The problem is limited time. Maybe the school day needs to be lengthened or the schools need to be in session year round.
Unfortunately, a lot of kids just can't concentrate longer than their six hour day. It's probably something with our society, since in other society's they don't seem to have the rampant "ADD" that's around the US. But beyond that, the teachers don't have time. My wife teaches elementary school. For a "6 hour" school day, she is working 10 hours. If she has to spend an additional 2 hours teaching, there's going to be at least an hour more of prep time required. I know I can't work 13 hour days for more than a couple of weeks at a time.
The US is now competing on a global scale when it comes to how we educate our children and we are falling behind especially in the math and sciences.
I agree, and I think tests are the problem. As an engineer, I do my best work when I'm allowed to stray off course. Which is why I think that students should be encouraged to learn science by doing and observing, not by reading. Sure, some reading will be involved, but I learn by frying capacitors, not by reading about it.
We need more math and science teachers, but who is going to do it? I have a BSEE and an MSEE, I'm not going to take a 50% pay cut to go teach high school math, especially since the state thinks that my education isn't qualified to teach (I need to get a teaching degree). I graduated from a top 50 school that's known for engineering. A math major roommate started teaching high school math in Syracuse, NY. The kids were hell, and the state was requiring him to take teaching courses in order to be certified. He said screw it, passed his actuarial tests, is earning twice as much, works fewer hours, and doesn't have to put up with the kids.
There is really no way to study for the verbal portion (memorizing thousands of words lol), other than having read a lot and becoming familiar with words.
But what does that mean? How important is a large vocabulary? I'm more concerned with kids being able to comprehend and figure out the meaning of words and phrases through critical analysis than to just be a walking dictionary.
As far as prep course go, I think learning the strategies to take the test is part of the test itself. Knowing on the GRE to make sure to fill in every answer b/c a wrong answer hurts less than a question you didn't reach is part of showing that you know how to do a little research and come prepared to a situation.
I agree with you, it is very important to be prepared, and even more important, to adapt to the situation. But are we testing the abilities and knowledge of the students, or the ability of the teacher to inform their students of the arbitrary rules? Let's face it, more points for a wrong answer than for no answer (on a multiple choice test) makes absolutely no sense.
-dave
Re:But what about the battery?
on
The Zune Cometh
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· Score: 2, Insightful
How long do they last while functioning? Talk time is usually a few hours.
Talk about not comparing apples to apples. A cellular phone, while talking uses a radio to transmit and receive signals, the iPod does no such thing.
If you believe the non-user removable battery was done for any other reason than:
1) design - no seams in the plastic
2) cost - we want the money for either a new iPod after three years, or at least pay us to replace the battery
you are being naive.
Designs are about compromise.
Yes, but the compromise may not be for the best "design" it may be for the benefit of the company.
We already are paying most public school teachers $50,000 and up for 2/3 year of work.
This is a lie that keeps getting repeated as fact. My wife, who, while following my moves, has worked in three different school districts. In each one, she was required to work for 10 months out of the year (between classroom instruction and required continuing education). In addition, her average day was 10 hours long. She works more hours in an average year than the average american worker. This also doesn't count the grading that goes on in the evenings and weekends.
We already provide some of the best health benefits out there.
While teachers generally do get good benefits, that's less and less true with the budget crises that have been hitting local communities. For instance, my employers health insurance is much better than the one offered through my wife's teacher's contract.
The unions that teachers belong to do not allow merit raises
This is a problem that needs to be addressed. I like Tim Pawlenty's idea in MN to create "super teachers". Basically these are teachers who perform well in the suburbs, move to teach in the inner cities, and if they still perform well and get the students to perform, they receive high pay (upwards of $100k). But standardized tests are not the way to judge a teacher's performance.
they do not allow the school to fire poor performing teachers
This is another lie that keeps getting repeated as fact. While it is not easy to fire poor performing teachers, it's possible, and done. What the unions require is that you can show the teacher is actually performing poorly. The problem is that parent's of C children, don't like that, and want there children to get A's. It's much easier to blame the teacher and urge the school board and local politicians to fire the teacher, than it is to accept the fact that junior isn't performing very well. My concern is that if the union wasn't there to help the teacher, that teachers would have to be even more careful about the children of the rich and powerful, and that's not a good thing.
School budgets are out of control, spending is through the roof.
But this spending is going towards testing and not towards attracting and keeping good teachers, and not towards supplies for the classroom (believe me, I have a huge file of receipts for items that my wife has bought for her classroom with our money).
substantially decrease State interference into the curriculum,
Exactly, education should be a local issue. The state and federal dept's of education should make sure that success stories are available to other districts to utilize.
and get rid of all of the staff that just loves throwing around money for magic beans.
I'm not sure if I'm inferring correctly, but the spending comes from the administration and school board, not the teachers.
We need to reorient our education system to move away from supporting the useless towardss supporting the useful. It should be made clear to students that a failure to appreciate and understand the sciences, the arts, politics and the humanities makes them a failure as a person, the way that not making the football team makes them a failure now.
