You don't know what your talking about K-12 education is the single largest spending line item in the state of California. (I suspect that it is the same in other states) Higher Education is the second largest spending line item. Together they use up over 50% of the entire state's general fund and over 40% of the states total budget. We are talking about 60 BILLION dollars here. That isn't counting all of the money collected through booster clubs and fund raisers. How can you say that no one is making money when there is 60 BILLION spent?
I'm not saying no one is making money, I'm saying that there are expenses in any field. When you have millions of individuals in a system and you need infrastructure to support them you are going to pay for it. I honestly don't think that $10000 per student per year is really that expensive which is about what California is paying. There aren't a lot of complaints in WA or OR when we want to increase the education budget.
Teachers do just fine pay wise. Maybe if YOU could get out our YOUR ivory tower, you might find that not everyone is making $100k to $200k for part time work. Yes, if you are counting yearly salaries, then teachers get a 3 month vacation. If you count hourly pay, they do even better.
Are you seriously trying to tell me that teachers make $100k or more? And we are talking about teachers here right, not professors at colleges? And part time work? Teachers work 8 hours a day, 180 days a year (in WA). A normal year is 250 but they aren't getting any pay for the other 70 days, contrary to popular belief. They get paid during that time but only because their paychecks were garnished during the year to pay them during the summer.
No teacher in Washington or Oregon is making more than 45k per year and that's after 25 years of work. They start out just above the poverty line at 24k per year, and that's after 4 years of college.
There's nothing left to say except you are spouting baseless propaganda against teachers.
Where do YOU think the 60 BILLION goes?
Based on the information here you have about 6.5 million students costing $60 billion. That's about $9200 per student. Figuring a student-teacher ratio of 30:1 that's about $276k per teacher. Ah, but we need buses, administration, bookkeeping, books, and facilities. That all costs money and eats away at the $276k. If spending less was possible then they'd be doing it. $9200 per student per year is a bargain.
Pharmaceuticals that make sure that their products get sold. Pediatricians that make sure their services are used. Restaurants and food service companies that the supply food for the ubiquitous school welfare programs.
Welfare is a different issue, but pharmaceuticals and pediatricians? Oh I get it, you're a conspiracy nutcase.
My wife worked in a lending institution. She has seen literally thousands of W-2s from teachers. They do just fine.
Then she's telling you as much bullshit as you are spouting off here.
That's a heaping helping of stupid, with a side of stupid. Let's hamstring smart kids with dumb parents keeping them from their potential. I know everyone thinks that the 40s, 50s, 60s education was so much better but we have a much more educated society than we did back then. I hate to guess at the dropout rate. And if you can truly tell me that not going to school is going to somehow make these kids' lives any better then you are delusional. At the very least they are at school learning something. Discipline is another issue and I think teachers/administrators need more power in that direction.
2. Privatize
Charter schools are doing some good things here, but are somewhat still new. Have to wait to really see how they pan out.
3. Do away with tenure and teachers unions
... Some people didn't know this, but if you've worked in the LAUSD for more than 3 years you cannot be fired for anything short of molesting a child, it's called tenure. Tenure is for, teachers. There is no way you can argue that keeping poor teachers (tenure) or keeping teachers that have broken the rules (teachers unions) somehow helps the kids. With these two "protective" organization are in place it takes an act of god to get rid of poor teachers.
Ugh. Tenure doesn't exist for school teachers. If a teacher doesn't do their job, which is spelled out via SLOs (pre-NCLB, Student Learning Objectives) then they are indeed able to be fired. If you don't expect a union to protect it's members from the government who wants more for less, then you don't know what a union is about. I can't think of a single teacher that I had during my entire public education that was even close to being bad enough to be fired. Some were better than others obviously but those who couldn't survive were weeded out.
There are no teacher's unions in private schools and the level of education you get in a private school by far exceeds that in a public school. Without tenure, without teacher's unions. So at the very least it's proof that excellence does not require tenure or unions.
Hardly proof. Parents are paying a premium to pay teachers more which begets better teachers.
4. Allow parents to take their kids out of failing schools.
I think it's a travesty that the government is going to force parents to place kids into school that they know are going to be a bad influence on the child. Parents should be able to send their child to whatever school that is reasonably in their area. It's so bad that people actually buy houses in order to get their kids sent to a particular school, and I guess for those who can't afford to move or afford a private school... to bad? That's just wrong. If we are going to be forced to pay for schools we should at least be able to select which one we're going to send our kids too, or at least let us get our money back so we can send them to a private school. The only obstacle that stops this 'voucher' system is the teachers unions. I would love to hear how the lack of a voucher system helps kids, because I'm pretty sure it only helps teachers at failing schools.
Nothing to argue with here. This is definitely a must. I'm quoting the entire thing because it is the best thing I've read in this thread.
Not only do they think they should be paid the most, they also believe that they should never be held accountable for anything. Failing school? Not the teachers fault! Failing class? Must be those old text books. Failing teacher? Blasphemy! As soon as someone opposes the teachers unions, they come out with TV and radio ads saying how evil their opponents are for trying to screw the children, literally using the children as a political football.
