In that case, the it isn't a money problem, but an efficient spending problem. Teaching mostly isn't a money problem at all. I was brought up in a country with considerably less money available for education, and yet probably education was about the most successful project that our country ever had (so-called "socialist" country). Illiteracy was virtually eliminated, Maths, Science and Engineering was thriving... Ever since the change from popular democracy to market democracy, illiteracy jumped sky high, while education gets more money than ever before.
It's the practical organisation of eduction that matters not the money. You need committed, knowledgeable teachers, a commitment to technological progress (pushing out religious, especially creationist crap out of the public education completely), creating social goals for children instead of selfish motives (the as teachers will get to see some sense in their profession), a commitment to the human race as such.
The only way to make education thrive is to make it public accessed and funded and run (including the related matters like text-book distribution, via either printing or sharing digitally), and let the teachers and professionals (that is, motivate every single professional in the country to contribute to education, not just only the professional teachers). I also like to emphasise that the gadgets that kids are using today (phones, hand-held and normal game-consoles, etc.) are also part of the problem. These devices do not encourage creativity because they are sold as closed systems with hardly accessible hacking-facilities, which would contribute to development of the children. Encourage programs for free, and cheap solutions that could be available the largest number of children and what allows them to play around the devices themselves. Unfortunately, this is not a business goal, can not be motived through profit. Either communities must deal with this themselves or some citizen funded entity.
Probably not, but they could sell the information about your user habits just as easily. They can mess with your device, deleting content, forcing content, tracking you without your consent.
Can't we get both? I mean, freedom to have complete control over our devices and only trusted applications running on it? For me it sounds like it was the same problem: Apple is not a trusted company. Neither is. But me, as a geek, I'm trusted already by my friends and family to fix their fucked up devices. So for the same reason, the software I use, should be trusted by them. Can't we build repositories based on trusted social connections, rather than profit-driven business entities?
The android problem has nothing to do with the fact the kernel is Linux. Linux based operating systems are tend to be secure because there's a community maintained software repository accompanied to them. Most of the software can be review by anybody because the source code is available. Also, you are completely in charge of your computer if you're choosing the right distro. Android is partially open only, and Google Play don't have the same approval mechanism like the Debian's repository.
Once we get some Debian alike distro on our mobiles, we can say that we have a secure operating system on our mobile devices.
True, but unfortunately the response to the Dancing Pigs problem is to leave the security issues to "expert companies" and thus putting the "technologically ignorant user" to trust in a company which has one and only goal: make the user a life-long consumer (not a customer!) and stuffing them whatever shit they make. The Dancing Pig problem also true for operating systems which is not the making of some shady black hat socio-paths but Trusted Companies with CEOs in suits. I desperately lobby for pushing the IT education to the level of an experienced user. People are using digital devices all the time, for years now, and seemingly have not evolved as users. And anything you want to teach them, they dismiss because it takes some focus. We must start at age 5 minimum to catch the attentions.
Alright, but you see, you can turn that off on any system. See, people jailbreak their iPhones too. I have no experience with WP but there must be a way. My point is, the malware problem actually goes deeper than these shallow observations.
Companies, like Apple, Google, Microsoft have their spyware already in place, and most of the people don't bother at all. So what difference does it make, if you let other people spy on you?
It is about the mindset of the user. Walled garden is the worst solution to this problem because while you leaving behind the "wild-west" of untrusted sources of software, in practice you just give the control of your device over to an other profit-driven company.
Instead, we should "empower" the user with the knowledge and control over their devices and the rest is their making. If someone is stupid enough to download whatever application is offered, they will learn on the hard way.
Well, I should now say that it all boils down to education. I see people having classes in IT which usually means to learn how to handle Microsoft Word and Excel, after they teach how to use Teh Internet.
Instead of indoctrinating specific business solutions to people, education should focus on matters of:
* Data organisation, protection, privacy
* Finding the best tool for the job, whatever that would be.
* Running ONLY trusted software on the computer. This could range from certified, and community verified software if there's no other choice, to those with community reviewed source code (Like FLOSS).
* Communication: Understand the complete workings of email systems, chat, and social networks.
These things, perhaps wrapped in to the age-specific constrains and theme, should be at the heart of IT education. There's a shit load of users out there, and they are fearfully ignorant, thus really dangerous. At least in regards of themselves.
