More to the point, I have problems with web applications that do have a "log out" button. Specifically, I hit "log out" and then re-enter the address that I was logged into, and I'm still logged in. I've had this problem with repeatedly with Microsoft Exchange 2000's OWA. I'm not expert enough to know what the problem is, but it seems like (depending on your browser), logging out of web applications isn't as simple and secure as we'd all hope.
Generally, if you're worried about security of your web apps on a certain machine, I'd recommend quitting whatever browser you're in, starting it again, and then clearing all the caches.
I don't know why you think Apple's security is so awful. The base of the OS has strong roots (based on NetBSD/FreeBSD, both very secure), and they haven't had much of a history of viruses, malware, or other huge security breaches. And it's not that people aren't trying. Loads of people hate Apple for various reasons and would love to see a virus or hack destroy Apple's claims to creating "secure" products. It's just that no one has succeeded yet in making a big splash.
I have.Mac, and I agree that it could use some work. The main reason I keep it is the syncing. First, it syncs certain portions of data (calendar, address book, browser bookmarks, etc.) and application preferences (location of the dock, changes in organization of toolbars, etc.). It sounds really minor, but it means that I get a certain level of uniformity of experience across the computers I use. I have three computers (home, work, laptop), and If I change settings on one of my computers and then go to use another computer, the changes are present on the other computer as soon as it syncs.
In addition to that, the online storage (iDisk) is set up so you can automatically cache the online files locally, and it'll sync automatically. So again, this allows me to share files across my computers. Additionally, if there is any data that I want synced across computers that isn't handled by the normal sync, I use Unison to sync it to my cached copy of my iDisk, then the OS automatically syncs it to the remote version. Eventually it makes it to all my computers.
It really works pretty well, and I've been particularly happy with the setup since Leopard, which additionally gives me remote access to my various computers, and also gives me a Time Machine backup on one of them for the odd occurrences where syncing accidentally causes me to lose a file I didn't intend to. I find the syncing and iDisk to be well-integrated into the OS, and my main request of Apple would be to open it all up so that you could use those services with your own servers. I'd feel more comfortable using an iDisk for my work files if the iDisk were hosted by my own company.
You're just pissed that few people care which browser they use.
No, I'm pissed that because of Microsoft's anti-competitive practices, web developers have to spend 5x more time and effort than they should because they can't code to the W3C standards for HTML and CSS. I'm pissed that because of this, many lazy web developers have chosen to only support the one major browser that doesn't conform to standards, which means I can't necessarily use the browser I want.
I'm pissed because Microsoft is purposefully trying to make sure I can't use the browser I want to use. For years, using a browser that conformed to standards meant that pages rendered incorrectly or didn't function at all. This was largely due to Microsoft, and it was on purpose. Sometimes this was the case on major sites, which meant that people could not use any browser other than IE and expect to be able to use the internet. Even still, Microsoft won't build its own sites according to standards. If you visit their knowledge base in any browser other than IE, it will cut off articles prematurely. If you visit an OWA site in anything other than IE, you don't get the real version of their web app. Microsoft was even caught putting extra code into MSN.com just so that it wouldn't render in Opera.
Face it, Microsoft has been systematic about subverting web standards in the hopes of forcing people to use their OS, their browser, and their websites. They do it in order to restrict the freedom of the market to choose anything other than their products. Because they have a monopoly and are able to overpower market forces, government intervention is probably required.
So you do realize you're talking about the situation 10 years ago, right?
Anyway, the end result of Opera's lawsuit, if successful, is not to force the market to use Opera. It's to give the market more freedom to choose Opera or Firefox, or other browsers.
Sure, and the beige box builders get a browser how then?
They should, at the very least, make IE an optional installation and provide the ability to uninstall it after it has been installed. Since they're considered a monopoly, I don't think it would be too off-base to require them to provide at least two alternative browsers with the Windows install disk.
Well yes, I'd be surprised if we didn't all have ubiquitous wireless broadband internet access (including e-mail) within the next twenty years. I get e-mail on my phone now, but I don't really use it for the purpose of making myself available to work for non-work hours.
