...you know how your kid is behaving, and you let him get away with it...your the problem not the school...its your job as a parent to make sure your kid has all his homework done everyday...not the school's...if you let your kid get away with that behavior your just setting him up for the big fall later on...good study habits need to start early.
Agreed! and my wife and I are trying as hard as possible. part of the issue is that he spends two weeks with us, then two weeks with his Mom.. so its very on/off as to parental involvement. (and no, the legal tangle is ugly to do it any other way.) Add to that the fact that he is ADD, and things get more interesting. We are TRYING to teach him to do things properly.. but the school is definately not helping! Teaching him at home that there are ramifications for him not doing his assignments, when the school turns around and proves that blatantly wrong, is difficult, to say the least.
In his own defense if he does well in the class without doing homework, maybe he doesn't need too...but then again perhaps he isn't challenged and belongs in a higher level class...I've always firmly believed any student that gets C's all the time might be because they don't care and are bored, make things harder, but by the same token stright A's mean the same thing...schools should aim for C's, NOT A's. C's mean the Kid is in the proper difficulty environment, if you can make it harder and they still get C's then you have done the right thing. A's mean its too damn easy...
Also agreed.. I was lucky enough to not need to crack a book through most of junior high because I came from a private school that was so advanced classwise that I had already HAD most of these things and didnt need to relearn them. But when I got to Highschool things changed.. and it was quite tough on me. (Add being a geek and being stuffed in the locker by the football team regularly, and you have a GREAT environment for people saying screw school!)
(one of) the problems is that "higher level" doesnt happen (at least not in my area.. not sure about others) until high school.. up until then all kids are "equal" and at that point you are supposed to choose A) "college prep" B) "regular" or C) "tech school" and they still treat tech-school as if you are going to be dirty-fingered all your life. I would have LOVED to have been able to take Calc and Auto Repair courses.. both would have great impact on my life outside of the school.. but that wasnt available. I could either be a math whiz OR I could be a barely literate grease monkey.. not both. YMMV.. I'm not so sure how other school systems are laid out.. but I know that was the case in the three different high schools I was involved with.
I suspect it is (now anyway, as opposed to say, vietnam era) an outgrowth of the way middle and high-schools function.
My son is currently in fourth, going to fifth grade next year. (School change.. lower to middle) and he has "learned" that he doesnt really need to take in his homework, complete his assignments on time, etc, simply because the way this lower school runs, it is next to impossibe to fail. (well, except for the inanely subjective questions they keep asking in written assignments.. like "Why do you think the hippo in the picture is sad" and they answer they want is "because he is brown, not gray" and the answer you give is "because his land is being taken by slash and burn agriculture" and it gets marked wrong.. "). But his teachers let him finish (or totally re-do) his work in class. THey even go so far as to totally not-count homework in the total grade.
But next year, he will be in a school with no such qualms about failing people. They have pretty much taught him to slack because "someone else" will do it. (Either in his in-class study group, or his parents, after I or my ex-wife get the threatening letter sent home by the school, aimed at us, not him).
He's screwed next year, right? Wrong. In this school, kids cant be in "special" (remedial, rather than short-bus special) education for just not studying.. they have to be in the class with all the other kids. Now, my son is not stupid.. he just hates doing homework. But he is going to be stuck in a class with a bunch of kids equally intelligent, but who do their work and shouldnt be held back due to people like my kid.
This extrapolates itself to the real world.. the guy at work who doesnt do his work, because he knows someone will pick up the slack. The kid in college who is there on a grant or scholarship, but sleeps through classes and passes anyway.. etc.
Grade inflation exists because no-one is willing to tell Johnny to get off his ass and actually WORK because he is dragging everyone else down with him. And when you have parents shelling out 100 grand for an education, they certainly dont want to hear that Johnny doesnt want to do his work either.. its pervasive, and it sucks, but until schools get straightened out so that the kids actual education is the important part, rather than placement test scores, SAT percentages per school, or sports teams.. its going to continue.
Shape the motes like spiders... and give them simple commands like "kill Tom Selleck"
AUGHHH! Thanks! Thanks SO MUCH! My therapist thanks you as well! I had FINALLY blocked Gene Simmons' acting career from my head.. but when I read that, for some reason I got his character from that and the one from "Never too young to die" crossed, and Now im seeing the Hard Rock Divine going after Tom with robotic spiders in fishnets!
I can only assume the digital camera is for the porn do-it-yourselfer.
Nah! I mean.. thats an added side benefit.. that and suddenly getting rich by adding to the plethora of "upskirt" sites.. but the REAL reason is..
Sony is quietly taking over the world.. through secret underground corporations run by Illuminati, they have their hands in cell-phones, digicams, the companies that provide your cell service, and web hosting companies. Once they hand these to kids, (who now think the inane blog type live-journal.com are the way to go) the kids will invariably run the bill sky-high on the phone/palm that mom and dad got them (and pay the cell bill for). Now they can send blurry black-with-a-bright-spot-in-the-middle photos REALTIME to a webpage and say "Look.. Its Rammstein! Live!" and hordes of people will flock to the site to see it!
Said site, of course, being owned by Sony.. and featuring sony advertising. And a couple of pics of unbelievably hot girls _in_ the advertising, making boys say "wow.. I can chat with her" and girls say "Wow, I can BE her with one of these new blog-cam-phone-pda-turnip twaddlers!"
Both Ericsson and Nokia have new phones that integrates lots of PDA features. Of course, most of those phones aren't available in the US.
The T62u is currently available from Cingular.. I know that is fairly limited as far as "us" is concerned.. its mainly PA, Jersey, and Delaware, as far as I know.. but its not a bad phone. Sounds kind of tinny.. but I figure everything this side of "all digital" does anyway.
