If I could do it all again, I would have listened to him when he said he didn't want to start playing because he was afraid he wouldn't be able to stop, instead of pressuring him to pick it up so we could play together. =(
You're joking, but I'm serious: This probably won't work.
I was in exactly the same position as the poster when I was in college (EverQuest). My best friend from the time I was 5 just disappeared. He stopped going to classes, he stopped sleeping normal times (at least this guy seems to have a schedule--my friend was on a totally strange cycle that seemed to rotate). He only ate leftovers or other stuff that he could bring up to his room. Until this time, he and I always used to trade off cooking dinner and actually sit down for dinner each night. He was, in a very real sense, like a brother. Closer than my actual brother, really. I considered his parents basically another set in addition to my own, and the families were very close.
Anyway, I'll never forget the morning that his girlfriend--another old friend of mine--showed up at our place one morning to try to drag him out. He wouldn't even come to his door. She just kept pleading at the door, becoming more frantic. They'd been together for years. Finally she said, "So, you want me to leave?" "Yes." "If I leave, I'm never coming back, is that okay with you?" "...Yes."
She was devastated. I spend the rest of the day taking care of her. She left that evening after I made her dinner, and I think that's the last time I ever saw her.
My friend just continued this "life" style, even as I called his parents and asked for their help. They couldn't get him to quit. He flunked out of his classes, and his parents stopped giving him money for rent and food (he had been paying his share all this time, which was nice--I'd leave a note for what he owed and there'd be a check there in the morning). Finally I had to evict him (my parents owned the place and we rented from them). It was heartbreaking; he wasn't showering and I had to air that room out for a week. He was pale and emaciated. Just totally a different person (he was a long-distance runner, always in way better shape than me--we were on the cross-country team in high school together--fun times).
He moved into his parents basement, and they tried to kick him out a few times, but basically their conscience wouldn't let them. This went on for at least another year at their place. I got updates on his "condition" through my dad, who had lunch with his dad (and some of the other guys from around town) every Friday.
Then one day, he comes upstairs and says to his dad "I canceled my account. I'm going for a run."
Now he's addicted to long-distance running, and is finally finishing his degree. There was a period for a few years before he started school again where he worked at a shoe store part time (I'm pretty sure he ran out of his large savings--"frugal" has never been the word for his level of financial conservativeness--by paying all those months of EQ bills). Despite these positive steps, though, our friendship is completely broken. I've tried to hang out with him a few times since that time, but he's just different. I don't know him. He's gone.
So what I'm saying is this: I don't think there's anything the poster can do. This addiction won't kill the guy, though, so that's good, but I think that what stops him will probably be running out of money or something along those lines. He's not going to get better, I don't think. He's just one of those people who gets addicted to things. Probably some form of OCD or something. Just give up and focus on your own studies. He's gone.
The piratebay is funded by a right wing millionaire businessman closely connected to fascist and racist organisations in Sweden. Google 'carl lundstrom' for details.
Wow, that I did not know. I don't understand how that could possibly be flamebait. That is straight-up "informative" goodness.
Furthermore, your post reiterates an important point: Piracy steals from everyone; not just the rich.
Everyone around here likes to believe in the goofy dot-com, Web 2.0, long-tail, free economics model of "new capitialism," but really, it's the same crazy bullshit as the credit crisis--a lot of people living high on the hog without any actual value being created.
Add to that the strong FOSS bias--the idea that a bunch of people in their spare time can create something better than something a bunch of people paid to do the same can, and reality just goes right out the window.
People don't have the time or inclination to work for free; they really do need to be paid for their time and effort so that they can do their best work. The fact that, these days, you actually have to posit that as a revolutionary concept is frightening. When you use the fruits of others' labor; you need to pay them. If we don't do that, we fall apart.
Finally, I think the "screw the big middleman corporations" is just an excuse. The truth is that its cheaper and easier to get what you want, and that's why people do it. Why do I know? Because here I have to admit that I download a lot of American TV (I live in Japan). Much of it is available on DVD. However, the DVDs have to be purchased and shipped from the US, and I have to have a multiregion DVD player (I do--by cracking one). By the time all of that is said and done, it's a very expensive prospect to watch something that I would be able to see for virtually free in the US. I could also get them from iTMS, in violation of their EULA, but... I think their prices are crazy for video. When shows have made it into the Japanese market, I prefer renting the DVDs (I get the Japanese subtitles that way, so I don't have to pause it every 3 minutes to explain details my wife--Japanese--missed in English), but even when they do make it in, they are years behind (I'm coming up on finishing the second season of BSG--do you know how hard it has been to avoid hearing any spoilers???). So what's this tell me? Pirates are just like me: They have a weird sense of entitlement and they are too cheap to pay the actual costs.
And this, when I'm honest with myself, is nothing to be proud of.
I have never pirated music on a large scale (just to sample something before buying--not necessary anymore with Last.fm, etc.), because I used to be a musician and know how much time, effort, and expense goes into making a record. I have never pirated video games because the best ones are always from the smallest developers, and all of them are phenomenally expensive to make. Probably the reason I make an exception for TV (not movies, but that's just because I've never seen the point--you can rent those and you get a better experience anyway) is that I don't have any experience or knowledge about how all that works. Probably if I or any of my friends were involved in that industry, I'd be more responsible about it. And that is the problem--a bunch of people who have no appreciation of the real-world costs--in time, money, and effort--of producing the media they enjoy somehow feel like it is their "right" to have it and share it with absolutely nothing going to the poor bastards who poured their lives into making it.
For every Cory Doctorow--who has made a little one-man cottage industry of encouraging everyone to screw over his peers, which has translated into lucrative column-writing, public speaking, blogging, and "activism" gigs--there are hundreds, maybe thousands, of guys like you getting the shaft.
Yes. This is ultimately where the Linux vs. proprietary OS argument just hits a brick wall. Linux people think that another program with similar functionality is good enough. People who actually do something other than type ASCII text for a living (i.e. developers) don't agree.
Without Excel, I'm sunk (yeah, I know about Crossover--I have it for the Mac, and if it works anything like that on Linux, then I don't consider that an alternative). Without Winsteps (Rasch modeling software), I'm sunk. Without Facets (different kind of Rasch model, modeling software), I'm sunk. Are there FOSS programs that handle the same tasks? Yes, but not as well, and even if they did handle them as well, they wouldn't do them the same way, and why should I kill myself learning a new application when I'm happy with what I'm using now (cue all the sarcastic "Oh! Well, you wouldn't want to learn something new, now would you?" comments. Please, I'm a researcher; my job is to learn, and do you run around reversing the hinge sides of the doors in your house just to keep yourself on your toes? Piss off.)?
I keep a fully-updated Ubuntu VM, just to keep up with what is happening there. I really like it, as OSes go. It's pretty and really easy to use. Pity it doesn't run any software I need.
Yes, Office has Styles. It's just that most people don't know what they are or how to use them, including OP. To do what he's talking about, you just open the Styles sidebar (or Inspector on the Mac version). I know; that's how I write. All the time.
