Believe it or not, this may actually be good for linux and/or mozilla users.
Think about it... Imagine you are a semi-responsible web developer trying to make a "standards compliant" page. Right now, you could design the page and test it with either Netscape or MSIE 4/5 and be pretty well assured that it would look pretty much the same in the other browser with a couple minor changes.
HOWEVER, if it becomes a well known fact that MSIE 5.5 is completely incompatible with Netscape (and even MSIE 5.0 for that matter), then development will turn towards Netscape. Responsible developers will never use the MSIE tags, and instead will develop their pages using Netscape because they can feel assured that the page will look pretty much the same in MSIE.
The fact is that no good website is going to use the proprietary tags. When I am developing my site (ahem... ubersite.com), I do all of my development in linux/netscape because then when I go to windows, it looks pretty much the same in either netscape or MSIE (with the big exception of font sizes).
So, much like VBScript, MSIE 5.5 proprietary tags will never catch on.
I drew those three black and white images of hands about five years ago in college, and now they appear on a link off Slashdot! I love the power of the web.
In case anyone is curious, the original game I wrote (five years ago) is here. Unfortunately, the game hasn't been modified since then either, so it's a bit outdated compared to, say, Quake III.
I have Mindspring as an my service provider, Covad as the line maintainer, and Ameritech as my local phone company in Chicago. My line worked great for about three months, and then one day it just stopped. There was no power surge, thunderstorm, or anything else. I was connected in linux, rebooted to windows, and could no longer connect to the outside world.
My setup uses a FlowPoint 2100 ADSL router and my PC connects to it via PPPoE which is a pain in the ass. When I called up Mindspring's technical support, I had to talk to the "Reboot the machine" and "Uninstall/reinstall the software" people for a couple days before they directed me to someone with a clue. Once that happened, the process was very slow because Mindspring had to contact Covad who had to arrange an appointment with me. When the Covad guy couldn't figure it out, I had to call up the Mindspring guy again. The Mindspring guy then had to contact Covad to run some line tests and then eventually after another week sent Covad back out to my apartment. This time, the Covad guy was able to fix the problem, but it had already been three weeks since I first went offline.
Now that I was connected, I ran a couple of port scans on my machine from an outside computer, and knocked my router offline. My line came back up for about a day, but then dropped off again and as of today, I have been offline for another week and a half. This evening, I am getting a cable modem.
Surprisingly, the cable company has a monopoly on their lines, but they charge less per month than the mess known as the DSL provider. So far, they have also provided better customer service.
The whole problem is in the "user experience" as defined by ebay. Every large commercial website goes through a detailed analysis of what they want users to see as they click through the site. Since ebay doesn't have banner ads, the only thing they want is the branding that they get when a user clicks on four different pages and sees the ebay logo every time.
By circumventing ebay's own front page and search engine, the biddersedge site is distorting ebay's users' experiences.
Personally, I think ebay is foolish for stopping biddersedge. Why would you want to drive users away from your site?
Uh... boss, uh... you see this VIRUS started downloading all this porn to my machine. I was just checking my email and then all of a sudden this naked woman showed up, but I had nothing to do with it...
I liked it better the first time when it was "My dog ate my homework".
Microsoft is a government determined monopoly based on patents, copyrights, and now the ultra power maintainer, the DMCA. Even in the old days, Standard Oil was a government maintained monopoly simply because it was illegal to kill Rockefeller. Anti-trust and impeachment trials are basically the legal alternative to assassination.
I would love to see the government remove Microsoft's rights to patents, copyrights, and trade secrets. The immediate results would be the decompiling of every bit of Windows, the posting of every Office/Visual/Media program, and 100% compatibility with wine and samba. Can you say, "Corporate Death Penalty"?
Best of all, it would be free and there would be nothing Bill could do to stop it. I have this vision of Alfred Hitchcock's "The Birds". There would be no big catastrophic event like an ice age or meteor, just hundreds of thousands of little pecks until Bill is left standing with no eyes yelling how this will be bad for the economy and freedom to innovate.
Unfortunately for everyone but M$, the real penalty will not be nearly as effect.
I would quit my job immediately if my employer installed filtering software. For God's sake, why would an employer want to forbid their employees from educating themselves?
Wow, I just tried to setup an example in my post that popped up the user's cookie in an alert window, but apparently the slashdot folks figured out a semi decent way to filter out javascript.
