It was a chorded keyboard featured on the cover of Either Byte or PC Magazine back in 1978 or '79. I thought it was a totally cool device then, and I've kinda been experimenting with variations for the last 7 years.
I got envious of those teenagers texting 60 miles per hour, and so I've almost finished a 4-"plate" Morse Code pad for my Windows7 touchscreen Fujitsu tablet that I hope to get working on my Windows7 Samsung smartphone. One-finger operation, plates for dot, dash, space and erase; and I might be able to finally use my phone with some sort of speed.
I'm going to try this Englebart system because it would make it easier to use my convertible tablet. (I typically use Google Sketchup Pro, and being able to type in dimensions easily without reverting to the on-screen keyboard or converting to laptop configuration might be much easier.)
It seems to me that there should have been a big pile of detached hands somewhere. Martial Law and Civil Law are still supposed to work together.
Some people here deride religion, but real religion is good for society as a whole. (This does not mean that it should be imposed on people by Government.) Religion teaches moral values in a way that Law can't, and in the absence of Law, those without moral values will act in ways detrimental to society. Sharia would have been better than no civil law.
First problem: The games suck as games. The player works through a few levels and then sells the game cause there's no more challenge. Anyone want to buy my used Sudoku?
Second problem: The "gamers" are dumb enough to buy them at high prices. If the games are so disposable, why are you wasting your money?
Third problem: The two previous problems feed on each other. Playing sucky games creates morons. People pay less for a good chess set, deck of cards, or goban and stones and actually get smarter by playing.
Fourth problem: These sucky games could be cloned mechanically with computer-generated artwork and nobody would be the wiser. Thin plots, limited reality, juvenile moral values; yet many semi-intelligent time-wasters go out and buy them rather than make their own. Proof that the Public School System rots your brain.
Fifth problem: CEO's who don't get that you make money by providing what the consumers want, rather than what you can stick the consumer with. (Pun intended.)
One requirement should be that code documentation, clear enough for a junior programmer or someone from the accounting department to successfully follow from start to conclusion, shall be produced for each component along with the code.
Then, the project leader shall be responsible for seeing that code, and its documentation, is included in the check-off document for each system, subsystem. and function.
Publicly "score" your programmers for the elegance and completeness of each milestone task. If I was the project manager I would probably run each component through Rose or some other UML environment to be included in the documentation (after it is compared with the original/changed design).
Changes should also be documented. So should maintenance changes, but that is usually where I find the least comprehensive documentation. It is the leader/manager's responsibility to make sure the PROJECT is complete, not just workable. It is the developer's responsibility to make sure that his/her portion of the project is complete, not just workable. If the developer can't write a description of what he did that could be understood by a dumb-ass, then he probably doesn't know what he's doing anyway.
There are 'way too many entry points to this discussion. The mass hypnosis of TV and movies undermined Japan's post-war program for a stronger Japan, by "Americanizing" Japanese values. American "reality" TV fosters a view of stupid, immoral Americans, but it also shows the vast difference in wealth between the two nations. This must be a threat to Chinese Government-approved values and economics. Now, 2/3 of the people in Chines TV may be "out-of-work" in whatever way a government-subsidized "production" can exist.
This puts one of China's leading-edge economic industries about where the United States was in 1921.
It's not age and it's not experience. Age is neither a detriment nor an advantage in producing good code. Experience isn't worth shit if all your experience is in writing code in a text editor in some obscure language and the job you are applying for requires you to be familiar with specific production environments like Eclipse or Visual Studio. Any humyuk out of school for a couple years with recent skills in those environments is better qualified than you are.
What should put you over the top is recent, proven experience in thinking and problem-solving. Decide what kind of code you want to write (business and accounting, DB, systems, embedded, etc., etc., and then produce something that shows you are qualified.
Of course, if you have many past years' experience in programming in one of the old standards like C/C++ and you are familiar with the newer production environments, then yes, your age may be an advantage because you have proven experience in thinking and problem-solving in areas that aren't rapidly changing.
Programmed instruction, computer aided instruction and the like were very successful in the 60's and 70's, but most educational environments couldn't afford it.
One of the most successful was the PLATO project sponsored by CDC. Using touch screen technology and programmed instruction, students were able to learn advanced mathematics and other subjects like chemistry in a client-server environment.
Texas Instruments had a "Talking Typewriter" that taught 3- to 6-year-olds how to touch type. (The keys were different colors. The teacher painted the student's fingernails colors to match the keys, and a programmed instruction course on the terminal would teach them to type.)
A key element was that children couldn't fail. They would become completely engrossed in learning when they were immediately successful and immediately rewarded for it by getting immediate feedback.
Programmed instruction was developed by B. F. Skinner and Norman Crowder. (Your history may vary, but i'll stick by it.) Programmed instruction was more expensive to develop because the information, presented in "frames", had to be tested so that over 98% of the time the student picked the right answer. This required much testing and re-writing. Also, programmed instruction presented in books usually resulted in books twice or three times larger than regular textbooks. Even though a student would finish the book in one-third to one-sixth the time for reading a comparable textbook, the publishing costs were much greater.
