From a 15th century monk's perspective, today's curve is vertical. Of course to us it's clearly not. Thus the flaw of the hand-wringing over "the singularity" is illustrated--it suffers from the classic error of attempting to evaluate the future in the context of today. Of course when we get to the future, we'll be in the future too--so it doesn't matter what we think now.
Ever hear of the generation gap? The youth of today are different from us--they've been raised from birth in a world of ubiquitous networked computing and ambient findability. (see? I can throw around stupid buzzwords too.) Talk of "The Singularity" is not much different from complaining that your kids spend all their time texting. It's making explicit the fact that you can't imagine keeping up as you age. Well duh. We won't be running the show in 2050--our kids and their kids will.
To get a conversation going among actual professional, smart, thinking adults.
Slashdot's value is the comments. God bless Boing Boing, Digg, Fark, etc. Whenever we want to talk about something they're always kind enough to give us some topics to choose from. But, they're not worth any more than that.
Most industries are not dominated by one company the way that desktop computing is dominated by Microsoft.
This report is good news not because Apple is more in charge, but because Microsoft is less in charge. The ideal situation would be 33% each Apple, Microsoft, and Linux desktops. That would provide max choice, max competition, and therefore max innovation and min prices.
It's trying to impose structure on something that is not very structured--human thought. Even the use of the word "semantic" points out the futility of the exercise, as it indicates language and changes in meaning--not structure.
Semantics is a human discipline--it is focused inward, not outward. Likewise the proper place for semantic technology is in the client, not the content. Building "semantic web sites" makes no sense. Google is absolutely right on this one--Web sites should simply be what they are, and it is up to the client to assign meaning and remember connections. Google provides a variety of tools that help people do just that.
Why should I have to tag everything I read online? I don't tag things I see in real life. I just remember them and make connections in my mind. If we want computers to be actually useful to us as assistants and not just stupid tools then they will need to begin to operate the same way. That is a very tough problem, yes. But it is the way we are headed, and the "semantic web" is IMO just a bad hack until we get there.
Furthermore the idea of trustworthyness and authority online is ridiculously complicated. I can't think of a harder problem in all of AI. It's much harder to determine if someone knows what they're talking about, or if they are trustworthy, than it is to simply identify the topic of an article. And we're still struggling with the latter.
I can keep and watch a NetFlix DVD for days, even weeks if I choose. It takes up a slot of my subscription, but I incur no extra fees. Can I do that with a rented download?
Maybe, there's no reason it has to be time- or date-limited. It could be limited by number of movies, just like NetFlix. If you have three in iTunes ready to watch, and try to rent a fourth, you get prompted "please choose a movie to replace with your new rental" and you have to click one to get rid of.
Also, am I willing to spend all day tying up my DSL downloading 8GB of data for a DVD-quality movie? No.
For those who work from home this is probably a deal-killer. I work at an office though, so I wouldn't mind tying up the connection all day. And I sleep at night, so it could be tied up then too. I don't think it would too tough to add a smart downloader to iTunes that pauses or throttles back the bit rate when it detects you're using the Web. I mean you have to wait at least 24 hours to turn your NetFlix movies anyway, so the Apple service does not have to meet a high bar. They just have to beat 24+ hours.
Will downloaded movies that are much smaller have degraded video quality, lack extras and other things that equivalent titles on DVD have? Probably.
Maybe. My guess is that they would include all the DVD extras but take a chance on a more aggressive compression scheme like H264.
Somehow, I don't think NetFlix is going to disappear quickly, even if they don't do downloads.
Definitely true--Blockbuster and Hollywood Video are still around for instance.
Granted it's your standard NTSC tube set, 20-something inches--not plasma, digital, LCD, or anything like that. But I was really surprised. I downloaded some episodes of "The Office" from iTunes and they really look good on the TV screen, about as good as a DVD actually. There was good color, very good contrast, nice and sharp with no pixel effects visible at all.
First, I am not advocating forcing kids to attend public school, but rather setting policies that encourage them to. One way to do that is to stop publicly funding ways to pull bright kids out of public schools.
Second, your problem was not with public schools in general but with YOUR local public school, which like many problem schools is in a poor area and short on resources and energy. I'd say that your story proves that when a community does care, and the proper resources are allocated, public schools work well. You really did want to go to a public school--just not yours.
Furthermore you're saying that the problem with the problem schools is that the students, families, teachers, and administrators don't care. They are unengaged. But what about the few who DO care? They are being led away. Your local public school was worse off without you and your family being involved there. I totally understand how leaving worked out much better for you. But if the debate is about how to fix the public schools, I don't see how siphoning off the best citizens HELPS them. These are the people most likely to hold teachers and administrators accountable. But instead we are helping them just walk away.
