I didn't say that kids should be in class for 50 hours a week -- I said, basically, that we're trying to cram 50 hours' worth of stuff into 30 hours with, sometimes, incompetent teachers and poor environments, "we're kinda' asking the impossible."
And the physical activity correlation with academic achievement works (particularly with boys) when it's rolled into the school day. The problem is more with bad teachers, as you yourself pointed out, rather than with the concept itself. You might not have liked gym, along with many other kids, but it's an essential release of pent up energy during the school day for many others. Again, just like teaching math, there isn't really a one size fits all approach to fostering academic achievement.
The problem with the math curriculum is how much ground high school kids are expected to cover in one or two classes per year. Just look through older posts: algebra; polynomials; logarithms; stats; calculus; trig. That is a massive amount of material to cover. Further, since math builds upon prior concepts, if you had a teacher who skipped over part of the curriculum or you simply had trouble with earlier material, you're boned once you reach the more advanced concepts -- and things can get exponentially worse unless you either get tutoring or have a sudden epiphany.
I actually don't know what the solution is. I know a couple old school Ph.Ds in biology who have had to take crash courses in stats the last few years as they work through DNA analyses. Their joke is that they went into biology because it was considered math-light 25 years ago. But then, I also know people with solid math backgrounds who stumble on figuring out tips (it's not just the % -- there are social norms involved that influence the calculation). Most math curricula are light on doing everyday math mentally.
If you breezed through math in high school? That's freakin' awesome. I honestly wish I was better at higher math -- my job options would've been wider post-graduation.
But... we're taking an accelerated math curriculum and throwing it at everyone, regardless of ability or, importantly, regardless of prior education. The one size fits all approach is kinda' crazy in a subject that, essentially, builds a scaffold from scratch.
Anywho... with regard to "useless" classes like gym and the arts... gym and music have pretty solid evidence showing they help raise academic scores (especially with regards to boys and doing something physical). Ditto for having green spaces for kids to spend time in during the day. Humanities classes, done well (trust, just like math and science, they often aren't), also teach critical thinking, but of a type that places value on being able to read emotions and placing events in context. The emotional IQ thing, as current thinking holds, is essential in making effective teams -- http://www.nytimes.com/2016/02...
Basically, we should be teaching kids 50 hours a week, giving them time to burn off energy, in environments with green spaces, with fully involved teachers, including individualized learning regimens (with private tutors, as needed), with music instruction (especially in groups) all in a cost-effective manner. IME, we're kinda' asking the impossible.
Buggy software comprises 10 million lines of code (the estimate of the size of the offending VW code).
Years down the road, after extensive analysis, white hat posts new and improved software to Git.
????
At issue here is how does a third party hack get distributed to end users?
Further, car makers really don't like it when you chip your car. Last year, I got a warranty notice for my A3 TDI saying my car needed new software to fix part of the emissions control system (ha!). There was an extensive bit saying that chipped cars were ineligible for (in my case, extended) warranty work. The reason for this is straightforward enough: most people chip their cars for performance which can introduce added stress to components.
For the record, I also don't like Metro on a desktop PC.
That said... Metro was optimized for touch and keyboard (but definitely not mouse). Type to search is usually faster than drilling through the Start menu with a mouse if you go more than a menu or two deep. Old-school shortcuts like alt-tab to switch windows and alt-F4 to close the current window are still there. If anyone cares, here's a list -- http://windows.microsoft.com/e... . We're going back 30 years or so, but I believe that some of those shortcuts go all the way back to WordStar (ctrl-c to copy, for instance).
FWIW, I don't think it's Metro that MS bungled, but rather how the plain old desktop, Metro, and settings were intermingled, especially in 8.0. Metro is fine for what it is: a UI designed for single / double-tasking media consumption. The default full-screen view is slick for Netflix and YouTube, while the default Mail and Calendar apps are good enough for my mom, but horrible for work needs. My biggest gripe is that the default apps for image viewing, the calculator, user settings and so on were all Metro apps -- even when launched from the desktop. One of the absolute stupidest things I've ever seen on a PC was day 2 or 3 with 8.0. I was writing an email in Outlook and wanted to double check some math. I fired up the calculator and was presented with a 22" fullscreen 4 function calculator that completely obscured the numbers I wanted to check.