I'm just guessing but probably you can get a cheap android device to every kids hand, while it would be a bit more tedious to do the same with iOS devices:).
But if you know some cool tablet which could run application straight from the linux world and have an optimised GUI for touch screen (perhaps gnome), that would be the perfect solution, or course.
What is exactly wrong with it? $50.000 isn't such a big money if you're living in the US or western Europe... Going with the arbitrary salary of $50.000pa for a programmer I don't think this too much to ask.
The "free software" in my opinion should pay enough in itself so that the developers don't have to get employed by some random thickhead company but working for the public. Kickstarter, after all, is nothing else but a popular place for asking donations.
Or am I missing something from your comment?
I'm so happy that you took the pain to write these things down so I realize I'm not the only nerd out there who is extremely troubled by this trend of persuade people in to numbness and idealize the user as an uncritical dumb ass.
Why does the formatting disappear if I comment in logged in mode? Lemme try again:
I second that. In Soviet Russia... no actually this isn't a joke. In the so called socialism in Hungary, there was a law for companies to provide all information about their product (you see how evil these people were? they forced the producers not to fuck over their customers!). Today, people buying Apple (Apple here is the most famous example, but far from the only one) products and give up their freedom as customer to decide what to do with that product. These companies create precedent for each other, and the "Next Big Thing" company will deploy similar or even more extreme measures...
... it's all like the RL politics:
* Spread fear: Hackers and viruses, evil pirates and so on...
* Monopolize: I don't know who thinks today that these companies hiding behind their copyrights, patent farming, buying up the competition are not forming monopolies and and do not confine criminally the free market (well, I'm not a free market fan, but neither I am of monopolies), which is against the law. The users are better off with no choice, aren't they?:)
* Building pseudo(?)-religious movements based on brands and messiahs. The latter could be called manager-cult as it seems that the actual creators of the most used and regarded products are ignored in order to give the stage to Bill Gates, Steve Balmers, Steve Jobs, the "great men of our times".
* Making a industrial sector resembling rather to a war-torn battlefield rather than field well organised, planned, and based on collaboration.
* Degrading the users of this industry to simple product receiver, thus directly changing the content of the public discussion. Today the term "user friendly" became a cover word of being like Apple or MS.
* These messiahs knows the best for the flock, the path to the Cloud: if we surrender our freedom and become _citizens_ of their realm, we are promised to arrive the land of the free.
These companies need to be challenged and we need to actively fight against their practices!
I second that. Inj Soviet Russia... no actually this isn't a joke. In the so called socialism in Hungary, there was a law for companies to provide all information about their product (you see how evil these people were? they forced the producers not to fuck over their customers!). Today, people buying Apple (Apple here is the most famous example, but far from the only one) products and give up their freedom as customer to decide what to do with that product. These companies create precedent for each other, and the "Next Big Thing" company will deploy similar or even more extreme measures...... it's all like the RL politics:
* Spread fear: Hackers and viruses, evil pirates and so on...
* Monopolize: I don't know who thinks today that these companies hiding behind their copyrights, patent farming, buying up the competition are not forming monopolies and and do not confine criminally the free market (well, I'm not a free market fan, but neither I am of monopolies), which is against the law. The users are better off with no choice, aren't they?:)
* Building pseudo(?)-religious movements based on brands and messiahs. The latter could be called manager-cult as it seems that the actual creators of the most used and regarded products are ignored in order to give the stage to Bill Gates, Steve Balmers, Steve Jobs, the "great men of our times".
* Making a industrial sector resembling rather to a war-torn battlefield rather than field well organised, planned, and based on collaboration.
* Degrading the users of this industry to simple product receiver, thus directly changing the content of the public discussion. Today the term "user friendly" became a cover word of being like Apple or MS.
* These messiahs knows the best for the flock, the path to the Cloud: if we surrender our freedom and become _citizens_ of their realm, we are promised to arrive the land of the free.
These companies need to be challenged and we need to actively fight against their practices!
You are just simply ridiculous.
"you hate your country": For going to have a war on the other side of the planet, and in addition, engaging in mass murdering of large number of civilians. Hell, I would hate my country for doing that and everybody has not only the right, but the obligation to stop it. Pure and simple. The fact that one born in the geographic feature that belongs to some social entity do not necessarily mean that it is "her country". It is, what it is: imposed power with spacial boundaries.
