I don't get the point. If something is truly worth having, indeed, let's have it. This is about a society deciding to make certain public services an essential part of its infrastructure.
I personally belief that informing and educating the public is so essential that it can not be made dependent on the ebb and flow of donations by "well-heeled" supporters, nor the interests of commercial radio and television.
There's a parallel to funding basic science here. Our society has decided this is a crucial element of our national infrastructure and it is being funded at levels that match that commitment (or lack thereof). Your argument is similar to claiming a bunch of rich people will get together to take care of funding basis research; have our national laboratories organize yearly fund-raisers so that their rich, liberal defenders could be made to pay for their own science.
In fact, I would now go a little further and argue that if you are willing to make that point, it is equivalent to saying you care but not really mean it. Sure, we care about science, but why should we be in the business of funding it?
It's not about demographical statistics. It's about providing opportunity for everyone with a radio or television to stay informed about the news, science, arts, etc. Sure, lots of rich people listen to NPR, and perhaps they're a majority, but it's still an important public infrastructure that merits public funding and attention. Even if only a minority of the poor rely on NPR to get some well-balanced, in-depth reporting it'd still be worth having.
cnerd: right on! The original poster's comments are indicative of an attitude where people refuse to maintain the very infrastructure on which our civilization depends like the arts or sciences.
Our commercial radio and TV system has amply demonstrated what a poor job it does of informing the citizenry of this country. NPR does a fantastic job with funding that is completely dwarfed by other public expenditures like e.g. the war in Iraq. But to my surprise some people still feel compelled to critically examine NPR funding while ignoring the billions spent in other areas.
Like you, I consider myself a libertarian, but there is no denying that societies can be subject to the tragedy of the commons.
Perfessers this, perfessers that, come on... Do you have any idea of how tough that job is? (Hint: it's not primarily about the teaching. You can only believe that because you think a universitiy is or should be some kind of vocational school)
Your suggestions are indicative of a prevalent tendency among students to blame everyone for their failures but themselves. And why shouldn't they? Those lazy professors are easy scapegoats in a society which despises its intellectuals. Ever considered that professors and instructors (all highly educated and skilled individuals) may not want to teach precisely because of having to deal with BS like this?
I propose to have failing students watch videotapes of themselves in class. Perhaps they'll find us an answer to the question of where our best people are and why they are not training the next generation of scientists and engineers.
I don't know about those 1 year antibiotic treatments, but for my asthma I know it is a matter of accumulated causes. Being in a room with a dog or cat will definitely cause my asthma to flare up, but less so when I have generally been living in a clean environment, no smoking, no mould etc. It feels as if there is a threshold above which my lungs go bezerk. Like a chronic inflammation that makes the lungs sensitive to pollutants that would otherwise not be a problem (below threshold).
My parents used to smoke in the house and I remember back then that the slightest exposure to mould, pets, etc would be enough for some VERY unpleasant hours of gasping for air. I now enjoy the dry, clean desert air, and never have any serious problems.
BTW, those inhalers do *wonders*, what a relief, you have to have asthma to appreciate how good it feels to have your lungs open up in the span of 1-2 seconds. I always carry one, never a problem.
Actually this is precisely what happened to me a couple of years ago. Even though I had childhood asthma, provoked by allergies to pets, grasses, certain trees, pollens, in short anything organic including some humans and goldfish;-), now that I have learned to avoid the causes I seldom if ever suffer from any symptoms.
One summer I was struck with persistent asthma symptoms so badly that my inhalers, anti-allergy medicines etc didn't work. It felt exactly like asthma, nothing like a bronchitis, except that it didn't respond to my medication. My doctor prescribed a combination of an anti-inflammitory inhaler (advair?) and antibiotics. I was puzzled by the latter, but he explained he suspected an infection may be the cause. Within 1 week the symptons disappeared never to return.
This is of course entirely anecdotal, but it sounds like my doctor was thinking along the same lines as you outline.
