Oh sorry, I forgot that a true Linux fan never points out the areas in which Linux is behind and can be improved. A true Linux fan insists that Linux is superior in whatever regard, no matter what the evidence..
It seems to me it is more likely to help my post's argument to mention I'm a Linux fan; I really do want Linux to succeed, but I am realistic about acknowledging it's weaknesses, rather than rabidly defending Linux to it's death. That is the only way to improve a product - to acknowledge it's weak points. I develop mainly on Windows for a living, and I hate Windows, I would much rather be doing the type of work I'm doing now on Linux, but Linux just is not up to scratch on nearly enough fronts to be viable for our clients or us. I'm not just some Microsoft product lover who doesn't really know much about Linux, which is the main reason I mentioned it. I've done quite a lot of Linux development, both for myself and some for work. I've got quite a lot of experience with emacs/makefiles etc, and sorry, but I'm much more productive in Visual Studio. And no, I don't use the mouse for anything, keyboard shortcuts for both. It's a better product. Let's all stop this religous crap and just admit it, so that we can focus on doing what needs to be done to improve it.
It's like the mindcraft tests that showed NT/IIS faster than Apache. Everybody cried foul, insisting the tests were rigged, and that Linux was much better. So the tests were repeated in a fair way, and it turned out NT/IIS was actually faster. Only then did some people actually start to acknowledge that there were parts of the networking stuff that could be sped up in Linux, and they used that to actually improve Linux, but this only happened because these people were willing to admit that it could be better.
"I believe that a truly dedicated kid, one who enjoys programming, will devour (or at least try) every new development environment they come across. "
This is true, and seems to be a common viewpoint on this thread, but neglects an important point - these truly dedicated kids will maybe form 1% of programmers, and the other 99% or so of programmers will learn through the usual means, like studying at university, and then go out to produce far far more software *for windows* than that other 1% will ever hope to produce for unix/linux.
Linux needs to be attractive to *many* programmers, not just a tiny handful who love to thinker and will find unix automatically.
"I find it humerous that the democrats that were on TV last week expousing the virtues of an electorial college system (when it was assumed that Gore would win the EC, but lose the popular vote) are now calling for it's removal and complaining how unfair it is:) "
Yes there are lot of people like that, but in defence of Gore, in case people read this and cast him into the same crowd.. from his speech thingy when he thought he'd lost (but won the popular vote) he seemed like a pretty good sport about the whole thing, pretty much saying that that is how the election works based on the constitution, which is the most important thing.
According to his post i was claimed to be the sqrt of *1* not *-1*.. isn't that the problem he had with this? Haven't read the article so I'm not sure what it does say..
The thing is, either something is encrypted strongly, or it's not really encrypted at all. Sure, you might discourage "casual in-listeners" from, say, reading your emails, by using weak encryption, but then who cares? That data can't have been that sensitive then. If somebody at my dial-up ISP decided they wanted to for some reason (e.g. the police decided they wanted to snoop my communications, or a competitor looking for trade secrets bribes one of their tech staff, whatever, there are probably 101 possibilities) they could quite easily build a log of every single packet sent and received by me, simple as that. Whatever reasons "they" might have, I'll have no way of knowing if it's just some "casual in-listener", or somebody who means business. If you have sensitive data, and/or you're serious about encryption, it's incredibly foolish to take a chance. If your data isn't that sensitive, why bother? I don't really believe in the concept of "inbetween" encryption. If it's, say, a very personal email to my girlfriend or something like that.. nothing I would *worry* about keeping from prying eyes, but also something I wouldn't want just anybody to read, then I can *still* just as easily use whatever weak encryption I might *usually* use to encrypt my emails. In which case it matters not a jot if you're xmitting via satellite, modem, cable, fiber, whatever. So I still don't see how this is an issue that relates to satellite. It's the same as any other internet communicates medium - choose your own encryption *at your computer*, anything else is a waste of time. Once a packet goes out of your computer, there are too many unknowns to guarantee anything.
