There needs to be a case that satisfies the requirements for an extradition order. Those requirements do not include proving Assange is guilty, or likely to be guilty, or providing one single word of evidence proving his guilt.
If you don't like my ABCD provide your own chain of reasoning.
A. There is a hearing at which the prosecutor does not need to provide evidence of guilt. B. At the hearing the prosecutor does not provide evidence of guilt. C. ?? D. Assange is not guilty.
Are you saying (i) that there is no need for C, D just follows logically from A and B; or (ii) there is a need for a C - in which case what goes there?
You accept that the extradition hearing was not trying to determine whether or not Assange was guilty. The prosecutor needed to prove that the European arrest warrant was valid, but didn't need to prove that Assange was guilty. The prosecutor provided evidence to show the arrest warrant was valid, but didn't provide evidence to prove that Arrange was guilty.
What's the significant of the prosecutor not providing evidence for something that they didn't need to provide evidence for?
Right, I think we've got to the position that I thought we might be in to start with. The only public case that you were basing all this on is the extradition hearing - the hearing in which the Court expressly stated that it was not judging Assange's guilt; in which there was literally no consideration of the evidence in relation to one of the allegations, and only cursory consideration in relation to the others; and in which the Swedish prosecutor didn't even appear.
I suppose if you want to come to a settled judgement on that basis, that's your prerogative. I suspect that it's too big of a gap for us to come to agreement; and in any case the legal system, like me, considers it only to have been a preliminary hearing.
Every little bit of information that has been leaked about this case has been reproduced on a thousand websites. If a case had been presented there would be innumerable translations and commentaries - it would be easy to find. A cynic would say that the reason you're refusing to give the link is that you know it doesn't exist.
To respond to your specific comments:
The case had to be presented in order to get an extradition order. Yes, there is an extradition order which is why he can't leave the embassy.
I know that there was an extradition hearing (judgment text). However, as I explained before, the case did not have to be presented at that hearing, and was not presented at that hearing. The Court reviewed a very small amount of material to ensure that the formal requirements of the Framework Decision were met - that's all. If you're basing a conclusion about Assange's innocence or guilt on that judgment you're building a tower without any foundations.
There are absolutely allegations which have a case filed in courts. See above.
My use of the phrase "criminal case" was not an accident. My point is that there are no filings that form part of the process by which Assange's guilt or innocence are assessed. You refer me to the English extradition hearing, but that hearing did not (and could not) make any judgement about his guilt.
Swedish courts don't operate like the USSR, but you need to do enough translation to find the case. If you search Slashdot there have been links posted to translated documents in the past (over a year ago?).
I still can't find this case that's open for inspection. The Swedish prosecutor has a chronology which doesn't refer to any charges having been filed. Justice for Assange has a list of available documents that doesn't include any Swedish case, and states that "no charges have been filed". If you know of this publicly available case, post it! I would love to read it! But nobody else - including the prosecutor and campaigners - seems to have any idea that it exists.
If you want knowledge, go get it! A bit of research will go a long way. To translate and find year(s) old sources requires more energy than I'm willing to give up. I gave a few hints for how to search out the case which is sufficient to get you started. Your choice is to either gain knowledge or argue from ignorance. Hopefully you choose the former, but the later is unfortunately more common.
The reason that I ask you to post a link to the case that you refer to isn't that I'm lazy and want you to do the work - it's that I think that we are at cross purposes, and you are referring to something that I don't recognise as being a case that's sufficient to judge Assange's innocence or guilt. If you will just post the source that you're relying on we can get to the bottom of it quickly.
It might be helpful to point out that the judge in this case, Lord Justice Laws, is a Court of Appeal judge sitting in the High Court - this could be a coincidence, but it's likely a reflection of the case being taken seriously and allocated an extremely experienced and senior judge.
Lord Justice Laws has ruled against the Government in a number of extremely high-profile cases, including the first case of a judge suspending the operation of a properly passed statute. He is well known for his view that the Courts have a constitutional power to uphold fundamental rights against Parliament, and that it is the role of the Courts (rather than political forces, which is the majority view in British jurisprudence) to hold Parliament and the Government to account. For any American Slashdotters, I'll also clarify that our judges are not political appointments and there is no realistic way that the Government could force him out.
