No, you'd know that they're being taught how to pass some third party standard which is probably going to make them corporate drones.
What exactly is wrong with standard testing? Seeing 1+1 on the test, tests your knowledge of addition. I wasn't aware you magically turned into a corporate drone at that point. Also, what's wrong with teaching to pass a test when the test contains at least the basics of what we've deemed that people need to know?
Here's a clue. Wal*Mart can charge so little for two reasons: they are gigantic, and their product are crap.
Off topic, but walmart sells the same products any other store sells. You can definitely complain about their business practices if you want to though.
We aren't funding our schools enough. I mean for fuck's sake I don't have a degree and I make better money than most teachers, and I'm only 21. No one of skill will want to be a teacher unless it pays well, passion for the job only stretches so far.
School systems seem to get plenty of money. All that money just doesn't get to the teachers. Standard gov. bloat has sucked this money out of the school system for 'administrative' purposes. I think when most people talk about private education it's primarily to help get rid of this gov. bloat which infects everything the gov. touches. I agree teachers need to make more money, but I also want them to be accountable to set standards. I think everyone must also remember that teachers generally work ~9 months of the year.
Remember, if you privatize the school system, it's no longer the children who are the customer, it's the parents.
The children haven't been the customers in a long time. The customers now are the PC thought police. Little Johny doesn't like math so he cuts up in class and ruins it for everyone else. The teacher can't do a thing b/c it might hurt his feelings, WTF?!. Teacher calls Johnys parents and the parents yell at her saying that she doesn't understand his culture or some crap like that. I'm not sure when the last time you were in a public school , but the situation I described above is what commonly occurs nowadays. Not long ago in a local school district a *middle* school teacher was beat up by a few of her students in class. Nothing happened to the students and she was fired when she finally got out of the hospital b/c she missed too many days of work. She sued the school district and won and now they school district is appealing on the grounds that classroom management and dealing with getting attacked by students is part of her job! This type of thing can only happen when you have gov. stuck in something. Overview of the case can be found here
I swear, what do you think there is left to cut? Instead, you'll have the overhead of: turning a profit, advertising,
Which will be tons less than all the pork barrel administrative crap that money gets wasted on now in every school system in America. As soon as you have shareholders and people wanting to turn a profit, the useless stuff gets cut. To keep the good stuff from getting cut you have to have some level of objective testing, which leads into my next point.
t's an education even more heavily geared towards passing standardized tests than we have currently, because the school's financial solvency depends upon it.
And what exactly is wrong to teaching kids to pass a test? To pass a math test you're going to have to learn the basics of math, same with science and english. Now, things like the humanities could be in a tough spot b/c they are hard to measure objectively, but I would argue we are so far behind in the basics that it doesn't matter.
For the record I'm not a hyper-conservative, just someone who has been following what's been going on in public schools for awhile. They are broken beyond repair and some radical changes need to happen to fix them. The worse part though is that unlike Friedman in his book The World Is Flat, I'm starting to think it's too late for the US.
Sounds like you went to a crap uni. In my software engineering class we went over all development methodologies and looked at the history and pros/cons of each. Other topics covered were things like defect tracking, testing, SCC, etc...
When it came to language use most classes had a 'preferred' language, but it certainly wasn't taught in class. CS isn't about learning a language. It's about learning algorithms and concepts that should allow any CS grad worth anything pick up most languages in short order. IIRC, over the course of my CS degree I used C, Pascal, Java, C++, Lisp, SQL, and VB.
In the CS program I attended and completed 'Software Engineering' was a year long final course that everyone had to take and pass to exit the program. The first week of class teams were formed and projects were picked from a list of things that would be helpful for the school. Teams met with their project sponsor and then worked on a year long project which culminated with a team presentation at the end. Last time I checked many of the projects that get built are still in use. Of course not all teams finished, and many learned a lot of valuable lessons the hard way about scope creep, communication issues, etc...
Class time during this year long class was spend learning about project methodologies and the history of software project management. Plus it touched on lots of accessory topics like defect management, testing, etc...
Well said. So many people have told me they wanted to try to use OSS or some other non-windows solutions, but then they run into this elitist attitude which turns them off. You tell ask a windows person about a windows solutions and they are falling all over themselves to help you. Asking a linux person about linux often gets you a STFU, RTFM. Now which solution do you think someone is going to normally pick?
Spending less than the current administration doesn't equal restoring fiscal prudence. We are spending so much currently that it's enough to make even the democrats look like they will spend relatively less.
Actually what you pointed out is what I said. The republicans have turned into such a spending party, that the market thinks even the dems will spend less. This is precisely one of the problems I have with the current republican party (among others).
The problem is that the Libertarian party as it exists is too extremist crazy (like, selling off the national parks, privitizing the fire department, etc).
