I wouldn't discount Saxon math based on its association with home schooling. I think the poster above makes a good point, it really depends on your learning style. I heard good things about it, so I picked up a copy of the Algebra I book to use as a backup to the book a high school student I was tutoring had. Mostly for practice problems and the like. I found the explanations in the Saxon book often make more sense to me than the ones in my student's book. Same ideas, just different approaches to the subject. Also, the material seemed better organized and the book doesn't jump around as much. YMMV.
You don't say if your small part of the $65/hr is counting any benefits they may or may not be offering you. You also don't say how much you're billable, so you might want to take that into account. I've been following some small business "managed IT" shops talk bout being happy to get 75% billable out of their consultants, so you might think of that as a benchmark.
This will not endear me to the general Slashdot community, but if you search Yahoo!Groups for some of the MS Small Business Server communities, in particular the smallbizit or "managed services" group, you'll find small business owners discussing the ins and outs of making a business work - including profitability and if you do some archive searchs what they're offering for benefits. If you participate in the OS religious wars, you may want to skip it, but if you can look past that, there's some value. A lot of the discussion is in moving a business from "break/fix" pricing to "managed services." You might Google "The SBS Show" which is a podcast talking about a lot of these issues, interviewing different business owners.
On the one hand it must be horribly annoying. You know what you want and they won't respect your descission. On the other hand, there are lesbian, it's no secret, Mom's who have given birth to children. So, perhaps that's the doctor's concern. That should you decide to get pregnant, they're liable for having prescribed the drug. Even if it is inconceivable to you and not something you want at all, the doctors can't know your mind on this one. I'd be cautious to if I was held liable for things that were outside of my control.
Maybe it was easier for them to work with the management, or they know the guy, or the organizers live in the area... etc, etc. I imagine the "burgeoning arts description" has to do with the work the H Street Main Street project has been working on. The productions at the "H Street Theater" have been nominated for a couple of Helen Hayes awards (for those unfamiliar, they're like an Oscar's for local theater), and the Atlas should be opening up soon. A dance school moved over there, and that sort of thing. Not that I'm claiming the whole area doesn't still look pretty sketchy, but a lot of new places have opened up in the last year and there's a lot of change from in the last year or so. Not as dramatic as when U Street really took off, but they're working on it.
But, yes, there's still a lot of stigma. And, there is still a lot of crime. But, from the police reports, there doesn't seem to be much more concentrated around H Street and a few blocks north, than any of the neighborhoods to the south (Capital Hill, the area around Union Station, Kingman Park which is by the stadium, "Hill East"). North of there is in a different police district, so I don't get those e-mails, but if you're going to H Street, you wouldn't necessarily need to go that way.
So, yeah... people will probably not go because it's not a neighborhood they're familiar with or feel safe in. But, that doesn't necessarily mean they should be writing it off so quickly.
Guess I'm not disagreeing with the comment I hit reply to, but wanted to throw my 2 cents into the thread.
MS does not donate, they invest: be it PR or else.
Which is what almost every company does, and lots of individuals do as well. Make a big donation, get your name out there. It's a transaction. It's a transaction for all of us who donate, we at least get the warm fuzzies out of it, or we wouldn't bother.
Who's to say the research won't find its way in that direction?
Exactly. Towards the end of the first section the article says: "To our knowledge, this is the first report describing the production of an archaeal protein in plants." So, there work is a starting point, or a peice of basic research, that could go off in a multitude of directions. It looks like the Mars angle keeps it interesting as 1) a starting point to look for investigative angles, and 2) a way to keep things interesting in an under grad class room.
What makes it sexist? Did he say the recipes were bad? That women were bad?
What makes it come off as sexist is the implication that women and engineers are exclusive groups. An idea the author reinforces when he says: for tech geeks like us.
If there had been other attempts at humor in the post, some of us who found the comment sexist might have found it funny instead.
First off, there are females at DefCon, and not all of them are there, because they think it's an easy place to pick up guys.
