That's why movies like Shaun of the Dead and 28 Days Later could never take place in America, Switzerland, Finland, Israel, etc. - any country that has a large amount of firepower among its civilian populace. The movie would be over in about 15 minutes.
I know people who have WW2 era anti-tank rockets, for chrissake.
I have a point to make, but first I'll give you sweet, sweet data. Here's the relevant Wikipedia page, you can backtrack the direct sources from there. These are the 2009 PISA results:
Math: China (#1), Finland (#6), United States (#30)
Reading: China (#1), Finland (#3), United States (#17)
Sciences: China #1), Finland (#2), United States (#23)
Elementary School: Finland (~$46,000), United States (~$40,000, China (~$18,000)
High School: Finland (~$46,000 - ~$71,000), United States (~$42,000.00 - ~$44,000), China ($24,000 - ~$28,000)
= = = = = =
On this last bit, I've done some digging but haven't been able to find concrete data on all three countries from one source, so I'm going with estimates. Peek into sources if you want.
The average U.S. School day is 9-3, or about 6 hours. Finland is about 5 hours. China is about 8 hours (roughly 9-5, with a two hour lunch, so still around 7 hours).
= = = = = =
Okay, so. China pays their teachers way less than the U.S. but get far better results. Finland pays their teachers about the same and gets way better results, but not as good as China. The U.S. pays the same amount of money (roughly) that Finland does for much, much worse results.
So what the hell are we doing wrong?
China is all drill, drill, drill. A lot of the East Asian countries (South Korea, China, Japan, Indonesia, etc.) have long school days which are often supplemented by private schooling (a.k.a. "Cram courses") after the fact. Most kids are home anywhere between 8:00-10:00 PM, 2-4 hours of homework, and then wake up at 6:00 or 7:00AM the next day.
Americans, we're 9-3, plus maybe an hour or two of homework (at most). Often there's an after school program, but these are more glorified daycare and less practical education.
Finland actually ends up using *less* hours per day than us, but they use innovative teaching methods that the U.S. is sorely lacking.
I see Finland and China as two extremes. China is like grinding in an MMO. If you simply just do something a lot, you're going to get better by rote and practice. That's the general Asian method, I've found. Drill, test, drill, test, drill, test. Finland seems to be the opposite extreme - less drilling, more trying to find methods that work without having an insanely look school day. The U.S. has the worst parts of both and the benefits of neither.
If we lengthened the school days in America and really put the kids asses to work, we could edge up closer to China - maybe eve beat it out. They do way better than us for 1/3 - 1/2 the cost on teacher salary. However, if we maintained the same salary but looked at where our methodology is wrong and tried new things, we could achieve similar resu
I started editing Wikipedia (anonymously) back in like 2004 or 2005 when it was still pretty new.
Back then things were pretty sweet. Anyone could pretty much write up anything and it would eventually evolve into a very well-written article.
Now, because of the delitionists, articles get deleted because they're "not notable" (little or no independent sources cited), because an admin is having a power trip, or for some other altogether arbitrary reason. The bar to write a new article has been greatly raised, and there isn't much of a grace period. Sometimes, good articles get deleted wholesale for... pretty much no reason. A handful of people (5-10) vote on it, it passes, and it gets rubbed-stamped and deleted. You can't even look at the older versions of deleted articles; to the layperson, they're just gone.
Wikipedia has very much become everything it set out to not be - controlled by a bunch of bureaucratic, mouth-breathing fucktards who want to ruin everybody's fun. I'm still hoping that one day someone high up in the hierarchy - i.e. one of those people who actually gets a salary and can make good business decisions - puts a stop to this shit and they can get some of the freedom back. It's not like bandwidth or disk storage is expensive anymore, cocksuckers. No need to ruin everyone's goddamned fun.
You might complain about that, but do you - or any other industrialized nation around the world - have to fill out the sort of bullshit paperwork that we Americans have to? AFAIK, you don't have to worry about getting audited or whether you qualify for certain deductions. There's a small but growing movement here to get a flat tax similar to the VAT added just to simplify the whole thing as well as cut 90% of the IRS down. Saves money, cuts down on bureaucracy, it's impossible to evade, and no more goddamned Form 1040s.
