I think the next greatest feat in physics will not be a new discovery, but just figuring out how to explain the current state of knowledge to a high school student. How can the field progress if only a handful of people actually understand the information we now possess?
I'm not sure I understand what you mean. Are you saying we should only pursue theories and bodies of knowledge if the average idiot can understand them?
I don't think so.
One interpretation of the OP's comment is essentially related to Feynman's famous quote: "I couldn't reduce it to the freshman level. That means we really don't understand it.". In other words, if the practitioners don't take the time to be able to explain their work to laymen, they are moving too fast even for their own good.
Another interpretation is this: we are all constantly asked to take action (e.g., vote) on questions that depend more or less on information that many, even the majority, not only don't understand, but have utterly no clue or even intuition about. Even in a representative democracy (to stick with the voting example), we need enough understanding to vet our representatives. The minimum requirements for education need to be not just a little higher, but a lot higher than they are. And a lot of what's missing could be addressed by the OP's proposal.
I bought the extended warranties in three circumstances:
In the '90's and into part of the '00's, my experience with laptops was that every one of them across multiple brands and users failed in some way before an extended warranty's period ended. And that included a startup that grew to as many as 80 people. Yes, the more abusive users had more problems, but even the gentle users did too. And IIRC, even CR recommended them then in this particular case. I had all manner of parts replaced under the warranty during that period, and it paid off. That said, this has become much less true in the last 8 years or so; I don't believe they pay any longer. This was never true for desktops, which have had readily available replacement parts for cheap (so I didn't cover those).
I bought a TV for my ailing mother, wanted a turnkey experience for her if the TV failed, and I wasn't close enough to be able to deal with it if the unit died. The TV didn't fail, but I received the peace of mind I purchased.
The third case was a little different: a home warranty when purchasing a house. It was pretty clear on inspection whether some of the appliances were close to their EOL. And the bonus is that through negotiation, one can often get the seller to pay part or all of the premium. Made money on that one too.
I haven't bought extended warranties on anything else, and it's paid off.
Oh, one special case: I skipped the extended warranty on tires for my car one time, and discovered (very soon after purchase, fortunately) that the installer had drastically over-inflated the tires, which would have, of course, caused accelerated and non-uniform wear. I suspected such nonsense and checked before I'd driven very far, and reduced the pressure to spec. "Coincidence? Perhaps! You be the judge!"
He has reviewed cloud backup and other services, yet never mentioned the legal differences between cloud based service storage and storage on your own in-house machine. That indicates that it's not interesting to his audience, which is telling. NPR recently did an article on how the domain holder of your email service is noticed by your potential job interviewer. Their comparison was between Yahoo! and of course AOL on one side (you're a LUser), and GMail on the other. Guess whose privacy actually suffers the most. This is definitely not understood.
There are more than enough of these to handle the largest data center. Start with cthulhu, vaal, landru, mcp (think TRON). And don't deny it: you've named production servers after most if not all of these names, haven't you?
the most common use for manual writing is filling in forms... where cursive is undesirable anyway
Wish I could have convinced my last escrow officer that was true! We were moving to a new area and my spouse couldn't make it to the closing on our new house. So she gave me POA for the closing papers. Guess what? My block-letter initials were fine because that's what I've always used, consistently. But they told me I had to use script for my spouse's signature and initials, even though my version would never match. By now, the only cursive I know well is embedded in my signature, and that's illegible. So the first several pages of paperwork was a struggle as I remembered. And it's those capital letters that are least used, too.
I stopped using script just as soon as my elementary school teachers stopped enforcing it; probably 6th grade.
Something old: Buy "Martin Gardner's Mathematical Games" on CD-ROM. Not for them to read (yet) but for you to read and get ideas for things to do with them.
Something new: Since you're Anonymous, I don't know where you are. But take them here. There is so much amazing hands-on stuff here. There may be similar places elsewhere, but this place is just outstanding.
