Every single student who attended the classes must be able to pass the test..
Why should they automatically pass every test by virtue of showing up?
Those who only did SOME homework should be able to get at the very least average grades.
Why? Shouldn't everyone be expected to do all the homework in order to get an average grade?
I think you are making the totally baseless assumption that these tests were somehow 100% of your grade (they were 50%). You are also assuming that no partial credit was assigned to a multiple-guess test which would also be a false assumption. If you couldn't cut it in AP calculus, you could transfer to regular Calculus class at any time (with automatically +1 grade inflation, B->A, C->B, D->C, but F->F)
Perhaps you are part of the every increasing clamor of dumming down to the least common denominator or that somehow a partial distribution of students should have a certain distribution of grades. As this particular calculus teacher pointed out, he basically expected everyone taking this class to learn the material and get an A (the result my year was ~70%A, ~20%B, 3 people transfered to regular calculus including the class validictorian to preserve her 4.0GPA, schools didn't have any bonuses gpa points for AP/IB classes back then). There was no making the test so hard as to attempt to discriminate levels of knowledge. There was no grading on a curve. If you wanted that, you were supposed to drop the class and enroll in the regular Calculus class which was taught more traditionally. The class was acutally offered as the first class of the day actually before the official public school start time (the normal school time started at 8:00am, but this class unofficially started at 7:30am to weed out the "slackers" and make sure everyone taking the class was committed). Basically it worked as most folks passed the AP calc test. So why is expecting kids to learn the material a bad teaching practice again?
There are many religions where there is God, but no "devil" or "satan". Even if you look to the bible (instead of the christian folklore of Milton, and Dante), the "devil" inhabits both heaven and earth and is more a tempting spirit (more like Goethe's Faust) than a counterpart to God who happens to live in Hell.
If there's a Heaven then there's a Hell.
How can there be one without the other?
AFAIK, there is no "hell" in the christian biblical sense of eternal punishment in Judaism, but there is Heaven. Although Judaism seems to have a temporary state of shame that offers the chance of redemption that might be considered "temporary hell-like".
Confirmed American plagiarists U.S. Vice President Joe Biden and historian Doris Kearns Goodwin are still enjoying successful careers. So it seems that at least in the U.S. plagiarism is somewhat tolerated.
Why stop at Biden, Obama seems to have his hand in it occasionally as well... How does that saying go again: great minds think alike, but fools seldom differ... My guess is that most politicians fall into the later camp...
This makes my insides hurt. This makes me want to go back and become a teacher just to go screw with the straight-A-memorizers. The only questions I plan to ask are tricks. Good luck little miss "I-made-color-coded-flash-cards-but-dont-understand-a-single-god-damned-term-on-them".
Trick questions always remind me of my High School calculus teacher.
He used to only give tests that were true-false or multi-"guess" test (still had to show your work) and he always had an angle. One pop-quiz he gave a multiple choice test on integration by parts where every single answer but one was "e) none of the above". Another test he gave was a true-false test on summation limit convergence where you could get 10% extra credit if you got every answer *wrong* (and had the guts to try for it).
The only other time I had a teacher do something like that was intro to electromagnetics in university. The first question of the midterm (worth 20% of the grade) was to write down maxwell's equations in complete english sentences using no mathematical symbols. I'm sure that thwarted many of the "flash-card" memorizers.
My point: there are teachers out there that do this already. Unfortunatly, there aren't enough of them.
Perhaps you should look at this as I often did in grade school. This is just preparing you for life.
My parents often taught me way back then that, the people who are "judging" you in life are not always fair, but it is not necessarily your job to prove them wrong if it doesn't make a difference. In the end, the only person you are in competition with is yourself, not your teacher, and not your friends.
Actually, I'd take a more epistemological angle to the problem. I think we may have accidentally taught young people that knowledge is something that need to be "searched" for rather than "discovered".
I think schools have always given a hint to students that ther superiors have the knowledge that they seek and all you have to do is seek it out, but due to the lack of available research resources in the past, both teachers and students have been forced to improvise, almost accidentally teaching students to "discover" their own knowledge. This allowed students to develop critical thinking approaches needed to discover the knowledge for themselves. For example, a student might have to go to a poorly indexed library and god-forbid use the dewey decimal system to lookup something and maybe skim a few encylopedia entries to discover synonymous or analogus topics. I even shutter to think about this, but even the act of "faking" references in an school essay requires the ability to develop a coherent reasoning path (enough to fool a teacher) and helps to develop these same skills.
Today, we've trained a whole generation of folks that critical knowledge discovery skills are obsolete and that a computer can point you directly to nearly unlimited knowledge banks indexed by poorly phrased queries. This is the logical outcome of google/wikipedia culture. Unfortunatly, sometimes the journey is as important as the destination (especially, if you ever want to go anywhere else).
As a silly example, how many times in a party, someone asks you something that you probably should know but you don't remember. Do you just "google-it", or do you try and develop a reasoning path to recover the information from your own knowledge bank? If you said the former, you are spending time improving your "searching" skills, but how long do you think it will take your reasoning path skills to atrophy?
Then imagine born in a world where you never had to reason at all? You don't even have to reason-out your opinion, you could just search out someone elses opinion and parrot it? Maybe that's not something we should be thinking about. It's too depressing...
Although I'm probably in the "bias" set that likes 70's and 80's music, I think a large part of the phenomena is simply shared experience. Back in those days, you had radio payola, and "records" which tended to make music a much more shared experience. Also the numbers of songs in wide release were pretty limited. I knew people back in those days that could literally name just about every single song on every single album in most people's collection, but that was only because everyone bought the same albums.
