The main problem is that you either have to provide students with power outlets, or the batteries have to be able to perform in the real world for around 8-12 hours.
Create a standard battery format, as exists for C, D, AA, etc. or use one of those. Place battery chargers all over campus, in every classroom. Swap charged for flat, no cost. Like Bicycling Sharing for batteries, in an institutional rather than municipal context.
As I read through the comments I see a lot of interest and debate about hardware -- screen readability, battery life, size and weight -- and to a lessor extent e-book file formats and publishing. These are important, and they miss essential points.
1. An e-book reader treats the student as a passive consumer. This is a model we have become all too familiar with, conditioned by being raised on a diet of printed books, movies and television. It fails because so much more is possible. A computer offers the opportunity for interactive learning, starting with social media and going straight into software development. Slashdot readers should known this. A key component is an on-going relationship with teachers, with interaction taking place entirely on-line, or as an enhancement to "brick and mortar" classroom activity.
2. The information contained in textbooks does not need to be published for profit. It is time for the textbook industry to follow the telegraph industry into the halls of our museums. Better still, to be reduced to a Wikipedia page. MIT has shown the way with their OpenCourseWare. Slashdot readers appreciate the value of free software. It should be obvious the same thing applies to textbooks.
3. It is not enough to fill a classroom with iMacs, or to offer an e-book reader in place of printed textbooks. What is needed is a larger infrastructure, something like a physical school and something akin to the Internet, the place where education takes place.
If you are interested in contributing to the development of such a place, come and join the Open Slate Project.
There is sufficient information in the public key to generate the private key (and it relies on multiplying together two large prime numbers). If the public key can be factored, then you have the two primes from the private key, and you can derive the private key. This is inherent to this encryption system, and it's why it's so important that you use large keys.
To me this sounds absolutely wrong. AFAIK (which isn't much) there is nothing is one key that can be used to generate the other. Please site a reference that supports your claim.
tap-ta-boom crash (because ASCII does not include a drum kit.)
Seriously, folks. Not to change the subject, we ARE talking about media violence, right? Well, my wife, see, she likes murder mysteries. Obsessed would be a better word. And when she is not reading one, or watchiong Law and Order, or CSI, or NCSI, she is doing crosswords. Entire books of them. Should I be worried?
Eating balls and doomed sausages. Hardly (no pun intended) the context for a serious discussion, but hey, this IS/.
... people will move even further away from [Adobe Flash]...
Agreed, but to what? Where is the FOSS alternative? Where is our Apache, our Postgressql, our Gnumeric equivalent for Flash? Seems to me the FOSS community frowns on Flash. Is it perceived as superficial? "Real web sites do not rely on silly animated tricks." Is that it?
The comments about mouseover events are spot-on. The Open Slate Project has chosen passive digitizers like the ones used by Fujitsu in their T1010 Lifebook. They are more rugged, consume less power, and the user interface is simple. This decision is based in part on years of experience with the best pen UI ever made, the Apple Newton OS 2.0. Ironically, Open Slate wants to make Squeak the de facto environment, eventually taking the place of the window manager. Smalltalk is designed for a three button mouse, so getting that to work with a passive slate (roughly speaking a one button mouse) will be quite a challenge!
As for the financial side, Apple makes plenty selling the apps it has. My guess is that Apple considers Flash to be too unstable, or too vulnerable, or maybe they just don't get along with Adobe. The lack of Flash does not mean useful web apps are unavailable. Anyone who wants to build a cool iPhone ap should check out the (a href="http://www.smalltalkconsulting.com/">Squeak VM for iPhone.
If "woosh" is for over your head, then what is for under? "Shoo?" "Sous?" "Xia?" We need to decide, because without standards the Big Corporations will slap a patent on "under."
