The reason is simple: the AP test assumes you will be using a [graphing] calculator
Half right. The AP Physics exam allows calculators during the free-response ("essay") part but not during the multiple choice part. It's not the only way in which the AP committee is conflicted...
Our education system is designed to produce slaves, not scientists.
Our educational system is actually designed to produce reliable, highly-paid assembly line workers.
The problem is, there are no highly-paid assembly line jobs any more. But at the dawn of the 20th century, when this system was congealing into what it has become, it was actually fairly well-suited to the goals of society... and it did a decent job getting kids in shape for what people thought they would be doing.
The world is different and our conception of education hasn't caught up to it. Read "Fast Times at Fairmont High" for Vernor Vinge's take on what's going to be needed. It seems pretty likely, at least in broad outline.
What I discovered, after breaking down and buying a high-capacity iPod (though this would hold true for any high capacity player) is this: Once you can carry around your entire music collection, you begin to think differently about your music. I listen a lot more now. But much more importantly, I listen more to "obscure" things. I have rediscovered those one-good-track CDs and those off-the-wall good songs that have lurked in my collection for years, gathering metaphorical dust, because the one good song was never worth the bother of digging out the CD -- and because eventually the one good song drifted out of my immediate namespace due to info crowding.
Sure, you could archive it all on computer and then just custom-make MD versions of your playlists. You give up spontaneity, though. Often I think of a song I'd like when doing something when I'm not at the computer. (I know, it's hard to believe there are such times...)
Perhaps as significantly, using iTunes+iPod, it's ridiculously easy to make playlists that range over my entire collection and to have those updated easily to the iPod. I don't need multiple copies of songs, because they're all symbolically linked, an efficiency that appeals to this aging geek.
To sum up, having a large-capacity player revolutionized music for me, because it put me back in control of what I listened to, when, and in what order.
Of course the idea is not that he/she would be listening to all of 1 GB in 5 minutes. It's that spreading the music across many discs leads to a high likeliehood that what he/she want to listen to next is on a different disc.
BARTLETT: Do I look like Joe McCarthy to you, Toby?
ZIEGLER: No sir. [beat] Nobody ever looks like Joe McCarthy. That's how they get in the door in the first place.
Or to put it another way: Yeah, this option exists already. And yeah, there are times when security trumps transparency. But it's always a dangerous move, the DHS seems congenitally disposed toward excessive secrecy, and if we don't keep our eyes open, we're going to find ourselves in a place most can't imagine we could ever reach.
The Roman Emperors eschewed titles of monarchy and pretended to be just "first in the Senate" for three centuries after the death of the Republic. You don't have to set fire to the National Archives to destroy the Constitution... you could do it one silly law or one far-reaching executive order at a time.
IMO, It's our job as citizens to watch the government and stop it from becoming 1984, not to remove its powers entirely into a impotent nation that could be invaded by Canada.
We're probably closer on this than you think. I could never be a libertarian for exactly the reasons you mention. But that's not the same as accepting "it's for your safety" as justification for all expansions of government power. In the case at hand, the person had a rational expectation that the email had been deleted. The government wanted to see it for investigating a tax case. That's quite a step below interdicting nuclear material.
All in all, I'm not sure I'd see the government's actions as out of line here. They got a court order and it seems the judge acted responsibly. One can snark Google for keeping these emails around as if they never expected to be asked to produce them. And one can snark the defendant for being naive enough to think "deleted" really means "can't be recovered".
My original post was responding to the jingoistic tone of its immediate parent. It's not enough that the government says it's doing something "for your safety". There are rules and there are limits and there are laws, and many of them restrict what the government can do -- because in a head-to-head between a single citizen and the government, the government has the advantage. Our system of law is designed to rebalance the playing field. Lately we seem to be throwing that principle overboard, and it saddens me. We can give up liberty (frigtheningly too easy to do) but we can never be 100% safe. And my understanding of history is that, in giving up the liberty, we generally make ourselves less safe.
And this shows why the most dangerous threat to liberty is not the black hats or the covert agents, it's the citizenry:
I think invasions of privacy like this are terrible, but I won't scold the US because I understand that they are doing it to protect me and everyone else in my country. I know that it opens up abuse, but *maybe* reading someone's email will save another person's life (or a lot of people).
Sure, maybe this time they're trying to protect you (though it seems it's actually more of a tax dispute). The possibility of abuse is huge and scary.
