Personally, I would take the simple maintenance on an electric car over a hybrid, at least for the sort of commute I have (which I can just do on my bicycle, so maybe add a few extra miles). Electric vehicles are meant for local commuting, with distances that resemble an urban or surburban commute to work, not an extended trip through a remote region. Electric vehicles win for local commutes, especially in major urban areas where traffic jams are common and gas powered cars waste a lot of energy idling their engines.
GM did this for the simple reason that they make so much money selling spare parts. Electric vehicles have fewer parts, so that hurts GM's bottom line.
You mean to tell me that the majority of people actually do not care about things like "just went to the bathroom" or "I am on a date right now?" Next you'll be telling me that most blogs receive less than 5 unique visitors per year or that the personal webpage I made when I was 13 was ignored!
Is this really news? I guess the precise number counts as news; I would have placed it somewhere closer to 99%.
One issue with NAT is the difficulty in running a server. I like being able to ssh to my home computer when I am at work; but behind NAT, that becomes more difficult (not impossible, just more difficult).
Except that a corporation is a special organization, with special privileges and responsibilities. A private, non-corporate club is not obligated to inform anyone of its financial status, nor is it required to seek profits, nor must it be chartered anywhere. None of the above is true of a corporation.
I doubt it will happen any time soon. Maybe after Steve Jobs is dead, buried, and an entirely new generation that has never heard of him starts buying computers.
There are very few modern block ciphers which are vulnerable to ciphertext only attacks or known plaintext attacks. The publicly known weaknesses in AES are chosen ciphertext attacks and side channel attacks; likewise with other currently used block ciphers and public key schemes. Many of these attacks are still infeasible to mount using any currently known technology.
It is true, if the NSA encountered someone using cryptography, they would probably use their signals intelligence capabilities to discover the plaintext. This does not mean they can break the encryption; it means they can sidestep the encryption. It is as much a "break" as planting a video camera above someone's keyboard and watching what they type is a "break."
Wiretaps are so they can basically watch everybody in the entire country,. This is more political than anything else.
Agree completely -- this is just a rehashing of the same arguments that were used to try to push the clipper chip on us.
If it's a national security concern the NSA already can crack the encryption
I would not bet on that one. Maybe the NSA has a quantum computer sitting in a basement in Ft. Meade, but I doubt that too. The NSA is advanced, but they are not deities.
What I'm saying is that if an experienced teacher knows something, chances are it has been done before. If it is not common knowledge, then you can do something about it. Make it common knowledge so that no one will make this mistake in the future.
Except that in advanced math, the number of possible mistakes is enormous -- to the point where even if every possible mistake could be documented, there would be far too many for any one person to memorize or search for. Often a single mistake can be disguised or appear in an unfamiliar way.
You memorize math formulas for a reason. The mistake is your own fault, and not a problem with self teaching or homeschooling. Double check your work.
Math is not about rote memorization.
Apparently, information that tells you not to do so is available online (if it wasn't before, it certainly is now). If the information is not present, make it present. The more alternatives that are available, the better. But, like I said, so much information is already present that I doubt that there are many subjects left uncovered.
Like I said, it is easy to make those sorts of assumptions and mistakes without realizing it. The one I used as an example can crop up in all sorts of ways, especially when dealing with infinity -- and it is not always obvious to students when that is the case. Most students in upper level math courses will understand why assuming a set is countable is wrong for a given proof, but may not see that they made such an assumption without the guidance of someone who can spot it.
I would think that it would merely require basic logic to figure such things out.
Well, if you think so, then you should be spending your time publishing papers in math journals.
"f someone does not have a teacher who can tell them whether or not their proof is correct, and they wrote something which does not match their book or any proof they find online"
The latter is an unlikely scenario. Still possible, but unlikely.
It is not as unlikely or rare as you seem to think, especially with more advanced topics. When I took abstract algebra, it was not uncommon for someone to turn in a proof that was not in the textbook or online, but which was still correct (as far as anyone, professor included, could tell). Yes, for basic problems, it is less likely, but all along I have been saying that it is the advanced topics which require the guidance of an experienced teacher.
