Right on! I was forced (by having the class leader's daughter as a girlfriend) to take a Dale Carnegie course, and it was amazing. Like finding out Dwayne Newton is an incredibly talented musician and a hell of an artist. That is, something that sounds so corny and goofy, but actually is like reading "Siddartha" or "Beyond Good and Evil", that is to say, life-changing. Weird experience. But Dale's right, the most beautiful sound to anyone is the sound of their own name!
What makes an attractive person? As a public high school teacher, it is a fact to me that the more attractive students have a much higher self-image and sense of confidence about themselves. And, with that confidence, tend to do better at school, are of course more comfortable in social situations, etc. Though it's not politically correct, perhaps, to state this so baldly.
On a side note, my older sister (a product of the 60's and a number of alternative lifestyles) used to tell me that physical beauty was due to karma, and was evident in the family situation, between say the rich suburbs of a city and the inner working-class areas of the city. So not just born rich, but beautiful. And not just poor, but ugly. I don't know, seems kind of a tough break for us eternal souls, to get screwed both ways.
Sorry, but you don't know the guy at all. You read a few words, and fit him into some image in your head, and that ain't him. And you are being mean, or trying to be mean to someone, maybe not even that guy. Though this whole thread is about labelling us all as one or another, isn't it?
I don't mean the following to sound harsh, but this behavior is typical of introverts.
Interesting. So describing a behavior as NOT extroverted, but actually introverted, might be considered harsh? Why would that be harsh? Well, only if extroversion were preferred to introversion, which is clearly a bias of the poster.
The article states quite definitely that extroversion is hard-wired and physiologically and chemically based, so one is no better than the other, and not a personal choice. The current literature is clear, nature beats nurture all the way, our personalities are pretty much genetically determined. On the other hand, it's important to remember this is a purely intellectual exercise, personality traits are all more of a continuum then a dichotomy, no one's an "extrovert" or an "introvert" completely, all the time, under any circumstances. It's like having a long discussion about being "right-brained" or "left-brained," another goofy dichotomy that I find annoying. There's only one dichotomy for us humans, and that's that boys and girls thang.
"The main difference between men and women is that men are lunatics and women are idiots.-Rebecca West"
An extrovert enjoys making *social* connections to people. You're not connecting with people; you're just hoping they will notice you...
Uh, so extroverts aren't also seeking attention and notice? Nonsense. What would be more true would be to say that extroverts are energized and relaxed by vocal exchanges with others, especially those exchanges they get to dominate, while introverts find some of these exchanges draining, awkward, and pointless.
Obviously I fall with the introverts, and the above post's description of the behaviors is right on, but mis-interpreted. I've often responded to tiresome small-talk statements about natural phenomena with (possibly pedantic!) responses. Probably once or twice about cumulous clouds, even. See, many introverts don't speak just to hear their own voices. We don't feel that every one in the room might be especially fascinated by whatever comes out of our mouths. So when we speak, we often try to offer only meaningful, true, information of some topic we're passionate about.
It does sound like a good read for us introverts, if for nothing else that sense of recognition. Personally, I've known of my own slant since high school; I need solitude, don't suffer fools gladly, don't have any interest in small-talk, am only "half-there" in large groups. But have also been the life of parties, had "true connections", real conversations, all that good stuff too, it's not all that hard to be an extrovert. Actually Dale Carnegie's book and course really aren't THAT bad an idea. At least you'll learn a little about people, that you probably didn't know.
Well, a couple more pertinent quotes:
"I love mankind; it's people I can't stand.-Charles Schultz"
"The trouble with the world is that the stupid are cocksure and the intelligent are full of doubt.-Bertrand Russell"
I mod this insightful! Well, anyway, would if I could. Mr. Garcia subscribes in the same way many of us (that is, about 1 out of 10 listeners/watchers) subscribe to public radio and tv. (blurb: WYSO 91.3 Yellow Springs, OH) That is, as an honest trade of value for value received, almost a gesture of respect. This is the behavior of a civilized human, and therefore rare and unusual.
On the other hand, I (and others) also pay a ridiculous amount of $$ for cable tv and a zippy fast internet connection, surely luxuries not often used in a way that would justify their cost, at least for me. I now pay, what, about $1.85 per day for cable TV? Goofy.