Something personal: Find ways to bring in things Right Now, as they happen. What you show interest and excitement in will be worth 2x the others, or boost their value. On a suitable occasion (birthday, etc.) give them a small unopened geode. Give them a hammer and safety glasses and let them break it open (well, not the 2-year old yet). If someone sends you steaks kept frozen with dry ice, put the meat away. Instead, get a bowl of warm water, gloves, the hammer and glasses again, and make sci-fi effects. If you're ready to retire that old, dead VCR, then get out the screwdrivers and take it apart with them.
My grandfather-in-law's slide rule is considerably older and still multiplies. My Magnavox tube radio and my Dad's Kodak Medalist camera using 620 film (which is 120 film on a fatter spool) are probably about the same. Assuming I don't have it, a museum astrolabe is far older yet functional, as is my answer to today's poll (the screw).
Deregulate them. Then they'll figure out these things for themselves and there'll be a lot more choices. Let me not have to pick the one at the front of the line, but the one I want with the features I want. I understand the protocol. The protocol is counter-productive.
If the city really thinks that it knows best, then let it run its own operation, but allow real competition. The city will be out of business in no time.
Some utility (FILCOM?), when presented with a particularly difficult input, died with a completely undocumented message in Spanish. Anybody remember this? Another one of that vintage: "You have entered the incorrect password.". Talk about bad luck!
Until this is resolved properly, there is no way I will use an e-mail system that wants to keep my e-mail on its servers (Gmail tries hard to discourage us from deleting our e-mail, even after downloading). This situation has been an open sore for years, and not just for Gmail. It seems that the best that can be done is to limit the time on in-transit servers to the bare minimum. For me, that's a hard prerequisite before any service level guarantee by an online provider. The law (or its interpretation) has to change first.
Yes. On my Mac, I got the friendly, red "Thanks for choosing NBC Direct!" message, then the slap-in-the-face black-outlined Surgeon General's warning box "Sorry, NBC Direct currently requires Windows XP (Service Pack 2) or Windows Media Center Edition or Windows Vista.". No thanks.
Sounds like the brilliant utility companies of the '60s that trusted the billing and payment amounts that they sent to their customers on punched cards, and expected to trust when the cards were returned with "payment".
Yes, I did. It refers in part to a common owner, for example, a business or school [emphasis mine].
[From the grandparent] Why... would anyone want to use this?
Schools that believe they are strapped for cash do. Several years ago, our kids got McDonald's ads disguised as class exercises. For example, if you buy a Big Mac and fries for such and such prices, what is the total? All illustrated with logos and characters. Teachers would remove the sheets from a child's curriculum upon request, but despite ongoing complaints, administrators ignored the general problem until Consumer Reports reported the practice. There have also been subsidized soft drink machines and TV. They will keep trying and we must continue to object.
I remember a 1960's era play about a family working from home, on terminals, and never having to go anywhere, and how it affected life. I believe it was on NET (National Educational Television), a predecessor of PBS. Anybody else remember this? Perhaps a reference?
Yes, this is nothing new. Every year or so for years I read a batch of these complaints in my newspaper's action line column. A quick search discloses years of this, including ambulance chasers looking for business. Some articles from the search point out that it's hardly just AOL doing this either.
... a 20 line excel formula that required a little programming prowess.
Exactly. Even without stepping into VBA or some other embedded scripting language, any spreadsheet beyond the toy level is basically an exercise in programming. And that is an exercise in mathematics. How many complex spreadsheet authors or users actually have the kind of experience to develop "software" like this? Very few, I'll wager. What's somewhat surprising is that there aren't more of these problems.
Slashdot Mirror
I think the next greatest feat in physics will not be a new discovery, but just figuring out how to explain the current state of knowledge to a high school student. How can the field progress if only a handful of people actually understand the information we now possess?
I'm not sure I understand what you mean. Are you saying we should only pursue theories and bodies of knowledge if the average idiot can understand them?
I don't think so.
One interpretation of the OP's comment is essentially related to Feynman's famous quote: "I couldn't reduce it to the freshman level. That means we really don't understand it.". In other words, if the practitioners don't take the time to be able to explain their work to laymen, they are moving too fast even for their own good.
