This will then be your primary computing device that:
A) you leave on the roof of your car. B) gets dropped in the toilet. C) you spill your beverage on. D) gets chewed up by your dog. E) you get mugged for. F) you leave in your hotel room. G) you have confiscated by the authorities (should you find yourself at the wrong place/time) H) gets reverse-engineered/stress-tested by your toddler
You say that as if such destruction wouldn't cause you to (insurance-covered or not) buy ANOTHER phone thus stimulating market activity, as if that's not good? Look guys, we need to work together to rescue the economy./Keynes
For those that love to play the moral equivalence card, please keep this in mind when equating the US and China over whatever whine you have today.
The US has MANY, many things wrong with it; some are things it neglects to do, some are things it does or has done (there seems to be no statute of limitations on historical grievances against the US); some things it's responsible for that are downright morally repugnant.
But without a doubt, the US is nowhere in the same league as China on pretty much any moral scale you care to measure. (I'd have thought that was clear since the revelation that China sells felons' body parts, but hey...)
Of course you probably know this, but the problem is that these sort of eugenic fantasies rarely actually play out as 'black and white' (ahem) as their proponents suppose.
Tending to be relatively ignorant of the subtleties of genetics, they rarely realize that what we see as obvious differences in skin color are actually rather difficult to tease out of the DNA...and rarely are they expressed as simply as "aha! here's the gene that makes you a "black" person".
Of course, like poison gas you'd have a very difficult time targeting it usefully, because you're always going to get people who may look like one ethnicity, but have buried in their DNA the evidence of a 'miscengary' by-blow deep in their family history.
I'd suspect that the White Plague-style "kill all women" would be relatively easy. More difficult would be a single-person-specific disease. Hardest still - or at least, seemingly hardest to target would be going after a discrete ethnic group because, well, ethnic groups AREN'T discrete (except in racist fantasies).
..they'll need that because kids taking pictures in malls will figure out how to auto-upload their pics on Dropbox. Ergo, they need to have more internet powers to stop such a heinous abuse of freedom.
Our elected representatives (I don't care which party you support) have: - refused to BALANCE THE BUDGET, ie their main job - chosen superficial feel-good measures ahead of everything else - continue to rabidly borrow for everything - cut all long term investment in favor of more bread, more circuses - for the last 30 years they've passed measures that cut taxes or raise spending today, with 'promised cuts' or 'promised revenues' later that never seem to arrive.
We don't have enough $$ coming in to pay our commitments. Instead of (the quickest route) cutting spending, we begin debating who we should take more money from, as if tax revenue is inexhaustible.
2006:the death of consoles. 2007:the death of the gaming PC 2008:the death of consoles. 2009:the death of the gaming PC 2010:the death of consoles. 2011:the death of the gaming PC 2012: (now) the death of consoles.
Both seem just fine.
The fact is that yes, ipads can play Angry Birds gloriously. I (personally) don't know how well they play the bazillion flash games at armorgames.com or kongregate.com that seem to be very entertaining for the gamer-set that likes those sorts of tactical-reflex games. So they're not replacing PCs EVEN IN THAT SPECIFIC DEMO. Further, I'm not a consoleer, but for them intuitive quick controls and immersiveness seem to be almost everything. The controls on touch pads are, well, touchpads (and suck, mostly). You are also never going to get the immersiveness of Call of Duty 4 on a 9" ipad screen, compared to the 54" plasma with 7.1 sound.
I'm sure they're just trying to sell more magazines but seriously can we move on from this conception of the zero-sum gamer's market?
FWIW at least in the 80s and 90s when I did importations, "genuine" Haggis COULDN'T be imported as it was considered (legally) unfit for human consumption.
You're simply refusing to see religion in anything but its most-extreme form.
I'm probably "religious" by your definition. I go to church about 1-2/month. I spend a lot of time with my church's volunteer programs, etc.
I'd presume from your comments, that you don't believe in "my God". I don't ipso facto assume you're evil. I don't 'fear' God looking over my shoulder. I do believe that God knows precisely what kind of person I am, deep down, and thus I try to live my life with as few illusions about myself as possible, and try very hard to be a good person.
To say "religion prevents people from rationalizing" is just patently untrue. Along your logic, you're asserting that Thomas Aquinas, for example, wasn't rational?
Saying religion prevents rationality is like saying "hamburgers make you fat" - at extreme enough application, yes, you're possibly right. But pretty much only at that extreme.
