In the education field if you can't control cheating what the hell good is testing doing? That is what this is all about and yes there is a whole lot of collateral damage going on because of it. But the kicker is that it's all so stupid.
You implement a key sequence that will reset any TI, Casio, whatever calculator to it's factory settings. Hell even a little button under the battery cover. Whatever. When someone walks into a testing center they present their calculator and the steward hits that button.
But what about the programs that the user might have had on their calculator you might ask? Well they backed them up before going to take a test where they knew they were going to have their calc wiped. So when they get home they resync their calc and they are back to where they were.
This issue is such a non-starter if there was just some common sense applied that it makes me very sad.
The biggest issue with this service is the price. Computers are pretty damn cheap these days, even the GPUs. Sure the enthusiast market will have it's $300 video cards but that is like saying every car needs a v12. Most people get by just fine with a v6.
To then charge, near?, full price on top of a subscription for a service that already requires you to have a computer, ISP connection, and all the rest is downright asking for failure. I'm sure their startup costs are substantial but only the really really stupid people who again already have a computer and an internet connection are going to pay full price for such a service. And most of those really really stupid people have already been sold video cards, games, and consoles by the Best Buy drones.
Yeah, I'd like to think that the majority of/.ers are combatant enough in basic math as to do something as simple as that.
This might be a tech geek site but I think part of being a a real geek was being smart even in those 'low level' classes. I know that is what I did. I remember being put in a class at one point due to a location change and I had to deal with it. I excelled to the point where the people who were in charge where like wth, why is this kid here?
Being a geek is not just about being tech smart. It's about being smart.
There is one of the better posts on Blizzards own forums as to why publishing someones 1st and last name, in association with other details, is a (TM) very bad thing.
Yes they can already sell off what data they have but not without their users going wtf!? But when RealID becomes the norm well then it's no wonder Joe Bob Jones is getting targeted ads for snickerdoodles. His forum posts, linked with Facebook and all the rest that I talked about, said that he might like them!
While a lot of people have gone on and on about how using real names will promote more civility and better discourse, something I seriously doubt is necessarily true, that is no where near the real reason Blizzard is forcing RealID.
It's a means to open up their TOS to allow dataminers access to a vast swath of information. Cha ching! Add to that anyone in game using RealID that then links up friends list? Cha ching! Even more information to datamine. And of course anyone who has played WoW knows that they log damn near everything. You can bet that gchat, party chat, officer chat, raid chat, general chat, trade chat, and every other channel that you type a letter in will be up for datamining. Cha ching!
It's all about the money people. Cloaked in a flag of good intentions.
Is/. not seeing that this is just a huge statistical game?
I've looked at a fair amount of the financial models and they are either a) statistical models that do try to gauge the market, or b) purposeful obfuscation bullshit trying to make things seem very complicated while it hides the true intent of enriching those who make them.
I have no doubt that they used A in their model for doing whatever they were trying to do by predicting the World Cup. Just in the same way all of the people in Vegas, and all over the world, have been doing for years. But when you only have a limited number of 'flips of the coin' it's never going to be perfect. Never mind the human error factor in crafting said models.
This would seem pretty simple but the internet is just a collection of big nets. Everyone remember back when BBSses were the rage and being online meant threaded forums?
Well if someone throws a kill switch on the internet that is what we are going back too. Granted with a lot higher tech and it will be interesting to see how that plays out. I can design a low cost Wifi network that would likely cover my whole city right now.
Or even if we have to go to wired or sneakernet. The tech these days can facilitate a lot of communication.
But my understanding, and David talks about that in the interview, is that Comedy Central (Owned of course by Viacom.) is footing the bill for the production of this new season. As well as having the option to produce more. So I just was just looking for a little more depth in how that works.
And right, I mean 20th Century Fox is of course owned by NewsCorp. In the same way CC is owned by Viacom. I did not bring in Newscorp because Fox tends to brand all of it's TV channels such that we all know that they are a part of Fox. However that you make that distinction does bring up a good point. It could be that Viacom is not interested/care/whatever in this little project of CC's. If it makes a buck for that division better for their bottom line. But this could be, and likely is now that I think about it, all CC's doing and thus that division alone of Viacom does not have the fiscal muscle to buy up all of the rights to Futurama let alone think about doing a movie.
If I recall correctly, Fox is still the company behind Futurama, but Comedy Central had already bought the exclusive right to show Futurama, previously held by Cartoon Network. I'm sure Fox could have bought it back instead of waiting for the deal to expire, if they wanted to, so they probably still aren't convinced the show can be successful enough to air on network TV.
