If it weren't for his idea to sell software cheaply to everyone, we might only see computers in businesses and schools where many of the early creators and users thought they belonged.
I doubt it. Gates pretty much created the idea of selling an operating system; if he hadn't, IBM would have just made something else that would have sold with their PCs, just like Apple or Commodore (agreed, BASIC probably isn't the best choice for an operating system) or any of the others.
Re:I think they should give the teachers laptops..
on
Technology and Society
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· Score: 2
The problem is that all school does is repeat over and over again the same information, and in most cases it never sticks permanently. Personally I think the idea of "building blocks", while intuitively it seems to make sense, is not the best way to learn. I always found the best way to learn is to get thrown into something, and let the brain learn the basics by analyzing and breaking down the complicated. Give the kids a laptop, and maybe a few of them will have the tenacity to mess around with it until it makes sense to them...
King's little ploy is a bad idea, and he's a bad bad person and politican. His support in Maine has always been tenuous, and he is on his way out now due to term limits.
A bad person? Because he doesn't agree with you? What a contemptible thing to say. As for that "tenuous" comment, that's just wishful thinking; he's had a huge approval rating during his term in office.
(Aside: Personally, I think Macromedia can f*ck off, they write terrible software with horrible interfaces that produce terrible results 99.9% of the time!
So poor craftsmanship removes Constitutional protections...novel idea...
Skimmed the article a little too fast, apparently they did mention some of these. Not sure why this is all presented as new, some of these dating methods have been around for a while.
These RADAR/SONAR devices have drastically reduced the time it takes to locate archaeological sites, and yet they don't even mention it until the end of the article. After having clearly stated that "The only physical discovery to truly revolutionize archaeology has been radiocarbon dating."
They also leave out potassium-argon dating, fluorine dating, electron spin resonance dating, uranium-thorium dating, fission track dating and several more.
Still, radiocarbon dating put the field on a much more rigorous footing, which anthropology seriously needed. And accurate readings can tell us about things such as trade routes; for example, lead isotope analysis can reveal where the copper in a copper tool came from, something which has revealed a startlingly complex trading system in ancient societies of both the old world and new. Stable isotope analysis of skeletal remains can tell us about diet and lifestyle.
Just because it's a server doesn't mean that a desktop environment like GNOME wouldn't be used. At both my college and my first job most development workstations were loaded up with Exceed and used any one of a number of boxes as X servers.
I didn't play System Shock, but I did play Thief, and while I enjoyed the latter, it just wasn't as fun. What I liked about Deus Ex was that it seemed more open; there were several ways to surpass each obstacle, rather than two or three. Plus, it just seemed to handle better.
On the other hand, it makes no sense whatsoever for any software NOT to be free, regardless of whether or not the programmers are willing to work for free or not.
Sure it does. Make your software closed, and everyone will have to come to you for the upgrades.
Deus Ex is by no means mediocre; it's one of the best computer games that I've ever played. And I'm one of those people who hates most new games and drones on and on about how great wasteland and bard's tale and zork were...
Like the first person who replied clearly pointed out, the Trek franchise HAS a theme-- why they ditched it (and any instant recognition it had) is beyond ANYONE..
I kind of liked it; it went well with the montage opening. You know, after what, 20 years worth of episodes with the orchestral music on the previous 3 series, the old theme was getting a little played out. Especially since each consecutive show had duller and duller opening music.
It's also hard to relate the "Higgs boson" to the above questions in explaining it all to lay persons. Ultimately, we want to know why the universe is the way it is, and part of that question is "what is the universe made of?", which is a far more difficult question than it might appear.
Don't you mean "we, as physicists"? Why should a 5 billion dollar particle accelerator take precedence over space travel or new telescope construction? Personally I'm lukewarm on the idea of a particle accelerator being built with my tax dollars at the moment. 5 billion dollars would vaccinate a lot of children.
It is unfortunate that it takes billion-dollar accelerators to answer these questions, but I think they're worth answering. And I'd rather have several accelerators than the equivalent of B-2 bombers.
Agreed, but those aren't necessarily the only two options.
Actually the court ruled that Microsoft is a monopoly. Then the appeals court sustained that decision. They just wanted a different remedy than breakup.
Workers during the start of the Industrial Revolution and up to the 1920s had no rights. No sick leave, no family leave, no workman's comp, no ergonomics, no disability, no insurance, no prevailing wage, no holiday time. Layoffs came with no advanced warning, heck back then you couldn't even have the warning of knowing what the stock price was doing.
Plus companies not infrequently hired private investigators to snoop on off-hours employees to make sure they were "moral and upright". And if you went on strike the company would hire goons to attack you. And of course there's always the company store, which kept a lot of people in perpetual debt to the company they were working for.
It saddens me that when people asked me who I was voting for last year, they responded with "Who's Harry Browne!!!?" and "The WHAT Party!!?" The media whores have done a really good job in lying to the American public that only a Republican or a Democrat have a chance for the White House (or any other elected office).
What are you talking about? There are elected independents in Congress, and Ross Perot got a significant chunk of voters in 92. There seems to be the view that the reason the Libertarian party does so dismally is because people aren't familiar with them. I'm quite familiar with what they believe; I just reject it totally as being laughingly simplistic, and their candidates as being hopelessly unfit to hold major office.
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If it weren't for his idea to sell software cheaply to everyone, we might only see computers in businesses and schools where many of the early creators and users thought they belonged.
I doubt it. Gates pretty much created the idea of selling an operating system; if he hadn't, IBM would have just made something else that would have sold with their PCs, just like Apple or Commodore (agreed, BASIC probably isn't the best choice for an operating system) or any of the others.
