SC stopped paying for canned lessons baout 20 years ago. Each district maintains its own completely seperate standards from the sate and each selects text books and course content from lists the state "approves". Each school is using a completely unique set of books, custom produces lessons, and all try to steer towards a state run annual exam (which only this state uses).
Any of the canned material is completely useless. Even lesson plans produced in Greenville are useless in Columbia, or Charleston as the distric requirements are so different, or the class strucutre is so unique, tha lesson material from one teacher is almost useless to another, especially since the course software or smartboard models are different, textbooks are different, and more...
We are in FULL support of a NATIONAL MANDATED system, including not only a selection of books for each subject and grade level (more than 1 choice for each), but included poackaged lesson material. Naturally any such system accounts for local state and distric influence in local materials, I'm just talking about national standards for reading, writing, math, science, national and international history. Local history is up to the local school, as are the selection of foreign languages, special education, even graduation requirements to an extent,but the core 5 subjects shold be nationally standardized with provided materials and lessons. My wife would save 5-10 hours per week and earn back her entire summer if this was done, and it would save local districts cumulative billions of dollars...
I concur. My wife is an elementary teacher. Contrary to high school, where teachers make 1 or 2 lesson plans and teach them to several seperate sets of students, my wife teaches 2 sets of students a whole littany of lessons on reading, math, history, and science. She then not only preps all that mnaterial personally, 3-4 times the lessons of a high schoo teacher, but she also is responsible for 2-3 times the number of handouts (3rd graders don;t take good notes) and frequent quizzes and tests have to be graded as well as nightly homework.
With the move away from multiple choice assignments, my wife has been spending 2-3 hours per night grading homework (as there are no longer teacher's aids or interns as there was 15 years ago), and she also often has work on weekends. She also attends 2 manditory teacher meetings per week, one which she was "appointed" to lead with no additional pay. This means she comes home at 5:30PM 2 nights a week (that's when she LEAVES school, having arrived at 6:30AM), works til 7 or 8PM, works weekends, and ALL THROUGH every vacation period (which is all about catching up, not getting ahead), and then she can't work during the summer as A) getting a good job for only 9 weeks is pretty hard and b) she needs all that time to rewrite all her lesson plans due to a new school initiative, district mandate, change in state requirements for 3rd grade education, new books, or more.
In a year she works more hours than me, and she has 6 times my "vacation." With 2 masters degrees and 10 years on the job, she's making only $42K, of which she's still repaying college loans, and forks out about $1000 a year in continued required (unreimbursed) education to maintain her teaching certificate, and spends another $600-800 in unreimbursed classrom expenses (required by state law but unfunded by the district, mostly in paper, ink and generic supplies).
1) that average pay is not regionally adjusted, so it's a BS number. 2) that average teacher pay includes specials teachers, coaches, and other non-principal administrators (curriculum coordinators, team leads, guidance councelors, scecially trained resource teachers, and more, which artificially inflate the wage 3) those numbers are from 2006/2007. It has decresed since. 4) 15 years ago, the average 4 teachers shared 1 classroom aid during the day, and had assistants or interns grading their papers at night, and teaching was a roughly 40 hour job. Today, the distric here employs NO classroom aids or interns, and the teachers AVERAGE 55 hours per week, and most work through the summer on classroom materials (traditionally provided by the school in the past, now up to the teachers to write themselves) and they can't work summer jobs to make the difference in salary.
My wife is in her 10th year teaching, is STILL paying back college loans, over $300 a month, has 2 masters degrees in advanced early childhood education and works as a special educator for advanced math and science students. She makes only $42K anually, of which she spends up to $1000 a year maintaining her certification (payiong for required but unreimbursed college classes and other required training), and another $600-800 a year in unreimbursed classrom expenses (including things like ink and paper and pencils the school provides little of, and that's beyond the donations of that material that run dry before christmas every year).
A starting teacher WITH a state certifiaction and a 4 year degree in SC starts at only $23K. That's a take home pay after benefits of less than $1100 a week (expenses removed), with an average expected student loan payment exceeding $400 a month (assuming current state school 4 year costs with 25% covered by scholarship!). That means a starting teacher has less than $700 a month to live on... that's fucking rediculous, and it's no wonder this state is DANGEROUSLY understaffed and nearing the line of loosing federal education funding due to excessive classroom sizes.
If we wend back to having teacher's aids, and techers could work an honest 40 hour week, and afford to work a summer job in addition, and push the starting salary up to $30K (or cover the student loan payments under a 5 year repayment contract for employment), then they might get some qaulity teachers...
My wife is a national certified teacher in SC. She has 2 masters degrees and is now in her 10th year teaching. She STILL makes well below $50K! (about $42). And on top of that they just repealed her annual raise for the 5th year in a row, capped her classroom reimbursible expenses at $250 (for which she has to buy her own ink and paper to print materials beyond the 100th printed page per week even though state and district regulations require her to hand out an average of about 300 pages per week, we average about $600 a year in unreimbursed expenses we report on our taxes), her nation teacher certification bonus was suspended ($7500 over 10 years, now gone never to return), and they don't even assist paying back the student loans. New teachers fresh out of college in this state can expect $30K in college debt and several thousand additional to acquire certifications, and if they're lucky and place in an advanced teaching position start at a measly $23K anually. There is also no tenure in this state, and teachers are on their own dime to maintain ther certification (which includes taking an additional 9 semester hours in classes every 5 years which is also not currently reimbursed). Considdering it's a 55+ hour per week job, that's lower pay than the average 2 year trade school graduate for more hours work per week, less benefits, and they're on their own to write all their own lessons on their own...
Apple has a LONG history of patenting anti-consumer things just to prevent everyone else from doing it.
Lookl at the feedback here. Do you REALLY think Apple would release such a thing being a newcomer and underdog in the market? And if you DO think they would, based on what eveidence?
OK, dumbass, CALM DOWN. This is NOT a patent apple intends to release in a product. this patent is OLD, but just finally "approved". If Apple intended to use this, it would already be in the iPhone.
Apple has a LONG history of patenting "anti-consumer" technologies with the express idea to NEVER release it. It's their way of ensuring noone else does as in many cases, with something like this, if some moneygrubbing company (Nokia, Motorolla, etc) produced such a device, advertising revenue would dry up an any device that did not support it, and then even devs writing apps for apple would be forced to use it.