OO.o does Styles better, for sure. So does Apple's Pages. Word needs to be stricter about them and not spam the syle list with idiotic crap like "Normal + italic" when you italicize for emphasis or to introduce a new term. If I want a separate style for that, I'll make it myself, thankyouverymuch.
And this, right here, is what I think causes all the misguided hatred of Word among TeX users. It isn't that Word is so bad; it's that they, too, don't know how to use it. Whenever I've had an argument with a TeX user (only on Slashdot, because that is the only place I've ever met one, and yes, I'm in academia, and no, I'm not in the humanities... exactly--I do actual research with hypotheses, not just write book reports^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H literary criticism), it has always come down to this:
If you need to include formulae, etc. in your document, TeX is your man. If you don't, the only thing that TeX offers is a more tedious way of picking styles, and a document that is cluttered with code until you do the output.
Word, with styles, is sufficient for much of academia, and they know it.
Please quantify. I am in applied linguistics, and I am the only person I know who has ever heard of TeX, let alone tried using it. Applied linguistics is very much a social science, being a bastard child of psychology and linguistics. We follow the same protocols as psychology and share a lot of the same sources. And yet... Never, ever have I seen or heard of someone using TeX. Never have I seen a journal or conference that did not ask for.doc files.
Finally, having tried TeX, I have to admit that I think it's totally pointless. Any publisher is just going to rip the formatting out of a document before laying it out for their pages in InDesign. Who cares what the document looks like when you hand it to them? As long as they can tell what is a heading and what is a subheading, they're good to go. In this case, I speak from experience as a peer reviewer/editor for an annual journal. I've talked with the layout guys about such minutia, and they are always like, "Just make sure we can tell what's what; we'll be stripping all that out anyway."
I suggest that TeX solves a problem that isn't a problem anymore. I can definitely see its benefit over something like Word if one is a mathematician and needs to put formulae, etc. in the document. However, for much of academia, it's basically a lot of text, a few tables, and a few graphs pasted in from SPSS or Excel (R if the person can be arsed to deal with it--again, a great tool for people who need more oomph than most of us in the social sciences do).
What branch of linguistics? I was about to post how no one in linguistics has even heard of it, because... I'm an applied linguist (assistant professor at a large, famous university), and not only do I not use it, I don't know of anyone else who has even heard of it, and I've never seen a journal submission page that listed it as an option. They all want.doc files.
Not calling you a liar; I just want to know. What, theoretical linguistics or something? Chomsky, etc?
Under any circumstance, at any level of education (believe me--I've taught them all, from K through university), "strict but fair" will win the respect and cooperation of the class. I'd like to throw in, however, "funny and empathetic" too. I am one of the strictest teachers I know, and I am very careful to apply all rules to all situations. But my classes are energetic and I try to be charming and funny as I do them, and my door is always open to students if they have concerns--about class or otherwise.
I started teaching at a very rough high school, and I really learned the little social engineering tricks you have to do to control a group of people there. Now I'm lucky to have wonderful students (one of the top universities in the world), but the same social tricks apply. If you are strict but fair, you will be imprinted as a sort of parental figure, and even though people think that's not what they want, that's what they want.
You raise the critical point there: "spanking" vs. "beating." As I've written on these very pages before, a spanking--which is what I occasionally got--is primarily a correction ritual. The pain is instantaneous and fades in a few minutes. It lets you know Mom and Dad are serious about this one.
The effectiveness is completely destroyed if it's employed all the time. It becomes normal, and fosters resentment of the parents. And I'm not even going to comment on actual beatings, which I remember friends in grade school talking about--things that leave marks, slaps on the face or head, hitting with implements... Sorry, that is child abuse, and yes, those kids all grew up to be fucked up.
It's all about the kind of world model you give your kids. Being rational and consistent with the discipline of your kids, leaving some kind of physical punishment only for the worst or most dangerous infractions, sets up a world model that is very close to that of the adult world--there are a lot of negative consequences that you don't want for behaving incorrectly, and if you behave really incorrectly, you will really, really regret it.
The world model set up by parents who fly off the handle and beat children, out of anger, and as a normal course of events is this: You are at the mercy of capricious and unjust forces who will smite you whenever they feel like it. This either makes kids pull into themselves and try to avoid doing anything that might result in a beating, or it makes them say "fuck it" and do whatever occurs to them because it won't alter the consequences one bit. The latter is especially difficult when they get into the real world where punishments are ramped. Getting a drunk driving ticket sucks, yeah, but it's better than getting beaten, and who cares anyway. The lower-level punishments, which seem really bad and dire to someone who has a correct world model in their head, mean nothing to someone who is used to being hit all the time.
This is, I think, the problem with any of these discussions. What is the operational definition of corporal punishment? Just like the parent, I barely even remember being spanked, but things my parents have said have had a much, much worse impact on me that the silly little spankings ever did.
I'll help you out here with regards to word processing in OO.o. It, too, isn't good enough. It's close, but has some deal-breakers for me:
1) Setting tabs is a hassle because the only way to get them where you want them is to enter the numbers manually. You can drag the markers on the ruler, but they don't snap to logical, easy units like they do on Word and, um, how they did on electric typewriters (yes, I remember those, and probably still know how to use one).
2) Tables. Tables tables tables. This is where both OO.o and Pages (which is a pretty nice little application that is easy to use--handles styles correctly) fall down for me. I use lots of tables in my writing (stats, mostly), and OO.o just doesn't make them easy to use. I used to have a laundry list of complaints, but I've posted the same sentiment many times on Slashdot, so they're out there somewhere. The only one that comes to mind is the weird border behavior where adjacent cells will both be considered as having borders on the same line, so you get instances of doubled or halved lines if you're not careful. It's a mess.
3) It's not Word. This is probably the biggest drawback in and of itself. You have to export to.doc to share anything, and pray to the gods above that everything makes the transition okay. The only way you can be sure, though, is to open the document in Word and check (and fix whatever didn't survive), in which case... Why not just use Word? This is what happened to me, ultimately, at the end of my one-year experiment with OO.o.
So I'll see everything you said and raise you a word processor. OO.o just doesn't cut it.
Yeah, they call it "death from overwork," but I've rarely seen Japanese salarymen work in the way that I would consider "work." I have decided that the Japanese concept of work has little to do with measurable results and a lot to do with how awful the process was and how long it took.
When the culture puts a lot of value on suffering for your employer, it's no wonder that some people push themselves to suffer so much that it literally kills them. When you live on cigarettes, One Cup single-serving sake, and vending-machine coffee; when you are getting a couple hours of sleep a night, tops; when you are spending 3 hours of your waking day running after trains and then being crammed into them with the other exhausted, smelly people; when you continue this lifestyle for years on end; yeah, you're going to die. And you probably won't even have that many results to show for it.
So much of the "work" that Japanese companies have people do is just kind of meaningless activity. All it does is exhaust people and turn bright, energetic college kids into the dead shells you see riding the train (full disclosure: I'm a university teacher in Japan).
