I agree 100% with this assessment. Television is a skewed view of the Western world. I certainly don't allow my children to watch it unsupervised. The Internet is far more educational.
You make it sound like there is no defense against the influence of television. However, I happen to know that this is completely false. Every television I have ever seen has an off swtich, and you certainly don't have to pay for cable (I don't, do you?). These people are paying a substantial percentage of their income to be able to watch this crap.
I actually agree that television is pernicious. Clearly the messages portrayed on television have an influence on the population. If they didn't advertisers wouldn't pay huge amounts of money for 30 second spots. The problem is that people should be able to choose how they live their lives. If that includes "The Simpsons" and gangsta rap, well, that's their choice. I might think that they have made a poor choice, but that's what life is all about.
Cultures change as they come in contact with other cultures. That is simply the way of things. Now, the west could keep the country of Bhutan in a bottle and treat the people there like they were part of some zoo exhibit, but apparently that's not what a substantial chunk of the population of Bhutan wants. You and I might agree that the media that they are being exposed to is "bad" for them, but who are we to judge?
No wonder Westerners (especially Americans) have a reputation for meddling. We tend to want to make all of the choices for everyone on the planet.
Listen, Westerners are exposed to all sorts of lifestyles, including "backwards" ones like Bhutanese culture. However, you don't see many of us living on top of mountains without electricity, running water, or television. Why? Because we like our modern society.
No one is forcing the Bhutanese to change. They are making the changes themselves. The Bhutanese people have been exposed to the Western lifestyle, and they are finding that they like it. It's not like we are marching in with tanks and forcing people to watch "The Simpsons" at gunpoint.
If you want to help sustain a feudal society, pack up your bags and go live in one. Give up your TV, your computer, your instant dinners, your modern medical treatment, and your hot and cold running water and go live on top of a mountain somewhere and eat Yak cheese (which probably is good). The reason that you don't move to Bhutan is that you aren't interested in giving up your lifestyle for $1,200 a year and all the buddhism you can stomach. Apparently some of the folks in Bhutan feel the same way.
Keeping people in a bottle so that you can preseve their culture is like keeping your four-year-old girl in a closet so that Satan can't tempt her. No matter how good your intentions, the action is flat out wrong.
The crazier the things SCO management says, the higher their stock price rises. With the IBM trial several years out they have plenty of time to pump up SCOX stock to ridiculous levels and get out squeaky clean.
There are experimental cars that run on hydrogen. When hydrogen is oxidized (burned) it produces water. My guess is that this is what you have heard of. However, the trick is getting hydrogen to begin with. You can do this by electrolyzing water (producing O2 ahd H2), or by breaking down fossil fuels.
The Big Hydrogen Tycoon will look exactly like the Big Oil Tycoon because the Hyrdogen will be extracted from fossil fuels.
The fact of the matter is that Hydrogen isn't an energy source, like solar power, nuclear power, or fossil fuels, it is merely an energy container (like a battery). Hydrogen is either going to be obtained by breaking down fossil fuels or by electrolizing water with electricity generated from fossil fuels (or possibly nuclear power). The Hydrogen merely moves the point of pollution from millions of individual automobiles to hundreds of power plants. Localizing the pollution will help in some ways, and hurt in others.
Microsoft started seeing schools that were making successful switches to Free Software, and so now they are backing down. Essentially it is the same situation as a knife-wielding mugger backing down when his victim pulls a gun on him.
Microsoft can posture all it wants, but second hand computers invariably had a Windows license in some part of their career. Heck, most corporate PCs actually end up purchasing the license twice. Asking schools to purchase yet another license when the computer is given away is just ridiculous.
Re:There already are "underground" gun makers..
on
Walmart to Push RFID
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· Score: 1
Anyone that can handle the chemistry behind methamphetamines can handle the chemistry behind modern gunpowder weapons, and if you can machine steel, brass should be a piece of cake. That's assuming that criminals don't just smuggle in ammunition from somewhere else, or steal it from the government (the government isn't giving up its guns).
Yes, making ammunition illegal would almost certainly raise the price on the black market, but it would also increase the power of the illegal weapons. After all, if none of the potential victims are going to be armed.