B. F. Skinner fell out of favor first, because it turned out that his theory of Operant Conditioning and Behaviorism didn't explain the learning of language in young people, and second, for political incorrectness during the late 70's and early 80's.
You can't just give children a device without the proper tools to accomplish your task. Giving children computers and game consoles without goals and direction is a case of "jumping to solutions" without adequate requirements analysis. Given the choice, children will automatically gravitate toward those things that are more like play than study, but children love to learn; they will spend hours on projects that they find rewarding.
What works? Montessori methods work, but this is a whole environment. If you have money, send your kids to a Montessori school.
Directed study works, but the teachers have rebelled.
Deer Park, Texas started a TQM project for their schools, and increased student competency by 20-44%. Teachers don't like it for the same reason they don't like directed study; they think they are the experts. (In spite of huge quantities of evidence to the contrary.)
An example of modern programmed instruction, pretty well done, is The Logic Cafe ( http://thelogiccafe.net/PLI/index.htm ). TLC is a hybrid site that uses the principles of programmed instruction with additions. To me, this is an example of how good programmed instruction could be developed. If someone designs a programmed instructional website they can automatically pinpoint and revise frames that don't get 98%+ positive responses. IMHO, most CAI fails because they just record boring, un-goaled lectures and present it as "instruction."
Programmed instruction in books was used a lot by CDC, IBM, Jeppson, Xerox, Fereal Electric, Phillips-Ford, and many others. Ken Stroud's book, "Engineering Mathematics" is still one of the most popular Engineering Math books available.
Yes, technology and e-learning could be real good for kids, but there has to be some content.
Yeah, you might be right. One aspect of the problem is that the system is broken. People may be doing the best they can (according to Deming) but the broken system reshapes their behavior. That may explain why there is so little difference between the Demopublicans and the Republicrats.
The original post asked, "What can we do when the internet mob is wrong?" Forget it; most people don't care. Thi8s discussion about the kid who got killed over new Nike shoes came up at work last night. some of the talkers were so outraged that they ranted for over half an hour. When I tell them today that it was a hoax, they will just go, "oops" and continue on as if they didn't waste their time and emotional energy for nothing. Five years from now they will be saying, "Do your remember that time the kid got killed...?" and will have forgotten that it wasn't true.
In the long term it will mean nothing. What matters is when there are consequences in the short term. Crowds have beaten and killed people when they mistakenly thought a person ran over a little kid, or was a molester, or robbed someplace etc., etc,.. Some sociologists are claiming that Obama go elected on the basis of crowd think and internet mob-ism. (This is not scientific, but I've asked lots of people over the years why they voted for Obama, and NOT ONE of them could tell me anything about his voting record in Illinois or Washington.) Cultural biases are affecting our lives. Friends tell me it was very uncomfortable being a middle eastern person in the USA after 9/11. This type of bias may fade, but when? And how much harm does it do in the meantime?
Bryan Caplan, and Economist, wrote a book called, "The Myth of the Rational Voter" http://www.amazon.com/Myth-Rational-Voter-Democracies-Policies/dp/0691129428 , in which he points out that cultural biases against free markets and foreigners, and toward make-work and pessimism are exploited by politicians everywhere.
I doubt that there is anything we can do to offset the influence of sensationalism and propaganda except expose the facts as well as we can. (Ooops! Pessimism, right?)
We know it's on android, but the article points to an earlier article that says, "In our post yesterday, we wrongly assumed that Carrier IQ was something that carriers added to smartphones — but now it’s clear that Apple bakes Carrier IQ into its closed-source iOS for use by carriers."
This makes me suspicious that there may be a version in Windows-based phones, or other phones with different data OS' installed.
I love my Lifebook T900 from Fujitsu. I run either Windows 7 or Debian Mint. I like having the power, the screen is a Wacom Tablet, and I can do powerful shit on it. Max RAM is only 8GB at this point, and getting Linux to address all the functions of the Wacom was a challenge (and not quite finished yet), but overall it is a great convertible tablet. My younger brother calls it my $5000 chess board, but the i7 processor gives me some great math and graphics possibilities.
My second choice would have been a similar tablet from Lenovo. I've used Lenovo tablets before and always found them dependable and very usable with Linux installed. I picked the Fujitsu because it seemed to have more durability features.
Naw...The collection of prior art will collapse the patent system long before that happens. This article http://mises.org/daily/5025/The-Fight-Against-Intellectual-Property has some good arguments that I see as a prediction that "common sense" will return to patent law. I am intrigued by the argument that patents are a government monopoly-granting process allowing IP holders to attack the property rights of others.
And human creativity shows no sign of being finite, so I suspect that different solutions will keep appearing.
