Agreed.
My daughter got a school-issued iPad last year (junior in high school) and in my opinion it only served to distract her from studies at home (due to the constant Twitter/Instagram/whatever checking), and watch Netflix in her room rather than in the family area.
In her opinion, it did nothing to improve her educational outcomes, and only served to provide another distraction to kids in her classes. Most teachers did not integrate it into lessons at all. Many kids would simply play games in class all day. This is in a middle-class, suburban U.S. high school. After reading Amanda Ripley's "The Smartest Kids in the World", I'm even more against them in schools.
With these devices, the schools are adding more burden to the parents to control the kids' access to the devices simply so that they can get their regular homework done.
Unfortunately, it seems the "oooohhh, shiny!" perspective seems to win out with schools rather than encouraging hard work.
I recently finished a Masters in CS online from DePaul University (a decent brick and mortar college in Chicago) and was really happy with it. Learned a lot of theory that filled in the gaps of my self-taught understanding of a lot of things CS, even though I've worked in CS for 20 years (my BS is in Electrical Engineering).
All the classes were recorded versions of in-class sections. Being a working father, it was great for accommodating my schedule.
I initially started the program just to get the piece of paper, but I also found that now that I'm in my 40s, I really enjoy learning. MUCH more than undergrad when I was 20. I would definitely recommend the "online version of brick and mortar" programs at non-profit or state schools. You likely won't get to do research, but I think if you really wanted that, you'd be in a PhD program.
Other schools I looked at that had similar programs were Colorado State, Stanford, USC, U of Illinois, Texas Tech, Penn State, Arizona State, and (I think) UCLA. Ironically, I decided on DePaul because it was close, but it turned out I never had to be on campus at all. I'm sure we'll be seeing a lot more online programs at most universities simply because it can increase their revenue with little marginal cost. Maybe not for liberal arts degrees which require discussion and face-to-face interaction. But I think for the sciences, and especially CS, the model works well.
Did anyone go to their website and read up on the company executives? This guy Sage cut his entrepreneurial teeth on his company that produced anti-aging products.
I can't say anything about the other person, but Ms. Warrior would be a disastrous pick, IMHO. I had some contact with her when she was CTO at Motorola and I came away from that experience thinking she was:
1. Was a poor leader
2. Did not consider opinions other than her own on making decisions.
3. Was really not very knowledgeable
4. Was only out for her own advancement
Perhaps these are the attributes of many successful executives, but don't strike me as qualities you want in a civil servant.
Did you ever have contact with a person of real power/wealth/influence and come away thinking "How did they EVER get to where they are?" The older I get, the more I think success requires some work + many connections + a lot of luck.
It looks like the last might strike Ms. Warrior here again pretty soon.
I did 9/80 for awhile a few years ago when my employer offered it. At the time, my kids were younger and I ended up only seeing them an hour or less every work day. Even though I made up the clock time on the off Friday, I still felt I was missing too much of their lives by rarely seeing them for 9 days out of 14.
Probably be different now that they're older and awake so much more of the day, but haven't tried it again.
For heaven's sake, try to be humble. For some reason, this industry just breeds arrogance. You'll run into many colleagues that think they are experts at everything.
Few are, and the real experts are usually the humble ones you don't know about until you actually work with them.
What is it exactly, about the framework/language that makes it difficult to scale?
Honestly, I've heard this complaint about RoR for years, but no one I know has enough knowledge to verbalize the issues. Can someone who is knowledgeable in RoR give a few points here?
I think a reasonable "real" list comes from real problems.
As Kennedy said, we are called to fight "a struggle against the common enemies of man: tyranny, poverty, disease, and war itself". This is a good starting list of real problems for mankind.
Let's simplify the list by throwing out tyranny, since it may be a cause or result of the others, complicating things. And let's throw out disease since the path to reducing that is more straightforward (more R&D). What's left? War and poverty. Let's take a stab at listing the top causes of poverty:
- corruption in government - human laziness - lack of natural resources - lack of educational opportunities - racism
How to overcome these? I have no idea except maybe to educate everyone on the planet to a greater degree. I don't see any engineering solutions as applicable, though.
