Well, I will tell you why one customer stays. My grandfather has been with AOL for years. He hates it: the buggy software crashes on him regularly, connection is not especially reliable, etc.
Unfortunately, he is the author of a lot of articles in journals in his field and is well known in this field. This means that his email address is published a *lot*. Leaving AOL would necessitate the huge hassle of changing and updating his email address.
And then, of course, he is also 72 years old and not especially computer adept. He *does* want to leave AOL, but for better or worse he knows how to use the program. We've talked about DSL, but the extra speed matters little to him.
Basically, he stays with AOL because it is easier for him than the alternative.
Re:Hasn't Halloween passed its useful life?
on
Halloween Fun
·
· Score: 1
Dunno about you, but in my neighborhood it seems to divide into three parts. Maybe half of the "trick-or-treaters" are mid-to-older-teens who do not bother to dress up and just carry a pillowcase for candy. The other half are actual children, but half of *them* no longer bother to wear a costume.
For me, the whole point of Halloween is for *kids* to dress up, have fun going house to house or at a party, and yes get sick eating too much candy. I know I should just let it pass, but I get really annoyed when I see a pile of kids, not in costume, driving around with pillowcases in a minivan to collect candy. Personally, I think Halloween has definitely passed its useful life.
that many of the icons in Yoper's config utility are exact copies (not lookalikes, copies) of standard MacOS X icons? They've even got the stylized Mac face on two images, for crying out loud!
Methinks someone is begging for a call from Apple Legal here.
I appreciate your courteous and well-written reply. I'd like to respond to some of your points:
In college and adult life, I have met many people who were homeschooled like myself, and the vast majority of them will freely acknowledge that they were poorly socialized by the experience.
Now my question is, what is the definition of "poorly socialized"? Does this mean "lacking in personal contact"? If so, I would make the argument that this is a personal failing on _their_ part (failing to seek out or acquire adequate contact) and has nothing to do with the institution itself.
Meeting with other homeschooled children on an occasional (or even a regular) basis is not a substitute for learning to function in the midst of constant interaction with your peers on a daily basis.
Why not? I admit I am at an informational disadvantage here (I never went to high school, and have never attended a school over 300 people), but I can't really see how coinhabiting a building with hundreds of "peers" teaches one much of anything. Could you elaborate?
(If your "all-homeschooler class" is actually meeting on a daily basis, then it's not really homeschooling [snip]
No, no, that's not what I was talking about. I meant a pre-arranged class on a single subject, which for us typically met twice a week for two hours. I took math, physics, chess, and fencing with other HSers.
But ask yourself whether you have a logical reason for believing, in general, that a homeschool education will be better.
Yeah, I do, though admittedly it does not apply to all cases. As a homeschooler, one learns at a pace and in a style tailored to your own learning style. Since most homeschoolers (who are successful at it, I should add) are fairly self motivated, you can often cover considerably more than a public school class would in the same amount of time. The extremely good teacher/student ratio helps too:).
The thing is, though, if you ask 5 different people why homeschooling is better for them, you will almost certainly get five different answers.
May I also remind you, for what (little) it's worth, that homeschooled students consistently score higher than public school students on standardized tests. I do not claim that test scores demonstrate quality of education, but I do think it is worthy of note.
The vast majority of parents in the USA are not nearly as well educated as the average teacher.
Granted. However, the beauty of homeschooling is that not all learning needs to be didactic from parent to child. Again using myself as an example, I have learned from/been taught by: myself, my mother and father, a local builder (that was math), my literature-buff grandfather, another homeschooling mom, a local chess player, and a 17 year old fencing champion. I've also used elements from the homeschool curriculum provided by Saxon and various audio courses from the library.
The point I'm trying to make is, there are a *huge* number of learning resources available, and the parent does not have to know everything.
The textbooks I have seen are not demonstrably better in quality (indeed, they are often worse depending on the agenda of the organization selling them).
I beg to differ, and suggest you look at different textbooks -- preferably not the ones put out by Christian organizations. Furthermore, there is no reason to limit oneself to books designated as 'textbooks'.
