which is greater than 5/6. If you can prove 5/6 >= 5, then you've either got different definitions of those numbers, or you've got an inconsistent proving system that lets you derive a contradiction.
Unless they're very motivated, or the teachers drop the idea of grading on gentler curves and start to fail people en masse (which isn't the best way to endear themselves to parents or angry school board members), I think a fair number of students would try to coast by with minimal effort.
Heh. I did once have a college course with no homework, no project, and few exams -- most of the classes consisted of an open, earnest discussion on sociology / polisci studies. Something like 30-40% of the course grade came down to/one/ essay question in the final.;)
Yup. Things were so much better when those darn poor people knew their place and minded their betters...
While some "America is getting STOOOOOPID" studies have pointed to early exams as having nastier questions, they often ignore the question of selectivity. If we only looked at the cream of the crop now (as did some early snapshots), they're still doing pretty darn well.
Good for you. The problem-solving skills are fundamental, but you can usually look up Greene's theorem or Runge-Kutta differentiation or Simpson's rule and its ilk for numerical integration or what-have-you if you need them.
Learn the concepts, but don't be afraid to reach for the CRC Handbooks or other favorite reference book.
Involved parents also help -- they, probably at least as much as a school, can get their children interested in learning not just as a way to graduate, but in something they should be doing for their entire lives.
"Alpha children wear grey. They work much harder than we do, because they're so frightfully clever. I'm really awfully glad I'm a Beta, because I don't work so hard. And then we are much better than the Gammas and Deltas. Gammas are stupid. They all wear green, and Delta children where khaki. Oh no, I don't want to play with delta children. And Epsilons are still worse. They're too stupid to be able..."
-- Aldous Huxley, "Brave New World"
If it's all the same to you, I'd hope that even the sanitation engineers are educated, because a) they may vote, b) if they're clueless, their mistakes may plague others, and c) I consider human beings to have substantial intellectual potential, and it'd be a shame to neglect it just because they may not/need/ it for their work.
Since it opens the door to mathematical logic, proving techniques, and a domain where people/must/ be able to reason to do well, I'm all for teaching algebra to everybody.
'sides, they/will/ use it, or suffer due to lack of trying.
- They may not realize how much they're screwed if they maintain a high credit card debt, and only make minimum monthly payments -- or, in general, how much borrowing money can really cost them.
- They may not understand what their politicians blather about when discussing economics.
- They may have no clue as to why the lottery is a/bad/ investment, unless it's a HUGE jackpot and everybody else is staying home due to CNN claiming a massive outbreak of West Nile and gigantic man-eating snakehead fish.;)
And so forth. Mathematical reasoning -- and, for that matter, a class on rhetoric, lying plausibly, and common fraud techniques (to innoculate people against smoke and mirrors) would prove quite useful to people, I'd think.
Ummm, the Ayatollah Khomeni has been dead for quite some time, so if he's back to bother us there's something/really/ funky going on. The Colonel ain't yet, but he's actually been behaving himself lately as far as I've read.
But you can see the fanatical flavor of the month anytime, by tuning into al-Jazeera or anything else that covers public opinion in the Arab world. You want interviews with young children who praise martyrdom as a worthy objective, and how if they die for The One True Faith they go straight to Paradise? They got it. You want "Death to America" protests? They've only been doing that since... well, at least the revolution against the Shah of Iran, and maybe earlier.
If Skylarov retains copyright, as DOJ contended (rather curious, if true; did he write it on his own?), then either Elcomsoft is infringing copyright or Skylarov has explicitly authorized any distribution by the company. It's not like he's the janitor, for cryin' out loud -- he's somebody in a position to make the decisions with regards to the work.
You didn't read the article -- but no surprise here, you're just another knee-jerk Slashdot poster.
Quote from the article:
The DMCA is both an egregious law and a brazen power grab by Hollywood, the music industry and software companies. It is probably unconstitutional. It creates unnecessary federal crimes, cedes too much authority to copyright holders, and should be unceremoniously tossed out by the courts. (As a bonus, perhaps we could horsewhip its many fans in Congress.
Now, in case you're too ignorant to know what "egregious", "unconstitutional", and "brazen power grab" mean, I'll simplify by noting that Declan is calling the DMCA a really really bad law.
There's a big difference between "no one's taken advantage" and "no one CAN take advantage of the law in the bizarre ways claimed by the EFF and other alarmists, because the law just isn't written that way".
...like give permission to his employers to sell the code, for profit, within the United States, via a server in the United States? At least, that's what the original indictment specifies...
