I'm taking a blind guess here, but I'm thinking that after a certain amount of use, kids do perform worse in school with computers. Rather, rephrasing that into a sentence that doesn't suck: I think kids probably do better in school using computers a certain amount, and when they start using computers past that amount, their performance starts to suffer.
I love computers. I have to say that out loud, or this one will bite me. I'd also really hate the irony of saying otherwise in this medium. However, computers are not a panacea. As has been, and is currently being said many times in this forum, a computer is a tool. It is a very good tool, with odds and ends that make many jobs easier, nevertheless, a pair of pliers is not the best choice when one needs to drive a nail, and wrench used too much will hurt your wrist. The calculator didn't solve low grades in math, and the computer will do no better. There are other factors, closer to the student, the teacher, and the administrator that hold much more sway in that department.
Computers are still new to the classroom. Yeah, I was playing Oregon trail in the fifth grade, but that wasn't much of an educational use. I don't think the fact that you can get five people from Missouri to Oregon half starved is worth the cost. I don't see computer use in school today as having progressed much beyond that, either. The teachers and administrators seem as the generals of World War I, fumbling with new technology they don't know how to apply tactically, and thus causing lots of casualties and stagnation. Perhaps also leading to the League of Nations and World War II, but I can't be sure of that now.
Not that I can do much better. Off hand, the only two things I can think of where a computer is really handy in an English class(which is the only one I feel I have any shot at quickly getting right), is typing in a reproducible, easily edited way, and researching. The finer points of writing and researching still need to be taught, however. A lot of school don't seem to be doing that as well as they should.
Indeed, Amazon beat google to the searching through copyrighted material thing. I would think that Amazon would actually be a bigger target on this issue too, than google, as most of Amazon's catalogue is likely made up of copyrighted works.
There is no objection, I admit, to a company using DRM on copyrighted material, but why a company, no matter what its size may be, should DRM non-copyrighted material, I can't quite make out.
The way copyrights work(not complaining about this part), he alone has the rights to reproduce the original versions of the films. The number of copies of those are finite -- no more are being produced. Regarding a book, this wouldn't be so much of a problem; the medium has been proven to have a very long shelf life. If the original films were books, they could sit out their copyrighted days in some libraries somewhere, and be in fine shape for consumption and/or reproduction afterward. The media the movies are actually stored on, however, has not been tested to such an age as is required in this case. Taking current consumption out of the picture, this puts those versions in jeopardy for the future.
"Other than that, just because you and aparently millions of others have deified Star Wars doesn't give you diddly squat as far as any kind of right or privelege to decide whether or not George Lucas is doing the right thing."
Everyone has the right to decide whether or not Lucas is doing the right thing. That decision, however, doesn't mean diddly squat.
"'Renig on their social contract'?? What contract is that? Lucas is a dude who created a beloved work, and who wants to "finish" it in the way that he as an artist envisioned it. That "vision" is his alone. You and all of these other nay-saying fans can bitch all you want, but because you're not the ones with the vision, you *really* have no entitlement to decide anything at all about these films."
We're talking about the original trilogy here, not the prequels. The version of the original trilogy that was released to theatres waas a finished product. Anything new Lucas makes using that material is a new finished product.
While I think you are slightly over valuing the author's vision and undervaluing the rights of the fan, I will agree with you that that "renig on their social contract" line went a bit too far. Anyone who consumes a work gets one sub-microscopic share in it -- not enough to do anything meaningful, but enough to stand up and have a say at the shareholder meetings. Yeah the author retains controlling interest, and has the "vision," but who said vision meant anything? There have been many authors who have had excellent visions, but crap executions, and their works have faded into obscurity.
No, no one is forced to. But some of us have friends who like this stuff, and some of us end up putting our friendships before our tastes.
I've diatribed against the third movie, and will continue to, but I'm going to see it because my friends are going to see it, and I like to see movies with them.
Setting all that aside, however... nobody's forcing you to read our diatribes.
It's been a while since the business with the original iMac ripoff, so my memory might be a bit fuzzy, but I think the shuffles might be even more identical than the teardrop computers.
Or, teachers and administrators could do what they are being paid to do, and intervene into situations that get out of hand. Student or teacher, you don't need a security camera to know what's going down in your school.
