I think, as in all things, the answer (or at least, the most probable solution to be agreed upon) will be somewhere in the middle.
Did anyone stop to think that those in power want to polarize the population, even though if the populace really stopped and looked at things, it would realize that they don't disagree on all that much? That's my conspiracy idea of the day.
You bring up an interesting point, actually. At least from my point of view. I was a big-time napster user back in the day. However, I primarily used it to track down strange music I had a hard time finding at music stores. I got into My Bloody Valentine that way. A year ago, I bought some of their stuff off iTunes.
I also remember downloading Pearl Jam's Binaural off napster a week before it was released. I loved it, and when it was released, I went out and bought it. I can't be the only one like this.
I hate to sound cynical (and I certainly hate to sound redundant), but I really hated having to buy a CD for $18 for one or two songs. Right now, iTunes seems like a happy medium, especially since they started getting more obscure stuff. This time last year, I couldn't find any Sleater-Kinney or Sonic Youth on iTunes, but they're there now. Not the most obscure, but not bad.
I just wish they wouldn't charge $20 for the new Outkast CD. I'm not sure how much it costs in stores, but I have a hard time justifying that, especially since I've already bought 2 or 3 songs from the album.
Anyway, I stopped using napster when it became really popular, right before it shut down. Not because it became popular, but because of the way people I knew used it. They saw it as a way to avoid paying for music (well, duh). I don't think the difference between that and discovering new music is that subtle a difference.
Now I get 30-second sound bytes to help me decide on iTunes. Better than nothing, and better than 10 years ago, but I still yearn for the napster days.
...including someone who cannot listen to CD's because there is a whine on all of them...
Ok, I don't hear that, but a muted television drives me nuts. Most have a high pitch squeal. Apparently, not everyone can hear it. I don't consider myself an audiophile by any stretch. I'm pretty sure my hearing is moderately damaged from too many close encounters with loud bands in small bars. But a muted tv really irritates me. Even when it's not muted, I can hear it, though it's not so bad.
Anyone else know what I'm talking about? I've met 1 or 2 people who can hear it too.
Dear god. I remember how I used to read them. I'd go through them once or twice, but while flipping pages I'd see some situation or ending that I liked. So I'd try to find out how to get to that point by finding what pages led to it. And what pages led to them, etc. That's right, I reverse-engineered Choose-Your-Own-Adventure books.
You mean, "It automatically updates *its* definitions, too."
I can't believe how many people get this wrong.
Ok, wait a second. My undergrad degree was in English. I do think that poor grammar/spelling can be irritating. "it's" vs. "its" is not all that intuitive, though. When you make most words possessive, you tack a 's on to the end. "its" seems to be a strange exception.
A mistake such as this can be distracting, but I certainly can believe that people make it all the time. Hell, I made the same mistake most of my way through my degree.:)
A neat way to remember when to use which: there's an 's at the end of "it" if the apostrophe is taking the place of the letter i. Think of it as a little i. Works for me, anyway.
Man, writing about grammar and spelling makes me irrationally paranoid about my own. So I make no claims to the grammatical correctness of this post.:)
I'm not going to comment on the a couple points in your post, since I pretty much agree with you (other than maybe the potential upsides to zealous individuals, but I'm wading into deep water there). But I'll continue to fall off-topic with one of them:
Do you even know what post-modernism is?
In application, it means that "right" and "wrong" are not universal. Whatever a person thinks is right is right for that person. Whatever a person believes to be true is true for that person, but if somebody else believes different, that reality is true for him. It's a nonsensical philosophy, but it's growing in popularity.
Actually, what you're describing here would probably more correctly be called relativism. This sort of relativism is, I agree, nonsensical. It easily falls apart in the face of even basic logic. There are, however, other strains of relativism which are at least slightly more coherent.
