On a more serious note, for the grandparent post, your son may just be an artist type given his grades in that class, and he may realize that the way school is taught is bullshit. It's more busy-work than learning, and he's being graded on putting his nose to the grindstone and not thinking. Getting him drugged up on ritalin (which is all that most professional help amounts to any more) will not help him. What will help him is figuring out a way to challenge him, to get him to work harder. If he fails classes, sign him up for some community college courses for the summer. He won't want to ruin his summer, so he may work harder next year, and if you choose the classes right, he'll have to actually work at them and find them interesting, find a reason to do the homework. If you start challenging him (easy A's on tests with no homework done means that he's nowhere near challenged), he'll have to learn a work ethic. That's what I've run into... I was the same as your son, and my work ethic sucks. I'm slowly fixing it (damn you, Slashdot!), but it takes work and desire. Give him a reason to desire it and an outlet for his abilities.
Children 50 years ago would be going to high school and higher education in much lower numbers than they are today, and there would be a significantly decreased stigma with vocational education. A high school education gets you a lot less today than it did in the 50's and 60's. Now it's bare minimum, back then it meant you could start above the minimum.
Oh, right. Let's bring our children up in a communist educational system where everyone works to varying degrees to get the exact same reward, and then just throw them into a capitalist society. Or do you do work for free?
The thing I've found with professors is that they overvalue their own field's education, and don't give two shits about everything else. Which is why they act as if it's more important... to your English Literature professor, that information is the culmination of what he's dedicated his life to. To you, it's two credit hours. Did you really expect you'd see eye-to-eye on something like that?;)
So if your boss stops giving you paychecks, will you still go in to work just for the satisfaction of a job well done? If so, have I got a job for you...
Versus what we're doing now, which is teaching them to "Show up, slack off, and you'll get kicked out with a diploma eventually because we don't want to deal with you any more"? I'd much prefer monetary rewards. No, it's not the idealistic "right" thing to do, but guess what? It's realistic. The vast majority of people will not do something unless there's a tangible reward attached. Be it money, a trophy, whatever, it needs to be something, and it needs to be something that a child can attach value to. Because if you say "you'll get a good job in 10 years" means as much to an 8 year old as "something good might happen next century". There are a number of people who see the value in learning for the sake of it... but society as a whole? There are enough who don't that we need to somehow change motivators for them.
So... you consider your paycheck a bribe? Why don't you just work without the corruption of being bribed to produce value for your company, aka, work for free? I don't think you've thought this whole "bribery" thing through. If kids are required to be at school, give them some kind of reward for doing a good job at it. It's basic human behavior... expecting kids to work their asses off learning when they see no benefit from it. Saying "If you work hard you'll get a good job in 10 years" isn't a reward. You could say that to an 8 year old, and that would be further away than they've even lived, much less been cognizant of themselves. There need to be shorter-term rewards for working hard, and just as importantly, LACK of those rewards for not working hard, and for not succeeding. The most important thing is to make the rewards dependent on results... just like everything else in this world.
A penalty is a significantly different motivator than a reward. If you do nothing but penalize rats, they will end up cowering in the corner doing nothing, even if you eventually institute a periodic reward. If you reward them for doing new things, they will keep trying new things, even if you periodically penalize them for doing the "wrong" thing.
The scheme should be enacted as long as education and attendance to school is mandatory. If you're going to require someone to do something, you should reward them for doing a good job. Just like the real world works... you do the work, you get the paycheck. You don't do the work, you don't get paid. They payments would stop at grade 12 because after that, you aren't required to be in school. Not a huge leap.
And if they don't want to work for education in the high school years (9-12 in the US)? Let them work vocational ed, and still reward them for good work. Really... kids are getting some seriously mixed signals. School is where you fuck around since there's no outcome other than some letter at the end of the year tied to what you do. The real world and jobs are really important since you get money for those.
Doctor pay is astronomical because the risks and costs are astronomical. My soon-to-be sister-in-law is a doctor. The malpractice insurance, office space, clerk and receptionist pay. Hell, the tuition bill is effectively another mortgage payment. What we need to do is find a way to hold doctors accountable for serious mistakes without leaving them open to frivolous lawsuits, which drives the cost of malpractice insurance up. Which drives people away from the field, so those who do stay can charge more since the supply of physicians is down...
