I've read Faster with a lot of expectations -- Gleick has a good reputation and I was (and am) quite interested in the topic. The book disappointed me.
My main problem with the book is that there are really no interesting ideas in it. The book is basically a semi-coherent collection of time-related stories, observations, interviews. It looks as if Gleick decided to write a book about acceleration of life, went out, collected a lot of material, edited it, put it in a big pile and presented this pile to the readers.
Nothing hold this book together besides the trivial commonality of subject. There is no main thread running through it, no interesting claims made, no good arguments put forward. The main idea of the book -- that life becomes subjectively faster -- is self-evident and seeing demonstrations of this basic fact over and over again becomes quite tiring quickly.
I think that I dislike this book because there is no insight in it. It's just a pile of facts and that doesn't quite cut it.
Kaa
Re:Why laptops? Answer: To eliminate bricks&mortar
on
Laptops In Education
·
· Score: 1
Think about how much more cost-effectively public schooling would be if school boards just demolished schools and let kids study at home or at the mall or in unsupervised study cubicles.
Quite obviously you don't have any kids. Why in the world would a kid study if instead he can play games (both computer and not), watch TV, surf the 'net, and hang out on chat channels?
Besides you forgot one major function of schools -- it's free (tax-funded) daycare for kids. In a lot of families both parents work.
Desktops should be at home. In any case, by "complicated" I meant that right now nobody has a clue how to effectively teach a networked class. It's not a hardware/logistics problem. It's a teaching methodology problem.
A classroom network will have to be wireless, I don't see a way around this.
Why? Everybody sits at a desk, right? Why can't each desk have Ethernet ports?
I see some reason is supplying kids with free/cheap/subsidized computers -- desktops which they'll have at home. I don't see much use in giving them laptops to be used in class. The problem is that effectively using laptops in class is very complicated. Not only you need networking infrastructure, both hardware and software (and no, 'wall' doesn't cut it), but you also need teachers who understand all this. And most of all, you need a teaching methodology that makes use of all that computing power. To date I haven't heard of a single successful project (but some unsuccessful ones) which intergrated laptops into classroom teaching. Computers are good for doing homework, but not for the classroom, at least not yet.
I have no objection to giving technology to kids -- I am sure they'll discover many uses of it (like playing network games during class and making the teacher's computer crash). It's a good thing and will feed their brains. However, the resources of our educational system are quite limited and I am afraid that this is going to end up being a very expensive white elefant. I am sure 95% of teachers won't know how to use it, or have any clue what to do with it.
money is more than just something you buy stuff with, but a way of keeping score.
I rest my case. Keeping score in games the very rich play doesn't concern me nearly is much as people who are power-hungry.
If you look at the history of the XX century you'll find that the kind of people you should be afraid of (from Hitler and Stalin to Pol Pot and Kim Ir Sen) did not come to power through money and were not very interested in money anyway.
People living downwind of the United Carbide Plant in Bhopal might disagree...
If you are going to use industrial accidents, I'll use wars: kinda "government accidents". Where were more people killed?
Or the people screwed by big tobacco who lied when they knew smoking was a)addictive and b) killed.
Come on! Show me a smoker who doesn't know that smoking is addictive and dangerous. Smoking is a matter of personal choice and I don't believe this whining about how Joe Camel came to me, tied me up, and pushed his cigarettes into my mouth.
Even in the First World, it's very difficult for me to ignore, say, car manafacturers, even though I don't own a car.
And how so? Besides, we are talking about individual corporations, not the whole industries. Besides, let's say you want to (1) not have a car; (2) smoke pot. Should you be more afraid of Ford or DEA?
In a who-is-the-most-evil-of-them-all contest between the government and the corporations I vote firmly for the government. Three brief reasons:
(1) Business attracts people interested in money. Government attracts people interested in power. I find the the second kind more repugnant and much more dangerous.
(2) A government can do much nastier things to you than a corporation can. The absolute worse thing that a corporation can do is sue you into bankrupcy. A government, OTOH, can put you in jail, confiscate your property and do other most unpleasant things.
(3) If I dislike a corporation, I can more or less ignore it: not use its services and products, turn away from it's advertising, etc. Now a government is much, much harder to ignore.
