you're confusing cost-to-operate with cost-to-consumer. i have no doubt that private schools are more efficiently run, but the cost to the student (or, more accurately, their family) is dramatically lower for public education. additionally, while private schools are almost certainly more efficient in their manner of operation, they're overcoming significant economic disadvantages, like much lower buying power. i went to a private school most of my life. in the early/mid '90s, the whole question of vouchers, charter schools, and the like was just becoming hot (again), and our administration made an effort to make sure we knew what the debate was about (since it could be interpreted as being about us). various folks running for local, state, and federal positions came in to address the student body, the most notable being Steve Forbes during his presidential bid. Forbes was a big advocate of vouchers, and proposed one of the most "liberal" such plans. Forbes lost a lot of steam on that push, however, when one of our drama teachers (who rocked) pointed out that even his proposal would get the students in the room about 1/3 of the way through the year - which, coincidentally, happened to be the previous day. for this model really to make economic sense, and have lower overall cost, you have to assume that loads of people just won't bother with education. and i have to say that's probably true. but there's very real, very measurable value to genuine widespread public education to all members of a society. that's true within one generation, but becomes overwhelming when taken over the longer term.
Well, it turns out the public high school I went to constantly got new books, at a turn over rate of about 5 years or so.
whoa, "constantly" == "5 years"? that sounds like about the right run rate for a textbook, actually. the principal advantages of longer lifespans are allowing kids to resell their books and buy used ones, and not requiring teachers to rework their own materials constantly; this is balanced against the utility of updating both the factual content, contextual presentation, and teaching style in the books. at an average run rate of five years, kids can resell and buy used 80% of their books, and your average teacher, who prepares less than 5 units, will have to rewrite less than one curriculum a year (well, that's not quite right because teachers often change the units they're teaching from year to year, and there's greater concentration than just standard distribution, but those are unrelated factors).
additionally, while i don't have any hard statistical evidence to back it up, i strongly suspect your experience is atypical. i've worked with kids from a variety of public schools, and the significant majority of their textbooks were more than five years old. for the most part, these kids were from quite affluent areas, as well. my mother is a teacher, as well, and has spent the vast bulk of her career (eligible for retirement, and considering it for this year) in poorer areas; she's got a garage full of textbooks she uses to fill in for when the funding isn't there for the correct materials.
As for the third party testing, I think if the teachers got paid partly through "commission" on student performance in terms of in-class grades, such safe guards are necessary.
well, probably, yeah, but that's because it's a poor idea to start with. no need to polish the turd.
well, i assume the tea thing means your on the european, but not quite continental, end of the connection (by which standard i suppose i'm supposed to like coffee, which is gross). if so, than nope: it's "butt" over here, as well.
For a minute there, i thought it was the Attorney-General's Department who had used the word "epistemologically" correctly in a sentence, rather than some Institute. my world view was momentarily shaken.
clearly. but the article was submitted as "HITCHHACKERS GUIDE TO TEH GALXY!!!1". you people just don't appreciate what the editors are doing for you, raising the overall quality from AOL-chatroom level to well-funded-blog-on-sterroids level.
the presumption that this comment was intended as some sort of odd leverage to use against the Chinese strongly suggests you don't understand the context it was made in - specifically, the purpose of the conference. it's not a question of how "important" either Fred or the conference is, it's a question of what the statement means in the context it was delivered.
you assert knowledge of Microsoft's, specifically Fred's, intentions, but give no reasoning or evidence. China's been at what game longer than Microsoft? deciding how Microsoft should do business? um, i don't think that's quite right. but that's what's being discussed here.
so you've failed or neglected to either provide any evidence or rationale for your assertion or address my comments about the context of the statement, instead asserting that the context and the speaker are irrelevant. good job so far.
how on earth is this "Insightful"? not only is it random speculation, it's also an obvious guess, and redundant this late on.
it may happen to be correct, who knows. but there's no evidence or argument supported. and as such things go, it's poorly reasoned. Fred's statement was about their online services presence - he explicitly talked about the persecution of bloggers. there's no mention of refusing to sell Windows to China, either the government or the people generally. the assumption that it's about piracy isn't quite a non-sequitor (sure, profits to the same company and all), but is bizarre: do you really think Microsoft's blogging services are important enough to the Chinese government to get them to change their laws?