My point is that Law LJ is absolutely not able to be pushed around by the Government. I don't really believe that any of our senior judges are, but if you were looking for a judge who would err in favour of the executive, he is exactly the person you would not want. You can criticize the law - and I would tend to agree with you that it is too broad - but it's certainly not the case that a verdict in favour of the Government was inevitable regardless of the facts.
Could you provide a link to the evidence that you consider to be complete?
My understanding is that:
i) the case has not been presented;
ii) there has been no "filing" in the criminal case against him;
iii) the case - such as exists at the moment - is not open for public inspection (if it were, it would be a bit odd for the pro-Assange websites to be trumpeting leaked documents, surely?).
I think that if you post a link to the fully presented case it will probably clear things up.
I don't mean to be rude, but I don't think that you've quite understood the process.
There has not been a public case yet in which the prosecutor has had to lay out the evidence against Assange. There has been no hearing where the object was to determine whether he was guilty.
I'm guessing that by "read the case" you mean the English High Court case, but that was an extradition hearing. The Court was not required to consider the strength of the case against Assange, and there was no obligation to prove the case. That comes later in the process.
What's available on the internet is a few leaked documents and some speculation - nothing on which to build a conclusion.
At present, the only person who has been able to consider all the evidence against Assange is the Swedish prosecutor, who considers that there is a case to answer. In due course a Court will determine whether Assange is guilty, but in the meantime, anyone saying that they've read a few scraps of information here and there, and are therefore able confidently to say that the prosecutor is wrong, hasn't understood how little they know of the facts.
If you can imagine situations in which it would still be rape despite the woman having consented earlier, clearly it doesn't logically follow that consenting earlier in the evening means it will not be rape to have sex with the person while they sleep.
In which case it all comes down to the facts, and anyone saying on Slashdot that they know whether he is guilty or not is kidding themselves, because they don't have all the facts.
It's purely a question of where being charged fits into the legal process, I think. In the UK, for example, you're usually charged after being arrested, so you would be extradited first and charged second (because you can't be arrested until you arrive). An example of that was Hussain Osman, who was extradited from Italy and arrested and charged on arrival.
Interpol invovlemnt in this kind of charges is unheard of.
If you have no idea what you're talking about, everything is "unheard of".
Where a European State seeks to prosecute someone in another European country it is completely normal for Interpol to handle the communication between forces, and (according to Interpol's stats, and counting both formal notices and communications only sent to a particular country) happens about 20,000 times a year.
Notices can be issued for a wide range of offences. The first page of published notices on the Interpol website included, at the time of this comment, individuals wanted in connection with murder, rape, sexual assault, forging a passport and "unlawfully using a computer with the intention to commit an offence".
The constant monitoring of his residence by several UK policemens is also unheard of
This is a little misleading, since it ignores the obvious reasons why this is the case: it ignores that Assange's case is very unusual, since the police know exactly where he is and have a warrant for his arrest, but cannot carry it out; and it ignores that Hans Crescent and the surrounding streets are home to a number of embassies and missions, meaning that there would often be police there in any case.
It's also not true to say that it's unheard of - in other cases of people taking refuge in embassies, police or other state authorities have waited outside to apprehend them.
he was questioned, than he was released and told he can travel off the country, after he did it, suddenly, both of the "victims" changed their minds and he is wanted for another questioning again
Do you have a source for this? I've never heard that the alleged victims "changed their minds" (which, I feel compelled to say, is a bit of a distasteful turn of phrase) and it would surprise me that their statements would be released to the public.
No - if you pay 10 bitcoins in and get 10 bitcoins out, the fact that they may not be the same bitcoins isn't going to confuse anyone. If you've logged everything, as you suggest, this is going to be transparent.
Does it avoid anti money laundering ("AML") legislation?
No - AML legislation makes it an offence to attempt to hide the source, ownership or control of funds. Running this scheme would be an offence in itself.
Will it allow you to bring the money into regular circulation?
