trivialscene - Slashdot User

Kodak Kills Kodachrome 399

Posted by timothy on Monday June 22, 2009 @03:41PM from the and-try-to-find-tri-x-pan dept.

eldavojohn writes "Another sign that digital cameras are slowly phasing out analog comes with Kodak's announcement to discontinue Kodachrome film. This should come as no surprise as Polaroid film was phased out long ago. At least the analog photography industry knows how to change with the times."

The Art of The Farewell Email 703

Posted by samzenpus on Monday February 23, 2009 @01:01PM from the so-long-suckers dept.

With so many people losing their jobs, the farewell email, letting colleagues and contacts know where you are moving and how you can be reached, has become common. Writing a really good one, whether it be funny, sad or just plain mad is an art form. Chris Kula, a receptionist at a New York engineering firm, wrote: "For nearly as long as I've worked here, I've hoped that I might one day leave this company. And now that this dream has become a reality, please know that I could not have reached this goal without your unending lack of support." In May, lawyer Shinyung Oh was let go from the San Francisco branch of the Paul Hastings law firm six days after losing a baby. "If this response seems particularly emotional," she wrote to the partners, "perhaps an associate's emotional vulnerability after a recent miscarriage is a factor you should consider the next time you fire or lay someone off. It shows startlingly poor judgment and management skills — and cowardice — on your parts." Let's hear the best and worst goodbye emails you've seen.

House Ransacked Thanks to Craigslist Hoax 4

Posted by samzenpus on Wednesday March 26, 2008 @12:16PM

A Craigslist hoax has left Robert Salisbury with an empty house and a lot of anger. The Craigslist ad said the owner of a Jacksonville home was forced to leave the area suddenly and his belongings, including a horse, were free. After receiving a call from a woman who was about to take his horse, Robert returned home to find close to 30 people armed with printouts of the ad, rummaging through his barn and front porch. "They honestly thought that because it appeared on the Internet it was true, it boggles the mind", Salisbury said. Although many of his things have been returned already, Robert is selling plans for a water engine online to help recoup some of what he is out.

Man Hides Castle Behind Hay Bales

Posted by samzenpus on Tuesday January 29, 2008 @03:26PM

A UK farmer built an entire mock castle and kept it hidden behind bales of hay for 4 years to avoid building regulations. The builder wants to take advantage of a provision of planning law that allows buildings without planning permission to be declared legal if no objections have been made after four years. The county council is not happy and is moving their mock seige weaponry towards the farm.

Comment From personal experience... (Score 5, Interesting) 528

by trivialscene on Thursday August 31, 2006 @05:53PM (#16019621) Attached to: Continued Opposition To Laptops in Schools

Last year I taught at a private high school that required all of its students to purchase laptops. At first I thought it sounded like a great idea; how cutting-edge. But before the year was over, I came to see the whole program as a waste of the parents' and the school's money.

The issue isn't really anything from the technical end. IT had WebSense up and running, which blocked anything they deemed inappropriate for anyone connecting to the school's wireless (nevermind the few students who found ways around this). And IT could monitor what each computer logged into the system was up to at any point in time. They kept a record, so if a teacher suspected a student of doing anything unacceptable, but didn't want to make a big deal about it during class, all it took was an email: "What was Johnny doing between 1:15 and 1:30? Oh, playing a game? Thanks." And the next day the kid would get detention. As TripMaster Monkey said, a competent IT staff solved all of the problems from that end.

The issue is why is the program worthwhile? In what way does the education of the students become more successful by requiring their parents to spend xxxx dollars on a laptop for each of their children? And is it worth the hassle to the school's IT people?

Some might argue that it helps develop the students' computer skills. I'm not sure about national statistics, but I can assure you that every one of my students had at least one computer in their home. And trust me; they knew how to use it. Toting a laptop around campus all day didn't make them better users.

I have also heard arguments that each student having a computer affords for excellent instructional opportunities beyond the standard lecture and note-taking approach. Of course this is true, but I would have much rather had a projector in my room (which I did not) so that I could show visual aids from my computer. They are many ways to reach out to students with different learning styles and to make class more exciting that don't require every single child to have a laptop. And many ways that are less expensive.

In addition to the burden on IT of keeping up with the above-mentioned 'security measures', they had to employ one guy who did nothing but repair laptops (or send them off to be replaced) five days a week. That was his entire job. I've seen more laptops in multiple pieces, with broken/missing keys, and with cracked screens than I can count. Children in grade school do not need to be held responsible for keeping a laptop in running order. The average fifteen-year-old can barely be help responsible for walking across the room without tripping over his own feet. High school students rough house, drop things, are clumsy, are forgetful (I would never dream of leaving my computer on a bench for two hours), and just generally are not prepared to take care of these expensive pieces of equipment.

Most importantly, I know of very few teachers who in any way used the laptop capability regularly in their class. Some teachers forbid the students from using their computers during class, probably to reduce unacceptable use. I never had any problems with in-class laptop use because I taught physics and I don't know many people that can keep pace note-taking with that much mathematical notation (and 98% of the students couldn't type fast enough to keep pace in history class, either...so much for the 'saves paper from note-taking' argument), so if a laptop was out while I was teaching, knew someone was up to no good. The only time the computers ever saw the light of day in my room is when I didn't want to start on a new subject for the last five minutes of class, so I would let the kids work on WebAssign homework. As for lab data analysis, the upper-end TI's that all of the students had could do everything I needed, and if they couldn't, it's nothing that couldn't be done at home.

My point is: mandatory laptop programs in grade school have a short list of benefits which is overwhelmed by the subsequent detriments. The (questionable) honing of computer skills and introduction of new (seldom-used) teaching tools does not outweigh the cost to everyone involved and hassle to the IT group.

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