Most people in that situation would quickly conclude that the window can be opened by throwing a chair through it; in other words, a hardware solution.;-)
Unless you live in a high-rise apartment building.
BTW, I forgot to mention that in five minutes everything returns to normal -- and as you stand on your front lawn looking at the broken window, you see cops and an emergency psychiatric care ambulance drive up: your automated phone system thoughtfully called 911 saying you are having paranoidal delusions...
o, the worst part is the crackers hacking their way into my refrigerator...
Man, you don't have no imagination.
Think of a fully wired house with remote-controlled: locks, temperature, lights, music, toilet, the works. Imagine, for example, being woken at 4 am by a maniacal laughter echoing through the house to find out that lights don't work, the house is bitterly cold, and the lock on your door will not open...
We've been talking about running the Net to everything in the house, and the current IP protocol just can't handle it.
Well, you probably don't want to make every appliance in your house freely accessible from the 'net (I wonder how much fun it will be to hack toasters... "Drat! My toast's burned again. Damn hackers!":-). A much more reasonable solution would be to set up the house as a private subnet behind a router/firewall combo. And in this case you only need one IP address per house.
You want IPv6 mostly because it's a better protocol, not only because it has a larger address space.
The viewpoint you are missing is called compensation.
More correctly, it's called the "deep pockets" legal theory: don't sue the guilty ones, sue those who can pay you.
I mean let's face it, they do deserve some compensation.
They do? Maybe, in the grand scheme of things. But why does the ISP have to pay it? Why not the phone company, or the CD players' manufacturers, or the local supermarket, or somebody else? There is this weird perception that I meet all the time: if something bad happens to you, you deserve compensation. I don't see why it is true, or even how it possibly can be true, but the good people persist: I spilled coffee on myself -- let's sue McDonalds!
If you are trying to argue there is some justice in this, you have not succeeded.
The Pinkerton guys have a point: there is market demand for this. It's not like they are pushing this program down onto unwilling schools -- the schools ask for it. And while it's true that an ethical (translation: whose ethics are somewhat similar to mine) company would not get involved in this dirty business, it's also true that there is a whole bunch of less conscientious people who would do it without a second thought.
Katz is somewhat misled by his anti-corporation (what he calls anti-corporatist) stance. He suggests that schools should work with troubled (from their point of view) teens instead of big corporations getting into the act. Well, and how would that be better? If the school principal is an asshole who believes that wearing black is a sign of being possessed by Satan, then Pinkerton or not, he is going to inflict major suffering on non-conformist kids in his school.
I don't see the WAVE program as a problem -- I see it as a symptom of a much bigger problem, vis. that schools are scared of their own kids and don't understand them. I don't know if it can be fixed, but while schools fear teens and while hysterical parents demand strip searches for a 150% guarantee that nothing bad will happen to their little Johnny in school, such things as WAVE will continue to pop up with gruesome regularity.
Basically what you seem to be saying is that these industries are completely unable to make a profit without government subsidy, given in the form of favorable legislation, to force them into a position of monopoly.
Well, it's a matter of phrasing it. I would put it like this: if they don't own what they make, they will not make anything.
You seem to be saying that there will always be a need for huge sums of money spent in huge industries to produce huge meaningful artworks like The Pokemon Movie
OK, I'll be more precise. Certain artworks -- like, for example, full-length feature movies -- are very complex to make. To create them requires tight cooperation of tens of highly talented people under the guidance/tyranny/leadership of one person. Part of what makes movies possible is discipline: a cameraman may have his own opinion of how to do things, but when a producer says jump, he jumps (as opposed to certain software projects...). Now, my argument is that to consistently create such artworks, all these people will have to be paid. And since they are skilled and talented, they have to be paid much more than the minumum wage.
I am not saying volunteer movies are impossible. I would just say that they are not very likely. I would guess that even if you could assemble the needed number of volunteers with needed skills, trying to direct them will be like herding cats...
How much does it change your perspective _knowing_ that there are artists in any given field who will eat dirt and ramen noodles for years, decades, if doing so lets them create _their_ artwork?
What do you mean, change my perspective? I know some guys like that personally.
