Teaching doesn't pay. Scores are leaving the profession, and fewer and fewer graduates are going into it.
Education has now spent a decade as one of the five lowest-paying masters degrees in the country. (Music Education and Social Work, perennially topping the list.)
For a degree that can easily cost a quarter-million dollars or more to obtain, starting salaries are scarcely competitive with the night manager at McDonalds.
If they want real talent, the state is going to need to change their compensation system in a meaningful way.
>More robust competition at the local level will raise speeds and lower prices.
We used to have something like that in the US until the ISP deregulation of the late 90s removed requirements for allowing subleasing bandwidth and last mile connectivity. (Of the sort the UK uses to proliferate enviable cost competition.)
Here's a quick, entirely true story of a windows 8 activation:
(Preface: I'm a software developer, and regularly develop under, run, and test with: XP, Win7, OSX, Mint, Ubuntu, etc. I like and use each of these for entirely different reasons.)
A friend of mine, non-programmer but average to above-average PC and Mac user for more than a decade, bought a new, name-brand, laptop that came with Windows 8 "pre-installed." I was over when she began booting it up for the first time.
The first boot / install began by asking for wif access, and asking for (unusually personal) mandatory information, phone number, email address, etc. which it then (presumably) validated. I did not see a way to bypass customer information capture, which is possible with every other OS I've had experience with.
Then it began an install routine, and crashed. We tried twice more, with some sort of connection failure to Microsoft crashing the install each time. On the fourth try, it finally succeeded, and then began an install that required (I believe) at least 3 in-process system reboots.
Almost an hour later, my friend was "rewarded" with the baffling windows 8 UI. Her reaction was exactly: "Well, it looks like you can go anywhere Microsoft wants you to."
After nearly an hour of raw frustration, intrusive marketing practices, you get hit with the UI from bizarro-world. And there's no obvious, intuitive way to use it like you would, say, every other computer that you've used in the last twenty years.
By the time we'd bothered to google for ways to defeat her new laptop's UI and use it like a general purpose computer, my friend had made up her mind. She *hated* Windows 8. We returned the computer, stopped by the Apple store on the way home, and picked up a Macbook. (She set it up in under 10 minutes, began using it right away, and has been happy with it since.)
I don't think my friend will ever buy an Windows machine again. And I can't say that I blame her.
I *still* can't believe Microsoft got something like the first hour of ownership/UX with their OS so completely wrong.
I remember reading something about Ballmer unilaterally kicking everyone who raised objections to the win8 UI off the team. I guess this is what happens when you fill a bench with yes-men, maybe?
>the AWB is a class of weapons that is rarely used in crime
Sure, that distinction belongs to the semi-automatic handgun. But it is frequently the AWB class of weapon used in spectacularly high profile mass-murders.
While by far most of America's 32,929 civilian firearm casualties in 2012 were singular affairs of homicide, suicide, ground-standing, etc., most commonly involving semi-automatic handguns, the AR-15 (along with a handful of AK-47 variants) seem to be the favorite weapon among manifesto-writing mass murders willing to gun down entire rooms full of school children, moviegoers, mall shoppers, etc.
Why do mass murderers seem to be drawn to the AR-15? Is it the 800 rounds a minute fire rate that the aftermarket accessory stocks boast of? http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=IMChi7FFSMA#! Military fantasy attachments like bayonet mounts and ultra-high capacity clips?
Who knows? Whatever the reason, it's these weapons that tend to show up at America's most shocking scenes of horror, time and time again. And that gets them noticed.
But it's not being used as a logo. It's being used to identify a person.
"For us, there's a zero-tolerance policy of adding or subtracting actual content from an image," said Santiago Lyon, AP's director of photography.
You know, if the army is "promoting" her, in a literal and figurative sense, would it have been so hard to send someone around with a camera and take a decent picture of her in front of a flag?
Photoshoppery from my government, even if it's just to make our leadership appear more endearing to the masses, is a bad habit at the very least.
I sent an edit request to Slashdot, explaining the above, but with no response, and sadly no credit ( for the title, the text, and the story itself ) will go to http://mrfuture.com/
That sucks. I'm changing my url to theirs, for what little it will do, but I'm thinking that this might be the last time I submit a story to Slashdot. The "(via...)" convention in blogs has really become the right thing to do, at the bare minimum in situations like this.
