Speaking as somebody who aspires to teaching in the long term, I disagree. The best and brightest should be out doing the research and advancing the frontiers. Teachers should be from the next echelon, taking that material and presenting it in a way the rest of the world can learn.
Another point: many of the "best and brightest" can't teach worth a damn. Aside from the idea that it requires a different talent to teach than to study, which different people have in different measures... people who are far ahead in their fields often don't relate well to those who can't keep up with them. A teacher has to teach everybody. Especially below university levels, it requires more people skills than just standing up in front of a room and talking. A book, a scanner with OCR, and voice output would do as well -- but I don't see any proposals to replace teachers with computers.
And finally, about giving teachers more money -- it's not the money for the teachers (well, there are exceptions), it's the money to support the teachers. Books. Maps and journals and course materials. Things as prosaic as pencils for the students. That's what's been skimped so often.
What I'm saying is, before labeling every piece of mail that you get as spam, try unsubscribing. And yes, I know that some unsubscribe links are fake. What are you going to do? There are also fake breasts and fake watches. Will you spend the rest of your life wandering around as a confused virgin? (well.. maybe the wrong place to ask this)
Ooooo, love those ad hominem attacks. They really strengthen your case.
We shall loftily ignore that for the moment (dipstick) and suggest to you this course of action: Go out and have unprotected sex with 1000 prostitutes who say they don't have AIDS. Then tell me whether you feel morally superior for accurately trusting the 35 or so of them who didn't lie^H^H^Hspeak falsely.
I can run Linux on my 386 (not that I'm going to get a lot of computation done on a 386 but it could be used as my console.) I can collect old junky hardware and add disparate pieces to a Beowulf, either replacing the slowest nodes as hardware comes in or just growing it.
Try running W2K clustering on any but a P3 - a fairly fast one with a heap of memory (no pun intended.)
(Speaking of memory -- who in their right mind puts a GUI-based OS on a headless machine???)
For shoestring operations, Beowulf is recycled computing.
The patron saint of MS-bashers is m'buddy Penfield... Judge Thomas Penfield Jackson is on my Christmas card list for life.:)
"Nuke 'em 'til they glow, then shoot 'em in the dark." -- Jerry Pournelle, _FootFall_
Is this the best that the so-called egalitarian culture of the Internet has to offer?
You confuse "egalitarian" with "identical" or "mass-enlightened." Baloney.
It is "egalitarian" in the sense that all responses are given equal weight; it does not mean that those responses will all be equal in quality. Remember that the WWF and tractor pulls are very popular events these days. "Egalitarian" means that the opinions of people who think these are the pinnacles of modern civilization will be equal in importance to your (obviously far more valuable [sarcasm alert]) opinion. You may be accustomed to surrounding yourself with intelligent, educated, culturally sensitive people -- welcome to the rest of the world!
ThatTallGuy
That's the problem with democracy: two village idiots can outvote one educated person.
After a brief search through the above-cited annual report: "All cash and short-term investments are classified as available for sale and are recorded at market value." This is the amount of money they will realize if they sell the investment now (ignoring market fluctuations due to dumping such a large set of investments all at once.) This is not money they can't get their hands on if they want!
Who said anything about 30B in penalties? I said divest the OS. So you with your 401K suddenly have stock in two companies instead of one, just as with AT&T. I don't think anybody who held AT&T stock on the day of the split (and held it since) is complaining.
The snowball effect you are worried about is because one company has too much economic power as well as OS power. Gee... OS monopoly... enough finances to tip world markets... richest guy in the world... anybody seeing a pattern here?
Maybe "cash" was too specific a term. But "short term assets" is not a second line in the summary... it's a resource they can call upon on short notice. I call that "close enough."
See Microsoft's Annual Report direct from their site. I quote:
Cash and short-term investments: 31,600 (millions) including a charge-off of 3.92 billion for "impairments of certain investments." Total: 35.5 billion bucks. As of June 30, 2001 (i.e. almost a year ago.) And last I heard, they were not losing any money.
Not enough. Consider: MS has 35+ billion-with-a-B dollars just in the bank, not counting personal funds of the richest man in the world and several of his executives, not counting long-term assets. Even one billion dollars -- big as it is to you and me (or at least me) -- is barely enough to get their attention.
