I only asked the more personal questions because you gave an impression about your personality and how much I saw of myself in it a few years ago. I grew up in a public school and I had my first girlfriend when I turned 18, unfortunately six months later I moved across the country and that was really the last I saw of her save for one week when she came out to visit. I also had no problems talking to girls, largely because I wanted nothing more than a friendship with most of them. Generally I found older more intelligent and mature women a lot more attractive. I still do...
I'd say your socializing skills are unimportant to you because of your personality, not your upbringing, although it probably had a hand in it just as it did with me. Growing up I had two older sisters which took any and all time my parents had, as well as their money. So as I a result I was doing odd jobs at the age of 8 to get what I wanted. They bought a newer computer at that time and it was the last thing they ever bought for me. From then on out I worked for everything I got. Its hard to say if its just my personality to not accept that I can't have something or my upbringing which would never have allowed me to have many of the things I do.
As for politics, it sounds like you would have enjoyed my school. VT is polarized but surprisingly enough for a small town of 12k people they all respect eachothers' opinions and attempt to debate on merits instead of faith.
In many ways its similar to the question about whether smoking marijuana is right or wrong. Most people respond by saying its wrong because its illegal, but if you ask them why it is illegal they have no answer. Its just an example of something we've been able to debate without reducing ourselves to using derrogatory terms.
You would not have been an outcast. Our school encouraged people with different opinions to speak out because a different perspectively inherently helps other people learn. This is why I think learning in a group is so great, not because you'd necessarily learn more, but because the group as a whole would be a lot more intelligent. I also think that if you saw a more simpler approach to a topic you might be shocked and probably would learn something. I suppose it depends greatly on the difference between the top and bottom of the class and making sure the mean is close to the top. This was never a problem in my school.
Or I could have meant what I wrote and you're assumption was flawed. I could have meant by testing extremes you will see the worst scenarios. In the case of the power grid that would be a power failure which last I checked doesn't happen under any normal condition.
So that means we shouldn't strive for 99% and work up to 100%? I'm seriously, did you honestly think that was a firm number? It doesn't have to start out that way, but you should always work towards it.
To just assume that you can never reach 100% accurasy is just plain naive, modifying the tests scenarios and expanding the test setup for more precision will eventually create an environment that will duplicate real life.
It sure sounds like you are trivializing the importance of testing complex systems. To just accept defeat won't get anyone anywhere. If they have to create a scale model of NYC 50 miles wide they could create a duplicate environment. Hell, they could just hook up a city to a test grid and offer real cheap electricity with that caveat.
KDE and Gnome have both been intuitive for users to get to applications for quite some time. Especially after people started standardising on GTK and QT.
I think you're right, improvements to OpenOffice have a much more powerful ability to bring users to the platform. Getting some big accounting software makers to create a linux version would also help a lot. Right now the average user has no reason to switch to Linux because the software they know runs on Windows.
So Linux needs two approaches to successfully gain steam on the desktop. The first approach being a continued evolution for existing desktop products. I'm sorry to say but the Gimp still can't compared with Photoshop. Then the second approach, I still can't get Avid for Linux, or Dreamweaver
I'm sorry if you think I trivialize the issue when in fact I think it is one of the most important steps to creating software that people are going to rely on. If its a chat client it obviously doesn't need the same level of testing but when it comes to the power grid there needs to be constant testing so that you spot problems before they become an issue. I don't believe any of this testing was done after the control systems were installed and verified. Security is a process not a product so I believe software should continually be tested.
That said, it is possible to create a model of the power grid that will behave exactly the same. The real problem is the fact that all power grids are not created equal. Some were built 80 years ago, some 5 years and so the technology needs to be tested better to ensure that the system can properly interact.
I said nothing wrong, the meaning of my words used all english words and meant the same thing. We have hundreds, even thousands of ways of expressing an idea in english. Because it is not a common phrase or an expected phrasing doesn't make it wrong. The meaning of all the words in my sentence were correct. No words were made up, not definitions were changed, it just didn't mention a word in the manner is which was expected so people are deeming it wrong.
