nothing more, nothing less. Do any of you expect an honest answer to any of your questions when this guy is paid to set expectations?
Given that, here is my question:
How does your background make you an authoritative source on IT matters? Give me a few reasons why I would want to ask you a question and value your answer?
(Sorry that's harsh, but I honestly want to know!)
You click an icon, the cursor changes to question mark, then you click something else of interest.
A browser appears with whatever relevant information happens to be on hand for that particular item.
Of all the help systems, I like this one the best. Beats looking through indexes, of things you may or may not actually know about, to maybe sort of find the information of interest. (Assuming it exists in the first place.)
There are better hardware deals for sure. (I may actually pick one of these up for Linux actually.) However, the OS and nicely packaged and useable tools make up for a lot where the overall value proposition is concerned.
C'mon man, this is a cool machine. Price is not everything. Look past the hardware and look at the package deal.
Yes, this is a damn good buy. You get a solid OS, nice included applications all in a nifty little package with style and size unmatched in the PC world.
Also consider the value of the software added. If you actually pay for software, the package Apple ships in the box makes up for the price difference alone!
The top problem happens to be planning and specification. Many of these companies, that I have worked with, are willing to pay in-house staff to solve computing problems, but are not willing to pay for the proper planning and specification process necessary to get good solutions in the end.
The result is many projects being a quick hack that get added onto until it's one big mess.
Failure to plan and properly understand their own processes hurts any software though. If these mid-sized companies decided to go with a packaged solution, it's likely they will continue the same mistakes, unless they are willing to bear the cost of changing business to match the software (at the expense of their potential competetive advantage) or are willing to let the implementation people actually do their thing, they will not see the returns the package promises.
OSS has serious potential in this area. IBM knows this and it's paying off. Success will remain elusive until the core problems of planning and specification and process understanding are solved.
Google is in the early lead with a great mail service. Gmail rocks.
Now they need to add simple groupware. And maybe charge for that service. Only charge a little and devalue Microsofts offering while boosting their own. Leverage their servers, search, and gmail just like Gates would.
I'll pay a few bucks a month for a calendar / contact manager addition to Gmail. I won't ever buy the MSFT offering because it does not work well with my existing solution.
(I've got 4 invites by the way. Copy a line of content from http://www.pdxradiospots.com, paste into the mail you send to the contact address you find there and the first 4 will get invites today!)
Man, there is just not enough time to keep track of OSS / FS!
DOESN'T THAT JUST KICK ASS!
Sorry this is offtopic. Maybe I'll stuff a copy in my journal. Back in the day, reading Linux Today and Slash, one could watch FS/OSS grow every day. It was cool in that everyone was a part of it.
Today that is still true, but it's too big! Never thought it would come to that, but it has. We are really here and it feels great!
(Pat's on everybody's back who worked hard to get us here. I stand in wonder. Honestly, I do!)
More complexity is not what's needed on the Google home page. There is an images button for image searching. How many people really need the visual context.
Now, page thumbnails... I might go for that actually, but including images for the hell of it does not add any real value that I can see.
Shareholders looking for something to talk about? It's still early, but maybe this and the dumb changes to the Groups interface show signs of Google falling under the influence of Wall Street just like everybody else does, do no evil or not.
Combined with a bit of fuzzy logic, this might be a great addition. Instead of hitting a bunch of little buttons, one could just say:
"Rush shuffle volume 9 play" and get your named tracks played in shuffle order at a high volume with very little effort compared to all the little buttons necessary to get this done.
Of course, this will probably consume enough CPU power to sharply reduce battery life... Some bozo will add a damn button to turn on the voice function to compensate. The wonders of technology.
If these things all could be crammed into an Mp3 player, then lots of other devices could benefit. The mixture of voice and technology seems kind of like the laser was. Everybody knows it's cool, but we just haven't perfected the tech enough to catch up with the idea in practical ways --yet.
$500 is easily justified, given the nice enviromnent that comes with the machine. This box and a nice Linux box would work well together. One or the other would get to be the head machine after a while. That's the beauty of X based environments.
Hey Apple, I want that box. Make me one or two...;P
College is a good thing, so let's get that off the table right out of the gate.
She clearly has a different way of learning and passion for what she does. Who's to say secondary school would help at this point? The biggest thing she has going for her right now is her view of how things work. The schools are going to take her down a path already taken by lots of people. It's a good path, but not the only one for sure.