"flag burning and riots": I blame them too: leaving the symbolism aside, they should have gone after the government, the armed forces, and most importantly, after Capital, whatever form it would assume, like corporations, banks, and so on. Unfortunately, this can not be done by burning flags (it's a bit funny that you're blaming them for symbolic acts...) neither with rioting: it can only be done via well organised civil war, a revolution. All they did what shot in the water. The Capital, the War, the Government looks intact to me: progressivism at its best was a failure.
"TV and movies" Looking at those before and after the '60s, I don't see the difference in the mainstream. Dumb, patronizing nationalist propaganda.
children saying Please, Thank You, Sir & Ma'am: I hear children saying please and thank you. The other too has nothing to do with social lubricant, but the power-hunger of some adults. Some feel sorry to get deprived of the pleasure of beating up children thus calm frustrations.
") the belief that nationalism is a Bad Thing, and therefore nations are a Bad Thing; thus people claiming to be "citizens of the world" and welcoming large-scale illegal immigration."
Sure you're just being funny. Migration was and is a fact of the world. People tend to move, ya know? In fact so much, that if you look at the history, most of the time there wasn't even citizenship or border control. The only thing that would suprise me if you would not be a descendant of a (im)migrant. People born in to the biosphere of this planet. Nations are the bully boys, who set themselves up with strict imaginary lines between "us and them" and place armed thugs to rules around these imaginary lines (called border).
Blaming is easy, isn't it?
To be completely precise, British people are fascinated by celebrities as much as Americans. One of this celebrity happens to be the queen and co. And, as an interesting note, the royal family happens to be celebrity in many countries, including the USA. There's no "us and them" here.
Heeeey, you forgot about the non-decent criminals.
This is basically nothing else but a selective breeding of criminality. Any criminal, who organises their crime without the proper privacy tools, would be arrested.
And perhaps it would be somewhat good if they could go a bit further. They could just randomly arrest citizens if they don't use proper privacy tools.
Correct me if I'm wrong here, but I don't see what is exactly the difference between the metro tiles, and the widgets on the iOS/Android home screens. With a little adjustment, one can enforce a GUI rule over the widgets. Would you imagine that on my android phone, if I get to the weather widget, it show (with animation) the current, updated, location based weather information? The MetroUI offer nothing revolutionary, it's just a skin and a set of constrains for its widgets. And the same goes for HTC Sense, iOS UI etc.
The annoying part of this whole business that it should not be game changer at all. If the Microsoft believes that this "UI" is so superior, they should come up with an Android and a iOS version of it. Of course they won't, because they want to make it a signature product, which sells something completely unrelated: the OS.
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In that case, the it isn't a money problem, but an efficient spending problem. Teaching mostly isn't a money problem at all. I was brought up in a country with considerably less money available for education, and yet probably education was about the most successful project that our country ever had (so-called "socialist" country). Illiteracy was virtually eliminated, Maths, Science and Engineering was thriving... Ever since the change from popular democracy to market democracy, illiteracy jumped sky high, while education gets more money than ever before.
It's the practical organisation of eduction that matters not the money. You need committed, knowledgeable teachers, a commitment to technological progress (pushing out religious, especially creationist crap out of the public education completely), creating social goals for children instead of selfish motives (the as teachers will get to see some sense in their profession), a commitment to the human race as such.
The only way to make education thrive is to make it public accessed and funded and run (including the related matters like text-book distribution, via either printing or sharing digitally), and let the teachers and professionals (that is, motivate every single professional in the country to contribute to education, not just only the professional teachers). I also like to emphasise that the gadgets that kids are using today (phones, hand-held and normal game-consoles, etc.) are also part of the problem. These devices do not encourage creativity because they are sold as closed systems with hardly accessible hacking-facilities, which would contribute to development of the children. Encourage programs for free, and cheap solutions that could be available the largest number of children and what allows them to play around the devices themselves. Unfortunately, this is not a business goal, can not be motived through profit. Either communities must deal with this themselves or some citizen funded entity.
It's a(n?) euphemism for monopolist aspirations.
Probably not, but they could sell the information about your user habits just as easily. They can mess with your device, deleting content, forcing content, tracking you without your consent.