My question of about post-modernism was probably a bit of a trick question. It certainly can contain elements of the sort of relativism you described, at least on the surface. It's actually pretty hard to define. I will say, though, that at least academic post-modernism can be suprisingly non-relativistic. Certain types of feminism are an off-shoot of post-modernism, for example, and many of these feminists believe in objective ethics. And I'm pretty sure Derrida denies being a relativist.
I think that post-modernism, or at least relativism is waning in popularity. In academia at least. I certainly don't think relativism is that prevalent in the general american populace, especially given events of the last two years. That's what political bumper stickers tell me, anyway.:)
So call them prima donnas, relativists and cry-babies.:)
Well, then again, at least compatibility amongst DVD writers is really good, right? No, wait, we have a variety of competing standards, and only now does it appear that a consensus is forming.
Mods forgive me if I'm going off topic here, but can some explain to me why exactly this sort of competition is so bad? We certainly argue that having a variety of desktop environments / window managers encourages competition and progress.
Don't get me wrong. I can see some (at least short-term) pitfalls with competing standards. But isn't the idea that the possible outcomes of competition overshadow these pitfalls?
I say, let there be competing standards, especially while DVD writers are expensive. Eventually one standard will probably prevail, and by the time prices go down standards won't be an issue.
I could be wrong. Like I said, someone please enlighten me if I'm missing something.
We are a nation of laws, not chaos. Just because Joe Citizen doesn't like a law doesn't mean he gets to be self-appointed dictator. The law does not bow to prima donnas, post-modernists, or cry babies.
Whoah, chill on the ad hominem right there. Joe Citizen, who disagrees with laws enacted by our representatives, is a prima donna, post-modernist and/or a cry baby?
What thought process led you to this remarkable conclusion? Do you even know what post-modernism is?
This is simply ridiculous name-calling. It is perfectly acceptable in our society to complain about laws we dislike. How do think unfair laws are dealt with? How do you think encryption export laws were loosened? There have been countless figures and groups throughout history who affected positive change. They were called names too.
And no, this isn't just about video games. Think about it.
Every time I see an AOL commercial on TV, I think "man, their advertising department needs to be shot."
Hey, not just AOL:
"By the way, if anyone here is in advertising or marketing, kill yourself. No, this is not a joke: kill yourself . . . I know what the marketing people are thinking now too: 'Oh. He's going for that anti-marketing dollar. That's a good market.' Oh man, I am not doing that, you fucking evil scumbags."
This really is unfortunate. Sticking to standards/guidelines/whatever is great where it makes sense. Safari is a great browser (using it to post this message), but I do most of my browsing with Chimera, simply for the tabs.
Anyway, why are they being consistent on this issue? It's not like they are in other places. Their website has tabs. Their i* apps (and Safari) don't stick to the Aqua look.
I don't see why they can't make it an option that is off by default.
Okay, this is a weird one. But I like it, so it's in my.sig right now.
I have a friend who works at UMN. He and some co-workers were joking about how people expect computers to do everything for them. One of them grabbed a mouse and spoke into it: "COMPUTER! Whatever happened to Blueberry Muffin?"
I can't explain why I think this is so damn funny. In fact, I didn't think it was very funny at first. But the more I think about it, the funnier it gets.
Good points. No disagreement there. I'd have to say, though, that I think the SC rejects plenty (the vast majority?) of cases on the grounds that they're not Constitutional issues. Which is good, like you said.
Perhaps, but by virtue of being a written document, it is up for interpretation. It's not like we can resurrect its writters and ask them what rights we have concerning internet access. Not that I think I'd care about what they'd have to say - the world's a little different now.
Don't you have to make interpretations of a document in order to make changes to it, let alone to know that changes are needed?
And I have no problem letting the Supreme Court interpret the Constitution. It's not like any of us can agree on it's meaning - someone has to. Remember that an interpretation needs justification. It's not like they're making random rulings.
If things were meant to be different - too bad. It's just not realistic.
