In 2012 Linus received the Millennium prize, which is kind of like the Nobel prize for technology (the Nobels are more about fundamental science).
https://www.bbc.com/news/techn...
And by "20 years ago", I mean 1940. It was just more "Andy Griffith Mayberry". I was in 3rd grade, and I walked home a mile from school every day. Didn't think a thing of it.
There are towns and cities in the US with no school bus system -- kids either walk or take public transportation. I know, I grew up in such a place.
We don't have school buses in Finland, and it's common for students to walk or cycle a couple of km to school. We're such a backwards country.
(When I was in school in the 80s/90s, you'd get free public transportation or taxi to school if the trip was more than 5 km one way. I don't know if that has changed, but I still don't see any school buses around.)
The problem is multi-fold
1. Little Education in Parallel processing programming.
2. Most programming language have poor implementation of parallel processing.... I have seen languages such as MPL (for an early parallel processing system) that actually had an elegant structure of plural variables where you can code parallel processing without threads but using standard lanagues.
I learned Fortran 90 around the turn of the millennium. Its native vector/matrix/complex math meant that decent compilers could automatically parallelize things like matrix multiplication. After all, the math construct is parallel to begin with. Using math this way helps solve both 1 and 2.
In contrast, most languages started out with loop constructs, and later added hints to parallelize them. To a physics/math person this looks completely backwards. When two vectors are added together in real life, nature doesn't loop over the x/y/z components.
Of course, this means more demands for the compiler. Back around 2000, I used some commercial compilers for F90, partly because GCC at the time was not capable enough for Fortran. Multiple threads or processes are necessary if you want to parallelize beyond SIMD. But for the programmer, things should be made easier by using native parallel constructs rather than loops with hints.
Sticking a system in a small box looked pretty, but the tiny fan was noisy as hell, and it killed the hard disk from the overheating after a while. There was some kind of trouble with the power supply.
I had a Nehemiah for a few years as I wanted a silent, low-power system. It was fine in an open case with a large passive heatsink. Those tiny-whiny fans on Mini-ITX systems are idiotic as they basically maintain the same power density. You can get completely silent systems in a regular ATX size if you choose these "mini" components and let them breathe.
For stronger systems with discrete GPUs, it's hard to get completely fanless, but third party coolers with large fans can get asymptotically close to silence. It's the same idea about reducing power density. I've never understood the need for extreme small size in home/desktop hardware, to me silence is much more important.
BIOS updates can be a problem even when the hardware itself works perfectly with Linux. Thinkpads have been great, as Lenovo provides bootable DOS images for the updater. In contrast, my Lenovo Legion only has BIOS updates for Windows. This announcement seems to focus on the Think* market, so no practical change for Linux users.
This year's rush of BIOS updates seems to be about the Meltdown and Spectre vulnerabilities, more specifically CPU microcode updates. Linux has other ways to update those, so I wouldn't worry too much about BIOS side.
OK. So I'm not the only one noticing this! Accessing the web now is HORRIBLE. Especially on a phone. It's like the web is back to dial up speeds.
When the "web on a phone" first appeared in the form of WAP etc., I thought it would mean the return of clean and simple web design. Mobile connection speeds were worse than dialup to begin with, and some of the display size and input limitations still apply today. But now we have fast connections and CPUs with small displays, so we get Fisher-Price text and image layout with all the advertising and tracking bits, or even less actual content to see. Of course, you get this on the desktop too because many sites only design for mobile now.
Add to this the appification of web, a great step backwards in platform independence and the use of computers as universal tools. For example, posting videos on Instagram needs the app, so you need one real computer to produce the work, and a toy device to distribute it. (I use Android-x86 under a VM, but you get the issue.)
nothing is the clear winner compared to college when it comes to discipline. As a former mature student, I am in a position to speak on this.
