Lose your manufacturing economy and you'll lose your knowledge economy, or did you think you could have the cake and eat it too?
My MBA had lead me to believe that through leverage and synergy, not only can we eat the cake and keep it for later, we can also lend out the same cake to others who can in turn do the same, and moreover, the same can be done with the eaten cake which can again be leveraged. Moreover the cake having been eaten, futures contracts on anticipated fertiliser yields can be optioned and bundled with cake shares into massive derivative portfolios which can be sold to speculators adding to overall market liquidity.
There are naysayers who claim that all this cake eating will result in is a big pile of crap. But the smart MBA will have left the cake industry and moved on the the next victim^Hopportunity long before the tab needs to be picked up. Look at Carly Fiorina. After HP, she's moving into politics. Do you know how much money can be made by liquidating^Hleveraging^Hoptimising the US government? Think big, and let the markets decide the winners.
What we need is less technology in Elementary School.
As a mathematician, I would unquestionably back this assertion and would indeed extend it into the later years of Secondary school. My points mostly apply to mathematics, but I suspect they extend beyond it.
The most important piece of technology for a mathematics educator is a blackboard. The most importance piece of high-tech equipment is a sliding blackboard. For students, their most important tools are paper, pencils, and a ruler and compass. This is all the equipment that should ever be used in mathematics education.
Now, technology can be useful, but in elementary instruction it is more of a hindrance than a help. Remember, your ultimate objective is to teach students completely new methods and concepts. This is hard enough as it is without having to introduce them to an entire suite of new technology on top of everything else--often obsolete, inefficient, or unhelpful examples of technology at that.
The first piece of high tech equipment students should be introduced to is a digital calculator for the calculation of trignometric functions and the rest of the elementary functions. These should most certainly NOT be allowed in the primary school cycle, and when introduced should be confined only to the evaluation of such non rational results. In essence, they should only be used as a more modern replacement for the old slide rules and log tables. Nothing more.
A second level mathematics student should preferably never even see a single computer in the classroom before they enter third level education. The only exception to this is for second level computer programming courses, and these should never be made a part of any mathematics curriculum whatsoever. However, once in third level education, computers and computer programming must be introduced as a fundamental tool of modern mathematics; I quote the mathematician Gian-Carlo Rota's who said that "The future belongs to the computer-literate-squared." But the best time to introduce most students to the fundamentals of computers is in third level, after the more fundamental skills in other areas have been mastered.
Make no mistake, we have modern technology suitable for the classroom. We have bigger, cheaper black and white boards. We have better, cheaper pens and copy books for students. Books are numerous and cheaper, or at least they should be. These are the important advancements we have made and which we should allow to impact our schools. Trying to go beyond these basic tools has been a recipe for disaster wherever it has been tried--excepting the handsome profits reaped by the companies who supplied these technologies.
Computers and other high tech equipment should be banned outright from all primary schools. Their presence in secondary schools should be limited to select, computer centric subjects like programming and typewriting. Tech should only be introduced in the senior cycle of second level education and even then should never be used in most subjects. Once in University, technology can be presented--as it always has been--but before that I want students to be able to add fractions, solve quadratic equations, be familiar with trigonometry, and to know what a graph is. If western mathematics educations keeps going the way its going, that type of student is going to disappear from third level institutions, and no amount of computers is going to be able to fix the problem.
The Democratic People's Republic of Korea isn't the best Korea; it's the only Korea, you Capitalist Roadster.
Completely Embrace the Forward Thinking Progress of the People's Informational Movement!! Let The Empowered Voices Of The People Be Audible Across The Web!!* Down With The Internet Imperialists!
*Offer void where in opposition to the rule of the Kim family and the Korean People's Army.
The max value of a signed 32 bit int is 2 147 483 647. It is much more likely that someone set an index value on the database to int years ago and then forgot about it.
Almost 6 years ago I developed a somewhat fundamental technique in computer animation,....
In other words you discovered a mathematical algorithm, and proceeded to patent it.
I have absolutely no sympathy for your difficulties in attempting to monopolise mathematics and in all honesty for the good of wider society I would hope that your attempt fails. Unfortunately, it may very well succeed. And while that will probably not result in benefit to you personally, it will further damage the freedoms of intellectual thought and scientific inquiry in many countries across the world.