So I say it's really hard to say how/if people will pay for content. I haven't paid any extra yet beyond my earthlink account, and would probably resist. There's just too much out there for free, and I don't see how the free content can really fall off in quantity at this point. (side thought: Is anyone out there contemplating the permanence, or persistence of internet content? That is, pages created 3-5 years ago and abandoned are still on available servers, etc.? Isn't it all sort of an interesting possibility of an eternal archive? The all-time library of Alexandria?)
I would, however, leap at the chance to use micro-payments for cable tv or internet content. I'm thinking of perhaps some small initial set-up fee, then charges in the realm of fractions of a cent per minute, or something. I'm sure I come in on the low end of usage so should pay less than I do now. Of course, then I'd have to give more to public radio.
Nah, just not true, "adults with real jobs" will never really influence or effect the pop music scene. Kids 12 to 25 are always the ones who will spend the most and make the stars. Pop music is pop music, the simple fact that the backstreet boys have sold so many cds means by definition they are a good pop music act, however they were marketed. Geez, Frank Sinatra was marketed. (Also, marketed is a very strange verb to use repeatedly.)
I think the interesting points made were these two: the end of the cd-replacing era, and the fact that 12 to 25's no longer identify as strongly with musical genres or bands. These two resonate with my point of view, anyway, and make the most sense.
As an old boomer (born '55, young for a boomer) of course I'm pretty sure music sales are down because the music is just so bad!
I agree completely. There really is nothing like having the whole system and box being presented to you as "ready to be instructed" in the form of a basic prompt. All those old first generation vic-20's, appleII's, trash-80's, etc. were so available they encouraged programming. I remember finding some of the apple iic's I had to teach with at school in the 80's had a mini-assembler (supposedly written by the Woz himself) built into rom. And even though the graphics were non-existent, lots of kids created some pretty cool animation almost in no time, learning the idea of sprites and screen-flipping effortlessly.
What's bad about windows xp is the activation scam. As I can personally use only one computer at a time, I refuse to accept that I can't install any software I buy on any computer I own. And, it's too picky about memory.
All of us beasts are wonders, but we are beasts none the less.
Through the freedom from food-gathering brought about by cultivation of grain, and the biological plus brought by successfully digesting cow's milk, we humans gained something the other beasts do not have, leisure time. Our big brains, using symbols of language and shape, can now think of all manner of ephemeral objects, and create words like beauty and poetry and god, and attach all sorts of profound meaning to them.
All these words and activities are maya, the great illusion we clever monkeys create. We live and die in a minute flash of time in the universe with our fellow beasts, and all of us are wonders of creation. But humans as the "utter pinnacle of all creation," or when compared to the beasts like the "glory of the sun" doesn't quite match up to the sum of human history so far.
What animal murders his own kind? Or destroys and poisons its home? Or beats its own young without mercy? Or slaughters entire nations?
Beauty may be real, though, and that alone may yet save us.
The 12 coins is a great problem, and a joy to solve by oneself, you should skip the solutions here and try it if you've never had the pleasure.
I had a 7th grade student solve it a long time ago, though it took him overnight and I don't know if he had help. Also, we had already looked at the 9 coins, one heavy, two weighings problem so I'm sure that helped him.
I'd think that in an interview, just coming up with the first crucial step, then some idea of the rest of the solution in ten minutes would be pretty good, IF one had never heard of the problem. This is an ancient math question though, seems like everyone in CS or Math or Physics would have heard of this one by college.
You, my friend, have hit it exactly right. Yeah, cheats are fun, but then it's not the game. Might as well just pick up a soccer ball and run with it. Throw a football over the goal line and claim a touchdown.
It is interesting to look at where the line of semi-acceptable cheating exists, between the extreme of a cheat which just skips to "WINNER!", game over immediately, and a subtle editing of a cfg file for say, a wider field of view.
It's also interesting that this is actually a serious issue for some people, wow. Games? Definition? Pointless leisure activity, remember?
The only thing we know for sure is that -- no matter what -- there will be some dork out there bitching and moaning about how great games used to be, and how they don't make them like they used to.