Throw in how some OS settings were only available in Metro... and, yeah.
But my issues with Metro were, by and large, focused on how I kept on being punted into it even when I most definitely did not want to be.
As for the icons? I think MS is simply going for consistency across the different flavours of device (phone, tablet, desktop). As 8.1 stands right now, it has two sets of icons, one for desktop, one for Metro. With 10's move towards windowed Metro apps, it doesn't really make much sense to maintain multiple sets of icons -- that lack of consistency, in and of itself, I believe, is poor UI design.
I know it's been said before (and most likely even within this thread), but it's worth repeating: coffee pods are stupidly expensive. Keurig's business is model is to package up beans that cost between $6 and $12 per pound at retail and jack the price up to, at the high end, $40 per pound.
If you're in a household that drinks 3 or 4 cups a day, you can buy an all-in-one coffeemaker like a Jura (whole beans on one side, water on the other, coffee out the middle) and come out ahead in 2 or three 3 years. You also get a similar level of convenience, wider selection of coffee (especially at the higher end of the coffee spectrum), less trash (the grounds get dumped into a container, ready for composting) and, generally, a better cuppa (freshly ground beans make a difference).
Yes, refilling your own pods is cheaper -- as is using a French press. But, when it comes to convenience and TCO, you've got better options.
Errrr... who said anything about removing other courses?
Also, FWIW, classes get added to and removed from curricula all the time. I just googled up my old school. The intro courses still contain some old favourites from 20 years ago; the second year+ courses are mostly unrecognizable.
Errrr... wasn't talking about women in chemistry -- I was talking about sciences and disciplines within each science being split from each other which has been, for centuries, the norm.
Seriously, guys, what's wrong with this? What's wrong with getting more women into engineering?
It's not like the curriculum is changing to be all SJW-y. Or that the courses are any less rigorous. Or that women simply can't handle math, science and engineering at a high level. So why the consternation over adding some programs in applied engineering? Was there this level of consternation when science was hived off from philosophy? Or science into chemistry, physics, and biology? Or when branches of science were thrown back together (biochem)? When electrical engineering became its own thing?
Before anyone gets too POed at me, there is also a SJW-y movement afoot aimed at tackling the over-feminisation of elementary school education. Yes -- it really is a thing, and it relates to boys underperforming girls in elementary schools. It flares up and down in Canada (and I think also in the States). And it's something that my kids' Toronto-area school is working very hard to fix, to the point of hiring moderately under-qualified men (like the grade 7 / 8 English teacher who, demonstrably, doesn't read what he assigns and pulls all of his lesson plans off the intertubes) at the expense of better qualified women. That's right, if you're a male elementary school teacher, you will be actively recruited by a variety of schools to close the gender gap.
Actually, it isn't. The US constitution guarantees the rights to assemble and to petition the government. Freedom of association was inferred via a court decision from, somewhat ironically in this case, the NAACP v. Alabama.
Yeah, look. The legislation in question is horse shit. It's not made to redress any actual wrongs; it's window dressing meant to pander to a certain kind of social conservative. Further, it, pretty much by definition, allows for state sanctioning of particular kinds of discrimination which is, at best, icky, and, at worst OMG wrong.
Damn damn damn damn. I got through high school my nose buried in the books of Pratchett and Adams, blasting The Velvet Underground and The Ramones on my Walkman.
I hate getting older... my idols and heroes are all slowly passing away.
A good example is alcohol, when i was in school many of the other kids in my class were forbidden from touching alcohol and that made them seek out ways to obtain alcohol... Myself and a few others were never forbidden, our parents allowed us to try alcohol if we wanted... I found alcoholic drinks tasted quite disgusting, and lost interest in them.
I liked the taste and (ultimately) became a brewer.
