I once made an experiment: the assignment was to write a program that downloads a file via HTTP. Prior to that, they had another assignment which illustrated how one can send and receive stuff via a TCP socket (see Lab#1 and Lab#2 on this page http://info.railean.net/index.php?title=List_of_SIPC_labs%2C_2010).
Assuming that people are lazy and they don't like to read, I decided to make a video tutorial that explains how HTTP downloads a file. The difference between the first assignment and the last one was very small - it is the same "send and receive stuff via TCP sockets", but this time what you send is a string specified by the protocol. I told them about the RFC, of course, but again - I assumed they wouldn't look at it.
The video tells one everything they need to know to download a file and implement resume support. Unfortunately, there were quite a few of those who didn't add that feature, even though it was an easy thing to do (especially that I explained everything in class, in much more detail).
My conclusion is that it is not a matter of lazyness (I can understand not reading a 200 page RFC, but watching a 10min video is easy), it is a matter of making the right choice when going to a university. Most people simply don't belong here. They should have taken another course in another field, one they would be genuinely interested in.
An alternative explanation is that people are afraid to ask questions; I invest a lot of efforts in reducing the distance between us, to make them feel free and express their curiosity. Sometimes I make lists of FUQs - "Frequantly Unasked Questions", where I offer responses to questions they didn't ask, but which I did ask myself when I was in their shoes. Sometimes I also ask them to write anonymous feedback about the classes, an example can be seen here: http://railean.net/index.php/2010/04/18/metafeedback_on_education
A feature that I use is a special grading policy (you can see it in the description of those assignments). One has to do X to get 80%, and the extra effort needed to get to 90% is usually very small. And the delta between 90% and 100% is also trivial.
In other words, if you really worked on the assignment, you'd figure out that if X if "effort points" got you to 80%, X+eps will get you to 90%.
So I know that if someone went just for the 80% result, they most likely cheated, because if they didn't - they'd obviously go for the 90%, and eventually 100%.
For instance, the only difference between "downloading a file via HTTP" and "downloading a file via HTTP with resume support" is a "Range: offset-length" string in your GET request. If a student doesn't realize that, I sincerely doubt the fact that they implemented the "usual download" themselves. Here's the video I'm talking about, if you're patient enough, you will see how the part about "Range" is explained: http://www.vimeo.com/10011691
So - if people fail to write a nice program after getting so many hints, they don't deserve any credit.
My final "feature" is that they can only get their grade after I interview them - they have to walk me through their code and answer various questions I ask them about their implementation.
This approach takes a lot of time and it doesn't scale well (my group is made of 20 students, so I can afford to dedicate a lot of time to each of them), but it allows me to make sure that those who really know what they are doing will be rewarded, and that those who don't will get a chance to improve.
also co-existance of Autism and WS is common, like 10-20% of subjects who have ws
Hmm.. this sounds very strange, people with Autism tend to be solitary and they prefer not to be around other people; someone with WS is on the other end of the spectrum. How is this possible?
Hmm.. I'm from Eastern Europe as well, I've studied in several schools and the situation was different in each of them.
When I started going to school - everything was 100% user-friendly, I really enjoyed studying during those years.
At a later stage in my life my family moved to another city, the new school wasn't as good. On my 3min walk to school I could get bullied by people studying in another school (it was on the route), or by people from other grades in my school. And I've seen a lot of intra-class bullying too.
The culture is the same (the country is very small [Moldova], I suppose there is not much variation here).
I think the explanation is that in my first school teachers would establish a personal contact with every child and get involved in our lives. In the other schools the teachers would keep the distance and limit themselves to "I've discussed the materials with you, I'm done"; there were a few exceptions - and with those teachers things were always under control.
Such an attitude has 2 effects: - for the good kids: "I know that someone cares" (thus studying is encouraged) - for the bad kids: "I know that someone watches me" (thus bullying is discouraged)
Don't you think that such questions are good for exercising one's analytical skills? You can go through various scenarios in your head, discuss this with friends, generate some interesting ideas.
In such discussion points I often make "accidental discoveries" that are not relevant in a particular context, but which can be successfully applied in another one.
To address your question - if they "fix" the gene for posting hypothetical situations, we'll get a "-20% chance of finding magic items".
On Windows, an on-screen keyboard that is designed to be a replacement for a typical keyboard must use WM_KEYDOWN and WM_KEYUP messages - otherwise it won't be able to interact with some programs. This is why a software keylogger will "see" these keystrokes anyway.
