Before I start, I should mention that I'm oral deaf; this means that while I have a significant hearing loss (total, actually, but I have a cochlear implant to make up for it) I function in the mainstream world using standard english. I'm actually a terrible signer; I always say I like talking too much.
At first look, this seems pretty interesting. Obviously, the big problem for a deaf person is understanding those who don't sign, but it works both ways; people who can't hear tend to get quite a bit of a "deaf accent". I sometimes have trouble being understoof myself, though in my case it tends to be mistaken for a European or Australian accent (don't ask me); in people I've met who spend more time with other deaf people, it's much more noticable. Clearer speech could help on both sides.
On the other side of the issue, I have to wonder how effective this can be. Aside from the fact that the hand gestures are only part of signing (there's also the position of the hands, facial expression, etc) you also have all the difficulties in translating between languages. I don't know anything about Australian sign language, but American Sign Language (ASL) is NOT a set of symbols to replace English words with; it's a complete language with its own grammar and syntax. Imagine trying to build a box which translates spoken German into English, while missing some of the original words, and still have it come out making sense..
Bidder 1 places a bid. Bidder 2 outbids bidder 1. Bidder 1 sees that he's been outbid and decides he can go just a little higher. Bidder 2 sees he's been outbid...
I once had an item I was selling on Ebay jump from around $70 to around $170 in the last couple hours this way. Because the bidders kept revising how much they wanted the item over the course of the auction, I ended up with an extra $100. Had bidder #2 used a sniper service, the auction would have closed at only $70.
Now, if both bidders had decided on a maximum beforehand and refused to change it, then the bidding process wouldn't have made any difference. OTOH, if bidder #2 decided on a maximum beforehand and not been willing to change it, while his competition displayed normal auction behavior, he would have won by sniping but not otherwise.
I'm working on my BSCS at the University of Colorado at Denver. 128 credit hours. Out of that, 15 credit hours are electives - and those have to be chosen from math and computer courses!
(I'm too tired now to look up what everything else was, though I do remember that at least 7 specific math classes, 9-12 specific computer classes, and 3 classes in sciences, plus labs)
I remember getting a D in Algebra for stubborness; all year I insisted on just writing down the answer, instead of listing each step. (Yes, I know now there are valid reasons for putting down exactly what you're doing, what can I say, I was a stubborn kid). Even at the risk of a bad grade I just didn't see why I should take the extra time to write down the steps when I already knew the answer.:-)
As I'm sure plenty of other people have said in this discussion, the trouble is having to dumb down classes to the lowest denominator, so you can get people through. My high school had over 2100 students in a building meant for 1800; imagine if a significant fraction had to repeat grades. "Honors" classes help a bit, but you still have many, many students divided into just two levels, so you're not really going to keep the interest of the really bright ones.
>If a kid can easily breeze through K-12 with no effort, there's little incentive to excel when he has the opportunity in college and, moreover, >he has no study skills because studying was a waste of time until he got to set his own pace in college.
I have to agree; I ended up falling into that trap myself. I coasted through school up til I hit 12th grade; at that point I found I actually needed to study. As you can imagine, it came as quite a shock.;-)
4 years later, I'm still getting good grades (will graduate with honors in December from the University of Colorado) but I'm still terrible at studying. I simply didn't pick up the skill early and never really learned it.
I'd say it depends on what type of computer work you're doing. From your description, it sounds like you're into the practical side of computing: programming and network administration. On the theoretical track (which I'm on) there's a bit more math involved.
