I have been teaching in a high school for 2 years now. I totally agree, but cell phones are just part of it. Now, they have internet access, cameras, games, show movies, and tons of music to entertain (or deafen) students. The new thing this year was to direct dial the phone in my room. I ended up taking it off the hook. I've gotten to confiscating them. The first time for the class period. The second time the parent has to pick the cell phone up to get it back. As for lawyers, every student has to sign a rules agreement that specifies that cell phones are not allowed and will be taken if brought on campus. (doesn't help much) Our school was overcrowded for a while (3300+ students). Rules are seriously hard to enforce. Plus we had the added bonus of the school being 79% minority with most parents being non-English speakers. Drugs, guns, gangs, and dropouts are a bigger problem, so the admin doesn't take cells phones and music players as serious an issue. Now, the people who don't actually DO the work are talking about merit pay? How about combat pay?
In order to turn things around we need to get rid of the G.E.D. and let kids know that if they drop out they will live in poverty and follow that up by demonstrating that we are more than willing to toss kids out of school.
That may sound cruel but it could stop the current loss of lives and futures that now are consequences of a broken educational system.
As long as people with a HS diploma get paid the same minimum wage as those who drop out, it won't make a difference.
I'm not sure how helping doctors turned into crapping on teachers and how they do their jobs. When children are not learning, everybody likes to blame someone for it. Teacher's unions have nothing to do with how a teacher teaches. They just keep the public from railroading teachers every time someone is not happy about something in education. The problems with education have nothing to do with teachers, unions, funding, or any of that. The biggest problems are: 1. The current cultural belief that being ignorant and stupid is OK and possibly entertaining. 2. That all society's ills, that have nothing to do with education, can be cured at schools. 3. That somehow teachers can educate students that don't want it or don't show up to class. 4. That homogeneously mixing children is going to improve the education of low performers by mixing them high performers, and is not a detriment to both. 5. That everybody who has experienced the educational system is an expert on how to teach in it. (a big one for me) 6. That teachers or unions have any control on how or what they teach. 7. That someone is to blame for a crappy child's behavior. 8. That children raising children makes for responsible parents. 9. That every child is entitled to good outcome even if they didn't work for it or deserve it. 10. When parents learn that schools are not a free baby sitting service. 11. That not every person who graduates from high school wants to go to college. 12. That the country should actually decide the purpose of education, besides college prep. 13. Don't move a child onto the next grade or educational level after failing so that their self esteem will not be damaged. It only makes matters worse. 14. Give up the idea that teachers are not your child's parents, psychologists, or entertainers. 15. That some people actually believe that EVERY child can be educated to the level of college readiness in exactly a proscribed amount of time and methodology. Assuming of course that all children can be educated to that level. **Shall I go on?**
EVERYBODY loves to blame teachers and unions for all the crap in education, because they don't want to admit to their contribution to it. The detriment to education comes from the outside, not from within.
You mean that the ads with Jerry and Bill didn't clue you in? Seriously, MS is in a dynastic cycle (like the US). They are passing from their golden age into the age of famine and corruption that will break down into civil unrest. Eventually a new dynasty will rise from the ashes (Linux possibly?). MS is like IBM in a way. A self importance pervaded and colored their decisions. At one time, they mandated the standards until it became too hard for the public to accept. The big blue faded away as the foreign invasion swept away the masses by superior force. In other words, MS will screw with their customers to the point where their disgust will drive them to anything else.
After reading through the posts, it is enlightening that the UK educational system is suffering under the same crap as the US system. It used to be that public education was an end, not the means to an end. Education has become more of a higher-learning preparatory that a life preparatory. The original purpose of education was for the national acculturation of the young to produce law-biding, taxpaying workers/solders/citizens/voters. In an information age, the learned have become more than a asset. They have become a commodity in which nations compete. The trade-off has become quantity verses quality. Nowadays, competing nations need a technical workforce more than they need invention.
> McAfee, which took about an hour to remove fully
Really?
I don't believe it. I've never seen an anti-virus product that could be removed fully. They all seem to leave their tendrils somewhere in your system. I always reformat in this situation.
I've never been able to remove McAfee without reformatting and reinstalling.
But then, I've never made it past 3 licks before biting into the chewy center of a tootsie-pop. Mr. Owl knows.
Things that didn't work: 1. using tools like compilers and other software that students had no access to outside the school. 2. giving crippled versions of these same tools to students. 3. Trying to either be too broad with no depth, or the opposite of that. 4. teaching things that are unlikely to have a future use outside of the classroom. (like LOGO)
Things that did work: 1. do not do the first list.
