Even though we have seen kids learn difficult topic more easily by using a computational approach to learning, most instructors are reluctant to introduce these new ways of thinking into their curriculum. What do Slashdot users think are the best ways to help revitalize math and science programs in our schools, or should we stick to the old conventional methods to learning?
Well, see, just because it works better doesn't mean we should use it. The teachers don't know how to use it. How would the teachers learn?
Except that you have assumed that things would be worse if drugs were legalized. You have not shown it.
Actually, I believe a fair case could be made for the opposite, that things improve. I mean, old folks talk about the "good old days" all the time, and I seem to remember that a hundred years back cocaine, heroin, and laudanum were all sold OTC...
What exactly is wrong with the MPAA not wanting people to film movies?
Ah, let me explain. When the MP Ass. Head decides to make movies harder to copy, he is also making them harder to watch. When his monopoly decides to hire private goon squads to attack pirates off U.S. soil, I pay for it, every damn time. When the MP Ass. Head wants to punish preteens in order to attempt to gain a foothold in the courts, I pay for that too.
The MP Ass. Head does not pay for these things. His assistants do not pay for these things. His assistant's assistants do not pay for these things. The grips do not pay for these things. The producers and directors and actors do not pay for these things. I pay for these things, and I don't want these things. I paid for those night vision goggles, chum, and if I'm going to pay for them I want them so I can use them.
This general process is like arming 7-11 clerks -- hopefully they'll shoot the thief, and the casualties among the store's patrons would be minimal. Crime prevention is supposed to be an indirect result of police enforcement, not the industry. That doesn't stand up in the real world, and it doesn't stand up in the economic one, either. If bullet spray is a problem at 7-11's, nobody's going to shop there, and if legal movies are too hard to watch, nobody's going to bother trying.
Yeah, because changing the course of politics as we know it is trivially easy. Heck, if the Interweb can't do it a couple decades, clearly, it's just a failure.
It's a little early to proclaim that net capability won't assist revolutions. This report sounds like sour grapes about the author's political views not spreading as they want, and that's unfortunate for the author, perhaps. The reality is that while the web itself will not be accessible to those behind the Red Firewall, it's irrelevant -- those inside will have more effective communication, should they choose to have it, because they'll be able to use the technology.
Wow, what's happened to our work force? Here are a few ideas that might actually look like you give a shit.
Do you live next to Mr. Rogers or something?
I mean, in case you hadn't noticed...management generally *doesn't* give a shit. Why should everybody who has a completely, 100% at-will job give a shit, when they're the least valuable humans in the building? I work at a place that doesn't have those kinds of managers now, but they most certainly exist.
I've had a job once at a place where this division between policy and reality existed. The simple truth is that Stupid Rules Are Implemented So That Management Can Punish People At Will. Every single person in that building used their email to chat with everyone else, but only the people who pissed off managers would get fired over it. Every single person in that place ate lunch at their desk at one point or another -- they had to, with the draconian policies on time-in -- but it was policy that you couldn't have food on the floor. The only people who got fired...right. They irritated their manager.
This is the same place that fired someone for taking an LOA. Upper management didn't care, but they didn't have to. The rules were in place, and the manager could fire them for any number of things, every day, whenever they felt like it.
There's a noble vision where *you* act better than the people who don't give a shit, even if they don't. That's nice. I work in the real world, and there are places where your employment is measured solely by the pettiness of your employer.
Be a "stand-up geek" and do the right thing.
Uh, yeah. Don't forget to drink your milk, either, so you can grow up nice and strong, and eat your spinach.
Don't you get it? This is the third prong of Microsoft's plan. The first was FUD, the second was the SCO debacle -- now, with those hard-bought politicians they own, they're going to reinstate the draft. They'll make sure that the draft picks are done using Access, which will allow them to skew the results so that everybody who's ever written code under the GPL will be drafted. Once free software is outside the country...that's when they strike!
I do my best to read an entire post even if I'm turned off by one of the first statements. Much of what you say here is fair, logical, and levelheaded.
Except, IMHO, this:
The government _is_ "us".
The government is as much me as I am the government, and I cannot explain in this limited space how much I am not the government.
If you believe that the best thing to do is join the system and somehow "make it better", that's very noble, and I commend you for taking the high road. I operate under different principles. I don't like the idea that there is a large, unintelligent mass of people elected on the basis of good hair that determine my future to some degree -- but it is reality. I'm not going to get a better haircut and run for mayor simply because I dislike the mayor. I dislike garbage too, but I don't get in a garbage bag and hope that I'll smell better. I throw it the hell away -- I don't roll around in the stuff.
