NCLB is designed to simultaneously take money from public schools while increasing state and federal government involvement. Once this reaches a critical level, people will be much more receptive to ideas like, say, vouchers.
Does this mean I can do it? Stalking jokes aside, what's the difference between me attaching a GPS to someone's car and me following them around? Surely it's legal for me to tail a car. This just makes it simpler for me to track the whereabouts of multiple cars at once.
The article is pretty short on information. In the summary you can see this:
Today the House Science and Technology Committee's Subcommittee on Energy and Environment held a hearing on the need for a National Climate Service, that could meet the increased demand for climate information, the committee said.
which means this isn't Obama's idea necessarily. But, who knows what goes on in the background? Maybe the executive branch did have some influence there.
I think this is more like a state that already has Department of Child Protective Services needing a department that deals with domestic violence.
Here's the press release which also doesn't have much info on whose idea this was.
Missing in these kinds of arguments is how much income the top 10% make. In 2005, the top 10% had 48.5% of the income (citation). This gets higher every year. Presenting this as 10% of the people have 70% of the tax burden is slightly misleading. There are of course varying estimates of who gets how much income; google "income inequality" for more about this.
Also I'd like to see an example of what you're talking about with Jon Stewart. I've of course seen him fall back on "I'm an entertainer." However, it seems to me that he uses that not to deflect criticism of his beliefs, but to deflect statements about his responsibility as a journalist or expert.
This sounds like a KIPP school. I've read some of the analyses by proponents of this kind of school setup. My conclusion is that KIPP schools demonstrate that kids who seek out a rigorous curriculum and learning environment will benefit from such. Maybe I'm biased by "romantic notions of teaching." KIPP schools have the advantage of not having to serve anyone they don't feel like, though, so the "no excuses" approach is limited to the kids who choose to go to the school.
The main difference here is that when you're making a presentation to adults, you have no responsibility for their character development. The desire to make someone else look stupid is not an acceptable trait that I should encourage or ignore. I don't tolerate it when students mock the math ability of others either.
There's never a time, however, when I persist in presenting something false as true. That would be wrong and not education, as you pointed out. The last thing I want is for my kids to think that things are true because I said them. I guess I can't remember any of my teachers doing that, but I've kind of only been thinking math since that's what I teach. It's much easier to have this kind of abuse of authority in a class with lots of subjective information. Teaching math is easy that way.
Unions protect all the teachers, good and bad. It's administration's job to demonstrate that a given teacher is bad. If they are too lazy or can't adequately describe their grounds for firing, this is hardly the union's fault.
Or would you rather let them fire the good teacher who has just turned 40 and lost that certain je ne sais quoi she used to have? Do some research. That shit happens.
You're not just a smart kid, you're gifted, which is a different problem. Not a problem for you of course (or maybe it was at the school you were in) but for the school to know how to handle. Gifted students have special needs that not all teachers know how to meet.
I've believed for a couple of years now that students need to learn how to detect authority, not just how to respect it. Anyone can be given a title like "Principal" or "Officer" or "President" and not actually qualify to have the authority that goes along with it. Schools and parents place a huge emphasis on respecting the authority conferred by titles. Some teachers buy into this.
Besides that, there are two components to "correcting false information" in a classroom setting. There's the part that's about the information itself, and the part where the student is trying to make the teacher look stupid. Of course it can be done without the second part. This is usually no problem. I am always interested in something I haven't thought of, because things can always be done better. But in my experience, the problems arise when students have some other agenda in addition to correcting something they think is wrong. Teachers must react to both when both are present.
I've pirated a lot of games, but out of respect for Stardock's principled stand, I haven't done this with Demigod or any of their other games. Pirates in general who rationalize by complaining about the price of games or draconian copy protection should go out of their way to accommodate the few (or one) publisher who acts reasonably. Presumably they're saving a ton of money by getting their games for free, so some of that money should go to Stardock. That is, if you like the game. Which suggests another problem of "how can I know that" so I'm waiting for a demo. Does a demo exist yet?
I looked around a little bit for examples of the questions that made this a push poll instead of an actual poll and found nothing. Has anyone been on the receiving end of one of these solicitations?
I actually see both your point and the GP point. I'm with you as long as someone else isn't making money off my free labor. If they make more money because of my work, then it stands to reason that I ought to also. I'm happy helping people with free products because no one else is making money from my labor.
I wonder if Hollywood has considered what the end state will be if everything they do to fight movie piracy is successful. No more rips from DVD or bluray, no more cameras in theaters or projection booths, no way to see the movie other than a way they approve. Will the erstwhile pirates be flooding theaters to see the movies they used to watch free? There's no way to know, but I tend to think not. Nothing I've heard from MPAA and friends presents a better model that allows pirates to have movies in the same way they do now, but with payment going to wherever it goes when you go to the theater. Surely that's what MPAA wants? A way to make money off the people who aren't paying them now? Surely they're not interested in simply stopping people from having it free, with no financial benefit for themselves. Without that, I think all their effort is for nothing.
