It's the US Government (and the military no less)!!! You can sell anything to them, no matter how poorly marketed, expensive, or functional it is, especially if it ties in with the "war on terror"
Even without buying into intelligent design, it's not that hard to simultaneously accept evolution, and accept the texts of Genesis as a metaphor, which is the Catholic Church's current stance. There are *FAR* bigger metaphors in the Bible.
On the other hand, to play devils advocate (no pun intended!), there is a rather baffling gap in the evolutionary chain with regard to humans. Although there's quite a bit of living and fossilized evidence supporting evolution in many species (incl. mammals) found on Earth, there is bafflingly little evidence for human evolution, considering that we don't share all that much in common with the closest apes, and though there is some evidence for extinct "in-between" species, it's largely constricted to insular areas. Why, for instance, do we know so much about dinosaurs, and so little about our own ancestors?
Mind you, I don't consider this an overwhelming argument for or against evolution/creationism, although there are a few puzzling questions that still remain to be answered.
There's no reason why religion and science shouldn't be able to get along. Religious texts have been reinterpreted many, many times on both scientific and moral grounds, and I personally find the moral philosophy of the New Testament to be quite good, even in spite of whatever your spiritual/religious beliefs might be.
Has anybody else noticed that Catholicism is quickly becoming the more "accepting/open-minded" branch of Christianity, especially compared to "mainstream Christianity" in the US? Discuss.
Current Pope aside (who, from what I can tell, isn't even well-liked by most Catholics), the Catholic church has more or less apologized for most of its past crimes, and John Paul II even made a case for evolution. Likewise, the Church has definitely placed a huge emphasis on charitable works, and focused very little on evangelism (which, is effectively very much in line with the text of the New Testament).
Although I could be completely wrong, Catholicism seems to be one of the more progressive mainstream branches of Christianity, whereas the bible-belt Christians seem to be moving in the other direction. (This is rather significant, given the Church's history)
Personally, I'm a bit upset at these scientists for protesting a speech from the Pope, which is -- dare I say -- rather dogmatic of them. No scientist should be afraid of ideas, even if they contradict his own.
Although that's all fine and true, I would find it immensely difficult to believe that anybody could confuse Scrabulous for the original Scrabble, given that it's reached the status of being an American cultural icon. Virtually everyone in the US knows what Scrabble is, and should be able to deduce that Scrabulous is not Scrabble.
I don't think you could very easily prove either, that Scrabulous is adversely affecting sales of the original game.
As long as the rules for Scrabulous aren't a carbon-copy clone of the original, I'm not 100% certain that the concept of their game is novel enough to nab the Scrabulous guys on patent/copyright infringement.
Kleenex and Clorox have had similar problems, as their brand names have passed into common english usage, and no longer have enforceable trademarks.
Since the return to the moon is in effect supposed to be a stepping stone to Mars, why not send out proposals for a Mars lander that could easily be scaled back for a moon landing?
Then, plan to keep the astronauts up there for at least a month so that we can start planning for long-term habitation.
Am I crazy to be suggesting this? It would certainly reduce redundancies, and free up funds and time to focus on the other issues we'd have with a Mars mission (ie. the intermediary vehicle that would take the lander from Earth's orbit to Mars or the Moon and back)
Actually, come to think of it, I'm not seeing how a moon mission would be *that* much less difficult than a Mars mission, apart from the return journey.
When they're done with Firefox, could they spare a few guys to work on OpenOffice, The GIMP, and Blender? Those projects seem more in the need of a UI overhaul than Firefox does.
(But still, I'm excited to see that some of the "big" open-source projects are taking UI design seriously. Huzzah!)
Moreover, the people of Sweden are decidedly on their side, with the Pirate Party, which is sympathetic to TPB's cause, being one of the top ten political parties in the country.
The Socialist Party USA's presidential candidate came in 8th place in 2004, in terms of the popular vote.
Of course, that only amounted to 10,837 votes, or 0.009% of the total.