This patent ensures this technology will not be used. Think about it. Just a couple of hours, and there's 300+ posts here of people biching about this. The technology is simply so wrong, not a single poster is suppoting is (unless they work for an ad firm, or a company that makes ad sponsored products). With 7% market share, it would be SUICIDE for apple to use this technology.
This is NOT the first time Apple has done this. As I said, they have a long tradition and history of patenting user tracking systems, automated reporting systems, tracking devices, ad generation systems, and more.
Again, this is an OLD patent, and it;s been in the news a while. The only reason its back is the PTO finally got around to oficially approving it. Had apple intended to use thisd, it would ALREADY be in use... clearly they're on YOUR SIDE, protecting you from the REST of the assholes on the net, but you;re so biggoted you don;t even realize it.
I bet you also still believe Apple is 2x the price of the competition? If that's the case, go on, try to make a 27" iMac equivalent out of comodoty parts on NewEgg for less than a 27" iMac (with GPU, LED backlit 27" non-TFT display of the same or better resolution, similar performance or better parts, in ANY form factor. Don;t even bother with the speakers, webcam, wireless keyboard, software, even leave out the OS etc, just the core machine specs. You can't even BUILD one cheaper...
Compare the MacBook Air to the new Adamo XPS.. Dell is $700 more expensive for a SLOWER machine. Compare the MacBook pro 15" to any Dell, you can't get one for less under 17" and those have worse GPUs, or cost a slew more. Try to buy a 13" notebook with a dedicated GPU for less than $900, and you can't find one other than Apple's white macbook... No, they don;t have a $400 notebook, or a $600 desktop, but if I had one, it would suck ass compared to my 2 year old stuff... A machine of THAT low performance is practically useless, and anything apple offers doesn't matter to those people, so apple simply choooses to ignore the lowest end (and least profitable) market segment. Good for them, as it means when i buy Apple kit it runs better and lasts longer than any PC's I have.
Actually, Apple has patended numerous "anti-consumer" technologies. They bhave not used a single one, but since those patents exist, neither can anyone else.
until you understand that Apple designs and patents LOTS of technology with the specific intent of NEVER releasing it, and NEVER licensing it, and viggerously defending it in courts, you can never understand Applel nor be a fan.
What Apple does by designing such technology is ensuring you as a consumer will never have to deal with it.
until apple actually RELEASES an offending product, you have no right to boycott them. They just HELPED you, and you're too biggoted to see it.
Apple has a LONG history of such patents. So called "user experience" patents put in place by Apple with the primary intent of not being utilized simply so others can not also use such techniques.
Worse, patch SEVERITY was not accounted for in these results, nor was the fact that many patches were for unexploited vulnerabilitys, and others were to close ITW threats...
FF and Safari rank bad in this article, but when looking at the raw data, patch severity, and explited patch footprint, IE is the worst, even though not patched very often.
I'd also note that a single patch may include fixes for numerous bugs, and this is additionally not covered in the scope of this article. A single patch in IE recently fixed more than 10 vulnerabilties...
Medical data mostly, but naturally that also includes billing records, credit cards and bank transaction data, and lots of other information that should not be leaked. Of course, the $150M in equipment something to be concerned over as well, especially when you have a few hundred employees and contractors with datacenter access on a regular basis.
We're not a "typical business" because of the data, and also because of who owns many of the servers in our datacenters (only about 2/3rds actually belong to us directly, and half of those go with a contract if we loose it to a competitor). We have numerous different government (state and federal) security standard to adhere to. We go through an external security audit from one group or another every few weeks ensuring we're sticking to the standards for their servers and their data.
in a dul row arrangement, cold air will never "warm up" on it's row. It has to be pulled through a server from the cold side to the hot side where it then rises.
2 of our datacenters are being remodled to go a step further, and not cool the space between racks, only what's in the, in a similar design (sealed racks). so the additional several thousand square feet of the datacenter need only be maintained at a nice comfortable room temp.
2 of our 6 datacenters are built using the hot/cold isle method. 2 others are in a migration to a newwer design that still uses hot/cold, but it;s all intra-rack. The datacewnter itself will be a nice 76 degrees, but inside the racks will be 65 or lower. Cold moisture free air is pumped in from the top front of the rack. Servers pull it through to the back and hot air is pulled up and out. The racks are sealed for both airflow and noise reduction. Each rack chassis is about 6-8" deeper than a normal rack, but because of efficincy we can place about 1/3 more racks in a datacenter and still have ample cooling. We currently have 5 air handlers in each large datacenter, and 3 each in the smaller ones. Any one can be offline completely assuming we're at max capacity, honestly any 2 likely could be off as our datacenters, though designed to be full, are rarely much more than half populated, as it would only be full during a period when another datacenter is being rebuolt (every 3-4 years or so on our pace).
I had to be locked in one over an entire weekend VOLUNTARILY.
Major server overhauls, were going to take all weekend to do full backups, replace drive cages, rebuild, and then restore.
The client operated the top 3 floors of a 15 story building, but because of the design, had I not been locked in a secure area (datacenter), I would have had access to several other floors I was not supposed to be on that were wide open from the elevator (no loched doors). Security locked up the whole place Fridays at 8PM and did not come back until monday at 5AM, and people were not normally left to be in the building without security watching elevator cameras...
The server room thankfully had its own integrated bathroom, and I brought in a cooler, a portable TV, a game console, and a folding cot. I spent the weekend in there alone. Made a SHITLOAD of overtime doing it (some of it double and a half time based on our billing methodology). Will NEVER do something like that again willingly...
"Your argument is a bit silly and is ignoring the economy of scale."
And how does ecomony of scale also not apply to ground based solar and wind?
"The majority of the cost in Rocket development is in personnel and support. The actual physical materials and fuel used aren't nearly as expensive. With a large investment into capital and mass manufacturing of rockets, cost can be driven down significantly."
Actually, the majority of the cost in in life support, operations, ground crews, storage, rocket recovery, and more. Yea, fuel is cheap, but these things are one-time use for the most part (being nearly completely rebuilt each launch), and it takes a massive amount of manpower to place one on a pad, fill it up, launch it, track it, recover it, transport it, and start again. A fully reusable non-VTO rocket could save a lot, but those also cost a lot more in electronics. Further, life support is not going to get much cheaper, and even if you can put these things up cheap, people still need to work on em...