Oh come on... all white people are just rolling in money and pay for things like college with pocket change. Especially the white men. Didn't you know that?
Yes, debilitating long term effects like teaching children that if they work hard and do well, they will be rewarded. Oh the horrors!
The only problem I see is if the reward is only tied to "working hard" and divorced from "doing well". THAT is when you run into problems like my generation has (Gen Why)
Finance theory as found in the textbooks is what led us into the financial mess we're in now. Short term profit is definitely good, but it is not the only thing that should be considered. Shit, just look at HP. Cut the cost of development and product manufacturing by using less costly and inferior methods saves a shit-ton of cash and makes a lot of money over your 18 months. What happens after that, though? When people start realizing that the printers will fall apart after 3 months of use? You've just saved cash by spending your corporate good name, which means that next time around people won't buy your stuff. That doesn't matter to the ??O's who jump ship after a couple years with a golden parachute, but it sure as hell drives any kind of quality or sustainability into the ground. And it leaves us in the financial mess we're in where stock prices are starting to reflect actual value companies have.
What about shooting shells over a hill, though? Sure, call in air support, but why not bring some mortars in and target them appropriately?
Oh, and it depends on the distance, but you can get commerical-grade laser rangefinders for $440, and they're accurate to +/- 1 yard at up to 930 yards. That's not too bad, or too expensive. Hook up some simple mems (like an iPhone) to get inclination and such, GPS and a compass for direction, and you have a very cheap targeting device. Couple thousand more at most to get it ruggedized for military use, and you have a nice over-hill targeting system that'll let you lob mortars onto enemies from a pretty good distance while exposing yourself minimally. And if the enemy's on the move, that's where the fast targeting transmission comes in.
Why is education tied so inextricably to socialization, though? That's the main problem... we need to find a way for kids to be able to be educated about things separately from being socialized.
What about speed, though? It's a hell of a lot faster to lase a target than it is to find it, then look it up on a map. From a distance, what do you do... estimate? Hope your maps are correct? Or would you rather have your GPS tied to a laser and a compass, and just "point and click", the target is instantly identified? A moving convoy, that's gonna be the difference between hitting them and hitting near them.
The point is that the iPhone is a device capable of all kinds of neat things, even if it's not the absolute best at any one thing. Jack of all trades, if you will. I mean, a Canon EOS 5D Mark II will take MUCH better pictures than a silly iPhone. Why would you even take pictures with a phone when the camera is so much better? Even if you're a master of none, being a Jack of all trades really makes for an interesting device that lets you do things you can't do with anything else.
What about that other 10% of the day? It's mostly for gamers and developers, but multiple cores really does speed a lot of things up. And they're starting to be quite useful now that Joe User is getting into video and audio editing and so on. Those most certainly are CPU-limited applications, and they are pretty amenable to parallelism as well. Just because you only email, browse the web and use a word processor doesn't mean that's what everyone does.
Silly poster. Don't you know that the United States is the only country that matters, and that since T-Mobile is #4 or 5 here, they've gotta be a small fry altogether?
So don't sign a contract. Every carrier I know will let you buy a phone outright instead of amortizing it through a contract term. It's just that you won't get your G1 for $50, it'll be more like $550.
The reason everyone puts energy into H.264 is because all their devices use H.264. My video camera records to H.264, most HD videos are H.264 last time I checked. It's simply putting energy into what gives the best return of your investment. Theora works on... a computer. And that's it.
Anecdotes do not data make. You've asserted you can train anyone to be violent. Can you train anyone to NOT be violent, though? And, do they just not behave violently, or do they truly never have any violent thoughts? Chimpanzee troupes wage war on each other for territory... violence is an inherent characteristic in all animals. There is no evidence that you can get that out of people, and there is plenty of evidence that it can be more strongly expressed in some people. Otherwise murder wouldn't have been written about since writing was invented.
Slashdot Mirror
You committed suicide?!