You have to assume the government has a good aim, something that it would be worth having the government do, etc., and then you can join and do that. I don't want to control people's lives, even if it helps them somehow, because that's not what I'm supposed to do, I have no children. I don't want to have a political persona to have to put on like a shit-suit whenever I walk out of my home. I dislike "making pretty", and I don't like lying in public. I'm 100% unqualified to join "them".
And yes, it's "us" and "them". I showed up at public school because the alternative was a crime. It's essentially illegal to have a job and raise a kid at the same time, so my parents chose to eat and send the kid to Government Day Care. I signed on for Selective Service because I live in an oppressive government that will gladly jail me if I don't. If I get drafted, it will still be 'us' and 'them', because I'm being forced by law into doing something. If my literal choice is prison or military service, sadly, I'll probably pick killing people. At least I'll have the tiny freedom of who to shoot first, or the option of suicide by the enemy. (Actually, this sounds better now -- find a nice place where some news organization is filming live, run up to the camera and state that I'm committing suicide because I've been drafted, and then run off to get slaughtered. Should make an excellent sound bite. Might cause a few others to do the same, and at the very least I've made "them" waste training. Small consolation.)
Call it stupid -- fine. I agree. It is stupid that my life would be wasted, but it's also a choice. Don't know about you, but I'd rather die on my feet than live on my knees.
So in essence, things aren't going your way and it is everyone elses fault?
Well, yeah. That's democracy, if I'm not mistaken. Say I like duct-taping the beaks of swans shut and tossing them off buildings? I'm in the minority, so it's illegal. I can get arrested for doing things I find fun and entertaining. Things aren't going my way, and it is indeed everyone else's fault, because they voted for the last asshole, and they're going to vote for the next one.
This doesn't mean I can't do things my way -- it just means I have to play the game of being a criminal in some cases, and merely being a social outcast in others. It virtually guarantees in many cases that I cannot be afforded the same rights as one of the majority. While I firmly believe that there is no 'normal', that everybody is an individual, etc., most of those individuals believe they are part of a teeming throng of The Righteous Folk, for whatever reason. They want to be part of the in-crowd. I just want them to go the hell away, because I want my privacy and my life. I don't want to go kill people because the asshole that got elected this time decided it was a good idea.
...the Selective Service exists only as a tool to be used in a doomsday situation
Look, that's very nice and all -- but it can still kill me. I still have a problem with that, despite how "unlikely" or "dire" the situations where it will occur might be. I don't keep prepped C-4 bombs in my house, because they might go off. Why is it okay to have this ludicrous thing in place when the best thing it can do is absolutely wrong and awful?
"We lack linguists and computer geeks...is there some reason smart people don't want to get shot at or blown to pieces?"
I guess it's a good thing I have virtually no actual IT work experience. If they ever get so desperate that tech support personnel are in high demand, they deserve me.
I guess you could build the infrastructure first, and then have the house build around it, maybe? Might not be impossible.
As for the city bureaucrats, it does the valuable service of burying them under the new home, saving other robots the trouble of trying to gather them...
Seriously, though...maybe some books on linguistics or social activity? If F2F isn't the kid's strong suit, bridge to it from written material.
If you're worried that they're bad at socializing, as opposed to just not wanting to be around other people, you could probably do worse than directing them to NLP books. If nothing else, it presents human interaction as something hackable.
Well, that's the point -- well-engineered bad-faith cases would be virtually indistinguishable in a courtroom from good-faith cases.
Trust me -- I'm not advocating legislature. I'm advocating not bothering to take legislature seriously, because it relies heavily upon things that cannot be proven conclusively.
Hey, it doesn't matter how big it is, or what it looks like...if you're a burglar, and something spits flame at you, running is the first thing that comes to mind.
It doesn't spit flame?
Okay, yeah, it sucks. The flame-spitting version might be worth the cash, though.
In April, U.S. District Court in Detroit dismissed the suit, saying that Grosse did not violate the law because she was not acting in bad faith or trying to generate a profit from the Web site.
