At present, and for the forseeable future, there's no adequate substitute for humans that speak the language. I realize we throw Arabic speakers out of the military because they're gay and all, but maybe we could make an exception because their skills are necessary at present. No computer translation system is adequate for usage in a live military operation.
Oh, and IACL (I am A Computational Linguist).
You need to do what those global warming guys are doing. Say that we need more funding and study and more work to get tools to work as you'd like. Maybe you'd be lucky and get a DOD grant for a few million for improving translation software. I honestly think that we are decades to centuries away from this at the moment. Your average government guy will just want to throw down a wad of cash and buy a working product. Um, what no working product exists except human translators? Well, although it would most likely be cheaper just to train the US troops to speak passably in most languages than to spend the money to research generic translation software. We really should be working on being able to translate all our currently used langauages using software. It's hard problem. You need to work at how you present it though so you are assured more money.;) Currently to get the performance what we want you have to use human translators. What we really need developed sometime in the next 20-30 years is the ability to translate near perfect English to Indian to Chinese to Russian. That would help us more in the long run than anything else. We really should be more heavily funding this type of research.
I'm into Perry Rhodan and except for a tiny percentage its mainly only avaible in German so an excellent German to English translation would let me read more pulp fiction.;)
If all slashdot readers can AVOID the temptation to visit the utube site I'm sure the company would much appreciate it!
Opps. Why the heck did they post links in the summary if they didn't want us to visit it?
It sounds like the company should update their webhosting and look at all the miss directed youtube folks as free ads. Well, I can see where the company is coming from. My dad sells large farm equipment. Their company would never ever just stick an ad in newspaper or do TV ads. They put ads only in industry specific mags. If you are looking for peices of machinary around $50-60K each you will see their products when shopping around in that industry. They wouldn't want John Doe Average Walmart Shopper to even look or visit their site as that person isn't likely to ever buy any of their products. Now if John Doe Average was actually looking for their products it would be different. It would be like say car companies with cars costing over $200K paying walmart to post ads at their entrance. It just wouldn't happen. Not enough walmart shoppers would even be the right demographic for that product. Of course, you do have doctors and lawyers that shop at walmart too so maybe it would be worth their effort.
I'm surprised at how rational most of these posts that I've read in this thread are! I was expecting to see a long string of posts bad mouthing the MS corporate culture at every turn and praising Google at every chance. I've seen posts that actually rationally compare the working environment, the actual corporate culture, and what factors this guy should use to make his decision. Most of the best posts that I've read state that Google is a workaholic company at the moment, but with lots lof long term potential to move up. In similiar posts MS apparently has a more long term healthy attitude in expecting their employees to have a life outside of work though their mature company and advancement would be what's normal for a large company.
Honestly reading the topic, I think that that guy should make up his own mind and not ask slashdot unless he wanted our opinions about some of the actual corporate environment rather than what was shown to him during interviews. What's really ironic is that likely the folks at both Google and MS are reading this thread and mentally comparing their work places. We need to have slashdot poll for those that work for google, those that work directly at MS, those that are MS contractors, those that are employeed in the IT field and actually work with employees from either company, IT people in general, hey I read slashdot and would like to be employeed in the IT field in the US at any employer, and my job was outsourced to India or downsided to make room for these new cheaper grads you so I'm pissed at the guy for being offered my old job for less money.
You can't remove undesirable genes from a population by culling the afflicted, unless you have a disease which is caused by having bad copy of the gene. Take sickle cell anemia: if you magically killed everyone who has it this second, there would still be millions of carriers with a single bad copy of the gene who don't develop the disease. And if two carriers have children, 1/4 will likely be sickle cell.
Besides which, new mutations arise constantly, so even if you could wipe out all known genetic illness, something new would just show up to replace it.
I know it's not a good idea and I wouldn't want to live in the same solar system as a society that tried it, but I think that a society that would go that far would also develop methods for testing and killing off carriers as well. Actually, if I recall some "reasons" for cultures to follow the whole infanticide bit it was said infant didn't look normal, or sex imbalance, usually though it was an heir of a specific gender was wanted and all those of the other gender were discarded. The high tech version of that is doing a complete gene scan and if any undesirable genes are found to automatically abort it. The really elegant version would be to genetically engineer gene scans and auto-abort abilities into our females.
As long as I don't do anything wrong why should I worry?
To me it seems people will only notice things are becoming a police state when its a bit to late. Most/.'ers can see what is coming but the general populs, the ones who vote (though how effective that is I don't know) will happily ignore things until it becomes and issue when the police turn up at the front door
I take is as long as I don't do anything massively annoying or expensive to the government or companies; they'll mainly ignore me and leave me be. RIAA and MPAA are exceptions and not the rule. Of course if I was sharing thousands of files they'd be annoyed at me, but I'd not really be expensive to them. P2P is only expensive to the RIAA in the abstract if even that. I think of it more along as I have "freedom of speech" so long as I don't defame or libeal anyone or annoy someone that might SLAPP suit me. I was annoying vocal about politics through HS, but wasn't allowed to vote then and classmates where just as well. When I went to college, we observed our local politicans and college staff. They did a lot of stupid things and we didn't like most of it. The system is designed so that we couldn't change anything without massive organized effort. We didn't really care "that much" about any of it. We were only there for 4 years and then went home. By then we had lives. As long as I don't bad mouth my employeer or do something stupid, get arrested, or get in the news for something about my employeer, they'll generally care less what I do with my homelife. My local government doesn't care too much about me as long as I pay my taxes and the cops don't have to show up at my residence or neighborhood alot.
I'm very mixed about the idea of an IT police state where we actually have the private life data of anyone that we want. (Well, I guess it wouldn't be a police state if everyone had access to it.) If my home was wired up for full video/audio and any one out there could look into any room of my house at any time, the people that are most likely to watch would be my mom, my mother in law, and also a few of my wife's friends. No one else would generally care about looking into my house. My employeer would generally only check in if and only if I called in sick. Let's be really honest. Police states focus their attention on those groups that are likely able to change government policy. How politically successful has slashdot, the EFF, or the Pirate Party been? A police state could just ignore us as power less. What we'll find really frightening isn't the idea of God or Big Brother watching us and knowing everything about us. It's that God or Big Brother has scored us and we just aren't important enough to watch. I could see Big Brother occasionally looking at the slashdot editors, but never bothering with the average slashdotter.
... that in a facility full of teachers and information, students would still have to make network connections to outside sources, in order to learn.... that in an environment in which huge amounts of learning occurred for over hundreds of years before the Internet was even invented, it only takes one generation for people to become convinced that learning is impossible without the Internet.
