Grandparent is correct and does not state that is the SOLE CAUSE for the problem. The post adds another interesting factor in this complex multifaceted problem. I'm not there yet but we are resisting a push towards an education factory that produces employees. Including pushes from business to outsource employee training costs unto their employee's and 3rd parties (education system) at THEIR expense and at THEIR OWN TIME.
I wouldn't be surprised if Walmart gets caught billing new employees for their own training and charges interest on the loan deduced from their future salaries. Then insists the government partially subsidize schools where their employees can be trained and watch anti-union propaganda films then be tested on them (the forced videos are done today.)
I wonder the exact thing myself. I think most consider or at least are aware of the possibility and then dismiss it. I think a combination of both is going on plus other factors. If it were simple, we'd have proven what is going on by now. The complexity of the situation is what prevents us from having a clear understanding of what is going wrong or if anything is wrong in the first place. So discussions like this continue for generations and scientific studies seem to do little to contribute to a solution.
Putting complex reality into numbers is not simple and doing proper statistics on those numbers is also not simple (especially when people at many levels in the system benefit from tweaking those numbers.)
I'm in the same boat; totally agree. I blame HR, MBAs, and society who want 4 year degrees for janitors... I.T. doesn't need 4 year degree. I keep thinking meritocracy... as well as how people are naturally talented at gaming/hacking systems (best examples seen in The Wire: "juking the stats")
As far as critical thinking, math, science, AND student expectations I've seen a constant decline for 10 years. I'm phasing out CS for trade skills - not just me but the programs themselves are. Maybe CS will be preserved; some think it is gone already. New specialized degrees are taking over and students are migrating towards those, so maybe CS survives. Most my students now are not CS and because the CS is a minority vs the glorified trade skill degrees. Maybe that is what we should be doing - since most people are there for jobs today... the customer is always right? (ARE they customers??) The university seems like it will DIE and only it's name will remain on the trade schools that have taken over from the inside. At least a trade skill degree that is also liberal arts degree has the benefits of essentially 2 years of "worthless crap" in other topics which still broadens minds. I don't see any downward trend to the benefits that occur from study in other topics.
For IT, programmers, networking, etc. I am not convinced the university model is best. They are better suited to a unionized trade skill where one works as an apprentice and towards being a master. They do have classes scattered over the many years it takes to become a master. I feel better about a master carpenter's abilities than that of many PhDs just out of school. Medical PhD is unusual in that it tends to be a hybrid with the apprenticeship model. Not that this would be what industry wants, since too many seem to think techies above 35 are too old. Do we want competent professionals or should the majority of them just be conditioned monkeys? "Monkeys" are sufficient for many jobs... and management has found ways to break jobs into simplistic tasks.
Asides: Correspondence schools seem like all the rage today - same old less prestigious program but now with internet and a prestigious name! So it is good now??
Everybody is a university now... did some regulation get removed at some point? What are the majority of jobs going to be and what are they now? nurses, drivers, cashiers, secretaries, food industry, managers...
Cultural errors: teachers used to be respected experts. today parents have no respect ("if you can't x you teach") and are always defensive of their poor parenting (possibly because the TV and daycare raises their children and they know it.) Parents are never responsible and rarely hold the child responsible (for OTHER people they'll see it but not for themselves.)
Quantity vs Quality. Feature BLOAT in education. Our grandparents didn't learn calculus in high school but they understood what was covered at a deeper level; that is, the ones who were literate at the end of it... I have an engineer great uncle who was a well respected consultant who NEVER learned calculus! We think we are better today because we have calculus and higher literacy rates and higher graduation rates etc. But those are empty features and empty statistics. One can fudge quantification and fudge the statistics just as much as the fuzzy qualitative aspects we discount as unscientific. I've seen plenty of "hard facts" that make things look like they are going great but we all subjectively and see it getting worse - to the point where today we can start to quantify the negative long term results.
Me too and I'm not interested in learning Lua or more APIs. I think C is where it should remain; however, this could prove extremely useful for development, debugging and experimentation - especially for any kind of driver. I think it should be an option; although, it is likely many users would turn it on because of the number of drivers or features that would not have been ported to C yet. Eventually, things can be ported or even automatically translated to C code. For rapid and more stable development, I'm all for it; as a replacement for C I am not. Stability and security 1st. speed 2nd... but I do want speed eventually.
I often wonder how much is perception. The old people I talk with make it sound so bad and now after only 10 years I see a pattern myself and it looks bad. I get what they are talking about but at the same time I'm seeing it as well. Just how low can it go? Yet the numbers all point to the world progressing significantly with most nations being near the top end of the old scale. If things were as bad as they seemed why is it not more apparent given the world has been progressing as we've been in decline?
I recognize some of it is my increased skill as a result of teaching the same materials - I was good enough when I started but now I'm much better. There are so many details and alternative perspectives one can experience when teaching something. Perhaps it warps my perspective? Plus there is the tenancy for people to spin their own memories - the brain will fill in memory holes with imagination and that is strongly influenced by emotional memories -- which are longer lasting than details. People don't realize just how horrible human memory is until one studies a little cognitive psychology or hypnosis on that topic.
I have 70 year old friends with similar complaints about students and they said their elders told them similar things to what they are telling me now. They also wonder if it is real-- no bottom has been reached.
Some details are legit, like grammar. The whole system changed and skips teaching grammar because they don't have time with all the other junk they have to cover. I frankly don't care if all the rules are followed, I'm not a fan of english anyhow. If they are going to make drastic wide reaching policy changes to education they should be changing things for the better, like by making english more consistent so all those flawed words which are not phonetic or spelled inconsistently are phased out... then take that saved time and bring back grammar.