That is not a helpful post. Not only does it resort to name calling, but it also promotes political group-think.
And can you show a source on the subsidy/tax statement? Based on the rest of your post I'm a bit leery of the claim, but would nonetheless like to see what you base it off of.
So... you want total silence for watching non-trailer ads?
I can understand wanting silence during the movie. I can probably see an argument for wanting it during the trailers. Why you would be offended by noise during non-movie advertisements I cannot make out.
Were there cameras watching the inside of the school as well?
I can better understand cameras watching only the entrances of the school -- their concern is only the entrance and egress of people who might disrupt the school. If one is worried about security, one does not need to spot a problem on the inside when it was already spotted at the door.
This, if the cameras were only at the entrances, would be enough to sway me quite a bit, as their primary focus was not on treating the students as criminals, tracking each and every one on the inside all day.
It would sway me quite a bit... but I'd still need more information.
The receptionist was likewise, I presume, not roving the halls. Did the receptionist have other duties than punishing students trying to leave, or was her entire raison d'etre to bust bolters?
I use the same line of thought for this question as I did for the cameras -- she was at the entrance. If someone really wanted to bust students there were more effective placements and functions.
The "prison feeling" of high school is one of the things I most hated about it. The above are not very good, but are, in varying cases and amounts, justifyable. The justification had better be pretty damn good though.
With the tags in this story, the students are specifically watched at the entrance. Not only the entrance, but at various places inside the school. There can be no pretext here of "watching for questionable people entering the school," the students themselves are the questionable people.
I don't know the particulars of the situation at your high school, but from what I know right now, this is at a completely different level.
"What do you teach children when you have to tag them and constantly monitor all their activities?
That you don't trust them."
Thank you! I was hoping someone would say that.
Indeed, put yourself into a kid's shoes... well, actually, the grandparent poster didn't seem to have any concern for the feeling of violation a kid may feel at this. The ends, for him, seem to so justify the means, that anything ill about those means seems not to exist.
The general disregard for the rights, ideas, and opinions of kids is what pissed me off most about being one. No matter how smart you are, no one wants to listen to what you have to say until you're eighteen, or more likely twenty-one. If you're a kid with a talent, you're the monkey in somebody's sideshow, fodder for talkshows, political photo-ops, or slow news day "human interest" pieces.
Setting that diatribe aside, though, and going a bit more in depth on one of the parent poster's points:
"They never learn to be trusted, thus either will rebell even more than the kids of today or become complacent slaves to society"
They will not become slaves to a society that isn't constantly watching them. What lesson should be taken from being tagged and monitored than that one should behave while being watched? If one is never not watched, can one learn that one should follow the rules then too? When would that lesson be learned?
Society works through the often tacit agreement of the people in it to follow certain guidelines at all times, with the knowledge that, for most of that time, they won't be near anyone who can enforce those guidelines. Most of the time you can probably get away with crossing a double yellow line. Most of the time you can get away with stealing someone else's stapler. Most of the time you can sneak into someone else's yard and use the pool. We don't need to be constantly under surveilance, though, because most of us do agree to this social contract.
The term "social contract" brings up another of the parent poster's points(and one that has been brought up before): trust. Drafting a contract in business requires good faith on both sides. Good faith... trust. The social contract requires no less. The tagging of these students shows a lack of that faith.
"they will not have a concept of freedom that we do
There is a danger there. However, children can see how their parents live. For example: Just because kids are not allowed to drive, does not mean they will grow into adults that do not know how to or expect to drive."
People do not start out driving and then, through no fault of their own, lose that right. This is a case where kids had some privacy and then lost it.
Ah but doesn't the consideration of one's own sentience rather support the statement that one is sentient? Can one program a machine to think it self sentient, or consider its sentience at all?
Actually, the Sun Tzu-bot struck me as benig closer to sentience.
There was an article maybe a year or two ago now about a robot, designed to fight other robots for testing AI fighting strategy or something, that got out of its enclosure and escaped into the parking lot.
One room? Pssh. I'll take my Sun Tzu-bot any day of the week.
"1. Robots must never harm human beings or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm."
What constitutes harm? If we have a robot that can grab things, but shouldn't grab people because it could hurt them, what happens if someone near it is going to fall if it doesn't grab him? Does it make a difference if it's the roof of a building, or the top of a sofa? People can die by falling from either. Even in the latter case, where death has a far lower probability, serious injury may occur.