In Sweden's 2006 general election, The Pirate Party received the 10th most popular votes, or 0.63 (just below "The Feminist Initiative")
"Top ten political party" doesn't mean a thing, and TPB are clearly in violation of the law, and will likely face all sorts of penalties for moving their operations out of the country. Whether or not the law needs to change might be another issue, but I don't think there's any debate here that what they're doing is illegal...
I'd much prefer a team full of people who are competent, but not fantastic at their job over a group of people who were overconfident and arrogant any day.
"Plan for the worst, expect the best" tends to be the strategy that produces the best results in the long-run, and prevents small problems from turning into huge problems. Even though Team 2's best estimate is 20% longer than Team 1's, I'd put my money on Team 2.
Sadly, the business world these days seems reluctant to identify and root out incompetent a**holes (probably the only aspect of 'The Apprentice' that actually correlates to reality).
Suppose job Candidate #1 says: "I know everything" While Candidate #2 admits: "I still have a lot to learn"
I'd be a hell of a lot more confident in Candidate #2, simply because he's aware of, and open about his own weaknesses.
Sadly, I'm not yet on the side of the table where I get to make those calls.
This isn't like the Y2K bug, where it was "assumed" that poorly written software using 2-digit years would start to behave erratically, whereas programmers had taken this into account in all but the most basic of applications many many years ago. (Due to the manner in which the UNIX timestamp works, the Y2K bug was never an issue on the platform for applications that used the standard UNIX timestamp)
However, the current 32-bit UNIX timestamp WILL unequivocally stop working in 2038, and will cause an integer overflow in any application that relies upon a 32-bit UNIX timestamp. Simply put, it doesn't know how to count any higher. (Any software using MMDDYYYY won't directly be affected, although any routines that "translate" between UNIX and human-readable dates will fail).
Modifying the function time_t() to return a 64-bit value would solve the problem, but would cause major headaches for existing applications, as 64-bit and 32-bit data types are not inherently interchangeable. Backwards compatibility would be completely broken for virtually every application, making this option impractical.
Although 64-bit systems do not suffer this problem, 32-bit systems will most likely see the introduction of a time_t_64() function to return a 64-bit timestamp, which will require programmers to modify their code to ensure that timestamps are stored in 64-bit data types, and to convert existing stored time data to the new format. As long as we can standardize this in the near future, 30 years should be enough time for developers to modify their applications to make use of the new function.
Around 2020, kernel developers should then officially depreciate the 32-bit time_t(), and modify it so that it prints an obnoxious message to the console (perhaps along with a superfluous series of beep()s) whenever the antiquated function is called to alert users of exceedingly lazy developers.
It's not a *huge* deal just yet, but it would certainly be prudent to standardize a method of dealing with this on 32-bit systems NOW so that it doesn't become a problem in the future, especially since we can't say with 100% certainty that 32-bit devices will have disappeared by 2038.
Apple doesn't support network booting from Wireless connections. I'm not 100% sure that I've heard of any PCs that have the capability to do so either....
That said, they'll probably support Netbooting via the USB->Ethernet adapter, and I imagine that 802.11n Netboot support isn't that far off.
Still, the lack of Firewire and Target-Disk mode greatly disappoints me. I love my (aging) 12" Powerbook, although I certainly wouldn't mind it being a bit thinner, and could probably do without an optical drive. However, there were far too many compromises made with the Air that could have been readily avoided.
I suppose that losing the Ethernet port was a sacrifice that had to be made at some point due to the size of the connector, and that Apple remains morally-opposed to 4-pin firewire connectors, but still.... it wouldn't have killed them to add a second USB port, included the ethernet dongle with the base machine, or fitted it with a more capable hard drive from the get-go?
Wow. What alternate universe do you live in that the.com bubble never burst?
My career doesn't occupy my life 24/7, and my time really isn't worth enough to justify the cost of having groceries delivered, especially when the "experience" of being able to see the physical product that you are purchasing isn't available.
Sure, "the future" will be different, but is there really all that big of a need to eliminate the traditional retail sector entirely? I find it nice to have an excuse to leave home/work every now and then.