The root of the REAL decline which I think does exist (but not as bad as the perception) I think is with the blind use of metrics. Think of it like feature bloat in software. Too much topics and students (quantity) so we must lower the quality to the lowest common denominator to pass the BS measurement games we've created. When you punish kids, they just learn how to avoid punishment - adults too. classic Skinner... now when you reward/punish by simple metrics the people just learn how to game the system. This also applies to educators, administrators, politicians, and even the voting public. Sure parents don't approve of Texas lowering the bar on standard exams, but they DO support it when it helps their brats and the politician who claims to have raised test scores. The politician ran on raising test scores because reality (jobs/colleges) showed grade inflation only made it worse for students later on. So it gets worse. Everybody games the system at all levels; that I think has gotten worse because the NEEDS and BENEFITS to cheating the system are much higher today.
A rigid formal policy system is easy to hack/engineer for a human brain, even a child's. The culture even promotes "lawyer think" where you play technical games to skirt around the intent of actually learning something.
Most people would figure out something. A billion drivers and only a few end up stuck like this because all the others figure it out so it doesn't make the news. The "Oh Shit!" button is more of a joke. People do panic and even when they calm down a little they can still be working on low brain power; in addition, some nations have an extremely low threshold. Any moron can drive in the USA for example; you don't even have to be literate to pass the exam in my state.
Please do provide some more info to start out people like myself who find this extremely interesting. I remember outcome based education as a fight going on when I was in school and how politicians were saying it and other leaders while the teachers were resisting it all at every step. I don't know what the "New Math" is.
I'm curious about history as well because we are often trying new things without any justification for the changes. These fads seem to come and go without much info on what was wrong with the old one-- other than it is "old" and therefore the new fad is better and we should move to that one ASAP. why? because.
College Degrees: Not enough time... completely misunderstood. It is a modern certification program and becoming as horrible as an industry certification. MBAs and their religion continue to ruin the world (and it is a religion.) The benefit of a 4 degree is largely historical and came down to a demographic filter. College wasn't for everybody, today it is.
IT: The computer form of auto mechanic. Networking is similar. Universities want "customers" so their CS program does more IT. Business thought IT was rocket science while today it is approaching being the the tech janitor. HR still prefers degrees. Sure, an auto mechanic with an engineering degree is ideal... but not necessary and probably rare. It gets worse as HR filtering techniques are getting more brain dead.
Developer: This career fits far more into the classic Apprenticeship model which only really exists in the USA in some trade union professions like plumbers. Higher level networking is more like a plumber as well. Some jobs don't require a master plumber.
Soft Engineering and related: A master carpenter is like a PhD but the education model is different and it is not formalized - experience and skill is so important you can't force it successfully into a degree program. It remains traditional. Classes on higher level theory are not forbidden in an Apprenticeship model but they are dispersed over the career instead of crammed into the beginning when the student can't grasp their importance or retain as much.
Think about how alternative career models ARE NOT EVEN CONSIDERED when new careers are created - only 1 model is ever considered. This is largely being imposed by HR people's expectations... The other side is the education institutions who have their own biases in addition to the undue influence of HR and MBAs.
Reality is usually not pleasant; expect it to suck and you might discover the truth.
FYI: I'm faculty at a university. I've seen the slow morphing of the university into a trade school, as well as the fight with administrators to revive the universally dismissed "correspondence school model" unaware that putting the prefix CYBER onto something does not change it. The increased application of business tactics in customer relations and even a migration of the term student to customer. Don't flunk so many customers! Make entry level courses EASY so they don't change majors, etc. I'm young, the older ones have seen more. CS probably should have remained the math degree it was, now it is 2, maybe 3 courses in a CS degree.
Sales tax is a huge waste of everybody's time and resources. just outlaw sales taxes and get it over with. The differences can be made up by income tax. Besides, sales tax is regressive in that it harms the poor more than the rich; especially when applied to essentials like food... and I'd include electricity and heat too.
So, you don't care about the poor? (seems like most Americans do not) well how about an appeal to equity - why should you pay more tax than bill gates? sales tax is higher for you than it is him. that is not equitable.
If you do not consume, you pay less tax; essentially we reward people who do not consume in this heavily consumer biased economy... Your income is taxed already (unless too poor) so why tax you again when you spend that money?? Isn't that a double tax?
If you save money, you get taxed on the interest unless you have one of the loophole schemes.... even then you have to invest aggressively because inflation is higher than any conservative investments. Inflation is an indirect covert tax on everybody who isn't heavily and aggressively invested - and what is worse the inflation tax does NOT go to the public it goes to the same Robber Barron Bankers, or more aptly put term from the last century: Banksters.
People panic and their brains slow down as the car speeds up. The only solution is to have a large RED button on the dashboard labeled "Oh Shit!" At least they don't forget the car isn't driving for them.... couple more years and that'll happen - could be parallel parking accidents already are being blamed on the computer...
Stop falling for the propaganda (aka P.R.) there is no such thing as I.P. it was created to fool people into merging all concepts into 1 generic term for the benefit of the industry. In addition, it is called Property when it is not property or even tangible!
Also they put forward this myth people have fallen for that only big powerful interests can create anything of value. Music and art always existed and these laws did not exist during most of human of civilization. Inventions also happened without them; it is a mistake to assume the boom starting with the industrial revolution was due to patents because more people were educated, there was more investment, and more supporting technology to build upon. Government and Institutions did most the invention and science and they still do the majority of it today.
