Yes, but it will remain that way for largely practical reasons. Having high schools let out earlier than elementary schools means that the older kids will be home to look after their younger siblings. The busing costs for school districts would skyrocket if all school levels ran simultaneously. The bus drivers first take the high school kids, then the middle school kids, then the elementary school kids. A school district would need a whole lot more buses running simultaneously to get everyone aged 5-18 to school at the same time. My high school and elementary/middle schools were actually two different districts, because I went to a regional high school. They had a bus-sharing scheme like this one worked out among all the districts.
I think you're being a bit cynical and concluding something too broad based on your own experience. As a counter anecdote, here's some of my experience which would counter your broad assumptions. Perhaps your situation is just a part of the culture of your particular branch of study.
I'm a sophomore chemical engineering student, and let me tell you, the majority of us would not be passing our classes if not for teamwork. (And this is at a top university, too.) Our classes are designed to encourage teamwork. Professors regularly encourage group work.
I almost became a computer science major, but after taking the second CS course, I decided not to. Why? Because no one was interested in teamwork, something that I enjoy. I tried delegating tasks between my partner and me, but my partner often wound up preemptively completing come of the work I was supposed to do, even when I had done it myself. I suspect this was at least partly reaction to the fact that I was mostly intending to be a ChemE, so people didn't think I could code (not true at all), but I wasn't even given a chance.
In two of my ChemE classes so far, we have actually been required to complete submit problem sets as groups. When we're not, teamwork is the de facto standard anyway. Some of these problems are really quite difficult, and it's not unusual for 20+ students to gather of their own volition to work together and bounce ideas off each other. There are LOTS of phone calls and IMs among the 90 or so of us the night before a problem set is due.
I'm just suggesting you not make such broad assumptions about every field based on your limited experience.
No, no, no, and for the last time, NO. Didn't vote for the candidate that the mobsters down the street are in collusion with? Don't expect a pretty outcome when they come knocking to check out who you voted for.
Despite that there are many reasons to use Gentoo instead of Kubuntu - after all if you wanted the easy life you wouldn't be using Linux in the first place.
I don't think this is necessarily true. I didn't switch to Linux because I wanted to make things harder on myself. I switched for many reasons, including being fed up with spyware and Windows just being a complete pain. I wanted to learn more about computers, and so I switched to Gentoo. After a year and a half on Gentoo, I couldn't take it anymore. An entire system shouldn't break when you edit your cflags, and I'd just had to do one revdep-rebuild too many. I was tired of networking breaking at every upgrade--the classic paradox of needing to get online to fix your networking. I was tired of mplayer breaking at every upgrade. I was tired of having my computer's power drained by constantly having to compile updates in the background.
So I switched to Ubuntu. I've never been happier, because I've finally found what I want in a Linux distro. I want a stable operating system, which was why I wanted to switch to Linux in the first place--to get away from Windows's fluctuations over which I had no control. I have a powerful operating system that does everything I need. What I love about Ubuntu is that a user can have as much or as little control over the operating system as s/he wants. Ubuntu will take care of things for you, but the power of Linux is still readily accessible. Maybe it's not bleeding edge, but I can always compile a bleeding edge CVS snapshot if I ever really want to. (Though I think things started going wrong when I had quite a few packages set to ~x86...)
My time is precious to me, and I'm happy to be using a system where I don't have to micromanage every package I want to install. Want video? sudo aptitude install mplayer. And it just WORKS.
Ubuntu has made using my computer a pleasure, as opposed to a second job. Ubuntu isn't just for the non-technical. Linux doesn't have to make your life harder, and if we all insist that it must be that way, then Linux has no chance in the mainstream. Let those of us who want a distro like Ubuntu be.
Sometimes this issue can be solved by using the User Agent Switcher extension to mask your browser as IE. On Gap.com for instance, it appears they won't let you shop without IE--until you change your UA string to an IE one. Then it works just fine. Unfortunately this trick won't work for sites that require things like ActiveX, just for ones that are silly and require IE exclusively for no apparent reason.:(
Yum.:) If I recall correctly, chocolate chip cookies were invented in the late 30s who ran out of bakers' chocolate to make chocolate cookies, and instead added now-standard semi-sweet chocolate chips, assuming they'd melt. They didn't, and the chocolate chip cookie was born.:D
Although it's not exactly stable yet, Xgl is one of the most awesome GUIs I've ever seen. Can you rotate virtual desktops on a cube in Windows or OS X? Nah, didn't think so.
