Actually size is not that big of a deal. Panasonic makes phone systems that include the ability of to have wireless phones roam within an area aka similar to a cell phone system. The phones are tiny and the cradles are also small. Just drop the phone into the cradle and it starts recharging no connection other than sitting in the cradle.
I certainly agree with you that an application should be written to be flexible in the databases it can talk to. But typically portability is used to say the application can run on Unix, Windows, Linux etc. Or replace the computer with 3090 or Sun or Intel.
And that is rarely a true statement for any client.
As a consultant and developer for the lastest 2 decades the comment does surprise. Not because of the content but because he has the guts to say portability does not matter.
I have only ever been on a couple of projects ever where "portability" mattered to the company. Both projects were for software companies and in both cases portability really only meant that it worked on Oracle or SQL Server.
The rest of the projects without exception were done on a single platform using a single set of tools specified by the client. Rarely do companies care if it runs outside their environment or even skillset. Portability of hardware and OS is relevant for only a hand full of companies writing products like Oracle. For the rest of us it is farce and usually used by people pushing a particular agenda.
If anything the off shoring of high tech jobs is not a new phenomenon. It has been occurring since the early 90s.
It is just American high tech workers never noticed because they were to busy fleeing COBOL business application market for the DotCom companies. In the end, the DotCom bubble made the effect of offshoring high tech jobs worse.
1) High Tech workers got use to even more money and high money lifestyle 2) DotCom economy not only helped make it easier to offshore, made it imperative to move the jobs off shore due to market shortage in labor, and gave the high tech consulting industry time to mature. 3) Money grew the high tech job sector to an unsustainable size 4) A large workforce means more obvious inefficient workers or to be more blunt to spot bad high tech workers
Even without off shoring the high tech job sector was in for a shrinking period. The off shoring just makes it more obvious and more painful.
Pay MS and design the hardware to run MS technology". Not in the embedded world. Why pay a per-unit royalty if you don't have to? And, if the device can run MS technology, it can run Linux. And, Linux supports other non-MS technologies. Like CHEAP embedded MIPS processors. Like IBM mainframes. Like 68K processors. Like SPARC processors. Which have never been supported "MS technology". As a hardware vendor this gives more choice.
I had this exact same thought. This is based on the following assumptions:
1) Cost to design hardware for Linux or MS is the same 2) Cost to design software for Linux or MS is the same 3) Cost of production and deployment is the same
Thus from an economics point of view the obvious choice is Linux. However, how sure are you that the cost are equal? They may in fact not be equal hence why MS can compete in the CE space.
But Linux doesn't compete with MS. Redhat does. Novell does (which is why Miguel is tracking this.NET stuff, I guess).
That is true. So, why has Redhat, Novell, et al done something similar to help the CE market? Rather than just say here is a distro go forth and multiple.
Your kidding right... what does WMP solve let me think, I can listen to music, watch DVD, download a movie.
Pioneer for example showed a stereo component they had running WMP at the 2002 and 2003 CEDIA. Samsung is also working on WMP components for your stereo.
http://msdn.microsoft.com/embedded/default.aspx http://msdn.microsoft.com/embedded/devplat/csmrel e c/default.aspx http://www.microsoft.com/windowsmo bile/products/po rtablemediacenters/default.mspx http://msdn.micro soft.com/embedded/xp/
Unfortunately, I thought the same as you about the CE world. The assumption, that the cost to develop the software is the same and thus the company is playing extra for MS. I made the same assumption. However, after further research I am finding that the assumption is not accurate. The cost of hiring a Linux software team may in fact be more expensive than the MS solution. Thus negating the MS tax assumption.
MS will win because it looks for problems it can solve for customers with its technology. MS employees are not looking at Linux and going oh look at that feature we need to counter it. Or no problem we already have done that.
Instead they look at the market and say, how can we solve someone's problem. A great example is thin media clients. Linux could have dominated this market. Linux is a robust OS that just runs. It has a low to no cost for deploying to millions of homes. The HD1000 from ROKU (http://www.rokulabs.com) is a great example of what is possible for Linux in this $100+ billion industry.
However, Linux is squandering away the opportunity. MS came in to the marketplace and said to the hardware manufacturers here is a complete solution just install. To a company that cares more about selling hardware than software the choice is clear. Pay MS and design the hardware to run MS technology (especially when you have multiple hardware vendors saying here is the base platform already designed for you). The consumer electronic companies make money by selling hardware not software. Anyone who says to them here is a complete and working system just build the hardware will get there attention.
