One would assume the IRS watches out for things like this, or universities would overwhelmed with companies donating software for "instructional purposes".
>Perhaps of more concern is the fact that by using these applications, charities are going to be locking themselves into a proprietary set of file >formats that they may not later be able to extract information from without Microsoft's blessings.
A couple of people have mentioned this, but is it really true?
I have Word on my computer, and I use it frequently. (There, that should get me modded down quickly..) It's no LaTeX, but for everyday typing it gets things done quickly and easily, and it came with the computer; there's no reason not to use it.
But do you HAVE to have Word to read what I typed? No! Fire up OpenOffice and use that to read.doc files. I prefer the Word interface (probably because I'm used to it) but OpenOffice reads the files just as well.
The same applies to other parts of Microsoft Office. I don't own Powerpoint, but when I need to view a.pp file, I open it with OpenOffice. When I need to make a.pp file, I create it with OpenOffice and then transfer it to a school computer, where I display it using Powerpoint. Compatability!
While I'm sure Microsoft would like free alternatives like OpenOffice to just go away, they do exist, and as long as they remain compatable with Microsoft's efforts, we won't need thier software to read the files. Result: software can be chosen based on user preferences.. and isn't that what we all want?
I was referring more to restricting how places can regulate where you can carry guns, concealed or not, such as requiring government buildings to have metal detectors if they want to ban guns.
Having a standardized policy on concealed weapons permits isn't a bad idea; the laws on that really were all over the place. But it seems as if, say, Denver and Colorado Springs really would have a legitimate interest in regulating guns differently; openly carrying a gun might be appropriate in some parts of the state and not others.
>Sparse attendance is, of course, an end-of-semester inevitability. Many students viewed the lecture by Webcast, if at all. But more significantly, >just 350 students signed up for the course this spring, in striking contrast to enrollment in the fall of 2000, when the same lecture hall was >engorged at the start of the semester with 700 students sitting and standing in every available pocket of space.
How the heck do you learn anything in a class of 700 students? I'd be surprised if I could even hear the teacher..
Well, what he did was, he had a book about mathematics where he scribbled his insights into the margin. He apparently only cared about seeing the solution for himself, so he would just write out enough of the proof to convince himself that he had it, and then move on.
After his death, his son found the book and decided to publish another edition of it with his father's margin notes included. The margins were full of assorted theorems with no or little proof that Fermat was satisfied with; over the years, every single one of them was proved to be correct, except the last theorem, which had to wait for Andrew Wiles.
You really should read Simon Singh's book; he's an excellent writer who really brings the subject to life.
>College students are typically leftist because they don't have to work in the real world
hmm...seeing as I don't know any college students who don't have a job in the real world, I'm not really sure how to respond to this. This semester I worked mainly with two other students; one writes computer books (and makes enough to support a family), the other is an interpreter for the UN. As for myself, I teach math at the middle school level. (And if you plan to argue that teaching isn't a "real job", I would suggest you've never had to deal with 25 13-year-olds for an appeciable length of time:-))
I don't think unsupported generalizations really make good arguments.
>Do you think that individuals should be allowed to make as much money as they want to in the free market?
Sure. If what you're doing is legal and you can get rich doing it, more power to you.
> Environmentalism is an irrational belief in Gaea, i.e., "Mother Earth"
I can honestly say I have never seen anyone even mention "Gaea" outside of cartoons. I'd define an environmentalist as someone who wants to protect the Earth from being damaged, generally by human-caused pollution. Some of them go too far, but seeing as I like being able to breathe, I have to respect what they do.
That looks pretty cool. Do you know when they expect to finish?
I saw the MGM monorail from a distance when I was in Vegas late last year, but I didn't have a chance to see it close up. It'd be nice if you could take that all the way from Excalibar to Harrah's..
Trouble is, where do you put the cars while you're building over the roads? Every time we get a highway "improvement" project that closes part of the road, it just results in more traffic jams for a few years.
>Why be redundant? College students are most always hyper leftist. It makes sense: while living in their isolated world of "higher thought" where > they don't have to work for a living
*shrug* Most of the people I go to college with work for a living; many of them hold responsible, full-time jobs. True, college students/professors do have a tendency to be somewhat liberal, which makes sense; they're the ones who are trained to use their brains effectively.
>As to your charge that "all most post does is insult," I disagree. I stated that Leftists hate individualism (do you agree or disagree?).
Disagree, certainly. I'm sure you'd label me a leftist, and I'm certainly not against individualism; I'm too far off the norm to be.
>>aside from the author's apparent belief that there's no reason whatsoever to worry about pollution, >>which I don't think I need to respond to.