Someone really hates unions and is using the teachers union as a straw
While I agree with most of the other stuff you said, a union that can barely get cost of living wage increases is not something that you should worry about. We aren't talking Teamsters here. If anything teachers should strike MORE. Then maybe parents would stop seeing schools as a babysitting service and as a way to improve their child's future.
Also, my mother was a teacher and my sister is currently a teacher and I have never, ever, heard of tenure in teaching outside of colleges. In fact, after a certain age teachers are 'encouraged' to retire, no matter how good they are. 'Encouraged' by increasing diminishment of their retirement. Very fair.
1) Increase the wage to a family-supportable level. The lack of good teachers is because very few people who are good at something, especially science and math, can't afford to teach instead of work a corporate gig.
2) Give those going into education a way to pay off their student loans in exchange for 10 years of teaching. Why would someone go to college, get $40k+ of student loans and have all that debt until they are 60, just because they are teachers? Once again, why not just go work elsewhere and actually pay off your debt before you die?
3) Get rid of 'No Child Left Behind'. Yes, let's punish schools for testing poorly, when those schools need MORE help, not less. It's like starving a hungry person, it just doesn't make sense.
4) We need more teachers and smaller class sizes. You can't expect any student to get good grades when the student-teacher ratio is 30+ to 1. The good get worse and the bad don't get the attention they need.
5) REQUIRE better degrees from teachers, but be smart about it. In the State of Washington (and Oregon, I think) teachers are required to get a Masters or equivalent. Why a masters? That seems like overkill. However, they have some of the best schools in the nation and have the top SAT scores year after year. On the other hand, Alabama, Arkansas, etc., don't require a teaching degree at all to be a teacher. They are really dragging down the curve and are a major part of the problem.
To fix education here in the US we would have to completely scrap our current system. The current system is a business. There are huge sums of money being thrown around, and there are plenty of people who want it. Asking how to fix the current system is the same question as asking how we can fix corporate America to start putting the customers before profit. There certainly are ways, but you can forget about it happening. Not enough people really care to make it happen. We have become a orphanage state. Most kids start getting shuttle off to state or semi-private institution between 1 and 3 years old. By the time they are five or six, most of them spend more waking hours under the care of the state than they do their parents. It is not uncommon for half of all meals a kid eats to be supplied by the state. The numbers look even worse if you don't add together the number of hours mom and dad care for their child. Then when the kid is under the parents care, they are supposed to spend a significant portion of that time, doing work that they were instructed to do by the state.
Quite simply, what we call parents, have been relegated to the role that used to be supplied by the absentee divorced father. The state is most kids primary care giver. So, the question becomes, how do you fix a system where 98% of youth are raised in an orphanage?
How did this get modded insightful? This is the type of propaganda that parents who home school throw around from their ivory towers.
To fix education here in the US we would have to completely scrap our current system. The current system is a business. There are huge sums of money being thrown around, and there are plenty of people who want it.
Wait, who's making money? The teachers? Barely. The administrators? Nope. Are the schools filled with top-end equipment and supplies and built to be functional and beautiful? Nope.
The fact is that John Q. Public DOES NOT FUND SCHOOLS. People complain about how the system sucks but won't support bonds to build more schools or replace/remodel existing schools that are so run down that they are a detriment to education. They think teachers get paid way too much and get paid for a 3 month vacation. They think that they should be able to send there kid off to school and they should come home smart without having to do anything.
The reason schools are so screwed up is because the only people who can afford to be teachers are primarily women. This may sound sexist but women can get married, have their husbands make the bulk of the money and teach. No way could I support my family on a teacher salary. The funny thing is I would teach, I would make the sacrifice but I'm not willing to take a 70+% pay cut (yes, that much) to do it. My mother and sister could. Until they increase the pay for teachers to a livable, family supportable income you will continue to get very few men, and maybe, as family budgets get tighter, increasingly fewer women.
I remember back when my dad was going to get a new car (actually a truck) and I asked him what features he was getting on it. You know, a good stereo, a/c, leather seats, power windows. "What do I need those for? I use the car to move me and stuff." While we did get him to settle for a/c he still rolls his own windows and is in cloth seats.
I have the same aversion for SYNC. First off it's features are given to you my other systems, IPods for music, Garmin et al. for GPS navigation, hands free cell phone for calling. The better thing is I can move the Garmin to another car. And yes, I know it's not a phone or an IPod, it just communicates via bluetooth with them but it seems like a lot of money for something I can, and have, already accomplished with my current setup.
Also, as a UI developer I really have to wonder how these are going to look in 3 years+. My old SUV had a HUGE cell phone with hands free. It also had an small antenna on the back. I've never used it since it was outdated when I bought the car used at 4 years old. Unless there's a way to update the system, and there very well might be, it's going to be obsolete fast. And would I need to subscribe to something? I'm getting tired of paying monthly fees for services on things I own.
I didn't go to college to get a well-rounded education based in theory. I went to college to learn something I could apply to a career that would last me 30+ years and make me money. I just happened to enjoy working with computers. I started as a Chemical Engineer, which pays better than CS but I just couldn't do it - it was much too boring.
