Florin Iucha wrote: > [ big snippage ] > > There is a saying in Latin (sorry I couldn't remember it, my high-school Latin > kinda rusted) that translates (roughly to): > "The one who Gods hate, they made him a teacher" > > Have you had any teaching experience? I have taught some computer operating/ > word processing/excel number-munging to _school teachers_ for two weeks and > believe me, it was exhausting. > > My wife taught math for a couple of weeks to childrens in grades 5-8. > > Did you _ever_ had to control 20 kids? To silence them? To persuade them to > do _anything_? The attention span of a 6 year old is under 1 minute :) Did you ever unload a box car of cedar decking in 100 degree heat? Have you ever worked 6 months of 100 hours weeks to do an emergency rebuild of a data center? Have you ever... > > Look in the supermarket for parents who can barely control their own kid. > > When you say that teachers are overpaid you don't know what are you talking > about. > > It takes special (wo)man to be a teacher. I know I couldn't. It takes a special kind of person to be a teacher, baseball player, computer programmer, ballet dancer, etc... I know I can't do three of the above. I bet most teachers can't do three of the above either. I had a teacher for a roommate for a couple of years. She left for her job about 20 minutes after I did and got home about an hour before I did. While she did her grading, etc..., I read the books I needed to keep up with the computer profession. When summer rolled around she slept in for a couple of weeks and puttered around the house, and then took a month long trip to Europe. I still went to work, and still read my books in the evening. Our pay at that time was about the same. It looked to me like she worked hard when she worked, but she didn't work as often as most people I know. The last time I had a summer off was in 1982. The next time I will have a summer off is in 2026. > > [This message largely ignores the possibility to catch a bullet during the > work hours.] > > It's very easy to put dollar figures over the heads of a bunch of people: > we give $X for education, $Y for health, $Z for justice. > > It gets harder when you look at your slice: and your doctor says - sorry, > you are sick but you medical insurance covers a 10 minute visit and this > tylenol; and your local school says - sorry, for the budget we have we will > put your kids together with another 40 and watch them not to kick themselves > too hard. Oh please - budget increases seem to largely go to more administrators, more 'special services' (grief counselors?), more building features (my son has a grand piano in his hallway), more pay for teachers. The last thing they ever address is the dreaded 'too many children in the classroom', because that issue has so much political clout they can't afford to get rid of it. Since less students per teacher means the teachers will need to work less hard, maybe they should fund smaller class sizes by cutting teachers pay... > > It's very tempting to judge someone else's shoes without trying them on. There will be a boxcar of siding out in the railyard sometime this summer. If it ever gets hot, I could use a teacher to unload it... > > </rant> > > florin > OK, back to juggling pid's and tracking resources. I've been trying to wrap fork(), exec() and now clone() for a long time with a more intuitive API and have yet to succeed. Maybe 'they' were right in the first place...