There seems to be a growing movement in Japanese society, however, that is realizing this and pushing back. The economic downturn is helping, too. It used to be that once you landed a job, you were set for life. However, if you ever got fired or downsized, you were screwed for life; no one would ever hire you again. You were damaged goods. Now, the latter is still true, but the former isn't. People get laid off all the time now. Last year a few major companies hired a bunch of new college graduates, those people turned down other offers, and then the companies came back and retracted their offers and paid them about $5k to go away. These people are now both never employed and damaged goods. Hiring only happens once a year here, so they were basically paid $5k to live on for the next year of their lives, after which they got to do the whole grueling interviewing and testing process again, this time with a lingering question about their CV: "Why was this person cut at the last minute by the other company?"
So all of this is building up what I--and any other Western person, who is used to crap like this--can only call a healthy cynicism about employers, and a rejection of their bullshit in favor of an easier life with fewer problems. Temp agencies are taking over as they have done in the US, etc., with all of the bullshit, but all of the benefits as well. I did IT temp work before becoming an academic, and although the lack of security really was pretty scary, the pay was good and the hours were great. I wasn't a salary slave like I am now. Oh, and guess what? Tenure is getting harder to get, so I'm on a year contract anyway! Nothing has changed. Security is dead. Fuck the companies and live your life!
I am hopeful that we here in Japan will see less karoshi as the new generation takes over--the new generation who sees that it's possible to live without being a slave to a company--and that the difficult economic conditions force companies to cut out nonessential make-work activities, increasing efficiency, and evaluating people on what they get done, not how late they stay.
Sleep and lifestyle are important, folks. Don't forget that quality of life is the only thing you should be worried about, because you only get one. If you're having fun staying up all night working (because you might be!) then great! But if you don't like it, don't do it.
I sleep at least 8 hours a night. I am one of the most productive people I know. I'm not interested in dying for my job.
The ultimate problem with Doctorow is that no one learned about him as a novelist, they learned about him as the "copyfighter" who gave his novels away for free.
His business model is to gain notoriety for destroying all of his peers' business models, and tack some really amateurish sci-fi on it as a proof-of-concept. Then he has the gall to claim that he's succeeded as a novelist by giving his shit away. No, he has sort of, kind of succeeded as a novelist for being the guy who gives his shit away for free. People don't read Doctorow because it's good (because it isn't), but because it's Doctorow. That is not a business model that other writers can or should emulate.
Furthermore, as an academic, I can tell you that writing a textbook takes a lot longer and is a lot more intensive a process than writing light fiction. If you're wrong in a textbook, you're in trouble. Not many people buy them, but they must exist anyway (this is why they're so expensive). If a school uses it and all the students pirate it, those are actual (not RIAA/MPAA-style) lost sales. In fact, they're worse, because the campus bookstore bought a bunch of copies and had to return them. It's not only the publisher and writer aren't getting a sale, they're taking a loss.
I'm so tired of the Doctorow-driven copyfighting nonsense. One internet gasbag making part of his money from his free books does not a revolution make. And I'm banned from commenting at Boing Boing for saying so.
I have been arguing for this for 10 years (I'm assuming the OP means breaking it into separate OS application companies). Here's why it would be good for everyone, including MS:
Windows would get better. Without having to be part of such a large organization with such a large corporate line to toe, they could work smaller/faster/smarter, like Apple does. Yes, Apple makes applications as well, but they aren't comparable to the high stakes involved with Office. Also, by losing their biggest actual benefit (the tight integration with Office), they will have to compete more on features, usability, and security--which will be good for everyone.
It would be good for Office. By being cut loose, the application company would no longer have to put the Windows platform, branding, and goofy UI idea du jour ahead of the main goal: making the best office suite better. Suddenly, I think we could expect the infuriating hobbles put on the Mac version of the product (Why no VB support? Why can I only see 5 Styles in the style list? Why can't it look more like Pages, which looks more like Word 2003?) to disappear, and--even better--the introduction of a native Linux version.
This would be good for Apple. Suddenly, their platform, which is already very good, gets better, because of the better, wholehearted (as opposed to half-assed) support from the application company.
This would be good for Linux. Suddenly, with Windows playing on an even field, and a native Office, I think we'd see a lot of companies and even more tech-savvy home users move (I'd move off the Mac in such a case, I think). With the influx of users would come more development cash, opportunities, and interest. Linux would not only become more viable due to the things MS does, but because of the increased attention, Linux could really grow and mature.
This would be good for every software company in the world. Suddenly you're not competing with the MS Windows/Office/EverythingElse juggernaut; you're competing with individual products. You have a shot!
I don't really hate MS products. In fact, I really like Office. With the exception of PPT, nothing really has all the features and ease-of-use Office has (Keynote beats PPT soundly, though). A lot of times I have tried to move off of Office out of principle (or because of the frustrating UI of Word on the Mac--but it's still better than Office 2007!), but I always end up back, because I always find that there's something it does that nothing else does (or, rather, does right--tables in Word are the biggie).
I also liked Windows, a lot, through the Win2k/XP years. I only recently switched back to the Mac, due to the horrid mess Vista is (I really don't think 7 is much of an improvement--although it does seem a little better, from playing with the beta for a few hours). I would like to see all that talent at MS put to better use making a better product. I just don't think that it can be done with the company so big. The bigger a company is, the less each individual does--partly due to laziness/anonymity (not really that big a problem, I don't thing--most people like doing a good job), partly due to lack of clear focus. Too many cooks.
So there you go, Mr. AC. Those are the reasons why cutting MS in two would be good, exactly.
Looking into the future, PCs are getting cheaper and cheaper. Right now the cheapest is around $250. Already, being able to save $50-$100 off that price by not using Windows is going to make a huge difference.
Yes, it would, if MS would ever allow such a situation to occur, which it would not.
Don't forget that software is basically free. There are basically no material costs to its large-scale production. R&D, yes. But you do a bunch of R&D, pay those folks, and your costs after that are minimal. You charge whatever the market will bear for your product and reinvest that into R&D for the next thing.
What I'm saying is that if MS starts to see that kind of situation arising, it's an easy fix. They just pull a different number out of their behinds and say that's the OEM price. Because all the prices come out of their asses.
With the business market penetration MS has, and the legal weight they can throw around, they aren't going to go broke any time soon, and if they have to tighten their belts a little to keep hold of the OEM market, they will.
So, while you did acknowledge that MS might have to take revenue cuts, your first suggestion that Linux will become more popular, I think, is right out. It will never be popular with consumers, period. MS, if they have any brains at all (and they have a lot of them), will just plain never let it happen.
Finally, I have to point out that all that is predicated on the assumption (that you seem to be making as well) that the move to Linux would be motivated by price. And this is perhaps the problem with the entire Linux community--if your biggest sales point is that you're cheaper, people aren't going to budge. Hell, the Mac has been eating into Windows' market share quite a bit in the last couple years (I even switched), and no matter how you look at it, it's not cheaper than Windows (I'm not convinced it's really all that much more expensive, either--not for me, anyway, but I always had really expensive computers). So why are people moving? They prefer the MacOS experience to that of Vista. Simple.