The benefits of rewarding you for your discovery are far outweighed by the costs to wider society. Neither you, nor anyone else should be receiving these patents.
My first guess was actually Intel. The "little island" comment lead me to think that the executive had mixed up the UK and Ireland (Intel have a big plant in Ireland). Then again, I wouldn't put it past the executive of any major US company to use the a pejorative like "little island" when referring to the UK. UK-ians need to learn to stop speaking American.
And the only way to win is not to play. And as someone who has never had any social networking accounts of any kind, I'm feeling schadenfreude-nly victorious right about now. Also, a bit lonesome--but the alternative seems to be getting worse every day.
Wow. A story about how joining a social networking site actually turns you into a Pedophile. That sure is a new twist over the standard "Facebook is swarming with Pedos" line. I'm sure that Facebook will be promoting prostitution and terrorism by the end of the year as well, with at least one young life tragically ruined in an accident brought on by Facebook induced stupidity.... . Oh wait...
Actually he's not so far off in his suggestion, but he's missing additional facts. The CMB could in fact be caused by some phenomena giving the universe a certain temperature. But the CMB is not the only evidence for the Big Bang.
I saw a (BBC) educational program once where a scientist was put in a fictional dock, before a court and accused of making the big bang up. It was a nice way of presenting the debate by lamp-shading the fact that, at a basic level, the Big Bang theory is an extraordinary proposition. The program made the point rather well that there were several independent evidences which pointed towards this origin of the universe. The CMB was one, inflation was another, and I think that the proportions of elements might have been the third.
I love to find a link to the program, but I've never been able to find it again. I think it was either a BBC or ITV production. It was definitely British anyway. Their experience with Fred Hoyle probably had a lot to do with it.
The history of post-War British technology has been a long succession of failed innovations which shortly afterwards have been appropriated and successfully marketed by American companies: Jet airliners, liquid crystal displays, public key encryption, home computers, the Web, and Pop Idol. Whichever British scientists don't end up emigrating to the US outright usually end up working for the US economy anyway.
Sadly, as a nation, the British seem not only contented with this state of affairs, but actually quite proud of their "special relationship". I blame the BBC for buying too many syndicated shows.
Well, since most Bugs Bunny films were made in the 1950's, with Bugs being in his teens at the time, I think the point could be successfully argued that images of Bugs in a dress constitute porn and indeed child porn of some ki--oh, wait....
The reason the courts see it this way is because of the distinction the legal system places on written vs oral evidence. Oral evidence is obvious; the person giving it may or may not be telling the truth. Written evidence however has a more privileged status. Once you've written something down, you can't "take it back". It's out there as physical evidence and can be used against you. This is why even the most gung ho characters will back up if you ask them to put things in writing. The written word is powerful rope with which to hang yourself.
As far as most judges and lawyers are concerned, data on computers is simply another form of the written word, and so anything you've "written" there--encrypted or not--is legitimate evidence waiting to be used against you. In some sense they are in fact right. Personally, I view computer data by its very nature to be more abstract and far more transitory than the traditional written word, and so worthy of less... distinction as evidence in a court. But that said, it is a (quasi-)permanent record of events and that's what courts are interested in.
Bottom line, the old rules still apply. If you don't want to reveal something, never, ever write it down. Encrypting it on your computer is just not good enough. If you don't want people reading it and aren't willing to take a risk, then you either need to delete the data or better yet not write it down in the first place. All that said, encryption is preferable to just leaving your papers lying around, but don't expect encryption alone to magically make your written words disappear.
Near Inferno, West Virginia Fiery Mountains, pyroclastic rivers Life is doomed there, 'midst the blackened trees See the mighty mountains tremb'lin like leaves
Lava flows, take me home To the place that erupts West Virginia, baleful mama Take me home, Lava flows.
Try finding out how the offside rule in soccer works sometime; preferably from a soccer fan. I suspect you will learn to commiserate with your fellows ambivalence towards technology.
But its 19 mile ascent showed the plucky determination of the American family unit, and as such it may as well have reached the moon! That's what really counts here, and it's important that people are told about this feat so they feel better about things.
Meanwhile, the Chinese are sending an actual spacecraft to the moon. But, whatever... .
There are (fiction) films and books about Aushwitz. If those forms of entertainment are acceptable, why not a game?
