This is no way to run an education system, and I won't be experimenting with charter schools again.
Presumably it was possible to find out some of this information about a particular private school before actually sending your child there. (.e.g. turnover rate, teacher salaries, etc)
I would hope that if a charter school had better numbers in these areas that you wouldn't discount it just because of one bad experience. By the same token I would expect you to be just as vigilant regarding negative factors in public schools. For example if you moved to a new city, I would hope that you wouldn't simply assume that the local public school is automatically better than all the local charter schools simply because that was your previous experience.
Well, given that we spend more money per student than any nation in the world, I would expect our public education system to be at least one of the best in the world.
Yes it would be great if parents "stepped up". The problem is that parents used to be kids that are now a product of the same dysfunctional school system that their kids are now going through.
It's not just the problem for these families. It's a problem for all of society when a large section of the population is uneducated. It would be one thing if we weren't spending many resources on education, but as it stands we are actually wasting a lot of resources on inefficient education.
Clearly, just telling families to just get their shit together is really not going to solve anything from a societal standpoint.
Once we are able to break this cycle, then we won't need to tell families how important education is, because they will already know.
1)They also take students from "public schools" (i.e. traditional public schools), decreasing the expenses of the school as well.
The counter argument I usually hear for this, is that schools lose their economies of scale when they lose students and money. This implies a bigger question of why public schools aren't doing better than they are *if* the benefits of economies of scale in public education are so significant.
I would suggest that the reason is that public schools don't actually spend most of the money on educating students. A new student is more money in the pockets of bureaucrats with little additional cost. They don't have their expenses lowered very much by losing a student because they weren't spending that much money on the student to begin with.
I don't think charter schools are all good, or that they are the magic bullet to fix our broken education system. What I do know is that our traditional public schools are failing miserably. I know some people want to fix it rather than coming up with a new solution, but I really don't think we have the luxury of continuing down this path if we care about improving society
the teachers' union (which may, or may not have got a bit too powerful; but i'll tell-ya, their salaries sure doesn't reflect that)
People who think teachers at public schools are getting paid a lot, are on crack.
The teachers unions are in fact very powerful. It is extremely hard to fire bad teachers.
I think the teachers unions should be fighting for higher salaries rather than immunity from being fired. This would encourage more talented people to become teachers. As it stands, being a teacher only appeals to incompetent people (who like not being fired regardless of performance), and charitable people (who will accept low pay because they enjoy or feel a duty to teach).
We should be paying teachers like $80,000 to start, and fire all the bad ones. Teachers shouldn't even need a union. I am a software developer. We don't have a union. We get paid a high salary because our skills are highly valued. It should be the same for teachers. I wouldn't be where I am today without the few good teachers I had.
Imagine what could be accomplished if most teachers were good teachers rather than just a handful.
If we had a vote among teachers to double teacher salaries, but be subject to being possible fired for sucking, I suspect most would not take this deal. That's unfortunate. But the ones that would take the deal, are exactly the ones we want.
I think politicians being public figures tend to get more criticism (justified or not) than regular people. I don't think racial criticism of Alan West can be used as an accurate measurement of how racist black people are as a whole, any more than racial criticism of Obama can be used as a measurement for the level of racism among white people.
The failure is theirs to own, when they don't allow people to escape.
This kind of mindset that each race is responsible for the success of their own people is part of the problem.
If some black kid is getting a bad education and is heading down a road with no opportunities, we (non-black people) shouldn't be thinking "That's the black community's fault for embracing ghetto culture". We should see this as a terrible tragedy that a child is allowed to go down this path, regardless of the color of their skin.
People should be treated as individuals, not members of a race.
Also, speaking of "Science 101" and the null hypothesis...
When you are assuming the "null hypothesis" usually it means you are about to do an experiment where this hypothesis is contrasted with an alternate hypothesis.
You don't get to simply neglect to then do the experiment and assume the null hypothesis is true.