If Linux developers could give people some sort of compelling reason to move away from the de facto standard OS--something that normal people actually cared about--we might see a change. But I don't think that will ever happen, either, because it's not monetized to do so, and because the Linux community's whole philosophy is that it is better to have a computer that you cobble together from bits of code in order to build a perfectly and personally customized computer from 1999. Oh, and don't touch that button; the driver is screwed up and it makes the computer freeze.
Simply put, Windows isn't going anywhere, most likely, and if it does start going away, it won't be based on price (alone). As much as I'd love Linux to take off (I really like Ubuntu), I just don't see that happening. Ever.
Don't give tenure to a teacher until they know they can teach. Simple as that.
Oops. Good point. All my posts in this thread come from my own experiences in the university system (posting about how important and difficult to acquire tenure is).
By the time you get tenure in a university, the school knows exactly who you are. I don't know that "tenure" really needs to exist in the K-12 system.
That being said, those people need some form of basic job security. Taking a job that required you to spend many years in school and get at least a master's degree and go through formal licensure should carry some kind of basic security.
People are going to pounce on me with comments like "Nothing's secure! I got downsized just last month!" to which I must reply:
--And how long was it before you found another job? A month? Two? SIX??? That can be rough (I've been there, too!), but teachers are only hired once a year. If a district downsizes you, you have to scramble to find something right away, and it will almost definitely require moving, but you'll also have to stay in the state, because you're only licensed there. If you somehow miss that window, you're waiting tables with your master's degree for a year. Teaching is a risky career choice... And yet we wonder why good people leave the profession and many just stay away.
In my own case, there is no way I'd ever teach K-12. Tons of hassles, terrible pay, and working with morons (not all of them, of course). I imagine that losing good people is as much a problem as not being able to get rid of bad is.
1) Um, the article says nothing of the sort. I don't know where you got that number.
2) I am a teacher in my mid-30s. I work at a top-level university in Japan (where they actually pay teachers a reasonable salary), and I make about $70k, up from $55k at my last job. I make far more than any of my friends (I'm a lucky bastard) here in Japan, and I don't even want to tell you what my mid-30s friends who are K-12 teachers in the US make (hint: "mid-30s" isn't just their age--okay, that might be an exaggeration, but unfortunately it's pretty close).
3) Even if that were true, please keep in mind that it's not like you just waltz out of a bachelor's program and become a teacher making the median salary. First off, you probably need a master's degree, and those cost money and time. Secondly, you need a license, and that requires doing a lot of free teaching.
I'm mid-30s now and I am just now starting to feel like a grown-up with a grown-up salary. I have basically been a college student all these years. But you won't see me buying a house just yet. I'm an assistant professor on a one-year contract. Getting tenure without a PhD is a long shot. Getting a PhD is more years and more money. This is a job that requires you to be extremely qualified.
Everyone has gone to school and seen teachers at work and therefore think they know about the job. Sorry. You are seeing the tiniest tip of the iceberg when you are seeing your teacher in front of class. That isn't the job. Being qualified is the job. If it looks easy, that means the teacher has spent hundreds of hours in prep for that class, over many years. The job of a teacher is, first and foremost, to be a student. After that it's just tricks that you learn over time through experience and through chats with people who've done it longer.
4) Finally, why are we so fussy about tenure?
Can you imagine having spent 20+ years in training for a job, only to end up on 1-year contracts? When you get hired by a company, you're hired. You will only be let go if there's a downsizing or you majorly screw up. You can expect a pretty stable paycheck that goes up as you gain seniority and get more responsibility. You work there. Not so with a one-year contract. You don't work there, but are expected to build up a program, to attend planning meetings, to engage in institutional research.
I used to do contract IT work; it's not like that. You have no responsibilities in a job like that. You are paid by the hour and you go home. With a one-year teaching contract, you have tons of responsibilities and are treated like a tenured teacher, except you could get the boot next year if enrollment goes down. It is an incredibly stressful lifestyle.
And may god have mercy on your soul if you find that you need to cobble together a bunch of part-time gigs. The pay for those is a joke. I got $3k for an entire semester of teaching Japanese at a state university in the US--five days a week!!! $3k for the semester! I did it to have it on my resume, so it was worth it for me that one time, but with prep, teaching, and grading time worked in, I calculated that I was making $9/hr for a job that required a master's degree. Tenure is the only way we get to have a "normal" life. Schools would love to kill tenure so they could just boot anyone for any reason (you'd better believe there'd still be terrible teachers--academia is all about politics because there's no way to reliably measure if anyone's good or not!), but if they did that, then there would probably only be terrible teachers, because anyone with any sense at all would quit.
You hit on an important point that I don't think most people who have never taught really realize. Having done stints in both high school and jr. high teaching, I have this to say: Teaching jr. high or high school is the same as being in jr. high or high school, but keeping your head down and just passing through isn't an option. It can be fun, but, at least for me, it was miserable.
On the other hand, teaching university is just like being in university, which I enjoyed a great deal, and for that reason, that is where I work. I get paid a handsome salary to hang around with idealistic people and learn stuff!
And Japanese are not economically that much worse off than Americans.
I was about to reply about the standard of living over here in Japan (you're not going to become phenomenally wealthy, but everyone is comfortably middle class--the guy at the gas station will probably be able to afford to send his kids to college if they want to go--I call that better than in the US), but then I realized something, I think...
Are you actually using "Japanese" and "American" to mean "Americans of Japanese descent" and "Americans of random European (white) descent"? Because if you are, well... I'm glad we didn't elect you, Ms. Palin.
It is crude but hey, thats what immature is all about..
That is not a song about sex; it is a song about alienation and loneliness, and using sex as a replacement for real spiritual closeness, even when we know that's what we're doing.
Sorry. Rabid NIN fan. And I am an adult. Speaking from the standpoint of someone who (unfortunately) has a BA in literature, and therefore has spent a lot of time pulling art apart, I would suggest that the reason for Reznor's continued success and dedicated fanbase spanning a couple generations now is that his work very well may be crude, but it is always honest, and is never immature. To be honest, his lyrics are kind of flattening out (while his music gets better and better--normal for pop musicians, I think), but the guy knows how to express himself poetically.
Back to the topic at hand, however, I understand Apple's position to a certain extent, after the whole baby-shaking incident, but... come on. This is one of the most successful bands of the 1990s, which is still touring sold-out arena shows today. He's pretty mainstream at this point, especially since most of us who got into NIN in the early 90s have kids of our own now. I don't, but if I did, I'd be stoked if he/she got into NIN when he/she was old enough to get it. With my luck, and the way kids turn out, though, they'd probably get into Phish or something (shudder) --oh well, at least Phish knows how to play and does a great show.
Hey, thanks for the suggestion. I'll look into it.
Or maybe I won't. I ended up just picking up a Logitech diNovo Mini, so I now have easy, full, wireless control of the computer, so I've been just browsing my NAS and desktop in the Finder, firing the video up in VLC, and clicking the fullscreen button.