Fast forward to today and music is much more fragmented and less of a shared experience. Artists that become popular today don't have the selective pressure that they used to. The ones we remember from the 70's and 80's are the survivors that became part of the shared experience (got radio-play and were recorded the albums that everyone bought). You don't remember the ones that didn't make it. Musicians today can survive in a much more narrow niche.
So what songs would concerts gravitate towards? The ones that survived the selective pressure of the shared experience. At least that's my opinion. Of course there's still lots of "live" music, but there were also the precursor to "raves" in the 80's. I don't remember any of those bands, just like I'm sure in 2040 nobody will remember similar contemporary music. On the other hand, I can see Coldplay, being at least as popular as say R.E.M. in the long run...
Maybe there's no Rolling Stones, Aerosmith, or Beatles bands in the wings, but that's probably because nobody seems to play their own instruments anymore... As for guitar hero, name a few popular artists today that play their own music on a guitar... That's why they have 70's and 80's bands..
Not sure that this will work very well. If you accidentially end up on a kill list of an automated hunter-killer, any redress list probably won't appear in the phone book listing...;^)
Was Jobs’s conversation with Brin/Page meant to stir the data giant into even more of an unstoppable data bank, or was it merely an innocent remark meant to give the users a more pleasant experience? Probably both.
Or... False dichotomy. Jobs seemed to be committed to destroy android even if it cost apple the last dollar in it's bank. Why would Jobs give "good" advice to Google to help it's bank account? Perhaps I suggest a third option. Maybe Jobs was hoping to tease google into chasing a ghost... I have no evidence, but then again, neither do the authors of this article, and at least a passive disinformation strategy makes more sense than Jobs wanting to help Google+...
I think you may be overestimating the amount of business plans for novel markets a typical VC will see. Smart people often think alike and see the same potentials and come up with very similar markets to attack. Of course each business plan of attack on a market is often not the same, and therein lies the rub. Just because you think there are enough customers to support your business model doesn't mean you were the only one to see it nor does it mean you have the best way to attack it.
As someone once said, "all plans of war go out the window once the first shot is fired".
VCs aren't islands, they are really a network, they don't mind giving referrals (as many VCs don't like to jump in alone, they may see part of the action even if they aren't the lead). If a VC doesn't happen to have expertise in the market you are aiming for and they don't think you are a total bozo, they often refer you to another VC that does, and those VCs probably see many business plans that attack your market.
As a result, the VC that is likely to fund you really isn't looking so much at your specific plan of attack in a market as they are looking to see if they think you can win the war in that market. Many times that comes down to if they feel the principals are inexperienced and/or overcommitted to a certain attack plan. That is usually the ticket out of the door. Even if the VC hasn't seen this market angle before, they either think (or in many cases, they know) that some other smart person probably has and that your company will be going up against that other company. Nobody wants to get into a gun fight when thier champion is armed with a spoon. Ideas are often a dime a dozen, execution wins the war...
You may not believe this, but Steve Jobs's wasn't the first or even the second CEO of apple computer.
In fact, the man behind the initial venture capital foray of Apple was Mike Markkula (who served as the CEO). He was an initial angel investor who was referred to Mr Jobs by a few other VCs. Mike provided the "adult" supervision to Jobs and Wozniak during the fund raising part of company's existance. Initally, Mike hired Michael Scott (from either national semiconductor or fairchild, I forgot which one) as the first CEO. It was only later after some turmoil that Mike took over the CEO position and then yielded the CEO position to Jobs (and later supported Sculley which led to Jobs' departure, and then helped lure Jobs back).
So even Mr Job's didn't just walk into VC offices and get funded as the CEO of the company. But, Jobs was smart enough and passionate enough about doing the work that was able to put his ego enough in check to know that in order to get the money they needed to get it done. I believe that the Google story is very similar with Eric Schmidt performing the "adult" supervison...
I think some people miss a very important point about VC funding. For some business plans, you really need to get it (e.g., for corporate connection reasons if there is no other "exit-plan" for your business). It isn't just about the money. If it is the case you need to get VC money and you can't craft your business plan to attract VC funding, no matter how good your idea might be to your end customers, your business plan is a fail.
Sure, some VCs get it wrong, but many folks instead blame the VCs instead of their plan. A VC is simply a customer for your business equity like a end-user is a customer for your product. Many folks forget they are selling their equity to the VC and their product to the end-user. Sure the VC might be interested in the details of your product, but that's not what they are buying.
Of course some business just need money and that is something that can be gotten from Angel investors, relatives, or even credit cards, but if you need to strike while the fire is hot, sometimes VC funding is required.
In security, you have to start with the assumption that everyone is untrustworthy until proven otherwise.
A comon problem with following that truism is that trust is not binary. A security system that assumes trust is binary is bound to fail.
In security, you have to start with the assumption that you can't protect everything from everyone. If you don't start with this, you'll probably build a fortress that everyone will complain about and not use.
There's a reason that terrorist organize in cells for security. It's because it works. If a terrorist (or a cell) assumed everyone was untrustworthy, then this organization wouldn't work (each cell would be independent and wouldn't be able to give/get orders from any other cell/source), because there isn't any way to prove otherwize in a cell. The reason the cell works is because if it fails, only that cell is compromized. Assuming a reasonable construction of cells, you mitigate the damage of a breach and that is really the only way to design a good security system. Only fool will assume that the security they design is unbreachable (and there are many in the security consulting business that are fools)...