These mistakes that you say can't be fixed unless you have a teacher (even then, it would still be possible to find and fix them) are rare, and likely do not detract from the benefits of self teaching or homeschooling. They will have to be applied at some point, and that is when the mistake will become evidence. Finding your own solutions, as I said before, is highly beneficial to the learning process.
It is not so rare to come up with a mistake that is not obvious, which appears to get you the correct answer, and which only someone with experience could spot, not at advanced levels anyway. I have seen it happen in CS and math at the very least, although I doubt that the phenomenon is limited to those two subjects. Yes, finding your own solution to a mistake you made is beneficial to learning...if you are aware that you made a mistake.
For example, it is common for students to assume that they will only ever deal with finite or countable sets, and they often unknowingly make this assumption in proofs. In higher level topics, it is sometimes unclear that this assumption was even made, and in some cases a student may wind up with a proof that looks correct but has a hidden assumption that is not valid. There are a few possible outcomes if a student does not have an experienced teacher to point this out to them:
They go on making the assumption, eventually reaching a level where it prevents them from getting the right answer, and are unable to understand why.
They go on making the assumption, eventually start getting wrong answers, and then drop the assumption but fail to review their previous work, thus missing a valuable lesson about an earlier result.
They go on making the assumption, and when it causes them to get a wrong answer, they are forced to repeat all their previous work, spending time rewriting many other proofs which they might have otherwise gotten correct had the problem been pointed out earlier.
They never reach a level where the assumption causes them to make a mistake, and thus never even learn that they had been making a mistake all along.
Sure, none of that applies to the absolute basic topics. Yet I started observing myself making these assumptions as soon as I took an introductory proof writing course, where we spent our time proving results about the Integers from the axioms. My professor was very good at pointing out where I had made an invalid assumption, even in cases where I ultimately had the correct answer. I also turned in a few proofs that were not in the textbook but that were still correct.
Eventually, after being shown where they have made mistakes, people will learn how to spot these things on their own -- and that point, they are ready to do novel work (i.e. research). Even then, mistakes are made, and sometimes papers are retracted years after being published because a subtle mistake was spotted. Someone who is not doing research level math (or any other topic, really) should be getting the guidance of someone with experience, especially for more advanced topics. Even Ramanujan needed the guidance of an experienced professor.
Funny, back when I was working for a software company, I found myself using things I had learned in upper level courses all the time. I had to write a parser once, because a regular expression would not have been enough for what I was doing. I dealt with cryptography all the time, and was expected to understand block chaining and CCA security at a minimum. Those are just the moments that stick out; if I were to take a look at what I was doing, I am sure many other "upper level" topics were covered.
Frankly, though, I find the focus on "useful stuff" to be more of a distraction than anything else. I went to college because I wanted an education, not because I was hoping for job training. I am in grad school now for the same reason -- I really do love my field, I love learning about it, and I want to keep learning about it right up to the edge of what is currently known. I certainly understand that not everyone is like me, and that some people really just want to get technical training so they can get a higher paying job -- and that is why I think people should stop acting like trade schools are inferior or a sign of failure. Vocational schools have their place, and people who just want to get a job should go to a vocational school, get a 2 year degree, and get a job.
Yes, and in most things, there is no way to check your mistakes but to try out your methods yourself to the best of your ability. Chances are, someone has done what you're trying to do already (unless it's something completely new, but in that case, a teacher likely couldn't even help you). That is where the internet comes in.
Except that you might have a new or rare method of proof that is correct, in which case you really need someone with enough experience to say either, "Yes, this is correct, and a nice job on coming up with this proof" or, "No, this is not correct, there is a slight problem at this step..." If someone does not have a teacher who can tell them whether or not their proof is correct, and they wrote something which does not match their book or any proof they find online, what should they do? In most cases, they will err on the side of caution, assume their proof was in some way wrong, and try to understand the proofs they found -- which is detrimental to their learning whether or not their proof was actually correct.
I never said that they were, and I even explained that double checking your work is always a good idea. If you're doing it correctly step by step, you'll be able to double check it.