What I find funny about the Blackberry thing is that, in a couple places that I've worked, they were being used pretty much exclusively for middle-management. The lowly helpdesk techs supposedly weren't important enough to get one, in spite of the fact that it would be really useful for them to receive e-mail when they were away from their desks "in the field". Then a bunch of managers who were at their desks all day anyway had them. But then, oddly, the executive team didn't have Blackberries.
I once asked one of the VPs about it, and he basically said, "We let the managers get them because it makes them feel important and they aren't that expensive. But I sure as hell don't want to be on-call 24 hours a day." I felt like I learned something right there. The trappings of power are usually most appreciated by those who don't really have any. Those guys who spend a lot of time trying to show you who's boss are specifically those who aren't "the boss". The people who are really in charge don't necessarily feel the need to prove it to you.
But what I'm saying is, they wouldn't be intense enough to get anyone's attention unless they were already specifically monitoring Earth, and monitoring it closely. And even then, they'd have to be looking at just the right time to catch the explosion.
I mean, really, how can we even tell the explosion happened here on Earth. If our equipment is sensitive enough, we can pick up seismic activity. If we go sifting through the rubble we can find radiation. But AFAIK, detonating a nuclear bomb won't even give you a flash of detectable radiation on the other side of our planet. If you do get radiation very far away, I suspect it would be from the fallout, and not from the explosion itself. And that's just on our planet, which is incredibly small in comparison to the known universe.
I wouldn't want to downplay the danger of nuclear fallout, but the amount of radiation released in a nuclear bomb's explosion isn't that enormous. It's enough to be deadly to people, and it's enough to poison our environment. However, it's not enough to make the heavens sit up and take notice in a universe filled with huge flaming balls of fusion reactions.
A user accustomed to Unix will find OSX fundamentally different.
A user accustomed to what form of Unix? I'm just thinking that a user accustomed to Solaris might find NetBSD to be different. A user accustomed to FreeBSD might feel out of place when using AIX.
Maybe you'd have to explain what it is that all these systems have in common that forms "the spirit of Unix", and which of those things OSX doesn't have. Seriously, I'm not being smart or sarcastic here. I've used FreeBSD, OSX, and Unix, but find Solaris a little confusing, so I wouldn't consider myself a Unix expert.
It doesn't seem to me, though, that additional graphical systems and APIs make it "un-Unix-y", or else the development of X11 itself would have been a violation of "the spirit of Unix". (it wasn't present in the original version of Unix, and AFAIK it isn't required to be Unix certified) I don't know. Maybe I don't understand what you mean.
Do fission explosions give off any kind of radiation that doesn't happen in nature? If so, what?
It's been a long time since I studied anything relating to nuclear bombs, but besides being big explosions, what do they really give off? An EM pulse? Are there not occasional EM pulses in space, naturally? And how hard would it be to detect that pulse from outside our solar system? Nuclear reactions give off neutron radiation, I guess, but neutron radiation isn't that weird, and how far is that radiation really going to get? You get some other radioactive debris scattered about, but that's not going to count for much in terms of getting detected by an ET. What else is there? I don't remember. Gamma rays? Whatever it is, it's not on the level that it will stand out too terribly in a universe that has things like pulsars and supernovas.
I know nuclear bombs have a lot of notoriety, but they're still mostly just bombs. They aren't magic. It's not like they give off radiation and chemicals that don't otherwise exist. Or someone correct me if I'm wrong... All of my argument is based on what I can remember of physics and chemistry from school.
Still, if it's possible, even with advanced technology, to view things outside of our light-cone, it would have huge consequences. We continue to look for ways around this, but we have no real reason to believe that it's possible to get around it.
That's pretty silly. First, on a cosmic scale, nuclear bombs are *tiny*. I don't see why they would be noticeable. At this point, we can't even figure out how to detect a planet as small as Earth orbiting even the closest star, and nuclear explosions are tiny compared to the size of the Earth.
