Yeah, you and the previous poster both missed the part where I disclaimed any need for the specific style of manual writing, but you both got it right where I think that some type of manual writing is useful for learning and understanding. Does this prove my point that communication within a language is difficult enough even if the text is readable? I spent a lot of time learning to create good lettering for drafting. To me this is a function of Communication and Art, more than it is a matter of understanding and learning.
I also agree with you (partially), in that poor penmanship is definitely an impediment to communication (but maybe not the biggest impediment). The best reason I can actually think of for keeping cursive is to keep the graphologists in business. However, when I was a kid, good penmanship was the mark of a good student and an educated person. So, OK, can you tell me that manuscript or block printing is always going to be legible? I've seen as many exceptions to that supposition as I have regarding cursive.
As for being faster to write, cursive was never taught to us in the Catholic school I went to as necessarily faster, but we were given to understand that learning to write continuously on paper would let us give more thought to what we were trying to say than having to interrupt our thought to position our pen for the next letter. (I don't know if that holds up under scientific scrutiny or not. How many things were we taught in some manner "because that's the way it's done"?) The biggest difference between cursive and block or manuscript is that the individual unit is a word instead of a letter. A skilled cursive writer writes a whole word in a single stream of action. The actual unit of communication in a language is a sentence, and a sentence is composed of words strung together into a thought.
As for speed, I can actually scoot along with my triangle and T-square producing many different styles of clear lettering faster than I can write cursive. But I already know what I'm trying to communicate when I do this and I'm not composing on the fly or trying to capture thoughts from a lecture or book. (And it's a pain to set up a drawing board, T-square and triangle during a lecture.)
I doubt that cursive writing will go away anymore than concept sketching will go away. The neuro-motor connection is valuable in enhancing learning and understanding. People will still write in notebooks and journals that don't need electricity. The people who can't write in the future will be the same people who can't write now; the neglected, the mentally impaired, the lazy, and those who depended on the public school system to give them the essential skills.
Especially important is the need for learning and understanding. According to John Medina in his book, "Brain Rules", concepts are learned better and more thoroughly if there is a little more effort put into the learning process. Motor memory is apparently a good adjunct to learning, especially in complex relationships.
The ability to communicate, on the other hand, is being lost at a tremendous rate. People who can't spell are trying to write about complex problems. People with bad grammar are trying to discuss important political, social and scientific issues. People who can't do basic arithmetic are trying to make sense out of figures that are twisted, distorted and under-represented in the daily media. People who can't think are still trying to vote intelligently and failing. (And,look at what happens daily on/. !)
I can use a number of computer drafting and drawing tools pretty well, but if I want to really understand something, I draw it by hand. (There is also something satisfying about the order that comes from drawing my pencil across my straight-edge, but that's something different.) I spent many hours learning to create legible printed text to COMMUNICATE ideas to others, but my own thinking is usually accompanied by either quick notes that look like shorthand, or complete notes in cursive so I can understand them later. Sometimes my slide rule is more valuable to understanding something than a calculator. Short notes and memos are still more easily written than typed, printed and delivered.
A few months ago a lawyer friend of mine mentioned that her son couldn't read an analog watch. He wears one, but it doesn't tell him the time. There is a whole level of understanding about the world that came from learning to tell time. I seemed to have a connection with the turning of the earth. I could find true North if I was lost in the woods. I could calculate height and distance without a tape measure. I could go sailing and be pretty sure I would end up where I wanted. The ability to read, write and calculate helped mankind overcome basic limitations by enhancing basic metal abilities. I am afraid the serfs of the future will be those that have been removed from the basic skills by layers of technology they use without the underlying knowledge to support it. (In my field, I have already been all but replaced by people who are called programmers, but can't do Boolean Algebra or Assembly language. A bunch of "cookbook" programmers who seem to think that writing code is more important than solving a problem. They rely, as they should, on solutions painstakingly solved by the programmers of my generation which have been combined into large complex systems and placed in books and repositories. But they couldn't reproduce the solutions if they had to start from scratch.)
As you may have guessed, I'm worried that the loss of the ability to write will diminish our ability to think and communicate. Cursive writing is only part of this process, so the loss of manual writing ability does not depend on a specific style. Cursive penmanship did give us a common ground for understanding the ideas of other people. Linguists tell us that the actual understanding of written communication is tremendously difficult, even if the communication is simple and clearly presented.
Everybody's understanding of law is incomplete. This board is definitely not the place to carry out a technical discussion on jurisprudence or philosophy. However, I'd like to add a some points:
First, theoretically, we don't derive our rights from the government, but from our creator (at least in the USA). We are entitled to live our lives as we wish as long as we don't impinge on the rights of others. Certain laws come into being authorizing the use of force against specific behaviors that impinge on the rights of others. If it was left at at that, our laws would be much simpler.
Second, government agencies are not supposed to act, or enact laws, or use force in such a way that it impinges on our natural rights, except in cases where the exercise of our natural rights impinges on the rights of others. (Thus the understanding that laws tell what what we may NOT do.)
Third, one of these rights (derived from our rights to Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness) is the right to engage in trade with others, including corporations and agencies in government. We trade a little of our earnings for national security, or administration of land titles, and so forth. In diluting our absolute rights to liberty in the interest of establishing a contractual agreement with government entities such as the State, City, County or whatever, we may have inadvertently established a master-slave relationship with these entities that goes against our best self-interest.
Although you say the law says we MUST pay our taxes, my reading is that a person who does not pay his/her taxes is subject to sanctions (such as fines or incarceration). While it amounts to the same thing, it seems to be more like processing through a NAND gate to achieve the desired state. (Remember, not doing something is a behavior also.) In Texas, the laws read that a person may not drive without a valid diver's license and without sufficient financial resources to offset damages to others resulting from the consequences of driving. The language is pretty convoluted, but in most cases the original legislation is designed to tell a person what they may NOT do.
The original premise in the article quoted seemed to be that the process of crafting legislation is analogous to the crafting of programs. I agree that there is an overlap in the area of logical communication, but the intent, scope, purpose and process are different, and so I say the analogy fails.
Well said! And well said in such a short paragraph! It is interesting to think of a set of legislation as a CASE statement. Any case covered generates an error condition, any case not covered is legal...
