Are you seriously comparing access to TV with education? Education is only barely acceptable-- the benefits of an educated society are so huge that they warrant the government making everyone pay for it. The same CANNOT be said for TV, and I would argue that a large portion of our country would be better off watching less-- though they are of course to pay for it on their own dollar.
Your argument isnt really that good, but it sounds good when you wield it in various arguments. Why not make the same statement about gov't healthcare? Or gov't subsidized cars (cars are a heck of a lot more reasonable than TVs, tbqh)? Or gov't subsidized computers?
The problem is that NONE of these are really government roles, and go pretty squarely against how things were supposed to happen in the US. Despite what Obama and the dem congress may think (and Im sure they really believe in their cause), the constitution doesnt endorse a gigantic government that subsidizes every aspect of its citizens lives-- thats not what freedom means, its not the intent of the 9th and 10th amendments, and its not whats laid out in the 7 articles of the constitution.
Education gets a pass (this is IMHO--and im sure many would disagree with me) ONLY because of the welfare clause and because of the enormous benefit that comes with an educated population.
I think that was understood. As I said, my sympathies to that person, they certainly dont deserve to be scammed, but they could have exercised some diligence and common sense and avoided the whole issue.
I dont want to blame the victim so to speak, but these tactics are only used when and if they will work; the way we prevent this type of fraud is for people to pay closer attention to what they sign.
What if I have a 52" tv so that I can watch netflix and the occasional DVD (which is in fact the case)? Or to play my Wii? Do I now have to pay for a licensing fee?
If not, im not really seeing the difference between that and the current system (where only those who get cable tv, pay for it), except that in your scenario the government is running it. And why exactly would I want a fixed price so that what little competition in the TV space there is is rendered moot?
It wouldnt have to be done by the government; it could be an ICANN requirement that sites list what content their site has to some degree of specificity.
The trouble is that the tags don't tell you enough.
They can tell you a heck of a lot more than a.xxx TLD does, and they actually have some reasonable chance of being useful in the real world with non-.xxx tlds.
If you block anything that approximately means "unmoderated user content" then you block everything from Slashdot to vendors' tech support forums to Google web search.
Most web filters have various settings, one of which does block unmoderated user content, recognizing that it likely is not appropriate for younger children. But it makes a heck of a lot more sense for the webmaster to describe their site than for others to try to infer its content (didnt they do this in the past with meta tags?) It would also make filtering the truly explicit stuff much much easier.
The only way the smut peddlers would actually register their content as smut is if the law required it; they know it means their site will be blocked and they have no interest in that.
I think a number of places (the us included) already have laws about letting children access your site. And if ICANN enforced it, I really dont think they would have much choice (would you rather some people filter you, or to simply lose your domain registration?) And its not exactly censoring, its just the DNS authority saying "if you want to participate in our DNS system, you will at least self-describe your site and its content" (which was in fact part of the idea of TLDs to begin with, which noone really follows-- slashdot.ORG????)
Isnt this a rather good place for TXT records? img.tumbler.com TXT contains:unfiltered-images,usercontent
Worked for SPF, and would certainly get the job done easily. Let sites classify themselves, and have registrars enforce it.
As for first amendment rights, as long as it is not being legislated or pushed into place by the government, what your employer filters is not a violation of your rights at all.
Once again, im not going to deal with "motivated parents", as it will be true with or without vouchers-- those who really care about their kids will use the voucher option and their kids WILL score better, statistically. Whether or not its caused by the fact that private schools magically make kids score better, or the fact that the teachers are less likely to be incompetent, or the fact that fewer kids are likely to be disruptive, isnt really important in the end. I happen to think its some combination of 2 and 3.
Kids who are homeschooled dont have to learn from one parent; there are often collaboratives where multiple parents will team up so one can specialize in one thing and another parent in a different subject. And often they have several years head start-- when the child is still learning arithmetic, the parent can be brushing up on algebra, trig and calc.
Sounds like awful tactics, and I am sorry your friend had to deal with that. However, you know how you prevent bad people from using those bad tactics?