That is why MS wins. They solve problems; they don't just invent technology for technologies sake.
In discussing the whole outsourcing of information jobs with people I decided to see if history has anything to say on this. A close parallel is the turn of the 20th century and the start of the Industrial Revolution. The dominate military and economic powerhouse was The British Empire. The upstart was America a 2nd class rebel colony of the Empire.
British manufacturing was based on craftsmanship. A good craftsman could build an item without a lot of wasted resources. This was important as a majority of resources had to be imported into the country.
America on the other hand became the home of mass production. The original Model T was made by craftsmanship. Every part of the car was built by the same person. Then one day, Henry Ford said no, everyone line up and we all build the same car, thus inventing mass production. This was possible because in terms of resources back then, we had unlimited resources. America could afford to be wasteful. While other American industries adopted the new technique Britain did not and eventual lost its Superpower status.
Then a very interesting thing happens, the craftsmen were no longer needed. A car could be built by teaching a person to do one simple part of the whole equation. The craftsmen saw their wages decrease. The smart ones realize that the money is designing more efficient manufacturing techniques, designing products, running the factories, etc.
Now fast forward to the future to the start of the Knowledge Revolution. The dominate military and economic powerhouse is America. The upstart is India a 2nd class rebel colony of the Empire.
The question has been what happens when the knowledge workers are put out of work. But here is a radical thought, what if programmers were never knowledge workers. What if programmers were simply craftsmen? Now America with a constrained resource called knowledge is facing a country with essentially unlimited knowledge resource. That country has take knowledge to the next step by creating a form of knowledge factory. Knowledge is no longer confined to only highly skilled labor but can be manufactured just like regular good via repeatable process.
How does this historical analogy benefit people? Well as an architect, I can go and write up specifications for a new program. Then subcontract out the actual implementation to an offshore development shop. I can then sell that product either to a software publisher or directly. The idea is important not the implementation. I think American developers (and I include myself) have forgotten that the idea is what matters not the implementation. There are literally thousands of ways to solve the same problem. The key is to identify the problem and come up with a solution. After that its just cranking out some code which anyone can do even a computer.
I will grant you that there are a lot of "poor" Indians. However, I do know people over there. What I am saying is quite true. I will use the lunch example. I was having lunch with another developer and discussing the whole outsourcing issue. The cost of my portion of lunch was around $15. The same or better meal in India would cost $1 per someone who has been there.
So an developer in India would pay out say $20 per month. While I would shell out nearly $300 for lunch. Who is better off?
The per capita income in the US is roughly $35k The average income for a developer in the US is $70k.
The per capital income in India $2,570 The average income for a developer in India is $8k.
This means that developers in the USA are getting 2 times per capita. Meanwhile, developers in India are getting over 3 times per capita. This does not even begin to take into account differences in the cost of living. And senior and talented individuals are making over $20k which is 8-10 times per capita. Most senior level people are luck to make 3-4 times per capita here in the US. So while it is true companies are taking advantage of the price difference they certainly are not paying slave or sweat shop wages. Developers in India are actually doing better than here in the States.
Also it is interesting to note that when the Pharmaceuticals companies try to block people from buying cheaper drugs they get called greedy. Both groups are suffering from what Economists refer to as pricing parity. That is the notion that prices within an area will move towards parity. The concept originally sought to explain why prices at the local level tended to be the same. However, local is relative and as the world becomes the global village the size of local becomes the whole world.
>It's unfortunate when sombody posts baseless remarks like this and even more > unfortunate when it gets modded up.
I am not posting baseless remarks. Fact, SAT and ACT schools in Texas have remade flat while TAAS scores rose over the last 10 years. The only change was a spike in SAT schools which coincides with a change in the SAT test itself. After which the scores went back to being flat. Fact, Texas schools must take the top 10% of students from any Texas school as long as that student has passed the TAAS. In fact, because of this many parents and students game the system by changing schools their senior year. By changing to another school they are ensured a placement at a school even with poor SAT and ACT scores. Fact, a co-workers daughter was denied a place at UT because while she qualified to go, they did not have an open slot. Why? Because of having to take all students that graduated in the top 10% of their class regardless of the quality of the school. Fact, a school district administration in Austin (our state capital) is under investigation for doctoring TAAS tests. Fact, two HISD schools are under investigation for lying in their reports on school drop outs since this statistic is used to grade the performance of the school.
