Americans turning to british television
on
15 Minutes
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· Score: 2
At my house (in the US) we have quite a collection of BBC videos:) Mr Bean, Black Adder, Thin Blue Line, Danger UXB, All Creatures, Upstairs downstairs, wallace and gromit, monty python... and who could live without junkyard wars on monday nights?:) (I'm tempted to list the original "Connections" series here, but I'm not sure if that was a british production...(
My all time british favorite "the secret life of machines" has been off the air for years here (and isn't avaliable on videotape to my knowledge). It even won a cable ace award.
This isn't to say I'm immune from the lure of futurama, simpsons, UCB, voyager and earth final conflict (althugh some have been sucking latley:).
I've been a student for quite some time -- and I'll tell you exactly what causes cheating at aleast one university... the quarter system
My university (www.ucr.edu) is on the quarter system that means *10 weeks* for a course (10 weeks instruction, 1 week finals, one week break). They teach courses they have no business teaching in 10 weeks, ie: Compiler design, 10 week course, final project? a compiler! EE120b -- logic design -- final project? a cpu! all in 10 weeks... only the extrodinary students get thru it, which is why our graduation rate is 30%.
However, all courses are curved -- which means you have to compete on a curve, with accelerated curiculium, with students who are cheating!
Now if you think about how the standard curve is calculated, you find the average score, then the std deviation and set your "grade" levels. BY DEFINITION of the curve, your failing the lowest x% of your students... no professor I've ever met would let a curve ride higher then the 60D, 70C, 80B, 90A. But with the acelerated coursework, its routine for good marks like A's and B's to hover in the 30 - 60% range, because students can't possibly keep up with the courses. I recall once in physics getting a 26 out of 100 on a midterm and having a very solid C. The worst thing I ever heard of was an upper level chemistry course having an average score of 1, yes 1 point.
The awfull thing about this is, if some students aren't failing completley, then none of the class can pass!
So I argue here that cheating in large quantities is infact encouraged by some university policies, and is usually an indicator something is terribly wrong with the academics of the college.
Some cds do, theres a track title format already in place, it works on a few very new cd players and very new cds, I've seen a couple... but on the whole the industry has no desire to make it htat much easier to make mp3s...
Damn straight! The best way to ruin your uptime is to be doing unnecessary things to the computers...
I admin at a research lab, and the GSR's (graduate student researchers) are always asking me "Can you install Matlab6"? To which I reply, "Whats wrong with matlab 5.1?"... "Well, the EE department has matlab 6..." "We will to, as soon as you can tell me why we need it."
Granted, In this case the windows patches were definatley not-optional, but I understand the mind frame that wouldn't wanna install them.
A friend of mine was up for a job as a sysadmin at a JC out here (college of the desert I think) in southern cali.
He didn't get the job, but a "trained monkey" did -- the guy converted the entire colleges WinNT domain setup into various workgroup shares because he didn't know how to admin NT.
Why do all these articles insist that linux has to please everybody? Why do they insist that linux is for end-users? Maybe those of us who have been using it for years are happy with what it can do...
These guys all feel they are owed something for an OS they payed nothing for... He makes some good points, but at the end of the day if you don't like something, get off your article writin butt and write some code.
And lastly, I disagree with the thesis-statement of the article. Linux will be used by lots of people in the near and distant future, you can't kill a free OS.
Now this pisses me off -- you guys who replied to flame me took an insightfull comment all wrong -- I made a point about the dangers of jamming cellphones, gave an example of a real experince I'd had in that area -- I pointed out the problem is a social one, not a technological one, but you saw past all that and managed to get offended over the least signifigant portion of the comment -- an anticdote.
To the moderators who moded my comment down: use your heads don't listen to the trolls.
To those offended by the use of the word FAG: get a grip, its just a word...
Umm, I've been in starbucks atleast once when lives could have been lost if peoples cell phones were jammed -> When it was robbed. You can't go jamming cell phones so no one interrupts your latte.
This is a tech solution to a social problem. Social problems need social solutions. Everytime I'm in class and some guys phone rings during class I shout "FAG!" [its always a horrible ring to, like the scooby doo theme or the theme to rocky]... the entire class chuckles, and guess what? A Lot less cell phones are ringing in Math 46:)
I'm sorry, but *EVEN IF* it was an unfair test they have the right to publish it. Its your job to decide wether the test was fair or not, not MS's. Microsoft skews test results in its favor all the time (remember the apache/iis affair?) so at its worst, this is no worse then what MS itself does.
This leaves us in a bad situation, no one can publish benchmarks that show the software in a bad light, and you most ceartinly can't trust their own benchmarks.
I realize lots of other databse vendors do this, but that dosen't make it any more or less right.
IANA (australian) but my guess is the good people of australia are probably reasonable people... They've just got bad leadership like most of the rest of the world...