Sure saved me some time raving on about Powermonger and Dungeon Master, not wanting to be a dork and all. Doesn't mean it's not true.
But historical facts such as windows and doors and living conditions can of course NEVER be known or proven as a certainty. And of course this is true for prehistory and astronomy as well, we can't go back there to find out. So we always preface this sort of knowledge unspokingly with "As far as current evidence and theory supports..." Rigorous historical texts actually tend to be a little dry in that they refer only to found objects from different sites, etc., and very little description of so-called daily life.
And finally, absence of proof does at least mean that it's NOT supported by current evidence and theory, and shouldn't be in textbooks. And absence of proof always points towards absence of existance, at least more than towards existance.
Pardon me, didn't mean to appear upset. Nor to flame or complain, which I don't think I did. I just didn't get the left-right thing or see it as a major cultural idiom. And yes, the clutch pedal IS neither back nor forward, my point is that the pedals in a car don't make a good analogy for the left-right thing.
Ah, now that makes sense! For some reason I have never noticed the position of the buttons in dialogs, seems like most of the time I hit cancel anyway.
GUI designers certainly are working WAY too hard, though, if the ordering of dialog choices has been looked into so thoroughly!
This fits with the notion of western culture that going to left is "going back"...
So eastern culture has going to right as "going back" and to the left as forward? Hunh? Where does that come from?
Their interface change effectively violated the very way that most people (who speak english) have thought about how stuff works for thousands of years.
So now it's just english speakers, not western culture? And thousands of years of english speakers? More news to me!
Also, how does the clutch pedal fit in with this bizarre right-left idea? And, when you turn something, some part of the wheel is going up, down, right, left, and every angle in-between. There's no such thing as turning a wheel "to the right.
As for the main thread of this discussion, once I found Midnight Commander I never used any of the desktop file managers in *nix, just kept a terminal window handy with MC running. How tiresome that the main things being worked on in Nautilus seem to be icons and themes. BFD.
And Kramnik is still the current champ, win or lose to Deep Fritz. I'm always surprised when people make a big deal out of a human chess player, even the champ, losing to a computer program. The program thinks for basically millions of man-years for each move, moves the pieces around on the board to see what happens, and feels no fatigue or pressure. Of course the programs will eventually beat any and all humans, big deal! My Dodge Caravan can run down the fastest sprinter, too, so what? Are the Olympics now somehow pointless?
I give credit to Kramnik for taking Fritz on, I hope he gets big $$$ at least. It'll make big news if he loses, and not much if he wins, so it's hard for him to come out much ahead except for a payoff.
As for human dignity (see the web site) I can't imagine how we lose or gain any, geez, the machines don't even gloat. And, we can still unplug the machines. Seems like the human programmer of Fritz keeps the human dignity balance covered.
Well, getting the correct answer is highly over-rated, especially if the student has no idea of the significance of the answer, or any way of even knowing if the calculator's answer is correct. Today's calculator dependent students (and probably anyone under 25 or so) can not understand numbers due to their dependence. I had a student today reduce the fraction 1000/4000 all the way down to 125/500, then stop. This student, and many like her, can not hear unemployment figures, economic trends, interest rates, percentages, or basically any real life numbers and make any sense of their meaning at all. Numbers are just marks on the paper or buttons to be pushed. We are actually crippling many intelligent kids who will never gain the sense of understanding they could have achieved. Oh well, could be it's just me, my fellow teachers of math certainly don't seem to agree with my views.
And, while "r u going 2 b home l8r" may be quicker to type, it's slower to communicate as the brain has to switch interpretation of symbols. I'm sure if you're used to it it's easy enough, but the typer is simply just being lazy, or trendy. Not that there's anything wrong with that, these are teenagers, right? But I don't see the problem with grading papers that include this sort of thing, just don't bother grading them, they're unacceptable!
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Right on! I was forced (by having the class leader's daughter as a girlfriend) to take a Dale Carnegie course, and it was amazing. Like finding out Dwayne Newton is an incredibly talented musician and a hell of an artist. That is, something that sounds so corny and goofy, but actually is like reading "Siddartha" or "Beyond Good and Evil", that is to say, life-changing. Weird experience. But Dale's right, the most beautiful sound to anyone is the sound of their own name!
