The warmup I will grant you. The stretching, believe it or not, is controversial. There's acually quite a bit of evidence that shows stretching before exercise is detrimental. Stretch afterward if necessary. Or, better yet, consider exercises that involve moving through a wide range of motion. For legs I would suggest Overhead squats. You don't need to use much weight (heck, a broomstick works great for starting).
By the way, if you haven't tried Tabata intervals the suggestion is actually a bit of a trap. Tabata intervals are ridiculously effective, and tremendously time dense, but they aren't very much fun. They hurt too much. I tend to bring them up when someone suggests that they don't have enough time to exercise. Tabata intervals are a good way to demonstrate that it isn't that they don't have enough time but rather that they don't have enough desire. That's a different subject altogether.
Once you make exercise a regular habit it becomes hard to imagine your life without it, but there's no question that making exercise a habit can be difficult. My advice, start small.
I have a timer on my watch that beeps every hour. When the alarm goes off I either get up and do a set of pullups or 2.5 minutes of jump rope. Sometimes I am concentrating hard enough on whatever I am doing that I miss the alarm, but for the most part I get up and move for a bit. Throw in 20 minutes of strength training or jogging before I come into work and you can make a big difference in your life.
I had similar problems that I have solved with deadlifts and overhead squats. $100 at just about any sporting good store will get you a bar and enough weight to keep things interesting for a bit. You might consider having someone check your form at first, though.
The important bit is that you don't really need piles of fancy equipment or a gym membership to strength train.
Exactly. I fail to see how spending 20 minutes a day either running or lifting heavy crap over my head somehow makes me less intelligent. Nice try. If you aren't working out on a regular basis you are either ignorant as to the many benefits of physical fitness, or you are extremely poor at managing your time.
There's plenty of clinical evidence that shows that getting in shape can require 20 minutes a day (or less). Don't even try tell me that you can't cough up 20 minutes a day for an activity is likely to increase both the length and quality of your life. Heck, you can make serious improvement with 4 minutes of Tabata Intervals a few times a week. That's a 20 second maximal sprint followed by 10 seconds rest repeated 8 times. Of course, it will probably take at least a half hour to recover from this workout the first time you do it:).
If you mean that I haven't been tried for murder, yes, that's true. I have never been tried for murder. Of course, neither have any of the people charged with illegally distributing copyrighted materials. I have seen how the justice system works, though. Heck, my father's a judge. I spent enough time at his office when he was a public defender to realize that I wasn't really interested in going into the family business.
The justice system in the U.S. has its issues, but it works better than anything else you are likely to come up with. In this particular case I imagine that it works remarkably well. For the most part when the ISP coughs up contact information for the IP address in question the person that is fingered owns a computer that has been used for illegal purposes. Things would probably work even better if it wasn't in the ISPs best interest to encourage its users to share copyrighted material illegally. The illegal distribution of copyrighted materials in one of the primary uses of high speed connections to the Internet.
There have been documented cases where the RIAA have fingered the wrong person. Witness the case brought against a lady who doesn't even own a computer. Their detection and identification methods aren't at all fullproof, but becuase nobody can afford to go to court with them, their methods have not stood up to a true test in court. Yes, they are opening themselves to various legal avenues for reprisal, but they also realize that most of the defendants can't afford to take the trial that far anyway. Hence, the extortion: the alternative to settling out of court would put such a severe strain on most people's monetary resources that simply giving in to the extortion is a much cheaper solution. Until one of these cases actually goes to court, the RIAA's "evidence" is of such dubious nature that it should not be considered a de facto proof of guilt.
Yes, and she didn't didn't settle. In fact, the RIAA is going to probably end up picking up her legal fees. If the RIAA presses then they are likely to find themselves on the hook for considerably more than legal fees. This is how the system *should* work. The RIAA made a mistake and they are going to pay for it.
Unless I'm mistaken, the RIAA's lawsuits are civil are they not? IANAL, but I don't believe the "feds" are allowed to get involved in evidence collection for a civil suit. I believe that it is completely up to the plaintiff to collect and present whatever evidence they feel would be necessary for a conviction. Again, the settlements in the RIAA suits are more or less a case of the defendants simply giving in because their pockets a much shallower than those of the RIAA.
