Einstein quotes
for Akma:
Things should be made as simple as possible, but not any simpler.
For Dave:
The wireless telegraph is not difficult to understand. The ordinary telegraph is like a very long cat. You pull the tail in New York, and it meows in Los Angeles. The wireless is the same, only without the cat.
Friday, 24 May 2002
Thursday, 23 May 2002
Dave is trying to explain end-to-end for a putative intelligent senator
There is another way of looking at this that may appeal to regulators, which is a separation of powers issue.
Moving bits is (or should be) a commodity business, and thus should be consistently profitable for the right kind of company (after all, Walmart makes big bucks running a commodity business). The thing that made me uneasy about Netparadox was the bit that implied you can't make money with a well-designed network. It was a good soundbite, but wrong on a deeper level.
I think that is the wrong message to be sending. You can make money delivering a commodity product well. In fact, you can make more reliable money that way than running a 'content' business, which involves betting large sums on the fickle tastes of the public, then spending larger sums trying to persuade them that they really want to watch your 'content', not someone else's.
If someone owns both businesses, they will be tempted to cheat by making the bit-moving business favour their offerings over other people's. In the long run, this is foolish, as they will undermine the value proposition of the commodity 'moving bits' business, and undermine the real competitiveness of the content
The temptation is, as Dave say, inevitable, but it should be resisted as it will destroy the ongoing low risk business with a steady return in favour of supposed short term gains from the high risk business. (Lessig and Winer call this 'strategy tax').
If there is competition in provision, this will work itself out, as the companies that make this kind of mistake will be dumped in favour of smarter ones.
The problem is when there aren't available alternatives because of a regulatory monopoly (only one local phone co; only one cable co). This is where regulation to ensure separation of powers comes in.
Lessig argues convincingly that it was this kind of regulation to ensure open access to the phone network that allowed the net to grow in the first place:
But there is one part of the Internet where end-to-end is more than just a norm. Here the principle has the force of law, and the network owner cannot favor one kind of content over another or prefer one form of service over another. Instead the network owner must keep its network open for any application or use the customers might demand. Competitors must be allowed to interconnect; consumers must be allowed to try new uses. In this part of the Internet, "open access" is the rule.
This part of the Internet is--ironically enough--the telephone network, where because of increasing regulation imposed by the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals in the 1970s--leading to a breakup of AT&T by the Justice Department in 1984 and culminating with the Telecommunications Act of 1996--the old telephone network has been replaced with a new one over which the owner has very little control. Instead, the FCC spends an extraordinary amount of effort making sure the telephone lines remain open to innovators and consumers on terms analogous to the terms required by an end-to-end principle: nondiscrimination and a right to access.
The FCC is convinced that this regulatory burden is severe and costly to maintain. And no doubt it is costly. But the question is not simply how much the regulation costs; it is also about its benefit. What is the benefit of effectively enforcing end-to-end on the telephone system?
In my view, the benefit has been the Internet. Though the Internet proper was initially a network among universities, had it not been for the ability of ordinary consumers to connect to the Internet, that network would have gone nowhere. (Universities are fun, but they aren't enough to fuel commercial revolutions.) Ordinary consumers connected to the Net across phone lines. And had it not been for the open-access rules that the government imposed upon telephones, the telephone companies would most likely have behaved just as every network owner in history has behaved--to control access and use architecture to minimize competition. If it hadn't been as cheap to dial a local bulletin-board system (BBS) as it was to dial a local friend; had the Baby Bells kept the power to force customers to a Baby Bell ISP; had the government not insisted that competitors be connected and had it not policed pricing to ensure nondiscrimination--had it not, in short, used the power of law to force a competitive neutrality onto the telephone system, the telephone system would not have inspired the extraordinary innovation that it did.
By keeping the network neutral, by keeping it open to innovation, the FCC has made possible the extraordinary innovation that the Internet has produced. Open access was the rule; a regulation produced that rule.