In fact, in our religious drive to privatize everything we have private corps funding our research institutions (and that is done largely for the patents.) It is possible secrets would be lost without patents and corporate spying would be huge (it is already) as well as much lower investment (one can argue for a moderate use of patents) -- but perhaps we would go back to our history and fund research again?? Public research does not waste as much time on Erection pills... There is a lot of good science that is underfunded while resources are put into consumer products people don't need. This new system makes research and education expensive or prohibited - its one thing to re-invent the wheel because of secrets and quite another to be FORBIDDEN because somebody "owns" an idea. Institutions used to SHARE science and now they censor it because their corporate sponsors don't want any patents going to the competition... plus the academic publishers must prop up their old DEAD businesses.
I totally agree but I don't have to be defeatist all the time. Besides, the ideas are still sound because SOMETHING has to come after the system collapses. I lost all hope 20 years ago; probably 50 if I was old enough. Nixon was the beginning of the end.
Collapses are a common part of history and a necessary part of the human condition. The founders thought they could civilize revolution but at least Franklin knew that was impossible. It had a pretty good run while it lasted.
Stallman is being quite wise in applying the benefits of computer science to similar problems outside computers.
The bigger picture: too big to fail has a flip side issue that was and is also a HUGE problem today: undue influence of government. Too much power concentrated becomes a threat to democracy, freedom etc. Ultimately that is the issue that causes the troubles in markets and governments. The main reason they can't fail is they are too powerful to allow themselves to fail!
Separation of powers was a realistic approach to government design in order to limit the always occurring errors in all human social systems. The problem is that we don't apply this risk mitigation technique outside of government! As Ben Franklin said, all such systems of government fall into despotism - or in CS: Eventually the error correction algorithm itself fails because it is inherently flaws and the system crashes. His thinking can be extended onto billionaires if we don't fix the election system and media.
How about we break it up into 3 separate branches of government? Say! We can go further than that! Lets make it more responsive to the people by breaking it up into 50 regional mini governments! We could go even further and have smaller subdivisions around population centers! Lets call them... grandchild governments? that is shitty... it needs a new word... ah... how about "city" ?
Now some areas of the country are stupid or crazy and so we have to split the powers up with the subdivisions so we don't have wars going on between the divisions...;-)
This is way too good to believe that anybody in the US federal government would suggest such a brilliant idea.
They shouldn't have done HD TV the way they did. It should have been setup around a broadcasted packet network over a really wide band. Initially, it could be handled as they did, with auctions for bandwidth. But we'd have the infrastructure ready to go for the future.
Going digital should have included the division of the airwaves - instead we have an analog split of frequencies severely limiting use of a limited PUBLIC resource to a few monopolies.
We were never loyal MS Office customers we were chained slaves to our data and other people's data we needed to access but it was practically encrypted by MS so we'd pay them to unlock it. For some people, it IS a tax on email because office docs is what they email (often not needing a word file when an email is just fine.) It is more akin to ezpass on toll roads. Nobody is going to cry when they don't need MS Office, they won't even care or notice -- Office itself annoys users with changes when the same old 20 year old app and GUI is all most of us ever wanted.
APPLE is not the problem; they have those rules for everybody - MS bullies retail stores into special deals because of their monopoly power! Normal biz has to take around a 30% hit to get their software on the shelf and more for shelf placement etc. While an online middle man does not deserve that level of retail markup, it is not an unreasonable overhead cost to the business models. Just because MS can't get SPECIAL treatment anymore I am not going to shed a tear... suck it up MS, if you are so great you will thrive on a level playing field. I'm going to rejoice at this hubris leading towards their downfall as people MIGRATE to other apps to do basic office tasks.
Why does somebody pay for the same old ancient app?? TextEdit is all I need 90% of the time; WordPad too... that is if I'm not just using email or a browser to write something.
When something is wrong and a good person spots and fixes it-- if they make any noise they are shutup / fired etc. Our regulators are industry people and that doesn't help matters; furthermore, the IAEA is not just the worlds "regulator" but they are also the industry lobby group. We've had leaks and "minor" events which didn't turn into some big disaster, not that it didn't raise cancer rates etc - it is extremely difficult to prove causation for nuclear problems. Even in Japan, the generations of problems they will have from that radiation will be impossible to legally connect to the disaster itself - only the general statistics for the nation will go up a bit. Remember, Japan's gov tried to lower regulatory the bar on danger to make things look better! With that kind of corruption just after a disaster what hope would later things have?? Oh, and I thought that the company building those new nuke plants was the same corp that did Japans mess? or did that change after all?
I personally knew somebody who worked in the local plant on the robotics - he was mentally Homer Simpson. How he ever managed to program a robot I would love to know! I'd also like to know how he cheated his way into an Electrical Engineering degree...(he needed help doing simple electrical wiring of his house, I kid you not! that place would have burned down...) I'll never feel safe about a place who takes YEARS to fire somebody like him. (BTW, he generally gets promoted instead of fired - the company or division goes down and he starts again helping destroy another business.) Real life Homer knows how to work HR people.
I'm not anti-nuclear, just practical: 1) solar is now cheaper than nuclear. 2) wind should get there too. 3) Practical thorium reactors do not exist. Neither does fusion; both are only 5 years away... 4) Nuclear fuel ran out. the USA had the most in the world; it is all gone (except weapons - remember in the 90s when we started to source fuel from weapons?) the USA now has to import fuel. Sure it is high density but it is not abundant (and newer tech could make our use of it smarter, but we waste it. gov has to subsidize ANY move completely or it doesn't happen.)
