America's school textbook system is a racket,
and the textbooks suck, not so much because
of the religious wars but because it's a damn
racket, but the computers don't solve that.
It doesn't matter if material is "current."
Algebra hasn't changed since I was in school,
nor physics, nor history. And you can bet the
laptops will be used to look at pablum
just as bad as in the textbooks because this
does nothing to address the corruption
of America's educational-industrial complex.
It's the ultimate "dog bites man" story.
Let's see: Americans are insanely mobile,
and yet the country has no national curriculum,
so children who move have gaps in what they've
learned. Any attempts to write even a skeleton
for a national curriculum gets shot down by
politics. By the time kids enter kindergarten,
they have been driven by television to have the
attention span of a horny weasel, making
discipline difficult, ever more so because
every class will have two or more problem
kids who cannot be disciplined without a
confrontation with their parents. Another
two or more will have been so neglected that
the teacher will have to show them how to
tie their shoes, use silverware, and sometimes
how to brush their teeth. Separating problem
children for the benefit of normal kids is
too tied up in legalities, so it just
doesn't happen. Wellcome to the circus.
But hold, there's more.
Teaching doesn't pay well. So few people enter
it. Many of these come from the bottom of the
collegiate barrel. Ed-school is a joke.
Teacher unions worsen the problem by fighting
against any attempt to tighten merit
requirements in the hiring, tenuring,
promotion, or firing of teachers. The
only surefire way to fire a teacher
is to lay an accusation of pedophilia.
In ed-school, teachers learn methods
based on the ideology of Jean-Jacques
Rousseau and his heirs, which is
largely counterproductive. Ironically,
ed-schools continue to represent Rousseau's
ideas as grand innovation.
So the classroom is a lunatic asylum,
and the teachers can often be counted
among the patients.
First grade reading is hardest hit by
ed-school methods, making for a piss-poor start.
The impact of "whole-language" teaching
has a negative effect on the entire 12 year
system. Yet ed-schools stick to these methods
because ed-schools are a cult, not a branch
of academia. As students progress through the
system, they are hit by popular culture and
its pernicious influence against making any
effort longer than thirty minutes. This same
monstrosity also helps create the school
clique system, which by high school comes to
resemble wartime Beirut, minus the firearms.
And the solution, says the state of Maine,
is to give them all laptops.
And people wonder why I am renewing my green
card, but not filing for naturalization...
Sooner or later someone will patch an SSH client
to go to linemode, where the client sends only
one packet for each section of the session
between carriage returns.
The most important thing about electronic elections is not that Haxor Doods can't hack
into these machines after they draw the curtain.
What's important is that there still be a
trail of paper ballots for later audits, in case
the election officials are corrupt. If you're
going to use these machines, make sure they print
an unambiguous ballot that the voter sees and deposits in the box. That way any mishap can
be corrected.
..that Toricelli is trying to attract any
attention that will distract people from
his current troubles
(ethics violations
accusations)? Why else would he try
to re-illegalize something already illegal?
Episode two: Xena reaches the secret boardroom
of the plutocratic pranksters who have been
teasing Scully and Mulder, and teaches them a
lesson they won't forget.
Episode three: with Xena gone, and every
mystery solved ("and I would have gotten
away with it if it weren't for that meddling
barbarian princess!"), Scully and Mulder
are reassigned to the Sklyarov case.
According to Muslim law, stoning is done this way: you are wrapped all around in a sack and buried tightly to your waist. Then people throw stones at you that are around the size of a tennis ball. If you climb out of the pit while the stoning goes on, it is a sign from God and you are spared and released. Sounds like fun, no?
Russia can develop countermeasures to Star Wars,
meaning decoys and chaff for their ICBMs. If
they are smart, however (and I believe they are),
they will keep these to themselves.
Other countries are fscked, however. Saddam
isn't going to have a suitcase nuke any time soon.
That takes too much effort, with the Israelis
ready to repeat 1982 and the US patroling the air.
He'll be lucky to build a truck nuke, which is
not as easy to bring into Canada,
let alone across the border to a population center, with the FBI and assorted other spooks working exactly to prepare for such an event..
