but I immediately thought of this as an HR test for potential office workers instead of an academic competency test. I suppose it could be a shiny new toy at Student Services in their "How to Study" program but still seems secondary to a lot of other essential academic abilities.
Although the 6"x5" Flash window means the type displays at about friggin' 5 point. Cute layout. Virtually unreadable demo with 17" at 1152x864. A pet peeve I have with web designers.
Seems like a valid office worker test to me. And, obviously more important, a money-making need to promote that they can fill.
I'm very cynical about AI research building a conscious and autonomous gestalt any time soon (and a little dubious that this program even "detects" argument very well in real-world language), but, in this case, I'm willing to believe that the program just might work well enough to be a useful complement to the professor's reading. As long as it is scanning for writing style, terminology and, perhaps, some argument structure.
In the '80s I looked at the shareware DOS release of a program called Readability Plus by Roland Larson. Apparently it is still around:
The guy's original business model was a little creepy. Sell it to corporations so everyone would speak in the same corporate-approved voice. But it was a pretty interesting program to play around with. Put in a couple paragraphs of Philip K. Dick and it would demonstrate in charts and graphs why it was practically perfect pulp novel writing. (Alan Dean Foster was about a grade level above optimal if I remember.)
"Trials" in a year? How many subjects? Any institutional or commercial backing? What constitutes "success"? Plans for commercial production and rollout if the trials succeed? I'm not holding my breath that I'll see any of these guys wandering around in the next decade or two.
Just when the probe is getting there, it will put back on-site testing of the outer solar system by, what, 1/3 of a century at least?
Maybe NASA could start a casino? That seems to be one solution to keep the rich getting richer and still funnel everybody else's tax dollars to Halliburton.
That's about it. Going into Canada has been like, "Welcome to Canada! Enjoy!" But those are steely SOBs coming back.
Wife and I honeymooned tenting out at the Winnipeg Folk Festival. She had her driver's license. I had mine from another city. We honestly and gullibly said we were now living in a third city. Spent an hour sunning on a ledge watching his buddy wave in musicians I recognized while he rooted through the vehicle.
It does make a person wonder what a post-9/11 Canadian honeymoon would end like without passports.
Think of all the people who survive their trailer house exploding into a gazillion pieces from a natural gas leak when they light up a smoke. We just had one last week in one of our suburban Possum Hollers.
MUCH better chance of survival in a gas explosion then drenched in flammable liquids and lit up. And a much better chance that it would be survival you would want to survive.
Although I'm also one not endorsing the idea that hydrogen is an "energy source".
Doesn't seem much different than burning cow chips to heat your mud hut except that efficiency is wasted in additional artificial processing to placate western sensibilities.
What is the energy output of grass?
Where does the grass come from? Farmers divert land used to grow FOOD? Or we level a few more RAIN FORESTS?
Sure this isn't a late April Fool?
Can't get around the fact that there are just too many people **COUGH (pope)** to run an industrial world on grass.
That's how computers will take over the world. The fools will install grammer checkers that actually require an intelligent comprehension of a world gestalt.
Since OO.org can already make an ODBC connection to MySQL and PostgreSQL to do merges and basic database manipulations within OO.org, requiring Java so one can use an "Access-like" database seems like an effort to provide less with more.
Better be a good database solution and, more critically, better not break current database connectivity with quality servers.
Disturbing? I think the phrase you are looking for is "a predictable certainty".
I quit reading dead tree news about 1999. TV news is far worse. A fecal mass of "human interest" fit for a teen gossip rag and the money shots of propaganda. If you find it an amusing use of your time, look for the editorial qualifying phrases that pay for so-called broadcast "news":...the Italian journalist, WHO WAS SHOT ACCIDENTALLY,...social security, WHICH IS IN TROUBLE,...extending tax breaks [primarily for the rich], WHICH WILL STIMULATE THE ECONOMY.
That's why "news" exists -- to make these OPINIONS the de facto foundation of public consciousness. Americans seem more naive about this process than people in some other countries. I doubt that citizens have been as uncritical reading Pravda.
Something like the web comes along and it isn't a problem. Until it comes to the awareness of a critical mass of people that there might be some genuine news available here. That citizens can actually reinsert their voices into public consciousness without an editorial gatekeeper. Then power predictably has to act to destroy the threat.
The only interesting question is whether something as global as the internet can be coopted instead of trying to imitate the Great Server Wall of China here. It is American tradition to at least maintain the pleasant illusion of intellectual freedom.
