Are you completely incapable of comprehending written English?
No, I'm not.
You stated, as if it were fact, that "pay-go" phones were very expensive
I stated in my original post (emphasis added): "At least, back when I had one, they were a lot more expensive than pay phones for the kind of very occasional use described [...] They might have friendlier plans now." As I stated in response to your initial misguided response, and contrary to your characterization abivem "I made no assumption. I stated my factual experience, and mentioned that it was outdated and that things may have changed."
I stated *currently* factual information to rebut your claim.
Nothing you stated would rebut any claim that I actually made. If you had read what I wrote (and were not, as you say, "completely incapable of comprehending written English") you would realize that.
The current information you provided was useful and welcome. The misrepresentation of what I wrote and unwarranted attacks were neither.
Next time, try to be less insulting.
You were the first one to be insulting. And the premise of your insults was your own mistake, not the actual content of my post. So perhaps you should practice what you preach.
Rather than lower the standards to "C", and having to teach remedial courses in college, why not start earlier in high school, to encourage learning the basics and getting those A's and B's.....
Unless you are encouraging grade inflation, no amount of encouraging learning the basics is going to change the fact that C's are "average". If the needs of the modern economy is for more education (either college or trade) for a person to be basically productive and self-supporting adult, then just as highschool became universal when it previously hadn't been, and that needs to happen for post-highschool formal education; making whatever post-highschool education they are academically qualified for financially accessible to average performers is a step in that direction.
Uh, why? Pay-go doesn't meet my needs for reasons outside of price now.
They are *considerably* cheaper than that now.
That's good to hear, for those whose needs are in that direction.
I'm about to submit another message to someone else who made the same assumption as if it were fact without having checked first.
I made no assumption. I stated my factual experience, and mentioned that it was outdated and that things may have changed. Heck, you quoted the whole message, is it too much to ask that you also read the whole thing?
At least, back when I had one, they were a lot more expensive than pay phones for the kind of very occasional use described-- since you had to pay $25-30 every 2-3 months or so (details varied by vendor) to keep the phone active -- but potentially cheaper then regular cell phones for use that was regular but not particularly heavy.
Here, the Judge has simply stated that the Plaintiff has filed to properly allege his complaint; this is no different than if the Plaintiff had alleged rape but failed to allege forceful sexual assault.
Presuming that rape were, in the jurisdicition applicable to the analogy, defined as, say, "a sexual assault committed through use or threat of force", its more like the Judge saying that the problem is that the Plaintiff alleged "rape" and merely stated in his complaint "On such and such date, Defendant sexually assaulted me through use or threat of force." The problem isn't that the elements of the offense weren't alleged, but that they were alleged in the form of a recitation with no specificity as to how the Defendant had acted which met the elements.
(The rest of your description is correct, but the analogy at the end seemed to miss the point.)
It goes the other way. American English speakers often call universities "colleges".
Yes, which is why I said in an earlier paragraph in the post you quoted from that college was the more general term. There is, nevertheless, a meaningful distinction: "university" doesn't mean the same thing as "college" (though "college" may include "university") and neither means the same as "college or technical school".
I could see helping those students to head on out to a trade/tech school
If you give everyone with a C or better average a scholarship to college or technical school, as the proposal described in TFA would, then those who have the performance to be admitted to college can use it to go to college (which most C students will not unless they have impressive test scores, extracurriculars, and/or demanding courses in which they got the Cs), and those who don't have the performance or inclination for college can use it to go to a technical school. So I don't see what you are objecting to: the proposal seems to have the effect you desire.
It seems that (in this case) Perl 6 is being invented to make it less like Perl, and more like, well, bits and pieces of every other language.
So more like PHP?
More seriously, this seems to happen to almost every successful language, as it becomes so widely used in the area that is most specialized for that people want it to do that plus related things so they don't have to use two or more languages, and this demand drives the evolution of the language.
I'm not sure its a bad thing, so long as it doesn't lose, in the change, those of its distinguishing features that make it so attractive to its main use.
