There are those who believe that life here began out there, far across the universe... Some believe that there may yet be brothers of man who even now fight to survive somewhere beyond the heavens.
1) This opens the school up for a big "emotional distress" lawsuit, and
Oh, no! Someone said mean words to me! For some reason, I absolutely must get offended by this!
You may not feel it's appropriate, but this is the reality of the world we live in. The school could be facing lawsuits like this, whether the plaintiffs are just trying to make a buck, or if they feel it's the only way to make sure it doesn't happen again, they are still open to liability issues surrounding this.
Even for teens, teachers are still enough of an authority that for a student to realize this is being said about them in a very public forum (not just the teacher's lounge, for example) could have repercussions for decades.
Decades? No, even for a moment? Why are some people so afraid of words? If there's anything people need to be taught, it's that you do not need to be offended by mere words, and indeed, it is far more efficient not to be. If you made a mistake, don't make the same one again. If you didn't, shrug it off. Whining about things (especially words) and getting offended doesn't change anything.
I've heard people say this, and it sounds like good logic, but it's good in theory and not in face. The phrase "I love you" is just words. The Constitution is just words. Hitler's speeches that riled up so many people is just words.
But words are how we communicate, they are how we express our thoughts and feelings. They are how we transmit facts and opinions, so the "Just words" argument really doesn't work.
These words are letting a number of students know that someone they respected and whom they thought respected them did not respect them. They are telling them that someone, a trained and recognized authority, has judged them to be inferior. So it's more than just words, there's a lot more involved. Even for people that will just "shrug it off," there's still damage that hits in ways we don't always see for a long time.
So it's not about words. It's what those words convey, communicate, and represent.
I not only have to agree with everything the parent says, but add two points:
1) This opens the school up for a big "emotional distress" lawsuit, and
2) I taught emotionally disturbed kids and normal kids. Even for teens, teachers are still enough of an authority that for a student to realize this is being said about them in a very public forum (not just the teacher's lounge, for example) could have repercussions for decades. I've known people that have been insulted by teachers that took it to heart because they respected the teacher and took years to understand the comments were not only inappropriate but not worth paying attention to.
All teachers want to be remembered as an influence and want to change lives, but not in the way this teacher has changed some young lives.
While you leap to assumptions and base beliefs on probability (I'm glad I don't, the probability was that I'd never accomplish what I did in life), I just love your wording of "An intelligence manipulating things to prevent us from detecting the true origins of the universe."
Excellent point. If Creationism were true, then a consequence of it is a God who intentionally misleads or allows us to be misled and who hides the truth.
I'm quite well off, I've been retired since I was 45 and spending all my time writing and ballroom dancing. I'm ecstatic, right now, because the tax law change lets me move, literally, millions, into irrevocable trusts so nobody can get at it by suing me or through other ways. Yes, this time, the votes did help me and the wealthy.
But even though I worked my ass off to get where I am (running a software based service company that ran on my custom software), you'd be surprised at how often Congress and the President, even Bush, has screwed me over along the way.
I've worked hard, but because I don't make as little as you, I'm limited in what I can keep or do with it in ways that, unless you've gotten into estate management and similar topics, wouldn't know about.
I know it may come as a shock to some but most people in the US aren't liberals.
"Liberal" is just the word the extreme right has made up to describe anyone they disagree with. It's a label, almost a pejorative they've created so they can just say, "He's a liberal," instead of dealing with something a person has said that has any validity. It's a way to call names instead of dealing with the facts.
It's been so distorted by people that think there is their way and the wrong way that it really doesn't have any meaning any longer.
Considering how they ignore science when it's inconvenient to their agenda, like the recent memos on global warming, for example, they've shown they can intentionally distort science as much as they distort politics.
That's almost by design. The Fox News bias is from the original founding idea: studies showed most vocal conservatives (as opposed to real conservatives) didn't want facts and didn't want to learn. They wanted to hear only what re-enforced their already limited and slanted viewpoints. It was consciously created with that in mind. Some of the "talent" involved have even made comments, off camera, at social events, like, "Oh, that's just the act, get over it," or, "It's what I do for a job, who believes that crap?"
Interestingly enough, surveys also show that those very same people, when presented with facts that disrupt or disprove what they want to believe will ignore those facts and will become even more emotionally entrenched and committed to what they want to believe is true - even after seeing proof it is false.