That said, have her look at the program and see if any of the talks are interesting to her. If she knows only a bit, maybe the technical talks won't be that interesting, but the talks that delve into the overlap between politics and technology might be of interest. I'm guessing if she's not that into it, the contests wouldn't be very fun to her.
If it's not her thing at all, have her look and see if Vegas is something interesting to her, and she can join you later. But, I'd be more inclined to say, if it's not her thing, plan a different trip that both of you would enjoy before or after DefCon.
It's probably been five years since I read it, so I don't remember a lot about "The God Particle," but I do remember finding it readable at the time. As I recall, Lederman walks you through a history of physics to the work at the time of publishing in search of "the god particle" the smallest bit (overly simplifying there). I like this kind of approach, because you see ideas build and it helps me understand the connections between concepts.
we need to bring science fiction to the fans, and possibly even integrate it with real life.
First off - I did laugh!
Second - This hits a sore spot, so I can't help but mouth off. People who say they don't like science fiction, because it's made up or not real. But I think in books like Kim Stanley Robinsons Mars series (particularly the earth scenarios) or movies like Gattaca, the what if of science fiction is instructional. They get you thinking about what is over the horizon. It's a little late to start thinking about the ethics of cloning now that the cat is out of the bag. Science Fiction helps get at least some people thinking about the issues at least a little ahead of the time. Without beating them over the head with it. Not all the fiction, all of the time, but some.
No kidding. You would think when they go on to list Octavia Butler as being on the board, they would take a clue. I don't know that I would say the bias is in SciFi, exactly, but definitely in the perception of SciFi. I wonder if the author of the article is even familiar with the genre or the people on the board. In the grand scheme of things, his off hand comment probably doesn't matter much. But, it certainly illustrates the short distance between being excited about something and being annoyed.
Heh... we got one of these at a company I used to work for, about a week after I started (isn't that always the way;) ). Our licensing, was ahem... fast and loose. Anyway, we scramble to get in order, they send the audit software they want to use, and... I can't run it, because the license key they sent was invalid. That added another 3 or so weeks of delay into the process. Since our licensing was messed up, I can't complain about the incident. But, in general their tactics suck.
We got the more official letter by the way, and ignored it a while. I would never respond to the mass mailed letter. If I got a real one, I'd start trading lawyer letters, or any other kind of official looking letter to drag it out.
I started thinking the article was pretty out there, ridiculous, and taking what is basically a good story far to seriously, until I got to the end. I don't think a fairy tale has a lot of obligations (if any). I changed my mind on the ridiculousness of the article when I got to the end. The part that starts "Am I pulling your leg? You bet!" and basically asks for people to think critically about what they see. And I like to imagine the point of that exercise isn't just to rip apart LOTR, but to get some practice in looking at the other stories of good vs. evil in similar light. Who's telling the story? Why are they telling the story? Kind of pulls you back to English Lit. or creative writing classes.
And it changes colors, supposedly. Most definitely. There are a couple of posters who describe there (including myself, earlier). I adore mine. You can have them grown for you. There is a lot of variability in color - if it's murky or more brilliant in color, and how different the color change is.
It's also on some of those birthstone lists for June.
Diamonds are not time honored tradition!! It's all a DeBeer's ploy. Don't believe me, this article talks about it and has links to people like the Washington Post. DeBeer's created the diamond market and created the "tradition." They've received advertising honors for this feat! http://www.howstuffworks.com/diamond3.htm
My tooth was cracked. To have the crown fitted properly, because of the tooth shape and the deep crack, he needed to get below the gum line. There was sort of an indentation in the shape of the tooth, so my gum was coming over where the cap needed to go. My dentist used his laser to cut back the gum and importantly - cauterize - the cut at the same time. That allowed him to continue the work, it didn't hurt for me. My dentist says he couldn't have done it as quickly or easily, that it would have been quite difficult, if he hadn't had his new laser.
I'm a big fan of brushing and flossing also. Who would have thought that a bagel would be so bad (bagels are a leading cause of cracked teeth - don't eat stale bagels).
