It shouldn't be subject matter experts (SMEs) vs. teachers. Research into learning and teaching has consistently shown that the more effective teachers are also SMEs.
What's more, in K-12 education, the teaching skills required are more demanding than subject matter knowledge, so the emphasis is logically skewed in that direction. In other words, we don't expect college level writing or math in K-12 schools so why do we expect college level CS? Kids will more than likely learn the same facts, formulae, and procedures without much meaningful context or purpose just to get the grade, like they do most other subjects. When faced with a choice between learning for understanding vs. cramming to pass mandated tests, which determine a school's future funding, guess which most schools choose.
I forsee that Theranos' blood testing machines will provide the breakthrough on finding new illnesses like Bellybutton Stink syndrome, and perhaps even the holy grail of modern medicine - Overactive ear hair! And whoever they are leasing this technology to will have just the maintenance med for that.
If only it were something so trivial as made-up illnesses. Many medically accepted diagnostic tests for serious illnesses come with caveats based on decades of experience. Simply, we shouldn't test everyone for everything, AKA screening, because it does more harm than good. Tests often show up symptoms of conditions without the conditions themselves existing. In other words, flagging one or more markers for a condition doesn't necessarily mean that you have the condition. Unskilled staff won't be able to recognise cases like these or know what to do since they are not trained diagnosticians. It's even often a problem when doctors perform screening. It's expensive, unnecessary, and in most cases causes harm to patients through unnecessary medical prescriptions and procedures, each of which carry their own risks and side effects.
> "Anyone looking for something to worry about in the near future might want to consider the opposite of superintelligence: superstupidity"
At least we know what superstupidity looks like and what it does, based on observing Washington, DC. One lesson is to minimize the control and possible impact from failures of these complex but inherently stupid systems. See, for example the office of the vice president - a VP might say some stupid things, but it doesn't really do too much damage.
The new crop of candidates provide another lesson in superstupidity. They aren't exactly a bunch of brain surgeons either.
Congress-critters ain't stoopid, they're pretty smart. They understand what they need to do to get elected and stay in office. Unfortunately, that rarely means serving the best interests of the majority of the electorate... or even reading, let alone understanding, the legislature they put forward on behalf of their corporate sponsors.
If a service desk makes you wait, pull out a real book and start reading it. See how long it takes them to realise how bad this makes them look and start serving you:)
What the US has is effectively a consumer oriented popularity contest for who gets to represent the super-rich, AKA representative democracy. Such a system doesn't require a great deal of transparency or attention from the electorate because they really don't have much of a say in the law and policy making processes. It's certainly convenient, voting wise, but not very effective at providing rule of the people, by the people, for the people.
Ironically, what congress seems so opposed to in other countries, most notably Venezuela, is a move towards participatory democracy (PD) (not that Venezuela's anywhere near it; it's more of an aspiration). PD is far more than just voting. It means that the electorate are charged with the responsibility to govern themselves, elect who they need to manage the job, and be kept well-informed with progress in a fully transparent and accountable process. The main issue that congress seems to have with PD is that not only is it strongly democratic, but it also tends to lead to highly socialised governments, systems, services, healthcare, etc. There's little room for for-profit, private business in socialist democracies, e.g. Sweden, whose economy is roughly 90% state owned.
Perhaps they've learned a little from how the music industry calculates its losses to unauthorised copying. But it seems they haven't learned enough. By the music industry's calculations it should be closer to $1 trillion is losses from unauthorised uses of Ubuntu. (They don't understand FOSS, BTW).
He should open source his hacky Python code so that everyone who wants can join in and speed up the process. I've got a Raspberry Pi sitting here just waiting to bring down the entire music industry. I'd like to start with Celine Dion's, Brian Adams', and Justin Bieber's record companies and move on from there.
To get an idea of just how wrong headed your arguments are here's a small sample of articles that dig into the reality of mass surveillance: https://duckduckgo.com/?q=surv... The US is a rogue nation that no longer follows the rule of law (or its own constitution), ignoring Geneva conventions, conventions on human and civil rights, etc. That the US declares its mass surveillance on its allies to be legal is not surprising. That what they are doing is wrong has nothing to do with whatever declarations the offending regime (the US) makes. And yes, the five eyes do re-route our internet traffic so that it passes through govt. controlled exchanges. That's why it's being called global dragnet surveillance.
