You're ignoring the fact that a gallon has been standardised as being measured at 60 degrees F. Changing the temperature at which it's measured is tantamount to changing the definition of a gallon. The case that these motorists are bringing isn't that they didn't receive a gallon, it's that the industry has declared a gallon of fuel to be a gallon at 60 degrees and then pumps it at a higher temperature, thereby providing less fuel.
If it is acceptable to you that agreed definitions be changed during the course of a sale, I would like to offer you 1000 tons of gold for only $10,000. I will notify you of the meaning of the words "ton" and "dollar" once you have agreed to the sale.
Even a tiny difference in volume makes a big difference over a long time. The complaint is that motorists are paying for a product with a strict definition, and that that definition is being ignored to their detriment. Does that not seem somewhat unfair to you?
As has been pointed out, they have already posted a response to this criticism. They are now going to provide 5 laptops, but it looks like this was never a problem anyway; the 2 laptops was just a cost-cutting measure, they wanted to run the test multiple times.
If you're doing that sort of thing, I strongly suggest getting a commercial mobile connectivity solution instead of relying on what comes with your OS.
I can think of at least two Canadian-based solutions that would resolve the issue of intermittent connection loss without even letting your apps be aware of the issue. Are they secret?
illegal because America kills people, and no country can extradite to a country that murders people in order to claim revenge for crimes as put in law by the Geneva convection which the UK is meant to adhere to I think you're a little confused on this. The UK cannot - and does not - extradite people to face the death penalty. If they are being extradited to the US, the State must offer assurances that the individual will not face the death penalty. This isn't a blanket ban on extradition to the US. I don't think it's in any Geneva convention, either, it's provided for by the EU charter on Human Rights.
And if someone "forgets" to scan it? If they scan it and don't drop it? If they scan it and drop something else? What's needed is a system where it's impossible to both vote and take your voting slip outside the booth. The suggestion that has been posted many many times before - the one where the paper receipt drops down behind a glass screen, allowing you to validate it without taking it anywhere - seems rather more sensible to me.
The trick is, it paper receipt IS the vote, at least if there is a manual recount.
So if you take it out, you are literally throwing your vote away. Well, that's the problem - there isn't always a manual recount. If you're losing a district anyway then forcing people to either vote for you or invalidate their votes (depending on whether there's a recount or not) can only be helpful.
Sorry, who didn't read the post? I don't mean to overreact, but I find it quite rude for you to criticise me while making the exact mistake you're accusing me of!
From the post I replied to:
In randomly selected polling places, the paper receipts get counted manually From my post:
The chances of it being undetected are high enough for it to be feasible. So what I was actually saying was that since only a sample of polling stations are manually counted, if you swing one station by intimidating voters you've got a good chance of getting away with it. All you do is tell the people inside to vote for the party you want on the computer, drop off a blank piece of paper in the box and bring the receipt out (or else!). This isn't just a trivial vulnerability; since if you're strong arming voters you're likely to be losing in that district anyway it can only improve your chances.
There's a big problem with that - men waiting outside. If you don't bring your paper receipt out - and have it say the right thing - they break your legs. The chances of it being undetected are high enough for it to be feasible.
According to Payscale.com a non-certified IT technician working for a school in Utah can expect about $33k a year. That's not a great deal less than my estimate, and to be perfectly honest the difference between $40k and $33k a year for a technician is largely academic for a school struggling for cash - there are simply better things to spend the money on.
Is there any reason you write "UTAH", by the way? As far as I'm aware it's not an acronym.
You're right there is a variance but it is down right deceitful of you to tag 'suburban NY' as if to say that inner cities are not spending money. Lets look at DC arguably the worst school system in the nation which spend more than any state (per pupil) except NJ (13K per kid) or NYC, can you get more urban, at nearly fourteen thousand (only 2% less than the state average). UTAH as a whole does not spend much money per pupil at 5K per pupil (least in the nation) so picking out Salt Lake City and your example even bolsters my point. West High in Salt Lake city (the school district you mentioned) is one of the top in the nation
"West High School has been named the top high school in Utah and number 158 in the nation by Newsweek and the Washington Post.