Too many responses to the question of how to help our public schools revolve on personal stories such as yours. Yes, you got out and got a great education. I would argue that by doing so your local public school was made that much worse.
Finally I just have to say something about the current fetishization of "the marketplace" as the way to fix public schooling. It's bullshit, an artifact of electing business leaders to government. Our system of government is not an economic marketplace. It is a structured social agreement. It has accountability pre-baked-in, through elections and lobbying. Creating more types of schools does not actually improve accountability one tiny bit, all it does is splinter the existing accountability, allowing greater stratification between the social and economic classes. It simply makes it easier and more convenient to identify the "least desirable" elements and marginalize them.
That's a great solution. Remove the parents' right to educate their children as they see fit, all to prop up the current system in an effort to 'improve' it, whatever that means. Gotta love that dictatorial approach to the problem. Really jives with the whole 'freedom' and 'democracy' thing.
I am advocating one solution that will get communities re-engaged with public schools. The whole point is that the current approach is NOT democratic--it's like the government handing the richest and most active citizens vouchers of tax money to move out of town.
And excuse me for believing in the power of U.S. citizens to come together and solve problems. We've done quite well over the years when challenged as a group. But, you're right that it is easier to just balkanize and disengage.
In the old days there were no compulsory public schools. The institution is a very new one, historically speaking.
Dude how old are you? Compulsory education dates to the late 19th century--that's pretty old to me. I guess if you're looking back 1000 years you're right, but there's a lot of shitty stuff in that 1000 years--are you sure you want to argue for the superiority of ignorance?
During the 20th century America's dramatic growth and success took place on a base of compulsory, public-funded education.
They're unengaged in the public school system. This is not at all the same as saying they aren't interested in educating their children. Hence the explosive growth of homeschooling, and other alternatives.
Which is exactly my point--it is self-fulfilling to decry the state of public schools on one hand, while with the other you encourage the most enthusiastic and active families to pull their children and energy out of them. If we actually care about the state of public schools we need to find ways to get families to stay there and work to improve them instead of leaving.
Of course maybe we don't care about them, but if that's the case why bother lamenting how crappy they are?
But your approach is the opposite: force everyone to go to public school and live with the problems (drugs, metal detectors, violence), and drag everyone down to the lowest common denominator. Doesn't sound like a good solution to me.
No, you totally missed it. My approach is to encourage parents to keep their kids in public school, so they'll care about the schools and work and then the schools will get better. I did not say force. Please quote me if you think I did.
The whole idea is that some parents fight harder for their kids than others. Right now they are being encouraged to "fight hard" by pulling their kids out of public schools as fast as they can. I'd rather they keep the kids there and "fight hard" to make the schools better.
When people care about something, the lowest denominator is brought up to an acceptable level. Look at some environmental laws for one example. We can't all move out of the country, so in response to citizen demand, the since the 1950s the government has taken action to improve and protect the quality of our air and water. What we're doing with schools now is akin to just spending a ton of money to buy Canada so everyone can go move there. What we should be doing is improving the ones we've already got.
The reason school were better in the "old days" wasn't because anyone recognized the importance of schools, but because problem kids weren't required to attend school at all.
Let me be more specific: since the beginning of the 20th century the U.S. has grown from a quiet protectionist country to the most powerful and prosperous nation on earth. A big part of that was our well-educated and productive population--mostly educated by public schools, which originated in the mid-19th century in the U.S. Since 1918 every state has had a compulsory education law. The WWII generation, the so-called "greatest generation," was primarily the product of compulsory public education. So I'm not sure what you're referring to.
So I won't try expounding. You won't get it because you see the government as something "other" than you. When in fact in the U.S. the government IS you--ESPECIALLY at the local levels at which school district decisions are made. If you think the government is a bunch of big bad people who want to crush your spirit, I guess I can see why you would not want this.
But if you see the government as the tool of your friends and neighbors you would probably think differently. What if I said that we should abolish all public schools, so that local communities could set up their own schools as they see fit? You would probably be FOR that, right? Freedom to do what they want.
My point is that already happened. They are called public schools. They are controlled, guided, and funded at the state and lcoal levels. (You live in a state and a local community, right?) But when we're constantly sold an anti-government, anti-community, anti-civic responsibility message by the political industry, it's no wonder the people see them as these terrible things foisted upon them.
