Code.org Documentary Serving Multiple Agendas? 226
theodp writes "'Someday, and that day may never come,' Don Corleone says famously in The Godfather, 'I'll call upon you to do a service for me.' Back in 2010, filmmaker Lesley Chilcott produced Waiting for 'Superman', a controversial documentary that analyzed the failures of the American public education system, and presented charter schools as a glimmer of hope, including the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation-backed KIPP Los Angeles Prep. Gates himself was a 'Superman' cast member, lamenting how U.S. public schools are producing 'American Idiots' of no use to high tech firms like Microsoft, forcing them to 'go half-way around the world to recruit the engineers and programmers they needed.' So some found it strange that when Chilcott teamed up with Gates again three years later to make Code.org's documentary short What Most Schools Don't Teach, kids from KIPP Empower Academy were called upon to demonstrate that U.S. schoolchildren are still clueless about what computer programmers do. In a nice coincidence, the film went viral just as leaders of Google, Microsoft, and Facebook pressed President Obama and Congress on immigration reform, citing a dearth of U.S. programming talent. And speaking of coincidences, the lone teacher in the Code.org film (James, Teacher@Mount View Elementary), whose classroom was tapped by Code.org as a model for the nation's schools, is Seattle teacher Jamie Ewing, who took top honors in Microsoft's Partners in Learning (PiL) U.S. Forum last summer, earning him a spot on PiL's 'Team USA' and the chance to showcase his project at the Microsoft PiL Global Forum in Prague in November (82-page Conference Guide). Ironically, had Ewing stuck to teaching the kids Scratch programming, as he's shown doing in the Code.org documentary, Microsoft wouldn't have seen fit to send him to its blowout at 'absolutely amazingly beautiful' Prague Castle. Innovative teaching, at least according to Microsoft's rules, 'must include the use of one or more Microsoft technologies.' Fortunately, Ewing's project — described in his MSDN guest blog post — called for using PowerPoint and Skype. For the curious, here's Microsoft PiL's vision of what a classroom should be."
Exquisite Use(overuse) Of Hyper Text (Score:5, Funny)
The near excessive use of hypertext in this article is precisely how HTML was envisioned to be.
It's beautiful. /sniff
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Aw come on! So, the OP provided a lot of links and citations. This is supposed to be a good thing. If the underlines on the text are too difficult for you, then change your browser options.
Re:Exquisite Use(overuse) Of Hyper Text (Score:4, Insightful)
Aw come on! So, the OP provided a lot of links and citations.
But at the expense of clarity. I have read it twice, and I still don't understand what he is trying to say. Does a discussion about education really need a link to the dialog of a movie about the mafia? Many of the other links are just as pointless.
Re:Exquisite Use(overuse) Of Hyper Text (Score:5, Interesting)
code.org is run by microsoft to promote microsoft products to little kids with government money, and to make sure kids grow up with microsoft approved coding habbits and ideas about programming, before they find alterantives.
They are also trying to put a postive spin on outsourcing tech jobs to foriegners who already grew up exlcusively with the technology they gave them, to replace westerners who demand more money, and think independantly.
This is all helped by a whole host of corporate artists, celebrities, and other proffesional astro-turfers.
Re:Exquisite Use(overuse) Of Hyper Text (Score:4, Informative)
WTF? I'm gonna assume this was intended to be funny, but it's sitting at +3 Interesting
1) Code.org is not run by microsoft. It's a non-profit founded by Hadi Partovi [crunchbase.com]
2) Code.org doesn't promote microsoft coding habits. I can't actually find any microsoft languages on their site.
3) I'm not cetain who "they" refers to in the 3rd sentence, but Code.org doesn't have anything to say about outsourcing tech jobs. If it's referring to Microsoft, then Facebook, Yahoo, Google, Cisco and Intel also signed the letter [scribd.com] requesting an overhaul of the tech visa system
4) westerners who...think independently. Yep, that's some pretty "independent" thinking thinking you've got going there. It's so independent, it may form it's own little country with a flag and national anthem.
5) This is all helped by a whole host of corporate artists, celebrities, and other proffesional astro-turfers. Huh?
Sadly, as bat-sh-t crazy as your description was...it still made more sense than the article.
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Re:Exquisite Use(overuse) Of Hyper Text (Score:5, Funny)
I... don't know where... to click... first...
