That is a valid argument one could make. Another valid argument is whether or not, ignoring zoning laws, any laws concerning proper storage and disposal of chemicals were violated (the article didn't go into enough detail about that). If this guy was illegally dumping toxic chemicals into the public sewer system, then confiscating the chemicals was also warranted. While supposedly the chemicals weren't any more toxic than standard household chemicals, it's possible that the sheer volume being used and dumped could constitute a violation.
However, the fire department was certainly within their rights to call in an investigative team once discovering the chemicals and then to remove them for toxicity/flammability/etc testing. Once that testing is completed, however, and if those chemicals were shown to be relatively harmless, they should've been returned. To use my drug example, this would be akin to a police officer coming across a white powder that appears to be cocaine (even though it might just be something harmless, like talc, that the officer isn't trained to recognize at first sight) during an investigation for another incident and requesting that it be removed and tested for confirmation.
On the bright side, it appears as if this home chemist wasn't arrested or anything and is a free man while the investigation is ongoing. While I agree that the local authorities were probably overly alarmist, they did at least show some restraint by not arresting him.
No, I haven't. Then again, just because they do it in a school doesn't make it right. Also, we just don't know how disorganized and messy this dude's lab was -- it may have been much worse than the school dark room you're describing. You're also ignoring the issue that having a larger scale chem lab (as opposed to just a dark room) is apparently a violation of local zoning laws.
Well, the article claimed that having a chemistry lab was a violation of the zoning laws in the area. In addition, it described the condition of the lab as being not particularly safe with the chemicals lying around, etc., meaning that even if it wasn't a violation of zoning laws, it probably violated safe storage and disposal laws.
True, but apparently the chemicals were noticed by the fire department when they entered the house to deal with a fire on the second floor. The authorities were already in the house to deal with an incident and found these chemicals lying around in plain sight.
An argument could be made as to whether the firefighters were legally allowed to check the basement for flammable materials, but I wouldn't be surprised if firefighters are given leeway concerning checking a house they have already entered for other fire safety violations.
This is definitely not a case of entering the house without a warrant. This is a case of you calling the cops to report a burglary of your bedroom and them noticing your huge stash of drugs lying on the kitchen table after you let them in.
Any legal objections over this should less be about the lack of a warrant and more about issues of zoning laws and whether or not Mr. Deeb was violating regulations concerning proper handling and disposal of laboratory chemicals.
Actually, it only appears to keep a full copy for the most recent versions, and repacking the repository ('git gc') will delta-encode everything as necessary. At least, that's how I understand the way it's described on the git wiki: http://git.or.cz/gitwiki/Git?highlight=(delta)|(compress)
You could've just gotten Gimp.app -- which only requires X11.app be installed -- no other rigmarole necessary. Hell, it's linked off the first page you get by Googling for "Gimp Mac OS X" and it's the third link overall that Google comes up with.
x86-64 is backwards compatible with x86-32. You can run x86-32 applications at full native speeds. What will probably happen (similar to what happened with PPC-32 vs. 64 on OS X) is that most applications will stay 32-bit (x86-32) and only those that really need the extra memory will switch to 64-bit (x86-64). Users will be able to run both simultaneously.
Unfortunately by your reasoning, if they were to do that, they would lose all the money they make on their hardware. GPL'd OS X would make it that much easier to get it running on non-Intel hardware.
There may be valid reasons to GPL OS X. Claiming that Apple wouldn't lose significant amounts of money by doing so isn't one of them.
Looking at the actual license used, it is the MIT license. I guess they referred to it as a "BSD-like" license as it is somewhat more familiar to the average techie.
Give Gimpshop a whirl. It's hacked to look more like Photoshop in the UI department.
That said, it is quite powerful once you can get used to the UI. Maybe not quite a Photoshop killer, but I definitely thinks it stacks up well against Paint Shop Pro.