Consider this: the way plants are arranged in virgin forest is natural, whereas the way plants are arranged in my backyard garden is not. But, my desire to order what seems chaotic is natural. Not just natural for a human, but a part of nature. When (American) football is played on artificial turf it seems unnatural, but my point is that the human ability to create artificial turf exists within the realm of nature, because there is no way for anything to exist outside of nature. This is in my opinin a fundamental aspect of Darwin's discovery.
Modern cows are the result of HUMANS selecting for traits, not nature.
This is a common misconception. Humans do not operate outside of nature. The law of natural selection includes the efforts of whalers hunting whales and conservationists trying to protect whales. The pigs that are reportedly wrecking havoc in parts of the southeast are not alien, simply new arrivals. The humans who make TV shows proclaiming the end of life as we know it due to the pig infestation are one little piece of the same natural process. And yes, cows have done well because they are good to eat AND easy to farm. Whales, like tuna, are not so lucky.
And it extends way beyond China. I see this as simply another example of "yellow peril" thinking. What about the Brits, who want to monitor everything? What about the French, who want to kick people off the net for misbehaving? What about Iran, who wants to kick out everyone? Do you really think the USA looks like the good guys to the rest of the 'net? Who gave the world Microsoft, and the RIAA, and the MPAA? All this "evil Chinese" stuff is getting tiresome.
You must be new here. For your make-up assignment you are to familiarize yourself with our/. culture. CowboyNeal would approve it, and Netcraft would confirm it.
I, for one, welcome our FreeBSD 8.0 overlords. Long live FreeBSD!
The woman has no basis for any expectation of protection against editing "her" page on Wikipedia, any more than if someone defaced the "I Love You" I scratched in the sand on Waikiki Beach. If someone changed it to "I Love Sally" then my wife has no reason to consider it true.
Wikipedia should refuse to comply. We do not want to establish any more precedence that social information sites are resposible for the actions of their users.
The last thing I want my students doing is mindlessly copying stuff - I want them engaging their brains and thinking about the content which is something that is not easy to achieve! In addition to the use of clickers and questions in the lecture, to relieve the writing part I make the OpenOffice (no PowerPoint!) slides available on the website along with a video podcast of the lecture audio and the computer screen. This lets students listen again to any part they found hard to understand... or to catch up if they "accidentally" miss a lecture!
Unfortunately slides are only part of the issue and I do a good bit of writing on the whiteboard as well (derivations, answers to student questions which need diagrams etc.). So far I have found no easy way to capture this - I know that there are solutions but the ones I have found are not portable and since I lecture in different rooms from term-to-term they are not viable.
This sounds like a job for Super Chalk Board. Seriously, I need to update some of the relevent material; much of what I have on the web site (Chalk Dust see in particular "Delivery") is out of date.
Interested?
"Lesson learned? You still need to run anti-virus on Windows 7."
But they did not rep[ort how well their own software was at preventing the same attacks, or for that matter Symantec or McAfee. It is the nature of anti-virus software to fail to catch new attacks, and these were clearly new.
I use LyX 1.5.7 on Gnome 2.26.3 on FreeBSD and I don't think it uses qt. It looks a lot like a regular Gnome app. I recall a few years ago a version that did look "old fashioned." It can appear cluttered at first, but only because the UI tries to offer lots of tool buttons to the rich command set. I find this version the easiest to use. The old UI was not so intuitive to young folks raised on Macs and Windows.
I think WWII started the day WWI ended or to be more accurate when the US listened to England and France and agreed to an unjust and unwise peace with Germany.
Absolutly true! Except I would say "... when the victors imposed unjust and unwise war reparations.
Re the comment about Japan and an oil embargo, as I recall steel was a factor. Japan was buying US scrap metal and using it to build its navy.
And now to piss off a lot of readers, let's not forget that Japan began this chapter in history with the admirable goal of freeing their Asian bothers from the tyranny of Western colonialism. "Asia for Asians" was their slogan. Too bad they had not yet learned how to manage... that came later.
"DIY" and software do not appear together often enough.