As for my son I have no illusions about his abilities or talents. However, out of a class of thirtysomething only 4 students are passing one of whom has a C! Is that because of the students, poor teaching or the fact that they spend an enormous amount of time learning strategies for passing the new TAKS test? By the way, if a student does poorly on a practice test they MUST attend a Saturday class. I am sure my son will do well in life and I try to encourage him as best as I know how.
> Some feel that this is just fine. Many feel that this is a terribly ineffective and > inefficient way to learn.
I certainly was an opponent of testing simply because you become what you test. While the testing is well meaning it has created a system based on passing that test rather than if the schools are doing their job the students would pass the test. Or put another way teaching TAAS is not educating.
"Much of the criticism of public schools is, I believe, politically motivated."
Right now the US education system and it students rank very low compared to other industrial nations. I don't have the rank handy although I know it is below 10 almost 20 if I remember correctly. Texas ranks near the bottom when compared to other states.
>Besides, how can you claim that his class is not sufficiently advanced if, at the same > time, he is getting a "C"?"
I never claimed his class was advanced I was appalled at how behind he and his class are in math.
> Having said that, please let me wish you the best of luck with your son and commend > you for taking an active interest in his education. If my dad did that, maybe I'd have > been a doctor instead of a programmer;^]
Thank you, my wife and I are trying to do the best we can with our children.
Guilty as charged. Sorry for not taking the time to do an exhaustive edit and review process before posting. It will not happen again.
This posting has been checked for facts by RS This posting has been checked for spelling by MSWord This posting has been checked for grammar by MSWord This posting has been checked for the kitchen sink by RS
Who said I blamed anyone for his bad grades. I just pointed out that our education system is in shambles and continues to provide mediocre education unless you have the money to send your child to private school. In fact the private school my eldest son attends almost went bankrupt in the 50-70's because the public school system did a good job of educating students. Now it is flourishing again and in fact has enough money that they are putting the final touches on a new arts and music building.
He was in magnet for many years since 1st grade. We eventually pulled him because it was exhausting him. He was in school or going to school almost 12 hours a day. Now he goes to regular education school at Revere Middle School which use to be a good school regardless of placement. But as you have rightly pointed out we have decide it is time to pull him and put him in another placement probably private school like his brother.
You might want to add to your comment... HISD is spends most of its resources on Special Needs, bad behavior, and magnet school kids. The average kids get whatever is left over. I think it is very unfortunate that school district with a US$1.3B budget can't produce a quality education system that supports a majority of the educational needs of its student population. And when you consider the budget remember the US is not even in the top 20 in education systems.
Actually the finest was a joke. HISD is a joke, the school system focuses solely on taking the state test and statics. To the point where my older son asked point blank to be sent to private school.
We choose to send our youngest son to the school he is in because it was a good school until the last couple of years when as you rightly pointed out the quality of the teachers has declined to where only 4 students are passing what is a fairly basic math class (by the way my son does not like math nor is he very good at it which is fine with me).
As for the special school I went to it no longer exists the education system decided that students working at their own pace rather than the pace of the slowest is a bad thing.
I agree to some extend with your comment about labor although the one thing missing is that the US face reality that our debt is making the cost of our labor expenses by causing inflation... oh wait I forgot we lie about there being no inflation.
I agree with him although I think R&D will be more affected by this country failed education system more than the lower funding. Last night, I spent time with my youngest son who is in 7th grade doing his homework. He has only just now gotten to porportions granted he is not in advanced math but still by the time I was in 7th grade we were doing pre-algebra and that was really review since I had learned a lot of in 5th grade along with others at my grade level (Special elementary school but still).
Even scarier, he is making a C in math and science and he is one of only 4 kids in those classes that is passing. Our education system is very broken in this country and will only get worse if Bush has his way. My son goes to Houston Independent School District home of the finest education system hence why we kicked Rod Paige up to Secretary of Education. After all HISD students pass the state test or conviently transfer to another school or not drop out code even if the principals have to lie.
As potentially unpatriotic as it is to say, it makes me glad to know that the hope, energy and imagination of the billion people in China are there to step up, if we turn our backs on this important step in Humanity's future. It matters far more to me that we do this as a species then we do it as a nation. I hate the thought of what losing this would be a sign of for us as a country, though.
