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Education

Khan Academy: the Teachers Strike Back 575

theodp writes "With his Khan Academy: The Hype and the Reality screed in the Washington Post, Mathalicious founder Karim Kai Ani — a former middle school teacher and math coach — throws some cold water on the Summer of Khan Love hippies, starting with U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan. From the article: 'When asked why so many teachers have such adverse reactions to Khan Academy, Khan suggests it's because they're jealous. "It'd piss me off, too, if I had been teaching for 30 years and suddenly this ex-hedge-fund guy is hailed as the world's teacher." Of course, teachers aren't "pissed off" because Sal Khan is the world's teacher. They're concerned that he's a bad teacher who people think is great; that the guy who's delivered over 170 million lessons to students around the world openly brags about being unprepared and considers the precise explanation of mathematical concepts to be mere "nitpicking." Experienced educators are concerned that when bad teaching happens in the classroom, it's a crisis; but that when it happens on YouTube, it's a "revolution."'"
Bug

Facebook API Bug Deletes Contact Info On Phones 178

An anonymous reader writes "If you thought that Facebook's recent unannounced change of its users' email address tied with their account to Facebook ones was bad, you'll be livid if you check your mobile phone contacts and discover that the change has deleted the email addresses of many of your friends. According to Facebook, the glitch was due to a bug in its application-programming interface, and causes the last added email address to be pulled and added to the user's phone Contacts. The company says they are working hard at fixing the problem, but in the meantime, a lot of users have effectively lost some of the information stored on their devices."

Comment The problem isnt.. (Score 1) 622

The problem isn't that nobody is willing to do the work, the problem is that people are not ALLOWED to do the work. Or worse, people who don't know as much as they think they do have the power to stop others by not allowing check ins that would fix problems. The upper tier of the dev team is full of themselves; They don't want to listen to others because they want to do things "their way" even when others have shown this to be incorrect. And they REFUSE to educate themselves, the PHP core dev team is like people from the deep south or something.

Comment Re:Participant Psychosis? (Score 1) 540

You are wrong. I am not legally insane, but I would love to go to mars. As for kids, sure, let me donate to a sperm back I hold all rights to, give me a willing female PHD on mars as a backup, and we are good. I will be the first guy on mars, women will be begging to use my seed here on earth - thats why i would leave a supply behind - and the money can be spent on things I care about here on earth while my kids would eb well taken care of, so its win-win. As for kids on mars, sure, but its something you have to really plan for due to the hostile conditions. I wouldn't be surprised if the first trip is all of the same gender to not create issues. You are the one with mental problems; why would you have such a low self esteem that you cared about the world you left behind? Better to think of the future and all the great things you could explore OUT THERE.

Comment Re:THEN YOU DO IT MISTER HIGH AND MIGHTY !! (Score 2, Interesting) 663

The problem is simple: You are asking me to code something I could get paid a LOT of money to work on, for free with nothing gained from the time and effort spent away from my family... outside of my work. People like myself who could be doing this sort of work exist and we are freely available at a good market rate, but we would rather be making money than donating our time and effort to something we do not see as practical, efficient, or worthwhile. Open source is great for simple things, or if somebody is just learning, or if you are really skilled, really bored, and motivated by your education (Like Linux itself was started on as a school project, right?).. but if you are like most people working on something that technical for no money is a waste of time and energy as the people who can make it career already have, and I for one do not want to be the guy who pressures somebody else that I respect to step aside so I can be "them" in the OSS community. I respect the upper tier of open source - the Linus's, Alan's, etc, of the world - too much to be that much of a jerk. Its also not practical. Worse, as things advance the driver will be surpassed or just not work on a chipset.. and then you will have people like Linus belittling the effort you made into it. Nobody wants to be belittled for working on something nobody else wants or has the skills to do. Or you could just get sued for violating an nda, or if you didn't, for researching things and learning its secrets on your own. If you are not going to make yourself a target, why should you expect others to? I love open source; But its reasons like this that it has so many gaps and parts of it outright sucks.
Book Reviews

Book Review: Occupy World Street 284

jsuda writes "For those billions of people for whom the current political-economic system doesn't work–the Occupy Wall Street people, the Tea Partiers, the 99%-ers and have-nots, the middle and lower classes, and the rest of the unwashed masses, Occupy World Street is a starburst of enlightenment and a practical vision of hope for a new and advanced society." Read on for jsuda's review

Comment What about the GPL? (Score 1) 203

You guys are all forgetting that the gpl is in play and TFA is crap. The only reason google has been able to hold off on source as long as it has on some versions of android is because most open source people dont have the balls to hold them accountable and force the issue. But that does not magically mean there is no GPL or that they do not have that legal obligation. Motorola would ALSO have this obligation, they CANT close source android because its just Linux with some patches.

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