. Unless there's a nifty library out there that I missed (and there very well could be!), Java lacks anything that makes it suitable for kernel development, process scheduling, and the like.
There are extensions to Java for this kind of thing. See (e.g.) the JX operating system.
Where, exactly, did the SCOTUS or the Clean Air Act COMPEL the EPA to act?
Have you read the Clean Air Act?
The relevant paragraph is this one:
(a) Authority of Administrator to prescribe by regulation Except as otherwise provided in subsection (b) of this section-- (1) The Administrator shall by regulation prescribe (and from time to time revise) in accordance with the provisions of this section, standards applicable to the emission of any air pollutant from any class or classes of new motor vehicles or new motor vehicle engines, which in his judgment cause, or contribute to, air pollution which may reasonably be anticipated to endanger public health or welfare. Such standards shall be applicable to such vehicles and engines for their useful life (as determined under subsection (d) of this section, relating to useful life of vehicles for purposes of certification), whether such vehicles and engines are designed as complete systems or incorporate devices to prevent or control such pollution.
There's a phrasing there that does in fact compel the EPA to act. Or have you read the SCOTUS decision?
The fact that DOT's mandate to promote energy efficiency by setting mileage standards may overlap with EPA's environmental responsibilities in no way licenses EPA to shirk its duty to protect the public "health" and "welfare," 7521(a)(1). Pp. 25-30.... Under the Act's clear terms, EPA can avoid promulgating regulations only if it determines that greenhouse gases do not contribute to climate change or if it provides some reasonable explanation as to why it cannot or will not exercise its discretion to determine whether they do.... Nor can EPA avoid its statutory obligation by noting the uncertainty surrounding various features of climate change and concluding that it would therefore be better not to regulate at this time.... On remand, EPA must ground its reasons for action or inaction in the statute.
Sounds like a lot of compelling to act is going on there too.
Those are adjusted dollars from after your current dollar tanks in 2011.
Still optimistic. Say you have 10% inflation between now and 2020. That's 12 years, 1.1^12 ~= 3, or about 200% total inflation. Do you really think you'll be able to buy fossil fuels for $7.10/gal in 2020? Here in the UK, the price has increased by a substantial proportion of that per gallon over the last 12 years (from ~70p/litre = $6.30/gal in 1996 to ~120p/litre = $10.80/gal in 2008). Don't think for a moment that the US will be immune to the continuing price rises.
To be honest, I disagree. The concepts of object-oriented design didn't make much sense to me at all (tried to learn it in C++ in college classes) until I started messing about with Java. And, more specifically, once I started leafing through the standard Java libraries. Looking at how the API was organized suddenly made OO make sense to me. I think the exact point of realization was "Wait, I get it... all these GUI objects ARE JComponents, and that's why I can treat them all the same!".
So I'd say it's a decent learning language as well. Ironically, learning Java made C++ make a lot more sense to me than learning C++ ever did.:-)
I suppose Java isn't an absolutely terrible language to learn OOP in. C++ is definitely worse. But there's a problem with Java in that it encourages a "string together these prepackaged solutions to make a new one" approach to programming. While this is great for actually achieving stuff, it's not ideal for learning with. Which is why I'd recommend a simpler language for learning.
I picked up OOP using Borland Pascal with Objects (the forerunner to Delphi), which was a good experience. It came with a standard library ('TurboVision') that allowed the same intuitive understanding that you're talking about picking up from Swing, but was substantially simpler and could be easily learned in its entirety. Of course, using a DOS environment to learn might not be entirely wise these days. Delphi is more complex, but still simpler than Java.
I'm generally impressed with the skills of those whose first OO experience was with Smalltalk: that's a language that really encourages you to think about what objects and classes are and how to use them effectively. I imagine that the gap left by Smalltalk's waning popularity has been filled by Ruby, which is a similarly expressive language at least. Python, also, is a rather expressive language, although its standard library lacks the strict OO basis I'd consider ideal.
These are all much better languages than Java for a learner, IMO.
Depending on your "enterprise" app of choice, Sun may appear to be nothing but a has-been.
I said Java dominates, not Sun. I'll agree that only a small proportion of those applications are running on Sun hardware these days, but that wasn't my point. Java is still a successful technology in the only market it was ever profitable in, and I therefore don't see any reason to say that Sun were "forced" to open source it. It wouldn't have gone away if they hadn't.