This is exactly the worse thing to happen at least from a US prospective. The US military is the strongest in a battle because we control the sky. If China controls space guess who controls the war -- China. China Space program and dedication to that cause are more of a threat than Iraq or North Korea.
Say all you want but if we do not get off our butts, dust ourselves off and get back into space in major way we will go the way of the Soviet Union, British Empire, Ottoman Empire, etc. There use to be a time when Astronuats died and yes it was tragic and the country morned but then we moved on and continued our quest.
Whomever ends up controlling space will be the next Superpower. Right now the US is looking more and more like the British Empire at the end of the 18th and beginning of the 19th century.
> go and use a machine with U160 SCSI drives and > then one that has IDE... there is a > SIGNIFICANT difference in speed,
Really. I have machines that have Ultra160 and IDE. The only advantage that SCSI has is the multiple I/O requests it can handle. And I have seen absolutely no preceived difference in performance in the normal use of the computers ie. I use them as workstations. In fact I challenge your remark that 2+ ghz machine using IDE boots slower than you Dual P3.
I have a dual Xenon with Ulta160 at home and a 2ghz using IDE133 at work. Both with 512mb memory. The machine at work boots much faster than my home machine even excluding the POST time to find the SCSI drives. And I have seen no difference in preceived performance.
SCSI is only worth anything when you start talking about I/O intensive applications like housing a database. And most desktop users almost never require anything more from there drive than reading and writing a single file at a time.
Thus the reason for SCSI being expensive is because it is for corporations and backend servers that are a shared resource and so the cost per user is cheaper than IDE.
I would say that environment has a lot to add as well. If you look at the wild kids raised by animals what you find is a an animal. It takes a lot of time and effort to bring the human being back if it can ever be achieved.
Face it we are one step away from being an animal. Without civilization we would not have a mind, we would just be a group of communal animals like apes or gorillas. Our intelligence seems to be more derived from civilization than something programmed into our minds.
Most of the AI field is predicated on the idea that intelligence is a biological process that if we just understood enough we would be able to duplicate it just like we duplicate in software almost any piece of hardware. This just goes counter to what we know about the biology. Our brains are vastly more complex than any piece of software yet the AI community continues to think that that our brains are just a smallset of rules that if they could mimic they would have AI or an emergant process from wiring togather a bunch of processes like knowledge storage and processing, learning, senses and pattern recognition to name a few.
I just got back from CEDIA conference (Custom Electronic Designers and Installers Association conference) where there were a lot of MP3 components. And everyone single one was overpriced, under powered and not worth the electronics put into them. Sure you go that way but anyone with the ability to put togather an MP3 server could do a much better job than I have seen by the stereo industry thus far. Not to mention that adding a DVD player and a hardware decoder will get you a fantastic AV component that will rival anything you can currently buy at any price. Just get yourself PowerStrip which will fix the display problem. Then a good IR controller and your ready to rock. I would mention that it would be really smart to get a good sound card say a M-Audio 2496 a lot of soundcards don't sound any good in a stereo setup.
Jeez its called passwords to a mini/mainframe or agast a web based application. That can minimized unauthorized use by
requiring a login
user training to lock the computer or app when they step away
low time out on the app to lock it.
requiring an additional password for committing certain kinds of transactions.
Most corps still require a password when starting an application because
You should never assume that the user at the other end is the user logged in.
Others with more or less access may need to use your computer for a variety of reasons
Because some bad person might just look for that open computer with no one at and pull up applications
As a side note David Neeleman is responsible for ticketless travel and checkin kiosks. And who dragged Southwest screamming and kicking into ticketless. He is a very smart guy and so are the IT guys. I was in a meeting with him back in the mid 90's when he first proposed this exact setup. So I just would like to say way to go Dave.
I think people are over reacting. The guts of the article is about how in this age of megacorporations do small authors of books or software find a market. Katz then uses his own experience of selling his book as an example. Rather than slam him why not talk about the point. What are some effective ways to market your product using the Internet and competing with corporations. Or are you afraid that then you might have to stop whining about why no one is using or buying your program/book you wrote in your spare time.
Personnaly I was fired up that maybe I could compete and make a decent living without having to work for some major corporation.
Re:Odd, I've seen this before someplace.
on
Wireless Monitors?
·
· Score: 1
Oops I think you forgot about 1080i HDTV. Displays a flawless picture, that looks very real and better than anything generated completely by computer with a few exceptions.
