Me too. I downloaded my entire library and now it's on my nook. Even my textbooks for next semester!
This is going to save me having to lug around about 300 pounds of books when I go back to school. Definitely one of the smartest investments I've ever made.
Not specifically that it's a nook, but in that it's an eReader.
Take the 'Harvard Classics' collection that I've been trying to build up over the past few years... it's about 3 feet long right now (and if I completed it, it would be 5 feet long). That's a lot of space when you live in a college dorm. But now, it's on my nook. So, it's about the size of one relatively small book.
And seeing this makes me feel even more AWESOME about having bought my nook two days ago.
The big things I use my calculator for are operations with matrices and trig functions.
I don't *need* my calculator to do these things... but it's either the calculator or stupid mistakes with matrices, or it's either the calculator or a big table of trig function values.
It's mostly a time saver, so that I can do more math and less arithmetic. I can do arithmetic and I can do algebra, but there's no reason why I should have to do a bunch of pointless calculation if I actually have a good understanding of what's going on.
But that said, I don't think we should require these big, fancy graphing calculators in high-school... just teach derivatives earlier instead of teaching them in a mysterious calculus class, after all the only thing these calculators are ever used for in high-school math, besides playing games, is finding the minima and maxima of functions. And matrix math... but the worst we ever did in high-school was 3x3, and you can usually write down a minimal amount of work and do the rest of those in your head. (when doing expansion by minors for example)
Otherwise, I remember a few times in an algebra class where we were tested on whether or not we could solve a system of equations by plugging coefficients into matrices in our calculators... of course, we were never taught *why* the methods worked, only how to do them on a calculator. Because most (probably all) math classes in high-school in the USA are a stupid waste of time.
It wasn't until college that I started to really think math was nifty... and this happened my first semester when my professor (unlike all of my high-school teachers) took the five minutes out of his schedule to explain Euler's identity to me. I added a math major that day.
Sorry to reply to myself... but to clarify, it basically lets you choose to boot from a special test-mode setup and a normal-use setup. And there's some extra little bits to control various things in the test-mode setup... you can enable/disable certain commands, a little LED lights up to show you're in test-mode, etc.
It's nifty.
The nspire is actually pretty freaking smart about resetting. Instead of actually needing to do a full reset, it has a fancy test-taking mode. You hold down the escape+home(on) key while the calculator is turned off, then you'll get a dialogue asking if you want to enter 'press to test' mode. Once you enter that mode, the calculator resets, and reloads the firmware without deleting anything you've been working on, and a little led on the end of the calculator will blink every few seconds to show that you're in the right mode. And then, the only way to exit the mode is to plug the calculator into either another calculator or a computer with the TI software. But, once you exit the testing mode, all of your stuff will be right where you left it.
It can be a huge pain in the ass, but honestly, if TI wants to make cheating really hard, this is sure a good way to do it.
Of course, once the DRM on the calculator is defeated... it's going to be fairly trivial to replace the testing image with something more useful... or even just use some assembly code to flash the led.
Are we making an artificial brain or an artificial mind?
And if we're making a mind, do we treat it like a human, with rights and such?
And what do we do if it asks to die? After all, it'd be our fault for bringing it into being. Are we really ready for this sort of responsibility?
Assuming we can actually "make" a "brain", I think the sort of ethical and moral problems that come up will be pretty deep stuff.
My understanding is that humans have these "extra" wisdom teeth now because of our softer, easier-to-chew diets. A long time ago, when we would have to eat more interesting things, the teeth would naturally wear down enough that there would be plenty of space for the wisdom teeth, but now, when they try to come in, they don't have enough room, and it is not uncommon for them to grow at an unpleasant angle and actually impact themselves into the surrounding teeth- or worse, the jaw bone behind them.
That is my very basic understanding from the oral surgeon who removed mine a few months ago. It was completely painless (unless you're extremely bothered by the insertion of a small IV).