Also when you say things like:
Good try, but the null hypothesis doesn't need protection. It is the default assumption. Bone up on your Science 101 and come back to argue another time
It makes you an asshole. And when you are wrong, it makes you a dumb asshole. When you need to resort to proclaiming yourself the winner of an argument, it is a sign of weakness. It just makes you look ridiculous, like a losing fighter dancing and celebrating around the ring after the bell to influence the judges into thinking he won. Sometimes the winning fighters do this too, but if you won convincingly, you shouldn't need to.
There is a difference between saying "I have proven that lion roars don't cause earthquakes statistically" and "I am assuming lion roars don't cause earthquakes because this seems too unlikely to even warrant effort to verify"
I think it is reasonable not to do any research into whether lion roars cause earthquakes.
Are you really suggesting that you think it is reasonable to say that every chemical in marijuana has zero effect on schizophrenia, and that we are so confident we don't even need to check?
I am not saying that we need to act as if marijuana does cause schizophrenia until it is proven that it doesn't (e.g. recommending schizophrenics not use marijuana, etc). I am just saying that we need to acknowledge that from a scientific point of view we don't know the answer to this question until we do the work.
The difference between lion roars and earth quakes is that no one can even give a plausible reason to of how this might be true (as far as I know). Even if someone "proved" a causal link between lion roars and earthquakes, the focus would immediately be on what this person did wrong to arrive at such a ridiculous conclusion.
If someone actually did prove a causal link between marijuana and schizophrenia, I don't think anyone would say "How can that be, it is impossible for these things to be related". So I don't think this is a good comparison.
Maybe Jesus cast his magic powers to make it seem like marijuana is safe even though it's not.
Confounding factors don't have to be supernatural to be non-obvious. And yes, you are supposed to take appropriate steps to discover and account for confounding factors you are not yet aware of. You don't get to pretend that there aren't any until they are proven to exist, especially given the likelihood that there are confounding factors you are unaware of.
But in science we don't protect a hypothesis, when it is contraindicated by the evidence, by inventing unknown unrecorded unexplained confounding factors.
Exactly! we don't protect a hypothesis like "Marijuana doesn't cause schizophrenia". We attack it to see if it can withstand scrutiny. Just like we attack the hypothesis that "Marijuana does cause schizophrenia". Neither hypothesis gets a free pass.
That is the opposite of how reason works.
Actually it is reasonable to should follow accepted statistical methods that do not allow you to conflate correlation and causation. We actually do have the tools to determine causation, and "common sense logic" that regular people think they possess is simply no substitute for actual science and statistics.
I do. I'm only suggesting that if marijuana use increases 1000% and there is no epidemic of schizophrenia afterward, there doesn't seem to be any reason to assume a causal link, or to fear one..
We shouldn't be *assuming* causal links either way. You need to actually show causal links using real science and legitimate statistical methods.
There may be underlying factors influencing the decrease in schizophrenia, but there is absolutely no evidence that using cannabis will increase your likelihood of being diagnosed with it.
No there isn't any evidence. And I wasn't suggesting that there was. But you have to rule these sorts of things out properly. That's the reason for doing real statistics. You can't just assume that marijuana causes schizophrenia and you can't assume it doesn't.
Showing causal links is difficult regardless. You have to do more work than just showing a correlation or an anti-correlation.
Incidence of schizophrenia should follow the increase in marijuana use when plotted against time, it doesnt. It's inverse.
Hospitals make people sicker. If hospitals made people healthier, you'd expect people who went to hospitals to be healthier than people who didn't, but in fact you find just the opposite.
This is the kind of logic that results from using this kind of "common sense" approach, rather than actual science.
Not necessarily. It could be that marijuana increase schizophrenia, and some other factor decreases schizophrenia fore than marijuana increases it. I'm not saying this is the case, but you can't just look at a period where schizophrenia decreased and say that everything that increased in that time period can't be increasing schizophrenia.
