I hope this is not too offtopic. I use the database module in Works (which is basically a spreadsheet, but with the ability to display a line as a record) I love it because I can search for text in all fields with a simple command and the search results come up like a little spreadsheet. It's so easy and perfect for what I want.
It's not too expensive, but I would love to find a non-Microsoft equivalent, just because, well, just because.
I've never seen anything like that, though. Has anyone? It seems like most db programs want to be told which fields to search and not simply search all fields. On the other hand, I could be totally and irrevocably wrong about that.
Meanwhile, for a small amount of cash, the Works database module would be ultra-simple and appropriate for use by the original poster.
The relationships and observations that we use mathematics to model are discovered. They are out there, we discover them, and then we model them. That should be obvious to all but the most die-hard of idealists.
This is absolutely true. The failure to recognize this, by the way, is one of the main factors responsible for many of the failures of math and science education in this country. People in charge (politicians, scientists pre-selected for symbolic talents, etc.) simply can't imagine that the process by which we develop mental models of mathematical knowledge differs from the way mathematics itself is built up (i.e. how it reveals itself in order to be discovered)
By forcing kids to develop mathematical thinking in the manner that mathematical relationships themselves are built up in nature, instead of in the manner that students might actually comprehend them, we produce generation after generation of adults with math phobia, except for the afore-mentioned ones who are talented in symbolic mental representations. And even they, I have a feeling, will probably learn it better if they learn it in a psychologically more natural manner.
As pointed out in a comment above, if Germany does it, why not the USA? (Especially with all the secrecy and propensity to spy on citizens that the USA feds have these days)
I'm wondering now about China. I remember that Skype was, for a short time, on slippery footing for continued operations in the People's Republic. Then, for some reason, there was no longer a problem. I can't help but suspect that Skype may have opened up its code to China in order to continue operating there. The Chinese government lives and breathes by spying on its people (and anybody else living in its territory, of course).
On the other hand, maybe they didn't open their code, but the Chinese government figured out how to tap into communications, anyway. In the current article, the Germans have shown one way that it's possible.
It seems to me that we somehow got through the cold war, and two world wars, with our eavesdropping rules on the telephone lines intact. Why are we so afraid as to give up our freedoms to a bunch of terrorists who happened to get lucky one time eight years ago? It's sad. Besides, we're not really at war anyway. Last I checked, congress never declared a war.
This is all rather interesting. I remember that a couple decades ago when the Japanese economy was high, a Japanese company came to California and bought the point of land where the famous Monterey cyprus was growing. I was told at the time that tourists would no longer be able to photograph it nor especially sell images of it. I remember being very glad when the tree, which was not young, died shortly after that. Served them right. But in light of what people are saying here, maybe that was wrong - maybe they couldn't have prohibited people from taking photos of that tree, anyway.
Most of the commentators on this thread seem to feel that this policy is aimed at foreign visitors entering the US. I think that's not the point at all - the point is to keep the US population in line.
In this case, one might also argue that it's meant to chill Americans' desire to travel abroad where they might find out that life in other countries (particularly Europe and Canada, but also in other places) might actually be better in certain respects than life in America, because they might return home and demand that Americans, as members of what's still the richest nation on earth, get the same advantages as people in some other countries.
"People deal with cognitive dissonance -- the clashing of conflicting thoughts -- by eliminating one of the thoughts.
This idea is simply not true. It really bugs me when I read something like this.
First of all, people can hold thoughts in cognitive dissonance for a long time, sometimes an entire lifetime without necessarily eliminating one or the other. I realize I'm opening up myself to a lot of snarky comments by saying it, but it's true nonetheless.
Secondly, cognitive growth, that is, conceptual growth, particularly in math or in other logically structured areas of thought, only comes about through the synthesis of thoughts that are otherwise held in cognitive dissonance. This is Hegel's famous thesis, antithesis, synthesis triad.
In either case, cognitive dissonance is not always resolved by rejecting one thought or the other.
Success isn't about intelligence: it's also about discipline, energy, drive, and attitude. A surplus of the last four can even mitigate against weaknesses in brain power.
I've spent the last twenty years teaching a "gifted" section in an Elementary school. Your comment (and also the rest of it, which I have not quoted) express exactly my point of view on the subject. When kids entered my class, they ceased to be the elite within their former classes, and instead became just another kid in the class, and, often for the first time, had to develop some discipline and drive.
Although I do have some egalitarian-inspired sympathy with the folks who want all students heterogeneously thrown into the same class (except they somehow still don't want the special ed kids and the out-of-control kids, of course), my experience is that "gifted" kids cannot be properly challenged in such a setting, if only because much of the challenge in a class comes, not from the teacher, but from the other young minds in the community.
