I write in print on the board because my colleagues and I have been informed by students that they cannot read cursive. In so many words, students have told me that they were never taught.
Wow, sad and amazing. I think my twentysomething daughters can read and write cursive. I'll have to ask the youngest.
That's one of many things that annoys me about Windows. This notebook runs W7 because I just haven't gotten around to installing Linux yet. Linux would already be on it if it wouldn't hibernate. Ironically, the Linux tower gets shut down when I'm not using it, because when I boot it, all the apps and docs that were open when I shut it down reopen, and it enters its password for me. Hit the switch, pour a cup of coffee and it's good to go, as if it hadn't been shut down at all.
I wonder if Windows will ever catch up with Linux featurewise? I know of no features Windows has that Linux lacks, but Windows lacks quite a few features I consider absolutely necessary.
Since I don't use Word (Oo instead) I guess I don't have to worry about the Flash exploit so much. I'll update Flash when the Patch Tuesday forces a reboot (another feature Windows lacks -- Linux updates need no reboots).
It's amazing that people actually pay for an OS that is less capable than a free one! "You get what you pay for", my ass!
Capitalization improves readability, as does good penmanship when you're writing by hand. Why did you make that conscious decision? Are you sure it was a conscious decision? What is the purpose of eschewing capitalization?
I'm typing this on a Win 7 notebook w Firefox. KSHE's playing right now (using Flash, of course) and no notification came to me, although some virus defs came through this morning.
Windows users are targeted with Microsoft Word documents delivered as an email attachments which contain malicious Flash content
Why? They could as easily infect you with a macro. Who in their right mind opens a Word doc from and unknown source, especially when Windows warns you when you start to open a word doc in Outlook (we use Outlook at work).
I just wish Flash would stop crashing every single time I have it hibernate when I'm listening to the radio.
There's always a risk of zoning out since you know you can go listen again later
I guess everybody's different, but humans aren't as good at multitasking as they think they are. I want to have my full attention on what the lecturer is saying. Of course, you have to copy anything that's written on the blackboard (now whiteboard).
I know by allowing this half of the class will be tooling about on Facebook.
Well, if they're doing that, 40 years ago they would have been passing notes to each other and still missing the lecture. There are a lot more distractions these days, though.
Those instances are where I walk about the office, hand a test to colleagues, and have them hand the test back to me declaring that they, too, can't read the response.
Ah, ok, I was under the impression that penmanship was part of the grade, but if it isn't legible it's the same as if they turned in a blank piece of paper.
How is it a bad assumption that their lack of instruction was a disservice?
The assumption is that they lacked instruction rather than that their skills had deteriorated. Of course, if it's a high school class your assumption would probably be valid.
What it often misses is that there is more to being free and finding success than having a degree.
Very true. In my case, the actual knowledge is worth more than the degree; I've always loved learning. That was unfortunately a detriment before I went to college, after about the third grade it's all rote memorization and no learning. And I was always terrible at memorization.
Students who speak and write like people do where I'm from will, unfortunately, be looked down upon when they go out into the real world.
Well, that's grammar. It's also sad but true. Some even look down on certain accents.
"The tyrant fears the laugh more than the assassin's bullet." HA HA!
No woosh there, it was a humorous story about police corruption and a sentient whirlwind.
I love people like you, I'm 60 and you make me think I should get off your lawn. I wish laptops had existed when I was in college; I can type faster than I could ever write longhand, but even then, rather than taking notes I'd just record the lecture with the laptop. Actually, that's what I did, only I used a cassette recorder.
That they did not receive instruction earlier in life on quick, efficient, and legible handwriting was a disservice to them.
That's an assumption on your part, and a bad one at that. When I was in school, computers were multimillion dollar building sized-pocket calculators, and they taught penmanship in grade school. But by the time I was in college my handwriting was terrible, mostly from taking notes in class during high school. The essays are timed and you expect good penmanship?? That's insane!
You're quite right that we're moving away from handwriting, but we're not there yet.
Thanks to people like you!
Incidentally, I think the batteries must be dead in your vibrating keyboard. I read your sig and the spelling is a mess.
