This reward system sends the wrong message to students in an already faltering education system and it will cause system dependence later in life. The effective message is students do not have to do anything to receive half the benefit they would have received had they performed their work to the best of their ability. There will also be unintended consequences to an automatic 50% grade: the lower tier students will have no incentive to work harder for a free handout (grade) and top tier students will be discouraged by a system that rewards apathy over achievement.
I suppose I do things backwards at my place - I keep all of my remotes organized neatly on top of the television. Everytime I want to watch television, rarely, or watch a movie I will settle down with the necessary remotes - television, DVD and surround sound receiver. I should get a universal remote but I don't watch enought television to convince myself to buy one. Once I'm down for the movie I don't like to get up, but when station programming is on I usually get up during the commercials.
For me getting up allows me to stretch out my muscles, get something to eat or perform household chores. And honestly, convincing oneself of the remote control need justifies oneself in being lazy, IMO. So I answer your question of "do you like walking up to your TV every time..." with a "yes, I do".
One way you can accomplish power statistics monitoring is to design, or incorporate into an existing protocol, a client-server model where the server collects power consumption data from all protocol enabled clients. Currently a protocol exists, SNMP, for collecting various statistics useful for monitoring networks. I don't think the current version does power monitoring, so you may be on to something.
In addition, power companies use SCADA systems to gather various statistics of their network. Implementing a SCADA style system for computers is not practical because of costs, therefore the software solution (SNMP) seems the logical route.
As an internal monitoring metric it's a good idea for understanding network operation costs. I question the likelihood of organizations volunteering power consumption information to outsiders. In the case of power consumption would this expose the size of my network? For instance, if we are consuming X Megawatts in Y seconds that may hint at the size of my network, knowing the average power consumption per device.
"I'm having a hard time understanding how 'average' people afford homes in hot markets. In the San Francisco Bay Area, for example, the average home price is around $750,000. What's the average salary? Google and Yahoo pay well but not enough to afford a $750,000 house, even if there are two people in a household earning the same salary. I heard a general guideline that your house should be no more than two and a half times your gross salary. That means that you'd need roughly $300,000 a year to buy an average house. Do most households in the Bay Area make that kind of money? I think I'm doing fairly well, but I couldn't afford something like that. Am I just grossly underpaid, or are people crazy?"
'Average' people buy houses they cannot afford, because they've bought into certain ideas, sometimes misleading. The most popular idea is leveraging your credit to buy real estate (mortgage) for a place to live or maybe serve as an investment. Another idea, one I think gets people into trouble, is that of 'keeping up with the Jones'. The Jones have an image of a really nice car, a beatiful house, kids, happy couple and maybe some pets. Everyone wants to live like the Jones so they go out and buy the house and car, without solid financial planning.
Your numbers (total house purchase price = 2.5 x gross salary) may work out to what I use (monthly payment on 15 year fixed = 25% x net monthly income). I did not do the math to verify this.
Like you say, most people in the Bay area aren't expected to bring in large amounts of money and live in OVERPRICED housing. What happens is people create a recipe for bankruptcy: a high mortgage, credit card bills and unexpected medical expenses. See this link for rising bankruptcy numbers: http://www.bankruptcyaction.com/USbankstats.htm
Look at the "Bankruptcy Profiles" section, "Slightly better educated than the general population". Does this mean that our education system and parents have failed to educate us? Well that's for another thread, I'm off topic anyway!
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This reward system sends the wrong message to students in an already faltering education system and it will cause system dependence later in life. The effective message is students do not have to do anything to receive half the benefit they would have received had they performed their work to the best of their ability. There will also be unintended consequences to an automatic 50% grade: the lower tier students will have no incentive to work harder for a free handout (grade) and top tier students will be discouraged by a system that rewards apathy over achievement.
I suppose I do things backwards at my place - I keep all of my remotes organized neatly on top of the television. Everytime I want to watch television, rarely, or watch a movie I will settle down with the necessary remotes - television, DVD and surround sound receiver. I should get a universal remote but I don't watch enought television to convince myself to buy one. Once I'm down for the movie I don't like to get up, but when station programming is on I usually get up during the commercials.
For me getting up allows me to stretch out my muscles, get something to eat or perform household chores. And honestly, convincing oneself of the remote control need justifies oneself in being lazy, IMO. So I answer your question of "do you like walking up to your TV every time..." with a "yes, I do".
One way you can accomplish power statistics monitoring is to design, or incorporate into an existing protocol, a client-server model where the server collects power consumption data from all protocol enabled clients. Currently a protocol exists, SNMP, for collecting various statistics useful for monitoring networks. I don't think the current version does power monitoring, so you may be on to something.
In addition, power companies use SCADA systems to gather various statistics of their network. Implementing a SCADA style system for computers is not practical because of costs, therefore the software solution (SNMP) seems the logical route.
As an internal monitoring metric it's a good idea for understanding network operation costs. I question the likelihood of organizations volunteering power consumption information to outsiders. In the case of power consumption would this expose the size of my network? For instance, if we are consuming X Megawatts in Y seconds that may hint at the size of my network, knowing the average power consumption per device.
"I'm having a hard time understanding how 'average' people afford homes in hot markets. In the San Francisco Bay Area, for example, the average home price is around $750,000. What's the average salary? Google and Yahoo pay well but not enough to afford a $750,000 house, even if there are two people in a household earning the same salary. I heard a general guideline that your house should be no more than two and a half times your gross salary. That means that you'd need roughly $300,000 a year to buy an average house. Do most households in the Bay Area make that kind of money? I think I'm doing fairly well, but I couldn't afford something like that. Am I just grossly underpaid, or are people crazy?"
'Average' people buy houses they cannot afford, because they've bought into certain ideas, sometimes misleading. The most popular idea is leveraging your credit to buy real estate (mortgage) for a place to live or maybe serve as an investment. Another idea, one I think gets people into trouble, is that of 'keeping up with the Jones'. The Jones have an image of a really nice car, a beatiful house, kids, happy couple and maybe some pets. Everyone wants to live like the Jones so they go out and buy the house and car, without solid financial planning.
Your numbers (total house purchase price = 2.5 x gross salary) may work out to what I use (monthly payment on 15 year fixed = 25% x net monthly income). I did not do the math to verify this.
Like you say, most people in the Bay area aren't expected to bring in large amounts of money and live in OVERPRICED housing. What happens is people create a recipe for bankruptcy: a high mortgage, credit card bills and unexpected medical expenses. See this link for rising bankruptcy numbers: http://www.bankruptcyaction.com/USbankstats.htm
Look at the "Bankruptcy Profiles" section, "Slightly better educated than the general population". Does this mean that our education system and parents have failed to educate us? Well that's for another thread, I'm off topic anyway!
Yes, read this article. http://www.chipzilla.com/?article=26177