Do you honestly think that students live's should be determined for them before they are 18? There are plenty of ex-athletes who have succeeded very well in business. There are a lot of poorly performing high school students who have gone on to great success later in life.
I agree that something needs to be done. My idea would be to teach the basics in elementary school. In Junior High/Middle school, start seperating the students a little more. Have advanced classes, normal classes, and some remedial classes. In High school you now have the ability for advanced students to stay on an advanced path, other students to remain on a normal path, and regardless of how hard you try, you still will have some on a remedial path. Maybe we need alternative high schools. Some cater for the college prep crowd, others for the students who learn using more "alternative" methods. I think we need to adapt, not to punish. I think that athletes should be required to maintain a minimum GPA to continue playing sports, after all, the primary purpose of education is to educate. But sports and other extra-curricular activities can teach a lot of important skills and lessons as well.
-dave
Re:This is cronyism at its finest
on
More A's, More Pay
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· Score: 2, Insightful
Nothing is inherently wrong with standardized testing, but the implementation of the test matters greatly. I believe just about every state has examples of their standardized tests online, take a look at them and judge for yourself whether they actually test knowledge and understanding. For the most part, they don't. Math is a pretty easy one, addition is addition, but reading comprehension is not black and white.
The school district in my community is in a tough situation. They've been teaching elementary school science by using hands on experiments. The problem is that the test wants to make sure that students have memorized a textbook, and not understand the scientific process. I could care less if a fifth grader knows the genus of a frog or camel, I'd rather they understand how science is performed and learn to enjoy it, so that we have more scientists, not fewer (as is the current trend). So the district must now teach science out of a text book, rather than hands on.
Have you taken the SATs? How much of that was useful in college, and later in life? Virtually none of the verbal portion. Why do you think there are SAT (and other standardized test) prep courses. It's not teaching you knowledge or application, it's teaching you how to take the test.
In addition, some people just don't test well. Some people get nervous. Others succeed at tests, but fail in other areas such as writing reports or presenting materials. Standardized tests, when created properly, and when combined with others methods of verification, can be a useful tool. On their own, and poorly written, they mean next to nothing.
While people don't want advertising, I would argue that people prefer advertising to paying for the service themselves.
On this side of the pond you have choices:
TV: There are a few channels without commercials, but very few, some people use DVRs and fast forward through them. I don't know that I agree with you on the VCR, I myself have never heard about somebody recording a show onto a tape just to get through the commercials (though I have known of people who recorded a movie and while doing so, edited out the commercials).
Radio: There is your standard AM/FM, supported by advertisers generally. Or you could pay for XM/Sirius. To me, I'll save the $10/mo and when advertising comes on, either suffer through it, or hit the next preset on my radio.
Magazines and Newspapers: These are almost completely supported by advertising revenue, and since companies are still advertising in them, somebody must be looking at it. And there is a difference, at least when it comes to newspapers: location. I am much more tolerant of local advertising (a new restaurant in my town, or a specialty shop that I hadn't noticed before) than I am of other advertising.
Internet: Yes, there is ad-blocking software out there, but how many people, not of the slashdot demographic use it? Nobody I know uses it. People definately get annoyed at some ads (pop-up/pop-under, flash, ones that take control of the mouse), but the text, or even banner ads, aren't hated as much in the real world as they are on slashdot.
I think if you broke it down and told people that in order to see their TV shows, listen to their radio stations, surf their websites, they'd either have to pay (even more) for cable/sat, spend $10 a month on sat radio and either subscribe or purchase products from every website they visit, they'll gladly accept the ads.
The biggest advantage of Linux over Windows for me is ease of use, and that seems to be an intrinsic advantage, because Windows, as its name implies, is predominantly GUI oriented. A graphic interface is better for some jobs, a text interface is better for others, just like a spoon is better for eating soup and a fork is better for steak.
I personally cannot think of one action that my mom, dad, wife or in-laws would prefer to do with a text interface. Yes, you and I might, but they don't want to touch a command line.
Try to automate any task in Windows, it's a real PITA.
How many of the typical desktop OS users actually automate a task? The same demographic above (i.e. most desktop users) certainly don't.
Ironically, ease of installation, which is often cited by XP users as an advantage of Windows over Linux, seems to be one of the areas where Linux shines.
I've got to completely disagree on this one. There is the often pointed out example of Windows installation media not containing SATA drivers, etc. and that is a problem. But linux is not easy to install. The problem I see with linux is that no installation seems to be the same. I've started playing with Linux to create a MythTV box. Problem is, I can't get anywhere close to installing MythTV because first you have to install so many items, and it isn't consistent.
I installed Ubuntu, found MythTV install instructions and started following them. But you soon realise that for some reason, component A wasn't installed during your install process, but was during the authors. Or you can follow the same instructions, yet sometimes drivers are installed in the wrong place, or not set up to reload once the system is rebooted.
And all of this is a pretty moot point, as most people buy computers with an OS. So, if Dell installed Ubuntu and made sure the install was correct, then linux would be fine.