It might be that reading deleted emails, or wiretapping American citizens, or planting infiltrators in protest groups, will save some lives. You know what? Too bad. We hear all the time how "freedom has costs" and we honor "the greatest generation" and the current military for being willing to risk their lives for freedom. Here's the kicker: If you live in a free society, you must tolerate risks in the name of freedom too.
There's a chance unbridled surveillance will prevent a terrorist attack. There's a much higher chance that unbridled surveillance will destroy the Republic as we know it. I am for preserving the liberties that make the nation worth living in.
I bought it a couple of times. I had just received the original no-frills DVD in the mail when that day they announced the suped-up 20th anniversay edition. *Sigh*
Then you get to the payoff and it's just a screed against copyright law as it stands. It doesn't offer guidance, just copyright-hate.
Hmmm... from the comic:
Of course, filmmakers and distributors should get paid for their work and copyright should prevent wholesale appropriation... But documentarians need to depict a world full of copyrighted culture. Demanding payment for every use can hinder the very creativity that copyright is supposed to encourage.
Ah, yes, I see it now, all the drooling venom from these godless commies... Get real. Despite what is peddled these days, not all criticism is a mad attack. The comic is in fact quite clear that copyright serves a social good and that the system is not intrinsically flawed.
Take your own jeremiad somewhere else.
Oh, and postnote based on the postscript:
So count us as stodgy believers in the copyright system, not revolutionaries eager to scrap the whole thing.... [But] the system seems to have gone astray.
Well... you need to explain how come we keep inventing esoteric math (imaginary numbers, fractal geometry, etc.) and then eventually finding places in the real world well-modeled by them.
The question of how much of math is invented and how much is discovered, is very much an ongoing philosophical inquiry.
But I dare you do compare it in seriousness to the Clipper chip which Clinton and Gore both personally championed.
Well, I'm tempted to see your "Clipper Chip" and raise you one "illegal warrantless domestic spying", with a side order of "Total Information Awareness".
But I won't. The Clipper Chip was a dumb idea. And despite the revisionism that passes for intellectual courage these days, there were plenty of Clinton allies on the left who joined in the denunciation of it.
I agree that the import of this CD (such as it is) lies in that a political party thought this a good idea, not in that the party was the Republicans. The Democrats are no saints when it comes to privacy. But the Republicans are in power and the Democrats are less organized than the Whigs right now, so it's the Republicans we need to watch.
And all of them attacking either the GOP or the Bush Administration.
"I rob banks because that's where the money is."
When you control the executive, both houses of Congress, and an increasingly large fraction of the courts, you should probably expect to become the primary target for political attacks. After all, that's where the power is.
And how could you run an attack on the opposition party, seeing as there is none? The Democrats are about as effective as the Whigs, right now, and they don't seem to have the wherewithal to change that.
Well, it's refreshing to see someone finally admit what we all know: The Republican Party is intent on becoming synonymous with the federal government. (Minnesota GOP == IRS) Someday soon, it'll be just like in glorious Stalinist Russia: The government will exist to serve the Party.
Sometimes I feel like I've fallen off an asymptote and come back from the other side of infinity...
On a related note, if you want to end all of this, help the Libertarians. I do and I enjoy it.
Why is there any reason to believe that the Libertarian candidates, having said what they needed to get elected, won't also immediately go back on their promises?
OK. Except... Homeland Security isn't the police force, and for good reason. Leaving aside the practical impact of mission dilution, their objective is much different. It's the same reason we have the Posse Commitatus Act -- to keep national security assets out of daily life. Nations that don't respect that often end up having the army controlling daily life.
I am not a tin-foil hat guy and I recognize that we in the States are blessed with a highly professional military that takes seriously the principle of civilian control. Here's the rub, though: They do so because of the institutional separation, the incorporated distrust if you will. Paradoxically, we can trust our military precisely because we don't. Dragging DHS into obscenity policing is a step toward a disaster that makes street-variety terrorism pale in comparison.
It's simpler than that. How about "no wartime powers until Congress, you know, declares war". This President has not been given -- has not sought -- has gone out of his way to avoid seeking -- the passage of a writ of war. Why? Because that would explicitly recognize that Congrees, too, has a Constitutional role in warmaking. Also, the writ of war would likely spell out the conditions under which the war could be considered "won" and hence the state of war lifted.
It's much more convenient (for this President) to pretend that his commander-in-chief authority trumps everything else, that the state of war be unregulated and unending, that no basis be admitted that anyone else has any power in this matter.