I would seriously find it hard to believe that any 18 year old is heading to college to do anything other than get an education so they can get a good career. I think most of the men heading to college are more concerned about getting laid and meeting women.
Just to add to your post, at my college Interior Design was referred to as Interior Architecture and was under the School of Architecture. Obviously it had an architecture-heavy curriculum. I think at least the first 2 years follow the same intro courses as architecture.
Muslims believe that one can truly understand the Koran only in the original Arabic; Jews are instructed in Hebrew in their youth; Hindus learn Sanskrit in order to read the Bhagavad Gita and other writings. But among Christians, only scholars and specialists have even the slightest knowledge of the Greek in which the New Testament is written.
Curious . . ..
This is talked about extensively in 'God Is Not Great' by Christopher Hitchens. The plain fact is that those who cannot read the source material cannot form their own opinions about the source material. This keeps the power in the hands of the church.
The reason Islam is the mess that it is is because it depends on the uneducated and typically illiterate masses to do what they are told the Koran says. If someone tells me what the bible says I can go look it up myself and interpret it myself - and I sure as hell don't know Latin or Greek.
I know nothing of The Watchmen, so if I sound a bit harsh I'm completely reacting to the trailer and I am not necessarily talking about the content. I am also looking at this from a layperson's POV. That said, I saw the trailer in the theater with The Dark Knight. Feel free to flame away. Here goes...
It looks too much like the 300-style over-the-top CG action sequences. Remember when one movie did the wire-fu karate stuff first and then the next thousand or so movies did the wire-fu? It got old and derivative fast. The Spirit is suffering from the same 'looks just like Sin City' problem.
The problem is it looks less interesting than 300 did. Is it a superhero movie? It didn't tell me anything or interest me in any way. Aren't trailers supposed to make you want to watch a movie, get you excited about a movie? I didn't get any feeling of excitment, and when it said it wasn't coming out until 2009 I cared even less. And I'll be the first to say that a lot of the costumes/character designs looked like shit. The guy who looks like kinda-sorta like Batman? He looks more like Die Fledermaus from The Tick. The electricity guy looked way too CG, and is this just a Batman ripoff because I think I saw Scarecrow in there. Was the electricity guy killing asians and then lifting some glass thing out of the ground? WTF was that?
On a side note - we need a live-action The Tick movie.
I think my problem with all these comic book movies is that a lot of times there's a lot of assumptions made on the audience. I bet a large majority of people didn't know 300 was a graphic novel before it was a movie, and probably still don't know. To splash something like 'The Watchmen' up on screen and have the majority or people care seems a little presumptuous. That preview was made for the fan, not for the average audience member.
So I quickly watched it again and it was alright. I'm still not sure about how an average audience person might take it.
A game is definitely the way to go. Kids play games on the computer so they naturally know that programming is required to make a game. A Tetris clone made with a simple C library will really start him on the right track. My intro programming class in college (good old CS150) used C - How To Program but I didn't realize how much it cost ($110!). You can get a used earlier edition for cheap or maybe you could find it at a library.
One of my favorite quotes I heard when in college (I know not from whom):
"No one goes into programming with the dream of making the next great spreadsheet. They go in to make the next great game."
There's really no imbalance since you can always roll any of the classes. Flavor of the Month got you down? Roll one.
This won't be any different from the DK. Everyone will be able to roll one. At first I thought it'd at least require you to sacrifice a character you already leveled or do a series of quests but I haven't heard anything more about that in a long time.
The DK class will serve one major purpose and that is as a tank. As anyone who plays WoW knows, there is a massive shortage of viable tanks (prot-spec warriors or tanking druids, with the proper gear). Since most raid spots only need 1 or two tanks, if you still want to be guaranteed a raid spot or be nigh-unkillable in PvP, roll a healer.
I like the way Tycho on Penny-Arcade put it, that standing in Lakeshire makes you wonder why they don't bother making a game out of all the raw material they have in the world.
It might not be the game Tycho wants. They made their game, and while somewhat entertaining it wasn't what I wanted.
And that's the heart of the problem. Some people want crazy continent-wide PvP. Some people just want to explore. Some people want to destroy the largest monsters in the world. Some people want shiny stuff. Some people want to be involved with, or be the focus of, a story. And some people just want to buy/sell/create stuff and never leave town. And everyone wants to do it at varying speeds (the casual vs. hardcore).
You can't please everyone. You can certainly try, but Blizzard has certainly given up in a lot of places. World PvP and crafting are definitely two that come to mind right off the bat. They are going to try for some things in regards to world PvP in WotLK but we'll see how that goes. They tried updates to world PvP in BC as well and that didn't turn out so great. Crafting is more of a money sink than anything else and is considered by many to be one of the worst crafting systems in MMOs. I doubt that will change.
WoW 'unofficially' did this with Blackwing Lair (BWL). Some of the super high-end raiders made it real far when it released and after one of the bosses there was an area that was unnavigable via a 'bugged' door that mysteriously wouldn't open. It was fixed a few weeks later and quickly forgotten.
It could've truly been a bug since BWL wasn't open beta tested before it was released, but they couldn't have found that during closed testing? It was always suspect.