1. The original plan for Java was as a language for embedded systems. The other applications were added as an afterthought, effectively.
this is not entirely correct; I met with Arthur van Hoff (he of java.lang.String fame) back in the late 90's when a large chunk of the original java team went to Marimba to develop Castanet - they really thought that the future of Java would be centralised software as a service style apps that would download to your thin 'pc' 'workstation' etc as you needed them and would always be up to date.
[Java]'s a great learning language, like Turing was back in the 80's-90's or so, and it can be used to teach the basics of OOP and OOP compiler design.
Java is a useful language with a well-designed and extensive set of libraries that make it one of the best languages available for implementing most kinds of business applications.
What it isn't, in fact, is a good learning language.
How they EVER planned to make money off java, is beyond me, [well, maybe the embedded versions]. This should have been open-source from the start.
1. The original plan for Java was as a language for embedded systems. The other applications were added as an afterthought, effectively. 2. It's hard to see how they would have been better off had it been free software[1] from the beginning. The language was adopted at a phenomenal rate, has had a huge amount of community input and is now effectively one of the three most important languages for commercial programming today (along with C++ and C#).
Sun's lack of profit from Java stems primarily from the fact that they never developed the kind of leading support software for it that the development community required, leaving things like IDEs and application servers for others to successfully commercialise. If Sun had produced an IDE even a fraction as good as eclipse, or a server environment as robust as IBM WebLogic, they could have made a fortune from it. But they failed to achieve that.
[1]: I use the term to avoid confusion: Java has always been a "source code available" product, but simply did not have the redistributability of modified versions that we expect from free software. Many people understand "open source" to include the former.
plus, even though the jython library version is out-of-date, it still makes c-python look like a snail - and i never thought i'd say that java is faster than c!
C-Python is a bytecode interpreter written in C (Apples). Jython is a bytecode->bytecode translater that operates on top of the Java runtime (Oranges).
They are coerced into behaving nicely by the huge open source community which is not that much interested in what they have to offer anymore and have a lot of influence in the market
Not really. Java still dominates the enterprise application market (the only place it ever made any money for Sun), and its open source status is likely to have little effect on this. Even without ZFS being open-sourced, Solaris would still have a world leading file system. And I don't see where any pressure at all came from for them to open source the design of their UltraSparc T1 and T2 processors. Sun have been progressively opening more and more of their key business IP, and as far as I can see the only reason they have done so is that they really believe in the benefits of open source.
The World Wildlife Fund (WWF) in 2000 sued the World Wrestling Federation (WWF) and successfully forced them to change their name.
You mean the Worldwide Fund for Nature, previously known as the World Wildlife Fund. They managed to do this, despite having changed their name to one that didn't conflict five years previously. The only issue at stake in the trial was the fact that the organisations used the wwf.org and wwf.com domain names, and people were apparently getting confused between them.
I doubt he'll comment. But I will: it sounds like bullshit to me. Unless you can propose how exactly somebody might interface a neural network to a knowledge-based system. That's substantially more advanced than any ANN system I've encountered so far, and I've looked at some fairly esoteric ANN designs.
Games? It is the best scratch pad for AI experiments.
Bollocks. Very few games have AI that's even approximately interesting. The most advanced stuff that's commonly used is stuff like algorithms for navigating around a map and obstacle avoidance that were basically mastered by the robotics community in the late 80s and early 90s.
Show me a game that does something truly novel in terms of AI, and I'll be impressed. I don't see any, though.
But one really interesting thing I have learned is since we actually see all of the code requests come in is that so far nobody has really wanted to the code for a practical reason. All of the requests have been done for "GPL Activism". In the majority of cases when people ask for code they just wanted to see if we would let them have it. I only one case that I know of did anyone go so far as actually getting code. I am rather sure we just shipped him a burned CD with all of the code on it. But after he got it he told us that he didn't really want the code, he just wanted to see if we would give it to him just like all of the other requests.
Interesting. I take it there isn't anyone who has ever had an interest in including their own patches into your firmware, then?
Nice. I've been playing around with the free version of a piece of windows software called 'b2spice' for a while now, which is in many ways a better simulator, but I find the restrictions placed on the free version annoying (e.g. there's no model for a 555, and no way to add new components to the library). But this applet just allows me to quickly knock together a small circuit, it has a better selection of components, and it's easier to see what's going on with the circuit than using b2spice.
Join a banjo orchestra with your clarinet and you'll be a god of instrumental flexibility.