Also, most teachers I know spend most of their time helping the kids on the bottom of the class. The idea of a teacher who only favors bright students with his attentions is, as far as I've seen, a myth. In thirty years of teaching I have yet to meet one. Of course, your mileage may vary, since I've only one lifetime of observations. This tendency of teachers to reach the bottom students at the expense of the top ones was true long before the No Child Left Behind Act, with it's disaggregation of students' test results, increased the pressure to focus on the bottom of the class. It's bound up with the reasons why most teachers become teachers in the first place.
If I was making that list, then I'd like to include Beagle Brothers Software, who not only made great and useful tools for the Apple ][, but made them with a whimsical sense of humor. I still have a copy somewhere of their poster of Apple ][ peeks and pokes. Great stuff!! See it here: http://stevenf.com/beagle/
But unless I go back for the remedial math classes, I can't teach it.
As someone who chafes all the time about the stupid things my school district leadership puts me through, I don't want to argue much about the stupidity common in school administration. I'm wondering if, in this case, though, there might be a little bit of method in the madness. (I don't really know your situation, so I know I'm talking out my hat in a sense, but I just want to bring up one possibility)
I'm wondering if the remedial math you mentioned was math from an educator's viewpoint. The younger you go with kids the more you can see the ideas of (1) math and (2) how math is actually learned diverging. It sounds like you would be more involved with high school than primary school, as I am, so the differences would be slight at that level, but still, it might be a matter of credentialing for all grades in your particular location.
Again, I don't mean to question too much what I don't really know about your particular situation, it's just that such requirements for courses that seem like "basic math" are fairly common, and that's the reason - that kids don't always learn math the way that math itself is put together, and this is particularly so for the most basic levels of math, so it makes sense that when teachers are credentialed to teach all grade levels, they're aware of some of these differences.
Ha! I complain about something being trollish and get rated a troll myself. Oh well, I never really wanted to metamoderate anyhow. Still, seems ironic.
If the lead article was not a lead article, but was a comment, wouldn't it have been rated troll by now? Okay, maybe it's not negative enough to be a troll. How about troll bait, then? This *is* Slashdot, after all.
Is there simply a file I can delete to fix this? I got an Acer desktop for my sister, and I'd like to tell her what to delete to get rid of this threat.
Maybe I'm dense or something, but I can't seem to find this anywhere in the plan: As a citizen of the East Bay and not San Francisco, would I be able to use the 300 kbs "free service" for free when I happen to be in the city?
"This is/. buddy, what you'll get is a bunch of reasons why its right or wrong from people that didn't read the article"
Point taken, so I won't read it.
On the other hand, I will ask myself why this article is not appearing in a peer-reviewed scientific journal instead of a newspaper. It's kind of like asking why those warnings of the weird effects of microwaves are not appearing in a newspaper instead of anonymously written forwarded emails.
I agree with your comment, but I have to say that, for this user at least, the functionality and ease of use of Ubuntu is already outstanding, hence I do think it's time for them to start working on beauty. I've had an easier time setting up a Samba computer on Ubuntu than I have with OS X. Of course, other's mileage may vary.
US elections are controlled at the local level, so unfortunately such a nationwide fix would not be workable here.
When you think about it, elections are rapidly becoming nationally controlled through the use of electronic voting machines, which are controlled by a national or international corporation. I believe at this time only a handful of corporations make such machines, and when the inevitable corporate mergers occur, it will gradually tend toward one company controlling everything nationwide (assuming bought-off politicians, of course).
Yes, I teach in a K-12 setting, and Lightspeed limits what I and the students can see. It seems to me to be more appropriate in a setting like mine. Although it's annoying in some ways, I can usually get whatever I need for teaching in an elementary school. Also, not all mp3's are blocked. There are still some podcasts that I can reach (but maybe I won't say which, in case Lightspeed is reading);-)
I love Eudora and have used version 4.3.1 for more years than I care to think about. I was almost going to jump ship for Thunderbird, though, since it apparently reads unicode, and I'm hoping to have the occasional e-mail from China show as something other than gibberish.
I really hope that this union of Mozilla and Eudora will allow me to continue using the Eudora I already like and feel comfortable with, yet still be able to send/receive Chinese characters.
I haven't tried all those things you mentioned, but I installed Edubuntu in my classroom computers this summer and it was better at installing a printer shared on a Windows machine than Mac OS 10.4 was. I was impressed. Of course, maybe that means that Mac OS 10.4 is not ready for the desktop..;-)
.....do what comes natural.... toke up, get rowdy and start smashing stuff....