The kid was an example of something that can happen to make you lose your data. In the same way that you might be cautious with handling of your discs, or being cautious in allowing your kids to handle discs, another way to be cautious is to backup your data.
Not too mention that it is pretty nice not having to be constantly loading and ejecting discs every time you want to consume media. I don't listen to CDs or watch DVD's anymore. I back them all up on a server so that I can just select them from a list when I want to listen to or watch them. No I don't *need* to back them up. It's just more convenient both for casual consumption and it protects you from data loss by having more than one copy.
Thats exactly what I do. But when I go to my friends hosue, playig an mkv file is a bit more elaborate than just throwing it on a thumb drive. I either have to set up ps3media server at their house on one of his computers (if it's fast enough), or bring my own computer, or transcode the file.
I have this computer (a PS3) that is fast enough to play 1080p video. It's cool if I can stream it video from another computer, but I sucks that my *only* option is to have another fast enough computer for playing my video container format of preference.
I don't know if the retarded "only pirates use mkv" reason is the actual reason that Sony doesn't support mkv, but this is still a retarded reason.
It is only moderately inconvenient for me to play my files over DLNA, they are legal and not protected by cinavia. It is also not inconvenient for me to buy devices other than ones from Sony. My Roku works great.
Actually the PS3 will not play any kind of backups protected by Cinavia (including mp4 files, or transcoded DLNA network streams).
The PS3
will
play mkv files streamed via DLNA. It just won't play them locally.
You can go download a pirated copy of a new movie or make your own backup yourself in any format mp4, mkv, wmv, etc, and it won't play in a PS3.
It's trivial to transcode any video to mp4 or mkv. Not supporting mkvs doesn't do anything to stop any piracy. They already have a way to filter out pirated content regardless of video container format.
I would call not being able to be played on consumer electronic hardware a serious restriction.
Yes it is, but mkv still has fewer restrictions than other container formats
I sometimes believe that the pirates use MKV just out of a sense of "leetness" rather than actual features.
Being an open standard is definitely an important feature, aside from being leet. Mkv is not just *an* open video container, it is the most prominent and widely used open video container format.
Being an open video container means that it is easier to for 3rd parties to develop applications that support these files. This is good for healthy competition and consumers. This is not good if you are a big company trying to solidify your dominance in a market.
Android is good for consumers because it means that their apps can run on many different phones. It would be bad for consumers but good for Samsung if android only ran on Samsung devices. Microsoft would love it if everyone used wmv, because then they become the gatekeeper for new technology regarding video. Same with mp4 and apple. With mkv nobody is the gatekeeper. There is no gate to restrict people.
Look at what google is doing with VPX codecs. They don't want to be stuck paying licensing fees for h264, but rather than making their own proprietary compression scheme, they decided to purchase and open source a compression scheme that every (including google) can use royalty free. What's in it for google? They are boosting their support among developers who like the idea of using technology that doesn't come with any catches.
My time is valuable, so instead I just run a DLNA server that transcodes video on the fly. It would just be more convenient if PS3 supported mkv natively.
Copyright infringers use mkv because it is arguably the best container format with the fewest restrictions. They have no reasons to use inferior products. The people who follow the rules are stuck with the shit that microsoft, sony, and apple feed them. They are designed to lock people into proprietary technology in order to secure revenue. These formats are designed to restrict rather than empower people.
For the things I listed, people in practice are unable to get patents because the novelty standard as set by the courts is either too low or too high.
If the novelty standard is too high, then it is impossible for anyone to get a patent because it is too hard to prove that nothing like your product has ever existed before.
If the novelty standard is too low, then anyone can circumvent your patent by trivially changing the design.
So yes, you can technically pay for and try to get a patent in these areas, but for the most part this is just a waste of money, and that's why almost nobody does it.
There is a quantifiable difference with these industries and one like the pharmaceutical industry that completely revolves around patents.
Also ipwatchdog is probably not a reliable/unbiased source since it is run by a patent attorney, who stands to gain if people believe that patents are more effective/necessary than they are.