I teach in a technical university, the metrics I use to measure my success are: - "about how many of my students I can say "I'm proud to say I taught them"?" - "how many of my students I would hire after they graduate" (I work in a software development company) - "how many of my students I would trust with the design of a life-support system [that would be used for me]"
I teach information security, communication protocols and software design.
This only works at a personal scale, but the method is good enough to motivate me invest everything I can in my students.
Now, the question is whether this approach can be applied to the entire system? If universities were obliged to hire their own 'output' for a number of years - they'd certainly be more interested in producing good results.
Alternatively, if universities had departments that would create sell commercial products - they'd be interested in hiring their own students (cheaper + they are already familiar with the modus operandi), which would in turn lead to greater efforts invested in the education of people.
Of course, this approach won't work with primary schools or other "entry level" stages of education.
I think the solution is to let people submit corrections for the automatically generated subtitles.
This way we'll get a starting point, so the problem becomes more simple.
I am now trying to write the subtitles for one of my lectures, and I find it very very tiring and difficult. The greatest problem for me is in synchronizing audio with text - I have to manually indicate in which time period a particular text needs to be shown.
In other words, the bottleneck is not in figuring out what the words are, it is in figuring out how to sync them. Most of the time is invested into shifting ranges and offsetting the subs by a few ms, until I get that right. The most difficult part is in synchronizing the pieces between them - if I shift the interval for one piece of text - it can overlap with adjacent pieces, and they need to be reviewed as well.
If a computer could do that for me - I'd be happy.
> in order to know whether you'd been successful > you'll have to wait a very long time whilst the > learning and development process takes places, > and we're in an industry that pretty much demands > instant results and proof.
I think there is a difference that has to be taken into account. With an engineered system, you can watch it with a debugger and see how its state changes as a function of input.
In other words, you can make multiple test runs with various inputs and watch how they affect the state of the system.
- with computers, you can perform a large number of iterations in a short interval of time - with humans, there is no way to take a debugger and see what's happening inside a brain (perhaps you can see how electrical impulses travel, but that is like using an oscilloscope to observe a transmission that goes through a cable. Yes, you see that there is activity, but you'll need a sniffer that can parse the physical data and show you what happens in the other layers of the network stack to understand the meaning of what you see).
That's why I am not sure I agree with your observation. With computers it is more simple - the clock's frequency is very high, things happen at a fast pace; you don't need to wait several decades to see how generation N+1 will do; you can clone a running instance and see how it will behave with new input data, etc.
In high-school I had a stomach ache and my head hurt before [almost] every math class. I didn't feel comfortable there, I was under the pressure of always having to give quick answers and not making mistakes, etc.
Before high-school my attitude towards math was different, I felt comfortable with it. I think this depends a lot on the teacher. The "dark ages" started when I switched schools and got a new teacher.
I then went to a university where mathematics was present in almost every course during the first 2 years. Fortunately, the teachers were wiser, i.e. more mistake-friendly; and I was lucky to have very bright and supportive colleagues.
It is funny that my mates could explain to me during a break concepts that I was unable to "get" for an entire semester in school.
I am convinced that math anxiety, if it exists, is also a function of a teacher's skills and personality.
Check out this guy's post: http://science.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1557648&cid=31215920, I think the remark on "processing intensive vs memory intensive" is useful. Some people are better at number crunching, others are better at thinking about things in abstract terms. Our current educational system is not designed to take this into account.
Some teachers can make this distinction, thus they choose different approaches for different students; while others cannot. This, I think, explains why having a good teacher is an important factor.
Today I teach at a university, and I place a great emphasis on my mistake-friendly policy. This allows my students to concentrate on the problem rather than on the fear of "what will the teacher/others think about me if I am wrong?". Here's a reference to one of my two courses: http://info.railean.net/index.php?title=List_of_PSI_labs
Another interesting story on the subject is "Identity theft" by Robert Sawyer, it explores the scenario "what if the original is not destroyed after the copy is made".
I am a strong supporter of the pen and paper approach, I have outlined the arguments in a lecture I held recently; I call it The write right rite, and it is available for download.
I'm a teacher (in a technical university), I've discussed this with my students some time after that lecture and asked them whether they apply my hints, and whether they find them efficient. I got really good feedback from them - which is not surprising, since I've been using those techniques myself when I was a student.
