DHS is funded by our tax dollars. There are procedures in place to make sure that government contracts are issued to companies in a fair manner. Do we know if this was done correctly? Of course, since Comcast NBC Universal is staffed by a former FCC board member, I guess things like due diligence don't matter anymore. Not to mention the fact that Jeff Immelt (CEO of GE who used to own NBC Universal) is the jobs czar. This just reeks of conflict of interest.
Next there is the issue of ownership. If our tax dollars paid for this PSA, we damn well better own it. When Northrop Grumman makes a bomber, they don't retain ownership of it. This is just ridiculous. I'll bet NBC already had the PSA's ready to go, maybe thinking they'd run their own war on piracy. But then they realized, "Hey, we could pitch this to the DHS and make millions!"
This is a good point. If more teachers were more like you, a lot of the problems problems with the education system (maybe even the need for standardized testing) would go away. The important thing about testing is figuring out which students needed help with which concepts. That's why things like pop quizzes and homework should be done. Not to give Timmy padding on his GPA, but to use as a diagnostic tool by a good teacher.
I have tutored several students, and some of the common practices in grading are awful. Having kids grade each others homework, and using scantrons totally misses the point: assignments, tests, and even grades themselves should serve to help kids learn. Sometimes my tutoring students would have some misunderstanding that is easy to fix. Not reading the instructions and dropping off negative signs were pretty common mistakes that just took a little bit of training.
This wasn't a story about the ability to build computers or other electronics. This car analogy is not a comparison of two similar themes. You're making an analogy between users who don't notice RAM that's suddenly missing (requires basic technical knowledge) and the mechanical skill it takes to rebuild a modern car engine (requires advanced mechanical and technical knowledge). That isn't instructive or edifying; it's misleading though it's an easy mistake to make.
I'd answer it by saying I wouldn't know how to rebuild my car's engine, but if a repair shop removed it and replaced it with a significantly inferior engine without telling me, I would notice. I think that's a fair analogy to removing a stick of RAM.
Really? I wouldn't know for a second if they dropped in an older engine or a slightly smaller one. More to the point, it wouldn't even occur to me to look. If it were significantly inferior, fine, I would notice, but that's not an appropriate analogy. I wouldn't call 2 GB significantly inferior to 3 GB if you're not doing a lot of RAM intensive stuff. Hell, I only run into paging problems on my work computer when I have large Inventor assemblies open with a few tabs of Firefox, etc.
I wouldn't notice if they changed my oil, but used a cheaper grade than what I asked for. In the computer world, you can get different brands, speeds, and quality RAM. Hell, I don't even know where to find the speed of the RAM on this old PowerBook G4 besides looking on the actual stick.
I do think you're absolutely right about the ethics bit. It reminds me of the Ron Paul schtick about heroine. Good people wouldn't do bad things even if there were no rules prohibiting them.
I'm wrong. It was somebody else's aide he was cheating with. Also, his first wife was his high school geometry teacher. That's got to be worth some geek cred, right?
Obviously someone in his position can delegate an aide to cheat on his wife.
Wasn't it his aide's wife he was cheating with? I think that would get a little awkward. Or am I thinking of some other Republican running for president?
I have thought about this as well, whether to put more towards the mortgage or keep more in savings. While it makes more sense mathematically to have less in savings and more equity in the house, the problem is also one of liquidity. If I lose my job, I'd rather tap into savings than take out a second mortgage.
But it's amazing how many people pay off the smaller loans first rather than the highest interest rates first. Lets say you have $4000 left on your car at 2%, and $150,000 left on your house at 6%. Your great-aunt Matilda kicks the bucket and leaves you $4000. Most people would spend that money on a new big screen TV. A smaller portion would pay off that pesky car note. Very few would put it towards the mortgage, though.
That's what I was thinking. Maybe the new interface with random screen jumps and clicks redirecting me to the parent post instead of the link I am clicking on is Taco's way of punishing me for crimes unknown. Maybe a good apology is in order.
I'm sorry, baby! Please take me back. I promise I won't do it again.
I have Dish Network, and I've noticed they will "inject" advertisements on top of the advertisements that come from Comedy Central or other cable-type networks. Isn't this sort of analogous to that? I don't know about bogus search results, but injected ads and redirects seem like one of those things a company like this can get away with. Few of their customers will notice; it's probably not illegal; the risks are low; the payoff is high.
On the other hand, doesn't this mean they're not entitled to 512(a) safe harbor status? The law is explicit on this point. Time for **AA to sue Mediacom!! Who's bringing the popcorn?
