What he said. We had to roll our own. There is an astounding amount of "the devil is in the details" when dealing with this subject. For examples: How do you handle accrual of vacation/sick time for an employee whose start date is in the middle of a pay period? Is there a delay before they start accruing? Is there a maximum allowable amount? Does it increase based on seniority? How do you integrate your system with your time clock to deal with hourly employees (don't forget to credit them paid leave for holidays)? What if somebody is out for a span that includes the paid lunch hour? Will you allow entries that would cause the current balance to be pushed into the negative? If not, how will you forecast future remaining time, while taking all these rules into account?
This is one of those business cases where the ol' 80/20 rule just doesn't cut it. Just tracking who's here and who isn't is pretty simple, but when you start automating the payroll side of it, it becomes many times more complicated and customized.
Most of those can be answered with the term "pro-rate". Still, your point is valid - do you prorate or not?
"Because in order to make the Windows Store a success, Microsoft needs to block the competition, just like Apple does with its App/Mac stores... Now suddenly, Steam is no longer available on Windows, but it is on Linux."
I don't believe for a second that Microsoft is going to block Steam out of Windows. I do, however, believe that most people will use whatever's on their Windows OS by default (there's lots of data to show that people tend to go with the 'default'). If Microsoft adds a Store to Windows 8, they're going to be tough competition for Steam simply because it's installed by default.
It will probably be blocked under WinRT (ARM based systems and native Metro) just because of the requirements for working with that API - e.g. it must go through the Microsoft AppStore. It should still work under the "Legacy" Desktop mode, but that's only for Intel based systems.
Windows UAC prompt runs on a different session (the secured on) instead of the normal session so that hook-based keylogger won't work any more. Also it has higher integrity level than normal apps so keylogger can't inject their version of dlls to steal the password, well, as long as someone doesn't run the keylogger at higher IL anyway.
I suggest you look into the ability of Apps to attach to different sessions - it's really not that hard. So all the keylogger has to do now is monitor one session, just not the user's session.
For that matter, they can install into the login session and capture any users logging in. Worse case, it installs during a reboot and captures the login session (session 0) and the UAC session; so whenever those sessions are active they automatically capture the only important thing - usernames and passwords - and they don't have to filter out much of anything either since the user can only do a couple things - select a user and enter a password.
The U.S. has a serious shortage of engineers* partially because...<snip>
(*I realize that some people -- particularly Republicans, for some reason -- deny this shortage exists. But having spent the better part of last year trying to hire some decent engineers, I know it's true.)
There is no real shortage of engineers. There are, however, a shortage of companies that want to (i) pay engineers properly, and (ii) hire senior engineers for senior positions, as opposed to trying to fill a position for a senior engineer with an entry level engineer, or pay a senior engineer what an entry level engineer gets. There is also a shortage of companies willing to relocate people as well.
So you get what you're willing to pay for, what you're willing to invest in, etc. Don't complain when you don't want to put up.
I presumed the lack of volume is due to Win 8 phones coming out end of this year? The older win7 phones can't be upgraded to win8 due to hardware limitations... they'll only get up to win7.8 update and the apps for win8 may not work with the older version. So with this in mind, why would you buy a win7 phone right now?
You assume wrong. According to someone quite familiar with mobile sales (see here) it is due to Microsoft buying Skype, not simply an issue for Nokia. Apparently all 600 cell service providers world-wide are refusing to sell WinPhone period since the Skype acquisition.
Actually start delivering real content that is properly edited, checked, etc.
Seriously, newpapers - both on-line and in print - are getting worse and worse about grammatical mistakes - punction, grammar, spelling, etc. They rely too much on technology to find the problems, and don't even do that in many cases.
The 3rd book in The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo (The Girl who Kicked the Hornet's Nest) has a good take on the whole issue. Newspapers need to cut management costs, increase staffing, and actually produce good work. This will in turn bring in more readers and advertisers. Sadly, management is too concerned with their bonus' to make a good long term decision for the health of their company.
If you live in the inner city - places like Paterson, NJ, downtown Los Angeles, CA, Washington, D.C, - then the chances of a carjacking as described (especially for white folks in a black neighborhood) are actually pretty high, and can very well be as described by the GP.
