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I wasn't aware that Apple is preventing Palm from writing their own sync software? Did I miss that in TFA?

As much as the Apple haters might not want to acknowledge, the ability to sync with iTunes is fully open. Anyone with even a tiny bit of XML knowledge can write software to sync with iTunes. iTunes is not an OS. They never promised support for every mp3 player on the market. Palm broke the rules by using Apple's device ID. There is absolutely nothing preventing Palm from writing it's own sync software. You can find tons of Open Source software packages that do the same for Mac, PC, and Linux for that matter.

There is also nothing preventing someone from using iTunes to purchase music. All it does is place it on your local PC. Any sync software can pick it up from there.

Look here: http://gtk-osx.sourceforge.net/

A software based solution to the problem of aggregating a heterogeneous collection of parallel OpenGL command streams into one, compositing the output of several graphics cards into one image, or both, has been available for years : It's called Chromium.

Although originally designed for a networked cluster with one gpu per machine, it can conceivably be adapted to one machine with multiple GPUs. Because Chromium's software based compositing would bog down a single processor system, a natural extension would be to build a PCI-E card, running some sort of embedded Unix with a dedicated high speed processor, which would handle compositing the output of multiple GPUs in parallel.

I'm surprised no one has done this yet for Linux.

jdb2

Is there an ongoing "my Javascript is faster than yours ha-ha" competition in the browser market?

Uhm... Yes?

Javascript is the one client-side programming language that is always guaranteed to be there, on anything that can reasonably be called a browser. Anything that can be called a web application is probably at some point going to care about Javascript speed. And faster Javascript opens the door to some things you might not have thought were possible in a browser.

When looking for a browser, it isn't just speed people are looking for; They want security

Chrome runs each tab in a separate process, meaning it can theoretically sandbox each tab using standard OS techniques -- for example, on Linux, my Chromium does seem to be running things as an unprivileged user, and chrooting them out of the way.

Other browsers are playing catch-up.

add-ons, customization

The Chrome extension API isn't finished, but it's just Javascript and HTML. It's the kind of thing that a web developer could learn in an hour. It won't run Firefox extensions (yet), but it seems likely that it'll have plenty of extensions Firefox won't, just because of how much easier it is to get off the ground.

If I want top speed, I'll use chrome. If I want an all-around great browser, I'll use Firefox.

We don't care, this isn't about you. (And for what it's worth, Firefox is working hard to improve javascript, security, and reliability to match Chrome.)

This is about the 80% who still use IE, and about the rest of us not having to care anymore. I can build a web app that works in Chrome, Firefox, Safari, Epiphany, Galeon, Konqueror, Opera, in every browser, ever, with minimal effort -- figure an extra 5-10% development time to make it work on browsers other than the one I develop for. IE will fuck it up and add easily 20-50% to my development time.

Doing it this way means that at some point in the future, hopefully, something like YouTube will force IE users to either switch browsers or install this plugin -- at which point, I can forget that IE exists, and let it all melt away like a bad dream.

Vega Strike is a good open source example... good point. I heard they're working on moving to Ogre too... should be interesting. I played around with Vega Strike a couple of years ago, but it felt like it hadn't "cooked" long enough so to speak

http://vegastrike.sourceforge.net/wiki/Development:Ogre

Oolite is the most obvious one. It faithfully recreates the Elite gameplay, but updates the graphics (slightly) and provides a simple way for others to expand the game. It is basically what you would end up with if you tried to write Elite (rather than 'some space trading/combat game') today.

Vega Strike has broadly the same gameplay mechanics as Elite, but is much richer; lots of different things to trade, different things available at different stations, different factions to join or fight, and so on. It also has massively improved graphics (detailed textures, gratuitous use of shaders) without that detracting from the game actually being fun.

Transcendence is a bit different. It's a 2D top-down game, but it has a lot of the things that made Elite fun. It's somewhere between XPilot, Elite, and Nethack. (It's Windows-only, but runs very well in WINE.)

> I'm not sure about you, but I have not had much success getting libusb-win32 to work with x64.