Seems like a post on an "appreciation day" is an invitation for a little venting. I've had many a day where I've had a similar wish. (It gets answered about as well as my wish for cash instead of trinket rewards;) ). Of course, there are also people who will go out of their way to work with you to figure out a problem, instead of just dump it on you with an e-mail that consist entirely of "the servers broken," without any other information.
Presumably, developers sit around and tell stories about awful sysadmins.
I am personally not sure that the two positions are mutually exclusive. I like my car, it gets me where I need to go, but I don't know a lot about it. I appreciate the assistance I've received that has been both volunteered and sold to me. But, I do think they can be taken to an exclusive level and that some people like it that way, or perhaps want to have it both ways.
Eyepeepackets makes some good points. Having read this far down in the conversation, and reading Slashdot in general, it seems there is another underlying issue. It would appear that your average vocal Slashdot reader wants 1) to topple Microsoft and supplant it with... well, one would assume Linux, and 2) wants to retain an uberGeek sort of status via his/her affiliation with all things Linux and OpenSource. So, there's a conflict. Do people want Linux to take over for Windows or do they want it to remain an elite.
It appears that a number of people need to figure out what it is they want to see happen with Linux in the future, before they can really figure out how to respond to the original editorial.
I had to look and see what's in my area, and I'll admit, there is an impulse to walk the short walk to the "Donkey Xote" statue and see if George Stephanopolous' book is there, even though I have no desire to read it. Then I looked at how many books were left on metro, at park benches, etc., and I started to wonder how many books are going to end up being found versus thrown away. I suppose there are more than a few heathens out there who throw their books away already, and there are probably books that don't deserve the paper their printed on. But, it is vaguely depressing to think of a bunch of books getting thrown out. On the other hand, it is pretty harmless fun, so why get all curmudgeonly about it?
I heard an interesting presentation at the Baltimore Chapter of the Association for Women in Computing, given by Dr. Linda Rosenberg - Chief Scientist for Software Assurance at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center. The presentation is online. In the middle of the presentation was a discussion of some of the tools the assurance team uses. There's a density test, which might be of particular interest to the original poster. The density test looks at how many errors one would expect to find based on lines of code, and I think complexity but I'm a bit fuzzy on the exact details. Anyway, part of it is that there is that based on measurement of past debugging there is a curve of how many errors you would expect to find over time. When the testing team says they are done, the results are compared against the curve, to judge whether they fit the pattern one would expect to be done. That is, how far along on the curve are they? There's another tool the assurance team has to judge whether requirements are meaningful, by evaluating the requirements document to make sure it's complete. Using key phrases to judge whether a requirement statement is definitive or fuzzy or incomplete (that is does it say "to be determined later") and giving a percentage of how many of these types of statements you have compared to the rest of the document. Maybe not perfect, but a starting place to judge.
Neither programming or software assurance are areas I have knowledge in, so take the above with a grain of salt and check it out yourself. It all seemed rather interesting.
One can hope. They seem good at hysteria, but the analogies need some work.
"'I say to you that the VCR is to the American film producer and the American public as the Boston strangler is to the woman home alone.'"
Most women in Boston at the time were probably afraid of the Boston Strangler. Most women have some level of fear of the crimes perpetrated against women. But, crime against women has such a long history of being over hyped (look out for the darkie, he'll get your white women... FBI crime statistics keep showing a decrease compared to media coverage.... don't go out alone after dark by yourself, when you're more likely to get raped by an acquaintance than a stranger, etc.). The point is, the Boston Strangler was very threatening, but unlikely to have a direct affect on the well-being of probably close to all the women in Boston. (I will admit at this time I'm not particularly familiar with the case, so I'm thinking any mass murderer in general). Therefore, if the VCR was like the Boston Strangler, well even if this is a poorly chosen metaphor the VCR would perhaps pick off a proportionally few movie producers, but not have much impact on the population as a whole, except cause some worry that will most likely come to naught.
