My bad then. I didn't get any of that context from "I got drawn (without my intention) into three 20 minute sessions, talking to high school students about computer science and programming," which is all he said about why he's there.
The only other context I have to draw on is my own experience speaking on front of students, where what most of the students want is to not be sitting in class.
The most valuable thing you can give them is insight about your experience, not just as as someone in the technology field, but as someone who has had a long career in any field. They are high-school students - they go to football practice, go home and Facebook and play video games every night, they have no idea what it's like to find or to have a career. Ask the teacher to introduce you in a way that stresses that you have been in an important and growing industry for decades and you know what things are like out there, and to remind the students that they are all going to need to find jobs and really need to think about what they want to spend their future doing. Give a 3 or 4 minute introduction of yourself and what you do and then open it up for questions about anything the students are willing to ask, about technology or otherwise.
This way, you at least give students who want to draw from your experience the opportunity to do so. Not to make any assumptions about your presentation skills or ability to put together an engaging demonstration, but anything you do (especially related to computers) will put most of the class to sleep. I watched Steve Wozniak lecture to a classroom of 200 college students and I think about three of them were even remotely interested in anything he had to say - a not-Steve-Wozniak in a high school classroom will be lucky to do that well unless the students realize they have an opportunity to learn how they are going to survive and enjoy a life without Mom and Dad in a few years and can capitalize on that opportunity.
I see some comments here encouraging you to take the classes from the other requirements, insisting that they are good for you and your career long-term. I agree with them, and my message is essentially the same, but I'm going to take a different approach to my response in case they can't impress upon you the importance of those other subjects.
A bachelor's degree by definition requires education on a variety of enriching subjects other than your major. It signifies that you have received an education on those subjects. You are requesting a means to obtain something without earning it.
If you want a computer science education without the other requirements, there are a lot of options out there, including free ones (see MIT's OpenCourseWare). If you want some kind of proof that you have obtained a computer science education without the other requirements, there are trade schools. If you want a bachelor's degree, then you need to put in the work to get one, and that includes courses on subjects outside of CS.
Clearly, then, this malware was engineered by Apple itself to cull from its userbase those that it felt were not worthy of their computing experience. I mean, seriously, no one who dares install apps from anywhere other than the App Store(TM) should be able to call themselves an Apple user.
Today shouldn't be a day to back up your data, it should be a day to set up automated backups. This is where people need education - even laypeople understand the concept of a backup copy of something, they just don't know about modern tools that can be set up to do it for you automatically.
There's no excuse anymore to not have an automated backup system in place.
So it's "orwellian" to insist that the people who receive my software, via you, have the same rights as you did, and can use altered versions of it freely in place of the versions you gave them?
Maybe not "orwellian," but certainly not liberating. If your software was truly free, you wouldn't be insisting anything, you would just distribute the software.
That said, I of course understand your argument. It's like trying to achieve peace. Some will argue that war is needed, some will argue that we should all just be peaceful. In the case of freedom, some will argue that certain restrictions that attempt to enforce freedom are the best way to get there, others say "if you want to promote freedom, just make your work truly free."
Why does Groupon retain the "tipping point" for all their deals? My understanding is that Groupon is the second or third iteration in a series that was based on this idea, and I suppose it was interesting when they were still a startup, no one had heard of them and businesses wanted a little insurance on their investment. But now that they're big, I don't see how it's still relevant. Since they started getting big press, has there been a single Groupon in any market that has failed to hit the tipping point?
Today's deal in Seattle tipped at 100 before 7AM and there are currently over 3000 purchases, with about 50 taking place just within the span of me writing this post. If anything, it seems like the right move now would be to emphasize purchasing before selling out, a la woot.
Part of Groupon's value is that they help businesses plan deals and write excellent and differentiating copy to sell them, and they do a good job of it, so I don't see why they still have the tipping point mechanic. Does anyone even look at it when they evaluate a deal?
My knee-jerk reaction to the "games are not art" crap was orthogonal to most peoples' - "fine then, nothing is art."
Film certainly isn't. I mean, hey, who doesn't like going out on a date to a movie, or having some friends over to watch 300, or putting a rom-com on in the background while making dinner? We're not there for the movie, we're there to enjoy each others' company. Movies are just passive, background entertainment, not to mention totally commercial, and most of them are devoid of any artistic content. Ebert's wasting his time.
