What annoys me as a liberal though is that we're supposedly hypocrits for saying Obama shouldn't be compared to Nazi Germany while some liberals compared Bush to Hitler.
In defense of the liberals who called Bush Hitler: When liberals called Bush Hitler they did it because he pushed for laws which let the government detail indefinitely those deemed 'dangerous to the state', to secretly arrest persons of interest and hold them overseas in black site prisons run by the CIA, to tap our phones, to lie their way into wars of choice and to run a prison holding hundreds of suspected militants without legal representation just outside of US territorial waters. That's some pretty scary fucked up shit.
What's gotten the Tea Party all Nazi up on Obama's Ass? Buying a car company temporarily, extending health insurance, increasing the minimum wage and returning tax levels to pay for a war to pre 2002 levels.
OH MY GOD RUN FOR THE HILLS!
Look Tea Party Hitler Youth. The reason we get pissed off by your Hitler antics is because you ignore and support absurdly dangerous government actions like the patriot act while choosing something like feeding starving children as proof of Evil Nazi intentions.
"I saw Obama help a sick child. That's the sort of thing Hitler would do."
It's completely absurd! If you're going to throw around charges of Nazism at least for God's sake find something nefarious to be the rationale.
What Anonymous didn't mention was that their entire plan was nothing more than to create a press release in order to unleash the largest botnet on earth: Slashdot.
I reject your assertion that Engineers are more likely to be like this. I've found it true of most professional classes.
I've yet to meet a doctor who doesn't seem to fancy them self a professional economist. It goes along with years of education and training. Once you've studied very hard at one small specialty there is a temptation to think that your above average education has granted you the magical powers to know everything else about everything else along with it.
There are lots of arrogant dullards but for those with a well respected highly technical intellectual background it's easy to feel as if your arrogance is justified and warranted since often it is. On the flip side you get the stupid Slashdot questions like "yeah but how do the researchers know that..." when the researchers of course addressed those very questions.
If they can fit twice as much product onto 1" square for the same price then you get an effective decrease in cost.
The incremental costs of memory are somewhat linear. If size was of no concern then they could sell a 10TB drive for the same price if they just put more spindles into one drive. The cost is per spindle. So yes they could sell you a 10TB drive instead of a 1TB drive that was 10x as large physically, but it's going to cost 10x as much.
Re:why not capture the 14 bit/channel of 1 sensor?
on
HDR Video a Reality
·
· Score: 1
14 bits is 14 stops linearly encoded. 14 stops of Dynamic Range isn't considered HDR.
You can do the same thing to Low Dynamic Range Images, and they'll look just as unreal. Similarly you can take a 18 stop HDR image and apply normal image processing techniques and get realistic looking images.
The *only* defining aspect of HDR images is the large amount of dynamic range they contain. The fact that people abuse that dynamic range is an aesthetic one completely separate of HDR.
It's like saying that Photoshop makes images look fake. *Photoshop* doesn't make images look fake, bad artists make images look fake. You don't have to apply a stock lens flare to your family photo. It won't be too long before all cameras just shoot HDR. The largest application then will be to adjust the exposure at home without worrying about under or over exposing that shot of your friends on the beach.
Well first of all these are 14 year olds not college students.
Secondly design docs might be boring but that's why you don't tell them they're writing design docs. They're just writing instructions for their classmates to follow. Maybe it's a Lego set. Maybe it's your favorite soup. Maybe it's a puzzle. Whatever it is, it just has to be specific (to the point of silliness) and complete.
These are also I assume students who have had no computer science experience. Dropping them straight into coding would be like dropping them into the ocean. Starting them with writing "instructions" is simpler. They can think extremely literally while not writing in a language they already can speak and write: English.
Software often is bloated and inefficient because it has poor design docs. People just start writing features instead of figuring out how the program works. Any trained code monkey can write a standard application. The real magic happens in the concept and functionality specifications. Very few applications invent some new process or algorithm.