Spelling and grammar however... (see original post);-)
I think TV punishes the weak. Smart people will use it to their advantage by choosing quality entertainment, decent news shows, good documentaries (and of course the occasional Jerry Springer to see what the People are doing). For the not-so-educated/cultured TV is a scourge. Like most information technologies it selectively benefits those who are already on top of things.
The posting above provides an excellent 3 paragraph overview of LSA!;-) I believe you are refering to Peter Foltz's (NMSU/KnowledgeAnalysis Technologies) research on using LSA for automated essay evaluation:
http://www-psych.nmsu.edu/~pfoltz/
He seems to hold a patent on this technology (along with T. Landauer and Darrell Laham) which has now been commercialized by Pearson Knowledge technologies:
As a Belgian, may I add that there are essentially two variations of the Dutch "g" which, among other things, differentiate Northern (Netherlands) and Southern (Belgian/Flemish) Dutch speakers. The difference in pronounciation is on the same level as the difference between how "standard" English is spoken in the US and the UK.
The Northern speakers have adopted the mentioned choking sound tending to pronounce each "g" as if it were a "ch". The Flemish have continued to use the "soft" g, which is the same base sound but without the "clear hair lodged in throat" overtones, leading to a clearer distinction between "g" and "ch" in their spoken language. I am not a linguist, however, and generalizing from personal experience.
There's many subtleties as discussed in this page (with samples of the pronounciation of the word "echt"): http://rudhar.com/fonetics/cxch.htm
We don't need a term like agnosticism just so we can cover the prevalent misunderstandings of what the term atheism means!
It's a-theism, not anti-theism, for a reason. An excellent source on this topic is wikipedia. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atheism "The literal meaning of the term is therefore "lack of belief in a god"." In other words, atheists lack a belief in god, they do not believe there is no god. Also, they do not believe there could or couldn't be a god, "because we don't know".
These are all very different things.
Now, granted some atheists may claim they actually believe there is no god, much like you may find a republican that really wants to balance the budget.;-) The Wikipedia definition refers to that as positive or strong atheism. But according to the root of the word *a*theism, it really should correspond to "weak" or negative position as defined by Wikipedia, namely the absence of a god-belief.
"The amount of effort needed to get a good looking LaTeX or TeX document is far more than I'd ever want to put in on any document "..."no real work done"??
You have clearly never worked on substantial texts involving an extensive amount of structure, math, references, etc. LaTeX can't be beat in those areas and in my opinion produces gorgeous, professional looking documents. That's why large numbers of highly productive physicists, mathematicians, computer scientists, etc. swear by it.
I agree that MS Word is great for yard sale announcements and other ephemeral documents.
I actually built something like this as a child using a light sensitive transistor and an array of LEDs (possibly 8x8) precisely because I thought a regular light bulb wouldn't have sufficient response time. A lens was used to focus the light which made the setup very sensitive to correct positioning. It worked amazingly well, and over much longer distances than I had anticipated. If tuned well it did a great job at ignoring ambient light and other sources of noise.
The next project was a Nipkow camera/television pair built from two turntable motors and discs fashioned from a large piece of PCB (I think about 10 lines). Again, I avoided light bulbs because of response time and used the same LED array.
Re:How to set up an archive from .doc formatted ms
on
Apple Delays New iMac
·
· Score: 1
A wristwatch TV is silly. However!, I can't believe nobody has suggested making it a cell phone or even a video phone. That'd be useful. I hate carying around my cell phone, forgetting to take it places, fumbling to find it among the car keys and change. My watch on the other hand is a perfect, simple device that I never forget.
Combine a watch with a wireless phone/video phone, throw in limited PDA functionality, and one of those retinal projection devices (no screen necessary), keep the size limited to that of a regular slim watch: it'd be perfect.
"If you want the rights of an american citizen, go through the process of becoming a citizen."
