The only thing keeping us from getting "missiled" at this point is that few countries have the ICBM technology to hit us. Which is why we're developing these "missile shields" (which sometimes work... the patriot missle defence is more or less useless at this point against modern missiles).
There are more reasons than just the lack of technology. If a country would ever attack the US in an organized strike (invasion, missiles, bombing raids, etc) we would nuke them and they know that. Also would be the lack of precession and rarity of materials needed to make ICBM, many developing countries can simply not spend that amount of money needed to make a single ICBM nor effectively deploy them. Honestly, nuclear war is, despite possible, considered to be useless by most countries as it would accomplish nothing.
Things like this is exactly why people are questioning our space program, we just seem to do things just to say we can. What really needs to happen is that taxpayers fund government research which releases *all* findings/blueprints/formulas/source/etc to the public (minus *real* national security issues, such nuclear weapons). Private businesses (such as Virgin Galactic and SpaceX) then can take the information and adapt them to create things thereby reducing taxpayer load. Our current system of hiding anything and everything under the guise of "national security" is what is making our space program fail, and outsourcing things to private companies does nothing to benefit the public.
...Then why am I seeing ads for the Volt? A car made by Chevy which apparently is in such bad financial shape that the government has to help them or else they will declare bankruptcy. Here is the thing though, the Volt won't be out until 2010 at the earliest. Ive seen similar ads from other companies who are declaring bankruptcy, my favorite are the long and large commercials of the companies who have to liquidate their inventory before they go out of business.
We'll see. Android hasn't exactly had a stellar launch.
An OS doesn't really depend on the launch, it depends on commitments. And really, just about every cell phone maker and provider have been eager to jump on the Android bandwagon, compare this to say, the iPhone which is looked at as very successful even though it has no chance of being ported to other phones and by the looks of it it won't be on any other carrier other than AT&T here in the USA.
Look, the problem is Google is a tech company and so they hired a large amount of people to work on a few projects, namely StreetView and Andorid. As StreetView is largely completed, there is no need for Google to keep the employees or contractors they hired for StreetView. Android is similarly mostly complete, it will take bugfixes and will need features added, but with the large amount of third-party applications Android is as good, or will be as good if not better as the iPhone, Windows Mobile, Symbian, and other smartphone operating systems. On the other hand, Apple with their Nazi-like approach to third-party apps, will need to keep a huge staff on hand to improve the iPhone's OS whereas Google can rely on third-party applciations.
1) The public doesn't give Google any money.
2) The businesses that buy advertising don't automatically have the money to increase advertising budgets in a 'slowing economy'.
On number 1, yes they do. Every click on a Google ad gives Google money from a business. On number 2, no they don't automatically have the money, but in a slowing economy, advertising budgets are going to be one of the last to be completely eliminated in hopes of attracting more customers.
It only lost 60% of its value this year. If you think that isn't having a MAJOR impact on it you are on crack. Yeah, its a long way from bankrupt, and I think we all agree it will weather this relatively well, but still... a REALLY big chunk of that ad revenue came from companies that are suffering badly right now... from AIG and Bear Stearns to Ford and GM. Their revenue is definitely shrinking right now.
Yes, but I still see ads for AIG, Ford, GM, etc. and no less than before they got bailed out/went bankrupt. Sure they might not have a 10 billion dollar budget on ads, but they are still going to advertise and Google is as cheap as any other way to get your ads out.
I also think that Google has spent a lot of money on the T-Mobile/Android deals. Android took a lot of time and money to develop, and also StreetView took many man-hours to complete. However, in the long run, Android is going to make Google billions in licensing and other revenue streams.
Honestly, Google doesn't really have to worry about the economy. Unless people stop getting internet access, Google has a rather steady source of income via ads and no one but the businesses pay a cent (and really, advertising is only going to slightly increase with a slowing economy as more people want to get more customers). Google isn't like the car manufacturers in which consumers voluntarily have to pay a large sum to get a car and taking a large amount of money to make the car. While Google does have to pay for servers and bandwidth, they have an almost unlimited commodity with a lot of people willing to buy it. Google isn't in bad financial shape.
