I use Avast on my workhorse machine and MS Security Essentials on my netbook. I feel like Avast does more, but is a resource hog, so only use it on my heftier machine. Both are running XP.
I've been typing since I first got WordPerfect on my PC-Junior. My handwriting is good enough; not award-winning but not illegible either by any stretch.
Just as many others here, I learnt cursive in elementary school, found it inpractical, and forgot it. I'm a professional now, and have never had any trouble whatsoever writing in print.
And so what? I find print easier to read, and type even better, and now that we're allegedly on the road to a paper-free workplace, what's wrong with kids typing better than they write? Times change. Time was, everyone wrote in formal script. That ended, and civilisation (such that it is) continued to progress.
Re:psycho tests
on
Half Mast
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
"Psycho tests" have a tendancy to miss important things. They rarely give much insight into anything but a pre-defined tendancy or trait, and with a few exceptions (sociopathy, psychopathy) don't predict violent behavior. In fact, labelling kids based on that kind of test would isolate them even more, which is bad since isolation and ostracism seem to be the root of the problem.
The key here is to go after the system which isolates and abuses kids in such a way that they feel the only escape is murder and/or suicide. How do we do this? Teachers and scool administrators need to take a more active role in their classrooms...not interfereing per se outside the classroom, but setting an example.
In my high school (a distant and happily fading memory), teachers ignored teasing and bullying until (and often after) real fights broke out. If they'd simply said "enough" and stopped it (or at least tried) many of us would have had more positive, or at least less negative, experiences.
And of course actually having and enforcing proper gun control wouldn't hurt. (had to get that in, eh?)
Whether or not it's new, it's a law-enforcement application of technology that doesn't run the risk of trampling civil rights. Well, OK, not much risk, anyways, since I certainly don't view car theft as a civil right.;-)
The problem with this is not abuse...it's non-use. I'm here at Oberlin College, in Ohio, and we have a wireless net for parts of our campus. The idea is great and the development office loves it (read, "good advertising"), but the thing is, its so expensive to get the wireless modem/ethernet cards that essentially no one uses it.
A better way to use funds would be to provide more help to students who don't have thier own computers. Like longer lab hours and more support staff, and better equipment there. That's my two cents (the rest of my money having gone to Oberlin, including "technology fee").
While what you talk about in terms of the keiretsus is really interesting, and cool, and I kinda like the idea, it actually could easily argue for *less* education, at least as we usually see it. In order to explain why, and of course also to expound my own theories on the topic;-), I will go through my whole thought process. I think people might find it interesting.
Based on other things I have read/heard, I do not have too much trouble believing that, at least for some segments of the population, wages have at least effectively decreased. Lots of that could, of course, be due to the skew effects of an outlying lower group; but then again, the incredible rise in the upper-bracket outliers' earnings, especially in the power-broker 80's and dot-com late-90's, ought to even out that effect. Slightly.
The thing that is really important to remember is that the stats excerpted in the review are talking about the wages of the 80% of Americans "in gainful employment," which I take to mean, essentially, the working middle and lower classes below retirement age (thus excluding the huge skewing effects of the soaring unemployed/welfare and social security populations). My guess would be that it's not a matter of people getting pay cuts or even so much of lay-offs, but of simply fewer jobs, people getting fewer promotions/raises, and those promoted getting less of a raise. And, I would surmise from the subject matter of the book that the author argues that this is because many jobs formerly done by people can now be done by machine or are rendered extraneous by one technology or another (for instance, I am sure there is less demand in the USPS for mail sorters or carriers since email has hugely reduced snail-mail volume, and that for the same reasons I would guess the ones they do hire don't get as many raises as they might have in, say, 1973).
All that is actually a bit of a tangential argument, since one of the points Katz brings up in his review is the idea of education becoming more important. Another reason people might be making less is that, over the course of mechanization or whatever, the jobs they were trained to do were eliminated, so that their (better-paid) expertise was no longer of any use, and so they had to get lower-paying, less specialised (or entry-level) positions. That would explain the decrease in wages (however, as a scientist, I'd still like to know a wage comparison for the same job between those two years, which is not given in the excerpt).