What I really like is it is a tri-mode.. I may be paying a bit more for the signal in oddball areas, but at least I _have_ a signal.
Check out Sony-Ericsson's new phones. I have the T-62u and it does a lot of these things out of the box, or with an attatchment. It has an attachable 32MB mp3 player, can take a camera, has a calendar, alarm, is synchable with Outlook and features GPRS "high speed" data transmission.
Its a greyscale display, but still has a nice look.. not like the T81i(I think thats the name) which is full color and features a screensaver. (Why in gods name do I need a screen saver on a phone?)
but I think Im going to swing less towards bigass PDA's all-in-ones and more toward smaller phone style ones.
I already have to carry my work-issued two way pager, my Multiplier geek tool kit, and my bungee badge on my belt.. adding a PDA just makes me look a bit too batman.. where adding a phone only causes me to lean to one side a little bit.
Just for Clarification... Amish is Mennonite. http://www.mhsc.ca/index.asp?content=http://www.mh sc.ca/encyclopedia/contents/A4574ME.html
No, Amish != mennonite as Christian != Catholic.
Amish may be viewed as an "umbrella" sect.. but mennonites drive cars, (albeit modest ones) and River Brethren (yet another sub-division) may or may not depending on their church. Its kind of confusing, but you get good at distinguishing when you spend years going to PA Dutch Farm Markets.
As to the whole "power/outside world" thing.. the Amish sometimes have phones in the barn, so they can call a vet. (Not that they do often.. these people abuse animals in ways that are truly horrific.. if you dont believe me check out the New Holland Horse Auctions some time.. ). They have electricity in their stores in Lancaster and phones as well. But not at the house.
Of course, if you keep a working farm like these people do, you dont have TIME to sit and read slashdot or watch TV at night. I have worked a few summers on farms run by Mennonites.. those people WORK man.
How did they keep the block of ice from melting? Sorry, I've lived in Texas all of my life and the thought of getting a block of ice in the winter and keeping it till summer just astounds me.
I have lived in/around "PA Dutch Country" all my life. Had the good luck to grow up on a (rented) 200+ year old farm, complete with bank barn and stone farmhouse, smokehouse, etc. One way to keep the ice from melting is using it in a springhouse.. where the temperature of the water is so low anyway that the ice is mainly just an "added" coolant.
Another way was the bank barns.. built into the side of the mountain, and made of extremely thick stone walls.. they stay pretty low temp naturally, just because the ground is cool and never really warms up. Line that with tongue-in-groove wood over two feet of fine sawdust, and you have one hell of an insulator. On a stone floor, this will keep it quite cool for quite a while.. and keeps the cold in, more than the heat out.
We used to build these. Then we got _REAL_ cannons.. (black powder, medieval carriages, neat things to play with.. 16 oz of cannon powder will fire an empty 1 lb propane can quite a distance..).
Or the big red knife:
- Tiny little scisors
- Tiny little screwdriver
- Tiny little tommygun
- Tiny little satelite uplink
- Tiny little antitank missile
- Tiny little tactical nuke...
(cue vatican swiss guard) I can see you! I can see you! Big knife, small knife.. big knife.. small knife... Wait.. you have a string.. SNIP! I have cut! I have cut the string! This thing.. I dunno what this thing does....
He is trying to use it from a user perspective, not the "I have locked myself in the basement and never touched a girl" perspective that you seem all to familiar with.
Face it... most of what exists on Linux, aside from the morass of half assed standards that are built in Gnome and KDE apps, are basically beta software. You _have_ to be able to do some tweaking. Sure.. someday I may be able to download a pre-built RPM for my specific system..but part of what I love about Linux is I can use virtually any hardware I want.. rather than good old Windows inability to tell a PCI modem from a PCI video card. And no, I havent locked myself in the basement.. took me all of 10 minutes to read the README, get the files I needed, unzip em, stick em where they needed to be, browse the instructions for./configure, which clearly stated what flags I needed to set for my system, and run the compiler. I launched the compiler, and read two emails till it finished. Then I ran make && make install and boogeyed off to enjoy a beer and some quality time with the wife, and when I came back it was there and rarin to go. yeah.. it took some work.. but at least I got a custom app that does EXACTLY what I want, rather than some prebuilt Windows app or RH app that crashes at every inopportune moment because it is enhanced for a Hercules card.
If Linux is ever going to be accepted, you should not have to tweak it, and it should not matter what WM you are running, unless you are a skinning loser, which I think you might be. Not sure what you mean by "skinning loser" but I have it usually running from the command line, because It allows me to skip that whole stupid graphic end of the game. Unless im watching something HUGE and want the volume thingy and the slider bar, I just associated it from nautilus on the command line.
When I _do_ use the skin, its the default one, and while annoying at times, I can live with it fine. Im not a theme freak or skin junky anyway.. most of them suck, and im not enough of a grapchics person to make my own, so "default" is where most of my stuff is set.
Mainly because he limited himself to RPM's and didnt specify what WM he was using.
I use both mplayer and gmplayer on Mandrake just fine. It doesnt have resize problems, has resize ability, etc. That _may_ be because Im using windowmaker and/or blackbox, but it seems to work fine in KDE as well. Course, I installed the source for them, and compiled from scratch, after doing all the enable/disable flags the right way for my system.
The only issue Im having with Mplayer right now is it has a tendency to put some.viv files upside down when it plays them.. not sure, and not really bothered by it, but it was something i noticed.
Xine hasnt worked for me since day one.. but i have never tweaked it.. I just think it doesnt like my DVD drive.. as soon as it comes up and tries to hit the drive it locks the system hard.
I dont know what the problem is for this guy, other than the fact that he seems to be RPM happy and he uses RedHat. (which is certainly his prerogative)
Anyone who knows a set of identical twins should have been able to predict this out of the box.