The next issue is hardware. Software is plentiful on linux, and at least with Ubuntu, incredibly easy to get and install. But hardware is still a crapshoot. Want a wireless card, go buy a certain model. But wait, you have to make sure it is the right hardware revision too! This isn't a fault of the Linux developers though, it's a hardware developer issue. But like chicken and the egg, somebody's got to move forward first, and unless more hardware comes with linux support (or linux supports it on it's own), it's going to be hard to get people to switch.
Don't get me wrong. I installed ubuntu and was incredibly impressed. The application installer I thought was a tremendous idea and I think it will only get better. But for the average desktop user, windows is still king and linux just can't compete. Yet. Hopefully in a year this post will be completely wrong.
What type of university teaches the use of specific programs for courses instead of teaching the basic principles necessary to use any program?
Who said they aren't teaching the basic principles? All he mentioned was that the actual practice was being done on other Windows software. What this means is that people also learn the shortcuts and special features of that piece of software in addition to the basic principles.
Sure, the graduates should be able to use any piece of accounting (or graphics) software, but their experience will be on a specific one, one which they might decide they really like and would like to continue to use. Look up Apple during the 80's for more on this trend (well, it wasn't really a success if you ask me, but they did try hard at it).
That being said, my school had windows labs, Mac labs, unix (many different flavors of Unix and Linux, Solaris, SGI, etc.) labs. And even though I was not a CS student, but took a few CS classes, I had spent some time on all of the systems. But I definitely had preferences.
By "mindless zombies" you mean the average computer user who has neither the time, nor background knowledge to care how computers work. The computer is an appliance to most people, they want it to work.
I don't know how to play most of the instruments in a large orchestra, but I still want to listen to it.
Is this really the case? My school just required minimum specifications, and that was if you needed to run certain classroom software. You could (and we did) attach just about every type of hardware you can think of. And most systems were built by the user, not purchased.
Now, if you wanted on-campus warranty support through the campus computer shop, you needed to buy a laptop through the school, but I think that's valid.
And corporate IT dept's are different, at least in my mind. For one thing, any work computer is/should be provided by the employer, therefore meeting their list of supported machines. And at least where I work, there is a seperate network for visitors (contractors, vendors, customers, etc.) that's firewalled from the employee network, and there are no restrictions on them.
I'm not saying you are wrong, my experience is just 180 degrees opposite of yours.
Personally, I think it should be law that all computer hardware is to be priced without software - and the user is given a choice to purchase whatever software he or she wishes.
Do you think there should be a law that all cars should be priced without radios/airbags/seats/engines/etc.?
How about a law where all new houses should be priced without doors/windows/kitchens/baths/etc.?
A computer system is a system. It's comprised of hardware and software to create a product which the consumer desires. If the buyer doesn't want Windows, they can replace it. If they don't want to pay for windows, they can purchase a system without it. Just because most major vendors don't sell systems without windows, doesn't mean they aren't out there.
And what about the people that don't know how to or don't want to install their own OS? You know, the ones who buy a computer to use it.
And this talk of a MS tax just bugs me. It's not a tax, in any way, shape or form. A low end dell desktop (E521) runs $329. A low end Dell laptop (B130) runs $499, both including Windows XP. You won't find any manufacturer with a lower price system without an operating system.
By putting windows as the default on all systems, Dell saves money by ensuring compatible hardware and drivers, and with streamlined support documentation and scripts. If anything, the average support cost (and therefore purchase price) would go up if they were required to support their product with any OS of the consumers choice.
On my HP (I don't know if all HP's are like this) laptop, when I reinstalled the OS (hard drive replacement), there was an option for installing without all of the crap. Unfortunately, I'm not sure that this is a widespread procedure or not.
Average can be the mean, mode or median, from definition 1a: a single value (as a mean, mode, or median) that summarizes or represents the general significance of a set of unequal values
And probably an even better definition is 2b: a level (as of intelligence) typical of a group, class, or series
Ah, but you are confusing liberal and democrat. Or more accurately, you are confusing liberal and "dixiecrat". Yes, the democratic party (in the south) after the civil war was terrible. They voted for segregation, were supportive of many racist organizations. But they were not liberals.
That party doesn't exist anymore for all intents and purposes. In fact, if you look at the people who supported the dixiecrats, you would find that they are considered conservative now.
The GP was getting pretty trolly with his whole "back in the day" argument, as back in the day, just about everybody in power abused it (and abused it worse than they do today). But that being said, his main argument about the Republican party (successfully) coopting the word liberal to have negative connotations. But what's probably worse, is that most liberals have resigned themselves to this fact and are too scared to even admit they are liberal.
I myself am a social liberal (though not a democrat), and fiscal conservative. I don't belong to a political party.
You ended up paying extra for probably everything in that computer. It's called volume discounts, and everybody from the CPU manufacturer down to the software vendors offer them. There is nothing wrong with this. The best customers are generally given the best terms, since they have the most clout and if they went elsewhere, the vendor would lose the most business
You didn't pay extra because "MS decided it could have a better monopoly position by offering cheaper copies of windows to big resellers". You paid extra because you wanted a computer that "had what I wanted, without a ton of extra stuff I didn't". Which is fine, the small retailer provided a service to you and you paid for said service.
If you want everybody to pay the same amount for the same product, be prepared to spend a lot more on your computers in the future as the OEMs would then have to pay retail prices for the components.
