The free Adobe Reader is just a reader. Acrobat is actually much more than just a reader. It includes document review features and UI that are much nicer than anything I've seen on Linux yet. You can make PDF files from Autocad and Visio (for example).
For that matter, how can a human judge that a human wrote the essay if it is a human who wrote the criteria that the essay is obeying? The point is moot.
The students who want to learn will take the opportunity. Those who already know what is being taught, or who don't care to learn will take the easy way out. This system doesn't change that. It will save teachers time, though.
Probably so. But if you can write one that satisfies the system's criteria for an "A," and say absolutely nothing, then chances are good you can write one that satisfies the system's criteria and says something meaningful. To be able to successfully break conventions (i.e. break conventions and get away with it) you have to know the conventions. What is this but enforcing conventions?
Apparently, the system uses statistical analysis as well as grammar checks to determine the score for the essay. Basically, they've built up a database of essays that have been graded by a bunch of humans, and then used these algorithms to figure out which bucket the essay belongs in. Sounds kinda like SpamAssassin, actually. I'd be willing to bet that with sufficient resources (in terms of essays and human grading time), this wouldn't be all that tough to duplicate. After all, what are spam filters but content analyzers?
(Shameless plug for a system that requires human judges rather than computer judges)
mini fuel cells will take care of one of the issues. Without putting a tower every place, I don't think there's a way to resolve 2), 3 is probably a function of the frequencies used being blocked by things like water or tinted glass or something. Probably there are physical limitations.
Not having computer viruses does not obviate the need to or the ability to understand them. Just as I can understand how to perform an amputation without actually having to perform one. And I don't have to have an amputation to know that I don't want one.
And frankly (stay with me here, there are a lot of negatives coming up), I don't think anybody would mind not appreciating the absence of computer viruses. Regardless of whether you think the "good lacks definition" in this case.
Get rid of all the viruses and virus writers and bam! you don't have viruses or virus writers anymore! No need to deal with viruses or virus writers! WooHoo! now we can all move on to more important things than updating our anti-virus software... fun things like taking out the trash.
So what you are saying is that without viruses, there would be a significant impact made by the slightest virus? How would that impact occur without viruses?
Microsoft has extensively investigated an engineering solution for NT 4.0 and found that the Windows NT 4.0 architecture will not support a fix to this issue, now or in the future.
It looks like if you use NT4 you are screwed. Just upgrade your machine to the new windows operating system. That'll fix it.
Here's the story on the washington post. Parallels between the critical infrastructure question and computer security professionals. There's a certain point where information should be kept quiet.
If all you got out of school was that the book is your "teacher," then your tuition was little more than an expensive library card.
I agree to some extent. I'm not motivated by some 55 year-old has been that can't keep up with the literature. I'm not motivated by her telling me that, "hey, this is A quality. Big thumbs up!" I'm motivated by my desire to learn. That is a huge part of education. The other part is learning what to learn. That comes from a) a book or b) with experience. But aside from a library card, I got a degree. I have credentials now.
Graduates of small, high-quality, close-knit colleges outperform graduates of large, impersonal universities in almost all fields including science and engineering.
More to the point, how do students who had involved professors do vs. students who didn't have involved professors. You are talking in terms of colleges and universities. The number of independent variables you include is staggering. "Small, high-quality, close-knit colleges" vs. "large, impersonal universities"? Is the reason they outperform because of the peer groups they formed in college that taught them more efficiently than the teachers did? Is the reason they outperform due to the criteria used for performance? Is the reason they outperform linked to socio-economic status? Is the reason they outperform linked to race? Class size? Computing resources? Dorm life? Campus environment? Library resources?
And I'll have to remind you that someone has to write the books. Who is it that writes them?
Teachers are the representative of Authority (a. k. a. "The Man"). They are as referees in a game The Man makes up. What good is a game without referees or rules?
The point is that something needs to act as a gatekeeper. The gatekeeper, by allowing individuals to pass through the gate, confers on individuals credentials that The Man can recognize easily. It gives The Man an easy way to put you in a bucket and judge your market potential. The Man delegates this gatekeeping function to the referees who say, "you beat the crap out of that team" (A) or who say, "you lost horribly on that one (F)"
Think of "teachers" as being similar to the kerberos TGS.
Just google for "grade inflation" and read a couple of the articles. For your convenience I've listed a couple of articles that I found off the top. There's pretty strong social pressure on professors to "give" the students the grades even though the students may not have earned them. And that lottery money being used for merit based scholarships? A waste of effort. Taxpayers would do better to simply allocate funds to the schools instead of giving it to the kids as a scholarship.
