"In any event, we all go into future shock eventually. I've seen even computer scientists and programmers react negatively to new technologies. This is one of the advantages of humans having finite life spans. If we didn't, the eventual future shock would likely retard society's growth and developement."
"I believe in libraries because most students don't have any money... 'To hell with you. To hell with you and to hell with the Internet.' It's distracting. It's meaningless; it's not real. It's in the air somewhere.'"
Rant time. From the original post: "I defy you to read and find a single sentence that isn't permeated, suffused, soaked, and encrusted with truth."
Challenge accepted, for example, from the article:
"The area of a triangle is equal to one-half its base times its height." Students are asked tomemorize this formula and then "apply" it over and over in the "exercises." Gone is the thrill, the joy, even the pain and frustration of the creative act. There is not even a problem anymore. The question has been asked and answered at the same time--there is nothing left for the student to do."
Item (1) I have an MA in math and teach at a community college in NYC (previously Boston; algebra, trigonometry, statistics, etc.) (2) As an academic, when you start teaching, you are in for a rude shock. All throughout school, I was engaged, getting "A"'s almost all the time, and considered a "B" to be a signal of failure. The shock is to discover that the majority of people in most classes (including, unknown to you, all of your prior classmates) are unengaged, and are more-or-less comfortable with doing C/D/F work. (3) The problem discussed here (exercising area of a triangle) is, yes, trivial to someone who "gets it". However, it is very difficult to the majority of community college students that I see. For students who fundamentally can't grasp the concept of a variable, repeating algebra for years and years, and who can't "get" the idea of substitution, it's possibly overwhelmingly difficult.
Yes, to you and me, "there is nothing left for the student to do", I agree fully. But what I've learned since starting as a teacher is that the exercises are an ongoing attempt to prove mastery of the "substitution" concept, and it's actually an enormous struggle for most people who aren't posting on Slashdot.
I've learned that I can hand out a complete "practice test" in advance of an exam (passingly similar to this proposed exercise), and give an exact duplicate of that test in the next class, with only the numbers changed, and still have the majority of a class fail the test.
Now, that's not all I do, but I do include examples of this just to check my own sanity all the time. What I also do now is to always include one or two "concept questions" requiring actual analysis of ideas, and the level of frustration and aggravation from the students for those is far, far more enormous. Frequently people just stop trying those by the end of a semester, leaving them blank, and are happy to walk away with a "B" or "C" from the rest of their tests.
In summary: I now consider my #1 job in all my classes to be an effort to make students comfortable with abstraction. Give me or you a formula and then, indeed, "there is nothing left... to do". But for most students, whose brains fundamentally cannot abstract enough to grasp substitution, there is an enormous skyscraper-sized obstacle still standing in front of them. That is in fact the fundamental goal of most math classes for most students, and they certainly can't do creative exploration or problem-solving until they at least "get" that, and are able to express patterns coherently when they see them.
"Besides, if I remember my math, a sine wave is simply made up of a string of parabolas with a change in the inflection point at Y = 0. (Not bad for a lawyer, eh?)"
That is incredibly incorrect.
Consider: What is the derivative of a parabola and a sine wave? Are they the same?
I agree, and would add one more commonly-heard rationalization from the 5% sociopath types: "If you're stupid enough to be taken advantage of, you deserve to lose your money."
"To this day, I am amazed when I hear American Republicans support the war. It is the exact opposite of their platform, but they blindly follow it even against their own philosophy."
Oh, I disagree with this. What I'm amazed by is that the written/spoken Republican party platform is the exact opposite of their actual philosophy. They are, in fact, always more prone to violence.
"Cultures are different. Vietnamese culture and Iranian culture are different. The Iranians bear 100% of the blame for the existence of a tyrannical government in Iran. We should condemn Iranian culture and its people."
Perhaps we'd be in better shape if Iran had a history of experience with a democratic governing process. It's a shame that we in the USA overthrew their last democratically elected leader, and installed a tyrant who agreed to give oil-drilling rights to US companies.
That's passive-aggressive and it's stupid and pointless. It's also classic tech-geek to avoid the necessary social interaction.
You must tell them WHY it's a problem and WHY it's being delayed, or there is no conceivable way that they'll change their actions. They don't have ESP to read your mind as to why you're pissed off.
"Why is it that corporations who want to keep the money they earned by selling products and services are evil and greedy, but the government wanting to take more and more of that money is perfectly fine?"
Because it's a democracy and we all get a say in what happens to the money in the latter case. Should be the former, too, by way of enforced corporate charters, as it once was.