The laws are actually more like the spirits of laws. Drafting the letters of those laws is somewhat more complex than programming a robot to vacuum a room.
"As humans, personify almost all machines we come in close contact with."
Humans personify almost everything they come into contact with. It doesn't have to be close contact either.
One of Humanity's biggest curiosities is about humanity. It is perhaps the biggest. The question of humanity is the basis of almost all art. We study animals, and end up teaching dolphins how to use computers, and gorillas how to use sign language. We are constantly looking for the being that can explain us to us: a god, aliens, both, neither, some dude who lost himself on a mountain, and in recent history robots. Maybe if we can consciously build a sentient being from the ground up, we can learn why we are from it. Or maybe if it becomes sentient on its own, it can tell us what it was like, passing in that moment from the mundane into the sublime.
If and when emergent behavior happens, it will be sometime possibly long after we call it emergent behavior. We want it to happen... maybe just to get a perspective that isn't human.
"...it seems Nintendo is all but ignored by the MSM, unless it's an article predicting doom and gloom..."
In that respect, it's a lot like Apple. Actually...
Both companies do very well with their portable products, even above and beyond their non-mobile ones. Both companies enjoy zealous followings, and suffer some zealous detractors. Both companies are often featured in articles with the word "beleaguered" or synonyms thereof.
Is Shigeru Miyamoto Steve Jobs in disguise? We've never seen them both at the same time...
Slashdot Mirror
They have to be more intelligent than us... they're all somewhere deep in space, and only smart people can get themselves there.
I mean, they're on some other planet, or something, right?
I'm taking a blind guess here, but I'm thinking that after a certain amount of use, kids do perform worse in school with computers. Rather, rephrasing that into a sentence that doesn't suck: I think kids probably do better in school using computers a certain amount, and when they start using computers past that amount, their performance starts to suffer.
I love computers. I have to say that out loud, or this one will bite me. I'd also really hate the irony of saying otherwise in this medium. However, computers are not a panacea. As has been, and is currently being said many times in this forum, a computer is a tool. It is a very good tool, with odds and ends that make many jobs easier, nevertheless, a pair of pliers is not the best choice when one needs to drive a nail, and wrench used too much will hurt your wrist. The calculator didn't solve low grades in math, and the computer will do no better. There are other factors, closer to the student, the teacher, and the administrator that hold much more sway in that department.
Computers are still new to the classroom. Yeah, I was playing Oregon trail in the fifth grade, but that wasn't much of an educational use. I don't think the fact that you can get five people from Missouri to Oregon half starved is worth the cost. I don't see computer use in school today as having progressed much beyond that, either. The teachers and administrators seem as the generals of World War I, fumbling with new technology they don't know how to apply tactically, and thus causing lots of casualties and stagnation. Perhaps also leading to the League of Nations and World War II, but I can't be sure of that now.
Not that I can do much better. Off hand, the only two things I can think of where a computer is really handy in an English class(which is the only one I feel I have any shot at quickly getting right), is typing in a reproducible, easily edited way, and researching. The finer points of writing and researching still need to be taught, however. A lot of school don't seem to be doing that as well as they should.
Indeed, Amazon beat google to the searching through copyrighted material thing. I would think that Amazon would actually be a bigger target on this issue too, than google, as most of Amazon's catalogue is likely made up of copyrighted works.
There is no objection, I admit, to a company using DRM on copyrighted material, but why a company, no matter what its size may be, should DRM non-copyrighted material, I can't quite make out.
Ah, thanks. :-)
I missed that one. Who went after PG and when? This sounds too interesting to just let slip by.
"How has he prevented access to the originals?"
The way copyrights work(not complaining about this part), he alone has the rights to reproduce the original versions of the films. The number of copies of those are finite -- no more are being produced. Regarding a book, this wouldn't be so much of a problem; the medium has been proven to have a very long shelf life. If the original films were books, they could sit out their copyrighted days in some libraries somewhere, and be in fine shape for consumption and/or reproduction afterward. The media the movies are actually stored on, however, has not been tested to such an age as is required in this case. Taking current consumption out of the picture, this puts those versions in jeopardy for the future.