There is nothing wrong with the phrasing. This is not why there are so many languages on earth. There is a reason I can understand a person that speaks english in Kenya and England.
Its a single outage, if it happened inside of ten years then I'd say there was a problem. That doesn't mean we can't look at the causes and try to prevent them from happening again. Seems more like it happened a result of cascading circumstances. There was a lot of harm done from the outage thats for sure but the problem isn't necessarily has large as a lot of people seem to think it is. Perhaps it is, I don't have all the facts on the matter. At any rate, I feel confident that the power grid will function and can still be relied upon.
Forgot rats, for some reason they likes to chew cables.
Now, for an example. I stress tested a database I am in the process of building for Mercedes, I made the machine come to crawl. I did it to a dual cpu server, a quad cpu server, and a 16 cpu server. Guess what? They all behaved exactly the same as the system grew. Now scale it up to the DB/2 cluster that it will actually be working on. I do the same thing and guess what? Yep, the exact same result.
If testing fails to produce an outcome that brings a fault then there is a flaw in the testing procedure. The real world can have more connections, but I don't care, software can be 100% bug free. I constantly hear programmers saying that every complex piece of software will have bugs. Its poor planning, and management, even if the programmer is incredibly gifted they will make mistakes without proper planning.
Yes, in the real world there are unforeseen variables but as systems because critical they should be undergoing more testing to ensure such things don't occur. But as I said in my original post. One outage in recent years is hardly a trend and is more likely just blown out of proportion.
Web systems were but one example. I'll through another much more complex example. Take DNA from bacteria and splice it with stem cells to produce nerves much more resistent to damage. You are talking thousands about thousands of long protein strands most of which you have no idea what perform what task. Do this without destroying the cell. When you are done with that test you move on to a more complex test until ultimately you are ready to do it with humans, at which time you can accurately predict exactly what it will do. Yes there are occasions when that doesn't happen that way but that is usually because something was missed in the testing procedure.
The elitism seen here is incredible, just because a system in and of itself isn't complex doesn't mean you can take stock of how they manage. Although personally I'm about to design a call center application for Mercedes that will be used by hundreds of thousands of people. This system can get quite complex albeit, not as important as a power system.
When it comes to troubleshooting systems you always have the option of making an exact scale model. You scale it up for more precision. This is a simple concept and apparently a lot of people think just because a system is complex and antiquated the same ideas can't apply.
In my experience its impossible to ignore since it sets off the firealarms throughout the building and calls the fire department who have to come out an investigate. Only they are allowed to shut it off, if you do then you get yourself a nice hefty fine. I guess its not like that everywhere from the sounds.
Yeah, I figured that is what it was, but language is about communicating an idea and the point got across so it is considered acceptable. The meaning still fits my purpose even though it is not the common saying.
Every test you can run will behave exactly the same in the real environment. I'm not sure why that is even remotely hard to understand.
Re:Software bug was just one part of bigger proble
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Tracking the Blackout Bug
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I believe you can trace it all to one problem. Lack of management...
Realistically none of these problems had to happen and wouldn't have happened if the people in charge were doing their jobs. Maybe they were working on a way to make cold fusion feasible, I don't know but if they were negligent then they need to be removed from their position. If they were just too busy with other aspects of the system then they need to bring more people in so the system can be properly maintained. A power outage is a big deal. Of course, one outage is hardly a trend so probably the whole thing is just blown out of proportion.
You could generate a virtual power grid that is not live but all the systems would think it is.
Just like when you upload a website so you can test email functions and db connectivity. There is always a way to make an environment "live" even when its not.
Those parts of the world don't rely on power for virtually every aspect of their lives. Electricity is used everywhere, its is like a bomb dropped if power goes out in the U.S.
Many businesses can't function, businesses of all types from banks to some hotels, to retailers, printing presses, the list goes on.
We are very fortunate to have a power grid as stable as it is. For the most part things do just work, although there is no telling how much damage is done every year to electronics because someone turned a tv on and the resulting spike gives ICs the twitch.
This all reminds me of the movie Resident Evil where they shut down power and all the doors unlock when power is restored.