If a "researcher" focused solely on, say, empirical analysis of decryption technology with respect to e-commerce, and in the name of research provided programs for breaking into Amazon.com, Ebay and Yahoo!, I suspect that the DMCA would apply. The definition of "research" can only be left to a common-sense / reasonable-person standard instead of "it's research because I'm doing it and I say it is", much like the word "religion" is subjective (much to the dismay of a "church" in Nevada that tried to get assorted sex acts classified as religious rites and get a tax exemption on the, er, donations, IIRC. The IRS successfully slapped that one down.).
He was a principal player of an enterprise engaging in commercial activity that was criminalized in the US, and that impacted a US company -- Adobe. Despite that, he entered the country voluntarily and demonstrated this activity. According to a DOJ press release, he is also the copyright holder on his program, so any distribution should be going on only with his full consent -- which is likely given the nature of his presentation.
The program was also purchasable from within the United States from an Elcomsoft.com server hosted in Chicago (again, within the US...). Payment was handled through an online service located with the United States.
So, he was willingly distributing an illegal circumvention device within the United States, to Americans.
1- A hell of a lot more funding, plus more stringent competency requirements, for public defenders. (Are their public defenders for civil suits? I doubt it -- the Bill of Rights "you have a right to an attorney" clause probably only covers criminal cases -- but perhaps there should be.) Defense attorneys often get criticized for defending people who are probably guilty, but the alternative is having a judicial system with a rubber stamp.
2- Loser pays "reasonable" legal expenses, perhaps to be specified in statute (e.g. hire Johnny Cochran to beat a traffic ticket if you like, but don't expect the state to foot the bill), possibly subject to an "ability to pay" rule.
3- Harsher sanctions against barratry.
4- The full text of laws/must/ be freely available to the public, at minimal production/delivery cost -- none of that "we copyrighted the Code and you'll have to pay to see it" bullshit.
Hmmm. It might be that a lot of customers just don't care about 10K RPM (do many even ask what speeds the drives are?), or about SCSI); again, do the masses care about whether or not multiple SCSI drives running simultaneously on the same controller do better than trying simultaneous accesses to multiple IDE drives on the same channel?
I suspect that most home users care primarily about one thing about drives: capacity, for all those pictures / videos / games / MP3s / et al. Noise might be another concern if it's terribly loud, and size (I'd guess that some might blink at a full-height drive, now that there are so many big, cheap, single-height IDE drives). But RPMs?
And if SCSI is only sold in low quantities, or to entities that can pay top dollar, then the prices/might/ be reasonable from a "we've still got to pay overhead and the factory costs the same even if we pump out few drives" point of view.
It's probably the same situation as with tape drives (IDE ones aren't TOO outrageous, but SCSI tapes of modern, non-trivial capacity are very, very expensive) -- it's probably worse there, in that many home users probably never even consider getting a tape drive for backing up.
SPECint? SPECfp? Quake (II, III, whatever -- substitute "Quack" for an ATI video card)? WinStone (?)? TPC-whatever? Disk benchmarks? FFT? Wavelet decomposition? Kernel convolutions with large images? Idle loops? Heavily interactive code, or code that only needs user interaction at start and end? Aieeeeeeeee...
A typical TV commercial is 30 seconds, although the imbecilic 1-800-4LOSERS ones may seem longer. That's not a long time in which to describe any benchmark aside from meaningless ones (MHz) or very very specific ones (peak fps rendering an empty wall).
First -- what specific, bogus claims has Intel made about P4 performance? A literalist might suggest that Intel claims that P4's help game performance in alien spacecraft, but that's a little hard to falsify, as far as I know, and probably wouldn't fly (unless, say, the plaintiffs include a bona fide literally minded extra-terrestial of the Roswellus anthroabductus variety).
Second -- it's a generally established principle ("puffery") that commercials are allowed to exaggerate to some degree. Chevy can claim that their vehicles are tough, "like a rock", which is a far less specific claim than, say, "this product is so tough that it can be driven two hundred thousand miles without maintenance" or "its windows will withstand sustained 9x19mm fire: perfect for the urban gangland outing". "Making the internet run faster"/might/ be considered puffery as it's a fairly vapid claim (does "the internet" include, say, running the Flash / Shockwave / Java applets that abound online?).
If they/have/ been making specific, non-puffery, bogus claims however, then I wouldn't mind seeing them smacked around for it, so long as the same reasoning gets applied in other cases as well.
Slashdot Mirror
You can't, because it's a falsifiable statement.
a=-1
b=-1
LHS:
2^-1 = 0.5
3^-1 = 0.33333...
Sum:
0.833333.... (5/6)
RHS:
5*a*b =
5*-1*-1 =
5
which is greater than 5/6. If you can prove 5/6 >= 5, then you've either got different definitions of those numbers, or you've got an inconsistent proving system that lets you derive a contradiction.
