From khare at alumni.caltech.edu  Mon Dec 28 00:56:47 2009
From: khare at alumni.caltech.edu (Rohit Khare)
Date: Mon, 28 Dec 2009 00:56:47 -0800
Subject: [FoRK] In case you hadn't seen the privacy theater rant this
	morning...
Message-ID: <E52314C5-44D8-424E-8781-FD7FB8C1F2AA@alumni.caltech.edu>

It took me over a week to calm down after the RockYou phishing  
incident to write up this guest post over at TechCrunch:

Privacy Theater: Why Social Networks Only Pretend To Protect You
http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/12/27/privacy-theater/

If anyone finds it tame, well, that's because it is ;)

Rohit

From michaelslists at gmail.com  Mon Dec 28 01:56:42 2009
From: michaelslists at gmail.com (silky)
Date: Mon, 28 Dec 2009 20:56:42 +1100
Subject: [FoRK] In case you hadn't seen the privacy theater rant this
	morning...
In-Reply-To: <E52314C5-44D8-424E-8781-FD7FB8C1F2AA@alumni.caltech.edu>
References: <E52314C5-44D8-424E-8781-FD7FB8C1F2AA@alumni.caltech.edu>
Message-ID: <5e01c29a0912280156ie8d6798mebaa97fe7750aea7@mail.gmail.com>

On Mon, Dec 28, 2009 at 7:56 PM, Rohit Khare <khare at alumni.caltech.edu> wrote:
> It took me over a week to calm down after the RockYou phishing incident to
> write up this guest post over at TechCrunch:
>
> Privacy Theater: Why Social Networks Only Pretend To Protect You
> http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/12/27/privacy-theater/
>
> If anyone finds it tame, well, that's because it is ;)

One day it will become accepted that users shouldn't actually have
passwords ... It's just not appropriate (or required), IMHO.


> Rohit
> _______________________________________________
> FoRK mailing list
> http://xent.com/mailman/listinfo/fork

-- 
silky
  http://www.mirios.com.au/
  http://island.mirios.com.au/t/rigby+random+20

bear; tenderize YIPE serial faithful, desirably.

From jbone at place.org  Mon Dec 28 05:49:31 2009
From: jbone at place.org (Jeff Bone)
Date: Mon, 28 Dec 2009 07:49:31 -0600
Subject: [FoRK] HTTP 0.2, 9p, and op
In-Reply-To: <594AF469-509A-40FF-A05D-017CF751BB64@place.org>
References: <1FFCA1AF-D079-4EDC-B140-7F79A82A03F7@place.org>
	<594AF469-509A-40FF-A05D-017CF751BB64@place.org>
Message-ID: <745DC822-6B9D-4649-B4FE-CEF81E085479@place.org>


Beberg says:

> Both file and message models have processes. I don't see how this is  
> a weakness, as the actor/data model is very robust. The message  
> model makes vastly more sense once you build more then one machine,  
> and you want to do anything with them. Things like checkpoints and  
> process migration also are more intuitive concepts, things the file  
> model has had people screwing up completely forever.

Adam,

First, I think we're more or less in violent agreement about analysis  
if not specifics of the conclusions.  In particular, I agree  
wholeheartedly with the implication of your messaging-orientation:   
that semantics belong primarily in messages rather than elsewhere.   
That said, I think you're misunderstanding a couple of the points I  
was trying to make (but that's probably because I was making them  
poorly.)

I really have no beef at all w/ the actor model, indeed I think it's  
really the paradigm to pay attention to going forward from here;  what  
I'm talking about is a bit of a technical canard regarding e.g. the  
actor model as implemented in Erlang, but it's rather important once  
you start scaling up.  I'll get to that in a minute.  But re:  
weakness, I'm not suggesting that the actor model is itself weak  
because it's got more than one kind of thing (i.e., messages and  
actors.)  The point of the bit you were referring to is this:  aside  
from the pure lambda calculus and the pure pi-calculi --- neither of  
which anyone would *actually* want to program in directly (numbers as  
Church numerals?  I think not!) --- I'm not aware of any fundamental  
models of computation in which you *truly* only have one "kind of  
thing."  For most practical systems it becomes useful if not necessary  
to have at least two kinds of thing, and I don't see that as a  
weakness necessarily.  You'd like to have as few things as possible,  
with as much genericity as possible;  but no more.  (Consistency,  
hobgoblins, and all that. ;-)

What I'm really talking about here is this:  how do you name the  
entities in your system?  (Let's assume genericity of interfaces at  
some level.)  For systems of large scale over time and space, you're  
going to need some kind of naming scheme that is, if not hierarchical,  
at least multidimensional.  I don't really love (mandatory, strict)  
hierarchical naming schemes --- in fact, I predicted (during a round  
of "what changes do you expect to see in the next few years"  
discussion) at Jerry Michaelski's annual retreat in '99 or '00 (can't  
recall) that we'd see "the death of hierarchical filing schemes"  
within 5 years.  A bit overoptimistic, but the rise of tagging and  
folksonomy at least vindicates the basic idea if not drives the nails  
in.  Tagging and hierarchical naming are just two kinds of namespaces,  
but you've got to have *some* kind of a namespace.  At least one.

Whether you're talking about interacting with stored content or live  
humans via messaging, you've got to name the recipient somehow.  A  
flat namespace doesn't suffice at scale --- maybe as a primitive  
(i.e., hashes for content, etc.) but you want some better, more  
metadata-rich directory scheme on top of that.  To see the weakness of  
flat namespaces, try loading 30,000 pdfs onto your Kindle DX. ;-)  No  
thank you!  (And btw, Bezos:  FIX IT!  I haven't played with a Nook  
yet and don't particularly relish organizing those ~30k files into  
some hierarchical scheme, but allegedly if I did the latter at least  
the Nook would preserve hierarchical filing structure.  But why can't  
folks figure out that tags and "smart folders" / views are a better  
way to go?  And Apple, I'm looking at you:  you've got all the  
plumbing, at *least* get this right in the next version of Mail!  I'm  
sick of relying on flaky third-party tools that use your existing  
infrastructure to do what you should've done in 10.4.)

(As another case-in-point, I believe it was Bill Humphries (maybe? if  
not, then somebody around here) that prodded me a several years ago to  
get set up on Delicious, very early in the game there, way before the  
acquisition.  I did, but the account set mostly dormant for a couple  
of years before I started using it.  I just hit >33k bookmarks on it  
over the holidays.  There's just *no way* even that relatively small  
amount of stuff could be managed effectively using any containment /  
hierarchy scheme.  But no flat scheme would suffice, either....   
search, maybe --- but probably not by itself, short of user metadata  
and annotation.  And in the end user-organized namespaces are nothing  
but a means for that.)

So re:  "everything is a..." --- I'm not insistent on any particular  
*set* of generic methods, indeed the traditional file open and close  
are both unnecessary in general and harmful in the distributed case.   
And I'm not insistent on any particular structure or semantics of the  
namespace --- just that there is one.  And, I claim, if you've got  
both of those, and you can put arbitrary things (content chunks,  
dynamic services / processes / actors, and people --- for starters)  
into that namespace, you might as well jettison all the rest of the  
unnecessary trivia and call it a "file system."  The fundamental  
pairing of naming and generic interfaces is clearly sufficiently  
powerful that it's an essential and useful feature of building large  
systems, and we've got several existence proofs of that already.  It's  
the obsession with the trivial differences rather than the focus on  
the commonalities that keeps us stuck.

jb


From sean at conman.org  Mon Dec 28 08:17:33 2009
From: sean at conman.org (Sean Conner)
Date: Mon, 28 Dec 2009 11:17:33 -0500
Subject: [FoRK] Whither BEEP? Re:  HTTP 0.2, 9p, and op
In-Reply-To: <4B3435BC.2080408@lig.net>
References: <1FFCA1AF-D079-4EDC-B140-7F79A82A03F7@place.org>
	<4B33B544.400@lig.net>
	<72CEC39C-81E4-446C-82D9-23F6645D509D@radicalcentrism.org>
	<20091224222308.GA20218@brevard.conman.org>
	<4B33F311.70408@lig.net>
	<20091225010201.GA13376@brevard.conman.org>
	<4B3435BC.2080408@lig.net>
Message-ID: <20091228161733.GA16088@brevard.conman.org>


  Well, while I'm waiting to hear back from The Company's (where I work)
upstream provider on why some firewall they have on some other network is
filtering *our* traffic, I'll respond here (ha ha, how apropos our
discussion). [3]

It was thus said that the Great Stephen Williams once stated:
> 
> Then why put SOAP over HTTP?  Why do you need HTTP at all?  Answer that, 
> and you will have taken your first step.

  Well, my question would be, why do you need SOAP at all?  But that's
beside the issue---you don't technically *need* HTTP at all---it could be
run over TCP, UDP, SCTP or heck, if you don't care for program-to-program
communication and only want host-to-host communication, IP would work just
as well, although you would have to do all the congestion/reliability that
TCP provides yourself.

  Heck, you could do SOAP via SMTP, or hey!  SOAP over HTTP via IP over
SMTP, whch in turn is tunneled over IP via avian carrier.  

> For just part of the answer, and one of the features that few other 
> protocols have: BEEP provides flow control on multiple simultaneous 
> channels, all running over a single TCP (or whatever) connection.  This 
> means you could many separate IM/chat/presence channels with minimal 
> traffic (no need to keep identifying the destination), including bulk 
> data transfer at lower priority, all playing nicely with TCP and sharing 
> packets when possible.  Instead of sending 5 small packets, plus acks, 
> for 5 separate IM / data transfer channels, you can send 1 packet with 
> the data for all of them.  Huge win in some cases.

  Seems like a lot of trouble/overhead for such a small gain to me.

  So I'm going over RFC-3195, which is the "Reliable Delivery for syslog"
RFC [1] and instead of just specifying TCP and saying something like "okay,
each syslog message consists of ASCII charaters between 32 and 126
inclusive, with each message separated by ASCII 13 and ASCII 10 (CR LF)". 
But no, it specifies BEEP and the example they give is more verbose than the
UDP protocol, given the overhead of all the "framing" (but otherwise, the
actual message format is *the same*).  

  I also like this bit:

	BEEP defines "transport mappings," specifying how BEEP messages are
	carried over the underlying transport technologies.  At the time of
	this writing, only one such transport is defined, in [4], which
	specifies BEEP over TCP.

  I suppose that could change over time, but still, it seems silly to me. 
There's also this bit:

   The overhead for one ANS frame is about thirty octets, once the
   initial handshakes have been exchanged.  If this overhead is too
   high, then messages are likely being generated at a high rate.  In 
   this case, multiple syslog messages can be aggregated into a single
   ANS frame, each separated by a CRLF sequence from the preceding.  The
   final message still MUST NOT end with a CRLF.

   For example,

      L: MSG 1 0 . 0 50
      L: 
      L: Central Services. This has not been a recording.
      L: END
      I: ANS 1 0 . 0 119 0
      I: 
      I: <29>Oct 27 13:21:08 ductwork imxpd[141]: Heating emergency.
      I: <29>Oct 27 13:21:09 ductwork imxpd[141]: Contact Tuttle.END
      I: NUL 1 0 . 119 0 
      I: END

  Before, low level hardware stack, IP stack, UDP stack, syslog. Now, low
level hardware stack, IP stack, TCP stack, BEEP stack (plus maybe an XML
parser if you want to be pedantic about it, otherwise a homebrewed,
half-assed literal string parser) and finally syslog.  So what exactly are
we buying here?  I mean, besides additional complexity? [2]

  Then again, I'm not working on an enterprise-level network, so perhaps
that's where my bias comes in.

  -spc (Some days, the rabit hole seems infinitely deep)

[1]	I've written my own syslog server in a combination of C and Lua. The
	C code handles the networking layer, and breaks the syslog message
	into its various components and sends it to the Lua layer, which
	does the actual logic; it could be logging, but so far, I have it
	summarizing multiple syslog messages (from Postfix, the SMTP server
	I use) into a single message, sending emails when bad things are
	logged from our routers, adding rules to iptables when excessive ssh
	attempts are made, among other things I can do in "realtime" as the
	various sybsystems log their activity.

[2]	Also, the COOKED version of this is even sillier.  Heck, my
	traditional UDP based version already makes the distinction between
	an device and a relay; the only thing my version doesn't do is the
	path of relays---everything else is taken care of.

[3]	Ah, problem figured out.  It appears that the firewall *was*
	filtering our traffic (in fact, it filters *all* traffic).  It's
	just that last week it was set to allow all our traffic through
	without filtering.  This week (around 8:00 am) the firewall software
	was upgraded, but not the current configuation.  It seems that the
	new software took it upon itself to filter out any asynchrously
	routed traffic (which had been turned off previously) and there
	seems to be no option to turn that off.  Our traffic (or rather,
	some subsets of it) is routed asynchronously.

	There is now a workaround going, and our upstream is "talking" to
	the firewall vendor.

	Sigh.


From nornagon at gmail.com  Mon Dec 28 16:41:39 2009
From: nornagon at gmail.com (Jeremy Apthorp)
Date: Tue, 29 Dec 2009 11:41:39 +1100
Subject: [FoRK] At least you're not in Berkeley....
In-Reply-To: <4B3817A0.1030307@mithral.com>
References: <4B3817A0.1030307@mithral.com>
Message-ID: <14d615330912281641u139ae4dr548f78de500234e7@mail.gmail.com>

2009/12/28 Adam L Beberg <beberg at mithral.com>:
> We all know the college is circling a dark abyss of funding and moral due to
> the California budget. But looks like the high schools are in on the action
> too. Since they cut the number of kids allowed into the colleges, better cut
> the number of smart kids down :)

Why has reducing standard deviation become more important than
increasing the mean? I'm sure all of you have read Lockhart's
Lament[1], in which he complains that the standardisation of curricula
has ensured mediocrity: the bad teachers are curtailed at the cost of
constraining the excellent ones. And it doesn't seem like that's an
isolated phenomenon -- here it is again; let's bring up the rear at
the cost of moving slower.

Is that the right thing to do?

Specific to this case, we naturally don't want to compromise the
education of black kids in favour of producing better-educated white
kids. But we also don't want to compromise the education of white kids
in order to help out black kids. What's the right path? Here, it seems
like cutting out science labs is the wrong answer. There must be a way
to improve things for those who are struggling without dragging down
those who are excelling.

j

[1]: http://www.maa.org/devlin/LockhartsLament.pdf

From sdw at lig.net  Mon Dec 28 19:07:18 2009
From: sdw at lig.net (Stephen D. Williams)
Date: Mon, 28 Dec 2009 19:07:18 -0800
Subject: [FoRK] At least you're not in Berkeley....
In-Reply-To: <14d615330912281641u139ae4dr548f78de500234e7@mail.gmail.com>
References: <4B3817A0.1030307@mithral.com>
	<14d615330912281641u139ae4dr548f78de500234e7@mail.gmail.com>
Message-ID: <4B397265.5030103@lig.net>

Fire the administrators first.  Make teachers more self-managed, i.e. 
managing, helping, and responsible for each other and the quality of 
output.  Involve capable and available parents in teaching, 
administration, etc.

This is especially true of the lower end of the scale but applies to 
some extent everywhere.  Many of the parents of the more advanced kids 
could help with English, math, etc.  (Some) teachers need to drop the 
attitude of "this is MY classroom, you don't know what you're doing".  
Give classes to parents / college students / etc. to become "teacher 
deputies".  Create more open source education materials, and online 
educational resources.

Most of this isn't rocket science, and removing the rocket science to 
try to pay for more of the same for those lagging is not going to help 
in any measurable way.

If the key hard problem is lagging students, especially inner-city 
students, then what is really needed are:

A) A PR campaign: education, being smart, getting a good job are good 
things, not to be dissed.  Anti-intellectualism in 7-12th is rampant and 
stupid.  It's from kid and pop culture, not parents (not usually) or 
teachers.
B) Accomplishment is very good, screwing up is very bad.  Track karma 
points or something, publicly if possible or at least use them for entry 
to sports, days off school, trips, special events, etc.  Support very 
frequent "sprints" for points, weekly whenever possible, with very rapid 
and intra-school public rewards.
C) Really show constantly how much better you are likely to do if you 
apply yourself, vs. where you will likely end up otherwise.  Be clear 
about probabilities of different choices.  Rock star, not probable 
without 10K hours, etc.
D) Low to medium pressure education, not high-pressure except for kids 
who can take it.  Directly address anxiety, etc.
E) Insist on frequent PT training, not necessarily team sports, but 
something small daily, or something significant 3-4 times/wk.  Running, 
biking, picking up trash on the double, whatever.
F) Find multiple ways to intervene when neighborhood, parents, siblings, 
etc. are not working for a student.  Create boarding students, perhaps 
in every large school district, to help kids focus, detach from a drain 
spiral, etc.  Pair it with a job / chores, PT, strict rules but also 
socializing, cool free time, etc.  Have the kids build Habitat for 
Humanity-like low-priced housing, factories, etc. even.
G) Put homeless / jobless parents to work running boarding school 
infrastructure.
H) Make military or peace-corp or infrastructure-corp mandatory at some 
point, 13th or earlier.

sdw

Jeremy Apthorp wrote:
> 2009/12/28 Adam L Beberg <beberg at mithral.com>:
>   
>> We all know the college is circling a dark abyss of funding and moral due to
>> the California budget. But looks like the high schools are in on the action
>> too. Since they cut the number of kids allowed into the colleges, better cut
>> the number of smart kids down :)
>>     
>
> Why has reducing standard deviation become more important than
> increasing the mean? I'm sure all of you have read Lockhart's
> Lament[1], in which he complains that the standardisation of curricula
> has ensured mediocrity: the bad teachers are curtailed at the cost of
> constraining the excellent ones. And it doesn't seem like that's an
> isolated phenomenon -- here it is again; let's bring up the rear at
> the cost of moving slower.
>
> Is that the right thing to do?
>
> Specific to this case, we naturally don't want to compromise the
> education of black kids in favour of producing better-educated white
> kids. But we also don't want to compromise the education of white kids
> in order to help out black kids. What's the right path? Here, it seems
> like cutting out science labs is the wrong answer. There must be a way
> to improve things for those who are struggling without dragging down
> those who are excelling.
>
> j
>
> [1]: http://www.maa.org/devlin/LockhartsLament.pdf
> _______________________________________________
> FoRK mailing list
> http://xent.com/mailman/listinfo/fork
>   

From jebdm at jebdm.net  Tue Dec 29 01:44:08 2009
From: jebdm at jebdm.net (Jebadiah Moore)
Date: Tue, 29 Dec 2009 09:44:08 +0000
Subject: [FoRK] At least you're not in Berkeley....
In-Reply-To: <4B397265.5030103@lig.net>
References: <4B3817A0.1030307@mithral.com>
	<14d615330912281641u139ae4dr548f78de500234e7@mail.gmail.com>
	<4B397265.5030103@lig.net>
Message-ID: <69ae910f0912290144r73c30187l2d1d97fabee623e7@mail.gmail.com>

Liked most of your points, but thought I might comment on a few:

On Tue, Dec 29, 2009 at 3:07 AM, Stephen D. Williams <sdw at lig.net> wrote:

> A) A PR campaign: education, being smart, getting a good job are good
> things, not to be dissed.  Anti-intellectualism in 7-12th is rampant and
> stupid.  It's from kid and pop culture, not parents (not usually) or
> teachers.
>

7-12th anti-intellectualism definitely comes from kid/pop culture (probably
even more kid than pop), but I don't think a PR campaign would do much to
fix it.  Or at least not anything but a very clever one.  I think we'd be
better off with a rewards system, plus of course a show of confidence from
teachers/parents.  In fact, a bad PR campaign (I'm thinking DARE and the
like) is probably actually counterproductive; such things seem corny and
childish jokes to most kids, something to be (at best) mocked.  (Quick
Google search returns highly cited article:
http://alcoholfacts.org/DARE.html).


> B) Accomplishment is very good, screwing up is very bad.  Track karma
> points or something, publicly if possible or at least use them for entry to
> sports, days off school, trips, special events, etc.  Support very frequent
> "sprints" for points, weekly whenever possible, with very rapid and
> intra-school public rewards.
>

I really, really think this is a good idea.  The whole point of education is
that it reaps real rewards, but kids don't see it in the day to day so they
feel like it's useless.   You've got to be careful with the rewards, again,
though, because you have to avoid the DARE effect.  Some rewards that seem
to be effective are:

   - access to minor toys (with younger kids)
   - food, especially stuff not available in the cafeteria (you can probably
   get local places to sponsor this)
   - "free dress" passes at schools with uniforms/restricted dress codes
   - biggish trips (kids will work for Six Flags, but probably not a museum
   or equivalent)
   - free periods (can especially be effective if you have a "reading" or
   "homeroom" type class)
   - free days (a bit hard to do, but really effective)
   - parties (just don't try "too hard"; don't schedule a bunch of
   activities, just get food and maybe some equipment if appropriate and gather
   a bunch of kids together)

Even better than a direct karma system (based on grades or whatever) would
be access to *applications* of their knowledge; make it analogous to real
life (minus the nasty stuff, since you only get a few years without it).
For example, offering kids a chance to do some "actual work" or an
apprenticeship or something like that, for actual money, is a great
experience.  This is a bit difficult, since you've got to be flexible (at
best, something where the kids can completely choose their own schedules)
and you have to deal with labor laws.  But some good examples of "real" jobs
that might be viable would be running concession stands (including the mild
accounting involved), any volunteer work which requires some of the RRR's,
Mechanical Turk type stuff, certain jobs working with machines/computers
(model trains, light computer programming, web design, secretarial work),
etc.

One problem you'd probably run into in the *assigning* of karma points end
is that some people seem to think it's Evil for individual grades to be
shared at all.  For some reason, it's okay to distinguish between A, AB,
Pass, and Failing students (as evident through No Pass No Play, Honor Role,
etc.), but if any kid sees how any other kid did on a particular assignment,
it's a Big Deal.

D) Low to medium pressure education, not high-pressure except for kids who
> can take it.  Directly address anxiety, etc.
>

In particular, cut down on the homework.  And don't put so much emphasis (or
grade-weight) on the exam.

F) Find multiple ways to intervene when neighborhood, parents, siblings,
> etc. are not working for a student.  Create boarding students, perhaps in
> every large school district, to help kids focus, detach from a drain spiral,
> etc.  Pair it with a job / chores, PT, strict rules but also socializing,
> cool free time, etc.  Have the kids build Habitat for Humanity-like
> low-priced housing, factories, etc. even.
>

I've always thought it would be a good idea to have public dorms available
on a sliding scale (possibly in exchange for a moderate amount of work, just
trash pickup and that sort of thing) to kids.  The cost is partially to fund
the place, and partially because it's good for kids to get a feel for what
it means to be on their own early.  We sort of have this now, in the form of
college dorms, but it's really too little too late (except for the rare few
students who actively pay for their schooling and aren't using loans/parent
funding/scholarships).

Have more highly-monitored ones for the younger students (though really
before about middle school it's probably inappropriate), and more freedom
for the older ones, or the ones that earn it.  Particularly, I think it
would be beneficial for a lot of students to be allowed that extra freedom
at around 15 or 16, and in my ideal world it would require special measure
for a parent to stop them (only in certain cases of big problems).

--

Another thing I've been thinking about for a long time is the effects of
modularizing education. It'd be beneficial to split courses into smaller
component parts, which would be graded separately and which could be (in
certain cases) mixed-and-matched.  This has a couple of benefits.  First
off, it allows partial retakes: because grades happen at a grainier level,
if you fail one part of a course you don't have to retake the whole thing.
Good for the student, good for the teacher, good for the funding.  Second,
it gives students, teachers, and parents a better view of where exactly a
student is struggling.  Third, it allows better mixing and matching; instead
of one English class, split the grading of it into its' composition and
literature components, and allow some choice on the literature bit.  Fourth,
it allows better compatability across schools; obviously, curriculum varies
from place to place (at least in order); this way, if a student moves, he
doesn't have to redo as much work.

I think modularization would be particularly effective if combined with a
slight revamp of the grading system.  Consider the purpose of grades; first,
to determine if a subject has been mastered; second, as a diagnostic to
assess performance; third, as a way to rank students.  But a single grade
doesn't do all of these effectively, because the first and the third goals
are sometimes in conflict (and must be traded off between using a curve).

The other thing to consider is how precisely we want to grade.  Since grades
are often quite subjective, and any formula (the standard weighted average,
for example) is still relatively arbitrary, I'd say that grades are fuzzy,
and it's best to reflect that by having only a small amount of
distinguishment between different levels.  Percentage grades are certainly
too precise; numeric GPAs are still too much; letter grades are roughly
accurate.

The most reflective way I can imagine to score this is to make grades
Pass/Fail, with a plus component (which look like "Pass +2" or "Fail").  But
this shouldn't just closely mimic ABCDF.  A Pass shouldn't indicate mastery
of roughly 70% of the material, as it often does now; complete mastery
should be required to pass any module.  With unmodularized grades, this is
somewhat unrealistic; we in general lack the manpower required to handle
that level of retakes.  But the more finely you grade achievement, the less
students have to retake, and at this small scale it can often be handled
with tutoring/peer tutoring/digital courses/parent help/etc.  (Also note
that if you have finely-enough grained modules, students won't have to
retake any material they already understand; in fact, this might be a good
way to decide how far to break the modules down.)

It's probably advantageous to supplement this system with a school-managed
portfolio of sorts, especially for project-oriented or art/writing-type
classes.

Another advantage of modularization is that it makes it more obvious that
the "grade level" distinction is a bit silly, and would encourage educators
to define required materials in terms of a student's entire career rather
than at each year level.  That's good because it allows students more choice
in what they take, potentially lessens the amount of necessary review (the
worst part of school for me), and it has the potential for having classrooms
with a wider variety of ages and achievement levels among students.

A final point before I finish my now-long post:  peer tutoring is *a great
idea*.  It's obviously great for the students being tutored, since they can
get a finer level of attention and a more relatable viewpoint.  But it's
also great for the peer tutors.  On a lower level, it helps solidify
knowledge (teaching is the best learning).  But more importantly, it teaches
a skill lost on most smart people (and peer tutors typically come from the
brighter kids): talking to people who don't think like you do.

So much potential for improvement here... haven't even gotten into
improvements to curricula or timetabling or...

-- 
Jebadiah Moore
http://jebdm.net

From jebdm at jebdm.net  Tue Dec 29 01:57:51 2009
From: jebdm at jebdm.net (Jebadiah Moore)
Date: Tue, 29 Dec 2009 09:57:51 +0000
Subject: [FoRK] At least you're not in Berkeley....
In-Reply-To: <69ae910f0912290144r73c30187l2d1d97fabee623e7@mail.gmail.com>
References: <4B3817A0.1030307@mithral.com>
	<14d615330912281641u139ae4dr548f78de500234e7@mail.gmail.com>
	<4B397265.5030103@lig.net>
	<69ae910f0912290144r73c30187l2d1d97fabee623e7@mail.gmail.com>
Message-ID: <69ae910f0912290157g3befacecm6c1d0b9e97021507@mail.gmail.com>

I just realized I forgot to actually explain the advantage of the Pass/Fail
plus system.  While grades (especially when done as percentages) vary a lot
between teachers and schools, the "fail point" is generally consistent (if I
would pass if one teacher graded, I would probably pass if another did, and
the same for failing).  Thus, you get some consistency in pass/fail.

But above and below that is fairly fluid.  Some teachers do it based on
merit, some use a true curve, some teachers "don't give out A's", some use
simple ranking, etc.  Using a plus system allows an open-ended decision
about how to define that additional information, but without screwing over
students since it's explicitly open-ended and thus the teacher has to define
what a plus one, plus two... means.  (Teacher Joe uses merit and Bob uses a
curve, so that a student of Joe would've gotten an A but of Bob would've
gotten a B or C).

Additionally, by splitting the components you can use some simple statistics
to get a semi-fair comparison; have formulas to cast between different
systems, or to give a score relative to the teacher's history, the rest of
the class, other classes in the same school, etc.  Granted, you can do these
stats with percentage or letter grades, but the math is more tedious, and
the unified system means people assume you can compare no matter what.  By
splitting the components, you make it easier, and thus more likely to be
done, and you also make it obvious that it *needs* to be done (if you want
to make certain comparisons) by making the plus component
subjective/arbitrary.

-- 
Jebadiah Moore
http://jebdm.net

From jtauber at jtauber.com  Tue Dec 29 04:29:26 2009
From: jtauber at jtauber.com (James Tauber)
Date: Tue, 29 Dec 2009 07:29:26 -0500
Subject: [FoRK] At least you're not in Berkeley....
In-Reply-To: <14d615330912281641u139ae4dr548f78de500234e7@mail.gmail.com>
References: <4B3817A0.1030307@mithral.com>
	<14d615330912281641u139ae4dr548f78de500234e7@mail.gmail.com>
Message-ID: <486F011B-0D4C-4A82-99B6-5EEE996F3991@jtauber.com>

On Dec 28, 2009, at 7:41 PM, Jeremy Apthorp wrote:
> Why has reducing standard deviation become more important than
> increasing the mean?

Isn't that the explicit policy of many (if not most) left-leaning lobby groups?

James



From sdw at lig.net  Tue Dec 29 09:43:55 2009
From: sdw at lig.net (Stephen D. Williams)
Date: Tue, 29 Dec 2009 09:43:55 -0800
Subject: [FoRK] At least you're not in Berkeley....
In-Reply-To: <69ae910f0912290144r73c30187l2d1d97fabee623e7@mail.gmail.com>
References: <4B3817A0.1030307@mithral.com>	<14d615330912281641u139ae4dr548f78de500234e7@mail.gmail.com>	<4B397265.5030103@lig.net>
	<69ae910f0912290144r73c30187l2d1d97fabee623e7@mail.gmail.com>
Message-ID: <4B3A3FDB.4090909@lig.net>

Good ideas.  Perhaps we should write up a full plan of action / design.

I agree, PR has to be done very subtly.  Corniness is, almost always, 
fail.  Still, some campaigns are done well.  Many of the current 
anti-smoking / anti-lie ads are pitch perfect as far as I can tell.  At 
the very worst, interview / capture the attitude, plans, an achievement 
of a whole set of kids in high school and then track them for 4, 8, and 
12 years.  Create very clear illustrations of the statistics, story 
arcs, and resulting happiness with projections into the future.  
Teenagers often can't connect paying attention to school with fun, 
relationships, careers, etc.  Even those who should know better often 
become attracted to being "rich" quickly so that they can be independent 
sooner, etc., not realizing that this will tend to trap them in 
low-income jobs and semi-miserable lives.

Really, I think it is often a lack of any understanding of statistical 
demographics that causes lack of motivation.  Along with other forces 
that prevent teenagers from being motivated to do what they know they 
should do.  One of my target applications for my visualization / 
interaction work is to help solve that problem.

BTW, some of the alternative public schools in California have some of 
the features mentioned below in some form.  "Continuation High Schools", 
for instance, work on a point system of completion where grades are 
generally not mentioned and are given later.  Students are expected to 
achieve 50 points per week.  They work mostly asynchronously and if they 
go faster, they graduate earlier, on the week they complete all 
requirements.  They maintain very tight control over attendance and 
movement, but they only go to school until 1pm and have little or no 
homework.  The only real problem is that because they are for kids who 
are behind or in trouble for any reason, they aren't as academic as 
would be nice.  The same or similar system could work for kids at all 
levels.  Even if they don't get the same level of education, starting 
community college a year or more earlier could catch them up fairly well.

