No, it took at lot of illegal coercing of computer manufacturers, embrace/extend/extinguish, breaking monopoly laws, creating broken standards and closed up de-facto standards and generally being assholes. Not luck, but illegal activities. Praising Microsoft is equal to praising the mafia.
When I get an attachment I can't open, I respond with something like this.
I'm sorry, but I can't open the Word document you sent as I don't use Word. Would you mind saving the file in RTF format (under the File menu, choose "Save as.." and select "Rich Text" in the drop-down box) and sending me that as an attachment. In the future, it would be easiest if you would send me documents in that way because, as I said, I and others who don't use Word can't read them in the default format.
This has the advantages of a) explaining what I want to a secretary or supplier who doesn't realize that you can save documents in different file formats, instead of confusing them with some political badgering about monopolies, bytes, GNU/Linux and Kenya, b) not reinforcing the stereotype that Linux users are rabid, socially dysfunctional pricks and c) not being a jerk to someone who doesn't know any better.
For that to stick, your audience has to have a modicum of intelligence, social skills, professionalism and plain common sense. Unfortunately, this is/.
Being able to capitalize on it for decades, expanding into so many markets (both software and hardware), and even managing to fund one of the biggest private R&D on Earth today (MS Research), that is no luck.
No, it took at lot of illegal coercing of computer manufacturers, embrace/extend/extinguish, breaking monopoly laws, creating broken standards and closed up de-facto standards and generally being assholes. Not luck, but illegal activities. Praising Microsoft is equal to praising the mafia.
If you like to pander to mindless rhetoric, that's fine with me. Assuming for a second that indeed praising them is like praising the mafia, it would still underscore two things in business:
1. You have to be ruthless.
2. You have to have a business acumen to know what to ruthlessly pursue.
My argument is that MS position was not just a matter of sheer luck. Your statement provide further proof of my thesis. By either pure will or mere logical stupidity, you are taking a moral position as a logical counter-example of my assertion (care to get familiar with the is-ought problem?).
You argue that MS was ruthless? Gee, did you figure that out by yourself? When you were building up your angst when replying, did you read the following disclaimer in my post?
Removing the typical moral overtones we at/. like to put on things, Gates did a hell of a lot more
I know that reading is too much to ask from the emotional likes of you, but c'mon. How juvenile and parochial.
Further, where was I praising MS? Since when pointing out a wrong assertion (that this was mere luck) became a moral praise? Since when giving credit in the ruthless game of business a no-no? It's a historical fact, independently of how your collective sandy vags cry otherwise. Furthermore, you are trying to pin a immoral overtone to my post (nice strawman.) Are you (and those who voted your post as insightful) that stupid? You guys are not just emotionally gullible. You guys are intentionally ignorant of the facts and willingly (and inevitably) e-tarded.
But your own post, you admit then that it was more than sheer luck (my thesis). So independently of how your moral system reacts to it, if you are honest, you then have to accept that then my assertion is a correct, factual one, independently of the moral overtones (which were not something I argued pro/con... not unless you are dishonest enough to go the strawman way... and if you were, then your posturing would be more about ideological convenience rather than true morality.)
"I grew up in a homeschooling family, and was homeschooled through high school. ( I went on to get a B.S. and M.S. in computer science; my mom has programming experience and holds bachelor's degrees in physics and math — she's pretty qualified to teach.) Mom is still homeschooling my younger brother and sister and is looking for a good computer science curriculum that covers word processing, spreadsheets, databases, intro to programming, intro to operating systems, etc. Does the Slashdot readership know of a high school computer science curriculum suitable for homeschooling that covers these topics?"
See those two sentences in bold/italics in the quote above. I call bullshit on this person having a MS in CS (or went through grad school but didn't learn much... it happens.) Who the hell would list word processing and spreadsheets as computer science topics? Moreover, am I to believe a holder of a veritable MS degree in CS cannot devise a basic HS-level CS curriculum?
I don't think Bill Gates did anything miraculous. He sold MS-DOS to IBM, and then rode their success as the IBM PC became the default standard for computers. The PC "won" the computing battle therefore the microsoft OS won.
Basically he got lucky, and if he had picked somebody else, like Commodore or Atari or TI to sell his OS, then he'd be in the same place they are (bankrupt). Ever heard of Berkeley Softworks? No because even though they developed a nice GUI-based OS in 1985, they chose the wrong team (commodore) and disappeared off the planet.
Had they chosen IBM PC instead, maybe we'd all be using Berkeley Windows instead of MS windows. And Bill Gates would be in the same camp as Nolan Bushnell or Jack Tramel.
Selling MS-DOS to IBM and riding it was indeed a streak of luck, of having a vision that could be worked, and having it at the right place and the right time. But to assume that such a streak of luck is the only thing that propelled MS to its position of dominance is as bad an oversimplification of things as one can make. Removing the typical moral overtones we at/. like to put on things, Gates did a hell of a lot more (as one of the few people that can be geek/technocrat and businessman at the same time) in driving MS's direction. Getting a streak of luck is great. Being able to capitalize on it for decades, expanding into so many markets (both software and hardware), and even managing to fund one of the biggest private R&D on Earth today (MS Research), that is no luck.
I'm not a fan of MS products, and I've always prefer to work in predominantly Unix/Linux systems and development environments (for practical and ideological reasons). But even I can find some objective neurons left to give credit where credit is due.
Bingo. Either that or a sneakernet (I'm sure dissidents dedicated enough to circumvent censorship will be more than willing to suffer very high latency for information they truly desire to get or disseminate.)
As a grad student in engineering that has seen nearly all his friends at the BS, MS, and PhD levels all able to find good paying, stable jobs, I had grown pretty tired of the stream of/. articles from Ivy League tenured professors of religion ranting about how our education system is all wrong.
No. You are taking proof that education pays as proof that our education system is not wrong. I'm sorry to say, but that's not how logic works. I'm the recipient of post-grad education, which IMO was really excellent. I know that it opened a lot of doors for me and has allowed me to command a very (very, but very) good salary.
But that doesn't change the fact our education system is wrong. All you have to do is take your average HS grad and ask him what the square root of 36 is, what a/b + c/d equals to. On a much less esoteric and far more practical front, what exactly our education system equips HS students with?
Our education system is wrong in that it makes no provision for vocational training at the HS level (as found in say, the German or Japanese models of education.) It also makes little provision to college-level vocational training (as in AS degrees.)
Our education systems works on the assumption that the only road for success is in getting one or more college degrees. It ignores the fact that in practice, every economy has a threshold over which it cannot absorb more college graduates. It makes no provision for building a skilled, blue collar work force.
