It's not quite the easy s// operation you might think it is - "gods" are necessarily supernatural concepts, but a flying purple elephant is subject to natural laws that we are well acquainted with.
For that matter, life on another planet very well might have a large elephant-size creature with vestigal wings. In fact we can make up a lot of lifeforms that might be on other planets (assuming for argument's sake that there is life on other planets), but the logical thing to do is not make any of those predictions at all.
Actually, the Bible pretty much states exactly what time the crucifixion did occur: The first Sunday after the first full moon on or after the vernal equinox. This spring celebration was fused with local pagan celebrations in some cultures (ours) and thus you get rabbits and chocolate. Not everyone in the world celebrates easter with chocolates and rabbits - the Greeks, for example.
The biggest problem with FSM is that it's a bad analogy. It takes an argument about something necessarily supernatural - a Creator - and forces it into the natural world. Of course it's silly that spaghetti would fly around and talk or whatever FSM does. That's because the properties surrounding spaghetti, as well as the possibilities of it becoming animated, are very well known to people. However, we know very little (zero, in fact) about Creators of the universe.
Not true at all - it is the idea that because no knowledge can be had about the existence of a creator, no assumptions should be made about the existence or non-existence of one. Sounds perfectly logical to me.
The problem of course is that all you need to do is describe the final product and any computer programmer worth anything will be able to figure out how to do it. The real important results are published in journals (patent-free!) or kept proprietary secrets (Google). Software patents don't help the public out; they hinder the public because it's now damn near impossible to develop software without infringing any patents.
And then when software companies can't patent software and keep its code a trade secret, other hackers look at the finished product and go "oh, I know how I can do that!" and rebuild it anyway.
But you were. You may have changed, yes, but the fact that you couldn't pull yourself through two more years when, at the time, it was the best option for you, tells me a lot about you. The fact that you thought high school was intolerable tells me that 1) you had one of the worst high schools in the country 2) the surrounding community was similarly dangerous or 3) you are weak. So weak, in fact, that you couldn't handle high school. Do you think that the killer you mentioned was that way because of high school? I seriously doubt it.
Your high school seems like a rare case, to be honest. School shootings happen, in-school murder/manslaughter happens, but it's not as common as you think. Our high school had two students kill themselves as well. High school students do these things. I survived just fine. It seems to me more likely to me that it was your community you escaped, not your high school. Also, realize that a LOT has changed in 20 years.
You're also trying to tell me that you've never had to deal with a bitter administrator? Abusive policemen? That's because you've been a student all your life. Even if you become a professor, be prepared to deal with university management. They can be a real bitch. Be prepared to deal with bureaucracy and bone-headed politics when applying for grants. And if you ever need to advise the government on anything, I don't think you're going to like it.
Humility is very important. I wish G.W. Bush had more humility. I wish Americans in general were more humble. Humility doesn't work opposite individuality or initiative - in fact, I think it augments those. It is very important to your success that you realize your flaws. Humble is not the same as submissive. If we had more humility in the US, we wouldn't have so much distrust of academics (which I think is one of the biggest parts of the problem).
Finally, one of the biggest thing high school teaches you is how to survive high school. I think that's a very important skill to have.
Do prisoners get to leave prison after their prison shift and do whatever they want? Can prisoners quit prison whenever they want to? And somehow I think social outcasts are going to run into the same problem no matter where they go. If you mean actual violence, the schools are no more dangerous than its surrounding community. I think you might be over-exaggerating just a tad.
A student that cannot pass basic standardized tests will not succeed in a liberal arts university unless they get smart enough to pass those same tests. Seriously. I don't care how bad a test taker you are. The high school exams needed to pass (at least in Indiana) are quite easy for someone who is not ignorant.
Close - I was in Indiana. And hey, a fellow U of C alum!
You took it upon yourself to skip the HS Diploma because you were getting a diploma of equal or greater value. This is a clear exception to the rule. But what if you hadn't met that someone who helped you out? What did you gain by leaving high school 2 years earlier? The fact that you didn't complete high school tells me one of two possible things: 1) You are (or were) a weak and/or lazy bastard who can't handle mundane but necessary tasks or 2) if you left high school early to go to university, then you are a very ambitious person.