Painting and sculpture certainly aren't. I can blast through the Louvre in an hour or two and see most of the crap hung up on the walls there and not really be affected by it. Lots of people can make pretty pictures. Besides, most of "the good stuff" was made by people supported by rich people with agendas, and most everything else is devoid of true artistic content. Talk about commercial.
Writing most definitely isn't, regardless of the era it came from. Who ever got anything out of spending hours consuming a made-up story via one of the slowest mediums we have for transmitting information? Besides, most written word is crap.
Music? Feh. I've had it with corporate jingles, elevator music, and films that all have the same generic orchestral score. Besides, music has pretty much been distilled into a science now anyways - we know what sounds pleasant to human ears and what sound discordant. Besides, most of it is just noise. That certainly precludes it from being art.
Photography is so far from art it's not even funny. I mean, come on, you're taking stuff that already exists and recording it into a saved image. And nowadays, most people take that image and edit it anyways! Not to mention that most photos are totally uninspired.
What's that? You mean you can take creative expression in all of the above mediums and ponder it, learn about it and its history, be inspired and moved by it by it, read into its meaning, classify it into genres, think about the author's state of mind when he created it, compare individual works within or across genres, authors and time periods, and in general appreciate it? Hm. Wonder if anyone's ever done that with games.
Just because a lot of people sit and stare at games to kill time or chill with their friends doesn't mean they're not art, and just because games are part of a highly commercialized industry doesn't mean they're not art, and just because there are probably a lot of games out there that shouldn't be considered are doesn't mean that games as a whole aren't art. All of those statements apply equally Ebert's preferred art form as well. Both games and film (and writing, painting, sculpture, music, photography, underwater basket weaving and every other art form out there) are art because they can be appreciated, interpreted, and connected with. People who insist that art is primarily comprised of the mediums that they care about are either snobs or are trying to reassure themselves that the time and money they spend on what they like is more valuable than the time and money that other people spend on what they like.
What it ultimately means is that there are different laws for Geeks and hackers than for the rest of society, to the benefit of the former, as it should be.
Why does this sound so familiar? Corporation says:
What it ultimately means is that there are different laws for large corporations than for the rest of society, to the benefit of the former, as it should be.
Ah, there we go. Laws are never for us, they're always for the other guys, right?
Discussion in these threads always centers on cost and not value, and value is where the center of the struggle is. How does one determine the value of a copy of an artistic work in a digital format, especially in comparison to ye olden times when buying music meant buying a physical object that couldn't be perfectly, freely and infinitely copied? The industry would like to pretend that the value hasn't changed. Rampant copyright infringement results in some pretty heavy cognitive dissonance on the part of consumers: is this song worth what I paid for it, is it worth more (obviously I wouldn't have paid for it if it was worth less... right?), or is it worth nothing because it doesn't cost anything to make a copy that is as good as the original?
A translator from one top-heavy system to another made by the company that has a vested interested in the source system, which happens to be proprietary, is not pretty. Who'd have thunk it?
I don't think that's quite right, and I blame the article for what I believe is misleading wording:
"The online retailer said Thursday that it would shutter its Irving distribution facility April 12 and cancel plans to hire as many as 1,000 additional workers rather than pay Texas what the state says is owed in uncollected sales tax.
I could be wrong, but I don't think "rather" is the right word there. Whether or not they pay the bill is up to the negotiation and appeal process. I believe what Amazon is saying as part of the negotiation/appeal is "fine, if you make us pay the tax, we'll pack up and take our business to another state that isn't going to charge us such taxes in the future, and you can forget about the 1000 jobs we were going to add to your economy. Oh, and have fun dealing with all of our soon-to-be unemployed Texas staff."
itâ(TM)s part of a series of prank sites, the first two of which aimed at Google and Amazon, intended to make people think more about data in the age of internet behemoths
Making it a Facebook app would have largely defeated the point. The impact is made greater by removing the data from the context of Facebook entirely and putting it up somewhere else in another context.
I agree with the notion that Google is riding it's legacy of taking search from something that was literally an impossible problem to solve to something that was instant. It earned every bit of that, but search has entered a new era.