And just as a sidenote. My HP laptop hard drive failed, I got a replacement and used the restore CDs. The restore CDs give you the option of a clean OS install without all of the extra stuff. I didn't know this until I did it, and I don't know if other OEMs do the same. But I was pleasantly surprised.
To quote a response of mine from above:
But a judge didn't decide whether or not to enforce it, it never went in front of a judge, instead, he solicited advice from a couple of lawyers without knowing any specifics. Like I said in my above post, the reason that it might be hard to get a judge to rule in favor of the tenant is that the tenant may be unable to prove that the address was provided at a certain time.
Judges must rule based on proven facts, not based on a "he said, she said" situation.
For all we know, the judge may side with him. But we won't know, because he decided that the two lawyers spoke for the judge (which they do not).
Then sue. According to your original post: Two lawyers both said that while my landlord was in violation of the statute (it took her 37 days to return my deposit), I'd be hard pressed to find any judge that would find in my favor.
So you are taking the word of these two lawyers as being the word of the judge. While it may be true, it may not be. Why do you claim that: I can attest to the outright activism in at least my local (Dayton, OH) area judges.
When all you can say is that according to some lawyers this is the case. In fact, you can't attest to the outright activism.
So if you can prove your side, then sue. I was trying to show that if you uphold one side to the letter of the law, you must uphold the other. And in this case you can. If you do lose, and in fact the judge does ignore the law, then you can attest to the "outright activism" but you can't just take the word of the two lawyers you spoke to.
Take the NAB claim, supported by XM and Sirius' own filings, that some of the satellite companies' terrestrial repeaters (devices that receive signals and retransmit them), installed on buildings and towers to ensure seamless satellite radio coverage, don't comply with FCC rules.
In a filing this summer with the Securities and Exchange Commission, Sirius Satellite Radio Inc. acknowledged FCC findings that some of its modulators were too powerful. It also admitted that some of its employees had asked suppliers to ignore FCC rules in building the devices.
The businessweek article (much like this summary) is crap. The only complaint that NPR filed was about power levels in FM modulators. And their complaint is about all FM modulators, not just the satellite radio modulators.
From the Baltimore Sun article:
He urged the FCC to look beyond satellite radio sets and conduct a "thorough technical review" of the most popular FM modulators on the market, and to pursue a recall of all those found in violation of FCC rules.
And:
SEC filings by XM Radio - Sirius' chief competitor - also admit some of its modulators are out of compliance. Both companies said they have ordered suppliers to suspend production and shipment until their products comply with FCC rules. Both said they were working with the FCC and hoped to avoid supply interruptions to retailers.
In fact, the issue is so important that the Consumer Electronics Association, which represents the makers of FM modulators says:
Meghan R. Henning, a spokeswoman for the Consumer Electronics Association, which represents 2,100 electronics manufacturers, said, "This is a serious issue and we're acknowledging it.... It's well within the FCC's rights to speak to the wrong-doers."
If the FCC ordered a recall of devices found by commission technical reviewers to be overpowered, Henning said, "the CEA would be fine with that."
So again, NPR is not going after satellite in particular. The NAB is going after satellite for additional, purely business (and in my opinion, invalid) reasons, but have no relation to NPRs efforts regarding modulator power levels. Furthermore, the satellite radio companies admit that their products violate FCC rules.
But a judge didn't decide whether or not to enforce it, it never went in front of a judge, instead, he solicited advice from a couple of lawyers without knowing any specifics. Like I said in my above post, the reason that it might be hard to get a judge to rule in favor of the tenant is that the tenant may be unable to prove that the address was provided at a certain time.
Judges must rule based on proven facts, not based on a "he said, she said" situation.
It's not surprising, and I don't think unreasonable.
Did they violate the wording of the law? Yes, but at the same time, you received your deposit back, albeit 7 days late. The spirit of the law is to make sure that the deposit is returned within a short amount of time, and while the wording of the law places a strict limit, small claims judges (in my experience - which is only once case), want to make sure that the spirit is upheld, and aren't as concerned with the the specifics.
If you want the letter of the law in this case to be upheld, then you have to be willing to uphold it yourself. The tenant shall provide the landlord in writing with a forwarding address or new address to which the written notice and amount due from the landlord may be sent. If the tenant fails to provide the landlord with the forwarding or new address as required, the tenant shall not be entitled to damages or attorneys fees under division (C) of this section.
Did you provide the forwarding address when you moved out? Can you prove that? Unless you can prove that you provided the forwarding address at that time (and I honestly don't know how you would, you would have to in effect have somebody "serve" them), the judge is going to think that 7 days late is reasonable.
Also, were you harmed? If waiting that extra 7 days put an undue burden on you or your family, then you would probably have more of an argument. At the same time, if the landlord states that his or her child was in the hospital during that time, the judge is going to be more sympathetic.
Basically, you got your money, and if you weren't harmed, I'd let it go. We have too many unneeded lawsuits clogging up our courts.
Which is *exactly* what they are doing. They are asking the FCC to investigate the manufacturers of the equipment. They've run their tests, they know who's breaking the rules. Nobody is suing XM or Sirius.