I'm pretty sure CN, part of the Turner family, just got the rights to show Futurama for a while. That was it. That is a pretty standard deal in the industry and does not give the broadcaster anything more than just the rights to broadcast the show. (It's the same thing as if you watch Sanford and Son on the TVLand network. They actually don't have the rights to, even if they wanted too, make any new Sanford and Sons. We miss you Redd Foxx!)
Then when CN's contract was up with the rights holders of Futurama, Fox, CC who has dabbled in cartoons also for years said they wanted to show Futurama. And likely offered Fox a much better contract. I remember watching the CN bumps where they talked about just that.
Then, and this is where I'm gonna delve into speculation, once CC saw that they were getting really good ratings from the reruns just like CN did they decided to approach Fox to see about getting the rights to make new episodes. Which then brings me back to my original question because I was under the impression that CC bought Futurama but it would appear that is not the case. Rather they just have some sort of new set of rights to make new eps but Fox still holds the ultimate rights to the IP that is the show.
David brings up Fox a few times in the interview and seems to imply that they still are a part of this new season? Do they somehow still hold some of the rights to Futurama and are just 'leasing' them to Viacom right now? (Forgive my lack of knowledge if there is a better word to be used there.)
He also goes so far as to talk about Fox when discussing a real feature length movie. So given that Viacom easily has the resources, if they were so inclined, and are no stranger to movies themselves further makes me think that Fox still owns Futurama?
Perhaps it's time for managers of open source startups to stop chasing the billion-dollar dream.
I love it when authors use a false premise to setup their stories. Of course every one wants to make it big but the idea that there is some mythical number that every open source CFO is reaching for is just stupid.
You seem to think that because the Bush's were from Texas that we all got in line behind them. Most Texans didn't then and still now do not want govt up their a**es.
My only reference to Texas in my OP was to refer to the topic at hand. To extraoplate that I'm critical of W because he was 'from Texas' is a reach and you will have to do much better than that.
The huge problem heres is that you're basing your opinion of a huge population of people on the actions of one man.
Thats pretty much the same as saying all Germans agree with Hitler, and all Russians want to rule the world. To call this view point ignorant would be putting it politely.
You are 100% wrong. I could point out why but you have already violated Godwin's law and as such you fail.
Take a poll of how the average Texan felt about Janet Reno's delegation to Waco. I assure you that Federal jackassery did not start in 2000.
If you are going to put on your tinfoil hat then I'll put on mine and we can to all the way back to Jackson. But I like to keep my scope tight. That being said if you'd like we can go back to Raygun and talk about how he changed things. When he changed the tax code that allowed, what is considered a normal now, the super rich culture to evolve I think we started down a very bad path.
By the way, don't interpret that as an endorsement of Bush; I reserve my right to dislike our last few presidents, regardless of their party.
I was no fan, nor am I now, of Clinton. He is about as close to being a DINO as you can get but since he was prez most people on the left give him a pass. Shrug, I don't know you and or your full/real views so I'm not going to judge you on anything but what you say right here.
Sorry I wasn't alive during the FDR administrations and he served longer than 8 years. Oops, wrong period of unchecked infringement on our civil liberties?
FDR 32nd President of the United States In office March 4, 1933 - April 12, 1945
Was there any ever real doubt that a spill of this magnitude was not going to reach the loop?
Here in Fla we get to deal with all sorts of fun naturally occurring things. And I don't really begrudge those things much like those people who live inland in tornado ally don't really begrudge mother nature for those things.
But this...gah. And then on top of it I have to watch the super rich play the blame game? Fuck you. Seriously, fuck YOU.
What you have here is a buncha people who are independent and are tired of government encroaching on civil liberty and forcing "help" on us.
The huge problem with this argument is where was this outrage when we had 8 years of unchecked infringement on our civil liberty's, government expansion, insane government spending, and a host of other issues. (I'm not going to even go in to your "help" bit as that rebuttal could fill up a whole other post.)
What you are saying rings so hollow in the wake of a lot of crazy things that went on. Instead only because now the media wing of the far right has gone on the warpath are you all acting as if our governments are acting contrary to their purpose. And furthermore because the far right is feeling so threatened we get what happened in Tx, Az, and what is happening in the GOP primary's now. Sure the far left has it's batch of crazy's but your blind if you don't see that it's the far right at this point that is, and has done, an insane amount of damage to the US in almost every way possible.
While not directly related to HP's tablet plans, there has been something that I've been wondering about to the point that I've almost submitted an Ask Slashdot article about.
