In other words, I don't have an answer but I don't think you've made an argument.
I wasn't making an argument, I was giving a rationale. School simply do not have the money to retrain every single teacher who isn't really interested in learning in the first place. To make matters worse, they are unreplaceable due to union contracts... it doesn't matter how poorly trained they are for today's technology, they're here to stay because of the union.
I was explaining that while people here are debating about the good or bad ways that a school district trys to engineer students, the reason has nothing to do with engineering of students, and everything to do with the path of least resistance and least cost. Businesses work on cost-profit ratios, public services work on cost-benefit ratios. I never said it was the way it should be, I said it was the way it is.
I hate working for a public agency personally. I think we do some of the stupidest things for the most arbitrary reasons, and no one here has any focus on what our purpose is supposed to be: education. Especially in IT, which is purely administrative, we very rarely ask if we are doing something because it benefits us or the students.
Your argument makes sense in a corporate environment where we depend on managers being effective at understanding how their subordinates work, but in schools teachers do not understand how students do. The playing field is not level.
Teachers depend on IT to do the work they want to do but don't know how to: stop the students from using the computers to waste time every time they turn around. People don't pay tax dollars so that we can let students post whiney blogs about how few people are friending them on myspace. Obviously IT can't decide case-by-case to block, so we have to make smart blocking rules.
It's not like this is an Orwellian scheme of oppression, this is about making effective efficient classrooms that don't waste taxpayer time and money on things students have every capability to do at home in their free time. It's not like we block e-mail or anything, this is no brain stuff. People can still go to Digg and Slashdot and blogspot, etc. These all have SOME redeeming qualities.
Public education has nothing to do with sending gossipy messages over myspace though, no matter how much of a phenomenon it is.
All that said, Wikipedia does not fit our guidelines. Regardless of accuracy, Wikipedia is nothing but an educational source.
I work in a large school district IT Department. We block plenty of sites, including MySpace and Facebook, (though we don't block Wikipedia).
Generally, the feeling among us here is that if we receive a complain about a website, we will examine it. We won't block non-porn sites until we receive complaints, and the website has to have no educational value for us to consider blocking.
The main problem your country faces is it's two party/district system.
Actually, our two-party system saves us in many ways. I can't ellaborate much further, I spent an entire term studying the benefits and costs, and I can't concatonate that down to a/. post.
In 2004, my decision was between someone who was a little off on the margins and someone who I honestly couldn't pin down, and any time I did, I hated what he had to say.
As much as people rail at Bush for being daddy's boy, Kerry made me believe MUCH more that he wanted power for the sake of power, and at the time, that looked like something worse.
Since he was reelected though, it's like he misplaced his... humanity or something. He doesn't stand for what he did the first term, he doesn't stand for freedom or justice, he doesn't even seem to stand for the conservative principals that got him elected in the first place.
It was Kerry that made me vote Bush. I voted for Bush and I'm a registered Libertarian... that should tell you something...
Moving away from pages that "only work in IE" would take a lot more than HTML5. Microsoft made IE the engine for displaying all system windows in their OS... when you browse my computer, what more or less happens is Windows generates an HTML DOM object to display the contents.
This is the reason Microsoft has had so much trouble with standards and the reason they will never be able to fully support standards as long as IE is integrated in Windows to the level it is. Standardizing would leave the OS itself high-and-dry, which is something Microsoft is not willing to do.
This was part of the reason Netscape sued them, and it was part of their anti-trust suit here in the US. Everyone knows this was done almost for the sole purpose of using MS controlled platforms (IE) to prevent non-MS controlled platforms (the web) from abstracting out all the functions a user needs. Most people still think the internet doesn't work on Linux, or that Linux has a "different internet" of its own. I would venture to say that their anti-competative practices with IE are the ONLY reason they still command the market share they do.
Talking to Microsoft before formalizing a web standard is like going to them for an open document format: you just end up knee deep in shit that Microsoft doesn't genuinely believe in the first place.
So when Intel decides that it's time to implement new architectures and force new methods of coding it's an awesome thing, but when Sony does it people tell them to stop trying to be different...
I know people will cry about the console market being different, but the principals of the decisions are the same. If people cried about the Cell I expect them to cry about Intel's new direction.
And this had to be said... I have Karma to burn.
What I dont understand is why people moan about the price of the PS3, when despite what anyone says, you are getting more value per $ than the 360, yet they have no problem with forking out far more on X360 + Live for what is otherwise a basic experience.
How can people whose issue with the PS3 is price honestly justify getting a 360? Pot. Kettle. Black.
What about Sarbanes-Oxley requirements for data security and integrity? Call me crazy, but being portable is somewhat at odds with the text of this law.
As an owner of a DS, a PSP, a PS3 and a Wii I can tell you that one DEFINITELY reinforces the other. My PSP becames so much better with my PS3 and visa versa.
Actually, I think the article was saying that it was refreshing to see someone talk about outsourcing as more than cheap labor, not that the outsourcing was itself good or bad.
Slashdot Mirror
1: Because of the union 2: They shouldn't
I was explaining that while people here are debating about the good or bad ways that a school district trys to engineer students, the reason has nothing to do with engineering of students, and everything to do with the path of least resistance and least cost. Businesses work on cost-profit ratios, public services work on cost-benefit ratios. I never said it was the way it should be, I said it was the way it is.
