Even if they did pump 10 billion, Diplomas were never and are never attendance awards unless you have shitty teachers and go to a shitty school.
If you fail your tests and do shitty work you wont pass the class, and you'll stay back, so whats this stuff about diplomas being given away as attendance awards?
I see MCAS as awarding people with money/good parents, and punishing people without financial or parent support.
simple, your teachers pass out As to anyone who does work, instead of passing out As to anyone who does GOOD work. If you get 70s and 80s on all your work you shouldnt get an A at the end of the semester.
So if you are just passing by the skin of your teeth, and you get an A or a B, its your teachers being nice to you giving you inflated grades.
The MCAS shouldnt even exist. They only create these things to keep poor people from going to college.
The MCAS is setup so that if you fail it, you can NEVER go to college, you can NEVER get a diploma, and all you get is some stupid certificate.
Alot of kids who went to shitty schools have to either become very mature at a young age and take matters into their own hands and teach themselves, or they are going to fail that test and never go to college.
Seems like class Warfare to me.
I'm from MA as well AC, and the MCAS sucks. Its just class warfare.
A kid could get all As in their shitty school and fail the MCAS because their school has books from the 1970s and 1980s while the richer more upper class schools have the newest books, best teaching materials,and smartest teachers.
Thank god for the internet, kids who have no money might have a chance.
Your school had AP classes, not all schools do. Your school had GOOD AP classes, some AP classes suck, just regular classes with more workload. You didnt study for the test? Actually yes you did. I'll explain how you studied.
When you were in school, you enjoyed it, you liked the courseload, you took the mathbook and english books home with you, you studied on your own and finished the whole book regardless of what the pace of the class was, and you learned at your own pace even if your teacher sucked and your school was shit.
This lead you to do well on the SATs because you from the beginning trained yourself to do well on the SATs by studying the material the SATs are based on.
Take another example, of a person who thought the class was moving too slow, never learned anything, and was bored out of their brain with the material, this person would ignore the teacher, never show interest in being in an AP class if it just meant more workload from crappy teachers, and would only do just enough studying to get by, because to this person school was living hell, they didnt want to be there, they just wanted to go home as soon as possible.
You see, some peoples experience with school is, going to school to get bullied all day by students and teachers, boring materials, slowly paced classes which go over the same shit over and over because others in the class cant keep up with you, and to this person school is a complete waste of time.
SATs wouldnt be on the list of things they'd be worried about. Your experience in highschool is unique, just like my experience is unique, and these experiences lead to the results, you took the SATs because you enjoyed your learning experience, I didnt take the SATS because to me school was a waste of time.
I did 95 percent of all my learning outside the classroom, I've taught myself everything, how to read, how to write, and I would have taught myself to pass the SATs, but SATs werent an issue to a person who hates school.
I agree with this, alot of rich kids have tutors and think they are somehow smart, if you buy your knowledge you arent intelligent, just rich.
2. Annoying egos (the same people who "failed" a test because they got a 96% and not a 99%)
This was a stupid comment, perhaps you need to take school more seriously, but if you want to keep a high GPA, you need to go for 100% on every paper, every exam, every peice of work. You need to learn to submit high quality work, and to not accept anything other than an A if you want to be successful in school.
3. Distinguishing people with high gpas without any other significant experience in h.s.
I have a high GPA in college (4.0), I was a slacker in highschool, maybe I learned to stop being lazy and not accept anything less than an A.
Why hate people for taking school seriously? Go get your GED if you are too lazy to compete in school.
They do this to filter out the poor. The rich automatically have an advantage in that they are usually trained for the SAT, if you are poor you arent even thinking about the SAT, your teachers dont train you for the SATs, and unless you have parents who make you study for the SATs you wont ge t a good score.
The SATs are a filtering device pure and simple, I never even took the SATs, I should get around to taking it, but because I never took it I'm in a community college.
If I decide to take it now and I score a 1500, perhaps I would get accepted into Harvard a bit sooner, but you'll end up in the same spot if you get good grades, keep a 3.5 or above GPA, do well in your classes for a consistant period of time and you can transfer into Harvard. Its also cheaper this way.
SATs are useless, people should be judged by their grades, their merit, not some score on a test which could be a fluke, or which they could have used their money to train themselves for.
