nedlohs has it right. Economics is not a real Nobel -- as you point out. Further, it's as related to reality as the Peace Prize -- that is, it is not.
He doesn't say the Nobel Prize for Peace is not a real Nobel, he just said it's not related to reality. It's not, just look at the past recipients of the Nobel Peace Prize. There's no way a sane person could correlate those winners to the concept of progressing peace.
The comparison was more of a numbers thing -- I do know they're only tangentially related (by large numbers). I've no intentions of going to Burning Man, because I *would* hate it, but that's just me.. I was the dude at Bonnaroo who hung out at his tent reading Kafka instead of going to see the Dead play; I'd probably drive 10,000 people away from Burning Man.
Hell, when I went to Bonnaroo (back when it was still awesome, many years ago; heard its kinda commercial and filled with kids on senior trips these days..), I believe it pulled in twice that number, for 4 days. And there were no geriatric gay guys sans pants, either. Also I saw Neil Young and James Brown there. And Garage a Trois, which was actually the best show of the whole thing.. Burning Man, more like Second-Rate Man.
I'm glad you're brave enough to respond to my refutation of my post to -- oh, nevermind, you came back anonymously.
Not that it matters, but I don't own an XBox, or XBox360, and will never load GFWL on my computer, and will never participate as a consumer or producer in XBLA. I don't much care for Microsoft and their shoddy Steam-knockoff products.
None of that changes the fact that PSN was porous as all hell, was hacked, exposed sensitive information of thousands -- millions -- of their users, and was down for weeks. And none of that changes the fact that XBLA is a very closed-down place, and Microsoft's business practices are draconian -- if you're being *kind* to them.
So do you want to hang, or be shot?
Yes, clearly, me comparing a black kettle to a black pot.. CLEARLY that makes me a M$ FANBOY! Fuck you're clever, guy!
I'm not Anon, bro. There's my name. It's.. it's right there.
You also need to get the stick outta your butt.
There's absolutely no way my post could have been interpreted as anything but a joke. It's referencing the PSN incident in a way that's so inaccurate that anyone who heard anything about it would understand both that I was referencing that incident and that I was exaggerating and fabricating the story with the intent of eliciting a laugh from the allegedly tech-savvy readership here at Slashdot.
Of course I'm not going to admit to the facts, MY POST WAS NOT INTENDED TO BE FACTUAL. I have no reason to rescind what I said, as what I said WAS NOT INTENDED TO BE FACTUAL.
Good god, do you call up Leno every time he takes an actual occurrence and fabricates details to make it funny? Are you an alien who has never come into contact with the concept of human comedy before?
You know very fucking well what I meant. Forgive me for expressing it in a brief and humorous sentence referencing an incident the details of which we all are very fucking aware of, rather than providing a detailed blow-by-blow recount of the entire PSN incident complete with sourced quotes and references.
Go blow it out your uptight corporate shill of an asshole.
Sweet, it's nice to know that my memory isn't completely shit-ass these days:) For just being some random schmuck I'd say I nailed the important parts pretty accurately!
this is old -- but if I recall correctly, I think Spamhaus got themselves into the shit PRECISELY BY responding to the summons. Granted, their response was "No.. we're not responding", but the fact that they responded was taken as acknowledgement of the court's jurisdiction. And then, when they never showed up, the court had no option but to find in favor of the plaintiff since the defendant had acknowledged the court's jurisdiction but failed to appear to defend themselves.
Maybe i have it confused with a different case. it's possible.
I actually had no idea what problem you were talking about until the discussion below you developed.
I just.. wow, man, wow. People actually DO that?
There wouldn't even be an issue if instead of jumping straight to fractions on both sides of the equation, if they simply started at a more simple step. A/B = C There you go.. explain how and why that is done and there's no need for a trick when the right side reads C/D.
Absolutely ridiculous.
I was fortunate, I suppose, to have some pretty talented teachers. Some.. not all.
So far as the waitress/teacher analogy.. refer back to the "not all" statement. When I took Trig, my teacher had years previously given up on teaching. It took me a long time to catch up to where I should have been, and I still actually struggle at times to keep things straight (nothing a short 5-second glance askew and bit of reasoning can't sort out, but not something I feel others need to do).
There are teachers now who are fucking up kids by teaching them poorly, and by teaching them poor information. Not all of them are bad because they're just waiting until retirement, either -- some just can't connect with other people in a way that allows them to explain new concepts in an easily digestible manner. Some aren't able to intuit when their lessons have whizzed over heads. The teachers who can't do that, don't pick it up later on.
That's unfair. Maybe some do. Certainly some do not. Teachers and professors alike, I've found some that simply don't understand those concepts, who are unable to modify their method of explaining a concept to students if the students don't immediately grok it. They are fucking kids up, and all their instruction on how to teach did no good.
If I had my druthers, that sort of teacher would be fired. That doesn't happen, though. The excessive schooling needed for teachers is a way of compensating, in my opinion, for the difficulty of getting rid of teachers who aren't very good at it.
I did have a few not very good teachers, and at least two that were awful. I rarely if ever remember them. It's the really good ones I remember. I don't think a single bad teacher will put a kid off learning -- that strikes me as something that would cross from being bad at their job to being criminal -- so long as that kid manages to find some good teachers, too. With the usual caveats about their parents and upbringing, of course.. but that's.. that's a whole different big old mess.
I'm not even a fresh out of school teacher, bro. I'm still IN school.