Its not the dollars going into the class its how they are getting used.
First, I'd like to point out that variance is not the same thing as variation. I wasn't talking about the variation in the amount spent in terms of school quality, I was discussing the variance of the data; the level of deviance from the mean. My point wasn't to characterize Utah's schools as being of low quality, just to show that your point - that they had money to spend on technology - was unfounded. If you want to discuss quality of schooling in terms of money spent, though, you might want to use an example other than West High to prove your point. The school is located by Capitol Hill, so has an affluent base to raise funds from. It receives $40 to $50 thousand dollars a year from alumni - an example of its affluent supporters. If you consult their financial report, you'll see they spend a further $1,040,000 from the student Activities Agency Fund, twice that spent by East, which has a comparable number of students (just under 90%). Their combined income from the Federal and State standard funding (Federal grants + State money, mostly raised from property taxes in its area) comes to just over $18m. By my calculations this gives them just under $8.5k per child per year, meaning that when I pointed to schools in Utah with a budget of $3k per child per year I probably wasn't talking about them. Just to clarify by the way, Salt Lake City school district spends an average of about $6k per child per year (again I refer you to their annual report). Bearing this in mind, I'm not quite sure why you chose a school in SLC as an example of a low spending Utah school - especially when you're so worried about people being deceitful!
And to return to the original discussion - the lack of money for good technical staff in schools - I would like to refer you to the West High School website. As you can see, their income at 30% above the average has allowed them to employ a team of dedicated technicians and web designers.
I don't dispute your summation: "Its [sic] not the dollars going into the class its [sic] how they are getting used". What I object to is you labeling my post as deceitful and then following up with vague assertions ("arguably the worst school system"), bad data ("Salt Lake city [was] the school district you mentioned") and misleading examples ("West High School has been named the top high school in Utah"). Wages are higher in DC than in Utah - did you take this into account? Did you consider property prices? Did you, in fact consider a single statistic before claiming West High to be the proof that I was being "deceitful"?
I'm sure there are examples of poorly funded schools with exemplary results to be found somewhere. But I would ask you to do a little more research before calling names.
Patents don't keep your methodology secret, it's a trade. In return for making your idea public knowledge you get a legal guarantee that no one copies it for x years.
For that matter, why should public schools have to deal with unruly students at all? Under the current system, there seems to be a belief that everyone is entitled to a free education, no matter what. The right to a free education extends just as far as it doesn't interfere with others' rights to a free education. If a student is habitually disruptive or destructive, at some point we should step back and say, "You've forfeited your right to a free education. You can reapply next year. Get out." It would keep our schools focused on education instead of crisis management. Right now, the worst we can do is shuffle a disruptive "student" between schools. This doesn't even attempt to solve the problem. Right now, one or two "students" can completely destroy the learning atmosphere in a class of 30. How is this fair? On one hand, there are kids who actually do want to be there and really want to learn. On the other, there are those in the classrooms that don't want to learn; let them leave. If they're impeding other students, make them leave.
This really is a difficult question to answer - I doubt we'll ever be sure what the solution is. Personally, I believe that everyone is entitled to a free education, no matter what. At the end of the day, these are children; they aren't mature enough to make reliably good decisions, and yet the decisions they make will have a huge effect on the rest of their lives. I'm a strong believer in personal responsibility, but I'm still not quite sure that the behaviour of unruly children is their fault - from my experience, the most problematic children are those who go home every night to parents who haven't had an education and don't think it's necessary. We make a big deal out of peer pressure and this is a thousand times more, the people to whom you look for a role model telling you that school is stupid and pointless and encouraging you to cause trouble. Society as a whole should, in my opinion, take it upon itself to protect those at risk, especially when they can't protect themselves; this protection should extend, I believe, to ensuring that where you're born doesn't stop you getting an education.
What we need to find, in my opinion, is alternative solutions. At the end of the day some teachers find it much less of a problem to get problem children to work than others, and we need to work out what it is they're doing differently and make it much more widespread. More support outside the school can only help; studies repeatedly find that providing activities for children in the evening - sports, games etc - helps to improve concentration, attendance and behaviour during the day. Some students will still be unruly, and will still be disruptive, and some will have to be sidelined to keep the lessons going, but giving up on them isn't the answer.