What were you doing that you needed to d typecasting as part of a network socket functionality? I've never used python socket, only higher level network libraries like urllib, httplib, etc.
I thought of something like this too, but how do you prevent big companies from hiring 1 super attractive person to their product development team whose title indicates some kind of technical knowledge but in reality all she does is visual PR? I don't think this would be a high enough cost to big companies to prevent companies from doing it. There is no shortage of beautiful young girls willing to take a medium paying job where the only thing they need to do is look pretty in front of people.
What if she wears a really slutty outfit to conventions? Are we really going to start mandating dress codes at conventions? Have you ever tried creating a dress code for women to try to force them to look professional? I think the best you could probably do is either a person who kicks out people who are deemd to be obvious booth babes by a "you know it when you see it" metric. Or you have someone kicking people out based on some objective standard that will let in a lot of booth babes in and remove a lot of legitimate women on technicalities.
And no "dry hustle" booth babes; they are, basically, prostitutes.
What kind of rule could you possibly make to get rid of these metaphorical prostitutes?
1. No hot girls at booths?
2. Only allow smart/talented people at booths?
3. No slutty outfits?
These are all pretty subjective judgements. I am not saying it can't be done. I just have no idea how.
I think the booth babes will disappear when they are no longer profitable and when this fact is clear to the companies that currently hire them.
Given that CES happens in Vegas at almost the same time as the pron trade show, and that there is a lot of overlap between pron and electronics, a lot of the same people attend both shows. I can imagine this skewing CES to be more erotic and AEE to be more technology oriented.
I've never been to either CES or AEE. I have been to E3 once back when they still had booth babes. I found it to be pretty dumb, but a lot of the people there seemed to be really into it. I guess that's changed since I went.
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This is no way to run an education system, and I won't be experimenting with charter schools again.
Presumably it was possible to find out some of this information about a particular private school before actually sending your child there. (.e.g. turnover rate, teacher salaries, etc)
I would hope that if a charter school had better numbers in these areas that you wouldn't discount it just because of one bad experience. By the same token I would expect you to be just as vigilant regarding negative factors in public schools. For example if you moved to a new city, I would hope that you wouldn't simply assume that the local public school is automatically better than all the local charter schools simply because that was your previous experience.
Well, given that we spend more money per student than any nation in the world, I would expect our public education system to be at least one of the best in the world.
Yes it would be great if parents "stepped up". The problem is that parents used to be kids that are now a product of the same dysfunctional school system that their kids are now going through.
It's not just the problem for these families. It's a problem for all of society when a large section of the population is uneducated. It would be one thing if we weren't spending many resources on education, but as it stands we are actually wasting a lot of resources on inefficient education.
Clearly, just telling families to just get their shit together is really not going to solve anything from a societal standpoint.
Once we are able to break this cycle, then we won't need to tell families how important education is, because they will already know.
1)They also take students from "public schools" (i.e. traditional public schools), decreasing the expenses of the school as well.
The counter argument I usually hear for this, is that schools lose their economies of scale when they lose students and money. This implies a bigger question of why public schools aren't doing better than they are *if* the benefits of economies of scale in public education are so significant.
I would suggest that the reason is that public schools don't actually spend most of the money on educating students. A new student is more money in the pockets of bureaucrats with little additional cost. They don't have their expenses lowered very much by losing a student because they weren't spending that much money on the student to begin with.
I don't think charter schools are all good, or that they are the magic bullet to fix our broken education system. What I do know is that our traditional public schools are failing miserably. I know some people want to fix it rather than coming up with a new solution, but I really don't think we have the luxury of continuing down this path if we care about improving society
the teachers' union (which may, or may not have got a bit too powerful; but i'll tell-ya, their salaries sure doesn't reflect that)
People who think teachers at public schools are getting paid a lot, are on crack.
The teachers unions are in fact very powerful. It is extremely hard to fire bad teachers.
