but MS Word sometimes has problems opening its documents... nice effort, but I'll stick with my M$, thanks
Hmmm...you know, I bet these people don't actually pay to use M$. I can't think of very many people I know who would keep using Office if they had to pay for it. As long as they can "borrow" somebody's cd, yes, they will continue to use Office. If, however, they were offered the choice of $450 or free + a few glitches, I am willing to bet they would go for the latter.
Upgrade the kernel? Edit/etc/modules.conf? Forget about it:
Wait, I am assuming you know how to install hardware in Windows, correct? I mean, sometimes the little hardware detection thing works, and sometimes all you have to do is use the little driver install progam on the disk, but you still have to know how to do those things. And if it doesn't work, you have to know how to make it work.
So how is this any different in linux? Forget about upgrading the kernel, if you have a modular (which most distributions ship with) you don't need to worry about that. Modules.conf? If you have hotplug installed (which most distributions do) you don't need to mess with that. If the hardware isn't supported (which, granted, is true more often than it should be, and it is annoying), or if hotplug doesn't work, you might have to do some manual dicking around.
But my point...1) installing supported hardware isn't any harder, for the most part, than it is in Windows if you are using a relatively modern distribution that is built for desktop users. And 2) if you are expected to know the basic ins and outs of installing drivers in Windows, why is it so inconceivable for somebody to know the basic ins and outs of installing drivers in linux?
How about because they haven't passed a rigorous set of clinical tests that indicate the drug has its intended effect at a reasonable dosage, has a minimum number of side effects, is relatively non-addictive, and is expunged from the body within a reasonable time frame. The process of regulating drugs is more objective than you might think. Unless a drug is well studied such that its mechanism of action is known and is fairly benign, it cannot be put up for over-the-counter sale.
Note: Sorry for the use of reasonable and relatively. I don't know the exact numbers and limits. Also, you might object on the basis of the legality of cigarettes. Well, "big tobacco" has a lot of influence. And it is hard to justify shutting down an already established multi-billion dollar industry when use of the drug is considered recreational and a personal choice.
I would just like to add to your list the effect drug usage has on family life. What happens when the parents come home and shoot up some heroin to relax, thus neglecting (or abusing) their children? This already happens with alcohol, and we tend to turn a blind eye to it until domestic abuse is reported.
Or what about the second hand smoke from cigarettes? Public smoking bans are meant to protect employees like waiters who would otherwise have to sit around breathing second hand smoke 8 hours a day. What about a newborn in a household where smoking is allowed? Pot produces second hand smoke as well, and it is just as harmful as cigarette smoke.
Then again, in the US we don't seem to really care about families anyway, so maybe this is a pointless argument.
Huh? How about your creditors? Or your family? Or even just yourself? There are bills that need to be paid which requires having a job. And, as has been discussed earlier already, employers don't always take it kindly when you tell them you want more free time. Don't pretend it is easy to just go out and get another job. It isn't. And even if it was, it doesn't necessarily mean your new employer will be any more amicable.
And if you disregard their expectations that's just what they'll continue to do. Is that what you want?
I'm not a fucking evangelist. I don't care what they do. If they want to use IE, I have no problem with them using what I consider an inferior browser.
The developers need to accept that other people got there before them and established certain conventions and expectations that need to be met.
If the developers had decided to reverse the mouse buttons, move the status bar to a different window, and put "Print Preview" in the "Tools" menu, I would agree with you. The developers did not do that. They made a very usable browser that meets most expectations. The expectations of some people are just absurd. There needs to be a balance between meeting expectations and the freedom to do things differently.
Bah... I could go on but mozilla is for geeks right now.
Why does somebody have to say this every time a piece of software from the open source community is evaluated as a replacement for a piece of proprietary software? Granted, in some cases it is justified, but this is just absurd. I'm sorry, but not being able do drag-n-drop toolbars does not make Mozilla a geek-only toy.
If somebody is using new software, they need to accept that they are using new software, and not insist that it behave in exactly the same way, shape, form that their old software did. If they want IE they need to use IE.
The popular science magazines like Scientific American and The New Scientist have some faults, but I think they have the right idea as far as content is concerned. There are a lot of interesting topics in science to talk about without focusing on the latest genomic research. Scientific American, for example, published an article on the science of coffee a few months ago. Stuff like that can be very interesting to people and still be real science.
The challenge comes when you need to take some of the more difficult subjects, like quantum computing or drug discovery, and present it to people who don't have degrees in physics or chemistry. There is some really interesting physics and chemistry involved that can be explained, it just takes longer. You don't have to compromise the integrity of the actual science, either, by making fallacious claims or drawing erroneous conclusions in an effort to make the science more exciting. This is my major problem with some of the stuff in Scientific American and The New Scientist. Just present the facts; they will stand on their own merit.
Keith Devlin is a good example of a popular author. He is a true mathematician, but he can write popular books, like The Millenium Problems, on the most complicated current mathematical problems. Granted you have to have some patience to get through explanations of things like the Yang-Mills hypothesis, but it is completely within the grasp of someone with only a basic math background if they are interested enough to take the time.
Yes, but only if the directors/writers make an effort to do a good job. Even if you have a well-written novel as a good source, that doesn't guarantee a good movie. There have been a number of flops including Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood, Chocolat, and Beloved. Toni Morrison even won a Pulitzer for Beloved, but the movie just didn't do it justice.