Another interpretation is this: we are all constantly asked to take action (e.g., vote) on questions that depend more or less on information that many, even the majority, not only don't understand, but have utterly no clue or even intuition about. Even in a representative democracy (to stick with the voting example), we need enough understanding to vet our representatives. The minimum requirements for education need to be not just a little higher, but a lot higher than they are. And a lot of what's missing could be addressed by the OP's proposal.
I bought the extended warranties in three circumstances:
In the '90's and into part of the '00's, my experience with laptops was that every one of them across multiple brands and users failed in some way before an extended warranty's period ended. And that included a startup that grew to as many as 80 people. Yes, the more abusive users had more problems, but even the gentle users did too. And IIRC, even CR recommended them then in this particular case. I had all manner of parts replaced under the warranty during that period, and it paid off. That said, this has become much less true in the last 8 years or so; I don't believe they pay any longer. This was never true for desktops, which have had readily available replacement parts for cheap (so I didn't cover those).
I bought a TV for my ailing mother, wanted a turnkey experience for her if the TV failed, and I wasn't close enough to be able to deal with it if the unit died. The TV didn't fail, but I received the peace of mind I purchased.
The third case was a little different: a home warranty when purchasing a house. It was pretty clear on inspection whether some of the appliances were close to their EOL. And the bonus is that through negotiation, one can often get the seller to pay part or all of the premium. Made money on that one too.
I haven't bought extended warranties on anything else, and it's paid off.
Oh, one special case: I skipped the extended warranty on tires for my car one time, and discovered (very soon after purchase, fortunately) that the installer had drastically over-inflated the tires, which would have, of course, caused accelerated and non-uniform wear. I suspected such nonsense and checked before I'd driven very far, and reduced the pressure to spec. "Coincidence? Perhaps! You be the judge!"
'Nuf said.
He has reviewed cloud backup and other services, yet never mentioned the legal differences between cloud based service storage and storage on your own in-house machine. That indicates that it's not interesting to his audience, which is telling. NPR recently did an article on how the domain holder of your email service is noticed by your potential job interviewer. Their comparison was between Yahoo! and of course AOL on one side (you're a LUser), and GMail on the other. Guess whose privacy actually suffers the most. This is definitely not understood.
There are more than enough of these to handle the largest data center. Start with cthulhu, vaal, landru, mcp (think TRON). And don't deny it: you've named production servers after most if not all of these names, haven't you?
the most common use for manual writing is filling in forms... where cursive is undesirable anyway
Wish I could have convinced my last escrow officer that was true! We were moving to a new area and my spouse couldn't make it to the closing on our new house. So she gave me POA for the closing papers. Guess what? My block-letter initials were fine because that's what I've always used, consistently. But they told me I had to use script for my spouse's signature and initials, even though my version would never match. By now, the only cursive I know well is embedded in my signature, and that's illegible. So the first several pages of paperwork was a struggle as I remembered. And it's those capital letters that are least used, too.
I stopped using script just as soon as my elementary school teachers stopped enforcing it; probably 6th grade.
Something old: Buy "Martin Gardner's Mathematical Games" on CD-ROM. Not for them to read (yet) but for you to read and get ideas for things to do with them.
Something new: Since you're Anonymous, I don't know where you are. But take them here. There is so much amazing hands-on stuff here. There may be similar places elsewhere, but this place is just outstanding.
Something personal: Find ways to bring in things Right Now, as they happen. What you show interest and excitement in will be worth 2x the others, or boost their value. On a suitable occasion (birthday, etc.) give them a small unopened geode. Give them a hammer and safety glasses and let them break it open (well, not the 2-year old yet). If someone sends you steaks kept frozen with dry ice, put the meat away. Instead, get a bowl of warm water, gloves, the hammer and glasses again, and make sci-fi effects. If you're ready to retire that old, dead VCR, then get out the screwdrivers and take it apart with them.
My grandfather-in-law's slide rule is considerably older and still multiplies. My Magnavox tube radio and my Dad's Kodak Medalist camera using 620 film (which is 120 film on a fatter spool) are probably about the same. Assuming I don't have it, a museum astrolabe is far older yet functional, as is my answer to today's poll (the screw).
