Perhaps the third system could be considered to be the voter who is checking his/her individual vote on the viewable paper trail. You start to get a bunch of mis-printed votes and your third system -- the voter -- raises the red flag. Similar to the mess in Florida. One system - the voters - raised a ruckus about another system - the butterfly ballot. Unfortunately, there was not a third system - electronic - to determine the intent of the voters (thought there was that guy with the bug eyes that they kept showing in the media.
The advent of the release of this software raises many interesting issues. According to their CEO, their software will not support Skype's Super Node technology. Right now every computer with Skype installed on it can be used as a relay to carry data between two other computers when both of those computers are only allowed to make outgoing TCP calls. This means that very soon Skype users will have an alternative client which will not hijack their computer. This could eventually have a very negative effect on the Skype network if too many people choose not to act as Skype Super Nodes and the network starts to deteriorate.
And quit parroting the teacher union's crap they spew about home schooling.
Look, anyone can find examples of students both home schooled and public schooled and use that as reasons to support their side of the story.
Here's mine: The church that I attend lets a homeschool organization rent our facilities once a week. They have about 100 kids come in for group lessons. Parents with specialized skills teach at that time. I don't know what all of the classes are, but I know that art is one of them because I'll come to church some Sundays to find the halls turned into art galleries.
I've walked in to see orderly lines of students, older students willingly helping with the younger students (instead of beating them up). It is the students' responsibility to set up, break down, and clean the classrooms, and I've seen them doing this -- not just without complaint -- but eagerly and efficiently. If I happen to be at the church building on the day that they meet, the children look you in the eye and greet you politely. They say things like "pardon me", "please", "thank you." It's almost hard to picture if you've been through the public school systems. They have a bulletin board with all of the announcements for the organization in one of the halls. On the occasions when I've stopped to read it, I see that they have sports leagues, proms, and academic contests. The feel that I get is that there is all of the benefits of the public school system and few of the drawbacks.
The school that I grew up in was far removed from the inner-city, graffiti-coated, gang-invested stereotype. But if I look back on my own "socialization", I have to wonder at the arguments against homeschool. It almost seems that it's a blind "quantity trumps quality" generalization -- that being properly introduced into society requires that I be surrounded by 30 other children in the classroom, and a sea of them during the lunch break. And one couldn't possibly function as a proper lady or gentleman in society without that. It seems more a Darwinian approach. The ones with certain traits survive and thrive. And many on Slashdot know that those traits aren't generally the traits that necessarily make you thrive in the real world. In fact, it usually takes a good deal of unlearning, unsocialization, before you realize that the world doesn't necessarily work the way it did in school.
home schooling is villified by those who fear its results.
You can expect similar arguments from the Teachers Unions and those who are held in its thrall to any advance in education which leads to a loss of their power and influence.
And thus the reaction against this charter school. The fact is, it is not just this charter school. It is ALL charter schools. The online content is really a secondary issue. The real key here is the unionization. In the public school systems, the union holds a monopoly. Charter schools represent a threat because they fall outside of the monopoly's clutches. Teachers in a charter school can *gasp* be fired for poor performance. Like him or hate him, John Stossel did a very interesting program called Stupid In America: How Lack of Choice Cheats Our Kids Out of a Good Education. It was about the union opposition to charter schools. I remember that there was an interview with a teacher's union official in which the reporter tried to get the official to admit that there could be a union teacher that was not fit to teach and should be fired. The official would not say it, instead claiming that there was no such thing as a bad teacher and there was absolutely no good reason to fire one. Again, this doesn't ring true with my education experience.
This is also one of the reasons there is nearly a universal backlash in the field of education against No Child Left Behind. This is a hate that crosses party lines, be
I don't think royalties is really the issue at hand. Apparently, the DVDs were being purchased by the scrubbing companies on a one-to-one basis. The artists were making their money. So the question becomes one of the "fair use" rights involved in having a company edit a copy of a DVD for a person versus the reputation of the artists who have their names attached to that DVD. I don't think royalties entered into the suit.
... and be careful throwing around the word "theft" when speaking of copyright law; you're liable to go down in flames, here.
This was probably pointed out in the last discussion on this topic; if so, it's worth mentioning again. Here's an interesting comic from Duke Law that points out some of the landmines of copyright law. Instead of collage, it uses documentary filmmaking as its example. It tries to be balanced, but to me it paints a bleak picture of the future of art.
IMO, it seems that a better use for these large capacity DVDs would be to put entire seasons of standard def material on one disc. The term box set would go away.
There are companies that have reported that the standards are so lax that you could rip up a credit card application, tape it back together, mail it in and still get a credit card.