Think of it not as "the internet" and more as extremely easy access to reference materials. Long ago, you only had access to the university library with the research resources that they housed if you where "in the know" of a professor or other staff member, or student. Most of the general public wasn't aware that the information even existed or that it was in a university. We take for granted alot of easily obtained public information. Google, dictionary.com, and wikipedia are my top three useful sites. We are spoiled by info. I can't wait for cheap universal internet access. One of my bosses was showing me a Sprint Air Card that had a monthly price somewhere $50-60 with speeds higher than dialup, but lower than broadband. I'd love if I can could pay $ 15 per month for that product for internet access for a family of 4. (Think 4 laptops each with its own card rather than one card into a switch for the 4 laptops.) We really need to make use of home internet schooling/educational classes more. Maybe it'll happen over a generation or two.
30" screens will also make Apple a lot more money. Funny how that works out.
O.K. In brief the article had "other opinions" that listed larger monitor gains at only 5% and dual monitor (using 17-19in monitor) gains at maybe 30%. So how long till, Apple funds a study for productivity gains using dual or triple 30" screens? I don't know about you, but I'd love to be in on a year long study about if using several 30" screens would improve my productivity. Let's see I could watch a movie on one will working one the other two, yeah huge monitors will be the wave of the future.
Another thing to add to the factors you mention is that when humans' offspring are not quite, shall we say, perfect. We do our damndest to save them, be it an emergency cesarean to save mother and baby both or via ongoing operations and treatments afterwards. The reason that so many seemingly health animals are seen hopping around Chernobyl could well be down to survival-of-the-fittest, radio-mutant embryos having been quickly aborted and another mating attempt made.
I've always of been of mixed mind on this. My thoughts always run to abortion and how the same people that are pro abortion over here are against infanticide in areas where that's cultural accepted there, but abortion isn't something that they have. My thoughts aren't really on the pros/cons of abortion, but the apparently accepted in several cultures that placing an infant out for exposure or what we'd consider virtual infanticide is an accepted practise. I hate to even think along these lines, but we could "solve" many of our genetic diseases by just killing off that percentage of the population that displays those diseases or traits that we don't like. Those that survive would be healthy, but I wouldn't want to be one those that had been purged.
I rather like our means of trying to correct genetic disorders and such. I wear glasses. Think about the percentage of the population that wears glasses or contacts. We see that as an easily corrected genetic disorder. We have been breeding ourselves, but eye sight is a neutral trait that we've been "correcting" rather than breeding. Let's face it, we are human and have developed medicines and the entire health industry to extend the life of those that if left to nature would die with a vastly shorter life. Longer lifes and medical problems are parts of what makes us human.
Relativism is an important tool in understanding the world. But if you let it get too out of control you will come to believe that black is white, and they are both grey. China's system of government is anti-humanist, corrupt, inefficient, brutal, militaristic, autocratic, and by almost any definition (other than the Chinese, which you seem to prefer) evil. It IS worse than our system on all but the most twisted 'better' to 'worse' scale, for the individual and for the society as a whole.
I find this the funniest statement ever. Because everyone else could say the same about the US system except brutal and "anti-humanist" (whatever you mean by that.) Although we say we are a democracy, we are a republic, but if we look at who gets elected election after election (think families and not just individuals) we appear just as autocratic as China to outsiders. To outsiders, we appear to alternate between several sets of families that currently control the white house. We seem like a blend of autocracy and republicanism to them. Iran, NK, China, USSR, East Germany would have all said that the US system is "evil" by their standards. Britain, France and Germany could say that the US is currently going down paths that each of them has taken in the past and has chosen to try to avoid in the future. We haven't had our US version of Hilter or political purges after lost elections yet though some would label Bush that. I'm going to say you are right and wrong, the Chinese culture is thousands of years old and they know about in their gut about peasant up risings and when it is the right time for such. The current Chinese government on the other hand came into being sometime between WWI & WII while most of the first world were ignoring that those Asians were doing. China actually briefly tried republicanism, but it wasn't ready for that system of government and got overthrown. I honestly think the 2 top issues of any Chinese government is insuring that government system will still be incharge for the next generation or two and that they don't have a peasant uprising or atleast have the ability to quickly put one down. All the recent wealth in China has actually made more Chinese like their brand of communism since its the system that they grew up in and brought them their personal wealth. The more that I think about it the more that I'm kinda of neutral to the whole thing. I really would like to see how the US transforms in the next 50 years or so. Will we look back on our current republican forms of government as the good ole days or the bad ole days? Well we have some IT based police state or some IT based direct democracy?
If you assume that we'll start using more efficient cars in the future, and take that into consideration when making your graph/paper/prediction/whatever, then it might make the looming crisis look less severe, meaning that people won't actually start using more efficient cars... and the crisis ends up being worse.
What are you talking about? We humans are all stupid. We'd ignore most cries of doom until the day after the event. When the price for a gallon of gas becomes $20-30 a gallon, over about 5-10 years then it'll be too late. Hardly anyone could afford gas then. We'd see people buy bikes and then see masses of people die from actually excerising for the first couple of months. I've honestly thought of how difficult/possible that it would be for me to daily ride a bike the round trip of 20 miles or so that I make. I've come that it should be possible, but it's not within my current abilities. I can't afford a new energy efficient car. I just got a deal of a car for $2000 from a relative. It gets about 16 mpg in the town. I'd love to be able t afford 30-50 mpg in town vehicle, but I most of the lower middle class don't have that kind of income. Heck, I'd never be able to afford "new" car prices. It's not that I don't want to do anything. It's just that the only things that fall within my personal price range are replacing lightblubs and other "little" factors like that. That's why it makes me excited that Wal-mart is going to actually pay lip service to the environmental movement over the next 2-3 years if it shows to be profitable and good PR. The liberals and others that hate Walmart just cause hating Walmart is a cool thing to do within their group forget that the masses that shop at Walmart can't afford any of the envirnomentally correct solutions that they've seen. If the product shows up at Walmart, it will be within a price range I and others can actually afford to buy. Economic environmentalism could be a good long term thing if it actually works. I just hope it works better than the made in the US deal.
It's actually quite unnerving how much information (both in terms of quantity and quality) they have about every such user. It would be possible for them to create a more or less accurate psychological profile of an 'active' user cross-reference with what appears to be his/her hobbies, habits, even daily schedules and pinpoint his/her exact location (at work or at home) at any given time he uses one of their increasing number of services. Now who or what is to guarantee this information is not going to fall into the wrong hands? What if a hacker (rogue blackhat, CIA, the Russian FSB or whatever) gains access to critical information stored on Google Servers? What if a corporation like Time Warner buys up Google (and expands its board of directors with less 'ethical' ones)? What if Google chooses to really cooperate with governments to comply with local laws put into place to fight 'dissidents' or 'terrorists'?