I dont know what I'd get on the SATs, my Math skills are kinda weak, but I'm guessing I'd get around a 1200-1400 range, because even if you only get a 500-600 on math, if you get 800 on verbal, it makes up for the difference.
Alot of people train hard for the SATs, get into Harvard or Yale, and drop out, mainly because they dont know how to work hard, they just know how to pass tests.
take Dres CD, put my voice on the beginning, say some garbage advertisement, like "hell yeah, go to www.website.com and get free shit" and then call it a new song, spread it all over kazaa and suddenly its legal?
If its legal so are all the movies on Kazaa which have those 1 minute clips with the guys on it.
Too bad, if thats true perhaps musicians should retire and release all the music for free, I mean all the music which can be made with copyright has been made.
Segas problem, they release Dreamcast, they spend $100 million on advertisements, they spend make 100+ games a year, and only maybe 5-6 of these games sold over a million copies.
Sega spend a fortune on Shenmue instead of developing Virtua Fighter 4, lost more money, invested in SegaNet, good plan but they just ran out of money. The games werent selling fast enough. What good is buying the system if you dont buy 100 games along with it? (yeah right like a person could buy 100 games)
I dont know where but I've either met you or heard of you from some websitesa while back. Sadly, our past leadership diverted too much funding towards fighting a war of attrition with Sony and Nintendo in the home space, when our competencies were really arcade machines
I dont think Sega is doing bad because they released Dreamcast, Sega's problem was they released the system knowing they didnt have enough money to go through with the launch. The system sold well, but Sega released way too many games, spent way too much money on games, and released too many new games which while its good for the industry, isnt smart for business, they should have released sonic, nights, virtua fighter 4, panzer dragoon and all this stuff instead of jet set radio and new games. Overall Sega spent more money making games that didnt sell than Dreamcast was worth, other than that Dreamcast was a good system, it sold well, almost 10 million systems in around 2 years is selling well by anyones standards.
Sega needs to stop being so much of a pioneer and focus on making money like other businesses. Sega may have the best developers, the newest technologies and the best franchises, in the end if Sega goes out of business its because Sega didnt properly run their business.
They could have made a fortune on Dreamcast and Seganet if they would have pulled a Nintendo and focused on their big games, N64 survived and didnt sell as well as DC did.
While I dont like the Merger idea, I think Sega is better of just learning how to run a business. The best company for Sega to merge with would definately be Namco.
Imagine Sega/Namco coming out with a system and games like Virtua Fighter, Tekken, and all that, just dont let the system come out under Segas name, let it be the Namco Dreamcast2 and it might have a chance.
What Sega should do is simply downsize, I want to see Sega stay in business and a merger is not the way to do it. What Sega should do is get rid of some of their development teams but keep the good ones, or sell some of the development teams which arent their best but which are very good.
Definately keep Sonic team, definately keep AM2, but the other teams, Sega can sell them, or make PC games with them.
"Well, by and large, for desktop users, this hasn't been borne out by past experience. When XP came out, most users didn't decide to switch to a free OS, despite having to pay for an upgrade and facing the specter of future upgrades. It seems to me that in most cases, for whatever reason, desktop users are willing to pay for a familiar, commercial operating system."
This is because no one had a choice, and because during this time Linux was not easy enough to use. You cannot say most users didnt decide to switch when Microsoft was blocking Linux from being preloaded while Preloading WindowsXP, after the trial, Microsoft had to loosen their grip and now Lindows is beginning to preinstall their software.
" And one other thing: it seems to me you're putting a lot of emphasis on gaming, but notwithstanding a subset of the/. crowd, games aren't the primary purpose for people buying PC's. For professionals, productivity and ease-of-use are the paramount concerns, not availability of games."
So you are telling me the casual user, such as the college student, or the teenager, the ones who buy desktop computers more than any other group, buys them for their "productivity" and "ease-of-use"? If this were true, Apples Mac would be the best selling PC device on the planet.
People buy Windows because it plays games, game sales outsell every other type of software, most people upgrade because of games, people use their computers for games and multimedia such as music and movies. The average college student does not care if the OS uses Microsoft Word or Star Office as long as they can write their papers. The average college student does not care about ease of use as long as it does the job its supposed to do.