Except that the role of government has ALWAYS included things like "making sure our citizens dont get killed". Defense, roads, etc have long (ie, back to Rome at least) been government roles.
National parks and scientific research less so-- I think the governments role in those should be less (im not clear on why the Fed needs to own 90% of Nevada for example).
TV I think not at all. There is very little in the way of compelling reasons for why that is the government's place to provide, or for how it qualifies as a necessity (for the record, we dont have TV service).
John Logie Baird invented British television in which the taxpayer is the customer, pays directly for the product, and elects politicians to keep an eye on things. That's quite different, as well as being a whole lot better.
Im sorry, I disagree-- why should I and those I live with have to pay for others to watch TV? What if we really dont want to watch it?
A common carrier in common-law countries (corresponding to a public carrier in civil-law systems,[1] usually called simply a carrier) is a person or company that transports goods or people for any person or company and that is responsible for any possible loss of the goods during transpor In what sense is Google the common carrier? Even ISPs arent considered to be common carriers by the courts, and they actually transport the packets around.
Youll have to do better than claiming "they want to be the only channel you can use", since that defines just about every company in existence (and Im not sure its true for Google except as regards its Ad products).
but it's consistent with how humans understand communication.
Um? Common carrier is a specific type of legal concept with a specific meaning; how are you getting the idea that people think that "something that isnt a common carrier", IS a common carrier "consistent with how humans understand communication"? How do you get to the idea that you get to dictate to Google what kind of service they provide?
And the trend in civil liberties is to place fewer restrictions on expressions of identity, not greater ones.
Quit trying to play the victim card; your civil liberties arent in danger: * Google isnt discriminating on race, religion, etc * Its not by ANY stretch necessary to use their product for anything, and your quality of life isnt really affected by a decision to abstain * Its remarkably easy to take your ball and go to someone else (facebook?) if you really want to use another social network
If Googles policies are an issue, the answer is the same as it always has been, for example with a Mechanic who is incompetent-- go somewhere else.
I think the primary indicator for a student's success is the value his or her parents put on education.
Im not going to argue that particular point, and I dont think it can really be controlled for. However GP is dead wrong if hes going to complain there the same; every test in the US ive ever seen has homeschoolers beating public schools soundly, and for substantially less money. This article has some good insights; and if you dont like that source, "public schools vs home school statistics" on google will turn up a plethora of articles.
There is no statistically significant difference in educational outcomes between private and public schools after you account for classroom composition. The hypothesized reason private schools offer superior educational outcomes is because less class time is wasted on disruptions and disciplinary actions (Dronkers and Robert, 2008.)
How are you "accounting for classroom composition"? Found the study you were referencing (next time, a study title would be helpful), and a few issues with your statements regarding it. First, apparently they do not go into "educational outcomes", as you implied: A weakness of the PISA 2000 data is the cross-sectional nature of the collected data. It is a one-moment picture of the 15-year-old students; we do not know anything about their further development, nor about their earlier education experiences and outcomes.
Second, they are attempting to control for the classroom composition by adding in several variables based on surveys from teachers; that may be OK, but the devil is in the details-- such adjustments could easily skew a study to say whatever you wanted. For instance, they have something like 20 or 30 variables that they mix in, apply various weightings to, and then use to adjust the score.
Luckily there is a very simple way to validate some of this data: look at places where school vouchers are in place (which eliminates most of the stuff that they had to create variables to control for), and then compare performance (edit, appears to be a lot more complicated than that; with each study attempting to ignore or control for this thing or that, with differing results depending on where you look:\ )
The other thing that their study doesnt really account for at all is homeschooling-- homeschoolers consistently do better than any of the schools in the study, and there is no income factor to control for; many homeschoolers team up with several parents and have classes with several children in them, so theres not necessarily a bye on the issue of class size or composition either.
parents who don't give a shit, who are a product of the media-manufactured anti-intellectual social serfdom that punishes academics outside of the top income quintile.