Being involved in your kids' education is not just about nagging them to do homework. It's about encouraging them to read; it's about talking to them about the merits of one movie over another; it's about museums and galleries; it's about board games and puzzles; it's about what is the nerdiest rock and roll song ever recorded (I think it's "Ramble On" because of the hobbits, the kids voted for "Why Does the Sun Shine"); it's about talking over current events; it's about the kid with 7 years' worth of violin lessons teaching you how to do vibrato on a guitar.
To homeschool or not to homeschool: that is the question, but the answer is not binary.
The research is absolutely clear: the kids who do best academically tend to have parents who are interested in their education and, specifically, read to their kids from an early age.
After that, everything is mostly details. You will find kids who do well academically in public schools, in private schools, in charter schools, in homeschools. And you will find kids who are pulled from one and placed into another because the latter didn't pan out.
The main takeaway is that you have to be engaged in your kid's education; that's really the only thing homeschooling has, by definition, over other educational avenues.
Time for my anecdote. Our eldest daughter had a rough time with bullying at her public school a few years ago. She is, at heart, a nerdy kid who had issues wondering why other kids couldn't relate to her... which is, for better or worse, like chum to a bullying shark in elementary school. We talked to the vice principal, her teacher, and the piece of dog ***t's parents. The bullying mostly came under control. And then, we tried to figure out what to do to make sure our kid didn't look like chum. For us, it involved two things she loves: dance and swimming. Dance gave her good posture and the ability to look confident and strong even when she's nervous. Lifesaving classes taught her to be in control of a situation. And now, she's a confident teenager whose former bully politely ask her for tutoring (and she gets taken out, gratis, for tea and pastries).
If we had pulled her from her public school and homeschooled her, I'm not sure she would've learned that degree of self confidence and poise. And she still would have looked like chum in a private school, but we would have been paying for her to be bullied by well-heeled brats.
FWIW, that's not what my parents did under similar conditions... and I HATED elementary school. My parents were oblivious, and I've never really learned how to deal with difficult people.
Our other daughter is a different kid; she got an award from her school last year mostly for standing up for classmates who were being bullied. She's... intense. Public school is a good place for her to be.
For laptops (and even desktops) whether touch makes sense depends on the application. I've seen, for example, medical apps that work well on laptops and desktops with touch screen monitors. I've also seen DJ apps that, while designed for mouse control, are easier to use with a touch screen. And where I work, the "Prototype Manufacturing" lab has switched all their monitors to touch screen monitors (keyboards and mice are still available, but a lot of the time, the techs use just the touch screens).
The great divide between touch and mouse seems to come down to text. As soon as you need to highlight or edit text, touch rapidly starts becoming a hindrance to doing work. FWIW, one of my kids a touchscreen notebook. Much of her tech life revolves around touchscreens, from the family's smartphones to the Wii U to tablets. But the combination of horrible touchpad and Office ribbons had her rummaging in a junk drawer for a corded mouse that is almost as old as she is.
I love win 8.1 most of the time. It's fast, stable, runs on comparatively old hardware. But... lordy. Networking problems today at the household. By force of habit, I double-click the tray's networking icon -- out slides a Metro charm-type thing that show my network connections. Cool -- I double-click Network 1. Nothing. I right click it. Nothing. There is nothing that can be done my to my PC's sole network connection from that Metro element intruding into my desktop which, somewhat ironically, covers up the network icon that CAN get me to networking properties.
And, you're right, Metro with a mouse sucks. But, you know what? Metro with a keyboard is OK. If you can remember some of the old shortcuts (alt-tab to change windows, alt-F4 to close windows, etc.), it's actually OK for dealing with a couple open apps. And I like type-to-search for docs and applications. And win-q/w/s for launching different kinds of searches is kinda' slick if you've been trained to open Explorer and pray. But I never, ever work with just a couple open windows open and there is, honestly, never a time when the only things I want to do on my PC can be done with just Metro apps.
Personally, I can't stand the senseless bouncing between full-screen Metro apps (most of the default OS tools are Metro apps, not their desktop counterparts) and windowed desktop applications. I was gob-smacked the first time I needed to check some math while writing an email in 8.0; a 22" four-function calculator taking up the entire screen was among the stupidest things I've ever seen on a computer.