Considering very few of the students will ever actually go into Computer Science I think it would be prudent to teach them more generic skills which will actually be valuable wherever they end up. Creating a new process or solution and then presenting it to other people to implement is an important skill that all jobs require. If you have an idea you have to be able to communicate it to your teammates or coworkers.
The claim that the US process cost 10x as much I imagine has more to do with the fact that the Census is a labor intensive process. So intensive that it altered our unemployment rates briefly.
So yes the cost per person was about 10x higher in the US but the cost per hour for a census employee was probably considerably higher as well.
The Brazilian Census cost about $1B USD. Of that only $75M was for their hardware. So in neither scenario was hardware cost significant. I doubt we spent $13B more than the Brazilians on developing custom hardware that we didn't use--so it's bad journalism and misleading reporting to suggest in the same sentence that our solution to develop custom hardware was an example of US waste.
Furthermore if we have 30% more people in the US that means we would need 320,000 census devices. That's not a bad run of a product and I would say safely warrants custom hardware. Especially if you could create a far less expensive device. slow RISC Processor + Basic software + Broad-com chip w/ AGPS should be less than $100 to make. This is the census we're talking about. 7 questions. You don't need anything more than a TI-83, GPS and an 3G antenna to make that an effective product. I would be surprised if you couldn't make something which uses less than $20 in wholesale components.
Because I often have multiple pieces of content playing at once. Widescreen (like a book) provides the best format for presenting multiple lists concurrently.
Does Johnny Loves Linux kill puppies on the weekend? Does he have warrants for his arrest in 13 states and was he once suspected of murdering a homeless man in San Francisco? If the answer is yes then do you still believe he's a good person or a psychopath who should be locked up.
I would say though that beyond interacting as a team and other language skills I would actually add at least a small section on properly writing a design spec.
The future of outsourced IT even is be able to clearly deliver your creative vision to a team of developers who might not be on your continent. A clearly written design doc is like a form of programming except that it is written in plain English. Yes it's less clear than something like C++ but it also approachable. Let the Chinese worry about performance and memory leaks at $0.50 an hour. 99% of code isn't groundbreaking innovation in algorithm design it's just competently executing a design doc.
I'm not a full time programmer but it seems like offloading all of the menial development and bug bashing after the architecture is designed would be desirable. If I had a magic compiler which took some outlined code and a design doc and made a program I would think it was the greatest invention in computer science since the transistor--and yet we kind of have that in outsourced inexpensive development companies.
As the students learn to write design docs the teacher should be competent in programming and always challenge the students to not have any 'holes' in their design that would be ambiguous and perhaps result in an undesirable solution. Just like code had compile errors, the teacher's role would be to 'compile' the design docs and report incomplete logic.
You could do this completely outside of the specifications for IT. Maybe they aren't interested in computers yet. So write up design docs for ANYTHING. Play the Amelia Bedelia and tell fellow students to take everything incredibly literally--and try to follow their classmates' instructions without any intervention. See if they can get a classmate to recreate something using only their design doc. This would be entertaining and educational. And tell them they have to be specific. If they don't say to use scissors then don't proceed with the step that involves cutting. Very quickly the students will see where their peers are failing (and where they fail on other people's design docs) and get into the spirit of things.
Also important in an IT program would be Troubleshooting. How many times do we have a family or friend call us and go "My such and such doesn't work. Do you know how to fix it?" The answer is almost always the same "No but...". People rarely know the answer to a problem. A mechanic often doesn't know what's wrong until they've gone through a process of elimination.
There should be course material in playing 20 Questions. Where you use logic to whittle down a problem to a likely solution. Try it and then go back to the beginning. Again this isn't limited to IT or computers. Diagnostic problem solving is critical to every area of learning. It could be the most important skill a student learns period. It's the fundamental process of problem solving. Maybe have each student learn about two or three subject and then as a team of 4 give them a 'mystery' to solve. As a team they should work together to use their combined knowledge to solve the mystery. "Maybe it's a cougar." "No the cougar doesn't live in South America. Which of our animals live in South America?"