Then as well, this is spending billions working towards 2030 to gain a 20-30% efficincy on something that would only work in polar orbit, and loose 10-20% of that gain in long distance transmission of that poewr to usable areas (and create doxens of easy to explait terrorist targets compared to a localized distributed grid).
Then there's the argument of WHY do we even NEED the efficincy??? There's enough non-farm undeveloped land and rooftops to deploy a decentralized wind and solar system using existing (not even advancing) technology such that the US's tier 7 and higher zones are enough to power the entire hemesphere, and similar sections of the far east, europe, africa, and australia can easily do the same. The efficency is only relevent if it's A) dramatically cheaper (in this case it;s far more expensive, and far more complex and difficult to repair, not to mention power outages that could last weeks instead of days), B) if there's a supply shortage of material or land (neither is a concern), or C), there are significant infrastructure gains to the alternate design (in this case it;s more complex). It's simply a bad idea on all 3 counts, and in this case serves no purpose other than to promote a Japanese space agency agenda at the expense of it;s citizens.
- Raised floor is certainly important, and a given. Check - Cable management above AND below the floor. This is not an either-or... Check - Cooling capacity is hard to judge, should be scalable. Redundancy is often overlooked but is often even more important that capacity... Check - Power quality: never seen a big datacenter without a Liebert, or at least UPS in every rack. Power does not have the be contitioned except between the UPS and the machines/devices. A whole data center power conditioner is often more efficient, but unnecessary for the little guys. either way - check. - Age is irrelevent as long as it's under support. If it's not, replace it. Generators need to be run several times a year to validate their condition, and also to grease the innards... See too many good generators get kicked on and fail an hour later because the oil hand't been changed in 3 years.... - Outages should be tracked, by system, rack row, and power distro. When system seem to be going down more frequently in one area, there's usually an underlying reason... As Google recently proved as well for us all, do not ASSUME all is well, routine disgnostics including memory scans should be performed on ALL hardware. Even ECC RAM deteriorates with age (rapidly) and needs to be part of a maintenance testing and replacement policy - Check. - Fire suppression is usually part of your building codes, and a given, as is the routine checks (at least anually) by law.
In addition, we deploy: - Man traps on all enterences to data centers. You go in one door, it closes, then you authenticate to a second door. A pressure plate ensures only one person goes in/out at a time (and it it's tripped, a scurity guy looking at a screen has to override). - Full 24x7 video surveilance of the data centers. - in/out logs for all equipment. To take a device in/out of a datacenter requires it being logged in a book (by a designated person). This is for anything the size of a disk/tape and larger. All drive bays are audited nightly by security and if drives go missing, security reviews the access logs and server room security footage to see who might have taken them. - clear and consistent labeling systems for rack, shelves, cables and systems. - pre-cable just about everything to row level redundant switches, and have no cabling from server to other servers not passed through a rack/row switch first. Row switches connect to distro switches. This ensures cabling is simple, and predictable. - Colorcoded cabling: we use 1 color for redundant cabling (indicating their should be 2 of these connected to the server at all times, and to seperate cards in the backplane and seperate switches to boot), a seperate color for generic gigabit connections, another color for DS View, another color the out management network(s), another color for heartbeat cables, and yet another for non-ethernet (T1/PRI/etc). Other colors are used in some areas to designate 100m connections, special connectivity, or security enclave barriers, and non-fiber switch-to-switch connections. Every cable is labled at both ends and every 6-8 feet inbetween. - FULLY REDUNDANT POWER. It's not enough to have clean poewr, and good UPS and a generator. In a large datacenter (more than a few rows, or anything truly mission critical), you should have 2 seperate power companies, 2 seperate generators, and 2 fully segregated power systems at the datcenter, room, row, and rack levels. in each datacenter we use 2 Liebert mains, each row has a seperate distribution unit connected to a differnt main, and each rack has 4 PDUs (2 to each distro). Every server is connected to 2 seperat PDUs, run all the way back to 2 completely independent power grids. For a deployment of 50 servers or so this is big time overkill. We have over 3500 servers, we need this... We can not rely on a PSU failure taking out racks at a time which may server dozens of other systems each.
What YOU can do with it, vs. what Verizon's TOS and contract say you can do are 2 different things. What PC World has publised is accurate per Verizon's service agreement. I got back from a local store at lunch (always looking for something better than my iPhone, and had to check it out).
Use of ActiveSync requires the additional $15/month plan. (not listed as a $15 charge, but simply requires the corporate data plan, even on residential lines) Verizon does not actively block this service, and it is "possible" to connect to activesync resources without paying the extra fee. However, should they detect its use they reserve the right to backcharge from the phone plan commision data the charges, or terminate my contract, at their choice (including back billing pro-rated subsidies, service fees, and a termination fee). You likely won't be contacted about this, but simply be billed.
As with AT&T, Verizon is not actively seeking to stop people who currently tether, as their system and billing software are not yet fully in place. (I know dozens of people tethering iPhones that are NOT jailbroken today, and none have been hassled by AT&T. one of my friends said he actually called AT&T and asked if he could, and they told him the could not support it, but if he did, he would not incur charges until tethering was a service AT&T could bill users for, and since they currently can not, he would not be charged). However, per the rep in the store, from the day tethering becomes available, charges will AUTOMATICALLY be added to your bill if you are tethering from verizon.
The verizon rep also confirmed the data caps on both the "unlimited" data plan (definition of unlimited was 24/7/365, not unlimited DATA, aka unlimited ACCESS). Having both produces a cumulative cap of 10GB, however, he could not confirm if that meand 10, or 5+5 seperately metered (in which case using 7 on the data plan and 2 on the tether plan might still incur additionall $50/GB charges for surpassing the data plan cap.
he also said the data plan cap would be automatically billed for overages on the Droid, something not common to previous Verizon phones.
I didn;t bother sticking around long enough to even reall yplay with the demo phone after hearing this. The phone looked clunky, I've heard complaints about the keyboard, the app store is not yet evolved enough, and the price is too high for something essentially equal to my iPhone. I really could care less about multitasking.
I've actually only seen pretty favorable reviews of the Droid so far.
However, the fact the device has some limitations yet vs the iPhone, also can not yet tether (though Verizon publically slammed AT&T for that little limit on the iPhone pretty hard), the app community is basically non-existent and the pay-for apps are almost across the board more expensive when you do find some, it gets less battery life, and the device is not only price the same but costs potentially $35 more per month to use ($15 for exchange and AT&T is romored to be offering a 5GB tether cap for only $10 for the iPhone soon), its still not good enough.