Anyone who's used Facebook (vaguely like MySpace for college students, so it's like MySpace minus emo thirteen year olds and middle school drama) recently has had access to something similar. You can upload photos, click on a person in the photo, and "tag" it with their name, so anyone who views the photo has a link to their profile. Pretty neat, really...and it doesn't require IE6.:)
So, what if I leave the room and keep my computer on and don't have it password protected, and my roommate decides to use my computer, or my roommte brings some friends over and they mess around with my computer? Will I take the blame?
And how will they know if you're using a computer in a computer lab? You don't generally log into those.
If something like this were to happen at my university, unfortunately I think the implementation of the system would be rather easy. Students are assigned IP addresses by MAC addresses, all of which are connected to one's bursar account, since they charge us if we use any more than 2GB of off-campus-network bandwidth per month, so they can see every exchange over the internet we make.
Me! Me! Grepping music would be awesome, especially if you could grep for lyrics or some such. [I know I can find lyrics pretty readily through google, but lyrics for some of the more obscure songs I own are difficult to find.]
Yeah, things tend to be skewed that way. In my high school programming experience, I was always one of the few girls, although at the competitions we attended, girls were always equitably represented among the winners, it seemed. Through the three years I participated, there were three, then five, then six girls at competitions with about 70ish participants. My programming teacher in high school once asked me what it was like to be the only girl in the class. It's difficult, especially when you're around insecure teenage boys who can't deal with the fact that a girl could own them at programming. Although I eventually gained their respect (it only took, oh, two years), the task was lonely and difficult.
As for the ratio of men to women in CS at my university, I can't specifically comment, as I'm a freshman ChemE now (51% female here, interestingly), but I know that electrical and computer engineering is 11% female. (Oh, the facts one must know to be a tour guide...)
As for Google specifically, just tonight I attended a Google information session at my university, and the proportions of men to women were about the same as those aforementioned programming competitions. It wasn't very surprising, because I guess I've just gotten used to it.
I don't know that there's necessarily a correlation. I enjoy programming, and I also enjoy role-playing, but without the influence of my friends, I never would have started RPing. These friends have pretty much zero interest in programming. In fact, one of the best roleplayers I know is definitely not the logical, problem-solving oriented type, at least in a programming/engineering manner. I think it's more of the whole geek/nerd culture thing going on...my friends come from a video-game playing background, but I do not but am a geek in a variety of other ways.
And sadly, those four years of English seem to have little impact. I attend a very highly-regarded university in the US, and all freshmen are required to take a writing seminar. I was shocked when I saw the writing of my classmates. In my class of seventeen, only three actually know how to write. Two went to private school, and I went to public school, but I didn't learn how to write in school. My mother, a former English teacher and journalist of sorts, taught me how to write with discipline. Public schools simply don't teach that same sort of discipline; not even mine did so, despite being a very good public school.
Flashblock would be what you're looking for. Whenever a flash animation is embedded in a page, it replaces it with the flash logo, and you can click on it if you want to play it. Otherwise, it's just a lovely flash-free stretch of internet.:)
What's the big deal? RFID has been used to open doors for quite some time now. To get into my dorm, all I have to do is wave my wallet at a sensor by the door.
The problem is, of course, what happens when you lose your ID card...
MIT is heavy on the Linux usage, I hear. And here at Cornell, they've got no problems with non-Windows OSes like Linux or Mac. We even have a lab full of Linux computers.
I've got two of my own Linux machines on the network right now. In fact, one of them IS running Linux on a Celeron, the other on a Sempron.
I'm sure there are plenty of schools who are Linux- as well as Mac-friendly.
I, like many other Slashdotters, emailed in my comment on the form recommended on that guy's blog. However, I got an email back saying,
We have received an email from you regarding the proposed rulemaking on electronic-only preregistration. The comments you submitted cannot be considered because they were in the form of email. As the instructions in the Copyright Office's Federal Register notice state, comments can be delivered to the Copyright Office by the
following means:
[cue legalese that says mail five paper copies to Office of the General Counsel, U.S. Copyright Office, James Madison Memorial Building, Room LM-401, 101 Independence Avenue, SE., Washington, DC 20559-6000]
Slashdot Mirror
Yes, but it will remain that way for largely practical reasons. Having high schools let out earlier than elementary schools means that the older kids will be home to look after their younger siblings. The busing costs for school districts would skyrocket if all school levels ran simultaneously. The bus drivers first take the high school kids, then the middle school kids, then the elementary school kids. A school district would need a whole lot more buses running simultaneously to get everyone aged 5-18 to school at the same time. My high school and elementary/middle schools were actually two different districts, because I went to a regional high school. They had a bus-sharing scheme like this one worked out among all the districts.
