Has anyone noticed that many of Ashcroft's actions since he's risen to power are being challenged and defeated in the courts? A couple have even garnered harsh criticism of Ashcroft & co. from the presiding judge. Looks like they will appeal most of the cases all the way to the Supreme Court, and most are regarding constutional issues which the court will likely hear and rule on.
I didn't hear his swearing in personally, but I'll bet part of his oath was to uphold the Constitution..
How many cases will he have to lose on grounds that he acted unconstitutionally before someone takes action to remove him from office?
Look, Amazon uses very predatory tactics to get their remainders, which they then sell as "used".
Documentation?
If this is so, then why, when I buy a book used, is it shipped from some random user's home address, often in a reused padded envelope? Is this some flimsy sham erected by a guilt-ridden Amazon.com?
I'm a teacher at such a school. Our port-80 opaque proxy is some Novell stuff, which requires some sort of authentication from the browser that has to do with the Win95/Novell logon information. That means that if you try to use a non-approved browser (like Mozilla, or heavens forbid Python to do some web programming) it don't work.
Oh, and this Novell 'stuff' crashes 1-2 times a week. Of course. Too bad they couldn't afford the cadillac of web caches, Squid.. wait..
I've seriously considered using an external proxy somewhere (netcat would work, but so would Squid running elsewhere on the 'net). I've especially considered it during the interminable downtime, as those are always times I need web access. But I'd probably get fired for that:-(
You are obviously basing this statement on political rhetoric and not on experience. Inquire at your local high school on the difficulty to remove a teacher who has tenure based on poor performance.
True, one low-score year is not enough. But combine one or more low-score year with student/parent complaints, administrative observations, and student grades, and you have enough subjective and objective information to successfully terminate a teacher.
To say that teachers as a whole take the brunt of failure in standardized testing may be true, but individual teachers do not suffer if their students perform worse than the rest of the school. Such programs have been proposed but the teachers union has kept them from happening to the best of my knowledge.
That may be in some places. Here in SC we don't have a teachers' union, so teachers are a little easier to remove. Let's just say I'm a bit worried.
I have been told that it would literally take a year worth of paper work to remove a teacher with tenure. It is tedious and dangerous as the adminstration tends to get hammered by the teachers union.
Depends where you are. Unions do create an immense inertia in the educational world, no doubt about it. However, the trouble is usually due to the subjective nature of the evaluations on which terminations are based. The union can easily argue that "students don't like this teacher because she makes them work", or "the pricipals' evaluations are flawed because he does not understand the teacher's techniques". That's why an objective measure like test scores helps the matter.
Teaching is one of the few professions were there is absolutely no accountability
This is simply not true, and is becoming less true by the day. Standardized testing is almost universal now, and who do you think bears the brunt of blame (blame is effectively equivalent to accountability) when test scores are low? Administrators? The elected school board? Students? Parents? Nope. Teachers.
There are those in the profession that support this, and those that oppose it. One positive is that it provides hard evidence with which administrators may weed out the "bad teachers". And there are bad teachers, no doubt about it.
A negative is that it narrows the focus of the entire school year to "pass the test", resulting in ineffective teaching methods, repeated "practice tests", and administrators saying "If it isn't on [the test], don't teach it. Period."
In terms of helping young citizens develop into intellectually capable adults, that's completely and totally wrong.
I teach middle school math at a school in South Carolina. My previous experience was as a math and computer science student, system administrator, and programmer. I also have quite a background in web design.
Prior to becoming a teacher, I spent a lot of time around schools and youth-assistance nonprofits. I was appalled by the state of technology, particularly in the schools.
There are many problems with the technology itself -- the kinds of computers, network connections, management and administration, etc.
There are also enormous problems in the *use* of technology -- teacher training, student training, availability, emphasis, etc. In the end, I find that many educational uses of technology are extremely shallow -- instructors either let the computer do the teaching, or use the computers as glorified pen-and-pencil.
Teachers are required to take technology courses for recertification credit in most states, but most of those courses are abysmal, as they do nothing to build fundamental understandings or relate new concepts to possibilities for real student learning.
I strongly encourage every/.'er to spend time at a school. See what things are like. Let's see the/. effect applied on the physical plane!
If you have a shred of social conscience and know a NIC from a NACK, the educational world can use your help. Bring your deep understanding, your vision, and your willingness to help to your nearest school. You might spec and build a new lab, or help a teacher to understand how the web *really* works. You may just save the school from making a big investment in something they do not understand and which will not be used. Whatever happens, you'll find it very rewarding.
Simplicity is best. Trying to align all your graphics, fit your text in the right little boxes, etc. just makes for ugly display with the wrong-sized font (and don't ever hard-code the font size!), and makes it impossible for folks with blindness to read it. Simple is best.
Avoid JavaScript (and any complex client-side functionality) like the plague. It's fine to use JavaScript, but realize that it won't work on someone's browser (I can't count the times "JavaScript Error" appears in my browser's status bar on professional sites) so you'd best provide an alternative.
Example: when you make the (bad) choice to put your navigation in a <SELECT> tag, you can use JavaScript to make the browser jump to the new section once the user selects it. However, for those without JavaScript, or for whom your JavaScript doesn't work, you
must provide a "Go" button.