I was one of those children. I applied for special status at the local University, and was accepted, but I remained in high school. I know how shitty school can be, but the fact is that it's seriously not that bad. Actually, this would be one way to improve the system: teach students that everything is going to be okay! Jon Stewart had the best idea: take kids to a 20 year high school reunion.
Not every gifted high school student has the option of attending college immediately after dropping out of high school. If they are crying bitter tears over the SHITHOLE that is the education system, they're going to need Prozac to get them through the SHITHOLE that is life. Seriously, those terrible teachers in high school? You're going to have to deal with people like them your entire life. If you can't take it for four years, you have bigger issues.
The problem with the education system doesn't involve the best students. The problem is in how the worst students are handled. If the best students can't take it, I place the blame solely on them. You found a way - but the fact is that many high school students who are at the top of their class (as far as intelligence) can't go straight to university. The MAJOR problems going down in inner cities don't involve giving the brightest students advanced education.
This "schools teach people to become sheeple" crap has to stop, though. Not all teachers hate kids. I know very many teachers who love teaching kids. Yes, part of the problem is that bad teachers do keep their jobs. Schools do teach "socially appropriate" habits, and this is a Very Good Thing. They are NOT meant to teach you to be silent and submissive. They might teach you to be humble. They may teach you that you in fact, do not know everything. In fact, you seem like a person who could use a great deal of humility. I think a lot of people could use more humility. They might teach you respect for authority. They might teach you how to properly deal with authority. But how are schools going to teach you to question authority without undermining it? I think that schools are already doing the best they can on that front.
Err... you're suggesting that a large proportion of people on a slashdot forum are highschool dropouts? Not that I think slashdot readers are All That, but I would suspect there are fewer highschool dropouts in these forums than, say, the national average...
It was meant with a certain amount of sarcasm - of course the majority of people on Slashdot aren't high school dropouts. But I do think they are acting like they are.
In any case, I'm well into a PhD program now, I never thought about dropping out of highschool, and I still agree with a lot of the criticisms. I'm not sure why you think that distinguishing "your" and "you're" is a good way to test overall education and intelligence (though it is aggravating of course), or why you completely dismiss the obvious fact that not everyone learns the same way, or is good at the same things. Or that teaching people with a particular multiple-choice test in mind, while it may increase standardized test scores, might not be the ideal way to prepare people for the real world.
It might not be ideal, but it's the most efficient. The fact is that most highly intelligent people can pass the standardized tests. You can't compare people's intelligence using those tests (I am smarter because I was in the 99th percentile and YOU were only in he 98th!!), but if people fail them, that certainly speaks volumes about their intelligence. Even if your ideal method of learning might be listening to audio tapes underwater, most students can learn in a lecture-style environment.
I know we're not trying to convince people to stay in school. But there's nothing wrong with *what* is being taught in high school, the problem is in *how*. And a lot of the reasons people in this conversation have been coming up with apply only to those who are smarter than your average bear. I was a teenager, I think it's ridiculous that those people have to drop out of school because it's too easy, or too stupid.
I guess my point in a nutshell is: we don't need to worry that we're bringing the better students down, we need to worry about bringing the worse students up.
The solution isn't getting rid of standardized testing, because we need to make sure students can pass those tests. If you ask me, the problem partially comes from our culture. We are becoming increasingly distrustful of academics or "eggheads". Being popular implies that you don't give a shit about schoolwork or that you are above it somehow. It's important to work hard and achieve, but studying doesn't count towards working hard; in fact studying is to the detriment of hard work somehow. Grades are thrown by the wayside in favor of a win for the school sports team.
Even our teaching methods are under attack - you many remember the recent report by conservative group Human Events on the 10 most harmful books of the 19th and 20th century. On the list was John Dewey's book Democracy and Education, in which Dewey attacked the current system of simply teaching children facts and suggested that we teach children thinking skills.
I think our teaching methods could be improved. But I think kids are dropping out of high school because our culture says it's okay to.
