I'm not nessessarily clear on where you're drawing the line between technology and not-technology...
This lack of distinction, of course, makes it difficult to evaluate your argument.
Chimps use sticks to extract bugs from logs and mounds--an evolutionary advantage derived from technology.
...in a similar fashion, it is hard to see human tech use as extra-evolutionary; evolution has pointed us towards opposable thumbs and big brains, which in turn have encuraged a wide variety of tech invention/use.
At it's base, evolutionary pressures are about keeping the DNA moving--and, it could be argued, artifical wombs do that to a T.
If your agrument is that you are concerned by the prospect of a human society intermeshed with technology, that's another issue.
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"do we necessarily want to become a people who can't function without the full dependence on technology?"
---------------
I belive we're already there mate.
Again, I'm not clear on what you mean by "technology", but let's be (obscenely) generous, and say technology means industrial/post-industrial.
Now, take our current world, and remove any technology invented after 1700 (again, being generous)...
...I don't think many people are going to be left once all the dust settles.
MS may have choosen a bad X-Box pricing scheme for their Euro market, but I'd be surprised if it was the rest of attempts to "rip-off markets on which it can (still) freely impose its monopolistic dirty hands."
...what with them having to compete with Sony and Nintindo in said market.
True, a College Degree (tm) isn't the alpha and omega of l33t IT skillz...
The thing is though, that a College Degree is shorthand for a heap of good things that have little to do with pure IT knowlege.
Having the Degree shows (with greater creditbility directly correlated to a more difficult/rigorous/reputable/'good' College):
(1) Willingness and ability to accept and compete assignments, even when you may not see the point(and you thought general eduction requirements were a waste of time...).
(2) Ability to work well with a diverse group of people, not of your choosing (professors, classmates, administrators, etc.).
(3) Wide range of skills/knowlege/expierience (not only being able to program, but being able to communicate verbally and in writting to management/lay people/presentation groups effectively).
(4) You'll make your employer look good (or not bad) when meeting clients/customers (you're reasonably good at chit-chatting people, and have appropiatelly urbane things to say over cocktails or coffee).
(5) You can consider the impact your actions are likely to have on other people (i.e. clients/customers/coworkers/the public/etc.).
(6)...you've been able to do all this for 4 years, in a strange enviorment, with unknown people, while dealing with your own personal life. --if you can finish a thesis and pull nice grades in the midst of the usual College scene (minimal seperation between personal and professional life, people doing the sometimes ill-advised things people do when they're 19), then you'll certainly be able to keep all those servers running, regardless of whatever else is going on outside work!
Best of all, the Degree says that an empoyer doesn't have to take your word on it--your proven ability to do these things is backed by the reputation and honor of your College.
...Again, it is true that there are indeed people who have all of those skills (and more) who have never attended/graduated College.
But as an employeer, if you're faced with two potential employees of approximate skill, one of whom doesn't have a degree, and the other of whom is sporting a nice Cum Laude from Cal Tech, or MIT, or Mudd---you probably hire the one with the Degree.
If anything, I expect that addvantage to become more pronounced as basic IT knowlege becomes more common, and markets tighten....also that degree is going to be invaluable in later life/at high levels, as the job comes to involve more and more working with other people.
As your own example proves, there will always be people who can do very well without a Degree (and people with Degrees who lack the skills the employer is looking for), but the potential benefits of having still ought not be overlooked...
"Because people are no longer used to contracting fatal diseases (which bubonic plague always is if left untreated"
----------------
Actually, it isn't.
The most virulent & deadly version of plague (pneumatic) has a mortality rate of aprox. 90% if left untreated...
...if (untreated) bubonic plague had a 100% mortality rate, european history would look very diffrent.
WhereI'm coming from: I spent the last 5 years (first as a student, then in IT and the Dean of Students Office) at a college that had a not very disimilar situation regarding a student run site that used{collegename}.com as its address; I am now in a Dean of Students Office at a college that has yet to be deviled with such a problem.
Should Drexel have 300+ domain names?
...well, given the way everyone else on the net treats domain names, it isn't surprising that they do. On the other hand, it does seem both silly and wasteful.
It does make a lot of sense for colleges to purchase their {collegename}.com site (if it is unowned), maintaining it as either a mirror of their.edu site, or something seperate. The reason for this is simple--most people don't know how to browse the web, and just stil.com at the end of whatever they're looking for....if they're looking for a college site, and instead come up with porn, or--even worse--something hateful using the school's name, then the school is going to have to waste incriddible amounts of time/energy/money explaining that it isn't their site, and trying to make amends with andry people.
It doesn't matter that legally it isn't the College's responsibility--the College will lose the preception battle on this one, *particularly* if the offending site is about the college.
The answer is simple--buy the bloody site.
I don't feel that this resitricts the expression of students or anyone else; it's still easy to put up a site called {collegename}student.com or {collegename}sucks.com or whatever...