Although, I do have to question the massive amounts of math they dump on you; the *required* math classes for my computer degree are: (doesn't count classes that may fill requirements but aren't required by name)
Calculus I Calculus II Calculus IIIa Linear Algebra Differential Equations Numerical Analysis I Probability and Statistics for Engineers
Then I end up taking another 11 hours of math because those classes are the most convenient...and I don't really care for math!:-)
When do most people start taking algebra, anyway? I remember that I took basic algebra in 8th grade, then algebra II in 10th. Granted, that was the advanced math track (such as it was; my school didn't offer many advanced classes). However, I'm currently working with the AVID Program (Advancement Via Individual Determination) which takes students "in the middle" (2.5-3.5 GPAs) and puts them in advanced classes; it seems to work fairly well. In 9th grade they actually continue that with matrix algebra. These are the traditional "high-risk" kids; low-income area with a largely minority population.
That said, maybe a partial soluation is to require algebra at the middle school level rather than high school...
I got the most advanced model, back at the end of 98; it came to around $50k for the internal part, the surgery, and two processors (the external part which captures sounds, translates them into electronic impluses, and transmits them to the part inside my head). Thank goodness for insurance..
You may be interested to know that the implant surgery is performed on an outpatient basis. (This seems to surprise people). I went in one morning, had it installed, then left the hospital the next morning. (There is a one month delay for everything to heal before it is actually activated, though)
That's one problem, the "use it or lose it" principle.
A cochlear implant (which bypasses the ears and directly stimulates the auditory nerve) is most effective when hearing loss is fairly recent, because the nerve hasn't had time to atrophy. Given several years of complete deafness, it may no longer be able to carry the signals correctly. Presumably this would apply to restoring sight as well.
OTOH, there was at least one case where a grandmotherly woman who was deaf from childhood was successfully implanted, so that's not an absolute.
I imagine that both technologies work better with someone who could previously hear/see, because the brain understands how to interpret the signals. When I recieved my cochlear implant, for the first few seconds everything was bells, but within minutes things began to sound normal (and within hours my hearing was better than it had been in several years)
It seems to me that the typical spammer would rather grab emails off a newsgroup or buy somebody's list of a million addresses, rather than going to the trouble of looking up people from the phone book..
I'm hoping to extra footage includes more lightsaber dueling; I was dissapointed at how quickly Yoda's duel was over at the end. That muppet can move!
I wonder how much the LotR Deluxe DVD is gonna cost...it's got some cards from the game I'd love to get;-) Haven't actually seen LotR yet though.
Note 1: As many of you probably know, Colorado just enacted a no-call list. It was shot down the first time on a more or less party-line vote (the democrats voted for it, republicans voted against it) but in the face of enormous popularity with the voters was enacted the second time. It went into effect July 1st (that is, people signed up by a certain date can no longer be called as of last Monday) and so many people signed up they kept overloading the system. If someone calls you, you can file a complaint; after (I think it was 3?) complains they look into it. You can also take the company to small claims court for up to $500. Can't offer any hard numbers, but I can tell you that the number of calls I've been getting is WAY down this week....
Second, a bit of humor from one of my favorite comic strips (Ozy and Millie): Telemarketer: Could I interest you in aluminum siding? Lewellyn: Well, you won't have to try very hard! Alluminum siding has a deceptively interesting history. It was first invented.." etc etc Telemarketer: (hangs up)
Maybe they could come out with SimPolice where a crime is committed in your city and you have to drive around and figure out whodonit...
If they want to make it more realistic, there should be an option to let your businesses pay $5 to have their name on your new stadium... (Yes, I'm in Colorado!;-))
She doesn't.
Because of the way quantum cryptography works (and believe me, you don't want to get into the math behind it), reading the message destroys it. So here's an example of what happens:
Bob wants to send Alice a secure message; she needs to get the message and be sure that nobody else can read it. Perfect security is obtained by a 1-time pad, as described above. (If I transmit the string AOSTJSDOFKEOSJ using a one-time pad, it could be any string 14 characters long including "this is a code", "attack at dawn", "remember steak", etc). The difficulty lies in exchanging the 1-time pad without meeting.