(keels over)
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The near excessive use of hypertext in this article is precisely how HTML was envisioned to be.
It's beautiful. /sniff
Sir Tim thanks you, but says it would be even better if you threw him another 200 kilo-quid, like HM Liz2 did.
In English (Score:4, Funny)
Can you translate this to English, Spanish, American or some language humans speak? I'm pretty sure it's valid HTML, but WTF?
Re:In English (Score:5, Insightful)
kids are as good as the parents make them (Score:5, Insightful)
i have a kid in a NYC public school. one of the best elementary schools in the city. i also talk to people who have kids in other schools or work in other schools.
the curriculum is the same. the kids are not.
in my school the kindergarten kids at a minimum know the alphabet on the first day of kindergarten. most of the kids in my son's class already know how to read simple books when they come in to kindergarten. by the end of kindergarten all the kids in my son's school are expected to read Scholastic Level F books
i have talked to people and there are first graders in some schools who don't know the alphabet.
if you want smart kids, make them smart. some days my five year old only watches documentaries on netflix and no cartoons.
Re:kids are as good as the parents make them (Score:5, Funny)
Do they teach proper capitalization in your son's kindergarten?
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Just because the Son is going to a great school doesn't mean the Parent did. His inability to use capitalization may be the driving force behind putting his kid in a good school.
I agree with what he's saying though... you need to encourage your kid to do things that stimulate the brain. Reading is the time-honored classic but is from from the only mentally stimulating activity that kids might enjoy.
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"I am unable to start my sentences with a capital letter, because I went to a crappy school!"
Now there's some ironic mind-numbing apologism for you.
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That whooshing you just heard was the joke flying over your head.
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I don't know, man. I wouldn't be surprised if SJHillman was dead serious.
If not, then:
Ha.
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Re:The 'S' Is Capitalized (Score:5, Funny)
Do they teach proper capitalization in your son's kindergarten?
Suck my dick.
From what I hear in the news, they do teach that in public schools.
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Just use proper sentence case and stop being some kind of bitchy linguistic rebel.
You obviously have no problem in finding the shift key and even a five year old can understand the rule 'start every sentence with a capital letter'.
Alternatively, accept that people are going to poke fun at your style of writing.
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Alternatively, accept that people are going to poke fun at your style of writing.
Also accept that you may be denied credit and/or pay higher interest rates. Credit agencies have found that people with poor grammar are bad credit risks. [economist.com] There is an especially strong correlation with typing in either ALL CAPS, or all lower case. Several companies already monitor social media and collect data.
There is also a secondary effect: If many of your friends, especially those you communicate with frequently, use bad grammar, then you are likely to be a bad credit risk as well.
Re:kids are as good as the parents make them (Score:4, Insightful)
yep.
I went through several different public schools (family moved a lot). I found that the brightness of the students, and reputation/"quality" of the school, had more to do with their parents than the school. Some areas had demographics where the students were taught by their parents they couldn't expect to do more than flip burgers at McGhetto, or if they were lucky, become managers. Other schools, with similar quality teaching, had parents who taught their kids that they could make something of their life, with an education.
The thing about private/charter schools is that they require an effort to join them - that right there makes them self-selecting against bad parents. Not always, I have some friends that went to a mediocre charter school, that didn't teach evolution (which is the sole reason why some parents sent them there, not for concerns about other aspects of quality of education), and others who went to some of the better charter schools (they do teach evolution, or at least didn't put a point on avoiding it).
Yep, anecdotal, but there seem to be a lot of others that have noticed this. The problem isn't the schools, it's the parents.
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... some areas had demographics where the students were taught by their parents they couldn't expect to do more than flip burgers at McGhetto, or if they were lucky, become managers. Other schools, with similar quality teaching, had parents who taught their kids that they could make something of their life, with an education.
I tell my kids the latter, but is it lying if you tell them something that only used to be true?
Re:kids are as good as the parents make them (Score:5, Interesting)
You're aware that teen pregnancies in the United States are down 41% since 1990, right?