Is HP back? More specifically is HP back as a decent producer of consumer products?
For those who might be younger there was a time when HP's consumer end products were bad. Further as a company they looked as if they were all about marketing and not the actual tech behind what they produced. They were still a 500 lb gorilla in the marketplace but they were flinging poop all over the place and all the other big gorillas, and the little chimps too, were starting to wonder if they were losing it.
Now I know a little behind what went on and most of what I know points to the failure of their CEO at the time Carly Fiorina. However it seemd like the whole corporate culture had gone into some sort of 80's era marketing is the only thing that is important mode. I read a lot of posts here talking about that very thing.
So while HP forced Carly out I wonder what their corporate culture is like today? I mean to dismiss marketing in business but HP went way too far in their value of it. Are they really back? Can I get excited about HP tech and if I buy something with an HP logo expect good things?
Well notice my UID, I am not exactly a/. noobie. The moderation on my OP imo makes no sense but shrug. Happens every now and then and I don't care but I did find it odd.
And I used to use a hosts file too but I've been lazy since moving to Win7 and have not put one back in place since for the most part FF's Adblock Plus took care of it all anyway. I still thou like having two unique browsers thou as I run 2 monitors so it's nice being able to open up each one and have them go where I want. So Chrome is going to sit on my 2nd monitor for now which will give me plenty of opportunity to judge it's overall functionality in direct comparison to FF.
Yep, I've been using Chrome now for a bit with it's Adblock and because of the way it just hides the ads rather than blocking them outright the overall speed of using Chrome vs my normal Firefox setup is about the same.
On pages where there are few ads to block I can defiantly see that Chrome is faster however, sadly, those pages are few on the modern web.
As an aside my OP got modded down to 0 as Troll?! Weird!
Slashdot Mirror
What a one sided version of what is a huge issue.
In the education field if you can't control cheating what the hell good is testing doing? That is what this is all about and yes there is a whole lot of collateral damage going on because of it. But the kicker is that it's all so stupid.
You implement a key sequence that will reset any TI, Casio, whatever calculator to it's factory settings. Hell even a little button under the battery cover. Whatever. When someone walks into a testing center they present their calculator and the steward hits that button.
But what about the programs that the user might have had on their calculator you might ask? Well they backed them up before going to take a test where they knew they were going to have their calc wiped. So when they get home they resync their calc and they are back to where they were.
This issue is such a non-starter if there was just some common sense applied that it makes me very sad.
The biggest issue with this service is the price. Computers are pretty damn cheap these days, even the GPUs. Sure the enthusiast market will have it's $300 video cards but that is like saying every car needs a v12. Most people get by just fine with a v6.
To then charge, near?, full price on top of a subscription for a service that already requires you to have a computer, ISP connection, and all the rest is downright asking for failure. I'm sure their startup costs are substantial but only the really really stupid people who again already have a computer and an internet connection are going to pay full price for such a service. And most of those really really stupid people have already been sold video cards, games, and consoles by the Best Buy drones.
Yeah, I'd like to think that the majority of /.ers are combatant enough in basic math as to do something as simple as that.
This might be a tech geek site but I think part of being a a real geek was being smart even in those 'low level' classes. I know that is what I did. I remember being put in a class at one point due to a location change and I had to deal with it. I excelled to the point where the people who were in charge where like wth, why is this kid here?
Being a geek is not just about being tech smart. It's about being smart.
How? You a Blizzard shill?
http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.html?sid=1&topicId=25626349382
There is one of the better posts on Blizzards own forums as to why publishing someones 1st and last name, in association with other details, is a (TM) very bad thing.
Yes they can already sell off what data they have but not without their users going wtf!? But when RealID becomes the norm well then it's no wonder Joe Bob Jones is getting targeted ads for snickerdoodles. His forum posts, linked with Facebook and all the rest that I talked about, said that he might like them!
While a lot of people have gone on and on about how using real names will promote more civility and better discourse, something I seriously doubt is necessarily true, that is no where near the real reason Blizzard is forcing RealID.
It's a means to open up their TOS to allow dataminers access to a vast swath of information. Cha ching! Add to that anyone in game using RealID that then links up friends list? Cha ching! Even more information to datamine. And of course anyone who has played WoW knows that they log damn near everything. You can bet that gchat, party chat, officer chat, raid chat, general chat, trade chat, and every other channel that you type a letter in will be up for datamining. Cha ching!
It's all about the money people. Cloaked in a flag of good intentions.
Anyway, all these computers and digital gadgets are no good. They just fill your head with numbers and that can't be good for you.