Twenty years ago, my wife and I would spend from about $100 a month to $200 on CDs. Most of the music we've bought on CD hasn't been listened to in a decade -- despite having every single note ripped and stored on a media server.
Now, we spend $10.
Just for giggles, I stream music from bands I like, even if I have the CD, just so they can get a couple bucks from me.
I've also seen alpha-nerds placed into management positions where half the underlings either quit or transferred out of the department within six months.
This isn't some alpha-nerd v. social butterfly thing; it's all about fitting the right person to the right job.
FWIW, it's pretty easy to find posts from tech people around here who, on the topic of a nerd-centric work environment, say, "Suck it up, that's how we roll." The counterpoint, of course, is that if you want management to notice you and think you're worthy of promotion, you... make chit-chat. Go out for coffee. Talk about current events. That's how management rolls.
Experience has taught me that capability and knowledge takes a back-seat to being liked by the people making the personnel decisions. Drinking buddies, flirts, camping cliques, fellow sports fans, all move up faster than those that have the best technical knowledge.
At the risk of being labelled "Troll", maybe that's not so bad. The folks with social skills move on to positions that require unscripted social interactions, the folks who are really good at the technical aspects of the job keep on doing their own thing.
There are gender differences; you don't see it so much in ability scores, but you do tend to see it in how boys and girls learn. There are, I believe, some advantages for separating boys and girls for some classes, but certainly not all. The tricky bit, however, is that, on an individual basis, some kids simply don't fit the gender stereotypes. Some girls like being hands-on and active; some boys prefer to get their answers from reading and watching.
In a perfect world, you'd pair the right kid with the right teaching method, but that's not always possible, so you make compromises... like gender-specific classes -- which can also help boys in some cases. FWIW, a couple years ago, news and infotainment stories based on all-boys programs were all the rage in Canada (specifically that elementary school education had become too feminized with too many female educators), so, while the current media frenzy is focusing on girls' achievements, there is a degree of parity in the overall arc of the coverage.
As for the current controversy, Google and MS aren't in the business of being SJWs; they're in the business of making money. And the research strongly suggests that:
The financial benefits of greater gender equity are undeniable. Extensive global research conducted by Credit Suisse, Catalyst and McKinsey & Co. examining the link between women on boards and stronger financial performance of Fortune 500 companies has been cited in numerous publications. Examining the return on sales, return on invested capital, and return on equity, their research confirmed that companies with women on their boards of directors outperform those with the least number of women by significant margins in each category.
Source (with cursory review of the literature): http://www.theglobeandmail.com... Note: Credit Suisse is not some backwater, liberal college spouting pseudo-scientific gibberish; they're a well-run capitalist organization that makes no bones about being in it for the money.
You want people with a wide variety of backgrounds and experiences working together. It might take longer to reach a decision (or finish a project), but it's likely that the decision will be better for it. Monocultures are suboptimal for decision making (the research from WWII on is quite solid on this). Google and Microsoft are not pushing forward with trying to get more girl coders from some sense of goodness and charity; they're doing it because they see a business case for it. The gender equity aspect is veneer slapped over a business decision to make it 1.) seem like a good thing for society and 2.) make it easier to shake money loose governments to improve their own workforces.
The apology is released right before American Thanksgiving when, more or less guaranteed, the story will be buried almost immediately beneath a pile of stories about travel, Black Friday, football, and recipes.
Slashdot Mirror
Hey-o,
You misunderstood my points.
I didn't say that kids should be in class for 50 hours a week -- I said, basically, that we're trying to cram 50 hours' worth of stuff into 30 hours with, sometimes, incompetent teachers and poor environments, "we're kinda' asking the impossible."
And the physical activity correlation with academic achievement works (particularly with boys) when it's rolled into the school day. The problem is more with bad teachers, as you yourself pointed out, rather than with the concept itself. You might not have liked gym, along with many other kids, but it's an essential release of pent up energy during the school day for many others. Again, just like teaching math, there isn't really a one size fits all approach to fostering academic achievement.