Even though I know this is all in jest, I still find it fascinating that anyone, even in poking fun, accesses the "hippie" stereotype as being rowdy and smashing stuff.
I don't find it surprising, because, ever since the hippie generation realized they could have a great life by just keeping to themselves and not constantly kowtowing to authority figures, those in authority have been livid that someplace, somewhere, there might be a hippie on his subsistence farm somewhere having a great life without the guidance or dictates of any higher authority.
And so, ever since the seventies, hippies in popular culture have been demonized as being nothing but rude, inconsiderate, drug-addled and somewhat smelly creatures who always oppose things, violently if necessary, just because they don't always take authoritarians seriously enough.
Again, I realize that the comment I'm replying to is just a joke, but still, it's interesting to see the characterization that was used.
When I first began traveling to China 8 years ago (and China, by the way, is full of wonderful people, though I differ with their government on many issues) I reflected that China was becoming more like America, and America was becoming more like China. For example, in America, we have the defacto suspension of habeas corpus, the accelerating gap between the haves and the have nots (and the have mores, as Bush likes to call his base), the increasing surveillance of ordinary citizens and the recording of their activities, and the expanded secrecy of government (Cheney's office will not even tell reporters who works there, let alone what their job descriptions are) which puts us square on a path towards Chinese-style government, where a constitution has only existed for a few years, and the rule of law is still a long way off.
A friend of mine recently viewed some factories in Shenzhen similar to the ones in this article, though smaller and producing different products. He got to talk to the people in charge of the factory and found out that the tax laws are such that the factory was only meant to operate about ten years. After that, the tax subsidies fade out. Then they will build new factories under new tax subsidies somewhere further west where wages can even be lower. And what about the workers laid off from the present factories? - well, who cares?
This is an extension of the abstration of the chevron menus... alter the user's environment based on usage. It doesn't work. I've used environments like this and it takes getting used to.
WordPerfect has had something like this for many years. Actually only the tool bars, but not the menus, change when you change to different tasks, such as tables. Compared to the new Word, then, WordPerfect again has the best of both worlds. (And it is actually still being sold, by the way, in case anyone was wondering)
Also WordPerfect has for many years had the automatic text preview feature for things like font changes. Once again Microsoft steals good ideas from WordPerfect (though perhaps other programs I don't know of also have this feature.)
There are probably even more features that WordPerfect had first and better, but the ComputerWorld site is running so slow (due to Slashdotting, I presume) that I finally gave up reading the rest of the article.
Some engineers are really good at grammar and spelling, and consider computer languages to be fundamentally the same processes of clear and beautiful thought as human languages. Others handle them as entirely different things - can't spell worth beenz and don't grammar thier English, even though they spend all day producing flawless syntax in artificial languages. Those of us in the former group don't really understand the latter, and find their behaviour annoying, but it's such a common pattern that it's obviously a different set of mental structures approaches to information processing or something, on the level of spoken-vs-written-vs-visual focus, as opposed to laziness and stupidity (:-)
I agree with you that there are different things going on here. I think part of the difference, at least, is audience sense, which is something alluded to in other posts.
In other words, it's a lot easier for some people to know how a computer is going to interpret their prose than how a person is going to interpret their prose, so they adjust (or don't) their writing accordingly.
Slashdot Mirror
It's not too expensive, but I would love to find a non-Microsoft equivalent, just because, well, just because.
I've never seen anything like that, though. Has anyone? It seems like most db programs want to be told which fields to search and not simply search all fields. On the other hand, I could be totally and irrevocably wrong about that.
Meanwhile, for a small amount of cash, the Works database module would be ultra-simple and appropriate for use by the original poster.
This is absolutely true. The failure to recognize this, by the way, is one of the main factors responsible for many of the failures of math and science education in this country. People in charge (politicians, scientists pre-selected for symbolic talents, etc.) simply can't imagine that the process by which we develop mental models of mathematical knowledge differs from the way mathematics itself is built up (i.e. how it reveals itself in order to be discovered)
By forcing kids to develop mathematical thinking in the manner that mathematical relationships themselves are built up in nature, instead of in the manner that students might actually comprehend them, we produce generation after generation of adults with math phobia, except for the afore-mentioned ones who are talented in symbolic mental representations. And even they, I have a feeling, will probably learn it better if they learn it in a psychologically more natural manner.
I'm wondering now about China. I remember that Skype was, for a short time, on slippery footing for continued operations in the People's Republic. Then, for some reason, there was no longer a problem. I can't help but suspect that Skype may have opened up its code to China in order to continue operating there. The Chinese government lives and breathes by spying on its people (and anybody else living in its territory, of course).