Second, even if you detected them, it doesn't seem like there'd be anything particular to flag them as a sign of intelligent life. They aren't a continuing pattern or signal-- they're just explosions. Explosions happen throughout the universe all the time, so a handful of explosions set off randomly over the past 50 years wouldn't be worth investigating even if someone had equipment sensitive enough to detect them.
Finally, the universe is a very large place, and I don't see any reason to believe that, even if there were aliens advanced enough to detect something so small and curious enough to spend their time looking for nuclear explosions, that they would be within a few light-years already. I know a light-year is a very long distance, but not compared to how big space is. So if the aliens were only a hundred light-years away, they still wouldn't be seeing a signal of broadcasts or nuclear explosions for a while. And that's not even an issue of having technology advanced enough to see that far-- if Einstein is correct, then there's simply no possibility of having sensors that can see beyond their light cone.
I've never heard of them either, and I used to play a lot of games (not so much in the past 2 years). I looked them up on Wikipedia and found a name that I did recognize: God Games. Now, I still couldn't remember a single game published under that name, but it at least rung a bell.
So I looks at their list of "notable games", but only Max Payne and Serious Sam seemed particularly notable to me.
The question is whether that apparent slowing is something you experience at the time and can take advantage of (i.e. if time slows to one-third speed, can you read numbers or dodge bullets three times as quickly?) or if it's an illusion your memory retroactively imposes.
Still, I think those are multiple different questions:
Is the apparent slowing something actually allowing you to do *something* better in that short period of time?
Does the apparent slowing allow you read numbers more quickly?
Does the apparent slowing allow you to dodge bullets?
Is the apparent slowing only an illusion?
It seems that the people performing the study want to claim they've answered all of these questions, but from my brief reading, it seems to me that they've only even tried to answer the second question. (I'm pretty sure we can answer "no" to the third question, though, even without this study.)
I also am unclear as to what they think they're testing. They're faced with the question, "Does time really seem to slow down?" and in response they test, "Are people able to see and process things faster?"
It's not clear to me what that the test answers the question. Does time *actually* slow down, and in a Neo-like state we can stop to look around while bullets are flying at us? Of course not. But do things *seem* to move more slowly? It seems so.
What's really scary is that (from what I understand) Brave New World was somewhat ridiculed upon its release for being unrealistic. People thought Huxley was crazy for thinking that society could move in the direction he was predicting. Now, look around at the world today. Huxley's vision doesn't seem all that "out there".
Also worth noting, I believe that in some states, a masters degree is required for teaching high school. Undergrad degrees will only allow you to teach elementary or middle school. Admittedly, I'm not sure about that.
That seems logical to me as everything you teach in high school (even advanced courses) is well below what is taught at a university, so having even more education wouldn't necessarily help.
I don't think that this is necessarily a good argument. For example, pick a random college graduate. Now ask yourself, is that person qualified to teach AP calculus? Probably not. Now the truth is that most subjects (literature, history, philosophy, psychology, etc.) are just as complex as calculus, but they're just easier to bullshit. I don't think most college graduates are qualified to teach them to high school kids.
For one thing, in order to teach, it's not enough to have a vague recollection of the subject matter. First, you should know the subject matter backwards and forwards, sufficiently that you could answer relatively obscure questions should they come up. Second, you need to know something about teaching, which is itself a skill.
And that's not even taking into account that our university system is also embarrassing, and I wouldn't trust most college graduates these days to screw in a lightbulb.
What I think would work to improve teaching quality would be a general increase in pay
Well that was my point-- not necessarily that current teachers are underpaid for their current skill set, but that if you want better teachers you'll probably have to pay better. I've been told for most of my life that I'd be a good teacher, but I'd like to be able to afford to buy my own house, live in a decent area, and generally live comfortably. In the current economic landscape, that's not possible on a teacher's salary.
Incentives are theoretically good, but you have to be very good about how it's practiced. For example, if you pay teachers more for their students getting better grades, then you'll probably get a lot of grade inflation, and kids being passed along that shouldn't be. If you make it based on standardized test scores, then teachers will simply teach to that test (as you mentioned).