The recommendations I make in my lecture are "platform agnostic", they will work with any mechanism of writing data down. For example, I recommend that the text is translated from one language into another, after you remove the redundancy from it; also - you can transform it from one form into another (ex: what you heard in words can be represented as a chart; or a tree).
From my experience, with handwriting you can process the input data in multiple passes before you commit it to paper; the more you process it, the more you think about it - the better you understand it. In other words, it will take you less time to review the notes before an exam, and the data will stay in your mind long after the course is over.
A notebook is certainly not as fast as 'pen and paper'. A PDA - same thing: I used to rely on my Palm PDA a lot, and I was very fast with both of their text input systems, but I could only keep up with courses where the data were just text and where the teachers used a lot of redundancy in their messages; as soon as there were any diagrams or formula - a Palm just didn't work.
A tablet PC could be a good alternative - it is a sheet of paper of an infinite size + you get a lot of aids (calculator, search function, drawing tools). But it is bigger than paper, it consumes power...
I don't think the comparison is fair (traffic accidents vs terrorism). If the problem being debated was "saving lives" - then yes, the comparison would be fair; but the problem is different: "us vs them", therefore different counting rules apply.
The difference is that a car accident is an unfortunate event, while terrorism is an action with the evil_bit=TRUE, i.e. someone means to cause harm and does so.
The difference is that there is an illusion that acts of terrorism could be prevented, while car accidents - no. Every time terrorists score, the government tells itself "failure on our end, we could not prevent that, control is not in our hands".
Note: Both problems are important, both can be addressed by a better education; but terrorism has an impact on the "emotional layer" too, so humans react to it differently because such is the design of our psyche.
I wrote an article about humans and the evil bit, perhaps it will give a better picture of what I mean.
The problem is, everybody has their own ideas about what to teach the children, and the vast majority of those ideas will turn little Lisa into an imbecile, a sociopath, or a robot.
You are right, but I think this doesn't mean that we shouldn't try to improve things. History has shown that better education makes a better society.
Maybe we can apply the open-source philosophy to this aspect of our lives? A collaborative act will help us see what is better, what works in different circumstances, for different people, and so on.
I have started a project which is called "Bed time stories with a twist" - the idea is to write stories that are optimized to help a child develop certain skills.
I've started a wiki which reflects the current state of the initiative. No stories were written yet, I am still at the planning phase, and there are many years until I become a parent. But I am convinced that this will have an effect - stories are a project like any other; with requirements, implementation details, testing, etc. Some can be designed properly, others - poorly. Why not try make them better?
By exposing one's brain to information from different fields you teach them to see a problem from more than one perspective. They can understand the problem better that way. This gives them the advantage of being able to apply knowledge from other fields when designing their software.
It may not be obvious, or easy to measure, but I believe that my exposure to psychology, philosophy, and foreign languages results in the generation of pretty interesting ideas and solutions in the world of software. In the same manner, my technical background gives me advantages (or at least it gives my work a unique touch) when dealing with "humanistic things".
Of course, you don't necessarily have to go to a university to achieve the same effect, you can read books, talk to people, participate in discussions, and so on.
p.s. the summary is biased: "focus purely on writing _great_ software". The focus is on writing software, whether it is great or not - that's a different question.
I am curious what its advantages are over Mandriva; just a few days ago someone wrote the same thing about it - "Mandriva provides the best KDE4 experience".
It was also said that it has the most easy to use administration interface too.
I'm asking this as a GNOME user who decided to give KDE4 a try, so I hope you can shed some light on the subject.
I teach in a university and I have recently had a special lecture in which I explained to students which mechanisms they can use to memorize and understand things better in class. My approach is very different from yours.
You may want to take a look, I filmed it and will upload it to the Internet soon (writing the subtitles at the moment) - you will see that different people learn in different ways, and by forcing them do it your way you render some people helpless.
I believe that teachers should not tell students how to take notes in class, it is up to them to determine what the modus operandi should be. When you design a program, you have one part that deals with the logic, another one with the representation of the data, another one with input, etc. This provides a great flexibility and allows you to easily modify how the program looks without changing anything else. It is the same with learning - you are just their source of information, you are not supposed to tell them how to store it, how to represent it. By doing that, you're preventing them from using more efficient methods or methods that work better for them.
You can find more details about my lecture here - The write right rite, the video is not yet available (writing subtitles is soooooo slow), but when it's there - I think you will find it useful. I will be very glad if you don't forget to check that page every now and then, and provide feedback afterwards.