So, Bob generates a random sequence and sents it off to Alice, a bit at a time. If nobody interferes, Alice and Bob can use those bits to create a 1-time pad for secure communication. However, if Eve intercepts the communication, that destroys the values; she can send new bits to Alice, but because she can't create exactly what Bob sent, Alice and Bob will be able to tell that the communication was not secure, so they won't use those bits. They just try again until Eve gives up.
(This is a simplification, of course; if you're interested in a detailed look at the math behind quantum computing, I recommend this website)
>That any human can still defeat chess programs tells us that humans must be playing chess in some way
>fundamentally different from the numerical calculations and search algorithms used by the programs.
Or, it tells us that those humans must know something about the game that the programmers don't:-)
You probably could...except it's been done, so you can't claim that it's original;-)
One guy apparently figured out a way to correct Y2K problems, patented it, and send a letter around to all the Fortune 500 companies demanding money for using his patented method of solving the Y2K problem...he apparently figured at least some of them would have, so he'd get easy money. Needless to say, they're challenging the patent.
There are patents for "Walking while chewing gum", "Playing tennis while wearing pads", and "Amusing a cat using a laser pointer". This one doesn't surprise me a whole lot.:-)
An interesting site to read about this stuff is Patently Absurd
Ok, the "Walking while chewing gum" one is fake, but the others are real...on the second page of that link it shows a patent for determining bra size. As follows:
1) Prepare unclothed breast
2) Breast Size Measure
3) Conversion to cup size
You gotta wonder about some people..
Slashdot Mirror
After 31 minutes, I noticed that I'd already found who owned the fish and was trying to finish filling in the chart :-p
Didn't even realize I'd answered the original question...
Before I start, I should mention that I'm oral deaf; this means that while I have a significant hearing loss (total, actually, but I have a cochlear implant to make up for it) I function in the mainstream world using standard english. I'm actually a terrible signer; I always say I like talking too much.
At first look, this seems pretty interesting. Obviously, the big problem for a deaf person is understanding those who don't sign, but it works both ways; people who can't hear tend to get quite a bit of a "deaf accent". I sometimes have trouble being understoof myself, though in my case it tends to be mistaken for a European or Australian accent (don't ask me); in people I've met who spend more time with other deaf people, it's much more noticable. Clearer speech could help on both sides.
On the other side of the issue, I have to wonder how effective this can be. Aside from the fact that the hand gestures are only part of signing (there's also the position of the hands, facial expression, etc) you also have all the difficulties in translating between languages. I don't know anything about Australian sign language, but American Sign Language (ASL) is NOT a set of symbols to replace English words with; it's a complete language with its own grammar and syntax. Imagine trying to build a box which translates spoken German into English, while missing some of the original words, and still have it come out making sense..
The thing is, often an auction will go like this:
Bidder 1 places a bid.
Bidder 2 outbids bidder 1.
Bidder 1 sees that he's been outbid and decides he can go just a little higher.
Bidder 2 sees he's been outbid...
I once had an item I was selling on Ebay jump from around $70 to around $170 in the last couple hours this way. Because the bidders kept revising how much they wanted the item over the course of the auction, I ended up with an extra $100. Had bidder #2 used a sniper service, the auction would have closed at only $70.
Now, if both bidders had decided on a maximum beforehand and refused to change it, then the bidding process wouldn't have made any difference. OTOH, if bidder #2 decided on a maximum beforehand and not been willing to change it, while his competition displayed normal auction behavior, he would have won by sniping but not otherwise.
36 credits free electives?!? Sheee....
I'm working on my BSCS at the University of Colorado at Denver. 128 credit hours. Out of that, 15 credit hours are electives - and those have to be chosen from math and computer courses!
(I'm too tired now to look up what everything else was, though I do remember that at least 7 specific math classes, 9-12 specific computer classes, and 3 classes in sciences, plus labs)
Do you mean Discrete Structures?
It's listed as a CSC course, not a math course.
