That assessment is quite correct! What's not so obvious, is that the fact
that we have a special class of student, commonly known as "speakers of
other languages" hence the term ESOL for Education for Speakers of Other
Languages, is a federal-court-mandated effort to provide this somewhat
nebulous group of pupils with an additional opprotunity to secure the
education to which the constitution apparently entitles them.
However, what's not so widely recognized is that this program has priority
over mainstream classes. Consequently, as more kids' parents find a way to
get their children so-classified, local school admistrators (most the
principals) are forced to provide limited-size classes for the ESOL program.
Since the mandate is not accompanied by any additional funding, the
administrator has to take teachers from the mainstream classes and assign
them to the ESOL program where class size is limited to 22 pupils per
teacher rather than the more common 30-35 seen in mainstream classes.
That's why so many people were so PI**ED about the "EBONYX" (as it was
spelled in our local papers, though that doesn't make it correct, by any
means) thing. This would have mandated that all users of that particular
pseudo-language were entitled to smaller classes, i.e. more personal
attention, than the mainstream.
While I don't doubt for a moment that there might be potential for great
benefit to those students qualifying for the smaller class-sizes, it's
taking those resources from the already overstressed mainstream education
program.
Dick
-----Original Message-----
From: Jim Strickland <jim(a)calico.litterbox.com>
To: classiccmp(a)classiccmp.org <classiccmp(a)classiccmp.org>
Date: Thursday, March 09, 2000 12:38 PM
Subject: Re: languages
>> Well, throw-in-the-towel is known (at least the acording
>> phrase is in wide use in Germany - just most don't know
>> the orgin), but what is Ebonyx ?
>
>Ebonyx was the attempt by some boards of education in California to
establish
>the slang associated with Black culture as a language so they could get
funding
>to teach english as a second language. It was always a brazen attempt to
get
>funding, nothing more.
>
>
>>
>> And, Jim, for the Grammer ting, don't forget that English
>> is a bastard based on (at least) 5 languages from 3 different
>> language families (No Offense Ment).
>
>None taken. You're absolutely correct. English took much of its structure
>from Norweigan, and much of its vocabulary from Norman French, and
simplified
>both. It picks up vocabulary from everywhere, and when that fails words
are
>simply made up. I'm thinking here of Scuba and Radar, wich both started
out
>as acronyms and are now ordinary nouns.
>
>*snip*
>
>> Serious, ain't we are going exactly the same way with
>> programming languages as with real ones ? Just instead
>> of centuries, it took only some dozend years to go from
>> Machine code (grunting sounds) to ADA (Goethes Poems)
>
>*laugh* I'm not sure I'd compare any computer language to Goethe, but it's
>a good analogy...
>
>
>> and only less than 10 years to fall back to C ?
>>
>> Gruss
>> H.
>
>I think Hans is making a bit of a joke here, but he's not far from the
mark.
>A living language is not a static thing. It grows. It evolves. Parts are
>added and other parts dropped as the society that speaks it changes. Until
>recently (ie the last 20 years or so) English was taught in a very
prescriptive
>way - x is the correct way to speak, where x is whatever dictionary and/or
>grammar system you embrace.
>
>However in the late 60s (things take time to
>filter into the education system) some language experts - notably Webster's
>Dictionary among them - began to realise that language *changes* over time.
>Websters dictionary embraced a descriptive philosophy - we're not in the
>business of telling you how you SHOULD speak, only how you DO speak.
>
>One of the results of this was the formation of the American Heritage
>dictionary, which clung to the prescriptive philosophy.
>
>Ultimately I think the descriptive folks are correct. While I agree with
Dick
>and others that as the English language is simplified it looses alot of its
>elegance and beauty, I'd rather see that than the total stagnation that
results
>with rigid prescriptiveism. A great example of what happens to a language
when
>it is artificially prevented from changing is French. With the
establishment
>of the French Acadamy and the legislation against borrowings from other
>languages, in a few hundred years French went from the language of
diplomacy
>to a linguistic backwater, populated with grotesque and awkward words
created
>to describe things where a borrowing had been previously used.
>
>None of this changes the fact that today's schools are doing a lousy job
>teaching people to communicate. (In the US). One need only look at the
web
>to see this - US domains which are so cluttered and badly designed and
where
>the text is so obtuse and irrellivant that the entire page is useless
abound.
>
>(Yes, in this graphical age, I think page layout should be taught alongside
>some understanding of grammar and spelling). Schools are instead focusing
on
>self esteem building, instead of teaching and letting students develop self
>esteem when they *succeed*. Obviously grinding a student's ego into the
floor
>every time they mess up is the wrong way to go about teaching anything, but
>so is pushing self esteem above education. *sigh* If I had children, I
would
>definately feel ripped off by todays schools.