Luckily the source is available, along with free and open source compilers for Windows.

Extra points for sending the compiled binaries to the project.

Why run three monitors with ultramon when you can run three independent PCs with three independent monitors using synergy? I've got the same (or more) screen real estate and 3x the horsepower.

Because I'm running one task that can't be clustered - audio editing/mixing. And I was the first to report full implementation of four CPU cores (2x AMD Opteron 270's dual-core CPU's) in pro audio back in November 2005. My rig made previous audio bench tests obsolete.

Current quads still don't whip it by a huge margin for audio anyway, and at the time I had 4x the horsepower of the common studio DAW. Only now are audio plug-ins drawing CPU loads big enough to max it on a heavy mix.

You'll need a proper desk to display that teletype.

Now that it's working, the plan is to build a case of brass and glass, with lights inside, to show off the mechanism and make it look Victorian-era. The California Steampunk Exhibition is on for spring 2010 (2009 was canceled due to the recession), and I want to have it there.

The software for this is on SourceForge, if anybody else has a Baudot teletype machine. It not only does RSS feeds, but you can send SMS messages from the Teletype. The idea is to support modern communications with very retro technology.

Fun fact: port 1337 is also the default port used by encrypted filesharing app WASTE

In popular rock (based on sales) music, some bands like Dream Theater do side projects, like "Liquid Tension Project" and do whatever they want with the comfort.

I wished some amazing talents who got drowned by "sales" concerns, like Mariah Carey do some classical jazz side projects, even in another nickname if they were concerned about their brand (name) focus. Of course, either them or their producers doesn't have that vision or basically for example Classical jazz listening "elite" won't take it serious no matter how good it could be...

One URL for you, http://www.sourceforge.net/ , pick a random nick, release... I believe there are many doing it.

I know many Redhat devs that also work for M$. It does not make redhat any more appealing than windows nor is Gentoo more appealing as they steal code from BSD ports. Ubuntu is a debian clone also. Maybe I am disillusioned, but as I understand, graduating to BSD from Linux is the only way to go. IMHO the only honest Linux distro's left are Debian and Slackware, but your average person on the street is not that intelligent anymore. Society has changed whereby people just want to plug things in and work automatically without any use of intelligence whatsoever. The educational process people have to go through takes many years of experience and although I support FOSS, it is going to take a total rethink of how to get people changing their ways. The biggest problem for OpenSource is getting people away from M$ as software developers use "dirty tricks" whereby programs are created to organise a persons life and they end up like possessed people and will not let go because they feel threatened coming out of their "comfort zone". A prime example is doing a Bungee Jump or Parachute jump. For some the "fear of change is immense". The best way I can help people change is show them the software map on sourceforge http://sourceforge.net/softwaremap/index.php for them to understand whatever can be done on windows can be done on Linux or BSD. I did not mean to upset some people with this post, it was never my intention, but hopefully you can see things from a different point of view now. Regards, NSN

Because I'm sure my Linux on [insert device here] port will look just fine on CodePlex.

Hmm. MS's recommended migration path from Visual FoxPro is to .NET and SQL Server. I wrote a tool to simplify migration of VFP databases to PostgreSQL instead. Wonder if they'd like to host it for me?

reference links

TwistedStorage

XTreemFS

Tahoe

XAM

GPFS

OSFree is an open source alternative to OS/2. As IBM could not open source OS/2 because of over 300 licensed code bases that went into developing it, they instead spund it off to Serenity systems to create an OEM version of OS/2 named eComStation. But OSFree is an attempt to build an open sourced OS/2 from scratch to work with MS-DOS, OS/2 1.X command, OS/2 2.0 3.0 and 4.0 (Warp and Merlin), and even some eComStation compatibility. I am not sure if they will try a WIN-OS2 substation or use ODIN to run 16 bit and 32 bit Windows applications. ODIN was the OS/2 version of WINE.