Lots more detail on this in Lessig's book The Future of Ideas
There is another way of looking at this that may appeal to regulators, which is a separation of powers issue.
Moving bits is (or should be) a commodity business, and thus should be consistently profitable for the right kind of company (after all, Walmart makes big bucks running a commodity business). The thing that made me uneasy about Netparadox was the bit that implied you can't make money with a well-designed network. It was a good soundbite, but wrong on a deeper level.
I think that is the wrong message to be sending. You can make money delivering a commodity product well. In fact, you can make more reliable money that way than running a 'content' business, which involves betting large sums on the fickle tastes of the public, then spending larger sums trying to persuade them that they really want to watch your 'content', not someone else's.
If someone owns both businesses, they will be tempted to cheat by making the bit-moving business favour their offerings over other people's. In the long run, this is foolish, as they will undermine the value proposition of the commodity 'moving bits' business, and undermine the real competitiveness of the content
The temptation is, as Dave say, inevitable, but it should be resisted as it will destroy the ongoing low risk business with a steady return in favour of supposed short term gains from the high risk business. (Lessig and Winer call this 'strategy tax').
If there is competition in provision, this will work itself out, as the companies that make this kind of mistake will be dumped in favour of smarter ones.
The problem is when there aren't available alternatives because of a regulatory monopoly (only one local phone co; only one cable co). This is where regulation to ensure separation of powers comes in.
Lessig argues convincingly that it was this kind of regulation to ensure open access to the phone network that allowed the net to grow in the first place:
But there is one part of the Internet where end-to-end is more than just a norm. Here the principle has the force of law, and the network owner cannot favor one kind of content over another or prefer one form of service over another. Instead the network owner must keep its network open for any application or use the customers might demand. Competitors must be allowed to interconnect; consumers must be allowed to try new uses. In this part of the Internet, "open access" is the rule.
This part of the Internet is--ironically enough--the telephone network, where because of increasing regulation imposed by the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals in the 1970s--leading to a breakup of AT&T by the Justice Department in 1984 and culminating with the Telecommunications Act of 1996--the old telephone network has been replaced with a new one over which the owner has very little control. Instead, the FCC spends an extraordinary amount of effort making sure the telephone lines remain open to innovators and consumers on terms analogous to the terms required by an end-to-end principle: nondiscrimination and a right to access.
The FCC is convinced that this regulatory burden is severe and costly to maintain. And no doubt it is costly. But the question is not simply how much the regulation costs; it is also about its benefit. What is the benefit of effectively enforcing end-to-end on the telephone system?
In my view, the benefit has been the Internet. Though the Internet proper was initially a network among universities, had it not been for the ability of ordinary consumers to connect to the Internet, that network would have gone nowhere. (Universities are fun, but they aren't enough to fuel commercial revolutions.) Ordinary consumers connected to the Net across phone lines. And had it not been for the open-access rules that the government imposed upon telephones, the telephone companies would most likely have behaved just as every network owner in history has behaved--to control access and use architecture to minimize competition. If it hadn't been as cheap to dial a local bulletin-board system (BBS) as it was to dial a local friend; had the Baby Bells kept the power to force customers to a Baby Bell ISP; had the government not insisted that competitors be connected and had it not policed pricing to ensure nondiscrimination--had it not, in short, used the power of law to force a competitive neutrality onto the telephone system, the telephone system would not have inspired the extraordinary innovation that it did.
By keeping the network neutral, by keeping it open to innovation, the FCC has made possible the extraordinary innovation that the Internet has produced. Open access was the rule; a regulation produced that rule.
Lots more detail on this in Lessig's book The Future of Ideas
Tuesday, 21 May 2002
Dave is live-blogging Connectivity 2002
One thing they are talking about is email & privacy.
Here's my 3 stage plan for the elimination of spam through email user experience improvement:
1. Integrate PGP signing and encryption so that they happen automatically, and are on by default. Adopt one of the various proposals for Key exchange through email interaction too. Yes, this may be less than perfectly secure but its a damn sight better than spoofable headers; hard core crypto heads can validate keys through side channels and mark them that way in address book (see 3 below).