This author seems to have inappropriately compared the "fear" of machines doing better than humans with concept of uncanny valley.
The concept of the "uncanny valley" is that the affinity of humans for observing the appearance or behavior of a human-like entity (robot, alien, whatever) has this unexpected dip when it is too close to the human behavior (we have this apparent built-in viceral problem with the entity). However, this is only true when it is trying to mimic human-like behaviors. If it's doing something totally different or totally exceeding human behaviors (say distinctly non-human speed, accuracy, strength, appearance, etc), the uncanny valley doesn't say anything about affinity, in fact, if you were to extrapolate the curve out, humans might even have more affinity for these "super-human" behaviors. Maybe that's why many express affinity for live-action versions of comic book super-heros, or airbrushed models in magazines. The behavior is so far from the uncanny valley that it doesn't invoke the supression response that is responsible for it.
Just like what was once observed with "space-shuttle" pilots, the computers can probably do a better job at this task, but we don't quite trust them yet (for some reason). That's really just the human fear of being replaced by machines, not uncanny valley. Note that the only people fearful about this behavior are the people that are likely to be replaced (and maybe a few that sympathize with them)...
"Or maybe even worse (supporting the KMT/taiwan/south-korea/south-vietnam) didn't really put us into China's good graces back then..."
nonono.... supporting KMT was a big plus during the time because China was fighting the Japanese on multiple fronts. even with the in-fighting CCP and KMT were unwilling partners in the same war against Japan, they were glad to have help from US because US wouldn't want the northern border moved down severely like the Soviets did. what screwed relations was US running away at the first sign of trouble and left the KMT to die without promised weapons and support when later on they regretted when Japan attacked Pearl Harbour. that's why Communist won. that's why KMT ran away to Taiwan.
I think you need to reread your history...
The chinese civil war between the KMT and CPC started in 1927, but was interrupted by the Japanese invasion in 1937. The US supported both the KMT and the CCP against Japan in WWII (the KMT didn't do very good against the Japanese, so we also gave arms to Mao and CCP). Perl Harbor happened later in 1941. The Japanese were finally defeated in china in 1945 (they surrendered to the KMT). The continuation of the chinese civil war which led to the collapse of the KMT happened after WWII was over (restarting in 1947 after failed negotiations between the KMT & CCP) which eventually led to the CCP defeating the KMT and the formation of the PROC in 1949 and the KMT retreat to Taiwan.
A more common occurance is: you know, oh Jeff makes X money, but my friend Jackie is looking for a job that pays X, let's just hire Jackie, make Jeff train Jackie and then fire Jeff, it will only cost us Y dollars to pay both of them for a short period of time then I'll be able to work with my friend Jackie. Too bad about Jeff, but we can't afford two people. Hopefully he'll get the message and start looking for a new job right away...
The problem with patents is that they cost a lot of money to obtain. It would make sense, that for defensive purposes, we establish an auxiliary office (or organization) where ideas can be publishes and searched as "prior art" without having to have the $10ks of dollars it takes to get a patent. Such a warehouse would accept contributions of ideas from everyone, at minimal (or no cost).
I don't think this would work. First of all, the patent office doesn't spend much time doing searches for prior art. The $10K fee is basically enough to keep the "rif-raf" out which is the problem you would have if you didn't have any barrier to submission or resources validate to your proposed data base(e.g., how do you get people to not submit ideas covered by other people's existing patents which would pollute the data base?)
there is no such thing in practice as a "defensive patent".
Quite true, patents are first strike and counter-strike weapons, not defensive weapons. Counterstrike is only for deterence, not defense.
The idea isn't patented, the claims are patented. A patent is a description of several claims (dependent and independent). Since the claims of two patents were written by different lawyers, although it's possible that a few claims in the claim tree might be fairly similar to another patent, they are unlikely to be exactly the same. However, even if two claims are essentially the same, two patent claims aren't like matter and anti-matter and annilate each other. Whoever has the superior filing date will survive (and on average it's probably just 50-50 the troll has the superior filing date). Even if you survive filing date challenge, it doesn't mean all the claims of the troll's patent are automatically invalidated, just the ones that happen to be the same as yours (which as I mentioned before is highly unlikely in the first place).
Patents are mostly designed to be enforced not examined. After a patent gets filed it is pretty much rubberstamped after a cursory investigation by the patent office (the patent office is in the patent granting business, not the patent validation business since they don't get money for the later). Later, when a patent holder claims infringment by a product, only then does the court look at the patent (the so called markman hearing) to decide what the law says about the patent(s) in question. Only after this hearing, does a jury look at the potentially infringing product, to see if it reads on the validated claims in the patent. Nowhere other than a markman hearing does any authority really look at any patents (either the one in question or other potentially similar patents or prior art). If parties want to settle, it is usually during or right after that hearing.
Patent trolls are just like terrorists. When you go to war against another country (company), you are implicitly risking your country/people (company/business) and they theirs. When you go to war against terrorists (patent trolls), they have nothing for you to strike at. You can't play defense (witness the TSA).
Even if you "take-out" one claim of one of their patents, that doesn't often keep them from using other claims from that same patent against you. It's like the hydra. You make take out one head, but that doesn't mean the other ones won't still be there to bite the next person that comes along.