I would guess that it's more a natural symptom of Apple's growing popularity. As something rises to the top of public consciousness, it's going to get evaluated and critiqued. You'll have haters as well as lovers. The other side of the coin is: any press is good press.
Seems that someone noticed that Senators with iPods ask tougher questions when faced with "content industry representatives" at hearings. This group is asking people to donate money to buy your senator an iPod. From their site:
Plus, we're going to pre-load each one with examples of the cultural richness made possible by sharing and collaboration - public domain content, Creative Commons content, and audio messages about the importance of balanced copyright policy. It will be engraved with the words "listen to the people." And it will arrive at each Senator's campaign office with a letter of explanation and a list of all the people who helped pay for it.
I think this guy is just speaking for the wrong generation. People his age didn't see it live. People our age were the target audience of a big educational/promotional tie-in with NASA. Wasn't there an essay contest in advance of the mission in which children could nominate their teachers? I was at a small, rural school in eastern Oklahoma and as such we didn't have the facilities to watch live. But I remember all of the teachers being excited that there was a teacher going up in space. Their enthusiasm spilled over onto the children (who didn't need much help getting excited about the shuttle program). I think that, in part, it was this build-up that makes people of our generation remember it so vividly. We were so emotionally primed that day to begin with.
Though I didn't see it live, I've talked to tons of people my age who did watch in their classroom. I personally remember running from the bus to my front door just so I could see the replays of the launch. Our television faced the front door. My mother didn't watch television that much, so it was unusual that it was on when I walked in the door. The very first thing that I saw was a repeat of the explosion (or non-explosion, whatever). I stood there in shock. I don't think I even closed the front door.
I think that myth #1 might be better worded, "Aside from an entire generation of school children, few people actually saw the Challenger tragedy unfold live on television.."
I have my doubts that the typical secular person would recognize the Christian parallels in this story any more than in any other archetypical story. Sacrificial heroes are common to plot and very common to f/sf plot. Lord of the Rings could easily be read as Christian allegory if you had a mind to, though I believe that Tolkien was fairly adamant that it was never intended as an allegory of any kind. "No. I dislike allegory whenever I smell it," was a quote of his, I believe.
I've not seen the movie yet, myself. I'm re-reading the books now in anticipation. I'm also a Christian and have been quite steeped in Christian thinking. Knowing their nature now (and having read some of C. S. Lewis's other works more recently), it is obvious that Narnia is Christian allegory in a kind of "hindsight is 20/20" way. I remember reading these books as a child though, and despite my religious upbringing, I didn't make the connection until late in the series when Aslan very specifically said something along the lines of, "I'm here to remind you of someone from your world." Something like that which very bluntly pointed out the connection. Maybe I was just too dense (or not used to reading fiction as allegory. Or too used to American fiction).
At any rate, you certainly don't have to be a Christian to enjoy good plot and much good plot revolves around heroes whose sacrifice saves the world. So I wouldn't let that put anyone off of seeing the movie or reading the books.
I am glad that they didn't try to PeeCee Lewis's original intent though. I was afraid that the movie would be Disneyfied to death.
When I first played Tetris, my eyes were trying to fill in everything I saw with falling blocks. It was especially bad when I was reading. The lines of text needed to be completed quickly because they were getting dangerously close to the top of the page.
If I had been younger and more impressionable, who knows what I would have been capable of. I might have gone around dropping blocks next to people!
My story: Beware using an ATM in a thunderstorm. I was at the ATM of a drive-through bank on a rainy Sunday. I stuck my card in and began the transaction just in time for the electricity to blink off and then on again. The ATM blanked out. I sat there and watched as it rebooted (Windows) and stopped at the desktop. I could get no response from the machine and it apparently wasn't giving my card back. No employees at the bank, being a weekend, so I immediately went home and called to cancel the card. Is it odd that there are no failsafes for that kind of thing?
Dvorak writes about Apple, complains about people writing about Apple.
Kind of reminds me of this famous exchange:
HEAD KNIGHT: He said the word again!
ROBIN: I was looking for it.
KNIGHTS: Aaaaugh!
ROBIN: Uh, here, here in this forest.
ARTHUR: No, it is far from--
KNIGHTS: Aaaaugh!
HEAD KNIGHT: Aaaaugh! Stop saying the word!
ARTHUR: Oh, stop it!
KNIGHTS: Aaaaugh!
HEAD KNIGHT: Oh! He said it again!
ARTHUR: Patsy!
HEAD KNIGHT: Aaugh! I said it! I said it! Ooh! I said it
again! That's three its!
KNIGHTS: Aaaaugh!
Slashdot Mirror
I'm sorry, sir, but I take offense!
sincerely,
SharkJumper
Not just emotionally true, historically true. See Kitty Genovese.