Like I said, I would quarrel with the thesis. More education, unless we are talking about everybody getting an (or another) liberal arts degree, makes people *more* specialised, and effects the same kind of pigeonholing the book seems to say is becoming obsolete.
There is a follow-up post on the Slashdot thread, I doubt you would have read that far down (or as late as it was posted), that talks about how many Japanese corporations are structured: that they hire based on ability to learn and adapt, and shuffle employees about regularly, so that, in the words of the poster, "you don't have 'programmers' and 'salespeople', you have an employees for company X," which sounds to me like a bloody good idea and perhaps even an argument *against* more education, at least in terms of how it's generally achieved.
So those are my ideas.
-------
"There's only 3 things you need to know about science:
If it stinks, it's chemistry,
If it wiggles, it's biology,
AND
If it doesn't work, it's physics."
-Paul Tardif
It seems we all more or less agree that Microsoft is evil and needs to be toppled, one way or the other. Something that people can do, if they're in a position to do it (a company or organisation with in-house counsel, for instance, or attorneys themselves), is to take the time to file an amicus brief. They aren't as useful as, say, electing a president/representatives less wooed by the $ in M$, but they help. Especially in these highly politicized keep-my-job-as-appointee-by-making-happy-constitue nts cases.
Well, as previously mentioned, you employer usually has rights to contract-developed products. And because your employer is the military, notorious for...um...
"convenient"... interpretations of contracts, etc., well, I'd say your chances are slim. But always worth a shot. The GAO is occasionally reasonable. Occasionally.
As previously suggested, get lists of sites. Then, first things first, complain to school/library administrators. Don't threaten or even hint that you plan on taking action...just complain. Then, contact the ACLU (www.aclu.org). Your best bet is probably to go after the school district's use of the software, not Bess, since businesses get lots of leeway in the law, but school districts are subject to heightened scrutiny. (if you're in the 3rd circuit, it'll be harder, but still worth a shot) Be aggressive.
Keep us posted and good luck!
Slashdot Mirror
I use Avast on my workhorse machine and MS Security Essentials on my netbook. I feel like Avast does more, but is a resource hog, so only use it on my heftier machine. Both are running XP.
I've been typing since I first got WordPerfect on my PC-Junior. My handwriting is good enough; not award-winning but not illegible either by any stretch.
Just as many others here, I learnt cursive in elementary school, found it inpractical, and forgot it. I'm a professional now, and have never had any trouble whatsoever writing in print.
And so what? I find print easier to read, and type even better, and now that we're allegedly on the road to a paper-free workplace, what's wrong with kids typing better than they write? Times change. Time was, everyone wrote in formal script. That ended, and civilisation (such that it is) continued to progress.
"Psycho tests" have a tendancy to miss important things. They rarely give much insight into anything but a pre-defined tendancy or trait, and with a few exceptions (sociopathy, psychopathy) don't predict violent behavior. In fact, labelling kids based on that kind of test would isolate them even more, which is bad since isolation and ostracism seem to be the root of the problem.
The key here is to go after the system which isolates and abuses kids in such a way that they feel the only escape is murder and/or suicide. How do we do this? Teachers and scool administrators need to take a more active role in their classrooms...not interfereing per se outside the classroom, but setting an example.
In my high school (a distant and happily fading memory), teachers ignored teasing and bullying until (and often after) real fights broke out. If they'd simply said "enough" and stopped it (or at least tried) many of us would have had more positive, or at least less negative, experiences.
And of course actually having and enforcing proper gun control wouldn't hurt. (had to get that in, eh?)
Whether or not it's new, it's a law-enforcement application of technology that doesn't run the risk of trampling civil rights. Well, OK, not much risk, anyways, since I certainly don't view car theft as a civil right. ;-)
The problem with this is not abuse...it's non-use. I'm here at Oberlin College, in Ohio, and we have a wireless net for parts of our campus. The idea is great and the development office loves it (read, "good advertising"), but the thing is, its so expensive to get the wireless modem/ethernet cards that essentially no one uses it.
