You can also go Alienware's website (which is now owned by Dell). I picked out an Area 51 and clicked "customize". Halfway down the page I was offered not one, but two XP options:
( ) Genuine Windows XP Media Center Edition 2005 - DirectX 9 Only! [-$50] ( ) Genuine Windows XP Professional - DirectX 9 Only!
Doesn't even cost extra. I also wouldn't call Alienware as targeted to a corporate audience either.
You didn't even address the issues Okay then, I'll address the issue. Why are teachers, especially those in the private sector, so poorly paid? Simply put, the reason is that the supply of teachers far, far outstrip the demand. There are many more people who are technically qualified to be a teacher than there are positions for people to teach. This drives down the price of teaching. Why should a school pay $40,000 to one teacher when there are 5 more willing to work for $35,000?
Because the supply of teachers is so high, those that are actually willing to sell their labor for that low of an amount tend to fall into two categories: 1) Teachers who "live to teach" and would do it no matter how much they are paid. 2) Teachers who have no other marketable skills and have no choice but to sell their labor as cheaply as possible. As much as I would like to say that most teachers fall into category 1, the reality is that most fall into category 2. Those who have other skills outside of teaching will tend to move to those jobs, leaving only those with no other marketable skills (which, sadly, are often also the most unqualified teachers to boot) behind to teach.
The solution is actually simpler to say than it is to implement. The solution is to drastically reduce the supply of teachers while also increasing demand. To increase the demand for teachers, teachers need to have any idea of "tenure" removed. Poor performance = you are fired. No more rubberrooming of teachers. Also, the qualifications for teaching needs to be gradually increased, without any grandfathering. This will help reduce the supply side. The problem is that both of these are fraught with political pitfalls. As I said, much easier said than done.
Children were tested (nationally) more often (age 7, 11 and 14, as well as the exams at 16). Schools were rated based on the children's results, and "bad" schools told to improve Or Else The United States has a similar system called No Child Left Behind. Not too surprisingly, the exact same things that happened with the UK's version is currently happening in the US: testing fraud, teaching to the test, and even the encouragement by schools for less able students to drop out to help bring up the average school test scores. Of course, the overall effect is an actual reduction in the quality of education in the United States.
It's always amazing to me how a demonstrably bad idea gets mimicked over and over again.
I've always thought the way the TSA treats pilots was a bit.. odd. A couple years ago, a TSA agent was giving a pilot a hard time over a small jeweler's screwdriver in an eyeglass repair kit.
The pilot said to him, "Well, you can confiscate this if you want, but -- and I don't mean to alarm you -- I have a fire axe in the cockpit."
This research might be true for driving in heavily urban areas, where safe driving requires the processing of many, many variables such as cars all around, lane changes, keeping your blind spots clear, reading road signs, and general navigation so that you end up where you are trying to go.
However, the OPPOSITE is true for driving long distances on relatively empty freeways in rural areas. Take, for example, the 600 mile stretch from El Paso, TX to San Antonio, TX which consists of an abundance of two things: diddly and squat. If drivers on this stretch has no other stimulus, they are in danger of entering the highly dangerous state of hypnotic disassociation (sometimes calls highway hypnosis or white line fever), where the conscious brain practically shuts down and you go into auto-pilot -- completely unable to react to anything quickly. If something does happen suddenly, the driver "snaps out" and is disoriented for a second. Usually by that point, its already far too late.
Keeping your mind alert through talking to a passenger or listening to heavy metal on the radio actually helps prevent this condition.
BM has never had success marketing a single software product in their entire history IBM has had many successful software products, albeit mostly in the enterprise arena (WebSphere and DB2 jump to mind).
Until they make it BETTER and not just CHEAPER, they're wasting their time. The whole point of this article is that they are, in fact, making it better as well as cheaper. Did you even bother to read the summary?
Dude, that greeting line is typical for a slashdot user whose user ID is between 10,000 and 50,000 (ask any decent HR department if you don't believe me). Oh good, my UID for my original account's UID is 7577. My current one is 449201. I just missed the danger zone on both ends:)
I was speaking of hardware uhhhh... You mentioned the iPhone (which for this article is the iPhone software development platform, i.e. software) and Android (which is also software). Where is this "hardware" context of which you speak?