Accounting, for instance, has been done the same way for almost 500 years, yet there are thousands of accounting packages available, written in dozens of different languages, even to run on the same hardware. Some programs (Quickbooks, for instance) have been "improved" beyond comprehension while still preserving their deficiencies and shortcomings.
Once a problem is solved in programming, it should never have to be solved again. Most of the underlying code in computer systems is based on programs written back in the early days of digital computers. By adding the basic "components" together, more complex systems problems can be solved at a higher scale of interaction and complexity. So, scaling can be a problem. And, how the heck are we supposed to know where to find the original solution to the problem? (Note: There have been attempts to "hash" the common solutions and create unique, searchable identifiers, but I don't know what ever happened to those experiments. The ACM maintains and makes available a "library" of fundamental algorithims, but it is getting unmanageable.).
Now the person coming in to review or improve legacy code has a "complexity" obstacle that prevents him from easily determining the purpose and scope of the code.
In the digital world, programs work on data. Every digital program relies on sequence, alternation, and repetition. Many researchers (Djikstra, Jacopini, Martin and more) have shown that these are directly comparable to concepts in mathematical logic (sequential proof, decision rule, and quantification) and have demonstrated ways to "prove" programs correct. In today's world, we have the power to actually analyze programs, derive the structures, and prove the validity of the results at a meta-level (giving a nod to Goedel on the way). A meta system of this kind should discover what a program or system does, whether it does it correctly, and whether it does ONLY what it is supposed to. Now the problem becomes one of making the results understandable. The various packages that analyze source code and produce UML documentation are a very good start in that direction. I am concerned, because, (as recent demonstrations of Stuxnet and Duqu show) the interaction of flawed systems can have accumulating ill effects on those of us who have to depend more and more on computer systems to control our cars, our environment and the tools we use in our lives.
Not every industrial process is as easy to analyze as software. And the complexity of modern industrial processes makes it even harder to understand once the process has been analyzed. Much of industrial behavior is analog; much of it is probabilistic; and much of it depends on uncontrollable inputs such as human behavior, and human mis-interpretation of the situation. If I was part of the investigating team trying to preserve lost company know-how, I'd probably go back to anything resembling requirements analysis, and work forward from there.
The people who decide to use an hour each day for study or mental enhancement rather than mindless, passive, commercial-loaded crap "entertainment" would get the equivalent of 9 work weeks of enhancement each year. I've already given up Bones and House because of Fox.com's commercial-ridden presentations, lousy web presentation and cross-scripted ads. The last shows to go will be NCIS and CSI, but I'm willing. 10 years from now they won't have added anything substantial to my life anyway.
If the shows are really good, such as "IRIS" or "The Great Queen SeonDeok" I can buy the whole series on DVD, without commercials. (Your individual taste may vary.)
I was with you up until you went "by gut instinct." You just went one step too many and crossed from "reasonable thinker" status to "uninformed opinion" status.
The important thing is that, although you haven't exhausted all the posibilities, you did recognize that there may be more than one possibility for explaining the disparity in data. Now you should test your hypothesis before glueing yourself to the uninformed opinion.
This is the kind of stupid argumentation that drives me crazy! (Disclaimer: It is not really a drive, but more like a short putt.)
Somebody notices a glitch in the distribution where the data has been sorted by a hot political topic, and immediately everyone starts expressing an opinion. They are jumping to conclusions which, by definition, means they have not done any meaningful research, analysis, or other investigation. The whole discussion becomes a time-waster or political agenda.
This is an opportunity for some sociology team, anthropology team, or maybe economics team to FIND OUT WHY, by researching the issue and discovering what actually influences the situation.
One of my critical tasks is building spreadsheet models, and Since I automate (read: VBA) alot of functions, I want to be able to dstribute these models to as many people as possible. If I could develop the models in LibreOffice and my Excel users could run the macros, I probably would switch. Right now, I don't want anything coming between me and getting results.
If the models were used only internally it would be no problem to use whatever tool we wanted, but some of these models are distributed over a wide number of companies and organizations and this means we all have settled on the "common denominator" to get work done.
For serious number crunching, graphics, and so forth, I have UNIX and Linux systems. It totally pisses me off that dependable drivers for advanced GPU's (and other devices) are so hard to come by and break so easily in Linux and UNIX. Someday, when I'm rich and famous, I will hire a crew of developers to write drivers for everybody. In the meantime, I don't have time to futz with the myriad of minor obstacles to working in Linux.
And there is no good substitute for CUDA yet.
Ubuntu pissed me off with their latest version. If I wanted my serious numbers system to break every time I patched the OS I'd have built a Windows system! Can't somebody figure out that those of us trying to get work done want faster and better, but want to hang on to a consistent way of using it?