A madly romantic, obsessed hobbyist is better than the most highly paid hack. The complexities professionals deal with are far beyond the laymen, but there are always madmen out there so beyond the professionals that it'd give you whiplash just thinking about it
Granted. But I specifically picked an art form which could not be done by a single individual, which needs cooperation of many, many people. Those fanatics you are talking about create (sometimes) absolutely amazing works. But they don't cooperate well, especially if it means implementing somebody else's vision.
Is there even a need for a full-length movie? If the answer is 'yes, the length is important' then why not a 27 hour movie?
The answer to first question is yes. I would only replace "full-length" by "longer than, say, one hour". It's completely up to the producer to decide how long his movie needs to be. And I agree that making everything 1 hour and 45 minutes long (or whatever) isn't particularly creative.
The answer to second question is no, and it is dictated by human biology.
The forms media has fallen into are impossibly stereotyped and restrictive. They will crack... and shatter...
Well, as a rational being - at least for purposes of this discussion B-) - I can only do as I wish others to do. (See Kant's categorical imperative.) Certainly if I want everyone to buy from A instead of B, I have to buy from A.
Big fallacy here: implicit assumption that what's good for one person is good for another person. Needs and values differ a lot.
Besides, there are obvious limitations to this maxim: apply "I can only do as I wish others to do" to sleeping with your girlfriend (or wife, or SO, or whatever), or to backpacking in a remote wilderness.
I like powerful CPUs. I also like being able to breathe the atmosphere. So if manufacturer A is doing a better job of keeping his toxins to himself than manufacturer B, it's in my selfish best interest to purchase from A.
If and only if you believe that your action will influence manufacturer B -- otherwise you sacrificed something for nothing.
And I don't believe the shit about "If only everybody did this, then....". History provides ample arguments that when everybody has to do something, the malcontents invariably end up either on the stake or in concentration camps.
When you reach the point where you can do "Gone With The Wind" with a cast of thousands entirely on a computer, in a week of work and a week of rendering (i.e. give it another 50 years), why is it still necessary to have Hollywood?
It isn't and you probably won't have Hollywood in this case. Markets (i.e. capitalist economy) are quite efficient at killing off outdated ways to do things. For example, look around -- see any typesetters?
To some extent you're pre-supposing a scarcity of resources. One of the major points in the explosion of technology is that this scarcity isn't continuing.
Ah, but you see, I am not presupposing the scarcity of bits, or even of atoms. I am presupposing the scarcity of brains and talent, and I am quite sure that this scarcity isn't going to go away whatever technology develops.
I would humbly argue that 'consumer-grade' camcorders will eventually beat Cinemascope given enough years
Consumer-grade of the future will beat Cinemascope of today? Sure, very quickly. But Cinemascope of the future? I doubt it, if only because professionals deal with complexitities that "lay" consumers are better insulated from.
and I will stubbornly argue that, given a world full of people to draw on, there is going to be a _lot_ of stuff out there more interesting than backyards and dogs.
Granted. But: (1) not for a while; and (2) there is going to be a huge bias towards doable-by-one-or-two-persons short genres. How long do you think it will take for a couple of guys holding day jobs to make a full-length movie, even if rendering all they want takes minutes? It's more of a complexity limitation, than a technological limitation and thus not very amenable to being overcome by progress.
I have no doubt that real art is created by individuals, not corporations or media cartels. Yet certain kind of activities (like making movies or pharamaceutical research) demand commitment of huge sums of money upfront. If there is no monetary reward at the end, this money simply will not be committed. And saying "Ha, I can do all this in a couple of evening in my basement" is a bit too optimistic for my taste.
Slashdot Mirror
As, I belive, Djikstra have said:
Computer science is about computers as much as astronomy is about telescopes.
Kaa
I've read Faster with a lot of expectations -- Gleick has a good reputation and I was (and am) quite interested in the topic. The book disappointed me.
My main problem with the book is that there are really no interesting ideas in it. The book is basically a semi-coherent collection of time-related stories, observations, interviews. It looks as if Gleick decided to write a book about acceleration of life, went out, collected a lot of material, edited it, put it in a big pile and presented this pile to the readers.