The problem you and everyone else responding to me have is that you cannot see beyond the status quo. Yes, if all kids were forced into shitty schools that would suck. My point is that they suck because all the people most likely to care are being encouraged to disengage. If they were encouraged to engage, the schools would improve--they would have to. To the last sentence of my GP post, this way of thinking is no different from offering targetted tax credits, programs, and regulatory exemptions to attract citizens and businesses to revitalize a neighborhood. That's not particularly Marxist in my opinion.
Home-schooled kids end up better educated than public schooled kids because by definition they have extremely low teacher-to-student ratios and are taught by extremely engaged teacher(s). Is it because home schooling in general is better than public schooling? NO. It is an artifact of who is involved--only the most engaged and active parents will make the decision and dedicate the time to teach their own children (who they care deeply about), and to navigate the substantial paperwork and bureaucracy in getting official approval for home schooling. The same is true for private schools and charter schools.
Educational success is tied most directly to the level of engagement and dedication of the parents and teachers. The cost and bureaucracy selects for such levels of engagement in home schooling, private schools, and to a lesser extent charter schools. The computer teaching system may or may not--remains to be seen.
Who is left to deal with students who have unengaged, uninterested, poor parents? Public school teachers. Is it any wonder that they burn out so quickly, and hold strong opinions?? They get no support at all for the absolute hardest jobs in teaching--their funding is pulled for roads, corporate subsidies, and charter schools, they have the most challenging students, and they are continuously shit on by people who never attended public school to begin with, or who still hold child-like resentments from what happened one day when they were a student years and years ago (let it go man). If home-schooling parents or private school teachers had to work in public middle schools, most would quit teaching and go find something easier and better paying. It's easy to be dismissive and self-congratulatory when you don't have to see what things are really like.
The answer to our problem public schools is to recognize that the problem is not with the schools but with the system that sucks all the resources out of them. Instead people just find more creative ways to suck even more good students and even more resources out of them.
Want to make public schools better? Get rid of charter schools, get rid of computer teachers, make it hard to home-school kids, tax the hell out of private schools. Force the community to care about the public schools, rather than try to find new ways for the best students and families to pull out of them.
There's so much hand-wringing about how our schools are not as good as they used to be. Well in the old days communities recognized the importance of public schools and most students went there--so there was interest in them as institutions. Teachers received respect from parents on par with doctors, lawyers, engineers, and other professionals. These days so many people scream and shout about how public schools are "broken" that it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. Teachers are criticized so much as cheap money-grubbing idiots, is it any wonder that students and families and communities are unengaged??
The modern approach to "fixing our school system" is the most misguided, stupid strategy ever. It would be like a city trying to revitalize its downtown by continously finding new ways to incent the best businesses and citizens to move out to the suburbs.
Yes, yes, we're all horribly oppressed and the big bad companies run everything and there's NOTHING we can do, citizens and elected officials DON'T MATTER, it's all companies running the world don't you know.
Right? WRONG. The greatest victory of the special interests was in making people like you think you don't matter. So you sit at home in your basement, patting yourself on the back on how clear-thinking and level-headed you are to know that you can't make a difference.
It's utter bullshit! There are literally thousands of examples where citizen action overrode the desires of corporate interests. Do you have weekends? Do you have clean water to drink and clean air to breathe? Do you know any kids forced to work in factories at age 13? Do your phone calls go through to the people you're calling, even if you're bitching about the phone company? Do you have the right to put up a Web site called "FordSucks.com"? Do you know what the ingredients are in your Cheerios? Can you find out how much GE spent on lobbying last year? Etc.
I don't really buy into your defeatist fantasy, so I think I'm going to go call and write to my members of Congress, I'm going to go give some money to SaveTheInternet.com, and I'm going to encourage all my friends and family to do the same--taking the time to explain the issues to them so they know what's at stake. It's harder than being smug on the couch, and I recognize that I'm damaging my cynical smart guy street cred, but darn it I just can't seem to stop caring about the world around me.
You might want to hit the books again if you're making statements like this:...since the public equally values original works and derivative works...
Law is the embodiment of the public will, and the law says that original works are valued over derivative--that is what copyright is. If there were no copyright law then yes, perhaps the unfettered "marketplace of ideas" would invisible-hand the best artists to the top. But there are copyright laws, in the U.S. anyway.
God bless you for going to law school, we can never have enough of you guys around I guess. But please try harder to separate your opinion from what the law says. While you might believe that derivative works have value commensurate with original work, the law preferentially protects original works. This ruling is yet another of many that upholds that.