It would teach diagnostic troubleshooting and team work simultaneously.
Lastly I think we start teaching formal logic far too late in life. An introductory programming class is a good way to condition pure logic but other classes should get in on the act. Essentially logic is the formalized science of minimizing hypocrisy. Teachers should put a strong emphasis on encouraging students to formulate ideas that aren't self contradictory.
So what you're saying is that GRUB is a virus? It's writing there in an undocumented fashion as well.
They're all exploiting a no-rules no man's land. Without any regulation or standard you should assume there will inevitably be conflicts and collisions.
There isn't a conspiracy here. People ARE vandalizing the Google posting. And they've also vandalized the FDR Memorial posting as well (Who knew FDR's memorial was a bridge?):D
Before the night is out I'm sure the Lincoln Memorial will be in Washington State and the White House will be in Manhattan.
he said no such thing. He said they were using power point incorrectly.
Ummmm No I have to go with the parent on this one. He practically says the words "part of a worthless organization".
More likely it was founded to provide some general a three-star command. Starting with a small group of dedicated and intelligent officers, IJC has successfully grown into a stove-piped and bloated organization, top-heavy in rank.
Next month IJC will attempt a giant leap for mankind. In a first-of-its-kind effort, IJC will embed a new stovepipe into an already existing stovepipe. The rationale for this bold move resides in the fact that an officer, who is currently without one, needs a staff of 35 people to create a big splash before his promotion board.
So in other words the whole operation is just to pad resumes but serve no purpose. That is my definition of a "worthless organization".
MPEG-LA has been very clear publicly in an official capacity on numerous occasions that only charging *for the viewing of the video* constitutes a commercial broadcast.
As long as the customer doesn't "pay per view" you are in the clear. Ad supported... whatever. All fine.
1) We don't need that many developers. We need good developers. 2) It's really not that hard to get a CC so any serious developer will be able to still join.
Yes we might lose that shinning new star from Zimbabwe who was going to create an amazing new ad blocker--but in all likelihood we'll get an identical one out of someone from Canada anyway.
I was on a antidepressant for a few months and they told me that the medication I was put on was also used for treating people with alcoholism and substance abuse so I think it's a little bit more specific than depression inspired addiction but it actually minimizes physiologically the impact of withdrawal.
Except that teaching is an exceptional area of employment in the public sector:
1) Their pay isn't determined by profit. The entire endeavor is a "loss" in that it's payed for out of taxes. 2) They don't have other areas for employment. Unlike my job where I can just change companies if I don't agree with the management or feel underpayed-- your only other options for most teachers is the same system you were fired from or want to quit. 3) The schools can't choose who they accept and attendance is compulsory so you get an entire cross section of the population. 4) A higher performing teacher doesn't improve the income of the school district. Rewarding a well performing teacher comes at the cost of other areas. Unlike a business where a higher performing employee creates additional wealth in the company. 5) Nobody can seem to agree on what a "good teacher" is since it varies from student to student. It seemed in school that my favorite teachers were loathed by most kids. The teachers I couldn't stand were loved by many others. If you use empirical metrics then you get into "teaching the test". I would prefer my hypothetical children were taught more useful things than exactly what year Columbus landed in the West Indies. I was in advanced placement college level math in highschool--and I failed miserably on the highschool freshman level standardized math test (along with most of the AP math students) because it was focused on things we had learned and forgotten years ago such as how to do long division on decimals by hand.
Education is far too complex in my opinion to summarize in a number whether that's GPA or teacher performance. One of the few numbers which actually is indicative of success in live is the Creativity Quotient test. But that test can't be performed with a bunch of bubbles. We need to be teaching problem solving not solutions. And punishing and rewarding educators based on how well children memorize solutions is just going to further erode our educational system, not improve it.
I haven't found teachers as a professional demographic to be any more or less varried in their talent. Are there bad teachers? Yes. But compared to the professionals in my field that I encounter I tended to find a much higher percentage of competent and good teachers than I have fellow private sector employees in my area of expertise.