Just wait for active census. You are actually worried about the wrong company. Google may have the data, but would use it to craft better ads. It's companies like http://www.acxiom.com/ that you really need to worry about. Acxiom has access to all sorts of public data. It'll only be a matter of time until several companies or the government pays them to do something like this. I think of Google's data collection in the same manner as Walmart's data collection. Walmart has the data sitting around of what you buy every purchase. They could come up with an individual or household profile that lists all purchased goods at Walmart. Any one that pays in credit card, debit card, or check should be easy to match up and create a profile. Those that always pay cash would be different, but they have security cameras on all the cashiers and the entrance/exit. In theory they could match up a visual profile of who paid cash.
Here is a better one though, Walmart or other stores could also start tracking you by license plate of the vehicle that you get into. I've seen devices in the $20-$30K range that can already scan license plates and cross check them with a downloaded copy of stolen vehicles from NCIC. Companies don't currently have access to NCIC lookups, but they don't need them. Remember if you pay in credit card, debit card, or check then in theory the company should have a record of your address. They could use that address with the vehicle license plate and if they get vehicle model id down then they could use that to estimate how much disposable income that you have based on the estimated blue book of the car. The price would have to come down to atleast 1/10 of current prices before companies start to think about spying on all their consumers. How long do you think that will take?
Personally, I think that the US government needs to revise its census laws/rules and start working to develop an "active census" to determine the estimated "long form" info on every individual in the US at near real-time. Our founding fathers couldn't envision the tech or the resources that we have today. We could literally start trying and actually have a real-time census within 5-10 years if we really wanted it. The next census may be the classical census, but how long do you think that it will be before either companies or the government develops active census?
Google will be the largest media company in the world within 10 years. You heard it here first.
"Media Company" is a bit off. Think media hosting or media distrubition company. Google will do for web delivered video and ads what Nelson does for TV. There was an article that I ran across not to long ago that stated that shows that have about 5-10% of their watchers via Ipod or other video download sources won't have their viewers counted by Nelson. I'll predict that Google will come out with 3-5 simple slightly different video ranking and emmbeded ads that increase profits for ad producers, media content creators (TV, music, and movies), and Google.
Here is a question. Will AOL/TimeWarner buy Google or will Google buy that company?
I mean, if we can get the word out to 650 million Internet users to use IP address 216.168.30.71, what damage is done?
They don't even know what 64.233.187.104, 209.191.93.52, or 207.46.20.60 are. What makes you think that they'll know what 216.168.30.71 is? There is a reason why people use this domain names rather than IP addresses to refer to websites.
You are right about one thing, though... the connection to the Internet is a deal-breaker. It's just that every OS is the current generation has the ability to connect to the Internet, and a wide variety of options for software that uses it. Heck... most of us can probably get the Internet on our phone. It may be a deal-breaker, but it's an irrelevant one.
Um since when has this been an actual issue? I had internet access in Win 3.11, Win95, Win98, Win2000, WinXP Home, and WinXP Pro. (Ok. The whole trumpet winsock was a pain in the butt for Win 3.11 & Win 95, but you could still easily do it at the time.) Every brand of Linux that I've seen can have internet access if the computer has either a network card or a modem. Macs have had easier to access internet for awhile. Since when has internet access even been part of the equation?
However, lots of people are still using W98, so their obsolecence program is not necessarily working all that well in personal user space. I'm sure that in corporate space (where they make their money) it works a treat.
I don't think that MS is aiming at the home market except of course by requiring OEMs to preinstall its new OS rather than WinXP. Honestly, I think Vista is a massive marketing mistake. I read not long that some one thought the MS change for years instead of versions after the name in Office was a stroke of genius. Employees with Office2000 or Office2003 want a new Office because their existing Office is either 6 or 3 years old depending on how they do their math. Your average office employee has no idea when WinXP was released except that it is newer than Win98 or Win2000 and they'll shortly forget about when Vista is released. The IT staff will remember and care, but your average worker could careless. Instead of Vista, MS should name this next release something like Windows2006 or Windows2007 depending on when they actually are planning on releasing it. In 6-7 years when MS is ready to release the next new shiny OS all these office workers will have a year staring down at them rather than Vista. In the next release cycle, they'll all think my current version works fine, why should I upgrade? WinXP and Vista were naming mistakes that will slow adoption of the next new shiny OS.
It would be melodramatic to claim that the U.S. is on the brink of another Cold War, this time with the Chinese. However, "friendly" competition with China will help the space program, it will help Silicon Valley--it will help the United States in any area in which there is a perceived technological deficiency.
I like to think that China is just our current "other side" that we are having a cultural clash issues with. We need an "other side" to compete with. For the next 2-3 decades, China looks to be ours. The only way to resolve our cultural issues sooner is for alot more exchanging of culture. Examples would be Chinese movies, TV, books consumed in the US and the reverse happening. I doubt that'll happen though.
I've always respected both the USSR and China. I've found it odd that we really were allies to both countries during WWII. Growing up during the 80s, I had nothing personal against the USSR version of communism. To me, they were just the "other side" that the US military/spies were always competing with in media. (It was either the USSR or Nazis.) Today, I respect China far more as "the other side" than USSR for a number of little reasons. We didn't defeat the USSR, economics defeated the USSR. As it stands today, China is far more likely to outlast the US economically in the long run.
China has gone through lots of phases and is a very old country. The US tends to forget that. The communist part of China could disappear tomorrow (say next 100-200 years), but they'd still be "the other side" that we choose to target in our long term planing. It isn't that China is or isn't communist. China is the other super power however their local government is. We should look at competing with them. I look at it as a long term culture clash more than anything else though.
If it wasn't China, who would be the other side? Iran, North Korea, Japan, France, or Britain? We have to have an equal contest though. To the average US citizen, Iran and North Korea don't feel like an equal "other side." Japan and Britian both have a firm hold on segments of our culture. They may be economic dangers, but we don't feel like they are "the other side" any more. France seems to have its moments for the US. Let's admit it, we get it from the British that we'll find something/anything about the French to dislike just on general grounds. If we really want to be honest, the EU should be seriously considered "the other side." The EU doesn't make a good media villian though.
This story has been running for a few weeks. Basically it appears the HP board requested or authorised a private investigator to acquire telephone records from board members, staff and/or journalists.
The 'pretexting' seems to be an odd name for pretending to be someone else in order to acquire illicit phone records. It's naughty.
Thank's for pointing that out. After going back and re-reading the article, I missed a small paragraph about what they were charging the HP people with. Apparently, this missed my radio news sources and doesn't seem to directly affect me so I'd avoid it if possible. The not knowing about pretexting was actually bugging me more than the HP CEO potentially doing something illegal. I guess that I just expect CEOs to be doing things slightly illegal. I just don't like terms thrown around that I don't know. Truthfully, I think the cops should come down harder on the detectives than on the HP folks. The detectives should have said no or informed the police that they were being asked to break the law. I could actually buy that an HP exec wouldn't know if their request was illegal or not. The detectives should have at that point informed their client that what was asked was against such and such law. Um being unethical isn't the same as illegal. The HP person could have actually thought that it was legal for HP to buy up all the phone private phone records of all their employees buy purchasing the info from all the various telecoms that HP employees are likely to use. If the telecom handed HP all the data have the money was paid, you'd think that the transaction was legal or the telecom(s) would inform you that it was against the law and "unsellable information."