Can't we get both? I mean, freedom to have complete control over our devices and only trusted applications running on it? For me it sounds like it was the same problem: Apple is not a trusted company. Neither is. But me, as a geek, I'm trusted already by my friends and family to fix their fucked up devices. So for the same reason, the software I use, should be trusted by them. Can't we build repositories based on trusted social connections, rather than profit-driven business entities?
The android problem has nothing to do with the fact the kernel is Linux. Linux based operating systems are tend to be secure because there's a community maintained software repository accompanied to them. Most of the software can be review by anybody because the source code is available. Also, you are completely in charge of your computer if you're choosing the right distro. Android is partially open only, and Google Play don't have the same approval mechanism like the Debian's repository. Once we get some Debian alike distro on our mobiles, we can say that we have a secure operating system on our mobile devices.
True, but unfortunately the response to the Dancing Pigs problem is to leave the security issues to "expert companies" and thus putting the "technologically ignorant user" to trust in a company which has one and only goal: make the user a life-long consumer (not a customer!) and stuffing them whatever shit they make. The Dancing Pig problem also true for operating systems which is not the making of some shady black hat socio-paths but Trusted Companies with CEOs in suits. I desperately lobby for pushing the IT education to the level of an experienced user. People are using digital devices all the time, for years now, and seemingly have not evolved as users. And anything you want to teach them, they dismiss because it takes some focus. We must start at age 5 minimum to catch the attentions.
Alright, but you see, you can turn that off on any system. See, people jailbreak their iPhones too. I have no experience with WP but there must be a way. My point is, the malware problem actually goes deeper than these shallow observations.
Companies, like Apple, Google, Microsoft have their spyware already in place, and most of the people don't bother at all. So what difference does it make, if you let other people spy on you?
It is about the mindset of the user. Walled garden is the worst solution to this problem because while you leaving behind the "wild-west" of untrusted sources of software, in practice you just give the control of your device over to an other profit-driven company.
Instead, we should "empower" the user with the knowledge and control over their devices and the rest is their making. If someone is stupid enough to download whatever application is offered, they will learn on the hard way.
Well, I should now say that it all boils down to education. I see people having classes in IT which usually means to learn how to handle Microsoft Word and Excel, after they teach how to use Teh Internet. Instead of indoctrinating specific business solutions to people, education should focus on matters of: * Data organisation, protection, privacy * Finding the best tool for the job, whatever that would be. * Running ONLY trusted software on the computer. This could range from certified, and community verified software if there's no other choice, to those with community reviewed source code (Like FLOSS). * Communication: Understand the complete workings of email systems, chat, and social networks. These things, perhaps wrapped in to the age-specific constrains and theme, should be at the heart of IT education. There's a shit load of users out there, and they are fearfully ignorant, thus really dangerous. At least in regards of themselves.
I'm just guessing but probably you can get a cheap android device to every kids hand, while it would be a bit more tedious to do the same with iOS devices :).
But if you know some cool tablet which could run application straight from the linux world and have an optimised GUI for touch screen (perhaps gnome), that would be the perfect solution, or course.
What is exactly wrong with it? $50.000 isn't such a big money if you're living in the US or western Europe... Going with the arbitrary salary of $50.000pa for a programmer I don't think this too much to ask. The "free software" in my opinion should pay enough in itself so that the developers don't have to get employed by some random thickhead company but working for the public. Kickstarter, after all, is nothing else but a popular place for asking donations. Or am I missing something from your comment?
I'm so happy that you took the pain to write these things down so I realize I'm not the only nerd out there who is extremely troubled by this trend of persuade people in to numbness and idealize the user as an uncritical dumb ass.
Why does the formatting disappear if I comment in logged in mode? Lemme try again:
I second that. In Soviet Russia... no actually this isn't a joke. In the so called socialism in Hungary, there was a law for companies to provide all information about their product (you see how evil these people were? they forced the producers not to fuck over their customers!). Today, people buying Apple (Apple here is the most famous example, but far from the only one) products and give up their freedom as customer to decide what to do with that product. These companies create precedent for each other, and the "Next Big Thing" company will deploy similar or even more extreme measures...
... it's all like the RL politics:
These companies need to be challenged and we need to actively fight against their practices!
I second that. Inj Soviet Russia... no actually this isn't a joke. In the so called socialism in Hungary, there was a law for companies to provide all information about their product (you see how evil these people were? they forced the producers not to fuck over their customers!). Today, people buying Apple (Apple here is the most famous example, but far from the only one) products and give up their freedom as customer to decide what to do with that product. These companies create precedent for each other, and the "Next Big Thing" company will deploy similar or even more extreme measures... ... it's all like the RL politics:
* Spread fear: Hackers and viruses, evil pirates and so on...
