The AI-generated cat pictures thread
12-03-2013, 12:25 PM
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12-04-2013, 09:16 AM
Boost Czar
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12-04-2013, 02:22 PM
Boost Pope
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I'm not sure if you're familiar with who Cliff Stoll is. He's the Berkeley astronomer-turned-security-guru who wrote "A Cuckoo's Egg" and sells Klein Bottles. A real mad scientist type, Stoll is the kind of person who is always making wild predictions about technology while at the same time seeming to be Luddite, and what's remarkable is that he tends to be right more often than not.
So, I think we can all agree that online databases have not replaced the newspaper. True, news is now more likely to be physically conveyed as state-changes on an LCD panel than on the back of a dead tree, but journalists, not machines, still research and write it. The only thing that's changed about "The Newspaper" is the paper part.
Will a CD-ROM (or any software package) ever take the place of a competent teacher? I doubt it. Having access to vast amounts of information at your fingertips doesn't teach you HOW to learn. If anything, having access to technology makes kids learn LESS, since the technology itself becomes a focus of attention, and skills such as arithmatic logic seem less important. (Fun fact: I actually used the Pythagorean theorem in the real world yesterday, when I needed to find the angle at which two walls intersected and yet all I had was a tape measure.)
Have computer networks changed the way government functions? I guess it's slightly easier to renew my car registration now, but that's about the extent of it.
And he's absolutely correct in how worthless the democratization of the Internet has been. I mean, think about Twitter. There are so many damned voices out there now that we probably listen less than we ever have.
Of course, he totally missed the ball on that last sentence. Which is ironic, since Amazon.com opened in the same year that article was published. (I got a free mouse pad from them which said "Outside of a dog, a book is man's best friend. Inside of a dog it's too dark to read." for being one of their first customer. The first book I bought from them was Hackers: Heroes of the Computer Revolution by Steven Levy.)
So, I think we can all agree that online databases have not replaced the newspaper. True, news is now more likely to be physically conveyed as state-changes on an LCD panel than on the back of a dead tree, but journalists, not machines, still research and write it. The only thing that's changed about "The Newspaper" is the paper part.
Will a CD-ROM (or any software package) ever take the place of a competent teacher? I doubt it. Having access to vast amounts of information at your fingertips doesn't teach you HOW to learn. If anything, having access to technology makes kids learn LESS, since the technology itself becomes a focus of attention, and skills such as arithmatic logic seem less important. (Fun fact: I actually used the Pythagorean theorem in the real world yesterday, when I needed to find the angle at which two walls intersected and yet all I had was a tape measure.)
Have computer networks changed the way government functions? I guess it's slightly easier to renew my car registration now, but that's about the extent of it.
And he's absolutely correct in how worthless the democratization of the Internet has been. I mean, think about Twitter. There are so many damned voices out there now that we probably listen less than we ever have.
Of course, he totally missed the ball on that last sentence. Which is ironic, since Amazon.com opened in the same year that article was published. (I got a free mouse pad from them which said "Outside of a dog, a book is man's best friend. Inside of a dog it's too dark to read." for being one of their first customer. The first book I bought from them was Hackers: Heroes of the Computer Revolution by Steven Levy.)
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12-04-2013, 03:03 PM
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It mostly got to me because it wasn't animated in the thumbnail, and I was curious as to what Mario could be doing with a blue sky background. When I clicked it and saw that, it caught me off guard.
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