For some reason, I think that HP or other companies could have bought the information from telecom and be legal. It wouldn't be ethical to use it to spy on your employees, but I would think that the obtaining of information could have been handled legally by HP. I'm just guessing about how easy corporate data is sold around in the US that might have been possible.
I think LucasFilms needs to try its hand at TV soaps. He needs 2 tv series one fantasy with all the fanstay elements that everyone loves, and atleast one scifi series one of which should be Star Wars. I like Star War's the movies, but after some one pointed out the amount of Star War's books and other Star Wars content that they have, I'm inclined to think that LucasFilms has plenty of material for 2-3 StarWars series. I hope that some one forces Lucas to watch B5 and take their little lessons before doing his own thing. I'm not the only one that would love a 5 season Star Wars arc that has interlocking story arcs.
I'm hoping that he will avoid the mini-series and too many made for TV specials though I do see where if he wanted to try alot of different things that he could through TV specials. One thought that really is interesting is that I could see Lucas starting a Star Wars TV series and pushing his budget special effects to the limits far more than he thought possible.
Let's also remember the lesson of Dr. Who. Plot first; special effects second! He should be able to cheaply produce something that both pushs the limits and is fun to watch.
I tried the to poor links. Neither makes it clear what Dunn did that was illegal or unethical. Browsing through slashdot, I've read the term "pretexting" several times, but no definitions or whether or not it is actually against the law. The one thing in the article that I saw that seemed illegal was private detectives obtaining personal information under false pretenses. The article didn't state though if their HP employeers directed them to use those methods or if the private detectives just used those methods and their employeers are getting the flak, but it turns out the people that the were using were breaking the law. There isn't enough information in the article for me to come out for or against Dunn or anyone else. Dunn is apparently the one that all this is falling on, but the article didn't make clear why. If I really cared, I'd look it up myself, but I could careless other than apparently those in the know have better info than what was linked to the main/. article and those that browse at 5 seem to be left clueless at what was actually going on.
Wow. It's not often that we actually get to witness someone touting their lack of education and willingness to settle as virtues. I applaud your honesty.
Graduating in the top 20 of HS with a 3.98 GPA and with a BS in CS with 3.75 GPA, I consider myself fairly "educated." I consider it more of life style choices. I don't choose to go home and spend the entire night "enriching" myself. I go home watch some anime, read some manga, or play some video games. I don't really care about programming for programming's sake. I doubt many on slashdot actually do as a personal choice or we'd see much less/. postings and more people devote time to their private programming project.
Here is another example. Do you go home, and spend from 4:00-9:00 working on projects for work? That's basically what students see themselves as doing when they get home and are expected to spend the entire time on homework for homework's sake or studying because its bound to be better than TV or video games. I liked to watch TLC, History Channel, and Discovery channel. Now a days I watch cartoon network with the kids and get horrified at the toons that I used to watch growing up. I don't change the station or prevent my kids from watching what I watched growing up though. I read far more now than I did in HS or college. I read a 300 pg fiction book a night. I don't watch TV really, but do play video games. I consider the standard education that folks like you would like to cram down everyone's throats as mainly a waste of time. I didn't really appreciate that opinion until I was finished with organized education. I can now safely say most of education is BS to keep the populance busy and unproductive. Really, we could start being productive adults at 12 or 13, but that would cut down on our education, reduce the number of teachers, and be "child labor" so it must be an evil concept.
Anyone who is reasonably intelligent and even slightly motivated can get good grades in K-12. The trick is maintaining the discipline to develop good enough study habits to get you through college with the same marks.
Um, I'll disagree slightly with you there. I don't think that you need to be intelligent at all to graduate from K-12. From my history you were sorted into a couple of groups over and over: remedial, basic, advanced, or honors. The only basic classes that I took were those general ed electives that everyone had to take and that there weren't different skill sets in there. I associated with some friends in basic classes while I took mainly advanced or honors classes. The big difference between basic and advanced classes seemed to be speed and sometime quantity of material. The basic classes seemed to go over the same material as we would, except things that we'd speed 1-2 days on they'd speed 1-2 weeks on. Really, this mainly left us actually making it through the text book and reviewing at the end of the year over selected portions of what the teacher thought important. In "basic" classes we were lucky to make it 70% through the textbook.
To get through most of the advanced class work, here is the not so secret of it. Show up every day and turn in something to be graded. You might not make a B or an A, but you'll get a C for sure. Heck, D is a passing grade and if you show any effort what so ever a teacher will assist you as much as possible.
Being the top of your class because the course is not intended for exceptional students does not mean that games helped or hindered you. It simply means that you were too advanced for the class you took. If this allowed you additional free time to play video games, that is a failing of the school system.
Um, I strongly disagree. It sounds like you are one that would like to load down students with 3-4 hours of homework nightly regaurdless if the need it just to keep them busy. I took honors and avdanced classes in HS. The honors classes that I avoided where english and geography and for excellent reason. Those classes had teachers that believed you should read a book nearly every night and do a full book report on it or worse spend 3-4 hours in homework for that class. I hated those types of teachers then as a student and now as a parent. Ok. As a parent, I sometimes would like teachers to assign a bit more of homework to keep my kids busy, but it doesn't work that way. Homework keeps either my wife or I busy with our childern to make sure that they do it. Back in the day, I spent 15 min - 30 min on homework. I watched TV or played SNES from 4:00-10:00 except for dinner time. I usually got most of my homework in 8:30-9:30 depending on what was on that night. You seem to be of the attitude that my life would have been better enriched had I spent that time "studying" for the sake of learning. BS. College was somewhat difficult for the quantities of reading that they wanted, but no one really required or demanded that you do them. The only real homework was in math or health classes. Those college health classes wanted you to develop an entire healthy lifestyle rountine and live by it. Math at the college level didn't change much except instead of the nightly problem set being worth any points you got a check mark for doing it. Sometimes if you were lucky a profressor would run the math homework through a TA for actually correctness grading to see if you really were doing it right. I took 18 hours and found plenty of time to blow off playing games or watching TV in addition to studying reading for that day's classes. I don't think that I'm exceptional or that I needed an additional hurdle just to make my life more difficult. If I wanted more difficult classes, I could have taken a cal. based physics class instead of the trig based one.
Slashdot Mirror
At present, and for the forseeable future, there's no adequate substitute for humans that speak the language. I realize we throw Arabic speakers out of the military because they're gay and all, but maybe we could make an exception because their skills are necessary at present. No computer translation system is adequate for usage in a live military operation.
