"STEM" is perpetually an issue because while people are more than willing to march in the streets over what's in a biology text, the same people smugly tell American engineers it's their own fault they are homeless and bankrupt.
who has programmed a computer understands that computers are only good at linear decision making based on rigid, mathematical criteria. If X then Y, if not X then Z.
Puzzles like chess are therefore easily mastered by a computer, once it is instructed how to win by a programmer.
Where computers fail, however, is intuition: a skill which is universally superior in human beings. Instead of traversing the entire probability matrix, human beings can accurately discard huge numbers of possible outcomes nearly instantly and arrive at the best possible option.
A good example of this the Battle of Midway. Had Admiral Nimitz been a computer, he would have lost both Midway and the Aleutians without a fight, and opened the U.S. west coast to invasion.
Instead he intuitively gambled that the Imperial Japanese Navy would be unprepared for a counter-attack and managed to cripple four capital ships while driving the Japanese offensive back over 3000 miles.
That's why computers cannot replace human beings. They are tools. Nothing more.
That's interesting. And wrong. The L.A. Unified Superintendent makes $330,000 a year. Palo Alto Unified? $280K Saddleback Valley Unified? $284k (Source: Sacramento Bee)
Across the state, four-fifths of school budgets look like this:
Let's use your own numbers. $254,000 per classroom. According to your percentages, 82% is spent on salaries and benefits. That means each classroom generates $208,000 in salary and benefits. According to you, the highest paid teacher is $78,000, which leaves $130,000 PER CLASSROOM IN SALARY AND BENEFITS for.... who?
We spend over $10,000 per student every year for public education.
Teachers (being very generous here) make $80,000 a year. 30 students to a class.
In nearly every school:
1. No computer curriculum/no practical science materials 2. No district/state funding for athletic equipment 3. No district/state funding for clubs 4. No district/state funding for field trips 5. No district/state funding for new books/supplies 6. No district/state funding for musical instruments/art supplies 7. No district/state funding for theater/drama sets/costumes 8. No district/state funding for industrial arts/woodworking 9. No district/state funding for automotive repair classes 10. No district/state funding for uniforms (cheerleading, band)
Why everyone is so hostile to the PC in recent years?
Why this story left "PC" out of the headline, for example?
Why everyone is so quick to embrace proprietary, locked-down devices that have only a tiny fraction of the PC's power, and only the few can develop for and that nobody can repair or upgrade or even change the battery in?
By what authority do they intentionally deface other people's web sites (this site has MALWARE [whether it does or not]) and libel them publicly with neither due process nor legal authorization?
Defacing someone's web site is arguably a criminal offense to say nothing of copyright and trademark infringement.
How products like this barrel forward without a smidgen of evidence that anyone wants them?
First guy gets caught taking naughty pictures with these (or any other wearable) at a shopping mall and they are over forever. The over-under on that is about four minutes.
Could we maybe take all the money being wasted on this crap and go back to having a software industry again?
at a time when most of the rest of the world was either dirt poor to begin with, or crippled by war.
A handful of nations had their military and military production destroyed. Among them Great Britain, which alone accounted for over one-quarter of worldwide exports in 1950.
We didn't conduct genocide against the Axis. We also rebuilt their economies.
So your theory that the U.S. won by forfeit for 20 years looks a little tired too, smartass.
Today, thanks to the mixed blessing of global capitalism
You misspelled trade imbalance and punitive tariffs.
You're basically blaming Americans for the fact that we were spectacularly lucky
So what my grandparents and parents built from 1950 to 1970 was luck? Wow, you are one towering arrogant asshole aren't you? Don't like America much either it seems.
A little less wiseass and a little more reading would suit you.
America is confronted by its absence in matters of competence, courage, integrity and enterprise.
We as a nation have completely lost our ability to create. We no longer invent. We no longer explore. We are content to sit on our wider and wider asses and make rude noises from the back of the class while our beloved government spends $600 million in a failed attempt to build a web site.
Do you ever wonder where the software business went? Ever wonder why something everyone needs and everyone wants has been relegated to the retail equivalent of a grocery store candy rack?
