Indeed. I wish CNN would limit themselves to things that are news. Not things that might be news a year or ten from now. Not worthless surveys that at best waste bandwidth. You know, news. Things that are happening, and which might actually impact someone's life.
The "but it's what they use in the real world" argument is a complete red herring. Let's take a group of Junior High School students. They are 5-10 years away from the workforce. Now then, what OS were you using 5 years ago? I guarantee if wasn't Win98, let alone Win2k or WinXP. What were you using at work 10 years ago? Depending on your profession there might not even have been a computer on your work desk 10 years ago.
This line of reasoning is made more pointed when applied to grade school kids, who are about 15 years away from the workforce. Of course (again, depending on your profession) you might have been using some form of Unix 15 years ago.
These things being true, and the amount of time kids have for actually learning stuff being reduced by stuff that neither educates them or enriches thier lives, I must agree that technology training in the classroom should be concept based, not content based.
As a disclaimer, I beleive that IBM should never have changed thier corporate motto from "THINK."
In conclusion, and getting back to the topic of whether Open Source/Free Software belongs in schools, I certainly think the reduced deployment costs are enticing. This is particularly true in the world of software companies auditing your licenses. Furthermore, Linux has some appeal inasmuch as it introduces Unix-like systems, which have been around quite a while and show no signs of going away anytime soon. Unfortunately there is not yet (to the best of my knowledge) a lot of Linux/Unix educational software. This is obviously one of those "no software because there's no users because there's no software" infinite loops, and the only solution is for somebody to stick his neck out and be the first user and the first developer.
A current list of efnet servers can be found at efnet.org. I realize that sometimes this site is somewhat less than reliable itself, but it is updated regularly to reflect reality.
The problem with that presumed loophole is that this case involves a California court ruling on a California law. Stock market manipulation is against Federal law, and would incur the wrath of the SEC and a Federal court.
Thus, posting "This is only my opinion of course, but XYZ Corp is going to announce BLOWOUT EARNINGS! Buy Now!" and subsequently selling stock in XYZ Corp after it runs up but before they actually announce is still illegal pump-and-dump. Even in California. (Rather remarkably like that medical marijuana initiative they had that made medicinal pot legal except for that whole Federal Law thing!)
Hey! Who stole my Mac and put this Wintel hardware on my desk? Oh well, let me launch Outlook and see if I have any mail.... Wow, a message titled "I Love you"
Interesting. OK, what about those folks in the arts? You write a play or a novel or a symphony or make a sculpture while a grad student. Who can copyright it? Are you strictly speaking allowed to submit such works in competitions (a major way of actually Becoming Employable in the arts)? Can you even really put such works in your portfolio?
I hope I have pointed out some of the problems with the "you work for us and anything you make is ours" philosophy as applied to college students.
I'm prepared to accept that there are valid issues in the protection of privacy, but none that can justify the loss of even one single life.
Okay. So it's okay to sniff everybody's email and hey, why not all thier irc/im/icq/chat as well? As long as it catches one guy who hits return after typing "Oh Gawd, I want to kill my ex-wife!" then it's all worth it. After all, the Good Guys saved the ex-wife's life!
People tend to forget that if things had gone just a little differently in the last few decades of the 18th century, people like Madison, Jefferson, and Washington would have been hung as traitors, murderers, and yes, terrorists.
That being said lets remember that the vast majority of people in the United States are not terrorists. Talk about signal to noise ratio on this thing.
I laughed when I heard about this proposal. I thought it was inane, mostly for reasons that others have discussed. That does not mean someone won't try to pull it off.
Alrighty, I will grant that the 4th Amendment does not say anything about non-governmental searches and seizures. That being said there are a number of hurdles they need to jump, both legal and technological.
A new law could of course circumvent old anti-hack/crack laws, and being Federal it would trump any state laws. However, the RIAA cannot get something made into international law. So legal problem 1 leads to tech problem 1, making sure your target is actually in the US.
That being said I don't think such theoretical law would survive it's first test case. All that has to happen is some judge's mp3 collection vanishes....
