Laptops in a functioning school system are a requirement, not a problem.
You state this, yet you haven't given a single cogent reason why. If the schools and teachers are bad, how is throwing laptops into the mix going to help (or hurt) any. It, OTOH, does take money away from funds that could be used to hire the best teachers away from industry and the universities.
It's a mix of feminists trying to make girls score better and too many female teachers that think competition is a four-letter word -- not that any of that is bad in the proper balance.
Actually, I don't disagree with you here. I think that, ultimately, gender seperated schools might be the answer. Boys and girls learn differently - neither gender is more intelligent, but they are psychologically very different. Deal with it and move on - stop pretending that what's best for a teenager of one gender is best for the other. Plenty of time for "integration" after school, in college, and beyond, IMHO.
And administrators who want to "structure" every millisecond of a kid's time at school and eliminate things like recess after lunch should be lined up against the wall and shot for excessive and wanton cruelty:D
This is not to say students don't need computers -- they do -- but that's what the computer lab is for.
Or a single desktop in every classroom, preferably linked to a projector, so a teacher can look up stuff and display presentations/educational films when required. But putting 25 laptops (restricted or not) in the hands of a class of teenagers is jsut asking for them to be distracted.
should not be taught in schools as a 'professional skill.' What kids need is a strong grounding in the maths, hard sciences, and history, as well as being literate; preferably in more than one language. Who knows if Powerpoint will even be around in 10 years when those kids enter the workforce. The way things are looking now, Microsoft's power might be much less by that time.
Apart from purposes of research or computer science courses, I hesitate to say that there's even a place for ubiquitous computing in the classroom. Typing noises *are* distracting, and a good teacher can teach more than 100 computers! And, as far as electronic demonstrations replacing *real* dissections and chemistry experiments for reasons of "ethics" and "safety" - some school administrators need a good punch upside the head since the virtual world is only a poor approximation of the real one.
If you are listing the above situations and you go run a tool to reset the password, you should really make sure your resume is up to date as that is a huge fireable offense (in some situations possibly criminal). If you don't normally have access there is a reason for it.
Right. Nothing wrong with dissiminating info on how to fix problems. It's up to the people who read it to decide what to do with it. Me, I'm self-employed, so I'd never need to do anything like that:D
With computers controlling large buildings, you want the things to be as reliable as possible. Use two of the things as read-only partitions for the acual code and data and run the system itself on a RAM disk. More reliable than a CD, I suspect.
...If you got root at your pc at work, I suggest creating an additional account for you "personal recreation"...
And if you don't have root at work, are running Windows, and there's no BIOS password and/or CD Boot is enabled, you can always make an NT Password Reset disk. No relation to the creator - just a happy customer. And, yes, I've always used the thing for white-hat purposes.
Why can't your off-site backup be up continuously and permanently connected via the Internet/VPN?
You don't want an off-site backup (or any backup modality for that matter) to be permanently connected. Why? Too much chance of malware hosing the thing along with your main hard drive... Part of the advantage of a good backup is that it's safe from any malicious activity that may go on in your system!
Also, you completely sidestepped his argument, EASE OF USE, not graphical slickness.
I'm saying that there are GUIs for Linux/BSD that are just as easy and intuitive as Windows and OS X. Certainly the better setups with KDE are and even WindowMaker isn't too shabby.
would involve keeping all data on a removable compact flash card. When the owner sells the phone, the flash card can either be removed and reused in their new phone, or slagged with Thermite.
Also, for every frivolous law suit that gets thrown out immediately, the lawyer and plaintiff should have to pay court costs, the defendant's attourney fees, the juror salary for any jurors called in to serve, the electrical bill, the court reporter's salary for that time, the balifs' salaries for that time, and the judges salary for the time that he spent to throw it out.
Problem is: how do you legally define "frivolous?" In order to have an equitable legal system, all processes that are started have to be treated equally. Also, if we institute such a policy for "frivolous" suits, it's going to prevent people with *legitimate* grievances from suing people and corporations with more money to burn than them. We're a capitalist society - but remember that our Constitution states that "all men were created equally" (and, by extension, deserve equal treatment by the law regardless of race, ethnicity, wealth, or gender).