And as a sidenote. According to the article about this issue in the Baltimore Sun last thursday, Sirius has admitted that they have urged their suppliers to violate the FCC rules and exceed the power levels.
But the point is that the manufacturers are not abiding by the license agreement. So if they decide to violate the maximum power requirement, what makes you think that they follow the other requirements?
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The problem is limited time. Maybe the school day needs to be lengthened or the schools need to be in session year round.
Unfortunately, a lot of kids just can't concentrate longer than their six hour day. It's probably something with our society, since in other society's they don't seem to have the rampant "ADD" that's around the US. But beyond that, the teachers don't have time. My wife teaches elementary school. For a "6 hour" school day, she is working 10 hours. If she has to spend an additional 2 hours teaching, there's going to be at least an hour more of prep time required. I know I can't work 13 hour days for more than a couple of weeks at a time.
The US is now competing on a global scale when it comes to how we educate our children and we are falling behind especially in the math and sciences.
I agree, and I think tests are the problem. As an engineer, I do my best work when I'm allowed to stray off course. Which is why I think that students should be encouraged to learn science by doing and observing, not by reading. Sure, some reading will be involved, but I learn by frying capacitors, not by reading about it.
We need more math and science teachers, but who is going to do it? I have a BSEE and an MSEE, I'm not going to take a 50% pay cut to go teach high school math, especially since the state thinks that my education isn't qualified to teach (I need to get a teaching degree). I graduated from a top 50 school that's known for engineering. A math major roommate started teaching high school math in Syracuse, NY. The kids were hell, and the state was requiring him to take teaching courses in order to be certified. He said screw it, passed his actuarial tests, is earning twice as much, works fewer hours, and doesn't have to put up with the kids.
There is really no way to study for the verbal portion (memorizing thousands of words lol), other than having read a lot and becoming familiar with words.
But what does that mean? How important is a large vocabulary? I'm more concerned with kids being able to comprehend and figure out the meaning of words and phrases through critical analysis than to just be a walking dictionary.
As far as prep course go, I think learning the strategies to take the test is part of the test itself. Knowing on the GRE to make sure to fill in every answer b/c a wrong answer hurts less than a question you didn't reach is part of showing that you know how to do a little research and come prepared to a situation.
I agree with you, it is very important to be prepared, and even more important, to adapt to the situation. But are we testing the abilities and knowledge of the students, or the ability of the teacher to inform their students of the arbitrary rules? Let's face it, more points for a wrong answer than for no answer (on a multiple choice test) makes absolutely no sense.
-dave
How long do they last while functioning? Talk time is usually a few hours.
Talk about not comparing apples to apples. A cellular phone, while talking uses a radio to transmit and receive signals, the iPod does no such thing.
If you believe the non-user removable battery was done for any other reason than:
1) design - no seams in the plastic
2) cost - we want the money for either a new iPod after three years, or at least pay us to replace the battery
you are being naive.
Designs are about compromise.
Yes, but the compromise may not be for the best "design" it may be for the benefit of the company.
-dave
We already are paying most public school teachers $50,000 and up for 2/3 year of work.
This is a lie that keeps getting repeated as fact. My wife, who, while following my moves, has worked in three different school districts. In each one, she was required to work for 10 months out of the year (between classroom instruction and required continuing education). In addition, her average day was 10 hours long. She works more hours in an average year than the average american worker. This also doesn't count the grading that goes on in the evenings and weekends.
We already provide some of the best health benefits out there.
While teachers generally do get good benefits, that's less and less true with the budget crises that have been hitting local communities. For instance, my employers health insurance is much better than the one offered through my wife's teacher's contract.
The unions that teachers belong to do not allow merit raises
This is a problem that needs to be addressed. I like Tim Pawlenty's idea in MN to create "super teachers". Basically these are teachers who perform well in the suburbs, move to teach in the inner cities, and if they still perform well and get the students to perform, they receive high pay (upwards of $100k). But standardized tests are not the way to judge a teacher's performance.
they do not allow the school to fire poor performing teachers
This is another lie that keeps getting repeated as fact. While it is not easy to fire poor performing teachers, it's possible, and done. What the unions require is that you can show the teacher is actually performing poorly. The problem is that parent's of C children, don't like that, and want there children to get A's. It's much easier to blame the teacher and urge the school board and local politicians to fire the teacher, than it is to accept the fact that junior isn't performing very well. My concern is that if the union wasn't there to help the teacher, that teachers would have to be even more careful about the children of the rich and powerful, and that's not a good thing.
School budgets are out of control, spending is through the roof.
But this spending is going towards testing and not towards attracting and keeping good teachers, and not towards supplies for the classroom (believe me, I have a huge file of receipts for items that my wife has bought for her classroom with our money).
substantially decrease State interference into the curriculum,
Exactly, education should be a local issue. The state and federal dept's of education should make sure that success stories are available to other districts to utilize.
and get rid of all of the staff that just loves throwing around money for magic beans.
I'm not sure if I'm inferring correctly, but the spending comes from the administration and school board, not the teachers.