Most of the comments I have read on this refer to the benefits of
open source because the problem was discovered and fixed
within a matter of hours/minutes instead of weeks. Then the
counter to that is that the crack is in the open so vulnerable
systems can be broken into.
The main thing that I haven't heard mentioned here is the benefit
that holes like this have to other developers. Now I as Joe
Developer am at least conscious of these holes so that in my next
product, I can make sure no such holes exist. I read people
discussing the common "; command" thing with system commands as
though it were just common knowledge.
The truth is that this is common knowledge due to the open source
process. How many such exploits have you heard for
DOS-based developers? For every bug that M$ finds and "fixes" in
its crap, how many countless other developers have
created the same holes and are totally unaware of how to fix them?
People who use Windows just expect programs to crash occasionally
and not ask questions. Not only is the OS buggy, but so
is every application written for it because everyone is trying to
reinvent the wheel on security issues. And according to M$,
100 different buggy incompatible security models are better than
one solid one because people know how the solid one works.
Actually, the temporal sensitivity of the human eye depends on the brightness of the display and the surrounding light. A film in a movie theater I believe runs at 48 fps, TV at 60 fps, and most monitors at around 72 fps.
Since the movie theater is dark and the film is relatively dark, there is no noticable flicker in the picture. Generally a monitor is brighter than a TV, which is why you can notice a flicker if your monitor is set to 60 Hz.
The moral of the story: if you notice your monitor flickering, turn off all the lights in your office/home/computer lab and work in the dark. To help prevent nagging coworkers from trying to disrupt you, play James Brown nonstop and nickname yourself "Venus".
Even better would be a TLD of ".", not "dot", just ".". Then, they would need to allow non alphanumericdash characters in domain names such as a "/". Then you could simply have:
I think it's a great strategy for AOL to do exactly what they are doing and that they should have every right to do it. Let's face it, no one is forced to use AOL. I wouldn't consider Microsoft a monopoly, and AOL has a lot more useful competitors than MS. I have never used AOL and never will. They have provided me with a great number of shiny coasters, and for that I am thankful.
What is happening with ISPs is the same thing that has happened in every other industry ever developed. If you don't care and don't want to research the matter, you choose the biggest, most expensive, most overrated, and generally worst option of all. I mean, does anybody actually consider McDonalds to be "good food"? It's cheap, it's easy, and there's one within fifty feet of any point in America. However, that does not make them a monopoly.
So, yes, if you are one of the poor saps who eats at McDonalds, shops at WalMart, watches the local news, and uses AOL, then your view of the web will probably be as bland as anything else.
Turn up the radio, no fuck it, turn it off -- Rage Against The Machine
There's always the non-portable Apex DVD/VCD/CD/MP3 player which pretty much does anything you would want it to do for about $200. It has a relatively rough user interface and remote, but it's still godly cool.
However, in this case, 2600.com is linking to sites that have software which was deemed illegal, yes, ILLEGAL by a court, under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act.
Did I miss something here? As far as I know, there has been no trial, only a preliminary injunction. Are you trying to say that a preliminary injunction against 2600.com somehow makes this software illegal?
Anyone can still legally post and use DeCSS under the assumption that they are using it for compatibility as guaranteed by the DMCA. Under any form of copyright law, it is and has always been illegal to use DeCSS to make copies of movies and redistribute them.
Let's face it, the reason why the MPAA went after 2600.com is because they are an easy target. They posted the code along with statements that this code could be used to pirate movies. Should doing this be illegal? Probably not, and hopefully this case will set a precedent on the matter. Is it illegal to sell a gun by advertising things like "Hey, you can kill people with this gun!"? I don't know. If I am considering killing someone and then I see a "gun control" PSA that says "Guns kill people", who goes to prison then?
<RANT> What I do know is that killing people and/or robbing their homes is a hell of a lot more serious than decrypting some bits. If you steal someone's car, they no longer have a car. If you kill someone, they are dead. If you pirate a movie, the MPAA is out $20. Fuck the analogies, Mr. Valenti, and talk about the real world. You want to continue to be paid for providing a service that open source and broadband technology has rendered obsolete. </RANT>
I've seen this and it is absolutely true! Just the other day, I rented Stigmata on DVD, and while I was watching it, I noticed that there were a couple of scenes with some visual artifacts in them, so I tried to do a slow motion and zoom to see what was going on.