I don't really know how to fix the problems with education, but I think these three things would certainly help: attract better teachers, decrease the average class size, and get parents more involved. The first two of those things inherently mean spending more money on teachers' salaries (pay them better, hire more of them).
High school teachers make, on average, $47,602... The median for people with only a bachelor's degree is $43,143.
Ok. So that's the average (probably mean?) salary for teachers, and the median salary for people with bachelor's degrees. What's the mean yearly income for people with bachelors degrees? I don't really know, but I wouldn't be surprised if it were higher.
But let's not quibble over that, because I have no numbers of my own to argue with, and anyway you could argue that the median is a better indicator of what's a good "average" salary. Still, I would say that high school teachers should probably have a master's degree. If indeed "most" high school teachers only have a master's degree, that would be one indicator that highly educated people are not being drawn toward teaching high school. So what's the average income of people with master's degrees?
Ahhh, but therein lies the problem, lack of proper education, and yet we keep paying teachers more...
Wait... are you actually suggesting that teachers are over-paid? In most places that I've been or even heard about, teachers barely make a livable wage. If anything, it's a problem that it's hard to attract and keep good teachers because they're paid poorly and mistreated by principals (and other school bureaucrats) and parents (who refuse to believe that their little darling has ever been anything but perfect). And part of the reason kids never get a chance to learn anything but "obedience" is because class sizes are way too big (sometimes as much as 35 kids to a teacher). The teacher doesn't have time to do anything except try to keep the classroom under control.
If we paid teachers decently, if parents got involved in their kids educations, and if we had 15-20 kids per class, you'd see a huge difference in our education system from that alone.
perhaps we should have the ability to judge for ourselves what we NEED and what we WANT and how best to achieve it
In case you don't understand, the problem some people have with "commercialism" (consumerism) is the fact that it's inherently filled with grand efforts to prevent people from using their own judgment. We're constantly being inundated with attempts to brainwash us. I know, it sounds like a conspiracy theory, but read up sometime on advertising/marketing/PR theory, and you'll see that it's pretty scary stuff. They all aim at making false unconscious connections between positive feelings and the product/person/company that they're trying to sell. Advertisers have even spent a lot of time studying cults and fascist regimes in order to mimic their methods.
Really, it's even public knowledge, if you care to study it. So in order to educate people properly and allow them to exercise good judgment, we may have to take some steps to reduce the influence of these brainwashing techniques.
I tell you, I *might* be persuaded to pay that price if it was some sort of continuous license w/unlimited downloads. For example, if I could take a DVD from my current collection, get it so if I lose the file I can always re-download from Apple, and if they release an HD version I get it for free, then that might be worth $4. Otherwise, screw you, I'll rip the DVD myself.
Yeah, the question seems weird to me. As far as Photoshop goes, it hasn't changed that much. I learned on Photoshop 4, and though there are a bunch of refinements in later versions, a lot of it is still the same in CS3.
On the other programs, though, it's a different story. Flash has changed quite a lot in the past few years, as it's moved from a simpler animation program to more of an application framework. You can teach on old versions of Flash, but it really makes sense to get an up-to-date version. (at least Flash 7?)
Dreamweaver, on the other hand... Well, first of all, how people make web pages has changed over the past few years. A lot of tags that were commonly used in 2000 are now depreciated. Maybe they were depreciated then, too (I don't know), but people still used them. Conventions have changed a bit. So an old web editor may teach bad habits.
But I almost want to say that no one should be trained to use Dreamweaver. WYSIWYG web editors are for people who need to throw together a web page but don't want to know how to make web pages. If you know how to use a WYSIWYG web editor, you can almost train people by teaching them how to use a word processor, but it won't really be teaching them how to make decent web pages. If you're going to teach people to make web pages, you should be teaching them how to hand code basic HTML and CSS, or else what you're teaching is pretty useless IMO.
