Step #1 - Get the resumes of each of the people who have the opportunity to directly influence my decisions. Get rid of the people whose resumes are not up to my standards. Well, maybe not, "get rid". Possibly just bench them.
Step #2 - Neuter the Department of Homeland Security. Start finding different places for their employees to go because I would shut them down before my term is over.
Step #3 - Address the country and read to them the Bill of Rights and first bit of the Declaration of Independence... then apologize for the lies of many of my predecessors while thanking them for creating such a stable staging ground for the next era of development of the nation.
Step #4 - Befriend the ACLU and the NRA
Step #5 - Slowly, begin to trim the fat from various auxiliary military budgets and reinvest that money in raising the quality of Intermediate, Elementary, Pre-K education/childcare. (New Teacher Initiatives, Federal bonuses for X many years as a teacher, etc.)
Step #6 - Add debt forgiveness incentives against higher education loans if the student enters industries of high need and/or learns Arabic, Chinese (either), Korean, Spanish, Japanese.
Step #7 - Begin swapping US troops for UN Peacekeepers (2:1) in Iraq and sponsor a system of reconstruction that will allow for schools and infrastructure over profit-focused industry. (They can do that on their own)
Step #8 - Address the UN. State that the US has been wrong on many occasions and we will often continue to be wrong. However, today, we begin to acknowledge our shortcomings and will begin the long trek to become the nation we always wanted to be.
Step #9 - Re-regulate energy companies around the nation (If you want guaranteed profit, don't expect it to be a lot).
Step #10 - Sit down with the automotive industry and tell them that I will not be covering any of their butts for any reason until they allow their engineers low-fuel-consumption automobiles to hit the production line WITH attractive exteriors.
I can relate. I'm the 20-something/dream user according to their description but I also teach my GF everything I know so she can be more efficient. (I'm a teacher at heart and by education).
However educated she may be, and however confident she may be, if she sees a new error, she freezes.
"Honey! Come here. What's this mean?! Come here! Look at this!" "Just tell me what it says." "'There has been a fault 0x000fjs88.' What's it mean? Did I do something wrong? Should I have backed up everything recently?" "Does it have an 'OK' button?" "Yes." "Press the OK button." "Are you sure?" "Is there another button?" "No... but." "Then you have to press the button." "Ok. I pressed it. Now what?" "What happened after you pressed the button?" "The program shut down." "Ok. Launch the program and see if your work is saved." "Ya, it's there. THANKS SO MUCH HONEY!!" "I didn't do anything. I just told you to choose your only option."
You sound like my girlfriend. I guess I'm a "dream user" / "20-something whiz kid", but I teach my GF anything an everything I can. Sadly, despite having only second-hand knowledge of tech, she's constantly catching her departmental tech guy on BS.
THIS post has it right for one main reason -- GUI. People are dumb and reluctant to change because change confuses them. A different UI -- or hell, one menu bar in a different place will make then curl up into a fetal position. If you make it look like office, to the "T", then organizations who need to save money (like schools) will actually adopt OO.o. Otherwise, it will simply never happen.
I've always said that the one of the greatest proofs of corporate/political influence on the seat of the president was the ex-president's life after the white house. Just look at the good things these guys have done while NOT in the white house. Jimmy Carter -- Nobel Price (saving the world one place at a time... by hand). Al Gore -- Nobel Prize (using what little influence he had left to mobilize a massive awareness campaign). Bill Clinton is constantly on the road giving speeches.
Hell, Dwight D. Eisenhower's exit speech was only possible because he was leaving office and didn't have to reap the PR hell that he would have put himself through.
Imagine that-- a nation so corrupt that their official leader is afraid to act on behalf of the general welfare.
In every situation I have ever worked and with every person I have ever lived, I have been the go-to geek. I tell it like it is because I personally care about solving problems and making other peoples' lives easier. As the parent post said, most true geeks will shrug their shoulders and charge nothing. Personally, when fixing friends' computers (or their parents', or their friends') I refuse monetary compensation, but in college required the person to barter a home-cooked meal (hey, that meant a lot in undergrad!).