The same applies to ICBMs. Saddam can't add
chaff countermeasures or anything else to his
ICBMs (if he gets any), because his nukes will
still be too large. Now, keep in mind that if
Saddam, or Osama, or Moamar, or whatever
next lunatic comes around
(unpleasant thought of the day - what if Pakistan
is taken over by someone madder than Musharaf?), is able to nuke the
US and gain something by it, he will. So while
Star Wars cannot protect against Pissed-Off Putin,
it can protect against tinpot dictators.
It takes hard-core chemical usage to
manufacture photovoltaic cells. Just remember
that there are other ways to exploit the sun,
as well (solar ovens, solar heating ranges,
et cetera).
I saw one case where a Windows user with some
grossly inadequate "personal firewall" panicked
at an attempt to connect to port 13, i.e. "daytime", i.e. the one service least likely to
be even remotely useful for an attack of any kind.
Thanks to clueless users we are approaching the day when people will think port 80 is the only thing that exists in the IP protocol tree.
will they give this "personality" the
Scientology personality test? Is this AI
a promising pre-Clear(TM)? Can it be audited
all the way to OT(TM)? In college, one of our
passtimes was to take and retake the Scientologists' tests using composite personalities (gather in threes, answer every third).
.. is the obvious one. Intellectual property
law can turn biotech into a disaster for farmers,
consumers, small time researchers, and universities. Of the other fears,
I do think we should all relax. Yes, there's
a risk of anaphilactic shock from GM food.
But then again, we're starting to figure out
what makes people hyperallergic in the first
place, so the risk won't be around much longer.
Frankenkudzus might spring up, but they are
unlikely to be more trouble than run of the mill
kudzus. The IP issues, however, are a headache and a half.
Microsoft is licensing VERY CHEAPLY their development and office tools and a huge database of
technical information. Of COURSE they have a right to know the information about the person to
whom they are sending this software.
Well, gee, VALinux is providing similar
services completely free of charge, and
except for services where they provide me with
server space, VA isn't even tracking my
browsing activity. VAL needs a large base
of application software in order to make
a better business case for their hardware products. MS needs the MSDN for the same
reason. MS should follow VA's example.
"In exchange for funding, Novartis
would be allowed to sift through the
research of the department of plant
and microbial biology at Berkeley's
College of Natural Resources -
licensing up to about one-third of the
researchers' output."
Slashdot Mirror
America's school textbook system is a racket, and the textbooks suck, not so much because of the religious wars but because it's a damn racket, but the computers don't solve that. It doesn't matter if material is "current." Algebra hasn't changed since I was in school, nor physics, nor history. And you can bet the laptops will be used to look at pablum just as bad as in the textbooks because this does nothing to address the corruption of America's educational-industrial complex.
It's the ultimate "dog bites man" story. Let's see: Americans are insanely mobile, and yet the country has no national curriculum, so children who move have gaps in what they've learned. Any attempts to write even a skeleton for a national curriculum gets shot down by politics. By the time kids enter kindergarten, they have been driven by television to have the attention span of a horny weasel, making discipline difficult, ever more so because every class will have two or more problem kids who cannot be disciplined without a confrontation with their parents. Another two or more will have been so neglected that the teacher will have to show them how to tie their shoes, use silverware, and sometimes how to brush their teeth. Separating problem children for the benefit of normal kids is too tied up in legalities, so it just doesn't happen. Wellcome to the circus. But hold, there's more.
Teaching doesn't pay well. So few people enter it. Many of these come from the bottom of the collegiate barrel. Ed-school is a joke. Teacher unions worsen the problem by fighting against any attempt to tighten merit requirements in the hiring, tenuring, promotion, or firing of teachers. The only surefire way to fire a teacher is to lay an accusation of pedophilia. In ed-school, teachers learn methods based on the ideology of Jean-Jacques Rousseau and his heirs, which is largely counterproductive. Ironically, ed-schools continue to represent Rousseau's ideas as grand innovation. So the classroom is a lunatic asylum, and the teachers can often be counted among the patients.