I learned physics from a textbook. It was a bad joke. I learned about Roman history by reading adult-level books (not textbooks) on the subject. Guess which one I learned better?
So, on what basis can you claim that a homeschool education is superior? Because the parents care more?
Yes.
Because they provide "personal attention" (something most public school teachers are willing to give, contrary to your assertion)?
When they don't want thei child exposed to "what they teach in school these days", like evolution, and science and other cultures and religions == being scared of the world.
I agree with you. Did you not understand what I said?
> hint: not all homeschooling families are > hermits or bible-pounders
And not all/.-ers are compter geeks... but it's a safe bet:)
Most slashdotters are computer geeks: probably true. Most homeschooling families are bible-pounders: demonstrably untrue.
Most schools have reasonable admission policies for homeschoolers, and some even actively recruit us. In general, you will have to come up with a transcript (I wrote mine myself, with the aid of my parents) and the usual letters of recommendation. Some schools require you to get a GED as well. There are a few more hoops to jump through, but overall it is not odious.
I'm homeschooled, and to be frank your comment pisses me off. You're just repeating popular stereotypes that have little to no substance to them.
they get no interaction with other kids and are far too sheltered...
Speaking as a homeschooled 17-year-old, that's bullshit. Any homeschooled kid who is "sheltered" and "gets no interaction with other kids" is that way because they are failing to take advantage of the opportunities available.
Did you know that homeschooling families can coordinate with each other and have "real" classes of all homeschoolers? Did you know that sometimes *gasp* a whole bunch of homeschooled kids might arrange a homeschool day at the park? Social opportunities *do* exist for homeschoolers, contrary to popular belief. Just because we aren't thrown together with hundreds of other kids does not mean we cannot socialize.
many times its becuase the parents are scared of the world
Um, not all homeschool parents are bible-pounding religionists. Not wanting to subject your child to the impersonal, unpleasant non-education given by public school != being scared of the world.
Schools have many problems but hopefully the parents will help and motviate their child and guide them in the right direction
If they are being taught poorly by overworked and underpaid teachers, get little to no personal attention, and are taught "to the test", how will a little "guidance and motivation" help?
But I do not think home schooling is the correct fix.
And I think you are wrong. While I am not claiming that homeschooling will work for everyone (it won't), your post is uninformed and incorrect. Learn a bit more about what you are criticizing (hint: not all homeschooling families are hermits or bible-pounders). Even better, go to a local homeschool association get-together or an all-homeschooler class, or talk to some real homeschooled students like me.
I haven't read Gatto's book (though I should). I do have a recommendation for a similar work though: James Loewen's "Lies My Teacher Told Me". It doesn't take on the whole education system (it's American history specific), but he does show at length that American history is deliberately taught in a way that discourages critical thought, heroizes the government, and suppresses historical dissent.
Great read. Now I have to read the book actually reviewed...
There is a major difference between "supporting porn access for kids" and "opposing arbitrary, corporation-influenced censorship for all patrons".
I'm not sure how seriously you meant the quoted passage in your post, but it's wrong and I wanted to point that out.
Amount is only message-wise.
on
Spam's U.S. Roots
·
· Score: 4, Informative
According to the article, Asia has a significantly higher number of spamming machines. It's just that the US, with readily available high bandwidth connections (and nutbars like Alan Ralsky) spews out a disproportionate percentage of all actual spam messages.
I am an adamant pacifist. If the United States institutes general conscription without provision for civilian service, I will have to leave the country (which would make me sad - I still have great respect for my country, if not for all its deeds), because I am not willing in any circumstance to serve in the Armed Forces.
Therefore, I am taking dispute with your statement that arguably it's good for people. There are many pacifists like myself who would have to deal with a system that completely contradicts their beliefs. I also have a hard time seeing how military training would in and of itself help any citizen's life.
That euphemism's been around for a long, long time. It really dates back to at least Emperor Augustus 2000 years ago, calling himself "first citizen" and "first among equals".
Re:Busting him for violating sanctions
on
Bobby Fischer Found
·
· Score: 4, Informative
Sad when a genius has his cheese slide off his cracker.
