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User: Brad_McBad

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  1. Re:Maybe, just... maybe... on A Gates Foundation Education Initiative Fizzles · · Score: 2, Interesting

    You don't *need* money, you need good teachers. Paying more for a bad ones who can slither their way through interview, know buzzwords and can use a digital whiteboard won't fix it.

    I went to a State school in the UK. Half of the kids were rough as anything, and the other half weren't. There were blackboards ('chalkboards' in the colonial parlance) and textbooks.
    This is about ten years ago.

    Not a rich school.
    The teachers were good, so those who wanted to learn ended up going to a University of their choice, and those who couldn't be arsed weren't allowed to disrupt the teaching. If you'd put shiny e-tech and new age / business school teaching methods in there it would have gone horribly, horribly wrong.

    That money is required for success in everything is a curious Americanism. India has more programmers and techs than anywhere else, and their schools run on a budget that couldn't run a US schoolbus.

  2. Maybe, just... maybe... on A Gates Foundation Education Initiative Fizzles · · Score: 4, Insightful

    ...you can't fix education by throwing money at it.

    Perhaps you have to know what you're doing.

  3. Re:People don't upgrade from what they're given on Windows 7 To Be "Thoroughly" Tested For Antitrust Compliance · · Score: 3, Insightful

    In my case, this is because I am revolted by the IE7 interface, and am pissed off that it can't be turned back to IE6 mode.

  4. Just means someone else will do it. on UK Government Abandons Piracy Legislation · · Score: 5, Insightful

    The law, as I understand it was proposed, would have made ISPs responsible for monitoring their networks and enforcing the law, which ain't their job.

    All this does is open the way for a properly appointed government body to do it.

    Bugger.

  5. Re:holy crap !!! on UK Government Abandons Piracy Legislation · · Score: 1

    I wouldn't scream too loudly, Jacquie Smith is still trying to run the country like her own personal penal system...

  6. Re:And the previous owner was? on US Army Files Found On Second-Hand MP3 Player · · Score: 1

    Nope. Only if has the power to legally declare war on behalf of his country. He's done nothing wrong under New Zealand law, excepting any crazy treaties. If the US wants to do something to him then they have to prove he violated their law within their sovereign territory, then try to get him extradited.

    I'm kinda hoping the current president isn't the kind of guy to declare war over a second hand iPod...

  7. Re:This summary is a little misleading. on UK Child Abuse Investigators Resent Being Charged For ISP Data · · Score: 1

    Not for me, it isn't. I couldn't care less. The truth is that it is far safer to be a child in the UK now, for good or ill, than it ever has been.

    The "problem" is that there are so few instances of this happening that when it does, it gets blown up out of proportion. Case in point, the Madeline McCann thing. Why would parents who lost a child in Portugal benefit significantly from running a "Find Maddy" campaign in the UK, when their child was lost in Portugal?

    *BOOM* I contend that it doesn't. It sells more papers, and increases the fervour of the masses to the level where it's guaranteed to add an extra hundred thousand daily sales of your paper. It's a touchy subject because people have been told to think that it is.

  8. Re:If you don't want your kids to play these games on The State of Video Game Regulation · · Score: 1

    Heh, when I was little my favorite game was a Spectrum 48k thing called "B.C. Bill." You were a caveman, and had a club. You bopped women on the head and took them back to your cave, then you bopped walking hamburgers and dinosaurs and took them back to the cave. If you got good at bopping women and food, after a time you'd get young versions of you coming out the cave.

    I note that I'm not a violent rapist and animal poacher.

  9. Re:can we request the torture vids? on Obama Edicts Boost FOIA and .gov Websites · · Score: 1

    No one cares how many people you can give head to in a year.

  10. Re:It's for personal use... on Obama Keeps His Blackberry (And Gets a Sectera) · · Score: 1

    Nope. He missed mine, and you're confusing my point. I never said that being a top lawyer means he knows tech, the point I was trying to make is that he's unlikely to use the Blackberry for government business if it's not marked as being used as such since he knows what the law is, and seems to have a big thing about government accountability and honesty.

    Using the degree was a straw man argument to some level, but even so - elements of the campaign that he waged to get where he is now suggests that he is either capable of making informed, relevant technology decisions, or doesn't have a problem asking advice of number of people to get an appropriate decision made.

  11. Re:If you don't want your kids to play these games on The State of Video Game Regulation · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Yeah, IRL, me either. Just don't want to get modded down for being seen to slap down someone's kids...

  12. Re:It's for personal use... on Obama Keeps His Blackberry (And Gets a Sectera) · · Score: 1

    Could this possibly be the same exact same qualification held by the CEOs and CFOs of major American banks?

    You know, the ones who decided to defraud investors by chopping and changing subprime mortgages into AAA rated bonds, thus bringing down every market connected with it?