Slashdot Mirror
I wouldn't discount Saxon math based on its association with home schooling. I think the poster above makes a good point, it really depends on your learning style. I heard good things about it, so I picked up a copy of the Algebra I book to use as a backup to the book a high school student I was tutoring had. Mostly for practice problems and the like. I found the explanations in the Saxon book often make more sense to me than the ones in my student's book. Same ideas, just different approaches to the subject. Also, the material seemed better organized and the book doesn't jump around as much. YMMV.
This whole article out to be modded flame bait. Just like this post.
You don't say if your small part of the $65/hr is counting any benefits they may or may not be offering you. You also don't say how much you're billable, so you might want to take that into account. I've been following some small business "managed IT" shops talk bout being happy to get 75% billable out of their consultants, so you might think of that as a benchmark.
This will not endear me to the general Slashdot community, but if you search Yahoo!Groups for some of the MS Small Business Server communities, in particular the smallbizit or "managed services" group, you'll find small business owners discussing the ins and outs of making a business work - including profitability and if you do some archive searchs what they're offering for benefits. If you participate in the OS religious wars, you may want to skip it, but if you can look past that, there's some value. A lot of the discussion is in moving a business from "break/fix" pricing to "managed services." You might Google "The SBS Show" which is a podcast talking about a lot of these issues, interviewing different business owners.
On the one hand it must be horribly annoying. You know what you want and they won't respect your descission. On the other hand, there are lesbian, it's no secret, Mom's who have given birth to children. So, perhaps that's the doctor's concern. That should you decide to get pregnant, they're liable for having prescribed the drug. Even if it is inconceivable to you and not something you want at all, the doctors can't know your mind on this one. I'd be cautious to if I was held liable for things that were outside of my control.
Maybe it was easier for them to work with the management, or they know the guy, or the organizers live in the area... etc, etc. I imagine the "burgeoning arts description" has to do with the work the H Street Main Street project has been working on. The productions at the "H Street Theater" have been nominated for a couple of Helen Hayes awards (for those unfamiliar, they're like an Oscar's for local theater), and the Atlas should be opening up soon. A dance school moved over there, and that sort of thing. Not that I'm claiming the whole area doesn't still look pretty sketchy, but a lot of new places have opened up in the last year and there's a lot of change from in the last year or so. Not as dramatic as when U Street really took off, but they're working on it.
But, yes, there's still a lot of stigma. And, there is still a lot of crime. But, from the police reports, there doesn't seem to be much more concentrated around H Street and a few blocks north, than any of the neighborhoods to the south (Capital Hill, the area around Union Station, Kingman Park which is by the stadium, "Hill East"). North of there is in a different police district, so I don't get those e-mails, but if you're going to H Street, you wouldn't necessarily need to go that way.
So, yeah... people will probably not go because it's not a neighborhood they're familiar with or feel safe in. But, that doesn't necessarily mean they should be writing it off so quickly.
Guess I'm not disagreeing with the comment I hit reply to, but wanted to throw my 2 cents into the thread.
MS does not donate, they invest: be it PR or else.
Which is what almost every company does, and lots of individuals do as well. Make a big donation, get your name out there. It's a transaction. It's a transaction for all of us who donate, we at least get the warm fuzzies out of it, or we wouldn't bother.
Exactly. Towards the end of the first section the article says: "To our knowledge, this is the first report describing the production of an archaeal protein in plants." So, there work is a starting point, or a peice of basic research, that could go off in a multitude of directions. It looks like the Mars angle keeps it interesting as 1) a starting point to look for investigative angles, and 2) a way to keep things interesting in an under grad class room.
What makes it sexist? Did he say the recipes were bad? That women were bad?
What makes it come off as sexist is the implication that women and engineers are exclusive groups. An idea the author reinforces when he says: for tech geeks like us.
If there had been other attempts at humor in the post, some of us who found the comment sexist might have found it funny instead.
First off, there are females at DefCon, and not all of them are there, because they think it's an easy place to pick up guys.