I know two sets.. and both of them were raised in identical environments, however each is quite distinct from their sibling in a million ways.
*sigh*
How could _any_ rational person think that a clone of your old dog would know you and know the old tricks when it was born? They said it TWICE in the article, which makes me think someone somewhere thinks this is possible.
Ahhh, I see. So those that do get punished should not be punished because some others are not???? Shouldn't we be demanding that the others be punished, not demanding ( back in the day) that the US "Free Kevin?"
I dont think I, nor most of the people I have read on this forum believe that Kevin did not deserve to be punished. I certainly feel he did. My issue was more with inept prosecutors with an axe to grind, and media frenzy, coupled with people who were judging something they did not understand. That was the basis to my question for him.. is there a better way than how we do it now?
I am not a "kevin supporter". I know he broke laws, I know he did time, and I have no problem with that. I _do_ however have issues with the method with which they prosecuted him, and the way they treated him after the caught him.
I am not sure I'd classify stealing and possessing Credit Card numbers as being overblown.
I would consider it a crime.. but not a (X) billion dollar crime.. we all know he broke the law.. but looking at what some white collar criminals have done with bookeeping, and the punsihments imposed, shows that Kevin had things go a lot worse for him. Probably because of the extreme use of the word "cyber".. but I dont think he deserved what he got.
As how you have spent 8 years involved in a situation that seems by all accounts to have been an overblown kangaroo court, do you feel the government needs a specific branch specifically to deal with "cybercrime", and if so, how would you see it laid out, ideally, and why?
Movies, music, art etc are a vital part of our culture and our lives. In the past these media were distributed by a wide range of sources and were available to most of the populace
They still are. Radio plays music, free. Television shows movies for free, (albeit edited). There are many libraries where you can check out movies, tapes, and even (gosh) books!. I dont see anyone limiting your access to these.
Do you really want 5 multinational conglomerates controlling ever aspect of american culture and then determining what price you will have to pay to be a part of it? I sure as hell dont.
They dont. They may control "pop" culture, but I dont think they control "culture". If you (or america, for that matter) are such sheep that you will follow what a movie or a record tells you, you have serious serious issues that you need professional help for.
I have the right to do whatever I want as long as it isnt hurting anyone. 100% of the stuff I download is stuff that I would NOT buy otherwise. Therefor there is no loss or harm done to the RIAA members therefor what I do is not illegal.
Morally justify with both hands all you want, there Che Guevera, but the fact is, what you do is illegal. Stop getting a hard-on over the freedom-fighting routine long enough to realize you are breaking the law. If you dont agree with those laws and choose to break them, thats fine. But at least have the balls to stand up and say you break them because you choose to be a thief, rather than attempting to justify it as "legal because I dont feel the same way the lawmakers do". If you _really_ want to impress me, get busted and make your case in court, and get the laws changed.
The "if people choose to take things while Im not looking" comment doesnt wash either. you know full well you are distributing, and posession is 9/10ths.
See this is the internet and everything is distributed (not the hippie generation where your approach might actually work). Millions upon millions of people disobeying the law is infinitely more formidable than getting a couple hundred to take a fall for millions.
I kind of disagree. See, the problem here is that we all sit around/. feeling high and mighty cause we are socking it to EvilCo., but in reality we are breaking laws. And we are not in the courts attempting to change those laws. (Well, some of us are, but most of us are sitting here reading/. waiting for the newest mp3's to queue and download).
Problem is, all this will do is force the **AA industries to put more features into everything to keep us from doing this. (whether or not it is legal for us to do d/l certain tracks wont matter.. its the "what about the children" issue.. better 10 guilty man go free than one innocent man be jailed, only backwards).
Thats the issue.. its not civil disobediance, its unwillingness to accept that maybe, just maybe, you have to pay for something and you dont have a RIGHT to steal someone elses content just because you feel they make too much money.
Loved your work on the soap opera. Love your album, too! I listen to it every day!
Do me a favor, fax me a copy of your signature, so I can tape it to the album and sell pirates of it and photocopies of the cover on Ebay as "signed collectibles" okay?
an nationwide cell phone protest! Its easy when ever you see one of thease ignorant idiots in a movie theater or in public take the phone and throw it in the nearest toilet! However it would be funny to watch some loud mouth get zapped at dennys. or we could figgure out a way to play with the air waves so that we can remote-zap someone!
I would soften that with "in public" defined as anywhere there is NOT a phone booth/accessible public phone.
I have no issue whatsoever with the guy who stands in the lobby of Red Lobster and makes a cell call, simply because he prefers to use the service he paid for rather than spend change in an ATT phone.
I _do_ however, have an issue with the harried executive type who wanders through otherwise closed hallways using an earbud and a boom mic and talks, loudly, while wandering around, so you are caught between trying to figure out if he is A) insane, B) talkign to you, C) on a cellphone.
I put those people right up there with jackasses who insist on singing along out loud with their disc-man on the bus, or walking down my quiet suburban street at 2:00 in the morning. (It happens more often than you would think).
And the main reason the street thing bothers me, is it sets off all the neighbors dogs, and that goes on for hours.
Im not anti-cellphone, Im anti-jackass. Much like guns, its not the phone, its the guy USING IT.
Maeryk
Dont even get me STARTED on speaker phones in cubicles.. I get great joy out of interjecting "inappropriate" content into idiots who insist on using speaker-phones halfway across their office from where they sit.
You would be amazed what a few choice (and loud) comments about "masturbation" or "prostate exam" will do to shut them up.
I have a cell phone but I have never had it ring anywhere inappropriate because I turn off the damn ringer and put it on vibration mode. Why is it that nobody else can do this?