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More to the point, I have problems with web applications that do have a "log out" button. Specifically, I hit "log out" and then re-enter the address that I was logged into, and I'm still logged in. I've had this problem with repeatedly with Microsoft Exchange 2000's OWA. I'm not expert enough to know what the problem is, but it seems like (depending on your browser), logging out of web applications isn't as simple and secure as we'd all hope.
Generally, if you're worried about security of your web apps on a certain machine, I'd recommend quitting whatever browser you're in, starting it again, and then clearing all the caches.
I don't know why you think Apple's security is so awful. The base of the OS has strong roots (based on NetBSD/FreeBSD, both very secure), and they haven't had much of a history of viruses, malware, or other huge security breaches. And it's not that people aren't trying. Loads of people hate Apple for various reasons and would love to see a virus or hack destroy Apple's claims to creating "secure" products. It's just that no one has succeeded yet in making a big splash.
I have .Mac, and I agree that it could use some work. The main reason I keep it is the syncing. First, it syncs certain portions of data (calendar, address book, browser bookmarks, etc.) and application preferences (location of the dock, changes in organization of toolbars, etc.). It sounds really minor, but it means that I get a certain level of uniformity of experience across the computers I use. I have three computers (home, work, laptop), and If I change settings on one of my computers and then go to use another computer, the changes are present on the other computer as soon as it syncs.
In addition to that, the online storage (iDisk) is set up so you can automatically cache the online files locally, and it'll sync automatically. So again, this allows me to share files across my computers. Additionally, if there is any data that I want synced across computers that isn't handled by the normal sync, I use Unison to sync it to my cached copy of my iDisk, then the OS automatically syncs it to the remote version. Eventually it makes it to all my computers.
It really works pretty well, and I've been particularly happy with the setup since Leopard, which additionally gives me remote access to my various computers, and also gives me a Time Machine backup on one of them for the odd occurrences where syncing accidentally causes me to lose a file I didn't intend to. I find the syncing and iDisk to be well-integrated into the OS, and my main request of Apple would be to open it all up so that you could use those services with your own servers. I'd feel more comfortable using an iDisk for my work files if the iDisk were hosted by my own company.
You're just pissed that few people care which browser they use.
No, I'm pissed that because of Microsoft's anti-competitive practices, web developers have to spend 5x more time and effort than they should because they can't code to the W3C standards for HTML and CSS. I'm pissed that because of this, many lazy web developers have chosen to only support the one major browser that doesn't conform to standards, which means I can't necessarily use the browser I want.
I'm pissed because Microsoft is purposefully trying to make sure I can't use the browser I want to use. For years, using a browser that conformed to standards meant that pages rendered incorrectly or didn't function at all. This was largely due to Microsoft, and it was on purpose. Sometimes this was the case on major sites, which meant that people could not use any browser other than IE and expect to be able to use the internet. Even still, Microsoft won't build its own sites according to standards. If you visit their knowledge base in any browser other than IE, it will cut off articles prematurely. If you visit an OWA site in anything other than IE, you don't get the real version of their web app. Microsoft was even caught putting extra code into MSN.com just so that it wouldn't render in Opera.
Face it, Microsoft has been systematic about subverting web standards in the hopes of forcing people to use their OS, their browser, and their websites. They do it in order to restrict the freedom of the market to choose anything other than their products. Because they have a monopoly and are able to overpower market forces, government intervention is probably required.
So you do realize you're talking about the situation 10 years ago, right?
Anyway, the end result of Opera's lawsuit, if successful, is not to force the market to use Opera. It's to give the market more freedom to choose Opera or Firefox, or other browsers.
Sure, and the beige box builders get a browser how then?
They should, at the very least, make IE an optional installation and provide the ability to uninstall it after it has been installed. Since they're considered a monopoly, I don't think it would be too off-base to require them to provide at least two alternative browsers with the Windows install disk.
I think it's more a case of Opera being pissed that it's not funded with Google money like Mozilla Firefox is.
Wait, so Opera is pissed at Google and Firefox, so their solution is to sue Microsoft? Oh, yeah, and who said Opera doesn't take money from Google?
If "developers" are going to "fight", how about developing something the market cares about instead, eh?