I already watch YouTube on my Internet-connected Samsung HDTV. Several blu-ray players have this option, too. So your concern over a major FAIL is unfounded. It's not the easiest user interface, but it does the job. When my 4 year old asks me how forklifts are made, it's nice to be able to press a few buttons and have a video ready to go. I could pull out the laptop and do the same thing, I guess, but sometimes TV just seems like preferred screen. Especially since he is likely to be playing elsewhere in the living room, and will not want to sit right by a small laptop screen for 10 or 15 minutes.
But due to inflation, that $0.99 was only worth $0.17 back in 1970. So prices have actually dropped by about 83% by your calculations. Of course there's more people buying music, and there's more music being made, so the pie is getting bigger.
Some people work for small companies where they expect their employees to be responsible about what they download. If I need to patch AutoCAD, or download and install some trial FEA software, I'm sure as hell not going to ask permission first. They expect me to do a job and acquire the tools I need to do that job. I even have to change my network settings based on what PLC system I'm talking to. Hell, our helpdesk thinks that Spybot S&D is malware, and they deleted my hosts file. So I really don't like them remoting into my machine.
Unfortunately, you're correct. Texans take the whole "common man" thing to a new low. In order to have any credibility at work, I have to put on a drawl when I speak. It's absurd, but it gets the job done. Several pundits cited Rick Perry's bad grammar as part of his appeal (although I didn't realize "very unique" was bad grammar until one of the pundits pointed it out).
Just look at our previous governor. He couldn't talk his way out of a paper bag. But we loved him. If dubya ran again, he'd win in a huge landslide.
I know. ever since the change any time I try to click on a link in a post, Slashdot takes me to the parent post. Very bizarre. Same thing happens when I try to moderate. If I don't click and drag down to the right moderation the first time, it takes me to the parent post.
The best part of pay.gov is that you can choose what agency to donate to. I've often felt like they should do everybody's taxes this way, not just donations. It's the ultimate voting with your wallet.
They could set up a certain percentage that just goes to the general fund, but then you'd get to direct the rest of your tax dollars where you feel they should go. Better yet, have a list of what percentage currently goes to what, and then let you tweak it by a few percent either way. If people knew that the federal funding of $HOTBUTTONTOPIC amounted to something like $0.008 per person, maybe they wouldn't be so upset by it.
On second thought, the wealthy would suddenly have more say in how the government prioritizes things. That could be a very bad thing.
Win+Pause is one of the first things I hit when I start work on someone else's computer.
Thanks for that!! I never knew that one. Just Win+D whenever my boss is around and I'm on Slashdot. I'm a keyboard fiend, hate the mouse/trackpad. Things like F6 F2 Ctrl+C Alt+Tab Ctrl+V to paste a filename are waaaaaay faster than using a mouse. I'm probably one of the few people that actually use the menu key, too.
Since you obviously think that teaching is a no-education-required profession, there's not really any point in trying to have this discussion. You are among the misinformed throngs that think teachers just sit around babysitting all day. Good teachers put in hundreds of hours outside of class time preparing lessons, calling parents, taking continuing education courses, decorating their classrooms, and grading homework. These things take time and training. The notion that teachers work 9 months a year for less than 8 hrs a day is only true for shitty teachers.
I don't think you will find any teachers that claim to be in poverty. In fact, I find more people claiming that teachers claim poverty than actual teachers claiming to be in poverty. But they are not excessively paid. In my area, the average teacher makes about 10% over the median individual income.
The conversation is (or morphed into being) about percentage of a state budget for teachers and whether or not its unreasonable. So bringing up corrections is certainly germane. I guess I could have talked about H&HS rather than corrections, but it's harder to get good data on how many people that department serves.
Let's look at the cost of my child's daycare. The legal ratio is 18:1; the actual ratio is about 11:1. The "teacher" does not likely have a college degree. She probably makes $14/hr. My share of her income is probably around $3,300. So a lot of what I pay is for overhead. I get that. I also understand economies of scale. But the quality of education is also supposed to be better at elementary school compared to daycare.
The elementary school in my neighborhood has a ratio of 17:1. The teachers all have bachelor's degrees, and many have a master's. The average salary is somewhere around $47k. That's $2,764 per child just for the teacher's salary. I can certainly see administrative costs, benefits, supplies, etc. costing over $1,250 per child. I simply don't see $4,000 per child as an exorbitant amount.
Comparing corrections budgets to education budgets is not the same as comparing youth to criminals. And yes, I can certainly see how it would cost 10x as much as teaching kids. My point is that there's a problem when people are ranting about cutting teacher's pay while non-government corrections contractors are getting lucrative contracts.