You know, I guess I have to agree. My original reaction was "blah, they just took a bunch of half-baked ideas from greek philosophy and buddhist theology, and threw them together with a bunch of fight scenes." But now that I think about it, the philosohpy itself wasn't that bad. It wasn't new or insightful, but it was well presented.
What drove me crazy was the dialogue. The Neo and Morpheus characters continually made the philosophical discussion sound like it was being carried out by a bunch of drunken frat boys on a Saturday night. "Some things change, other things stay the same." Whoa there Morpheus, that was sure deep. And then, of course, Neo just never seems to get it. His facial expressions, at least, make it look like the cranks in his head are turning very slowly.
Anyway, I think your guess is interesting. But if they are going to finish with the reference to the syllogism of the cave from Plato's Republic, Neo's perception of reality needs to be scaled up quite a bit. In the MR, Neo and company are only (supposedly) in sphere two, as described by Plato; there are four total. But then I think the point Plato was making was that it is generally impossible to reach the third sphere, much less the fourth sphere. You are always looking at shadows, even if you think you are looking at forms.
Just waste that is very chemically toxic, emits powerful high-energy radiation, and has a half-life measured in millenia
You know, this is probably the most misunderstood aspect of nuclear reactors. Everybody is convinced that nuclear waste is so dangerous and that it is the worst thing that can happen to the environment because the radioactive nuclei won't stabilize for thousands of years.
The thing is, nuclear waste is composed of fission products, which are a lot of different things. There are short-lived isotopes, medium-lived isotopes, and long-lived isotopes. The long-lived isotopes that everybody likes to make a big deal about are only a percentage of the total waste (I don't remember the actual number, but I think it is something like 20%). Furthermore, you can observe an interesting trend if you look at a chart of the nuclides. The high-energy betas and gammas tend to come from short-lived and medium-lived isotopes. Long-lived isotopes tend to emit weak betas and alphas.
So what does this mean? It means nuclear waste becomes a lot "safer" after several decades (long enough for the short and medium-lived isotopes to stabilize). Then the longer-lived isotopes that remain suddenly become a lot easier to dispose of. Better yet, if those long-lived isotopes happen to be fissile, they can be recycled into new fuel and then they don't have to be disposed of period. Also, if you could separate the short, medium, and long-lived isotopes initially, the short-lived could be kept in a facility until they stabilize, the long-lived could be recycled, and then the only waste that you actually have to worry about disposing of are the medium-lived isotopes.
Personally, I don't think nuclear power is the perfect solution to every solution, but it is a good solution to many problems. If people would get over the stigma on radiation (leftover from the cold war) and come up with a good way to deal with nuclear waste, nuclear power would be a much better solution than the many gas and oil burning power plants we currently have in the US. And that's not to say that power-generating is the only good function for a nuclear reactor. A lot of really good science can be done with them that can't be done with anything else.
It isn't really worth replying to this, but I will anyway.
I didn't miss the scope of the article or your point. I know what the computer program is meant to do and what situations it is designed for. You are missing my point. My point is that computers and standardized papers to not constitute teaching, and being told exactly what to write so that you can get an A does not constitute learning. I have already given my reasons so I will not repeat them here. A paper topic like the one you mentioned does require a student to make inferences, but they are very shallow and restricted inferences. A student can most likely find exactly what they need to include if they simply look through their lecture notes.
And the money, well I am talking about college here, but in a lot of places the situation is the same. We just spent about 50 billion dollars waging the war in Iraq. We spent billions more on tax cuts and defense spending. Sports and entertainment are multi-billion dollar industries. So why exactly can't we afford to put some money into our schools? I know that's not what you were saying, but really. Districts not having enough money can be remedied if people would put education at a higher priority. The thing I don't understand is how states can keep cutting school money. I don't know anybody who thinks the schools are already getting too much money or that giving money to schools is a bad thing. Why are schools so readily cut and not things like defense spending?
As to the professor in your example, in such a situation, I have to agree, if the essay is so open-ended, it would be inappropriate to use any kinda of structured metrics. But what you have there isn't about knowing the material so much as demonstrating creative writing ability. In a standard restricted or even an extended response item with clear parameters, though, the "formula" is pre-written.
That is exactly my point. Writing papers isn't just about understanding the material. If that were the case, learning would be a simple matter of just memorizing a bunch of facts in a book and regurgitating them on demand. The purpose of an open-ended paper isn't to demonstrate creative writing ability. It is meant to be an exercise in picking out a suitable topic, making an appropriate argument, providing evidence to support your argument, addressing counter-arguments, and justifying interpretations of possibly ambiguous statements by taking into account such things as historical context, cultural attitudes, and the author's personal beliefs/alignments.
Now, how do you propose to write a rubric to objectively grade that kind of paper? You have already provided an answer, you can't. Standardized papers, just like standardized tests, where the professor merely wants to make sure the student is properly memorizing everything he is lecturing about, is just a bunch of bullshit. It says nothing about a students ability to think independently, examine critically, and articulate clearly and precisely.
A grade of A+ on a standardized paper simply says things like "This student has successfully identified the subset of events I chose to emphasize in my class that led up to World War II." Similarly, an A+ grade on a typical multiple choice test amounts to a statement like "This student has successfully managed to differentiate between right and wrong answers to given questions by using a combination of knowledge of the subject, the process of elimination, and dumb luck."