> Finally, I've read the Bill of Rights and the > Constitution myself, and no where does it state > that the government may not establish a public > education system. > > If it doesn't say it can, then it can't. That is > what a government of laws is all about. And just > to make sure that product of government > education could figure it out they went back and > tacked on this:
I should've been more specific. It doesn't say that the state governments may not establish a public school system. And guess what? The public school system is almost completely managed by the individual state governments.
> Amendment X > > The powers not delegated to the United States by > the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the > states, are reserved to the states respectively, > or to the people. > > Guess they didn't count on what a modern > miseducation could do to a persons ability to > reason though since it didn't help in your case. > (Ok, cheap shot. But Goddammit people, this > ain't rocket science, it is plainly written > English. You read Slashdot, can probably even > program a frickin VCR from the bad engrish > manual even.)
Umm, looks like you're the one whose education was lacking. It says the powers are delegated to the states. As I said, public education is almost entirely managed by the individual states.
> For those riding the short bus, Amendment X (the > NO amendment if you need a memory aid) says that > if a power isn't specifically listed in the > Constituition then Congress has no authority to > do it. Since my copy doesn't contain an > Amendment adding oversight of children's > education to Congress's enumerated powers....
Ahem, as I said before (get it into your head), the state governments are in charge of public education. The Department of Education only comes into play if they want federal tax dollars to support it. Whether this is legitimate or not is another debate entirely -- but a state could potentially fund its entire education system using only state tax revenues if it wanted to blow off the Department of Education.
> Yes, the whole US Department of Education is > unconstituitional. As are most of the Cabinet > level posts and their whole entrenched nests of > vermin.
You're not the only one that can quote the Constitution. You're neglecting Article 2, Section 2:
Section 2 - Civilian Power over Military, Cabinet, Pardon Power, Appointments
The President shall be Commander in Chief of the Army and Navy of the United States, and of the Militia of the several States, when called into the actual Service of the United States; he may require the Opinion, in writing, of the principal Officer in each of the executive Departments, upon any subject relating to the Duties of their respective Offices, and he shall have Power to Grant Reprieves and Pardons for Offenses against the United States, except in Cases of Impeachment.
Right here, it says that the President can have a cabinet with cabinet members to run various executive departments. What is the Department of Education? Why, it's an executive department! No where in the Constitution does it say what executive departments the President may have, however. He could theoretically create a Department of Silly Walks if he so chose. Heck, at least two of the current departments (Treasury and War/Defense) have been in existence since the Constitution has been ratified.
>> Granted, I'm not a Supreme Court justice, the >> only people who can make an official, legal >> interpretation of the Constitution, but if >> you're posting here on Slashdot, than I doubt >> you are one either. > > Wrong again. We the People delegate certain > powers to the various levels of government but > it derives from US. If we buy
I wouldn't call most of public school government mandated propaganda? Or is mathematics propaganda? Biology? Chemistry? Physics? Etc. About the only classes I can think of that could even have any potential of being government propaganda would be history and government.
Your argument falls flat here, especially since it's the state governments, not the federal government, that sets mandatory schooling laws, and the Founding Fathers did believe that powers not explicitly delegated to the federal government belong to the states. On top of that, (and this does vary somewhat from state to state), often the nature of what is taught in the schools is determined at the community level, not at the state level. For example, when I was school age, my home state of Massachusetts only required that you attend school until you're 16 years of age. That's it. No where was it mentioned what you were required to learn provided you leave school at 16. Now if you wanted a high school diploma, you were required to take American history and physical education, but no other requirements were specified by the state. All the other requirements were set up by my home town. And you know what? My home town was governed by town meeting -- meaning that the people of the town itself set the requirements for the curriculum -- that is, the parents of the school children.
I know that my case is not typical, but you are overgeneralizing quite a bit in your arguments.
Finally, I've read the Bill of Rights and the Constitution myself, and no where does it state that the government may not establish a public education system. Granted, I'm not a Supreme Court justice, the only people who can make an official, legal interpretation of the Constitution, but if you're posting here on Slashdot, than I doubt you are one either.