It's worked great so far.
But Boxee is a lot prettier, so I don't want to give up on it.
Maybe just on the Mac, but I recently built a HTPC out of an old Mac Mini--a project I started after reading about Boxee here on Slashdot--and I've found that VLC works great at playing stuff off the network, while Boxee stutters and then crashes. Also, the "social networking" angle is irritating.
Slashdot Mirror
Surely with hindsight you can think of something?
Actually, yes I can.
If I could do it all again, I would have listened to him when he said he didn't want to start playing because he was afraid he wouldn't be able to stop, instead of pressuring him to pick it up so we could play together. =(
You're joking, but I'm serious: This probably won't work.
I was in exactly the same position as the poster when I was in college (EverQuest). My best friend from the time I was 5 just disappeared. He stopped going to classes, he stopped sleeping normal times (at least this guy seems to have a schedule--my friend was on a totally strange cycle that seemed to rotate). He only ate leftovers or other stuff that he could bring up to his room. Until this time, he and I always used to trade off cooking dinner and actually sit down for dinner each night. He was, in a very real sense, like a brother. Closer than my actual brother, really. I considered his parents basically another set in addition to my own, and the families were very close.
Anyway, I'll never forget the morning that his girlfriend--another old friend of mine--showed up at our place one morning to try to drag him out. He wouldn't even come to his door. She just kept pleading at the door, becoming more frantic. They'd been together for years. Finally she said, "So, you want me to leave?" "Yes." "If I leave, I'm never coming back, is that okay with you?" "...Yes."
She was devastated. I spend the rest of the day taking care of her. She left that evening after I made her dinner, and I think that's the last time I ever saw her.
My friend just continued this "life" style, even as I called his parents and asked for their help. They couldn't get him to quit. He flunked out of his classes, and his parents stopped giving him money for rent and food (he had been paying his share all this time, which was nice--I'd leave a note for what he owed and there'd be a check there in the morning). Finally I had to evict him (my parents owned the place and we rented from them). It was heartbreaking; he wasn't showering and I had to air that room out for a week. He was pale and emaciated. Just totally a different person (he was a long-distance runner, always in way better shape than me--we were on the cross-country team in high school together--fun times).
He moved into his parents basement, and they tried to kick him out a few times, but basically their conscience wouldn't let them. This went on for at least another year at their place. I got updates on his "condition" through my dad, who had lunch with his dad (and some of the other guys from around town) every Friday.
Then one day, he comes upstairs and says to his dad "I canceled my account. I'm going for a run."
Now he's addicted to long-distance running, and is finally finishing his degree. There was a period for a few years before he started school again where he worked at a shoe store part time (I'm pretty sure he ran out of his large savings--"frugal" has never been the word for his level of financial conservativeness--by paying all those months of EQ bills). Despite these positive steps, though, our friendship is completely broken. I've tried to hang out with him a few times since that time, but he's just different. I don't know him. He's gone.
So what I'm saying is this: I don't think there's anything the poster can do. This addiction won't kill the guy, though, so that's good, but I think that what stops him will probably be running out of money or something along those lines. He's not going to get better, I don't think. He's just one of those people who gets addicted to things. Probably some form of OCD or something. Just give up and focus on your own studies. He's gone.
The piratebay is funded by a right wing millionaire businessman closely connected to fascist and racist organisations in Sweden. Google 'carl lundstrom' for details.
Wow, that I did not know. I don't understand how that could possibly be flamebait. That is straight-up "informative" goodness.
Furthermore, your post reiterates an important point: Piracy steals from everyone; not just the rich.
Everyone around here likes to believe in the goofy dot-com, Web 2.0, long-tail, free economics model of "new capitialism," but really, it's the same crazy bullshit as the credit crisis--a lot of people living high on the hog without any actual value being created.
Add to that the strong FOSS bias--the idea that a bunch of people in their spare time can create something better than something a bunch of people paid to do the same can, and reality just goes right out the window.
People don't have the time or inclination to work for free; they really do need to be paid for their time and effort so that they can do their best work. The fact that, these days, you actually have to posit that as a revolutionary concept is frightening. When you use the fruits of others' labor; you need to pay them. If we don't do that, we fall apart.
Finally, I think the "screw the big middleman corporations" is just an excuse. The truth is that its cheaper and easier to get what you want, and that's why people do it. Why do I know? Because here I have to admit that I download a lot of American TV (I live in Japan). Much of it is available on DVD. However, the DVDs have to be purchased and shipped from the US, and I have to have a multiregion DVD player (I do--by cracking one). By the time all of that is said and done, it's a very expensive prospect to watch something that I would be able to see for virtually free in the US. I could also get them from iTMS, in violation of their EULA, but... I think their prices are crazy for video. When shows have made it into the Japanese market, I prefer renting the DVDs (I get the Japanese subtitles that way, so I don't have to pause it every 3 minutes to explain details my wife--Japanese--missed in English), but even when they do make it in, they are years behind (I'm coming up on finishing the second season of BSG--do you know how hard it has been to avoid hearing any spoilers???). So what's this tell me? Pirates are just like me: They have a weird sense of entitlement and they are too cheap to pay the actual costs.
And this, when I'm honest with myself, is nothing to be proud of.
I have never pirated music on a large scale (just to sample something before buying--not necessary anymore with Last.fm, etc.), because I used to be a musician and know how much time, effort, and expense goes into making a record. I have never pirated video games because the best ones are always from the smallest developers, and all of them are phenomenally expensive to make. Probably the reason I make an exception for TV (not movies, but that's just because I've never seen the point--you can rent those and you get a better experience anyway) is that I don't have any experience or knowledge about how all that works. Probably if I or any of my friends were involved in that industry, I'd be more responsible about it. And that is the problem--a bunch of people who have no appreciation of the real-world costs--in time, money, and effort--of producing the media they enjoy somehow feel like it is their "right" to have it and share it with absolutely nothing going to the poor bastards who poured their lives into making it.
For every Cory Doctorow--who has made a little one-man cottage industry of encouraging everyone to screw over his peers, which has translated into lucrative column-writing, public speaking, blogging, and "activism" gigs--there are hundreds, maybe thousands, of guys like you getting the shaft.
Can we stop pretending that theft is okay now?
Yes. This is ultimately where the Linux vs. proprietary OS argument just hits a brick wall. Linux people think that another program with similar functionality is good enough. People who actually do something other than type ASCII text for a living (i.e. developers) don't agree.
Without Excel, I'm sunk (yeah, I know about Crossover--I have it for the Mac, and if it works anything like that on Linux, then I don't consider that an alternative). Without Winsteps (Rasch modeling software), I'm sunk. Without Facets (different kind of Rasch model, modeling software), I'm sunk. Are there FOSS programs that handle the same tasks? Yes, but not as well, and even if they did handle them as well, they wouldn't do them the same way, and why should I kill myself learning a new application when I'm happy with what I'm using now (cue all the sarcastic "Oh! Well, you wouldn't want to learn something new, now would you?" comments. Please, I'm a researcher; my job is to learn, and do you run around reversing the hinge sides of the doors in your house just to keep yourself on your toes? Piss off.)?