I'm going to have to dismiss the entire analogy as false due to stretching the premises. Software, in its fundamental sense, is a specific set of instructions designed to make a machine respond precisely, purportedly to accomplish some specified machine-driven task. There is no corresponding requirement for legislation to control the behavior of human action. In fact, according to Blackstone's "Commentaries", law is supposed to define what persons may NOT do. I can see where confusing the two viewpoints might lead us into the quagmire.
The simple laws of mechanics that control our machinery today are subject to very precise, although inexact, mathematical definitions. Theoretically it is possible to prove the precision and error of our computational instructions (although it is not practical to do so in all cases at this time). No human language to date can capture the causes and effects, conditions and nuances with mathematical precision. This shortcoming of human language has been an obstacle in Western philosophical thought since the early Greeks. Therefore, legislation must be drafted in precise terms relating to generalities, but interpreting the law must be done by judging the specific case to see if it fits the criteria described as prohibited behavior.
So we have two very important distinctions: First, to direct computational behavior we must only describe the desired behavior in precise terms. To direct human behavior, we must describe the desired behavior by precisely describing ALL the undesirable behavior, and this is probably impossible. (I'm not going to get into the morality of master-managing each individual's life, nor the tendency of people to resent being forced to behave in ways they don't want to.)
Second, we lack the precision to even clearly define simple boundaries of behavior, especially when nuanced by myriad values and beliefs. This means that the method of reconciliation for conflicting logic cannot be the same as that for precisely-defined goals such as software requires.
In defense of the article, it seems that both legislation and software respond to logical analysis. It seems that clearly-defined legislation is also clearly-defined propositional logic.
OT: Some Science Fiction writer will probably have a field day describing a serious future where the computationality of Truth, Justice and Equality conflict with real life. In Houston, if you run a red light you've broken the law. A computer and camera can prove you ran the red light. However, thousands of tickets per year are being dismissed due to matters of extenuation, mitigation and mercy. So where does the "objective, computerized judicial process" fit in?
"Elected officials should be limited to two terms; one in office and one in jail."
Yeah. Agile/SCRUM is not always the best way to coordinate development. What works works, what doesn't work doesn't work, and you can do what doesn't work over and over again and it still won't work.
I've seen Agile/SCRUM work real well in a couple of situations, but I've seen it fail in situations where people adopted the template but didn't understand what makes it work. Gold-plating a pile of shit doesn't make it not-shit. SCRUM works when it works because it overcomes some problems in the normal monolithic project management process for teams that have to develop in a hurry. Not adhering to the working process just reinstates the original problems, along with a couple of problems that didn't exist before.
..and Agile development are not always the best choices for development. My solution is really a cure for a situation where Agile?SCRUM has already failed.
A problem is defined by the difference between the way things are and they way you want them to be. You have not adequately defined the problem, or problems, here. This seems to be common among "Agile development" aficionados, and particularly in the case of SCRUM (which accepts as a given that the requirements are not complete before starting on the project).
The two things that usually help straighten out this type of mess: First, a business-case justification for the project. This means that if the project is not useful it isn't implemented. Need to learn how to make a good business case for a project and/or a solution? A good place to start is the book, "businessThink" by Marcum, Smith and Khalsa http://www.amazon.com/businessThink-Rules-Getting-Right%C2%96Now-Matter/dp/0471219932 .
The second is as complete a list of FUNCTIONAL requirements as possible. And remember, each functional requirement is subject to the same case analysis as the whole project. (Re-read "businessThink".)
I get a sense from your post that you are not in a position to initiate any action, and your role is to criticize and whine. Don't. If you can adequately describe the difference between the way things are and the way they ought to be, then someone with authority will listen to you.
A slightly different topic from "gender determination" would be "normalizing characteristics". Since each person has a different but similar physiology, maybe we should test for things like normal hinge points (tendon attachments) and chromosome/hormone levels and then determine the probable advantage/disadvantage for each sport adjusted from the median. We could then create a handicap rating so that the only important variables are training and motivation. Everyone starts out even.
This is a very interesting video, but I'd like more technical details. I'd really like to know how it works to keep its balance. I'd really like to know how many gyros it takes to locate the balance when the upper body is rotating. Can anyone direct me to other sources?
Back in the days of PARC, they had a device that you could manipulate the input on screen using your fingers. It was called a "Capacitance-Activated Tablet" or "CAT" for short. A few months later, someone developed a device that used a rolling ball and sensors on an X-Y axis to move the cursor, and pressing a button to initiate the action. Because of it's looks, and since they already had a CAT, they called it a MOUSE.
Unless the mechanism of the patent in question is different from the capacitance array, or unless this company bought the patents from Xerox, it seems that Xerox holds a patent on prior art. I'd like to see the working model they submitted with their patent...
Touch-screen technology at the time required little lamps around the bezel of the screen, and the location was done using the interference of the X-Y coordinates of the intersecting beams of light. Light-pens gave feedback to the actual pixel grid on the (phosphor based) screen.
I worked for a large dataceneter/hosting company for a while a few years back. One of the most tedious, lengthy troubleshooting processes is e-mail failures, and I sort of specialized in those, therefore I didn't close as many tickets as the other TS guys. On the other hand, once the problem was fixed the customer had no need to call back. Eventually I ended up leaving the company, partly over pay and partly over dissatisfaction with the job. Unfortunately, there was no scoring system that adequately measured my contribution to customer satisfaction, so the company wasn't totally pleased with my performance either.
Ultimately, the goal of Tech support is to collect data that can be used to correct problems upstream and prevent the customer from ever having to call tech support. That is a very lofty goal, and probably unreachable in reality, but it is useful as an ideal.
Customer problems caused by features or policies in the company's offering should definitely be corrected by the company. Work-arounds should be made available as soon as the problem is detected and handled, and that information should be shared with everyone.
These types of problems should be classified as to their importance, difficulty, and lapsed time. A numerical scale can be used to score these problems. If a customer calls back with the same problem, the ticket should be re-opened. This creates an incentive to close a problem completely rather than closing incompletely-solved tickets to rack up a higher closing rate. Since more than one tech may be working on a ticket over multiple shifts, time spent on the ticket ought to be credited, and the score distributed accordingly. Common problems ought to have a troubleshooting tree or decision table for testing and resolution. These tools could be made web-available so the customer can work their own problem or work cohesively with a tech. (Once a problem has been solved, it should not need to be solved again; only administered.)
Customer tutoring will always be important. This type of tech support should not be scored at all, since customer understanding will vary the closing time of the ticket.