Maybe in 6-12 months after the app community is on it's feet with 25K+ apps competitive on price and function to the iTunes Store offerings, we get to a 2.2 or 2.3 release, and when Verizon matches the costs $ for $, then maybe Droid will complete (of course, a new iPhone and OS 4 will be coming out in June, so they better move FAST)
its real easy actually. Mac Address passthru from the PC is one way. Checking the IPs of the target sites is another (mobile phones don't hit MS's update.com port and download patches through a secure protocol for instance), the browser type sent out in web requests is another. Of course, the easiest answer is: it;s in the firmware that allows the connection in the first place. The PC connection is a uniquely identified network adapter, and packets sent to/from it are easy enough to ID within the device, and seperately log. Bypassing that would require major firmware changes to the device and some impressive hackiung skills....and YES, thay ARE using traffic monitoring.
Exchange support, including connecting to corporate servers from my AT&T residential account IS in my TOS, and if it's not in Verizon's then, it is correct to say that it;s $15 extra for Exchange ActivSync.
I suspect if their marketing in fact does say "unlimited data" for the dataplan, but fineprints a 5GB cap, then they'll get ass raped in the courts soon enough, and be forced to refund anyone who was charged any extra fees for such, and print a retraction of all their adds clearly identifying that they do not have "unlimited" data....and AT&T will SLAM verizon in commercials until this is changed.
Also, rumors have it AT&T's tethering for iPhone will be $10 and $25 (capped and unlimited respectively), so Verizon's going to have some disgruntled customers demanding matching prices real soon...
Personally, I have 2 iPhones, and haver been looking for something better. Pre tempted me until I held one for a few hours.... cheap plastic POS and no app store worth a damn. The original Android was kinda cool, but again, no future for the device was seen, and the few apps thta are available that beat what the iPhone has simply cost too much. Multitasking also on its own is not a selling point (I hardly feel a tug at all to have it, except for wanting to be able to listed to pandora and surf at the same time, which is coming soon via the iPod API plug-in. Even the Droid, in all its glory, can't multitask GPS and a call concurrently... The ONY device that can is the Naviphone, and they've got the patents on that for a while...
I get Exchange on both my iPhoines at not additional charge. They're personal phones on residential plans that i have connected to our corporate e-mail infrastrcuture. There are also numerous company iPhones doing the same also at no extra charge. i could only imagine an extra charge if it was AT&T's mail server, not my own, and even than, there are DOZENS of firms (including microsoft) that host Exchange at $5 per user per month or less. $15 is rediculous.
No, the moral of the story is you should not buy a device for use in your area without looking at a local map of towers first. Also, after the first few days, you could have easily returned both iPhones for a full refund to AT&T (no penalty, only 3 or 4 days of prorated use).
I live in an area permeated with AT&T towers, and my 2 iPhones get 5 bars here in our corporate complex, and even sprint phones, connected to a TOWER ON THE ROOF, get fewer bars and dropped calls. Verizon is god awful here, even dropping calls on major interstates and piss-poor quality anywhere that's not near a college campus or the center of downtown.
Also, $119 PER iPhone??? wtf plan do you have? I pay about that per month TOTAL, for 2 iPhones, and we're on the 1400 minute family plan... You're not paying for 2 seperate unlimited plans are you? I'm sure if you looked at your bill, and dropped to the lowest plan that supports the a-list and put a few of your most popular numbers in, you;de save $60-80 a month (or use google voice as a pass-through, and put your google number in as one of your 5 numbers).
We need a few laws put in place: 1) incremental charges for overages may never exceed 150% the per-unit charge of the base plan rates. So in this case, it's $6/GB. Overage should not be more than $9/GB. 2) end users shuold have to opt in to additional charges. By default, plans should dramatically limit data rates at no additional charge, and voice calls should be pre-empted by an audio notification of excess chanrges before the call is placed. 3) anywhere a capped or restricted plan is in use, a FULL UNLIMITED option must be available. This must be a each SPEED Tier, not just at the top tier. AKA, for home internet, there might be a 2MB, 5MB, and 10MB option for downspeed, each with caps. EACH plan must offer a surcharge for a higher cap, as well as an unlimited cap, allowing me unlimited data at only 2dn/256 up should i so choose.
As for call quality, I disagree. I have both a 2G iPhoine and a 3GS. My signal strength is BY FAR better than T mobile, Verizon, and Sprint users here in the building (and we have a microcell from sprint on the roof!) I have not dropped a single call on either device in nearly 2 years that was not preemped by the person on the other end say "i'm driving through a bad area, youmight loose me" with the exception of a specifc place along the freeway here where ALL phones drop calls due to a provider crossover to a local carrier that is not part of the national partnerships and can not hot transition calls to their towers. Both my iPhones have amazing call clarity. I can make calls perfectly clear in places where others have no signal at all on their own devices. I'm in a building complex with over 6,000 other people. About 1/3rd of us now have iPhones bacause the phones available from Verizon and Sprint all suck here. A few have the original google phone, and short of being a nice toy for some simple apps and media, it's completely useless on campus with no signal except outdoors.
This is no small city, with towers from Verizon outnumbering AT&T. Sprint has a bunch (including one right here on campus as i metioned and yet the AT&T tower 3 miles from here gives me calls places Sprint phones do not). T-mobile has 2 towers in town, none near us, but t-mobile phones use partner towers from a number of companies and there are a smattering of local carriers leasing towers to all parties (can't tell who'se leasing to who from the map of towers). Needless to say, this whole city is blanketed in signal. Granted, both AT&T and Verizon have MASSIVE corporate offices here.
1) the PC will pass it;s MAC address through the device. This can easily be detected. 2) Android does not his update.microsoft.com, nor an AV update site, nor half a dozed other IPs and services that are rediculously difficult to prevent your PC from communicating with. 3) "browser type" is not the android default on your PC. 4) simple software that's part of the bridged network adapter "tells" them it's being tethered, and tracks the data through each interface seperately. 5) downloading files through any means the android OS does not support is easily detected.
There are a dozen other ways, especially depending on the content you access, the protocol you use, and more.