This surprises me somewhat. I'll admit never playing a banjo, but I've played quite a few other stringed instruments, and almost all of them give you three different degrees of freedom you can freely adjust as a player: velocity at which you strike the string (affecting amplitude and intonation), position along the string you strike it at (which affects intonation) and precise pitch (in the case of a fretted instrument like a banjo selected by slightly bending the string along the fretboard). Also, the choice of whether to use a plectrum or your finger to pick a string usually affects the sound considerably. Whereas a clarinet only really allows you to vary the amplitude of the tone, although admittedly you can do this continuously throughout the tone.
Sure a banjo isn't as flexible an instrument as a violin, but few are.
Narrator: In A.D. 2101, song was beginning.
Captain: What happen ?
Mechanic: Somebody set up us the drumloop.
Operator: We get signal.
Captain: What !
Operator: Main amp turn on.
Captain: It's you !!
CATS: How are you gentlemen !!
CATS: All your bass are belong to us.
CATS: You are on the way to first verse.
Captain: What you say !!
CATS: You have no chance to harmonize mark your time.
CATS: Ha Ha Ha Ha....
Operator: Captain !!
Captain: Turn on every 'Moog'!!
Captain: You know what you playing.
Captain: Play 'Moog'.
Captain: For great chorus.
No, ADHD is a scam to try and console douchebag parents that their little darlings aren't really stupid, worthless, and lazy and nothing is their fault.
What a load of crap.
Which is clearly why a strong genetic component has been identified in its distribution.
You've been listening to too much of the anti-ADHD propoganda that has been put out by, among others, the church of Scientology. Go back and look at the evidence from the beginning, without preconceptions.
Several reels of 100 metal film resistors, 100OHm, 1K, 10K, 100K and 1M.
A bag of brestripped, tinned and finished wires of various lengths for breadboard prototyping.
A reel of single core wire (for when the premade ones won't quite stretch).
Several bags of capacitors (100p 1n 10n 100n ceramic, polyester, mica or mylar and 1u 100u and 1000u in electrolytic). You want maybe 20 of the smaller ones and 10 of the larger ones.
A nice big bag of cheap transistors. These are a little trickier, but all of the low priced ones will be similar. You probably want something like 20 small ones like BC108 (NPN, low power) a corresponding PNP one and 5 medium power ones like BFY51.
10 cheap LEDs
1 Buzzer
1 loudspeaker
A good powersupply. You won't need more than 1Amp, but you probably want 0--15V variable, and 2 outputs if you can manage it. This is the mist expensive part, but you could just get a 9V wall wart if this is a problem. Batteries get annoying quite fast.
You can also add to it later. You can buy a rail of 741 op amps (indestructible, and still popular even though they're 20 years obsoloete) and 555 oscillator chips. Later still you can get some logic ICs.
Plase, slashdotters weigh in, because I've missed something here.
A breadboard? Some stripboard?
A few diodes: some 1N4001s (silicon) and perhaps some 1N34As (germanium) if you'll be doing audio work with them.
If you're confident you can handle them properly, some MOSFETs, both of the p- and n-channel varieties. If you want to play around with logic circuits, FETs are much easier to understand than bipolar transistors. Plus if you want to play with higher power applications (e.g. larger audio amps, motor controllers, etc.) they're pretty much the only way of handling the kind of load you want. They are, however, static sensitive: a charge can build up on the gate that will destroy them. Keep them in an anti-static bag and ensure you're earthed when handling them. A STP4NK60ZFP (!) is fairly cheap and will take quite a current.
Things are supposed to get cheaper, right? I bought a dual-trace 100 MHz scope for something like $1000, and that was 20 years ago. I just took a look at prices for the same thing... $1000. WTF?
Yeah, but $1000 20 years ago was more like $5000 today.
You are correct, but the issue is a complex one. Ask yourself why we have targets and league tables in the UK? Because there is a perception that schools have been failing students, and there is no way to accurately judge schools/classes/teachers, without targets and league tables, just as it is impossible to know how well a student is doing without tests/essays/exams.
The problem is the league tables are too simplistic. They judge only one single aspect of quality (how well a school handles mediocre kids) without considering any other factors that may be important. There are a number of possible simple changes that might be beneficial. How about publishing a table for each grade? That way you could look at schools comparitively over different levels. "This school is really good at getting Cs for its kids, but it doesn't get many As. This one gets a lot of Ds, but not many As at all." Then the encouragement is to improve across the board, wherever it is possible, rather than concentrating on only one set of kids.