I propose it went to the same place as the space program. Those capable of making software and spacecraft were fired from their jobs because in 2014 America it is more profitable to destroy people's careers and the companies they build than it is to sell the products they used to make.
It does not take MBA level education to drown a company in money, fire the employees and sell off the wreckage. That is happening to every company in this country, most recently with the auto industry.
America invented the 20th century between 1950 and 1970, during a time when the average wage doubled. Since then, the average wage has dropped over 20% during the greatest increase in productivity in the history of man.
And there are still people in this country who will claim its the fault of those who were fired they don't have jobs any more.
As proof of my thesis, watch the "nuh uhhhh!" replies to this post.
Why don't we have a space program any more? Let's have a space program again, then this stuff will matter.
Lack of a space program is further evidence of America's ongoing loss of the ability to do anything useful. We already outsourced all our manufacturing. We can't build a web site for $600 million and the space program has been reduced to six guys trying to earn a merit badge.
At the most fundamental level everything that happens in the world, including human behavior, happens because of some combination of the laws of physics and random chance.
Slashdot Mirror
"STEM" is perpetually an issue because while people are more than willing to march in the streets over what's in a biology text, the same people smugly tell American engineers it's their own fault they are homeless and bankrupt.
The Federal government has no constitutional authority to establish scientific research facilities.
The Federal Government has no constitutional authority to ban light bulbs.
who has programmed a computer understands that computers are only good at linear decision making based on rigid, mathematical criteria. If X then Y, if not X then Z.
Puzzles like chess are therefore easily mastered by a computer, once it is instructed how to win by a programmer.
Where computers fail, however, is intuition: a skill which is universally superior in human beings. Instead of traversing the entire probability matrix, human beings can accurately discard huge numbers of possible outcomes nearly instantly and arrive at the best possible option.
A good example of this the Battle of Midway. Had Admiral Nimitz been a computer, he would have lost both Midway and the Aleutians without a fight, and opened the U.S. west coast to invasion.
Instead he intuitively gambled that the Imperial Japanese Navy would be unprepared for a counter-attack and managed to cripple four capital ships while driving the Japanese offensive back over 3000 miles.
That's why computers cannot replace human beings. They are tools. Nothing more.
Google slowly becomes Microsoft. Monopolists never change.
They spend $8,482 per student.
If you don't count bond issues. Or lottery money.
$150,595 for a Superintendent
That's interesting. And wrong. The L.A. Unified Superintendent makes $330,000 a year. Palo Alto Unified? $280K Saddleback Valley Unified? $284k (Source: Sacramento Bee)
Across the state, four-fifths of school budgets look like this:
Let's use your own numbers. $254,000 per classroom. According to your percentages, 82% is spent on salaries and benefits. That means each classroom generates $208,000 in salary and benefits. According to you, the highest paid teacher is $78,000, which leaves $130,000 PER CLASSROOM IN SALARY AND BENEFITS for.... who?
Thanks for making my point for me.
We spend over $10,000 per student every year for public education.
Teachers (being very generous here) make $80,000 a year. 30 students to a class.
In nearly every school:
1. No computer curriculum/no practical science materials
2. No district/state funding for athletic equipment
3. No district/state funding for clubs
4. No district/state funding for field trips
5. No district/state funding for new books/supplies
6. No district/state funding for musical instruments/art supplies
7. No district/state funding for theater/drama sets/costumes
8. No district/state funding for industrial arts/woodworking
9. No district/state funding for automotive repair classes
10. No district/state funding for uniforms (cheerleading, band)
Where is the other $220,000?
Been using it as a primary desktop OS since Slackware 3 circa 1994.
Works just fine. Always has. UNIX and Linux are properly engineered. They were invented by engineers.
Windows was slapped together over a weekend so Bill and Steve could get to the IBM meeting on time.
Wish we could see some jobs and the kind of economic activity produced by the Mercury, Gemini and Apollo Programs.
If Bitcoins get lost. Gone forever, right?
How long will it take to lose all 21 million coins?
Bitcoin, crowdfunding and all other upstart mechanisms by which small ideas become money-making ideas will be declared illegal soon.