Think about what a joke clinton made the US look like with scandal after scandal after scandal... he couldn't even not fuck up on his LAST day in office... still I wouldn't blame us americans for it.
the australian government obviously has some end goal they aren't letting anyone in on. Probably bought and paid for by corporations:)
Its true the density isn't as great, but in this case the medium is just a piece of plastic, not a VERY expensive piece of silicon, so real estate is not a commodity... however it sounds like their switching times are much slower then silicon transistors... given that and the distance between the resistors growing (because they're less dense) it sounds like the problem will infact be speed.
This is percisely the reason we (we being technology workers) need a good strong union. Tech workers could bring just about any business to its knees with a strike. Do you remember how hobbeled (sp?) verizon was during their strike? they still haven't recovered completley... At my job (sysadmin) I can't even take a day off without things going to hell... immagine a week or month to strike.
(Anyone know of any tech unions?)
one of many ways Verizion frustrates customers ...
on
The State of Broadband
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· Score: 5
I live in a verizion only town... a so. cal town of about 100,000 people... dsl has been avaliable here for years, if you live in the rural part of the valley!... Thats right, they put dsl into the rural / agricultural portion of town... my buddy who has a 10 acre farm has dsl, the budweiser clidesdales (sp?) live a few miles down the street from him and THEY could get dsl...
Meanwhile, I live in the urban part of town, high schools, businessess, high population.. no dsl.. no plans to put dsl in... however this dosen't stop them from sending out flyers every 6 months to announce that dsl is avaliable in my area --then you call them and they tell you they aren't REALLY planning on putting dsl in, they just wnated to see how many people are interested to gague wether it'd be profitable...
yeah, well start stockpiling motherboards to, because for damn sure once they've corrupted the HD's they will go after motherboards to make sure they don't work with anything but their bullshit.
I have a few "stoner" friends left from HS [somehow darwin hasn't killed them yet], and they asked me to fix their computer a few years back... Now, you have to immagine these guys, they are always smoking... from the time they get up to the time they go to bed, its just one bowl after another. I remember one day I had to drop off something to their house (I don't recall what) on my way to work, 7:30 am these guys were already sucking on their bongs:)... back to the story, I took their computer home, plugged it in, turned it on, and it started belchin out pot smell! In a few minutes my computer smelled completley like pot smoke...
I ended up opening a window and stacking enough books under the computer so that the exhaust shot out my window... simply amazing.
My father ran into one of these guys and he nearly took him to the cleaners... He was looking over printer supplies for black ink, and the plainclothes cannon rep told him he needed this 60$ thing (an entire new printer head that also came with an ink tank) when he just needed the 12$ in k cartridge... long story short, another employee stopped him and said "that dude gets a commision off all cannon products, you just need this ink tank here."
However, this is the level of service I'm used to recieved at frys (bastards!).
They're scared because a 1000$ pc rocks the socks off a 1000$ sun. If linux is a viable unix, (which I argue it is), then they can't beat the price/performance ratio.
A dual 450mhz machine (ultra60) costs about 12,000$... go build yourself a dual 1ghz machine with pc parts, probably cost around 2 grand.
So its not really about linux, but the cheap hardware linux runs on -- and that my friend -- is what keeps them up at night.
Ahhh grasshopper say, many things not about making money. Many things about market penetration.
I work at an EDU, and sun routinely gives me 20 - 60% discounts depending on the product. They're probably trying to capture market share, and put a dent in linux which has sun scared right now (I deal with sun on almost a daily basis... my sun rep said "we can't compete with linux")... the Blade system is a replacement for the Ultra 5 which cost as little as 1200$ with a edu discount (any student id gets you the discount).
I'm gonna be the disenting oponion here -- that show while vaguely pro N'sync was an indictment of the music industry. I'm afraid you've missed the point of that episode entirely.
I say vaguely pro N'sync because it *was* advertising but there were a few rips on them as well.
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My all time british favorite "the secret life of machines" has been off the air for years here (and isn't avaliable on videotape to my knowledge). It even won a cable ace award.
This isn't to say I'm immune from the lure of futurama, simpsons, UCB, voyager and earth final conflict (althugh some have been sucking latley:).
I've been a student for quite some time -- and I'll tell you exactly what causes cheating at aleast one university ... the quarter system
My university (www.ucr.edu) is on the quarter system that means *10 weeks* for a course (10 weeks instruction, 1 week finals, one week break). They teach courses they have no business teaching in 10 weeks, ie: Compiler design, 10 week course, final project? a compiler! EE120b -- logic design -- final project? a cpu! all in 10 weeks ... only the extrodinary students get thru it, which is why our graduation rate is 30%.
However, all courses are curved -- which means you have to compete on a curve, with accelerated curiculium, with students who are cheating!