The primary difference between the US-Soviet pre-cold war relationship and the US-China is that in the first instance, we were forced together (fighting germany in WWII) and never really developed a trading relationship, where the current US-China relationship formed from common economic forces. If you look at the US-China relationship post WWII, and pre-Nixon, it might remind you a bit of the US-Soviet relationship. Or maybe even worse (supporting the KMT/taiwan/south-korea/south-vietnam) didn't really put us into China's good graces back then...
The turning point with china? Basically Mao's death in 1976 and US agreeing that taiwan was part of china in 1979. These have nothing to do with technology. The change in leadership and economic orientation made the economies more compatible (perhaps best summarized by the quote "I don't care if it's a black cat or a white cat, as long as it catches mice").
The turning point with Russia? Collapse of the Soviet Union and Gorbachev and Boris Yeltsin started things along, but of course Mr Putin's influence basically rendered their economy (apparently some wikileaked documents called it a virtual mafia state) incompatible with ours.
I think we technophiles hate to admit it, but events (even in the world of technology) often revolves more around people (e.g., rms, linus torvalds, bill gates, steve jobs, in the tech world etc) than any underlying technology.
In the days of the eariler internet, the ideas of "from" and "sender" were not presumed to be the same (or example, it might be assumed that the "from" might be the person that dictated the message and the "sender" was the secretary, or even an automated computer process).
Email with a "To" routed to a machine located in your own organization was usually very trivial (user name only, no machine name at all, or at most the name of any machine on the locally admistered network if your machine wasn't on that specific network), just like a memo.
Unfortunatly, non-local address mechanisms on the (pre-global-domain-routed) internet, were usually very complicated (unlike the post office or an internal organization memo). Today, postal addressing is hierarchical (even pre-zipcode, postal addressing was city-state and they tried to figure it out for you). The pre-domain internet** used to be like postal addressing of olden-times when you had to put a rural-route# as part of the address since many streets didn't have names and if it didn't get there, it was most likely gonna get stuck in general delivery at a sorting center.
Of course my experience isn't the earliest (I'm not that old yet). In case anyone is interested, the list of known routable email systems circa 1979 is listed in RFC 808, many of those systems had be up for at least 5 years and in specific, the BBN SNDMSG was up and going in 1971 (which is by general consensus the granddaddy of email systems, but they didn't use To/From, but the more cryptic TOUSR/RPY)...
**Life was especially bad in the early internet days when many folks had shiny new fully qualified domain name email addresses, but many machines (which were email endpoints) weren't connected to the internet so some addresses needed to have routing information that was composed of parts that were right to left (domain style) and some left to right (! uucp style). I had the mispleasure of implementing sendmail rules for rmail/domain/decnet routing, so I was scarred permanently by that period of time...
Salt: a random per user number (not an algorithm) used to foil attacks like rainbow tables. Signature: an algorithm that authenticates a message (like a password).
Typically any secret algorithm is considered security by obfuscation.
So a "salt" generating algorithm would be an obfuscated pseudo-random number generator used in a non-standard way as non-cryptographically secure signature. Yeah, that's the ticket to good security;^)
For all people speculating about juristiction, please read the Outerspace Treaty (the relavant parts are below).
Since these launches are from the US and the US signed the treaty, the US is potentally liable for what a non-government (e.g., private) entity does in outer space. Forcing the non-governmental entity launching in a signator's territory to carry sufficient insurance to offset most of the potential liabiity seems like it would always be a likely on-going requirement (by any the 100 or so nation-states who are signators to this treaty including the US).
Article VI: States Parties to the Treaty shall bear international responsibility for national activities in outer space, including the moon and other celestial bodies, whether such activities are carried on by governmental agencies or by non-governmental entities, and for assuring that national activities are carried out in conformity with the provisions set forth in the present Treaty. The activities of non-governmental entities in outer space, including the moon and other celestial bodies, shall require authorization and continuing supervision by the appropriate State Party to the Treaty. When activities are carried on in outer space, including the moon and other celestial bodies, by an international organization, responsibility for compliance with this Treaty shall be borne both by the international organization and by the States Parties to the Treaty participating in such organization.
Article VII: Each State Party to the Treaty that launches or procures the launching of an object into outer space, including the moon and other celestial bodies, and each State Party from whose territory or facility an object is launched, is internationally liable for damage to another State Party to the Treaty or to its natural or juridical persons by such object or its component parts on the Earth, in air space or in outer space, including the moon and other celestial bodies.
I'd have to agree with the cooking ~ chemistry at the 10-year-old level.
The traditional chemistry is generally not taught until junior high-school or high-school because of several things: - students aren't yet well acquainted with physical science principles (gasses, liquids, atoms, measuring, etc) - lab safety (some interesting classical experiments can be dangerous) - student patience level for the quantitative side of chemistry (most or interested in qualitative stuff which can be done with physical science only)
You might ask yourself, what about chemistry your 10yo grandson is interested: science or potions? If it's just mixing potions and seeing things change (the qualitative side), then cooking is likely to be a good way to be interesting and educational at the same time**. If there is some interest in how chemistry works under the hood and the scientific aspect of it (making a theory, testing it, performing the experiment and evalutating), then maybe something more advanced would be appropriate, however, there are probably simpler ways to teach scientific principles (e.g., physical science or biology).
** e.g., learning acids and bases and stoichometry by making pancake batter is probably more interesting than watching pH strips...
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I disagree with many of your assumptions.
Every single student who attended the classes must be able to pass the test..
Why should they automatically pass every test by virtue of showing up?
Those who only did SOME homework should be able to get at the very least average grades.