I'm not saying that the super-rich should get away scot-free, but putting an arbitrary limit on how much someone can make is just as silly.
It's not an arbitrary limit, since I'm not advocating taking away all of their income, just taxing them at 80-90%.
Besides, can you calculate how long it will take for middle-class people to make $5 million a year, assuming an average inflation of 5% and a current income of $60000?
Goes without saying that income tax brackets should be inflation-adjusted.
USA live and strive on immigration, USA is immigration. Even if you could somehow close your borders (and you can't), the only thing it would do is haste the death of your country.
Who said anything about clamping down on *legal* immigration. We need to clamp down on *illegal* uncontrolled immigration and be much more careful about whom we let into this country legally. If someone is bent on destroying our civilization, we should find that out before we let them into the US, and keep them the hell out. The thousands of immigrants who want a better life for themselves and their families; who start businesses that help the economy, etc; they can come and stay. We just need to keep the other kind out!
I went to a certain small school in PA. Some people might know of it. In 2000 or so, they installed a phone system that allowed dialling by name if you didn't know the 4-digit phone # of the person, mostly so an operator didn't have to man the desk at night. One (drunken) game was to say something like "Stupid Bitch" to the system and try to guess what it would come up with. Guess wrong - you drank. BTW - "Stupid Bitch" translated to Prof. St----- Be----.
You might be surprised, but there are still a lot of people out there with their phone lines (and phones) configured for pulse-dialing/rotary instead of touch-tone. Unfortunately, speaking from personal experience, they make getting through a traditional digit-entry interface impossible.
Rotary detect - detecting clicks on a line, is pretty trivial as well. If you're worried about noise causing wrong selections, make it so the choice numbers are 0 3 6 and 9. That way, a missed or extra click detected could be construed at the next lower- or higher-numbered choice.
I don't think that the US has any more operator-controlled phones (last ones in California and Nevada were supposed to be converted in 2003 or so - google for "toll stations") so having absolutely no dialling mechanism probably isn't an issue. Maybe on the rare operator-run private branch exchange or something...
I can shell script command line options to photoshop on OS X, but trying to do the same on Linux (with WINE) was to cumbersome and cludgy for me to even get it working. Mostly this is Adobe's fault and I can do 80% of the same thing using GIMP.
Well, running in emulation is just a PITA, whether it be WINE or Parallels. GIMP is an awesome tool for web work (I use it basically exclusively nowadays) where perfact colour matching doesn't matter 100% since everyone's monitor is slightly different, but I've heard people bitching about it for print media use since it lacks features like C-M-Y-K colour channel separation.
First of all, mod parent up as insightful --- deserves it!
We agree on so much, and I believe that if all people from both sides of the fence, libs and conservatives, sat down, we'd find out we agree on more than we think.
Well, you seem like the rational, principled brand of conservative. Some of the others are either corrupted by their interests or slightly less-scary Christian versions of the Islamic fundamentalists. (BTW, same goes for a lot of liberals, who tend to either have special interests in mind, or be nannycrats who want to protect everyone from themselves!)
Yeah, there are people with lots of money. That's cool with me: they'll spend it on something one way or the other. A rising tide lifts all boats...
Trickle-down economics aka Reaganomics? Hahahahahaha. Think about it this way: if you're working at McDonalds at $6/hr, does the company (with an entrenched model of business) really have a compelling interest in you getting educated and/or getting good health care. At the lower end of the scale, the people and corporations at the high end need a steady supply of replacable worker drones and have no interest in doing anything to change that.
Diverting funds for education and health care from the top to the bottom is the only way to alter that situation.
I actually wish most Linux distros would bring their terminal integration with the rest of their OS up to the same level as the default terminal.app on OS X. On OS X, if I use the GUI to move a folder, in which my shell happens to be also within, the shell is informed and updates instantly.