I keep a fully-updated Ubuntu VM, just to keep up with what is happening there. I really like it, as OSes go. It's pretty and really easy to use. Pity it doesn't run any software I need.
Yes, Office has Styles. It's just that most people don't know what they are or how to use them, including OP. To do what he's talking about, you just open the Styles sidebar (or Inspector on the Mac version). I know; that's how I write. All the time.
OO.o does Styles better, for sure. So does Apple's Pages. Word needs to be stricter about them and not spam the syle list with idiotic crap like "Normal + italic" when you italicize for emphasis or to introduce a new term. If I want a separate style for that, I'll make it myself, thankyouverymuch.
And this, right here, is what I think causes all the misguided hatred of Word among TeX users. It isn't that Word is so bad; it's that they, too, don't know how to use it. Whenever I've had an argument with a TeX user (only on Slashdot, because that is the only place I've ever met one, and yes, I'm in academia, and no, I'm not in the humanities... exactly--I do actual research with hypotheses, not just write book reports^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H literary criticism), it has always come down to this:
If you need to include formulae, etc. in your document, TeX is your man. If you don't, the only thing that TeX offers is a more tedious way of picking styles, and a document that is cluttered with code until you do the output.
Word, with styles, is sufficient for much of academia, and they know it.
Please quantify. I am in applied linguistics, and I am the only person I know who has ever heard of TeX, let alone tried using it. Applied linguistics is very much a social science, being a bastard child of psychology and linguistics. We follow the same protocols as psychology and share a lot of the same sources. And yet... Never, ever have I seen or heard of someone using TeX. Never have I seen a journal or conference that did not ask for .doc files.
Finally, having tried TeX, I have to admit that I think it's totally pointless. Any publisher is just going to rip the formatting out of a document before laying it out for their pages in InDesign. Who cares what the document looks like when you hand it to them? As long as they can tell what is a heading and what is a subheading, they're good to go. In this case, I speak from experience as a peer reviewer/editor for an annual journal. I've talked with the layout guys about such minutia, and they are always like, "Just make sure we can tell what's what; we'll be stripping all that out anyway."
I suggest that TeX solves a problem that isn't a problem anymore. I can definitely see its benefit over something like Word if one is a mathematician and needs to put formulae, etc. in the document. However, for much of academia, it's basically a lot of text, a few tables, and a few graphs pasted in from SPSS or Excel (R if the person can be arsed to deal with it--again, a great tool for people who need more oomph than most of us in the social sciences do).
TeX is all over linguistics.
What branch of linguistics? I was about to post how no one in linguistics has even heard of it, because... I'm an applied linguist (assistant professor at a large, famous university), and not only do I not use it, I don't know of anyone else who has even heard of it, and I've never seen a journal submission page that listed it as an option. They all want .doc files.
Not calling you a liar; I just want to know. What, theoretical linguistics or something? Chomsky, etc?
Under any circumstance, at any level of education (believe me--I've taught them all, from K through university), "strict but fair" will win the respect and cooperation of the class. I'd like to throw in, however, "funny and empathetic" too. I am one of the strictest teachers I know, and I am very careful to apply all rules to all situations. But my classes are energetic and I try to be charming and funny as I do them, and my door is always open to students if they have concerns--about class or otherwise.
I started teaching at a very rough high school, and I really learned the little social engineering tricks you have to do to control a group of people there. Now I'm lucky to have wonderful students (one of the top universities in the world), but the same social tricks apply. If you are strict but fair, you will be imprinted as a sort of parental figure, and even though people think that's not what they want, that's what they want.
You raise the critical point there: "spanking" vs. "beating." As I've written on these very pages before, a spanking--which is what I occasionally got--is primarily a correction ritual. The pain is instantaneous and fades in a few minutes. It lets you know Mom and Dad are serious about this one.
The effectiveness is completely destroyed if it's employed all the time. It becomes normal, and fosters resentment of the parents. And I'm not even going to comment on actual beatings, which I remember friends in grade school talking about--things that leave marks, slaps on the face or head, hitting with implements... Sorry, that is child abuse, and yes, those kids all grew up to be fucked up.
It's all about the kind of world model you give your kids. Being rational and consistent with the discipline of your kids, leaving some kind of physical punishment only for the worst or most dangerous infractions, sets up a world model that is very close to that of the adult world--there are a lot of negative consequences that you don't want for behaving incorrectly, and if you behave really incorrectly, you will really, really regret it.
The world model set up by parents who fly off the handle and beat children, out of anger, and as a normal course of events is this: You are at the mercy of capricious and unjust forces who will smite you whenever they feel like it. This either makes kids pull into themselves and try to avoid doing anything that might result in a beating, or it makes them say "fuck it" and do whatever occurs to them because it won't alter the consequences one bit. The latter is especially difficult when they get into the real world where punishments are ramped. Getting a drunk driving ticket sucks, yeah, but it's better than getting beaten, and who cares anyway. The lower-level punishments, which seem really bad and dire to someone who has a correct world model in their head, mean nothing to someone who is used to being hit all the time.
This is, I think, the problem with any of these discussions. What is the operational definition of corporal punishment? Just like the parent, I barely even remember being spanked, but things my parents have said have had a much, much worse impact on me that the silly little spankings ever did.
I'll help you out here with regards to word processing in OO.o. It, too, isn't good enough. It's close, but has some deal-breakers for me:
1) Setting tabs is a hassle because the only way to get them where you want them is to enter the numbers manually. You can drag the markers on the ruler, but they don't snap to logical, easy units like they do on Word and, um, how they did on electric typewriters (yes, I remember those, and probably still know how to use one).
2) Tables. Tables tables tables. This is where both OO.o and Pages (which is a pretty nice little application that is easy to use--handles styles correctly) fall down for me. I use lots of tables in my writing (stats, mostly), and OO.o just doesn't make them easy to use. I used to have a laundry list of complaints, but I've posted the same sentiment many times on Slashdot, so they're out there somewhere. The only one that comes to mind is the weird border behavior where adjacent cells will both be considered as having borders on the same line, so you get instances of doubled or halved lines if you're not careful. It's a mess.
3) It's not Word. This is probably the biggest drawback in and of itself. You have to export to .doc to share anything, and pray to the gods above that everything makes the transition okay. The only way you can be sure, though, is to open the document in Word and check (and fix whatever didn't survive), in which case... Why not just use Word? This is what happened to me, ultimately, at the end of my one-year experiment with OO.o.
So I'll see everything you said and raise you a word processor. OO.o just doesn't cut it.
Yeah, they call it "death from overwork," but I've rarely seen Japanese salarymen work in the way that I would consider "work." I have decided that the Japanese concept of work has little to do with measurable results and a lot to do with how awful the process was and how long it took.
