The question of teachers pay is a no brainer for me, they definitely deserve more.
Unfortunately, whenever a situation arises that will pay more for competency, the unions scream like they were being raped with a telephone pole. The least competent teachers are the ones who are the greatest union supporters, (or at least they were when I attended high school,) and the unions don't want to lose these dedicated dues-paying members. Consequently, until this situation changes, there will be less-than-competent teachers that non-teachers can point to for examples of why the higher pay isn't deserved, and the unions can continue to campaign on the platform that they are needed in the fight for higher pay. Until the unions themselves start stressing competency, it will be hard for them to get support for higher pay, which, once achieved, would weaken union support.
Given how some people are when they finish school it's probably more like 15 sentences.
Or 15 minutes, whichever comes first.
By assigning units to the number 15, you stifle the individuals self-determination and possible hurt the individuals self worth, which is not the goal of the San Francisco area schools. Students attending San Francisco area schools should not have standards in place that can make students feel that they are unsuccessful. To that end, requiring specific units such as sentences, words, minutes, letters, seconds, etc., can only hurt the self-esteem of those who cannot achieve the 15 unit minimum.
First, I am not a proponent of unneeded homework. However, in all seriousness, I lost all respect for the San Francisco Bay area schools in the mid-nineties. At one point, there were complaints that the schools had no standards for graduation. The schools came up with standards such as "Graduates shall be able to solve problems through compromise", without any hard, measurable standards, such as being able to read, write, add, or recite any history. I remember thinking "Wow, if one kid thinks 2+2=4 and one thinks that 2+2=6, do they compromise and select 5 as the solution?" Around the same time, the teachers across the Bay were trying to get Ebonics recognized as a language so that more teachers could collect an extra 10% salary for being bilingual. And a professor at Berkley was seen on the news protesting against a bill for removal of minority hiring preferences, saying that she would not have "gotten the job" if it wasn't for those preferences. I was happy that I was moving soon, so my newborn daughter wouldn't be raised in that educational environment.
Hopefully, those educated in the Bay Area can tell me that I just heard all of the bad press, and the schools are much better than I believe.
Because it has approximately the same features and performance, a more human-friendly UI, no WTFs like VARCHAR3 and empty string IS NULL (if you don't believe it, just try it: oracle actually treats empty char fields as NULL), and it is slightly cheaper?
Does it have the words "Don't Panic" on the cover in big, friendly, letters?
am i the only one not assuming that we are intelligent life? have you tried to use windows me? or add a wireless card in linux?
NdisWrapper works great for me as far as wireless. Download the source, follow the instructions (remembering to use gcc3.4), and it works better in Debian Sarge than it does when I boot XP Pro. Never used WindowsMe, went from NT4.0/98SE to XP.
As far as the much broader intelligent life question, I believe intelligent life exists on this planet. I also believe that there are those that think they are intelligent that are very mistaken.
All raw weather data is usually broadcast freely, as is most model data. Countries can cease dissemination on their own at any time, however. For instance, if my memory serves me correctly, it was difficult to get Iran data in the early eighties and Iraq data in the late eighties. The weather models still generated worldwide forecasts, even without the missing data. It was difficult to verify the models in the areas with missing data, though. Now, satellites can make up for the most of the missing data for model input, so the actual surface and rawinsonde (weather balloon) observations aren't as important.
It always seems a bit odd to me, that when you model the weather, you need to model the entire world, and all the different models get their data from the same sources. Why then, don't we have a world weather computer? What I mean, is combining all these different computer resources into one huge model? I know that each nation does its own little tweaks to produce the "best" model, but surely the ability to throw even more machines at such a problem would produce better results? Are we heading this way, or is their just too much prestige for a country to work out its own weather?
One reason for countries to maintain their own weather forecast agency is to ensure the integrity of the data. This ensures that a country isn't receiving tainted data, or denied data. Models could be skewed to favor accuracy in one country over another, giving that country agricultural and energy trading competitive advantages. During many conflicts, countries where the conflicts occur cease dissemination of weather data so that the opposing force can't use the data. The US DoD maintains its own weather forecasting computers to ensure that access can't be denied, even if there is an NWS outage. If a country maintains its own systems, data integrity isn't in question.