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SC stopped paying for canned lessons baout 20 years ago. Each district maintains its own completely seperate standards from the sate and each selects text books and course content from lists the state "approves". Each school is using a completely unique set of books, custom produces lessons, and all try to steer towards a state run annual exam (which only this state uses).
Any of the canned material is completely useless. Even lesson plans produced in Greenville are useless in Columbia, or Charleston as the distric requirements are so different, or the class strucutre is so unique, tha lesson material from one teacher is almost useless to another, especially since the course software or smartboard models are different, textbooks are different, and more...
We are in FULL support of a NATIONAL MANDATED system, including not only a selection of books for each subject and grade level (more than 1 choice for each), but included poackaged lesson material. Naturally any such system accounts for local state and distric influence in local materials, I'm just talking about national standards for reading, writing, math, science, national and international history. Local history is up to the local school, as are the selection of foreign languages, special education, even graduation requirements to an extent,but the core 5 subjects shold be nationally standardized with provided materials and lessons. My wife would save 5-10 hours per week and earn back her entire summer if this was done, and it would save local districts cumulative billions of dollars...
I concur. My wife is an elementary teacher. Contrary to high school, where teachers make 1 or 2 lesson plans and teach them to several seperate sets of students, my wife teaches 2 sets of students a whole littany of lessons on reading, math, history, and science. She then not only preps all that mnaterial personally, 3-4 times the lessons of a high schoo teacher, but she also is responsible for 2-3 times the number of handouts (3rd graders don;t take good notes) and frequent quizzes and tests have to be graded as well as nightly homework.
With the move away from multiple choice assignments, my wife has been spending 2-3 hours per night grading homework (as there are no longer teacher's aids or interns as there was 15 years ago), and she also often has work on weekends. She also attends 2 manditory teacher meetings per week, one which she was "appointed" to lead with no additional pay. This means she comes home at 5:30PM 2 nights a week (that's when she LEAVES school, having arrived at 6:30AM), works til 7 or 8PM, works weekends, and ALL THROUGH every vacation period (which is all about catching up, not getting ahead), and then she can't work during the summer as A) getting a good job for only 9 weeks is pretty hard and b) she needs all that time to rewrite all her lesson plans due to a new school initiative, district mandate, change in state requirements for 3rd grade education, new books, or more.
In a year she works more hours than me, and she has 6 times my "vacation." With 2 masters degrees and 10 years on the job, she's making only $42K, of which she's still repaying college loans, and forks out about $1000 a year in continued required (unreimbursed) education to maintain her teaching certificate, and spends another $600-800 in unreimbursed classrom expenses (required by state law but unfunded by the district, mostly in paper, ink and generic supplies).
1) that average pay is not regionally adjusted, so it's a BS number.
2) that average teacher pay includes specials teachers, coaches, and other non-principal administrators (curriculum coordinators, team leads, guidance councelors, scecially trained resource teachers, and more, which artificially inflate the wage
3) those numbers are from 2006/2007. It has decresed since.
4) 15 years ago, the average 4 teachers shared 1 classroom aid during the day, and had assistants or interns grading their papers at night, and teaching was a roughly 40 hour job. Today, the distric here employs NO classroom aids or interns, and the teachers AVERAGE 55 hours per week, and most work through the summer on classroom materials (traditionally provided by the school in the past, now up to the teachers to write themselves) and they can't work summer jobs to make the difference in salary.
My wife is in her 10th year teaching, is STILL paying back college loans, over $300 a month, has 2 masters degrees in advanced early childhood education and works as a special educator for advanced math and science students. She makes only $42K anually, of which she spends up to $1000 a year maintaining her certification (payiong for required but unreimbursed college classes and other required training), and another $600-800 a year in unreimbursed classrom expenses (including things like ink and paper and pencils the school provides little of, and that's beyond the donations of that material that run dry before christmas every year).
A starting teacher WITH a state certifiaction and a 4 year degree in SC starts at only $23K. That's a take home pay after benefits of less than $1100 a week (expenses removed), with an average expected student loan payment exceeding $400 a month (assuming current state school 4 year costs with 25% covered by scholarship!). That means a starting teacher has less than $700 a month to live on... that's fucking rediculous, and it's no wonder this state is DANGEROUSLY understaffed and nearing the line of loosing federal education funding due to excessive classroom sizes.
If we wend back to having teacher's aids, and techers could work an honest 40 hour week, and afford to work a summer job in addition, and push the starting salary up to $30K (or cover the student loan payments under a 5 year repayment contract for employment), then they might get some qaulity teachers...
$50K?
My wife is a national certified teacher in SC. She has 2 masters degrees and is now in her 10th year teaching. She STILL makes well below $50K! (about $42). And on top of that they just repealed her annual raise for the 5th year in a row, capped her classroom reimbursible expenses at $250 (for which she has to buy her own ink and paper to print materials beyond the 100th printed page per week even though state and district regulations require her to hand out an average of about 300 pages per week, we average about $600 a year in unreimbursed expenses we report on our taxes), her nation teacher certification bonus was suspended ($7500 over 10 years, now gone never to return), and they don't even assist paying back the student loans. New teachers fresh out of college in this state can expect $30K in college debt and several thousand additional to acquire certifications, and if they're lucky and place in an advanced teaching position start at a measly $23K anually. There is also no tenure in this state, and teachers are on their own dime to maintain ther certification (which includes taking an additional 9 semester hours in classes every 5 years which is also not currently reimbursed). Considdering it's a 55+ hour per week job, that's lower pay than the average 2 year trade school graduate for more hours work per week, less benefits, and they're on their own to write all their own lessons on their own...
No, it means it will be limited to NO phones.
Apple has a LONG history of patenting anti-consumer things just to prevent everyone else from doing it.
Lookl at the feedback here. Do you REALLY think Apple would release such a thing being a newcomer and underdog in the market? And if you DO think they would, based on what eveidence?
OK, dumbass, CALM DOWN. This is NOT a patent apple intends to release in a product. this patent is OLD, but just finally "approved". If Apple intended to use this, it would already be in the iPhone.
Apple has a LONG history of patenting "anti-consumer" technologies with the express idea to NEVER release it. It's their way of ensuring noone else does as in many cases, with something like this, if some moneygrubbing company (Nokia, Motorolla, etc) produced such a device, advertising revenue would dry up an any device that did not support it, and then even devs writing apps for apple would be forced to use it.