Even if I didn't teach and witness this kind of behavior individually, it doesn't take much to demonstrate that it happens pretty regularly. The grade inflation phenomenon is at least partly the fault of teachers who cave to social pressure from their students and the students' parents (who have lawyers!). It is also a result of an entitlement attitude. And please, don't ask me "What idiot has an entitlement attitude?" I'll think you think you are entitled to me responding.
I agree. Although teacher feedback is important, teachers' effort and participation in your education is almost unnecessary. Use your professor and the college as a way to get the credit and get the recognition you deserve. Engage in a dialogue the books you read and the assignments you have: let them be your "teachers."
There are 2 big misconceptions that students have: 1) By paying their tuition and fees they have somehow earned an A on their transcript and 2) The instructor has all the answers and is the Source Of Truth that can light their way by simply talking to them.
When I was in school, I went to the lectures and I read the assignments and I worked the problems. I could have skipped the lectures, but they kept me disciplined and paced my progress through the text and pointed out the important bits.
Having said all that, everyone has their own learning styles. Maybe on-line doesn't fit into the poster's learning style, and the poster just can't get into it. If that is the case, the idea to go back to a standard school is probably a good idea.
Vote in the elections. Communicate with your representatives. It works. The problem is that not enough voters who care about reverse engineering are educated about why it is bad. If there were enough voters that were educated about why it is so bad would write to their representatives (how many are there who read slashdot?) something would get done.
Interestingly enough, I haven't seen a rational explanation that shows why reverse engineering is a good thing. Which isn't really surprising given crowd, I guess -- more interested in that cool new game that plays on linux than in freedom of expression.
Who cares. They'll never do anything about it, and even if they do they'll mess it up. They voted to pass resolution 1441, but they haven't backed it up. And frankly, I'd say that VX nerve gas would be a tad more disruptive to the average French citizen than a little unsolicited spam.
Hell, I may just dig out my old french books and see if I can sell some wine and cheese via the internet.
There's a comment here that got me thinking: is the U.S. government paying money to microsoft for the privilege of fixing microsofts shoddy work? Are they really spending my tax dollars on that? If so, isn't this just another subsidy? Do the fixes get released to the public domain? Does anybody who works for the gov't care to comment?
Actually, there's still debate on whether or not computers are "Just Tools" as you put it. (I'm going to muck this part up a bit, but) Some view technology as a means of oppression by the capitalist establishment: "The substantive view sees the tool as having an innate influence on human action. The tool is not so innocent, but rather it effects a change on human behavior or consiousness, and in case of mordern technologies, that change is usually dehumanizing." (From Sullivan and Porter, _Opening Spaces Writing Technologies and Critical Research Practices_, page 104). It is a summary in a larger discussion, but shows the line of thought nicely. There's also way to look at technology that is a happy medium somewhere between "just a tool" and "insidious artifact of capital domination."
Think about it for a minute and you can see how this idea came about. The old guard saw the first computers and were intimidated by them. They didn't want to subject themselves to learning a whole new set of behaviors inflicted on them by a machine. So "It is a tool of the establishment!" There was an interesting article a while back about how people were becoming slaves to their machines... the only things humans are better at than computers are making decisions where there is some ambiguity. I
Frankly, I'm not particularly surprised that your average government school teacher with little or no training in computers himself could make effective use of computers dropped into their classrooms. I know a High School English teacher who only this year figured out how to use email. I really don't see how someone like that could begin to use teach effectively using computers.
There has been a lot of research on computers in Composition Studies (the study of writing). Back when it was the typewriter vs. DOS word processors people studied all kinds of aspects of writing with computers. Many studies came to much the same conclusion: It depends. There's still a lot of work to be done (and a lot of work still going on: here's a conference later this year)
The fact of the matter is that at the higher levels of education (ala MS, MA, PhD.) it has made writing much EASIER. Revision is easier, Editing is easier. Whether that makes the writing BETTER is open to debate there, too, as what constitutes better writing is very difficult to define.
And Calvin was wrong. With the right approach, I can make you care about the material I present. I've found through experience that thumb-screws, the iron-maiden, shackles, and the lash all have very positive effects on student attitude toward the material presented.
You can actually read this edition online from U-Michigan.
http://www.hti.umich.edu/cgi/c/cme/cme-idx?type=he ader&idno=Gawain
Must be in the public domain. Not much of a translation, though, seems more like an edition. More of a transcription than a translation.
Since the Total Information Awareness project will make finding this kind of information easy, I don't see what all the fuss is about. The government should be able to find this data in a couple of seconds, right?
Slashdot Mirror
Just a minor correction:
The free Adobe Reader is just a reader. Acrobat is actually much more than just a reader. It includes document review features and UI that are much nicer than anything I've seen on Linux yet. You can make PDF files from Autocad and Visio (for example).
