Many (most?) schools treat students like a burden. Educate the brats, get them to behave, beat them into line, do whatever it takes to break them and mould them into proper members of society.
- sigh -
You're so right. If it weren't for all those students, we could run our schools so much more efficiently!!!
30 years ago, I was so geek that it was the other nerds that were bullying me up (ordinary bullies were simply on another plane of existence so they never were a problem).
Needless to say, I was a wee-bit paranoid.
But after I discovered programming, in order to get my fix, since I could not afford a programmable calculator, much less a minicomputer (micros were unheard of yet), I had to develop the social skills to enable to leech some device access...
In some of those fish-processing plants the loss of a hand is more common than you know. The working conditions these people put up with is just terrible. It's very much like the horror stories you hear about the rest of the meat packing industry.
Aaaah! This is why that Big Mac I ate the other day tasted funny...
This practice kept a lot of trades and information alive that might have otherwise died out. It would take a reel jerk to sue them for DMCA violations too =:-)
What worked for railroads will not work for IT because the players have no interest in playing nice with each other.
They will. It's inevitable.
120 years ago, the railroads didn't work together (different track gauge for each railroad; incompatible couplers, and in England, at one point, there were 3 incompatible brake systems) because they had no interest in playing nice with each other.
Over time, the railroads who played nice with each other had an advantage over the ones who didn't, and legislation eventually did the rest, so, nowadays, railroads are 100% compatible with each other (to the point that engines from one road can be remote-controlled by engines from another road).
In the 'golden days of railroad' that the grandparent comment referred to, it was ALL private.
They were able to survive as private entreprises as they were MONOPOLIES. At least, until the government would start to build roads that the competition could use for FREE.
I have always been interested in railroads, and as I see organizations thriving to work over large areas, I cannot fail to notice that they run in essentially the same problems railroads ran into 150 years ago when they found-out that they had to absolutely synchronize their operations over vast territories in order to simply avoid accidents...
This is one reason, for example, why Standard Timezones were adopted by the railroads, then telegraphy used to coordinate operations.
More than 100 years ago, there were elaborate protocols to insure that instructions were transmitted reliably and double-checked to insure that no error of communication occured.
Of course, the technology used (telegraph keys and, later, telephone) was not as sophisticated as now, but the essential principles (fail-safe, reduntancy checks, retransmission protocols and whatnot) were there.
It's always fun to watch young pups straight out of school try to solve a problem that was solved more than a century ago by the high-tech industry of the times: the railroads...
I often get calls on my cell phone from my wife at the other end of the house. At least people are communicating.
Funniest thing I saw was on one of those big ass-articulated buses in $CITY_WITH_BIG-ASS_ARTICULATED_BUSES:
(BRRRLINGDDR - phone rings - 8 people check their phones, but only one girl answers it)
Hello? Hi, $GIRL_NAME! ...
Oh, I'm on the bus. ...
You too? Where is it? we're getting near $SHOPPING_MALL. ...
What? Well, I'm sitting at the rear of the bus. ...
Oh? You're at the front of the same bus, then!!!!
Why can't people register, for free, without complaining?
Because we DON'T FUCKING WANT THE FUCKING NEW-YORK TIMES TO FUCKING KNOW WE READ THE FUCKING ARTICLE.
a
And now this totally useless trash to foil the stupid lameness filter into accepting all those capitals because I AM YELLING the message above, because the twit I am answering doesn't seem to get it.
5) The SCO debacle has created a crisis within the Linux community. They pretend that it hasn't, but it has. This will come to a head in 2004 with either the development of a new organizational structure for Linux or the start of its demise. Linux has to grow or die, and the direction it takes will be determined in 2004.
So what?
Most significant Linux development is outside of the US anyways, where the SCO pissing contest is but a source of entertainment as it demonstrates the terminal stupidity of americans.
But who'll care??? After Saudi Arabia and Venezuela (despite the violent destabilization campaign waged there by the USA) start selling their petroleum in Euros, the US dollar won't be worth the paper it's printed on, and no one will care about the 'mericans any more.
The Pakastan/India conflict is eventually going to explode.
And you can thank the britshit for this. Before they lay their dirty hands on India, everyone there lived together. Now, it's three different countries who hate each other's guts.