So far, closed systems lose out to open systems pretty much every time. Yes, now that Linux runs in every home and hardly anyone ever uses Microsoft's Word format anymore...
I don't know about anybody else, but if I knew I was going to be nailed to a cross or subjected to some other torturous death, for a story I knew I had made up, I would be all about saying "We made it all up! It was just a joke!" Nobody is going to die for a made up story. You are making the very false assumption that it was Jesus making up a story. Actually, the story - as it were - was settled upon in the 4th century by the First Council of Nicaea -- some 300 years after Jesus was executed.
If we look at the history of early Christians, none of them received wealth for their beliefs and most were brutally persecuted. Not a good business model, if you ask me. Trust me when I say the members of the First Council of Nicaea headed by Emperor Constantine I of Rome (who was hardly a pauper and certainly not persecuted) very much had both profit and power in mind when it was formed -- and it worked too. It was direct result of this Council and the subsequent Councils that led the Christian Church into becoming the most powerful and wealthy entity in the history of the world just a few centuries later.
I think you need to learn a bit more of history, GCH.
What's far more likely is that the virgin birth is a later addition to the story of Jesus. In comic book terminology, this is a retroactive alteration of the continuity, or "retcon". "Hm... how do we explain the origin of Jesus' [...] I KNOW! We have a special "Origins of Jesus" issue in the Bible, where we reveal that ACTUALLY, Jesus is the son of God! Actually, you are exactly right. The people who were discussing this was First Council of Nicaea in the fourth century and the "Origins of Jesus" issue is called the Nicene Creed. (To be fair, this part of the Nicene Creed was heavily influenced by the Apostles' Creed from the second century.)
To call Japan Steel Works a "sword maker" is like referring to Microsoft as "that company that makes Minesweeper". Japan Steel Works is a very large steel company that makes a very wide variety of products (of which swords are a very, very small part) and did $2 billion worth of sales in 2007 alone.
I mean seriously, Slashdot, isn't this story cool enough without adding misleading sensationalist crap onto it?
The GTK port for eclipse on Linux seems ok to me. This is true, as IBM is a huge Linux supporter (and has a lot of applications for Linux, comparatively speaking). However, IBM doesn't really support OS X, and SWT has always had big problems on that platform.
Wow are you clueless.
it claims so under penalty of perjury. Cease and desist letters are just that -- letters of correspondence. They are not sworn and therefore do not fall under perjury.
Furthermore, they state they have also sent such claims to the ISP, a third-party. I think that is unsupportable and illegal, and I don't believe they have the right to do that. You can send a C&D to anyone you want over anything you want. There is nothing illegal in sending a letter making claims and demands. The first amendment is pretty clear on that point. It may be baseless or even stupid, but isn't illegal -- and they have every legal right to do it.
It's libellous[sic] It's obvious you don't know what libel is. This C&D was a private communication -- only made public by its recipient. Private communications, by definition, are never libelous.
it's barratry No it isn't. Barratry is multiple legal actions for the sole purpose to harass. So far, they've sent a single C&D (which isn't a legal action at all) and the purpose was not for harassment.
How your rant of baseless crap got +5 Informative is beyond me.
I don't disagree that there was likely no "national security" reason That is truly a spectacular bit of linguistic acrobatics. You have a future in politics, PR, or marketing.
Funny, Apple used to be about "choice" Apple used to be about choice in the same way that Ford was: "You have your Model T in any color you like, so long as it's black."
Apple has never been about choice. You can run their operating system on any hardware you like, so long as they made it. You can sync your iPod with any software you like, so long as it's iTunes. You can use your iPhone with any carrier you like, so long as it's one the Apple chose for you.
I think you hit the nail on the head. The gameplay geniuses over at Valve touched on this very concept on their commentary track for Portal.
According to the commentary track, they closely watched the reaction of play testers when they died or otherwise failed. If they laughed as they died, they know they did the right thing. If they swore like a drunk sailor, something may need to be tweaked.