Sorry, lost the rest of my message and posted before I was finished editing....
I point out to students that they are unlikely to be famous and rich in the future, so they better take advantage of all the knowledge they can get. (no response from them) I point out that a slaves do indeed have choices about their futures. They can choose to do as expected of a slave or choose to suffer consequences if they do not. There are no preferred choices a slave can pick from. As a person, if you deny or give away the opportunity that education can give you, then you have limited your choices. Many times this is limited to non-preferred choices. Hence, you (as a student) are no better off than the slave. (I often get blank, blinking faces.
Outside of high school, many of my college freshmen are only interested in getting the credit for the course so they can move on to the interests they signed on for.
At this time, I have to wonder about how much need is there for science and mathematics in our American society. We have evolved into a service and consumer society. We are not creating and producing products as we were in the past. Even as the politicians pontificate (I wanted to use that word today, badly) about research into new energy resources, I believe that we will import that, because we can't afford to make our own products. What I do is becoming a hard sell.
As a teacher (of mathematics) I noticed long ago that most of the dislike of mathematics is related to promoting a culture of stupidity. The seeds of this idea comes from the "popular" cultural ideas that if your smart or educated, then your not "one of us".
If it makes you feel any better, the attitude you're describing isn't limited to math or science. I already posted most of this comment here, but thought it worth repeating.
Many draw a distinction between "us" ("normal people") and "them" ("scientists and mathematicians," as well as others who focus on intellectual achievement), defining the two as utterly opposed to one another.
Anyhow, you're right -- they "just don't see the connection," and I'm not sure if my efforts, like pointing out the us vs. them tendencies, actually helped.
It hasn't worked for me so far. One of the fallacies I pointed out was the television show "Numbers". While the show does point out mathematics as an important feature in crime fighting, it depicts that only a mathematics genius is capable of performing the work.
I joking point out that most of them are not going to be the next rap performer (bad poetry to drum beats not really being a musical art form) or the next raging starlet, so they better take advantage of their education.
As a teacher (of mathematics) I noticed long ago that most of the dislike of mathematics is related to promoting a culture of stupidity.
The seeds of this idea comes from the "popular" cultural ideas that if your smart or educated, then your not "one of us". The idea is further promoted by using derogatory terms for smart people like nerd or geek. The promotion goes so far as to depict smart people (nerds or geeks) as socially inept and not hip or with-it. The reality is so far from the truth that it is incredible. In reality, smart people are more likely to have highly developed social skills along with situational adaptability skills. The ignorant wrongly believe that they can elevate themselves by attempting to lower others. However, a popular culture promoting ignorance and stupidity is only part of the issue.....
The problems I have encountered with teaching children mathematics is that children are no longer learning skills that promote memorization and logical reasoning. Much of these problems comes from the electronic media intrusion into their lives. Children are constantly assaulted with advertisements and other errata all day long. Mentally, they have to dispose much of it to make sense of their world. Lacking the experience, they have no idea what is important to remember and what to forget. The default is to dispose of anything that does not provide instant gratification. It is a shame to have so much and to be so bored.
The "instant gratification" and easily accessible entertainment destroys the logical reasoning learning. Children are no longer involved in hobbies or interests that require more than collecting pictures of anime characters off the web and searching for over-the-top Youtube videos.
When you have the rich (like Paris) or well known (Brittany) acting like stoned asses (nice they may be) and getting away with it publicly, why would they be interested in anything that doesn't resemble that life. Mathematics, or even literacy, is not on their radar.
If you don't believe me, look at some of the asinine responses previous to mine.
And, don't even get me started on some the stupid educational ideas that are being promoted as we speak.
Besides the things previously mentioned...
Plan (or think about) what the finished product is going to look like before you start......
When planning, sometimes a pencil and paper is much more efficient than a keyboard......
Commenting is everything. You would be amazed to find out later, you don't remember your own code.......
Be consistent with your styling. Try to follow a standard in convention.......
Be a researcher, don't reinvent the wheel.
(someone has done it before, and usually better).......
Unless you have a cause, a single stretch of
code should not run for pages/screens.......
Don't go overboard on breaking up code. That is just as bad........
It is easier do document as you go. The little (but important) things are easy to forget.......
Don't assume that input data will always be good data. Consider the results when (and it will) that occurs......