Welcome to the club, man. When this happened to me, I went looking for challeneges - I took a few courses at the local university. Maybe you can find someone to teach you some real math - get the Spivak calculus book or an elementary number theory book and learn to write proofs.
I absolutely agree that teaching kids the why in addition to the how is vital - but if we that kind of sophistication in our high schools, I think things would be a lot different anyway.
People shouldn't get me wrong - education reform in our high schools is absolutely vital. But I've had it with this kind of whining from intelligent people.
And what exactly have us Orthodox Christians done that was so terrible?
That's what I thought.
But I think you are one of the sane people. True, religions have been abused, and yes, it should make religious people angry. And I think it does. But you can't hold religion at fault, you have to hold the leaders responsible.
Look at it this way: not only is the history of organized religion terrible, the history of humanity as a whole is pretty terrible. The history of organized government has been pretty terrible - in fact, responsible for all the wars in human history!! Does that mean government is bad?
Man, a lot of people sure are whining about how the high school machine is interested in cranking out thoughtless droids in order for the corporate system to maintain control over helpless consumers, ruining education by teaching to a narrow test (never mind that the majority of Americans can't keep "your" and "you're" straight), or teaching kids in a way that is not best suited to them, or teaching things that "don't matter in the real world."
These are probably the people dropping out of high school. Grow up, people!
The standardized tests test for perfectly acceptable topics: basic grammar, reading comprehension, and basic math. The majority of the kids dropping out are most likely the ones who cannot accomplish these things. So if you are getting bored in class because the teacher won't teach "outside of the box", take it upon your self to learn these things, but don't quit high school! First of all, if you can afford it, you can simply switch schools. Second of all, even though you might be convinced you are a super genius, people hiring you will be a little less than convinced if you couldn't sit through four years of high school.
If your teachers or administrators are jerks, notify someone. Figure out exactly what they are doing wrong (say, not letting you leave for a medical emergency) and report them to the proper authorities. I truly feel sorry for you if you get a bad teacher that can't teach worth shit, but even if you go to a small school like I did, you'll get a different teacher next year who can explain things to you. Oh, I know, why don't expend some effort and go to a different teacher of that subject for help? When your teachers refuse to help you, provided you are putting forth an effort, go to the principal or the guidance counselor. If you don't like the way the system is being run, there are smarter ways to fix things than quitting high school.
Also, as much as you might put stock in the Great Sheeple Conspiracy, seriously, take off your tin foil hat.
I don't understand why people drop out of high school. It's free (unlike college), and it's only going to take away 1 or 2 years of your life. Even if high school is useless for you, I don't see what plans you could possibly have that would be ruined by your continued attendance in high school. It may suck, but seriously, that diploma is important.
I don't think that JS has tuples in the same manner, and Python has more native functions for dealing with dicts and arrays, as well as those "magic" functions I talked about earlier.
If JS does have these features, please forgive me, as the state of Javascript documentation is completely pathetic. That's the biggest problem, in my mind. I had no idea JS could even handle dicts (comes built-in to objects, it seems) or do closures at all from reading literature on JS. It's a lot more powerful than I thought, but I still think Python is better.
There's nothing wrong with Javascript as a language. In fact, it's actually more powerful than Python, considering that Javascript really is a functional language
Actually, Python is just as much of a functional language as Javascript - it does the same thing. The problem I have with Javascript is its slim pickings in data processing. Python has dicts, arrays, and tuples, and built-in methods to make your classes behave like these objects. Really, this is six/half dozen stuff, but the REAL negative to Javascript is the complete lack of good documentation out there.
You're right, however, in that the real evil is how browsers implement Javascript.
I don't know about you, but the Javascript I've been doing lately is 99% DOM manipulation, 1% form verification.
Javascript has evolved into this kind of creature - there's tons of ugly crud left over from the old days when it was about form validation. I think if you really wanted to see things improve, you'd start over. In addition, all of the documentation on Javascript is about 99% form verification and Stupid Browser Tricks and 1% DOM manipulation.
Isn't that already the case? Seems to me that client-side authentication would be rife with problems, and thus all authentication methods I know of are either 100% server-side (IIS' basic auth or Apache's.htaccess, for example) or use little or no javascript client-side just for sanity-checking before sending off the credentials for server-side validation via Perl, PHP, Ruby, ASP, ASP.NET, etc.