You are right. In fact, there are many things that play a role in the improvement of the learning process - muscle memory is just one of them.
I have recently filmed one of my lectures, it is called The write right rite, in this class I make a list of such learning aids and explain how each of them works.
The video is not yet online (I am now writing the subtitles for it), but when it's there - I believe you would be interested in taking a look at it.
Imagine you get ordered to run into a building to rescue a human, knowing that your chance to survive is almost zero and you are compelled to do it, whether you want or not.
Maybe your argument is a little bit anthropocentric?
Altruism is a feature that many intelligent animals have, so why would a robot not feel good about helping people, or other life forms? Why should that be labeled as 'exploitation'?
Second, see the emphasis in the quoted text. Yes, sending a robot which is just as fragile as a human would be a bad idea (just as it is to send in a human, knowing they will die). But if the robot is optimized for such activities and has a strong body and special tools to aid its navigation inside such buildings - the robot has much better chances. In such circumstances it has no reason to feel exploited because it knows that it was designed for such activities (unless you want to send a 'general purpose' computer into a mission that can only be handled by specialized units). This and the altruism factor are arguments that should convince you to review your statements.
Interesting idea, but I think this isn't so. This experiment doesn't say that "men with greater intelligence get more stupid around a beautiful woman and less intelligent men get less stupid]", it merely says "men are less intelligent when around a beautiful woman".
Therefore, a woman can only see that a man acts dumb, but she has insufficient information to determine what his actual level of intelligence is.
What are the alternatives then? Enter an eternal state of depression and never recover? Turn into an outcast and never interact with women again? What if your spouse dies - will you be alone for the rest of your life to prove that it was true love?
I don't think that the "degree of recoverability" is a good metric for the "quality of love".
I also use poetry and stories as a "way to let it all out", and I'm interested in checking out how it works for other people. Another way for me is to get another job (besides the primary one) or engage in other activities, to keep my mind loaded.
Slashdot Mirror
I once made an experiment: the assignment was to write a program that downloads a file via HTTP. Prior to that, they had another assignment which illustrated how one can send and receive stuff via a TCP socket (see Lab#1 and Lab#2 on this page http://info.railean.net/index.php?title=List_of_SIPC_labs%2C_2010).
Assuming that people are lazy and they don't like to read, I decided to make a video tutorial that explains how HTTP downloads a file. The difference between the first assignment and the last one was very small - it is the same "send and receive stuff via TCP sockets", but this time what you send is a string specified by the protocol. I told them about the RFC, of course, but again - I assumed they wouldn't look at it.
The video tells one everything they need to know to download a file and implement resume support. Unfortunately, there were quite a few of those who didn't add that feature, even though it was an easy thing to do (especially that I explained everything in class, in much more detail).
My conclusion is that it is not a matter of lazyness (I can understand not reading a 200 page RFC, but watching a 10min video is easy), it is a matter of making the right choice when going to a university. Most people simply don't belong here. They should have taken another course in another field, one they would be genuinely interested in.
An alternative explanation is that people are afraid to ask questions; I invest a lot of efforts in reducing the distance between us, to make them feel free and express their curiosity. Sometimes I make lists of FUQs - "Frequantly Unasked Questions", where I offer responses to questions they didn't ask, but which I did ask myself when I was in their shoes. Sometimes I also ask them to write anonymous feedback about the classes, an example can be seen here: http://railean.net/index.php/2010/04/18/metafeedback_on_education
A feature that I use is a special grading policy (you can see it in the description of those assignments). One has to do X to get 80%, and the extra effort needed to get to 90% is usually very small. And the delta between 90% and 100% is also trivial.
In other words, if you really worked on the assignment, you'd figure out that if X if "effort points" got you to 80%, X+eps will get you to 90%.
So I know that if someone went just for the 80% result, they most likely cheated, because if they didn't - they'd obviously go for the 90%, and eventually 100%.
For instance, the only difference between "downloading a file via HTTP" and "downloading a file via HTTP with resume support" is a "Range: offset-length" string in your GET request. If a student doesn't realize that, I sincerely doubt the fact that they implemented the "usual download" themselves.
Here's the video I'm talking about, if you're patient enough, you will see how the part about "Range" is explained: http://www.vimeo.com/10011691
So - if people fail to write a nice program after getting so many hints, they don't deserve any credit.
