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These "online courses" are mostly the same old crap repackaged for online distribution. Videos of actual blackboards, in some cases. It's not a semi-intelligent program teaching you the subject, something that's quite feasible for calculus and much of basic math.

And this

Oracle Previews Java SE 7 for Mac OS X, Unveils Java SE Roadmap
Oracle is releasing a technology preview of Java SE 7 on Mac OS X and said it plans to release Java SE 7 on Mac OS X for developers in the second quarter of 2012 and a consumer version later that year.

http://thejournal.com/articles/2011/10/06/oracle-previews-java-se-7-for-mac-os-x-unveils-java-se-roadmap.aspx

Yes, yes. This is all very fine. Until there is a massive security breach (like this recent one) and the CEO is looking for a place to drop the blame-hammer. Password aging may have had nothing to do with the breach, but who cares? The IS dept didn't have one? It's their fault then....

Funny, I got my first Windows PC (A 486DX running Win3.1) because the guy that had it owed me $100 and had gotten it full of malware and didn't know how to fix it. He figured it was a good excuse to lose the debt and at the same time give him a reason to shell out nearly $3K! on a brand new P100Mhz to play...was Heretic or Hexen first? Ehhh one of the two.

I got into doing PC repair for a living when I stopped by my local shop to score some RAM sticks and heard the boss cussing his brains out. He got stuck with a truckload of Gateway Astro from some guy that owed him a grand, and while they all had restore discs no OS was installed and it refused to take the restore discs. I told him "why don't you just use a standard Win98 disc?" and he swore to me because of the funky USB everything on those it couldn't be done. I bet him the RAM sticks I wanted I could do it, and after the Win98 install simply stuck in the restore discs and installed the drivers manually. He handed me the sticks and said "Grab a seat, there are 40 more of those in the back". I ended up being "the scary biker guy in the back that does great work" for 5 years. It was funny to hear little old ladies go "is the scary biker guy here?"

But back to the topic at hand, the problem with Worst Buy (other than they suck of course) and these other groups that offer "optimization" is they don't actually understand the customer. I too offer optimization, and my customers love it and talk about me like I walk on water. The secret? The average customer does NOT want a faster PC! I repeat, they do NOT want a faster PC they want an easier to use PC. So what I do is basically set them up a "toaster". Any customer that pays the $55 for optimization gets a PC that autoupdates, has AV set to autoscan and autoupdate, it automatically cleans the registry and temp files, defrags itself, has all the codecs (thanks to K-Lite Mega) installed, flash, Java, .NET, Silverlight, all installed, Firefox with ABP and ForecastFox installed, and finally Go Open Office and GNUCash.

When I'm done all the customer has to do is "flip a switch and go" and THAT, not squeezing an extra couple of notches in some benchmark, is what I've found the customers REALLY want in a PC. Unlike my old boss I don't get folks coming back in a month or two infected like a Bangkok whore, but I have found the referrals more than make up for that. Give folks a good value, let them know you care about more than just their wallet, and they will go out of their way to brag on you and send business your way. Worst Buy doesn't care how bad your experience is, once they have your money and that is why they have a bad rep. Well that and the shitty service, pervs that go through your files looking for porn, geeks that don't know the right end of a screwdriver....

Games are good for your eyesight, social life, physical health, learning, stress, language skills and economy, among other things.

Oh, and gaming addiction is mostly bunk.

Sometimes I think people on SlashDot are not necessarily the smartest in the world.

By tucking the electronic guts of the Mac right behind the LCD display, Ive's team essentially made the PC disappear. Can someone explain why this won't be the future of PC design for anyone other than gamers--or why the rest of the industry hasn't followed suit yet?

Perhaps not the rest of the industry didn't follow, but don't overlook these triumphs of industrial design.

I had the pleasure of remotely supporting a half dozen of these fine machines. The only thing that held me together was my dream of the day they would be retired, and I could take one out and go 'Office Space' on its ass.

FileMaker Pro has had relational functionality since version 3.0, released in early 1996. I used it for a one-to-many relation in my wedding invitation database way back in 1996. One table was for invitations, the other was for invitees on each invitation (a one-to-many relation).

FileMaker Pro 3.0 from Claris Goes Relational
FileMaker Pro 3.0 Has Relational Powers

Here is an article from a magazine called "Technological Horizons in Education" that is called "Making the switch to open source software", detailing a school that does indeed use OpenOffice to teach these much-needed word processing skills.

http://www.thejournal.com/magazine/vault/A4499.cfm

The funny thing is, there's already at least one school in New Hampshire that integrates laptops in its education program quite well. Some friends of mine work there; it's a private school, grades 9-12, called Brewster Academy in Wolfeboro. This school is very forward-thinking in its computer-enhanced curriculum and is constantly being written up in journals, magazines, newspapers, etc. for it.

I wonder if the NH school folks have consulted with, or researched about, Brewster? It'd be nice to think they would, given that it's right there in their state and all, but the real world being how it is, I don't know if that's likely.