And I HAVE taught, albeit on a smaller scale. Both independently -- teaching concepts and techniques to both family and friends when the actual teachers failed to adapt their method of explaining those things to the particular way in which the individual was misunderstanding them -- and professionally -- teaching methods of completing tasks on a job efficiently and explaining the reasons for doing things in one particular manner or another and providing examples of how else the tasks I was training them on may be accomplished and the advantages and disadvantages of the method I recommend as well as the methods others have used.
I love your reading comprehension, by the way. The way you presume that I think I deserve more pay and less hours, despite me clearly stating I'd be more than willing to work for a pittance, and despite all indications that this is a task for which I have eternal patience and from which I draw great enjoyment simply to be doing regardless of the reward.
I never complained about the salaries being too low -- in fact, I complained that they were too high. I never complained about how hard it is to attain tenure -- in fact, I complained that tenure is a large reason there is a glut of bad teachers. Of course, tenure only exists because the general public is far too critical of teachers. I provided some examples of perfectly acceptable behavior which takes place entirely outside and apart from school that can cause serious problems for teachers. Did you read that? No.. of course you didn't. But, just in case you're reading this, I'll explain. It's easier to fire a teacher for an invalid reason than it is to fire them for being a bad teacher. Get enough parents complaining that they saw a teacher sitting at a bar with a beer in their hand over the summer, or that they saw a teacher at a political rally for an unpopular view -- which could be anything, pro-choice or life, defense of marriage or LGBT rights -- and a teacher will catch shit, because the administration is catching shit. If the teacher is simply not very good at their job, well now THEN the administration will go to bat for them. But who cares, you're not reading this, either.
You read two words I typed and assumed a whole fucking load of things I would be saying, not a single one of which I ACTUALLY said and quite a few of which I hold the opposing view.
Fucking misguided unintelligent ape. Go find someone else to vent your frustrations about your sister-in-law. I am not her, and she is not me. Were you not such an idiot I'd gladly hand you my phone and tell you to call ANY NUMBER ON THERE and ask that person to describe to you the extent of my ability to teach and tutor them on things they were unable to understand. You see, THAT IS WHO I AM. I'm even doing it now, despite my utter lack of a single fucking shit about your continued existence -- yes, you're so dense I doubt a single tear would be shed were you to pass from this earth before I click "Submit", yet even now I am compelled to explain to you the manner in which you are wrong and further to expound upon the correct answer in a way that maybe you will understand. And were this to fail, I'd do it again. And again. My patience for this is eternal, and my reward absolutely personal.
Oh, a parting word. That BIG SCARY REAL WORLD you seem to believe I've never been a part of? I'm 29, bro. I've lived out in the real world and found it unrewarding, outside of the few chances I had in my previous job to teach newer employees. Every single one of them thanked me, personally, and privately spoke to my boss about how good I was at explaining things to them, how patient I was, and how much they actually enjoyed coming in to work under me. The actual jobs were not at all enjoyable -- but I put them at ease, I was patient with them, and I was quite careful to push them to perform exactly as much as I was confident they could do at the
I'm quite talented at teaching new concepts to people and to kids. I've quite a long time left before I'll be legally allowed to teach. While I appreciate the higher-level classes in my chosen subject that I'm forced to take, I will never need those to teach high school, and while I appreciate that some classes on child psych and teaching methods will be useful, most of them aren't and won't be.
Now, after I do get through all that, within 6 years I'll need a Masters or I'll no longer be allowed to teach.
I mean, FUCKING REAL? How the fuck can you justify such an intensive education when I'll never need the overwhelming majority of it to just.. teach.. kids. I'm not talking elementary school. I'm talking high school, math, science, physics.
There's a problem. Because of bad teachers -- and because it's so fucking hard to get rid of bad teachers -- the requirements to teach have been raised and raised until they're now higher than the requirements for a more well-paying job in the private sector. AND NONE OF THAT BULLSHIT MAKES SOMEONE A BETTER TEACHER (and I fully appreciate the humor in my short temper and foul mouth and desire to teach -- trust me, folks, that's how I am normally but when I'm getting gears in heads turning I'm an entirely different, eternally patient, and deeply understanding nice guy).
And, of course, since the bar is set so high to simply teach -- well, now teachers need to make more money, because they have such large monetary requirements to get to the point that they can teach and to continue teaching, and because with their level of education they could easily make more elsewhere.
If I could drop out of college, right-the-hell-now, and begin teaching, but only ever make 30k a year.. I'd do so in a heartbeat. I don't care about money. All I want to do is to have a job I enjoy doing, and the one thing that I'm naturally talented at doing -- I've been teaching and tutoring people since I was a *child*, simply because I love doing it and people love the way I do it. But I can't, because nobody has the fucking backbone to look at some moron who doesn't understand how to explain simple concepts to others and tell them so. Because our society abhors making judgement calls, and so rather than make a decision on an individual who cannot perform their job properly we instead shift responsibility onto rules and regulations that DO NOT address the actual issue anyway -- but hey, it makes us feel better, right?
The hardest part about becoming a teacher is not the part where you teach, but rather all the goddamnedable hoops that you have to jump through to reach that part. In the end, you're left less with competent teachers than you are with talented hoop-jumpers.
That's the problem with increasing incentivization for teachers, too. It makes it a more competitive profession compared to other professions that holders of the degrees that teachers hold have available to them, but the problem is that making teaching more attractive for those at that level of education will only draw in more people who are only tentatively interested in teaching. The real problem is the requirements to teach are simply too great, because nobody wants to have to make a stand and make a call as to whether someone is a good teacher or not -- hell, even if they could, the unions put the kibosh on that sort of thing.
