blah blah blah...

For most teachers: that is to say, elementary and middle school teachers, who are the majority in question here... professional development is about as useful as the "breadth requirements" in the average 4 year college degree. Possibly useful for people who still have no idea what their degree is going to be after 3 years.. but for people who know what they are going to be doing as a job, they are a total waste of time and money.

Elementary and middle school teachers are not teaching modern electronics. Nor are they teaching modern history. They teach subjects that have not changed in decades.

That in no way renders standardized tests as "idiocy". that merely points out that poor kids have a terrible time being able to learn in school. The standardized tests are *accurately showing* that the poor children are learning less.

Properly speaking, your argument should then be, "inner city schools should be held to lower standards of achievement". If you want to make actual change happen, you should be validating the test scores, and pointing out, "here is WHY the students are scoring lower", not trying to get rid of a valuable tool that proves the children there need more help.

Just because success on standardized tests strongly correlates with family income, doesnt mean it is NOT a valid test.
Just because something turns up data that is non-PeeCee, doesnt mean it is WRONG.

Common sense check:
People who come from wealthier homes, tend to do better in school, and be better educated.

Well, DUH! This is because the schools they go to are better, and the parents are more involved, leading to better achievement.

If this fact bothers you, and you want to do something about it, then the first step to correct it, is to measure the difference in achievement . The next step is to then take new measures to improve achievement in lower-income areas.

You MUST HAVE proper measurement of results, if you wish to determine methods of meaningful, effective change! This is basic science!

If instead, you throw out tests results that you dont like, because they somehow don't sit well with your politically biased beliefs... then you are a zealot on a mission. A mission whose core goal is "pretend everyone is the same", rather than *ACTUALLY HELP CHILDREN*.

PS: the claims of "randomness" are completely bogus. What they might mean is, "they dont match up with the criteria that we, the school board, decide to claim as being 'the best teachers'".

As a parent, however, the material on the tests, exactly corresponds to my definition of what my child should be learning.
Math skills. Reading comprehension.
If the teachers are "teaching to the test".. well, good! they are then teaching my child useful skills, rather than most of the utter garbage in the current curriculum.
Does my child need to learn how to make cute little paper-mache buildings? NO, TEACH THEM HOW TO DO MATH AND READ, for #$#@ SAKE! Not to mention logic!

And yes, I am a real parent, with 3 children, this is not some "hypothetical child" argument.

It's because they don't teach children proper math and comprehension skills, that the majority of voters are a bunch of idiot sheep who are easily lead into voting for dumb and dumber.

Oh, well then.. mission accomplished! Because that's all any good parents want to achieve: that their child "doesnt get arrested"

Arrrg.

SO, you cant use a web browser then? what a shame.

(There are web-based irc clients/gateways. all that's required is javascript. cf: http://webchat.freenode.net/ )

Darn, no edit button.

I suppose I should add the disclaimer to the above, that it presumes you are a competent, experienced script coder.

If you are not... then please disreguard my above post.

The appropriate, time-honored solution to your problem is:
stop asking permission to do so.
Just write the script (very, VERY carefully, making sure it has an insane amount of safety checks), then give it a limited test run... then if it works out okay, start using it fully.

Even a cautious manager will usually be impressed once they find out you've been using some script you wrote, in production, for a year, and they havent heard of any problems with the system.

It seems like we have a bunch of "physicists" putting their oar in about windowing systems.
Because writing a new windowing system is easy, right?

http://xkcd.com/793/

Depends what they're administering.
There are plenty of systems that are more closed, and the sysadmin should be spending their time living in the pre-provided frameworks, rather than coding their own.

Many times, it's a matter of learning what is already available for the system, rather than coding your own, lesser quality replacement.

The irony in the article, is that the link for "high quality, not 'good enough' quality", leads to a page where the first image has around 20% of the data, missing/blacked out.

First time I've seen a definition of "high quality" that means "20% data loss"

Hey! Quit giving away my kids' secret science project on "the halflife of one-time-charged biological sources of radiation in the visible spectrum" !
He's going to beat that little brat Lewis this time....

"Well, it wasnt easy, let me tell you! We had to work for a YEAR until we could tune the failure timing to remain just outside of the warran.... Umm.. I mean , yeah, that's kind of odd, isnt it?"

wow.. really badly written code.

Url for what you are referring to, please?

on the page I'm looking at, it just has

(Create)
[List of party areas][10/15 toggle]
(Search)

There is no "attending" option that I see.