No - this isn't going to provide any response to the question "what is the ultimate source of your funds", which is the key question that banks, lawyers and other regulated bodies are required to ask as part of their AML procedure. (In fact, in my jurisdiction, the suspicious Bitcoin transaction would be enough to require them to make a report to the police).
It seems to me that your suggestion takes a very literal interpretation of "money laundering", and assumes that it means breaking the link between the exact money that you obtained illegally and the exact money that you have now. That's part of it, but there's a lot more involved and, crucially, breaking that link is not enough on its own either (i) to pass AML checks, or (ii) to avoid conviction for the AML or handling the proceeds of crime offences.
It's only nonsense if you accept that, to be a good programmer, you have to be motivated right at the start of the course - being motivated after you've done some of the course, and the importance has been made clear, is not enough.
I don't see any reason that that would be the case. In fact, I suspect that the biggest difference between the people who are motivated at the outset and the others, is that the former have already seen the importance and power of the CLI. In such a case, there's no obvious difference between their motivation once the importance and power have been explained.
This isn't saying that students should not use the CLI, nor that they should not be proficient in it.
The point is that wanting to use a GUI for lots of common tasks is not lazy or incompetent. It's often the quickest and easiest way to get the job done. As a result, if you want students to appreciate that the CLI is important you need to explain why it is better to spend time learning its eccentricities rather than relying on the GUI applications.
The alternative is to do what the GGP advocates, and just put them on the CLI and make them use it. That seems like a great way to sap their motivation with what seems like a pointless task.
To reiterate: this isn't to detract from the power of the CLI. The point is that if you want students who are used to slick GUI applications to appreciate that power, you need to make it clear what the benefits are. Initially at least, the students will be able to do almost any task you set them much more quickly and easily with GUI applications than using the command line, and so if you do not set out those benefits clearly, they are liable to think that the CLI is a waste of time.
They can learn the command line the same way people 40 years ago learned command line.
Put those students on a system that can only do command line, and require them to do things. Problem solved.
Stand obstinately in the way of making the subject more accessible, and you will get two types of students: those who are keen, motivated and passionate about technology, and those who choose technology because they can't make it anywhere else. The latter group is not going to yield many great programmers. So congratulations - you've managed to retain the group who will always do your subject, no matter what, while keeping everyone else away.
You don't have to dumb-down. You don't have to give everyone an A+. The point here is just to make it so that more people can engage with the subject initially, which opens it up to a lot more people with the potential to be great programmers.
You know I never thought of it like that but you are absolutely right. That's insightful there, thanks. It made me realize something that is insightful as well. You know who will accept an excuse, hardship, extenuating circumstances, and is just generally a more compassionate system? Socialism. Whenever capitalists dig their grave too deep to get back out of and capitalism stops accepting their excuses, they all come running to socialism to bail them out. And every single time, we invite the greedy fucks back into our homes and vaults, they take whatever they think they can get away with, and then turn around and try to kill the system that just saved them via legislation and all other types of general douchebag moves. In this context, people that tend towards liberal/socialist beliefs are battered women who keep on believing that the handsome and strong conservative capitalists aren't gonna keep beating them, even when historically they always have.
You talk about "socialism" all through your post, and then about "liberal/socialist beliefs" in your final sentence. I'm not sure why; liberalism and socialism are completely separate political philosophies, with significant contradictions. They are not interchangeable.
More generally, the image that you conjure is of someone repeatedly suffering from the failings of capitalism, but continuing to support it and stick up for it, unquestioningly faithful that it will do better next time. Socialism is a pretty broad church, but I don't think you would find any socialists with those views. The views that you describe as socialist are in many ways the exact opposite of traditional socialism.
There are varying 'degrees' of socialism, but in a great many cases it involves believing that capitalism cannot, and will not, do a good job of managing certain sectors, and so it should either be removed completely or heavily regulated - i.e. the opposite of what you are describing as socialist.
"Socialism" and "liberalism" are not simply pejorative terms for anyone who disagrees with you. In this case, the views you dislike are more prevalent among capitalist, economically right-wing people; for example, the UK's Conservative chancellor, a center-right conservative capitalist, recently went on record stating that his view was that bailing out the banks after a crisis is the price to be paid for the benefits of unregulated capitalism.