Stephen

Jebadiah Moore wrote:
> Liked most of your points, but thought I might comment on a few:
>
> On Tue, Dec 29, 2009 at 3:07 AM, Stephen D. Williams <sdw at lig.net> wrote:
>
>   
>> A) A PR campaign: education, being smart, getting a good job are good
>> things, not to be dissed.  Anti-intellectualism in 7-12th is rampant and
>> stupid.  It's from kid and pop culture, not parents (not usually) or
>> teachers.
>>
>>     
>
> 7-12th anti-intellectualism definitely comes from kid/pop culture (probably
> even more kid than pop), but I don't think a PR campaign would do much to
> fix it.  Or at least not anything but a very clever one.  I think we'd be
> better off with a rewards system, plus of course a show of confidence from
> teachers/parents.  In fact, a bad PR campaign (I'm thinking DARE and the
> like) is probably actually counterproductive; such things seem corny and
> childish jokes to most kids, something to be (at best) mocked.  (Quick
> Google search returns highly cited article:
> http://alcoholfacts.org/DARE.html).
>
>
>   
>> B) Accomplishment is very good, screwing up is very bad.  Track karma
>> points or something, publicly if possible or at least use them for entry to
>> sports, days off school, trips, special events, etc.  Support very frequent
>> "sprints" for points, weekly whenever possible, with very rapid and
>> intra-school public rewards.
>>
>>     
>
> I really, really think this is a good idea.  The whole point of education is
> that it reaps real rewards, but kids don't see it in the day to day so they
> feel like it's useless.   You've got to be careful with the rewards, again,
> though, because you have to avoid the DARE effect.  Some rewards that seem
> to be effective are:
>
>    - access to minor toys (with younger kids)
>    - food, especially stuff not available in the cafeteria (you can probably
>    get local places to sponsor this)
>    - "free dress" passes at schools with uniforms/restricted dress codes
>    - biggish trips (kids will work for Six Flags, but probably not a museum
>    or equivalent)
>    - free periods (can especially be effective if you have a "reading" or
>    "homeroom" type class)
>    - free days (a bit hard to do, but really effective)
>    - parties (just don't try "too hard"; don't schedule a bunch of
>    activities, just get food and maybe some equipment if appropriate and gather
>    a bunch of kids together)
>
> Even better than a direct karma system (based on grades or whatever) would
> be access to *applications* of their knowledge; make it analogous to real
> life (minus the nasty stuff, since you only get a few years without it).
> For example, offering kids a chance to do some "actual work" or an
> apprenticeship or something like that, for actual money, is a great
> experience.  This is a bit difficult, since you've got to be flexible (at
> best, something where the kids can completely choose their own schedules)
> and you have to deal with labor laws.  But some good examples of "real" jobs
> that might be viable would be running concession stands (including the mild
> accounting involved), any volunteer work which requires some of the RRR's,
> Mechanical Turk type stuff, certain jobs working with machines/computers
> (model trains, light computer programming, web design, secretarial work),
> etc.
>
> One problem you'd probably run into in the *assigning* of karma points end
> is that some people seem to think it's Evil for individual grades to be
> shared at all.  For some reason, it's okay to distinguish between A, AB,
> Pass, and Failing students (as evident through No Pass No Play, Honor Role,
> etc.), but if any kid sees how any other kid did on a particular assignment,
> it's a Big Deal.
>
> D) Low to medium pressure education, not high-pressure except for kids who
>   
>> can take it.  Directly address anxiety, etc.
>>
>>     
>
> In particular, cut down on the homework.  And don't put so much emphasis (or
> grade-weight) on the exam.
>
> F) Find multiple ways to intervene when neighborhood, parents, siblings,
>   
>> etc. are not working for a student.  Create boarding students, perhaps in
>> every large school district, to help kids focus, detach from a drain spiral,
>> etc.  Pair it with a job / chores, PT, strict rules but also socializing,
>> cool free time, etc.  Have the kids build Habitat for Humanity-like
>> low-priced housing, factories, etc. even.
>>
>>     
>
> I've always thought it would be a good idea to have public dorms available
> on a sliding scale (possibly in exchange for a moderate amount of work, just
> trash pickup and that sort of thing) to kids.  The cost is partially to fund
> the place, and partially because it's good for kids to get a feel for what
> it means to be on their own early.  We sort of have this now, in the form of
> college dorms, but it's really too little too late (except for the rare few
> students who actively pay for their schooling and aren't using loans/parent
> funding/scholarships).
>
> Have more highly-monitored ones for the younger students (though really
> before about middle school it's probably inappropriate), and more freedom
> for the older ones, or the ones that earn it.  Particularly, I think it
> would be beneficial for a lot of students to be allowed that extra freedom
> at around 15 or 16, and in my ideal world it would require special measure
> for a parent to stop them (only in certain cases of big problems).
>
> --
>
> Another thing I've been thinking about for a long time is the effects of
> modularizing education. It'd be beneficial to split courses into smaller
> component parts, which would be graded separately and which could be (in
> certain cases) mixed-and-matched.  This has a couple of benefits.  First
> off, it allows partial retakes: because grades happen at a grainier level,
> if you fail one part of a course you don't have to retake the whole thing.
> Good for the student, good for the teacher, good for the funding.  Second,
> it gives students, teachers, and parents a better view of where exactly a
> student is struggling.  Third, it allows better mixing and matching; instead
> of one English class, split the grading of it into its' composition and
> literature components, and allow some choice on the literature bit.  Fourth,
> it allows better compatability across schools; obviously, curriculum varies
> from place to place (at least in order); this way, if a student moves, he
> doesn't have to redo as much work.
>
> I think modularization would be particularly effective if combined with a
> slight revamp of the grading system.  Consider the purpose of grades; first,
> to determine if a subject has been mastered; second, as a diagnostic to
> assess performance; third, as a way to rank students.  But a single grade
> doesn't do all of these effectively, because the first and the third goals
> are sometimes in conflict (and must be traded off between using a curve).
>
> The other thing to consider is how precisely we want to grade.  Since grades
> are often quite subjective, and any formula (the standard weighted average,
> for example) is still relatively arbitrary, I'd say that grades are fuzzy,
> and it's best to reflect that by having only a small amount of
> distinguishment between different levels.  Percentage grades are certainly
> too precise; numeric GPAs are still too much; letter grades are roughly
> accurate.
>
> The most reflective way I can imagine to score this is to make grades
> Pass/Fail, with a plus component (which look like "Pass +2" or "Fail").  But
> this shouldn't just closely mimic ABCDF.  A Pass shouldn't indicate mastery
> of roughly 70% of the material, as it often does now; complete mastery
> should be required to pass any module.  With unmodularized grades, this is
> somewhat unrealistic; we in general lack the manpower required to handle
> that level of retakes.  But the more finely you grade achievement, the less
> students have to retake, and at this small scale it can often be handled
> with tutoring/peer tutoring/digital courses/parent help/etc.  (Also note
> that if you have finely-enough grained modules, students won't have to
> retake any material they already understand; in fact, this might be a good
> way to decide how far to break the modules down.)
>
> It's probably advantageous to supplement this system with a school-managed
> portfolio of sorts, especially for project-oriented or art/writing-type
> classes.
>
> Another advantage of modularization is that it makes it more obvious that
> the "grade level" distinction is a bit silly, and would encourage educators
> to define required materials in terms of a student's entire career rather
> than at each year level.  That's good because it allows students more choice
> in what they take, potentially lessens the amount of necessary review (the
> worst part of school for me), and it has the potential for having classrooms
> with a wider variety of ages and achievement levels among students.
>
> A final point before I finish my now-long post:  peer tutoring is *a great
> idea*.  It's obviously great for the students being tutored, since they can
> get a finer level of attention and a more relatable viewpoint.  But it's
> also great for the peer tutors.  On a lower level, it helps solidify
> knowledge (teaching is the best learning).  But more importantly, it teaches
> a skill lost on most smart people (and peer tutors typically come from the
> brighter kids): talking to people who don't think like you do.
>
> So much potential for improvement here... haven't even gotten into
> improvements to curricula or timetabling or...
>
>   

From sdw at lig.net  Tue Dec 29 09:44:44 2009
From: sdw at lig.net (Stephen D. Williams)
Date: Tue, 29 Dec 2009 09:44:44 -0800
Subject: [FoRK] At least you're not in Berkeley....
In-Reply-To: <486F011B-0D4C-4A82-99B6-5EEE996F3991@jtauber.com>
References: <4B3817A0.1030307@mithral.com>	<14d615330912281641u139ae4dr548f78de500234e7@mail.gmail.com>
	<486F011B-0D4C-4A82-99B6-5EEE996F3991@jtauber.com>
Message-ID: <4B3A400C.80104@lig.net>

James Tauber wrote:
> On Dec 28, 2009, at 7:41 PM, Jeremy Apthorp wrote:
>   
>> Why has reducing standard deviation become more important than
>> increasing the mean?
>>     
>
> Isn't that the explicit policy of many (if not most) left-leaning lobby groups?
>   

Only in those cases where it is perceived, probably erroneously much but 
not all of the time, that some are benefiting from the public at the 
expense of others.  This led, for instance, to inter-school busing as 
there was clear disparity between what "good" and "bad" schools were 
providing in the same city.  We expect and generally don't interfere 
with the ability of parents to provide a rich environment for their 
children if they are so interested and they can afford it.  At some 
point, and certainly past certain boundaries like public school, we are 
supposed to be providing equal opportunity for all regardless of their 
family ability.  We can't fully reach that ideal, however we always 
should strive for it.

For one thing, different states, counties, and cities have different 
funding, local opportunities, quality of teachers and people that all 
contribute to the overall level of education possible.  Secondly, 
teachers flock to where the most competitive posts, whether it is 
because a school is new, the area is nicer, the kid demographics match 
their own preferences, whatever.  Third, and probably the biggest 
driver, is the culture of the kids themselves.  While influenced in 
chaotic ways by the school, parents, and pop culture, the choices of the 
upper and "lower" (badass) supernodes in the kids' social networks have 
a bigger influence than anything else.

Clearly, chopping off science classes because there are too many who 
aren't getting to the middle is completely wrong.

In any case, on std. dev. vs. mean, many countries that are admired have 
gone way down the path of focusing on the mean at the expense of all 
else: Japan as a prime example.  The US has always been different there, 
and hopefully we will find a way to improve the mean without chopping 
off our heads.  Being creative, flexible, meritocratic, and going all 
Web 3.0 on the problem is likely to be the answer.

Periodically I have a vision of kids and adults getting into a parallel 
learning system that they do in addition to formal school that begins to 
outpace and replace the formal school.  In the early stages, they learn 
mostly on their own while following along and passing formal testing in 
their "day" school.  It almost seems sometimes like the mountain of 
homework practice is an effort to hold off competition by consuming all 
resources.

For instance, which is likely a better way to learn a foreign language?  
Traditional book / wrote learning?  Or the very best immersive software 
combined with daily Skype conversation with students in the desired 
language who are also trying to learn English?  Is there really any 
question?

> James
>
>   
Stephen


From beberg at mithral.com  Tue Dec 29 10:33:59 2009
From: beberg at mithral.com (Adam L Beberg)
Date: Tue, 29 Dec 2009 10:33:59 -0800
Subject: [FoRK] At least you're not in Berkeley....
In-Reply-To: <69ae910f0912290144r73c30187l2d1d97fabee623e7@mail.gmail.com>
References: <4B3817A0.1030307@mithral.com>	<14d615330912281641u139ae4dr548f78de500234e7@mail.gmail.com>	<4B397265.5030103@lig.net>
	<69ae910f0912290144r73c30187l2d1d97fabee623e7@mail.gmail.com>
Message-ID: <4B3A4B97.20002@mithral.com>

Jebadiah Moore wrote on 12/29/2009 1:44 AM:
> Another thing I've been thinking about for a long time is the effects of
> modularizing education. It'd be beneficial to split courses into smaller
> component parts, which would be graded separately and which could be (in
> certain cases) mixed-and-matched.

The commercial world did the research and figured this out many years 
ago and moved to the modular system. Why? Because they need to learn 
things and then get shit done. Academia sticks to the age old system of 
putting a student in a room with someone droning on in front of a board 
for 1-3 hours because almost all of them would be out of a job if they 
did it the modern and proven better way. The students that even show up 
are on Facebook.

15 minute max modules, a low number of concepts in each covered several 
ways, immediate iterative feedback/quizzing after each module to detect 
they mastered the concept with review of relevant previous modules. 1990 
technology at best - because that's when I was using it, even had a job 
developing the stuff in '92.

The real win is the material has to be developed once really well then 
refined over time only for those topics that actually change - math is a 
one shot but history needs modules added over time. Naturally this 
concept goes over exactly as well as feeding uranium paste to infants 
here in academia. Smart people look ahead one step and see the end of 
their career standing in front of a board for 1-3 hours.

Want to talk disruption... an easy 1000:1 win on headcount? Good news is 
you'd still need those 999 daycare workers, and they make more then most 
teachers. Everybody wins! Except the universities, they are screwed - no 
daycare needed.

-- 
Adam L. Beberg
http://www.mithral.com/~beberg/

From jebdm at jebdm.net  Tue Dec 29 10:40:50 2009
From: jebdm at jebdm.net (Jebadiah Moore)
Date: Tue, 29 Dec 2009 18:40:50 +0000
Subject: [FoRK] At least you're not in Berkeley....
In-Reply-To: <4B3A400C.80104@lig.net>
References: <4B3817A0.1030307@mithral.com>
	<14d615330912281641u139ae4dr548f78de500234e7@mail.gmail.com>
	<486F011B-0D4C-4A82-99B6-5EEE996F3991@jtauber.com>
	<4B3A400C.80104@lig.net>
Message-ID: <69ae910f0912291040o761fc2e6xec382c8781f9e48a@mail.gmail.com>

>
> Periodically I have a vision of kids and adults getting into a parallel
> learning system that they do in addition to formal school that begins to
> outpace and replace the formal school.  In the early stages, they learn
> mostly on their own while following along and passing formal testing in
> their "day" school.  It almost seems sometimes like the mountain of homework
> practice is an effort to hold off competition by consuming all resources.
>

The biggest two reasons this idea seems to get rejected are that kids need
more discipline/won't be able to handle the freedom well, and that it
consumes too much teacher time because the teachers then need to evaluate a
wider range of work.  The first one always seemed a cop-out to me, although
I suppose I'm somewhat biased; regardless, any potential problems can be
mitigated using a simple "sliding scale".  Offer traditional courses for the
students who need/prefer them, as well as the option to do more independent
study (you can either take English, or you can write some essays about
something you're interested in; you can take a math course, or you can read
the book, do some exercises, and pass some tests; etc.)  If a student is
found to be "unable to handle" the independent study, they can be required
to do the traditional method.

There are a couple of ways you can handle teacher time.  For a lot of
students, there would actually be *less *time required, particularly in
courses where the "independent study" version is just reading/watching
videos/using software instead of attending normal classes.  In appropriate
courses, offer an "exam-only" option.  For some courses which require more
extensive subjective evaluation, there will be a performance hit in the
actual evaluation, but this is probably offset by the reduced lecture time.

On the subject of independent study, there was a course I took back in
middle school called "Research Skills" which I think should be a standard
part of the curriculum.  (I took it by chance, actually; it was an elective
that I got put in to because my other choices were full, but I'm glad I
did.)  The class did feature a brief section on how to search the internet
effectively, writing bibliographies, etc., but the vast majority of the
course focused on creating projects.  If I remember correctly, we did
three.  The first was small and independent, with a couple of topics to
choose from.  The second was bigger, but we had to work in small groups.
This one was kind of silly; I don't remember it exactly, but we were
assigned two classic novels and we had to produce some sort of creative
synthesis of them.  And the third was a 6-week project, completely
open-ended (with approval from the teacher)--I made a small 3D game, some
people built machines, some people made videos, etc.  (Virtually all of the
class time was spent working on the projects.)

Now that I think about it, it did teach research skills, but it taught them
in the sort of way that is imperative for "information workers" to know:
being able to find information on new topics, to learn about those topics
from that information, and as a result be able to create something new.  It
also taught a little bit about group work--in particular, about the
difficulties of doing *creative* work without an obvious division of labor,
in a way that is actually productive.

But I think the neatest aspect of the course was being required to create
something new and of substance, and not just the little dinky projects
occasionally assigned through school.  The nearest analogues I can think of
from my schooling are a few projects required in intermediate university
courses, which were of course more complex, but actually somewhat easier
given the tighter focus and increased domain knowledge.  But the hardness of
doing something "new" for the first time was eased somewhat by having a
(great) teacher there to help you keep your focus, bounce ideas off of,
etc., somewhat like having a good manager.  And I think once you've created
something new for the first time, it just gets easier.

And this was a class at the only public middle school in the town, one of
the larger public middle schools in Texas.  The students weren't all G&T
types either; in fact, it had a pretty representative distribution of
students.  Granted, the teacher was exceptional, but it does serve as an
existence proof that guided independent study is a viable option for a wide
range of students.

-- 
Jebadiah Moore
http://jebdm.net

From jebdm at jebdm.net  Tue Dec 29 10:54:06 2009
From: jebdm at jebdm.net (Jebadiah Moore)
Date: Tue, 29 Dec 2009 18:54:06 +0000
Subject: [FoRK] At least you're not in Berkeley....
In-Reply-To: <4B3A4B97.20002@mithral.com>
References: <4B3817A0.1030307@mithral.com>
	<14d615330912281641u139ae4dr548f78de500234e7@mail.gmail.com>
	<4B397265.5030103@lig.net>
	<69ae910f0912290144r73c30187l2d1d97fabee623e7@mail.gmail.com>
	<4B3A4B97.20002@mithral.com>
Message-ID: <69ae910f0912291054r25a73bcev90344176ca9ef29f@mail.gmail.com>

On Tue, Dec 29, 2009 at 6:33 PM, Adam L Beberg <beberg at mithral.com> wrote:

> The commercial world did the research and figured this out many years ago
> and moved to the modular system. Why? Because they need to learn things and
> then get shit done. Academia sticks to the age old system of putting a
> student in a room with someone droning on in front of a board for 1-3 hours
> because almost all of them would be out of a job if they did it the modern
> and proven better way. The students that even show up are on Facebook.
>

There's some headway being made in the university setting, with the various
free/cheap online courses
being made avaliable, but there's no credit for the free ones and the credit
is only "respectable" (or even acceptable) in certain settings for the cheap
ones.  A lot of online courses piggyback on "real" schools' accreditation,
but I don't think that's the way to go--it's an ugly hack if there ever was
one.  I think the only real fix will be to have a modular accreditation
process to go along with the modular courses.  The difficulty is the public
acceptance (and acceptance within academia), but I think if it keeps getting
traction then it might win purely on numbers.

But honestly, I highly doubt there'll be much progress beyond what we've got
with University of Phoenix et al in the university setting for a while.
K-12 schools seem a lot more open to innovation at this point (due to
necessity, and the sad fact that university bloat is even greater government
bloat).  But if some sort of significant reform can be made in K12 (possibly
in California?), I think demand/frustration/obviousness would float it up to
the universities.

-- 
Jebadiah Moore
http://jebdm.net

From aaron at bavariati.org  Tue Dec 29 10:57:44 2009
From: aaron at bavariati.org (Aaron Burt)
Date: Tue, 29 Dec 2009 10:57:44 -0800
Subject: [FoRK] At least you're not in Berkeley....
In-Reply-To: <4B3817A0.1030307@mithral.com>
References: <4B3817A0.1030307@mithral.com>
Message-ID: <20091229185744.GA25220@aaron-x31>

On Sun, Dec 27, 2009 at 06:27:44PM -0800, Adam L Beberg wrote:
> Berkeley High School is considering a controversial proposal to
> eliminate science labs and the five science teachers who teach them
> to free up more resources to help struggling students.

Wow, so Berkeley finally gets to experience what most of the rest of the US
has been going through under No Child Left Behinded?

Declining tax revenues, the NCLB and special-ed obligations coupled with
the rise in Autism and learning-disablity diagnoses ensure that public
High Schools will continue to contract their curricula to a mandated
McDonalds-worker minimum.

If you want your kid to go from public school to university, you should
live in a small, exclusive wealthy district, or in one that offers a
"Running Start" program at the local community college.

(For that matter, a schoolteacher friend of mine from Baltimore says the
only middle-class kids in public school are the ones whose parents want to
"make a statement".  Those kids usually get beat up a lot.)

I'd make some comment about the Berzerkeley Reality Distortion Field, but
this crap isn't funny.
  Aaron

From ken_ganshirt at yahoo.ca  Tue Dec 29 11:54:31 2009
From: ken_ganshirt at yahoo.ca (Ken Ganshirt @ Yahoo)
Date: Tue, 29 Dec 2009 11:54:31 -0800 (PST)
Subject: [FoRK] At least you're not in Berkeley....
In-Reply-To: <486F011B-0D4C-4A82-99B6-5EEE996F3991@jtauber.com>
Message-ID: <599243.49438.qm@web33006.mail.mud.yahoo.com>

--- On Tue, 12/29/09, James Tauber <jtauber at jtauber.com> wrote:
> On Dec 28, 2009, at 7:41 PM, Jeremy Apthorp wrote:
> > Why has reducing standard deviation become more important than
> > increasing the mean?
> 
> Isn't that the explicit policy of many (if not most)
> left-leaning lobby groups?
> 

I meant to comment on that, too. But in a different fashion. 

"...become..."?? It has been ever thus. 

I don't know that it has anything to do with right or left or lobby groups. Unless by lobby groups you mean parents and teachers and administrators.

 ...ken...


      __________________________________________________________________
Make your browsing faster, safer, and easier with the new Internet Explorer? 8. Optimized for Yahoo! Get it Now for Free! at http://downloads.yahoo.com/ca/internetexplorer/


From jtauber at jtauber.com  Tue Dec 29 12:08:57 2009
From: jtauber at jtauber.com (James Tauber)
Date: Tue, 29 Dec 2009 15:08:57 -0500
Subject: [FoRK] At least you're not in Berkeley....
In-Reply-To: <599243.49438.qm@web33006.mail.mud.yahoo.com>
References: <599243.49438.qm@web33006.mail.mud.yahoo.com>
Message-ID: <60F4FBD5-600C-4EFA-9B31-0F73B8D6E8DB@jtauber.com>


On Dec 29, 2009, at 2:54 PM, Ken Ganshirt @ Yahoo wrote:

> --- On Tue, 12/29/09, James Tauber <jtauber at jtauber.com> wrote:
>> On Dec 28, 2009, at 7:41 PM, Jeremy Apthorp wrote:
>>> Why has reducing standard deviation become more important than
>>> increasing the mean?
>> 
>> Isn't that the explicit policy of many (if not most)
>> left-leaning lobby groups?
>> 
> 
> I meant to comment on that, too. But in a different fashion. 
> 
> "...become..."?? It has been ever thus. 
> 
> I don't know that it has anything to do with right or left or lobby groups. Unless by lobby groups you mean parents and teachers and administrators.

I wasn't actually referring specifically to education. In general it just seems to be fairly strongly left vs right correlated to care about standard deviation versus mean in a whole range of things.

For example, if one report said "average household incomes are up 20%" and another report said "the gap between the top quintile and bottom quintile has increased" based on the same raw statistics, I think you could pick which one came from a left-wing think tank and which a right-wing think tank.

James

From sdw at lig.net  Tue Dec 29 13:40:06 2009
From: sdw at lig.net (Stephen D. Williams)
Date: Tue, 29 Dec 2009 13:40:06 -0800
Subject: [FoRK] At least you're not in Berkeley....
In-Reply-To: <60F4FBD5-600C-4EFA-9B31-0F73B8D6E8DB@jtauber.com>
References: <599243.49438.qm@web33006.mail.mud.yahoo.com>
	<60F4FBD5-600C-4EFA-9B31-0F73B8D6E8DB@jtauber.com>
Message-ID: <4B3A7736.6060103@lig.net>

James Tauber wrote:
> On Dec 29, 2009, at 2:54 PM, Ken Ganshirt @ Yahoo wrote:
>   
>> --- On Tue, 12/29/09, James Tauber <jtauber at jtauber.com> wrote:
>>     
>>> On Dec 28, 2009, at 7:41 PM, Jeremy Apthorp wrote:
>>>       
>>>> Why has reducing standard deviation become more important than
>>>> increasing the mean?
>>>>         
>>> Isn't that the explicit policy of many (if not most)
>>> left-leaning lobby groups?
>>>
>>>       
>> I meant to comment on that, too. But in a different fashion. 
>>
>> "...become..."?? It has been ever thus. 
>>
>> I don't know that it has anything to do with right or left or lobby groups. Unless by lobby groups you mean parents and teachers and administrators.
>>     
>
> I wasn't actually referring specifically to education. In general it just seems to be fairly strongly left vs right correlated to care about standard deviation versus mean in a whole range of things.
>
> For example, if one report said "average household incomes are up 20%" and another report said "the gap between the top quintile and bottom quintile has increased" based on the same raw statistics, I think you could pick which one came from a left-wing think tank and which a right-wing think tank.
>   

Wouldn't you also have to note the glee or sense of foreboding that went 
along with those headlines?  ;-)  As in, for the second headline: 
"Yes!!  Those hard workers at the top are finally getting more of what 
they deserve rather than the slackers at the bottom." vs. "Oh no, the 
rich get richer at the expense of the poor.".  It could even be neutral 
or mixed: "Yes!!  We've expanded our global market share which has 
resulted in more income at the top which we expect to trickle down to 
the poor soon."  Since we know that wealth is created, not divided in a 
zero sum game, that should come into play here somewhere.  Well, some 
people don't know, but they should.

There has been a lot of fake production on Wall Street, housing bubble, 
etc.  That's completely different than real production: physical, mental 
or artistic.
> James
>
>   
sdw


From sean at conman.org  Tue Dec 29 14:08:00 2009
From: sean at conman.org (Sean Conner)
Date: Tue, 29 Dec 2009 17:08:00 -0500
Subject: [FoRK] At least you're not in Berkeley....
In-Reply-To: <4B397265.5030103@lig.net>
References: <4B3817A0.1030307@mithral.com>
	<14d615330912281641u139ae4dr548f78de500234e7@mail.gmail.com>
	<4B397265.5030103@lig.net>
Message-ID: <20091229220800.GA3418@brevard.conman.org>

It was thus said that the Great Stephen D. Williams once stated:
> Fire the administrators first.

  Not a bad idea really.  What with all those zero tollerance rules at
schools with clear cut guidelines (*cough cough*) why are the high priced
administrators even needed anymore?  Student violates clear cut guideline,
student is removed from school.

  Then again, with funding attached to the number of students (or even the
student!) there's little incentive to remove distruptive students; can't
lose the funding, you know.

> Make teachers more self-managed, i.e. 
> managing, helping, and responsible for each other and the quality of 
> output.  Involve capable and available parents in teaching, 
> administration, etc.

  A friend of mine was a high school English teacher in a former life (he's
a plumber now and makes way mor money; I'm not sure if the level of work is
less, but I suspect it is, since he was also the Journalism teacher and an
assistant football coach) and way back then, I asked him about unruly
students.  He couldn't remove them from his classroom.  The administration
would just send them right back to class.  He couldn't even demand homework
from the students and he certainly couldn't discipline them (what could he
do?  He couldn't expell the kids, couldn't touch them).  I'm sure the
students knew he wasn't in control.  

> This is especially true of the lower end of the scale but applies to 
> some extent everywhere.  Many of the parents of the more advanced kids 
> could help with English, math, etc.  

  I was one of those "advanced kids" twenty, thirty years ago and my Mom
would not have been able to help.  Working two jobs (latch-key kid here)
would preclude that.  

> (Some) teachers need to drop the 
> attitude of "this is MY classroom, you don't know what you're doing".  
> Give classes to parents / college students / etc. to become "teacher 
> deputies".  Create more open source education materials, and online 
> educational resources.

  Open source education material I'm okay with.  Online educational
resources less so.  

  Sometime in the mid-90s, back when I worked at a local ISP (one of two in
the area, so I'm thinking probably 1994 there abouts) I was asked to give a
lecture at a local middle school (grades 6-8, or ages 10/11 - 12/13) about
the Internet.  So I arrive at this middle school and prior to my lecture I'm
given a tour of their new computer lab.

  OH MY GOD!

  Perhaps two dozen new high end Macs spread across the large room, each
desk artfully placed to create an organic look to the organization (no
straight rows, but it wasn't so random that you couldn't easily walk about). 
All the power and cables were run through pipes coming down from the ceiling
to each desk.

  Simply stated, it was a gorgeous setup and exceeded anything I've seen at
the university (which I was still kind of attending but that's another
story).  The school (or most likely, school district) must have spent easily
six figures, maybe even seven, setting up this lab.

  I did a quick mental calculation---twenty-four computers (give or take),
and if you double up the students, that's about 50 per class having access
(and that's a high estimate, giving benefit of the doubt to the school) and
assuming six class periods per day, that's 300 students can use these
computers.

  It was a huge middle school, so I wouldn't be surprised if the student
population wasn't around 1,500 to 2,000 students.  So, at most, 20% of the
students had access to this lab (and at the time, I think I calculated about
10% would have access to this lab).

  I saw a colossal waste of money in that lab.

> If the key hard problem is lagging students, especially inner-city 
> students, then what is really needed are:
> 
> A) A PR campaign: education, being smart, getting a good job are good 
> things, not to be dissed.  Anti-intellectualism in 7-12th is rampant and 
> stupid.  It's from kid and pop culture, not parents (not usually) or 
> teachers.

  While I saw anti-intellectualism in my day (and I was certainly the target
of much teasing buy the intellecutally challanged) it was helped, I think,
because I was in the "gifted" and "academic" tracks in school.  In 5th
through 8th grades, we smart kids were segregated to our own section in
school (similar to the way that kids on the short bus would be) and, at
least in 5th grade, were treated waaaaaaay better than the hoi polloi (early
access to lunch, special field trips, unstructured classes, *wistful sigh*).

  I would be seriously surprised if that program still existed.  I do know
that the high school I attended (which still holds the record for the
highest number of Silver Knight Awards [1]) is now an "F" school.

[1]	An award given out by the Miami Herald to outstanding students in
	South Florida.  There are only twelve such awards handed out each
	year, one for English, one for Science, Arts, etc) and the
	competition is among three school districts, each of which are
	easily in the top 10 country wide in terms of number of students.

	It's not an easy award to get.

	In my Junior year of high school, my school won 5 (or was it 6?) of
	the awards.  This was in 1986.

> F) Find multiple ways to intervene when neighborhood, parents, siblings, 
> etc. are not working for a student.  Create boarding students, perhaps 
> in every large school district, to help kids focus, detach from a drain 
> spiral, etc.  Pair it with a job / chores, PT, strict rules but also 
> socializing, cool free time, etc.  Have the kids build Habitat for 
> Humanity-like low-priced housing, factories, etc. even.