Yes, the RIAA lawsuits are civil, but that's only because if the RIAA were to press criminal charges people would end up in jail for the simple act of sharing Brittney Spears music. Distributing copyrighted works on the scale that is alleged is a federal offense. The RIAA, wisely, in my opinion, is taking a different tactic than unleashing the federales on filesharers. Basically the RIAA takes a group of "John Does" to trial in order to force the ISPs to actually cough up contact information. Then, at that point the RIAA drops the John Doe case and files seperate civil cases in the appropriate venue against the various filesharers. At that point the RIAA has a huge club as they have evidence that the filesharer has committed a federal crime. Sure, it's possible that the ISP got the IP address wrong, or that the identity of the person had been stolen and used to purchase the services of the ISP (that's probably what happened to Marie Lindor), but its not likely in most cases. What's more likely is that the parents are the ones that are sued while it is really the children (or neighbors, or someone else that has access to the computer) that is actually to blame.
Not that it really matters, in most of the cases the person whose name appears on the account at the ISP has plenty of reason to settle. Maybe they aren't guilty, but chances are good that if they aren't someone in their family is guilty. Once again, pretty much at any point the RIAA could turn the case into a criminal case in which folks could go to prison. So instead of fighting the person *wisely* accepts the RIAA's terms.
I can't wait for the day that the RIAA takes on somebody who can afford a proper defense and take the case all the way to court. That's the only way we'll ever get a decision as to whether or not the RIAA's tactics are legal. Of course, the down side is, if the defendant loses, that sets precedent for the RIAA. We would most likely be assured of a renewed wave of lawsuits backed by this precedent. In reality, we need to change the laws... something that's hard to do when the RIAA has already taken all of your money.
You'll be waiting a long time, because it's not re
How can you have "no hope" of defeating their lawyers in a crime that you didn't commit? If there was "no evidence" then you would have all sorts of legal avenues for reprisal, many of which could possibly lead to a large pot of gold.
The reality is that the RIAA has plenty of evidence that the people in question were distributing their copyrighted materials illegally. At the very least they know that someone at your computer was distributing the files. The RIAA certainly has enough evidence that if they were to call in the feds the agents could get a search warrant to seize your computer, search your house and start building a case. Most people, when confronted, wisely choose to take the RIAA up on its offer to settle out of court. They know they were distributing copyrighted material, and they likewise know that if the case became a criminal matter the feds would find enough evidence to put them in prison for a long time. Our current penalties for this sort of crime are ridiculously harsh. That doesn't make the person innocent, it just means that they aren't stupid.
As a practical matter this means that you shouldn't distribute copyrighte material. Heck, you can probably even download it, just don't distribute it (IANAL, and all that). Or perhaps you should simply stick to musicians that are happy to allow you to download their work. As a practical example I really enjoy Harvey Danger's new album, and it's available as a free download via bittorrent (they even have the music in ogg format).
Actually, that's a good point. I imagine that recently RMS makes more money doing speaking tours than anything else. However, for years the FSF survived on the sale of tapes of its software distribution. Even today, if you get the deluxe GNU distribution from the Free Software Foundation it will run you something like $5,000.
As for writing "very little software" RMS has certainly written his share of software. Of course, I am the sort of hardcore Emacs user that lurks on emacs-devel so I might be biased:).
Stallman has been making a living selling Free Software for over a decade. RMS holds some interesting ideas, but he doesn't believe that programmers should work for free.
Unisys got tricked by Microsoft. Microsoft liked the Unisys machine as an advertisement for the capabilities of Windows. It was good press for Microsoft to be able to talk about "mainframe" Windows, but that's not the Microsoft folks wanted to sell. They wanted to sell clusters of commodity hardware. So Unisys had the unenviable job of trying to sell mainframe Windows to customers that invariably wanted to talk about the deal to Microsoft. Microsoft would then do its best to steer the customers towards a cluster.
Running Linux these same boxes appeal to the same sorts of customers that have traditionally purchased big iron, porting the software to Linux is easier, and you don't have to partner with Microsoft.
What about OSS? Doesn't OSS crush everyone else since it's impossible to compete with "free"?
Nothing is free. I make a living customizing Free Software based software, and it's basically never free. There's no question that Free Software lowers the total cost of software, but the total cost is still not zero. This is especially true if you haven't spent the last ten years learning how to deploy Free Software:). Heck, that's why Microsoft software still gets installed in a lot of places. Depending on the skillsets that you have access to there are plenty of situations where Microsoft software makes more sense.