it seems entirely plausible to me that Microsoft is finding that things in China are either worse than they expected or are trending downwards, in terms of human rights, and are looking to back out. is the alternative here to believe that the Chinese government can't possibly be bad enough to make Microsoft uncomfortable?
nor is it intended to be. slashdot collective brain damage seems to have caused everyone to read "...perhaps we have to look again.." as "...we're definitely eliminating...". is it that hard to believe that microsoft's finding things worse than they expected, or trending in the wrong direction, and reconsidering their decision?
ah, so you're not being illiterate, just presumptive, making inappropriate assumptions. Fred Tipson's got nothing to do with PR, nor does he have a PR background. take a look at his bio, which seems pretty accurate. PR folks don't tend to have extensive experience with the UN, CFR, or international law. there's no indication (anywhere but from slashdot commenters) that his function there is anything to do with PR, except in the sense that any public statements have the potential to be.
the conference in athens - covered here on/. earlier, so even folks who don't get out much have no particular excuse for not knowing this - exists largely to discuss international issues around the internet and internet governance. clearly this is something Microsoft has a vested interest in, even if only for financial reasons. given the nature of the meeting, i'd be surprised if they weren't sending someone with Fred's qualifications. i see no reason to believe that Microsoft isn't considering its position in China - which is all that was claimed; again, i'd be surprised if that weren't true.
flack : one who provides publicity; especially : PRESS AGENT
i've never paid for cable or satellite. the service has just never seemed to offer me any value: while there's some decent content, it's overwhelmed by noise, and i'm not willing to schedule my life around the box. today, i watch several programs regularly, however.
take, for example, Lost, Jericho, and Heroes. three different networks, prime-time big-money shows, and each of their networks distributes the latest episode online for free. sure, it's in some stupid flash player, which diminishes the experience (prevents portability, inhibits replay, and - particularly the ABC player - can be buggy), but that's a huge shift in outlook on the part of the major networks from even two years ago. the official distributions contain commercials, but that's a trade-off well worth it (ABC's model is particularly nice: watch 'em once, then scroll around however you want, including watching the whole show straight through without interruption). i have no idea what the user population of these sorts of services are today, but i strongly believe they'll continue to grow.
then there's DVD series. i've watched far more "television" shows via DVD in the past year than i have off broadcast+cable+satellite in the past five (like i said, i don't have "television" in the normal sense). there's some unanswered questions about this as an model in itself - how do you know which shows to watch? where's the up-front production money come from? - but, again, that model seriously diminishes the "need" for "traditional" television. and i'm certainly not alone on this front: this is a very big market already.
and this is just the officially sanctioned means. if i remember correctly, ABC lets you watch back episodes through their player, NBC not; bittorrent to the rescue. eztv even specializes in exactly this sort of television content shifting.
then there's iTunes. their pricing model is informative. personally, i think it's too high: i've bought some short movies, but wouldn't pay that much for a television show/season. however, when you look at what people actually pay for cable/satallite - which can easily top $100/month - it's actually not a bad deal, by the numbers. if the quality was higher, i might be inclined to get, say, Lost and Battlestar Galactica this way; alternately, if the current product was available for, say, $20-25/season.
the "slow erosion of traditional television broadcasting" is already upon us, and is only going to accelerate with increased broadband adoption and data rates. and good riddance.
i'm pretty sure there's more than 85 Hindus in India.;-)
i agree generally with your statements about democracy and diversity in India, but i do think you're painting a somewhat overly-rosy picture. there is the occasional spat of violence (as in bombs going off, not just some street brawl); last time i was there, a bomb went off the day i left the country. and while the "holy men" certainly above scrutiny, equating the outlook on Hindus in India to the outlook on Christians in the USA isn't really fair: certainly the civil calendar is much more based on Hindu festivals and they're much more ingrained in the secular culture of the country (it'd be something like if all half the country didn't show up for work on Ash Wednesday and all 12 days of Christmas were de facto holidays). still, the fact that it works as well as it does is pretty impressive, really. there's certainly no lack of bad blood, between the human tragedy that was Partition and the on-off war with Pakistan (among other things). yet it mostly just works. again, i agree in general, i just think you're overstating it.