There are a number of variables in play: - much better health levels for children - no malnutrition (in the West, anyway) - universal literacy and childhood education
Couple that with the fact that IQ tests are necessarily abstract and theoretical, something that matches far closer to our culture and daily lives today, and you've probably explained it.
A person could be a successful functional adult in the 1930s having dropped out of school at 8th grade. They could run their business, have employees and have a rather good life as a tradesman or farmer. Further, those trades and functions required a practical intelligence that is (afaik) never tested in such tests. I've had the pleasure of knowing a couple of individuals that have been - literally - mechanical geniuses, having a tremendously powerful intellect in terms of engines, motors, electricals (not 'electronics' ie circuit boards, etc), and when we talk about current events they're tremendously subtle and insightful. But I expect that they wouldn't 'register' as "high IQ" in a formal sense because they were relatively uneducated.
Further, I'm not sure if it's just me but everyone I know who actually talks about their high IQ (or worse, their mensa membership) is pretty immediately obviously a complete ass. Considering the high number of asses I meet daily, that would suggest that lots of people have high IQs, right?
I don't really disagree with anything else you said, except: "You can not have normal food in there".
Huh?
If there's one thing the US doesn't have any problem with, it's food except in excess.
You can easily, and almost too-cheaply have ample, delicious food of *any* conceivable variety, from organic, non-GMO local-raised meals to the cheapest, sugar-laden breakfast food.
Most of our Euro sales folks fly home at least 3-5kg heavier after a 10-day sales swing.
Marxism - particularly as practiced by the Soviet and Chinese states - has been explicitly non-religious. Everyone coming to "logical conclusions" there?
Seriously, the idea that religion separates people seems backward. People have been dividing ourselves into "us" and "them" FOREVER. Religion is just another team to root for, another banner to follow.
"The reason for our advance is our slow move away from rigid dogmatic conformist thinking." Agreed, essentially Humanism is a turning-away from unthinking dogmatism. On the other hand, during the Dark Ages the only thing that KEPT Europe from sinking into absolute savagery was the Church. And, given that Islam - despite amazing advances early-on - has pretty much technologically and culturally stopped in the 15th century, we probably should also thank the Catholic Church for being its inveterate and deep-pocketed foe.
Except for the fact that the US is abundantly supplied with everything from food, to space, to a young and growing population (but not dangerously so) that's relatively male/female balanced, to rare earths (we just aren't particularly interested in the messy business of recovery), to now oil.
A collapse in the world economy would be painful, no doubt, but at the level of cataclysmic situation that would cause such desperation, the US will suffer less than pretty much any other country.
I find his comments to be interesting and insightful, but there's a sort of "why aren't people as smart as me?" arrogance behind it all.
I guess there's no reason someone can't be right AND insufferable.
It's altogether too easy (and becoming a little tiresome) to point at the excesses of religion and say "look how stupid that is". One can also point to the ample number of murders committed with guns and knives, yet it would be asinine to suggest that guns and knives are therefore valueless.
PERSONALLY, I suspect that religious faith has lost its attraction to the West largely because we have little to fear. We eat well, we live long mostly-healthy lives, we have comprehensive social systems that by and large will care for us regardless. We have little expectation that a passing famine, plague, or war will kill us, our children, or our community. Why would we NEED Faith or hope that a Supreme Being has some sort of great plan to explain some horrific tragedy we've suffered?
It's when life hands us inexplicables that we (as a species) resort to (as Dawkins might put it) contrived systems of belief, in order to try to put a human-comprehensible face on the unfeeling universe. Voltaire would call it Pangloss.
I don't know that this is bad. Genuine hope is a significant predictor of success in otherwise-hopeless situations. Faith can be a moral rudder in times of chaos and change. Sure, it can be (and has been) abused as a justification for horrible conduct and brutality. But it seems to me that humans in general are capable of ample brutality with or without the pastiche excuse of religious doctrine, so I'm hard put to BLAME such conduct on Faith.
Rephrasing: "A significant fraction of Xbox360 players have an immature perspective on the application of military force and its ramification in countries that they probably can't find on a map". Is that news?
Besides, the question was grossly loaded and the OP summary equally editorial in tone. "Is the average Xbox 360 player at all aware that drone strikes in countries like Pakistan cause a serious number of civilian deaths on a regular basis?" This has almost no impact on the question, in reality. The only time geopolitics cares about morality is when it's useful to do so. The cost/benefit calculus of a drone strike is far more complicated (and subjective) than this oversimplified screed.