"My father still lives at the address where Potomac Computer Systems started up, so he still gets an order every few weeks... he's retired now, so he doesn't have much to do. Every week, he'll just take a stack of a few orders, put disks in them, and mail them out."
Two observations, having just read the article in the New York Times today:
(1) The author's primary argument (moreso than physical work being an economic defense against the Internet) is that mechanical work gives the worker a more fulfilling life. One that is fully present, immediate, using our moral and intellectual capacities to their utmost, grounded in a community, and dealing fairly and face-to-face between owner/worker and customer.
(2) The danger I see here is that the independently-owned mechanical work (on motorcycles from the 70's, in this example) presumes the right and capacity to actually, independently, work on these machines. Once companies put enough computer-controlled parts and DRM-equivalents into the machines, this may no longer be feasible; if so, the intellectual property regime will force even this job under its corporate knuckle.
This actually sounds very familiar; a similar thing happened to my family when I was in high school.
My dad, doctor in a small town, had a run-in with a cop on the road (pulled over & ticketed while racing to a medical emergency). Then he went to a public meeting where he complained to the chief of police. Chief of police told him he wouldn't rest until he was in handcuffs someday.
So my dad was followed kind of routinely. So was I, and so were my cousins. I got harassed one time sitting in an unmoving vehicle in my uncle's driveway -- cop pulls in behind me and and accuses me of illegal hunting, of all things. (Do I have any hunting gear whatsoever? No, a notepad, pencil and some D&D books.)
Didn't last as long as your story, but same deal -- harassing a guy's children because he's politically offensive. Real classy.
I've worked at two small technology companies (video games, actually) that got bought out by larger corporations.
The wise owner/managers in both cases did this: Work up until required by their contract (1 year in both cases), and leave the next day. The not-so-wise programmers (including me) tried to stick around, make it work, become frustrated, etc.
I now see there's a standard protocol for company buyouts. Step #1 is where big company sends spokesperson on site to give a boilerplate spiel, "We're not changing your working practices; your culture is great, we don't want to change that; etc. etc.". All bullshit. They say that to forestall mass departures, and proceed to make whatever changes they wish, at whatever pace is desirable for them. Now I know: When your small company is bought out, leave ASAP. It's over.
I actually do recommend that you sell and leave ASAP.
A primary problem is that principals want to fire people at-will, without evidence. The union demands legitimate documented evidence, and many principals don't have the time or interest in following that up, and therefore simply drop that responsibility.
One thing that has been tried in places is putting teachers and the union on a renewal panel with the principal, including a regular review/evaluation process. Lesson: The union members are far more aggressive about removing bad teachers, so as to protect the quality of the profession (similar to doctor & lawyer bars). The example in the article saw an increase from 1% of teachers fired to 12% in the year that union-involved renewal boards were established. Principals are quoted as being enormously grateful for the confidence given by such oversight. (See article above, p. 10/37, item #6, "Increasing Accountability for Teaching Quality".)
I've taught at community colleges in two states, one with a weak union and one with a strong one. I know the strong-union institution (CUNY in New York) has far more regular, and far more rigorous observation/evaluation practices, by fellow professors. At the previous job it was entirely one assistant dean's responsibility to oversee everyone, he didn't really care for it, skipped it the majority of the time (and only sat in for 5 minutes after I begged him to give me the contract-required review), couldn't understand the proceedings in the class, etc.
Read the senate bill: http://www.ncga.state.nc.us/Sessions/2009/Bills/Senate/PDF/S1004v1.pdf [state.nc.us] I hate the telcos as much as anyone, but this bill says that when the city enters into the communications business, it should have to pay all the same taxes and fees as private business would, and be burdened with the same oversight. They also say that other fees the citizens pay (trash, water etc) cannot be used to fund the communications business. I don't see how this bill is unfair at all. The telcos are essentially saying "If we didn't have to pay any fees to the city to provide service, we could be competetive." If government wants to set up a business, they should have go compete with other businesses on a level playing field. If municipalities want to open up their own ISP, I am all for that, but then they should stop collecting fees and taxing the other ISPs they are competing with.
Bullshit, bullshit, and more bullshit. The government is not running a business; it is providing the best service it can to the citizenry. If that prices out some private ISPs, fuck 'em. If they want to establish taxes specific to the ISPs, fuck 'em. If the people _vote to make private ISPs illegal in their community_ (perhaps because they have a history of gouging, monopoly, and privacy-breaking practices), then they can do that too!