Maybe they'll appeal to the market once the market is actually choosing the best browser instead of having IE forced on it?
Well yes, I'd be surprised if we didn't all have ubiquitous wireless broadband internet access (including e-mail) within the next twenty years. I get e-mail on my phone now, but I don't really use it for the purpose of making myself available to work for non-work hours.
What I find funny about the Blackberry thing is that, in a couple places that I've worked, they were being used pretty much exclusively for middle-management. The lowly helpdesk techs supposedly weren't important enough to get one, in spite of the fact that it would be really useful for them to receive e-mail when they were away from their desks "in the field". Then a bunch of managers who were at their desks all day anyway had them. But then, oddly, the executive team didn't have Blackberries.
I once asked one of the VPs about it, and he basically said, "We let the managers get them because it makes them feel important and they aren't that expensive. But I sure as hell don't want to be on-call 24 hours a day." I felt like I learned something right there. The trappings of power are usually most appreciated by those who don't really have any. Those guys who spend a lot of time trying to show you who's boss are specifically those who aren't "the boss". The people who are really in charge don't necessarily feel the need to prove it to you.
But what I'm saying is, they wouldn't be intense enough to get anyone's attention unless they were already specifically monitoring Earth, and monitoring it closely. And even then, they'd have to be looking at just the right time to catch the explosion.
I mean, really, how can we even tell the explosion happened here on Earth. If our equipment is sensitive enough, we can pick up seismic activity. If we go sifting through the rubble we can find radiation. But AFAIK, detonating a nuclear bomb won't even give you a flash of detectable radiation on the other side of our planet. If you do get radiation very far away, I suspect it would be from the fallout, and not from the explosion itself. And that's just on our planet, which is incredibly small in comparison to the known universe.
I wouldn't want to downplay the danger of nuclear fallout, but the amount of radiation released in a nuclear bomb's explosion isn't that enormous. It's enough to be deadly to people, and it's enough to poison our environment. However, it's not enough to make the heavens sit up and take notice in a universe filled with huge flaming balls of fusion reactions.
A user accustomed to Unix will find OSX fundamentally different.
A user accustomed to what form of Unix? I'm just thinking that a user accustomed to Solaris might find NetBSD to be different. A user accustomed to FreeBSD might feel out of place when using AIX.
Maybe you'd have to explain what it is that all these systems have in common that forms "the spirit of Unix", and which of those things OSX doesn't have. Seriously, I'm not being smart or sarcastic here. I've used FreeBSD, OSX, and Unix, but find Solaris a little confusing, so I wouldn't consider myself a Unix expert.
It doesn't seem to me, though, that additional graphical systems and APIs make it "un-Unix-y", or else the development of X11 itself would have been a violation of "the spirit of Unix". (it wasn't present in the original version of Unix, and AFAIK it isn't required to be Unix certified) I don't know. Maybe I don't understand what you mean.
Do fission explosions give off any kind of radiation that doesn't happen in nature? If so, what?
It's been a long time since I studied anything relating to nuclear bombs, but besides being big explosions, what do they really give off? An EM pulse? Are there not occasional EM pulses in space, naturally? And how hard would it be to detect that pulse from outside our solar system? Nuclear reactions give off neutron radiation, I guess, but neutron radiation isn't that weird, and how far is that radiation really going to get? You get some other radioactive debris scattered about, but that's not going to count for much in terms of getting detected by an ET. What else is there? I don't remember. Gamma rays? Whatever it is, it's not on the level that it will stand out too terribly in a universe that has things like pulsars and supernovas.
I know nuclear bombs have a lot of notoriety, but they're still mostly just bombs. They aren't magic. It's not like they give off radiation and chemicals that don't otherwise exist. Or someone correct me if I'm wrong... All of my argument is based on what I can remember of physics and chemistry from school.
Still, if it's possible, even with advanced technology, to view things outside of our light-cone, it would have huge consequences. We continue to look for ways around this, but we have no real reason to believe that it's possible to get around it.