Unfortunately, if anyone reads this, I'll probably get flamed for defending teachers. It's just too easy to bash teachers as a group rather than try to look at it from their perspective. I knew I'd be on the receiving end of it when I decided to become a teacher, but that doesn't mean I have to like it.
Hey, at least I support you. As a former sub teacher myself (as I mentioned before) and someone with a family full of teachers, I do think a lot of teachers get a bad rap. And yes, I have my own horror stories and I have also heard horror stories from my relatives about their students and the administration. It is not an easy job at all.
Re:Correcting problems with public education
on
Improving Education?
·
· Score: 1
jejones said: It's ironic that on/., where people complain, and rightly so, about the "Microsoft tax," one should find a proponent of the exactly analogous situation in education.
First of all, I never complained about the "Microsoft tax." I don't even know how the "Microsoft tax" applies as a comparison in this situation, unless you're referring to something that everybody has to pay, but a minority doesn't take advantage of. For that matter, I don't pay the Microsoft tax because I don't own any computers that came with Windows pre-installed anyway.
Besides, a government should provide services to the people. That's its purpose. The debate is in what kind of services it should provide. Are you advocating getting rid of public police departments and forcing everyone to hire private security guards? What about fire departments, street maintenance crews, trash collectors, the military, etc.?
I argue that providing education to the entire population is a worthwile government service, even if the current system is badly hosed. To take my example of the police force, many people still choose to hire private security, even though public police are available, for whatever reason. The same logic could apply to public vs. private schools.
Dragonmaster Lou said: Second, not all parents can afford private schools. Are you going to deny education to those kids whose parents work for minimum wage and can't afford the tuition payments?
jejones said: Products are denied to people who can't afford them every day. I take it you believe in the bogus concept of a "positive right," i.e. something that people supposedly can get by coercing others to give it to them.
Education isn't a product. It's a necessity to function in today's society. Dare I say that education is as much a basic human right as voting, freedom from torture, fair legal representation, etc. Education is a very different sort of animal than a big screen TV. I am not advocating that people who can't afford big screen TVs be given big screen TVs because big screen TVs aren't necessary for survival. Education, in my opinion, is necessary.
Agreed, but at least in a free market one has a chance. Monopolies have zero motivation to improve--vide this article in Reason about the massive deception public schools are perpetrating to avoid giving accurate information about how well they're doing.
I never said that the public school system has a perfectly clean nose -- it has its problems, and more people should stand up to get them fixed. If enough parents did digging and raised enough of a stink about the quality of their local public schools, you better believe they'd get fixed -- school boards are typically elected by their communities, and there is an incentive to keep the schools working or else the board members find themselves out of a job.
I admit this is an idealized case -- we all know that the power of the vote doesn't always (perhaps never) manages to keep politicies doing a good job in positions of power.
Finally, the free market also has one issue -- it only works where there is a profit motive. This is perfectly fine when talking about big screen TVs. However, this could be a problem with something like education. I mean, if I were the head of a private school with my only motivation being a profit, I certainly wouldn't want to erect a my school in some place where it could be less than profitable -- rural areas, inner cities, etc., typically places where people couldn't afford tuition or where the population density is too small to sustain the school. As a result, all those children in said areas would be denied even the chance of an education because no schools were established there.
First, could you please explain how public schools aren't compatibile with a republican (small 'r' -- let's not get all political part here) form of government? Or do you mean that the Republican Party doesn't want any kind of educated electorate?
Okay, sorry. I'll shut off my political yappings for now. I am still interested in your reasoning behind that statement, however, so please satisfy my curiosity.
Second, your idea of replacing all public schools with private schools is inherently flawed, and not just because of the potential to send students to Islamic fundamentalist madrassas. See my other post in this thread for my detailed reasons why a purely private system is flawed.
