"I found school to be child/teenager storage, and nothing more. "Here, go sit with these people who don't want you around." I was not allowed to take programming classes, so I went home and taught myself how to program without any books."
Believe it or not, you actually understand the American Education Model. It can be summed up in a single phrase, "The cream always rises." The American system is designed to wharehouse students and provide them with the minimum needed to produce productive cogs in the machine. Now everyone knows that this produces a stable society, but not a competitive work force. In order to remain competitive in a global economy America relys on the fact that exceptional people will overcome the adversity the system creates.
OK I know this will be an unpopular opinion with a lot of people. In my home state (think "Friday Night Lights")a high school athletics instructor with a winning team can earn $130,000.00 a year. Now granted a lot of this is from "Off Season Athletic Camps." Of course if you want your child to make the team and he/she is not training off season with the person who is going to determine who makes the team, they better be a sports prodigy. In my same state the median salary for a secondary school teacher is $31,000.00 a year. To me there is a big discrepancy here. I know a lot of parents think that athletics is their child's shot at college, but the reality is a good education is their shot at a successful career in business.
When we pay teachers as much as rock stars we will have our priorities correct.
"And the men who hold high places
Must be the ones to start
To mould a new reality
Closer to the heart"
Rush 2112 rocks!
Re:is the punishment comissurate with the crime?
on
Death Penalty For Hackers?
·
· Score: 3, Interesting
"loosing most of the income for the rest of your life seems like a much harshier sentence, than death."
Since part of the sentence for people convicted of computer crimes is that they can never use a computer again, they actually do lose their best opportunity to make a decent living.
Personally I think the idea of a death penalty for hacking is rediculous. People have lost their retirement savings because of the actions of a few executives at Enron, Worldcom, and Tyco. I do not hear anyone calling for "The Death Penalty for Intentional Accounting Fraud."
Actually no. Liquids cannot exist in a vacuum. Instead, some portion of the mass flashes into a vapor. This change of state reduces the temperature of the remaining mass until it freezes into a solid. So in a true vacuum (like space) matter only exists in three states, solid, gaseous, plasma. I tried to find a good link for an explanation, but this was the best I could find on short notice. If you look at the summary, you will find a line that says, "When pressure is sufficiently low, a substance may not be able to exist as a liquid, but only as a solid or a gas." That is what I am talking about.
" Intel doesn't have a monopoly, at least with PC chips. AMD is simply using this as a business tactic."
Here is a list of specific allegations:
Forcing major customers such as Dell, Sony, Toshiba, Gateway, and Hitachi into Intel-exclusive deals in return for outright cash payments, discriminatory pricing or marketing subsidies conditioned on the exclusion of AMD;
According to industry reports, and as confirmed by the JFTC in Japan, Intel has paid Dell and Toshiba huge sums not to do business with AMD.
Intel paid Sony millions for exclusivity. AMD's share of Sony's business went from 23 percent in '02 to 8% in '03, to 0%, where it remains today.
Forcing other major customers such as NEC, Acer, and Fujitsu into partial exclusivity agreements by conditioning rebates, allowances and market development funds (MDF) on customers' agreement to severely limit or forego entirely purchases from AMD;
Intel paid NEC several million dollars for caps on NEC's purchases from AMD. Those caps assured Intel at least 90% of NEC's business in Japan and imposed a worldwide cap on the amount of AMD business NEC could do.
Establishing a system of discriminatory and retroactive incentives triggered by purchases at such high levels as to have the intended effect of denying customers the freedom to purchase any significant volume of processors from AMD;
When AMD succeeded in getting on the HP retail roadmap for mobile computers, and its products sold well, Intel responded by withholding HP's fourth quarter 2004 rebate check and refusing to waive HP's failure to achieve its targeted rebate goal; it allowed HP to make up the shortfall in succeeding quarters by promising Intel at least 90% of HP's mainstream retail business.