By the way, that's billions, not millions. Numbers are reported in thousands.
Even then, do you really think $37.5B is "plenty of money" to educate 9.3 million school age kids? Seriously? That's roughly $4000 per kid. Think about how much people pay for daycare and college. Probably half to two thirds of that would be for teacher's salaries alone. That leaves the rest for the other costs of educating people: administration, buses, books, maintenance, etc.
Let's look at another line item. They have $9B for corrections. There are roughly 170,000 inmates in California. That comes to about $53,000 per year per inmate. More than ten times the cost of educating a child. Where do you think you get more bang for your buck?
Let's do a little math, shall we? How much do you think educators should make? For argument, let's go with $40k on average. Now, how many students on average does the teacher have? Let's say 30. So each student's family would have to come up with 40,000/30= $1,333.33 each year for their teacher. How much do you pay in state taxes? For argument let's go with 5% of your family income, so maybe $6000.
So if you had two kids, and you were paying your fair share for your kids' education, about 44% of your taxes would theoretically be going to pay just their teachers. That's not to mention the cost of the schools, buses, administration, textbooks, benefits, etc. So I don't think 55 to 65% of the state budget being spent on education is unreasonable.
Perhaps instead of cutting taxes for the rich, this country should get serious about paying for what they expect. I would gladly pay more state taxes to keep schools, parks, and libraries open. All of these things are on the chopping block in my neck of the woods.
You have obviously never tried to import a real MIDI performance. If you have anything even close to rubato, even Sibelius throws up all over the place. Besides, Bach is known for several voices at once. Sibelius would have no idea which notes are for which voice. Look. MIDI to a nice score is nearly impossible to do automatically. And as for Lilypond requiring "just some editing"... HAHAHAHAHA!!! I love Han-Wen, but it takes a metric ass-load of work to go from a complex MIDI performance to a playable score.
Maybe not trivial, but enough to make it hard to win a legitimate case without spending a lot of money on lawyers and computer experts. I've seen one judge that would believe anything a computer screen tells him. Maybe it serves me right for reading TFA, but it seems to me that the burden in these cases was laughably low.
Slashdot Mirror
DHS is funded by our tax dollars. There are procedures in place to make sure that government contracts are issued to companies in a fair manner. Do we know if this was done correctly? Of course, since Comcast NBC Universal is staffed by a former FCC board member, I guess things like due diligence don't matter anymore. Not to mention the fact that Jeff Immelt (CEO of GE who used to own NBC Universal) is the jobs czar. This just reeks of conflict of interest.
Next there is the issue of ownership. If our tax dollars paid for this PSA, we damn well better own it. When Northrop Grumman makes a bomber, they don't retain ownership of it. This is just ridiculous. I'll bet NBC already had the PSA's ready to go, maybe thinking they'd run their own war on piracy. But then they realized, "Hey, we could pitch this to the DHS and make millions!"
Maybe I need to get my tinfoil hat adjusted.
That would have been a lot funnier if your handle was Bob Dole.
That seems like a reasonable compromise. The ease of scantrons, and the educational value of an actual check.
This is a good point. If more teachers were more like you, a lot of the problems problems with the education system (maybe even the need for standardized testing) would go away. The important thing about testing is figuring out which students needed help with which concepts. That's why things like pop quizzes and homework should be done. Not to give Timmy padding on his GPA, but to use as a diagnostic tool by a good teacher.
I have tutored several students, and some of the common practices in grading are awful. Having kids grade each others homework, and using scantrons totally misses the point: assignments, tests, and even grades themselves should serve to help kids learn. Sometimes my tutoring students would have some misunderstanding that is easy to fix. Not reading the instructions and dropping off negative signs were pretty common mistakes that just took a little bit of training.
This wasn't a story about the ability to build computers or other electronics. This car analogy is not a comparison of two similar themes. You're making an analogy between users who don't notice RAM that's suddenly missing (requires basic technical knowledge) and the mechanical skill it takes to rebuild a modern car engine (requires advanced mechanical and technical knowledge). That isn't instructive or edifying; it's misleading though it's an easy mistake to make.
I'd answer it by saying I wouldn't know how to rebuild my car's engine, but if a repair shop removed it and replaced it with a significantly inferior engine without telling me, I would notice. I think that's a fair analogy to removing a stick of RAM.
Really? I wouldn't know for a second if they dropped in an older engine or a slightly smaller one. More to the point, it wouldn't even occur to me to look. If it were significantly inferior, fine, I would notice, but that's not an appropriate analogy. I wouldn't call 2 GB significantly inferior to 3 GB if you're not doing a lot of RAM intensive stuff. Hell, I only run into paging problems on my work computer when I have large Inventor assemblies open with a few tabs of Firefox, etc.
