Don't underestimate the impact of how the news of the NSA-Big American Tech orgy is playing out abroad. The Snowden leak has confirmed the most cynical suspicions of most mainland Chinese, and the pressure in that billion+ market for products unstained by NSA influence will become a major tech driver in the near future. In fact, for most people in the world, the only spying they dislike more than being spied on by their own governments is being spied on by the USA. Unless Microsoft, Google, and Apple can put together a successful Hail Mary marketing campaign to salvage their images, alternatives like Firefox OS are very likely to see surprising growth in their market share.
In other words, what Foxconn is doing may not be Open Source altruism. More likely, they are positioning themselves to ride an anti-NSA wave, particularly in mainland China.
Like Muad'Dave said, I figure the Tsunami washing away nearly everything in the area to be a bigger reason for people going to 'live in school gymnasiums'. The earthquake alone was actually survivable.
The earthquake was survivable. Other areas are rebuilding from the tsunami. The area around Fukushima Daiichi remains empty. It will stay empty of humans for years to come.
As for 'no mood to suck it up', well, it's their choice, but I figure they're going to start recanting when it really starts hitting pocket books and pollution targets.
No, they won't. If you don't understand this then you don't understand the Japanese people. In some respects the Japanese people view the meltdowns at Fukushia Daiichi as the very worst disaster to ever befall their country. Considering some of the things that have happened to Japan, that might seem overstated, but it is not. Those other disasters were ones that could be worked around and made better. Tons of radioactive crud being spewed across the countryside is not something that they can make better. They can collect as much of it as they can and bury it, but they know it is still there, waiting to kill just inches beneath the surface of the elementary school playgrounds. That's the sort of horror that will have Japanese people waking up in cold sweats for decades to come. This is the kind of horror that will spawn a new generation of Japanese monster movies as the culture tries to exorcise these demons.
Gee, I wonder why that is? Could it be those "tiny amounts of radiation" that leaked and caused all the folks who used to provide services to go and live in school gymnasiums in the next prefecture over?
The nuclear power industry just took a mammoth dump all over the Japanese people's beloved countryside. They are in no mood to "suck it up." Nuclear power is dead in Japan. Get used to it.
Gee, I wonder why that is? Could it be those "tiny amounts of radiation" that leaked and caused all the folks who used to provide services to go and live in school gymnasiums in the next prefecture over?
The nuclear power industry just took a mammoth dump all over the Japanese people's beloved countryside. They are in no mood to "suck it up." Nuclear power is dead in Japan. YOU suck it up.
Good riddance. All schools should be able to do that, not just the charters. If a child is disrupting his classmates' education and refuses to stop, ie: he's a troublemaker, then he should face discipline and expulsion.
Really. Go to your friendly neighborhood high school and visit some of the classrooms at the end of the day. It's nasty. Kids today have taken slobbery to a whole new level. It is unfair to students that the only time they get a clean classroom is the first period of the day. Without either proper upbringing from their parents or firmly enforced rules from the school, kids will be pigs. The empirical evidence to support this claim can be found within a few miles of where you live.
that a school teaches its students to submit to such arbitrary authority?
Not arbitrary authority. The school's authority. If the school doesn't want kids to bring Sharpies to school so they can cut down on the graffiti and vandalism, then the students need to not bring Sharpies to school. If students do so anyway, they need to learn that their feelings and opinions on the matter do not count. If the school has a dress code and the child violates the dress code, then they need to learn that their feelings and opinions on that matter are irrelevant as well.
In other words, children need to learn to follow the rules of the organization that they find themselves a part of.
I won't debate your points about the rich, though. After all, the rich are the main reason why most politicians suck.
The objection is to teachers' unions that get policies in place that make it hard to fire teachers for incompetence. This sort of thing does occur in some school systems.
It's pretty unusual, actually. Very few school districts actually have work rules that protect incompetent teachers. The problem is that administrators have to prove that the teacher is incompetent. If the administrators are themselves incompetent, then they either don't bother trying or they fail to properly prove their case.
This isn't a problem with the unions. It is a problem with poor management and incompetent administrators that get promoted to positions of authority due to nepotism or favoritism.
A fact that's not lost on China's planners. That's why Beijing is trying several different strategies to quickly raise wages and thus build a larger domestic consumer market.
SCENARIO #2: Put that same developer on a team fixing bugs that made it to the field and need quick resolution (a potentially more challenging job.)
Way to go with the clumsy and totally inaccurate parallel.