Slashdot Mirror
. Unless there's a nifty library out there that I missed (and there very well could be!), Java lacks anything that makes it suitable for kernel development, process scheduling, and the like.
There are extensions to Java for this kind of thing. See (e.g.) the JX operating system.
This doesn't apply to any versions of the game sold outside of the US, correct?
No, it doesn't. Nobody else is quite that stupid.
Where, exactly, did the SCOTUS or the Clean Air Act COMPEL the EPA to act?
Have you read the Clean Air Act?
The relevant paragraph is this one:
There's a phrasing there that does in fact compel the EPA to act. Or have you read the SCOTUS decision?
Sounds like a lot of compelling to act is going on there too.
Those are adjusted dollars from after your current dollar tanks in 2011.
Still optimistic. Say you have 10% inflation between now and 2020. That's 12 years, 1.1^12 ~= 3, or about 200% total inflation. Do you really think you'll be able to buy fossil fuels for $7.10/gal in 2020? Here in the UK, the price has increased by a substantial proportion of that per gallon over the last 12 years (from ~70p/litre = $6.30/gal in 1996 to ~120p/litre = $10.80/gal in 2008). Don't think for a moment that the US will be immune to the continuing price rises.
To be honest, I disagree. The concepts of object-oriented design didn't make much sense to me at all (tried to learn it in C++ in college classes) until I started messing about with Java. And, more specifically, once I started leafing through the standard Java libraries. Looking at how the API was organized suddenly made OO make sense to me. I think the exact point of realization was "Wait, I get it... all these GUI objects ARE JComponents, and that's why I can treat them all the same!".
So I'd say it's a decent learning language as well. Ironically, learning Java made C++ make a lot more sense to me than learning C++ ever did. :-)
I suppose Java isn't an absolutely terrible language to learn OOP in. C++ is definitely worse. But there's a problem with Java in that it encourages a "string together these prepackaged solutions to make a new one" approach to programming. While this is great for actually achieving stuff, it's not ideal for learning with. Which is why I'd recommend a simpler language for learning.
I picked up OOP using Borland Pascal with Objects (the forerunner to Delphi), which was a good experience. It came with a standard library ('TurboVision') that allowed the same intuitive understanding that you're talking about picking up from Swing, but was substantially simpler and could be easily learned in its entirety. Of course, using a DOS environment to learn might not be entirely wise these days. Delphi is more complex, but still simpler than Java.
I'm generally impressed with the skills of those whose first OO experience was with Smalltalk: that's a language that really encourages you to think about what objects and classes are and how to use them effectively. I imagine that the gap left by Smalltalk's waning popularity has been filled by Ruby, which is a similarly expressive language at least. Python, also, is a rather expressive language, although its standard library lacks the strict OO basis I'd consider ideal.
These are all much better languages than Java for a learner, IMO.
Sun doesn't "dominate".
It shares the market with IBM, HP and Linux.
Depending on your "enterprise" app of choice, Sun may appear to be nothing but a has-been.
I said Java dominates, not Sun. I'll agree that only a small proportion of those applications are running on Sun hardware these days, but that wasn't my point. Java is still a successful technology in the only market it was ever profitable in, and I therefore don't see any reason to say that Sun were "forced" to open source it. It wouldn't have gone away if they hadn't.
1. The original plan for Java was as a language for embedded systems. The other applications were added as an afterthought, effectively.
this is not entirely correct; I met with Arthur van Hoff (he of java.lang.String fame) back in the late 90's when a large chunk of the original java team went to Marimba to develop Castanet - they really thought that the future of Java would be centralised software as a service style apps that would download to your thin 'pc' 'workstation' etc as you needed them and would always be up to date.
When I say originally, I really do mean originally. Van Hoff didn't join the Java team until they'd been working on it for two years, with the primary goal being a language to enable more advanced applications for 'digitally controlled consumer devices'. The focus was already shifting by the time he joined the team, so I'm not surprised he felt differently about it.
a server environment as robust as IBM WebLogic
Errm... s/WebLogic/Websphere/. Sorry, was thinking about something else...
[Java]'s a great learning language, like Turing was back in the 80's-90's or so, and it can be used to teach the basics of OOP and OOP compiler design.
Java is a useful language with a well-designed and extensive set of libraries that make it one of the best languages available for implementing most kinds of business applications.