It's no different than suggesting that the quality of service at a restaurant could be improved by mandating 2 year degrees in culinary school for all wait staff, and after a number of years they must complete their bachelor's, and then making their pay close to that of executive chefs. None of that would make for better wait staff. Those with talent and desire would have both crushed by excessive and unnecessary training and monetary obligations, and the rest would be those who once aspired to be executive chefs but washed out at some point. Oh, and you couldn't fire the waiter who drops drinks, nor the one who clearly is disdainful of customers, nor
I sure don't. I don't know that farming in China is worse than living in "corporate cities". It could be worse.
It could be better, but only because of social policies enacted by the Chinese government to ensure that they have a large population of workers desperate enough to take any work they can, a virtual slave class who are not allowed freedom of travel, who very well could have led a more happy and healthy and stable life as simple subsistence farmers. Of course, that wouldn't be as good for The State, so it's discouraged.
Don't ever underestimate the evil of the Chinese government. Their population, to them, is not people but a resource. Look at their treatment of other resources and you will see how they will treat their people-resource. Its only value is to be exploited as harshly as possible for the benefit of the State.
The gulf region sort of plans on having occasional large amounts of water that need to be drained away, from tropical storms and hurricanes.
Not so much New England.
There's your difference.
Yeah, had it hit Florida or Mississippi or whatever -- no big deal.
Did you see the flooding up in Connecticut? Something tells me you haven't. They're not prepared to get that much water dumped on them in such a short period of time.
Hah. The "smell" thing goes on here in the States, too.. but it's starting to get shot down like the bullshit it is.
Was happening here in PA, but recently a group from a new development were told to pound dirt when they tried to shut down a pre-existing pig farm bordering the development. If I recall I think the judge basically told them it's their fault for not doing their due diligence before buying the house.
Also used to be a lot of people complaining about, of all things, nature. They'd buy new houses bordering state game lands, and then complain that they could hear hunters shooting during hunting season, or they'd complain when they saw bears from their kitchen window.
Ugh, and then there's the wankers who moved into houses near the local gun club. To get to those houses, they have to drive past THREE SIGNS for the club -- it's impossible to not know there's a gun club *right there*. So they move in, and complain because oh gosh, people start shooting guns at 9am and ohhh nooo it's looouud. Give me a break. Move into the house you want, don't move into a house and force your neighbors to become the neighbors you want.
Friggin douches.
Fortunately they are getting less and less traction with these antics lately. The US is still crazy and over-litigious, but damn is it better than it was in the 90s.
No, the human body has evolved to eat whatever kind of food it can fit into its mouth.
We're dogs. We're pigs. Your stomach upset is caused not because of genetics, but because your body is accustomed to a high-quality diet. It is no longer able to digest garbage.
That is, unless you think you could find a day-old carcass laying around, cut it up, warm it over a fire and eat the half-cooked results without shitting out your lungs.
Your belief that fast food contains no real food is a bit misguided, anyway. Do you believe EVERYTHING you read? Do you have power crystals laying around? Christ..
Don't be intentionally dense -- no, I can't write on your paper/blog/site/notebook/whatever, not without your permission.
That would be an invasion of your rights. That would be FORCING you to allow me to scribble on your stuff.
You cannot, however, stop me from writing in my own paper/blog/site/notebook/whatever. And I can't stop you from doing the same in your own.
And I can't force you to read what I write, and you can't force me to read what you write.
That's how rights work. If something involves forcing anyone to do anything, it's probably a violation of the target of that force's rights -- unless the force is being used to prevent that person or entity from exerting force over another person or entity in a violation of that third party's rights.
You might be thinking of how protesters are often shut down and their "right to free speech" violated? Here's the deal. Very, very infrequently is that actually what's going on -- typically those "protesters" are, in fact, violating the rights of everyone else because they believe their right to be heard supersedes the right of others to freely travel and engage in commerce.
So, yeah. Giant protest, human chain across a roadway? That's not exercising freedom of speech, that's, well. Hah. That's terrorism. That is -- let's just go whole hog here -- a bunch of entitled trustafarian wankers who think their private agenda is more important than me getting to my job, or me getting to the store, or me getting to a friend's house or even my own house.
That's not freedom of speech. They are infringing the rights of others, and are RIGHTFULLY removed and prevented from their petty little public temper tantrums. They're trying to FORCE others to hear their speech. That's not freedom of speech -- that is tyranny.
I've seen that guy. He hasn't been shut up. Wanna know why? He doesn't force anyone to pay attention to him. He doesn't interfere with anyone's right to travel freely or engage in commerce. He is crazy as hell, but he's got one thing right. He understands freedom of speech. He understands that he can say the craziest shit he wants to, and he's within his rights to do so -- so long as he does not infringe upon anyone else's rights. He does not, and so is not stopped from exercising his right to free speech.
For some reason this is obvious to any rational human being -- and a few irrational ones -- but is very hard to explain to entitled little snots who have been grown with the notion that they are special and have a right to be heard.
There is no right to be heard, only a right to speak.
That's the only way you can have freedom -- anything else involves the imposition of force on unwilling parties.
If I want to call my friend on the west coast -- not a pre-planned call, but just call them -- I WOULD NEED TO KNOW THAT THEY ARE 3 HOURS TIME-SHIFTED FROM ME.