My dad is now 69 years old, and spent his entire career as a EE. Oftentimes he hated it, or was bored with it. But he was able to retire at 55 due to good planning.
Last night he was telling me that the days in his late 50s when he was still healthy, retired and doing whatever he felt like, were some of the best of his life.
Me, I get fed up, bored, and tired of what I'm doing. I've been doing IT for 20 years as well and would really like to leave the game and become a photographer. But, like my dad, I've got kids that depend on me, and I'd like to retire in my 50s. So, I'm keeping my head down, depositing my check every other week, paying down my mortgage, and watching my 401k grow. If I get canned, maybe I'll move to something else, but for now, I'm taking the money and running.
In the words of the great Ozzie Guillen - "Keep taking their money until they kick you out."
Did you ever notice that different children "don't like" different foods? This is a genetic safeguard to preserve the species. Evolution apparently "invented" that a long time ago.
Hehe.
Judging by how my kids "don't like" different foods, can I conclude that eating tomatoes, broccoli and green beans are going to drive humanity to extinction while eating cookies and Lucky Charms will preserve our species?
If what the article is asserting is true - that the big carriers have politicians in their pocket due to big campaign contributions - then where are all the big corporations that have a vested interest in SEEING muni networks?
Companies like HP, Dell, Apple, Microsoft, Google. If my town instantly had low-cost broadband, more people would need computers to hook up to it. And those computers need OSes and software. And those users would go to Google to search and have mail. And all that adds up to a lot of cash for providers of these things. Isn't it logical that they be actively lobbying FOR the networks. Perhaps they are lobbying as well and these type of laws won't steamroll across the country like the article seems to indicate.
I just don't see how it can be as one-sided as the article portrays it.
Slashdot Mirror
Agreed.
My daughter got a school-issued iPad last year (junior in high school) and in my opinion it only served to distract her from studies at home (due to the constant Twitter/Instagram/whatever checking), and watch Netflix in her room rather than in the family area.
In her opinion, it did nothing to improve her educational outcomes, and only served to provide another distraction to kids in her classes. Most teachers did not integrate it into lessons at all. Many kids would simply play games in class all day. This is in a middle-class, suburban U.S. high school. After reading Amanda Ripley's "The Smartest Kids in the World", I'm even more against them in schools.
With these devices, the schools are adding more burden to the parents to control the kids' access to the devices simply so that they can get their regular homework done.
Unfortunately, it seems the "oooohhh, shiny!" perspective seems to win out with schools rather than encouraging hard work.
I recently finished a Masters in CS online from DePaul University (a decent brick and mortar college in Chicago) and was really happy with it. Learned a lot of theory that filled in the gaps of my self-taught understanding of a lot of things CS, even though I've worked in CS for 20 years (my BS is in Electrical Engineering).
All the classes were recorded versions of in-class sections. Being a working father, it was great for accommodating my schedule.
I initially started the program just to get the piece of paper, but I also found that now that I'm in my 40s, I really enjoy learning. MUCH more than undergrad when I was 20. I would definitely recommend the "online version of brick and mortar" programs at non-profit or state schools. You likely won't get to do research, but I think if you really wanted that, you'd be in a PhD program.
Other schools I looked at that had similar programs were Colorado State, Stanford, USC, U of Illinois, Texas Tech, Penn State, Arizona State, and (I think) UCLA. Ironically, I decided on DePaul because it was close, but it turned out I never had to be on campus at all. I'm sure we'll be seeing a lot more online programs at most universities simply because it can increase their revenue with little marginal cost. Maybe not for liberal arts degrees which require discussion and face-to-face interaction. But I think for the sciences, and especially CS, the model works well.
Did anyone go to their website and read up on the company executives? This guy Sage cut his entrepreneurial teeth on his company that produced anti-aging products.