I'm more referring to the fact that you can't do a lot of things that you can do in the shell in Linux without dealing with the NetInfo Manager in OS X. A lot of the flatfiles in the/etc directory in OS X are just there for historical reasons and don't really do anything.
On OS X, if I use the GUI to move a folder, in which my shell happens to be also within, the shell is informed and updates instantly.
There I agree with you. BTW - if you need a Linux shell to update its file system structure database, just use the "rehash" command. This rescans the file system if something else has changed the directory structure or added files that the shell can't find.
We need to go to wherever the terrorists are. If they're in the middle east, we need to be in the Middle East. If they're else where, we should move elsewhere.
Nope, first isolate the terrorists (yes, folks, that includes a lot of Israelis too) by non-interference in the Middle East. Granted, I wouldn't want Israelis getting killed due to Israel being overrun, so let any Israeli who wishes to immigrate to the US in the next 10 years do so.
Increased border security and screening of *legal* entrants to the US: I agree with you 100%. This is the only way to avoid having draconian laws that reduce freedoms within the United States *themselves*.
If after taking all of those steps, another terrorist attack still happens - I say: go get 'em. But be creative about it - don't use a massive quantity of ground troops. Use bombing or covert assassination techniques to kill those people.
We definitely agree on this. Ethanol is a start (for the oil problem), and I think we should put more money towards this and other alternative energy sources and research too.
Ethanol is only a good solution if it's produced from waste products like corn cobs. Otherwise, the growing of the crops required to produce it will take more energy (and cause environmental damage through fertilizers and other chemicals) than you'll get out in the end. Nuclear, wind, hydro and solar, combined with plug-in hybrid or fuel-cell cars and a coast-to-coast electrified rail network for freight and medium-distance passenger transportation is the answer.
Sure, everybody will agree that Environmental protection, reduced emissions, etc. are good for the world. But there are many many things that should have higher priority over it, like our Safety from those trying to kill us.
Terrorism - domestic and otherwise - has killed no more than 3,000 Americans in the past decade. Compare that to more than 100,000 deaths by misadventure and accident in the US alone, and it's a drop in the bucket. Also keep in mind that Hurrican Katrina, which many scientists do think was a pruduct of environmental degradation, killed 2,000 people. If we start having storms like that annually, it'll make the WTC attack seem like no big deal.
At that point, all the rich people, instead of running your large businesses, go and play golf all day.
Actually, fewer large businesses and many smaller/startup businesses - a state of constant flux, would be *just fine* with me. As it is, large businesses get comfortable, rest on their laurels, and fail to really innovate. If some of them failed due to lack of real interest of the people running them, would that be such a horrible thing? Plus, if you were running a public company and making $5 mil per year, the stockholders could vote you out at any time if you spent your time playing golf. Thus your income would plummet from $5 mil/yr to approximately zero, and you won't be sitting on $60 mil to keep you comfortable for the rest of your life!
why 5mil? i'd say 35k is enough for everyone.... don't be so greedy. poor people are people too.
Keep it a level that doesn't discourage innovation but discourages ostentatious and excessive wealth and/or puts a lot of that wealth back into the hands of the middle-class, so they're not dependent on their employers for things like health insurance. Again - giving the middle-class and poor more time to educate and innovate rather than running in circles on a treadmill.
But apart from the propietariness, am i really the only one who abhors the osx user interface?
Its saving grace are the UNIX underpinnings of the OS, allowing you to do pretty much what you bl**dy well want with is. Back to the car analogy: Maybe there's no "door open" switch, but there's a terminal under the hood to which you can run a wire and connect a switch.
Slashdot Mirror
... read in James Earl Jones' voice...
You state this, yet you haven't given a single cogent reason why. If the schools and teachers are bad, how is throwing laptops into the mix going to help (or hurt) any. It, OTOH, does take money away from funds that could be used to hire the best teachers away from industry and the universities.
It's a mix of feminists trying to make girls score better and too many female teachers that think competition is a four-letter word -- not that any of that is bad in the proper balance.