Another way to look at it - a police officer has one of these cars, and gets called in to duty in an emergency but can't use the police issued vehicle for some reason (e..g left it at the station, what-have-you). He's got to take the car but it refuses to do what he wants it to, and makes it to the scene too late to be of any help - whether someone had a heart attack, was a victim of domestic abuse, attempted burglary, etc.
Google's solution is far better from the point that the human overrides the computer (same with Boeing) so in an emergency it is always clear what the vehicle will do. The MIT solution (much like Airbus) makes the computer override the human so you never really know what the vehicle is going to do until it does it, and you might have to spend some precious time telling the computer to take a hike so you can do what you need to do to resolve the problem. In an emergency every moment counts.
The normal speed of traffic is 10% over the limit.
Typically in the US, average speed of traffic is about 10 MPH over the posted speed, not 10% over the posted speed. That goes regardless of posted speed - so a posted speed of 25 MPH yields 35 MPH, while one of 60 MPH yields 70 MPH.
What we need is to rethink the whole idea of Congress. We have now reached the point where direct, non-representative, democracy is possible. Why not vote directly on the issues, instead of voting for representatives who may or may not represent our interests?
And you really think that would solve the issue? Too many people will just do whatever they're told. For example, look at how many people still buy Window.
"One of his thoughts would be to require a patent holder to produce the patented item within a certain time"
And thus you make patent the SOLE ballpark of big firm which can afford lose a few dollar setting up a quick-n-dirty item production, whereas the small guy, the garage inventor is royally screwed, because he won't be able to produce the items, and the industry can dictate their term while buying the patent from him, when not outright stealing, because he can't protect himself due to the production requirement.
In fact I contend there is no way whatsoever you can both protect the small inventor and avoid patent troll. The only way out is to enforce non obviousness and repell software patent outright.
Which is why you require a business plan be submitted as well, that it too much meet certain criteria, and hold them to it.
And still, the "serious" people all think the solution is more austerity, because having more broke people is somehow going to stimulate the economy.
Austerity is about making the government do what people are already doing - watching what and how it spends money a lot more closely, making sure the necessaries get spent on, and not the luxuries. You know, like making sure the Tax man can collect the taxes but that the GSA doesn't go to Vegas for the weekend.
Once the government finances are in order, then there will be more money to spend on the people - either thru reducing taxes or through paying out more services. Either way, it ultimately is more money back in people pockets.
On the other hand, those that advocate government spending would take the $25/week that the person has, and say that the government is wiser about how to spend it, and thus the taxes increase, the service decrease, and the government is still broke. The person may or may not see more services - as in all likelihood that $25/week taken now goes to pay for new computers so that the government workers can have Windows 8 on a brand new computer come November.
If government had money, then austerity wouldn't be necessary. And sometimes you have to cut spending in order to save before you can spend big again. The same applies to governments - even during prolonged recessions. Spending is not always the answer.
Because in past recessions (~30 years) spending on technology has held up pretty well. Most of the time IT growth only slowed – it did not stop. That implies that technology generated a lot of productively gains. Now – today – maybe not. It may be that we have reached a level of technology where productive gains level out. Does a office worker need a 2nd computer?
I don’t think that is the answer – I think consumers are moving to tablets and Business is moving towards servers.
There's also the issue that depsite the academics of it, the recession from 2000 never really ended, and after the dot-com bust then employers did a lot of improvement through technology/productivity gains, and then didn't really pick up in hiring when the recession academically ended. So why is there a surprise when the academic definitions says that the recession returned and technology isn't picking up? Perhaps because they've already done as much as they could, and they're just holding fast through the end of the real recession (despite what academics call it at any given point in time).
My civics may be a bit rusty but my understanding of executive orders is that they are used to further describe legislation that has been passed (i.e. laws) and outlines what federal officers (in the broad sense, not LEOs) are to do to execute the law.
Yes, that is how they are suppose to work. However, in practice they often create new "laws" that the Executive branch wishes were on the books but are not yet, and all political parties that have been in the White House are guilty of that.