Not everything has a step-by-step process for getting the answer. In particular, if you were asked to write a proof there is no step-by-step process for getting the answer, a statement which itself was proved by Turing. You might double or triple check your proof, and still have a subtle logical flaw that you are unable to see. Your proof might appear accurate, and you might go on thinking that you just found a different way to prove the statement than you saw in your book or on a website. This is particularly true of more advanced math; you might assume something is logical when it is not, or a counterexample to a statement might be very obscure or difficult to think up without more experience in the topic.
In the computer science field, I was able to self-learn much earlier than what it was introduced in education
In fact, when I was a teenager (actually, as soon as I received my first computer, on my 13th birthday), I also started teaching myself basic computer science. Throughout high school, I learned more and more from books, and was encouraged by my family who gave me the books as gifts.
Then I got to college, and learned all sorts of CS topics that I had missed. Algorithms, methods of proof, lambda calculus/CL, and so forth. Compilers was a particularly prominent example -- it is a topic that textbooks just do not explain sufficiently well, especially beyond the basic lexer/syntactic analyzer/semantic analyzer concept. Cryptography is another prominent example, one which is often poorly explained by books and which people frequently have misconceptions about.
I would say that this is even more the case with math. I thought I understood differential equations when I came to college, since my friend and I used to read textbooks on the topic and do example problems with each other. Then I took a formal course, and realized that there were connections between DE and a number of other fields of math, and that some of those connections were not even mentioned in the textbook.
It is not like I am completely closed to the idea of learning by reading books. I have done so myself, and continue to do so. However, formal instruction is necessary if you ever want to go beyond the most basic level. I would not call myself an expert on the history of World War II just because I have read a number of books on the subject; I would only say that I have read about it.
You keep talking about "resources" without really specifying what those "resources" are. Books? Journal subscriptions? Library access? Can you clarify which "resources" you are referring to?
As for having mistakes explained, not all mistakes are the result of poor memorization. For example, I recently turned in a proof as a homework assignment for an introductory topology course. The conclusion of the proof was correct; the logic, however, was not correct. My mistake was subtle, and in another scenario, that same mistake would have led to the wrong answer. It is not at all inconceivable that a person with less experience than my professor would have thought I had just written a different but still correct proof.
Of course, topology is not a basic subject, so the sort of mistakes a topology student can make are far more varied and sometimes difficult to understand than a student who is learning basic algebra might make. This is precisely my point: as the material becomes more advanced, it is less and less likely that one can learn it without the help of an experienced teacher.
This is why you need direction. No, this doesn't come from someone with "years of experience," it can come from just about any source. There's all kinds of curriculum and tutorials floating around that can be used. If you follow them in order and do as they say, nothing should be missed. Public schooling also has a curriculum, naturally. Without direction, you really will miss things. You simply can't say that someone that actually has the resources they need (something these people you're speaking of didn't have, obviously) can't learn efficiently.
When you make a mistake, who is going to explain what went wrong? Textbooks cannot publish every possible mistake that a student might make, along with an explanation of why it is a mistake. As the material gets more advanced, the number of possible mistakes grows very rapidly, to the point where you really need someone with a very deep and detailed understanding of the material to explain to you why your answer is wrong; this is part of the process of learning. Like I said, I am sure people can learn the basics without an experienced teacher, but there is more to learn than just the basics.
Really? Do you honestly believe that every person that underwent homeschooling and didn't have tutors didn't learn anything? Please. See, this is the part where these great things called "books" and the "internet" come in handy. There is a plentiful amount of information circulating around, and you don't have to be a teacher or a tutor to get it. This is where the "willful" part comes in. If they actually attempt to do a good job of teaching you useful information by studying the material themselves and explaining it, they can succeed.
I did not say that people who are homeschooled do not learn anything, I said that they will have trouble going beyond the basics, except perhaps in the particular subject their parents are experts in. Again, who is going to explain why their mistakes are mistakes? How are the parents expected to learn advanced topics in subjects they are not familiar with (and if their parents can do so, why not cut out the middle man), to the point of being able to teach those topics to their children?
Why exactly is the publisher cooperating? On the one hand, the DoD is going to pay for every copy, so the publisher has guaranteed revenue if they print uncensored copies. On the other hand, if the publisher cares about getting this information out, why would they redact it?