In other words, I'd still need to know what time zone they are in so that I could judge whether or not the hour of my calling would be appropriate or not.
Abolish time zones, and you would still need to know what the time zones are.
I've said in another post somewhere -- the only advantage the abolishing on time zones would create would be for office monkeys who frequently schedule meetings with business associates on the other side of the planet.
And that advantage would be.. practically no advantage, since you can just all agree to use UTC for meeting times and have each person responsible for being aware of what time zone they are currently in and what the difference between their present time zone and UTC is (or they could just, yanno, have a watch set to UTC).
I don't think seriously inconveniencing most of the world just so a few desk jockeys can do even less work is even remotely a good idea.
Don't forget that a lot of the Chinese economy's growth is born on the backs of a virtual slave class, and that it was only possible because of a combination of their grossly undervalued workers (undervalued if you're a Westerner who, you know, actually thinks that the lives of people have innate value beyond an expendable and utterly replaceable cog to be used as hard and fast as possible until it shatters) and their utter disregard for any sort of environmental protection.
China's factories are so awful that even a 19th century Englishman gleefully sending children under machinery for a pittance a day with no regard for their safety would blush and consider it barbaric. It's pretty damn bad.
I can't force you to listen to me, but you can't force me to shut up.
That's sort of how rights work. It's a hands-off approach. The right to be heard is not a right -- it is not freedom. The right to be heard can only be construed as forcing people to listen to things they don't want to, and that's not.. that's just.
Gosh, Communism sure has worked out well everywhere else. You're obviously right. Communist policies such as taking land from farmers and parceling it out to the Common People who didn't know how or have any desire to farm were absolutely sound ideas, that only failed because of EVIL MEAN CAPITALISM!
I'm well aware of the size of Africa... and I think it's significantly less rural than you're giving it credit for. There's an awful lot of people living in sub-Saharan Africa.
regardless.. I've been trying and failing to find a way to illustrate the difference between Europe and America. honestly, until you've seen first-hand what good old fashioned American suburban sprawl looks like, I don't think you'd understand. It's... not really like anything you'd find in Europe.
I'm 20 miles away from the nearest "major" city (~50k people..). My town's 7k. In between, along the highway, it's pretty much 20 miles of low-density suburban towns.. the whole damn way. You'll catch one, then drive a mile or two, and there's the next, and then a mile or two, and then another.
Ever since WW2, that's really been the form of American population migrations. Everyone wants their quarter-acre (or half-acre, or acre) lot of land and a nice little single-family home sitting on it. Which is why everyone needs a car.. which is why LA's traffic is so godawful.. which is why large-scale public transit in America is unpopular (which makes it bad, which makes it more unpopular).
And then each of those little towns, well.. now it's not as bad as it used to be, but it's still pretty bad. Some of them only have one player in town for your phone, one for cable, etc etc. The agreement being that this company lays line but is granted exclusivity in that area. That's *getting* better, but honestly the only reason for that is because technology rocks and the only-player phone company and only-player cable company have become competition for each other for phone, cable and internet.
I did reverse the infrastructure timeframes, though:| ours was 40s/50s, y'alls came later. In 20 years we'll be ahead once we get around to replacing things, that's just the nature of upgrade cycles (except not, because ours is being handled in a super-shitty way -- the telecomms basically convinced everyone that they're not public utilities, and while that might be OK, the damn cables SHOULD BE considered public utilities just the same as our sewage, but I'll stop before I turn this into a completely different rant).
Long story short: You really just need to see America. Not just the big cities, and not just the big skies in the midwest. Honestly, most Americans don't even understand what their own country looks like (ugh, *especially* the urbanites.. for some reason they're all convinced that they're more knowledgeable and intelligent and worldly than anyone not living in a large city, it drives me up the wall). Hell, I and my friends and family are all fairly well-traveled, and there's still quite a few places I've not seen even in the contiguous 48 (namely the, er, majority of flyover country. i've only flown over it. shhhhh)
I did pick up on the B/b difference;) everyone else missed it. The speeds the swedish dude got with his land-line internet are pretty much exactly what I have here in the states, once you convert from bits to bytes -- and for roughly the same cost. I'm paying a bit more.. but then, he said 10-14 M(bit)/s, and I'm getting ~2M(Byte)/s, so I'm willing to throw the small difference in cash into the small difference in speed (yep, if he was right and that was 10-14Mbit, I'm at 16Mbit and have seen up to 32Mbit.. worth an extra 20-30 USD a month, that's debatable, but it's still more for more).
Kinda shocked about the Laplanders though. I knew the Fins were trying to hook everyone up, but couldn't (can't) comprehend how they can reconcile that with a native nomadic population. 'course not all the laplanders still wander all over, but last I'd heard I thought some still did and freely crossed borders?
Oh well. Let's just all agree to sigh and shake our heads at the 4G standard.. that is, the "we want to call it something new but not actually do anything new" standard. I think the States should adopt that more broadly. Convert to metric? SIMPLE! Feet and pounds are now metric! Damn that was easy!
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nedlohs has it right.
Economics is not a real Nobel -- as you point out.
Further, it's as related to reality as the Peace Prize -- that is, it is not.
He doesn't say the Nobel Prize for Peace is not a real Nobel, he just said it's not related to reality. It's not, just look at the past recipients of the Nobel Peace Prize. There's no way a sane person could correlate those winners to the concept of progressing peace.