Basically, if you don't run into problems from the wisdom teeth embedding themselves into other parts of your mouth, most of your issues will come from cavities, infections, etc due to their location in the far back of the mouth, where they are hard to access to brush and clean properly.
Luckily, if you have them removed relatively early in life, you will usually have very little to no complications, due to the fact that the roots of the wisdom teeth usually take a while to actually connect to the nerve in the tissue surrounding your jaw bone. When this happens is usually different depending on who you are, but I'm guessing it usually happens in the late teenage years to the early 20s.
Anywho, my $.02 is this: talk to your dentist and if he says you should have them removed, DO IT, because the longer you wait, the worst it will be. If you do it early on, like I was lucky enough to, it is nothing at all.
Hell, I even got to take codeine and eat nothing but cottage cheese for two days.
I don't think you'll find all of the high school math in one book, but I do know of a great book that I taught myself Trig with because my school won't let me take it. It's "Trigonomerty: An Analytic Approach. By Drooyan/Hadel. Amazingly awesome book that not only teaches you the circular functions and other stuff people associate with Trig, but it does a damn good job of showing you how everything works, and why. The first chapter is about the unit circle in case that helps clear up what I'm trying to get across.:)
I'll admit it isn't the most visually appealing book or the easiest thing to read, but if you spend a few hours really working to understand the contents of a chapter, it's totally worth it, because in the end you'll have a very very deep understanding.
Also, the Blitzer: Precalculus book is very good. Great if you need to refresh your algebra skills. It also has a great Trig section.
For calculus, I would suggest, "The Complete Idiots Guide to: Calculus" (to get started), it was surprisingly good. And most of all, Calculus: An Intuitive and Physical Approach. That last book is practically my bible.
Anyways, good luck, you learn your math, and I'll struggle to get my stupid high school to let me take an interesting math class I won't be bored in.:)
I'm not going to complain... because no one takes their high school work seriously, that just makes it easier for me to get into the college I want because there is less/no competeition.
I can certainly relate to your experience. I am a freshman in high school. Unfortunately my high-school is located in just the right spot so that we get a lot of really "ghetto" people. I don't want to over-generalize, but a lot of the students from these low income families [ not all minorities ] are either, stupid, unmotivated, or unlucky. I am constantly reminded of how stupid people can be, by walking down the hall and hearing stuff like, "Ma'n.... yo mutha [...] you step on my airs you n[...]"... It's ridiculous. I'm not sure where you're from, but I know in the US one of the major problems is that our society teaches people that it is rewarding to be stupid. On your statement about the classes being slowed down... I agree that a lot of classes cater towards the not-as-smart students, but I would like to add that in a lot of cases the problem is the teachers. My 6th grade math teacher, for example, was: 1) an idiot 2) a jerk. He took away almost all my interest in math, and never taught me anything. I'm just lucky I read the books that I read [ and am really good at taking standardized tests ], otherwise I wouldn't have taken the honors algebra class when I started high school. Because of how bad the teacher was, I didn't get to take the Algebra course in 8th grade, so the high school class was *really* hard the first semester. That said though, I agree with you wholly.
Please... I really don't think Apple copied konfabulator. I know they copy stuff, but please don't use that as an argument. I'm not trying to be sarcastic or rude, but I think Desk Accessories came first.:) Desk Accessories
If they broke the internet into little pieces.. that'd be bad on soooo many levels, but the one that would probably bother me the most is that I have a lot of friends in other countries, and I don't want to spend a bunch of money to send them mail. [ which is also incredibly slow ] I know people in Columbia, Brazil, UK, Germany, Australia, Japan, etc. I would be very lonely if they broke the internet.:-\
Slashdot Mirror
Or you could become a Philosophy and Math major like I did!
Me too. I downloaded my entire library and now it's on my nook. Even my textbooks for next semester! This is going to save me having to lug around about 300 pounds of books when I go back to school. Definitely one of the smartest investments I've ever made. Not specifically that it's a nook, but in that it's an eReader. Take the 'Harvard Classics' collection that I've been trying to build up over the past few years... it's about 3 feet long right now (and if I completed it, it would be 5 feet long). That's a lot of space when you live in a college dorm. But now, it's on my nook. So, it's about the size of one relatively small book. And seeing this makes me feel even more AWESOME about having bought my nook two days ago.