Third, don't say teaching isn't particularly hard unless you've actually tried it. In your idealized situation with an apprentice motivated to learn, sure, teaching can be pretty easy if you have the right skills and knowledge to teach the subject matter at hand. However, when dealing with the beaurocracy of any school system, public or private, parents who either don't care about their child's performance, parents who complain when you rightfully say that their child is performing badly, etc., the life of a modern school teacher isn't an easy one. Trust me, I am speaking from experience as a substitute teacher who has tried to actually teach and not just babysit a class.
Re:Correcting problems with public education
on
Improving Education?
·
· Score: 1
First of all, it's not a monopoly. Private schools aren't illegal -- you can certainly choose to send your kids to a private school, and many parents do.
Second, not all parents can afford private schools. Are you going to deny education to those kids whose parents work for minimum wage and can't afford the tuition payments?
Granted, I'm sure that a compromise could be reached. You could get some kind of tax credits or vouchers to pay for tuition if you can't afford sending your kids to private school and there were no public schools available.
Finally, bear in mind that being private is no guarantee of quality. In my case, I transferred out of a private school back to a public school and it turned out the quality of education was much higher in the public school. Specifically, my old private school was so small that all students were grouped into the same math classes no matter their ability. Similarly for all other classes, although they did have some differentiation in reading. When I moved back to public schooling starting at grade 6, I was actually slightly behind where I should be in math because of the lack of differentiation in math classes in my private school. Fortunately, I got back into the public system early enough to work my way back up to the top levels. If I had gotten back in high school (the private school I attended only went up to grade 8), I probably wouldn't have gotten into the same college I eventually attended, etc.
I admit that I was fortunate in that my home town had excellent public schools -- not all people are as fortunate. However, dividing this into a "public vs. private school" debate is an oversimplification of the problem.
You forgot an operating that doesn't suck, has a Unix-base, isn't plagued by tons of viruses and other malware, and still runs major commercial applications.
Okay, enough with the flamage, although I have to admit that my Mac has been far more reliable than any Wintel box I've owned, and I figured that reliability is worth paying more for.
Microsoft used to ship a licensed copy of [then] Central Point Software's Anti-Virus program with MS-DOS 6.0. They stopped shipping anti-virus software with the release of Windows 95, however. I'm surprsied it's taken them this long to start shipping an anti-virus tool with their OS again.
Actually, the most basic ADC membership, which allows you to download Xcode and a bunch of other tools, is free for everyone, not just students. Now if you want free releases of the OS, etc., that will cost you money. However, I believe they may offer discounts on hardware if you get a more expensive membership, which may help offset those costs.
Actually, if you saw some early Apple tutorials on navigating the finder, double-clicking was never mentioned in them. They'd always tell the user to open a file from the Finder by single clicking it, then going to the "File" menu and choosing "Open."
Double clicking was an optional shortcut that has become common place.
Umm, he's referring to the Windows key not doing anything useful. He never said that Windows can't do discontiguous selections.
That said, the Windows key does do a teensy bit more than just shift focus to the start menu, but not that much (I mostly just use Windows-M for Minimize All and Windows-F to bring up Explorer's Find dialog).
Back in the early days of the computer market (the 50's, in this case), IBM had some serious problems. Basically, they would come out with new mainframe models every couple years or so -- but the architecture was so radically different from the previous generation that it couldn't run the previous generation's software (this was before they got the whole "backwards compatibility" concept). Recompiling also wasn't much of an option because most of the software written back then was done in assembly -- and even in the few cases where it was written in Fortran or something, the hardware, OSes (as primitive as they were back then), etc., were so radically different that a simple recompile wouldn't do either.
Their solution? Emulation. When you bought a new IBM mainframe, you could also acquire an emulator for the previous generation's equipment so you can continue to run your old stuff. Given as how storage technologies, etc., were also changing as fast as the CPU architectures, you would also essentially be running the emulated software off of the equivilent of "ROM archives."
There wasn't a problem with this back then, and I don't see why there should be a problem with this now.