Nothing hold this book together besides the trivial commonality of subject. There is no main thread running through it, no interesting claims made, no good arguments put forward. The main idea of the book -- that life becomes subjectively faster -- is self-evident and seeing demonstrations of this basic fact over and over again becomes quite tiring quickly.
I think that I dislike this book because there is no insight in it. It's just a pile of facts and that doesn't quite cut it.
Kaa
Think about how much more cost-effectively public schooling would be if school boards just demolished schools and let kids study at home or at the mall or in unsupervised study cubicles.
Quite obviously you don't have any kids. Why in the world would a kid study if instead he can play games (both computer and not), watch TV, surf the 'net, and hang out on chat channels?
Besides you forgot one major function of schools -- it's free (tax-funded) daycare for kids. In a lot of families both parents work.
Kaa
Using desktops is even more complicated.
Desktops should be at home. In any case, by "complicated" I meant that right now nobody has a clue how to effectively teach a networked class. It's not a hardware/logistics problem. It's a teaching methodology problem.
A classroom network will have to be wireless, I don't see a way around this.
Why? Everybody sits at a desk, right? Why can't each desk have Ethernet ports?
Kaa
I see some reason is supplying kids with free/cheap/subsidized computers -- desktops which they'll have at home. I don't see much use in giving them laptops to be used in class. The problem is that effectively using laptops in class is very complicated. Not only you need networking infrastructure, both hardware and software (and no, 'wall' doesn't cut it), but you also need teachers who understand all this. And most of all, you need a teaching methodology that makes use of all that computing power. To date I haven't heard of a single successful project (but some unsuccessful ones) which intergrated laptops into classroom teaching. Computers are good for doing homework, but not for the classroom, at least not yet.
I have no objection to giving technology to kids -- I am sure they'll discover many uses of it (like playing network games during class and making the teacher's computer crash). It's a good thing and will feed their brains. However, the resources of our educational system are quite limited and I am afraid that this is going to end up being a very expensive white elefant. I am sure 95% of teachers won't know how to use it, or have any clue what to do with it.
Kaa
money is more than just something you buy stuff with, but a way of keeping score.
I rest my case. Keeping score in games the very rich play doesn't concern me nearly is much as people who are power-hungry.
If you look at the history of the XX century you'll find that the kind of people you should be afraid of (from Hitler and Stalin to Pol Pot and Kim Ir Sen) did not come to power through money and were not very interested in money anyway.
People living downwind of the United Carbide Plant in Bhopal might disagree...
If you are going to use industrial accidents, I'll use wars: kinda "government accidents". Where were more people killed?
Or the people screwed by big tobacco who lied when they knew smoking was a)addictive and b) killed.
Come on! Show me a smoker who doesn't know that smoking is addictive and dangerous. Smoking is a matter of personal choice and I don't believe this whining about how Joe Camel came to me, tied me up, and pushed his cigarettes into my mouth.
Even in the First World, it's very difficult for me to ignore, say, car manafacturers, even though I don't own a car.
And how so? Besides, we are talking about individual corporations, not the whole industries. Besides, let's say you want to (1) not have a car; (2) smoke pot. Should you be more afraid of Ford or DEA?
Kaa
One word. Microsoft.
One word. Linux.
Kaa
In a who-is-the-most-evil-of-them-all contest between the government and the corporations I vote firmly for the government. Three brief reasons:
(1) Business attracts people interested in money. Government attracts people interested in power. I find the the second kind more repugnant and much more dangerous.
(2) A government can do much nastier things to you than a corporation can. The absolute worse thing that a corporation can do is sue you into bankrupcy. A government, OTOH, can put you in jail, confiscate your property and do other most unpleasant things.
(3) If I dislike a corporation, I can more or less ignore it: not use its services and products, turn away from it's advertising, etc. Now a government is much, much harder to ignore.
Kaa
Anyone knows if it's available on the 'net? That's the second time I hear about how good it was. I'd like to read it.
Kaa
It seems that US-based web hosting companies now have a sustainable business advantage over their competitors in Europe.
Kaa
I wonder if there's a British equivalent of the American ACLU and whether it thinks it's a good time to get into the ISP business...