2. Provide subtle UI cueing for different priorities - Bigger bolder type for high priorities, smaller lighter type for low priorities. Think how a print Newspaper uses type size to convey story importance, but get a smart visual designer to come up with the actual mappings. Have indicators for verified signed and encrypted mails.
3. Create a fuzzy-logic prioritization engine, that takes into account lots of info about the mail (Think trust metrics). Key input values are:
-Who is this from? (verified signed mail > someone you've sent mail to > someone in address book > random user)
Ideally, have a trust hierarchy in the address book - like a fuzzy kill file that can reward as well as punish
-Who is this to? (uses my public key > addressed just to me > me as part of CC list > mailing list address)
-Does it contain money? (Paypal emails etc).
-Does it match keyword/semantic signatures I like or dislike (eg I would like 'QuickTime' and dislike 'millions of email addresses')
-Has it been sitting in my inbox a while and I still haven't read it?
-etc.
The point of this is that each of these stages is a fluid extension of existing UI and features that is useful in itself, and capable of further refinement, but acting in concert they provide a way for email to hold back the tragedy of the commons that spam represents.
One thing they are talking about is email & privacy.
Here's my 3 stage plan for the elimination of spam through email user experience improvement:
1. Integrate PGP signing and encryption so that they happen automatically, and are on by default. Adopt one of the various proposals for Key exchange through email interaction too. Yes, this may be less than perfectly secure but its a damn sight better than spoofable headers; hard core crypto heads can validate keys through side channels and mark them that way in address book (see 3 below).
2. Provide subtle UI cueing for different priorities - Bigger bolder type for high priorities, smaller lighter type for low priorities. Think how a print Newspaper uses type size to convey story importance, but get a smart visual designer to come up with the actual mappings. Have indicators for verified signed and encrypted mails.
3. Create a fuzzy-logic prioritization engine, that takes into account lots of info about the mail (Think trust metrics). Key input values are:
-Who is this from? (verified signed mail > someone you've sent mail to > someone in address book > random user)
Ideally, have a trust hierarchy in the address book - like a fuzzy kill file that can reward as well as punish
-Who is this to? (uses my public key > addressed just to me > me as part of CC list > mailing list address)
-Does it contain money? (Paypal emails etc).
-Does it match keyword/semantic signatures I like or dislike (eg I would like 'QuickTime' and dislike 'millions of email addresses')
-Has it been sitting in my inbox a while and I still haven't read it?
-etc.
The point of this is that each of these stages is a fluid extension of existing UI and features that is useful in itself, and capable of further refinement, but acting in concert they provide a way for email to hold back the tragedy of the commons that spam represents.
Sunday, 19 May 2002
Akma, who was kind enough recently to confirm my appointment as Dean of Memetic Engineering and Reader of Thoughts at the University of Blogaria, has been thinking about authenticity, complexity and binary thought (us v. them).
Symmetrically, I attended church today, to see some friends confirmed, and also saw the priest officially installed.
I was struck by the formal and contractual sounding nature of the installation, (it was very like installing software - a licence we could reject as parishioners, but then have no priest) and also by the 'binary' (in AKMA's terms) discussion of Christian doctrine as part of the confirmation - the idea that we have a common heritage in the Book of Common Prayer, and that one might suffer for being identified as a Christian. I know persecution casts a long shadow, but the small Anglican congregation gathered in the hills above Silicon Valley seems very far from Rome.
On a related note, I just ordered Stephen Wolfram's A New Kind of Science, which claims that complexity is explicable (or at least able to be generated) from simple rules.
I'm looking forward to reading this tome, and I will let Akma know if I recommend its memes. I do agree that appreciating compexity and eschewing a zero-sum viewpoint is important, but to assert that complex outcomes require complex explanations (which Akma does not, directly) is another common logical flaw. Occam's razor needs to be kept sharp too.