You bring up a great point about failure states. I work for several large hotels and the fire control systems are the ones that alert whenever there is any problem of any kind largely because any problem of any kind needs to be addressed immediately so it makes sense.
I would think power systems would think along the same lines since the odds are, ANY failure whatsoever needs immediate attention of engineers that maintain the system. This is not a requirement for all software but when it comes to such critical services why doesn't everybody do the same practice? It seems so blatently obvious that alarms should have been raised.
Also, in situation's where you don't work on a live environment you can always create a test environment that is for all intensive purposes "live" For web development work I do I have a testing domain which is used to test sites to ensure that because they work here in my lab they will work when I hand them off to the client. Its 100% accurate, I've seen it done with countless other systems, so why wasn't it done here?
You are the first person I've seen through this whole thread that actually took the time to articulate this. It is what I was attempting to say initially when I was talking about how it went wrong with the kids I knew but I assumed that it wasn't the case for all students.
You and I seem have a similar personality. I taught myself everything. I was a paid part time netware administator by the age of 12 because I liked computers and studied my ass of, of course, I was fortunate I had exposure to computers early. My father works for IBM. He never taught me a thing about it, but the administrator at my school saw my interest and took me under her wing where I learned a lot. I've since continued my education studying at the UVM school of medicine for two years with a lab technician researching heart disease and my computer career as remained steady.
Now don't take this the wrong way, but the mere fact that you don't like to socialize with people you're own age is a point made earlier. It is an important skillset even though many people can live perfectly full and happy lives without it. I don't see this necessarily as a product of homeschooling but again as a product of personality since I have a public school friend that thinks along the same lines.
I think that many people don't realize that there are great public schools out there just like there are great parents that properly homeschool their parents. You're right that the only ones I saw did it for religious reasons and that is ultimately why it failed.
Now, back to the topic of sex, how do you meet people in school for the purposes of having a relationship? Generally growing up my interaction with girls was really only because I had to in school and that lead to my getting to know them and moving on to form some great relationships.
Its more or less a curiousity of mine since I obviously haven't had much experience with homeschooled individuals.
Oh yeah, in review of what you call social crap. How do you interact with adults on a professional level? Have you gotten a job where you had to do an interview? How did that go? If you got the job how did you interact with people in the office? In such an environment you will inevitably have to deal with people of differing intelligence and ideals so I wonder how that works since you already show distaste in talking to people you're own age.
In case you hadn't noticed I like to start from the bottom and work up. I'll start by stating that teachers never told me drugs were bad. They told me exactly what they did to me physically. It is up to me and my thought processes to come up with whether that is good or bad.
A displaying of facts does not have to suggest that one thing or another is valid, it is merely describing how something works and why it is used.
Continuing with this position I present this Definition of Moral Definition of Morality
By definition you are not creating a moral by stating a fact unless you attempt to classify the fact as good or bad.
Moving on, happiness == success not success ==happiness. You totally read it backwards or I displayed it backwards, in either case I will clarify. For some people they are happy being a doctor saving lives, others are happy being an automechanic. These people I consider successful. Take my sister, she is happy being a full time mom, she too is successful. This is how I see the purpose of education.
Drugs are inherently not a path to happiness because they can't be sustained. A person can be an automechanic for the their entire life, they can also change careers and find something else that makes them happy that they could sustain if they chose.
You are right that a man cannot be judged based on his job. In the course of a year I did landscaping, trash removal, fill hotels with all new furniture, cabled hotels, installed networks at the hotels and local schools among several others places. Oh yeah, I was also spending vast hours of my day with my niece, teaching her how to crawl, exposing her to music and other forms of active stimulus. So I agree with you there. That doesn't mean it doesn't play a small role in helping define a person.
I will also admit that I do make assumptions when I meet someone new, however, I never let that stop me from getting to know them further. Working for a hotel for many years I came across people of all kinds and most were perfectly decent people.