Bing is now competing at the forefront, which is taking search from finding results in an index to finding answers to questions and solving problems. "Decision engine" is a bit overhyped, but it's the right direction to move in, in my opinion. This is a good thing, because Bing and Google will push each other.
I generally refer friends and people I know to Bing because they tend to treat search engines like a natural language processor, or as a companion that can help them answer questions and solve problems.
Google is still (much) more effective if your Google-fu is powerful, but if it's not, Bing can be a bit friendlier and better at getting you to what you want to see.
I don't think we're going to see this blow up like the iPhone app store. I don't think people are crazy for apps - they are crazy for mobile apps. The mobile platform offers a specific set of benefits and drawbacks that makes it ideal for the app explosion we've seen:
- Location awareness - Accelerometer functionality - Forward and/or rear-facing cameras - The novelty and utility of the web in your pocket - Bandwidth limitations and limitations imposed by the form factor, reducing the utility of what's possible in the browser and raising the relative value of proprietary applications designed for the form factor
In my head, the average Apple fan's interaction with the store will be something like the following: "Awesome, a new app store for my desktop/laptop! Let's check it out.... oh. I guess I don't really need any apps because Safari already gets me everywhere I need to go, and rest of these aren't apps, they're just programs." People aren't as likely to pick up cheap distractions and website-replacement apps for a desktop or laptop. Maybe it will make them more likely to purchase higher-priced software, but this isn't going to be another "app revolution."
Explain to students that there aren't many professional work environments that ban either, so they need to get used to managing their own usage, and get used to people around them doing things on their laptops. It's an opportunity for people who have problems with either or both to learn that if they can't rein in their attention, they're going to fail at class, at work and at life.
For those that say that it's not the job of the class to teach these lessons, I agree - it's simply the students' job to take control of their own life. It's no different than someone tailgating you on the freeway or cutting in front of you in line. University classrooms are learning environments and professors and TAs should help enforce that, but they aren't surrounded by some magical force field that entitles you to a guardian angel when you walk in.
If Joe Laptop won't turn off Netflix or Quake Live, grow a pair and ask them to turn it off, or just get up and move. Don't sit next to him next time. If your classroom has become a LAN party with every student except for you participating, talk to the TA or professor after class and ask them to help. It is their responsibility to help ensure that you have an opportunity to learn; it's not their job to guarantee that you'll have a private fort wherever you decide to sit.
Split-screen gaming is dying because it sucks. I would love to get a great multiplayer FPS or racing experience on one screen for the convenience of it, but it's just not going to happen.
I think there's lots of space in the market for more 2-4 player "same screen" games, and I wish developers would make more of them.
Facebook isn't leaking your personal information to make money, they're doing it because they genuinely misunderstand why people need to keep some things private.
I don't think they misunderstand so much as they don't care. With half a billion users that flinch for a day or two every time some new feature is released and then settle into it like it's always been a vital part of their lives, I can hardly blame them. The company is there to make money and make a dent in the universe, and they can't do either if people turn off all the features they introduce.
Now we're just a hop and a skip away from "Once users are banned from browsing non-Google-approved websites or attempting to use non-Google services, security, usability and more are improved."
For those that always say "but you can modify it!" or "well you don't have to use it" (the latter of which is true even for Apple's iEcosphere), that doesn't address the problem. The problem is that a whole lot of people will see the convenience and the stability and they won't modify it and they will use it, making the whole concept of walled gardens and lockin more popular among consumers who want ease (as opposed to choice) and companies who want to make money. Large groups of people will forget that they ever had a choice to begin with. I'm not trying to evoke 1984 here or say that we're all going to be slaves to Google, but in the world of consumer technology right now, the leading idea that is getting the most users and making the most money is "step into the [Apple/Microsoft/Google/Facebook] world and bask in the luxury of having everything work together and not having to make choices."
Just like the old adage about privacy and security, is it worth trading choice for convenience?
Slashdot Mirror
The Manhole, arguably the spiritual predecessor to Myst, was built in HyperTalk.
My bad then. I didn't get any of that context from "I got drawn (without my intention) into three 20 minute sessions, talking to high school students about computer science and programming," which is all he said about why he's there.
The only other context I have to draw on is my own experience speaking on front of students, where what most of the students want is to not be sitting in class.