Another tech problem is the fact that even Joe Average is seeing the need for firewalls. Granted, most folks are not equiped to launch counter hax0ring, but if enough calls about offensive IPs go to the ISP something might happen.
And how exactly are they going to tell the difference between legit and pirated mp3s? For that matter if someone were to burn thier mp3 collection to a CD, how do they think they will erase that remotely?
Now these are just the obvious things that have occured to me in 10 minutes while only barely awake. I sincerely hope that the voice of reason will be heard. In the meantime I'd like to announce publically to the RIAA that to the best of my knowledge I have *zero* illegal mp3s. I've only bought one CD this year because modern music sucks, not because of file sharing.
If the Pointy-Haired Bosses of the world can't tell that thier "team" consists of two guys doing the work and 5 leeches, what makes you think the pointy-haired college professor can? I mean really!
Alrighty, everybody agrees that being laid off sucks. Moving right along here.
Katz questions the morality of paying turnaround artists and other executives lots of money while laying off the rank and file. I would like to point out that when a company goes out of business for lack of "turning things around" everyone ends up unemployed. How is that morally better?
Katz also gives several "alternatives" to the current system. "How about 3-6 mo. warning that you will be unemployed?" Um, are you out of your mind? Letting the employee have 3-6 months to become disgruntled and wreak havoc internally? "How about letting these techies find other ways to be useful to the company?" What gives techies a better right to feed thier families than the secretaries and janitors? What makes you think there is another place for them? And in what way does this reduce company costs (which is why they are laying off if you will recall)?
I agree with posters who have commented that making a COBRA payment when you are now an ex-wage-earner is a sick joke. This should however clue you in to the real cost of health insurance. I beleive (although this is not the forum to discuss it) that if Joe Average had to pay for his own health insurance, "reform" would have happened already.
A well informed poster mentioned how different American and British unions are. They developed in different times for different reasons (As Sesame Street says, "not weird, just different). Furthermore, since he asserts that Brittain has had unions for almost 400 years, it should not be a surprise if thier system has had kinks worked out of it.
BTW, I had to ask the bank *twice* for a plain-jane no frills no debit no visa logo ATM card. They assumed that I was an idiot the first time (evidentally) and that *naturally* I would want the convenience of something with virtually no fraud protection that would encourage me to accidentally overdraw my account.
Somebody somewhere is making a nice chunk of money off this. It sure isn't me.
Ya know, I am seriously considering taking the "Acquit Skylarvov" sign out of my vehicle and replacing it with one that says "I AM NOT A TERRORIST."
Maybe you folks have forgotten that you are not terrorists. In all likelihood nobody you know is a terrorist. However, any antiterrorism law, any weak encryption law, any national ID card, any "war on terrorism" does effect you.
Does any rational person honestly think that another peice of plastic in your wallet will prevent hijackings? Does any rational person think that terrorists send email between one another to organize bombings? Do you really think Hamas uses out-of-the-box encryption techniques? Do you honestly think the airport security zero tolerance of anything remotely pointy is going to be any more sucessful than the zero tolerance policies in our schools?
Good lord people, some of you are old enough to remember when the IBM corporate motto was "THINK."
So in all the shuffle everybody seems to have forgotten Dmitry. How are he and his case doing?
Earlier this week I read http://www.misterrogers.org/elementary_education/p rview.asp?prid=69 and was really hit by this statement: "It's very tempting to get drawn into watching news around the clock, but adults must resist that temptation because it can lead to a feeling of hopelessness and despair" Time to turn off the news. It's the weekend. Do something recreational and be ready to actually get some work done Monday.
Okay, now that I've taken a few minutes to read the article I feel I can reply. Let me start by saying that if you don't like the idea that Visionics software is used there, please take your money elsewhere. Vote with your dollars. Barnes and Noble or Amazon.com would love to have your money.