I propose that this allows a program of incentives to get support techs to be working in the areas they are most effective. A good tutor with good understanding of the product and good language skills should be evaluated on the time spent tutoring, and the troubleshooters should be scored on the points they earn solving a variety of problems. Obviously, some techs are going to figure out how to "Work" the system so they get more points, so there ought to be a peer score applied to determine any bonuses.
The ultimate goal should be customer satisfaction with the process. (Dell? Quickbooks? Are you LISTENING?)
The first measure of output ought to be the customer's satisfaction. However, measuring progress requires a SYSTEM. I strongly suggest a system like Kepner-Tregoe. It works well for individuals and teams, progress is easily determined, and even management can analyze the results.
By argument, I mean in the logical sense, such as a "claim" bolstered by "proof, information, and example". (I'm trying to separate the/. process of somebody posting something and someone else immediately disagreeing. But, Hey, I'm not trying to start an argument here about slashdot postings...)
So, I wonder if this argument has been used in the patent "process vs. product" or "software patent" courts. It seems to me that patents are generally awarded to the "products of Science" rather than the science itself. If code processes, algorithms, and concepts are Science, then patents should only be awarded to the "products of Science" such as individual chips or other hardware that utilizes the software and not the software itself. This argument could help clarify the boundaries of the patentable domain.
This was a big area of debate before the EU formed: Just how much of autonomy and national identity must a country give up to be a member of the EU? What happens when an EU member (say, France, for instance), or a small coalition of countries, have a major influence on the EU Parliament and try to impose their values in conflict with the national traditional values? What happens if Turkey tries to impose it's values concerning drug use on the Netherlands? Why should France's or GB's values on privacy (or lack thereof) be imposed on Sweden?
In the United States of America, the individual States are supposed to be "sovereign" and all rights not specifically granted to the Federal Government are the province of the individual States. Over the years "creeping Federalism" has undermined the individuality, power and authority of the individual States. This has also been happening in in the EU. Sweden is technically a "Constitutional Monarchy". Did Swedes know that by joining the EU they gave away their Constitution?
I watched it on HULU every time it came available. One tasteful, short advertisement, or the occasional long advertisement with no show interruptions, works for me. I'm beginning to think that the networks really need to rethink their programming. I'm also a fan of CBS's CIS and Numb3rs series, and watch it on site. I bet these numbers aren't counted at FOX for evaluating shows.
..for a Ph.D. thesis? How can Mathematics be applied to safely invest without damaging Society?
Well, first, NNT is "outraged" at the "inappropriate use" of Quantitative Analysis (according to his books and the articles I've read), not the "utility" of Quantitative Analysis. The reality is that investments' values fluctuate. The role of the Mathematician is to limit the losses, therefore the risks, involved in investing. This is a legitimate role. If you had been working for 45 years and were about to retire, wouldn't you want to know that your retirement funds were as safe as they could be?
Part of the problem comes from the fact that investment value is affected by information other than the worthiness of the investment. This value activity has created an analytical branch of its own, and subsequent buy and sell orders are based on the activity rather than the underlying fundamentals. NNT's argument in "The Black Swan" is based on the idea that since these random events are indeed "random", by definition they are unknowable, unpredictable and un-assessable. So, when these events occur, no contingency plan behaves correctly. Keep in mind, that this is only a problem if the event(s) affect the investment values, or the perception of investment values, in a negative way. Unfortunately, the use of these QA tools creates an aberration in perception, and may be creating it's own perception, and this "perception" may not conform to "reality", therefore leading to aberrant behavior based on an aberrant strategy. (Oooh, the stock market has become psychotic...) Skynet takes over the market and tries to wipe out the humans because its programming tells it that is what humans want.
Mathematics can tell us a lot about what reality "is", and there is a lot of room for a creative Mathematician to alleviate the downside and limits of financial decision-making. I say, if you like Math and this is an area that interests you, go for it. Try to be the best. Be creative and innovative instead of being a sheep.
Malcolm Gladwell's book, "Outliers" deals with somewhat the same problem in a different domain, and Ayers, "Super Crunchers" gives a good layman's view of how well Math can work for us in certain areas. Graham and Dodd, "Portfolio Analysis" may still be the best overall book touching on your field. Benjamin Graham's, "The Intelligent Investor" may still be the best basic investment book. If you want to get out there a little ways, try Prector's, "The Elliott Wave Theory." I had a friend working at Lockheed in Artificial Intelligence, who was responsible for the computer analysis of the market for Prector's newsletter. Every year they would run a 3-month test of the application, and it would consistently make money well in excess of the inflation rate (even in '89). It's been 15 years since I talked to him, and I have no idea how well it's done in the last few years, but the field seems fascinating.
I say no, especially for me. I constantly had problems from walking and running until I read the book, "The Maffetone Method" by Phillip Maffetone. (Maffetone trains bicycle racers and super-long-distance runners. Stuart Mittleman, the holder of the record for the 1000-mile run, was one of his clients.) The two things I changed as a result of reading his book were:
1. I changed to low-cut Converse All Stars, and
2. I went on a low-carb diet. (I gained 40 lbs in four years on a low-fat diet. Maffetone hypothesized that some people were carbohydrate sensitive and suggested that trying a low-carb diet might work better for those people.)
The end result was that I lost 20 lbs in two years, and my legs and hips quit hurting almost immediately.
I've loved trains ever since I was a kid. Interestingly enough, the most successful railroads were built WITHOUT government help. The most notable was the Great Northern developed by James Hill. The Union Pacific and the Southern Pacific were heavily subsidized, and this subsidy seems to be directly responsible for cost overruns, poor quality and outright theft. Despite all this, rail ended up being a "good thing" for America.
If Obama wants to create more efficient rail, I would rather see greater tax breaks for the railroads and the people using them (both travel and shipping), rather than subsidies.
An interesting tidbit I read in an Economics book a while back: Rail is the least expensive way to travel. It may not seem that way when we are paying for it out of our own pocket, but the actual cost per mile of traveling by Air or Auto is much higher when you consider the "externalities" we are paying through taxes rather than directly as a portion of our fare.
Yeah, cute. I'd be more impressed if there was a link to the code that showed how it worked. The Scientific American article was particularly disappointing. I remember when SA gave you enough information to learn something.
Everyone has a right to speak their mind. It is protected by the Constitution of the United States.