There is a crossover point where I almost always insist that my clients use a Linux or UNIX server system: High-reliability servers (two or more load balancing, fall-over configurations) are very well suited for multiple workstations using the same apps (such as accounting). If they need Windows applications it is usually better to run a virtual server or two and connect everyone together with thin-client systems. (I'm assuming that single-point configuration and very low downtime are important criteria.) I've been working with a company that has over 1000 employees and runs their major apps from Windows Server 2008, PXE-booting to a huge number of obsolete desktop units. (Sigh) I won't be around the day they need to change, but they could replace their Windows servers with one good-sized HR cluster and consistently compatible thin clients and save a huge amount on energy and administration. (On the plus side, the billing apps that this outfit is running is a genius-level achievement and there is almost no downtime at this point.)
As the wildly different comments on this thread show, taxation is a very complex subject.
Theoretically, in the USA, people are entitled to the results of their labor. When someone takes your money from you by force (or threat of force) it is called theft. The people who advocate involuntary taxation are those who think that government is more important than peoples' rights.
The best plan I've seen so far is the Fair Tax Plan http://www.fairtax.org/site/PageServer . It still is not perfect, but it is about 90% better than what we have (based on the assumption that 90% of the the IRS would be eleiminated).
Of course, the key word is "involuntary"; What would happen if we had a national referendum and the PEOPLE set the tax rate? Reviewed every presidential election year?
Interesting point, and I challenge on the basis that "aptitude" is not being tested properly. (The Army tested me in 1964 and I ended up in the Signal Corps where I learned telephony, radio, computer programming and cryptology. I think it is interesting that 47 years later I am still working in related fields.)
Too many tests have shown that "aptitude" scores rely on familiarity rather than inate talent. I have seen people who were lousy artists take 8-week courses in drawing (someties modelled after "Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain" by Betty Edwards) and go on to be terrific artists. I suspect that desire and instruction are more important than "aptitude" or inate talent.
If we were to redesign the course curriculum from scratch; if we were to design a program that turned out talented engineers or scientists and the program we designed had to work in 97% of the cases, how would we do it?
I would want a program that ensured that every talented person applying for the program was successfull. (In industrial terms: No scrap.)
Would we design a computer program the way the universities have "designed" academic programs? Isn't it possible that things have changes somewhat since the Middle Ages and new processes and technology could improve the throughput of the University?
Would a University course pass a TQM survey? Why not?
Is it any wonder that practical people exit a broken system?
Note: She is an adult and recovering from the abuse. However, she was born with ataxic cerebral palsy. I don't know how bad it is, but it may preclude her from many occupations. Apparently she is pretty smart and plays the piano well. Ataxic cerebral palsy usually affects muscular coordination, and the symptoms (poor balance, shakiness, poor coordination) last a lifetime and may get worse in old age.
There is no reason to discuss why she needed her family's support, if she needed her family's support, if it was justified to withdraw the support or anything else because we don't know enough facts, and it's none of our business.
Yup. to just about everything you said, I agree. And in fact, I usually am positioned as a part of the profit team, and the people who hire me are pretty glad to have me on their side.
It seems that the "IT professionals" within the companies are getting younger, have less experience, and are many times doing two jobs. (Lots of times the decision is made by the accountant.) Many of them don't recognize that I do more than the average "geek squad" newbie, and it gets harder to get the time to explain my added value.
Interestingly enough, in the last year two of my bigger clients caled me in to do work for them because they had bad experiences working with multiple "Low bidders" and wanted to eliminate the hassels and anxiety upstream.
Well, almost. The point you are making is that the cheap guys can "skim the gravy" from a project and it will supposedly cost the company less. This is true if you only count transaction fees. (Although this approach certainly hurts my cash flow.) But the cheap, inexperienced guy ends up costing the business money because he usually charges for 20 hours of his own time before walking away ($35x20 = $700) and then I come in and charge $110x5 (=$550) so the incremental cost is $1250. If that was all, the cost of calling me in for an emergency would be more than offset by the money saved by usually using the cheap guy.
However, there is the cost of having the system/network down. The employee cost, the overhead for lost time (of which employee down time is factor) and the possible loss of reputation for missed quotes or customer deliverables somehow needs to be added into the cost. (In Economics, its called "opportunity cost".) Remember, delays are accumulative. If my customer is a builder, electrical contractor, etc., the business is trying to meet a schedule. Statisitics show that a 10% schedule overrun eats about 25% of the profit in a job. The next 10% eats about 20% more profit. Idled workers still on the active payroll are a huge portion of that cost. Seventy electricians idled for a couple of hours on a highway lighting project is a HUGE loss to the company. (I use 2 or so hours, because that is approximately the extra time spent catching up and undoing the mess on the example I gave.)
Excellent attitude about your purpose! Too me, the words,"legitimate purpose" do not do justice to the scope of the decision, but it definitely is the right direction. The implementation of any new technology should make the whole system perform better.
Slashdot Mirror
It was a chorded keyboard featured on the cover of Either Byte or PC Magazine back in 1978 or '79. I thought it was a totally cool device then, and I've kinda been experimenting with variations for the last 7 years.