Municipal government should not be using taxes and fees to provide a commercial advantage for themselves. I think the "level playing field" is actually a good title for this bill, and not an unreasonable request. We're all hopped up on this because it's something that's near and dear to us, but imagine if the city set up a taxi service, but then did not have to pay gasoline tax or hackney licenses. Obviously it benefits the public who uses taxis, but is it fair to the taxi drivers and cab companies that they now have to charge more than the city taxis.
Awesome, sign me up for that taxi service. Democracy comes first, capitalism comes second.
I'd say in 2008 if anyone had announced Obama as the winner and then it turned out to be McCain when official results were in, we'd be looking at cleaning up from the riots still. Maybe a revolution.
Good christ, are you the same guy I remember predicting that back in 2000? Please, give it up. It's the most demonstrably untrue thing we've heard in the last decade.
Cause political chaos by throwing sudden, and massive support behind a new political party. Wish Americans were capable of picking some other party aside from Republicans or Democrats.
Unfortunately, there's a primary structural difference in that Sweden uses the parliamentary system and the USA does not. Whereas we use "first-past-the-post" voting, by Duverger's Law, it follows mathematically that only two parties will be successful. In the US you'd need a 3rd party to instantly jump to 51% support in some location or it wouldn't make any difference whatsoever (and note the Pirate Party in Sweden is very far from that figure; but that's okay in a parliamentary system).
Slashdot Mirror
"In any event, we all go into future shock eventually. I've seen even computer scientists and programmers react negatively to new technologies. This is one of the advantages of humans having finite life spans. If we didn't, the eventual future shock would likely retard society's growth and developement."
This is intriguing fantasy.
"I believe in libraries because most students don't have any money... 'To hell with you. To hell with you and to hell with the Internet.' It's distracting. It's meaningless; it's not real. It's in the air somewhere.'"
Wow, someone's got a bad case of future shock
I grew up on newspapers & magazines, but I'm coming to grips with the fact that someday those will be effectively gone, too.
"Hmm... Over a given half-period of the sine wave, wouldn't they be the same?"
No. The derivative of a parabola is a straight line. The derivative of a sine wave is a cosine wave.
Parabolas and sine waves are not remotely the same thing.
Rant time. From the original post: "I defy you to read and find a single sentence that isn't permeated, suffused, soaked, and encrusted with truth."
Challenge accepted, for example, from the article:
"The area of a triangle is equal to one-half its base times its height." Students are asked tomemorize this formula and then "apply" it over and over in the "exercises." Gone is the thrill, the joy, even the pain and frustration of the creative act. There is not even a problem anymore. The question has been asked and answered at the same time--there is nothing left for the student to do."
Item (1) I have an MA in math and teach at a community college in NYC (previously Boston; algebra, trigonometry, statistics, etc.) (2) As an academic, when you start teaching, you are in for a rude shock. All throughout school, I was engaged, getting "A"'s almost all the time, and considered a "B" to be a signal of failure. The shock is to discover that the majority of people in most classes (including, unknown to you, all of your prior classmates) are unengaged, and are more-or-less comfortable with doing C/D/F work. (3) The problem discussed here (exercising area of a triangle) is, yes, trivial to someone who "gets it". However, it is very difficult to the majority of community college students that I see. For students who fundamentally can't grasp the concept of a variable, repeating algebra for years and years, and who can't "get" the idea of substitution, it's possibly overwhelmingly difficult.
Yes, to you and me, "there is nothing left for the student to do", I agree fully. But what I've learned since starting as a teacher is that the exercises are an ongoing attempt to prove mastery of the "substitution" concept, and it's actually an enormous struggle for most people who aren't posting on Slashdot.
I've learned that I can hand out a complete "practice test" in advance of an exam (passingly similar to this proposed exercise), and give an exact duplicate of that test in the next class, with only the numbers changed, and still have the majority of a class fail the test.
Now, that's not all I do, but I do include examples of this just to check my own sanity all the time. What I also do now is to always include one or two "concept questions" requiring actual analysis of ideas, and the level of frustration and aggravation from the students for those is far, far more enormous. Frequently people just stop trying those by the end of a semester, leaving them blank, and are happy to walk away with a "B" or "C" from the rest of their tests.
In summary: I now consider my #1 job in all my classes to be an effort to make students comfortable with abstraction. Give me or you a formula and then, indeed, "there is nothing left... to do". But for most students, whose brains fundamentally cannot abstract enough to grasp substitution, there is an enormous skyscraper-sized obstacle still standing in front of them. That is in fact the fundamental goal of most math classes for most students, and they certainly can't do creative exploration or problem-solving until they at least "get" that, and are able to express patterns coherently when they see them.