Yes...the "advanced" math course here is:
:-)
8th: Algebra
9th: Geometry
10th: Algebra II
11th: Trig
12th: Calculus
I remember getting a D in Algebra for stubborness; all year I insisted on just writing down the answer, instead of listing each step. (Yes, I know now there are valid reasons for putting down exactly what you're doing, what can I say, I was a stubborn kid). Even at the risk of a bad grade I just didn't see why I should take the extra time to write down the steps when I already knew the answer.
As I'm sure plenty of other people have said in this discussion, the trouble is having to dumb down classes to the lowest denominator, so you can get people through. My high school had over 2100 students in a building meant for 1800; imagine if a significant fraction had to repeat grades. "Honors" classes help a bit, but you still have many, many students divided into just two levels, so you're not really going to keep the interest of the really bright ones.
>If a kid can easily breeze through K-12 with no effort, there's little incentive to excel when he has the opportunity in college and, moreover,
;-)
>he has no study skills because studying was a waste of time until he got to set his own pace in college.
I have to agree; I ended up falling into that trap myself. I coasted through school up til I hit 12th grade; at that point I found I actually needed to study. As you can imagine, it came as quite a shock.
4 years later, I'm still getting good grades (will graduate with honors in December from the University of Colorado) but I'm still terrible at studying. I simply didn't pick up the skill early and never really learned it.
I'd say it depends on what type of computer work you're doing. From your description, it sounds like you're into the practical side of computing: programming and network administration. On the theoretical track (which I'm on) there's a bit more math involved.
:-)
Although, I do have to question the massive amounts of math they dump on you; the *required* math classes for my computer degree are: (doesn't count classes that may fill requirements but aren't required by name)
Calculus I
Calculus II
Calculus IIIa
Linear Algebra
Differential Equations
Numerical Analysis I
Probability and Statistics for Engineers
Then I end up taking another 11 hours of math because those classes are the most convenient...and I don't really care for math!
When do most people start taking algebra, anyway? I remember that I took basic algebra in 8th grade, then algebra II in 10th. Granted, that was the advanced math track (such as it was; my school didn't offer many advanced classes). However, I'm currently working with the AVID Program (Advancement Via Individual Determination) which takes students "in the middle" (2.5-3.5 GPAs) and puts them in advanced classes; it seems to work fairly well. In 9th grade they actually continue that with matrix algebra. These are the traditional "high-risk" kids; low-income area with a largely minority population.
That said, maybe a partial soluation is to require algebra at the middle school level rather than high school...
I pronounce it coke-le-ear.
I got the most advanced model, back at the end of 98; it came to around $50k for the internal part, the surgery, and two processors (the external part which captures sounds, translates them into electronic impluses, and transmits them to the part inside my head). Thank goodness for insurance..
You may be interested to know that the implant surgery is performed on an outpatient basis. (This seems to surprise people). I went in one morning, had it installed, then left the hospital the next morning. (There is a one month delay for everything to heal before it is actually activated, though)
That's one problem, the "use it or lose it" principle.
A cochlear implant (which bypasses the ears and directly stimulates the auditory nerve) is most effective when hearing loss is fairly recent, because the nerve hasn't had time to atrophy. Given several years of complete deafness, it may no longer be able to carry the signals correctly. Presumably this would apply to restoring sight as well.
OTOH, there was at least one case where a grandmotherly woman who was deaf from childhood was successfully implanted, so that's not an absolute.
I imagine that both technologies work better with someone who could previously hear/see, because the brain understands how to interpret the signals. When I recieved my cochlear implant, for the first few seconds everything was bells, but within minutes things began to sound normal (and within hours my hearing was better than it had been in several years)
It seems to me that the typical spammer would rather grab emails off a newsgroup or buy somebody's list of a million addresses, rather than going to the trouble of looking up people from the phone book..
Yet another predictable result of having Republicans in the white house...