People complaining about the top 5% and claiming the US is a "serfdom" make me roll my eyes a little. You are aware of the immense privilege that about 98% of the people in our country have, compared with other societies either global or historical, right?
There may be issues with our societies today, and slashdot is a great place to have such discussions, but hyperbole like that is just ridiculous. I have the freedom now to change jobs, or leave the country, or move to another state, any time I want; that HARDLY qualifies as a serfdom. Doing any of those isnt really that expensive either.
Just want to say, when you call someone a retard, it doesnt really convince observers that youre reasonable or any more correct than he is; it just labels you as unpleasant and angry.
What learning tech early does, is teach the kid "it's okay to use tech". Simple, and as scary, as that
Why not have desktops in the classes where it is relevant?
Youre not gonna convince me that kids need a laptop in calculus, or in biology. Overhead projectors are still really nice because you can make sure everyone is on the same page; with a laptop you end up hoping that all 30 kids have the same agenda as the teacher.
But they didn't grow up with computers, and it takes them forever to get tasks done, and malware is a hell of a lot more than a minor annoyance for them. They find the entire process frustrating and sometimes inaccessible.
Firstly, no person is perfect, and a number of people can get thru schools that emphasize computers and STILL not get how to avoid malware.
Second, luckily for these people there are people who specialize in IT so that they dont HAVE to worry about malware and the rest. Their job if they are an economist has nothing to do with their skills with a particular version of Excel.
How useful would said person be if they just didnt naturally get computers, but spent years learning Excel 2003? Still relevant in 2007 or 2010? Oops, the entire UI changed, guess all that knowledge is useless now. But at least they didnt learn any critical thinking in school, right?
The tests used today are a legacy of the past where knowing details was the focus of education. I'd much rather employ someone who knew how do do computer assisted research or build a spread sheet to calculate unit costs than someone well versed in memorized facts that are obsolete as soon as you walk out of the test hall.
Id much rather have someone who knew how to calculate costs on their own, and can cross check the answer the computer spits out to make sure theyre doing it right; and who isnt utterly useless when the computers are unavailable for some reason.
Do you really want to teach kids to be numb-minded automatons who are only as useful as they are quick at inputting data into a computer? I really fear for your children (if you have any) if those are your aspirations for them.
The best teachers I ever had all had one thing in common: they were lazy.
You had some awful teachers then. The best teachers I ever had loved teaching and engaged the students. I can still decline verbs in latin because of how awesome my highschool latin teacher was (Thanks, Mrs Guppy!).
The bad teachers I had were the lazy ones who didnt care whether what they were teaching was accurate, or engaging, or whether anyone was listening. If a teacher is lazy about it, chances are they dont like teaching, and arent going to be good at it, its really that simple.
This is one of the big reasons, I would suspect, that private schools and homeschoolers tend to dominate standardized testing (having involved parents helps, too-- looks like raising kids requires you to actually pay attention to them.)
Protip, a license that restricts what the coder and devs using the code can do, is not really "free". It may protect the end users freedoms but it inarguably does so at the expense of developer freedoms.
When he says GPL is not truly free, he means it, and I dont think anyone involved with the development of GPLv2 and GPLv3 would argue that.
I just wanted to step in and express my gratitude for how much I have learned in this thread. I now know where not to stick body parts, what crossing my fingers means, and what a meatgrinder does.
Once the DNS is redirected, you can get Godaddy to get you an SSL cert in about 1 hour. Just need access to create a txt record or modify your webpage, which shouldnt be a big deal, and since the entire thing is automated I dont think youd have any issues.
Its a DNS hack with a 24 hr TTL. Might take a while for service to resume. (Though I think Google DNS ignores TTL, so that might be fixed sooner than others).
Slashdot Mirror
Are you seriously comparing access to TV with education? Education is only barely acceptable-- the benefits of an educated society are so huge that they warrant the government making everyone pay for it. The same CANNOT be said for TV, and I would argue that a large portion of our country would be better off watching less-- though they are of course to pay for it on their own dollar.