Well, the player was right at the scene where the girl is telling the priest how she doesn't believe in God. I was stepping through it, and as soon as she finished saying "God", there was one blank frame, immediately followed by a black frame with blood red lettering that read "There is only one true God". When I stepped to the next frame, my DVD player starting spinning uncontrolably and smoke began to pour from my television.
Immediately after, the power went out in my apartment and the two square miles around me. As lightning repeatedly struck my DVD player, an angel appeared in my living room to bring me a message from God. She told me that by using DeCSS, I was stealing money from the righteous MPAA and I should never use linux again because so many poor folks paid for their MCSE and that linux damages the ability of the marketplace to innovate.
I have never seen anything like it. The weirdest thing though was that when I DeCSSed it, no angels appeared!
I think the obvious solution is that no one ever attempts to break CSS again, because that's how God wants it.
John Lennon was shot twenty years ago, yet the article still refers to him as "former beatle". No wonder he's suing.
I would like to see a janitor retire and then claim that anyone who uses the bathrooms he cleaned twenty years ago owes him money.
Honestly, nothing against Paul McCartney, but hasn't he made enough money already? For god's sake, he's just a musician. I respect his right to earn a buck, but why can't he realize that society has already compensated him extremely well for the work he's done?
Artists need some way to profit from their work. Even if only a small fraction goes to the artist, it's better than none. By freeloading you're doing nothing to encourage the production or distribution of "quality" music. While the system may be "unfair", and while you're free to disagree with it, it does not make intellectual property null and void. It exists for a reason, you, as a consumer, have a simple choice: Accept conditions and buy it, or not.
That's like saying "Slaves need some some way to eat. Even if their master only gives them a piece of bread a day, it's better than nothing. By freeing slaves, you're doing nothing to help them eat. While the system may be 'unfair', that does not make the concept of owning slaves null and void. It exists for a reason, so just accept it."
Please. The reason why intellectual property exists in the form it does today is because of the corporations ability to buy Congressmen. Nobody gives a crap about the artists. Maybe a couple hundred years ago someone did.
Besides, what kind of a band can't make money by selling touring and selling merchandise? The reason you can't make money by touring, Creed, is because you suck, not because of the 2% of Americans who use Napster.
If someone doesn't stop this evil Napster, the bank is going to reposess my Porsche! Get a real job.
I signed up for Yahoo Bill Pay in September and I have to say that it is easily the best non-entertainment service available on the web. It's sort of a bitch to first set up. Once you sign up on the website, you have to wait for an address confirmation to come in the US Mail and then enter the "secret code" from the mailing. Then, to get up and running, you have to add every one of your "payees" to a list which includes their name, address, and your account number with them. This takes a little while, but you only have to do it once.
Once you have the payee list, you can set up payments very easily. For things like rent, you can set it up to automatically pay every month. For something like a credit card bill, you can have it "remind" you every month when your payment is due.
Now, I basically log into the site every time I get a bill. The first thing I see is a whole list of all my upcoming payments and reminders. Then, it is butt-easy to add a payment for my new bill, and then I'm done.
One of the cool things about the Yahoo thing is that if your "payee" accepts ACH payments (Automated Clearing House ? - electronic) payments, then the payments will automatically be made electronically. Otherwise, they will cut a check and send it. The check is just like a normal check - it is "from" your account and "to" the payee - with your account number on it. So, if your bank returns cancelled checks, you will received all of these cancelled yahoo checks along with any others you may have written.
The main problems that I have come across have been reported and fixed. The only problem that still exists is that there is no way to keep track of your checking balance through the site. So, if you schedule a bunch of payments that you can't afford, your checks will just bounce and you'll be charged up the ass by your bank. Other than that, no complaints from me.
The service does cost $7 a month which may be a big deal if you're not going to go 100% with this. Myself, I don't even have any checks for my account. Every check I write comes from Yahoo. The $7 is probably about what I would spend per month between stamps, envelopes, and late payments.
Highly Recommended!!! A++++!!! (Ok, I'm also addicted to Ebay)
I don't understand how companies like Fox and Disney can walk this holy high ground and expect anyone to see their point?
On one hand, everywhere you look and everything you see has some corporate logo, trademark, copyrighted something or other on it. Look around your home and count the corporate owned propoganda staring you in the face from that Nike symbol on your shoes to the Levi tag on your jeans to the Mickey Mouse ears on your head. You cannot escape it!
