If Brazil wants to flex it muscles with respect to defending privacy, it should give political asylum to Snowden. Now that will send a message. It's crazy how no supposedly democratic country has stepped up yet.
On the other hand, the same overqualified people also make better decisions when voting or keeping in check their government. You have people who understand the world surrounding them (and well beyond their borders) and who aren't prone to democratic apathy (and I guess that's why frequent strikes are a well-known French phenomenon).
The economic/employment viewpoint is certainly a valid one, and I agree with you to a great extent, but it's good to look at the civic one as well. Ideally, maybe a great portion of the people out of high school should go to a vocational school first, then go work, make some money, gain some experience, and only then at some point spend some time at university to gain a better understanding of the world. With MOOCs now, this should be easier hopefully.
You have to start somewhere. If you make enough noise you'll be noticed, just look at the tea party or the gay rights movement. Then you'll influence decisions by the two big parties, but still you shouldn't stop there. There's so much similarity between the two big parties, so many political issues not covered by either and so much apathy toward both, that if there's a determined and well organized alternative it will eventually get a chance. Certainly not doing anything hasn't worked great so much, has it?
Start a party! Or join one that is in line with your ideology! Be active! Recruit others!
We need political groups who are endorsed by, or at least ideologically in line with, some of the NGOs and foundations that we (or at least I) support: EFF, Amnesty International, and others.
I wonder what the Nobel Peace committee thinks about this whole mess that they endorsed a priori?
One advantage I could see in having JavaScript used on both client and server sides is that ultimately we could imagine new frameworks that would completely hide the separation between client and server. After all, we're using MVC anyway, might as well have all components in the same language so that the glue part is as seamless as possible. Wouldn't it be nice if you could have an IDE that gives you the impression that you're programming a regular desktop application, but that would take care of the deployment aspects? And once you get there, you can imagine higher level, languages that would generate the JavaScript for you if you're not a fan.
Yup, the consolidation of the YouTube and the Google accounts made me logout from Google forever. I want to keep my YouTube identity separate from my Google identity, and since it's impossible to do so without constantly logging in and out of them, I gave up on the Google side of things (so I just use my old YouTube account). What made the decision even easier is when they announced the impending death of iGoogle.
The 3:2 proportion is perfect for programming. I also want something that I can hook up to a projector when giving a presentation and I don't have to fiddle with resolutions. Ideally I want my usual resolution on both the laptop screen and the projector. That used to be the case for example with the first gen MacBooks.
1- publicly funded research should not copyright protected. Have a university-wide policy for that. Easily enforced by tenure and promotion committees. 2- to enable 1., get together with other top universities and start running a federation of open-access journals that are free to publish in and freely available to the public. Have your librarians run them.
All I can remember from Space: 1999 was all the psychedelic colors. The crew would inevitably land on some kind of orange/green/yellow planet with some tall flowers, some kerfuffle would ensue, and guns would make people vanish, problem solved and end of the episode. Fun stuff.
Look no further than in agriculture. Just a century ago, what percentage of people used to work in the farms? What's that percentage now? People then moved into the manufacturing industries, but work there has also been replaced by machines to a great extent, and cheaper labor in other countries.
It doesn't take a lot of human labor to fulfill our basic needs anymore, and so people have been trying to create needs we didn't think we had. This is why so much rides on advertisement these days. Is there a point where the incremental improvement in our comfort is no longer worth the money we'd spend to get it? That's when we'll probably face major unemployment issues...
What is well established is the scientific discovery process, and the difference it makes between a scientific theory and beliefs. The theory of evolution is a great illustration of that difference, and making sure that it is taught is especially timely.