Or that 48% of US families contain at least one multi-generational adult (blowing your whole "Single woman only" idea out of the water?)
http://www.pewsocialtrends.org/2010/03/18/the-return-of-the-multi-generational-family-household/ [pewsocialtrends.org]
26% of children live with one parent. If you're going to single out that trend as being generally responsible for the decline of American...everything,despite the fact that it's a minority of total family arrangements, you really ought to highlight the fact that of that 26^% group, 26% of *them* are being raised by fathers, while 74% are raised by their mothers. You pour out plenty of vitriol on those "selfish" single women, but don't even blink at the selfish men who are raising kids on their own.
As I see it, you've got two options: Revise your previous post to be equally offensive, stupid, and insulting to both women and men, or adopt an opinion that reflects objective reality and requires a basic grasp of math.
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Its not very likely that the *entire* problem is teen pregnancies after all.
NONE of the problem is teen pregnancies. There is no causal relationship between having a teen mother and doing poorly in school. There is a strong correlation, but that does not imply causality. When you correct for the IQ of the parents, the correlation disappears. The problem is that stupid people are very likely to both have stupid kids [wikipedia.org] and to do so while they are still teenagers. Later children borne by those same mothers do just as poorly as the first, despite the fact that their mother was no lo
Re:kids are as good as the parents make them (Score:4, Interesting)
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Agreed! My Mom always says that nobody will fucking care if you put it on the resume that you were walking when you turned 10 months old, talking in full sentences by 15th month, and reading before you turned three. I have some fairly prodigious friends who were early readers. They are extremely good in their fields but are somewhat mediocre parents, for example -- we always feel a bit sorry for their kid when they visit. Their jobs are in humanities so the pay isn't all that great, but at least they seem t
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My two cousins, raised by an aunt who didn't prioritize education, couldn't read at that age either. One is an A student in college, the other was a C student but he at least made it through a 1 year motorcycle mechanic curriculum. I don't have any stats on early reading, but I don't imagine it matters much after a few years (assuming that you're getting a good education).
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There was a study done about reading skills in later grades in various European countries. This is complicated somewhat by the variety of languages involved, but Norway came out on top, and AFAIK Norwegian is not much different from other Germanic languages. The interesting part is that in Norway they don't even start teaching reading until kids are 7 - later than any of the other countries.
Sometimes I think this whole "my kid learned to read at 4" stuff is like making a seal balance a ball on the end of
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Your example shows how hard it is to figure out what works and what doesn't.
Here's a "counter"example (I say "counter" in that that doesn't invalidate yours): my kid went through the German system. German schools rank much higher than US schools on the PISA international comparison. Vorschule (in the US, called kindergarden) was still devoted to playing, socialising, napping etc. His class was not expected to even learn the alphabet until the first day of the first grade. But by the end of the calendar
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Vorschule (in the US, called kindergarden)
Kindergarten (German for "child's garden") isn't called kindergarten in Germany? I love it!
still devoted to playing, socialising, napping etc. His class was not expected to even learn the alphabet until the first day of the first grade.
Same as when I went to school in the US - I majored in story time and eating paste. Yet we're told that US schools have gone downhill since then. This "teach 'em calculus in kindergarten" thing is designed to make it look like schools are improving, not to actually improve education. Frankly a lot of grade school, and even later grades, are filled with make work to keep the kids busy and appear industrious. I think th
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Kindergarten (German for "child's garden") isn't called kindergarten in Germany? I love it!
In Germany, "Kindergarten" refers to what is known as nursery school or preschool in the USA. "Vorschule" is literally "pre school" or "preceeds school" as the first day of the first grade is celebrated as the kid's first day of school.
Interestingly I just read that it was german immigrants to the east coast who introduced the idea of institutionalised learning before 1st grade to US schooling, back in the progressive era (early 20th century).
Frankly a lot of grade school, and even later grades, are filled with make work to keep the kids busy and appear industrious
Yeah, I'm amused when educators and politicians proclaim that cu
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some days my five year old only watches documentaries on netflix and no cartoons.
sound familiar all i watched as a little kid was bill nye the science guy and batman
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when you are a 5 year old who has seen blizzards, hurricanes and has had a tornado pass over his home then maybe he gets curious as to why and how these things happen
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the problem with home schooling is the instructors
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They are the way they are due to systemic, endemic racism in America.
Sure there is racism and racial disparities, but there are also lots of predominantly white low achieving schools. Racism is far from the whole answer.