Sounds like Sun's made a pretty good decision for all inovlved. Value-added, low-cost (targetting a magic price somewhere between "free" and "what it's worth to ya"), and still open source (free-beer, free-speech).
It's what took Linux from nothing to what it is today. Why not the same for an office suite?
Guido's management of this enormous, popular project stands in some contrast to Linus' management of Linux, as discussed here on slashdot in January. Guido has held a tight on his project, but has always been careful to justify his positions with solid reasoning based in a few of his own well-known principles of language design.
Guido's PEPs are a good way for him to relinquish some responsibility for the project while ensuring proper formal scrutiny of and public comment on all language improvements.
In its relatively short existence, Python has made some impressive gains in popularity and diversity of uses (from embedded systems to "supercomputers" and from 10-second syadmin hacks to full-scale applications). Congratulations, Guido.
Slashdot Mirror
I didn't hear his swearing in personally, but I'll bet part of his oath was to uphold the Constitution..
How many cases will he have to lose on grounds that he acted unconstitutionally before someone takes action to remove him from office?
Documentation?
If this is so, then why, when I buy a book used, is it shipped from some random user's home address, often in a reused padded envelope? Is this some flimsy sham erected by a guilt-ridden Amazon.com?
Dustin
I'm a teacher at such a school. Our port-80 opaque proxy is some Novell stuff, which requires some sort of authentication from the browser that has to do with the Win95/Novell logon information. That means that if you try to use a non-approved browser (like Mozilla, or heavens forbid Python to do some web programming) it don't work.
:-(
Oh, and this Novell 'stuff' crashes 1-2 times a week. Of course. Too bad they couldn't afford the cadillac of web caches, Squid.. wait..
I've seriously considered using an external proxy somewhere (netcat would work, but so would Squid running elsewhere on the 'net). I've especially considered it during the interminable downtime, as those are always times I need web access. But I'd probably get fired for that
This is simply not true, and is becoming less true by the day. Standardized testing is almost universal now, and who do you think bears the brunt of blame (blame is effectively equivalent to accountability) when test scores are low? Administrators? The elected school board? Students? Parents? Nope. Teachers.
There are those in the profession that support this, and those that oppose it. One positive is that it provides hard evidence with which administrators may weed out the "bad teachers". And there are bad teachers, no doubt about it.
A negative is that it narrows the focus of the entire school year to "pass the test", resulting in ineffective teaching methods, repeated "practice tests", and administrators saying "If it isn't on [the test], don't teach it. Period." In terms of helping young citizens develop into intellectually capable adults, that's completely and totally wrong.
Dustin
I teach middle school math at a school in South Carolina. My previous experience was as a math and computer science student, system administrator, and programmer. I also have quite a background in web design.
/.'er to spend time at a school. See what things are like. Let's see the /. effect applied on the physical plane!
Prior to becoming a teacher, I spent a lot of time around schools and youth-assistance nonprofits. I was appalled by the state of technology, particularly in the schools.
There are many problems with the technology itself -- the kinds of computers, network connections, management and administration, etc.
There are also enormous problems in the *use* of technology -- teacher training, student training, availability, emphasis, etc. In the end, I find that many educational uses of technology are extremely shallow -- instructors either let the computer do the teaching, or use the computers as glorified pen-and-pencil.
Teachers are required to take technology courses for recertification credit in most states, but most of those courses are abysmal, as they do nothing to build fundamental understandings or relate new concepts to possibilities for real student learning.
I strongly encourage every
If you have a shred of social conscience and know a NIC from a NACK, the educational world can use your help. Bring your deep understanding, your vision, and your willingness to help to your nearest school. You might spec and build a new lab, or help a teacher to understand how the web *really* works. You may just save the school from making a big investment in something they do not understand and which will not be used. Whatever happens, you'll find it very rewarding.
Dustin
Simplicity is best. Trying to align all your graphics, fit your text in the right little boxes, etc. just makes for ugly display with the wrong-sized font (and don't ever hard-code the font size!), and makes it impossible for folks with blindness to read it. Simple is best.
Avoid JavaScript (and any complex client-side functionality) like the plague. It's fine to use JavaScript, but realize that it won't work on someone's browser (I can't count the times "JavaScript Error" appears in my browser's status bar on professional sites) so you'd best provide an alternative.
Those are my pet peeves.
Sounds like Sun's made a pretty good decision for all inovlved. Value-added, low-cost (targetting a magic price somewhere between "free" and "what it's worth to ya"), and still open source (free-beer, free-speech). It's what took Linux from nothing to what it is today. Why not the same for an office suite?
Guido's management of this enormous, popular project stands in some contrast to Linus' management of Linux, as discussed here on slashdot in January. Guido has held a tight on his project, but has always been careful to justify his positions with solid reasoning based in a few of his own well-known principles of language design.
Guido's PEPs are a good way for him to relinquish some responsibility for the project while ensuring proper formal scrutiny of and public comment on all language improvements.
In its relatively short existence, Python has made some impressive gains in popularity and diversity of uses (from embedded systems to "supercomputers" and from 10-second syadmin hacks to full-scale applications). Congratulations, Guido.