Threatening retaliation against customers for introducing AMD computer platforms, particularly in strategic market segments such as commercial desktop;
Then-Compaq CEO Michael Capellas said in 2000 that because of the volume of business given to AMD, Intel withheld delivery of critical server chips. Saying "he had a gun to his head," he told AMD he had to stop buying.
According to Gateway executives, their company has paid a high price for even its limited AMD dealings. They claim that Intel has "beaten them into 'guacamole'" in retaliation.
Establishing and enforcing quotas among key retailers such as Best Buy and Circuit City, effectively requiring them to stock overwhelmingly or exclusively, Intel computers, artificially limiting consumer choice;
AMD has been entirely shut out from Media Markt, Europe's largest computer retailer, which accounts for 35 percent of Germany's retail sales.
Office Depot declined to stock AMD-powered notebooks regardless of the amount of financial support AMD offered, citing the risk of retaliation.
Forcing PC makers and tech partners to boycott AMD product launches or promotions;
Then-Intel CEO Craig Barrett threatened Acer's Chairman with "severe consequences" for supporting the AMD Athlon 64(TM) launch. This coincided with an unexplained delay by Intel in providing $15-20M in market development funds owed to Acer. Acer withdrew from the launch in September 2003.
Abusing its market power by forcing on the industry technical standards and products that have as their main purpose the handicapping of AMD in the marketplace.
Intel denied AMD access to the highest level of membership for the Advanced DRAM technology consortium to limit AMD's participation in critical industry standard decisions that would affect its business.
Intel designed its compilers, which translate software programs into machine-readable language, to degrade a program's performance if operated on a computer powered by an AMD microprocessor.
I use Trillian as an IM client and it does something similar to this. I get underlined links with more information from Wikimedia if words in the message match an existing wiki topic. I think it is pretty cool.
"I've actually met a few knowledgeable salespeople at Fry's, although they vary wildly. I understand pay is horrible."
Yeah I have too, but they were usually new employees and high school kids that were working their first job. Fry's does not give their staff any kind of commission so there is little incentive for high performers to keep it up for very long. Even the best ones burn out eventually.
"When at Fry's, it's a good bet that your fellow customers will be knowledgeable. Feel free to ask stray customers questions if your salesperson doesn't know."
I get this a lot. I am always polite and helpful, but it really ticks me off. I am not getting paid by the store and I am not making a commission on the sale. It is because of this that Fry's and other discount retailers are able to get away with hiring poor staff and paying them next to nothing. I feel the same way about all the free technical support I give to my friends and relatives. If the geeks of the world stopped giving free support, businesses would be forced to offer better support themselves.
"What's more, if users go to a Web site to complain about the lack of iPod compatibility, Sony BMG will send them an email with a back door measure on how to work around the copy protection."
Does anyone know where this web site is?
Re:I'm all for science/technology/astronomy but...
on
Back to Moon in 2015?
·
· Score: 0, Flamebait
"But still, is there anything on the moon that we can use/do that would be cool, other than just developing the technology used to get there?"
I think the moon is the logical first step in any plan to go to mars. It will allow us to develop technology for long term exposure to the hazards of space. I know a lot of that can be done on the international space station, but there is a lot to be said for having a little gravity and something solid beneath you.
" You are asking why? Are you serious? In this information age, you don't know why govt. controls the media?"
This reminds me of an interview I heard with a Soviet era Russian general. The interviewer asked some question about how all the Russian people were brainwashed by government propaganda. The general laughed and said "That is the difference between Americans and Russians. Our government publishes propaganda and we say 'Look, it is government propaganda.' Your government publishes propaganda and you believe it."
"If the US Government censored people talking shit about it, this very website would have been shut down years ago."
Sure, but if it started accurately describing in detail the security systems at the white house it would be a different matter. This country has a long history of censorship in the name of civil defense. After all, "Lose lips sink ships!"
"Take a laptop that you use for your communications. With the availability of WiFi, you can use your laptop most places where there are computers and many places where there aren't."
Does anyone know how feasible this is in Europe? More specifically will this work in Germany, Austria, and the Czech Republic? I know here in the states most internet cafes now have wifi, but how common is that overseas?