You see, money is only speech if it's being spent by a rich guy. Otherwise, it's contraband.
Why is Facebook exempt from COPPA? For that matter why are Disney, Blizzard, Steam, Twitter, Hasbro, Mattel and Nickelodeon also exempt?
We all know they collect e-mail addresses from site visitors under the age of 13. That was made illegal in 1998 without permission from a parent.
Yet somehow only little companies are subject to fines from the FTC. Why?
If your work is not available for commercial sale, your copyright expires and your work is irrevocably transferred to the public domain.
There's nothing wrong with passwords. Use a good password and everything will be fine.
Can we start working on something important for a change instead of obsessively re-inventing the wheel?
Why everyone is so hostile to the PC in recent years?
Why this story left "PC" out of the headline, for example?
Why everyone is so quick to embrace proprietary, locked-down devices that have only a tiny fraction of the PC's power, and only the few can develop for and that nobody can repair or upgrade or even change the battery in?
Ever wonder?
When did Google become the Internet police?
By what authority do they intentionally deface other people's web sites (this site has MALWARE [whether it does or not]) and libel them publicly with neither due process nor legal authorization?
Defacing someone's web site is arguably a criminal offense to say nothing of copyright and trademark infringement.
Google? Who exactly do you think you are?
How products like this barrel forward without a smidgen of evidence that anyone wants them?
First guy gets caught taking naughty pictures with these (or any other wearable) at a shopping mall and they are over forever. The over-under on that is about four minutes.
Could we maybe take all the money being wasted on this crap and go back to having a software industry again?
Thank God you were here. I'm sure all the ignorant people at Ford never bothered to do any of the math.
at a time when most of the rest of the world was either dirt poor to begin with, or crippled by war.
A handful of nations had their military and military production destroyed. Among them Great Britain, which alone accounted for over one-quarter of worldwide exports in 1950.
We didn't conduct genocide against the Axis. We also rebuilt their economies.
So your theory that the U.S. won by forfeit for 20 years looks a little tired too, smartass.
Today, thanks to the mixed blessing of global capitalism
You misspelled trade imbalance and punitive tariffs.
You're basically blaming Americans for the fact that we were spectacularly lucky
So what my grandparents and parents built from 1950 to 1970 was luck? Wow, you are one towering arrogant asshole aren't you? Don't like America much either it seems.
A little less wiseass and a little more reading would suit you.
America is confronted by its absence in matters of competence, courage, integrity and enterprise.
We as a nation have completely lost our ability to create. We no longer invent. We no longer explore. We are content to sit on our wider and wider asses and make rude noises from the back of the class while our beloved government spends $600 million in a failed attempt to build a web site.
Do you ever wonder where the software business went? Ever wonder why something everyone needs and everyone wants has been relegated to the retail equivalent of a grocery store candy rack?
I propose it went to the same place as the space program. Those capable of making software and spacecraft were fired from their jobs because in 2014 America it is more profitable to destroy people's careers and the companies they build than it is to sell the products they used to make.
It does not take MBA level education to drown a company in money, fire the employees and sell off the wreckage. That is happening to every company in this country, most recently with the auto industry.
America invented the 20th century between 1950 and 1970, during a time when the average wage doubled. Since then, the average wage has dropped over 20% during the greatest increase in productivity in the history of man.
And there are still people in this country who will claim its the fault of those who were fired they don't have jobs any more.
As proof of my thesis, watch the "nuh uhhhh!" replies to this post.
Two different tools for two different tasks. Tablets are consumption tools. Computers are production tools.
The end.
Brought to you by reality TV!
What could go wrong?
Why don't we have a space program any more? Let's have a space program again, then this stuff will matter.
Lack of a space program is further evidence of America's ongoing loss of the ability to do anything useful. We already outsourced all our manufacturing. We can't build a web site for $600 million and the space program has been reduced to six guys trying to earn a merit badge.
Bring the space program back.
The fuck do you have against the Goonies?
At the most fundamental level everything that happens in the world, including human behavior, happens because of some combination of the laws of physics and random chance.
What a load of neckbeard bilge. Shut the fuck up.