These union guys are like mafia. In my work place I have to pay them (it is automatically taken from my paycheck). I don't want them to represent me but I don't have a choice. The first thing these guys did when they took over was to remove all work incentives like merit raises etc. and so far have only defended people who should be kicked out for not working. Once there was a potential strike situation and they started telling me that I could not come to work even I don't have anything to do with them. They informed me that their people would be guarding the doors. They have also tried to get me sign documents where I certify that I will not work on certain days etc. There are lots of incidents with these guys - I hope they rot in hell...
Just as the subject line says. Stop using netflix and use Amazon's video on demand instead. It works on Linux just great! The movies are usually between $.99 and $4.99 / film so at least for me it is about the same price I paid for netflix.
Yes, the university level education is pretty much free in Finland. They also have 22% sales tax, 75% gasoline tax, 50% tax on cars, extremely high income tax (goes very easily over 30% and can go up to 60%) etc. Also the salaries paid after getting a good education are very bad. There is pretty much only Nokia that is doing R&D, which means that it does not much make sense to get a PhD. In fact I saw that most people were making a complete U-turn after getting their PhD - they usually ended up being elementary school teachers (very expensive ones as measured by the money invested in their education by the tax payers). In general you will end up doing much better moneywise if you stay away from the university and just start working directly.
I was actually involved in teacher training in Finland (and since that time have moved to US because they actually pay me here for doing my job and the government does not steal everything I make). In my opinion the main problems with the US school (or at least in California) system are: 1) lack of well defined curriculum; 2) lack of proper teacher training; 3) excessive testing of students; 4) attempting to teach too much and too sophisticated material to young students; 5) trying to just get students to memorize things rather than teaching them to solve problems; 6) powerful teacher unions and the incompetent school district administrators will block any attempt to change things towards the better; 7) parent involvement and language problems.
Point 1) leads to a very inconsistent overall teaching process. This will hit especially hard the students who have lazy or inexperienced teachers. These teachers have hard time in preparing the core curriculum and communicating to the students and parents what will be taught and what will be required from the students. I suppose that we would call these the "bad teachers". In Finland it is not necessarily such a disaster for the students if you have a bad teacher since the curriculum was designed in such a way that even an "idiot" can teach it. All the textbooks are prepared so that they are compatible with the national curriculum. In addition to coherent teaching plan, one needs to consider also simple practical issues. For example, students can concentrate on a given subject for about 45 mins after which they will need a break. This break is also important for teachers so that they can prepare for the next class (photocopies etc.). This is how it works in Finland but in California, for example, things are completely upside down. Even at the university level studenst can at most concentrate for two hours on the subject being taught. At high school level one should make mathematics courses, which include calculus and integration, mandatory. Most students tend to skip these courses since "it willl ruin their GPA". The outcome is that their math skills as completely inadequate when they enter college.
Regarding 2) the teacher training programs at least in California are a joke (as compared to Finland). In Finland students are actually chosen to the teacher training programs based on their abilities to communicate and teach (usually a group of teachers will be judging them before they get accepted). This weeds out people how would not be able to teach no metter what one does - it makes no sense to try to turn them into teachers. In addition to the subject training (masters level in the main subject and bachelors in the 2nd subject; grades 6 and above), they will have pedagogical training with directed classroom teaching, courses which emphasize classroom demonstrations and doing experiments with students. In the directed classroom teaching they will be dealing with real students (they are the teacher in charge) and an expert who is giving them feedback how things are going. You can also fail this part in which case you will not become a teacher. Here the state of California (= all the highly paid half politicians - half bureaucrats who run the system) has its own vision what teachers need to know and do in the classroom
It depends what you mean by "works". I have lived in a country with socialized health care and it did not work at least for me. Several reasons:
1) Anything run by government is slow and does not respond well to their customer base (think about DMV, for example). 2) You cannot choose your doctors - you are stuck with what you happen to get. And usually you get someone who does not give a damn what is happening to you. They just try to shove pain killers down your throat or some other drugs to mess you up, just to get rid of you. This is especially bad when it comes to older people. 3) It takes for ever to see a doctor. If you have a serious condition you will probably die before get anywhere. Unless, you can pay the private sector and they will take care of you right away. 4) Since the public sector is not paying doctors well enough and their work schedules suck, they will get the worst doctors. I had to pay on top of everything a private plan so that I could see a doctor who could actually help me (= I was effectively paying twice!). This becomes even more difficult if you have children. Because of the lack of properly trained doctors, you will most often see just a nurse. Also, no periodic check ups etc. - if you would try to do this they would just laugh at you and send you away... 5) Some folks try to assure that it is much cheaper. Well, it might be cheaper but that is because the service is worse. You get what you pay for! 6) Most socialized health care systems do not include dental, eye, etc. In fact, there were not even private plans available and you had to pay a lot to get these services. 7) I had many times problems getting into the public clinics because these were "taken over" by some wierdos (not an uncommon scene to have police men surround the place and take someone out of the building in a straight jacket).... the list goes on...