OSFree hasn't reached Alpha phase yet, but they are working on creating a LiveCD version that boots, and a version of OSFree that runs in Linux but runs OS/2 programs inside of Linux, like that Borg or Ferengi version of OS/2 ran under Windows to run OS/2 programs in a different OS.

Why has Slashdot almost ignored AROS Amiga Research OS? It has gone beyond what HaikuOS has and has had a LiveCD and VMWare image for a long time now. It is based on AmigaOS 3.1 APIs and written from scratch, IIRC AmigaOS 4.X was using AROS code to build it on. So while it is like an older AmigaOS 3.1 version it can run in a virtual machine or LiveCD or even a version that runs inside of Linux to run AROS programs. What Amiga Fan that runs Linux wouldn't want an AROS subsystem? All AROS lacks is decent applications, but that is being worked on with the AROS bounty system.

FreeDOS is a MS-DOS replacement. It can run the FreeGEM replacement GUI for Windows 3.X (basically a 16 bit GUI that runs GEM programs over DOS) or OpenGEM. But most think OpenGEM is the better of the 16 bit GUIS for DOS.

ReactOS is based on WINE to become a stand alone OS that is Windows XP/2003 compatible. It hasn't reached Beta stage yet, and lacks proper driver support, but it can be run via VmWare virtual machines or a LiveCD. The Virtual machine comes bundled with QEMU available from the downloads section and it is good to download and try out. It doesn't support modern 32 bit Windows programs but can be made to run the older ones that don't require .Net libraries or the BITS service. In about five years time it should become stable enough to reach the Beta stage and support most drivers and be able to be installed to an actual machine. By the time it reaches 1.0 status, Microsoft will have abandoned Windows XP and most likely have Windows 8 or 9 with a Virtual PC mode to run XP software like Windows 7 does. The Windows Legacy Software is not going away, and Microsoft proved that with the XP Virtual Machine for Windows 7 Pro and up users. Many software companies cannot afford to upgrade their software to work on Windows Vista or above and many small businesses have their old business software written for DOS, 16 bit Windows, or Windows XP or lower, and cannot afford to buy new machines that run Windows Vista or Windows 7 and lose compatibility with their legacy Windows software for business.

OSFree is an open source alternative to OS/2. As IBM could not open source OS/2 because of over 300 licensed code bases that went into developing it, they instead spund it off to Serenity systems to create an OEM version of OS/2 named eComStation. But OSFree is an attempt to build an open sourced OS/2 from scratch to work with MS-DOS, OS/2 1.X command, OS/2 2.0 3.0 and 4.0 (Warp and Merlin), and even some eComStation compatibility. I am not sure if they will try a WIN-OS2 substation or use ODIN to run 16 bit and 32 bit Windows applications. ODIN was the OS/2 version of WINE.

OSFree hasn't reached Alpha phase yet, but they are working on creating a LiveCD version that boots, and a version of OSFree that runs in Linux but runs OS/2 programs inside of Linux, like that Borg or Ferengi version of OS/2 ran under Windows to run OS/2 programs in a different OS.

Why has Slashdot almost ignored AROS Amiga Research OS? It has gone beyond what HaikuOS has and has had a LiveCD and VMWare image for a long time now. It is based on AmigaOS 3.1 APIs and written from scratch, IIRC AmigaOS 4.X was using AROS code to build it on. So while it is like an older AmigaOS 3.1 version it can run in a virtual machine or LiveCD or even a version that runs inside of Linux to run AROS programs. What Amiga Fan that runs Linux wouldn't want an AROS subsystem? All AROS lacks is decent applications, but that is being worked on with the AROS bounty system.

FreeDOS is a MS-DOS replacement. It can run the FreeGEM replacement GUI for Windows 3.X (basically a 16 bit GUI that runs GEM programs over DOS) or OpenGEM. But most think OpenGEM is the better of the 16 bit GUIS for DOS.