That's kind of the point of copyright--not everyone is going to "get" what everyone else is trying to do. I mean since when do you get to rule on my artistic integrity?? Who appointed you the judge of all art? Luckily our society recognizes that and protects original creation. Otherwise all the aspects of culture would be smeared out into a thin, boring gruel by the masses of opposing opinions. You get to make choices for your own life only. Don't want to hear Bruce Willis swear? Don't buy the movie!
Which gets to my main point in this entire stupid debate...if you don't like the movies that are out there, make your own movies. Nobody is saying you can't make a movie that would make you happy. They're just saying that you can't leech off someone's else's creation without their permission.
That's the real question here, conveniently ignored. If there is so much demand for interesting but clean movies, why not get some investors together and make them? I have yet to hear a good answer to this question.
a) Microsoft was convicted of abusing their monopoly in the browser fight, giving Apple tremendous legal firepower if MS starts bundling their music store with the OS;
and
b) Apple is no tiny start-up like Netscape, but a highly profitable 30-year-old company with seasoned management and legal teams, and over $8 billion in the bank.
The keyboards and mice are produced by the Microsoft Hardware division. That division was also responsible for Microsoft's short-lived foray into home networking equipment.
The X-Box products come out of the X-Box division, a new part of the company not related at all to MS Hardware--it was created specifically to go after the videogames market.
I worked for a consultant to MS for a while and it was surprising how thick the walls were between divisions. MS Hardware or X-Box are not likely to have a role in a big new project like an iPod killer--they'll just develop a whole new group for it, or radically expand the scope of an existing group.
There's no guarantee that Microsoft will be able to negotiate the same rates with the recording labels that Apple has. In fact from previous stories we know that the labels are aching to raise online prices and introduce differentiation, but were overpowered by Apple's market share. Microsoft will have a market share of 0% as they negotiate their deals--expect them to pay more per song than Apple for recent "hit" music. So the RIAA is laughing because not only are they going to get paid twice for one consumer purchase, but the second payment might actually be bigger than the first.
Apple is laughing because Microsoft seems to have no profit foothold anywhere in the business plan. As new entrants their players will most likely have to compete on price, reducing the profit margin there. And by re-paying labels for music already purchases, they are in essence subsidizing their customers' libraries--a huge expense. Compare to Apple who commands a healthy profit on the players AND a small profit on every song sold. The only thing better than beating a competitor is making them lose a lot money and STILL get beaten.
It's totally intuitive to everyone but computer geeks. It is simply a place you put things that you need easy access to. Use an application often? Drag it onto the Dock. Working on a certain document lately? Drag it onto the Dock. Need to access a certain folder often? Drag it onto the Dock. When you're done needing it you just drag it off. And if you open an application or file some other way, it shows up on the Dock automatically.
The best physical analogy I can think of is a shelf where you put all things you need the most often. If you need something else you can always go to the garage to get it (and while you're using it if you put it down, it automatically goes to that shelf to wait). But most of the time you can just go to that shelf or drawer and get started right away.
It's an innovative UI element, crosses a ton of "standard" computer boundaries, and so of course it's hated by the geeks who are hard-wired to use computers a certain way. They're not exactly Apple's main UI audience though. For those people Apple includes Terminal.:-)
The problems of local franchising, federal preemption, common carrier, and net neutrality are mixed together due the structure and language of the 1996 Telecomm Act. They do not have to be, it is just the way that law is written and interpretted. Telecomm companies are taking advantage of that to try to kill all the birds with one stone--open the local franchises, get federal preemption, kill off common carrier, kill off network unbundling and competitive access, and give them total power over the content and services being offered over the local networks.
Network neutrality is primarily concerned with the last one--the control of content and services. Because of the 1996 Act, that is tied to TV today, and telecomm companies would like you to think that it has to be. But it doesn't.
That's the whole point of this debate. The Supreme Court decided, based on the 1996 Telecomm Act, that cable Internet service is not subject to common carrier status, and that will go into effect this August. However DSL and other telco lines still are considered common carrier. Hence the huge amount of money the telco companies are spending now, to convince Congress to rewrite the 1996 Act to free them from common carrier laws too.
BUT what Congress should do is simply rewrite the laws to re-apply common carrier to cable Internet. That would reset the bar to where it was one year ago. Tell your member of Congress.
Slashdot Mirror
From a 15th century monk's perspective, today's curve is vertical. Of course to us it's clearly not. Thus the flaw of the hand-wringing over "the singularity" is illustrated--it suffers from the classic error of attempting to evaluate the future in the context of today. Of course when we get to the future, we'll be in the future too--so it doesn't matter what we think now.