The argument, "everyone is entitled to their opinion" is a rhetorical and logical fallacy on more than one count, which is why I make the distinction about free expression rather than dubious rights or entitlements. However, some of "Mudflats" blogs were put-downs, innuendos and accusations of dubious veracity and rife with unsupported opinions. A person entitled to free speech is also RESPONSIBLE for the content of that speech, and anonymity deprives the targets (assuming that the speecha targets political figures such as Sarah Palin and Mike Doogan) of their right to confront their accusers in a meaningful way. "Outing" the blogger disclosed some of the biases in her accusations.
OK, the "consider the source" argument is also a fallacious argument, but knowing a person has a bone to pick is important to evaluating their trustworthiness or objectivity.
Anonymity has its place. Whenever the speech could lead to extralegal reprisals, such as speech in China, anonymity must be protected. Also, if a person wants their arguments to be evaluated on merit, anonymity might be a good idea in order to dilute the "authority" value (plus or minus) of the author. "Adam Smith" wrote his books under a pseudonym for both reasons, I believe.
A couple of lawyer friends and I had a running argument about the "superiority of scientific thinking over legal thought". My main argument was that science was superior because it tried to uncover the "truth", while both advocates in a criminal case were trying to suppress information inimical to their arguments.
My secondary argument was similar to your thoughts: I maintain it is not possible to be fair and compare relevancy and/or standards if the definitions are fuzzy.
When I grew up, the age of consent was 12 years old in Louisiana, Florida and South Dakota, but 18 in Nebraska. I know at least 4 couples from my graduating class ('66) that got married and dropped out of school before my Junior year because the girl got knocked up. (That was the rule back then; if she gets pregnant, you marry her.) I have a cousin who got pregnant at 15 and married her 30-year-old boyfriend, and they have been married for 54 years. Today he would have spent at least 8 years in prison. I know one girl who lived in my neighborhood who got married at 13 (boyfriend 18) and she was married 26 years before he died. (They say it was a car accident, but I think she might have talked him to death. I never could stand her.)
The problem with standards, particularly arbitrary standards, is that they don't leave any wriggle room for administering JUSTICE. Here in Houston a few years back a nice Mexican kid met a nice Mexican girl, moved in with her and her mother and they lived together for two years. Then they had an argument, and the girl and her mother filed a complaint against him for having sex with a minor. They tried to withdraw the complaint after the young couple made up, but it was out of their hands at that time. Texas has no room for mitigation and extenuation. Even after the Mother and daughter proved that the guy was under the impression she was 18 when they first met (and the mother backed up the girl's lie), it looked like the guy was going to get some prison time and have to register as a sex offender for the rest of his life. Only political pressure on the DA saved the kid.
In another case, again in Houston, a 14 or 15-year-old girl (I forget which) was admitted the hospital to deliver a baby and her "boyfriend" (18) was charged with rape, even though he had been living with the girl for two years, working and contributing to the family well-being. It was very clear that her parents and his parents knew about the relationship, condoned it, and that he was acting responsibly. What saved this guy is that the part of Mexico they came from had a cultural practice of the guy meeting with the girl's father and getting drunk before moving in together, and (since this is what happened in Houston) they would be considered married. An amicus was filed that claimed their relationship constituted a "common law marriage" (still legal in Texas) and the judge and everyone else agreed.
I believe that here in Texas the "spread" is three years; meaning that one party (or both parties) can be minor if there is less than three years difference in their ages. Maybe those girls in question can claim they were engaging in a consensual sex act and, if they are under the spread, get the threat dismissed? (I was going to say they might get off, but the double entendre is too awful....)
I had a book once called, "The Honest Politician's Guide to Crime Control." It had a GREAT argument about the deficiency in the term "statutory rape". The book is out of print now. I guess there wasn't a large enough audience.
I'm 61, and last year found myself in an environment of people in their mid 20's and younger. They didn't have clue 1. They were good programmers, some of them were genius level, but their social skills and teamwork sucked big time. Furthermore, they were all into "agile" programming. The lack of planning on the project caused massive support problems. (This may have been OK in the early iterations of the product, but it was starting to show up as a major tech support problem. Once they shipped a product that didn't even work because they hadn't tested it thoroughly.) What drove me away was the lack of a plan and a clear set of performance standards. I never really knew what I was hired for, and I had no way of knowing how well I was doing, but I had a strong sense of "not fitting in" and falling below expectations (even though nobody stated the expectations).
Somewhere it occurred to me that these guys took for granted the elemental programming concepts that my generation had to invent on-the-fly back in the 60's and 70's. None of them could do assembly, none of them knew how to manage a decision table, and the idea of a formal systems analysis was foreign to them. My computer game was chess (which I've had to take off all my systems in order to get work done), and these guys think a "game" is WoW.
I suggest you decide what you want. To me, CS is designing the hardware and structure. CIS is designing the administration and apps that make the structure work, and MIS is is the design and apps that produce tangible results, especially for a specific end-user. These definitions don't necessarily match up with what the colleges are teaching under those names. In my experience, MIS environments have a little more respect for age and experience, CS has a high regard for innovation and results.
The term "old-school" in this context makes me laugh. Back in the days when air was clean and sex was dirty, "relational" databases were considered a resource hog and were shunned by competent programmers. The fastest and most efficient databases were the "network" databases, but they also required the most work and the trickiest coding. Right in the middle were the "hierarchal" databases. Many programmers avoided the database problem by using a "reverse ISAM" arrangement which still used up some extra resources, but were easier to maintain. Of course, nowadays, when it is almost impossible to find programmers who can even program apps from tape into 32K systems, I can see why youngsters use the "telephone book" databases.. (so they can avoid actually having to think about their data!) I guess that's why it's so hard to find good assembly language programmers, too.
Anyone wanting to find out what it used to be like in the bad ol' days could look up CODASYL. Watch out for bad dreams.
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Yeah, you and the previous poster both missed the part where I disclaimed any need for the specific style of manual writing, but you both got it right where I think that some type of manual writing is useful for learning and understanding. Does this prove my point that communication within a language is difficult enough even if the text is readable? I spent a lot of time learning to create good lettering for drafting. To me this is a function of Communication and Art, more than it is a matter of understanding and learning.