I got envious of those teenagers texting 60 miles per hour, and so I've almost finished a 4-"plate" Morse Code pad for my Windows7 touchscreen Fujitsu tablet that I hope to get working on my Windows7 Samsung smartphone. One-finger operation, plates for dot, dash, space and erase; and I might be able to finally use my phone with some sort of speed.
I'm going to try this Englebart system because it would make it easier to use my convertible tablet. (I typically use Google Sketchup Pro, and being able to type in dimensions easily without reverting to the on-screen keyboard or converting to laptop configuration might be much easier.)
It seems to me that there should have been a big pile of detached hands somewhere. Martial Law and Civil Law are still supposed to work together.
Some people here deride religion, but real religion is good for society as a whole. (This does not mean that it should be imposed on people by Government.) Religion teaches moral values in a way that Law can't, and in the absence of Law, those without moral values will act in ways detrimental to society. Sharia would have been better than no civil law.
First problem: The games suck as games. The player works through a few levels and then sells the game cause there's no more challenge. Anyone want to buy my used Sudoku?
Second problem: The "gamers" are dumb enough to buy them at high prices. If the games are so disposable, why are you wasting your money?
Third problem: The two previous problems feed on each other. Playing sucky games creates morons. People pay less for a good chess set, deck of cards, or goban and stones and actually get smarter by playing.
Fourth problem: These sucky games could be cloned mechanically with computer-generated artwork and nobody would be the wiser. Thin plots, limited reality, juvenile moral values; yet many semi-intelligent time-wasters go out and buy them rather than make their own. Proof that the Public School System rots your brain.
Fifth problem: CEO's who don't get that you make money by providing what the consumers want, rather than what you can stick the consumer with. (Pun intended.)
Just as I was thinking that this might be the start of a good FORTH machine, I find out that Fish used to work with Chuck Moore. What a coinkydink.
One requirement should be that code documentation, clear enough for a junior programmer or someone from the accounting department to successfully follow from start to conclusion, shall be produced for each component along with the code.
Then, the project leader shall be responsible for seeing that code, and its documentation, is included in the check-off document for each system, subsystem. and function.
Publicly "score" your programmers for the elegance and completeness of each milestone task. If I was the project manager I would probably run each component through Rose or some other UML environment to be included in the documentation (after it is compared with the original/changed design).
Changes should also be documented. So should maintenance changes, but that is usually where I find the least comprehensive documentation. It is the leader/manager's responsibility to make sure the PROJECT is complete, not just workable. It is the developer's responsibility to make sure that his/her portion of the project is complete, not just workable. If the developer can't write a description of what he did that could be understood by a dumb-ass, then he probably doesn't know what he's doing anyway.
There are 'way too many entry points to this discussion. The mass hypnosis of TV and movies undermined Japan's post-war program for a stronger Japan, by "Americanizing" Japanese values. American "reality" TV fosters a view of stupid, immoral Americans, but it also shows the vast difference in wealth between the two nations. This must be a threat to Chinese Government-approved values and economics. Now, 2/3 of the people in Chines TV may be "out-of-work" in whatever way a government-subsidized "production" can exist.
This puts one of China's leading-edge economic industries about where the United States was in 1921.
It's not age and it's not experience. Age is neither a detriment nor an advantage in producing good code. Experience isn't worth shit if all your experience is in writing code in a text editor in some obscure language and the job you are applying for requires you to be familiar with specific production environments like Eclipse or Visual Studio. Any humyuk out of school for a couple years with recent skills in those environments is better qualified than you are.
What should put you over the top is recent, proven experience in thinking and problem-solving. Decide what kind of code you want to write (business and accounting, DB, systems, embedded, etc., etc., and then produce something that shows you are qualified.
Of course, if you have many past years' experience in programming in one of the old standards like C/C++ and you are familiar with the newer production environments, then yes, your age may be an advantage because you have proven experience in thinking and problem-solving in areas that aren't rapidly changing.
Good luck.
Programmed instruction, computer aided instruction and the like were very successful in the 60's and 70's, but most educational environments couldn't afford it.
One of the most successful was the PLATO project sponsored by CDC. Using touch screen technology and programmed instruction, students were able to learn advanced mathematics and other subjects like chemistry in a client-server environment.
Texas Instruments had a "Talking Typewriter" that taught 3- to 6-year-olds how to touch type. (The keys were different colors. The teacher painted the student's fingernails colors to match the keys, and a programmed instruction course on the terminal would teach them to type.)
A key element was that children couldn't fail. They would become completely engrossed in learning when they were immediately successful and immediately rewarded for it by getting immediate feedback.