-dave
We need to reorient our education system to move away from supporting the useless towardss supporting the useful. It should be made clear to students that a failure to appreciate and understand the sciences, the arts, politics and the humanities makes them a failure as a person, the way that not making the football team makes them a failure now.
Do you honestly think that students live's should be determined for them before they are 18? There are plenty of ex-athletes who have succeeded very well in business. There are a lot of poorly performing high school students who have gone on to great success later in life.
I agree that something needs to be done. My idea would be to teach the basics in elementary school. In Junior High/Middle school, start seperating the students a little more. Have advanced classes, normal classes, and some remedial classes. In High school you now have the ability for advanced students to stay on an advanced path, other students to remain on a normal path, and regardless of how hard you try, you still will have some on a remedial path. Maybe we need alternative high schools. Some cater for the college prep crowd, others for the students who learn using more "alternative" methods. I think we need to adapt, not to punish. I think that athletes should be required to maintain a minimum GPA to continue playing sports, after all, the primary purpose of education is to educate. But sports and other extra-curricular activities can teach a lot of important skills and lessons as well.
-dave
Nothing is inherently wrong with standardized testing, but the implementation of the test matters greatly. I believe just about every state has examples of their standardized tests online, take a look at them and judge for yourself whether they actually test knowledge and understanding. For the most part, they don't. Math is a pretty easy one, addition is addition, but reading comprehension is not black and white.
The school district in my community is in a tough situation. They've been teaching elementary school science by using hands on experiments. The problem is that the test wants to make sure that students have memorized a textbook, and not understand the scientific process. I could care less if a fifth grader knows the genus of a frog or camel, I'd rather they understand how science is performed and learn to enjoy it, so that we have more scientists, not fewer (as is the current trend). So the district must now teach science out of a text book, rather than hands on.
Have you taken the SATs? How much of that was useful in college, and later in life? Virtually none of the verbal portion. Why do you think there are SAT (and other standardized test) prep courses. It's not teaching you knowledge or application, it's teaching you how to take the test.
In addition, some people just don't test well. Some people get nervous. Others succeed at tests, but fail in other areas such as writing reports or presenting materials. Standardized tests, when created properly, and when combined with others methods of verification, can be a useful tool. On their own, and poorly written, they mean next to nothing.
-dave
While people don't want advertising, I would argue that people prefer advertising to paying for the service themselves.
On this side of the pond you have choices:
TV: There are a few channels without commercials, but very few, some people use DVRs and fast forward through them. I don't know that I agree with you on the VCR, I myself have never heard about somebody recording a show onto a tape just to get through the commercials (though I have known of people who recorded a movie and while doing so, edited out the commercials).
Radio: There is your standard AM/FM, supported by advertisers generally. Or you could pay for XM/Sirius. To me, I'll save the $10/mo and when advertising comes on, either suffer through it, or hit the next preset on my radio.
Magazines and Newspapers: These are almost completely supported by advertising revenue, and since companies are still advertising in them, somebody must be looking at it. And there is a difference, at least when it comes to newspapers: location. I am much more tolerant of local advertising (a new restaurant in my town, or a specialty shop that I hadn't noticed before) than I am of other advertising.
Internet: Yes, there is ad-blocking software out there, but how many people, not of the slashdot demographic use it? Nobody I know uses it. People definately get annoyed at some ads (pop-up/pop-under, flash, ones that take control of the mouse), but the text, or even banner ads, aren't hated as much in the real world as they are on slashdot.
I think if you broke it down and told people that in order to see their TV shows, listen to their radio stations, surf their websites, they'd either have to pay (even more) for cable/sat, spend $10 a month on sat radio and either subscribe or purchase products from every website they visit, they'll gladly accept the ads.
-dave
The biggest advantage of Linux over Windows for me is ease of use, and that seems to be an intrinsic advantage, because Windows, as its name implies, is predominantly GUI oriented. A graphic interface is better for some jobs, a text interface is better for others, just like a spoon is better for eating soup and a fork is better for steak.
I personally cannot think of one action that my mom, dad, wife or in-laws would prefer to do with a text interface. Yes, you and I might, but they don't want to touch a command line.
Try to automate any task in Windows, it's a real PITA.
How many of the typical desktop OS users actually automate a task? The same demographic above (i.e. most desktop users) certainly don't.
Ironically, ease of installation, which is often cited by XP users as an advantage of Windows over Linux, seems to be one of the areas where Linux shines.
I've got to completely disagree on this one. There is the often pointed out example of Windows installation media not containing SATA drivers, etc. and that is a problem. But linux is not easy to install. The problem I see with linux is that no installation seems to be the same. I've started playing with Linux to create a MythTV box. Problem is, I can't get anywhere close to installing MythTV because first you have to install so many items, and it isn't consistent.
I installed Ubuntu, found MythTV install instructions and started following them. But you soon realise that for some reason, component A wasn't installed during your install process, but was during the authors. Or you can follow the same instructions, yet sometimes drivers are installed in the wrong place, or not set up to reload once the system is rebooted.
And all of this is a pretty moot point, as most people buy computers with an OS. So, if Dell installed Ubuntu and made sure the install was correct, then linux would be fine.