;) Currently to get the performance what we want you have to use human translators. What we really need developed sometime in the next 20-30 years is the ability to translate near perfect English to Indian to Chinese to Russian. That would help us more in the long run than anything else. We really should be more heavily funding this type of research.
;)
Oh, and IACL (I am A Computational Linguist).
You need to do what those global warming guys are doing. Say that we need more funding and study and more work to get tools to work as you'd like. Maybe you'd be lucky and get a DOD grant for a few million for improving translation software. I honestly think that we are decades to centuries away from this at the moment. Your average government guy will just want to throw down a wad of cash and buy a working product. Um, what no working product exists except human translators? Well, although it would most likely be cheaper just to train the US troops to speak passably in most languages than to spend the money to research generic translation software. We really should be working on being able to translate all our currently used langauages using software. It's hard problem. You need to work at how you present it though so you are assured more money.
I'm into Perry Rhodan and except for a tiny percentage its mainly only avaible in German so an excellent German to English translation would let me read more pulp fiction.
If all slashdot readers can AVOID the temptation to visit the utube site I'm sure the company would much appreciate it!
Opps. Why the heck did they post links in the summary if they didn't want us to visit it?
It sounds like the company should update their webhosting and look at all the miss directed youtube folks as free ads. Well, I can see where the company is coming from. My dad sells large farm equipment. Their company would never ever just stick an ad in newspaper or do TV ads. They put ads only in industry specific mags. If you are looking for peices of machinary around $50-60K each you will see their products when shopping around in that industry. They wouldn't want John Doe Average Walmart Shopper to even look or visit their site as that person isn't likely to ever buy any of their products. Now if John Doe Average was actually looking for their products it would be different. It would be like say car companies with cars costing over $200K paying walmart to post ads at their entrance. It just wouldn't happen. Not enough walmart shoppers would even be the right demographic for that product. Of course, you do have doctors and lawyers that shop at walmart too so maybe it would be worth their effort.
I'm surprised at how rational most of these posts that I've read in this thread are! I was expecting to see a long string of posts bad mouthing the MS corporate culture at every turn and praising Google at every chance. I've seen posts that actually rationally compare the working environment, the actual corporate culture, and what factors this guy should use to make his decision. Most of the best posts that I've read state that Google is a workaholic company at the moment, but with lots lof long term potential to move up. In similiar posts MS apparently has a more long term healthy attitude in expecting their employees to have a life outside of work though their mature company and advancement would be what's normal for a large company.
Honestly reading the topic, I think that that guy should make up his own mind and not ask slashdot unless he wanted our opinions about some of the actual corporate environment rather than what was shown to him during interviews. What's really ironic is that likely the folks at both Google and MS are reading this thread and mentally comparing their work places. We need to have slashdot poll for those that work for google, those that work directly at MS, those that are MS contractors, those that are employeed in the IT field and actually work with employees from either company, IT people in general, hey I read slashdot and would like to be employeed in the IT field in the US at any employer, and my job was outsourced to India or downsided to make room for these new cheaper grads you so I'm pissed at the guy for being offered my old job for less money.
You can't remove undesirable genes from a population by culling the afflicted, unless you have a disease which is caused by having bad copy of the gene. Take sickle cell anemia: if you magically killed everyone who has it this second, there would still be millions of carriers with a single bad copy of the gene who don't develop the disease. And if two carriers have children, 1/4 will likely be sickle cell.
Besides which, new mutations arise constantly, so even if you could wipe out all known genetic illness, something new would just show up to replace it.
I know it's not a good idea and I wouldn't want to live in the same solar system as a society that tried it, but I think that a society that would go that far would also develop methods for testing and killing off carriers as well. Actually, if I recall some "reasons" for cultures to follow the whole infanticide bit it was said infant didn't look normal, or sex imbalance, usually though it was an heir of a specific gender was wanted and all those of the other gender were discarded. The high tech version of that is doing a complete gene scan and if any undesirable genes are found to automatically abort it. The really elegant version would be to genetically engineer gene scans and auto-abort abilities into our females.
As long as I don't do anything wrong why should I worry?
/.'ers can see what is coming but the general populs, the ones who vote (though how effective that is I don't know) will happily ignore things until it becomes and issue when the police turn up at the front door
To me it seems people will only notice things are becoming a police state when its a bit to late. Most
I take is as long as I don't do anything massively annoying or expensive to the government or companies; they'll mainly ignore me and leave me be. RIAA and MPAA are exceptions and not the rule. Of course if I was sharing thousands of files they'd be annoyed at me, but I'd not really be expensive to them. P2P is only expensive to the RIAA in the abstract if even that. I think of it more along as I have "freedom of speech" so long as I don't defame or libeal anyone or annoy someone that might SLAPP suit me. I was annoying vocal about politics through HS, but wasn't allowed to vote then and classmates where just as well. When I went to college, we observed our local politicans and college staff. They did a lot of stupid things and we didn't like most of it. The system is designed so that we couldn't change anything without massive organized effort. We didn't really care "that much" about any of it. We were only there for 4 years and then went home. By then we had lives. As long as I don't bad mouth my employeer or do something stupid, get arrested, or get in the news for something about my employeer, they'll generally care less what I do with my homelife. My local government doesn't care too much about me as long as I pay my taxes and the cops don't have to show up at my residence or neighborhood alot.
I'm very mixed about the idea of an IT police state where we actually have the private life data of anyone that we want. (Well, I guess it wouldn't be a police state if everyone had access to it.) If my home was wired up for full video/audio and any one out there could look into any room of my house at any time, the people that are most likely to watch would be my mom, my mother in law, and also a few of my wife's friends. No one else would generally care about looking into my house. My employeer would generally only check in if and only if I called in sick. Let's be really honest. Police states focus their attention on those groups that are likely able to change government policy. How politically successful has slashdot, the EFF, or the Pirate Party been? A police state could just ignore us as power less. What we'll find really frightening isn't the idea of God or Big Brother watching us and knowing everything about us. It's that God or Big Brother has scored us and we just aren't important enough to watch. I could see Big Brother occasionally looking at the slashdot editors, but never bothering with the average slashdotter.
... that in a facility full of teachers and information, students would still have to make network connections to outside sources, in order to learn. ... that in an environment in which huge amounts of learning occurred for over hundreds of years before the Internet was even invented, it only takes one generation for people to become convinced that learning is impossible without the Internet.