On a more serious note, for the grandparent post, your son may just be an artist type given his grades in that class, and he may realize that the way school is taught is bullshit. It's more busy-work than learning, and he's being graded on putting his nose to the grindstone and not thinking. Getting him drugged up on ritalin (which is all that most professional help amounts to any more) will not help him. What will help him is figuring out a way to challenge him, to get him to work harder. If he fails classes, sign him up for some community college courses for the summer. He won't want to ruin his summer, so he may work harder next year, and if you choose the classes right, he'll have to actually work at them and find them interesting, find a reason to do the homework. If you start challenging him (easy A's on tests with no homework done means that he's nowhere near challenged), he'll have to learn a work ethic. That's what I've run into... I was the same as your son, and my work ethic sucks. I'm slowly fixing it (damn you, Slashdot!), but it takes work and desire. Give him a reason to desire it and an outlet for his abilities.
Children 50 years ago would be going to high school and higher education in much lower numbers than they are today, and there would be a significantly decreased stigma with vocational education. A high school education gets you a lot less today than it did in the 50's and 60's. Now it's bare minimum, back then it meant you could start above the minimum.
Oh, right. Let's bring our children up in a communist educational system where everyone works to varying degrees to get the exact same reward, and then just throw them into a capitalist society. Or do you do work for free?
The thing I've found with professors is that they overvalue their own field's education, and don't give two shits about everything else. Which is why they act as if it's more important... to your English Literature professor, that information is the culmination of what he's dedicated his life to. To you, it's two credit hours. Did you really expect you'd see eye-to-eye on something like that? ;)
So if your boss stops giving you paychecks, will you still go in to work just for the satisfaction of a job well done? If so, have I got a job for you...
Versus what we're doing now, which is teaching them to "Show up, slack off, and you'll get kicked out with a diploma eventually because we don't want to deal with you any more"? I'd much prefer monetary rewards. No, it's not the idealistic "right" thing to do, but guess what? It's realistic. The vast majority of people will not do something unless there's a tangible reward attached. Be it money, a trophy, whatever, it needs to be something, and it needs to be something that a child can attach value to. Because if you say "you'll get a good job in 10 years" means as much to an 8 year old as "something good might happen next century". There are a number of people who see the value in learning for the sake of it... but society as a whole? There are enough who don't that we need to somehow change motivators for them.
So... you consider your paycheck a bribe? Why don't you just work without the corruption of being bribed to produce value for your company, aka, work for free? I don't think you've thought this whole "bribery" thing through. If kids are required to be at school, give them some kind of reward for doing a good job at it. It's basic human behavior... expecting kids to work their asses off learning when they see no benefit from it. Saying "If you work hard you'll get a good job in 10 years" isn't a reward. You could say that to an 8 year old, and that would be further away than they've even lived, much less been cognizant of themselves. There need to be shorter-term rewards for working hard, and just as importantly, LACK of those rewards for not working hard, and for not succeeding. The most important thing is to make the rewards dependent on results... just like everything else in this world.
A penalty is a significantly different motivator than a reward. If you do nothing but penalize rats, they will end up cowering in the corner doing nothing, even if you eventually institute a periodic reward. If you reward them for doing new things, they will keep trying new things, even if you periodically penalize them for doing the "wrong" thing.
The scheme should be enacted as long as education and attendance to school is mandatory. If you're going to require someone to do something, you should reward them for doing a good job. Just like the real world works... you do the work, you get the paycheck. You don't do the work, you don't get paid. They payments would stop at grade 12 because after that, you aren't required to be in school. Not a huge leap.
And if they don't want to work for education in the high school years (9-12 in the US)? Let them work vocational ed, and still reward them for good work. Really... kids are getting some seriously mixed signals. School is where you fuck around since there's no outcome other than some letter at the end of the year tied to what you do. The real world and jobs are really important since you get money for those.
Doctor pay is astronomical because the risks and costs are astronomical. My soon-to-be sister-in-law is a doctor. The malpractice insurance, office space, clerk and receptionist pay. Hell, the tuition bill is effectively another mortgage payment. What we need to do is find a way to hold doctors accountable for serious mistakes without leaving them open to frivolous lawsuits, which drives the cost of malpractice insurance up. Which drives people away from the field, so those who do stay can charge more since the supply of physicians is down...