It's interesting you mention being a mature student. I've gone back to the university a couple of times after an early graduation and a few years in the workforce, and it's meant a huge difference to my learning. In that position, you (a) appreciate the value of your education much more, and (b) you have some real-life basis for things like "hey, I could use this theory in my field" and "nope, it doesn't really work like that".
I've also come to reflect this "reverse order education" in other aspects of my life. For example, I've dabbled in electronics since about the age of 8, and of course it was much later that I learned enough theory to design more complex circuits myself, largely through formal education. I'm worried about students that take years of theory before they get to do anything hands-on; by that time they might realize they're in the wrong field.
More specifically, it's an issue with the vocational vs. academic divide: if you want to dabble in electronics, you go to the trade school. Or if you prefer to learn quantum theory for electron transport in solids, go to the university. But for certain things you need people that know both, and there isn't a formal eduction path for such a thing, so people need to learn by themselves. Indeed, there were times when I did consider the more vocational route myself, though I'm now glad I didn't. Because you can usually learn the hands-on bits about electronics and programming yourself, but something like advanced math takes a bit more discipline.
In Finland we do not have much homeless people at all. Those very, very few we have are it by own choice because our social system makes sure everybody got a place to live. Finland it quite unique in this regard, even among the Nordic countries. If you have problems (drugs, alcohol, unemployment, depression, whatever) and you are not able to pay for own living, you get it for free. It is like the motto would be "first a place to live, then we try to fix your other problems".
A Finn here. I don't know about the homeless specifically, but it's possible to fall outside the social care for reasons other than your own choice. The problem is with the bureaucracy, which can be hard to deal with if you're burdened with illness. In many cases, your illness is not considered serious enough to get extra help. This often means mental illness or conditions like the chronic fatigue syndrome, which are hard to diagnose properly. To the outside, it may look like these people are giving up and choosing to drop out. If you're lucky, your friends and family can help you, both directly and in dealing with the bureaucracy.
As a taxpayer, this pisses me off. I'd rather give directly to the poor (e.g. via basic income) than fund the Kafkaesque system. In case I give directly to my friends, it means (1) I have to earn more, thus paying more taxes, and (2) they may have to deal with extra bureaucracy and taxes due to the extra income. Good times!
As a Finn with quite wide experience of different kind of saunas, I can assure you that there are Finnish saunas that can be around 50C and there is nothing wrong with them, it is actually very common to have lower temperatures for long relaxing sauna sessions. Not all of us like those "birch twigs" ("vasta" or "vihta") either even if used correctly they are really nice. Snow is very rare during other seasons but winter, but even during the winter, snow diving is not for all of us.
Being nude in sauna serves a purpose; you sweat in sauna, and you are there to clean up. You don't shower with your clothes on either.
This. I'd like to add that the ideal temperature usually scales with the size of the sauna; in smaller ones, the steam of löyly is more easily concentrated so you get the same effect at a smaller average temperature. Of course, the steam itself will be around 100 C, but you won't be steaming yourself all the time.
For the proper/. analogy, löyly (throwing water on the stove) is exactly like a heat pipe: water evaporates at the stove and condenses on your skin, thus providing fast heat transfer at a fixed temperature.
On the point of nudity, while Finns are generally comfortable with the collective nudity of sauna, we don't deny the potential erotic aspects of it. Mixed gender sauna sessions are usually limited to couples, families with small children, and other close-knit groups. Different shifts for men and women are also a practical matter at larger gatherings.
I feel for you, and I've also come to witness the problem from a teacher's perspective. Incidentally, a colleague of mine recently wrote about this problem in the local paper. Besides the usual problem of losing talent, he also worries about gifted students getting frustrated and causing trouble for others. In the extreme, you'll have geniuses turned mass murderers.
I can understand that level of anger towards the society, as it first asks you to study and work hard, but then punishes you for being too smart. These days I try to have as little to do with the society as possible, working by myself and with a close set of friends. Still, I have to do things like pay taxes.