I've taken to running ad-aware checks on all the patron computers frequently
I'm a fan of ad-aware and all, but I'm not sure most people are aware of its licensing terms. From their FAQ:
Can I use Ad-aware Standard (free) version at work?
No, Ad-aware Standard is free for individual use only. For profit business entities, governmental entities, or educational institutions, must purchase a valid end-user license in order to use the software.
Just so you know.
That line is a little up for interpretation, though, and I haven't looked at the license itself. Perhaps a opensource equivalent should be created? Not that I, as yet, know anything about removing adware.
Refresh my memory... where in the Constitution or Bill of Rights is Internet access defined as a "right"?
Neither the Constitution nor the Bill of Rights specifically grant the right to do a lot of things. They are meant to be interpreted. From certain inalienable rights are derived specific ones. We wouldn't need the judicial or legislative branches as they exist now if everything was spelled out cold.
The Constitution doesn't say whether I can wear a shirt. Do I have a "right" to wear a shirt that has controversial content? Maybe, maybe not. But you're not going to get the answer by saying, "Well, the constitution doesn't mention anything about shirts with the F-word on them, so don't expect to be allowed to wear it." You'll get a better answer looking at the general right to freedom of speech (and, of course, any applicable amendments to that right).
Unfortunately, as P.T. Barnum would put it, "There's a sucker born every minute..."
Exactly. Sure, it's a social problem, but we use laws to deal with social problems all the time, with varying degrees of sucess.
So I agree with pretty much everything you said, but the social problem is apparently unsolvable. And I'll be honest, I don't care how suckers are out there, or whether we're educating them all (we can't), I don't want to deal with spam. So let's get rid of it any way we can: legally, technically and socially. Sure, each solution on it's own will fail, but let's shotgun it. We'll never get rid of it all, but even a 75% reduction will make checking email less of a chore.
Why is it that there is always some belief that laws are inherently bad?
Also the belief that laws have no teeth. I remember a few months ago on the Daily Show during the sniper shootings, they showed a clip of Ari Fleisher (however that's spelled) or someone saying that laws limiting the ability of psychos to aquire firearms won't work, because they'll always find a way around it (sounds like some arguments about spam, eh?). It cut back to John Sterwart - "THAT'S RIGHT! LAWS ARE USELESS AND INEFFECTIVE!" Freakin hilarious.
If you email address is simple (e.g. first initial+last name+some number) and your domain name is...
Tell me about it. I deal with that a lot. I mean, look at my email address. It's nice to have a simple one like that, but the amount of spam I get is ridiculous. 100+ a day. I also strongly suspect a particularly bitter ex-girlfriend of signing me up for all sorts of crap. I know she got my email into initial circulation with those damn "Someone's got a crush on you" crap. That's about when I started getting unreasonable spam, about 2 years ago.
On the bright side, OS X's Mail.app has an extraordinary spam filter. Very few false positives (about 2 in a couple months, I think). The occasional spam slips through, but only a couple a week. Considering the amount I get, it's been a great relief.
And to all you damn spammers out there, I don't know who the hell "JOE BLACK" is, unless you think I bear a strinking resemblance to Brad Pitt. In which case, thanks for the flattery, but fuck off.
To stretch a historical point, the BSD license is somewhat like Gandhi's passive resistance and refusal to fight, a strategy that eventually overturned the aggressor (ie Britain) more effectively than fighting ever could have done.
Definitely a stretch. What does BSD passively resist (besides accusations of being dead for 10 years)? Gandhi had a problem with Britain, and basically protested in a peaceful manner. How is BSD doing anything like this at all? Maybe if Gandhi said, "Hey, who am I to tell the gov't what to do?" then you'd have a point. Seems more like Gandhi was saying that people have basic rights to certain things that ought not be violated, even by big, evil greedy governments. Hmmm. I'm gonna resist the temptation of making a historical stretch as well.
Hardly 'civil disobedience' at all unless you plan on publicly breaking a law and then publicly going to jail as a way of protesting that you feel the law is unjust.