As the parent poster said, it's not that "geeks" in general are untrustworthy. It's assholes that seek to make money off their geekdom that inspire spite. If I had a dollar for every time someone brought me a computer and said "The Guy at Best Buy said the motherboard is dead and it will cost $400 to replace" only for me to go into safemode and remove spyware/virus bloat and fix the computer, I'd be paying someone to make my Slashdot posts for me!
In short, everyone should befriend a geek. If you know a nice geek, you're set. If you don't, then ask around for someone who does. Rarely does hardware need to be replaced, but when it does, you needn't pay sky-high prices to have it done.
A kiss, a chesty hug, a 6-pack, or a warm meal is usually enough.
Wow... I don't have sound at work, but felt compelled to watch the video anyway. With all the fade-aways and cut-scenes, had I not read the article I would have assumed that by working on a computer, I would become a narcotics abuser! 0.o
Wow... adding 800gb/s to the workload of a southbridge would be quite a jump in required power, no? If they want such a possibility, would we have to accept another mboard form factor? Make room for yet another heatsink. O.o
... but instead with the capability of field agents or investigators to actually understand the crime. The majority of field agents aren't recruited for their technical prowess -- they're selected for physical capability, trustworthiness, confidence, attention to detail, etc.
Knowing the ins and outs of piracy, computer logic, techy sub-culture, and the history of networked data-transfer devices/wire-fraud comes with a completely different generation of learning and they're not going to abondon their current force for a brand new set of rookies.
Of course it's low. You don't think their employee training on computer usage and literacy works much better than the private sector, do ya?
Don't ditch it. There's no need to ditch it altogether. Release a "second edition" a la Win98, give some options to reduce bloat, work with major hardware manufacturers to make useful drivers, and work on general compatibility (back and forward). Then re-release the OS to praise and thanks.
Make it a logical step from XP so that companies needn't retrain their employees.
This is just silly. I understand that people would prefer to PREVENT crime instead of REACTING to crime, but you can't PREDICT crime as an alternative. Prevention and prediction are two very different things.
To prevent crime, educate the populace so as help to instill acceptable ethics and a sense of shame. Help them to acquire the resources they actually need and stop telling them they're less of a person if they don't have the "best" of everything. Teach people about people and reinforce those teachings throughout life.
To predict crime, go see a psychic because they are just as likely to choose an imminent criminal due to "suspicious" activity. You'd spend less money this way. You'll need it for the counter-suits.
Truth of the matter is that the nation isn't a fan of raising their children. Nor do they look kindly on higher taxes to reduce classroom size so that teachers can be mentors as well as lectures. And since crime prediction is a fantasy, the best we can do is crime reaction.
Well, Jack Thompson hates it. It must be good. That's all the review I need anymore.Hey eepok, Butt-Darts 4 is coming out tomorrow!
What's Jack think?
He says it will summon the anti-christ if even one child plays it.
What time does Best Buy open?
Anyone else foresee the re-release of Vista sometime in the future? I mean, it's failed with businesses (no one in their right minds is installing it for their lay corporate workers). It's failed with enthusiasts.
Why not just change the UI back to what made Windows "Windows", make some resource requirement adjustments, work with major companies on driver support for a a year, and release it like an entirely new OS.
It worked before. And we, for the most part, loved 98SE.
No. It took them a while to muscle MS into allowing them to sell XP. Even then, it's only on 1 home laptop option and 3 gaming machines.
Those ordering for small business have to eat the cost of additionally buying a Windows XP client license in addition to the Vista cost of buying a Dell.
Isn't it a corollary of wheeled transportation that you're never supposed to hit anything or try to go over a hole that is near the diameter of the wheels? Think about it. Even an obstacle 1/4 the height of a height of a wheel will screw you up.
Therein lies the problem, doesn't it? All these police stations get these new toys that have the potential of making so many arrests or detentions easier than pie and make policies governing their use without the public's approval. I understand that there are certain policies the police need to keep on the down low for the sake of preventing further unruliness, but this is not one of them.