However, software companies that build their software on Microsoft's platform are in a particularly difficult spot. If Microsoft decides to enter their niche then they are at a distinct advantage because suddenly the playing field gets tilted against them. You simply can't compete with Microsoft on Microsoft's platform.
What about Oracle? They bought PeopleSoft (in a hostile fashion, BTW) with the expressed purpose of shutting it down so as to remove them as a source of competition.
Heck, that's a perfect reason to be wary of any commercial software. I worked for a company that had just spent quadzillions of dollars rolling out JD Edwards right before JD Edwards was purchased by Peoplesoft. Peoplesoft then got swept up by Oracle and it became evident that JD Edwards was as dead a product as has ever existed. The real irony was that the company in question actually had developed a pretty usable ERP system itself over the years. They junked a workable system for a series of rocky upgrades.
That's still makes Oracle different than Microsoft because Microsoft tends to target its partners. Microsoft used to have a lot of "partners" in the business intelligence market. Now Microsoft has a lot of doomed competitors. Oracle does this on occassion with its partners too. Here's hoping PostgreSQL can continue to make wins...
What about Apple? They're doing as best as they can to lock up all Mac software development for themselves.
Yes, Apple is very similar. On the one hand Apple knows that more software developed for their platform is a good thing. On the other hand Apple basically uses the army of developers that develop for Mac platforms as a barometer for measuring the next market to invade. Like Microsoft Apple tries to get folks to develop for its platform and then if one of these developers finds a particularly profitable niche Apple jumps in.
Microsoft is simply looking for a way to use its cash hoards to generate some growth. That's what businesses do. Microsoft has billions of dollars sitting around in low interest accounts. It's looking for some growth opportunities.
The real story is what this does to Microsoft's current business "partners." There really aren't technology niches that aren't threatened by Microsoft. I know I certainly wouldn't be interested in building my business on Microsoft's technology. Sure, someone gets rich when Microsoft enters a market as they invariably buy someone. However, everyone else gets crushed. Competing with Microsoft is ridiculously hard under the best of circumstances, but it is impossible when you have to purchase Microsoft technology to use your own product.
Sony's crazy devices don't play MP3s. The inventor of the Walkman judged the market so poorly that in a day and age when everyone talks about "MP3 players" Sony's supposedly competitive device doesn't actually play MP3s. Good one Sony. What's next, barbed-wire toilet paper?
On the bright side, you can use it as a mass storage device on Linux...
Marketeers happily pay millions of dollars for a few seconds of television because they know that thirty seconds is enough time to influence people's behavior. That being the case it is folly to think that you can expose yourself to much longer periods of pornography without any effect on your behavior. The fact of the matter is that quite a few studies have been done on the effects of pornography on behavior, especially in children. Here's a good list.
I am not trying to set public policy, and I tend to agree that outlawing pornography is not likely to be effective. However, just because I can't turn off pornography everywhere doesn't make pornography harmless. For the most part that means that my reaction to this problem is to try and limit my exposure and the exposure of my family to pornography.
You've fallen for a logical fallacy here. Yes, abstinence-pledges have more self-control - right until they break their pledge! Surveys show that abstinence-only sex education actually makes teens more likely to have sex, as compared to full sex education.
I am not really talking about sex education in schools. Quite frankly, if you are relying on the school system to teach your kids about sex then your kids are screwed (probably quite literally). I am not trying to set public policy. Feel free to teach your children whatever you want, but I plan on teaching my children the same things that my parents taught me. I know that for me abstaining until I was married was a huge win. It wasn't easy, but it was worth it.
Or are you going to try and convince me that abstinence until marriage is an impossible goal? Clearly it's not impossible. I did it, and thousands more like me get married every year without ever having had sex.
It really is a fairly simple proposition. There is a price to pay for being sexually active outside of marriage, and unfortunately children pay the brunt of the price. I, and many people like myself, are proof that even in today's society it is possible to live in such a way that you can honestly tell your wife that she is the first (and only). I personally believe that this sort of behavior makes for stronger marriages, and that the breakdown in the nuclear family and the huge increase in the divorce rate is a direct result of the increased promiscuity that is common these days. It truly is unrealistic to expect people that are promiscuous before marriage to remain faithful in marriage. Some people do change and some marriages in which the couple abstained before marriage don't end up working out. Abstinence is not magic, but the odds really do tip in your favor if you save yourself for marriage.