That guy was a good poet, but unfortunately 1) poetry is not prose, although good prose is poetic; 2) In art, the rules are guidelines rather than laws, but when one breaks a convention one should have a good artistic reason; 3) a lot of young folks don't realize that and think "If cummings can do it, so can I; 4) He only wrote POETRY like that -- his prose used caps and all the other normal writing conventions. Here is some of his prose:
A locomotive cut the car in half, killing my father instantly. When two brakemen jumped from the halted train, they saw a woman standing â" dazed but erect â" beside a mangled machine; with blood spouting (as the older said to me) out of her head. One of her hands (the younger added) kept feeling her dress, as if trying to discover why it was wet. These men took my sixty-six year old mother by the arms and tried to lead her toward a nearby farmhouse; but she threw them off, strode straight to my father's body, and directed a group of scared spectators to cover him. When this had been done (and only then) she let them lead her away.
Just throwing paint on a canvas doesn't make you Jackson Pollack. Unless there's a valid reason, all lowercase is as ignorant as all caps.
I used to have good penmanship, but now? About the only time I use a pen is to write a check or sign a document. This tech is about twenty years too late.
Well, if you were to travel 500 years back you'd certainly sound as funny as Shakespeare sounds to us (Data: "I'm from France"), but if someone 400 years from the future went back to 1920 there would be plenty of sound recordings and books to study. Not that I actually believe it ever happened or will happen...
Well, I'm in the middle of writing a sci-fi book with a bad plot...:) It has time travel, FTL travel, terraforming planets that really can't be terraformed (Venus), man-made neutron stars as weapons of mass destruction, all sorts of impossibilities. But most sci-fi is really fantasy anyway. Chapter 2 ridicules Star Trek, even though I've been a fan since 1966. It's in my/. JEs.
The Butterfly Effect says that the most minor change in the distant past will cause huge changes in the future, so nobody can travel back and live in their own past.
I remember a short story with this theme, but it's been so long ago I can't remember its name or who wrote it. Despite Hawking's Daily Mail piece "how to build a time machine" (which I believe was tongue in cheek) I don't think anyone will ever travel backwards through time, and have serious doubts about FTL. It's fun to fantasize, though.
That is basically the result of massive advances in public health and disease prevention, and massive reduction in child mortality (which is partly the same thing, but also specific medical advances).
Exactly. That, and better pollution controls, and OSHA keeping so many young men dying on the job, and other things that have nothing to do with medicine. My grandfather probably would have made it to a hundred if Purina wasn't too cheap to put doors on the elevator.
When my grandmother was 95 she told me "I don't know why anybody wants to live to be a hundred, it ain't no fun bein' old!" Of course, she'd outlived 3 of her 4 kids, two husbands, and several doctors who all told her if she didn't cut her cholesterol down she'd die. She finally did, five years later when she fell and broke her hip. Outliving those you love is bad for your health!
However, I'm 60 and in better health than a lot of people I know who are half my age. I'm starting to get a touch of CRS, though.
Do you really think any time traveler will risk the possibility that something they do will cause them to have never existed? I know if I were a time traveler I'd be pretty careful about what I did.
Remember when they were building the LHC and screwed up the power supply? That was the doings of time traveler. Oh, and ghosts, bigfoots, Bermuda Triangle, Area 51...;)
Log scale? Yep, that complicates it a little. However, didn't they test the time dilation with a couple of astronauts? I don't think they got anywhere near.8C..8C is pretty damned fast.
If I find that someone (Person or corporate entity.) has installed software on MY computer without my explicit permission, they will be explaining to law enforcement why they think they have the right.
LOL, who went to prison for Sony's XCP? I was bitten by Sony's malware almost ten years ago but idiots keep buying Sony's shit. It cost them NOTHING, I'll never EVER buy another Sony product but I'm one in seven billion.
Someone should have gone to prison for deliberately infecting thousands of their paying customers' PCs, but no... rich people only go to prison when they fuck over someone with more wealth and power.
Is there a silver lining in this cloud? FOSS will benefit... a tiny bit. There are too many people stupid enough to buy Sony products after XCP, OtherOS, and all the other fuckings over they served their paying customers.