Now then, I think that somebody needs to ask what they intend to do when the computer beeps and announces that a "known shoplifter" is on site. Does this mean that the security goon and/or camera will be alerted to watch this person? Or will someone tell the person that they and thier money are not welcome? Or will they just assume that a crime will surely happen and push the Red Button? I did not see this question answered in the article and I find this a serious omission.
Anyone who truly thinks there is such a thing as complete privacy online should do a google search for his/her own name. Once properly horrified, do a google search for an ex-significant other.
Perhaps sites like this go over the top, perhaps society should rethink what records are "public," but the genie is out of the bottle.
Sounds to me like some professor got conned into buying his kid a PDA on the pretext of how this would help his child in school. PDAs are however banned at the local high school. Professor/daddy considers this an insult to his intelligence and goes about finding/creating legitimate uses for the PDA in class.
As someone who went to school during the transition between calculators being banned and calculators being required, this is interesting. If nothing else at least making the "wrong" OS choice for my child on a PDA is cheaper than on a notebook computer!
I happened to be cleaning out a file cabinet the other day when I stumbled across a printout of an editorial entitled "Can Anyone Save Packard-Bell," which then went on to say roughly, "Okay, Packard Bell and Apple have roughly equal market share, how come you only consider one of these companies doomed?" Well, um, in those days nobody really would have thought Packard Bell was doomed. I assume most of you are old enough to remember when a Packard Bell sub $1000 computer was revolutionary (if crappy).
If you have never read Gil Amelio's book you might want to go to your local library. It of course is necessarily biased, but it illustrates the foundation he built for the company. Of course The Steve came in as the conquering hero. He could not have done it if Gil had not gotten the finances in order. Gil also mentions that one of his biggest problems was not "Steving" certain executives early on. Hmmm, something to learn from.
Now if I may address certain perennial complaints of non-Mac users. Complaint: "Nutty color schemes are not what it takes to sell computers." Fact: If the appearance of a computer does not matter, then explain why you can walk into a furniture store and buy a
"Computer Armoire?" If appearance doesn't matter then how come so many iMacs have sold over the last few years? Complaint: "Only one mouse button!!" How many of you use the mouse that came with your machine? Really! I don't use the single button mouse, I bought a nice multi-button scrollwheel mouse. But if you have ever tried to teach a small child to use a mouse, you know that the single button variety has it's uses.
I think Carl Sagan put it most succinctly. Without using any math that would confuse the average American. Either the fact that we only know of a dozen planets or so and only one contains life and only a fraction of that life is sentient would tend to indicate that life (and particularly intelligent life) is exceedingly rare and maybe cannot be found elsewhere. Or the universe is such a mind bogglingly big place that life (and particularly intelligent life) might be out there in abundance without us being any the wiser.
Sagan also pointed out that if all these alien abduction stories were true then it was amazing that the neighbors hadn't noticed. It is not known whether he was smoked up when he came to these conclusions.
Bottom line is that until we get a galactic greeting card it all may as well be science fiction.
Just because sales went up does not mean that sales would not have gone up *more* without this "interference." Of course not a popular thing to say here.
Slashdot Mirror
Indeed. I wish CNN would limit themselves to things that are news. Not things that might be news a year or ten from now. Not worthless surveys that at best waste bandwidth. You know, news. Things that are happening, and which might actually impact someone's life.
Crackers are bad enough. Password stealing crackers who put INLINE SOUND on thier webpages should be shot.
This line of reasoning is made more pointed when applied to grade school kids, who are about 15 years away from the workforce. Of course (again, depending on your profession) you might have been using some form of Unix 15 years ago.
These things being true, and the amount of time kids have for actually learning stuff being reduced by stuff that neither educates them or enriches thier lives, I must agree that technology training in the classroom should be concept based, not content based.
As a disclaimer, I beleive that IBM should never have changed thier corporate motto from "THINK."
In conclusion, and getting back to the topic of whether Open Source/Free Software belongs in schools, I certainly think the reduced deployment costs are enticing. This is particularly true in the world of software companies auditing your licenses. Furthermore, Linux has some appeal inasmuch as it introduces Unix-like systems, which have been around quite a while and show no signs of going away anytime soon. Unfortunately there is not yet (to the best of my knowledge) a lot of Linux/Unix educational software. This is obviously one of those "no software because there's no users because there's no software" infinite loops, and the only solution is for somebody to stick his neck out and be the first user and the first developer.
A current list of efnet servers can be found at efnet.org. I realize that sometimes this site is somewhat less than reliable itself, but it is updated regularly to reflect reality.
Thus, posting "This is only my opinion of course, but XYZ Corp is going to announce BLOWOUT EARNINGS! Buy Now!" and subsequently selling stock in XYZ Corp after it runs up but before they actually announce is still illegal pump-and-dump. Even in California. (Rather remarkably like that medical marijuana initiative they had that made medicinal pot legal except for that whole Federal Law thing!)
Hey! Who stole my Mac and put this Wintel hardware on my desk? Oh well, let me launch Outlook and see if I have any mail.... Wow, a message titled "I Love you"
And they'd have gotten away with it too, if it hadn't been for those meddling kids! ;-)
I hope I have pointed out some of the problems with the "you work for us and anything you make is ours" philosophy as applied to college students.
Okay. So it's okay to sniff everybody's email and hey, why not all thier irc/im/icq/chat as well? As long as it catches one guy who hits return after typing "Oh Gawd, I want to kill my ex-wife!" then it's all worth it. After all, the Good Guys saved the ex-wife's life!
People tend to forget that if things had gone just a little differently in the last few decades of the 18th century, people like Madison, Jefferson, and Washington would have been hung as traitors, murderers, and yes, terrorists.
That being said lets remember that the vast majority of people in the United States are not terrorists. Talk about signal to noise ratio on this thing.
I laughed when I heard about this proposal. I thought it was inane, mostly for reasons that others have discussed. That does not mean someone won't try to pull it off.
A new law could of course circumvent old anti-hack/crack laws, and being Federal it would trump any state laws. However, the RIAA cannot get something made into international law. So legal problem 1 leads to tech problem 1, making sure your target is actually in the US.
That being said I don't think such theoretical law would survive it's first test case. All that has to happen is some judge's mp3 collection vanishes....
Another tech problem is the fact that even Joe Average is seeing the need for firewalls. Granted, most folks are not equiped to launch counter hax0ring, but if enough calls about offensive IPs go to the ISP something might happen.
And how exactly are they going to tell the difference between legit and pirated mp3s? For that matter if someone were to burn thier mp3 collection to a CD, how do they think they will erase that remotely?
Now these are just the obvious things that have occured to me in 10 minutes while only barely awake. I sincerely hope that the voice of reason will be heard. In the meantime I'd like to announce publically to the RIAA that to the best of my knowledge I have *zero* illegal mp3s. I've only bought one CD this year because modern music sucks, not because of file sharing.
If the Pointy-Haired Bosses of the world can't tell that thier "team" consists of two guys doing the work and 5 leeches, what makes you think the pointy-haired college professor can? I mean really!
Yeah! All we need to do is input pictures of known suicide bombers and... um, oh yeah. Never mind! =)
Katz questions the morality of paying turnaround artists and other executives lots of money while laying off the rank and file. I would like to point out that when a company goes out of business for lack of "turning things around" everyone ends up unemployed. How is that morally better?
Katz also gives several "alternatives" to the current system. "How about 3-6 mo. warning that you will be unemployed?" Um, are you out of your mind? Letting the employee have 3-6 months to become disgruntled and wreak havoc internally? "How about letting these techies find other ways to be useful to the company?" What gives techies a better right to feed thier families than the secretaries and janitors? What makes you think there is another place for them? And in what way does this reduce company costs (which is why they are laying off if you will recall)?
I agree with posters who have commented that making a COBRA payment when you are now an ex-wage-earner is a sick joke. This should however clue you in to the real cost of health insurance. I beleive (although this is not the forum to discuss it) that if Joe Average had to pay for his own health insurance, "reform" would have happened already.
A well informed poster mentioned how different American and British unions are. They developed in different times for different reasons (As Sesame Street says, "not weird, just different). Furthermore, since he asserts that Brittain has had unions for almost 400 years, it should not be a surprise if thier system has had kinks worked out of it.
BTW, I had to ask the bank *twice* for a plain-jane no frills no debit no visa logo ATM card. They assumed that I was an idiot the first time (evidentally) and that *naturally* I would want the convenience of something with virtually no fraud protection that would encourage me to accidentally overdraw my account.
Somebody somewhere is making a nice chunk of money off this. It sure isn't me.
Maybe you folks have forgotten that you are not terrorists. In all likelihood nobody you know is a terrorist. However, any antiterrorism law, any weak encryption law, any national ID card, any "war on terrorism" does effect you.
Does any rational person honestly think that another peice of plastic in your wallet will prevent hijackings? Does any rational person think that terrorists send email between one another to organize bombings? Do you really think Hamas uses out-of-the-box encryption techniques? Do you honestly think the airport security zero tolerance of anything remotely pointy is going to be any more sucessful than the zero tolerance policies in our schools?
Good lord people, some of you are old enough to remember when the IBM corporate motto was "THINK."
So in all the shuffle everybody seems to have forgotten Dmitry. How are he and his case doing?
Earlier this week I read http://www.misterrogers.org/elementary_education/p rview.asp?prid=69 and was really hit by this statement: "It's very tempting to get drawn into watching news around the clock, but adults must resist that temptation because it can lead to a feeling of hopelessness and despair" Time to turn off the news. It's the weekend. Do something recreational and be ready to actually get some work done Monday.
So spend the $10/mo on a Usenet newsfeed! Sheesh this is not hard, people!
Now then, I think that somebody needs to ask what they intend to do when the computer beeps and announces that a "known shoplifter" is on site. Does this mean that the security goon and/or camera will be alerted to watch this person? Or will someone tell the person that they and thier money are not welcome? Or will they just assume that a crime will surely happen and push the Red Button? I did not see this question answered in the article and I find this a serious omission.
Perhaps sites like this go over the top, perhaps society should rethink what records are "public," but the genie is out of the bottle.
As someone who went to school during the transition between calculators being banned and calculators being required, this is interesting. If nothing else at least making the "wrong" OS choice for my child on a PDA is cheaper than on a notebook computer!
I happened to be cleaning out a file cabinet the other day when I stumbled across a printout of an editorial entitled "Can Anyone Save Packard-Bell," which then went on to say roughly, "Okay, Packard Bell and Apple have roughly equal market share, how come you only consider one of these companies doomed?" Well, um, in those days nobody really would have thought Packard Bell was doomed. I assume most of you are old enough to remember when a Packard Bell sub $1000 computer was revolutionary (if crappy).
If you have never read Gil Amelio's book you might want to go to your local library. It of course is necessarily biased, but it illustrates the foundation he built for the company. Of course The Steve came in as the conquering hero. He could not have done it if Gil had not gotten the finances in order. Gil also mentions that one of his biggest problems was not "Steving" certain executives early on. Hmmm, something to learn from.
Now if I may address certain perennial complaints of non-Mac users. Complaint: "Nutty color schemes are not what it takes to sell computers." Fact: If the appearance of a computer does not matter, then explain why you can walk into a furniture store and buy a "Computer Armoire?" If appearance doesn't matter then how come so many iMacs have sold over the last few years? Complaint: "Only one mouse button!!" How many of you use the mouse that came with your machine? Really! I don't use the single button mouse, I bought a nice multi-button scrollwheel mouse. But if you have ever tried to teach a small child to use a mouse, you know that the single button variety has it's uses.
Okay! Via Voice it is!
Sagan also pointed out that if all these alien abduction stories were true then it was amazing that the neighbors hadn't noticed. It is not known whether he was smoked up when he came to these conclusions.
Bottom line is that until we get a galactic greeting card it all may as well be science fiction.
Woohoo! did I get first post??