Those people are also a small percentage of the people playing WOW, are they not? I haven't seen any actual numbers about this, it's just the impression I have.
The distinction between hardcore and casual game lies in how long you have to play before you receive a reward. Because the omnipresent level grind has a large number of small increments, it's pretty rewarding to most players, and everyone participates in it anyway. By contrast, the grinds that occur after the level grind have to be sought out and may have a small number of large increments. Take a faction grind with Neutral -> Friendly -> Honored -> Revered -> Exalted. Those can take quite a long time of doing really repetitive things before you get a reward at each increment.
So, how much boring stuff are you willing to put up with without a reward? This is the measure of how hardcore a game is. Back when I played WOW, I used to have a ton of characters, and kind of lost interest in each one as I got closer to maxing it out in gear and level. Like a lot of guilds, we left AQ40 to try Naxxramas and then BC did a number on our guild. Luckily for me, the leveling process had enough neat stuff in it to make a new character interesting. That's WOW catering to casuals.
Is this a joke? The blame on slashdot invariably goes from stupid/lazy/authoritarian teachers to teachers' unions. I think the line usually goes that it's easier to control kids than to teach them, but I've found the reverse is true in my 12 years teaching. This is going somewhat off the original topic, but academic frustration is the root of a great many behavior problems. Boredom is maybe the flip side of this.
There is also the story and the features of the game that make it art. Ebert says that games can't be artistic works of fiction since the user controls the outcome. While the user does control the outcome, there is something to be said for a game forcing you to choose between two unfavorable options or choose how your character presents him or herself (i.e. roleplaying.) See Mass Effect for some of this, or better yet Planescape: Torment. The gameplay mechanics should really be a relatively minor thing in a roleplaying game, but because the computer can crunch the numbers so well, they take a featured role in CRPG.
This sounds like a way to sell more expensive hardware or induce people to buy new computers when they wouldn't otherwise. I'm not sure how many people they expect to replace their existing vista install with windows 7. But if their "Which Windows is Right for Me?" tool suggests the starter edition that can only run 3 apps, people might decide to just get a new machine. At the store, the computer sales guy is going to say "this one is rated for starter edition" and start explaining about how AV and IM clients will run down the 3 application count and starter edition is a piece of crap, that's upsell right there.
I'm nowhere near the actual marketing and OS edition strategies but this sounds like something MS would do. Were the myriad editions used this way in the past?
I don't remember very many prominent Democrats opposing the NSA's illegal spying program. In fact many prominent Democrats were in favor. I remember a lengthy and uncompromising campaign against these kind of things by Chris Dodd (D-CT), but I also remember that Harry Reid (D-NV) decided to ignore the hold that Dodd placed on the FISA Amendments Act of 2008. Ignoring holds placed by Senators is not generally done. And then a lot of Democrats voted to end debate on the amendments to the act. I think you're giving the Democratic party too much credit for opposing the lawlessness of the Bush administration. They don't oppose lawlessness per se.
The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court is part of the judicial branch. Under the law from 1978, intelligence gatherers can apply for a warrant from this court the normal way, or they can do the wiretap without one and then they have 72 hours in which to obtain the warrant or else destroy whatever they have and also it's inadmissable. This is for surveillance where one party is a US person and the other party is known to be a foreign national.
On the contrary, the FISA amendments act from last year changes this. The time period is now 7 days, and all you need now is a letter from the AG or his designee. That's a way to keep oversight of executive branch in house and totalitarian.
I guess I do believe in the necessity of espionage, and in the existence of state secrets. My objections are to the abuse of these concepts to justify any and everything. It is of course possible that there is no way to have espionage and state secrets without them eventually ballooning into what we have now.
I think on this issue we can call it the current Bush/Cheney douche-o-rama. The administration announced yesterday recent that CIA personnel who relied on legal advice from the DOJ will not be investigated or prosecuted. This says that anything written by someone senior enough in DOJ will be carte blanch for torture. At least, that's the way I would read it if I had a mind to enable torture during my administration. The announcement did not mention what would happen to those giving the advice (Yoo, Addington, etc) or to the officials at the top (Rumsfeld, Cheney, etc.) However, the administration constantly says that they are not interested in looking backwards, only forwards.
Well, that's a relief. When will this kind of forgiveness come to the criminal justice system that the rest of us live in? I mean, crimes I committed in the past should stay in the past why dredge up all that evidence at taxpayer expense just to put me in prison? Or, in the words of Bob Loblaw, "why should you go to jail for a crime that someone else noticed?"