The real problem with using a taser here is that no harm needed to be done to the person to stop him from being a complete ass. Yes, he was a drama queen about being forced out. Yes, he exaggerated and narrated for the cameras every bit. We know he had a distinct motive to make a scene. However, pinning him down was unnecessary, cuffing him was unnecessary, and tasing him was simply a punishment -- something no police force is allowed to do. Punishment is for the courts.
The taser is a defensive weapon, not a tool to make the job easier.
It's hard to say no to a new tech grant because new computers and the possibility of a "laptop for every child" can look so good in the Sunday paper, but the truth of the matter is that high technology (like PDAs, cellphones, computers, even graphing calculators at times) are so much more distracting than helpful that I, working in education AND being such a techy have to be the lone educated person in the room saying thing like, "No, it will only hurt the kids! Just upgrade the office computers and pay for computer/program/database training for the staff!"
That said, the only "infiltration" is the exploitation of the technology so as to make goofing off that much easier and that much less detectable.
I always get weird looks like, "What in the world do you know?" and I always have to reexplain that the kids know computers better than the administration would ever like to know and will find ways to communicate when they shouldn't or play/make games would they should be working.
At BEST, I'd like to see a completely crippled tablet mini-pc that exists solely for taking notes and uploading those notes to personal webspace. There is so little that tech has to offer the student and so much harm to do to the class.
Now, if you don't mind, I have to get back to writing a grant proposal for new flat screen televisions in the class room./sigh
It's not that Microsoft is installing something "evil". It's that they're installing something, activating a latent "feature", or changing settings without our knowledge or permission. Most of us consider our computers a gateway and necessary tool to MANY things in life-- Communication, work, play, storage of private information, etc. Any change to that system without our approval, especially considering the amount of customizations many of us make to Windows, can throw its functionality out of balance or even eliminate what little privacy we thought we had.
I see it akin to Ford coming in the middle of the night and tinkering with your car and not letting you know about it. Who knows if they're enhancing their "planned obsolescence" business model, helping their oil buddies by lowering their fuel efficiency of your vehicle, or simply fixing a problem they'd rather not have the public know about.
If you're like me and use your computer for literally everything, it's even more serious. Kinda like your landlord coming to your apartment while you're at work doing "something" and never letting you know.
I just don't feel safe with anyone doing any of the above.
Riiight. It's not news if people don't die or doesn't affect you?
The news here is that a known resource has disappeared (without notice), leaving customers without their data (without notice), and the owner is not to be found (not giving notice of leaving). That's strange. Quite abnormal. And loss of data, in the tech world, is pretty detrimental to most endeavors.
The statistic stating that "up to ten times as much money is spent nationwide on educating 'developmentally disabled' students as gifted ones" has no bearing on whether or not gifted students are getting their due and appropriate education.
The simple fact of the matter is that special education requires MANY MANY more resources than a class specialized in advanced education. I work at university sponsored school for students with ADD, ADHD, and Asperger's kids and I can personally attest to the amount of money that needs to make sure these students grow up to become normal functioning members of our society. Psychologists, occupational therapists, speech therapists, specially trained teachers -- almost all of which have their PH.Ds. It's no surprise it costs more.
As others are stating, the failing more frequently comes from poor school districts that aren't able to afford the advanced courses (or the better-skilled teachers to teach them). Or, more pervasive, the American love of idiocy and stupidity.
I believe the best way to change it around and start helping our gifted students would be to publicly award smart people on TV instead of athletes and actresses.
Slashdot Mirror
Step #1 - Get the resumes of each of the people who have the opportunity to directly influence my decisions. Get rid of the people whose resumes are not up to my standards. Well, maybe not, "get rid". Possibly just bench them.
Step #2 - Neuter the Department of Homeland Security. Start finding different places for their employees to go because I would shut them down before my term is over.