Now if you think about how the standard curve is calculated, you find the average score, then the std deviation and set your "grade" levels. BY DEFINITION of the curve, your failing the lowest x% of your students ... no professor I've ever met would let a curve ride higher then the 60D, 70C, 80B, 90A. But with the acelerated coursework, its routine for good marks like A's and B's to hover in the 30 - 60% range, because students can't possibly keep up with the courses. I recall once in physics getting a 26 out of 100 on a midterm and having a very solid C. The worst thing I ever heard of was an upper level chemistry course having an average score of 1, yes 1 point.
The awfull thing about this is, if some students aren't failing completley, then none of the class can pass!
So I argue here that cheating in large quantities is infact encouraged by some university policies, and is usually an indicator something is terribly wrong with the academics of the college.
Some cds do, theres a track title format already in place, it works on a few very new cd players and very new cds, I've seen a couple ... but on the whole the industry has no desire to make it htat much easier to make mp3s ...
I admin at a research lab, and the GSR's (graduate student researchers) are always asking me "Can you install Matlab6"? To which I reply, "Whats wrong with matlab 5.1?" ... "Well, the EE department has matlab 6..." "We will to, as soon as you can tell me why we need it."
Granted, In this case the windows patches were definatley not-optional, but I understand the mind frame that wouldn't wanna install them.
He didn't get the job, but a "trained monkey" did -- the guy converted the entire colleges WinNT domain setup into various workgroup shares because he didn't know how to admin NT.
These guys all feel they are owed something for an OS they payed nothing for... He makes some good points, but at the end of the day if you don't like something, get off your article writin butt and write some code.
And lastly, I disagree with the thesis-statement of the article. Linux will be used by lots of people in the near and distant future, you can't kill a free OS.
To the moderators who moded my comment down: use your heads don't listen to the trolls.
To those offended by the use of the word FAG: get a grip, its just a word ...
This is a tech solution to a social problem. Social problems need social solutions. Everytime I'm in class and some guys phone rings during class I shout "FAG!" [its always a horrible ring to, like the scooby doo theme or the theme to rocky] ... the entire class chuckles, and guess what? A Lot less cell phones are ringing in Math 46 :)
This leaves us in a bad situation, no one can publish benchmarks that show the software in a bad light, and you most ceartinly can't trust their own benchmarks.
I realize lots of other databse vendors do this, but that dosen't make it any more or less right.
Theres so much evil in the world its easy to get some of it confused with the other :)
On voyager, every other show someone mutinys for 40 mins and they appologize to janeway in the last 5 and its all cool.
Id like the show to be a bit more like the real military. Anyone who mutiny'd would be dead by morning.
Think about what a joke clinton made the US look like with scandal after scandal after scandal ... he couldn't even not fuck up on his LAST day in office ... still I wouldn't blame us americans for it.
the australian government obviously has some end goal they aren't letting anyone in on. Probably bought and paid for by corporations :)
As someone painfully familiar with grammars, I can tell you your absoultley right :) ...
If we don't go to space, who will ?
Its true the density isn't as great, but in this case the medium is just a piece of plastic, not a VERY expensive piece of silicon, so real estate is not a commodity... however it sounds like their switching times are much slower then silicon transistors ... given that and the distance between the resistors growing (because they're less dense) it sounds like the problem will infact be speed.
YOU might find it dispicable, but "ethics" is not in the business lexicon. A business wouldn't think twice about ruining you completley.
We have to face the fact that we're not powerfull enuf or valuable enuf on our own to protect ourselves.
(Anyone know of any tech unions?)
Meanwhile, I live in the urban part of town, high schools, businessess, high population .. no dsl .. no plans to put dsl in ... however this dosen't stop them from sending out flyers every 6 months to announce that dsl is avaliable in my area --then you call them and they tell you they aren't REALLY planning on putting dsl in, they just wnated to see how many people are interested to gague wether it'd be profitable ...
yeah, well start stockpiling motherboards to, because for damn sure once they've corrupted the HD's they will go after motherboards to make sure they don't work with anything but their bullshit.
I ended up opening a window and stacking enough books under the computer so that the exhaust shot out my window ... simply amazing.
However, this is the level of service I'm used to recieved at frys (bastards!).
I feel like I might be feeding a troll here ...
A dual 450mhz machine (ultra60) costs about 12,000$ ... go build yourself a dual 1ghz machine with pc parts, probably cost around 2 grand.
So its not really about linux, but the cheap hardware linux runs on -- and that my friend -- is what keeps them up at night.
I work at an EDU, and sun routinely gives me 20 - 60% discounts depending on the product. They're probably trying to capture market share, and put a dent in linux which has sun scared right now (I deal with sun on almost a daily basis... my sun rep said "we can't compete with linux")... the Blade system is a replacement for the Ultra 5 which cost as little as 1200$ with a edu discount (any student id gets you the discount).
I say vaguely pro N'sync because it *was* advertising but there were a few rips on them as well.