I also agree with you (partially), in that poor penmanship is definitely an impediment to communication (but maybe not the biggest impediment). The best reason I can actually think of for keeping cursive is to keep the graphologists in business. However, when I was a kid, good penmanship was the mark of a good student and an educated person. So, OK, can you tell me that manuscript or block printing is always going to be legible? I've seen as many exceptions to that supposition as I have regarding cursive.
As for being faster to write, cursive was never taught to us in the Catholic school I went to as necessarily faster, but we were given to understand that learning to write continuously on paper would let us give more thought to what we were trying to say than having to interrupt our thought to position our pen for the next letter. (I don't know if that holds up under scientific scrutiny or not. How many things were we taught in some manner "because that's the way it's done"?) The biggest difference between cursive and block or manuscript is that the individual unit is a word instead of a letter. A skilled cursive writer writes a whole word in a single stream of action. The actual unit of communication in a language is a sentence, and a sentence is composed of words strung together into a thought.
As for speed, I can actually scoot along with my triangle and T-square producing many different styles of clear lettering faster than I can write cursive. But I already know what I'm trying to communicate when I do this and I'm not composing on the fly or trying to capture thoughts from a lecture or book. (And it's a pain to set up a drawing board, T-square and triangle during a lecture.)
I doubt that cursive writing will go away anymore than concept sketching will go away. The neuro-motor connection is valuable in enhancing learning and understanding. People will still write in notebooks and journals that don't need electricity. The people who can't write in the future will be the same people who can't write now; the neglected, the mentally impaired, the lazy, and those who depended on the public school system to give them the essential skills.
Especially important is the need for learning and understanding. According to John Medina in his book, "Brain Rules", concepts are learned better and more thoroughly if there is a little more effort put into the learning process. Motor memory is apparently a good adjunct to learning, especially in complex relationships.
The ability to communicate, on the other hand, is being lost at a tremendous rate. People who can't spell are trying to write about complex problems. People with bad grammar are trying to discuss important political, social and scientific issues. People who can't do basic arithmetic are trying to make sense out of figures that are twisted, distorted and under-represented in the daily media. People who can't think are still trying to vote intelligently and failing. (And,look at what happens daily on /. !)
I can use a number of computer drafting and drawing tools pretty well, but if I want to really understand something, I draw it by hand. (There is also something satisfying about the order that comes from drawing my pencil across my straight-edge, but that's something different.) I spent many hours learning to create legible printed text to COMMUNICATE ideas to others, but my own thinking is usually accompanied by either quick notes that look like shorthand, or complete notes in cursive so I can understand them later. Sometimes my slide rule is more valuable to understanding something than a calculator. Short notes and memos are still more easily written than typed, printed and delivered.
A few months ago a lawyer friend of mine mentioned that her son couldn't read an analog watch. He wears one, but it doesn't tell him the time. There is a whole level of understanding about the world that came from learning to tell time. I seemed to have a connection with the turning of the earth. I could find true North if I was lost in the woods. I could calculate height and distance without a tape measure. I could go sailing and be pretty sure I would end up where I wanted. The ability to read, write and calculate helped mankind overcome basic limitations by enhancing basic metal abilities. I am afraid the serfs of the future will be those that have been removed from the basic skills by layers of technology they use without the underlying knowledge to support it. (In my field, I have already been all but replaced by people who are called programmers, but can't do Boolean Algebra or Assembly language. A bunch of "cookbook" programmers who seem to think that writing code is more important than solving a problem. They rely, as they should, on solutions painstakingly solved by the programmers of my generation which have been combined into large complex systems and placed in books and repositories. But they couldn't reproduce the solutions if they had to start from scratch.)
As you may have guessed, I'm worried that the loss of the ability to write will diminish our ability to think and communicate. Cursive writing is only part of this process, so the loss of manual writing ability does not depend on a specific style. Cursive penmanship did give us a common ground for understanding the ideas of other people. Linguists tell us that the actual understanding of written communication is tremendously difficult, even if the communication is simple and clearly presented.
Everybody's understanding of law is incomplete. This board is definitely not the place to carry out a technical discussion on jurisprudence or philosophy. However, I'd like to add a some points:
First, theoretically, we don't derive our rights from the government, but from our creator (at least in the USA). We are entitled to live our lives as we wish as long as we don't impinge on the rights of others. Certain laws come into being authorizing the use of force against specific behaviors that impinge on the rights of others. If it was left at at that, our laws would be much simpler.
Second, government agencies are not supposed to act, or enact laws, or use force in such a way that it impinges on our natural rights, except in cases where the exercise of our natural rights impinges on the rights of others. (Thus the understanding that laws tell what what we may NOT do.)
Third, one of these rights (derived from our rights to Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness) is the right to engage in trade with others, including corporations and agencies in government. We trade a little of our earnings for national security, or administration of land titles, and so forth. In diluting our absolute rights to liberty in the interest of establishing a contractual agreement with government entities such as the State, City, County or whatever, we may have inadvertently established a master-slave relationship with these entities that goes against our best self-interest.
Although you say the law says we MUST pay our taxes, my reading is that a person who does not pay his/her taxes is subject to sanctions (such as fines or incarceration). While it amounts to the same thing, it seems to be more like processing through a NAND gate to achieve the desired state. (Remember, not doing something is a behavior also.) In Texas, the laws read that a person may not drive without a valid diver's license and without sufficient financial resources to offset damages to others resulting from the consequences of driving. The language is pretty convoluted, but in most cases the original legislation is designed to tell a person what they may NOT do.
The original premise in the article quoted seemed to be that the process of crafting legislation is analogous to the crafting of programs. I agree that there is an overlap in the area of logical communication, but the intent, scope, purpose and process are different, and so I say the analogy fails.
Well said! And well said in such a short paragraph! It is interesting to think of a set of legislation as a CASE statement. Any case covered generates an error condition, any case not covered is legal...
I'm going to have to dismiss the entire analogy as false due to stretching the premises. Software, in its fundamental sense, is a specific set of instructions designed to make a machine respond precisely, purportedly to accomplish some specified machine-driven task. There is no corresponding requirement for legislation to control the behavior of human action. In fact, according to Blackstone's "Commentaries", law is supposed to define what persons may NOT do. I can see where confusing the two viewpoints might lead us into the quagmire.