  I ... no.  I just can't support this.  I would have been miserable if
forced to do this.  I had to quit a class (journalism) because of crap like
this.  It was pressure that I didn't need, and I felt (along with my Mom,
who was instrumental in getting me out of that class) such crap had no place
in the class.  At least my Drama teacher understood and didn't force me into
such stuff (instead, I helped behind the scenes, doing accounting-like
work).

> G) Put homeless / jobless parents to work running boarding school 
> infrastructure.

  Okay, let me guess:  volunteer, right?  Because from what I'm hearing,
there isn't any school district that can "afford" such pay.

> H) Make military or peace-corp or infrastructure-corp mandatory at some 
> point, 13th or earlier.

  Again ... no.  Just ... no.

  -spc (Who knew that had he gone into the military, would have ended up in
	Leavenworth ... )

From sdw at lig.net  Tue Dec 29 15:27:21 2009
From: sdw at lig.net (Stephen D. Williams)
Date: Tue, 29 Dec 2009 15:27:21 -0800
Subject: [FoRK] At least you're not in Berkeley....
In-Reply-To: <20091229220800.GA3418@brevard.conman.org>
References: <4B3817A0.1030307@mithral.com>	<14d615330912281641u139ae4dr548f78de500234e7@mail.gmail.com>	<4B397265.5030103@lig.net>
	<20091229220800.GA3418@brevard.conman.org>
Message-ID: <4B3A9059.5080801@lig.net>

Sean Conner wrote:
> It was thus said that the Great Stephen D. Williams once stated:
>   
Huh?  Thanks, I think.
> ...
>> Make teachers more self-managed, i.e. 
>> managing, helping, and responsible for each other and the quality of 
>> output.  Involve capable and available parents in teaching, 
>> administration, etc.
>>     
>
>   A friend of mine was a high school English teacher in a former life (he's
> a plumber now and makes way mor money; I'm not sure if the level of work is
> less, but I suspect it is, since he was also the Journalism teacher and an
> assistant football coach) and way back then, I asked him about unruly
> students.  He couldn't remove them from his classroom.  The administration
> would just send them right back to class.  He couldn't even demand homework
> from the students and he certainly couldn't discipline them (what could he
> do?  He couldn't expell the kids, couldn't touch them).  I'm sure the
> students knew he wasn't in control.  
>   

Jumping to suspending students is wrong, a lot of them would just think 
it was a nice vacation and it doesn't really solve the problem except to 
defuse certain high-tension situations.  Better is some kind of 
graduated restrictive alternative.  That is much easier when you have a 
modular education system.
>> This is especially true of the lower end of the scale but applies to 
>> some extent everywhere.  Many of the parents of the more advanced kids 
>> could help with English, math, etc.  
>>     
>
>   I was one of those "advanced kids" twenty, thirty years ago and my Mom
> would not have been able to help.  Working two jobs (latch-key kid here)
> would preclude that.  
>   

Neither would have my parents, however I did help some and could have 
helped more if the school was more receptive and flexible.  Due to the 
skip-a-generation and other similar effects, it may be that it may be 
more the opposite association in many cases.
>> (Some) teachers need to drop the 
>> attitude of "this is MY classroom, you don't know what you're doing".  
>> Give classes to parents / college students / etc. to become "teacher 
>> deputies".  Create more open source education materials, and online 
>> educational resources.
>>     
>
>   Open source education material I'm okay with.  Online educational
> resources less so.  
>   

Why?
>   Sometime in the mid-90s, back when I worked at a local ISP (one of two in
> the area, so I'm thinking probably 1994 there abouts) I was asked to give a
> lecture at a local middle school (grades 6-8, or ages 10/11 - 12/13) about
> the Internet.  So I arrive at this middle school and prior to my lecture I'm
> given a tour of their new computer lab.
>
>   OH MY GOD!
>
>   Perhaps two dozen new high end Macs spread across the large room, each
> desk artfully placed to create an organic look to the organization (no
> straight rows, but it wasn't so random that you couldn't easily walk about). 
> All the power and cables were run through pipes coming down from the ceiling
> to each desk.
>   

Ancient history, hardly representative now.
> ...
>   I saw a colossal waste of money in that lab.
>   

It wouldn't be now.  Might not have been then either.  What is your 
rationale?
>
>> If the key hard problem is lagging students, especially inner-city 
>> students, then what is really needed are:
>>
>> A) A PR campaign: education, being smart, getting a good job are good 
>> things, not to be dissed.  Anti-intellectualism in 7-12th is rampant and 
>> stupid.  It's from kid and pop culture, not parents (not usually) or 
>> teachers.
>>     
>
>   While I saw anti-intellectualism in my day (and I was certainly the target
> of much teasing buy the intellecutally challanged) it was helped, I think,
> because I was in the "gifted" and "academic" tracks in school.  In 5th
> through 8th grades, we smart kids were segregated to our own section in
> school (similar to the way that kids on the short bus would be) and, at
> least in 5th grade, were treated waaaaaaay better than the hoi polloi (early
> access to lunch, special field trips, unstructured classes, *wistful sigh*).
>
>   I would be seriously surprised if that program still existed.  I do know
> that the high school I attended (which still holds the record for the
> highest number of Silver Knight Awards [1]) is now an "F" school.
>   

Many enrichment programs still exist.
> ...
>> F) Find multiple ways to intervene when neighborhood, parents, siblings, 
>> etc. are not working for a student.  Create boarding students, perhaps 
>> in every large school district, to help kids focus, detach from a drain 
>> spiral, etc.  Pair it with a job / chores, PT, strict rules but also 
>> socializing, cool free time, etc.  Have the kids build Habitat for 
>> Humanity-like low-priced housing, factories, etc. even.
>>     
>
>   I ... no.  I just can't support this.  I would have been miserable if
> forced to do this.  I had to quit a class (journalism) because of crap like
> this.  It was pressure that I didn't need, and I felt (along with my Mom,
> who was instrumental in getting me out of that class) such crap had no place
> in the class.  At least my Drama teacher understood and didn't force me into
> such stuff (instead, I helped behind the scenes, doing accounting-like
> work).
>   

Crap like what?  You're not clear what you are disagreeing with.  It is 
not necessarily that any of those ideas would be forced on anyone, just 
offered as a better option.  You probably weren't forced to live in a 
boarding school or build houses in journalism class, so what are you 
alluding to?
>> G) Put homeless / jobless parents to work running boarding school 
>> infrastructure.
>>     
>
>   Okay, let me guess:  volunteer, right?  Because from what I'm hearing,
> there isn't any school district that can "afford" such pay.
>   

No way, it's a job.  For housing, food, etc. at least.  Funding is a 
different issue.  Arguing that the current system's funding state 
prevents us from finding better solutions is not a good excuse.
>> H) Make military or peace-corp or infrastructure-corp mandatory at some 
>> point, 13th or earlier.
>>     
>
>   Again ... no.  Just ... no.
>   
Recently, from a friend:
http://watch.bnn.ca/squeezeplay/december-2009/squeezeplay-december-9-2009/#clip244523
> SqueezePlay : December 9, 2009 : The Little Nation That Could 
> [12-09-09 5:40 PM]
> Israel has a small population, and few natural resources. But its 
> technology sector shines - it has the highest concentration of 
> start-up companies in the world. BNN speaks to Dan Senor, author, 
> "Start-up Nation: The Story of Israel's Economic Miracle." 

>   -spc (Who knew that had he gone into the military, would have ended up in
> 	Leavenworth ... )
>
>   
Maybe, maybe not.  The reality is a lot different than the impression.

sdw


From sdw at lig.net  Tue Dec 29 15:38:56 2009
From: sdw at lig.net (Stephen D. Williams)
Date: Tue, 29 Dec 2009 15:38:56 -0800
Subject: [FoRK] (The) Civility Project.org
Message-ID: <4B3A9310.2030700@lig.net>

Cool. We've needed this for a while. Well, I wasn't referring to FoRK 
specifically... ;-)
Just a little dumb that they seem to imply it is 
"thecivilityproject.org" with the logo when that domain seems to be 
owned by someone else and is dead.

http://www.civilityproject.org/
> Take the Civility Pledge
>
> * will be civil in my public discourse and behavior.
> * will be respectful of others whether or not I agree with them.
> * will stand against incivility when I see it.
> Welcome to The Civility Project:
>
> It seems our society has become increasingly divided and polarized. 
> Every week we are treated to scenes of bitter fighting, protests 
> turning to violence and vandalism, name-calling, and personal attacks. 
> Important debates are no longer fought with ideas and words but with 
> shouting and screaming, even throwing things.
>
> I am concerned about the hate and animosity being aimed at men and 
> women with whom we may disagree on one issue or another and have 
> decided to do something about it. I reached out to some people from 
> various political, racial and religious backgrounds to see if we could 
> join our hearts and minds together in calling others to civility. Some 
> of us may agree on nothing other than the importance of civility in 
> society.
>
> We are proud to launch The Civility Project?a collection of liberals 
> and conservatives, Democrats and Republicans, blacks and whites, and 
> people of various faith?or no faith? who agree that even in sharp 
> disagreement we should not be disagreeable.
>
> I am a conservative evangelical Southern Baptist who tried to elect 
> Mitt Romney, a Mormon, as president. My friend Lanny Davis is of the 
> Jewish faith and has worked closely with Bill and Hillary Clinton. 
> Other original endorsers of this project are closely aligned with 
> Barack Obama or worked hard for a Republican successor to President 
> Bush. Our respect for one another and our debate with each other is 
> marked by civility, and we simply want to encourage it across the 
> country (and around the world).
>
> We may even have different motivations for practicing civility. As a 
> follower of Jesus Christ, I am motivated by biblical teaching such as, 
> ?Let all that you do be done in love? (I Corinthians 16:14). But 
> whether out of spiritual conviction or pure pragmatism, civility 
> should be preferred to incivility and that?s why we?re inviting 
> everyone who will to take the Civility Pledge. It simply says:
>
> * I will be civil in my public discourse and behavior.
> * I will be respectful of others whether or not I agree with them.
> * I will stand against incivility when I see it.
>
> If you?d like to be part of a civility movement in this country just 
> add your voice to ours, share this site with others, and give us your 
> feedback. Thank you.
>
>
>
> Mark DeMoss
> President, The DeMoss Group
> Founder, The Civility Project

sdw





From ken_ganshirt at yahoo.ca  Tue Dec 29 16:08:59 2009
From: ken_ganshirt at yahoo.ca (Ken Ganshirt @ Yahoo)
Date: Tue, 29 Dec 2009 16:08:59 -0800 (PST)
Subject: [FoRK] At least you're not in Berkeley....
In-Reply-To: <4B3A7736.6060103@lig.net>
Message-ID: <727909.33521.qm@web33002.mail.mud.yahoo.com>

--- On Tue, 12/29/09, Stephen D. Williams <sdw at lig.net> wrote:

>
>  ... trickle down to the poor soon."? Since we know that
> wealth is created, not divided in a zero sum game, that
> should come into play here somewhere.? Well, some
> people don't know, but they should.
> 

Oh geeezz... Proof please??

>
> There has been a lot of fake production on Wall Street,
> housing bubble, etc.? That's completely different than
> real production: physical, mental or artistic.
>

Yeah, that's pretty much my point. The fake stuff seems to have mostly exceeded the real thing ... for at least a decade. Maybe a lot longer.

I don't know if I'm exactly a lefty but I sure get tired of having this "trickle down" nonsense continually blown up my ass. I've yet to see any substantial evidence of it. Simply platitudes that we should take on trust because we're too freakin' stupid to actually understand how it all works. Too complicated for even the regulators to understand....

       ...ken... (Yeah, I know I promised to stay away from the keyboard until I stopped being petulant and testy but I just couldn't let a throwaway like that go by.)


      __________________________________________________________________
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From nornagon at gmail.com  Tue Dec 29 16:17:14 2009
From: nornagon at gmail.com (Jeremy Apthorp)
Date: Wed, 30 Dec 2009 11:17:14 +1100
Subject: [FoRK] At least you're not in Berkeley....
In-Reply-To: <727909.33521.qm@web33002.mail.mud.yahoo.com>
References: <4B3A7736.6060103@lig.net>
	<727909.33521.qm@web33002.mail.mud.yahoo.com>
Message-ID: <14d615330912291617t22591885jd9b5039ed8e429fe@mail.gmail.com>

2009/12/30 Ken Ganshirt @ Yahoo <ken_ganshirt at yahoo.ca>:
> --- On Tue, 12/29/09, Stephen D. Williams <sdw at lig.net> wrote:
>
>>
>> ?... trickle down to the poor soon."? Since we know that
>> wealth is created, not divided in a zero sum game, that
>> should come into play here somewhere.? Well, some
>> people don't know, but they should.
>>
>
> Oh geeezz... Proof please??

All trades move goods from lower value to higher value, by definition.
If you have ten thousand tires but not much money, and I have lots of
money but need a tire for my care, and I buy a tire off you, we both
benefit. I need the tire more than I need the money, and you need the
money more than I need the tire. Thus, both of us have become more
wealthy. The more trades occur, the more wealthy everyone is. Fact.

Adam Smith pointed this out in 1776.

j


From nornagon at gmail.com  Tue Dec 29 16:20:12 2009
From: nornagon at gmail.com (Jeremy Apthorp)
Date: Wed, 30 Dec 2009 11:20:12 +1100
Subject: [FoRK] At least you're not in Berkeley....
In-Reply-To: <14d615330912291617t22591885jd9b5039ed8e429fe@mail.gmail.com>
References: <4B3A7736.6060103@lig.net>
	<727909.33521.qm@web33002.mail.mud.yahoo.com> 
	<14d615330912291617t22591885jd9b5039ed8e429fe@mail.gmail.com>
Message-ID: <14d615330912291620n363769b4r59f7c6bb21298ee4@mail.gmail.com>

As for wealth trickling down, this is pretty plainly true. Rich people
still buy coffee, and the more money they have, the more they'll be
willing to pay for it. The more they pay their gourmet coffee vendors,
the more they can pay their workers in Ethiopia or wherever. The
richer a country, the richer its people. How does this not make sense?

j.capitalist

From dmorton at bitfurnace.com  Tue Dec 29 16:21:45 2009
From: dmorton at bitfurnace.com (Damien Morton)
Date: Wed, 30 Dec 2009 11:21:45 +1100
Subject: [FoRK] At least you're not in Berkeley....
In-Reply-To: <20091229185744.GA25220@aaron-x31>
References: <4B3817A0.1030307@mithral.com> <20091229185744.GA25220@aaron-x31>
Message-ID: <8092dc770912291621v13364864tc13544d0b094631a@mail.gmail.com>

On Wed, Dec 30, 2009 at 5:57 AM, Aaron Burt <aaron at bavariati.org> wrote:

>
>
> Declining tax revenues, the NCLB and special-ed obligations coupled with
> the rise in Autism and learning-disablity diagnoses ensure that public
> High Schools will continue to contract their curricula to a mandated
> McDonalds-worker minimum.
>
>
In New York state, there is a constitutional mandate that all children be
provided a minimum standard of education.

Apparently there has been a long running battle over what constitutes a
"minimum" of education, with the government of New York asserting that a
level suitable for a McDonalds worker being the minimum, while the New York
Supreme Court took the position that the "minimum" was that level of
education required for a citizen to comprehend the political issues of the
day sufficiently well for them to function as a citizen and voter, and that
these issues included such things as foreign affairs, economic decisions,
and electoral reforms such as private vs public funding of candidates. When
I was told this story, I was told that the government of New York had ignore
repeated Supreme Court rulings of this nature for decades.

Anyone read John Taylor Gatto? http://www.spinninglobe.net/againstschool.htm

From dmorton at bitfurnace.com  Tue Dec 29 16:41:44 2009
From: dmorton at bitfurnace.com (Damien Morton)
Date: Wed, 30 Dec 2009 11:41:44 +1100
Subject: [FoRK] At least you're not in Berkeley....
In-Reply-To: <8092dc770912291621v13364864tc13544d0b094631a@mail.gmail.com>
References: <4B3817A0.1030307@mithral.com> <20091229185744.GA25220@aaron-x31>
	<8092dc770912291621v13364864tc13544d0b094631a@mail.gmail.com>
Message-ID: <8092dc770912291641l34b888aewf8a7116e6de60e52@mail.gmail.com>

This quote from Gatto always seems to hit the nail on the spot.

... Once you understand the logic behind modern schooling, its tricks and
traps are fairly easy to avoid. School trains children to be employees and
consumers; teach your own to be leaders and adventurers. School trains
children to obey reflexively; teach your own to think critically and
independently. Well-schooled kids have a low threshold for boredom; help
your own to develop an inner life so that they'll never be bored. Urge them
to take on the serious material, the grown-up material, in history,
literature, philosophy, music, art, economics, theology - all the stuff
schoolteachers know well enough to avoid. Challenge your kids with plenty of
solitude so that they can learn to enjoy their own company, to conduct inner
dialogues. Well-schooled people are conditioned to dread being alone, and
they seek constant companionship through the TV, the computer, the cell
phone, and through shallow friendships quickly acquired and quickly
abandoned. Your children should have a more meaningful life, and they can.
On Wed, Dec 30, 2009 at 11:21 AM, Damien Morton <dmorton at bitfurnace.com>wrote:

> On Wed, Dec 30, 2009 at 5:57 AM, Aaron Burt <aaron at bavariati.org> wrote:
>
>>
>>
>> Declining tax revenues, the NCLB and special-ed obligations coupled with
>> the rise in Autism and learning-disablity diagnoses ensure that public
>> High Schools will continue to contract their curricula to a mandated
>> McDonalds-worker minimum.
>>
>>
> In New York state, there is a constitutional mandate that all children be
> provided a minimum standard of education.
>
> Apparently there has been a long running battle over what constitutes a
> "minimum" of education, with the government of New York asserting that a
> level suitable for a McDonalds worker being the minimum, while the New York
> Supreme Court took the position that the "minimum" was that level of
> education required for a citizen to comprehend the political issues of the
> day sufficiently well for them to function as a citizen and voter, and that
> these issues included such things as foreign affairs, economic decisions,
> and electoral reforms such as private vs public funding of candidates. When
> I was told this story, I was told that the government of New York had ignore
> repeated Supreme Court rulings of this nature for decades.
>
> Anyone read John Taylor Gatto?
> http://www.spinninglobe.net/againstschool.htm
>
>
>
>

From jtauber at jtauber.com  Tue Dec 29 17:19:25 2009
From: jtauber at jtauber.com (James Tauber)
Date: Tue, 29 Dec 2009 20:19:25 -0500
Subject: [FoRK] At least you're not in Berkeley....
In-Reply-To: <4B3A7736.6060103@lig.net>
References: <599243.49438.qm@web33006.mail.mud.yahoo.com>
	<60F4FBD5-600C-4EFA-9B31-0F73B8D6E8DB@jtauber.com>
	<4B3A7736.6060103@lig.net>
Message-ID: <EF87C41F-E6FA-4208-B453-BF480BF4CE16@jtauber.com>


On Dec 29, 2009, at 4:40 PM, Stephen D. Williams wrote:
>> For example, if one report said "average household incomes are up 20%" and another report said "the gap between the top quintile and bottom quintile has increased" based on the same raw statistics, I think you could pick which one came from a left-wing think tank and which a right-wing think tank.
>>  
> 
> Wouldn't you also have to note the glee or sense of foreboding that went along with those headlines?  ;-)

Absolutely. That's probably even more of an indicator :-) But all other things being equal...

James



From dmorton at bitfurnace.com  Tue Dec 29 17:25:49 2009
From: dmorton at bitfurnace.com (Damien Morton)
Date: Wed, 30 Dec 2009 12:25:49 +1100
Subject: [FoRK] At least you're not in Berkeley....
In-Reply-To: <EF87C41F-E6FA-4208-B453-BF480BF4CE16@jtauber.com>
References: <599243.49438.qm@web33006.mail.mud.yahoo.com>
	<60F4FBD5-600C-4EFA-9B31-0F73B8D6E8DB@jtauber.com>
	<4B3A7736.6060103@lig.net>
	<EF87C41F-E6FA-4208-B453-BF480BF4CE16@jtauber.com>
Message-ID: <8092dc770912291725t234bc1dek75baa6dd0dc1990d@mail.gmail.com>

What if there was a headline that said "average real household incomes up
20% while median real income down 50%"

Is that a left wing or a right wing statement?

On Wed, Dec 30, 2009 at 12:19 PM, James Tauber <jtauber at jtauber.com> wrote:

>
> On Dec 29, 2009, at 4:40 PM, Stephen D. Williams wrote:
> >> For example, if one report said "average household incomes are up 20%"
> and another report said "the gap between the top quintile and bottom
> quintile has increased" based on the same raw statistics, I think you could
> pick which one came from a left-wing think tank and which a right-wing think
> tank.
> >>
> >
> > Wouldn't you also have to note the glee or sense of foreboding that went
> along with those headlines?  ;-)
>
> Absolutely. That's probably even more of an indicator :-) But all other
> things being equal...
>
> James
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> FoRK mailing list
> http://xent.com/mailman/listinfo/fork
>

From whump at mac.com  Tue Dec 29 17:44:35 2009
From: whump at mac.com (Bill Humphries)
Date: Tue, 29 Dec 2009 17:44:35 -0800
Subject: [FoRK] (The) Civility Project.org
In-Reply-To: <4B3A9310.2030700@lig.net>
References: <4B3A9310.2030700@lig.net>
Message-ID: <6C3D1F46-BEF4-463F-9EF6-06983F17D4F5@mac.com>


On Dec 29, 2009, at 3:38 PM, Stephen D. Williams wrote:

> Just a little dumb that they seem to imply it is "thecivilityproject.org" with the logo when that domain seems to be owned by someone else and is dead.
> 
> http://www.civilityproject.org/
>> Take the Civility Pledge
>> 
>> * will be civil in my public discourse and behavior.
>> * will be respectful of others whether or not I agree with them.
>> * will stand against incivility when I see it.

Tone Argument: http://derailingfordummies.com/#hostile

See also: http://slacktivist.typepad.com/slacktivist/2009/08/those-pearls-wont-clutch-themselves.html

-- whump

From michaelslists at gmail.com  Tue Dec 29 17:53:11 2009
From: michaelslists at gmail.com (silky)
Date: Wed, 30 Dec 2009 12:53:11 +1100
Subject: [FoRK] (The) Civility Project.org
In-Reply-To: <6C3D1F46-BEF4-463F-9EF6-06983F17D4F5@mac.com>
References: <4B3A9310.2030700@lig.net>
	<6C3D1F46-BEF4-463F-9EF6-06983F17D4F5@mac.com>
Message-ID: <5e01c29a0912291753l64938d69t77060aa788c228f7@mail.gmail.com>

On Wed, Dec 30, 2009 at 12:44 PM, Bill Humphries <whump at mac.com> wrote:
> On Dec 29, 2009, at 3:38 PM, Stephen D. Williams wrote:
> > http://www.civilityproject.org/
> > Take the Civility Pledge
> >
> > * will be civil in my public discourse and behavior.
> > * will be respectful of others whether or not I agree with them.
> > * will stand against incivility when I see it.
>
> Tone Argument: http://derailingfordummies.com/#hostile

Man, that whole website is a bit of a self-fulfilling prophecy really.

I don't think I'll be taking the civility pledge anytime soon. May as
well take the "incredibly boring approach to discussions" pledge.
There is no need to respect everyone (but you also don't need to be an
a*hole).


> See also: http://slacktivist.typepad.com/slacktivist/2009/08/those-pearls-wont-clutch-themselves.html
>
> -- whump

-- 
silky
  http://www.mirios.com.au/
  http://island.mirios.com.au/t/rigby+random+20

outdid! Continence. Liveliness gouger quay temporize UNSPOILED
GOALTENDER-nachos paternoster ...

From wkearney99 at hotmail.com  Tue Dec 29 17:54:39 2009
From: wkearney99 at hotmail.com (Bill Kearney)
Date: Tue, 29 Dec 2009 20:54:39 -0500
Subject: [FoRK] At least you're not in Berkeley....
References: <4B3817A0.1030307@mithral.com><14d615330912281641u139ae4dr548f78de500234e7@mail.gmail.com><4B397265.5030103@lig.net>
	<20091229220800.GA3418@brevard.conman.org>
Message-ID: <BLU0-SMTP550564F8FA8186C26AACF8D7790@phx.gbl>

>  Again ... no.  Just ... no.

It's more than a little myopic to reject everything out of hand simply 
because you *think* they wouldn't have worked for you at that time. 


From andrew at ceruleansystems.com  Tue Dec 29 18:02:24 2009
From: andrew at ceruleansystems.com (J. Andrew Rogers)
Date: Tue, 29 Dec 2009 18:02:24 -0800
Subject: [FoRK] At least you're not in Berkeley....
In-Reply-To: <727909.33521.qm@web33002.mail.mud.yahoo.com>
References: <727909.33521.qm@web33002.mail.mud.yahoo.com>
Message-ID: <11C5A347-C51B-4B5D-B26D-5648F09B84A2@ceruleansystems.com>


On Dec 29, 2009, at 4:08 PM, Ken Ganshirt @ Yahoo wrote:
> I don't know if I'm exactly a lefty but I sure get tired of having this "trickle down" nonsense continually blown up my ass.


The "trickle down" theory is obviously a valid heuristic, but there is an unstated caveat. 

Money only trickles down to people who actually offer something of value.  




From dmorton at bitfurnace.com  Tue Dec 29 18:30:09 2009
From: dmorton at bitfurnace.com (Damien Morton)
Date: Wed, 30 Dec 2009 13:30:09 +1100
Subject: [FoRK] At least you're not in Berkeley....
In-Reply-To: <11C5A347-C51B-4B5D-B26D-5648F09B84A2@ceruleansystems.com>
References: <727909.33521.qm@web33002.mail.mud.yahoo.com>
	<11C5A347-C51B-4B5D-B26D-5648F09B84A2@ceruleansystems.com>
Message-ID: <8092dc770912291830g25d0442bg1c99357301eccf8@mail.gmail.com>

On Wed, Dec 30, 2009 at 1:02 PM, J. Andrew Rogers <
andrew at ceruleansystems.com> wrote:
>
> On Dec 29, 2009, at 4:08 PM, Ken Ganshirt @ Yahoo wrote:
> > I don't know if I'm exactly a lefty but I sure get tired of having this
> "trickle down" nonsense continually blown up my ass.
>
> The "trickle down" theory is obviously a valid heuristic, but there is an
> unstated caveat.
>
> Money only trickles down to people who actually offer something of value.


... to people with money.

From ken_ganshirt at yahoo.ca  Tue Dec 29 18:42:04 2009
From: ken_ganshirt at yahoo.ca (Ken Ganshirt @ Yahoo)
Date: Tue, 29 Dec 2009 18:42:04 -0800 (PST)
Subject: [FoRK] At least you're not in Berkeley....
Message-ID: <571923.82930.qm@web33001.mail.mud.yahoo.com>

--- On Tue, 12/29/09, Jeremy Apthorp <nornagon at gmail.com> wrote:
> 2009/12/30 Ken Ganshirt @ Yahoo <ken_ganshirt at yahoo.ca>:
> > --- On Tue, 12/29/09, Stephen D. Williams <sdw at lig.net>
> wrote:
> >
> >>
> >> ?... trickle down to the poor soon."? Since we know that
> >> wealth is created, not divided in a zero sum game, that
> >> should come into play here somewhere.? Well, some
> >> people don't know, but they should.
> >>
> >
> > Oh geeezz... Proof please??
> 
> All trades move goods from lower value to higher value, by
> definition. If you have ten thousand tires but not much money, and I
> have lots of money but need a tire for my care, and I buy a tire off
> you, we both benefit. I need the tire more than I need the money, and
> you need the money more than I need the tire. Thus, both of us have
> become more wealthy. The more trades occur, the more wealthy everyone
> is. Fact.
> 
> Adam Smith pointed this out in 1776.
> 

Yeah, well it ain't 1776 and, in case you haven't noticed, there's a lot more pixie dust than tires being "manufactured" of late. No matter how big a stick you hit me with you still won't get it into my head that pixie dust is a "good" similar to a tire. 

Trades in pixie dust add nothing to the economy. Contrariwise, they suck from it.

     "Proponents of these [trickle down] policies claim that if the top income earners invest more into the business infrastructure and equity markets, it will in turn lead to more goods at lower prices, and create more jobs for middle and lower class individuals. [Wikipedia]"

See? You need "goods". Assuming "trickle down" actually works in the first place. 

Pixie dust isn't "goods". It's leveraged gambling on things that mostly don't exist.

It's possible that in 1776 it all made sense because, probably, back in 1776 trade was mostly in real things and real services. Investments were made to purchase ownership in enterprises that made real things or provided real services. Or to create such enterprises.

Now, in 2009, the markets are just branch offices of Atlantic City/Las Vegas. Most investments aren't. They're just bets and the majority of the stuff that's bet on ...err... invested in is pixie dust not ownership. Not in expansion of capacity to manufacture or deliver real goods and services or creation of new capacity.

We would be much better off if the clowns who create the various forms of pixie dust were, instead, applying their overactive imaginations to the creation of video games. The fantasy worlds they create for Wall Street would, otherwise directed, produce some astounding game environments.

North America has contracted out/offshored a huge amount of the manufacture of real goods and provision of real services. I would love to see a chart for the last twenty years that shows, for the USA, the total annual valuation of pixie dust traded versus the total annual value of real goods and services "traded". It would be instructive, I think.

My opinion, of course. 

        ...ken... (and it's free, unlike jb's often overpriced $.02.)



      __________________________________________________________________
The new Internet Explorer? 8 - Faster, safer, easier.  Optimized for Yahoo!  Get it Now for Free! at http://downloads.yahoo.com/ca/internetexplorer/


From nornagon at gmail.com  Tue Dec 29 18:58:48 2009
From: nornagon at gmail.com (Jeremy Apthorp)
Date: Wed, 30 Dec 2009 13:58:48 +1100
Subject: [FoRK] At least you're not in Berkeley....
In-Reply-To: <571923.82930.qm@web33001.mail.mud.yahoo.com>
References: <571923.82930.qm@web33001.mail.mud.yahoo.com>
Message-ID: <14d615330912291858g691615a2t292c40bd33c96c2a@mail.gmail.com>

2009/12/30 Ken Ganshirt @ Yahoo <ken_ganshirt at yahoo.ca>:
> Yeah, well it ain't 1776 and, in case you haven't noticed, there's a lot more pixie dust than tires being "manufactured" of late. No matter how big a stick you hit me with you still won't get it into my head that pixie dust is a "good" similar to a tire.
>
> Trades in pixie dust add nothing to the economy. Contrariwise, they suck from it.
>
> ? ? "Proponents of these [trickle down] policies claim that if the top income earners invest more into the business infrastructure and equity markets, it will in turn lead to more goods at lower prices, and create more jobs for middle and lower class individuals. [Wikipedia]"
>
> See? You need "goods". Assuming "trickle down" actually works in the first place.
>
> Pixie dust isn't "goods". It's leveraged gambling on things that mostly don't exist.
>
> It's possible that in 1776 it all made sense because, probably, back in 1776 trade was mostly in real things and real services. Investments were made to purchase ownership in enterprises that made real things or provided real services. Or to create such enterprises.