If Slashdot systematically omits credit for a story's source, then they're no kind of blog I want to be reading. Any thoughts on how to make this right?
Or it might just have been my oversight that clipped it out, but I could swear the story link itself was set to MrFuture.com. Either way I feel terrible.
Everyone send a nice note to MrFuture.com thanking him for originally digging this up.
Hmm, interesting. Slashdot seems to have clipped my article attribution out. This was originally blogged at http://mrfuture.com/ And my quote was lifted directly from there.
Anyone know of a way to fix that after the fact, or does Slashdot dislike via mentions?
LED's don't work particularly well with conventional dimmers. Most LED brightness is controlled by varying the pulse width (PWM) of current sent through them, rather than applying resistance ( as in a conventional dimmer. ) There's a sweet-spot where resistance variance works, but, for low-light, I believe pwm is the only reliable way to achieve half-brightness or less with conventional leds. Any EEs that can validate that for me?
I think that the article is very sympathetic to DJ D., moreso than I'd be. Even if the prosecution is the RIAA.
This isn't someone who was making mixes for his friends, he had a factory set up to create and sell tens of thousands of copies of music that he didn't own. He'd already received a cease-and-desist letter from the music's owners, which he ignored.
A petition and city hall squabble over a cinder-block cross sitting in a neighborhood park... is the first thing that comes to mind when you think of relgious oppression?
That's subjugation?
In your evening prayers tonight, remember thank God for such impossibly gentile and genteel persecution. Think of the martyrs of Uganda, tortured and beheaded for their faith. Think of the nuns in Nicaragua, raped and murdered for theirs.
And then think of those poor people in San Diego, who had to go to a couple of city council meetings, and might, if their inhuman opressors have their way, ultimately be asked to move their cross to private property. Or at least dress it up a little.
You jerk! I've heard of people being more opressed over the color of their house!
If you want some positive attention paid to the Christian vast majority, maybe try a few good works, not grouseing over public art placement spat. Your pity-fishing trip was wasted, sir. Good day.
"I've witnessed many an intellectual roll their eyes"...
"liberal groups will bend themselves into a pretzel to prevent/cancel meetings and conferences featuring conservative ideology."...
"just think it's amusing that a lot of liberals are so smug"
So, if I'm following you here, my friend-who-feels-he-is-treated-as-second-class... You're saying Intellectuals, of whom you've witnessed many, are out there working at cancelling meetings. And they're liberals. And they roll their eyes at you. And they're smug. And presumptive too.
So, These Intellectuals, also known as Liberals, certainly sound like a scary opressive lot, what with the smugness and the eye-rollin and all. Thinkin they "have the one true answer..." and such. Horrible.
I never imagined second-class-citizenship would be so hard... so cruel. People sure can be mean.
"I'm agnostic, BTW"
Thats an interesting thing to toss into a conversation. Why do you feel like you need to justify your own beliefs here? Any why are you trying to distance yourself from Christians like myself? Although you've grossly stereotyped Christians as convervatives and Intellectuals as (smug) (presumptive) Liberals, are you trying to appear objective by saying that you're not a Christian?
"Subjugation of religion, especially Christian religion, is the governing philosophy of a large number of people."
Frankly, that just seems kind of far fetched to me. Have you or a member of your immediate family been subjugated recently? What kind of large numbers of people are out subjugating? What does the subjugating look like, exactly?
You'll find a lot of people in this world who will disagree with you on any particular topic under the sun. What's the best beer? What kind of toothpaste is effective? Which is the one true God? Etc... even more so on the internet, where a really loud minority of jerks spends a lot of time filling up message boards and such...
But in the real world, how have you personally been subjugated. Has your church been bombed / forced to close/ taxed? Has your pastor been hog tied and told to convert? Has the government raided your school/church/home and confiscated holy books?
Or is it more of a don't-hand-out-pamphlets-in-city-hall's-parking-lo t-anymore kind of subjugation?
"Slashdot readers fall for anything someone puts in a press realease "
Erm, if you'd actually read the article linked to, you would have noticed that it's not a press release, but, well, and article.