This patent ensures this technology will not be used. Think about it. Just a couple of hours, and there's 300+ posts here of people biching about this. The technology is simply so wrong, not a single poster is suppoting is (unless they work for an ad firm, or a company that makes ad sponsored products). With 7% market share, it would be SUICIDE for apple to use this technology.
This is NOT the first time Apple has done this. As I said, they have a long tradition and history of patenting user tracking systems, automated reporting systems, tracking devices, ad generation systems, and more.
Again, this is an OLD patent, and it;s been in the news a while. The only reason its back is the PTO finally got around to oficially approving it. Had apple intended to use thisd, it would ALREADY be in use... clearly they're on YOUR SIDE, protecting you from the REST of the assholes on the net, but you;re so biggoted you don;t even realize it.
I bet you also still believe Apple is 2x the price of the competition? If that's the case, go on, try to make a 27" iMac equivalent out of comodoty parts on NewEgg for less than a 27" iMac (with GPU, LED backlit 27" non-TFT display of the same or better resolution, similar performance or better parts, in ANY form factor. Don;t even bother with the speakers, webcam, wireless keyboard, software, even leave out the OS etc, just the core machine specs. You can't even BUILD one cheaper...
Compare the MacBook Air to the new Adamo XPS.. Dell is $700 more expensive for a SLOWER machine. Compare the MacBook pro 15" to any Dell, you can't get one for less under 17" and those have worse GPUs, or cost a slew more. Try to buy a 13" notebook with a dedicated GPU for less than $900, and you can't find one other than Apple's white macbook... No, they don;t have a $400 notebook, or a $600 desktop, but if I had one, it would suck ass compared to my 2 year old stuff... A machine of THAT low performance is practically useless, and anything apple offers doesn't matter to those people, so apple simply choooses to ignore the lowest end (and least profitable) market segment. Good for them, as it means when i buy Apple kit it runs better and lasts longer than any PC's I have.
Actually, Apple has patended numerous "anti-consumer" technologies. They bhave not used a single one, but since those patents exist, neither can anyone else.
This is exactly the idea...
until you understand that Apple designs and patents LOTS of technology with the specific intent of NEVER releasing it, and NEVER licensing it, and viggerously defending it in courts, you can never understand Applel nor be a fan.
What Apple does by designing such technology is ensuring you as a consumer will never have to deal with it.
until apple actually RELEASES an offending product, you have no right to boycott them. They just HELPED you, and you're too biggoted to see it.
Apple has a LONG history of such patents. So called "user experience" patents put in place by Apple with the primary intent of not being utilized simply so others can not also use such techniques.
Worse, patch SEVERITY was not accounted for in these results, nor was the fact that many patches were for unexploited vulnerabilitys, and others were to close ITW threats...
FF and Safari rank bad in this article, but when looking at the raw data, patch severity, and explited patch footprint, IE is the worst, even though not patched very often.
I'd also note that a single patch may include fixes for numerous bugs, and this is additionally not covered in the scope of this article. A single patch in IE recently fixed more than 10 vulnerabilties...
lol!
Medical data mostly, but naturally that also includes billing records, credit cards and bank transaction data, and lots of other information that should not be leaked. Of course, the $150M in equipment something to be concerned over as well, especially when you have a few hundred employees and contractors with datacenter access on a regular basis.
We're not a "typical business" because of the data, and also because of who owns many of the servers in our datacenters (only about 2/3rds actually belong to us directly, and half of those go with a contract if we loose it to a competitor). We have numerous different government (state and federal) security standard to adhere to. We go through an external security audit from one group or another every few weeks ensuring we're sticking to the standards for their servers and their data.
in a dul row arrangement, cold air will never "warm up" on it's row. It has to be pulled through a server from the cold side to the hot side where it then rises.
2 of our datacenters are being remodled to go a step further, and not cool the space between racks, only what's in the, in a similar design (sealed racks). so the additional several thousand square feet of the datacenter need only be maintained at a nice comfortable room temp.
2 of our 6 datacenters are built using the hot/cold isle method. 2 others are in a migration to a newwer design that still uses hot/cold, but it;s all intra-rack. The datacewnter itself will be a nice 76 degrees, but inside the racks will be 65 or lower. Cold moisture free air is pumped in from the top front of the rack. Servers pull it through to the back and hot air is pulled up and out. The racks are sealed for both airflow and noise reduction. Each rack chassis is about 6-8" deeper than a normal rack, but because of efficincy we can place about 1/3 more racks in a datacenter and still have ample cooling. We currently have 5 air handlers in each large datacenter, and 3 each in the smaller ones. Any one can be offline completely assuming we're at max capacity, honestly any 2 likely could be off as our datacenters, though designed to be full, are rarely much more than half populated, as it would only be full during a period when another datacenter is being rebuolt (every 3-4 years or so on our pace).
I had to be locked in one over an entire weekend VOLUNTARILY.
Major server overhauls, were going to take all weekend to do full backups, replace drive cages, rebuild, and then restore.
The client operated the top 3 floors of a 15 story building, but because of the design, had I not been locked in a secure area (datacenter), I would have had access to several other floors I was not supposed to be on that were wide open from the elevator (no loched doors). Security locked up the whole place Fridays at 8PM and did not come back until monday at 5AM, and people were not normally left to be in the building without security watching elevator cameras...
The server room thankfully had its own integrated bathroom, and I brought in a cooler, a portable TV, a game console, and a folding cot. I spent the weekend in there alone. Made a SHITLOAD of overtime doing it (some of it double and a half time based on our billing methodology). Will NEVER do something like that again willingly...
"Your argument is a bit silly and is ignoring the economy of scale."
And how does ecomony of scale also not apply to ground based solar and wind?
"The majority of the cost in Rocket development is in personnel and support. The actual physical materials and fuel used aren't nearly as expensive. With a large investment into capital and mass manufacturing of rockets, cost can be driven down significantly."
Actually, the majority of the cost in in life support, operations, ground crews, storage, rocket recovery, and more. Yea, fuel is cheap, but these things are one-time use for the most part (being nearly completely rebuilt each launch), and it takes a massive amount of manpower to place one on a pad, fill it up, launch it, track it, recover it, transport it, and start again. A fully reusable non-VTO rocket could save a lot, but those also cost a lot more in electronics. Further, life support is not going to get much cheaper, and even if you can put these things up cheap, people still need to work on em...