Ah, but in the end even stockbrokers need to buy cars, pay mechanics
and cleaners, clothe their children, etc. etc. The money they win by
gambling on pixie dust trickles down to the rest of the market.

I assume that by 'pixie dust' you're referring to things like futures,
derivatives, foreign currency, etc., as opposed to slightly more
tangible things like actual shares.

j


From ken_ganshirt at yahoo.ca  Tue Dec 29 20:49:15 2009
From: ken_ganshirt at yahoo.ca (Ken Ganshirt @ Yahoo)
Date: Tue, 29 Dec 2009 20:49:15 -0800 (PST)
Subject: [FoRK] At least you're not in Berkeley....
In-Reply-To: <11C5A347-C51B-4B5D-B26D-5648F09B84A2@ceruleansystems.com>
Message-ID: <228409.51535.qm@web33007.mail.mud.yahoo.com>

--- On Tue, 12/29/09, J. Andrew Rogers <andrew at ceruleansystems.com> wrote:
> 
> On Dec 29, 2009, at 4:08 PM, Ken Ganshirt @ Yahoo wrote:
> > I don't know if I'm exactly a lefty but I sure get
> tired of having this "trickle down" nonsense continually
> blown up my ass.
> 
> 
> The "trickle down" theory is obviously a valid heuristic,
> but there is an unstated caveat. 
> 
> Money only trickles down to people who actually offer
> something of value.? 
> 

Yes. That's my point. That's the way it *should* work. Something of *real* value.

What we've been doing, under the guise of "trickle down economics" is transferring taxpayer's dollars via various forms of subsidy to people and enterprises whose only contribution is to invent various new forms of pixie dust and games of chance. Or to businesses to use for capital spending to improve "productivity", a nifty euphemism for laying more people off.

And, in any case, compared to the torrent of cash we pump into the top of the income heirarchy, what goes back down could certainly be best described as a trickle.

        ...ken...


      __________________________________________________________________
Yahoo! Canada Toolbar: Search from anywhere on the web, and bookmark your favourite sites. Download it now
http://ca.toolbar.yahoo.com.


From sean at conman.org  Wed Dec 30 00:36:57 2009
From: sean at conman.org (Sean Conner)
Date: Wed, 30 Dec 2009 03:36:57 -0500
Subject: [FoRK] At least you're not in Berkeley....
In-Reply-To: <14d615330912291858g691615a2t292c40bd33c96c2a@mail.gmail.com>
References: <571923.82930.qm@web33001.mail.mud.yahoo.com>
	<14d615330912291858g691615a2t292c40bd33c96c2a@mail.gmail.com>
Message-ID: <20091230083657.GA24240@brevard.conman.org>

It was thus said that the Great Jeremy Apthorp once stated:
>
> I assume that by 'pixie dust' you're referring to things like futures,
> derivatives, foreign currency, etc., as opposed to slightly more
> tangible things like actual shares.

  That sounds like a fair assumption.  

  I never did see the appeal of Google stock, especially since a) they pay
no dividend, and b) they aren't voting stocks.  Okay, I mean, as an actual
investment and not on the "Greater Fool" theory of stocks.  It always seemed
to me a way for Google to say "FY" to Wall Street.

  -spc (Then again, since they've gone public, they've gone downhill, which
	seems to be the fate of many a public company lately ... )

From sean at conman.org  Wed Dec 30 01:18:26 2009
From: sean at conman.org (Sean Conner)
Date: Wed, 30 Dec 2009 04:18:26 -0500
Subject: [FoRK] At least you're not in Berkeley....
In-Reply-To: <4B3A9059.5080801@lig.net>
References: <4B3817A0.1030307@mithral.com>
	<14d615330912281641u139ae4dr548f78de500234e7@mail.gmail.com>
	<4B397265.5030103@lig.net>
	<20091229220800.GA3418@brevard.conman.org>
	<4B3A9059.5080801@lig.net>
Message-ID: <20091230091826.GB24240@brevard.conman.org>

It was thus said that the Great Stephen D. Williams once stated:
> Sean Conner wrote:
> >It was thus said that the Great Stephen D. Williams once stated:
>
> Huh?  Thanks, I think.

  You're welcome.

> >  A friend of mine was a high school English teacher in a former life (he's
> >a plumber now and makes way mor money; I'm not sure if the level of work is
> >less, but I suspect it is, since he was also the Journalism teacher and an
> >assistant football coach) and way back then, I asked him about unruly
> >students.  He couldn't remove them from his classroom.  The administration
> >would just send them right back to class.  He couldn't even demand homework
> >from the students and he certainly couldn't discipline them (what could he
> >do?  He couldn't expell the kids, couldn't touch them).  I'm sure the
> >students knew he wasn't in control.  
> >  
> 
> Jumping to suspending students is wrong, a lot of them would just think 
> it was a nice vacation and it doesn't really solve the problem except to 
> defuse certain high-tension situations. 

  Sorry if I didn't make myself clear---my friend never wanted to suspend
students, just to quiet or get rid (even if temporarily to the Principal's
Office) of the trouble makers so he could teach the students that wanted to
learn.  He basically wanted a way to quiet or remove students who were
distracting the classroom.

> >  Open source education material I'm okay with.  Online educational
> >resources less so.    
>
> Why?

  Too much of a distraction.  Waaaay too much of a distraction.

  Since the statute of limitations has passed, I can probably relate this
story now.  Back in college (this must have been ... hmm ... 1991?  1992?) I
was taking a computer graphics class held exclusively in a lab.  Ten
computers total, one for the teacher to use during her lecture, and nine in
a 3x3 layout.  Two students per computer (so a class of 18---not a bad
ratio for a high school teacher, but I digress).  When lecturing, the
teacher could not see the screens on the student computers (they faced away
from her).

  So I'm sitting in the back row, middle computer with my friend B.  The
teacher is droning on and one about Breshenham's Line Algorithm, or
Bresehenham's Circle Algorithm, or something along those lines.  B and I
were bored.  I started poking around the computer and found a bunch of
graphical hacks, stuff that make the screen look like it's melting, or
slides the desktop off to the side.  Basically, silly programs.

  Worse yet, the computers were networked, and any student could log onto
any computer (there was no assigned seating in the classroom).  And being
networked, I could log into the computer to my left.  Which I did.

  And I proceeded to melt that computer screen.  The pair of students next
to me were surprised and amazed at what happened.  Feeling flush from the
thrill of the prank, I logged into the machine in front of them (middle row,
left hand side) and did the same thing---melted the screen.

  The pair of students there were surprised at what happened, and in hushed
tones, theorized that maybe there was some computer virus at work.  Too much
fun.  I logged into the computer in front of them (first row, left side) and
did the same thing yet again.  This time, one of the two students was
another friend of mine, Br, and well, he was smart enough to know what was
happening.  

  But by this time, the entire class was more focused on Br's screen (as it
was melting) and not on the teacher.  She suddenly realized the class was
not paying attention to her but to Br's screen.  She walked around, caught
the screen just as it was finishing melting; meanwhile, I was trying like
hell to stop the program and log out before being caught.  She yelled that
she was going to find out what the hell was going on and stormed out of the
lab and headed towards the sysadmin office down the hall (fortunately, I was
friends with the sysadmins (students all), knew exactly what was going on
and managed to keep from laughing at the situation in front of the teacher. 
The teacher never did find out what happened).

  Now, that was a small class room with nine computers and 18 students,
nominally adults.  Things are worse with kids.

  Another story.  Seventh grade (1981, I was 12 at the time).  The middle
school has one computer, an Apple ][.  It's sitting in the corner of the
social studies classroom for the Gifted Students.  Pairs of students (Gifted
Students only) would sign up for an hour of time per week, on the computer. 
Self taught, as the social studies teacher would be most likely giving a
class, and it was expected the pair of students on the computer would be
quiet enough.

  My partner at the time was S, who had a horrible habit of skipping school
(yes, he was a Gifted Student, but it didn't mean he liked attending) so I
found myself one week alone at the computer.  This was also the week when
the teacher was having her students read a chapter or do busy work or
something because they were all quiet as she sat at her desk at the head of
the classroom.  

  A couple of the students were bored out of their skull, and convinced me
to write the following program (BASIC, it was an Apple ][ afterall):

	10 PRINT "GET THE SIGNAL SCHIFY"
	20 GOTO 10

(Historical note:  at the time there was a popular advertising campain for
Signal Mouthwash with the tag line, "Get the signal.")

  Much laughter from the students.  

  Not much laughter from the teacher (nicknamed by us students as "Schify").

  And yes, I was banned from using the computer for the rest of the year.

  Okay, two data points, involving myself, not the best way to make an
argument.  But I do know myself, and I was exceedingly bored in school
(elementary, middle, high, college---didn't matter).  What a great way to
kill time in the classroom!  Would I have loved a net connection in school? 
Hell yes!  11th grade study hall I would monopolize one of about ... um ...
six? computers in the entire school and call BBSes.  In college I probably
would have spent the classtime reading USENET had there been a network
connection available.

  And if you know what you are doing, you can get through any firewall
(http://boston.conman.org/2009/11/18.1).

  Money better spent on teachers and books.

> >  Sometime in the mid-90s, back when I worked at a local ISP (one of two in
> >the area, so I'm thinking probably 1994 there abouts) I was asked to give a
> >lecture at a local middle school (grades 6-8, or ages 10/11 - 12/13) about
> >the Internet.  So I arrive at this middle school and prior to my lecture 
> >I'm
> >given a tour of their new computer lab.
> >
> >  OH MY GOD!
> >
> >  Perhaps two dozen new high end Macs spread across the large room, each
> >desk artfully placed to create an organic look to the organization (no
> >straight rows, but it wasn't so random that you couldn't easily walk 
> >about). All the power and cables were run through pipes coming down from 
> >the ceiling
> >to each desk.
> >  
> 
> Ancient history, hardly representative now.
> >...
> >  I saw a colossal waste of money in that lab.
>
> It wouldn't be now.  Might not have been then either.  What is your 
> rationale?

  The middle school lab was better than some of the labs available to
students at the University (FAU, whose Ocean Engineering Department
regularly beats the pants off of MIT; that also had dedicated Computer
Science Department) I attended, with less student access (generally, the
computer labs at FAU were open to any student to use).  Seemed an apauling
waste of money to me.

> >>F) Find multiple ways to intervene when neighborhood, parents, siblings, 
> >>etc. are not working for a student.  Create boarding students, perhaps 
> >>in every large school district, to help kids focus, detach from a drain 
> >>spiral, etc.  Pair it with a job / chores, PT, strict rules but also 
> >>socializing, cool free time, etc.  Have the kids build Habitat for 
> >>Humanity-like low-priced housing, factories, etc. even.
> >>    
> >
> >  I ... no.  I just can't support this.  I would have been miserable if
> >forced to do this.  I had to quit a class (journalism) because of crap like
> >this.  It was pressure that I didn't need, and I felt (along with my Mom,
> >who was instrumental in getting me out of that class) such crap had no 
> >place
> >in the class.  At least my Drama teacher understood and didn't force me 
> >into
> >such stuff (instead, I helped behind the scenes, doing accounting-like
> >work).
> >  
> 
> Crap like what?  You're not clear what you are disagreeing with.  It is 
> not necessarily that any of those ideas would be forced on anyone, just 
> offered as a better option.  You probably weren't forced to live in a 
> boarding school or build houses in journalism class, so what are you 
> alluding to?

  I have issues with (what sounds like to me as) forced volunteerism.  And
government interventions.  I tend to have issues with authority, especially
authority that that demands respect just because it's the authority, and
that's what this sounds like (and oddly enough, I can thank several high
school teachers for clarifying that for me).

  Just put it down to a hot-button issue.

  -spc (Who still believes that the government that governs the least
	governs the best)


From sean at conman.org  Wed Dec 30 01:32:21 2009
From: sean at conman.org (Sean Conner)
Date: Wed, 30 Dec 2009 04:32:21 -0500
Subject: [FoRK] At least you're not in Berkeley....
In-Reply-To: <727909.33521.qm@web33002.mail.mud.yahoo.com>
References: <4B3A7736.6060103@lig.net>
	<727909.33521.qm@web33002.mail.mud.yahoo.com>
Message-ID: <20091230093221.GC24240@brevard.conman.org>

It was thus said that the Great Ken Ganshirt @ Yahoo once stated:
> 
> I don't know if I'm exactly a lefty but I sure get tired of having this
> "trickle down" nonsense continually blown up my ass. I've yet to see any
> substantial evidence of it. Simply platitudes that we should take on trust
> because we're too freakin' stupid to actually understand how it all works.
> Too complicated for even the regulators to understand....

  My girlfriend used to be involed with US Customs, and through her second
husband the marine industry.  Two interesting stories she's related to me.

  First one involves the yacht industry (or rather, the marine industry
sub-industry of yachts).  There was a deep tax put upon yachts, because, you
know, the rich can afford it, right?  

  Well, yes, but they didn't feel it was worth paying it, so they stopped
buying (and keeping) yachts.  So then you had yacht manufactorers laying
people off because of poor sales, yacht crews being laid off, cleaning crews
being laid off, dock hands being laid off, etc. etc.  A "trickle down"
effect if you will (only not the good type).

  Second one involves sugar (this comes from her experience in US Customs). 
There are huge sugar fields in and around the Lake Okeechobee area (that
large blue splotch in Florida).  For years, migrant workers would be shipped
in from the Caribbean to harvest the sugar fields for three months out of
the year.  Well, the sugar companies obviously exploited these poor migrant
island workers and were attempting to force the companies to pay them more,
offer them better working conditions, etc. etc.

  The sugar companies did one better---they figured out a way to mechanized
the sugar harvest and so they no longer needed to exploit those poor migrant
island workers.  Sure, there's more waste now than with hand harvesting, but
hey, those poor migrant island workers aren't being exploited.

  Only ...

  Only, those poor migrant island workers would work hard for three months
here in Florida and make enough money to support not only themselves but
their families for the entire year.  Far from being exploited, there were
huge waiting lists to become part of the yearly sugar harvest.  

  Now?

  Well, they certainly aren't being exploited by the US sugar companies
anymore.  

  -spc (I wonder if they ever got jobs .... )


From ken_ganshirt at yahoo.ca  Wed Dec 30 08:53:54 2009
From: ken_ganshirt at yahoo.ca (Ken Ganshirt @ Yahoo)
Date: Wed, 30 Dec 2009 08:53:54 -0800 (PST)
Subject: [FoRK] At least you're not in Berkeley....
In-Reply-To: <20091230093221.GC24240@brevard.conman.org>
Message-ID: <426383.40163.qm@web33006.mail.mud.yahoo.com>

--- On Wed, 12/30/09, Sean Conner <sean at conman.org> wrote:
> It was thus said that the Great Ken Ganshirt @ Yahoo once stated:
> > 
> > I don't know if I'm exactly a lefty but I sure get tired of having this
> > "trickle down" nonsense continually blown up my ass. I've yet to see any
> > substantial evidence of it. Simply platitudes that we should take on trust
> > because we're too freakin' stupid to actually understand how it all works.
> > Too complicated for even the regulators to understand....
> 
> ? My girlfriend used to be involed with US Customs, and through her second
> husband the marine industry.? Two interesting stories she's related to me.
> 
> ? First one involves the yacht industry (or rather,
> the marine industry sub-industry of yachts).?...

> 
> ? Second one involves sugar (this comes from her
> experience in US Customs). ...
> 

Yes. Good examples. Of *real* goods and services. No pixie dust in either of them.

However...

In the second example, do you s'pose the sugar companies lobbied for subsidies or got tax breaks for the capital investment to buy the harvesters that improved their "productivity"?? To whose benefit? And to what effect on "trickle down"??

        ...ken...



      __________________________________________________________________
Make your browsing faster, safer, and easier with the new Internet Explorer? 8. Optimized for Yahoo! Get it Now for Free! at http://downloads.yahoo.com/ca/internetexplorer/


From ken_ganshirt at yahoo.ca  Wed Dec 30 09:33:45 2009
From: ken_ganshirt at yahoo.ca (Ken Ganshirt @ Yahoo)
Date: Wed, 30 Dec 2009 09:33:45 -0800 (PST)
Subject: [FoRK] At least you're not in Berkeley....
In-Reply-To: <14d615330912291858g691615a2t292c40bd33c96c2a@mail.gmail.com>
Message-ID: <391488.11435.qm@web33002.mail.mud.yahoo.com>

--- On Tue, 12/29/09, Jeremy Apthorp <nornagon at gmail.com> wrote:

> 2009/12/30 Ken Ganshirt @ Yahoo <ken_ganshirt at yahoo.ca>:
> > Yeah, well it ain't 1776 and, in case you haven't
> noticed, there's a lot more pixie dust than tires being
> "manufactured" of late. No matter how big a stick you hit me
> with you still won't get it into my head that pixie dust is
> a "good" similar to a tire.
> >
> > Trades in pixie dust add nothing to the economy.
> Contrariwise, they suck from it.
> >


> 
> Ah, but in the end even stockbrokers need to buy cars, pay mechanics
> and cleaners, clothe their children, etc. etc. The money they win by
> gambling on pixie dust trickles down to the rest of the market.
> 

Ah, but the money they put in their own pockets and then spend on real goods and services is only a tiny tiny fraction of the vast quantities of other peoples' money they suck in to play with and lose on their gambling bets. And the equally vast quantities of tax payers money that insure their activities and bail their asses out when they really screw up.

>
> I assume that by 'pixie dust' you're referring to things like futures,
> derivatives, foreign currency, etc., as opposed to slightly more
> tangible things like actual shares.
> 

Well, all of those things, to some extent, yes. 

Futures are only once or twice removed from the real thing. You could fix most of the problems there by requiring that the purchaser actually take delivery of the commodity they have purchased. 

With a country's currency there is a promise by the sovereign to pay. That's worth something, I suppose. Varies by sovereign. But where's the real value? Currency trading is arbitrage. Pure gambling. Nothing of real value on either side of a transaction. Pixie dust. But mostly harmless as long as the people whose money the traders are playing with know it's being done and what the risks are, e.g. that it's pure gambling.

Short selling. All issues with short selling could be easily fixed by simply requiring ownership of the shares you plan to sell short, e.g. how can you sell something you just "borrowed" from someone who doesn't even know they lent it to you? Pixie dust. "Naked" shorts == pixie dust**3.

But mainly other forms of "derivatives" (what an interesting euphemism, eh?). Derived, occasionally, from real things but fourteen times removed.  Securitization, asset backed paper, debt obligations. All bundled into "pools". Often with such tenuous and serpentine connections, if any, to the real assets that they're "too complicated" for even the regulators to understand. At least that's what their inventors and purveyors would have us believe.

Pixie dust. Financial masturbation.

        ...ken...



      __________________________________________________________________
The new Internet Explorer? 8 - Faster, safer, easier.  Optimized for Yahoo!  Get it Now for Free! at http://downloads.yahoo.com/ca/internetexplorer/


From andrew at ceruleansystems.com  Wed Dec 30 10:06:59 2009
From: andrew at ceruleansystems.com (J. Andrew Rogers)
Date: Wed, 30 Dec 2009 10:06:59 -0800
Subject: [FoRK] At least you're not in Berkeley....
In-Reply-To: <391488.11435.qm@web33002.mail.mud.yahoo.com>
References: <391488.11435.qm@web33002.mail.mud.yahoo.com>
Message-ID: <48AA13DF-9F10-4580-AB9C-0C4E5590C533@ceruleansystems.com>


On Dec 30, 2009, at 9:33 AM, Ken Ganshirt @ Yahoo wrote:
> Futures are only once or twice removed from the real thing. You could fix most of the problems there by requiring that the purchaser actually take delivery of the commodity they have purchased. 


Worst. Idea. Evar.

Just because you don't understand the highly utilitarian function of futures and other derivatives does not mean they are a bad idea. You hate the concept of them, but you would hate the economic reality if they did not exist even worse.  

To use your example of commodity futures, they are a primary risk management tool for the producers of said commodities. If you are a producer with a high fixed cost, you do not want to be held hostage by an unpredictable market spot price -- it significantly increases your operational expenses and hence the average unit cost. When a farmer uses a futures contract, it means they don't have to worry about being on the losing side of the spot price at harvest time except to the extent that their costs (fuel, fertilizer, etc) may vary. 

It makes no sense at all to make the person holding the contract take delivery, since someone ultimately *does* take delivery.  If the supply chain cannot currently accommodate a farmer, are you just going to throw the farmer under the bus and force them to accept the spot price? Especially since harvest deliveries tend to be somewhat synchronized?  People that buy futures contracts that do not intend to take delivery are *insurance* for the producers, guaranteeing the the producer can sell to *someone* at a price they find acceptable. All of which has the effect of smoothing out price fluctuations in the market since the market spot price tends to converge on the average price of the futures contracts.


Most derivatives are a form of insurance to someone somewhere. Would the economy really be better if there was no legal way to manage risk?  Do you really find the idea of insurance abhorrent, or just when it is not called "insurance"?


(...additional gross failures of basic finance understanding elided...)




From robert.harley at gmail.com  Wed Dec 30 11:04:17 2009
From: robert.harley at gmail.com (Rob Harley)
Date: Wed, 30 Dec 2009 14:04:17 -0500
Subject: [FoRK] At least you're not in Berkeley....
Message-ID: <bfcef1040912301104h2545af50n52a4e7f5a53fa9ec@mail.gmail.com>

>Futures [...]
>With a country's currency [...]
>Short selling. [...]

Shouldn't you be implementing methodologies or something?

From sean at conman.org  Wed Dec 30 11:24:08 2009
From: sean at conman.org (Sean Conner)
Date: Wed, 30 Dec 2009 14:24:08 -0500
Subject: [FoRK] At least you're not in Berkeley....
In-Reply-To: <426383.40163.qm@web33006.mail.mud.yahoo.com>
References: <20091230093221.GC24240@brevard.conman.org>
	<426383.40163.qm@web33006.mail.mud.yahoo.com>
Message-ID: <20091230192408.GA20028@brevard.conman.org>

It was thus said that the Great Ken Ganshirt @ Yahoo once stated:
> 
> Yes. Good examples. Of *real* goods and services. No pixie dust in either of them.
> 
> However...
> 
> In the second example, do you s'pose the sugar companies lobbied for
> subsidies or got tax breaks for the capital investment to buy the
> harvesters that improved their "productivity"?? To whose benefit? And to
> what effect on "trickle down"??

  That I don't know.  Personally, I would love to see corporate welfare
abolished, but I'm not holding my breath on that ...

  -spc (I like breathing ... )



From jbone at place.org  Wed Dec 30 13:08:53 2009
From: jbone at place.org (Jeff Bone)
Date: Wed, 30 Dec 2009 15:08:53 -0600
Subject: [FoRK] (The) Civility Project.org
Message-ID: <F41F1DF9-F561-47A0-A63E-76495DAABE2B@place.org>


Were I a less civil person, I might say that this whole %20\"Civility 
%20Project\"\\ [.]((org)?)%20 (wtf?) sounds like just the thing for  
tards, retards, motards, fucktards, fuckheads, fuckwits, fools, tools,  
twits, twats, twit-tards, pussies, pansies, panty waists, prats,  
babies, mama's boys, 98-pound weaklings, losers, idiots, shit-for- 
brains, half-wits, hosers, morons, jerks, wankers, metrosexuals, whiny  
little bitches, cocksuckers, ass clowns, asswipes, dipshits,  
dumbfucks, dickless wonders, dorks, dweebs, dumbasses, douches,  
douchebags, dickheads, Limeys, Europeans, Canadians, Democrats and  
other well-known varieties of schoolyard faggot.

Boneheads are not known for being uncivil, however, so I won't say  
that.  I will however recommend:

   http://www.theonion.com/content/opinion/let_us_identify_the_faggots_and


;-)


jb


From jbone at place.org  Wed Dec 30 13:23:30 2009
From: jbone at place.org (Jeff Bone)
Date: Wed, 30 Dec 2009 15:23:30 -0600
Subject: [FoRK] (The) Civility Project.org
In-Reply-To: <F41F1DF9-F561-47A0-A63E-76495DAABE2B@place.org>
References: <F41F1DF9-F561-47A0-A63E-76495DAABE2B@place.org>
Message-ID: <1D51F515-58D5-453D-AB30-F96C911BA5B1@place.org>


On Dec 30, 2009, at 3:08 PM, Jeff Bone wrote:

> Were I a less civil person, I might say that this whole %20\"Civility 
> %20Project\"\\ [.]((org)?)%20 (wtf?) sounds like just the thing for  
> tards, retards, motards, fucktards, fuckheads, fuckwits, fools,  
> tools, twits, twats, twit-tards, pussies, pansies, panty waists,  
> prats, babies, mama's boys, 98-pound weaklings, losers, idiots, shit- 
> for-brains, half-wits, hosers, morons, jerks, wankers, metrosexuals,  
> whiny little bitches, cocksuckers, ass clowns, asswipes, dipshits,  
> dumbfucks, dickless wonders, dorks, dweebs, dumbasses, douches,  
> douchebags, dickheads, Limeys, Europeans, Canadians, Democrats...

My profound apologies --- I obviously forgot two categories worthy of  
note:  dickweeds and Californians.  Clearly implied, should have been  
explicit.

There, now I feel better.

;-)

jb


From gojomo at boxbe.com  Wed Dec 30 14:44:55 2009
From: gojomo at boxbe.com (Gordon Mohr)
Date: Wed, 30 Dec 2009 14:44:55 -0800
Subject: [FoRK] At least you're not in Berkeley....
In-Reply-To: <20091230083657.GA24240@brevard.conman.org>
References: <571923.82930.qm@web33001.mail.mud.yahoo.com>	<14d615330912291858g691615a2t292c40bd33c96c2a@mail.gmail.com>
	<20091230083657.GA24240@brevard.conman.org>
Message-ID: <4B3BD7E7.3020008@boxbe.com>

Sean Conner wrote:
>   I never did see the appeal of Google stock, especially since a) they pay
> no dividend, and b) they aren't voting stocks.  Okay, I mean, as an actual
> investment and not on the "Greater Fool" theory of stocks.  It always seemed
> to me a way for Google to say "FY" to Wall Street.

A stock with negligible voting rights or dividends does present problems.

But you could still figure some value from expected eventualities where 
(a) they start paying dividends, because they have so much cash and 
their markets are sufficiently slow-growth that even the 
controlling-votes cadre would rather take cash out; (b) the 
10X-voting-rights shares convert or disperse in ownership when the 
founders move on.

>   -spc (Then again, since they've gone public, they've gone downhill, which
> 	seems to be the fate of many a public company lately ... )

In what sense do you mean 'gone downhill'? It can't be financially; they 
IPO'd at 85, closed the first day at 100, and today are at 622.

- Gordon

From sdw at lig.net  Wed Dec 30 15:08:54 2009
From: sdw at lig.net (Stephen D. Williams)
Date: Wed, 30 Dec 2009 15:08:54 -0800
Subject: [FoRK] (The) Civility Project.org
In-Reply-To: <1D51F515-58D5-453D-AB30-F96C911BA5B1@place.org>
References: <F41F1DF9-F561-47A0-A63E-76495DAABE2B@place.org>
	<1D51F515-58D5-453D-AB30-F96C911BA5B1@place.org>
Message-ID: <4B3BDD86.4020708@lig.net>

Jeff Bone wrote:
>
> On Dec 30, 2009, at 3:08 PM, Jeff Bone wrote:
>
>> Were I a less civil person, I might say that this whole 
>> %20\"Civility%20Project\"\\ [.]((org)?)%20 (wtf?) sounds like just 
>> the thing for tards, retards, motards, fucktards, fuckheads, 
>> fuckwits, fools, tools, twits, twats, twit-tards, pussies, pansies, 
>> panty waists, prats, babies, mama's boys, 98-pound weaklings, losers, 
>> idiots, shit-for-brains, half-wits, hosers, morons, jerks, wankers, 
>> metrosexuals, whiny little bitches, cocksuckers, ass clowns, 
>> asswipes, dipshits, dumbfucks, dickless wonders, dorks, dweebs, 
>> dumbasses, douches, douchebags, dickheads, Limeys, Europeans, 
>> Canadians, Democrats...
>
> My profound apologies --- I obviously forgot two categories worthy of 
> note:  dickweeds and Californians.  Clearly implied, should have been 
> explicit.

Wouldn't it have been easier to just say "Non-Texans, plus Austininians, 
females, and anyone who has gone to a non-religious college"?  :-)  Or 
maybe I should ask, who specifically is it not just the thing for?

Not that Faux News reruns, misled and comically misguided people at town 
hall meetings ([1]), and various tragic outbursts in just the last two 
years won't be the butt of jokes for decades.  I wonder how far it will 
go and what it will take to jump the shark at Faux, in Congress, etc.  
(OK, Congress regularly jumps the shark... [2].)  Maybe this is all just 
a ploy to make the US seem so inhospitable that it slows down 
immigration for a while.  Kind of like complaining that Cleveland is so 
dirty and polluted that the river burns, when none of that has been the 
case for over 30 years.

Deliberate incivility is A) verbal violence and could be B) a threat of 
pre-violent stance.  Some of the rhetoric was tending toward the 
violence direction, although that seems to have been squelched by 
someone with brains somewhere.

I went looking for a quote along these lines:
http://www.christiantoday.com/article/holy.land.bishop.violence.is.the.tool.of.the.desperate.and.hopeless/17245.htm
> 'violence is the tool of the incompetent,'" Younan said. "I believe it 
> is also the tool of the desperate and the hopeless.
>
> "This is not to excuse any violence on any side but to face the hard 
> reality that unless people have something to live for they have 
> nothing to lose."
Is it really the case that these people have nothing to live for?  
Doubtful.  That would seem more often true of the people they mean to 
deprive of improvement (re: healthcare, wages, immigration).

But I also found this:
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2009/11/28/808766/-GOPs-Desperate-Need-For-Political-Violence
> The GOP is desperate in its need for political violence in America, 
> because a "long hot summer" of disturbances would grease the skids for 
> a GOP return to power. Riots happen all the time, even in places like 
> Canada and England. Look at these poll tax riots in London in 1990. Oh 
> if only the GOP could whip up some anti-tax riots like these!
> Of course, those were working class people protesting about regressive 
> fees, while the GOP has been having a hard time whipping up violence 
> against progressive taxation of the wealthy. They did get these folks 
> to protest on 9-12, but mostly they look too flabby and old to start 
> throwing bricks.