    The ones who've been running the housing market, of critical economic importance, as a Ponzi scheme?

    It's a degree that seems to scream "I have a mission to rape and pillage, then get out while I can", which would certainly seem to fit that blueblooded retard's MO.

    Let's also not forget that it's not an economics degree. The disciplines are related, but quite different.

  13. Re:It's for personal use... on Obama Keeps His Blackberry (And Gets a Sectera) · · Score: 1

    Come on - Sarah Palin is either as corrupt as they come, or she's small town stupid. A former lecturer in constitutional law isn't going to anything that daft.

  14. It's for personal use... on Obama Keeps His Blackberry (And Gets a Sectera) · · Score: 1

    ... so it's no different than owning an iPod. Official email will still be made a matter of public record, and he's going to be the first president to use email at all, largely because the former chiefs didn't want it on file.

  15. Re:If you don't want your kids to play these games on The State of Video Game Regulation · · Score: 3, Insightful

    What you've just written is a monument to the mollycoddling that Western (but particularly middle class American) children get put through. It's utterly ridiculous. Little boys have run around with sticks, knocked each other over, fallen out of trees, and got busted nicking candy from the store since time immemorial, these things are an important part of establishing identity and social boundaries.

    If a kid breaks another kids arm when playing with a baseball bat, he's learnt a damn hard lesson and won't do it again. If it's his arm that gets broken he'll learn to stay away from similar situations.

    Adults often try to rationalise this behaviour as "he was playing halo, and he just hit his friend with a bat. It's the game's fault", when it ain't. He was being a kid.

  16. Re:Mystery Pits on Oldest Weapons-grade Plutonium Found In Dump · · Score: 1

    It was like that with the IRA bombings.

    A: "Tube's closed. Bomb scare"
    B: "Damnitt, guess I'll have to get off at Temple".

    It's only since we "imported" 'The War Against Trrhr' (T.W.A.T.) from the US that the squawking, screaming attitude has become almost acceptable.

  17. If you don't want your kids to play these games... on The State of Video Game Regulation · · Score: 5, Insightful

    ... Don't buy them for them, and turn on the content rating system, to stop them from borrowing them from friends. Both the XBox and PS3 have these features. Older consoles don't, I admit. But it's a trivial issue. Nonetheless

    Most kids are bright enough to tell fiction from reality, and the ones who aren't are likely to get into trouble anyway.

    I hesitate to say it, but George Carlin was right - "Wait, the kid who eats too many marbles doesn't get to grow up to have kids of his own? Good. Fuck 'em."

  18. Re:Mystery Pits on Oldest Weapons-grade Plutonium Found In Dump · · Score: 1

    So don't put yourself there. I don't notice conscription being enforced in the US in the last thirty years.

  19. Re:Mystery Pits on Oldest Weapons-grade Plutonium Found In Dump · · Score: 1

    Heh. I remember when the 7/7 bombing happened and the non-BBC news channels were running around trying to get vox-pop interviews of people crying and shaking in terror - and the only ones they could find behaving in that way were American tourists.

    Thirty years of a terrorist bombing campaign will tend to toughen a people the fuck up. Go and ask the people who live in Gaza whether or not they're worried about a theoretical weapon that might kill a dozen people and make a square mile uninhabitable for two years.

  20. Re:Ezmode on The Secret Lives of Ubuntu and Debian Users · · Score: 1

    It's either: "These guys do the same stuff that everyone else does, except they do it with a smug, overdeveloped fashion sense because they use OS X"
    or
    "These guys do the same stuff that everyone else does, except they do it competently because they use Linux."

    Since the story is about Debian, I suppose the latter is the correct fix.

    There, fixed that for you.

  21. Re:Good riddance. on Ricardo Montalban Dead At 88 · · Score: 1

    Guru Nanak could kick Jesus' ass any day of the week. Especially Sunday...

  22. Re:Sure, 17 year-olds believe this because of a ga on Halo 3 Criticized In Murder Conviction · · Score: 3, Funny

    Yeah, "kill parent" just makes them tie up their affairs, kill any children then throw themselves off a cliff...

  23. Re:Compared to other countries? on Visitors To US Now Required To Register Online · · Score: 1

    Yes, and it's one of the many reasons I'm thinking about leaving Britain for good.

  24. Re:Compared to other countries? on Visitors To US Now Required To Register Online · · Score: 1

    No, and I've heard it's horrendous. There's nothing there I'm interested in, so i'm not too bothered.

  25. Re:Cannot believe I am saying this... on 30th Anniversary of the (No Good) Spreadsheet · · Score: 1

    Sad as it is to say, they are not the support staff. They are the ones "making the business", and for good or ill, we are there to support their requirements and get them done.

    It's a shitty situation, so now I work for a coding house. There are salesmen and techs and precious little else. It's almost a heaven. Now, if it weren't for the customers...