For that matter, how can a human judge that a human wrote the essay if it is a human who wrote the criteria that the essay is obeying? The point is moot.
The students who want to learn will take the opportunity. Those who already know what is being taught, or who don't care to learn will take the easy way out. This system doesn't change that. It will save teachers time, though.
Probably so. But if you can write one that satisfies the system's criteria for an "A," and say absolutely nothing, then chances are good you can write one that satisfies the system's criteria and says something meaningful. To be able to successfully break conventions (i.e. break conventions and get away with it) you have to know the conventions. What is this but enforcing conventions?
Apparently, the system uses statistical analysis as well as grammar checks to determine the score for the essay. Basically, they've built up a database of essays that have been graded by a bunch of humans, and then used these algorithms to figure out which bucket the essay belongs in. Sounds kinda like SpamAssassin, actually. I'd be willing to bet that with sufficient resources (in terms of essays and human grading time), this wouldn't be all that tough to duplicate. After all, what are spam filters but content analyzers? (Shameless plug for a system that requires human judges rather than computer judges)
mini fuel cells will take care of one of the issues. Without putting a tower every place, I don't think there's a way to resolve 2), 3 is probably a function of the frequencies used being blocked by things like water or tinted glass or something. Probably there are physical limitations.
Not having computer viruses does not obviate the need to or the ability to understand them. Just as I can understand how to perform an amputation without actually having to perform one. And I don't have to have an amputation to know that I don't want one.
And frankly (stay with me here, there are a lot of negatives coming up), I don't think anybody would mind not appreciating the absence of computer viruses. Regardless of whether you think the "good lacks definition" in this case.
Get rid of all the viruses and virus writers and bam! you don't have viruses or virus writers anymore! No need to deal with viruses or virus writers! WooHoo! now we can all move on to more important things than updating our anti-virus software... fun things like taking out the trash.
So what you are saying is that without viruses, there would be a significant impact made by the slightest virus? How would that impact occur without viruses?
No need to just "make them up" Steal them from soldiers!
Dumbass. Nice. Note to self: Next time read the story.
Here's the story on the washington post. Parallels between the critical infrastructure question and computer security professionals. There's a certain point where information should be kept quiet.
If all you got out of school was that the book is your "teacher," then your tuition was little more than an expensive library card.
I agree to some extent. I'm not motivated by some 55 year-old has been that can't keep up with the literature. I'm not motivated by her telling me that, "hey, this is A quality. Big thumbs up!" I'm motivated by my desire to learn. That is a huge part of education. The other part is learning what to learn. That comes from a) a book or b) with experience. But aside from a library card, I got a degree. I have credentials now.
Graduates of small, high-quality, close-knit colleges outperform graduates of large, impersonal universities in almost all fields including science and engineering.
More to the point, how do students who had involved professors do vs. students who didn't have involved professors. You are talking in terms of colleges and universities. The number of independent variables you include is staggering. "Small, high-quality, close-knit colleges" vs. "large, impersonal universities"? Is the reason they outperform because of the peer groups they formed in college that taught them more efficiently than the teachers did? Is the reason they outperform due to the criteria used for performance? Is the reason they outperform linked to socio-economic status? Is the reason they outperform linked to race? Class size? Computing resources? Dorm life? Campus environment? Library resources?
And I'll have to remind you that someone has to write the books. Who is it that writes them?
Teachers are the representative of Authority (a. k. a. "The Man"). They are as referees in a game The Man makes up. What good is a game without referees or rules?
The point is that something needs to act as a gatekeeper. The gatekeeper, by allowing individuals to pass through the gate, confers on individuals credentials that The Man can recognize easily. It gives The Man an easy way to put you in a bucket and judge your market potential. The Man delegates this gatekeeping function to the referees who say, "you beat the crap out of that team" (A) or who say, "you lost horribly on that one (F)"
Think of "teachers" as being similar to the kerberos TGS.
Just google for "grade inflation" and read a couple of the articles. For your convenience I've listed a couple of articles that I found off the top. There's pretty strong social pressure on professors to "give" the students the grades even though the students may not have earned them. And that lottery money being used for merit based scholarships? A waste of effort. Taxpayers would do better to simply allocate funds to the schools instead of giving it to the kids as a scholarship.
- Grade Inflation: The current fraud
- Fiscal Policy Effects on Grade Inflation
- A call for an end to grade inflation
- HOPE Scholarships Transform the University of Georgia
- Grade inflation becoming problem at Vanderbilt
- Students studying less, receiving higher grades
Even if I didn't teach and witness this kind of behavior individually, it doesn't take much to demonstrate that it happens pretty regularly. The grade inflation phenomenon is at least partly the fault of teachers who cave to social pressure from their students and the students' parents (who have lawyers!). It is also a result of an entitlement attitude. And please, don't ask me "What idiot has an entitlement attitude?" I'll think you think you are entitled to me responding.I agree. Although teacher feedback is important, teachers' effort and participation in your education is almost unnecessary. Use your professor and the college as a way to get the credit and get the recognition you deserve. Engage in a dialogue the books you read and the assignments you have: let them be your "teachers."