If other game companies had millions in extra money laying around like Blizzard does they could wait forever in releasing their games too. Bottom line is that investors need their profits and want results NOW.
Most big companies can afford to push the release date and sometimes do. Microsoft does although they do it minus quality.
When something's 'out of beta' it's probably not going to get the same attention it had before. If something's still being called beta, someone's actively working on it, and it already kicks ass, then what wouldn't I have to look forward to?
One man's finished product is another man's beta so you can't make assumptions about a product's ass-kicking status once it's 'out of beta'.
It's sometimes ok to not be product complete, WoW certainly wasn't when it launched. But people expect to play the game when they want - that means minimal server downtime and the ability to complete what they set out to do. Other than that, bugs are expected. As long as we don't have to later pay more for what we were supposed to get in the beginning I don't really see a problem. I'll be there on launch day.
The problem with the housing bubble and oil bubble is they aren't the same as the dot-com bubble - normal people are getting hurt. Predatory lenders and real estate agents told people they could afford more than they could and those people have lost real money. Oil is tanking peoples budgets, although the move toward smaller cars and mass transit is nice - i think the net result will be a gain.
The dot-com bubble hurt a lot programmers and IT folks who were making more than they should have on stuff they knew was crap. And VCs will always lose money when they don't do their due diligence, which they didn't do. The thing that tanked the economy at the time wasn't just the dot-coms, it was 9/11 - it just all gets attributed to the dot-coms.
I started at a tech startup about 3 months before 9/11 and our hard times started on that day. VCs disappeared for months and money was very very tight. In the end we made it through without VC funding because we actually made something other than an online dating website and weren't trying to sell pizzas over the web. I'm no millionaire unfortunately but I learned a ton from that experience.
Last time I checked 'Pulp Fiction' and 'Shawshank Redemption' weren't based on video games and I will admit there are always exceptions. You also chose two movies that are considered classics but didn't receive popular praise until later in their runs. 'Shawshank Redemption' barely made a profit in the theaters and while 'Pulp Fiction' made hefty money during its run it was initially very underrated. I know because I am a huge Tarantino fan and was at opening night - with only 20 other people in an entire 350 seat theater. Somewhat anecdotal I know, but it was one of those word-of-mouth, Oscar-contender boosted movies.
You might consider it a stupid generalization however, and since it's the start of Oscar season, you are somewhat right. The ratio is better than I thought it was but for every 'Michael Clayton' or 'The Departed' there's 4 or 5 movies like 'Man of the Year', 'The Marine', 'Marie Antoinette', 'Saw 3', 'Two For The Money', 'The Fog', 'The Legend Of Zorro', "The Heartbreak Kid', or 'The Comebacks'. The funny thing is that 'Marie Antoinette' was supposed to to be an Oscar contender... oops!
They put movies that most likely won't be very popular at this time for a few reasons. First, action/popcorn movies have a chance to make some scratch where they'd otherwise get lost or ignored in the summer. Second, Oscar contenders aren't typically popular movies and need to be released as close to the new year as possible to up their chances for nominations.
I would love for this movie to be good, I thought Max Payne was a great game. The trailer looks good but when they started showing some sort of angels or demons, and one pulling someone from a window I had to worry. That could just be in the context of the drugs (a main theme in the game) but it seemed really out of place.
The preview looks good but if it truly was it would've been out during the summer or during the holidays. I'm sorry for being the bearer of bad news but anything from the second-half of August until early November is going to be mediocre at best. It's just not a time of the year that good movies come out.
I think the best part of 'I, Robot' is that it's an easily digestible chunks that are fully fleshed out mini-stories and flow nicely into a long-term story arc. And yes, if you read the book and then see how the movie throws the 3 laws out the window, you get somewhat disillusioned.
And don't forget 'Bicentennial Man'. Same style and also made into a lackluster movie.
Let me be the first to say that I am not an avid reader and I found Crichton to be excellent. Out of all the posts in this thread you are the only one I saw who had Crichton in the title. I think his sci-fi is very underrated and I've read a lot of his stuff. I think he probably gets a lot of criticism from the hardcore readers for his books turning into such mediocre or bad movies. He's written more than Rowling and seems to have no control over the quality of the adaptations.
I was given Jurassic Park to me (pre-movie thankfully) by my aunt and read it very quickly. This was followed up by Andromeda Strain, Sphere, and Congo. Personally, I think his best is Sphere. I couldn't put that down. I read it when I was 15 and it was easily digestable and could've easily handled it a little earlier.
He also has the ability to help readers move out of sci-fi with medieval/historical stuff like Timeline (science is used as a plot device, not really sci-fi), Eaters of the Dead, and The Great Train Robbery. Also there's the social/political/business issues brought up in Rising Sun and Disclosure, although the adult themes in Disclosure are a little racy.
Slashdot Mirror
You don't know what your talking about K-12 education is the single largest spending line item in the state of California. (I suspect that it is the same in other states) Higher Education is the second largest spending line item. Together they use up over 50% of the entire state's general fund and over 40% of the states total budget. We are talking about 60 BILLION dollars here. That isn't counting all of the money collected through booster clubs and fund raisers. How can you say that no one is making money when there is 60 BILLION spent?