Right now, I am in the US and have a plan from Keiser - everything works smoothly!
To figure out, if her comments were racist, just think about the reverse situation: a white male giving a similar statement. This would have blocked the nomination of this person right there.
The US needs to get rid of reverse racism, which shows up in many places. For example, scholarships only to certain races etc. Again, think if one would be offering a scholarship to only white people or something similar but somehow it is OK to offer there to hispanics or african americans (and before you bring in poor economic background etc., one should make such scholarships dependent on their income NOT race). I grew up in Europe where these sort of things would be highly illegal.
Everyone must be treated equally regardless of their race! If things were messed up in the US in the past, the solution is not to go to the other extreme.
Universal health care amounts to massive government spending and bureaucracy. I have experience with this in Europe and I am glad I don't have to deal with that anymore here in the US!
All this will make energy more expensive and eventually we will see all our industry move to China. Energy is cheaper there and people are essentially slaves.
I was involved in one such project in Finland over ten years ago. At this time Linux was just starting to take off but was robust enough to be used even then. We had one server (NFS, bootp, email, web etc.) with over 100 PC hooked up to it (we also built the basic local area network there with students; 50 ohm coax at that time;-). Students could connect the machine using dialup (and our outside internet connection was 64kb/s!). Most computers in individual class rooms were running windows but we had two student classrooms that ran both windows and linux (about 50 PCs). I also created a simple linux based boot floppy (bootp was used to ID machine specific configuration) that could restore workstations from the server. Another floppy could be used to generate a model computer image to the server.
Few observations:
1) Before this, it was impossible to let students work in the computer classrooms without someone sitting behind them. Otherwise the windows systems just got killed on few minutes. After this new setup, we were able to let students use the classrooms at any time. If they killed windows, we could restore it in 10 minutes with the linux based boot floppy. The linux side, which many students started using, would run for months without problems. Also network printing worked very smoothly (compared to what they had previously).
2) There were problems getting teachers (except the ones teaching computers) to use linux. At that time linux desktop was not ready for casual users. The current linux distros are much much better. While I was happy with LaTeX, it was obvious that most people could not use it. There was some version of wordperfect available (through SYSV emulation) but it was buggy.
3) Linux was a great environment to get students to learn basic concepts in programming. For example, I had couple of 7th graders who became quite good programmers in a very short time.
4) All this pretty much ended when the school district got a "common information technology strategy". They required windows based solutions etc. These people were complete morons. Supposedly trained computer experts but they could hardly reinstall windows if asked. I think the most difficult problem is to find people who actually know something about computers. Somehow one should make sure that computer illiterate people don't make all the important decisions.
Hi,
Here is what I am mostly using:
(I am skipping obvious things like LaTeX etc.)
1. Maxima for symbolic algebra (and some numerics too) with graphical user interface wxmaxima
2. Octave for numerical & matrix stuff
3. Grace or qtiplot for 2d plotting. qtiplot does also 3D
4. opendx for demanding 3d visualization
5. fsc2 for data acq or I directly program the hardware, although it is tough to get programming specs for most things:-( Octave and linux-gpib are also etremely useful.