Slashdot Mirror
That is a valid argument one could make. Another valid argument is whether or not, ignoring zoning laws, any laws concerning proper storage and disposal of chemicals were violated (the article didn't go into enough detail about that). If this guy was illegally dumping toxic chemicals into the public sewer system, then confiscating the chemicals was also warranted. While supposedly the chemicals weren't any more toxic than standard household chemicals, it's possible that the sheer volume being used and dumped could constitute a violation.
However, the fire department was certainly within their rights to call in an investigative team once discovering the chemicals and then to remove them for toxicity/flammability/etc testing. Once that testing is completed, however, and if those chemicals were shown to be relatively harmless, they should've been returned. To use my drug example, this would be akin to a police officer coming across a white powder that appears to be cocaine (even though it might just be something harmless, like talc, that the officer isn't trained to recognize at first sight) during an investigation for another incident and requesting that it be removed and tested for confirmation.
On the bright side, it appears as if this home chemist wasn't arrested or anything and is a free man while the investigation is ongoing. While I agree that the local authorities were probably overly alarmist, they did at least show some restraint by not arresting him.
No, I haven't. Then again, just because they do it in a school doesn't make it right. Also, we just don't know how disorganized and messy this dude's lab was -- it may have been much worse than the school dark room you're describing. You're also ignoring the issue that having a larger scale chem lab (as opposed to just a dark room) is apparently a violation of local zoning laws.
Well, the article claimed that having a chemistry lab was a violation of the zoning laws in the area. In addition, it described the condition of the lab as being not particularly safe with the chemicals lying around, etc., meaning that even if it wasn't a violation of zoning laws, it probably violated safe storage and disposal laws.
True, but apparently the chemicals were noticed by the fire department when they entered the house to deal with a fire on the second floor. The authorities were already in the house to deal with an incident and found these chemicals lying around in plain sight.
An argument could be made as to whether the firefighters were legally allowed to check the basement for flammable materials, but I wouldn't be surprised if firefighters are given leeway concerning checking a house they have already entered for other fire safety violations.
This is definitely not a case of entering the house without a warrant. This is a case of you calling the cops to report a burglary of your bedroom and them noticing your huge stash of drugs lying on the kitchen table after you let them in.
Any legal objections over this should less be about the lack of a warrant and more about issues of zoning laws and whether or not Mr. Deeb was violating regulations concerning proper handling and disposal of laboratory chemicals.
Actually, it only appears to keep a full copy for the most recent versions, and repacking the repository ('git gc') will delta-encode everything as necessary. At least, that's how I understand the way it's described on the git wiki: http://git.or.cz/gitwiki/Git?highlight=(delta)|(compress)
I suggest LyX. Easiest LaTeX editor (technically it's not a LaTeX editor, but it's close enough to one) out there.
You could've just gotten Gimp.app -- which only requires X11.app be installed -- no other rigmarole necessary. Hell, it's linked off the first page you get by Googling for "Gimp Mac OS X" and it's the third link overall that Google comes up with.
x86-64 is backwards compatible with x86-32. You can run x86-32 applications at full native speeds. What will probably happen (similar to what happened with PPC-32 vs. 64 on OS X) is that most applications will stay 32-bit (x86-32) and only those that really need the extra memory will switch to 64-bit (x86-64). Users will be able to run both simultaneously.
Unfortunately by your reasoning, if they were to do that, they would lose all the money they make on their hardware. GPL'd OS X would make it that much easier to get it running on non-Intel hardware.
There may be valid reasons to GPL OS X. Claiming that Apple wouldn't lose significant amounts of money by doing so isn't one of them.
Neither, they are using EFI.
Looking at the actual license used, it is the MIT license. I guess they referred to it as a "BSD-like" license as it is somewhat more familiar to the average techie.
Give Gimpshop a whirl. It's hacked to look more like Photoshop in the UI department.
That said, it is quite powerful once you can get used to the UI. Maybe not quite a Photoshop killer, but I definitely thinks it stacks up well against Paint Shop Pro.
> Finally, I've read the Bill of Rights and the
> Constitution myself, and no where does it state
> that the government may not establish a public
> education system.