5) Nuclear is heavily subsidized and always was--solar gets relative nothing; nukes are also insured by gov. 6) Nuclear NEVER MADE A PROFIT (unless you ignore the tax payer) but like all power in the USA, we give a regulated monopoly control and then they take their unduly gained profits and bribe our officials. Free market my ass. some things can't become legit markets.
7) "Base power" is smaller the better grid you have. I have no prob with a few gov-owned nukes for base power; although, I'd rather we created a marketplace for power storage. Where Germany is going. high tech batteries may be their next big market (solar is as a result of their last energy policy.) a high voltage DC power grid is what we need; we waste too much from AC parasitic losses and conversion and regulation of AC making a distributed grid extremely costly. Many of those pie in the Thorium sky reactors are mini distributed power...
SERIOUSLY? yellowstone erupting? WTF? I wasted time reading your post only to find out in the end you don't know jack? there is no USA if yellowstone blows. weather control? you watch too much psyfi (tv.) do you have any idea the power involved in the weather? Sure harry potter can change it with a wand, but in the world of physics energy can't be created or destroyed. Hell, most sunlight is IR and passes thru the clouds. Unless you pull a Mr. Burns... (and in that case the severe cooling in the shadow would cause really strong thermal currents from the warmer areas producing... wind.)
The military has been using a lot of alt power for strategic reasons for quite a while now - the navy has been funding biofuel research. The US military is the largest oil user in the nation - oil has always been strategic problem.
You must be joking; FYI: Carriers are nuclear and take more power than a city and they have a city worth of people living on them. Extremely expensive to operate a carrier; I've said for years we need to sink half our carriers. homework: 1) how many carriers are there in the world? 2) how many does the USA have? 3) how many cruise missiles to sink a carrier? 4) how cheap and widespread are these missiles?
They look at rich industry middlemen and the few big successes and get false expectations.
Your 1 time performance or 1 photo does not deserve a great deal of value. Musicians WORK for a living, that is, those who make a living from it; NOT always for performing their music! Photographers make a living performing their trade skill for hire. I don't play my contractor (plumber or whatever) for the use of my toilet after it has been put in. I pay for them to apply their expert skills to do the task and then it is over with and they go to their next "performance." Artists may not get paid much for their skills and talents but they are not entitled to copyrights... in my opinion. yes, I don't care if my code is BSD but i want to get paid to write and support it. I'd code even if I was in an early retirement.
As far as jobs and income and our economic system. The days are numbered. We must think of something new because technology will wipe out MOST jobs and consumerism is a sick evil twisted way to prop up what we have already and it is all going to crash into reality.
I hope they pick another genius Scientist to help save the world. People don't realize how these positions work-- politics is about eating shit for a living and being pleasant while doing it. He wasn't a politician so he didn't have to enjoy it but he had to eat plenty of shit regardless because that is how it works. The man did a great deal of good while facing a huge system bent on our destruction and more powerful than even a president... or for that matters the majority of the public has no real power when it comes to our big problems we as a nation and the global problems the world faces today. Most energy secretaries don't know jack about energy and are connected to the wrong industries as business men -- who are not suited to government which is NOT a business except for the parts involving dodging blame and taking credit for successes from underlings.
Solyndra was a small loan that banks wouldn't back because they'd lose if it went bankrupt that is how that program functioned and it had a better loan record than most investors do. (If you don't realize it was a small loan then you need to lower your IQ by 10 points.) What I find funny about it is how little the donation amounts were to Obama and how massive they were to Bush and Republicans who started the Solyndra loan process under Bush. The company wasn't a massive fraud it was attempting to take a superior solar technology and make it CHEAPLY when China was dumping billions into subsidizing their cheap solar to put everybody else out of business. We didn't subsidize our solar or tariff theirs this was just a small loan to something with a HUGE potential payoff.
As for the nuclear plants-- those are always stupid; unless you can manage them properly which the USA can't privately or publicly... well, except the military that public org handles it's nuclear power just fine. Next gen nuke power never happens and I dismiss all talk of that because it hasn't been done its not that we won't build it it is because nobody is building something that isn't there yet. Meanwhile solar tech is cheaper than nuclear power without our subsidies (china lowered price remember) and nuke power is always heavily subsidized.
Don't assume everybody posts everything that is on their mind or everything they know or that the written word can convey as much as the spoken word can.
Every business raised prices by 1-3% to cover the cost of credit card processing fees because we were not allowed to know about them (I've read the agreement, you can't tell customers about their privatized tax.)
Its not like they don't make a killing on their business without the transaction fees. Then the bastards offer cash back and other incentives USING OUR OWN MONEY from the processing fees WE PAY!
Businesses can lower prices 1-3% across the board (or not raise them for a while) and credit card users will just feel the 1-3% tax they've always been ignorantly paying. I will gladly go back to cash now I have the FREEDOM to choose not to pay for the small convenience. Maybe they'll skip the fees since they make plenty of profit from the debt side of their racket. Yes, this means I'll also have more incentive to buy locally.
It would take a bunch of blockheads to sue LEGO... (lame i know)
A religion is not a race; that is stereotyping and possibly being racist to the others in the religion by not acknowledging their membership because of their race. Isn't that place a museum or christian in the 1st place?