Because games are crass, uncouth and juvenile, and are played by people of the same inclination; at least, that's the situation as far as the baby boom generation is concerned. To them, only movies are cool and sophisticated. And anything by that Spielburg guy who made that cool Jaws film they liked in the 70s has got to be classified as art, because he's really good.
Which isn't to say that war/holocaust films like Schindler's List and Saving Private Ryan are bad; but their melodramatic tones and convenient omissions of difficult details make it clear that they are entertainment first and education second. Schindler's list--lauded as the greatest holocaust film ever--features one of the few camps where most people got out alive. Despite earlier scenes set in the Warsaw ghetto, the film effectively dodged the bullet by turning back at the gates of Auschwitz.
By contrast, this game actually does try to inform people from the outset and highlights the essential details of its subject matter. It's made clear to players that getting across the Iron Curtain involved the risk of death and that even the guards were themselves were willing to risk it in some cases. The main point is made clear; East Germany was a prison and people would have to risk death to escape. People died trying to get across the Iron Curtain. In modern times, with many East Germans waxing nostalgic about their past, being this frank about the realities of the situation is important.
But no. This is a "vid-eo gaa-me". A crass, unsophisticated, junk pastime which offends more than it informs. If people want to learn "the truth" about crossing the iron curtain, they can just read a bestselling novel of someone who made it across uneventfully, or else watch a (made for TV) movie about the drama of the crossing--both usually with a love interest/sex scene thrown in for good measure. What can playing an anonymous soul being shot by an anonymous guard on an anonymous night on an anonymous part of the 1400km border possible teach anyone about a totalitarian society? Better to just cast a load of pretty actors who escape into the sunset as the mean head of the Stazi throws his hat on the ground in frustration.
The last protest I took part in was the worldwide march against the Iraq War. There were literally millions of people marching across the world. Most major cities globally had at least a few hundred thousand people all protesting against it. But the war happened anyway, and by and large the protests achieved absolutely nothing. Most politicians and pundits didn't even comment on them, at the time or since.
So forget popular protest. If you want to make a difference or change the world, buy a newspaper.
Slashdot Mirror
Which all pales in comparison to....
+ the cost of managements bonuses.
Becoming Communist.
My MBA had lead me to believe that through leverage and synergy, not only can we eat the cake and keep it for later, we can also lend out the same cake to others who can in turn do the same, and moreover, the same can be done with the eaten cake which can again be leveraged. Moreover the cake having been eaten, futures contracts on anticipated fertiliser yields can be optioned and bundled with cake shares into massive derivative portfolios which can be sold to speculators adding to overall market liquidity.
There are naysayers who claim that all this cake eating will result in is a big pile of crap. But the smart MBA will have left the cake industry and moved on the the next victim^Hopportunity long before the tab needs to be picked up. Look at Carly Fiorina. After HP, she's moving into politics. Do you know how much money can be made by liquidating^Hleveraging^Hoptimising the US government? Think big, and let the markets decide the winners.
As a mathematician, I would unquestionably back this assertion and would indeed extend it into the later years of Secondary school. My points mostly apply to mathematics, but I suspect they extend beyond it.
The most important piece of technology for a mathematics educator is a blackboard. The most importance piece of high-tech equipment is a sliding blackboard. For students, their most important tools are paper, pencils, and a ruler and compass. This is all the equipment that should ever be used in mathematics education.
Now, technology can be useful, but in elementary instruction it is more of a hindrance than a help. Remember, your ultimate objective is to teach students completely new methods and concepts. This is hard enough as it is without having to introduce them to an entire suite of new technology on top of everything else--often obsolete, inefficient, or unhelpful examples of technology at that.
The first piece of high tech equipment students should be introduced to is a digital calculator for the calculation of trignometric functions and the rest of the elementary functions. These should most certainly NOT be allowed in the primary school cycle, and when introduced should be confined only to the evaluation of such non rational results. In essence, they should only be used as a more modern replacement for the old slide rules and log tables. Nothing more.
A second level mathematics student should preferably never even see a single computer in the classroom before they enter third level education. The only exception to this is for second level computer programming courses, and these should never be made a part of any mathematics curriculum whatsoever. However, once in third level education, computers and computer programming must be introduced as a fundamental tool of modern mathematics; I quote the mathematician Gian-Carlo Rota's who said that "The future belongs to the computer-literate-squared." But the best time to introduce most students to the fundamentals of computers is in third level, after the more fundamental skills in other areas have been mastered.