Just yesterday I decided to give up on iGoogle, as I hated the fact that I couldn't use it while using a different YouTube account in the same browser. Much as I don't mind them logging and datamining everything I do (to some extent), I don't like them to correlate my calendar, my email information AND the silly videos I might want to watch. So the Google/YouTube consolidation did it for me, and I returned (unhappily) to My Yahoo. Too bad, as I really liked having Google Calendar and its to do list so readily available. Now with iGoogle being retired I really can't regret my decision. But Yahoo Calendar is ugly and its to-do list sucks. Netvibes looks promising, so I'll give it a shot.
The people listening on those conversation probably aren't any more sophisticated than those they're listening to, so maybe they won't be bored at all.
What we need is for reputable researchers from reputable institutions to launch free open access journals, and have them managed and archived by their libraries, using digital library tools. In Artificial Intelligence, there's already the Journal of Artificial Intelligence Research (JAIR) that has been free and available on-line since the beginning, and it has a good reputation.
The digital repository tools are mature now, we just need MIT, Stanford and others to decide to circumvent Elsevier and co and do it themselves. Then federate all the digital libraries across universities, and now you have additional redundancy and ease of access. It might even be cheaper for universities to run their own digital repositories instead of paying Elsevier and co outrageous fees. Or at least it gives them some leverage for fee negotiation.
Udacity and Coursera were launched by Stanford profs; not sure no-namers would have had the same success.
Yes, patterns often are needed due to the inflexibility of your programming language of choice (erm, Java), and yes, when you first learn about them you tend to use them everywhere and over-engineer things to death (guilty!). BUT, with some experience you realize that it's the idea behind them that is important. Especially if you're using some agile methodology, you basically only end up with patterns or a piece thereof as a result of some refactoring (see Joshua Kerievsky's excellent book on the subject), and you should also be ready to move away from them as soon as you realize you don't need them. Patterns provide a direction, but they're not necessarily an end goal.
I haven't read this new book, but breaking down patterns into smaller, more fundamental chunks could be very useful in that "refactoring toward patterns" attitude.
Also wanted to add that there's nothing to stop vocational schools to also require their students to be well-rounded, and to expect them to take many courses at University as part of their curriculum. As I said in an earlier post, that would in fact provide a great way to further subsidize university, through the offering of these "service courses" to the vocational schools.
That's not a bad way to look at it either. I'm just afraid it would cost more than my solution. I also wonder if everybody would go straight to a vocational school first and then never bother with a non-professional degree, meaning you'd never see the kind of Renaissance Man model you wished for in the first paragraph (and that I would like as well).
but what happens when it goes to MA, PHD for base level?
The student debt will just get that much higher. Unless the education bubble eventually bursts, the day people start defaulting on their debt repayments.
How would that be worse than the current situation? Right now those who do non-professional degrees spend all that time AND money on something that won't get them a degree. What I'm proposing is to make the state subsidize those degrees so that at least student's aren't in debt once they've completed a program that doesn't lead to a job. If anything, this should mean that we'll see MORE lower and middle classes in university, aided in that by everybody's taxes.
That's why I wish vocational schools had more prestige. There needs to be clear a distinction made between learning skills and getting an education. Neither is a bad thing in itself. I believe that learning skills, at a School (could be anything, ranging from Engineering to Law, Medicine, Journalism, Design, etc), can be viewed as an investment in the future (in terms of getting a job), and as such it is ok for it to rely on tuition fees. But getting an education, at a true University (with Arts, Math, Physics, History, Social Sciences, etc.), should be something that is fully subsidized. It wouldn't cost as much as you think to fund, since not many people would gravitate toward it in the first place. Once it's made clear that a University won't get you a job, you will only have people who go there who don't quite yet know what to do with their lives (until they figure out that to get a job they should go to a School), or people who have truly scholarly interest in the topic at hand.
There would be bridges between the two, of course. Schools would most likely require some courses to be taken at a University (this way, Schools would also partially subsidize Universities).
Slashdot Mirror
If Brazil wants to flex it muscles with respect to defending privacy, it should give political asylum to Snowden. Now that will send a message. It's crazy how no supposedly democratic country has stepped up yet.