No field is full of superstars. There are going to be superstar teachers. But we shouldn't expect all of them to be the best. Especially since they are payed less than a McDonalds manager. I reject this notion that teachers (because of union protection) have somehow developed into a below average competency are of employment. That wasn't my experience meeting with teacher nor as a student.
As a product of both private and public education I can also say that the differences between the two levels of competency was non-existent. But speaking as someone who has seen first hand from family members who are teachers what the political environment for educators is like--I think they need a union. The level of politics, backstabbing and mismanagement that goes on at the administrative level at private and public schools makes actual politics look like a civil dinner party. The more insulated they can be from all that in order to do their jobs in educating the better.
Jesus, taking the family out to porn just isn't the same as it used to be.
Got to pay for parking $10, 2x Adult tickets at $25 and 2x Kids $15 tickets + $5 x 4 for 3D! Then the wife and kids are going to want popcorn and candy. That's another $40.
What started as just a nice night out to watch some porn with the family ends up costing $150. No wonder the theatrical porn industry is dieing. Who has that kind of money?
By exposing how one has acted and reacted in the past, it makes it easier for one to predict how one will act and react in the future. Also, it may be transparent to one who is not in the middle of the conflict as to how certain information can expose tactics, capabilities, and sensitive information. You ask for a specific example. I'd love to give you a specific example, but I think it's enough to state that the kind of information that wikileaks is getting a hold of is the kind of documentation spys were trying to obtain in the past.
Slashdot Mirror
What annoys me as a liberal though is that we're supposedly hypocrits for saying Obama shouldn't be compared to Nazi Germany while some liberals compared Bush to Hitler.
In defense of the liberals who called Bush Hitler: When liberals called Bush Hitler they did it because he pushed for laws which let the government detail indefinitely those deemed 'dangerous to the state', to secretly arrest persons of interest and hold them overseas in black site prisons run by the CIA, to tap our phones, to lie their way into wars of choice and to run a prison holding hundreds of suspected militants without legal representation just outside of US territorial waters. That's some pretty scary fucked up shit.
What's gotten the Tea Party all Nazi up on Obama's Ass? Buying a car company temporarily, extending health insurance, increasing the minimum wage and returning tax levels to pay for a war to pre 2002 levels.
OH MY GOD RUN FOR THE HILLS!
Look Tea Party Hitler Youth. The reason we get pissed off by your Hitler antics is because you ignore and support absurdly dangerous government actions like the patriot act while choosing something like feeding starving children as proof of Evil Nazi intentions.
"I saw Obama help a sick child. That's the sort of thing Hitler would do."
It's completely absurd! If you're going to throw around charges of Nazism at least for God's sake find something nefarious to be the rationale.
What Anonymous didn't mention was that their entire plan was nothing more than to create a press release in order to unleash the largest botnet on earth: Slashdot.
I reject your assertion that Engineers are more likely to be like this. I've found it true of most professional classes.
I've yet to meet a doctor who doesn't seem to fancy them self a professional economist. It goes along with years of education and training. Once you've studied very hard at one small specialty there is a temptation to think that your above average education has granted you the magical powers to know everything else about everything else along with it.
There are lots of arrogant dullards but for those with a well respected highly technical intellectual background it's easy to feel as if your arrogance is justified and warranted since often it is. On the flip side you get the stupid Slashdot questions like "yeah but how do the researchers know that..." when the researchers of course addressed those very questions.
Size to a large extent is the cost.
If they can fit twice as much product onto 1" square for the same price then you get an effective decrease in cost.
The incremental costs of memory are somewhat linear. If size was of no concern then they could sell a 10TB drive for the same price if they just put more spindles into one drive. The cost is per spindle. So yes they could sell you a 10TB drive instead of a 1TB drive that was 10x as large physically, but it's going to cost 10x as much.
14 bits is 14 stops linearly encoded. 14 stops of Dynamic Range isn't considered HDR.
"HDR" images don't look unreal. Tonemapped HDR images look unreal.