In that case maybe I wasn't talking about you. But if that's your attitude, do you not find the uber-macho, shoot-first rhetoric of a lot of pro-gun posters a little worrying?
I don't think you've actually got the full meaning of the word there - you've only looked at the abridged Google definition.
If you click the down-arrow on the Google definition, the next bullet point is:
extreme selfishness, with a grandiose view of one's own talents and a craving for admiration, as characterizing a personality type
Similarly, in psychiatry, it refers to "a mental disorder in which people have an inflated sense of their own importance and a deep need for admiration", and the Dictionary.com definition is "inordinate fascination with oneself; excessive self-love; vanity".
That makes perfect sense in the original sentence, without any need for it to refer to exactly the situation that occurred in the original myth (frankly, if the word only referred to that exact situation it would be useless). You could substitute in a definition like so:
"And yes, even though I don't befriend the kind of [person with an inflated sense of their own importance] that would use Glass"
Just ask - "I'm sorry, I'm having one of those days - who is that?". If that's too embarrassing, just ask if they can remind you where Sam's desk is.
Struggling to remember the names of people outside your immediate department is not an "uncommon disability". Yes, it sounds like you have more trouble than most people, but it's perfectly normal to forget peoples' names. That's why people are so impressed when someone knows everyone's name in a company.
Everyone has been in that exact situation, and they aren't going to think you're a terrible person as long as you are polite about it.
hmm, when i was in school, getting "paddled" for bad behavior was the norm. And oddly enough, students didn't arm themselves and go around killing everyone in school back then either. I got thinking about this last sentence and did a google: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_school_shootings_in_the_United_States
People been killing other people at school with guns since guns were around. It's not new, it's human nature.
So i guess spanking students don't work anyways. Wonder, is it too late to sue the elementary, & middle schools i went to? 30+ years later. =)
Is any of this relevant?
Though if i was a teacher and I saw kids destroying school property, i'd probably take out my phone and take a picture of them. That way I don't have to remember names and would actually have some proof of what happened. But I wouldn't think of a teacher to think of doing that, it would counter the type of thinking schools teach these days.
It would be odd for a teacher to take a photograph of a student destroying school property rather than intervening immediately to deal with it. In my experience, the better and more experienced teachers have no trouble intervening, although a new teacher might want to report it to someone more experienced if they aren't sure how to handle it.
I don't understand your last sentence, and it seems wrong-headed - teachers are obviously not employing "the type of thinking schools teach these days", since they went to school 10 or more years ago. Was there some point you were trying to make?
Based on my experience working in schools, a couple of suggestions:
- You don't need to memorise two thousand students' names; you only need to know enough names to normally recognise one student out of a group who are present when someone is breaking the rules. You can track down the real culprits from there.
- You don't actually need to be able to put a name to a face - if you know their year group, or form group, or just about anything else about them, you can find out who they were pretty easily.
- It sounds like you're probably not a teacher. My experience as a teaching assistant was that each school will have some teachers who are strict on discipline, and that they will crack down extremely hard where non-teaching-staff have felt that misbehaviour was serious enough that they needed to report it.
Gun nuts are like tweeny boys waiting for their bits to grow.
I agree with this - and I often think exactly the same when reading pro-gun posts on Slashdot.
I can recognize that there are advantages to allowing gun ownership. Unfortunately, the gun proponents often sound like the real reason that they want a gun is that they're really, really hoping that they will get the chance to shoot someone dead.
Basically, I don't want to become... you or any other little touchy screeny zombie
As far as I can tell, your problem is that you're worried you don't have enough self-control to avoid using a smartphone excessively.
That's fine. If that's your worry, then not getting a smartphone seems a sensible response. But I must have missed the bit that justifies your diatribe against the GP - who doesn't seem to have your problem.
Plenty of us own a smartphone and use it occasionally to make our lives easier. It sounds like you can't do that, which is a shame, but it doesn't make it any less useful for those people who can.