To me this isn't learning. Learning is about developing the ability to think. It includes memorizing some basic facts and learning some basic skills, but there is more to it than just demonstrating that you were paying attention during class. And as for the class size, I totally agree. If you have 500 students in your class you can't be expected to read all of the papers. But, to me, the best solution is to reduce class sizes, not to develop a computer program that will do your grading for you or to pawn off all your grading on your graduate students.
You make a good point and I agree with you, but let me ask you this. If you were the victim of a similar crime, how would you go about getting compensated. Sue the parents (for monetary gain)? Throw the parents in jail? Throw the kids in jail? The victim should be compensated in some way, so how?
Suing a negligent company (and I am not saying the makers of Grand Theft Auto are negligent) is not, in principle, about making the victim rich. It is about punishing the negligent company. If you aren't going to sue them, how are you going to punish them? In our money-centric society, damaging somebody financially is considered suitable punishment.
Of course, this leads to the next question. Should we be focused on punishment (i.e: getting revenge), or should we focus on coming up with a remedy to the problem? Shouldn't we try to eliminate problems by attacking the source? Or should we just keep attacking the symptoms thereby never really getting rid of the problem?
This includes writing out objective standards for grading beforehand, possibly even designing a rubric explaining exactly what it takes to earn points.
It depends entirely on what the essay is for. Not all professors believe in rubrics, and I, as a student, certainly do not. Standardized tests may be graded on a rubric, but the english papers I wrote as an undergrad weren't. People always seems to want to assign numbers to students and papers claiming that it is easy to evaluate and is a more "objective" process. Grading, however, is not objective by nature. A well structured argument may or may not include certain keywords and phrases. Anytime human judgement is used instead of a list of "yes they mentioned topic A" or "no they failed to mention topic B" rules, the process is subjective; subjectivity is not necessarily a bad thing.
When a professor assigns an open-ended essay, such as "Write something about Dante's Inferno", only he/she knows exactly what he/she is looking for, and the criteria can't simply be reduced to a set of objective rules. The assumption you usually make is that, as an expert in his/her field, the professor knows what a good paper is. People like to make a big deal of human bias and prejudice, and , yes, it does happen, but it doesn't happen that often. Most professors act professionally, and they know that simply disagreeing with an argument is not grounds for marking off.
Unless, of course, you teach two classes with 500 students each. Sure, grading individual papers takes time, but it doesn't prevent you from having one-on-one time with your students as much as large class sizes. The thing is, good professors know exactly what they are looking for when they assign a problem set, essay, or test, and it is not necessarily something that can be easily be incorporated into a computer. As many others have already noted, good papers don't just have correct spelling, grammar, and the appearance of an argument. Even if a paper does have a really good argument, it might not be what the professor is looking for. Why should students get a good grade if they didn't complete the assignment? You have to keep in mind that our current educational model puts curriculum into the hands of the professor. The professor decides what needs to be taught, how it is going to be taught, and what the students need to learn. So it is up to the professor to decide whether certain goals have been met, not a computer program.
They've completely lost sight of the fact that the FBI, CIA, etc. have been well known (internationally as well as locally) for their less-than-ethical ways of doing "business".
You know, the "power corrupts" comment is fairly common, but I think the issue is more complicated. Power certainly does corrupt a lot of people, but I don't think organizations like the FBI or CIA seek legislation like the Patriot Act because they are power hungry. They do it to make their job easier. Youth curfews, for example, are usually supported/sought by local police departments because it is easier for them if they can just tell a group of kids to go home. Some groups of kids will get into trouble if left unsupervised, but catching them in the act is tricky. So rather than try to catch individual acts of vandalism (or whatever), they would prefer to just keep all juveniles off the street.
Now, the argument should be whether we should allow them to make their jobs easier, and you have to address this issue on a case by case basis. I think most people would agree that not allowing weapons on board aircraft is a reasonable measure. However, I think most would agree that overarching legislation like the Patriot Act is certainly not reasonable. Both make the jobs of the enforcing agencies easier. But one is simply a deterrant, and the other allows for circumvention of judicial controls, like due process.
The problem is, a lot of enforcement agencies see due process as a hurdle they have to cross to catch criminals. Criminals can get away because you don't have a search warrant, or you don't have a wiretap warrant, or the evidence isn't sufficient.... In other words, you can't just look at somebody and say "I think he might be up to something" and throw him in jail. I think it is important for law enforcement agencies (and legislators) to realize that due process is important because, yes, people do make mistakes, and suspicious looking activity can be legitimate. So as for my original point, no I don't think this is just about a power struggle.
And I am sure you think most teachers are slackers because they get paid too much, have cushy jobs, have no supervision, and are just there to collect a pay check?
Give me a break. You claim to have some teaching experience so you should know what it is really like. Not only is teaching difficult to do well (it is very time consuming), but public school teachers are underpaid. Parents whine about providing any support for the schools and treat them as a babysitting service. Students who have a clue care about their education, but this is not the majority. Most don't care a whit about what they are supposed to be learning and don't put any more than the bare minimum effort into it, if that. Since their parents equally don't care, the students can get away with it. Administration is only concerned with keeping parents happy and not in trying to support the teachers in any way. So teachers who want to do a good job have a really hard and thankless job to go to everyday.