I did, too. And I think excluding the dead or those who are older but kicked ass when they were younger isn't fair, either. But, then again, we're talking 3rd grader logic here -- and I really do sympathize for the kid. I remember what it was like when I was in third grade, back about 1970 or so and I thought Captain Kirk was cooler than Keith Partridge.
His friends are all looking at sports heroes and you're looking at people with long careers. There's a big difference.
Athletes only have a few decades in which they'll do well, then they retire. So it's easy to find a younger athlete as a hero: as they get older, they lose it.
But almost all the other professions take time to get experienced in. They require learning and years of experience to excel, other than something like astronaut, which can include younger people.
Too bad you can't include people like Chuck Yeager or Wiley Post.
I think the real story is that you're an alien from a planet on which several days can occur in the span of 24 earth hours. That teaser went up just a day ahead of the announcement.
Oh, I do apologize. It's clear I'm not giving this the earth-shattering priority it deserves, since I couldn't even keep track of how long the tease went on.
Besides the Beatles are pretty much the best selling band of all time. In the 2000s only eminem sold more records then the Beatles.
Oh, come on. It's not like Elvis finally came out of hiding and released a new album or something.
And your sarcasm is really not clever at all. I could go on and be as sarcastic as you to try to prove I'm clever, but I won't.
The point is they've earned the name by many local ex-employees. I didn't go into details, but did you ever see the site crapitalone.com while it was still up? It, along with the number of IT guys I knew that had worked there made the point very well about what kind of culture ran throughout the company.
But if you insist on just dwelling on what you think I thought I made up to be funny so you can prove you're oh, so clever, please, feel free to continue.
Yeah, I'd feel dirty if I defended Capital One, too.
They're local here and known by many people as Crapital One for their firing sprees and tendency to make employees disappear. They're also the fastest bank in the nation to sue their own customers. (I sell data to bankruptcy lawyers who keep up with this kind of thing.) They're the last bank I'd go to for a credit card or a loan anyway.
Definitely depressing. I used to teach full time, but before that, I subbed. I spent a week writing a script to send out (that later got me in touch with a Hollyweird agent, so it did its job) and after that week, went back to sub at one school I liked. That break of doing something I loved put me in a different frame -- when I drove up to that school, I started getting really depressed and realized a lot had to do with the building itself. We design offices so we like them. The same with homes. But schools are still, more often than not, dull and functional and uninteresting buildings. It's a wonder kids can stand them or teachers will put up with working in many of them.
There's also a story in education reform where there were a few men shopping for desks and noticed they all had small surfaces and went to someone who sold furniture to schools. The described what they wanted and he said, "Oh, you won't find that. You want a desk where students can work and be creative and functional. These desks are designed solely for listening."
Really a sad statement on the abuse we foster on our children in the name of education.
Oh, so you've read the fine print in the Obamacare packages?
Actually, ads in ebooks is a natural progression, it's just returning to how literature used to be published. A lot of literary works have been published or serialized and published in magazines supported by ads.
Buying a proven product does not involve anywhere near the risk of building that product in the first place, before it was proven. The risk and planning are a major part of the work.
It's a lot easier and the risk is a lot lower to buy something with a track record than to invest in creating a new product and then establishing that track record.
Oracle has, as of now, taken almost no risk on OOo, while Star Office took a major risk. Sun also took a risk, although not as big a one as Star Office did in creating the program.
Comparing that to the employee, working for the company that took the risk, is invalid.
Technically, remember, that OOo is basically a dressing up and improving of Star Office, started by a German company, so if you want to attribute 90% of the work to someone, I'd put it there, but I don't think, at this point, you can contribute 90% to one entity.
Granted, Star Office, both program and company, were bought by Sun, but a lot of the work was done well before Sun stepped in and bought it.
And, I know it's a small detail, but it can matter legally, it's not GPL, it's LGPL. There are differences.
I noticed that as well. It doesn't speak well of the Oracle people involved, since it essentially means they see Libre Office, which truly wants to remain free, as competition, and they only reason they'd see it that way is if Oracle's goals, which have not yet been stated, involved some way to tighten controls on OOo.
Slashdot Mirror
There are those who believe that life here began out there, far across the universe... Some believe that there may yet be brothers of man who even now fight to survive somewhere beyond the heavens.
1) This opens the school up for a big "emotional distress" lawsuit, and
Oh, no! Someone said mean words to me! For some reason, I absolutely must get offended by this!
You may not feel it's appropriate, but this is the reality of the world we live in. The school could be facing lawsuits like this, whether the plaintiffs are just trying to make a buck, or if they feel it's the only way to make sure it doesn't happen again, they are still open to liability issues surrounding this.