I think the teachers unions should be fighting for higher salaries rather than immunity from being fired. This would encourage more talented people to become teachers. As it stands, being a teacher only appeals to incompetent people (who like not being fired regardless of performance), and charitable people (who will accept low pay because they enjoy or feel a duty to teach).
We should be paying teachers like $80,000 to start, and fire all the bad ones. Teachers shouldn't even need a union. I am a software developer. We don't have a union. We get paid a high salary because our skills are highly valued. It should be the same for teachers. I wouldn't be where I am today without the few good teachers I had.
Imagine what could be accomplished if most teachers were good teachers rather than just a handful.
If we had a vote among teachers to double teacher salaries, but be subject to being possible fired for sucking, I suspect most would not take this deal. That's unfortunate. But the ones that would take the deal, are exactly the ones we want.
I think politicians being public figures tend to get more criticism (justified or not) than regular people. I don't think racial criticism of Alan West can be used as an accurate measurement of how racist black people are as a whole, any more than racial criticism of Obama can be used as a measurement for the level of racism among white people.
The failure is theirs to own, when they don't allow people to escape.
This kind of mindset that each race is responsible for the success of their own people is part of the problem.
If some black kid is getting a bad education and is heading down a road with no opportunities, we (non-black people) shouldn't be thinking "That's the black community's fault for embracing ghetto culture". We should see this as a terrible tragedy that a child is allowed to go down this path, regardless of the color of their skin.
People should be treated as individuals, not members of a race.
It's pretty lucky to be born to such hard working parents (which likely shaped quetwo's work ethic). Lots of kids aren't so lucky.
Also, speaking of "Science 101" and the null hypothesis...
When you are assuming the "null hypothesis" usually it means you are about to do an experiment where this hypothesis is contrasted with an alternate hypothesis.
You don't get to simply neglect to then do the experiment and assume the null hypothesis is true.
Also when you say things like:
Good try, but the null hypothesis doesn't need protection. It is the default assumption. Bone up on your Science 101 and come back to argue another time
It makes you an asshole. And when you are wrong, it makes you a dumb asshole. When you need to resort to proclaiming yourself the winner of an argument, it is a sign of weakness. It just makes you look ridiculous, like a losing fighter dancing and celebrating around the ring after the bell to influence the judges into thinking he won. Sometimes the winning fighters do this too, but if you won convincingly, you shouldn't need to.
There is a difference between saying "I have proven that lion roars don't cause earthquakes statistically" and "I am assuming lion roars don't cause earthquakes because this seems too unlikely to even warrant effort to verify"
I think it is reasonable not to do any research into whether lion roars cause earthquakes.
Are you really suggesting that you think it is reasonable to say that every chemical in marijuana has zero effect on schizophrenia, and that we are so confident we don't even need to check?
I am not saying that we need to act as if marijuana does cause schizophrenia until it is proven that it doesn't (e.g. recommending schizophrenics not use marijuana, etc). I am just saying that we need to acknowledge that from a scientific point of view we don't know the answer to this question until we do the work.
The difference between lion roars and earth quakes is that no one can even give a plausible reason to of how this might be true (as far as I know). Even if someone "proved" a causal link between lion roars and earthquakes, the focus would immediately be on what this person did wrong to arrive at such a ridiculous conclusion.
If someone actually did prove a causal link between marijuana and schizophrenia, I don't think anyone would say "How can that be, it is impossible for these things to be related". So I don't think this is a good comparison.
Maybe Jesus cast his magic powers to make it seem like marijuana is safe even though it's not.
Confounding factors don't have to be supernatural to be non-obvious. And yes, you are supposed to take appropriate steps to discover and account for confounding factors you are not yet aware of. You don't get to pretend that there aren't any until they are proven to exist, especially given the likelihood that there are confounding factors you are unaware of.
But in science we don't protect a hypothesis, when it is contraindicated by the evidence, by inventing unknown unrecorded unexplained confounding factors.