The majority of ISP customers believe that the internet consists of the web and email - truly a horribly watered down interpretation of what the Internet really is - or could be. Yet based on these public opinions, ISP's dilute their services with crap. If we allow popular perception to define what the internet of the future is going to be, then the internet of the future *will* only be web and email.
The public should somehow be taught that the internet has the capacity to be really amazing and useful; if people understood the true potential of the internet, then maybe they would start demanding more from ISP's. I'd like to think so anyway.. *sigh*.. I'm afraid of a situation one where I try to connect to my Linux box at work from home with vnc and not getting through because my ISP has decided that the only remote-access capabilities I may use are a few Microsoft-approved bloated proprietary protocols, or something like that. Right now, the internet has the potential to be turned into a completely useless watered down advertising experience..
"Plus there is the fact that anything beamed to you is probably also being beamed to everyone in a multiple state area around you. I sure hope they have some *strong* encryption built in. They ought to be doing something better than DES, no?"
Whatever you transmit with weak/no encryption on the Internet is *anyway* completely insecure - Carnivore aside, your packets can be read by anybody on the route. If you assume that non-satellite internet is somehow any more secure than satellite internet then you're a fool. What it boils down to is that if you want to transmit something securely, strong-encrypt it, and there is nothing to stop you from doing this on your satellite connection. So your point is entirely a non-issue.
To add to that, they probably only tested it on one or two hardware platforms as well - and I wouldn't be surprised if the hardware specs were specified by MS.
I don't think so - remember, Jon Katz was being *directly attacked* here, so for him to become defensive, fine, I don't blame him. But some people here get emotional and hostile even when Katz posts some random opinions on politics or the internet or school bullying or just about anything, in fact.
Well, I'm a South African, schooled during the apartheid era. To compare what gets taught in "South African history" before 1994 and after 1994, you would think they were different countries.. the history I was taught was very one-sided in favour of whites.. now it's turned around.. you get a fairly one-sided black perspective. Also, when I went to school, school prayer and classes preaching Christianity were mandated, but that has now been dropped, and is probably now closer to American schools in that regard - i.e. they *still* preach Christianity, and they still pray in schools and so on, but it is more of a voluntary thing that individuals can opt out of, or do stuff more specific to their own religions.
How much do your schools' history classes focus on the ugly side of American history (like genocide of indians, the until-recently oppression of black people, the until somewhat recently lack of women's rights, prohibition etc) ? Just asking.. curious. My perception of American schools comes from what I see in TV and movies.. and from this side, it looks like American schools are full of pro-USA patriotism propaganda, all that "this country is so great" BS entrenched in all the little kids brains from a young age. Like I say, I can only comment on what I see in TV and movies.
This is purely a money issue. As far as attracting people interested in south africa goes, southafrica.com is by far more valuable than any other domain name. This has absolutely zero, zip, nothing, void, bugger-all to do with censorship.
<p>Both him and the SA government, it seems, want to use the domain for commercial purposes, so in general I think he is entitled to it purely because 'he got there first'. Although then why should famous people be more entitled to domain names of their names if other people got there first?
If an American businessman running an American business, then let him use the ".us" domain. Since when do Americans get more right to ".com" than anybody else?
According to the article, it's the parent's of the kid who want his record expunged. They don't really say whether or not he wants that.
Regarding universities, I'd be inclined to disagree with you. Every university I know of is exactly like a school in the regard that it holds it's image above the welfare of it's own students. Better to sacrifice a few students here and there, even good ones, if it avoids the possibility of the University getting negative press.
I remember the University I went to kept adding extra charges to all the courses.. extra charges for lab use, for photocopies.. every possible expense was (over)charged - still the university claimed they were struggling so much with money - but damn, did they have the most beautiful, well-maintained gardens such as I've seldom seen anywhere else. Strange.
Of course, it isn't the gardens that lead me to my opinions.. it's other incidents I somehow got involved in.. but thats another story..