ReactOS is based on WINE to become a stand alone OS that is Windows XP/2003 compatible. It hasn't reached Beta stage yet, and lacks proper driver support, but it can be run via VmWare virtual machines or a LiveCD. The Virtual machine comes bundled with QEMU available from the downloads section and it is good to download and try out. It doesn't support modern 32 bit Windows programs but can be made to run the older ones that don't require .Net libraries or the BITS service. In about five years time it should become stable enough to reach the Beta stage and support most drivers and be able to be installed to an actual machine. By the time it reaches 1.0 status, Microsoft will have abandoned Windows XP and most likely have Windows 8 or 9 with a Virtual PC mode to run XP software like Windows 7 does. The Windows Legacy Software is not going away, and Microsoft proved that with the XP Virtual Machine for Windows 7 Pro and up users. Many software companies cannot afford to upgrade their software to work on Windows Vista or above and many small businesses have their old business software written for DOS, 16 bit Windows, or Windows XP or lower, and cannot afford to buy new machines that run Windows Vista or Windows 7 and lose compatibility with their legacy Windows software for business.

Don't use rsync to make backups. Because you don't just want to backup against spontaneous combustion â" inevitably, there will be accidental deletions and the like occurring in your studio. If you use rsync (with --delete, as any sane person would, otherwise your backup server will fill up in days, not years), then when some n00b runs `rm -rf ~/ReallyImportantVideos`, they'll be deleted from the backup too.

Remember that pro photography website that went down, because their "backup" was a mirroring RAID setup? Yep â" they lost all their data on one fell swoop when somebody accidentally deleted the whole lot. Don't make the same mistake.

Use an incremental backup tool. Three that come to mind are rdiff-backup, Dirvish, and BackupPC.

I would think that rdiff-backup would suit your needs best. I currently use BackupPC at home, which is great for home backups, but I think that it's overkill (and possibly a bit limited) for what you want.

Hope this helps!

There are 2 opensource projects aiming to do similar 3d reconstructions:

http://code.google.com/p/libmv/
http://insight3d.sourceforge.net/

So while getting those 496 cores would still be a task for you, opensource software _is_ nearly there too.

I find those adverts more amusing if you take them for what they really mean.
"Want to share a photo with a shake?"..."We'll charge you for that"
"Want to search for taxi companies?"..."We'll charge you for that too"

I thought they had reached a marketing high when they touted cut+paste, but now their advertising slogan is "want to do something on the phone you already paid for...We'll charge you for that!". I mean the same can be said for any platform but the specifics they use in are particularly trivial, and they sign off saying "only on the iphone".

I also used to do this on my cheap phone (£15) using anyremote that works on any phone that runs java

ELKS Linux should run on it; start digging through the files in http://sourceforge.net/projects/elks/files/.

Windows has apt? Cool. I never knew.

Actually, it does. Unfortunately, the repository seems to be wildly out of date; e.g. Firefox is only at 2.0.0.11, OOo at 2.3.

The article also compared Zones to VServers and noted that the latter aren't in the Linux kernel and require patches. This is true but Linux contains OS-level virtualisation of it's own, which you can use via the LXC tools: http://lxc.sourceforge.net/

The VServers people expressed disinterest in merging their stuff into mainline. However, a combination of core Linux developers and OpenVZ developers have been working for some time on integrating full OS-level virtualisation into Linux, with the result that you can now run virtual machines on mainline Linux without any kernel patches. Not all the features of OpenVZ are supported (e.g. I think OpenVZ lets you do live migrations) but I'm not sure if Zones supports these either.

It's not surprising the author didn't know about the Linux container stuff, though - not much noise has been made about it. Presumably this is partly because the OpenVZ people haven't switched over to using it instead of their external patches yet. It is perhaps less mature / well-tested than Zones but nevertheless it is there, in the kernel, and you can just go ahead and use it if your distro built in support.

Linux containers provide similar functionality to Solaris Zones: http://lxc.sourceforge.net/ They're a younger project but the support for them is in mainline Linux and you can do some pretty cool stuff with them. One thing that's nice (and I don't know if Zones can do this) is that you don't have to virtualise every aspect of a container, so for instance you can just isolate at the filesystem level if that's all you needed. Solaris Zones is capable of running apps for another OS within a Zone, using their system call compatibility layer. Linux has a system call compatibility layer but I don't know if it can run a complete other-OS userspace as Zones can (e.g. Zones can run CentOS or RHEL userland in a Zone, on top of the Solaris kernel).

