Sorry, but the fact is, when a majority of teachers start favouring religion over science, its time to sit up and pay attention.
It's not quite that bad, but close. They're not favoring religion, they're just not fighting any more. Which means that there's no-one fighting for real science in the classroom.
And I can't say I blame teachers terribly - they get the pointy end of the stick whenever someone wants to make political points, and don't get a whole lot of support otherwise (case in point: everyone will jump on the teacher when they do something wrong, but when the brat gets a failing grade, no-one backs up the teacher saying "yes, he didn't do his homework and should fail")
anyone with a strong science degree is making more money somewhere other than teaching.
I'll do you one better - the lady with the science degree won't be allowed in the classroom in the first place, because you need an education degree to get certified as a teacher.
I'd suspect that the teachers are more concerned with the creationist parents coming and complaining to them than they are about the evolutionist parents.
I suspect you're right - and schools these days are fairly risk-averse when it comes to parents and curriculum. Once you start down the "you don't need to teach the kids this" path, it's pretty hard to stop.
(Can only speak for Canada/Alberta here - but I have several friends and relatives in the teaching profession)
When you get your education degree, you do specialize - you go to school to be a math teacher or a science teacher or an English teacher.
When you get into the schools, it seems to be a whole new ball game - you get put where the school needs you, and it may be a subject you know little or nothing about. Add a bit of office politics to the mix, and suddenly your expert English teacher is stuck teaching math...
isn't censoring anything - rather, it's choosing not to encourage it
Looking back at this comment after responding to it once... holy cow, dancing around terminology much?
Here's where I'm drawing the distinction:
Auto-complete is Google being helpful, like their "you searched for X, did you really mean Y?" blurbs - they're guessing what you really meant to ask based on what popular searches are. So if I search for "Doctor Who", Google is choosing *not* to suggest "Doctor Who torrent", even though it normally would be the best related search. Since people see it as Google "recommending" a search, I can accept them choosing not to put certain words in that auto-complete.
On the other hand, not showing torrent *results* in Instant Search is censoring - I'm asking for something, and Google is choosing not to include it in their results for reasons unrelated to relevance. Granted, it's a sticky subject because Google is always "censoring" (or "filtering") content in the sense that they decide what to put on the front page and what they don't - the difference is that generally they're filtering based on improving the results for the end user. This is filtering for the benefit of a third-party, at the detriment of the end-user.
I've already turned Instant Search off - and if Google starts extending third-party filtering to the main engine, I'll start looking elsewhere for my search results.
during work hours, one player is denoted the "Boss." 'The Boss is tasked with giving directions to other players, which Muraski testified mimics the organization of a gang.'"
There is a difference and when did Twitter become the official response media for Microsoft?
I'm going to guess that there will never be an "official" MS response on this, because they (correctly) are treating this as a private matter between them and one of their customers.
Mom becomes aware of this (either because Timmy complains that he lost all his achievements, or because Mom noticed that his account has CHEATER all over it).
Timmy claims complete and total innocence (note: he may or may not be innocent, but show me a kid who's not going to claim it anyway at this point.)
Mom gets cranky, makes a stink to Microsoft (and then to the media at large, playing the "Poor Disabled Kid" attention card. *
Microsoft replies back to the Mom (whether because of the regular-channel appeal or the media attention, we'll never know) with proof of the cheats.
At this point, one of three things are happening right now:
Mom and Timmy are arguing with Microsoft about whether it is or isn't really cheating (because of his condition).
Mom is currently tearing a strip off Timmy for not only cheating, but lying about it (and making them look like fools)
Mom (and/or Timmy) is currently tearing a strip off Timmy's friends for installing hacks (with or without Timmy's knowledge)
I figure, if it's the first, we'll hear about it again in a few days. Otherwise, they're going to quietly hide and hope the media attention goes away.
* I'm still trying to find a scenario where it actually matters that the kid is autistic (other than a means to get the media attention, or as some sort of "you have to let my son cheat - he's disabled" BS. But maybe I'm just extra-cynical this morning.
Choosing not to auto-complete with "torrent" isn't censoring anything - rather, it's choosing not to encourage it (because people will see the suggestion of adding "torrent" to be support for piracy). A little out of sync with Google's usual MO, but whatever - if you want a torrent, you should know to ask for one.
Removing them from the instant search results is censoring - in my mind, it makes the "instant search" a different engine from the "press enter" search. Of course, it's still Google's choice, but I'll likely turn the instant search off now, since it's clear that you don't get the most honest results that way.
Given the general attitude of the judge, that fellow is very lucky that he wasn't asked to provide documentation regarding the "criminal attacks" and "bomb threats"...
So you're suggesting that the movie studios intentionally leak copies of their movies that when it gets to the "good part" suddenly cut off the audio and/or video? Hmm... that does sound perfectly legal and even moral. The question is, would it increase movie sales?