"It may (we hope) have been an oversight, and perhaps you had no intention to mislead your audience, but this omission did, in fact, constitute plagiarism, and people had every right to openly accuse you and call for a correction"
Oh come on.. anyone with half a brain can tell that Jon Katz is not by any means a plagiarist. He's been contributing original material to/. for many months, and been writing for decades. Let's be rational about this; if he did make a mistake now, it was obviously a tiny one out of a very prolific career.. you people harp on this one miniscule incident as if it defines his entire writing career or something. That's clearly a load of crap.
This really is a non-issue. Drop it already, and leave the guy alone. You don't have to keep attacking him.
I think it's perfectly healthy and normal for people to disagree, even strongly, with a writer's opinions.. but some of the hostility towards Jon Katz seen on/. goes far beyond "healthy and normal" disagreeing - some people here seem to react incredibly emotionally and aggressively defensive, as if Katz is making some kind of attack on them or something - I'm guessing that the *real* problem here doesn't like on Katz' side of this issue.. something to think about.. speaking for myself, I know I'm guilty of a lot of anger "projection"... misplacing innate anger towards things other than the real sources..
"I guess what I'm thinking is that he was deceptive. I think honesty and integrity are important"
I kind of got the impression that the guy was already fairly vocal about his opinions before this incident, and many people knew his opinions - so how is this deceptive? If he had pretended to be all into the homecoming thing, and then pulled this stunt, *thats* deceptive. Doesn't sound that way to me though.
For years Jon Katz prolifically writes what is clearly his own original material; he paraquotes one article, gives credit to the article *in front of the article*, and suddenly some pathetic whiner with absolutely nothing to show for his life is accusing him of plaguarism? I don't think so. How many of the rest of you whining about Katz can actually claim to have produced anything useful in your lives? Instead of sitting around complaining about other people who are doing more for society than you are, go out and do something constructive yourselves.
I can understand that some people might simply not like Katz' work. That is fine, it is healthy and normal for people to have differing opinions, and nobody who has ever produced anything has been without critics. But the reaction many people here have to Katz is clearly beyond "healthy and normal"; they react to his posts like they represent some kind of personal, emotional attack on them, becoming zealously and aggressively defensive. I don't see how one person's opinions can provoke such over-emotional reactions unless there is some sort of personal 'emotional involvement' on the part of the people overreacting. Psychologically, it's basically the idea that if something can upset you so much, it must hold some real meaning for you.. (or it's 'projection'.. )
Uh.. thats exactly what he did, he took a stand, and in a way that brought far more attention to his opinions than a pathetic letter to some editor, even if published, would have received.
I would be extremely proud if it were my son. Most people are so easy to subject into conformist behaviour, and the entire school system is designed to encourage it - you have to follow hundreds of pathetic, completely meaningless rules, the value system is completely warped, you are encouraged to not think, etc.
"On the other hand if he wrote a paper or letter to the editor protesting the Homecoming King/Queen status quo I would applaud him and stand behind his personal conviction"
No; you probably would never have read his letter, nor heard his opinion. Even if you had, you probably would have forgotten about it by lunchtime, and I doubt you would have even discussed it with your friends.
Quite frankly, you sound spineless - you advocate making a protest by going through society's predefined, narrow, ineffective supplied "standard" means of making "protests" - a typical "don't rock the boat" attitude.
"Most "mind upload" or "brain reprogramming" representations are much closer to mysticism than technology; waving a few buzzwords is not science fiction"
Yes, that is very true. I think you didn't make your point particularly clearly in your previous post.. sounds about right now.
"Ok, maybe someday it might happen, but nobody's gotten it anywhere close to convincingly right yet"
Uh.. and since when was science fiction supposed to be about the stuff that humans has already gotten right? Last I heard, most sci-fi revolved around the stuff that "someday might happen, but nobody has gotten anywhere close to convincingly right yet".
I guess I must've been confused.. will have to throw away a bunch of my Asimov's now..
"Personally, I'd rather a candidate didn't tailor his answers to the group he's writing / speaking to..."
Did you actually read the full answers? I read all of them, and in almost every single one Bush sounded to me like his opinions were completely the opposite of what seem to be the popular opinions on/.... from intellectual property protection (Bush is obviously extremely pro-corporation here) to the war on drugs, he is purely preaching to your average man-in-the-middle-of-the-IQ-bell-curve here - which probably isn't where your average/. reader is.