Doubtless someone will reply with "but why should my hard-earned tax dollars pay for poor students to get extra help!?!" The answer to that is because there's nothing magic about you. It's not some sort of eternal karma that decides who is a bad student and who a good one, it's a combination of genes and environment. It could just as easily have been you.
The average school in the US spends about 6K per student some of the schools you might consider poor (lets look at DC) spend upwards of twice that. 12K per kid per year that more than double what many elite private schools charge usually only 70% of that (not the kind with ponies and security teams where diplomats send their kids those are in a league of their own). OK, firstly while the average school spends around $6k per child, this doesn't tell the whole story; the variance in the figures is very large. Suburban schools in New York spend between 10 and 19 thousand dollars per child, while inner city schools in Utah struggle to meet the $3k mark. The schools you might consider poor do not spend "upwards of twice" $6k, they struggle to raise half of it.
Your estimates for the costs of private education are just as far off as your estimates of the money involved in public schooling. I suspect you have been misled by figures bandied about in the school voucher debate - these tend to lump secondary schools with elementary schools and even free schools to bring the apparent price down to less than the cost of a public school. For example, an often quoted figure for private school cost is $3600 per child - this is arrived at by taking the average for secondary school, elementary schools, free independent schools and church schools - all designed to make the secondary school cost look low. In truth, the average fee level of a private secondary school is rather higher at about $5,500. The gap between the private and public sector can be explained by a few things, such as reduction in bureaucratic red tape and potential increase in efficiency, but also by their frequent status as charitable organizations soliciting donations that can increase this to meet the public level, and their selectiveness; if you don't have to deal with unruly or disadvantaged children you can cut costs heavily.
My final point is that you seem to underestimate the costs in the day to day running of a school rather heavily! Just taking into account the staffing takes your available funds down to around $4k per pupil (and remember the schools that only make $3k per pupil originally?). Then you have to buy computers, books, stationary and furniture, run activities, organize school board elections, pay for heating, lighting and water and provide a bus for disabled students who can't get in otherwise. Depending on your location security might be an issue. And your building and equipment don't last forever with thousands of children inside - you need to make it to the end of the year with some surplus in case someone's broken a telescope or put a broom through the ceiling. (Or get insurance - but that will of course cost more than the average year's renovation costs; that's how insurance works).
My point with all this is that schools don't have millions of dollars sitting around in a cupboard somewhere. They aren't choosing not to employ a team of network technicians, it's just that even a small technical staff - say 2 people - eats into your budget by around $80k year if they're good at what they do. That money doesn't appear overnight.
The problem is that the solutions are being coded for individual sites not one size fits all. A custom solution would have no problem with that system at all.
You most certainly can bring a camera into most museums, if you manage to sneak it past the guards. If you make a photograph anywhere, inside a museum or outside of it, that photograph is copyrighted by you, period. The museum has no rights to it whatsoever, regardless of its policies. Just to clear things up - since there's a bit of contradiction between the things you said - any faithful representation of a two-dimensional object is exempt from being copyrighted in the US. If you use your camera in the museum to take an accurate photo of the picture, and the picture is not copyrighted, then there is no copyright on the photo either. If you take a photo of the corner of the room, you could try to assert copyright on it, however.
If you look through the results it certainly seems like this to me. Try, for example, comparing Google's record with Friendster's (immediately above in their table). From the data they have gathered I would put the two companies on a par concerning their privacy issues, but Google is put at the very bottom while Friendster scores normally. Perhaps I'm being overly cautious but this doesn't feel like a balanced study.
I'm pretty sure it's the same here. The general strategy is to try to produce enough evidence to get a court order for a search as part of a case against you; they park outside and try to detect your TV (no idea how accurate this is...). It's getting ridiculous now... I wonder what proportion of the license fee is spent sending out millions of notices to people without TVs.
The enforcement attempts are utterly ridiculous - I have thus far received 7 letters this year threatening me with legal action for using a TV without a license. They now want to schedule an enforcement visit to gather their evidence - I've repeatedly told them I have no intention of letting them check for TVs and that I don't have one. I wonder at what stage it moves from legitimate enforcement to harassment.