Don't assume any training or intelligence on the part of the end-user. (see previous)
I am not a creationist by any stretch. However, I think that both sides of the argument are to micro in their thinking. If all life (and existence) was guided by some omnipotent designer, that could have all been set in motion by the creation of the universe itself (big bang). And while not apparent, the Darwin theory may be part of a self improving design strategy.
There is a british scientist that has a video floating around that shows the progression from light sensing to eyeball very well with example critters all along the way. So that irreducible complexity bullshit is a complete joke. In fact, Ken Miller has an amazing 2hr presentation on the whole Intellitent Design where he absolutely eviscerates their silly arguments, and is a Roman Catholic, so it science and intelligence goes beyond religion.
The largest flaw (that I can see) in the Creationist's argument is the refutation of Darwin (which is their agenda). Otherwise, the theory of intelligent design is plausible on a more macro scale.
The God discussion belongs in religion and philosophy classes, not science classes. The evidence for "poof magic" is 0, so even though evolution can't trace the exact path for every critter that walks the earth, it at least has evidence.
That I can agree with, except that we also teach in science about historical cases where scientific belief (which was sometimes religiously driven) was incorrect and changed as a result of new discoveries of ideas. Galileo is one example.
I still don't see what this has to do with IT and that workforce.
I am not sure this is going to be an effective strategy in the long run.
---
What I would like to see is an email server that uses temp email addresses. All outgoing mail sent to the postbox is readdressed to a temp email (server generated) The user can set the life of a temp email addresses to say 24 hrs. Return email is forwarded back to the home email address until the time expires and the email address disappears. Then there is no place for the spam to go. Trusted people could get the home email, everyone else gets the temp email address.
The only reason that we still run a mainframe is because the management in place grow up around the mainframe and their underlings would be put out of work if we got rid of it.
If your really into playing games, get a console machine. They are made (designed and built) for it. It would take a considerable PC to compete with them. The cost vs. benefit ratio is not there.
If you want to process thousands or millions of data inputs in real (enough) time, a mainframe is the way to go. The cost vs. benefit ratio is pretty good. There are many other benefits as well that include security and reliability.
If you want to process thousands or millions of pieces of data aggregate that is not sequence or time sensitive, by all means, use a cluster.
If you want a means to access the internet and piss on the people you work for, get a PC. Its built for the job.
Each item is useful for its purposeful design. What is it you do again?
Can somebody please explain to me what the hell a "mainframe" is/was for and why it might be dead?
Seriously? In the infancy of computers, there were no IC chips. The CPU (and software) were hard wired out of transistors, vacuum tubes, or even relays depending on the time period. The were large enough to require gymnasiums to put them in, required lots of power, generated heat, and required many people to keep them working. There were no screens, or keyboards per se. Much of the data was punched into cards (remember hanging chads?).
Smaller external components were mounted in equipment racks (metal frames). The larger CPU was the largest, most central component, often referred to as the main frame. Many still exist, only they are a lot smaller now and still mounted in equipment racks.
The last one I saw was an IBM used in a plant. It had around 1000 RS244 serial ports to talk to all the equipment and terminals. It used AIX as its operating system. On the floor, was an old IBM 3240 (I think) to be used as a backup just in case. Seeing a 17" hard drive again was a trip.
I think the point was missed. Hard drive data densities and data speed are limited by the thickness of the surface recording media, distance of the head from the platter under operation, head gap, diameter, and encoding. By reducing the platter diameter, you reduce the amount of recording media, less storage. The 'trade up,' if you will, is that you can speed up the platter as the diameter at the outside track is reduced, and have fewer tracks (lower seek times). Hence, faster data, but less storage.
Last week I spied a 4 terrabyte drive in Best Buy. It wasn't THAT expensive. I trying to conceive where I would need storage on that scale.
The problem with solid state drives is the number of data rewrites. Solid state devices do have a limited life that is substantially shorter than hard drives in terms of rewriting files.
The problem with extra platters, and such, is a matter of cost and reliability. The more parts there are the more likely it is to fail.
My first hard drive (personally owned) was a 5" half height drive that stored a whopping 11 megs of data. I RLLed that drive up to 18 megs. If they were to duplicate that in today's technology, the same drive would be the size of a stamp and be blazingly fast.
Data storage? Oooh... cloud computing! Will it be cheaper and more reliable than Apple's Mobile Me?
Perhaps the security services just have a marketing problem. If they "sold" their services as a free replacement for Google Mail and Amazon S3, nobody would complain as much...
OK... time for a lie-down...
Shhhhh, don't give them any ideas...