Slashdot Mirror
NCLB is designed to simultaneously take money from public schools while increasing state and federal government involvement. Once this reaches a critical level, people will be much more receptive to ideas like, say, vouchers.
Does this mean I can do it? Stalking jokes aside, what's the difference between me attaching a GPS to someone's car and me following them around? Surely it's legal for me to tail a car. This just makes it simpler for me to track the whereabouts of multiple cars at once.
If NEA is as powerful as many around here think it is, the recording industry is going down.
The article is pretty short on information. In the summary you can see this:
which means this isn't Obama's idea necessarily. But, who knows what goes on in the background? Maybe the executive branch did have some influence there.
I think this is more like a state that already has Department of Child Protective Services needing a department that deals with domestic violence.
Here's the press release which also doesn't have much info on whose idea this was.
Missing in these kinds of arguments is how much income the top 10% make. In 2005, the top 10% had 48.5% of the income (citation). This gets higher every year. Presenting this as 10% of the people have 70% of the tax burden is slightly misleading. There are of course varying estimates of who gets how much income; google "income inequality" for more about this.
Also I'd like to see an example of what you're talking about with Jon Stewart. I've of course seen him fall back on "I'm an entertainer." However, it seems to me that he uses that not to deflect criticism of his beliefs, but to deflect statements about his responsibility as a journalist or expert.
This sounds like a KIPP school. I've read some of the analyses by proponents of this kind of school setup. My conclusion is that KIPP schools demonstrate that kids who seek out a rigorous curriculum and learning environment will benefit from such. Maybe I'm biased by "romantic notions of teaching." KIPP schools have the advantage of not having to serve anyone they don't feel like, though, so the "no excuses" approach is limited to the kids who choose to go to the school.
The main difference here is that when you're making a presentation to adults, you have no responsibility for their character development. The desire to make someone else look stupid is not an acceptable trait that I should encourage or ignore. I don't tolerate it when students mock the math ability of others either.
There's never a time, however, when I persist in presenting something false as true. That would be wrong and not education, as you pointed out. The last thing I want is for my kids to think that things are true because I said them. I guess I can't remember any of my teachers doing that, but I've kind of only been thinking math since that's what I teach. It's much easier to have this kind of abuse of authority in a class with lots of subjective information. Teaching math is easy that way.
Unions protect all the teachers, good and bad. It's administration's job to demonstrate that a given teacher is bad. If they are too lazy or can't adequately describe their grounds for firing, this is hardly the union's fault.
Or would you rather let them fire the good teacher who has just turned 40 and lost that certain je ne sais quoi she used to have? Do some research. That shit happens.
You're not just a smart kid, you're gifted, which is a different problem. Not a problem for you of course (or maybe it was at the school you were in) but for the school to know how to handle. Gifted students have special needs that not all teachers know how to meet.
I've believed for a couple of years now that students need to learn how to detect authority, not just how to respect it. Anyone can be given a title like "Principal" or "Officer" or "President" and not actually qualify to have the authority that goes along with it. Schools and parents place a huge emphasis on respecting the authority conferred by titles. Some teachers buy into this.
Besides that, there are two components to "correcting false information" in a classroom setting. There's the part that's about the information itself, and the part where the student is trying to make the teacher look stupid. Of course it can be done without the second part. This is usually no problem. I am always interested in something I haven't thought of, because things can always be done better. But in my experience, the problems arise when students have some other agenda in addition to correcting something they think is wrong. Teachers must react to both when both are present.
I've pirated a lot of games, but out of respect for Stardock's principled stand, I haven't done this with Demigod or any of their other games. Pirates in general who rationalize by complaining about the price of games or draconian copy protection should go out of their way to accommodate the few (or one) publisher who acts reasonably. Presumably they're saving a ton of money by getting their games for free, so some of that money should go to Stardock. That is, if you like the game. Which suggests another problem of "how can I know that" so I'm waiting for a demo. Does a demo exist yet?
Judging from the Wolverine workprint episode I'm sure you're right :)
I looked around a little bit for examples of the questions that made this a push poll instead of an actual poll and found nothing. Has anyone been on the receiving end of one of these solicitations?
A billable rate? The scientists there were independent contractors?
I actually see both your point and the GP point. I'm with you as long as someone else isn't making money off my free labor. If they make more money because of my work, then it stands to reason that I ought to also. I'm happy helping people with free products because no one else is making money from my labor.
I wonder if Hollywood has considered what the end state will be if everything they do to fight movie piracy is successful. No more rips from DVD or bluray, no more cameras in theaters or projection booths, no way to see the movie other than a way they approve. Will the erstwhile pirates be flooding theaters to see the movies they used to watch free? There's no way to know, but I tend to think not. Nothing I've heard from MPAA and friends presents a better model that allows pirates to have movies in the same way they do now, but with payment going to wherever it goes when you go to the theater. Surely that's what MPAA wants? A way to make money off the people who aren't paying them now? Surely they're not interested in simply stopping people from having it free, with no financial benefit for themselves. Without that, I think all their effort is for nothing.