On the other hand, the same overqualified people also make better decisions when voting or keeping in check their government. You have people who understand the world surrounding them (and well beyond their borders) and who aren't prone to democratic apathy (and I guess that's why frequent strikes are a well-known French phenomenon).
The economic/employment viewpoint is certainly a valid one, and I agree with you to a great extent, but it's good to look at the civic one as well. Ideally, maybe a great portion of the people out of high school should go to a vocational school first, then go work, make some money, gain some experience, and only then at some point spend some time at university to gain a better understanding of the world. With MOOCs now, this should be easier hopefully.
You have to start somewhere. If you make enough noise you'll be noticed, just look at the tea party or the gay rights movement. Then you'll influence decisions by the two big parties, but still you shouldn't stop there. There's so much similarity between the two big parties, so many political issues not covered by either and so much apathy toward both, that if there's a determined and well organized alternative it will eventually get a chance. Certainly not doing anything hasn't worked great so much, has it?
Start a party! Or join one that is in line with your ideology! Be active! Recruit others!
We need political groups who are endorsed by, or at least ideologically in line with, some of the NGOs and foundations that we (or at least I) support: EFF, Amnesty International, and others.
I wonder what the Nobel Peace committee thinks about this whole mess that they endorsed a priori?
One advantage I could see in having JavaScript used on both client and server sides is that ultimately we could imagine new frameworks that would completely hide the separation between client and server. After all, we're using MVC anyway, might as well have all components in the same language so that the glue part is as seamless as possible. Wouldn't it be nice if you could have an IDE that gives you the impression that you're programming a regular desktop application, but that would take care of the deployment aspects? And once you get there, you can imagine higher level, languages that would generate the JavaScript for you if you're not a fan.
Yup, the consolidation of the YouTube and the Google accounts made me logout from Google forever. I want to keep my YouTube identity separate from my Google identity, and since it's impossible to do so without constantly logging in and out of them, I gave up on the Google side of things (so I just use my old YouTube account). What made the decision even easier is when they announced the impending death of iGoogle.
The 3:2 proportion is perfect for programming. I also want something that I can hook up to a projector when giving a presentation and I don't have to fiddle with resolutions. Ideally I want my usual resolution on both the laptop screen and the projector. That used to be the case for example with the first gen MacBooks.
Here's a few ideas:
1- publicly funded research should not copyright protected. Have a university-wide policy for that. Easily enforced by tenure and promotion committees.
2- to enable 1., get together with other top universities and start running a federation of open-access journals that are free to publish in and freely available to the public. Have your librarians run them.
There's also RoboCup: autonomous robots playing soccer.
If you were truly drunk you wouldn't be posting anonymously! ;)
Very clever social and political satire: Tom The Dancing Bug
All I can remember from Space: 1999 was all the psychedelic colors. The crew would inevitably land on some kind of orange/green/yellow planet with some tall flowers, some kerfuffle would ensue, and guns would make people vanish, problem solved and end of the episode. Fun stuff.
Look no further than in agriculture. Just a century ago, what percentage of people used to work in the farms? What's that percentage now? People then moved into the manufacturing industries, but work there has also been replaced by machines to a great extent, and cheaper labor in other countries.
It doesn't take a lot of human labor to fulfill our basic needs anymore, and so people have been trying to create needs we didn't think we had. This is why so much rides on advertisement these days. Is there a point where the incremental improvement in our comfort is no longer worth the money we'd spend to get it? That's when we'll probably face major unemployment issues...
What is well established is the scientific discovery process, and the difference it makes between a scientific theory and beliefs. The theory of evolution is a great illustration of that difference, and making sure that it is taught is especially timely.