Fischer's always been a nutcase, even back when he was World Champion. Read a decent book on the history of chess (or one specific to him), there are (true) stories about Fischer that you just wouldn't believe. Little things like making the tournament organizers get a chessboard 3 millimeters larger. Flying his favorite chair to the match (in Iceland, no less). Giving up his freakin' World Championship because his insane terms didn't get met.
Basically what I'm saying is, yes Fischer is crazy, but this not new.
I use Camino (also Gecko-based, I don't know if it is exactly the same as Firefox's renderer) on Mac OS X 10.2.8, and moderation works just fine for me.
subscribers will be able to download and watch 100 or more movies each month.
A movie in compressed divx form is what, 600MB, x100 = 60000MB, or ~60GB in one month. Perhaps they can compress it more, but even so that's a hell of a lot of data. It'll be interesting to see how the broadband ISPs react to this, since multimedia is one of the big pros of broadband, but the providers nonetheless tend to rely on folks not actually using their full bandwidth much of the time (that's why they hate big P2P sharers).
The court ruled that the ENIAC patent was invalid due to a filing technicality (they filed several months too late). I don't believe the "originator" dispute between Atanasoff and Mauchly came into the ruling (though I could be wrong - I haven't read the actual document).
ENIAC had to be reprogrammed by almost completely rebuilding the machine.
No, it didn't. The cables connecting the various units had to be rearranged, yes. But the vast majority of the machines - all the accumulators, adding and multiplication units, etc - remained identical.
Much effort, yes. "Almost complete rebuilding", no.
Apparently, there was a massive multi-year court battle between Atanasoff (and the companies who needed his patents) and Mauchly/Eckert (with similar allies). The exact genesis of the ideas are unclear, but the Iowa folks go with Atanasoff because he's a hometown boy.
Slashdot Mirror
Hey, that's great. None of us knew about that. I'll pass it on.
Well, I will tell you why one customer stays. My grandfather has been with AOL for years. He hates it: the buggy software crashes on him regularly, connection is not especially reliable, etc.
Unfortunately, he is the author of a lot of articles in journals in his field and is well known in this field. This means that his email address is published a *lot*. Leaving AOL would necessitate the huge hassle of changing and updating his email address.
And then, of course, he is also 72 years old and not especially computer adept. He *does* want to leave AOL, but for better or worse he knows how to use the program. We've talked about DSL, but the extra speed matters little to him.
Basically, he stays with AOL because it is easier for him than the alternative.
Dunno about you, but in my neighborhood it seems to divide into three parts. Maybe half of the "trick-or-treaters" are mid-to-older-teens who do not bother to dress up and just carry a pillowcase for candy. The other half are actual children, but half of *them* no longer bother to wear a costume.
For me, the whole point of Halloween is for *kids* to dress up, have fun going house to house or at a party, and yes get sick eating too much candy. I know I should just let it pass, but I get really annoyed when I see a pile of kids, not in costume, driving around with pillowcases in a minivan to collect candy. Personally, I think Halloween has definitely passed its useful life.
I take it you've never seen how my 12-year-old sister and her friends type.
... you get the idea. It's enough to make a spell-checker turn in its dictionary.
OMG tht is sooo cool!!!1 rlly? no way!!
that many of the icons in Yoper's config utility are exact copies (not lookalikes, copies) of standard MacOS X icons? They've even got the stylized Mac face on two images, for crying out loud! Methinks someone is begging for a call from Apple Legal here.
What would you have us do about him? Surely you do not propose immediate military action?
I appreciate your courteous and well-written reply. I'd like to respond to some of your points:
:).
In college and adult life, I have met many people who were homeschooled like myself, and the vast majority of them will freely acknowledge that they were poorly socialized by the experience.
Now my question is, what is the definition of "poorly socialized"? Does this mean "lacking in personal contact"? If so, I would make the argument that this is a personal failing on _their_ part (failing to seek out or acquire adequate contact) and has nothing to do with the institution itself.
Meeting with other homeschooled children on an occasional (or even a regular) basis is not a substitute for learning to function in the midst of constant interaction with your peers on a daily basis.
