ideas posts page 3

Socialisms: Government Provision of Essentials

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This is somewhat a revisit and modified version (probably a better one at that) of an idea I discussed earlier. The revisit is in part because of the recent health care legislation. Some argue that health care is a “right” not afforded to some, something that everyone should be given regardless of income on ethical grounds. I’m not sure why health care is considered more essential than food, water, shelter, etc, but it is certainly where a lot of money is spent and made.

The government will provide relatively bare essentials deemed required for survival. These will include food, water, shelter, clothing, protection, education, occupation, health care, and probably some others that I can’t think of. They will be provided in whole by the government, directly, no intermediaries such as with food stamps, medicare, etc and with no fees. Provisions will be bare essential: For instance, food provisions will be limited to calculated nutritional need, and there will in theory be no overuse possible. The government services will be minimums, and will not place any limits on private provision of them that will favor the government provision. Quality will range from mediocre to craptacular, not only to follow real world precedence but also for providing incentive for folks to work hard and obtain better services from the private sector.

Teacher spot reports for knowledge check

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School administration would on occasion randomly choose some teachers to write a report. The report would be either a short (1-2 page) paper that must be written on the spot with little or no resources, or a longer (perhaps 10 pages) research paper which they will have a specified period to complete and can use any resources they want.

The topic of the paper would be randomly assigned, asking how they apply or could use certain educational principles in the classroom. Some possible topics might include how the teacher uses or could use Piaget’s or Vygotsky’s theories, positive reinforcement, levels-of-processing theory; how do they handle the different learning styles of students; what implications a recent educational news story might have for them; how do they apply technology in the classroom; or a more general question like how new educational theories have shaped their teaching styles.

The check would help ensure that teachers are paying attention to and using both well established and new educational theories to hopefully provide the best education they can to their children. Educational theories often are adopted slowly or aren’t translated well into teaching styles. There is a whole lot that can be done to improve the education system just by fully implementing the recommendations of the vast available knowledge pool of educational learning theory.

Appropriate living place service

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To help ensure people can easily move to the country best suited to them, there would be a program which all countries could choose to join. Joined countries would have buildings that citizens interested in moving away or even just seeing if there is something better could visit.

A counselor would be provided. The citizen would discuss their political, social, religious, and other wants and views, and the counselor would talk to them about the countries seeming most appropriate. The counselor would then give them guidance in how to research and choose a country as well as how the country moving procedures work.

The citizen would be given access to a computer database with political and social characteristics, news, geography, and all sorts of information about all of the participating countries, with advanced searches available.

After researching the countries, the citizen would talk to the counselor to make a final decision. If the citizen decides to go through with the move, the counselor would tell the citizen everything they need to do to proceed with the move.

The counselor would meet with a counselor from the other country to start the process toward citizenship for the citizen. This process should be an agreement between the two countries plus the citizen that would help ensure both success and safety for both the citizen and the new country. The process should be relatively quick and easy, with important records provided from the originating country so the destination country can more easily do background checks.

Some countries might only do exchanges, have number limits, or have certain stipulations on the citizens they will take, though the movement of citizens must be generally relatively free and easy.

A similar but simpler version of this service could be provided for intra-country moves, helping citizens find the best city or place within a country for them to live.

Education done like work flex-time

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*** reasons
scheduling classs around work, home, and other parts of life can be very difficult
especially when a rigid schedule week after week is required and
required classes frequently have few available scheduling options
long, fixed terms mean students must plan in advance and be scheduled for months

*** possible implementation characteristics
* semesters
no more fixed semesters or similar fixed periods
students attend lectures, office hours, etc. whenever they want
each lecture, etc is offered at one of many pre-scheduled times
students can pick and choose which time they want to go
times and frequency chosen based on previous demand
student must attend a certain set of lectures, plus perhaps some from an optional collection
can take as long as they want to complete a course
take tests/evaluations/projects when they feel they are ready
tests given in a testing center where they can be taken any time
monitored, students from many classes take tests at once
much harder than current tests to give flexibility in determining competency
getting 50% of the questions right probably good target normal grade
one on one type evaluations scheduled with prof for most convenient time
at least as important as tests
profs spend time with student determining their capabilities
projects are like homework, but larger and with a more defined purpose
projects last a certain duration, must be finished by a due date
some longer and bigger, some short and small
groups projects will require students signing up, running once a quota is reached
competencies rather than grades
not fixed
students can keep going until they achieve desired/required level of competency
profs decide competency based on tests, projects, evaluations, time spent with in class and office-hours
many profs involved, whole department perhaps
no homework per se normally
in class, supervised work only most of the time
perhaps some courses will have some continuity between some lectures with coursework given between
required to be taken in a certain order
should be rare
projects will be the majority of work done outside of class
Office-hours/tutoring
Some students obtain and undertand information in certain classes very easily while other students need a lot of help.
Part of profs time will be spent in an office hours / tutoring like teaching methodology where students are encouraged to seek assistance from the profs
in a larger capacity setting than an office.
An entire class should be able to show up and be handled in this setting.
Possible student activities would be private study with occasional questions to prof or longer discussions with prof about certain points.

Presidential Advertising and Funding

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The advertisements on the TV and radio and the costs associated are crazy and huge, and one item that helps prevent smaller parties from entering the political game. The money for these adverts coming primarily from donations, these donations sources have become a large point of contention.

I suggest that we eliminate all advertising by campaigners in these traditional advertising mediums. All other forums of communications that are currently used would then be expanded in power. Speeches and appearances, campaigners, candidate websites, and the debates should all be given more power.