Do the Q&A.
The most valuable thing you can give them is insight about your experience, not just as as someone in the technology field, but as someone who has had a long career in any field. They are high-school students - they go to football practice, go home and Facebook and play video games every night, they have no idea what it's like to find or to have a career. Ask the teacher to introduce you in a way that stresses that you have been in an important and growing industry for decades and you know what things are like out there, and to remind the students that they are all going to need to find jobs and really need to think about what they want to spend their future doing. Give a 3 or 4 minute introduction of yourself and what you do and then open it up for questions about anything the students are willing to ask, about technology or otherwise.
This way, you at least give students who want to draw from your experience the opportunity to do so. Not to make any assumptions about your presentation skills or ability to put together an engaging demonstration, but anything you do (especially related to computers) will put most of the class to sleep. I watched Steve Wozniak lecture to a classroom of 200 college students and I think about three of them were even remotely interested in anything he had to say - a not-Steve-Wozniak in a high school classroom will be lucky to do that well unless the students realize they have an opportunity to learn how they are going to survive and enjoy a life without Mom and Dad in a few years and can capitalize on that opportunity.
I see some comments here encouraging you to take the classes from the other requirements, insisting that they are good for you and your career long-term. I agree with them, and my message is essentially the same, but I'm going to take a different approach to my response in case they can't impress upon you the importance of those other subjects.
A bachelor's degree by definition requires education on a variety of enriching subjects other than your major. It signifies that you have received an education on those subjects. You are requesting a means to obtain something without earning it.
If you want a computer science education without the other requirements, there are a lot of options out there, including free ones (see MIT's OpenCourseWare). If you want some kind of proof that you have obtained a computer science education without the other requirements, there are trade schools. If you want a bachelor's degree, then you need to put in the work to get one, and that includes courses on subjects outside of CS.
Clearly, then, this malware was engineered by Apple itself to cull from its userbase those that it felt were not worthy of their computing experience. I mean, seriously, no one who dares install apps from anywhere other than the App Store(TM) should be able to call themselves an Apple user.
Today shouldn't be a day to back up your data, it should be a day to set up automated backups. This is where people need education - even laypeople understand the concept of a backup copy of something, they just don't know about modern tools that can be set up to do it for you automatically.
There's no excuse anymore to not have an automated backup system in place.
So it's "orwellian" to insist that the people who receive my software, via you, have the same rights as you did, and can use altered versions of it freely in place of the versions you gave them?
Maybe not "orwellian," but certainly not liberating. If your software was truly free, you wouldn't be insisting anything, you would just distribute the software.
That said, I of course understand your argument. It's like trying to achieve peace. Some will argue that war is needed, some will argue that we should all just be peaceful. In the case of freedom, some will argue that certain restrictions that attempt to enforce freedom are the best way to get there, others say "if you want to promote freedom, just make your work truly free."
Why does Groupon retain the "tipping point" for all their deals? My understanding is that Groupon is the second or third iteration in a series that was based on this idea, and I suppose it was interesting when they were still a startup, no one had heard of them and businesses wanted a little insurance on their investment. But now that they're big, I don't see how it's still relevant. Since they started getting big press, has there been a single Groupon in any market that has failed to hit the tipping point?
Today's deal in Seattle tipped at 100 before 7AM and there are currently over 3000 purchases, with about 50 taking place just within the span of me writing this post. If anything, it seems like the right move now would be to emphasize purchasing before selling out, a la woot.
Part of Groupon's value is that they help businesses plan deals and write excellent and differentiating copy to sell them, and they do a good job of it, so I don't see why they still have the tipping point mechanic. Does anyone even look at it when they evaluate a deal?
My knee-jerk reaction to the "games are not art" crap was orthogonal to most peoples' - "fine then, nothing is art."
Film certainly isn't. I mean, hey, who doesn't like going out on a date to a movie, or having some friends over to watch 300, or putting a rom-com on in the background while making dinner? We're not there for the movie, we're there to enjoy each others' company. Movies are just passive, background entertainment, not to mention totally commercial, and most of them are devoid of any artistic content. Ebert's wasting his time.