Ever hear of the generation gap? The youth of today are different from us--they've been raised from birth in a world of ubiquitous networked computing and ambient findability. (see? I can throw around stupid buzzwords too.) Talk of "The Singularity" is not much different from complaining that your kids spend all their time texting. It's making explicit the fact that you can't imagine keeping up as you age. Well duh. We won't be running the show in 2050--our kids and their kids will.
To get a conversation going among actual professional, smart, thinking adults.
Slashdot's value is the comments. God bless Boing Boing, Digg, Fark, etc. Whenever we want to talk about something they're always kind enough to give us some topics to choose from. But, they're not worth any more than that.
Most industries are not dominated by one company the way that desktop computing is dominated by Microsoft.
This report is good news not because Apple is more in charge, but because Microsoft is less in charge. The ideal situation would be 33% each Apple, Microsoft, and Linux desktops. That would provide max choice, max competition, and therefore max innovation and min prices.
The Loved Ones
My little brother's band. Please mod up, he could use the exposure and he definitely needs the money!
(note--dates from when MySpace was just a Web site for bands to share their music.)
It's trying to impose structure on something that is not very structured--human thought. Even the use of the word "semantic" points out the futility of the exercise, as it indicates language and changes in meaning--not structure.
Semantics is a human discipline--it is focused inward, not outward. Likewise the proper place for semantic technology is in the client, not the content. Building "semantic web sites" makes no sense. Google is absolutely right on this one--Web sites should simply be what they are, and it is up to the client to assign meaning and remember connections. Google provides a variety of tools that help people do just that.
Why should I have to tag everything I read online? I don't tag things I see in real life. I just remember them and make connections in my mind. If we want computers to be actually useful to us as assistants and not just stupid tools then they will need to begin to operate the same way. That is a very tough problem, yes. But it is the way we are headed, and the "semantic web" is IMO just a bad hack until we get there.
Furthermore the idea of trustworthyness and authority online is ridiculously complicated. I can't think of a harder problem in all of AI. It's much harder to determine if someone knows what they're talking about, or if they are trustworthy, than it is to simply identify the topic of an article. And we're still struggling with the latter.
I can keep and watch a NetFlix DVD for days, even weeks if I choose. It takes up a slot of my subscription, but I incur no extra fees. Can I do that with a rented download?
Maybe, there's no reason it has to be time- or date-limited. It could be limited by number of movies, just like NetFlix. If you have three in iTunes ready to watch, and try to rent a fourth, you get prompted "please choose a movie to replace with your new rental" and you have to click one to get rid of.
Also, am I willing to spend all day tying up my DSL downloading 8GB of data for a DVD-quality movie? No.
For those who work from home this is probably a deal-killer. I work at an office though, so I wouldn't mind tying up the connection all day. And I sleep at night, so it could be tied up then too. I don't think it would too tough to add a smart downloader to iTunes that pauses or throttles back the bit rate when it detects you're using the Web. I mean you have to wait at least 24 hours to turn your NetFlix movies anyway, so the Apple service does not have to meet a high bar. They just have to beat 24+ hours.
Will downloaded movies that are much smaller have degraded video quality, lack extras and other things that equivalent titles on DVD have? Probably.
Maybe. My guess is that they would include all the DVD extras but take a chance on a more aggressive compression scheme like H264.
Somehow, I don't think NetFlix is going to disappear quickly, even if they don't do downloads.
Definitely true--Blockbuster and Hollywood Video are still around for instance.
Granted it's your standard NTSC tube set, 20-something inches--not plasma, digital, LCD, or anything like that. But I was really surprised. I downloaded some episodes of "The Office" from iTunes and they really look good on the TV screen, about as good as a DVD actually. There was good color, very good contrast, nice and sharp with no pixel effects visible at all.
First, I am not advocating forcing kids to attend public school, but rather setting policies that encourage them to. One way to do that is to stop publicly funding ways to pull bright kids out of public schools.
Second, your problem was not with public schools in general but with YOUR local public school, which like many problem schools is in a poor area and short on resources and energy. I'd say that your story proves that when a community does care, and the proper resources are allocated, public schools work well. You really did want to go to a public school--just not yours.
Furthermore you're saying that the problem with the problem schools is that the students, families, teachers, and administrators don't care. They are unengaged. But what about the few who DO care? They are being led away. Your local public school was worse off without you and your family being involved there. I totally understand how leaving worked out much better for you. But if the debate is about how to fix the public schools, I don't see how siphoning off the best citizens HELPS them. These are the people most likely to hold teachers and administrators accountable. But instead we are helping them just walk away.
