The point of introductory schooling is to help people make the decisions about what career they want to pursue, not about only teaching them what they will need in their chosen vocation.
I don't know the American school system, but in Aus we have grades 1-12. From my schooling (nearly 30 years ago). Grades 1-3 is the basics (reading, writing, arithmetic), 4-6 start covering history, geography, and the generic stuff that's important to everyone. 7-8 was history, science, basic economics, physical education, math - the basic building blocks of finding out what interests you. 9-10 was starting to focus on the things that interested you. You could choose to take a business path, or a arts path, or a science path, or (oddly enough) a sports path. Years 11-12 were for the people who wanted to be educated more in the things that they were interested in continuing in after school was over. General a strong focus in what you started in 9-10, maybe focusing on a particular type of science, or accounting vs legal.
About the only good reason I can think of for doing a purely vocational focus in schools (only teaching what students need for the profession that someone has chosen for them) is that there would be almost no need to ever consider teaching religion in schools.
Seriously, schooling is about educating children enough so that as adults they can start focusing on what they want to do. Not about choosing a path for every student. Schools shouldn't be factory lines putting out clones, though with the recent trends in performance pay for teachers, focusing on grades rather than learning, and parents thinking of teachers purely as cheap child care for 8 hours a day - I understand why you would think that.
I remember this system, it was a slight variation (We had a D music class which tended to be the most successful class, then A, B, C, E, F) but it worked.
The problem is the push for Performance Pay for teachers - which is huge in the US and a LNP push in Australia. If a teacher is paid more if their class gets higher grades, then the focus is on making the students get better grades instead of teaching them the skills they need after school. There are two ways to efficiently increase the grades a student gets. The first is to make the test easier; the second is to focus only on the barest minimum they will need to know for the test, and ignore everything else.
The nature of schooling in the first world is all about the teachers, not the students - it's silly, but true.
At conferences, most of the moronic, insulting, self-serving and offensive comments I hear are labeled "marketing". However I can't complain about them.
I found this funny. There are Reader Clients for both iOS and Android that are rated as top apps. This means there must have been huge numbers of downloads of those apps, and large numbers of people using them - all requiring Google Reader.
Yet Google Reader has few users... this just doesn't add up.
It strikes me this is purely a Google+ selling point, and one that I suspect isn't going to work.
As a non-US citizen, the situation there seems to be. Democrat: We need 100,000 signatures to care about what you are saying. Republican: We need 100,000 dollars to care about what you are saying.
It doesn't make you all look good when the serious petitions get ignored and the stupid fatuous distractions get so mach attention. Still, I am glad you have a system where you can raise a petition AND get promised an answer if you can get enough support - and it doesn't have to be political or financial support. I wish more countries had that.
What's funny is when you look at the seriously conservative countries in the world, where guns aren't rare, and the governments are right wing extremists... the US goes to war with them.
What is the percentage of people who successfully use cars for their intended purpose who cause injury or death to themselves or someone else? What is the percentage of people who successfully use guns for their intended purpose who cause injury or death to themselves or someone else?
Unless these numbers are similar, the comparison isn't relevant.
It is kind of odd that anyone who actually attempts to rise up against the government, as is constitutionally permitted, is instantly labelled a "terrorist". That in itself makes the 2nd amendment toothless.
For me (a non US citizen) I feel that it's fairly simple. The Internet allows people's words to reach more people, this is only harmful if you are scared of what people will say. Modern firearms allow people's bullets to reach more people, this is just harmful. The analogy doesn't hold when you look at results.
When was the last time the spirit of the 2nd amendment, the "security of a free state", was maintained with a firearm in the US? What is the ratio of violent crimes with firearms in relation to defending that free state? What ratio is too high?
I imagine if I was raised in the US I would be pro-gun, because it's based completely on indoctrination - the same as my anti-gun beliefs are. I don't think that would make me a better person, I think it would make me more dangerous to the society around me, and I think a society constantly in danger is one that will lead to disaster when things get tough.