Programmed instruction was developed by B. F. Skinner and Norman Crowder. (Your history may vary, but i'll stick by it.) Programmed instruction was more expensive to develop because the information, presented in "frames", had to be tested so that over 98% of the time the student picked the right answer. This required much testing and re-writing. Also, programmed instruction presented in books usually resulted in books twice or three times larger than regular textbooks. Even though a student would finish the book in one-third to one-sixth the time for reading a comparable textbook, the publishing costs were much greater.
B. F. Skinner fell out of favor first, because it turned out that his theory of Operant Conditioning and Behaviorism didn't explain the learning of language in young people, and second, for political incorrectness during the late 70's and early 80's.
You can't just give children a device without the proper tools to accomplish your task. Giving children computers and game consoles without goals and direction is a case of "jumping to solutions" without adequate requirements analysis. Given the choice, children will automatically gravitate toward those things that are more like play than study, but children love to learn; they will spend hours on projects that they find rewarding.
What works? Montessori methods work, but this is a whole environment. If you have money, send your kids to a Montessori school.
Directed study works, but the teachers have rebelled.
Deer Park, Texas started a TQM project for their schools, and increased student competency by 20-44%. Teachers don't like it for the same reason they don't like directed study; they think they are the experts. (In spite of huge quantities of evidence to the contrary.)
An example of modern programmed instruction, pretty well done, is The Logic Cafe ( http://thelogiccafe.net/PLI/index.htm ). TLC is a hybrid site that uses the principles of programmed instruction with additions. To me, this is an example of how good programmed instruction could be developed. If someone designs a programmed instructional website they can automatically pinpoint and revise frames that don't get 98%+ positive responses. IMHO, most CAI fails because they just record boring, un-goaled lectures and present it as "instruction."
Programmed instruction in books was used a lot by CDC, IBM, Jeppson, Xerox, Fereal Electric, Phillips-Ford, and many others. Ken Stroud's book, "Engineering Mathematics" is still one of the most popular Engineering Math books available.
Yes, technology and e-learning could be real good for kids, but there has to be some content.
Yeah, you might be right. One aspect of the problem is that the system is broken. People may be doing the best they can (according to Deming) but the broken system reshapes their behavior. That may explain why there is so little difference between the Demopublicans and the Republicrats.
The original post asked, "What can we do when the internet mob is wrong?" Forget it; most people don't care. Thi8s discussion about the kid who got killed over new Nike shoes came up at work last night. some of the talkers were so outraged that they ranted for over half an hour. When I tell them today that it was a hoax, they will just go, "oops" and continue on as if they didn't waste their time and emotional energy for nothing. Five years from now they will be saying, "Do your remember that time the kid got killed...?" and will have forgotten that it wasn't true.
In the long term it will mean nothing. What matters is when there are consequences in the short term. Crowds have beaten and killed people when they mistakenly thought a person ran over a little kid, or was a molester, or robbed someplace etc., etc,.. Some sociologists are claiming that Obama go elected on the basis of crowd think and internet mob-ism. (This is not scientific, but I've asked lots of people over the years why they voted for Obama, and NOT ONE of them could tell me anything about his voting record in Illinois or Washington.) Cultural biases are affecting our lives. Friends tell me it was very uncomfortable being a middle eastern person in the USA after 9/11. This type of bias may fade, but when? And how much harm does it do in the meantime?
Bryan Caplan, and Economist, wrote a book called, "The Myth of the Rational Voter" http://www.amazon.com/Myth-Rational-Voter-Democracies-Policies/dp/0691129428 , in which he points out that cultural biases against free markets and foreigners, and toward make-work and pessimism are exploited by politicians everywhere.
I doubt that there is anything we can do to offset the influence of sensationalism and propaganda except expose the facts as well as we can. (Ooops! Pessimism, right?)
We know it's on android, but the article points to an earlier article that says, "In our post yesterday, we wrongly assumed that Carrier IQ was something that carriers added to smartphones — but now it’s clear that Apple bakes Carrier IQ into its closed-source iOS for use by carriers."
This makes me suspicious that there may be a version in Windows-based phones, or other phones with different data OS' installed.
I love my Lifebook T900 from Fujitsu. I run either Windows 7 or Debian Mint. I like having the power, the screen is a Wacom Tablet, and I can do powerful shit on it. Max RAM is only 8GB at this point, and getting Linux to address all the functions of the Wacom was a challenge (and not quite finished yet), but overall it is a great convertible tablet. My younger brother calls it my $5000 chess board, but the i7 processor gives me some great math and graphics possibilities.
My second choice would have been a similar tablet from Lenovo. I've used Lenovo tablets before and always found them dependable and very usable with Linux installed. I picked the Fujitsu because it seemed to have more durability features.
Naw...The collection of prior art will collapse the patent system long before that happens. This article http://mises.org/daily/5025/The-Fight-Against-Intellectual-Property has some good arguments that I see as a prediction that "common sense" will return to patent law. I am intrigued by the argument that patents are a government monopoly-granting process allowing IP holders to attack the property rights of others.