Right, because American gun ownership has obviously done wonders for stopping its government from harassing its citizens.
Hm, I don't see the government knocking down doors of random people's houses. Nor do I see police officers just trying to shoot random people like it is in China where citizens are not allowed to own guns (and there is lots of internet censorship, notice a pattern?) Yes, owning guns doesn't magically stop tyranny, but the more you regulate the right to bear arms and the right to speech, the press and to have access to all information, the quicker the government turns to tyranny.
Toshibas are ok. I have a Toshiba laptop that still works (battery is dead though) that runs Windows 3.1. The main problem with Toshiba is that some of the components are quite cheap. For example, after about a year or two of use, the touchpad on one I had bought just stopped working, wouldn't run in any OS I tried so I have to use an external mouse (not a big deal, I usually use those anyways but still). However, the power cords on Toshibas have never given me the problems that Gateway and Dell/Alienware laptops have. On the two Gateway laptops I have owned, the powercord when not falling off, quickly managed to break a wire after just a year of use, a similar thing happened to my Dell and Alienware laptops, however the Alienware one mostly just melted and then proceeded to fry my motherboard (last time I buy from some high-end laptop retailer trying to get decent quality).
Depends what you want. Vista will at least be somewhat usable on that configuration so unless you either don't know how to install Ubuntu, have XP that you want to run in a VM rather than dual-booting Vista, or want to save $50 you could always go with Vista because installing Ubuntu over Vista is trivial, and the hardware is going to be rather easy to work with Linux (no nVidia drivers, etc.) and the only other thing that Dell really installs for you is libdecss and other codecs which aren't too hard to find elsewhere. However, installing Vista over Ubuntu in a dual-booting mode is going to be a total pain requiring the reinstall of GRUB and perhaps changes to the partition layout.
I am disappointed that all distros quoted are "old" versions of their existing ones strictly speaking. Why do software companies do this all the time?
Err... Because those are the minimum supported versions? It would be like if a program came out that only ran on Vista, not XP everyone would really question the reason why. Similarly, its not bad that it doesn't require Ubuntu 8.10 to be installed, its quite good in fact that it doesn't.
There are many things on the Internet that kids can and will find before they've developed or matured enough to view it in context. There's lots of info out there that teaches kids how to make explosives, drugs, how to aquire weapons, etc.
...The kids who want to make explosives, drugs and acquire weapons will and can do it without the internet. That is like saying that because I know about communism and know how to start a revolution I am going to start a communist revolution here in the USA. That doesn't justify blocking any sites about communism or revolutions.
There are pages that show real photos and videos of gruesome deaths, explain how to cause mayhem in your school, all the hate groups are represented so kids can learn how black people are bad, women are marginal and basically anything else some group wants to propagate.
...And so what? If you block something because its "hateful" you end up eliminating an important side to an issue. Sure, most of us think that neo-Nazis are bad people, but lets say that gets extended a bit to anyone denying the holocaust, if we can do that then why not extend that to whoever doesn't believe the American Revolution was a good thing, you can easily see where that gets headed, a history that the government gets to decide. Now, I'm not agreeing with those opinions but students, along with all people, have a right to know all sides of every argument, and the right to access information about different opinions.
Yes, I know, hate speech is protected speech; but in a public education system kids shouldn't be using government (taxpayer) provided equipment to research such things.
...So we should pay even more taxpayers money to buy/develop software/devices to block such things? Bandwidth is minimal, the $.0001 it costs to access a hate website isn't near as much as the $1000 way to block it. And honestly, the government should not condone nor accept censorship of any kind.
If they are permitted to do so it should be within the confines of a learning environment that explains them and puts them in context so the students understand what they're seeing/reading.
Right. Like how we should put everything "in context" which is basically in invitation to mix propaganda with learning. For example, if I was a holocaust denier, I might put the Nazi regime "in context" with the US Army and portray the US Army as vicious killers who killed everyone they saw. The students can only truly understand something if they have access to all sides of a debate, be it "hate speech" or not. Censoring things leads to tyranny, something that has been seen all over the world.
That, and the principals are the final decision maker as to what content students are permitted to view. If they wanted to ban Star Trek websites, ultimately it's their call.