The amount of support that Ron Paul has scares me to death, because he's a nutjob, and is honest about it.
Granted, honesty is an important characteristic to have, and I do appreciate the need for the US government to stick more closely to the constitution, but the rest of his platform makes Bush look like a liberal teddy-bear.
Does the US government need substantial reform/a new direction? Perhaps. Is Ron Paul the answer? HECK NO!
Our understanding of Physics and Geology is undisputedly the best that it ever has been. One could even argue that our understanding of physical phenomena that occur for "human-sized" systems is nearly complete.
Granted, we still have a long ways to go in terms of exploiting those laws of physics to generate energy/resources, but the fact remains that our "catalogue" of Earth's natural resources is largely complete.
We know what materials are available to us, we know which of those materials can be used to generate energy, and we know that we're quickly running out of all of them. Although Nuclear fusion/fission offer the promise of "turning nothing into something", even our current supply of fissile material is most certainly finite (and we must take great care to properly re-process and re-use spent fuel).
I'd love to be proven wrong, but I'm really not sure we're going to uncover any magical new energy sources in the near future. Fusion research should of course be pursued (preferably funding several different designs, as there are quite a few worthy candidates), although every current indication shows that viable Fusion generation is going to be *really* *really* difficult, even if we do figure out how to sustain the reaction.
Bush is certainly no adveristisment for Harvard even if the folksy dumb southern act is to make him fit in with a constituancy that wouldn't like an Ivy League educated son of a Washington Beauracrat.
Bush went to Yale, so.... no, I don't think Harvard would use him as an advertisement, unless it were in jest.
However, I'm inclined to agree with you, even in spite of the number of spelling errors, and the seemingly random distribution of punctuation in your post. We can thank the Ivy League to a large extent for turning the American University system into a business, and subsequently being the first of those businesses to go corrupt.
Can anybody provide me with a legitimately good argument in favor of the private university system in the US? It just doesn't seem to work....
Whatever. My car gets fifty rods to the hogshead and that's the way I likes it! Also, it's not like we just made these things up, they came from somewhere else.
If only.
British Imperial Units and American Customary units are, in fact, two separate measurement systems that happen to use mostly the same names for their units, and approximately the same values. The system of US units was loosely based upon British Measurements in the 1700s, and wasn't updated in 1824, when the British "rationalized" their system.
For instance, 1 liquid US Gallon is equal to 0.833 British Gallons. Both systems used different interpretations of 3 different weight systems. Units of length were thankfully standardized in 1959 (although surveyors in the US still use the old definition of a yard, which is ever so slightly different).
The sick irony of it all is that Thomas Jefferson proposed in 1790 that the US adopt a decimalized system of measures loosely based around the Imperial system (eg. the "base units" would remain mostly unchanged), similar to the decimalized currency that the US introduced. The metric system wasn't implemented in France until 1791. Several subsequent US presidents recommended the adoption of the metric system, although no formal action was ever taken.
US measures have been strictly defined in terms of their metric equivalent by the government since 1893.
However, private citizens/groups aren't allowed to skirt the laws by printing a statement to that effect in a handbook, similar to the manner in which EULA tend not to hold up in court, even though "the customer agreed to it".
If the contract for your job states "we can fire you for any reason", and you're fired on the grounds of race or gender, the company would most likely be found guilty in a wrongful termination lawsuit.
In terms of free speech, things start to get hazy when it comes to private organizations, and very likely relies upon state laws, or the manner in which the university is funded. However, since the university in question is run by the state, they're directly violating the constitution.
Let me ask this. If the laptop were $100, or as with the spin off $75, what would be the incentive to spend billions of dollars on textbooks? The text book market is in for a good gutting.
I'd imagine that the cost of printing doesn't make up all that big of a portion of the cost of a textbook, although I do agree that the textbook industry is likely going to be the "next RIAA/MPAA" in terms of its outdated/draconian business practices. I wouldn't be at all shocked if an investigation revealed widespread collusion and anti-competitive practices in the industry.