I do write scores, and also edit textbooks. While I don't like the idea of people downloading them for free - and some people do, unfortunately - I can't object to people pirating them who live in Asia or Africa - they aren't published there, and they aren't shipped there. In the same way, I have downloaded music that I couldn't find any way to buy, and I've downloaded music that I later bought but that wasn't available over here until a later release date; these cases seem to me to be a byproduct of copyright, not the intended interdiction.
Have you been to those sites? 2 screensaver sites, online dating and an ad serving site. To me that sounds like the fourth site was serving the ads to the first 3 - especially since they are common examples of online advertising. Furthermore, the computer wasn't exclusively used by the teacher; it was also used by pupils.
Slashdot Mirror
You're ignoring the fact that a gallon has been standardised as being measured at 60 degrees F. Changing the temperature at which it's measured is tantamount to changing the definition of a gallon. The case that these motorists are bringing isn't that they didn't receive a gallon, it's that the industry has declared a gallon of fuel to be a gallon at 60 degrees and then pumps it at a higher temperature, thereby providing less fuel.
If it is acceptable to you that agreed definitions be changed during the course of a sale, I would like to offer you 1000 tons of gold for only $10,000. I will notify you of the meaning of the words "ton" and "dollar" once you have agreed to the sale.
Even a tiny difference in volume makes a big difference over a long time. The complaint is that motorists are paying for a product with a strict definition, and that that definition is being ignored to their detriment. Does that not seem somewhat unfair to you?
Then buy it second hand. Unless what you meant by not wanting them to have your money is that you want to have it...
As has been pointed out, they have already posted a response to this criticism. They are now going to provide 5 laptops, but it looks like this was never a problem anyway; the 2 laptops was just a cost-cutting measure, they wanted to run the test multiple times.
This isn't a troll! It's just against Slashdot's groupthink.
While I agree with you that the article is contrived, have you actually read the "debunking"? It's even more partisan and ridiculous...
I can think of at least two Canadian-based solutions that would resolve the issue of intermittent connection loss without even letting your apps be aware of the issue. Are they secret?
And if someone "forgets" to scan it? If they scan it and don't drop it? If they scan it and drop something else? What's needed is a system where it's impossible to both vote and take your voting slip outside the booth. The suggestion that has been posted many many times before - the one where the paper receipt drops down behind a glass screen, allowing you to validate it without taking it anywhere - seems rather more sensible to me.
So if you take it out, you are literally throwing your vote away. Well, that's the problem - there isn't always a manual recount. If you're losing a district anyway then forcing people to either vote for you or invalidate their votes (depending on whether there's a recount or not) can only be helpful.
From the post I replied to: In randomly selected polling places, the paper receipts get counted manually From my post: The chances of it being undetected are high enough for it to be feasible. So what I was actually saying was that since only a sample of polling stations are manually counted, if you swing one station by intimidating voters you've got a good chance of getting away with it. All you do is tell the people inside to vote for the party you want on the computer, drop off a blank piece of paper in the box and bring the receipt out (or else!). This isn't just a trivial vulnerability; since if you're strong arming voters you're likely to be losing in that district anyway it can only improve your chances.
There's a big problem with that - men waiting outside. If you don't bring your paper receipt out - and have it say the right thing - they break your legs. The chances of it being undetected are high enough for it to be feasible.
Moving forwards from this present moment in time
Don't you think you should concentrate on the today time frame first?According to Payscale.com a non-certified IT technician working for a school in Utah can expect about $33k a year. That's not a great deal less than my estimate, and to be perfectly honest the difference between $40k and $33k a year for a technician is largely academic for a school struggling for cash - there are simply better things to spend the money on.
Is there any reason you write "UTAH", by the way? As far as I'm aware it's not an acronym.