"and say anything that a given group of people wanna hear to try to scrounge up a vote"
Hmm.. strange you say that, considering that when I read his answers thats exactly what Bush sounded like to me.
Actually, both Bush and Gore sound that way to me. It's too bad that one of them are going to win, because some of the other candidates actually sound pretty intelligent. I guess thats what happens when you live way over on the high end of the IQ bell curve, when Bush and Gore are clearly targeting their campaigns squarely at 1 standard deviation from the mean..
"but they also have a vested interest in having healthy, affluent consumers purchasing their products"
Of course, you forget to mention that corporations (in particular actually) also have a vested interest in ensuring that the majority of the buying public are naive, easy to pursuade/sucker, doesn't demand quality (how many technically-illiterate people do you know who actually understand that when Windows crashes, it's because the product is defective, and it's not their fault, and that they should demand better quality?), and follow trends like sheep. This is exactly why corporations should stay *out* of education - the competition of capitalism works better when people can think for themselves, because when people are capable of criticising the stuff that is being shoved down their throats, then there is more incentive to actually produce quality goods.
"Anyone who thinks that corporations have any place within schools is an idiot"
Frankly, I find the idea that government has such a huge hand in education equally innocuous. What more perfect place for a government to brainwash it's citizens with it's propaganda?... the USA is not magically exempt from this happening either.
I don't have any suggestions though. Clearly corporations and government both have their share of alterior motives, but what alternatives are there? How can we get education systems to be more focused on science, math, and teaching people to actually think? I know I had my share of religuous and nationalist propaganda when I was at school.. and people weren't taught to think but rather to follow hundreds of stupid meaningless rules and just do what they're told.. wasn't really so bad though overall, we had some pretty good teachers (and some damn lousy ones).. actually the biggest problem was probably that there was very little focus on education, and a lot of focus on cricket, soccer etc.
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Oh sorry, I forgot that a true Linux fan never points out the areas in which Linux is behind and can be improved. A true Linux fan insists that Linux is superior in whatever regard, no matter what the evidence ..
It seems to me it is more likely to help my post's argument to mention I'm a Linux fan; I really do want Linux to succeed, but I am realistic about acknowledging it's weaknesses, rather than rabidly defending Linux to it's death. That is the only way to improve a product - to acknowledge it's weak points. I develop mainly on Windows for a living, and I hate Windows, I would much rather be doing the type of work I'm doing now on Linux, but Linux just is not up to scratch on nearly enough fronts to be viable for our clients or us. I'm not just some Microsoft product lover who doesn't really know much about Linux, which is the main reason I mentioned it. I've done quite a lot of Linux development, both for myself and some for work. I've got quite a lot of experience with emacs/makefiles etc, and sorry, but I'm much more productive in Visual Studio. And no, I don't use the mouse for anything, keyboard shortcuts for both. It's a better product. Let's all stop this religous crap and just admit it, so that we can focus on doing what needs to be done to improve it.
It's like the mindcraft tests that showed NT/IIS faster than Apache. Everybody cried foul, insisting the tests were rigged, and that Linux was much better. So the tests were repeated in a fair way, and it turned out NT/IIS was actually faster. Only then did some people actually start to acknowledge that there were parts of the networking stuff that could be sped up in Linux, and they used that to actually improve Linux, but this only happened because these people were willing to admit that it could be better.
"I believe that a truly dedicated kid, one who enjoys programming, will devour (or at least try) every new development environment they come across. "
This is true, and seems to be a common viewpoint on this thread, but neglects an important point - these truly dedicated kids will maybe form 1% of programmers, and the other 99% or so of programmers will learn through the usual means, like studying at university, and then go out to produce far far more software *for windows* than that other 1% will ever hope to produce for unix/linux.
Linux needs to be attractive to *many* programmers, not just a tiny handful who love to thinker and will find unix automatically.
