Spinsanity is a great site for articles that point out all of the spin from both parties.
They seem to do a pretty good job of showing the foolishness of both sides - which is refreshing, since IMHO both parties suck bad, and I therefore get very annoyed at sights that are focused on making one party or the other look bad, while ignoring their own parties major issues.
His verdict is not what you'd expect: the school system cannot be fixed, Gatto asserts, because it has been designed not to educate. Skeptical?
I've always thought that it was broken beyond repair. Even when I was younger and still in the system I thought it was a joke. Everything that was "spoon fed" to me during all of high school could have been covered in one year or less if I had been taught in a way that worked for me individually.
The current system must move all students of the same age along at the same pace. Thus everyone is treated as if they are the 'dummest' person, and the 'dummest' person is usually just being taught the wrong way for their personality type.
I've gotten about 10% better than the milage sticker said.
I bought a '99 Saturn SL1 brand new back in '98, to serve as my commuting car.
The fuel economy sticker on it said that it would get 38 mpg on the highway. The first few years I had it, it averaged about 44 mpg, today, it is almost 6 years old, has 120,000 miles on it, and it gets about 39.
On an aside, I'm a very happy Saturn owner... The car may not have much "get up and go", nor much "style", but in 120k miles, it's _never_ been in the shop, still has original brakes, etc. only the tires (and oil) have ever been replaced... and the original tires even lasted for 85k! I definitely recommend this as a commute car, unless you're over 6 feet tall.
To my knowledge, there are A LOT MORE consumer devices that operatate at or near the 2.4GHz range as compared to devices that operate at or near 5GHz. Cordless phones are the perfect example. -- Thus, there is a lot more interference at the 2.4GHz range, and thus a lot harder for filters to actually do their job.
Yeah... until recently, my only option for "broadband" internet access was via a local provider how used 2.4GHz equipment.
What a nightmare that was. That crap only worked about 50% of the time... until my neighbor used their cordless phone, or my microwave ran, etc. etc. The ISP was continually tracking down sources of interferance, and installing new filters, amplifiers, etc.
I've now moved to a provider that uses (motorolla) equipment that runs in the 5GHz range. This stuff seems to work flawlessly.
Give me a break! I wasn't trying to splat-out a definitive list of "classics". Anyway, it would be near impossible to get a consesus on such a list
The point is that students should spend their time reading substantive literature, scientific publications, looking at art work, etc... in order to develop critical thinking.
Reading about characters who live through (real or fictitious) trying events gives the student a chance to think about whether the character's actions were correct or not. Reading about how great people became leaders during time of crisis also expands the mind's critical thinking skills.
Reading scientific publications (whether they are still relevant today or not) gives insight into how a "great mind" thinks... and causes the reader to think about what experiments they themselves might have tried next, etc. etc.
Simply learning how to spell "hippopotamus", or how to divide 54 by 6, or how to use a word processor or surf the net does not develop critical thinking skills.
I've always thought the best way to a REAL education is reading the classics.
Whether they be Dickens, Shakspear, Aristotle, Newton, Tolstoy, Darwin, Hemmingway, Galileo, or whoever... Reading the classics is what creates minds that think about solving real problems and doing great deeds.
Everything else is just skills, and skills can be easily acquired by minds that are anxious to solve problems.
Over the years, there has been a fair amount of debate about whether robots should take on human forms, especially with regards to having detailed life-like faces. Some robot designers, wary of this debate, have settled on giving their creations near human-like faces.
My question is in relation to this topic. Do you think that people (and "sentient robots" that may exist some day) will be be overall better served if robots are readily distinguishable from humans? How strongly will this affect our "bonding" with robots and their bonding with us? Dogs for instance look quite different from humans, but many a family-pet seems to believe itself to be a real part of the family, and sometimes even seem to think themselves to be human. How will this affect the way we deal with "death" of a robot?
I fully understand that he is doing this to benefit more than only the amount of his own spare time.... I spend several hours a week on open source contributions myself.
I just thought that it was funny that he mentioned how much time he spent coming up with a scheme to save time...!
I wonder if all the time he'll save in his compiling will add up to the amount of time he spent figuring out how to speed it up + the time spent writing this article?
This company's idea of having machines counter attacking other machines without knowledge of what the machine it's attacking is, strikes a startling resemblance of what lead to the creation of the No-thing Sophotec in John C. Wright's "Golden Age" book series...
No, this is not impossible. Read up on just-in-time (JIT) compliers and you'll see why. In a nutshell, the Java Virtual Machine profiles the code that is being executed, then uses sophisticated algorythms to anylize this information, then compile (while the system is running) native code from the java byte code, that is optimized for the environment, and more importantly for the ways in which the code is being invoked. Subsequent calls are executed by this newly compiled native code.