Have you any idea how long this process takes? Last time I checked immigration requires a minimum of 5 years in permanent resident status before you can apply for citizenship. Most people arrriving in the US for work have some work related visa and need to first apply for a green card. The latter application can easily take 2-4 years, so we're looking at 3+5=8 years to be *eligible* to apply for citizenship. I have to say I have no idea how long the actual application takes, but in the present environment it wouldn't surprise me if there weren't any serious delays there as well.
Now a number of people obtain permanent residence through marriage etc, so there may be shortcuts to obtain citizenship sooner. Someone correct me if I am wrong, but this is what it looks like at the USCIS web site: http://uscis.gov/graphics/services/natz/gen eral.ht m http://uscis.gov/graphics/services/natz/index.h tm (note how most Americans could not apply!;-) )
I sympathize with your plead for better background checks, but have you recently applied for a US visa with the INS?;-)
The delays are astounding. The whole system, due to endless backgrounds checks, an inept and underfunded administration forced to apply an incredible set of Kafkaesque regulations is simply maddening! I shudder to think these people are now going to track fingerprints for every single visitor to enter and exit the US.
And, all of it applies *only* to those who are actually *legally* trying to move to or stay in the US. This fingerprinting business to me is just another one in a series of insults visitors and immigrants to this country have been made to suffer. And if you think we're just talking about people who are desparate to come here and should be happy to put up with this, have a look at our universities, national laboratories, the computer industry and any major technological ventures in this country. It's just not good policy if prevention of terrorism is your objective.
I posted this before, but Linus Torvalds is a good example: http://www.usvisanews.com/memo861.html Apparently, it took the INS 4 years to issue his greencard: http://www.siliconvalley.com/mld/silic onvalley/623 7239.htm Some background check...;-)
From experience I can tell you that presently the USCIS (former INS) services are hardly processing greencards, visas, work permits, advance parole, etc for foreign *professors* and *top level scientists*, let alone student visas. The delays are simply beyond comprehension and the procedures worse than anything Kafka could have drawn from his darkest nightmares. Greencards for outstanding professors are taking several years to approve, not to mention the incredible delays in actually getting the cards themselves printed. The latter I have from hearsay because I submitted in November 2002 and I haven't gotten to that stage yet:-(.
Have a look at: http://uscis.gov/graphics/index.htm (-> processing dates)
For many foreigners, especially those that are not desperate to work in the US (EU citizens e.g.), I fear it's getting to the point that the US are simply not worth it.
For testimony that the local/.'ers will enjoy see: http://www.shusterman.com/torvalds.html and this was the year 2000! Things have only gotten worse.
I watched the news conference and was surprised by the same thing. Of course, this discovery is scientifically very important, but I wonder why the presence or absence of water in the soil at this time was not part of the discussion. Not even a single reference was made. It seems it would be easy (?) and important to verify whether or not the soil at the landing site contains water *now*. And, given the new direction of the Bush Moon/Mars plan, such a determination may be even more important to future human missions than the verification of whether that location was ever wet or not in the distant past. What am I missing?
I am not a rocket scientist, but how is transporting the materials up there to construct whatever you need and then move it to the Moon/Mars/etc, any more cost effective than transporting it straight to Mars/Moon/etc?
There is nothing in space to make anything from. All building materials, fuel etc would have to be moved from Earth to orbit. And then you haven't even gotten anywhere: you still have the additional costs of getting to your destination. You've just added more overhead.
The ISS has apparently costed about 40 billion, and it's a far cry from an orbital construction post.
Actually this stuff is strongly related to research in adaptive hypertext linking.
I know this group ran experiments with web sites that generated dynamic links according to user retrieval patterns in 1996 and before:
Slashdot Mirror
Or calculate **PageRank** on journals: http://arxiv.org/abs/cs.DL/0601030, on articles: http://arxiv.org/abs/physics/0604130, and finally: http://www.eigenfactor.org/
I don't get the point. If something is truly worth having, indeed, let's have it. This is about a society deciding to make certain public services an essential part of its infrastructure.