"Other than that, just because you and aparently millions of others have deified Star Wars doesn't give you diddly squat as far as any kind of right or privelege to decide whether or not George Lucas is doing the right thing."
Everyone has the right to decide whether or not Lucas is doing the right thing. That decision, however, doesn't mean diddly squat.
"'Renig on their social contract'?? What contract is that? Lucas is a dude who created a beloved work, and who wants to "finish" it in the way that he as an artist envisioned it. That "vision" is his alone. You and all of these other nay-saying fans can bitch all you want, but because you're not the ones with the vision, you *really* have no entitlement to decide anything at all about these films."
We're talking about the original trilogy here, not the prequels. The version of the original trilogy that was released to theatres waas a finished product. Anything new Lucas makes using that material is a new finished product.
While I think you are slightly over valuing the author's vision and undervaluing the rights of the fan, I will agree with you that that "renig on their social contract" line went a bit too far. Anyone who consumes a work gets one sub-microscopic share in it -- not enough to do anything meaningful, but enough to stand up and have a say at the shareholder meetings. Yeah the author retains controlling interest, and has the "vision," but who said vision meant anything? There have been many authors who have had excellent visions, but crap executions, and their works have faded into obscurity.
No, no one is forced to. But some of us have friends who like this stuff, and some of us end up putting our friendships before our tastes.
I've diatribed against the third movie, and will continue to, but I'm going to see it because my friends are going to see it, and I like to see movies with them.
Setting all that aside, however... nobody's forcing you to read our diatribes.
I think Blu-ray will win because it has a bigger Wikipedia article than HD-DVD.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bluray
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HD-DVD
HD-DVD does win in url length, but only by letter size, which could be argued to be a wash.
It's been a while since the business with the original iMac ripoff, so my memory might be a bit fuzzy, but I think the shuffles might be even more identical than the teardrop computers.
Then again, maybe not.
Actually, I would think the obligatory line would be:
"I'd like to see that."
Well... I would.
(the picture in the article kinda sucks)
"'when is the last time the public actually stood up for their rights?'
How would we know? The corporate media would never tell us even if it actually happened."
The public doesn't need to stand up for its rights when it can make clever responses like that.
Or that.
Or that.
Or that. Or that. Or that. Or that.
Or that.
Or, teachers and administrators could do what they are being paid to do, and intervene into situations that get out of hand. Student or teacher, you don't need a security camera to know what's going down in your school.
That is not a helpful post. Not only does it resort to name calling, but it also promotes political group-think.
And can you show a source on the subsidy/tax statement? Based on the rest of your post I'm a bit leery of the claim, but would nonetheless like to see what you base it off of.
So... you want total silence for watching non-trailer ads?
I can understand wanting silence during the movie. I can probably see an argument for wanting it during the trailers. Why you would be offended by noise during non-movie advertisements I cannot make out.
Were there cameras watching the inside of the school as well?
I can better understand cameras watching only the entrances of the school -- their concern is only the entrance and egress of people who might disrupt the school. If one is worried about security, one does not need to spot a problem on the inside when it was already spotted at the door.
This, if the cameras were only at the entrances, would be enough to sway me quite a bit, as their primary focus was not on treating the students as criminals, tracking each and every one on the inside all day.
It would sway me quite a bit... but I'd still need more information.
The receptionist was likewise, I presume, not roving the halls. Did the receptionist have other duties than punishing students trying to leave, or was her entire raison d'etre to bust bolters?
I use the same line of thought for this question as I did for the cameras -- she was at the entrance. If someone really wanted to bust students there were more effective placements and functions.
The "prison feeling" of high school is one of the things I most hated about it. The above are not very good, but are, in varying cases and amounts, justifyable. The justification had better be pretty damn good though.
With the tags in this story, the students are specifically watched at the entrance. Not only the entrance, but at various places inside the school. There can be no pretext here of "watching for questionable people entering the school," the students themselves are the questionable people.
I don't know the particulars of the situation at your high school, but from what I know right now, this is at a completely different level.
"What do you teach children when you have to tag them and constantly monitor all their activities?
That you don't trust them."
Thank you! I was hoping someone would say that.