Currently they are, but they really shouldn't. It should be unregulated, for the sake of the students and for the sake of our future.
Well, naturally, but as a user you could always try to brute-force a password. Most school passwords are incredibly low-security, almost always one word, no caps and has something to do with the school. For example if the school's mascot is the Eagles then the password is probably eagle, eagles or *town name*eagles.
...So rather than giving your students a laptop you give them a glorified typewriter that can write papers and print them out. That isn't going to do a thing for them. How many of us in computer science learned things the "right way" how many of us started by learning BASIC in our intro to programming class. Very few. How many of us started learning more about computers when we figured out how to get past filters, how to gain access into a friend's site, how many of us were interested by the "forbidden" side of computers? I imagine that it would be most of us (at least for those who grew up in the '80s and '90s) what about phreaking? We didn't learn about the phone system by reading books, we learned about it by committing "toll fraud". The question is do you want the students to learn how to use a computer or not if the answer is yes, then install a few filtering things, make them weak, give them root, and I imagine that by the end of the year they will be moderately skilled in using a *Nix system, from there they can learn Linux and perhaps become a systems administrator, or a software engineer. On the other hand, knowing how to surf the web and type papers on Word lands you one place, in the back of the unemployment line.
For crying out loud, teach the kids how to use the machine, let them hack it, break it and put it back together, its how 90% of us became interested in computers.
One of the purposes of a public school system is to assist in the successful development of children. Protecting them from potentially damaging information falls under that umbrella.
What in the world? "Potentially damaging information"? Isn't that what China tells its citizens its great firewall project or golden shield thing prevents? Honestly, wow, a kid can access porn, that isn't damaging, they are going to find out what a naked person looks like eventually. Wow, a kid can access MySpace/Facebook/Whatever other popular networking site and talk to their friends, so damaging. Haven't people realized that porn and gossip spread before the internet? Before it was some guy who managed to sneak a Playboy into class and people passing notes, did that include "potentially damaging information"? This "potentially damaging information" is what anyone would call "censorship by an oppressive government".
If parents don't mind their children accessing MySpace then they are within their right to allow it on a home computer. School systems however, are not required to assume that all parents allow it nor should they be expected to do so themselves.
So wait, can we now say that because no parents have expressly approved the use of Google we should ban it? Whitelisting sites like that is honestly, is an idea that can only be expressed as "stupid" along with "retarded". Wait, but lets not stop with websites, lets now expect parents to approve all curriculum by the school! If parent's don't approve the teaching of prime numbers, lets stop it! And who knows where it would go with evolution, no doubt it wouldn't even be allowed to be taught even as a "theory".
As far as locking out installation of software, this should be fully supported. It can't be assumed that adolescents are capable of determining appropriate software to be installed and to avoid websites which could install malware. By locking down a system from a security standpoint will save energy in troubleshooting problems and performing maintenance.
Riiiight, like you know, all the parents who click the banner ads wanting the free screensavers featuring kittens do. On most matters, a teenager knows a ton more about computers than the average adult. Secondly, this is talking about a Macbook, those things are just about immune to viruses. Yes, some forms of malware do exist, but I'm not going to get a virus just by going to a website like you can on a Windows box.
And on troubleshooting problems, just reformat the thing. It works 100% of the time, and takes off all viruses (well, unless you somehow have a virus in your BIOS or something like that, but those are unlikely). Secondly, school is going to teach people about the real world, if I manage to mess up a computer, my data is gone, it teaches students how to actually use a computer rather than just have a understanding of computers.
Oh, and by the way, I'm sure the Nazi Party and the Communist Party of China fully endorse your post.
But how hard is it to get root on there? No doubt it is quite easy with A) Physical access to the machine and B) an owner who knows his machine. All you have to do is become root for a few seconds and delete whatever offending programs are on there and even that might not require root access.
A) Although the cell is a pain to code for, it is much better than whatever PC you can get for ~$400 which will probably contain a mid-to-low-range dual core x86 CPU, whereas the PS3 gives you a Cell CPU which is much, much, faster than the x86 CPU.