It did have an upside, though. It taught me to learn on my own, since no one else was going to help me. My teachers spent all their time on the troublemakers. All the special programs were for the "at-risk" kids. Meanwhile, I spent all my time in the library learning and reading. Someone once asked me if there was ever a special teacher who inspired me. My answer was "Fuck no. My teachers never did shit for me. *I* inspired me." It taught me to rely on myself and not expect others to do anything for me.
I was always good at math, but there was nothing interesting about it at school, until I switched to the IB Diploma programme at the age of 16. I suddenly had a couple of very inspiring teachers, and I went on to one of these universities that look like Hogwarts.
However, following my Master's degree, I've found it hard to fit in the academic world, with strangely similar feelings to the school years. I'm back to being the smart kid in a world that only values diligent and submissive workers -- and this includes universities. There have been few exceptions, but my career really took off a few years ago after I quit the last teaching job.
The problem is that you do not know when the transfer is complete.
I'm also baffled about this level of idiocy in a/. article. I guess things that were obvious to us geeks 15-20 years ago are completely new to today's "digital natives".
That said, these things only became obvious to me when I moved to Linux back in the day. I learned about things such as mounting filesystems and a lot of other fundamental machinery that must be going on in Windows too, but it's hidden from the user. But there are these occasions when you absolutely need to unmount.
Back in the days of Windows 3.1, writing to floppies would halt everything else, and it would be clear when the transfer was complete. There was not much multitasking or write caching going on anyway, so it was OK. Today we take those for granted, but in turn it means we need to be explicit about ejecting devices.
The point about spinning hard drives is somewhat orthogonal, though. Simply unmounting the drive won't power it off. So you often need to yank the plug out while the drive is spinning. This can be hard to do safely with small drives and short cables.
I primarily use Julia now, and I agree, "end" tags would make Python a lot more comfortable for me (plus it would match the Python koan "be explicit, not implicit", i.e. explicitly end your blocks with an end tag).
That said, as a mathematical modeller, I just find Julia easier than Python it pretty much every way going (I even prefer the 1-based indexing, which is a feature in nearly every programming language used by mathematicians). I know Python sees quite a bit of use in science (along with R, which is the other big name), but I think Julia is definitely going to gain some ground on Python in the future, especially as it approaches the 1.0 release.
Agreed, I also have a background in scientific computing, starting with Fortran 90. I like having native complex and matrix math, as well as the numerous builtin math functions. Doing the same with Python/Numpy gets really messy and verbose, so that's what Julia should aim to replace. The problem is the glue language aspect of Python -- many people who use Numpy also need some other features/libraries of Python. (I use Julia for my math art, but for live demos I need OpenGL and interactive controls, so I use Python for those.)
I still struggle to understand why KK is somebody worthy of media attention, unlike people who actually make useful tools and products. From what I've seen, she is just making a huge ass of herself.
Python is popular because it's relatively easy to use
To me, Python is the default language for starting something if I don't have a good reason to do otherwise. It has a very nice set of libraries for everything and then some, and it's quick to test throwaway ideas. It's a bit like going into some weird foreign country, not knowing what's safe to eat, but then there's McD where you know what you'll get. For most specific tasks, there are better languages, but Python to me is the ultimate all-round language.
I'm personally OK with the whitespace thing, but I've found that collaborations can be fragile with different people using different editors on different OSes. I much prefer the Julia style (derived from Fortran) where line breaks are significant, but no other whitespace is. You'll need an "end" to close a block, but no ugly punctuations like ; or {}.
It depends on what you mean by "speed". Usually, perceived computing speed involves both throughput and latency in some way. IMHO, interactive and realtime operations are much more about latency, while throughput only helps you process more stuff per frame. I'm not into gaming, but I'd expect that bad latency can easily make things completely unplayable. Bad throughput, OTOH, will only mean things like lower graphics quality. For a non-realtime look at latency, one of my favourite quotes:
"Why people think "performace" means "throughput" is something I'll never
understand. Throughput is _always_ secondary to latency, and really only
becomes interesting when it becomes a latency number (ie "I need higher
throughput in order to process these jobs in 4 hours instead of 8" -
notice how the real issue was again about _latency_)."