Howdy folks,
The problem with the math curriculum is how much ground high school kids are expected to cover in one or two classes per year. Just look through older posts: algebra; polynomials; logarithms; stats; calculus; trig. That is a massive amount of material to cover. Further, since math builds upon prior concepts, if you had a teacher who skipped over part of the curriculum or you simply had trouble with earlier material, you're boned once you reach the more advanced concepts -- and things can get exponentially worse unless you either get tutoring or have a sudden epiphany.
I actually don't know what the solution is. I know a couple old school Ph.Ds in biology who have had to take crash courses in stats the last few years as they work through DNA analyses. Their joke is that they went into biology because it was considered math-light 25 years ago. But then, I also know people with solid math backgrounds who stumble on figuring out tips (it's not just the % -- there are social norms involved that influence the calculation). Most math curricula are light on doing everyday math mentally.
If you breezed through math in high school? That's freakin' awesome. I honestly wish I was better at higher math -- my job options would've been wider post-graduation.
But ... we're taking an accelerated math curriculum and throwing it at everyone, regardless of ability or, importantly, regardless of prior education. The one size fits all approach is kinda' crazy in a subject that, essentially, builds a scaffold from scratch.
Anywho ... with regard to "useless" classes like gym and the arts ... gym and music have pretty solid evidence showing they help raise academic scores (especially with regards to boys and doing something physical). Ditto for having green spaces for kids to spend time in during the day. Humanities classes, done well (trust, just like math and science, they often aren't), also teach critical thinking, but of a type that places value on being able to read emotions and placing events in context. The emotional IQ thing, as current thinking holds, is essential in making effective teams -- http://www.nytimes.com/2016/02...
Basically, we should be teaching kids 50 hours a week, giving them time to burn off energy, in environments with green spaces, with fully involved teachers, including individualized learning regimens (with private tutors, as needed), with music instruction (especially in groups) all in a cost-effective manner. IME, we're kinda' asking the impossible.
Jeep releases vehicle with buggy software.
Buggy software comprises 10 million lines of code (the estimate of the size of the offending VW code).
Years down the road, after extensive analysis, white hat posts new and improved software to Git.
????
At issue here is how does a third party hack get distributed to end users?
Further, car makers really don't like it when you chip your car. Last year, I got a warranty notice for my A3 TDI saying my car needed new software to fix part of the emissions control system (ha!). There was an extensive bit saying that chipped cars were ineligible for (in my case, extended) warranty work. The reason for this is straightforward enough: most people chip their cars for performance which can introduce added stress to components.
For the record, I also don't like Metro on a desktop PC.
That said ... Metro was optimized for touch and keyboard (but definitely not mouse). Type to search is usually faster than drilling through the Start menu with a mouse if you go more than a menu or two deep. Old-school shortcuts like alt-tab to switch windows and alt-F4 to close the current window are still there. If anyone cares, here's a list -- http://windows.microsoft.com/e... . We're going back 30 years or so, but I believe that some of those shortcuts go all the way back to WordStar (ctrl-c to copy, for instance).
FWIW, I don't think it's Metro that MS bungled, but rather how the plain old desktop, Metro, and settings were intermingled, especially in 8.0. Metro is fine for what it is: a UI designed for single / double-tasking media consumption. The default full-screen view is slick for Netflix and YouTube, while the default Mail and Calendar apps are good enough for my mom, but horrible for work needs. My biggest gripe is that the default apps for image viewing, the calculator, user settings and so on were all Metro apps -- even when launched from the desktop. One of the absolute stupidest things I've ever seen on a PC was day 2 or 3 with 8.0. I was writing an email in Outlook and wanted to double check some math. I fired up the calculator and was presented with a 22" fullscreen 4 function calculator that completely obscured the numbers I wanted to check.
Throw in how some OS settings were only available in Metro ... and, yeah.
But my issues with Metro were, by and large, focused on how I kept on being punted into it even when I most definitely did not want to be.