Exactly. I'd also say it's a matter of motivation. Does your average p2p kid download music as a conscious political statement? Or just to get the latest Limp Bizkit without paying for it? The issue of whether they should be allowed to do so aside, this is poor civil disobedience. I don't care if the downloader thinks the law they're violating is unjust. That may very well be so. But it doesn't meet the criteria of civil disobedience by any stretch. I'd say it could very well be counterproductive, in fact.
The difference is that these people are profiting off of Linux without respecting the copyright.
No, people get mad even if someone violates the GPL without seeking profit. I remember such an issue with Gentoo Linux (someone correct me if I'm wrong). I want to say I read about that on lkml a while back.
PS: I should note that Bell Labs provided the C and C++ programming languages free of charge too. Do you use them? how many of your programs -- how much of your OS -- is built on C or C++?
<div style="voice: StrongBad">
Crap crap crap. Crappity crap.
Now I gotta toss one one of those beefy acronyms for good measure.
Ok, what do I run now? Debian GNU/BSD/AT&T/SCO/Linux.
Oh, I that's good! I like that!
</div>
Heh. Don't get me wrong. Right tool for the right job and all that. I wasn't saying that C is necessarily better than VB, just that it seems ridiculous to think that CS grads wouldn't know much more than basic C programming. There aren't many grads like that. But I seem to run into them. This kind of thing happens in every discipline, of course. I know philosophy students/grads that can't write to save their life.
You probably could. If you had a good understanding of systems administration in general. They wont. They'll have a bunch of general knowledge about how linux works and what some of the config files are for.
No kidding. I understand the need for teaching practical, specific skills, but only to a point. I mean, I took a programming class in high school (Pascal, whee). I didn't learn much, since I'd learned some of the basics of programming on my whiz-bang Commodore when I was 8. But I know some kids learned something. At least they learned about subroutines and somewhat structured programming.
There's this whole argument about teaching practical skills vs. a rounded liberal-arts education. It's kind of tiresome, but I have to say I lean a bit towards liberal arts. While my job is primarily in system administration, I am involved in some curriculum development. A big problem, I think, is that when a school offers a "practical" class, it is made an elective. Nothing wrong with that in and of itself, but electives, I think, aren't put under nearly enough scrutiny. Like you said, big deal if a kid knows what config files do what. They should concentrate on how computers work, not how to open files in redhat. Teach kids about binary math and how to subnet before you teach them how to crank up a dhcp client.
Unfortunately, the people who end up teaching these classes are physics teachers who can use word but not wordperfect or whatever. That's not really the teachers' faults, I think. The schools just don't support a more comprehensive program, especially for electives. This is often because the school administrators don't know how to properly support them, I think. They send these teachers off to a week-long training and expect them to teach a bunch of kids who were just tossed into electives because they couldn't hack it in trig.
I teach Cisco classes to teachers, and I've seen a lot of this kind of thing (no, I don't develop curriculum for Cisco). That and CS grads who think Visual Basic rocks all over C. That one always leaves me speechless.
Slashdot Mirror
Hah. Saying "here" is pretty funny.
I think, as in all things, the answer (or at least, the most probable solution to be agreed upon) will be somewhere in the middle.
Did anyone stop to think that those in power want to polarize the population, even though if the populace really stopped and looked at things, it would realize that they don't disagree on all that much? That's my conspiracy idea of the day.
You bring up an interesting point, actually. At least from my point of view. I was a big-time napster user back in the day. However, I primarily used it to track down strange music I had a hard time finding at music stores. I got into My Bloody Valentine that way. A year ago, I bought some of their stuff off iTunes.
I also remember downloading Pearl Jam's Binaural off napster a week before it was released. I loved it, and when it was released, I went out and bought it. I can't be the only one like this.