Symmetrically, I attended church today, to see some friends confirmed, and also saw the priest officially installed.
I was struck by the formal and contractual sounding nature of the installation, (it was very like installing software - a licence we could reject as parishioners, but then have no priest) and also by the 'binary' (in AKMA's terms) discussion of Christian doctrine as part of the confirmation - the idea that we have a common heritage in the Book of Common Prayer, and that one might suffer for being identified as a Christian. I know persecution casts a long shadow, but the small Anglican congregation gathered in the hills above Silicon Valley seems very far from Rome.
On a related note, I just ordered Stephen Wolfram's A New Kind of Science, which claims that complexity is explicable (or at least able to be generated) from simple rules.
I'm looking forward to reading this tome, and I will let Akma know if I recommend its memes. I do agree that appreciating compexity and eschewing a zero-sum viewpoint is important, but to assert that complex outcomes require complex explanations (which Akma does not, directly) is another common logical flaw. Occam's razor needs to be kept sharp too.
If you're at all interested in the CBTPA (Hollywood's bill to outlaw computers) read LawMeme's clear dicussion of the issues. Even if you accept the bogus claims at face value, it still doesn't make sense.
Friday, 17 May 2002
"How does the computer know so much?" Andrew asked tonight.
"It doesn't - people know things, and write them on web pages." I replied.
So Andrew got his own weblog tonight. Read more there.
"It doesn't - people know things, and write them on web pages." I replied.
So Andrew got his own weblog tonight. Read more there.
Thursday, 16 May 2002
Eisnerwatch
Fortune has a shallow article on the content clone wars, full of muddy zero-sum thinking.
Michael Eisner loves his iPod. "It's one of the most fabulous things I've seen in the past couple of years," he says. Eisner has no problem with the technology itself, but he deplores the fact that people are using it to avoid paying for Disney products, in effect stealing from the company. "Nothing about technology is threatening or upsetting or negative," he insists. "This is simply about conscious behavior, about right and wrong, and I just don't understand the enormous tidal wave of rhetoric that this issue has created from the so-called technology side. Shakespeare would find it interesting."
Rhetoric from the technology side? Scroll down a bit for the choice rhetoric from the copyright horders...
Anyway, Dan says;
Articles like this are infuriating. They cast the debate in binary terms, industry versus industry, as if that's really the issue. It isn't.
Guess who's missing from the story, and all too often from the debate? That's right, the customers. You. Me.
Not only the customers, but also the creators.
Dave says it makes Jobs look clueless, but I disagree. Jobs is quoted as saying:
"To say this intractable technology problem is going to be solved by something in the back pockets of technology companies, and they are not sharing it, is unbelievable. This is an important issue, and it's not going to be solved by threatening rhetoric. It's going to be solved by a computer scientist who has an incredibly original idea. We just don't know who or when."
Which Dave presumably takes to mean that Jobs believes that the intractable problem of selective copy prevention can be solved. I think he means that the meta-problem of the distribution of creative works and paying their creators can be solved.
Fortune has a shallow article on the content clone wars, full of muddy zero-sum thinking.
Michael Eisner loves his iPod. "It's one of the most fabulous things I've seen in the past couple of years," he says. Eisner has no problem with the technology itself, but he deplores the fact that people are using it to avoid paying for Disney products, in effect stealing from the company. "Nothing about technology is threatening or upsetting or negative," he insists. "This is simply about conscious behavior, about right and wrong, and I just don't understand the enormous tidal wave of rhetoric that this issue has created from the so-called technology side. Shakespeare would find it interesting."
Rhetoric from the technology side? Scroll down a bit for the choice rhetoric from the copyright horders...
Anyway, Dan says;
Articles like this are infuriating. They cast the debate in binary terms, industry versus industry, as if that's really the issue. It isn't.
Guess who's missing from the story, and all too often from the debate? That's right, the customers. You. Me.
Not only the customers, but also the creators.