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Grandparent is correct and does not state that is the SOLE CAUSE for the problem. The post adds another interesting factor in this complex multifaceted problem. I'm not there yet but we are resisting a push towards an education factory that produces employees. Including pushes from business to outsource employee training costs unto their employee's and 3rd parties (education system) at THEIR expense and at THEIR OWN TIME.
I wouldn't be surprised if Walmart gets caught billing new employees for their own training and charges interest on the loan deduced from their future salaries. Then insists the government partially subsidize schools where their employees can be trained and watch anti-union propaganda films then be tested on them (the forced videos are done today.)
I wonder the exact thing myself. I think most consider or at least are aware of the possibility and then dismiss it. I think a combination of both is going on plus other factors. If it were simple, we'd have proven what is going on by now. The complexity of the situation is what prevents us from having a clear understanding of what is going wrong or if anything is wrong in the first place. So discussions like this continue for generations and scientific studies seem to do little to contribute to a solution.
Putting complex reality into numbers is not simple and doing proper statistics on those numbers is also not simple (especially when people at many levels in the system benefit from tweaking those numbers.)
I'm in the same boat; totally agree.
I blame HR, MBAs, and society who want 4 year degrees for janitors... I.T. doesn't need 4 year degree. I keep thinking meritocracy... as well as how people are naturally talented at gaming/hacking systems (best examples seen in The Wire: "juking the stats")
As far as critical thinking, math, science, AND student expectations I've seen a constant decline for 10 years. I'm phasing out CS for trade skills - not just me but the programs themselves are. Maybe CS will be preserved; some think it is gone already. New specialized degrees are taking over and students are migrating towards those, so maybe CS survives. Most my students now are not CS and because the CS is a minority vs the glorified trade skill degrees. Maybe that is what we should be doing - since most people are there for jobs today... the customer is always right? (ARE they customers??) The university seems like it will DIE and only it's name will remain on the trade schools that have taken over from the inside. At least a trade skill degree that is also liberal arts degree has the benefits of essentially 2 years of "worthless crap" in other topics which still broadens minds. I don't see any downward trend to the benefits that occur from study in other topics.
For IT, programmers, networking, etc. I am not convinced the university model is best. They are better suited to a unionized trade skill where one works as an apprentice and towards being a master. They do have classes scattered over the many years it takes to become a master. I feel better about a master carpenter's abilities than that of many PhDs just out of school. Medical PhD is unusual in that it tends to be a hybrid with the apprenticeship model. Not that this would be what industry wants, since too many seem to think techies above 35 are too old. Do we want competent professionals or should the majority of them just be conditioned monkeys? "Monkeys" are sufficient for many jobs... and management has found ways to break jobs into simplistic tasks.
Asides:
Correspondence schools seem like all the rage today - same old less prestigious program but now with internet and a prestigious name! So it is good now??
Everybody is a university now... did some regulation get removed at some point?
What are the majority of jobs going to be and what are they now? nurses, drivers, cashiers, secretaries, food industry, managers...
Cultural errors: teachers used to be respected experts. today parents have no respect ("if you can't x you teach") and are always defensive of their poor parenting (possibly because the TV and daycare raises their children and they know it.) Parents are never responsible and rarely hold the child responsible (for OTHER people they'll see it but not for themselves.)
Quantity vs Quality. Feature BLOAT in education. Our grandparents didn't learn calculus in high school but they understood what was covered at a deeper level; that is, the ones who were literate at the end of it... I have an engineer great uncle who was a well respected consultant who NEVER learned calculus! We think we are better today because we have calculus and higher literacy rates and higher graduation rates etc. But those are empty features and empty statistics. One can fudge quantification and fudge the statistics just as much as the fuzzy qualitative aspects we discount as unscientific. I've seen plenty of "hard facts" that make things look like they are going great but we all subjectively and see it getting worse - to the point where today we can start to quantify the negative long term results.
Me too and I'm not interested in learning Lua or more APIs. I think C is where it should remain; however, this could prove extremely useful for development, debugging and experimentation - especially for any kind of driver. I think it should be an option; although, it is likely many users would turn it on because of the number of drivers or features that would not have been ported to C yet. Eventually, things can be ported or even automatically translated to C code. For rapid and more stable development, I'm all for it; as a replacement for C I am not. Stability and security 1st. speed 2nd... but I do want speed eventually.
I recognize my postings have errors. I don't proof read.
I often wonder how much is perception. The old people I talk with make it sound so bad and now after only 10 years I see a pattern myself and it looks bad. I get what they are talking about but at the same time I'm seeing it as well. Just how low can it go? Yet the numbers all point to the world progressing significantly with most nations being near the top end of the old scale. If things were as bad as they seemed why is it not more apparent given the world has been progressing as we've been in decline?
I recognize some of it is my increased skill as a result of teaching the same materials - I was good enough when I started but now I'm much better. There are so many details and alternative perspectives one can experience when teaching something. Perhaps it warps my perspective? Plus there is the tenancy for people to spin their own memories - the brain will fill in memory holes with imagination and that is strongly influenced by emotional memories -- which are longer lasting than details. People don't realize just how horrible human memory is until one studies a little cognitive psychology or hypnosis on that topic.
I have 70 year old friends with similar complaints about students and they said their elders told them similar things to what they are telling me now. They also wonder if it is real-- no bottom has been reached.
Some details are legit, like grammar. The whole system changed and skips teaching grammar because they don't have time with all the other junk they have to cover. I frankly don't care if all the rules are followed, I'm not a fan of english anyhow. If they are going to make drastic wide reaching policy changes to education they should be changing things for the better, like by making english more consistent so all those flawed words which are not phonetic or spelled inconsistently are phased out... then take that saved time and bring back grammar.