A reason to use multiple models is that each model has different strengths. One model may tend toward forecasting precipitation over the midwest more often than it is likely to occur, and another may tend to forecast precipitation less often then actual. By using both models, we can get a better idea of the actual weather. In this case, if both forecast dry, it would likely be dry, and if both forecast precipitation, we would expect precipitation, and if they split, the forecasters would have to go back to old time forecasting techniques and get the coin and dartboard out. (Just kidding about the coin and dartboard. They'd really have to unfold their broaches, hats, and Pterodactyls, and start using the charts for what they were intended.)
"Since there is no such thing as a 100% safe vaccine, and this vaccine is relatively new, a person would be gambling with their daughter's life either way."
Really? This vaccine hasn't killed any of the 11,000 women involved in testing. Cervical cancer kills one woman for every five who die in automobile accidents in the United States. Where, exactly, is this "gamble?"
This is a relatively new vaccine. Based on the high incidence of side effects of the vaccine and its relative newness, there is a gamble.
"Of course, we could just educate the girls and parents and let them make the decision as to yes/no and if yes, when, themselves."
Or we could just, you know, eradicate the disease from the population as quickly as possible. What exactly is your point?
Sure, there are a lot of things that can be done by trampling rights. Is that what you are advocating? Not that this would eradicate anything, anyway, since it only applies to females in grades 6-12 in Texas whose parents don't sign the affidavit, and the vaccine only works against a few of the many forms of HPV.
"Technically, since there is an opt-out (for religious or philosopical beliefs), the children aren't being forced into vaccinations, "
I like the opt-out requirement. It requires parents to go on record as saying, "I'm gambling with my daughter's life or uterus that she will live up to my ideal of purity." I've always thought, if you're going to be a horrible person, it's best to do it on-record so others can be suitably careful about your capacity for compassion and reason.
Since there is no such thing as a 100% safe vaccine, and this vaccine is relatively new, a person would be gambling with their daughter's life either way. I know that Merck and others would like everyone to believe otherwise, but that is not the case.
Of course, we could just educate the girls and parents and let them make the decision as to yes/no and if yes, when, themselves. If girls delay a year or two it could possibly result in millions of dollars less in revenue for Merck in the long run, since it wouldn't maximize the number of girls who have to get the protocol before the patent goes into the public domain.
... Merck and GlaxoSmithKline are right now lobbying for laws to _FORCE_ innoculation of girls in school from 6-11 mandatory with their vaccine against a sexually transmitted disease virus...
Thanks to their generous campaign contributions to Rick Perry, they have already succeeded in Texas. Governor Rick Perry recently signed an executive order requiring girls entering the sixth grade in 2008 or later to have the protocol. Technically, since there is an opt-out (for religious or philosopical beliefs), the children aren't being forced into vaccinations, but it will still enhance the bottom line for the pharmaceutical companies involved.
"We need to look at your computers to make sure your software is licensed." Says the BSA. "Hell no, now get off our property"... Says small business owner.
"Take a look at the EULA you accepted when you bought Microsoft software, and bend over please" continues BSA.
"I didn't accept any EULA, and I didn't buy Microsoft Software. Someone else must be using it under my identity. Get off of my property."
It is much easier, more effective and cheaper to kill humans than to render them unable to continue combat but still alive. Afterward, corpses don't sue or raise a human rights ruckus. And remember, we're talking about Singapore, not the U.S.
I've seen cops (in riot situations) revert to these zip ties that are similar to what I tie the cables in my computer up with. The cop takes a zip tie, forces the individuals arms behind his or her back and applies the zip tie.
These zip ties cost maybe 10 or 20 cents each. They are not fool proof. And the way in which you get the human into the physical position to apply the zip ties is a problem an engineer has yet to solve. But if you're telling me that this is too expensive. Or that, in the aftermath of the war, the individual (who at no time had any risk save maybe a broken arm through failed cooperation) will sue you. I will have to laugh. Have you priced bombs or even arms and ammunition recently? Not cheap. And through the use of those, the alternative is death. You can't put a price on life.