If you have mod points and buy Sony, mod me flamebait because I'm calling you a fucking moron. God damned dumbasses. Yes, I'm still pissed and I still want someone in prison over this, but governments are and have always been owned by the rich. Expect malware in your proprietary shitware.
I want Sony to fucking DIE. Unfortunately, they won't be bothered one tiny bit. They can do any damned thing they want to you. Bend over and take it, serfs.
Within 50 years (if not much sooner), we'll almost certainly have cured aging.
Well, there are some folks who know a lot more about medicine and biology than I do who believe that, but it's far from a certainty. Note that the average and median life spans for people have increased greatly in the last hundred years, but wake me up when someone makes it much past 115. Those outliers have been around since antiquity, there are quite a few in my family tree from centuries ago (an uncle was into genealogy).
I'm 60 and already starting to feel the effects of aging. I'll be 110 in 50 years. I'm pretty skeptical, they're going to have to figure out how to extend telomeraise (I don't know how to spell it, and neither does FireFox) without giving you cancer. They're going to have to figure out how to stop genetic errors when cells divide, and quite a few other thorny problems. I doubt my ten year old great nephew will see it, let alone me, and it may be an impossibility.
Once you approach even half the speed of light, local time slows down for you, so e.g. a 50 year trip would be 'only' 30 or 40 years (I haven't done the exact math)
Unless I'm mistaken the math is straightforward; at C the trip would seem instantaneous to the traveler, so half C a 50 light year trip would seem like 25.
But then, there's the problem that time speeds up greatly as you age -- remember how far apart Christmases were when you were five? That phenomenon accelerates as you age.
the goal of sending autonomous robotic explorers to stars (a la Mars Curiosity) just 13ly away may be quite feasible in some of our lifetimes
Certainly we'll have robotic probes to the stars in a few hundred years, but I'm very skeptical that you'll see it in your lifetime.
we take for granted, may change dramatically - e.g. the typical human lifespan.
The typical lifespan already has nearly doubled, but the longest lifespan hasn't changed at all.
Also, perspective: We've been 'human' for approximately 2 million years. We have millions of years ahead of us as a species, and even on cosmic scales, you can do an enormous amount in even just 2 million years.
I'm cautiously optimistic. I think our future in space is practically certain, and that we'll probably ultimately reach hundreds of other stars, and establish colonies on other planets. It's a matter of when and how, not if.
That I will agree with. I'm in the middle of writing a sci-fi book set ten million years in the future. In the book, we have evolved into at least four separate species (there may be more, I never know from one chapter to the next what's going to happen), one on terraformed Mars, one Terraformed Venus, and two on Earth. The Earthians have time travel, FTL travel, and a 500 year old is a young man. If you're interested, here's the first chapter. What's done so far is all posted (if you hate it, blame slashdot! They started it...).
If we did find a planet with technological creatures that close, it would be a pretty good indication that tech civilizations were pretty common.
It would be pretty hard to decipher the signal, though. You've probably seen this and this. We miight not even realize the signals were from an intelligence -- Greg Egan's Luminous has an extraterrestrial race with a completely different math than ours (I read it in 1995's The Year's Best Science Fiction, it's a very good, thought-provoking read. Wikipedia says he has a book by the same name, with that story in it).
It's pretty cold outside here, too (at least in the north right now) and we're alone as far as we can ascertain. But why would the newly found planet not have an atmosphere? It isn't like they can tell if it has a magnetic field. If it does, and it's Earth's mass more or less, it should have an atmosphere.
Vulcan circles a red dwarf? Wikipedia says nothing about the planet or its star, just about the Vulcans themselves. I was thinking Krypton, even though I haven't read a Superman comic since I was 7 or 8; it orbits a red star.
I'm always amused by "only n light years away" in every story about a newly-found planet. Adams was right. "Space is big. I mean really big. You think it's a long way to the chemist..." the Voyagers have been traveling for 40 years and still haven't gotten past the heliopause. Even Adams was understating the vast distances between stars, try as he might to impress how big space is. Getting to Vulcan/Krypton is indeed infinitely improbable, at least for the next few hundred years and maybe never.
Slashdot Mirror
the purpose is to emphasize that web forums, like slashdot, are more like chatting than they are like formal writing
So is a snail mail letter to Grandma. I don't see why the fact that it's a web forum needs emphasis; everyone knows they're on a forum.