Thus the JIT compiler is able to (often) do a better job at creating optimized native code than a C++ compiler can do, because the C++ compiler doesn't have run-time analysis to use in its decisions of how to optimize the code. The JVM can continuously re-optimize the same code over and over during the life of the application. JVMs of today (and the last few years) do this as standard practice.
Quite a few more, depending on your definition of "J2EE Application Server". J2EE is a collection of specifications, and you only need to implement one (or more) of those specifications to be considered a J2EE server....
But there are other Open Source "full j2ee stack" application servers out there besides JBoss - Jonas for example.
This article mentions outlandish prices (it says $100,000 per cpu) for J2EE (Weblogic and WebSphere).
It fails to note that these are the *most expensive* full-suites of these products that have lot of non-J2EE frills (you can get into Weblogic's base J2EE support for $10k). Other commercial J2EE application servers are well under the $10k mark (e.g. $1500 for Orion Server)
This article also fails to note that there are more than a couple very robust OpenSource implementations of J2EE application servers, that are of course free.
It's obvious that if they pointed these facts out that their argument would be weaker...
Each year less light reaches the surface of the Earth. No one is sure what's causing 'global dimming' - or what it means for the future. In fact most scientists have never heard of it. By David Adam
Thursday December 18, 2003
The Guardian
In 1985, a geography researcher called Atsumu Ohmura at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology got the shock of his life. As part of his studies into climate and atmospheric radiation, Ohmura was checking levels of sunlight recorded around Europe when he made an astonishing discovery. It was too dark. Compared to similar measurements recorded by his predecessors in the 1960s, Ohmura's results suggested that levels of solar radiation striking the Earth's surface had declined by more than 10% in three decades. Sunshine, it seemed, was on the way out.
The finding went against all scientific thinking. By the mid-80s there was undeniable evidence that our planet was getting hotter, so the idea of reduced solar radiation - the Earth's only external source of heat - just didn't fit. And a massive 10% shift in only 30 years? Ohmura himself had a hard time accepting it. "I was shocked. The difference was so big that I just could not believe it," he says. Neither could anyone else. When Ohmura eventually published his discovery in 1989 the science world was distinctly unimpressed. "It was ignored," he says.
It turns out that Ohmura was the first to document a dramatic effect that scientists are now calling "global dimming". Records show that over the past 50 years the average amount of sunlight reaching the ground has gone down by almost 3% a decade. It's too small an effect to see with the naked eye, but it has implications for everything from climate change to solar power and even the future sustainability of plant photosynthesis. In fact, global dimming seems to be so important that you're probably wondering why you've never heard of it before. Well don't worry, you're in good company. Many climate experts haven't heard of it either, the media has not picked up on it, and it doesn't even appear in the reports of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).
"It's an extraordinary thing that for some reason this hasn't penetrated even into the thinking of the people looking at global climate change," says Graham Farquhar, a climate scientist at the Australian National University in Canberra. "It's actually quite a big deal and I think you'll see a lot more people referring to it."
That's not to say that the effect has gone unnoticed. Although Ohmura was the first to report global dimming, he wasn't alone. In fact, the scientific record now shows several other research papers published during the 1990s on the subject, all finding that light levels were falling significantly. Among them they reported that sunshine in Ireland was on the wane, that both the Arctic and the Antarctic were getting darker and that light in Japan, the supposed land of the rising sun, was actually falling. Most startling of all was the discovery that levels of solar radiation reaching parts of the former Soviet Union had gone down almost 20% between 1960 and 1987.
The problem is that most of the climate scientists who saw the reports simply didn't believe them.
"It's an uncomfortable one," says Gerald Stanhill, who published many of these early papers and coined the phrase global dimming. "The first reaction has always been that the effect is much too big, I don't believe it and if it's true then why has nobody reported it before."
That began to change in 2001, when Stanhill and his colleague Shabtai Cohen at the Volcani Centre in Bet Dagan, Israel collected all the available evidence together and proved that, on average, records showed that the amount of solar radiation reaching the Earth's surface had gone down by between 0.23 and 0.32% each year from 1958 to 1992.
This forced more scientists to sit up and take notice, though some still refused to accept the change was real, and instead blamed it on inacc
Slashdot Mirror
The article shows how talented but morally challenged techies are becoming stooges of 'spammers, con artists, and other criminals.
Surely this has been the case for millenia? Only the specifics have changed.
Spinsanity is a great site for articles that point out all of the spin from both parties.