I hate to sound cynical (and I certainly hate to sound redundant), but I really hated having to buy a CD for $18 for one or two songs. Right now, iTunes seems like a happy medium, especially since they started getting more obscure stuff. This time last year, I couldn't find any Sleater-Kinney or Sonic Youth on iTunes, but they're there now. Not the most obscure, but not bad.
I just wish they wouldn't charge $20 for the new Outkast CD. I'm not sure how much it costs in stores, but I have a hard time justifying that, especially since I've already bought 2 or 3 songs from the album.
Anyway, I stopped using napster when it became really popular, right before it shut down. Not because it became popular, but because of the way people I knew used it. They saw it as a way to avoid paying for music (well, duh). I don't think the difference between that and discovering new music is that subtle a difference.
Now I get 30-second sound bytes to help me decide on iTunes. Better than nothing, and better than 10 years ago, but I still yearn for the napster days.
Ok, I don't hear that, but a muted television drives me nuts. Most have a high pitch squeal. Apparently, not everyone can hear it. I don't consider myself an audiophile by any stretch. I'm pretty sure my hearing is moderately damaged from too many close encounters with loud bands in small bars. But a muted tv really irritates me. Even when it's not muted, I can hear it, though it's not so bad.
Anyone else know what I'm talking about? I've met 1 or 2 people who can hear it too.
Dear god. I remember how I used to read them. I'd go through them once or twice, but while flipping pages I'd see some situation or ending that I liked. So I'd try to find out how to get to that point by finding what pages led to it. And what pages led to them, etc. That's right, I reverse-engineered Choose-Your-Own-Adventure books.
Ok, wait a second. My undergrad degree was in English. I do think that poor grammar/spelling can be irritating. "it's" vs. "its" is not all that intuitive, though. When you make most words possessive, you tack a 's on to the end. "its" seems to be a strange exception.
A mistake such as this can be distracting, but I certainly can believe that people make it all the time. Hell, I made the same mistake most of my way through my degree. :)
A neat way to remember when to use which: there's an 's at the end of "it" if the apostrophe is taking the place of the letter i. Think of it as a little i. Works for me, anyway.
Man, writing about grammar and spelling makes me irrationally paranoid about my own. So I make no claims to the grammatical correctness of this post. :)
I'm not going to comment on the a couple points in your post, since I pretty much agree with you (other than maybe the potential upsides to zealous individuals, but I'm wading into deep water there). But I'll continue to fall off-topic with one of them:
Actually, what you're describing here would probably more correctly be called relativism. This sort of relativism is, I agree, nonsensical. It easily falls apart in the face of even basic logic. There are, however, other strains of relativism which are at least slightly more coherent.
My question of about post-modernism was probably a bit of a trick question. It certainly can contain elements of the sort of relativism you described, at least on the surface. It's actually pretty hard to define. I will say, though, that at least academic post-modernism can be suprisingly non-relativistic. Certain types of feminism are an off-shoot of post-modernism, for example, and many of these feminists believe in objective ethics. And I'm pretty sure Derrida denies being a relativist.
I think that post-modernism, or at least relativism is waning in popularity. In academia at least. I certainly don't think relativism is that prevalent in the general american populace, especially given events of the last two years. That's what political bumper stickers tell me, anyway. :)
So call them prima donnas, relativists and cry-babies. :)
Mods forgive me if I'm going off topic here, but can some explain to me why exactly this sort of competition is so bad? We certainly argue that having a variety of desktop environments / window managers encourages competition and progress.
Don't get me wrong. I can see some (at least short-term) pitfalls with competing standards. But isn't the idea that the possible outcomes of competition overshadow these pitfalls?
I say, let there be competing standards, especially while DVD writers are expensive. Eventually one standard will probably prevail, and by the time prices go down standards won't be an issue.
I could be wrong. Like I said, someone please enlighten me if I'm missing something.
Whoah, chill on the ad hominem right there. Joe Citizen, who disagrees with laws enacted by our representatives, is a prima donna, post-modernist and/or a cry baby?
What thought process led you to this remarkable conclusion? Do you even know what post-modernism is?