These corporations want to slam all of this crap down your throat and then when *you* try to do something with it, they file lawsuits and C&Ds. Every street in America is visually poisoned by billions of corporate logos, but if you try to do anything with this logo that they do not approve, then away you go. Please.
The worst thing is that every person who watches these shows and buys from the advertisers promotes this sort of environmental pollution and litigative action.
If there's something you want to do about it, TURN OFF THE F'ING TV! Write letters to the advertisers telling them of your intent to boycott their products if they don't try to change Fox's actions. Even if it doesn't correct the problem, you'll feel good bitching at Corporate America.
Has anyone taken a look at Mattel's financial situation lately? This is their stock info from Yahoo.
Basically, in the last two years, their stock price has quartered and they are losing money. This combined with some recent downgrades from various brokers spells D - O - O - M.
Maybe this is their last attempt to save face before they are bought out or go bankrupt.
Re:More money = better grade at the end?
on
Laptop Exams?
·
· Score: 1
Laptops and even calculators can help on exams, but professors can also gear exams so that dependence on such a device will lower your score. For example, he could have some sort of "real world" problem where the trick is not crunching numbers, but actually setting up the problem.
Johnny has five dollars and spends one dollar and thirty cents, how much does he have left?
Are you telling me that a student who can search the internet for Johnny and his five dollars is actually going to have an advantage over someone with a brain instead of a laptop?
In school, we used to have exams where you would not be able to finish the whole exam if you entered all the problems into a calculator. Basically, it would take you longer to type them in than to solve them in your head, if you knew the "tricks" behind them.
Maybe if you could design a Turing laptop with OCR and some natural language processing along with a wireless high speed connection and a robotic arm to control your pencil, my argument might change.
Slashdot Mirror
Think about it... Imagine you are a semi-responsible web developer trying to make a "standards compliant" page. Right now, you could design the page and test it with either Netscape or MSIE 4/5 and be pretty well assured that it would look pretty much the same in the other browser with a couple minor changes.
HOWEVER, if it becomes a well known fact that MSIE 5.5 is completely incompatible with Netscape (and even MSIE 5.0 for that matter), then development will turn towards Netscape. Responsible developers will never use the MSIE tags, and instead will develop their pages using Netscape because they can feel assured that the page will look pretty much the same in MSIE.
The fact is that no good website is going to use the proprietary tags. When I am developing my site (ahem... ubersite.com), I do all of my development in linux/netscape because then when I go to windows, it looks pretty much the same in either netscape or MSIE (with the big exception of font sizes).
So, much like VBScript, MSIE 5.5 proprietary tags will never catch on.
In case anyone is curious, the original game I wrote (five years ago) is here. Unfortunately, the game hasn't been modified since then either, so it's a bit outdated compared to, say, Quake III.
My setup uses a FlowPoint 2100 ADSL router and my PC connects to it via PPPoE which is a pain in the ass. When I called up Mindspring's technical support, I had to talk to the "Reboot the machine" and "Uninstall/reinstall the software" people for a couple days before they directed me to someone with a clue. Once that happened, the process was very slow because Mindspring had to contact Covad who had to arrange an appointment with me. When the Covad guy couldn't figure it out, I had to call up the Mindspring guy again. The Mindspring guy then had to contact Covad to run some line tests and then eventually after another week sent Covad back out to my apartment. This time, the Covad guy was able to fix the problem, but it had already been three weeks since I first went offline.
Now that I was connected, I ran a couple of port scans on my machine from an outside computer, and knocked my router offline. My line came back up for about a day, but then dropped off again and as of today, I have been offline for another week and a half. This evening, I am getting a cable modem.
Surprisingly, the cable company has a monopoly on their lines, but they charge less per month than the mess known as the DSL provider. So far, they have also provided better customer service.
Long live the monopoly!
By circumventing ebay's own front page and search engine, the biddersedge site is distorting ebay's users' experiences.
Personally, I think ebay is foolish for stopping biddersedge. Why would you want to drive users away from your site?
Uh... boss, uh... you see this VIRUS started downloading all this porn to my machine. I was just checking my email and then all of a sudden this naked woman showed up, but I had nothing to do with it...
I liked it better the first time when it was "My dog ate my homework".
I would love to see the government remove Microsoft's rights to patents, copyrights, and trade secrets. The immediate results would be the decompiling of every bit of Windows, the posting of every Office/Visual/Media program, and 100% compatibility with wine and samba. Can you say, "Corporate Death Penalty"?