This is perhaps the single greatest reason why the Libertarian Party won't gain traction in America besides welfare-related issues.
well, that and the fact that the party itself is internally dysfunctional, in addition to espousing a form of government which seems to want to just stick its head in the sand regarding whole swaths of less lovely parts of human nature and sociology.
The LP stands for freedom with accountability.
more or less, yeah. those principles make for an excellent personal philosophy, and sound basis upon which to structure your interactions with others. great. the libertarian party and platform, however, does nothing to address the fact that, in vary many cases, people (individually or in groups) do not, in fact, act in a manner consistent with that philosophy.
lived in london. yup, never saw a fight. 'course, i wasn't looking around too much... too busy avoiding the puddles of urine and vomit three nights a week.
If violence in public places has fallen a lot and domestic violence has risen a little than the sum total of violence has fallen. That would be a good thing.
that's overly simplistic (and i'm being overly polite). domestic violence has a dramatically different character than a pub or street brawl. the psychological impact on those involved is much greater, and it has some very real issues around the victim's frequent (perceived or real) inability to leave. additionally, public violence is much more amenable to a wide range of solutions; domestic violence is generally tricky to deal with. so, unless the overall reduction was overwhelming, this is most certainly not worth it.
i don't disagree that capitalism tends to devolve into a land-grab for chargeable activities, but you have to recognize that these folks are supplying things which are valuable to us, things which have costs associated with them. IM networks, for example, have very significant, clearly measurable costs associated with them. just passing all that traffic around, maintaining the UID namespace, and so on... that stuff's non-trivial. true, it could be decentralized (like email largely is; jabber's pushing in that direction), but the existing networks today generally have significant centralized cost associated with them. i happen to know the most about IM networks, but the same is true for social networks and services generally.
there are good ways to monetize things, and there are bad ways. you want to add value to an existing service, not suddenly up the price (frequently, from zero) on what people've already been using. the company i work for, incidentally, is working on helping some of these folks monetize their social networks in ways that're good for everyone (enabling new types of activities which people are accustomed to paying for, and offering a better rate, and so on). if done well, in a way that isn't just about a land-grab and greed, it can be a positive experience all around.
geez, why is everyone missing the obvious answer? this isn't even new - i thought it was well established public knowledge. of course autism is linked to precipitation; it's just one of the many well-known side effects of dihydrogen monoxide, better known ad hydric acid. again, the list of horrible effects of this chemical are well known, and folks like these fine gents have been doing their best to bring the issue to light. the prevalence of this chemical is truly disturbing, being found in every stream, river, and lake in america. given that, is it any surprise that kids in areas with higher precipitation display higher autism rates?
no, you should simply have skipped the over-generalization. words like "all", "never", and so on are very dangerous in arguments. as i said, i've never paid for cable or satellite, and i doubt i'm alone here.
Most of you nay sayers now pay for cable. In fact I'd wager ALL of you do.
sigh. why do you people do that? you have a reasonably sound argument: people will pay for more than they think they'll pay for, things become viewed as indispensable once they're familiar, and so on. but then you go and blow it by associating the argument with obviously false, trivially disprovable over-generalization. even though disproving the "ALL" doesn't impact the rest of your argument logically, it totally wrecks your credibility. for the sake of rational discourse everywhere, please don't do that!
besides, this is slashdot. i know at least one user who lives in a trailer without electricity, and did you really think you weren't going to find anyone who gets all the programming they need over the internet? i've never paid a dime for cable or satellite. i'm still sitting on the fence regarding iTunes TV shows, but that's just based on the price being about 25% higher than feels correct; i like their model.