Too many responses to the question of how to help our public schools revolve on personal stories such as yours. Yes, you got out and got a great education. I would argue that by doing so your local public school was made that much worse.
Finally I just have to say something about the current fetishization of "the marketplace" as the way to fix public schooling. It's bullshit, an artifact of electing business leaders to government. Our system of government is not an economic marketplace. It is a structured social agreement. It has accountability pre-baked-in, through elections and lobbying. Creating more types of schools does not actually improve accountability one tiny bit, all it does is splinter the existing accountability, allowing greater stratification between the social and economic classes. It simply makes it easier and more convenient to identify the "least desirable" elements and marginalize them.
That's a great solution. Remove the parents' right to educate their children as they see fit, all to prop up the current system in an effort to 'improve' it, whatever that means. Gotta love that dictatorial approach to the problem. Really jives with the whole 'freedom' and 'democracy' thing.
I am advocating one solution that will get communities re-engaged with public schools. The whole point is that the current approach is NOT democratic--it's like the government handing the richest and most active citizens vouchers of tax money to move out of town.
And excuse me for believing in the power of U.S. citizens to come together and solve problems. We've done quite well over the years when challenged as a group. But, you're right that it is easier to just balkanize and disengage.
In the old days there were no compulsory public schools. The institution is a very new one, historically speaking.
Dude how old are you? Compulsory education dates to the late 19th century--that's pretty old to me. I guess if you're looking back 1000 years you're right, but there's a lot of shitty stuff in that 1000 years--are you sure you want to argue for the superiority of ignorance?
During the 20th century America's dramatic growth and success took place on a base of compulsory, public-funded education.
They're unengaged in the public school system. This is not at all the same as saying they aren't interested in educating their children. Hence the explosive growth of homeschooling, and other alternatives.
Which is exactly my point--it is self-fulfilling to decry the state of public schools on one hand, while with the other you encourage the most enthusiastic and active families to pull their children and energy out of them. If we actually care about the state of public schools we need to find ways to get families to stay there and work to improve them instead of leaving.
Of course maybe we don't care about them, but if that's the case why bother lamenting how crappy they are?
But your approach is the opposite: force everyone to go to public school and live with the problems (drugs, metal detectors, violence), and drag everyone down to the lowest common denominator. Doesn't sound like a good solution to me.
No, you totally missed it. My approach is to encourage parents to keep their kids in public school, so they'll care about the schools and work and then the schools will get better. I did not say force. Please quote me if you think I did.
The whole idea is that some parents fight harder for their kids than others. Right now they are being encouraged to "fight hard" by pulling their kids out of public schools as fast as they can. I'd rather they keep the kids there and "fight hard" to make the schools better.
When people care about something, the lowest denominator is brought up to an acceptable level. Look at some environmental laws for one example. We can't all move out of the country, so in response to citizen demand, the since the 1950s the government has taken action to improve and protect the quality of our air and water. What we're doing with schools now is akin to just spending a ton of money to buy Canada so everyone can go move there. What we should be doing is improving the ones we've already got.
The reason school were better in the "old days" wasn't because anyone recognized the importance of schools, but because problem kids weren't required to attend school at all.
Let me be more specific: since the beginning of the 20th century the U.S. has grown from a quiet protectionist country to the most powerful and prosperous nation on earth. A big part of that was our well-educated and productive population--mostly educated by public schools, which originated in the mid-19th century in the U.S. Since 1918 every state has had a compulsory education law. The WWII generation, the so-called "greatest generation," was primarily the product of compulsory public education. So I'm not sure what you're referring to.
So I won't try expounding. You won't get it because you see the government as something "other" than you. When in fact in the U.S. the government IS you--ESPECIALLY at the local levels at which school district decisions are made. If you think the government is a bunch of big bad people who want to crush your spirit, I guess I can see why you would not want this.
But if you see the government as the tool of your friends and neighbors you would probably think differently. What if I said that we should abolish all public schools, so that local communities could set up their own schools as they see fit? You would probably be FOR that, right? Freedom to do what they want.
My point is that already happened. They are called public schools. They are controlled, guided, and funded at the state and lcoal levels. (You live in a state and a local community, right?) But when we're constantly sold an anti-government, anti-community, anti-civic responsibility message by the political industry, it's no wonder the people see them as these terrible things foisted upon them.