Good point. I guess any party is going to have it's extremist. If more ex-republicans moved towards the Libertarian party it would move it more toward moderation. I guess all I can hope for now is that the republicans can view what happened yesterday as a message that they need to get back to what they used to be.
I say this as an ex-Republican who had to leave the party after they went bat shit crazy and decided to start doing exactly what they are supposed to be against.
Going dem doesn't change anything though. Libertarian is where republicans who are disenfranchised (either with the religious right taking over the party or the move to bigger gov. just like the dems) should move to. I used to be a Republican. I could stomach the small religious right side b/c they were the party of small gov., lower taxes, and free market enterprise. Now, the republicans and dems are virtually the same when it comes to fiscal policy (spend, spend, spend) and what's worse is that the Republicans have let the crazy religious right take over the party.
At the end it showed and gave me a summary of who/what I voted for. Now if it gets counted is another question. That's a question no matter what voting method you use though.
I'll second what you said. After voting this morning (on a new touch screen machine which worked just fine) I came to work and encouraged everyone else to vote. It seems like so many people don't understand and realize what a privilege it is to be able to self-govern.
You found a coupon on to take a $2k Latitude (not that crap they call an Inspiron) down to 1k? I know dell has coupons floating all over the place, but 50% off seems a bit much.
Just curious. What work can't you get done on the mac? Of course something like windows development is going to be a bit tough, but other than that obvious one I've found everything on the mac to be easier and just work.
I bought an ipod b/c of how I could integrate it into my car stereo (an Alpine head unit which fully controls the ipod and basically uses it as a HD for the music). At that time I didn't know of any other music players that could integrate so seamlessly with a digital music player. The downside is that if my ipod ever breaks I'll have to replace it with another ipod, but I knew that going in and accepted the risk.
I don't use itms though. I'll just go buy the CD if I want to purchase music.
I do that too, but always like to try some mmos. Eve, WOW, Silk Road, etc... while I'm not hardcore at all, I still like to try them out and see what they are like.
I've dumped windows a couple times, but some cool game always comes out that makes me reinstall it. It's not so much my windows habit that keeps me coming back, but my games habit I just can't seem to kick. Since I'm starting grad school in the spring maybe I'll put linux back on just to remove the game playing temptation;)
If you're going to compare using Inspirons then you need to compare against the MB and not the MBP. I think you also have to at least add XPPRO to the cost.
When looking at a Latitude vs. MBP the price difference isn't that great. There is definitely a bit of a premium, but many would say osx/usability is worth it.
I'm not sure an Inspiron -> MBP is really a fair comparison. Sure the hardware specs might be somewhat similar, but the build quality is totally different. Every Inspiron I've used has had the damn crap keyboard that moved under your fingers as you type and super cheap plastic feel. I'd rather use my G4 Powerbook than a new Inspiron any day of the week.
A closer comparison is probably the MBP -> Latitude. A similarly equipped Latitude is still cheaper, but probably not by the same amount.
I totally agree. I first used osx a year ago or so and am convinced that is how computing should work for users. It's all of the little things that you mention that put it above a linux or windows desktop. Of course it has it's issues like any piece of software, but it works and works well.
In fact, I'm not sure that linux can ever reach that type of integration or functionality by the very nature of OSS. Not that it's a bad thing, but lack of integration will always relegate linux to server room or the techies desktop.
Re:Add feature when they can make them work.
on
Jobs Unfazed by Zune
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· Score: 1
Exactly, the only wireless that I think matters is syncing. Anything else is just a gimmick. If you really want to do wireless right then if you're near a wireless hotspot you should be able to browse songs from your player and download them right on the spot.
All depends on how you define talent. If talent means that you have the ability to entertain a lot of people then Stern has tons of it. So, in the entertainment industry Stern is one of the top talents.
That's true, and the released evidence is, at this point, all circumstantial.
I agree. I think that arresting him at this point was a bit premature, unless there is more they aren't telling or they were afraid he was going to destroy more evidence (although having him free for a month would've allowed that already). If it were me, I would have at least waited till finding a body and figuring out cause of death, etc...
Outside the geek circles I'm also not sure how big this case is, so there could also be community pressure to arrest someone. This really sucks if that's the case. Rushing to trial could lead to a lack of evidence and an acquittal if he really is guilty.
Anyways, at the end of the day I hope the right person is caught, convicted and punished accordingly.
At this point there isn't a whole lot more that people can do (unless they know something and can come forward). A couple weeks ago the police released a final report and turned it into a cold case.
There is a better article about the case in the local paper where the she was killed, but they are slack and pull articles down in a couple days and charge you for them.
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No, you'd know that they're being taught how to pass some third party standard which is probably going to make them corporate drones.