And let's be absolutely, brutally honest: why should Xbox gamers care more about the citizens of these countries than their own leaders do? If they continue to ALLOW drone strikes with the collateral damage, they see a net value in it (even if this value is in usefully directing the public's anger toward America instead of themselves).
"..the legalese in international treaties supersedes national laws where applicable.." Not in the US.
The president can sign treaties all day long, but unless ratified into legislation by the US congress (and thus exposed to scrutiny on the grounds of Constitutionality), they are meaningless in US law.
The USC is rather clear in that the Federal government can set boundaries and limits on the behavior of the individual states' voting practices, but CANNOT dictate methods. I sincerely doubt any such "treaty" allowing observers would pass constitutional muster.
Tendentiousness check: would you agree that it would be an actionable "slimy piece of shit move" to compare someone to Hitler, the author of a World War and the industrialized genocide of 8 million Jews? (I mean, to be compared to a serial pedophile really isn't even in the same league, right?)
Because if you didn't have the same 'offended' reaction when Bush II was compared to Hitler for pretty much 6 years continuously, then you're simply a biased hypocrite.
Never said "they ran the state". I simply pointed out that TEACHERS unions (not just college professors' unions - is there such a thing?) have an extraordinary level of political power that is applied in ways deleterious to the public weal.
If you don't think so, you are a teacher, or simply missed 2012 in Wisconsin, in which the Teachers (and other) unions fought tooth and nail against results that ultimately ended up in MORE TEACHERS EMPLOYED.
Of course a 3rd grader can use it. It was DESIGNED for them to use it.
Ever see idiocracy? The UI for Win8 almost spot-on mimics the 'medical clinic computer' with idiotic giant icons because stupid people (and children) need them.
I'm an adult, thanks, and I have a method of using my computer; my priorities are efficiency and effectiveness, not ease-of-use. I'm uninterested in an OS that promises ease-of-use-uber-alles.
I cannot deny your personal experience, but its hard to believe that 'suddenly' the human species - you know, the wealthy, Western ones - desperately needs medication to function at a basic level, as you describe. Personally, I suspect it has everything to
It may not be a big-pharma ploy precisely, but I think our culture's immediate recourse to a pharmacopia of chemistry is more likely to be attacking the system than forcing us societally to confront the actual causes.
Further, as your story suggests, we are far too quick to dose juveniles whose brain chemistry is changing rapidly and flooded with varying surges of hormones constantly, preventing the kids' systems from learning (as a natural part of maturation) how to deal with their own body chemistry. It essentially leaves them physiologically addicted and constantly needing chemical support for normal function.
"Sooner or later, all software becomes obsolete. Not because there's something wrong with the software, but because the world in which the software lives changes."
This is, simply, bullshit.
I can write a letter with Wordperfect 3.0 perfectly fine, thanks. And it runs on my Zeos 386sx hunky dory. If all I want to do is to type documents, I NEVER NEED TO UPGRADE. Ever. Ever.
I know several businesses - including accounting firms, customs brokers, etc - that are running staggeringly ancient software on a simple server that pretty much is never touched. If it does what they need it to do, why would they EVER change?
As posters have already posted several times, there are many embedded systems that run xp just fine thanks, and barring some IT asswipe stealth "upgrading" the hardware because of some companywide mandate, they will continue to run just fine.
The fact is, this constant-upgrade treadmill is 80% marketing driven. Yes, Win7 is a stabler, better OS in pretty much every way than Win95. I get that. But I can run Win95 (or DOS) for that matter on systems that Win7 wouldn't even BOOT.
This 'announcement' from MS is the equivalent of Apple telling everyone that they "should just get the new iPhone". No real good reason, aside from some trival sideways improvements.
And I tell MS the same thing I'd tell Apple: bite me.
This just shows the strength of the Teachers Unions in MN, and why they need to be broken.
What they're really saying is "Coursera, by offering the simple stuff for free, you ultimately threaten the jobs of all the shitty, worthless, lazy time-serving teachers we have as dues-paying members, and we cannot allow you to continue to do so. This is not about "the children" or the consumer, it's about protecting our own, and preserving that massive political power. We've spent millions fighting merit pay, teacher-quality review, and any sort of system where parents get to exercise any choice in their childs' (short of home-schooling, and everyone knows they're religious crazies anyway), and we'll be goddamned if you take away the easy, simple-to-teach online coursework forcing human teachers to focus on the more challenging materials to justify our existance."