Exactly! we don't protect a hypothesis like "Marijuana doesn't cause schizophrenia". We attack it to see if it can withstand scrutiny. Just like we attack the hypothesis that "Marijuana does cause schizophrenia". Neither hypothesis gets a free pass.
That is the opposite of how reason works.
Actually it is reasonable to should follow accepted statistical methods that do not allow you to conflate correlation and causation. We actually do have the tools to determine causation, and "common sense logic" that regular people think they possess is simply no substitute for actual science and statistics.
I do. I'm only suggesting that if marijuana use increases 1000% and there is no epidemic of schizophrenia afterward, there doesn't seem to be any reason to assume a causal link, or to fear one..
We shouldn't be *assuming* causal links either way. You need to actually show causal links using real science and legitimate statistical methods.
There may be underlying factors influencing the decrease in schizophrenia, but there is absolutely no evidence that using cannabis will increase your likelihood of being diagnosed with it.
No there isn't any evidence. And I wasn't suggesting that there was. But you have to rule these sorts of things out properly. That's the reason for doing real statistics. You can't just assume that marijuana causes schizophrenia and you can't assume it doesn't.
Showing causal links is difficult regardless. You have to do more work than just showing a correlation or an anti-correlation.
Incidence of schizophrenia should follow the increase in marijuana use when plotted against time, it doesnt. It's inverse.
Hospitals make people sicker. If hospitals made people healthier, you'd expect people who went to hospitals to be healthier than people who didn't, but in fact you find just the opposite.
This is the kind of logic that results from using this kind of "common sense" approach, rather than actual science.
Not necessarily. It could be that marijuana increase schizophrenia, and some other factor decreases schizophrenia fore than marijuana increases it. I'm not saying this is the case, but you can't just look at a period where schizophrenia decreased and say that everything that increased in that time period can't be increasing schizophrenia.
The kid was an example of something that can happen to make you lose your data. In the same way that you might be cautious with handling of your discs, or being cautious in allowing your kids to handle discs, another way to be cautious is to backup your data.
Not too mention that it is pretty nice not having to be constantly loading and ejecting discs every time you want to consume media. I don't listen to CDs or watch DVD's anymore. I back them all up on a server so that I can just select them from a list when I want to listen to or watch them. No I don't *need* to back them up. It's just more convenient both for casual consumption and it protects you from data loss by having more than one copy.
Thats exactly what I do. But when I go to my friends hosue, playig an mkv file is a bit more elaborate than just throwing it on a thumb drive. I either have to set up ps3media server at their house on one of his computers (if it's fast enough), or bring my own computer, or transcode the file.
I have this computer (a PS3) that is fast enough to play 1080p video. It's cool if I can stream it video from another computer, but I sucks that my *only* option is to have another fast enough computer for playing my video container format of preference.
I don't know if the retarded "only pirates use mkv" reason is the actual reason that Sony doesn't support mkv, but this is still a retarded reason.
It is only moderately inconvenient for me to play my files over DLNA, they are legal and not protected by cinavia. It is also not inconvenient for me to buy devices other than ones from Sony. My Roku works great.
...because the movie studios send you physical replacements when your kid scratches their Monsters inc blu ray?
Actually the PS3 will not play any kind of backups protected by Cinavia (including mp4 files, or transcoded DLNA network streams).
The PS3
will
play mkv files streamed via DLNA. It just won't play them locally.
You can go download a pirated copy of a new movie or make your own backup yourself in any format mp4, mkv, wmv, etc, and it won't play in a PS3.
It's trivial to transcode any video to mp4 or mkv. Not supporting mkvs doesn't do anything to stop any piracy. They already have a way to filter out pirated content regardless of video container format.
I would call not being able to be played on consumer electronic hardware a serious restriction.
Yes it is, but mkv still has fewer restrictions than other container formats
I sometimes believe that the pirates use MKV just out of a sense of "leetness" rather than actual features.