That is the quote right there. Shows exactly where Prince's mindset is.
I wonder if the guy could even balance a simple checkbook if he had to.
It's dead! No, it's not. Really it's dead. Nah, it's just dying. Oh look it's back, oh wait, it's...
I could write my usual rebuttal to this nonsense but meh. I'll get the next one.
Is /. not seeing that this is just a huge statistical game?
I've looked at a fair amount of the financial models and they are either a) statistical models that do try to gauge the market, or b) purposeful obfuscation bullshit trying to make things seem very complicated while it hides the true intent of enriching those who make them.
I have no doubt that they used A in their model for doing whatever they were trying to do by predicting the World Cup. Just in the same way all of the people in Vegas, and all over the world, have been doing for years. But when you only have a limited number of 'flips of the coin' it's never going to be perfect. Never mind the human error factor in crafting said models.
This would seem pretty simple but the internet is just a collection of big nets. Everyone remember back when BBSses were the rage and being online meant threaded forums?
Well if someone throws a kill switch on the internet that is what we are going back too. Granted with a lot higher tech and it will be interesting to see how that plays out. I can design a low cost Wifi network that would likely cover my whole city right now.
Or even if we have to go to wired or sneakernet. The tech these days can facilitate a lot of communication.
Ah, phew. For a second there I was worried. Let me just turn to Fox News for some objectivity and...
But my understanding, and David talks about that in the interview, is that Comedy Central (Owned of course by Viacom.) is footing the bill for the production of this new season. As well as having the option to produce more. So I just was just looking for a little more depth in how that works.
And right, I mean 20th Century Fox is of course owned by NewsCorp. In the same way CC is owned by Viacom. I did not bring in Newscorp because Fox tends to brand all of it's TV channels such that we all know that they are a part of Fox. However that you make that distinction does bring up a good point. It could be that Viacom is not interested/care/whatever in this little project of CC's. If it makes a buck for that division better for their bottom line. But this could be, and likely is now that I think about it, all CC's doing and thus that division alone of Viacom does not have the fiscal muscle to buy up all of the rights to Futurama let alone think about doing a movie.
If I recall correctly, Fox is still the company behind Futurama, but Comedy Central had already bought the exclusive right to show Futurama, previously held by Cartoon Network. I'm sure Fox could have bought it back instead of waiting for the deal to expire, if they wanted to, so they probably still aren't convinced the show can be successful enough to air on network TV.
I'm pretty sure CN, part of the Turner family, just got the rights to show Futurama for a while. That was it. That is a pretty standard deal in the industry and does not give the broadcaster anything more than just the rights to broadcast the show. (It's the same thing as if you watch Sanford and Son on the TVLand network. They actually don't have the rights to, even if they wanted too, make any new Sanford and Sons. We miss you Redd Foxx!)
Then when CN's contract was up with the rights holders of Futurama, Fox, CC who has dabbled in cartoons also for years said they wanted to show Futurama. And likely offered Fox a much better contract. I remember watching the CN bumps where they talked about just that.
Then, and this is where I'm gonna delve into speculation, once CC saw that they were getting really good ratings from the reruns just like CN did they decided to approach Fox to see about getting the rights to make new episodes. Which then brings me back to my original question because I was under the impression that CC bought Futurama but it would appear that is not the case. Rather they just have some sort of new set of rights to make new eps but Fox still holds the ultimate rights to the IP that is the show.
David brings up Fox a few times in the interview and seems to imply that they still are a part of this new season? Do they somehow still hold some of the rights to Futurama and are just 'leasing' them to Viacom right now? (Forgive my lack of knowledge if there is a better word to be used there.)
He also goes so far as to talk about Fox when discussing a real feature length movie. So given that Viacom easily has the resources, if they were so inclined, and are no stranger to movies themselves further makes me think that Fox still owns Futurama?
Next time click on the link before you reply. It will save you from having to look foolish.
Perhaps it's time for managers of open source startups to stop chasing the billion-dollar dream.
I love it when authors use a false premise to setup their stories. Of course every one wants to make it big but the idea that there is some mythical number that every open source CFO is reaching for is just stupid.
Further if they want to look for a company that uses the FOSS model and has billions: http://www.google.com/finance?q=NYSE%3AIBM
...allowing it to launch the 0.0003-inch-thick sail.
Can't we at least get our science stories to use the metric system? Come on!
I hate to do this but if the shoe fits..."Posted by timothy."
You seem to think that because the Bush's were from Texas that we all got in line behind them. Most Texans didn't then and still now do not want govt up their a**es.