The server-side validation all comes from externals like PHP. What we need is something like HTTP authentication. The authentication procedure is a good start, but it needs to be implemented in the browsers a lot better for it to really work. For example, a form input indicating that this is a user/password box rather than some popup getting in the user's way. Also letting users destroy authentication information.
I think, then, that the solution would be to rewrite parts of the browser, destroy Javascript and start over again.
This of course has been said for YEARS, I'm certain.
Yes, the kid was acting like an idiot - but what kind of threat could possibly justify what the policeman did? Even verbally abusing the cops (and what was on video was not verbal abuse) would have only justified at most one tazering. After the initial incident, the kid was simply being dead weight - that's not an excuse to abuse him further. They could easily have picked the kid up (which, I believe, they did anyway in the end), take the kid down to headquarters and be done with it.
The reason they are searching the library is for the security of the students. It was clear there was no threat; the kid was just being a jerk. Sure that's asking for it, but it serious scares me when a cop loses his head over a college kid throwing a tantrum.
We trust the cops to keep a level head when they are doing their duty - picking a fight with a punk kid is simply below the standards that we should hold policemen to.
The biggest benefit of the current style is a widget set that can display documents using a simple markup language. It also benefits from a programmer interface based on documents, or data, not subroutines.What's wrong? It results in a very static design - you have to basically refresh the entire document to change one aspect of it with dynamic (where "dynamic" means "from somewheres else") content. There are plenty of hacks around this. Among the problems:
The current method for allowing a document to react to a user is terrible. Javascript sucks.
HTTP being a stateless protocol is both a benefit and drawback. It's a benefit because it makes things simpler. It's a drawback because, well, it's useful to have state. Currently we have what can be described at best as "workarounds" - sessions, cookies, etc.
The current method for updating a part of a document without reloading the entire thing boils down to a single Javascript function.
So I think the solutions here would be: sack Javascript and replace it with something better, like an iteration of Python, and make the focus more on manipulating the DOM than verifying forms; move the user authentication parts from the documents themselves (PHP, etc.) and into the web page server; and make the network support better. It would be nice to have a web browser that supported, say, socket based connections. The negative side to that, of course, is now you have to support all those connections. But it could be useful for other purposes as well.
Basically, the next step will be to treat the browser simply as a large framework for GUIs.
First of all, it's wrong if only because this would imply the similar death of the video gaming industry, which is not going to happen.
But to address what you say: there are a lot more things out there that are held in check merely by "morality and fear of the law" but you don't see society crumbling because of it.
Secondly, people DO want plastic disks. It might be easy for YOU to go online and get the music you want, but even in the absence of worrying about getting caught, much of the population has no idea how to find the music they want. It's much easier to go on iTunes or go to the store. And if someone does make something that's easy enough for 75% of the population, existing copyright laws will be able to control it to the industry's satisfaction. Look at YouTube for an example. The problem right now is that the copyright laws are more than enough for controlling the situation.
Secondly, record companies also do a lot more than control how plastic disks are created and distributed: they also make those disks VISIBLE - they're the gatekeepers of quality of music. Whenever you have media, you always have to have gatekeepers of quality that scale to the size of the industry. Even if all the record companies went bankrupt right now, and everyone went digital, you'd see the same the same pattern occuring: groups making money off of affiliating themselves with the best artists.
Even when musicians were live performers, people paid for copies of the composer's work to play on the piano at home. Nowadays, most musicians are live performers and composers rolled into one - which even counts groups like The Backstreet Boys or Britney Spears if you look at those groups as aggregates - Britney Spears doesn't write her own music, but the Britney Team has people who write it just for her. So people are going to pay for music for the foreseeable future at least. That's not even including those people who are going to purchase physical copies for the purpose of supporting the artist directly.