Deregulate them. Then they'll figure out these things for themselves and there'll be a lot more choices. Let me not have to pick the one at the front of the line, but the one I want with the features I want. I understand the protocol. The protocol is counter-productive.
If the city really thinks that it knows best, then let it run its own operation, but allow real competition. The city will be out of business in no time.
One small step to infinity...
Some utility (FILCOM?), when presented with a particularly difficult input, died with a completely undocumented message in Spanish. Anybody remember this? Another one of that vintage: "You have entered the incorrect password.". Talk about bad luck!
Until this is resolved properly, there is no way I will use an e-mail system that wants to keep my e-mail on its servers (Gmail tries hard to discourage us from deleting our e-mail, even after downloading). This situation has been an open sore for years, and not just for Gmail. It seems that the best that can be done is to limit the time on in-transit servers to the bare minimum. For me, that's a hard prerequisite before any service level guarantee by an online provider. The law (or its interpretation) has to change first.
Yes. On my Mac, I got the friendly, red "Thanks for choosing NBC Direct!" message, then the slap-in-the-face black-outlined Surgeon General's warning box "Sorry, NBC Direct currently requires Windows XP (Service Pack 2) or Windows Media Center Edition or Windows Vista.". No thanks.
You know you're reading a news article when a sentence begins with:
Still, ...
Hmm. I found this telling:
Most of my interviewers at MS could not answer the question... what does an object method look like in memory versus a static method?
and
They're certainly wizards with ... code optimization.
These tell me that they're leaving a lot on the table.
And of course Pascal should not be overlooked as one of the big sources of dumbing down computer science.
Interesting note; thanks.
Sounds like the brilliant utility companies of the '60s that trusted the billing and payment amounts that they sent to their customers on punched cards, and expected to trust when the cards were returned with "payment".
That's the right subject line, but for completely different reasons.
Best Buy is the company that reportedly exposed its customer data through an insecurely configured wireless network. And the company whose employees apparently used an internal site to fool customers. And the company involved with obstruction in overly aggressive MSN sales. In my opinion, they have always had dubious ethics.
They've done a very good job of creating an image of a "retailer that wants to fire customers".
Sounds like M5. Let's just be careful whose engrams are used!
Did you even read the patent?
Yes, I did. It refers in part to a common owner, for example, a business or school [emphasis mine].
[From the grandparent] Why ... would anyone want to use this?
Schools that believe they are strapped for cash do. Several years ago, our kids got McDonald's ads disguised as class exercises. For example, if you buy a Big Mac and fries for such and such prices, what is the total? All illustrated with logos and characters. Teachers would remove the sheets from a child's curriculum upon request, but despite ongoing complaints, administrators ignored the general problem until Consumer Reports reported the practice. There have also been subsidized soft drink machines and TV. They will keep trying and we must continue to object.
an algorithm to "un-blur" a blurred image is a total waste of time
Maybe for a single image, but how about blurred or pixelated informants or (increasingly) logos on TV, with many closely correlated frames?
This is very old news.
More importantly, it's a good reason to avoid all e-mail hosting services like gmail, Yahoo! Mail, etc., until this is resolved.
Walt Mossberg's recent column says they're not any better yet anyway.
I remember a 1960's era play about a family working from home, on terminals, and never having to go anywhere, and how it affected life. I believe it was on NET (National Educational Television), a predecessor of PBS. Anybody else remember this? Perhaps a reference?
Yes, this is nothing new. Every year or so for years I read a batch of these complaints in my newspaper's action line column. A quick search discloses years of this, including ambulance chasers looking for business. Some articles from the search point out that it's hardly just AOL doing this either.
Exactly. Even without stepping into VBA or some other embedded scripting language, any spreadsheet beyond the toy level is basically an exercise in programming. And that is an exercise in mathematics. How many complex spreadsheet authors or users actually have the kind of experience to develop "software" like this? Very few, I'll wager. What's somewhat surprising is that there aren't more of these problems.