>
> If it doesn't say it can, then it can't. That is
> what a government of laws is all about. And just
> to make sure that product of government
> education could figure it out they went back and > tacked on this:
I should've been more specific. It doesn't say that the state governments may not establish a public school system. And guess what? The public school system is almost completely managed by the individual state governments.
> Amendment X
>
> The powers not delegated to the United States by
> the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the
> states, are reserved to the states respectively,
> or to the people.
>
> Guess they didn't count on what a modern
> miseducation could do to a persons ability to
> reason though since it didn't help in your case.
> (Ok, cheap shot. But Goddammit people, this
> ain't rocket science, it is plainly written
> English. You read Slashdot, can probably even
> program a frickin VCR from the bad engrish
> manual even.)
Umm, looks like you're the one whose education was lacking. It says the powers are delegated to the states. As I said, public education is almost entirely managed by the individual states.
> For those riding the short bus, Amendment X (the
> NO amendment if you need a memory aid) says that
> if a power isn't specifically listed in the
> Constituition then Congress has no authority to
> do it. Since my copy doesn't contain an
> Amendment adding oversight of children's
> education to Congress's enumerated powers....
Ahem, as I said before (get it into your head), the state governments are in charge of public education. The Department of Education only comes into play if they want federal tax dollars to support it. Whether this is legitimate or not is another debate entirely -- but a state could potentially fund its entire education system using only state tax revenues if it wanted to blow off the Department of Education.
> Yes, the whole US Department of Education is
> unconstituitional. As are most of the Cabinet
> level posts and their whole entrenched nests of
> vermin.
You're not the only one that can quote the Constitution. You're neglecting Article 2, Section 2:
Section 2 - Civilian Power over Military, Cabinet, Pardon Power, Appointments
The President shall be Commander in Chief of the Army and Navy of the United States, and of the Militia of the several States, when called into the actual Service of the United States; he may require the Opinion, in writing, of the principal Officer in each of the executive Departments, upon any subject relating to the Duties of their respective Offices, and he shall have Power to Grant Reprieves and Pardons for Offenses against the United States, except in Cases of Impeachment.
Right here, it says that the President can have a cabinet with cabinet members to run various executive departments. What is the Department of Education? Why, it's an executive department! No where in the Constitution does it say what executive departments the President may have, however. He could theoretically create a Department of Silly Walks if he so chose. Heck, at least two of the current departments (Treasury and War/Defense) have been in existence since the Constitution has been ratified.
>> Granted, I'm not a Supreme Court justice, the
>> only people who can make an official, legal
>> interpretation of the Constitution, but if
>> you're posting here on Slashdot, than I doubt
>> you are one either.
>
> Wrong again. We the People delegate certain
> powers to the various levels of government but
> it derives from US. If we buy
I wouldn't call most of public school government mandated propaganda? Or is mathematics propaganda? Biology? Chemistry? Physics? Etc. About the only classes I can think of that could even have any potential of being government propaganda would be history and government.
Your argument falls flat here, especially since it's the state governments, not the federal government, that sets mandatory schooling laws, and the Founding Fathers did believe that powers not explicitly delegated to the federal government belong to the states. On top of that, (and this does vary somewhat from state to state), often the nature of what is taught in the schools is determined at the community level, not at the state level. For example, when I was school age, my home state of Massachusetts only required that you attend school until you're 16 years of age. That's it. No where was it mentioned what you were required to learn provided you leave school at 16. Now if you wanted a high school diploma, you were required to take American history and physical education, but no other requirements were specified by the state. All the other requirements were set up by my home town. And you know what? My home town was governed by town meeting -- meaning that the people of the town itself set the requirements for the curriculum -- that is, the parents of the school children.
I know that my case is not typical, but you are overgeneralizing quite a bit in your arguments.