I wouldn't notice if they changed my oil, but used a cheaper grade than what I asked for. In the computer world, you can get different brands, speeds, and quality RAM. Hell, I don't even know where to find the speed of the RAM on this old PowerBook G4 besides looking on the actual stick.
I do think you're absolutely right about the ethics bit. It reminds me of the Ron Paul schtick about heroine. Good people wouldn't do bad things even if there were no rules prohibiting them.
I'm wrong. It was somebody else's aide he was cheating with. Also, his first wife was his high school geometry teacher. That's got to be worth some geek cred, right?
Obviously someone in his position can delegate an aide to cheat on his wife.
Wasn't it his aide's wife he was cheating with? I think that would get a little awkward. Or am I thinking of some other Republican running for president?
"alacrity"
Where's the "+1, new vocabulary word" mod option?
I have thought about this as well, whether to put more towards the mortgage or keep more in savings. While it makes more sense mathematically to have less in savings and more equity in the house, the problem is also one of liquidity. If I lose my job, I'd rather tap into savings than take out a second mortgage.
But it's amazing how many people pay off the smaller loans first rather than the highest interest rates first. Lets say you have $4000 left on your car at 2%, and $150,000 left on your house at 6%. Your great-aunt Matilda kicks the bucket and leaves you $4000. Most people would spend that money on a new big screen TV. A smaller portion would pay off that pesky car note. Very few would put it towards the mortgage, though.
That's what I was thinking. Maybe the new interface with random screen jumps and clicks redirecting me to the parent post instead of the link I am clicking on is Taco's way of punishing me for crimes unknown. Maybe a good apology is in order.
I'm sorry, baby! Please take me back. I promise I won't do it again.
I have Dish Network, and I've noticed they will "inject" advertisements on top of the advertisements that come from Comedy Central or other cable-type networks. Isn't this sort of analogous to that? I don't know about bogus search results, but injected ads and redirects seem like one of those things a company like this can get away with. Few of their customers will notice; it's probably not illegal; the risks are low; the payoff is high.
On the other hand, doesn't this mean they're not entitled to 512(a) safe harbor status? The law is explicit on this point. Time for **AA to sue Mediacom!! Who's bringing the popcorn?
I already watch YouTube on my Internet-connected Samsung HDTV. Several blu-ray players have this option, too. So your concern over a major FAIL is unfounded. It's not the easiest user interface, but it does the job. When my 4 year old asks me how forklifts are made, it's nice to be able to press a few buttons and have a video ready to go. I could pull out the laptop and do the same thing, I guess, but sometimes TV just seems like preferred screen. Especially since he is likely to be playing elsewhere in the living room, and will not want to sit right by a small laptop screen for 10 or 15 minutes.
Vizzini, is that you?
But due to inflation, that $0.99 was only worth $0.17 back in 1970. So prices have actually dropped by about 83% by your calculations. Of course there's more people buying music, and there's more music being made, so the pie is getting bigger.
Some people work for small companies where they expect their employees to be responsible about what they download. If I need to patch AutoCAD, or download and install some trial FEA software, I'm sure as hell not going to ask permission first. They expect me to do a job and acquire the tools I need to do that job. I even have to change my network settings based on what PLC system I'm talking to. Hell, our helpdesk thinks that Spybot S&D is malware, and they deleted my hosts file. So I really don't like them remoting into my machine.
Unfortunately, you're correct. Texans take the whole "common man" thing to a new low. In order to have any credibility at work, I have to put on a drawl when I speak. It's absurd, but it gets the job done. Several pundits cited Rick Perry's bad grammar as part of his appeal (although I didn't realize "very unique" was bad grammar until one of the pundits pointed it out).
Just look at our previous governor. He couldn't talk his way out of a paper bag. But we loved him. If dubya ran again, he'd win in a huge landslide.
I know. ever since the change any time I try to click on a link in a post, Slashdot takes me to the parent post. Very bizarre. Same thing happens when I try to moderate. If I don't click and drag down to the right moderation the first time, it takes me to the parent post.
The best part of pay.gov is that you can choose what agency to donate to. I've often felt like they should do everybody's taxes this way, not just donations. It's the ultimate voting with your wallet.
They could set up a certain percentage that just goes to the general fund, but then you'd get to direct the rest of your tax dollars where you feel they should go. Better yet, have a list of what percentage currently goes to what, and then let you tweak it by a few percent either way. If people knew that the federal funding of $HOTBUTTONTOPIC amounted to something like $0.008 per person, maybe they wouldn't be so upset by it.