Considering Linux is more stable, the average college student would be happy to know the computer wont crash in the middle of writing the 20 page paper. They also know the computer wont fail, they dont have to worry about viruses, spyware, and people who are ripping music or trading files would love to feel safe from the RIAA.
And besides, that's what consoles are for. Also, make sure you have the chicken and the egg in the right order: gaming options may have some influence on marketshare, but (ask Mac users about this) marketshare certainly influences game developers. So unless Linux makes significant inroads in the next few years on its own, Windows will still be the primary platform for PC gaming.
I disagree, Linux can take Windows as long as they have nearly the same amount of backward compatibility as the new Longhorn, if both play the old Windows games at nearly the same level, this means if properly marketed, Linux will win.
Linux has this going for it.
Its cheaper.(Free) Its more powerful. Its stable & safe from hackers.
The question becomes what will Windows have over Linux to convince someone NOT to install the free Linux and buy the $200 Windows. I dont think people will pay for something when theres something free, College Students sure as hell wont, and these guys are gamers, see my point?
because at the time Windows98 came out, Linux wasnt as easy to use, there was no transgaming, wine didnt work this well, there was no crossover office, open office, etc,
As things are right now though, Longhorn seems to be starting from scratch in terms of compatibility, games most likely wont work, so people have the option of keeping XP, or getting linux.
People are more likely to upgrade to Linux over Longhorn because of price, people might not want to pay all that money to upgrade again and again.
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Yes thats basically what school is about.
I'm talking about college, but your school must suck, too bad for you eh?
College and highschool are not the same.
10 billion? Where did you get that number?
Even if they did pump 10 billion, Diplomas were never and are never attendance awards unless you have shitty teachers and go to a shitty school.
If you fail your tests and do shitty work you wont pass the class, and you'll stay back, so whats this stuff about diplomas being given away as attendance awards?
I see MCAS as awarding people with money/good parents, and punishing people without financial or parent support.
if you do the minimum how are you getting all As?
simple, your teachers pass out As to anyone who does work, instead of passing out As to anyone who does GOOD work. If you get 70s and 80s on all your work you shouldnt get an A at the end of the semester.
So if you are just passing by the skin of your teeth, and you get an A or a B, its your teachers being nice to you giving you inflated grades.
The MCAS shouldnt even exist. They only create these things to keep poor people from going to college.
The MCAS is setup so that if you fail it, you can NEVER go to college, you can NEVER get a diploma, and all you get is some stupid certificate.
Alot of kids who went to shitty schools have to either become very mature at a young age and take matters into their own hands and teach themselves, or they are going to fail that test and never go to college.
Seems like class Warfare to me.
I'm from MA as well AC, and the MCAS sucks. Its just class warfare.
A kid could get all As in their shitty school and fail the MCAS because their school has books from the 1970s and 1980s while the richer more upper class schools have the newest books, best teaching materials
Thank god for the internet, kids who have no money might have a chance.
What you said makes absolutely no sense. You do no work but you have a 3.x GPA?
Please tell me do your teachers hand out As just for showing up? If you truely did no work, you wouldnt have a high GPA.
Your school had AP classes, not all schools do. Your school had GOOD AP classes, some AP classes suck, just regular classes with more workload. You didnt study for the test? Actually yes you did. I'll explain how you studied.
When you were in school, you enjoyed it, you liked the courseload, you took the mathbook and english books home with you, you studied on your own and finished the whole book regardless of what the pace of the class was, and you learned at your own pace even if your teacher sucked and your school was shit.
This lead you to do well on the SATs because you from the beginning trained yourself to do well on the SATs by studying the material the SATs are based on.
Take another example, of a person who thought the class was moving too slow, never learned anything, and was bored out of their brain with the material, this person would ignore the teacher, never show interest in being in an AP class if it just meant more workload from crappy teachers, and would only do just enough studying to get by, because to this person school was living hell, they didnt want to be there, they just wanted to go home as soon as possible.
You see, some peoples experience with school is, going to school to get bullied all day by students and teachers, boring materials, slowly paced classes which go over the same shit over and over because others in the class cant keep up with you, and to this person school is a complete waste of time.
SATs wouldnt be on the list of things they'd be worried about. Your experience in highschool is unique, just like my experience is unique, and these experiences lead to the results, you took the SATs because you enjoyed your learning experience, I didnt take the SATS because to me school was a waste of time.