My final "feature" is that they can only get their grade after I interview them - they have to walk me through their code and answer various questions I ask them about their implementation.
This approach takes a lot of time and it doesn't scale well (my group is made of 20 students, so I can afford to dedicate a lot of time to each of them), but it allows me to make sure that those who really know what they are doing will be rewarded, and that those who don't will get a chance to improve.
Hmm.. this sounds very strange, people with Autism tend to be solitary and they prefer not to be around other people; someone with WS is on the other end of the spectrum. How is this possible?
Hmm.. I'm from Eastern Europe as well, I've studied in several schools and the situation was different in each of them.
When I started going to school - everything was 100% user-friendly, I really enjoyed studying during those years.
At a later stage in my life my family moved to another city, the new school wasn't as good. On my 3min walk to school I could get bullied by people studying in another school (it was on the route), or by people from other grades in my school. And I've seen a lot of intra-class bullying too.
The culture is the same (the country is very small [Moldova], I suppose there is not much variation here).
I think the explanation is that in my first school teachers would establish a personal contact with every child and get involved in our lives. In the other schools the teachers would keep the distance and limit themselves to "I've discussed the materials with you, I'm done"; there were a few exceptions - and with those teachers things were always under control.
Such an attitude has 2 effects:
- for the good kids: "I know that someone cares" (thus studying is encouraged)
- for the bad kids: "I know that someone watches me" (thus bullying is discouraged)
Don't you think that such questions are good for exercising one's analytical skills? You can go through various scenarios in your head, discuss this with friends, generate some interesting ideas.
In such discussion points I often make "accidental discoveries" that are not relevant in a particular context, but which can be successfully applied in another one.
To address your question - if they "fix" the gene for posting hypothetical situations, we'll get a "-20% chance of finding magic items".
It wouldn't: http://www.lazybit.com/index.php/2007/03/01/keylogger_virtual_keyboard_vmware?blog=2
On Windows, an on-screen keyboard that is designed to be a replacement for a typical keyboard must use WM_KEYDOWN and WM_KEYUP messages - otherwise it won't be able to interact with some programs. This is why a software keylogger will "see" these keystrokes anyway.
But you can try a couple of tricks: http://www.lazybit.com/index.php/2007/03/01/free_keylogger_protection?blog=2
I teach in a technical university, the metrics I use to measure my success are:
- "about how many of my students I can say "I'm proud to say I taught them"?"
- "how many of my students I would hire after they graduate" (I work in a software development company)
- "how many of my students I would trust with the design of a life-support system [that would be used for me]"
I teach information security, communication protocols and software design.
This only works at a personal scale, but the method is good enough to motivate me invest everything I can in my students.
Now, the question is whether this approach can be applied to the entire system? If universities were obliged to hire their own 'output' for a number of years - they'd certainly be more interested in producing good results.
Alternatively, if universities had departments that would create sell commercial products - they'd be interested in hiring their own students (cheaper + they are already familiar with the modus operandi), which would in turn lead to greater efforts invested in the education of people.
Of course, this approach won't work with primary schools or other "entry level" stages of education.
I think the solution is to let people submit corrections for the automatically generated subtitles.
This way we'll get a starting point, so the problem becomes more simple.
I am now trying to write the subtitles for one of my lectures, and I find it very very tiring and difficult. The greatest problem for me is in synchronizing audio with text - I have to manually indicate in which time period a particular text needs to be shown.
In other words, the bottleneck is not in figuring out what the words are, it is in figuring out how to sync them. Most of the time is invested into shifting ranges and offsetting the subs by a few ms, until I get that right. The most difficult part is in synchronizing the pieces between them - if I shift the interval for one piece of text - it can overlap with adjacent pieces, and they need to be reviewed as well.
If a computer could do that for me - I'd be happy.
It works with any dialog that was rendered via a MessageBox API call.
> in order to know whether you'd been successful
> you'll have to wait a very long time whilst the
> learning and development process takes places,
> and we're in an industry that pretty much demands
> instant results and proof.
I think there is a difference that has to be taken into account. With an engineered system, you can watch it with a debugger and see how its state changes as a function of input.
In other words, you can make multiple test runs with various inputs and watch how they affect the state of the system.
- with computers, you can perform a large number of iterations in a short interval of time
- with humans, there is no way to take a debugger and see what's happening inside a brain (perhaps you can see how electrical impulses travel, but that is like using an oscilloscope to observe a transmission that goes through a cable. Yes, you see that there is activity, but you'll need a sniffer that can parse the physical data and show you what happens in the other layers of the network stack to understand the meaning of what you see).