I worry about what will happen in the US when oil starts getting scarcer and much more expensive. I worry about what will happen in the US when corporations get even more power, and less afraid of the government. I worry because it will have a flow on effect that will change the world.
More than this when I was dealing with a hospital with IT, they had a policy of "nothing critical exists unless it is on paper." Apparently they once had a system crash while trying to get information about medication for a patient, and they stopped using their eRecord system overnight. Blue Screen of Death isn't funny when it could cause an actual death.
I have been getting flu-shots every year for over 10 years now. I have also been in the workforce for over 20 years, and I don't remember hearing about them much when I started working. Since getting the shots, I have had the flu twice; in the years previous I got them every couple of years. Just because something is common now, doesn't mean they were common always.
Based on my own personal experience with cops in this country (does not apply to cops in other countries that I've lived in) there is a very good chance any particular cop you encounter in real life will not be a "decent human being". Far from it. If you aren't expecting a violent, dishonest, angry bully or thug you could end up in a lot of trouble. Maybe even dead.
This sounds like to gets back into the Gun Control issue again. All police in the US work with the assumption that whoever they are dealing with is armed, so any hostility is considered a "threat". If the assumption is reversed, the "threat" becomes a "nuisance", and you are less likely to get violent reactions from the police.
- "Licensed for the murder of (1) person only. Not to be used for mass killings." - "This firearm will automatically call 911 when discharged because no one would use it for something illegal... right?" - "This gun was purchased for the exclusive purpose of killing a fellow human being." - "Keep out of reach of all children except your own." - "Putting a gun in your mouth and pulling the trigger may cause harm to the user, though probably not the gene-pool." - "In case of break in, shoot first and then explain why you killed the fireman coming to rescue to later."
... how many children need to be killed by how many bullets before it's enough for you to do anything. I won't judge. I just want to know what that number is, so I don't need to ask again, and I can just wait for it happen.
Unfortunately, I think the answer is "all of them".
Whenever someone kills more than two people in a firearm related incident, their name, photo and other other form of identification are automatically blacked out. Their name is changed to an equivalent of "John Doe" and their history isn't allowed to be published. Allow for reporting, but without specifics. Sure, it's a pain, and it makes things harder to understand; but is that pain worse than that felt by the family of the victims.
If you can't control guns in the US, and I agree you can't because there are too many people out there who want to be able to kill people "when the circumstances allow", then you need to control the media - which unfortunately breaks another one of those pesky amendments.
The freedom to own a gun unfortunately automatically seems to mean the freedom to be untrained and uneducated in gun use. It's a legacy of destruction from a time when a firearm was slow, unwieldy and required skill to use; as well as difficult to manufacture. Now the technology has improved to the point where someone can pick up a mass produced weapon for the first time and kill 30 people in a few minutes if they wanted to, and yet the concept of updating the amendment around this fact is apparently unfathomable.
To me it's the equivalent of someone saying 400 years ago that everyone should have the right to explosives because fireworks are fun; then people using the same argument to say that it means that all people should be able to carry nuclear weapons because they are explosive. If your laws can't update to reflect changes in technology and availability, then there are significant issues right there.
Oddly, I see people here who refuse to consider a change to gun rights be the same ones who are fighting for a change to laws around copyright, trademark and patents. They think that technology changes mean some laws need to be re-written, as long as it doesn't involve their right to own a device designed to kill other human beings.
It's fairly simple. When employers insist that you need to go to a doctor when you are sick and get proof or they won't believe that you were, then people decide "if I have to go out anyway, I may as well go to work." Also, when one person in an office is very sick, then they get a lot of negative attention. If it spreads and a number of people get sick, then they were one of the unlucky ones.
I used to stay home when sick, until I had a manager who told me that if I took any more time off I would probably lose my job. So when I next got the flu I took drugs and went to work. I can tell you though, I really enjoyed my lengthy closed door meeting with him and HR that day. I don't think they were happy I scheduled that meeting.