What exactly is wrong with standard testing? Seeing 1+1 on the test, tests your knowledge of addition. I wasn't aware you magically turned into a corporate drone at that point. Also, what's wrong with teaching to pass a test when the test contains at least the basics of what we've deemed that people need to know?
Here's a clue. Wal*Mart can charge so little for two reasons: they are gigantic, and their product are crap.
Off topic, but walmart sells the same products any other store sells. You can definitely complain about their business practices if you want to though.
We aren't funding our schools enough. I mean for fuck's sake I don't have a degree and I make better money than most teachers, and I'm only 21. No one of skill will want to be a teacher unless it pays well, passion for the job only stretches so far.
School systems seem to get plenty of money. All that money just doesn't get to the teachers. Standard gov. bloat has sucked this money out of the school system for 'administrative' purposes. I think when most people talk about private education it's primarily to help get rid of this gov. bloat which infects everything the gov. touches. I agree teachers need to make more money, but I also want them to be accountable to set standards. I think everyone must also remember that teachers generally work ~9 months of the year.
Remember, if you privatize the school system, it's no longer the children who are the customer, it's the parents.
The children haven't been the customers in a long time. The customers now are the PC thought police. Little Johny doesn't like math so he cuts up in class and ruins it for everyone else. The teacher can't do a thing b/c it might hurt his feelings, WTF?!. Teacher calls Johnys parents and the parents yell at her saying that she doesn't understand his culture or some crap like that. I'm not sure when the last time you were in a public school , but the situation I described above is what commonly occurs nowadays. Not long ago in a local school district a *middle* school teacher was beat up by a few of her students in class. Nothing happened to the students and she was fired when she finally got out of the hospital b/c she missed too many days of work. She sued the school district and won and now they school district is appealing on the grounds that classroom management and dealing with getting attacked by students is part of her job! This type of thing can only happen when you have gov. stuck in something. Overview of the case can be found here
I swear, what do you think there is left to cut? Instead, you'll have the overhead of: turning a profit, advertising,
Which will be tons less than all the pork barrel administrative crap that money gets wasted on now in every school system in America. As soon as you have shareholders and people wanting to turn a profit, the useless stuff gets cut. To keep the good stuff from getting cut you have to have some level of objective testing, which leads into my next point.
t's an education even more heavily geared towards passing standardized tests than we have currently, because the school's financial solvency depends upon it.
And what exactly is wrong to teaching kids to pass a test? To pass a math test you're going to have to learn the basics of math, same with science and english. Now, things like the humanities could be in a tough spot b/c they are hard to measure objectively, but I would argue we are so far behind in the basics that it doesn't matter.
For the record I'm not a hyper-conservative, just someone who has been following what's been going on in public schools for awhile. They are broken beyond repair and some radical changes need to happen to fix them. The worse part though is that unlike Friedman in his book
The World Is Flat, I'm starting to think it's too late for the US.
Sounds like you went to a crap uni. In my software engineering class we went over all development methodologies and looked at the history and pros/cons of each. Other topics covered were things like defect tracking, testing, SCC, etc...
When it came to language use most classes had a 'preferred' language, but it certainly wasn't taught in class. CS isn't about learning a language. It's about learning algorithms and concepts that should allow any CS grad worth anything pick up most languages in short order. IIRC, over the course of my CS degree I used C, Pascal, Java, C++, Lisp, SQL, and VB.
In the CS program I attended and completed 'Software Engineering' was a year long final course that everyone had to take and pass to exit the program. The first week of class teams were formed and projects were picked from a list of things that would be helpful for the school. Teams met with their project sponsor and then worked on a year long project which culminated with a team presentation at the end. Last time I checked many of the projects that get built are still in use. Of course not all teams finished, and many learned a lot of valuable lessons the hard way about scope creep, communication issues, etc...
Class time during this year long class was spend learning about project methodologies and the history of software project management. Plus it touched on lots of accessory topics like defect management, testing, etc...
Well said. So many people have told me they wanted to try to use OSS or some other non-windows solutions, but then they run into this elitist attitude which turns them off. You tell ask a windows person about a windows solutions and they are falling all over themselves to help you. Asking a linux person about linux often gets you a STFU, RTFM. Now which solution do you think someone is going to normally pick?
Spending less than the current administration doesn't equal restoring fiscal prudence. We are spending so much currently that it's enough to make even the democrats look like they will spend relatively less.
Actually what you pointed out is what I said. The republicans have turned into such a spending party, that the market thinks even the dems will spend less. This is precisely one of the problems I have with the current republican party (among others).
The problem is that the Libertarian party as it exists is too extremist crazy (like, selling off the national parks, privitizing the fire department, etc).