Not sure - I remember hearing about the Barenaked Ladies releasing a torrent of one of their songs that stopped mid-verse, followed by them telling you to go buy the album. Couldn't tell you if it helped or not (although the fact that they sell memory sticks with their live concerts says they're not afraid of the Big Bad Net.)
I love that story - they got all the benefits of the demo, with none of the downsides of DRM, while avoiding the problems of day-1 cracks (my understanding is that since the game didn't do the "legit" check until later in the game, crackers either had more trouble finding it or didn't think to look in the first place - since the game "worked", after all).
I really should have picked up a copy of that game as a show of support. (No, I didn't pirate it - I'm just not a big Batman fan.)
Getting a degree could also mean you're overly conformist and likely to lack a lot of creativity.
Indeed. That's why Universities are widely known for being bastions of Conservatism...
I've always wondered about this - there's plenty of die-hard Conservatives with degrees and doctorates. Do they just not socialize while they're in school?
I'm often amazed by Slashdot's anti-intellectual bent - though it is mostly populated by Americans, so I suppose it shouldn't be that surprising.
At the risk of feeding the troll, I'll just point out that there's more varieties of "intelligence" than just "college educated". (And I'm not talking that Emotional Intelligence tripe they sell HR trainers). That kid who dropped out of high school because he's tired of reading stupid books about old people might be very good with a welding torch, for example.
If I had a job opening and two people with no previous related experience were applying, one fresh out of college with a 2.8 GPA and one who didn't finish high school, all things being equal, who do you think I'm going to hire? Who would you hire?
That would depend entirely on what the job is. If I need a McGreeter, I'm going to take the high-schooler, to be honest. College kids are overqualified and are going to ditch at the first chance they get. The high-schooler will also be happier with the wage as well, I'll bet.
But then, I probably value longevity over costs more than the average corp. (Also, I know some small business owners, and they'll take someone who'll stay a while over a smarter person who'll ditch in six months any day of the week.)
On the other hand, take your typical liberal arts graduate. Sure, they may not have learned how to perform advanced math on hex numbers while in college, but they have shown that they are willing to learn new ideas, do the hard work, follow the rules, see a task through to completion and generally put up with the bullshit that you have to put up with in order to get the degree.
It's not the degree itself that matters. It is what getting the degree says about the person who got it.
Agreed. I had a psych prof (I was a CompSci major / Psych minor) flat out tell us that with very few exceptions, any Bachelor's degree was equivalent to any other once you're out in the real world. And I must say, my experience at work has proved that out - while I work generally in my field, my wife is a soil specialist by training, but her job is plants. Our old director of warehousing was a chemical engineer by training. Our current facility manager went to school for education. Except for the folks in accredited areas (e.g. accounting) I'm not sure if anyone actually went to school for what they're doing around here...
It may not get you the job, but it will get you interviews and consideration, which gives you a leg up on people that lack similar 'papers and documents.' Don't underestimate how important getting your foot in the door is. If you're lacking a degree, it's much more difficult to get people to take you seriously.
At least in the beginning of your career. If you have 15+ years of experience, that's probably better than two years of a co-op and a four year degree.
Depends on what you've been doing for those 15 years. If you can't get into your field (because you have neither experience or degree), fifteen years later you're going to have fifteen years of irrelevant experience and no degree, which arguably puts you in worse shape (since you can't really claim the youthful "eager to learn" either)
What I'm curious about is whether trades (plumbers, electricians, etc) count as degrees or not.
If they are small enough and cheap enough, you can use massive redundancy to get around the reliability problem. Just stop doing what the Space Shuttle currently does: "One out of the seven computers got a different answer, so we scrubbed the mission."
The reason they do that is so they still *have* that massive redundancy once the shuttle is orbiting and you don't have the luxury of just stopping the countdown and letting everyone out for a stretch. Once they're up, this stuff needs to Just Work.
Advertisers and tracking services will fight this to the bitter end.
Nah, they'll just ignore it - it's just a header, and has no mechanics for ensuring that the reciever (a) gets it, (b) knows what it means, or (c) does anything in particular with it.
Slashdot Mirror
I'm hoping that the teacher took the opportunity to let the student explain his alternative hypothesis, turning into a class discussion.
Sadly, I'm guessing she had to duck/cover to avoid problems down the road?
Sorry, but the fact is, when a majority of teachers start favouring religion over science, its time to sit up and pay attention.
It's not quite that bad, but close. They're not favoring religion, they're just not fighting any more. Which means that there's no-one fighting for real science in the classroom.