My own experience, as a kid coming from a poor family but with excellent grades and test scores, getting financial aid was super simple. My own experience, as a kid coming from a poor family but with excellent grades and test scores, getting financial aid was super simple. It's the kids who have good, but not great, grades/scores that have trouble.
Yeah, I'd agree that they'll be the big beneficiaries.
Of course, a good student at a non-top school can very often be one of the top students at that school and qualify for grants and scholarships that would have been unattainable to them otherwise.
Non-top schools often don't have as many grants and scholarships (for instance, when I attended Caltech, I was pretty much the bottom of the barrel of admits -- yet received pretty much full support because anyone that got into Caltech that didn't have everything covered by scholarships and had financial need was covered by Caltech grants at the time [not sure if that's still true].)
When that didn't work out, the other schools I went to (where I was certainly, comparatively, much higher on the performance totem pole than at Caltech), it would have been much harder to get money if I had had the same need (fortunately, because of changed family circumstances, I didn't, but I had done the research and it just wasn't there.)
That's an awful low bar to ask them to meet. If I only need to make a C to get a scholarship, that's likely only as hard as I'm going to work for it.
You probably need better than that to get into a decent school, which getting the city scholarship won't guarantee.
All this does (or is intended to do) is make it so that students that make even modest effort won't be denied access to whatever college or technical school their academic record qualifies them for because of their finances. Which, IMO, is a good thing. Rich students still have an advantage, of course, from legacy admissions on the like, as well as advantages in the environment they are likely to have supporting them in getting decent grades in the first place, but reducing the degree to which opportunity is a function of wealth is a good thing.
Don't know where you live, but in the US no one makes the distinction. FYI.
I live in the US (more specifically California) and everybody I've ever met makes a distinction between college (which is more general, and includes, e.g., 2-year institutions that issue only associate's degrees and various certificates, but not bachelor's or graduate degrees) and university (which is usually limited to institutions that issue graduate and/or professional degrees as well as undergraduate degrees, but sometimes used in a more generic sense that includes institutions that grant bachelor's degrees even if they don't grant graduate/professional degrees.)
I've never seen someone (an American in the US speaking English to another American, at any rate) refer to a community college or similar as "university".
So let me get this straight, C average or above to get rewarded with laptops and scholarships?
Well, clearly, you are performing at below expected level, so wouldn't get the scholarship.
The laptops are universal, and not a reward. The scholarships are for C average or better, and are arguably not a "reward" either, so much as a recognition that either college or technical school is as necessary as a highschool diploma was a few decades ago, and the area wants to improve its economic condition, it would be desirable for the baseline to be moved up to include being able to attend one of those institutions.
Yeah, sure, its a change, but there was a time when education beyond the eighth grade was exceptional and only open to those with wealth or who impressed a wealthy benefactor with their performance. Heck, there was a time that that was true of formal schooling period. The baseline moves.
Just why not make it universal, rather than "C average or above," which makes it a bit comical... Those with F averages aren't going to be qualify for University in the first place.
"University" != "college" != "college or technical school".
Is paying for college for people with a C-average instead of directing them towards only vocational training--as in many other Western countries--a good idea?
Scholarships offered independently of the school don't guarantee admission, and the scholarships are for any college or technical school. So, even granting, for the sake of argument, that broadening admission criteria is potentially harmful, that's irrelevant to what is going on here.
Unless, of course, you think that with the same grades and other performance measures, people who are poor should be kept out of college in favor of those who are rich.
I don't recall OLPC allowing any of these things in the US, it was starting strictly in 3rd world countries wasn't it?
Developing countries have been the focus, but the project has never ruled out working with school authorities anywhere in the world. What they ruled out was mass retail sale in developed countries as an early focus.
OTOH, there is a break from the earlier articulations of the principles of the project here, and its not in the fact that its in a developed country, its in the "Students will turn in their computers at the end of their eighth-grade year" part.
I'm talking absolute numbers, not relative. It doesn't matter if only.5% of illegal aliens don't learn English if that make the number 20,000,000 people (I know those figures are wrong, just hyperbole to make my point).