The next issue is hardware. Software is plentiful on linux, and at least with Ubuntu, incredibly easy to get and install. But hardware is still a crapshoot. Want a wireless card, go buy a certain model. But wait, you have to make sure it is the right hardware revision too! This isn't a fault of the Linux developers though, it's a hardware developer issue. But like chicken and the egg, somebody's got to move forward first, and unless more hardware comes with linux support (or linux supports it on it's own), it's going to be hard to get people to switch.
Don't get me wrong. I installed ubuntu and was incredibly impressed. The application installer I thought was a tremendous idea and I think it will only get better. But for the average desktop user, windows is still king and linux just can't compete. Yet. Hopefully in a year this post will be completely wrong.
-dave
What type of university teaches the use of specific programs for courses instead of teaching the basic principles necessary to use any program?
Who said they aren't teaching the basic principles? All he mentioned was that the actual practice was being done on other Windows software. What this means is that people also learn the shortcuts and special features of that piece of software in addition to the basic principles.
Sure, the graduates should be able to use any piece of accounting (or graphics) software, but their experience will be on a specific one, one which they might decide they really like and would like to continue to use. Look up Apple during the 80's for more on this trend (well, it wasn't really a success if you ask me, but they did try hard at it).
That being said, my school had windows labs, Mac labs, unix (many different flavors of Unix and Linux, Solaris, SGI, etc.) labs. And even though I was not a CS student, but took a few CS classes, I had spent some time on all of the systems. But I definitely had preferences.
-dave
By "mindless zombies" you mean the average computer user who has neither the time, nor background knowledge to care how computers work. The computer is an appliance to most people, they want it to work.
I don't know how to play most of the instruments in a large orchestra, but I still want to listen to it.
-dave
Is this really the case? My school just required minimum specifications, and that was if you needed to run certain classroom software. You could (and we did) attach just about every type of hardware you can think of. And most systems were built by the user, not purchased.
Now, if you wanted on-campus warranty support through the campus computer shop, you needed to buy a laptop through the school, but I think that's valid.
And corporate IT dept's are different, at least in my mind. For one thing, any work computer is/should be provided by the employer, therefore meeting their list of supported machines. And at least where I work, there is a seperate network for visitors (contractors, vendors, customers, etc.) that's firewalled from the employee network, and there are no restrictions on them.
I'm not saying you are wrong, my experience is just 180 degrees opposite of yours.
-dave
Personally, I think it should be law that all computer hardware is to be priced without software - and the user is given a choice to purchase whatever software he or she wishes.
Do you think there should be a law that all cars should be priced without radios/airbags/seats/engines/etc.?
How about a law where all new houses should be priced without doors/windows/kitchens/baths/etc.?
A computer system is a system. It's comprised of hardware and software to create a product which the consumer desires. If the buyer doesn't want Windows, they can replace it. If they don't want to pay for windows, they can purchase a system without it. Just because most major vendors don't sell systems without windows, doesn't mean they aren't out there.
And what about the people that don't know how to or don't want to install their own OS? You know, the ones who buy a computer to use it.
And this talk of a MS tax just bugs me. It's not a tax, in any way, shape or form. A low end dell desktop (E521) runs $329. A low end Dell laptop (B130) runs $499, both including Windows XP. You won't find any manufacturer with a lower price system without an operating system.
By putting windows as the default on all systems, Dell saves money by ensuring compatible hardware and drivers, and with streamlined support documentation and scripts. If anything, the average support cost (and therefore purchase price) would go up if they were required to support their product with any OS of the consumers choice.
-dave
On my HP (I don't know if all HP's are like this) laptop, when I reinstalled the OS (hard drive replacement), there was an option for installing without all of the crap. Unfortunately, I'm not sure that this is a widespread procedure or not.
-dave
http://www.m-w.com/dictionary/average
Average can be the mean, mode or median, from definition 1a:
a single value (as a mean, mode, or median) that summarizes or represents the general significance of a set of unequal values
And probably an even better definition is 2b:
a level (as of intelligence) typical of a group, class, or series
-dave
Ah, but you are confusing liberal and democrat. Or more accurately, you are confusing liberal and "dixiecrat". Yes, the democratic party (in the south) after the civil war was terrible. They voted for segregation, were supportive of many racist organizations. But they were not liberals.
That party doesn't exist anymore for all intents and purposes. In fact, if you look at the people who supported the dixiecrats, you would find that they are considered conservative now.
The GP was getting pretty trolly with his whole "back in the day" argument, as back in the day, just about everybody in power abused it (and abused it worse than they do today). But that being said, his main argument about the Republican party (successfully) coopting the word liberal to have negative connotations. But what's probably worse, is that most liberals have resigned themselves to this fact and are too scared to even admit they are liberal.
I myself am a social liberal (though not a democrat), and fiscal conservative. I don't belong to a political party.