I'm not saying no one is making money, I'm saying that there are expenses in any field. When you have millions of individuals in a system and you need infrastructure to support them you are going to pay for it. I honestly don't think that $10000 per student per year is really that expensive which is about what California is paying. There aren't a lot of complaints in WA or OR when we want to increase the education budget.
Teachers do just fine pay wise. Maybe if YOU could get out our YOUR ivory tower, you might find that not everyone is making $100k to $200k for part time work. Yes, if you are counting yearly salaries, then teachers get a 3 month vacation. If you count hourly pay, they do even better.
Are you seriously trying to tell me that teachers make $100k or more? And we are talking about teachers here right, not professors at colleges? And part time work? Teachers work 8 hours a day, 180 days a year (in WA). A normal year is 250 but they aren't getting any pay for the other 70 days, contrary to popular belief. They get paid during that time but only because their paychecks were garnished during the year to pay them during the summer.
No teacher in Washington or Oregon is making more than 45k per year and that's after 25 years of work. They start out just above the poverty line at 24k per year, and that's after 4 years of college.
There's nothing left to say except you are spouting baseless propaganda against teachers.
Where do YOU think the 60 BILLION goes?
Based on the information here you have about 6.5 million students costing $60 billion. That's about $9200 per student. Figuring a student-teacher ratio of 30:1 that's about $276k per teacher. Ah, but we need buses, administration, bookkeeping, books, and facilities. That all costs money and eats away at the $276k. If spending less was possible then they'd be doing it. $9200 per student per year is a bargain.
Pharmaceuticals that make sure that their products get sold. Pediatricians that make sure their services are used. Restaurants and food service companies that the supply food for the ubiquitous school welfare programs.
Welfare is a different issue, but pharmaceuticals and pediatricians? Oh I get it, you're a conspiracy nutcase.
My wife worked in a lending institution. She has seen literally thousands of W-2s from teachers. They do just fine.
Then she's telling you as much bullshit as you are spouting off here.
1. Make going to school non-compulsory
That's a heaping helping of stupid, with a side of stupid. Let's hamstring smart kids with dumb parents keeping them from their potential. I know everyone thinks that the 40s, 50s, 60s education was so much better but we have a much more educated society than we did back then. I hate to guess at the dropout rate. And if you can truly tell me that not going to school is going to somehow make these kids' lives any better then you are delusional. At the very least they are at school learning something. Discipline is another issue and I think teachers/administrators need more power in that direction.
2. Privatize
Charter schools are doing some good things here, but are somewhat still new. Have to wait to really see how they pan out.
3. Do away with tenure and teachers unions
... Some people didn't know this, but if you've worked in the LAUSD for more than 3 years you cannot be fired for anything short of molesting a child, it's called tenure. Tenure is for, teachers. There is no way you can argue that keeping poor teachers (tenure) or keeping teachers that have broken the rules (teachers unions) somehow helps the kids. With these two "protective" organization are in place it takes an act of god to get rid of poor teachers.
Ugh. Tenure doesn't exist for school teachers. If a teacher doesn't do their job, which is spelled out via SLOs (pre-NCLB, Student Learning Objectives) then they are indeed able to be fired. If you don't expect a union to protect it's members from the government who wants more for less, then you don't know what a union is about. I can't think of a single teacher that I had during my entire public education that was even close to being bad enough to be fired. Some were better than others obviously but those who couldn't survive were weeded out.
There are no teacher's unions in private schools and the level of education you get in a private school by far exceeds that in a public school. Without tenure, without teacher's unions. So at the very least it's proof that excellence does not require tenure or unions.
Hardly proof. Parents are paying a premium to pay teachers more which begets better teachers.
4. Allow parents to take their kids out of failing schools.
I think it's a travesty that the government is going to force parents to place kids into school that they know are going to be a bad influence on the child. Parents should be able to send their child to whatever school that is reasonably in their area. It's so bad that people actually buy houses in order to get their kids sent to a particular school, and I guess for those who can't afford to move or afford a private school... to bad? That's just wrong. If we are going to be forced to pay for schools we should at least be able to select which one we're going to send our kids too, or at least let us get our money back so we can send them to a private school. The only obstacle that stops this 'voucher' system is the teachers unions. I would love to hear how the lack of a voucher system helps kids, because I'm pretty sure it only helps teachers at failing schools.
Nothing to argue with here. This is definitely a must. I'm quoting the entire thing because it is the best thing I've read in this thread.
Not only do they think they should be paid the most, they also believe that they should never be held accountable for anything. Failing school? Not the teachers fault! Failing class? Must be those old text books. Failing teacher? Blasphemy! As soon as someone opposes the teachers unions, they come out with TV and radio ads saying how evil their opponents are for trying to screw the children, literally using the children as a political football.
Someone really hates unions and is using the teachers union as a straw
Abolish Tenure and the Teacher's union.
While I agree with most of the other stuff you said, a union that can barely get cost of living wage increases is not something that you should worry about. We aren't talking Teamsters here. If anything teachers should strike MORE. Then maybe parents would stop seeing schools as a babysitting service and as a way to improve their child's future.