The root of the REAL decline which I think does exist (but not as bad as the perception) I think is with the blind use of metrics. Think of it like feature bloat in software. Too much topics and students (quantity) so we must lower the quality to the lowest common denominator to pass the BS measurement games we've created. When you punish kids, they just learn how to avoid punishment - adults too. classic Skinner... now when you reward/punish by simple metrics the people just learn how to game the system. This also applies to educators, administrators, politicians, and even the voting public. Sure parents don't approve of Texas lowering the bar on standard exams, but they DO support it when it helps their brats and the politician who claims to have raised test scores. The politician ran on raising test scores because reality (jobs/colleges) showed grade inflation only made it worse for students later on. So it gets worse. Everybody games the system at all levels; that I think has gotten worse because the NEEDS and BENEFITS to cheating the system are much higher today.
A rigid formal policy system is easy to hack/engineer for a human brain, even a child's. The culture even promotes "lawyer think" where you play technical games to skirt around the intent of actually learning something.
Most people would figure out something. A billion drivers and only a few end up stuck like this because all the others figure it out so it doesn't make the news. The "Oh Shit!" button is more of a joke.
People do panic and even when they calm down a little they can still be working on low brain power; in addition, some nations have an extremely low threshold. Any moron can drive in the USA for example; you don't even have to be literate to pass the exam in my state.
Please do provide some more info to start out people like myself who find this extremely interesting. I remember outcome based education as a fight going on when I was in school and how politicians were saying it and other leaders while the teachers were resisting it all at every step. I don't know what the "New Math" is.
I'm curious about history as well because we are often trying new things without any justification for the changes. These fads seem to come and go without much info on what was wrong with the old one-- other than it is "old" and therefore the new fad is better and we should move to that one ASAP. why? because.
College Degrees:
Not enough time... completely misunderstood. It is a modern certification program and becoming as horrible as an industry certification. MBAs and their religion continue to ruin the world (and it is a religion.) The benefit of a 4 degree is largely historical and came down to a demographic filter. College wasn't for everybody, today it is.
IT:
The computer form of auto mechanic. Networking is similar. Universities want "customers" so their CS program does more IT. Business thought IT was rocket science while today it is approaching being the the tech janitor. HR still prefers degrees. Sure, an auto mechanic with an engineering degree is ideal... but not necessary and probably rare. It gets worse as HR filtering techniques are getting more brain dead.
Developer:
This career fits far more into the classic Apprenticeship model which only really exists in the USA in some trade union professions like plumbers. Higher level networking is more like a plumber as well. Some jobs don't require a master plumber.
Soft Engineering and related:
A master carpenter is like a PhD but the education model is different and it is not formalized - experience and skill is so important you can't force it successfully into a degree program. It remains traditional. Classes on higher level theory are not forbidden in an Apprenticeship model but they are dispersed over the career instead of crammed into the beginning when the student can't grasp their importance or retain as much.
Think about how alternative career models ARE NOT EVEN CONSIDERED when new careers are created - only 1 model is ever considered. This is largely being imposed by HR people's expectations... The other side is the education institutions who have their own biases in addition to the undue influence of HR and MBAs.
Reality is usually not pleasant; expect it to suck and you might discover the truth.
FYI: I'm faculty at a university. I've seen the slow morphing of the university into a trade school, as well as the fight with administrators to revive the universally dismissed "correspondence school model" unaware that putting the prefix CYBER onto something does not change it. The increased application of business tactics in customer relations and even a migration of the term student to customer. Don't flunk so many customers! Make entry level courses EASY so they don't change majors, etc. I'm young, the older ones have seen more. CS probably should have remained the math degree it was, now it is 2, maybe 3 courses in a CS degree.
Sales tax is a huge waste of everybody's time and resources. just outlaw sales taxes and get it over with. The differences can be made up by income tax. Besides, sales tax is regressive in that it harms the poor more than the rich; especially when applied to essentials like food... and I'd include electricity and heat too.
So, you don't care about the poor? (seems like most Americans do not) well how about an appeal to equity - why should you pay more tax than bill gates? sales tax is higher for you than it is him. that is not equitable.
If you do not consume, you pay less tax; essentially we reward people who do not consume in this heavily consumer biased economy... Your income is taxed already (unless too poor) so why tax you again when you spend that money?? Isn't that a double tax?
If you save money, you get taxed on the interest unless you have one of the loophole schemes.... even then you have to invest aggressively because inflation is higher than any conservative investments. Inflation is an indirect covert tax on everybody who isn't heavily and aggressively invested - and what is worse the inflation tax does NOT go to the public it goes to the same Robber Barron Bankers, or more aptly put term from the last century: Banksters.
People panic and their brains slow down as the car speeds up. The only solution is to have a large RED button on the dashboard labeled "Oh Shit!" At least they don't forget the car isn't driving for them.... couple more years and that'll happen - could be parallel parking accidents already are being blamed on the computer...
I'm a life long C programmer. it is BREAK; and always will be! stupid english speakers...
Stop falling for the propaganda (aka P.R.) there is no such thing as I.P. it was created to fool people into merging all concepts into 1 generic term for the benefit of the industry. In addition, it is called Property when it is not property or even tangible!
Also they put forward this myth people have fallen for that only big powerful interests can create anything of value. Music and art always existed and these laws did not exist during most of human of civilization. Inventions also happened without them; it is a mistake to assume the boom starting with the industrial revolution was due to patents because more people were educated, there was more investment, and more supporting technology to build upon. Government and Institutions did most the invention and science and they still do the majority of it today.