I would teach them how to create their own personal "apps" using Squeak. Use Nebraska to collaborate and share in class. Look for a few techies to help.
To get stared, try Sugar on a Stick and look at Etoys, a specialized subset of Squeak. (You use Squeak to create Etoys.)
I have been working on a related project for roughly ten years and made very little progress. The obstacles to free textbooks are many, and include:
o Author reluctance due to
- the dream of publishing a hit and making money
- fear that associating with such an endeavor (e.g., Wikipedia) will damage their reputation (corollary: a successful publication improves reputation)
- lack of skill in creating on-line content
o Difficulty in finding credible reviewers willing to work for free
o A belief held by consumers that something expensive is worth more (corollary: people measure success by money raised and spent rather than money saved)
o Marketing costs
o The belief that information printed on paper is better than when displayed on screen
- easier to read
- easier to highlight
- easier to carry
- better tactile experience (page flipping)
- better retention
o Broad-based doubts and fears about using computers in the classroom
- money could be better spent elsewhere
- lack of tech support
- the computer becomes a distraction
- disruptions caused by viruses and malware
I encourage anyone considering such an endeavor to explore ways that an automated text can provide a better experience than a printed book. Avoid the trap of publishing presentation slides or simply the text that would be used in a traditional book. Currently I am exploring Squeak, an open-source implementation of Smalltalk with rich media capabilities, specifically the use of bookmorphs and stackmorphs as lively containers for engaging interactive content. These two morphic classes draw inspiration from the old Macintosh HyperCard program.
I am undecided on the issue of true open-source content. Currently I lean towards a published version which can be used freely to create derivative works, while the original author's work cannot be altered. I am not a big fan of anonymous work, nor of communal products. Yet I totally support FOSS.
99% of the people on slashdot seem to be completely ignorant of how patents actually work, yet aren't afraid to criticize them based on their lack of understanding. You're one of them, most likley.
Patents have to be taken as a whole, for all the claims
I see you are one of the 99%. Patent applications have a long list of claims going from general to specific. The examiner can toss out the broader claims. After that it is up to the court. The court does not get involved until there is a plaintiff, and patent cases, being civil cases, can be extremly expensive to litigate. FOSS projects are by nature too poor to play.
Slashdot Mirror
Create a standard battery format, as exists for C, D, AA, etc. or use one of those. Place battery chargers all over campus, in every classroom. Swap charged for flat, no cost. Like Bicycling Sharing for batteries, in an institutional rather than municipal context.
As I read through the comments I see a lot of interest and debate about hardware -- screen readability, battery life, size and weight -- and to a lessor extent e-book file formats and publishing. These are important, and they miss essential points.
1. An e-book reader treats the student as a passive consumer. This is a model we have become all too familiar with, conditioned by being raised on a diet of printed books, movies and television. It fails because so much more is possible. A computer offers the opportunity for interactive learning, starting with social media and going straight into software development. Slashdot readers should known this. A key component is an on-going relationship with teachers, with interaction taking place entirely on-line, or as an enhancement to "brick and mortar" classroom activity.
2. The information contained in textbooks does not need to be published for profit. It is time for the textbook industry to follow the telegraph industry into the halls of our museums. Better still, to be reduced to a Wikipedia page. MIT has shown the way with their OpenCourseWare. Slashdot readers appreciate the value of free software. It should be obvious the same thing applies to textbooks.
3. It is not enough to fill a classroom with iMacs, or to offer an e-book reader in place of printed textbooks. What is needed is a larger infrastructure, something like a physical school and something akin to the Internet, the place where education takes place.
If you are interested in contributing to the development of such a place, come and join the Open Slate Project.
To me this sounds absolutely wrong. AFAIK (which isn't much) there is nothing is one key that can be used to generate the other. Please site a reference that supports your claim.
So ... did you give him the finger?
tap-ta-boom crash (because ASCII does not include a drum kit.)
