You say "eliminate completely all income taxes on anyone who makes less that $40,000 per year." Unfortunately, as you move to lower income brackets it is the "payroll" taxes which get you and they are extremely regressive. That is, Social Security and Medicare taxes are the greatest burden on the lower incomes so reducing income tax on them has a reduced effect. Few people realize that Bill Gates pays almost the same amount of payroll tax as lower wage earners because it only applies to the first $85,000 or so of income -- the next billions of income pay no Social Security.
A number of posters seem to have missed the point on how it is implemented (not surprising because that is hard to find in the articles). The key concept seems to be some shared space such as a server. The BBC article says:
"The 'pick and drop' system was developed using the Mitsubishi Amity handheld pen computer and a Wacom PL300 pen-sensitive desktop screen.
Pens are given a unique ID, which is readable by the computer when the pen is close to its screen.
When a person taps on an icon with the pen, the computer contacts a 'pen manager' server, via a fixed or wireless connection, and the object is attached to the pen, although the pen itself has no storage capacity.
When the pen tip comes close to the screen of another device, a shadow of the attached object appears on its screen.
Tapping the pen tip instructs the 'pen manager' server to copy the file to that location."
"Experienced writers, teachers, and writing assessment specialists have tested e-rater to determine the extent to which it "understands" the content of essay responses. Some of these writers have submitted essays that have tricked e-rater into giving a score even though the essay does not make any sense. The individual words in these "challenge essays" are grammatically correct, but they are strung together in such a way that they create nonsense sentences."
That observation shouldn't be surprising because earlier it says: "An e-rater score will be most beneficial to students who make a good faith effort at using it to improve their writing skills."
The program works (grossly oversimplified) by mimicking the grading of humans on essay samples.
I've had an HP/Compaq tablet for about a month and love it.
There is a tremendous variety of things called tablets and they can be very different. For example, mine is very lightweight (3 pounds?) and the keyboard detaches so the tablet can be a true tablet. The built-in wireless and excellent battery life are significant parts of what make this useful. I go well over 3 hours with wireless on. Would I have been equally or more happy with a 3 pound laptop -- maybe.
I know people who have purchased much more powerful tablets (mine is only 1GHz) with permanent keyboards. They have a machine which is heavier with a fraction of the battery life. The result is that they aren't happy.
I'm a professor and I can wirelessly control PowerPoint while writing on slides while walking around the lecture hall. I can hand it to a student to write something for others to see. In that mode I leave the keyboard off and it is easy to walk around with it in one hand and the pen in the other.
I do use it for notes in meetings and I like being able to use handwriting to mark up documents.
The true test seems to be at home. My kids want to use it all the time. Curl up by the fire with the tablet and surf the internet. My son's teacher requires a handwritten first draft so he can write it and then convert it to text for the later draft.
Would I recommend it for college? Well, for my kid going off to college I'm getting a lightweight laptop. However, by the time my other kid goes to college in a few years, the choice may be a tablet.
For the record, I'm not a gadget person who has to have the latest thing. For example, I never figured out a use for a PDA (yes I do know how it is extremely useful for some, but not for me).
Many people on/. assume that any use of cheat checking is "guilty until proven innocent", but that is not necessarily the case. I am a computer science professor who submits all programs for comparison to all other students in the class to MOSS . The 300 programs means 90000 comparisons which are returned sorted on similarity. It would be foolish to simply acuse people based on that. I spend at least an hour on each case. I only use MOSS to do a first pass to eliminate the programs which I need not look at. Out of 90000 only the top dozen require checking. Any case I build against a student is the same as if I did it all by hand -- I simply have been saved the time of looking at the vast majority which are fine. Of course, the assumption is that there are no false negatives -- all that I DON'T look at are innocent. Many years of experience have convinced me that it is a reasonable assumption. But my point is that the computer is not determining guilt; I am.
Briefly, the issue of the database of papers is quite a different issue and I agree with the sentiment that it is a problem. I do teach courses with essays and I can tell you that it is quite easy to find plagarism proof -- I can search the web as well as the students. Just last semester I read a paper, the alarms went off, I searched and found the sources, and failed the student.
People who have mentioned that the underlying issue is cutting costs, and that that is wrong are correct on both counts. In the US, financial support for education appears to be at a nadir.