The problem is that all school does is repeat over and over again the same information, and in most cases it never sticks permanently. Personally I think the idea of "building blocks", while intuitively it seems to make sense, is not the best way to learn. I always found the best way to learn is to get thrown into something, and let the brain learn the basics by analyzing and breaking down the complicated. Give the kids a laptop, and maybe a few of them will have the tenacity to mess around with it until it makes sense to them...
King's little ploy is a bad idea, and he's a bad bad person and politican. His support in Maine has always been tenuous, and he is on his way out now due to term limits.
A bad person? Because he doesn't agree with you? What a contemptible thing to say. As for that "tenuous" comment, that's just wishful thinking; he's had a huge approval rating during his term in office.
You know, Asimov wrote a short story where the entire plot revolved around the difference in spelling...
Well, at least the JP scene made a LITTLE sense...and the book actually had a segment of realistic-looking code...
Specially by Soviets.
They went from a virtual 3rd world country to a world superpower in about 2 decades. So yeah.
Actually, the thing that stimulates a sagging economy is increased government spending. Been proven time and time again.
Yeah, I get that a lot.
(Aside: Personally, I think Macromedia can f*ck off, they write terrible software with horrible interfaces that produce terrible results 99.9% of the time!
So poor craftsmanship removes Constitutional protections...novel idea...
Skimmed the article a little too fast, apparently they did mention some of these. Not sure why this is all presented as new, some of these dating methods have been around for a while.
These RADAR/SONAR devices have drastically reduced the time it takes to locate archaeological sites, and yet they don't even mention it until the end of the article. After having clearly stated that "The only physical discovery to truly revolutionize archaeology has been radiocarbon dating."
They also leave out potassium-argon dating, fluorine dating, electron spin resonance dating, uranium-thorium dating, fission track dating and several more.
Still, radiocarbon dating put the field on a much more rigorous footing, which anthropology seriously needed. And accurate readings can tell us about things such as trade routes; for example, lead isotope analysis can reveal where the copper in a copper tool came from, something which has revealed a startlingly complex trading system in ancient societies of both the old world and new. Stable isotope analysis of skeletal remains can tell us about diet and lifestyle.
Too bad PSO is unplayable because of the
rampant cheating.
Just because it's a server doesn't mean that a desktop environment like GNOME wouldn't be used. At both my college and my first job most development workstations were loaded up with Exceed and used any one of a number of boxes as X servers.
I didn't play System Shock, but I did play Thief, and while I enjoyed the latter, it just wasn't as fun. What I liked about Deus Ex was that it seemed more open; there were several ways to surpass each obstacle, rather than two or three. Plus, it just seemed to handle better.
On the other hand, it makes no sense whatsoever for any software NOT to be free, regardless of whether or not the programmers are willing to work for free or not.
Sure it does. Make your software closed, and everyone will have to come to you for the upgrades.
Huh? Nobody NEEDS to replace outlook and the platform it runs on.
Deus Ex is by no means mediocre; it's one of the best computer games that I've ever played. And I'm one of those people who hates most new games and drones on and on about how great wasteland and bard's tale and zork were...
Hey, CUNY's not so bad. Got to go to school in Manhattan for about $4k a year, and graduated debt-free.
His ability to avoid distraction, rhetoric and bullshit is highly commendable.
He doesn't care what RMS calls it...
...but he thinks his reasons for doing so are invalid.
He doesn't follow other operating systems development...
...but he finds Windows XP and FreeBSD uninteresting on a technical level. Guess he DOES follow them to a certain extent.
Sounds to me like he DOES care about these things.
Like the first person who replied clearly pointed out, the Trek franchise HAS a theme-- why they ditched it (and any instant recognition it had) is beyond ANYONE..
I kind of liked it; it went well with the montage opening. You know, after what, 20 years worth of episodes with the orchestral music on the previous 3 series, the old theme was getting a little played out. Especially since each consecutive show had duller and duller opening music.
It's also hard to relate the "Higgs boson" to the above questions in explaining it all to lay persons. Ultimately, we want to know why the universe is the way it is, and part of that question is "what is the universe made of?", which is a far more difficult question than it might appear.
Don't you mean "we, as physicists"? Why should a 5 billion dollar particle accelerator take precedence over space travel or new telescope construction? Personally I'm lukewarm on the idea of a particle accelerator being built with my tax dollars at the moment. 5 billion dollars would vaccinate a lot of children.
It is unfortunate that it takes billion-dollar accelerators to answer these questions, but I think they're worth answering. And I'd rather have several accelerators than the equivalent of B-2 bombers.
Agreed, but those aren't necessarily the only two options.
Actually the court ruled that Microsoft is a monopoly. Then the appeals court sustained that decision. They just wanted a different remedy than breakup.
Workers during the start of the Industrial Revolution and up to the 1920s had no rights. No sick leave, no family leave, no workman's comp, no ergonomics, no disability, no insurance, no prevailing wage, no holiday time. Layoffs came with no advanced warning, heck back then you couldn't even have the warning of knowing what the stock price was doing.
Plus companies not infrequently hired private investigators to snoop on off-hours employees to make sure they were "moral and upright". And if you went on strike the company would hire goons to attack you. And of course there's always the company store, which kept a lot of people in perpetual debt to the company they were working for.
It saddens me that when people asked me who I was voting for last year, they responded with "Who's Harry Browne!!!?" and "The WHAT Party!!?" The media whores have done a really good job in lying to the American public that only a Republican or a Democrat have a chance for the White House (or any other elected office).
What are you talking about? There are elected independents in Congress, and Ross Perot got a significant chunk of voters in 92. There seems to be the view that the reason the Libertarian party does so dismally is because people aren't familiar with them. I'm quite familiar with what they believe; I just reject it totally as being laughingly simplistic, and their candidates as being hopelessly unfit to hold major office.