Why? Shouldn't everyone be expected to do all the homework in order to get an average grade?
I think you are making the totally baseless assumption that these tests were somehow 100% of your grade (they were 50%). You are also assuming that no partial credit was assigned to a multiple-guess test which would also be a false assumption. If you couldn't cut it in AP calculus, you could transfer to regular Calculus class at any time (with automatically +1 grade inflation, B->A, C->B, D->C, but F->F)
Perhaps you are part of the every increasing clamor of dumming down to the least common denominator or that somehow a partial distribution of students should have a certain distribution of grades. As this particular calculus teacher pointed out, he basically expected everyone taking this class to learn the material and get an A (the result my year was ~70%A, ~20%B, 3 people transfered to regular calculus including the class validictorian to preserve her 4.0GPA, schools didn't have any bonuses gpa points for AP/IB classes back then). There was no making the test so hard as to attempt to discriminate levels of knowledge. There was no grading on a curve. If you wanted that, you were supposed to drop the class and enroll in the regular Calculus class which was taught more traditionally. The class was acutally offered as the first class of the day actually before the official public school start time (the normal school time started at 8:00am, but this class unofficially started at 7:30am to weed out the "slackers" and make sure everyone taking the class was committed). Basically it worked as most folks passed the AP calc test. So why is expecting kids to learn the material a bad teaching practice again?
If there's a God then there's a Devil.
There are many religions where there is God, but no "devil" or "satan". Even if you look to the bible (instead of the christian folklore of Milton, and Dante), the "devil" inhabits both heaven and earth and is more a tempting spirit (more like Goethe's Faust) than a counterpart to God who happens to live in Hell.
If there's a Heaven then there's a Hell.
How can there be one without the other?
AFAIK, there is no "hell" in the christian biblical sense of eternal punishment in Judaism, but there is Heaven. Although Judaism seems to have a temporary state of shame that offers the chance of redemption that might be considered "temporary hell-like".
Confirmed American plagiarists U.S. Vice President Joe Biden and historian Doris Kearns Goodwin are still enjoying successful careers. So it seems that at least in the U.S. plagiarism is somewhat tolerated.
Why stop at Biden, Obama seems to have his hand in it occasionally as well... How does that saying go again: great minds think alike, but fools seldom differ... My guess is that most politicians fall into the later camp...
This makes my insides hurt. This makes me want to go back and become a teacher just to go screw with the straight-A-memorizers. The only questions I plan to ask are tricks. Good luck little miss "I-made-color-coded-flash-cards-but-dont-understand-a-single-god-damned-term-on-them".
Trick questions always remind me of my High School calculus teacher.
He used to only give tests that were true-false or multi-"guess" test (still had to show your work) and he always had an angle. One pop-quiz he gave a multiple choice test on integration by parts where every single answer but one was "e) none of the above". Another test he gave was a true-false test on summation limit convergence where you could get 10% extra credit if you got every answer *wrong* (and had the guts to try for it).
The only other time I had a teacher do something like that was intro to electromagnetics in university. The first question of the midterm (worth 20% of the grade) was to write down maxwell's equations in complete english sentences using no mathematical symbols. I'm sure that thwarted many of the "flash-card" memorizers.
My point: there are teachers out there that do this already. Unfortunatly, there aren't enough of them.
Perhaps you should look at this as I often did in grade school. This is just preparing you for life.
My parents often taught me way back then that, the people who are "judging" you in life are not always fair, but it is not necessarily your job to prove them wrong if it doesn't make a difference. In the end, the only person you are in competition with is yourself, not your teacher, and not your friends.
Looking back, that was pretty wise advice.
Actually, I'd take a more epistemological angle to the problem. I think we may have accidentally taught young people that knowledge is something that need to be "searched" for rather than "discovered".
I think schools have always given a hint to students that ther superiors have the knowledge that they seek and all you have to do is seek it out, but due to the lack of available research resources in the past, both teachers and students have been forced to improvise, almost accidentally teaching students to "discover" their own knowledge. This allowed students to develop critical thinking approaches needed to discover the knowledge for themselves. For example, a student might have to go to a poorly indexed library and god-forbid use the dewey decimal system to lookup something and maybe skim a few encylopedia entries to discover synonymous or analogus topics. I even shutter to think about this, but even the act of "faking" references in an school essay requires the ability to develop a coherent reasoning path (enough to fool a teacher) and helps to develop these same skills.
Today, we've trained a whole generation of folks that critical knowledge discovery skills are obsolete and that a computer can point you directly to nearly unlimited knowledge banks indexed by poorly phrased queries. This is the logical outcome of google/wikipedia culture. Unfortunatly, sometimes the journey is as important as the destination (especially, if you ever want to go anywhere else).
As a silly example, how many times in a party, someone asks you something that you probably should know but you don't remember. Do you just "google-it", or do you try and develop a reasoning path to recover the information from your own knowledge bank? If you said the former, you are spending time improving your "searching" skills, but how long do you think it will take your reasoning path skills to atrophy?
Then imagine born in a world where you never had to reason at all? You don't even have to reason-out your opinion, you could just search out someone elses opinion and parrot it? Maybe that's not something we should be thinking about. It's too depressing...
Although I'm probably in the "bias" set that likes 70's and 80's music, I think a large part of the phenomena is simply shared experience. Back in those days, you had radio payola, and "records" which tended to make music a much more shared experience. Also the numbers of songs in wide release were pretty limited. I knew people back in those days that could literally name just about every single song on every single album in most people's collection, but that was only because everyone bought the same albums.