B) PS3s are uniform. Other than HD differences, a PS3 built in 2008 will be the same PS3 built in 2012 (assuming the PS3 lasts that long) this allows for a uniform cluster without worrying about differing parts (for example, the Core i7 built in 2008 will not be the same as the Core i7 built in 2012 and getting a 2008 Core i7 is going to be a pain)
C) PS3s are the new fad. It isn't going to be hard to set up a supercomputer cluster with PS3s compared to using a mismatch of older computers because again, the PS3 is uniform.
....About the cheapest computer you can build/buy that would be of any use as a supercomputer would be $200, add in a $150 GPU, and thats $350, about the price of a used PS3. Most supercomputers need fast CPUs, not a ton of RAM (though, the more RAM the better), and so it becomes that a PS3 is about the same as doing it with commodity computers only the PS3 has a much faster CPU.
PS: thanks to Intel for helping Linux stay on the leading edge. It looks like Linux may even support this before Windows, thanks to the Windows 7 schedule... I just wish Intel's pre-conditions on contributing to the xHCI specs didn't start with stuff like:
Honestly, Intel didn't have much choice, the NT kernel can't exactly be obtained, modified and distributed for free, OS X is too hardware-oriented, and there isn't really anything else (minus BSD and other *Nix variants)
The problem isn't that people aren't buying the movie, its because when I buy the movie I can't convert it to use on several devices. For example, say I have 3 desktops and one has a Blu-Ray drive. I don't want to spend ~$400 on Blu-Ray drives for the other 2 of my desktops so it makes more sense to rip the movie, stream it across the network or put it on a high-capacity external hard drive and read it from there.
Right, it's not x86, it's Power PC. That leaves Windows out of the running (who cares?) but Linux/Unix can run it no problem, IBM sells Bladeservers that run it, there are several companies trying to get into the daughter card processor market with the Cell processor. In theory OSX Leopard/Tiger could be modified to run on the Cell processor, both OS's are x86/PowerPC agnostic.
Yes, but the problem is A) Most people won't use Linux/Unix and B) OS X Snow Leopard (version 10.6) is rumored to be x86 only. Yes, servers will have the CPU, but for the average consumer, it won't benefit them save for the PS3.
* Metal Gear Solid 4 (ign score 10)
* Resistance (9.1)
* Resistance 2 (9.5)
* Motorstorm (8.9)
* Motorstorm: Pacific Rift (8.3)
* Ratchet & Clank, Tools of Destruction (9.4)
* Little Big Planet (9.5)
* Grand Turismo 5 Prologue (8.5)
* Siren: Blood Curse (8.4)
* Valkyria Chronicles (9.0)
That looks like a bit more then just 'nothing'... in fact, those look like some highly rated games... what does Microsoft have again? Halo 3 rated a good 9.5, and how many of the above are rated at or above a 9.5? And that's all you could name for the XBox?
I was talking about first-party titles. MGS4 is Konami, Resistance and Ratchet and Clank are made by Insomniac Games which after looking through the Wikipedia article I found no reason to believe they were owned by Sony.
The 360 and PS3 have a fair share of exclusive games, however most of them are not first-party like Nintendo's games.
* Co-developed the most powerful consumer electronic chip on the planet along with IBM and Toshiba
Not like it will actually be *used*. Its not based on the x86 architecture which eliminates it from being used on both Windows PCs and Macs. And honestly, the speed of the media the console is reading from is a much larger bottleneck than its CPU.
* Help push through the next gen media format BluRay and included it in the PS3
...And what is so great about BluRay? Honestly, I don't see BluRay lasting longer than DVD, and I imagine that 3-4 years from now there will be some other major new format. BluRay is good for today, but I don't see it improving anything in the long term.
* Massively upgraded their first party developer studio array to over 20 compared to only 10 for Nintendo and, lol, 3 for Microsoft
...And name me some of Sony's first party games. Nintendo has Mario, Zelda, Pokemon, and loads of other recognizable characters that are sure-fire sellers. Microsoft at least has Halo which is a sure-fire sale. But what does Sony have? Nothing.
* Developed the incredible and gigantic Home online service
...Which most people hate. Just look at this comments thread.
