- luv-talk - luv.asn.au

Gonski
by Tim Josling 17 Jun '13

17 Jun '13

As background... I recently visited my old high school. They have the same staff levels that they had when I was there, but less than half the students. The outcomes are worse however. Gang activity is now a problem. This is consistent with figures I have seen across the board of a doubling of per student real spending since I left school, while outcomes have deteriorated. Can someone enlighten me about the rationale of the Gonski reforms? I got onto the government's web site http://www.betterschools.gov.au/ and tried to derive some content from what is mostly PR hackery. What I managed to glean was: * More money will be directed to underprivileged students, with the objective of achieving more uniform outcomes across the social classes. * More detailed policy direction ("uniform standards") and reporting to Canberra (referred to as "accountability"). * Numerous mandates such as Asian languages; each school must be paired to a school in Asia, each school must have detailed policies about bullying, each student must have a "reading plan" etc. * A more politicized process for selection of trainee teachers (eg based on interviews and assessment of applicants' "community involvement"). * Make it harder to become a teacher by requiring more training initially (and ongoing), although there are some nods in the direction of providing more assistance to beginning teachers. * Teachers may **optionally** be assessed in part based on student performance but it seems this will generally not happen. Some of these policies may seem plausible but in social policy plausible solutions often produce no results, and often make things worse ("drugs are harmful so let's ban them"). Most notably, attempts to level the social classes by spending more on disadvantaged students - above a very moderate level - have consistently produced minuscule outcomes. As I suggested above, throwing money at the problem has been a miserable failure in the past, yet we seem to be embarking on an exercise of "if it doesn't work, then do even more of it ". In all my reading on the topic over the years, the one thing that seems to matter in student outcomes, once you factor in the student cohort, is teacher quality, specifically intelligence. Class sizes, within a fairly wide range, don't seem to make much difference (though they do affect teacher workloads). Yet teacher quality, including getting rid of under-performing teachers, is conspicuously absent from the agenda. There is no mention of paying teachers in in-demand fields more and trying to get a higher quality applicant. Can anyone reassure me that my hard earned tax dollars are being spent wisely here? Tim Josling

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Re: [luv-talk] Gonski
by Petros 17 Jun '13

17 Jun '13

From: "Russell Coker" <russell(a)coker.com.au> > I think that a large part of the solution to the current situation is in > removing some students from the regular school system. I'm sure > that everyone > here went to school with some kids who never had a chance of going to > university and probably weren't going to pass year 12. Having such students > in school only make things worse for everyone else. The "separation of kids" is one of the main differences between my upbringing in East Germany (where more or less all kids stay together until year 10) and the West German (and now in all of Germany) where most states separate kids after year 4, in three different school systems. To end up in the "low end school" (Hauptschule) is more or less the entry ticket to a failed life. There you have "no future kids". Why bother to learn? Take your drugs and learn for an underworld career. The selection is only partially based on merits. Everybody knows that well-off parents have more means to ensure their kids avoid these kind of schools even if they are not that bright. And the kid with he black fingernails is more likely to be there even if it's smarter than the rich one. Yes, having all kids learning together has some downsides but it has upsides too. School is social education too, and it is good to know how other people fare in life, what there problems are etc. Social separation happens anyway, by location, and the last years of houseprice explosion will speed up this process. Personally, I enjoy to see my kids growing up with a positive attitude. As most Australian kids do, I believe. I haven't seen many 12 years old who already feel that they are "the leftover" of a society that doesn't need them. That is good for everyone. It makes living in Australia a pleasant experience. My daughter learns in a public college, in a SEAL program (selected entry accelerated learning). The separation is much less intrusive than separation by school, and it seems to be the best of two worlds for her: an inclusive school and a challenging, stimulating learning environment. These facilities are there for all kids, not just the SEAL classes, as art curses, sport hall, science labs etc. BTW: The inclusive Australian education system fares better in international comparisons than the separating German one. Regards Peter

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Demuxing an MPEG TS from a USB PVR where the TS is prefixed with invalid data
by Anthony Hogan 16 Jun '13