Your argument isnt really that good, but it sounds good when you wield it in various arguments. Why not make the same statement about gov't healthcare? Or gov't subsidized cars (cars are a heck of a lot more reasonable than TVs, tbqh)? Or gov't subsidized computers?
The problem is that NONE of these are really government roles, and go pretty squarely against how things were supposed to happen in the US. Despite what Obama and the dem congress may think (and Im sure they really believe in their cause), the constitution doesnt endorse a gigantic government that subsidizes every aspect of its citizens lives-- thats not what freedom means, its not the intent of the 9th and 10th amendments, and its not whats laid out in the 7 articles of the constitution.
Education gets a pass (this is IMHO--and im sure many would disagree with me) ONLY because of the welfare clause and because of the enormous benefit that comes with an educated population.
I think that was understood. As I said, my sympathies to that person, they certainly dont deserve to be scammed, but they could have exercised some diligence and common sense and avoided the whole issue.
I dont want to blame the victim so to speak, but these tactics are only used when and if they will work; the way we prevent this type of fraud is for people to pay closer attention to what they sign.
What if I have a 52" tv so that I can watch netflix and the occasional DVD (which is in fact the case)? Or to play my Wii? Do I now have to pay for a licensing fee?
If not, im not really seeing the difference between that and the current system (where only those who get cable tv, pay for it), except that in your scenario the government is running it. And why exactly would I want a fixed price so that what little competition in the TV space there is is rendered moot?
It wouldnt have to be done by the government; it could be an ICANN requirement that sites list what content their site has to some degree of specificity.
The trouble is that the tags don't tell you enough.
They can tell you a heck of a lot more than a .xxx TLD does, and they actually have some reasonable chance of being useful in the real world with non-.xxx tlds.
If you block anything that approximately means "unmoderated user content" then you block everything from Slashdot to vendors' tech support forums to Google web search.
Most web filters have various settings, one of which does block unmoderated user content, recognizing that it likely is not appropriate for younger children. But it makes a heck of a lot more sense for the webmaster to describe their site than for others to try to infer its content (didnt they do this in the past with meta tags?) It would also make filtering the truly explicit stuff much much easier.
The only way the smut peddlers would actually register their content as smut is if the law required it; they know it means their site will be blocked and they have no interest in that.
I think a number of places (the us included) already have laws about letting children access your site. And if ICANN enforced it, I really dont think they would have much choice (would you rather some people filter you, or to simply lose your domain registration?) And its not exactly censoring, its just the DNS authority saying "if you want to participate in our DNS system, you will at least self-describe your site and its content" (which was in fact part of the idea of TLDs to begin with, which noone really follows-- slashdot.ORG????)
Thats not their large business corporate software. If you can buy it on a $500 laptop, youre not talking about the same things GP is.
Isnt this a rather good place for TXT records? img.tumbler.com TXT contains:unfiltered-images,usercontent
Worked for SPF, and would certainly get the job done easily. Let sites classify themselves, and have registrars enforce it.
As for first amendment rights, as long as it is not being legislated or pushed into place by the government, what your employer filters is not a violation of your rights at all.
Well, it certainly is better when one group gets to decide what is "informative", right?
Once again, im not going to deal with "motivated parents", as it will be true with or without vouchers-- those who really care about their kids will use the voucher option and their kids WILL score better, statistically. Whether or not its caused by the fact that private schools magically make kids score better, or the fact that the teachers are less likely to be incompetent, or the fact that fewer kids are likely to be disruptive, isnt really important in the end. I happen to think its some combination of 2 and 3.
Kids who are homeschooled dont have to learn from one parent; there are often collaboratives where multiple parents will team up so one can specialize in one thing and another parent in a different subject. And often they have several years head start-- when the child is still learning arithmetic, the parent can be brushing up on algebra, trig and calc.
Sounds like awful tactics, and I am sorry your friend had to deal with that. However, you know how you prevent bad people from using those bad tactics?