We were talking about robots. What is the probability that an enemy combatant will find a way to nullify the robots' non-lethal mode? Are you a programmer? Can you program the ability to ziptie a non-cooperative combatant as reliably as the ability to destroy a non-cooperative combatant? If the non-lethal, zip-tie, mode is nullified, the non-enemy combatant can be in harm's way, and die. And as you said,
You can't put a price on life.
My countrymens' life have a higher value than the enemy's countrymens' lives. But, the general in the field has to deal with this. So, he has to look at the consequces of dead enemies. Thanks to today's media, every dead enemy combatant has the potential to be a martyr.
Imagine if we found every Al-Queda member and marked them and made publicly known to everyone around them that they were part of an organization responsible for the deaths of innocent men, women & children, surely their families and societies would hold them as murderers. In our society, when your brother is murdered and you murder the person responsible, you are still tried for murder. Just because they did a crime does not give you the right to replicate the crime on them. And I think a lot of societies today agree with this or should come around to realizing that you can't let people murder each other. Justice & the truth are the only answers.
You obviously don't understand religious zealotry(sp?). Those who kill in the name of religion will kill regardless of what others think.
It is much easier, more effective and cheaper to kill humans than to render them unable to continue combat but still alive.
That's debateable. A wounded soldier is actually a liability to his surviving buddies during the battle.
Besides, indiscriminate killing isn't very useful unless you're willing to commit genocide. Most conflicts are not total war in the style of WWII where carpet-bombing, nuking, and firebombing entire cities was accepted.
Look at it this way, if you're going to send an indiscriminate kill-bot into a home to slaughter everything, why not just drop a 5000 lb bomb on the place and be done with it?
The purpose of these machines is precision removal of the opposition. If you carpet bomb, you defeat the purpose. A wounded human terrorist is still able to recover and try again.
I don't understand why the summary uses the phrase "destroy targets." Honestly, I was thinking that a while ago, the United States should be prioritizing weapons that disable humans through means other than chemical or lethal implementations.
Every time someone is killed by a US soldier (or even UN peacekeeper for that matter), more enemies of the United States are bred. It doesn't matter what the conditions were or the whether or not the rule of engagement were followed....
It is much easier, more effective and cheaper to kill humans than to render them unable to continue combat but still alive. Afterward, corpses don't sue or raise a human rights ruckus. And remember, we're talking about Singapore, not the U.S.
...Bring justice to them & let them live in shame for what they've done... By then they have already done the deed, and may not even believe that their wrongdoing was wrong. Too late.
..The classification of certain areas of the business as "cost centers" and others as "profit centers" is crude in that it does not take into account the interdependence of the business units and their ability to increase profits or reduce losses in seemingly unrelated units...
It pretty much has to be a one-or-the-other type of designation to make accounting easier. Everyone is supposed to keep costs low, but cost centers aren't expected to generate a profit. Cost centers costs are usually allocated to profit centers, and the profit centers have to generate enough revenue to cover the costs they generate plus their allocated costs.
I have worked at places where cost-allocation was totally screwed, and the cost-center/profit-center model was barely within the grasp of the executives. One place even managed to have a portion of one profit center's salaries allocated to a different profit center. Guess which profit center looked better on that company's paper?
Even if IT does generate revenue, the credit will probably fall elsewhere. For instance, if marketing comes up with a web campaign, and IT is responsible for making the web page and backend to ensure that someone visiting the page is aware of and able to purchase the product, those responsible for the sales campaign and fulfilling the orders will likely get the credit. The good news is that IT isn't responsible for ideas that aren't profitable, and won't be penalized for a failure.
Overall, you are right that the current naming scheme is crude. Unfortunately, those who end up running businesses haven't come up with something better. Given the current paradigms of big business that reward sales vice analytical thinking, I don't foresee a change anytime soon.
Just because your parents or grandparents can't learn a new OS doesn't mean the whole world should suffer their incompetence.