Even for teens, teachers are still enough of an authority that for a student to realize this is being said about them in a very public forum (not just the teacher's lounge, for example) could have repercussions for decades.
Decades? No, even for a moment? Why are some people so afraid of words? If there's anything people need to be taught, it's that you do not need to be offended by mere words, and indeed, it is far more efficient not to be. If you made a mistake, don't make the same one again. If you didn't, shrug it off. Whining about things (especially words) and getting offended doesn't change anything.
I've heard people say this, and it sounds like good logic, but it's good in theory and not in face. The phrase "I love you" is just words. The Constitution is just words. Hitler's speeches that riled up so many people is just words.
But words are how we communicate, they are how we express our thoughts and feelings. They are how we transmit facts and opinions, so the "Just words" argument really doesn't work.
These words are letting a number of students know that someone they respected and whom they thought respected them did not respect them. They are telling them that someone, a trained and recognized authority, has judged them to be inferior. So it's more than just words, there's a lot more involved. Even for people that will just "shrug it off," there's still damage that hits in ways we don't always see for a long time.
So it's not about words. It's what those words convey, communicate, and represent.
I not only have to agree with everything the parent says, but add two points:
1) This opens the school up for a big "emotional distress" lawsuit, and
2) I taught emotionally disturbed kids and normal kids. Even for teens, teachers are still enough of an authority that for a student to realize this is being said about them in a very public forum (not just the teacher's lounge, for example) could have repercussions for decades. I've known people that have been insulted by teachers that took it to heart because they respected the teacher and took years to understand the comments were not only inappropriate but not worth paying attention to.
All teachers want to be remembered as an influence and want to change lives, but not in the way this teacher has changed some young lives.
I'm glad to see that in all the variety of Slashdot, we do have someone here to represent the communist or socialist viewpoint.
While you leap to assumptions and base beliefs on probability (I'm glad I don't, the probability was that I'd never accomplish what I did in life), I just love your wording of "An intelligence manipulating things to prevent us from detecting the true origins of the universe."
Excellent point. If Creationism were true, then a consequence of it is a God who intentionally misleads or allows us to be misled and who hides the truth.
I'm quite well off, I've been retired since I was 45 and spending all my time writing and ballroom dancing. I'm ecstatic, right now, because the tax law change lets me move, literally, millions, into irrevocable trusts so nobody can get at it by suing me or through other ways. Yes, this time, the votes did help me and the wealthy.
But even though I worked my ass off to get where I am (running a software based service company that ran on my custom software), you'd be surprised at how often Congress and the President, even Bush, has screwed me over along the way.
I've worked hard, but because I don't make as little as you, I'm limited in what I can keep or do with it in ways that, unless you've gotten into estate management and similar topics, wouldn't know about.
Ah! At last I understand what you've been working on for all these years, Hari Seldon.
I know it may come as a shock to some but most people in the US aren't liberals.
"Liberal" is just the word the extreme right has made up to describe anyone they disagree with. It's a label, almost a pejorative they've created so they can just say, "He's a liberal," instead of dealing with something a person has said that has any validity. It's a way to call names instead of dealing with the facts.
It's been so distorted by people that think there is their way and the wrong way that it really doesn't have any meaning any longer.
Considering how they ignore science when it's inconvenient to their agenda, like the recent memos on global warming, for example, they've shown they can intentionally distort science as much as they distort politics.
That's almost by design. The Fox News bias is from the original founding idea: studies showed most vocal conservatives (as opposed to real conservatives) didn't want facts and didn't want to learn. They wanted to hear only what re-enforced their already limited and slanted viewpoints. It was consciously created with that in mind. Some of the "talent" involved have even made comments, off camera, at social events, like, "Oh, that's just the act, get over it," or, "It's what I do for a job, who believes that crap?"
Interestingly enough, surveys also show that those very same people, when presented with facts that disrupt or disprove what they want to believe will ignore those facts and will become even more emotionally entrenched and committed to what they want to believe is true - even after seeing proof it is false.
I did, too. And I think excluding the dead or those who are older but kicked ass when they were younger isn't fair, either. But, then again, we're talking 3rd grader logic here -- and I really do sympathize for the kid. I remember what it was like when I was in third grade, back about 1970 or so and I thought Captain Kirk was cooler than Keith Partridge.
A) You're also talking the much rarer cases, ones that don't come along but every so often.