As for the icons? I think MS is simply going for consistency across the different flavours of device (phone, tablet, desktop). As 8.1 stands right now, it has two sets of icons, one for desktop, one for Metro. With 10's move towards windowed Metro apps, it doesn't really make much sense to maintain multiple sets of icons -- that lack of consistency, in and of itself, I believe, is poor UI design.
I know it's been said before (and most likely even within this thread), but it's worth repeating: coffee pods are stupidly expensive. Keurig's business is model is to package up beans that cost between $6 and $12 per pound at retail and jack the price up to, at the high end, $40 per pound.
If you're in a household that drinks 3 or 4 cups a day, you can buy an all-in-one coffeemaker like a Jura (whole beans on one side, water on the other, coffee out the middle) and come out ahead in 2 or three 3 years. You also get a similar level of convenience, wider selection of coffee (especially at the higher end of the coffee spectrum), less trash (the grounds get dumped into a container, ready for composting) and, generally, a better cuppa (freshly ground beans make a difference).
Yes, refilling your own pods is cheaper -- as is using a French press. But, when it comes to convenience and TCO, you've got better options.
Errrr ... who said anything about removing other courses?
Also, FWIW, classes get added to and removed from curricula all the time. I just googled up my old school. The intro courses still contain some old favourites from 20 years ago; the second year+ courses are mostly unrecognizable.
Errrr ... wasn't talking about women in chemistry -- I was talking about sciences and disciplines within each science being split from each other which has been, for centuries, the norm.
Seriously, guys, what's wrong with this? What's wrong with getting more women into engineering?
It's not like the curriculum is changing to be all SJW-y. Or that the courses are any less rigorous. Or that women simply can't handle math, science and engineering at a high level. So why the consternation over adding some programs in applied engineering? Was there this level of consternation when science was hived off from philosophy? Or science into chemistry, physics, and biology? Or when branches of science were thrown back together (biochem)? When electrical engineering became its own thing?
Before anyone gets too POed at me, there is also a SJW-y movement afoot aimed at tackling the over-feminisation of elementary school education. Yes -- it really is a thing, and it relates to boys underperforming girls in elementary schools. It flares up and down in Canada (and I think also in the States). And it's something that my kids' Toronto-area school is working very hard to fix, to the point of hiring moderately under-qualified men (like the grade 7 / 8 English teacher who, demonstrably, doesn't read what he assigns and pulls all of his lesson plans off the intertubes) at the expense of better qualified women. That's right, if you're a male elementary school teacher, you will be actively recruited by a variety of schools to close the gender gap.
By definition, you're missing one of the crucial ingredients in a desert.
Yeah, they do shoot -- http://www.thestar.com/news/cr...
Canada has a no-fly list -- http://globalnews.ca/news/1801...
And I'd take Obama over Harper in a heartbeat.
That said, hells yeah, big gaming convention in town? My kids and I would be all over that.
Actually, it isn't. The US constitution guarantees the rights to assemble and to petition the government. Freedom of association was inferred via a court decision from, somewhat ironically in this case, the NAACP v. Alabama.
Yeah, look. The legislation in question is horse shit. It's not made to redress any actual wrongs; it's window dressing meant to pander to a certain kind of social conservative. Further, it, pretty much by definition, allows for state sanctioning of particular kinds of discrimination which is, at best, icky, and, at worst OMG wrong.
Dogs groom themselves with their tongues; if it's on their coat (or paws), it's also inside them.
Damn damn damn damn. I got through high school my nose buried in the books of Pratchett and Adams, blasting The Velvet Underground and The Ramones on my Walkman.
I hate getting older ... my idols and heroes are all slowly passing away.
fuckfuckfuckfuckfuckfuck
>
A good example is alcohol, when i was in school many of the other kids in my class were forbidden from touching alcohol and that made them seek out ways to obtain alcohol... Myself and a few others were never forbidden, our parents allowed us to try alcohol if we wanted... I found alcoholic drinks tasted quite disgusting, and lost interest in them.