I'm hoping to extra footage includes more lightsaber dueling; I was dissapointed at how quickly Yoda's duel was over at the end. That muppet can move! I wonder how much the LotR Deluxe DVD is gonna cost...it's got some cards from the game I'd love to get ;-) Haven't actually seen LotR yet though.
Note 1: As many of you probably know, Colorado just enacted a no-call list. It was shot down the first time on a more or less party-line vote (the democrats voted for it, republicans voted against it) but in the face of enormous popularity with the voters was enacted the second time. It went into effect July 1st (that is, people signed up by a certain date can no longer be called as of last Monday) and so many people signed up they kept overloading the system. If someone calls you, you can file a complaint; after (I think it was 3?) complains they look into it. You can also take the company to small claims court for up to $500. Can't offer any hard numbers, but I can tell you that the number of calls I've been getting is WAY down this week....
Second, a bit of humor from one of my favorite comic strips (Ozy and Millie):
Telemarketer: Could I interest you in aluminum siding?
Lewellyn: Well, you won't have to try very hard! Alluminum siding has a deceptively interesting history. It was first invented.." etc etc
Telemarketer: (hangs up)
It seems like I should be getting more worked up about this. But somehow, it just doesn't seem that surprising.
I can't wait to read more about the public reaction..
Yeah, but that one had an off switch. I'm sure they'll remember to get rid of that before they go on sale..
Maybe they could come out with SimPolice where a crime is committed in your city and you have to drive around and figure out whodonit...
;-))
If they want to make it more realistic, there should be an option to let your businesses pay $5 to have their name on your new stadium...
(Yes, I'm in Colorado!
Looking at it the ebay way...
Shipping includes postage, packing materials, time to wrap the package, time to drive to the post office, gas to drive to the post office..
I wonder what interesting license plates have been shot down because people didn't like them.
In Colorado, there was an attempt to get a plate made that said "Respect Life", with a columbine on it. It was shot down by the abortion lobby.
She doesn't. Because of the way quantum cryptography works (and believe me, you don't want to get into the math behind it), reading the message destroys it. So here's an example of what happens: Bob wants to send Alice a secure message; she needs to get the message and be sure that nobody else can read it. Perfect security is obtained by a 1-time pad, as described above. (If I transmit the string AOSTJSDOFKEOSJ using a one-time pad, it could be any string 14 characters long including "this is a code", "attack at dawn", "remember steak", etc). The difficulty lies in exchanging the 1-time pad without meeting. So, Bob generates a random sequence and sents it off to Alice, a bit at a time. If nobody interferes, Alice and Bob can use those bits to create a 1-time pad for secure communication. However, if Eve intercepts the communication, that destroys the values; she can send new bits to Alice, but because she can't create exactly what Bob sent, Alice and Bob will be able to tell that the communication was not secure, so they won't use those bits. They just try again until Eve gives up. (This is a simplification, of course; if you're interested in a detailed look at the math behind quantum computing, I recommend this website)
>That any human can still defeat chess programs tells us that humans must be playing chess in some way >fundamentally different from the numerical calculations and search algorithms used by the programs. Or, it tells us that those humans must know something about the game that the programmers don't :-)
There are some things money can't buy. For everything else, there's somebody willing to try it.
You probably could...except it's been done, so you can't claim that it's original ;-)
One guy apparently figured out a way to correct Y2K problems, patented it, and send a letter around to all the Fortune 500 companies demanding money for using his patented method of solving the Y2K problem...he apparently figured at least some of them would have, so he'd get easy money. Needless to say, they're challenging the patent.
There are patents for "Walking while chewing gum", "Playing tennis while wearing pads", and "Amusing a cat using a laser pointer". This one doesn't surprise me a whole lot. :-)
An interesting site to read about this stuff is Patently Absurd
Ok, the "Walking while chewing gum" one is fake, but the others are real...on the second page of that link it shows a patent for determining bra size. As follows: 1) Prepare unclothed breast 2) Breast Size Measure 3) Conversion to cup size You gotta wonder about some people..