The britshit are very good with partitionning countries, and it always blows-up in their face: Ireland, India, Koweit.
Perhaps it is time to get rid the world of the anglo-saxon incompetence, because whenever anglo-saxons touch something, they fuck it up irremediably.
Do something positive for Mankind today: shoot an anglo-saxon.
Sometimes I wonder why slashdot (or comments pushed up to score:5) even link to sites that will either flame up in DoS-style burnination, or will cost the provider a crapload of cash for going over bandwidth limits.
Fuck'em. When you connect someting to the net, you have to allow for anything to happen.
If you can't stand the heat, get out of the kitchen!
What a funny coincidence. I just got the whole UFO DVD set for christmas, and they have a nifty "amnesia" drug they administer to everyone who come accross their secret bases...
Stelios Haji-Ioannou opened a cinema (aka movie theater) in Milton Keynes,
England which offered movies at very low prices by forcing customers to book
in advance online. ...
The movie industry saw this and, noticing what Stelios had done to the airline
industry with his previous company EasyJet, refused to supply the EasyCinema
with the latest releases to prevent them from creating a precedent forcing
a decrease in prices at other cinemas.
In Canada, Guzzo did something similar.
He opened theaters that had (gasp!) comfortable seats, and put videogame machines
in the lobbies to help pacify impatient kids. Basically, his theaters were much
more pleasant to go to than the big chains
(sorry, can't find anything for United Theatres)were.
As it could be expected, some other movie chains leaned on distributors to
prevent Guzzo from having new releases, and this went to court, where Guzzo
won against distributors.
Some 6-7 years later, the big chains opened new theaters with better seats
and food selections.
Guess what, I'm not surprised by any of this in the least. I would hardly expect them to ask, say, my 16 year old neice whose knowledge is largely limited to nail polish and Justin Timberlake.
Some 30 years ago, my father boarded a BOAC flight out of London. He was carrying sharp moustache scissors in his handbag.
Since he does not look like the average englishmen (he looks like a well-groomed Saddam Hussein - which is quite funny, given that he is a member of the Royal Academy of Arts), he was singled out at security and his bag searched; they found the scissors, and while apologizing profusely (this is England, after all), they put the scissors in a enveloppe which was handed to the captain.
He then went back into the boarding line like if nothing happenned. Now, every average englishmen in the line was looking at im with suspicion and distrust. This lasted throughout the whole flight. Whenever he got up to the loo, everyone followed him by the eyes.
The kicker was when they were unboarding the plane, the captain was standing in the cockpit door, waiting for my father, and when he passed by, he handed my father his scissors with a cheerful "I hope you had a pleasant flight"...
... I was given nothing less than a "radar station". It was a very neat wooden box (about 60 cm high by 80 cm wide) with a sloping front.
There was a pull-out panel with a circular cutout with a green ground glass in it with concentric circles and various tiny blobs painted on the back, and behind it, an revolving black plastic circle with a radial line cut-out. When the 60 watt bulb behind it was turned-on, it looked like a sweeping radar scope.
Some toggle switches allowed to control the light, the rotator and some other blinkenlights (which were blinking christmas lights in reality).
Altough made of plywood, the whole thing was finished in that wrinkling paint which was so popular for instruments 40 years ago and it looked awfully real.
Plus there was a crystal radio with headphones built into the thing...
My father had worked several weeks with a TV-repairman friend to make it. I suppose that this gift I got was the one that was the closest ever to the true Christmas spirit: my father made it himself - never mind it was a "radar scope" instead of a rocking horse, it rocked the same... I must have played with the thing until I was 10...
Slashdot Mirror
You're so right. If it weren't for all those students, we could run our schools so much more efficiently!!!
No more blocklists a la SPEWS...
Needless to say, I was a wee-bit paranoid.
But after I discovered programming, in order to get my fix, since I could not afford a programmable calculator, much less a minicomputer (micros were unheard of yet), I had to develop the social skills to enable to leech some device access...
I guess Xerox wasn't too much off the bat...
Can I get a date with you???
What assets would they have, anyways?
120 years ago, the railroads didn't work together (different track gauge for each railroad; incompatible couplers, and in England, at one point, there were 3 incompatible brake systems) because they had no interest in playing nice with each other.
