Follow Slashdot stories on Twitter

 


Forgot your password?
Close
typodupeerror
×

Comment Re:Is this any real surprise? (Score 1) 263

by dgr73 (#45592923) Attached to: New Education Performance Data Published: Asia Dominates
Correlation does not equal causality. Just because Finnish teachers are unionized doesn't mean unionization is the reason for the good education system. Maybe you should start with a couple of facts omitted from your post: -In Finland, teacher is a very respected position. It's regarded as a calling -Teachers must have atleast a Master's degree -They have to go through rigorous training both in theory and on the job Nordic countries in general have very similar education systems. The wide variety comes from increased migration and non-assimilation of people from backwards countries. Finland has a small, but increasing number of these immigrants, so is slowly sliding down the PISA rankings. Sweden has a lot of these immigrants, so they are much further down. This is a sad state of affairs. As the education system that once guaranteed equal opportunity to everyone, no matter where in Finland you lived, now is slowly being divided into good and "ghetto" schools. /dotters from the US will probably find this very familiar. And at this point it becomes once again relevant to ask "Faced with a ghetto school, what good is a union?".

Comment Does anyone care? (Score 4, Insightful) 191

by dgr73 (#44316877) Attached to: Blackberry 10 Sends Full Email Account Credentials To RIM
I was in a conference once where all the big players in the security field were sitting and saying "no way we'll build backdoors into our systems, the best guarantee against that is the fact that if it's found out, we'll be killed in the market, nobody will buy from us". But considering how most companies hit by the NSA scandal are still doing brist business, I don't think RIM has anything to fear from anyone except a handful of Slashdotters, who use other types of phones anyway.

Comment Re:Most of the voters do too - there lies the prob (Score 0) 326

by dgr73 (#41321255) Attached to: House Approves Extending the Warrantless Wiretapping Act

In other words, you are saying that we should be judged in comparison to the worst countries out there rather than how well we live up to our own expectations for ourselves.

That does not mean we should accept it. The people to which we entrust the reigns of power must be held to the highest possible standard. Abuse under the cloak of authority has been with us since the first human civilization -- the great thing about modern civilizations is that we have laws to punish that abuse. Now is not the time to go roll back modern life to a pre-magna carta standing..

I love it when Americans think their country is the most free and hot shit country on the planet. And then find out it isn't.

Maybe if you didn't harbor illusions about the "highest possible standard" in your leadership, you'd be able to elect people who weren't total douches in the employ of corporations. It's so easy to reject a good candidate just because he once cheated on his wife, or shoplifted when he was 8. But that just leads to some rich douchebag who can afford to hide his mistakes to get elected with the full intention of fucking you over.

Comment Re:BS? Barbara Streisand? (Score 1) 465

by dgr73 (#39300349) Attached to: TSA 'Warning' Media About Reporting On Body Scanner Failures?

Oh yes, didn't you know? Between gigs, she flies her pink six-wheeled Ford to some island in the Pacific, where she sips Pernod by the pool, and launches rocket planes with tiny puppet vigilantes in them who terrorise world governments and bring Freedom to their asses.

Not to mention the occasional cameos as a robotic destroyer of small Colorado towns.

Comment Re:RIP (Score 1) 1613

by dgr73 (#37624344) Attached to: Steve Jobs Dead At 56

While I'm not a fan of Apple's business practices, Steve made a lot of advances in technology. RIP.

You mean advances in design.. the technology innovations weren't his, he just took them to the next level of usability. Something which I aspire to somewhat in my own line of work. So I didn't appreciate a lot of the things Apple did and don't own the toys (because that's what they are), but I don't deny what they did to the field of personal computing.

RIP Jobs.. enter greedy corporate bastards carving Apple's carcass into their own personal empires.

Comment Re:Putyour money were your mouth is! (Score 1) 178

by dgr73 (#35517636) Attached to: Paramount Pictures To Release Film On Bittorrent

Seems like a strawman technique to me though. "Hey everyone, the movie pirates were liars - they didn't buy this terrible movie after downloading it for free off Bittorent!" If it was a half decent movie, I would most likely download it and buy it if I liked it... but a horror movie titled Tunnel? Not interested in even the free version.

I think you're right, with that name they should've tagged it as a porn movie.

Comment Not-a-troll (Score 1) 901

by dgr73 (#35276992) Attached to: German Foreign Office Going Back To Windows
I think this proves what my personal experience is.. that there's a lot of good in Linux for the end-user, especially in Ubuntu. But there are SERIOUS gaps in drivers & usability sometimes. It's a better effort from a community than I thought possible some years ago, but amount of work to keep all drivers up-to-date is just too much. Windows wins by virtue of all companies automatically developing drivers for it.. so whenever some driver doesnt work, it's the vendor, not M$ that gets the blame. But with linux driver handling is so integrated into the system most users (like my wife) just go "linux sucks" when something doesnt work. This is just my opinion and doesnt need to be followed by posts asking "So what exactly doesnt work?" and "You're wrong, all you need to do is configure doohickey1 by using nageesh3.8, which you can get with the command...."

Slashdot Top Deals

He has not acquired a fortune; the fortune has acquired him. -- Bion

Close