-- Linus Torvalds
Add a couple more inches and a keyboard, and you could innovate a whole new kind of device. I think I'll call it "Lap Top".
Incidentally, today I got my new Nokia 8110 4G, which is a kind of "dumb"phone with great networking, including a Wifi hotspot, which you usually only find on "smart"phones. I want to keep the smarts on a computer I can control, and the phone should be more like a modem. (I need a traditional phone, and I don't want to pay for a separate data plan on a mobile dongle, as I don't use cell data that often.)
It helps if you're a sane, civilized country before you strike oil. Any Nordic country would probably have done the same*. In fact, there was a proposal about making Nordic oil a joint effort with Sweden, which IIRC was ahead of Norway in wealth and industrialization at the time, but the Swedes declined to take a chance on them.
*(Finland has a tradition of letting foreign companies take our mineral resources for free, after the national geological survey has first done the groundwork.)
Likewise, my impression of educational games is that they're plain old games with the usual addictive logic, with a bit of learning tacked on the side. It's as if the designers start out with the premise that learning != fun. In fact, a designer from Rovio (of Angry Birds fame) described good edutainment as food where you hide the healthy bits within the yummy ones. Because nobody can possibly enjoy veggies or learning, but it's something you have to do, so we'll help you tolerate it. As a teacher who doesn't eat meat, I find that wrong in so many ways.
Slashdot Mirror
Those that do not understand Free software repositories are condemned to reinvent them, poorly.
In 2012 Linus received the Millennium prize, which is kind of like the Nobel prize for technology (the Nobels are more about fundamental science). https://www.bbc.com/news/techn...
And by "20 years ago", I mean 1940. It was just more "Andy Griffith Mayberry". I was in 3rd grade, and I walked home a mile from school every day. Didn't think a thing of it.
There are towns and cities in the US with no school bus system -- kids either walk or take public transportation. I know, I grew up in such a place.
We don't have school buses in Finland, and it's common for students to walk or cycle a couple of km to school. We're such a backwards country.
(When I was in school in the 80s/90s, you'd get free public transportation or taxi to school if the trip was more than 5 km one way. I don't know if that has changed, but I still don't see any school buses around.)
The problem is multi-fold 1. Little Education in Parallel processing programming.
2. Most programming language have poor implementation of parallel processing. ... I have seen languages such as MPL (for an early parallel processing system) that actually had an elegant structure of plural variables where you can code parallel processing without threads but using standard lanagues.
I learned Fortran 90 around the turn of the millennium. Its native vector/matrix/complex math meant that decent compilers could automatically parallelize things like matrix multiplication. After all, the math construct is parallel to begin with. Using math this way helps solve both 1 and 2.
In contrast, most languages started out with loop constructs, and later added hints to parallelize them. To a physics/math person this looks completely backwards. When two vectors are added together in real life, nature doesn't loop over the x/y/z components.
Of course, this means more demands for the compiler. Back around 2000, I used some commercial compilers for F90, partly because GCC at the time was not capable enough for Fortran. Multiple threads or processes are necessary if you want to parallelize beyond SIMD. But for the programmer, things should be made easier by using native parallel constructs rather than loops with hints.
Sticking a system in a small box looked pretty, but the tiny fan was noisy as hell, and it killed the hard disk from the overheating after a while. There was some kind of trouble with the power supply.
I had a Nehemiah for a few years as I wanted a silent, low-power system. It was fine in an open case with a large passive heatsink. Those tiny-whiny fans on Mini-ITX systems are idiotic as they basically maintain the same power density. You can get completely silent systems in a regular ATX size if you choose these "mini" components and let them breathe.
