I went to the University of Illinois in the 80’s, I’d heard of Plato, but didn’t get to experience it. That said I had gone to a community college my first two years (Blackhawk College in Moline) and remember a multimedia learning experience involved slides, audio, and text input that really seemed to accelerate my learning on some writing fundamentals that may not have been up to snuff after high school. I remember thinking this is the way education should be. That experience didn’t linger however and it was back to a slog of just regular book learning.

I have thought on this over an over the last few decades. I took the huge Stanford AI course by Sebastian Thrun and Peter Norvig. I did well, but it was a disappointment in presentation and did not feel to be the accelerated learning sensation I’d had all those years ago at Blackhawk.

Why are we re-writing Calculus books over and over? Why isn’t there some insanely great multimedia interactive national curriculum for this sort of stuff. Why when we are busing kids around aren’t they on tablets watching lectures and doing interactive lessons?

I have seen the argument over and over that kids need individualized attention by teachers to do well, but I fail to understand why all the drudge assignment work and pre-scripted presentations have to be created and done by those same teachers. Why aren’t the teachers more like facilitators helping the kids to navigate and understand the material as created and presented by the truly best presenters online?

We frequently find mistakes in the material our child brings home that the teachers have prepared. We send it back with corrections explained to the teachers, but why should I have to proof read the teacher’s material? And our local elementary school is supposedly among the best here in Maryland. I can only imagine how abysmal the homework assignments are at poorer schools. Again, why are the teachers creating the homework assignments? I understand tailoring the explanations to the students as they struggle to master something, I don’t understand why the bulk of of assignments have to be custom created by the teachers, especially when they are going to flub it so often.

My wife and I spend a great deal of time educating our daughter, I feel it is almost home schooling and she gets very little from school itself. While she is an straight A student and we are proud, I am also angry we have to invest so much time and energy to teach her what she should be getting in school. Yes our daughter absolutely wants harder assignments and material in school, but the teachers hold back students like our daughter to keep the material at a level the bulk of the class can keep up with.

I’m not really a gamer, but while game review embargoes may be bad, how-about you don’t rush out on launch day to get it.

One of the highest correlated factors to success as an adult is delayed gratification as a kid. How about we all slow down and not have to be first. The game will still be available in a week and you’ll know if it is teh luz or not.

And if a preschooler uses a calculator at home, we don't threaten them and tell them to turn themselves in.

You can't control how assignments are done outside of class, you have to adapt your testing regimen for the modern age.

Ahhh, the wonderful future were societal problems are solved with technology. Fast forward ten years and the system is being enhanced to immobilize the shooter or tranq them in some fashion – works so well it gets rolled out to every store and fast food joint. Pretty soon everyone everywhere is constantly monitored for signs of aberrant behavior and an automated response ready to be applied. The future will be wonderful.

Duke seems to be in the wrong here. It is to hard to decide exactly what is research and copying in these cases. This isn't just some answer key that was mailed to some inner circle of conspirators. If Duke worries about how the internet will be used in finding solutions, then they need tougher in class testing procedures to show people have mastered the skill set they say they have or the University wants them to have.

In a way, using the internet to get the answer is the way it works in IT these days. I routinely get my solutions for problems at work by going to the internet – I don't memorize every command and algorithm. These kids aren't cheating, they're doing it the current/modern way.

I don't think these kids expected to be involved in The Prisoner's Dilemma, then again, maybe this is some meta-programming test for an optimal solution.

Many/most posts on this subject are on how terrible a deal this is for America and China getting off Scott free.

Or on the other hand, China's emissions per citizen is much lower than America's. So basically America can only agree to cut emissions if our historic advantage is preserved when negotiating with other countries. We got to polluted at much higher levels for decades, but now that emerging economies are polluting as much or more, well all that s**t has to come to a stop.