Step #3 - Address the country and read to them the Bill of Rights and first bit of the Declaration of Independence... then apologize for the lies of many of my predecessors while thanking them for creating such a stable staging ground for the next era of development of the nation.
Step #4 - Befriend the ACLU and the NRA
Step #5 - Slowly, begin to trim the fat from various auxiliary military budgets and reinvest that money in raising the quality of Intermediate, Elementary, Pre-K education/childcare. (New Teacher Initiatives, Federal bonuses for X many years as a teacher, etc.)
Step #6 - Add debt forgiveness incentives against higher education loans if the student enters industries of high need and/or learns Arabic, Chinese (either), Korean, Spanish, Japanese.
Step #7 - Begin swapping US troops for UN Peacekeepers (2:1) in Iraq and sponsor a system of reconstruction that will allow for schools and infrastructure over profit-focused industry. (They can do that on their own)
Step #8 - Address the UN. State that the US has been wrong on many occasions and we will often continue to be wrong. However, today, we begin to acknowledge our shortcomings and will begin the long trek to become the nation we always wanted to be.
Step #9 - Re-regulate energy companies around the nation (If you want guaranteed profit, don't expect it to be a lot).
Step #10 - Sit down with the automotive industry and tell them that I will not be covering any of their butts for any reason until they allow their engineers low-fuel-consumption automobiles to hit the production line WITH attractive exteriors.
LOL
I can relate. I'm the 20-something/dream user according to their description but I also teach my GF everything I know so she can be more efficient. (I'm a teacher at heart and by education).
However educated she may be, and however confident she may be, if she sees a new error, she freezes.
"Honey! Come here. What's this mean?! Come here! Look at this!"
"Just tell me what it says."
"'There has been a fault 0x000fjs88.' What's it mean? Did I do something wrong? Should I have backed up everything recently?"
"Does it have an 'OK' button?"
"Yes."
"Press the OK button."
"Are you sure?"
"Is there another button?"
"No... but."
"Then you have to press the button."
"Ok. I pressed it. Now what?"
"What happened after you pressed the button?"
"The program shut down."
"Ok. Launch the program and see if your work is saved."
"Ya, it's there. THANKS SO MUCH HONEY!!"
"I didn't do anything. I just told you to choose your only option."
You sound like my girlfriend. I guess I'm a "dream user" / "20-something whiz kid", but I teach my GF anything an everything I can. Sadly, despite having only second-hand knowledge of tech, she's constantly catching her departmental tech guy on BS.
;)
She makes me so proud...
THIS post has it right for one main reason -- GUI. People are dumb and reluctant to change because change confuses them. A different UI -- or hell, one menu bar in a different place will make then curl up into a fetal position. If you make it look like office, to the "T", then organizations who need to save money (like schools) will actually adopt OO.o. Otherwise, it will simply never happen.
Why doesn't he use the same source of power that's running the fan?
Common sense isn't so common, is it?
TRUE TRUE TRUE
I've always said that the one of the greatest proofs of corporate/political influence on the seat of the president was the ex-president's life after the white house. Just look at the good things these guys have done while NOT in the white house. Jimmy Carter -- Nobel Price (saving the world one place at a time... by hand). Al Gore -- Nobel Prize (using what little influence he had left to mobilize a massive awareness campaign). Bill Clinton is constantly on the road giving speeches.
Hell, Dwight D. Eisenhower's exit speech was only possible because he was leaving office and didn't have to reap the PR hell that he would have put himself through.
Imagine that-- a nation so corrupt that their official leader is afraid to act on behalf of the general welfare.
In every situation I have ever worked and with every person I have ever lived, I have been the go-to geek. I tell it like it is because I personally care about solving problems and making other peoples' lives easier. As the parent post said, most true geeks will shrug their shoulders and charge nothing. Personally, when fixing friends' computers (or their parents', or their friends') I refuse monetary compensation, but in college required the person to barter a home-cooked meal (hey, that meant a lot in undergrad!).