Most everyone here is going to have heard of Btrfs but here it is again anyhow: http://btrfs.wiki.kernel.org/index.php/Main_Page It gives you similar stuff (checksumming, RAID-in-filesystem, writeable snapshots) to ZFS but again is a younger project. It's also in mainline Linux so you can play with it if you have a recent kernel (don't trust it with critical data, yet).

System Tap is one (of a number) DTrace-ish system for Linux: http://sourceware.org/systemtap/ I understand it'll run on basically any non-stoneage kernel but to get all of the juicy features you would (I *think*) need to patch your kernel. This is the only one of these projects for which full functionality appears not to be completely in mainline. Various distributions include it, so you can probably install a package and try it out (at least in a limited form, depending on your kernel).

A notable feature here is that none of these sound quite as mature as the Solaris equivalents. Not all of them constitute "copying", however - for instance, container-like solutions for Linux predate Solaris Zones by years (and BSD Jails, a similar concept, are almost certainly even older). I'm not sure on the dates of the others.

Hehe, this is what I was talking about, it was the post after yours in the Ubuntu forum, by PorkyPie:

Hi again. Sorry that my previous solutions didn't work, but have you tried pressing F6 twice at the cd boot menu, and adding

acpi=off

at the end?

Or... if you have a usb memory stick handy, use Unetbootin to install it.

If you tried that and it didn't do anything for you, well, I dunno man. Apparently others are having the same issue.

That is really stunning. It is amazing that you can point at something like Kile, which I just looked at the screenshots of, and somehow think that it's AT ALL a sensible option for the average Word user.

That is... it's amazing that someone can live in a self-created world where that makes sense.

LOOK at Kile Starting a new Document Holy crap that's a confusing mess of ugly.
THIS is what it looks like for general usage... are you mad? Have you ANY concept of how a 'normal' day to day user of Office thinks?

Amazing. If there are many others like you in the OS community who are actually contributing and thinking they're making software for day to day usage by 'normal' people... it's doomed

That is really stunning. It is amazing that you can point at something like Kile, which I just looked at the screenshots of, and somehow think that it's AT ALL a sensible option for the average Word user.

That is... it's amazing that someone can live in a self-created world where that makes sense.

LOOK at Kile Starting a new Document Holy crap that's a confusing mess of ugly.
THIS is what it looks like for general usage... are you mad? Have you ANY concept of how a 'normal' day to day user of Office thinks?

Amazing. If there are many others like you in the OS community who are actually contributing and thinking they're making software for day to day usage by 'normal' people... it's doomed

I will be in Norway, so I'm missing DCC. Thanks for the list. David Rowe has made progress on the new Codec initiative I was promoting. See this.

come over at irc or forum for http://ufoai.sourceforge.net/ - while there is not enough developer interest in usability improvement (my personal opinion), maybe we can work together ;)

And how does LaTeX totally ignore the human part of the problem? Does kile http://kile.sourceforge.net/ not exist in your world? Can you not stand device-independent output?

You can do this with Xorg no matter what setup you have, even across network - I have sometimes used my laptop's basic display as desktop extension for my desktop. Check out DMX: http://dmx.sourceforge.net/

Not just crossover, it works great with Wine too. They also released a lib specifically for linux which means people can write their own client for it. One such client is Testify which runs natively

Why run three monitors with ultramon when you can run three independent PCs with three independent monitors using synergy? I've got the same (or more) screen real estate and 3x the horsepower.

Or possibly get a stick that supports U3 on it. Put the windows drivers for reiser on the CD portion of the drive and format the storage are as reiser. Self-contained, multi-platform, permission preserving solution.