And Acrobat 7 is just plain "pretty". Let xpdf compete with _that_. Not that often do I start up a new linux program and say, "Ooh, shiny!". But that situation is improving and it looks like Acrobat 7 is on my list in features, performance and appearance.
Of course the PC isn't "dead". But balance might suggest that a lot more secretaries could do fine with thin clients.
Same with the home. Power users will always want power machines but a thin client might just be the thing to finally kick start that crucial recipe terminal in the kitchen.
[E]veryone's favorite Science Guy is coming out with a new show, The Eyes of Nye where he tackles some more serious issues like addiction, sex, cloning, and climate change."
I think I've seen that show. Called "Bullshit" on Showtime with our favorite magicians.
1. Educated people, particularly educated people of metropolitan educated families, can have a very skewed picture of U.S. demographics. I went to high school in red state North Dakota, and, apparently, that isn't even the worst of fly-over America. Think of a lot of the U.S. as akin to the Afrikaner hinterlands. "Don't need no education when you got the Good Book." Outside of TV, the church _is_ the available culture of many red state Americans. Dude, the town I grew up in had a movie theater I could bicycle to. You take that for granted? A lot of towns across America can't even say that.
2. Speaking of TV. It had been the stereotype that Europeans actually read. Do they still? Because a lot of Americans don't. I took a grad course in medical ethics and, as an aside, the prof asked, "What do people read?" The class came up with all these off-the-wall answers: "New Yorker", "Washington Post", etc. (See out-of-touch above). The answer at that time: National Enquirer. The terrifying truth is that TV is the sole significant source of intellectual content for many, many adult Americans. Americans don't read. Many who do read don't read quality.
3. Prior to the very controversial No Child Left Behind, there have effectively been no national standards in secondary education. I think a lot of the world finds that pretty mind-boggling and pretty mind-boggling that a local parent group can pressure their particular school to teach "intelligent design".
4. Most controversially, I think the significant racial and class division in the U.S. play an important role. And, by that, I don't just mean "oppression" but particularly it's reaction: "I may not have me a fancy education or a good job, but I got Jesus and that's a world better because you can take that education and job and go to hell with it."
People have different capabilities. That many people take fables literally isn't the worst thing. The worst thing is that they think twelve warring theocratic tribes of illiterate sheepherders represent the model for an ideal civilization.
"[F]or the general public, whether they are on plaques or monuments, we should simply add, in big letters, 'See how far we have come. We will not put our God before your God. Here we each worship as we like. We have paintings and statues, both sacred and secular. We are not the Taliban. We are free people. We are allowed to think any thought. We are allowed to speak those thoughts.'"
If we could set up an off-shore gambling site where the house always assumes that government will do the backward and stupid thing, we could rake it in.
I was a sickly kid and the reusable needles back then seemed about as big as drinking straws. I read about pneumatic injectors and used to dream of when they would be the standard. When I finally got a flu vaccination with one of the damn things about seven years ago my arm ached distractingly all afternoon.
I guess any improvement is a good thing but the new needles are nothing. I've had more painful mosquito insertions. Anyone who can't handle them has to have psychological issues about personal invasion that won't be cured by technology.
I think people just don't appreciate their own strenghs and weaknesses.
This seems apparent to me looking at common number series questions. How can someone assert that completing a number series is a "purer" measure of intelligence than a verbal/cultural question? I can come up with all sorts of TORTURED PTOLEMAIC COMPLETIONS to a number series. But obviously there is ONE elegant WELL-KNOWN curve defining any particular series that a person KNOWLEDGEABLE and PRACTICED in various mathematics would recognize from EXPERIENCE. So, then. Why is this any different from a verbal/cultural question?
I think this point cuts to some of the snobbism about hereditary IQ that is much too prevalent in IQ societies.
Slashdot Mirror
but I immediately thought of this as an HR test for potential office workers instead of an academic competency test. I suppose it could be a shiny new toy at Student Services in their "How to Study" program but still seems secondary to a lot of other essential academic abilities.
Although the 6"x5" Flash window means the type displays at about friggin' 5 point. Cute layout. Virtually unreadable demo with 17" at 1152x864. A pet peeve I have with web designers.
Seems like a valid office worker test to me. And, obviously more important, a money-making need to promote that they can fill.
The idiot should have known better than to use $2 bills at a Best Buy. I've lived in Baltimore.