However, as the case currently is, we have hardly any any good public-domain educational materials suitable for general consumption online. If we did, the normal laws of economics would kick in, and the price of textbooks would be driven down to reasonable levels, and we'd be able to print those public-domain textbooks on dead trees for very little money.
Dover Books already does this for out-of-print and public-domain works, and is accordingly extremely popular in schools for teaching literature. The idea that the publishing industry can charge $15 for a paperback is nuts. A typical small paperback from dover, on the other hand, typically costs between $1 and $2.
In fact, the textbook industry *IS* promoting digital textbooks, at prices that are either similar to, or greater than existing textbooks (not to mention the costs of computers to display them on). So far, administrators are blindly gobbling it up, and many universities are beginning to promote the model, whilst educators helplessly look on. These "digital books" are of course, DRM-laden, and are sold on a per-student basis, preventing reuse or resale.
Even the best LCD panels today have miserable pixel density compared to paper, and I find that studying out of a textbook is far more useful than reading off of a screen. Go into your favorite text editor, write a phrase, and then shrink it down to the smallest size you can easily read. Now, grab the financial (stock quote) section of The Wall Street Journal, and hold it up next to the screen. Note that the dead tree next to your beautiful high-tech LCD panel easily contains 20 times as much text/information over the same area as your screen. Given the low cost of the OLPC, I can't imagine that its screen is all that fantastic, either, making its efficacy as an e-book reader even more dubious.
I'm also not making the argument that "just because we don't currently use computers, we shouldn't explore that route in the future." My point was that 1:1 laptop initiatives have already been tried, and failed even in districts that already have existing infrastructure and lots of money. There's hardly any evidence that computers increase the educational content of a class, and quite a bit of evidence to the contrary.
The failures were not a direct result of the technology, but rather, the fact that good educational software either doesn't exist, or isn't flexible/reliable enough to work into lesson plans without considerably overhead, and didn't seem to actually provide any tangible advantage. Although the OLPC's UI is nifty for a 1st grade classroom, the project has thus far done very little to reconcile the software/educational divide, which was, and still remains to be the biggest hurdle of putting computers in the classroom.
Maybe the software's not there yet, maybe the hardware's not there yet (a revolutionary new interface design perhaps, with multi-touch, and software designed to use it...), or maybe -- just maybe -- computers simply don't belong in the classroom. Perhaps kids learn best from another human.
I maintain my view that the money spent on OLPC would be put to better use by hiring more teachers, attracting better-qualified teachers (ie. pay them more), and reducing class sizes.
Virginia Tech was completely justified in its decision to let Seung-Hui Cho remain on campus. Fictional writing, does not make somebody a serial killer. I could possibly see the case for his removal if direct and specific threats were made, although there is no evidence for this...
What happened at Virginia Tech was simply a result of probability and bad gun control laws. Shit happens. Tons of people walk around with undiagnosed medical illnesses. Buying a gun in Virginia is (still) hilariously easy, and legal to do. Do the math. The odds of a student having a mental breakdown are low, but still not nonexistent. Multiply that by the odds that the student owns a gun, and you get the exact probability of a VT-like incident occurring.
Granted, Seung-Hui had been diagnosed with a medical illness, but also wasn't deemed to be a danger to himself or others (else he'd have been institutionalized, or placed under close watch). Perfectly "sane" people can very easily "snap" in a heartbeat, or those who are already ill can suddenly get much worse, although, again... the odds of this occurring are rather low.
The one factor in this equation that we *CAN* reduce is gun ownership, and it's pretty easy to see that more guns does not necessarily mean less crime, especially when the worst crimes (and *most* crimes) are a far cry from premeditated mafia/gang-style killings. Good people do bad things all the time, and it's best not to give us access to devices which can kill a room full of people, lest our emotions get the best of us.
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It's the US Government (and the military no less)!!! You can sell anything to them, no matter how poorly marketed, expensive, or functional it is, especially if it ties in with the "war on terror"
By any chance was it a 6-fingered rat?