For stronger systems with discrete GPUs, it's hard to get completely fanless, but third party coolers with large fans can get asymptotically close to silence. It's the same idea about reducing power density. I've never understood the need for extreme small size in home/desktop hardware, to me silence is much more important.
BIOS updates can be a problem even when the hardware itself works perfectly with Linux. Thinkpads have been great, as Lenovo provides bootable DOS images for the updater. In contrast, my Lenovo Legion only has BIOS updates for Windows. This announcement seems to focus on the Think* market, so no practical change for Linux users.
This year's rush of BIOS updates seems to be about the Meltdown and Spectre vulnerabilities, more specifically CPU microcode updates. Linux has other ways to update those, so I wouldn't worry too much about BIOS side.
OK. So I'm not the only one noticing this! Accessing the web now is HORRIBLE. Especially on a phone. It's like the web is back to dial up speeds.
When the "web on a phone" first appeared in the form of WAP etc., I thought it would mean the return of clean and simple web design. Mobile connection speeds were worse than dialup to begin with, and some of the display size and input limitations still apply today. But now we have fast connections and CPUs with small displays, so we get Fisher-Price text and image layout with all the advertising and tracking bits, or even less actual content to see. Of course, you get this on the desktop too because many sites only design for mobile now.
Add to this the appification of web, a great step backwards in platform independence and the use of computers as universal tools. For example, posting videos on Instagram needs the app, so you need one real computer to produce the work, and a toy device to distribute it. (I use Android-x86 under a VM, but you get the issue.)
nothing is the clear winner compared to college when it comes to discipline. As a former mature student, I am in a position to speak on this.
It's interesting you mention being a mature student. I've gone back to the university a couple of times after an early graduation and a few years in the workforce, and it's meant a huge difference to my learning. In that position, you (a) appreciate the value of your education much more, and (b) you have some real-life basis for things like "hey, I could use this theory in my field" and "nope, it doesn't really work like that".
I've also come to reflect this "reverse order education" in other aspects of my life. For example, I've dabbled in electronics since about the age of 8, and of course it was much later that I learned enough theory to design more complex circuits myself, largely through formal education. I'm worried about students that take years of theory before they get to do anything hands-on; by that time they might realize they're in the wrong field.
More specifically, it's an issue with the vocational vs. academic divide: if you want to dabble in electronics, you go to the trade school. Or if you prefer to learn quantum theory for electron transport in solids, go to the university. But for certain things you need people that know both, and there isn't a formal eduction path for such a thing, so people need to learn by themselves. Indeed, there were times when I did consider the more vocational route myself, though I'm now glad I didn't. Because you can usually learn the hands-on bits about electronics and programming yourself, but something like advanced math takes a bit more discipline.
In Finland we do not have much homeless people at all. Those very, very few we have are it by own choice because our social system makes sure everybody got a place to live. Finland it quite unique in this regard, even among the Nordic countries. If you have problems (drugs, alcohol, unemployment, depression, whatever) and you are not able to pay for own living, you get it for free. It is like the motto would be "first a place to live, then we try to fix your other problems".
A Finn here. I don't know about the homeless specifically, but it's possible to fall outside the social care for reasons other than your own choice. The problem is with the bureaucracy, which can be hard to deal with if you're burdened with illness. In many cases, your illness is not considered serious enough to get extra help. This often means mental illness or conditions like the chronic fatigue syndrome, which are hard to diagnose properly. To the outside, it may look like these people are giving up and choosing to drop out. If you're lucky, your friends and family can help you, both directly and in dealing with the bureaucracy.
As a taxpayer, this pisses me off. I'd rather give directly to the poor (e.g. via basic income) than fund the Kafkaesque system. In case I give directly to my friends, it means (1) I have to earn more, thus paying more taxes, and (2) they may have to deal with extra bureaucracy and taxes due to the extra income. Good times!