What the internet is going to do is make the entire process transparent - like Jenner says, you can get as much information about the artist as you want: blogs, live recordings, outtakes, etc. You're also going to get bands that are truly breakthrough artists, but aren't "commerical" enough for the majors that can now cause a buzz online instead. But even then, they are going to be affiliated with at least a small record company. Even if it's just the band and their friends under a label they started, it still lends credence to that band and makes tours easier to book and critics more amiable to reviewing your record. Record labels aren't going anywhere - but what I think IS going to change is that they'll stop being 4 mega-conglomerates and become more decentralized. You're already seeing this, but the majors are still maintaining control of the smaller groups. I think you're going to see a loss in this kind of control. I would also like to see a movement towards artist control of copyright.
There is a kernel of truth in what you say, however: the majority of a band's income comes from live performances.
Slashdot Mirror
It's not quite the easy s// operation you might think it is - "gods" are necessarily supernatural concepts, but a flying purple elephant is subject to natural laws that we are well acquainted with.
For that matter, life on another planet very well might have a large elephant-size creature with vestigal wings. In fact we can make up a lot of lifeforms that might be on other planets (assuming for argument's sake that there is life on other planets), but the logical thing to do is not make any of those predictions at all.
Actually, the Bible pretty much states exactly what time the crucifixion did occur: The first Sunday after the first full moon on or after the vernal equinox. This spring celebration was fused with local pagan celebrations in some cultures (ours) and thus you get rabbits and chocolate. Not everyone in the world celebrates easter with chocolates and rabbits - the Greeks, for example.
The biggest problem with FSM is that it's a bad analogy. It takes an argument about something necessarily supernatural - a Creator - and forces it into the natural world. Of course it's silly that spaghetti would fly around and talk or whatever FSM does. That's because the properties surrounding spaghetti, as well as the possibilities of it becoming animated, are very well known to people. However, we know very little (zero, in fact) about Creators of the universe.
Not true at all - it is the idea that because no knowledge can be had about the existence of a creator, no assumptions should be made about the existence or non-existence of one. Sounds perfectly logical to me.
The problem of course is that all you need to do is describe the final product and any computer programmer worth anything will be able to figure out how to do it. The real important results are published in journals (patent-free!) or kept proprietary secrets (Google). Software patents don't help the public out; they hinder the public because it's now damn near impossible to develop software without infringing any patents.
"...he learned using logic and reason isn't enough. You have to be a dick to everyone who doesn't think like you."
And then when software companies can't patent software and keep its code a trade secret, other hackers look at the finished product and go "oh, I know how I can do that!" and rebuild it anyway.
When the Catholics admit something is true, you've got to be pretty far gone to still not believe it.
It's unfortunate though that atheists insist on maintaining the intellectual high ground when agnosticism is the most logical perspective on life.
But you were. You may have changed, yes, but the fact that you couldn't pull yourself through two more years when, at the time, it was the best option for you, tells me a lot about you. The fact that you thought high school was intolerable tells me that 1) you had one of the worst high schools in the country 2) the surrounding community was similarly dangerous or 3) you are weak. So weak, in fact, that you couldn't handle high school. Do you think that the killer you mentioned was that way because of high school? I seriously doubt it.
Your high school seems like a rare case, to be honest. School shootings happen, in-school murder/manslaughter happens, but it's not as common as you think. Our high school had two students kill themselves as well. High school students do these things. I survived just fine. It seems to me more likely to me that it was your community you escaped, not your high school. Also, realize that a LOT has changed in 20 years.
You're also trying to tell me that you've never had to deal with a bitter administrator? Abusive policemen? That's because you've been a student all your life. Even if you become a professor, be prepared to deal with university management. They can be a real bitch. Be prepared to deal with bureaucracy and bone-headed politics when applying for grants. And if you ever need to advise the government on anything, I don't think you're going to like it.
Humility is very important. I wish G.W. Bush had more humility. I wish Americans in general were more humble. Humility doesn't work opposite individuality or initiative - in fact, I think it augments those. It is very important to your success that you realize your flaws. Humble is not the same as submissive. If we had more humility in the US, we wouldn't have so much distrust of academics (which I think is one of the biggest parts of the problem).
Finally, one of the biggest thing high school teaches you is how to survive high school. I think that's a very important skill to have.