You're right, PAE doesn't work. But MS created sort of a software fix for this for regular processors but they state in the link I posted that it is not ideal and that in the future processors will support this at the hardware level. SP2 implements a software controlled execution environment so I don't think it will be a catch all, but it will certainly improve things especially has more hardware comes out support PAE.
I respect your opinion because it comes from a rational point of view. You have clear reasons for why you would go that approach and don't just follow what a book or group of people tell you. That is commendable.
You're right, Saving Private Ryan, Platoon, and a few other good war movies do inform the viewer that war has serious and often very ugly consequences. It's a very important lesson kids don't get when they watch movies like Demolition Man or Terminator. Such movies are violence for the sake of entertainment instead of violence for the sake of education. I kind of think of the Passion of Christ as being an attempt to meld the two but I can't get past the terrible hour long ordeal of punishment Jesus went through. I watched it once, I will never watch it again not because it was bad, but because I learned the lesson or rather; I figured out the lesson they wanted to teach that I already knew and didn't find it the least bit entertaining. I found it very hard to watch, a lot like Saving Private Ryan. That is violence with a purpose.
I might add such movies like The Battle of Midway do glorify war but I think that was largely because it was the Vietnam era when these movies were produced so the propoganda machine was in full swing.
I can understand your point of view on sex and in a way I think I agree with because violence is clear and cut and easy to define as being right and wrong in given situation. Sex however is something a lot of adults have a problem with let alone kids.
Thanks, that is the point I was trying to make. I too was in the same situation. Then I started working as a net admin for a local school and there I learned to deal with teachers, other admins, and students, as well as parents.
The purpose of education is to provide assistance to society as a whole as well as give the person, not just child the tools to be successful. By successful, I mean happy.
I never said you had to be a professional to teach. Calling someone professional means nothing. When I was building networks for hotels, tax firms, retirement communities, and yep, public schools I was not considered a professional because I neither had a degree nor any certifications. I had a strong work ethic which the first people admired so they gave me the contracts to try me out. I proved that I could do the job better than a lot of professionals so my name grew and I obtained more and more contracts.
Now that that is out of the way let's talk about sex education in a public school. No moral lessons are learned because it is simply a presentation of a collection of facts. You are showed how and why condoms are used and educated on why people get HIV although astonishingly not many other STDs or STIs are mentioned. They are not allowed to say whether it acceptable behavior or not. If kids ask the question then the teacher responds by telling them to ask their parents.
I will grant you students do learn some morals in school by virtue of being exposed to so many different ideals but the ideal that they have to conform to fit in is well, not realistic in all schools.
No one at my school was bullied for being different. Sometimes people lost some popularity if they did something that the rest of the group didn't like in general that was when they chose to do things such as drugs. My high school experience was a lot like my college experience. No question was a stupid question and no abuse whatsoever was tolerated by students, teachers, or the administration. So yes, there are some more morals being taught there but I fail to see how these morals are a bad thing. For that I am sorry.
Now here's another example, I was very different from a lot of people at my school. I was the computer nerd and everyone came to me for help with their computers and we were all still great friends. About a quarter of the time I'd be studying, a quarter of the time partying or socializing in general, then the other half of all the time I spent in high school was working working and working. I started high school at $7/hr and ended at $120. At no time did anyone make fun of me for my nerdish tendencies and at no time did I feel I had to conform to the group.
It is quite obvious you have a prejudice against public schools, probably because they were crappy where you were, or maybe you are uninformed. I don't like to make negative assumptions so I'll go with the first. Not all public schools are drone factories just like my original post about home schooling. I said that it didn't always turn negative but it does indeed and far more often than you think.
I would first like to say that I am for this technology because it is tool to assist parents. However, many parents sit their child in front of a TV and use it as a babysitter. This is not an active role in parenting.
I'd say its a good thing and you make a great point about entertainment and that they would make more money if they produced lower rated movies all with higher rated movies. Look at the Matrix Reloaded, it has all of the same types of scenes as the first PG 13 rated movie but because their was sheer clothing it was rated R. They would have reached a larger audience if they just cut that little seen or even better, just colored it in so you couldn't see. It would be a cheap way to reach a much larger audience.