The problem you and everyone else responding to me have is that you cannot see beyond the status quo. Yes, if all kids were forced into shitty schools that would suck. My point is that they suck because all the people most likely to care are being encouraged to disengage. If they were encouraged to engage, the schools would improve--they would have to. To the last sentence of my GP post, this way of thinking is no different from offering targetted tax credits, programs, and regulatory exemptions to attract citizens and businesses to revitalize a neighborhood. That's not particularly Marxist in my opinion.
Home-schooled kids end up better educated than public schooled kids because by definition they have extremely low teacher-to-student ratios and are taught by extremely engaged teacher(s). Is it because home schooling in general is better than public schooling? NO. It is an artifact of who is involved--only the most engaged and active parents will make the decision and dedicate the time to teach their own children (who they care deeply about), and to navigate the substantial paperwork and bureaucracy in getting official approval for home schooling. The same is true for private schools and charter schools.
Educational success is tied most directly to the level of engagement and dedication of the parents and teachers. The cost and bureaucracy selects for such levels of engagement in home schooling, private schools, and to a lesser extent charter schools. The computer teaching system may or may not--remains to be seen.
Who is left to deal with students who have unengaged, uninterested, poor parents? Public school teachers. Is it any wonder that they burn out so quickly, and hold strong opinions?? They get no support at all for the absolute hardest jobs in teaching--their funding is pulled for roads, corporate subsidies, and charter schools, they have the most challenging students, and they are continuously shit on by people who never attended public school to begin with, or who still hold child-like resentments from what happened one day when they were a student years and years ago (let it go man). If home-schooling parents or private school teachers had to work in public middle schools, most would quit teaching and go find something easier and better paying. It's easy to be dismissive and self-congratulatory when you don't have to see what things are really like.
The answer to our problem public schools is to recognize that the problem is not with the schools but with the system that sucks all the resources out of them. Instead people just find more creative ways to suck even more good students and even more resources out of them.
Want to make public schools better? Get rid of charter schools, get rid of computer teachers, make it hard to home-school kids, tax the hell out of private schools. Force the community to care about the public schools, rather than try to find new ways for the best students and families to pull out of them.
There's so much hand-wringing about how our schools are not as good as they used to be. Well in the old days communities recognized the importance of public schools and most students went there--so there was interest in them as institutions. Teachers received respect from parents on par with doctors, lawyers, engineers, and other professionals. These days so many people scream and shout about how public schools are "broken" that it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. Teachers are criticized so much as cheap money-grubbing idiots, is it any wonder that students and families and communities are unengaged??
The modern approach to "fixing our school system" is the most misguided, stupid strategy ever. It would be like a city trying to revitalize its downtown by continously finding new ways to incent the best businesses and citizens to move out to the suburbs.
Yes, yes, we're all horribly oppressed and the big bad companies run everything and there's NOTHING we can do, citizens and elected officials DON'T MATTER, it's all companies running the world don't you know.
Right? WRONG. The greatest victory of the special interests was in making people like you think you don't matter. So you sit at home in your basement, patting yourself on the back on how clear-thinking and level-headed you are to know that you can't make a difference.
It's utter bullshit! There are literally thousands of examples where citizen action overrode the desires of corporate interests. Do you have weekends? Do you have clean water to drink and clean air to breathe? Do you know any kids forced to work in factories at age 13? Do your phone calls go through to the people you're calling, even if you're bitching about the phone company? Do you have the right to put up a Web site called "FordSucks.com"? Do you know what the ingredients are in your Cheerios? Can you find out how much GE spent on lobbying last year? Etc.
I don't really buy into your defeatist fantasy, so I think I'm going to go call and write to my members of Congress, I'm going to go give some money to SaveTheInternet.com, and I'm going to encourage all my friends and family to do the same--taking the time to explain the issues to them so they know what's at stake. It's harder than being smug on the couch, and I recognize that I'm damaging my cynical smart guy street cred, but darn it I just can't seem to stop caring about the world around me.
You might want to hit the books again if you're making statements like this: ...since the public equally values original works and derivative works...
Law is the embodiment of the public will, and the law says that original works are valued over derivative--that is what copyright is. If there were no copyright law then yes, perhaps the unfettered "marketplace of ideas" would invisible-hand the best artists to the top. But there are copyright laws, in the U.S. anyway.
God bless you for going to law school, we can never have enough of you guys around I guess. But please try harder to separate your opinion from what the law says. While you might believe that derivative works have value commensurate with original work, the law preferentially protects original works. This ruling is yet another of many that upholds that.