"refuse to consider any other information or alternate point of view on a subject"
That's a really gross generalization, and pretty rude. And offensive. I've looked at a lot of points of view on a lot of matters m'self. Or were you talking to some sort of imaginary charicature of an enemy rather than an actual person.?
"The new version is: "You're with the Lord? We hate you. You are now a second-class citizen.""
Yeah. So, I can see that you're an us-or-them kinda guy. Misplaced feelings of persecution, I get that.
But you've got to realize that more than 80% of America is some denomonation of Christian, so most feelings of opression you get are pretty much...not real, and are very often created by misanthropic leadsership. An emotional response like that is generally used to manipulate people into taking some sort of reactionary extremist position (eg: evoltion is a myth, the jury's still out on climate change, terry schiavo is just as aware as you and i, the free masons run the country, the feds are storming the compound-set the children on fire, etc.)
But hey, if you want to pretend that the bad slashdotters are keeping you down, etc... keep on keepin on.
When American scientists have to form a 527 group just to make sure the public has reasonable access to facts and reports?
We used to be the most technologically advanced country in the world. Now American fundamentalist extremists, enormously well funded fundamentalists, want to keep biology out of the classroom. Oil companies want to supress climate science. And both are the principal campaign financiers of the presidential administration and both houses of congress. And a majority position on the supreme court.
And the powers that be want to frame it as a "you're either with science or with the Lord" kind of insane debate that went out of fashion in the 18th century.
This is the kind of thinking that will relagate us to "has-been" status quicker than you can say "empire where the sun never sets"
While I enjoy the comedy magic antics of Penn and Teller, I'm not sure that I could take anyone citing them as a source on a science-related topic seriously.
Their show is shocking and funny... because it's designed to be shocking and funny. That's how their interview candidates are selected. Without straw men, punching bags, and contrarian positions it would sort of end up like an episode of nova.
That's the free throwaway 10 pager they pass out by the subways. The articles are sub-par, even for a free fishwrap. This won't have an impact on a literate, decision making crowd.
If they want to foster adoption, take out a quarter pager in the Wall Street Journal or the New York Times. People who have the clout to have their companies adopt a new and better office platform read those.
I hate it when the media holds Republican party members accountable for their voting record.
Sure, they control the Senate, the House, the Executive office, and the Supreme Court, and while things may not be going particularly well under this bold regime, I still feel it is only in the name of media bias that the honor of the party is besmirched. Not accountability. I say share the blame equally Democrats fault, even if they don't have much of a say in the process, or voted contrary to the ruling party's ways.
That, and Bill Frist resigned because of them, I say, and not the damning evidence mounting in his pending felony bribery and corruption charges. It was the democrats that made him do it.
But, he's right in pointing out that the powers that be do not have a vested interest in allowing citizens to own a general purpose reciever/transmitter. It marginalizes their sense of control.
Like PGP/GPG, buy one, use it, build an economy around it BEFORE they start thinking about making it illega.
It's more convenient for a home-user to go and rent a dvd for that price, sure. But think about the tech-consultancy-slaves stuck in podunk, ID, with hotel broadband, a laptop, and nothing in the world to do between 9pm and dawn...
Marketed right, there's crazy big money to be made.
Slashdot Mirror
Teaching doesn't pay. Scores are leaving the profession, and fewer and fewer graduates are going into it.
Education has now spent a decade as one of the five lowest-paying masters degrees in the country.
(Music Education and Social Work, perennially topping the list.)
For a degree that can easily cost a quarter-million dollars or more to obtain, starting salaries are scarcely competitive with the night manager at McDonalds.
If they want real talent, the state is going to need to change their compensation system in a meaningful way.
>More robust competition at the local level will raise speeds and lower prices.
We used to have something like that in the US until the ISP deregulation of the late 90s removed requirements for allowing subleasing bandwidth and last mile connectivity. (Of the sort the UK uses to proliferate enviable cost competition.)
Here's a quick, entirely true story of a windows 8 activation:
(Preface: I'm a software developer, and regularly develop under, run, and test with: XP, Win7, OSX, Mint, Ubuntu, etc. I like and use each of these for entirely different reasons.)