The comparison was more of a numbers thing -- I do know they're only tangentially related (by large numbers). I've no intentions of going to Burning Man, because I *would* hate it, but that's just me.. I was the dude at Bonnaroo who hung out at his tent reading Kafka instead of going to see the Dead play; I'd probably drive 10,000 people away from Burning Man.
Hell, when I went to Bonnaroo (back when it was still awesome, many years ago; heard its kinda commercial and filled with kids on senior trips these days..), I believe it pulled in twice that number, for 4 days.
And there were no geriatric gay guys sans pants, either.
Also I saw Neil Young and James Brown there. And Garage a Trois, which was actually the best show of the whole thing..
Burning Man, more like Second-Rate Man.
They'll have you actually read a number off the video card you purchased.
It's much more simple than you seem to think it is -- there's little chance someone's going to throw out their brand new video card.
I'm glad you're brave enough to respond to my refutation of my post to -- oh, nevermind, you came back anonymously.
Not that it matters, but I don't own an XBox, or XBox360, and will never load GFWL on my computer, and will never participate as a consumer or producer in XBLA. I don't much care for Microsoft and their shoddy Steam-knockoff products.
None of that changes the fact that PSN was porous as all hell, was hacked, exposed sensitive information of thousands -- millions -- of their users, and was down for weeks. And none of that changes the fact that XBLA is a very closed-down place, and Microsoft's business practices are draconian -- if you're being *kind* to them.
So do you want to hang, or be shot?
Yes, clearly, me comparing a black kettle to a black pot.. CLEARLY that makes me a M$ FANBOY! Fuck you're clever, guy!
I'm not Anon, bro. There's my name. It's.. it's right there.
You also need to get the stick outta your butt.
There's absolutely no way my post could have been interpreted as anything but a joke. It's referencing the PSN incident in a way that's so inaccurate that anyone who heard anything about it would understand both that I was referencing that incident and that I was exaggerating and fabricating the story with the intent of eliciting a laugh from the allegedly tech-savvy readership here at Slashdot.
Of course I'm not going to admit to the facts, MY POST WAS NOT INTENDED TO BE FACTUAL. I have no reason to rescind what I said, as what I said WAS NOT INTENDED TO BE FACTUAL.
Good god, do you call up Leno every time he takes an actual occurrence and fabricates details to make it funny? Are you an alien who has never come into contact with the concept of human comedy before?
Oh HI Mr. Pedant!
You know very fucking well what I meant. Forgive me for expressing it in a brief and humorous sentence referencing an incident the details of which we all are very fucking aware of, rather than providing a detailed blow-by-blow recount of the entire PSN incident complete with sourced quotes and references.
Go blow it out your uptight corporate shill of an asshole.
And that's something you CAN take literally.
On the other hand, PSN hands your CC data over to russian mafioso.
So... do you want to be hanged, or shot?
Sweet, it's nice to know that my memory isn't completely shit-ass these days :) For just being some random schmuck I'd say I nailed the important parts pretty accurately!
even if the end of your post makes no sense.
do you know harvey birdman?! >:D
this is old -- but if I recall correctly, I think Spamhaus got themselves into the shit PRECISELY BY responding to the summons. Granted, their response was "No.. we're not responding", but the fact that they responded was taken as acknowledgement of the court's jurisdiction. And then, when they never showed up, the court had no option but to find in favor of the plaintiff since the defendant had acknowledged the court's jurisdiction but failed to appear to defend themselves.
Maybe i have it confused with a different case. it's possible.
Check out Wikipedia's info on the Coleco Gemini.
It's a straight-up off-brand version of the Atari. same games play on it.
It was found legal because it was built using off the shelf equipment.
If THAT is legal, an "atari" emulator has to be legal.
Hell, call it a Coleco Gemini emulator.
I actually had no idea what problem you were talking about until the discussion below you developed.
I just.. wow, man, wow. People actually DO that?
There wouldn't even be an issue if instead of jumping straight to fractions on both sides of the equation, if they simply started at a more simple step.
A/B = C
There you go.. explain how and why that is done and there's no need for a trick when the right side reads C/D.
Absolutely ridiculous.
I was fortunate, I suppose, to have some pretty talented teachers.
Some.. not all.
So far as the waitress/teacher analogy.. refer back to the "not all" statement. When I took Trig, my teacher had years previously given up on teaching. It took me a long time to catch up to where I should have been, and I still actually struggle at times to keep things straight (nothing a short 5-second glance askew and bit of reasoning can't sort out, but not something I feel others need to do).
There are teachers now who are fucking up kids by teaching them poorly, and by teaching them poor information. Not all of them are bad because they're just waiting until retirement, either -- some just can't connect with other people in a way that allows them to explain new concepts in an easily digestible manner. Some aren't able to intuit when their lessons have whizzed over heads. The teachers who can't do that, don't pick it up later on.
That's unfair. Maybe some do. Certainly some do not. Teachers and professors alike, I've found some that simply don't understand those concepts, who are unable to modify their method of explaining a concept to students if the students don't immediately grok it. They are fucking kids up, and all their instruction on how to teach did no good.
If I had my druthers, that sort of teacher would be fired. That doesn't happen, though. The excessive schooling needed for teachers is a way of compensating, in my opinion, for the difficulty of getting rid of teachers who aren't very good at it.
I did have a few not very good teachers, and at least two that were awful. I rarely if ever remember them. It's the really good ones I remember. I don't think a single bad teacher will put a kid off learning -- that strikes me as something that would cross from being bad at their job to being criminal -- so long as that kid manages to find some good teachers, too.