Kaa
Most people in that situation would quickly conclude that the window can be opened by throwing a chair through it; in other words, a hardware solution. ;-)
Unless you live in a high-rise apartment building.
BTW, I forgot to mention that in five minutes everything returns to normal -- and as you stand on your front lawn looking at the broken window, you see cops and an emergency psychiatric care ambulance drive up: your automated phone system thoughtfully called 911 saying you are having paranoidal delusions...
Kaa
o, the worst part is the crackers hacking their way into my refrigerator...
Man, you don't have no imagination.
Think of a fully wired house with remote-controlled: locks, temperature, lights, music, toilet, the works. Imagine, for example, being woken at 4 am by a maniacal laughter echoing through the house to find out that lights don't work, the house is bitterly cold, and the lock on your door will not open...
Kaa
We've been talking about running the Net to everything in the house, and the current IP protocol just can't handle it.
:-). A much more reasonable solution would be to set up the house as a private subnet behind a router/firewall combo. And in this case you only need one IP address per house.
Well, you probably don't want to make every appliance in your house freely accessible from the 'net (I wonder how much fun it will be to hack toasters... "Drat! My toast's burned again. Damn hackers!"
You want IPv6 mostly because it's a better protocol, not only because it has a larger address space.
Kaa
Who are we to comment on your choice in port?..
... must use preview ...
... Must use preview button
I, of course, meant porN, not porT.
Kaa
I'm sorry, but did that give anyone else an erection, or is it just me?
Who are we to comment on your choice in port?..
Kaa
The viewpoint you are missing is called compensation.
More correctly, it's called the "deep pockets" legal theory: don't sue the guilty ones, sue those who can pay you.
I mean let's face it, they do deserve some compensation.
They do? Maybe, in the grand scheme of things. But why does the ISP have to pay it? Why not the phone company, or the CD players' manufacturers, or the local supermarket, or somebody else? There is this weird perception that I meet all the time: if something bad happens to you, you deserve compensation. I don't see why it is true, or even how it possibly can be true, but the good people persist: I spilled coffee on myself -- let's sue McDonalds!
If you are trying to argue there is some justice in this, you have not succeeded.
Kaa
The Pinkerton guys have a point: there is market demand for this. It's not like they are pushing this program down onto unwilling schools -- the schools ask for it. And while it's true that an ethical (translation: whose ethics are somewhat similar to mine) company would not get involved in this dirty business, it's also true that there is a whole bunch of less conscientious people who would do it without a second thought.
Katz is somewhat misled by his anti-corporation (what he calls anti-corporatist) stance. He suggests that schools should work with troubled (from their point of view) teens instead of big corporations getting into the act. Well, and how would that be better? If the school principal is an asshole who believes that wearing black is a sign of being possessed by Satan, then Pinkerton or not, he is going to inflict major suffering on non-conformist kids in his school.
I don't see the WAVE program as a problem -- I see it as a symptom of a much bigger problem, vis. that schools are scared of their own kids and don't understand them. I don't know if it can be fixed, but while schools fear teens and while hysterical parents demand strip searches for a 150% guarantee that nothing bad will happen to their little Johnny in school, such things as WAVE will continue to pop up with gruesome regularity.
Kaa
Basically what you seem to be saying is that these industries are completely unable to make a
profit without government subsidy, given in the
form of favorable legislation, to force them
into a position of monopoly.
Well, it's a matter of phrasing it. I would put it like this: if they don't own what they make, they will not make anything.
Kaa
You seem to be saying that there will always be a need for huge sums of money spent in huge industries to produce huge meaningful artworks like The Pokemon Movie
OK, I'll be more precise. Certain artworks -- like, for example, full-length feature movies -- are very complex to make. To create them requires tight cooperation of tens of highly talented people under the guidance/tyranny/leadership of one person. Part of what makes movies possible is discipline: a cameraman may have his own opinion of how to do things, but when a producer says jump, he jumps (as opposed to certain software projects...). Now, my argument is that to consistently create such artworks, all these people will have to be paid. And since they are skilled and talented, they have to be paid much more than the minumum wage.
I am not saying volunteer movies are impossible. I would just say that they are not very likely. I would guess that even if you could assemble the needed number of volunteers with needed skills, trying to direct them will be like herding cats...