Think of it not as "the internet" and more as extremely easy access to reference materials. Long ago, you only had access to the university library with the research resources that they housed if you where "in the know" of a professor or other staff member, or student. Most of the general public wasn't aware that the information even existed or that it was in a university. We take for granted alot of easily obtained public information. Google, dictionary.com, and wikipedia are my top three useful sites. We are spoiled by info. I can't wait for cheap universal internet access. One of my bosses was showing me a Sprint Air Card that had a monthly price somewhere $50-60 with speeds higher than dialup, but lower than broadband. I'd love if I can could pay $ 15 per month for that product for internet access for a family of 4. (Think 4 laptops each with its own card rather than one card into a switch for the 4 laptops.) We really need to make use of home internet schooling/educational classes more. Maybe it'll happen over a generation or two.
30" screens will also make Apple a lot more money. Funny how that works out.
O.K. In brief the article had "other opinions" that listed larger monitor gains at only 5% and dual monitor (using 17-19in monitor) gains at maybe 30%. So how long till, Apple funds a study for productivity gains using dual or triple 30" screens? I don't know about you, but I'd love to be in on a year long study about if using several 30" screens would improve my productivity. Let's see I could watch a movie on one will working one the other two, yeah huge monitors will be the wave of the future.
Another thing to add to the factors you mention is that when humans' offspring are not quite, shall we say, perfect. We do our damndest to save them, be it an emergency cesarean to save mother and baby both or via ongoing operations and treatments afterwards. The reason that so many seemingly health animals are seen hopping around Chernobyl could well be down to survival-of-the-fittest, radio-mutant embryos having been quickly aborted and another mating attempt made.
I've always of been of mixed mind on this. My thoughts always run to abortion and how the same people that are pro abortion over here are against infanticide in areas where that's cultural accepted there, but abortion isn't something that they have. My thoughts aren't really on the pros/cons of abortion, but the apparently accepted in several cultures that placing an infant out for exposure or what we'd consider virtual infanticide is an accepted practise. I hate to even think along these lines, but we could "solve" many of our genetic diseases by just killing off that percentage of the population that displays those diseases or traits that we don't like. Those that survive would be healthy, but I wouldn't want to be one those that had been purged.
I rather like our means of trying to correct genetic disorders and such. I wear glasses. Think about the percentage of the population that wears glasses or contacts. We see that as an easily corrected genetic disorder. We have been breeding ourselves, but eye sight is a neutral trait that we've been "correcting" rather than breeding. Let's face it, we are human and have developed medicines and the entire health industry to extend the life of those that if left to nature would die with a vastly shorter life. Longer lifes and medical problems are parts of what makes us human.
Relativism is an important tool in understanding the world. But if you let it get too out of control you will come to believe that black is white, and they are both grey. China's system of government is anti-humanist, corrupt, inefficient, brutal, militaristic, autocratic, and by almost any definition (other than the Chinese, which you seem to prefer) evil. It IS worse than our system on all but the most twisted 'better' to 'worse' scale, for the individual and for the society as a whole.
I find this the funniest statement ever. Because everyone else could say the same about the US system except brutal and "anti-humanist" (whatever you mean by that.) Although we say we are a democracy, we are a republic, but if we look at who gets elected election after election (think families and not just individuals) we appear just as autocratic as China to outsiders. To outsiders, we appear to alternate between several sets of families that currently control the white house. We seem like a blend of autocracy and republicanism to them. Iran, NK, China, USSR, East Germany would have all said that the US system is "evil" by their standards. Britain, France and Germany could say that the US is currently going down paths that each of them has taken in the past and has chosen to try to avoid in the future. We haven't had our US version of Hilter or political purges after lost elections yet though some would label Bush that. I'm going to say you are right and wrong, the Chinese culture is thousands of years old and they know about in their gut about peasant up risings and when it is the right time for such. The current Chinese government on the other hand came into being sometime between WWI & WII while most of the first world were ignoring that those Asians were doing. China actually briefly tried republicanism, but it wasn't ready for that system of government and got overthrown. I honestly think the 2 top issues of any Chinese government is insuring that government system will still be incharge for the next generation or two and that they don't have a peasant uprising or atleast have the ability to quickly put one down. All the recent wealth in China has actually made more Chinese like their brand of communism since its the system that they grew up in and brought them their personal wealth. The more that I think about it the more that I'm kinda of neutral to the whole thing. I really would like to see how the US transforms in the next 50 years or so. Will we look back on our current republican forms of government as the good ole days or the bad ole days? Well we have some IT based police state or some IT based direct democracy?
If you assume that we'll start using more efficient cars in the future, and take that into consideration when making your graph/paper/prediction/whatever, then it might make the looming crisis look less severe, meaning that people won't actually start using more efficient cars ... and the crisis ends up being worse.
What are you talking about? We humans are all stupid. We'd ignore most cries of doom until the day after the event. When the price for a gallon of gas becomes $20-30 a gallon, over about 5-10 years then it'll be too late. Hardly anyone could afford gas then. We'd see people buy bikes and then see masses of people die from actually excerising for the first couple of months. I've honestly thought of how difficult/possible that it would be for me to daily ride a bike the round trip of 20 miles or so that I make. I've come that it should be possible, but it's not within my current abilities. I can't afford a new energy efficient car. I just got a deal of a car for $2000 from a relative. It gets about 16 mpg in the town. I'd love to be able t afford 30-50 mpg in town vehicle, but I most of the lower middle class don't have that kind of income. Heck, I'd never be able to afford "new" car prices. It's not that I don't want to do anything. It's just that the only things that fall within my personal price range are replacing lightblubs and other "little" factors like that. That's why it makes me excited that Wal-mart is going to actually pay lip service to the environmental movement over the next 2-3 years if it shows to be profitable and good PR. The liberals and others that hate Walmart just cause hating Walmart is a cool thing to do within their group forget that the masses that shop at Walmart can't afford any of the envirnomentally correct solutions that they've seen. If the product shows up at Walmart, it will be within a price range I and others can actually afford to buy. Economic environmentalism could be a good long term thing if it actually works. I just hope it works better than the made in the US deal.
It's actually quite unnerving how much information (both in terms of quantity and quality) they have about every such user. It would be possible for them to create a more or less accurate psychological profile of an 'active' user cross-reference with what appears to be his/her hobbies, habits, even daily schedules and pinpoint his/her exact location (at work or at home) at any given time he uses one of their increasing number of services. Now who or what is to guarantee this information is not going to fall into the wrong hands? What if a hacker (rogue blackhat, CIA, the Russian FSB or whatever) gains access to critical information stored on Google Servers? What if a corporation like Time Warner buys up Google (and expands its board of directors with less 'ethical' ones)? What if Google chooses to really cooperate with governments to comply with local laws put into place to fight 'dissidents' or 'terrorists'?