BTW, maybe I'm being con-dense, what exactly is cloud computing? Is it shaped like animals or
something?
I have to ask, is this news?
Let me say this, somewhere in a hidden vault is an NSA computer searching (maybe using Google) and logging every instance where someone mentions the words president assassination nuclear Allah etc...
Oops....
Slashdot Mirror
I have been teaching in a high school for 2 years now. I totally agree, but cell phones are just part of it. Now, they have internet access, cameras, games, show movies, and tons of music to entertain (or deafen) students. The new thing this year was to direct dial the phone in my room. I ended up taking it off the hook. I've gotten to confiscating them. The first time for the class period. The second time the parent has to pick the cell phone up to get it back. As for lawyers, every student has to sign a rules agreement that specifies that cell phones are not allowed and will be taken if brought on campus. (doesn't help much) Our school was overcrowded for a while (3300+ students). Rules are seriously hard to enforce. Plus we had the added bonus of the school being 79% minority with most parents being non-English speakers. Drugs, guns, gangs, and dropouts are a bigger problem, so the admin doesn't take cells phones and music players as serious an issue. Now, the people who don't actually DO the work are talking about merit pay? How about combat pay?
In order to turn things around we need to get rid of the G.E.D. and let kids know that if they drop out they will live in poverty and follow that up by demonstrating that we are more than willing to toss kids out of school. That may sound cruel but it could stop the current loss of lives and futures that now are consequences of a broken educational system.
As long as people with a HS diploma get paid the same minimum wage as those who drop out, it won't make a difference.
I am a teacher, albeit not a a math teacher but teaching in general has a lot of problems in the U.S.
I am a teacher of mathematics (high school), all the problems I see come from outside the classroom, not in it.
On the other hand, he wrote an essay/article based upon his reasoned judgments about subject he was taught poorly by people
that didn't know anything about it while claiming that this education provided no means of making the argument he just made.
If you only knew what really happens in the classrooms today.....
I'm not sure how helping doctors turned into crapping on teachers and how they do their jobs. When children are not learning, everybody likes to blame someone for it. Teacher's unions have nothing to do with how a teacher teaches. They just keep the public from railroading teachers every time someone is not happy about something in education. The problems with education have nothing to do with teachers, unions, funding, or any of that. The biggest problems are: 1. The current cultural belief that being ignorant and stupid is OK and possibly entertaining. 2. That all society's ills, that have nothing to do with education, can be cured at schools. 3. That somehow teachers can educate students that don't want it or don't show up to class. 4. That homogeneously mixing children is going to improve the education of low performers by mixing them high performers, and is not a detriment to both. 5. That everybody who has experienced the educational system is an expert on how to teach in it. (a big one for me) 6. That teachers or unions have any control on how or what they teach. 7. That someone is to blame for a crappy child's behavior. 8. That children raising children makes for responsible parents. 9. That every child is entitled to good outcome even if they didn't work for it or deserve it. 10. When parents learn that schools are not a free baby sitting service. 11. That not every person who graduates from high school wants to go to college. 12. That the country should actually decide the purpose of education, besides college prep. 13. Don't move a child onto the next grade or educational level after failing so that their self esteem will not be damaged. It only makes matters worse. 14. Give up the idea that teachers are not your child's parents, psychologists, or entertainers. 15. That some people actually believe that EVERY child can be educated to the level of college readiness in exactly a proscribed amount of time and methodology. Assuming of course that all children can be educated to that level. **Shall I go on?** EVERYBODY loves to blame teachers and unions for all the crap in education, because they don't want to admit to their contribution to it. The detriment to education comes from the outside, not from within.
You mean that the ads with Jerry and Bill didn't clue you in? Seriously, MS is in a dynastic cycle (like the US). They are passing from their golden age into the age of famine and corruption that will break down into civil unrest. Eventually a new dynasty will rise from the ashes (Linux possibly?). MS is like IBM in a way. A self importance pervaded and colored their decisions. At one time, they mandated the standards until it became too hard for the public to accept. The big blue faded away as the foreign invasion swept away the masses by superior force. In other words, MS will screw with their customers to the point where their disgust will drive them to anything else.
After reading through the posts, it is enlightening that the UK educational system is suffering under the same crap as the US system. It used to be that public education was an end, not the means to an end. Education has become more of a higher-learning preparatory that a life preparatory. The original purpose of education was for the national acculturation of the young to produce law-biding, taxpaying workers/solders/citizens/voters. In an information age, the learned have become more than a asset. They have become a commodity in which nations compete. The trade-off has become quantity verses quality. Nowadays, competing nations need a technical workforce more than they need invention.