They seem to do a pretty good job of showing the foolishness of both sides - which is refreshing, since IMHO both parties suck bad, and I therefore get very annoyed at sights that are focused on making one party or the other look bad, while ignoring their own parties major issues.
His verdict is not what you'd expect: the school system cannot be fixed, Gatto asserts, because it has been designed not to educate. Skeptical?
I've always thought that it was broken beyond repair. Even when I was younger and still in the system I thought it was a joke. Everything that was "spoon fed" to me during all of high school could have been covered in one year or less if I had been taught in a way that worked for me individually.
The current system must move all students of the same age along at the same pace. Thus everyone is treated as if they are the 'dummest' person, and the 'dummest' person is usually just being taught the wrong way for their personality type.
This is not even close to being the "worlds first".
I interviewed with a company more than 6 years ago that was selling web-enabled thermostats, sprinkler systems, vending machines, etc. etc.
Maven may be "neat" to some, but it also has real issues...
I've gotten about 10% better than the milage sticker said.
I bought a '99 Saturn SL1 brand new back in '98, to serve as my commuting car.
The fuel economy sticker on it said that it would get 38 mpg on the highway. The first few years I had it, it averaged about 44 mpg, today, it is almost 6 years old, has 120,000 miles on it, and it gets about 39.
On an aside, I'm a very happy Saturn owner... The car may not have much "get up and go", nor much "style", but in 120k miles, it's _never_ been in the shop, still has original brakes, etc. only the tires (and oil) have ever been replaced... and the original tires even lasted for 85k! I definitely recommend this as a commute car, unless you're over 6 feet tall.
To my knowledge, there are A LOT MORE consumer devices that operatate at or near the 2.4GHz range as compared to devices that operate at or near 5GHz. Cordless phones are the perfect example. -- Thus, there is a lot more interference at the 2.4GHz range, and thus a lot harder for filters to actually do their job.
What a nightmare that was. That crap only worked about 50% of the time... until my neighbor used their cordless phone, or my microwave ran, etc. etc. The ISP was continually tracking down sources of interferance, and installing new filters, amplifiers, etc.
I've now moved to a provider that uses (motorolla) equipment that runs in the 5GHz range. This stuff seems to work flawlessly.
Give me a break! I wasn't trying to splat-out a definitive list of "classics". Anyway, it would be near impossible to get a consesus on such a list
The point is that students should spend their time reading substantive literature, scientific publications, looking at art work, etc... in order to develop critical thinking.
Reading about characters who live through (real or fictitious) trying events gives the student a chance to think about whether the character's actions were correct or not. Reading about how great people became leaders during time of crisis also expands the mind's critical thinking skills.
Reading scientific publications (whether they are still relevant today or not) gives insight into how a "great mind" thinks... and causes the reader to think about what experiments they themselves might have tried next, etc. etc.
Simply learning how to spell "hippopotamus", or how to divide 54 by 6, or how to use a word processor or surf the net does not develop critical thinking skills.
I've always thought the best way to a REAL education is reading the classics.
Whether they be Dickens, Shakspear, Aristotle, Newton, Tolstoy, Darwin, Hemmingway, Galileo, or whoever... Reading the classics is what creates minds that think about solving real problems and doing great deeds.
Everything else is just skills, and skills can be easily acquired by minds that are anxious to solve problems.
Over the years, there has been a fair amount of debate about whether robots should take on human forms, especially with regards to having detailed life-like faces. Some robot designers, wary of this debate, have settled on giving their creations near human-like faces.
My question is in relation to this topic. Do you think that people (and "sentient robots" that may exist some day) will be be overall better served if robots are readily distinguishable from humans? How strongly will this affect our "bonding" with robots and their bonding with us? Dogs for instance look quite different from humans, but many a family-pet seems to believe itself to be a real part of the family, and sometimes even seem to think themselves to be human. How will this affect the way we deal with "death" of a robot?
Gee wiz... it was a joke!
A lame joke, but a joke none-the-less.
I fully understand that he is doing this to benefit more than only the amount of his own spare time.... I spend several hours a week on open source contributions myself.
I just thought that it was funny that he mentioned how much time he spent coming up with a scheme to save time...!
I wonder if all the time he'll save in his compiling will add up to the amount of time he spent figuring out how to speed it up + the time spent writing this article?
Best quote in the article: "I like 'intelligent' people. It's the thick ones that worry me."
This company's idea of having machines counter attacking other machines without knowledge of what the machine it's attacking is, strikes a startling resemblance of what lead to the creation of the No-thing Sophotec in John C. Wright's "Golden Age" book series...
Can you imagine what might happen when a "hottie" walks though the office?
You do realize that this is impossible, right?