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messy... (Score:5, Funny)
What a crapton of links in an article.... i have no idea what the point was either.
i guess i'll just go with the standard WE HATE MICROSOFT.
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craptons are what you find when you don't find leptons
Come on -- is anyone surprized here (Score:3, Insightful)
How could anyone find it surprising that a corporation is promoting use of it's own products. Please. Actually, Microsoft's got a couple of good products that I've used and been happy with. One's Microsoft Lync which we use at work to do messaging, desktop sharing etc. I just wished there was a linux client for the thing. It would make my life much better.
I'm Linux/Unix guy for a living but I do admit Microsoft makes some reasonable products. I wish the corporate lock-in was not as bad as it is and I wish they published docs documenting all their file formats for interoperability. They have made some strides in the last couple of years.
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I was unaware that the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation develops software. How does their OS stack up against Windows?
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the point being? (Score:2)
there's no conspiracy (Score:4, Interesting)
it's up to us.
we're the ones who will provide the protocols that would permit the sorts of activities mentioned here to take place in a non-proprietary manner. sure, companies like microsoft seek to dominate their markets, and view lock-in one of the available tools. that's because we let them. we as a society have set up companies to be driven entirely by profit, and have not arranged our legal system to distinguish between proprietary and open systems.
look at tcp/ip, the single most successful open standard in the universe. it didn't just spring fully formed and without peers - there was lots of competition. it won because a few of the companies (and educational institutions and even government) found ways to make it into a world-scale protocol. companies get it if you say "interop is a non-negotiable precondition to purchase". government rightly gets involved not only as significant sales targets themselves, but also when they say (or should), that any utility-type monopolies granted must conform to non-proprietary standards.
imagine if mobile data service was non-proprietary: your phone simply negotiated a 5 minute service contract with the set of carriers it could detect at the moment, wherever you happen to be. (voice and text would simply layer over data, of course.) yes, that sort of thing is obvious to any techie as The Right Way, but it's our fault that the public has gone along the proprietary route: we need to speak up.
business tries to get away with whatever it can - that's just economic darwinism. we just need to set the rules.
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imagine if mobile data service was non-proprietary: your phone simply negotiated a 5 minute service contract with the set of carriers it could detect at the moment, wherever you happen to be. (voice and text would simply layer over data, of course.) yes, that sort of thing is obvious to any techie as The Right Way, but it's our fault that the public has gone along the proprietary route: we need to speak up.
There's precedence for this. Imagine that every broadcast system, AM, FM and TV used it's own frequencies and protocols. If you wanted to watch CBS you'd need a different TV from the one that watches ABC. Exclusive deals would be made, and some TVs could receive NBC, FOX and ABC, but some would only receive independents. That's what's happening with Internet TV right now. The thought is we're still in the shakeout phase, but once the great ideas bubble to the top, everything will work. But with excl
Lots of beating around the bush (Score:2)
Just lay out your accusations directly so we can see if they're merited by the evidence. The last part of the summary seems to kind of get to the point by implying that MS's contribution and involvement with these recent PSA causes were a way to market their products. Can we get some clarification?
It seems to me that people with strong opinions will tend to do things that are consistent with those opinions. People whose opinions differ might see that consistency of action over time as an organized conspirac
Re:Lots of beating around the bush (Score:4, Informative)
He's saying that a lot of this "U.S. schools are awful, just awful" stuff is propaganda, funded by U.S. tech firms in an effort to import more H1B-visa indentured servants to save money.
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Oddly enough US schools seem good enough to get high school graduates into the top tier universities and colleges yet the same graduates
Only some of them, and what exactly do they accomplish after that? Even if they go on to these places, there is a very likely chance that they don't go with a true understanding of math, science, or pretty much anything that requires a little bit of thought put into it. I'd say most of the ones who don't simply fail at these universities and colleges (and not all colleges or universities are good, either) probably have to actually learn to understand the concepts, and not just memorize information.
Re:Lots of beating around the bush (Score:4, Insightful)
"US schools are awful" is mostly being said by people who have friends investing or running charter schools. Follow the money.
Innovative my ass (Score:4, Insightful)
Innovative teaching, at least according to Microsoft's rules, 'must include the use of one or more Microsoft technologies.'