It is absurd for a college educated person like yourself to be completely oblivious to that fact. And just because you or I have been the recipients of a good college education (and that we are bound to reap the benefits), that does not mean that is is working for society. That is not how logic (and economics for that matter) works, and you as a grad student should have (or should have had) sufficient analytical acumen to come to that realization.
If the padding is random you'll decrease the amount of information leaked, but there may still be enough information leaked to reconstruct some conversations. What you really need for total security from this attack is to eliminate the side-channel completely, such as by sending packets of the same size and with the same frequency no matter how much data you've actually got that needs sending. That is a form of padding too, but it is better than random.
^^ This. I'm actually surprised to hear that with Skype the packets are of variable length and (somewhat) a function of the contents. I would have imagined that, after encryption, the communication protocol would split the content into packets of either random or same size.
But OTH, there might have been performance implications that forced Skype to not do just that. After all, there are legit reasons to not do super encryptions (as with the Predator's unencrypted download links.)
I get it: the appeal of exploring and learning far away and crap like that. There is no denying that some of the top (and expensive) public and private universities. But that is far more important at the graduate level.
Not many students will be pursuing graduate studies.
Which is exactly why I wonder why going to an out-of-state (and worse, an out-of-state private) university when there are good public local community colleges and universities (typically nearby unless one lives in the boondocks.). That line of yours right there pretty much validated the POV you were replying to.
It is always better to stay with one's parents (and pay some rent to them, and save as much as possible), than to blow thousands and thousands in dorms that aren't really that good for living as a student anyways, not getting anything but loans in return.
No, it's not. It might be "cheaper", but that is in no way the sole arbiter of what's "Better".
In the context of saving money and avoiding a 50K-60K loan on a plain vanilla BS/BA degree (which is obviously the context in which that sentence was written - obvious if one applies reading comprehension), yes, it is better. There is no legitimate reason to get into such debt for an undergraduate degree that most people could reasonable get by a fraction of the cost (or even at 0 cost if one qualifies for a scholarship at a public school.)
There is no evidence to suggest staying a couple more years with one parents' is going to negatively affect one's development into adulthood. In fact, it is typically quite the opposite (if one pays attention how Japanese and Koreans and Indians, for example, do this, and in general turn out to be good, full functioning adults.)
There is a natural need for seeking independence, but that is completely different from the typical abhorrence we see in this society when one contemplates the idea of a 18-23 year old person living with (or paying a nominal rent to) his parents while pursuing an education in an affordable manner. The later is nothing more than family dysfunction meeting "Silence of the Lambs." The former is an intelligent (though not necessarily pleasing) compromise for building a better (read more debt-free) future.
A 23-year old person with a 4-year degree and little to no debt (perhaps no more than say $15K-20K) will always, always, always, always be in a far better position towards true adult independence that someone with the same stats but buried by a $50K-60K debt or more - not to mention the cost of getting sick while in school with little to no insurance coverage, in a freaking dorm far away from anyone that cares, right in the middle of finals. Yeah.
In this context, it is definitely better. I'm sure you can propose contexts in which this is not better, but one would have to wonder about the objectivity and pragmatism of your reasoning.
Sure you can goto college. But philosophy? Seriously? Not exactly a useful degree.
Well, depends. It is useful if you intend to research in Philosophy and teach about it (as well as doing cross-research with other fields, like History, Sociology and the like.) But to get a degree and not do anything about it, not to even use it as a trampoline to get another degree (or a grad-level degree) with the intention to do work with it, of course that is a waste.
The guy pretty much wasted his education. He made the wrong choices. As smart as he might be, he was not smart enough with respect to his educational choices and decisions. Hardly a qualified person to advice others in their educational choices, me thinks.
Which means he's fully qualified to claim it did him absolutely no good, having actually gone through and done it.
He's fully qualified to say to him about his college experience (and his personal choices of study which are ultimately choices he has to live with.) That does not qualify him, however, to make an indictment on education in general. Look at the top researchers in the world, the top economists, the top biologists, the top computer sciences, the top surgeons. Or just forget about the "top" and think about the average practitioner who is making a successful career with their education, in the fields they chose to study. Have you ever heard one of them saying that their college education was useless.
Sorry, he's not qualified to say anything beyond of what lies in his own personal experience. This move sounds like a lot of projection to me.
These students should avoid failure by blowing $150k in college to qualify for a entry level job. Much more successful.
Whenever I see this I have to ask, "what posessed that young student to go to an out-of-state college"?
I mean, I am right now attending college part time (trying to convert an awful associates to a full bachelors). Im just finished freshman / sophmore levels at a community college at a whopping $95 per credit hour, and will be going to a state university this fall at an astounding $500 per credit hour. My bill at the end of all of this will be less than $45000, for a full bachelors degree.
I could, of course, have chosen to go to an out-of-state ritzy school like Georgetown, lived on campus, and blown $45000 per semester... but then, I really wouldnt have anyone else to blame for my debt but myself, would I?
Bingo. I never understood the imperative to go to an out-of-state or private university (unless it's, I dunno, MIT, Stanford or something of that caliber... and only with a hefty scholarship.) Sometimes there are no alternatives locally (for example, my sister had to go to UM to finish her degree in Mathematics because the local state university didn't have a good Math program back then... or even now.) But in general, young people are so retarded in that they simply go thousands of miles from home, to blow money in dorms, blowing up local learning opportunities at community college for their freshman and sophomore years (as well as not having to pay out-of-state fees in their junior and senior years in distant universities.)
I get it: the appeal of exploring and learning far away and crap like that. There is no denying that some of the top (and expensive) public and private universities. But that is far more important at the graduate level. At the undergrad level, on average, a good, motivated student will do rather well no matter what. It is always a lot wiser (and economic on the long run) to spend the first 2-2.5 years in a community college (where technical courses tend to be more diverse and better than at a 4-year school... and a cheaper) and then the rest at the closet local university that provides a good education for the desired degree. It is always better to stay with one's parents (and pay some rent to them, and save as much as possible), than to blow thousands and thousands in dorms that aren't really that good for living as a student anyways, not getting anything but loans in return.
Because the following scenario is, of course, impossible:
1. Microsoft tries to switch the current Skype servers with Microsoft servers
2. The whole thing bursts into flames
3. They put the previous Skype servers back online
possible =/= probable. And certainly this: (possible -> likely) is not a tautology.
What do you think is more likely? That Skype suffered another (yes, another) blow out that just happened to occur after its recent acquision by MS? Or that MS immediately engaged in the IT-OPs nightmare of changing the OS and infrastructure and rolled it out into production with only a mere weeks of acquiring Skype?