What's funny to me is the same people who want guns based on an amendment to the constitution so they can change the government if it's ever needed... are the same people who get furious at people who want to stop people from getting the government to make change.
Pro-Gun: "I need a gun in case I ever need to protest against my government and change the laws." Anti-Gun: "I want to peacefully get my government to change the laws." Pro-Gun: "You are anti American."
From an outsiders perspective it seems all the people who are pro guns want to use them to stop people from making the changes that are exactly the reason they say they need to have them. It seems like just pure insanity.
This kind of reminds me when back in the late '90s I went for a job at Telstra, which at the time was the only real provider of land lines to any house or business in the country. Their employment contract stated that I was not allowed to work for any customer of Telstra if I stopped working there for any reason for 12 months after finishing employment. Between 12 and 24 months I could only take a job with Telstra's permission.
I asked about the fact that pretty much every single business in the country was a customer of Telstra due to the fact that they owned all the phone lines. The HR person told me that was not their concern and if I wanted to work there I would need to agree to their terms.
I didn't sign that contract, and didn't work there. I never heard of them actually trying to enforce that contract, but they didn't care what it did the their employees.
Mostly because they go from 0km/h up to somewhere between 200-300 km/h, this is in a country where the top speed limit is 110km/h. So you spend most of your time in the first quarter to a third of the dial, meaning that your accuracy is way lower.
I personally think there should be a requirement for accurate speedometers (I know about tire pressure and stuff, but it's not that hard in this day to make them accurate using sensors) and then have them max out no more than 20-30km/h higher than the maximum speed limit. This would reduce teenagers dying trying to get their car up to "maximum speed".
Knowing what you are doing has nothing to do with it. Parts fail, and often they are nearly impossible to diagnose exactly what the problem is. This is why most corporations pay for quick replacement on fail of equipment, because it's not always easy. Otherwise the vendors wouldn't come with a new piece of equipment, they would arrive and swap what is broken. But they don't do that.
It also boils down to what you buy, and more importantly, where you buy it. I used to make my own equipment, and for me it was fine; however after returning a faulty MB with an intermittent network card failure and watching them while I am still in the store air clean it and put it back into stock convinced me that you generally don't want to buy parts from anywhere other than the manufacturer, and who does that? It's impossible to spot faulty PC equipment by eye (most of the time), so selling returns as new happens. They even put new stickers on the anti-static packaging.
I congratulate you for being the supreme king of diagnostics who can look at a computer for 20 seconds and know exactly where a failure occurred, because I would say most of the people who are purchasing PCs can't do that, and have to put a value on the time they have to waste trying to figure it out without any spare parts.
Home Built PCs tend to follow a simple formula. Built from cheapest parts that meet the required spec. 3-12 months later something breaks. Think it's the RAM, try to get it swapped under warranty. Can't prove it's RAM so it isn't replaced. Buy new RAM, it wasn't the RAM. Try to swap the MB out under warranty, rejected because you can't prove it's the MB. Buy new MB, problem stays. Put original RAM back in, still problem. Put original MB back in and the problem goes away... For 2-3 weeks, while you aren't using the 2nd set of RAM or MB you bought. Then it comes back, so you swap back to new MB and RAM and the problem persists. Then you find that your SATA cable is nicked, so you replace that, but it doesn't fix it. Talking to the store who is trying to charge you $150/hr for their "support time" they suggest it's the graphics card. You don't want to swap out the most expensive part of your PC so you borrow one from a friend, that you load and then spend 2 hours getting working, to find out that the problem is still happening. Three months later you are looking at your FrankenPC and wondering where all these spare parts came from, and then you realize that all the time, extra purchases, support $ and borrowing crap from friends was well worth the $250 you saved on the original purchase.
Slashdot Mirror
The point of introductory schooling is to help people make the decisions about what career they want to pursue, not about only teaching them what they will need in their chosen vocation.