{By the way, the idea that Article II gives the President sole warmaking power is complete BS, of course. Or are we saying that if Congress chose to de-fund a program in the Army, the President would be allowed to spend the money anyway? And if Article II authorizes him to ignore statutes, can he just send the 101st to knock over a bank to get the money?}
Well, classically, tragedy dealt with the fall of a hero due to an innate flaw, usually that of hubris (excessive pride). Hmmm... seems like it pretty much nails NASA prior to Challenger.
The Chinese Government will recognize the economic importance of the power that google brings to the internet. This gives google leverage to exact change.
(sound of clinking silver coins) Chinese gov't:...28, 29, 30. There you go; that's the precise amount left over based on the going rate for a soul these days.
You will not find the results you expect, so they are only censoring things that put the govt. in a bad light. They don't block out things like democracy.
The ability to criticize the government is the linchpin of democracy. Who cares if they allow harmless platitudes about generalized democracy? The issue is, can the people access the information they need to make self-government feasible? Or is the censorship being used to keep the people in the dark about the doings of their own government, so as to make opposition problematic and self-rule impossible?
I think it's pretty clear which one the Chinese government wants.
Or, to put it another way: How long until the ruling party decides that even the idea of democracy puts the government in a bad light (since it doesn't offer it)? And then what?
People have to (re)learn -- saying "Democracy" is cheap but pointless. Living democracy is a lot harder -- and worth all the marbles.
True, they could refuse to do business in China. But what will that accomplish?
It would allow Google to live up to its own motto, which is no small thing. It would, presumably, lead to a loss of comparative advantage for China, if we assume that (in a moral-free world) using Google is the optimal choice for them. It would help highlight the problem.
All that refusing to do business there will do is cost Google money. It won't change the world.
A major US company turning its back on many millions based solely on adherence to principle? Not change the world? It would send shockwaves through the world. It challenges the very basis of market capitalism.
I think that's asking a lot.
(A) We're not really asking anything. Google has told the world that they will do business guided by "Don't be evil". That's saying a lot. All we're asking is that they follow what they say.
(b) And if it is asking a lot -- well, too bad. Being free is advanced citizenship. It's not cheap, or easy, or convenient. It's not something done as an afterthought. They want to partake of the benefits of freedom, maybe they should pony up the ticket price. And that goes for every company, not just Google.
"Everyone else is doing it" is no more a valid moral justification than "I was just following orders".
IANAL, but in terms of copyright, congress only has the power "To promote the Progress of... useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors... the exclusive Right to their... Writings"
This is true. Unfortunately, so far, the US Supreme Court has given Congress considerable leeway in deciding what does, in fact, promote the progress of the arts. Heck, the Court even allowed, in a hypothetical sense, the indefinite extension of copyright so long as the law wasn't written to grant indefinite copyright explicitly. That is, Congress can't say "Copyright never expires", but apparently they can say "Copyright doesn't expire for 15,0000,000,000 years".
From what I understand, it's only illegal to circumvent copy protection to make illegal copies.
That's what you'd like to think. And it is certainly what the content cartel wanted everyone to think as the DMCA was moving through Congress. But in fact, the law makes no stipulation that circumvention be only to prevent illegal copies. It makes no allowance for legitimate copies at all. That's why some people call anti-circumvention legislation the super-copyright... it gives to content providers rights that they never, ever even dreamed of even as recently as two decades ago.
Re:Where to get decent photo editing done [a bit O
on
Adobe Lightroom Review
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
Blockquoth the poster:
But your advice, just take perfect photos and you won't want to post-process, is not helpful at all.
On the radio station I web-listen to (KFOG out of San Francisco), someone's running an ad for high-quality photo printing. In it, there's a caricature of an "elite" French photographer (complete with cheesy accent) who says,
People ask me, "Marco, how do you make the people you photograph appear so beautiful?" and I tell them, It is easy -- I only photograph beautiful people! Wrinkles, no! Blemishes, no! Only beautiful, yes!
Which sounds a lot like what the guy one step up was recommending.:)
Slashdot Mirror
Half right. The AP Physics exam allows calculators during the free-response ("essay") part but not during the multiple choice part. It's not the only way in which the AP committee is conflicted...
Our educational system is actually designed to produce reliable, highly-paid assembly line workers.
The problem is, there are no highly-paid assembly line jobs any more. But at the dawn of the 20th century, when this system was congealing into what it has become, it was actually fairly well-suited to the goals of society... and it did a decent job getting kids in shape for what people thought they would be doing.
The world is different and our conception of education hasn't caught up to it. Read "Fast Times at Fairmont High" for Vernor Vinge's take on what's going to be needed. It seems pretty likely, at least in broad outline.