Seriously, Occam's razor bitches. Pls turn your geek card at the door and thanks for playing.
Or, you know, it could just be a server issue. If you look, and ask Skype users, the outage is already over.
I know, not as fun as MS-bashing, but the best bashing is based on fact.
And the fact is that Skype has run flawlessly for at least seven years (according to the article) without a hiccup and as soon as M$ gets it, they break it.
There you go, an off the cuff, fact based, M$ bash.
No, it isn't (as there have been several outages in the past). Facts are a bitch for the fools who talk about them without checking them out, don't you think? The thing that gets me the most is this thing you said:
as soon as M$ gets it, they break it.
Correlation does not mean causation. Turn in your geek card at the door if you please.
My take on this (and I could be wrong for all I know) is that these language variations (with the exception of Russian, all other three are variations), is that they are all Indo-European languages.
To quote myself and to clarify/correct a posting snafu - by "my take on this" I mean that these languages were chosen (out of a range of possible selections) because they are Indo-European languages that are not in extreme close proximity historically and culturally (among other factors.)
I can understand the desire to have metaphors for Iranian Farsi and Russian, to help keep a better watch on the governments in those two countries, but why Mexican Spanish? The only thing that comes to mind is the massive amount of drug trafficking in that country. It seems like Chinese would be a better language to focus on, given the worries that many people have about that country.
You are looking at this as if the only and only focus of this is on risk mitigation. It isn't (not to say that it is not *one* of the primary motives behind the study.)
Metaphors are not just a function of language, but also culture and regional proximity. My take on this (and I could be wrong for all I know) is that these language variations (with the exception of Russian, all other three are variations), is that they are all Indo-European languages. They have shared structures, syntax and root words. All but three have developed within the context of Christian traditions (and thus Christian imagery might have played a role in the development of metaphors.)
Mexican Spanish and Iranian Farsi might serve as outliers. The former has an enormous borrowing from a variety of unrelated Amerindian languages (Nahuatl/Uto-Aztecan, Mixtec, Mayan, etc) and the culture that evolved it has a strong non-Caucasian component. The later is a non-Christian out lier with a strong non-Indo-European influence (Arabic to be precise.) Furthermore, the later is written right-to-left as opposed to left-to-right.
In terms of writing (and writing might influence language), Russian and Iranian Farsi might act as out liers from the point of view of an American English/Mexican Spanish nucleus with a shared Latin alphabet. They are also out liers from the point of view that American English and Mexican Spanish have evolved in close proximity with a very close (and often times tumultuous) history. In a way, they are a evolving Sprachbund (in particular American English as spoken in the South West wrt to Mexican Spanish.)
This last "North American" control group might shed lights on metaphor similarities between the two but that are not shared between other variants of Spanish and English.
One could have argued to select Pashtun or Urdu instead of Iranian Farsi, but the later (I believe) has a larger literary history (something to consider.)
These four languages provide so many cultural, geographical, historical and religious dimensions for analysis (on top of a well-established Indo-European ancestry), that their selection make sense.
Obviously, a study that included Chinese (or Korean or Arabic for that matter) could have been chosen. But they are so distinct, that they might have added more variables to consider. When you develop a model for analysis, you want to choose one that is manageable. The current choice of languages seem to provide that.
But then again, this is just speculation from my part.
Google App Engine. Steep learning curve but worth it.
Tell that to the StackExchange/StackOverflow guys. I've been a straight *nix developer and sysadmin for ages, and I prefer that over MS products. But even I can see through this type of bullshit (regarding MS products not scaling.)
As for Google App Engine, you gotta be joking. You can't upload a straight/stander JEE app on it, and there is a substantial amount of effort to make sure your code is not completely dependent to GAE's specific architecture. For that, it's much better to go to Amazon EC, or a true-standard app/platform hosting like Heroku.
I don't agree with this. First, anyone interested in CS has probably at least had some rudimentary exposure to programming. Either they taught themselves, or had high school courses that touched on it. The weed-out course serves as a first-pass filter to make sure those who really don't belong in CS don't waste their time on more courses and switch to something more suited for them. It's also a "last-chance" for those who didn't have any prior experience but may be talented to try this field out.
I'm on the IT side of things, and given both my exposure to new IT hires and freshly-minted CS grads, I wish there was a stronger weed-out system for both sides of the house. From the IT side, we have technical certifications (Cisco, Microsoft, Sun, etc.) instead of degrees in most cases. There is a huge difference between someone who is truly suited for IT work and the person who just barely passed a certification course and can't figure things out once they go "off-manual."
I ended up studying chemistry in school, and our weed-out class was organic chem. Same for the medical and pharmacy students...if you couldn't pass that class easily, it was pretty much a given that you wouldn't be successful. Engineering students had a combination of the higher-level math courses and (in our school) thermodynamics. Business majors had accounting. In the chemistry case, the 101-level course gave enough background for all the non-chemistry majors who needed a grounding in chem for the rest of their studies. Soon as you hit the next course though, the expectations ramped up. Especially in a subject like CS where you have millions of people trying to get in on the action because they're "good with computers," there needs to be a filter to drop out everyone who can't understand basic logic, how a loop or conditional works in a program, etc. Otherwise you get more grads that write stuff that ends up on thedailywtf.com.
I agree with everything you said there, except for the line in bold. It is very common for people getting in CS without having any knowledge or exposure to programing. Me for example. I've never had any exposure to computing or programming before I enrolled in my first programing course back in 1991. The only thing I ever saw before was a glimpse of an IBM mini-computer running an RPG program at an expo back in 1986, and I was "man, I wanna do that." I did quite well up to grad CS education, and I'm now back in grad school pursuing a MS in CE.
Even now with computing being so ubiquitous, there are students that get into CS without having any exposure to programming in HS. It's all about talent and dedication.
I simply do not have a good answer. I really don’t see what we can do (practically) at the college level to make Computer Science more accessible to the majority of students who don’t already have either programming experience or a strong aptitude.
To Prof. Kurmas: The problem is that most universities only have CS1 and CS2 before sending students down to Analysis of Algorithms and the like. From personal experience, my first two years were not in a 4-year college, but in a community college (Miami-Dade College in 1991 to be precise.) This is what I went through:
100x-level courses: Introduction to Micro-Computers, BASIC (that included a discussion to Bohn-Jacopini's Structured Program Theory right of the bat), Introduction to Turbo Pascal (with discussion on pass-by-value and pass-by-reference, pointers, differences between the stack and the heap and addressing modes) , Introduction to C (pointers up to the wazoo);
200x-level courses: Intermediate Turbo Pascal (first run into Object-Orientation), Intermediate C, A full 15-week course in x86-Assembly, C++, Delphi Programming, Introduction to Expert Systems.