Actually, I don't disagree with you here. I think that, ultimately, gender seperated schools might be the answer. Boys and girls learn differently - neither gender is more intelligent, but they are psychologically very different. Deal with it and move on - stop pretending that what's best for a teenager of one gender is best for the other. Plenty of time for "integration" after school, in college, and beyond, IMHO.
And administrators who want to "structure" every millisecond of a kid's time at school and eliminate things like recess after lunch should be lined up against the wall and shot for excessive and wanton cruelty :D
-b.
Or a single desktop in every classroom, preferably linked to a projector, so a teacher can look up stuff and display presentations/educational films when required. But putting 25 laptops (restricted or not) in the hands of a class of teenagers is jsut asking for them to be distracted.
-b.
Apart from purposes of research or computer science courses, I hesitate to say that there's even a place for ubiquitous computing in the classroom. Typing noises *are* distracting, and a good teacher can teach more than 100 computers! And, as far as electronic demonstrations replacing *real* dissections and chemistry experiments for reasons of "ethics" and "safety" - some school administrators need a good punch upside the head since the virtual world is only a poor approximation of the real one.
-b.
Right. Nothing wrong with dissiminating info on how to fix problems. It's up to the people who read it to decide what to do with it. Me, I'm self-employed, so I'd never need to do anything like that :D
-b.
-b.
Therefore, the name "browser" is quite misleading. More of an anonymizer wrapper for MSIE.
-b.
And if you don't have root at work, are running Windows, and there's no BIOS password and/or CD Boot is enabled, you can always make an NT Password Reset disk. No relation to the creator - just a happy customer. And, yes, I've always used the thing for white-hat purposes.
-b.
You don't want an off-site backup (or any backup modality for that matter) to be permanently connected. Why? Too much chance of malware hosing the thing along with your main hard drive... Part of the advantage of a good backup is that it's safe from any malicious activity that may go on in your system!
-b.
I'm saying that there are GUIs for Linux/BSD that are just as easy and intuitive as Windows and OS X. Certainly the better setups with KDE are and even WindowMaker isn't too shabby.
-b.
-b.
-b.
Problem is: how do you legally define "frivolous?" In order to have an equitable legal system, all processes that are started have to be treated equally. Also, if we institute such a policy for "frivolous" suits, it's going to prevent people with *legitimate* grievances from suing people and corporations with more money to burn than them. We're a capitalist society - but remember that our Constitution states that "all men were created equally" (and, by extension, deserve equal treatment by the law regardless of race, ethnicity, wealth, or gender).
-b.
It's not an arbitrary limit, since I'm not advocating taking away all of their income, just taxing them at 80-90%.
Besides, can you calculate how long it will take for middle-class people to make $5 million a year, assuming an average inflation of 5% and a current income of $60000?
Goes without saying that income tax brackets should be inflation-adjusted.
-b.
Who said anything about clamping down on *legal* immigration. We need to clamp down on *illegal* uncontrolled immigration and be much more careful about whom we let into this country legally. If someone is bent on destroying our civilization, we should find that out before we let them into the US, and keep them the hell out. The thousands of immigrants who want a better life for themselves and their families; who start businesses that help the economy, etc; they can come and stay. We just need to keep the other kind out!
-b.
-b.
Rotary detect - detecting clicks on a line, is pretty trivial as well. If you're worried about noise causing wrong selections, make it so the choice numbers are 0 3 6 and 9. That way, a missed or extra click detected could be construed at the next lower- or higher-numbered choice.
I don't think that the US has any more operator-controlled phones (last ones in California and Nevada were supposed to be converted in 2003 or so - google for "toll stations") so having absolutely no dialling mechanism probably isn't an issue. Maybe on the rare operator-run private branch exchange or something...
-b.
Well, running in emulation is just a PITA, whether it be WINE or Parallels. GIMP is an awesome tool for web work (I use it basically exclusively nowadays) where perfact colour matching doesn't matter 100% since everyone's monitor is slightly different, but I've heard people bitching about it for print media use since it lacks features like C-M-Y-K colour channel separation.
-b.
We agree on so much, and I believe that if all people from both sides of the fence, libs and conservatives, sat down, we'd find out we agree on more than we think.