I think you are missing the point. If I need to use specific software, and it runs easier on XP than on Vista, or runs on XP and not on Vista, then Vista is not an upgrade for my purposes, and there is no reason to purchase Vista. Whether or not Vista is an overall superior OS compared to XP doesn't matter for my purposes if Vista is inferior for my specific software needs.
Oooo Wait Wait! Lets all use software for Linux on Vista! It MUST work! What part of "changed the whole underlying operating system" did you not get!!!
Practically everything you install from now on will be in user space. DVD crapware from nero etc try to install themselves into the kernel space. Hmmm...user space...kernel space....user space....kernel space....hmmm...I wonder which is better!!
I believe the grandparent's point was that users expect their software to work on Vista like it did on XP, if Vista is being presented as an upgrade. If users expect their software to migrate seamlessly and it doesn't, then Vista won't meet their expectations, and thus is not an upgrade. Whether or not the non-migration is better for security isn't relevant if the user needs that particular software, since in the eyes of the purchaser, the purpose of an OS is to enable the needed software. If the software doesn't work on the new OS, the OS does not meet the requirements.
I could be wrong, though. Others opinions may vary.
but I think they've found that conservative approach just doesn't hold up when you start to reach a [certain] size and complexity.
Yeah, NASA has no experience working with complexity. The Apollo spacecraft and the Space Shuttle are just so primitive compared to a new Ford truck with Microsoft auto software.
Or it might just be that NASA realizes that a slow evolutionary change of their systems is better than a revolutionary change that is 50% more efficient but blows a rocket up.
Knowing one or two folks who work for NASA, and having met more than that, I think that they would move toward open source so it can be peer reviewed, which would result in the evolutionary change. Of the people I have met, the average IT staffer troubleshooting Word installations is way more conceited than any of the shuttle astronauts I have met. (About five that I know of, and probably at least a couple more, not that it matters.) NASA folks work to accomplish a mission, and their egos are pretty much non-existant except in the context that they have been part of the team that accomplished a specific mission. If John Doe off of the street offers an optimal solution, they will grab it, test the heck out of it, and use it if it works. Then, after the successful mission, they can say, "I was a part of that" when it comes up at cocktail parties.
Then again, I may have only met the best of NASA, and others who work there may have a better grasp on their corporate culture.
SOFAs are negotiated - both countries agree which set of laws apply in which cases, and if they can't come to an agreement, the U.S. doesn't have to have forces there.
Everyone inside the sovereign borders of a country should expect to be subject to its laws whether they agree with them or not.
So the US soldiers who raped that Iraqi woman should be subject to Iraqi law and not US military law?
When U.S. forces are stationed in foreign countries, they are usually subject to a Status Of Forces Agreement, which states which country has jurisdiction for which crimes. I don't know if we have a SOFA with the new Iraqi government, but if I had to guess, I would guess that we do, and any military member raping an Iraqi woman would be subject to the U.S. Uniform Code of Military Justice (UCMJ).
Your analogy would be closer if it said surgeons who believed faith healing was possible were barred, regardless of their ability to conduct surgery.
I would say your analogy is flawed - perhaps better would be if a surgeon didn't believe antibiotics prevented infection - they could get thru the procedure, only to later have problems. Thus it's appropriate that they lose their license.
In your example, the belief could affect the outcome. A broadcast meteorologist's belief or disbelief of Global Warming theories/studies/etc. shouldn't affect his/her forecasts.
Slashdot Mirror
Unfortunately, whenever a situation arises that will pay more for competency, the unions scream like they were being raped with a telephone pole. The least competent teachers are the ones who are the greatest union supporters, (or at least they were when I attended high school,) and the unions don't want to lose these dedicated dues-paying members. Consequently, until this situation changes, there will be less-than-competent teachers that non-teachers can point to for examples of why the higher pay isn't deserved, and the unions can continue to campaign on the platform that they are needed in the fight for higher pay. Until the unions themselves start stressing competency, it will be hard for them to get support for higher pay, which, once achieved, would weaken union support.
Or I could be wrong.
Oops, forgot to mark the first paragraph with the tongue-in-cheek tag.