I'm sorry, I was responding to the first part of your post, not the second. I should have been more specific.
The big things I use my calculator for are operations with matrices and trig functions.
I don't *need* my calculator to do these things... but it's either the calculator or stupid mistakes with matrices, or it's either the calculator or a big table of trig function values.
It's mostly a time saver, so that I can do more math and less arithmetic. I can do arithmetic and I can do algebra, but there's no reason why I should have to do a bunch of pointless calculation if I actually have a good understanding of what's going on.
But that said, I don't think we should require these big, fancy graphing calculators in high-school... just teach derivatives earlier instead of teaching them in a mysterious calculus class, after all the only thing these calculators are ever used for in high-school math, besides playing games, is finding the minima and maxima of functions. And matrix math... but the worst we ever did in high-school was 3x3, and you can usually write down a minimal amount of work and do the rest of those in your head. (when doing expansion by minors for example)
Otherwise, I remember a few times in an algebra class where we were tested on whether or not we could solve a system of equations by plugging coefficients into matrices in our calculators... of course, we were never taught *why* the methods worked, only how to do them on a calculator. Because most (probably all) math classes in high-school in the USA are a stupid waste of time.
It wasn't until college that I started to really think math was nifty... and this happened my first semester when my professor (unlike all of my high-school teachers) took the five minutes out of his schedule to explain Euler's identity to me. I added a math major that day.
Sorry to reply to myself... but to clarify, it basically lets you choose to boot from a special test-mode setup and a normal-use setup. And there's some extra little bits to control various things in the test-mode setup... you can enable/disable certain commands, a little LED lights up to show you're in test-mode, etc. It's nifty.
I believe this is exactly what the ti-nspire does.
The nspire is actually pretty freaking smart about resetting. Instead of actually needing to do a full reset, it has a fancy test-taking mode. You hold down the escape+home(on) key while the calculator is turned off, then you'll get a dialogue asking if you want to enter 'press to test' mode. Once you enter that mode, the calculator resets, and reloads the firmware without deleting anything you've been working on, and a little led on the end of the calculator will blink every few seconds to show that you're in the right mode. And then, the only way to exit the mode is to plug the calculator into either another calculator or a computer with the TI software. But, once you exit the testing mode, all of your stuff will be right where you left it. It can be a huge pain in the ass, but honestly, if TI wants to make cheating really hard, this is sure a good way to do it. Of course, once the DRM on the calculator is defeated... it's going to be fairly trivial to replace the testing image with something more useful... or even just use some assembly code to flash the led.
"Time line?! This is no time to argue about time! We don't have the time. What was I saying?"
As awful as the grammar here may have been, I think it's worth noting that I completely understood it with no problem.
Are we making an artificial brain or an artificial mind? And if we're making a mind, do we treat it like a human, with rights and such? And what do we do if it asks to die? After all, it'd be our fault for bringing it into being. Are we really ready for this sort of responsibility? Assuming we can actually "make" a "brain", I think the sort of ethical and moral problems that come up will be pretty deep stuff.
100 years of journalistic experience
And this article is the best they can do?
My understanding is that humans have these "extra" wisdom teeth now because of our softer, easier-to-chew diets. A long time ago, when we would have to eat more interesting things, the teeth would naturally wear down enough that there would be plenty of space for the wisdom teeth, but now, when they try to come in, they don't have enough room, and it is not uncommon for them to grow at an unpleasant angle and actually impact themselves into the surrounding teeth- or worse, the jaw bone behind them. That is my very basic understanding from the oral surgeon who removed mine a few months ago. It was completely painless (unless you're extremely bothered by the insertion of a small IV). Basically, if you don't run into problems from the wisdom teeth embedding themselves into other parts of your mouth, most of your issues will come from cavities, infections, etc due to their location in the far back of the mouth, where they are hard to access to brush and clean properly. Luckily, if you have them removed relatively early in life, you will usually have very little to no complications, due to the fact that the roots of the wisdom teeth usually take a while to actually connect to the nerve in the tissue surrounding your jaw bone. When this happens is usually different depending on who you are, but I'm guessing it usually happens in the late teenage years to the early 20s. Anywho, my $.02 is this: talk to your dentist and if he says you should have them removed, DO IT, because the longer you wait, the worst it will be. If you do it early on, like I was lucky enough to, it is nothing at all. Hell, I even got to take codeine and eat nothing but cottage cheese for two days.