You are assuming all schools are like the schools you describe. I'd also like to state that my mother works for the state as an 8th grade math teacher and she does indeed care more about her students than a great number of the parents that drop their kids off at school only because its free daycare. They don't care about the child's education.
Obviously not everyone benefits from this environment and obviously from your perspective home schooling has done great things, but you need to realize that it is far more common than you realize that these things go wrong.
In fourth grade public school I was doing well in math, I started helping other students learn and before long my teacher took me to the side and asked me if I wanted to learn algebra. I started and soon there after four more students joined me.
You seem to have a general prejudice against public schools and for that I'd say you should take a look at Mount Mansfield Union High School for an example of public school done right. You have the complete freedom to explore topics beyond the curriculum if you can prove competence in the core standards.
You seem to be forgetting that education depends greatly upon the teacher. Most public schools don't pay teachers well at all, many get 2nd jobs which take away time they could devote to their students. My mother is paid reasonably well, she will spend at least an extra three hours everyday after school helping kids or teaching them something they expressed an interest in. Not all teachers are bad, and most definitely not all don't care about their students.
Now I'll address your first issue because you are just plain wrong if you think that is a universal fact. They outperform inner city or ultra rural schools I'll believe. Schools with proper administration and teachers that care produce children equally intelligent and yes, sometimes more intelligent. It depends greatly upon the child and the environment they are growing up in. I see no problem with a child having multiple teachers with different teaching styles.
Oh yes, I almost missed it. Aren't parents the ones supposed to be teaching morals? Public schools obviously don't have this luxury because many morals are not universal but if parents were doing their job then the schools would be perfectly fine. That is the flaw of the system right now, it asks too much of the parents. Some parents have to work full time to support their child but then, who is going to teach them morals?
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That depends on what you are trying to simulate. If you want to know how a system deals with failure then model that doesn't break is very useful
I'd say your socializing skills are unimportant to you because of your personality, not your upbringing, although it probably had a hand in it just as it did with me. Growing up I had two older sisters which took any and all time my parents had, as well as their money. So as I a result I was doing odd jobs at the age of 8 to get what I wanted. They bought a newer computer at that time and it was the last thing they ever bought for me. From then on out I worked for everything I got. Its hard to say if its just my personality to not accept that I can't have something or my upbringing which would never have allowed me to have many of the things I do.
As for politics, it sounds like you would have enjoyed my school. VT is polarized but surprisingly enough for a small town of 12k people they all respect eachothers' opinions and attempt to debate on merits instead of faith.In many ways its similar to the question about whether smoking marijuana is right or wrong. Most people respond by saying its wrong because its illegal, but if you ask them why it is illegal they have no answer. Its just an example of something we've been able to debate without reducing ourselves to using derrogatory terms.
You would not have been an outcast. Our school encouraged people with different opinions to speak out because a different perspectively inherently helps other people learn. This is why I think learning in a group is so great, not because you'd necessarily learn more, but because the group as a whole would be a lot more intelligent. I also think that if you saw a more simpler approach to a topic you might be shocked and probably would learn something. I suppose it depends greatly on the difference between the top and bottom of the class and making sure the mean is close to the top. This was never a problem in my school.Or I could have meant what I wrote and you're assumption was flawed. I could have meant by testing extremes you will see the worst scenarios. In the case of the power grid that would be a power failure which last I checked doesn't happen under any normal condition.
To just assume that you can never reach 100% accurasy is just plain naive, modifying the tests scenarios and expanding the test setup for more precision will eventually create an environment that will duplicate real life.
It sure sounds like you are trivializing the importance of testing complex systems. To just accept defeat won't get anyone anywhere. If they have to create a scale model of NYC 50 miles wide they could create a duplicate environment. Hell, they could just hook up a city to a test grid and offer real cheap electricity with that caveat.I think you're right, improvements to OpenOffice have a much more powerful ability to bring users to the platform. Getting some big accounting software makers to create a linux version would also help a lot. Right now the average user has no reason to switch to Linux because the software they know runs on Windows.