Fast forward to today and music is much more fragmented and less of a shared experience. Artists that become popular today don't have the selective pressure that they used to. The ones we remember from the 70's and 80's are the survivors that became part of the shared experience (got radio-play and were recorded the albums that everyone bought). You don't remember the ones that didn't make it. Musicians today can survive in a much more narrow niche.
So what songs would concerts gravitate towards? The ones that survived the selective pressure of the shared experience. At least that's my opinion. Of course there's still lots of "live" music, but there were also the precursor to "raves" in the 80's. I don't remember any of those bands, just like I'm sure in 2040 nobody will remember similar contemporary music. On the other hand, I can see Coldplay, being at least as popular as say R.E.M. in the long run...
Maybe there's no Rolling Stones, Aerosmith, or Beatles bands in the wings, but that's probably because nobody seems to play their own instruments anymore... As for guitar hero, name a few popular artists today that play their own music on a guitar... That's why they have 70's and 80's bands..
Not sure that this will work very well. If you accidentially end up on a kill list of an automated hunter-killer, any redress list probably won't appear in the phone book listing... ;^)
Was Jobs’s conversation with Brin/Page meant to stir the data giant into even more of an unstoppable data bank, or was it merely an innocent remark meant to give the users a more pleasant experience? Probably both.
Or... False dichotomy. Jobs seemed to be committed to destroy android even if it cost apple the last dollar in it's bank. Why would Jobs give "good" advice to Google to help it's bank account? Perhaps I suggest a third option. Maybe Jobs was hoping to tease google into chasing a ghost... I have no evidence, but then again, neither do the authors of this article, and at least a passive disinformation strategy makes more sense than Jobs wanting to help Google+...
I think you may be overestimating the amount of business plans for novel markets a typical VC will see. Smart people often think alike and see the same potentials and come up with very similar markets to attack. Of course each business plan of attack on a market is often not the same, and therein lies the rub. Just because you think there are enough customers to support your business model doesn't mean you were the only one to see it nor does it mean you have the best way to attack it.
As someone once said, "all plans of war go out the window once the first shot is fired".
VCs aren't islands, they are really a network, they don't mind giving referrals (as many VCs don't like to jump in alone, they may see part of the action even if they aren't the lead). If a VC doesn't happen to have expertise in the market you are aiming for and they don't think you are a total bozo, they often refer you to another VC that does, and those VCs probably see many business plans that attack your market.
As a result, the VC that is likely to fund you really isn't looking so much at your specific plan of attack in a market as they are looking to see if they think you can win the war in that market. Many times that comes down to if they feel the principals are inexperienced and/or overcommitted to a certain attack plan. That is usually the ticket out of the door. Even if the VC hasn't seen this market angle before, they either think (or in many cases, they know) that some other smart person probably has and that your company will be going up against that other company. Nobody wants to get into a gun fight when thier champion is armed with a spoon. Ideas are often a dime a dozen, execution wins the war...
You may not believe this, but Steve Jobs's wasn't the first or even the second CEO of apple computer.
In fact, the man behind the initial venture capital foray of Apple was Mike Markkula (who served as the CEO). He was an initial angel investor who was referred to Mr Jobs by a few other VCs. Mike provided the "adult" supervision to Jobs and Wozniak during the fund raising part of company's existance. Initally, Mike hired Michael Scott (from either national semiconductor or fairchild, I forgot which one) as the first CEO. It was only later after some turmoil that Mike took over the CEO position and then yielded the CEO position to Jobs (and later supported Sculley which led to Jobs' departure, and then helped lure Jobs back).
So even Mr Job's didn't just walk into VC offices and get funded as the CEO of the company. But, Jobs was smart enough and passionate enough about doing the work that was able to put his ego enough in check to know that in order to get the money they needed to get it done. I believe that the Google story is very similar with Eric Schmidt performing the "adult" supervison...
I think some people miss a very important point about VC funding. For some business plans, you really need to get it (e.g., for corporate connection reasons if there is no other "exit-plan" for your business). It isn't just about the money. If it is the case you need to get VC money and you can't craft your business plan to attract VC funding, no matter how good your idea might be to your end customers, your business plan is a fail.
Sure, some VCs get it wrong, but many folks instead blame the VCs instead of their plan. A VC is simply a customer for your business equity like a end-user is a customer for your product. Many folks forget they are selling their equity to the VC and their product to the end-user. Sure the VC might be interested in the details of your product, but that's not what they are buying.
Of course some business just need money and that is something that can be gotten from Angel investors, relatives, or even credit cards, but if you need to strike while the fire is hot, sometimes VC funding is required.
In security, you have to start with the assumption that everyone is untrustworthy until proven otherwise.
A comon problem with following that truism is that trust is not binary. A security system that assumes trust is binary is bound to fail.
In security, you have to start with the assumption that you can't protect everything from everyone. If you don't start with this, you'll probably build a fortress that everyone will complain about and not use.
There's a reason that terrorist organize in cells for security. It's because it works. If a terrorist (or a cell) assumed everyone was untrustworthy, then this organization wouldn't work (each cell would be independent and wouldn't be able to give/get orders from any other cell/source), because there isn't any way to prove otherwize in a cell. The reason the cell works is because if it fails, only that cell is compromized. Assuming a reasonable construction of cells, you mitigate the damage of a breach and that is really the only way to design a good security system. Only fool will assume that the security they design is unbreachable (and there are many in the security consulting business that are fools)...