"Around the time a 28.8k modem was hot shit I knew my neighbours watched their kids online, and THOUGHT IT WAS NORMAL for an adult to do that."
I agree! I do not have children, but if I did, every computer in the house would connect to the internet through a proxy server. I would log all activity and I would read the logs. Then I would make sure my children knew I was watching them. I think this is a better solution than outright censorship. For one thing it allows children the freedom to make mistakes. It also empowers them to make good choices. Besides the internet is too big to effectivly censor.
"Then, when a state wants to implement slavery, your organization could say, "Hey, the people of this fine state want slavery, so our organization supports it." Or, when a state wants to ban guns, your organization could say, "Well, the state should do what it wants." You would need to be consistent, of course."
While I agree with you on the difference between civil liberty and states rights, your example is very flawed. States rights are defined by the tenth amendment which states:
The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.
Since gun ownership is guaranteed by the second amendment and slavery is banned by the thirteenth, neither can fall under the banner of states rights.
"Personally, I'd like to see a law that makes it illegal for adult context to appear on a URL unless is has a special extension, something like ".xxx". Then it'd be easy for concerned parents (and wives!) to configure the browser to block anything from that extension."
This is the solution I have been backing for years. It could even be a meta tag so existing sites did not have to register new domains. You could make it illegal to publish adult content without the meta tag included and then make the default browser installed in any OS automatically reject those sites. Require a person to go to an adult "novelty/book" store to purchase a browser capable of browsing adult content.
warning the next statement is flame bait To be honest, this will not keep kids out of porn sites, but at least it puts the responsibility for policing their childrens activity back into the parents hands instead of expecting everyone else to be responsible for raising their children.
" Seriously, why? It's not like the addition of Linux on the hard drive is going to garner any more sales of the product."
Just off the top of my head, it adds a full suite of internet applications. Adding Linux lets the console become an internet appliance. Besides, someone is going to port Linux to it as soon as it comes out. Why not let the manufacturer do it.
"I think it's a shame that they're twilighting the support for the OS. I still use it and have no real reason to upgrade to XP."
I feel the same. It is hard to believe I am going to have to shell out hard cash to replace an OS that meets all my needs because it will no longer be updated. What is worse is that I do not want / need to run XP. I have never really liked it. I bought one copy and within a few weeks reinstalled Win 2K. I guess this is one more reason to switch to Linux.
"Unless maybe the program is sponsored by CapitalOne.
"We need a loan officer here STAT!"
"
More like "Cancel the credit cards STAT!"
I canceled my Capitol One credit cards when I discovered that while my credit rating was good enough to be a Capitol One customer, it was not good enough to be a Capitol One employee.
Slashdot Mirror
Which is why the print head reads a chip in the ink cartrige and fails to print if it is not genuine HP ink.
Believe it or not, you actually understand the American Education Model. It can be summed up in a single phrase, "The cream always rises." The American system is designed to wharehouse students and provide them with the minimum needed to produce productive cogs in the machine. Now everyone knows that this produces a stable society, but not a competitive work force. In order to remain competitive in a global economy America relys on the fact that exceptional people will overcome the adversity the system creates.
When we pay teachers as much as rock stars we will have our priorities correct.
Rush 2112 rocks!
Since part of the sentence for people convicted of computer crimes is that they can never use a computer again, they actually do lose their best opportunity to make a decent living.
Personally I think the idea of a death penalty for hacking is rediculous. People have lost their retirement savings because of the actions of a few executives at Enron, Worldcom, and Tyco. I do not hear anyone calling for "The Death Penalty for Intentional Accounting Fraud."
Actually no. Liquids cannot exist in a vacuum. Instead, some portion of the mass flashes into a vapor. This change of state reduces the temperature of the remaining mass until it freezes into a solid. So in a true vacuum (like space) matter only exists in three states, solid, gaseous, plasma. I tried to find a good link for an explanation, but this was the best I could find on short notice. If you look at the summary, you will find a line that says, "When pressure is sufficiently low, a substance may not be able to exist as a liquid, but only as a solid or a gas." That is what I am talking about.