Also, my mother was a teacher and my sister is currently a teacher and I have never, ever, heard of tenure in teaching outside of colleges. In fact, after a certain age teachers are 'encouraged' to retire, no matter how good they are. 'Encouraged' by increasing diminishment of their retirement. Very fair.
To fix education you need to do a couple things:
1) Increase the wage to a family-supportable level. The lack of good teachers is because very few people who are good at something, especially science and math, can't afford to teach instead of work a corporate gig.
2) Give those going into education a way to pay off their student loans in exchange for 10 years of teaching. Why would someone go to college, get $40k+ of student loans and have all that debt until they are 60, just because they are teachers? Once again, why not just go work elsewhere and actually pay off your debt before you die?
3) Get rid of 'No Child Left Behind'. Yes, let's punish schools for testing poorly, when those schools need MORE help, not less. It's like starving a hungry person, it just doesn't make sense.
4) We need more teachers and smaller class sizes. You can't expect any student to get good grades when the student-teacher ratio is 30+ to 1. The good get worse and the bad don't get the attention they need.
5) REQUIRE better degrees from teachers, but be smart about it. In the State of Washington (and Oregon, I think) teachers are required to get a Masters or equivalent. Why a masters? That seems like overkill. However, they have some of the best schools in the nation and have the top SAT scores year after year. On the other hand, Alabama, Arkansas, etc., don't require a teaching degree at all to be a teacher. They are really dragging down the curve and are a major part of the problem.
To fix education here in the US we would have to completely scrap our current system. The current system is a business. There are huge sums of money being thrown around, and there are plenty of people who want it. Asking how to fix the current system is the same question as asking how we can fix corporate America to start putting the customers before profit. There certainly are ways, but you can forget about it happening. Not enough people really care to make it happen. We have become a orphanage state. Most kids start getting shuttle off to state or semi-private institution between 1 and 3 years old. By the time they are five or six, most of them spend more waking hours under the care of the state than they do their parents. It is not uncommon for half of all meals a kid eats to be supplied by the state. The numbers look even worse if you don't add together the number of hours mom and dad care for their child. Then when the kid is under the parents care, they are supposed to spend a significant portion of that time, doing work that they were instructed to do by the state. Quite simply, what we call parents, have been relegated to the role that used to be supplied by the absentee divorced father. The state is most kids primary care giver. So, the question becomes, how do you fix a system where 98% of youth are raised in an orphanage?
How did this get modded insightful? This is the type of propaganda that parents who home school throw around from their ivory towers.
To fix education here in the US we would have to completely scrap our current system. The current system is a business. There are huge sums of money being thrown around, and there are plenty of people who want it.
Wait, who's making money? The teachers? Barely. The administrators? Nope. Are the schools filled with top-end equipment and supplies and built to be functional and beautiful? Nope.
The fact is that John Q. Public DOES NOT FUND SCHOOLS. People complain about how the system sucks but won't support bonds to build more schools or replace/remodel existing schools that are so run down that they are a detriment to education. They think teachers get paid way too much and get paid for a 3 month vacation. They think that they should be able to send there kid off to school and they should come home smart without having to do anything.
The reason schools are so screwed up is because the only people who can afford to be teachers are primarily women. This may sound sexist but women can get married, have their husbands make the bulk of the money and teach. No way could I support my family on a teacher salary. The funny thing is I would teach, I would make the sacrifice but I'm not willing to take a 70+% pay cut (yes, that much) to do it. My mother and sister could. Until they increase the pay for teachers to a livable, family supportable income you will continue to get very few men, and maybe, as family budgets get tighter, increasingly fewer women.
I remember back when my dad was going to get a new car (actually a truck) and I asked him what features he was getting on it. You know, a good stereo, a/c, leather seats, power windows. "What do I need those for? I use the car to move me and stuff." While we did get him to settle for a/c he still rolls his own windows and is in cloth seats.
I have the same aversion for SYNC. First off it's features are given to you my other systems, IPods for music, Garmin et al. for GPS navigation, hands free cell phone for calling. The better thing is I can move the Garmin to another car. And yes, I know it's not a phone or an IPod, it just communicates via bluetooth with them but it seems like a lot of money for something I can, and have, already accomplished with my current setup.
Also, as a UI developer I really have to wonder how these are going to look in 3 years+. My old SUV had a HUGE cell phone with hands free. It also had an small antenna on the back. I've never used it since it was outdated when I bought the car used at 4 years old. Unless there's a way to update the system, and there very well might be, it's going to be obsolete fast. And would I need to subscribe to something? I'm getting tired of paying monthly fees for services on things I own.
I didn't go to college to get a well-rounded education based in theory. I went to college to learn something I could apply to a career that would last me 30+ years and make me money. I just happened to enjoy working with computers. I started as a Chemical Engineer, which pays better than CS but I just couldn't do it - it was much too boring.
I would seriously find it hard to believe that any 18 year old is heading to college to do anything other than get an education so they can get a good career. I think most of the men heading to college are more concerned about getting laid and meeting women.