No, this is not impossible. Read up on just-in-time (JIT) compliers and you'll see why. In a nutshell, the Java Virtual Machine profiles the code that is being executed, then uses sophisticated algorythms to anylize this information, then compile (while the system is running) native code from the java byte code, that is optimized for the environment, and more importantly for the ways in which the code is being invoked. Subsequent calls are executed by this newly compiled native code.
Thus the JIT compiler is able to (often) do a better job at creating optimized native code than a C++ compiler can do, because the C++ compiler doesn't have run-time analysis to use in its decisions of how to optimize the code. The JVM can continuously re-optimize the same code over and over during the life of the application. JVMs of today (and the last few years) do this as standard practice.
But there are other Open Source "full j2ee stack" application servers out there besides JBoss - Jonas for example.
This article is talking about J2EE (server side) applications. Which often benchmark faster than natively implemented code.
P.S.> Java desktop applications are fairly speedy if you use UI libraries such as SWT - which work directly on GTK for example.
It fails to note that these are the *most expensive* full-suites of these products that have lot of non-J2EE frills (you can get into Weblogic's base J2EE support for $10k). Other commercial J2EE application servers are well under the $10k mark (e.g. $1500 for Orion Server)
This article also fails to note that there are more than a couple very robust OpenSource implementations of J2EE application servers, that are of course free.
It's obvious that if they pointed these facts out that their argument would be weaker...
Each year less light reaches the surface of the Earth. No one is sure what's causing 'global dimming' - or what it means for the future. In fact most scientists have never heard of it. By David Adam
Thursday December 18, 2003
The Guardian
In 1985, a geography researcher called Atsumu Ohmura at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology got the shock of his life. As part of his studies into climate and atmospheric radiation, Ohmura was checking levels of sunlight recorded around Europe when he made an astonishing discovery. It was too dark. Compared to similar measurements recorded by his predecessors in the 1960s, Ohmura's results suggested that levels of solar radiation striking the Earth's surface had declined by more than 10% in three decades. Sunshine, it seemed, was on the way out.
The finding went against all scientific thinking. By the mid-80s there was undeniable evidence that our planet was getting hotter, so the idea of reduced solar radiation - the Earth's only external source of heat - just didn't fit. And a massive 10% shift in only 30 years? Ohmura himself had a hard time accepting it. "I was shocked. The difference was so big that I just could not believe it," he says. Neither could anyone else. When Ohmura eventually published his discovery in 1989 the science world was distinctly unimpressed. "It was ignored," he says.
It turns out that Ohmura was the first to document a dramatic effect that scientists are now calling "global dimming". Records show that over the past 50 years the average amount of sunlight reaching the ground has gone down by almost 3% a decade. It's too small an effect to see with the naked eye, but it has implications for everything from climate change to solar power and even the future sustainability of plant photosynthesis. In fact, global dimming seems to be so important that you're probably wondering why you've never heard of it before. Well don't worry, you're in good company. Many climate experts haven't heard of it either, the media has not picked up on it, and it doesn't even appear in the reports of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).
"It's an extraordinary thing that for some reason this hasn't penetrated even into the thinking of the people looking at global climate change," says Graham Farquhar, a climate scientist at the Australian National University in Canberra. "It's actually quite a big deal and I think you'll see a lot more people referring to it."
That's not to say that the effect has gone unnoticed. Although Ohmura was the first to report global dimming, he wasn't alone. In fact, the scientific record now shows several other research papers published during the 1990s on the subject, all finding that light levels were falling significantly. Among them they reported that sunshine in Ireland was on the wane, that both the Arctic and the Antarctic were getting darker and that light in Japan, the supposed land of the rising sun, was actually falling. Most startling of all was the discovery that levels of solar radiation reaching parts of the former Soviet Union had gone down almost 20% between 1960 and 1987.
The problem is that most of the climate scientists who saw the reports simply didn't believe them. "It's an uncomfortable one," says Gerald Stanhill, who published many of these early papers and coined the phrase global dimming. "The first reaction has always been that the effect is much too big, I don't believe it and if it's true then why has nobody reported it before."
That began to change in 2001, when Stanhill and his colleague Shabtai Cohen at the Volcani Centre in Bet Dagan, Israel collected all the available evidence together and proved that, on average, records showed that the amount of solar radiation reaching the Earth's surface had gone down by between 0.23 and 0.32% each year from 1958 to 1992.
This forced more scientists to sit up and take notice, though some still refused to accept the change was real, and instead blamed it on inacc
But the Poopsmith has always seemed to like his job....
The worst I've seen?
The job posting to find the person who will replace me.
What I want to know is: If they're man made, then how the HELL can they be elements?
--The Dead Milkmen.