This is simply ridiculous name-calling. It is perfectly acceptable in our society to complain about laws we dislike. How do think unfair laws are dealt with? How do you think encryption export laws were loosened? There have been countless figures and groups throughout history who affected positive change. They were called names too.
And no, this isn't just about video games. Think about it.
Hey, not just AOL:
(lifted from http://www.disinfo.com/pages/dossier/id1025/pg1/)
This really is unfortunate. Sticking to standards/guidelines/whatever is great where it makes sense. Safari is a great browser (using it to post this message), but I do most of my browsing with Chimera, simply for the tabs.
Anyway, why are they being consistent on this issue? It's not like they are in other places. Their website has tabs. Their i* apps (and Safari) don't stick to the Aqua look.
I don't see why they can't make it an option that is off by default.
Okay, this is a weird one. But I like it, so it's in my .sig right now.
I have a friend who works at UMN. He and some co-workers were joking about how people expect computers to do everything for them. One of them grabbed a mouse and spoke into it: "COMPUTER! Whatever happened to Blueberry Muffin?"
I can't explain why I think this is so damn funny. In fact, I didn't think it was very funny at first. But the more I think about it, the funnier it gets.
Good points. No disagreement there. I'd have to say, though, that I think the SC rejects plenty (the vast majority?) of cases on the grounds that they're not Constitutional issues. Which is good, like you said.
Perhaps, but by virtue of being a written document, it is up for interpretation. It's not like we can resurrect its writters and ask them what rights we have concerning internet access. Not that I think I'd care about what they'd have to say - the world's a little different now.
Don't you have to make interpretations of a document in order to make changes to it, let alone to know that changes are needed?
And I have no problem letting the Supreme Court interpret the Constitution. It's not like any of us can agree on it's meaning - someone has to. Remember that an interpretation needs justification. It's not like they're making random rulings.
If things were meant to be different - too bad. It's just not realistic.
I'm a fan of ad-aware and all, but I'm not sure most people are aware of its licensing terms. From their FAQ:
Just so you know.
That line is a little up for interpretation, though, and I haven't looked at the license itself. Perhaps a opensource equivalent should be created? Not that I, as yet, know anything about removing adware.
Neither the Constitution nor the Bill of Rights specifically grant the right to do a lot of things. They are meant to be interpreted. From certain inalienable rights are derived specific ones. We wouldn't need the judicial or legislative branches as they exist now if everything was spelled out cold.
The Constitution doesn't say whether I can wear a shirt. Do I have a "right" to wear a shirt that has controversial content? Maybe, maybe not. But you're not going to get the answer by saying, "Well, the constitution doesn't mention anything about shirts with the F-word on them, so don't expect to be allowed to wear it." You'll get a better answer looking at the general right to freedom of speech (and, of course, any applicable amendments to that right).
Exactly. Sure, it's a social problem, but we use laws to deal with social problems all the time, with varying degrees of sucess.
So I agree with pretty much everything you said, but the social problem is apparently unsolvable. And I'll be honest, I don't care how suckers are out there, or whether we're educating them all (we can't), I don't want to deal with spam. So let's get rid of it any way we can: legally, technically and socially. Sure, each solution on it's own will fail, but let's shotgun it. We'll never get rid of it all, but even a 75% reduction will make checking email less of a chore.
Also the belief that laws have no teeth. I remember a few months ago on the Daily Show during the sniper shootings, they showed a clip of Ari Fleisher (however that's spelled) or someone saying that laws limiting the ability of psychos to aquire firearms won't work, because they'll always find a way around it (sounds like some arguments about spam, eh?). It cut back to John Sterwart - "THAT'S RIGHT! LAWS ARE USELESS AND INEFFECTIVE!" Freakin hilarious.