>It's "apparent"? Well, what exactly did I type that made this lie "apparent" to you?
Let's see: >Environmentalism is a religion, and religion is superstition.
Here you called environmentalism superstition, which dictionary.com defines as an irrational belief. Or would you now like to claim you didn't type this?
I have to wonder at this...all the above post does is insult, let's see, liberals, college students, environmentalists, and religious people, while adding nothing to the discussion, and it's modded interesting and insightful? I see why some people think the moderation system is broken.
I wanted to reply to the above post and refute the points in it, but I couldn't find any, aside from the author's apparent belief that there's no reason whatsoever to worry about pollution, which I don't think I need to respond to.
I drive in Denver regularly without getting aggravated. I attribute this to avoiding rush hour, and to using up my aggravation teaching 13-year-olds:-)
Seriously, though, traffic jams are another bug reason for trying to reduce the number of cars on the road; it simply takes too long to get where you're going because of the congestion.
I can see maybe designing a city to be car-free, but it seems like it would be next to impossible to convert a typical city to such. Consider:
1) People like cars. Tell them they can't use thier cars anymore, and you're liable to be voted out of office.
2) If you get rid of cars, you have to have an alternative system of transportation in place. Unfortunately, the only place to PUT that system will many times be where the roads are now. Result: you can't build the system until the cars are gone, and you can't get rid of the cars until the system is ready!
I suppose that as the new money becomes more and more prevalent, it will become unusual to see the old $20s, so that if someone is passing counterfeit bills it'll be easier to track him down as not many people spend them.
Of course, in that case wouldn't they want to wait a bit longer before they change the bills again? I dunno....quite a few things the government does don't make that much sense to me.
The trouble is, it's still easier to do things from paper. For stuff like email, etc, sure there's no reason whatsoever to print it out (unless you want to pass it on to someone without knowing their email address)
Still, even though I've been using computers nonstop since I was seven, I'd still rather have paper for some things. I'm currently proofreading the next-to-last draft of a paper, which I've printed out so I can take my pencil and make notes on what needs to be changed. I find it's also easier on the eyes to read through papers that are actually paper; it's nice to not be staring at the monitor constantly.
Afraid I don't, sorry; I'm not involved with the IT department at my school.
Basically all of the computers require a login to use them; there's a general login in case you forget yours (or haven't gotten one yet) and they stopped allowing that one to print.
Of course, that's only been implemented in the computer science and general use labs, so they have to hope that people don't think to just wander over to the math lab and use the (no login required) computers there..
They're handy to have around, though. I never have the buy coasters..
To bring this somewhat back on-topic, I wonder if AOL has considered including more software on the CDs. The AOL software probably doesn't take up all of the available space (anybody know how much?), so if they were to include something useful on the CD, it might encourage people to keep them instead of automatically throwing them out.
Wouldn't you be more likely to keep a CD that said "1000 hours of AOL + free Commander Keen game!"?
Well...it's still useful to know the times tables and be able to add and subtract by hand. I have no objection whatsoever to students using a calculator - it makes things a lot faster! - provided they can do the basic operations without them.
I had a student the other month (7th grade, I think) who was absolutely convinced that the incorrect answer she had for a math problem was correct. Why? Her calculator said so. Unfortunately, her calculator only did the operations in the order she put them in; it didn't understand order of operations. Because she didn't know how to do the problem herself, she wasn't able to figure out what was wrong with the calculator's answer, or even realize that there WAS anything wrong with it.
Looking at the site, this isn't college; this is a combined middle school / high school.
Now, my experience with high school students (I work with an 11th grade class that meets in a computer lab) is that, given access to computers, the first things they do are check their email and start loading up websites containing either games or (depending on gender) romance or sports information.
Computers are certainly a great tool - I can't even do my work without internet access anymore, since I'm constantly looking up a research paper or TeX command I need - but at the middle school level, it sees as if you're going to have to devote a lot of time making the students close off the games and get back to work..
If anything, computers can lead to MORE paper use.
I've had several classes where the professor made thier powerpoint slides available online, and some people would go and print out the entire presentation before class; they eventually ended up changing the system so you had to be logged in to print and putting a cap on how much each person could print per semester.
Slashdot Mirror
One would assume the IRS watches out for things like this, or universities would overwhelmed with companies donating software for "instructional purposes".
>Perhaps of more concern is the fact that by using these applications, charities are going to be locking themselves into a proprietary set of file
.doc files. I prefer the Word interface (probably because I'm used to it) but OpenOffice reads the files just as well.
.pp file, I open it with OpenOffice. When I need to make a .pp file, I create it with OpenOffice and then transfer it to a school computer, where I display it using Powerpoint. Compatability!