In fact, in our religious drive to privatize everything we have private corps funding our research institutions (and that is done largely for the patents.) It is possible secrets would be lost without patents and corporate spying would be huge (it is already) as well as much lower investment (one can argue for a moderate use of patents) -- but perhaps we would go back to our history and fund research again?? Public research does not waste as much time on Erection pills... There is a lot of good science that is underfunded while resources are put into consumer products people don't need. This new system makes research and education expensive or prohibited - its one thing to re-invent the wheel because of secrets and quite another to be FORBIDDEN because somebody "owns" an idea. Institutions used to SHARE science and now they censor it because their corporate sponsors don't want any patents going to the competition... plus the academic publishers must prop up their old DEAD businesses.
I totally agree but I don't have to be defeatist all the time. Besides, the ideas are still sound because SOMETHING has to come after the system collapses. I lost all hope 20 years ago; probably 50 if I was old enough. Nixon was the beginning of the end.
Collapses are a common part of history and a necessary part of the human condition. The founders thought they could civilize revolution but at least Franklin knew that was impossible. It had a pretty good run while it lasted.
Stallman is being quite wise in applying the benefits of computer science to similar problems outside computers.
The bigger picture: too big to fail has a flip side issue that was and is also a HUGE problem today: undue influence of government. Too much power concentrated becomes a threat to democracy, freedom etc. Ultimately that is the issue that causes the troubles in markets and governments. The main reason they can't fail is they are too powerful to allow themselves to fail!
Separation of powers was a realistic approach to government design in order to limit the always occurring errors in all human social systems. The problem is that we don't apply this risk mitigation technique outside of government! As Ben Franklin said, all such systems of government fall into despotism - or in CS: Eventually the error correction algorithm itself fails because it is inherently flaws and the system crashes. His thinking can be extended onto billionaires if we don't fix the election system and media.
How about we break it up into 3 separate branches of government?
Say! We can go further than that! Lets make it more responsive to the people by breaking it up into 50 regional mini governments!
We could go even further and have smaller subdivisions around population centers! Lets call them... grandchild governments? that is shitty... it needs a new word... ah... how about "city" ?
Now some areas of the country are stupid or crazy and so we have to split the powers up with the subdivisions so we don't have wars going on between the divisions... ;-)
Somebody's clock was messed up.
This is way too good to believe that anybody in the US federal government would suggest such a brilliant idea.
They shouldn't have done HD TV the way they did. It should have been setup around a broadcasted packet network over a really wide band. Initially, it could be handled as they did, with auctions for bandwidth. But we'd have the infrastructure ready to go for the future.
Going digital should have included the division of the airwaves - instead we have an analog split of frequencies severely limiting use of a limited PUBLIC resource to a few monopolies.
We were never loyal MS Office customers we were chained slaves to our data and other people's data we needed to access but it was practically encrypted by MS so we'd pay them to unlock it. For some people, it IS a tax on email because office docs is what they email (often not needing a word file when an email is just fine.) It is more akin to ezpass on toll roads. Nobody is going to cry when they don't need MS Office, they won't even care or notice -- Office itself annoys users with changes when the same old 20 year old app and GUI is all most of us ever wanted.
APPLE is not the problem; they have those rules for everybody - MS bullies retail stores into special deals because of their monopoly power! Normal biz has to take around a 30% hit to get their software on the shelf and more for shelf placement etc. While an online middle man does not deserve that level of retail markup, it is not an unreasonable overhead cost to the business models. Just because MS can't get SPECIAL treatment anymore I am not going to shed a tear... suck it up MS, if you are so great you will thrive on a level playing field. I'm going to rejoice at this hubris leading towards their downfall as people MIGRATE to other apps to do basic office tasks.
Why does somebody pay for the same old ancient app?? TextEdit is all I need 90% of the time; WordPad too... that is if I'm not just using email or a browser to write something.
Nuclear problems; prevented by LUCK and coverups.
When something is wrong and a good person spots and fixes it-- if they make any noise they are shutup / fired etc. Our regulators are industry people and that doesn't help matters; furthermore, the IAEA is not just the worlds "regulator" but they are also the industry lobby group. We've had leaks and "minor" events which didn't turn into some big disaster, not that it didn't raise cancer rates etc - it is extremely difficult to prove causation for nuclear problems. Even in Japan, the generations of problems they will have from that radiation will be impossible to legally connect to the disaster itself - only the general statistics for the nation will go up a bit. Remember, Japan's gov tried to lower regulatory the bar on danger to make things look better! With that kind of corruption just after a disaster what hope would later things have?? Oh, and I thought that the company building those new nuke plants was the same corp that did Japans mess? or did that change after all?
I personally knew somebody who worked in the local plant on the robotics - he was mentally Homer Simpson. How he ever managed to program a robot I would love to know! I'd also like to know how he cheated his way into an Electrical Engineering degree...(he needed help doing simple electrical wiring of his house, I kid you not! that place would have burned down...) I'll never feel safe about a place who takes YEARS to fire somebody like him. (BTW, he generally gets promoted instead of fired - the company or division goes down and he starts again helping destroy another business.) Real life Homer knows how to work HR people.
I'm not anti-nuclear, just practical:
1) solar is now cheaper than nuclear.
2) wind should get there too.
3) Practical thorium reactors do not exist. Neither does fusion; both are only 5 years away...