In a few years, she will have a very interesting mix of current thinking mixed with old school stuff sprinkled with creativity and passion. We just might see some very good products come from that mix.
All I am saying is that what she can get done is not limited in any way by not going to school.
Your other point rubs me the wrong way too. She dropped out of school because it did not address her interests well enough. Getting kids interested in the tech means getting them the means to access and make use of it. In her case, she had other access. (I too was sucked in by HAM radio operators --good crowd if you are technically inclined --thanks guys!)
Lots of kids drop out because their passion lies outside the school. This tells me our high schools need some work. For every story like this we don't hear about the 100 dropouts that don't connect and end up making minimum wage or enter crime / drug scenes.
Good for her, but we can't hold her story up and say our schools are fine, that's all.
The counting can, and used to be, distributed. We can count everything precinct by precinct and get the numbers we need in a few hours.
There is no reason why Americans cannot count their own votes.
Some would say we would have to pay lots of people, or that we don't have enough time.
Bull. Look at all the senior citizens we have in this nation. Many of them are civic minded and many of them are capable. Let them get the counting done under direct public observation.
Doing this would cost us a lot less than these machines and their connection to the voter news service and the media currently do.
Did you know that the voter news service is the sole reporting agency used for all the major network election reports? Did you know they are highly secretive?
We are watching a battle right now in the Ukraine over transparancy when all but a very small percentage of our votes are handled by a single corporation that has clear ties to one party?
We can and should count our votes. There are plenty of people willing and able to do it.
30 percent of our national vote was cast on non-voter-verified electronic voting machines. Ohio also was at about 30 percent.
Realistically we will never know who exactly was elected this year and that's a big problem.
Until we can address the voting machine issue proper (with voter-verified votes at a minimum) Americans have lost their democracy for all intents and purposes.
Interestingly the only state that got this right was frickin Nevada. They did use the machines, but insisted that they produce voter-verified paper trails.
The rest of the nation could actually learn a thing or two from Nevada of all places.
In addition to all of that, what I find most hard to swallow is the lack of action on the part of our elected officials to avoid this mess. Election supervisors have known for years literally and bought the machines anyway.
This whole mess is a crime against the American People. People should be in jail over this. We send people away for far less (like duping a movie).
Sorry for the rant, but this issue bothers me more than any other because I cannot trust our national election. Even though I live in a state (Oregon) with a pretty solid voting system, my solid vote means nothing in light of Florida and Ohio both with significant election irregularities.
I am not convinced we actually chose our President this year. Americans should be just a bit more upset about that than they are. We get press reports on the Ukraine yet we see almost nothing about our own failed election.
Finally, this is not about who won or lost. It's that we will never actually know...
they don't want to have to deal with other opinions in the Christian home. I've seen this and it makes me sick.
Here is the truth about kids 'n computers:
If you supervise the computers, the kids are going to do just fine, if you don't they won't. It is really just that easy.
Linux actually helps in this. A nice OSS computer these days makes a fantastic student workstation. Hell, it makes a fantastic workstation period for a lot of people, but we are talking about kids. The combination of a good web browser, Open Office, some IM software (we use kopete), and a few fun distractions and your kid has everything they need. If they crave more, like programming or scripting, Linux & friends have more to offer than they can likely ever consume.
A win32 machine, on the other hand, is a mess really. Just about the entire frickin' Internet seems to be looking to prey on little kids. I ran one of these monsters for the kids for a while (not sure why, just did). It's a lot of work, and I know what I am doing! Sheesh!
So, a well kept family computer is simply a communication tool and an information retrieval tool. A poorly kept one is that, plus this ugly window into your home.
This is what these folks don't like.
Now, lets get down to the core of their piece. They say increased computer use limits kids ability to develop other learning paths because they trade the computer for other learning forms.
I believe this. However, the number of computers, or where they are located has nothing to do with this problem. Want to know what does? Glad you asked:
Kids with poor academic performance, with very few --and I mean few, exceptions are suffering from the following:
- poor or lacking parental involvement. You don't have to be a smart parent, just an involved one. Heck, learn with your kids, your footing the bill, why not get a refresher? (I do!)
- teacher dependance on the tool. If the teacher does not actually teach, question and challenge the kids, they are not going to get the critical thinking skills these folks are after. (Now that is an oxymoron if you read their material, but that's another discussion.)