* Branched out into smaller but high quality game development with PSN games
...Just like MS and Nintendo did?
* Created at movie download service for sub-HD movie purchases and rentals
...*yawn*, does it even matter anymore? Most people would go to a physical location and pick up a $1 per night DVD, get the movie off of iTunes, or stream/order the thing over Netflix.
* Created the console with most enormous graphical power advantage over its competitors ever in console history
...Which looks no better than the 360 honestly. And only looks marginally better when compared to the Wii over a standard definition TV.
Face it, this generation Sony can't compete with Nintendo and MS.
Slashdot Mirror
The only thing keeping us from getting "missiled" at this point is that few countries have the ICBM technology to hit us. Which is why we're developing these "missile shields" (which sometimes work... the patriot missle defence is more or less useless at this point against modern missiles).
There are more reasons than just the lack of technology. If a country would ever attack the US in an organized strike (invasion, missiles, bombing raids, etc) we would nuke them and they know that. Also would be the lack of precession and rarity of materials needed to make ICBM, many developing countries can simply not spend that amount of money needed to make a single ICBM nor effectively deploy them. Honestly, nuclear war is, despite possible, considered to be useless by most countries as it would accomplish nothing.
Things like this is exactly why people are questioning our space program, we just seem to do things just to say we can. What really needs to happen is that taxpayers fund government research which releases *all* findings/blueprints/formulas/source/etc to the public (minus *real* national security issues, such nuclear weapons). Private businesses (such as Virgin Galactic and SpaceX) then can take the information and adapt them to create things thereby reducing taxpayer load. Our current system of hiding anything and everything under the guise of "national security" is what is making our space program fail, and outsourcing things to private companies does nothing to benefit the public.
Well at least you can download porn via torrents right.... Oh wait....
...Then why am I seeing ads for the Volt? A car made by Chevy which apparently is in such bad financial shape that the government has to help them or else they will declare bankruptcy. Here is the thing though, the Volt won't be out until 2010 at the earliest. Ive seen similar ads from other companies who are declaring bankruptcy, my favorite are the long and large commercials of the companies who have to liquidate their inventory before they go out of business.
We'll see. Android hasn't exactly had a stellar launch.
An OS doesn't really depend on the launch, it depends on commitments. And really, just about every cell phone maker and provider have been eager to jump on the Android bandwagon, compare this to say, the iPhone which is looked at as very successful even though it has no chance of being ported to other phones and by the looks of it it won't be on any other carrier other than AT&T here in the USA.
Look, the problem is Google is a tech company and so they hired a large amount of people to work on a few projects, namely StreetView and Andorid. As StreetView is largely completed, there is no need for Google to keep the employees or contractors they hired for StreetView. Android is similarly mostly complete, it will take bugfixes and will need features added, but with the large amount of third-party applications Android is as good, or will be as good if not better as the iPhone, Windows Mobile, Symbian, and other smartphone operating systems. On the other hand, Apple with their Nazi-like approach to third-party apps, will need to keep a huge staff on hand to improve the iPhone's OS whereas Google can rely on third-party applciations.
1) The public doesn't give Google any money. 2) The businesses that buy advertising don't automatically have the money to increase advertising budgets in a 'slowing economy'.
On number 1, yes they do. Every click on a Google ad gives Google money from a business. On number 2, no they don't automatically have the money, but in a slowing economy, advertising budgets are going to be one of the last to be completely eliminated in hopes of attracting more customers.
It only lost 60% of its value this year. If you think that isn't having a MAJOR impact on it you are on crack. Yeah, its a long way from bankrupt, and I think we all agree it will weather this relatively well, but still... a REALLY big chunk of that ad revenue came from companies that are suffering badly right now... from AIG and Bear Stearns to Ford and GM. Their revenue is definitely shrinking right now.
Yes, but I still see ads for AIG, Ford, GM, etc. and no less than before they got bailed out/went bankrupt. Sure they might not have a 10 billion dollar budget on ads, but they are still going to advertise and Google is as cheap as any other way to get your ads out.
I also think that Google has spent a lot of money on the T-Mobile/Android deals. Android took a lot of time and money to develop, and also StreetView took many man-hours to complete. However, in the long run, Android is going to make Google billions in licensing and other revenue streams.