Finally, I've read the Bill of Rights and the Constitution myself, and no where does it state that the government may not establish a public education system. Granted, I'm not a Supreme Court justice, the only people who can make an official, legal interpretation of the Constitution, but if you're posting here on Slashdot, than I doubt you are one either.
Unfortunately, if anyone reads this, I'll probably get flamed for defending teachers. It's just too easy to bash teachers as a group rather than try to look at it from their perspective. I knew I'd be on the receiving end of it when I decided to become a teacher, but that doesn't mean I have to like it.
Hey, at least I support you. As a former sub teacher myself (as I mentioned before) and someone with a family full of teachers, I do think a lot of teachers get a bad rap. And yes, I have my own horror stories and I have also heard horror stories from my relatives about their students and the administration. It is not an easy job at all.
jejones said: It's ironic that on /., where people complain, and rightly so, about the "Microsoft tax," one should find a proponent of the exactly analogous situation in education.
First of all, I never complained about the "Microsoft tax." I don't even know how the "Microsoft tax" applies as a comparison in this situation, unless you're referring to something that everybody has to pay, but a minority doesn't take advantage of. For that matter, I don't pay the Microsoft tax because I don't own any computers that came with Windows pre-installed anyway.
Besides, a government should provide services to the people. That's its purpose. The debate is in what kind of services it should provide. Are you advocating getting rid of public police departments and forcing everyone to hire private security guards? What about fire departments, street maintenance crews, trash collectors, the military, etc.?
I argue that providing education to the entire population is a worthwile government service, even if the current system is badly hosed. To take my example of the police force, many people still choose to hire private security, even though public police are available, for whatever reason. The same logic could apply to public vs. private schools.
Dragonmaster Lou said: Second, not all parents can afford private schools. Are you going to deny education to those kids whose parents work for minimum wage and can't afford the tuition payments?
jejones said: Products are denied to people who can't afford them every day. I take it you believe in the bogus concept of a "positive right," i.e. something that people supposedly can get by coercing others to give it to them.
Education isn't a product. It's a necessity to function in today's society. Dare I say that education is as much a basic human right as voting, freedom from torture, fair legal representation, etc. Education is a very different sort of animal than a big screen TV. I am not advocating that people who can't afford big screen TVs be given big screen TVs because big screen TVs aren't necessary for survival. Education, in my opinion, is necessary.
Agreed, but at least in a free market one has a chance. Monopolies have zero motivation to improve--vide this article in Reason about the massive deception public schools are perpetrating to avoid giving accurate information about how well they're doing.
I never said that the public school system has a perfectly clean nose -- it has its problems, and more people should stand up to get them fixed. If enough parents did digging and raised enough of a stink about the quality of their local public schools, you better believe they'd get fixed -- school boards are typically elected by their communities, and there is an incentive to keep the schools working or else the board members find themselves out of a job.
I admit this is an idealized case -- we all know that the power of the vote doesn't always (perhaps never) manages to keep politicies doing a good job in positions of power.
Finally, the free market also has one issue -- it only works where there is a profit motive. This is perfectly fine when talking about big screen TVs. However, this could be a problem with something like education. I mean, if I were the head of a private school with my only motivation being a profit, I certainly wouldn't want to erect a my school in some place where it could be less than profitable -- rural areas, inner cities, etc., typically places where people couldn't afford tuition or where the population density is too small to sustain the school. As a result, all those children in said areas would be denied even the chance of an education because no schools were established there.
First, could you please explain how public schools aren't compatibile with a republican (small 'r' -- let's not get all political part here) form of government? Or do you mean that the Republican Party doesn't want any kind of educated electorate?
Okay, sorry. I'll shut off my political yappings for now. I am still interested in your reasoning behind that statement, however, so please satisfy my curiosity.
Second, your idea of replacing all public schools with private schools is inherently flawed, and not just because of the potential to send students to Islamic fundamentalist madrassas. See my other post in this thread for my detailed reasons why a purely private system is flawed.