On the other hand, maybe they didn't open their code, but the Chinese government figured out how to tap into communications, anyway. In the current article, the Germans have shown one way that it's possible.
It seems to me that we somehow got through the cold war, and two world wars, with our eavesdropping rules on the telephone lines intact. Why are we so afraid as to give up our freedoms to a bunch of terrorists who happened to get lucky one time eight years ago? It's sad. Besides, we're not really at war anyway. Last I checked, congress never declared a war.
This is all rather interesting. I remember that a couple decades ago when the Japanese economy was high, a Japanese company came to California and bought the point of land where the famous Monterey cyprus was growing. I was told at the time that tourists would no longer be able to photograph it nor especially sell images of it. I remember being very glad when the tree, which was not young, died shortly after that. Served them right. But in light of what people are saying here, maybe that was wrong - maybe they couldn't have prohibited people from taking photos of that tree, anyway.
Most of the commentators on this thread seem to feel that this policy is aimed at foreign visitors entering the US. I think that's not the point at all - the point is to keep the US population in line.
In this case, one might also argue that it's meant to chill Americans' desire to travel abroad where they might find out that life in other countries (particularly Europe and Canada, but also in other places) might actually be better in certain respects than life in America, because they might return home and demand that Americans, as members of what's still the richest nation on earth, get the same advantages as people in some other countries.
This idea is simply not true. It really bugs me when I read something like this.
First of all, people can hold thoughts in cognitive dissonance for a long time, sometimes an entire lifetime without necessarily eliminating one or the other. I realize I'm opening up myself to a lot of snarky comments by saying it, but it's true nonetheless.
Secondly, cognitive growth, that is, conceptual growth, particularly in math or in other logically structured areas of thought, only comes about through the synthesis of thoughts that are otherwise held in cognitive dissonance. This is Hegel's famous thesis, antithesis, synthesis triad.
In either case, cognitive dissonance is not always resolved by rejecting one thought or the other.
I've spent the last twenty years teaching a "gifted" section in an Elementary school. Your comment (and also the rest of it, which I have not quoted) express exactly my point of view on the subject. When kids entered my class, they ceased to be the elite within their former classes, and instead became just another kid in the class, and, often for the first time, had to develop some discipline and drive.
Although I do have some egalitarian-inspired sympathy with the folks who want all students heterogeneously thrown into the same class (except they somehow still don't want the special ed kids and the out-of-control kids, of course), my experience is that "gifted" kids cannot be properly challenged in such a setting, if only because much of the challenge in a class comes, not from the teacher, but from the other young minds in the community.
Also, most teachers I know spend most of their time helping the kids on the bottom of the class. The idea of a teacher who only favors bright students with his attentions is, as far as I've seen, a myth. In thirty years of teaching I have yet to meet one. Of course, your mileage may vary, since I've only one lifetime of observations. This tendency of teachers to reach the bottom students at the expense of the top ones was true long before the No Child Left Behind Act, with it's disaggregation of students' test results, increased the pressure to focus on the bottom of the class. It's bound up with the reasons why most teachers become teachers in the first place.
If I was making that list, then I'd like to include Beagle Brothers Software , who not only made great and useful tools for the Apple ][, but made them with a whimsical sense of humor. I still have a copy somewhere of their poster of Apple ][ peeks and pokes. Great stuff!! See it here: http://stevenf.com/beagle/
As someone who chafes all the time about the stupid things my school district leadership puts me through, I don't want to argue much about the stupidity common in school administration. I'm wondering if, in this case, though, there might be a little bit of method in the madness. (I don't really know your situation, so I know I'm talking out my hat in a sense, but I just want to bring up one possibility)
I'm wondering if the remedial math you mentioned was math from an educator's viewpoint. The younger you go with kids the more you can see the ideas of (1) math and (2) how math is actually learned diverging. It sounds like you would be more involved with high school than primary school, as I am, so the differences would be slight at that level, but still, it might be a matter of credentialing for all grades in your particular location.
Again, I don't mean to question too much what I don't really know about your particular situation, it's just that such requirements for courses that seem like "basic math" are fairly common, and that's the reason - that kids don't always learn math the way that math itself is put together, and this is particularly so for the most basic levels of math, so it makes sense that when teachers are credentialed to teach all grade levels, they're aware of some of these differences.
Ha! I complain about something being trollish and get rated a troll myself. Oh well, I never really wanted to metamoderate anyhow. Still, seems ironic.
If the lead article was not a lead article, but was a comment, wouldn't it have been rated troll by now? Okay, maybe it's not negative enough to be a troll. How about troll bait, then? This *is* Slashdot, after all.