...Just what I was thinking of. For those of you are slow, the movie the quote was from is National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Lampoon's_Christmas_Vacation
Honestly, Google doesn't really have to worry about the economy. Unless people stop getting internet access, Google has a rather steady source of income via ads and no one but the businesses pay a cent (and really, advertising is only going to slightly increase with a slowing economy as more people want to get more customers). Google isn't like the car manufacturers in which consumers voluntarily have to pay a large sum to get a car and taking a large amount of money to make the car. While Google does have to pay for servers and bandwidth, they have an almost unlimited commodity with a lot of people willing to buy it. Google isn't in bad financial shape.
and substituted an unlocked Google Android cell phone, retail price $180.
Everywhere I have seen Google's unlocked Android phone it was for $399. Not $180 which is the price of one that is locked to T-Mobile's network and a 2 year contract. http://www.engadget.com/2008/12/05/sim-hardware-unlocked-android-dev-phone-1-surfaces-for-399/ http://www.eweek.com/c/a/Mobile-and-Wireless/Google-Releases-SIMunlocked-Android-Phone-For-399/ http://code.google.com/android/dev-devices.html all give the $399 price point.
Right, because American gun ownership has obviously done wonders for stopping its government from harassing its citizens.
Hm, I don't see the government knocking down doors of random people's houses. Nor do I see police officers just trying to shoot random people like it is in China where citizens are not allowed to own guns (and there is lots of internet censorship, notice a pattern?) Yes, owning guns doesn't magically stop tyranny, but the more you regulate the right to bear arms and the right to speech, the press and to have access to all information, the quicker the government turns to tyranny.
Toshibas are ok. I have a Toshiba laptop that still works (battery is dead though) that runs Windows 3.1. The main problem with Toshiba is that some of the components are quite cheap. For example, after about a year or two of use, the touchpad on one I had bought just stopped working, wouldn't run in any OS I tried so I have to use an external mouse (not a big deal, I usually use those anyways but still). However, the power cords on Toshibas have never given me the problems that Gateway and Dell/Alienware laptops have. On the two Gateway laptops I have owned, the powercord when not falling off, quickly managed to break a wire after just a year of use, a similar thing happened to my Dell and Alienware laptops, however the Alienware one mostly just melted and then proceeded to fry my motherboard (last time I buy from some high-end laptop retailer trying to get decent quality).
Depends what you want. Vista will at least be somewhat usable on that configuration so unless you either don't know how to install Ubuntu, have XP that you want to run in a VM rather than dual-booting Vista, or want to save $50 you could always go with Vista because installing Ubuntu over Vista is trivial, and the hardware is going to be rather easy to work with Linux (no nVidia drivers, etc.) and the only other thing that Dell really installs for you is libdecss and other codecs which aren't too hard to find elsewhere. However, installing Vista over Ubuntu in a dual-booting mode is going to be a total pain requiring the reinstall of GRUB and perhaps changes to the partition layout.
I am disappointed that all distros quoted are "old" versions of their existing ones strictly speaking. Why do software companies do this all the time?
Err... Because those are the minimum supported versions? It would be like if a program came out that only ran on Vista, not XP everyone would really question the reason why. Similarly, its not bad that it doesn't require Ubuntu 8.10 to be installed, its quite good in fact that it doesn't.
There are many things on the Internet that kids can and will find before they've developed or matured enough to view it in context. There's lots of info out there that teaches kids how to make explosives, drugs, how to aquire weapons, etc.
There are pages that show real photos and videos of gruesome deaths, explain how to cause mayhem in your school, all the hate groups are represented so kids can learn how black people are bad, women are marginal and basically anything else some group wants to propagate.
Yes, I know, hate speech is protected speech; but in a public education system kids shouldn't be using government (taxpayer) provided equipment to research such things.
If they are permitted to do so it should be within the confines of a learning environment that explains them and puts them in context so the students understand what they're seeing/reading.