Best of all, it would be free and there would be nothing Bill could do to stop it. I have this vision of Alfred Hitchcock's "The Birds". There would be no big catastrophic event like an ice age or meteor, just hundreds of thousands of little pecks until Bill is left standing with no eyes yelling how this will be bad for the economy and freedom to innovate.
Unfortunately for everyone but M$, the real penalty will not be nearly as effect.
Some companies just need to get a clue.
Good job!
That's nothing compared to this one
The main thing that I haven't heard mentioned here is the benefit that holes like this have to other developers. Now I as Joe Developer am at least conscious of these holes so that in my next product, I can make sure no such holes exist. I read people discussing the common "; command" thing with system commands as though it were just common knowledge.
The truth is that this is common knowledge due to the open source process. How many such exploits have you heard for DOS-based developers? For every bug that M$ finds and "fixes" in its crap, how many countless other developers have created the same holes and are totally unaware of how to fix them?
People who use Windows just expect programs to crash occasionally and not ask questions. Not only is the OS buggy, but so is every application written for it because everyone is trying to reinvent the wheel on security issues. And according to M$, 100 different buggy incompatible security models are better than one solid one because people know how the solid one works.
Please.
Since the movie theater is dark and the film is relatively dark, there is no noticable flicker in the picture. Generally a monitor is brighter than a TV, which is why you can notice a flicker if your monitor is set to 60 Hz.
The moral of the story: if you notice your monitor flickering, turn off all the lights in your office/home/computer lab and work in the dark. To help prevent nagging coworkers from trying to disrupt you, play James Brown nonstop and nickname yourself "Venus".
Then, they would need to allow non alphanumericdash characters in domain names such as a "/". Then you could simply have:
http:///.
Not only would it look cool, but only the true techies would even be able to find it!What is happening with ISPs is the same thing that has happened in every other industry ever developed. If you don't care and don't want to research the matter, you choose the biggest, most expensive, most overrated, and generally worst option of all. I mean, does anybody actually consider McDonalds to be "good food"? It's cheap, it's easy, and there's one within fifty feet of any point in America. However, that does not make them a monopoly.
So, yes, if you are one of the poor saps who eats at McDonalds, shops at WalMart, watches the local news, and uses AOL, then your view of the web will probably be as bland as anything else.
Turn up the radio, no fuck it, turn it off
-- Rage Against The Machine
There's always the non-portable Apex DVD/VCD/CD/MP3 player which pretty much does anything you would want it to do for about $200. It has a relatively rough user interface and remote, but it's still godly cool.
Did I miss something here? As far as I know, there has been no trial, only a preliminary injunction. Are you trying to say that a preliminary injunction against 2600.com somehow makes this software illegal?
Anyone can still legally post and use DeCSS under the assumption that they are using it for compatibility as guaranteed by the DMCA. Under any form of copyright law, it is and has always been illegal to use DeCSS to make copies of movies and redistribute them.
Let's face it, the reason why the MPAA went after 2600.com is because they are an easy target. They posted the code along with statements that this code could be used to pirate movies. Should doing this be illegal? Probably not, and hopefully this case will set a precedent on the matter. Is it illegal to sell a gun by advertising things like "Hey, you can kill people with this gun!"? I don't know. If I am considering killing someone and then I see a "gun control" PSA that says "Guns kill people", who goes to prison then?
<RANT>
What I do know is that killing people and/or robbing their homes is a hell of a lot more serious than decrypting some bits. If you steal someone's car, they no longer have a car. If you kill someone, they are dead. If you pirate a movie, the MPAA is out $20. Fuck the analogies, Mr. Valenti, and talk about the real world. You want to continue to be paid for providing a service that open source and broadband technology has rendered obsolete.
</RANT>
Well, the player was right at the scene where the girl is telling the priest how she doesn't believe in God. I was stepping through it, and as soon as she finished saying "God", there was one blank frame, immediately followed by a black frame with blood red lettering that read "There is only one true God". When I stepped to the next frame, my DVD player starting spinning uncontrolably and smoke began to pour from my television.
Immediately after, the power went out in my apartment and the two square miles around me. As lightning repeatedly struck my DVD player, an angel appeared in my living room to bring me a message from God. She told me that by using DeCSS, I was stealing money from the righteous MPAA and I should never use linux again because so many poor folks paid for their MCSE and that linux damages the ability of the marketplace to innovate.