This author seems to have inappropriately compared the "fear" of machines doing better than humans with concept of uncanny valley.
The concept of the "uncanny valley" is that the affinity of humans for observing the appearance or behavior of a human-like entity (robot, alien, whatever) has this unexpected dip when it is too close to the human behavior (we have this apparent built-in viceral problem with the entity). However, this is only true when it is trying to mimic human-like behaviors. If it's doing something totally different or totally exceeding human behaviors (say distinctly non-human speed, accuracy, strength, appearance, etc), the uncanny valley doesn't say anything about affinity, in fact, if you were to extrapolate the curve out, humans might even have more affinity for these "super-human" behaviors. Maybe that's why many express affinity for live-action versions of comic book super-heros, or airbrushed models in magazines. The behavior is so far from the uncanny valley that it doesn't invoke the supression response that is responsible for it.
Just like what was once observed with "space-shuttle" pilots, the computers can probably do a better job at this task, but we don't quite trust them yet (for some reason). That's really just the human fear of being replaced by machines, not uncanny valley. Note that the only people fearful about this behavior are the people that are likely to be replaced (and maybe a few that sympathize with them)...
"Or maybe even worse (supporting the KMT/taiwan/south-korea/south-vietnam) didn't really put us into China's good graces back then..."
nonono.... supporting KMT was a big plus during the time because China was fighting the Japanese on multiple fronts. even with the in-fighting CCP and KMT were unwilling partners in the same war against Japan, they were glad to have help from US because US wouldn't want the northern border moved down severely like the Soviets did. what screwed relations was US running away at the first sign of trouble and left the KMT to die without promised weapons and support when later on they regretted when Japan attacked Pearl Harbour. that's why Communist won. that's why KMT ran away to Taiwan.
I think you need to reread your history...
The chinese civil war between the KMT and CPC started in 1927, but was interrupted by the Japanese invasion in 1937. The US supported both the KMT and the CCP against Japan in WWII (the KMT didn't do very good against the Japanese, so we also gave arms to Mao and CCP).
Perl Harbor happened later in 1941. The Japanese were finally defeated in china in 1945 (they surrendered to the KMT). The continuation of the chinese civil war which led to the collapse of the KMT happened after WWII was over (restarting in 1947 after failed negotiations between the KMT & CCP) which eventually led to the CCP defeating the KMT and the formation of the PROC in 1949 and the KMT retreat to Taiwan.
A more common occurance is: you know, oh Jeff makes X money, but my friend Jackie is looking for a job that pays X, let's just hire Jackie, make Jeff train Jackie and then fire Jeff, it will only cost us Y dollars to pay both of them for a short period of time then I'll be able to work with my friend Jackie. Too bad about Jeff, but we can't afford two people. Hopefully he'll get the message and start looking for a new job right away...
From AMD's point of view, OpenCL was so yesterday, today they are pushing HSA...
The problem with patents is that they cost a lot of money to obtain. It would make sense, that for defensive purposes, we establish an auxiliary office (or organization) where ideas can be publishes and searched as "prior art" without having to have the $10ks of dollars it takes to get a patent. Such a warehouse would accept contributions of ideas from everyone, at minimal (or no cost).
I don't think this would work. First of all, the patent office doesn't spend much time doing searches for prior art. The $10K fee is basically enough to keep the "rif-raf" out which is the problem you would have if you didn't have any barrier to submission or resources validate to your proposed data base(e.g., how do you get people to not submit ideas covered by other people's existing patents which would pollute the data base?)
there is no such thing in practice as a "defensive patent".
Quite true, patents are first strike and counter-strike weapons, not defensive weapons. Counterstrike is only for deterence, not defense.
The idea isn't patented, the claims are patented. A patent is a description of several claims (dependent and independent). Since the claims of two patents were written by different lawyers, although it's possible that a few claims in the claim tree might be fairly similar to another patent, they are unlikely to be exactly the same. However, even if two claims are essentially the same, two patent claims aren't like matter and anti-matter and annilate each other. Whoever has the superior filing date will survive (and on average it's probably just 50-50 the troll has the superior filing date). Even if you survive filing date challenge, it doesn't mean all the claims of the troll's patent are automatically invalidated, just the ones that happen to be the same as yours (which as I mentioned before is highly unlikely in the first place).
Patents are mostly designed to be enforced not examined. After a patent gets filed it is pretty much rubberstamped after a cursory investigation by the patent office (the patent office is in the patent granting business, not the patent validation business since they don't get money for the later). Later, when a patent holder claims infringment by a product, only then does the court look at the patent (the so called markman hearing) to decide what the law says about the patent(s) in question. Only after this hearing, does a jury look at the potentially infringing product, to see if it reads on the validated claims in the patent. Nowhere other than a markman hearing does any authority really look at any patents (either the one in question or other potentially similar patents or prior art). If parties want to settle, it is usually during or right after that hearing.
Patent trolls are just like terrorists. When you go to war against another country (company), you are implicitly risking your country/people (company/business) and they theirs. When you go to war against terrorists (patent trolls), they have nothing for you to strike at. You can't play defense (witness the TSA).
Even if you "take-out" one claim of one of their patents, that doesn't often keep them from using other claims from that same patent against you. It's like the hydra. You make take out one head, but that doesn't mean the other ones won't still be there to bite the next person that comes along.
Unfortunatly, this sounds like an illegal ponzi scheme (unlike social security which might be considered a "legal" varient).