When you create a working environment like that, you get two types of teachers: those you really really like teaching and are willing to put a lot of extra unpaid and uncompensated work into it, and those who gladly play the babysitter role the parents expect them to play. The latter will hand out worksheets and administer tests every once in a while to maintain the pretense that this is school and they are teaching something, but they certainly don't care about what they are "teaching." Thankfully my high school experience was mostly with the former, teachers who cared enough about their subject to deal with the poor working environment and associated politics. I came out of high school with a pretty good education, but I was lucky because budgets were being slashed left and right. By the time I graduated there wasn't much of anything left because there wasn't any money to pay for it.
I really hate the way people are so willing to criticize teachers and their teaching when they have no idea what the working environment is like. Most people, if forced to work in such an environment, wouldn't stand for it, but for some reason those same people can easily turn a blind eye to schools. Take some time to think about current educational policies in place and the results of those policies before you post disparaging comments about teachers, most of whom are not paid much more than the poverty line.
Nonsense. The GPL is intended to do exactly what you say it doesn't: it's intended to make all software free. It's a tool intended to destroy copyright from within.
BS. The GPL is intended to force a give some take some trade agreement on people who use free software. If you want to make your job easier by using somebody else's code, then the GPL forces you to do a favor in turn by making your code available to make somebody else's job easier (if you want to distribute it, that is).
It is not intended to destroy copyright (or intellectual property), it uses copyright. Without copyright there is no way it could exist. It doesn't "infect" people. And you can't "catch" it unless you want it. So aside from the idea that the license forces itself onto developers who want to distribute derivatives of GPL'd code, the term "viral" is not an accurate description. It is propaganda invented by Microsoft during their FUD campaign. All licenses have terms (BSD license included: you have to include the copyright statement). The GPL license just has more stringent terms when it comes to distribution.
But I don't think he was proposing that you not use Ogg tags or MP3 tags; he was talking about the filesystem abstracting the tags. If you changed "Stagnation.ogg/album" to the string "Trespass", then the filesystem abstraction layer should update the Ogg "album" tag inside the file to be "Trespass".
No, the parent poster had it right. In this case, you could play the file Stagnation.ogg. But you could also treat it as a directory and insert the file album into it. The metadata is stored as part of the filesystem, not part of the file. It would be a hefty task for the filesystem to transparently convert/album into the appropriate ID3 (or whatever it is for ogg) format while allowing this functionality for every conceivable format (mp3, ogg, wmf, ra,...).
As for the argument against filesystem metadata, somebody already mentioned this, but we already have metadata as part of the filesystem. Permissions and time stamps are probably the two most common forms of metadata in the filesystem (whether you are using NTFS, ext2, or XFS). The thing is current filesystems aren't designed to handle an arbitrary amount of metadata, so sometimes metadata is stored as part of the filesystem and sometimes it is stored as part of the file. With a flexible filesystem like ReiserFS, there is no longer a need to store metadata in the file. This is a boon to programs responsible for reading, writing, and cataloging metadata because they don't need to know every file format for every file on the system.
if Abiword already fills the niche for a simple word processor
While Abiword does fit the niche, it does not aspire to be a simple word processor. The goal is to make a good word processor that is compatible with Microsoft Word. The Abiword folks have already implemented probably 90% of the functionality most users would ever need. Floating frames and drawing functions come to mind as two features that have not yet been implemented but are planned.
The thing is, making a good word processor takes time. It has taken close to 5 years for Abiword to get where it is today. OpenOffice has a lot of features, but it is, in my opinion, a poor office suite, which isn't the fault of the guys currently working on it. It has a lot of cruft associated with it, and while efforts are underway, it will never integrate as well with GNOME as a pseudo-native application like Abiword. It has the same drawbacks as Microsoft Word without as many benefits. Abiword does not have as many features, yet, but it is a great word processor, and I can see it eventually becoming a drop-in replacement for Microsoft Office.
Agreed. But when are they going to learn that's not the case? Are they going to become adults before they are forced to realize that "fun" is great, but most of the time other things have to come first? Besides, why does learning have to be fun to be interesting and self-satisfying. For me learning is a lot of hard work, but I love it.
But you see, that's just it. People don't make an effort to learn because they don't think it is important, not because it isn't fun. You don't see employers clambering to make work more fun; people work because they know they have make a living. And despite that, quite a few people enjoy their work.
Learning is the same. People do it because they know it is necessary, but they also enjoy it. The problem is the number of people to realize that learning is important vs. the number of people who realize that having a job is important. Far fewer people believe education is important.
Just look at how willing people generally are to spend thousands of dollars on sports related items, but will cry as loud as they can if taxes are raised so that public schools can get more money. People are much more willing to spend money on things they want rather than things they need. Is this a bad thing? Maybe not, but it helps to have your priorities straight.
Well, sure, those are good skills to have, but there is more to being educated that what a game can teach you. I have played my fair share of games and I enjoyed them a lot. But you have to remember that any sort of skillset, whether it be reflexes or puzzle-solving or whatever, is filtered through a set of game designers and programmers before it ever reaches you. There are also some skillsets that are impossible to incorporate into a game.
Being well read, following current events, debating, and making a strong effort to be well-rounded contributes much more to being educated than playing games. It is the American Way to think education is both hard and boring, and to constantly avoid being educated. I can't help but scorn constant efforts to make education "fun" by reducing it to a series of 30-second sound bites with a lot of flashy special effects and a guy running around acting like an idiot. Educating yourself can be fun and interesting in its own right if you put forth the effort.