Just wait for active census. You are actually worried about the wrong company. Google may have the data, but would use it to craft better ads. It's companies like http://www.acxiom.com/ that you really need to worry about. Acxiom has access to all sorts of public data. It'll only be a matter of time until several companies or the government pays them to do something like this. I think of Google's data collection in the same manner as Walmart's data collection. Walmart has the data sitting around of what you buy every purchase. They could come up with an individual or household profile that lists all purchased goods at Walmart. Any one that pays in credit card, debit card, or check should be easy to match up and create a profile. Those that always pay cash would be different, but they have security cameras on all the cashiers and the entrance/exit. In theory they could match up a visual profile of who paid cash.
Here is a better one though, Walmart or other stores could also start tracking you by license plate of the vehicle that you get into. I've seen devices in the $20-$30K range that can already scan license plates and cross check them with a downloaded copy of stolen vehicles from NCIC. Companies don't currently have access to NCIC lookups, but they don't need them. Remember if you pay in credit card, debit card, or check then in theory the company should have a record of your address. They could use that address with the vehicle license plate and if they get vehicle model id down then they could use that to estimate how much disposable income that you have based on the estimated blue book of the car. The price would have to come down to atleast 1/10 of current prices before companies start to think about spying on all their consumers. How long do you think that will take?
Personally, I think that the US government needs to revise its census laws/rules and start working to develop an "active census" to determine the estimated "long form" info on every individual in the US at near real-time. Our founding fathers couldn't envision the tech or the resources that we have today. We could literally start trying and actually have a real-time census within 5-10 years if we really wanted it. The next census may be the classical census, but how long do you think that it will be before either companies or the government develops active census?
Google will be the largest media company in the world within 10 years. You heard it here first.
"Media Company" is a bit off. Think media hosting or media distrubition company. Google will do for web delivered video and ads what Nelson does for TV. There was an article that I ran across not to long ago that stated that shows that have about 5-10% of their watchers via Ipod or other video download sources won't have their viewers counted by Nelson. I'll predict that Google will come out with 3-5 simple slightly different video ranking and emmbeded ads that increase profits for ad producers, media content creators (TV, music, and movies), and Google.
Here is a question. Will AOL/TimeWarner buy Google or will Google buy that company?
I mean, if we can get the word out to 650 million Internet users to use IP address 216.168.30.71, what damage is done?
They don't even know what 64.233.187.104, 209.191.93.52, or 207.46.20.60 are. What makes you think that they'll know what 216.168.30.71 is? There is a reason why people use this domain names rather than IP addresses to refer to websites.
You are right about one thing, though... the connection to the Internet is a deal-breaker. It's just that every OS is the current generation has the ability to connect to the Internet, and a wide variety of options for software that uses it. Heck... most of us can probably get the Internet on our phone. It may be a deal-breaker, but it's an irrelevant one.
Um since when has this been an actual issue? I had internet access in Win 3.11, Win95, Win98, Win2000, WinXP Home, and WinXP Pro. (Ok. The whole trumpet winsock was a pain in the butt for Win 3.11 & Win 95, but you could still easily do it at the time.) Every brand of Linux that I've seen can have internet access if the computer has either a network card or a modem. Macs have had easier to access internet for awhile. Since when has internet access even been part of the equation?
However, lots of people are still using W98, so their obsolecence program is not necessarily working all that well in personal user space. I'm sure that in corporate space (where they make their money) it works a treat.
I don't think that MS is aiming at the home market except of course by requiring OEMs to preinstall its new OS rather than WinXP. Honestly, I think Vista is a massive marketing mistake. I read not long that some one thought the MS change for years instead of versions after the name in Office was a stroke of genius. Employees with Office2000 or Office2003 want a new Office because their existing Office is either 6 or 3 years old depending on how they do their math. Your average office employee has no idea when WinXP was released except that it is newer than Win98 or Win2000 and they'll shortly forget about when Vista is released. The IT staff will remember and care, but your average worker could careless. Instead of Vista, MS should name this next release something like Windows2006 or Windows2007 depending on when they actually are planning on releasing it. In 6-7 years when MS is ready to release the next new shiny OS all these office workers will have a year staring down at them rather than Vista. In the next release cycle, they'll all think my current version works fine, why should I upgrade? WinXP and Vista were naming mistakes that will slow adoption of the next new shiny OS.
It would be melodramatic to claim that the U.S. is on the brink of another Cold War, this time with the Chinese. However, "friendly" competition with China will help the space program, it will help Silicon Valley--it will help the United States in any area in which there is a perceived technological deficiency.
I like to think that China is just our current "other side" that we are having a cultural clash issues with. We need an "other side" to compete with. For the next 2-3 decades, China looks to be ours. The only way to resolve our cultural issues sooner is for alot more exchanging of culture. Examples would be Chinese movies, TV, books consumed in the US and the reverse happening. I doubt that'll happen though.
China is our enemy ...
Depends on who you are.
I've always respected both the USSR and China. I've found it odd that we really were allies to both countries during WWII. Growing up during the 80s, I had nothing personal against the USSR version of communism. To me, they were just the "other side" that the US military/spies were always competing with in media. (It was either the USSR or Nazis.) Today, I respect China far more as "the other side" than USSR for a number of little reasons. We didn't defeat the USSR, economics defeated the USSR. As it stands today, China is far more likely to outlast the US economically in the long run.
China has gone through lots of phases and is a very old country. The US tends to forget that. The communist part of China could disappear tomorrow (say next 100-200 years), but they'd still be "the other side" that we choose to target in our long term planing. It isn't that China is or isn't communist. China is the other super power however their local government is. We should look at competing with them. I look at it as a long term culture clash more than anything else though.
If it wasn't China, who would be the other side? Iran, North Korea, Japan, France, or Britain? We have to have an equal contest though. To the average US citizen, Iran and North Korea don't feel like an equal "other side." Japan and Britian both have a firm hold on segments of our culture. They may be economic dangers, but we don't feel like they are "the other side" any more. France seems to have its moments for the US. Let's admit it, we get it from the British that we'll find something/anything about the French to dislike just on general grounds. If we really want to be honest, the EU should be seriously considered "the other side." The EU doesn't make a good media villian though.
With Linux, all you have to do is concatenate 6 strings on the command line and edit 3 configuration files and you can accomplish anything!
And it would all be in Pearl.
This story has been running for a few weeks. Basically it appears the HP board requested or authorised a private investigator to acquire telephone records from board members, staff and/or journalists.
The 'pretexting' seems to be an odd name for pretending to be someone else in order to acquire illicit phone records. It's naughty.
Thank's for pointing that out. After going back and re-reading the article, I missed a small paragraph about what they were charging the HP people with. Apparently, this missed my radio news sources and doesn't seem to directly affect me so I'd avoid it if possible. The not knowing about pretexting was actually bugging me more than the HP CEO potentially doing something illegal. I guess that I just expect CEOs to be doing things slightly illegal. I just don't like terms thrown around that I don't know. Truthfully, I think the cops should come down harder on the detectives than on the HP folks. The detectives should have said no or informed the police that they were being asked to break the law. I could actually buy that an HP exec wouldn't know if their request was illegal or not. The detectives should have at that point informed their client that what was asked was against such and such law. Um being unethical isn't the same as illegal. The HP person could have actually thought that it was legal for HP to buy up all the phone private phone records of all their employees buy purchasing the info from all the various telecoms that HP employees are likely to use. If the telecom handed HP all the data have the money was paid, you'd think that the transaction was legal or the telecom(s) would inform you that it was against the law and "unsellable information."
