I feel this resonating quite strongly with me as I'm that young programmer that needs mentoring. Occasionally I get stuck with questions which I can't google answers for (for they result in the drywood type of solutions) and I don't have anyone to ask.
Sure, there are many, many people around me (professors, older students) who do know the answers to those questions, but but one question always paves way for another and asking them to make a commitment for longer than half an hour seems like asking too much.
I might be missing the point, but math is just working with symbols - we don't need to bend to fit the symbols, but we can make the symbols bend to fit us.
The way math was written 200 years ago won't be the way we write it in a few decades, will it?
Mathematical notation has been chosen, or developed over time, because it is highly efficient at communicating a huge amount of information in a short amount of space. It is almost as if the natural tendency of mathematical notation is to act a as a space-saving algorithm; the information content to notation ratio in mathematics is extremely high.
Most attempts to communicate this notation to computers has been difficult at best, with MathML being much too complex for humans to actually write, and LaTeX often requiring much looking up of the various short cuts that been developed, particularly for beginners.
Here's an example of some LaTeX to produce a mathematical diagram.
What juiceandjuice said. The transition costs (in terms of re-educating people and re-writing text books) is far too high for the moderate benefit of bending our notation to the limitations of 2012 computers. Instead, this problem will be solved by things like mathematica, tablets, and the math handwriting recognition software which appeared on HN the other day:
would "u r wrong" have been understood as easily 30 years ago as today? Language change, even 30 years is enough for some changes to happen. Now I'm not saying that 30 years from now we will be talking in im speak but you can't deny that english of today has changed in the last 30 years.
Mathematics has also changed over time. Trying to read mathematics documents from Fermat's period would be rather hard today. In the 20th mathematics saw some pretty drastic changes in the way it's expressed (someone can correct me if I'm wrong on this). Check out this group who had some pretty big influence on how math is expressed today. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nicolas_Bourbaki
Being symbol agnostic is acceptable, even expected, once mastery is accomplished. Dealing with both forms (computer and paper) while learning can be challenging - possibly enough to be a turn off altogether.
The problem is that it's vague, meaning that not even top lawyers interpret it the same way.
According to http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dy3zBZ4vI4E in such a case (according to the Vienna Convention) interpreted such laws requires the documents during the drafting phase of the convention. In case of ACTA these documents are secret even to the governments that have signed the agreement.
USA is behind it, they're almost the only ones who really want it, they write it and also their world view gets into it and then imposed on the other countries.
Prove it. Isn't it about time Europeans started to take responsibility for their ("democratic") governments? Why did your government sign the dotted line? If answer is "US made us", then news flash: You do not live in a democracy. If you insist you Europeans have your act together (where as we boobs in US don't) then clearly it is your own government that is behind it.
Thanks to Wikileaks and other sources we do have evidence of long running pressure and threats by the US to influence or in some cases directly write other countries laws in respect to copyright. One recent example about piracy: http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2012/jan/05/us-pressure...
Is it (remotely) possible that the Guardian has an agenda (gasp) to misdirect its global readers?
Spain? What about the European powers? Does that mean UK (nuclear power), France (nuclear power), Germany (fine ~occupied, but still a major economic power), are broken democracies subject to "threats" from, and cowering before, United States of America? (Poodles, one and all?)
America is the scape goat of the /Global/ oligarchy. My opinion, of course. You may wish to continue to trust in The Guardian (of Truth).
USA would profit from it when it would be made a law, USA is the primary driver of it. Other countries might accept it once it's ready but it's USA who are making it.
It's a different matter, but yes, I don't go to the USA anymore because of border control. It used to be a nice country to visit but it's just not worth it to me with all the stupid interviews and security theatre. I guess I'm more bitchy than the average person but I'd need a very strong incentive to go now.
Too bad the schedule for awesome chances like this to almost never seem to fit with the spare time I have. I'm way past the only-kiddy projects phase, yet haven't found anything big (as in a project shared with others) to hack on.