Over time, the railroads who played nice with each other had an advantage over the ones who didn't, and legislation eventually did the rest, so, nowadays, railroads are 100% compatible with each other (to the point that engines from one road can be remote-controlled by engines from another road).
This is one reason, for example, why Standard Timezones were adopted by the railroads, then telegraphy used to coordinate operations.
More than 100 years ago, there were elaborate protocols to insure that instructions were transmitted reliably and double-checked to insure that no error of communication occured.
Of course, the technology used (telegraph keys and, later, telephone) was not as sophisticated as now, but the essential principles (fail-safe, reduntancy checks, retransmission protocols and whatnot) were there.
It's always fun to watch young pups straight out of school try to solve a problem that was solved more than a century ago by the high-tech industry of the times: the railroads...
ntalk -o $WIFE | eliza | ntalk -i $WIFE
(BRRRLINGDDR - phone rings - 8 people check their phones, but only one girl answers it)
...
...
...
...
Hello? Hi, $GIRL_NAME!
Oh, I'm on the bus.
You too? Where is it? we're getting near $SHOPPING_MALL.
What? Well, I'm sitting at the rear of the bus.
Oh? You're at the front of the same bus, then!!!!
a
And now this totally useless trash to foil the stupid lameness filter into accepting all those capitals because I AM YELLING the message above, because the twit I am answering doesn't seem to get it.
Most significant Linux development is outside of the US anyways, where the SCO pissing contest is but a source of entertainment as it demonstrates the terminal stupidity of americans.
But who'll care??? After Saudi Arabia and Venezuela (despite the violent destabilization campaign waged there by the USA) start selling their petroleum in Euros, the US dollar won't be worth the paper it's printed on, and no one will care about the 'mericans any more.
The britshit are very good with partitionning countries, and it always blows-up in their face: Ireland, India, Koweit.
Perhaps it is time to get rid the world of the anglo-saxon incompetence, because whenever anglo-saxons touch something, they fuck it up irremediably.
Do something positive for Mankind today: shoot an anglo-saxon.
If you can't stand the heat, get out of the kitchen!
Simple: permit first posting on slashdot.
What a funny coincidence. I just got the whole UFO DVD set for christmas, and they have a nifty "amnesia" drug they administer to everyone who come accross their secret bases...
In Canada, Guzzo did something similar. He opened theaters that had (gasp!) comfortable seats, and put videogame machines in the lobbies to help pacify impatient kids. Basically, his theaters were much more pleasant to go to than the big chains (sorry, can't find anything for United Theatres)were.
As it could be expected, some other movie chains leaned on distributors to prevent Guzzo from having new releases, and this went to court, where Guzzo won against distributors.
Some 6-7 years later, the big chains opened new theaters with better seats and food selections.
Since he does not look like the average englishmen (he looks like a well-groomed Saddam Hussein - which is quite funny, given that he is a member of the Royal Academy of Arts), he was singled out at security and his bag searched; they found the scissors, and while apologizing profusely (this is England, after all), they put the scissors in a enveloppe which was handed to the captain.
He then went back into the boarding line like if nothing happenned. Now, every average englishmen in the line was looking at im with suspicion and distrust. This lasted throughout the whole flight. Whenever he got up to the loo, everyone followed him by the eyes.
The kicker was when they were unboarding the plane, the captain was standing in the cockpit door, waiting for my father, and when he passed by, he handed my father his scissors with a cheerful "I hope you had a pleasant flight"...
There was a pull-out panel with a circular cutout with a green ground glass in it with concentric circles and various tiny blobs painted on the back, and behind it, an revolving black plastic circle with a radial line cut-out. When the 60 watt bulb behind it was turned-on, it looked like a sweeping radar scope.
Some toggle switches allowed to control the light, the rotator and some other blinkenlights (which were blinking christmas lights in reality).
Altough made of plywood, the whole thing was finished in that wrinkling paint which was so popular for instruments 40 years ago and it looked awfully real.
Plus there was a crystal radio with headphones built into the thing...
My father had worked several weeks with a TV-repairman friend to make it. I suppose that this gift I got was the one that was the closest ever to the true Christmas spirit: my father made it himself - never mind it was a "radar scope" instead of a rocking horse, it rocked the same... I must have played with the thing until I was 10...