You can do the same thing to Low Dynamic Range Images, and they'll look just as unreal. Similarly you can take a 18 stop HDR image and apply normal image processing techniques and get realistic looking images.
The *only* defining aspect of HDR images is the large amount of dynamic range they contain. The fact that people abuse that dynamic range is an aesthetic one completely separate of HDR.
It's like saying that Photoshop makes images look fake. *Photoshop* doesn't make images look fake, bad artists make images look fake. You don't have to apply a stock lens flare to your family photo. It won't be too long before all cameras just shoot HDR. The largest application then will be to adjust the exposure at home without worrying about under or over exposing that shot of your friends on the beach.
Well first of all these are 14 year olds not college students.
Secondly design docs might be boring but that's why you don't tell them they're writing design docs. They're just writing instructions for their classmates to follow. Maybe it's a Lego set. Maybe it's your favorite soup. Maybe it's a puzzle. Whatever it is, it just has to be specific (to the point of silliness) and complete.
These are also I assume students who have had no computer science experience. Dropping them straight into coding would be like dropping them into the ocean. Starting them with writing "instructions" is simpler. They can think extremely literally while not writing in a language they already can speak and write: English.
Software often is bloated and inefficient because it has poor design docs. People just start writing features instead of figuring out how the program works. Any trained code monkey can write a standard application. The real magic happens in the concept and functionality specifications. Very few applications invent some new process or algorithm.
Considering very few of the students will ever actually go into Computer Science I think it would be prudent to teach them more generic skills which will actually be valuable wherever they end up. Creating a new process or solution and then presenting it to other people to implement is an important skill that all jobs require. If you have an idea you have to be able to communicate it to your teammates or coworkers.
The claim that the US process cost 10x as much I imagine has more to do with the fact that the Census is a labor intensive process. So intensive that it altered our unemployment rates briefly.
So yes the cost per person was about 10x higher in the US but the cost per hour for a census employee was probably considerably higher as well.
The Brazilian Census cost about $1B USD. Of that only $75M was for their hardware. So in neither scenario was hardware cost significant. I doubt we spent $13B more than the Brazilians on developing custom hardware that we didn't use--so it's bad journalism and misleading reporting to suggest in the same sentence that our solution to develop custom hardware was an example of US waste.
Furthermore if we have 30% more people in the US that means we would need 320,000 census devices. That's not a bad run of a product and I would say safely warrants custom hardware. Especially if you could create a far less expensive device. slow RISC Processor + Basic software + Broad-com chip w/ AGPS should be less than $100 to make. This is the census we're talking about. 7 questions. You don't need anything more than a TI-83, GPS and an 3G antenna to make that an effective product. I would be surprised if you couldn't make something which uses less than $20 in wholesale components.
Because I often have multiple pieces of content playing at once. Widescreen (like a book) provides the best format for presenting multiple lists concurrently.
Does Johnny Loves Linux kill puppies on the weekend? Does he have warrants for his arrest in 13 states and was he once suspected of murdering a homeless man in San Francisco? If the answer is yes then do you still believe he's a good person or a psychopath who should be locked up.
I would say though that beyond interacting as a team and other language skills I would actually add at least a small section on properly writing a design spec.
The future of outsourced IT even is be able to clearly deliver your creative vision to a team of developers who might not be on your continent. A clearly written design doc is like a form of programming except that it is written in plain English. Yes it's less clear than something like C++ but it also approachable. Let the Chinese worry about performance and memory leaks at $0.50 an hour. 99% of code isn't groundbreaking innovation in algorithm design it's just competently executing a design doc.
I'm not a full time programmer but it seems like offloading all of the menial development and bug bashing after the architecture is designed would be desirable. If I had a magic compiler which took some outlined code and a design doc and made a program I would think it was the greatest invention in computer science since the transistor--and yet we kind of have that in outsourced inexpensive development companies.
As the students learn to write design docs the teacher should be competent in programming and always challenge the students to not have any 'holes' in their design that would be ambiguous and perhaps result in an undesirable solution. Just like code had compile errors, the teacher's role would be to 'compile' the design docs and report incomplete logic.