One such example of reiser drivers for windows.
http://rfsd.sourceforge.net/

The Pointrel system, using contexts to associate triadal data, is a project I first put on SourceForge in 2001, but has roots going back much longer:
    http://sourceforge.net/projects/pointrel/
    http://pointrel.sourceforge.net/
"The Pointrel Data Repository System includes a triadal data storage system. A triad is an object with three links defined in a context. These links can point to arbitrary strings. When strings (especially uniquely generated ones) are treated as nodes, triads can build arbitrarily complex structures, as well as add to these structures at any time. Using triads, one can build arbitrary complex networks of relationships. These dynamic relationships can define the equivalent of records or objects in a database."

The Pointrel system, using contexts to associate triadal data, is a project I first put on SourceForge in 2001, but has roots going back much longer:
    http://sourceforge.net/projects/pointrel/
    http://pointrel.sourceforge.net/
"The Pointrel Data Repository System includes a triadal data storage system. A triad is an object with three links defined in a context. These links can point to arbitrary strings. When strings (especially uniquely generated ones) are treated as nodes, triads can build arbitrarily complex structures, as well as add to these structures at any time. Using triads, one can build arbitrary complex networks of relationships. These dynamic relationships can define the equivalent of records or objects in a database."

Here you go!

Yes, this really is the source code for Slashdot.

Here

Well that's easy enough. Just enable library sharing. If you don't have macs, and if iTunes for windows doesn't already do the trick (I don't know the answer to this), look at netatalk on linux: http://www.macosxhints.com/article.php?story=20070424081346722

Not only that, but you can develop Windows Mobile apps on a Mac.

http://cegcc.sourceforge.net/

LAME started life as a GPL'd patch against the dist10 ISO demonstration source, and thus was incapable of producing an mp3 stream or even being compiled by itself. But in May 2000, the last remnants of the ISO source code were replaced, and now LAME is the source code for a fully LGPL'd MP3 encoder...

Pretty much anything. Lunix existed before JeffK!!. http://lng.sourceforge.net/

in these modern times with object-oriented multithreaded programming, BASIC is kind of a throwback, don't you think?
 
Why do you think that? BASIC is simple, straight-forward and relatively easy to learn. There are all kinds of "old-time" BASIC programmers around and lots of professional code has been written in BASIC over the years. A lot of programming (even today) involves simple string handling and reading/writing to a file; there's no requirement for fancy front-ends with lots of buttons for a lot of business- or system-oriented programming.
 
I'm a big fan of BASIC, personally, and wish there was a really good console-oriented BASIC compiler or interpreter available for Linux.
 
Yes, I know about Freebasic and Gambas but both of those are striving to be an object-oriented fancy thing that doesn't bear a lot of resemblance to traditional BASIC.
 
Actually, BAS comes about the closest to my idea of what a BASIC interpreter should be. A few additional features like local variables, named subroutines and a $include directive to provide a simple Makefile-like capability would make it a real contender for serious BASIC programming on Linux. Sadly, the chap who wrote BAS doesn't seem to be too interested in that.

I've been working with computers over ten years now, and playing with them since elementary school. I'm a programmer by trade, and I don't touch type.

Sure, I don't at the keyboard, but my typing technique could be way better. I'm using two-three fingers per hand, plus thumbs.

I've been trying to use the exellent Klavaro ( http://klavaro.sourceforge.net/ ) to improve my skill, there has been some progress but nothing huge. I can't be bothered quite enough.

I for one would have been grateful to have been force-fed the basics all those years back. I'm not saying it's the only option, I type fairly fast, but it's hard to unlearn all that muscle memory and use all fingers even if I'd want to.

I've been playing with a full c64 emulator on my Nokia nseries which runs Symbian for the last couple years :). I can even emulate a Commodore Amiga on it.

I really don't understand Apple, and maybe someone can explain - what can you possibly write on the C64 that would constitute an actual platform like Java or Flash (both of which also run on my Nokia)? In other words: what threat does the Commodore 64, a machine that is 27 years old represent to the iPhone's already existing dev kit?

http://sourceforge.net/project/shownotes.php?group_id=171310&release_id=598227

That's what you have SMART for. Just run smartd or add smartctl to your own scripts. Intel SSDs report the wear parameter in SMART attribute 233.