Let's have your software developer above be trying to fix bugs in the code while the customer, who knows somewhere between jack and squat about programming because he is too lazy to learn, is trying to "add his own features". Do this without version control.
In the above parallel, the code monkey is the teacher, the program is the child's education, and the customer is the parent. Sounds like a challenge? It doesn't end there. This code monkey has to try to debug hundreds of such programs simultaneously, and gets a new set every year. No time to try and figure them out... just start debugging on the fly.
Add to the above problems malicious, black hat hackers trying to include code that makes the program compatible with their personal imaginary friend. This 'compatibility' code is cut from ancient and obsolete code repositories and pasted in at random locations with little skill or regard for the damage it may do to the rest of the program. These would be various and assorted clergy.
Now add in some highly skilled spammers who have unrestricted access to the program in your care. They keep hacking at it so that all it will do is display logos and popups. If you watch TV, then you've seen this process at work.
Now we are starting to get a little closer to what teaching is like using a software development metaphor. I know... I have been both a teacher and a software engineer. In fact, America faces a perennial shortage of math teachers because the job requirements are little removed from those of being a code monkey. After a few years of frustration, most math teachers quit and move on to easier jobs that pay better, like being programmers.
As a teacher, I have no problem with seeing education as a right, however, People need to think in terms of "My kid has the right to the OPPORTUNITY for and education", and not "My kid has the right to be educated despite everything I and my kid do to sabotage the teachers' efforts.". This idea that it is the teachers' responsibility to compensate for all of society's ills and repair all the damage done to kids by the poor parenting skills of their families really has to go before we as a society can start to move forward on the education problem.
SCENARIO #1: Take one teacher. Put her in a classroom of Japanese-American kids or Hungarian-American kids. They will do well because they are committed to learning.
SCENARIO #2: Put that same teacher in a classroom of African-American kids from Oakland, California. The kids will do poorly because African-American culture rejects learning -- and rejects Western culture in general.
In scenario #2, the teacher would be fired as a "bad" teacher. In scenario #1, the same teacher would get a bonus for producing such accomplished students.
Is there any reasonable and objective way to determine a teacher's performance that is independent of the students in her classroom?
As a teacher who has taught on three continents, as well as a number of locations in the USA, I recognize the point that you are making. Highly motivated students are a joy to teach. Students whose educational endeavors are strongly supported by their parents and their immediate community; and who themselves believe that their education is worthwhile and will benefit them in their futures, can absorb knowledge and technique as fast as the teacher can dish it out. Students with little support from parents and community, or whose potential is even undermined by negative attitudes towards education by those parents and community; and who see little correlation in their lives between educational success and success in life, are a remarkable challenge for any teacher to help.
The point that the quoted AC made about the African-American students is, in its broadest sense, accurate. African-American children tend to get little support or encouragement from their communities. More importantly, they are rarely provided evidence that an education can better their lives. While the more rigorous courses of study like science and engineering lead to occupations that are among the most blind to race in the whole economy, the same generalized anti-intellectualism prevalent in America that turns other demographics away from the hard degrees influences Black Americans negatively too. The popular, lucrative and, moreover easy, fields of study such as marketing and business administration, on the other hand, lead to industries and career fields that are anything but color blind. While children likely don't analyze things this deeply, they are still aware of the overall effect and as a result don't tend to see education as being meaningful to them.
An interesting point that the reader should note is that there exists another American demographic that has the exact same problem as African-Americans where education is concerned. I speak of rural White Americans, ie inbred redneck republitards; or more specifically, their inbred and mind-scrambled offspring.
Attempting to evaluating teachers based upon the success of their students is something that is doomed to do more harm than good. In some environments, a great teacher might be the one who only gets one of his students to seriously strive for educational success. In another environment, the poor teacher might be the one who only succeeds in fully engaging a hundred and forty-nine out of a hundred and fifty of her students in their studies. Being able to spot which is which from an office in city hall or the state capital is a non-trivial task with far more potential for error than for accuracy. Even assuming that the more skilled and the less talented teachers can be accurately identified, it is still harmful as it reinforces the assumption held by those-who-have-no-clue that America's education problems have something to do with the quality of the nation's teachers. Aside from the wasted effort in trying to fix the part of the system that's not broke, this actually makes things worse by undermining the status and respect that teachers should command in society. When a significant and loud, but clueless subset of American society keeps shouting "Teachers suck! We should stick it to them!", then even the best teachers have their authority i
Damn, making a stupid statement like this when there are hundreds of thousands of the things in the hands of soccer moms nationwide is ridiculous.