As a Finn with quite wide experience of different kind of saunas, I can assure you that there are Finnish saunas that can be around 50C and there is nothing wrong with them, it is actually very common to have lower temperatures for long relaxing sauna sessions. Not all of us like those "birch twigs" ("vasta" or "vihta") either even if used correctly they are really nice. Snow is very rare during other seasons but winter, but even during the winter, snow diving is not for all of us.
Being nude in sauna serves a purpose; you sweat in sauna, and you are there to clean up. You don't shower with your clothes on either.
This. I'd like to add that the ideal temperature usually scales with the size of the sauna; in smaller ones, the steam of löyly is more easily concentrated so you get the same effect at a smaller average temperature. Of course, the steam itself will be around 100 C, but you won't be steaming yourself all the time.
For the proper /. analogy, löyly (throwing water on the stove) is exactly like a heat pipe: water evaporates at the stove and condenses on your skin, thus providing fast heat transfer at a fixed temperature.
On the point of nudity, while Finns are generally comfortable with the collective nudity of sauna, we don't deny the potential erotic aspects of it. Mixed gender sauna sessions are usually limited to couples, families with small children, and other close-knit groups. Different shifts for men and women are also a practical matter at larger gatherings.
I feel for you, and I've also come to witness the problem from a teacher's perspective. Incidentally, a colleague of mine recently wrote about this problem in the local paper. Besides the usual problem of losing talent, he also worries about gifted students getting frustrated and causing trouble for others. In the extreme, you'll have geniuses turned mass murderers.
I can understand that level of anger towards the society, as it first asks you to study and work hard, but then punishes you for being too smart. These days I try to have as little to do with the society as possible, working by myself and with a close set of friends. Still, I have to do things like pay taxes.
It did have an upside, though. It taught me to learn on my own, since no one else was going to help me. My teachers spent all their time on the troublemakers. All the special programs were for the "at-risk" kids. Meanwhile, I spent all my time in the library learning and reading. Someone once asked me if there was ever a special teacher who inspired me. My answer was "Fuck no. My teachers never did shit for me. *I* inspired me." It taught me to rely on myself and not expect others to do anything for me.
I was always good at math, but there was nothing interesting about it at school, until I switched to the IB Diploma programme at the age of 16. I suddenly had a couple of very inspiring teachers, and I went on to one of these universities that look like Hogwarts.
However, following my Master's degree, I've found it hard to fit in the academic world, with strangely similar feelings to the school years. I'm back to being the smart kid in a world that only values diligent and submissive workers -- and this includes universities. There have been few exceptions, but my career really took off a few years ago after I quit the last teaching job.
Desktop unified hosting service. The abbreviation would be phonetically close to "DaaS".
The problem is that you do not know when the transfer is complete.
I'm also baffled about this level of idiocy in a /. article. I guess things that were obvious to us geeks 15-20 years ago are completely new to today's "digital natives".
That said, these things only became obvious to me when I moved to Linux back in the day. I learned about things such as mounting filesystems and a lot of other fundamental machinery that must be going on in Windows too, but it's hidden from the user. But there are these occasions when you absolutely need to unmount.
Back in the days of Windows 3.1, writing to floppies would halt everything else, and it would be clear when the transfer was complete. There was not much multitasking or write caching going on anyway, so it was OK. Today we take those for granted, but in turn it means we need to be explicit about ejecting devices.
The point about spinning hard drives is somewhat orthogonal, though. Simply unmounting the drive won't power it off. So you often need to yank the plug out while the drive is spinning. This can be hard to do safely with small drives and short cables.
Why is she different than any other entertainer?
Are you seriously asking why a "famous for being famous" person is different from professional performing artists such as musicians and actors?
I primarily use Julia now, and I agree, "end" tags would make Python a lot more comfortable for me (plus it would match the Python koan "be explicit, not implicit", i.e. explicitly end your blocks with an end tag).