What point? In any case, its relative numbers, not absolute, that matter, though relative to what other measure might be a matter of debate. But, that aside...
I realize the Spanish signs are for people who haven't learned English, almost always first generation. I'm also aware that it provides a competitive advantage for companies to do that. I'm saying I think it's wrong because it makes it easier to slide along and not integrate.
But if, as GP states and you seem not to dispute, English acquisition by immigrants is at an all-time high, the presence of such signs, etc., driven by the absolute number of recent immigrants is, to all available evidence, not, in fact, encouraging people not to integrate (at least so far as language acquisition goes), so your complaint would seem to be based on assumptions about the way you expect the world to work that don't pan out in practice.
100% agreed.. when Bill Gates name was mentioned it always had the tag "richest man in the world" Carlos Slim surpasses him and hes just " a billionaire" If i was Slim i would be absolutely insulted.
If I had $59+ billion like Slim, I probably wouldn't care if people neglected to call me the richest person in the world when talking about me on Slashdot.
Yea, I know it only reduces the number of characters to type, but lowering the bar to write standard code is always good.
Its not always worse the cost imposed by change, and your version requires user agents that may want to locate the DTD to come with some separate database mapping version identifiers to DTD locations, while the existing standard allows such databases, but also allows using the system identifier as a URL to retrieve the DTD. The proposal adds essentially nothing in terms of ease of writing standard code, and reduces functionality.
Um, a lot of these workers in India are "willing to learn English" because it's their birth tongue.
Its like the #40 first language in India with only a pretty small number of people speaking it first. Its the most popular second language, IIRC, though, with something like a third of billion Indians fluent in it.
China is shoving them out of the goods market because of their low prices (and associated poor environmental and human practices). India is beating them on call centers because many Indians are willing to learn English and have a chance to do so- something most Mexicans can not or will not.
Both India and China are cheaper-labor countries than Mexico, and insofar as they are more attractive, that's the reason for both, not just China. Mexico also has a higher per capita GDP than either, though, so I'm not really sure that those two are "beating" Mexico in any meaningful sense.
There may soon be a time when large numbers of Indians stop immigrating to the US because there are plenty of good jobs in India.
There may soon be a time that pigs fly because they evolve large enough, strong enough wings and learn how to use them, too. Wonderful word, "may".
It would be nice to think that Mexico could get to that point too.
A casual familiarity with the relevant geography would make it obvious why Mexico would need to be developed to a level far closer to that of the US than India would need to be to make immigrating to the US for economic reasons equally unpopular in each of those countries.
The Earl of Northumberland (who owns the City of London amongst other things) is probably the richest man in the world.
The title "Earl of Northumberland" is, per Wikipedia at least, a subsidiary title of the Dukes of Northumberland since Hugh Percy, 2nd Earl of Northumberland, was created Duke of Northumberland in 1766 and his heirs to this day retain that title; the present Duke had, as of sometime in 2005, an estimated wealth on the order of 300 million GBP, which is something like two orders of magnitude less than Carlos Slim's fortune.
(As for the City of London, I was under the impression that it had been a corporate city for many centuries, and not "owned", even the sense that a purely titular feudal holding might be said to be "owned", by anyone, save, in the sense that this is true of all land in England, the Crown.)
I thought they swore that taxpayers would never pay for OLPC? That was one of the main selling points, originally.
No, in fact, the whole point of the project from the outset was the main market was going to be direct, bulk sales to governments (specifically, national ministries of education) who would distribute them on a one-per-child basis in their educational systems, the reasoning being that only by selling in that manner would (1) they get big enough orders, and (2) the laptops being fully integrated into the educational system to give the most advantage to students and educators.
Slashdot Mirror
It improves the quality and attractiveness of software for which they sell professional support, services, etc.
Presumably because the proposed (and accepted) PDF standard is a well-described, implementable standard, whereas the OOXML proposal is neither.
Not well, apparently.
No, I'm not.