Just remember that whatever the US gets comfortable with doing to others abroad - Things like black sites, torture, ignoring habeas corpus, etc. - eventually get brought home to be used on its own marginalised and disenfranchised citizens, as we've recently seen from the former US torturer in Iraq who ran Chicago PD's infamous black site. Basically, a domestic version of Abu Ghraib. Be careful what behaviour you defend.
Ok, so you've changed the argument to tu quoque then: "You avoided having to engage with criticism by turning it back on the accuser - you answered criticism with criticism." https://yourlogicalfallacyis.c... If you can't argue coherently against the point then perhaps there may be some truth in it?
Why pick on science reporting? How much of the media's reporting on other topics is thorough, diligent, balanced, and representative of the real world? I guess lousy science reporting is easier to identify because people who are science literate tend to read it and complain loudly.
The USA has its infrastructure, military, and so much of its business hooked up to and dependent on the internet, you'd think it'd be a priority to make it more secure and stable. Instead, the NSA are doing their best to undermine web security and leave the USA open to attack. What are top secret hacking tools and techniques that only govts. have today are available to corporations and criminal gangs the next and the public/hackers thereafter. We need a more secure, private internet. No backdoors, no unpatched zero-day exploits, no offensive tools to get into the wrong hands, and an end to the cyber-weapons arms race that the USA has started.
So your argument is, the US government is abusing non-Americans' rights but that's OK because the non-Americans' governments should prevent the US, the most powerful empire in human history, from doing it. Does that characterise your argument appropriately?
Point well made. So, do you think it's OK for the US to get Canada, the UK, New Zealand, and Australia (AKA "the five eyes") to spy on Americans for them and reciprocate by spying on their citizens? Or if in practice, the data is merely (re-)routed between the five eyes in order to create technical loopholes so they can justify scooping everything up? (AKA GCHQ's "full take", code-named Tempora).
But flash is content and scripting. You can turn off js and read slashdot. But you cannot turn off flash and see a flash movie. Even when the movie itself would not need user interaction (scripting).
You could try comparing like with like: If you turn of JS in your browser, you can't see an HTML5 animation. HTML5+CSS3+JS is content and scripting. In fact, most of the JS animation utility libraries were ported from Actionscript (Flash).
In broad terms, any argument Flash-haters can level at Flash can also be made against JavaScript (JS is just as likely to annoy you in as many ways as Flash). I remember when it was JS that was derided and Flash the way forward. Fashions in software platforms come and go. What we need is a decent, mature, fully-featured, free and open source scripting language for apps that run in web browsers (which JS isn't). I don't care what it is, whether it's ActionScript, Java, Python, or something else. However, that would be direct competition to all app stores and destroy their walled-garden business models and stop all the malware attacks resulting from people having to install apps on their desktops in order to run them. See: https://xkcd.com/1367/
And while we're at it, let's put working on manufacturing lines as part of the school curriculum because those jobs will be there in 10 years' time when the kids leave school, right? Do we really want to pit US kids against workers in India and southern Asia? Doesn't sound like a useful strategy to me. How about better support for science and math curricula (pre-coding necessities) and better support for schools and teachers so that they can emphasise divergent (creative) thinking and problem-solving? You know, so they can do more than manufacture the virtual equivalent of plastic crap for the virtual equivalent of Walmart which will be done in India or China or wherever else has the lowest wages and poorest working conditions.
Look, nsa, DOD, and CIA will make heavy use of these overseas to find and track ISIS, AQ, etc. That should not be the least bit surprising. In fact, I'm sure that we make all of this equipment available to the 5 eyes, as well as other allies.
What should matter should only be the cases when it is found to be used by agencies like FBI or local police and without a legal warrent. Once this equipment is illegally, then you have a real issue.
This is a classic example of American double-standards. It's OK to undermine and abuse non-Americans' civil rights just as long as you don't do it to Americans. Well, the rest of the world hears this from American politicians, the military, and pundits. What kind of an impression do you think this makes? Do you think you're winning hearts and minds in the so called "War on Terror"?