One of the alliances in EVE - Red Something-Or-Other - is financed by a wealthy Russian dude. He basically just dropped $100,000 on PLEXes, CCP said "lol, okay", and he instantly crashed the PLEX market. You literally can buy your way into the game, and CCP is not remotely ashamed about it.
You can also play about 30 hours a month (once your skills are up) and make enough Isk to never have to pay for the game again. (Soloing Level 3s/4s, roughly 10 million an hour, and a PLEX is usually around 300,000,000 Isk.) CCP keeps the game relatively fair and balanced, and it's really a lot of fun if you have a good group.
Sadly, the most fun for me is in 0.0 but I'm not entirely fun of mandatory suicidal PvP missions every week. I just wanna mine and build stuff, man. That kinda killed the game for me.
It might just be cynicism on my part, but when bin Lubejob got clipped my first thought was that we had already set up Qaddafi as the next big boogeyman. Did bad things to his own people, wants to destroy the U.S., nearly everyone hates him, out in hiding, etc.
This isn't as true anymore. Nowdays you can essentially get pre-paid credit cards backed by a company like Visa. So you really don't have to put in your full details.
Well, if we're going along with idiotic things that are pointed out many times...
The common saying on the matter here is "Use crypto/VPN/IP spoofing/etc.". Until the day comes that it's an easy program that any idiot can install and run, it won't work. A lot of this sort of software that's oriented more towards the technical types tends to be lacking on the user-friendliness front.
I think this falls under what I call "the Cable TV Conundrum".
When Cable TV came out, one of the big selling points was "no commercials!" How did that work out for us? It started out that way, sure, but pretty soon they cable companies learned they could charge us for the stations and run commercials, basically double-dipping.
The same thing happens with websites. Show ads to free users? Sure. Show ads to pay users? Why the hell not. Even with stuff like tracking, it makes sense to track your paid users above all others - those who pay tend to be the heaviest users with the most disposable income.
So even with an opt-out, sure you might not, say, see any ads on a website once you've logged in. But I'd bet dollars to donuts that they're still tracking you and collecting data silently in the background.
Oh wow. I read TFL and there was a gem buried in there:
Some YouTube Comment: "What’s the matter with abortion groups? Why are they so linked to sex crimes and perversion?”
We may be falling behind in education, healthcare and countless other areas, but at least we’re still miles ahead of anyone else in hyperbole. USA! USA!
I'll take the time out to say a few things about my bank, PNC.
Let me preface the following by saying that I'm not shilling for them in any way; I'm just a satisfied customer for many years.
I initially chose PNC because a branch was close (1 block away) and a family friend used it and was satisified with it. I later opened an account myself, a simple free checking account. (To this day, their free checking is still free. They're ending their rewards program, but that aside they're not doing any of the grandstand threats that so many other banks are resorting to.) Their ATM (made by, of all companies, Diebold) can pop out money down to the dollar (as in I can withdraw $9 if I wanted to, which is fabulous at times when you're broke and have less than $20 in your account).
In the two incidents I've had with a debit card (one fraudulent company making charges, one ATM chomping my card), I was never charged for a new card.
My local branch is open 9-5 on weekdays as well as 9-6 on Thursdays (payday for a LOT of people around here) and 10-1 on Saturdays.
The only downside ever is the overdraft fees, but that's every bank really. They're not too insane with them and I immediately disabled overdraft protection once the option was given.
Thankfully, not all banks are still doing the 10-3, death of your balance by 1,000 cuts style of banking. YMMV, but PNC has been good to me.
Osama bin Laden hears the doorbell ring. He answers it and there are Navy SEALS at the door. "Great," he says, "I need this like I need a hole in the head."
Linux was created by the finest minds of the last thousand years - truly, men among men. They jacked their brains into the cyberspace, navigating neon green 3-D cities and running their own virtual construction company for ten years to build the Linux kernel. Only after it was finished did they convert it to more mundane code so that the lesser men of the world may bask in its glory.