Slashdot Mirror
You say that as if such destruction wouldn't cause you to (insurance-covered or not) buy ANOTHER phone thus stimulating market activity, as if that's not good? /Keynes
Look guys, we need to work together to rescue the economy.
For those that love to play the moral equivalence card, please keep this in mind when equating the US and China over whatever whine you have today.
The US has MANY, many things wrong with it; some are things it neglects to do, some are things it does or has done (there seems to be no statute of limitations on historical grievances against the US); some things it's responsible for that are downright morally repugnant.
But without a doubt, the US is nowhere in the same league as China on pretty much any moral scale you care to measure. (I'd have thought that was clear since the revelation that China sells felons' body parts, but hey...)
Of course you probably know this, but the problem is that these sort of eugenic fantasies rarely actually play out as 'black and white' (ahem) as their proponents suppose.
Tending to be relatively ignorant of the subtleties of genetics, they rarely realize that what we see as obvious differences in skin color are actually rather difficult to tease out of the DNA...and rarely are they expressed as simply as "aha! here's the gene that makes you a "black" person".
Of course, like poison gas you'd have a very difficult time targeting it usefully, because you're always going to get people who may look like one ethnicity, but have buried in their DNA the evidence of a 'miscengary' by-blow deep in their family history.
I'd suspect that the White Plague-style "kill all women" would be relatively easy.
More difficult would be a single-person-specific disease.
Hardest still - or at least, seemingly hardest to target would be going after a discrete ethnic group because, well, ethnic groups AREN'T discrete (except in racist fantasies).
...this was funded by all those iPads and iMacs and iPhones I saw at the OWS protests.
Ah, delicious irony.
..they'll need that because kids taking pictures in malls will figure out how to auto-upload their pics on Dropbox. Ergo, they need to have more internet powers to stop such a heinous abuse of freedom.
Our elected representatives (I don't care which party you support) have:
- refused to BALANCE THE BUDGET, ie their main job
- chosen superficial feel-good measures ahead of everything else
- continue to rabidly borrow for everything
- cut all long term investment in favor of more bread, more circuses
- for the last 30 years they've passed measures that cut taxes or raise spending today, with 'promised cuts' or 'promised revenues' later that never seem to arrive.
We don't have enough $$ coming in to pay our commitments.
Instead of (the quickest route) cutting spending, we begin debating who we should take more money from, as if tax revenue is inexhaustible.
How is this at all surprising?
If you haven't done these sorts of things, well, then Darwin appreciates your effort.
And I guess so does posterity.
2006:the death of consoles.
2007:the death of the gaming PC
2008:the death of consoles.
2009:the death of the gaming PC
2010:the death of consoles.
2011:the death of the gaming PC
2012: (now) the death of consoles.
Both seem just fine.
The fact is that yes, ipads can play Angry Birds gloriously. I (personally) don't know how well they play the bazillion flash games at armorgames.com or kongregate.com that seem to be very entertaining for the gamer-set that likes those sorts of tactical-reflex games. So they're not replacing PCs EVEN IN THAT SPECIFIC DEMO.
Further, I'm not a consoleer, but for them intuitive quick controls and immersiveness seem to be almost everything. The controls on touch pads are, well, touchpads (and suck, mostly). You are also never going to get the immersiveness of Call of Duty 4 on a 9" ipad screen, compared to the 54" plasma with 7.1 sound.
I'm sure they're just trying to sell more magazines but seriously can we move on from this conception of the zero-sum gamer's market?
That's why God gave us the interwebs:
http://www.urbanspoon.com/c/29/Twin-Cities-restaurants.html
FWIW at least in the 80s and 90s when I did importations, "genuine" Haggis COULDN'T be imported as it was considered (legally) unfit for human consumption.
You're simply refusing to see religion in anything but its most-extreme form.
I'm probably "religious" by your definition. I go to church about 1-2/month. I spend a lot of time with my church's volunteer programs, etc.
I'd presume from your comments, that you don't believe in "my God". I don't ipso facto assume you're evil. I don't 'fear' God looking over my shoulder. I do believe that God knows precisely what kind of person I am, deep down, and thus I try to live my life with as few illusions about myself as possible, and try very hard to be a good person.
To say "religion prevents people from rationalizing" is just patently untrue. Along your logic, you're asserting that Thomas Aquinas, for example, wasn't rational?
Saying religion prevents rationality is like saying "hamburgers make you fat" - at extreme enough application, yes, you're possibly right. But pretty much only at that extreme.