I can't say anything about the other person, but Ms. Warrior would be a disastrous pick, IMHO. I had some contact with her when she was CTO at Motorola and I came away from that experience thinking she was:
1. Was a poor leader
2. Did not consider opinions other than her own on making decisions.
3. Was really not very knowledgeable
4. Was only out for her own advancement
Perhaps these are the attributes of many successful executives, but don't strike me as qualities you want in a civil servant.
Did you ever have contact with a person of real power/wealth/influence and come away thinking "How did they EVER get to where they are?" The older I get, the more I think success requires some work + many connections + a lot of luck.
It looks like the last might strike Ms. Warrior here again pretty soon.
I did 9/80 for awhile a few years ago when my employer offered it. At the time, my kids were younger and I ended up only seeing them an hour or less every work day. Even though I made up the clock time on the off Friday, I still felt I was missing too much of their lives by rarely seeing them for 9 days out of 14.
Probably be different now that they're older and awake so much more of the day, but haven't tried it again.
For heaven's sake, try to be humble. For some reason, this industry just breeds arrogance. You'll run into many colleagues that think they are experts at everything.
Few are, and the real experts are usually the humble ones you don't know about until you actually work with them.
Find those people. Emulate them, befriend them.
What is it exactly, about the framework/language that makes it difficult to scale? Honestly, I've heard this complaint about RoR for years, but no one I know has enough knowledge to verbalize the issues. Can someone who is knowledgeable in RoR give a few points here?
I think a reasonable "real" list comes from real problems.
As Kennedy said, we are called to fight "a struggle against the common enemies of man: tyranny, poverty, disease, and war itself". This is a good starting list of real problems for mankind.
Let's simplify the list by throwing out tyranny, since it may be a cause or result of the others, complicating things. And let's throw out disease since the path to reducing that is more straightforward (more R&D). What's left? War and poverty. Let's take a stab at listing the top causes of poverty:
- corruption in government
- human laziness
- lack of natural resources
- lack of educational opportunities
- racism
And causes of wars:
- lack of natural resources
- racism (ethnic/religious hatred)
- governmental ambition
How to overcome these? I have no idea except maybe to educate everyone on the planet to a greater degree. I don't see any engineering solutions as applicable, though.
My dad is now 69 years old, and spent his entire career as a EE. Oftentimes he hated it, or was bored with it. But he was able to retire at 55 due to good planning.
Last night he was telling me that the days in his late 50s when he was still healthy, retired and doing whatever he felt like, were some of the best of his life.
Me, I get fed up, bored, and tired of what I'm doing. I've been doing IT for 20 years as well and would really like to leave the game and become a photographer. But, like my dad, I've got kids that depend on me, and I'd like to retire in my 50s. So, I'm keeping my head down, depositing my check every other week, paying down my mortgage, and watching my 401k grow. If I get canned, maybe I'll move to something else, but for now, I'm taking the money and running.
In the words of the great Ozzie Guillen - "Keep taking their money until they kick you out."
I just got out of the bathroom. That's some cable-laying culture in there ...
Did you ever notice that different children "don't like" different foods? This is a genetic safeguard to preserve the species. Evolution apparently "invented" that a long time ago.
Hehe.
Judging by how my kids "don't like" different foods, can I conclude that eating tomatoes, broccoli and green beans are going to drive humanity to extinction while eating cookies and Lucky Charms will preserve our species?
Whoo-hoo! - cake for breakfast tomorrow!
If what the article is asserting is true - that the big carriers have politicians in their pocket due to big campaign contributions - then where are all the big corporations that have a vested interest in SEEING muni networks?
Companies like HP, Dell, Apple, Microsoft, Google. If my town instantly had low-cost broadband, more people would need computers to hook up to it. And those computers need OSes and software. And those users would go to Google to search and have mail. And all that adds up to a lot of cash for providers of these things. Isn't it logical that they be actively lobbying FOR the networks. Perhaps they are lobbying as well and these type of laws won't steamroll across the country like the article seems to indicate.
I just don't see how it can be as one-sided as the article portrays it.