Agreed. Human drivers tend to have this sense of entitlement and exceptionalism so that they believe that they can break the law but anyone else who does it is a dangerous idiot. Automated cars are a new type of vehicle that these drivers have to negotiate. Expect a learning curve with a spike in accidents while drivers get used to it. I remember the same thing happening in Barcelona when they re-introduced trams. There was a sudden, dramatic spike in accidents, some of them fatal, while drivers learned what they could and couldn't "get away with." The answer is to give time for lawless drivers to learn about automated cars and adjust their law-breaking appropriately so that they don't get involved in as many accidents. And while we're at it, how about automated cars recording everything that happens around them that can be presented as evidence in court?
The alternative is rigorous and strict Urban Planning, which results in characterless urban high-density highrise housing. In fact, that's the ideal espoused by lots of today's social planners. They want high density housing located on light rail corridors.
I've travelled and lived in countries and regions where they have "rigorous and strict urban planning." For example Barcelona and Seville. Not exactly famous for their "characterless urban high-density highrise housing." In fact, they're among the most sought after places to live and work in the world. It's interesting to watch north Americans standing around with their cameras, staring at the streets, padestrianised areas, and buildings and going "Gee, that's so beautiful!"
It's also necessary to explain to north American visitors to not hire a car. It takes longer, is less convenient, and is more expensive than using public transport and taxis. Most of the people I knew who lived there didn't own cars; They only hired them on the rare occasions that they found it necessary.
Then think of London, Rome, and Moscow. You'd have to be crazy to try driving around in those cities (I know, I've been in cars with people who've insisted on trying).
By pandering to a minority of corporations, the Dpt. of Ed. is converting the US education system into a training programmes for idiot workers in dead-end jobs that'll soon be off-shored to subcontractors in developing countries with lower operating costs. The real advantage that the USA has is an excellent education system* that cultivates independent, critical, and creative thinkers who can then go on to learn just about anything they want and make excellent team-workers, project managers, and problem solvers.
*If you control for poverty, which is the biggest issue in US educational outcomes, the US consistently scores at the top of international tables but doesn't suffer as much from the negative effects of test-oriented curricula, despite the Dpt. of Ed.'s best efforts in the last decade or so.
Slashdot Mirror
It shouldn't be subject matter experts (SMEs) vs. teachers. Research into learning and teaching has consistently shown that the more effective teachers are also SMEs.
What's more, in K-12 education, the teaching skills required are more demanding than subject matter knowledge, so the emphasis is logically skewed in that direction. In other words, we don't expect college level writing or math in K-12 schools so why do we expect college level CS? Kids will more than likely learn the same facts, formulae, and procedures without much meaningful context or purpose just to get the grade, like they do most other subjects. When faced with a choice between learning for understanding vs. cramming to pass mandated tests, which determine a school's future funding, guess which most schools choose.
I forsee that Theranos' blood testing machines will provide the breakthrough on finding new illnesses like Bellybutton Stink syndrome, and perhaps even the holy grail of modern medicine - Overactive ear hair! And whoever they are leasing this technology to will have just the maintenance med for that.
If only it were something so trivial as made-up illnesses. Many medically accepted diagnostic tests for serious illnesses come with caveats based on decades of experience. Simply, we shouldn't test everyone for everything, AKA screening, because it does more harm than good. Tests often show up symptoms of conditions without the conditions themselves existing. In other words, flagging one or more markers for a condition doesn't necessarily mean that you have the condition. Unskilled staff won't be able to recognise cases like these or know what to do since they are not trained diagnosticians. It's even often a problem when doctors perform screening. It's expensive, unnecessary, and in most cases causes harm to patients through unnecessary medical prescriptions and procedures, each of which carry their own risks and side effects.
> "Anyone looking for something to worry about in the near future might want to consider the opposite of superintelligence: superstupidity"
At least we know what superstupidity looks like and what it does, based on observing Washington, DC. One lesson is to minimize the control and possible impact from failures of these complex but inherently stupid systems. See, for example the office of the vice president - a VP might say some stupid things, but it doesn't really do too much damage.
The new crop of candidates provide another lesson in superstupidity. They aren't exactly a bunch of brain surgeons either.
Congress-critters ain't stoopid, they're pretty smart. They understand what they need to do to get elected and stay in office. Unfortunately, that rarely means serving the best interests of the majority of the electorate... or even reading, let alone understanding, the legislature they put forward on behalf of their corporate sponsors.
Yes, and...