There are a number of variables in play:
- much better health levels for children
- no malnutrition (in the West, anyway)
- universal literacy and childhood education
Couple that with the fact that IQ tests are necessarily abstract and theoretical, something that matches far closer to our culture and daily lives today, and you've probably explained it.
A person could be a successful functional adult in the 1930s having dropped out of school at 8th grade. They could run their business, have employees and have a rather good life as a tradesman or farmer. Further, those trades and functions required a practical intelligence that is (afaik) never tested in such tests. I've had the pleasure of knowing a couple of individuals that have been - literally - mechanical geniuses, having a tremendously powerful intellect in terms of engines, motors, electricals (not 'electronics' ie circuit boards, etc), and when we talk about current events they're tremendously subtle and insightful. But I expect that they wouldn't 'register' as "high IQ" in a formal sense because they were relatively uneducated.
Further, I'm not sure if it's just me but everyone I know who actually talks about their high IQ (or worse, their mensa membership) is pretty immediately obviously a complete ass. Considering the high number of asses I meet daily, that would suggest that lots of people have high IQs, right?
I don't really disagree with anything else you said, except: "You can not have normal food in there".
Huh?
If there's one thing the US doesn't have any problem with, it's food except in excess.
You can easily, and almost too-cheaply have ample, delicious food of *any* conceivable variety, from organic, non-GMO local-raised meals to the cheapest, sugar-laden breakfast food.
Most of our Euro sales folks fly home at least 3-5kg heavier after a 10-day sales swing.
Marxism - particularly as practiced by the Soviet and Chinese states - has been explicitly non-religious. Everyone coming to "logical conclusions" there?
Seriously, the idea that religion separates people seems backward. People have been dividing ourselves into "us" and "them" FOREVER. Religion is just another team to root for, another banner to follow.
"The reason for our advance is our slow move away from rigid dogmatic conformist thinking."
Agreed, essentially Humanism is a turning-away from unthinking dogmatism.
On the other hand, during the Dark Ages the only thing that KEPT Europe from sinking into absolute savagery was the Church.
And, given that Islam - despite amazing advances early-on - has pretty much technologically and culturally stopped in the 15th century, we probably should also thank the Catholic Church for being its inveterate and deep-pocketed foe.
Except for the fact that the US is abundantly supplied with everything from food, to space, to a young and growing population (but not dangerously so) that's relatively male/female balanced, to rare earths (we just aren't particularly interested in the messy business of recovery), to now oil.
A collapse in the world economy would be painful, no doubt, but at the level of cataclysmic situation that would cause such desperation, the US will suffer less than pretty much any other country.
I find his comments to be interesting and insightful, but there's a sort of "why aren't people as smart as me?" arrogance behind it all.
I guess there's no reason someone can't be right AND insufferable.
It's altogether too easy (and becoming a little tiresome) to point at the excesses of religion and say "look how stupid that is". One can also point to the ample number of murders committed with guns and knives, yet it would be asinine to suggest that guns and knives are therefore valueless.
PERSONALLY, I suspect that religious faith has lost its attraction to the West largely because we have little to fear. We eat well, we live long mostly-healthy lives, we have comprehensive social systems that by and large will care for us regardless. We have little expectation that a passing famine, plague, or war will kill us, our children, or our community. Why would we NEED Faith or hope that a Supreme Being has some sort of great plan to explain some horrific tragedy we've suffered?
It's when life hands us inexplicables that we (as a species) resort to (as Dawkins might put it) contrived systems of belief, in order to try to put a human-comprehensible face on the unfeeling universe. Voltaire would call it Pangloss.
I don't know that this is bad. Genuine hope is a significant predictor of success in otherwise-hopeless situations. Faith can be a moral rudder in times of chaos and change. Sure, it can be (and has been) abused as a justification for horrible conduct and brutality. But it seems to me that humans in general are capable of ample brutality with or without the pastiche excuse of religious doctrine, so I'm hard put to BLAME such conduct on Faith.
Rephrasing:
"A significant fraction of Xbox360 players have an immature perspective on the application of military force and its ramification in countries that they probably can't find on a map". Is that news?
Besides, the question was grossly loaded and the OP summary equally editorial in tone. "Is the average Xbox 360 player at all aware that drone strikes in countries like Pakistan cause a serious number of civilian deaths on a regular basis?"
This has almost no impact on the question, in reality. The only time geopolitics cares about morality is when it's useful to do so. The cost/benefit calculus of a drone strike is far more complicated (and subjective) than this oversimplified screed.