Well, you seem like the rational, principled brand of conservative. Some of the others are either corrupted by their interests or slightly less-scary Christian versions of the Islamic fundamentalists. (BTW, same goes for a lot of liberals, who tend to either have special interests in mind, or be nannycrats who want to protect everyone from themselves!)
-b.
Trickle-down economics aka Reaganomics? Hahahahahaha. Think about it this way: if you're working at McDonalds at $6/hr, does the company (with an entrenched model of business) really have a compelling interest in you getting educated and/or getting good health care. At the lower end of the scale, the people and corporations at the high end need a steady supply of replacable worker drones and have no interest in doing anything to change that.
Diverting funds for education and health care from the top to the bottom is the only way to alter that situation.
-b.
I'm more referring to the fact that you can't do a lot of things that you can do in the shell in Linux without dealing with the NetInfo Manager in OS X. A lot of the flatfiles in the /etc directory in OS X are just there for historical reasons and don't really do anything.
On OS X, if I use the GUI to move a folder, in which my shell happens to be also within, the shell is informed and updates instantly.
There I agree with you. BTW - if you need a Linux shell to update its file system structure database, just use the "rehash" command. This rescans the file system if something else has changed the directory structure or added files that the shell can't find.
-b.
Nope, first isolate the terrorists (yes, folks, that includes a lot of Israelis too) by non-interference in the Middle East. Granted, I wouldn't want Israelis getting killed due to Israel being overrun, so let any Israeli who wishes to immigrate to the US in the next 10 years do so.
Increased border security and screening of *legal* entrants to the US: I agree with you 100%. This is the only way to avoid having draconian laws that reduce freedoms within the United States *themselves*.
If after taking all of those steps, another terrorist attack still happens - I say: go get 'em. But be creative about it - don't use a massive quantity of ground troops. Use bombing or covert assassination techniques to kill those people.
We definitely agree on this. Ethanol is a start (for the oil problem), and I think we should put more money towards this and other alternative energy sources and research too.
Ethanol is only a good solution if it's produced from waste products like corn cobs. Otherwise, the growing of the crops required to produce it will take more energy (and cause environmental damage through fertilizers and other chemicals) than you'll get out in the end. Nuclear, wind, hydro and solar, combined with plug-in hybrid or fuel-cell cars and a coast-to-coast electrified rail network for freight and medium-distance passenger transportation is the answer.
Sure, everybody will agree that Environmental protection, reduced emissions, etc. are good for the world. But there are many many things that should have higher priority over it, like our Safety from those trying to kill us.
Terrorism - domestic and otherwise - has killed no more than 3,000 Americans in the past decade. Compare that to more than 100,000 deaths by misadventure and accident in the US alone, and it's a drop in the bucket. Also keep in mind that Hurrican Katrina, which many scientists do think was a pruduct of environmental degradation, killed 2,000 people. If we start having storms like that annually, it'll make the WTC attack seem like no big deal.
-b.
Actually, fewer large businesses and many smaller/startup businesses - a state of constant flux, would be *just fine* with me. As it is, large businesses get comfortable, rest on their laurels, and fail to really innovate. If some of them failed due to lack of real interest of the people running them, would that be such a horrible thing? Plus, if you were running a public company and making $5 mil per year, the stockholders could vote you out at any time if you spent your time playing golf. Thus your income would plummet from $5 mil/yr to approximately zero, and you won't be sitting on $60 mil to keep you comfortable for the rest of your life!
-b.
Keep it a level that doesn't discourage innovation but discourages ostentatious and excessive wealth and/or puts a lot of that wealth back into the hands of the middle-class, so they're not dependent on their employers for things like health insurance. Again - giving the middle-class and poor more time to educate and innovate rather than running in circles on a treadmill.
-b.
Its saving grace are the UNIX underpinnings of the OS, allowing you to do pretty much what you bl**dy well want with is. Back to the car analogy: Maybe there's no "door open" switch, but there's a terminal under the hood to which you can run a wire and connect a switch.
-b.