You could do this completely outside of the specifications for IT. Maybe they aren't interested in computers yet. So write up design docs for ANYTHING. Play the Amelia Bedelia and tell fellow students to take everything incredibly literally--and try to follow their classmates' instructions without any intervention. See if they can get a classmate to recreate something using only their design doc. This would be entertaining and educational. And tell them they have to be specific. If they don't say to use scissors then don't proceed with the step that involves cutting. Very quickly the students will see where their peers are failing (and where they fail on other people's design docs) and get into the spirit of things.
Also important in an IT program would be Troubleshooting. How many times do we have a family or friend call us and go "My such and such doesn't work. Do you know how to fix it?" The answer is almost always the same "No but...". People rarely know the answer to a problem. A mechanic often doesn't know what's wrong until they've gone through a process of elimination.
There should be course material in playing 20 Questions. Where you use logic to whittle down a problem to a likely solution. Try it and then go back to the beginning. Again this isn't limited to IT or computers. Diagnostic problem solving is critical to every area of learning. It could be the most important skill a student learns period. It's the fundamental process of problem solving. Maybe have each student learn about two or three subject and then as a team of 4 give them a 'mystery' to solve. As a team they should work together to use their combined knowledge to solve the mystery. "Maybe it's a cougar." "No the cougar doesn't live in South America. Which of our animals live in South America?"
It would teach diagnostic troubleshooting and team work simultaneously.
Lastly I think we start teaching formal logic far too late in life. An introductory programming class is a good way to condition pure logic but other classes should get in on the act. Essentially logic is the formalized science of minimizing hypocrisy. Teachers should put a strong emphasis on encouraging students to formulate ideas that aren't self contradictory.
So what you're saying is that GRUB is a virus? It's writing there in an undocumented fashion as well.
They're all exploiting a no-rules no man's land. Without any regulation or standard you should assume there will inevitably be conflicts and collisions.
There isn't a conspiracy here. People ARE vandalizing the Google posting. And they've also vandalized the FDR Memorial posting as well (Who knew FDR's memorial was a bridge?) :D
Before the night is out I'm sure the Lincoln Memorial will be in Washington State and the White House will be in Manhattan.
No neither Wolf Blitzer nor Chris Matthews are "mainstream" news.
NBC Nightly News would be considered "mainstream" and it receives 10m viewers (3x as many).
I would say the "Mainstream Media" is:
NBC Nightly News, NPR, BBC World Service, US News and World Report, Newsweek and The New York Times.
Interestingly enough since I started reading this story it seems to have been corrected. Then I searched for "FDR memorial" and it moved to bridge.
I searched for "Franklin Delano Roosevelt Memorial" and it then found it. Now when I search for FDR Memorial it is also in the correct spot.
Either Google search in the area is buggered or there is a war afoot. :D
Just watch out for the Super Mutants. They like to hang out in that area. And be careful in the metro. Raiders are abundant.
he said no such thing. He said they were using power point incorrectly.
Ummmm No I have to go with the parent on this one. He practically says the words "part of a worthless organization".
More likely it was founded to provide some general a three-star command. Starting with a small group of dedicated and intelligent officers, IJC has successfully grown into a stove-piped and bloated organization, top-heavy in rank.
Next month IJC will attempt a giant leap for mankind. In a first-of-its-kind effort, IJC will embed a new stovepipe into an already existing stovepipe. The rationale for this bold move resides in the fact that an officer, who is currently without one, needs a staff of 35 people to create a big splash before his promotion board.
So in other words the whole operation is just to pad resumes but serve no purpose. That is my definition of a "worthless organization".
MPEG-LA has been very clear publicly in an official capacity on numerous occasions that only charging *for the viewing of the video* constitutes a commercial broadcast.
As long as the customer doesn't "pay per view" you are in the clear. Ad supported... whatever. All fine.
I really hope that this was a 2 part project. Where you have to also come up with a cost effective way at avoiding such attacks.