[1] People railing against any kind of govt. run healthcare, when 
they're on Medicare and, in the next breath, railing against any changes 
to that.
[2]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Impeachment_of_Bill_Clinton
> Starr, in turn, was criticised for spending $70 million in an 
> investigation that substantiated no wrongdoing other than perjury and 
> obstruction of justice.[4] Critics of Starr also contend that his 
> investigation was highly politicised because it regularly leaked 
> tidbits of information to the press, in violation of legal ethics, and 
> because his report included lengthy pornographic descriptions which 
> were humiliating yet irrelevant to the legal case.
http://www.time.com/time/daily/scandal/starr_report/files/6narrit.htm#L62

sdw
>
> There, now I feel better.
>
> ;-)
>
> jb


From wgstoddard at gmail.com  Wed Dec 30 15:48:30 2009
From: wgstoddard at gmail.com (Bill Stoddard)
Date: Wed, 30 Dec 2009 18:48:30 -0500
Subject: [FoRK] (The) Civility Project.org
In-Reply-To: <1D51F515-58D5-453D-AB30-F96C911BA5B1@place.org>
References: <F41F1DF9-F561-47A0-A63E-76495DAABE2B@place.org>
	<1D51F515-58D5-453D-AB30-F96C911BA5B1@place.org>
Message-ID: <4B3BE6CE.8000600@gmail.com>

On 12/30/09 4:23 PM, Jeff Bone wrote:
>
> On Dec 30, 2009, at 3:08 PM, Jeff Bone wrote:
>
>> Were I a less civil person, I might say that this whole 
>> %20\"Civility%20Project\"\\ [.]((org)?)%20 (wtf?) sounds like just 
>> the thing for tards, retards, motards, fucktards, fuckheads, 
>> fuckwits, fools, tools, twits, twats, twit-tards, pussies, pansies, 
>> panty waists, prats, babies, mama's boys, 98-pound weaklings, losers, 
>> idiots, shit-for-brains, half-wits, hosers, morons, jerks, wankers, 
>> metrosexuals, whiny little bitches, cocksuckers, ass clowns, 
>> asswipes, dipshits, dumbfucks, dickless wonders, dorks, dweebs, 
>> dumbasses, douches, douchebags, dickheads, Limeys, Europeans, 
>> Canadians, Democrats...
>
> My profound apologies --- I obviously forgot two categories worthy of 
> note:  dickweeds and Californians.  Clearly implied, should have been 
> explicit.
>
> There, now I feel better.
>
> ;-)

Heh heh!!!
>
> jb
>
> _______________________________________________
> FoRK mailing list
> http://xent.com/mailman/listinfo/fork
>


From andrew at ceruleansystems.com  Wed Dec 30 16:16:04 2009
From: andrew at ceruleansystems.com (J. Andrew Rogers)
Date: Wed, 30 Dec 2009 16:16:04 -0800
Subject: [FoRK] (The) Civility Project.org
In-Reply-To: <4B3BDD86.4020708@lig.net>
References: <F41F1DF9-F561-47A0-A63E-76495DAABE2B@place.org>
	<1D51F515-58D5-453D-AB30-F96C911BA5B1@place.org>
	<4B3BDD86.4020708@lig.net>
Message-ID: <B55FA280-2D4E-4826-8EAF-F014137B20F0@ceruleansystems.com>


On Dec 30, 2009, at 3:08 PM, Stephen D. Williams wrote:
> [1] People railing against any kind of govt. run healthcare, when they're on Medicare and, in the next breath, railing against any changes to that.


This is not inconsistent, hypocritical, or ironic unless you are asserting a false dichotomy. 

To sum up:

1.)  Having the government do more will be a disaster
2.)  Existing domain experience proves the incompetence that would precipitate said disaster
3.)  But the government nonetheless has effectively forced people to rely on the existing system with no way out as currently organized.

The false dichotomy is that the only two choices offered are stupid government policy of one extreme or another, without a sane policy or solution being considered an alternative.


Or by analogy: 

If you force someone to do a lot of vodka shots at gunpoint, it is reasonable that the person neither wants more vodka shots nor can become instantly sober just because you are pointing a gun at them and command it.



From sdw at lig.net  Wed Dec 30 17:03:11 2009
From: sdw at lig.net (Stephen D. Williams)
Date: Wed, 30 Dec 2009 17:03:11 -0800
Subject: [FoRK] (The) Civility Project.org
In-Reply-To: <B55FA280-2D4E-4826-8EAF-F014137B20F0@ceruleansystems.com>
References: <F41F1DF9-F561-47A0-A63E-76495DAABE2B@place.org>	<1D51F515-58D5-453D-AB30-F96C911BA5B1@place.org>	<4B3BDD86.4020708@lig.net>
	<B55FA280-2D4E-4826-8EAF-F014137B20F0@ceruleansystems.com>
Message-ID: <4B3BF84F.1070200@lig.net>

J. Andrew Rogers wrote:
> On Dec 30, 2009, at 3:08 PM, Stephen D. Williams wrote:
>   
>> [1] People railing against any kind of govt. run healthcare, when they're on Medicare and, in the next breath, railing against any changes to that.
>>     
>
>
> This is not inconsistent, hypocritical, or ironic unless you are asserting a false dichotomy. 
>
> To sum up:
>
> 1.)  Having the government do more will be a disaster
> 2.)  Existing domain experience proves the incompetence that would precipitate said disaster
> 3.)  But the government nonetheless has effectively forced people to rely on the existing system with no way out as currently organized.
>   

You can make that fine distinction. Few people publicly making those 
points during the whipped up period seemed capable or aware that their 
statements were missing qualifications and hedging needed to make any sense.
> The false dichotomy is that the only two choices offered are stupid government policy of one extreme or another, without a sane policy or solution being considered an alternative.
>   
However, the plain meaning of their words was to assert exactly that 
dichotomy: "We don't want ANY government run healthcare. 
Democrats/Obama/Liberals want ONLY government run healthcare."

First 2 Google responses for: "town hall meetings no government run 
healthcare medicare"
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/bob-cesca/get-your-goddamn-governme_b_252326.html
> President Obama at a town hall meeting last week described a letter he 
> received from a Medicare recipient:
>
> "I got a letter the other day from a woman. She said, 'I don't want 
> government-run health care. I don't want socialized medicine. And 
> don't touch my Medicare.'"
>
> At a town hall meeting held by Rep. Robert Inglis (R-SC):
>
> Someone reportedly told Inglis, "Keep your government hands off my 
> Medicare."
> "I had to politely explain that, 'Actually, sir, your health care is 
> being provided by the government,'" Inglis told the Post. "But he 
> wasn't having any of it."
>
> It's no wonder with "very serious" analysts like Arthur Laffer are 
> appearing on CNN and saying things like this (and getting away with it 
> unchallenged):
>
> "If you like the post office and the Department of Motor Vehicles and 
> you think they're run well, just wait till you see Medicare, Medicaid 
> and health care done by the government."
>
> Yeah, just wait until the government gets its mighty robot claws on 
> Medicare and Medicaid -- snatching control away from, you know, the 
> government. (Incidentally, the post office is amazing. As Maher said 
> recently, anyone can drop a letter into a blue metal box on the 
> sidewalk and in a couple of days it arrives at the place listed on the 
> envelope. For 44 cents. Off the top of your head, can you name 
> anything that costs 44 cents and actually functions exactly as 
> advertised?)
http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/07/28/why-americans-hate-single-payer-insurance/
> One of the truly amazing and depressing things about the health reform 
> debate is the persistence of fear-mongering over ?socialized medicine? 
> even though we already have a system in which the government pays 
> substantially more medical bills (47% of the total) than the private 
> insurance industry (35%).
>
> In a way, this is the flip side of the persistent belief that the free 
> market can cure healthcare, even though there are no places where it 
> actually has; people also believe that government-provided insurance 
> can?t work, even though there are many places where it does ? and one 
> of those places is the United States of America.
(That's the first I've seen those percentages. True?)

Weren't all the sane choices on the table considered? "No" and doing 
nothing to change the rapidly declining status quo were not sane 
options. Perhaps there was an alternate plan published that no one 
noticed. I know you could have suggested such a plan, however the GOP 
seemed to be careful not to. I think that also is seen as uncivil.

sdw
>
> Or by analogy: 
>
> If you force someone to do a lot of vodka shots at gunpoint, it is reasonable that the person neither wants more vodka shots nor can become instantly sober just because you are pointing a gun at them and command it.
>
>   



From jbone at place.org  Wed Dec 30 19:36:14 2009
From: jbone at place.org (Jeff Bone)
Date: Wed, 30 Dec 2009 21:36:14 -0600
Subject: [FoRK] (The) Civility Project.org
In-Reply-To: <F41F1DF9-F561-47A0-A63E-76495DAABE2B@place.org>
References: <F41F1DF9-F561-47A0-A63E-76495DAABE2B@place.org>
Message-ID: <62DFAF9F-9DF3-4C14-97CB-03A08E29DAA9@place.org>


Stephen says:

> Wouldn't it have been easier to just say

But Stephen, didn't I say specifically that I wasn't saying any such  
thing?

> [jb says, rather disclaims saying...]  Boneheads are not known for  
> being uncivil, however, so I won't say that

Oh, right, I did say that I wasn't saying any such thing, so saying  
what you suggest I should have said would've been, well, unnecessary.

I suppose I should also have (not) included "those drawn with a very  
fine camelhair brush."

;-)

jb


From sdw at lig.net  Wed Dec 30 20:02:38 2009
From: sdw at lig.net (Stephen D. Williams)
Date: Wed, 30 Dec 2009 20:02:38 -0800
Subject: [FoRK] (The) Civility Project.org
In-Reply-To: <62DFAF9F-9DF3-4C14-97CB-03A08E29DAA9@place.org>
References: <F41F1DF9-F561-47A0-A63E-76495DAABE2B@place.org>
	<62DFAF9F-9DF3-4C14-97CB-03A08E29DAA9@place.org>
Message-ID: <4B3C225E.9020203@lig.net>

Jeff Bone wrote:
>
> Stephen says:
>
>> Wouldn't it have been easier to just say
>
> But Stephen, didn't I say specifically that I wasn't saying any such 
> thing?

I know, I wasn't clear.  I was asking you to continue playing the devil 
being depicted.
>
>> [jb says, rather disclaims saying...]  Boneheads are not known for 
>> being uncivil, however, so I won't say that
>
> Oh, right, I did say that I wasn't saying any such thing, so saying 
> what you suggest I should have said would've been, well, unnecessary.
>
> I suppose I should also have (not) included "those drawn with a very 
> fine camelhair brush."

Exactly!
>
> ;-)
>
> jb
>
sdw


From sdw at lig.net  Wed Dec 30 20:35:42 2009
From: sdw at lig.net (Stephen D. Williams)
Date: Wed, 30 Dec 2009 20:35:42 -0800
Subject: [FoRK] Twas the Night Before Christmas
Message-ID: <4B3C2A1E.9010608@lig.net>

Silly, but once I had the idea, I had to finish it:

http://sdw.st/wp/art/poetry/twas
> Twas the night before Christmas, when all through the house
> Not a creature was stirring, except my son?s mouse.
> Stockings were hung by running shoes with care,
> In hopes that a long run soon would be there.
>
> My honey was nestled all snug in her bed,
> While visions of sugar-plums danced in her head.
> And her in her nightgown, and I with my map,
> Had just settled down for a long winter?s nap.
>
> When out on the net there arose such a chatter,
> That I sprang from my chair to avoid getting fatter.
> Away from the browser I flew like a flash,
> Tore open the door and got ready to dash.
...

sdw




From jbone at place.org  Wed Dec 30 20:53:54 2009
From: jbone at place.org (Jeff Bone)
Date: Wed, 30 Dec 2009 22:53:54 -0600
Subject: [FoRK] (The) Civility Project.org
In-Reply-To: <62DFAF9F-9DF3-4C14-97CB-03A08E29DAA9@place.org>
References: <F41F1DF9-F561-47A0-A63E-76495DAABE2B@place.org>
	<62DFAF9F-9DF3-4C14-97CB-03A08E29DAA9@place.org>
Message-ID: <CBE54B44-BC0A-47E7-B61B-C3381CFF4105@place.org>


Sigh...  for the irony-impaired...  Apparently peeling back the onion- 
like layers of irony and sarcasm in my initial humorous post made  
certain people cry, so...  let me be more straightforward.

I weighed in at less than a buck until I was a junior in high school.   
I broke 5'6" my senior year, and am not that much taller than that  
now.  I was in band.  I was president of the science club in high  
school.  I got stuffed and locked in a tuba case (not to mention  
countless lockers) around the same time.  There's hardly a name on  
that Borges' taxonomy that I haven't been called more than once.   
(Well, except "Democrat."  Though Bolcer came close, he *did* call me  
a "socialist" of all things!)  So yeah, I've been both the bearer of  
and subject to plenty of "uncivil" discourse (and behavior) in my time.

But I for one won't be taking any "civility pledge" --- and indeed, I  
think the pathetic call for such a thing is a sign of the times.

Civility rocks... except when it doesn't.  Here's another attempt to  
advance the wavefront of P.C.-ness, another attempt to create or  
reinstate a social norm that further restricts people from being who  
they are, from saying what they think however the fuck they want to  
say it.  And a rather pussified attempt at that.

There's a time and place for civility, without a doubt.  When those  
are the assumed rules of the game, then sure, play it that way.  And  
when not, then not.  But to amend some nebulous and implied social  
contract even further with universal, implicit rules about what can be  
said and how --- no thanks.  Rather, no --- and fuck off too, btw,  
with your pussy attitude and your limp-dick suggestion, Mr. Mark  
DeMoss.  (And btw, how typical of a social conservative to propose  
such amendments to the social contract.  No doubt Mr. DeMoss's primary  
concern here is not his own behavior, but that of others --- which is  
of course absolutely typical, perhaps even essential, to the social  
conservative mindset.  Note the "enforcement" clause in said pledge.   
"Will stand against..."  Well, Mr. DeMoss, *I* will stand against  
moral busybody-ness whenever I see it.  And you, sir, are a moral  
busybody.)

Should we have more "civility?"  What are we, Victorians?  Do we all  
need to perfect the fine British art of the left-handed compliment?

No.  Bad ideas and stupid people (or people acting stupidly) should be  
challenged, and blunt language is workable tool when more subtle ones  
fail to work.  And increasingly, with our increasing tendencies of  
isolation, narcissism, memetic balkanization, and solipsism --- the  
subtleties are lost on too many.

Too many bad ideas running around these days, and "civil" discourse  
doesn't improve a bad idea.  Too many stupid people, too many people  
acting stupidly...

Any proposed social norm that, for example, discourages me from  
proclaiming Dick Morris the King Twit (for Life) of the Faux News Twit- 
Tards --- loses.

Tell it like it is, that's what I say.  Civility is a loser --- when  
it encourages disingenuousness, dispassion, and disregard.  When it  
amounts to dishonesty.

Let it all hang out.  That's how Rohit sold me on FoRK, 'lo these many  
years ago now:  here's an experiment in publicly and persistently  
letting it all hang out.  Let's see how far people will take it.

Well, at least in my case --- I've done my best, R.


$0.02,


jb


PS -  And yeah, Dick Morris is the biggest fucking twit on the  
planet.  (How he croons and preens when the Faux-tians stroke him...   
makes my nut-sack crawl up, seriously, every time I hear that high- 
pitched, Pat-like, ambisexual laugh-croak emerging from that sweaty  
dough-boy body.  What a fucking TWIT.)





From dmorton at bitfurnace.com  Wed Dec 30 21:08:35 2009
From: dmorton at bitfurnace.com (Damien Morton)
Date: Thu, 31 Dec 2009 16:08:35 +1100
Subject: [FoRK] (The) Civility Project.org
In-Reply-To: <CBE54B44-BC0A-47E7-B61B-C3381CFF4105@place.org>
References: <F41F1DF9-F561-47A0-A63E-76495DAABE2B@place.org>
	<62DFAF9F-9DF3-4C14-97CB-03A08E29DAA9@place.org>
	<CBE54B44-BC0A-47E7-B61B-C3381CFF4105@place.org>
Message-ID: <8092dc770912302108n35c49f36iae3a38ec26363307@mail.gmail.com>

I just watched another FOX news video in which people sat, with civility,
and listened to Anne Coulter express her opinion that Obama was uniquely
placed to do something about terrorirsm because he had attended an Madrassa
and because he was non-white, which she described as the height of
political incorrectness.

They sat and they listened and they didnt interrupt and they didnt say a
fucking word.

Wasnt there a crew who put together a deal-pool website soewhere? Did the
secret service shut them down?

On Thu, Dec 31, 2009 at 3:53 PM, Jeff Bone <jbone at place.org> wrote:

>
> Sigh...  for the irony-impaired...  Apparently peeling back the onion-like
> layers of irony and sarcasm in my initial humorous post made certain people
> cry, so...  let me be more straightforward.
>
> I weighed in at less than a buck until I was a junior in high school.  I
> broke 5'6" my senior year, and am not that much taller than that now.  I was
> in band.  I was president of the science club in high school.  I got stuffed
> and locked in a tuba case (not to mention countless lockers) around the same
> time.  There's hardly a name on that Borges' taxonomy that I haven't been
> called more than once.  (Well, except "Democrat."  Though Bolcer came close,
> he *did* call me a "socialist" of all things!)  So yeah, I've been both the
> bearer of and subject to plenty of "uncivil" discourse (and behavior) in my
> time.
>
> But I for one won't be taking any "civility pledge" --- and indeed, I think
> the pathetic call for such a thing is a sign of the times.
>
> Civility rocks... except when it doesn't.  Here's another attempt to
> advance the wavefront of P.C.-ness, another attempt to create or reinstate a
> social norm that further restricts people from being who they are, from
> saying what they think however the fuck they want to say it.  And a rather
> pussified attempt at that.
>
> There's a time and place for civility, without a doubt.  When those are the
> assumed rules of the game, then sure, play it that way.  And when not, then
> not.  But to amend some nebulous and implied social contract even further
> with universal, implicit rules about what can be said and how --- no thanks.
>  Rather, no --- and fuck off too, btw, with your pussy attitude and your
> limp-dick suggestion, Mr. Mark DeMoss.  (And btw, how typical of a social
> conservative to propose such amendments to the social contract.  No doubt
> Mr. DeMoss's primary concern here is not his own behavior, but that of
> others --- which is of course absolutely typical, perhaps even essential, to
> the social conservative mindset.  Note the "enforcement" clause in said
> pledge.  "Will stand against..."  Well, Mr. DeMoss, *I* will stand against
> moral busybody-ness whenever I see it.  And you, sir, are a moral busybody.)
>
> Should we have more "civility?"  What are we, Victorians?  Do we all need
> to perfect the fine British art of the left-handed compliment?
>
> No.  Bad ideas and stupid people (or people acting stupidly) should be
> challenged, and blunt language is workable tool when more subtle ones fail
> to work.  And increasingly, with our increasing tendencies of isolation,
> narcissism, memetic balkanization, and solipsism --- the subtleties are lost
> on too many.
>
> Too many bad ideas running around these days, and "civil" discourse doesn't
> improve a bad idea.  Too many stupid people, too many people acting
> stupidly...
>
> Any proposed social norm that, for example, discourages me from proclaiming
> Dick Morris the King Twit (for Life) of the Faux News Twit-Tards --- loses.
>
> Tell it like it is, that's what I say.  Civility is a loser --- when it
> encourages disingenuousness, dispassion, and disregard.  When it amounts to
> dishonesty.
>
> Let it all hang out.  That's how Rohit sold me on FoRK, 'lo these many
> years ago now:  here's an experiment in publicly and persistently letting it
> all hang out.  Let's see how far people will take it.
>
> Well, at least in my case --- I've done my best, R.
>
>
> $0.02,
>
>
> jb
>
>
> PS -  And yeah, Dick Morris is the biggest fucking twit on the planet.
>  (How he croons and preens when the Faux-tians stroke him...  makes my
> nut-sack crawl up, seriously, every time I hear that high-pitched, Pat-like,
> ambisexual laugh-croak emerging from that sweaty dough-boy body.  What a
> fucking TWIT.)
>
>
>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> FoRK mailing list
> http://xent.com/mailman/listinfo/fork
>

From beberg at mithral.com  Wed Dec 30 23:42:19 2009
From: beberg at mithral.com (Adam L Beberg)
Date: Wed, 30 Dec 2009 23:42:19 -0800
Subject: [FoRK] Twas the Night Before Christmas
In-Reply-To: <4B3C2A1E.9010608@lig.net>
References: <4B3C2A1E.9010608@lig.net>
Message-ID: <4B3C55DB.60906@mithral.com>

Stephen D. Williams wrote on 12/30/2009 8:35 PM:
> Silly, but once I had the idea, I had to finish it:
>
> http://sdw.st/wp/art/poetry/twas
>> Twas the night before Christmas, when all through the house
>> Not a creature was stirring, except my son?s mouse.
>> Stockings were hung by running shoes with care,
>> In hopes that a long run soon would be there.
>>
>> My honey was nestled all snug in her bed,
>> While visions of sugar-plums danced in her head.
>> And her in her nightgown, and I with my map,
>> Had just settled down for a long winter?s nap.
>>
>> When out on the net there arose such a chatter,
>> That I sprang from my chair to avoid getting fatter.
>> Away from the browser I flew like a flash,
>> Tore open the door and got ready to dash.

ObNostalgia
http://www.xent.com/FoRK-archive/april00/0461.html

-- 
Adam L. Beberg
http://www.mithral.com/~beberg/

From beberg at mithral.com  Thu Dec 31 00:53:01 2009
From: beberg at mithral.com (Adam L Beberg)
Date: Thu, 31 Dec 2009 00:53:01 -0800
Subject: [FoRK] At least you're not in Berkeley....
In-Reply-To: <69ae910f0912291054r25a73bcev90344176ca9ef29f@mail.gmail.com>
References: <4B3817A0.1030307@mithral.com>	<14d615330912281641u139ae4dr548f78de500234e7@mail.gmail.com>	<4B397265.5030103@lig.net>	<69ae910f0912290144r73c30187l2d1d97fabee623e7@mail.gmail.com>	<4B3A4B97.20002@mithral.com>
	<69ae910f0912291054r25a73bcev90344176ca9ef29f@mail.gmail.com>
Message-ID: <4B3C666D.6080800@mithral.com>

Jebadiah Moore wrote on 12/29/2009 10:54 AM:
> There's some headway being made in the university setting, with the various
> free/cheap online courses
> being made avaliable, but there's no credit for the free ones and the credit
> is only "respectable" (or even acceptable) in certain settings for the cheap
> ones.  A lot of online courses piggyback on "real" schools' accreditation,
> but I don't think that's the way to go--it's an ugly hack if there ever was
> one.  I think the only real fix will be to have a modular accreditation
> process to go along with the modular courses.  The difficulty is the public
> acceptance (and acceptance within academia), but I think if it keeps getting
> traction then it might win purely on numbers.

Having fought the good fight, there is no way in hell this will come 
from within. It's viewed as an existance-level threat to the system, and 
of course it is. Video taping the person at the board for 1-3 hours 
completely misses the point. At best a nod to the fact that the system 
is broken and that something better is coming - just not from them.

Mostly it just shows really world class researchers for what they are - 
world class researchers who shouldn't be getting dragged kicking and 
screaming (and do they) away from curing cancer and saving the world to 
pretend they can teach. I'd really love to know who thought up the idea 
that good researchers are automatically capable teachers, or that these 
two things are even related in ANY way.

> But honestly, I highly doubt there'll be much progress beyond what we've got
> with University of Phoenix et al in the university setting for a while.
> K-12 schools seem a lot more open to innovation at this point (due to
> necessity, and the sad fact that university bloat is even greater government
> bloat).  But if some sort of significant reform can be made in K12 (possibly
> in California?), I think demand/frustration/obviousness would float it up to
> the universities.

Agreed. When the 9th graders are are doing more then first 2 years of 
college courses, colleges will have no choice but to nuke the 90% of the 
a degree that isn't the "get a job" skills people really want. Who the 
heck wants "well rounded" employees anyway, sounds expensive - give me a 
crew of area specific ninja masters any day of the week.

-- 
Adam L. Beberg
http://www.mithral.com/~beberg/

From andrew at ceruleansystems.com  Thu Dec 31 01:04:49 2009
From: andrew at ceruleansystems.com (J. Andrew Rogers)
Date: Thu, 31 Dec 2009 01:04:49 -0800
Subject: [FoRK] At least you're not in Berkeley....
In-Reply-To: <4B3C666D.6080800@mithral.com>
References: <4B3817A0.1030307@mithral.com>	<14d615330912281641u139ae4dr548f78de500234e7@mail.gmail.com>	<4B397265.5030103@lig.net>	<69ae910f0912290144r73c30187l2d1d97fabee623e7@mail.gmail.com>	<4B3A4B97.20002@mithral.com>
	<69ae910f0912291054r25a73bcev90344176ca9ef29f@mail.gmail.com>
	<4B3C666D.6080800@mithral.com>
Message-ID: <0127EC9E-91AA-42AD-8AC4-53879D4F1E1A@ceruleansystems.com>


On Dec 31, 2009, at 12:53 AM, Adam L Beberg wrote:
> Who the heck wants "well rounded" employees anyway, sounds expensive - give me a crew of area specific ninja masters any day of the week.


The money quote.  There is an awful lot of truth to the idea that the competency of extreme specialization is where the money is at unless you are one of those uncanny polymath types. Developing mad skillz isn't something you can learn in a four-year school, but that is what increasingly defines employability.

From dmorton at bitfurnace.com  Thu Dec 31 01:09:34 2009
From: dmorton at bitfurnace.com (Damien Morton)
Date: Thu, 31 Dec 2009 20:09:34 +1100
Subject: [FoRK] At least you're not in Berkeley....
In-Reply-To: <0127EC9E-91AA-42AD-8AC4-53879D4F1E1A@ceruleansystems.com>
References: <4B3817A0.1030307@mithral.com>
	<14d615330912281641u139ae4dr548f78de500234e7@mail.gmail.com>
	<4B397265.5030103@lig.net>
	<69ae910f0912290144r73c30187l2d1d97fabee623e7@mail.gmail.com>
	<4B3A4B97.20002@mithral.com>
	<69ae910f0912291054r25a73bcev90344176ca9ef29f@mail.gmail.com>
	<4B3C666D.6080800@mithral.com>
	<0127EC9E-91AA-42AD-8AC4-53879D4F1E1A@ceruleansystems.com>
Message-ID: <8092dc770912310109r6e82e046m95e9c2cc7680e274@mail.gmail.com>

Umm yeah - with the stats showing that most people (thats _most_ people, not
all people) will go through a handfull of careers in their lifetimes, the
last thing they would want is an education that doesnt stand them in good
stead throughout life.

On Thu, Dec 31, 2009 at 8:04 PM, J. Andrew Rogers <
andrew at ceruleansystems.com> wrote:

>
> On Dec 31, 2009, at 12:53 AM, Adam L Beberg wrote:
> > Who the heck wants "well rounded" employees anyway, sounds expensive -
> give me a crew of area specific ninja masters any day of the week.
>
>
> The money quote.  There is an awful lot of truth to the idea that the
> competency of extreme specialization is where the money is at unless you are
> one of those uncanny polymath types. Developing mad skillz isn't something
> you can learn in a four-year school, but that is what increasingly defines
> employability.
> _______________________________________________
> FoRK mailing list
> http://xent.com/mailman/listinfo/fork
>

From jebdm at jebdm.net  Thu Dec 31 03:44:15 2009
From: jebdm at jebdm.net (Jebadiah Moore)
Date: Thu, 31 Dec 2009 11:44:15 +0000
Subject: [FoRK] At least you're not in Berkeley....
In-Reply-To: <8092dc770912310109r6e82e046m95e9c2cc7680e274@mail.gmail.com>
References: <4B3817A0.1030307@mithral.com>
	<14d615330912281641u139ae4dr548f78de500234e7@mail.gmail.com>
	<4B397265.5030103@lig.net>
	<69ae910f0912290144r73c30187l2d1d97fabee623e7@mail.gmail.com>
	<4B3A4B97.20002@mithral.com>
	<69ae910f0912291054r25a73bcev90344176ca9ef29f@mail.gmail.com>
	<4B3C666D.6080800@mithral.com>
	<0127EC9E-91AA-42AD-8AC4-53879D4F1E1A@ceruleansystems.com>
	<8092dc770912310109r6e82e046m95e9c2cc7680e274@mail.gmail.com>
Message-ID: <69ae910f0912310344t19815f3fo41775d4711ac1b21@mail.gmail.com>

On Thu, Dec 31, 2009 at 8:53 AM, Adam L Beberg <beberg at mithral.com> wrote:

> Agreed. When the 9th graders are are doing more then first 2 years of
> college courses, colleges will have no choice but to nuke the 90% of the a
> degree that isn't the "get a job" skills people really want. Who the heck
> wants "well rounded" employees anyway, sounds expensive - give me a crew of
> area specific ninja masters any day of the week.


My hope is more that universities would adopt the sort of system changes
mentioned previously (modularization, improved grading, unified
certification, online courses/materials, karma of some sort, focus on
internships/practice, alternative living arrangements, teachers who can
teach, etc.).

Of course, there is definitely a level of tightening that would be
beneficial in terms of course choice.  Some things are made requirements but
are strictly unnecessary, especially when courses outside a major are
required for multiple years.  You can see this shift already in a lot of
universities; liberal arts used to be the norm, but it's now more of an
exception (most schools seem to have either watered that aspect down
significantly, or simply dropped it).

On Thu, Dec 31, 2009 at 9:04 AM, J. Andrew Rogers <
andrew at ceruleansystems.com> wrote:

> unless you are one of those uncanny polymath types


On Thu, Dec 31, 2009 at 9:09 AM, Damien Morton <dmorton at bitfurnace.com>wrote:

> Umm yeah - with the stats showing that most people (thats _most_ people,
> not
> all people) will go through a handfull of careers in their lifetimes, the
> last thing they would want is an education that doesnt stand them in good
> stead throughout life.
>

I think this is the kicker.  While specialization is all well and good, when
it can be practically used, there are a few cases here where there's an
issue with specialization: changing jobs (and job markets) and jobs where
there is no "specialization" that fits (also, less problematically, the need
for people with knowledge in multiple domains).

The first two are pretty similar problems.  In both cases, the hope is that
an education would provide certain general knowledge that would be
applicable in most careers.  This general knowledge includes things like
basic algebra, statistics, reading and (especially) writing, the scientific
method, basic philosophical modes of thought, cultural studies, some basic
history, basic computer skills, and possibly foreign language and
computational thinking (
www.cs.cmu.edu/afs/cs/usr/wing/www/publications/Wing06.pdf).

And while most of this education is provided in the K12 setting (save
statistics, philosophy, much cultural studies, and computational thinking),
the education tends to be at a relatively low level.  Say what you will
about the shift from requiring a high school diploma to requiring a
Bachelor's, but university does in general seem to bring people up to a more
acceptable level in these areas, regardless of their particular degree or
whether they had a liberal arts-type or more specialized course.  But I
don't think this situation is as it should be; students are definitely
capable of learning all of this material as part of their K12 education.

And for most people, this finishing-out of what should be K12 material, as
well as the cultural signoff you get by getting a degree, is really the main
use of going to postsecondary at all for most people.  The real problems
with specialization, then, are that
  1. you lose out on some of this finishing, that is both desirable for
employees (for job changes and general use) and employers,
  2. some jobs--nay, *most* jobs--do not have an appropriate specialized
education.