Slashdot Mirror
Personally, I would take the simple maintenance on an electric car over a hybrid, at least for the sort of commute I have (which I can just do on my bicycle, so maybe add a few extra miles). Electric vehicles are meant for local commuting, with distances that resemble an urban or surburban commute to work, not an extended trip through a remote region. Electric vehicles win for local commutes, especially in major urban areas where traffic jams are common and gas powered cars waste a lot of energy idling their engines.
GM did this for the simple reason that they make so much money selling spare parts. Electric vehicles have fewer parts, so that hurts GM's bottom line.
Actually, a perfect compression algorithm would have the entropy of its input as the lower bound: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Entropy_(information_theory)
You mean to tell me that the majority of people actually do not care about things like "just went to the bathroom" or "I am on a date right now?" Next you'll be telling me that most blogs receive less than 5 unique visitors per year or that the personal webpage I made when I was 13 was ignored!
Is this really news? I guess the precise number counts as news; I would have placed it somewhere closer to 99%.
http://www.catb.org/jargon/html/T/TECO.html
You are not thinking like an ed user. Clearly, the right thing is to first type "i", then type your text, then enter a line with just a period on it.
The one redeeming quality of ed is the documentation. The man page is nice and short and describes everything you need to know.
This reminds me of what happened to Darl McBride after the SCO suits started. It got so bad that he began carrying a handgun at all times.
Except for laws like COICA. They sure are capable of passing those...
One issue with NAT is the difficulty in running a server. I like being able to ssh to my home computer when I am at work; but behind NAT, that becomes more difficult (not impossible, just more difficult).
Why not just let corporations take over the government...
Hi, welcome to 21st century America, I see you are new here...
Except that a corporation is a special organization, with special privileges and responsibilities. A private, non-corporate club is not obligated to inform anyone of its financial status, nor is it required to seek profits, nor must it be chartered anywhere. None of the above is true of a corporation.
The reason we protect the privacy of individuals is because we recognize a need for human dignity
Or to help protect us from overreaching laws by making those laws unenforceable.
I doubt it will happen any time soon. Maybe after Steve Jobs is dead, buried, and an entirely new generation that has never heard of him starts buying computers.
The Republicans are certainly against people eating certain things: hallucinogenic mushrooms, peyote, etc.
It is true, if the NSA encountered someone using cryptography, they would probably use their signals intelligence capabilities to discover the plaintext. This does not mean they can break the encryption; it means they can sidestep the encryption. It is as much a "break" as planting a video camera above someone's keyboard and watching what they type is a "break."
Wiretaps are so they can basically watch everybody in the entire country,. This is more political than anything else.
Agree completely -- this is just a rehashing of the same arguments that were used to try to push the clipper chip on us.
If it's a national security concern the NSA already can crack the encryption
I would not bet on that one. Maybe the NSA has a quantum computer sitting in a basement in Ft. Meade, but I doubt that too. The NSA is advanced, but they are not deities.
Gee, where have we heard these arguments before?
What I'm saying is that if an experienced teacher knows something, chances are it has been done before. If it is not common knowledge, then you can do something about it. Make it common knowledge so that no one will make this mistake in the future.
Except that in advanced math, the number of possible mistakes is enormous -- to the point where even if every possible mistake could be documented, there would be far too many for any one person to memorize or search for. Often a single mistake can be disguised or appear in an unfamiliar way.
You memorize math formulas for a reason. The mistake is your own fault, and not a problem with self teaching or homeschooling. Double check your work.
Math is not about rote memorization.
Apparently, information that tells you not to do so is available online (if it wasn't before, it certainly is now). If the information is not present, make it present. The more alternatives that are available, the better. But, like I said, so much information is already present that I doubt that there are many subjects left uncovered.
Like I said, it is easy to make those sorts of assumptions and mistakes without realizing it. The one I used as an example can crop up in all sorts of ways, especially when dealing with infinity -- and it is not always obvious to students when that is the case. Most students in upper level math courses will understand why assuming a set is countable is wrong for a given proof, but may not see that they made such an assumption without the guidance of someone who can spot it.
I would think that it would merely require basic logic to figure such things out.
Well, if you think so, then you should be spending your time publishing papers in math journals.