A friend of mine, non-programmer but average to above-average PC and Mac user for more than a decade, bought a new, name-brand, laptop that came with Windows 8 "pre-installed." I was over when she began booting it up for the first time.
The first boot / install began by asking for wif access, and asking for (unusually personal) mandatory information, phone number, email address, etc. which it then (presumably) validated. I did not see a way to bypass customer information capture, which is possible with every other OS I've had experience with.
Then it began an install routine, and crashed. We tried twice more, with some sort of connection failure to Microsoft crashing the install each time. On the fourth try, it finally succeeded, and then began an install that required (I believe) at least 3 in-process system reboots.
Almost an hour later, my friend was "rewarded" with the baffling windows 8 UI. Her reaction was exactly: "Well, it looks like you can go anywhere Microsoft wants you to."
After nearly an hour of raw frustration, intrusive marketing practices, you get hit with the UI from bizarro-world. And there's no obvious, intuitive way to use it like you would, say, every other computer that you've used in the last twenty years.
By the time we'd bothered to google for ways to defeat her new laptop's UI and use it like a general purpose computer, my friend had made up her mind.
She *hated* Windows 8. We returned the computer, stopped by the Apple store on the way home, and picked up a Macbook.
(She set it up in under 10 minutes, began using it right away, and has been happy with it since.)
I don't think my friend will ever buy an Windows machine again. And I can't say that I blame her.
I *still* can't believe Microsoft got something like the first hour of ownership/UX with their OS so completely wrong.
I remember reading something about Ballmer unilaterally kicking everyone who raised objections to the win8 UI off the team. I guess this is what happens when you fill a bench with yes-men, maybe?
>the AWB is a class of weapons that is rarely used in crime
Sure, that distinction belongs to the semi-automatic handgun. But it is frequently the AWB class of weapon used in spectacularly high profile mass-murders.
While by far most of America's 32,929 civilian firearm casualties in 2012 were singular affairs of homicide, suicide, ground-standing, etc., most commonly involving semi-automatic handguns, the AR-15 (along with a handful of AK-47 variants) seem to be the favorite weapon among manifesto-writing mass murders willing to gun down entire rooms full of school children, moviegoers, mall shoppers, etc.
Why do mass murderers seem to be drawn to the AR-15? Is it the 800 rounds a minute fire rate that the aftermarket accessory stocks boast of?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=IMChi7FFSMA#!
Military fantasy attachments like bayonet mounts and ultra-high capacity clips?
Who knows? Whatever the reason, it's these weapons that tend to show up at America's most shocking scenes of horror, time and time again. And that gets them noticed.
>Most of Japan is high rises
>Also, a lot of the buildings in the US are older than those in Japan
You've clearly never ever been to Japan.
But it's not being used as a logo. It's being used to identify a person.
"For us, there's a zero-tolerance policy of adding or subtracting actual content from an image," said Santiago Lyon, AP's director of photography.
You know, if the army is "promoting" her, in a literal and figurative sense, would it have been so hard to send someone around with a camera and take a decent picture of her in front of a flag?
Photoshoppery from my government, even if it's just to make our leadership appear more endearing to the masses, is a bad habit at the very least.
I sent an edit request to Slashdot, explaining the above, but with no response, and sadly no credit ( for the title, the text, and the story itself ) will go to http://mrfuture.com/
That sucks. I'm changing my url to theirs, for what little it will do, but I'm thinking that this might be the last time I submit a story to Slashdot. The "(via...)" convention in blogs has really become the right thing to do, at the bare minimum in situations like this.
If Slashdot systematically omits credit for a story's source, then they're no kind of blog I want to be reading. Any thoughts on how to make this right?
Kremvax
Or it might just have been my oversight that clipped it out, but I could swear the story link itself was set to MrFuture.com. Either way I feel terrible.
Everyone send a nice note to MrFuture.com thanking him for originally digging this up.
Kremvax
Hmm, interesting. Slashdot seems to have clipped my article attribution out. This was originally blogged at http://mrfuture.com/ And my quote was lifted directly from there.
Anyone know of a way to fix that after the fact, or does Slashdot dislike via mentions?