>formats that they may not later be able to extract information from without Microsoft's blessings.
A couple of people have mentioned this, but is it really true?
I have Word on my computer, and I use it frequently. (There, that should get me modded down quickly..) It's no LaTeX, but for everyday typing it gets things done quickly and easily, and it came with the computer; there's no reason not to use it.
But do you HAVE to have Word to read what I typed? No! Fire up OpenOffice and use that to read
The same applies to other parts of Microsoft Office. I don't own Powerpoint, but when I need to view a
While I'm sure Microsoft would like free alternatives like OpenOffice to just go away, they do exist, and as long as they remain compatable with Microsoft's efforts, we won't need thier software to read the files. Result: software can be chosen based on user preferences.. and isn't that what we all want?
Let's not forget:
the grad student - come to see his adviser
the TA - needs the book for the course
hmm...I meant vetoing, not violating, but I wonder if the Slashdot crowd wouldn't be just as happy with what I typed..
I was referring more to restricting how places can regulate where you can carry guns, concealed or not, such as requiring government buildings to have metal detectors if they want to ban guns.
Having a standardized policy on concealed weapons permits isn't a bad idea; the laws on that really were all over the place. But it seems as if, say, Denver and Colorado Springs really would have a legitimate interest in regulating guns differently; openly carrying a gun might be appropriate in some parts of the state and not others.
Seeing as he just signed into law a bill eliminating most of the gun laws in the state, yup, I'd say so :-)
(It's now illegal for cities/counties in Colorado to have more restrictive gun laws than the state does)
Still, kudos to him for violating anything DMCA-related
>Sparse attendance is, of course, an end-of-semester inevitability. Many students viewed the lecture by Webcast, if at all. But more significantly,
>just 350 students signed up for the course this spring, in striking contrast to enrollment in the fall of 2000, when the same lecture hall was
>engorged at the start of the semester with 700 students sitting and standing in every available pocket of space.
How the heck do you learn anything in a class of 700 students? I'd be surprised if I could even hear the teacher..
I wonder how many complaints they got about stating the theorem incorrectly :-)
Well, what he did was, he had a book about mathematics where he scribbled his insights into the margin. He apparently only cared about seeing the solution for himself, so he would just write out enough of the proof to convince himself that he had it, and then move on.
After his death, his son found the book and decided to publish another edition of it with his father's margin notes included. The margins were full of assorted theorems with no or little proof that Fermat was satisfied with; over the years, every single one of them was proved to be correct, except the last theorem, which had to wait for Andrew Wiles.
You really should read Simon Singh's book; he's an excellent writer who really brings the subject to life.
>College students are typically leftist because they don't have to work in the real world
:-))
hmm...seeing as I don't know any college students who don't have a job in the real world, I'm not really sure how to respond to this. This semester I worked mainly with two other students; one writes computer books (and makes enough to support a family), the other is an interpreter for the UN. As for myself, I teach math at the middle school level. (And if you plan to argue that teaching isn't a "real job", I would suggest you've never had to deal with 25 13-year-olds for an appeciable length of time
I don't think unsupported generalizations really make good arguments.
>Do you think that individuals should be allowed to make as much money as they want to in the free market?
Sure. If what you're doing is legal and you can get rich doing it, more power to you.
> Environmentalism is an irrational belief in Gaea, i.e., "Mother Earth"
I can honestly say I have never seen anyone even mention "Gaea" outside of cartoons. I'd define an environmentalist as someone who wants to protect the Earth from being damaged, generally by human-caused pollution. Some of them go too far, but seeing as I like being able to breathe, I have to respect what they do.
That looks pretty cool. Do you know when they expect to finish?
I saw the MGM monorail from a distance when I was in Vegas late last year, but I didn't have a chance to see it close up. It'd be nice if you could take that all the way from Excalibar to Harrah's..
Trouble is, where do you put the cars while you're building over the roads? Every time we get a highway "improvement" project that closes part of the road, it just results in more traffic jams for a few years.
>Why be redundant? College students are most always hyper leftist. It makes sense: while living in their isolated world of "higher thought" where
> they don't have to work for a living
*shrug* Most of the people I go to college with work for a living; many of them hold responsible, full-time jobs. True, college students/professors do have a tendency to be somewhat liberal, which makes sense; they're the ones who are trained to use their brains effectively.
>As to your charge that "all most post does is insult," I disagree. I stated that Leftists hate individualism (do you agree or disagree?).
Disagree, certainly. I'm sure you'd label me a leftist, and I'm certainly not against individualism; I'm too far off the norm to be.
>>aside from the author's apparent belief that there's no reason whatsoever to worry about pollution,
>>which I don't think I need to respond to.