"I find it humerous that the democrats that were on TV last week expousing the virtues of an electorial college system (when it was assumed that Gore would win the EC, but lose the popular vote) are now calling for it's removal and complaining how unfair it is :) "
Yes there are lot of people like that, but in defence of Gore, in case people read this and cast him into the same crowd .. from his speech thingy when he thought he'd lost (but won the popular vote) he seemed like a pretty good sport about the whole thing, pretty much saying that that is how the election works based on the constitution, which is the most important thing.
According to his post i was claimed to be the sqrt of *1* not *-1* .. isn't that the problem he had with this? Haven't read the article so I'm not sure what it does say ..
When it comes to corruption and bribery, this means absolutely nothing. Sorry.
The thing is, either something is encrypted strongly, or it's not really encrypted at all. Sure, you might discourage "casual in-listeners" from, say, reading your emails, by using weak encryption, but then who cares? That data can't have been that sensitive then. If somebody at my dial-up ISP decided they wanted to for some reason (e.g. the police decided they wanted to snoop my communications, or a competitor looking for trade secrets bribes one of their tech staff, whatever, there are probably 101 possibilities) they could quite easily build a log of every single packet sent and received by me, simple as that. Whatever reasons "they" might have, I'll have no way of knowing if it's just some "casual in-listener", or somebody who means business. If you have sensitive data, and/or you're serious about encryption, it's incredibly foolish to take a chance. If your data isn't that sensitive, why bother? I don't really believe in the concept of "inbetween" encryption. If it's, say, a very personal email to my girlfriend or something like that .. nothing I would *worry* about keeping from prying eyes, but also something I wouldn't want just anybody to read, then I can *still* just as easily use whatever weak encryption I might *usually* use to encrypt my emails. In which case it matters not a jot if you're xmitting via satellite, modem, cable, fiber, whatever. So I still don't see how this is an issue that relates to satellite. It's the same as any other internet communicates medium - choose your own encryption *at your computer*, anything else is a waste of time. Once a packet goes out of your computer, there are too many unknowns to guarantee anything.
The majority of ISP customers believe that the internet consists of the web and email - truly a horribly watered down interpretation of what the Internet really is - or could be. Yet based on these public opinions, ISP's dilute their services with crap. If we allow popular perception to define what the internet of the future is going to be, then the internet of the future *will* only be web and email.
The public should somehow be taught that the internet has the capacity to be really amazing and useful; if people understood the true potential of the internet, then maybe they would start demanding more from ISP's. I'd like to think so anyway .. *sigh* .. I'm afraid of a situation one where I try to connect to my Linux box at work from home with vnc and not getting through because my ISP has decided that the only remote-access capabilities I may use are a few Microsoft-approved bloated proprietary protocols, or something like that. Right now, the internet has the potential to be turned into a completely useless watered down advertising experience ..
"Plus there is the fact that anything beamed to you is probably also being beamed to everyone in a multiple state area around you. I sure hope they have some *strong* encryption built in. They ought to be doing something better than DES, no?"
Whatever you transmit with weak/no encryption on the Internet is *anyway* completely insecure - Carnivore aside, your packets can be read by anybody on the route. If you assume that non-satellite internet is somehow any more secure than satellite internet then you're a fool. What it boils down to is that if you want to transmit something securely, strong-encrypt it, and there is nothing to stop you from doing this on your satellite connection. So your point is entirely a non-issue.
To add to that, they probably only tested it on one or two hardware platforms as well - and I wouldn't be surprised if the hardware specs were specified by MS.
I don't think so - remember, Jon Katz was being *directly attacked* here, so for him to become defensive, fine, I don't blame him. But some people here get emotional and hostile even when Katz posts some random opinions on politics or the internet or school bullying or just about anything, in fact.
That is the difference I was trying to point out.
Well, I'm a South African, schooled during the apartheid era. To compare what gets taught in "South African history" before 1994 and after 1994, you would think they were different countries .. the history I was taught was very one-sided in favour of whites .. now it's turned around .. you get a fairly one-sided black perspective. Also, when I went to school, school prayer and classes preaching Christianity were mandated, but that has now been dropped, and is probably now closer to American schools in that regard - i.e. they *still* preach Christianity, and they still pray in schools and so on, but it is more of a voluntary thing that individuals can opt out of, or do stuff more specific to their own religions.