Dave says it makes Jobs look clueless, but I disagree. Jobs is quoted as saying:
"To say this intractable technology problem is going to be solved by something in the back pockets of technology companies, and they are not sharing it, is unbelievable. This is an important issue, and it's not going to be solved by threatening rhetoric. It's going to be solved by a computer scientist who has an incredibly original idea. We just don't know who or when."
Which Dave presumably takes to mean that Jobs believes that the intractable problem of selective copy prevention can be solved. I think he means that the meta-problem of the distribution of creative works and paying their creators can be solved.
Creative Commons launched today, and Doc is blogging the launch presentation.
The basic idea is to make it easy to put works into the public domain, or disclaim copyright protection for some uses. This is useful, but it isn't really a solution to the growing chasm between the ease of creating and distributing digital creative works, and the difficulty of paying the creators for them.
It is a piece of the puzzle though, and very welcome. Well done Larry et al.
The basic idea is to make it easy to put works into the public domain, or disclaim copyright protection for some uses. This is useful, but it isn't really a solution to the growing chasm between the ease of creating and distributing digital creative works, and the difficulty of paying the creators for them.
It is a piece of the puzzle though, and very welcome. Well done Larry et al.
Tuesday, 14 May 2002
Felt the earth move tonight
Magnitude 5.2 in Gilroy. Shook the firepace here, and we took the boys outside. Nothing damaged though.
Magnitude 5.2 in Gilroy. Shook the firepace here, and we took the boys outside. Nothing damaged though.
Monday, 13 May 2002
Dave's latest JOHO is out.
In the email section he somehow repeats the original version of a little back and forth we had on my sadly-neglected Nonzero blog, implying I retracted it, when in fact we both forgot which blog it was on. Dave kindly corrected this in his blog at the time
Anyway, the point I was failing to make well by exaggerating and parodying was that Dave's orginal 'Web as Utopia' piece makes sense for those of us who are familiar with the web and have fond our place in it, but confuses those for whom it is an alien experience.
I know Dave doesn't really think that the web is 'a transcendent Platonic ideal of Socratic discourse'; I was exaggerating to make the point that we find online what we go looking for, and the web we see is a reflection of ourselves individually as well as collectively.
With 2 billion pages and counting, we can never see it all, and when we venture outside the well trodden paths of the personal web we know, we are more likely to make mistakes in our maps, and come back with 'here be dragons' written across entire continents and tales of men with no heads.
I think this effect, rather than malice or wilful misrepresentation is what is behind such things as journalists' clueless articles on weblogs or congressman fulminating against the net consisting mostly of porn and piracy.
This is part of what I got from reading SPLJ, and I'm glad I provoked Dave into such a clearly expressed retort about connection.
And talking of connecting, try out the Amazon connection browser that (appropriately enough) defaults to starting with SPLJ.
Just to make sure I don't lose this version, I'm 'syndicating' it to the Small Pieces Loosely Joined blog and nonzero too.
In the email section he somehow repeats the original version of a little back and forth we had on my sadly-neglected Nonzero blog, implying I retracted it, when in fact we both forgot which blog it was on. Dave kindly corrected this in his blog at the time
Anyway, the point I was failing to make well by exaggerating and parodying was that Dave's orginal 'Web as Utopia' piece makes sense for those of us who are familiar with the web and have fond our place in it, but confuses those for whom it is an alien experience.
I know Dave doesn't really think that the web is 'a transcendent Platonic ideal of Socratic discourse'; I was exaggerating to make the point that we find online what we go looking for, and the web we see is a reflection of ourselves individually as well as collectively.
With 2 billion pages and counting, we can never see it all, and when we venture outside the well trodden paths of the personal web we know, we are more likely to make mistakes in our maps, and come back with 'here be dragons' written across entire continents and tales of men with no heads.
I think this effect, rather than malice or wilful misrepresentation is what is behind such things as journalists' clueless articles on weblogs or congressman fulminating against the net consisting mostly of porn and piracy.