LED's don't work particularly well with conventional dimmers. Most LED brightness is controlled by varying the pulse width (PWM) of current sent through them, rather than applying resistance ( as in a conventional dimmer. ) There's a sweet-spot where resistance variance works, but, for low-light, I believe pwm is the only reliable way to achieve half-brightness or less with conventional leds. Any EEs that can validate that for me?
I think that the article is very sympathetic to DJ D., moreso than I'd be. Even if the prosecution is the RIAA.
This isn't someone who was making mixes for his friends, he had a factory set up to create and sell tens of thousands of copies of music that he didn't own. He'd already received a cease-and-desist letter from the music's owners, which he ignored.
What was he expecting?
You can't possibly be serious....
A petition and city hall squabble over a cinder-block cross sitting in a neighborhood park... is the first thing that comes to mind when you think of relgious oppression?
That's subjugation?
In your evening prayers tonight, remember thank God for such impossibly gentile and genteel persecution. Think of the martyrs of Uganda, tortured and beheaded for their faith. Think of the nuns in Nicaragua, raped and murdered for theirs.
And then think of those poor people in San Diego, who had to go to a couple of city council meetings, and might, if their inhuman opressors have their way, ultimately be asked to move their cross to private property. Or at least dress it up a little.
You jerk! I've heard of people being more opressed over the color of their house!
If you want some positive attention paid to the Christian vast majority, maybe try a few good works, not grouseing over public art placement spat. Your pity-fishing trip was wasted, sir. Good day.
"I've witnessed many an intellectual roll their eyes" ...
...
"liberal groups will bend themselves into a pretzel to prevent/cancel meetings and conferences featuring conservative ideology."
"just think it's amusing that a lot of liberals are so smug"
So, if I'm following you here, my friend-who-feels-he-is-treated-as-second-class... You're saying Intellectuals, of whom you've witnessed many, are out there working at cancelling meetings. And they're liberals. And they roll their eyes at you. And they're smug. And presumptive too.
So, These Intellectuals, also known as Liberals, certainly sound like a scary opressive lot, what with the smugness and the eye-rollin and all. Thinkin they "have the one true answer..." and such. Horrible.
I never imagined second-class-citizenship would be so hard... so cruel. People sure can be mean.
"I'm agnostic, BTW"
Thats an interesting thing to toss into a conversation. Why do you feel like you need to justify your own beliefs here? Any why are you trying to distance yourself from Christians like myself? Although you've grossly stereotyped Christians as convervatives and Intellectuals as (smug) (presumptive) Liberals, are you trying to appear objective by saying that you're not a Christian?
"Subjugation of religion, especially Christian religion, is the governing philosophy of a large number of people."
o t-anymore kind of subjugation?
Frankly, that just seems kind of far fetched to me. Have you or a member of your immediate family been subjugated recently? What kind of large numbers of people are out subjugating? What does the subjugating look like, exactly?
You'll find a lot of people in this world who will disagree with you on any particular topic under the sun. What's the best beer? What kind of toothpaste is effective? Which is the one true God? Etc... even more so on the internet, where a really loud minority of jerks spends a lot of time filling up message boards and such...
But in the real world, how have you personally been subjugated. Has your church been bombed / forced to close/ taxed? Has your pastor been hog tied and told to convert? Has the government raided your school/church/home and confiscated holy books?
Or is it more of a don't-hand-out-pamphlets-in-city-hall's-parking-l
What exactly passes for subjugation these days?
"Slashdot readers fall for anything someone puts in a press realease "
Erm, if you'd actually read the article linked to, you would have noticed that it's not a press release, but, well, and article.
"refuse to consider any other information or alternate point of view on a subject"
That's a really gross generalization, and pretty rude. And offensive. I've looked at a lot of points of view on a lot of matters m'self. Or were you talking to some sort of imaginary charicature of an enemy rather than an actual person.?
"The new version is: "You're with the Lord? We hate you. You are now a second-class citizen.""
Yeah. So, I can see that you're an us-or-them kinda guy. Misplaced feelings of persecution, I get that.