And I can't say I blame teachers terribly - they get the pointy end of the stick whenever someone wants to make political points, and don't get a whole lot of support otherwise (case in point: everyone will jump on the teacher when they do something wrong, but when the brat gets a failing grade, no-one backs up the teacher saying "yes, he didn't do his homework and should fail")
supply and demand
anyone with a strong science degree is making more money somewhere other than teaching.
I'll do you one better - the lady with the science degree won't be allowed in the classroom in the first place, because you need an education degree to get certified as a teacher.
I'd suspect that the teachers are more concerned with the creationist parents coming and complaining to them than they are about the evolutionist parents.
I suspect you're right - and schools these days are fairly risk-averse when it comes to parents and curriculum. Once you start down the "you don't need to teach the kids this" path, it's pretty hard to stop.
Which reminds me, I need to read up on our local Idiot Act (gov't passed a law allowing parents "to have their child excluded, without academic penalty, from instruction, exercises, and the use of instructional materials that deal primarily and explicitly with religion, sexuality, or sexual orientation". My daughter starts kindergarten this year, and I'm *so* looking forward to abusing this rule in the name of sanity. ("Well, Mr. Teacher, I see here that you're using Timmy and Suzy in your math example. I feel that you're implying a heterosexual relationship here, and thus I don't feel my daughter should have to learn about multiplication in that manner. We're gonna go to the park instead.")
(closed captioning for the humor impaired) Yes, I'll make sure my daughter learns multiplication.
(Can only speak for Canada/Alberta here - but I have several friends and relatives in the teaching profession)
When you get your education degree, you do specialize - you go to school to be a math teacher or a science teacher or an English teacher.
When you get into the schools, it seems to be a whole new ball game - you get put where the school needs you, and it may be a subject you know little or nothing about. Add a bit of office politics to the mix, and suddenly your expert English teacher is stuck teaching math...
isn't censoring anything - rather, it's choosing not to encourage it
Looking back at this comment after responding to it once... holy cow, dancing around terminology much?
Here's where I'm drawing the distinction:
Auto-complete is Google being helpful, like their "you searched for X, did you really mean Y?" blurbs - they're guessing what you really meant to ask based on what popular searches are. So if I search for "Doctor Who", Google is choosing *not* to suggest "Doctor Who torrent", even though it normally would be the best related search. Since people see it as Google "recommending" a search, I can accept them choosing not to put certain words in that auto-complete.
On the other hand, not showing torrent *results* in Instant Search is censoring - I'm asking for something, and Google is choosing not to include it in their results for reasons unrelated to relevance. Granted, it's a sticky subject because Google is always "censoring" (or "filtering") content in the sense that they decide what to put on the front page and what they don't - the difference is that generally they're filtering based on improving the results for the end user. This is filtering for the benefit of a third-party, at the detriment of the end-user.
I've already turned Instant Search off - and if Google starts extending third-party filtering to the main engine, I'll start looking elsewhere for my search results.
during work hours, one player is denoted the "Boss." 'The Boss is tasked with giving directions to other players, which Muraski testified mimics the organization of a gang.'"
OMG - I'm in a gang too!
There is a difference and when did Twitter become the official response media for Microsoft?
I'm going to guess that there will never be an "official" MS response on this, because they (correctly) are treating this as a private matter between them and one of their customers.
They can't add details. Thats private information. The information was given to the mother, and she didn't share it.
... which should give us all a fairly strong hint that Little Timmy might not be quite the angel he was previously advertised as.
The casino doesn't tattoo "Cheater" on their forehead for all to see, though. In a sense, MS has done this by labeling his account "Cheater."
That's more because casino's don't like to publicly acknowledge cheaters, though. (Makes the rubes nervous).
I've seen plenty of corner stores with big "BANNED" posters and pictures of the people who aren't allowed in. So apparently it's not very illegal.
Here's the timeline as I see it
At this point, one of three things are happening right now:
I figure, if it's the first, we'll hear about it again in a few days. Otherwise, they're going to quietly hide and hope the media attention goes away.
* I'm still trying to find a scenario where it actually matters that the kid is autistic (other than a means to get the media attention, or as some sort of "you have to let my son cheat - he's disabled" BS. But maybe I'm just extra-cynical this morning.
They are, but not in both cases.
Choosing not to auto-complete with "torrent" isn't censoring anything - rather, it's choosing not to encourage it (because people will see the suggestion of adding "torrent" to be support for piracy). A little out of sync with Google's usual MO, but whatever - if you want a torrent, you should know to ask for one.
Removing them from the instant search results is censoring - in my mind, it makes the "instant search" a different engine from the "press enter" search. Of course, it's still Google's choice, but I'll likely turn the instant search off now, since it's clear that you don't get the most honest results that way.
At least one of them should have reasonable singing ability as well - important to sooth the alien armadas.
If you're only planning to keep them 12 months or so, why not hire the even-cheaper high-schooler, then?