Unlike mathematicians like these, my claim is that mathematics is not art; it is a desperate battle. For your consideration, the AngryMath Manifesto: http://angrymath.blogspot.com/2009/01/angrymath-manifesto.html
"Besides, if I remember my math, a sine wave is simply made up of a string of parabolas with a change in the inflection point at Y = 0. (Not bad for a lawyer, eh?)"
That is incredibly incorrect.
Consider: What is the derivative of a parabola and a sine wave? Are they the same?
I agree, and would add one more commonly-heard rationalization from the 5% sociopath types: "If you're stupid enough to be taken advantage of, you deserve to lose your money."
"Are gonna start tagging "children" with gps locator tag subcutaneous inserts?"
Sure, and Slashdotters have already been helping with "how-to" advice: http://ask.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=09/06/01/1659209
"To this day, I am amazed when I hear American Republicans support the war. It is the exact opposite of their platform, but they blindly follow it even against their own philosophy."
Oh, I disagree with this. What I'm amazed by is that the written/spoken Republican party platform is the exact opposite of their actual philosophy. They are, in fact, always more prone to violence.
"Cultures are different. Vietnamese culture and Iranian culture are different. The Iranians bear 100% of the blame for the existence of a tyrannical government in Iran. We should condemn Iranian culture and its people."
Perhaps we'd be in better shape if Iran had a history of experience with a democratic governing process. It's a shame that we in the USA overthrew their last democratically elected leader, and installed a tyrant who agreed to give oil-drilling rights to US companies.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Ajax
"The house isn't going to do that, it's not in their best interest to cheat in games that are designed to be in their favor."
People don't always do what's in their best interest. Classic downfall of classic economic theory.
Ah, you must be the legal counsel to the EFF. Nice to meet ya.
That's passive-aggressive and it's stupid and pointless. It's also classic tech-geek to avoid the necessary social interaction.
You must tell them WHY it's a problem and WHY it's being delayed, or there is no conceivable way that they'll change their actions. They don't have ESP to read your mind as to why you're pissed off.
"Why is it that corporations who want to keep the money they earned by selling products and services are evil and greedy, but the government wanting to take more and more of that money is perfectly fine?"
Because it's a democracy and we all get a say in what happens to the money in the latter case. Should be the former, too, by way of enforced corporate charters, as it once was.
"Corporations don't pay tax. Not really. They pass on that tax to their customers. Ultimately, it is the consumer that pays the tax."
I'm guessing that Steve Ballmer has thought about this a little more closely than you have.
STFU
"My father still lives at the address where Potomac Computer Systems started up, so he still gets an order every few weeks... he's retired now, so he doesn't have much to do. Every week, he'll just take a stack of a few orders, put disks in them, and mail them out."
Odds that his dad just got slashdotted?
Two observations, having just read the article in the New York Times today:
(1) The author's primary argument (moreso than physical work being an economic defense against the Internet) is that mechanical work gives the worker a more fulfilling life. One that is fully present, immediate, using our moral and intellectual capacities to their utmost, grounded in a community, and dealing fairly and face-to-face between owner/worker and customer.
(2) The danger I see here is that the independently-owned mechanical work (on motorcycles from the 70's, in this example) presumes the right and capacity to actually, independently, work on these machines. Once companies put enough computer-controlled parts and DRM-equivalents into the machines, this may no longer be feasible; if so, the intellectual property regime will force even this job under its corporate knuckle.
"Actually most 'religious' wars are just conflicts over resources or land, and religion is used as an excuse."
Of all the wrong-headed, delusional comments in this thread, I nominate this one for the gold medal.
This actually sounds very familiar; a similar thing happened to my family when I was in high school.
My dad, doctor in a small town, had a run-in with a cop on the road (pulled over & ticketed while racing to a medical emergency). Then he went to a public meeting where he complained to the chief of police. Chief of police told him he wouldn't rest until he was in handcuffs someday.
So my dad was followed kind of routinely. So was I, and so were my cousins. I got harassed one time sitting in an unmoving vehicle in my uncle's driveway -- cop pulls in behind me and and accuses me of illegal hunting, of all things. (Do I have any hunting gear whatsoever? No, a notepad, pencil and some D&D books.)
Didn't last as long as your story, but same deal -- harassing a guy's children because he's politically offensive. Real classy.
I've worked at two small technology companies (video games, actually) that got bought out by larger corporations.