I write in print on the board because my colleagues and I have been informed by students that they cannot read cursive. In so many words, students have told me that they were never taught.
Wow, sad and amazing. I think my twentysomething daughters can read and write cursive. I'll have to ask the youngest.
That's one of many things that annoys me about Windows. This notebook runs W7 because I just haven't gotten around to installing Linux yet. Linux would already be on it if it wouldn't hibernate. Ironically, the Linux tower gets shut down when I'm not using it, because when I boot it, all the apps and docs that were open when I shut it down reopen, and it enters its password for me. Hit the switch, pour a cup of coffee and it's good to go, as if it hadn't been shut down at all.
I wonder if Windows will ever catch up with Linux featurewise? I know of no features Windows has that Linux lacks, but Windows lacks quite a few features I consider absolutely necessary.
Since I don't use Word (Oo instead) I guess I don't have to worry about the Flash exploit so much. I'll update Flash when the Patch Tuesday forces a reboot (another feature Windows lacks -- Linux updates need no reboots).
It's amazing that people actually pay for an OS that is less capable than a free one! "You get what you pay for", my ass!
Capitalization improves readability, as does good penmanship when you're writing by hand. Why did you make that conscious decision? Are you sure it was a conscious decision? What is the purpose of eschewing capitalization?
I'm typing this on a Win 7 notebook w Firefox. KSHE's playing right now (using Flash, of course) and no notification came to me, although some virus defs came through this morning.
Windows users are targeted with Microsoft Word documents delivered as an email attachments which contain malicious Flash content
Why? They could as easily infect you with a macro. Who in their right mind opens a Word doc from and unknown source, especially when Windows warns you when you start to open a word doc in Outlook (we use Outlook at work).
I just wish Flash would stop crashing every single time I have it hibernate when I'm listening to the radio.
There's always a risk of zoning out since you know you can go listen again later
I guess everybody's different, but humans aren't as good at multitasking as they think they are. I want to have my full attention on what the lecturer is saying. Of course, you have to copy anything that's written on the blackboard (now whiteboard).
I know by allowing this half of the class will be tooling about on Facebook.
Well, if they're doing that, 40 years ago they would have been passing notes to each other and still missing the lecture. There are a lot more distractions these days, though.
Those instances are where I walk about the office, hand a test to colleagues, and have them hand the test back to me declaring that they, too, can't read the response.
Ah, ok, I was under the impression that penmanship was part of the grade, but if it isn't legible it's the same as if they turned in a blank piece of paper.
How is it a bad assumption that their lack of instruction was a disservice?
The assumption is that they lacked instruction rather than that their skills had deteriorated. Of course, if it's a high school class your assumption would probably be valid.
What it often misses is that there is more to being free and finding success than having a degree.
Very true. In my case, the actual knowledge is worth more than the degree; I've always loved learning. That was unfortunately a detriment before I went to college, after about the third grade it's all rote memorization and no learning. And I was always terrible at memorization.
Students who speak and write like people do where I'm from will, unfortunately, be looked down upon when they go out into the real world.
Well, that's grammar. It's also sad but true. Some even look down on certain accents.
"The tyrant fears the laugh more than the assassin's bullet."
HA HA!
No woosh there, it was a humorous story about police corruption and a sentient whirlwind.
Wow, some people have bad penmanship even with a keyboard!
I love people like you, I'm 60 and you make me think I should get off your lawn. I wish laptops had existed when I was in college; I can type faster than I could ever write longhand, but even then, rather than taking notes I'd just record the lecture with the laptop. Actually, that's what I did, only I used a cassette recorder.
That they did not receive instruction earlier in life on quick, efficient, and legible handwriting was a disservice to them.
That's an assumption on your part, and a bad one at that. When I was in school, computers were multimillion dollar building sized-pocket calculators, and they taught penmanship in grade school. But by the time I was in college my handwriting was terrible, mostly from taking notes in class during high school. The essays are timed and you expect good penmanship?? That's insane!
You're quite right that we're moving away from handwriting, but we're not there yet.
Thanks to people like you!