Make no mistake, we have modern technology suitable for the classroom. We have bigger, cheaper black and white boards. We have better, cheaper pens and copy books for students. Books are numerous and cheaper, or at least they should be. These are the important advancements we have made and which we should allow to impact our schools. Trying to go beyond these basic tools has been a recipe for disaster wherever it has been tried--excepting the handsome profits reaped by the companies who supplied these technologies.
Computers and other high tech equipment should be banned outright from all primary schools. Their presence in secondary schools should be limited to select, computer centric subjects like programming and typewriting. Tech should only be introduced in the senior cycle of second level education and even then should never be used in most subjects. Once in University, technology can be presented--as it always has been--but before that I want students to be able to add fractions, solve quadratic equations, be familiar with trigonometry, and to know what a graph is. If western mathematics educations keeps going the way its going, that type of student is going to disappear from third level institutions, and no amount of computers is going to be able to fix the problem.
The Democratic People's Republic of Korea isn't the best Korea; it's the only Korea, you Capitalist Roadster.
Completely Embrace the Forward Thinking Progress of the People's Informational Movement!! Let The Empowered Voices Of The People Be Audible Across The Web!!* Down With The Internet Imperialists!
*Offer void where in opposition to the rule of the Kim family and the Korean People's Army.
And could any of us have really blamed them?
Then why did you even have children in the first place?
In other words you discovered a mathematical algorithm, and proceeded to patent it.
I have absolutely no sympathy for your difficulties in attempting to monopolise mathematics and in all honesty for the good of wider society I would hope that your attempt fails. Unfortunately, it may very well succeed. And while that will probably not result in benefit to you personally, it will further damage the freedoms of intellectual thought and scientific inquiry in many countries across the world.
The benefits of rewarding you for your discovery are far outweighed by the costs to wider society. Neither you, nor anyone else should be receiving these patents.
My first guess was actually Intel. The "little island" comment lead me to think that the executive had mixed up the UK and Ireland (Intel have a big plant in Ireland). Then again, I wouldn't put it past the executive of any major US company to use the a pejorative like "little island" when referring to the UK. UK-ians need to learn to stop speaking American.
And the only way to win is not to play. And as someone who has never had any social networking accounts of any kind, I'm feeling schadenfreude-nly victorious right about now. Also, a bit lonesome--but the alternative seems to be getting worse every day.
Wow. A story about how joining a social networking site actually turns you into a Pedophile. That sure is a new twist over the standard "Facebook is swarming with Pedos" line. I'm sure that Facebook will be promoting prostitution and terrorism by the end of the year as well, with at least one young life tragically ruined in an accident brought on by Facebook induced stupidity.... . Oh wait...
Will they also steal the designs of our Slashdot favicons?
Actually he's not so far off in his suggestion, but he's missing additional facts. The CMB could in fact be caused by some phenomena giving the universe a certain temperature. But the CMB is not the only evidence for the Big Bang.
I saw a (BBC) educational program once where a scientist was put in a fictional dock, before a court and accused of making the big bang up. It was a nice way of presenting the debate by lamp-shading the fact that, at a basic level, the Big Bang theory is an extraordinary proposition. The program made the point rather well that there were several independent evidences which pointed towards this origin of the universe. The CMB was one, inflation was another, and I think that the proportions of elements might have been the third.
I love to find a link to the program, but I've never been able to find it again. I think it was either a BBC or ITV production. It was definitely British anyway. Their experience with Fred Hoyle probably had a lot to do with it.
Heh. The part about the consulate handing the guy over had me convinced he tried to sell something to the Britain, and they only allow US/UK technology exchanges to go one way.
The history of post-War British technology has been a long succession of failed innovations which shortly afterwards have been appropriated and successfully marketed by American companies: Jet airliners, liquid crystal displays, public key encryption, home computers, the Web, and Pop Idol. Whichever British scientists don't end up emigrating to the US outright usually end up working for the US economy anyway.
Sadly, as a nation, the British seem not only contented with this state of affairs, but actually quite proud of their "special relationship". I blame the BBC for buying too many syndicated shows.