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These union guys are like mafia. In my work place I have to pay them (it is automatically taken from my paycheck). I don't want them to represent me but I don't have a choice.
The first thing these guys did when they took over was to remove all work incentives like merit raises etc. and so far have only defended people who should be kicked out for not working. Once there was a potential strike situation and they started telling me that I could not come to work even I don't have anything to do with them. They informed me that their people would be guarding the doors. They have also tried to get me sign documents where I certify that I will not work on certain days etc. There are lots of incidents with these guys - I hope they rot in hell...
Just as the subject line says. Stop using netflix and use Amazon's video on demand instead. It works on Linux just great!
The movies are usually between $.99 and $4.99 / film so at least for me it is about the same price I paid for netflix.
Yes, the university level education is pretty much free in Finland. They also have 22% sales tax, 75% gasoline tax, 50% tax on cars, extremely high income tax (goes very easily over 30% and can go up to 60%) etc. Also the salaries paid after getting a good education are very bad. There is pretty much only Nokia that is doing R&D, which means that it does not much make sense to get a PhD. In fact I saw that most people were making a complete U-turn after getting their PhD - they usually ended up being elementary school teachers (very expensive ones as measured by the money invested in their education by the tax payers). In general you will end up doing much better moneywise if you stay away from the university and just start working directly.
I was actually involved in teacher training in Finland (and since that time have moved to US because they actually pay me here for doing my job and the government does not steal everything I make). In my opinion the main problems with the US school (or at least in California) system are: 1) lack of well defined curriculum; 2) lack of proper teacher training; 3) excessive testing of students; 4) attempting to teach too much and too sophisticated material to young students; 5) trying to just get students to memorize things rather than teaching them to solve problems; 6) powerful teacher unions and the incompetent school district administrators will block any attempt to change things towards the better; 7) parent involvement and language problems.
Point 1) leads to a very inconsistent overall teaching process. This will hit especially hard the students who have lazy or inexperienced teachers. These teachers have hard time in preparing the core curriculum and communicating to the students and parents what will be taught and what will be required from the students. I suppose that we would call these the "bad teachers". In Finland it is not necessarily such a disaster for the students if you have a bad teacher since the curriculum was designed in such a way that even an "idiot" can teach it. All the textbooks are prepared so that they are compatible with the national curriculum. In addition to coherent teaching plan, one needs to consider also simple practical issues. For example, students can concentrate on a given subject for about 45 mins after which they will need a break. This break is also important for teachers so that they can prepare for the next class (photocopies etc.). This is how it works in Finland but in California, for example, things are completely upside down. Even at the university level studenst can at most concentrate for two hours on the subject being taught. At high school level one should make mathematics courses, which include calculus and integration, mandatory. Most students tend to skip these courses since "it willl ruin their GPA". The outcome is that their math skills as completely inadequate when they enter college.
Regarding 2) the teacher training programs at least in California are a joke (as compared to Finland). In Finland students are actually chosen to the teacher training programs based on their abilities to communicate and teach (usually a group of teachers will be judging them before they get accepted). This weeds out people how would not be able to teach no metter what one does - it makes no sense to try to turn them into teachers. In addition to the subject training (masters level in the main subject and bachelors in the 2nd subject; grades 6 and above), they will have pedagogical training with directed classroom teaching, courses which emphasize classroom demonstrations and doing experiments with students. In the directed classroom teaching they will be dealing with real students (they are the teacher in charge) and an expert who is giving them feedback how things are going. You can also fail this part in which case you will not become a teacher. Here the state of California (= all the highly paid half politicians - half bureaucrats who run the system) has its own vision what teachers need to know and do in the classroom
It depends what you mean by "works". I have lived in a country with socialized health care and it did not work at least for me. Several reasons:
1) Anything run by government is slow and does not respond well to their customer base (think about DMV, for example). ... the list goes on...
2) You cannot choose your doctors - you are stuck with what you happen to get. And usually you get someone who does not give a damn what is happening to you. They just try to shove pain killers down your throat or some other drugs to mess you up, just to get rid of you. This is especially bad when it comes to older people.