Ah. So if I claim I got bad service from someone, and then produce some form of evidence to back it up (hello, Photoshop? Pictures of XY's company rep doing something awful, please), then I can set up a domain name and squat legally. All I need to do, then, is produce photographs of someone who works for, say, Network Solutions, then get the domain networksolutions.info or something, and then charge them a few hundred thousand for pain and suffering, or some such nonsense!
Thank you, legal system, for giving me the faith to believe that extortion could be legalized!
Slashdot Mirror
Well, see, just because it works better doesn't mean we should use it. The teachers don't know how to use it. How would the teachers learn?
Actually, I believe a fair case could be made for the opposite, that things improve. I mean, old folks talk about the "good old days" all the time, and I seem to remember that a hundred years back cocaine, heroin, and laudanum were all sold OTC...
The MP Ass. Head does not pay for these things. His assistants do not pay for these things. His assistant's assistants do not pay for these things. The grips do not pay for these things. The producers and directors and actors do not pay for these things. I pay for these things, and I don't want these things. I paid for those night vision goggles, chum, and if I'm going to pay for them I want them so I can use them.
This general process is like arming 7-11 clerks -- hopefully they'll shoot the thief, and the casualties among the store's patrons would be minimal. Crime prevention is supposed to be an indirect result of police enforcement, not the industry. That doesn't stand up in the real world, and it doesn't stand up in the economic one, either. If bullet spray is a problem at 7-11's, nobody's going to shop there, and if legal movies are too hard to watch, nobody's going to bother trying.
Indeed! I believe Mr. Valenti to be the largest Ass. Head ever, in fact. :)
Reliable sources indicate it would actually cause a temporal perception shift, resulting in the ability to move at speeds much greater than normal.
Yeah, because changing the course of politics as we know it is trivially easy. Heck, if the Interweb can't do it a couple decades, clearly, it's just a failure.
It's a little early to proclaim that net capability won't assist revolutions. This report sounds like sour grapes about the author's political views not spreading as they want, and that's unfortunate for the author, perhaps. The reality is that while the web itself will not be accessible to those behind the Red Firewall, it's irrelevant -- those inside will have more effective communication, should they choose to have it, because they'll be able to use the technology.
It's not their fault your imagination is limited. Someone will come up with the problem later.
Do you live next to Mr. Rogers or something?
I mean, in case you hadn't noticed...management generally *doesn't* give a shit. Why should everybody who has a completely, 100% at-will job give a shit, when they're the least valuable humans in the building? I work at a place that doesn't have those kinds of managers now, but they most certainly exist.
I've had a job once at a place where this division between policy and reality existed. The simple truth is that Stupid Rules Are Implemented So That Management Can Punish People At Will. Every single person in that building used their email to chat with everyone else, but only the people who pissed off managers would get fired over it. Every single person in that place ate lunch at their desk at one point or another -- they had to, with the draconian policies on time-in -- but it was policy that you couldn't have food on the floor. The only people who got fired...right. They irritated their manager.
This is the same place that fired someone for taking an LOA. Upper management didn't care, but they didn't have to. The rules were in place, and the manager could fire them for any number of things, every day, whenever they felt like it.
There's a noble vision where *you* act better than the people who don't give a shit, even if they don't. That's nice. I work in the real world, and there are places where your employment is measured solely by the pettiness of your employer.
Uh, yeah. Don't forget to drink your milk, either, so you can grow up nice and strong, and eat your spinach.
Yes, down with freedom, as long as it means more conservative clothing for females between 6 and 18!
Don't you get it? This is the third prong of Microsoft's plan. The first was FUD, the second was the SCO debacle -- now, with those hard-bought politicians they own, they're going to reinstate the draft. They'll make sure that the draft picks are done using Access, which will allow them to skew the results so that everybody who's ever written code under the GPL will be drafted. Once free software is outside the country...that's when they strike!
Except, IMHO, this:
The government is as much me as I am the government, and I cannot explain in this limited space how much I am not the government.
If you believe that the best thing to do is join the system and somehow "make it better", that's very noble, and I commend you for taking the high road. I operate under different principles. I don't like the idea that there is a large, unintelligent mass of people elected on the basis of good hair that determine my future to some degree -- but it is reality. I'm not going to get a better haircut and run for mayor simply because I dislike the mayor. I dislike garbage too, but I don't get in a garbage bag and hope that I'll smell better. I throw it the hell away -- I don't roll around in the stuff.