On that note, I miss old fashioned cash registers. You almost always got a discount with your change at a McDonalds in Baltimore.
Isn't it great living in a country with math rankings in the high 20s and literacy near 50th?
Since it links three databases, would I have to read the rest of the article to assume that the good PR is paid for with SQLServer sales?
I'm very cynical about AI research building a conscious and autonomous gestalt any time soon (and a little dubious that this program even "detects" argument very well in real-world language), but, in this case, I'm willing to believe that the program just might work well enough to be a useful complement to the professor's reading. As long as it is scanning for writing style, terminology and, perhaps, some argument structure.
In the '80s I looked at the shareware DOS release of a program called Readability Plus by Roland Larson. Apparently it is still around:
http://www.stylewriter-usa.com/readability.html
in Windows and Mac programs.
The guy's original business model was a little creepy. Sell it to corporations so everyone would speak in the same corporate-approved voice. But it was a pretty interesting program to play around with. Put in a couple paragraphs of Philip K. Dick and it would demonstrate in charts and graphs why it was practically perfect pulp novel writing. (Alan Dean Foster was about a grade level above optimal if I remember.)
Remember, the shotgun is an essential element of the home defense armory.
The Chinese have OSHA?
This news is so old it stinks.
No kidding. Bionic eyes and my personal jet car.
"Trials" in a year? How many subjects? Any institutional or commercial backing? What constitutes "success"? Plans for commercial production and rollout if the trials succeed? I'm not holding my breath that I'll see any of these guys wandering around in the next decade or two.
Just when the probe is getting there, it will put back on-site testing of the outer solar system by, what, 1/3 of a century at least?
Maybe NASA could start a casino? That seems to be one solution to keep the rich getting richer and still funnel everybody else's tax dollars to Halliburton.
That's about it. Going into Canada has been like, "Welcome to Canada! Enjoy!" But those are steely SOBs coming back.
Wife and I honeymooned tenting out at the Winnipeg Folk Festival. She had her driver's license. I had mine from another city. We honestly and gullibly said we were now living in a third city. Spent an hour sunning on a ledge watching his buddy wave in musicians I recognized while he rooted through the vehicle.
It does make a person wonder what a post-9/11 Canadian honeymoon would end like without passports.
Think of all the people who survive their trailer house exploding into a gazillion pieces from a natural gas leak when they light up a smoke. We just had one last week in one of our suburban Possum Hollers.
MUCH better chance of survival in a gas explosion then drenched in flammable liquids and lit up. And a much better chance that it would be survival you would want to survive.
Although I'm also one not endorsing the idea that hydrogen is an "energy source".
Thank you.
Yes, then, a genuinely good thing and all, but rather a hyped article. Typically with multiple platters I've always thought of drives as "3D".
Doesn't seem much different than burning cow chips to heat your mud hut except that efficiency is wasted in additional artificial processing to placate western sensibilities.
What is the energy output of grass?
Where does the grass come from? Farmers divert land used to grow FOOD? Or we level a few more RAIN FORESTS?
Sure this isn't a late April Fool?
Can't get around the fact that there are just too many people **COUGH (pope)** to run an industrial world on grass.
That's how computers will take over the world. The fools will install grammer checkers that actually require an intelligent comprehension of a world gestalt.
But, oddly, I want one.
Since OO.org can already make an ODBC connection to MySQL and PostgreSQL to do merges and basic database manipulations within OO.org, requiring Java so one can use an "Access-like" database seems like an effort to provide less with more.
Better be a good database solution and, more critically, better not break current database connectivity with quality servers.
I'm thinking maybe it's an investment at Microsoft contract renewal time?
It feels to me like South Korea has been "moving to linux" for a few years now and I'm starting to get cynical.
Disturbing? I think the phrase you are looking for is "a predictable certainty".
...the Italian journalist, WHO WAS SHOT ACCIDENTALLY, ...social security, WHICH IS IN TROUBLE, ...extending tax breaks [primarily for the rich], WHICH WILL STIMULATE THE ECONOMY.
I quit reading dead tree news about 1999. TV news is far worse. A fecal mass of "human interest" fit for a teen gossip rag and the money shots of propaganda. If you find it an amusing use of your time, look for the editorial qualifying phrases that pay for so-called broadcast "news":
That's why "news" exists -- to make these OPINIONS the de facto foundation of public consciousness. Americans seem more naive about this process than people in some other countries. I doubt that citizens have been as uncritical reading Pravda.