The webcam works fine under Linux. The wireless is probably even better under Linux than under XP. Get your facts straight before you start making assumptions or others will (justifiably) call you an idiot.
This, folks, is what Microserfs are all about. They latch onto the coattails of the 'tough guy' thinking that this is some sort of fight to the death, and being weak themselves, they feel that they need to ride on a "winner". Pathetic...
This is why Micro$oft (and their Microserf echo chamber) try to attack and label Mac users as elitist snobs, and Linux users as middle aged virgins with Asperger syndrome. It is just primitive tribalism. M$ just appeals to people's insecurities, weaknesses and fears and you end up with otherwise intelligent people like coryking above making the weak justifications like those he posted.
Can coryking do his job with OO and also find features in it that will help him "Wow!" his customers (friends, relatives, whatever)? Of course, but that is not the point. Is he really concerned that 99.99% of the computer using population might not be able to achieve everything they do under Wondoze using a FOSS solution? Well, he is certainly concerned that THEY might realize that and leave him in the minority (ie: Windoze loses), but does he really care about those users? Of course not.
These shrill Microsoft fanboys attacking everything non-M$, these Microserfs, are just sycophants and lapdogs that have attached their fate, their credibility, and their self respect to the "strong man"; to the bully; thinking that it will offer them protection and status. It is so pathetic and primitive...
Threatening news like these new developments in Europe ALWAYS brings them out in droves: "No, FF can NEVER replace IE... don't even try!", and "OO can't replace Officide, it doesn't have [insert obscure 'feature' that no one uses here], and "Linux can never 'win' because it doesn't have Microsoft Bob!"
Really, folks, pity these Microserf clowns like coryking. They have staked their manhood on the eternal supremacy of a fairly mundane corporation. How pathetic is that? Don't argue with them. Just reassure them that everything is OK, give them a cheerful smile and send them home.
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Sovereign state =/= capitalist enterprise.
The State need never make a profit... ever.
Don't work too well against Zionists, though.
We have always been at war with Eastasia.
You've not been paying attention, have you?
Perhaps the Chinese are not as comfortable with the NSA watching everything they do as you are.
Don't underestimate the impact of how the news of the NSA-Big American Tech orgy is playing out abroad. The Snowden leak has confirmed the most cynical suspicions of most mainland Chinese, and the pressure in that billion+ market for products unstained by NSA influence will become a major tech driver in the near future. In fact, for most people in the world, the only spying they dislike more than being spied on by their own governments is being spied on by the USA. Unless Microsoft, Google, and Apple can put together a successful Hail Mary marketing campaign to salvage their images, alternatives like Firefox OS are very likely to see surprising growth in their market share.
In other words, what Foxconn is doing may not be Open Source altruism. More likely, they are positioning themselves to ride an anti-NSA wave, particularly in mainland China.
nt
Like Muad'Dave said, I figure the Tsunami washing away nearly everything in the area to be a bigger reason for people going to 'live in school gymnasiums'. The earthquake alone was actually survivable.
The earthquake was survivable. Other areas are rebuilding from the tsunami. The area around Fukushima Daiichi remains empty. It will stay empty of humans for years to come.
As for 'no mood to suck it up', well, it's their choice, but I figure they're going to start recanting when it really starts hitting pocket books and pollution targets.
No, they won't. If you don't understand this then you don't understand the Japanese people. In some respects the Japanese people view the meltdowns at Fukushia Daiichi as the very worst disaster to ever befall their country. Considering some of the things that have happened to Japan, that might seem overstated, but it is not. Those other disasters were ones that could be worked around and made better. Tons of radioactive crud being spewed across the countryside is not something that they can make better. They can collect as much of it as they can and bury it, but they know it is still there, waiting to kill just inches beneath the surface of the elementary school playgrounds. That's the sort of horror that will have Japanese people waking up in cold sweats for decades to come. This is the kind of horror that will spawn a new generation of Japanese monster movies as the culture tries to exorcise these demons.
Whatever. Nuclear power is dead in Japan, and it is the average Japanese citizens who want it that way.
Gee, I wonder why that is? Could it be those "tiny amounts of radiation" that leaked and caused all the folks who used to provide services to go and live in school gymnasiums in the next prefecture over?
The nuclear power industry just took a mammoth dump all over the Japanese people's beloved countryside. They are in no mood to "suck it up." Nuclear power is dead in Japan. Get used to it.