Incidentally, I think the batteries must be dead in your vibrating keyboard. I read your sig and the spelling is a mess.
Woosh to you, ma'am.
Where are the moderators? This is the third time I've seen this exact comment in this thread. It isn't exactly a unique nor profound thought.
Brought to you by the Department of Redundancy Department.
Boy would e. e. cummings HATE that thing!
That guy was a good poet, but unfortunately 1) poetry is not prose, although good prose is poetic; 2) In art, the rules are guidelines rather than laws, but when one breaks a convention one should have a good artistic reason; 3) a lot of young folks don't realize that and think "If cummings can do it, so can I; 4) He only wrote POETRY like that -- his prose used caps and all the other normal writing conventions. Here is some of his prose:
Just throwing paint on a canvas doesn't make you Jackson Pollack. Unless there's a valid reason, all lowercase is as ignorant as all caps.
I used to have good penmanship, but now? About the only time I use a pen is to write a check or sign a document. This tech is about twenty years too late.
Well, if you were to travel 500 years back you'd certainly sound as funny as Shakespeare sounds to us (Data: "I'm from France"), but if someone 400 years from the future went back to 1920 there would be plenty of sound recordings and books to study. Not that I actually believe it ever happened or will happen...
You are just making fun of bad sci-fi plots.
Well, I'm in the middle of writing a sci-fi book with a bad plot... :) It has time travel, FTL travel, terraforming planets that really can't be terraformed (Venus), man-made neutron stars as weapons of mass destruction, all sorts of impossibilities. But most sci-fi is really fantasy anyway. Chapter 2 ridicules Star Trek, even though I've been a fan since 1966. It's in my /. JEs.
The Butterfly Effect says that the most minor change in the distant past will cause huge changes in the future, so nobody can travel back and live in their own past.
I remember a short story with this theme, but it's been so long ago I can't remember its name or who wrote it. Despite Hawking's Daily Mail piece "how to build a time machine" (which I believe was tongue in cheek) I don't think anyone will ever travel backwards through time, and have serious doubts about FTL. It's fun to fantasize, though.
That is basically the result of massive advances in public health and disease prevention, and massive reduction in child mortality (which is partly the same thing, but also specific medical advances).
Exactly. That, and better pollution controls, and OSHA keeping so many young men dying on the job, and other things that have nothing to do with medicine. My grandfather probably would have made it to a hundred if Purina wasn't too cheap to put doors on the elevator.
When my grandmother was 95 she told me "I don't know why anybody wants to live to be a hundred, it ain't no fun bein' old!" Of course, she'd outlived 3 of her 4 kids, two husbands, and several doctors who all told her if she didn't cut her cholesterol down she'd die. She finally did, five years later when she fell and broke her hip. Outliving those you love is bad for your health!
However, I'm 60 and in better health than a lot of people I know who are half my age. I'm starting to get a touch of CRS, though.
Do you really think any time traveler will risk the possibility that something they do will cause them to have never existed? I know if I were a time traveler I'd be pretty careful about what I did.
Remember when they were building the LHC and screwed up the power supply? That was the doings of time traveler. Oh, and ghosts, bigfoots, Bermuda Triangle, Area 51... ;)
How would we know?
Log scale? Yep, that complicates it a little. However, didn't they test the time dilation with a couple of astronauts? I don't think they got anywhere near .8C. .8C is pretty damned fast.
How did you know he didn't?
If I find that someone (Person or corporate entity.) has installed software on MY computer without my explicit permission, they will be explaining to law enforcement why they think they have the right.
LOL, who went to prison for Sony's XCP? I was bitten by Sony's malware almost ten years ago but idiots keep buying Sony's shit. It cost them NOTHING, I'll never EVER buy another Sony product but I'm one in seven billion.
Someone should have gone to prison for deliberately infecting thousands of their paying customers' PCs, but no... rich people only go to prison when they fuck over someone with more wealth and power.
Is there a silver lining in this cloud? FOSS will benefit... a tiny bit. There are too many people stupid enough to buy Sony products after XCP, OtherOS, and all the other fuckings over they served their paying customers.
If you have mod points and buy Sony, mod me flamebait because I'm calling you a fucking moron. God damned dumbasses. Yes, I'm still pissed and I still want someone in prison over this, but governments are and have always been owned by the rich. Expect malware in your proprietary shitware.