Unless they're very motivated, or the teachers drop the idea of grading on gentler curves and start to fail people en masse (which isn't the best way to endear themselves to parents or angry school board members), I think a fair number of students would try to coast by with minimal effort.
/one/ essay question in the final. ;)
Heh. I did once have a college course with no homework, no project, and few exams -- most of the classes consisted of an open, earnest discussion on sociology / polisci studies. Something like 30-40% of the course grade came down to
Yup. Things were so much better when those darn poor people knew their place and minded their betters...
While some "America is getting STOOOOOPID" studies have pointed to early exams as having nastier questions, they often ignore the question of selectivity. If we only looked at the cream of the crop now (as did some early snapshots), they're still doing pretty darn well.
Good for you. The problem-solving skills are fundamental, but you can usually look up Greene's theorem or Runge-Kutta differentiation or Simpson's rule and its ilk for numerical integration or what-have-you if you need them.
Learn the concepts, but don't be afraid to reach for the CRC Handbooks or other favorite reference book.
Involved parents also help -- they, probably at least as much as a school, can get their children interested in learning not just as a way to graduate, but in something they should be doing for their entire lives.
You probably won't like Rosie O'Donnell's idiotic comment, either.
"Alpha children wear grey. They work much harder than we do, because they're so frightfully clever. I'm really awfully glad I'm a Beta, because I don't work so hard. And then we are much better than the Gammas and Deltas. Gammas are stupid. They all wear green, and Delta children where khaki. Oh no, I don't want to play with delta children. And Epsilons are still worse. They're too stupid to be able..."
/need/ it for their work.
-- Aldous Huxley, "Brave New World"
If it's all the same to you, I'd hope that even the sanitation engineers are educated, because a) they may vote, b) if they're clueless, their mistakes may plague others, and c) I consider human beings to have substantial intellectual potential, and it'd be a shame to neglect it just because they may not
Since it opens the door to mathematical logic, proving techniques, and a domain where people /must/ be able to reason to do well, I'm all for teaching algebra to everybody.
/will/ use it, or suffer due to lack of trying.
/bad/ investment, unless it's a HUGE jackpot and everybody else is staying home due to CNN claiming a massive outbreak of West Nile and gigantic man-eating snakehead fish. ;)
'sides, they
- They may not realize how much they're screwed if they maintain a high credit card debt, and only make minimum monthly payments -- or, in general, how much borrowing money can really cost them.
- They may not understand what their politicians blather about when discussing economics.
- They may have no clue as to why the lottery is a
And so forth. Mathematical reasoning -- and, for that matter, a class on rhetoric, lying plausibly, and common fraud techniques (to innoculate people against smoke and mirrors) would prove quite useful to people, I'd think.
Ummm, the Ayatollah Khomeni has been dead for quite some time, so if he's back to bother us there's something /really/ funky going on. The Colonel ain't yet, but he's actually been behaving himself lately as far as I've read.
But you can see the fanatical flavor of the month anytime, by tuning into al-Jazeera or anything else that covers public opinion in the Arab world. You want interviews with young children who praise martyrdom as a worthy objective, and how if they die for The One True Faith they go straight to Paradise? They got it. You want "Death to America" protests? They've only been doing that since... well, at least the revolution against the Shah of Iran, and maybe earlier.
If Skylarov retains copyright, as DOJ contended (rather curious, if true; did he write it on his own?), then either Elcomsoft is infringing copyright or Skylarov has explicitly authorized any distribution by the company. It's not like he's the janitor, for cryin' out loud -- he's somebody in a position to make the decisions with regards to the work.
...exactly what does the EFF have to gain from conning the easily scared?
Donations and other forms of support. Judging from many of the people on this forum, FUD is A-OK as long as it's for a geek-proclaimed "good cause".
You didn't read the article -- but no surprise here, you're just another knee-jerk Slashdot poster.
Quote from the article:
The DMCA is both an egregious law and a brazen power grab by Hollywood, the music industry and software companies. It is probably unconstitutional. It creates unnecessary federal crimes, cedes too much authority to copyright holders, and should be unceremoniously tossed out by the courts. (As a bonus, perhaps we could horsewhip its many fans in Congress.
Now, in case you're too ignorant to know what "egregious", "unconstitutional", and "brazen power grab" mean, I'll simplify by noting that Declan is calling the DMCA a really really bad law.
Hyperbole is the tool of those for whom the more humble truth is inadequate.
They should be educating people as to the truth and why it matters, instead of outright lying.
There's a big difference between "no one's taken advantage" and "no one CAN take advantage of the law in the bizarre ways claimed by the EFF and other alarmists, because the law just isn't written that way".
...like give permission to his employers to sell the code, for profit, within the United States, via a server in the United States? At least, that's what the original indictment specifies...
If you're an Amazon referrer link, aren't you getting paid for that?
