education

Re:Well it clearly matters to some people...
(Score:5, Insightful)
by mcrbids (148650) on Tuesday October 11, @02:57AM (#13758535)
I think the bigger question in my mind is why hadn't someone tried to do this before now?

Science isn't truth, and it isn't fact. It's a process that, over time, results in a gradual and constant tendency towards truth.

If you get into a debate with religious folk about "creationism" versus "evolution", one of the tactics almost invariably tried is to disprove some facet or other of evolution through some form of deductive reasoning. The basic idea is to prove that Science is somehow wrong, and then assume that creationism wins by default once that's done.

It's easy to see the fallacy: disproving evolution (even if they can) doesn't prove creationism.

But, scientific theory is always undergoing review and clarification. Newtonian gravity works, in limited scopes. It was revised and improved with relativity theory, which is itself being revised and improved today with multidimensional, superstring theory. It's this recursive process of deduction, testing, and review that advances science.

We should be ecstatic! Despite our incredible efforts to find it, we've uncovered NO evidence that this has ever happened before in the multi-billion year history of the universe!

People are stupid, and we have to acknowledge that. Our intellect barely rises above our other urges, the urge towards sex, the blindnesses caused by our tendency to suspend reason (A.K.A. "Faith") and follow the leader 'cause it's easy. And, truly fresh/new approaches to problems are rare, and hard to find. Most any "new" thought is merely an extension of a previous thought. We're creatures of habit. But, so long as we continue to try, so long as we continue to be willing to challenge our assumptions, and take the time to do so when somebody DOES come up with something new, then the process of Science progresses, and life continues to get better.

Schools today don't teach science. They teach "facts", like "water vapor absorbs light, but absorbes blue light the least, and thus makes the sky blue". They don't ever teach the method of science, the passion of science, beyond making you recite the "gather facts, form hypothesis, test hypothesis, draw conclusion" which is only minimally how science works.

Children are BORN scientists. As they explore with their hands, and their minds, the world around them, they perform hundreds of experiments a day, every day. Where do you find frogs? What bug is making that buzzing noise? What happens if you clap your hands near a grasshopper? How many blocks can I stack up before they fall over?

So, what do we do? We lock them up in a sterile environment, where they're told not to question the teacher, and never to talk to the kids next to them. We prevent their natural curiousity, and instead, browbeat them into performing tricks like a circus animal. The apathy of the schoolchild is both detrimental and obvious.

And after that's done, after the child's natural, scientific curiousity has been conquered, that's when we introduce the wonders of science in the most boring, unimaginably unflattering way possible, by forcing him/her to regurgitate "facts" that they'd be ridiculed to question.

The real wonder? How does science advance at all in the face of this educational travesty?

It's pretty obvious that scientific curiosity is built into the very fiber of humanity, or how else could still be advancing despite our incredibly expensive social efforts to prevent it?
--
I have no special talents. I am only passionately curious.
--Albert Einstein

again, from slashdot

Re:Not a global warming issue. (Score:4, Interesting)
by demachina (71715) Alter Relationship on Wednesday August 31, @11:20AM (#13442429)
"Oil companies only sell what people buy. "

That is completely nuts. Oil companies, in particular Standard Oil created the fossil fuel economy, hand in hand with Ford and GM, who marketed it and suckered Americans in to buying in to it. It's created horrible urban environments like the ones in California, and nearly ever urban, suburban nightmare in the U.S. which make it nearly impossible to exist without owning a car. It created massive expanses of concrete where pedestrians are an endangered species and mass transit largely non existent. Most American cities have turned in hell holes where no one wants to live surrounded by a massive suburban sprawl. Ironically the quality of life in such an environment is horrible but people do it anyway. No one in their right mind would spend 2-4 hours a day commuting on traffic clogged and polluted freeways. I'll take life in the country or in a real city with subways, and corner markets you walk to any day. The karma of the American life style is nearly all bad and it will be world killing and unsustainable as the billions of people in China and India start buying in to it which they are.

Everything Americans do is driven by nonstop advertising and marketing campaigns. Most cars are a truly horrible place to invest money because, with a few exceptions, their value craters in a few years and the marketing machine starts telling you to mortgage your soul to buy a new one though its a horrible investment.

The oil companies have year after year artificially inflated gasoline prices to pad their profit margins, and then dropped prices just as the backlash develops. Chances are it will go that way this time too. Oil companies simply can't let prices stay at current levels indefinitely because everyone will start flocking to alternatives to their product. They might let it stay high just long enough for people to start investing in alternatives, then drop prices and put all those alternatives out of business so investors in them get doubly burned. Oil companies have for 100 years done nothing but manipulate America and the world.

"our AC running"

Air conditioning karma is just as bad. Its led to mass migrations in to places where people shouldn't be living like the Southwestern deserts and the deep south. AC is why so many people are living in the path of devastating Hurricanes in the South and in the deserts without enough water in the Southwest. Florida was not a place you wanted to live before AC. AC fueled the massive growth in coal fired power plants which is one of the worst parts of the fossil fuel karma.

Computers I wouldn't judge so harshly. Its enabled communication and learning on an unprecedented scale. It give people something to do besides drive around in cars or vegetate passively in front of the TV. They have a down side but their karma is at least a wash.

"and saying that these poor people somehow where asking for it"

The poor people were unfortunate victims but a big chunk of the Louisiana economy, and the people living there are completely intertwined with and dependent on the fossil fuel economy. You can't drive far in Louisiana without smelling the stench of refineries.