I personally belief that informing and educating the public is so essential that it can not be made dependent on the ebb and flow of donations by "well-heeled" supporters, nor the interests of commercial radio and television.
There's a parallel to funding basic science here. Our society has decided this is a crucial element of our national infrastructure and it is being funded at levels that match that commitment (or lack thereof). Your argument is similar to claiming a bunch of rich people will get together to take care of funding basis research; have our national laboratories organize yearly fund-raisers so that their rich, liberal defenders could be made to pay for their own science.
In fact, I would now go a little further and argue that if you are willing to make that point, it is equivalent to saying you care but not really mean it. Sure, we care about science, but why should we be in the business of funding it?
It's not about demographical statistics. It's about providing opportunity for everyone with a radio or television to stay informed about the news, science, arts, etc. Sure, lots of rich people listen to NPR, and perhaps they're a majority, but it's still an important public infrastructure that merits public funding and attention. Even if only a minority of the poor rely on NPR to get some well-balanced, in-depth reporting it'd still be worth having.
cnerd: right on! The original poster's comments are indicative of an attitude where people refuse to maintain the very infrastructure on which our civilization depends like the arts or sciences.
Our commercial radio and TV system has amply demonstrated what a poor job it does of informing the citizenry of this country. NPR does a fantastic job with funding that is completely dwarfed by other public expenditures like e.g. the war in Iraq. But to my surprise some people still feel compelled to critically examine NPR funding while ignoring the billions spent in other areas.
Like you, I consider myself a libertarian, but there is no denying that societies can be subject to the tragedy of the commons.
Perfessers this, perfessers that, come on... Do you have any idea of how tough that job is? (Hint: it's not primarily about the teaching. You can only believe that because you think a universitiy is or should be some kind of vocational school)
Your suggestions are indicative of a prevalent tendency among students to blame everyone for their failures but themselves. And why shouldn't they? Those lazy professors are easy scapegoats in a society which despises its intellectuals. Ever considered that professors and instructors (all highly educated and skilled individuals) may not want to teach precisely because of having to deal with BS like this?
I propose to have failing students watch videotapes of themselves in class. Perhaps they'll find us an answer to the question of where our best people are and why they are not training the next generation of scientists and engineers.
I don't know about those 1 year antibiotic treatments, but for my asthma I know it is a matter of accumulated causes. Being in a room with a dog or cat will definitely cause my asthma to flare up, but less so when I have generally been living in a clean environment, no smoking, no mould etc. It feels as if there is a threshold above which my lungs go bezerk. Like a chronic inflammation that makes the lungs sensitive to pollutants that would otherwise not be a problem (below threshold). My parents used to smoke in the house and I remember back then that the slightest exposure to mould, pets, etc would be enough for some VERY unpleasant hours of gasping for air. I now enjoy the dry, clean desert air, and never have any serious problems. BTW, those inhalers do *wonders*, what a relief, you have to have asthma to appreciate how good it feels to have your lungs open up in the span of 1-2 seconds. I always carry one, never a problem.
Actually this is precisely what happened to me a couple of years ago. Even though I had childhood asthma, provoked by allergies to pets, grasses, certain trees, pollens, in short anything organic including some humans and goldfish ;-), now that I have learned to avoid the causes I seldom if ever suffer from any symptoms.
One summer I was struck with persistent asthma symptoms so badly that my inhalers, anti-allergy medicines etc didn't work. It felt exactly like asthma, nothing like a bronchitis, except that it didn't respond to my medication. My doctor prescribed a combination of an anti-inflammitory inhaler (advair?) and antibiotics. I was puzzled by the latter, but he explained he suspected an infection may be the cause. Within 1 week the symptons disappeared never to return.
This is of course entirely anecdotal, but it sounds like my doctor was thinking along the same lines as you outline.