Gee, I wonder why that is? Could it be those "tiny amounts of radiation" that leaked and caused all the folks who used to provide services to go and live in school gymnasiums in the next prefecture over?
The nuclear power industry just took a mammoth dump all over the Japanese people's beloved countryside. They are in no mood to "suck it up." Nuclear power is dead in Japan. YOU suck it up.
Very true! I believe that life begins with ejaculation! Every one of you masturbators is a mass murderer!
One nuclear aircraft carrier worth ought to do it.
Good riddance. All schools should be able to do that, not just the charters. If a child is disrupting his classmates' education and refuses to stop, ie: he's a troublemaker, then he should face discipline and expulsion.
they get fined for hot chips? really?
Really. Go to your friendly neighborhood high school and visit some of the classrooms at the end of the day. It's nasty. Kids today have taken slobbery to a whole new level. It is unfair to students that the only time they get a clean classroom is the first period of the day. Without either proper upbringing from their parents or firmly enforced rules from the school, kids will be pigs. The empirical evidence to support this claim can be found within a few miles of where you live.
that a school teaches its students to submit to such arbitrary authority?
Not arbitrary authority. The school's authority. If the school doesn't want kids to bring Sharpies to school so they can cut down on the graffiti and vandalism, then the students need to not bring Sharpies to school. If students do so anyway, they need to learn that their feelings and opinions on the matter do not count. If the school has a dress code and the child violates the dress code, then they need to learn that their feelings and opinions on that matter are irrelevant as well.
In other words, children need to learn to follow the rules of the organization that they find themselves a part of.
I won't debate your points about the rich, though. After all, the rich are the main reason why most politicians suck.
It's pretty unusual, actually. Very few school districts actually have work rules that protect incompetent teachers. The problem is that administrators have to prove that the teacher is incompetent. If the administrators are themselves incompetent, then they either don't bother trying or they fail to properly prove their case.
This isn't a problem with the unions. It is a problem with poor management and incompetent administrators that get promoted to positions of authority due to nepotism or favoritism.
Or they could learn to behave.
A fact that's not lost on China's planners. That's why Beijing is trying several different strategies to quickly raise wages and thus build a larger domestic consumer market.
Don't assume that the USA won't just apply a little Shock and Awe to Sealand with one of these things: http://tech.slashdot.org/story/12/01/31/1818215/pentagon-30000-pound-bomb-too-small
SCENARIO #2: Put that same developer on a team fixing bugs that made it to the field and need quick resolution (a potentially more challenging job.)
Way to go with the clumsy and totally inaccurate parallel.
Let's have your software developer above be trying to fix bugs in the code while the customer, who knows somewhere between jack and squat about programming because he is too lazy to learn, is trying to "add his own features". Do this without version control.
In the above parallel, the code monkey is the teacher, the program is the child's education, and the customer is the parent. Sounds like a challenge? It doesn't end there. This code monkey has to try to debug hundreds of such programs simultaneously, and gets a new set every year. No time to try and figure them out... just start debugging on the fly.
Add to the above problems malicious, black hat hackers trying to include code that makes the program compatible with their personal imaginary friend. This 'compatibility' code is cut from ancient and obsolete code repositories and pasted in at random locations with little skill or regard for the damage it may do to the rest of the program. These would be various and assorted clergy.
Now add in some highly skilled spammers who have unrestricted access to the program in your care. They keep hacking at it so that all it will do is display logos and popups. If you watch TV, then you've seen this process at work.
Now we are starting to get a little closer to what teaching is like using a software development metaphor. I know... I have been both a teacher and a software engineer. In fact, America faces a perennial shortage of math teachers because the job requirements are little removed from those of being a code monkey. After a few years of frustration, most math teachers quit and move on to easier jobs that pay better, like being programmers.
As a teacher, I have no problem with seeing education as a right, however, People need to think in terms of "My kid has the right to the OPPORTUNITY for and education", and not "My kid has the right to be educated despite everything I and my kid do to sabotage the teachers' efforts.". This idea that it is the teachers' responsibility to compensate for all of society's ills and repair all the damage done to kids by the poor parenting skills of their families really has to go before we as a society can start to move forward on the education problem.
SCENARIO #1: Take one teacher. Put her in a classroom of Japanese-American kids or Hungarian-American kids. They will do well because they are committed to learning.
SCENARIO #2: Put that same teacher in a classroom of African-American kids from Oakland, California. The kids will do poorly because African-American culture rejects learning -- and rejects Western culture in general.