Why not? I admit I am at an informational disadvantage here (I never went to high school, and have never attended a school over 300 people), but I can't really see how coinhabiting a building with hundreds of "peers" teaches one much of anything. Could you elaborate?
(If your "all-homeschooler class" is actually meeting on a daily basis, then it's not really homeschooling [snip]
No, no, that's not what I was talking about. I meant a pre-arranged class on a single subject, which for us typically met twice a week for two hours. I took math, physics, chess, and fencing with other HSers.
But ask yourself whether you have a logical reason for believing, in general, that a homeschool education will be better.
Yeah, I do, though admittedly it does not apply to all cases. As a homeschooler, one learns at a pace and in a style tailored to your own learning style. Since most homeschoolers (who are successful at it, I should add) are fairly self motivated, you can often cover considerably more than a public school class would in the same amount of time. The extremely good teacher/student ratio helps too
The thing is, though, if you ask 5 different people why homeschooling is better for them, you will almost certainly get five different answers.
May I also remind you, for what (little) it's worth, that homeschooled students consistently score higher than public school students on standardized tests. I do not claim that test scores demonstrate quality of education, but I do think it is worthy of note.
The vast majority of parents in the USA are not nearly as well educated as the average teacher.
Granted. However, the beauty of homeschooling is that not all learning needs to be didactic from parent to child. Again using myself as an example, I have learned from/been taught by: myself, my mother and father, a local builder (that was math), my literature-buff grandfather, another homeschooling mom, a local chess player, and a 17 year old fencing champion. I've also used elements from the homeschool curriculum provided by Saxon and various audio courses from the library.
The point I'm trying to make is, there are a *huge* number of learning resources available, and the parent does not have to know everything.
The textbooks I have seen are not demonstrably better in quality (indeed, they are often worse depending on the agenda of the organization selling them).
I beg to differ, and suggest you look at different textbooks -- preferably not the ones put out by Christian organizations. Furthermore, there is no reason to limit oneself to books designated as 'textbooks'.
I learned physics from a textbook. It was a bad joke. I learned about Roman history by reading adult-level books (not textbooks) on the subject. Guess which one I learned better?
So, on what basis can you claim that a homeschool education is superior? Because the parents care more?
Yes.
Because they provide "personal attention" (something most public school teachers are willing to give, contrary to your assertion)?
Public school might have a teacher/student r
When they don't want thei child exposed to "what they teach in school these days", like evolution, and science and other cultures and religions == being scared of the world.
I agree with you. Did you not understand what I said?
> hint: not all homeschooling families are
> hermits or bible-pounders
And not all
Most slashdotters are computer geeks: probably true. Most homeschooling families are bible-pounders: demonstrably untrue.
Most schools have reasonable admission policies for homeschoolers, and some even actively recruit us. In general, you will have to come up with a transcript (I wrote mine myself, with the aid of my parents) and the usual letters of recommendation. Some schools require you to get a GED as well. There are a few more hoops to jump through, but overall it is not odious.
I'm homeschooled, and to be frank your comment pisses me off. You're just repeating popular stereotypes that have little to no substance to them.
they get no interaction with other kids and are far too sheltered...
Speaking as a homeschooled 17-year-old, that's bullshit. Any homeschooled kid who is "sheltered" and "gets no interaction with other kids" is that way because they are failing to take advantage of the opportunities available.
Did you know that homeschooling families can coordinate with each other and have "real" classes of all homeschoolers? Did you know that sometimes *gasp* a whole bunch of homeschooled kids might arrange a homeschool day at the park? Social opportunities *do* exist for homeschoolers, contrary to popular belief. Just because we aren't thrown together with hundreds of other kids does not mean we cannot socialize.
many times its becuase the parents are scared of the world
Um, not all homeschool parents are bible-pounding religionists. Not wanting to subject your child to the impersonal, unpleasant non-education given by public school != being scared of the world.
Schools have many problems but hopefully the parents will help and motviate their child and guide them in the right direction
If they are being taught poorly by overworked and underpaid teachers, get little to no personal attention, and are taught "to the test", how will a little "guidance and motivation" help?