Another insightful slashdot post

I may be wrong (usually am) (Score:4, Insightful)
by zappepcs (820751) on Monday July 18, @12:54PM (#13090950)
(http://amcon.blogspot.com/ | Last Journal: Monday May 30, @08:42AM)
but it seems that many here are mistaking improvement for innovation. Innovation is doing that which has not been done, nor was expected via the conduits of common sense.

Innovation in computing will take some doing. There are plenty of companies that are trying to find and accept new business models and methods, trying to adapt to new threats, both malicious and competition based, but there is no innovation per se'. Unless you want to count multicore processors, low voltage processors, battery and power technologies that are leaps and bounds above previous. These are arguably derivitive works, but they build cornerstones for true innovation.

Innovation in computing, by definition, must change how we use them in some way. The spreadsheet was an innovation. The DOS was an innovation. GUI OS was an innovation. What do we need now?

We need more human like interaction with computers. Grandma doesn't need to know what icon to click if the computer asks her what she wants to do? Little sheila doesn't have to know the innards of Google if all she has to do is ask what is the three main properties of an isotope?

There is an entire new (as yet unexplored) world of computing that is a huge layer between the user and the actual workings of a computer. All the recent 'innovations' in computing and technology bring us that little bit closer to the world of Star Trek computers. The people that help bridge what we have today over to what Star Trek and other futuristic folks have promised are the people that will bring innovation.

The computer is a tool. We use it in different ways, but it is a tool. It really doesn't matter what OS you use, it is still a tool. I envision robots interacting with humans, and in the background use the computer/Internet to help or assist humans. How many times have you asked somebody who that movie actor was? or what is the word that means so and so? or asked people around you what is a word that means blah blah blah? We are born, and grow up, and by accident of birth, we learn and experience what it is that makes us much of what we are (so psychiatrists say) but with the computer and Internet, that can change. When you can ask your robot or PDA what is the identity of the bird that I just heard, then you have innovation. When you can be shopping and ask your robot or pda if this camelback couch is a good deal or not, that is innovation.

When you can type out a shopping list for the grocery store, and a kid shows up when you get home with the items you wanted... that is innovation.

The point is that technology isn't innovation. Innovation is how we use the technology. You can surf progressively faster and faster, but if you continue to surf the same way, there is no innovation.

Perhaps some will argue with me (and TFA is unavailable) but innovation is not new batteries or a different design of laptop. Innovation is how we use the technology and information (that wants to be free by the way).

Innovation is how software makes the information more useful. Right now we still pay lawyers to do patent searches... computers should tell us if there is prior art or patents without paying a lawyer. Information is just information. Sure there are those that want you to pay for it, but any free information should be available in ways that is just not possible now... that is innovation. When your child can ask the computer how many bones are in the human hand, and be shown a picture of them on the 'face' of their personal robot, that is innovation.

Information doesn't want to just be free, it wants to be freely integrated into all of our lives. When there is even just one place in a rural 3rd world country where information like this is available, it doesn't take much to imagine that even the uneducated can ask for help finding a new way to solve a problem and finding how it was solved in all of history in other places. Say a third world company wants to build cars... and they ask the computer for cross reference of their design against all of the worlds minimum requirements for safety? If they got the answer, that is innovation. ... well, that is what I want. I'm not holding my breath.
--
Change: the only constant unless you're a mushroom when the only constant is BulI$h1t, the only change is color/smell

I'm in love and life is fantastic. perfect. awesome.

I met a girl, who changed my world, her presence makes me love life, each day is akin to discovering a new worldlet of emotion within mysel, a cluster of confusion within finally makes sense I feel like a galaxy forming out of stardust, her beauty the guiding stars in spacetime who guide my formation as I guide hers. I never dreamt of anything as wonderful as this, being completely in love with another who loves you, and oh my the debates are half the fun ;P

im in love with tiger ahahaha, and a special someone :)

Using my computer is a joy only matched by her voice wowowowow, im so stoked and my life feels like some kind of zero friction machinery, schools awesomee, lifes awesome, the only thing gettin me down is my familys struggles but their getting smoothed over as I type XD

I love this guy nearly as much as I love her

GPL violation trolls (Score:5, Insightful)
by ites (600337) on Friday March 18, @07:56PM (#11973974)
(Last Journal: Thursday November 25, @11:20PM)

There are some voices on Slashdot that claim that GPL violators are just like file sharers. (And that to treat them differently is hypocritical.)

Indeed, both discussions are about copyright. But they are also more fundamentally about fair use.

The GPL is based on the author's copyright and a very generous fair use license that promotes shared investment in the work. When a company takes GPL'd work and resells derived works without respecting the author's copyright, they are taking someone's work and reselling it without respecting the original author's rights.

Now to file sharing. Yes, this is also about copyright and fair use. However, it is rarely about restricting access to a work, it is about broadening that access.

The moral debate is simple: all technology, all creative work, all artistic creation and invention is the result of a continuous cultural stream that stretches back to the origins of our species. Every single creative act is a pebble placed on a mountain built by our ancestors.

Slashdotters tend to understand this intuitively. We don't like patents because they claim ownership of something we know to belong to us all. We don't like GPL violators because they take common property and resell it under false pretenses. We don't like DRM because it takes common property and fences it off. We tolerate file sharing and defend those who do it because we know that the alternative is cultural sterility, decay, and evetually extinction.

There is no contradiction here. Anyone who takes sacks of pebbles from the mountain and says "these are now mine" is a simple rogue, legalised or not, and we all know it.

pwr!!!

Mjordan2nd: If you could be any fictional character, who would you be?
Chris: Spider Man
Tim: batman
Sidd: batman
Mjordan2nd: I'd be god