Given the general attitude of the judge, that fellow is very lucky that he wasn't asked to provide documentation regarding the "criminal attacks" and "bomb threats"...
So you're suggesting that the movie studios intentionally leak copies of their movies that when it gets to the "good part" suddenly cut off the audio and/or video? Hmm... that does sound perfectly legal and even moral. The question is, would it increase movie sales?
Not sure - I remember hearing about the Barenaked Ladies releasing a torrent of one of their songs that stopped mid-verse, followed by them telling you to go buy the album. Couldn't tell you if it helped or not (although the fact that they sell memory sticks with their live concerts says they're not afraid of the Big Bad Net.)
I love that story - they got all the benefits of the demo, with none of the downsides of DRM, while avoiding the problems of day-1 cracks (my understanding is that since the game didn't do the "legit" check until later in the game, crackers either had more trouble finding it or didn't think to look in the first place - since the game "worked", after all).
I really should have picked up a copy of that game as a show of support. (No, I didn't pirate it - I'm just not a big Batman fan.)
And checking the number of seeders/leechers helps, too.
This has been the best indicator for me, particularly the seed number - people don't waste time seeding bad files.
They are being taxed approximately 80 times the rate as the rest of the americans.
Do you mean that in percentages or in absolute dollars? 80x the absolute dollars makes sense if they're making 80x the cash...
Getting a degree could also mean you're overly conformist and likely to lack a lot of creativity.
Indeed. That's why Universities are widely known for being bastions of Conservatism...
I've always wondered about this - there's plenty of die-hard Conservatives with degrees and doctorates. Do they just not socialize while they're in school?
I'm often amazed by Slashdot's anti-intellectual bent - though it is mostly populated by Americans, so I suppose it shouldn't be that surprising.
At the risk of feeding the troll, I'll just point out that there's more varieties of "intelligence" than just "college educated". (And I'm not talking that Emotional Intelligence tripe they sell HR trainers). That kid who dropped out of high school because he's tired of reading stupid books about old people might be very good with a welding torch, for example.
If I had a job opening and two people with no previous related experience were applying, one fresh out of college with a 2.8 GPA and one who didn't finish high school, all things being equal, who do you think I'm going to hire? Who would you hire?
That would depend entirely on what the job is. If I need a McGreeter, I'm going to take the high-schooler, to be honest. College kids are overqualified and are going to ditch at the first chance they get. The high-schooler will also be happier with the wage as well, I'll bet.
But then, I probably value longevity over costs more than the average corp. (Also, I know some small business owners, and they'll take someone who'll stay a while over a smarter person who'll ditch in six months any day of the week.)
On the other hand, take your typical liberal arts graduate. Sure, they may not have learned how to perform advanced math on hex numbers while in college, but they have shown that they are willing to learn new ideas, do the hard work, follow the rules, see a task through to completion and generally put up with the bullshit that you have to put up with in order to get the degree.
It's not the degree itself that matters. It is what getting the degree says about the person who got it.
Agreed. I had a psych prof (I was a CompSci major / Psych minor) flat out tell us that with very few exceptions, any Bachelor's degree was equivalent to any other once you're out in the real world. And I must say, my experience at work has proved that out - while I work generally in my field, my wife is a soil specialist by training, but her job is plants. Our old director of warehousing was a chemical engineer by training. Our current facility manager went to school for education. Except for the folks in accredited areas (e.g. accounting) I'm not sure if anyone actually went to school for what they're doing around here...
It may not get you the job, but it will get you interviews and consideration, which gives you a leg up on people that lack similar 'papers and documents.' Don't underestimate how important getting your foot in the door is. If you're lacking a degree, it's much more difficult to get people to take you seriously.
At least in the beginning of your career. If you have 15+ years of experience, that's probably better than two years of a co-op and a four year degree.
Depends on what you've been doing for those 15 years. If you can't get into your field (because you have neither experience or degree), fifteen years later you're going to have fifteen years of irrelevant experience and no degree, which arguably puts you in worse shape (since you can't really claim the youthful "eager to learn" either)
What I'm curious about is whether trades (plumbers, electricians, etc) count as degrees or not.
If they are small enough and cheap enough, you can use massive redundancy to get around the reliability problem. Just stop doing what the Space Shuttle currently does: "One out of the seven computers got a different answer, so we scrubbed the mission."
The reason they do that is so they still *have* that massive redundancy once the shuttle is orbiting and you don't have the luxury of just stopping the countdown and letting everyone out for a stretch. Once they're up, this stuff needs to Just Work.
Advertisers and tracking services will fight this to the bitter end.
Nah, they'll just ignore it - it's just a header, and has no mechanics for ensuring that the reciever (a) gets it, (b) knows what it means, or (c) does anything in particular with it.