Do prisoners get to leave prison after their prison shift and do whatever they want? Can prisoners quit prison whenever they want to? And somehow I think social outcasts are going to run into the same problem no matter where they go. If you mean actual violence, the schools are no more dangerous than its surrounding community. I think you might be over-exaggerating just a tad.
A student that cannot pass basic standardized tests will not succeed in a liberal arts university unless they get smart enough to pass those same tests. Seriously. I don't care how bad a test taker you are. The high school exams needed to pass (at least in Indiana) are quite easy for someone who is not ignorant.
Close - I was in Indiana. And hey, a fellow U of C alum!
You took it upon yourself to skip the HS Diploma because you were getting a diploma of equal or greater value. This is a clear exception to the rule. But what if you hadn't met that someone who helped you out? What did you gain by leaving high school 2 years earlier? The fact that you didn't complete high school tells me one of two possible things: 1) You are (or were) a weak and/or lazy bastard who can't handle mundane but necessary tasks or 2) if you left high school early to go to university, then you are a very ambitious person.
I was one of those children. I applied for special status at the local University, and was accepted, but I remained in high school. I know how shitty school can be, but the fact is that it's seriously not that bad. Actually, this would be one way to improve the system: teach students that everything is going to be okay! Jon Stewart had the best idea: take kids to a 20 year high school reunion.
Not every gifted high school student has the option of attending college immediately after dropping out of high school. If they are crying bitter tears over the SHITHOLE that is the education system, they're going to need Prozac to get them through the SHITHOLE that is life. Seriously, those terrible teachers in high school? You're going to have to deal with people like them your entire life. If you can't take it for four years, you have bigger issues.
The problem with the education system doesn't involve the best students. The problem is in how the worst students are handled. If the best students can't take it, I place the blame solely on them. You found a way - but the fact is that many high school students who are at the top of their class (as far as intelligence) can't go straight to university. The MAJOR problems going down in inner cities don't involve giving the brightest students advanced education.
This "schools teach people to become sheeple" crap has to stop, though. Not all teachers hate kids. I know very many teachers who love teaching kids. Yes, part of the problem is that bad teachers do keep their jobs. Schools do teach "socially appropriate" habits, and this is a Very Good Thing. They are NOT meant to teach you to be silent and submissive. They might teach you to be humble. They may teach you that you in fact, do not know everything. In fact, you seem like a person who could use a great deal of humility. I think a lot of people could use more humility. They might teach you respect for authority. They might teach you how to properly deal with authority. But how are schools going to teach you to question authority without undermining it? I think that schools are already doing the best they can on that front.
It was meant with a certain amount of sarcasm - of course the majority of people on Slashdot aren't high school dropouts. But I do think they are acting like they are.
It might not be ideal, but it's the most efficient. The fact is that most highly intelligent people can pass the standardized tests. You can't compare people's intelligence using those tests (I am smarter because I was in the 99th percentile and YOU were only in he 98th!!), but if people fail them, that certainly speaks volumes about their intelligence. Even if your ideal method of learning might be listening to audio tapes underwater, most students can learn in a lecture-style environment.
I know we're not trying to convince people to stay in school. But there's nothing wrong with *what* is being taught in high school, the problem is in *how*. And a lot of the reasons people in this conversation have been coming up with apply only to those who are smarter than your average bear. I was a teenager, I think it's ridiculous that those people have to drop out of school because it's too easy, or too stupid.
I guess my point in a nutshell is: we don't need to worry that we're bringing the better students down, we need to worry about bringing the worse students up.
The solution isn't getting rid of standardized testing, because we need to make sure students can pass those tests. If you ask me, the problem partially comes from our culture. We are becoming increasingly distrustful of academics or "eggheads". Being popular implies that you don't give a shit about schoolwork or that you are above it somehow. It's important to work hard and achieve, but studying doesn't count towards working hard; in fact studying is to the detriment of hard work somehow. Grades are thrown by the wayside in favor of a win for the school sports team.
Even our teaching methods are under attack - you many remember the recent report by conservative group Human Events on the 10 most harmful books of the 19th and 20th century. On the list was John Dewey's book Democracy and Education, in which Dewey attacked the current system of simply teaching children facts and suggested that we teach children thinking skills.