This was the common way of doing things among us CS students at that community college at the time. To be honest, we were just required to take half of those courses, but the fact was that we had a variety to choose from (which we did to our everlasting benefit.)
When I transfered to a 4-year college, I was shocked to see students having just two meager programming courses when going their first junior-year programming course. I mean, you gotta be kidding me. There is no sufficient practice to ensure the student will focus on the actual subject matter (instead of still struggling with basic control structures and problem analysis.)
It doesn't help that universities now don't even teach a full-assembly language course (see here for exhibit A). We have universities that are teaching C++ and Java within the same course!
Yes, indeed CS1 and CS2 are not sufficient, but then again, what else does your university (and universities in general) provide? Do they provide 1000-level courses in 3 different programming languages? Does your university provide a full 15-course in Assembly language? Do they still teach C? And do they teach Python/Ruby and/or Lisp once a year, or at least, say every other year? I mean, do you provide variety for your students to sink their teeth and flex their programming knuckles before moving on to harder subjects?
Or is your school a predominantly Java workshop? Using BlueJ to top it off? Speaking of BlueJ, no other language requires an ed-taylored platform for teaching it. Do you see one in Python? Do you see on in C? I've been working in Java for 12 years now. It is an excellent tool for doing work.
It is also an atrocious language for teaching programming. It is a great language to introduce at the junior and senior level, in particular if used in the context of teaching enterprise computing (an excellent 4000-level topic.)
But for introductory/intermediate programming? It is stupid. Plain and simple. Yes, there are people out there teaching it like that and writing books on it since it came out Gosling's mind. It is still stupid. It does not make it the right tool. It is a disservice to use it in Academia like that.
And it is even a greater disservice when schools are predominantly mono-lingual at 1000/2000 course level. If a student is not exposed to a multitude of programming languages - both Algol and non-Algol like, and within the Algol family, both C-like and non-C like (.ie. Pascal or Ada), that student is not being served right.
That is the root of the problem, and anything short of fixing that is simply fidgeting around. Like trying to cure cancer with ibuprofen.
LinkedIn is filled with professionals. That isn't your everyday farmville-playing soccer moms or pirates who just have free content and who have little market value. These are people who's value is highly over that and they can be offered professional, high paying services and advertising. This is very valuable user base.
Maybe 5 years ago, but since then it's become a useless collection of unemployed strangers giving referrals to other unemployed strangers, and a collection of spam posters.
Almost nobody I KNOW OR ARE PROFESSIONALLY RELATED/CONNECTED TO keeps their profile up to date, because the vast majority of its "users" don't even bother to use it any more.
I never bothered to join linkedin, but I know a few people who have recently quit because they kept getting spam from recruiters as a result of their linkedin profile. Lots of recruiters seem to be doing very rough matches based on published skills and sending them messages about jobs that they're neither interested in nor qualified for.
That's stupid, quitting linkedin over unsolicited recruiters e-mails (not to mention probably false - about knowing people that have quit over the spam.) It's like I know this guy who went to Iraq and he knows of a ex-marine that has a tracking chip implanted on his ass. Same. Lame. As for quitting Linkedin for receiving unsolicited recruiter emails, that's like quitting going to a nudie bar because you are getting too many erections. I mean, the whole point of being in linkedin is to increase one's exposure to recruiters and potential job-related connections. What were these people thinking they were going to get when they joined in? How do you spell "duh!"?
Personally, I don't get that many, maybe 12 a week. I mostly ignore them, but once in a while I do read and *gasp* "connect" to one of them.
It is an excellent tool for what it is intended to. And though some of the technical discussion forums are moronic, there are quite a few that have been quite valuable. I've been able to keep track of past colleagues (some of them that I have not seen in over a decade) as they move from company to company. When I was unemployed about two years ago, it was through LinkedIn that I re-connected a long-lost contact who pointed me up to a couple of job opportunities. I personally got contacted by a long-lost contact from grad school that I pointed out to an ex-employer that had a job opening. Those are just two real-life examples.
Just one more arsenal for keeping one's professional network, stuff that only the stupid/overconfident can ignore. These tools, like anything else in the so-called "new media" (I hate that term), they are what you make of them. And what you make of them is more a function of who you are than anything else.
"The Edu Revolution is coming, and it's going to scare the Old Boys network."
The "Old Boys" network has a key advantage. Their parents actually care and can fully provide for the welfare of their children. The problem with Public Education is the fact that there is this crazy idea that "All kids should be saved and are worthy to go to college" The problem is School isn't always fun and most children do not have the ability to self motivate themselves to do well in school. There are a lot of parents who think education is a wast and use the schools as a baby sitting service. Other parents do not have the resources to help their children. Private school aren't any better then public schools however the parents tend to pressure the children to perform better. If you take all the kids out of a snotty upper crust public school and put them in the poorest inner city school, and all the kids of the inner city school into the upper crust public school I doubt you will see any meaningful change in the child's education.
I would argue the schools will need to be more selective. If by high school they should be strongly pressured (not forced) to go to vocational training if they don't have what it takes, so they are trained for the workforce in 4 years. The A and B students will then continue onto High school, where the distractive elements of kids who really don't want to be there, is reduced thus can focus more on education and college.
I agree with this. Other developed countries, notably Germany and Japan have similar models. The German model of education seems IMO the best for preparing kids either professionally and vocationally in a manner that is meaningful for both students and society. That is what we need.
What we currently have in the US is a system with a 12-year long baby-sitting system that, upon exit, gives a kid the choice of flipping burgers or go to a 4-year college. It completely ignores vocational training. Vocational training is the foundation to a solid, self-reliant and enterpreneurial blue collar working class. We do not have that at all.
Work and friends are two different things to me. I have a handful of good friends. I rarely ask for their help (they ask me for help more than I do them) but on the rare occasion that I ask for help they are there. At work there are a few people I would consider friends though I wouldn't put myself out, outside of work for them. Most people at work however just want something from you and then they move on. I think this is where life for most people compared with life for the 'old boys network' differs. Work isn't about making friends with influence or power to further your own needs, its just about getting your job done and going home...
These two are not necessarily mutually exclusive. In fact, they should match often.
Slashdot Mirror
No, it took at lot of illegal coercing of computer manufacturers, embrace/extend/extinguish, breaking monopoly laws, creating broken standards and closed up de-facto standards and generally being assholes. Not luck, but illegal activities. Praising Microsoft is equal to praising the mafia.