In some cases, the White House has used it to blatantly ignore the people, and Congress - for instance, Obama's executive order effectively implementing the Dream Act which was not passed by Congress that told the DoJ to not enforce certain laws that the are required to enforce. All political parties have been guilty of that, but Obama seems to be on the verge of outright rebellion against the Constitution.
But if they had to disclose the key, then this means Microsoft has to revoke Canonical's key, because that key would allow subverting Window's secure boot model, and now it can't be used to install without requiring user EFI reconfiguration on any PC that includes Canonical's key in its revocation list.
Then maybe Microsoft shouldn't have picked such a fscked-up security model.
But they want to restore their monopoly, and what better way?
They have fought tooth and nail to keep their "software as a revocable license" model so that they can continue to extort huge sums of money from the industries they service. I expect them to throw their resources at legislative change to "fix" this European problem.
This has enormous implications. I just wonder how many threats to 'take their ball and go home' will ensue, followed by threads of 'I'm getting my dad (the US government)'.
Except thats to a decision relating to AutoDesk, the US law is the same.
With this new ruling, states can pass laws that allow police to detain anyone who cannot prove their identity, on the theory that they *might* be illegal immigrants.
Without your driver's license, they'll call it in and it'll take a lot longer. If you are a foreigner, you are most certainly violating federal law by not carrying the papers; but if you are a citizen it will be quickly determined even without ID.
International Laws and Treatises do not permit visiting other countries without carrying your documentation to show you are there legally. In many countries if you don't have your papers that it grounds for arrest - even if you are there legally.
Maybe or maybe not.
The problem with the law is that it directly violates the "innocent until proven guilty" assumption that forms the basis for the US legal system.
Except International law, and by treatise the US Law as well, requires that passports, etc. be carried with one's self when traveling abroad regardless. Whenever I go to a foreign country I always keep my passport on me, any visas (usually in the passport), etc. If I am driving, I also carry my International Driver's Permit.
Here, we give you a chance to show that you are legally here even if you don't have your papers in immediate possession; that doesn't mean there won't be consequences.
It makes sense to have the code stewarded outside of SourceForge, because it ensures that the development is completely open. We (SourceForge) value our projects' ability to own their own data, even if that means that they can move it somewhere else. By having Allura completely open, and even developed outside of SourceForge itself, we ensure that this right - the right to pack up and move - is 100% protected.
You do realize that SF essentially had that until they turned to a closed development model, don't you?
Perhaps the bigger issue is that SF is no longer making as much money from that closed model as they were due to the maturing and backing of gForge, Savannah, and others, so now they're trying to get back in the good graces of the community. Somehow, I'm not sure it's going to work.
And, BTW, I fully support Oracle moving OOorg to Apache. It was the right thing to do. But I'm still baffled at why SF needs to other than to try to save face because they use to have a fully open project that is no longer such. It's a political move for SF more than anything else, while for Oracle there was far more than politics involved - Oracle simply didn't have the capability to serve OOorg they way it should; unlike SF with Allura.
...Ballmer had to show of a partially complete Win8-based tablet on Monday. To try to show they were ahead of Google. Never mind that Google's tablet is far more complete and closer to shipping.
Anyone who thinks American students are bad with reasoning obviously hasn't spent much time outside the country. Those people haven't seen anything, especially Asia. And the problem isn't just reasoning skills, it's simply entertaining your own opinion as opposed to trying to please a superior. I've been in situations where an employee was asked what they thought about something and they'd sheepishly avoid the answer. Even when pressed they seemed unable to come up with a response. Lack of creative and independent thinking continues to be a problem, even in Japan.
That's in part because in some places (like Japan) you don't do that in a meeting, or at work. You do that over a meal outside of work.
That said, I think America is moving too far in the opposite direction. Sometimes rote memorization essential. And you need standardized tests to glean some sort of progress. They might not be perfect, but there's no better alternative.
No you don't. You only need standardized tests if you want to make wide comparisons that often tell you nothing any way. There are far too many factors in education to make standardized tests useful - even if the curriculum was 100% the same - students connect differently with different teachers, teachers have different methods, people are different, some students are super smart but don't test well, others are really dumb but test very well, etc.