Once again, mankind has had guns for hundreds of years. There is nothing "almost impossible" about the manufacture of either guns themselves or the rounds that they use.
Microsoft currently has an 85+% profit margin on Windows. Clearly they have room to give on price. However, Microsoft also has a great deal of pressure from shareholders (which include Microsoft's management team and the vast majority of Microsoft employees) to increase their revenues. Microsoft currently trades at nearly a 30 price/earnings ratio, and if they are forced to lower the price that they charge for software (lowering their revenues and profit margins) it is likely to have a devastating effect on their stock price.
As a long term business decision lowering the price of Windows so that it can compete successfully with Linux probably makes sense. My guess is that the threat from Linux would large go away if Microsoft's prices dropped to 25% of current levels (this would still provide Microsoft with a healthy 10% profit margin). However, Microsoft executives would lose far more money from the devalution of the stock price than they could ever hope to recover at the lower with a more reasonable price structure.
Microsoft has structured their company around huge profit margins and a constantly rising stock price. Without these two ingredients Microsoft's business model is inherently broken.
Have you ever worked at a sub $7.00 wage. I have. You have to work overtime, and you can't afford broadband internet (and you should probably steer clear of cable), but it's hardly the end of the world. It's certainly better than Peru, where I went to high school.
America has lots of opportunity to get ahead. Even a Wal-Mart job is better than what most of the rest of the world dreams about. And in the U.S. it is always possible to educate yourself and get ahead. In most of the world that isn't the case either.
In short, you want some cheese to go with that whine?
I have seen lots of Wal-Mart greeters. This particular guy looked like he was enjoying himself. Perhaps it is impossible for a Wal-Mart employee to enjoy his or her job, but somehow I doubt that.
Last I checked none of the employees at my local Wal-Mart appeared as if they were compelled to work their by force. I didn't see any handcuffs, shock collars, or men with cattle prods. In fact, the old guy who greeted me this morning at my local Wal-Mart looked like he was having a great time.
The fact of the matter is that Wal-Mart beats their competitors by 1) controlling costs, and 2) pricing their inventory ridiculously low and relying on volume of sales to make up the difference.
The problem with this is that guns are not difficult to manufacture. Heck, many popular models still in use to day are simple variations on guns built before electricity. Not to mention the fact that their are literally millions of weapons currently in existence.
The firearms cat has been out of the bag for several hundred years. Pretending that you can keep firearms out of the hands of criminals (especially criminals that want to get past a security checkpoint) is ridiculous. Worst comes to worse the criminals could simply make their own weapons.
SCO's evidence isn't forged. Their case is simply ridiculously flimsy.
Enron and Worldcom are different. What these companies did was inherently illegal. They knowingly broke GAAP rules, and then foisted this bad information off on investors. SCO, on the other hand, simply is overstating their case. Think of it as VA Linux pretending it was going to be able to compete with Dell long-term in the Linux server business. It could have happened, but it wasn't particularly likely. Notice how none of the VA Linux guys ended up in jail when their stock went through the roof. Even those that sold stock at ridiculously high levels weren't breaking the law.
That's a good one. SCO is nothing more than a rebadged Caldera, which Ray Noorda already owns! In fact, the lawsuit over DR-DOS was between Microsoft and Caldera (now SCO).
Makes your head hurt, don't it.
In other words the greedy, angry, and litigious already own SCO. You would have to be a dunderhead to sign an agreement with those weasels.
I wouldn't sign anything SCO management gave me. The only good news is that eventually this case will either go to trial or SCO will go out of business.
Here's to hoping that the SCO management gets so greedy that they make a mistake and the SEC nails them to a tree.
SCO management knows that if they can keep their story in the news then people might start to believe they actually have a case.
The fact of the matter is that SCO isn't aiming their press release at members of the Linux community (or even members of the larger computing community), they are aiming these press releases at the large population of rubes that might be interested in gambling on an "insider deal." SCO's allegations are ridiculous to anyone with any knowledge of the situation, and their tactics are crude and hamhanded to any with an inkling of knowledge about the case. The mere fact that they keep issuing press releases should trigger alarm bells. Everything SCO management says is evidence, if they were trying to win they would listen to their legal counsel and do their talking in court.