Now I need to qualify that second point. There are a lot of fine teachers suffering from a poor educational system. (Hello Oregon!) Ever hear of high-stakes testing? Sure you have and that's the biggest problem we face today. Teachers cannot actually teach given the harsh testing requirements in many educational systems today. Not everybody is going to come out of school doing exactly the same things in exactly the same way.
Why don't people get this? That is why we are people, not robots!
Sorry for the rant, but this point is a touchy one for me.
If you want your kids to be free, critical thinkers, you had better start building them one day at a time. Nobody is going to do it for you, computers or not.
here in Oregon, we have the mail in system. Ballots come a coupla weeks before the election.
It's nice to do exactly what you describe. I think Oregon had record turnout numbers this year because it's easy to vote.
As for your thoughts regarding voter suppression. Spot on! The whole nation is built of of the democratic process. It's our most powerful check and people should give a shit about that, but a whole lot of them don't.
Personally, I would prefer we just do what Oregon currently does. Mail out the ballots, everybody marks them and returns them.
We get a paper record of the vote. Actual voting is distributed in both time and space, making large scale fraud very tough. Counting is centralized and observed.
Plus, the actual election happens over the course of a couple weeks, making the last minute smear tactics far less effective, or at the least very expensive to run.
Slashdot Mirror
nothing more, nothing less. Do any of you expect an honest answer to any of your questions when this guy is paid to set expectations?
Given that, here is my question:
How does your background make you an authoritative source on IT matters? Give me a few reasons why I would want to ask you a question and value your answer?
(Sorry that's harsh, but I honestly want to know!)
That was my thought exactly. If they reproduce at all and survive, even slowly, that would answer something important within our lifetimes at least.
Just hate these multi thousand year plans...
first, namely; "can life sustain itself elsewhere but earth?"
Seems to me, some of our extreme temp. plants could exist on mars right now near the polar regions where there is water.
How about a little test garden?
it's called "Help On Context".
You click an icon, the cursor changes to question mark, then you click something else of interest.
A browser appears with whatever relevant information happens to be on hand for that particular item.
Of all the help systems, I like this one the best. Beats looking through indexes, of things you may or may not actually know about, to maybe sort of find the information of interest. (Assuming it exists in the first place.)
value of the software included with the Mini.
There are better hardware deals for sure. (I may actually pick one of these up for Linux actually.) However, the OS and nicely packaged and useable tools make up for a lot where the overall value proposition is concerned.
few hundred dollars?
C'mon man, this is a cool machine. Price is not everything. Look past the hardware and look at the package deal.
Yes, this is a damn good buy. You get a solid OS, nice included applications all in a nifty little package with style and size unmatched in the PC world.
Also consider the value of the software added. If you actually pay for software, the package Apple ships in the box makes up for the price difference alone!
is pretty lame.
The top problem happens to be planning and specification. Many of these companies, that I have worked with, are willing to pay in-house staff to solve computing problems, but are not willing to pay for the proper planning and specification process necessary to get good solutions in the end.
The result is many projects being a quick hack that get added onto until it's one big mess.
Failure to plan and properly understand their own processes hurts any software though. If these mid-sized companies decided to go with a packaged solution, it's likely they will continue the same mistakes, unless they are willing to bear the cost of changing business to match the software (at the expense of their potential competetive advantage) or are willing to let the implementation people actually do their thing, they will not see the returns the package promises.
OSS has serious potential in this area. IBM knows this and it's paying off. Success will remain elusive until the core problems of planning and specification and process understanding are solved.
Google is in the early lead with a great mail service. Gmail rocks.
Now they need to add simple groupware. And maybe charge for that service. Only charge a little and devalue Microsofts offering while boosting their own. Leverage their servers, search, and gmail just like Gates would.
I'll pay a few bucks a month for a calendar / contact manager addition to Gmail. I won't ever buy the MSFT offering because it does not work well with my existing solution.
(I've got 4 invites by the way. Copy a line of content from http://www.pdxradiospots.com, paste into the mail you send to the contact address you find there and the first 4 will get invites today!)
Man, there is just not enough time to keep track of OSS / FS!
DOESN'T THAT JUST KICK ASS!
Sorry this is offtopic. Maybe I'll stuff a copy in my journal. Back in the day, reading Linux Today and Slash, one could watch FS/OSS grow every day. It was cool in that everyone was a part of it.