This is no surprise, whether it's a requirement of theirs or not, it sure seems to be standard practice. It causes big problems though, people running the program, like those in charge of the department of computer science at my school, come to push MS products for everything and pigeon hole students into the MS technologies. It's amazing just how many students there are that have used MS all their lives, but are still inept at using even the Windows command line, FSM forbid that you present them with anything else. Innovative teaching of technology in grade school - university should involve a variety of technologies and platforms, especially in secondary education.
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Back in high school it was MS DOS, Novell Netware and Borland Pascal. These days it may well be MS Windows, MS CIFS/SMB, and MS Visual Studio. The consolidation of power is a bit scary, that's true.
Everything is okay. (Score:2)
The kids in the public education system might turn out to be pretty decent Jeopardy players; that is, if they don't forget everything they 'learned' a year after graduating from high school...
There are insufficient programmers (Score:3)
available to work for $20,000 per year.
Sure the H1B's are making similar salaries but the thousands of programmers they interface with overseas are making $15,000 per year.
The good news?
Inflation is running over 25%.
I understand and agree that brilliant genius level programmers are rare and there won't be enough available in the U.S. But that's not a matter of schooling and training.
I worked directly with Infosys programmers from 2000-2013. In 2003, they were mostly masters degree candidates working in bachelor degree jobs. Today, they are mostly sub bachelor's degree candidates working in bachelor's degree jobs. The good 2003 programmers are all managers and executives now in infosys for the most part.
That level of programmer is available in the U.S.
The challenge is this: It is bloody hard to hire people. We spent 16 interviews over 5 months to get 2 positions filled. A company dedicated to IT can turn "on" 2 programmers almost instantly and it can also turn them "off" almost instantly (with no unemployment benefits). So a company like Infosys is like electric or gas or any other utility.
The problem being that infosys discriminates terribly. One hint, they require your high school graduation date on your resume. And that's just the start.
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brilliant genius level CEOs are also rare, but that doesn't stop the morons from getting ridiculous salaries and severance (HP, I'm looking at you)
how long has it been? (Score:2)
It seems they've been complaining about 'the dearth' for long enough now that if they were actually serious about solving the problem, those who were in pre-school when the complaining started would have Bachelor and Master degrees in CS by now...
Don't blame the education system (Score:3)
They've been operating on a shoestring budget since as long as I can remember. Shit wages make for shit teachers. Stop paying Administration with 6-digit salaries and distribute the difference among the staff and things will improve. Gates is a two-faced jackwagon blaming a systematically hamstrug public educational system that all his buddies want privatized.
Oh, and the reason Corporations go overseas for outsourcing is the H1B visa money, not talent. They couldn't give two shits about talent as long as someone is there to answer the support line.
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Regardless of any budget problems, throwing more money at schools isn't going to fix the problem of useless standardized tests that test only for rote memorization. And that's just one problem.
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You stop paying these administrators 6-digit salaries and you get 5-digit quality administrators.
Terrible Article (Score:2)
There is so much wrong with this summary, I don't even know where to begin:
- Did the poster just learn about hyperlinks? The posting looks like the time my 3 year old got into my wife's makeup
- Did we need hyperlinks to items like Don Careleone's quote? The venue of the Partner's in learning conference? A picture of James Ewing standing in front of a trifold?
- ti;dr; too incoherent, didn't read. The posting seems to be a bunch of ramblings attempting to draw connections between the Gates foundation,
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Re:There is no shortage of American talent (Score:4, Interesting)
Gates was lucky but he's also a really smart guy.
Really? Whenever I read stuff about Microsoft's early years, it seems like Paul Allen was the smart guy.
You know, the guy Gates and Ballmer forced out in the 80s when he had cancer?
Re:There is no shortage of American talent (Score:4, Interesting)
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Exactly. Why does being evil imply being stupid? Has he never heard of evil geniuses?
It's not that evil is implying stupidity, but rather than accusations of stupidity and evilness are easy ad hominem attacks on people that are not liked. It's like how the government can both be incredibly incompetent and diabolically all controlling at the same time.
Re:There is no shortage of American talent (Score:5, Informative)
You are aware Gates was a dropout right?
He made his business based on family connections at IBM.
Re:There is no shortage of American talent (Score:5, Informative)
He dropped out of college, but because he decided to found Microsoft. He did not get kicked out, and he didn't get to Harvard by being an idiot.