-- -- Linux user #520758
You remind me a bit of this
http://www.linuxtoday.com/news_story.php3?ltsn=2002-01-11-002-20-OP-0038
When I get an attachment I can't open, I respond with something like this.
I'm sorry, but I can't open the Word document you sent as I don't use Word. Would you mind saving the file in RTF format (under the File menu, choose "Save as.." and select "Rich Text" in the drop-down box) and sending me that as an attachment. In the future, it would be easiest if you would send me documents in that way because, as I said, I and others who don't use Word can't read them in the default format.
This has the advantages of a) explaining what I want to a secretary or supplier who doesn't realize that you can save documents in different file formats, instead of confusing them with some political badgering about monopolies, bytes, GNU/Linux and Kenya, b) not reinforcing the stereotype that Linux users are rabid, socially dysfunctional pricks and c) not being a jerk to someone who doesn't know any better.
For that to stick, your audience has to have a modicum of intelligence, social skills, professionalism and plain common sense. Unfortunately, this is /.
Being able to capitalize on it for decades, expanding into so many markets (both software and hardware), and even managing to fund one of the biggest private R&D on Earth today (MS Research), that is no luck.
No, it took at lot of illegal coercing of computer manufacturers, embrace/extend/extinguish, breaking monopoly laws, creating broken standards and closed up de-facto standards and generally being assholes. Not luck, but illegal activities. Praising Microsoft is equal to praising the mafia.
If you like to pander to mindless rhetoric, that's fine with me. Assuming for a second that indeed praising them is like praising the mafia, it would still underscore two things in business:
1. You have to be ruthless.
2. You have to have a business acumen to know what to ruthlessly pursue.
My argument is that MS position was not just a matter of sheer luck. Your statement provide further proof of my thesis. By either pure will or mere logical stupidity, you are taking a moral position as a logical counter-example of my assertion (care to get familiar with the is-ought problem?).
You argue that MS was ruthless? Gee, did you figure that out by yourself? When you were building up your angst when replying, did you read the following disclaimer in my post?
Removing the typical moral overtones we at /. like to put on things, Gates did a hell of a lot more
I know that reading is too much to ask from the emotional likes of you, but c'mon. How juvenile and parochial.
Further, where was I praising MS? Since when pointing out a wrong assertion (that this was mere luck) became a moral praise? Since when giving credit in the ruthless game of business a no-no? It's a historical fact, independently of how your collective sandy vags cry otherwise. Furthermore, you are trying to pin a immoral overtone to my post (nice strawman.) Are you (and those who voted your post as insightful) that stupid? You guys are not just emotionally gullible. You guys are intentionally ignorant of the facts and willingly (and inevitably) e-tarded.
But your own post, you admit then that it was more than sheer luck (my thesis). So independently of how your moral system reacts to it, if you are honest, you then have to accept that then my assertion is a correct, factual one, independently of the moral overtones (which were not something I argued pro/con... not unless you are dishonest enough to go the strawman way... and if you were, then your posturing would be more about ideological convenience rather than true morality.)
"I grew up in a homeschooling family, and was homeschooled through high school. ( I went on to get a B.S. and M.S. in computer science ; my mom has programming experience and holds bachelor's degrees in physics and math — she's pretty qualified to teach.) Mom is still homeschooling my younger brother and sister and is looking for a good computer science curriculum that covers word processing, spreadsheets , databases, intro to programming, intro to operating systems, etc. Does the Slashdot readership know of a high school computer science curriculum suitable for homeschooling that covers these topics?"
See those two sentences in bold/italics in the quote above. I call bullshit on this person having a MS in CS (or went through grad school but didn't learn much... it happens.) Who the hell would list word processing and spreadsheets as computer science topics? Moreover, am I to believe a holder of a veritable MS degree in CS cannot devise a basic HS-level CS curriculum?
I don't think Bill Gates did anything miraculous. He sold MS-DOS to IBM, and then rode their success as the IBM PC became the default standard for computers. The PC "won" the computing battle therefore the microsoft OS won.
Basically he got lucky, and if he had picked somebody else, like Commodore or Atari or TI to sell his OS, then he'd be in the same place they are (bankrupt). Ever heard of Berkeley Softworks? No because even though they developed a nice GUI-based OS in 1985, they chose the wrong team (commodore) and disappeared off the planet.
Had they chosen IBM PC instead, maybe we'd all be using Berkeley Windows instead of MS windows. And Bill Gates would be in the same camp as Nolan Bushnell or Jack Tramel.
Selling MS-DOS to IBM and riding it was indeed a streak of luck, of having a vision that could be worked, and having it at the right place and the right time. But to assume that such a streak of luck is the only thing that propelled MS to its position of dominance is as bad an oversimplification of things as one can make. Removing the typical moral overtones we at /. like to put on things, Gates did a hell of a lot more (as one of the few people that can be geek/technocrat and businessman at the same time) in driving MS's direction. Getting a streak of luck is great. Being able to capitalize on it for decades, expanding into so many markets (both software and hardware), and even managing to fund one of the biggest private R&D on Earth today (MS Research), that is no luck.
I'm not a fan of MS products, and I've always prefer to work in predominantly Unix/Linux systems and development environments (for practical and ideological reasons). But even I can find some objective neurons left to give credit where credit is due.
Satellites?
Bingo. Either that or a sneakernet (I'm sure dissidents dedicated enough to circumvent censorship will be more than willing to suffer very high latency for information they truly desire to get or disseminate.)
As a grad student in engineering that has seen nearly all his friends at the BS, MS, and PhD levels all able to find good paying, stable jobs, I had grown pretty tired of the stream of /. articles from Ivy League tenured professors of religion ranting about how our education system is all wrong.
No. You are taking proof that education pays as proof that our education system is not wrong. I'm sorry to say, but that's not how logic works. I'm the recipient of post-grad education, which IMO was really excellent. I know that it opened a lot of doors for me and has allowed me to command a very (very, but very) good salary.
But that doesn't change the fact our education system is wrong. All you have to do is take your average HS grad and ask him what the square root of 36 is, what a/b + c/d equals to. On a much less esoteric and far more practical front, what exactly our education system equips HS students with?
Our education system is wrong in that it makes no provision for vocational training at the HS level (as found in say, the German or Japanese models of education.) It also makes little provision to college-level vocational training (as in AS degrees.)
Our education systems works on the assumption that the only road for success is in getting one or more college degrees. It ignores the fact that in practice, every economy has a threshold over which it cannot absorb more college graduates. It makes no provision for building a skilled, blue collar work force.