Today that is still true, but it's too big! Never thought it would come to that, but it has. We are really here and it feels great!
(Pat's on everybody's back who worked hard to get us here. I stand in wonder. Honestly, I do!)
does not rollout this feature.
More complexity is not what's needed on the Google home page. There is an images button for image searching. How many people really need the visual context.
Now, page thumbnails... I might go for that actually, but including images for the hell of it does not add any real value that I can see.
Shareholders looking for something to talk about? It's still early, but maybe this and the dumb changes to the Groups interface show signs of Google falling under the influence of Wall Street just like everybody else does, do no evil or not.
In the car, jogging, etc...
Combined with a bit of fuzzy logic, this might be a great addition. Instead of hitting a bunch of little buttons, one could just say:
"Rush shuffle volume 9 play" and get your named tracks played in shuffle order at a high volume with very little effort compared to all the little buttons necessary to get this done.
Of course, this will probably consume enough CPU power to sharply reduce battery life... Some bozo will add a damn button to turn on the voice function to compensate. The wonders of technology.
If these things all could be crammed into an Mp3 player, then lots of other devices could benefit. The mixture of voice and technology seems kind of like the laser was. Everybody knows it's cool, but we just haven't perfected the tech enough to catch up with the idea in practical ways --yet.
scheme hosed them too. That timeline is old.
(didn't look at the thread, just grumbing about the groops interface chaneges..)
$500 is easily justified, given the nice enviromnent that comes with the machine. This box and a nice Linux box would work well together. One or the other would get to be the head machine after a while. That's the beauty of X based environments.
;P
Hey Apple, I want that box. Make me one or two...
College is a good thing, so let's get that off the table right out of the gate.
She clearly has a different way of learning and passion for what she does. Who's to say secondary school would help at this point? The biggest thing she has going for her right now is her view of how things work. The schools are going to take her down a path already taken by lots of people. It's a good path, but not the only one for sure.
In a few years, she will have a very interesting mix of current thinking mixed with old school stuff sprinkled with creativity and passion. We just might see some very good products come from that mix.
All I am saying is that what she can get done is not limited in any way by not going to school.
Your other point rubs me the wrong way too. She dropped out of school because it did not address her interests well enough. Getting kids interested in the tech means getting them the means to access and make use of it. In her case, she had other access. (I too was sucked in by HAM radio operators --good crowd if you are technically inclined --thanks guys!)
Lots of kids drop out because their passion lies outside the school. This tells me our high schools need some work. For every story like this we don't hear about the 100 dropouts that don't connect and end up making minimum wage or enter crime / drug scenes.
Good for her, but we can't hold her story up and say our schools are fine, that's all.
What can we do other than bring the issue to the table over and over again?
The 'winners' sure are not going to do it, now are they?
The counting can, and used to be, distributed. We can count everything precinct by precinct and get the numbers we need in a few hours.
There is no reason why Americans cannot count their own votes.
Some would say we would have to pay lots of people, or that we don't have enough time.
Bull. Look at all the senior citizens we have in this nation. Many of them are civic minded and many of them are capable. Let them get the counting done under direct public observation.
Doing this would cost us a lot less than these machines and their connection to the voter news service and the media currently do.
Did you know that the voter news service is the sole reporting agency used for all the major network election reports? Did you know they are highly secretive?
We are watching a battle right now in the Ukraine over transparancy when all but a very small percentage of our votes are handled by a single corporation that has clear ties to one party?
We can and should count our votes. There are plenty of people willing and able to do it.
You are spot on in that regard. I simply was calling the problem electronic voting presents to many people today.
There are other states, mine included, that handled their elections in a trustworthy way.
Still, the states that appear to matter are nothing more than a clusterfuck right now which invalidates our solid votes.
It needs to get fixed. We need to bitch long and loud until it does or we have no democracy here.
talk about that.
This about the broken trust created by non-verifiable voting systems in use today, not who won or didn't.
30 percent of our national vote was cast on non-voter-verified electronic voting machines. Ohio also was at about 30 percent.
Realistically we will never know who exactly was elected this year and that's a big problem.
Until we can address the voting machine issue proper (with voter-verified votes at a minimum) Americans have lost their democracy for all intents and purposes.
Interestingly the only state that got this right was frickin Nevada. They did use the machines, but insisted that they produce voter-verified paper trails.