Spelling and grammar however... (see original post) ;-)
I think TV punishes the weak. Smart people will use it to their advantage by choosing quality entertainment, decent news shows, good documentaries (and of course the occasional Jerry Springer to see what the People are doing). For the not-so-educated/cultured TV is a scourge. Like most information technologies it selectively benefits those who are already on top of things.
The posting above provides an excellent 3 paragraph overview of LSA!;-) I believe you are refering to Peter Foltz's (NMSU/KnowledgeAnalysis Technologies) research on using LSA for automated essay evaluation:
. shtml
http://www-psych.nmsu.edu/~pfoltz/
He seems to hold a patent on this technology (along with T. Landauer and Darrell Laham) which has now been commercialized by Pearson Knowledge technologies:
http://www.k-a-t.com/
http://www.k-a-t.com/IEA
http://www.k-a-t.com/peterspage.shtml
As a Belgian, may I add that there are essentially two variations of the Dutch "g" which, among other things, differentiate Northern (Netherlands) and Southern (Belgian/Flemish) Dutch speakers. The difference in pronounciation is on the same level as the difference between how "standard" English is spoken in the US and the UK.
The Northern speakers have adopted the mentioned choking sound tending to pronounce each "g" as if it were a "ch". The Flemish have continued to use the "soft" g, which is the same base sound but without the "clear hair lodged in throat" overtones, leading to a clearer distinction between "g" and "ch" in their spoken language. I am not a linguist, however, and generalizing from personal experience.
There's many subtleties as discussed in this page (with samples of the pronounciation of the word "echt"):
http://rudhar.com/fonetics/cxch.htm
We don't need a term like agnosticism just so we can cover the prevalent misunderstandings of what the term atheism means!
It's a-theism, not anti-theism, for a reason.
An excellent source on this topic is wikipedia.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atheism
"The literal meaning of the term is therefore "lack of belief in a god"." In other words, atheists lack a belief in god, they do not believe there is no god. Also, they do not believe there could or couldn't be a god, "because we don't know".
These are all very different things.
Now, granted some atheists may claim they actually believe there is no god, much like you may find a republican that really wants to balance the budget.;-) The Wikipedia definition refers to that as positive or strong atheism. But according to the root of the word *a*theism, it really should correspond to "weak" or negative position as defined by Wikipedia, namely the absence of a god-belief.
"The amount of effort needed to get a good looking LaTeX or TeX document is far more than I'd ever want to put in on any document "..."no real work done"?? You have clearly never worked on substantial texts involving an extensive amount of structure, math, references, etc. LaTeX can't be beat in those areas and in my opinion produces gorgeous, professional looking documents. That's why large numbers of highly productive physicists, mathematicians, computer scientists, etc. swear by it. I agree that MS Word is great for yard sale announcements and other ephemeral documents.
I actually built something like this as a child using a light sensitive transistor and an array of LEDs (possibly 8x8) precisely because I thought a regular light bulb wouldn't have sufficient response time. A lens was used to focus the light which made the setup very sensitive to correct positioning. It worked amazingly well, and over much longer distances than I had anticipated. If tuned well it did a great job at ignoring ambient light and other sources of noise.
The next project was a Nipkow camera/television pair built from two turntable motors and discs fashioned from a large piece of PCB (I think about 10 lines). Again, I avoided light bulbs because of response time and used the same LED array.
tr -d '\000' | tr '\227\007\221\222\223\224' "\-\|\`\'\"\"" | strings | perl -p -e's/[\n\r]/\n /g;' | fmt | less
\n/;' -e 's/\|\|/\n\n/g;' -e's/\|/ \|
This is a nasty kludge, lots of junk included, but it helps to at least capture the jist of the document.
A wristwatch TV is silly. However!, I can't believe nobody has suggested making it a cell phone or even a video phone. That'd be useful. I hate carying around my cell phone, forgetting to take it places, fumbling to find it among the car keys and change. My watch on the other hand is a perfect, simple device that I never forget.