Is there simply a file I can delete to fix this? I got an Acer desktop for my sister, and I'd like to tell her what to delete to get rid of this threat.
Missed that line. Thanks.
Maybe I'm dense or something, but I can't seem to find this anywhere in the plan: As a citizen of the East Bay and not San Francisco, would I be able to use the 300 kbs "free service" for free when I happen to be in the city?
On the other hand, I will ask myself why this article is not appearing in a peer-reviewed scientific journal instead of a newspaper. It's kind of like asking why those warnings of the weird effects of microwaves are not appearing in a newspaper instead of anonymously written forwarded emails.
I agree with your comment, but I have to say that, for this user at least, the functionality and ease of use of Ubuntu is already outstanding, hence I do think it's time for them to start working on beauty. I've had an easier time setting up a Samba computer on Ubuntu than I have with OS X. Of course, other's mileage may vary.
When you think about it, elections are rapidly becoming nationally controlled through the use of electronic voting machines, which are controlled by a national or international corporation. I believe at this time only a handful of corporations make such machines, and when the inevitable corporate mergers occur, it will gradually tend toward one company controlling everything nationwide (assuming bought-off politicians, of course).
Yes, I teach in a K-12 setting, and Lightspeed limits what I and the students can see. It seems to me to be more appropriate in a setting like mine. Although it's annoying in some ways, I can usually get whatever I need for teaching in an elementary school. Also, not all mp3's are blocked. There are still some podcasts that I can reach (but maybe I won't say which, in case Lightspeed is reading) ;-)
I really hope that this union of Mozilla and Eudora will allow me to continue using the Eudora I already like and feel comfortable with, yet still be able to send/receive Chinese characters.
I haven't tried all those things you mentioned, but I installed Edubuntu in my classroom computers this summer and it was better at installing a printer shared on a Windows machine than Mac OS 10.4 was. I was impressed. Of course, maybe that means that Mac OS 10.4 is not ready for the desktop..;-)
Even though I know this is all in jest, I still find it fascinating that anyone, even in poking fun, accesses the "hippie" stereotype as being rowdy and smashing stuff.
I don't find it surprising, because, ever since the hippie generation realized they could have a great life by just keeping to themselves and not constantly kowtowing to authority figures, those in authority have been livid that someplace, somewhere, there might be a hippie on his subsistence farm somewhere having a great life without the guidance or dictates of any higher authority.
And so, ever since the seventies, hippies in popular culture have been demonized as being nothing but rude, inconsiderate, drug-addled and somewhat smelly creatures who always oppose things, violently if necessary, just because they don't always take authoritarians seriously enough.
Again, I realize that the comment I'm replying to is just a joke, but still, it's interesting to see the characterization that was used.
When I first began traveling to China 8 years ago (and China, by the way, is full of wonderful people, though I differ with their government on many issues) I reflected that China was becoming more like America, and America was becoming more like China. For example, in America, we have the defacto suspension of habeas corpus, the accelerating gap between the haves and the have nots (and the have mores, as Bush likes to call his base), the increasing surveillance of ordinary citizens and the recording of their activities, and the expanded secrecy of government (Cheney's office will not even tell reporters who works there, let alone what their job descriptions are) which puts us square on a path towards Chinese-style government, where a constitution has only existed for a few years, and the rule of law is still a long way off.
A friend of mine recently viewed some factories in Shenzhen similar to the ones in this article, though smaller and producing different products. He got to talk to the people in charge of the factory and found out that the tax laws are such that the factory was only meant to operate about ten years. After that, the tax subsidies fade out. Then they will build new factories under new tax subsidies somewhere further west where wages can even be lower. And what about the workers laid off from the present factories? - well, who cares?
WordPerfect has had something like this for many years. Actually only the tool bars, but not the menus, change when you change to different tasks, such as tables. Compared to the new Word, then, WordPerfect again has the best of both worlds. (And it is actually still being sold, by the way, in case anyone was wondering)
Also WordPerfect has for many years had the automatic text preview feature for things like font changes. Once again Microsoft steals good ideas from WordPerfect (though perhaps other programs I don't know of also have this feature.)
There are probably even more features that WordPerfect had first and better, but the ComputerWorld site is running so slow (due to Slashdotting, I presume) that I finally gave up reading the rest of the article.
I agree with you that there are different things going on here. I think part of the difference, at least, is audience sense, which is something alluded to in other posts.
In other words, it's a lot easier for some people to know how a computer is going to interpret their prose than how a person is going to interpret their prose, so they adjust (or don't) their writing accordingly.