With the usual caveats about their parents and upbringing, of course.. but that's.. that's a whole different big old mess.
Wah wah wah.
I'm not even a fresh out of school teacher, bro. I'm still IN school.
And I HAVE taught, albeit on a smaller scale. Both independently -- teaching concepts and techniques to both family and friends when the actual teachers failed to adapt their method of explaining those things to the particular way in which the individual was misunderstanding them -- and professionally -- teaching methods of completing tasks on a job efficiently and explaining the reasons for doing things in one particular manner or another and providing examples of how else the tasks I was training them on may be accomplished and the advantages and disadvantages of the method I recommend as well as the methods others have used.
I love your reading comprehension, by the way. The way you presume that I think I deserve more pay and less hours, despite me clearly stating I'd be more than willing to work for a pittance, and despite all indications that this is a task for which I have eternal patience and from which I draw great enjoyment simply to be doing regardless of the reward.
I never complained about the salaries being too low -- in fact, I complained that they were too high. I never complained about how hard it is to attain tenure -- in fact, I complained that tenure is a large reason there is a glut of bad teachers.
Of course, tenure only exists because the general public is far too critical of teachers. I provided some examples of perfectly acceptable behavior which takes place entirely outside and apart from school that can cause serious problems for teachers. Did you read that? No.. of course you didn't. But, just in case you're reading this, I'll explain.
It's easier to fire a teacher for an invalid reason than it is to fire them for being a bad teacher. Get enough parents complaining that they saw a teacher sitting at a bar with a beer in their hand over the summer, or that they saw a teacher at a political rally for an unpopular view -- which could be anything, pro-choice or life, defense of marriage or LGBT rights -- and a teacher will catch shit, because the administration is catching shit. If the teacher is simply not very good at their job, well now THEN the administration will go to bat for them.
But who cares, you're not reading this, either.
You read two words I typed and assumed a whole fucking load of things I would be saying, not a single one of which I ACTUALLY said and quite a few of which I hold the opposing view.
Fucking misguided unintelligent ape. Go find someone else to vent your frustrations about your sister-in-law. I am not her, and she is not me. Were you not such an idiot I'd gladly hand you my phone and tell you to call ANY NUMBER ON THERE and ask that person to describe to you the extent of my ability to teach and tutor them on things they were unable to understand. You see, THAT IS WHO I AM. I'm even doing it now, despite my utter lack of a single fucking shit about your continued existence -- yes, you're so dense I doubt a single tear would be shed were you to pass from this earth before I click "Submit", yet even now I am compelled to explain to you the manner in which you are wrong and further to expound upon the correct answer in a way that maybe you will understand. And were this to fail, I'd do it again. And again. My patience for this is eternal, and my reward absolutely personal.
Oh, a parting word. That BIG SCARY REAL WORLD you seem to believe I've never been a part of? I'm 29, bro. I've lived out in the real world and found it unrewarding, outside of the few chances I had in my previous job to teach newer employees. Every single one of them thanked me, personally, and privately spoke to my boss about how good I was at explaining things to them, how patient I was, and how much they actually enjoyed coming in to work under me. The actual jobs were not at all enjoyable -- but I put them at ease, I was patient with them, and I was quite careful to push them to perform exactly as much as I was confident they could do at the
I'm quite talented at teaching new concepts to people and to kids. I've quite a long time left before I'll be legally allowed to teach. While I appreciate the higher-level classes in my chosen subject that I'm forced to take, I will never need those to teach high school, and while I appreciate that some classes on child psych and teaching methods will be useful, most of them aren't and won't be.
Now, after I do get through all that, within 6 years I'll need a Masters or I'll no longer be allowed to teach.
I mean, FUCKING REAL? How the fuck can you justify such an intensive education when I'll never need the overwhelming majority of it to just.. teach.. kids. I'm not talking elementary school. I'm talking high school, math, science, physics.
There's a problem. Because of bad teachers -- and because it's so fucking hard to get rid of bad teachers -- the requirements to teach have been raised and raised until they're now higher than the requirements for a more well-paying job in the private sector. AND NONE OF THAT BULLSHIT MAKES SOMEONE A BETTER TEACHER (and I fully appreciate the humor in my short temper and foul mouth and desire to teach -- trust me, folks, that's how I am normally but when I'm getting gears in heads turning I'm an entirely different, eternally patient, and deeply understanding nice guy).
And, of course, since the bar is set so high to simply teach -- well, now teachers need to make more money, because they have such large monetary requirements to get to the point that they can teach and to continue teaching, and because with their level of education they could easily make more elsewhere.
If I could drop out of college, right-the-hell-now, and begin teaching, but only ever make 30k a year.. I'd do so in a heartbeat. I don't care about money. All I want to do is to have a job I enjoy doing, and the one thing that I'm naturally talented at doing -- I've been teaching and tutoring people since I was a *child*, simply because I love doing it and people love the way I do it. But I can't, because nobody has the fucking backbone to look at some moron who doesn't understand how to explain simple concepts to others and tell them so. Because our society abhors making judgement calls, and so rather than make a decision on an individual who cannot perform their job properly we instead shift responsibility onto rules and regulations that DO NOT address the actual issue anyway -- but hey, it makes us feel better, right?
The hardest part about becoming a teacher is not the part where you teach, but rather all the goddamnedable hoops that you have to jump through to reach that part.
In the end, you're left less with competent teachers than you are with talented hoop-jumpers.