I think you're being a bit cynical and concluding something too broad based on your own experience. As a counter anecdote, here's some of my experience which would counter your broad assumptions. Perhaps your situation is just a part of the culture of your particular branch of study.
I'm a sophomore chemical engineering student, and let me tell you, the majority of us would not be passing our classes if not for teamwork. (And this is at a top university, too.) Our classes are designed to encourage teamwork. Professors regularly encourage group work.
I almost became a computer science major, but after taking the second CS course, I decided not to. Why? Because no one was interested in teamwork, something that I enjoy. I tried delegating tasks between my partner and me, but my partner often wound up preemptively completing come of the work I was supposed to do, even when I had done it myself. I suspect this was at least partly reaction to the fact that I was mostly intending to be a ChemE, so people didn't think I could code (not true at all), but I wasn't even given a chance.
In two of my ChemE classes so far, we have actually been required to complete submit problem sets as groups. When we're not, teamwork is the de facto standard anyway. Some of these problems are really quite difficult, and it's not unusual for 20+ students to gather of their own volition to work together and bounce ideas off each other. There are LOTS of phone calls and IMs among the 90 or so of us the night before a problem set is due.
I'm just suggesting you not make such broad assumptions about every field based on your limited experience.
Allow me to say, Ando was truly touched by His Noodly Appendage. We have lost a great man. Ramen.
No, no, no, and for the last time, NO. Didn't vote for the candidate that the mobsters down the street are in collusion with? Don't expect a pretty outcome when they come knocking to check out who you voted for.
Despite that there are many reasons to use Gentoo instead of Kubuntu - after all if you wanted the easy life you wouldn't be using Linux in the first place.
I don't think this is necessarily true. I didn't switch to Linux because I wanted to make things harder on myself. I switched for many reasons, including being fed up with spyware and Windows just being a complete pain. I wanted to learn more about computers, and so I switched to Gentoo. After a year and a half on Gentoo, I couldn't take it anymore. An entire system shouldn't break when you edit your cflags, and I'd just had to do one revdep-rebuild too many. I was tired of networking breaking at every upgrade--the classic paradox of needing to get online to fix your networking. I was tired of mplayer breaking at every upgrade. I was tired of having my computer's power drained by constantly having to compile updates in the background.
So I switched to Ubuntu. I've never been happier, because I've finally found what I want in a Linux distro. I want a stable operating system, which was why I wanted to switch to Linux in the first place--to get away from Windows's fluctuations over which I had no control. I have a powerful operating system that does everything I need. What I love about Ubuntu is that a user can have as much or as little control over the operating system as s/he wants. Ubuntu will take care of things for you, but the power of Linux is still readily accessible. Maybe it's not bleeding edge, but I can always compile a bleeding edge CVS snapshot if I ever really want to. (Though I think things started going wrong when I had quite a few packages set to ~x86...)
My time is precious to me, and I'm happy to be using a system where I don't have to micromanage every package I want to install. Want video? sudo aptitude install mplayer. And it just WORKS.
Ubuntu has made using my computer a pleasure, as opposed to a second job. Ubuntu isn't just for the non-technical. Linux doesn't have to make your life harder, and if we all insist that it must be that way, then Linux has no chance in the mainstream. Let those of us who want a distro like Ubuntu be.
Sometimes this issue can be solved by using the User Agent Switcher extension to mask your browser as IE. On Gap.com for instance, it appears they won't let you shop without IE--until you change your UA string to an IE one. Then it works just fine. Unfortunately this trick won't work for sites that require things like ActiveX, just for ones that are silly and require IE exclusively for no apparent reason. :(
Yum. :) If I recall correctly, chocolate chip cookies were invented in the late 30s who ran out of bakers' chocolate to make chocolate cookies, and instead added now-standard semi-sweet chocolate chips, assuming they'd melt. They didn't, and the chocolate chip cookie was born. :D
Although it's not exactly stable yet, Xgl is one of the most awesome GUIs I've ever seen. Can you rotate virtual desktops on a cube in Windows or OS X? Nah, didn't think so.