But I do not think home schooling is the correct fix.
And I think you are wrong. While I am not claiming that homeschooling will work for everyone (it won't), your post is uninformed and incorrect. Learn a bit more about what you are criticizing (hint: not all homeschooling families are hermits or bible-pounders). Even better, go to a local homeschool association get-together or an all-homeschooler class, or talk to some real homeschooled students like me.
Then think again about your opinion.
I haven't read Gatto's book (though I should). I do have a recommendation for a similar work though: James Loewen's "Lies My Teacher Told Me". It doesn't take on the whole education system (it's American history specific), but he does show at length that American history is deliberately taught in a way that discourages critical thought, heroizes the government, and suppresses historical dissent. Great read. Now I have to read the book actually reviewed...
They support porn access for kids...
There is a major difference between "supporting porn access for kids" and "opposing arbitrary, corporation-influenced censorship for all patrons".
I'm not sure how seriously you meant the quoted passage in your post, but it's wrong and I wanted to point that out.
According to the article, Asia has a significantly higher number of spamming machines. It's just that the US, with readily available high bandwidth connections (and nutbars like Alan Ralsky) spews out a disproportionate percentage of all actual spam messages.
I am an adamant pacifist. If the United States institutes general conscription without provision for civilian service, I will have to leave the country (which would make me sad - I still have great respect for my country, if not for all its deeds), because I am not willing in any circumstance to serve in the Armed Forces.
Therefore, I am taking dispute with your statement that arguably it's good for people. There are many pacifists like myself who would have to deal with a system that completely contradicts their beliefs. I also have a hard time seeing how military training would in and of itself help any citizen's life.
Sincerely,
Tar-Palantir
That euphemism's been around for a long, long time. It really dates back to at least Emperor Augustus 2000 years ago, calling himself "first citizen" and "first among equals".
Sad when a genius has his cheese slide off his cracker.
Fischer's always been a nutcase, even back when he was World Champion. Read a decent book on the history of chess (or one specific to him), there are (true) stories about Fischer that you just wouldn't believe. Little things like making the tournament organizers get a chessboard 3 millimeters larger. Flying his favorite chair to the match (in Iceland, no less). Giving up his freakin' World Championship because his insane terms didn't get met.
Basically what I'm saying is, yes Fischer is crazy, but this not new.
6.022E23 is Avogadro's number, the number of atoms in a mole of an element.
Marvin, the Paranoid Android.
Brain the size of the universe and I can't even get nominated. Life, don't talk to me about life.
I use Camino (also Gecko-based, I don't know if it is exactly the same as Firefox's renderer) on Mac OS X 10.2.8, and moderation works just fine for me.
He claims you should use the server JVM instead, stating that it is faster but slower to startup and consumes more memory.
subscribers will be able to download and watch 100 or more movies each month.
A movie in compressed divx form is what, 600MB, x100 = 60000MB, or ~60GB in one month. Perhaps they can compress it more, but even so that's a hell of a lot of data. It'll be interesting to see how the broadband ISPs react to this, since multimedia is one of the big pros of broadband, but the providers nonetheless tend to rely on folks not actually using their full bandwidth much of the time (that's why they hate big P2P sharers).
I don't think that's really Roland - note the misspelling of the last name.
The court ruled that the ENIAC patent was invalid due to a filing technicality (they filed several months too late). I don't believe the "originator" dispute between Atanasoff and Mauchly came into the ruling (though I could be wrong - I haven't read the actual document).
ENIAC had to be reprogrammed by almost completely rebuilding the machine.
No, it didn't. The cables connecting the various units had to be rearranged, yes. But the vast majority of the machines - all the accumulators, adding and multiplication units, etc - remained identical.
Much effort, yes. "Almost complete rebuilding", no.
Apparently, there was a massive multi-year court battle between Atanasoff (and the companies who needed his patents) and Mauchly/Eckert (with similar allies). The exact genesis of the ideas are unclear, but the Iowa folks go with Atanasoff because he's a hometown boy.