I liked the taste and (ultimately) became a brewer.
Hey, guys --
I bought a couple of these cables to go from my PC to a switch then from the switch to the NAS.
Now I'm scared that that the ports on my switch, NAS, and motherboard are not up to snuff since my MP3s still sound like crap.
I should also clarify something.
Being involved in your kids' education is not just about nagging them to do homework. It's about encouraging them to read; it's about talking to them about the merits of one movie over another; it's about museums and galleries; it's about board games and puzzles; it's about what is the nerdiest rock and roll song ever recorded (I think it's "Ramble On" because of the hobbits, the kids voted for "Why Does the Sun Shine"); it's about talking over current events; it's about the kid with 7 years' worth of violin lessons teaching you how to do vibrato on a guitar.
To homeschool or not to homeschool: that is the question, but the answer is not binary.
The research is absolutely clear: the kids who do best academically tend to have parents who are interested in their education and, specifically, read to their kids from an early age.
After that, everything is mostly details. You will find kids who do well academically in public schools, in private schools, in charter schools, in homeschools. And you will find kids who are pulled from one and placed into another because the latter didn't pan out.
The main takeaway is that you have to be engaged in your kid's education; that's really the only thing homeschooling has, by definition, over other educational avenues.
Time for my anecdote. Our eldest daughter had a rough time with bullying at her public school a few years ago. She is, at heart, a nerdy kid who had issues wondering why other kids couldn't relate to her ... which is, for better or worse, like chum to a bullying shark in elementary school. We talked to the vice principal, her teacher, and the piece of dog ***t's parents. The bullying mostly came under control. And then, we tried to figure out what to do to make sure our kid didn't look like chum. For us, it involved two things she loves: dance and swimming. Dance gave her good posture and the ability to look confident and strong even when she's nervous. Lifesaving classes taught her to be in control of a situation. And now, she's a confident teenager whose former bully politely ask her for tutoring (and she gets taken out, gratis, for tea and pastries).
If we had pulled her from her public school and homeschooled her, I'm not sure she would've learned that degree of self confidence and poise. And she still would have looked like chum in a private school, but we would have been paying for her to be bullied by well-heeled brats.
FWIW, that's not what my parents did under similar conditions ... and I HATED elementary school. My parents were oblivious, and I've never really learned how to deal with difficult people.
Our other daughter is a different kid; she got an award from her school last year mostly for standing up for classmates who were being bullied. She's ... intense. Public school is a good place for her to be.
For laptops (and even desktops) whether touch makes sense depends on the application. I've seen, for example, medical apps that work well on laptops and desktops with touch screen monitors. I've also seen DJ apps that, while designed for mouse control, are easier to use with a touch screen. And where I work, the "Prototype Manufacturing" lab has switched all their monitors to touch screen monitors (keyboards and mice are still available, but a lot of the time, the techs use just the touch screens).
The great divide between touch and mouse seems to come down to text. As soon as you need to highlight or edit text, touch rapidly starts becoming a hindrance to doing work. FWIW, one of my kids a touchscreen notebook. Much of her tech life revolves around touchscreens, from the family's smartphones to the Wii U to tablets. But the combination of horrible touchpad and Office ribbons had her rummaging in a junk drawer for a corded mouse that is almost as old as she is.
I love win 8.1 most of the time. It's fast, stable, runs on comparatively old hardware. But ... lordy. Networking problems today at the household. By force of habit, I double-click the tray's networking icon -- out slides a Metro charm-type thing that show my network connections. Cool -- I double-click Network 1. Nothing. I right click it. Nothing. There is nothing that can be done my to my PC's sole network connection from that Metro element intruding into my desktop which, somewhat ironically, covers up the network icon that CAN get me to networking properties.
And, you're right, Metro with a mouse sucks. But, you know what? Metro with a keyboard is OK. If you can remember some of the old shortcuts (alt-tab to change windows, alt-F4 to close windows, etc.), it's actually OK for dealing with a couple open apps. And I like type-to-search for docs and applications. And win-q/w/s for launching different kinds of searches is kinda' slick if you've been trained to open Explorer and pray. But I never, ever work with just a couple open windows open and there is, honestly, never a time when the only things I want to do on my PC can be done with just Metro apps.