And I wouldn't worry about tuition dollars being used to make the purchase....tuition is rarely a money-maker for colleges; infact, at the (small, liberal arts) colleges I'm familar with, tuition doesn't even always cover the actual cost of a student being at the college. This is why colleges spend so much energy in raising money from alums and outside doners--it's the only way to keep things running....it's also the way to fund purchasing a.com site; just find some alums/trustees/donors who are on board, and have them donate a sum expressively for that purpose.
...Of course, any College that hasn't trademarked their name is also asking for a whole world of hurt.
it also greatly reduces the chance of war; no one is crazy enough to think they can beat an elephant in a fist fight.
--------------
Unfortunately, the mouse that sneaks in with a suitcase nuke (or bioweapon, or whatnot), and plants it in the elephant's back yard isn't too concerned about a fist fight. This is particularly true when the mouse either (1) isn't planing to claim responsibility for the attack, (2) isn't connected to a geographical nation/state (who do you nuke in retaliation then?), (3) cares more about the dammage they're doing than their own survival, or (4) any/all of the above.
-----------
The U.S. is the only country in the history of the world to have been in the situation of knowing it could conquer the rest of the world and yet not do it.
------------
Disagreed.
The US can certainly nuke the rest of the world--and hasn't done it.
Conquering is something completely diffrent; as is--in fact--any objective less than the full scale destruction of a target. Vietnam applies well here as an empiric example.
...this is also a reason why we *don't* need suborbital bombers. We do--as you correctly point out--already have enough of a conventional presense to defend ourselves/our intrests against any other conventional force on the planet. Building suborbitals isn't going to raise that threshold......and it isn't going to deter unconventional (terror) campaigns either.
The military's intrest in suborbitals does put those of us who grew up on space stories, and firmly belive that being in space is a good idea in something of a bind.
On one hand, it seems like a nice way to get funding for an interesting area of space travel, and it's military applications don't seem to have a particularly high chance of being used.
On the other hand, it represents a creaping ligitimization of space as a DMZ--which disturbs me for both philosophic reasons, and also becase it really doesn't seem to be the sort of space we all dreamed about in our youth.
More to the point, there is a flaw in the "we must trick our gov into funding a space program" attitude.
We do live in a republic where we have both the ability and the duty to infulence the direction our government takes.
If we want a stronger space program, we should stand up and say so....Shadow alliances with the military/industrial/comercial complex merely feeds the notion that policy exists at the whim of corprate intrests--as well as making the position of those intrests stronger.
Slashdot Mirror
Someone mod this bit of homophobic rubbish down. Please.
I'm not nessessarily clear on where you're drawing the line between technology and not-technology...
This lack of distinction, of course, makes it difficult to evaluate your argument.
Chimps use sticks to extract bugs from logs and mounds--an evolutionary advantage derived from technology.
...in a similar fashion, it is hard to see human tech use as extra-evolutionary; evolution has pointed us towards opposable thumbs and big brains, which in turn have encuraged a wide variety of tech invention/use.
At it's base, evolutionary pressures are about keeping the DNA moving--and, it could be argued, artifical wombs do that to a T.
If your agrument is that you are concerned by the prospect of a human society intermeshed with technology, that's another issue.
---------------
"do we necessarily want to become a people who can't function without the full dependence on technology?"
---------------
I belive we're already there mate.
Again, I'm not clear on what you mean by "technology", but let's be (obscenely) generous, and say technology means industrial/post-industrial.
Now, take our current world, and remove any technology invented after 1700 (again, being generous)...
...I don't think many people are going to be left once all the dust settles.
MS may have choosen a bad X-Box pricing scheme for their Euro market, but I'd be surprised if it was the rest of attempts to "rip-off markets on which it can (still) freely impose its monopolistic dirty hands."
...what with them having to compete with Sony and Nintindo in said market.
True, a College Degree (tm) isn't the alpha and omega of l33t IT skillz...
...you've been able to do all this for 4 years, in a strange enviorment, with unknown people, while dealing with your own personal life. --if you can finish a thesis and pull nice grades in the midst of the usual College scene (minimal seperation between personal and professional life, people doing the sometimes ill-advised things people do when they're 19), then you'll certainly be able to keep all those servers running, regardless of whatever else is going on outside work!
...also that degree is going to be invaluable in later life/at high levels, as the job comes to involve more and more working with other people.
The thing is though, that a College Degree is shorthand for a heap of good things that have little to do with pure IT knowlege.
Having the Degree shows (with greater creditbility directly correlated to a more difficult/rigorous/reputable/'good' College):
(1) Willingness and ability to accept and compete assignments, even when you may not see the point(and you thought general eduction requirements were a waste of time...).
(2) Ability to work well with a diverse group of people, not of your choosing (professors, classmates, administrators, etc.).
(3) Wide range of skills/knowlege/expierience (not only being able to program, but being able to communicate verbally and in writting to management/lay people/presentation groups effectively).
(4) You'll make your employer look good (or not bad) when meeting clients/customers (you're reasonably good at chit-chatting people, and have appropiatelly urbane things to say over cocktails or coffee).