Well, since most Bugs Bunny films were made in the 1950's, with Bugs being in his teens at the time, I think the point could be successfully argued that images of Bugs in a dress constitute porn and indeed child porn of some ki--oh, wait....
The reason the courts see it this way is because of the distinction the legal system places on written vs oral evidence. Oral evidence is obvious; the person giving it may or may not be telling the truth. Written evidence however has a more privileged status. Once you've written something down, you can't "take it back". It's out there as physical evidence and can be used against you. This is why even the most gung ho characters will back up if you ask them to put things in writing. The written word is powerful rope with which to hang yourself.
As far as most judges and lawyers are concerned, data on computers is simply another form of the written word, and so anything you've "written" there--encrypted or not--is legitimate evidence waiting to be used against you. In some sense they are in fact right. Personally, I view computer data by its very nature to be more abstract and far more transitory than the traditional written word, and so worthy of less... distinction as evidence in a court. But that said, it is a (quasi-)permanent record of events and that's what courts are interested in.
Bottom line, the old rules still apply. If you don't want to reveal something, never, ever write it down. Encrypting it on your computer is just not good enough. If you don't want people reading it and aren't willing to take a risk, then you either need to delete the data or better yet not write it down in the first place. All that said, encryption is preferable to just leaving your papers lying around, but don't expect encryption alone to magically make your written words disappear.
Reverse image searches like TinEye blow this idea out of the water before it's even begun.
It was sent in binary. It a court that would probably count.
Near Inferno, West Virginia
Fiery Mountains, pyroclastic rivers
Life is doomed there, 'midst the blackened trees
See the mighty mountains tremb'lin like leaves
Lava flows, take me home
To the place that erupts
West Virginia, baleful mama
Take me home, Lava flows.
Try finding out how the offside rule in soccer works sometime; preferably from a soccer fan. I suspect you will learn to commiserate with your fellows ambivalence towards technology.
But its 19 mile ascent showed the plucky determination of the American family unit, and as such it may as well have reached the moon! That's what really counts here, and it's important that people are told about this feat so they feel better about things.
Meanwhile, the Chinese are sending an actual spacecraft to the moon. But, whatever... .
Because games are crass, uncouth and juvenile, and are played by people of the same inclination; at least, that's the situation as far as the baby boom generation is concerned. To them, only movies are cool and sophisticated. And anything by that Spielburg guy who made that cool Jaws film they liked in the 70s has got to be classified as art, because he's really good.
Which isn't to say that war/holocaust films like Schindler's List and Saving Private Ryan are bad; but their melodramatic tones and convenient omissions of difficult details make it clear that they are entertainment first and education second. Schindler's list--lauded as the greatest holocaust film ever--features one of the few camps where most people got out alive. Despite earlier scenes set in the Warsaw ghetto, the film effectively dodged the bullet by turning back at the gates of Auschwitz.
By contrast, this game actually does try to inform people from the outset and highlights the essential details of its subject matter. It's made clear to players that getting across the Iron Curtain involved the risk of death and that even the guards were themselves were willing to risk it in some cases. The main point is made clear; East Germany was a prison and people would have to risk death to escape. People died trying to get across the Iron Curtain. In modern times, with many East Germans waxing nostalgic about their past, being this frank about the realities of the situation is important.
But no. This is a "vid-eo gaa-me". A crass, unsophisticated, junk pastime which offends more than it informs. If people want to learn "the truth" about crossing the iron curtain, they can just read a bestselling novel of someone who made it across uneventfully, or else watch a (made for TV) movie about the drama of the crossing--both usually with a love interest/sex scene thrown in for good measure. What can playing an anonymous soul being shot by an anonymous guard on an anonymous night on an anonymous part of the 1400km border possible teach anyone about a totalitarian society? Better to just cast a load of pretty actors who escape into the sunset as the mean head of the Stazi throws his hat on the ground in frustration.
Very true.
The last protest I took part in was the worldwide march against the Iraq War. There were literally millions of people marching across the world. Most major cities globally had at least a few hundred thousand people all protesting against it. But the war happened anyway, and by and large the protests achieved absolutely nothing. Most politicians and pundits didn't even comment on them, at the time or since.
So forget popular protest. If you want to make a difference or change the world, buy a newspaper.
I smell a Mod!