Just to add to your post, at my college Interior Design was referred to as Interior Architecture and was under the School of Architecture. Obviously it had an architecture-heavy curriculum. I think at least the first 2 years follow the same intro courses as architecture.
Video capture of gameplay for the sake of the gameplay is about as creative as live capture of a sports event for the sake of the sports event.
So they need a disclaimer at the end of video games. This one in WoW's case:
"Rebroadcasting, or any other pictures, descriptions, or accounts of the game, without Blizzard's express written consent, is strictly prohibited."
Cue "First they came for the jews" letter.
A video game thread that wasn't about Wolfenstien just got Godwin'd...
Muslims believe that one can truly understand the Koran only in the original Arabic; Jews are instructed in Hebrew in their youth; Hindus learn Sanskrit in order to read the Bhagavad Gita and other writings. But among Christians, only scholars and specialists have even the slightest knowledge of the Greek in which the New Testament is written.
Curious . . . .
This is talked about extensively in 'God Is Not Great' by Christopher Hitchens. The plain fact is that those who cannot read the source material cannot form their own opinions about the source material. This keeps the power in the hands of the church.
The reason Islam is the mess that it is is because it depends on the uneducated and typically illiterate masses to do what they are told the Koran says. If someone tells me what the bible says I can go look it up myself and interpret it myself - and I sure as hell don't know Latin or Greek.
I know nothing of The Watchmen, so if I sound a bit harsh I'm completely reacting to the trailer and I am not necessarily talking about the content. I am also looking at this from a layperson's POV. That said, I saw the trailer in the theater with The Dark Knight. Feel free to flame away. Here goes...
It looks too much like the 300-style over-the-top CG action sequences. Remember when one movie did the wire-fu karate stuff first and then the next thousand or so movies did the wire-fu? It got old and derivative fast. The Spirit is suffering from the same 'looks just like Sin City' problem.
The problem is it looks less interesting than 300 did. Is it a superhero movie? It didn't tell me anything or interest me in any way. Aren't trailers supposed to make you want to watch a movie, get you excited about a movie? I didn't get any feeling of excitment, and when it said it wasn't coming out until 2009 I cared even less. And I'll be the first to say that a lot of the costumes/character designs looked like shit. The guy who looks like kinda-sorta like Batman? He looks more like Die Fledermaus from The Tick. The electricity guy looked way too CG, and is this just a Batman ripoff because I think I saw Scarecrow in there. Was the electricity guy killing asians and then lifting some glass thing out of the ground? WTF was that?
On a side note - we need a live-action The Tick movie.
I think my problem with all these comic book movies is that a lot of times there's a lot of assumptions made on the audience. I bet a large majority of people didn't know 300 was a graphic novel before it was a movie, and probably still don't know. To splash something like 'The Watchmen' up on screen and have the majority or people care seems a little presumptuous. That preview was made for the fan, not for the average audience member.
So I quickly watched it again and it was alright. I'm still not sure about how an average audience person might take it.
A game is definitely the way to go. Kids play games on the computer so they naturally know that programming is required to make a game. A Tetris clone made with a simple C library will really start him on the right track. My intro programming class in college (good old CS150) used C - How To Program but I didn't realize how much it cost ($110!). You can get a used earlier edition for cheap or maybe you could find it at a library.
One of my favorite quotes I heard when in college (I know not from whom):
"No one goes into programming with the dream of making the next great spreadsheet. They go in to make the next great game."
There's really no imbalance since you can always roll any of the classes. Flavor of the Month got you down? Roll one.
This won't be any different from the DK. Everyone will be able to roll one. At first I thought it'd at least require you to sacrifice a character you already leveled or do a series of quests but I haven't heard anything more about that in a long time.
The DK class will serve one major purpose and that is as a tank. As anyone who plays WoW knows, there is a massive shortage of viable tanks (prot-spec warriors or tanking druids, with the proper gear). Since most raid spots only need 1 or two tanks, if you still want to be guaranteed a raid spot or be nigh-unkillable in PvP, roll a healer.
I like the way Tycho on Penny-Arcade put it, that standing in Lakeshire makes you wonder why they don't bother making a game out of all the raw material they have in the world.
It might not be the game Tycho wants. They made their game, and while somewhat entertaining it wasn't what I wanted.
And that's the heart of the problem. Some people want crazy continent-wide PvP. Some people just want to explore. Some people want to destroy the largest monsters in the world. Some people want shiny stuff. Some people want to be involved with, or be the focus of, a story. And some people just want to buy/sell/create stuff and never leave town. And everyone wants to do it at varying speeds (the casual vs. hardcore).
You can't please everyone. You can certainly try, but Blizzard has certainly given up in a lot of places. World PvP and crafting are definitely two that come to mind right off the bat. They are going to try for some things in regards to world PvP in WotLK but we'll see how that goes. They tried updates to world PvP in BC as well and that didn't turn out so great. Crafting is more of a money sink than anything else and is considered by many to be one of the worst crafting systems in MMOs. I doubt that will change.
WoW 'unofficially' did this with Blackwing Lair (BWL). Some of the super high-end raiders made it real far when it released and after one of the bosses there was an area that was unnavigable via a 'bugged' door that mysteriously wouldn't open. It was fixed a few weeks later and quickly forgotten.