The simple laws of mechanics that control our machinery today are subject to very precise, although inexact, mathematical definitions. Theoretically it is possible to prove the precision and error of our computational instructions (although it is not practical to do so in all cases at this time). No human language to date can capture the causes and effects, conditions and nuances with mathematical precision. This shortcoming of human language has been an obstacle in Western philosophical thought since the early Greeks. Therefore, legislation must be drafted in precise terms relating to generalities, but interpreting the law must be done by judging the specific case to see if it fits the criteria described as prohibited behavior.
So we have two very important distinctions: First, to direct computational behavior we must only describe the desired behavior in precise terms. To direct human behavior, we must describe the desired behavior by precisely describing ALL the undesirable behavior, and this is probably impossible. (I'm not going to get into the morality of master-managing each individual's life, nor the tendency of people to resent being forced to behave in ways they don't want to.)
Second, we lack the precision to even clearly define simple boundaries of behavior, especially when nuanced by myriad values and beliefs. This means that the method of reconciliation for conflicting logic cannot be the same as that for precisely-defined goals such as software requires.
In defense of the article, it seems that both legislation and software respond to logical analysis. It seems that clearly-defined legislation is also clearly-defined propositional logic.
OT: Some Science Fiction writer will probably have a field day describing a serious future where the computationality of Truth, Justice and Equality conflict with real life. In Houston, if you run a red light you've broken the law. A computer and camera can prove you ran the red light. However, thousands of tickets per year are being dismissed due to matters of extenuation, mitigation and mercy. So where does the "objective, computerized judicial process" fit in?
"Elected officials should be limited to two terms; one in office and one in jail."
Yeah. Agile/SCRUM is not always the best way to coordinate development. What works works, what doesn't work doesn't work, and you can do what doesn't work over and over again and it still won't work.
I've seen Agile/SCRUM work real well in a couple of situations, but I've seen it fail in situations where people adopted the template but didn't understand what makes it work. Gold-plating a pile of shit doesn't make it not-shit. SCRUM works when it works because it overcomes some problems in the normal monolithic project management process for teams that have to develop in a hurry. Not adhering to the working process just reinstates the original problems, along with a couple of problems that didn't exist before.
..and Agile development are not always the best choices for development. My solution is really a cure for a situation where Agile?SCRUM has already failed.
A problem is defined by the difference between the way things are and they way you want them to be. You have not adequately defined the problem, or problems, here. This seems to be common among "Agile development" aficionados, and particularly in the case of SCRUM (which accepts as a given that the requirements are not complete before starting on the project).
The two things that usually help straighten out this type of mess: First, a business-case justification for the project. This means that if the project is not useful it isn't implemented. Need to learn how to make a good business case for a project and/or a solution? A good place to start is the book, "businessThink" by Marcum, Smith and Khalsa http://www.amazon.com/businessThink-Rules-Getting-Right%C2%96Now-Matter/dp/0471219932 .
The second is as complete a list of FUNCTIONAL requirements as possible. And remember, each functional requirement is subject to the same case analysis as the whole project. (Re-read "businessThink".)
I get a sense from your post that you are not in a position to initiate any action, and your role is to criticize and whine. Don't. If you can adequately describe the difference between the way things are and the way they ought to be, then someone with authority will listen to you.
Good luck.
A slightly different topic from "gender determination" would be "normalizing characteristics". Since each person has a different but similar physiology, maybe we should test for things like normal hinge points (tendon attachments) and chromosome/hormone levels and then determine the probable advantage/disadvantage for each sport adjusted from the median. We could then create a handicap rating so that the only important variables are training and motivation. Everyone starts out even.
This is a very interesting video, but I'd like more technical details. I'd really like to know how it works to keep its balance. I'd really like to know how many gyros it takes to locate the balance when the upper body is rotating. Can anyone direct me to other sources?
Thanks.
Back in the days of PARC, they had a device that you could manipulate the input on screen using your fingers. It was called a "Capacitance-Activated Tablet" or "CAT" for short. A few months later, someone developed a device that used a rolling ball and sensors on an X-Y axis to move the cursor, and pressing a button to initiate the action. Because of it's looks, and since they already had a CAT, they called it a MOUSE.
Unless the mechanism of the patent in question is different from the capacitance array, or unless this company bought the patents from Xerox, it seems that Xerox holds a patent on prior art. I'd like to see the working model they submitted with their patent...
Touch-screen technology at the time required little lamps around the bezel of the screen, and the location was done using the interference of the X-Y coordinates of the intersecting beams of light. Light-pens gave feedback to the actual pixel grid on the (phosphor based) screen.
I worked for a large dataceneter/hosting company for a while a few years back. One of the most tedious, lengthy troubleshooting processes is e-mail failures, and I sort of specialized in those, therefore I didn't close as many tickets as the other TS guys. On the other hand, once the problem was fixed the customer had no need to call back. Eventually I ended up leaving the company, partly over pay and partly over dissatisfaction with the job. Unfortunately, there was no scoring system that adequately measured my contribution to customer satisfaction, so the company wasn't totally pleased with my performance either.
Ultimately, the goal of Tech support is to collect data that can be used to correct problems upstream and prevent the customer from ever having to call tech support. That is a very lofty goal, and probably unreachable in reality, but it is useful as an ideal.
Customer problems caused by features or policies in the company's offering should definitely be corrected by the company. Work-arounds should be made available as soon as the problem is detected and handled, and that information should be shared with everyone.
These types of problems should be classified as to their importance, difficulty, and lapsed time. A numerical scale can be used to score these problems. If a customer calls back with the same problem, the ticket should be re-opened. This creates an incentive to close a problem completely rather than closing incompletely-solved tickets to rack up a higher closing rate. Since more than one tech may be working on a ticket over multiple shifts, time spent on the ticket ought to be credited, and the score distributed accordingly. Common problems ought to have a troubleshooting tree or decision table for testing and resolution. These tools could be made web-available so the customer can work their own problem or work cohesively with a tech. (Once a problem has been solved, it should not need to be solved again; only administered.)
Customer tutoring will always be important. This type of tech support should not be scored at all, since customer understanding will vary the closing time of the ticket.
I propose that this allows a program of incentives to get support techs to be working in the areas they are most effective. A good tutor with good understanding of the product and good language skills should be evaluated on the time spent tutoring, and the troubleshooters should be scored on the points they earn solving a variety of problems. Obviously, some techs are going to figure out how to "Work" the system so they get more points, so there ought to be a peer score applied to determine any bonuses.