Re: There is no shortage of American talent (Score:2)
He got into Harvard because he came from a rich family ... the usual connections.
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I'm sure his family connections helped. Nevertheless, he was objectively very bright. He was nearly perfect on his SATs and he wrote a "pancake" sorting algorithm that went unchallenged as "fastest" for 30 years.
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I remember reading that he completed Harvard's Math 55, which isn't a small feat even for smartest freshmen.
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The equation involves luck, effort, and smarts.
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"like when Gates bought CP/M..."
Um....No. Just plain No.
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It seems inappropriate to call the person who gave the most money to charity in the history of the world self-serving.
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Some of us believe that the way he got the money was inappropriate.
To highlight: if I gave some money I stole to charity would I be criminal or admirable?
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Depends...is your name Robin Hood?
Or Pablo Escobar?
Re:There is no shortage of American talent (Score:5, Insightful)
Depends...is your name Robin Hood?
No, señor, it's Carlos.
Mexican drug lords are often viewed as heroes because of how they bestow largess on the poor.
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My name is Inigo Montoya.
Re:There is no shortage of American talent (Score:4, Insightful)
OMG, he made a product that most people liked and bought it
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That is not all he did, and it is hard to believe you are unaware.
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Why do we have to choose. You can be both admirable and criminal. One is a legal definition, and the other an opinion on the man's morality. There are people who aren't stuck in second grade morality that know morality can be a complex determination that can vary from one person to the next.
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Nice about the "second grade morality".
Yes, you can be both. The part about stealing then donating was meant to show the issue by taking it out of the complex determination arena.
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It seems inappropriate to call the person who gave the most money to charity in the history of the world self-serving.
In the Red-Blue bipolar imaginary Fun World, perhaps.
In the real world, you can be both, either, or neither. Nothing requires that one be dependent on the other.
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No, seriously, charity is literally the definitional opposite of self-serving behavior. I understand that Gates was not the nicest man when it came to running a business, but he's said, and is on course to, divest his entire wealth into a charity with the intent of intelligently benefiting all mankind by the time he dies. I would love to hear a definition of "self-serving" that seriously allows for that.
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Rockerfeller employed private armies who murdered striking workers and their supporters. There's a decent argument that he gave to charity for the same reason ancient kings had gigantic monuments erected to themselves.
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Remind me of all the murders Gates is responsible for. I get we don't like Microsoft much.
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Owning most of the most successful software company in history?
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So it's only "real" charity when there's no strings attached?
FTFY. Nice try but the problem here is that Bill donates to a "third party" that is really working to further his and his friend's interests and always will. Their lip service is something like their primary interest is to eradicate malaria but it turns out all their buddies get rich selling nets and vaccines to third world countries. The Gates Foundation "gives" money but all that money comes right back to their friends. The Foundation gets the write off. The friends get the revenue (independent of ho
Re:Good luck being a programmer (Score:5, Funny)
I don't know about that. Everyone on /. seems to be a fuckin' critic, yet critics still have jobs.
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Being a good programmer is different from merely being a programmer, and I highly doubt most kids would turn out to be competent programmers to begin with.
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Re:Good luck being a programmer (Score:4, Interesting)
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We - several kids in my school - were taught programming in elementary school (zx spectrum, c+4/16 era) it was optional and extra-curricular but still) and in high school (where I was in a math-CS spec. class). After high school only around 20% of my class went to CS or IT related universities and jobs later. If 20% of everyone who learnt proper coding became a programmer, th
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Agreed. Pointless post. Code.org is probably irrelevant anyway as people who want to code will learn how anyway, and most other people probably don't care.
Besides coding is only the tip of the iceberg. There is a huge difference between teaching a kid how to code in school and actually writing quality code, understanding relational databases, coding for real-time transaction processing, understanding source control, having the patience to sit in front of a monitor for 8-10 hours a day, etc, etc.
Most of t
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You obviously do get the point of this /. post. I don't even understand your reply..
I guess this is about something currently relevant (or more likely, in the mass media) inside the US.. there is nothing in this article that i understand or -by extension- once came across and found relevant.
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May the Road Rise With You...
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my son had trouble with the mouse because he'd been using the tablet for years.
mice are keypunch machines
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