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Comment Re:Difficult to Define a "Good" Teacher (Score 1) 1322

by rainman_bc (#27812311) Attached to: Why Is It So Difficult To Fire Bad Teachers?

How is that we hear so many stories of Asian immigrants coming to this country with nothing, or next to nothing and pulling themselves up by their bootstraps, often with less than most native-born people who linger in stagnant poverty over generations.

The asian immigrants have one thing going for them; hope. People here in the vicious cycle of poverty have often given up on themselves, and are actually in a position where they feel hopeless.

The native family likely has a drug abuse problem, maybe a alcoholic father or a mother addicted to gambling. You can succeed in life if you have the drive and determination to do so, but these kids from these fucked up homes come out fucked up too, and the cycle continues.

For the state to defeat poverty, it takes investment, time, and determination. You can blame the individual, but you should also blame their circumstances.

Comment Re:Labor Economics (Score 1) 1322

by rainman_bc (#27812295) Attached to: Why Is It So Difficult To Fire Bad Teachers?

, they call students who simply can't learn the way they teach, lazy.

Let's dissect this for a moment.

If we're talking grade school, my wife finds that with most kids who lag behind it's the parents lack of involvement that's the problem. Teachers want to fail the kids who don't perform; my wife had six kids on her class who didn't do a lick of homework. When she called the parents in to discuss they never showed. Why should the school care when the parents don't? Education, IMO starts in the home. A teacher in grade school can't fail a kid; it's too hard and it's not worth the effort. The parent needs to decide to hold their kid back.

In high school, welcome to life. You're in a class of 30. When you move into university you'll be in a class of 150. The world doesn't bend for you, you bend for the world. Tough shit. That, unfortunately is life, and isn't the teacher's fault, it's the student's. Teaching style be damned.
Hardware Hacking

Build a BoxeeBox and Wean Yourself From Cable 335

Posted by CmdrTaco from the but-what-about-chuck dept.
Since I've been having serious problems with satellite all week, DeviceGuru's submission was really interesting to me. He says "Inspired by Roku's awesome Netflix video download box and impressed with Boxee's free A/V media center platform, it was merely a matter of time before DeviceGuru blogger Rick Lehrbaum would create the BoxeeBox, an Ubuntu-powered HTPC with Boxee serving as its primary media center UI. Based on a 2.5GHz Core 2 Duo CPU, the BoxeeBox has the look and feel of consumer A/V equipment and packs 2GB RAM, 1TB HDD, CD/DVD drive, USB, Firewire, HDMI, DVI-D, RGB, and 8-channel surround sound audio."
Google

Google Search Flagging Everything As Potentially Harmful 407

Posted by Soulskill from the minor-problem dept.
dowlingw writes "It looks like for the moment at least, all Google results are failing the malware checks and being listed with a warning 'This site may harm your computer,' including all pages from Google themselves. Users trying to visit pages at search results will only be able to proceed via manual manipulation of the search result link to remove the Google click-through (which is also broken). Until Google fixes this bug, it looks Google web search is useless." Update: 01/31 at 15:16 GMT by SS: The problem now appears to be fixed.
Update: 01/31 at 22:01 GMT by KD : Google has now posted an explanation, apologizing and taking responsibility for the "human error" that led to the problem.
Games

DRM Shuts Down PC Version of Gears of War 598

Posted by Soulskill from the you-know-what-really-grinds-my-gears dept.
carlmenezes writes "It seems that the DRM on the PC version of Gears of War came with a built-in shut-off date; the digital certificate for the game was only good until January 28, 2009. Now, the game fails to work unless you adjust your system's clock. What is Epic's response? 'We're working on it.'"
The Almighty Buck

Used Game Market Affecting Price, Quality of New Titles 384

Posted by Soulskill from the either-that-or-it-doesn't dept.
Gamasutra is running a feature discussing the used game market with various developers and analysts. The point has been raised by many members of the industry that used game sales are hurting developers and publishers even more lately, when they're already beleaguered by rising piracy rates and a struggling economy. Atari executives recently commented that used game sales are "extremely painful," while GameStop's CEO unsurprisingly came out in support of resales. We've recently discussed a few of the ways game designers are considering to limit used game sales. David Braben, chairman of UK-based developer Frontier Development had this to say: "Five years ago, a great game would have sold for a longer period of time than for a bad game — which was essentially our incentive to make great games. But no longer. Now publishers and developers just see revenue the initial few weeks regardless of the game's quality and then gamers start buying used copies which generates money that goes into GameStop's pocket, nobody else's."
Censorship