You have to assume the government has a good aim, something that it would be worth having the government do, etc., and then you can join and do that. I don't want to control people's lives, even if it helps them somehow, because that's not what I'm supposed to do, I have no children. I don't want to have a political persona to have to put on like a shit-suit whenever I walk out of my home. I dislike "making pretty", and I don't like lying in public. I'm 100% unqualified to join "them".
And yes, it's "us" and "them". I showed up at public school because the alternative was a crime. It's essentially illegal to have a job and raise a kid at the same time, so my parents chose to eat and send the kid to Government Day Care. I signed on for Selective Service because I live in an oppressive government that will gladly jail me if I don't. If I get drafted, it will still be 'us' and 'them', because I'm being forced by law into doing something. If my literal choice is prison or military service, sadly, I'll probably pick killing people. At least I'll have the tiny freedom of who to shoot first, or the option of suicide by the enemy. (Actually, this sounds better now -- find a nice place where some news organization is filming live, run up to the camera and state that I'm committing suicide because I've been drafted, and then run off to get slaughtered. Should make an excellent sound bite. Might cause a few others to do the same, and at the very least I've made "them" waste training. Small consolation.)
Call it stupid -- fine. I agree. It is stupid that my life would be wasted, but it's also a choice. Don't know about you, but I'd rather die on my feet than live on my knees.
Well, yeah. That's democracy, if I'm not mistaken. Say I like duct-taping the beaks of swans shut and tossing them off buildings? I'm in the minority, so it's illegal. I can get arrested for doing things I find fun and entertaining. Things aren't going my way, and it is indeed everyone else's fault, because they voted for the last asshole, and they're going to vote for the next one.
This doesn't mean I can't do things my way -- it just means I have to play the game of being a criminal in some cases, and merely being a social outcast in others. It virtually guarantees in many cases that I cannot be afforded the same rights as one of the majority. While I firmly believe that there is no 'normal', that everybody is an individual, etc., most of those individuals believe they are part of a teeming throng of The Righteous Folk, for whatever reason. They want to be part of the in-crowd. I just want them to go the hell away, because I want my privacy and my life. I don't want to go kill people because the asshole that got elected this time decided it was a good idea.
Simple. If you're too stupid to pretend to be stupid, or too well-careered to pretend to be stupid, you can't avoid the draft.
The rest of us -- good liars without decent employment history -- will gladly take the jobs of the aforementioned.
Yeah, you're a bunch more likely to be at the site that gets hit with a ballistic missile. You'll be doing fine after the atomization process occurs.
I'd rather take my chances on the front line, where I have a chance to maybe see the people who are going to shoot at me.
I guess it's a good thing I have virtually no actual IT work experience. If they ever get so desperate that tech support personnel are in high demand, they deserve me.
Is there some example somewhere of a CAPTCHA nobody's been able to break yet with mere brute programming?
I mean, I realize there's technically some way around any CAPTCHA setup, just curious if one is currently deemed King Of The Hill...
I guess you could build the infrastructure first, and then have the house build around it, maybe? Might not be impossible.
As for the city bureaucrats, it does the valuable service of burying them under the new home, saving other robots the trouble of trying to gather them...
Seriously, though...maybe some books on linguistics or social activity? If F2F isn't the kid's strong suit, bridge to it from written material.
If you're worried that they're bad at socializing, as opposed to just not wanting to be around other people, you could probably do worse than directing them to NLP books. If nothing else, it presents human interaction as something hackable.
Trust me -- I'm not advocating legislature. I'm advocating not bothering to take legislature seriously, because it relies heavily upon things that cannot be proven conclusively.
Hey, it doesn't matter how big it is, or what it looks like...if you're a burglar, and something spits flame at you, running is the first thing that comes to mind.
It doesn't spit flame?
Okay, yeah, it sucks. The flame-spitting version might be worth the cash, though.
Ah. So if I claim I got bad service from someone, and then produce some form of evidence to back it up (hello, Photoshop? Pictures of XY's company rep doing something awful, please), then I can set up a domain name and squat legally. All I need to do, then, is produce photographs of someone who works for, say, Network Solutions, then get the domain networksolutions.info or something, and then charge them a few hundred thousand for pain and suffering, or some such nonsense!
Thank you, legal system, for giving me the faith to believe that extortion could be legalized!
The most obvious difference between British and US government is, of course, the accent.
Which is fine -- but this is the NSA. Why bother, when there's plenty of other fine distributions?
I honestly wonder who would trust the NSA.