Then as well, this is spending billions working towards 2030 to gain a 20-30% efficincy on something that would only work in polar orbit, and loose 10-20% of that gain in long distance transmission of that poewr to usable areas (and create doxens of easy to explait terrorist targets compared to a localized distributed grid).
Then there's the argument of WHY do we even NEED the efficincy??? There's enough non-farm undeveloped land and rooftops to deploy a decentralized wind and solar system using existing (not even advancing) technology such that the US's tier 7 and higher zones are enough to power the entire hemesphere, and similar sections of the far east, europe, africa, and australia can easily do the same. The efficency is only relevent if it's A) dramatically cheaper (in this case it;s far more expensive, and far more complex and difficult to repair, not to mention power outages that could last weeks instead of days), B) if there's a supply shortage of material or land (neither is a concern), or C), there are significant infrastructure gains to the alternate design (in this case it;s more complex). It's simply a bad idea on all 3 counts, and in this case serves no purpose other than to promote a Japanese space agency agenda at the expense of it;s citizens.
- Raised floor is certainly important, and a given. Check
- Cable management above AND below the floor. This is not an either-or... Check
- Cooling capacity is hard to judge, should be scalable. Redundancy is often overlooked but is often even more important that capacity... Check
- Power quality: never seen a big datacenter without a Liebert, or at least UPS in every rack. Power does not have the be contitioned except between the UPS and the machines/devices. A whole data center power conditioner is often more efficient, but unnecessary for the little guys. either way - check.
- Age is irrelevent as long as it's under support. If it's not, replace it. Generators need to be run several times a year to validate their condition, and also to grease the innards... See too many good generators get kicked on and fail an hour later because the oil hand't been changed in 3 years....
- Outages should be tracked, by system, rack row, and power distro. When system seem to be going down more frequently in one area, there's usually an underlying reason... As Google recently proved as well for us all, do not ASSUME all is well, routine disgnostics including memory scans should be performed on ALL hardware. Even ECC RAM deteriorates with age (rapidly) and needs to be part of a maintenance testing and replacement policy - Check.
- Fire suppression is usually part of your building codes, and a given, as is the routine checks (at least anually) by law.
In addition, we deploy:
- Man traps on all enterences to data centers. You go in one door, it closes, then you authenticate to a second door. A pressure plate ensures only one person goes in/out at a time (and it it's tripped, a scurity guy looking at a screen has to override).
- Full 24x7 video surveilance of the data centers.
- in/out logs for all equipment. To take a device in/out of a datacenter requires it being logged in a book (by a designated person). This is for anything the size of a disk/tape and larger. All drive bays are audited nightly by security and if drives go missing, security reviews the access logs and server room security footage to see who might have taken them.
- clear and consistent labeling systems for rack, shelves, cables and systems.
- pre-cable just about everything to row level redundant switches, and have no cabling from server to other servers not passed through a rack/row switch first. Row switches connect to distro switches. This ensures cabling is simple, and predictable.
- Colorcoded cabling: we use 1 color for redundant cabling (indicating their should be 2 of these connected to the server at all times, and to seperate cards in the backplane and seperate switches to boot), a seperate color for generic gigabit connections, another color for DS View, another color the out management network(s), another color for heartbeat cables, and yet another for non-ethernet (T1/PRI/etc). Other colors are used in some areas to designate 100m connections, special connectivity, or security enclave barriers, and non-fiber switch-to-switch connections. Every cable is labled at both ends and every 6-8 feet inbetween.
- FULLY REDUNDANT POWER. It's not enough to have clean poewr, and good UPS and a generator. In a large datacenter (more than a few rows, or anything truly mission critical), you should have 2 seperate power companies, 2 seperate generators, and 2 fully segregated power systems at the datcenter, room, row, and rack levels. in each datacenter we use 2 Liebert mains, each row has a seperate distribution unit connected to a differnt main, and each rack has 4 PDUs (2 to each distro). Every server is connected to 2 seperat PDUs, run all the way back to 2 completely independent power grids. For a deployment of 50 servers or so this is big time overkill. We have over 3500 servers, we need this... We can not rely on a PSU failure taking out racks at a time which may server dozens of other systems each.
What YOU can do with it, vs. what Verizon's TOS and contract say you can do are 2 different things. What PC World has publised is accurate per Verizon's service agreement. I got back from a local store at lunch (always looking for something better than my iPhone, and had to check it out).
Use of ActiveSync requires the additional $15/month plan. (not listed as a $15 charge, but simply requires the corporate data plan, even on residential lines) Verizon does not actively block this service, and it is "possible" to connect to activesync resources without paying the extra fee. However, should they detect its use they reserve the right to backcharge from the phone plan commision data the charges, or terminate my contract, at their choice (including back billing pro-rated subsidies, service fees, and a termination fee). You likely won't be contacted about this, but simply be billed.
As with AT&T, Verizon is not actively seeking to stop people who currently tether, as their system and billing software are not yet fully in place. (I know dozens of people tethering iPhones that are NOT jailbroken today, and none have been hassled by AT&T. one of my friends said he actually called AT&T and asked if he could, and they told him the could not support it, but if he did, he would not incur charges until tethering was a service AT&T could bill users for, and since they currently can not, he would not be charged). However, per the rep in the store, from the day tethering becomes available, charges will AUTOMATICALLY be added to your bill if you are tethering from verizon.
The verizon rep also confirmed the data caps on both the "unlimited" data plan (definition of unlimited was 24/7/365, not unlimited DATA, aka unlimited ACCESS). Having both produces a cumulative cap of 10GB, however, he could not confirm if that meand 10, or 5+5 seperately metered (in which case using 7 on the data plan and 2 on the tether plan might still incur additionall $50/GB charges for surpassing the data plan cap.
he also said the data plan cap would be automatically billed for overages on the Droid, something not common to previous Verizon phones.
I didn;t bother sticking around long enough to even reall yplay with the demo phone after hearing this. The phone looked clunky, I've heard complaints about the keyboard, the app store is not yet evolved enough, and the price is too high for something essentially equal to my iPhone. I really could care less about multitasking.
I've actually only seen pretty favorable reviews of the Droid so far.
However, the fact the device has some limitations yet vs the iPhone, also can not yet tether (though Verizon publically slammed AT&T for that little limit on the iPhone pretty hard), the app community is basically non-existent and the pay-for apps are almost across the board more expensive when you do find some, it gets less battery life, and the device is not only price the same but costs potentially $35 more per month to use ($15 for exchange and AT&T is romored to be offering a 5GB tether cap for only $10 for the iPhone soon), its still not good enough.