That's kind of the point of copyright--not everyone is going to "get" what everyone else is trying to do. I mean since when do you get to rule on my artistic integrity?? Who appointed you the judge of all art? Luckily our society recognizes that and protects original creation. Otherwise all the aspects of culture would be smeared out into a thin, boring gruel by the masses of opposing opinions. You get to make choices for your own life only. Don't want to hear Bruce Willis swear? Don't buy the movie!
Which gets to my main point in this entire stupid debate...if you don't like the movies that are out there, make your own movies. Nobody is saying you can't make a movie that would make you happy. They're just saying that you can't leech off someone's else's creation without their permission.
That's the real question here, conveniently ignored. If there is so much demand for interesting but clean movies, why not get some investors together and make them? I have yet to hear a good answer to this question.
a) Microsoft was convicted of abusing their monopoly in the browser fight, giving Apple tremendous legal firepower if MS starts bundling their music store with the OS;
and
b) Apple is no tiny start-up like Netscape, but a highly profitable 30-year-old company with seasoned management and legal teams, and over $8 billion in the bank.
To this day Microsoft has yet to turn a profit on the XBox project.
The keyboards and mice are produced by the Microsoft Hardware division. That division was also responsible for Microsoft's short-lived foray into home networking equipment.
The X-Box products come out of the X-Box division, a new part of the company not related at all to MS Hardware--it was created specifically to go after the videogames market.
I worked for a consultant to MS for a while and it was surprising how thick the walls were between divisions. MS Hardware or X-Box are not likely to have a role in a big new project like an iPod killer--they'll just develop a whole new group for it, or radically expand the scope of an existing group.
There's no guarantee that Microsoft will be able to negotiate the same rates with the recording labels that Apple has. In fact from previous stories we know that the labels are aching to raise online prices and introduce differentiation, but were overpowered by Apple's market share. Microsoft will have a market share of 0% as they negotiate their deals--expect them to pay more per song than Apple for recent "hit" music. So the RIAA is laughing because not only are they going to get paid twice for one consumer purchase, but the second payment might actually be bigger than the first.
Apple is laughing because Microsoft seems to have no profit foothold anywhere in the business plan. As new entrants their players will most likely have to compete on price, reducing the profit margin there. And by re-paying labels for music already purchases, they are in essence subsidizing their customers' libraries--a huge expense. Compare to Apple who commands a healthy profit on the players AND a small profit on every song sold. The only thing better than beating a competitor is making them lose a lot money and STILL get beaten.
clap clap clap clap
I could not have said it better.
It's totally intuitive to everyone but computer geeks. It is simply a place you put things that you need easy access to. Use an application often? Drag it onto the Dock. Working on a certain document lately? Drag it onto the Dock. Need to access a certain folder often? Drag it onto the Dock. When you're done needing it you just drag it off. And if you open an application or file some other way, it shows up on the Dock automatically.
:-)
The best physical analogy I can think of is a shelf where you put all things you need the most often. If you need something else you can always go to the garage to get it (and while you're using it if you put it down, it automatically goes to that shelf to wait). But most of the time you can just go to that shelf or drawer and get started right away.
It's an innovative UI element, crosses a ton of "standard" computer boundaries, and so of course it's hated by the geeks who are hard-wired to use computers a certain way. They're not exactly Apple's main UI audience though. For those people Apple includes Terminal.
Americans spent $25 billion online in the first quarter of 2006 alone. Obviously a market that size can only support one big player.
The problems of local franchising, federal preemption, common carrier, and net neutrality are mixed together due the structure and language of the 1996 Telecomm Act. They do not have to be, it is just the way that law is written and interpretted. Telecomm companies are taking advantage of that to try to kill all the birds with one stone--open the local franchises, get federal preemption, kill off common carrier, kill off network unbundling and competitive access, and give them total power over the content and services being offered over the local networks.
Network neutrality is primarily concerned with the last one--the control of content and services. Because of the 1996 Act, that is tied to TV today, and telecomm companies would like you to think that it has to be. But it doesn't.
That's the whole point of this debate. The Supreme Court decided, based on the 1996 Telecomm Act, that cable Internet service is not subject to common carrier status, and that will go into effect this August. However DSL and other telco lines still are considered common carrier. Hence the huge amount of money the telco companies are spending now, to convince Congress to rewrite the 1996 Act to free them from common carrier laws too.
BUT what Congress should do is simply rewrite the laws to re-apply common carrier to cable Internet. That would reset the bar to where it was one year ago. Tell your member of Congress.