Seriously, folks. Not to change the subject, we ARE talking about media violence, right? Well, my wife, see, she likes murder mysteries. Obsessed would be a better word. And when she is not reading one, or watchiong Law and Order, or CSI, or NCSI, she is doing crosswords. Entire books of them. Should I be worried?
Too bad this was posted AC because it deserves +5 Insightfull.
Archie!
And yes, I did use webcrawler. Archie and gopher were hot back before the day AOL turned loose the unwashed masses. Usenet news never recovered.
Trumpet winsock, anyone?
Agreed, but to what? Where is the FOSS alternative? Where is our Apache, our Postgressql, our Gnumeric equivalent for Flash? Seems to me the FOSS community frowns on Flash. Is it perceived as superficial? "Real web sites do not rely on silly animated tricks." Is that it?
The comments about mouseover events are spot-on. The Open Slate Project has chosen passive digitizers like the ones used by Fujitsu in their T1010 Lifebook. They are more rugged, consume less power, and the user interface is simple. This decision is based in part on years of experience with the best pen UI ever made, the Apple Newton OS 2.0. Ironically, Open Slate wants to make Squeak the de facto environment, eventually taking the place of the window manager. Smalltalk is designed for a three button mouse, so getting that to work with a passive slate (roughly speaking a one button mouse) will be quite a challenge!
As for the financial side, Apple makes plenty selling the apps it has. My guess is that Apple considers Flash to be too unstable, or too vulnerable, or maybe they just don't get along with Adobe. The lack of Flash does not mean useful web apps are unavailable. Anyone who wants to build a cool iPhone ap should check out the (a href="http://www.smalltalkconsulting.com/">Squeak VM for iPhone.
If "woosh" is for over your head, then what is for under? "Shoo?" "Sous?" "Xia?" We need to decide, because without standards the Big Corporations will slap a patent on "under."
Obviously you haven't had your Jimmy Dean breakfast.
Consider this: the way plants are arranged in virgin forest is natural, whereas the way plants are arranged in my backyard garden is not. But, my desire to order what seems chaotic is natural. Not just natural for a human, but a part of nature. When (American) football is played on artificial turf it seems unnatural, but my point is that the human ability to create artificial turf exists within the realm of nature, because there is no way for anything to exist outside of nature. This is in my opinin a fundamental aspect of Darwin's discovery.
This is a common misconception. Humans do not operate outside of nature. The law of natural selection includes the efforts of whalers hunting whales and conservationists trying to protect whales. The pigs that are reportedly wrecking havoc in parts of the southeast are not alien, simply new arrivals. The humans who make TV shows proclaiming the end of life as we know it due to the pig infestation are one little piece of the same natural process. And yes, cows have done well because they are good to eat AND easy to farm. Whales, like tuna, are not so lucky.
Ah yes, and the beer! Mmmm. And the platypus. Its all good.
> ... it extends way beyond firefox.
And it extends way beyond China. I see this as simply another example of "yellow peril" thinking. What about the Brits, who want to monitor everything? What about the French, who want to kick people off the net for misbehaving? What about Iran, who wants to kick out everyone? Do you really think the USA looks like the good guys to the rest of the 'net? Who gave the world Microsoft, and the RIAA, and the MPAA? All this "evil Chinese" stuff is getting tiresome.
Took the words right out of my mouth.
Maybe the rule is not as simple as you think.
You must be new here. For your make-up assignment you are to familiarize yourself with our /. culture. CowboyNeal would approve it, and Netcraft would confirm it.
I, for one, welcome our FreeBSD 8.0 overlords. Long live FreeBSD!
The article did say the launch had been delayed.
The woman has no basis for any expectation of protection against editing "her" page on Wikipedia, any more than if someone defaced the "I Love You" I scratched in the sand on Waikiki Beach. If someone changed it to "I Love Sally" then my wife has no reason to consider it true.