At my school, the Engineering College has an extensive Co-op and Internship program. Not only is it an excellent way to help pay for school, it also is an excellent way to get valuable experience. My observation is that students who have been in the Co-op program or have had Internships get the most and best job offers. Anyone who is any good will get an offer from the company they worked with. In addition to valuable experience, they also know how to interview.
Of course, some Co-op experiences are a waste, but they appear to be rare and there is sufficient competition that a company which does not provide useful experiences disappears from the program.
From the article: "The aircraft was the first to use proper ailerons, instead of the inferior wing warping system that the Wright's used." That statement should be cleaned up a bit. While it certainly applies to the first 100 years of flight, current research indicates that wing warping will provide significant improvements in the near future as demonstrated by current prototypes.
On the other hand, one slashdot comment was that the Wright's had controled flight, but if this fellow had working ailerons, I suspect that his flight was controled. Rather one should say that the Wright brothers significantly advanced the science of flight, and for that, they deserve a significant place in the history of flight.
In the current US system, poll sign-in is supposed to address that problem. We know this has been abused in the past as is exemplified in the Chicago jokes: "vote early, vote often" or "the only problem with a dead voter is that he or she can only vote once." However, it is a system which works reasonably well.
I'm a professor on the front line of this at our school. We have a two-semester introductory programming sequence for majors in C++. We use VS.NET for the first semester, and use gcc on Sun Sparcs for the seoncd semester. When students have completed the two-course sequence they can program in both environments (in theory:-). Subsequent courses can then choose the appropriate platform.
Microsoft provides the software (VS, not Office) as part of an academic alliance for students to download so that can be counted as a huge donation, if you want to think of it that way. Microsoft did help with the transition of the first course from Unix/gcc to Windows/VS. Having an IDE for the first course seems to make the first steps easier for students.
Did we sell our souls to Microsoft? I don't think so, especially since our second semester is on another platform. Is it smart marketing and a good investment for Microsoft? I think so.
I encourage undergraduate students to work as interns or on co-op. Then my reply to the advanced degree question is: look around, and if you see people doing what you want to do having advanced degrees, then get an advanced degree.
As an advisor, I second the comments about needing to love the research -- a PhD process throws many hurdles in your way. If you do not enjoy the work and the people you are working with, you will have difficulty completing at PhD.
Also, I second the comment that an advanced degree may be more benefitial later in ones career. Elder alumni have related that to me.
For context: I am a professor with a PhD in Computer Science.
I spoke with a developer with a working system. The phone companies can (as in "do now") provide the location information, and security is provided through certificates. If, for the moment, you assume that certificates work, you get to control who gets to see your location information. You can hand it off to your friends or boss, and you can turn it off (stealth mode) at any time. I saw it working and it is pretty impressive (or scary for all the reasons already mentioned). Also, once the infastructure is in place (which it now is), it is trivial to implement.
Coercive permission and court warrants would get around perfect security (if such a thing existed). However, my point is that the infastructure is in place right now (in US) and implementation is easy.
As I approach becoming a 50-year-old geek, a Kevlar canoe for wilderness camping is a welcome technological aid. Its light weight allows old farts like me to still portage with ease. It is 17 feet long (about 5.5 meters) and weights about 40 pounds (a bit less than 20 kg). It isn't as pretty as a wood-canvas beauty, nor does it perform as well as some I have used, but I can carry it, it is quiet, and it does track well on lakes.
Judging from how my daughter uses IM, limiting to six conversations will kill this device. I think a dozen is more the norm. By the way, keeping up with many conversations has turned her into a speedy touch typist.
Re: I've used genetic algorithms
on
Digital Darwin
·
· Score: 1
I interpret the results differently. Some anti-evolutionists argue that there are certain existing structures which they believe could not have evolved and use that observation to claim that the theory of evolution is wrong. This work demonstrates a mechanism for the evolution of that class of structure. Hence, it removes yet another argument from anti-evolutionists.
In my interpretation of the results, I would argue that while the criticism "all this work does is simulate evolution on a computer" is a correct observation it misses the important result that a mechanism is demonstrated.