In short, SCO isn't trying to win a court case; they are trying to hype their stock.
To an outsider their case looks like a bunch of poor underdogs who have are fighting an IBM Goliath. SCO's target audience doesn't have a clue about source code or NDAs, and to them the offer to prove their case almost certainly looks genuine. These people don't know about the GPL or the UC Berkeley AT&T court case. They don't even know that SCO isn't Santa Cruz Operations (the former UNIX company), but that SCO is really just Caldera (the former Linux company). They simply see that a small company claims to have rights to some code, and some journalists (and Microsoft) keep adding credence to their story.
This is a pump and dump scheme, nothing more, nothing less. Think of it as a variation on the Dot Com Boomers that hyped their stock up to the moon despite the fact that they knew that they had no chance of making a profit. Everyone makes fun of the dot com management teams, but they weren't stupid. They weren't selling pet food, or medical advice, their stock price was the real product they were hawking. The guys that founded those companies generally made a big fat pile of money at the subsequent investors expense. And it was all perfectly legal.
SCO management is in a similar position. They aren't going to win their case, but that doesn't matter, because right now their stock is what they are really selling. The difference is that the "Big Lie" in this case isn't that online commerce is going to change the world. The story this time is that scrappy SCO from Lindon, Utah has got IBM by the short hairs. It's pure @#$!!, but it plays well on TV.
As long as the SCO insiders jump through SEC hoops when they sell (and they have plenty of time to sell), and as long as they don't laugh out loud while pretending they have a case, it's all perfectly legal.
I had heard about that particular study, and it makes perfect sense. Smoking is another activity that I have a hard time condemning. Sure, there are problems with cigarette smoke in public places, but for the most part cigarette smokers are a pretty benign group.
Don't get me wrong. I am not saying that discussions aren't useful tools, and I certainly agree that lectures can be very entertaining. However, when push comes to shove most learning revolves around the written word. That is why books were such an improvement over spreading traditions orally, and it is why Google is so darn useful. The written word puts centuries of knowledge at your fingertips. No professor, no matter how experienced, can match the massive amount of information, wisdom, and insight contained in even a modest library.
Sure professors go to conferences, but that's more about hobnobbing than learning. Not to mention the fact that the difference between the professors that are going to listen at a conference and the ones that are going to present is the fact that the ones presenting have written a paper or book.
Yes, there is nothing quite like the mix of entertainment and information that make up a good lecture. However, such lessons are by their very nature ephemeral. Books, on the other hand, can be studied over and over again.
If I can learn the material without spending 3 hours a week in a lecture, how is that a bad thing? Yes, for many folks a University is little more than a chance to visit a really nice library and work with really expensive machines.
One thing is certain, when your professors want to learn something new, they don't sign up for a class; they check out a book.
I am not saying that I would learn better in a sensory deprivation chamber. Interaction with other people is definitely an important part of learning. However, it is no longer necessary to move to a University (or even drive across town) to get this type of interaction. Our discussion here on/. should prove that intelligent discussions are possible in an online environment.
Don't get me wrong, I enjoyed the years that I spent on campus, and I learned some very important skills, and I met some great folks, but these experiences required an inordinate sacrifice of time and money. With my online courses it is much easier to make my studies fit around my schedule, and instead of the contrived University setting I am able to gain experience in the real world (and get paid for it to boot).
The tradeoff is that I no longer attend lectures, and that my "study groups" are held via email, newsgroup, or instant message instead of being set around a pizza somewhere.
Now, I have mostly been talking about business courses up until this point (because that is what I am taking). However, the cutting edge of C.S. work is even more likely to be carried out online instead of offline. We both know that most "interesting" C.S. is happening on various mailing lists, just like it has since the days of Arpanet. It's fun to actually get together, and some work probably does get done that way, but it absolutely dwarfed by the amount of cutting edge stuff that gets done via email.
Think about the number of "good presentations" you have been to that lead you to read a paper, and then compare that with the number of "good papers" that you ran into because the paper was presented to you via a website or a mailing list, and you will realize that unless you are at one of the hacker havens chances are very good that you already get most of your relevant C.S. info via the Internet.