The primary difference between the US-Soviet pre-cold war relationship and the US-China is that in the first instance, we were forced together (fighting germany in WWII) and never really developed a trading relationship, where the current US-China relationship formed from common economic forces. If you look at the US-China relationship post WWII, and pre-Nixon, it might remind you a bit of the US-Soviet relationship. Or maybe even worse (supporting the KMT/taiwan/south-korea/south-vietnam) didn't really put us into China's good graces back then...
The turning point with china? Basically Mao's death in 1976 and US agreeing that taiwan was part of china in 1979. These have nothing to do with technology. The change in leadership and economic orientation made the economies more compatible (perhaps best summarized by the quote "I don't care if it's a black cat or a white cat, as long as it catches mice").
The turning point with Russia? Collapse of the Soviet Union and Gorbachev and Boris Yeltsin started things along, but of course Mr Putin's influence basically rendered their economy (apparently some wikileaked documents called it a virtual mafia state) incompatible with ours.
I think we technophiles hate to admit it, but events (even in the world of technology) often revolves more around people (e.g., rms, linus torvalds, bill gates, steve jobs, in the tech world etc) than any underlying technology.
"To", "From", "cc", and "subject" are all parts of the original 1975 RFC for mail transport protocol which standardized the eariler 1973 RFC.
In the days of the eariler internet, the ideas of "from" and "sender" were not presumed to be the same (or example, it might be assumed that the "from" might be the person that dictated the message and the "sender" was the secretary, or even an automated computer process).
Email with a "To" routed to a machine located in your own organization was usually very trivial (user name only, no machine name at all, or at most the name of any machine on the locally admistered network if your machine wasn't on that specific network), just like a memo.
Unfortunatly, non-local address mechanisms on the (pre-global-domain-routed) internet, were usually very complicated (unlike the post office or an internal organization memo). Today, postal addressing is hierarchical (even pre-zipcode, postal addressing was city-state and they tried to figure it out for you). The pre-domain internet** used to be like postal addressing of olden-times when you had to put a rural-route# as part of the address since many streets didn't have names and if it didn't get there, it was most likely gonna get stuck in general delivery at a sorting center.
Of course my experience isn't the earliest (I'm not that old yet). In case anyone is interested, the list of known routable email systems circa 1979 is listed in RFC 808, many of those systems had be up for at least 5 years and in specific, the BBN SNDMSG was up and going in 1971 (which is by general consensus the granddaddy of email systems, but they didn't use To/From, but the more cryptic TOUSR/RPY)...
**Life was especially bad in the early internet days when many folks had shiny new fully qualified domain name email addresses, but many machines (which were email endpoints) weren't connected to the internet so some addresses needed to have routing information that was composed of parts that were right to left (domain style) and some left to right (! uucp style). I had the mispleasure of implementing sendmail rules for rmail/domain/decnet routing, so I was scarred permanently by that period of time...
Salt: a random per user number (not an algorithm) used to foil attacks like rainbow tables.
Signature: an algorithm that authenticates a message (like a password).
Typically any secret algorithm is considered security by obfuscation.
So a "salt" generating algorithm would be an obfuscated pseudo-random number generator used in a non-standard way as non-cryptographically secure signature. Yeah, that's the ticket to good security ;^)
For all people speculating about juristiction, please read the Outerspace Treaty (the relavant parts are below).
Since these launches are from the US and the US signed the treaty, the US is potentally liable for what a non-government (e.g., private) entity does in outer space. Forcing the non-governmental entity launching in a signator's territory to carry sufficient insurance to offset most of the potential liabiity seems like it would always be a likely on-going requirement (by any the 100 or so nation-states who are signators to this treaty including the US).
Article VI: States Parties to the Treaty shall bear international responsibility for national activities in outer space, including the moon and other celestial bodies, whether such activities are carried on by governmental agencies or by non-governmental entities, and for assuring that national activities are carried out in conformity with the provisions set forth in the present Treaty. The activities of non-governmental entities in outer space, including the moon and other celestial bodies, shall require authorization and continuing supervision by the appropriate State Party to the Treaty. When activities are carried on in outer space, including the moon and other celestial bodies, by an international organization, responsibility for compliance with this Treaty shall be borne both by the international organization and by the States Parties to the Treaty participating in such organization.
Article VII: Each State Party to the Treaty that launches or procures the launching of an object into outer space, including the moon and other celestial bodies, and each State Party from whose territory or facility an object is launched, is internationally liable for damage to another State Party to the Treaty or to its natural or juridical persons by such object or its component parts on the Earth, in air space or in outer space, including the moon and other celestial bodies.
I'd have to agree with the cooking ~ chemistry at the 10-year-old level.
The traditional chemistry is generally not taught until junior high-school or high-school because of several things:
- students aren't yet well acquainted with physical science principles (gasses, liquids, atoms, measuring, etc)
- lab safety (some interesting classical experiments can be dangerous)
- student patience level for the quantitative side of chemistry (most or interested in qualitative stuff which can be done with physical science only)
You might ask yourself, what about chemistry your 10yo grandson is interested: science or potions? If it's just mixing potions and seeing things change (the qualitative side), then cooking is likely to be a good way to be interesting and educational at the same time**. If there is some interest in how chemistry works under the hood and the scientific aspect of it (making a theory, testing it, performing the experiment and evalutating), then maybe something more advanced would be appropriate, however, there are probably simpler ways to teach scientific principles (e.g., physical science or biology).
** e.g., learning acids and bases and stoichometry by making pancake batter is probably more interesting than watching pH strips...