(5) You can consider the impact your actions are likely to have on other people (i.e. clients/customers/coworkers/the public/etc.).
(6)
Best of all, the Degree says that an empoyer doesn't have to take your word on it--your proven ability to do these things is backed by the reputation and honor of your College.
...Again, it is true that there are indeed people who have all of those skills (and more) who have never attended/graduated College.
But as an employeer, if you're faced with two potential employees of approximate skill, one of whom doesn't have a degree, and the other of whom is sporting a nice Cum Laude from Cal Tech, or MIT, or Mudd---you probably hire the one with the Degree.
If anything, I expect that addvantage to become more pronounced as basic IT knowlege becomes more common, and markets tighten.
As your own example proves, there will always be people who can do very well without a Degree (and people with Degrees who lack the skills the employer is looking for), but the potential benefits of having still ought not be overlooked...
"Because people are no longer used to contracting fatal diseases (which bubonic plague always is if left untreated"
----------------
Actually, it isn't.
The most virulent & deadly version of plague (pneumatic) has a mortality rate of aprox. 90% if left untreated...
...if (untreated) bubonic plague had a 100% mortality rate, european history would look very diffrent.
WhereI'm coming from: I spent the last 5 years (first as a student, then in IT and the Dean of Students Office) at a college that had a not very disimilar situation regarding a student run site that used{collegename}.com as its address; I am now in a Dean of Students Office at a college that has yet to be deviled with such a problem.
...well, given the way everyone else on the net treats domain names, it isn't surprising that they do. On the other hand, it does seem both silly and wasteful.
.edu site, or something seperate. The reason for this is simple--most people don't know how to browse the web, and just stil .com at the end of whatever they're looking for. ...if they're looking for a college site, and instead come up with porn, or--even worse--something hateful using the school's name, then the school is going to have to waste incriddible amounts of time/energy/money explaining that it isn't their site, and trying to make amends with andry people.
...tuition is rarely a money-maker for colleges; infact, at the (small, liberal arts) colleges I'm familar with, tuition doesn't even always cover the actual cost of a student being at the college. This is why colleges spend so much energy in raising money from alums and outside doners--it's the only way to keep things running. ...it's also the way to fund purchasing a .com site; just find some alums/trustees/donors who are on board, and have them donate a sum expressively for that purpose.
Should Drexel have 300+ domain names?
It does make a lot of sense for colleges to purchase their {collegename}.com site (if it is unowned), maintaining it as either a mirror of their
It doesn't matter that legally it isn't the College's responsibility--the College will lose the preception battle on this one, *particularly* if the offending site is about the college.
The answer is simple--buy the bloody site.
I don't feel that this resitricts the expression of students or anyone else; it's still easy to put up a site called {collegename}student.com or {collegename}sucks.com or whatever...
And I wouldn't worry about tuition dollars being used to make the purchase.
...Of course, any College that hasn't trademarked their name is also asking for a whole world of hurt.
it also greatly reduces the chance of war; no one is crazy enough to think they can beat an elephant in a fist fight.
...and it isn't going to deter unconventional (terror) campaigns either.
...Shadow alliances with the military/industrial/comercial complex merely feeds the notion that policy exists at the whim of corprate intrests--as well as making the position of those intrests stronger.
--------------
Unfortunately, the mouse that sneaks in with a suitcase nuke (or bioweapon, or whatnot), and plants it in the elephant's back yard isn't too concerned about a fist fight. This is particularly true when the mouse either (1) isn't planing to claim responsibility for the attack, (2) isn't connected to a geographical nation/state (who do you nuke in retaliation then?), (3) cares more about the dammage they're doing than their own survival, or (4) any/all of the above.
-----------
The U.S. is the only country in the history of the world to have been in the situation of knowing it could conquer the rest of the world and yet not do it.
------------
Disagreed.
The US can certainly nuke the rest of the world--and hasn't done it.
Conquering is something completely diffrent; as is--in fact--any objective less than the full scale destruction of a target. Vietnam applies well here as an empiric example.
...this is also a reason why we *don't* need suborbital bombers. We do--as you correctly point out--already have enough of a conventional presense to defend ourselves/our intrests against any other conventional force on the planet. Building suborbitals isn't going to raise that threshold...
The military's intrest in suborbitals does put those of us who grew up on space stories, and firmly belive that being in space is a good idea in something of a bind.
On one hand, it seems like a nice way to get funding for an interesting area of space travel, and it's military applications don't seem to have a particularly high chance of being used.
On the other hand, it represents a creaping ligitimization of space as a DMZ--which disturbs me for both philosophic reasons, and also becase it really doesn't seem to be the sort of space we all dreamed about in our youth.
More to the point, there is a flaw in the "we must trick our gov into funding a space program" attitude.
We do live in a republic where we have both the ability and the duty to infulence the direction our government takes.
If we want a stronger space program, we should stand up and say so.