That's why I am not sure I agree with your observation. With computers it is more simple - the clock's frequency is very high, things happen at a fast pace; you don't need to wait several decades to see how generation N+1 will do; you can clone a running instance and see how it will behave with new input data, etc.
In high-school I had a stomach ache and my head hurt before [almost] every math class. I didn't feel comfortable there, I was under the pressure of always having to give quick answers and not making mistakes, etc.
Before high-school my attitude towards math was different, I felt comfortable with it. I think this depends a lot on the teacher. The "dark ages" started when I switched schools and got a new teacher.
I then went to a university where mathematics was present in almost every course during the first 2 years. Fortunately, the teachers were wiser, i.e. more mistake-friendly; and I was lucky to have very bright and supportive colleagues.
It is funny that my mates could explain to me during a break concepts that I was unable to "get" for an entire semester in school.
I am convinced that math anxiety, if it exists, is also a function of a teacher's skills and personality.
Check out this guy's post: http://science.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1557648&cid=31215920, I think the remark on "processing intensive vs memory intensive" is useful. Some people are better at number crunching, others are better at thinking about things in abstract terms. Our current educational system is not designed to take this into account.
Some teachers can make this distinction, thus they choose different approaches for different students; while others cannot. This, I think, explains why having a good teacher is an important factor.
Today I teach at a university, and I place a great emphasis on my mistake-friendly policy. This allows my students to concentrate on the problem rather than on the fear of "what will the teacher/others think about me if I am wrong?". Here's a reference to one of my two courses: http://info.railean.net/index.php?title=List_of_PSI_labs
I think the intro makes a difference.
Another interesting story on the subject is "Identity theft" by Robert Sawyer, it explores the scenario "what if the original is not destroyed after the copy is made".
I am a strong supporter of the pen and paper approach, I have outlined the arguments in a lecture I held recently; I call it The write right rite, and it is available for download.
I'm a teacher (in a technical university), I've discussed this with my students some time after that lecture and asked them whether they apply my hints, and whether they find them efficient. I got really good feedback from them - which is not surprising, since I've been using those techniques myself when I was a student.
The recommendations I make in my lecture are "platform agnostic", they will work with any mechanism of writing data down. For example, I recommend that the text is translated from one language into another, after you remove the redundancy from it; also - you can transform it from one form into another (ex: what you heard in words can be represented as a chart; or a tree).
From my experience, with handwriting you can process the input data in multiple passes before you commit it to paper; the more you process it, the more you think about it - the better you understand it. In other words, it will take you less time to review the notes before an exam, and the data will stay in your mind long after the course is over.
A notebook is certainly not as fast as 'pen and paper'. A PDA - same thing: I used to rely on my Palm PDA a lot, and I was very fast with both of their text input systems, but I could only keep up with courses where the data were just text and where the teachers used a lot of redundancy in their messages; as soon as there were any diagrams or formula - a Palm just didn't work.
A tablet PC could be a good alternative - it is a sheet of paper of an infinite size + you get a lot of aids (calculator, search function, drawing tools). But it is bigger than paper, it consumes power...
I don't think the comparison is fair (traffic accidents vs terrorism). If the problem being debated was "saving lives" - then yes, the comparison would be fair; but the problem is different: "us vs them", therefore different counting rules apply.
The difference is that a car accident is an unfortunate event, while terrorism is an action with the evil_bit=TRUE, i.e. someone means to cause harm and does so.
The difference is that there is an illusion that acts of terrorism could be prevented, while car accidents - no. Every time terrorists score, the government tells itself "failure on our end, we could not prevent that, control is not in our hands".
Note: Both problems are important, both can be addressed by a better education; but terrorism has an impact on the "emotional layer" too, so humans react to it differently because such is the design of our psyche.
I wrote an article about humans and the evil bit, perhaps it will give a better picture of what I mean.
Hmm, why don't you try viewing the "Google cached" version of the page, rather than the page itself?
You are right, but I think this doesn't mean that we shouldn't try to improve things. History has shown that better education makes a better society.
Maybe we can apply the open-source philosophy to this aspect of our lives? A collaborative act will help us see what is better, what works in different circumstances, for different people, and so on.
I have started a project which is called "Bed time stories with a twist" - the idea is to write stories that are optimized to help a child develop certain skills.