In scenario #2, the teacher would be fired as a "bad" teacher. In scenario #1, the same teacher would get a bonus for producing such accomplished students.
Is there any reasonable and objective way to determine a teacher's performance that is independent of the students in her classroom?
As a teacher who has taught on three continents, as well as a number of locations in the USA, I recognize the point that you are making. Highly motivated students are a joy to teach. Students whose educational endeavors are strongly supported by their parents and their immediate community; and who themselves believe that their education is worthwhile and will benefit them in their futures, can absorb knowledge and technique as fast as the teacher can dish it out. Students with little support from parents and community, or whose potential is even undermined by negative attitudes towards education by those parents and community; and who see little correlation in their lives between educational success and success in life, are a remarkable challenge for any teacher to help.
The point that the quoted AC made about the African-American students is, in its broadest sense, accurate. African-American children tend to get little support or encouragement from their communities. More importantly, they are rarely provided evidence that an education can better their lives. While the more rigorous courses of study like science and engineering lead to occupations that are among the most blind to race in the whole economy, the same generalized anti-intellectualism prevalent in America that turns other demographics away from the hard degrees influences Black Americans negatively too. The popular, lucrative and, moreover easy, fields of study such as marketing and business administration, on the other hand, lead to industries and career fields that are anything but color blind. While children likely don't analyze things this deeply, they are still aware of the overall effect and as a result don't tend to see education as being meaningful to them.
An interesting point that the reader should note is that there exists another American demographic that has the exact same problem as African-Americans where education is concerned. I speak of rural White Americans, ie inbred redneck republitards; or more specifically, their inbred and mind-scrambled offspring.
Attempting to evaluating teachers based upon the success of their students is something that is doomed to do more harm than good. In some environments, a great teacher might be the one who only gets one of his students to seriously strive for educational success. In another environment, the poor teacher might be the one who only succeeds in fully engaging a hundred and forty-nine out of a hundred and fifty of her students in their studies. Being able to spot which is which from an office in city hall or the state capital is a non-trivial task with far more potential for error than for accuracy. Even assuming that the more skilled and the less talented teachers can be accurately identified, it is still harmful as it reinforces the assumption held by those-who-have-no-clue that America's education problems have something to do with the quality of the nation's teachers. Aside from the wasted effort in trying to fix the part of the system that's not broke, this actually makes things worse by undermining the status and respect that teachers should command in society. When a significant and loud, but clueless subset of American society keeps shouting "Teachers suck! We should stick it to them!", then even the best teachers have their authority i
Damn, making a stupid statement like this when there are hundreds of thousands of the things in the hands of soccer moms nationwide is ridiculous.
The webcam works fine under Linux. The wireless is probably even better under Linux than under XP. Get your facts straight before you start making assumptions or others will (justifiably) call you an idiot.
Idiot!
You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.
There you have it.
This, folks, is what Microserfs are all about. They latch onto the coattails of the 'tough guy' thinking that this is some sort of fight to the death, and being weak themselves, they feel that they need to ride on a "winner". Pathetic...
This is why Micro$oft (and their Microserf echo chamber) try to attack and label Mac users as elitist snobs, and Linux users as middle aged virgins with Asperger syndrome. It is just primitive tribalism. M$ just appeals to people's insecurities, weaknesses and fears and you end up with otherwise intelligent people like coryking above making the weak justifications like those he posted.
Can coryking do his job with OO and also find features in it that will help him "Wow!" his customers (friends, relatives, whatever)? Of course, but that is not the point. Is he really concerned that 99.99% of the computer using population might not be able to achieve everything they do under Wondoze using a FOSS solution? Well, he is certainly concerned that THEY might realize that and leave him in the minority (ie: Windoze loses), but does he really care about those users? Of course not.
These shrill Microsoft fanboys attacking everything non-M$, these Microserfs, are just sycophants and lapdogs that have attached their fate, their credibility, and their self respect to the "strong man"; to the bully; thinking that it will offer them protection and status. It is so pathetic and primitive...
Threatening news like these new developments in Europe ALWAYS brings them out in droves: "No, FF can NEVER replace IE... don't even try!", and "OO can't replace Officide, it doesn't have [insert obscure 'feature' that no one uses here], and "Linux can never 'win' because it doesn't have Microsoft Bob!"
Really, folks, pity these Microserf clowns like coryking. They have staked their manhood on the eternal supremacy of a fairly mundane corporation. How pathetic is that? Don't argue with them. Just reassure them that everything is OK, give them a cheerful smile and send them home.