That said, have her look at the program and see if any of the talks are interesting to her. If she knows only a bit, maybe the technical talks won't be that interesting, but the talks that delve into the overlap between politics and technology might be of interest. I'm guessing if she's not that into it, the contests wouldn't be very fun to her.
If it's not her thing at all, have her look and see if Vegas is something interesting to her, and she can join you later. But, I'd be more inclined to say, if it's not her thing, plan a different trip that both of you would enjoy before or after DefCon.
I can name a few, and it's not by choice either. The joys of rural/small town living can include not having cablemodems or DSL as an option.
It's probably been five years since I read it, so I don't remember a lot about "The God Particle," but I do remember finding it readable at the time. As I recall, Lederman walks you through a history of physics to the work at the time of publishing in search of "the god particle" the smallest bit (overly simplifying there). I like this kind of approach, because you see ideas build and it helps me understand the connections between concepts.
we need to bring science fiction to the fans, and possibly even integrate it with real life.
First off - I did laugh!
Second - This hits a sore spot, so I can't help but mouth off. People who say they don't like science fiction, because it's made up or not real. But I think in books like Kim Stanley Robinsons Mars series (particularly the earth scenarios) or movies like Gattaca, the what if of science fiction is instructional. They get you thinking about what is over the horizon. It's a little late to start thinking about the ethics of cloning now that the cat is out of the bag. Science Fiction helps get at least some people thinking about the issues at least a little ahead of the time. Without beating them over the head with it. Not all the fiction, all of the time, but some.
No kidding. You would think when they go on to list Octavia Butler as being on the board, they would take a clue. I don't know that I would say the bias is in SciFi, exactly, but definitely in the perception of SciFi. I wonder if the author of the article is even familiar with the genre or the people on the board. In the grand scheme of things, his off hand comment probably doesn't matter much. But, it certainly illustrates the short distance between being excited about something and being annoyed.
We got the more official letter by the way, and ignored it a while. I would never respond to the mass mailed letter. If I got a real one, I'd start trading lawyer letters, or any other kind of official looking letter to drag it out.
I started thinking the article was pretty out there, ridiculous, and taking what is basically a good story far to seriously, until I got to the end. I don't think a fairy tale has a lot of obligations (if any). I changed my mind on the ridiculousness of the article when I got to the end. The part that starts "Am I pulling your leg? You bet!" and basically asks for people to think critically about what they see. And I like to imagine the point of that exercise isn't just to rip apart LOTR, but to get some practice in looking at the other stories of good vs. evil in similar light. Who's telling the story? Why are they telling the story? Kind of pulls you back to English Lit. or creative writing classes.
Most definitely. There are a couple of posters who describe there (including myself, earlier). I adore mine. You can have them grown for you. There is a lot of variability in color - if it's murky or more brilliant in color, and how different the color change is.
It's also on some of those birthstone lists for June.
Diamonds are not time honored tradition!! It's all a DeBeer's ploy. Don't believe me, this article talks about it and has links to people like the Washington Post. DeBeer's created the diamond market and created the "tradition." They've received advertising honors for this feat!
http://www.howstuffworks.com/diamond3.htm
My dentist has a laser, he loves it.
My tooth was cracked. To have the crown fitted properly, because of the tooth shape and the deep crack, he needed to get below the gum line. There was sort of an indentation in the shape of the tooth, so my gum was coming over where the cap needed to go. My dentist used his laser to cut back the gum and importantly - cauterize - the cut at the same time. That allowed him to continue the work, it didn't hurt for me. My dentist says he couldn't have done it as quickly or easily, that it would have been quite difficult, if he hadn't had his new laser.
I'm a big fan of brushing and flossing also. Who would have thought that a bagel would be so bad (bagels are a leading cause of cracked teeth - don't eat stale bagels).