I don't know the American school system, but in Aus we have grades 1-12. From my schooling (nearly 30 years ago). Grades 1-3 is the basics (reading, writing, arithmetic), 4-6 start covering history, geography, and the generic stuff that's important to everyone. 7-8 was history, science, basic economics, physical education, math - the basic building blocks of finding out what interests you. 9-10 was starting to focus on the things that interested you. You could choose to take a business path, or a arts path, or a science path, or (oddly enough) a sports path. Years 11-12 were for the people who wanted to be educated more in the things that they were interested in continuing in after school was over. General a strong focus in what you started in 9-10, maybe focusing on a particular type of science, or accounting vs legal.
About the only good reason I can think of for doing a purely vocational focus in schools (only teaching what students need for the profession that someone has chosen for them) is that there would be almost no need to ever consider teaching religion in schools.
Seriously, schooling is about educating children enough so that as adults they can start focusing on what they want to do. Not about choosing a path for every student. Schools shouldn't be factory lines putting out clones, though with the recent trends in performance pay for teachers, focusing on grades rather than learning, and parents thinking of teachers purely as cheap child care for 8 hours a day - I understand why you would think that.
I remember this system, it was a slight variation (We had a D music class which tended to be the most successful class, then A, B, C, E, F) but it worked.
The problem is the push for Performance Pay for teachers - which is huge in the US and a LNP push in Australia. If a teacher is paid more if their class gets higher grades, then the focus is on making the students get better grades instead of teaching them the skills they need after school. There are two ways to efficiently increase the grades a student gets. The first is to make the test easier; the second is to focus only on the barest minimum they will need to know for the test, and ignore everything else.
The nature of schooling in the first world is all about the teachers, not the students - it's silly, but true.
At conferences, most of the moronic, insulting, self-serving and offensive comments I hear are labeled "marketing". However I can't complain about them.
I found this funny. There are Reader Clients for both iOS and Android that are rated as top apps. This means there must have been huge numbers of downloads of those apps, and large numbers of people using them - all requiring Google Reader.
Yet Google Reader has few users... this just doesn't add up.
It strikes me this is purely a Google+ selling point, and one that I suspect isn't going to work.
Clippy the Teacher!
As a non-US citizen, the situation there seems to be.
Democrat: We need 100,000 signatures to care about what you are saying.
Republican: We need 100,000 dollars to care about what you are saying.
It doesn't make you all look good when the serious petitions get ignored and the stupid fatuous distractions get so mach attention. Still, I am glad you have a system where you can raise a petition AND get promised an answer if you can get enough support - and it doesn't have to be political or financial support. I wish more countries had that.
What's funny is when you look at the seriously conservative countries in the world, where guns aren't rare, and the governments are right wing extremists... the US goes to war with them.
What is the percentage of people who successfully use cars for their intended purpose who cause injury or death to themselves or someone else?
What is the percentage of people who successfully use guns for their intended purpose who cause injury or death to themselves or someone else?
Unless these numbers are similar, the comparison isn't relevant.
It is kind of odd that anyone who actually attempts to rise up against the government, as is constitutionally permitted, is instantly labelled a "terrorist". That in itself makes the 2nd amendment toothless.
For me (a non US citizen) I feel that it's fairly simple. The Internet allows people's words to reach more people, this is only harmful if you are scared of what people will say. Modern firearms allow people's bullets to reach more people, this is just harmful. The analogy doesn't hold when you look at results.
When was the last time the spirit of the 2nd amendment, the "security of a free state", was maintained with a firearm in the US? What is the ratio of violent crimes with firearms in relation to defending that free state? What ratio is too high?
I imagine if I was raised in the US I would be pro-gun, because it's based completely on indoctrination - the same as my anti-gun beliefs are. I don't think that would make me a better person, I think it would make me more dangerous to the society around me, and I think a society constantly in danger is one that will lead to disaster when things get tough.
I worry about what will happen in the US when oil starts getting scarcer and much more expensive. I worry about what will happen in the US when corporations get even more power, and less afraid of the government. I worry because it will have a flow on effect that will change the world.