Standarized tests don't get to the core of the problems in education. They only add to it - both from distracting teachers from being able to teach, and students from being able to learn, to having schools teach to the tests so that their students do well and they get more funding. There's a reason why colleges and universities are putting less and less emphasis on SAT and ACT scores.
The fact of the matter is that you need the fundamentals before you can progress. It's similar to artistic technique. Too many people hide behind the label of modern art to excuse their lack of talent. In order to have flexibility you need underlying ability. It's essentially the same principle here.
True - you need the fundamentals; reasoning is one of them.
And the fact is that kids don't necessarily have the knack for reasoning that people acquire with age. So why waste excessive amounts of energy trying to drill that into them?
Go talk to a kid between 2 and 5 years old. They nearly all have excellent reasoning skills. Talk to them 5 and 10 years later, and those skills have probably diminished due to the education system, standardized testing, and force fed answers.
But certainly, Americans have the ability to think independently and creatively. And I find them to generally be better informed and less prone to falling for myths, urban legends and other such nonsense. I'll concede, it could be the part of the country where I live. But overseas and amongst immigrants I've found that the consensus is that the US has the best educational system in the world.
I'm not saying that other countries are not worse off. Honor cultures (asia, middle-east) really suffer because of it. Western cultures tend to suffer due to political idealogies for feeding desired answers (e.g. Europe, Russia, even the US). Facism and Communism push for unquestioned authority.
So you have not only cultural issues, but educational ones too.
this study would be more interesting if we could compare current results with results from the past,
It is called the Flynn Effect . A person of normal intelligence in 1970 would score about 90 in IQ tests today. A person of average intelligence would score barely 50 in IQ tests.
Somehow I think they/you got the curving wrong. More likely that someone in 1970 would get 110 today, and someone average then would go hire for exactly the reason of TFA. While kids today have the capability to be as intelligent, the educational system is structured such that they end up not being so. So IQ has gone down in the last 50 years, not up.
Slashdot Mirror
What he said. We had to roll our own. There is an astounding amount of "the devil is in the details" when dealing with this subject. For examples: How do you handle accrual of vacation/sick time for an employee whose start date is in the middle of a pay period? Is there a delay before they start accruing? Is there a maximum allowable amount? Does it increase based on seniority? How do you integrate your system with your time clock to deal with hourly employees (don't forget to credit them paid leave for holidays)? What if somebody is out for a span that includes the paid lunch hour? Will you allow entries that would cause the current balance to be pushed into the negative? If not, how will you forecast future remaining time, while taking all these rules into account?
This is one of those business cases where the ol' 80/20 rule just doesn't cut it. Just tracking who's here and who isn't is pretty simple, but when you start automating the payroll side of it, it becomes many times more complicated and customized.
Most of those can be answered with the term "pro-rate". Still, your point is valid - do you prorate or not?
I don't believe for a second that Microsoft is going to block Steam out of Windows. I do, however, believe that most people will use whatever's on their Windows OS by default (there's lots of data to show that people tend to go with the 'default'). If Microsoft adds a Store to Windows 8, they're going to be tough competition for Steam simply because it's installed by default.
It will probably be blocked under WinRT (ARM based systems and native Metro) just because of the requirements for working with that API - e.g. it must go through the Microsoft AppStore. It should still work under the "Legacy" Desktop mode, but that's only for Intel based systems.
Windows UAC prompt runs on a different session (the secured on) instead of the normal session so that hook-based keylogger won't work any more. Also it has higher integrity level than normal apps so keylogger can't inject their version of dlls to steal the password, well, as long as someone doesn't run the keylogger at higher IL anyway.
I suggest you look into the ability of Apps to attach to different sessions - it's really not that hard. So all the keylogger has to do now is monitor one session, just not the user's session.
For that matter, they can install into the login session and capture any users logging in. Worse case, it installs during a reboot and captures the login session (session 0) and the UAC session; so whenever those sessions are active they automatically capture the only important thing - usernames and passwords - and they don't have to filter out much of anything either since the user can only do a couple things - select a user and enter a password.