There are 2 big misconceptions that students have: 1) By paying their tuition and fees they have somehow earned an A on their transcript and 2) The instructor has all the answers and is the Source Of Truth that can light their way by simply talking to them.
When I was in school, I went to the lectures and I read the assignments and I worked the problems. I could have skipped the lectures, but they kept me disciplined and paced my progress through the text and pointed out the important bits.
Having said all that, everyone has their own learning styles. Maybe on-line doesn't fit into the poster's learning style, and the poster just can't get into it. If that is the case, the idea to go back to a standard school is probably a good idea.
Just get a nice 19" diagonal picture of yourself to put up while you are out smoking.
Vote in the elections. Communicate with your representatives. It works. The problem is that not enough voters who care about reverse engineering are educated about why it is bad. If there were enough voters that were educated about why it is so bad would write to their representatives (how many are there who read slashdot?) something would get done.
Interestingly enough, I haven't seen a rational explanation that shows why reverse engineering is a good thing. Which isn't really surprising given crowd, I guess -- more interested in that cool new game that plays on linux than in freedom of expression.
Who cares. They'll never do anything about it, and even if they do they'll mess it up. They voted to pass resolution 1441, but they haven't backed it up. And frankly, I'd say that VX nerve gas would be a tad more disruptive to the average French citizen than a little unsolicited spam. Hell, I may just dig out my old french books and see if I can sell some wine and cheese via the internet.
Remember when everyone was giving VP Dan a hard time about misspelling tomato? It turns out that it is a fairly common stupid mistake.
Like you have a clue about racism, whitey. Please. You'd be lucky to know it if it slapped you in the face.
IANAL. If you use XHTML, does this patent cover you?
There's a comment here that got me thinking: is the U.S. government paying money to microsoft for the privilege of fixing microsofts shoddy work? Are they really spending my tax dollars on that? If so, isn't this just another subsidy? Do the fixes get released to the public domain? Does anybody who works for the gov't care to comment?
Actually, there's still debate on whether or not computers are "Just Tools" as you put it. (I'm going to muck this part up a bit, but) Some view technology as a means of oppression by the capitalist establishment: "The substantive view sees the tool as having an innate influence on human action. The tool is not so innocent, but rather it effects a change on human behavior or consiousness, and in case of mordern technologies, that change is usually dehumanizing." (From Sullivan and Porter, _Opening Spaces Writing Technologies and Critical Research Practices_, page 104). It is a summary in a larger discussion, but shows the line of thought nicely. There's also way to look at technology that is a happy medium somewhere between "just a tool" and "insidious artifact of capital domination."
Think about it for a minute and you can see how this idea came about. The old guard saw the first computers and were intimidated by them. They didn't want to subject themselves to learning a whole new set of behaviors inflicted on them by a machine. So "It is a tool of the establishment!" There was an interesting article a while back about how people were becoming slaves to their machines... the only things humans are better at than computers are making decisions where there is some ambiguity. I
Frankly, I'm not particularly surprised that your average government school teacher with little or no training in computers himself could make effective use of computers dropped into their classrooms. I know a High School English teacher who only this year figured out how to use email. I really don't see how someone like that could begin to use teach effectively using computers.
There has been a lot of research on computers in Composition Studies (the study of writing). Back when it was the typewriter vs. DOS word processors people studied all kinds of aspects of writing with computers. Many studies came to much the same conclusion: It depends. There's still a lot of work to be done (and a lot of work still going on: here's a conference later this year)
The fact of the matter is that at the higher levels of education (ala MS, MA, PhD.) it has made writing much EASIER. Revision is easier, Editing is easier. Whether that makes the writing BETTER is open to debate there, too, as what constitutes better writing is very difficult to define.
And Calvin was wrong. With the right approach, I can make you care about the material I present. I've found through experience that thumb-screws, the iron-maiden, shackles, and the lash all have very positive effects on student attitude toward the material presented.
You can actually read this edition online from U-Michigan. http://www.hti.umich.edu/cgi/c/cme/cme-idx?type=he ader&idno=Gawain
Must be in the public domain. Not much of a translation, though, seems more like an edition. More of a transcription than a translation.
Since the Total Information Awareness project will make finding this kind of information easy, I don't see what all the fuss is about. The government should be able to find this data in a couple of seconds, right?