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but MS Word sometimes has problems opening its documents... nice effort, but I'll stick with my M$, thanks
Hmmm...you know, I bet these people don't actually pay to use M$. I can't think of very many people I know who would keep using Office if they had to pay for it. As long as they can "borrow" somebody's cd, yes, they will continue to use Office. If, however, they were offered the choice of $450 or free + a few glitches, I am willing to bet they would go for the latter.
Upgrade the kernel? Edit /etc/modules.conf? Forget about it:
Wait, I am assuming you know how to install hardware in Windows, correct? I mean, sometimes the little hardware detection thing works, and sometimes all you have to do is use the little driver install progam on the disk, but you still have to know how to do those things. And if it doesn't work, you have to know how to make it work.
So how is this any different in linux? Forget about upgrading the kernel, if you have a modular (which most distributions ship with) you don't need to worry about that. Modules.conf? If you have hotplug installed (which most distributions do) you don't need to mess with that. If the hardware isn't supported (which, granted, is true more often than it should be, and it is annoying), or if hotplug doesn't work, you might have to do some manual dicking around.
But my point...1) installing supported hardware isn't any harder, for the most part, than it is in Windows if you are using a relatively modern distribution that is built for desktop users. And 2) if you are expected to know the basic ins and outs of installing drivers in Windows, why is it so inconceivable for somebody to know the basic ins and outs of installing drivers in linux?
How about because they haven't passed a rigorous set of clinical tests that indicate the drug has its intended effect at a reasonable dosage, has a minimum number of side effects, is relatively non-addictive, and is expunged from the body within a reasonable time frame. The process of regulating drugs is more objective than you might think. Unless a drug is well studied such that its mechanism of action is known and is fairly benign, it cannot be put up for over-the-counter sale.
Note: Sorry for the use of reasonable and relatively. I don't know the exact numbers and limits. Also, you might object on the basis of the legality of cigarettes. Well, "big tobacco" has a lot of influence. And it is hard to justify shutting down an already established multi-billion dollar industry when use of the drug is considered recreational and a personal choice.
I would just like to add to your list the effect drug usage has on family life. What happens when the parents come home and shoot up some heroin to relax, thus neglecting (or abusing) their children? This already happens with alcohol, and we tend to turn a blind eye to it until domestic abuse is reported.
Or what about the second hand smoke from cigarettes? Public smoking bans are meant to protect employees like waiters who would otherwise have to sit around breathing second hand smoke 8 hours a day. What about a newborn in a household where smoking is allowed? Pot produces second hand smoke as well, and it is just as harmful as cigarette smoke.
Then again, in the US we don't seem to really care about families anyway, so maybe this is a pointless argument.
and I haven't seen a hard disk in a machine (even consumer devices) that's under 1GB in years.
I think that's the point. This distribution is meant for older hardware. When a 1GB hard disk was as large as you could get.
No one is making you work the job you are at.
Huh? How about your creditors? Or your family? Or even just yourself? There are bills that need to be paid which requires having a job. And, as has been discussed earlier already, employers don't always take it kindly when you tell them you want more free time. Don't pretend it is easy to just go out and get another job. It isn't. And even if it was, it doesn't necessarily mean your new employer will be any more amicable.
And if you disregard their expectations that's just what they'll continue to do. Is that what you want?
I'm not a fucking evangelist. I don't care what they do. If they want to use IE, I have no problem with them using what I consider an inferior browser.
The developers need to accept that other people got there before them and established certain conventions and expectations that need to be met.
If the developers had decided to reverse the mouse buttons, move the status bar to a different window, and put "Print Preview" in the "Tools" menu, I would agree with you. The developers did not do that. They made a very usable browser that meets most expectations. The expectations of some people are just absurd. There needs to be a balance between meeting expectations and the freedom to do things differently.
Bah... I could go on but mozilla is for geeks right now.
Why does somebody have to say this every time a piece of software from the open source community is evaluated as a replacement for a piece of proprietary software? Granted, in some cases it is justified, but this is just absurd. I'm sorry, but not being able do drag-n-drop toolbars does not make Mozilla a geek-only toy.
If somebody is using new software, they need to accept that they are using new software, and not insist that it behave in exactly the same way, shape, form that their old software did. If they want IE they need to use IE.
The popular science magazines like Scientific American and The New Scientist have some faults, but I think they have the right idea as far as content is concerned. There are a lot of interesting topics in science to talk about without focusing on the latest genomic research. Scientific American, for example, published an article on the science of coffee a few months ago. Stuff like that can be very interesting to people and still be real science.
The challenge comes when you need to take some of the more difficult subjects, like quantum computing or drug discovery, and present it to people who don't have degrees in physics or chemistry. There is some really interesting physics and chemistry involved that can be explained, it just takes longer. You don't have to compromise the integrity of the actual science, either, by making fallacious claims or drawing erroneous conclusions in an effort to make the science more exciting. This is my major problem with some of the stuff in Scientific American and The New Scientist. Just present the facts; they will stand on their own merit.
Keith Devlin is a good example of a popular author. He is a true mathematician, but he can write popular books, like The Millenium Problems, on the most complicated current mathematical problems. Granted you have to have some patience to get through explanations of things like the Yang-Mills hypothesis, but it is completely within the grasp of someone with only a basic math background if they are interested enough to take the time.
It seems to me that's WHY THEY HAVE GOOD STORIES.
Yes, but only if the directors/writers make an effort to do a good job. Even if you have a well-written novel as a good source, that doesn't guarantee a good movie. There have been a number of flops including Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood, Chocolat, and Beloved. Toni Morrison even won a Pulitzer for Beloved, but the movie just didn't do it justice.