But you've got to realize that more than 80% of America is some denomonation of Christian, so most
feelings of opression you get are pretty much...not real, and are very often created by misanthropic leadsership. An emotional response like that is generally used to manipulate people into taking some sort of reactionary extremist position (eg: evoltion is a myth, the jury's still out on climate change, terry schiavo is just as aware as you and i, the free masons run the country, the feds are storming the compound-set the children on fire, etc.)
But hey, if you want to pretend that the bad slashdotters are keeping you down, etc... keep on keepin on.
When American scientists have to form a 527 group just to make sure the public has reasonable access to facts and reports?
We used to be the most technologically advanced country in the world. Now American fundamentalist extremists, enormously well funded fundamentalists, want to keep biology out of the classroom. Oil companies want to supress climate science. And both are the principal campaign financiers of the presidential administration and both houses of congress. And a majority position on the supreme court.
And the powers that be want to frame it as a "you're either with science or with the Lord" kind of insane debate that went out of fashion in the 18th century.
This is the kind of thinking that will relagate us to "has-been" status quicker than you can say "empire where the sun never sets"
(but then, I get all my news from Fox.)
While I enjoy the comedy magic antics of Penn and Teller, I'm not sure that I could take anyone citing them as a source on a science-related topic seriously.
Their show is shocking and funny... because it's designed to be shocking and funny. That's how their interview candidates are selected. Without straw men, punching bags, and contrarian positions it would sort of end up like an episode of nova.
No, not if it's Metro.
That's the free throwaway 10 pager they pass out by the subways. The articles are sub-par, even for a free fishwrap. This won't have an impact on a literate, decision making crowd.
If they want to foster adoption, take out a quarter pager in the Wall Street Journal or the New York Times. People who have the clout to have their companies adopt a new and better office platform read those.
I hate it when the media holds Republican party members accountable for their voting record.
Sure, they control the Senate, the House, the Executive office, and the Supreme Court, and while things may not be going particularly well under this bold regime, I still feel it is only in the name of media bias that the honor of the party is besmirched. Not accountability. I say share the blame equally Democrats fault, even if they don't have much of a say in the process, or voted contrary to the ruling party's ways.
That, and Bill Frist resigned because of them, I say, and not the damning evidence mounting in his pending felony bribery and corruption charges. It was the democrats that made him do it.
C. Montgomery Burns.
But, he's right in pointing out that the powers that be do not have a vested interest in allowing citizens to own a general purpose reciever/transmitter. It marginalizes their sense of control.
Like PGP/GPG, buy one, use it, build an economy around it BEFORE they start thinking about making it illega.
Kremax
Really,
In terms of sheer personality, traits, quirks, strenths, paranoias, I haven't seen any screen representation of a real Hacker that even comes close.
A Hacker's Hacker. Hmmm, maybe I just like the sound of the word... hacker's hacker, going to get pint of a Hacker Pschorr...
Kremvax
It's more convenient for a home-user to go and rent a dvd for that price, sure. But think about the tech-consultancy-slaves stuck in podunk, ID, with hotel broadband, a laptop, and nothing in the world to do between 9pm and dawn...
Marketed right, there's crazy big money to be made.
Kremvax
( http://noaa.gov )
See the IBM Black Forest Supercomputer, and watch the tape librarian robots whizz arond the drives with live-cams.
and actually sit on the bench of a Cray 1 (sort of hidden downstairs, not getting half the love it deserves.)
nist.gov is also here, with the home of THE atomic clock, to which all other US atomic clocks are compared!
Plus Boulder has some of the finest hiking and bike trails in North America. And those Rocky Mountains...
Kremvax
It's a natural fit to use a device like this to track an individual, their location, their posessions, etc without their explicit, uncoerced consent.
All the same arguements that apply to the slightly RFID debate. Though this is a lot more powerful/practical for extended-range/duration tracking.
Sure, there are no bad machines, only bad owners, etc... But the candy will prove too tempting for Power to resist its use/overuse.
The Ministry of Freedom / Homeland Sec. will *love* these.
Just one citizen's opinion,
Kremvax
Although the description lists tenuous "Good" uses (tracking Children, the elderly, the insane )
the insidious uses outweigh these 10000 to 1.
Total (location) information awareness.
I feel safer already...
Kremvax