16 Jun '13

Hi all, I have a TV which has a built in USB record feature (which basically dumps DVB-T MPEG TS in 2GB chunks). I'd like to pull the audio track out of something I recorded. VLC happily plays the file and identifies the video, audio and EPG info in the transport stream, but if, for example, I run: avconv -i ... -acodec copy audio.mp3 ... I end up with about 2 seconds of silence. It seems there's a couple of dummy streams and also that the overall file is prefixed with what looks like null garbage. I know that if vlc can play it, there's gotta be a way of extracting it, but must admit that I haven't had any luck thus far. Any ideas on recommended tools for stubborn MPEG TS demuxing? Anthony

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Re: [luv-talk] hipsters vs geeks
by Tim Josling 16 Jun '13

16 Jun '13

On Sun, Jun 16, 2013 at 12:00 PM, <luv-talk-request(a)lists.luv.asn.au> wrote: >> From: Rick Moen <rick(a)linuxmafia.com> >> Subject: Re: [luv-talk] hipsters vs geeks > I was told by two people who claim to remember the 60s, (I do myself, but I was an mis-(in)formed child then), that in Australia "Hippies" were called "Freaks". I read somewhere that many in the rest of the world used that term for themselves too. They felt "Hippies" was a mainstream media label as (proto-hippies?) E.g. in the Crosby Stills Nash and Young song "Almost cut my hair" referring to "letting my freak flag fly" (ie his long hair). http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u4YpqRPLIWc >And Malcolm Muggeridge said he had seen the 60s before, except then it was called the 20s. 20s nostalgia is apparently taking off right now due to another "The Great Gatsby" movie but will likely be over way before the 2020s. The similarities were almost uncanny, such as authors like Herman Hesse who were recycled with great enthusiasm. Tim Josling

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Your Last Rights
by Lev Lafayette 16 Jun '13

16 Jun '13

Something that people may be attending; a small meeting with Dr. Rodney Syme, former president and lifelong worker for "Dying with Dignity Victoria" The meeting will be held next on Saturday June 22nd at 18:00 at the at the Melbourne Unitarian Church, 110 Grey Street. East Melbourne, June 22nd. Dr. Rodney Syme, will speak on "Legislative Requirements and Impediments to Our Last Rights" DWDV promotes the right for a mentally competent, terminally ill adult with intolerable suffering to choose whether to persevere or to ask a doctor for assistance to die peacefully. Current Victorian law denies the sufferer that right to choose, despite the overwhelming majority of Victorians wanting that choice for more than 25 years. DWDV's legislative charter specifies that the form of requested assistance given to terminally ill sufferers to die peacefully is to provide an oral dose of medication that the patient may consume voluntarily. This is physician assisted dying (PAD). In order to maximise safeguards, DWDV's legislative charter does not embrace the broader approach where a doctor administers a lethal dose to the sufferer by injection. A 1997 professional study published in the Australian medical literature showed that nearly 1 in 50 deaths is already physician assisted dying; but these doctors risk prosecution as the intention to shorten life is illegal, regardless of the patient's circumstances. The law is opaque, depending on the ability to establish "intention" or not of shortening life. In about 5% of terminal cases, palliative care simply is unable to provide relief from intolerable suffering (e.g., motor neuron disease, asbestosis, spinal cancer). A real consequence of lack of choice to die in a dignified manner with medical assistance is that some sufferers attempt to take their own lives anyway while they believe they still can, often by violent and undignified means. (Information from Dying With Dignity Victoria, http://www.dwdv.org.au/FAQs.html) The meeting has been organised by the Victorian Secular Lobby, Inc. For the Right to Life Victoria point of view see: Assisted suicide the path to Nazism: Right to Life http://www.theage.com.au/victoria/assisted-suicide-the-path-to-nazism-right… http://www.righttolife.com.au/index.php/life-issues/euthanasia -- Lev Lafayette, BA (Hons), MBA, GCertPM mobile: 0432 255 208 RFC 1855 Netiquette Guidelines http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc1855.txt

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hipsters vs geeks
by Russell Coker 16 Jun '13