"f someone does not have a teacher who can tell them whether or not their proof is correct, and they wrote something which does not match their book or any proof they find online"
The latter is an unlikely scenario. Still possible, but unlikely.
It is not as unlikely or rare as you seem to think, especially with more advanced topics. When I took abstract algebra, it was not uncommon for someone to turn in a proof that was not in the textbook or online, but which was still correct (as far as anyone, professor included, could tell). Yes, for basic problems, it is less likely, but all along I have been saying that it is the advanced topics which require the guidance of an experienced teacher.
These mistakes that you say can't be fixed unless you have a teacher (even then, it would still be possible to find and fix them) are rare, and likely do not detract from the benefits of self teaching or homeschooling. They will have to be applied at some point, and that is when the mistake will become evidence. Finding your own solutions, as I said before, is highly beneficial to the learning process.
It is not so rare to come up with a mistake that is not obvious, which appears to get you the correct answer, and which only someone with experience could spot, not at advanced levels anyway. I have seen it happen in CS and math at the very least, although I doubt that the phenomenon is limited to those two subjects. Yes, finding your own solution to a mistake you made is beneficial to learning...if you are aware that you made a mistake.
For example, it is common for students to assume that they will only ever deal with finite or countable sets, and they often unknowingly make this assumption in proofs. In higher level topics, it is sometimes unclear that this assumption was even made, and in some cases a student may wind up with a proof that looks correct but has a hidden assumption that is not valid. There are a few possible outcomes if a student does not have an experienced teacher to point this out to them:
Sure, none of that applies to the absolute basic topics. Yet I started observing myself making these assumptions as soon as I took an introductory proof writing course, where we spent our time proving results about the Integers from the axioms. My professor was very good at pointing out where I had made an invalid assumption, even in cases where I ultimately had the correct answer. I also turned in a few proofs that were not in the textbook but that were still correct.
Eventually, after being shown where they have made mistakes, people will learn how to spot these things on their own -- and that point, they are ready to do novel work (i.e. research). Even then, mistakes are made, and sometimes papers are retracted years after being published because a subtle mistake was spotted. Someone who is not doing research level math (or any other topic, really) should be getting the guidance of someone with experience, especially for more advanced topics. Even Ramanujan needed the guidance of an experienced professor.
Funny, back when I was working for a software company, I found myself using things I had learned in upper level courses all the time. I had to write a parser once, because a regular expression would not have been enough for what I was doing. I dealt with cryptography all the time, and was expected to understand block chaining and CCA security at a minimum. Those are just the moments that stick out; if I were to take a look at what I was doing, I am sure many other "upper level" topics were covered.
Frankly, though, I find the focus on "useful stuff" to be more of a distraction than anything else. I went to college because I wanted an education, not because I was hoping for job training. I am in grad school now for the same reason -- I really do love my field, I love learning about it, and I want to keep learning about it right up to the edge of what is currently known. I certainly understand that not everyone is like me, and that some people really just want to get technical training so they can get a higher paying job -- and that is why I think people should stop acting like trade schools are inferior or a sign of failure. Vocational schools have their place, and people who just want to get a job should go to a vocational school, get a 2 year degree, and get a job.
Yes, and in most things, there is no way to check your mistakes but to try out your methods yourself to the best of your ability. Chances are, someone has done what you're trying to do already (unless it's something completely new, but in that case, a teacher likely couldn't even help you). That is where the internet comes in.
Except that you might have a new or rare method of proof that is correct, in which case you really need someone with enough experience to say either, "Yes, this is correct, and a nice job on coming up with this proof" or, "No, this is not correct, there is a slight problem at this step..." If someone does not have a teacher who can tell them whether or not their proof is correct, and they wrote something which does not match their book or any proof they find online, what should they do? In most cases, they will err on the side of caution, assume their proof was in some way wrong, and try to understand the proofs they found -- which is detrimental to their learning whether or not their proof was actually correct.
I never said that they were, and I even explained that double checking your work is always a good idea. If you're doing it correctly step by step, you'll be able to double check it.