I live in Nampa, ID. If I had to wait for interesting presentors to come my way to learn something I would still be learning to read. However, it is amazing what one can learn (and for free) by simply subscribing to the right mailing list. Want to learn about databases? postgresql-hackers will teach you a ton. Want to learn about operating systems? LKML is not only educational, it's flamefests are entertaining as well.
Think about it and you will realize that I am right. The real ground breaking stuff is not happening in a closet in some University somewhere, it is being done right out in the open on the Internet. Sure, a lot of the cool work is being done by academics, but even academic projects are soliciting help from all around the world. In fact, academic projects that aren't allied with either a commercial or a Free Software project outside of academia are rapidly heading towards irrelevance.
And once again, much of the collaboration in either case is done using the exact same tools that I use in my online classes so let's not overestimate the importance of lectures.
Getting together face to face is fun, and it helps smooth out possible conflicts, but it is hardly necessary for C.S. research, and it certainly isn't necessary for basic undergrad courses. This is especially true if you happen to have the kind of personality that prefers to learn from reading and research.
Dead people don't go to the emergency room, they don't collect unemployment or disability insurance, they don't get Medicaid or Medicare, and they never get any more social security benefits.
A seatbelt might save your life, but in anything but a non trivial crash you probably will still be injured. In such a case it probably saves resources to simply have the victims safely dead.
If someone doesn't want to wear a seatbelt (facing a greater possibility of death) then that is fine with me. Dead people cost me less money.
I would agree that sometimes there is an advantage to being able to discuss the topic at hand over with other folks. However, from my own experience I found that whenever I went to a study group I spent most of my time explaining what I had already learned to people that didn't understand (or didn't read) the assignment.
That being the case, it sometimes is helpful to be able to ask questions, and it certainly helps crystalize concepts in your mind if you have to explain them to someone else. However, I am just as comfortable using email for these types of discussions as I am sitting around a table eating pizza. Now that I am married my primary reason for attending study groups (cute girls) has also gone away.
Personally I like online classes much better than I liked traditional classes.
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I agree 100% with this assessment. Television is a skewed view of the Western world. I certainly don't allow my children to watch it unsupervised. The Internet is far more educational.
You make it sound like there is no defense against the influence of television. However, I happen to know that this is completely false. Every television I have ever seen has an off swtich, and you certainly don't have to pay for cable (I don't, do you?). These people are paying a substantial percentage of their income to be able to watch this crap.
I actually agree that television is pernicious. Clearly the messages portrayed on television have an influence on the population. If they didn't advertisers wouldn't pay huge amounts of money for 30 second spots. The problem is that people should be able to choose how they live their lives. If that includes "The Simpsons" and gangsta rap, well, that's their choice. I might think that they have made a poor choice, but that's what life is all about.
Cultures change as they come in contact with other cultures. That is simply the way of things. Now, the west could keep the country of Bhutan in a bottle and treat the people there like they were part of some zoo exhibit, but apparently that's not what a substantial chunk of the population of Bhutan wants. You and I might agree that the media that they are being exposed to is "bad" for them, but who are we to judge?
No wonder Westerners (especially Americans) have a reputation for meddling. We tend to want to make all of the choices for everyone on the planet.
Listen, Westerners are exposed to all sorts of lifestyles, including "backwards" ones like Bhutanese culture. However, you don't see many of us living on top of mountains without electricity, running water, or television. Why? Because we like our modern society.
No one is forcing the Bhutanese to change. They are making the changes themselves. The Bhutanese people have been exposed to the Western lifestyle, and they are finding that they like it. It's not like we are marching in with tanks and forcing people to watch "The Simpsons" at gunpoint.
If you want to help sustain a feudal society, pack up your bags and go live in one. Give up your TV, your computer, your instant dinners, your modern medical treatment, and your hot and cold running water and go live on top of a mountain somewhere and eat Yak cheese (which probably is good). The reason that you don't move to Bhutan is that you aren't interested in giving up your lifestyle for $1,200 a year and all the buddhism you can stomach. Apparently some of the folks in Bhutan feel the same way.
Keeping people in a bottle so that you can preseve their culture is like keeping your four-year-old girl in a closet so that Satan can't tempt her. No matter how good your intentions, the action is flat out wrong.