First grade reading is hardest hit by ed-school methods, making for a piss-poor start. The impact of "whole-language" teaching has a negative effect on the entire 12 year system. Yet ed-schools stick to these methods because ed-schools are a cult, not a branch of academia. As students progress through the system, they are hit by popular culture and its pernicious influence against making any effort longer than thirty minutes. This same monstrosity also helps create the school clique system, which by high school comes to resemble wartime Beirut, minus the firearms.
And the solution, says the state of Maine, is to give them all laptops. And people wonder why I am renewing my green card, but not filing for naturalization...
It should not be a problem for the client to
represent both the local typing and what is
echoed, in linemode.
Sooner or later someone will patch an SSH client
to go to linemode, where the client sends only
one packet for each section of the session
between carriage returns.
Problem solved.
When Joe Sixpack starts to need email for
things like job-hunting, things like this
will be damned important.
*whew* Good thing I still have all those y2k
supplies.
Mea culpa. Me go get coffee now.
You realize time or no time,
a felony conviction can rip you
a new career asshole on a semiregular
basis for the rest of your life.
The most important thing about electronic elections is not that Haxor Doods can't hack into these machines after they draw the curtain. What's important is that there still be a trail of paper ballots for later audits, in case the election officials are corrupt. If you're going to use these machines, make sure they print an unambiguous ballot that the voter sees and deposits in the box. That way any mishap can be corrected.
I'd rather keep my soul.
'nuff said.
the weak get slimy. 'nuff said.
..that Toricelli is trying to attract any attention that will distract people from his current troubles (ethics violations accusations)? Why else would he try to re-illegalize something already illegal?
Episode one: Xena runs out of bubble gum.
Episode two: Xena reaches the secret boardroom
of the plutocratic pranksters who have been
teasing Scully and Mulder, and teaches them a
lesson they won't forget.
Episode three: with Xena gone, and every
mystery solved ("and I would have gotten
away with it if it weren't for that meddling
barbarian princess!"), Scully and Mulder
are reassigned to the Sklyarov case.
Smallpox vaccinations lose potency after 20 years.
Better get a booster!
According to Muslim law, stoning is done this way: you are wrapped all around in a sack and buried tightly to your waist. Then people throw stones at you that are around the size of a tennis ball. If you climb out of the pit while the stoning goes on, it is a sign from God and you are spared and released. Sounds like fun, no?
Russia can develop countermeasures to Star Wars, meaning decoys and chaff for their ICBMs. If they are smart, however (and I believe they are), they will keep these to themselves.
Other countries are fscked, however. Saddam isn't going to have a suitcase nuke any time soon. That takes too much effort, with the Israelis ready to repeat 1982 and the US patroling the air. He'll be lucky to build a truck nuke, which is not as easy to bring into Canada, let alone across the border to a population center, with the FBI and assorted other spooks working exactly to prepare for such an event..
The same applies to ICBMs. Saddam can't add chaff countermeasures or anything else to his ICBMs (if he gets any), because his nukes will still be too large. Now, keep in mind that if Saddam, or Osama, or Moamar, or whatever next lunatic comes around (unpleasant thought of the day - what if Pakistan is taken over by someone madder than Musharaf?), is able to nuke the US and gain something by it, he will. So while Star Wars cannot protect against Pissed-Off Putin, it can protect against tinpot dictators.
Gets dark? Hand crank. Car batteries.
It takes hard-core chemical usage to
manufacture photovoltaic cells. Just remember
that there are other ways to exploit the sun,
as well (solar ovens, solar heating ranges,
et cetera).
I saw one case where a Windows user with some grossly inadequate "personal firewall" panicked at an attempt to connect to port 13, i.e. "daytime", i.e. the one service least likely to be even remotely useful for an attack of any kind. Thanks to clueless users we are approaching the day when people will think port 80 is the only thing that exists in the IP protocol tree.
will they give this "personality" the Scientology personality test? Is this AI a promising pre-Clear(TM)? Can it be audited all the way to OT(TM)? In college, one of our passtimes was to take and retake the Scientologists' tests using composite personalities (gather in threes, answer every third).
Which hopefully won't happen.
"In exchange for funding, Novartis
would be allowed to sift through the
research of the department of plant
and microbial biology at Berkeley's
College of Natural Resources -
licensing up to about one-third of the
researchers' output."