How much does it change your perspective _knowing_ that there are artists in any given field who will eat dirt and ramen noodles for years, decades, if doing so lets them create _their_ artwork?
What do you mean, change my perspective? I know some guys like that personally.
A madly romantic, obsessed hobbyist is better than the most highly paid hack. The complexities professionals deal with are far beyond the laymen, but there are always madmen out there so beyond the professionals that it'd give you whiplash just thinking about it
Granted. But I specifically picked an art form which could not be done by a single individual, which needs cooperation of many, many people. Those fanatics you are talking about create (sometimes) absolutely amazing works. But they don't cooperate well, especially if it means implementing somebody else's vision.
Is there even a need for a full-length movie? If the answer is 'yes, the length is important' then why not a 27 hour movie?
The answer to first question is yes. I would only replace "full-length" by "longer than, say, one hour". It's completely up to the producer to decide how long his movie needs to be. And I agree that making everything 1 hour and 45 minutes long (or whatever) isn't particularly creative.
The answer to second question is no, and it is dictated by human biology.
The forms media has fallen into are impossibly stereotyped and restrictive. They will crack... and shatter...
And that will be a good thing.
Kaa
Well, as a rational being - at least for purposes of this discussion B-) - I can only do as I wish others to do. (See Kant's categorical imperative.) Certainly if I want everyone to buy from A instead of B, I have to buy from A.
Big fallacy here: implicit assumption that what's good for one person is good for another person. Needs and values differ a lot.
Besides, there are obvious limitations to this maxim: apply "I can only do as I wish others to do" to sleeping with your girlfriend (or wife, or SO, or whatever), or to backpacking in a remote wilderness.
Kaa
Sigh, what are we coming to?
See Kaa's law.
Kaa
...there is another approach called natural selection that has a really, and I mean really, good reputation.
Idiots breed faster -- they have nothing better to do.
Kaa
I like powerful CPUs. I also like being able to breathe the atmosphere. So if manufacturer A is doing a better job of keeping his toxins to himself than manufacturer B, it's in my selfish best interest to purchase from A.
If and only if you believe that your action will influence manufacturer B -- otherwise you sacrificed something for nothing.
And I don't believe the shit about "If only everybody did this, then....". History provides ample arguments that when everybody has to do something, the malcontents invariably end up either on the stake or in concentration camps.
Kaa
When you reach the point where you can do "Gone With The Wind" with a cast of thousands entirely on a computer, in a week of work and a week of rendering (i.e. give it another 50 years), why is it still necessary to have Hollywood?
It isn't and you probably won't have Hollywood in this case. Markets (i.e. capitalist economy) are quite efficient at killing off outdated ways to do things. For example, look around -- see any typesetters?
To some extent you're pre-supposing a scarcity of resources. One of the major points in the explosion of technology is that this scarcity isn't continuing.
Ah, but you see, I am not presupposing the scarcity of bits, or even of atoms. I am presupposing the scarcity of brains and talent, and I am quite sure that this scarcity isn't going to go away whatever technology develops.
I would humbly argue that 'consumer-grade' camcorders will eventually beat Cinemascope given enough years
Consumer-grade of the future will beat Cinemascope of today? Sure, very quickly. But Cinemascope of the future? I doubt it, if only because professionals deal with complexitities that "lay" consumers are better insulated from.
and I will stubbornly argue that, given a world full of people to draw on, there is going to be a _lot_ of stuff out there more interesting than backyards and dogs.
Granted. But: (1) not for a while; and (2) there is going to be a huge bias towards doable-by-one-or-two-persons short genres. How long do you think it will take for a couple of guys holding day jobs to make a full-length movie, even if rendering all they want takes minutes? It's more of a complexity limitation, than a technological limitation and thus not very amenable to being overcome by progress.
I have no doubt that real art is created by individuals, not corporations or media cartels. Yet certain kind of activities (like making movies or pharamaceutical research) demand commitment of huge sums of money upfront. If there is no monetary reward at the end, this money simply will not be committed. And saying "Ha, I can do all this in a couple of evening in my basement" is a bit too optimistic for my taste.
Kaa