It's called being fully buzz word compliant. I don't expect most business to find IM type services of particular use. By that I mean write applications that use IM. If they do need messaging then they use messaging software like Tibco or MQSeries which provide more robust services need for that kind of mission critical environment. If it is not mission critical then sticking it into a database works quite well. After all us corporate types love to fell up the database with useless I mean useful information.
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Actually size is not that big of a deal. Panasonic makes phone systems that include the ability of to have wireless phones roam within an area aka similar to a cell phone system. The phones are tiny and the cradles are also small. Just drop the phone into the cradle and it starts recharging no connection other than sitting in the cradle.
I certainly agree with you that an application should be written to be flexible in the databases it can talk to. But typically portability is used to say the application can run on Unix, Windows, Linux etc. Or replace the computer with 3090 or Sun or Intel.
And that is rarely a true statement for any client.
As a consultant and developer for the lastest 2 decades the comment does surprise. Not because of the content but because he has the guts to say portability does not matter.
I have only ever been on a couple of projects ever where "portability" mattered to the company. Both projects were for software companies and in both cases portability really only meant that it worked on Oracle or SQL Server.
The rest of the projects without exception were done on a single platform using a single set of tools specified by the client. Rarely do companies care if it runs outside their environment or even skillset. Portability of hardware and OS is relevant for only a hand full of companies writing products like Oracle. For the rest of us it is farce and usually used by people pushing a particular agenda.
If anything the off shoring of high tech jobs is not a new phenomenon. It has been occurring since the early 90s.
It is just American high tech workers never noticed because they were to busy fleeing COBOL business application market for the DotCom companies. In the end, the DotCom bubble made the effect of offshoring high tech jobs worse.
1) High Tech workers got use to even more money and high money lifestyle
2) DotCom economy not only helped make it easier to offshore, made it imperative to move the jobs off shore due to market shortage in labor, and gave the high tech consulting industry time to mature.
3) Money grew the high tech job sector to an unsustainable size
4) A large workforce means more obvious inefficient workers or to be more blunt to spot bad high tech workers
Even without off shoring the high tech job sector was in for a shrinking period. The off shoring just makes it more obvious and more painful.
I had this exact same thought. This is based on the following assumptions:
1) Cost to design hardware for Linux or MS is the same
2) Cost to design software for Linux or MS is the same
3) Cost of production and deployment is the same
Thus from an economics point of view the obvious choice is Linux. However, how sure are you that the cost are equal? They may in fact not be equal hence why MS can compete in the CE space.
That is true. So, why has Redhat, Novell, et al done something similar to help the CE market? Rather than just say here is a distro go forth and multiple.
Your kidding right... what does WMP solve let me think, I can listen to music, watch DVD, download a movie.
l e c/default.aspxo bile/products/po rtablemediacenters/default.mspxo soft.com/embedded/xp/
Pioneer for example showed a stereo component they had running WMP at the 2002 and 2003 CEDIA. Samsung is also working on WMP components for your stereo.
http://msdn.microsoft.com/embedded/default.aspx
http://msdn.microsoft.com/embedded/devplat/csmre
http://www.microsoft.com/windowsm
http://msdn.micr
Unfortunately, I thought the same as you about the CE world. The assumption, that the cost to develop the software is the same and thus the company is playing extra for MS. I made the same assumption. However, after further research I am finding that the assumption is not accurate. The cost of hiring a Linux software team may in fact be more expensive than the MS solution. Thus negating the MS tax assumption.
MS will win because it looks for problems it can solve for customers with its technology. MS employees are not looking at Linux and going oh look at that feature we need to counter it. Or no problem we already have done that.
Instead they look at the market and say, how can we solve someone's problem. A great example is thin media clients. Linux could have dominated this market. Linux is a robust OS that just runs. It has a low to no cost for deploying to millions of homes. The HD1000 from ROKU (http://www.rokulabs.com) is a great example of what is possible for Linux in this $100+ billion industry.
However, Linux is squandering away the opportunity. MS came in to the marketplace and said to the hardware manufacturers here is a complete solution just install. To a company that cares more about selling hardware than software the choice is clear. Pay MS and design the hardware to run MS technology (especially when you have multiple hardware vendors saying here is the base platform already designed for you). The consumer electronic companies make money by selling hardware not software. Anyone who says to them here is a complete and working system just build the hardware will get there attention.
That is why MS wins. They solve problems; they don't just invent technology for technologies sake.