Slashdot Mirror
There needs to be a case that satisfies the requirements for an extradition order. Those requirements do not include proving Assange is guilty, or likely to be guilty, or providing one single word of evidence proving his guilt.
If you don't like my ABCD provide your own chain of reasoning.
OK, so help me out:
A. There is a hearing at which the prosecutor does not need to provide evidence of guilt.
B. At the hearing the prosecutor does not provide evidence of guilt.
C. ??
D. Assange is not guilty.
Are you saying (i) that there is no need for C, D just follows logically from A and B; or (ii) there is a need for a C - in which case what goes there?
I'm afraid I don't quite follow.
You accept that the extradition hearing was not trying to determine whether or not Assange was guilty. The prosecutor needed to prove that the European arrest warrant was valid, but didn't need to prove that Assange was guilty. The prosecutor provided evidence to show the arrest warrant was valid, but didn't provide evidence to prove that Arrange was guilty.
What's the significant of the prosecutor not providing evidence for something that they didn't need to provide evidence for?
Right, I think we've got to the position that I thought we might be in to start with. The only public case that you were basing all this on is the extradition hearing - the hearing in which the Court expressly stated that it was not judging Assange's guilt; in which there was literally no consideration of the evidence in relation to one of the allegations, and only cursory consideration in relation to the others; and in which the Swedish prosecutor didn't even appear.
I suppose if you want to come to a settled judgement on that basis, that's your prerogative. I suspect that it's too big of a gap for us to come to agreement; and in any case the legal system, like me, considers it only to have been a preliminary hearing.
Every little bit of information that has been leaked about this case has been reproduced on a thousand websites. If a case had been presented there would be innumerable translations and commentaries - it would be easy to find. A cynic would say that the reason you're refusing to give the link is that you know it doesn't exist.
To respond to your specific comments:
The case had to be presented in order to get an extradition order. Yes, there is an extradition order which is why he can't leave the embassy.
I know that there was an extradition hearing (judgment text). However, as I explained before, the case did not have to be presented at that hearing, and was not presented at that hearing. The Court reviewed a very small amount of material to ensure that the formal requirements of the Framework Decision were met - that's all. If you're basing a conclusion about Assange's innocence or guilt on that judgment you're building a tower without any foundations.
There are absolutely allegations which have a case filed in courts. See above.
My use of the phrase "criminal case" was not an accident. My point is that there are no filings that form part of the process by which Assange's guilt or innocence are assessed. You refer me to the English extradition hearing, but that hearing did not (and could not) make any judgement about his guilt.
Swedish courts don't operate like the USSR, but you need to do enough translation to find the case. If you search Slashdot there have been links posted to translated documents in the past (over a year ago?).
I still can't find this case that's open for inspection. The Swedish prosecutor has a chronology which doesn't refer to any charges having been filed. Justice for Assange has a list of available documents that doesn't include any Swedish case, and states that "no charges have been filed". If you know of this publicly available case, post it! I would love to read it! But nobody else - including the prosecutor and campaigners - seems to have any idea that it exists.
If you want knowledge, go get it! A bit of research will go a long way. To translate and find year(s) old sources requires more energy than I'm willing to give up. I gave a few hints for how to search out the case which is sufficient to get you started. Your choice is to either gain knowledge or argue from ignorance. Hopefully you choose the former, but the later is unfortunately more common.
The reason that I ask you to post a link to the case that you refer to isn't that I'm lazy and want you to do the work - it's that I think that we are at cross purposes, and you are referring to something that I don't recognise as being a case that's sufficient to judge Assange's innocence or guilt. If you will just post the source that you're relying on we can get to the bottom of it quickly.
It might be helpful to point out that the judge in this case, Lord Justice Laws, is a Court of Appeal judge sitting in the High Court - this could be a coincidence, but it's likely a reflection of the case being taken seriously and allocated an extremely experienced and senior judge.
Lord Justice Laws has ruled against the Government in a number of extremely high-profile cases, including the first case of a judge suspending the operation of a properly passed statute. He is well known for his view that the Courts have a constitutional power to uphold fundamental rights against Parliament, and that it is the role of the Courts (rather than political forces, which is the majority view in British jurisprudence) to hold Parliament and the Government to account. For any American Slashdotters, I'll also clarify that our judges are not political appointments and there is no realistic way that the Government could force him out.