I don't know what's more disheartening, the fact that someone believes they can create a virus that can melt cyberspace steel, or the fact that there are companies that are scamming their customers with unnecessary products~!
Easy to say. A lot harder to do. I think in his place I would cave too.
This is in no way meant an attack on your position, but that generally goes with any "moral high ground" position, doesn't it? I don't mean to wholly equate the importance of this with other civil rights situations, but I'm sure it must have been easier for Rosa Parks to give up her seat or Martin Luther King to put his head down and accept things the way they are. It's all a matter of willpower and the ability to sacrifice.
I'm sure part of my position has to do with the fact that I own very little. I don't own a home. I don't own a car. Technically I don't even own my cell phone. They could take, at most, my computer and the clothes off of my back. So I suppose that much like other people who are in a similar situation of standing up for something, I don't have very much in the way of material things to lose.
I'm an orthodox Kopimist. I believe Ctrl+Insert and Shift+Insert are the proper path. Some of my friends belong to the reformed church and use the right click menu, but I believe their ignorance of church doctrine is somewhat unsettling.
Never heard of a money order except on those cheesy TV informericals.
Money orders are quite simple and straightforward. They're like checks, except you pay a (small) fee to actually use them. My mom still refuses to get on the online payment bandwagon and pays our power bill and whatnot thusly. Example:
1) Go to a store that doles out money orders. Most supermarkets that have Western Union and the like can also process money orders.
2) Tell them the amount and the recipient, i.e. "Power Company" for $56.83.
3) A money order, along with a receipt, is printed up.
4) Detach the receipt, mail money order. The part that is superior to checks (IMO) is that you have a receipt showing it was created. There have been one or two times in my childhood where we were late with a bill and power was about to be shut off, and the money order receipt was proof enough that the cash was on the way.
Money orders (much like checks) can have a STOP order placed on them (i.e. cancel it, and get a refund on the cash with said receipt). They cost anywhere from $0.50 to $1.00 as a flat fee to have them made up, and again, unlike checks you actually get a receipt. They're quite wonderful and sending a money order makes you far less susceptible to potential fraud.
If you go a step further and make the organization a 501(c)3 nonprofit (which in this case would mean having a mission statement of serving the people of a town rather than serving shareholders), you can get all of the trendy tech folks to donate some starting capital and/or equipment towards everything. It's relevant to their field, it makes them look benevolent, and it's a hell of a tax writeoff.
This is why I can't really enjoy comic books except for incredibly ludicrous stuff like Deadpool and Squirrel Girl (i.e. my need for suspension of disbelief and continuity is overridden by sheer funny).
I'm of the belief that if you kill a character, they should stay dead. I think Batman would have been a hell of a lot more interesting if he died at some point, stayed dead, and someone else took up the mantle. Hm... The Phantom, now that I think about it, is just like this. The "current" phantom is the 21st in a long line of fathers passing on the mantle to their son. THAT'S an interesting story. It has a built-in revenge motive for the newest iteration of the Phantom; the previous one was his father and therefore must have been killed. It has potential to be mixed up - maybe there's no heir, so someone completely unfamiliar with the mythos and rituals is chosen to be Phantom. Maybe a son takes up the mantle believing his father to be dead, and it turns out he's not - now you have *two* Phantoms. It goes against many of the modern conventions of comic books and I imagine that's why I find it so interesting.
Slashdot Mirror
That's why movies like Shaun of the Dead and 28 Days Later could never take place in America, Switzerland, Finland, Israel, etc. - any country that has a large amount of firepower among its civilian populace. The movie would be over in about 15 minutes.
I know people who have WW2 era anti-tank rockets, for chrissake.
Uphill, both ways, in a CAVE, with a box of SCRAPS!