So Linux needs two approaches to successfully gain steam on the desktop. The first approach being a continued evolution for existing desktop products. I'm sorry to say but the Gimp still can't compared with Photoshop. Then the second approach, I still can't get Avid for Linux, or DreamweaverThat said, it is possible to create a model of the power grid that will behave exactly the same. The real problem is the fact that all power grids are not created equal. Some were built 80 years ago, some 5 years and so the technology needs to be tested better to ensure that the system can properly interact.
There is nothing wrong with the phrasing. This is not why there are so many languages on earth. There is a reason I can understand a person that speaks english in Kenya and England.
Its a single outage, if it happened inside of ten years then I'd say there was a problem. That doesn't mean we can't look at the causes and try to prevent them from happening again. Seems more like it happened a result of cascading circumstances. There was a lot of harm done from the outage thats for sure but the problem isn't necessarily has large as a lot of people seem to think it is. Perhaps it is, I don't have all the facts on the matter. At any rate, I feel confident that the power grid will function and can still be relied upon.
Now, for an example. I stress tested a database I am in the process of building for Mercedes, I made the machine come to crawl. I did it to a dual cpu server, a quad cpu server, and a 16 cpu server. Guess what? They all behaved exactly the same as the system grew. Now scale it up to the DB/2 cluster that it will actually be working on. I do the same thing and guess what? Yep, the exact same result.
If testing fails to produce an outcome that brings a fault then there is a flaw in the testing procedure. The real world can have more connections, but I don't care, software can be 100% bug free. I constantly hear programmers saying that every complex piece of software will have bugs. Its poor planning, and management, even if the programmer is incredibly gifted they will make mistakes without proper planning.Yes, in the real world there are unforeseen variables but as systems because critical they should be undergoing more testing to ensure such things don't occur. But as I said in my original post. One outage in recent years is hardly a trend and is more likely just blown out of proportion.
The elitism seen here is incredible, just because a system in and of itself isn't complex doesn't mean you can take stock of how they manage. Although personally I'm about to design a call center application for Mercedes that will be used by hundreds of thousands of people. This system can get quite complex albeit, not as important as a power system.
When it comes to troubleshooting systems you always have the option of making an exact scale model. You scale it up for more precision. This is a simple concept and apparently a lot of people think just because a system is complex and antiquated the same ideas can't apply.In my experience its impossible to ignore since it sets off the firealarms throughout the building and calls the fire department who have to come out an investigate. Only they are allowed to shut it off, if you do then you get yourself a nice hefty fine. I guess its not like that everywhere from the sounds.
Yeah, I figured that is what it was, but language is about communicating an idea and the point got across so it is considered acceptable. The meaning still fits my purpose even though it is not the common saying.
Every test you can run will behave exactly the same in the real environment. I'm not sure why that is even remotely hard to understand.
Realistically none of these problems had to happen and wouldn't have happened if the people in charge were doing their jobs. Maybe they were working on a way to make cold fusion feasible, I don't know but if they were negligent then they need to be removed from their position. If they were just too busy with other aspects of the system then they need to bring more people in so the system can be properly maintained. A power outage is a big deal. Of course, one outage is hardly a trend so probably the whole thing is just blown out of proportion.
Just like when you upload a website so you can test email functions and db connectivity. There is always a way to make an environment "live" even when its not.
Many businesses can't function, businesses of all types from banks to some hotels, to retailers, printing presses, the list goes on.
We are very fortunate to have a power grid as stable as it is. For the most part things do just work, although there is no telling how much damage is done every year to electronics because someone turned a tv on and the resulting spike gives ICs the twitch.You bring up a great point about failure states. I work for several large hotels and the fire control systems are the ones that alert whenever there is any problem of any kind largely because any problem of any kind needs to be addressed immediately so it makes sense.
I would think power systems would think along the same lines since the odds are, ANY failure whatsoever needs immediate attention of engineers that maintain the system. This is not a requirement for all software but when it comes to such critical services why doesn't everybody do the same practice? It seems so blatently obvious that alarms should have been raised.Also, in situation's where you don't work on a live environment you can always create a test environment that is for all intensive purposes "live" For web development work I do I have a testing domain which is used to test sites to ensure that because they work here in my lab they will work when I hand them off to the client. Its 100% accurate, I've seen it done with countless other systems, so why wasn't it done here?