Its the logical progression of the "looking out for #1" and "touchy feely you are always right and your feelings are important" crap we have been teaching in schools for the last decade or so.
Nobody else can do it, because they dont make a distinction between Cell Phone and just generally being obnoxious. And I would bet if they didnt have the cell phone, they would find some OTHER way to be obnoxious.
Blame the theater as well, since they seem hell bent to make the most uncomfortable seats, noisy snack containers, and deafening sound systems available. (I wont even go to the nicest theater near me cause my ears ring incessantly after seeing a film, and it _still_ sounds like crap. Volume does not make up for a good sound system!)
I think its just the outgrowth of the "I can do whatever I want, and you cant touch me, cause thats assault, and I will sue" mindset. And I think it has pervaded society a lot.
I have been running Limewire, and has anyone else noticed that no matter WHAT you put in the search box, you nearly immediately get three hits back with exactly that title and an appropriate extension? One is a broken move file that just locks your player, and two others are pr0n teasers.. but that must be a large server with a fast pipe... because it consistant, and it is FAST.
Has anyone run into this with any of the other P2P clients, or is it just limewire specific?
(I would think that would be a better way to tie up the services anyway.. just have a remote server that responds to incoming searches with a couple of crap files. Get enough of them doing it, and the S/N ratio will get so screwed people will stop using it.)
It is the user! Zapping the annoying Cell phone user in the theater wont stop them from A) letting their annoying screaming child run amok during the movie B) chatting at normal volume with the person next to them C) loudly snoring D) being generally obnoxious with their squeaky straw or nearly empty soda.
We went to my son's 4th grade chorus recital last night. The family perched behind us A) let their 3? 4? year old child spend the entire half hour screaming to his (presumed) relative on stage, they carried on a conversation that came out louder on my camcorder than the singing, and when the kids did "hard knock life" with the snapping part, they got into a rampant (and loud) discussion of how to snap, and proceeded to practice throughout the rest of the show.
Yes, I politely asked them to quiet down. No it didnt do any good.
Its not the phone, its the jerk using it, and those same jerks have ALWAYS A) worn hats to theaters, B)jammed their knees into your seat (partially the theaters fault for building seats for 5' 100 lb people) and C) insisted on sitting dead center in a row of people and getting up three times during the movie.
I would much prefer the devices be in the SEATS and controlled by a consensus of people in the theater.
I can't help but feel that the USA is in danger of losing its global dominance because of the general attitude of Americans that "We're just better". Your insight above has prompted me to say this, but some of the other responses to this article also make me think it.
Unfortunately, I think you are right. I dont share that belief that "we is the best" and if I gave that impression, I apologize. (See my followup post for more info.) However, I do feel that different business models need more time to homogenize into something good, rather than a sudden 180 degree turn to "heres the new, better way. Do it or screw you".
Don't sit on your laurels, Americans. The rest of the world isn't as stupid, or as lazy, as many of you seem to think.
Hear hear! I personally think that is utterly true.. but since the majority of the US thinks "world news" means reading the "national" section of USA Today, I tend to think I am in the minority. Denis Leary's routine about "and you know why we are the best? cause we've got the bomb! thats why" was a joke for him.. but I strongly suspect a lot of people actually believe that to be true.
It's a shame, really. Japan, for instance, was given all the tools after world war two to make themselves into whatever they wanted, and they did.. became a powerhouse in the electronics, auto, etc, industries. And we suddenly got scared. But we certainly have the ability to out-pace them, if we put our collective minds to it. Problem is, unions and idiot lawsuits wont allow that to happen, not to mention billions of middle managers who feel the need to leave their inane and often useless mark on a project, dooming it to never being "right". (Yes.. I have seen plenty of PHB's do exactly what happens in the Dilbert strips.)
I do not know how this guy get a score of 3. Here's an article on BBC which reports about guys like you: Colour still marks US job market [bbc.co.uk]
That has _nothing_ whatsoever to do with what I am talking about.
I could give a rats ass about color, creed, religion, or national origin on a personal or professional level. Im talking about business cultures.. like the difference between mom-and-pop shop where you call and get a live person, and CorpCo where you get a 12 minute "press or say 1 to listen to our menu, which has changed" and eventually end up on the voice mail of some drone who doesnt want to answer it and sits and watches it ring.
Im talking about the fact that you take a company that a _lot_ of people have worked their butts off to make a success here in the US, and suddenly tie its success and/or operations to some fledgeling endeavor in europe somewhere, run by people who have no clue how we do business here. Its a true cultural gap, and its not about what color people are, its about how they learned to work.
EG: I used to work in a nursery (trees) and the guy who owned it would bring in cambodian and honduran laborers on a work visa, set them up with a soc. sec. number, and taxes and everything. These guys worked CIRCLES around us and went from sunup to sundown, no matter how much you told em to take it a little easier. They loved the ability to do so.. because they were actually making pretty good money (compared to what they were used to) and were making inroads into bringing themselves and their familys to america.
Now.. he didnt do this because he hated the US, or because their labor was cheaper.. he did it because after years of putting ads in the paper, and using the two other kids he had working for him as word of mouth, he couldnt get anyone here to DO the work for what he was paying. (which wasnt bad wages, I might add). Its a cultural difference..
Compare that to companies which are now expanding into other countries, and discovering that people will work 14 hour days for 7.95 an hour to do the same job you are getting 30 bucks an hour to do, and they wont bitch about it, and wonder why "global" is such a buzzword suddenly?
Slashdot Mirror
...you know how your kid is behaving, and you let him get away with it...your the problem not the school...its your job as a parent to make sure your kid has all his homework done everyday...not the school's...if you let your kid get away with that behavior your just setting him up for the big fall later on...good study habits need to start early.