I have a point to make, but first I'll give you sweet, sweet data. Here's the relevant Wikipedia page, you can backtrack the direct sources from there. These are the 2009 PISA results:
Math: China (#1), Finland (#6), United States (#30)
Reading: China (#1), Finland (#3), United States (#17)
Sciences: China #1), Finland (#2), United States (#23)
= = = = = =
And now, the average cost to teach a child (Primary/Grammar/Elementary School Source, Secondary/High School Source) For Primary School and High School:
Primary/Grammar/Elementary School: Switzerland (#2, $6,470.00 per student), U.S. (#4, $6,043.00 per student), China (No data)
Secondary/High School: Switzerland (#1, $9,348.00 per student), U.S. (#3, $7,764.00 per student), China (No data)
= = = = = =
Next, the average salary per teacher for Elementary and High School (U.S. source, Finland source, China source). All are converted to dollars using XE.com.
Elementary School: Finland (~$46,000), United States (~$40,000, China (~$18,000)
High School: Finland (~$46,000 - ~$71,000), United States (~$42,000.00 - ~$44,000), China ($24,000 - ~$28,000)
= = = = = =
On this last bit, I've done some digging but haven't been able to find concrete data on all three countries from one source, so I'm going with estimates. Peek into sources if you want.
The average U.S. School day is 9-3, or about 6 hours. Finland is about 5 hours. China is about 8 hours (roughly 9-5, with a two hour lunch, so still around 7 hours).
= = = = = =
Okay, so. China pays their teachers way less than the U.S. but get far better results. Finland pays their teachers about the same and gets way better results, but not as good as China. The U.S. pays the same amount of money (roughly) that Finland does for much, much worse results.
So what the hell are we doing wrong?
China is all drill, drill, drill. A lot of the East Asian countries (South Korea, China, Japan, Indonesia, etc.) have long school days which are often supplemented by private schooling (a.k.a. "Cram courses") after the fact. Most kids are home anywhere between 8:00-10:00 PM, 2-4 hours of homework, and then wake up at 6:00 or 7:00AM the next day.
Americans, we're 9-3, plus maybe an hour or two of homework (at most). Often there's an after school program, but these are more glorified daycare and less practical education.
Finland actually ends up using *less* hours per day than us, but they use innovative teaching methods that the U.S. is sorely lacking.
I see Finland and China as two extremes. China is like grinding in an MMO. If you simply just do something a lot, you're going to get better by rote and practice. That's the general Asian method, I've found. Drill, test, drill, test, drill, test. Finland seems to be the opposite extreme - less drilling, more trying to find methods that work without having an insanely look school day. The U.S. has the worst parts of both and the benefits of neither.
If we lengthened the school days in America and really put the kids asses to work, we could edge up closer to China - maybe eve beat it out. They do way better than us for 1/3 - 1/2 the cost on teacher salary. However, if we maintained the same salary but looked at where our methodology is wrong and tried new things, we could achieve similar resu
I started editing Wikipedia (anonymously) back in like 2004 or 2005 when it was still pretty new.
Back then things were pretty sweet. Anyone could pretty much write up anything and it would eventually evolve into a very well-written article.
Now, because of the delitionists, articles get deleted because they're "not notable" (little or no independent sources cited), because an admin is having a power trip, or for some other altogether arbitrary reason. The bar to write a new article has been greatly raised, and there isn't much of a grace period. Sometimes, good articles get deleted wholesale for... pretty much no reason. A handful of people (5-10) vote on it, it passes, and it gets rubbed-stamped and deleted. You can't even look at the older versions of deleted articles; to the layperson, they're just gone.
Wikipedia has very much become everything it set out to not be - controlled by a bunch of bureaucratic, mouth-breathing fucktards who want to ruin everybody's fun. I'm still hoping that one day someone high up in the hierarchy - i.e. one of those people who actually gets a salary and can make good business decisions - puts a stop to this shit and they can get some of the freedom back. It's not like bandwidth or disk storage is expensive anymore, cocksuckers. No need to ruin everyone's goddamned fun.
Yes, but thankfully not all manufacturing is dead in this country, and I'd wager that every major city has a freelance machinist or two.
"Make me a wrench that works with this" is pretty easy as far as machining tools goes.
And yes, it would probably be a patent violation, but if cash trades hands under the table no one's gonna know about it.