-dave
You ended up paying extra for probably everything in that computer. It's called volume discounts, and everybody from the CPU manufacturer down to the software vendors offer them. There is nothing wrong with this. The best customers are generally given the best terms, since they have the most clout and if they went elsewhere, the vendor would lose the most business
You didn't pay extra because "MS decided it could have a better monopoly position by offering cheaper copies of windows to big resellers". You paid extra because you wanted a computer that "had what I wanted, without a ton of extra stuff I didn't". Which is fine, the small retailer provided a service to you and you paid for said service.
If you want everybody to pay the same amount for the same product, be prepared to spend a lot more on your computers in the future as the OEMs would then have to pay retail prices for the components.
And just as a sidenote. My HP laptop hard drive failed, I got a replacement and used the restore CDs. The restore CDs give you the option of a clean OS install without all of the extra stuff. I didn't know this until I did it, and I don't know if other OEMs do the same. But I was pleasantly surprised.
-dave
To quote a response of mine from above: But a judge didn't decide whether or not to enforce it, it never went in front of a judge, instead, he solicited advice from a couple of lawyers without knowing any specifics. Like I said in my above post, the reason that it might be hard to get a judge to rule in favor of the tenant is that the tenant may be unable to prove that the address was provided at a certain time.
Judges must rule based on proven facts, not based on a "he said, she said" situation.
For all we know, the judge may side with him. But we won't know, because he decided that the two lawyers spoke for the judge (which they do not).
-dave
Then sue. According to your original post:
Two lawyers both said that while my landlord was in violation of the statute (it took her 37 days to return my deposit), I'd be hard pressed to find any judge that would find in my favor.
So you are taking the word of these two lawyers as being the word of the judge. While it may be true, it may not be. Why do you claim that:
I can attest to the outright activism in at least my local (Dayton, OH) area judges.
When all you can say is that according to some lawyers this is the case. In fact, you can't attest to the outright activism.
So if you can prove your side, then sue. I was trying to show that if you uphold one side to the letter of the law, you must uphold the other. And in this case you can. If you do lose, and in fact the judge does ignore the law, then you can attest to the "outright activism" but you can't just take the word of the two lawyers you spoke to.
-dave
Economics:
1) Cheap Labor
2) Large Market
It's as simple as that.
-dave
Thank you. Why is it that on Slashdot that Microsoft and the US are always considered the most evil anybody can ever be?
-dave
From a much better article at http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/nationworld/bal-
The businessweek article (much like this summary) is crap. The only complaint that NPR filed was about power levels in FM modulators. And their complaint is about all FM modulators, not just the satellite radio modulators.
From the Baltimore Sun article:
And:
In fact, the issue is so important that the Consumer Electronics Association, which represents the makers of FM modulators says:
So again, NPR is not going after satellite in particular. The NAB is going after satellite for additional, purely business (and in my opinion, invalid) reasons, but have no relation to NPRs efforts regarding modulator power levels. Furthermore, the satellite radio companies admit that their products violate FCC rules.
-dave
But a judge didn't decide whether or not to enforce it, it never went in front of a judge, instead, he solicited advice from a couple of lawyers without knowing any specifics. Like I said in my above post, the reason that it might be hard to get a judge to rule in favor of the tenant is that the tenant may be unable to prove that the address was provided at a certain time.
Judges must rule based on proven facts, not based on a "he said, she said" situation.
-dave
It's not surprising, and I don't think unreasonable.
Did they violate the wording of the law? Yes, but at the same time, you received your deposit back, albeit 7 days late. The spirit of the law is to make sure that the deposit is returned within a short amount of time, and while the wording of the law places a strict limit, small claims judges (in my experience - which is only once case), want to make sure that the spirit is upheld, and aren't as concerned with the the specifics.
If you want the letter of the law in this case to be upheld, then you have to be willing to uphold it yourself.
The tenant shall provide the landlord in writing with a forwarding address or new address to which the written notice and amount due from the landlord may be sent. If the tenant fails to provide the landlord with the forwarding or new address as required, the tenant shall not be entitled to damages or attorneys fees under division (C) of this section.
Did you provide the forwarding address when you moved out? Can you prove that? Unless you can prove that you provided the forwarding address at that time (and I honestly don't know how you would, you would have to in effect have somebody "serve" them), the judge is going to think that 7 days late is reasonable.
Also, were you harmed? If waiting that extra 7 days put an undue burden on you or your family, then you would probably have more of an argument. At the same time, if the landlord states that his or her child was in the hospital during that time, the judge is going to be more sympathetic.
Basically, you got your money, and if you weren't harmed, I'd let it go. We have too many unneeded lawsuits clogging up our courts.
-dave
Which is *exactly* what they are doing. They are asking the FCC to investigate the manufacturers of the equipment. They've run their tests, they know who's breaking the rules. Nobody is suing XM or Sirius.
And as a sidenote. According to the article about this issue in the Baltimore Sun last thursday, Sirius has admitted that they have urged their suppliers to violate the FCC rules and exceed the power levels.
-dave
But the point is that the manufacturers are not abiding by the license agreement. So if they decide to violate the maximum power requirement, what makes you think that they follow the other requirements?
-dave
According to http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/nationworld/bal-t e.radio26oct26,1,519954.story?ctrack=1&cset=true, below 89MHz is set aside for non-commercial radio. Hence why NPR is located there.
-dave