And human creativity shows no sign of being finite, so I suspect that different solutions will keep appearing.
Accounting, for instance, has been done the same way for almost 500 years, yet there are thousands of accounting packages available, written in dozens of different languages, even to run on the same hardware. Some programs (Quickbooks, for instance) have been "improved" beyond comprehension while still preserving their deficiencies and shortcomings.
Once a problem is solved in programming, it should never have to be solved again. Most of the underlying code in computer systems is based on programs written back in the early days of digital computers. By adding the basic "components" together, more complex systems problems can be solved at a higher scale of interaction and complexity. So, scaling can be a problem. And, how the heck are we supposed to know where to find the original solution to the problem? (Note: There have been attempts to "hash" the common solutions and create unique, searchable identifiers, but I don't know what ever happened to those experiments. The ACM maintains and makes available a "library" of fundamental algorithims, but it is getting unmanageable.).
Now the person coming in to review or improve legacy code has a "complexity" obstacle that prevents him from easily determining the purpose and scope of the code.
In the digital world, programs work on data. Every digital program relies on sequence, alternation, and repetition. Many researchers (Djikstra, Jacopini, Martin and more) have shown that these are directly comparable to concepts in mathematical logic (sequential proof, decision rule, and quantification) and have demonstrated ways to "prove" programs correct. In today's world, we have the power to actually analyze programs, derive the structures, and prove the validity of the results at a meta-level (giving a nod to Goedel on the way). A meta system of this kind should discover what a program or system does, whether it does it correctly, and whether it does ONLY what it is supposed to. Now the problem becomes one of making the results understandable. The various packages that analyze source code and produce UML documentation are a very good start in that direction. I am concerned, because, (as recent demonstrations of Stuxnet and Duqu show) the interaction of flawed systems can have accumulating ill effects on those of us who have to depend more and more on computer systems to control our cars, our environment and the tools we use in our lives.
Not every industrial process is as easy to analyze as software. And the complexity of modern industrial processes makes it even harder to understand once the process has been analyzed. Much of industrial behavior is analog; much of it is probabilistic; and much of it depends on uncontrollable inputs such as human behavior, and human mis-interpretation of the situation. If I was part of the investigating team trying to preserve lost company know-how, I'd probably go back to anything resembling requirements analysis, and work forward from there.
The people who decide to use an hour each day for study or mental enhancement rather than mindless, passive, commercial-loaded crap "entertainment" would get the equivalent of 9 work weeks of enhancement each year. I've already given up Bones and House because of Fox.com's commercial-ridden presentations, lousy web presentation and cross-scripted ads. The last shows to go will be NCIS and CSI, but I'm willing. 10 years from now they won't have added anything substantial to my life anyway.
If the shows are really good, such as "IRIS" or "The Great Queen SeonDeok" I can buy the whole series on DVD, without commercials. (Your individual taste may vary.)
I was with you up until you went "by gut instinct." You just went one step too many and crossed from "reasonable thinker" status to "uninformed opinion" status.
The important thing is that, although you haven't exhausted all the posibilities, you did recognize that there may be more than one possibility for explaining the disparity in data. Now you should test your hypothesis before glueing yourself to the uninformed opinion.
This is the kind of stupid argumentation that drives me crazy! (Disclaimer: It is not really a drive, but more like a short putt.)
Somebody notices a glitch in the distribution where the data has been sorted by a hot political topic, and immediately everyone starts expressing an opinion. They are jumping to conclusions which, by definition, means they have not done any meaningful research, analysis, or other investigation. The whole discussion becomes a time-waster or political agenda.
This is an opportunity for some sociology team, anthropology team, or maybe economics team to FIND OUT WHY, by researching the issue and discovering what actually influences the situation.
One of my critical tasks is building spreadsheet models, and Since I automate (read: VBA) alot of functions, I want to be able to dstribute these models to as many people as possible. If I could develop the models in LibreOffice and my Excel users could run the macros, I probably would switch. Right now, I don't want anything coming between me and getting results.
If the models were used only internally it would be no problem to use whatever tool we wanted, but some of these models are distributed over a wide number of companies and organizations and this means we all have settled on the "common denominator" to get work done.
For serious number crunching, graphics, and so forth, I have UNIX and Linux systems. It totally pisses me off that dependable drivers for advanced GPU's (and other devices) are so hard to come by and break so easily in Linux and UNIX. Someday, when I'm rich and famous, I will hire a crew of developers to write drivers for everybody. In the meantime, I don't have time to futz with the myriad of minor obstacles to working in Linux.
And there is no good substitute for CUDA yet.
Ubuntu pissed me off with their latest version. If I wanted my serious numbers system to break every time I patched the OS I'd have built a Windows system! Can't somebody figure out that those of us trying to get work done want faster and better, but want to hang on to a consistent way of using it?