It could've truly been a bug since BWL wasn't open beta tested before it was released, but they couldn't have found that during closed testing? It was always suspect.
If other game companies had millions in extra money laying around like Blizzard does they could wait forever in releasing their games too. Bottom line is that investors need their profits and want results NOW.
Most big companies can afford to push the release date and sometimes do. Microsoft does although they do it minus quality.
When something's 'out of beta' it's probably not going to get the same attention it had before. If something's still being called beta, someone's actively working on it, and it already kicks ass, then what wouldn't I have to look forward to?
One man's finished product is another man's beta so you can't make assumptions about a product's ass-kicking status once it's 'out of beta'.
It's sometimes ok to not be product complete, WoW certainly wasn't when it launched. But people expect to play the game when they want - that means minimal server downtime and the ability to complete what they set out to do. Other than that, bugs are expected. As long as we don't have to later pay more for what we were supposed to get in the beginning I don't really see a problem. I'll be there on launch day.
And WoW has been so successful because they had all that casual content and raiding content in at launch, AMIRITE?
The problem with the housing bubble and oil bubble is they aren't the same as the dot-com bubble - normal people are getting hurt. Predatory lenders and real estate agents told people they could afford more than they could and those people have lost real money. Oil is tanking peoples budgets, although the move toward smaller cars and mass transit is nice - i think the net result will be a gain.
The dot-com bubble hurt a lot programmers and IT folks who were making more than they should have on stuff they knew was crap. And VCs will always lose money when they don't do their due diligence, which they didn't do. The thing that tanked the economy at the time wasn't just the dot-coms, it was 9/11 - it just all gets attributed to the dot-coms.
I started at a tech startup about 3 months before 9/11 and our hard times started on that day. VCs disappeared for months and money was very very tight. In the end we made it through without VC funding because we actually made something other than an online dating website and weren't trying to sell pizzas over the web. I'm no millionaire unfortunately but I learned a ton from that experience.
Last time I checked 'Pulp Fiction' and 'Shawshank Redemption' weren't based on video games and I will admit there are always exceptions. You also chose two movies that are considered classics but didn't receive popular praise until later in their runs. 'Shawshank Redemption' barely made a profit in the theaters and while 'Pulp Fiction' made hefty money during its run it was initially very underrated. I know because I am a huge Tarantino fan and was at opening night - with only 20 other people in an entire 350 seat theater. Somewhat anecdotal I know, but it was one of those word-of-mouth, Oscar-contender boosted movies.
You might consider it a stupid generalization however, and since it's the start of Oscar season, you are somewhat right. The ratio is better than I thought it was but for every 'Michael Clayton' or 'The Departed' there's 4 or 5 movies like 'Man of the Year', 'The Marine', 'Marie Antoinette', 'Saw 3', 'Two For The Money', 'The Fog', 'The Legend Of Zorro', "The Heartbreak Kid', or 'The Comebacks'. The funny thing is that 'Marie Antoinette' was supposed to to be an Oscar contender... oops!
They put movies that most likely won't be very popular at this time for a few reasons. First, action/popcorn movies have a chance to make some scratch where they'd otherwise get lost or ignored in the summer. Second, Oscar contenders aren't typically popular movies and need to be released as close to the new year as possible to up their chances for nominations.
I would love for this movie to be good, I thought Max Payne was a great game. The trailer looks good but when they started showing some sort of angels or demons, and one pulling someone from a window I had to worry. That could just be in the context of the drugs (a main theme in the game) but it seemed really out of place.
The preview looks good but if it truly was it would've been out during the summer or during the holidays. I'm sorry for being the bearer of bad news but anything from the second-half of August until early November is going to be mediocre at best. It's just not a time of the year that good movies come out.
One example (of many): Doom came out in October.
I think the best part of 'I, Robot' is that it's an easily digestible chunks that are fully fleshed out mini-stories and flow nicely into a long-term story arc. And yes, if you read the book and then see how the movie throws the 3 laws out the window, you get somewhat disillusioned.
And don't forget 'Bicentennial Man'. Same style and also made into a lackluster movie.
Let me be the first to say that I am not an avid reader and I found Crichton to be excellent. Out of all the posts in this thread you are the only one I saw who had Crichton in the title. I think his sci-fi is very underrated and I've read a lot of his stuff. I think he probably gets a lot of criticism from the hardcore readers for his books turning into such mediocre or bad movies. He's written more than Rowling and seems to have no control over the quality of the adaptations.
I was given Jurassic Park to me (pre-movie thankfully) by my aunt and read it very quickly. This was followed up by Andromeda Strain, Sphere, and Congo. Personally, I think his best is Sphere. I couldn't put that down. I read it when I was 15 and it was easily digestable and could've easily handled it a little earlier.
He also has the ability to help readers move out of sci-fi with medieval/historical stuff like Timeline (science is used as a plot device, not really sci-fi), Eaters of the Dead, and The Great Train Robbery. Also there's the social/political/business issues brought up in Rising Sun and Disclosure, although the adult themes in Disclosure are a little racy.