Those people are also a small percentage of the people playing WOW, are they not? I haven't seen any actual numbers about this, it's just the impression I have.
The distinction between hardcore and casual game lies in how long you have to play before you receive a reward. Because the omnipresent level grind has a large number of small increments, it's pretty rewarding to most players, and everyone participates in it anyway. By contrast, the grinds that occur after the level grind have to be sought out and may have a small number of large increments. Take a faction grind with Neutral -> Friendly -> Honored -> Revered -> Exalted. Those can take quite a long time of doing really repetitive things before you get a reward at each increment.
So, how much boring stuff are you willing to put up with without a reward? This is the measure of how hardcore a game is. Back when I played WOW, I used to have a ton of characters, and kind of lost interest in each one as I got closer to maxing it out in gear and level. Like a lot of guilds, we left AQ40 to try Naxxramas and then BC did a number on our guild. Luckily for me, the leveling process had enough neat stuff in it to make a new character interesting. That's WOW catering to casuals.
Is this a joke? The blame on slashdot invariably goes from stupid/lazy/authoritarian teachers to teachers' unions. I think the line usually goes that it's easier to control kids than to teach them, but I've found the reverse is true in my 12 years teaching. This is going somewhat off the original topic, but academic frustration is the root of a great many behavior problems. Boredom is maybe the flip side of this.
There is also the story and the features of the game that make it art. Ebert says that games can't be artistic works of fiction since the user controls the outcome. While the user does control the outcome, there is something to be said for a game forcing you to choose between two unfavorable options or choose how your character presents him or herself (i.e. roleplaying.) See Mass Effect for some of this, or better yet Planescape: Torment. The gameplay mechanics should really be a relatively minor thing in a roleplaying game, but because the computer can crunch the numbers so well, they take a featured role in CRPG.
This sounds like a way to sell more expensive hardware or induce people to buy new computers when they wouldn't otherwise. I'm not sure how many people they expect to replace their existing vista install with windows 7. But if their "Which Windows is Right for Me?" tool suggests the starter edition that can only run 3 apps, people might decide to just get a new machine. At the store, the computer sales guy is going to say "this one is rated for starter edition" and start explaining about how AV and IM clients will run down the 3 application count and starter edition is a piece of crap, that's upsell right there.
I'm nowhere near the actual marketing and OS edition strategies but this sounds like something MS would do. Were the myriad editions used this way in the past?
I don't remember very many prominent Democrats opposing the NSA's illegal spying program. In fact many prominent Democrats were in favor. I remember a lengthy and uncompromising campaign against these kind of things by Chris Dodd (D-CT), but I also remember that Harry Reid (D-NV) decided to ignore the hold that Dodd placed on the FISA Amendments Act of 2008. Ignoring holds placed by Senators is not generally done. And then a lot of Democrats voted to end debate on the amendments to the act. I think you're giving the Democratic party too much credit for opposing the lawlessness of the Bush administration. They don't oppose lawlessness per se.
The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court is part of the judicial branch. Under the law from 1978, intelligence gatherers can apply for a warrant from this court the normal way, or they can do the wiretap without one and then they have 72 hours in which to obtain the warrant or else destroy whatever they have and also it's inadmissable. This is for surveillance where one party is a US person and the other party is known to be a foreign national.
On the contrary, the FISA amendments act from last year changes this. The time period is now 7 days, and all you need now is a letter from the AG or his designee. That's a way to keep oversight of executive branch in house and totalitarian.
These are fine distinctions I know.
I guess I do believe in the necessity of espionage, and in the existence of state secrets. My objections are to the abuse of these concepts to justify any and everything. It is of course possible that there is no way to have espionage and state secrets without them eventually ballooning into what we have now.
I think on this issue we can call it the current Bush/Cheney douche-o-rama. The administration announced yesterday recent that CIA personnel who relied on legal advice from the DOJ will not be investigated or prosecuted. This says that anything written by someone senior enough in DOJ will be carte blanch for torture. At least, that's the way I would read it if I had a mind to enable torture during my administration. The announcement did not mention what would happen to those giving the advice (Yoo, Addington, etc) or to the officials at the top (Rumsfeld, Cheney, etc.) However, the administration constantly says that they are not interested in looking backwards, only forwards.
Well, that's a relief. When will this kind of forgiveness come to the criminal justice system that the rest of us live in? I mean, crimes I committed in the past should stay in the past why dredge up all that evidence at taxpayer expense just to put me in prison? Or, in the words of Bob Loblaw, "why should you go to jail for a crime that someone else noticed?"