In discussing the whole outsourcing of information jobs with people I decided to see if history has anything to say on this. A close parallel is the turn of the 20th century and the start of the Industrial Revolution. The dominate military and economic powerhouse was The British Empire. The upstart was America a 2nd class rebel colony of the Empire.
British manufacturing was based on craftsmanship. A good craftsman could build an item without a lot of wasted resources. This was important as a majority of resources had to be imported into the country.
America on the other hand became the home of mass production. The original Model T was made by craftsmanship. Every part of the car was built by the same person. Then one day, Henry Ford said no, everyone line up and we all build the same car, thus inventing mass production. This was possible because in terms of resources back then, we had unlimited resources. America could afford to be wasteful. While other American industries adopted the new technique Britain did not and eventual lost its Superpower status.
Then a very interesting thing happens, the craftsmen were no longer needed. A car could be built by teaching a person to do one simple part of the whole equation. The craftsmen saw their wages decrease. The smart ones realize that the money is designing more efficient manufacturing techniques, designing products, running the factories, etc.
Now fast forward to the future to the start of the Knowledge Revolution. The dominate military and economic powerhouse is America. The upstart is India a 2nd class rebel colony of the Empire.
The question has been what happens when the knowledge workers are put out of work. But here is a radical thought, what if programmers were never knowledge workers. What if programmers were simply craftsmen? Now America with a constrained resource called knowledge is facing a country with essentially unlimited knowledge resource. That country has take knowledge to the next step by creating a form of knowledge factory. Knowledge is no longer confined to only highly skilled labor but can be manufactured just like regular good via repeatable process.
How does this historical analogy benefit people? Well as an architect, I can go and write up specifications for a new program. Then subcontract out the actual implementation to an offshore development shop. I can then sell that product either to a software publisher or directly. The idea is important not the implementation. I think American developers (and I include myself) have forgotten that the idea is what matters not the implementation. There are literally thousands of ways to solve the same problem. The key is to identify the problem and come up with a solution. After that its just cranking out some code which anyone can do even a computer.
I will grant you that there are a lot of "poor" Indians. However, I do know people over there. What I am saying is quite true. I will use the lunch example. I was having lunch with another developer and discussing the whole outsourcing issue. The cost of my portion of lunch was around $15. The same or better meal in India would cost $1 per someone who has been there.
So an developer in India would pay out say $20 per month. While I would shell out nearly $300 for lunch. Who is better off?
The per capita income in the US is roughly $35k
The average income for a developer in the US is $70k.
The per capital income in India $2,570
The average income for a developer in India is $8k.
This means that developers in the USA are getting 2 times per capita. Meanwhile, developers in India are getting over 3 times per capita. This does not even begin to take into account differences in the cost of living. And senior and talented individuals are making over $20k which is 8-10 times per capita. Most senior level people are luck to make 3-4 times per capita here in the US. So while it is true companies are taking advantage of the price difference they certainly are not paying slave or sweat shop wages. Developers in India are actually doing better than here in the States.
Also it is interesting to note that when the Pharmaceuticals companies try to block people from buying cheaper drugs they get called greedy. Both groups are suffering from what Economists refer to as pricing parity. That is the notion that prices within an area will move towards parity. The concept originally sought to explain why prices at the local level tended to be the same. However, local is relative and as the world becomes the global village the size of local becomes the whole world.
>It's unfortunate when sombody posts baseless remarks like this and even more
;^]
> unfortunate when it gets modded up.
I am not posting baseless remarks. Fact, SAT and ACT schools in Texas have remade flat while TAAS scores rose over the last 10 years. The only change was a spike in SAT schools which coincides with a change in the SAT test itself. After which the scores went back to being flat. Fact, Texas schools must take the top 10% of students from any Texas school as long as that student has passed the TAAS. In fact, because of this many parents and students game the system by changing schools their senior year. By changing to another school they are ensured a placement at a school even with poor SAT and ACT scores. Fact, a co-workers daughter was denied a place at UT because while she qualified to go, they did not have an open slot. Why? Because of having to take all students that graduated in the top 10% of their class regardless of the quality of the school. Fact, a school district administration in Austin (our state capital) is under investigation for doctoring TAAS tests. Fact, two HISD schools are under investigation for lying in their reports on school drop outs since this statistic is used to grade the performance of the school.