B) Name one of these that was considered cool or looked up to by 3rd graders.
It takes less training (in terms of time and years) than it does to make a name in other fields.
Physical shape is an issue in space flight, just like in sports, so age is, again, a factor.
His friends are all looking at sports heroes and you're looking at people with long careers. There's a big difference.
Athletes only have a few decades in which they'll do well, then they retire. So it's easy to find a younger athlete as a hero: as they get older, they lose it.
But almost all the other professions take time to get experienced in. They require learning and years of experience to excel, other than something like astronaut, which can include younger people.
Too bad you can't include people like Chuck Yeager or Wiley Post.
You mean you don't welcome our new disaster-warning-texting overlords?
I think the real story is that you're an alien from a planet on which several days can occur in the span of 24 earth hours. That teaser went up just a day ahead of the announcement.
Oh, I do apologize. It's clear I'm not giving this the earth-shattering priority it deserves, since I couldn't even keep track of how long the tease went on.
Besides the Beatles are pretty much the best selling band of all time. In the 2000s only eminem sold more records then the Beatles.
Oh, come on. It's not like Elvis finally came out of hiding and released a new album or something.
Just the Beatles?
But this is was a world changing announcement. They've made us wait for several days and pundits have been speculating on this for all that time.
It's a big deal.
Really big.
I know, since Apple said it would change my world.
It's not like it's something trivial that won't effect most iPod or iPhone or iMac users, is it?
Not really.
Now if they could make funnier Vikings than Monty Python, THAT would count for something!
And your sarcasm is really not clever at all. I could go on and be as sarcastic as you to try to prove I'm clever, but I won't.
The point is they've earned the name by many local ex-employees. I didn't go into details, but did you ever see the site crapitalone.com while it was still up? It, along with the number of IT guys I knew that had worked there made the point very well about what kind of culture ran throughout the company.
But if you insist on just dwelling on what you think I thought I made up to be funny so you can prove you're oh, so clever, please, feel free to continue.
Yeah, I'd feel dirty if I defended Capital One, too.
They're local here and known by many people as Crapital One for their firing sprees and tendency to make employees disappear. They're also the fastest bank in the nation to sue their own customers. (I sell data to bankruptcy lawyers who keep up with this kind of thing.) They're the last bank I'd go to for a credit card or a loan anyway.
Definitely depressing. I used to teach full time, but before that, I subbed. I spent a week writing a script to send out (that later got me in touch with a Hollyweird agent, so it did its job) and after that week, went back to sub at one school I liked. That break of doing something I loved put me in a different frame -- when I drove up to that school, I started getting really depressed and realized a lot had to do with the building itself. We design offices so we like them. The same with homes. But schools are still, more often than not, dull and functional and uninteresting buildings. It's a wonder kids can stand them or teachers will put up with working in many of them.
There's also a story in education reform where there were a few men shopping for desks and noticed they all had small surfaces and went to someone who sold furniture to schools. The described what they wanted and he said, "Oh, you won't find that. You want a desk where students can work and be creative and functional. These desks are designed solely for listening."
Really a sad statement on the abuse we foster on our children in the name of education.
Oh, so you've read the fine print in the Obamacare packages?
Actually, ads in ebooks is a natural progression, it's just returning to how literature used to be published. A lot of literary works have been published or serialized and published in magazines supported by ads.
Buying a proven product does not involve anywhere near the risk of building that product in the first place, before it was proven. The risk and planning are a major part of the work.
It's a lot easier and the risk is a lot lower to buy something with a track record than to invest in creating a new product and then establishing that track record.
Oracle has, as of now, taken almost no risk on OOo, while Star Office took a major risk. Sun also took a risk, although not as big a one as Star Office did in creating the program.
Comparing that to the employee, working for the company that took the risk, is invalid.
Technically, remember, that OOo is basically a dressing up and improving of Star Office, started by a German company, so if you want to attribute 90% of the work to someone, I'd put it there, but I don't think, at this point, you can contribute 90% to one entity.
Granted, Star Office, both program and company, were bought by Sun, but a lot of the work was done well before Sun stepped in and bought it.
And, I know it's a small detail, but it can matter legally, it's not GPL, it's LGPL. There are differences.
I noticed that as well. It doesn't speak well of the Oracle people involved, since it essentially means they see Libre Office, which truly wants to remain free, as competition, and they only reason they'd see it that way is if Oracle's goals, which have not yet been stated, involved some way to tighten controls on OOo.