When the culture puts a lot of value on suffering for your employer, it's no wonder that some people push themselves to suffer so much that it literally kills them. When you live on cigarettes, One Cup single-serving sake, and vending-machine coffee; when you are getting a couple hours of sleep a night, tops; when you are spending 3 hours of your waking day running after trains and then being crammed into them with the other exhausted, smelly people; when you continue this lifestyle for years on end; yeah, you're going to die. And you probably won't even have that many results to show for it.
So much of the "work" that Japanese companies have people do is just kind of meaningless activity. All it does is exhaust people and turn bright, energetic college kids into the dead shells you see riding the train (full disclosure: I'm a university teacher in Japan).
There seems to be a growing movement in Japanese society, however, that is realizing this and pushing back. The economic downturn is helping, too. It used to be that once you landed a job, you were set for life. However, if you ever got fired or downsized, you were screwed for life; no one would ever hire you again. You were damaged goods. Now, the latter is still true, but the former isn't. People get laid off all the time now. Last year a few major companies hired a bunch of new college graduates, those people turned down other offers, and then the companies came back and retracted their offers and paid them about $5k to go away. These people are now both never employed and damaged goods. Hiring only happens once a year here, so they were basically paid $5k to live on for the next year of their lives, after which they got to do the whole grueling interviewing and testing process again, this time with a lingering question about their CV: "Why was this person cut at the last minute by the other company?"
So all of this is building up what I--and any other Western person, who is used to crap like this--can only call a healthy cynicism about employers, and a rejection of their bullshit in favor of an easier life with fewer problems. Temp agencies are taking over as they have done in the US, etc., with all of the bullshit, but all of the benefits as well. I did IT temp work before becoming an academic, and although the lack of security really was pretty scary, the pay was good and the hours were great. I wasn't a salary slave like I am now. Oh, and guess what? Tenure is getting harder to get, so I'm on a year contract anyway! Nothing has changed. Security is dead. Fuck the companies and live your life!
I am hopeful that we here in Japan will see less karoshi as the new generation takes over--the new generation who sees that it's possible to live without being a slave to a company--and that the difficult economic conditions force companies to cut out nonessential make-work activities, increasing efficiency, and evaluating people on what they get done, not how late they stay.
Sleep and lifestyle are important, folks. Don't forget that quality of life is the only thing you should be worried about, because you only get one. If you're having fun staying up all night working (because you might be!) then great! But if you don't like it, don't do it.
I sleep at least 8 hours a night. I am one of the most productive people I know. I'm not interested in dying for my job.
Thank you.
The ultimate problem with Doctorow is that no one learned about him as a novelist, they learned about him as the "copyfighter" who gave his novels away for free.
His business model is to gain notoriety for destroying all of his peers' business models, and tack some really amateurish sci-fi on it as a proof-of-concept. Then he has the gall to claim that he's succeeded as a novelist by giving his shit away. No, he has sort of, kind of succeeded as a novelist for being the guy who gives his shit away for free. People don't read Doctorow because it's good (because it isn't), but because it's Doctorow. That is not a business model that other writers can or should emulate.
Furthermore, as an academic, I can tell you that writing a textbook takes a lot longer and is a lot more intensive a process than writing light fiction. If you're wrong in a textbook, you're in trouble. Not many people buy them, but they must exist anyway (this is why they're so expensive). If a school uses it and all the students pirate it, those are actual (not RIAA/MPAA-style) lost sales. In fact, they're worse, because the campus bookstore bought a bunch of copies and had to return them. It's not only the publisher and writer aren't getting a sale, they're taking a loss.
I'm so tired of the Doctorow-driven copyfighting nonsense. One internet gasbag making part of his money from his free books does not a revolution make. And I'm banned from commenting at Boing Boing for saying so.
Beat me to it! It's one of my favorite quotes.
I have been arguing for this for 10 years (I'm assuming the OP means breaking it into separate OS application companies). Here's why it would be good for everyone, including MS:
I don't really hate MS products. In fact, I really like Office. With the exception of PPT, nothing really has all the features and ease-of-use Office has (Keynote beats PPT soundly, though). A lot of times I have tried to move off of Office out of principle (or because of the frustrating UI of Word on the Mac--but it's still better than Office 2007!), but I always end up back, because I always find that there's something it does that nothing else does (or, rather, does right--tables in Word are the biggie).
I also liked Windows, a lot, through the Win2k/XP years. I only recently switched back to the Mac, due to the horrid mess Vista is (I really don't think 7 is much of an improvement--although it does seem a little better, from playing with the beta for a few hours). I would like to see all that talent at MS put to better use making a better product. I just don't think that it can be done with the company so big. The bigger a company is, the less each individual does--partly due to laziness/anonymity (not really that big a problem, I don't thing--most people like doing a good job), partly due to lack of clear focus. Too many cooks.
So there you go, Mr. AC. Those are the reasons why cutting MS in two would be good, exactly.
Looking into the future, PCs are getting cheaper and cheaper. Right now the cheapest is around $250. Already, being able to save $50-$100 off that price by not using Windows is going to make a huge difference.
Yes, it would, if MS would ever allow such a situation to occur, which it would not.
Don't forget that software is basically free. There are basically no material costs to its large-scale production. R&D, yes. But you do a bunch of R&D, pay those folks, and your costs after that are minimal. You charge whatever the market will bear for your product and reinvest that into R&D for the next thing.
What I'm saying is that if MS starts to see that kind of situation arising, it's an easy fix. They just pull a different number out of their behinds and say that's the OEM price. Because all the prices come out of their asses.
With the business market penetration MS has, and the legal weight they can throw around, they aren't going to go broke any time soon, and if they have to tighten their belts a little to keep hold of the OEM market, they will.
So, while you did acknowledge that MS might have to take revenue cuts, your first suggestion that Linux will become more popular, I think, is right out. It will never be popular with consumers, period. MS, if they have any brains at all (and they have a lot of them), will just plain never let it happen.
Finally, I have to point out that all that is predicated on the assumption (that you seem to be making as well) that the move to Linux would be motivated by price. And this is perhaps the problem with the entire Linux community--if your biggest sales point is that you're cheaper, people aren't going to budge. Hell, the Mac has been eating into Windows' market share quite a bit in the last couple years (I even switched), and no matter how you look at it, it's not cheaper than Windows (I'm not convinced it's really all that much more expensive, either--not for me, anyway, but I always had really expensive computers). So why are people moving? They prefer the MacOS experience to that of Vista. Simple.
If Linux developers could give people some sort of compelling reason to move away from the de facto standard OS--something that normal people actually cared about--we might see a change. But I don't think that will ever happen, either, because it's not monetized to do so, and because the Linux community's whole philosophy is that it is better to have a computer that you cobble together from bits of code in order to build a perfectly and personally customized computer from 1999. Oh, and don't touch that button; the driver is screwed up and it makes the computer freeze.
Simply put, Windows isn't going anywhere, most likely, and if it does start going away, it won't be based on price (alone). As much as I'd love Linux to take off (I really like Ubuntu), I just don't see that happening. Ever.
BRAVO!!! Best post I've ever read on Slashdot, and not only because I agree with every word of it, but it is beautifully written as well. Thank you!