Good point. I guess any party is going to have it's extremist. If more ex-republicans moved towards the Libertarian party it would move it more toward moderation. I guess all I can hope for now is that the republicans can view what happened yesterday as a message that they need to get back to what they used to be.
I say this as an ex-Republican who had to leave the party after they went bat shit crazy and decided to start doing exactly what they are supposed to be against.
Going dem doesn't change anything though. Libertarian is where republicans who are disenfranchised (either with the religious right taking over the party or the move to bigger gov. just like the dems) should move to. I used to be a Republican. I could stomach the small religious right side b/c they were the party of small gov., lower taxes, and free market enterprise. Now, the republicans and dems are virtually the same when it comes to fiscal policy (spend, spend, spend) and what's worse is that the Republicans have let the crazy religious right take over the party.
At the end it showed and gave me a summary of who/what I voted for. Now if it gets counted is another question. That's a question no matter what voting method you use though.
I'll second what you said. After voting this morning (on a new touch screen machine which worked just fine) I came to work and encouraged everyone else to vote. It seems like so many people don't understand and realize what a privilege it is to be able to self-govern.
You found a coupon on to take a $2k Latitude (not that crap they call an Inspiron) down to 1k? I know dell has coupons floating all over the place, but 50% off seems a bit much.
Just curious. What work can't you get done on the mac? Of course something like windows development is going to be a bit tough, but other than that obvious one I've found everything on the mac to be easier and just work.
I bought an ipod b/c of how I could integrate it into my car stereo (an Alpine head unit which fully controls the ipod and basically uses it as a HD for the music). At that time I didn't know of any other music players that could integrate so seamlessly with a digital music player. The downside is that if my ipod ever breaks I'll have to replace it with another ipod, but I knew that going in and accepted the risk.
I don't use itms though. I'll just go buy the CD if I want to purchase music.
As mentioned elsewhere in the thread, when did a couple of anecdotal reports lead to 'always'?
I agree. AM talk radio is so popular that in my area some stations that were AM are showing up on the FM dial now.
I do that too, but always like to try some mmos. Eve, WOW, Silk Road, etc... while I'm not hardcore at all, I still like to try them out and see what they are like.
I've dumped windows a couple times, but some cool game always comes out that makes me reinstall it. It's not so much my windows habit that keeps me coming back, but my games habit I just can't seem to kick. Since I'm starting grad school in the spring maybe I'll put linux back on just to remove the game playing temptation ;)
If you're going to compare using Inspirons then you need to compare against the MB and not the MBP. I think you also have to at least add XPPRO to the cost.
When looking at a Latitude vs. MBP the price difference isn't that great. There is definitely a bit of a premium, but many would say osx/usability is worth it.
I'm not sure an Inspiron -> MBP is really a fair comparison. Sure the hardware specs might be somewhat similar, but the build quality is totally different. Every Inspiron I've used has had the damn crap keyboard that moved under your fingers as you type and super cheap plastic feel. I'd rather use my G4 Powerbook than a new Inspiron any day of the week.
A closer comparison is probably the MBP -> Latitude. A similarly equipped Latitude is still cheaper, but probably not by the same amount.
I totally agree. I first used osx a year ago or so and am convinced that is how computing should work for users. It's all of the little things that you mention that put it above a linux or windows desktop. Of course it has it's issues like any piece of software, but it works and works well.
In fact, I'm not sure that linux can ever reach that type of integration or functionality by the very nature of OSS. Not that it's a bad thing, but lack of integration will always relegate linux to server room or the techies desktop.
Exactly, the only wireless that I think matters is syncing. Anything else is just a gimmick. If you really want to do wireless right then if you're near a wireless hotspot you should be able to browse songs from your player and download them right on the spot.
All depends on how you define talent. If talent means that you have the ability to entertain a lot of people then Stern has tons of it. So, in the entertainment industry Stern is one of the top talents.
That's true, and the released evidence is, at this point, all circumstantial.
I agree. I think that arresting him at this point was a bit premature, unless there is more they aren't telling or they were afraid he was going to destroy more evidence (although having him free for a month would've allowed that already). If it were me, I would have at least waited till finding a body and figuring out cause of death, etc...
Outside the geek circles I'm also not sure how big this case is, so there could also be community pressure to arrest someone. This really sucks if that's the case. Rushing to trial could lead to a lack of evidence and an acquittal if he really is guilty.
Anyways, at the end of the day I hope the right person is caught, convicted and punished accordingly.
At this point there isn't a whole lot more that people can do (unless they know something and can come forward). A couple weeks ago the police released a final report and turned it into a cold case.
There is a better article about the case in the local paper where the she was killed, but they are slack and pull articles down in a couple days and charge you for them.