Perhaps the third system could be considered to be the voter who is checking his/her individual vote on the viewable paper trail. You start to get a bunch of mis-printed votes and your third system -- the voter -- raises the red flag. Similar to the mess in Florida. One system - the voters - raised a ruckus about another system - the butterfly ballot. Unfortunately, there was not a third system - electronic - to determine the intent of the voters (thought there was that guy with the bug eyes that they kept showing in the media.
Pssh.
Fragile (frah-jee-lay). Italian n. Major Award.
Ah! You're familiar with my work!
Here's mine: The church that I attend lets a homeschool organization rent our facilities once a week. They have about 100 kids come in for group lessons. Parents with specialized skills teach at that time. I don't know what all of the classes are, but I know that art is one of them because I'll come to church some Sundays to find the halls turned into art galleries.
I've walked in to see orderly lines of students, older students willingly helping with the younger students (instead of beating them up). It is the students' responsibility to set up, break down, and clean the classrooms, and I've seen them doing this -- not just without complaint -- but eagerly and efficiently. If I happen to be at the church building on the day that they meet, the children look you in the eye and greet you politely. They say things like "pardon me", "please", "thank you." It's almost hard to picture if you've been through the public school systems. They have a bulletin board with all of the announcements for the organization in one of the halls. On the occasions when I've stopped to read it, I see that they have sports leagues, proms, and academic contests. The feel that I get is that there is all of the benefits of the public school system and few of the drawbacks.
The school that I grew up in was far removed from the inner-city, graffiti-coated, gang-invested stereotype. But if I look back on my own "socialization", I have to wonder at the arguments against homeschool. It almost seems that it's a blind "quantity trumps quality" generalization -- that being properly introduced into society requires that I be surrounded by 30 other children in the classroom, and a sea of them during the lunch break. And one couldn't possibly function as a proper lady or gentleman in society without that. It seems more a Darwinian approach. The ones with certain traits survive and thrive. And many on Slashdot know that those traits aren't generally the traits that necessarily make you thrive in the real world. In fact, it usually takes a good deal of unlearning, unsocialization, before you realize that the world doesn't necessarily work the way it did in school.
And thus the reaction against this charter school. The fact is, it is not just this charter school. It is ALL charter schools. The online content is really a secondary issue. The real key here is the unionization. In the public school systems, the union holds a monopoly. Charter schools represent a threat because they fall outside of the monopoly's clutches. Teachers in a charter school can *gasp* be fired for poor performance. Like him or hate him, John Stossel did a very interesting program called Stupid In America: How Lack of Choice Cheats Our Kids Out of a Good Education. It was about the union opposition to charter schools. I remember that there was an interview with a teacher's union official in which the reporter tried to get the official to admit that there could be a union teacher that was not fit to teach and should be fired. The official would not say it, instead claiming that there was no such thing as a bad teacher and there was absolutely no good reason to fire one. Again, this doesn't ring true with my education experience.
This is also one of the reasons there is nearly a universal backlash in the field of education against No Child Left Behind. This is a hate that crosses party lines, be
Oops, you just gave them royalties.
I don't think royalties is really the issue at hand. Apparently, the DVDs were being purchased by the scrubbing companies on a one-to-one basis. The artists were making their money. So the question becomes one of the "fair use" rights involved in having a company edit a copy of a DVD for a person versus the reputation of the artists who have their names attached to that DVD. I don't think royalties entered into the suit.
... and be careful throwing around the word "theft" when speaking of copyright law; you're liable to go down in flames, here.
SharkJumper
This was probably pointed out in the last discussion on this topic; if so, it's worth mentioning again. Here's an interesting comic from Duke Law that points out some of the landmines of copyright law. Instead of collage, it uses documentary filmmaking as its example. It tries to be balanced, but to me it paints a bleak picture of the future of art.
SharkJumper
Sure, but where do you find $70 duct tape?
IMO, it seems that a better use for these large capacity DVDs would be to put entire seasons of standard def material on one disc. The term box set would go away.
There are companies that have reported that the standards are so lax that you could rip up a credit card application, tape it back together, mail it in and still get a credit card.
Specifically, companies like this one.
SharkJumper
Not to mention that when your MP3 player breaks you have to send in your phone to get it repaired.
SharkJumper
This is Karma Whoring
SharkJumper
I would guess that it's more a natural symptom of Apple's growing popularity. As something rises to the top of public consciousness, it's going to get evaluated and critiqued. You'll have haters as well as lovers. The other side of the coin is: any press is good press.
SharkJumper
In fact, you can bribe your senator with an iPod.