As the parent poster said, it's not that "geeks" in general are untrustworthy. It's assholes that seek to make money off their geekdom that inspire spite. If I had a dollar for every time someone brought me a computer and said "The Guy at Best Buy said the motherboard is dead and it will cost $400 to replace" only for me to go into safemode and remove spyware/virus bloat and fix the computer, I'd be paying someone to make my Slashdot posts for me!
In short, everyone should befriend a geek. If you know a nice geek, you're set. If you don't, then ask around for someone who does. Rarely does hardware need to be replaced, but when it does, you needn't pay sky-high prices to have it done.
A kiss, a chesty hug, a 6-pack, or a warm meal is usually enough.
Well, since rights are declared, not given, maybe we can declare it a right and require the government to provide access.
hmm... on second thought, I may actually trust a telecom more.
Wow... I don't have sound at work, but felt compelled to watch the video anyway. With all the fade-aways and cut-scenes, had I not read the article I would have assumed that by working on a computer, I would become a narcotics abuser! 0.o
Come on man... just one more refresh...
Wow... adding 800gb/s to the workload of a southbridge would be quite a jump in required power, no? If they want such a possibility, would we have to accept another mboard form factor? Make room for yet another heatsink. O.o
... but instead with the capability of field agents or investigators to actually understand the crime. The majority of field agents aren't recruited for their technical prowess -- they're selected for physical capability, trustworthiness, confidence, attention to detail, etc.
Knowing the ins and outs of piracy, computer logic, techy sub-culture, and the history of networked data-transfer devices/wire-fraud comes with a completely different generation of learning and they're not going to abondon their current force for a brand new set of rookies.
Of course it's low. You don't think their employee training on computer usage and literacy works much better than the private sector, do ya?
Don't ditch it. There's no need to ditch it altogether. Release a "second edition" a la Win98, give some options to reduce bloat, work with major hardware manufacturers to make useful drivers, and work on general compatibility (back and forward). Then re-release the OS to praise and thanks.
Make it a logical step from XP so that companies needn't retrain their employees.
This is just silly. I understand that people would prefer to PREVENT crime instead of REACTING to crime, but you can't PREDICT crime as an alternative. Prevention and prediction are two very different things.
To prevent crime, educate the populace so as help to instill acceptable ethics and a sense of shame. Help them to acquire the resources they actually need and stop telling them they're less of a person if they don't have the "best" of everything. Teach people about people and reinforce those teachings throughout life.
To predict crime, go see a psychic because they are just as likely to choose an imminent criminal due to "suspicious" activity. You'd spend less money this way. You'll need it for the counter-suits.
Truth of the matter is that the nation isn't a fan of raising their children. Nor do they look kindly on higher taxes to reduce classroom size so that teachers can be mentors as well as lectures. And since crime prediction is a fantasy, the best we can do is crime reaction.
Well, Jack Thompson hates it. It must be good. That's all the review I need anymore. Hey eepok, Butt-Darts 4 is coming out tomorrow! What's Jack think? He says it will summon the anti-christ if even one child plays it. What time does Best Buy open?
Don't draw attention to yourself.
If they don't have a reason to target you, they probably won't.
I'm a wishful thinker, but that's just ludicrous. =P
Anyone else foresee the re-release of Vista sometime in the future? I mean, it's failed with businesses (no one in their right minds is installing it for their lay corporate workers). It's failed with enthusiasts. Why not just change the UI back to what made Windows "Windows", make some resource requirement adjustments, work with major companies on driver support for a a year, and release it like an entirely new OS. It worked before. And we, for the most part, loved 98SE.
No. It took them a while to muscle MS into allowing them to sell XP. Even then, it's only on 1 home laptop option and 3 gaming machines.
Those ordering for small business have to eat the cost of additionally buying a Windows XP client license in addition to the Vista cost of buying a Dell.
http://www.dell.com/content/topics/segtopic.aspx/winxp_inspn?c=us&cs=19&l=en&s=dhs
No pretty linkage for you!
Isn't it a corollary of wheeled transportation that you're never supposed to hit anything or try to go over a hole that is near the diameter of the wheels? Think about it. Even an obstacle 1/4 the height of a height of a wheel will screw you up.