The ultimate goal should be customer satisfaction with the process. (Dell? Quickbooks? Are you LISTENING?)
The first measure of output ought to be the customer's satisfaction. However, measuring progress requires a SYSTEM. I strongly suggest a system like Kepner-Tregoe. It works well for individuals and teams, progress is easily determined, and even management can analyze the results.
I recommend, "The New Rational Manager" by Kepner and Tregoe ( http://www.kepner-tregoe.com/webstore/webstore-Pub-Software-PUB.cfm#RatMan ), and, "The Thinkers Toolkit" by Morgan Jones ( http://www.amazon.com/Thinkers-Toolkit-Powerful-Techniques-Problem/dp/0812928083/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1245180924&sr=1-3 ).
By argument, I mean in the logical sense, such as a "claim" bolstered by "proof, information, and example". (I'm trying to separate the /. process of somebody posting something and someone else immediately disagreeing. But, Hey, I'm not trying to start an argument here about slashdot postings...)
So, I wonder if this argument has been used in the patent "process vs. product" or "software patent" courts. It seems to me that patents are generally awarded to the "products of Science" rather than the science itself. If code processes, algorithms, and concepts are Science, then patents should only be awarded to the "products of Science" such as individual chips or other hardware that utilizes the software and not the software itself. This argument could help clarify the boundaries of the patentable domain.
Obama's real Birth certificate...
This was a big area of debate before the EU formed: Just how much of autonomy and national identity must a country give up to be a member of the EU? What happens when an EU member (say, France, for instance), or a small coalition of countries, have a major influence on the EU Parliament and try to impose their values in conflict with the national traditional values? What happens if Turkey tries to impose it's values concerning drug use on the Netherlands? Why should France's or GB's values on privacy (or lack thereof) be imposed on Sweden?
In the United States of America, the individual States are supposed to be "sovereign" and all rights not specifically granted to the Federal Government are the province of the individual States. Over the years "creeping Federalism" has undermined the individuality, power and authority of the individual States. This has also been happening in in the EU. Sweden is technically a "Constitutional Monarchy". Did Swedes know that by joining the EU they gave away their Constitution?
I watched it on HULU every time it came available. One tasteful, short advertisement, or the occasional long advertisement with no show interruptions, works for me. I'm beginning to think that the networks really need to rethink their programming. I'm also a fan of CBS's CIS and Numb3rs series, and watch it on site. I bet these numbers aren't counted at FOX for evaluating shows.
The world might be quite different if the KGB had realized how wasy it was to get the USA to elect a Communist, foreign-born, Muslim president.
..for a Ph.D. thesis? How can Mathematics be applied to safely invest without damaging Society?
Well, first, NNT is "outraged" at the "inappropriate use" of Quantitative Analysis (according to his books and the articles I've read), not the "utility" of Quantitative Analysis. The reality is that investments' values fluctuate. The role of the Mathematician is to limit the losses, therefore the risks, involved in investing. This is a legitimate role. If you had been working for 45 years and were about to retire, wouldn't you want to know that your retirement funds were as safe as they could be?
Part of the problem comes from the fact that investment value is affected by information other than the worthiness of the investment. This value activity has created an analytical branch of its own, and subsequent buy and sell orders are based on the activity rather than the underlying fundamentals. NNT's argument in "The Black Swan" is based on the idea that since these random events are indeed "random", by definition they are unknowable, unpredictable and un-assessable. So, when these events occur, no contingency plan behaves correctly. Keep in mind, that this is only a problem if the event(s) affect the investment values, or the perception of investment values, in a negative way. Unfortunately, the use of these QA tools creates an aberration in perception, and may be creating it's own perception, and this "perception" may not conform to "reality", therefore leading to aberrant behavior based on an aberrant strategy. (Oooh, the stock market has become psychotic...) Skynet takes over the market and tries to wipe out the humans because its programming tells it that is what humans want.
Mathematics can tell us a lot about what reality "is", and there is a lot of room for a creative Mathematician to alleviate the downside and limits of financial decision-making. I say, if you like Math and this is an area that interests you, go for it. Try to be the best. Be creative and innovative instead of being a sheep.
Malcolm Gladwell's book, "Outliers" deals with somewhat the same problem in a different domain, and Ayers, "Super Crunchers" gives a good layman's view of how well Math can work for us in certain areas. Graham and Dodd, "Portfolio Analysis" may still be the best overall book touching on your field. Benjamin Graham's, "The Intelligent Investor" may still be the best basic investment book. If you want to get out there a little ways, try Prector's, "The Elliott Wave Theory." I had a friend working at Lockheed in Artificial Intelligence, who was responsible for the computer analysis of the market for Prector's newsletter. Every year they would run a 3-month test of the application, and it would consistently make money well in excess of the inflation rate (even in '89). It's been 15 years since I talked to him, and I have no idea how well it's done in the last few years, but the field seems fascinating.
I say go for it, and good luck!
I say no, especially for me. I constantly had problems from walking and running until I read the book, "The Maffetone Method" by Phillip Maffetone. (Maffetone trains bicycle racers and super-long-distance runners. Stuart Mittleman, the holder of the record for the 1000-mile run, was one of his clients.) The two things I changed as a result of reading his book were:
1. I changed to low-cut Converse All Stars, and
2. I went on a low-carb diet. (I gained 40 lbs in four years on a low-fat diet. Maffetone hypothesized that some people were carbohydrate sensitive and suggested that trying a low-carb diet might work better for those people.)
The end result was that I lost 20 lbs in two years, and my legs and hips quit hurting almost immediately.
Check this link http://books.google.com/books?id=1ehUeFPfch0C&dq=Philip+Maffetone&printsec=frontcover&source=an&hl=en&ei=PMPtSa-HJKb0MvqC0AI&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=5#PPA62,M1 for excerpts from his book, "Fix your Feet, and click on the "Picking the right shoe" entry in the TOC.
I've loved trains ever since I was a kid. Interestingly enough, the most successful railroads were built WITHOUT government help. The most notable was the Great Northern developed by James Hill. The Union Pacific and the Southern Pacific were heavily subsidized, and this subsidy seems to be directly responsible for cost overruns, poor quality and outright theft. Despite all this, rail ended up being a "good thing" for America.
If Obama wants to create more efficient rail, I would rather see greater tax breaks for the railroads and the people using them (both travel and shipping), rather than subsidies.