You read things before signing them.
Except that the role of government has ALWAYS included things like "making sure our citizens dont get killed". Defense, roads, etc have long (ie, back to Rome at least) been government roles.
National parks and scientific research less so-- I think the governments role in those should be less (im not clear on why the Fed needs to own 90% of Nevada for example).
TV I think not at all. There is very little in the way of compelling reasons for why that is the government's place to provide, or for how it qualifies as a necessity (for the record, we dont have TV service).
John Logie Baird invented British television in which the taxpayer is the customer, pays directly for the product, and elects politicians to keep an eye on things. That's quite different, as well as being a whole lot better.
Im sorry, I disagree-- why should I and those I live with have to pay for others to watch TV? What if we really dont want to watch it?
My thoughts, exactly. If you listen to radio, you are not the customer
Its not that simple. Or have you not heard of member supported stations?
Or the fact that in one regard, ALL stations are member supported?
A common carrier in common-law countries (corresponding to a public carrier in civil-law systems,[1] usually called simply a carrier) is a person or company that transports goods or people for any person or company and that is responsible for any possible loss of the goods during transpor
In what sense is Google the common carrier? Even ISPs arent considered to be common carriers by the courts, and they actually transport the packets around.
Youll have to do better than claiming "they want to be the only channel you can use", since that defines just about every company in existence (and Im not sure its true for Google except as regards its Ad products).
but it's consistent with how humans understand communication.
Um? Common carrier is a specific type of legal concept with a specific meaning; how are you getting the idea that people think that "something that isnt a common carrier", IS a common carrier "consistent with how humans understand communication"? How do you get to the idea that you get to dictate to Google what kind of service they provide?
And the trend in civil liberties is to place fewer restrictions on expressions of identity, not greater ones.
Quit trying to play the victim card; your civil liberties arent in danger:
* Google isnt discriminating on race, religion, etc
* Its not by ANY stretch necessary to use their product for anything, and your quality of life isnt really affected by a decision to abstain
* Its remarkably easy to take your ball and go to someone else (facebook?) if you really want to use another social network
If Googles policies are an issue, the answer is the same as it always has been, for example with a Mechanic who is incompetent-- go somewhere else.
I think the primary indicator for a student's success is the value his or her parents put on education.
Im not going to argue that particular point, and I dont think it can really be controlled for. However GP is dead wrong if hes going to complain there the same; every test in the US ive ever seen has homeschoolers beating public schools soundly, and for substantially less money. This article has some good insights; and if you dont like that source, "public schools vs home school statistics" on google will turn up a plethora of articles.
There is no statistically significant difference in educational outcomes between private and public schools after you account for classroom composition. The hypothesized reason private schools offer superior educational outcomes is because less class time is wasted on disruptions and disciplinary actions (Dronkers and Robert, 2008.)
How are you "accounting for classroom composition"?
Found the study you were referencing (next time, a study title would be helpful), and a few issues with your statements regarding it. First, apparently they do not go into "educational outcomes", as you implied:
A weakness of the PISA 2000 data is the cross-sectional nature of the collected data. It is a one-moment picture of the 15-year-old students; we do not know anything about their further development, nor about their earlier education experiences and outcomes.
Second, they are attempting to control for the classroom composition by adding in several variables based on surveys from teachers; that may be OK, but the devil is in the details-- such adjustments could easily skew a study to say whatever you wanted. For instance, they have something like 20 or 30 variables that they mix in, apply various weightings to, and then use to adjust the score.
Luckily there is a very simple way to validate some of this data: look at places where school vouchers are in place (which eliminates most of the stuff that they had to create variables to control for), and then compare performance (edit, appears to be a lot more complicated than that; with each study attempting to ignore or control for this thing or that, with differing results depending on where you look :\ )
The other thing that their study doesnt really account for at all is homeschooling-- homeschoolers consistently do better than any of the schools in the study, and there is no income factor to control for; many homeschoolers team up with several parents and have classes with several children in them, so theres not necessarily a bye on the issue of class size or composition either.
parents who don't give a shit, who are a product of the media-manufactured anti-intellectual social serfdom that punishes academics outside of the top income quintile.