I hate working for a public agency personally. I think we do some of the stupidest things for the most arbitrary reasons, and no one here has any focus on what our purpose is supposed to be: education. Especially in IT, which is purely administrative, we very rarely ask if we are doing something because it benefits us or the students.
Your argument makes sense in a corporate environment where we depend on managers being effective at understanding how their subordinates work, but in schools teachers do not understand how students do. The playing field is not level.
Teachers depend on IT to do the work they want to do but don't know how to: stop the students from using the computers to waste time every time they turn around. People don't pay tax dollars so that we can let students post whiney blogs about how few people are friending them on myspace. Obviously IT can't decide case-by-case to block, so we have to make smart blocking rules.
It's not like this is an Orwellian scheme of oppression, this is about making effective efficient classrooms that don't waste taxpayer time and money on things students have every capability to do at home in their free time. It's not like we block e-mail or anything, this is no brain stuff. People can still go to Digg and Slashdot and blogspot, etc. These all have SOME redeeming qualities.
Public education has nothing to do with sending gossipy messages over myspace though, no matter how much of a phenomenon it is.
All that said, Wikipedia does not fit our guidelines. Regardless of accuracy, Wikipedia is nothing but an educational source.
What you writes wrote makes no sense.
I work in a large school district IT Department. We block plenty of sites, including MySpace and Facebook, (though we don't block Wikipedia).
Generally, the feeling among us here is that if we receive a complain about a website, we will examine it. We won't block non-porn sites until we receive complaints, and the website has to have no educational value for us to consider blocking.
What would happen if you were able to force Word into a crash cycle? I wonder what the garbage collector would think of it...
In 2004, my decision was between someone who was a little off on the margins and someone who I honestly couldn't pin down, and any time I did, I hated what he had to say.
As much as people rail at Bush for being daddy's boy, Kerry made me believe MUCH more that he wanted power for the sake of power, and at the time, that looked like something worse.
Since he was reelected though, it's like he misplaced his... humanity or something. He doesn't stand for what he did the first term, he doesn't stand for freedom or justice, he doesn't even seem to stand for the conservative principals that got him elected in the first place.
It was Kerry that made me vote Bush. I voted for Bush and I'm a registered Libertarian... that should tell you something...
...fuck you Bush, get the hell out of office. I want my country back.
Moving away from pages that "only work in IE" would take a lot more than HTML5. Microsoft made IE the engine for displaying all system windows in their OS... when you browse my computer, what more or less happens is Windows generates an HTML DOM object to display the contents.
This is the reason Microsoft has had so much trouble with standards and the reason they will never be able to fully support standards as long as IE is integrated in Windows to the level it is. Standardizing would leave the OS itself high-and-dry, which is something Microsoft is not willing to do.
This was part of the reason Netscape sued them, and it was part of their anti-trust suit here in the US. Everyone knows this was done almost for the sole purpose of using MS controlled platforms (IE) to prevent non-MS controlled platforms (the web) from abstracting out all the functions a user needs. Most people still think the internet doesn't work on Linux, or that Linux has a "different internet" of its own. I would venture to say that their anti-competative practices with IE are the ONLY reason they still command the market share they do.
Talking to Microsoft before formalizing a web standard is like going to them for an open document format: you just end up knee deep in shit that Microsoft doesn't genuinely believe in the first place.
Speaking as someone who wrote reports on the Cell as early as 2004, it was mostly the people who thought Sony was the devil himself who hyped it up.
Easiest way to make sure a product doesn't meet expectations is to raise expectations.
So when Intel decides that it's time to implement new architectures and force new methods of coding it's an awesome thing, but when Sony does it people tell them to stop trying to be different... I know people will cry about the console market being different, but the principals of the decisions are the same. If people cried about the Cell I expect them to cry about Intel's new direction. And this had to be said... I have Karma to burn.
If anyone does they'll be contacted by my lawyers. I hold a patent on non-patents.
No, Nintendo was able to create enormous hype. That's what happened.
A statement from the VP of marketting on hardware production and logistics?
Call me crazy, but seems like Nintendo is manufacturing hype at this point.
What I dont understand is why people moan about the price of the PS3, when despite what anyone says, you are getting more value per $ than the 360, yet they have no problem with forking out far more on X360 + Live for what is otherwise a basic experience. How can people whose issue with the PS3 is price honestly justify getting a 360? Pot. Kettle. Black.
I don't know, I'm pretty sure my pet has left some copyrighted material on par with RIAA's in the back yard from time to time...
Srsly
I think that comes sometime after the brain control waves.
What about Sarbanes-Oxley requirements for data security and integrity? Call me crazy, but being portable is somewhat at odds with the text of this law.
As an owner of a DS, a PSP, a PS3 and a Wii I can tell you that one DEFINITELY reinforces the other. My PSP becames so much better with my PS3 and visa versa.
I suppose that depends. IBM has never been known for great consumer software, business or personal.
As far I'm aware however, IBM is known for great development software, especially for inhouse dev cycles and hardware. Octopiler anyone?
Actually, I think the article was saying that it was refreshing to see someone talk about outsourcing as more than cheap labor, not that the outsourcing was itself good or bad.