Indeed, put yourself into a kid's shoes... well, actually, the grandparent poster didn't seem to have any concern for the feeling of violation a kid may feel at this. The ends, for him, seem to so justify the means, that anything ill about those means seems not to exist.
The general disregard for the rights, ideas, and opinions of kids is what pissed me off most about being one. No matter how smart you are, no one wants to listen to what you have to say until you're eighteen, or more likely twenty-one. If you're a kid with a talent, you're the monkey in somebody's sideshow, fodder for talkshows, political photo-ops, or slow news day "human interest" pieces.
Setting that diatribe aside, though, and going a bit more in depth on one of the parent poster's points:
"They never learn to be trusted, thus either will rebell even more than the kids of today or become complacent slaves to society"
They will not become slaves to a society that isn't constantly watching them. What lesson should be taken from being tagged and monitored than that one should behave while being watched? If one is never not watched, can one learn that one should follow the rules then too? When would that lesson be learned?
Society works through the often tacit agreement of the people in it to follow certain guidelines at all times, with the knowledge that, for most of that time, they won't be near anyone who can enforce those guidelines. Most of the time you can probably get away with crossing a double yellow line. Most of the time you can get away with stealing someone else's stapler. Most of the time you can sneak into someone else's yard and use the pool. We don't need to be constantly under surveilance, though, because most of us do agree to this social contract.
The term "social contract" brings up another of the parent poster's points(and one that has been brought up before): trust. Drafting a contract in business requires good faith on both sides. Good faith... trust. The social contract requires no less. The tagging of these students shows a lack of that faith.
"they will not have a concept of freedom that we do
There is a danger there. However, children can see how their parents live. For example: Just because kids are not allowed to drive, does not mean they will grow into adults that do not know how to or expect to drive."
People do not start out driving and then, through no fault of their own, lose that right. This is a case where kids had some privacy and then lost it.
Ah but doesn't the consideration of one's own sentience rather support the statement that one is sentient? Can one program a machine to think it self sentient, or consider its sentience at all?
*honk*
Actually, the Sun Tzu-bot struck me as benig closer to sentience.
There was an article maybe a year or two ago now about a robot, designed to fight other robots for testing AI fighting strategy or something, that got out of its enclosure and escaped into the parking lot.
One room? Pssh. I'll take my Sun Tzu-bot any day of the week.
Ack! Indeed. Got a little carried away and went with the lightning bug rather than the lightning. Thanks :)
Consider law 1; the backbone of the laws:
"1. Robots must never harm human beings or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm."
What constitutes harm? If we have a robot that can grab things, but shouldn't grab people because it could hurt them, what happens if someone near it is going to fall if it doesn't grab him? Does it make a difference if it's the roof of a building, or the top of a sofa? People can die by falling from either. Even in the latter case, where death has a far lower probability, serious injury may occur.
The laws are actually more like the spirits of laws. Drafting the letters of those laws is somewhat more complex than programming a robot to vacuum a room.
"As humans, personify almost all machines we come in close contact with."
Humans personify almost everything they come into contact with. It doesn't have to be close contact either.
One of Humanity's biggest curiosities is about humanity. It is perhaps the biggest. The question of humanity is the basis of almost all art. We study animals, and end up teaching dolphins how to use computers, and gorillas how to use sign language. We are constantly looking for the being that can explain us to us: a god, aliens, both, neither, some dude who lost himself on a mountain, and in recent history robots. Maybe if we can consciously build a sentient being from the ground up, we can learn why we are from it. Or maybe if it becomes sentient on its own, it can tell us what it was like, passing in that moment from the mundane into the sublime.
If and when emergent behavior happens, it will be sometime possibly long after we call it emergent behavior. We want it to happen... maybe just to get a perspective that isn't human.
*honk*
"...it seems Nintendo is all but ignored by the MSM, unless it's an article predicting doom and gloom..."
In that respect, it's a lot like Apple. Actually...
Both companies do very well with their portable products, even above and beyond their non-mobile ones. Both companies enjoy zealous followings, and suffer some zealous detractors. Both companies are often featured in articles with the word "beleaguered" or synonyms thereof.
Is Shigeru Miyamoto Steve Jobs in disguise? We've never seen them both at the same time...
Hemisphere? I thought the Earth was flat? Or do you mean sphere as in it's like a deflated balloon?
(dogpile on the joke)