The crazier the things SCO management says, the higher their stock price rises. With the IBM trial several years out they have plenty of time to pump up SCOX stock to ridiculous levels and get out squeaky clean.
There are experimental cars that run on hydrogen. When hydrogen is oxidized (burned) it produces water. My guess is that this is what you have heard of. However, the trick is getting hydrogen to begin with. You can do this by electrolyzing water (producing O2 ahd H2), or by breaking down fossil fuels.
The Big Hydrogen Tycoon will look exactly like the Big Oil Tycoon because the Hyrdogen will be extracted from fossil fuels.
The fact of the matter is that Hydrogen isn't an energy source, like solar power, nuclear power, or fossil fuels, it is merely an energy container (like a battery). Hydrogen is either going to be obtained by breaking down fossil fuels or by electrolizing water with electricity generated from fossil fuels (or possibly nuclear power). The Hydrogen merely moves the point of pollution from millions of individual automobiles to hundreds of power plants. Localizing the pollution will help in some ways, and hurt in others.
Microsoft started seeing schools that were making successful switches to Free Software, and so now they are backing down. Essentially it is the same situation as a knife-wielding mugger backing down when his victim pulls a gun on him.
Microsoft can posture all it wants, but second hand computers invariably had a Windows license in some part of their career. Heck, most corporate PCs actually end up purchasing the license twice. Asking schools to purchase yet another license when the computer is given away is just ridiculous.
Anyone that can handle the chemistry behind methamphetamines can handle the chemistry behind modern gunpowder weapons, and if you can machine steel, brass should be a piece of cake. That's assuming that criminals don't just smuggle in ammunition from somewhere else, or steal it from the government (the government isn't giving up its guns).
Yes, making ammunition illegal would almost certainly raise the price on the black market, but it would also increase the power of the illegal weapons. After all, if none of the potential victims are going to be armed.
Once again, mankind has had guns for hundreds of years. There is nothing "almost impossible" about the manufacture of either guns themselves or the rounds that they use.
Microsoft currently has an 85+% profit margin on Windows. Clearly they have room to give on price. However, Microsoft also has a great deal of pressure from shareholders (which include Microsoft's management team and the vast majority of Microsoft employees) to increase their revenues. Microsoft currently trades at nearly a 30 price/earnings ratio, and if they are forced to lower the price that they charge for software (lowering their revenues and profit margins) it is likely to have a devastating effect on their stock price.
As a long term business decision lowering the price of Windows so that it can compete successfully with Linux probably makes sense. My guess is that the threat from Linux would large go away if Microsoft's prices dropped to 25% of current levels (this would still provide Microsoft with a healthy 10% profit margin). However, Microsoft executives would lose far more money from the devalution of the stock price than they could ever hope to recover at the lower with a more reasonable price structure.
Microsoft has structured their company around huge profit margins and a constantly rising stock price. Without these two ingredients Microsoft's business model is inherently broken.
Have you ever worked at a sub $7.00 wage. I have. You have to work overtime, and you can't afford broadband internet (and you should probably steer clear of cable), but it's hardly the end of the world. It's certainly better than Peru, where I went to high school.
America has lots of opportunity to get ahead. Even a Wal-Mart job is better than what most of the rest of the world dreams about. And in the U.S. it is always possible to educate yourself and get ahead. In most of the world that isn't the case either.
In short, you want some cheese to go with that whine?
I have seen lots of Wal-Mart greeters. This particular guy looked like he was enjoying himself. Perhaps it is impossible for a Wal-Mart employee to enjoy his or her job, but somehow I doubt that.
Last I checked none of the employees at my local Wal-Mart appeared as if they were compelled to work their by force. I didn't see any handcuffs, shock collars, or men with cattle prods. In fact, the old guy who greeted me this morning at my local Wal-Mart looked like he was having a great time.
The fact of the matter is that Wal-Mart beats their competitors by 1) controlling costs, and 2) pricing their inventory ridiculously low and relying on volume of sales to make up the difference.
The problem with this is that guns are not difficult to manufacture. Heck, many popular models still in use to day are simple variations on guns built before electricity. Not to mention the fact that their are literally millions of weapons currently in existence.