....2 hours later....
My name is Josephoartigasia monesi. You killed my species. Prepare to die.
Sadly, real news more and more seems to resemble The Onion these days.
Perhaps even more alarmingly, quite a few of their more outlandish stories have actually come true several years later.
(This being one of the funniest such stories...)
Even without buying into intelligent design, it's not that hard to simultaneously accept evolution, and accept the texts of Genesis as a metaphor, which is the Catholic Church's current stance. There are *FAR* bigger metaphors in the Bible.
On the other hand, to play devils advocate (no pun intended!), there is a rather baffling gap in the evolutionary chain with regard to humans. Although there's quite a bit of living and fossilized evidence supporting evolution in many species (incl. mammals) found on Earth, there is bafflingly little evidence for human evolution, considering that we don't share all that much in common with the closest apes, and though there is some evidence for extinct "in-between" species, it's largely constricted to insular areas. Why, for instance, do we know so much about dinosaurs, and so little about our own ancestors?
Mind you, I don't consider this an overwhelming argument for or against evolution/creationism, although there are a few puzzling questions that still remain to be answered.
There's no reason why religion and science shouldn't be able to get along. Religious texts have been reinterpreted many, many times on both scientific and moral grounds, and I personally find the moral philosophy of the New Testament to be quite good, even in spite of whatever your spiritual/religious beliefs might be.
Has anybody else noticed that Catholicism is quickly becoming the more "accepting/open-minded" branch of Christianity, especially compared to "mainstream Christianity" in the US? Discuss.
Current Pope aside (who, from what I can tell, isn't even well-liked by most Catholics), the Catholic church has more or less apologized for most of its past crimes, and John Paul II even made a case for evolution. Likewise, the Church has definitely placed a huge emphasis on charitable works, and focused very little on evangelism (which, is effectively very much in line with the text of the New Testament).
Although I could be completely wrong, Catholicism seems to be one of the more progressive mainstream branches of Christianity, whereas the bible-belt Christians seem to be moving in the other direction. (This is rather significant, given the Church's history)
Personally, I'm a bit upset at these scientists for protesting a speech from the Pope, which is -- dare I say -- rather dogmatic of them. No scientist should be afraid of ideas, even if they contradict his own.
Although that's all fine and true, I would find it immensely difficult to believe that anybody could confuse Scrabulous for the original Scrabble, given that it's reached the status of being an American cultural icon. Virtually everyone in the US knows what Scrabble is, and should be able to deduce that Scrabulous is not Scrabble.
I don't think you could very easily prove either, that Scrabulous is adversely affecting sales of the original game.
As long as the rules for Scrabulous aren't a carbon-copy clone of the original, I'm not 100% certain that the concept of their game is novel enough to nab the Scrabulous guys on patent/copyright infringement.
Kleenex and Clorox have had similar problems, as their brand names have passed into common english usage, and no longer have enforceable trademarks.
Since the return to the moon is in effect supposed to be a stepping stone to Mars, why not send out proposals for a Mars lander that could easily be scaled back for a moon landing?
Then, plan to keep the astronauts up there for at least a month so that we can start planning for long-term habitation.
Am I crazy to be suggesting this? It would certainly reduce redundancies, and free up funds and time to focus on the other issues we'd have with a Mars mission (ie. the intermediary vehicle that would take the lander from Earth's orbit to Mars or the Moon and back)
Actually, come to think of it, I'm not seeing how a moon mission would be *that* much less difficult than a Mars mission, apart from the return journey.
When they're done with Firefox, could they spare a few guys to work on OpenOffice, The GIMP, and Blender? Those projects seem more in the need of a UI overhaul than Firefox does.
(But still, I'm excited to see that some of the "big" open-source projects are taking UI design seriously. Huzzah!)
The Socialist Party USA's presidential candidate came in 8th place in 2004, in terms of the popular vote.
Of course, that only amounted to 10,837 votes, or 0.009% of the total.