Personally, I can't stand the senseless bouncing between full-screen Metro apps (most of the default OS tools are Metro apps, not their desktop counterparts) and windowed desktop applications. I was gob-smacked the first time I needed to check some math while writing an email in 8.0; a 22" four-function calculator taking up the entire screen was among the stupidest things I've ever seen on a computer.
I'll take a stab at this.
Twenty years ago, my wife and I would spend from about $100 a month to $200 on CDs. Most of the music we've bought on CD hasn't been listened to in a decade -- despite having every single note ripped and stored on a media server.
Now, we spend $10.
Just for giggles, I stream music from bands I like, even if I have the CD, just so they can get a couple bucks from me.
I've also seen alpha-nerds placed into management positions where half the underlings either quit or transferred out of the department within six months.
This isn't some alpha-nerd v. social butterfly thing; it's all about fitting the right person to the right job.
FWIW, it's pretty easy to find posts from tech people around here who, on the topic of a nerd-centric work environment, say, "Suck it up, that's how we roll." The counterpoint, of course, is that if you want management to notice you and think you're worthy of promotion, you ... make chit-chat. Go out for coffee. Talk about current events. That's how management rolls.
Experience has taught me that capability and knowledge takes a back-seat to being liked by the people making the personnel decisions. Drinking buddies, flirts, camping cliques, fellow sports fans, all move up faster than those that have the best technical knowledge.
At the risk of being labelled "Troll", maybe that's not so bad. The folks with social skills move on to positions that require unscripted social interactions, the folks who are really good at the technical aspects of the job keep on doing their own thing.
There are gender differences; you don't see it so much in ability scores, but you do tend to see it in how boys and girls learn. There are, I believe, some advantages for separating boys and girls for some classes, but certainly not all. The tricky bit, however, is that, on an individual basis, some kids simply don't fit the gender stereotypes. Some girls like being hands-on and active; some boys prefer to get their answers from reading and watching.
In a perfect world, you'd pair the right kid with the right teaching method, but that's not always possible, so you make compromises ... like gender-specific classes -- which can also help boys in some cases. FWIW, a couple years ago, news and infotainment stories based on all-boys programs were all the rage in Canada (specifically that elementary school education had become too feminized with too many female educators), so, while the current media frenzy is focusing on girls' achievements, there is a degree of parity in the overall arc of the coverage.
As for the current controversy, Google and MS aren't in the business of being SJWs; they're in the business of making money. And the research strongly suggests that:
The financial benefits of greater gender equity are undeniable. Extensive global research conducted by Credit Suisse, Catalyst and McKinsey & Co. examining the link between women on boards and stronger financial performance of Fortune 500 companies has been cited in numerous publications. Examining the return on sales, return on invested capital, and return on equity, their research confirmed that companies with women on their boards of directors outperform those with the least number of women by significant margins in each category.
Source (with cursory review of the literature): http://www.theglobeandmail.com... Note: Credit Suisse is not some backwater, liberal college spouting pseudo-scientific gibberish; they're a well-run capitalist organization that makes no bones about being in it for the money.
You want people with a wide variety of backgrounds and experiences working together. It might take longer to reach a decision (or finish a project), but it's likely that the decision will be better for it. Monocultures are suboptimal for decision making (the research from WWII on is quite solid on this). Google and Microsoft are not pushing forward with trying to get more girl coders from some sense of goodness and charity; they're doing it because they see a business case for it. The gender equity aspect is veneer slapped over a business decision to make it 1.) seem like a good thing for society and 2.) make it easier to shake money loose governments to improve their own workforces.
The apology is released right before American Thanksgiving when, more or less guaranteed, the story will be buried almost immediately beneath a pile of stories about travel, Black Friday, football, and recipes.
OMG, the review embargo actually worked! Totally dodged a bullet there. I wonder how many more times we can pull that one off?