I stated in my original post (emphasis added): "At least, back when I had one, they were a lot more expensive than pay phones for the kind of very occasional use described [...] They might have friendlier plans now." As I stated in response to your initial misguided response, and contrary to your characterization abivem "I made no assumption. I stated my factual experience, and mentioned that it was outdated and that things may have changed."
Nothing you stated would rebut any claim that I actually made. If you had read what I wrote (and were not, as you say, "completely incapable of comprehending written English") you would realize that.
The current information you provided was useful and welcome. The misrepresentation of what I wrote and unwarranted attacks were neither.
You were the first one to be insulting. And the premise of your insults was your own mistake, not the actual content of my post. So perhaps you should practice what you preach.
Unless you are encouraging grade inflation, no amount of encouraging learning the basics is going to change the fact that C's are "average". If the needs of the modern economy is for more education (either college or trade) for a person to be basically productive and self-supporting adult, then just as highschool became universal when it previously hadn't been, and that needs to happen for post-highschool formal education; making whatever post-highschool education they are academically qualified for financially accessible to average performers is a step in that direction.
Uh, why? Pay-go doesn't meet my needs for reasons outside of price now.
That's good to hear, for those whose needs are in that direction.
I made no assumption. I stated my factual experience, and mentioned that it was outdated and that things may have changed. Heck, you quoted the whole message, is it too much to ask that you also read the whole thing?
At least, back when I had one, they were a lot more expensive than pay phones for the kind of very occasional use described-- since you had to pay $25-30 every 2-3 months or so (details varied by vendor) to keep the phone active -- but potentially cheaper then regular cell phones for use that was regular but not particularly heavy.
They might have friendlier plans now.
Presuming that rape were, in the jurisdicition applicable to the analogy, defined as, say, "a sexual assault committed through use or threat of force", its more like the Judge saying that the problem is that the Plaintiff alleged "rape" and merely stated in his complaint "On such and such date, Defendant sexually assaulted me through use or threat of force." The problem isn't that the elements of the offense weren't alleged, but that they were alleged in the form of a recitation with no specificity as to how the Defendant had acted which met the elements.
(The rest of your description is correct, but the analogy at the end seemed to miss the point.)
Yes, which is why I said in an earlier paragraph in the post you quoted from that college was the more general term. There is, nevertheless, a meaningful distinction: "university" doesn't mean the same thing as "college" (though "college" may include "university") and neither means the same as "college or technical school".
If you give everyone with a C or better average a scholarship to college or technical school, as the proposal described in TFA would, then those who have the performance to be admitted to college can use it to go to college (which most C students will not unless they have impressive test scores, extracurriculars, and/or demanding courses in which they got the Cs), and those who don't have the performance or inclination for college can use it to go to a technical school. So I don't see what you are objecting to: the proposal seems to have the effect you desire.
So more like PHP?
More seriously, this seems to happen to almost every successful language, as it becomes so widely used in the area that is most specialized for that people want it to do that plus related things so they don't have to use two or more languages, and this demand drives the evolution of the language.
I'm not sure its a bad thing, so long as it doesn't lose, in the change, those of its distinguishing features that make it so attractive to its main use.
Yeah, I'd agree that they'll be the big beneficiaries.
Non-top schools often don't have as many grants and scholarships (for instance, when I attended Caltech, I was pretty much the bottom of the barrel of admits -- yet received pretty much full support because anyone that got into Caltech that didn't have everything covered by scholarships and had financial need was covered by Caltech grants at the time [not sure if that's still true].)
When that didn't work out, the other schools I went to (where I was certainly, comparatively, much higher on the performance totem pole than at Caltech), it would have been much harder to get money if I had had the same need (fortunately, because of changed family circumstances, I didn't, but I had done the research and it just wasn't there.)
You probably need better than that to get into a decent school, which getting the city scholarship won't guarantee.
All this does (or is intended to do) is make it so that students that make even modest effort won't be denied access to whatever college or technical school their academic record qualifies them for because of their finances. Which, IMO, is a good thing. Rich students still have an advantage, of course, from legacy admissions on the like, as well as advantages in the environment they are likely to have supporting them in getting decent grades in the first place, but reducing the degree to which opportunity is a function of wealth is a good thing.