>
>Anyway, I've gone on much longer in this message than intended, but in
addition
>to hitting a nerve this thread also hit stuff I studied in college, so...
:)
>
>--
>Jim Strickland
>jim(a)DIESPAMMERSCUMcalico.litterbox.com
>-----------------------------------------------------------------------
> BeOS Powered!
>-----------------------------------------------------------------------
--- "Merle K. Peirce" <at258(a)osfn.org> wrote:
> I do recall, though, that studying Latin did make things seem much
> easier to me, if only because the language forced organised thought.
Ditto on the Latin - 4 years in High School. I think in my case, since
I had no decent formal training in English (my native language), learning
Latin grammar produced an understanding of English grammar. I do know
that learning Latin made it easier to learn Greek. I had an idea of
what sorts of phrases and subordinate clauses exist, and so knew to ask
how these concepts translated to Greek ("cum clauses", for example, or
the many uses of infinitives)
> ...I learned the Church Latin pronunciation, which annoys everyone else, to
> my gratification...
Ack! Heretic! :-) My Latin teacher told us a story of when _he_ went
to out High School in the 1960's - they learned Church Latin and it was
a supreme effort of will not to laugh when conjugating the present tense
of the verb "scio", to know.
For the confused reader at home, it goes... "scio, scis, scit, scimus,
scistis, sciunt" and in Classical Latin C's are hard, giving us "skeeo,
skiss, skit...". Church Latin uses a soft C here, resulting in "sheeo,
shiss...". Try *that* in a room full of sophmores.
-ethan
P.S. - if I've messed up the full conjugation, my apologies; it's off the
top of my head, 18 years later. The nugget of the story, however, is accurate.
-ethan
=====
Even though my old e-mail address is no longer going to
vanish, please note my new public address: erd(a)iname.com
The original webpage address is still going away. The
permanent home is: http://penguincentral.com/
See http://ohio.voyager.net/ for details.
__________________________________________________
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Talk to your friends online with Yahoo! Messenger.
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Not so! The subject is compound, i.eVERBS and NOUNS (the conjuction AND
makes it compound) the verb is WERE, and MORE is a predicate nominative,
i.e. a substantive (any word functioning as a NOUN) with a role of modifying
the subject. The preposition OF points to ABSTRACTION which modifies the
predicate nominative. The past participle NEEDED modifies the term
ABSTRACTION in its role as a modifier of MORE, which modifies the subjects.
THAN compounds the modification by the preposition by providing a second
object of the preposition OF, which further modifies the term ABSTRACTION by
limiting it.
Now, that's more detail than one normally needs to understand the lines in
the daily paper's comics, but there are sentences, more likely to appear on
the editorial page than in the sports section, which often deserve and too
often require careful analysis prior to concluding one knows what's being
said. You may disagree with that analysis, but it certainly does underscore
that the quoted sentence is complete. It also serves as an example of the
numerous devices about which current high-school graduates know nothing.
Dick
-----Original Message-----
From: Eric Smith <eric(a)brouhaha.com>
To: classiccmp(a)classiccmp.org <classiccmp(a)classiccmp.org>
Date: Thursday, March 09, 2000 12:14 PM
Subject: Re: languages
>allisonp(a)world.std.com wrote:
>> Up to that point verbs and nouns were
>> more of an abstraction needed to pass tests than working tools.
>
>This sentence no verb! :-)
<> projects with it, be able to word-process but not necessarily spell-check
<> be able to run good educational software. I'm already biased towards a Ma
<> Plus (and own one), but certainly ready for suggestions. NeXT? MicroVax
<> 3100? Cost, hardware and software, is a factor, of course.
Why only one box? Why not several each with it's attributes would induce
a greater range of thinking. Also applying similar skills to different
boxes teaches troubleshooting and similarity of use.
The latter is funny as I had someone (an adult) today tell me their
system had to have Word to write a memo as they didn't know how to use
Write... Write is stripped down Word! Lazy!
With the common classics like Apples, CPM crates and all you can get a
lot of different things to investigate. If you can teach anything, teach
them how to find out when the answer is not obvious or in the standard
books. Learn how to use information sources, printed and electronic.
Being able to figure it out is believe it or not a very valuable skill
in this cookie cutter world.
Allison
-----Original Message-----
From: Tony Duell <ard(a)p850ug1.demon.co.uk>
To: classiccmp(a)classiccmp.org <classiccmp(a)classiccmp.org>
Date: Thursday, March 09, 2000 2:54 PM
Subject: Re: PDP-11/05 with RX02 :-(
>>
>> I can't find my book on the M8256 (RX211) so I don't know if the switches
>> are set right.
>>
>> I have a PDP-11/05 here that works fine and boots up RT11 or XXDP on an
RX01
>> with an RX11. When I replace the RX01 system with an RX211 and an RX02
and
>> try and boot RT11 the CPU hangs up at:
>>
>> 173546 , run light on. Requires a full reset to clear.