There is a crossover point where I almost always insist that my clients use a Linux or UNIX server system: High-reliability servers (two or more load balancing, fall-over configurations) are very well suited for multiple workstations using the same apps (such as accounting). If they need Windows applications it is usually better to run a virtual server or two and connect everyone together with thin-client systems. (I'm assuming that single-point configuration and very low downtime are important criteria.) I've been working with a company that has over 1000 employees and runs their major apps from Windows Server 2008, PXE-booting to a huge number of obsolete desktop units. (Sigh) I won't be around the day they need to change, but they could replace their Windows servers with one good-sized HR cluster and consistently compatible thin clients and save a huge amount on energy and administration. (On the plus side, the billing apps that this outfit is running is a genius-level achievement and there is almost no downtime at this point.)
As the wildly different comments on this thread show, taxation is a very complex subject.
Theoretically, in the USA, people are entitled to the results of their labor. When someone takes your money from you by force (or threat of force) it is called theft. The people who advocate involuntary taxation are those who think that government is more important than peoples' rights.
The best plan I've seen so far is the Fair Tax Plan http://www.fairtax.org/site/PageServer . It still is not perfect, but it is about 90% better than what we have (based on the assumption that 90% of the the IRS would be eleiminated).
Of course, the key word is "involuntary"; What would happen if we had a national referendum and the PEOPLE set the tax rate? Reviewed every presidential election year?
Interesting point, and I challenge on the basis that "aptitude" is not being tested properly. (The Army tested me in 1964 and I ended up in the Signal Corps where I learned telephony, radio, computer programming and cryptology. I think it is interesting that 47 years later I am still working in related fields.)
Too many tests have shown that "aptitude" scores rely on familiarity rather than inate talent. I have seen people who were lousy artists take 8-week courses in drawing (someties modelled after "Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain" by Betty Edwards) and go on to be terrific artists. I suspect that desire and instruction are more important than "aptitude" or inate talent.
If we were to redesign the course curriculum from scratch; if we were to design a program that turned out talented engineers or scientists and the program we designed had to work in 97% of the cases, how would we do it?
I would want a program that ensured that every talented person applying for the program was successfull. (In industrial terms: No scrap.)
Would we design a computer program the way the universities have "designed" academic programs? Isn't it possible that things have changes somewhat since the Middle Ages and new processes and technology could improve the throughput of the University?
Would a University course pass a TQM survey? Why not?
Is it any wonder that practical people exit a broken system?
Note: She is an adult and recovering from the abuse. However, she was born with ataxic cerebral palsy. I don't know how bad it is, but it may preclude her from many occupations. Apparently she is pretty smart and plays the piano well. Ataxic cerebral palsy usually affects muscular coordination, and the symptoms (poor balance, shakiness, poor coordination) last a lifetime and may get worse in old age.
There is no reason to discuss why she needed her family's support, if she needed her family's support, if it was justified to withdraw the support or anything else because we don't know enough facts, and it's none of our business.
http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Dstripbooks&field-keywords=thinker's+toolbox&x=0&y=0
Yup. to just about everything you said, I agree. And in fact, I usually am positioned as a part of the profit team, and the people who hire me are pretty glad to have me on their side.
It seems that the "IT professionals" within the companies are getting younger, have less experience, and are many times doing two jobs. (Lots of times the decision is made by the accountant.) Many of them don't recognize that I do more than the average "geek squad" newbie, and it gets harder to get the time to explain my added value.
Interestingly enough, in the last year two of my bigger clients caled me in to do work for them because they had bad experiences working with multiple "Low bidders" and wanted to eliminate the hassels and anxiety upstream.
Well, almost. The point you are making is that the cheap guys can "skim the gravy" from a project and it will supposedly cost the company less. This is true if you only count transaction fees. (Although this approach certainly hurts my cash flow.)
But the cheap, inexperienced guy ends up costing the business money because he usually charges for 20 hours of his own time before walking away ($35x20 = $700) and then I come in and charge $110x5 (=$550) so the incremental cost is $1250. If that was all, the cost of calling me in for an emergency would be more than offset by the money saved by usually using the cheap guy.
However, there is the cost of having the system/network down. The employee cost, the overhead for lost time (of which employee down time is factor) and the possible loss of reputation for missed quotes or customer deliverables somehow needs to be added into the cost. (In Economics, its called "opportunity cost".) Remember, delays are accumulative. If my customer is a builder, electrical contractor, etc., the business is trying to meet a schedule. Statisitics show that a 10% schedule overrun eats about 25% of the profit in a job. The next 10% eats about 20% more profit. Idled workers still on the active payroll are a huge portion of that cost. Seventy electricians idled for a couple of hours on a highway lighting project is a HUGE loss to the company. (I use 2 or so hours, because that is approximately the extra time spent catching up and undoing the mess on the example I gave.)
Excellent attitude about your purpose! Too me, the words,"legitimate purpose" do not do justice to the scope of the decision, but it definitely is the right direction. The implementation of any new technology should make the whole system perform better.