If America wants the world to have a better environment then it needs to lead by example – not demand we get the best deal. China is developing renewables at a much faster clip than America, but it still has a lot of ground to catch up on a per-citizen basis in economics. It is a foregone conclusion that China will pollute more than America in the short run while it catches up economically. To expect them to stay behind because we don't like it, even though we basically did the same or worse when adjusted for population just won't fly. As China becomes more affluent you can expect pollution levels to decrease as an enriched middle-class demands a better environment. Yes there will be damage in the short run, but this is probably unavoidable given political realities. Better to do something than nothing.

I'm fine with being mad at China for human right's abuses or lack of free speech, but this whining is really about we-got-our-nut, screw everyone else if they try to catch up.

If you really want to save the world, push for Nuclear-Fusion research. We know this is a solvable problem if we just have the political will to tackle it. Others like Lockheed might get there before ITER, but in general this needs a Manhattan project level off commitment to be certain it is solved, not just wait and hope the free market takes care of it, because you know in the meantime we are still burning oil and coal.

The obvious solution is to automate this stuff! What could go wrang?

My wife often decides to hate things because everyone is “into” them. My daughter gets caught up in liking what others like for no reason other than that it’s the trend. Then there’s me who like many Slashdotters decide what to like based on what seems like good empirical evidence and an ability to just judge for myself.

I think it is the dynamic between the hippster and trenders that give the wild oscillations in popularity for things and why trends come and go. Ironically it is the trenders that undo the hippsters as when the hippster/hatters reach a certain critical mass, then boom the trenders hate it to.

Easy morals to have if you're not the one on the bottom. Your assumption is that if someone cheats at all to offset an unfair advantage then they will be incapable of doing anything afterward.

By my way of think the unprivledged that stay in the system my offset the priviledged that will never be expected to perform because all they needed was a peice of paper to cover the corruption that got them to where they are. The unpriviledged will actually have to produce when they get where they are going whether in India or America. Granted there will be a lot of chaff, but there will also be some wheat.

For years I’ve been hearing how India is posed to take off economically. No one talked about China being a powerhouse 30 years ago, then 20 years ago the litany became India was next and posed to pass China, you know, because of freedom and stuff. I still kept hearing this, but it just never seems to happen. Meanwhile lots of doom and gloom predictions about China that never seem to materialize.

Both are countries are corrupt, but in very different ways. China’s leaders are pushing their populous into the modern age to benefit both their people and themselves. The richer the people are the more they can skim off the top.

India seems to want to let half of its population wallow in ignorance, superstition, and class based prejudice, all the while setting the tone for corruption at all levels that keeps anything from getting done.

Religious fanaticism is unpleasant, but if we could conquer corruption there would be very little left to fix in the world.

BTW, if I were a poor student in India, I would cheat too, then work hard in the real world to make it not just a selfish waste.

One always hears about attempts to steal intellectual property, but (assuming this isn’t hype by Kaspersky) could these types of attacks be about insider trading? Could nation-states being playing the markets with this info?

I am troubled by the no concern for his vegan diet. No concern would imply he was routinely served meat with no deviation from the regular prison fare. I don’t know about Sweden, but it seems there would be plenty of vegetarian diet dishes available for religious reasons to prisoners. If he was offered vegetarian fare, perhaps that suffices, its not like we can accommodate every dietary request. My religion only allows me to eat panda or human flesh certainly wouldn’t fly.

The question here is whether any reasonable accommodation was made. Without more details it is hard to judge. Disturbing if true though. This would imply you have to have a major religion to back up your moral choices in life – which to me is not religious freedom.

BTW, that first soles was also supposed to be souls.

Seems there trouble with my soul (sole) as well.

Ummm, why does he need the names and addresses to pray for them? Sort of like “what does God need with a starship?” Surely this man's all seeing deity can take care of these wayward soles by just know this man cares about the state of their immortal souls.

Of course maybe this is a more impotent rather than Omnipotent God, in which case I guess this man has to carry God's message in person, to do what God can't.

So if we're lucky this won't be the true Higgs partilce, as that would point to more discoveries involving a fifth force dubbed the technicolor force and allow us to see particles composed of techni-quarks. Should this come to be, then that probably more than justifies the expense of the LHC as just finding the Higgs would not really give us radically new knowledge.