That said, as a mathematical modeller, I just find Julia easier than Python it pretty much every way going (I even prefer the 1-based indexing, which is a feature in nearly every programming language used by mathematicians). I know Python sees quite a bit of use in science (along with R, which is the other big name), but I think Julia is definitely going to gain some ground on Python in the future, especially as it approaches the 1.0 release.
Agreed, I also have a background in scientific computing, starting with Fortran 90. I like having native complex and matrix math, as well as the numerous builtin math functions. Doing the same with Python/Numpy gets really messy and verbose, so that's what Julia should aim to replace. The problem is the glue language aspect of Python -- many people who use Numpy also need some other features/libraries of Python. (I use Julia for my math art, but for live demos I need OpenGL and interactive controls, so I use Python for those.)
I agree, the "war" metaphor has gone too far. I shall call this phenomenon "wargate".
I still struggle to understand why KK is somebody worthy of media attention, unlike people who actually make useful tools and products. From what I've seen, she is just making a huge ass of herself.
Python is popular because it's relatively easy to use
To me, Python is the default language for starting something if I don't have a good reason to do otherwise. It has a very nice set of libraries for everything and then some, and it's quick to test throwaway ideas. It's a bit like going into some weird foreign country, not knowing what's safe to eat, but then there's McD where you know what you'll get. For most specific tasks, there are better languages, but Python to me is the ultimate all-round language.
I'm personally OK with the whitespace thing, but I've found that collaborations can be fragile with different people using different editors on different OSes. I much prefer the Julia style (derived from Fortran) where line breaks are significant, but no other whitespace is. You'll need an "end" to close a block, but no ugly punctuations like ; or {}.
Also, the word "blog" should not be used for non-diary products.
It depends on what you mean by "speed". Usually, perceived computing speed involves both throughput and latency in some way. IMHO, interactive and realtime operations are much more about latency, while throughput only helps you process more stuff per frame. I'm not into gaming, but I'd expect that bad latency can easily make things completely unplayable. Bad throughput, OTOH, will only mean things like lower graphics quality. For a non-realtime look at latency, one of my favourite quotes:
"Why people think "performace" means "throughput" is something I'll never understand. Throughput is _always_ secondary to latency, and really only becomes interesting when it becomes a latency number (ie "I need higher throughput in order to process these jobs in 4 hours instead of 8" - notice how the real issue was again about _latency_)." -- Linus Torvalds
Add a couple more inches and a keyboard, and you could innovate a whole new kind of device. I think I'll call it "Lap Top".
Incidentally, today I got my new Nokia 8110 4G, which is a kind of "dumb"phone with great networking, including a Wifi hotspot, which you usually only find on "smart"phones. I want to keep the smarts on a computer I can control, and the phone should be more like a modem. (I need a traditional phone, and I don't want to pay for a separate data plan on a mobile dongle, as I don't use cell data that often.)
Just to note, you seem to be asserting that "papal infallibility is bullshit".
It's only bullshit until a bull is issued.
It helps if you're a sane, civilized country before you strike oil. Any Nordic country would probably have done the same*. In fact, there was a proposal about making Nordic oil a joint effort with Sweden, which IIRC was ahead of Norway in wealth and industrialization at the time, but the Swedes declined to take a chance on them.
*(Finland has a tradition of letting foreign companies take our mineral resources for free, after the national geological survey has first done the groundwork.)
Likewise, my impression of educational games is that they're plain old games with the usual addictive logic, with a bit of learning tacked on the side. It's as if the designers start out with the premise that learning != fun. In fact, a designer from Rovio (of Angry Birds fame) described good edutainment as food where you hide the healthy bits within the yummy ones. Because nobody can possibly enjoy veggies or learning, but it's something you have to do, so we'll help you tolerate it. As a teacher who doesn't eat meat, I find that wrong in so many ways.