Slashdot Mirror
you're confusing cost-to-operate with cost-to-consumer. i have no doubt that private schools are more efficiently run, but the cost to the student (or, more accurately, their family) is dramatically lower for public education. additionally, while private schools are almost certainly more efficient in their manner of operation, they're overcoming significant economic disadvantages, like much lower buying power.
i went to a private school most of my life. in the early/mid '90s, the whole question of vouchers, charter schools, and the like was just becoming hot (again), and our administration made an effort to make sure we knew what the debate was about (since it could be interpreted as being about us). various folks running for local, state, and federal positions came in to address the student body, the most notable being Steve Forbes during his presidential bid. Forbes was a big advocate of vouchers, and proposed one of the most "liberal" such plans. Forbes lost a lot of steam on that push, however, when one of our drama teachers (who rocked) pointed out that even his proposal would get the students in the room about 1/3 of the way through the year - which, coincidentally, happened to be the previous day.
for this model really to make economic sense, and have lower overall cost, you have to assume that loads of people just won't bother with education. and i have to say that's probably true. but there's very real, very measurable value to genuine widespread public education to all members of a society. that's true within one generation, but becomes overwhelming when taken over the longer term.
additionally, while i don't have any hard statistical evidence to back it up, i strongly suspect your experience is atypical. i've worked with kids from a variety of public schools, and the significant majority of their textbooks were more than five years old. for the most part, these kids were from quite affluent areas, as well. my mother is a teacher, as well, and has spent the vast bulk of her career (eligible for retirement, and considering it for this year) in poorer areas; she's got a garage full of textbooks she uses to fill in for when the funding isn't there for the correct materials.well, probably, yeah, but that's because it's a poor idea to start with. no need to polish the turd.
well, i assume the tea thing means your on the european, but not quite continental, end of the connection (by which standard i suppose i'm supposed to like coffee, which is gross). if so, than nope: it's "butt" over here, as well.
For a minute there, i thought it was the Attorney-General's Department who had used the word "epistemologically" correctly in a sentence, rather than some Institute. my world view was momentarily shaken.
personally, i think "Plays for Maybe" has a nice ring to it.
now tell the truth: how long've you been waiting for someone to set that up for you? ;-)
the presumption that this comment was intended as some sort of odd leverage to use against the Chinese strongly suggests you don't understand the context it was made in - specifically, the purpose of the conference. it's not a question of how "important" either Fred or the conference is, it's a question of what the statement means in the context it was delivered.
you assert knowledge of Microsoft's, specifically Fred's, intentions, but give no reasoning or evidence. China's been at what game longer than Microsoft? deciding how Microsoft should do business? um, i don't think that's quite right. but that's what's being discussed here.
so you've failed or neglected to either provide any evidence or rationale for your assertion or address my comments about the context of the statement, instead asserting that the context and the speaker are irrelevant. good job so far.
how on earth is this "Insightful"? not only is it random speculation, it's also an obvious guess, and redundant this late on.
it may happen to be correct, who knows. but there's no evidence or argument supported. and as such things go, it's poorly reasoned. Fred's statement was about their online services presence - he explicitly talked about the persecution of bloggers. there's no mention of refusing to sell Windows to China, either the government or the people generally. the assumption that it's about piracy isn't quite a non-sequitor (sure, profits to the same company and all), but is bizarre: do you really think Microsoft's blogging services are important enough to the Chinese government to get them to change their laws?
it seems entirely plausible to me that Microsoft is finding that things in China are either worse than they expected or are trending downwards, in terms of human rights, and are looking to back out. is the alternative here to believe that the Chinese government can't possibly be bad enough to make Microsoft uncomfortable?
nor is it intended to be. slashdot collective brain damage seems to have caused everyone to read "...perhaps we have to look again.." as "...we're definitely eliminating...". is it that hard to believe that microsoft's finding things worse than they expected, or trending in the wrong direction, and reconsidering their decision?
the conference in athens - covered here on
i've never paid for cable or satellite. the service has just never seemed to offer me any value: while there's some decent content, it's overwhelmed by noise, and i'm not willing to schedule my life around the box. today, i watch several programs regularly, however.
take, for example, Lost, Jericho, and Heroes. three different networks, prime-time big-money shows, and each of their networks distributes the latest episode online for free. sure, it's in some stupid flash player, which diminishes the experience (prevents portability, inhibits replay, and - particularly the ABC player - can be buggy), but that's a huge shift in outlook on the part of the major networks from even two years ago. the official distributions contain commercials, but that's a trade-off well worth it (ABC's model is particularly nice: watch 'em once, then scroll around however you want, including watching the whole show straight through without interruption). i have no idea what the user population of these sorts of services are today, but i strongly believe they'll continue to grow.