> McAfee, which took about an hour to remove fully
Really?
I don't believe it. I've never seen an anti-virus product that could be removed fully. They all seem to leave their tendrils somewhere in your system. I always reformat in this situation.
I've never been able to remove McAfee without reformatting and reinstalling.
But then, I've never made it past 3 licks before biting into the chewy center of a tootsie-pop. Mr. Owl knows.
Things that did work: 1. do not do the first list.
I point out to students that they are unlikely to be famous and rich in the future, so they better take advantage of all the knowledge they can get. (no response from them) I point out that a slaves do indeed have choices about their futures. They can choose to do as expected of a slave or choose to suffer consequences if they do not. There are no preferred choices a slave can pick from. As a person, if you deny or give away the opportunity that education can give you, then you have limited your choices. Many times this is limited to non-preferred choices. Hence, you (as a student) are no better off than the slave. (I often get blank, blinking faces.
Outside of high school, many of my college freshmen are only interested in getting the credit for the course so they can move on to the interests they signed on for.
At this time, I have to wonder about how much need is there for science and mathematics in our American society. We have evolved into a service and consumer society. We are not creating and producing products as we were in the past. Even as the politicians pontificate (I wanted to use that word today, badly) about research into new energy resources, I believe that we will import that, because we can't afford to make our own products. What I do is becoming a hard sell.
As a teacher (of mathematics) I noticed long ago that most of the dislike of mathematics is related to promoting a culture of stupidity. The seeds of this idea comes from the "popular" cultural ideas that if your smart or educated, then your not "one of us".
If it makes you feel any better, the attitude you're describing isn't limited to math or science. I already posted most of this comment here, but thought it worth repeating.
Many draw a distinction between "us" ("normal people") and "them" ("scientists and mathematicians," as well as others who focus on intellectual achievement), defining the two as utterly opposed to one another.
Anyhow, you're right -- they "just don't see the connection," and I'm not sure if my efforts, like pointing out the us vs. them tendencies, actually helped.
It hasn't worked for me so far. One of the fallacies I pointed out was the television show "Numbers". While the show does point out mathematics as an important feature in crime fighting, it depicts that only a mathematics genius is capable of performing the work.
I joking point out that most of them are not going to be the next rap performer (bad poetry to drum beats not really being a musical art form) or the next raging starlet, so they better take advantage of their education.
The seeds of this idea comes from the "popular" cultural ideas that if your smart or educated, then your not "one of us"
So I guess your "one of us" then.
Stop guessing.
The problems I have encountered with teaching children mathematics is that children are no longer learning skills that promote memorization and logical reasoning. Much of these problems comes from the electronic media intrusion into their lives. Children are constantly assaulted with advertisements and other errata all day long. Mentally, they have to dispose much of it to make sense of their world. Lacking the experience, they have no idea what is important to remember and what to forget. The default is to dispose of anything that does not provide instant gratification. It is a shame to have so much and to be so bored.
The "instant gratification" and easily accessible entertainment destroys the logical reasoning learning. Children are no longer involved in hobbies or interests that require more than collecting pictures of anime characters off the web and searching for over-the-top Youtube videos.
When you have the rich (like Paris) or well known (Brittany) acting like stoned asses (nice they may be) and getting away with it publicly, why would they be interested in anything that doesn't resemble that life. Mathematics, or even literacy, is not on their radar.
If you don't believe me, look at some of the asinine responses previous to mine.
And, don't even get me started on some the stupid educational ideas that are being promoted as we speak.
Besides the things previously mentioned... Plan (or think about) what the finished product is going to look like before you start...... When planning, sometimes a pencil and paper is much more efficient than a keyboard...... Commenting is everything. You would be amazed to find out later, you don't remember your own code....... Be consistent with your styling. Try to follow a standard in convention....... Be a researcher, don't reinvent the wheel. (someone has done it before, and usually better)....... Unless you have a cause, a single stretch of code should not run for pages/screens....... Don't go overboard on breaking up code. That is just as bad........ It is easier do document as you go. The little (but important) things are easy to forget....... Don't assume that input data will always be good data. Consider the results when (and it will) that occurs...... Don't assume any training or intelligence on the part of the end-user. (see previous)
There is a british scientist that has a video floating around that shows the progression from light sensing to eyeball very well with example critters all along the way. So that irreducible complexity bullshit is a complete joke. In fact, Ken Miller has an amazing 2hr presentation on the whole Intellitent Design where he absolutely eviscerates their silly arguments, and is a Roman Catholic, so it science and intelligence goes beyond religion.