I've started a wiki which reflects the current state of the initiative. No stories were written yet, I am still at the planning phase, and there are many years until I become a parent. But I am convinced that this will have an effect - stories are a project like any other; with requirements, implementation details, testing, etc. Some can be designed properly, others - poorly. Why not try make them better?
By exposing one's brain to information from different fields you teach them to see a problem from more than one perspective. They can understand the problem better that way. This gives them the advantage of being able to apply knowledge from other fields when designing their software.
It may not be obvious, or easy to measure, but I believe that my exposure to psychology, philosophy, and foreign languages results in the generation of pretty interesting ideas and solutions in the world of software. In the same manner, my technical background gives me advantages (or at least it gives my work a unique touch) when dealing with "humanistic things".
Of course, you don't necessarily have to go to a university to achieve the same effect, you can read books, talk to people, participate in discussions, and so on.
p.s. the summary is biased: "focus purely on writing _great_ software". The focus is on writing software, whether it is great or not - that's a different question.
I am curious what its advantages are over Mandriva; just a few days ago someone wrote the same thing about it - "Mandriva provides the best KDE4 experience".
It was also said that it has the most easy to use administration interface too.
I'm asking this as a GNOME user who decided to give KDE4 a try, so I hope you can shed some light on the subject.
I teach in a university and I have recently had a special lecture in which I explained to students which mechanisms they can use to memorize and understand things better in class. My approach is very different from yours.
You may want to take a look, I filmed it and will upload it to the Internet soon (writing the subtitles at the moment) - you will see that different people learn in different ways, and by forcing them do it your way you render some people helpless.
I believe that teachers should not tell students how to take notes in class, it is up to them to determine what the modus operandi should be. When you design a program, you have one part that deals with the logic, another one with the representation of the data, another one with input, etc. This provides a great flexibility and allows you to easily modify how the program looks without changing anything else. It is the same with learning - you are just their source of information, you are not supposed to tell them how to store it, how to represent it. By doing that, you're preventing them from using more efficient methods or methods that work better for them.
You can find more details about my lecture here - The write right rite, the video is not yet available (writing subtitles is soooooo slow), but when it's there - I think you will find it useful. I will be very glad if you don't forget to check that page every now and then, and provide feedback afterwards.
You are right. In fact, there are many things that play a role in the improvement of the learning process - muscle memory is just one of them.
I have recently filmed one of my lectures, it is called The write right rite, in this class I make a list of such learning aids and explain how each of them works.
The video is not yet online (I am now writing the subtitles for it), but when it's there - I believe you would be interested in taking a look at it.
Here's one short film to "rule it out": http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-2966542393735208484#
Maybe your argument is a little bit anthropocentric?
Altruism is a feature that many intelligent animals have, so why would a robot not feel good about helping people, or other life forms? Why should that be labeled as 'exploitation'?
Second, see the emphasis in the quoted text. Yes, sending a robot which is just as fragile as a human would be a bad idea (just as it is to send in a human, knowing they will die). But if the robot is optimized for such activities and has a strong body and special tools to aid its navigation inside such buildings - the robot has much better chances. In such circumstances it has no reason to feel exploited because it knows that it was designed for such activities (unless you want to send a 'general purpose' computer into a mission that can only be handled by specialized units). This and the altruism factor are arguments that should convince you to review your statements.
Interesting idea, but I think this isn't so. This experiment doesn't say that "men with greater intelligence get more stupid around a beautiful woman and less intelligent men get less stupid]", it merely says "men are less intelligent when around a beautiful woman".
Therefore, a woman can only see that a man acts dumb, but she has insufficient information to determine what his actual level of intelligence is.
Hmmm, you bring up an interesting point and it would be great if you could elaborate on it.
I disagree with you, you can see my point of view here: Simple relationship mathematics.
What are the alternatives then? Enter an eternal state of depression and never recover? Turn into an outcast and never interact with women again? What if your spouse dies - will you be alone for the rest of your life to prove that it was true love?
I don't think that the "degree of recoverability" is a good metric for the "quality of love".
would disagree with the article.
http://www.kurzweilai.net/articles/art0134.html?printable=1
Hi, I'd like to read some of the stuff you wrote.
I also use poetry and stories as a "way to let it all out", and I'm interested in checking out how it works for other people. Another way for me is to get another job (besides the primary one) or engage in other activities, to keep my mind loaded.