This is part of what I got from reading SPLJ, and I'm glad I provoked Dave into such a clearly expressed retort about connection.
And talking of connecting, try out the Amazon connection browser that (appropriately enough) defaults to starting with SPLJ.
Just to make sure I don't lose this version, I'm 'syndicating' it to the Small Pieces Loosely Joined blog and nonzero too.
John Glimore explains the problem with Intel's appeasement
Intel builds machines that process data. "Content" is just data.
Every piece of data that an Intel processor or networking component
handles is copyrighted by somebody, under the Berne Convention. It's
all "content". You could talk about "protecting data" but people
would realize that preventing it from being copied does not "protect"
their data. Frequently you NEED to copy your data -- e.g. onto a
backup tape -- to protect it. So instead you use this made-up word
"content". Since nobody knows a definition for "content", you can say
the most outrageous things about it and get away with it.
Intel's chips have no way to tell what permission that individual chip
owner has under the copyright law, for many reasons. (The laws
change, copyrights expire, individuals or companies get more rights
than the general public does because they signed licenses, there are
things that everyone has the legal right to do with data whether or
not it is copyrighted, etc etc etc.)
If Intel really thought that there was a "need to protect content", it
would have built features into its chips to make sure that none of
Intel's OWN chip designs, hardware designs, software, documents, trade
secrets, and other intellectual property could ever be stolen or
copied using Intel equipment. That's Intel's first and foremost
interest in intellectual property protection -- but it has expended
zero effort toward "fixing" its chips to provide technical barriers
against such unlawful copying. Therefore I discount the claim that
Intel sees a "need to protect content".
What Intel is doing is a cynical scheme to buy off an oligopoly.
Also, Intel has a vested interest in people buying new hardware, as that is what they sell. They have done very well for decades by making the stuff faster and better so people want to upgrade.They should stick to this, instead of requiring an upgrade to get a machine that plays what it should. This is likely to backfire hard, as peoepl wil prefer the older unrestricted hardware over the new.
Intel builds machines that process data. "Content" is just data.
Every piece of data that an Intel processor or networking component
handles is copyrighted by somebody, under the Berne Convention. It's
all "content". You could talk about "protecting data" but people
would realize that preventing it from being copied does not "protect"
their data. Frequently you NEED to copy your data -- e.g. onto a
backup tape -- to protect it. So instead you use this made-up word
"content". Since nobody knows a definition for "content", you can say
the most outrageous things about it and get away with it.
Intel's chips have no way to tell what permission that individual chip
owner has under the copyright law, for many reasons. (The laws
change, copyrights expire, individuals or companies get more rights
than the general public does because they signed licenses, there are
things that everyone has the legal right to do with data whether or
not it is copyrighted, etc etc etc.)
If Intel really thought that there was a "need to protect content", it
would have built features into its chips to make sure that none of
Intel's OWN chip designs, hardware designs, software, documents, trade
secrets, and other intellectual property could ever be stolen or
copied using Intel equipment. That's Intel's first and foremost
interest in intellectual property protection -- but it has expended
zero effort toward "fixing" its chips to provide technical barriers
against such unlawful copying. Therefore I discount the claim that
Intel sees a "need to protect content".
What Intel is doing is a cynical scheme to buy off an oligopoly.
Also, Intel has a vested interest in people buying new hardware, as that is what they sell. They have done very well for decades by making the stuff faster and better so people want to upgrade.They should stick to this, instead of requiring an upgrade to get a machine that plays what it should. This is likely to backfire hard, as peoepl wil prefer the older unrestricted hardware over the new.
Sunday, 12 May 2002
Book people
AKMA and Dorothea have been discussing 'Book People' - I am certainly one (why else would I be writing this at half-past one on a Saturday night?).
It is certainly hereditary. (My father extended our house when my youngest sister was born. He added a small playroom, a small bedroom for my middle sister, and a large room lined with book-cases and a desk for him to work in. Since have now left home, the other 2 rooms are full of books as is the more recent loft conversion, as is his offfice about a mile away).