Seems like a post on an "appreciation day" is an invitation for a little venting. I've had many a day where I've had a similar wish. (It gets answered about as well as my wish for cash instead of trinket rewards ;) ). Of course, there are also people who will go out of their way to work with you to figure out a problem, instead of just dump it on you with an e-mail that consist entirely of "the servers broken," without any other information.
Presumably, developers sit around and tell stories about awful sysadmins.
And the world turns on.
...is some overbearing sweaty person seeing an excuse to get 'appropriately' fresh upon viewing the button. Yippee :P.
:).
Now, "have you brought your geek proper offerings today" I could go for
I am personally not sure that the two positions are mutually exclusive. I like my car, it gets me where I need to go, but I don't know a lot about it. I appreciate the assistance I've received that has been both volunteered and sold to me. But, I do think they can be taken to an exclusive level and that some people like it that way, or perhaps want to have it both ways.
Eyepeepackets makes some good points. Having read this far down in the conversation, and reading Slashdot in general, it seems there is another underlying issue. It would appear that your average vocal Slashdot reader wants 1) to topple Microsoft and supplant it with... well, one would assume Linux, and 2) wants to retain an uberGeek sort of status via his/her affiliation with all things Linux and OpenSource. So, there's a conflict. Do people want Linux to take over for Windows or do they want it to remain an elite.
It appears that a number of people need to figure out what it is they want to see happen with Linux in the future, before they can really figure out how to respond to the original editorial.
I had to look and see what's in my area, and I'll admit, there is an impulse to walk the short walk to the "Donkey Xote" statue and see if George Stephanopolous' book is there, even though I have no desire to read it. Then I looked at how many books were left on metro, at park benches, etc., and I started to wonder how many books are going to end up being found versus thrown away. I suppose there are more than a few heathens out there who throw their books away already, and there are probably books that don't deserve the paper their printed on. But, it is vaguely depressing to think of a bunch of books getting thrown out. On the other hand, it is pretty harmless fun, so why get all curmudgeonly about it?
I heard an interesting presentation at the Baltimore Chapter of the Association for Women in Computing, given by Dr. Linda Rosenberg - Chief Scientist for Software Assurance at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center. The presentation is online. In the middle of the presentation was a discussion of some of the tools the assurance team uses. There's a density test, which might be of particular interest to the original poster. The density test looks at how many errors one would expect to find based on lines of code, and I think complexity but I'm a bit fuzzy on the exact details. Anyway, part of it is that there is that based on measurement of past debugging there is a curve of how many errors you would expect to find over time. When the testing team says they are done, the results are compared against the curve, to judge whether they fit the pattern one would expect to be done. That is, how far along on the curve are they? There's another tool the assurance team has to judge whether requirements are meaningful, by evaluating the requirements document to make sure it's complete. Using key phrases to judge whether a requirement statement is definitive or fuzzy or incomplete (that is does it say "to be determined later") and giving a percentage of how many of these types of statements you have compared to the rest of the document. Maybe not perfect, but a starting place to judge.
Neither programming or software assurance are areas I have knowledge in, so take the above with a grain of salt and check it out yourself. It all seemed rather interesting.
One can hope. They seem good at hysteria, but the analogies need some work.
"'I say to you that the VCR is to the American film producer and the American public as the Boston strangler is to the woman home alone.'"
Most women in Boston at the time were probably afraid of the Boston Strangler. Most women have some level of fear of the crimes perpetrated against women. But, crime against women has such a long history of being over hyped (look out for the darkie, he'll get your white women... FBI crime statistics keep showing a decrease compared to media coverage.... don't go out alone after dark by yourself, when you're more likely to get raped by an acquaintance than a stranger, etc.). The point is, the Boston Strangler was very threatening, but unlikely to have a direct affect on the well-being of probably close to all the women in Boston. (I will admit at this time I'm not particularly familiar with the case, so I'm thinking any mass murderer in general). Therefore, if the VCR was like the Boston Strangler, well even if this is a poorly chosen metaphor the VCR would perhaps pick off a proportionally few movie producers, but not have much impact on the population as a whole, except cause some worry that will most likely come to naught.