:)
If a service desk makes you wait, pull out a real book and start reading it. See how long it takes them to realise how bad this makes them look and start serving you
What the US has is effectively a consumer oriented popularity contest for who gets to represent the super-rich, AKA representative democracy. Such a system doesn't require a great deal of transparency or attention from the electorate because they really don't have much of a say in the law and policy making processes. It's certainly convenient, voting wise, but not very effective at providing rule of the people, by the people, for the people.
Ironically, what congress seems so opposed to in other countries, most notably Venezuela, is a move towards participatory democracy (PD) (not that Venezuela's anywhere near it; it's more of an aspiration). PD is far more than just voting. It means that the electorate are charged with the responsibility to govern themselves, elect who they need to manage the job, and be kept well-informed with progress in a fully transparent and accountable process. The main issue that congress seems to have with PD is that not only is it strongly democratic, but it also tends to lead to highly socialised governments, systems, services, healthcare, etc. There's little room for for-profit, private business in socialist democracies, e.g. Sweden, whose economy is roughly 90% state owned.
Perhaps they've learned a little from how the music industry calculates its losses to unauthorised copying. But it seems they haven't learned enough. By the music industry's calculations it should be closer to $1 trillion is losses from unauthorised uses of Ubuntu. (They don't understand FOSS, BTW).
He should open source his hacky Python code so that everyone who wants can join in and speed up the process. I've got a Raspberry Pi sitting here just waiting to bring down the entire music industry. I'd like to start with Celine Dion's, Brian Adams', and Justin Bieber's record companies and move on from there.
To get an idea of just how wrong headed your arguments are here's a small sample of articles that dig into the reality of mass surveillance: https://duckduckgo.com/?q=surv... The US is a rogue nation that no longer follows the rule of law (or its own constitution), ignoring Geneva conventions, conventions on human and civil rights, etc. That the US declares its mass surveillance on its allies to be legal is not surprising. That what they are doing is wrong has nothing to do with whatever declarations the offending regime (the US) makes. And yes, the five eyes do re-route our internet traffic so that it passes through govt. controlled exchanges. That's why it's being called global dragnet surveillance.
Just remember that whatever the US gets comfortable with doing to others abroad - Things like black sites, torture, ignoring habeas corpus, etc. - eventually get brought home to be used on its own marginalised and disenfranchised citizens, as we've recently seen from the former US torturer in Iraq who ran Chicago PD's infamous black site. Basically, a domestic version of Abu Ghraib. Be careful what behaviour you defend.
Ok, so you've changed the argument to tu quoque then: "You avoided having to engage with criticism by turning it back on the accuser - you answered criticism with criticism." https://yourlogicalfallacyis.c... If you can't argue coherently against the point then perhaps there may be some truth in it?
...or it's a classic case of the scorpion and the frog allegory. The NSA just can't help themselves. It's in their nature.
Why pick on science reporting? How much of the media's reporting on other topics is thorough, diligent, balanced, and representative of the real world? I guess lousy science reporting is easier to identify because people who are science literate tend to read it and complain loudly.
The USA has its infrastructure, military, and so much of its business hooked up to and dependent on the internet, you'd think it'd be a priority to make it more secure and stable. Instead, the NSA are doing their best to undermine web security and leave the USA open to attack. What are top secret hacking tools and techniques that only govts. have today are available to corporations and criminal gangs the next and the public/hackers thereafter. We need a more secure, private internet. No backdoors, no unpatched zero-day exploits, no offensive tools to get into the wrong hands, and an end to the cyber-weapons arms race that the USA has started.
That's a fairly good summary of Cold War mentality. So who's at war with whom right now? Is the US at war with Brazil? The UK? Germany? etc.
So your argument is, the US government is abusing non-Americans' rights but that's OK because the non-Americans' governments should prevent the US, the most powerful empire in human history, from doing it. Does that characterise your argument appropriately?
Point well made. So, do you think it's OK for the US to get Canada, the UK, New Zealand, and Australia (AKA "the five eyes") to spy on Americans for them and reciprocate by spying on their citizens? Or if in practice, the data is merely (re-)routed between the five eyes in order to create technical loopholes so they can justify scooping everything up? (AKA GCHQ's "full take", code-named Tempora).
I don't see how this addresses my point.
But flash is content and scripting.
You can turn off js and read slashdot. But you cannot turn off flash and see a flash movie. Even when the movie itself would not need user interaction (scripting).
You could try comparing like with like: If you turn of JS in your browser, you can't see an HTML5 animation. HTML5+CSS3+JS is content and scripting. In fact, most of the JS animation utility libraries were ported from Actionscript (Flash).