My wife and daughter happened across the spam museum a few weeks ago and found that it included a recreation of the diner from the Monty Python skit including a TV which will play the skit for you (over and over, I presume:-).
Obviously, Hormel has the good sense to see the humor in all this.
Note the relationship of the described encrypted files key management to TCPA (not necessarily Palladium). TCPA stores the private key on a chip and protects it (not from physical attack). The concept is to eliminate the need to keep a working copy of the private key on an external device such as a floppy. The TCPA description indicates that the Linux-boot-floppy attack would not allow access to TCPA encrypted files since the boot environment would be different.
The end of the article mentions repeaters and that they could be useful for quantum key distribution -- extending the range of quantum key distrubution. However, if you can copy for a repeater, I would think that you could make other copies which would seem to defeat quantum key distribution. What am I missing here?
On the other hand, I came across a paper which proves quantum key distribution safe against a "collective" attack which allows "quantum memory". I've had trouble understanding how a collective attack works: "each qubit is attached to a separate probe, unentangled to any other probe. The measurement is delayed until after all the classical data is obtained." This paper went way over my head. Maybe someone out in/. land can help with an intuitive explanation because I think the significance of this paper and the safe use of repeaters in quantum key distribution are related.
My experience is different. I'm in an Engineering College. The issue of buying good student reviews with high grades was examined by looking at student reviews and grades -- at our school student reviews are numerical (and supported by comments). It turned out that the highest rated faculty member in CS also had the lowest average grades assigned.
On a different note, a responder noted the effect of students dropping halfway through. I have observed that to have a significant effect on distribution. Also, university rules can have an effect. In my school you cannot retake a class if you earned a 2.0 so a student who believes they will get less than a 3.0 will skip the final exam to force a 0.0 so they can retake the class. The combined effect in my introduction to programming class is a significant number of drops in the middle plus a significant number of students skipping the final resulting in many failures and drops but fewer than expected grades between 1.0 and 3.0. The class average is usually around 2.5 and about 25% drops.
"Computer Power and Human Reason : From Judgement to Calculation" by Joseph Weizenbaum
is an excellent overview of CS topics for a general, educated audience. It is over 25 years old, yet still relevant. Amazon.com still sells it.
Technical, but easy to read books on circuits are the ones by M. Morris Mano published by Prentice Hall such as "Computer System Architecture".
Slashdot Mirror
You say "eliminate completely all income taxes on anyone who makes less that $40,000 per year." Unfortunately, as you move to lower income brackets it is the "payroll" taxes which get you and they are extremely regressive. That is, Social Security and Medicare taxes are the greatest burden on the lower incomes so reducing income tax on them has a reduced effect. Few people realize that Bill Gates pays almost the same amount of payroll tax as lower wage earners because it only applies to the first $85,000 or so of income -- the next billions of income pay no Social Security.
I forget the brand, but I had a USB key fail on me -- nothing would talk to it anymore. Just something to keep in mind.
A number of posters seem to have missed the point on how it is implemented (not surprising because that is hard to find in the articles). The key concept seems to be some shared space such as a server. The BBC article says:
"The 'pick and drop' system was developed using the Mitsubishi Amity handheld pen computer and a Wacom PL300 pen-sensitive desktop screen.
Pens are given a unique ID, which is readable by the computer when the pen is close to its screen.
When a person taps on an icon with the pen, the computer contacts a 'pen manager' server, via a fixed or wireless connection, and the object is attached to the pen, although the pen itself has no storage capacity.
When the pen tip comes close to the screen of another device, a shadow of the attached object appears on its screen.
Tapping the pen tip instructs the 'pen manager' server to copy the file to that location."
Yes, you can trick it. From the e-rater article:
"Experienced writers, teachers, and writing assessment specialists have tested e-rater to determine the extent to which it "understands" the content of essay responses. Some of these writers have submitted essays that have tricked e-rater into giving a score even though the essay does not make any sense. The individual words in these "challenge essays" are grammatically correct, but they are strung together in such a way that they create nonsense sentences."
That observation shouldn't be surprising because earlier it says: "An e-rater score will be most beneficial to students who make a good faith effort at using it to improve their writing skills."
The program works (grossly oversimplified) by mimicking the grading of humans on essay samples.