That's what you have SMART for. Just run smartd or add smartctl to your own scripts. Intel SSDs report the wear parameter in SMART attribute 233.

Here's a cheaper ($200 + shipping) and open source design/ software implementation. http://www.opengear.com/product-okvmpci.html Found them by searching for an open source kvm over ip implementation. http://okvm.sourceforge.net/kvmoverip.html

As John Holt would say, you need to learn to trust children.
    http://www.educationreformbooks.net/how_learn.htm

Schools traffic in "just in case" learning; unschooling is more about "just in time" and "on demand" learning.
    http://patapata.sourceforge.net/WhyEducationalTechnologyHasFailedSchools.html

So, you could see unschooling as like "eXtreme Programming" compared to a schoolish "waterfall model" of child development. :-)

But, sure, "strewing" stuff around the home to interest kids is something many unschoolers do:
    http://sandradodd.com/strew/sandra

But a healthy child who is part of a healthy community wants to learn to become part of it -- whatever it takes.

There are two problems there though. Kids today are often unhealthy (media violence, junk food, consumerism) and communities are often unhealthy for the similiar reasons (an economics that values stuff other than community). So, the biggest challenges for unschooling come from living in a dysfunctional society (created in large part by compulsory schooling).

From an essay I wrote almost three years ago:
"Why Educational Technology Has Failed Schools"
http://patapata.sourceforge.net/WhyEducationalTechnologyHasFailedSchools.html
""" ... With all that technological success in other areas, why are schools still considered a problem area, see:
"To fix US schools, [bipartisan] panel says, start over"
http://www.csmonitor.com/2006/1215/p01s01-ussc.html
Or in other words, why has technology failed in compulsory schools? Clearly something is wrong here -- technology is helping make these other places more productive and more flexible -- but in schools, there is not much change, despite a huge expenditure in technology and training.
Ultimately, educational technology's greatest value is in supporting "learning on demand" based on interest or need which is at the opposite end of the spectrum compared to "learning just in case" based on someone else's demand. Compulsory schools don't usually traffic in "learning on demand", for the most part leaving that kind of activity to libraries or museums or the home or business or the "real world". In order for compulsory schools to make use of the best of educational technology and what is has to offer, schools themselves must change.
But, history has shown schools extremely resistant to change. Consider for
example:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Caldwell_Holt
From there: "After many years of working within the school system, Holt became disillusioned with it. He became convinced that reform of the school system was not possible because it was fundamentally flawed. Thus, he became an advocate of homeschooling. It was not helpful, however, to simply remove children from the school environment if parents simply re-created it at home. Holt believed that children did not need to be coerced into learning; they would do so naturally if given the freedom to follow their own interests and a rich assortment of resources. This line of thought became known as unschooling." ...
And it also turns out, based on psychological studies, that for creative work (as opposed to ditch digging), reward is often not a motivator, and creativity and intrinsic interest diminish if a task is done for gain:
http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/motivation.html
This finding calls into question the entire notion of a scarcity-based ideology oriented around exchanging ration-units for creative goods, as opposed to a "gift economy", such as drives GNU/Linux.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gift_economy
So, if most of what people do is not related to growing food or making things, then a system based around material rewards doesn't make much sense. And it turns out, a lot of difficult work is quite interesting, if you are not forced to do it -- where the work (and success at a challenging task) is its own reward.
But then is compulsory schooling really needed when people live in such a way? In a gift economy, driven by the power of imagination, backed by automation like matter replicators and flexible robotics to do the drudgery, isn't there plenty of time and opportunity to learn everything you need to know? Do people still need to be forced to learn how to sit in one place for hours at a time? When people actually want to learn something like reading or basic arithmetic, it only takes around 50 contact hours or less to give them the basics, and then they can bootstrap themselves as far as they want to go. Why are the other 10000 hours or so of a child's time needed in "school"? Especially when even poorest kids in Ind