Painting and sculpture certainly aren't. I can blast through the Louvre in an hour or two and see most of the crap hung up on the walls there and not really be affected by it. Lots of people can make pretty pictures. Besides, most of "the good stuff" was made by people supported by rich people with agendas, and most everything else is devoid of true artistic content. Talk about commercial.
Writing most definitely isn't, regardless of the era it came from. Who ever got anything out of spending hours consuming a made-up story via one of the slowest mediums we have for transmitting information? Besides, most written word is crap.
Music? Feh. I've had it with corporate jingles, elevator music, and films that all have the same generic orchestral score. Besides, music has pretty much been distilled into a science now anyways - we know what sounds pleasant to human ears and what sound discordant. Besides, most of it is just noise. That certainly precludes it from being art.
Photography is so far from art it's not even funny. I mean, come on, you're taking stuff that already exists and recording it into a saved image. And nowadays, most people take that image and edit it anyways! Not to mention that most photos are totally uninspired.
What's that? You mean you can take creative expression in all of the above mediums and ponder it, learn about it and its history, be inspired and moved by it by it, read into its meaning, classify it into genres, think about the author's state of mind when he created it, compare individual works within or across genres, authors and time periods, and in general appreciate it? Hm. Wonder if anyone's ever done that with games.
Just because a lot of people sit and stare at games to kill time or chill with their friends doesn't mean they're not art, and just because games are part of a highly commercialized industry doesn't mean they're not art, and just because there are probably a lot of games out there that shouldn't be considered are doesn't mean that games as a whole aren't art. All of those statements apply equally Ebert's preferred art form as well. Both games and film (and writing, painting, sculpture, music, photography, underwater basket weaving and every other art form out there) are art because they can be appreciated, interpreted, and connected with. People who insist that art is primarily comprised of the mediums that they care about are either snobs or are trying to reassure themselves that the time and money they spend on what they like is more valuable than the time and money that other people spend on what they like.
Geek says:
What it ultimately means is that there are different laws for Geeks and hackers than for the rest of society, to the benefit of the former, as it should be.
Why does this sound so familiar?
Corporation says:
What it ultimately means is that there are different laws for large corporations than for the rest of society, to the benefit of the former, as it should be.
Ah, there we go. Laws are never for us, they're always for the other guys, right?
Discussion in these threads always centers on cost and not value, and value is where the center of the struggle is. How does one determine the value of a copy of an artistic work in a digital format, especially in comparison to ye olden times when buying music meant buying a physical object that couldn't be perfectly, freely and infinitely copied? The industry would like to pretend that the value hasn't changed. Rampant copyright infringement results in some pretty heavy cognitive dissonance on the part of consumers: is this song worth what I paid for it, is it worth more (obviously I wouldn't have paid for it if it was worth less... right?), or is it worth nothing because it doesn't cost anything to make a copy that is as good as the original?
A translator from one top-heavy system to another made by the company that has a vested interested in the source system, which happens to be proprietary, is not pretty. Who'd have thunk it?
It's not real GPS, as in, it doesn't receive and act on signals from the GPS satellites.
Yes it does.
"The online retailer said Thursday that it would shutter its Irving distribution facility April 12 and cancel plans to hire as many as 1,000 additional workers rather than pay Texas what the state says is owed in uncollected sales tax.
I could be wrong, but I don't think "rather" is the right word there. Whether or not they pay the bill is up to the negotiation and appeal process. I believe what Amazon is saying as part of the negotiation/appeal is "fine, if you make us pay the tax, we'll pack up and take our business to another state that isn't going to charge us such taxes in the future, and you can forget about the 1000 jobs we were going to add to your economy. Oh, and have fun dealing with all of our soon-to-be unemployed Texas staff."
itâ(TM)s part of a series of prank sites, the first two of which aimed at Google and Amazon, intended to make people think more about data in the age of internet behemoths
Making it a Facebook app would have largely defeated the point. The impact is made greater by removing the data from the context of Facebook entirely and putting it up somewhere else in another context.
I agree with the notion that Google is riding it's legacy of taking search from something that was literally an impossible problem to solve to something that was instant. It earned every bit of that, but search has entered a new era.
Bing is now competing at the forefront, which is taking search from finding results in an index to finding answers to questions and solving problems. "Decision engine" is a bit overhyped, but it's the right direction to move in, in my opinion. This is a good thing, because Bing and Google will push each other.