It is absurd for a college educated person like yourself to be completely oblivious to that fact. And just because you or I have been the recipients of a good college education (and that we are bound to reap the benefits), that does not mean that is is working for society. That is not how logic (and economics for that matter) works, and you as a grad student should have (or should have had) sufficient analytical acumen to come to that realization.
Why? Please elaborate.
AC seems to be entangled with the is/ought problem while riding a high horse ;)
I have to agree. This one is going to blow up in the US Marshal's office face, figuratively speaking. It comes off as petty.
They are going to use the proceedings to compensate the victims. How's that petty?
If the padding is random you'll decrease the amount of information leaked, but there may still be enough information leaked to reconstruct some conversations. What you really need for total security from this attack is to eliminate the side-channel completely, such as by sending packets of the same size and with the same frequency no matter how much data you've actually got that needs sending. That is a form of padding too, but it is better than random.
^^ This. I'm actually surprised to hear that with Skype the packets are of variable length and (somewhat) a function of the contents. I would have imagined that, after encryption, the communication protocol would split the content into packets of either random or same size.
But OTH, there might have been performance implications that forced Skype to not do just that. After all, there are legit reasons to not do super encryptions (as with the Predator's unencrypted download links.)
I get it: the appeal of exploring and learning far away and crap like that. There is no denying that some of the top (and expensive) public and private universities. But that is far more important at the graduate level.
Not many students will be pursuing graduate studies.
Which is exactly why I wonder why going to an out-of-state (and worse, an out-of-state private) university when there are good public local community colleges and universities (typically nearby unless one lives in the boondocks.). That line of yours right there pretty much validated the POV you were replying to.
It is always better to stay with one's parents (and pay some rent to them, and save as much as possible), than to blow thousands and thousands in dorms that aren't really that good for living as a student anyways, not getting anything but loans in return.
No, it's not. It might be "cheaper", but that is in no way the sole arbiter of what's "Better".
In the context of saving money and avoiding a 50K-60K loan on a plain vanilla BS/BA degree (which is obviously the context in which that sentence was written - obvious if one applies reading comprehension), yes, it is better. There is no legitimate reason to get into such debt for an undergraduate degree that most people could reasonable get by a fraction of the cost (or even at 0 cost if one qualifies for a scholarship at a public school.)
There is no evidence to suggest staying a couple more years with one parents' is going to negatively affect one's development into adulthood. In fact, it is typically quite the opposite (if one pays attention how Japanese and Koreans and Indians, for example, do this, and in general turn out to be good, full functioning adults.)
There is a natural need for seeking independence, but that is completely different from the typical abhorrence we see in this society when one contemplates the idea of a 18-23 year old person living with (or paying a nominal rent to) his parents while pursuing an education in an affordable manner. The later is nothing more than family dysfunction meeting "Silence of the Lambs." The former is an intelligent (though not necessarily pleasing) compromise for building a better (read more debt-free) future.
A 23-year old person with a 4-year degree and little to no debt (perhaps no more than say $15K-20K) will always, always, always, always be in a far better position towards true adult independence that someone with the same stats but buried by a $50K-60K debt or more - not to mention the cost of getting sick while in school with little to no insurance coverage, in a freaking dorm far away from anyone that cares, right in the middle of finals. Yeah.
In this context, it is definitely better. I'm sure you can propose contexts in which this is not better, but one would have to wonder about the objectivity and pragmatism of your reasoning.
And one of his two is worthless.
Sure you can goto college. But philosophy? Seriously? Not exactly a useful degree.
Well, depends. It is useful if you intend to research in Philosophy and teach about it (as well as doing cross-research with other fields, like History, Sociology and the like.) But to get a degree and not do anything about it, not to even use it as a trampoline to get another degree (or a grad-level degree) with the intention to do work with it, of course that is a waste.
The guy pretty much wasted his education. He made the wrong choices. As smart as he might be, he was not smart enough with respect to his educational choices and decisions. Hardly a qualified person to advice others in their educational choices, me thinks.
Which means he's fully qualified to claim it did him absolutely no good, having actually gone through and done it.
He's fully qualified to say to him about his college experience (and his personal choices of study which are ultimately choices he has to live with.) That does not qualify him, however, to make an indictment on education in general. Look at the top researchers in the world, the top economists, the top biologists, the top computer sciences, the top surgeons. Or just forget about the "top" and think about the average practitioner who is making a successful career with their education, in the fields they chose to study. Have you ever heard one of them saying that their college education was useless.
Sorry, he's not qualified to say anything beyond of what lies in his own personal experience. This move sounds like a lot of projection to me.
These students should avoid failure by blowing $150k in college to qualify for a entry level job. Much more successful.
Whenever I see this I have to ask, "what posessed that young student to go to an out-of-state college"?
I mean, I am right now attending college part time (trying to convert an awful associates to a full bachelors). Im just finished freshman / sophmore levels at a community college at a whopping $95 per credit hour, and will be going to a state university this fall at an astounding $500 per credit hour. My bill at the end of all of this will be less than $45000, for a full bachelors degree.
I could, of course, have chosen to go to an out-of-state ritzy school like Georgetown, lived on campus, and blown $45000 per semester... but then, I really wouldnt have anyone else to blame for my debt but myself, would I?
Bingo. I never understood the imperative to go to an out-of-state or private university (unless it's, I dunno, MIT, Stanford or something of that caliber... and only with a hefty scholarship.) Sometimes there are no alternatives locally (for example, my sister had to go to UM to finish her degree in Mathematics because the local state university didn't have a good Math program back then... or even now.) But in general, young people are so retarded in that they simply go thousands of miles from home, to blow money in dorms, blowing up local learning opportunities at community college for their freshman and sophomore years (as well as not having to pay out-of-state fees in their junior and senior years in distant universities.)
I get it: the appeal of exploring and learning far away and crap like that. There is no denying that some of the top (and expensive) public and private universities. But that is far more important at the graduate level. At the undergrad level, on average, a good, motivated student will do rather well no matter what. It is always a lot wiser (and economic on the long run) to spend the first 2-2.5 years in a community college (where technical courses tend to be more diverse and better than at a 4-year school... and a cheaper) and then the rest at the closet local university that provides a good education for the desired degree. It is always better to stay with one's parents (and pay some rent to them, and save as much as possible), than to blow thousands and thousands in dorms that aren't really that good for living as a student anyways, not getting anything but loans in return.
Because the following scenario is, of course, impossible: 1. Microsoft tries to switch the current Skype servers with Microsoft servers 2. The whole thing bursts into flames 3. They put the previous Skype servers back online
possible =/= probable. And certainly this: (possible -> likely) is not a tautology.