Being an open standard is definitely an important feature, aside from being leet. Mkv is not just *an* open video container, it is the most prominent and widely used open video container format.
Being an open video container means that it is easier to for 3rd parties to develop applications that support these files. This is good for healthy competition and consumers. This is not good if you are a big company trying to solidify your dominance in a market.
Android is good for consumers because it means that their apps can run on many different phones. It would be bad for consumers but good for Samsung if android only ran on Samsung devices. Microsoft would love it if everyone used wmv, because then they become the gatekeeper for new technology regarding video. Same with mp4 and apple. With mkv nobody is the gatekeeper. There is no gate to restrict people.
Look at what google is doing with VPX codecs. They don't want to be stuck paying licensing fees for h264, but rather than making their own proprietary compression scheme, they decided to purchase and open source a compression scheme that every (including google) can use royalty free. What's in it for google? They are boosting their support among developers who like the idea of using technology that doesn't come with any catches.
My time is valuable, so instead I just run a DLNA server that transcodes video on the fly. It would just be more convenient if PS3 supported mkv natively.
Copyright infringers use mkv because it is arguably the best container format with the fewest restrictions. They have no reasons to use inferior products. The people who follow the rules are stuck with the shit that microsoft, sony, and apple feed them. They are designed to lock people into proprietary technology in order to secure revenue. These formats are designed to restrict rather than empower people.
For the things I listed, people in practice are unable to get patents because the novelty standard as set by the courts is either too low or too high.
If the novelty standard is too high, then it is impossible for anyone to get a patent because it is too hard to prove that nothing like your product has ever existed before.
If the novelty standard is too low, then anyone can circumvent your patent by trivially changing the design.
So yes, you can technically pay for and try to get a patent in these areas, but for the most part this is just a waste of money, and that's why almost nobody does it.
There is a quantifiable difference with these industries and one like the pharmaceutical industry that completely revolves around patents.
Also ipwatchdog is probably not a reliable/unbiased source since it is run by a patent attorney, who stands to gain if people believe that patents are more effective/necessary than they are.
I wonder if I can use Gaikai to play a game I've always wanted on my PS3 called "watch a fucking MKV file"
What were you doing that you needed to d typecasting as part of a network socket functionality? I've never used python socket, only higher level network libraries like urllib, httplib, etc.
I thought of something like this too, but how do you prevent big companies from hiring 1 super attractive person to their product development team whose title indicates some kind of technical knowledge but in reality all she does is visual PR? I don't think this would be a high enough cost to big companies to prevent companies from doing it. There is no shortage of beautiful young girls willing to take a medium paying job where the only thing they need to do is look pretty in front of people.
What if she wears a really slutty outfit to conventions? Are we really going to start mandating dress codes at conventions? Have you ever tried creating a dress code for women to try to force them to look professional? I think the best you could probably do is either a person who kicks out people who are deemd to be obvious booth babes by a "you know it when you see it" metric. Or you have someone kicking people out based on some objective standard that will let in a lot of booth babes in and remove a lot of legitimate women on technicalities.
Why would we care about what you say about what he says? What makes you an authority on the subject of what makes people authorities on subjects?
And no "dry hustle" booth babes; they are, basically, prostitutes.
What kind of rule could you possibly make to get rid of these metaphorical prostitutes?
1. No hot girls at booths?
2. Only allow smart/talented people at booths?
3. No slutty outfits?
These are all pretty subjective judgements. I am not saying it can't be done. I just have no idea how.
I think the booth babes will disappear when they are no longer profitable and when this fact is clear to the companies that currently hire them.
Given that CES happens in Vegas at almost the same time as the pron trade show, and that there is a lot of overlap between pron and electronics, a lot of the same people attend both shows. I can imagine this skewing CES to be more erotic and AEE to be more technology oriented.
I've never been to either CES or AEE. I have been to E3 once back when they still had booth babes. I found it to be pretty dumb, but a lot of the people there seemed to be really into it. I guess that's changed since I went.