But of course, it remains the case that 100% of people who have abstained from sex, have never had sex. Well, gee whiz! 100% - What a wonder! I wonder what could have produced that?
Abstinence before marriage is very similar to remaining faithful in marriage in one important aspect. In both cases 99.99% is not good enough. You can't be "mostly" virgin, and you can't be "mostly" faithful to your wife. I happen to believe that the discipline required to *never* fail is worth the effort. Feel free to believe whatever you want.
I was a virgin on my wedding night, and so was my wife. Yes, sex that night was far from brilliant. However, there are far more important things in life than one night of good sex. The real reason for abstinence before marriage is that it makes sex a very special bond. Waiting until you are married to have sex also teaches you the self control that you will need to remain faithful.
Why did I decide to take such a stand? I saw the sort of family that my father had and I realized that more than anything I wanted that sort of a family for myself. People today think that they can live whatever sort of life they want before getting married and that somehow the marriage ceremony is going to change them. Well, that's crap. Being a good husband and father takes preparation and dedication just like every other worthwhile thing in the world, and learning to avoid the temptations that could ruin a marriage is part of that necessary preparation.
This isn't really about religion either. Single mothers are one of the biggest social problems that this nation currently faces. Not only do they tend to live below the poverty line, but their children have all sorts of socialization issues. Only a fool would argue that today's sexual atmosphere doesn't contribute to the problem.
Marrying a virgin isn't about being able to have sex with a virgin. As you point out yourself, that's one of the downsides. Marrying a virgin is about marrying someone who is serious enough about your relationship that he or she has waited to have sex just with you. That's a powerful commitment, and it's part of the glue that holds good marriages together. Now, I am not saying that people can't change, because I don't believe that. But learning self-control is much harder after you have had sex.
It sounds like you have made the classic mistake of ripping out and replacing something that worked simply because you wanted to do something better. That's almost always a bad idea without buy in from the highest levels.
Sure, the old site is crufty, but it is paid for, and the stuff you are doing is not. If you don't have the political pull to spend money at will it is almost a better plan to find minor changes that can be done inexpensively but that yield proportionally large benefits. Once you have a few visible "successes" under your belt then you can start trying to change the world. Until then, promising the moon without being able to deliver is simply a full-proof way to fail. If you have undertaken a project that you can not complete with your current staff and management is starting to question the viability of your project then you probably had better start thinking about plan B. Plan B probably should not include "industry statistics."
Seriously, you need to deliver something. Not complain about needing more help.
Unfortunately taking away laptops doesn't solve the root of either problem. Her classes won't get more interesting if laptops are taken away, and students that are interested in transcribing her every word aren't going to become interested in spending more time listening simply because they have less useful transcription tools.
I prefer "market" based solutions to these sorts of problems. If your grading structure doesn't require students to think, then don't be surprised when they don't think. Changing the tools that can be used to take notes isn't going to guarantee better notes or better discussions. It might make the teacher feel better about herself though, and that's a worthy goal, I suppose.
This is why I don't buy the professor's line that she is banning laptops because students were spending too much time transcribing precisely what she said. Unless her lectures are basically a list of facts without diagrams, graphs, or charts, and with very little chance to actually apply concepts then laptops are a relatively poor interface for taking notes. If there really was an advantage to transcribing then you would expect laptop wielding students to simply use their laptops to record the lecture.
No, what the students are doing with the laptops is that they are spending their time posting to/. or something, and the professor is just flattering herself. Her students have realized that they can get a good enough grade in her class without paying attention to the lecture, and so they are spending lecture time more profitably.
I am always disappointed by a class that wastes my time (and money). Wasting my time is especially egregious now that I am older and have a family, a job, and piles of other things that I would rather be doing. I have been in lots of classes where I paid attention because the lectures were interesting. I have been in quite a few classes where I paid attention because I was afraid of failing. However, I have also been in lots of classes where the lectures were pointless and boring and where I would have been better off to simply find somewhere quiet and read the text book. "Learning" is not something that only happens in a lecture hall. My experience leads me to believe that the professors with the pointless and boring lectures are always the ones that try and come up with schemes that "force" students to pay attention. If the lectures were interesting, or the subject matter was difficult, then the students wouldn't need to be "encouraged" to pay attention. Instead they would do it by themselves.