My point is that Law LJ is absolutely not able to be pushed around by the Government. I don't really believe that any of our senior judges are, but if you were looking for a judge who would err in favour of the executive, he is exactly the person you would not want. You can criticize the law - and I would tend to agree with you that it is too broad - but it's certainly not the case that a verdict in favour of the Government was inevitable regardless of the facts.
Could you provide a link to the evidence that you consider to be complete?
My understanding is that:
I think that if you post a link to the fully presented case it will probably clear things up.
I don't mean to be rude, but I don't think that you've quite understood the process.
There has not been a public case yet in which the prosecutor has had to lay out the evidence against Assange. There has been no hearing where the object was to determine whether he was guilty.
I'm guessing that by "read the case" you mean the English High Court case, but that was an extradition hearing. The Court was not required to consider the strength of the case against Assange, and there was no obligation to prove the case. That comes later in the process.
What's available on the internet is a few leaked documents and some speculation - nothing on which to build a conclusion.
At present, the only person who has been able to consider all the evidence against Assange is the Swedish prosecutor, who considers that there is a case to answer. In due course a Court will determine whether Assange is guilty, but in the meantime, anyone saying that they've read a few scraps of information here and there, and are therefore able confidently to say that the prosecutor is wrong, hasn't understood how little they know of the facts.
If you can imagine situations in which it would still be rape despite the woman having consented earlier, clearly it doesn't logically follow that consenting earlier in the evening means it will not be rape to have sex with the person while they sleep.
In which case it all comes down to the facts, and anyone saying on Slashdot that they know whether he is guilty or not is kidding themselves, because they don't have all the facts.
When a party has had consentual sex several times prior to intercourse while sleeping, it shoul be apparent that the claim is false.
I don't think that that follows as a matter of logic.
It's purely a question of where being charged fits into the legal process, I think. In the UK, for example, you're usually charged after being arrested, so you would be extradited first and charged second (because you can't be arrested until you arrive). An example of that was Hussain Osman, who was extradited from Italy and arrested and charged on arrival.
This is complete nonsense.
Interpol invovlemnt in this kind of charges is unheard of.
If you have no idea what you're talking about, everything is "unheard of".
Where a European State seeks to prosecute someone in another European country it is completely normal for Interpol to handle the communication between forces, and (according to Interpol's stats, and counting both formal notices and communications only sent to a particular country) happens about 20,000 times a year.
Notices can be issued for a wide range of offences. The first page of published notices on the Interpol website included, at the time of this comment, individuals wanted in connection with murder, rape, sexual assault, forging a passport and "unlawfully using a computer with the intention to commit an offence".
The constant monitoring of his residence by several UK policemens is also unheard of
This is a little misleading, since it ignores the obvious reasons why this is the case: it ignores that Assange's case is very unusual, since the police know exactly where he is and have a warrant for his arrest, but cannot carry it out; and it ignores that Hans Crescent and the surrounding streets are home to a number of embassies and missions, meaning that there would often be police there in any case.
It's also not true to say that it's unheard of - in other cases of people taking refuge in embassies, police or other state authorities have waited outside to apprehend them.
he was questioned, than he was released and told he can travel off the country, after he did it, suddenly, both of the "victims" changed their minds and he is wanted for another questioning again
Do you have a source for this? I've never heard that the alleged victims "changed their minds" (which, I feel compelled to say, is a bit of a distasteful turn of phrase) and it would surprise me that their statements would be released to the public.
I'm not quite sure what this is meant to achieve.
Does it hide the source of your funds?
No - if you pay 10 bitcoins in and get 10 bitcoins out, the fact that they may not be the same bitcoins isn't going to confuse anyone. If you've logged everything, as you suggest, this is going to be transparent.
Does it avoid anti money laundering ("AML") legislation?
No - AML legislation makes it an offence to attempt to hide the source, ownership or control of funds. Running this scheme would be an offence in itself.
Will it allow you to bring the money into regular circulation?