For a second there, I thought you'd gone and posted your Gentoo USE flags.
Internet-wide distcc in a screensaver?
Anyone who's used Facebook (vaguely like MySpace for college students, so it's like MySpace minus emo thirteen year olds and middle school drama) recently has had access to something similar. You can upload photos, click on a person in the photo, and "tag" it with their name, so anyone who views the photo has a link to their profile. Pretty neat, really...and it doesn't require IE6. :)
So, what if I leave the room and keep my computer on and don't have it password protected, and my roommate decides to use my computer, or my roommte brings some friends over and they mess around with my computer? Will I take the blame?
And how will they know if you're using a computer in a computer lab? You don't generally log into those.
If something like this were to happen at my university, unfortunately I think the implementation of the system would be rather easy. Students are assigned IP addresses by MAC addresses, all of which are connected to one's bursar account, since they charge us if we use any more than 2GB of off-campus-network bandwidth per month, so they can see every exchange over the internet we make.
Oh my, time to break out my tin foil hat.
Me! Me! Grepping music would be awesome, especially if you could grep for lyrics or some such. [I know I can find lyrics pretty readily through google, but lyrics for some of the more obscure songs I own are difficult to find.]
Yeah, things tend to be skewed that way. In my high school programming experience, I was always one of the few girls, although at the competitions we attended, girls were always equitably represented among the winners, it seemed. Through the three years I participated, there were three, then five, then six girls at competitions with about 70ish participants. My programming teacher in high school once asked me what it was like to be the only girl in the class. It's difficult, especially when you're around insecure teenage boys who can't deal with the fact that a girl could own them at programming. Although I eventually gained their respect (it only took, oh, two years), the task was lonely and difficult.
As for the ratio of men to women in CS at my university, I can't specifically comment, as I'm a freshman ChemE now (51% female here, interestingly), but I know that electrical and computer engineering is 11% female. (Oh, the facts one must know to be a tour guide...)
As for Google specifically, just tonight I attended a Google information session at my university, and the proportions of men to women were about the same as those aforementioned programming competitions. It wasn't very surprising, because I guess I've just gotten used to it.
I don't know that there's necessarily a correlation. I enjoy programming, and I also enjoy role-playing, but without the influence of my friends, I never would have started RPing. These friends have pretty much zero interest in programming. In fact, one of the best roleplayers I know is definitely not the logical, problem-solving oriented type, at least in a programming/engineering manner. I think it's more of the whole geek/nerd culture thing going on...my friends come from a video-game playing background, but I do not but am a geek in a variety of other ways.
And sadly, those four years of English seem to have little impact. I attend a very highly-regarded university in the US, and all freshmen are required to take a writing seminar. I was shocked when I saw the writing of my classmates. In my class of seventeen, only three actually know how to write. Two went to private school, and I went to public school, but I didn't learn how to write in school. My mother, a former English teacher and journalist of sorts, taught me how to write with discipline. Public schools simply don't teach that same sort of discipline; not even mine did so, despite being a very good public school.
Flashblock would be what you're looking for. Whenever a flash animation is embedded in a page, it replaces it with the flash logo, and you can click on it if you want to play it. Otherwise, it's just a lovely flash-free stretch of internet. :)
What's the big deal? RFID has been used to open doors for quite some time now. To get into my dorm, all I have to do is wave my wallet at a sensor by the door.
The problem is, of course, what happens when you lose your ID card...
that last bit alone is enough to never vote for him again.
You couldn't vote for Bush ever again, even if you wanted to. You know, that whole 22nd Amendment two-term limit thing...
Do a ctrl-F5 and all will be well. :0
MIT is heavy on the Linux usage, I hear. And here at Cornell, they've got no problems with non-Windows OSes like Linux or Mac. We even have a lab full of Linux computers.
I've got two of my own Linux machines on the network right now. In fact, one of them IS running Linux on a Celeron, the other on a Sempron.
I'm sure there are plenty of schools who are Linux- as well as Mac-friendly.
Microsoft stopped supporting IE for Mac at version 5.2. I've had to use it at school, and it's not pretty.
Thus, I doubt Mac IE users would be able to access all the features they'd be panning to implement anyway.
...what. ADV + torrent? Sorry, you just broke my brain.
Probably the same reason they won't sell birth control pills.