I've had an HP/Compaq tablet for about a month and love it.
There is a tremendous variety of things called tablets and they can be very different. For example, mine is very lightweight (3 pounds?) and the keyboard detaches so the tablet can be a true tablet. The built-in wireless and excellent battery life are significant parts of what make this useful. I go well over 3 hours with wireless on. Would I have been equally or more happy with a 3 pound laptop -- maybe.
I know people who have purchased much more powerful tablets (mine is only 1GHz) with permanent keyboards. They have a machine which is heavier with a fraction of the battery life. The result is that they aren't happy.
I'm a professor and I can wirelessly control PowerPoint while writing on slides while walking around the lecture hall. I can hand it to a student to write something for others to see. In that mode I leave the keyboard off and it is easy to walk around with it in one hand and the pen in the other.
I do use it for notes in meetings and I like being able to use handwriting to mark up documents.
The true test seems to be at home. My kids want to use it all the time. Curl up by the fire with the tablet and surf the internet. My son's teacher requires a handwritten first draft so he can write it and then convert it to text for the later draft.
Would I recommend it for college? Well, for my kid going off to college I'm getting a lightweight laptop. However, by the time my other kid goes to college in a few years, the choice may be a tablet.
For the record, I'm not a gadget person who has to have the latest thing. For example, I never figured out a use for a PDA (yes I do know how it is extremely useful for some, but not for me).
Two places which have details on arguments against the current state-of-the-art of electronic voting are verifiedvoting.org and Electronic Frontier Foundation.
Here is a link to the actual report.
Many people on /. assume that any use of cheat checking is "guilty until proven innocent", but that is not necessarily the case. I am a computer science professor who submits all programs for comparison to all other students in the class to MOSS . The 300 programs means 90000 comparisons which are returned sorted on similarity. It would be foolish to simply acuse people based on that. I spend at least an hour on each case. I only use MOSS to do a first pass to eliminate the programs which I need not look at. Out of 90000 only the top dozen require checking. Any case I build against a student is the same as if I did it all by hand -- I simply have been saved the time of looking at the vast majority which are fine. Of course, the assumption is that there are no false negatives -- all that I DON'T look at are innocent. Many years of experience have convinced me that it is a reasonable assumption.
But my point is that the computer is not determining guilt; I am.
Briefly, the issue of the database of papers is quite a different issue and I agree with the sentiment that it is a problem. I do teach courses with essays and I can tell you that it is quite easy to find plagarism proof -- I can search the web as well as the students. Just last semester I read a paper, the alarms went off, I searched and found the sources, and failed the student.
People who have mentioned that the underlying issue is cutting costs, and that that is wrong are correct on both counts. In the US, financial support for education appears to be at a nadir.
At my school, the Engineering College has an extensive Co-op and Internship program. Not only is it an excellent way to help pay for school, it also is an excellent way to get valuable experience. My observation is that students who have been in the Co-op program or have had Internships get the most and best job offers. Anyone who is any good will get an offer from the company they worked with. In addition to valuable experience, they also know how to interview.
Of course, some Co-op experiences are a waste, but they appear to be rare and there is sufficient competition that a company which does not provide useful experiences disappears from the program.
On the other hand, one slashdot comment was that the Wright's had controled flight, but if this fellow had working ailerons, I suspect that his flight was controled. Rather one should say that the Wright brothers significantly advanced the science of flight, and for that, they deserve a significant place in the history of flight.
Excellent point.
In the current US system, poll sign-in is supposed to address that problem. We know this has been abused in the past as is exemplified in the Chicago jokes: "vote early, vote often" or "the only problem with a dead voter is that he or she can only vote once." However, it is a system which works reasonably well.
I'm a professor on the front line of this at our school. We have a two-semester introductory programming sequence for majors in C++. We use VS.NET for the first semester, and use gcc on Sun Sparcs for the seoncd semester. When students have completed the two-course sequence they can program in both environments (in theory :-). Subsequent courses can then choose the appropriate platform.
Microsoft provides the software (VS, not Office) as part of an academic alliance for students to download so that can be counted as a huge donation, if you want to think of it that way. Microsoft did help with the transition of the first course from Unix/gcc to Windows/VS. Having an IDE for the first course seems to make the first steps easier for students.
