Was that BC Calc? Because if it was, then that's not really a fair comparison because BC Calc is supposed to cover 2 semesters. That being said, you're not seriously arguing that AP Calc is harder than taking the course in college, are you? Any day of the week, I'd rather learn calculus from an experienced, English-speaking teacher in a 20 person classroom whose career goal is to teach students mathematics than from a math prof who only teaches because he has to in a 300 person lecture hall and a TA from Elbonia. A few decades later, I remember a lot of calc from my AP calc class, but I don't remember a damn thing from calc 3 which I had to take in college.

Anyway, the AP classes that I was talking about were things like AP U.S. History, AP U.S. Lit, AP Chemistry, Physics, etc. These were all semester-long courses in university, but took a full year to teach in high school. Learning the same material in twice the time is not impressive to me.

Aren't we talking about a minor change, here? All I'm saying is that a motivated student ought to be able to take a bloody AP class if he or she wants to, even in the absence of a stellar transcript. I mean, really. If a kid is fascinated with history, why shouldn't that kid be allowed to take AP U.S. History instead of standard U.S. History? The kid'll get some exposure to college level work in a class that piques his or her interest instead of being told, "Hey, sorry kid. You're too dumb to handle college work."

Back when I was in school, there was this chick who really wanted to take AP Econ, but she didn't have good grades, and the teacher gave her the boot (it was in front of the whole class, too. Ouch!). All I'm saying is that there were plenty of supposedly qualified kids in that class who never even came close to grasping the material, but I bet this chick would have gotten it because she cared more than they did.

I know it's just an anecdote and I know it's just my opinion not a scientific study, but anyway, that's what I think. Because frankly, who cares if they fail? I'd rather see a motivated kid challenge him or herself and come up short than not to take the challenge at all.

Ahh, sorry. I missed that part of the conversation.

Maybe the "Let's Encrypt" initiative will help. Cloudflare is also a good option.

Cheers!

And it fucking pisses me off that the grocery store won't just give me free food, too.

StartSSL is a business, and its business model is to give out free Class 1 certs with the hope of converting you into a paying customer. They charge for every possible thing other than issuing personal use basic certs, even cert revocations. So if you say wanted to revoke your "free" cert for a very good reason like, say, Heartbleed, then be prepared to be converted to a paying customer.

I'm not saying that you should never use StartSSL, though. I'm just saying that you should know what you're getting yourself into, and know why they don't offer (and never will offer) other free services like wildcard certs.

Ideally, your web host should hold your hand through this.

I don't want to come across as a shill, so I'm not going to name names, but I just looked at the customer panel for a large shared hosting provider, and the process for adding HTTPS was dead simple. You just click on "Secure Hosting", and it walks you through it. You can use a self-signed cert (which they create for you automatically), buy an SSL cert through them for $15/yr, or you can copy/paste in your own (if you want to save a few bucks and get a PositiveSSL from Namecheap for $9/yr or a "free" cert from StartSSL). It took me about 2 pointy-clickys to add SSL to a test domain.

Or even better, imagine going through college as a conservative. As you no doubt remember, only expressions of Leftist doctrine are permitted in the "marketplace of ideas" that we call college. Never mind examining the merits of all ideas; college is a place where everyone from the students through the professors consider it to be their moral duty to ignore what you say and then insult you personally while explaining how sensitive and inclusive and open-minded they are.

At the end of the day, the path to your dreams need not run through any club nor class nor approval of the tactless. It's consistent, persistent action that advances you toward your goals and dreams, and that is the lesson that I hammer into my children's heads. I have very little patience for "oh, but she might get awkwardly hit on!" Apparently that happens 742 times per hour just walking down the street, anyway.

I understand what they do. My point is that they should not do that. They should give motivated kids a chance to be challenged. And let's be honest, do AP classes represent an actual challenge? I took a metric assload of them, and I did not find them to be challenging at all. The reason for this should be obvious: they take a semester-long college course and consume a full academic year teaching it. Of course they're dead easy.

Well, maybe they should change that.

I'm not GP, but many schools restrict who can enroll in AP courses. Personally, I think that this is stupid. Even the lower-class-rank students should be able to take an AP class if they think that they can handle it. They may not be taking a full course load of AP, but why not let them try some college level work in a subject that they like?

I would argue that those guys are not brilliant at all.

Any programmer can solve a complex problem with a complex solution. The brilliant programmers are the ones who can take a complex problem, distill it down to well-organized chunks, making the solution appear straightforward and obvious (even when the solution was anything but obvious).

When you get a dev on your staff who writes clear, straightforward code, you keep that dev in high morale and you don't let him or her go.

This is silly. Girls already do way better in school than boys, on average, and US colleges are majority-female. If girls are so uncomfortable with boys in their class, how come they are kicking our asses in school?

If memory serves, if a black person is shot and killed, it is something like 80x more likely that it was by another black person than that the shooter was a white police officer.

The better advice is to avoid high-crime areas, and that is without regard to skin color.

Given all of the news stories lately I don't blame you for this, but you should look up the statistics don't support the fatherly advice that you've given your children. I don't really feel like googling, but if memory serves, among the number of black people who are shot and killed annually, something like 1% of those is by white police officers, and roughly 80% are shot by young, black men.

So..... yeah. You should probably consider giving your black children the same advice that I give my white children: to avoid high-crime areas, stay with friends, look like they know what they're doing, etc.

And for what it's worth, I have family in Chicago and my kids have been there many times. Chicago is a fine city, but like any other major city, you need to be aware of where you are because there are certain neighborhoods that are not welcoming toward white people.

Not like we have a choice. Our state government mandates that all new developments must have an HOA. It's been that way for decades.

That being said, I don't live under an HOA. Just sayin' that many don't have a realistic choice and endure it out of necessity.

Now that only drove up Bennett's click count. I guess commenting only drives up his comment count, too.

Oops.

But I just can't help myself. I have to click so that I can comment, and I have to comment so that I can bitch about what a shitty writer Bennett is.

One day I'll have to write a greasemonkey script to filter Bennett Haselton out.

When did advanced students cease being role models and instead become problems that need to be kicked out of the room?

I don't really get the point of the Google initiative. I think that most schools have an intro to computing/programming concepts course that is geared toward catching up those who don't have prior programming experience. Not sure why booting white males and Asians out of the room is necessary or fair.