That's pretty silly. First, on a cosmic scale, nuclear bombs are *tiny*. I don't see why they would be noticeable. At this point, we can't even figure out how to detect a planet as small as Earth orbiting even the closest star, and nuclear explosions are tiny compared to the size of the Earth.
Second, even if you detected them, it doesn't seem like there'd be anything particular to flag them as a sign of intelligent life. They aren't a continuing pattern or signal-- they're just explosions. Explosions happen throughout the universe all the time, so a handful of explosions set off randomly over the past 50 years wouldn't be worth investigating even if someone had equipment sensitive enough to detect them.
Finally, the universe is a very large place, and I don't see any reason to believe that, even if there were aliens advanced enough to detect something so small and curious enough to spend their time looking for nuclear explosions, that they would be within a few light-years already. I know a light-year is a very long distance, but not compared to how big space is. So if the aliens were only a hundred light-years away, they still wouldn't be seeing a signal of broadcasts or nuclear explosions for a while. And that's not even an issue of having technology advanced enough to see that far-- if Einstein is correct, then there's simply no possibility of having sensors that can see beyond their light cone.
I've never heard of them either, and I used to play a lot of games (not so much in the past 2 years). I looked them up on Wikipedia and found a name that I did recognize: God Games. Now, I still couldn't remember a single game published under that name, but it at least rung a bell.
So I looks at their list of "notable games", but only Max Payne and Serious Sam seemed particularly notable to me.
The question is whether that apparent slowing is something you experience at the time and can take advantage of (i.e. if time slows to one-third speed, can you read numbers or dodge bullets three times as quickly?) or if it's an illusion your memory retroactively imposes.
Still, I think those are multiple different questions:
It seems that the people performing the study want to claim they've answered all of these questions, but from my brief reading, it seems to me that they've only even tried to answer the second question. (I'm pretty sure we can answer "no" to the third question, though, even without this study.)
I also am unclear as to what they think they're testing. They're faced with the question, "Does time really seem to slow down?" and in response they test, "Are people able to see and process things faster?"
It's not clear to me what that the test answers the question. Does time *actually* slow down, and in a Neo-like state we can stop to look around while bullets are flying at us? Of course not. But do things *seem* to move more slowly? It seems so.
What's really scary is that (from what I understand) Brave New World was somewhat ridiculed upon its release for being unrealistic. People thought Huxley was crazy for thinking that society could move in the direction he was predicting. Now, look around at the world today. Huxley's vision doesn't seem all that "out there".
Also worth noting, I believe that in some states, a masters degree is required for teaching high school. Undergrad degrees will only allow you to teach elementary or middle school. Admittedly, I'm not sure about that.
That seems logical to me as everything you teach in high school (even advanced courses) is well below what is taught at a university, so having even more education wouldn't necessarily help.
I don't think that this is necessarily a good argument. For example, pick a random college graduate. Now ask yourself, is that person qualified to teach AP calculus? Probably not. Now the truth is that most subjects (literature, history, philosophy, psychology, etc.) are just as complex as calculus, but they're just easier to bullshit. I don't think most college graduates are qualified to teach them to high school kids.
For one thing, in order to teach, it's not enough to have a vague recollection of the subject matter. First, you should know the subject matter backwards and forwards, sufficiently that you could answer relatively obscure questions should they come up. Second, you need to know something about teaching, which is itself a skill.
And that's not even taking into account that our university system is also embarrassing, and I wouldn't trust most college graduates these days to screw in a lightbulb.
What I think would work to improve teaching quality would be a general increase in pay
Well that was my point-- not necessarily that current teachers are underpaid for their current skill set, but that if you want better teachers you'll probably have to pay better. I've been told for most of my life that I'd be a good teacher, but I'd like to be able to afford to buy my own house, live in a decent area, and generally live comfortably. In the current economic landscape, that's not possible on a teacher's salary.
Incentives are theoretically good, but you have to be very good about how it's practiced. For example, if you pay teachers more for their students getting better grades, then you'll probably get a lot of grade inflation, and kids being passed along that shouldn't be. If you make it based on standardized test scores, then teachers will simply teach to that test (as you mentioned).