Agreed! and my wife and I are trying as hard as possible. part of the issue is that he spends two weeks with us, then two weeks with his Mom.. so its very on/off as to parental involvement. (and no, the legal tangle is ugly to do it any other way.) Add to that the fact that he is ADD, and things get more interesting. We are TRYING to teach him to do things properly.. but the school is definately not helping! Teaching him at home that there are ramifications for him not doing his assignments, when the school turns around and proves that blatantly wrong, is difficult, to say the least.
In his own defense if he does well in the class without doing homework, maybe he doesn't need too...but then again perhaps he isn't challenged and belongs in a higher level class...I've always firmly believed any student that gets C's all the time might be because they don't care and are bored, make things harder, but by the same token stright A's mean the same thing...schools should aim for C's, NOT A's. C's mean the Kid is in the proper difficulty environment, if you can make it harder and they still get C's then you have done the right thing. A's mean its too damn easy...
Also agreed.. I was lucky enough to not need to crack a book through most of junior high because I came from a private school that was so advanced classwise that I had already HAD most of these things and didnt need to relearn them. But when I got to Highschool things changed.. and it was quite tough on me. (Add being a geek and being stuffed in the locker by the football team regularly, and you have a GREAT environment for people saying screw school!)
(one of) the problems is that "higher level" doesnt happen (at least not in my area.. not sure about others) until high school.. up until then all kids are "equal" and at that point you are supposed to choose A) "college prep" B) "regular" or C) "tech school" and they still treat tech-school as if you are going to be dirty-fingered all your life. I would have LOVED to have been able to take Calc and Auto Repair courses.. both would have great impact on my life outside of the school.. but that wasnt available. I could either be a math whiz OR I could be a barely literate grease monkey.. not both. YMMV.. I'm not so sure how other school systems are laid out.. but I know that was the case in the three different high schools I was involved with.
Maeryk
I suspect it is (now anyway, as opposed to say, vietnam era) an outgrowth of the way middle and high-schools function.
My son is currently in fourth, going to fifth grade next year. (School change.. lower to middle) and he has "learned" that he doesnt really need to take in his homework, complete his assignments on time, etc, simply because the way this lower school runs, it is next to impossibe to fail. (well, except for the inanely subjective questions they keep asking in written assignments.. like "Why do you think the hippo in the picture is sad" and they answer they want is "because he is brown, not gray" and the answer you give is "because his land is being taken by slash and burn agriculture" and it gets marked wrong.. "). But his teachers let him finish (or totally re-do) his work in class. THey even go so far as to totally not-count homework in the total grade.
But next year, he will be in a school with no such qualms about failing people. They have pretty much taught him to slack because "someone else" will do it. (Either in his in-class study group, or his parents, after I or my ex-wife get the threatening letter sent home by the school, aimed at us, not him).
He's screwed next year, right? Wrong. In this school, kids cant be in "special" (remedial, rather than short-bus special) education for just not studying.. they have to be in the class with all the other kids. Now, my son is not stupid.. he just hates doing homework. But he is going to be stuck in a class with a bunch of kids equally intelligent, but who do their work and shouldnt be held back due to people like my kid.
This extrapolates itself to the real world.. the guy at work who doesnt do his work, because he knows someone will pick up the slack. The kid in college who is there on a grant or scholarship, but sleeps through classes and passes anyway.. etc.
Grade inflation exists because no-one is willing to tell Johnny to get off his ass and actually WORK because he is dragging everyone else down with him. And when you have parents shelling out 100 grand for an education, they certainly dont want to hear that Johnny doesnt want to do his work either.. its pervasive, and it sucks, but until schools get straightened out so that the kids actual education is the important part, rather than placement test scores, SAT percentages per school, or sports teams.. its going to continue.
Maeryk
Shape the motes like spiders... and give them simple commands like "kill Tom Selleck"
AUGHHH! Thanks! Thanks SO MUCH! My therapist thanks you as well! I had FINALLY blocked Gene Simmons' acting career from my head.. but when I read that, for some reason I got his character from that and the one from "Never too young to die" crossed, and Now im seeing the Hard Rock Divine going after Tom with robotic spiders in fishnets!
AUGHHH!
I can only assume the digital camera is for the porn do-it-yourselfer.
Nah! I mean.. thats an added side benefit.. that and suddenly getting rich by adding to the plethora of "upskirt" sites.. but the REAL reason is..
Sony is quietly taking over the world.. through secret underground corporations run by Illuminati, they have their hands in cell-phones, digicams, the companies that provide your cell service, and web hosting companies. Once they hand these to kids, (who now think the inane blog type live-journal.com are the way to go) the kids will invariably run the bill sky-high on the phone/palm that mom and dad got them (and pay the cell bill for). Now they can send blurry black-with-a-bright-spot-in-the-middle photos REALTIME to a webpage and say "Look.. Its Rammstein! Live!" and hordes of people will flock to the site to see it!
Said site, of course, being owned by Sony.. and featuring sony advertising. And a couple of pics of unbelievably hot girls _in_ the advertising, making boys say "wow.. I can chat with her" and girls say "Wow, I can BE her with one of these new blog-cam-phone-pda-turnip twaddlers!"
Its clever... all your PDA are belong to them!
Maeryk
Both Ericsson and Nokia have new phones that integrates lots of PDA features. Of course, most of those phones aren't available in the US.
The T62u is currently available from Cingular.. I know that is fairly limited as far as "us" is concerned.. its mainly PA, Jersey, and Delaware, as far as I know.. but its not a bad phone. Sounds kind of tinny.. but I figure everything this side of "all digital" does anyway.
What I really like is it is a tri-mode.. I may be paying a bit more for the signal in oddball areas, but at least I _have_ a signal.