Therein lies the problem, doesn't it? All these police stations get these new toys that have the potential of making so many arrests or detentions easier than pie and make policies governing their use without the public's approval. I understand that there are certain policies the police need to keep on the down low for the sake of preventing further unruliness, but this is not one of them.
The real problem with using a taser here is that no harm needed to be done to the person to stop him from being a complete ass. Yes, he was a drama queen about being forced out. Yes, he exaggerated and narrated for the cameras every bit. We know he had a distinct motive to make a scene. However, pinning him down was unnecessary, cuffing him was unnecessary, and tasing him was simply a punishment -- something no police force is allowed to do. Punishment is for the courts.
The taser is a defensive weapon, not a tool to make the job easier.
It's hard to say no to a new tech grant because new computers and the possibility of a "laptop for every child" can look so good in the Sunday paper, but the truth of the matter is that high technology (like PDAs, cellphones, computers, even graphing calculators at times) are so much more distracting than helpful that I, working in education AND being such a techy have to be the lone educated person in the room saying thing like, "No, it will only hurt the kids! Just upgrade the office computers and pay for computer/program/database training for the staff!"
/sigh
That said, the only "infiltration" is the exploitation of the technology so as to make goofing off that much easier and that much less detectable.
I always get weird looks like, "What in the world do you know?" and I always have to reexplain that the kids know computers better than the administration would ever like to know and will find ways to communicate when they shouldn't or play/make games would they should be working.
At BEST, I'd like to see a completely crippled tablet mini-pc that exists solely for taking notes and uploading those notes to personal webspace. There is so little that tech has to offer the student and so much harm to do to the class.
Now, if you don't mind, I have to get back to writing a grant proposal for new flat screen televisions in the class room.
It's not that Microsoft is installing something "evil". It's that they're installing something, activating a latent "feature", or changing settings without our knowledge or permission. Most of us consider our computers a gateway and necessary tool to MANY things in life-- Communication, work, play, storage of private information, etc. Any change to that system without our approval, especially considering the amount of customizations many of us make to Windows, can throw its functionality out of balance or even eliminate what little privacy we thought we had.
I see it akin to Ford coming in the middle of the night and tinkering with your car and not letting you know about it. Who knows if they're enhancing their "planned obsolescence" business model, helping their oil buddies by lowering their fuel efficiency of your vehicle, or simply fixing a problem they'd rather not have the public know about.
If you're like me and use your computer for literally everything, it's even more serious. Kinda like your landlord coming to your apartment while you're at work doing "something" and never letting you know.
I just don't feel safe with anyone doing any of the above.
Riiight. It's not news if people don't die or doesn't affect you?
The news here is that a known resource has disappeared (without notice), leaving customers without their data (without notice), and the owner is not to be found (not giving notice of leaving). That's strange. Quite abnormal. And loss of data, in the tech world, is pretty detrimental to most endeavors.
Have a heart.
I'll be the first person to punch someone in the nose if they speak like that... but that, sir, was so extreme it was beautiful.
+15 Sarcasm Points for you!
The statistic stating that "up to ten times as much money is spent nationwide on educating 'developmentally disabled' students as gifted ones" has no bearing on whether or not gifted students are getting their due and appropriate education. The simple fact of the matter is that special education requires MANY MANY more resources than a class specialized in advanced education. I work at university sponsored school for students with ADD, ADHD, and Asperger's kids and I can personally attest to the amount of money that needs to make sure these students grow up to become normal functioning members of our society. Psychologists, occupational therapists, speech therapists, specially trained teachers -- almost all of which have their PH.Ds. It's no surprise it costs more. As others are stating, the failing more frequently comes from poor school districts that aren't able to afford the advanced courses (or the better-skilled teachers to teach them). Or, more pervasive, the American love of idiocy and stupidity. I believe the best way to change it around and start helping our gifted students would be to publicly award smart people on TV instead of athletes and actresses.