4) Nuclear fuel ran out. the USA had the most in the world; it is all gone (except weapons - remember in the 90s when we started to source fuel from weapons?) the USA now has to import fuel. Sure it is high density but it is not abundant (and newer tech could make our use of it smarter, but we waste it. gov has to subsidize ANY move completely or it doesn't happen.)
5) Nuclear is heavily subsidized and always was--solar gets relative nothing; nukes are also insured by gov.
6) Nuclear NEVER MADE A PROFIT (unless you ignore the tax payer) but like all power in the USA, we give a regulated monopoly control and then they take their unduly gained profits and bribe our officials. Free market my ass. some things can't become legit markets.
7) "Base power" is smaller the better grid you have. I have no prob with a few gov-owned nukes for base power; although, I'd rather we created a marketplace for power storage. Where Germany is going. high tech batteries may be their next big market (solar is as a result of their last energy policy.) a high voltage DC power grid is what we need; we waste too much from AC parasitic losses and conversion and regulation of AC making a distributed grid extremely costly. Many of those pie in the Thorium sky reactors are mini distributed power...
SERIOUSLY? yellowstone erupting? WTF? I wasted time reading your post only to find out in the end you don't know jack? there is no USA if yellowstone blows. weather control? you watch too much psyfi (tv.) do you have any idea the power involved in the weather? Sure harry potter can change it with a wand, but in the world of physics energy can't be created or destroyed. Hell, most sunlight is IR and passes thru the clouds. Unless you pull a Mr. Burns... (and in that case the severe cooling in the shadow would cause really strong thermal currents from the warmer areas producing... wind.)
The military has been using a lot of alt power for strategic reasons for quite a while now - the navy has been funding biofuel research. The US military is the largest oil user in the nation - oil has always been strategic problem.
You must be joking; FYI: Carriers are nuclear and take more power than a city and they have a city worth of people living on them. Extremely expensive to operate a carrier; I've said for years we need to sink half our carriers.
homework:
1) how many carriers are there in the world?
2) how many does the USA have?
3) how many cruise missiles to sink a carrier?
4) how cheap and widespread are these missiles?
They look at rich industry middlemen and the few big successes and get false expectations.
Your 1 time performance or 1 photo does not deserve a great deal of value. Musicians WORK for a living, that is, those who make a living from it; NOT always for performing their music! Photographers make a living performing their trade skill for hire. I don't play my contractor (plumber or whatever) for the use of my toilet after it has been put in. I pay for them to apply their expert skills to do the task and then it is over with and they go to their next "performance." Artists may not get paid much for their skills and talents but they are not entitled to copyrights... in my opinion. yes, I don't care if my code is BSD but i want to get paid to write and support it. I'd code even if I was in an early retirement.
As far as jobs and income and our economic system. The days are numbered. We must think of something new because technology will wipe out MOST jobs and consumerism is a sick evil twisted way to prop up what we have already and it is all going to crash into reality.
I hope they pick another genius Scientist to help save the world. People don't realize how these positions work-- politics is about eating shit for a living and being pleasant while doing it. He wasn't a politician so he didn't have to enjoy it but he had to eat plenty of shit regardless because that is how it works. The man did a great deal of good while facing a huge system bent on our destruction and more powerful than even a president... or for that matters the majority of the public has no real power when it comes to our big problems we as a nation and the global problems the world faces today. Most energy secretaries don't know jack about energy and are connected to the wrong industries as business men -- who are not suited to government which is NOT a business except for the parts involving dodging blame and taking credit for successes from underlings.
Solyndra was a small loan that banks wouldn't back because they'd lose if it went bankrupt that is how that program functioned and it had a better loan record than most investors do. (If you don't realize it was a small loan then you need to lower your IQ by 10 points.) What I find funny about it is how little the donation amounts were to Obama and how massive they were to Bush and Republicans who started the Solyndra loan process under Bush. The company wasn't a massive fraud it was attempting to take a superior solar technology and make it CHEAPLY when China was dumping billions into subsidizing their cheap solar to put everybody else out of business. We didn't subsidize our solar or tariff theirs this was just a small loan to something with a HUGE potential payoff.
As for the nuclear plants-- those are always stupid; unless you can manage them properly which the USA can't privately or publicly... well, except the military that public org handles it's nuclear power just fine. Next gen nuke power never happens and I dismiss all talk of that because it hasn't been done its not that we won't build it it is because nobody is building something that isn't there yet. Meanwhile solar tech is cheaper than nuclear power without our subsidies (china lowered price remember) and nuke power is always heavily subsidized.
Don't assume everybody posts everything that is on their mind or everything they know or that the written word can convey as much as the spoken word can.
No; however, it is nice to win a little freedom!
Every business raised prices by 1-3% to cover the cost of credit card processing fees because we were not allowed to know about them (I've read the agreement, you can't tell customers about their privatized tax.)
Its not like they don't make a killing on their business without the transaction fees. Then the bastards offer cash back and other incentives USING OUR OWN MONEY from the processing fees WE PAY!
Businesses can lower prices 1-3% across the board (or not raise them for a while) and credit card users will just feel the 1-3% tax they've always been ignorantly paying. I will gladly go back to cash now I have the FREEDOM to choose not to pay for the small convenience. Maybe they'll skip the fees since they make plenty of profit from the debt side of their racket. Yes, this means I'll also have more incentive to buy locally.
It would take a bunch of blockheads to sue LEGO... (lame i know)
A religion is not a race; that is stereotyping and possibly being racist to the others in the religion by not acknowledging their membership because of their race. Isn't that place a museum or christian in the 1st place?