The headline would have read:
"Teacher Suspended after entire class fails assignment."
I can't decide. I'm a swing voter and the deadline to make a decision hasn't come and gone yet.
Let's be honest.
1) We don't need that many developers. We need good developers.
2) It's really not that hard to get a CC so any serious developer will be able to still join.
Yes we might lose that shinning new star from Zimbabwe who was going to create an amazing new ad blocker--but in all likelihood we'll get an identical one out of someone from Canada anyway.
I was on a antidepressant for a few months and they told me that the medication I was put on was also used for treating people with alcoholism and substance abuse so I think it's a little bit more specific than depression inspired addiction but it actually minimizes physiologically the impact of withdrawal.
Except that teaching is an exceptional area of employment in the public sector:
1) Their pay isn't determined by profit. The entire endeavor is a "loss" in that it's payed for out of taxes.
2) They don't have other areas for employment. Unlike my job where I can just change companies if I don't agree with the management or feel underpayed-- your only other options for most teachers is the same system you were fired from or want to quit.
3) The schools can't choose who they accept and attendance is compulsory so you get an entire cross section of the population.
4) A higher performing teacher doesn't improve the income of the school district. Rewarding a well performing teacher comes at the cost of other areas. Unlike a business where a higher performing employee creates additional wealth in the company.
5) Nobody can seem to agree on what a "good teacher" is since it varies from student to student. It seemed in school that my favorite teachers were loathed by most kids. The teachers I couldn't stand were loved by many others. If you use empirical metrics then you get into "teaching the test". I would prefer my hypothetical children were taught more useful things than exactly what year Columbus landed in the West Indies. I was in advanced placement college level math in highschool--and I failed miserably on the highschool freshman level standardized math test (along with most of the AP math students) because it was focused on things we had learned and forgotten years ago such as how to do long division on decimals by hand.
Education is far too complex in my opinion to summarize in a number whether that's GPA or teacher performance. One of the few numbers which actually is indicative of success in live is the Creativity Quotient test. But that test can't be performed with a bunch of bubbles. We need to be teaching problem solving not solutions. And punishing and rewarding educators based on how well children memorize solutions is just going to further erode our educational system, not improve it.
I haven't found teachers as a professional demographic to be any more or less varried in their talent. Are there bad teachers? Yes. But compared to the professionals in my field that I encounter I tended to find a much higher percentage of competent and good teachers than I have fellow private sector employees in my area of expertise.
No field is full of superstars. There are going to be superstar teachers. But we shouldn't expect all of them to be the best. Especially since they are payed less than a McDonalds manager. I reject this notion that teachers (because of union protection) have somehow developed into a below average competency are of employment. That wasn't my experience meeting with teacher nor as a student.
As a product of both private and public education I can also say that the differences between the two levels of competency was non-existent. But speaking as someone who has seen first hand from family members who are teachers what the political environment for educators is like--I think they need a union. The level of politics, backstabbing and mismanagement that goes on at the administrative level at private and public schools makes actual politics look like a civil dinner party. The more insulated they can be from all that in order to do their jobs in educating the better.
Jesus, taking the family out to porn just isn't the same as it used to be.
Got to pay for parking $10, 2x Adult tickets at $25 and 2x Kids $15 tickets + $5 x 4 for 3D! Then the wife and kids are going to want popcorn and candy. That's another $40.
What started as just a nice night out to watch some porn with the family ends up costing $150. No wonder the theatrical porn industry is dieing. Who has that kind of money?
By exposing how one has acted and reacted in the past, it makes it easier for one to predict how one will act and react in the future. Also, it may be transparent to one who is not in the middle of the conflict as to how certain information can expose tactics, capabilities, and sensitive information. You ask for a specific example. I'd love to give you a specific example, but I think it's enough to state that the kind of information that wikileaks is getting a hold of is the kind of documentation spys were trying to obtain in the past.
OMG General Petraeus is a spy!
http://www.amazon.com/Marine-Corps-Counterinsurgency-Field-Manual/dp/0226841510