As for this second point, I point you to the average white-collar worker.
These are jobs that are between manual labor and more specialized
information work; not cooking or lawn care, but not yet programming or
writing.  These include things like low level management, some sales
positions, insurance adjusting, some secretarial/administrative positions,
HR, etc., and these are where it seems that the majority of college-educated
people end up working.  The only really applicable degrees to these are
business, maybe, but even that is not a close match.  Really, many of these
seem doable with only a high school education, but they require degrees
almost invariably now (often without caring what degree you have,
specifically; business is great, but literature or history or math also
work).  And people don't tend to keep these types of jobs their whole life:
unlike, say, programmers or writers who tend to shift to other programming
or writing jobs, many of these people will switch around to other average
white-collar jobs where their responsibilities require a different skill set
(and usually additional training).



The best solution, probably, is to fix K12; cut the cruft and include the
sort of things typically learned in the first two years of a Bachelor's
degree.  Then, we could truly have specialization in post-secondary and not
worry about the loss of the general.

If that's not going to realistically happen, then I think there is at least
a balance to be struck between specialization and a general education; there
are a few aspects of the supplement needed which get taken care of sort of
"automatically" in most university courses (for instance, the writing).
Then, you just need to extend university degrees with a couple of basic
courses.

Something that I wouldn't be surprised to see in the near future is the
splitting off of the general supplement from the main degree.  You earn an
AA first, which encompasses the supplement (usually combined with a few
courses in your intended major), and then you finish with two more mostly
specialized years.

All three of these options would be greatly aided by a fully modular
system.  Modularization might give K12 the boost it needs to get in the
extra material.  A set of general modules (and not courses!) would aide a
tradeoff in post-secondary, especially with classes which fulfill multiple
objectives, at least partially.  But I think the biggest benefit of a
modular system, especially with a split degree, would be the compatibility
between courses and ease of switching schools and degrees.


-- 
Jebadiah Moore
http://jebdm.net

From sdw at lig.net  Thu Dec 31 07:48:20 2009
From: sdw at lig.net (Stephen D. Williams)
Date: Thu, 31 Dec 2009 07:48:20 -0800
Subject: [FoRK] Twas the Night Before Christmas
In-Reply-To: <4B3C55DB.60906@mithral.com>
References: <4B3C2A1E.9010608@lig.net> <4B3C55DB.60906@mithral.com>
Message-ID: <4B3CC7C4.6060006@lig.net>

Adam L Beberg wrote:
> Stephen D. Williams wrote on 12/30/2009 8:35 PM:
>> Silly, but once I had the idea, I had to finish it:
>>
>> http://sdw.st/wp/art/poetry/twas
>> ...
>
> ObNostalgia
> http://www.xent.com/FoRK-archive/april00/0461.html
>
Cool!  Something I missed and/or didn't remember.

One of my rejects was: "It ain't rain!, dear."

Stephen


From ken_ganshirt at yahoo.ca  Thu Dec 31 10:16:11 2009
From: ken_ganshirt at yahoo.ca (Ken Ganshirt @ Yahoo)
Date: Thu, 31 Dec 2009 10:16:11 -0800 (PST)
Subject: [FoRK] At least you're not in Berkeley....
In-Reply-To: <4B3C666D.6080800@mithral.com>
Message-ID: <466137.46322.qm@web33002.mail.mud.yahoo.com>

--- On Thu, 12/31/09, Adam L Beberg <beberg at mithral.com> wrote:
> 
> Agreed. When the 9th graders are are doing more then first
> 2 years of college courses, colleges will have no choice but
> to nuke the 90% of the a degree that isn't the "get a job"
> skills people really want. Who the heck wants "well rounded"
> employees anyway, sounds expensive - give me a crew of area
> specific ninja masters any day of the week.
> 

Business and industry and civil service hiring practices don't support this. Community colleges have been doing that (teaching "get a job" skills) for lo these many years. But job descriptions still contain the requirement for university degrees not community college certificates or other indicators of possession of the target work skills. 

Indeed, the evolution the past three or so decades has been just the opposite.

Are there signs of a sea change? If so, I have missed them.

       ...ken...


      __________________________________________________________________
Ask a question on any topic and get answers from real people. Go to Yahoo! Answers and share what you know at http://ca.answers.yahoo.com

From ken_ganshirt at yahoo.ca  Thu Dec 31 11:50:50 2009
From: ken_ganshirt at yahoo.ca (Ken Ganshirt @ Yahoo)
Date: Thu, 31 Dec 2009 11:50:50 -0800 (PST)
Subject: [FoRK] At least you're not in Berkeley....
Message-ID: <219271.49530.qm@web33008.mail.mud.yahoo.com>

--- On Wed, 12/30/09, J. Andrew Rogers <andrew at ceruleansystems.com> wrote:

> 
> On Dec 30, 2009, at 9:33 AM, Ken Ganshirt @ Yahoo wrote:
> > Futures are only once or twice removed from the real
> thing. You could fix most of the problems there by requiring
> that the purchaser actually take delivery of the commodity
> they have purchased. 
> 
> 
> Worst. Idea. Evar.
> 
> Just because you don't understand the highly utilitarian
> function of futures and other derivatives does not mean they
> are a bad idea. You hate the concept of them, but you would
> hate the economic reality if they did not exist even
> worse.? 
> 

Actually, it's "Worst. Idea. Ever."

But, no, the "Worst. Idea. Evar." was allowing speculators into the game.

Let's be clear. I don't hate the concept of futures contracts or similar instruments. Hell, I have a large and long agricultural heritage with multiple close relatives still managing to survive on the farm, so I have long understood the benefits. 

What I hate is the idea that uninterested bystanders can gamble with them, to no particular benefit to either the producer or the ultimate user of the commodity.

I didn't say to stop the selling of contracts for future delivery of a commodity. *That's* where the "insurance" comes in, for both the producer and the ultimate user of the commodity. Striking a contract for future delivery ensures a predictable flow of the commodity at a mutually agreed-upon time and price. Both parties win.

This allows the producer to better schedule production (which product, how much and when) and budget the income side of the ledger. It allows the ultimate user of the commodity to be confident of supply when it's needed and budget the expense side.

Stick speculators in the middle and you have the potential to drive the price up (that is certainly their intent). This is artifical and benefits neither *real* party to the contract. The producer sees none of this artificial appreciation in price. And the ultimate user of the commodity has to pay more for it based on disinterested parties gambling on the "bigger fool" premise, not necessarily anything to do with the real effects of supply and demand for the commodity itself.

If there is some incidental "insurance" benefit from a speculator being willing to buy a producer's commodity earlier than might the actual user of the commodity, that is offset by the other damage the speculation causes: Creating the illusion of demand.

Producers base production plans on their best forecasts of demand. If the "demand" (quantities, timing and price) is only speculators acquiring paper instruments to gamble with and selling them to each other, rather than real demand, you screw up the ability of producers to forecast effectively. 

Eliminate the speculation and you pretty much eliminate the need for the slight bit of accidental "insurance" you suggest might come from allowing speculators to purchase and gamble with the contracts. The supply would more accurately follow the real demand and there would be no need for purchase by a speculator.

Futures contracts between producers and users == valuable.
They are contracts between the real parties and they are a derivative that is only once removed (in time) from the real good.

Speculators gambling with futures contracts == pixie dust.

This applies to my thinking on all forms of "derivative". Some, perhaps most, start with a utility value if you keep them closely tied to the real parties and the real assets. But the ability to gamble with the paper instruments corrupts them. The farther the instruments are removed from the real players and assets and the more fragmented and comingled the instruments become, the worse the corruption. 

When it's trading purely between and for the enjoyment and enrichment of disinterested third parties it is nothing more than financial masturbation. 

Pixie dust.

In my view.

 ...ken... <I think I'll charge $.01 for this one>



      __________________________________________________________________
Looking for the perfect gift? Give the gift of Flickr! 

http://www.flickr.com/gift/


From andrew at ceruleansystems.com  Thu Dec 31 13:09:22 2009
From: andrew at ceruleansystems.com (J. Andrew Rogers)
Date: Thu, 31 Dec 2009 13:09:22 -0800
Subject: [FoRK] At least you're not in Berkeley....
In-Reply-To: <219271.49530.qm@web33008.mail.mud.yahoo.com>
References: <219271.49530.qm@web33008.mail.mud.yahoo.com>
Message-ID: <B740C9F4-0F72-41DC-A8BB-34FE188DB2D2@ceruleansystems.com>


On Dec 31, 2009, at 11:50 AM, Ken Ganshirt @ Yahoo wrote:
> What I hate is the idea that uninterested bystanders can gamble with them, to no particular benefit to either the producer or the ultimate user of the commodity.


Yes, you've made it clear that you hate the idea. But you love the consequences. Those "uninterested bystanders" are trading in the *risk* of the commodity market, not the commodity itself.  They are doing the producers and consumers a favor for a price that both are willing to pay. No one is keeping the consumer from dealing with the producer directly, but that is predicated on them being able to agree on contract terms.

Both the producer and the consumer of the commodity want to deal in the commodity, the associated risk is just an expensive bit of unpleasantness they would rather not have.  The middlemen that are trading these future contracts are removing that risk for a price, a price that is lower than for the producers and consumers to deal with the risk directly. If it wasn't worth the price, no one would be paying it.


> Stick speculators in the middle and you have the potential to drive the price up (that is certainly their intent).


Speculators go both directions, higher prices and lower prices. I notice that populist blowhards don't curse the speculators when prices plummet.  


> This is artifical and benefits neither *real* party to the contract. The producer sees none of this artificial appreciation in price. And the ultimate user of the commodity has to pay more for it based on disinterested parties gambling on the "bigger fool" premise, not necessarily anything to do with the real effects of supply and demand for the commodity itself.


Don't be silly, the commodity consumer also deals in futures contracts and the producer not seeing the price appreciation (or depreciation) is an intended feature, not a bug. When the market price either spikes or plummets, some middle man somewhere lost his shirt on that commodity. They take that hit so the businesses that depend on those inputs and outputs don't have to. See: Southwest Airlines and jet fuel futures; it doesn't affect their bottom line when a refinery goes offline.


> Producers base production plans on their best forecasts of demand. If the "demand" (quantities, timing and price) is only speculators acquiring paper instruments to gamble with and selling them to each other, rather than real demand, you screw up the ability of producers to forecast effectively.


Huh?  Once the producer has a contract they have made their money, it becomes someone else's risk. They forecast based on what they think they can sell to whoever wants to buy a contract. That paper is a reflection of anticipated future demand by other people in the market.


> Eliminate the speculation and you pretty much eliminate the need for the slight bit of accidental "insurance" you suggest might come from allowing speculators to purchase and gamble with the contracts. The supply would more accurately follow the real demand and there would be no need for purchase by a speculator.


This is fantasy. The markets are increasingly unpredictable for both the producers and consumers because the real supply and demand is. Have you been following the commodity markets over the last five years? The real risk has grown so much that futures markets are becoming dominated by risk such that it makes risk management very expensive. Futures contracts are predictions of future market prices per the combined wisdom of speculators, and when the combined wisdom is wrong they lose money. 


BTW, the other reason people buy commodity futures when they don't strictly need the delivery is as a defense against governments devaluing currency. The value of a barrel of crude oil is independent of the currency it is denominated in. Those price increases are basically materialized inflation.





From dmorton at bitfurnace.com  Thu Dec 31 13:33:02 2009
From: dmorton at bitfurnace.com (Damien Morton)
Date: Fri, 1 Jan 2010 08:33:02 +1100
Subject: [FoRK] At least you're not in Berkeley....
In-Reply-To: <219271.49530.qm@web33008.mail.mud.yahoo.com>
References: <219271.49530.qm@web33008.mail.mud.yahoo.com>
Message-ID: <8092dc770912311333u26fe1000v7482a65815476419@mail.gmail.com>

On Fri, Jan 1, 2010 at 6:50 AM, Ken Ganshirt @ Yahoo
<ken_ganshirt at yahoo.ca>wrote:

> --- On Wed, 12/30/09, J. Andrew Rogers <andrew at ceruleansystems.com> wrote:
>
> >
> > On Dec 30, 2009, at 9:33 AM, Ken Ganshirt @ Yahoo wrote:
> > > Futures are only once or twice removed from the real
> > thing. You could fix most of the problems there by requiring
> > that the purchaser actually take delivery of the commodity
> > they have purchased.
> >
> >
> > Worst. Idea. Evar.
> >
> > Just because you don't understand the highly utilitarian
> > function of futures and other derivatives does not mean they
> > are a bad idea. You hate the concept of them, but you would
> > hate the economic reality if they did not exist even
> > worse.
> >
>
> Actually, it's "Worst. Idea. Ever."
>
> But, no, the "Worst. Idea. Evar." was allowing speculators into the game.
>
>
Most of the high risk speculation can be damped down with a tiny financial
transaction tax.

From beberg at mithral.com  Thu Dec 31 13:36:16 2009
From: beberg at mithral.com (Adam L Beberg)
Date: Thu, 31 Dec 2009 13:36:16 -0800
Subject: [FoRK] At least you're not in Berkeley....
In-Reply-To: <8092dc770912310109r6e82e046m95e9c2cc7680e274@mail.gmail.com>
References: <4B3817A0.1030307@mithral.com>	<14d615330912281641u139ae4dr548f78de500234e7@mail.gmail.com>	<4B397265.5030103@lig.net>	<69ae910f0912290144r73c30187l2d1d97fabee623e7@mail.gmail.com>	<4B3A4B97.20002@mithral.com>	<69ae910f0912291054r25a73bcev90344176ca9ef29f@mail.gmail.com>	<4B3C666D.6080800@mithral.com>	<0127EC9E-91AA-42AD-8AC4-53879D4F1E1A@ceruleansystems.com>
	<8092dc770912310109r6e82e046m95e9c2cc7680e274@mail.gmail.com>
Message-ID: <4B3D1950.5080907@mithral.com>

Damien Morton wrote on 12/31/2009 1:09 AM:
> Umm yeah - with the stats showing that most people (thats _most_ people, not
> all people) will go through a handfull of careers in their lifetimes, the
> last thing they would want is an education that doesnt stand them in good
> stead throughout life.

How is that my problem as an employer? So I'm supposed to hire history 
majors to code, because a degree is a degree? Bull, hire programmers in 
the programming phase of their life, etc.

 From my experience with a 4-year cirriculums 1/3 the credits are 
useless filler and purely skill-free (read: profit), 1/3 are general use 
for your field (breadth) but not in depth enough to be useful, and 1/3 
may approach job related things, but treated it in a theoretic way so as 
not to be "dirty" with practical uses. No matter what the degree, you'll 
spend 2 years on the job before you're all that competent.

Many degrees offered do not even HAVE corresponding jobs to get, which 
is another huge problem with colleges. The "well rounded" stuff is just 
taking your money, here have another student loan.

Jebadiah Moore wrote on 12/31/2009 3:44 AM:
>   2. some jobs--nay, *most* jobs--do not have an appropriate specialized
> education.
>
> As for this second point, I point you to the average white-collar worker.
> These are jobs that are between manual labor and more specialized
> information work; not cooking or lawn care, but not yet programming or
> writing.

See, that's the problem. Cooking and designing a landscape are skill 
based, and way harder to do well then we all dismiss them as - neither 
you can learn in a college. Both cooking and programming seem to have 
the same small fraction of practitioners that are actually good.

In all cases I've ever seen, anyone good at something started doing it 
way before college, or after it. If anything college just gave them free 
time to work on their 10k hours while skipping those useless classes.

-- 
Adam L. Beberg
http://www.mithral.com/~beberg/

From dmorton at bitfurnace.com  Thu Dec 31 14:02:30 2009
From: dmorton at bitfurnace.com (Damien Morton)
Date: Fri, 1 Jan 2010 09:02:30 +1100
Subject: [FoRK] At least you're not in Berkeley....
In-Reply-To: <4B3D1950.5080907@mithral.com>
References: <4B3817A0.1030307@mithral.com>
	<14d615330912281641u139ae4dr548f78de500234e7@mail.gmail.com>
	<4B397265.5030103@lig.net>
	<69ae910f0912290144r73c30187l2d1d97fabee623e7@mail.gmail.com>
	<4B3A4B97.20002@mithral.com>
	<69ae910f0912291054r25a73bcev90344176ca9ef29f@mail.gmail.com>
	<4B3C666D.6080800@mithral.com>
	<0127EC9E-91AA-42AD-8AC4-53879D4F1E1A@ceruleansystems.com>
	<8092dc770912310109r6e82e046m95e9c2cc7680e274@mail.gmail.com>
	<4B3D1950.5080907@mithral.com>
Message-ID: <8092dc770912311402n283df33djc8214dd40740173b@mail.gmail.com>

On Fri, Jan 1, 2010 at 8:36 AM, Adam L Beberg <beberg at mithral.com> wrote:

> Damien Morton wrote on 12/31/2009 1:09 AM:
>
>  Umm yeah - with the stats showing that most people (thats _most_ people,
>> not
>> all people) will go through a handfull of careers in their lifetimes, the
>> last thing they would want is an education that doesnt stand them in good
>> stead throughout life.
>>
>
> How is that my problem as an employer? So I'm supposed to hire history
> majors to code, because a degree is a degree? Bull, hire programmers in the
> programming phase of their life, etc.
>

Well, your needs as an employer will likely change over the course of your
life. But then you are thinking as a professional who has had only one
career all their life. Most people don't fit that mold.

>
> From my experience with a 4-year cirriculums 1/3 the credits are useless
> filler and purely skill-free (read: profit), 1/3 are general use for your
> field (breadth) but not in depth enough to be useful, and 1/3 may approach
> job related things, but treated it in a theoretic way so as not to be
> "dirty" with practical uses. No matter what the degree, you'll spend 2 years
> on the job before you're all that competent.
>

Melbourne University has switched to 5 year degrees. 3 years of general
education and 2 years of specialist education.


>
> Many degrees offered do not even HAVE corresponding jobs to get, which is
> another huge problem with colleges. The "well rounded" stuff is just taking
> your money, here have another student loan.
>

It would be interesting to do a study on how many people actually end up
working in the field they studied in. My guess is that the number of people
who made the right choice in choosing a life path at age 18 is pretty damned
low.

Myself, I chose the life of a computer programmer when I was 14. I should
have chosen to be a rock star instead.


> Jebadiah Moore wrote on 12/31/2009 3:44 AM:
>
>   2. some jobs--nay, *most* jobs--do not have an appropriate specialized
>> education.
>>
>> As for this second point, I point you to the average white-collar worker.
>> These are jobs that are between manual labor and more specialized
>> information work; not cooking or lawn care, but not yet programming or
>> writing.
>>
>
> See, that's the problem. Cooking and designing a landscape are skill based,
> and way harder to do well then we all dismiss them as - neither you can
> learn in a college. Both cooking and programming seem to have the same small
> fraction of practitioners that are actually good.
>
> In all cases I've ever seen, anyone good at something started doing it way
> before college, or after it. If anything college just gave them free time to
> work on their 10k hours while skipping those useless classes.


Again, youre thinking as a software engineer and youre right - the best
software engineers I have met started when they were teenagers, and the
degree was just a way of legitimising and rounding out what they already
knew. Not sure I can say the same about architects or surgeons.

This brings us back to the original subject: school education. I had the
mind to do my own studies when I was very young - I was reading books on
Communism and the Arab-Israeli wars and Nuclear Power and Astrophysics and
god knows what else when I was a child. I had a chemistry set and was making
things that go boom. I designed a nuclear power rocket engine and sent it to
the JPL when I was 10. An interest in wargames and role-playing games had me
delving into all eras of history - it was a competition amongst my friends
to find the most obscure and bizarre stories to play out in our games. We
ran a massively multiplayer role playing game once, in which 200 kids played
out a scenario based on George Orwell's Homage to Catalonia - the spanish
civil war. None of that I got from school, and when I look at
my friends kids, I see them discarding the seed of their passions to fit in
with their tweener friends.

John Gatto talks about being comfortable with solitude as a tool for
personal growth and education. I had a lot of solitude as a kid, which is
probably what the impetus for all that reading and studying was. Was it a
tool for personal growth? I dont know.

From jebdm at jebdm.net  Thu Dec 31 14:20:38 2009
From: jebdm at jebdm.net (Jebadiah Moore)
Date: Thu, 31 Dec 2009 22:20:38 +0000
Subject: [FoRK] At least you're not in Berkeley....
In-Reply-To: <4B3D1950.5080907@mithral.com>
References: <4B3817A0.1030307@mithral.com>
	<14d615330912281641u139ae4dr548f78de500234e7@mail.gmail.com>
	<4B397265.5030103@lig.net>
	<69ae910f0912290144r73c30187l2d1d97fabee623e7@mail.gmail.com>
	<4B3A4B97.20002@mithral.com>
	<69ae910f0912291054r25a73bcev90344176ca9ef29f@mail.gmail.com>
	<4B3C666D.6080800@mithral.com>
	<0127EC9E-91AA-42AD-8AC4-53879D4F1E1A@ceruleansystems.com>
	<8092dc770912310109r6e82e046m95e9c2cc7680e274@mail.gmail.com>
	<4B3D1950.5080907@mithral.com>
Message-ID: <69ae910f0912311420r43b1c9dar199a37cdcb967c3a@mail.gmail.com>

On Thu, Dec 31, 2009 at 9:36 PM, Adam L Beberg <beberg at mithral.com> wrote:

>
> Jebadiah Moore wrote on 12/31/2009 3:44 AM:
>
>   2. some jobs--nay, *most* jobs--do not have an appropriate specialized
>> education.
>>
>> As for this second point, I point you to the average white-collar worker.
>> These are jobs that are between manual labor and more specialized
>> information work; not cooking or lawn care, but not yet programming or
>> writing.
>>
>
> See, that's the problem. Cooking and designing a landscape are skill based,
> and way harder to do well then we all dismiss them as - neither you can
> learn in a college. Both cooking and programming seem to have the same small
> fraction of practitioners that are actually good.
>
> In all cases I've ever seen, anyone good at something started doing it way
> before college, or after it. If anything college just gave them free time to
> work on their 10k hours while skipping those useless classes.


I was referring to cooking, not cheffing (is that the word?), and lawn care
(raking, mowing, etc.), not landscape design.  The lower-level stuff still
requires some skill, and there is a lot of variation in ability, but it's
not so much that I'd suggest any extra education or study for them.  Being a
chef (designing a menu, ordering ingredients, etc.) or a landscape designer
does require a bit more skill, enough so that it would be useful to have
outside education in them--although, like with most things, experience and
talent can often suffice.

I agree that there's a performance gap between the top and bottom--with
programmers, IIRC, the top 10% write programs which run 5x as efficiently
(in space and time) 10x as quickly as the bottom 10%.  It's not as
measurable for cooks and lawn care, but I'd expect there to be similar (if
smaller) gaps.  If you look at chefs and landscapers, the gaps are probably
a bit bigger--particularly with the landscapers (compare
http://gardenwebs.net/Butchart.gardens.jpg and
http://gohmert.house.gov/images/user_images/Tyler_Rose_Garden_copy_2.jpg).

I agree that most people who are really good were interested before they
started formally studying/working at it, and that there are some things you
can't really learn in college.  But I'm not sure what it is exactly that
you're saying though--that college is useless?

-- 
Jebadiah Moore
http://jebdm.net

From jebdm at jebdm.net  Thu Dec 31 14:37:46 2009
From: jebdm at jebdm.net (Jebadiah Moore)
Date: Thu, 31 Dec 2009 22:37:46 +0000
Subject: [FoRK] At least you're not in Berkeley....
In-Reply-To: <8092dc770912311402n283df33djc8214dd40740173b@mail.gmail.com>
References: <4B3817A0.1030307@mithral.com> <4B397265.5030103@lig.net>
	<69ae910f0912290144r73c30187l2d1d97fabee623e7@mail.gmail.com>
	<4B3A4B97.20002@mithral.com>
	<69ae910f0912291054r25a73bcev90344176ca9ef29f@mail.gmail.com>
	<4B3C666D.6080800@mithral.com>
	<0127EC9E-91AA-42AD-8AC4-53879D4F1E1A@ceruleansystems.com>
	<8092dc770912310109r6e82e046m95e9c2cc7680e274@mail.gmail.com>
	<4B3D1950.5080907@mithral.com>
	<8092dc770912311402n283df33djc8214dd40740173b@mail.gmail.com>
Message-ID: <69ae910f0912311437u7e8de21ahd671547843c3d66d@mail.gmail.com>

On Thu, Dec 31, 2009 at 10:02 PM, Damien Morton <dmorton at bitfurnace.com>wrote:

> John Gatto talks about being comfortable with solitude as a tool for
> personal growth and education. I had a lot of solitude as a kid, which is
> probably what the impetus for all that reading and studying was. Was it a
> tool for personal growth? I dont know.
>

I'd say that solitude can be a tool for personal growth, but the degree to
which it's helpful depends on your location on the introvert-extrovert
scale.  I personally have found that I am more productive, I learn more, I
feel more satisfied about how I spend my time, and I'm happier in a deep,
"philosophical" kind of way when I have a lot of solitude.  But when I'm
more actively socializing and whatnot, I get a different "connected" sort of
happiness, and I have less interest in intellectual sorts of stuff for a
while.  There's a tradeoff between the two as well; if I go too long without
a social period, I get depressed, but if I go too long without a period of
solitude, I get depressed as well.  For me, the right ratio seems to be
about 85% solitude, 15% social.

Other people seem to work similarly, although most (since most people seem
to be extroverts) peoples' ratio seems to lean more towards the social.  I
seem to be odd in that my cycle is longer (i.e., I like a month of isolation
followed by a week of socializing), but I don't think I'm otherwise
overgeneralizing.

I haven't read much Gatto (what I have read I tended to agree with), but I
assume he explains more thoroughly what he means by "being comfortable with
solitude".  It seems that in modern times people are less comfortable in it,
so they tend to gravitate towards TV/Facebook/mindless entertainment of
various sorts.  Whereas to be "comfortable" with solitude, I think Gatto
probably means that you have to be capable of seeking out and engaging in
stimulating activity on your own, without the guide of a teacher or boss.
But that's sort of a normative definition of "comfortable", isn't it?
(Unless you restrict "solitude" to mean "time not only without access to
other people, but also without access to mindless entertainment"...)

-- 
Jebadiah Moore
http://jebdm.net

From ken_ganshirt at yahoo.ca  Thu Dec 31 14:41:06 2009
From: ken_ganshirt at yahoo.ca (Ken Ganshirt @ Yahoo)
Date: Thu, 31 Dec 2009 14:41:06 -0800 (PST)
Subject: [FoRK] At least you're not in Berkeley....
In-Reply-To: <B740C9F4-0F72-41DC-A8BB-34FE188DB2D2@ceruleansystems.com>
Message-ID: <867250.72537.qm@web33002.mail.mud.yahoo.com>

--- On Thu, 12/31/09, J. Andrew Rogers <andrew at ceruleansystems.com> wrote:

> > Eliminate the speculation and you pretty much
> > eliminate the need for the slight bit of accidental
> > "insurance" you suggest might come from allowing speculators
> > to purchase and gamble with the contracts. The supply would
> > more accurately follow the real demand and there would be no
> > need for purchase by a speculator.
> 
> 
> This is fantasy. The markets are increasingly unpredictable
> for both the producers and consumers because the real supply
> and demand is. Have you been following the commodity markets
> over the last five years? The real risk has grown so much
> that futures markets are becoming dominated by risk such
> that it makes risk management very expensive. Futures
> contracts are predictions of future market prices per the
> combined wisdom of speculators, and when the combined wisdom
> is wrong they lose money. 
> 

Shucks, I live in Canada. We are pretty much all about commodities. Can't get away from them even if I wanted to. Can't buy a Canadian mutual fund that isn't overweight commodities, one way or another.

So, no, I don't "follow" the commodity markets. But I maintain some awareness of them.

Did you notice, for instance, how much the price of oil dropped when your government threatened to take the speculators out of the game? Despite their total denial that the otherwise unexplanable price increases had nothing to do with rampant speculation.

    This is our fundamental source of disagreement: 

         We disagree on cause and effect, not on the details. 

I contend that it is the increased participation by pure speculators -- disinterested third parties whose only interest is in gambling, not knowledgeable trading in commodities -- that it is their unfettered gambling that is the underlying cause of commodity markets having become totally nuts in the past few years. Not the reverse.

Can you point me at any evidence to suggest the supply:demand relationship itself has somehow gone completely haywire on its own over the past few years? Or at least an explanation of why one might believe it has? Because that's what you are asking me to believe.

      ...ken...


      __________________________________________________________________
Looking for the perfect gift? Give the gift of Flickr! 

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From ken_ganshirt at yahoo.ca  Thu Dec 31 14:59:32 2009
From: ken_ganshirt at yahoo.ca (Ken Ganshirt @ Yahoo)
Date: Thu, 31 Dec 2009 14:59:32 -0800 (PST)
Subject: [FoRK] At least you're not in Berkeley....
In-Reply-To: <4B3D1950.5080907@mithral.com>
Message-ID: <500145.16934.qm@web33003.mail.mud.yahoo.com>

--- On Thu, 12/31/09, Adam L Beberg <beberg at mithral.com> wrote:
> 
> See, that's the problem. Cooking and designing a landscape
> are skill based, and way harder to do well then we all
> dismiss them as - 

Damn straight.

>
> -neither you can learn in a college. 
>

Actually you can. It's no big deal and it's nothing new. Pretty old, actually.

Let's not get distracted over labels like "college", "university", etc. These are skills you can learn in a classroom and lab. There is both theory and practicum involved. It's well understood how to provide the instruction and learning environment for both of your examples, and for similar skills. 

We have many institutions in North America that do a fine job of assisting people to learn the fundamentals to the point where they can go into the workplace and do a credible job almost immediately. And provide a solid foundation for further learning as they do the job; from experience and from experienced colleagues.

Some institutions are also well prepared to take them back again at various points in their development to help them move to journeyman levels. To provide additional theory and practicum for more advanced skills in the field.

Of course you need employers who see it as being in their best interest to help further the learning. It's interesting that golf courses and landscape businesses and welding contractors and other "blue collar" enterprises, for instance, generally see it in their best interest. But "white collar" enterprises generally don't. 

Why do you suppose that is?

         ...ken...


      __________________________________________________________________
Looking for the perfect gift? Give the gift of Flickr! 

http://www.flickr.com/gift/

From howell.r at inkworkswell.com  Thu Dec 31 15:43:57 2009
From: howell.r at inkworkswell.com (Reese)
Date: Thu, 31 Dec 2009 18:43:57 -0500
Subject: [FoRK] At least you're not in Berkeley....
In-Reply-To: <219271.49530.qm@web33008.mail.mud.yahoo.com>
References: <219271.49530.qm@web33008.mail.mud.yahoo.com>
Message-ID: <4B3D373D.6060304@inkworkswell.com>

On 31-Dec-09 14:50, Ken Ganshirt @ Yahoo wrote:

> What I hate is the idea that uninterested bystanders can gamble with them, to no particular benefit to either the producer or the ultimate user of the commodity.

s/commodity./but the verifiable detriment of the commodity./

There, fixed that for you.