Maeryk
Check out Sony-Ericsson's new phones. I have the T-62u and it does a lot of these things out of the box, or with an attatchment. It has an attachable 32MB mp3 player, can take a camera, has a calendar, alarm, is synchable with Outlook and features GPRS "high speed" data transmission.
Its a greyscale display, but still has a nice look.. not like the T81i(I think thats the name) which is full color and features a screensaver. (Why in gods name do I need a screen saver on a phone?)
but I think Im going to swing less towards bigass PDA's all-in-ones and more toward smaller phone style ones.
I already have to carry my work-issued two way pager, my Multiplier geek tool kit, and my bungee badge on my belt.. adding a PDA just makes me look a bit too batman.. where adding a phone only causes me to lean to one side a little bit.
Maeryk
Just for Clarification... Amish is Mennonite. http://www.mhsc.ca/index.asp?content=http://www.mh sc.ca/encyclopedia/contents/A4574ME.html
No, Amish != mennonite as Christian != Catholic.
Amish may be viewed as an "umbrella" sect.. but mennonites drive cars, (albeit modest ones) and River Brethren (yet another sub-division) may or may not depending on their church. Its kind of confusing, but you get good at distinguishing when you spend years going to PA Dutch Farm Markets.
As to the whole "power/outside world" thing.. the Amish sometimes have phones in the barn, so they can call a vet. (Not that they do often.. these people abuse animals in ways that are truly horrific.. if you dont believe me check out the New Holland Horse Auctions some time.. ). They have electricity in their stores in Lancaster and phones as well. But not at the house.
Of course, if you keep a working farm like these people do, you dont have TIME to sit and read slashdot or watch TV at night. I have worked a few summers on farms run by Mennonites.. those people WORK man.
Maeryk
How did they keep the block of ice from melting? Sorry, I've lived in Texas all of my life and the thought of getting a block of ice in the winter and keeping it till summer just astounds me.
I have lived in/around "PA Dutch Country" all my life. Had the good luck to grow up on a (rented) 200+ year old farm, complete with bank barn and stone farmhouse, smokehouse, etc. One way to keep the ice from melting is using it in a springhouse.. where the temperature of the water is so low anyway that the ice is mainly just an "added" coolant.
Another way was the bank barns.. built into the side of the mountain, and made of extremely thick stone walls.. they stay pretty low temp naturally, just because the ground is cool and never really warms up. Line that with tongue-in-groove wood over two feet of fine sawdust, and you have one hell of an insulator. On a stone floor, this will keep it quite cool for quite a while.. and keeps the cold in, more than the heat out.
Neat technology, really.
Maeryk
We used to build these. Then we got _REAL_ cannons.. (black powder, medieval carriages, neat things to play with.. 16 oz of cannon powder will fire an empty 1 lb propane can quite a distance..).
Wait till the Germans discover this throwing larger fruit for fun and profit"
Maeryk
Well, a little red knife, anyway.
...
Or the big red knife:
- Tiny little scisors
- Tiny little screwdriver
- Tiny little tommygun
- Tiny little satelite uplink
- Tiny little antitank missile
- Tiny little tactical nuke
(cue vatican swiss guard) I can see you! I can see you! Big knife, small knife.. big knife.. small knife... Wait.. you have a string.. SNIP! I have cut! I have cut the string! This thing.. I dunno what this thing does....
Maeryk
He is trying to use it from a user perspective, not the "I have locked myself in the basement and never touched a girl" perspective that you seem all to familiar with.
./configure, which clearly stated what flags I needed to set for my system, and run the compiler. I launched the compiler, and read two emails till it finished. Then I ran make && make install and boogeyed off to enjoy a beer and some quality time with the wife, and when I came back it was there and rarin to go. yeah.. it took some work.. but at least I got a custom app that does EXACTLY what I want, rather than some prebuilt Windows app or RH app that crashes at every inopportune moment because it is enhanced for a Hercules card.
Face it... most of what exists on Linux, aside from the morass of half assed standards that are built in Gnome and KDE apps, are basically beta software. You _have_ to be able to do some tweaking. Sure.. someday I may be able to download a pre-built RPM for my specific system..but part of what I love about Linux is I can use virtually any hardware I want.. rather than good old Windows inability to tell a PCI modem from a PCI video card. And no, I havent locked myself in the basement.. took me all of 10 minutes to read the README, get the files I needed, unzip em, stick em where they needed to be, browse the instructions for
If Linux is ever going to be accepted, you should not have to tweak it, and it should not matter what WM you are running, unless you are a skinning loser, which I think you might be.
Not sure what you mean by "skinning loser" but I have it usually running from the command line, because It allows me to skip that whole stupid graphic end of the game. Unless im watching something HUGE and want the volume thingy and the slider bar, I just associated it from nautilus on the command line.
When I _do_ use the skin, its the default one, and while annoying at times, I can live with it fine. Im not a theme freak or skin junky anyway.. most of them suck, and im not enough of a grapchics person to make my own, so "default" is where most of my stuff is set.
Maeryk
Mainly because he limited himself to RPM's and didnt specify what WM he was using.
.viv files upside down when it plays them.. not sure, and not really bothered by it, but it was something i noticed.
I use both mplayer and gmplayer on Mandrake just fine. It doesnt have resize problems, has resize ability, etc. That _may_ be because Im using windowmaker and/or blackbox, but it seems to work fine in KDE as well. Course, I installed the source for them, and compiled from scratch, after doing all the enable/disable flags the right way for my system.
The only issue Im having with Mplayer right now is it has a tendency to put some
Xine hasnt worked for me since day one.. but i have never tweaked it.. I just think it doesnt like my DVD drive.. as soon as it comes up and tries to hit the drive it locks the system hard.