People complaining about the top 5% and claiming the US is a "serfdom" make me roll my eyes a little. You are aware of the immense privilege that about 98% of the people in our country have, compared with other societies either global or historical, right?
There may be issues with our societies today, and slashdot is a great place to have such discussions, but hyperbole like that is just ridiculous. I have the freedom now to change jobs, or leave the country, or move to another state, any time I want; that HARDLY qualifies as a serfdom. Doing any of those isnt really that expensive either.
Just want to say, when you call someone a retard, it doesnt really convince observers that youre reasonable or any more correct than he is; it just labels you as unpleasant and angry.
What learning tech early does, is teach the kid "it's okay to use tech". Simple, and as scary, as that
Why not have desktops in the classes where it is relevant?
Youre not gonna convince me that kids need a laptop in calculus, or in biology. Overhead projectors are still really nice because you can make sure everyone is on the same page; with a laptop you end up hoping that all 30 kids have the same agenda as the teacher.
But they didn't grow up with computers, and it takes them forever to get tasks done, and malware is a hell of a lot more than a minor annoyance for them. They find the entire process frustrating and sometimes inaccessible.
Firstly, no person is perfect, and a number of people can get thru schools that emphasize computers and STILL not get how to avoid malware.
Second, luckily for these people there are people who specialize in IT so that they dont HAVE to worry about malware and the rest. Their job if they are an economist has nothing to do with their skills with a particular version of Excel.
How useful would said person be if they just didnt naturally get computers, but spent years learning Excel 2003? Still relevant in 2007 or 2010? Oops, the entire UI changed, guess all that knowledge is useless now. But at least they didnt learn any critical thinking in school, right?
The tests used today are a legacy of the past where knowing details was the focus of education. I'd much rather employ someone who knew how do do computer assisted research or build a spread sheet to calculate unit costs than someone well versed in memorized facts that are obsolete as soon as you walk out of the test hall.
Id much rather have someone who knew how to calculate costs on their own, and can cross check the answer the computer spits out to make sure theyre doing it right; and who isnt utterly useless when the computers are unavailable for some reason.
Do you really want to teach kids to be numb-minded automatons who are only as useful as they are quick at inputting data into a computer? I really fear for your children (if you have any) if those are your aspirations for them.
The best teachers I ever had all had one thing in common: they were lazy.
You had some awful teachers then. The best teachers I ever had loved teaching and engaged the students. I can still decline verbs in latin because of how awesome my highschool latin teacher was (Thanks, Mrs Guppy!).
The bad teachers I had were the lazy ones who didnt care whether what they were teaching was accurate, or engaging, or whether anyone was listening. If a teacher is lazy about it, chances are they dont like teaching, and arent going to be good at it, its really that simple.
This is one of the big reasons, I would suspect, that private schools and homeschoolers tend to dominate standardized testing (having involved parents helps, too-- looks like raising kids requires you to actually pay attention to them.)
Protip, a license that restricts what the coder and devs using the code can do, is not really "free". It may protect the end users freedoms but it inarguably does so at the expense of developer freedoms.
When he says GPL is not truly free, he means it, and I dont think anyone involved with the development of GPLv2 and GPLv3 would argue that.
I just wanted to step in and express my gratitude for how much I have learned in this thread. I now know where not to stick body parts, what crossing my fingers means, and what a meatgrinder does.
Once the DNS is redirected, you can get Godaddy to get you an SSL cert in about 1 hour. Just need access to create a txt record or modify your webpage, which shouldnt be a big deal, and since the entire thing is automated I dont think youd have any issues.
Its a DNS hack with a 24 hr TTL. Might take a while for service to resume. (Though I think Google DNS ignores TTL, so that might be fixed sooner than others).
There are worse things to be, AMD needs all the help they can get and I really dont want to have the CPU market become a 1 horse race.