You know, I guess I have to agree. My original reaction was "blah, they just took a bunch of half-baked ideas from greek philosophy and buddhist theology, and threw them together with a bunch of fight scenes." But now that I think about it, the philosohpy itself wasn't that bad. It wasn't new or insightful, but it was well presented.
What drove me crazy was the dialogue. The Neo and Morpheus characters continually made the philosophical discussion sound like it was being carried out by a bunch of drunken frat boys on a Saturday night. "Some things change, other things stay the same." Whoa there Morpheus, that was sure deep. And then, of course, Neo just never seems to get it. His facial expressions, at least, make it look like the cranks in his head are turning very slowly.
Anyway, I think your guess is interesting. But if they are going to finish with the reference to the syllogism of the cave from Plato's Republic, Neo's perception of reality needs to be scaled up quite a bit. In the MR, Neo and company are only (supposedly) in sphere two, as described by Plato; there are four total. But then I think the point Plato was making was that it is generally impossible to reach the third sphere, much less the fourth sphere. You are always looking at shadows, even if you think you are looking at forms.
Just waste that is very chemically toxic, emits powerful high-energy radiation, and has a half-life measured in millenia
You know, this is probably the most misunderstood aspect of nuclear reactors. Everybody is convinced that nuclear waste is so dangerous and that it is the worst thing that can happen to the environment because the radioactive nuclei won't stabilize for thousands of years.
The thing is, nuclear waste is composed of fission products, which are a lot of different things. There are short-lived isotopes, medium-lived isotopes, and long-lived isotopes. The long-lived isotopes that everybody likes to make a big deal about are only a percentage of the total waste (I don't remember the actual number, but I think it is something like 20%). Furthermore, you can observe an interesting trend if you look at a chart of the nuclides. The high-energy betas and gammas tend to come from short-lived and medium-lived isotopes. Long-lived isotopes tend to emit weak betas and alphas.
So what does this mean? It means nuclear waste becomes a lot "safer" after several decades (long enough for the short and medium-lived isotopes to stabilize). Then the longer-lived isotopes that remain suddenly become a lot easier to dispose of. Better yet, if those long-lived isotopes happen to be fissile, they can be recycled into new fuel and then they don't have to be disposed of period. Also, if you could separate the short, medium, and long-lived isotopes initially, the short-lived could be kept in a facility until they stabilize, the long-lived could be recycled, and then the only waste that you actually have to worry about disposing of are the medium-lived isotopes.
Personally, I don't think nuclear power is the perfect solution to every solution, but it is a good solution to many problems. If people would get over the stigma on radiation (leftover from the cold war) and come up with a good way to deal with nuclear waste, nuclear power would be a much better solution than the many gas and oil burning power plants we currently have in the US. And that's not to say that power-generating is the only good function for a nuclear reactor. A lot of really good science can be done with them that can't be done with anything else.
It isn't really worth replying to this, but I will anyway.
I didn't miss the scope of the article or your point. I know what the computer program is meant to do and what situations it is designed for. You are missing my point. My point is that computers and standardized papers to not constitute teaching, and being told exactly what to write so that you can get an A does not constitute learning. I have already given my reasons so I will not repeat them here. A paper topic like the one you mentioned does require a student to make inferences, but they are very shallow and restricted inferences. A student can most likely find exactly what they need to include if they simply look through their lecture notes.
And the money, well I am talking about college here, but in a lot of places the situation is the same. We just spent about 50 billion dollars waging the war in Iraq. We spent billions more on tax cuts and defense spending. Sports and entertainment are multi-billion dollar industries. So why exactly can't we afford to put some money into our schools? I know that's not what you were saying, but really. Districts not having enough money can be remedied if people would put education at a higher priority. The thing I don't understand is how states can keep cutting school money. I don't know anybody who thinks the schools are already getting too much money or that giving money to schools is a bad thing. Why are schools so readily cut and not things like defense spending?
As to the professor in your example, in such a situation, I have to agree, if the essay is so open-ended, it would be inappropriate to use any kinda of structured metrics. But what you have there isn't about knowing the material so much as demonstrating creative writing ability. In a standard restricted or even an extended response item with clear parameters, though, the "formula" is pre-written.
That is exactly my point. Writing papers isn't just about understanding the material. If that were the case, learning would be a simple matter of just memorizing a bunch of facts in a book and regurgitating them on demand. The purpose of an open-ended paper isn't to demonstrate creative writing ability. It is meant to be an exercise in picking out a suitable topic, making an appropriate argument, providing evidence to support your argument, addressing counter-arguments, and justifying interpretations of possibly ambiguous statements by taking into account such things as historical context, cultural attitudes, and the author's personal beliefs/alignments.
Now, how do you propose to write a rubric to objectively grade that kind of paper? You have already provided an answer, you can't. Standardized papers, just like standardized tests, where the professor merely wants to make sure the student is properly memorizing everything he is lecturing about, is just a bunch of bullshit. It says nothing about a students ability to think independently, examine critically, and articulate clearly and precisely.
A grade of A+ on a standardized paper simply says things like "This student has successfully identified the subset of events I chose to emphasize in my class that led up to World War II." Similarly, an A+ grade on a typical multiple choice test amounts to a statement like "This student has successfully managed to differentiate between right and wrong answers to given questions by using a combination of knowledge of the subject, the process of elimination, and dumb luck."