IMNSHO, the only way to stop their tactics for good is to divest the OS from the rest of the application world -- split the company, publicize the source, whatever it takes. The OS is where the power lies; remove the power.
Slashdot Mirror
Speaking as somebody who aspires to teaching in the long term, I disagree. The best and brightest should be out doing the research and advancing the frontiers. Teachers should be from the next echelon, taking that material and presenting it in a way the rest of the world can learn.
Another point: many of the "best and brightest" can't teach worth a damn. Aside from the idea that it requires a different talent to teach than to study, which different people have in different measures... people who are far ahead in their fields often don't relate well to those who can't keep up with them. A teacher has to teach everybody. Especially below university levels, it requires more people skills than just standing up in front of a room and talking. A book, a scanner with OCR, and voice output would do as well -- but I don't see any proposals to replace teachers with computers.
And finally, about giving teachers more money -- it's not the money for the teachers (well, there are exceptions), it's the money to support the teachers. Books. Maps and journals and course materials. Things as prosaic as pencils for the students. That's what's been skimped so often.
Of course it looks broken. It has /.'ed itself; the server is being overwhelmed with responses.
Ooooo, love those ad hominem attacks. They really strengthen your case.
We shall loftily ignore that for the moment (dipstick) and suggest to you this course of action: Go out and have unprotected sex with 1000 prostitutes who say they don't have AIDS. Then tell me whether you feel morally superior for accurately trusting the 35 or so of them who didn't lie^H^H^Hspeak falsely.
Go on. I'll wait.
Doesn't matter. If they can't find the real Canucks in the masses of Americans, that works just as well. :)
Try running W2K clustering on any but a P3 - a fairly fast one with a heap of memory (no pun intended.)
(Speaking of memory -- who in their right mind puts a GUI-based OS on a headless machine???)
For shoestring operations, Beowulf is recycled computing.
The patron saint of MS-bashers is m'buddy Penfield... Judge Thomas Penfield Jackson is on my Christmas card list for life. :)
"Nuke 'em 'til they glow, then shoot 'em in the dark." -- Jerry Pournelle, _FootFall_
You confuse "egalitarian" with "identical" or "mass-enlightened." Baloney.
It is "egalitarian" in the sense that all responses are given equal weight; it does not mean that those responses will all be equal in quality. Remember that the WWF and tractor pulls are very popular events these days. "Egalitarian" means that the opinions of people who think these are the pinnacles of modern civilization will be equal in importance to your (obviously far more valuable [sarcasm alert]) opinion. You may be accustomed to surrounding yourself with intelligent, educated, culturally sensitive people -- welcome to the rest of the world!
ThatTallGuy
That's the problem with democracy: two village idiots can outvote one educated person.
After a brief search through the above-cited annual report: "All cash and short-term investments are classified as available for sale and are recorded at market value." This is the amount of money they will realize if they sell the investment now (ignoring market fluctuations due to dumping such a large set of investments all at once.) This is not money they can't get their hands on if they want!
Who said anything about 30B in penalties? I said divest the OS. So you with your 401K suddenly have stock in two companies instead of one, just as with AT&T. I don't think anybody who held AT&T stock on the day of the split (and held it since) is complaining.
The snowball effect you are worried about is because one company has too much economic power as well as OS power. Gee... OS monopoly... enough finances to tip world markets... richest guy in the world... anybody seeing a pattern here?
Maybe "cash" was too specific a term. But "short term assets" is not a second line in the summary... it's a resource they can call upon on short notice. I call that "close enough."
See Microsoft's Annual Report direct from their site. I quote: Cash and short-term investments: 31,600 (millions) including a charge-off of 3.92 billion for "impairments of certain investments." Total: 35.5 billion bucks. As of June 30, 2001 (i.e. almost a year ago.) And last I heard, they were not losing any money.
Not enough. Consider: MS has 35+ billion-with-a-B dollars just in the bank, not counting personal funds of the richest man in the world and several of his executives, not counting long-term assets. Even one billion dollars -- big as it is to you and me (or at least me) -- is barely enough to get their attention. IMNSHO, the only way to stop their tactics for good is to divest the OS from the rest of the application world -- split the company, publicize the source, whatever it takes. The OS is where the power lies; remove the power.