Reese



From jebdm at jebdm.net  Thu Dec 31 15:55:57 2009
From: jebdm at jebdm.net (Jebadiah Moore)
Date: Thu, 31 Dec 2009 23:55:57 +0000
Subject: [FoRK] At least you're not in Berkeley....
In-Reply-To: <500145.16934.qm@web33003.mail.mud.yahoo.com>
References: <4B3D1950.5080907@mithral.com>
	<500145.16934.qm@web33003.mail.mud.yahoo.com>
Message-ID: <69ae910f0912311555w20288c0cqc3438488e6cbdddb@mail.gmail.com>

On Thu, Dec 31, 2009 at 10:59 PM, Ken Ganshirt @ Yahoo <
ken_ganshirt at yahoo.ca> wrote:

> Of course you need employers who see it as being in their best interest to
> help further the learning. It's interesting that golf courses and landscape
> businesses and welding contractors and other "blue collar" enterprises, for
> instance, generally see it in their best interest. But "white collar"
> enterprises generally don't.
>
> Why do you suppose that is?
>

You seem to be implying with that last statement that you have an answer in
mind, but I'm not quite sure what you're aiming at.  But text is a tone
killer.

A lot of "white collar enterprises" do support significant continuing
education.  But if there is a gap in support, some hypotheses:
  1) that people at white collar jobs *already* paid for a college education
once, and it's more likely that either they are willing to support their own
education, or you can find someone else that's already qualified,
  2) that there is higher turnover in white collar jobs after continued
education (company A lets company B train an employee, then offers them a
higher salary to switch), whereas in blue collar jobs there is more loyalty
to whoever provided the education, [NB this is possibly completely wrong, I
have no statistics]
  3) many white collar jobs require experience, not more education (beyond
college), for promotion (perhaps this is what you were implying?)
  4) blue collar employers are often smaller in scale (esp. the ones you
mention) and thus have more "loyalty" to the types of workers that are good
enough that they'd be willing to pay for extra education,
  5) among the larger blue collar employers (thinking here about the
McDonalds's and Wal-Marts of the world), the large amount of employee
turnover and lower denominator of employees means that it's more worthwhile
to educate the good ones, in order to keep them around (although I would
expect a great deal of scalping here as well).

-- 
Jebadiah Moore
http://jebdm.net

From howell.r at inkworkswell.com  Thu Dec 31 15:55:37 2009
From: howell.r at inkworkswell.com (Reese)
Date: Thu, 31 Dec 2009 18:55:37 -0500
Subject: [FoRK] At least you're not in Berkeley....
In-Reply-To: <B740C9F4-0F72-41DC-A8BB-34FE188DB2D2@ceruleansystems.com>
References: <219271.49530.qm@web33008.mail.mud.yahoo.com>
	<B740C9F4-0F72-41DC-A8BB-34FE188DB2D2@ceruleansystems.com>
Message-ID: <4B3D39F9.1020404@inkworkswell.com>

On 31-Dec-09 16:09, J. Andrew Rogers wrote:
> On Dec 31, 2009, at 11:50 AM, Ken Ganshirt @ Yahoo wrote:
>> What I hate is the idea that uninterested bystanders can gamble with them, to no particular benefit to either the producer or the ultimate user of the commodity.
> 
> 
> Yes, you've made it clear that you hate the idea. But you love the consequences. Those "uninterested bystanders" are trading in the *risk* of the commodity market, not the commodity itself.  They are doing the producers and consumers a favor for a price that both are willing to pay. No one is keeping the consumer from dealing with the producer directly, but that is predicated on them being able to agree on contract terms.

Please work this out in terms of the gasoline price runup from say,
2005 to the peak in price before the recent collapse.

Or a more traditional workup, track gold from any low price point
to any high price point and back to a low across any 10 or 15 years.

Or more simply, select any traded commodity and track how it was
pumped, and then dumped, then bought back across anything from 1 to
15 years.

That's how it works, short term. The long term can be even more
difficult to comprehend but if you work in a brokerage, you know
that you receive your fee regardless. And that you are doing good
if you can match the 12% return that accrues to congresscritters,
their wives, and chidrens. @@

Reese



From howell.r at inkworkswell.com  Thu Dec 31 16:04:11 2009
From: howell.r at inkworkswell.com (Reese)
Date: Thu, 31 Dec 2009 19:04:11 -0500
Subject: [FoRK] At least you're not in Berkeley....
In-Reply-To: <8092dc770912311402n283df33djc8214dd40740173b@mail.gmail.com>
References: <4B3817A0.1030307@mithral.com>	<14d615330912281641u139ae4dr548f78de500234e7@mail.gmail.com>	<4B397265.5030103@lig.net>	<69ae910f0912290144r73c30187l2d1d97fabee623e7@mail.gmail.com>	<4B3A4B97.20002@mithral.com>	<69ae910f0912291054r25a73bcev90344176ca9ef29f@mail.gmail.com>	<4B3C666D.6080800@mithral.com>	<0127EC9E-91AA-42AD-8AC4-53879D4F1E1A@ceruleansystems.com>	<8092dc770912310109r6e82e046m95e9c2cc7680e274@mail.gmail.com>	<4B3D1950.5080907@mithral.com>
	<8092dc770912311402n283df33djc8214dd40740173b@mail.gmail.com>
Message-ID: <4B3D3BFB.5090003@inkworkswell.com>

On 31-Dec-09 17:02, Damien Morton wrote:
> On Fri, Jan 1, 2010 at 8:36 AM, Adam L Beberg wrote:

>> From my experience with a 4-year cirriculums 1/3 the credits are useless
>> filler and purely skill-free (read: profit), 1/3 are general use for your
>> field (breadth) but not in depth enough to be useful, and 1/3 may approach
>> job related things, but treated it in a theoretic way so as not to be
>> "dirty" with practical uses. No matter what the degree, you'll spend 2 years
>> on the job before you're all that competent.
>>
> 
> Melbourne University has switched to 5 year degrees. 3 years of general
> education and 2 years of specialist education.

Wow. Is general schooling in Australia that poor?

> ...My guess is that the number of people
> who made the right choice in choosing a life path at age 18 is pretty damned
> low.

Agree.

> Myself, I chose the life of a computer programmer when I was 14. I should
> have chosen to be a rock star instead.

I chose a more tumultuous path. You'd have to retrace my steps, you
could not purchase my life experiences at any price. I would not trade
them for life as a programmer from age 14 or rock star status.

Reese


From andrew at ceruleansystems.com  Thu Dec 31 16:22:15 2009
From: andrew at ceruleansystems.com (J. Andrew Rogers)
Date: Thu, 31 Dec 2009 16:22:15 -0800
Subject: [FoRK] At least you're not in Berkeley....
In-Reply-To: <867250.72537.qm@web33002.mail.mud.yahoo.com>
References: <867250.72537.qm@web33002.mail.mud.yahoo.com>
Message-ID: <C8C0DF38-F9F1-4890-8668-8EA72900548D@ceruleansystems.com>

On Dec 31, 2009, at 2:41 PM, Ken Ganshirt @ Yahoo wrote:
> I contend that it is the increased participation by pure speculators -- disinterested third parties whose only interest is in gambling, not knowledgeable trading in commodities -- that it is their unfettered gambling that is the underlying cause of commodity markets having become totally nuts in the past few years. Not the reverse.


This might be true in a few commodities markets, but it is plainly false in most commodities markets that have been gyrating unpredictably recently.  The primary causes are real-world supply chain anomalies and an increasing number of (largely stupid) government interventions in the commodity supply chains.  This is not a US problem, it is a global problem.

The market has to reprice every time a monkey wrench gets thrown into the works, and there have been a *lot* of monkey wrenches since 2005. The US Congressional reports and industry chatter by the noble commodity producers and consumers tend to blame boringly obvious and less conspiratorial causes than what makes good news copy. 


> Can you point me at any evidence to suggest the supply:demand relationship itself has somehow gone completely haywire on its own over the past few years? Or at least an explanation of why one might believe it has? Because that's what you are asking me to believe.


The problem is that risk is managed by predicting future supply and demand.  In times past, there was pretty tight convergence between the predictions by consumers and producers and the reality, so risk of future pricing was pretty small.  That made life simple for everyone.  Unfortunately, predictive accuracy of future pricing has been deteriorating for years.

In several commodities markets there has been a pattern over the last five years or so of decreasing convergence between predictions about future market conditions and the reality when that future arrives.  If you write a future pricing contract based on bad predictions, someone loses a lot of money.  Since the predictions are deteriorating, people risk losing ever greater amounts of money and so it is increasingly expensive and difficult to hedge that risk.  Market spot prices are becoming more erratic as ever larger corrections are being made.



The so-called "speculators" are not causing this.  A big part of the problem is that both the producers and consumers of commodities are mis-predicting the global supply chains, and in most cases there is no practical way that these organizations could have predicted it accurately anyway. There have been several unanticipated anomalies on both the supply and demand side in recent years. This has been compounded by a large number of stupid government interventions, often in response to the natural anomalies, that aggravated the situation.  The producers and consumers are as much to blame for the price fluctuations as anyone else is, if you buy into the idea that they should be able to accurately predict the future.

By the way, if you think it is easy to predicting future supply and demand, it should be a simple matter for you to be swimming in filthy lucre.



From jtauber at jtauber.com  Thu Dec 31 16:50:08 2009
From: jtauber at jtauber.com (James Tauber)
Date: Thu, 31 Dec 2009 19:50:08 -0500
Subject: [FoRK] At least you're not in Berkeley....
In-Reply-To: <4B3D3BFB.5090003@inkworkswell.com>
References: <4B3817A0.1030307@mithral.com>	<14d615330912281641u139ae4dr548f78de500234e7@mail.gmail.com>	<4B397265.5030103@lig.net>	<69ae910f0912290144r73c30187l2d1d97fabee623e7@mail.gmail.com>	<4B3A4B97.20002@mithral.com>	<69ae910f0912291054r25a73bcev90344176ca9ef29f@mail.gmail.com>	<4B3C666D.6080800@mithral.com>	<0127EC9E-91AA-42AD-8AC4-53879D4F1E1A@ceruleansystems.com>	<8092dc770912310109r6e82e046m95e9c2cc7680e274@mail.gmail.com>	<4B3D1950.5080907@mithral.com>
	<8092dc770912311402n283df33djc8214dd40740173b@mail.gmail.com>
	<4B3D3BFB.5090003@inkworkswell.com>
Message-ID: <8DA9A962-7972-451E-AFC6-14290E279541@jtauber.com>

On Dec 31, 2009, at 7:04 PM, Reese wrote:

> On 31-Dec-09 17:02, Damien Morton wrote:
>> On Fri, Jan 1, 2010 at 8:36 AM, Adam L Beberg wrote:
> 
>>> From my experience with a 4-year cirriculums 1/3 the credits are useless
>>> filler and purely skill-free (read: profit), 1/3 are general use for your
>>> field (breadth) but not in depth enough to be useful, and 1/3 may approach
>>> job related things, but treated it in a theoretic way so as not to be
>>> "dirty" with practical uses. No matter what the degree, you'll spend 2 years
>>> on the job before you're all that competent.
>>> 
>> Melbourne University has switched to 5 year degrees. 3 years of general
>> education and 2 years of specialist education.
> 
> Wow. Is general schooling in Australia that poor?


Why do you say that? It's pretty similar to US model isn't it? (In fact that's what its critics derided it as when first proposed)

Note that in Australia it's pretty rare to require (or even have) a masters degree. Most things that in the US would require a masters degree or graduate study only require a bachelors degree in Australia. PhD programmes rarely require coursework because the bachelors degrees (with honours) are deemed adequate preparation for the thesis.

The Melbourne model is just a movement towards a more North American / European approach of a more general bachelors degree and delaying specialization until graduate study (e.g. a Masters). In Europe it's called the Bologna model.

James





From ken_ganshirt at yahoo.ca  Thu Dec 31 20:17:28 2009
From: ken_ganshirt at yahoo.ca (Ken Ganshirt @ Yahoo)
Date: Thu, 31 Dec 2009 20:17:28 -0800 (PST)
Subject: [FoRK] At least you're not in Berkeley....
Message-ID: <88334.20810.qm@web33005.mail.mud.yahoo.com>

--- On Thu, 12/31/09, Jebadiah Moore <jebdm at jebdm.net> wrote:

> On Thu, Dec 31, 2009 at 10:59 PM, Ken
> Ganshirt @ Yahoo <ken_ganshirt at yahoo.ca> wrote:
> 
> > Of course you need employers who see it as being in their best
> > interest to help further the learning. It's interesting that golf 
> > courses and landscape businesses and welding contractors and 
> > other "blue collar" enterprises, for
> > instance, generally see it in their best interest. But "white collar"
> > enterprises generally don't.
> >
> > Why do you suppose that is?
> >
> 
> You seem to be implying with that last statement that you
> have an answer in mind, but I'm not quite sure what you're aiming at.?
>

Nope. Nothing implied. Simply something I've observed and am curious about.

Since you showed me yours, I'll show you mine...

If I was forced to hazard a guess I would guess there's more shortsightedness and less relating to the human capital in typical white-collar organizations. Perhaps for a couple of the reasons you mentioned. 

One factor might be simple greed and what I call the "one-minute manager/silver bullet" mentality. Investing in employee develop costs money. The business case for employee development is not short term. The payoff is not immediate, usually.

Or simply laziness. The payoff also takes some work. It costs managerial attention ... to things like planning (matching expected personnel needs to expected business initiatives), which requires actually understanding the area you are managing and thinking farther ahead than this afternoon's budget meeting.

? ???(Can I get an "Oooooo"?)

Another might be the interchangability of your typical sheepskin holder when it comes to average white-collar type jobs. When the typical Bachelor's holder comes out of college they know nothing especially useful, including how to work, and aren't even particularly literate. Once they've got six months to a year experience in any typical office job, so that they at least know how to work and how to read a procedure manual, they become plug 'n play.

? ???(Can I get an "Oowwwwwwwch"?)

But that's a little guessing liberally flavored with cynical opinions based on personal observations from the perspective of ten years as a Dilbert and twenty as a pointy-haired boss (both internal IT and Engineering).

>
> But text is a tone killer.
> 

Yes. I can see where my wording led you to think the question might be rhetorical. So, for the record, it wasn't. 

I've always had a pretty intuitive feeling for the business case for employee development (not to mention that I've done actual business cases for it a number of times over the years) so the deterioration of the commitment to it in white-collar organizations over the course of my careers puzzles me greatly. Especially when contrasted with the fact (well, my observation) that blue-collar organizations, large and small, still seem as commited to it as ever.

A related observation is that blue-collar organizations tend to focus more on evidence of having the necessary skills whereas white-collar organizations seem much more focused on possession of a degree of some sort.

? ? ???...ken...




      __________________________________________________________________
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From andrew at ceruleansystems.com  Thu Dec 31 20:31:49 2009
From: andrew at ceruleansystems.com (J. Andrew Rogers)
Date: Thu, 31 Dec 2009 20:31:49 -0800
Subject: [FoRK] At least you're not in Berkeley....
In-Reply-To: <88334.20810.qm@web33005.mail.mud.yahoo.com>
References: <88334.20810.qm@web33005.mail.mud.yahoo.com>
Message-ID: <2D2EF95B-C0D7-48E5-AA79-00ACBC5B2D3E@ceruleansystems.com>


On Dec 31, 2009, at 8:17 PM, Ken Ganshirt @ Yahoo wrote:
> If I was forced to hazard a guess I would guess there's more shortsightedness and less relating to the human capital in typical white-collar organizations. Perhaps for a couple of the reasons you mentioned. 
> 
> One factor might be simple greed and what I call the "one-minute manager/silver bullet" mentality. Investing in employee develop costs money. The business case for employee development is not short term. The payoff is not immediate, usually.


I think another big factor is that in the modern economy everyone is increasingly viewed -- and treated -- as being self-employed contractors.  This is the other side of the coin where you don't work for some large corporation your entire life. Instead of being a reconfigurable cog, you are there as long as you are useful to the current project or mission, so it is up to you to make yourself useful.

They rarely say it, but this has been the trend for a long time.  A little less feudal, a little more like the movie business -- project-oriented.

Unless you work for the government, of course.  





From ken_ganshirt at yahoo.ca  Thu Dec 31 20:33:58 2009
From: ken_ganshirt at yahoo.ca (Ken Ganshirt @ Yahoo)
Date: Thu, 31 Dec 2009 20:33:58 -0800 (PST)
Subject: [FoRK] At least you're not in Berkeley....
In-Reply-To: <C8C0DF38-F9F1-4890-8668-8EA72900548D@ceruleansystems.com>
Message-ID: <952004.64697.qm@web33003.mail.mud.yahoo.com>

--- On Thu, 12/31/09, J. Andrew Rogers <andrew at ceruleansystems.com> wrote:
> 
> By the way, if you think it is easy to predicting future
> supply and demand, it should be a simple matter for you to
> be swimming in filthy lucre.
> 

I sure hope I did not leave the impression I thought forecasting commodity supply and demand was easy. I thought I was implying just the opposite. That it's already difficult enough if you are an experienced supplier, purchaser or trader. But that it gets even murkier when you have to try to guess how much of what you are seeing is real and how much is just gamblers screwing around.

 ...ken...


      __________________________________________________________________
Make your browsing faster, safer, and easier with the new Internet Explorer? 8. Optimized for Yahoo! Get it Now for Free! at http://downloads.yahoo.com/ca/internetexplorer/


From andrew at ceruleansystems.com  Thu Dec 31 21:12:44 2009
From: andrew at ceruleansystems.com (J. Andrew Rogers)
Date: Thu, 31 Dec 2009 21:12:44 -0800
Subject: [FoRK] At least you're not in Berkeley....
In-Reply-To: <952004.64697.qm@web33003.mail.mud.yahoo.com>
References: <952004.64697.qm@web33003.mail.mud.yahoo.com>
Message-ID: <A4B36616-832A-4746-9280-45E5F47FBAC4@ceruleansystems.com>


On Dec 31, 2009, at 8:33 PM, Ken Ganshirt @ Yahoo wrote:
> I sure hope I did not leave the impression I thought forecasting commodity supply and demand was easy.


You didn't, I was just reiterating the point that it is really hard even under ideal circumstances, and it has been a few years since circumstances where vaguely "ideal".  No one has anything remotely resembling accurate insight into the global supply and demand, and not because they don't want it.


> I thought I was implying just the opposite. That it's already difficult enough if you are an experienced supplier, purchaser or trader. But that it gets even murkier when you have to try to guess how much of what you are seeing is real and how much is just gamblers screwing around.


Again, it has nothing to do with "gamblers screwing around".  It simply is not the material factor you think it is, and becomes less so every year.  Yes, you have a few anomalies like the Hunt brothers. 

The commodity supply chain is grossly mis-predicting its own inputs and outputs. The primary factors are unforeseen variances in supply and demand, which have gotten more severe as of late for well-understood reasons, and government trade policies creating even more unpredictable variances.  Remember, trade is global.  In many commodity markets prices can be materially impacted by the action of any one of dozens of countries.  Agricultural commodities are an extreme example of this where natural variance is increasing rapidly and the government of just about every significant agriculture producing country is going crazy with market-altering policies on a quarterly basis.  We can't predict the weather next week, never mind next year.


One more time: the global supply chain has become increasingly unpredictable at the basic level of producer supply and consumer demand.  There are no speculators, gamblers, hooligans, flim-flam artists, or international playboys in that equation.  Why invent a conspiracy when the causal factors in the supply chain are plainly obvious?

Future pricing stability is dependent on predictability.  Reality -- not the markets -- has become measurably less predictable, and future pricing and markets reflect that. 

From jebdm at jebdm.net  Thu Dec 31 22:41:52 2009
From: jebdm at jebdm.net (Jebadiah Moore)
Date: Fri, 1 Jan 2010 06:41:52 +0000
Subject: [FoRK] At least you're not in Berkeley....
In-Reply-To: <88334.20810.qm@web33005.mail.mud.yahoo.com>
References: <88334.20810.qm@web33005.mail.mud.yahoo.com>
Message-ID: <69ae910f0912312241y2bf526ccr342505d410d6e45f@mail.gmail.com>

On Fri, Jan 1, 2010 at 4:17 AM, Ken Ganshirt @ Yahoo
<ken_ganshirt at yahoo.ca>wrote:

>      (Can I get an "Oooooo"?)
>


>      (Can I get an "Oowwwwwwwch"?)
>

Always happy to blame the bureaucrats.  Honestly, I'm probably a bit overly
biased against them (is there such a thing?), so I'm surprised I didn't jump
to that conclusion.

-- 
Jebadiah Moore
http://jebdm.net

From jbone at place.org  Fri Jan  1 05:21:31 2010
From: jbone at place.org (Jeff Bone)
Date: Fri, 1 Jan 2010 07:21:31 -0600
Subject: [FoRK] My Mac Tablet (for sale, if you're interested)
Message-ID: <BA70A1F1-B843-4186-80BE-B5AC0F17C480@place.org>


Okay, so I got impatient and decided not to wait any longer for Apple  
to do a Mac tablet.  I bought a like-new (unopened) mid-2009 13" white  
plastic MacBook (a  MC240LL/A) on eBay and sent it off to a company  
that is an Axiotron reseller.  Axiotron "makes" the "Modbook" --- a  
conversion kit for (certain) Macbooks that turns them into tablets.   
Basically they rip the keyboard off, mount the display and a Wacom  
inductive digitizer where that was, and put the whole thing into a  
hybrid enclosure that's a cut-up version of the MacBook plastic base  
with an aluminum faceplate around the display.  They only work through  
resellers, though, and getting any info out of the company directly is  
like trying to get the NSA to respond to an FOIA request.

Beforehand, I knew there were a couple of potential problems.  The  
company had promised (some time ago --- early 2008) and even demo'd  
some screen- and input- rotation software that would allow you to use  
the tablet in either portrait or landscape mode.  This never  
materialized, and it turned out to be a bit tricky.  There were some  
third-party apps to do the same thing, and this feature was built-in  
in earlier versions of Mac OS X.  Unfortunately Apple, in its infinite  
consumer-friendliness, disabled this feature in its laptops in one of  
the more recent versions of Mac OS X.

The third-party apps also fail to work, apparently, on certain  
graphics chipsets.  There was some indication that this might work  
properly on the Nvidia chipsets used in the make and model I was  
purchasing, so I bit the bullet.  On receiving the base unit, I  
upgraded it to Snow Leopard (Leopard was installed, Snow Leopard was  
in the box) and compiled Amit Singh's fbrotate utility to see if I  
could get at least the display appropriately oriented.  This didn't  
work on my MacBook Air 1,1 (Rev A) w/ Leopard btw --- the Intel  
chipset it uses didn't work w/ the utility and you ended up with about  
1/3 of the display filled with random garbage rendered into the frame  
buffer.  But it worked like a champ on the newer MacBook with the  
Nvidia chipset + Snow Leopard.  I figured that the digitizer on the  
tablet, once converted, wouldn't be a problem if appropriately  
calibrated and that should I want to use a mouse I could figure  
something out on that front, so off I sent the thing to get converted.

The entire turn-around for the conversion was less than a week;  I  
received the converted unit on Christmas Eve.

First thing I did was attempt to download one of the third-party apps  
--- a menulet --- that does rotation.  It worked out-of-the-box with  
the unit!  Fabulous.  No hackery necessary on my part.

I've been playing with it a bit since then, and while it's useful as a  
side, portrait-mode, "smart" monitor and doodle pad --- it ain't going  
to be replacing my MacBook air as my primary carry machine of choice.

Cons:

   - TFT display sucks if you're used to the backlit goodness of more- 
expensive macs
   - the inductive input takes getting used to;  no multi-touch, of  
course
   - the bugger is heavy;  @ 5.3 lbs, almost twice as much as my  
MacBook Air
   - let me say it again:  too heavy and cumbersome to be toted around  
w/o a care
   - inked text input really, really sucks --- this isn't even up to  
Newton '94 par

Pros:

   - nav works reasonably well
   - absolutely fantastic sketch tool;  bundled with Autodesk Sketch,  
love it
   - rocks for viewing PDFs (though aspect ratio is more Euro A4-like,  
food for thought....)
   - perhaps can't fault text input too much;  my handwriting isn't up  
to it's '94 par, either. ;-)

Still, it's a fairly cool (if expensive) toy / experiment.  On the  
whole, though, it merely reinforces my prior thesis:  the form factor  
is the application.  In this case, a 5-pound large-ish tablet form  
factor doesn't suffice to replace e.g. the Moleskine and / or a hip- 
pocket stack of index cards in a rubber band, and for most of the  
stuff I do you still just can't beat the keyboard.  The gadget on the  
whole just doesn't meet the requirements for a ubiquitous / portable  
note-taking and sketching mechanism.  It IS however a quite a  
reasonable addition to the desktop for somebody that does e.g. a lot  
of portrait-mode reading or has any kind of artistic / creative need  
for e.g. a standard digitizer pen input system (at which it does  
better than e.g. the non-display equivalents of same.)

If anybody's interested in buying it from me, let me know.  I'm not  
attached to it and while it's cool I just don't see it becoming  
central to my workflow.  It's beefy;  I sprang for the 256GB SSD  
option, maxed the memory out to 6GB.  They threw in a GPS module for  
free...  other than that, and the tablet features, it's just a  
mid-2009 MacBook, 2.13GHz Core 2 Duo.  Have a couple of really nice,  
portable Cricket collapsible / adjustable laptop stands that look and  
work great, can be adjusted to hold it at a reasonable angle for  
portrait work, willing to throw in too..  Will entertain any  
reasonable offer....


jb


PS - as for my Air...  as mentioned, it's an original from the Air  
launch in 2008.  Best computer I've ever owned, hands-down.  Had been  
hitting the limit on the 64GB SSD for some time, rendering the whole  
thing pretty much a PITA to use.  I'd been wanting to upgrade the Air  
to a higher-capacity SSD for some time, but the MBA Rev A used (for  
whatever perverse reason) a PATA ZIF interface with a non-standard  
cable, which made this somewhat tedious.  I found an option --- a  
RunCore 128GB unit --- that was apparently made to work after several  
months and reams of customer complaints in early-mid 2008.  They  
finally got everything sorted out and I ordered one, just got it  
yesterday and spent about 4 hours installing the thing.  The  
instructions that came with it were absolute crap, but with some  
googling, some peering at rather mysterious pictures on Anandtech, and  
so on I eventually got the thing installed and working.  Using it now,  
in fact;  and it's better than perfect.  It more than doubled my  
available storage;  it also increased disk performance (according to  
Xbench) by a factor of at least 2 and as high as ~10 on some tests.   
Score! So now my nearly 2 year-old MacBook Air, which otherwise was  
nearing the end of its normal lifetime, has probably two more years of  
life.  :-)  (I.e., now I can wait for the MBA / tablet convertible w/  
a terabyte SSD and multi-touch input on the display.  In early  
2012.  ;-)

The whole experience of doing this upgrade, though, was a bit nerve- 
racking.  The MBA design is tighter than a nervous lab-rat's ass, and  
working with it is like doing brain surgery on said lab-rat with  
chopsticks, while wearing mittens.  In a walk-in freezer.  With a gun  
to your head. ;-)  I was pretty sure I'd bricked the whole thing  
multiple times.  Required multiple rounds of dis- and reassembly.   
Would've been nice if I'd put the PATA-ZIF-ish cable in right-side up  
the first (or second, or...) time, DOH!  ;-)





From andy at hexten.net  Fri Jan  1 07:14:59 2010
From: andy at hexten.net (Andy Armstrong)
Date: Fri, 1 Jan 2010 15:14:59 +0000
Subject: [FoRK] Why doesn't iTunes...
Message-ID: <2CFC3DE0-90DB-4EBC-B8B9-666A8758AAED@hexten.net>

...let me upload a playlist and sell it as a compilation? I'd get a small cut, maybe just a couple of cents, on each track sold.

There are all sorts of interesting compilations that can be curated - at some effort - from iTunes. Having done so I'd like to be able to make the result available as an album. Can't just me me, surely?

-- 
Andy Armstrong, Hexten





From jbone at place.org  Sat Jan  2 06:30:49 2010
From: jbone at place.org (Jeff Bone)
Date: Sat, 2 Jan 2010 08:30:49 -0600
Subject: [FoRK] At least you're not in Berkeley....
Message-ID: <8C70CDF3-798D-443C-A863-7AEB435F8018@place.org>


Summarizing this whole thread (or rather, more specifically, the  
futures and markets parts of it...)

"In which a number of people who don't have the faintest clue what the  
fuck they're talking about discourse at great length and with great  
passion about fields in which they have no actual experience, drawing  
woefully wrong conclusions from prima facie incorrect assumptions, to  
no effect and with few exceptions."

;-)

Sadly, this greatly resembles the actual discussion among policy- 
makers these days, who are *also* frequently much stronger on "theory"  
than practice.


jb


From jbone at place.org  Sat Jan  2 07:26:55 2010
From: jbone at place.org (Jeff Bone)
Date: Sat, 2 Jan 2010 09:26:55 -0600
Subject: [FoRK] At least you're not in Berkeley....
In-Reply-To: <8C70CDF3-798D-443C-A863-7AEB435F8018@place.org>
References: <8C70CDF3-798D-443C-A863-7AEB435F8018@place.org>
Message-ID: <106CF520-D641-4E9A-8BAD-B4A8056DB4CE@place.org>


On Jan 2, 2010, at 8:30 AM, Jeff Bone wrote:

> "In which a number of people who don't have the faintest clue what  
> the fuck they're talking about discourse at great length and with  
> great passion about fields in which they have no actual experience,  
> drawing woefully wrong conclusions from prima facie incorrect  
> assumptions, to no effect and with few exceptions."

To give just one example of what I'm talking about here... bemoaning  
the evil impact of speculators and ndf-type instruments is quite the  
popular sport these days.  But consider:  without non-physical  
futures, forwards, and similar instruments and a highly liquid market  
therein, what impact could the producers, warehousers, transporters,  
and other "physical arbitrageurs" have?  I.e., to what extent could we  
*count on* them artificially distorting supply vs. demand in order to  
maximize profits?

What the hell do you think OPEC *is* in the first place?  Not to  
mention the entire ecosystem of folks like Trafigura, cf.

   http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/africa/the-dark-secrets-of-the-trilliondollar-oil-trade-1793503.html

To be sure, this happens even *with* non-deliverable transactions  
making the bulk of the trading volume.  But such purely-financial  
speculation largely limits the physical shenanigans by making such  
less profitable than they would be otherwise.  And that's *despite*  
--- not because of --- regulation making such purely-financial  
activity a low-margin business already today.  Increasing regulation  
on (or otherwise discouraging) the purely-financial activity means  
increasing the power of the physical supply chain to control prices,  
potentially without limit --- not to mention hindering true price  
discovery in the process.  And what we've got going on right now is  
*barely* adequate to ensure proper flow and supply / demand balance.

We should encourage, not discourage, the purely-financial activity,  
particularly the shorter-term activity.  Remember, those guys don't  
care which way the price goes;  they don't have any benefit (and lots  
of drawbacks) by artificially moving prices in either particular  
direction over a long period, so it's nonsensical to assume that they  
profit by (or have any impact at all on) artificially inflating prices  
over longer time periods.  Nope, that's primarily the game of the guys  
that have physical delivery on one or both legs of a long run.  They  
play hot-potato with the commodity over longish periods;  and the  
result is higher end-user prices and price inflation.