Here's another one - Book people would rather spend an hour on public transport (where they can read) than 20 minutes driving.
Anyway, I recently encountered The Folio Society - a company who does understand 'Book people', and they have successfully tempted me to sign up...
It is certainly hereditary. (My father extended our house when my youngest sister was born. He added a small playroom, a small bedroom for my middle sister, and a large room lined with book-cases and a desk for him to work in. Since have now left home, the other 2 rooms are full of books as is the more recent loft conversion, as is his offfice about a mile away).
Here's another one - Book people would rather spend an hour on public transport (where they can read) than 20 minutes driving.
Anyway, I recently encountered The Folio Society - a company who does understand 'Book people', and they have successfully tempted me to sign up...
Teaching children to program
Doc pointed me at David Scott Williams' DustyScript idea.
I sent him a brief email saying I thought it was missing the point, and suggesting existing software tools, but made a hash of describing the point, so I'll try again here.
Being a good programmer is not about the language you use, it is about the way you think, and the way you approach problems. You need to be able to keep high-level and low level goals in mind at once, to analyse and model situations, to express the model in rules, and to adapt the rules to new situations. Its perfectly possibel to write good clear code in almost any language, just as you can write bad, unclear code in any language or even 4 at once
Young children are fantastically good at learning languages by example, but often not good at predicate logic or deductive reasoning, which takes a lot of training. (As an aside, the book Reading Reflex applies this insight to teaching reading - instead of teaching deductive rules parrot fashion, it groups different representations of the same sound and gets the children to work through them until they derive an unconscious model that way).
The best 'programming' exercise with small children is the 'I am a robot' game. You play their robot slave, and do what you are told, but very literally, and in small stages, with 'error messages' returned in a robot voice. Just getting you to walk from the sofa to the bedroom can take ages and they love it. They naturally want to be the simple-minded robot too (just make sure they don't get too attached to it, or they may end up working in telephone support).
I've seen a huge amount of 'educational' software - I used to work in the CD-ROM business, and I buy up remaindered CD's from Marshalls for my 2 boys and watch how they use them. Most of them are dross, with the same few ideas (Pelmanism, missing words etc.) recycled with a different character or brand attached. Some have genuine insight, and I can see them learning to reason using them. Here are a selection:
Logical Journey of the Zoombinis is a wonderful introduction to deductive logic through a compelling game. It was designed with this in mind and my boys have been playing this since they were 3, and are still enjoying it now at 5 and 7 (as do I).
The Pajama Sam series of adventures from Humongous are good at teaching the global/local focus, but one that is great fun and teaches valuable debugging skills is Pajama Sam's SockWorks which features a long series of machines that have socks in them that you have to get into the right coloured baskets. As you can also build your own puzzles, the idea of solvable and unsolvable problems naturally comes up.
Zap! is another great game that teaches by stealth. You have to help 3 wisecracking cartoon charcters to fix their electrical, optical and audio-visual gadgets to get their show on the road. It manages to include a compelte circuit simulator, an optical workbench simulator and sound environment simulator, and still be lots of fun for Kindergarten children.
To teach programming concepts without writing textual code, Cocoa is perfect (if you have a Mac). It is a tool that enables you to create 2d video games by drawing the characters and defining what happens when they encounter each other by example. Andrew has made about 65 games with this, some original, some homages to TV programs or his brother's films.
Finally, if you want a comprehensible textual language, use Runtime Revolution, whose language Transcript is based on the old Apple HyperCard language, and as such has completely human-readable programs. This is what I plan to get Andrew into next.
I sent him a brief email saying I thought it was missing the point, and suggesting existing software tools, but made a hash of describing the point, so I'll try again here.