Yes
I don't think you'll find all of the high school math in one book, but I do know of a great book that I taught myself Trig with because my school won't let me take it. It's "Trigonomerty: An Analytic Approach. By Drooyan/Hadel. Amazingly awesome book that not only teaches you the circular functions and other stuff people associate with Trig, but it does a damn good job of showing you how everything works, and why. The first chapter is about the unit circle in case that helps clear up what I'm trying to get across. :)
:)
I'll admit it isn't the most visually appealing book or the easiest thing to read, but if you spend a few hours really working to understand the contents of a chapter, it's totally worth it, because in the end you'll have a very very deep understanding.
Also, the Blitzer: Precalculus book is very good. Great if you need to refresh your algebra skills. It also has a great Trig section.
For calculus, I would suggest, "The Complete Idiots Guide to: Calculus" (to get started), it was surprisingly good. And most of all, Calculus: An Intuitive and Physical Approach. That last book is practically my bible.
Anyways, good luck, you learn your math, and I'll struggle to get my stupid high school to let me take an interesting math class I won't be bored in.
is why I'm moving out of the US.
Samus would be proud.
In Soviet Russia... Vista exploit you! ...
Oh wait! That's how it works everywhere else too!
Umm... KDE is not a window manager. KDE is a desktop environment. There is a BIG difference. If I recall correctly, the window manger is called kwin.
break it; in an unobvious way... the young people will notice it's broken, but the old dude will have no idea
I'm not going to complain... because no one takes their high school work seriously, that just makes it easier for me to get into the college I want because there is less/no competeition.
I can certainly relate to your experience. I am a freshman in high school. Unfortunately my high-school is located in just the right spot so that we get a lot of really "ghetto" people. I don't want to over-generalize, but a lot of the students from these low income families [ not all minorities ] are either, stupid, unmotivated, or unlucky. I am constantly reminded of how stupid people can be, by walking down the hall and hearing stuff like, "Ma'n.... yo mutha [...] you step on my airs you n[...]"... It's ridiculous. I'm not sure where you're from, but I know in the US one of the major problems is that our society teaches people that it is rewarding to be stupid.
On your statement about the classes being slowed down... I agree that a lot of classes cater towards the not-as-smart students, but I would like to add that in a lot of cases the problem is the teachers. My 6th grade math teacher, for example, was: 1) an idiot 2) a jerk.
He took away almost all my interest in math, and never taught me anything. I'm just lucky I read the books that I read [ and am really good at taking standardized tests ], otherwise I wouldn't have taken the honors algebra class when I started high school. Because of how bad the teacher was, I didn't get to take the Algebra course in 8th grade, so the high school class was *really* hard the first semester. That said though, I agree with you wholly.
Please... I really don't think Apple copied konfabulator. I know they copy stuff, but please don't use that as an argument. I'm not trying to be sarcastic or rude, but I think Desk Accessories came first. :)
Desk Accessories
If they broke the internet into little pieces.. that'd be bad on soooo many levels, but the one that would probably bother me the most is that I have a lot of friends in other countries, and I don't want to spend a bunch of money to send them mail. [ which is also incredibly slow ] :-\
I know people in Columbia, Brazil, UK, Germany, Australia, Japan, etc. I would be very lonely if they broke the internet.
Which is why old catholic men get prostate problems far more than other people.
Wouldn't a file on one of these be a petafile? :)