Slashdot videos: Now with more Slashdot!

It's only slightly better than living in a giant spinning space station... or in a bomb shelter right here.

Anything you can do on mars, robots can do better. already.

You have no duty or responsibility for your fellow man, only you matter and the rest of the world can go to hell.

Even further, you are not your brother's keeper even if Jesus said so!

Second hand smoke bother you? well fuck off and die! I'm not giving up my cigarettes you communist!

Humans did ok for most their existence without cars... but now you have one we can't possibly ADAPT to new circumstances... because you don't want to be inconvenienced.

Makes me wonder if WW2 could be won today with so many selfish wimps unwilling to make any sacrifice for the greater good... or even thinking the greater good means anything other than what directly benefits themselves...

Google's next project after that failed glasses thing:

The Google House

Most the stuff is FREE but you must log-in to enter your house. It tracks everything you do and keeps that information forever!

Your phone or grocery store advertizes that you might like to buy some bran muffins. no reason... (except Google House recognized you were constipated today.)

All 3 branches in the US are broken, including most of the 4th estate.

Not only do broken systems allow for corruption but one of the BEST ways to do corruption is by breaking the system!

Congress is so far worse with the worst approval ratings in history; far worse than the executive and they end up re-elected anyway. The industrial military complex has almost completely gamed that democratic body. The reason all three largely move in the same direction while in fighting is because the entire game is rigged... like a Casino, people win/lose but the house always wins (unless Trump owns it.)

Does anybody ever consider the NSA and government system spies on upcoming politicians and most likely officials who hold office as well?

Does anybody notice how people who are strong critics end up in office only paying lip service to positions they legitimately held before they had any power? If not entirely flipping their previous positions?

We've caught the military using PsyOps to win over Senators. You think that is all that has ever happened??

The UK is so in bed with our industrial military spy complex one expects them to parrot each other if not experiment in the UK before trying it out here.

So... Walmart needs worker drones, they are the customer and the education system manufactures worker drones to their specifications?

Cost externalization is another new MBA philosophy being pushed in all aspects possible. Even though all the great progress of the past was not done using these new techniques and new economics we will just hammer every nail with the same new MBA hammer.

Don't train employees... Don't give them any reason to stick around if you do train them. Externalize all your needs by blaming everybody else for not providing that for you-- externalize the cost of employee training (that is, after you externalize all the employees you can to China or India.) Complain colleges don't train your employees enough because naturally your XYZ framework is the only one which matters so the school should teach that instead of useless theory...

The "product" is not up to shifting arbitrary and highly biased expectations. We need more H1B Visas because American workers are now all retarded because of the schools; we can't even find people with 10 years of experience in 5 year old technologies anymore!

Education was always a political issue and always will be one I did not say that it wasn't. The shift in the voting population's PRIORITIES of the issue is what caused it to be elevated to a major issue. At some point it shifted up just 1 position into the top 5 list and became a football.

Administrators are not voted in by the staff; they are hired by politicians. The public likes simple stats - which is why they'll vote for a sheriff with higher arrest numbers even though he got those by skipping real police work for arresting minor offenders that can't be convicted (or more likely plea.)

The union has less power than ever before. The union has it's own political problems and can't ever seem to win against the onslaught of BS coming from all sides.

There is a widespread propaganda war being waged and the public is falling for it. Everybody thinks they are a dentist because they had some teeth pulled. THAT is a big problem here as well.

As far as my family of teachers, we all have a lot of leeway; except in the standardized testing of simplistic metrics... where every year a huge amount of education time is LOST only prepping for gaming the exams. Art teachers not doing art, but teaching to the english test; etc. Perfect is the enemy of good. Some people need to fail and some deserve to fail -- children need to be left behind so the majority and the gifted can continue forward. No, not permanently behind. The only thing good about the technology ideas is how they can customize to an individual level-- and not imposing 1 size fits all. The smart approach would be to profile students and group them by learning styles and emotional problems. COST is a huge factor which is why class sizes are the way they are...

I'm not anti-technology (I built my own stuff) but we can't even measure outcomes competently so how can we seriously evaluate these technology experiments on children.

I know about education; I'm in the field too.

The real problem in modern education in the USA is that the Republicans entered into the issue. I'm not saying their ideas are all horrible; but that the political fight was so much smaller so the teachers and schools were not in the middle of a political culture war. You see, what really started the mess was that public polling showed voters ranked education higher in priority than in the past and that turned it into a two party political football. The rest is a bunch of policies and ideas which have zero basis in reality and everything to do about sounding good, getting votes, and political BRANDING. SO BOTH PARTIES WORK TO DESTROY IT like everything else they touch these days. That has harmed the system greatly which only reflects the broken political system, just another thing that precedes the collapse of a once great democracy.