In Sweden's 2006 general election, The Pirate Party received the 10th most popular votes, or 0.63 (just below "The Feminist Initiative")
"Top ten political party" doesn't mean a thing, and TPB are clearly in violation of the law, and will likely face all sorts of penalties for moving their operations out of the country. Whether or not the law needs to change might be another issue, but I don't think there's any debate here that what they're doing is illegal...
I'd much prefer a team full of people who are competent, but not fantastic at their job over a group of people who were overconfident and arrogant any day.
"Plan for the worst, expect the best" tends to be the strategy that produces the best results in the long-run, and prevents small problems from turning into huge problems. Even though Team 2's best estimate is 20% longer than Team 1's, I'd put my money on Team 2.
Sadly, the business world these days seems reluctant to identify and root out incompetent a**holes (probably the only aspect of 'The Apprentice' that actually correlates to reality).
Suppose job Candidate #1 says: "I know everything"
While Candidate #2 admits: "I still have a lot to learn"
I'd be a hell of a lot more confident in Candidate #2, simply because he's aware of, and open about his own weaknesses.
Sadly, I'm not yet on the side of the table where I get to make those calls.
WRONG.
This isn't like the Y2K bug, where it was "assumed" that poorly written software using 2-digit years would start to behave erratically, whereas programmers had taken this into account in all but the most basic of applications many many years ago. (Due to the manner in which the UNIX timestamp works, the Y2K bug was never an issue on the platform for applications that used the standard UNIX timestamp)
However, the current 32-bit UNIX timestamp WILL unequivocally stop working in 2038, and will cause an integer overflow in any application that relies upon a 32-bit UNIX timestamp. Simply put, it doesn't know how to count any higher. (Any software using MMDDYYYY won't directly be affected, although any routines that "translate" between UNIX and human-readable dates will fail).
Modifying the function time_t() to return a 64-bit value would solve the problem, but would cause major headaches for existing applications, as 64-bit and 32-bit data types are not inherently interchangeable. Backwards compatibility would be completely broken for virtually every application, making this option impractical.
Although 64-bit systems do not suffer this problem, 32-bit systems will most likely see the introduction of a time_t_64() function to return a 64-bit timestamp, which will require programmers to modify their code to ensure that timestamps are stored in 64-bit data types, and to convert existing stored time data to the new format. As long as we can standardize this in the near future, 30 years should be enough time for developers to modify their applications to make use of the new function.
Around 2020, kernel developers should then officially depreciate the 32-bit time_t(), and modify it so that it prints an obnoxious message to the console (perhaps along with a superfluous series of beep()s) whenever the antiquated function is called to alert users of exceedingly lazy developers.
It's not a *huge* deal just yet, but it would certainly be prudent to standardize a method of dealing with this on 32-bit systems NOW so that it doesn't become a problem in the future, especially since we can't say with 100% certainty that 32-bit devices will have disappeared by 2038.
No wired ethernet. Weighs less than a Nomad. Lame.
Apple doesn't support network booting from Wireless connections. I'm not 100% sure that I've heard of any PCs that have the capability to do so either....
That said, they'll probably support Netbooting via the USB->Ethernet adapter, and I imagine that 802.11n Netboot support isn't that far off.
Still, the lack of Firewire and Target-Disk mode greatly disappoints me. I love my (aging) 12" Powerbook, although I certainly wouldn't mind it being a bit thinner, and could probably do without an optical drive. However, there were far too many compromises made with the Air that could have been readily avoided.
I suppose that losing the Ethernet port was a sacrifice that had to be made at some point due to the size of the connector, and that Apple remains morally-opposed to 4-pin firewire connectors, but still.... it wouldn't have killed them to add a second USB port, included the ethernet dongle with the base machine, or fitted it with a more capable hard drive from the get-go?
Let me guess..... Duke Nukem is being added as one of the character choices?
Wow. What alternate universe do you live in that the .com bubble never burst?
My career doesn't occupy my life 24/7, and my time really isn't worth enough to justify the cost of having groceries delivered, especially when the "experience" of being able to see the physical product that you are purchasing isn't available.