Not everything has a step-by-step process for getting the answer. In particular, if you were asked to write a proof there is no step-by-step process for getting the answer, a statement which itself was proved by Turing. You might double or triple check your proof, and still have a subtle logical flaw that you are unable to see. Your proof might appear accurate, and you might go on thinking that you just found a different way to prove the statement than you saw in your book or on a website. This is particularly true of more advanced math; you might assume something is logical when it is not, or a counterexample to a statement might be very obscure or difficult to think up without more experience in the topic.
In the computer science field, I was able to self-learn much earlier than what it was introduced in education
In fact, when I was a teenager (actually, as soon as I received my first computer, on my 13th birthday), I also started teaching myself basic computer science. Throughout high school, I learned more and more from books, and was encouraged by my family who gave me the books as gifts.
Then I got to college, and learned all sorts of CS topics that I had missed. Algorithms, methods of proof, lambda calculus/CL, and so forth. Compilers was a particularly prominent example -- it is a topic that textbooks just do not explain sufficiently well, especially beyond the basic lexer/syntactic analyzer/semantic analyzer concept. Cryptography is another prominent example, one which is often poorly explained by books and which people frequently have misconceptions about.
I would say that this is even more the case with math. I thought I understood differential equations when I came to college, since my friend and I used to read textbooks on the topic and do example problems with each other. Then I took a formal course, and realized that there were connections between DE and a number of other fields of math, and that some of those connections were not even mentioned in the textbook.
It is not like I am completely closed to the idea of learning by reading books. I have done so myself, and continue to do so. However, formal instruction is necessary if you ever want to go beyond the most basic level. I would not call myself an expert on the history of World War II just because I have read a number of books on the subject; I would only say that I have read about it.
You keep talking about "resources" without really specifying what those "resources" are. Books? Journal subscriptions? Library access? Can you clarify which "resources" you are referring to?
As for having mistakes explained, not all mistakes are the result of poor memorization. For example, I recently turned in a proof as a homework assignment for an introductory topology course. The conclusion of the proof was correct; the logic, however, was not correct. My mistake was subtle, and in another scenario, that same mistake would have led to the wrong answer. It is not at all inconceivable that a person with less experience than my professor would have thought I had just written a different but still correct proof.
Of course, topology is not a basic subject, so the sort of mistakes a topology student can make are far more varied and sometimes difficult to understand than a student who is learning basic algebra might make. This is precisely my point: as the material becomes more advanced, it is less and less likely that one can learn it without the help of an experienced teacher.
This is why you need direction. No, this doesn't come from someone with "years of experience," it can come from just about any source. There's all kinds of curriculum and tutorials floating around that can be used. If you follow them in order and do as they say, nothing should be missed. Public schooling also has a curriculum, naturally. Without direction, you really will miss things. You simply can't say that someone that actually has the resources they need (something these people you're speaking of didn't have, obviously) can't learn efficiently.
When you make a mistake, who is going to explain what went wrong? Textbooks cannot publish every possible mistake that a student might make, along with an explanation of why it is a mistake. As the material gets more advanced, the number of possible mistakes grows very rapidly, to the point where you really need someone with a very deep and detailed understanding of the material to explain to you why your answer is wrong; this is part of the process of learning. Like I said, I am sure people can learn the basics without an experienced teacher, but there is more to learn than just the basics.
Really? Do you honestly believe that every person that underwent homeschooling and didn't have tutors didn't learn anything? Please. See, this is the part where these great things called "books" and the "internet" come in handy. There is a plentiful amount of information circulating around, and you don't have to be a teacher or a tutor to get it. This is where the "willful" part comes in. If they actually attempt to do a good job of teaching you useful information by studying the material themselves and explaining it, they can succeed.
I did not say that people who are homeschooled do not learn anything, I said that they will have trouble going beyond the basics, except perhaps in the particular subject their parents are experts in. Again, who is going to explain why their mistakes are mistakes? How are the parents expected to learn advanced topics in subjects they are not familiar with (and if their parents can do so, why not cut out the middle man), to the point of being able to teach those topics to their children?
Why exactly is the publisher cooperating? On the one hand, the DoD is going to pay for every copy, so the publisher has guaranteed revenue if they print uncensored copies. On the other hand, if the publisher cares about getting this information out, why would they redact it?
Something about this smells funny.