Tell me about it. I deal with that a lot. I mean, look at my email address. It's nice to have a simple one like that, but the amount of spam I get is ridiculous. 100+ a day. I also strongly suspect a particularly bitter ex-girlfriend of signing me up for all sorts of crap. I know she got my email into initial circulation with those damn "Someone's got a crush on you" crap. That's about when I started getting unreasonable spam, about 2 years ago.
On the bright side, OS X's Mail.app has an extraordinary spam filter. Very few false positives (about 2 in a couple months, I think). The occasional spam slips through, but only a couple a week. Considering the amount I get, it's been a great relief.
And to all you damn spammers out there, I don't know who the hell "JOE BLACK" is, unless you think I bear a strinking resemblance to Brad Pitt. In which case, thanks for the flattery, but fuck off.
Definitely a stretch. What does BSD passively resist (besides accusations of being dead for 10 years)? Gandhi had a problem with Britain, and basically protested in a peaceful manner. How is BSD doing anything like this at all? Maybe if Gandhi said, "Hey, who am I to tell the gov't what to do?" then you'd have a point. Seems more like Gandhi was saying that people have basic rights to certain things that ought not be violated, even by big, evil greedy governments. Hmmm. I'm gonna resist the temptation of making a historical stretch as well.
Exactly. I'd also say it's a matter of motivation. Does your average p2p kid download music as a conscious political statement? Or just to get the latest Limp Bizkit without paying for it? The issue of whether they should be allowed to do so aside, this is poor civil disobedience. I don't care if the downloader thinks the law they're violating is unjust. That may very well be so. But it doesn't meet the criteria of civil disobedience by any stretch. I'd say it could very well be counterproductive, in fact.
No, people get mad even if someone violates the GPL without seeking profit. I remember such an issue with Gentoo Linux (someone correct me if I'm wrong). I want to say I read about that on lkml a while back.
<div style="voice: StrongBad">
Crap crap crap. Crappity crap.
Now I gotta toss one one of those beefy acronyms for good measure.
Ok, what do I run now? Debian GNU/BSD/AT&T/SCO/Linux. Oh, I that's good! I like that!
</div>
Heh. Don't get me wrong. Right tool for the right job and all that. I wasn't saying that C is necessarily better than VB, just that it seems ridiculous to think that CS grads wouldn't know much more than basic C programming. There aren't many grads like that. But I seem to run into them. This kind of thing happens in every discipline, of course. I know philosophy students/grads that can't write to save their life.
Yeah, I always loved when those old Macs crashed and popped up a window saying that it crashed due to Error -16 or something.
Granted, they got better. OS X certainly rocks my face.
No kidding. I understand the need for teaching practical, specific skills, but only to a point. I mean, I took a programming class in high school (Pascal, whee). I didn't learn much, since I'd learned some of the basics of programming on my whiz-bang Commodore when I was 8. But I know some kids learned something. At least they learned about subroutines and somewhat structured programming.
There's this whole argument about teaching practical skills vs. a rounded liberal-arts education. It's kind of tiresome, but I have to say I lean a bit towards liberal arts. While my job is primarily in system administration, I am involved in some curriculum development. A big problem, I think, is that when a school offers a "practical" class, it is made an elective. Nothing wrong with that in and of itself, but electives, I think, aren't put under nearly enough scrutiny. Like you said, big deal if a kid knows what config files do what. They should concentrate on how computers work, not how to open files in redhat. Teach kids about binary math and how to subnet before you teach them how to crank up a dhcp client.
Unfortunately, the people who end up teaching these classes are physics teachers who can use word but not wordperfect or whatever. That's not really the teachers' faults, I think. The schools just don't support a more comprehensive program, especially for electives. This is often because the school administrators don't know how to properly support them, I think. They send these teachers off to a week-long training and expect them to teach a bunch of kids who were just tossed into electives because they couldn't hack it in trig.
I teach Cisco classes to teachers, and I've seen a lot of this kind of thing (no, I don't develop curriculum for Cisco). That and CS grads who think Visual Basic rocks all over C. That one always leaves me speechless.