If only we could agree on a perfect definition of intelligence first, then maybe we could come up with a better way to measure it.
Ah, there's the rub.
The problem with testing for intelligence is that we're really not quite certain what we're looking for. Spatial reasoning? Problem solving? Mathematical calculations? Reading comprehension?
It's nearly impossible to test "smarts" in any consistent way because of the varied background and education of each individual. Worst-case scenario, you actually end up testing a person's memory.
Take my family for instance. I'm a 145... which seems high enough, you'd think. My oldest sister scored a 175 and wasn't really taking the test that seriously (which is just as well, since scores in that range are wildly inaccurate anyway). Everyone else in the family is somewhere in between; I, with my "genius" IQ, am actually the slowest of the bunch. The net result is that none of us really put much stock in IQ tests.
My sister is definately a genius by any definition. She's a master of all disciplines: an artist, physicist, linguist, mathematician, writer, everything. Not only can she compete in every field, she excels. She, with less to work with than the average McGuyver setup, could conquer the world in an hour.
She was followed by a brother with similar capacity and opportunity. The two of them made being smart not only cool, but reachable for the rest of us. The opportunity for learning for the rest of us was immense. Every curiousity could be satisfied, and even the most complicated concepts can be taught if you have a highly-capable teacher.
So now, while I don't personally think I measure up to the mental level of all the great minds of our day, all the "intelligence" tests I take tell me that I do. Compared to a history exam, IQ tests seem easy--like I'd studied for it. In a sense, I guess, I have. I have an uncommonly strong educational background that gives me a noticable edge.
So what does that mean? Are IQ tests really worthless? If you could create an IQ test for which the results weren't affected by prior education, would it be useful? Would the results be different?
It's not the length or width of the runway that sets it apart--quite a few airports have runways rivaling (or exceeding) those dimensions. It's the construction quality and flatness. Runway diagrams will usually list the runway elevation for either end separately, because it will ofen differ by up to a few hundred feet. One of my most interesting experiences as a student pilot was landing on the rolling hills of a local airport runway.
The key to making this work is really to find a low-profile co-conspirator in a more freedom-friendly environment. Get basic shell access on an internet connected node that is far beyond the reach of this opessive regime. A dsl connected workstation in Canada, for example, would do just fine.
Compose from the privacy of your own inconspicuous home. Turn off all cache and save nothing locally. And, of course, tunnel all traffic over a secure connection until its well out of the country. Then use an anonymizing service from there. You dont want an IP address that you connect to directly to be verifiably associated with dissident material.
Do not use email. Encrypt everything. Store nothing within the country - especially encrypted material or encryption keys. Just the possession of that sort of thing is enough to convince a paranoid Organization that you have something to hide.
Finally, slip through the cracks. Don't draw attention to yourself. Security through obscurity is the best first line of defense.
1.6 million years before my home in colorado starts getting salty. I can live with that.
And I'd got my hopes up thinking I'd soon be able to scuba dive in NY. Not enough global hair spray usage, I guess.
No, we actually did build an entire 3-tiered application in PHP. First we built an application framework, similar in functionality and purpose to JBoss. Then we started at the bottom and built separate modules to perform individual tasks -- the presentation logic, the business logic, database interaction, etc. Each layer was absolutely independant, linked to the application as a whole only by the framework. If we wanted to use a different database, all we had to change was the database layer. If we wanted to change the presentation format (HTML, PDF, etc.) all we had to do was tell the framework to use a different presentation layer.
Perfect? No, No. We only had 3 weeks to develop it. No project of that magnitude is flawless in 3 weeks. It was, however, indistinguishable from perfect in all the important ways for that class (function, maintainability, expandability). The problem with n-tiered development with PHP is that it takes a lot of dicipline to do it the right way instead of one of the myriad easy ways. The rules of separation are enforced only by yourself, and not the language or framework. It takes more work, but it pays later when you have to maintain it.
Cheat? No. Be careful not to make such bold accusations on such little knowledge. We cleared everything with the professor first, and only hid the details from our fellow students because it was doubted that others would build a true n-tiered archetecture if they could use PHP. My group was already very accomplished in this area.
Afraid to hire one of us, you say? You'd be missing out. One of us got a job specifically because of this project and is now teaching others to do this sort of rapid-but-maintainable web development on a larger scale. Another one of our team (still in school) has created and maintains a number of well-known and extremely widely used PHP-based tools. And me? I get paid an obscene amount to do what I used to do just for fun. That project helped me out quite a bit, too.
So yes, it's possible, we did actually did it. It worked perfectly, and it turned out to be a very profitable undertaking for us all.
When I was in school, in my Enterprise Systems class we had to design (as the final project) a true 3-tiered enterprise web application using Java and J-Boss -- a daunting task to complete in 3 weeks. So my group did the only sensible thing and re-associated the.jsp extension with the PHP processor and wrote the whole thing using php instead...and told no one.
We didn't take any shortcuts at all: we preserved a complete and separate true 3-tiered archetecture with all the fixins and everything. In fact, adding site-wide RSS output capability only took about 15 minutes to implement. We could swap in and out components with no effort at all.