I dont know what the problem is for this guy, other than the fact that he seems to be RPM happy and he uses RedHat. (which is certainly his prerogative)
Maeryk
Anyone who knows a set of identical twins should have been able to predict this out of the box.
I know two sets.. and both of them were raised in identical environments, however each is quite distinct from their sibling in a million ways.
*sigh*
How could _any_ rational person think that a clone of your old dog would know you and know the old tricks when it was born? They said it TWICE in the article, which makes me think someone somewhere thinks this is possible.
Maeryk
Ahhh, I see. So those that do get punished should not be punished because some others are not???? Shouldn't we be demanding that the others be punished, not demanding ( back in the day) that the US "Free Kevin?"
I dont think I, nor most of the people I have read on this forum believe that Kevin did not deserve to be punished. I certainly feel he did. My issue was more with inept prosecutors with an axe to grind, and media frenzy, coupled with people who were judging something they did not understand. That was the basis to my question for him.. is there a better way than how we do it now?
I am not a "kevin supporter". I know he broke laws, I know he did time, and I have no problem with that. I _do_ however have issues with the method with which they prosecuted him, and the way they treated him after the caught him.
Maeryk
I am not sure I'd classify stealing and possessing Credit Card numbers as being overblown.
I would consider it a crime.. but not a (X) billion dollar crime.. we all know he broke the law.. but looking at what some white collar criminals have done with bookeeping, and the punsihments imposed, shows that Kevin had things go a lot worse for him. Probably because of the extreme use of the word "cyber".. but I dont think he deserved what he got.
Maeryk
As how you have spent 8 years involved in a situation that seems by all accounts to have been an overblown kangaroo court, do you feel the government needs a specific branch specifically to deal with "cybercrime", and if so, how would you see it laid out, ideally, and why?
Maeryk
Movies, music, art etc are a vital part of our culture and our lives. In the past these media were distributed by a wide range of sources and were available to most of the populace
They still are. Radio plays music, free. Television shows movies for free, (albeit edited). There are many libraries where you can check out movies, tapes, and even (gosh) books!. I dont see anyone limiting your access to these.
Do you really want 5 multinational conglomerates controlling ever aspect of american culture and then determining what price you will have to pay to be a part of it? I sure as hell dont.
They dont. They may control "pop" culture, but I dont think they control "culture". If you (or america, for that matter) are such sheep that you will follow what a movie or a record tells you, you have serious serious issues that you need professional help for.
I have the right to do whatever I want as long as it isnt hurting anyone. 100% of the stuff I download is stuff that I would NOT buy otherwise. Therefor there is no loss or harm done to the RIAA members therefor what I do is not illegal.
Morally justify with both hands all you want, there Che Guevera, but the fact is, what you do is illegal. Stop getting a hard-on over the freedom-fighting routine long enough to realize you are breaking the law. If you dont agree with those laws and choose to break them, thats fine. But at least have the balls to stand up and say you break them because you choose to be a thief, rather than attempting to justify it as "legal because I dont feel the same way the lawmakers do". If you _really_ want to impress me, get busted and make your case in court, and get the laws changed.
The "if people choose to take things while Im not looking" comment doesnt wash either. you know full well you are distributing, and posession is 9/10ths.
maeryk
See this is the internet and everything is distributed (not the hippie generation where your approach might actually work). Millions upon millions of people disobeying the law is infinitely more formidable than getting a couple hundred to take a fall for millions.
/. feeling high and mighty cause we are socking it to EvilCo., but in reality we are breaking laws. And we are not in the courts attempting to change those laws. (Well, some of us are, but most of us are sitting here reading /. waiting for the newest mp3's to queue and download).
I kind of disagree. See, the problem here is that we all sit around
Problem is, all this will do is force the **AA industries to put more features into everything to keep us from doing this. (whether or not it is legal for us to do d/l certain tracks wont matter.. its the "what about the children" issue.. better 10 guilty man go free than one innocent man be jailed, only backwards).
Thats the issue.. its not civil disobediance, its unwillingness to accept that maybe, just maybe, you have to pay for something and you dont have a RIGHT to steal someone elses content just because you feel they make too much money.
Maeryk
Loved your work on the soap opera. Love your album, too! I listen to it every day!
Do me a favor, fax me a copy of your signature, so I can tape it to the album and sell pirates of it and photocopies of the cover on Ebay as "signed collectibles" okay?
Thanks!
ta!
Maeryk
an nationwide cell phone protest! Its easy when ever you see one of thease ignorant idiots in a movie theater or in public take the phone and throw it in the nearest toilet! However it would be funny to watch some loud mouth get zapped at dennys. or we could figgure out a way to play with the air waves so that we can remote-zap someone!
I would soften that with "in public" defined as anywhere there is NOT a phone booth/accessible public phone.
I have no issue whatsoever with the guy who stands in the lobby of Red Lobster and makes a cell call, simply because he prefers to use the service he paid for rather than spend change in an ATT phone.
I _do_ however, have an issue with the harried executive type who wanders through otherwise closed hallways using an earbud and a boom mic and talks, loudly, while wandering around, so you are caught between trying to figure out if he is A) insane, B) talkign to you, C) on a cellphone.
I put those people right up there with jackasses who insist on singing along out loud with their disc-man on the bus, or walking down my quiet suburban street at 2:00 in the morning. (It happens more often than you would think).
And the main reason the street thing bothers me, is it sets off all the neighbors dogs, and that goes on for hours.
Im not anti-cellphone, Im anti-jackass. Much like guns, its not the phone, its the guy USING IT.
Maeryk
Dont even get me STARTED on speaker phones in cubicles.. I get great joy out of interjecting "inappropriate" content into idiots who insist on using speaker-phones halfway across their office from where they sit.
You would be amazed what a few choice (and loud) comments about "masturbation" or "prostate exam" will do to shut them up.