That's the problem with increasing incentivization for teachers, too. It makes it a more competitive profession compared to other professions that holders of the degrees that teachers hold have available to them, but the problem is that making teaching more attractive for those at that level of education will only draw in more people who are only tentatively interested in teaching. The real problem is the requirements to teach are simply too great, because nobody wants to have to make a stand and make a call as to whether someone is a good teacher or not -- hell, even if they could, the unions put the kibosh on that sort of thing.
It's no different than suggesting that the quality of service at a restaurant could be improved by mandating 2 year degrees in culinary school for all wait staff, and after a number of years they must complete their bachelor's, and then making their pay close to that of executive chefs. None of that would make for better wait staff. Those with talent and desire would have both crushed by excessive and unnecessary training and monetary obligations, and the rest would be those who once aspired to be executive chefs but washed out at some point. Oh, and you couldn't fire the waiter who drops drinks, nor the one who clearly is disdainful of customers, nor
Is it? Is it really? Do you know this?
I sure don't. I don't know that farming in China is worse than living in "corporate cities". It could be worse.
It could be better, but only because of social policies enacted by the Chinese government to ensure that they have a large population of workers desperate enough to take any work they can, a virtual slave class who are not allowed freedom of travel, who very well could have led a more happy and healthy and stable life as simple subsistence farmers. Of course, that wouldn't be as good for The State, so it's discouraged.
Don't ever underestimate the evil of the Chinese government. Their population, to them, is not people but a resource. Look at their treatment of other resources and you will see how they will treat their people-resource. Its only value is to be exploited as harshly as possible for the benefit of the State.
The gulf region sort of plans on having occasional large amounts of water that need to be drained away, from tropical storms and hurricanes.
Not so much New England.
There's your difference.
Yeah, had it hit Florida or Mississippi or whatever -- no big deal.
Did you see the flooding up in Connecticut? Something tells me you haven't. They're not prepared to get that much water dumped on them in such a short period of time.
Hah. The "smell" thing goes on here in the States, too.. but it's starting to get shot down like the bullshit it is.
Was happening here in PA, but recently a group from a new development were told to pound dirt when they tried to shut down a pre-existing pig farm bordering the development. If I recall I think the judge basically told them it's their fault for not doing their due diligence before buying the house.
Also used to be a lot of people complaining about, of all things, nature. They'd buy new houses bordering state game lands, and then complain that they could hear hunters shooting during hunting season, or they'd complain when they saw bears from their kitchen window.
Ugh, and then there's the wankers who moved into houses near the local gun club. To get to those houses, they have to drive past THREE SIGNS for the club -- it's impossible to not know there's a gun club *right there*. So they move in, and complain because oh gosh, people start shooting guns at 9am and ohhh nooo it's looouud. Give me a break. Move into the house you want, don't move into a house and force your neighbors to become the neighbors you want.
Friggin douches.
Fortunately they are getting less and less traction with these antics lately. The US is still crazy and over-litigious, but damn is it better than it was in the 90s.
No, the human body has evolved to eat whatever kind of food it can fit into its mouth.
We're dogs. We're pigs. Your stomach upset is caused not because of genetics, but because your body is accustomed to a high-quality diet. It is no longer able to digest garbage.
That is, unless you think you could find a day-old carcass laying around, cut it up, warm it over a fire and eat the half-cooked results without shitting out your lungs.
Your belief that fast food contains no real food is a bit misguided, anyway. Do you believe EVERYTHING you read? Do you have power crystals laying around? Christ..
Don't be intentionally dense -- no, I can't write on your paper/blog/site/notebook/whatever, not without your permission.
That would be an invasion of your rights. That would be FORCING you to allow me to scribble on your stuff.
You cannot, however, stop me from writing in my own paper/blog/site/notebook/whatever. And I can't stop you from doing the same in your own.
And I can't force you to read what I write, and you can't force me to read what you write.
That's how rights work. If something involves forcing anyone to do anything, it's probably a violation of the target of that force's rights -- unless the force is being used to prevent that person or entity from exerting force over another person or entity in a violation of that third party's rights.
You might be thinking of how protesters are often shut down and their "right to free speech" violated? Here's the deal. Very, very infrequently is that actually what's going on -- typically those "protesters" are, in fact, violating the rights of everyone else because they believe their right to be heard supersedes the right of others to freely travel and engage in commerce.
So, yeah. Giant protest, human chain across a roadway? That's not exercising freedom of speech, that's, well. Hah. That's terrorism. That is -- let's just go whole hog here -- a bunch of entitled trustafarian wankers who think their private agenda is more important than me getting to my job, or me getting to the store, or me getting to a friend's house or even my own house.
That's not freedom of speech. They are infringing the rights of others, and are RIGHTFULLY removed and prevented from their petty little public temper tantrums. They're trying to FORCE others to hear their speech. That's not freedom of speech -- that is tyranny.
Hell, look at this.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Juan_(street_protester)
I've seen that guy. He hasn't been shut up. Wanna know why? He doesn't force anyone to pay attention to him. He doesn't interfere with anyone's right to travel freely or engage in commerce. He is crazy as hell, but he's got one thing right. He understands freedom of speech. He understands that he can say the craziest shit he wants to, and he's within his rights to do so -- so long as he does not infringe upon anyone else's rights. He does not, and so is not stopped from exercising his right to free speech.
For some reason this is obvious to any rational human being -- and a few irrational ones -- but is very hard to explain to entitled little snots who have been grown with the notion that they are special and have a right to be heard.