You might complain about that, but do you - or any other industrialized nation around the world - have to fill out the sort of bullshit paperwork that we Americans have to? AFAIK, you don't have to worry about getting audited or whether you qualify for certain deductions. There's a small but growing movement here to get a flat tax similar to the VAT added just to simplify the whole thing as well as cut 90% of the IRS down. Saves money, cuts down on bureaucracy, it's impossible to evade, and no more goddamned Form 1040s.
One of the alliances in EVE - Red Something-Or-Other - is financed by a wealthy Russian dude. He basically just dropped $100,000 on PLEXes, CCP said "lol, okay", and he instantly crashed the PLEX market. You literally can buy your way into the game, and CCP is not remotely ashamed about it.
You can also play about 30 hours a month (once your skills are up) and make enough Isk to never have to pay for the game again. (Soloing Level 3s/4s, roughly 10 million an hour, and a PLEX is usually around 300,000,000 Isk.) CCP keeps the game relatively fair and balanced, and it's really a lot of fun if you have a good group.
Sadly, the most fun for me is in 0.0 but I'm not entirely fun of mandatory suicidal PvP missions every week. I just wanna mine and build stuff, man. That kinda killed the game for me.
It might just be cynicism on my part, but when bin Lubejob got clipped my first thought was that we had already set up Qaddafi as the next big boogeyman. Did bad things to his own people, wants to destroy the U.S., nearly everyone hates him, out in hiding, etc.
Don't worry, capitalism prevails! Simply switch to a power company that doesn't track your data.
Did you just call me a savage? I'LL KILL YOU!
This isn't as true anymore. Nowdays you can essentially get pre-paid credit cards backed by a company like Visa. So you really don't have to put in your full details.
Well for one thing, cultists generally make better chefs. A local cultist gave me this killer fruit punch recipe. Can't wait to try it out!
Well, if we're going along with idiotic things that are pointed out many times...
The common saying on the matter here is "Use crypto/VPN/IP spoofing/etc.". Until the day comes that it's an easy program that any idiot can install and run, it won't work. A lot of this sort of software that's oriented more towards the technical types tends to be lacking on the user-friendliness front.
I think this falls under what I call "the Cable TV Conundrum".
When Cable TV came out, one of the big selling points was "no commercials!" How did that work out for us? It started out that way, sure, but pretty soon they cable companies learned they could charge us for the stations and run commercials, basically double-dipping.
The same thing happens with websites. Show ads to free users? Sure. Show ads to pay users? Why the hell not. Even with stuff like tracking, it makes sense to track your paid users above all others - those who pay tend to be the heaviest users with the most disposable income.
So even with an opt-out, sure you might not, say, see any ads on a website once you've logged in. But I'd bet dollars to donuts that they're still tracking you and collecting data silently in the background.
Oh wow. I read TFL and there was a gem buried in there:
Some YouTube Comment: "What’s the matter with abortion groups? Why are they so linked to sex crimes and perversion?”
We may be falling behind in education, healthcare and countless other areas, but at least we’re still miles ahead of anyone else in hyperbole. USA! USA!
I lol'd.
I'll take the time out to say a few things about my bank, PNC.
Let me preface the following by saying that I'm not shilling for them in any way; I'm just a satisfied customer for many years.
I initially chose PNC because a branch was close (1 block away) and a family friend used it and was satisified with it. I later opened an account myself, a simple free checking account. (To this day, their free checking is still free. They're ending their rewards program, but that aside they're not doing any of the grandstand threats that so many other banks are resorting to.) Their ATM (made by, of all companies, Diebold) can pop out money down to the dollar (as in I can withdraw $9 if I wanted to, which is fabulous at times when you're broke and have less than $20 in your account).
In the two incidents I've had with a debit card (one fraudulent company making charges, one ATM chomping my card), I was never charged for a new card.
My local branch is open 9-5 on weekdays as well as 9-6 on Thursdays (payday for a LOT of people around here) and 10-1 on Saturdays.
The only downside ever is the overdraft fees, but that's every bank really. They're not too insane with them and I immediately disabled overdraft protection once the option was given.
Thankfully, not all banks are still doing the 10-3, death of your balance by 1,000 cuts style of banking. YMMV, but PNC has been good to me.