* Monopolize: I don't know who thinks today that these companies hiding behind their copyrights, patent farming, buying up the competition are not forming monopolies and and do not confine criminally the free market (well, I'm not a free market fan, but neither I am of monopolies), which is against the law. The users are better off with no choice, aren't they? :)
* Building pseudo(?)-religious movements based on brands and messiahs. The latter could be called manager-cult as it seems that the actual creators of the most used and regarded products are ignored in order to give the stage to Bill Gates, Steve Balmers, Steve Jobs, the "great men of our times".
* Making a industrial sector resembling rather to a war-torn battlefield rather than field well organised, planned, and based on collaboration.
* Degrading the users of this industry to simple product receiver, thus directly changing the content of the public discussion. Today the term "user friendly" became a cover word of being like Apple or MS.
* These messiahs knows the best for the flock, the path to the Cloud: if we surrender our freedom and become _citizens_ of their realm, we are promised to arrive the land of the free.
These companies need to be challenged and we need to actively fight against their practices!
Frankly, if browsers "can ruin the security" that must be blamed on the OS rather than the application. Security is as good as the operating system...
You are just simply ridiculous. "you hate your country": For going to have a war on the other side of the planet, and in addition, engaging in mass murdering of large number of civilians. Hell, I would hate my country for doing that and everybody has not only the right, but the obligation to stop it. Pure and simple. The fact that one born in the geographic feature that belongs to some social entity do not necessarily mean that it is "her country". It is, what it is: imposed power with spacial boundaries. "flag burning and riots": I blame them too: leaving the symbolism aside, they should have gone after the government, the armed forces, and most importantly, after Capital, whatever form it would assume, like corporations, banks, and so on. Unfortunately, this can not be done by burning flags (it's a bit funny that you're blaming them for symbolic acts...) neither with rioting: it can only be done via well organised civil war, a revolution. All they did what shot in the water. The Capital, the War, the Government looks intact to me: progressivism at its best was a failure. "TV and movies" Looking at those before and after the '60s, I don't see the difference in the mainstream. Dumb, patronizing nationalist propaganda. children saying Please, Thank You, Sir & Ma'am: I hear children saying please and thank you. The other too has nothing to do with social lubricant, but the power-hunger of some adults. Some feel sorry to get deprived of the pleasure of beating up children thus calm frustrations. ") the belief that nationalism is a Bad Thing, and therefore nations are a Bad Thing; thus people claiming to be "citizens of the world" and welcoming large-scale illegal immigration." Sure you're just being funny. Migration was and is a fact of the world. People tend to move, ya know? In fact so much, that if you look at the history, most of the time there wasn't even citizenship or border control. The only thing that would suprise me if you would not be a descendant of a (im)migrant. People born in to the biosphere of this planet. Nations are the bully boys, who set themselves up with strict imaginary lines between "us and them" and place armed thugs to rules around these imaginary lines (called border). Blaming is easy, isn't it?
To be completely precise, British people are fascinated by celebrities as much as Americans. One of this celebrity happens to be the queen and co. And, as an interesting note, the royal family happens to be celebrity in many countries, including the USA. There's no "us and them" here.
Heeeey, you forgot about the non-decent criminals. This is basically nothing else but a selective breeding of criminality. Any criminal, who organises their crime without the proper privacy tools, would be arrested. And perhaps it would be somewhat good if they could go a bit further. They could just randomly arrest citizens if they don't use proper privacy tools.
Correct me if I'm wrong here, but I don't see what is exactly the difference between the metro tiles, and the widgets on the iOS/Android home screens. With a little adjustment, one can enforce a GUI rule over the widgets. Would you imagine that on my android phone, if I get to the weather widget, it show (with animation) the current, updated, location based weather information? The MetroUI offer nothing revolutionary, it's just a skin and a set of constrains for its widgets. And the same goes for HTC Sense, iOS UI etc. The annoying part of this whole business that it should not be game changer at all. If the Microsoft believes that this "UI" is so superior, they should come up with an Android and a iOS version of it. Of course they won't, because they want to make it a signature product, which sells something completely unrelated: the OS.