If you want students to pay attention in class, make paying attention in class a prerequisite for doing well on the exams. If you can do well on the exams without paying attention in class, then don't expect taking away laptops to solve the problem. If this teacher truly is correct and students aren't paying attention because they are trying to transcribe everything she says (and they aren't just playing poker online), then she should simply suggest that the students take notes with pen and paper and supplement those handwritten notes with "class notes" available in a handy electronic format. The clever students will quickly realize that following her advice will give them an edge, and soon enough everyone will be taking notes with pen and paper.
Or you can just ban laptops and pretend that the lectures magically became more interesting. While you are at it you should punish students that don't show up for lectures (or that leave early) by docking them points instead of simply making it impossible to do well on the tests without attending the lecture.
I expect to learn something when I take a course. Unfortunately, that's not necessarily a given. Blame the student if you want, but if I can get a good grade without learning then it is the teacher that is letting *me* down, not the other way around. I am the one paying the money.
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The warmup I will grant you. The stretching, believe it or not, is controversial. There's acually quite a bit of evidence that shows stretching before exercise is detrimental. Stretch afterward if necessary. Or, better yet, consider exercises that involve moving through a wide range of motion. For legs I would suggest Overhead squats. You don't need to use much weight (heck, a broomstick works great for starting).
By the way, if you haven't tried Tabata intervals the suggestion is actually a bit of a trap. Tabata intervals are ridiculously effective, and tremendously time dense, but they aren't very much fun. They hurt too much. I tend to bring them up when someone suggests that they don't have enough time to exercise. Tabata intervals are a good way to demonstrate that it isn't that they don't have enough time but rather that they don't have enough desire. That's a different subject altogether.
Once you make exercise a regular habit it becomes hard to imagine your life without it, but there's no question that making exercise a habit can be difficult. My advice, start small.
I have a timer on my watch that beeps every hour. When the alarm goes off I either get up and do a set of pullups or 2.5 minutes of jump rope. Sometimes I am concentrating hard enough on whatever I am doing that I miss the alarm, but for the most part I get up and move for a bit. Throw in 20 minutes of strength training or jogging before I come into work and you can make a big difference in your life.
I had similar problems that I have solved with deadlifts and overhead squats. $100 at just about any sporting good store will get you a bar and enough weight to keep things interesting for a bit. You might consider having someone check your form at first, though.
The important bit is that you don't really need piles of fancy equipment or a gym membership to strength train.
Exactly. I fail to see how spending 20 minutes a day either running or lifting heavy crap over my head somehow makes me less intelligent. Nice try. If you aren't working out on a regular basis you are either ignorant as to the many benefits of physical fitness, or you are extremely poor at managing your time.
There's plenty of clinical evidence that shows that getting in shape can require 20 minutes a day (or less). Don't even try tell me that you can't cough up 20 minutes a day for an activity is likely to increase both the length and quality of your life. Heck, you can make serious improvement with 4 minutes of Tabata Intervals a few times a week. That's a 20 second maximal sprint followed by 10 seconds rest repeated 8 times. Of course, it will probably take at least a half hour to recover from this workout the first time you do it :).
There are plenty of geeks that exercise.
If you mean that I haven't been tried for murder, yes, that's true. I have never been tried for murder. Of course, neither have any of the people charged with illegally distributing copyrighted materials. I have seen how the justice system works, though. Heck, my father's a judge. I spent enough time at his office when he was a public defender to realize that I wasn't really interested in going into the family business.
The justice system in the U.S. has its issues, but it works better than anything else you are likely to come up with. In this particular case I imagine that it works remarkably well. For the most part when the ISP coughs up contact information for the IP address in question the person that is fingered owns a computer that has been used for illegal purposes. Things would probably work even better if it wasn't in the ISPs best interest to encourage its users to share copyrighted material illegally. The illegal distribution of copyrighted materials in one of the primary uses of high speed connections to the Internet.
Yes, and she didn't didn't settle. In fact, the RIAA is going to probably end up picking up her legal fees. If the RIAA presses then they are likely to find themselves on the hook for considerably more than legal fees. This is how the system *should* work. The RIAA made a mistake and they are going to pay for it.