The debates in particular need to be improved to allow more even representation of competing candidates and their ideas. Each candidate should be timed during the debate for how much they’ve said. This includes words spoken during or interrupting others’ speech. At the end, during their final statements, the other candidates should be given the time to even out their total speaking time. And the presidential debates should always include at least one third party candidate, the most popular probably. This will bring in an additional voice to attempt to break up the polarization in the discussion between only two voices.

Both the costs of campaigning and the needs to receive all that money through donations must be reduced significantly. All that money could potentially be used for better purposes.

Other mediums should be better at providing information than the more stagnant campaign adverts on TV and radio.

Objective File System

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This is a modification of part of a previous post.

each file is stored in two databases: the normal hierchical db and an objective db. The hierarchical db is used for speed and for compatibility with current file systems. The objective db is used for metadata and other information less critical to basic file operations.

The objective db contains much of the metadata (non file operation related stuff). Each file type is an object type in the database, inheriting from the basic file object or one of its children. Each file type will have its own attributes as well as actions related to it. The actions may consist only of OS functions related to it, may also include application calls, and could even include user/other created scripts and functions related to the file type. The actions would provide the data from the file to the system or other function that is necessary for it to operate (functions and applications would all have a defined standard interface to them).

the opennest market

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In democracy, each person gets one vote equal to every other. The votes are basically free, but some rules must be set up to ensure this. The free or open market is somewhat considered to be democracy of commerce. To take this to the extreme:

There would be a number of businesses equal to the number of citizens, each business owned and run by exactly one citizen. There would be no employees. All needs of the business that could not be completed by the owner would be outsourced to other businesses, surely creating the need for a lot of very specialized businesses. Government oversight would be needed to ensure that no mergers or pseudo mergers occur. Every business runs on its own, with no collusion, and any interactions with other businesses must be proper business transactions with dollars exchanged for goods or services and the best value chosen from multiple candidates. Each business would be required to turn, or attempt to turn, a profit, and that profit would be the sole income of the owner. Oversight would also ensure that there were a number of a given type of businesses in a given geographical region.

All of this should create somewhere near the largest amount of competition possible, and really test competition’s ability to create low costs, innovation, and good quality.

This system would certainly have many problems, especially in enforcement, but can serve for analysis of the openness of markets and the rules affecting them.

An interesting modification of this system would be to force all of this at the initialization of the system, but then remove all oversight. This would somewhat mirror the entire human history relating to economic issues, except that it would certainly go very fast. Mergers would happen all over until large companies would be formed.

Force multiple candidates

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Each party must field in final election a number of candidates based on the percentage of support the party recieved in the previous election for that race. It could be that a candidate must be fielded for each 105 of support. This would be a minimum. Larger elections that can field more candidates, such as presidential elections, would have a higher number of required candidates than smaller ones, such as local elections in small towns, which may be able to field only one per party or not even have party affiliations.

This would give a wider range of choices in the final election. It would also force the big two to divide their forces, giving independent candidates a better chance while keeping the same elections style.

versatile home: an ideal

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The versatile home is a type of home which can be changed easily to fit any needs of the user. Ideally,

  • Quick and easy: anything can be changed quickly and easily enough that it can be changed for testing purposes, and changed back if need be.
  • Non-destructive: should require no materials to be wasted in the process.

Layout

Layout of anything and everything ideally would be able to be changed.

  • Rooms: the walls in the house should be easily movable and removable to create any floorplan. Any given room should be expandable or shrinkable depending on the needs for it and adjacent rooms.
  • Utilities: any sort of appliance should be placable anywhere in the house, regardless of utility needs. Electricity would be the easiest to deal with, and should be easily accessible anywhere on the floor, walls, ceiling, or outside walls. Phone and the like wouldn’t be hard either. Water and gas would pose quite a challenge, especially with water requiring sewer connections as well. But ideally you could put a toilet, shower, heater, whatever anywhere in the house, even move them around in a room, without much more consideration than moving a table.
  • Outside walls: these go along with the layout, but pose far greater challenges than interior layout. Any expansion or subtraction of total area of the house would require addition or subtraction of both floor and ceiling in addition to the walls. Also, utility hookups would need to be expanded or subtracted, as would heating ducts or pipes. This type of modification would probably be left as the hardest to do. Still, changing needs deem it important for a versatile house, so it must be left with the capabilities of doing so, preferably non-destructively as well.

Modules

It would probably be easiest if every part of the house could be created and then installed and removed as easily connecting modules. Utilities would connect from one module to the next. Structural modules (structure of walls and ceilings, subfloor) would be seperate from the visible facings (wall and ceiling painting, carpet or wood on floor) of them, allowing easy change in appearance of area or the ability to change the size and shape of a room without having mismatched visible facings.

It would be good if companies produced these modules, standardized. The companies would deliver or take them back as the users added or removed them. This would eliminate much wasted materials, make the system more cost effective, and also make it much easier for the user.

With company produced modules, there would have to be industry standards so that no user would be stuck buying modules from any given company, especially with the possibility of companies going out of business. With changing technology, new versions of the modules would need to be created. This should happen at a relatively slow pace, and the new versions should be relatively backwards compatible with old versions. All modules should be designed for relatively easy upgrades to possible future versions.

Need

The need for versatile housing is evident in the variety of ways and things people use houses for, the changing needs of a user, and the need to be able to accommodate multiple users over the lifespan of the house.

The operating systems of the user should not be dictated by the layout and setup of the house: Rather, the operations should be set up to be as efficient or comfortable (or whatever other criteria you want) as possible, then the layout and setup should be modified to best fit these needs. If a layout doesn’t fit these needs as good as it was thought, it should be modifiable to better accommodate.

Workshop Paradigm

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apps + files organized by job/workshop

example: music making workshop has music creation apps + users personal (and other’s shared?) music files

different users have same apps (tools) but their own files (works)

different jobs/workshops may use same tools ie music making and music listening workshop may both need some listening tools