If a "researcher" focused solely on, say, empirical analysis of decryption technology with respect to e-commerce, and in the name of research provided programs for breaking into Amazon.com, Ebay and Yahoo!, I suspect that the DMCA would apply. The definition of "research" can only be left to a common-sense / reasonable-person standard instead of "it's research because I'm doing it and I say it is", much like the word "religion" is subjective (much to the dismay of a "church" in Nevada that tried to get assorted sex acts classified as religious rites and get a tax exemption on the, er, donations, IIRC. The IRS successfully slapped that one down.).
He was a principal player of an enterprise engaging in commercial activity that was criminalized in the US, and that impacted a US company -- Adobe. Despite that, he entered the country voluntarily and demonstrated this activity. According to a DOJ press release, he is also the copyright holder on his program, so any distribution should be going on only with his full consent -- which is likely given the nature of his presentation.
The program was also purchasable from within the United States from an Elcomsoft.com server hosted in Chicago (again, within the US...). Payment was handled through an online service located with the United States.
So, he was willingly distributing an illegal circumvention device within the United States, to Americans.
1- A hell of a lot more funding, plus more stringent competency requirements, for public defenders. (Are their public defenders for civil suits? I doubt it -- the Bill of Rights "you have a right to an attorney" clause probably only covers criminal cases -- but perhaps there should be.) Defense attorneys often get criticized for defending people who are probably guilty, but the alternative is having a judicial system with a rubber stamp.
/must/ be freely available to the public, at minimal production/delivery cost -- none of that "we copyrighted the Code and you'll have to pay to see it" bullshit.
2- Loser pays "reasonable" legal expenses, perhaps to be specified in statute (e.g. hire Johnny Cochran to beat a traffic ticket if you like, but don't expect the state to foot the bill), possibly subject to an "ability to pay" rule.
3- Harsher sanctions against barratry.
4- The full text of laws
Birds implementing RFC 1149, "A Standard for the Transmission of IP Datagrams on Avian Carriers"?
Hmmm. It might be that a lot of customers just don't care about 10K RPM (do many even ask what speeds the drives are?), or about SCSI); again, do the masses care about whether or not multiple SCSI drives running simultaneously on the same controller do better than trying simultaneous accesses to multiple IDE drives on the same channel?
/might/ be reasonable from a "we've still got to pay overhead and the factory costs the same even if we pump out few drives" point of view.
I suspect that most home users care primarily about one thing about drives: capacity, for all those pictures / videos / games / MP3s / et al. Noise might be another concern if it's terribly loud, and size (I'd guess that some might blink at a full-height drive, now that there are so many big, cheap, single-height IDE drives). But RPMs?
And if SCSI is only sold in low quantities, or to entities that can pay top dollar, then the prices
It's probably the same situation as with tape drives (IDE ones aren't TOO outrageous, but SCSI tapes of modern, non-trivial capacity are very, very expensive) -- it's probably worse there, in that many home users probably never even consider getting a tape drive for backing up.
System performance running what?
SPECint? SPECfp? Quake (II, III, whatever -- substitute "Quack" for an ATI video card)? WinStone (?)? TPC-whatever? Disk benchmarks? FFT? Wavelet decomposition? Kernel convolutions with large images? Idle loops? Heavily interactive code, or code that only needs user interaction at start and end? Aieeeeeeeee...
A typical TV commercial is 30 seconds, although the imbecilic 1-800-4LOSERS ones may seem longer. That's not a long time in which to describe any benchmark aside from meaningless ones (MHz) or very very specific ones (peak fps rendering an empty wall).
First -- what specific, bogus claims has Intel made about P4 performance? A literalist might suggest that Intel claims that P4's help game performance in alien spacecraft, but that's a little hard to falsify, as far as I know, and probably wouldn't fly (unless, say, the plaintiffs include a bona fide literally minded extra-terrestial of the Roswellus anthroabductus variety).
/might/ be considered puffery as it's a fairly vapid claim (does "the internet" include, say, running the Flash / Shockwave / Java applets that abound online?).
/have/ been making specific, non-puffery, bogus claims however, then I wouldn't mind seeing them smacked around for it, so long as the same reasoning gets applied in other cases as well.
Second -- it's a generally established principle ("puffery") that commercials are allowed to exaggerate to some degree. Chevy can claim that their vehicles are tough, "like a rock", which is a far less specific claim than, say, "this product is so tough that it can be driven two hundred thousand miles without maintenance" or "its windows will withstand sustained 9x19mm fire: perfect for the urban gangland outing". "Making the internet run faster"
If they
Perhaps they're busy being sheared by another robot?
That's because he'd be moderated down to "Troll" or "Flamebait" down to -1. This way, he can deliver his "insights" from on high.