>It's "apparent"? Well, what exactly did I type that made this lie "apparent" to you?
Let's see:
>Environmentalism is a religion, and religion is superstition.
Here you called environmentalism superstition, which dictionary.com defines as an irrational belief. Or would you now like to claim you didn't type this?
I have to wonder at this...all the above post does is insult, let's see, liberals, college students, environmentalists, and religious people, while adding nothing to the discussion, and it's modded interesting and insightful? I see why some people think the moderation system is broken.
I wanted to reply to the above post and refute the points in it, but I couldn't find any, aside from the author's apparent belief that there's no reason whatsoever to worry about pollution, which I don't think I need to respond to.
You've got lots and lots of traffic, but then you have areas where it's just people walking and the trolly; much nicer without all the cars there.
Of course, this leads to the scariest thing in Denver: parking.
I drive in Denver regularly without getting aggravated. I attribute this to avoiding rush hour, and to using up my aggravation teaching 13-year-olds :-)
Seriously, though, traffic jams are another bug reason for trying to reduce the number of cars on the road; it simply takes too long to get where you're going because of the congestion.
I can see maybe designing a city to be car-free, but it seems like it would be next to impossible to convert a typical city to such. Consider:
1) People like cars. Tell them they can't use thier cars anymore, and you're liable to be voted out of office.
2) If you get rid of cars, you have to have an alternative system of transportation in place. Unfortunately, the only place to PUT that system will many times be where the roads are now. Result: you can't build the system until the cars are gone, and you can't get rid of the cars until the system is ready!
I suppose that as the new money becomes more and more prevalent, it will become unusual to see the old $20s, so that if someone is passing counterfeit bills it'll be easier to track him down as not many people spend them.
Of course, in that case wouldn't they want to wait a bit longer before they change the bills again? I dunno....quite a few things the government does don't make that much sense to me.
The trouble is, it's still easier to do things from paper. For stuff like email, etc, sure there's no reason whatsoever to print it out (unless you want to pass it on to someone without knowing their email address)
Still, even though I've been using computers nonstop since I was seven, I'd still rather have paper for some things. I'm currently proofreading the next-to-last draft of a paper, which I've printed out so I can take my pencil and make notes on what needs to be changed. I find it's also easier on the eyes to read through papers that are actually paper; it's nice to not be staring at the monitor constantly.
Afraid I don't, sorry; I'm not involved with the IT department at my school.
Basically all of the computers require a login to use them; there's a general login in case you forget yours (or haven't gotten one yet) and they stopped allowing that one to print.
Of course, that's only been implemented in the computer science and general use labs, so they have to hope that people don't think to just wander over to the math lab and use the (no login required) computers there..
This caught my interest, so I did a google search on it and came up with the following website:
t hd ay99/Awards99/Nsa/nsa.html
https://www.denix.osd.mil/denix/Public/News/Ear
It says that in 1998, the reutilization program was able to donate $13 million to schools, among other things..
They're handy to have around, though. I never have the buy coasters..
To bring this somewhat back on-topic, I wonder if AOL has considered including more software on the CDs. The AOL software probably doesn't take up all of the available space (anybody know how much?), so if they were to include something useful on the CD, it might encourage people to keep them instead of automatically throwing them out.
Wouldn't you be more likely to keep a CD that said "1000 hours of AOL + free Commander Keen game!"?
Well...it's still useful to know the times tables and be able to add and subtract by hand. I have no objection whatsoever to students using a calculator - it makes things a lot faster! - provided they can do the basic operations without them.
;-)
I had a student the other month (7th grade, I think) who was absolutely convinced that the incorrect answer she had for a math problem was correct. Why? Her calculator said so. Unfortunately, her calculator only did the operations in the order she put them in; it didn't understand order of operations. Because she didn't know how to do the problem herself, she wasn't able to figure out what was wrong with the calculator's answer, or even realize that there WAS anything wrong with it.
What's a manual typewriter?
Looking at the site, this isn't college; this is a combined middle school / high school.
Now, my experience with high school students (I work with an 11th grade class that meets in a computer lab) is that, given access to computers, the first things they do are check their email and start loading up websites containing either games or (depending on gender) romance or sports information.
Computers are certainly a great tool - I can't even do my work without internet access anymore, since I'm constantly looking up a research paper or TeX command I need - but at the middle school level, it sees as if you're going to have to devote a lot of time making the students close off the games and get back to work..
If anything, computers can lead to MORE paper use.
I've had several classes where the professor made thier powerpoint slides available online, and some people would go and print out the entire presentation before class; they eventually ended up changing the system so you had to be logged in to print and putting a cap on how much each person could print per semester.