I did 95 percent of all my learning outside the classroom, I've taught myself everything, how to read, how to write, and I would have taught myself to pass the SATs, but SATs werent an issue to a person who hates school.
See the picture?
Ok now you said a few things which are stupid.
1. The tutors who get the money for test preps
I agree with this, alot of rich kids have tutors and think they are somehow smart, if you buy your knowledge you arent intelligent, just rich.
2. Annoying egos (the same people who "failed" a test because they got a 96% and not a 99%)
This was a stupid comment, perhaps you need to take school more seriously, but if you want to keep a high GPA, you need to go for 100% on every paper, every exam, every peice of work. You need to learn to submit high quality work, and to not accept anything other than an A if you want to be successful in school.
3. Distinguishing people with high gpas without any other significant experience in h.s.
I have a high GPA in college (4.0), I was a slacker in highschool, maybe I learned to stop being lazy and not accept anything less than an A.
Why hate people for taking school seriously? Go get your GED if you are too lazy to compete in school.
Go to school, this is the best time, the economy is shit, get your degree.
The SATs dont matter, spend a year at a community college, get all As, and transfer to a university.
Its that simple. You do not need to take the SATs after you prove yourself by getting enough college credits.
They do this to filter out the poor. The rich automatically have an advantage in that they are usually trained for the SAT, if you are poor you arent even thinking about the SAT, your teachers dont train you for the SATs, and unless you have parents who make you study for the SATs you wont ge t a good score.
The SATs are a filtering device pure and simple, I never even took the SATs, I should get around to taking it, but because I never took it I'm in a community college.
If I decide to take it now and I score a 1500, perhaps I would get accepted into Harvard a bit sooner, but you'll end up in the same spot if you get good grades, keep a 3.5 or above GPA, do well in your classes for a consistant period of time and you can transfer into Harvard. Its also cheaper this way.
SATs are useless, people should be judged by their grades, their merit, not some score on a test which could be a fluke, or which they could have used their money to train themselves for.
I dont know what I'd get on the SATs, my Math skills are kinda weak, but I'm guessing I'd get around a 1200-1400 range, because even if you only get a 500-600 on math, if you get 800 on verbal, it makes up for the difference.
Alot of people train hard for the SATs, get into Harvard or Yale, and drop out, mainly because they dont know how to work hard, they just know how to pass tests.
what the fuck is a musicologist?
take Dres CD, put my voice on the beginning, say some garbage advertisement, like "hell yeah, go to www.website.com and get free shit" and then call it a new song, spread it all over kazaa and suddenly its legal?
If its legal so are all the movies on Kazaa which have those 1 minute clips with the guys on it.
$51.9 million in revenue or is this what he has in the bank?
I'm sure he got alot of money off of Eminem but I'm also sure he pays Eminem alot of money.
Lets not forget all the advertisement costs of running the label,
Too bad, if thats true perhaps musicians should retire and release all the music for free, I mean all the music which can be made with copyright has been made.
Both are under copyright. Stop making excuses.
If everything is unoriginal why the hell should artists own anything?
Why should dre own his shit if you admit no one really owns the music because nothing is original?
Actually the average dreamcast owner did buy around 4 games, the problem is they werent 4 Sega games.
Soul Caliber sold millions of copies but it was made by Namco who for whatever reason hated Sega and decided not to make any more games.
Segas best selling Games were Sonic, NBA2k, etc.
Segas problem, they release Dreamcast, they spend $100 million on advertisements, they spend make 100+ games a year, and only maybe 5-6 of these games sold over a million copies.
Sega spend a fortune on Shenmue instead of developing Virtua Fighter 4, lost more money, invested in SegaNet, good plan but they just ran out of money. The games werent selling fast enough. What good is buying the system if you dont buy 100 games along with it? (yeah right like a person could buy 100 games)
I dont know where but I've either met you or heard of you from some websitesa while back.
Sadly, our past leadership diverted too much funding towards fighting a war of attrition with Sony and Nintendo in the home space, when our competencies were really arcade machines
I dont think Sega is doing bad because they released Dreamcast, Sega's problem was they released the system knowing they didnt have enough money to go through with the launch. The system sold well, but Sega released way too many games, spent way too much money on games, and released too many new games which while its good for the industry, isnt smart for business, they should have released sonic, nights, virtua fighter 4, panzer dragoon and all this stuff instead of jet set radio and new games. Overall Sega spent more money making games that didnt sell than Dreamcast was worth, other than that Dreamcast was a good system, it sold well, almost 10 million systems in around 2 years is selling well by anyones standards.