It all boiled down to a matter of perceived fairness. In your case, even though you were bested, you had fun because you knew that, fundamentally, you lost fair and square. However, if you discovered that kid with the unbelievable aim was cheating, I'm guessing you'd find that a lot less fun simply because it wasn't fair.
Same thing goes for puzzle games, single-player games, and MMO's. If the game is fair, you can have fun even if you fail. If the game isn't fair (i.e. the player has almost no chance of succeeding or the difficulty is far far too high), then no amount of playing will make it fun.
All depends on how to spin the numbers
on
Is AMD Dead Yet?
·
· Score: 3, Insightful
If you look at the companies from a 5-year window (such as this article does), AMD looks better:
Intel is UP 17.4% AMD is UP almost 28.4%
But if we extend that window to 8 years, they are BOTH in trouble, each DOWN about 63%.
Lastly, with careful manipulation of the dates to just a little bit over 2 years (where I chose the high point in the stock after the AMD/ATI hysteria and AMD's stock price skyrocketed before coming back to the Realm of Reality), it looks like AMD is on the brink, being down over 80%.
This is why we shouldn't use stock prices over time to judge these things. They are just too easily manipulated.
However, I'm NOT saying AMD isn't having troubles right now. There's a LOT on AMD's sheets right now that look very unhappy with a negative P/E and EPS along with massive cash losses. I'm just saying we shouldn't look at stock price alone, especially over arbitrary time lengths.
You're right - if you just take the FBI at it's word. Why on Earth would you do that? Because the FBI's story makes sense and yours doesn't. You seem to have forgotten to think it through. How did the EFF know to file a FOIA request for these specific files? (Remember that FOIA requests have to be very specific. If they too broad or fishing expeditions, they are not valid.) Simple, because the FBI reported the incident to the FISA court and the Oversight Committee. In other words, we know this took place because the FBI told us so -- and you seem to be taking the FBI at its word just fine on that!
Before the FBI reported the incident to their oversight, there were only two organizations that knew an incident took place -- the FBI and the ISP. The ISP didn't say anything (if they did, we'd know who they are). That means the FBI admitted an incident took place to the proper authorities. That report came to attention of the EFF, who then filed FOIA paperwork on it. So, that means the only reason why the EFF knew anything at all was because the FBI was honest about an incident taking place.
Now, if they were doing illegal nasty stuff, as you seem to be convinced they are, why would they have reported their own illegal activities to the court AND their oversight committee? Why would they have complied with the FOIA request? If they wanted to snoop through these emails in secret, why would they have told all kinds of people AND granted interview requests with REPORTERS on it?
No -- the FBI has been pretty upright and forthcoming on all this. The FBI's story makes sense from bow to stern. The story you put forward doesn't make sense at all if you think about it critically. What you are proposing is that the FBI is acting schizophrenically by willfully doing illegal nasty stuff, then suddenly deciding to follow the law and report it to the authorities, then suddenly go illegal again and lie about it, but then go legal again and grant the FOIA request (which could expose all the illegal stuff), and then talk to reporters about it (never a good idea when you have something to hide).
Two important questions here: Actually, neither of them are important.
If the ISP actually misunderstood the surveillance request, why didn't they get confirmation? Asking for one person's email to be sent is one thing, but a request for the entire domain's email to be forwarded sounds too broad to be legitimate. It sounded to me, from reading TFA, that it was an accident on the part of the ISP. The FBI didn't ask for it.
When the FBI found they were getting email from individuals other than those they wanted. Did they promptly delete the email unread and report to the admin? Or did they think, "Hmmmm. Well, since we're already getting it..." ...and anything they read in there would be inadmissible in court since it wasn't obtained from a proper warrant. So why bother?
The truth is that FBI agents are actually very, very busy people. They are often working a bunch of cases at once and they don't have enough time to go on illegal fishing expeditions that wouldn't be admissible in court anyway. It is almost certain that the FBI agents not only didn't read the email they weren't looking for, but actively stopped the problem and got rid of the excess because sifting through a mountain of crap would only hinder their investigation. In either case, the FBI did report the issue to both the court AND their executive oversight (that would be 2 branches of government).