16 Jun '13

http://www.youtube.com/v/f3xe-Wxio1o Interesting Youtube video. Note that this is the form to download with youtube-dl. -- My Main Blog http://etbe.coker.com.au/ My Documents Blog http://doc.coker.com.au/

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Re: [luv-talk] charity....oops
by Rohan McLeod 15 Jun '13

15 Jun '13

Andrew Spiers wrote: >> ...........snip >> no legislative requirement >> for a charity to reveal how much of one's donation will actually go to >> the child ...........snip > Reputable ones disclose this information. > http://www.msf.org.au/donate/what-your-donations-help-us-achieve/how-your-d… > Well I stand corrected; I will certainly be more inclined to give to MSF .now that I know only 12% is retained; I wonder why charities don't advertise it more prominently ? Another issue I find is that there seems to be a preference for a 'monthly commitment ', rather than a one-off donation.....discouraging to us commitment -phobes ! regards Rohan McLeod

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charity
by Russell Coker 15 Jun '13

15 Jun '13

http://tinyurl.com/d3jnmqt The above TED blog post has an interview with Dan Pallotta about entrepreneurial charitable organisations. The idea that instead of just giving almost all their money to the cause a charity can invest some in advertising and staff to get more donations for a bigger end result. http://blog.ted.com/2013/03/01/effective-altruism-peter-singer-at-ted2013/ The above TED blog post has an overview of Peter Singer's TED talk about effective altruism. Among other things he asks whether failing to donate to a charity to save a child's life is equivalent to walking past a child dying in the street and doing nothing. Of course a problem with that analogy is that many people will walk past someone dying in the street. -- My Main Blog http://etbe.coker.com.au/ My Documents Blog http://doc.coker.com.au/

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be as generous as Bill Gates
by Russell Coker 14 Jun '13

14 Jun '13

http://tinyurl.com/lo35nnt Interesting article about Bill Gates on philanthropy, tax, etc. # On the topic of tech giants being accused of setting up tax avoidance # schemes, Mr Gates said he was "one of those rare people who is actually for # taxes". He said he has paid a total of $US6 billion in tax. # "I feel like the services I get from the government are extremely # worthwhile," Mr Gates said. # Mr Gates said if one was to objectively look at what foreign aid had been # able to achieve then they “would never accuse it of creating a dependency". # "Having children not die is not creating a dependency, having children not # be so sick they can't go to school, not having enough nutrition so their # brains don't develop. That is not a dependency. That's an evil thing and # books like that - they're promoting evil," he said. Dear Libertarians, please try and be as generous as Bill. -- My Main Blog http://etbe.coker.com.au/ My Documents Blog http://doc.coker.com.au/

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Sysadmin's dilemma - RE: be as generous as Bill Gates
by Pidgorny, Slav (GEUS) 14 Jun '13

14 Jun '13

G'day - > -----Original Message----- > > - Windows sysadmins are cheap, abundant, and ineffective. > > - Unix sysadmins are expensive, rare, and effective. > > This is true, but even more so *nix systems don't fall over as often. > > It's the classic sysadmin's dilemma. MS-Windows admins are running around > like headless chooks trying to put out brush fires caused by poor choice of > operating system, whereas *nix admins don't look like they have to work > very hard at all - because the problems are fewer and easier to fix (giving > them more time to deal with even more complex problems). > >From where I am I have seen many examples that are contrary to your stereotypes. And what exactly is the dilemma - to be effective or ineffective, or cheap or not? Regards Slav "This e-mail and any attachments to it (the "Communication") is, unless otherwise stated, confidential, may contain copyright material and is for the use only of the intended recipient. If you receive the Communication in error, please notify the sender immediately by return e-mail, delete the Communication and the return e-mail, and do not read, copy, retransmit or otherwise deal with it. Any views expressed in the Communication are those of the individual sender only, unless expressly stated to be those of Australia and New Zealand Banking Group Limited ABN 11 005 357 522, or any of its related entities including ANZ Bank New Zealand Limited (together "ANZ"). ANZ does not accept liability in connection with the integrity of or errors in the Communication, computer virus, data corruption, interference or delay arising from or in respect of the Communication."

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