The firearms cat has been out of the bag for several hundred years. Pretending that you can keep firearms out of the hands of criminals (especially criminals that want to get past a security checkpoint) is ridiculous. Worst comes to worse the criminals could simply make their own weapons.
SCO's evidence isn't forged. Their case is simply ridiculously flimsy.
Enron and Worldcom are different. What these companies did was inherently illegal. They knowingly broke GAAP rules, and then foisted this bad information off on investors. SCO, on the other hand, simply is overstating their case. Think of it as VA Linux pretending it was going to be able to compete with Dell long-term in the Linux server business. It could have happened, but it wasn't particularly likely. Notice how none of the VA Linux guys ended up in jail when their stock went through the roof. Even those that sold stock at ridiculously high levels weren't breaking the law.
That's a good one. SCO is nothing more than a rebadged Caldera, which Ray Noorda already owns! In fact, the lawsuit over DR-DOS was between Microsoft and Caldera (now SCO).
Makes your head hurt, don't it.
In other words the greedy, angry, and litigious already own SCO. You would have to be a dunderhead to sign an agreement with those weasels.
I wouldn't sign anything SCO management gave me. The only good news is that eventually this case will either go to trial or SCO will go out of business.
Here's to hoping that the SCO management gets so greedy that they make a mistake and the SEC nails them to a tree.
SCO management knows that if they can keep their story in the news then people might start to believe they actually have a case.
The fact of the matter is that SCO isn't aiming their press release at members of the Linux community (or even members of the larger computing community), they are aiming these press releases at the large population of rubes that might be interested in gambling on an "insider deal." SCO's allegations are ridiculous to anyone with any knowledge of the situation, and their tactics are crude and hamhanded to any with an inkling of knowledge about the case. The mere fact that they keep issuing press releases should trigger alarm bells. Everything SCO management says is evidence, if they were trying to win they would listen to their legal counsel and do their talking in court.
In short, SCO isn't trying to win a court case; they are trying to hype their stock.
To an outsider their case looks like a bunch of poor underdogs who have are fighting an IBM Goliath. SCO's target audience doesn't have a clue about source code or NDAs, and to them the offer to prove their case almost certainly looks genuine. These people don't know about the GPL or the UC Berkeley AT&T court case. They don't even know that SCO isn't Santa Cruz Operations (the former UNIX company), but that SCO is really just Caldera (the former Linux company). They simply see that a small company claims to have rights to some code, and some journalists (and Microsoft) keep adding credence to their story.
This is a pump and dump scheme, nothing more, nothing less. Think of it as a variation on the Dot Com Boomers that hyped their stock up to the moon despite the fact that they knew that they had no chance of making a profit. Everyone makes fun of the dot com management teams, but they weren't stupid. They weren't selling pet food, or medical advice, their stock price was the real product they were hawking. The guys that founded those companies generally made a big fat pile of money at the subsequent investors expense. And it was all perfectly legal.
SCO management is in a similar position. They aren't going to win their case, but that doesn't matter, because right now their stock is what they are really selling. The difference is that the "Big Lie" in this case isn't that online commerce is going to change the world. The story this time is that scrappy SCO from Lindon, Utah has got IBM by the short hairs. It's pure @#$!!, but it plays well on TV.
As long as the SCO insiders jump through SEC hoops when they sell (and they have plenty of time to sell), and as long as they don't laugh out loud while pretending they have a case, it's all perfectly legal.
Caveat Emptor.
I had heard about that particular study, and it makes perfect sense. Smoking is another activity that I have a hard time condemning. Sure, there are problems with cigarette smoke in public places, but for the most part cigarette smokers are a pretty benign group.
Let's hope they come with Peril Sensitive Sunglasses as well. That would be helpful.
Don't get me wrong. I am not saying that discussions aren't useful tools, and I certainly agree that lectures can be very entertaining. However, when push comes to shove most learning revolves around the written word. That is why books were such an improvement over spreading traditions orally, and it is why Google is so darn useful. The written word puts centuries of knowledge at your fingertips. No professor, no matter how experienced, can match the massive amount of information, wisdom, and insight contained in even a modest library.