Sure, "the future" will be different, but is there really all that big of a need to eliminate the traditional retail sector entirely? I find it nice to have an excuse to leave home/work every now and then.
9.5) If lawyer survives, sue him for cruelty to animals, and possession of illegal weapons.
The amount of support that Ron Paul has scares me to death, because he's a nutjob, and is honest about it.
Granted, honesty is an important characteristic to have, and I do appreciate the need for the US government to stick more closely to the constitution, but the rest of his platform makes Bush look like a liberal teddy-bear.
Does the US government need substantial reform/a new direction? Perhaps.
Is Ron Paul the answer? HECK NO!
"Any person capable of acquiring a position of power should be no means be allowed to occupy that position"
No idea who said it first, but it sort of does ring true.
Our understanding of Physics and Geology is undisputedly the best that it ever has been. One could even argue that our understanding of physical phenomena that occur for "human-sized" systems is nearly complete.
Granted, we still have a long ways to go in terms of exploiting those laws of physics to generate energy/resources, but the fact remains that our "catalogue" of Earth's natural resources is largely complete.
We know what materials are available to us, we know which of those materials can be used to generate energy, and we know that we're quickly running out of all of them. Although Nuclear fusion/fission offer the promise of "turning nothing into something", even our current supply of fissile material is most certainly finite (and we must take great care to properly re-process and re-use spent fuel).
I'd love to be proven wrong, but I'm really not sure we're going to uncover any magical new energy sources in the near future. Fusion research should of course be pursued (preferably funding several different designs, as there are quite a few worthy candidates), although every current indication shows that viable Fusion generation is going to be *really* *really* difficult, even if we do figure out how to sustain the reaction.
You're absolutely right. Apple should start giving tons of money to its biggest competitor to license an inferior technology.
WTF are you smoking, mate?
Bush went to Yale, so.... no, I don't think Harvard would use him as an advertisement, unless it were in jest.
However, I'm inclined to agree with you, even in spite of the number of spelling errors, and the seemingly random distribution of punctuation in your post. We can thank the Ivy League to a large extent for turning the American University system into a business, and subsequently being the first of those businesses to go corrupt.
Can anybody provide me with a legitimately good argument in favor of the private university system in the US? It just doesn't seem to work....
If only.
British Imperial Units and American Customary units are, in fact, two separate measurement systems that happen to use mostly the same names for their units, and approximately the same values. The system of US units was loosely based upon British Measurements in the 1700s, and wasn't updated in 1824, when the British "rationalized" their system.
For instance, 1 liquid US Gallon is equal to 0.833 British Gallons. Both systems used different interpretations of 3 different weight systems. Units of length were thankfully standardized in 1959 (although surveyors in the US still use the old definition of a yard, which is ever so slightly different).
I could go on, but wikipedia does a pretty good job of explaining the mess.
The sick irony of it all is that Thomas Jefferson proposed in 1790 that the US adopt a decimalized system of measures loosely based around the Imperial system (eg. the "base units" would remain mostly unchanged), similar to the decimalized currency that the US introduced. The metric system wasn't implemented in France until 1791. Several subsequent US presidents recommended the adoption of the metric system, although no formal action was ever taken.
US measures have been strictly defined in terms of their metric equivalent by the government since 1893.
Sigh.....
I was never making that argument.
However, private citizens/groups aren't allowed to skirt the laws by printing a statement to that effect in a handbook, similar to the manner in which EULA tend not to hold up in court, even though "the customer agreed to it".
If the contract for your job states "we can fire you for any reason", and you're fired on the grounds of race or gender, the company would most likely be found guilty in a wrongful termination lawsuit.
In terms of free speech, things start to get hazy when it comes to private organizations, and very likely relies upon state laws, or the manner in which the university is funded. However, since the university in question is run by the state, they're directly violating the constitution.