Something like the web comes along and it isn't a problem. Until it comes to the awareness of a critical mass of people that there might be some genuine news available here. That citizens can actually reinsert their voices into public consciousness without an editorial gatekeeper. Then power predictably has to act to destroy the threat.
The only interesting question is whether something as global as the internet can be coopted instead of trying to imitate the Great Server Wall of China here. It is American tradition to at least maintain the pleasant illusion of intellectual freedom.
And Acrobat 7 is just plain "pretty". Let xpdf compete with _that_. Not that often do I start up a new linux program and say, "Ooh, shiny!". But that situation is improving and it looks like Acrobat 7 is on my list in features, performance and appearance.
Of course the PC isn't "dead". But balance might suggest that a lot more secretaries could do fine with thin clients.
Same with the home. Power users will always want power machines but a thin client might just be the thing to finally kick start that crucial recipe terminal in the kitchen.
[E]veryone's favorite Science Guy is coming out with a new show, The Eyes of Nye where he tackles some more serious issues like addiction, sex, cloning, and climate change."
I think I've seen that show. Called "Bullshit" on Showtime with our favorite magicians.
I can think of a few possibilities:
1. Educated people, particularly educated people of metropolitan educated families, can have a very skewed picture of U.S. demographics. I went to high school in red state North Dakota, and, apparently, that isn't even the worst of fly-over America. Think of a lot of the U.S. as akin to the Afrikaner hinterlands. "Don't need no education when you got the Good Book." Outside of TV, the church _is_ the available culture of many red state Americans. Dude, the town I grew up in had a movie theater I could bicycle to. You take that for granted? A lot of towns across America can't even say that.
2. Speaking of TV. It had been the stereotype that Europeans actually read. Do they still? Because a lot of Americans don't. I took a grad course in medical ethics and, as an aside, the prof asked, "What do people read?" The class came up with all these off-the-wall answers: "New Yorker", "Washington Post", etc. (See out-of-touch above). The answer at that time: National Enquirer. The terrifying truth is that TV is the sole significant source of intellectual content for many, many adult Americans. Americans don't read. Many who do read don't read quality.
3. Prior to the very controversial No Child Left Behind, there have effectively been no national standards in secondary education. I think a lot of the world finds that pretty mind-boggling and pretty mind-boggling that a local parent group can pressure their particular school to teach "intelligent design".
4. Most controversially, I think the significant racial and class division in the U.S. play an important role. And, by that, I don't just mean "oppression" but particularly it's reaction: "I may not have me a fancy education or a good job, but I got Jesus and that's a world better because you can take that education and job and go to hell with it."
People have different capabilities. That many people take fables literally isn't the worst thing. The worst thing is that they think twelve warring theocratic tribes of illiterate sheepherders represent the model for an ideal civilization.
0 50 75.html
Like this article:
http://www.buzzflash.com/contributors/05/03/con
on the ten commandments says:
"[F]or the general public, whether they are on plaques or monuments, we should simply add, in big letters, 'See how far we have come. We will not put our God before your God. Here we each worship as we like. We have paintings and statues, both sacred and secular. We are not the Taliban. We are free people. We are allowed to think any thought. We are allowed to speak those thoughts.'"
If we could set up an off-shore gambling site where the house always assumes that government will do the backward and stupid thing, we could rake it in.
I was a sickly kid and the reusable needles back then seemed about as big as drinking straws. I read about pneumatic injectors and used to dream of when they would be the standard. When I finally got a flu vaccination with one of the damn things about seven years ago my arm ached distractingly all afternoon.
I guess any improvement is a good thing but the new needles are nothing. I've had more painful mosquito insertions. Anyone who can't handle them has to have psychological issues about personal invasion that won't be cured by technology.
I think people just don't appreciate their own strenghs and weaknesses.
This seems apparent to me looking at common number series questions. How can someone assert that completing a number series is a "purer" measure of intelligence than a verbal/cultural question? I can come up with all sorts of TORTURED PTOLEMAIC COMPLETIONS to a number series. But obviously there is ONE elegant WELL-KNOWN curve defining any particular series that a person KNOWLEDGEABLE and PRACTICED in various mathematics would recognize from EXPERIENCE. So, then. Why is this any different from a verbal/cultural question?
I think this point cuts to some of the snobbism about hereditary IQ that is much too prevalent in IQ societies.