Follow Slashdot blog updates by subscribing to our blog RSS feed

 



Forgot your password?
typodupeerror
×

Comment Re:Normal (Score 2, Informative) 417

When they're old enough, why not? Or did you miss the part about "old enough" or "under close supervision, and specific direction."?

Did no one else get to sit on their parents lap and steer the car?

Or learn to drive a stick by shifting from the passenger's seat because their dad needed his other hand to hold a beer?

Comment Re:Tech News? (Score 1) 302

Er... what am I missing here, why the heck is this story even on Slashdot, which is primarily a technology news site?

On its own, this article doesn't necessarily fit except to a minority of readers who might be wine geeks. However this article is related to an ongoing discussion on "Intellectual Property" [sic] concerning the increasingly problematic state of trademarks, patents and copyrights. As one article among many on this topic, it fits in just fine. Extending the discussion beyond the tech industry provides context.

Or were you trolling? In which case may I direct you to this Rick Astley Video, or goat.cx?

Comment Re:More EU stupidity. More AU cowtowing. (Score 2, Insightful) 302

Would you expect a "Scotch Whisky" to come from Polland? Obviously no. It doesn't preclude Japanese to make great Single Malt Whiskies. They just don't make Scotch Whiskies.

Think of it as a trademark, shared by all the producers from one geographic region. You can't buy a Macintosh from Hewlett-Packard, can you? So why should you be able to buy a Burgundy from someone that isn't located in the region of Burgundy, and therefore doesn't share in the trademark?

(Emphasis mine)

But there's a system in place for establishing and protecting trademarks and the regional producers never used it. Generally, once you stop protecting a trademark, you lose it. Why are they able to fight this now so late in the game?

Comment Re:Dont't like the idea anyway... (Score 4, Insightful) 302

The problem is that I, as a casual consumer, cannot know the dozens of varieties available on the market. I might think that Australian port is my favorite, but how am I supposed to find that product on a shelf after the name change? The product is "port," I've never thought of that as a Brand name. The industry has done a fairly good job communicating to the public that "sparkling wine" and "champagne" are analogous, but what's their strategy for teaching me new names for all these--"Auslese, burgundy, chablis, claret, marsala, moselle, port, and sherry"? I don't know if I have the spare bandwidth in my brain to absorb all that, especially since I don't go to a liquor store for wines more than three or four times per year and thus don't have a lot of exposure to this information.

Comment Re:Cost of Labor (Score 4, Informative) 115

They may be using modern technology to do the census, but they're using them in a primitive way. Modern statistical methods allow one to take a small sample and accurately determine the entire population and its makeup, at a tiny fraction of the cost.

The Census Bureau has been arguing for sampling for several Censuses now. It's not like they aren't aware of modern statistical methods. It's a no-go. Congress won't approve it. It might not even be legal since the letter of the law clearly specifies an enumeration of every individual.
Besides, the specific data from this Census gets opened in 2080 and will be a treasure trove for historians and genealogists.

Comment Re:US did do GPS (Score 4, Informative) 115

I was an enumerator in 2000 and one of our team did exactly that: made up the data at home. She was caught in two days when those forms got input into the computer and got kicked back out. Besides running an ANOVA check on the data to compare the variances between workers (I'm guessing that's how they caught her so quickly, but I didn't know what an ANOVA was at the time), they also had a follow-up team separate from ours that double-checked a random sample of our work.

Comment Re:Educational Problems (Score 1) 629

However, without a standardized national curriculum or standards for grading, there is much variance between different schools in different places. Grades between different districts might not be directly comparable. The SAT was invented to compensate for that. You raise a good point in that what is evaluated on the SAT isn't necessarily in the curriculum... in fact, in many sections, it's intentionally NOT what is in the curriculum.

Comment Re:Educational Problems (Score 1) 629

I agree that the information should be available. Transparency is important.

However, with the abysmal state of science reporting in the mainstream press, the LA Times is likely to misinterpret the numbers. The teachers are right when they question the validity of the tests--will the Times be running any disclaimers of the limitations of their findings? Will the "value-added" calculation be published for peer review? Even if LA Times does everything right, some other newspaper in another city will try to do the same thing and make a hash of the numbers. (I guess I just don't trust journalists with science; they routinely get it wrong).

We really should be looking at designing tests with more validity for assessing this sort of thing. Before we can even do that we need to form some sort of consensus as a society as to what a "well educated" citizen even looks like in the 21st century. The tests are determining the curriculum rather than the other way around--and no, the teachers' union has nothing to do with that problem.

Comment Re:Alternate solution (Score 4, Insightful) 1139

How you're modded "Troll" is beyond me.

Perhaps the moderator should have posted a dissenting view instead. I recommend something like "Fifty years from now, your van will be long gone and its replacement replaced by other vans, but those tracks, built once, would still be in service and paying energy dividends."

Comment Re:SHOCKING! (Score 1) 711

This was a while back, but I remember recess in my first week of middleschool - 5th grade. A bunch of us wanted to play tag or something, but a teacher/supervisor stopped us and told us we weren't to run anymore, we're too old for that game. The rest of middleschool recess was like that, the one consistent time of day to get out our frustrations we were reduced to walking like any other intermission between class periods. Strange rule though, because we had Gym, and dodgeball is just a form of tag with a ball and slightly different rule (tag, you're out! instead of tag, you're it!)...

That may be the saddest thing I've ever read--particularly since my PhD research is on the developmental effects of play. Running and rough play is one way that children condition themselves to suppress impulsive behavior. Forcing kids to be sedate for longer than is developmentally appropriate is making the attention problem worse. It messes with brain development.

Comment Re:Sigh again (Score 1) 711

I agree, but I don't think there will ever be an objective threshold between normal distractibility and pathology. It's always going to be a judgement call of how much it interferes with everyday life.

The problem is with the schools creating a curriculum that isn't developmentally appropriate. Placing preschoolers in kindergarten, kindergartners in first grade, and so on, means that kids never get the developmental experience of learning to suppress their own impulses (something that happens in early childhood during unstructured physical activity). They don't get that foundation and then we have to compensate for it later medically.
(I know, [citation needed]? The experts in this area are Kathy Hirsh-Pasek, Roberta Golinkoff, and Dorothy Singer.)

Slashdot Top Deals

People who go to conferences are the ones who shouldn't.

Working...