What it isn't, in fact, is a good learning language.
How they EVER planned to make money off java, is beyond me, [well, maybe the embedded versions]. This should have been open-source from the start.
1. The original plan for Java was as a language for embedded systems. The other applications were added as an afterthought, effectively.
2. It's hard to see how they would have been better off had it been free software[1] from the beginning. The language was adopted at a phenomenal rate, has had a huge amount of community input and is now effectively one of the three most important languages for commercial programming today (along with C++ and C#).
Sun's lack of profit from Java stems primarily from the fact that they never developed the kind of leading support software for it that the development community required, leaving things like IDEs and application servers for others to successfully commercialise. If Sun had produced an IDE even a fraction as good as eclipse, or a server environment as robust as IBM WebLogic, they could have made a fortune from it. But they failed to achieve that.
[1]: I use the term to avoid confusion: Java has always been a "source code available" product, but simply did not have the redistributability of modified versions that we expect from free software. Many people understand "open source" to include the former.
plus, even though the jython library version is out-of-date, it still makes c-python look like a snail - and i never thought i'd say that java is faster than c!
C-Python is a bytecode interpreter written in C (Apples). Jython is a bytecode->bytecode translater that operates on top of the Java runtime (Oranges).
They are coerced into behaving nicely by the huge open source community which is not that much interested in what they have to offer anymore and have a lot of influence in the market
Not really. Java still dominates the enterprise application market (the only place it ever made any money for Sun), and its open source status is likely to have little effect on this. Even without ZFS being open-sourced, Solaris would still have a world leading file system. And I don't see where any pressure at all came from for them to open source the design of their UltraSparc T1 and T2 processors. Sun have been progressively opening more and more of their key business IP, and as far as I can see the only reason they have done so is that they really believe in the benefits of open source.
The World Wildlife Fund (WWF) in 2000 sued the World Wrestling Federation (WWF) and successfully forced them to change their name.
You mean the Worldwide Fund for Nature, previously known as the World Wildlife Fund. They managed to do this, despite having changed their name to one that didn't conflict five years previously. The only issue at stake in the trial was the fact that the organisations used the wwf.org and wwf.com domain names, and people were apparently getting confused between them.
Tell you what you can have cowboyneal.isgay and I'll take isgay.cowboyneal. Yours is for most normal folk while mine is for the Yoda speaking /. crowd.
You mean gay.cowboynealis
I doubt he'll comment. But I will: it sounds like bullshit to me. Unless you can propose how exactly somebody might interface a neural network to a knowledge-based system. That's substantially more advanced than any ANN system I've encountered so far, and I've looked at some fairly esoteric ANN designs.
Games? It is the best scratch pad for AI experiments.
Bollocks. Very few games have AI that's even approximately interesting. The most advanced stuff that's commonly used is stuff like algorithms for navigating around a map and obstacle avoidance that were basically mastered by the robotics community in the late 80s and early 90s.
Show me a game that does something truly novel in terms of AI, and I'll be impressed. I don't see any, though.
But one really interesting thing I have learned is since we actually see all of the code requests come in is that so far nobody has really wanted to the code for a practical reason. All of the requests have been done for "GPL Activism". In the majority of cases when people ask for code they just wanted to see if we would let them have it. I only one case that I know of did anyone go so far as actually getting code. I am rather sure we just shipped him a burned CD with all of the code on it. But after he got it he told us that he didn't really want the code, he just wanted to see if we would give it to him just like all of the other requests.
Interesting. I take it there isn't anyone who has ever had an interest in including their own patches into your firmware, then?
> www.falstad.com/circuit
Nice. I've been playing around with the free version of a piece of windows software called 'b2spice' for a while now, which is in many ways a better simulator, but I find the restrictions placed on the free version annoying (e.g. there's no model for a 555, and no way to add new components to the library). But this applet just allows me to quickly knock together a small circuit, it has a better selection of components, and it's easier to see what's going on with the circuit than using b2spice.
Join a banjo orchestra with your clarinet and you'll be a god of instrumental flexibility.
This surprises me somewhat. I'll admit never playing a banjo, but I've played quite a few other stringed instruments, and almost all of them give you three different degrees of freedom you can freely adjust as a player: velocity at which you strike the string (affecting amplitude and intonation), position along the string you strike it at (which affects intonation) and precise pitch (in the case of a fretted instrument like a banjo selected by slightly bending the string along the fretboard). Also, the choice of whether to use a plectrum or your finger to pick a string usually affects the sound considerably. Whereas a clarinet only really allows you to vary the amplitude of the tone, although admittedly you can do this continuously throughout the tone.