How much do your schools' history classes focus on the ugly side of American history (like genocide of indians, the until-recently oppression of black people, the until somewhat recently lack of women's rights, prohibition etc) ? Just asking .. curious. My perception of American schools comes from what I see in TV and movies .. and from this side, it looks like American schools are full of pro-USA patriotism propaganda, all that "this country is so great" BS entrenched in all the little kids brains from a young age. Like I say, I can only comment on what I see in TV and movies.
This is purely a money issue. As far as attracting people interested in south africa goes, southafrica.com is by far more valuable than any other domain name. This has absolutely zero, zip, nothing, void, bugger-all to do with censorship.
<p>Both him and the SA government, it seems, want to use the domain for commercial purposes, so in general I think he is entitled to it purely because 'he got there first'. Although then why should famous people be more entitled to domain names of their names if other people got there first?
If an American businessman running an American business, then let him use the ".us" domain. Since when do Americans get more right to ".com" than anybody else?
According to the article, it's the parent's of the kid who want his record expunged. They don't really say whether or not he wants that.
Regarding universities, I'd be inclined to disagree with you. Every university I know of is exactly like a school in the regard that it holds it's image above the welfare of it's own students. Better to sacrifice a few students here and there, even good ones, if it avoids the possibility of the University getting negative press.
I remember the University I went to kept adding extra charges to all the courses .. extra charges for lab use, for photocopies .. every possible expense was (over)charged - still the university claimed they were struggling so much with money - but damn, did they have the most beautiful, well-maintained gardens such as I've seldom seen anywhere else. Strange.
Of course, it isn't the gardens that lead me to my opinions .. it's other incidents I somehow got involved in .. but thats another story ..
"It may (we hope) have been an oversight, and perhaps you had no intention to mislead your audience, but this omission did, in fact, constitute plagiarism, and people had every right to openly accuse you and call for a correction"
Oh come on .. anyone with half a brain can tell that Jon Katz is not by any means a plagiarist. He's been contributing original material to /. for many months, and been writing for decades. Let's be rational about this; if he did make a mistake now, it was obviously a tiny one out of a very prolific career .. you people harp on this one miniscule incident as if it defines his entire writing career or something. That's clearly a load of crap.
This really is a non-issue. Drop it already, and leave the guy alone. You don't have to keep attacking him.
I think it's perfectly healthy and normal for people to disagree, even strongly, with a writer's opinions .. but some of the hostility towards Jon Katz seen on /. goes far beyond "healthy and normal" disagreeing - some people here seem to react incredibly emotionally and aggressively defensive, as if Katz is making some kind of attack on them or something - I'm guessing that the *real* problem here doesn't like on Katz' side of this issue .. something to think about .. speaking for myself, I know I'm guilty of a lot of anger "projection" ... misplacing innate anger towards things other than the real sources ..
"I guess what I'm thinking is that he was deceptive. I think honesty and integrity are important"
I kind of got the impression that the guy was already fairly vocal about his opinions before this incident, and many people knew his opinions - so how is this deceptive? If he had pretended to be all into the homecoming thing, and then pulled this stunt, *thats* deceptive. Doesn't sound that way to me though.
For years Jon Katz prolifically writes what is clearly his own original material; he paraquotes one article, gives credit to the article *in front of the article*, and suddenly some pathetic whiner with absolutely nothing to show for his life is accusing him of plaguarism? I don't think so. How many of the rest of you whining about Katz can actually claim to have produced anything useful in your lives? Instead of sitting around complaining about other people who are doing more for society than you are, go out and do something constructive yourselves.