You're right there is a variance but it is down right deceitful of you to tag 'suburban NY' as if to say that inner cities are not spending money. Lets look at DC arguably the worst school system in the nation which spend more than any state (per pupil) except NJ (13K per kid) or NYC, can you get more urban, at nearly fourteen thousand (only 2% less than the state average). UTAH as a whole does not spend much money per pupil at 5K per pupil (least in the nation) so picking out Salt Lake City and your example even bolsters my point. West High in Salt Lake city (the school district you mentioned) is one of the top in the nation
"West High School has been named the top high school in Utah and number 158 in the nation by Newsweek and the Washington Post.
First, I'd like to point out that variance is not the same thing as variation. I wasn't talking about the variation in the amount spent in terms of school quality, I was discussing the variance of the data; the level of deviance from the mean. My point wasn't to characterize Utah's schools as being of low quality, just to show that your point - that they had money to spend on technology - was unfounded. If you want to discuss quality of schooling in terms of money spent, though, you might want to use an example other than West High to prove your point. The school is located by Capitol Hill, so has an affluent base to raise funds from. It receives $40 to $50 thousand dollars a year from alumni - an example of its affluent supporters. If you consult their financial report, you'll see they spend a further $1,040,000 from the student Activities Agency Fund, twice that spent by East, which has a comparable number of students (just under 90%). Their combined income from the Federal and State standard funding (Federal grants + State money, mostly raised from property taxes in its area) comes to just over $18m. By my calculations this gives them just under $8.5k per child per year, meaning that when I pointed to schools in Utah with a budget of $3k per child per year I probably wasn't talking about them. Just to clarify by the way, Salt Lake City school district spends an average of about $6k per child per year (again I refer you to their annual report). Bearing this in mind, I'm not quite sure why you chose a school in SLC as an example of a low spending Utah school - especially when you're so worried about people being deceitful!Its not the dollars going into the class its how they are getting used.
And to return to the original discussion - the lack of money for good technical staff in schools - I would like to refer you to the West High School website. As you can see, their income at 30% above the average has allowed them to employ a team of dedicated technicians and web designers.
I don't dispute your summation: "Its [sic] not the dollars going into the class its [sic] how they are getting used". What I object to is you labeling my post as deceitful and then following up with vague assertions ("arguably the worst school system"), bad data ("Salt Lake city [was] the school district you mentioned") and misleading examples ("West High School has been named the top high school in Utah"). Wages are higher in DC than in Utah - did you take this into account? Did you consider property prices? Did you, in fact consider a single statistic before claiming West High to be the proof that I was being "deceitful"?
I'm sure there are examples of poorly funded schools with exemplary results to be found somewhere. But I would ask you to do a little more research before calling names.
Patents don't keep your methodology secret, it's a trade. In return for making your idea public knowledge you get a legal guarantee that no one copies it for x years.
For that matter, why should public schools have to deal with unruly students at all? Under the current system, there seems to be a belief that everyone is entitled to a free education, no matter what. The right to a free education extends just as far as it doesn't interfere with others' rights to a free education. If a student is habitually disruptive or destructive, at some point we should step back and say, "You've forfeited your right to a free education. You can reapply next year. Get out." It would keep our schools focused on education instead of crisis management. Right now, the worst we can do is shuffle a disruptive "student" between schools. This doesn't even attempt to solve the problem. Right now, one or two "students" can completely destroy the learning atmosphere in a class of 30. How is this fair? On one hand, there are kids who actually do want to be there and really want to learn. On the other, there are those in the classrooms that don't want to learn; let them leave. If they're impeding other students, make them leave.
This really is a difficult question to answer - I doubt we'll ever be sure what the solution is. Personally, I believe that everyone is entitled to a free education, no matter what. At the end of the day, these are children; they aren't mature enough to make reliably good decisions, and yet the decisions they make will have a huge effect on the rest of their lives. I'm a strong believer in personal responsibility, but I'm still not quite sure that the behaviour of unruly children is their fault - from my experience, the most problematic children are those who go home every night to parents who haven't had an education and don't think it's necessary. We make a big deal out of peer pressure and this is a thousand times more, the people to whom you look for a role model telling you that school is stupid and pointless and encouraging you to cause trouble. Society as a whole should, in my opinion, take it upon itself to protect those at risk, especially when they can't protect themselves; this protection should extend, I believe, to ensuring that where you're born doesn't stop you getting an education.What we need to find, in my opinion, is alternative solutions. At the end of the day some teachers find it much less of a problem to get problem children to work than others, and we need to work out what it is they're doing differently and make it much more widespread. More support outside the school can only help; studies repeatedly find that providing activities for children in the evening - sports, games etc - helps to improve concentration, attendance and behaviour during the day. Some students will still be unruly, and will still be disruptive, and some will have to be sidelined to keep the lessons going, but giving up on them isn't the answer.