Yeah... I didn't want anything to do with the dinky little 16GB on my iPhone for music. I carried an 80GB iPod, which was almost out of space.
My iPod now lives at work. Out and about, I only listen to the iPhone.
Even other geeks get sick of schlepping a lot of junk around all the time.
Don't give tenure to a teacher until they know they can teach. Simple as that.
Oops. Good point. All my posts in this thread come from my own experiences in the university system (posting about how important and difficult to acquire tenure is).
By the time you get tenure in a university, the school knows exactly who you are. I don't know that "tenure" really needs to exist in the K-12 system.
That being said, those people need some form of basic job security. Taking a job that required you to spend many years in school and get at least a master's degree and go through formal licensure should carry some kind of basic security.
People are going to pounce on me with comments like "Nothing's secure! I got downsized just last month!" to which I must reply:
--And how long was it before you found another job? A month? Two? SIX??? That can be rough (I've been there, too!), but teachers are only hired once a year. If a district downsizes you, you have to scramble to find something right away, and it will almost definitely require moving, but you'll also have to stay in the state, because you're only licensed there. If you somehow miss that window, you're waiting tables with your master's degree for a year. Teaching is a risky career choice... And yet we wonder why good people leave the profession and many just stay away.
In my own case, there is no way I'd ever teach K-12. Tons of hassles, terrible pay, and working with morons (not all of them, of course). I imagine that losing good people is as much a problem as not being able to get rid of bad is.
1) Um, the article says nothing of the sort. I don't know where you got that number.
2) I am a teacher in my mid-30s. I work at a top-level university in Japan (where they actually pay teachers a reasonable salary), and I make about $70k, up from $55k at my last job. I make far more than any of my friends (I'm a lucky bastard) here in Japan, and I don't even want to tell you what my mid-30s friends who are K-12 teachers in the US make (hint: "mid-30s" isn't just their age--okay, that might be an exaggeration, but unfortunately it's pretty close).
3) Even if that were true, please keep in mind that it's not like you just waltz out of a bachelor's program and become a teacher making the median salary. First off, you probably need a master's degree, and those cost money and time. Secondly, you need a license, and that requires doing a lot of free teaching.
I'm mid-30s now and I am just now starting to feel like a grown-up with a grown-up salary. I have basically been a college student all these years. But you won't see me buying a house just yet. I'm an assistant professor on a one-year contract. Getting tenure without a PhD is a long shot. Getting a PhD is more years and more money. This is a job that requires you to be extremely qualified.
Everyone has gone to school and seen teachers at work and therefore think they know about the job. Sorry. You are seeing the tiniest tip of the iceberg when you are seeing your teacher in front of class. That isn't the job. Being qualified is the job. If it looks easy, that means the teacher has spent hundreds of hours in prep for that class, over many years. The job of a teacher is, first and foremost, to be a student. After that it's just tricks that you learn over time through experience and through chats with people who've done it longer.
4) Finally, why are we so fussy about tenure?
Can you imagine having spent 20+ years in training for a job, only to end up on 1-year contracts? When you get hired by a company, you're hired. You will only be let go if there's a downsizing or you majorly screw up. You can expect a pretty stable paycheck that goes up as you gain seniority and get more responsibility. You work there. Not so with a one-year contract. You don't work there, but are expected to build up a program, to attend planning meetings, to engage in institutional research.
I used to do contract IT work; it's not like that. You have no responsibilities in a job like that. You are paid by the hour and you go home. With a one-year teaching contract, you have tons of responsibilities and are treated like a tenured teacher, except you could get the boot next year if enrollment goes down. It is an incredibly stressful lifestyle.
And may god have mercy on your soul if you find that you need to cobble together a bunch of part-time gigs. The pay for those is a joke. I got $3k for an entire semester of teaching Japanese at a state university in the US--five days a week!!! $3k for the semester! I did it to have it on my resume, so it was worth it for me that one time, but with prep, teaching, and grading time worked in, I calculated that I was making $9/hr for a job that required a master's degree. Tenure is the only way we get to have a "normal" life. Schools would love to kill tenure so they could just boot anyone for any reason (you'd better believe there'd still be terrible teachers--academia is all about politics because there's no way to reliably measure if anyone's good or not!), but if they did that, then there would probably only be terrible teachers, because anyone with any sense at all would quit.
You hit on an important point that I don't think most people who have never taught really realize. Having done stints in both high school and jr. high teaching, I have this to say: Teaching jr. high or high school is the same as being in jr. high or high school, but keeping your head down and just passing through isn't an option. It can be fun, but, at least for me, it was miserable.
On the other hand, teaching university is just like being in university, which I enjoyed a great deal, and for that reason, that is where I work. I get paid a handsome salary to hang around with idealistic people and learn stuff!
And Japanese are not economically that much worse off than Americans.
I was about to reply about the standard of living over here in Japan (you're not going to become phenomenally wealthy, but everyone is comfortably middle class--the guy at the gas station will probably be able to afford to send his kids to college if they want to go--I call that better than in the US), but then I realized something, I think...
Are you actually using "Japanese" and "American" to mean "Americans of Japanese descent" and "Americans of random European (white) descent"? Because if you are, well... I'm glad we didn't elect you, Ms. Palin.
It is crude but hey, thats what immature is all about..
That is not a song about sex; it is a song about alienation and loneliness, and using sex as a replacement for real spiritual closeness, even when we know that's what we're doing.
Sorry. Rabid NIN fan. And I am an adult. Speaking from the standpoint of someone who (unfortunately) has a BA in literature, and therefore has spent a lot of time pulling art apart, I would suggest that the reason for Reznor's continued success and dedicated fanbase spanning a couple generations now is that his work very well may be crude, but it is always honest, and is never immature. To be honest, his lyrics are kind of flattening out (while his music gets better and better--normal for pop musicians, I think), but the guy knows how to express himself poetically.
Back to the topic at hand, however, I understand Apple's position to a certain extent, after the whole baby-shaking incident, but... come on. This is one of the most successful bands of the 1990s, which is still touring sold-out arena shows today. He's pretty mainstream at this point, especially since most of us who got into NIN in the early 90s have kids of our own now. I don't, but if I did, I'd be stoked if he/she got into NIN when he/she was old enough to get it. With my luck, and the way kids turn out, though, they'd probably get into Phish or something (shudder) --oh well, at least Phish knows how to play and does a great show.
Thanks for the suggestion!
Hey, thanks for the suggestion. I'll look into it.
Or maybe I won't. I ended up just picking up a Logitech diNovo Mini, so I now have easy, full, wireless control of the computer, so I've been just browsing my NAS and desktop in the Finder, firing the video up in VLC, and clicking the fullscreen button.
It's worked great so far.
But Boxee is a lot prettier, so I don't want to give up on it.
Maybe just on the Mac, but I recently built a HTPC out of an old Mac Mini--a project I started after reading about Boxee here on Slashdot--and I've found that VLC works great at playing stuff off the network, while Boxee stutters and then crashes. Also, the "social networking" angle is irritating.