No - this isn't going to provide any response to the question "what is the ultimate source of your funds", which is the key question that banks, lawyers and other regulated bodies are required to ask as part of their AML procedure. (In fact, in my jurisdiction, the suspicious Bitcoin transaction would be enough to require them to make a report to the police).
It seems to me that your suggestion takes a very literal interpretation of "money laundering", and assumes that it means breaking the link between the exact money that you obtained illegally and the exact money that you have now. That's part of it, but there's a lot more involved and, crucially, breaking that link is not enough on its own either (i) to pass AML checks, or (ii) to avoid conviction for the AML or handling the proceeds of crime offences.
It's only nonsense if you accept that, to be a good programmer, you have to be motivated right at the start of the course - being motivated after you've done some of the course, and the importance has been made clear, is not enough.
I don't see any reason that that would be the case. In fact, I suspect that the biggest difference between the people who are motivated at the outset and the others, is that the former have already seen the importance and power of the CLI. In such a case, there's no obvious difference between their motivation once the importance and power have been explained.
This isn't saying that students should not use the CLI, nor that they should not be proficient in it.
The point is that wanting to use a GUI for lots of common tasks is not lazy or incompetent. It's often the quickest and easiest way to get the job done. As a result, if you want students to appreciate that the CLI is important you need to explain why it is better to spend time learning its eccentricities rather than relying on the GUI applications.
The alternative is to do what the GGP advocates, and just put them on the CLI and make them use it. That seems like a great way to sap their motivation with what seems like a pointless task.
To reiterate: this isn't to detract from the power of the CLI. The point is that if you want students who are used to slick GUI applications to appreciate that power, you need to make it clear what the benefits are. Initially at least, the students will be able to do almost any task you set them much more quickly and easily with GUI applications than using the command line, and so if you do not set out those benefits clearly, they are liable to think that the CLI is a waste of time.
They can learn the command line the same way people 40 years ago learned command line.
Put those students on a system that can only do command line, and require them to do things. Problem solved.
Stand obstinately in the way of making the subject more accessible, and you will get two types of students: those who are keen, motivated and passionate about technology, and those who choose technology because they can't make it anywhere else. The latter group is not going to yield many great programmers. So congratulations - you've managed to retain the group who will always do your subject, no matter what, while keeping everyone else away.
You don't have to dumb-down. You don't have to give everyone an A+. The point here is just to make it so that more people can engage with the subject initially, which opens it up to a lot more people with the potential to be great programmers.
You know I never thought of it like that but you are absolutely right. That's insightful there, thanks. It made me realize something that is insightful as well. You know who will accept an excuse, hardship, extenuating circumstances, and is just generally a more compassionate system? Socialism. Whenever capitalists dig their grave too deep to get back out of and capitalism stops accepting their excuses, they all come running to socialism to bail them out. And every single time, we invite the greedy fucks back into our homes and vaults, they take whatever they think they can get away with, and then turn around and try to kill the system that just saved them via legislation and all other types of general douchebag moves. In this context, people that tend towards liberal/socialist beliefs are battered women who keep on believing that the handsome and strong conservative capitalists aren't gonna keep beating them, even when historically they always have.
You talk about "socialism" all through your post, and then about "liberal/socialist beliefs" in your final sentence. I'm not sure why; liberalism and socialism are completely separate political philosophies, with significant contradictions. They are not interchangeable.
More generally, the image that you conjure is of someone repeatedly suffering from the failings of capitalism, but continuing to support it and stick up for it, unquestioningly faithful that it will do better next time. Socialism is a pretty broad church, but I don't think you would find any socialists with those views. The views that you describe as socialist are in many ways the exact opposite of traditional socialism.
There are varying 'degrees' of socialism, but in a great many cases it involves believing that capitalism cannot, and will not, do a good job of managing certain sectors, and so it should either be removed completely or heavily regulated - i.e. the opposite of what you are describing as socialist.
"Socialism" and "liberalism" are not simply pejorative terms for anyone who disagrees with you. In this case, the views you dislike are more prevalent among capitalist, economically right-wing people; for example, the UK's Conservative chancellor, a center-right conservative capitalist, recently went on record stating that his view was that bailing out the banks after a crisis is the price to be paid for the benefits of unregulated capitalism.