Yes, the RIAA lawsuits are civil, but that's only because if the RIAA were to press criminal charges people would end up in jail for the simple act of sharing Brittney Spears music. Distributing copyrighted works on the scale that is alleged is a federal offense. The RIAA, wisely, in my opinion, is taking a different tactic than unleashing the federales on filesharers. Basically the RIAA takes a group of "John Does" to trial in order to force the ISPs to actually cough up contact information. Then, at that point the RIAA drops the John Doe case and files seperate civil cases in the appropriate venue against the various filesharers. At that point the RIAA has a huge club as they have evidence that the filesharer has committed a federal crime. Sure, it's possible that the ISP got the IP address wrong, or that the identity of the person had been stolen and used to purchase the services of the ISP (that's probably what happened to Marie Lindor), but its not likely in most cases. What's more likely is that the parents are the ones that are sued while it is really the children (or neighbors, or someone else that has access to the computer) that is actually to blame.
Not that it really matters, in most of the cases the person whose name appears on the account at the ISP has plenty of reason to settle. Maybe they aren't guilty, but chances are good that if they aren't someone in their family is guilty. Once again, pretty much at any point the RIAA could turn the case into a criminal case in which folks could go to prison. So instead of fighting the person *wisely* accepts the RIAA's terms.
You'll be waiting a long time, because it's not re
How can you have "no hope" of defeating their lawyers in a crime that you didn't commit? If there was "no evidence" then you would have all sorts of legal avenues for reprisal, many of which could possibly lead to a large pot of gold.
The reality is that the RIAA has plenty of evidence that the people in question were distributing their copyrighted materials illegally. At the very least they know that someone at your computer was distributing the files. The RIAA certainly has enough evidence that if they were to call in the feds the agents could get a search warrant to seize your computer, search your house and start building a case. Most people, when confronted, wisely choose to take the RIAA up on its offer to settle out of court. They know they were distributing copyrighted material, and they likewise know that if the case became a criminal matter the feds would find enough evidence to put them in prison for a long time. Our current penalties for this sort of crime are ridiculously harsh. That doesn't make the person innocent, it just means that they aren't stupid.
As a practical matter this means that you shouldn't distribute copyrighte material. Heck, you can probably even download it, just don't distribute it (IANAL, and all that). Or perhaps you should simply stick to musicians that are happy to allow you to download their work. As a practical example I really enjoy Harvey Danger's new album, and it's available as a free download via bittorrent (they even have the music in ogg format).
Actually, that's a good point. I imagine that recently RMS makes more money doing speaking tours than anything else. However, for years the FSF survived on the sale of tapes of its software distribution. Even today, if you get the deluxe GNU distribution from the Free Software Foundation it will run you something like $5,000.
As for writing "very little software" RMS has certainly written his share of software. Of course, I am the sort of hardcore Emacs user that lurks on emacs-devel so I might be biased :).
Stallman has been making a living selling Free Software for over a decade. RMS holds some interesting ideas, but he doesn't believe that programmers should work for free.
Nice try though.
Unisys got tricked by Microsoft. Microsoft liked the Unisys machine as an advertisement for the capabilities of Windows. It was good press for Microsoft to be able to talk about "mainframe" Windows, but that's not the Microsoft folks wanted to sell. They wanted to sell clusters of commodity hardware. So Unisys had the unenviable job of trying to sell mainframe Windows to customers that invariably wanted to talk about the deal to Microsoft. Microsoft would then do its best to steer the customers towards a cluster.
Running Linux these same boxes appeal to the same sorts of customers that have traditionally purchased big iron, porting the software to Linux is easier, and you don't have to partner with Microsoft.
Nothing is free. I make a living customizing Free Software based software, and it's basically never free. There's no question that Free Software lowers the total cost of software, but the total cost is still not zero. This is especially true if you haven't spent the last ten years learning how to deploy Free Software :). Heck, that's why Microsoft software still gets installed in a lot of places. Depending on the skillsets that you have access to there are plenty of situations where Microsoft software makes more sense.
However, software companies that build their software on Microsoft's platform are in a particularly difficult spot. If Microsoft decides to enter their niche then they are at a distinct advantage because suddenly the playing field gets tilted against them. You simply can't compete with Microsoft on Microsoft's platform.
Heck, that's a perfect reason to be wary of any commercial software. I worked for a company that had just spent quadzillions of dollars rolling out JD Edwards right before JD Edwards was purchased by Peoplesoft. Peoplesoft then got swept up by Oracle and it became evident that JD Edwards was as dead a product as has ever existed. The real irony was that the company in question actually had developed a pretty usable ERP system itself over the years. They junked a workable system for a series of rocky upgrades.