You and I seem have a similar personality. I taught myself everything. I was a paid part time netware administator by the age of 12 because I liked computers and studied my ass of, of course, I was fortunate I had exposure to computers early. My father works for IBM. He never taught me a thing about it, but the administrator at my school saw my interest and took me under her wing where I learned a lot. I've since continued my education studying at the UVM school of medicine for two years with a lab technician researching heart disease and my computer career as remained steady.
Now don't take this the wrong way, but the mere fact that you don't like to socialize with people you're own age is a point made earlier. It is an important skillset even though many people can live perfectly full and happy lives without it. I don't see this necessarily as a product of homeschooling but again as a product of personality since I have a public school friend that thinks along the same lines.I think that many people don't realize that there are great public schools out there just like there are great parents that properly homeschool their parents. You're right that the only ones I saw did it for religious reasons and that is ultimately why it failed.
Now, back to the topic of sex, how do you meet people in school for the purposes of having a relationship? Generally growing up my interaction with girls was really only because I had to in school and that lead to my getting to know them and moving on to form some great relationships.Its more or less a curiousity of mine since I obviously haven't had much experience with homeschooled individuals.
Oh yeah, in review of what you call social crap. How do you interact with adults on a professional level? Have you gotten a job where you had to do an interview? How did that go? If you got the job how did you interact with people in the office? In such an environment you will inevitably have to deal with people of differing intelligence and ideals so I wonder how that works since you already show distaste in talking to people you're own age.A displaying of facts does not have to suggest that one thing or another is valid, it is merely describing how something works and why it is used.
Continuing with this position I present this Definition of MoralDefinition of Morality
By definition you are not creating a moral by stating a fact unless you attempt to classify the fact as good or bad.
Moving on, happiness == success not success ==happiness. You totally read it backwards or I displayed it backwards, in either case I will clarify. For some people they are happy being a doctor saving lives, others are happy being an automechanic. These people I consider successful. Take my sister, she is happy being a full time mom, she too is successful. This is how I see the purpose of education.
Drugs are inherently not a path to happiness because they can't be sustained. A person can be an automechanic for the their entire life, they can also change careers and find something else that makes them happy that they could sustain if they chose.You are right that a man cannot be judged based on his job. In the course of a year I did landscaping, trash removal, fill hotels with all new furniture, cabled hotels, installed networks at the hotels and local schools among several others places. Oh yeah, I was also spending vast hours of my day with my niece, teaching her how to crawl, exposing her to music and other forms of active stimulus. So I agree with you there. That doesn't mean it doesn't play a small role in helping define a person.
I will also admit that I do make assumptions when I meet someone new, however, I never let that stop me from getting to know them further. Working for a hotel for many years I came across people of all kinds and most were perfectly decent people.You're right, PAE doesn't work. But MS created sort of a software fix for this for regular processors but they state in the link I posted that it is not ideal and that in the future processors will support this at the hardware level. SP2 implements a software controlled execution environment so I don't think it will be a catch all, but it will certainly improve things especially has more hardware comes out support PAE.
You're right, Saving Private Ryan, Platoon, and a few other good war movies do inform the viewer that war has serious and often very ugly consequences. It's a very important lesson kids don't get when they watch movies like Demolition Man or Terminator. Such movies are violence for the sake of entertainment instead of violence for the sake of education. I kind of think of the Passion of Christ as being an attempt to meld the two but I can't get past the terrible hour long ordeal of punishment Jesus went through. I watched it once, I will never watch it again not because it was bad, but because I learned the lesson or rather; I figured out the lesson they wanted to teach that I already knew and didn't find it the least bit entertaining. I found it very hard to watch, a lot like Saving Private Ryan. That is violence with a purpose.