Combine a watch with a wireless phone/video phone, throw in limited PDA functionality, and one of those retinal projection devices (no screen necessary), keep the size limited to that of a regular slim watch: it'd be perfect.
"If you want the rights of an american citizen, go through the process of becoming a citizen."
n eral.ht mh tm ;-) )
Have you any idea how long this process takes? Last time I checked immigration requires a minimum of 5 years in permanent resident status before you can apply for citizenship. Most people arrriving in the US for work have some work related visa and need to first apply for a green card. The latter application can easily take 2-4 years, so we're looking at 3+5=8 years to be *eligible* to apply for citizenship. I have to say I have no idea how long the actual application takes, but in the present environment it wouldn't surprise me if there weren't any serious delays there as well.
Now a number of people obtain permanent residence through marriage etc, so there may be shortcuts to obtain citizenship sooner. Someone correct me if I am wrong, but this is what it looks like at the USCIS web site:
http://uscis.gov/graphics/services/natz/ge
http://uscis.gov/graphics/services/natz/index.
(note how most Americans could not apply!
I sympathize with your plead for better background checks, but have you recently applied for a US visa with the INS? ;-)
Apparently, it took the INS 4 years to issue his greencard:c onvalley/623 7239.htm
The delays are astounding. The whole system, due to endless backgrounds checks, an inept and underfunded administration forced to apply an incredible set of Kafkaesque regulations is simply maddening! I shudder to think these people are now going to track fingerprints for every single visitor to enter and exit the US.
And, all of it applies *only* to those who are actually *legally* trying to move to or stay in the US. This fingerprinting business to me is just another one in a series of insults visitors and immigrants to this country have been made to suffer. And if you think we're just talking about people who are desparate to come here and should be happy to put up with this, have a look at our universities, national laboratories, the computer industry and any major technological ventures in this country. It's just not good policy if prevention of terrorism is your objective.
I posted this before, but Linus Torvalds is a good example:
http://www.usvisanews.com/memo861.html
http://www.siliconvalley.com/mld/sili
Some background check...;-)
This is very true.
:-(.
/.'ers will enjoy see:d this was the year 2000! Things have only gotten worse.
From experience I can tell you that presently the USCIS (former INS) services are hardly processing greencards, visas, work permits, advance parole, etc for foreign *professors* and *top level scientists*, let alone student visas. The delays are simply beyond comprehension and the procedures worse than anything Kafka could have drawn from his darkest nightmares. Greencards for outstanding professors are taking several years to approve, not to mention the incredible delays in actually getting the cards themselves printed. The latter I have from hearsay because I submitted in November 2002 and I haven't gotten to that stage yet
Have a look at:
http://uscis.gov/graphics/index.htm
(-> processing dates)
For many foreigners, especially those that are not desperate to work in the US (EU citizens e.g.), I fear it's getting to the point that the US are simply not worth it.
For testimony that the local
http://www.shusterman.com/torvalds.html
an
I watched the news conference and was surprised by the same thing. Of course, this discovery is scientifically very important, but I wonder why the presence or absence of water in the soil at this time was not part of the discussion. Not even a single reference was made. It seems it would be easy (?) and important to verify whether or not the soil at the landing site contains water *now*. And, given the new direction of the Bush Moon/Mars plan, such a determination may be even more important to future human missions than the verification of whether that location was ever wet or not in the distant past. What am I missing?
I am not a rocket scientist, but how is transporting the materials up there to construct whatever you need and then move it to the Moon/Mars/etc, any more cost effective than transporting it straight to Mars/Moon/etc?
There is nothing in space to make anything from. All building materials, fuel etc would have to be moved from Earth to orbit. And then you haven't even gotten anywhere: you still have the additional costs of getting to your destination. You've just added more overhead.
The ISS has apparently costed about 40 billion, and it's a far cry from an orbital construction post.
I know this group ran experiments with web sites that generated dynamic links according to user retrieval patterns in 1996 and before: