Rich kids with parents that care about their future attend schools that stay open longer. The kids care, and the parents care, so they outperform their inner-city peers.
And from that, your correlation was school year length and quality of education. I'd make the correlation between parents who can buy children everything that could accelerate their learning, and many don't spend hours a week worrying about money, so they can spend time focusing on their kids education. Wealthy people are also often more educated or have better instincts or decision making capabilities than poor people. It isn't just blind luck most of the time...
My kid has had everything educational that money can buy, and I'm retired so I spend plenty of time with him. On his summer vacation we made a boat and I taught him how to fish. He got to spend more time focusing on his martial arts and moved up two belts. He also got to spend time playing with his friends when we really don't have that much time during the school year. We built two new computers and a server, got a minecraft server going and spent half the summer installing minecraft mods, changing up bits of stuff and testing it all out.
He's in the first grade and reads at a 6th grade level. He just scored the highest in the school district on a vocabulary test, and our schools are among the best in the state. So I think that having stuff like computers, tablets and video games that require reading, along with the rounding experiences of being away from school for a while end up enriching him a lot more than hammering the same middle ground materials at them for a longer period of time. Our school just extended their school year by 10 days. I doubt its going to result in anything measurable unless you fudge the numbers to get the results you want.
In my experience, giving kids opportunities to learn in ways they can best make use of is more important than "turn the knob up a little more" approaches. There are a million smart things we could do with our kids to improve their education. "The same, only moreso" isn't one of them.
Funny little microcosmic story, since I work at the school almost daily. We have a computer lab...maybe 35 machines, core 2 duo era which surprised me...I expected antiques. First problem is that everything they do on them requires sound, and obviously 35 kids with speakers going would be mayhem. So instead they bought cheap headphones and it took the kids 45 minutes to destroy them in one way or the other. My first job at computer lab is being handed a giant wad of 30 headphones, all tangled together, half of them with broken off usb connectors. Along the line various parents bought more cheap headphones, all of which met with the same end. Of course, a flat short cabled mono earbud would have done the trick, but apparently in the entire state of California, educators haven't figured out that they're spending a gazillion dollars on computers and curriculum, but the kids cant use it because a $5 earbud isn't available.
Oh, and its almost a month into the school year, and all the kids are still under their old teacher from last year, if they were in the school last year. So even if they do get logged in with a working set of headphones, they cant work on current school year materials because they can't log in to their current grade level. So far nobody knows who is supposed to fix that or who did it previously, but my bet is on one of the many people we laid off because we'd rather spend money on political pork than schools.
Yet all the teachers march their kids in here twice a week for an hour of attempting to log in (apparently there are too many machines on some wimpy server, as half the logins fail the first time, then half the half, then finally we get everyone on), then they log into last years page and play educational games for the 9 remaining minutes, but of course from the prior grade.
We also got donated five ipads for each classroom, an enormous expenditure.
If I speed, I can shave about an hour off a 250 mile trip I do a fair bit. 4 hours instead of 5? I'll take it.
How much effort does it take to do this sort of avoidance of the main point? Or were you just speed reading?
Sure, driving long haul on the highway, speeding makes sense.
But my point was that most speeding is done in mixed traffic, on surface roads, and to no benefit other than to increase driving risk. The retard weaving through traffic cutting people off, tailgating and other general stupid driving stuff gains nothing, while creating a lot of risk for themselves and the drivers around them. The google car would eliminate that childish shenanigans, and people would still get where they're going on time.
In your example, you'd have to wind up in to the 80+mph range to save an hour. I'm pretty much doubting you or anyone else can drive safely for 4 hours at 80+. At a minimum, you won't arrive rested and relaxed, and will probably need an hour to settle down after running the Indy 500.
But the google car could go 100mph with little increased danger, no increased stress, and no loss of attention over time. Then you'd get there in 3 hours.
"I'm sorry, but you're not a very experienced systems programmer if you think any massive, monolithic operating system written by 10,000+ people over decades long periods is less susceptible to viruses than any other."
No. You are right. Every OS has exactly the same susceptibility to viruses. There is absolutely no point in having a security model. In the end none of it matters, because Cute Fuzzy Bunny tapped his heals together three times in his ruby slippers and made it so.
Not very bright and petulant is no way to go through life son. I worked on the team that developed vax/vms, and worked for Jim Allchin and David Cutler before they went to microsoft to create the current instances of windows. Take the advice of a more experienced person...
To say that any large code piece is more or less susceptible to viruses is in and of itself foolish. One would have to have the imagination, tools and forethought of every person that might choose to hack the product to prevent it from being hacked, and in the process of making an operating system bulletproof, it'd also become unusable due to the onerous security. Not to mention there are security holes in every driver, app and plug in, and since most computers have software from a dozen or more suppliers...to create any sort of bulletproof or even nearly so system would be ridiculously implausible. About all you can do is hit 90%-95% and hope the user is smart enough to not do too many stupid things.
I gave you several informative links, but as is usually the case with apple stuff, the buyers respond like its a religion or staunch political perspective. Facts aren't important, because we've got our minds made up. Yet the facts remain that at almost any given time in the last 5 years, OS X has had more unpatched security holes in it than windows, and usually they're considered higher severity
But most hackers don't bother, because they can nail 50 windows idiots by getting them to click on something while they might only have a shot at one mac user, simply because there aren't that many. It'd be like developing a hack for a 1920's steam engine. You could do it, probably easily...but whats the point?
Could be because research shows that different parts of the brain are activated when reading from an electronic device and reading from paper. Research also shows that retention is less when reading from an electronic device. Research shows that reading actual books, making notes in them, taking written notes in class and listening to lectures results in the most transfer of knowledge and the ability to recall it. Why? Because those processes engage more than one part of the brain, something tablets, don't. Electronic Devices are excellent sources for reference materials, but they don't actually facilitate learning.
Tablets do make sense in that it is easier to carry a single tablet instead of a stack of text books, but then, at least when I was in college, the text books usually stayed in the dorm and were used for out of class assignments. We carried notebooks (the paper kind) with us to class.
Most schools that have gone to electronic devices such as tablets have done so, not because it increases learning, but because it saves them money.
I think that like most research, this was made up to suit an opinion. Most educators I've come across cant stop beating the paper book drum, so its no surprise that they'd commission a study to prove their opinion. You know, just like margarine was better than butter, cigarettes were good for us, eggs were bad for us and we should all stop eating meat because it'll kill us? Yeah, all that stuff that turned out to be wrong.
My kid is 7 and has read maybe 4 paper books in his life. Isn't interested. Has used a computer, tablet and ipod since he was two. In the first grade he read at a 6.5 grade level. He just did a master vocabulary test and scored the highest of anyone in the entire school district, including the high school students.
Oh yeah, and our district is one of the highest performing in California.
So in my small sample size, how you put words in front of a kid makes no difference. Whats important is doing it in a way that interests him. Having him pick his own birthday/christmas gifts out on amazon, including having him read and compare reviews, seller ratings and prices was a good exercise. So was showing him how to look up easter eggs and cheat codes for his video games. Oh yeah, the games are good too...I made sure to select quite a few that require reading to be successful. Spent a few years helping him pronounce words and explaining what they meant, but at this point he can read pretty much anything the average adult can.
I'd feel worse about my small sample size, but among my sons friends many aren't interested in books either, but have no problems with reading.
Nobody is going to upgrade to Linux unless Windows enrages them enough, or someone shows them the advantages (which still may not be enough to make them switch).
Exactly what I always say. "Where is the business driver for linux". Right now other than "Its free and if you live in a browser or libre office, you probably won't know the difference", and thats not much of a business driver.
The rest of it is "I hate microsoft/apple" and/or "I like complicated technology things developed by technical people for technical people, and/or I like having something that mystifies other people".
So you're suggesting that if I buy a PC laptop i need a seperate bag for the mouse and keyboard to carry with me. Kinda makes an 11-13" machine sort of pointless, no?
I'm suggesting you buy the pc laptop that has the mouse and keyboard you love already built in. There are 75,000 to choose from. A little more selection option than you get with apple.
Quite simply you could buy about the most expensive reasonable PC laptop with the most awesome keyboard and mouse, and it'd still be cheaper than a comparatively pedestrian apple laptop.
As a long time and current systems programmer I would never claim any OS is virus proof. I never did make such a claim. The fact remains that Linux and OS X are far less susceptible to viruses than Windows.
I'm sorry, but you're not a very experienced systems programmer if you think any massive, monolithic operating system written by 10,000+ people over decades long periods is less susceptible to viruses than any other. If anything, after years of being lanced by virus writers, I suspect Windows has fewer holes and flaws than OS X. Even apple has the PR machine in reverse, after riding that misconception for years.
This has been an issue of opportunity and bang for the buck virus writing. Security companies find huge gaping holes in OSX all the time, and eventually Apple fills them. If there were no such holes, why the fixes? Yeah, thats right...people don't fix what wasn't broken.
In the meanwhile, I've gotten exactly zero viruses of any kind on any machine in my household. We use free virus protection, don't surf russian porn sites, and don't click on any dialogue boxes that say "Kan I install my foobar mach 7 browser helper now?". I do see some malware occasionally on some extended family machines, but they were installing random free software, and frankly you can see some of the same problems doing that with a mac...
But the brain has to have a justification for spending too much money on something, so when the air comes out of the virus thing, I'm sure someone will find some obscure and likely incorrect reason to buy these things.
If you use half a dozen programmes at once, the way the OS handles the following things will matter to you- finding the application, launching the application, switching between the applications, displaying content from multiple applications on screen at once.
Ironically, it is precisely that cluster of functions that Win8 has decided to screw with. Up until now, MS (excluding Bob) has kept that relatively sacred.
I guess the good news is that all of this stuff works fine in win7, and if you dont like it you can get 50,000,000,000 free software snippets to do all of this however you wish? Linux, windows, os x....all about the same at this point, once installed, tweaked and running.
There is no magic faery dust. Its an operating system and it does exactly the same things in approximately the same ways with the same results as any other mature full featured OS.
I guess the game people are trying it, although having instituted day one dlc I no longer buy new games, since the $8-10 dlc reduces the games resale value by the same amount. I don't buy used games anymore either, because they're still priced at the same point they used to be, and I have to buy $10 worth of dlc to get the full game.
Similarly, I suspect that if the textbook companies play too many games, our smart college kids will figure out how to circumvent them.
Why every kid in america isnt carrying some inexpensive tabet full of all of their textbooks, school work and tests is a mystery to me. If we wanted to stimulate the economy, when HP was crapping out of the tablet business why didn't someone ask them to donate their touchpads (and make more!) along with developing educational systems and curriculum that would be usable tools nationwide, and make a permanent investment in our future, along with dropping education costs through the floor? Give HP a nice fat tax cut for their troubles.
What a wasted opportunity. We kept people busy doing busywork instead, most of which has little to no future value.
Although the trackpad is probably interacted with an awful lot and for most people it is worth a couple hundred or more to have a user input system they like.
And anyone with a windows machine can select from thousands of keyboards, mice, trackpads and trackballs that suit them. Pretty much all for under $100. Where did the other $400 go?
Oh, thats right. They went to setting record level profits built on the backs of 3rd world slave labor, and nothing was passed along to charity or any other beneficial entity.
Apple got rich because a lot of deep pocketed people wanted to be as cool as Steve Jobs. I suppose the fact that Steve had a live in prostitute for many years because he had trouble relating to women is the key swing factor apple buyers can relate to.
Funny thiing is that I may spend most of my time in an application (or two or three) but when the OS is lacking a decent file manager, a decent clipboard, a robust yet simple recovery system, and nags me every day for updates that require reboot, I DO care about the OS. Productivity goes way down no matter how good the application is if the environment I am working in is poor.
Hmm, windows has an excellent file manager and 57,000,000 free ones if you don't like that one. It also has a decent clipboard and 100,000,000,000 free ones if you don't like that one. Recovery for many things seems plenty fine to me, can you be more specific? Oh, and we only get updates once a week, they install in the middle of the night, and reboots are maybe once a month and also happen after the installs complete while you're asleep.
I also think that 1% of people spend more than 15 minutes a day with a file manager and/or the clipboard.
Aren't we really grasping at the thinnest straws at this point?
Yes and you can put a high end motor in a compact car (rice rocket) - doesn't make it a high end car. The fit and finish, the wholistic integration of the components - that is what makes a product high quality, not the components themselves.
Never taken one apart then? They're made by one of the same far east manufacturers as dells, lenovo's and so forth, largely from the exact same parts.
A few years ago I took an old acer core 2 duo laptop and slapped osx on it without any shenanigans. Exactly the same hardware as a macboo pro from its era, although the screen panel on the acer was better than the one you'd have gotten in the macbook, and the keyboard and touchpad felt quite a bit better to me than most macbooks.
A few months ago I built a desktop with the exact same parts except the case, screen, keyboard and mouse as the highest end non xeon mac pro you can buy. Cost me $600 and again OS X slid right in because the hardware is the exact same as the apple product. The same. The same pieces with the same model numbers and from the same companies.
But you guys go on and continue contorting yourselves to find the reason why you spent twice as much. There isnt one.
"Whats funny is that 99% of people spend 99% of their time in an application..."
Actually, what's funny is that 99% of all viruses spend their time in Windows, but you still have the audacity to say that it is six of one and one half of the other. That takes a special combination of balls and stupidity, my friend.
Yes, this has been true in the past, but perhaps you've noticed plenty of reports on virus issues on macs? Its because there simply weren't enough of them for virus writers to bother with.
As a former operating system programmer, listening to someone say they think any machine is virus proof or worth spending extra for because it can't get a virus demonstrates something much lower down on the ladder than balls and stupidity.
Apple also has no "non over-priced" products. I'm so bored of the what OS is better. It's a pile of files. The software you need to use is the real reason you use a computer, not because you want to use an OS. All marketing "make a demographic" back when software was in its infancy bullshit. I've got windows7 and do very little windowing.
Whats funny is that 99% of people spend 99% of their time in an application, not sitting in the operating system. Although I'm fully prepared to argue that I've used every major operating system produced in the last 20 years...and they're all pretty much the freaking same once you spend 3 days on it and get used to it.
So sitting in safari on a mac vs chrome on windows. Office apps on a mac vs office apps on windows. Any difference at all? Really? I guess at that point you get reduced to claiming that only an apple trackpad suits you. It doesn't really, but its a fairly pathetic thing to cling to as a last ditch effort to justify the higher cost.
OS X comes with Apple's quality hardware. Not everyone has the money to buy them. Sad, for them.
Some have the sense to build a hackintosh with the exact same parts for $500 instead of paying $1500. Others take apart the apple box to find that the hardware is fairly pedestrian and common. Then the disillusionment starts to set in...
Heh, every place has its stories. Where I live and work, Yellowstone National Park, the usual approach is to drive carefree until one sees an elk or bison, then full stop on the road, hop out, and start shooting pictures. If you're lucky, they'll make an attempt to edge off the road a little and close the doors after they get out.
Sounds like you should release a few bengal tigers into the park. Not only will that solve the stupid driver problem, you'll have some nice cars to sell, once you touch up the fingernail scratches on the doors and windows.
When I wrote "stupid or unlucky" instead of just "stupid", I meant it. I know a lot of traffic citations are just a matter of being unlucky, but I still think the sample is highly biased towards bad drivers.
So you think most drivers are well aware of the rules of the road and routinely follow them?
Cuz if you feel that way, let me know which planet you reside on. I want to move there. People who live near me drive like assholes who never read the driving manual, or think it just says "You're the only person on earth. Act accordingly".
"We'd like everyone to give us $50. After that, we're pretty likely to spend all the money just before we crash and burn. If we should somehow survive, we'll be mowed down by facebook and twitter, and end up in a garbage can with google+.
But thanks for all the money! We'll have some good fun spending it!"
Your theory isn't holding up in the face of the data. Googles Cars have logged hundreds of thousands of miles and have one accident caused by human error.
Slow vehicle driving significantly black the prevailing speed cause accidents for other vehicles, while seldom getting hit themselves. They cause chain reaction fender benders two or three cars back, which they are seldom even aware of, and drive away, never to show up in accident statistics.
At least that's the theory put forth by those who perpetually drive over the speed limit.
That would seem to indicate that other drivers aren't following at a safe speed and/or distance. Which is a good reason to get people out from behind the wheel.
With reports of Google's self-driving car crashing left and right how could anyone want to be in one of these vehicles? They just aren't safe. When something happens when you're driving then it's at least your fault and you could do something about it, but not in self-driving cars.
In both of the cases you cited, a human was driving. The only accident the google cars have been in are ones where a human driven car smashed into the google car while it was performing legally and properly.
Of course, both stories tried to cast question on whether the car was human piloted or auto piloted, because who would want to read a story about a car driven by an idiot crashing into a driverless car?
Fail. Linux does "just work" and it supports every perepheral and USB device I've plugged into it.
I spent years wondering why linux people say they can do an install and everything works out of the box. It finally came to me that they're like american car buyers talking with japanese car buyers. I've owned quite a few of both, and every japanese car I ever owned went 7-8+ years without needing anything other than fluid changes, filters and tires. The american cars had a raft of small things fall off or stop working, and occasionally major issues. Yet I hear people who own american cars say "My buick never needed anything", and we'd continue the conversation until the owner revealed that they'd made 10 warranty visits for the same sorts of small things that annoyed me about american cars. The problem was they considered that 'normal', while my idea of 'normal' was zero warranty trips to the dealer.
So since I've installed linux a half dozen times in the last couple of years and NEVER had a fully running system when I was done with the ubuntu disk, I'm guessing you're extremely lucky or that you do a half dozen to a dozen things after install to make the machine work, without realizing that this is not 'normal' or 'just works'.
These were all fairly commodity platforms. In several installs, the intel integrated graphics driver was not included in the distribution, because it failed some kind of open source smell test. The audio didn't work on many systems until I installed a newer version of some code and edited a text file. My attempts with a pair of atom/ion boxes required hours to collect all the relevant piece parts and many file edits to work, and even though dozens of people made it work, getting them to share their efforts was like pulling teeth. "Hey, you should read 500 pages of stuff and work on it for 5 hours and learn it! Then you'll know!" Only thing is, I dont give a %$@#$ about knowing a lot about linux, I just wanted it to work without a lot of hassle.
Sooo...congratulations on your good luck and/or invisible linux post install work. It really DOESN'T "just work". Hell, apple crap doesnt just work either. My wife got an ipad and wanted to post a picture she took on facebook, but there was no option to do that from the camera app until she installed some extra software and tweaked a configuration. Really? Most people taking photos don't want to post them on facebook from the camera app? "Why, just go into the photo gallery and the option is right there...anyone would know that". Well, anyone who owned an ipad before and already came across this situation, found it not working in an intuitive manner, and figured out how to fix it.
As for the rest, tl;dr. Linux hasn't been adopted because its too hard to install and brings zero real benefits to most users and support people. Its a solution looking for a problem.
First off, OS X did absolutely nothing to linux. The market segments have about a.5% overlap. Fat walleted people spending extra on hardware because its cool doesn't overlap with nerdy people who like editing 15 text files and scrounging drivers and apps from 50 sources to get an OS installed.
I agree with all the points in the article, but have to say they're knee jerk reactions to the major problem: linux on the desktop has no business driver. Its not cheaper, its not significantly better, almost nobody knows how to use or support it compared to the brazillions of people with windows familiarity, and there is no killer app or capability that would motivate people to change to it. Also, almost nobody actually gives a %$#@ about open source. All it is is a hole in the ground where nerds argue over what should and shouldn't be done, most of it with zero business drivers.
People bought the apple ii for visicalc. People abandoned cp/m and went to ms-dos because IBM got behind it, standardized a hardware and operating system platform, and provided service and support for it. People went with windows instead of the technically superior OS/2 because IBM stepped on their dick with it about 47 times until windows had enough inertia that technically superior no longer mattered. OS X failed to take over in corporations because it (like linux) lacks a lot of usable security and enterprise management tools that actually work and can be used by the average IT guy and customer.
Windows may suck in a lot of ways, but I can stick a windows 7 disk into about 90% of the computers made in the last 8 years and have a fully running, working system when I'm done. Every time I install linux, I have to scrounge drivers, load optional software made optional because nobody would agree on making it standard, and edit text files. Then I have an operating system I got for free (instead of $40), which won't run many of the apps I use, isnt familiar to most people, and when it breaks I need help to fix. Oh yeah, anyone tried asking for help on any linux forum of any kind? Whole lotta fun getting told off by the script kiddies.
THATS the problem, not 50 little technical reasons. There simply isn't any clear and beneficial reason for any business (or any individual for that matter) to install it vs windows, unless you have a piece of iron with no OS and can't afford $40.
How fast and how far do you drive? 20MPH over the speed limit in a lot of cases will save you more time than 90 seconds per trip.
I read a study a while back that said that chronic speeders trying to save time rarely save more than a few minutes on their trip, since most time is spent sitting at red lights or in traffic. I guess if you're driving 300-500 miles on the highway, you could knock some time off but most people don't drive that far on a routine basis. Even in that scenario, sitting by the side of the road getting a ticket for 15 minutes that costs you 10 hours of work to pay for is a pretty shitty substitute for ten minutes. I guess if someone were dying at your destination and it'd be the last ten minutes they'd spend with them, or if you get to nail the babysitter if you get home early...then theres some compensation.
My bet is for 99% of excessive speeders who think they're saving time end up dawdling around in the driveway or garage for a while, then read their junk mail, then watch tv. Not really a set of exercises greatly enhanced by all that time savings.
Actually it means 3/4 of the people who were either stupid enough or unlucky enough to get caught by a cop don't know the basic rules of driving. If your sample is people in (remedial) "driving school" for having lots of tickets, you have a huge selection bias towards bad drivers.
I considered that until I realized that I had been stopped for being halfway through a light when it turned red. Which is perfectly legal, but I'm guessing the cop needed some work on his quota.
So its a little less a situation of being the one stupid enough, just the one trailing the pack by too far a margin. Any which way, the relative randomness of traffic violations seems to offset the plausibility of this being a group of people different from any other group of 50-60 you picked at random.
My wife performs about 5 moving violations per minute, and since I see people every 3 minutes tailgating, changing lanes in the middle of intersections, changing lanes without signaling, turning in one lane and changing 2-4 lanes mid turn, etc, etc, etc...that I think ignorance of the rules of the road and attention to driving are fairly endemic.
Reminds me of when Massachusetts changed the "who has right of way in a rotary" from its original "driver in the rotary has right of way" to the driver entering the rotary, which immediately caused a spate of accidents, so they changed it back. After that, nobody knew who had right of way, so it just turned into bumper cars.
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Rich kids with parents that care about their future attend schools that stay open longer. The kids care, and the parents care, so they outperform their inner-city peers.
And from that, your correlation was school year length and quality of education. I'd make the correlation between parents who can buy children everything that could accelerate their learning, and many don't spend hours a week worrying about money, so they can spend time focusing on their kids education. Wealthy people are also often more educated or have better instincts or decision making capabilities than poor people. It isn't just blind luck most of the time...
My kid has had everything educational that money can buy, and I'm retired so I spend plenty of time with him. On his summer vacation we made a boat and I taught him how to fish. He got to spend more time focusing on his martial arts and moved up two belts. He also got to spend time playing with his friends when we really don't have that much time during the school year. We built two new computers and a server, got a minecraft server going and spent half the summer installing minecraft mods, changing up bits of stuff and testing it all out.
He's in the first grade and reads at a 6th grade level. He just scored the highest in the school district on a vocabulary test, and our schools are among the best in the state. So I think that having stuff like computers, tablets and video games that require reading, along with the rounding experiences of being away from school for a while end up enriching him a lot more than hammering the same middle ground materials at them for a longer period of time. Our school just extended their school year by 10 days. I doubt its going to result in anything measurable unless you fudge the numbers to get the results you want.
In my experience, giving kids opportunities to learn in ways they can best make use of is more important than "turn the knob up a little more" approaches. There are a million smart things we could do with our kids to improve their education. "The same, only moreso" isn't one of them.
Funny little microcosmic story, since I work at the school almost daily. We have a computer lab...maybe 35 machines, core 2 duo era which surprised me...I expected antiques. First problem is that everything they do on them requires sound, and obviously 35 kids with speakers going would be mayhem. So instead they bought cheap headphones and it took the kids 45 minutes to destroy them in one way or the other. My first job at computer lab is being handed a giant wad of 30 headphones, all tangled together, half of them with broken off usb connectors. Along the line various parents bought more cheap headphones, all of which met with the same end. Of course, a flat short cabled mono earbud would have done the trick, but apparently in the entire state of California, educators haven't figured out that they're spending a gazillion dollars on computers and curriculum, but the kids cant use it because a $5 earbud isn't available.
Oh, and its almost a month into the school year, and all the kids are still under their old teacher from last year, if they were in the school last year. So even if they do get logged in with a working set of headphones, they cant work on current school year materials because they can't log in to their current grade level. So far nobody knows who is supposed to fix that or who did it previously, but my bet is on one of the many people we laid off because we'd rather spend money on political pork than schools.
Yet all the teachers march their kids in here twice a week for an hour of attempting to log in (apparently there are too many machines on some wimpy server, as half the logins fail the first time, then half the half, then finally we get everyone on), then they log into last years page and play educational games for the 9 remaining minutes, but of course from the prior grade.
We also got donated five ipads for each classroom, an enormous expenditure.
If I speed, I can shave about an hour off a 250 mile trip I do a fair bit. 4 hours instead of 5? I'll take it.
How much effort does it take to do this sort of avoidance of the main point? Or were you just speed reading?
Sure, driving long haul on the highway, speeding makes sense.
But my point was that most speeding is done in mixed traffic, on surface roads, and to no benefit other than to increase driving risk. The retard weaving through traffic cutting people off, tailgating and other general stupid driving stuff gains nothing, while creating a lot of risk for themselves and the drivers around them. The google car would eliminate that childish shenanigans, and people would still get where they're going on time.
In your example, you'd have to wind up in to the 80+mph range to save an hour. I'm pretty much doubting you or anyone else can drive safely for 4 hours at 80+. At a minimum, you won't arrive rested and relaxed, and will probably need an hour to settle down after running the Indy 500.
But the google car could go 100mph with little increased danger, no increased stress, and no loss of attention over time. Then you'd get there in 3 hours.
No. You are right. Every OS has exactly the same susceptibility to viruses. There is absolutely no point in having a security model. In the end none of it matters, because Cute Fuzzy Bunny tapped his heals together three times in his ruby slippers and made it so.
Not very bright and petulant is no way to go through life son. I worked on the team that developed vax/vms, and worked for Jim Allchin and David Cutler before they went to microsoft to create the current instances of windows. Take the advice of a more experienced person...
To say that any large code piece is more or less susceptible to viruses is in and of itself foolish. One would have to have the imagination, tools and forethought of every person that might choose to hack the product to prevent it from being hacked, and in the process of making an operating system bulletproof, it'd also become unusable due to the onerous security. Not to mention there are security holes in every driver, app and plug in, and since most computers have software from a dozen or more suppliers...to create any sort of bulletproof or even nearly so system would be ridiculously implausible. About all you can do is hit 90%-95% and hope the user is smart enough to not do too many stupid things.
I gave you several informative links, but as is usually the case with apple stuff, the buyers respond like its a religion or staunch political perspective. Facts aren't important, because we've got our minds made up. Yet the facts remain that at almost any given time in the last 5 years, OS X has had more unpatched security holes in it than windows, and usually they're considered higher severity
But most hackers don't bother, because they can nail 50 windows idiots by getting them to click on something while they might only have a shot at one mac user, simply because there aren't that many. It'd be like developing a hack for a 1920's steam engine. You could do it, probably easily...but whats the point?
Could be because research shows that different parts of the brain are activated when reading from an electronic device and reading from paper. Research also shows that retention is less when reading from an electronic device. Research shows that reading actual books, making notes in them, taking written notes in class and listening to lectures results in the most transfer of knowledge and the ability to recall it. Why? Because those processes engage more than one part of the brain, something tablets, don't. Electronic Devices are excellent sources for reference materials, but they don't actually facilitate learning.
Tablets do make sense in that it is easier to carry a single tablet instead of a stack of text books, but then, at least when I was in college, the text books usually stayed in the dorm and were used for out of class assignments. We carried notebooks (the paper kind) with us to class.
Most schools that have gone to electronic devices such as tablets have done so, not because it increases learning, but because it saves them money.
I think that like most research, this was made up to suit an opinion. Most educators I've come across cant stop beating the paper book drum, so its no surprise that they'd commission a study to prove their opinion. You know, just like margarine was better than butter, cigarettes were good for us, eggs were bad for us and we should all stop eating meat because it'll kill us? Yeah, all that stuff that turned out to be wrong.
My kid is 7 and has read maybe 4 paper books in his life. Isn't interested. Has used a computer, tablet and ipod since he was two. In the first grade he read at a 6.5 grade level. He just did a master vocabulary test and scored the highest of anyone in the entire school district, including the high school students.
Oh yeah, and our district is one of the highest performing in California.
So in my small sample size, how you put words in front of a kid makes no difference. Whats important is doing it in a way that interests him. Having him pick his own birthday/christmas gifts out on amazon, including having him read and compare reviews, seller ratings and prices was a good exercise. So was showing him how to look up easter eggs and cheat codes for his video games. Oh yeah, the games are good too...I made sure to select quite a few that require reading to be successful. Spent a few years helping him pronounce words and explaining what they meant, but at this point he can read pretty much anything the average adult can.
I'd feel worse about my small sample size, but among my sons friends many aren't interested in books either, but have no problems with reading.
Nobody is going to upgrade to Linux unless Windows enrages them enough, or someone shows them the advantages (which still may not be enough to make them switch).
Exactly what I always say. "Where is the business driver for linux". Right now other than "Its free and if you live in a browser or libre office, you probably won't know the difference", and thats not much of a business driver.
The rest of it is "I hate microsoft/apple" and/or "I like complicated technology things developed by technical people for technical people, and/or I like having something that mystifies other people".
I didn't spend anywhere near twice as much?
Well then, tell me what you bought and what you paid, and I'll show you an equivalent or better windows machine for half the price.
So you're suggesting that if I buy a PC laptop i need a seperate bag for the mouse and keyboard to carry with me. Kinda makes an 11-13" machine sort of pointless, no?
I'm suggesting you buy the pc laptop that has the mouse and keyboard you love already built in. There are 75,000 to choose from. A little more selection option than you get with apple.
Quite simply you could buy about the most expensive reasonable PC laptop with the most awesome keyboard and mouse, and it'd still be cheaper than a comparatively pedestrian apple laptop.
As a long time and current systems programmer I would never claim any OS is virus proof. I never did make such a claim. The fact remains that Linux and OS X are far less susceptible to viruses than Windows.
I'm sorry, but you're not a very experienced systems programmer if you think any massive, monolithic operating system written by 10,000+ people over decades long periods is less susceptible to viruses than any other. If anything, after years of being lanced by virus writers, I suspect Windows has fewer holes and flaws than OS X. Even apple has the PR machine in reverse, after riding that misconception for years.
http://www.windowsitpro.com/article/paul-thurrotts-wininfo/security-expert-windows-7-secure-mac-os-140118
http://www.techradar.com/us/news/software/operating-systems/apple-tones-down-claims-regarding-os-xs-unassailable-security-1087070
This has been an issue of opportunity and bang for the buck virus writing. Security companies find huge gaping holes in OSX all the time, and eventually Apple fills them. If there were no such holes, why the fixes? Yeah, thats right...people don't fix what wasn't broken.
In the meanwhile, I've gotten exactly zero viruses of any kind on any machine in my household. We use free virus protection, don't surf russian porn sites, and don't click on any dialogue boxes that say "Kan I install my foobar mach 7 browser helper now?". I do see some malware occasionally on some extended family machines, but they were installing random free software, and frankly you can see some of the same problems doing that with a mac...
But the brain has to have a justification for spending too much money on something, so when the air comes out of the virus thing, I'm sure someone will find some obscure and likely incorrect reason to buy these things.
If you use half a dozen programmes at once, the way the OS handles the following things will matter to you- finding the application, launching the application, switching between the applications, displaying content from multiple applications on screen at once.
Ironically, it is precisely that cluster of functions that Win8 has decided to screw with. Up until now, MS (excluding Bob) has kept that relatively sacred.
I guess the good news is that all of this stuff works fine in win7, and if you dont like it you can get 50,000,000,000 free software snippets to do all of this however you wish? Linux, windows, os x....all about the same at this point, once installed, tweaked and running.
There is no magic faery dust. Its an operating system and it does exactly the same things in approximately the same ways with the same results as any other mature full featured OS.
I guess the game people are trying it, although having instituted day one dlc I no longer buy new games, since the $8-10 dlc reduces the games resale value by the same amount. I don't buy used games anymore either, because they're still priced at the same point they used to be, and I have to buy $10 worth of dlc to get the full game.
Similarly, I suspect that if the textbook companies play too many games, our smart college kids will figure out how to circumvent them.
Why every kid in america isnt carrying some inexpensive tabet full of all of their textbooks, school work and tests is a mystery to me. If we wanted to stimulate the economy, when HP was crapping out of the tablet business why didn't someone ask them to donate their touchpads (and make more!) along with developing educational systems and curriculum that would be usable tools nationwide, and make a permanent investment in our future, along with dropping education costs through the floor? Give HP a nice fat tax cut for their troubles.
What a wasted opportunity. We kept people busy doing busywork instead, most of which has little to no future value.
Although the trackpad is probably interacted with an awful lot and for most people it is worth a couple hundred or more to have a user input system they like.
And anyone with a windows machine can select from thousands of keyboards, mice, trackpads and trackballs that suit them. Pretty much all for under $100. Where did the other $400 go?
Oh, thats right. They went to setting record level profits built on the backs of 3rd world slave labor, and nothing was passed along to charity or any other beneficial entity.
Apple got rich because a lot of deep pocketed people wanted to be as cool as Steve Jobs. I suppose the fact that Steve had a live in prostitute for many years because he had trouble relating to women is the key swing factor apple buyers can relate to.
Funny thiing is that I may spend most of my time in an application (or two or three) but when the OS is lacking a decent file manager, a decent clipboard, a robust yet simple recovery system, and nags me every day for updates that require reboot, I DO care about the OS. Productivity goes way down no matter how good the application is if the environment I am working in is poor.
Hmm, windows has an excellent file manager and 57,000,000 free ones if you don't like that one. It also has a decent clipboard and 100,000,000,000 free ones if you don't like that one. Recovery for many things seems plenty fine to me, can you be more specific? Oh, and we only get updates once a week, they install in the middle of the night, and reboots are maybe once a month and also happen after the installs complete while you're asleep.
I also think that 1% of people spend more than 15 minutes a day with a file manager and/or the clipboard.
Aren't we really grasping at the thinnest straws at this point?
Yes and you can put a high end motor in a compact car (rice rocket) - doesn't make it a high end car. The fit and finish, the wholistic integration of the components - that is what makes a product high quality, not the components themselves.
Never taken one apart then? They're made by one of the same far east manufacturers as dells, lenovo's and so forth, largely from the exact same parts.
A few years ago I took an old acer core 2 duo laptop and slapped osx on it without any shenanigans. Exactly the same hardware as a macboo pro from its era, although the screen panel on the acer was better than the one you'd have gotten in the macbook, and the keyboard and touchpad felt quite a bit better to me than most macbooks.
A few months ago I built a desktop with the exact same parts except the case, screen, keyboard and mouse as the highest end non xeon mac pro you can buy. Cost me $600 and again OS X slid right in because the hardware is the exact same as the apple product. The same. The same pieces with the same model numbers and from the same companies.
But you guys go on and continue contorting yourselves to find the reason why you spent twice as much. There isnt one.
Actually, what's funny is that 99% of all viruses spend their time in Windows, but you still have the audacity to say that it is six of one and one half of the other. That takes a special combination of balls and stupidity, my friend.
Yes, this has been true in the past, but perhaps you've noticed plenty of reports on virus issues on macs? Its because there simply weren't enough of them for virus writers to bother with.
As a former operating system programmer, listening to someone say they think any machine is virus proof or worth spending extra for because it can't get a virus demonstrates something much lower down on the ladder than balls and stupidity.
Apple also has no "non over-priced" products. I'm so bored of the what OS is better. It's a pile of files. The software you need to use is the real reason you use a computer, not because you want to use an OS. All marketing "make a demographic" back when software was in its infancy bullshit. I've got windows7 and do very little windowing.
Whats funny is that 99% of people spend 99% of their time in an application, not sitting in the operating system. Although I'm fully prepared to argue that I've used every major operating system produced in the last 20 years...and they're all pretty much the freaking same once you spend 3 days on it and get used to it.
So sitting in safari on a mac vs chrome on windows. Office apps on a mac vs office apps on windows. Any difference at all? Really? I guess at that point you get reduced to claiming that only an apple trackpad suits you. It doesn't really, but its a fairly pathetic thing to cling to as a last ditch effort to justify the higher cost.
OS X comes with Apple's quality hardware. Not everyone has the money to buy them. Sad, for them.
Some have the sense to build a hackintosh with the exact same parts for $500 instead of paying $1500. Others take apart the apple box to find that the hardware is fairly pedestrian and common. Then the disillusionment starts to set in...
Heh, every place has its stories. Where I live and work, Yellowstone National Park, the usual approach is to drive carefree until one sees an elk or bison, then full stop on the road, hop out, and start shooting pictures. If you're lucky, they'll make an attempt to edge off the road a little and close the doors after they get out.
Sounds like you should release a few bengal tigers into the park. Not only will that solve the stupid driver problem, you'll have some nice cars to sell, once you touch up the fingernail scratches on the doors and windows.
When I wrote "stupid or unlucky" instead of just "stupid", I meant it. I know a lot of traffic citations are just a matter of being unlucky, but I still think the sample is highly biased towards bad drivers.
So you think most drivers are well aware of the rules of the road and routinely follow them?
Cuz if you feel that way, let me know which planet you reside on. I want to move there. People who live near me drive like assholes who never read the driving manual, or think it just says "You're the only person on earth. Act accordingly".
"We'd like everyone to give us $50. After that, we're pretty likely to spend all the money just before we crash and burn. If we should somehow survive, we'll be mowed down by facebook and twitter, and end up in a garbage can with google+.
But thanks for all the money! We'll have some good fun spending it!"
Your theory isn't holding up in the face of the data. Googles Cars have logged hundreds of thousands of miles and have one accident caused by human error.
Slow vehicle driving significantly black the prevailing speed cause accidents for other vehicles, while seldom getting hit themselves. They cause chain reaction fender benders two or three cars back, which they are seldom even aware of, and drive away, never to show up in accident statistics.
At least that's the theory put forth by those who perpetually drive over the speed limit.
That would seem to indicate that other drivers aren't following at a safe speed and/or distance. Which is a good reason to get people out from behind the wheel.
With reports of Google's self-driving car crashing left and right how could anyone want to be in one of these vehicles? They just aren't safe. When something happens when you're driving then it's at least your fault and you could do something about it, but not in self-driving cars.
In both of the cases you cited, a human was driving. The only accident the google cars have been in are ones where a human driven car smashed into the google car while it was performing legally and properly.
Of course, both stories tried to cast question on whether the car was human piloted or auto piloted, because who would want to read a story about a car driven by an idiot crashing into a driverless car?
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Fail. Linux does "just work" and it supports every perepheral and USB device I've plugged into it.
I spent years wondering why linux people say they can do an install and everything works out of the box. It finally came to me that they're like american car buyers talking with japanese car buyers. I've owned quite a few of both, and every japanese car I ever owned went 7-8+ years without needing anything other than fluid changes, filters and tires. The american cars had a raft of small things fall off or stop working, and occasionally major issues. Yet I hear people who own american cars say "My buick never needed anything", and we'd continue the conversation until the owner revealed that they'd made 10 warranty visits for the same sorts of small things that annoyed me about american cars. The problem was they considered that 'normal', while my idea of 'normal' was zero warranty trips to the dealer.
So since I've installed linux a half dozen times in the last couple of years and NEVER had a fully running system when I was done with the ubuntu disk, I'm guessing you're extremely lucky or that you do a half dozen to a dozen things after install to make the machine work, without realizing that this is not 'normal' or 'just works'.
These were all fairly commodity platforms. In several installs, the intel integrated graphics driver was not included in the distribution, because it failed some kind of open source smell test. The audio didn't work on many systems until I installed a newer version of some code and edited a text file. My attempts with a pair of atom/ion boxes required hours to collect all the relevant piece parts and many file edits to work, and even though dozens of people made it work, getting them to share their efforts was like pulling teeth. "Hey, you should read 500 pages of stuff and work on it for 5 hours and learn it! Then you'll know!" Only thing is, I dont give a %$@#$ about knowing a lot about linux, I just wanted it to work without a lot of hassle.
Sooo...congratulations on your good luck and/or invisible linux post install work. It really DOESN'T "just work". Hell, apple crap doesnt just work either. My wife got an ipad and wanted to post a picture she took on facebook, but there was no option to do that from the camera app until she installed some extra software and tweaked a configuration. Really? Most people taking photos don't want to post them on facebook from the camera app? "Why, just go into the photo gallery and the option is right there...anyone would know that". Well, anyone who owned an ipad before and already came across this situation, found it not working in an intuitive manner, and figured out how to fix it.
As for the rest, tl;dr. Linux hasn't been adopted because its too hard to install and brings zero real benefits to most users and support people. Its a solution looking for a problem.
First off, OS X did absolutely nothing to linux. The market segments have about a .5% overlap. Fat walleted people spending extra on hardware because its cool doesn't overlap with nerdy people who like editing 15 text files and scrounging drivers and apps from 50 sources to get an OS installed.
I agree with all the points in the article, but have to say they're knee jerk reactions to the major problem: linux on the desktop has no business driver. Its not cheaper, its not significantly better, almost nobody knows how to use or support it compared to the brazillions of people with windows familiarity, and there is no killer app or capability that would motivate people to change to it. Also, almost nobody actually gives a %$#@ about open source. All it is is a hole in the ground where nerds argue over what should and shouldn't be done, most of it with zero business drivers.
People bought the apple ii for visicalc. People abandoned cp/m and went to ms-dos because IBM got behind it, standardized a hardware and operating system platform, and provided service and support for it. People went with windows instead of the technically superior OS/2 because IBM stepped on their dick with it about 47 times until windows had enough inertia that technically superior no longer mattered. OS X failed to take over in corporations because it (like linux) lacks a lot of usable security and enterprise management tools that actually work and can be used by the average IT guy and customer.
Windows may suck in a lot of ways, but I can stick a windows 7 disk into about 90% of the computers made in the last 8 years and have a fully running, working system when I'm done. Every time I install linux, I have to scrounge drivers, load optional software made optional because nobody would agree on making it standard, and edit text files. Then I have an operating system I got for free (instead of $40), which won't run many of the apps I use, isnt familiar to most people, and when it breaks I need help to fix. Oh yeah, anyone tried asking for help on any linux forum of any kind? Whole lotta fun getting told off by the script kiddies.
THATS the problem, not 50 little technical reasons. There simply isn't any clear and beneficial reason for any business (or any individual for that matter) to install it vs windows, unless you have a piece of iron with no OS and can't afford $40.
How fast and how far do you drive? 20MPH over the speed limit in a lot of cases will save you more time than 90 seconds per trip.
I read a study a while back that said that chronic speeders trying to save time rarely save more than a few minutes on their trip, since most time is spent sitting at red lights or in traffic. I guess if you're driving 300-500 miles on the highway, you could knock some time off but most people don't drive that far on a routine basis. Even in that scenario, sitting by the side of the road getting a ticket for 15 minutes that costs you 10 hours of work to pay for is a pretty shitty substitute for ten minutes. I guess if someone were dying at your destination and it'd be the last ten minutes they'd spend with them, or if you get to nail the babysitter if you get home early...then theres some compensation.
My bet is for 99% of excessive speeders who think they're saving time end up dawdling around in the driveway or garage for a while, then read their junk mail, then watch tv. Not really a set of exercises greatly enhanced by all that time savings.
Actually it means 3/4 of the people who were either stupid enough or unlucky enough to get caught by a cop don't know the basic rules of driving. If your sample is people in (remedial) "driving school" for having lots of tickets, you have a huge selection bias towards bad drivers.
I considered that until I realized that I had been stopped for being halfway through a light when it turned red. Which is perfectly legal, but I'm guessing the cop needed some work on his quota.
So its a little less a situation of being the one stupid enough, just the one trailing the pack by too far a margin. Any which way, the relative randomness of traffic violations seems to offset the plausibility of this being a group of people different from any other group of 50-60 you picked at random.
My wife performs about 5 moving violations per minute, and since I see people every 3 minutes tailgating, changing lanes in the middle of intersections, changing lanes without signaling, turning in one lane and changing 2-4 lanes mid turn, etc, etc, etc...that I think ignorance of the rules of the road and attention to driving are fairly endemic.
Reminds me of when Massachusetts changed the "who has right of way in a rotary" from its original "driver in the rotary has right of way" to the driver entering the rotary, which immediately caused a spate of accidents, so they changed it back. After that, nobody knew who had right of way, so it just turned into bumper cars.