As for my son I have no illusions about his abilities or talents. However, out of a class of thirtysomething only 4 students are passing one of whom has a C! Is that because of the students, poor teaching or the fact that they spend an enormous amount of time learning strategies for passing the new TAKS test? By the way, if a student does poorly on a practice test they MUST attend a Saturday class. I am sure my son will do well in life and I try to encourage him as best as I know how.
> Some feel that this is just fine. Many feel that this is a terribly ineffective and
> inefficient way to learn.
I certainly was an opponent of testing simply because you become what you test. While the testing is well meaning it has created a system based on passing that test rather than if the schools are doing their job the students would pass the test. Or put another way teaching TAAS is not educating.
"Much of the criticism of public schools is, I believe, politically motivated."
Right now the US education system and it students rank very low compared to other industrial nations. I don't have the rank handy although I know it is below 10 almost 20 if I remember correctly. Texas ranks near the bottom when compared to other states.
>Besides, how can you claim that his class is not sufficiently advanced if, at the same
> time, he is getting a "C"?"
I never claimed his class was advanced I was appalled at how behind he and his class are in math.
> Having said that, please let me wish you the best of luck with your son and commend
> you for taking an active interest in his education. If my dad did that, maybe I'd have
> been a doctor instead of a programmer
Thank you, my wife and I are trying to do the best we can with our children.
Guilty as charged. Sorry for not taking the time to do an exhaustive edit and review process before posting. It will not happen again.
This posting has been checked for facts by RS
This posting has been checked for spelling by MSWord
This posting has been checked for grammar by MSWord
This posting has been checked for the kitchen sink by RS
Who said I blamed anyone for his bad grades. I just pointed out that our education system is in shambles and continues to provide mediocre education unless you have the money to send your child to private school. In fact the private school my eldest son attends almost went bankrupt in the 50-70's because the public school system did a good job of educating students. Now it is flourishing again and in fact has enough money that they are putting the final touches on a new arts and music building.
He was in magnet for many years since 1st grade. We eventually pulled him because it was exhausting him. He was in school or going to school almost 12 hours a day. Now he goes to regular education school at Revere Middle School which use to be a good school regardless of placement. But as you have rightly pointed out we have decide it is time to pull him and put him in another placement probably private school like his brother.
You might want to add to your comment...
HISD is spends most of its resources on Special Needs, bad behavior, and magnet school kids. The average kids get whatever is left over. I think it is very unfortunate that school district with a US$1.3B budget can't produce a quality education system that supports a majority of the educational needs of its student population. And when you consider the budget remember the US is not even in the top 20 in education systems.
Actually the finest was a joke. HISD is a joke, the school system focuses solely on taking the state test and statics. To the point where my older son asked point blank to be sent to private school.
We choose to send our youngest son to the school he is in because it was a good school until the last couple of years when as you rightly pointed out the quality of the teachers has declined to where only 4 students are passing what is a fairly basic math class (by the way my son does not like math nor is he very good at it which is fine with me).
As for the special school I went to it no longer exists the education system decided that students working at their own pace rather than the pace of the slowest is a bad thing.
I agree to some extend with your comment about labor although the one thing missing is that the US face reality that our debt is making the cost of our labor expenses by causing inflation... oh wait I forgot we lie about there being no inflation.
I agree with him although I think R&D will be more affected by this country failed education system more than the lower funding. Last night, I spent time with my youngest son who is in 7th grade doing his homework. He has only just now gotten to porportions granted he is not in advanced math but still by the time I was in 7th grade we were doing pre-algebra and that was really review since I had learned a lot of in 5th grade along with others at my grade level (Special elementary school but still).
Even scarier, he is making a C in math and science and he is one of only 4 kids in those classes that is passing. Our education system is very broken in this country and will only get worse if Bush has his way. My son goes to Houston Independent School District home of the finest education system hence why we kicked Rod Paige up to Secretary of Education. After all HISD students pass the state test or conviently transfer to another school or not drop out code even if the principals have to lie.
As potentially unpatriotic as it is to say, it makes me glad to know that the hope, energy and imagination of the billion people in China are there to step up, if we turn our backs on this important step in Humanity's future. It matters far more to me that we do this as a species then we do it as a nation. I hate the thought of what losing this would be a sign of for us as a country, though.
This is exactly the worse thing to happen at least from a US prospective. The US military is the strongest in a battle because we control the sky. If China controls space guess who controls the war -- China. China Space program and dedication to that cause are more of a threat than Iraq or North Korea.