An interesting tidbit I read in an Economics book a while back: Rail is the least expensive way to travel. It may not seem that way when we are paying for it out of our own pocket, but the actual cost per mile of traveling by Air or Auto is much higher when you consider the "externalities" we are paying through taxes rather than directly as a portion of our fare.
Yeah, cute. I'd be more impressed if there was a link to the code that showed how it worked. The Scientific American article was particularly disappointing. I remember when SA gave you enough information to learn something.
Everyone has a right to speak their mind. It is protected by the Constitution of the United States.
The argument, "everyone is entitled to their opinion" is a rhetorical and logical fallacy on more than one count, which is why I make the distinction about free expression rather than dubious rights or entitlements. However, some of "Mudflats" blogs were put-downs, innuendos and accusations of dubious veracity and rife with unsupported opinions. A person entitled to free speech is also RESPONSIBLE for the content of that speech, and anonymity deprives the targets (assuming that the speecha targets political figures such as Sarah Palin and Mike Doogan) of their right to confront their accusers in a meaningful way. "Outing" the blogger disclosed some of the biases in her accusations.
OK, the "consider the source" argument is also a fallacious argument, but knowing a person has a bone to pick is important to evaluating their trustworthiness or objectivity.
Anonymity has its place. Whenever the speech could lead to extralegal reprisals, such as speech in China, anonymity must be protected. Also, if a person wants their arguments to be evaluated on merit, anonymity might be a good idea in order to dilute the "authority" value (plus or minus) of the author. "Adam Smith" wrote his books under a pseudonym for both reasons, I believe.
A couple of lawyer friends and I had a running argument about the "superiority of scientific thinking over legal thought". My main argument was that science was superior because it tried to uncover the "truth", while both advocates in a criminal case were trying to suppress information inimical to their arguments.
My secondary argument was similar to your thoughts: I maintain it is not possible to be fair and compare relevancy and/or standards if the definitions are fuzzy.
When I grew up, the age of consent was 12 years old in Louisiana, Florida and South Dakota, but 18 in Nebraska. I know at least 4 couples from my graduating class ('66) that got married and dropped out of school before my Junior year because the girl got knocked up. (That was the rule back then; if she gets pregnant, you marry her.) I have a cousin who got pregnant at 15 and married her 30-year-old boyfriend, and they have been married for 54 years. Today he would have spent at least 8 years in prison. I know one girl who lived in my neighborhood who got married at 13 (boyfriend 18) and she was married 26 years before he died. (They say it was a car accident, but I think she might have talked him to death. I never could stand her.)
The problem with standards, particularly arbitrary standards, is that they don't leave any wriggle room for administering JUSTICE. Here in Houston a few years back a nice Mexican kid met a nice Mexican girl, moved in with her and her mother and they lived together for two years. Then they had an argument, and the girl and her mother filed a complaint against him for having sex with a minor. They tried to withdraw the complaint after the young couple made up, but it was out of their hands at that time. Texas has no room for mitigation and extenuation. Even after the Mother and daughter proved that the guy was under the impression she was 18 when they first met (and the mother backed up the girl's lie), it looked like the guy was going to get some prison time and have to register as a sex offender for the rest of his life. Only political pressure on the DA saved the kid.
In another case, again in Houston, a 14 or 15-year-old girl (I forget which) was admitted the hospital to deliver a baby and her "boyfriend" (18) was charged with rape, even though he had been living with the girl for two years, working and contributing to the family well-being. It was very clear that her parents and his parents knew about the relationship, condoned it, and that he was acting responsibly. What saved this guy is that the part of Mexico they came from had a cultural practice of the guy meeting with the girl's father and getting drunk before moving in together, and (since this is what happened in Houston) they would be considered married. An amicus was filed that claimed their relationship constituted a "common law marriage" (still legal in Texas) and the judge and everyone else agreed.
I believe that here in Texas the "spread" is three years; meaning that one party (or both parties) can be minor if there is less than three years difference in their ages. Maybe those girls in question can claim they were engaging in a consensual sex act and, if they are under the spread, get the threat dismissed? (I was going to say they might get off, but the double entendre is too awful....)
I had a book once called, "The Honest Politician's Guide to Crime Control." It had a GREAT argument about the deficiency in the term "statutory rape". The book is out of print now. I guess there wasn't a large enough audience.
I'm 61, and last year found myself in an environment of people in their mid 20's and younger. They didn't have clue 1. They were good programmers, some of them were genius level, but their social skills and teamwork sucked big time. Furthermore, they were all into "agile" programming. The lack of planning on the project caused massive support problems. (This may have been OK in the early iterations of the product, but it was starting to show up as a major tech support problem. Once they shipped a product that didn't even work because they hadn't tested it thoroughly.) What drove me away was the lack of a plan and a clear set of performance standards. I never really knew what I was hired for, and I had no way of knowing how well I was doing, but I had a strong sense of "not fitting in" and falling below expectations (even though nobody stated the expectations).
Somewhere it occurred to me that these guys took for granted the elemental programming concepts that my generation had to invent on-the-fly back in the 60's and 70's. None of them could do assembly, none of them knew how to manage a decision table, and the idea of a formal systems analysis was foreign to them. My computer game was chess (which I've had to take off all my systems in order to get work done), and these guys think a "game" is WoW.
I suggest you decide what you want. To me, CS is designing the hardware and structure. CIS is designing the administration and apps that make the structure work, and MIS is is the design and apps that produce tangible results, especially for a specific end-user. These definitions don't necessarily match up with what the colleges are teaching under those names. In my experience, MIS environments have a little more respect for age and experience, CS has a high regard for innovation and results.
Good luck.
The term "old-school" in this context makes me laugh. Back in the days when air was clean and sex was dirty, "relational" databases were considered a resource hog and were shunned by competent programmers. The fastest and most efficient databases were the "network" databases, but they also required the most work and the trickiest coding. Right in the middle were the "hierarchal" databases. Many programmers avoided the database problem by using a "reverse ISAM" arrangement which still used up some extra resources, but were easier to maintain. Of course, nowadays, when it is almost impossible to find programmers who can even program apps from tape into 32K systems, I can see why youngsters use the "telephone book" databases.. (so they can avoid actually having to think about their data!) I guess that's why it's so hard to find good assembly language programmers, too.
Anyone wanting to find out what it used to be like in the bad ol' days could look up CODASYL. Watch out for bad dreams.