What I discovered, after breaking down and buying a high-capacity iPod (though this would hold true for any high capacity player) is this: Once you can carry around your entire music collection, you begin to think differently about your music. I listen a lot more now. But much more importantly, I listen more to "obscure" things. I have rediscovered those one-good-track CDs and those off-the-wall good songs that have lurked in my collection for years, gathering metaphorical dust, because the one good song was never worth the bother of digging out the CD -- and because eventually the one good song drifted out of my immediate namespace due to info crowding.
Sure, you could archive it all on computer and then just custom-make MD versions of your playlists. You give up spontaneity, though. Often I think of a song I'd like when doing something when I'm not at the computer. (I know, it's hard to believe there are such times...)
Perhaps as significantly, using iTunes+iPod, it's ridiculously easy to make playlists that range over my entire collection and to have those updated easily to the iPod. I don't need multiple copies of songs, because they're all symbolically linked, an efficiency that appeals to this aging geek.
To sum up, having a large-capacity player revolutionized music for me, because it put me back in control of what I listened to, when, and in what order.
Of course the idea is not that he/she would be listening to all of 1 GB in 5 minutes. It's that spreading the music across many discs leads to a high likeliehood that what he/she want to listen to next is on a different disc.
Or to put it another way: Yeah, this option exists already. And yeah, there are times when security trumps transparency. But it's always a dangerous move, the DHS seems congenitally disposed toward excessive secrecy, and if we don't keep our eyes open, we're going to find ourselves in a place most can't imagine we could ever reach.
The Roman Emperors eschewed titles of monarchy and pretended to be just "first in the Senate" for three centuries after the death of the Republic. You don't have to set fire to the National Archives to destroy the Constitution... you could do it one silly law or one far-reaching executive order at a time.
Um, they can do that too, with the proper subpeona. This isn't much different from the usual seizure of records.
Sure, maybe this time they're trying to protect you (though it seems it's actually more of a tax dispute). The possibility of abuse is huge and scary.
It might be that reading deleted emails, or wiretapping American citizens, or planting infiltrators in protest groups, will save some lives. You know what? Too bad. We hear all the time how "freedom has costs" and we honor "the greatest generation" and the current military for being willing to risk their lives for freedom. Here's the kicker: If you live in a free society, you must tolerate risks in the name of freedom too.
There's a chance unbridled surveillance will prevent a terrorist attack. There's a much higher chance that unbridled surveillance will destroy the Republic as we know it. I am for preserving the liberties that make the nation worth living in.
I bought it a couple of times. I had just received the original no-frills DVD in the mail when that day they announced the suped-up 20th anniversay edition. *Sigh*
Hmmm... from the comic:
Ah, yes, I see it now, all the drooling venom from these godless commies... Get real. Despite what is peddled these days, not all criticism is a mad attack. The comic is in fact quite clear that copyright serves a social good and that the system is not intrinsically flawed.
Take your own jeremiad somewhere else.
Oh, and postnote based on the postscript:
I might have missed something, but how is this a use of your tax dollars (good or bad)? It claims to have been funded by the Rockefeller Foundation.
Well... you need to explain how come we keep inventing esoteric math (imaginary numbers, fractal geometry, etc.) and then eventually finding places in the real world well-modeled by them.
The question of how much of math is invented and how much is discovered, is very much an ongoing philosophical inquiry.
Well, I'm tempted to see your "Clipper Chip" and raise you one "illegal warrantless domestic spying", with a side order of "Total Information Awareness".
But I won't. The Clipper Chip was a dumb idea. And despite the revisionism that passes for intellectual courage these days, there were plenty of Clinton allies on the left who joined in the denunciation of it.
I agree that the import of this CD (such as it is) lies in that a political party thought this a good idea, not in that the party was the Republicans. The Democrats are no saints when it comes to privacy. But the Republicans are in power and the Democrats are less organized than the Whigs right now, so it's the Republicans we need to watch.
"I rob banks because that's where the money is."
When you control the executive, both houses of Congress, and an increasingly large fraction of the courts, you should probably expect to become the primary target for political attacks. After all, that's where the power is.
And how could you run an attack on the opposition party, seeing as there is none? The Democrats are about as effective as the Whigs, right now, and they don't seem to have the wherewithal to change that.
Well, it's refreshing to see someone finally admit what we all know: The Republican Party is intent on becoming synonymous with the federal government. (Minnesota GOP == IRS) Someday soon, it'll be just like in glorious Stalinist Russia: The government will exist to serve the Party.