The best part was that not only did we pull it off, but we were the only group to finish (Everyone else was dealing with the horrors of sluggish development that EJB invariably brings with it. Most were about 15% done.), but we were the only group to ever get full marks on the assignment.
EJB is for managers and people who want to be sold a solution. PHP is for developers who know what it takes to build a solution and want to get it working, get it working right, and get it working right now.
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Ah, there's the rub.
The problem with testing for intelligence is that we're really not quite certain what we're looking for. Spatial reasoning? Problem solving? Mathematical calculations? Reading comprehension?
It's nearly impossible to test "smarts" in any consistent way because of the varied background and education of each individual. Worst-case scenario, you actually end up testing a person's memory.
Take my family for instance. I'm a 145... which seems high enough, you'd think. My oldest sister scored a 175 and wasn't really taking the test that seriously (which is just as well, since scores in that range are wildly inaccurate anyway). Everyone else in the family is somewhere in between; I, with my "genius" IQ, am actually the slowest of the bunch. The net result is that none of us really put much stock in IQ tests.
My sister is definately a genius by any definition. She's a master of all disciplines: an artist, physicist, linguist, mathematician, writer, everything. Not only can she compete in every field, she excels. She, with less to work with than the average McGuyver setup, could conquer the world in an hour.
She was followed by a brother with similar capacity and opportunity. The two of them made being smart not only cool, but reachable for the rest of us. The opportunity for learning for the rest of us was immense. Every curiousity could be satisfied, and even the most complicated concepts can be taught if you have a highly-capable teacher.
So now, while I don't personally think I measure up to the mental level of all the great minds of our day, all the "intelligence" tests I take tell me that I do. Compared to a history exam, IQ tests seem easy--like I'd studied for it. In a sense, I guess, I have. I have an uncommonly strong educational background that gives me a noticable edge.
So what does that mean? Are IQ tests really worthless? If you could create an IQ test for which the results weren't affected by prior education, would it be useful? Would the results be different?
It's not the length or width of the runway that sets it apart--quite a few airports have runways rivaling (or exceeding) those dimensions. It's the construction quality and flatness. Runway diagrams will usually list the runway elevation for either end separately, because it will ofen differ by up to a few hundred feet. One of my most interesting experiences as a student pilot was landing on the rolling hills of a local airport runway.
The key to making this work is really to find a low-profile co-conspirator in a more freedom-friendly environment. Get basic shell access on an internet connected node that is far beyond the reach of this opessive regime. A dsl connected workstation in Canada, for example, would do just fine.
Compose from the privacy of your own inconspicuous home. Turn off all cache and save nothing locally. And, of course, tunnel all traffic over a secure connection until its well out of the country. Then use an anonymizing service from there. You dont want an IP address that you connect to directly to be verifiably associated with dissident material.
Do not use email. Encrypt everything. Store nothing within the country - especially encrypted material or encryption keys. Just the possession of that sort of thing is enough to convince a paranoid Organization that you have something to hide.
Finally, slip through the cracks. Don't draw attention to yourself. Security through obscurity is the best first line of defense.
1.6 million years before my home in colorado starts getting salty. I can live with that. And I'd got my hopes up thinking I'd soon be able to scuba dive in NY. Not enough global hair spray usage, I guess.
Perfect? No, No. We only had 3 weeks to develop it. No project of that magnitude is flawless in 3 weeks. It was, however, indistinguishable from perfect in all the important ways for that class (function, maintainability, expandability). The problem with n-tiered development with PHP is that it takes a lot of dicipline to do it the right way instead of one of the myriad easy ways. The rules of separation are enforced only by yourself, and not the language or framework. It takes more work, but it pays later when you have to maintain it.
Cheat? No. Be careful not to make such bold accusations on such little knowledge. We cleared everything with the professor first, and only hid the details from our fellow students because it was doubted that others would build a true n-tiered archetecture if they could use PHP. My group was already very accomplished in this area.
Afraid to hire one of us, you say? You'd be missing out. One of us got a job specifically because of this project and is now teaching others to do this sort of rapid-but-maintainable web development on a larger scale. Another one of our team (still in school) has created and maintains a number of well-known and extremely widely used PHP-based tools. And me? I get paid an obscene amount to do what I used to do just for fun. That project helped me out quite a bit, too.
So yes, it's possible, we did actually did it. It worked perfectly, and it turned out to be a very profitable undertaking for us all.
We didn't take any shortcuts at all: we preserved a complete and separate true 3-tiered archetecture with all the fixins and everything. In fact, adding site-wide RSS output capability only took about 15 minutes to implement. We could swap in and out components with no effort at all.
The best part was that not only did we pull it off, but we were the only group to finish (Everyone else was dealing with the horrors of sluggish development that EJB invariably brings with it. Most were about 15% done.), but we were the only group to ever get full marks on the assignment.
EJB is for managers and people who want to be sold a solution. PHP is for developers who know what it takes to build a solution and want to get it working, get it working right, and get it working right now.