On second thought, the wealthy would suddenly have more say in how the government prioritizes things. That could be a very bad thing.
Win+Pause is one of the first things I hit when I start work on someone else's computer.
Thanks for that!! I never knew that one. Just Win+D whenever my boss is around and I'm on Slashdot. I'm a keyboard fiend, hate the mouse/trackpad. Things like F6 F2 Ctrl+C Alt+Tab Ctrl+V to paste a filename are waaaaaay faster than using a mouse. I'm probably one of the few people that actually use the menu key, too.
Since you obviously think that teaching is a no-education-required profession, there's not really any point in trying to have this discussion. You are among the misinformed throngs that think teachers just sit around babysitting all day. Good teachers put in hundreds of hours outside of class time preparing lessons, calling parents, taking continuing education courses, decorating their classrooms, and grading homework. These things take time and training. The notion that teachers work 9 months a year for less than 8 hrs a day is only true for shitty teachers.
I don't think you will find any teachers that claim to be in poverty. In fact, I find more people claiming that teachers claim poverty than actual teachers claiming to be in poverty. But they are not excessively paid. In my area, the average teacher makes about 10% over the median individual income.
The conversation is (or morphed into being) about percentage of a state budget for teachers and whether or not its unreasonable. So bringing up corrections is certainly germane. I guess I could have talked about H&HS rather than corrections, but it's harder to get good data on how many people that department serves.
Let's look at the cost of my child's daycare. The legal ratio is 18:1; the actual ratio is about 11:1. The "teacher" does not likely have a college degree. She probably makes $14/hr. My share of her income is probably around $3,300. So a lot of what I pay is for overhead. I get that. I also understand economies of scale. But the quality of education is also supposed to be better at elementary school compared to daycare.
The elementary school in my neighborhood has a ratio of 17:1. The teachers all have bachelor's degrees, and many have a master's. The average salary is somewhere around $47k. That's $2,764 per child just for the teacher's salary. I can certainly see administrative costs, benefits, supplies, etc. costing over $1,250 per child. I simply don't see $4,000 per child as an exorbitant amount.
Comparing corrections budgets to education budgets is not the same as comparing youth to criminals. And yes, I can certainly see how it would cost 10x as much as teaching kids. My point is that there's a problem when people are ranting about cutting teacher's pay while non-government corrections contractors are getting lucrative contracts.
By the way, that's billions, not millions. Numbers are reported in thousands.
Even then, do you really think $37.5B is "plenty of money" to educate 9.3 million school age kids? Seriously? That's roughly $4000 per kid. Think about how much people pay for daycare and college. Probably half to two thirds of that would be for teacher's salaries alone. That leaves the rest for the other costs of educating people: administration, buses, books, maintenance, etc.
Let's look at another line item. They have $9B for corrections. There are roughly 170,000 inmates in California. That comes to about $53,000 per year per inmate. More than ten times the cost of educating a child. Where do you think you get more bang for your buck?
Let's do a little math, shall we? How much do you think educators should make? For argument, let's go with $40k on average. Now, how many students on average does the teacher have? Let's say 30. So each student's family would have to come up with 40,000/30= $1,333.33 each year for their teacher. How much do you pay in state taxes? For argument let's go with 5% of your family income, so maybe $6000.
So if you had two kids, and you were paying your fair share for your kids' education, about 44% of your taxes would theoretically be going to pay just their teachers. That's not to mention the cost of the schools, buses, administration, textbooks, benefits, etc. So I don't think 55 to 65% of the state budget being spent on education is unreasonable.
Perhaps instead of cutting taxes for the rich, this country should get serious about paying for what they expect. I would gladly pay more state taxes to keep schools, parks, and libraries open. All of these things are on the chopping block in my neck of the woods.
You have obviously never tried to import a real MIDI performance. If you have anything even close to rubato, even Sibelius throws up all over the place. Besides, Bach is known for several voices at once. Sibelius would have no idea which notes are for which voice. Look. MIDI to a nice score is nearly impossible to do automatically. And as for Lilypond requiring "just some editing" ... HAHAHAHAHA!!! I love Han-Wen, but it takes a metric ass-load of work to go from a complex MIDI performance to a playable score.
Maybe not trivial, but enough to make it hard to win a legitimate case without spending a lot of money on lawyers and computer experts. I've seen one judge that would believe anything a computer screen tells him. Maybe it serves me right for reading TFA, but it seems to me that the burden in these cases was laughably low.