Sometimes I feel like I've fallen off an asymptote and come back from the other side of infinity...
Why is there any reason to believe that the Libertarian candidates, having said what they needed to get elected, won't also immediately go back on their promises?
OK. Except... Homeland Security isn't the police force, and for good reason. Leaving aside the practical impact of mission dilution, their objective is much different. It's the same reason we have the Posse Commitatus Act -- to keep national security assets out of daily life. Nations that don't respect that often end up having the army controlling daily life.
I am not a tin-foil hat guy and I recognize that we in the States are blessed with a highly professional military that takes seriously the principle of civilian control. Here's the rub, though: They do so because of the institutional separation, the incorporated distrust if you will. Paradoxically, we can trust our military precisely because we don't. Dragging DHS into obscenity policing is a step toward a disaster that makes street-variety terrorism pale in comparison.
It's simpler than that. How about "no wartime powers until Congress, you know, declares war". This President has not been given -- has not sought -- has gone out of his way to avoid seeking -- the passage of a writ of war. Why? Because that would explicitly recognize that Congrees, too, has a Constitutional role in warmaking. Also, the writ of war would likely spell out the conditions under which the war could be considered "won" and hence the state of war lifted.
It's much more convenient (for this President) to pretend that his commander-in-chief authority trumps everything else, that the state of war be unregulated and unending, that no basis be admitted that anyone else has any power in this matter.
{By the way, the idea that Article II gives the President sole warmaking power is complete BS, of course. Or are we saying that if Congress chose to de-fund a program in the Army, the President would be allowed to spend the money anyway? And if Article II authorizes him to ignore statutes, can he just send the 101st to knock over a bank to get the money?}
Well, classically, tragedy dealt with the fall of a hero due to an innate flaw, usually that of hubris (excessive pride). Hmmm... seems like it pretty much nails NASA prior to Challenger.
blockquoth the poster:
...28, 29, 30. There you go; that's the precise amount left over based on the going rate for a soul these days.
The Chinese Government will recognize the economic importance of the power that google brings to the internet. This gives google leverage to exact change.
(sound of clinking silver coins)
Chinese gov't:
Google: Pleasure doing business with you.
The ability to criticize the government is the linchpin of democracy. Who cares if they allow harmless platitudes about generalized democracy? The issue is, can the people access the information they need to make self-government feasible? Or is the censorship being used to keep the people in the dark about the doings of their own government, so as to make opposition problematic and self-rule impossible?
I think it's pretty clear which one the Chinese government wants.
Or, to put it another way: How long until the ruling party decides that even the idea of democracy puts the government in a bad light (since it doesn't offer it)? And then what?
People have to (re)learn -- saying "Democracy" is cheap but pointless. Living democracy is a lot harder -- and worth all the marbles.
It would allow Google to live up to its own motto, which is no small thing.
It would, presumably, lead to a loss of comparative advantage for China, if we assume that (in a moral-free world) using Google is the optimal choice for them.
It would help highlight the problem.
A major US company turning its back on many millions based solely on adherence to principle? Not change the world? It would send shockwaves through the world. It challenges the very basis of market capitalism.
(A) We're not really asking anything. Google has told the world that they will do business guided by "Don't be evil". That's saying a lot. All we're asking is that they follow what they say.
(b) And if it is asking a lot -- well, too bad. Being free is advanced citizenship. It's not cheap, or easy, or convenient. It's not something done as an afterthought. They want to partake of the benefits of freedom, maybe they should pony up the ticket price. And that goes for every company, not just Google.
"Everyone else is doing it" is no more a valid moral justification than "I was just following orders".
This is true. Unfortunately, so far, the US Supreme Court has given Congress considerable leeway in deciding what does, in fact, promote the progress of the arts. Heck, the Court even allowed, in a hypothetical sense, the indefinite extension of copyright so long as the law wasn't written to grant indefinite copyright explicitly. That is, Congress can't say "Copyright never expires", but apparently they can say "Copyright doesn't expire for 15,0000,000,000 years".
I2ANAL.
That's what you'd like to think. And it is certainly what the content cartel wanted everyone to think as the DMCA was moving through Congress. But in fact, the law makes no stipulation that circumvention be only to prevent illegal copies. It makes no allowance for legitimate copies at all. That's why some people call anti-circumvention legislation the super-copyright
On the radio station I web-listen to (KFOG out of San Francisco), someone's running an ad for high-quality photo printing. In it, there's a caricature of an "elite" French photographer (complete with cheesy accent) who says,
Which sounds a lot like what the guy one step up was recommending.