On a side note, my older sister (a product of the 60's and a number of alternative lifestyles) used to tell me that physical beauty was due to karma, and was evident in the family situation, between say the rich suburbs of a city and the inner working-class areas of the city. So not just born rich, but beautiful. And not just poor, but ugly. I don't know, seems kind of a tough break for us eternal souls, to get screwed both ways.
Sorry, but you don't know the guy at all. You read a few words, and fit him into some image in your head, and that ain't him. And you are being mean, or trying to be mean to someone, maybe not even that guy. Though this whole thread is about labelling us all as one or another, isn't it?
Interesting. So describing a behavior as NOT extroverted, but actually introverted, might be considered harsh? Why would that be harsh? Well, only if extroversion were preferred to introversion, which is clearly a bias of the poster.
The article states quite definitely that extroversion is hard-wired and physiologically and chemically based, so one is no better than the other, and not a personal choice. The current literature is clear, nature beats nurture all the way, our personalities are pretty much genetically determined. On the other hand, it's important to remember this is a purely intellectual exercise, personality traits are all more of a continuum then a dichotomy, no one's an "extrovert" or an "introvert" completely, all the time, under any circumstances. It's like having a long discussion about being "right-brained" or "left-brained," another goofy dichotomy that I find annoying. There's only one dichotomy for us humans, and that's that boys and girls thang.
"The main difference between men and women is that men are lunatics and women are idiots.-Rebecca West"
An extrovert enjoys making *social* connections to people. You're not connecting with people; you're just hoping they will notice you ...
Uh, so extroverts aren't also seeking attention and notice? Nonsense. What would be more true would be to say that extroverts are energized and relaxed by vocal exchanges with others, especially those exchanges they get to dominate, while introverts find some of these exchanges draining, awkward, and pointless.
Obviously I fall with the introverts, and the above post's description of the behaviors is right on, but mis-interpreted. I've often responded to tiresome small-talk statements about natural phenomena with (possibly pedantic!) responses. Probably once or twice about cumulous clouds, even. See, many introverts don't speak just to hear their own voices. We don't feel that every one in the room might be especially fascinated by whatever comes out of our mouths. So when we speak, we often try to offer only meaningful, true, information of some topic we're passionate about.
It does sound like a good read for us introverts, if for nothing else that sense of recognition. Personally, I've known of my own slant since high school; I need solitude, don't suffer fools gladly, don't have any interest in small-talk, am only "half-there" in large groups. But have also been the life of parties, had "true connections", real conversations, all that good stuff too, it's not all that hard to be an extrovert. Actually Dale Carnegie's book and course really aren't THAT bad an idea. At least you'll learn a little about people, that you probably didn't know.
Well, a couple more pertinent quotes:
"I love mankind; it's people I can't stand.-Charles Schultz"
"The trouble with the world is that the stupid are cocksure and the intelligent are full of doubt.-Bertrand Russell"
On the other hand, I (and others) also pay a ridiculous amount of $$ for cable tv and a zippy fast internet connection, surely luxuries not often used in a way that would justify their cost, at least for me. I now pay, what, about $1.85 per day for cable TV? Goofy.
So I say it's really hard to say how/if people will pay for content. I haven't paid any extra yet beyond my earthlink account, and would probably resist. There's just too much out there for free, and I don't see how the free content can really fall off in quantity at this point. (side thought: Is anyone out there contemplating the permanence, or persistence of internet content? That is, pages created 3-5 years ago and abandoned are still on available servers, etc.? Isn't it all sort of an interesting possibility of an eternal archive? The all-time library of Alexandria?)
I would, however, leap at the chance to use micro-payments for cable tv or internet content. I'm thinking of perhaps some small initial set-up fee, then charges in the realm of fractions of a cent per minute, or something. I'm sure I come in on the low end of usage so should pay less than I do now. Of course, then I'd have to give more to public radio.
I think the interesting points made were these two: the end of the cd-replacing era, and the fact that 12 to 25's no longer identify as strongly with musical genres or bands. These two resonate with my point of view, anyway, and make the most sense.
As an old boomer (born '55, young for a boomer) of course I'm pretty sure music sales are down because the music is just so bad!