I have a cell phone but I have never had it ring anywhere inappropriate because I turn off the damn ringer and put it on vibration mode. Why is it that nobody else can do this?
Its the logical progression of the "looking out for #1" and "touchy feely you are always right and your feelings are important" crap we have been teaching in schools for the last decade or so.
Nobody else can do it, because they dont make a distinction between Cell Phone and just generally being obnoxious. And I would bet if they didnt have the cell phone, they would find some OTHER way to be obnoxious.
Blame the theater as well, since they seem hell bent to make the most uncomfortable seats, noisy snack containers, and deafening sound systems available. (I wont even go to the nicest theater near me cause my ears ring incessantly after seeing a film, and it _still_ sounds like crap. Volume does not make up for a good sound system!)
I think its just the outgrowth of the "I can do whatever I want, and you cant touch me, cause thats assault, and I will sue" mindset. And I think it has pervaded society a lot.
Maeryk
I have been running Limewire, and has anyone else noticed that no matter WHAT you put in the search box, you nearly immediately get three hits back with exactly that title and an appropriate extension? One is a broken move file that just locks your player, and two others are pr0n teasers.. but that must be a large server with a fast pipe... because it consistant, and it is FAST.
Has anyone run into this with any of the other P2P clients, or is it just limewire specific?
(I would think that would be a better way to tie up the services anyway.. just have a remote server that responds to incoming searches with a couple of crap files. Get enough of them doing it, and the S/N ratio will get so screwed people will stop using it.)
Maeryk
It is the user! Zapping the annoying Cell phone user in the theater wont stop them from A) letting their annoying screaming child run amok during the movie B) chatting at normal volume with the person next to them C) loudly snoring D)
being generally obnoxious with their squeaky straw or nearly empty soda.
We went to my son's 4th grade chorus recital last night. The family perched behind us A) let their 3? 4? year old child spend the entire half hour screaming to his (presumed) relative on stage, they carried on a conversation that came out louder on my camcorder than the singing, and when the kids did "hard knock life" with the snapping part, they got into a rampant (and loud) discussion of how to snap, and proceeded to practice throughout the rest of the show.
Yes, I politely asked them to quiet down. No it didnt do any good.
Its not the phone, its the jerk using it, and those same jerks have ALWAYS A) worn hats to theaters, B)jammed their knees into your seat (partially the theaters fault for building seats for 5' 100 lb people) and C) insisted on sitting dead center in a row of people and getting up three times during the movie.
I would much prefer the devices be in the SEATS and controlled by a consensus of people in the theater.
Maeryk
I can't help but feel that the USA is in danger of losing its global dominance because of the general attitude of Americans that "We're just better". Your insight above has prompted me to say this, but some of the other responses to this article also make me think it.
Unfortunately, I think you are right. I dont share that belief that "we is the best" and if I gave that impression, I apologize. (See my followup post for more info.) However, I do feel that different business models need more time to homogenize into something good, rather than a sudden 180 degree turn to "heres the new, better way. Do it or screw you".
Don't sit on your laurels, Americans. The rest of the world isn't as stupid, or as lazy, as many of you seem to think.
Hear hear! I personally think that is utterly true.. but since the majority of the US thinks "world news" means reading the "national" section of USA Today, I tend to think I am in the minority. Denis Leary's routine about "and you know why we are the best? cause we've got the bomb! thats why" was a joke for him.. but I strongly suspect a lot of people actually believe that to be true.
It's a shame, really. Japan, for instance, was given all the tools after world war two to make themselves into whatever they wanted, and they did.. became a powerhouse in the electronics, auto, etc, industries. And we suddenly got scared. But we certainly have the ability to out-pace them, if we put our collective minds to it.
Problem is, unions and idiot lawsuits wont allow that to happen, not to mention billions of middle managers who feel the need to leave their inane and often useless mark on a project, dooming it to never being "right". (Yes.. I have seen plenty of PHB's do exactly what happens in the Dilbert strips.)
Maeryk
I do not know how this guy get a score of 3. Here's an article on BBC which reports about guys like you: Colour still marks US job market [bbc.co.uk]
That has _nothing_ whatsoever to do with what I am talking about.
I could give a rats ass about color, creed, religion, or national origin on a personal or professional level. Im talking about business cultures.. like the difference between mom-and-pop shop where you call and get a live person, and CorpCo where you get a 12 minute "press or say 1 to listen to our menu, which has changed" and eventually end up on the voice mail of some drone who doesnt want to answer it and sits and watches it ring.
Im talking about the fact that you take a company that a _lot_ of people have worked their butts off to make a success here in the US, and suddenly tie its success and/or operations to some fledgeling endeavor in europe somewhere, run by people who have no clue how we do business here. Its a true cultural gap, and its not about what color people are, its about how they learned to work.
EG: I used to work in a nursery (trees) and the guy who owned it would bring in cambodian and honduran laborers on a work visa, set them up with a soc. sec. number, and taxes and everything. These guys worked CIRCLES around us and went from sunup to sundown, no matter how much you told em to take it a little easier. They loved the ability to do so.. because they were actually making pretty good money (compared to what they were used to) and were making inroads into bringing themselves and their familys to america.
Now.. he didnt do this because he hated the US, or because their labor was cheaper.. he did it because after years of putting ads in the paper, and using the two other kids he had working for him as word of mouth, he couldnt get anyone here to DO the work for what he was paying. (which wasnt bad wages, I might add). Its a cultural difference..
Compare that to companies which are now expanding into other countries, and discovering that people will work 14 hour days for 7.95 an hour to do the same job you are getting 30 bucks an hour to do, and they wont bitch about it, and wonder why "global" is such a buzzword suddenly?
Maeryk