Being a good programmer is not about the language you use, it is about the way you think, and the way you approach problems. You need to be able to keep high-level and low level goals in mind at once, to analyse and model situations, to express the model in rules, and to adapt the rules to new situations. Its perfectly possibel to write good clear code in almost any language, just as you can write bad, unclear code in any language or even 4 at once
Young children are fantastically good at learning languages by example, but often not good at predicate logic or deductive reasoning, which takes a lot of training. (As an aside, the book Reading Reflex applies this insight to teaching reading - instead of teaching deductive rules parrot fashion, it groups different representations of the same sound and gets the children to work through them until they derive an unconscious model that way).
The best 'programming' exercise with small children is the 'I am a robot' game. You play their robot slave, and do what you are told, but very literally, and in small stages, with 'error messages' returned in a robot voice. Just getting you to walk from the sofa to the bedroom can take ages and they love it. They naturally want to be the simple-minded robot too (just make sure they don't get too attached to it, or they may end up working in telephone support).
I've seen a huge amount of 'educational' software - I used to work in the CD-ROM business, and I buy up remaindered CD's from Marshalls for my 2 boys and watch how they use them. Most of them are dross, with the same few ideas (Pelmanism, missing words etc.) recycled with a different character or brand attached. Some have genuine insight, and I can see them learning to reason using them. Here are a selection:
Logical Journey of the Zoombinis is a wonderful introduction to deductive logic through a compelling game. It was designed with this in mind and my boys have been playing this since they were 3, and are still enjoying it now at 5 and 7 (as do I).
The Pajama Sam series of adventures from Humongous are good at teaching the global/local focus, but one that is great fun and teaches valuable debugging skills is Pajama Sam's SockWorks which features a long series of machines that have socks in them that you have to get into the right coloured baskets. As you can also build your own puzzles, the idea of solvable and unsolvable problems naturally comes up.
Zap! is another great game that teaches by stealth. You have to help 3 wisecracking cartoon charcters to fix their electrical, optical and audio-visual gadgets to get their show on the road. It manages to include a compelte circuit simulator, an optical workbench simulator and sound environment simulator, and still be lots of fun for Kindergarten children.
To teach programming concepts without writing textual code, Cocoa is perfect (if you have a Mac). It is a tool that enables you to create 2d video games by drawing the characters and defining what happens when they encounter each other by example. Andrew has made about 65 games with this, some original, some homages to TV programs or his brother's films.
Finally, if you want a comprehensible textual language, use Runtime Revolution, whose language Transcript is based on the old Apple HyperCard language, and as such has completely human-readable programs. This is what I plan to get Andrew into next.
Friday, 3 May 2002
Study says Internet music sharing helps, does not hurt industry - [04/05/2002] - Hindustantimes.com
Study says Internet music sharing helps, does not hurt industry - [04/05/2002] - Hindustantimes.com
Last month, the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry said worldwide sales of albums fell last year for the first time since CDs were introduced into shops in the early 1980s, and blamed illegal piracy for the decline.
The Jupiter study found that while Internet file-swapping may deter some purchases, on balance the effect is not damaging to the industry.
"File sharing has a polarizing effect on music spending, spurring increases among some users and decreases among others," said the report by Jupiter analyst Aram Sinnreich.
"However, the boost outweighs the bust. Experienced file sharers were 75 percent more likely than the average online music fan to have increased their music spending levels."
Wilco turned up very high in the charts after making their album available online.
Now I want a survey about the effect of 'protected' CDs on sales.
Last month, the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry said worldwide sales of albums fell last year for the first time since CDs were introduced into shops in the early 1980s, and blamed illegal piracy for the decline.
The Jupiter study found that while Internet file-swapping may deter some purchases, on balance the effect is not damaging to the industry.
"File sharing has a polarizing effect on music spending, spurring increases among some users and decreases among others," said the report by Jupiter analyst Aram Sinnreich.
"However, the boost outweighs the bust. Experienced file sharers were 75 percent more likely than the average online music fan to have increased their music spending levels."
Wilco turned up very high in the charts after making their album available online.
Now I want a survey about the effect of 'protected' CDs on sales.
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