The wise owner/managers in both cases did this: Work up until required by their contract (1 year in both cases), and leave the next day. The not-so-wise programmers (including me) tried to stick around, make it work, become frustrated, etc.
I now see there's a standard protocol for company buyouts. Step #1 is where big company sends spokesperson on site to give a boilerplate spiel, "We're not changing your working practices; your culture is great, we don't want to change that; etc. etc.". All bullshit. They say that to forestall mass departures, and proceed to make whatever changes they wish, at whatever pace is desirable for them. Now I know: When your small company is bought out, leave ASAP. It's over.
I actually do recommend that you sell and leave ASAP.
Here's an article on these issues from the AFT union magazine, "American Educator", last fall:
http://www.aft.org/pubs-reports/american_educator/issues/fall2008/goldstein.pdf
A primary problem is that principals want to fire people at-will, without evidence. The union demands legitimate documented evidence, and many principals don't have the time or interest in following that up, and therefore simply drop that responsibility.
One thing that has been tried in places is putting teachers and the union on a renewal panel with the principal, including a regular review/evaluation process. Lesson: The union members are far more aggressive about removing bad teachers, so as to protect the quality of the profession (similar to doctor & lawyer bars). The example in the article saw an increase from 1% of teachers fired to 12% in the year that union-involved renewal boards were established. Principals are quoted as being enormously grateful for the confidence given by such oversight. (See article above, p. 10/37, item #6, "Increasing Accountability for Teaching Quality".)
I've taught at community colleges in two states, one with a weak union and one with a strong one. I know the strong-union institution (CUNY in New York) has far more regular, and far more rigorous observation/evaluation practices, by fellow professors. At the previous job it was entirely one assistant dean's responsibility to oversee everyone, he didn't really care for it, skipped it the majority of the time (and only sat in for 5 minutes after I begged him to give me the contract-required review), couldn't understand the proceedings in the class, etc.
IAAL... I want to be able to cheat somebody in a (virtual) contract and laugh at them down the barrel of a plasma blaster when they complain.
Confirmed: That's definitely a lawyer.
Read the senate bill: http://www.ncga.state.nc.us/Sessions/2009/Bills/Senate/PDF/S1004v1.pdf [state.nc.us] I hate the telcos as much as anyone, but this bill says that when the city enters into the communications business, it should have to pay all the same taxes and fees as private business would, and be burdened with the same oversight. They also say that other fees the citizens pay (trash, water etc) cannot be used to fund the communications business. I don't see how this bill is unfair at all. The telcos are essentially saying "If we didn't have to pay any fees to the city to provide service, we could be competetive." If government wants to set up a business, they should have go compete with other businesses on a level playing field. If municipalities want to open up their own ISP, I am all for that, but then they should stop collecting fees and taxing the other ISPs they are competing with.
Bullshit, bullshit, and more bullshit. The government is not running a business; it is providing the best service it can to the citizenry. If that prices out some private ISPs, fuck 'em. If they want to establish taxes specific to the ISPs, fuck 'em. If the people _vote to make private ISPs illegal in their community_ (perhaps because they have a history of gouging, monopoly, and privacy-breaking practices), then they can do that too!
Municipal government should not be using taxes and fees to provide a commercial advantage for themselves. I think the "level playing field" is actually a good title for this bill, and not an unreasonable request. We're all hopped up on this because it's something that's near and dear to us, but imagine if the city set up a taxi service, but then did not have to pay gasoline tax or hackney licenses. Obviously it benefits the public who uses taxis, but is it fair to the taxi drivers and cab companies that they now have to charge more than the city taxis.
Awesome, sign me up for that taxi service. Democracy comes first, capitalism comes second.
I'd say in 2008 if anyone had announced Obama as the winner and then it turned out to be McCain when official results were in, we'd be looking at cleaning up from the riots still. Maybe a revolution.
Good christ, are you the same guy I remember predicting that back in 2000? Please, give it up. It's the most demonstrably untrue thing we've heard in the last decade.
Cause political chaos by throwing sudden, and massive support behind a new political party. Wish Americans were capable of picking some other party aside from Republicans or Democrats.
Unfortunately, there's a primary structural difference in that Sweden uses the parliamentary system and the USA does not. Whereas we use "first-past-the-post" voting, by Duverger's Law, it follows mathematically that only two parties will be successful. In the US you'd need a 3rd party to instantly jump to 51% support in some location or it wouldn't make any difference whatsoever (and note the Pirate Party in Sweden is very far from that figure; but that's okay in a parliamentary system).
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duverger's_law