Did we sell our souls to Microsoft? I don't think so, especially since our second semester is on another platform. Is it smart marketing and a good investment for Microsoft? I think so.
I encourage undergraduate students to work as interns or on co-op. Then my reply to the advanced degree question is: look around, and if you see people doing what you want to do having advanced degrees, then get an advanced degree.
As an advisor, I second the comments about needing to love the research -- a PhD process throws many hurdles in your way. If you do not enjoy the work and the people you are working with, you will have difficulty completing at PhD.
Also, I second the comment that an advanced degree may be more benefitial later in ones career. Elder alumni have related that to me.
For context: I am a professor with a PhD in Computer Science.
I spoke with a developer with a working system. The phone companies can (as in "do now") provide the location information, and security is provided through certificates. If, for the moment, you assume that certificates work, you get to control who gets to see your location information. You can hand it off to your friends or boss, and you can turn it off (stealth mode) at any time. I saw it working and it is pretty impressive (or scary for all the reasons already mentioned). Also, once the infastructure is in place (which it now is), it is trivial to implement.
Coercive permission and court warrants would get around perfect security (if such a thing existed).
However, my point is that the infastructure is in place right now (in US) and implementation is easy.
As I approach becoming a 50-year-old geek, a Kevlar canoe for wilderness camping is a welcome technological aid. Its light weight allows old farts like me to still portage with ease. It is 17 feet long (about 5.5 meters) and weights about 40 pounds (a bit less than 20 kg). It isn't as pretty as a wood-canvas beauty, nor does it perform as well as some I have used, but I can carry it, it is quiet, and it does track well on lakes.
Judging from how my daughter uses IM, limiting to six conversations will kill this device. I think a dozen is more the norm. By the way, keeping up with many conversations has turned her into a speedy touch typist.
I interpret the results differently. Some anti-evolutionists argue that there are certain existing structures which they believe could not have evolved and use that observation to claim that the theory of evolution is wrong. This work demonstrates a mechanism for the evolution of that class of structure. Hence, it removes yet another argument from anti-evolutionists.
In my interpretation of the results, I would argue that while the criticism "all this work does is simulate evolution on a computer" is a correct observation it misses the important result that a mechanism is demonstrated.
My wife and daughter happened across the spam museum a few weeks ago and found that it included a recreation of the diner from the Monty Python skit including a TV which will play the skit for you (over and over, I presume :-).
Obviously, Hormel has the good sense to see the humor in all this.
... not to mention that heat signature is a major negative in a modern battlefield!
Note the relationship of the described encrypted files key management to TCPA (not necessarily Palladium). TCPA stores the private key on a chip and protects it (not from physical attack). The concept is to eliminate the need to keep a working copy of the private key on an external device such as a floppy. The TCPA description indicates that the Linux-boot-floppy attack would not allow access to TCPA encrypted files since the boot environment would be different.
On the other hand, I came across a paper which proves quantum key distribution safe against a "collective" attack which allows "quantum memory". I've had trouble understanding how a collective attack works: "each qubit is attached to a separate probe, unentangled to any other probe. The measurement is delayed until after all the classical data is obtained." This paper went way over my head. Maybe someone out in /. land can help with an intuitive explanation because I think the significance of this paper and the safe use of repeaters in quantum key distribution are related.
My experience is different. I'm in an Engineering College. The issue of buying good student reviews with high grades was examined by looking at student reviews and grades -- at our school student reviews are numerical (and supported by comments). It turned out that the highest rated faculty member in CS also had the lowest average grades assigned.
On a different note, a responder noted the effect of students dropping halfway through. I have observed that to have a significant effect on distribution. Also, university rules can have an effect. In my school you cannot retake a class if you earned a 2.0 so a student who believes they will get less than a 3.0 will skip the final exam to force a 0.0 so they can retake the class. The combined effect in my introduction to programming class is a significant number of drops in the middle plus a significant number of students skipping the final resulting in many failures and drops but fewer than expected grades between 1.0 and 3.0. The class average is usually around 2.5 and about 25% drops.
Technical, but easy to read books on circuits are the ones by M. Morris Mano published by Prentice Hall such as "Computer System Architecture".
-rich enbody@cse.msu.edu