Furthermore, education is not a business. You can't turn education into an easy statistic like sales and students are NOT customers!! They are not supposed to be happy customers with a "your #1" sticker handed out to everybody and every parent is immune from criticism. The culture is all fucked up; used to be the student was to blame, now the special snowflakes are perfect and the teacher is always the problem.

Yes, technology needs to be PROVEN before it's allowed to be used. SCIENCE should decide everything. That means parents (voters) will be pleased. automated tests have yet to be intelligent. I can interview a student and assess them quicker and more accurately than any static test plus they can't ever fool me. But in the land of lawsuits somebody will be upset they didn't get their "your #1" sticker... while the multiple choice exam allows many times more to sneak bye or undeservedly fail.

SCIENCE:
We can't even adjust school hours to fit best with sleeping patterns of the children when that stuff has been known forever.

Science says that middle school kids shouldn't even be educated conventionally. They need emotional development training and stuff so out of the norm many people would revolt. Most education problems are psychologically based and their parents and environment are HUGE factors. If you apply developmental psychology instead of acting like it doesn't exist, you would turn poor performing students, future criminals, and fragile suicide kids into good students and functional adults. Naturally, parents would be upset because they'd have responsibilities, something which they avoid like everything today.

Parents want free daycare. Some need it too. Snow days not only cause parents to call in irate, but it also means some children DO NOT EAT.

There is so much wrong which has so much more impact-- but we only can discuss a FEW issues and wave some shiny new toy in the public's eye... like they were children.

They act far more like Cardassians, they should use the planet that fits their role best.

Vulcan's only pull that crap in that lousy Enterprise series.

Whatever that USSR joke line is. but reversed.

You can't be free without a cost. If lawyers are going to continue to ruin society, we need to curb them... but given how democracy is failing those issues are really sideshow to the real problems. Cutting down on misinformation and ignorance are one of the few things left that can be done to support democracy.

The Mussolini's political party where Fascism comes from and while that famous quote of his "Fascism should more properly be called corporatism" can not have it's attribution proven; it is not far from the manifesto of HIS party that the man promoted. When I asked a poly sci professor whom was familiar with the Fascist party and it's book, he didn't think the quote was much of a stretch and it was not impossible for him to have said it. Fascism isn't "free market" corporatism it is a merging of the state and the corporations; it seems to be like communism from the outside especially since both inherently require lots of authoritarianism and on that spectrum they very similar to each other... It's a matter of perspective and priority/philosophy that differentiates it from it's perceived opposite.

I'm frequently pointing people to PoliticalCompass.org because there is no binary or even linear political scale. Simply because you are against communism it doesn't make you the opposite... besides, the opposite of communism is not fascism, but economic anarchy (the most free market possible...which never lasts just like communism because it's so unstable it falls apart... imbalance happens caused by the system which break the system from the start; either system. Even the most free market, the black market is never really free within it's own domain. )

Every system sold to the masses is based around basic socialism which is the argument that the needs of the many out weigh the needs of the few. Even free market Randians use the same argument, that more people are better off with their system so you should choose it over those "unrealistic" others and naturally they add additional appeals, premises and argument to that.

All systems are headed for shake up so inventing a lot in them is a waste of time; once robotics and AI surpass nearly every human job the economics and political schemes fail because they were built around assumptions that will be altered. I think the transition is going to resemble holy wars because a lot of these systems are at religious levels. (Just look at the Christians freaking out at this new pope preaching actual Christian values because it contradicts their other stronger political beliefs.)

Doesn't everybody learn from experience about jumping into fads at some point?

Is this just a problem for new IT being given power too soon or am I wrong and we have a lot of IT people who never learn?

It is being stalled and will continue to be for a little while longer. No, it's not completely stalled but it could be moving much faster than it is. I have a hard time believing Tar sands is economical at $40 / bl. I've never heard that low an estimate before. I remember when fracking was getting wonderful estimates and they ended up losing $ when higher more realistic numbers came out. (fracking is still cheap... although they leak so much doing it cheaply it does more harm than coal does. responsible fracking is much more costly; deciding on a compromise and transition scheme is tricky and the ideal compromise can't be done because of politics and selfish voters.)

I didn't discuss natural gas or H2.

Fascism is corporatism! Learn some history.
Governments bossing around corporations is at the opposite side.

Furthermore, if you believe it is a democratic government then the government is "we" and therefore "we" collectively are exercising our control not losing it.