then there's DVD series. i've watched far more "television" shows via DVD in the past year than i have off broadcast+cable+satellite in the past five (like i said, i don't have "television" in the normal sense). there's some unanswered questions about this as an model in itself - how do you know which shows to watch? where's the up-front production money come from? - but, again, that model seriously diminishes the "need" for "traditional" television. and i'm certainly not alone on this front: this is a very big market already.
and this is just the officially sanctioned means. if i remember correctly, ABC lets you watch back episodes through their player, NBC not; bittorrent to the rescue. eztv even specializes in exactly this sort of television content shifting.
then there's iTunes. their pricing model is informative. personally, i think it's too high: i've bought some short movies, but wouldn't pay that much for a television show/season. however, when you look at what people actually pay for cable/satallite - which can easily top $100/month - it's actually not a bad deal, by the numbers. if the quality was higher, i might be inclined to get, say, Lost and Battlestar Galactica this way; alternately, if the current product was available for, say, $20-25/season.
the "slow erosion of traditional television broadcasting" is already upon us, and is only going to accelerate with increased broadband adoption and data rates. and good riddance.
read the summary, even: "senior policy counsel" != "PR flack" (whatever a "flack" is; perhaps you meant "hack"?).
IPv4.5?
i agree generally with your statements about democracy and diversity in India, but i do think you're painting a somewhat overly-rosy picture. there is the occasional spat of violence (as in bombs going off, not just some street brawl); last time i was there, a bomb went off the day i left the country. and while the "holy men" certainly above scrutiny, equating the outlook on Hindus in India to the outlook on Christians in the USA isn't really fair: certainly the civil calendar is much more based on Hindu festivals and they're much more ingrained in the secular culture of the country (it'd be something like if all half the country didn't show up for work on Ash Wednesday and all 12 days of Christmas were de facto holidays).
still, the fact that it works as well as it does is pretty impressive, really. there's certainly no lack of bad blood, between the human tragedy that was Partition and the on-off war with Pakistan (among other things). yet it mostly just works. again, i agree in general, i just think you're overstating it.
...Jobs wasn't there. next question?
lived in london. yup, never saw a fight. 'course, i wasn't looking around too much... too busy avoiding the puddles of urine and vomit three nights a week.
i don't disagree that capitalism tends to devolve into a land-grab for chargeable activities, but you have to recognize that these folks are supplying things which are valuable to us, things which have costs associated with them. IM networks, for example, have very significant, clearly measurable costs associated with them. just passing all that traffic around, maintaining the UID namespace, and so on... that stuff's non-trivial. true, it could be decentralized (like email largely is; jabber's pushing in that direction), but the existing networks today generally have significant centralized cost associated with them. i happen to know the most about IM networks, but the same is true for social networks and services generally.
there are good ways to monetize things, and there are bad ways. you want to add value to an existing service, not suddenly up the price (frequently, from zero) on what people've already been using. the company i work for, incidentally, is working on helping some of these folks monetize their social networks in ways that're good for everyone (enabling new types of activities which people are accustomed to paying for, and offering a better rate, and so on). if done well, in a way that isn't just about a land-grab and greed, it can be a positive experience all around.
geez, why is everyone missing the obvious answer? this isn't even new - i thought it was well established public knowledge. of course autism is linked to precipitation; it's just one of the many well-known side effects of dihydrogen monoxide, better known ad hydric acid. again, the list of horrible effects of this chemical are well known, and folks like these fine gents have been doing their best to bring the issue to light. the prevalence of this chemical is truly disturbing, being found in every stream, river, and lake in america. given that, is it any surprise that kids in areas with higher precipitation display higher autism rates?
no, you should simply have skipped the over-generalization. words like "all", "never", and so on are very dangerous in arguments. as i said, i've never paid for cable or satellite, and i doubt i'm alone here.
besides, this is slashdot. i know at least one user who lives in a trailer without electricity, and did you really think you weren't going to find anyone who gets all the programming they need over the internet? i've never paid a dime for cable or satellite. i'm still sitting on the fence regarding iTunes TV shows, but that's just based on the price being about 25% higher than feels correct; i like their model.