I agree completely. There really is nothing like having the whole system and box being presented to you as "ready to be instructed" in the form of a basic prompt. All those old first generation vic-20's, appleII's, trash-80's, etc. were so available they encouraged programming. I remember finding some of the apple iic's I had to teach with at school in the 80's had a mini-assembler (supposedly written by the Woz himself) built into rom. And even though the graphics were non-existent, lots of kids created some pretty cool animation almost in no time, learning the idea of sprites and screen-flipping effortlessly.
What's bad about windows xp is the activation scam. As I can personally use only one computer at a time, I refuse to accept that I can't install any software I buy on any computer I own. And, it's too picky about memory.
Through the freedom from food-gathering brought about by cultivation of grain, and the biological plus brought by successfully digesting cow's milk, we humans gained something the other beasts do not have, leisure time. Our big brains, using symbols of language and shape, can now think of all manner of ephemeral objects, and create words like beauty and poetry and god, and attach all sorts of profound meaning to them.
All these words and activities are maya, the great illusion we clever monkeys create. We live and die in a minute flash of time in the universe with our fellow beasts, and all of us are wonders of creation. But humans as the "utter pinnacle of all creation," or when compared to the beasts like the "glory of the sun" doesn't quite match up to the sum of human history so far.
What animal murders his own kind? Or destroys and poisons its home? Or beats its own young without mercy? Or slaughters entire nations?
Beauty may be real, though, and that alone may yet save us.
the hubris... the hubris...
(insert pause for slash-dotters to sigh knowingly as they recognize themselves in the last paragraph...)
I had a 7th grade student solve it a long time ago, though it took him overnight and I don't know if he had help. Also, we had already looked at the 9 coins, one heavy, two weighings problem so I'm sure that helped him.
I'd think that in an interview, just coming up with the first crucial step, then some idea of the rest of the solution in ten minutes would be pretty good, IF one had never heard of the problem. This is an ancient math question though, seems like everyone in CS or Math or Physics would have heard of this one by college.
It is interesting to look at where the line of semi-acceptable cheating exists, between the extreme of a cheat which just skips to "WINNER!", game over immediately, and a subtle editing of a cfg file for say, a wider field of view.
It's also interesting that this is actually a serious issue for some people, wow. Games? Definition? Pointless leisure activity, remember?
Sure saved me some time raving on about Powermonger and Dungeon Master, not wanting to be a dork and all. Doesn't mean it's not true.
And finally, absence of proof does at least mean that it's NOT supported by current evidence and theory, and shouldn't be in textbooks. And absence of proof always points towards absence of existance, at least more than towards existance.
Just praising the nimble MC!
GUI designers certainly are working WAY too hard, though, if the ordering of dialog choices has been looked into so thoroughly!
This fits with the notion of western culture that going to left is "going back"...
So eastern culture has going to right as "going back" and to the left as forward? Hunh? Where does that come from?
Their interface change effectively violated the very way that most people (who speak english) have thought about how stuff works for thousands of years.
So now it's just english speakers, not western culture? And thousands of years of english speakers? More news to me!
Also, how does the clutch pedal fit in with this bizarre right-left idea? And, when you turn something, some part of the wheel is going up, down, right, left, and every angle in-between. There's no such thing as turning a wheel "to the right.
As for the main thread of this discussion, once I found Midnight Commander I never used any of the desktop file managers in *nix, just kept a terminal window handy with MC running. How tiresome that the main things being worked on in Nautilus seem to be icons and themes. BFD.
I give credit to Kramnik for taking Fritz on, I hope he gets big $$$ at least. It'll make big news if he loses, and not much if he wins, so it's hard for him to come out much ahead except for a payoff.
As for human dignity (see the web site) I can't imagine how we lose or gain any, geez, the machines don't even gloat. And, we can still unplug the machines. Seems like the human programmer of Fritz keeps the human dignity balance covered.
And, while "r u going 2 b home l8r" may be quicker to type, it's slower to communicate as the brain has to switch interpretation of symbols. I'm sure if you're used to it it's easy enough, but the typer is simply just being lazy, or trendy. Not that there's anything wrong with that, these are teenagers, right? But I don't see the problem with grading papers that include this sort of thing, just don't bother grading them, they're unacceptable!