I think our teaching methods could be improved. But I think kids are dropping out of high school because our culture says it's okay to.
Welcome to the club, man. When this happened to me, I went looking for challeneges - I took a few courses at the local university. Maybe you can find someone to teach you some real math - get the Spivak calculus book or an elementary number theory book and learn to write proofs.
I absolutely agree that teaching kids the why in addition to the how is vital - but if we that kind of sophistication in our high schools, I think things would be a lot different anyway.
People shouldn't get me wrong - education reform in our high schools is absolutely vital. But I've had it with this kind of whining from intelligent people.
And what exactly have us Orthodox Christians done that was so terrible?
That's what I thought.
But I think you are one of the sane people. True, religions have been abused, and yes, it should make religious people angry. And I think it does. But you can't hold religion at fault, you have to hold the leaders responsible.
Look at it this way: not only is the history of organized religion terrible, the history of humanity as a whole is pretty terrible. The history of organized government has been pretty terrible - in fact, responsible for all the wars in human history!! Does that mean government is bad?
Man, a lot of people sure are whining about how the high school machine is interested in cranking out thoughtless droids in order for the corporate system to maintain control over helpless consumers, ruining education by teaching to a narrow test (never mind that the majority of Americans can't keep "your" and "you're" straight), or teaching kids in a way that is not best suited to them, or teaching things that "don't matter in the real world."
These are probably the people dropping out of high school. Grow up, people!
The standardized tests test for perfectly acceptable topics: basic grammar, reading comprehension, and basic math. The majority of the kids dropping out are most likely the ones who cannot accomplish these things. So if you are getting bored in class because the teacher won't teach "outside of the box", take it upon your self to learn these things, but don't quit high school! First of all, if you can afford it, you can simply switch schools. Second of all, even though you might be convinced you are a super genius, people hiring you will be a little less than convinced if you couldn't sit through four years of high school.
If your teachers or administrators are jerks, notify someone. Figure out exactly what they are doing wrong (say, not letting you leave for a medical emergency) and report them to the proper authorities. I truly feel sorry for you if you get a bad teacher that can't teach worth shit, but even if you go to a small school like I did, you'll get a different teacher next year who can explain things to you. Oh, I know, why don't expend some effort and go to a different teacher of that subject for help? When your teachers refuse to help you, provided you are putting forth an effort, go to the principal or the guidance counselor. If you don't like the way the system is being run, there are smarter ways to fix things than quitting high school.
Also, as much as you might put stock in the Great Sheeple Conspiracy, seriously, take off your tin foil hat.
I don't understand why people drop out of high school. It's free (unlike college), and it's only going to take away 1 or 2 years of your life. Even if high school is useless for you, I don't see what plans you could possibly have that would be ruined by your continued attendance in high school. It may suck, but seriously, that diploma is important.
I don't think that JS has tuples in the same manner, and Python has more native functions for dealing with dicts and arrays, as well as those "magic" functions I talked about earlier.
If JS does have these features, please forgive me, as the state of Javascript documentation is completely pathetic. That's the biggest problem, in my mind. I had no idea JS could even handle dicts (comes built-in to objects, it seems) or do closures at all from reading literature on JS. It's a lot more powerful than I thought, but I still think Python is better.
Sure, call me when these are implemented.
It would be more likely that browsers will correctly implement a brand new language than new iterations of the same language.
Actually, Python is just as much of a functional language as Javascript - it does the same thing. The problem I have with Javascript is its slim pickings in data processing. Python has dicts, arrays, and tuples, and built-in methods to make your classes behave like these objects. Really, this is six/half dozen stuff, but the REAL negative to Javascript is the complete lack of good documentation out there.
You're right, however, in that the real evil is how browsers implement Javascript.
Javascript has evolved into this kind of creature - there's tons of ugly crud left over from the old days when it was about form validation. I think if you really wanted to see things improve, you'd start over. In addition, all of the documentation on Javascript is about 99% form verification and Stupid Browser Tricks and 1% DOM manipulation.