There is no real shortage of engineers. There are, however, a shortage of companies that want to (i) pay engineers properly, and (ii) hire senior engineers for senior positions, as opposed to trying to fill a position for a senior engineer with an entry level engineer, or pay a senior engineer what an entry level engineer gets. There is also a shortage of companies willing to relocate people as well.
So you get what you're willing to pay for, what you're willing to invest in, etc. Don't complain when you don't want to put up.
I presumed the lack of volume is due to Win 8 phones coming out end of this year? The older win7 phones can't be upgraded to win8 due to hardware limitations ... they'll only get up to win7.8 update and the apps for win8 may not work with the older version. So with this in mind, why would you buy a win7 phone right now?
You assume wrong. According to someone quite familiar with mobile sales (see here) it is due to Microsoft buying Skype, not simply an issue for Nokia. Apparently all 600 cell service providers world-wide are refusing to sell WinPhone period since the Skype acquisition.
So agrees a reputable Ex-Nokia Exec - see here The Sun Tzu of Nokisoftian Microkia - Mirror mirror on the wall, who'se the baddest of them all - Waterloo, I was defeated you won the war - a long trek blog in search of the worst CEO ever (spoiler alert: Elop)
Actually start delivering real content that is properly edited, checked, etc.
Seriously, newpapers - both on-line and in print - are getting worse and worse about grammatical mistakes - punction, grammar, spelling, etc. They rely too much on technology to find the problems, and don't even do that in many cases.
The 3rd book in The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo (The Girl who Kicked the Hornet's Nest) has a good take on the whole issue. Newspapers need to cut management costs, increase staffing, and actually produce good work. This will in turn bring in more readers and advertisers. Sadly, management is too concerned with their bonus' to make a good long term decision for the health of their company.
If you live in the inner city - places like Paterson, NJ, downtown Los Angeles, CA, Washington, D.C, - then the chances of a carjacking as described (especially for white folks in a black neighborhood) are actually pretty high, and can very well be as described by the GP.
Another way to look at it - a police officer has one of these cars, and gets called in to duty in an emergency but can't use the police issued vehicle for some reason (e..g left it at the station, what-have-you). He's got to take the car but it refuses to do what he wants it to, and makes it to the scene too late to be of any help - whether someone had a heart attack, was a victim of domestic abuse, attempted burglary, etc.
Google's solution is far better from the point that the human overrides the computer (same with Boeing) so in an emergency it is always clear what the vehicle will do. The MIT solution (much like Airbus) makes the computer override the human so you never really know what the vehicle is going to do until it does it, and you might have to spend some precious time telling the computer to take a hike so you can do what you need to do to resolve the problem. In an emergency every moment counts.
Typically in the US, average speed of traffic is about 10 MPH over the posted speed, not 10% over the posted speed. That goes regardless of posted speed - so a posted speed of 25 MPH yields 35 MPH, while one of 60 MPH yields 70 MPH.
What we need is to rethink the whole idea of Congress. We have now reached the point where direct, non-representative, democracy is possible. Why not vote directly on the issues, instead of voting for representatives who may or may not represent our interests?
And you really think that would solve the issue? Too many people will just do whatever they're told. For example, look at how many people still buy Window.
"One of his thoughts would be to require a patent holder to produce the patented item within a certain time" And thus you make patent the SOLE ballpark of big firm which can afford lose a few dollar setting up a quick-n-dirty item production, whereas the small guy, the garage inventor is royally screwed, because he won't be able to produce the items, and the industry can dictate their term while buying the patent from him, when not outright stealing, because he can't protect himself due to the production requirement. In fact I contend there is no way whatsoever you can both protect the small inventor and avoid patent troll. The only way out is to enforce non obviousness and repell software patent outright.
Which is why you require a business plan be submitted as well, that it too much meet certain criteria, and hold them to it.
And still, the "serious" people all think the solution is more austerity, because having more broke people is somehow going to stimulate the economy.