Right. Like how we should put everything "in context" which is basically in invitation to mix propaganda with learning. For example, if I was a holocaust denier, I might put the Nazi regime "in context" with the US Army and portray the US Army as vicious killers who killed everyone they saw. The students can only truly understand something if they have access to all sides of a debate, be it "hate speech" or not. Censoring things leads to tyranny, something that has been seen all over the world.
That, and the principals are the final decision maker as to what content students are permitted to view. If they wanted to ban Star Trek websites, ultimately it's their call.
Currently they are, but they really shouldn't. It should be unregulated, for the sake of the students and for the sake of our future.
Well, naturally, but as a user you could always try to brute-force a password. Most school passwords are incredibly low-security, almost always one word, no caps and has something to do with the school. For example if the school's mascot is the Eagles then the password is probably eagle, eagles or *town name*eagles.
...So rather than giving your students a laptop you give them a glorified typewriter that can write papers and print them out. That isn't going to do a thing for them. How many of us in computer science learned things the "right way" how many of us started by learning BASIC in our intro to programming class. Very few. How many of us started learning more about computers when we figured out how to get past filters, how to gain access into a friend's site, how many of us were interested by the "forbidden" side of computers? I imagine that it would be most of us (at least for those who grew up in the '80s and '90s) what about phreaking? We didn't learn about the phone system by reading books, we learned about it by committing "toll fraud". The question is do you want the students to learn how to use a computer or not if the answer is yes, then install a few filtering things, make them weak, give them root, and I imagine that by the end of the year they will be moderately skilled in using a *Nix system, from there they can learn Linux and perhaps become a systems administrator, or a software engineer. On the other hand, knowing how to surf the web and type papers on Word lands you one place, in the back of the unemployment line.
For crying out loud, teach the kids how to use the machine, let them hack it, break it and put it back together, its how 90% of us became interested in computers.
One of the purposes of a public school system is to assist in the successful development of children. Protecting them from potentially damaging information falls under that umbrella.
What in the world? "Potentially damaging information"? Isn't that what China tells its citizens its great firewall project or golden shield thing prevents? Honestly, wow, a kid can access porn, that isn't damaging, they are going to find out what a naked person looks like eventually. Wow, a kid can access MySpace/Facebook/Whatever other popular networking site and talk to their friends, so damaging. Haven't people realized that porn and gossip spread before the internet? Before it was some guy who managed to sneak a Playboy into class and people passing notes, did that include "potentially damaging information"? This "potentially damaging information" is what anyone would call "censorship by an oppressive government".
If parents don't mind their children accessing MySpace then they are within their right to allow it on a home computer. School systems however, are not required to assume that all parents allow it nor should they be expected to do so themselves.
So wait, can we now say that because no parents have expressly approved the use of Google we should ban it? Whitelisting sites like that is honestly, is an idea that can only be expressed as "stupid" along with "retarded". Wait, but lets not stop with websites, lets now expect parents to approve all curriculum by the school! If parent's don't approve the teaching of prime numbers, lets stop it! And who knows where it would go with evolution, no doubt it wouldn't even be allowed to be taught even as a "theory".
As far as locking out installation of software, this should be fully supported. It can't be assumed that adolescents are capable of determining appropriate software to be installed and to avoid websites which could install malware. By locking down a system from a security standpoint will save energy in troubleshooting problems and performing maintenance.
Riiiight, like you know, all the parents who click the banner ads wanting the free screensavers featuring kittens do. On most matters, a teenager knows a ton more about computers than the average adult. Secondly, this is talking about a Macbook, those things are just about immune to viruses. Yes, some forms of malware do exist, but I'm not going to get a virus just by going to a website like you can on a Windows box.
And on troubleshooting problems, just reformat the thing. It works 100% of the time, and takes off all viruses (well, unless you somehow have a virus in your BIOS or something like that, but those are unlikely). Secondly, school is going to teach people about the real world, if I manage to mess up a computer, my data is gone, it teaches students how to actually use a computer rather than just have a understanding of computers.
Oh, and by the way, I'm sure the Nazi Party and the Communist Party of China fully endorse your post.
But how hard is it to get root on there? No doubt it is quite easy with A) Physical access to the machine and B) an owner who knows his machine. All you have to do is become root for a few seconds and delete whatever offending programs are on there and even that might not require root access.