And to be clear:  the phys-arbs use the instruments, too.  Contango  
generally doesn't happen by itself for no reason.  But the non-phys  
guys use them with greater agility, thus helping control the  
aberrations, and likely always will --- as long as they are *allowed*  
to do so.  (You don't *really* think all those policy-makers taking  
aim at "speculation" really care about that in itself, out of  
principle, or have the slightest understanding of the economics  
involved...  do you?  Mmm hmm....  I have a bridge to sell you, too.)


$0.02,



jb


From sdw at lig.net  Sat Jan  2 07:36:05 2010
From: sdw at lig.net (Stephen D. Williams)
Date: Sat, 02 Jan 2010 07:36:05 -0800
Subject: [FoRK] My Mac Tablet (for sale, if you're interested)
In-Reply-To: <BA70A1F1-B843-4186-80BE-B5AC0F17C480@place.org>
References: <BA70A1F1-B843-4186-80BE-B5AC0F17C480@place.org>
Message-ID: <4B3F67E5.2080407@lig.net>

Jeff Bone wrote:
>
> ...
> jb
>
>
> PS - as for my Air...  as mentioned, it's an original from the Air 
> launch in 2008.  Best computer I've ever owned, hands-down.  Had been 
> hitting the limit on the 64GB SSD for some time, rendering the whole 
> thing pretty much a PITA to use.  I'd been wanting to upgrade the Air 
> to a higher-capacity SSD for some time, but the MBA Rev A used (for 
> whatever perverse reason) a PATA ZIF interface with a non-standard 
> cable, which made this somewhat tedious.  I found an option --- a 
> RunCore 128GB unit --- that was apparently made to work after several 
> months and reams of customer complaints in early-mid 2008.  They 
> finally got everything sorted out and I ordered one, just got it 
> yesterday and spent about 4 hours installing

I have the original MacBook Air with 64GB SSD also.  I would rather have 
the newer one, not only for the larger SSD but for hardware 3D also...  
Since that's a key component of what I'm developing, it's a pain.  I 
suppose it makes a good worst case for that.  Plus, my daytime 
development now takes more than 2GB of RAM to even compile.  Not my 
code, Maven plus something crazy's going on.

I tracked down one of those 128GB SSDs, but it's $420.  I think I'll put 
that toward a MacBook Pro I waiting to get.  I'm having a hard time 
deciding on whether to get the biggest one or not.  Crazy size, but I 
crave the resolution and the extra hour of battery life isn't bad 
either.  But probably not usable on a plane at all.


> the thing.  The instructions that came with it were absolute crap, but 
> with some googling, some peering at rather mysterious pictures on 
> Anandtech, and so on I eventually got the thing installed and 
> working.  Using it now, in fact;  and it's better than perfect.  It 
> more than doubled my available storage;  it also increased disk 
> performance (according to Xbench) by a factor of at least 2 and as 
> high as ~10 on some tests.  Score! So now my nearly 2 year-old MacBook 
> Air, which otherwise was nearing the end of its normal lifetime, has 
> probably two more years of life.  :-)  (I.e., now I can wait for the 
> MBA / tablet convertible w/ a terabyte SSD and multi-touch input on 
> the display.  In early 2012.  ;-)
>
> The whole experience of doing this upgrade, though, was a bit 
> nerve-racking.  The MBA design is tighter than a nervous lab-rat's 
> ass, and working with it is like doing brain surgery on said lab-rat 
> with chopsticks, while wearing mittens.  In a walk-in freezer.  With a 
> gun to your head. ;-)  I was pretty sure I'd bricked the whole thing 
> multiple times.  Required multiple rounds of dis- and reassembly.  
> Would've been nice if I'd put the PATA-ZIF-ish cable in right-side up 
> the first (or second, or...) time, DOH!  ;-)
>
I found this page:
http://web.me.com/g.baulard/Runcore/Changement_SSD_sur_MBA_rev_A.html

sdw


From sdw at lig.net  Sat Jan  2 07:52:44 2010
From: sdw at lig.net (Stephen D. Williams)
Date: Sat, 02 Jan 2010 07:52:44 -0800
Subject: [FoRK] Meta, was: Re:  At least you're not in Berkeley....
In-Reply-To: <8C70CDF3-798D-443C-A863-7AEB435F8018@place.org>
References: <8C70CDF3-798D-443C-A863-7AEB435F8018@place.org>
Message-ID: <4B3F6BCC.5040406@lig.net>

Jeff Bone wrote:
>
> Summarizing this whole thread (or rather, more specifically, the 
> futures and markets parts of it...)
>
Are we going for a record for un-re-subjected subthreads?  I count at 
least 4 distinct FoRKs, only one of which should still have the same 
subject.

I'm just sayin'...

sdw


From sdw at lig.net  Sat Jan  2 07:54:05 2010
From: sdw at lig.net (Stephen D. Williams)
Date: Sat, 02 Jan 2010 07:54:05 -0800
Subject: [FoRK] Why doesn't iTunes...
In-Reply-To: <2CFC3DE0-90DB-4EBC-B8B9-666A8758AAED@hexten.net>
References: <2CFC3DE0-90DB-4EBC-B8B9-666A8758AAED@hexten.net>
Message-ID: <4B3F6C1D.8020605@lig.net>

Andy Armstrong wrote:
> ...let me upload a playlist and sell it as a compilation? I'd get a small cut, maybe just a couple of cents, on each track sold.
>
> There are all sorts of interesting compilations that can be curated - at some effort - from iTunes. Having done so I'd like to be able to make the result available as an album. Can't just me me, surely?
>
>   
Sounds interesting.  Couldn't you just sell access to a set of song 
links?  Is there even a way to import/export a song list?

How about for one of the open source alternatives?

sdw


From andy at hexten.net  Sat Jan  2 08:00:01 2010
From: andy at hexten.net (Andy Armstrong)
Date: Sat, 2 Jan 2010 16:00:01 +0000
Subject: [FoRK] Why doesn't iTunes...
In-Reply-To: <4B3F6C1D.8020605@lig.net>
References: <2CFC3DE0-90DB-4EBC-B8B9-666A8758AAED@hexten.net>
	<4B3F6C1D.8020605@lig.net>
Message-ID: <E8F1A25A-FEAE-4894-A9D7-F1B20F8CC787@hexten.net>

On 2 Jan 2010, at 15:54, Stephen D. Williams wrote:
> Sounds interesting.  Couldn't you just sell access to a set of song links?

Yeah, you could - but it lacks convenience. I'd like people's compilations to appear as first class citizens in the iTunes store - and I can't really see business reasons why that wouldn't be desirable.

>  Is there even a way to import/export a song list?

Yeah, you can export a playlist - but that doesn't really help with buying the songs. Maybe a third party app could then buy the contents of the playlist for you - but that's both a can of worms in security / liability terms and an additional speed hump.

> How about for one of the open source alternatives?


You'd need something that works as a client for a music store with a fairly extensive catalogue. Do such things exist? I guess there's Amazon...

-- 
Andy Armstrong, Hexten





From jbone at place.org  Sat Jan  2 08:19:38 2010
From: jbone at place.org (Jeff Bone)
Date: Sat, 2 Jan 2010 10:19:38 -0600
Subject: [FoRK] The Uncertain Future
Message-ID: <5A4BFA9D-4DA0-4908-A016-CC32609FA9B4@place.org>


For all my railing around here about existential risks and the tipping- 
point arms race we play against them with technological progress, I  
fear I've failed to get the point across viscerally.  Well, SIAI is at  
least making an attempt to help you figure the odds, based on your own  
priors:

   http://www.theuncertainfuture.com/

This *might* be the first "product" of SIAI that has any real, general  
value at all...  but perhaps high value at that.

A few minor criticisms:

   - the model isn't even approximately complete
     - definitions are sketchy
       - "neuromorphic" AI is fairly clear;
       - "non-neuromorphic" AI is not at all clear
       - FAQs do help some on this... but make assumptions
       - levels of AI --> potential impact ignored
     - existential risks category is rather sketchy
       - could use a Drake-like abstract risk variable
       - doesn't model incentive-effect relationships well
         - funding vs. cost / FLOP is a poor proxy...
         - doesn't model progress / risk-reduction relationship
         - ditto (certain kinds of) progress and risk-increase
         - doesn't model benefits of risk-reducing tech
     - doesn't account for various discontinuities
     - assumes AI (though not IA) is discrete;
       - non-discrete AI progress may mitigate some risk
       - IA may be either risk-reducing or -increasing
   - conclusions may be obscure
     - does not illustrate risk-reward effectively
     - at the very least, superimpose the last two graphs!

For all that, best attempt so far to make it easier for non-Bayesians  
or lazy folks to figure out what *they* really think.

This should help some in placing their Long Bets correctly.  ;-)

Enjoy.  And to crib whump...

More Like This!


jb





From jbone at place.org  Sat Jan  2 08:22:17 2010
From: jbone at place.org (Jeff Bone)
Date: Sat, 2 Jan 2010 10:22:17 -0600
Subject: [FoRK] Meta...
Message-ID: <D9B4BCE0-99D0-4789-9DF0-25EB29506E40@place.org>


sdw says:

> Are we going for a record for un-re-subjected subthreads? I count at  
> least 4 distinct FoRKs, only one of which should still have the same  
> subject.


Dangers of living in digest / web archive scraping mode.

StN improving somewhat, not enough quite yet to make me reconsider  
going near-RT again.

Sorry for those of you that actually use threads in your mail client  
(which, of course, is wrong anyway. ;-)


jb


From jbone at place.org  Sat Jan  2 08:38:21 2010
From: jbone at place.org (Jeff Bone)
Date: Sat, 2 Jan 2010 10:38:21 -0600
Subject: [FoRK] Meta...
In-Reply-To: <D9B4BCE0-99D0-4789-9DF0-25EB29506E40@place.org>
References: <D9B4BCE0-99D0-4789-9DF0-25EB29506E40@place.org>
Message-ID: <7B7E5C5A-E395-485B-A2D0-694F22D031E0@place.org>


Actually, failed to parse your complaint, Stephen, you're actually  
complaining about the opposite thing to what I'm apologizing for...  I  
think.

To be clear, what I was apologizing for is a tendency to respond in  
semantic-thread in a non-thread-structure-preserving way, which is the  
result of how I'm reading FoRK these days (i.e., batch and not  
necessarily through my mail client.)  In the case of what you're  
complaining about, I think ;-) --- rather tortured construction, there  
--- it would've been easy for me to resubject, but I'll simply pass  
the blame along to my precursors in said apparent-non-thread.

;-)

jb


On Jan 2, 2010, at 10:22 AM, Jeff Bone wrote:

>
> sdw says:
>
>> Are we going for a record for un-re-subjected subthreads? I count  
>> at least 4 distinct FoRKs, only one of which should still have the  
>> same subject.
>
>
> Dangers of living in digest / web archive scraping mode.
>
> StN improving somewhat, not enough quite yet to make me reconsider  
> going near-RT again.
>
> Sorry for those of you that actually use threads in your mail client  
> (which, of course, is wrong anyway. ;-)
>
>
> jb
>


From dme at dme.org  Sat Jan  2 08:50:26 2010
From: dme at dme.org (David Edmondson)
Date: Sat, 2 Jan 2010 16:50:26 +0000
Subject: [FoRK] Meta...
In-Reply-To: <7B7E5C5A-E395-485B-A2D0-694F22D031E0@place.org>
References: <D9B4BCE0-99D0-4789-9DF0-25EB29506E40@place.org>
	<7B7E5C5A-E395-485B-A2D0-694F22D031E0@place.org>
Message-ID: <F20B6D96-D4C1-484E-93F9-385C11F187D1@dme.org>

Idle curiosity...

On 2 Jan 2010, at 4:38pm, Jeff Bone wrote:
> To be clear, what I was apologizing for is a tendency to respond in semantic-thread in a non-thread-structure-preserving way, which is the result of how I'm reading FoRK these days (i.e., batch and not necessarily through my mail client.)  

Then how?



From sdw at lig.net  Sat Jan  2 09:42:07 2010
From: sdw at lig.net (Stephen D. Williams)
Date: Sat, 02 Jan 2010 09:42:07 -0800
Subject: [FoRK] Why doesn't iTunes...
In-Reply-To: <E8F1A25A-FEAE-4894-A9D7-F1B20F8CC787@hexten.net>
References: <2CFC3DE0-90DB-4EBC-B8B9-666A8758AAED@hexten.net>	<4B3F6C1D.8020605@lig.net>
	<E8F1A25A-FEAE-4894-A9D7-F1B20F8CC787@hexten.net>
Message-ID: <4B3F856F.8090507@lig.net>

Andy Armstrong wrote:
> On 2 Jan 2010, at 15:54, Stephen D. Williams wrote:
>   
>> Sounds interesting.  Couldn't you just sell access to a set of song links?
>>     
>
> Yeah, you could - but it lacks convenience. I'd like people's compilations to appear as first class citizens in the iTunes store - and I can't really see business reasons why that wouldn't be desirable.
>
>   
>>  Is there even a way to import/export a song list?
>>     
>
> Yeah, you can export a playlist - but that doesn't really help with buying the songs. Maybe a third party app could then buy the contents of the playlist for you - but that's both a can of worms in security / liability terms and an additional speed hump.
>
>   
>> How about for one of the open source alternatives?
>>     
>
>
> You'd need something that works as a client for a music store with a fairly extensive catalogue. Do such things exist? I guess there's Amazon...
>
>   
Any vendor that sells non-DRM content could be used as a wholesaler by 
another vendor, except for double sales tax, if that is being 
collected.  There's probably a reseller program for that too on Amazon.

sdw


From sdw at lig.net  Sat Jan  2 10:03:21 2010
From: sdw at lig.net (Stephen D. Williams)
Date: Sat, 02 Jan 2010 10:03:21 -0800
Subject: [FoRK] Meta...
In-Reply-To: <7B7E5C5A-E395-485B-A2D0-694F22D031E0@place.org>
References: <D9B4BCE0-99D0-4789-9DF0-25EB29506E40@place.org>
	<7B7E5C5A-E395-485B-A2D0-694F22D031E0@place.org>
Message-ID: <4B3F8A69.6080109@lig.net>

Jeff Bone wrote:
>
> Actually, failed to parse your complaint, Stephen, you're actually 
> complaining about the opposite thing to what I'm apologizing for...  I 
> think.
>
> To be clear, what I was apologizing for is a tendency to respond in 
> semantic-thread in a non-thread-structure-preserving way, which is the 
> result of how I'm reading FoRK these days (i.e., batch and not 
> necessarily through my mail client.)  In the case of what you're 
> complaining about, I think ;-) --- rather tortured construction, there 
> --- it would've been easy for me to resubject, but I'll simply pass 
> the blame along to my precursors in said apparent-non-thread.

With or without proper 'In-Reply-To:" and related headers, it is 
important to change the subject in a substantial conversation when the 
topic has changed in a divergent way.  This is especially true when 
there are two or more active threads.  This works nicely when you are 
reading in threading mode since a subtree will mainly hold the 
sub-conversation, marked with a different subject.  It is even more 
important when reading in temporal mode, which is what I tend to do if 
I'm free enough to keep up in real time.

I like the ", was: " resubjecting style to provide a link to the 
previous thread independent of the other headers.
A good email client should support threaded reading on both subject and 
other headers basis to be rebust.

sdw
>
> ;-)
>
> jb
>
>
> On Jan 2, 2010, at 10:22 AM, Jeff Bone wrote:
>
>>
>> sdw says:
>>
>>> Are we going for a record for un-re-subjected subthreads? I count at 
>>> least 4 distinct FoRKs, only one of which should still have the same 
>>> subject.
>>
>>
>> Dangers of living in digest / web archive scraping mode.
>>
>> StN improving somewhat, not enough quite yet to make me reconsider 
>> going near-RT again.
>>
>> Sorry for those of you that actually use threads in your mail client 
>> (which, of course, is wrong anyway. ;-)
>>
>>
>> jb
>>
>
> _______________________________________________
> FoRK mailing list
> http://xent.com/mailman/listinfo/fork

From whump at mac.com  Sat Jan  2 10:14:52 2010
From: whump at mac.com (Bill Humphries)
Date: Sat, 02 Jan 2010 10:14:52 -0800
Subject: [FoRK] Why doesn't iTunes...
In-Reply-To: <E8F1A25A-FEAE-4894-A9D7-F1B20F8CC787@hexten.net>
References: <2CFC3DE0-90DB-4EBC-B8B9-666A8758AAED@hexten.net>
	<4B3F6C1D.8020605@lig.net>
	<E8F1A25A-FEAE-4894-A9D7-F1B20F8CC787@hexten.net>
Message-ID: <32D9CAC9-11F0-4470-A09C-62B3A76AF302@mac.com>


On Jan 2, 2010, at 8:00 AM, Andy Armstrong wrote:

> On 2 Jan 2010, at 15:54, Stephen D. Williams wrote:
>> Sounds interesting.  Couldn't you just sell access to a set of song links?

http://www.apple.com/support/ilife/tutorials/itunes/it6-2.html

But you don't get a commission.

-- whump

From andy at hexten.net  Sat Jan  2 10:22:12 2010
From: andy at hexten.net (Andy Armstrong)
Date: Sat, 2 Jan 2010 18:22:12 +0000
Subject: [FoRK] Why doesn't iTunes...
In-Reply-To: <32D9CAC9-11F0-4470-A09C-62B3A76AF302@mac.com>
References: <2CFC3DE0-90DB-4EBC-B8B9-666A8758AAED@hexten.net>
	<4B3F6C1D.8020605@lig.net>
	<E8F1A25A-FEAE-4894-A9D7-F1B20F8CC787@hexten.net>
	<32D9CAC9-11F0-4470-A09C-62B3A76AF302@mac.com>
Message-ID: <999CDAEB-0BDA-4447-8C77-D5DE4199C252@hexten.net>

On 2 Jan 2010, at 18:14, Bill Humphries wrote:
>> On 2 Jan 2010, at 15:54, Stephen D. Williams wrote:
>>> Sounds interesting.  Couldn't you just sell access to a set of song links?
> 
> http://www.apple.com/support/ilife/tutorials/itunes/it6-2.html
> 
> But you don't get a commission.


Ah - who knew it was as easy as RTFM! :)

Thanks Bill. I'm not too bothered about the commission although I still think it'd make business sense for the music companies.

-- 
Andy Armstrong, Hexten





From jbone at place.org  Sat Jan  2 10:42:57 2010
From: jbone at place.org (Jeff Bone)
Date: Sat, 2 Jan 2010 12:42:57 -0600
Subject: [FoRK] Meta...
In-Reply-To: <7B7E5C5A-E395-485B-A2D0-694F22D031E0@place.org>
References: <D9B4BCE0-99D0-4789-9DF0-25EB29506E40@place.org>
	<7B7E5C5A-E395-485B-A2D0-694F22D031E0@place.org>
Message-ID: <D818B2EE-0E35-4CEF-AAAB-9AC7AD701FBF@place.org>


sdw says:

> With or without proper 'In-Reply-To:" and related headers, it is  
> important to change the subject in a substantial conversation when  
> the topic has changed in a divergent way

Completely agree.  Sadly, as you have clearly identified, this isn't  
how people generally converse in high-traffic mailing lists;  the 'In- 
Reply-To:' relation loses its value in proportion to how far you chase  
it transitively.  Conventions help, as noted.

Not an excuse at all, but merely an explanation of why I don't depend  
on or use threading views in my mail client, when I *am* using a mail  
client to read things.

Re:  David's question:  generally read through the list archive's  
pipermail web interface.  Writing occurs in the mail client, of  
course.  Sub-optimal, but the explanation for why would be too tedious  
to present here at the moment.

;-)

jb


From sean at conman.org  Sat Jan  2 13:52:52 2010
From: sean at conman.org (Sean Conner)
Date: Sat, 2 Jan 2010 16:52:52 -0500
Subject: [FoRK] Objectivists arguing Theology (was Re: At least you're not
	in Berkeley....)
In-Reply-To: <8C70CDF3-798D-443C-A863-7AEB435F8018@place.org>
References: <8C70CDF3-798D-443C-A863-7AEB435F8018@place.org>
Message-ID: <20100102215252.GA18115@brevard.conman.org>

It was thus said that the Great Jeff Bone once stated:
> 
> Summarizing this whole thread (or rather, more specifically, the  
> futures and markets parts of it...)
> 
> "In which a number of people who don't have the faintest clue what the  
> fuck they're talking about discourse at great length and with great  
> passion about fields in which they have no actual experience, drawing  
> woefully wrong conclusions from prima facie incorrect assumptions, to  
> no effect and with few exceptions."

  Reminds me of one of my favorite quotes:

	For reasons that escape me the objectivists on this group are less
	than willing to discuss or defend their ideas.  You and me
	discussing objectivism here is a little like a couple of pagans
	arguing Christian theology whist sitting in the pews of an otherwise
	vacant church.

(picked up that quote years and years ago in USENET when I was reading
alt.philosophy.objectivism trying to figure out what type of cult a few
friends fell into in college)

> Sadly, this greatly resembles the actual discussion among policy- 
> makers these days, who are *also* frequently much stronger on "theory"  
> than practice.

  They're in power, so they must know their stuff, right?

  -spc (Right?  Hello?  Hello?  Is this thing on?)


From sean at conman.org  Sat Jan  2 15:00:55 2010
From: sean at conman.org (Sean Conner)
Date: Sat, 2 Jan 2010 18:00:55 -0500
Subject: [FoRK] Google (was Re:  At least you're not in Berkeley....)
In-Reply-To: <4B3BD7E7.3020008@boxbe.com>
References: <571923.82930.qm@web33001.mail.mud.yahoo.com>
	<14d615330912291858g691615a2t292c40bd33c96c2a@mail.gmail.com>
	<20091230083657.GA24240@brevard.conman.org>
	<4B3BD7E7.3020008@boxbe.com>
Message-ID: <20100102230055.GD18115@brevard.conman.org>

It was thus said that the Great Gordon Mohr once stated:
> Sean Conner wrote:
> >  I never did see the appeal of Google stock, especially since a) they pay
> >no dividend, and b) they aren't voting stocks.  Okay, I mean, as an actual
> >investment and not on the "Greater Fool" theory of stocks.  It always 
> >seemed
> >to me a way for Google to say "FY" to Wall Street.
> 
> A stock with negligible voting rights or dividends does present problems.
> 
> But you could still figure some value from expected eventualities where 
> (a) they start paying dividends, because they have so much cash and 
> their markets are sufficiently slow-growth that even the 
> controlling-votes cadre would rather take cash out; (b) the 
> 10X-voting-rights shares convert or disperse in ownership when the 
> founders move on.

  That's a real long view there---Microsoft went public in 1986 and they
didn't start paying dividends until recently, so that was ... a bit over
twenty years?  Then again, Microsoft stock came with voting rights so it
wasn't quite as bad as Google stock.

  
> >  -spc (Then again, since they've gone public, they've gone downhill, which
> >	seems to be the fate of many a public company lately ... )
> 
> In what sense do you mean 'gone downhill'? It can't be financially; they 
> IPO'd at 85, closed the first day at 100, and today are at 622.

  Aside from the whole China thang [1] and the apparent hypocrisy of CEO
Eric Schmidt [2], Google's AdSense program has never been that transparent
[3] and just try getting hold of a human at Google for support [4] (granted,
they're huge and humans don't scale like their architecture, but still, they
have a serious image problem with support).  The majority of their products
(and they have a lot of products [5]) are in perpetual beta.  Also, they've
cut back perks for their employees [6].  There have also been issues with
Google News [7] (true or false, it's still an image problem).

  I've tried to present actual problems with Google, and leave out my ...
ill ease ... with the amount of information Google has massed (combine their
search technology with Gmail and Google Docs, and what's to stop an
unethical Google employee [8] from using such information for nefarious
things (like insider trading on an unrelated company)?  But that can't
happen, right? [9]).  For instance, go to Google Maps [10], find your
neighborhood.  Along the top right of the map you'll see some boxes:

	More	Map Satellite Terrain

  Select "More" then "Real Estate".  On the left you'll get some search
criteria you can filter on.  Select "Forclosure".  Pitty about Mr. MacGregor
down the street being in forclosure ... 

  -spc (Who can remember a time before Google ... and yes, it sucked)

[1]	http://websearch.about.com/od/focusongoogle/a/googlechina.htm
	http://blog.searchenginewatch.com/060125-072617
	http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Censorship_by_Google#China

[2]	http://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2009/12/google-ceo-eric-schmidt-dismisses-privacy
	http://blog.openitstrategies.com/2008/09/don-mess-with-eric.html


[3]	http://www.praxicom.com/2006/09/auditing_google.html
	http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/cyberlaw2005/CyberGroup/Jan_18#Google.27s_and_Yahoo.27s_Response_to_Click_Fraud_--_Our_Attempt_to_Answer_the_Question_as_to_Whether_OSPs_Alone_Can_Solve_This_Issue
	http://business.timesonline.co.uk/tol/business/markets/united_states/article703023.ece

	The last link is from 2006, so this shows that the issue has been
	ongoing for quite some time now.

[4]	http://dondodge.typepad.com/the_next_big_thing/2007/10/why-google-will.html
	http://www.semreportcard.com/how-to-contact-google-customer-service/
	http://news.cnet.com/8301-30684_3-10391073-265.html

[5]	http://www.usabilityviews.com/simply_google.htm

[6]	http://venturebeat.com/2008/07/05/googles-subsidized-child-day-care-not-as-good-as-it-used-to-be/
	http://www.businessinsider.com/2008/7/googler-parents-cry-rebel-as-google-blows-day-care
	http://news.cnet.com/8301-13577_3-10024551-36.html
	http://valleywag.gawker.com/5067504/financial-apocalypse-leads-google-to-lay-off-a-cafe

[7]	http://www.searchengineguide.com/jennifer-laycock/is-google-dropp.php
	http://newsbusters.org/node/5477

[8]	just humor me for a moment ... 

[9]	http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J._Edgar_Hoover

[10]	http://maps.google.com/

From sean at conman.org  Sat Jan  2 15:08:38 2010
From: sean at conman.org (Sean Conner)
Date: Sat, 2 Jan 2010 18:08:38 -0500
Subject: [FoRK] Google (was Re:  At least you're not in Berkeley....)
In-Reply-To: <20100102230055.GD18115@brevard.conman.org>
References: <571923.82930.qm@web33001.mail.mud.yahoo.com>
	<14d615330912291858g691615a2t292c40bd33c96c2a@mail.gmail.com>
	<20091230083657.GA24240@brevard.conman.org>
	<4B3BD7E7.3020008@boxbe.com>
	<20100102230055.GD18115@brevard.conman.org>
Message-ID: <20100102230838.GA3593@brevard.conman.org>


  Almost forgot the following---if you are into more of a conspriatorial
frame of mind, or just like reading mindless conspriacy rants, then check
out the following:

	http://www.google-watch.org/

  -spc (I find it amusing myself ... )


From sdw at lig.net  Sun Jan  3 13:34:00 2010
From: sdw at lig.net (Stephen D. Williams)
Date: Sun, 03 Jan 2010 13:34:00 -0800
Subject: [FoRK] 2000-2009: The Bubble Decade
Message-ID: <4B410D48.5090207@lig.net>

I think that's the name that will stick.

Internet bubble bursts in 2000/2001
The most bubble-headed politician/crony period in a long time
The Enron / California energy bubble
Housing bubble
Banking bubble
Wall street bubble
The Oil bubble

Even "Bubble 9" and "the Bubbles" flow well enough.

sdw
http://sdw.st/wp/world/commentary/2000-2009-the-bubble-decade



From geege4 at gmail.com  Sun Jan  3 17:18:01 2010
From: geege4 at gmail.com (geege schuman)
Date: Sun, 3 Jan 2010 20:18:01 -0500
Subject: [FoRK] My Mac Tablet (for sale, if you're interested)
In-Reply-To: <4B3F67E5.2080407@lig.net>
References: <BA70A1F1-B843-4186-80BE-B5AC0F17C480@place.org>
	<4B3F67E5.2080407@lig.net>
Message-ID: <493a95a01001031718m46249335y88f8f0559e7c9706@mail.gmail.com>

On Sat, Jan 2, 2010 at 10:36 AM, Stephen D. Williams <sdw at lig.net> wrote:

> Jeff Bone wrote:
>
>>
>> ...
>> jb
>>
>>
>> PS - as for my Air...  as mentioned, it's an original from the Air launch
>> in 2008.  Best computer I've ever owned, hands-down.  Had been hitting the
>> limit on the 64GB SSD for some time, rendering the whole thing pretty much a
>> PITA to use.  I'd been wanting to upgrade the Air to a higher-capacity SSD
>> for some time, but the MBA Rev A used (for whatever perverse reason) a PATA
>> ZIF interface with a non-standard cable, which made this somewhat tedious.
>>  I found an option --- a RunCore 128GB unit --- that was apparently made to
>> work after several months and reams of customer complaints in early-mid
>> 2008.  They finally got everything sorted out and I ordered one, just got it
>> yesterday and spent about 4 hours installing
>>
>
> I have the original MacBook Air with 64GB SSD also.  I would rather have
> the newer one, not only for the larger SSD but for hardware 3D also...
>  Since that's a key component of what I'm developing, it's a pain.  I
> suppose it makes a good worst case for that.  Plus, my daytime development
> now takes more than 2GB of RAM to even compile.  Not my code, Maven plus
> something crazy's going on.
>
> I tracked down one of those 128GB SSDs, but it's $420.  I think I'll put
> that toward a MacBook Pro I waiting to get.  I'm having a hard time deciding
> on whether to get the biggest one or not.  Crazy size, but I crave the
> resolution and the extra hour of battery life isn't bad either.  But
> probably not usable on a plane at all.
>
>
>
>  the thing.  The instructions that came with it were absolute crap, but
>> with some googling, some peering at rather mysterious pictures on Anandtech,
>> and so on I eventually got the thing installed and working.  Using it now,
>> in fact;  and it's better than perfect.  It more than doubled my available
>> storage;  it also increased disk performance (according to Xbench) by a
>> factor of at least 2 and as high as ~10 on some tests.  Score! So now my
>> nearly 2 year-old MacBook Air, which otherwise was nearing the end of its
>> normal lifetime, has probably two more years of life.  :-)  (I.e., now I can
>> wait for the MBA / tablet convertible w/ a terabyte SSD and multi-touch
>> input on the display.  In early 2012.  ;-)
>>
>> The whole experience of doing this upgrade, though, was a bit
>> nerve-racking.  The MBA design is tighter than a nervous lab-rat's ass, and
>> working with it is like doing brain surgery on said lab-rat with chopsticks,
>> while wearing mittens.  In a walk-in freezer.  With a gun to your head. ;-)
>>  I was pretty sure I'd bricked the whole thing multiple times.  Required
>> multiple rounds of dis- and reassembly.  Would've been nice if I'd put the
>> PATA-ZIF-ish cable in right-side up the first (or second, or...) time, DOH!
>>  ;-)
>>
>
> Jeff, don't you realize it's 2010?  Check the 2007 FoRK archives.

>
> _______________________________________________
> FoRK mailing list
> http://xent.com/mailman/listinfo/fork
>