Austerity is about making the government do what people are already doing - watching what and how it spends money a lot more closely, making sure the necessaries get spent on, and not the luxuries. You know, like making sure the Tax man can collect the taxes but that the GSA doesn't go to Vegas for the weekend.
Once the government finances are in order, then there will be more money to spend on the people - either thru reducing taxes or through paying out more services. Either way, it ultimately is more money back in people pockets.
On the other hand, those that advocate government spending would take the $25/week that the person has, and say that the government is wiser about how to spend it, and thus the taxes increase, the service decrease, and the government is still broke. The person may or may not see more services - as in all likelihood that $25/week taken now goes to pay for new computers so that the government workers can have Windows 8 on a brand new computer come November.
If government had money, then austerity wouldn't be necessary. And sometimes you have to cut spending in order to save before you can spend big again. The same applies to governments - even during prolonged recessions. Spending is not always the answer.
Because in past recessions (~30 years) spending on technology has held up pretty well. Most of the time IT growth only slowed – it did not stop. That implies that technology generated a lot of productively gains. Now – today – maybe not. It may be that we have reached a level of technology where productive gains level out. Does a office worker need a 2nd computer?
I don’t think that is the answer – I think consumers are moving to tablets and Business is moving towards servers.
There's also the issue that depsite the academics of it, the recession from 2000 never really ended, and after the dot-com bust then employers did a lot of improvement through technology/productivity gains, and then didn't really pick up in hiring when the recession academically ended. So why is there a surprise when the academic definitions says that the recession returned and technology isn't picking up? Perhaps because they've already done as much as they could, and they're just holding fast through the end of the real recession (despite what academics call it at any given point in time).
My civics may be a bit rusty but my understanding of executive orders is that they are used to further describe legislation that has been passed (i.e. laws) and outlines what federal officers (in the broad sense, not LEOs) are to do to execute the law.
Yes, that is how they are suppose to work. However, in practice they often create new "laws" that the Executive branch wishes were on the books but are not yet, and all political parties that have been in the White House are guilty of that.
In some cases, the White House has used it to blatantly ignore the people, and Congress - for instance, Obama's executive order effectively implementing the Dream Act which was not passed by Congress that told the DoJ to not enforce certain laws that the are required to enforce. All political parties have been guilty of that, but Obama seems to be on the verge of outright rebellion against the Constitution.
But if they had to disclose the key, then this means Microsoft has to revoke Canonical's key, because that key would allow subverting Window's secure boot model, and now it can't be used to install without requiring user EFI reconfiguration on any PC that includes Canonical's key in its revocation list.
Then maybe Microsoft shouldn't have picked such a fscked-up security model.
But they want to restore their monopoly, and what better way?
They have fought tooth and nail to keep their "software as a revocable license" model so that they can continue to extort huge sums of money from the industries they service. I expect them to throw their resources at legislative change to "fix" this European problem.
And if you recall, AutoDesk lost.
This has enormous implications. I just wonder how many threats to 'take their ball and go home' will ensue, followed by threads of 'I'm getting my dad (the US government)'.
Except thats to a decision relating to AutoDesk, the US law is the same.
...are Microsoft, Apple, GNOME (GNOME3 and Unity), and others copying KDE 4.x? KDE is leading the edge of desktop development right now.
Without your driver's license, they'll call it in and it'll take a lot longer. If you are a foreigner, you are most certainly violating federal law by not carrying the papers; but if you are a citizen it will be quickly determined even without ID. International Laws and Treatises do not permit visiting other countries without carrying your documentation to show you are there legally. In many countries if you don't have your papers that it grounds for arrest - even if you are there legally.
Except International law, and by treatise the US Law as well, requires that passports, etc. be carried with one's self when traveling abroad regardless. Whenever I go to a foreign country I always keep my passport on me, any visas (usually in the passport), etc. If I am driving, I also carry my International Driver's Permit.
Here, we give you a chance to show that you are legally here even if you don't have your papers in immediate possession; that doesn't mean there won't be consequences.
And just try doing that in any other country.
VS2008 and VS2010 have come a long way. But you are correct - they still have a long way to go to match GCC's level of standards compliance.