Just in time for the latest XKCD! http://xkcd.com/1118/
Just yesterday I decided to give up on iGoogle, as I hated the fact that I couldn't use it while using a different YouTube account in the same browser. Much as I don't mind them logging and datamining everything I do (to some extent), I don't like them to correlate my calendar, my email information AND the silly videos I might want to watch. So the Google/YouTube consolidation did it for me, and I returned (unhappily) to My Yahoo. Too bad, as I really liked having Google Calendar and its to do list so readily available. Now with iGoogle being retired I really can't regret my decision. But Yahoo Calendar is ugly and its to-do list sucks. Netvibes looks promising, so I'll give it a shot.
The people listening on those conversation probably aren't any more sophisticated than those they're listening to, so maybe they won't be bored at all.
Someone please mod this up!
What we need is for reputable researchers from reputable institutions to launch free open access journals, and have them managed and archived by their libraries, using digital library tools. In Artificial Intelligence, there's already the Journal of Artificial Intelligence Research (JAIR) that has been free and available on-line since the beginning, and it has a good reputation.
The digital repository tools are mature now, we just need MIT, Stanford and others to decide to circumvent Elsevier and co and do it themselves. Then federate all the digital libraries across universities, and now you have additional redundancy and ease of access. It might even be cheaper for universities to run their own digital repositories instead of paying Elsevier and co outrageous fees. Or at least it gives them some leverage for fee negotiation.
Udacity and Coursera were launched by Stanford profs; not sure no-namers would have had the same success.
Yes, patterns often are needed due to the inflexibility of your programming language of choice (erm, Java), and yes, when you first learn about them you tend to use them everywhere and over-engineer things to death (guilty!). BUT, with some experience you realize that it's the idea behind them that is important. Especially if you're using some agile methodology, you basically only end up with patterns or a piece thereof as a result of some refactoring (see Joshua Kerievsky's excellent book on the subject), and you should also be ready to move away from them as soon as you realize you don't need them. Patterns provide a direction, but they're not necessarily an end goal.
I haven't read this new book, but breaking down patterns into smaller, more fundamental chunks could be very useful in that "refactoring toward patterns" attitude.
Also wanted to add that there's nothing to stop vocational schools to also require their students to be well-rounded, and to expect them to take many courses at University as part of their curriculum. As I said in an earlier post, that would in fact provide a great way to further subsidize university, through the offering of these "service courses" to the vocational schools.
That's not a bad way to look at it either. I'm just afraid it would cost more than my solution. I also wonder if everybody would go straight to a vocational school first and then never bother with a non-professional degree, meaning you'd never see the kind of Renaissance Man model you wished for in the first paragraph (and that I would like as well).
but what happens when it goes to MA, PHD for base level?
The student debt will just get that much higher. Unless the education bubble eventually bursts, the day people start defaulting on their debt repayments.
How would that be worse than the current situation? Right now those who do non-professional degrees spend all that time AND money on something that won't get them a degree. What I'm proposing is to make the state subsidize those degrees so that at least student's aren't in debt once they've completed a program that doesn't lead to a job. If anything, this should mean that we'll see MORE lower and middle classes in university, aided in that by everybody's taxes.
That's why I wish vocational schools had more prestige. There needs to be clear a distinction made between learning skills and getting an education. Neither is a bad thing in itself. I believe that learning skills, at a School (could be anything, ranging from Engineering to Law, Medicine, Journalism, Design, etc), can be viewed as an investment in the future (in terms of getting a job), and as such it is ok for it to rely on tuition fees. But getting an education, at a true University (with Arts, Math, Physics, History, Social Sciences, etc.), should be something that is fully subsidized. It wouldn't cost as much as you think to fund, since not many people would gravitate toward it in the first place. Once it's made clear that a University won't get you a job, you will only have people who go there who don't quite yet know what to do with their lives (until they figure out that to get a job they should go to a School), or people who have truly scholarly interest in the topic at hand.
There would be bridges between the two, of course. Schools would most likely require some courses to be taken at a University (this way, Schools would also partially subsidize Universities).