Doubtless someone will reply with "but why should my hard-earned tax dollars pay for poor students to get extra help!?!" The answer to that is because there's nothing magic about you. It's not some sort of eternal karma that decides who is a bad student and who a good one, it's a combination of genes and environment. It could just as easily have been you.
Your estimates for the costs of private education are just as far off as your estimates of the money involved in public schooling. I suspect you have been misled by figures bandied about in the school voucher debate - these tend to lump secondary schools with elementary schools and even free schools to bring the apparent price down to less than the cost of a public school. For example, an often quoted figure for private school cost is $3600 per child - this is arrived at by taking the average for secondary school, elementary schools, free independent schools and church schools - all designed to make the secondary school cost look low. In truth, the average fee level of a private secondary school is rather higher at about $5,500. The gap between the private and public sector can be explained by a few things, such as reduction in bureaucratic red tape and potential increase in efficiency, but also by their frequent status as charitable organizations soliciting donations that can increase this to meet the public level, and their selectiveness; if you don't have to deal with unruly or disadvantaged children you can cut costs heavily.
My final point is that you seem to underestimate the costs in the day to day running of a school rather heavily! Just taking into account the staffing takes your available funds down to around $4k per pupil (and remember the schools that only make $3k per pupil originally?). Then you have to buy computers, books, stationary and furniture, run activities, organize school board elections, pay for heating, lighting and water and provide a bus for disabled students who can't get in otherwise. Depending on your location security might be an issue. And your building and equipment don't last forever with thousands of children inside - you need to make it to the end of the year with some surplus in case someone's broken a telescope or put a broom through the ceiling. (Or get insurance - but that will of course cost more than the average year's renovation costs; that's how insurance works).
My point with all this is that schools don't have millions of dollars sitting around in a cupboard somewhere. They aren't choosing not to employ a team of network technicians, it's just that even a small technical staff - say 2 people - eats into your budget by around $80k year if they're good at what they do. That money doesn't appear overnight.
The problem is that the solutions are being coded for individual sites not one size fits all. A custom solution would have no problem with that system at all.
Just to clear things up - since there's a bit of contradiction between the things you said - any faithful representation of a two-dimensional object is exempt from being copyrighted in the US. If you use your camera in the museum to take an accurate photo of the picture, and the picture is not copyrighted, then there is no copyright on the photo either. If you take a photo of the corner of the room, you could try to assert copyright on it, however.
I'm pretty sure it's the same here. The general strategy is to try to produce enough evidence to get a court order for a search as part of a case against you; they park outside and try to detect your TV (no idea how accurate this is...). It's getting ridiculous now... I wonder what proportion of the license fee is spent sending out millions of notices to people without TVs.
The enforcement attempts are utterly ridiculous - I have thus far received 7 letters this year threatening me with legal action for using a TV without a license. They now want to schedule an enforcement visit to gather their evidence - I've repeatedly told them I have no intention of letting them check for TVs and that I don't have one. I wonder at what stage it moves from legitimate enforcement to harassment.
I do write scores, and also edit textbooks. While I don't like the idea of people downloading them for free - and some people do, unfortunately - I can't object to people pirating them who live in Asia or Africa - they aren't published there, and they aren't shipped there. In the same way, I have downloaded music that I couldn't find any way to buy, and I've downloaded music that I later bought but that wasn't available over here until a later release date; these cases seem to me to be a byproduct of copyright, not the intended interdiction.
Have you been to those sites? 2 screensaver sites, online dating and an ad serving site. To me that sounds like the fourth site was serving the ads to the first 3 - especially since they are common examples of online advertising. Furthermore, the computer wasn't exclusively used by the teacher; it was also used by pupils.