Google's Gatekeepers 150

Posted by kdawson from the can't-read-that-here-try-a-proxy dept.
theodp writes "With control of 63% of the world's Internet searches, as well as ownership of YouTube, the NY Times reports that Google is the most powerful and protean of the Internet gatekeepers, exerting enormous influence over who can find an audience on the Web around the world. Deciding what controversial material does and doesn't appear on the local search engines Google maintains in many countries — as well as on Google.com, YouTube, Blogger, Picasa, and Orkut — falls on the shoulders of Nicole Wong and her colleagues, who have arguably been given more influence over online expression than anyone else on the planet. Some find Google's gatekeeper role worrisome: 'If your whole game is to increase market share,' says Lawrence Lessig, 'it's hard to do good, and to gather data in ways that don't raise privacy concerns or that might help repressive governments to block controversial content.'"
Image

New "MP3 100% Compatible" Logo For DRM-Free Music 263

Posted by kdawson from the plays-for-sure-this-time-we-really-mean-it dept.
Sockatume writes "A coalition of seven UK digital music stores have created a logo for DRM-free, MP3 music. The 'MP3: 100% Compatible' logo allows the stores to emphasize the advantages of the format, namely that MP3 files will run on any device and won't keel over and die as DRM-laden files are wont to. The BPI — the UK equivalent of the RIAA — is backing the scheme, emphasizing that it will also allow users to identify legitimate stores."

Comment Re:Anti ACLU (Score 1) 979

by rainman_bc (#25509887) Attached to: ACLU Creates Map of US "Constitution-Free Zone"

There was two comments in the post = a point about chanting islamic chants and a second point about C4.

Why are the two even related? The Unibomber was America. You're not using Christian Chants as your rhetoric, you're using Islamic chants.

So yeah, I take exception to your example because you're using the use of fear mongering and Muslims when religious radicals exist in all walks of life. I never heard people talking this way about Waco, Texas.
Security

Submission + - Single sign on with Windows and *nix.

Submitted by jetole
jetole writes: I am hoping the Ladies and Gents here on Slashdot can help. I want a single sign on architecture where the master server can be on Windows or Linux and I have yet to find such a thing. I have looked into replicating Active Directory to OpenLDAP and found that all user credentials (i.e. password hashes) do not exist in the Active Directory LDAP. I have looked for a method to have OpenLDAP replicate to Active Directory LDAP and have found that this isn't possible for user logins and as far as I can tell this won't happen with Microsoft. I am desperately seeking a way where I can have a single sign on architecture where a master can reside on either a Windows or Linux server and communicate with a master on the opposite OS and am hoping someone here knows of a way this can be done. Surely there must be some way where if I add a user to Windows then it will be replicated to Linux and vice versa?
Hardware Hacking

Submission + - Tiny 6-chip Linux Computer is Released Under GPL

Submitted by __aajbyc7391
__aajbyc7391 writes: Linuxstamp, a tiny, open-sourced computer is being showcased at LinuxWorld in San Francisco this week. Pre-built boards can be ordered for the hefty sum of $120 (plus shipping), or you can download the design for free and build it yourself. The board boasts an extremely simple hardware design, consisting of six integrated circuits (processor, flash, RAM, serial-to-USB, ethernet PHY, and power conversion) plus a bunch of passives. It runs a kernel.org kernel along with a minimal debian filesystem, and uses U-boot as its bootstrap loader. The board's design is available from its wiki site under the GPLv2 license.
Software

Submission + - Which open source video apps use SMP effectively?

Submitted by ydrol
ydrol writes: After building my new Core 2 Quad Q6600 pc, I was readly to unleash video conversion activity the likes of which I had never seen before. However I was disappointed to see a lot of the conversion tools either dont use SMP at all, or do not balance the workload evenly across processors, or require ugly hacks to use SMP (eg invoking distributed encoding options). I get the impression that Open Source projects are a bit slow on the uptake here? Which Open Source video conversion apps take full native advantage of SMP?

And before you ask, no I dont want to pick up the code and add SMP support myself, thanks.
AMD

Submission + - AMD's Triple-Core Phenom X3 Debuts

Submitted by Ninjakicks
Ninjakicks writes: AMD officially launched their new triple-core processor today with the introduction of the Phenom X3 8750. When AMD first announced plans to introduce tri-core processors, reaction to the news was mixed. The thought was that AMD was simply planning to pass off partially functional Phenom X4 quad-core processors as triple-core products, making lemonade from lemons if you will. In reality however, the tri-core is a way for AMD to increase bottom-line profits, getting more usable die from a wafer and mitigating yield loss. This is an age-old strategy in the semiconductor space and after all, the graphics guys have been selling GPUs, with non-functional processing units, for years. This full performance review and evaluation of the new AMD Phenom X3 8750 Tri-Core processor shows the CPU scales relatively well in a number of standard application benchmarks, in addition to dropping in at a relatively competitive price point.

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