You clearly don't understand English very well. I wrote, "In broad terms,..." I'm struggling to imagine how your point could be made more narrow.
In broad terms, any argument Flash-haters can level at Flash can also be made against JavaScript (JS is just as likely to annoy you in as many ways as Flash). I remember when it was JS that was derided and Flash the way forward. Fashions in software platforms come and go. What we need is a decent, mature, fully-featured, free and open source scripting language for apps that run in web browsers (which JS isn't). I don't care what it is, whether it's ActionScript, Java, Python, or something else. However, that would be direct competition to all app stores and destroy their walled-garden business models and stop all the malware attacks resulting from people having to install apps on their desktops in order to run them. See: https://xkcd.com/1367/
And while we're at it, let's put working on manufacturing lines as part of the school curriculum because those jobs will be there in 10 years' time when the kids leave school, right? Do we really want to pit US kids against workers in India and southern Asia? Doesn't sound like a useful strategy to me. How about better support for science and math curricula (pre-coding necessities) and better support for schools and teachers so that they can emphasise divergent (creative) thinking and problem-solving? You know, so they can do more than manufacture the virtual equivalent of plastic crap for the virtual equivalent of Walmart which will be done in India or China or wherever else has the lowest wages and poorest working conditions.
Look, nsa, DOD, and CIA will make heavy use of these overseas to find and track ISIS, AQ, etc. That should not be the least bit surprising. In fact, I'm sure that we make all of this equipment available to the 5 eyes, as well as other allies.
What should matter should only be the cases when it is found to be used by agencies like FBI or local police and without a legal warrent. Once this equipment is illegally, then you have a real issue.
This is a classic example of American double-standards. It's OK to undermine and abuse non-Americans' civil rights just as long as you don't do it to Americans. Well, the rest of the world hears this from American politicians, the military, and pundits. What kind of an impression do you think this makes? Do you think you're winning hearts and minds in the so called "War on Terror"?
Agreed. Human drivers tend to have this sense of entitlement and exceptionalism so that they believe that they can break the law but anyone else who does it is a dangerous idiot. Automated cars are a new type of vehicle that these drivers have to negotiate. Expect a learning curve with a spike in accidents while drivers get used to it. I remember the same thing happening in Barcelona when they re-introduced trams. There was a sudden, dramatic spike in accidents, some of them fatal, while drivers learned what they could and couldn't "get away with." The answer is to give time for lawless drivers to learn about automated cars and adjust their law-breaking appropriately so that they don't get involved in as many accidents. And while we're at it, how about automated cars recording everything that happens around them that can be presented as evidence in court?
The alternative is rigorous and strict Urban Planning, which results in characterless urban high-density highrise housing. In fact, that's the ideal espoused by lots of today's social planners. They want high density housing located on light rail corridors.
I've travelled and lived in countries and regions where they have "rigorous and strict urban planning." For example Barcelona and Seville. Not exactly famous for their "characterless urban high-density highrise housing." In fact, they're among the most sought after places to live and work in the world. It's interesting to watch north Americans standing around with their cameras, staring at the streets, padestrianised areas, and buildings and going "Gee, that's so beautiful!"
It's also necessary to explain to north American visitors to not hire a car. It takes longer, is less convenient, and is more expensive than using public transport and taxis. Most of the people I knew who lived there didn't own cars; They only hired them on the rare occasions that they found it necessary.
Then think of London, Rome, and Moscow. You'd have to be crazy to try driving around in those cities (I know, I've been in cars with people who've insisted on trying).
I don't know about sandwiches but I can see the proceedings unfold at Google HQ: http://thecodinglove.com/post/...
By pandering to a minority of corporations, the Dpt. of Ed. is converting the US education system into a training programmes for idiot workers in dead-end jobs that'll soon be off-shored to subcontractors in developing countries with lower operating costs. The real advantage that the USA has is an excellent education system* that cultivates independent, critical, and creative thinkers who can then go on to learn just about anything they want and make excellent team-workers, project managers, and problem solvers.
*If you control for poverty, which is the biggest issue in US educational outcomes, the US consistently scores at the top of international tables but doesn't suffer as much from the negative effects of test-oriented curricula, despite the Dpt. of Ed.'s best efforts in the last decade or so.