Say all you want but if we do not get off our butts, dust ourselves off and get back into space in major way we will go the way of the Soviet Union, British Empire, Ottoman Empire, etc. There use to be a time when Astronuats died and yes it was tragic and the country morned but then we moved on and continued our quest.
Whomever ends up controlling space will be the next Superpower. Right now the US is looking more and more like the British Empire at the end of the 18th and beginning of the 19th century.
> go and use a machine with U160 SCSI drives and
> then one that has IDE... there is a
> SIGNIFICANT difference in speed,
Really. I have machines that have Ultra160 and IDE. The only advantage that SCSI has is the multiple I/O requests it can handle. And I have seen absolutely no preceived difference in performance in the normal use of the computers ie. I use them as workstations. In fact I challenge your remark that 2+ ghz machine using IDE boots slower than you Dual P3.
I have a dual Xenon with Ulta160 at home and a 2ghz using IDE133 at work. Both with 512mb memory. The machine at work boots much faster than my home machine even excluding the POST time to find the SCSI drives. And I have seen no difference in preceived performance.
SCSI is only worth anything when you start talking about I/O intensive applications like housing a database. And most desktop users almost never require anything more from there drive than reading and writing a single file at a time.
Thus the reason for SCSI being expensive is because it is for corporations and backend servers that are a shared resource and so the cost per user is cheaper than IDE.
I would say that environment has a lot to add as well. If you look at the wild kids raised by animals what you find is a an animal. It takes a lot of time and effort to bring the human being back if it can ever be achieved.
Face it we are one step away from being an animal. Without civilization we would not have a mind, we would just be a group of communal animals like apes or gorillas. Our intelligence seems to be more derived from civilization than something programmed into our minds.
Most of the AI field is predicated on the idea that intelligence is a biological process that if we just understood enough we would be able to duplicate it just like we duplicate in software almost any piece of hardware. This just goes counter to what we know about the biology. Our brains are vastly more complex than any piece of software yet the AI community continues to think that that our brains are just a smallset of rules that if they could mimic they would have AI or an emergant process from wiring togather a bunch of processes like knowledge storage and processing, learning, senses and pattern recognition to name a few.
Forget those wallwarts and powerhubs lets just use Power over Ethernet.
I just got back from CEDIA conference (Custom Electronic Designers and Installers Association conference) where there were a lot of MP3 components. And everyone single one was overpriced, under powered and not worth the electronics put into them. Sure you go that way but anyone with the ability to put togather an MP3 server could do a much better job than I have seen by the stereo industry thus far. Not to mention that adding a DVD player and a hardware decoder will get you a fantastic AV component that will rival anything you can currently buy at any price. Just get yourself PowerStrip which will fix the display problem. Then a good IR controller and your ready to rock. I would mention that it would be really smart to get a good sound card say a M-Audio 2496 a lot of soundcards don't sound any good in a stereo setup.
- requiring a login
- user training to lock the computer or app when they step away
- low time out on the app to lock it.
- requiring an additional password for committing certain kinds of transactions.
Most corps still require a password when starting an application because- You should never assume that the user at the other end is the user logged in.
- Others with more or less access may need to use your computer for a variety of reasons
- Because some bad person might just look for that open computer with no one at and pull up applications
As a side note David Neeleman is responsible for ticketless travel and checkin kiosks. And who dragged Southwest screamming and kicking into ticketless. He is a very smart guy and so are the IT guys. I was in a meeting with him back in the mid 90's when he first proposed this exact setup. So I just would like to say way to go Dave.I think people are over reacting. The guts of the article is about how in this age of megacorporations do small authors of books or software find a market. Katz then uses his own experience of selling his book as an example. Rather than slam him why not talk about the point. What are some effective ways to market your product using the Internet and competing with corporations. Or are you afraid that then you might have to stop whining about why no one is using or buying your program/book you wrote in your spare time.
Personnaly I was fired up that maybe I could compete and make a decent living without having to work for some major corporation.
Oops I think you forgot about 1080i HDTV. Displays a flawless picture, that looks very real and better than anything generated completely by computer with a few exceptions.
It's called being fully buzz word compliant. I don't expect most business to find IM type services of particular use. By that I mean write applications that use IM. If they do need messaging then they use messaging software like Tibco or MQSeries which provide more robust services need for that kind of mission critical environment. If it is not mission critical then sticking it into a database works quite well. After all us corporate types love to fell up the database with useless I mean useful information.