And let's be absolutely, brutally honest: why should Xbox gamers care more about the citizens of these countries than their own leaders do? If they continue to ALLOW drone strikes with the collateral damage, they see a net value in it (even if this value is in usefully directing the public's anger toward America instead of themselves).
"..the legalese in international treaties supersedes national laws where applicable.."
Not in the US.
The president can sign treaties all day long, but unless ratified into legislation by the US congress (and thus exposed to scrutiny on the grounds of Constitutionality), they are meaningless in US law.
The USC is rather clear in that the Federal government can set boundaries and limits on the behavior of the individual states' voting practices, but CANNOT dictate methods. I sincerely doubt any such "treaty" allowing observers would pass constitutional muster.
Tendentiousness check: would you agree that it would be an actionable "slimy piece of shit move" to compare someone to Hitler, the author of a World War and the industrialized genocide of 8 million Jews? (I mean, to be compared to a serial pedophile really isn't even in the same league, right?)
Because if you didn't have the same 'offended' reaction when Bush II was compared to Hitler for pretty much 6 years continuously, then you're simply a biased hypocrite.
Never said "they ran the state".
I simply pointed out that TEACHERS unions (not just college professors' unions - is there such a thing?) have an extraordinary level of political power that is applied in ways deleterious to the public weal.
If you don't think so, you are a teacher, or simply missed 2012 in Wisconsin, in which the Teachers (and other) unions fought tooth and nail against results that ultimately ended up in MORE TEACHERS EMPLOYED.
Of course a 3rd grader can use it.
It was DESIGNED for them to use it.
Ever see idiocracy? The UI for Win8 almost spot-on mimics the 'medical clinic computer' with idiotic giant icons because stupid people (and children) need them.
I'm an adult, thanks, and I have a method of using my computer; my priorities are efficiency and effectiveness, not ease-of-use. I'm uninterested in an OS that promises ease-of-use-uber-alles.
I cannot deny your personal experience, but its hard to believe that 'suddenly' the human species - you know, the wealthy, Western ones - desperately needs medication to function at a basic level, as you describe.
Personally, I suspect it has everything to
It may not be a big-pharma ploy precisely, but I think our culture's immediate recourse to a pharmacopia of chemistry is more likely to be attacking the system than forcing us societally to confront the actual causes.
Further, as your story suggests, we are far too quick to dose juveniles whose brain chemistry is changing rapidly and flooded with varying surges of hormones constantly, preventing the kids' systems from learning (as a natural part of maturation) how to deal with their own body chemistry. It essentially leaves them physiologically addicted and constantly needing chemical support for normal function.
"Sooner or later, all software becomes obsolete. Not because there's something wrong with the software, but because the world in which the software lives changes."
This is, simply, bullshit.
I can write a letter with Wordperfect 3.0 perfectly fine, thanks. And it runs on my Zeos 386sx hunky dory. If all I want to do is to type documents, I NEVER NEED TO UPGRADE. Ever. Ever.
I know several businesses - including accounting firms, customs brokers, etc - that are running staggeringly ancient software on a simple server that pretty much is never touched. If it does what they need it to do, why would they EVER change?
As posters have already posted several times, there are many embedded systems that run xp just fine thanks, and barring some IT asswipe stealth "upgrading" the hardware because of some companywide mandate, they will continue to run just fine.
The fact is, this constant-upgrade treadmill is 80% marketing driven. Yes, Win7 is a stabler, better OS in pretty much every way than Win95. I get that. But I can run Win95 (or DOS) for that matter on systems that Win7 wouldn't even BOOT.
This 'announcement' from MS is the equivalent of Apple telling everyone that they "should just get the new iPhone". No real good reason, aside from some trival sideways improvements.
And I tell MS the same thing I'd tell Apple: bite me.
This just shows the strength of the Teachers Unions in MN, and why they need to be broken.
What they're really saying is "Coursera, by offering the simple stuff for free, you ultimately threaten the jobs of all the shitty, worthless, lazy time-serving teachers we have as dues-paying members, and we cannot allow you to continue to do so. This is not about "the children" or the consumer, it's about protecting our own, and preserving that massive political power. We've spent millions fighting merit pay, teacher-quality review, and any sort of system where parents get to exercise any choice in their childs' (short of home-schooling, and everyone knows they're religious crazies anyway), and we'll be goddamned if you take away the easy, simple-to-teach online coursework forcing human teachers to focus on the more challenging materials to justify our existance."