More than this when I was dealing with a hospital with IT, they had a policy of "nothing critical exists unless it is on paper." Apparently they once had a system crash while trying to get information about medication for a patient, and they stopped using their eRecord system overnight.
Blue Screen of Death isn't funny when it could cause an actual death.
I have been getting flu-shots every year for over 10 years now. I have also been in the workforce for over 20 years, and I don't remember hearing about them much when I started working.
Since getting the shots, I have had the flu twice; in the years previous I got them every couple of years.
Just because something is common now, doesn't mean they were common always.
Based on my own personal experience with cops in this country (does not apply to cops in other countries that I've lived in) there is a very good chance any particular cop you encounter in real life will not be a "decent human being". Far from it. If you aren't expecting a violent, dishonest, angry bully or thug you could end up in a lot of trouble. Maybe even dead.
This sounds like to gets back into the Gun Control issue again. All police in the US work with the assumption that whoever they are dealing with is armed, so any hostility is considered a "threat". If the assumption is reversed, the "threat" becomes a "nuisance", and you are less likely to get violent reactions from the police.
- "Licensed for the murder of (1) person only. Not to be used for mass killings."
- "This firearm will automatically call 911 when discharged because no one would use it for something illegal... right?"
- "This gun was purchased for the exclusive purpose of killing a fellow human being."
- "Keep out of reach of all children except your own."
- "Putting a gun in your mouth and pulling the trigger may cause harm to the user, though probably not the gene-pool."
- "In case of break in, shoot first and then explain why you killed the fireman coming to rescue to later."
... how many children need to be killed by how many bullets before it's enough for you to do anything. I won't judge. I just want to know what that number is, so I don't need to ask again, and I can just wait for it happen.
Unfortunately, I think the answer is "all of them".
Target: Whatever the weapon is currently pointing at.
Whenever someone kills more than two people in a firearm related incident, their name, photo and other other form of identification are automatically blacked out. Their name is changed to an equivalent of "John Doe" and their history isn't allowed to be published. Allow for reporting, but without specifics.
Sure, it's a pain, and it makes things harder to understand; but is that pain worse than that felt by the family of the victims.
If you can't control guns in the US, and I agree you can't because there are too many people out there who want to be able to kill people "when the circumstances allow", then you need to control the media - which unfortunately breaks another one of those pesky amendments.
The freedom to own a gun unfortunately automatically seems to mean the freedom to be untrained and uneducated in gun use. It's a legacy of destruction from a time when a firearm was slow, unwieldy and required skill to use; as well as difficult to manufacture. Now the technology has improved to the point where someone can pick up a mass produced weapon for the first time and kill 30 people in a few minutes if they wanted to, and yet the concept of updating the amendment around this fact is apparently unfathomable.
To me it's the equivalent of someone saying 400 years ago that everyone should have the right to explosives because fireworks are fun; then people using the same argument to say that it means that all people should be able to carry nuclear weapons because they are explosive. If your laws can't update to reflect changes in technology and availability, then there are significant issues right there.
Oddly, I see people here who refuse to consider a change to gun rights be the same ones who are fighting for a change to laws around copyright, trademark and patents. They think that technology changes mean some laws need to be re-written, as long as it doesn't involve their right to own a device designed to kill other human beings.
It's fairly simple. When employers insist that you need to go to a doctor when you are sick and get proof or they won't believe that you were, then people decide "if I have to go out anyway, I may as well go to work."
Also, when one person in an office is very sick, then they get a lot of negative attention. If it spreads and a number of people get sick, then they were one of the unlucky ones.
I used to stay home when sick, until I had a manager who told me that if I took any more time off I would probably lose my job. So when I next got the flu I took drugs and went to work. I can tell you though, I really enjoyed my lengthy closed door meeting with him and HR that day. I don't think they were happy I scheduled that meeting.
I am pretty sure castration is cheap though.