What do you think is more likely? That Skype suffered another (yes, another) blow out that just happened to occur after its recent acquision by MS? Or that MS immediately engaged in the IT-OPs nightmare of changing the OS and infrastructure and rolled it out into production with only a mere weeks of acquiring Skype?
Seriously, Occam's razor bitches. Pls turn your geek card at the door and thanks for playing.
Or, you know, it could just be a server issue. If you look, and ask Skype users, the outage is already over.
I know, not as fun as MS-bashing, but the best bashing is based on fact.
And the fact is that Skype has run flawlessly for at least seven years (according to the article) without a hiccup and as soon as M$ gets it, they break it.
There you go, an off the cuff, fact based, M$ bash.
No, it isn't (as there have been several outages in the past). Facts are a bitch for the fools who talk about them without checking them out, don't you think? The thing that gets me the most is this thing you said:
as soon as M$ gets it, they break it.
Correlation does not mean causation. Turn in your geek card at the door if you please.
My take on this (and I could be wrong for all I know) is that these language variations (with the exception of Russian, all other three are variations), is that they are all Indo-European languages.
To quote myself and to clarify/correct a posting snafu - by "my take on this" I mean that these languages were chosen (out of a range of possible selections) because they are Indo-European languages that are not in extreme close proximity historically and culturally (among other factors.)
I can understand the desire to have metaphors for Iranian Farsi and Russian, to help keep a better watch on the governments in those two countries, but why Mexican Spanish? The only thing that comes to mind is the massive amount of drug trafficking in that country. It seems like Chinese would be a better language to focus on, given the worries that many people have about that country.
You are looking at this as if the only and only focus of this is on risk mitigation. It isn't (not to say that it is not *one* of the primary motives behind the study.)
Metaphors are not just a function of language, but also culture and regional proximity. My take on this (and I could be wrong for all I know) is that these language variations (with the exception of Russian, all other three are variations), is that they are all Indo-European languages. They have shared structures, syntax and root words. All but three have developed within the context of Christian traditions (and thus Christian imagery might have played a role in the development of metaphors.)
Mexican Spanish and Iranian Farsi might serve as outliers. The former has an enormous borrowing from a variety of unrelated Amerindian languages (Nahuatl/Uto-Aztecan, Mixtec, Mayan, etc) and the culture that evolved it has a strong non-Caucasian component. The later is a non-Christian out lier with a strong non-Indo-European influence (Arabic to be precise.) Furthermore, the later is written right-to-left as opposed to left-to-right.
In terms of writing (and writing might influence language), Russian and Iranian Farsi might act as out liers from the point of view of an American English/Mexican Spanish nucleus with a shared Latin alphabet. They are also out liers from the point of view that American English and Mexican Spanish have evolved in close proximity with a very close (and often times tumultuous) history. In a way, they are a evolving Sprachbund (in particular American English as spoken in the South West wrt to Mexican Spanish.)
This last "North American" control group might shed lights on metaphor similarities between the two but that are not shared between other variants of Spanish and English.
One could have argued to select Pashtun or Urdu instead of Iranian Farsi, but the later (I believe) has a larger literary history (something to consider.)
These four languages provide so many cultural, geographical, historical and religious dimensions for analysis (on top of a well-established Indo-European ancestry), that their selection make sense.
Obviously, a study that included Chinese (or Korean or Arabic for that matter) could have been chosen. But they are so distinct, that they might have added more variables to consider. When you develop a model for analysis, you want to choose one that is manageable. The current choice of languages seem to provide that.
But then again, this is just speculation from my part.
Don't use MS products if you want to scale.
Google App Engine. Steep learning curve but worth it.
Tell that to the StackExchange/StackOverflow guys. I've been a straight *nix developer and sysadmin for ages, and I prefer that over MS products. But even I can see through this type of bullshit (regarding MS products not scaling.)
As for Google App Engine, you gotta be joking. You can't upload a straight/stander JEE app on it, and there is a substantial amount of effort to make sure your code is not completely dependent to GAE's specific architecture. For that, it's much better to go to Amazon EC, or a true-standard app/platform hosting like Heroku.
I don't agree with this. First, anyone interested in CS has probably at least had some rudimentary exposure to programming. Either they taught themselves, or had high school courses that touched on it. The weed-out course serves as a first-pass filter to make sure those who really don't belong in CS don't waste their time on more courses and switch to something more suited for them. It's also a "last-chance" for those who didn't have any prior experience but may be talented to try this field out.
I'm on the IT side of things, and given both my exposure to new IT hires and freshly-minted CS grads, I wish there was a stronger weed-out system for both sides of the house. From the IT side, we have technical certifications (Cisco, Microsoft, Sun, etc.) instead of degrees in most cases. There is a huge difference between someone who is truly suited for IT work and the person who just barely passed a certification course and can't figure things out once they go "off-manual."
I ended up studying chemistry in school, and our weed-out class was organic chem. Same for the medical and pharmacy students...if you couldn't pass that class easily, it was pretty much a given that you wouldn't be successful. Engineering students had a combination of the higher-level math courses and (in our school) thermodynamics. Business majors had accounting. In the chemistry case, the 101-level course gave enough background for all the non-chemistry majors who needed a grounding in chem for the rest of their studies. Soon as you hit the next course though, the expectations ramped up. Especially in a subject like CS where you have millions of people trying to get in on the action because they're "good with computers," there needs to be a filter to drop out everyone who can't understand basic logic, how a loop or conditional works in a program, etc. Otherwise you get more grads that write stuff that ends up on thedailywtf.com.
I agree with everything you said there, except for the line in bold. It is very common for people getting in CS without having any knowledge or exposure to programing. Me for example. I've never had any exposure to computing or programming before I enrolled in my first programing course back in 1991. The only thing I ever saw before was a glimpse of an IBM mini-computer running an RPG program at an expo back in 1986, and I was "man, I wanna do that." I did quite well up to grad CS education, and I'm now back in grad school pursuing a MS in CE.
Even now with computing being so ubiquitous, there are students that get into CS without having any exposure to programming in HS. It's all about talent and dedication.
I simply do not have a good answer. I really don’t see what we can do (practically) at the college level to make Computer Science more accessible to the majority of students who don’t already have either programming experience or a strong aptitude.