I live in the US (more specifically California) and everybody I've ever met makes a distinction between college (which is more general, and includes, e.g., 2-year institutions that issue only associate's degrees and various certificates, but not bachelor's or graduate degrees) and university (which is usually limited to institutions that issue graduate and/or professional degrees as well as undergraduate degrees, but sometimes used in a more generic sense that includes institutions that grant bachelor's degrees even if they don't grant graduate/professional degrees.)
I've never seen someone (an American in the US speaking English to another American, at any rate) refer to a community college or similar as "university".
Well, clearly, you are performing at below expected level, so wouldn't get the scholarship.
The laptops are universal, and not a reward. The scholarships are for C average or better, and are arguably not a "reward" either, so much as a recognition that either college or technical school is as necessary as a highschool diploma was a few decades ago, and the area wants to improve its economic condition, it would be desirable for the baseline to be moved up to include being able to attend one of those institutions.
Yeah, sure, its a change, but there was a time when education beyond the eighth grade was exceptional and only open to those with wealth or who impressed a wealthy benefactor with their performance. Heck, there was a time that that was true of formal schooling period. The baseline moves.
"University" != "college" != "college or technical school".
Scholarships offered independently of the school don't guarantee admission, and the scholarships are for any college or technical school. So, even granting, for the sake of argument, that broadening admission criteria is potentially harmful, that's irrelevant to what is going on here.
Unless, of course, you think that with the same grades and other performance measures, people who are poor should be kept out of college in favor of those who are rich.
Developing countries have been the focus, but the project has never ruled out working with school authorities anywhere in the world. What they ruled out was mass retail sale in developed countries as an early focus.
OTOH, there is a break from the earlier articulations of the principles of the project here, and its not in the fact that its in a developed country, its in the "Students will turn in their computers at the end of their eighth-grade year" part.
If I had $59+ billion like Slim, I probably wouldn't care if people neglected to call me the richest person in the world when talking about me on Slashdot.
Its not always worse the cost imposed by change, and your version requires user agents that may want to locate the DTD to come with some separate database mapping version identifiers to DTD locations, while the existing standard allows such databases, but also allows using the system identifier as a URL to retrieve the DTD. The proposal adds essentially nothing in terms of ease of writing standard code, and reduces functionality.
I thought it was Knieu/Lunitzz ?
Its like the #40 first language in India with only a pretty small number of people speaking it first. Its the most popular second language, IIRC, though, with something like a third of billion Indians fluent in it.
Both India and China are cheaper-labor countries than Mexico, and insofar as they are more attractive, that's the reason for both, not just China. Mexico also has a higher per capita GDP than either, though, so I'm not really sure that those two are "beating" Mexico in any meaningful sense.
There may soon be a time that pigs fly because they evolve large enough, strong enough wings and learn how to use them, too. Wonderful word, "may".
A casual familiarity with the relevant geography would make it obvious why Mexico would need to be developed to a level far closer to that of the US than India would need to be to make immigrating to the US for economic reasons equally unpopular in each of those countries.
The title "Earl of Northumberland" is, per Wikipedia at least, a subsidiary title of the Dukes of Northumberland since Hugh Percy, 2nd Earl of Northumberland, was created Duke of Northumberland in 1766 and his heirs to this day retain that title; the present Duke had, as of sometime in 2005, an estimated wealth on the order of 300 million GBP, which is something like two orders of magnitude less than Carlos Slim's fortune.
(As for the City of London, I was under the impression that it had been a corporate city for many centuries, and not "owned", even the sense that a purely titular feudal holding might be said to be "owned", by anyone, save, in the sense that this is true of all land in England, the Crown.)
No, in fact, the whole point of the project from the outset was the main market was going to be direct, bulk sales to governments (specifically, national ministries of education) who would distribute them on a one-per-child basis in their educational systems, the reasoning being that only by selling in that manner would (1) they get big enough orders, and (2) the laptops being fully integrated into the educational system to give the most advantage to students and educators.