To me this isn't learning. Learning is about developing the ability to think. It includes memorizing some basic facts and learning some basic skills, but there is more to it than just demonstrating that you were paying attention during class. And as for the class size, I totally agree. If you have 500 students in your class you can't be expected to read all of the papers. But, to me, the best solution is to reduce class sizes, not to develop a computer program that will do your grading for you or to pawn off all your grading on your graduate students.
You make a good point and I agree with you, but let me ask you this. If you were the victim of a similar crime, how would you go about getting compensated. Sue the parents (for monetary gain)? Throw the parents in jail? Throw the kids in jail? The victim should be compensated in some way, so how?
Suing a negligent company (and I am not saying the makers of Grand Theft Auto are negligent) is not, in principle, about making the victim rich. It is about punishing the negligent company. If you aren't going to sue them, how are you going to punish them? In our money-centric society, damaging somebody financially is considered suitable punishment.
Of course, this leads to the next question. Should we be focused on punishment (i.e: getting revenge), or should we focus on coming up with a remedy to the problem? Shouldn't we try to eliminate problems by attacking the source? Or should we just keep attacking the symptoms thereby never really getting rid of the problem?
This includes writing out objective standards for grading beforehand, possibly even designing a rubric explaining exactly what it takes to earn points.
It depends entirely on what the essay is for. Not all professors believe in rubrics, and I, as a student, certainly do not. Standardized tests may be graded on a rubric, but the english papers I wrote as an undergrad weren't. People always seems to want to assign numbers to students and papers claiming that it is easy to evaluate and is a more "objective" process. Grading, however, is not objective by nature. A well structured argument may or may not include certain keywords and phrases. Anytime human judgement is used instead of a list of "yes they mentioned topic A" or "no they failed to mention topic B" rules, the process is subjective; subjectivity is not necessarily a bad thing.
When a professor assigns an open-ended essay, such as "Write something about Dante's Inferno", only he/she knows exactly what he/she is looking for, and the criteria can't simply be reduced to a set of objective rules. The assumption you usually make is that, as an expert in his/her field, the professor knows what a good paper is. People like to make a big deal of human bias and prejudice, and , yes, it does happen, but it doesn't happen that often. Most professors act professionally, and they know that simply disagreeing with an argument is not grounds for marking off.
Unless, of course, you teach two classes with 500 students each. Sure, grading individual papers takes time, but it doesn't prevent you from having one-on-one time with your students as much as large class sizes. The thing is, good professors know exactly what they are looking for when they assign a problem set, essay, or test, and it is not necessarily something that can be easily be incorporated into a computer. As many others have already noted, good papers don't just have correct spelling, grammar, and the appearance of an argument. Even if a paper does have a really good argument, it might not be what the professor is looking for. Why should students get a good grade if they didn't complete the assignment? You have to keep in mind that our current educational model puts curriculum into the hands of the professor. The professor decides what needs to be taught, how it is going to be taught, and what the students need to learn. So it is up to the professor to decide whether certain goals have been met, not a computer program.
They've completely lost sight of the fact that the FBI, CIA, etc. have been well known (internationally as well as locally) for their less-than-ethical ways of doing "business".
You know, the "power corrupts" comment is fairly common, but I think the issue is more complicated. Power certainly does corrupt a lot of people, but I don't think organizations like the FBI or CIA seek legislation like the Patriot Act because they are power hungry. They do it to make their job easier. Youth curfews, for example, are usually supported/sought by local police departments because it is easier for them if they can just tell a group of kids to go home. Some groups of kids will get into trouble if left unsupervised, but catching them in the act is tricky. So rather than try to catch individual acts of vandalism (or whatever), they would prefer to just keep all juveniles off the street.
Now, the argument should be whether we should allow them to make their jobs easier, and you have to address this issue on a case by case basis. I think most people would agree that not allowing weapons on board aircraft is a reasonable measure. However, I think most would agree that overarching legislation like the Patriot Act is certainly not reasonable. Both make the jobs of the enforcing agencies easier. But one is simply a deterrant, and the other allows for circumvention of judicial controls, like due process.
The problem is, a lot of enforcement agencies see due process as a hurdle they have to cross to catch criminals. Criminals can get away because you don't have a search warrant, or you don't have a wiretap warrant, or the evidence isn't sufficient.... In other words, you can't just look at somebody and say "I think he might be up to something" and throw him in jail. I think it is important for law enforcement agencies (and legislators) to realize that due process is important because, yes, people do make mistakes, and suspicious looking activity can be legitimate. So as for my original point, no I don't think this is just about a power struggle.
And I am sure you think most teachers are slackers because they get paid too much, have cushy jobs, have no supervision, and are just there to collect a pay check?
Give me a break. You claim to have some teaching experience so you should know what it is really like. Not only is teaching difficult to do well (it is very time consuming), but public school teachers are underpaid. Parents whine about providing any support for the schools and treat them as a babysitting service. Students who have a clue care about their education, but this is not the majority. Most don't care a whit about what they are supposed to be learning and don't put any more than the bare minimum effort into it, if that. Since their parents equally don't care, the students can get away with it. Administration is only concerned with keeping parents happy and not in trying to support the teachers in any way. So teachers who want to do a good job have a really hard and thankless job to go to everyday.