You can wear your tinfoil hat if you want, but it really seems to me that the FBI didn't ask for it, didn't want it, stopped it when they noticed it, and reported the issue to the proper oversight authorities. I'm just not seeing a scandal here.
Slashdot Mirror
hat has happened since is that all the baby bells have merged again
It is definitely going that way, but they aren't quite there yet. They haven't ALL merged together again.
After the breakup, there were 7 "baby bells". There are now 3 left: AT&T, Qwest, and Verizon.
- AT&T is SBC renamed after SBC acquired AT&T. SBC (formerly Southwest Bell) also acquired the baby bells Ameritech, Pacific Telesis, and BellSouth.
- Qwest was an independent which became a de facto baby bell when it acquired U S West.
- Verizon (formerly Bell Atlantic) acquired baby bell NYNEX.
Since when has Slashdot let mere facts stand in the way of a good headline?
You can also go Alienware's website (which is now owned by Dell). I picked out an Area 51 and clicked "customize". Halfway down the page I was offered not one, but two XP options:
( ) Genuine Windows XP Media Center Edition 2005 - DirectX 9 Only! [-$50]
( ) Genuine Windows XP Professional - DirectX 9 Only!
Doesn't even cost extra. I also wouldn't call Alienware as targeted to a corporate audience either.
Because the supply of teachers is so high, those that are actually willing to sell their labor for that low of an amount tend to fall into two categories:
1) Teachers who "live to teach" and would do it no matter how much they are paid.
2) Teachers who have no other marketable skills and have no choice but to sell their labor as cheaply as possible.
As much as I would like to say that most teachers fall into category 1, the reality is that most fall into category 2. Those who have other skills outside of teaching will tend to move to those jobs, leaving only those with no other marketable skills (which, sadly, are often also the most unqualified teachers to boot) behind to teach.
The solution is actually simpler to say than it is to implement. The solution is to drastically reduce the supply of teachers while also increasing demand. To increase the demand for teachers, teachers need to have any idea of "tenure" removed. Poor performance = you are fired. No more rubberrooming of teachers. Also, the qualifications for teaching needs to be gradually increased, without any grandfathering. This will help reduce the supply side. The problem is that both of these are fraught with political pitfalls. As I said, much easier said than done.
It's always amazing to me how a demonstrably bad idea gets mimicked over and over again.
I've always thought the way the TSA treats pilots was a bit.. odd. A couple years ago, a TSA agent was giving a pilot a hard time over a small jeweler's screwdriver in an eyeglass repair kit.
The pilot said to him, "Well, you can confiscate this if you want, but -- and I don't mean to alarm you -- I have a fire axe in the cockpit."
This research might be true for driving in heavily urban areas, where safe driving requires the processing of many, many variables such as cars all around, lane changes, keeping your blind spots clear, reading road signs, and general navigation so that you end up where you are trying to go.
However, the OPPOSITE is true for driving long distances on relatively empty freeways in rural areas. Take, for example, the 600 mile stretch from El Paso, TX to San Antonio, TX which consists of an abundance of two things: diddly and squat. If drivers on this stretch has no other stimulus, they are in danger of entering the highly dangerous state of hypnotic disassociation (sometimes calls highway hypnosis or white line fever), where the conscious brain practically shuts down and you go into auto-pilot -- completely unable to react to anything quickly. If something does happen suddenly, the driver "snaps out" and is disoriented for a second. Usually by that point, its already far too late.
Keeping your mind alert through talking to a passenger or listening to heavy metal on the radio actually helps prevent this condition.
I agree completely. :)
I think you need to learn a bit more of history, GCH.
To call Japan Steel Works a "sword maker" is like referring to Microsoft as "that company that makes Minesweeper". Japan Steel Works is a very large steel company that makes a very wide variety of products (of which swords are a very, very small part) and did $2 billion worth of sales in 2007 alone.