I generally refer friends and people I know to Bing because they tend to treat search engines like a natural language processor, or as a companion that can help them answer questions and solve problems.
Google is still (much) more effective if your Google-fu is powerful, but if it's not, Bing can be a bit friendlier and better at getting you to what you want to see.
I don't think we're going to see this blow up like the iPhone app store. I don't think people are crazy for apps - they are crazy for mobile apps. The mobile platform offers a specific set of benefits and drawbacks that makes it ideal for the app explosion we've seen:
- Location awareness
- Accelerometer functionality
- Forward and/or rear-facing cameras
- The novelty and utility of the web in your pocket
- Bandwidth limitations and limitations imposed by the form factor, reducing the utility of what's possible in the browser and raising the relative value of proprietary applications designed for the form factor
In my head, the average Apple fan's interaction with the store will be something like the following: "Awesome, a new app store for my desktop/laptop! Let's check it out.... oh. I guess I don't really need any apps because Safari already gets me everywhere I need to go, and rest of these aren't apps, they're just programs." People aren't as likely to pick up cheap distractions and website-replacement apps for a desktop or laptop. Maybe it will make them more likely to purchase higher-priced software, but this isn't going to be another "app revolution."
let's ban them because writing offers better recall and less personal distractions.
Instead of treating the students like small children, why not let them decide what works best for them?
Keep the laptops, keep the wifi.
Explain to students that there aren't many professional work environments that ban either, so they need to get used to managing their own usage, and get used to people around them doing things on their laptops. It's an opportunity for people who have problems with either or both to learn that if they can't rein in their attention, they're going to fail at class, at work and at life.
For those that say that it's not the job of the class to teach these lessons, I agree - it's simply the students' job to take control of their own life. It's no different than someone tailgating you on the freeway or cutting in front of you in line. University classrooms are learning environments and professors and TAs should help enforce that, but they aren't surrounded by some magical force field that entitles you to a guardian angel when you walk in.
If Joe Laptop won't turn off Netflix or Quake Live, grow a pair and ask them to turn it off, or just get up and move. Don't sit next to him next time. If your classroom has become a LAN party with every student except for you participating, talk to the TA or professor after class and ask them to help. It is their responsibility to help ensure that you have an opportunity to learn; it's not their job to guarantee that you'll have a private fort wherever you decide to sit.
This post is the winner.
Split-screen gaming is dying because it sucks. I would love to get a great multiplayer FPS or racing experience on one screen for the convenience of it, but it's just not going to happen.
I think there's lots of space in the market for more 2-4 player "same screen" games, and I wish developers would make more of them.
Sure. Lower the price on your service to compensate, since it's now worth less, and I'll consider.
What's that? You're going to keep the same prices and institute restrictions? No thanks.
Facebook isn't leaking your personal information to make money, they're doing it because they genuinely misunderstand why people need to keep some things private.
I don't think they misunderstand so much as they don't care. With half a billion users that flinch for a day or two every time some new feature is released and then settle into it like it's always been a vital part of their lives, I can hardly blame them. The company is there to make money and make a dent in the universe, and they can't do either if people turn off all the features they introduce.
Now we're just a hop and a skip away from "Once users are banned from browsing non-Google-approved websites or attempting to use non-Google services, security, usability and more are improved."
For those that always say "but you can modify it!" or "well you don't have to use it" (the latter of which is true even for Apple's iEcosphere), that doesn't address the problem. The problem is that a whole lot of people will see the convenience and the stability and they won't modify it and they will use it, making the whole concept of walled gardens and lockin more popular among consumers who want ease (as opposed to choice) and companies who want to make money. Large groups of people will forget that they ever had a choice to begin with. I'm not trying to evoke 1984 here or say that we're all going to be slaves to Google, but in the world of consumer technology right now, the leading idea that is getting the most users and making the most money is "step into the [Apple/Microsoft/Google/Facebook] world and bask in the luxury of having everything work together and not having to make choices."
Just like the old adage about privacy and security, is it worth trading choice for convenience?
I agree. Pen and paper, tablets, smartphones, etc. are all portable, but civilization still has desks, offices and workplaces for a reason.
As it turns out, when asked, all 774,651 people were "just trying out to see how it was before they bought it."