The largest flaw (that I can see) in the Creationist's argument is the refutation of Darwin (which is their agenda). Otherwise, the theory of intelligent design is plausible on a more macro scale.
The God discussion belongs in religion and philosophy classes, not science classes. The evidence for "poof magic" is 0, so even though evolution can't trace the exact path for every critter that walks the earth, it at least has evidence.
That I can agree with, except that we also teach in science about historical cases where scientific belief (which was sometimes religiously driven) was incorrect and changed as a result of new discoveries of ideas. Galileo is one example. I still don't see what this has to do with IT and that workforce.
---
now they can go face shopping on Rodeo Drive. It puts a whole new spin to online shopping in facebook.
---
What I would like to see is an email server that uses temp email addresses. All outgoing mail sent to the postbox is readdressed to a temp email (server generated) The user can set the life of a temp email addresses to say 24 hrs. Return email is forwarded back to the home email address until the time expires and the email address disappears. Then there is no place for the spam to go. Trusted people could get the home email, everyone else gets the temp email address.
Perhaps there is something like this already.
The only reason that we still run a mainframe is because the management in place grow up around the mainframe and their underlings would be put out of work if we got rid of it.
If your really into playing games, get a console machine. They are made (designed and built) for it. It would take a considerable PC to compete with them. The cost vs. benefit ratio is not there.
If you want to process thousands or millions of data inputs in real (enough) time, a mainframe is the way to go. The cost vs. benefit ratio is pretty good. There are many other benefits as well that include security and reliability.
If you want to process thousands or millions of pieces of data aggregate that is not sequence or time sensitive, by all means, use a cluster.
If you want a means to access the internet and piss on the people you work for, get a PC. Its built for the job.
Each item is useful for its purposeful design. What is it you do again?
Can somebody please explain to me what the hell a "mainframe" is/was for and why it might be dead?
Seriously? In the infancy of computers, there were no IC chips. The CPU (and software) were hard wired out of transistors, vacuum tubes, or even relays depending on the time period. The were large enough to require gymnasiums to put them in, required lots of power, generated heat, and required many people to keep them working. There were no screens, or keyboards per se. Much of the data was punched into cards (remember hanging chads?).
Smaller external components were mounted in equipment racks (metal frames). The larger CPU was the largest, most central component, often referred to as the main frame. Many still exist, only they are a lot smaller now and still mounted in equipment racks.
The last one I saw was an IBM used in a plant. It had around 1000 RS244 serial ports to talk to all the equipment and terminals. It used AIX as its operating system. On the floor, was an old IBM 3240 (I think) to be used as a backup just in case. Seeing a 17" hard drive again was a trip.
Last week I spied a 4 terrabyte drive in Best Buy. It wasn't THAT expensive. I trying to conceive where I would need storage on that scale.
The problem with solid state drives is the number of data rewrites. Solid state devices do have a limited life that is substantially shorter than hard drives in terms of rewriting files.
The problem with extra platters, and such, is a matter of cost and reliability. The more parts there are the more likely it is to fail. My first hard drive (personally owned) was a 5" half height drive that stored a whopping 11 megs of data. I RLLed that drive up to 18 megs. If they were to duplicate that in today's technology, the same drive would be the size of a stamp and be blazingly fast.
Now you're assuming people know who their real father is, or that their mothers even know.
The "Who's your daddy?" question does take on a practical application.
I suppose I could be, "Who's the daddy?"
Edwards could use this one.
You assume the text entry box has enough space for either of those. You may be making a mistaken assumption.
This would actually be better. Location Hoffa's body. Ex's other nickname. (maybe too easy) True father's name.
Data storage? Oooh... cloud computing! Will it be cheaper and more reliable than Apple's Mobile Me?
Perhaps the security services just have a marketing problem. If they "sold" their services as a free replacement for Google Mail and Amazon S3, nobody would complain as much...
OK... time for a lie-down...
Shhhhh, don't give them any ideas... BTW, maybe I'm being con-dense, what exactly is cloud computing? Is it shaped like animals or something?
What's the name of the voice in your head?
Where are the bodies buried?
I have to ask, is this news? Let me say this, somewhere in a hidden vault is an NSA computer searching (maybe using Google) and logging every instance where someone mentions the words president assassination nuclear Allah etc... Oops....