I mean seriously, Slashdot, isn't this story cool enough without adding misleading sensationalist crap onto it?
How your rant of baseless crap got +5 Informative is beyond me.
Apple has never been about choice. You can run their operating system on any hardware you like, so long as they made it. You can sync your iPod with any software you like, so long as it's iTunes. You can use your iPhone with any carrier you like, so long as it's one the Apple chose for you.
I think you hit the nail on the head. The gameplay geniuses over at Valve touched on this very concept on their commentary track for Portal.
According to the commentary track, they closely watched the reaction of play testers when they died or otherwise failed. If they laughed as they died, they know they did the right thing. If they swore like a drunk sailor, something may need to be tweaked.
It all boiled down to a matter of perceived fairness. In your case, even though you were bested, you had fun because you knew that, fundamentally, you lost fair and square. However, if you discovered that kid with the unbelievable aim was cheating, I'm guessing you'd find that a lot less fun simply because it wasn't fair.
Same thing goes for puzzle games, single-player games, and MMO's. If the game is fair, you can have fun even if you fail. If the game isn't fair (i.e. the player has almost no chance of succeeding or the difficulty is far far too high), then no amount of playing will make it fun.
If you look at the companies from a 5-year window (such as this article does), AMD looks better:
Intel is UP 17.4%
AMD is UP almost 28.4%
But if we extend that window to 8 years, they are BOTH in trouble, each DOWN about 63%.
Lastly, with careful manipulation of the dates to just a little bit over 2 years (where I chose the high point in the stock after the AMD/ATI hysteria and AMD's stock price skyrocketed before coming back to the Realm of Reality), it looks like AMD is on the brink, being down over 80%.
This is why we shouldn't use stock prices over time to judge these things. They are just too easily manipulated.
However, I'm NOT saying AMD isn't having troubles right now. There's a LOT on AMD's sheets right now that look very unhappy with a negative P/E and EPS along with massive cash losses. I'm just saying we shouldn't look at stock price alone, especially over arbitrary time lengths.
...my ass.
That's called marketing son. It comes out in 4 days and they are creating hype for it.
(NOTE: The inadvertent part was completely fabricated by Slashdot. Not even the article makes this claim.)
Before the FBI reported the incident to their oversight, there were only two organizations that knew an incident took place -- the FBI and the ISP. The ISP didn't say anything (if they did, we'd know who they are). That means the FBI admitted an incident took place to the proper authorities. That report came to attention of the EFF, who then filed FOIA paperwork on it. So, that means the only reason why the EFF knew anything at all was because the FBI was honest about an incident taking place.
Now, if they were doing illegal nasty stuff, as you seem to be convinced they are, why would they have reported their own illegal activities to the court AND their oversight committee? Why would they have complied with the FOIA request? If they wanted to snoop through these emails in secret, why would they have told all kinds of people AND granted interview requests with REPORTERS on it?
No -- the FBI has been pretty upright and forthcoming on all this. The FBI's story makes sense from bow to stern. The story you put forward doesn't make sense at all if you think about it critically. What you are proposing is that the FBI is acting schizophrenically by willfully doing illegal nasty stuff, then suddenly deciding to follow the law and report it to the authorities, then suddenly go illegal again and lie about it, but then go legal again and grant the FOIA request (which could expose all the illegal stuff), and then talk to reporters about it (never a good idea when you have something to hide).
The truth is that FBI agents are actually very, very busy people. They are often working a bunch of cases at once and they don't have enough time to go on illegal fishing expeditions that wouldn't be admissible in court anyway. It is almost certain that the FBI agents not only didn't read the email they weren't looking for, but actively stopped the problem and got rid of the excess because sifting through a mountain of crap would only hinder their investigation. In either case, the FBI did report the issue to both the court AND their executive oversight (that would be 2 branches of government).
You can wear your tinfoil hat if you want, but it really seems to me that the FBI didn't ask for it, didn't want it, stopped it when they noticed it, and reported the issue to the proper oversight authorities. I'm just not seeing a scandal here.
The President can only pardon a criminal action. What we are talking about here is immunity from civil lawsuits.