3) It takes for ever to see a doctor. If you have a serious condition you will probably die before get anywhere. Unless, you can pay the private sector and they will take care of you right away.
4) Since the public sector is not paying doctors well enough and their work schedules suck, they will get the worst doctors. I had to pay on top of everything a private plan so that I could see a doctor who could actually help me (= I was effectively paying twice!). This becomes even more difficult if you have children. Because of the lack of properly trained doctors, you will most often see just a nurse. Also, no periodic check ups etc. - if you would try to do this they would just laugh at you and send you away...
5) Some folks try to assure that it is much cheaper. Well, it might be cheaper but that is because the service is worse. You get what you pay for!
6) Most socialized health care systems do not include dental, eye, etc.
In fact, there were not even private plans available and you had to pay a lot to get these services.
7) I had many times problems getting into the public clinics because these were "taken over" by some wierdos (not an uncommon scene to have police men surround the place and take someone out of the building in a straight jacket).
Right now, I am in the US and have a plan from Keiser - everything works smoothly!
To figure out, if her comments were racist, just think about the reverse situation: a white male giving a similar statement.
This would have blocked the nomination of this person right there.
The US needs to get rid of reverse racism, which shows up in many places. For example, scholarships only to certain races etc. Again, think if one would be offering a scholarship to only white people or something similar but somehow it is OK to offer there to hispanics or african americans (and before you bring in poor economic background etc., one should make such scholarships dependent on their income NOT race). I grew up in Europe where these sort of things would be highly illegal.
Everyone must be treated equally regardless of their race! If things were messed up in the US in the past, the solution is not to go to the other extreme.
Universal health care amounts to massive government spending and bureaucracy. I have experience with this in Europe and I am glad I don't have to deal with that anymore here in the US!
All this will make energy more expensive and eventually we will see all our industry move to China. Energy is cheaper there and people are essentially slaves.
Hi,
I was involved in one such project in Finland over ten years ago. At this time Linux was just starting to take off but was robust enough to be used even then. We had one server (NFS, bootp, email, web etc.) with over 100 PC hooked up to it (we also built the basic local area network there with students; 50 ohm coax at that time ;-). Students could connect the machine using dialup (and our outside internet connection was 64kb/s!). Most computers in individual class rooms were running windows but we had two student classrooms that ran both windows and linux (about 50 PCs). I also created a simple linux based boot floppy (bootp was used to ID machine specific configuration) that could restore workstations from the server. Another floppy could be used to generate a model computer image to the server.
Few observations:
1) Before this, it was impossible to let students work in the computer classrooms without someone sitting behind them. Otherwise the windows systems just got killed on few minutes. After this new setup, we were able to let students use the classrooms at any time. If they killed windows, we could restore it in 10 minutes with the linux based boot floppy. The linux side, which many students started using, would run for months without problems. Also network printing worked very smoothly (compared to what they had previously).
2) There were problems getting teachers (except the ones teaching computers) to use linux. At that time linux desktop was not ready for casual users. The current linux distros are much much better. While I was happy with LaTeX, it was obvious that most people could not use it. There was some version of wordperfect available (through SYSV emulation) but it was buggy.
3) Linux was a great environment to get students to learn basic concepts in programming. For example, I had couple of 7th graders who became quite good programmers in a very short time.
4) All this pretty much ended when the school district got a "common information technology strategy". They required windows based solutions etc. These people were complete morons. Supposedly trained computer experts but they could hardly reinstall windows if asked. I think the most difficult problem is to find people who actually know something about computers. Somehow one should make sure that computer illiterate people don't make all the important decisions.
Ok.. typo change the last octave to comedi... ;-)
Hi, Here is what I am mostly using: (I am skipping obvious things like LaTeX etc.) 1. Maxima for symbolic algebra (and some numerics too) with graphical user interface wxmaxima 2. Octave for numerical & matrix stuff 3. Grace or qtiplot for 2d plotting. qtiplot does also 3D 4. opendx for demanding 3d visualization 5. fsc2 for data acq or I directly program the hardware, although it is tough to get programming specs for most things :-( Octave and linux-gpib are also etremely useful.