Third, don't say teaching isn't particularly hard unless you've actually tried it. In your idealized situation with an apprentice motivated to learn, sure, teaching can be pretty easy if you have the right skills and knowledge to teach the subject matter at hand. However, when dealing with the beaurocracy of any school system, public or private, parents who either don't care about their child's performance, parents who complain when you rightfully say that their child is performing badly, etc., the life of a modern school teacher isn't an easy one. Trust me, I am speaking from experience as a substitute teacher who has tried to actually teach and not just babysit a class.
First of all, it's not a monopoly. Private schools aren't illegal -- you can certainly choose to send your kids to a private school, and many parents do.
Second, not all parents can afford private schools. Are you going to deny education to those kids whose parents work for minimum wage and can't afford the tuition payments?
Granted, I'm sure that a compromise could be reached. You could get some kind of tax credits or vouchers to pay for tuition if you can't afford sending your kids to private school and there were no public schools available.
Finally, bear in mind that being private is no guarantee of quality. In my case, I transferred out of a private school back to a public school and it turned out the quality of education was much higher in the public school. Specifically, my old private school was so small that all students were grouped into the same math classes no matter their ability. Similarly for all other classes, although they did have some differentiation in reading. When I moved back to public schooling starting at grade 6, I was actually slightly behind where I should be in math because of the lack of differentiation in math classes in my private school. Fortunately, I got back into the public system early enough to work my way back up to the top levels. If I had gotten back in high school (the private school I attended only went up to grade 8), I probably wouldn't have gotten into the same college I eventually attended, etc.
I admit that I was fortunate in that my home town had excellent public schools -- not all people are as fortunate. However, dividing this into a "public vs. private school" debate is an oversimplification of the problem.
There is an open source implementation of Cocoa, GNUStep: http://www.gnustep.org/.
They try to keep up to date with Apple's changes to the API as much as they possible can.
You forgot an operating that doesn't suck, has a Unix-base, isn't plagued by tons of viruses and other malware, and still runs major commercial applications.
Okay, enough with the flamage, although I have to admit that my Mac has been far more reliable than any Wintel box I've owned, and I figured that reliability is worth paying more for.
Microsoft used to ship a licensed copy of [then] Central Point Software's Anti-Virus program with MS-DOS 6.0. They stopped shipping anti-virus software with the release of Windows 95, however. I'm surprsied it's taken them this long to start shipping an anti-virus tool with their OS again.
Actually, the most basic ADC membership, which allows you to download Xcode and a bunch of other tools, is free for everyone, not just students. Now if you want free releases of the OS, etc., that will cost you money. However, I believe they may offer discounts on hardware if you get a more expensive membership, which may help offset those costs.
Actually, if you saw some early Apple tutorials on navigating the finder, double-clicking was never mentioned in them. They'd always tell the user to open a file from the Finder by single clicking it, then going to the "File" menu and choosing "Open."
Double clicking was an optional shortcut that has become common place.
Umm, he's referring to the Windows key not doing anything useful. He never said that Windows can't do discontiguous selections.
That said, the Windows key does do a teensy bit more than just shift focus to the start menu, but not that much (I mostly just use Windows-M for Minimize All and Windows-F to bring up Explorer's Find dialog).
Back in the early days of the computer market (the 50's, in this case), IBM had some serious problems. Basically, they would come out with new mainframe models every couple years or so -- but the architecture was so radically different from the previous generation that it couldn't run the previous generation's software (this was before they got the whole "backwards compatibility" concept). Recompiling also wasn't much of an option because most of the software written back then was done in assembly -- and even in the few cases where it was written in Fortran or something, the hardware, OSes (as primitive as they were back then), etc., were so radically different that a simple recompile wouldn't do either.
Their solution? Emulation. When you bought a new IBM mainframe, you could also acquire an emulator for the previous generation's equipment so you can continue to run your old stuff. Given as how storage technologies, etc., were also changing as fast as the CPU architectures, you would also essentially be running the emulated software off of the equivilent of "ROM archives."
There wasn't a problem with this back then, and I don't see why there should be a problem with this now.