That's still makes Oracle different than Microsoft because Microsoft tends to target its partners. Microsoft used to have a lot of "partners" in the business intelligence market. Now Microsoft has a lot of doomed competitors. Oracle does this on occassion with its partners too. Here's hoping PostgreSQL can continue to make wins...
Yes, Apple is very similar. On the one hand Apple knows that more software developed for their platform is a good thing. On the other hand Apple basically uses the army of developers that develop for Mac platforms as a barometer for measuring the next market to invade. Like Microsoft Apple tries to get folks to develop for its platform and then if one of these developers finds a particularly profitable niche Apple jumps in.
Microsoft is simply looking for a way to use its cash hoards to generate some growth. That's what businesses do. Microsoft has billions of dollars sitting around in low interest accounts. It's looking for some growth opportunities.
The real story is what this does to Microsoft's current business "partners." There really aren't technology niches that aren't threatened by Microsoft. I know I certainly wouldn't be interested in building my business on Microsoft's technology. Sure, someone gets rich when Microsoft enters a market as they invariably buy someone. However, everyone else gets crushed. Competing with Microsoft is ridiculously hard under the best of circumstances, but it is impossible when you have to purchase Microsoft technology to use your own product.
Sony's crazy devices don't play MP3s. The inventor of the Walkman judged the market so poorly that in a day and age when everyone talks about "MP3 players" Sony's supposedly competitive device doesn't actually play MP3s. Good one Sony. What's next, barbed-wire toilet paper?
On the bright side, you can use it as a mass storage device on Linux...
Marketeers happily pay millions of dollars for a few seconds of television because they know that thirty seconds is enough time to influence people's behavior. That being the case it is folly to think that you can expose yourself to much longer periods of pornography without any effect on your behavior. The fact of the matter is that quite a few studies have been done on the effects of pornography on behavior, especially in children. Here's a good list.
I am not trying to set public policy, and I tend to agree that outlawing pornography is not likely to be effective. However, just because I can't turn off pornography everywhere doesn't make pornography harmless. For the most part that means that my reaction to this problem is to try and limit my exposure and the exposure of my family to pornography.
I am not really talking about sex education in schools. Quite frankly, if you are relying on the school system to teach your kids about sex then your kids are screwed (probably quite literally). I am not trying to set public policy. Feel free to teach your children whatever you want, but I plan on teaching my children the same things that my parents taught me. I know that for me abstaining until I was married was a huge win. It wasn't easy, but it was worth it.
Or are you going to try and convince me that abstinence until marriage is an impossible goal? Clearly it's not impossible. I did it, and thousands more like me get married every year without ever having had sex.
It really is a fairly simple proposition. There is a price to pay for being sexually active outside of marriage, and unfortunately children pay the brunt of the price. I, and many people like myself, are proof that even in today's society it is possible to live in such a way that you can honestly tell your wife that she is the first (and only). I personally believe that this sort of behavior makes for stronger marriages, and that the breakdown in the nuclear family and the huge increase in the divorce rate is a direct result of the increased promiscuity that is common these days. It truly is unrealistic to expect people that are promiscuous before marriage to remain faithful in marriage. Some people do change and some marriages in which the couple abstained before marriage don't end up working out. Abstinence is not magic, but the odds really do tip in your favor if you save yourself for marriage.
Abstinence before marriage is very similar to remaining faithful in marriage in one important aspect. In both cases 99.99% is not good enough. You can't be "mostly" virgin, and you can't be "mostly" faithful to your wife. I happen to believe that the discipline required to *never* fail is worth the effort. Feel free to believe whatever you want.
I was a virgin on my wedding night, and so was my wife. Yes, sex that night was far from brilliant. However, there are far more important things in life than one night of good sex. The real reason for abstinence before marriage is that it makes sex a very special bond. Waiting until you are married to have sex also teaches you the self control that you will need to remain faithful.
Why did I decide to take such a stand? I saw the sort of family that my father had and I realized that more than anything I wanted that sort of a family for myself. People today think that they can live whatever sort of life they want before getting married and that somehow the marriage ceremony is going to change them. Well, that's crap. Being a good husband and father takes preparation and dedication just like every other worthwhile thing in the world, and learning to avoid the temptations that could ruin a marriage is part of that necessary preparation.