Except for NVidia!
"
Nvidia should be the easiest of all because they will do the port for us.
Here is a list of specific allegations:
That is why I only use NVIDIA video cards.
I think it is because of all the problems we had with moon base alpha back in 1999.
I use Trillian as an IM client and it does something similar to this. I get underlined links with more information from Wikimedia if words in the message match an existing wiki topic. I think it is pretty cool.
Yeah I have too, but they were usually new employees and high school kids that were working their first job. Fry's does not give their staff any kind of commission so there is little incentive for high performers to keep it up for very long. Even the best ones burn out eventually.
"When at Fry's, it's a good bet that your fellow customers will be knowledgeable. Feel free to ask stray customers questions if your salesperson doesn't know."
I get this a lot. I am always polite and helpful, but it really ticks me off. I am not getting paid by the store and I am not making a commission on the sale. It is because of this that Fry's and other discount retailers are able to get away with hiring poor staff and paying them next to nothing. I feel the same way about all the free technical support I give to my friends and relatives. If the geeks of the world stopped giving free support, businesses would be forced to offer better support themselves.
Does anyone know where this web site is?
I think the moon is the logical first step in any plan to go to mars. It will allow us to develop technology for long term exposure to the hazards of space. I know a lot of that can be done on the international space station, but there is a lot to be said for having a little gravity and something solid beneath you.
This reminds me of an interview I heard with a Soviet era Russian general. The interviewer asked some question about how all the Russian people were brainwashed by government propaganda. The general laughed and said "That is the difference between Americans and Russians. Our government publishes propaganda and we say 'Look, it is government propaganda.' Your government publishes propaganda and you believe it."
Sure, but if it started accurately describing in detail the security systems at the white house it would be a different matter. This country has a long history of censorship in the name of civil defense. After all, "Lose lips sink ships!"
I thought it was about the Czech Composer.
Does anyone know how feasible this is in Europe? More specifically will this work in Germany, Austria, and the Czech Republic? I know here in the states most internet cafes now have wifi, but how common is that overseas?
I agree! I do not have children, but if I did, every computer in the house would connect to the internet through a proxy server. I would log all activity and I would read the logs. Then I would make sure my children knew I was watching them. I think this is a better solution than outright censorship. For one thing it allows children the freedom to make mistakes. It also empowers them to make good choices. Besides the internet is too big to effectivly censor.
While I agree with you on the difference between civil liberty and states rights, your example is very flawed. States rights are defined by the tenth amendment which states:
Since gun ownership is guaranteed by the second amendment and slavery is banned by the thirteenth, neither can fall under the banner of states rights.This is the solution I have been backing for years. It could even be a meta tag so existing sites did not have to register new domains. You could make it illegal to publish adult content without the meta tag included and then make the default browser installed in any OS automatically reject those sites. Require a person to go to an adult "novelty/book" store to purchase a browser capable of browsing adult content.
warning the next statement is flame bait
To be honest, this will not keep kids out of porn sites, but at least it puts the responsibility for policing their childrens activity back into the parents hands instead of expecting everyone else to be responsible for raising their children.
This was my favorite.
Just off the top of my head, it adds a full suite of internet applications. Adding Linux lets the console become an internet appliance. Besides, someone is going to port Linux to it as soon as it comes out. Why not let the manufacturer do it.
I feel the same. It is hard to believe I am going to have to shell out hard cash to replace an OS that meets all my needs because it will no longer be updated. What is worse is that I do not want / need to run XP. I have never really liked it. I bought one copy and within a few weeks reinstalled Win 2K. I guess this is one more reason to switch to Linux.
"We need a loan officer here STAT!" "
More like "Cancel the credit cards STAT!"
I canceled my Capitol One credit cards when I discovered that while my credit rating was good enough to be a Capitol One customer, it was not good enough to be a Capitol One employee.