For some reason, I think that HP or other companies could have bought the information from telecom and be legal. It wouldn't be ethical to use it to spy on your employees, but I would think that the obtaining of information could have been handled legally by HP. I'm just guessing about how easy corporate data is sold around in the US that might have been possible.
What state/area of the country are you in? I'm in AR and my local schools still do this. As far as I'm aware, the TX schools also do it.
I think LucasFilms needs to try its hand at TV soaps. He needs 2 tv series one fantasy with all the fanstay elements that everyone loves, and atleast one scifi series one of which should be Star Wars. I like Star War's the movies, but after some one pointed out the amount of Star War's books and other Star Wars content that they have, I'm inclined to think that LucasFilms has plenty of material for 2-3 StarWars series. I hope that some one forces Lucas to watch B5 and take their little lessons before doing his own thing. I'm not the only one that would love a 5 season Star Wars arc that has interlocking story arcs.
I'm hoping that he will avoid the mini-series and too many made for TV specials though I do see where if he wanted to try alot of different things that he could through TV specials. One thought that really is interesting is that I could see Lucas starting a Star Wars TV series and pushing his budget special effects to the limits far more than he thought possible.
Let's also remember the lesson of Dr. Who. Plot first; special effects second! He should be able to cheaply produce something that both pushs the limits and is fun to watch.
I tried the to poor links. Neither makes it clear what Dunn did that was illegal or unethical. Browsing through slashdot, I've read the term "pretexting" several times, but no definitions or whether or not it is actually against the law. The one thing in the article that I saw that seemed illegal was private detectives obtaining personal information under false pretenses. The article didn't state though if their HP employeers directed them to use those methods or if the private detectives just used those methods and their employeers are getting the flak, but it turns out the people that the were using were breaking the law. There isn't enough information in the article for me to come out for or against Dunn or anyone else. Dunn is apparently the one that all this is falling on, but the article didn't make clear why. If I really cared, I'd look it up myself, but I could careless other than apparently those in the know have better info than what was linked to the main /. article and those that browse at 5 seem to be left clueless at what was actually going on.
Wow. It's not often that we actually get to witness someone touting their lack of education and willingness to settle as virtues.
/. postings and more people devote time to their private programming project.
I applaud your honesty.
Graduating in the top 20 of HS with a 3.98 GPA and with a BS in CS with 3.75 GPA, I consider myself fairly "educated." I consider it more of life style choices. I don't choose to go home and spend the entire night "enriching" myself. I go home watch some anime, read some manga, or play some video games. I don't really care about programming for programming's sake. I doubt many on slashdot actually do as a personal choice or we'd see much less
Here is another example. Do you go home, and spend from 4:00-9:00 working on projects for work? That's basically what students see themselves as doing when they get home and are expected to spend the entire time on homework for homework's sake or studying because its bound to be better than TV or video games. I liked to watch TLC, History Channel, and Discovery channel. Now a days I watch cartoon network with the kids and get horrified at the toons that I used to watch growing up. I don't change the station or prevent my kids from watching what I watched growing up though. I read far more now than I did in HS or college. I read a 300 pg fiction book a night. I don't watch TV really, but do play video games. I consider the standard education that folks like you would like to cram down everyone's throats as mainly a waste of time. I didn't really appreciate that opinion until I was finished with organized education. I can now safely say most of education is BS to keep the populance busy and unproductive. Really, we could start being productive adults at 12 or 13, but that would cut down on our education, reduce the number of teachers, and be "child labor" so it must be an evil concept.
Anyone who is reasonably intelligent and even slightly motivated can get good grades in K-12. The trick is maintaining the discipline to develop good enough study habits to get you through college with the same marks.
Um, I'll disagree slightly with you there. I don't think that you need to be intelligent at all to graduate from K-12. From my history you were sorted into a couple of groups over and over: remedial, basic, advanced, or honors. The only basic classes that I took were those general ed electives that everyone had to take and that there weren't different skill sets in there. I associated with some friends in basic classes while I took mainly advanced or honors classes. The big difference between basic and advanced classes seemed to be speed and sometime quantity of material. The basic classes seemed to go over the same material as we would, except things that we'd speed 1-2 days on they'd speed 1-2 weeks on. Really, this mainly left us actually making it through the text book and reviewing at the end of the year over selected portions of what the teacher thought important. In "basic" classes we were lucky to make it 70% through the textbook.
To get through most of the advanced class work, here is the not so secret of it. Show up every day and turn in something to be graded. You might not make a B or an A, but you'll get a C for sure. Heck, D is a passing grade and if you show any effort what so ever a teacher will assist you as much as possible.
Being the top of your class because the course is not intended for exceptional students does not mean that games helped or hindered you. It simply means that you were too advanced for the class you took. If this allowed you additional free time to play video games, that is a failing of the school system.
Um, I strongly disagree. It sounds like you are one that would like to load down students with 3-4 hours of homework nightly regaurdless if the need it just to keep them busy. I took honors and avdanced classes in HS. The honors classes that I avoided where english and geography and for excellent reason. Those classes had teachers that believed you should read a book nearly every night and do a full book report on it or worse spend 3-4 hours in homework for that class. I hated those types of teachers then as a student and now as a parent. Ok. As a parent, I sometimes would like teachers to assign a bit more of homework to keep my kids busy, but it doesn't work that way. Homework keeps either my wife or I busy with our childern to make sure that they do it. Back in the day, I spent 15 min - 30 min on homework. I watched TV or played SNES from 4:00-10:00 except for dinner time. I usually got most of my homework in 8:30-9:30 depending on what was on that night. You seem to be of the attitude that my life would have been better enriched had I spent that time "studying" for the sake of learning. BS. College was somewhat difficult for the quantities of reading that they wanted, but no one really required or demanded that you do them. The only real homework was in math or health classes. Those college health classes wanted you to develop an entire healthy lifestyle rountine and live by it. Math at the college level didn't change much except instead of the nightly problem set being worth any points you got a check mark for doing it. Sometimes if you were lucky a profressor would run the math homework through a TA for actually correctness grading to see if you really were doing it right. I took 18 hours and found plenty of time to blow off playing games or watching TV in addition to studying reading for that day's classes. I don't think that I'm exceptional or that I needed an additional hurdle just to make my life more difficult. If I wanted more difficult classes, I could have taken a cal. based physics class instead of the trig based one.