To Prof. Kurmas: The problem is that most universities only have CS1 and CS2 before sending students down to Analysis of Algorithms and the like. From personal experience, my first two years were not in a 4-year college, but in a community college (Miami-Dade College in 1991 to be precise.) This is what I went through:
100x-level courses: Introduction to Micro-Computers, BASIC (that included a discussion to Bohn-Jacopini's Structured Program Theory right of the bat), Introduction to Turbo Pascal (with discussion on pass-by-value and pass-by-reference, pointers, differences between the stack and the heap and addressing modes) , Introduction to C (pointers up to the wazoo);
200x-level courses: Intermediate Turbo Pascal (first run into Object-Orientation), Intermediate C, A full 15-week course in x86-Assembly, C++, Delphi Programming, Introduction to Expert Systems.
This was the common way of doing things among us CS students at that community college at the time. To be honest, we were just required to take half of those courses, but the fact was that we had a variety to choose from (which we did to our everlasting benefit.)
When I transfered to a 4-year college, I was shocked to see students having just two meager programming courses when going their first junior-year programming course. I mean, you gotta be kidding me. There is no sufficient practice to ensure the student will focus on the actual subject matter (instead of still struggling with basic control structures and problem analysis.)
It doesn't help that universities now don't even teach a full-assembly language course (see here for exhibit A). We have universities that are teaching C++ and Java within the same course!
Yes, indeed CS1 and CS2 are not sufficient, but then again, what else does your university (and universities in general) provide? Do they provide 1000-level courses in 3 different programming languages? Does your university provide a full 15-course in Assembly language? Do they still teach C? And do they teach Python/Ruby and/or Lisp once a year, or at least, say every other year? I mean, do you provide variety for your students to sink their teeth and flex their programming knuckles before moving on to harder subjects?
Or is your school a predominantly Java workshop? Using BlueJ to top it off? Speaking of BlueJ, no other language requires an ed-taylored platform for teaching it. Do you see one in Python? Do you see on in C? I've been working in Java for 12 years now. It is an excellent tool for doing work.
It is also an atrocious language for teaching programming. It is a great language to introduce at the junior and senior level, in particular if used in the context of teaching enterprise computing (an excellent 4000-level topic.)
But for introductory/intermediate programming? It is stupid. Plain and simple. Yes, there are people out there teaching it like that and writing books on it since it came out Gosling's mind. It is still stupid. It does not make it the right tool. It is a disservice to use it in Academia like that.
And it is even a greater disservice when schools are predominantly mono-lingual at 1000/2000 course level. If a student is not exposed to a multitude of programming languages - both Algol and non-Algol like, and within the Algol family, both C-like and non-C like (.ie. Pascal or Ada), that student is not being served right.
That is the root of the problem, and anything short of fixing that is simply fidgeting around. Like trying to cure cancer with ibuprofen.
Maybe 5 years ago, but since then it's become a useless collection of unemployed strangers giving referrals to other unemployed strangers, and a collection of spam posters.
Almost nobody I KNOW OR ARE PROFESSIONALLY RELATED/CONNECTED TO keeps their profile up to date, because the vast majority of its "users" don't even bother to use it any more.
There, fixed that for you.
I never bothered to join linkedin, but I know a few people who have recently quit because they kept getting spam from recruiters as a result of their linkedin profile. Lots of recruiters seem to be doing very rough matches based on published skills and sending them messages about jobs that they're neither interested in nor qualified for.
That's stupid, quitting linkedin over unsolicited recruiters e-mails (not to mention probably false - about knowing people that have quit over the spam.) It's like I know this guy who went to Iraq and he knows of a ex-marine that has a tracking chip implanted on his ass. Same. Lame. As for quitting Linkedin for receiving unsolicited recruiter emails, that's like quitting going to a nudie bar because you are getting too many erections. I mean, the whole point of being in linkedin is to increase one's exposure to recruiters and potential job-related connections. What were these people thinking they were going to get when they joined in? How do you spell "duh!"?
Personally, I don't get that many, maybe 12 a week. I mostly ignore them, but once in a while I do read and *gasp* "connect" to one of them.
It is an excellent tool for what it is intended to. And though some of the technical discussion forums are moronic, there are quite a few that have been quite valuable. I've been able to keep track of past colleagues (some of them that I have not seen in over a decade) as they move from company to company. When I was unemployed about two years ago, it was through LinkedIn that I re-connected a long-lost contact who pointed me up to a couple of job opportunities. I personally got contacted by a long-lost contact from grad school that I pointed out to an ex-employer that had a job opening. Those are just two real-life examples.
Just one more arsenal for keeping one's professional network, stuff that only the stupid/overconfident can ignore. These tools, like anything else in the so-called "new media" (I hate that term), they are what you make of them. And what you make of them is more a function of who you are than anything else.
"The Edu Revolution is coming, and it's going to scare the Old Boys network."
The "Old Boys" network has a key advantage. Their parents actually care and can fully provide for the welfare of their children. The problem with Public Education is the fact that there is this crazy idea that "All kids should be saved and are worthy to go to college" The problem is School isn't always fun and most children do not have the ability to self motivate themselves to do well in school. There are a lot of parents who think education is a wast and use the schools as a baby sitting service. Other parents do not have the resources to help their children. Private school aren't any better then public schools however the parents tend to pressure the children to perform better. If you take all the kids out of a snotty upper crust public school and put them in the poorest inner city school, and all the kids of the inner city school into the upper crust public school I doubt you will see any meaningful change in the child's education.
I would argue the schools will need to be more selective. If by high school they should be strongly pressured (not forced) to go to vocational training if they don't have what it takes, so they are trained for the workforce in 4 years. The A and B students will then continue onto High school, where the distractive elements of kids who really don't want to be there, is reduced thus can focus more on education and college.
I agree with this. Other developed countries, notably Germany and Japan have similar models. The German model of education seems IMO the best for preparing kids either professionally and vocationally in a manner that is meaningful for both students and society. That is what we need.
What we currently have in the US is a system with a 12-year long baby-sitting system that, upon exit, gives a kid the choice of flipping burgers or go to a 4-year college. It completely ignores vocational training. Vocational training is the foundation to a solid, self-reliant and enterpreneurial blue collar working class. We do not have that at all.
The Edu Revolution is coming, and it's going to scare the Old Boys network.
Empty rhetorical nonsense.
Work and friends are two different things to me. I have a handful of good friends. I rarely ask for their help (they ask me for help more than I do them) but on the rare occasion that I ask for help they are there. At work there are a few people I would consider friends though I wouldn't put myself out, outside of work for them. Most people at work however just want something from you and then they move on. I think this is where life for most people compared with life for the 'old boys network' differs. Work isn't about making friends with influence or power to further your own needs, its just about getting your job done and going home...
These two are not necessarily mutually exclusive. In fact, they should match often.