Van? Van Wilder? Is that you?
Oh come on... all white people are just rolling in money and pay for things like college with pocket change. Especially the white men. Didn't you know that?
Yes, debilitating long term effects like teaching children that if they work hard and do well, they will be rewarded. Oh the horrors!
The only problem I see is if the reward is only tied to "working hard" and divorced from "doing well". THAT is when you run into problems like my generation has (Gen Why)
Finance theory as found in the textbooks is what led us into the financial mess we're in now. Short term profit is definitely good, but it is not the only thing that should be considered. Shit, just look at HP. Cut the cost of development and product manufacturing by using less costly and inferior methods saves a shit-ton of cash and makes a lot of money over your 18 months. What happens after that, though? When people start realizing that the printers will fall apart after 3 months of use? You've just saved cash by spending your corporate good name, which means that next time around people won't buy your stuff. That doesn't matter to the ??O's who jump ship after a couple years with a golden parachute, but it sure as hell drives any kind of quality or sustainability into the ground. And it leaves us in the financial mess we're in where stock prices are starting to reflect actual value companies have.
What about shooting shells over a hill, though? Sure, call in air support, but why not bring some mortars in and target them appropriately? Oh, and it depends on the distance, but you can get commerical-grade laser rangefinders for $440, and they're accurate to +/- 1 yard at up to 930 yards. That's not too bad, or too expensive. Hook up some simple mems (like an iPhone) to get inclination and such, GPS and a compass for direction, and you have a very cheap targeting device. Couple thousand more at most to get it ruggedized for military use, and you have a nice over-hill targeting system that'll let you lob mortars onto enemies from a pretty good distance while exposing yourself minimally. And if the enemy's on the move, that's where the fast targeting transmission comes in.
Why is education tied so inextricably to socialization, though? That's the main problem... we need to find a way for kids to be able to be educated about things separately from being socialized.
Yeah, but it's -10 points for misspelling automatically when there's a spell-check function in the browser...
What about speed, though? It's a hell of a lot faster to lase a target than it is to find it, then look it up on a map. From a distance, what do you do... estimate? Hope your maps are correct? Or would you rather have your GPS tied to a laser and a compass, and just "point and click", the target is instantly identified? A moving convoy, that's gonna be the difference between hitting them and hitting near them.
You can pocket your tablet PC? Amazing!
The point is that the iPhone is a device capable of all kinds of neat things, even if it's not the absolute best at any one thing. Jack of all trades, if you will. I mean, a Canon EOS 5D Mark II will take MUCH better pictures than a silly iPhone. Why would you even take pictures with a phone when the camera is so much better? Even if you're a master of none, being a Jack of all trades really makes for an interesting device that lets you do things you can't do with anything else.
What about that other 10% of the day? It's mostly for gamers and developers, but multiple cores really does speed a lot of things up. And they're starting to be quite useful now that Joe User is getting into video and audio editing and so on. Those most certainly are CPU-limited applications, and they are pretty amenable to parallelism as well. Just because you only email, browse the web and use a word processor doesn't mean that's what everyone does.
Silly poster. Don't you know that the United States is the only country that matters, and that since T-Mobile is #4 or 5 here, they've gotta be a small fry altogether?
So don't sign a contract. Every carrier I know will let you buy a phone outright instead of amortizing it through a contract term. It's just that you won't get your G1 for $50, it'll be more like $550.
Crying wolf doesn't hurt, either.
The reason everyone puts energy into H.264 is because all their devices use H.264. My video camera records to H.264, most HD videos are H.264 last time I checked. It's simply putting energy into what gives the best return of your investment. Theora works on... a computer. And that's it.
Anecdotes do not data make. You've asserted you can train anyone to be violent. Can you train anyone to NOT be violent, though? And, do they just not behave violently, or do they truly never have any violent thoughts? Chimpanzee troupes wage war on each other for territory... violence is an inherent characteristic in all animals. There is no evidence that you can get that out of people, and there is plenty of evidence that it can be more strongly expressed in some people. Otherwise murder wouldn't have been written about since writing was invented.