A) Although the cell is a pain to code for, it is much better than whatever PC you can get for ~$400 which will probably contain a mid-to-low-range dual core x86 CPU, whereas the PS3 gives you a Cell CPU which is much, much, faster than the x86 CPU.
B) PS3s are uniform. Other than HD differences, a PS3 built in 2008 will be the same PS3 built in 2012 (assuming the PS3 lasts that long) this allows for a uniform cluster without worrying about differing parts (for example, the Core i7 built in 2008 will not be the same as the Core i7 built in 2012 and getting a 2008 Core i7 is going to be a pain)
C) PS3s are the new fad. It isn't going to be hard to set up a supercomputer cluster with PS3s compared to using a mismatch of older computers because again, the PS3 is uniform.
....About the cheapest computer you can build/buy that would be of any use as a supercomputer would be $200, add in a $150 GPU, and thats $350, about the price of a used PS3. Most supercomputers need fast CPUs, not a ton of RAM (though, the more RAM the better), and so it becomes that a PS3 is about the same as doing it with commodity computers only the PS3 has a much faster CPU.
PS: thanks to Intel for helping Linux stay on the leading edge. It looks like Linux may even support this before Windows, thanks to the Windows 7 schedule... I just wish Intel's pre-conditions on contributing to the xHCI specs didn't start with stuff like:
Honestly, Intel didn't have much choice, the NT kernel can't exactly be obtained, modified and distributed for free, OS X is too hardware-oriented, and there isn't really anything else (minus BSD and other *Nix variants)
The problem isn't that people aren't buying the movie, its because when I buy the movie I can't convert it to use on several devices. For example, say I have 3 desktops and one has a Blu-Ray drive. I don't want to spend ~$400 on Blu-Ray drives for the other 2 of my desktops so it makes more sense to rip the movie, stream it across the network or put it on a high-capacity external hard drive and read it from there.
Right, it's not x86, it's Power PC. That leaves Windows out of the running (who cares?) but Linux/Unix can run it no problem, IBM sells Bladeservers that run it, there are several companies trying to get into the daughter card processor market with the Cell processor. In theory OSX Leopard/Tiger could be modified to run on the Cell processor, both OS's are x86/PowerPC agnostic.
Yes, but the problem is A) Most people won't use Linux/Unix and B) OS X Snow Leopard (version 10.6) is rumored to be x86 only. Yes, servers will have the CPU, but for the average consumer, it won't benefit them save for the PS3.
* Metal Gear Solid 4 (ign score 10) * Resistance (9.1) * Resistance 2 (9.5) * Motorstorm (8.9) * Motorstorm: Pacific Rift (8.3) * Ratchet & Clank, Tools of Destruction (9.4) * Little Big Planet (9.5) * Grand Turismo 5 Prologue (8.5) * Siren: Blood Curse (8.4) * Valkyria Chronicles (9.0) That looks like a bit more then just 'nothing'... in fact, those look like some highly rated games... what does Microsoft have again? Halo 3 rated a good 9.5, and how many of the above are rated at or above a 9.5? And that's all you could name for the XBox?
I was talking about first-party titles. MGS4 is Konami, Resistance and Ratchet and Clank are made by Insomniac Games which after looking through the Wikipedia article I found no reason to believe they were owned by Sony.
The 360 and PS3 have a fair share of exclusive games, however most of them are not first-party like Nintendo's games.
* Co-developed the most powerful consumer electronic chip on the planet along with IBM and Toshiba
Not like it will actually be *used*. Its not based on the x86 architecture which eliminates it from being used on both Windows PCs and Macs. And honestly, the speed of the media the console is reading from is a much larger bottleneck than its CPU.
* Help push through the next gen media format BluRay and included it in the PS3
* Massively upgraded their first party developer studio array to over 20 compared to only 10 for Nintendo and, lol, 3 for Microsoft
* Developed the incredible and gigantic Home online service
* Branched out into smaller but high quality game development with PSN games
* Created at movie download service for sub-HD movie purchases and rentals
* Created the console with most enormous graphical power advantage over its competitors ever in console history
Face it, this generation Sony can't compete with Nintendo and MS.