Wikipedia should refuse to comply. We do not want to establish any more precedence that social information sites are resposible for the actions of their users.
This sounds like a job for Super Chalk Board. Seriously, I need to update some of the relevent material; much of what I have on the web site (Chalk Dust see in particular "Delivery") is out of date. Interested?
"Lesson learned? You still need to run anti-virus on Windows 7."
But they did not rep[ort how well their own software was at preventing the same attacks, or for that matter Symantec or McAfee. It is the nature of anti-virus software to fail to catch new attacks, and these were clearly new.
I use FreeBSD.
I use LyX 1.5.7 on Gnome 2.26.3 on FreeBSD and I don't think it uses qt. It looks a lot like a regular Gnome app. I recall a few years ago a version that did look "old fashioned." It can appear cluttered at first, but only because the UI tries to offer lots of tool buttons to the rich command set. I find this version the easiest to use. The old UI was not so intuitive to young folks raised on Macs and Windows.
Absolutly true! Except I would say "... when the victors imposed unjust and unwise war reparations.
Re the comment about Japan and an oil embargo, as I recall steel was a factor. Japan was buying US scrap metal and using it to build its navy.
And now to piss off a lot of readers, let's not forget that Japan began this chapter in history with the admirable goal of freeing their Asian bothers from the tyranny of Western colonialism. "Asia for Asians" was their slogan. Too bad they had not yet learned how to manage ... that came later.
"DIY" and software do not appear together often enough.
I would teach them how to create their own personal "apps" using Squeak. Use Nebraska to collaborate and share in class. Look for a few techies to help.
To get stared, try Sugar on a Stick and look at Etoys, a specialized subset of Squeak. (You use Squeak to create Etoys.)
http://www.squeak.org/
http://squeakland.org/
http://www.sugarlabs.org/
Nebraska: http://wiki.squeak.org/squeak/1356
Wider range of info: http://squeak.zwiki.org/SqueakNotes
A recent class at University of Illinois: https://agora.cs.illinois.edu/display/cs598rej/Spring+2009;jsessionid=3BA508D972A809064DC117DBDF7C36C8
I have been working on a related project for roughly ten years and made very little progress. The obstacles to free textbooks are many, and include:
o Author reluctance due to
- the dream of publishing a hit and making money
- fear that associating with such an endeavor (e.g., Wikipedia) will damage their reputation (corollary: a successful publication improves reputation)
- lack of skill in creating on-line content
o Difficulty in finding credible reviewers willing to work for free
o A belief held by consumers that something expensive is worth more (corollary: people measure success by money raised and spent rather than money saved)
o Marketing costs
o The belief that information printed on paper is better than when displayed on screen
- easier to read
- easier to highlight
- easier to carry
- better tactile experience (page flipping)
- better retention
o Broad-based doubts and fears about using computers in the classroom
- money could be better spent elsewhere
- lack of tech support
- the computer becomes a distraction
- disruptions caused by viruses and malware
I encourage anyone considering such an endeavor to explore ways that an automated text can provide a better experience than a printed book. Avoid the trap of publishing presentation slides or simply the text that would be used in a traditional book. Currently I am exploring Squeak, an open-source implementation of Smalltalk with rich media capabilities, specifically the use of bookmorphs and stackmorphs as lively containers for engaging interactive content. These two morphic classes draw inspiration from the old Macintosh HyperCard program.
I am undecided on the issue of true open-source content. Currently I lean towards a published version which can be used freely to create derivative works, while the original author's work cannot be altered. I am not a big fan of anonymous work, nor of communal products. Yet I totally support FOSS.
I see you are one of the 99%. Patent applications have a long list of claims going from general to specific. The examiner can toss out the broader claims. After that it is up to the court. The court does not get involved until there is a plaintiff, and patent cases, being civil cases, can be extremly expensive to litigate. FOSS projects are by nature too poor to play.