By assigning units to the number 15, you stifle the individuals self-determination and possible hurt the individuals self worth, which is not the goal of the San Francisco area schools. Students attending San Francisco area schools should not have standards in place that can make students feel that they are unsuccessful. To that end, requiring specific units such as sentences, words, minutes, letters, seconds, etc., can only hurt the self-esteem of those who cannot achieve the 15 unit minimum.
First, I am not a proponent of unneeded homework. However, in all seriousness, I lost all respect for the San Francisco Bay area schools in the mid-nineties. At one point, there were complaints that the schools had no standards for graduation. The schools came up with standards such as "Graduates shall be able to solve problems through compromise", without any hard, measurable standards, such as being able to read, write, add, or recite any history. I remember thinking "Wow, if one kid thinks 2+2=4 and one thinks that 2+2=6, do they compromise and select 5 as the solution?" Around the same time, the teachers across the Bay were trying to get Ebonics recognized as a language so that more teachers could collect an extra 10% salary for being bilingual. And a professor at Berkley was seen on the news protesting against a bill for removal of minority hiring preferences, saying that she would not have "gotten the job" if it wasn't for those preferences. I was happy that I was moving soon, so my newborn daughter wouldn't be raised in that educational environment.
Hopefully, those educated in the Bay Area can tell me that I just heard all of the bad press, and the schools are much better than I believe.
NdisWrapper works great for me as far as wireless. Download the source, follow the instructions (remembering to use gcc3.4), and it works better in Debian Sarge than it does when I boot XP Pro. Never used WindowsMe, went from NT4.0/98SE to XP.
As far as the much broader intelligent life question, I believe intelligent life exists on this planet. I also believe that there are those that think they are intelligent that are very mistaken.
Maybe this will help.
All raw weather data is usually broadcast freely, as is most model data. Countries can cease dissemination on their own at any time, however. For instance, if my memory serves me correctly, it was difficult to get Iran data in the early eighties and Iraq data in the late eighties. The weather models still generated worldwide forecasts, even without the missing data. It was difficult to verify the models in the areas with missing data, though. Now, satellites can make up for the most of the missing data for model input, so the actual surface and rawinsonde (weather balloon) observations aren't as important.
One reason for countries to maintain their own weather forecast agency is to ensure the integrity of the data. This ensures that a country isn't receiving tainted data, or denied data. Models could be skewed to favor accuracy in one country over another, giving that country agricultural and energy trading competitive advantages. During many conflicts, countries where the conflicts occur cease dissemination of weather data so that the opposing force can't use the data. The US DoD maintains its own weather forecasting computers to ensure that access can't be denied, even if there is an NWS outage. If a country maintains its own systems, data integrity isn't in question.
A reason to use multiple models is that each model has different strengths. One model may tend toward forecasting precipitation over the midwest more often than it is likely to occur, and another may tend to forecast precipitation less often then actual. By using both models, we can get a better idea of the actual weather. In this case, if both forecast dry, it would likely be dry, and if both forecast precipitation, we would expect precipitation, and if they split, the forecasters would have to go back to old time forecasting techniques and get the coin and dartboard out. (Just kidding about the coin and dartboard. They'd really have to unfold their broaches, hats, and Pterodactyls, and start using the charts for what they were intended.)
Of course, we could just educate the girls and parents and let them make the decision as to yes/no and if yes, when, themselves. If girls delay a year or two it could possibly result in millions of dollars less in revenue for Merck in the long run, since it wouldn't maximize the number of girls who have to get the protocol before the patent goes into the public domain.
2. Advertise by posting on Slashdot.
3. Avoid lawsuits by
4. Profit!
Can someone help me with step 3?
Not that it would necessarily work...
We were talking about robots. What is the probability that an enemy combatant will find a way to nullify the robots' non-lethal mode? Are you a programmer? Can you program the ability to ziptie a non-cooperative combatant as reliably as the ability to destroy a non-cooperative combatant? If the non-lethal, zip-tie, mode is nullified, the non-enemy combatant can be in harm's way, and die. And as you said, My countrymens' life have a higher value than the enemy's countrymens' lives. But, the general in the field has to deal with this. So, he has to look at the consequces of dead enemies. Thanks to today's media, every dead enemy combatant has the potential to be a martyr.