The server-side validation all comes from externals like PHP. What we need is something like HTTP authentication. The authentication procedure is a good start, but it needs to be implemented in the browsers a lot better for it to really work. For example, a form input indicating that this is a user/password box rather than some popup getting in the user's way. Also letting users destroy authentication information.
I think, then, that the solution would be to rewrite parts of the browser, destroy Javascript and start over again.
This of course has been said for YEARS, I'm certain.
Yes, the kid was acting like an idiot - but what kind of threat could possibly justify what the policeman did? Even verbally abusing the cops (and what was on video was not verbal abuse) would have only justified at most one tazering. After the initial incident, the kid was simply being dead weight - that's not an excuse to abuse him further. They could easily have picked the kid up (which, I believe, they did anyway in the end), take the kid down to headquarters and be done with it.
The reason they are searching the library is for the security of the students. It was clear there was no threat; the kid was just being a jerk. Sure that's asking for it, but it serious scares me when a cop loses his head over a college kid throwing a tantrum.
We trust the cops to keep a level head when they are doing their duty - picking a fight with a punk kid is simply below the standards that we should hold policemen to.
So I think the solutions here would be: sack Javascript and replace it with something better, like an iteration of Python, and make the focus more on manipulating the DOM than verifying forms; move the user authentication parts from the documents themselves (PHP, etc.) and into the web page server; and make the network support better. It would be nice to have a web browser that supported, say, socket based connections. The negative side to that, of course, is now you have to support all those connections. But it could be useful for other purposes as well.
Basically, the next step will be to treat the browser simply as a large framework for GUIs.
For that to be true you have to count logging (and pissing) off Second Life players as "harm".
Wait a second - didn't they release Firefox 2.0 like over two weeks ago?
You seem to be doing pretty well yourself...
s html
http://nethack.devnull.net/tournament/scoreboard.
I'll submit my own observation: people use the internet to post "it's a trap" on anything they possibly can.
That's nonsense.
First of all, it's wrong if only because this would imply the similar death of the video gaming industry, which is not going to happen.
But to address what you say: there are a lot more things out there that are held in check merely by "morality and fear of the law" but you don't see society crumbling because of it.
Secondly, people DO want plastic disks. It might be easy for YOU to go online and get the music you want, but even in the absence of worrying about getting caught, much of the population has no idea how to find the music they want. It's much easier to go on iTunes or go to the store. And if someone does make something that's easy enough for 75% of the population, existing copyright laws will be able to control it to the industry's satisfaction. Look at YouTube for an example. The problem right now is that the copyright laws are more than enough for controlling the situation.
Secondly, record companies also do a lot more than control how plastic disks are created and distributed: they also make those disks VISIBLE - they're the gatekeepers of quality of music. Whenever you have media, you always have to have gatekeepers of quality that scale to the size of the industry. Even if all the record companies went bankrupt right now, and everyone went digital, you'd see the same the same pattern occuring: groups making money off of affiliating themselves with the best artists.
Even when musicians were live performers, people paid for copies of the composer's work to play on the piano at home. Nowadays, most musicians are live performers and composers rolled into one - which even counts groups like The Backstreet Boys or Britney Spears if you look at those groups as aggregates - Britney Spears doesn't write her own music, but the Britney Team has people who write it just for her. So people are going to pay for music for the foreseeable future at least. That's not even including those people who are going to purchase physical copies for the purpose of supporting the artist directly.
What the internet is going to do is make the entire process transparent - like Jenner says, you can get as much information about the artist as you want: blogs, live recordings, outtakes, etc. You're also going to get bands that are truly breakthrough artists, but aren't "commerical" enough for the majors that can now cause a buzz online instead. But even then, they are going to be affiliated with at least a small record company. Even if it's just the band and their friends under a label they started, it still lends credence to that band and makes tours easier to book and critics more amiable to reviewing your record. Record labels aren't going anywhere - but what I think IS going to change is that they'll stop being 4 mega-conglomerates and become more decentralized. You're already seeing this, but the majors are still maintaining control of the smaller groups. I think you're going to see a loss in this kind of control. I would also like to see a movement towards artist control of copyright.
There is a kernel of truth in what you say, however: the majority of a band's income comes from live performances.