Your order was shipped on December 4th and not received before Christmas?
In that case maybe I wasn't talking about you. But if that's your attitude, do you not find the uber-macho, shoot-first rhetoric of a lot of pro-gun posters a little worrying?
I don't think you've actually got the full meaning of the word there - you've only looked at the abridged Google definition.
If you click the down-arrow on the Google definition, the next bullet point is:
extreme selfishness, with a grandiose view of one's own talents and a craving for admiration, as characterizing a personality type
Similarly, in psychiatry, it refers to "a mental disorder in which people have an inflated sense of their own importance and a deep need for admiration", and the Dictionary.com definition is "inordinate fascination with oneself; excessive self-love; vanity".
That makes perfect sense in the original sentence, without any need for it to refer to exactly the situation that occurred in the original myth (frankly, if the word only referred to that exact situation it would be useless). You could substitute in a definition like so:
"And yes, even though I don't befriend the kind of [person with an inflated sense of their own importance] that would use Glass"
Just ask - "I'm sorry, I'm having one of those days - who is that?". If that's too embarrassing, just ask if they can remind you where Sam's desk is.
Struggling to remember the names of people outside your immediate department is not an "uncommon disability". Yes, it sounds like you have more trouble than most people, but it's perfectly normal to forget peoples' names. That's why people are so impressed when someone knows everyone's name in a company.
Everyone has been in that exact situation, and they aren't going to think you're a terrible person as long as you are polite about it.
hmm, when i was in school, getting "paddled" for bad behavior was the norm. And oddly enough, students didn't arm themselves and go around killing everyone in school back then either. I got thinking about this last sentence and did a google: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_school_shootings_in_the_United_States
People been killing other people at school with guns since guns were around. It's not new, it's human nature.
So i guess spanking students don't work anyways. Wonder, is it too late to sue the elementary, & middle schools i went to? 30+ years later. =)
Is any of this relevant?
Though if i was a teacher and I saw kids destroying school property, i'd probably take out my phone and take a picture of them. That way I don't have to remember names and would actually have some proof of what happened. But I wouldn't think of a teacher to think of doing that, it would counter the type of thinking schools teach these days.
It would be odd for a teacher to take a photograph of a student destroying school property rather than intervening immediately to deal with it. In my experience, the better and more experienced teachers have no trouble intervening, although a new teacher might want to report it to someone more experienced if they aren't sure how to handle it.
I don't understand your last sentence, and it seems wrong-headed - teachers are obviously not employing "the type of thinking schools teach these days", since they went to school 10 or more years ago. Was there some point you were trying to make?
Based on my experience working in schools, a couple of suggestions:
- You don't need to memorise two thousand students' names; you only need to know enough names to normally recognise one student out of a group who are present when someone is breaking the rules. You can track down the real culprits from there.
- You don't actually need to be able to put a name to a face - if you know their year group, or form group, or just about anything else about them, you can find out who they were pretty easily.
- It sounds like you're probably not a teacher. My experience as a teaching assistant was that each school will have some teachers who are strict on discipline, and that they will crack down extremely hard where non-teaching-staff have felt that misbehaviour was serious enough that they needed to report it.
Gun nuts are like tweeny boys waiting for their bits to grow.
I agree with this - and I often think exactly the same when reading pro-gun posts on Slashdot.
I can recognize that there are advantages to allowing gun ownership. Unfortunately, the gun proponents often sound like the real reason that they want a gun is that they're really, really hoping that they will get the chance to shoot someone dead.
Basically, I don't want to become... you or any other little touchy screeny zombie
As far as I can tell, your problem is that you're worried you don't have enough self-control to avoid using a smartphone excessively.
That's fine. If that's your worry, then not getting a smartphone seems a sensible response. But I must have missed the bit that justifies your diatribe against the GP - who doesn't seem to have your problem.
Plenty of us own a smartphone and use it occasionally to make our lives easier. It sounds like you can't do that, which is a shame, but it doesn't make it any less useful for those people who can.