You obviously don't understand religious zealotry(sp?). Those who kill in the name of religion will kill regardless of what others think.
The purpose of these machines is precision removal of the opposition. If you carpet bomb, you defeat the purpose. A wounded human terrorist is still able to recover and try again.
It is much easier, more effective and cheaper to kill humans than to render them unable to continue combat but still alive. Afterward, corpses don't sue or raise a human rights ruckus. And remember, we're talking about Singapore, not the U.S.
It pretty much has to be a one-or-the-other type of designation to make accounting easier. Everyone is supposed to keep costs low, but cost centers aren't expected to generate a profit. Cost centers costs are usually allocated to profit centers, and the profit centers have to generate enough revenue to cover the costs they generate plus their allocated costs.
I have worked at places where cost-allocation was totally screwed, and the cost-center/profit-center model was barely within the grasp of the executives. One place even managed to have a portion of one profit center's salaries allocated to a different profit center. Guess which profit center looked better on that company's paper?
Even if IT does generate revenue, the credit will probably fall elsewhere. For instance, if marketing comes up with a web campaign, and IT is responsible for making the web page and backend to ensure that someone visiting the page is aware of and able to purchase the product, those responsible for the sales campaign and fulfilling the orders will likely get the credit. The good news is that IT isn't responsible for ideas that aren't profitable, and won't be penalized for a failure.
Overall, you are right that the current naming scheme is crude. Unfortunately, those who end up running businesses haven't come up with something better. Given the current paradigms of big business that reward sales vice analytical thinking, I don't foresee a change anytime soon.
I think you are missing the point. If I need to use specific software, and it runs easier on XP than on Vista, or runs on XP and not on Vista, then Vista is not an upgrade for my purposes, and there is no reason to purchase Vista. Whether or not Vista is an overall superior OS compared to XP doesn't matter for my purposes if Vista is inferior for my specific software needs.
I could be wrong, though. Others may disagree.
I believe the grandparent's point was that users expect their software to work on Vista like it did on XP, if Vista is being presented as an upgrade. If users expect their software to migrate seamlessly and it doesn't, then Vista won't meet their expectations, and thus is not an upgrade. Whether or not the non-migration is better for security isn't relevant if the user needs that particular software, since in the eyes of the purchaser, the purpose of an OS is to enable the needed software. If the software doesn't work on the new OS, the OS does not meet the requirements.
I could be wrong, though. Others opinions may vary.
Knowing one or two folks who work for NASA, and having met more than that, I think that they would move toward open source so it can be peer reviewed, which would result in the evolutionary change. Of the people I have met, the average IT staffer troubleshooting Word installations is way more conceited than any of the shuttle astronauts I have met. (About five that I know of, and probably at least a couple more, not that it matters.) NASA folks work to accomplish a mission, and their egos are pretty much non-existant except in the context that they have been part of the team that accomplished a specific mission. If John Doe off of the street offers an optimal solution, they will grab it, test the heck out of it, and use it if it works. Then, after the successful mission, they can say, "I was a part of that" when it comes up at cocktail parties.
Then again, I may have only met the best of NASA, and others who work there may have a better grasp on their corporate culture.
SOFAs are negotiated - both countries agree which set of laws apply in which cases, and if they can't come to an agreement, the U.S. doesn't have to have forces there.
Darn, thought I hit preview, and missed a slash in the bold off tag after the O in Of. My apologies.
When U.S. forces are stationed in foreign countries, they are usually subject to a Status Of Forces Agreement, which states which country has jurisdiction for which crimes. I don't know if we have a SOFA with the new Iraqi government, but if I had to guess, I would guess that we do, and any military member raping an Iraqi woman would be subject to the U.S. Uniform Code of Military Justice (UCMJ).
In your example, the belief could affect the outcome. A broadcast meteorologist's belief or disbelief of Global Warming theories/studies/etc. shouldn't affect his/her forecasts.