A better way to use funds would be to provide more help to students who don't have thier own computers. Like longer lab hours and more support staff, and better equipment there. That's my two cents (the rest of my money having gone to Oberlin, including "technology fee").
While what you talk about in terms of the keiretsus is really interesting, and cool, and I kinda like the idea, it actually could easily argue for *less* education, at least as we usually see it. In order to explain why, and of course also to expound my own theories on the topic ;-), I will go through my whole thought process. I think people might find it interesting.
Based on other things I have read/heard, I do not have too much trouble believing that, at least for some segments of the population, wages have at least effectively decreased. Lots of that could, of course, be due to the skew effects of an outlying lower group; but then again, the incredible rise in the upper-bracket outliers' earnings, especially in the power-broker 80's and dot-com late-90's, ought to even out that effect. Slightly.
The thing that is really important to remember is that the stats excerpted in the review are talking about the wages of the 80% of Americans "in gainful employment," which I take to mean, essentially, the working middle and lower classes below retirement age (thus excluding the huge skewing effects of the soaring unemployed/welfare and social security populations). My guess would be that it's not a matter of people getting pay cuts or even so much of lay-offs, but of simply fewer jobs, people getting fewer promotions/raises, and those promoted getting less of a raise. And, I would surmise from the subject matter of the book that the author argues that this is because many jobs formerly done by people can now be done by machine or are rendered extraneous by one technology or another (for instance, I am sure there is less demand in the USPS for mail sorters or carriers since email has hugely reduced snail-mail volume, and that for the same reasons I would guess the ones they do hire don't get as many raises as they might have in, say, 1973).
All that is actually a bit of a tangential argument, since one of the points Katz brings up in his review is the idea of education becoming more important. Another reason people might be making less is that, over the course of mechanization or whatever, the jobs they were trained to do were eliminated, so that their (better-paid) expertise was no longer of any use, and so they had to get lower-paying, less specialised (or entry-level) positions. That would explain the decrease in wages (however, as a scientist, I'd still like to know a wage comparison for the same job between those two years, which is not given in the excerpt).
Like I said, I would quarrel with the thesis. More education, unless we are talking about everybody getting an (or another) liberal arts degree, makes people *more* specialised, and effects the same kind of pigeonholing the book seems to say is becoming obsolete.
There is a follow-up post on the Slashdot thread, I doubt you would have read that far down (or as late as it was posted), that talks about how many Japanese corporations are structured: that they hire based on ability to learn and adapt, and shuffle employees about regularly, so that, in the words of the poster, "you don't have 'programmers' and 'salespeople', you have an employees for company X," which sounds to me like a bloody good idea and perhaps even an argument *against* more education, at least in terms of how it's generally achieved.
So those are my ideas.
-------
"There's only 3 things you need to know about science:
If it stinks, it's chemistry,
If it wiggles, it's biology,
AND
If it doesn't work, it's physics."
-Paul Tardif
It seems we all more or less agree that Microsoft is evil and needs to be toppled, one way or the other. Something that people can do, if they're in a position to do it (a company or organisation with in-house counsel, for instance, or attorneys themselves), is to take the time to file an amicus brief.e nts cases.
They aren't as useful as, say, electing a president/representatives less wooed by the $ in M$, but they help. Especially in these highly politicized keep-my-job-as-appointee-by-making-happy-constitu
It's released the 18th. Go to Americangods.com for up-to-the-second times, as well as a VERY extensive journal Neil has been keeping about the book.
Well, as previously mentioned, you employer usually has rights to contract-developed products. And because your employer is the military, notorious for ...um...
"convenient" ... interpretations of contracts, etc., well, I'd say your chances are slim. But always worth a shot. The GAO is occasionally reasonable. Occasionally.
As previously suggested, get lists of sites. Then, first things first, complain to school/library administrators. Don't threaten or even hint that you plan on taking action...just complain. Then, contact the ACLU (www.aclu.org). Your best bet is probably to go after the school district's use of the software, not Bess, since businesses get lots of leeway in the law, but school districts are subject to heightened scrutiny. (if you're in the 3rd circuit, it'll be harder, but still worth a shot) Be aggressive.
Keep us posted and good luck!