I'd imagine that the cost of printing doesn't make up all that big of a portion of the cost of a textbook, although I do agree that the textbook industry is likely going to be the "next RIAA/MPAA" in terms of its outdated/draconian business practices. I wouldn't be at all shocked if an investigation revealed widespread collusion and anti-competitive practices in the industry.
However, as the case currently is, we have hardly any any good public-domain educational materials suitable for general consumption online. If we did, the normal laws of economics would kick in, and the price of textbooks would be driven down to reasonable levels, and we'd be able to print those public-domain textbooks on dead trees for very little money.
Dover Books already does this for out-of-print and public-domain works, and is accordingly extremely popular in schools for teaching literature. The idea that the publishing industry can charge $15 for a paperback is nuts. A typical small paperback from dover, on the other hand, typically costs between $1 and $2.
In fact, the textbook industry *IS* promoting digital textbooks, at prices that are either similar to, or greater than existing textbooks (not to mention the costs of computers to display them on). So far, administrators are blindly gobbling it up, and many universities are beginning to promote the model, whilst educators helplessly look on. These "digital books" are of course, DRM-laden, and are sold on a per-student basis, preventing reuse or resale.
Even the best LCD panels today have miserable pixel density compared to paper, and I find that studying out of a textbook is far more useful than reading off of a screen. Go into your favorite text editor, write a phrase, and then shrink it down to the smallest size you can easily read. Now, grab the financial (stock quote) section of The Wall Street Journal, and hold it up next to the screen. Note that the dead tree next to your beautiful high-tech LCD panel easily contains 20 times as much text/information over the same area as your screen. Given the low cost of the OLPC, I can't imagine that its screen is all that fantastic, either, making its efficacy as an e-book reader even more dubious.
I'm also not making the argument that "just because we don't currently use computers, we shouldn't explore that route in the future." My point was that 1:1 laptop initiatives have already been tried, and failed even in districts that already have existing infrastructure and lots of money. There's hardly any evidence that computers increase the educational content of a class, and quite a bit of evidence to the contrary.
The failures were not a direct result of the technology, but rather, the fact that good educational software either doesn't exist, or isn't flexible/reliable enough to work into lesson plans without considerably overhead, and didn't seem to actually provide any tangible advantage. Although the OLPC's UI is nifty for a 1st grade classroom, the project has thus far done very little to reconcile the software/educational divide, which was, and still remains to be the biggest hurdle of putting computers in the classroom.
Maybe the software's not there yet, maybe the hardware's not there yet (a revolutionary new interface design perhaps, with multi-touch, and software designed to use it...), or maybe -- just maybe -- computers simply don't belong in the classroom. Perhaps kids learn best from another human.
I maintain my view that the money spent on OLPC would be put to better use by hiring more teachers, attracting better-qualified teachers (ie. pay them more), and reducing class sizes.
I'll take it a step further.
Virginia Tech was completely justified in its decision to let Seung-Hui Cho remain on campus. Fictional writing, does not make somebody a serial killer. I could possibly see the case for his removal if direct and specific threats were made, although there is no evidence for this...
What happened at Virginia Tech was simply a result of probability and bad gun control laws. Shit happens. Tons of people walk around with undiagnosed medical illnesses. Buying a gun in Virginia is (still) hilariously easy, and legal to do. Do the math. The odds of a student having a mental breakdown are low, but still not nonexistent. Multiply that by the odds that the student owns a gun, and you get the exact probability of a VT-like incident occurring.
Granted, Seung-Hui had been diagnosed with a medical illness, but also wasn't deemed to be a danger to himself or others (else he'd have been institutionalized, or placed under close watch). Perfectly "sane" people can very easily "snap" in a heartbeat, or those who are already ill can suddenly get much worse, although, again... the odds of this occurring are rather low.
The one factor in this equation that we *CAN* reduce is gun ownership, and it's pretty easy to see that more guns does not necessarily mean less crime, especially when the worst crimes (and *most* crimes) are a far cry from premeditated mafia/gang-style killings. Good people do bad things all the time, and it's best not to give us access to devices which can kill a room full of people, lest our emotions get the best of us.