I have never seen anything like it. The weirdest thing though was that when I DeCSSed it, no angels appeared!
I think the obvious solution is that no one ever attempts to break CSS again, because that's how God wants it.
I would like to see a janitor retire and then claim that anyone who uses the bathrooms he cleaned twenty years ago owes him money.
Honestly, nothing against Paul McCartney, but hasn't he made enough money already? For god's sake, he's just a musician. I respect his right to earn a buck, but why can't he realize that society has already compensated him extremely well for the work he's done?
That's like saying "Slaves need some some way to eat. Even if their master only gives them a piece of bread a day, it's better than nothing. By freeing slaves, you're doing nothing to help them eat. While the system may be 'unfair', that does not make the concept of owning slaves null and void. It exists for a reason, so just accept it."
Please. The reason why intellectual property exists in the form it does today is because of the corporations ability to buy Congressmen. Nobody gives a crap about the artists. Maybe a couple hundred years ago someone did.
Besides, what kind of a band can't make money by selling touring and selling merchandise? The reason you can't make money by touring, Creed, is because you suck, not because of the 2% of Americans who use Napster.
If someone doesn't stop this evil Napster, the bank is going to reposess my Porsche! Get a real job.
Do not click here
Uh oh, not good.
See, it isn't that hard!
Look! Here's another one!
Once you have the payee list, you can set up payments very easily. For things like rent, you can set it up to automatically pay every month. For something like a credit card bill, you can have it "remind" you every month when your payment is due.
Now, I basically log into the site every time I get a bill. The first thing I see is a whole list of all my upcoming payments and reminders. Then, it is butt-easy to add a payment for my new bill, and then I'm done.
One of the cool things about the Yahoo thing is that if your "payee" accepts ACH payments (Automated Clearing House ? - electronic) payments, then the payments will automatically be made electronically. Otherwise, they will cut a check and send it. The check is just like a normal check - it is "from" your account and "to" the payee - with your account number on it. So, if your bank returns cancelled checks, you will received all of these cancelled yahoo checks along with any others you may have written.
The main problems that I have come across have been reported and fixed. The only problem that still exists is that there is no way to keep track of your checking balance through the site. So, if you schedule a bunch of payments that you can't afford, your checks will just bounce and you'll be charged up the ass by your bank. Other than that, no complaints from me.
The service does cost $7 a month which may be a big deal if you're not going to go 100% with this. Myself, I don't even have any checks for my account. Every check I write comes from Yahoo. The $7 is probably about what I would spend per month between stamps, envelopes, and late payments.
Highly Recommended!!! A++++!!! (Ok, I'm also addicted to Ebay)
On one hand, everywhere you look and everything you see has some corporate logo, trademark, copyrighted something or other on it. Look around your home and count the corporate owned propoganda staring you in the face from that Nike symbol on your shoes to the Levi tag on your jeans to the Mickey Mouse ears on your head. You cannot escape it!
These corporations want to slam all of this crap down your throat and then when *you* try to do something with it, they file lawsuits and C&Ds. Every street in America is visually poisoned by billions of corporate logos, but if you try to do anything with this logo that they do not approve, then away you go. Please.
The worst thing is that every person who watches these shows and buys from the advertisers promotes this sort of environmental pollution and litigative action.
If there's something you want to do about it, TURN OFF THE F'ING TV! Write letters to the advertisers telling them of your intent to boycott their products if they don't try to change Fox's actions. Even if it doesn't correct the problem, you'll feel good bitching at Corporate America.
Has anyone taken a look at Mattel's financial situation lately? This is their stock info from Yahoo.
Basically, in the last two years, their stock price has quartered and they are losing money. This combined with some recent downgrades from various brokers spells D - O - O - M.
Maybe this is their last attempt to save face before they are bought out or go bankrupt.
Are you telling me that a student who can search the internet for Johnny and his five dollars is actually going to have an advantage over someone with a brain instead of a laptop?
In school, we used to have exams where you would not be able to finish the whole exam if you entered all the problems into a calculator. Basically, it would take you longer to type them in than to solve them in your head, if you knew the "tricks" behind them.
Maybe if you could design a Turing laptop with OCR and some natural language processing along with a wireless high speed connection and a robotic arm to control your pencil, my argument might change.