Seems that someone noticed that Senators with iPods ask tougher questions when faced with "content industry representatives" at hearings. This group is asking people to donate money to buy your senator an iPod. From their site:
Plus, we're going to pre-load each one with examples of the cultural richness made possible by sharing and collaboration - public domain content, Creative Commons content, and audio messages about the importance of balanced copyright policy. It will be engraved with the words "listen to the people." And it will arrive at each Senator's campaign office with a letter of explanation and a list of all the people who helped pay for it.
Interesting idea.
SharkJumper
Not to mention those that modded it up to +4 Informative.
SharkJumper
This guy is totally false on #1
I think this guy is just speaking for the wrong generation. People his age didn't see it live. People our age were the target audience of a big educational/promotional tie-in with NASA. Wasn't there an essay contest in advance of the mission in which children could nominate their teachers? I was at a small, rural school in eastern Oklahoma and as such we didn't have the facilities to watch live. But I remember all of the teachers being excited that there was a teacher going up in space. Their enthusiasm spilled over onto the children (who didn't need much help getting excited about the shuttle program). I think that, in part, it was this build-up that makes people of our generation remember it so vividly. We were so emotionally primed that day to begin with.
Though I didn't see it live, I've talked to tons of people my age who did watch in their classroom. I personally remember running from the bus to my front door just so I could see the replays of the launch. Our television faced the front door. My mother didn't watch television that much, so it was unusual that it was on when I walked in the door. The very first thing that I saw was a repeat of the explosion (or non-explosion, whatever). I stood there in shock. I don't think I even closed the front door.
I think that myth #1 might be better worded, "Aside from an entire generation of school children, few people actually saw the Challenger tragedy unfold live on television.."
For those children, it left a lasting impression.
SharkJumper
I have my doubts that the typical secular person would recognize the Christian parallels in this story any more than in any other archetypical story. Sacrificial heroes are common to plot and very common to f/sf plot. Lord of the Rings could easily be read as Christian allegory if you had a mind to, though I believe that Tolkien was fairly adamant that it was never intended as an allegory of any kind. "No. I dislike allegory whenever I smell it," was a quote of his, I believe.
I've not seen the movie yet, myself. I'm re-reading the books now in anticipation. I'm also a Christian and have been quite steeped in Christian thinking. Knowing their nature now (and having read some of C. S. Lewis's other works more recently), it is obvious that Narnia is Christian allegory in a kind of "hindsight is 20/20" way. I remember reading these books as a child though, and despite my religious upbringing, I didn't make the connection until late in the series when Aslan very specifically said something along the lines of, "I'm here to remind you of someone from your world." Something like that which very bluntly pointed out the connection. Maybe I was just too dense (or not used to reading fiction as allegory. Or too used to American fiction).
At any rate, you certainly don't have to be a Christian to enjoy good plot and much good plot revolves around heroes whose sacrifice saves the world. So I wouldn't let that put anyone off of seeing the movie or reading the books.
I am glad that they didn't try to PeeCee Lewis's original intent though. I was afraid that the movie would be Disneyfied to death.
SharkJumper
When I first played Tetris, my eyes were trying to fill in everything I saw with falling blocks. It was especially bad when I was reading. The lines of text needed to be completed quickly because they were getting dangerously close to the top of the page.
If I had been younger and more impressionable, who knows what I would have been capable of. I might have gone around dropping blocks next to people!
SharkJumper
And it's written by none other than Katharine Q. Seelye.
Oh yeah! I read about you in the newspaper!
My story:
Beware using an ATM in a thunderstorm. I was at the ATM of a drive-through bank on a rainy Sunday. I stuck my card in and began the transaction just in time for the electricity to blink off and then on again. The ATM blanked out. I sat there and watched as it rebooted (Windows) and stopped at the desktop. I could get no response from the machine and it apparently wasn't giving my card back. No employees at the bank, being a weekend, so I immediately went home and called to cancel the card.
Is it odd that there are no failsafes for that kind of thing?
SharkJumper
Nope. Cue Solsbury Hill. That way NASA can turn this into a romantic comedy a la The Shining:
Dvorak writes about Apple, complains about people writing about Apple.
Kind of reminds me of this famous exchange:
HEAD KNIGHT: He said the word again!
ROBIN: I was looking for it.
KNIGHTS: Aaaaugh!
ROBIN: Uh, here, here in this forest.
ARTHUR: No, it is far from--
KNIGHTS: Aaaaugh!
HEAD KNIGHT: Aaaaugh! Stop saying the word!
ARTHUR: Oh, stop it!
KNIGHTS: Aaaaugh!
HEAD KNIGHT: Oh! He said it again!
ARTHUR: Patsy!
HEAD KNIGHT: Aaugh! I said it! I said it! Ooh! I said it
again! That's three its!
KNIGHTS: Aaaaugh!