Maybe in 6-12 months after the app community is on it's feet with 25K+ apps competitive on price and function to the iTunes Store offerings, we get to a 2.2 or 2.3 release, and when Verizon matches the costs $ for $, then maybe Droid will complete (of course, a new iPhone and OS 4 will be coming out in June, so they better move FAST)
its real easy actually. Mac Address passthru from the PC is one way. Checking the IPs of the target sites is another (mobile phones don't hit MS's update.com port and download patches through a secure protocol for instance), the browser type sent out in web requests is another. Of course, the easiest answer is: it;s in the firmware that allows the connection in the first place. The PC connection is a uniquely identified network adapter, and packets sent to/from it are easy enough to ID within the device, and seperately log. Bypassing that would require major firmware changes to the device and some impressive hackiung skills. ...and YES, thay ARE using traffic monitoring.
Exchange support, including connecting to corporate servers from my AT&T residential account IS in my TOS, and if it's not in Verizon's then, it is correct to say that it;s $15 extra for Exchange ActivSync.
I suspect if their marketing in fact does say "unlimited data" for the dataplan, but fineprints a 5GB cap, then they'll get ass raped in the courts soon enough, and be forced to refund anyone who was charged any extra fees for such, and print a retraction of all their adds clearly identifying that they do not have "unlimited" data. ...and AT&T will SLAM verizon in commercials until this is changed.
Also, rumors have it AT&T's tethering for iPhone will be $10 and $25 (capped and unlimited respectively), so Verizon's going to have some disgruntled customers demanding matching prices real soon...
Personally, I have 2 iPhones, and haver been looking for something better. Pre tempted me until I held one for a few hours.... cheap plastic POS and no app store worth a damn. The original Android was kinda cool, but again, no future for the device was seen, and the few apps thta are available that beat what the iPhone has simply cost too much. Multitasking also on its own is not a selling point (I hardly feel a tug at all to have it, except for wanting to be able to listed to pandora and surf at the same time, which is coming soon via the iPod API plug-in. Even the Droid, in all its glory, can't multitask GPS and a call concurrently... The ONY device that can is the Naviphone, and they've got the patents on that for a while...
I get Exchange on both my iPhoines at not additional charge. They're personal phones on residential plans that i have connected to our corporate e-mail infrastrcuture. There are also numerous company iPhones doing the same also at no extra charge. i could only imagine an extra charge if it was AT&T's mail server, not my own, and even than, there are DOZENS of firms (including microsoft) that host Exchange at $5 per user per month or less. $15 is rediculous.
No, the moral of the story is you should not buy a device for use in your area without looking at a local map of towers first. Also, after the first few days, you could have easily returned both iPhones for a full refund to AT&T (no penalty, only 3 or 4 days of prorated use).
I live in an area permeated with AT&T towers, and my 2 iPhones get 5 bars here in our corporate complex, and even sprint phones, connected to a TOWER ON THE ROOF, get fewer bars and dropped calls. Verizon is god awful here, even dropping calls on major interstates and piss-poor quality anywhere that's not near a college campus or the center of downtown.
Also, $119 PER iPhone??? wtf plan do you have? I pay about that per month TOTAL, for 2 iPhones, and we're on the 1400 minute family plan... You're not paying for 2 seperate unlimited plans are you? I'm sure if you looked at your bill, and dropped to the lowest plan that supports the a-list and put a few of your most popular numbers in, you;de save $60-80 a month (or use google voice as a pass-through, and put your google number in as one of your 5 numbers).
I agree on your data plan ideas, mostly.
We need a few laws put in place: 1) incremental charges for overages may never exceed 150% the per-unit charge of the base plan rates. So in this case, it's $6/GB. Overage should not be more than $9/GB. 2) end users shuold have to opt in to additional charges. By default, plans should dramatically limit data rates at no additional charge, and voice calls should be pre-empted by an audio notification of excess chanrges before the call is placed. 3) anywhere a capped or restricted plan is in use, a FULL UNLIMITED option must be available. This must be a each SPEED Tier, not just at the top tier. AKA, for home internet, there might be a 2MB, 5MB, and 10MB option for downspeed, each with caps. EACH plan must offer a surcharge for a higher cap, as well as an unlimited cap, allowing me unlimited data at only 2dn/256 up should i so choose.
As for call quality, I disagree. I have both a 2G iPhoine and a 3GS. My signal strength is BY FAR better than T mobile, Verizon, and Sprint users here in the building (and we have a microcell from sprint on the roof!) I have not dropped a single call on either device in nearly 2 years that was not preemped by the person on the other end say "i'm driving through a bad area, youmight loose me" with the exception of a specifc place along the freeway here where ALL phones drop calls due to a provider crossover to a local carrier that is not part of the national partnerships and can not hot transition calls to their towers. Both my iPhones have amazing call clarity. I can make calls perfectly clear in places where others have no signal at all on their own devices. I'm in a building complex with over 6,000 other people. About 1/3rd of us now have iPhones bacause the phones available from Verizon and Sprint all suck here. A few have the original google phone, and short of being a nice toy for some simple apps and media, it's completely useless on campus with no signal except outdoors.
This is no small city, with towers from Verizon outnumbering AT&T. Sprint has a bunch (including one right here on campus as i metioned and yet the AT&T tower 3 miles from here gives me calls places Sprint phones do not). T-mobile has 2 towers in town, none near us, but t-mobile phones use partner towers from a number of companies and there are a smattering of local carriers leasing towers to all parties (can't tell who'se leasing to who from the map of towers). Needless to say, this whole city is blanketed in signal. Granted, both AT&T and Verizon have MASSIVE corporate offices here.
Simple, in so many ways
1) the PC will pass it;s MAC address through the device. This can easily be detected.
2) Android does not his update.microsoft.com, nor an AV update site, nor half a dozed other IPs and services that are rediculously difficult to prevent your PC from communicating with.
3) "browser type" is not the android default on your PC.
4) simple software that's part of the bridged network adapter "tells" them it's being tethered, and tracks the data through each interface seperately.
5) downloading files through any means the android OS does not support is easily detected.
There are a dozen other ways, especially depending on the content you access, the protocol you use, and more.