When you create a working environment like that, you get two types of teachers: those you really really like teaching and are willing to put a lot of extra unpaid and uncompensated work into it, and those who gladly play the babysitter role the parents expect them to play. The latter will hand out worksheets and administer tests every once in a while to maintain the pretense that this is school and they are teaching something, but they certainly don't care about what they are "teaching." Thankfully my high school experience was mostly with the former, teachers who cared enough about their subject to deal with the poor working environment and associated politics. I came out of high school with a pretty good education, but I was lucky because budgets were being slashed left and right. By the time I graduated there wasn't much of anything left because there wasn't any money to pay for it.
I really hate the way people are so willing to criticize teachers and their teaching when they have no idea what the working environment is like.
Most people, if forced to work in such an environment, wouldn't stand for it, but for some reason those same people can easily turn a blind eye to schools.
Take some time to think about current educational policies in place and the results of those policies before you post disparaging comments about teachers, most of whom are not paid much more than the poverty line.
Nonsense. The GPL is intended to do exactly what you say it doesn't: it's intended to make all software free. It's a tool intended to destroy copyright from within.
BS. The GPL is intended to force a give some take some trade agreement on people who use free software. If you want to make your job easier by using somebody else's code, then the GPL forces you to do a favor in turn by making your code available to make somebody else's job easier (if you want to distribute it, that is).
It is not intended to destroy copyright (or intellectual property), it uses copyright. Without copyright there is no way it could exist. It doesn't "infect" people. And you can't "catch" it unless you want it. So aside from the idea that the license forces itself onto developers who want to distribute derivatives of GPL'd code, the term "viral" is not an accurate description. It is propaganda invented by Microsoft during their FUD campaign. All licenses have terms (BSD license included: you have to include the copyright statement). The GPL license just has more stringent terms when it comes to distribution.
But I don't think he was proposing that you not use Ogg tags or MP3 tags; he was talking about the filesystem abstracting the tags. If you changed "Stagnation.ogg/album" to the string "Trespass", then the filesystem abstraction layer should update the Ogg "album" tag inside the file to be "Trespass".
/album into the appropriate ID3 (or whatever it is for ogg) format while allowing this functionality for every conceivable format (mp3, ogg, wmf, ra, ...).
No, the parent poster had it right. In this case, you could play the file Stagnation.ogg. But you could also treat it as a directory and insert the file album into it. The metadata is stored as part of the filesystem, not part of the file. It would be a hefty task for the filesystem to transparently convert
As for the argument against filesystem metadata, somebody already mentioned this, but we already have metadata as part of the filesystem. Permissions and time stamps are probably the two most common forms of metadata in the filesystem (whether you are using NTFS, ext2, or XFS). The thing is current filesystems aren't designed to handle an arbitrary amount of metadata, so sometimes metadata is stored as part of the filesystem and sometimes it is stored as part of the file. With a flexible filesystem like ReiserFS, there is no longer a need to store metadata in the file. This is a boon to programs responsible for reading, writing, and cataloging metadata because they don't need to know every file format for every file on the system.
if Abiword already fills the niche for a simple word processor
While Abiword does fit the niche, it does not aspire to be a simple word processor. The goal is to make a good word processor that is compatible with Microsoft Word. The Abiword folks have already implemented probably 90% of the functionality most users would ever need. Floating frames and drawing functions come to mind as two features that have not yet been implemented but are planned.
The thing is, making a good word processor takes time. It has taken close to 5 years for Abiword to get where it is today. OpenOffice has a lot of features, but it is, in my opinion, a poor office suite, which isn't the fault of the guys currently working on it. It has a lot of cruft associated with it, and while efforts are underway, it will never integrate as well with GNOME as a pseudo-native application like Abiword. It has the same drawbacks as Microsoft Word without as many benefits. Abiword does not have as many features, yet, but it is a great word processor, and I can see it eventually becoming a drop-in replacement for Microsoft Office.
Agreed. But when are they going to learn that's not the case? Are they going to become adults before they are forced to realize that "fun" is great, but most of the time other things have to come first? Besides, why does learning have to be fun to be interesting and self-satisfying. For me learning is a lot of hard work, but I love it.
But you see, that's just it. People don't make an effort to learn because they don't think it is important, not because it isn't fun. You don't see employers clambering to make work more fun; people work because they know they have make a living. And despite that, quite a few people enjoy their work.
Learning is the same. People do it because they know it is necessary, but they also enjoy it. The problem is the number of people to realize that learning is important vs. the number of people who realize that having a job is important. Far fewer people believe education is important.
Just look at how willing people generally are to spend thousands of dollars on sports related items, but will cry as loud as they can if taxes are raised so that public schools can get more money. People are much more willing to spend money on things they want rather than things they need. Is this a bad thing? Maybe not, but it helps to have your priorities straight.
Well, sure, those are good skills to have, but there is more to being educated that what a game can teach you. I have played my fair share of games and I enjoyed them a lot. But you have to remember that any sort of skillset, whether it be reflexes or puzzle-solving or whatever, is filtered through a set of game designers and programmers before it ever reaches you. There are also some skillsets that are impossible to incorporate into a game.
Being well read, following current events, debating, and making a strong effort to be well-rounded contributes much more to being educated than playing games. It is the American Way to think education is both hard and boring, and to constantly avoid being educated. I can't help but scorn constant efforts to make education "fun" by reducing it to a series of 30-second sound bites with a lot of flashy special effects and a guy running around acting like an idiot. Educating yourself can be fun and interesting in its own right if you put forth the effort.