Osama bin Laden hears the doorbell ring. He answers it and there are Navy SEALS at the door. "Great," he says, "I need this like I need a hole in the head."
Linux was created by the finest minds of the last thousand years - truly, men among men. They jacked their brains into the cyberspace, navigating neon green 3-D cities and running their own virtual construction company for ten years to build the Linux kernel. Only after it was finished did they convert it to more mundane code so that the lesser men of the world may bask in its glory.
I don't know what's more disheartening, the fact that someone believes they can create a virus that can melt cyberspace steel, or the fact that there are companies that are scamming their customers with unnecessary products~!
Use the money to hire a private contractor? The government does that enough as it is...
Easy to say. A lot harder to do. I think in his place I would cave too.
This is in no way meant an attack on your position, but that generally goes with any "moral high ground" position, doesn't it? I don't mean to wholly equate the importance of this with other civil rights situations, but I'm sure it must have been easier for Rosa Parks to give up her seat or Martin Luther King to put his head down and accept things the way they are. It's all a matter of willpower and the ability to sacrifice.
I'm sure part of my position has to do with the fact that I own very little. I don't own a home. I don't own a car. Technically I don't even own my cell phone. They could take, at most, my computer and the clothes off of my back. So I suppose that much like other people who are in a similar situation of standing up for something, I don't have very much in the way of material things to lose.
I'm an orthodox Kopimist. I believe Ctrl+Insert and Shift+Insert are the proper path. Some of my friends belong to the reformed church and use the right click menu, but I believe their ignorance of church doctrine is somewhat unsettling.
Mother of God, China's already embraced and extended us. HOW LONG UNTIL WE'RE EXTINGUISHED?!
Never heard of a money order except on those cheesy TV informericals.
Money orders are quite simple and straightforward. They're like checks, except you pay a (small) fee to actually use them. My mom still refuses to get on the online payment bandwagon and pays our power bill and whatnot thusly. Example:
1) Go to a store that doles out money orders. Most supermarkets that have Western Union and the like can also process money orders.
2) Tell them the amount and the recipient, i.e. "Power Company" for $56.83.
3) A money order, along with a receipt, is printed up.
4) Detach the receipt, mail money order. The part that is superior to checks (IMO) is that you have a receipt showing it was created. There have been one or two times in my childhood where we were late with a bill and power was about to be shut off, and the money order receipt was proof enough that the cash was on the way.
Money orders (much like checks) can have a STOP order placed on them (i.e. cancel it, and get a refund on the cash with said receipt). They cost anywhere from $0.50 to $1.00 as a flat fee to have them made up, and again, unlike checks you actually get a receipt. They're quite wonderful and sending a money order makes you far less susceptible to potential fraud.
Form a Limited Liability Company/Corporation. Unless you commit out and out fraud, if the company goes under you won't risk going under either.
If you go a step further and make the organization a 501(c)3 nonprofit (which in this case would mean having a mission statement of serving the people of a town rather than serving shareholders), you can get all of the trendy tech folks to donate some starting capital and/or equipment towards everything. It's relevant to their field, it makes them look benevolent, and it's a hell of a tax writeoff.
This is why I can't really enjoy comic books except for incredibly ludicrous stuff like Deadpool and Squirrel Girl (i.e. my need for suspension of disbelief and continuity is overridden by sheer funny).
I'm of the belief that if you kill a character, they should stay dead. I think Batman would have been a hell of a lot more interesting if he died at some point, stayed dead, and someone else took up the mantle. Hm... The Phantom, now that I think about it, is just like this. The "current" phantom is the 21st in a long line of fathers passing on the mantle to their son. THAT'S an interesting story. It has a built-in revenge motive for the newest iteration of the Phantom; the previous one was his father and therefore must have been killed. It has potential to be mixed up - maybe there's no heir, so someone completely unfamiliar with the mythos and rituals is chosen to be Phantom. Maybe a son takes up the mantle believing his father to be dead, and it turns out he's not - now you have *two* Phantoms. It goes against many of the modern conventions of comic books and I imagine that's why I find it so interesting.