I can understand that some people might simply not like Katz' work. That is fine, it is healthy and normal for people to have differing opinions, and nobody who has ever produced anything has been without critics. But the reaction many people here have to Katz is clearly beyond "healthy and normal"; they react to his posts like they represent some kind of personal, emotional attack on them, becoming zealously and aggressively defensive. I don't see how one person's opinions can provoke such over-emotional reactions unless there is some sort of personal 'emotional involvement' on the part of the people overreacting. Psychologically, it's basically the idea that if something can upset you so much, it must hold some real meaning for you .. (or it's 'projection' .. )
"Don't pull a stunt, take a stand"
Uh .. thats exactly what he did, he took a stand, and in a way that brought far more attention to his opinions than a pathetic letter to some editor, even if published, would have received.
I would be extremely proud if it were my son. Most people are so easy to subject into conformist behaviour, and the entire school system is designed to encourage it - you have to follow hundreds of pathetic, completely meaningless rules, the value system is completely warped, you are encouraged to not think, etc.
"On the other hand if he wrote a paper or letter to the editor protesting the Homecoming King/Queen status quo I would applaud him and stand behind his personal conviction"
No; you probably would never have read his letter, nor heard his opinion. Even if you had, you probably would have forgotten about it by lunchtime, and I doubt you would have even discussed it with your friends.
Quite frankly, you sound spineless - you advocate making a protest by going through society's predefined, narrow, ineffective supplied "standard" means of making "protests" - a typical "don't rock the boat" attitude.
"Most "mind upload" or "brain reprogramming" representations are much closer to mysticism than technology; waving a few buzzwords is not science fiction"
Yes, that is very true. I think you didn't make your point particularly clearly in your previous post .. sounds about right now.
"Ok, maybe someday it might happen, but nobody's gotten it anywhere close to convincingly right yet"
Uh .. and since when was science fiction supposed to be about the stuff that humans has already gotten right? Last I heard, most sci-fi revolved around the stuff that "someday might happen, but nobody has gotten anywhere close to convincingly right yet".
I guess I must've been confused .. will have to throw away a bunch of my Asimov's now ..
"Personally, I'd rather a candidate didn't tailor his answers to the group he's writing / speaking to..."
Did you actually read the full answers? I read all of them, and in almost every single one Bush sounded to me like his opinions were completely the opposite of what seem to be the popular opinions on /. ... from intellectual property protection (Bush is obviously extremely pro-corporation here) to the war on drugs, he is purely preaching to your average man-in-the-middle-of-the-IQ-bell-curve here - which probably isn't where your average /. reader is.
"and say anything that a given group of people wanna hear to try to scrounge up a vote"
Hmm .. strange you say that, considering that when I read his answers thats exactly what Bush sounded like to me.
Actually, both Bush and Gore sound that way to me. It's too bad that one of them are going to win, because some of the other candidates actually sound pretty intelligent. I guess thats what happens when you live way over on the high end of the IQ bell curve, when Bush and Gore are clearly targeting their campaigns squarely at 1 standard deviation from the mean ..
"but they also have a vested interest in having healthy, affluent consumers purchasing their products"
Of course, you forget to mention that corporations (in particular actually) also have a vested interest in ensuring that the majority of the buying public are naive, easy to pursuade/sucker, doesn't demand quality (how many technically-illiterate people do you know who actually understand that when Windows crashes, it's because the product is defective, and it's not their fault, and that they should demand better quality?), and follow trends like sheep. This is exactly why corporations should stay *out* of education - the competition of capitalism works better when people can think for themselves, because when people are capable of criticising the stuff that is being shoved down their throats, then there is more incentive to actually produce quality goods.
"Anyone who thinks that corporations have any place within schools is an idiot"
Frankly, I find the idea that government has such a huge hand in education equally innocuous. What more perfect place for a government to brainwash it's citizens with it's propaganda? ... the USA is not magically exempt from this happening either.
I don't have any suggestions though. Clearly corporations and government both have their share of alterior motives, but what alternatives are there? How can we get education systems to be more focused on science, math, and teaching people to actually think? I know I had my share of religuous and nationalist propaganda when I was at school .. and people weren't taught to think but rather to follow hundreds of stupid meaningless rules and just do what they're told .. wasn't really so bad though overall, we had some pretty good teachers (and some damn lousy ones) .. actually the biggest problem was probably that there was very little focus on education, and a lot of focus on cricket, soccer etc.