There is no right to be heard, only a right to speak.
That's the only way you can have freedom -- anything else involves the imposition of force on unwilling parties.
.. no, you don't get it.
If I want to call my friend on the west coast -- not a pre-planned call, but just call them -- I WOULD NEED TO KNOW THAT THEY ARE 3 HOURS TIME-SHIFTED FROM ME.
In other words, I'd still need to know what time zone they are in so that I could judge whether or not the hour of my calling would be appropriate or not.
Abolish time zones, and you would still need to know what the time zones are.
I've said in another post somewhere -- the only advantage the abolishing on time zones would create would be for office monkeys who frequently schedule meetings with business associates on the other side of the planet.
And that advantage would be.. practically no advantage, since you can just all agree to use UTC for meeting times and have each person responsible for being aware of what time zone they are currently in and what the difference between their present time zone and UTC is (or they could just, yanno, have a watch set to UTC).
I don't think seriously inconveniencing most of the world just so a few desk jockeys can do even less work is even remotely a good idea.
Don't forget that a lot of the Chinese economy's growth is born on the backs of a virtual slave class, and that it was only possible because of a combination of their grossly undervalued workers (undervalued if you're a Westerner who, you know, actually thinks that the lives of people have innate value beyond an expendable and utterly replaceable cog to be used as hard and fast as possible until it shatters) and their utter disregard for any sort of environmental protection.
China's factories are so awful that even a 19th century Englishman gleefully sending children under machinery for a pittance a day with no regard for their safety would blush and consider it barbaric. It's pretty damn bad.
That's dumb.
I can't force you to listen to me, but you can't force me to shut up.
That's sort of how rights work. It's a hands-off approach. The right to be heard is not a right -- it is not freedom. The right to be heard can only be construed as forcing people to listen to things they don't want to, and that's not.. that's just.
You're dumb.
Gosh, Communism sure has worked out well everywhere else. You're obviously right. Communist policies such as taking land from farmers and parceling it out to the Common People who didn't know how or have any desire to farm were absolutely sound ideas, that only failed because of EVIL MEAN CAPITALISM!
I'm well aware of the size of Africa... and I think it's significantly less rural than you're giving it credit for. There's an awful lot of people living in sub-Saharan Africa.
regardless.. I've been trying and failing to find a way to illustrate the difference between Europe and America. honestly, until you've seen first-hand what good old fashioned American suburban sprawl looks like, I don't think you'd understand. It's... not really like anything you'd find in Europe.
I'm 20 miles away from the nearest "major" city (~50k people..). My town's 7k. In between, along the highway, it's pretty much 20 miles of low-density suburban towns.. the whole damn way. You'll catch one, then drive a mile or two, and there's the next, and then a mile or two, and then another.
Ever since WW2, that's really been the form of American population migrations. Everyone wants their quarter-acre (or half-acre, or acre) lot of land and a nice little single-family home sitting on it. Which is why everyone needs a car.. which is why LA's traffic is so godawful.. which is why large-scale public transit in America is unpopular (which makes it bad, which makes it more unpopular).
And then each of those little towns, well.. now it's not as bad as it used to be, but it's still pretty bad. Some of them only have one player in town for your phone, one for cable, etc etc. The agreement being that this company lays line but is granted exclusivity in that area. That's *getting* better, but honestly the only reason for that is because technology rocks and the only-player phone company and only-player cable company have become competition for each other for phone, cable and internet.
I did reverse the infrastructure timeframes, though :| ours was 40s/50s, y'alls came later. In 20 years we'll be ahead once we get around to replacing things, that's just the nature of upgrade cycles (except not, because ours is being handled in a super-shitty way -- the telecomms basically convinced everyone that they're not public utilities, and while that might be OK, the damn cables SHOULD BE considered public utilities just the same as our sewage, but I'll stop before I turn this into a completely different rant).
Long story short: You really just need to see America. Not just the big cities, and not just the big skies in the midwest. Honestly, most Americans don't even understand what their own country looks like (ugh, *especially* the urbanites.. for some reason they're all convinced that they're more knowledgeable and intelligent and worldly than anyone not living in a large city, it drives me up the wall).
Hell, I and my friends and family are all fairly well-traveled, and there's still quite a few places I've not seen even in the contiguous 48 (namely the, er, majority of flyover country. i've only flown over it. shhhhh)
I did pick up on the B/b difference ;) everyone else missed it. The speeds the swedish dude got with his land-line internet are pretty much exactly what I have here in the states, once you convert from bits to bytes -- and for roughly the same cost. I'm paying a bit more.. but then, he said 10-14 M(bit)/s, and I'm getting ~2M(Byte)/s, so I'm willing to throw the small difference in cash into the small difference in speed (yep, if he was right and that was 10-14Mbit, I'm at 16Mbit and have seen up to 32Mbit.. worth an extra 20-30 USD a month, that's debatable, but it's still more for more).
Kinda shocked about the Laplanders though. I knew the Fins were trying to hook everyone up, but couldn't (can't) comprehend how they can reconcile that with a native nomadic population. 'course not all the laplanders still wander all over, but last I'd heard I thought some still did and freely crossed borders?
Oh well. Let's just all agree to sigh and shake our heads at the 4G standard.. that is, the "we want to call it something new but not actually do anything new" standard. I think the States should adopt that more broadly. Convert to metric? SIMPLE! Feet and pounds are now metric! Damn that was easy!