For example, It's rediculous that they only just introduced stdint.h in VS2010.
It makes sense to have the code stewarded outside of SourceForge, because it ensures that the development is completely open. We (SourceForge) value our projects' ability to own their own data, even if that means that they can move it somewhere else. By having Allura completely open, and even developed outside of SourceForge itself, we ensure that this right - the right to pack up and move - is 100% protected.
You do realize that SF essentially had that until they turned to a closed development model, don't you?
Perhaps the bigger issue is that SF is no longer making as much money from that closed model as they were due to the maturing and backing of gForge, Savannah, and others, so now they're trying to get back in the good graces of the community. Somehow, I'm not sure it's going to work.
And, BTW, I fully support Oracle moving OOorg to Apache. It was the right thing to do. But I'm still baffled at why SF needs to other than to try to save face because they use to have a fully open project that is no longer such. It's a political move for SF more than anything else, while for Oracle there was far more than politics involved - Oracle simply didn't have the capability to serve OOorg they way it should; unlike SF with Allura.
...Ballmer had to show of a partially complete Win8-based tablet on Monday. To try to show they were ahead of Google. Never mind that Google's tablet is far more complete and closer to shipping.
Anyone who thinks American students are bad with reasoning obviously hasn't spent much time outside the country. Those people haven't seen anything, especially Asia. And the problem isn't just reasoning skills, it's simply entertaining your own opinion as opposed to trying to please a superior. I've been in situations where an employee was asked what they thought about something and they'd sheepishly avoid the answer. Even when pressed they seemed unable to come up with a response. Lack of creative and independent thinking continues to be a problem, even in Japan.
That's in part because in some places (like Japan) you don't do that in a meeting, or at work. You do that over a meal outside of work.
That said, I think America is moving too far in the opposite direction. Sometimes rote memorization essential. And you need standardized tests to glean some sort of progress. They might not be perfect, but there's no better alternative.
No you don't. You only need standardized tests if you want to make wide comparisons that often tell you nothing any way. There are far too many factors in education to make standardized tests useful - even if the curriculum was 100% the same - students connect differently with different teachers, teachers have different methods, people are different, some students are super smart but don't test well, others are really dumb but test very well, etc.
Standarized tests don't get to the core of the problems in education. They only add to it - both from distracting teachers from being able to teach, and students from being able to learn, to having schools teach to the tests so that their students do well and they get more funding. There's a reason why colleges and universities are putting less and less emphasis on SAT and ACT scores.
The fact of the matter is that you need the fundamentals before you can progress. It's similar to artistic technique. Too many people hide behind the label of modern art to excuse their lack of talent. In order to have flexibility you need underlying ability. It's essentially the same principle here.
True - you need the fundamentals; reasoning is one of them.
And the fact is that kids don't necessarily have the knack for reasoning that people acquire with age. So why waste excessive amounts of energy trying to drill that into them?
Go talk to a kid between 2 and 5 years old. They nearly all have excellent reasoning skills. Talk to them 5 and 10 years later, and those skills have probably diminished due to the education system, standardized testing, and force fed answers.
But certainly, Americans have the ability to think independently and creatively. And I find them to generally be better informed and less prone to falling for myths, urban legends and other such nonsense. I'll concede, it could be the part of the country where I live. But overseas and amongst immigrants I've found that the consensus is that the US has the best educational system in the world.
I'm not saying that other countries are not worse off. Honor cultures (asia, middle-east) really suffer because of it. Western cultures tend to suffer due to political idealogies for feeding desired answers (e.g. Europe, Russia, even the US). Facism and Communism push for unquestioned authority.
So you have not only cultural issues, but educational ones too.
this study would be more interesting if we could compare current results with results from the past,
It is called the Flynn Effect . A person of normal intelligence in 1970 would score about 90 in IQ tests today. A person of average intelligence would score barely 50 in IQ tests.
Somehow I think they/you got the curving wrong. More likely that someone in 1970 would get 110 today, and someone average then would go hire for exactly the reason of TFA. While kids today have the capability to be as intelligent, the educational system is structured such that they end up not being so. So IQ has gone down in the last 50 years, not up.