The rest of the nation could actually learn a thing or two from Nevada of all places.
In addition to all of that, what I find most hard to swallow is the lack of action on the part of our elected officials to avoid this mess. Election supervisors have known for years literally and bought the machines anyway.
This whole mess is a crime against the American People. People should be in jail over this. We send people away for far less (like duping a movie).
Sorry for the rant, but this issue bothers me more than any other because I cannot trust our national election. Even though I live in a state (Oregon) with a pretty solid voting system, my solid vote means nothing in light of Florida and Ohio both with significant election irregularities.
I am not convinced we actually chose our President this year. Americans should be just a bit more upset about that than they are. We get press reports on the Ukraine yet we see almost nothing about our own failed election.
Finally, this is not about who won or lost. It's that we will never actually know...
because it is more Netscape like than Firefox is. Firefox leans heavy in the IE direction. Of course a lot of people like this about it, but I don't.
Both browsers are good performers, I just don't go for the little interface annoyances I see growing in Firefox.
To the developers: Hey, it could just be me, so don't take that personally. You do have plenty of Firefox downloads afterall.
I will have a look again, but I must say my experience was different.
they don't want to have to deal with other opinions in the Christian home. I've seen this and it makes me sick.
Here is the truth about kids 'n computers:
If you supervise the computers, the kids are going to do just fine, if you don't they won't. It is really just that easy.
Linux actually helps in this. A nice OSS computer these days makes a fantastic student workstation. Hell, it makes a fantastic workstation period for a lot of people, but we are talking about kids. The combination of a good web browser, Open Office, some IM software (we use kopete), and a few fun distractions and your kid has everything they need. If they crave more, like programming or scripting, Linux & friends have more to offer than they can likely ever consume.
A win32 machine, on the other hand, is a mess really. Just about the entire frickin' Internet seems to be looking to prey on little kids. I ran one of these monsters for the kids for a while (not sure why, just did). It's a lot of work, and I know what I am doing! Sheesh!
So, a well kept family computer is simply a communication tool and an information retrieval tool. A poorly kept one is that, plus this ugly window into your home.
This is what these folks don't like.
Now, lets get down to the core of their piece. They say increased computer use limits kids ability to develop other learning paths because they trade the computer for other learning forms.
I believe this. However, the number of computers, or where they are located has nothing to do with this problem. Want to know what does? Glad you asked:
Kids with poor academic performance, with very few --and I mean few, exceptions are suffering from the following:
- poor or lacking parental involvement. You don't have to be a smart parent, just an involved one. Heck, learn with your kids, your footing the bill, why not get a refresher? (I do!)
- teacher dependance on the tool. If the teacher does not actually teach, question and challenge the kids, they are not going to get the critical thinking skills these folks are after. (Now that is an oxymoron if you read their material, but that's another discussion.)
Now I need to qualify that second point. There are a lot of fine teachers suffering from a poor educational system. (Hello Oregon!) Ever hear of high-stakes testing? Sure you have and that's the biggest problem we face today. Teachers cannot actually teach given the harsh testing requirements in many educational systems today. Not everybody is going to come out of school doing exactly the same things in exactly the same way.
Why don't people get this? That is why we are people, not robots!
Sorry for the rant, but this point is a touchy one for me.
If you want your kids to be free, critical thinkers, you had better start building them one day at a time. Nobody is going to do it for you, computers or not.
(Where is Paul Ferris when you need him?)
Rant mode = 0
t isn't this a bit silly?
The people in this world, that actually give a shit, are the people that matter.
'nuff said.
here in Oregon, we have the mail in system. Ballots come a coupla weeks before the election.
It's nice to do exactly what you describe. I think Oregon had record turnout numbers this year because it's easy to vote.
As for your thoughts regarding voter suppression. Spot on! The whole nation is built of of the democratic process. It's our most powerful check and people should give a shit about that, but a whole lot of them don't.
Lots of dirty tricks pulled this year...
How come more people cannot see this simple fact?
Personally, I would prefer we just do what Oregon currently does. Mail out the ballots, everybody marks them and returns them.
We get a paper record of the vote. Actual voting is distributed in both time and space, making large scale fraud very tough. Counting is centralized and observed.
Plus, the actual election happens over the course of a couple weeks, making the last minute smear tactics far less effective, or at the least very expensive to run.
I think your machine would work however.