>>
>> I have tried other RX211s, RX02s, and cables and the same problem occurs.
>>
>> The disk is being accessed for a little while (4 or 5 "clicks") and
dies....
>
>A few quick things to check :
>
>1) You are trying to boot an RX02 version of RT11, not an RX01. While the
>RX02 can read/write RX01 disks, the RX211 and RX11 need rather different
>software to drive them, so an RX02 can't _boot_ a bootable RX01 disk.
>
I know. I was trying RX02 RT11v4. BL
>2) You've got the DIP switch in the RX02 (on the upper, controller,
>board) set correctly. I'm pretty sure that how to set this is on the web
>somewhere, but if you can't find anything (and nobody else beats me to
>it), I'll try to find the fine manual.
>
I guess so. The RX02s are from LSI systems.
>3) The RX211 is a DMA (NPR) device.
You just said the magic words! I have never been blessed with a RX211 before
(always big drives or RX01s). Many thanks for saving me hours of going
through boxes to find out it was a NPR device. Thanks again.
<very happy PDP-11/05 systems now>
john
PDP-8 and other rare mini computers
http://www.pdp8.com
>You need to cut the jumper between
>pins CA1 and CB1 on the backplane of the slot where the RX211 is
>installed. That's the most likely problem if you've just pulled an RX11
>and replaced it by an RX211.
>
>-tony
>
>
--- CLASSICCMP(a)trailing-edge.com wrote:
John B. writes:
> >I have a PDP-11/05... replace the RX01 system with an RX211 and an RX02...
> To get to *real* basics:
>
> The RX11 is a programmed I/O device. The RX211 is (as usually used) a
> DMA device. You'll probably have to remove the NPR continuity wire across
> the slot when you put the RX211 in it, and ensure that this signal is
> continuous up to that far too.
I doubt you are short of double-height grant cards, but I have a wad of
non-DEC ones because SRC used to ship our own with every Unibus COMBOARD.
Let me know if you're interested.
When I get my flatbed scanner back from loan, I'll add both of our designs
to the "field guide".
-ethan
=====
Even though my old e-mail address is no longer going to
vanish, please note my new public address: erd(a)iname.com
The original webpage address is still going away. The
permanent home is: http://penguincentral.com/
See http://ohio.voyager.net/ for details.
__________________________________________________
Do You Yahoo!?
Talk to your friends online with Yahoo! Messenger.
http://im.yahoo.com
You're right, of course, Allison, but I love to bitch about the way the
nation's schools are destroying our language and our future.
Dick
-----Original Message-----
From: allisonp(a)world.std.com <allisonp(a)world.std.com>
To: classiccmp(a)classiccmp.org <classiccmp(a)classiccmp.org>
Date: Thursday, March 09, 2000 11:07 AM
Subject: Re: languages
>An aside...
>
>I find this discussion interesting and agree with the demise of modern
>language but, this is a great stretch from discussing classic computers.
>
>Of course if we drift into the structured language debate of the late 70s
>we will all require asbestos/kevlar/ceramic britches. ;)
>
>Allison
>
>
>
>I have a PDP-11/05 here that works fine and boots up RT11 or XXDP on an RX01
>with an RX11. When I replace the RX01 system with an RX211 and an RX02 and
>try and boot RT11 the CPU hangs up at:
>
>173546 , run light on. Requires a full reset to clear.
>
>I have tried other RX211s, RX02s, and cables and the same problem occurs.
To get to *real* basics:
The RX11 is a programmed I/O device. The RX211 is (as usually used) a
DMA device. You'll probably have to remove the NPR continuity wire across
the slot when you put the RX211 in it, and ensure that this signal is
continuous up to that far too.
--
Tim Shoppa Email: shoppa(a)trailing-edge.com
Trailing Edge Technology WWW: http://www.trailing-edge.com/
7328 Bradley Blvd Voice: 301-767-5917
Bethesda, MD, USA 20817 Fax: 301-767-5927
I can't find my book on the M8256 (RX211) so I don't know if the switches
are set right.
I have a PDP-11/05 here that works fine and boots up RT11 or XXDP on an RX01
with an RX11. When I replace the RX01 system with an RX211 and an RX02 and
try and boot RT11 the CPU hangs up at:
173546 , run light on. Requires a full reset to clear.
I have tried other RX211s, RX02s, and cables and the same problem occurs.
The disk is being accessed for a little while (4 or 5 "clicks") and dies....
If anyone here has a quick "config" fix I would appreciate it otherwise I
guess I will dive into the boxes of manuals/fiche later today.
Current 11/05 config:
Main CPU
M9312 w DY rom
RX211 with RX02
8K core
ODT and passes diagnostics.
john
PDP-8 and other rare mini computers
http://www.pdp8.com