Sega needs to stop being so much of a pioneer and focus on making money like other businesses. Sega may have the best developers, the newest technologies and the best franchises, in the end if Sega goes out of business its because Sega didnt properly run their business.
They could have made a fortune on Dreamcast and Seganet if they would have pulled a Nintendo and focused on their big games, N64 survived and didnt sell as well as DC did.
While I dont like the Merger idea, I think Sega is better of just learning how to run a business. The best company for Sega to merge with would definately be Namco.
Imagine Sega/Namco coming out with a system and games like Virtua Fighter, Tekken, and all that, just dont let the system come out under Segas name, let it be the Namco Dreamcast2 and it might have a chance.
Sega and Sammy shouldnt merge.
What Sega should do is simply downsize, I want to see Sega stay in business and a merger is not the way to do it. What Sega should do is get rid of some of their development teams but keep the good ones, or sell some of the development teams which arent their best but which are very good.
Definately keep Sonic team, definately keep AM2, but the other teams, Sega can sell them, or make PC games with them.
"Well, by and large, for desktop users, this hasn't been borne out by past experience. When XP came out, most users didn't decide to switch to a free OS, despite having to pay for an upgrade and facing the specter of future upgrades. It seems to me that in most cases, for whatever reason, desktop users are willing to pay for a familiar, commercial operating system."
/. crowd, games aren't the primary purpose for people buying PC's. For professionals, productivity and ease-of-use are the paramount concerns, not availability of games."
This is because no one had a choice, and because during this time Linux was not easy enough to use. You cannot say most users didnt decide to switch when Microsoft was blocking Linux from being preloaded while Preloading WindowsXP, after the trial, Microsoft had to loosen their grip and now Lindows is beginning to preinstall their software.
" And one other thing: it seems to me you're putting a lot of emphasis on gaming, but notwithstanding a subset of the
So you are telling me the casual user, such as the college student, or the teenager, the ones who buy desktop computers more than any other group, buys them for their "productivity" and "ease-of-use"? If this were true, Apples Mac would be the best selling PC device on the planet.
People buy Windows because it plays games, game sales outsell every other type of software, most people upgrade because of games, people use their computers for games and multimedia such as music and movies. The average college student does not care if the OS uses Microsoft Word or Star Office as long as they can write their papers. The average college student does not care about ease of use as long as it does the job its supposed to do.
Considering Linux is more stable, the average college student would be happy to know the computer wont crash in the middle of writing the 20 page paper. They also know the computer wont fail, they dont have to worry about viruses, spyware, and people who are ripping music or trading files would love to feel safe from the RIAA.
And besides, that's what consoles are for. Also, make sure you have the chicken and the egg in the right order: gaming options may have some influence on marketshare, but (ask Mac users about this) marketshare certainly influences game developers. So unless Linux makes significant inroads in the next few years on its own, Windows will still be the primary platform for PC gaming.
I disagree, Linux can take Windows as long as they have nearly the same amount of backward compatibility as the new Longhorn, if both play the old Windows games at nearly the same level, this means if properly marketed, Linux will win.
Linux has this going for it.
Its cheaper.(Free)
Its more powerful.
Its stable & safe from hackers.
The question becomes what will Windows have over Linux to convince someone NOT to install the free Linux and buy the $200 Windows. I dont think people will pay for something when theres something free, College Students sure as hell wont, and these guys are gamers, see my point?
Microsoft didnt invent that shit!
uPNP, USB2? software firewalls? you sound silly.
That stuff is on every OS, its not a new feature, Microsoft didnt invent it.
because at the time Windows98 came out, Linux wasnt as easy to use, there was no transgaming, wine didnt work this well, there was no crossover office, open office, etc,
As things are right now though, Longhorn seems to be starting from scratch in terms of compatibility, games most likely wont work, so people have the option of keeping XP, or getting linux.
People are more likely to upgrade to Linux over Longhorn because of price, people might not want to pay all that money to upgrade again and again.
Mainstream meaning enough people so that we get games and commercial software, I dont mean mainstream in that it has to be #1.