My only reference to Texas in my OP was to refer to the topic at hand. To extraoplate that I'm critical of W because he was 'from Texas' is a reach and you will have to do much better than that.
The huge problem heres is that you're basing your opinion of a huge population of people on the actions of one man.
Thats pretty much the same as saying all Germans agree with Hitler, and all Russians want to rule the world. To call this view point ignorant would be putting it politely.
You are 100% wrong. I could point out why but you have already violated Godwin's law and as such you fail.
Take a poll of how the average Texan felt about Janet Reno's delegation to Waco. I assure you that Federal jackassery did not start in 2000.
If you are going to put on your tinfoil hat then I'll put on mine and we can to all the way back to Jackson. But I like to keep my scope tight. That being said if you'd like we can go back to Raygun and talk about how he changed things. When he changed the tax code that allowed, what is considered a normal now, the super rich culture to evolve I think we started down a very bad path.
By the way, don't interpret that as an endorsement of Bush; I reserve my right to dislike our last few presidents, regardless of their party.
I was no fan, nor am I now, of Clinton. He is about as close to being a DINO as you can get but since he was prez most people on the left give him a pass. Shrug, I don't know you and or your full/real views so I'm not going to judge you on anything but what you say right here.
Sorry I wasn't alive during the FDR administrations and he served longer than 8 years. Oops, wrong period of unchecked infringement on our civil liberties?
FDR 32nd President of the United States
In office
March 4, 1933 - April 12, 1945
Really?
Was there any ever real doubt that a spill of this magnitude was not going to reach the loop?
Here in Fla we get to deal with all sorts of fun naturally occurring things. And I don't really begrudge those things much like those people who live inland in tornado ally don't really begrudge mother nature for those things.
But this...gah. And then on top of it I have to watch the super rich play the blame game? Fuck you. Seriously, fuck YOU.
What you have here is a buncha people who are independent and are tired of government encroaching on civil liberty and forcing "help" on us.
The huge problem with this argument is where was this outrage when we had 8 years of unchecked infringement on our civil liberty's, government expansion, insane government spending, and a host of other issues. (I'm not going to even go in to your "help" bit as that rebuttal could fill up a whole other post.)
What you are saying rings so hollow in the wake of a lot of crazy things that went on. Instead only because now the media wing of the far right has gone on the warpath are you all acting as if our governments are acting contrary to their purpose. And furthermore because the far right is feeling so threatened we get what happened in Tx, Az, and what is happening in the GOP primary's now. Sure the far left has it's batch of crazy's but your blind if you don't see that it's the far right at this point that is, and has done, an insane amount of damage to the US in almost every way possible.
While not directly related to HP's tablet plans, there has been something that I've been wondering about to the point that I've almost submitted an Ask Slashdot article about.
Is HP back? More specifically is HP back as a decent producer of consumer products?
For those who might be younger there was a time when HP's consumer end products were bad. Further as a company they looked as if they were all about marketing and not the actual tech behind what they produced. They were still a 500 lb gorilla in the marketplace but they were flinging poop all over the place and all the other big gorillas, and the little chimps too, were starting to wonder if they were losing it.
Now I know a little behind what went on and most of what I know points to the failure of their CEO at the time Carly Fiorina. However it seemd like the whole corporate culture had gone into some sort of 80's era marketing is the only thing that is important mode. I read a lot of posts here talking about that very thing.
So while HP forced Carly out I wonder what their corporate culture is like today? I mean to dismiss marketing in business but HP went way too far in their value of it. Are they really back? Can I get excited about HP tech and if I buy something with an HP logo expect good things?
Well notice my UID, I am not exactly a /. noobie. The moderation on my OP imo makes no sense but shrug. Happens every now and then and I don't care but I did find it odd.
And I used to use a hosts file too but I've been lazy since moving to Win7 and have not put one back in place since for the most part FF's Adblock Plus took care of it all anyway. I still thou like having two unique browsers thou as I run 2 monitors so it's nice being able to open up each one and have them go where I want. So Chrome is going to sit on my 2nd monitor for now which will give me plenty of opportunity to judge it's overall functionality in direct comparison to FF.
Yep, I've been using Chrome now for a bit with it's Adblock and because of the way it just hides the ads rather than blocking them outright the overall speed of using Chrome vs my normal Firefox setup is about the same.
On pages where there are few ads to block I can defiantly see that Chrome is faster however, sadly, those pages are few on the modern web.
As an aside my OP got modded down to 0 as Troll?! Weird!