What's funny to me is the same people who want guns based on an amendment to the constitution so they can change the government if it's ever needed... are the same people who get furious at people who want to stop people from getting the government to make change.
Pro-Gun: "I need a gun in case I ever need to protest against my government and change the laws."
Anti-Gun: "I want to peacefully get my government to change the laws."
Pro-Gun: "You are anti American."
From an outsiders perspective it seems all the people who are pro guns want to use them to stop people from making the changes that are exactly the reason they say they need to have them. It seems like just pure insanity.
This kind of reminds me when back in the late '90s I went for a job at Telstra, which at the time was the only real provider of land lines to any house or business in the country. Their employment contract stated that I was not allowed to work for any customer of Telstra if I stopped working there for any reason for 12 months after finishing employment. Between 12 and 24 months I could only take a job with Telstra's permission.
I asked about the fact that pretty much every single business in the country was a customer of Telstra due to the fact that they owned all the phone lines. The HR person told me that was not their concern and if I wanted to work there I would need to agree to their terms.
I didn't sign that contract, and didn't work there. I never heard of them actually trying to enforce that contract, but they didn't care what it did the their employees.
Speedometer's are almost useless.
Mostly because they go from 0km/h up to somewhere between 200-300 km/h, this is in a country where the top speed limit is 110km/h. So you spend most of your time in the first quarter to a third of the dial, meaning that your accuracy is way lower.
I personally think there should be a requirement for accurate speedometers (I know about tire pressure and stuff, but it's not that hard in this day to make them accurate using sensors) and then have them max out no more than 20-30km/h higher than the maximum speed limit. This would reduce teenagers dying trying to get their car up to "maximum speed".
Some of my family loves driving from Perth to Sydney for recreation. They say the record is 1800km without seeing another car, though they see trucks.
This isn't on the back roads either.
Knowing what you are doing has nothing to do with it. Parts fail, and often they are nearly impossible to diagnose exactly what the problem is. This is why most corporations pay for quick replacement on fail of equipment, because it's not always easy. Otherwise the vendors wouldn't come with a new piece of equipment, they would arrive and swap what is broken. But they don't do that.
It also boils down to what you buy, and more importantly, where you buy it. I used to make my own equipment, and for me it was fine; however after returning a faulty MB with an intermittent network card failure and watching them while I am still in the store air clean it and put it back into stock convinced me that you generally don't want to buy parts from anywhere other than the manufacturer, and who does that? It's impossible to spot faulty PC equipment by eye (most of the time), so selling returns as new happens. They even put new stickers on the anti-static packaging.
I congratulate you for being the supreme king of diagnostics who can look at a computer for 20 seconds and know exactly where a failure occurred, because I would say most of the people who are purchasing PCs can't do that, and have to put a value on the time they have to waste trying to figure it out without any spare parts.
Home Built PCs tend to follow a simple formula.
Built from cheapest parts that meet the required spec.
3-12 months later something breaks.
Think it's the RAM, try to get it swapped under warranty. Can't prove it's RAM so it isn't replaced.
Buy new RAM, it wasn't the RAM.
Try to swap the MB out under warranty, rejected because you can't prove it's the MB. Buy new MB, problem stays. Put original RAM back in, still problem. Put original MB back in and the problem goes away...
For 2-3 weeks, while you aren't using the 2nd set of RAM or MB you bought.
Then it comes back, so you swap back to new MB and RAM and the problem persists. Then you find that your SATA cable is nicked, so you replace that, but it doesn't fix it.
Talking to the store who is trying to charge you $150/hr for their "support time" they suggest it's the graphics card. You don't want to swap out the most expensive part of your PC so you borrow one from a friend, that you load and then spend 2 hours getting working, to find out that the problem is still happening.
Three months later you are looking at your FrankenPC and wondering where all these spare parts came from, and then you realize that all the time, extra purchases, support $ and borrowing crap from friends was well worth the $250 you saved on the original purchase.