I want Sony to fucking DIE. Unfortunately, they won't be bothered one tiny bit. They can do any damned thing they want to you. Bend over and take it, serfs.
Stephen Hawking says time travel is possible. Maybe some day, but I doubt even your great great great grandchildren will see FTL or time travel.
Within 50 years (if not much sooner), we'll almost certainly have cured aging.
Well, there are some folks who know a lot more about medicine and biology than I do who believe that, but it's far from a certainty. Note that the average and median life spans for people have increased greatly in the last hundred years, but wake me up when someone makes it much past 115. Those outliers have been around since antiquity, there are quite a few in my family tree from centuries ago (an uncle was into genealogy).
I'm 60 and already starting to feel the effects of aging. I'll be 110 in 50 years. I'm pretty skeptical, they're going to have to figure out how to extend telomeraise (I don't know how to spell it, and neither does FireFox) without giving you cancer. They're going to have to figure out how to stop genetic errors when cells divide, and quite a few other thorny problems. I doubt my ten year old great nephew will see it, let alone me, and it may be an impossibility.
Once you approach even half the speed of light, local time slows down for you, so e.g. a 50 year trip would be 'only' 30 or 40 years (I haven't done the exact math)
Unless I'm mistaken the math is straightforward; at C the trip would seem instantaneous to the traveler, so half C a 50 light year trip would seem like 25.
But then, there's the problem that time speeds up greatly as you age -- remember how far apart Christmases were when you were five? That phenomenon accelerates as you age.
the goal of sending autonomous robotic explorers to stars (a la Mars Curiosity) just 13ly away may be quite feasible in some of our lifetimes
Certainly we'll have robotic probes to the stars in a few hundred years, but I'm very skeptical that you'll see it in your lifetime.
we take for granted, may change dramatically - e.g. the typical human lifespan.
The typical lifespan already has nearly doubled, but the longest lifespan hasn't changed at all.
Also, perspective: We've been 'human' for approximately 2 million years. We have millions of years ahead of us as a species, and even on cosmic scales, you can do an enormous amount in even just 2 million years.
I'm cautiously optimistic. I think our future in space is practically certain, and that we'll probably ultimately reach hundreds of other stars, and establish colonies on other planets. It's a matter of when and how, not if.
That I will agree with. I'm in the middle of writing a sci-fi book set ten million years in the future. In the book, we have evolved into at least four separate species (there may be more, I never know from one chapter to the next what's going to happen), one on terraformed Mars, one Terraformed Venus, and two on Earth. The Earthians have time travel, FTL travel, and a 500 year old is a young man. If you're interested, here's the first chapter. What's done so far is all posted (if you hate it, blame slashdot! They started it...).
Interesting, thanks. Apparently I've been miseducated.
If we did find a planet with technological creatures that close, it would be a pretty good indication that tech civilizations were pretty common.
It would be pretty hard to decipher the signal, though. You've probably seen this and this. We miight not even realize the signals were from an intelligence -- Greg Egan's Luminous has an extraterrestrial race with a completely different math than ours (I read it in 1995's The Year's Best Science Fiction, it's a very good, thought-provoking read. Wikipedia says he has a book by the same name, with that story in it).
It's pretty cold outside here, too (at least in the north right now) and we're alone as far as we can ascertain. But why would the newly found planet not have an atmosphere? It isn't like they can tell if it has a magnetic field. If it does, and it's Earth's mass more or less, it should have an atmosphere.
Vulcan circles a red dwarf? Wikipedia says nothing about the planet or its star, just about the Vulcans themselves. I was thinking Krypton, even though I haven't read a Superman comic since I was 7 or 8; it orbits a red star.
I'm always amused by "only n light years away" in every story about a newly-found planet. Adams was right. "Space is big. I mean really big. You think it's a long way to the chemist..." the Voyagers have been traveling for 40 years and still haven't gotten past the heliopause. Even Adams was understating the vast distances between stars, try as he might to impress how big space is. Getting to Vulcan/Krypton is indeed infinitely improbable, at least for the next few hundred years and maybe never.
Depressing, isn't it?