I might add such movies like The Battle of Midway do glorify war but I think that was largely because it was the Vietnam era when these movies were produced so the propoganda machine was in full swing.I can understand your point of view on sex and in a way I think I agree with because violence is clear and cut and easy to define as being right and wrong in given situation. Sex however is something a lot of adults have a problem with let alone kids.
Oh Netware, how I miss you
I never said you had to be a professional to teach. Calling someone professional means nothing. When I was building networks for hotels, tax firms, retirement communities, and yep, public schools I was not considered a professional because I neither had a degree nor any certifications. I had a strong work ethic which the first people admired so they gave me the contracts to try me out. I proved that I could do the job better than a lot of professionals so my name grew and I obtained more and more contracts.
Now that that is out of the way let's talk about sex education in a public school. No moral lessons are learned because it is simply a presentation of a collection of facts. You are showed how and why condoms are used and educated on why people get HIV although astonishingly not many other STDs or STIs are mentioned. They are not allowed to say whether it acceptable behavior or not. If kids ask the question then the teacher responds by telling them to ask their parents.I will grant you students do learn some morals in school by virtue of being exposed to so many different ideals but the ideal that they have to conform to fit in is well, not realistic in all schools.
No one at my school was bullied for being different. Sometimes people lost some popularity if they did something that the rest of the group didn't like in general that was when they chose to do things such as drugs. My high school experience was a lot like my college experience. No question was a stupid question and no abuse whatsoever was tolerated by students, teachers, or the administration. So yes, there are some more morals being taught there but I fail to see how these morals are a bad thing. For that I am sorry.Now here's another example, I was very different from a lot of people at my school. I was the computer nerd and everyone came to me for help with their computers and we were all still great friends. About a quarter of the time I'd be studying, a quarter of the time partying or socializing in general, then the other half of all the time I spent in high school was working working and working. I started high school at $7/hr and ended at $120. At no time did anyone make fun of me for my nerdish tendencies and at no time did I feel I had to conform to the group.
It is quite obvious you have a prejudice against public schools, probably because they were crappy where you were, or maybe you are uninformed. I don't like to make negative assumptions so I'll go with the first. Not all public schools are drone factories just like my original post about home schooling. I said that it didn't always turn negative but it does indeed and far more often than you think.I'd say its a good thing and you make a great point about entertainment and that they would make more money if they produced lower rated movies all with higher rated movies. Look at the Matrix Reloaded, it has all of the same types of scenes as the first PG 13 rated movie but because their was sheer clothing it was rated R. They would have reached a larger audience if they just cut that little seen or even better, just colored it in so you couldn't see. It would be a cheap way to reach a much larger audience.
Obviously not everyone benefits from this environment and obviously from your perspective home schooling has done great things, but you need to realize that it is far more common than you realize that these things go wrong.
In fourth grade public school I was doing well in math, I started helping other students learn and before long my teacher took me to the side and asked me if I wanted to learn algebra. I started and soon there after four more students joined me.You seem to have a general prejudice against public schools and for that I'd say you should take a look at Mount Mansfield Union High School for an example of public school done right. You have the complete freedom to explore topics beyond the curriculum if you can prove competence in the core standards.
You seem to be forgetting that education depends greatly upon the teacher. Most public schools don't pay teachers well at all, many get 2nd jobs which take away time they could devote to their students. My mother is paid reasonably well, she will spend at least an extra three hours everyday after school helping kids or teaching them something they expressed an interest in. Not all teachers are bad, and most definitely not all don't care about their students.Now I'll address your first issue because you are just plain wrong if you think that is a universal fact. They outperform inner city or ultra rural schools I'll believe. Schools with proper administration and teachers that care produce children equally intelligent and yes, sometimes more intelligent. It depends greatly upon the child and the environment they are growing up in. I see no problem with a child having multiple teachers with different teaching styles.
Oh yes, I almost missed it. Aren't parents the ones supposed to be teaching morals? Public schools obviously don't have this luxury because many morals are not universal but if parents were doing their job then the schools would be perfectly fine. That is the flaw of the system right now, it asks too much of the parents. Some parents have to work full time to support their child but then, who is going to teach them morals?