Sure professors go to conferences, but that's more about hobnobbing than learning. Not to mention the fact that the difference between the professors that are going to listen at a conference and the ones that are going to present is the fact that the ones presenting have written a paper or book.
Yes, there is nothing quite like the mix of entertainment and information that make up a good lecture. However, such lessons are by their very nature ephemeral. Books, on the other hand, can be studied over and over again.
Yes, sometimes added examples are handy. Especially when you get stuck.
If I can learn the material without spending 3 hours a week in a lecture, how is that a bad thing? Yes, for many folks a University is little more than a chance to visit a really nice library and work with really expensive machines.
One thing is certain, when your professors want to learn something new, they don't sign up for a class; they check out a book.
All the more reason not to have seatbelt laws. If they don't actually help save your life, why should you have to wear them?
BTW, where did you get your statistics?
I am not saying that I would learn better in a sensory deprivation chamber. Interaction with other people is definitely an important part of learning. However, it is no longer necessary to move to a University (or even drive across town) to get this type of interaction. Our discussion here on /. should prove that intelligent discussions are possible in an online environment.
Don't get me wrong, I enjoyed the years that I spent on campus, and I learned some very important skills, and I met some great folks, but these experiences required an inordinate sacrifice of time and money. With my online courses it is much easier to make my studies fit around my schedule, and instead of the contrived University setting I am able to gain experience in the real world (and get paid for it to boot).
The tradeoff is that I no longer attend lectures, and that my "study groups" are held via email, newsgroup, or instant message instead of being set around a pizza somewhere.
Now, I have mostly been talking about business courses up until this point (because that is what I am taking). However, the cutting edge of C.S. work is even more likely to be carried out online instead of offline. We both know that most "interesting" C.S. is happening on various mailing lists, just like it has since the days of Arpanet. It's fun to actually get together, and some work probably does get done that way, but it absolutely dwarfed by the amount of cutting edge stuff that gets done via email.
Think about the number of "good presentations" you have been to that lead you to read a paper, and then compare that with the number of "good papers" that you ran into because the paper was presented to you via a website or a mailing list, and you will realize that unless you are at one of the hacker havens chances are very good that you already get most of your relevant C.S. info via the Internet.
I live in Nampa, ID. If I had to wait for interesting presentors to come my way to learn something I would still be learning to read. However, it is amazing what one can learn (and for free) by simply subscribing to the right mailing list. Want to learn about databases? postgresql-hackers will teach you a ton. Want to learn about operating systems? LKML is not only educational, it's flamefests are entertaining as well.
Think about it and you will realize that I am right. The real ground breaking stuff is not happening in a closet in some University somewhere, it is being done right out in the open on the Internet. Sure, a lot of the cool work is being done by academics, but even academic projects are soliciting help from all around the world. In fact, academic projects that aren't allied with either a commercial or a Free Software project outside of academia are rapidly heading towards irrelevance.
And once again, much of the collaboration in either case is done using the exact same tools that I use in my online classes so let's not overestimate the importance of lectures.
Getting together face to face is fun, and it helps smooth out possible conflicts, but it is hardly necessary for C.S. research, and it certainly isn't necessary for basic undergrad courses. This is especially true if you happen to have the kind of personality that prefers to learn from reading and research.
Dead people don't go to the emergency room, they don't collect unemployment or disability insurance, they don't get Medicaid or Medicare, and they never get any more social security benefits.
A seatbelt might save your life, but in anything but a non trivial crash you probably will still be injured. In such a case it probably saves resources to simply have the victims safely dead.
If someone doesn't want to wear a seatbelt (facing a greater possibility of death) then that is fine with me. Dead people cost me less money.
I would agree that sometimes there is an advantage to being able to discuss the topic at hand over with other folks. However, from my own experience I found that whenever I went to a study group I spent most of my time explaining what I had already learned to people that didn't understand (or didn't read) the assignment.
That being the case, it sometimes is helpful to be able to ask questions, and it certainly helps crystalize concepts in your mind if you have to explain them to someone else. However, I am just as comfortable using email for these types of discussions as I am sitting around a table eating pizza. Now that I am married my primary reason for attending study groups (cute girls) has also gone away.
Personally I like online classes much better than I liked traditional classes.