This isn't really about religion either. Single mothers are one of the biggest social problems that this nation currently faces. Not only do they tend to live below the poverty line, but their children have all sorts of socialization issues. Only a fool would argue that today's sexual atmosphere doesn't contribute to the problem.
Marrying a virgin isn't about being able to have sex with a virgin. As you point out yourself, that's one of the downsides. Marrying a virgin is about marrying someone who is serious enough about your relationship that he or she has waited to have sex just with you. That's a powerful commitment, and it's part of the glue that holds good marriages together. Now, I am not saying that people can't change, because I don't believe that. But learning self-control is much harder after you have had sex.
I needed that, thanks.
It sounds like you have made the classic mistake of ripping out and replacing something that worked simply because you wanted to do something better. That's almost always a bad idea without buy in from the highest levels.
Sure, the old site is crufty, but it is paid for, and the stuff you are doing is not. If you don't have the political pull to spend money at will it is almost a better plan to find minor changes that can be done inexpensively but that yield proportionally large benefits. Once you have a few visible "successes" under your belt then you can start trying to change the world. Until then, promising the moon without being able to deliver is simply a full-proof way to fail. If you have undertaken a project that you can not complete with your current staff and management is starting to question the viability of your project then you probably had better start thinking about plan B. Plan B probably should not include "industry statistics."
Seriously, you need to deliver something. Not complain about needing more help.
No, the 911 operator was right. What you needed to do was call the police. 911 is not the police.
Wait a second. I thought that you guys had a Queen or something.
Unfortunately taking away laptops doesn't solve the root of either problem. Her classes won't get more interesting if laptops are taken away, and students that are interested in transcribing her every word aren't going to become interested in spending more time listening simply because they have less useful transcription tools.
I prefer "market" based solutions to these sorts of problems. If your grading structure doesn't require students to think, then don't be surprised when they don't think. Changing the tools that can be used to take notes isn't going to guarantee better notes or better discussions. It might make the teacher feel better about herself though, and that's a worthy goal, I suppose.
This is why I don't buy the professor's line that she is banning laptops because students were spending too much time transcribing precisely what she said. Unless her lectures are basically a list of facts without diagrams, graphs, or charts, and with very little chance to actually apply concepts then laptops are a relatively poor interface for taking notes. If there really was an advantage to transcribing then you would expect laptop wielding students to simply use their laptops to record the lecture.
No, what the students are doing with the laptops is that they are spending their time posting to /. or something, and the professor is just flattering herself. Her students have realized that they can get a good enough grade in her class without paying attention to the lecture, and so they are spending lecture time more profitably.
I couldn't agree more.
I am always disappointed by a class that wastes my time (and money). Wasting my time is especially egregious now that I am older and have a family, a job, and piles of other things that I would rather be doing. I have been in lots of classes where I paid attention because the lectures were interesting. I have been in quite a few classes where I paid attention because I was afraid of failing. However, I have also been in lots of classes where the lectures were pointless and boring and where I would have been better off to simply find somewhere quiet and read the text book. "Learning" is not something that only happens in a lecture hall. My experience leads me to believe that the professors with the pointless and boring lectures are always the ones that try and come up with schemes that "force" students to pay attention. If the lectures were interesting, or the subject matter was difficult, then the students wouldn't need to be "encouraged" to pay attention. Instead they would do it by themselves.
If you want students to pay attention in class, make paying attention in class a prerequisite for doing well on the exams. If you can do well on the exams without paying attention in class, then don't expect taking away laptops to solve the problem. If this teacher truly is correct and students aren't paying attention because they are trying to transcribe everything she says (and they aren't just playing poker online), then she should simply suggest that the students take notes with pen and paper and supplement those handwritten notes with "class notes" available in a handy electronic format. The clever students will quickly realize that following her advice will give them an edge, and soon enough everyone will be taking notes with pen and paper.
Or you can just ban laptops and pretend that the lectures magically became more interesting. While you are at it you should punish students that don't show up for lectures (or that leave early) by docking them points instead of simply making it impossible to do well on the tests without attending the lecture.
I expect to learn something when I take a course. Unfortunately, that's not necessarily a given. Blame the student if you want, but if I can get a good grade without learning then it is the teacher that is letting *me* down, not the other way around. I am the one paying the money.