I don't really know how to fix the problems with education, but I think these three things would certainly help: attract better teachers, decrease the average class size, and get parents more involved. The first two of those things inherently mean spending more money on teachers' salaries (pay them better, hire more of them).
I meant to write, "If indeed 'most' high school teachers only have a bachelor's degree, that would be one indicator..."
High school teachers make, on average, $47,602... The median for people with only a bachelor's degree is $43,143.
Ok. So that's the average (probably mean?) salary for teachers, and the median salary for people with bachelor's degrees. What's the mean yearly income for people with bachelors degrees? I don't really know, but I wouldn't be surprised if it were higher.
But let's not quibble over that, because I have no numbers of my own to argue with, and anyway you could argue that the median is a better indicator of what's a good "average" salary. Still, I would say that high school teachers should probably have a master's degree. If indeed "most" high school teachers only have a master's degree, that would be one indicator that highly educated people are not being drawn toward teaching high school. So what's the average income of people with master's degrees?
Ahhh, but therein lies the problem, lack of proper education, and yet we keep paying teachers more...
Wait... are you actually suggesting that teachers are over-paid? In most places that I've been or even heard about, teachers barely make a livable wage. If anything, it's a problem that it's hard to attract and keep good teachers because they're paid poorly and mistreated by principals (and other school bureaucrats) and parents (who refuse to believe that their little darling has ever been anything but perfect). And part of the reason kids never get a chance to learn anything but "obedience" is because class sizes are way too big (sometimes as much as 35 kids to a teacher). The teacher doesn't have time to do anything except try to keep the classroom under control.
If we paid teachers decently, if parents got involved in their kids educations, and if we had 15-20 kids per class, you'd see a huge difference in our education system from that alone.
perhaps we should have the ability to judge for ourselves what we NEED and what we WANT and how best to achieve it
In case you don't understand, the problem some people have with "commercialism" (consumerism) is the fact that it's inherently filled with grand efforts to prevent people from using their own judgment. We're constantly being inundated with attempts to brainwash us. I know, it sounds like a conspiracy theory, but read up sometime on advertising/marketing/PR theory, and you'll see that it's pretty scary stuff. They all aim at making false unconscious connections between positive feelings and the product/person/company that they're trying to sell. Advertisers have even spent a lot of time studying cults and fascist regimes in order to mimic their methods.
Really, it's even public knowledge, if you care to study it. So in order to educate people properly and allow them to exercise good judgment, we may have to take some steps to reduce the influence of these brainwashing techniques.
I tell you, I *might* be persuaded to pay that price if it was some sort of continuous license w/unlimited downloads. For example, if I could take a DVD from my current collection, get it so if I lose the file I can always re-download from Apple, and if they release an HD version I get it for free, then that might be worth $4. Otherwise, screw you, I'll rip the DVD myself.
Yeah, the question seems weird to me. As far as Photoshop goes, it hasn't changed that much. I learned on Photoshop 4, and though there are a bunch of refinements in later versions, a lot of it is still the same in CS3.
On the other programs, though, it's a different story. Flash has changed quite a lot in the past few years, as it's moved from a simpler animation program to more of an application framework. You can teach on old versions of Flash, but it really makes sense to get an up-to-date version. (at least Flash 7?)
Dreamweaver, on the other hand... Well, first of all, how people make web pages has changed over the past few years. A lot of tags that were commonly used in 2000 are now depreciated. Maybe they were depreciated then, too (I don't know), but people still used them. Conventions have changed a bit. So an old web editor may teach bad habits.
But I almost want to say that no one should be trained to use Dreamweaver. WYSIWYG web editors are for people who need to throw together a web page but don't want to know how to make web pages. If you know how to use a WYSIWYG web editor, you can almost train people by teaching them how to use a word processor, but it won't really be teaching them how to make decent web pages. If you're going to teach people to make web pages, you should be teaching them how to hand code basic HTML and CSS, or else what you're teaching is pretty useless IMO.