Sure a banjo isn't as flexible an instrument as a violin, but few are.
Narrator: In A.D. 2101, song was beginning. ....
Captain: What happen ?
Mechanic: Somebody set up us the drumloop.
Operator: We get signal.
Captain: What !
Operator: Main amp turn on.
Captain: It's you !!
CATS: How are you gentlemen !!
CATS: All your bass are belong to us.
CATS: You are on the way to first verse.
Captain: What you say !!
CATS: You have no chance to harmonize mark your time.
CATS: Ha Ha Ha Ha
Operator: Captain !!
Captain: Turn on every 'Moog'!!
Captain: You know what you playing.
Captain: Play 'Moog'.
Captain: For great chorus.
No, ADHD is a scam to try and console douchebag parents that their little darlings aren't really stupid, worthless, and lazy and nothing is their fault.
What a load of crap.
Which is clearly why a strong genetic component has been identified in its distribution.
You've been listening to too much of the anti-ADHD propoganda that has been put out by, among others, the church of Scientology. Go back and look at the evidence from the beginning, without preconceptions.
Several reels of 100 metal film resistors, 100OHm, 1K, 10K, 100K and 1M.
A bag of brestripped, tinned and finished wires of various lengths for breadboard prototyping.
A reel of single core wire (for when the premade ones won't quite stretch).
Several bags of capacitors (100p 1n 10n 100n ceramic, polyester, mica or mylar and 1u 100u and 1000u in electrolytic). You want maybe 20 of the smaller ones and 10 of the larger ones.
A nice big bag of cheap transistors. These are a little trickier, but all of the low priced ones will be similar. You probably want something like 20 small ones like BC108 (NPN, low power) a corresponding PNP one and 5 medium power ones like BFY51.
10 cheap LEDs
1 Buzzer
1 loudspeaker
A good powersupply. You won't need more than 1Amp, but you probably want 0--15V variable, and 2 outputs if you can manage it. This is the mist expensive part, but you could just get a 9V wall wart if this is a problem. Batteries get annoying quite fast.
You can also add to it later. You can buy a rail of 741 op amps (indestructible, and still popular even though they're 20 years obsoloete) and 555 oscillator chips. Later still you can get some logic ICs.
Plase, slashdotters weigh in, because I've missed something here.
A breadboard? Some stripboard?
A few diodes: some 1N4001s (silicon) and perhaps some 1N34As (germanium) if you'll be doing audio work with them.
If you're confident you can handle them properly, some MOSFETs, both of the p- and n-channel varieties. If you want to play around with logic circuits, FETs are much easier to understand than bipolar transistors. Plus if you want to play with higher power applications (e.g. larger audio amps, motor controllers, etc.) they're pretty much the only way of handling the kind of load you want. They are, however, static sensitive: a charge can build up on the gate that will destroy them. Keep them in an anti-static bag and ensure you're earthed when handling them. A STP4NK60ZFP (!) is fairly cheap and will take quite a current.
Things are supposed to get cheaper, right? I bought a dual-trace 100 MHz scope for something like $1000, and that was 20 years ago. I just took a look at prices for the same thing... $1000. WTF?
Yeah, but $1000 20 years ago was more like $5000 today.
Thanks, inflation.
You are correct, but the issue is a complex one. Ask yourself why we have targets and league tables in the UK? Because there is a perception that schools have been failing students, and there is no way to accurately judge schools/classes/teachers, without targets and league tables, just as it is impossible to know how well a student is doing without tests/essays/exams.
The problem is the league tables are too simplistic. They judge only one single aspect of quality (how well a school handles mediocre kids) without considering any other factors that may be important. There are a number of possible simple changes that might be beneficial. How about publishing a table for each grade? That way you could look at schools comparitively over different levels. "This school is really good at getting Cs for its kids, but it doesn't get many As. This one gets a lot of Ds, but not many As at all." Then the encouragement is to improve across the board, wherever it is possible, rather than concentrating on only one set of kids.
Also, what if there's a component of genetics in the ability to be a hard worker?
That's not a "what if": it's known to be the case. ADHD is a genetic condition that causes an inability to work hard (at least in some circumstances).
Roughly. I just looked up the words in a dictionary. :)