I have had a stainless steel stove for years, don't particularly care for it (beyond occasional cleaning, but not anally) and there has been zero pitting. So either your stove is cheap or whoever told you it would "pit badly" was wrong and you shouldn't worry so much.
Not that it matters... I have no grudge against spoon rests!:) Just (like you are saying, I think) don't agree 3D printing the, will somehow solve the world's domestic budget issues...
And in all my years of *cooking* I have never needed one, either. My kitchen is in perfect order, no useless crap crowding the counters necessary!
But the point is someone who would buy such an absurdly unnecessary device (let alone 4!) is clearly not worried about saving a few extra bucks a year by printing one themselves. And if you are worried about that, I'd wager you will be on an episode of "Hoarders" in a few years with a few thousand useless 3D printed widgets piling up in your garage...
Yep, they led with the stupidest example. I just looked on Amazon, you can buy a dozen plastic shower curtain rings for about $3-5, depending on how "fancy" you want to get. And those are actually guaranteed not to decompose or melt in a hot, humid environment, unlike several of the common materials used by 3D printers...
Seriously... shower rings. Yes, that's the future of 3D printing that will save the world.
But I can't fault the summary, the article is even worse: "It blows my mind you can print your own shower curtains and beat the retail price," said Joshua Pearce, an associate professor in the Materials Science and Engineering Department at MTU.
So now printing a couple 1" diameter pieces of hard plastic more or less equates to an entire shower curtain? Seriously, go Michigan Technical University, your academic rigor speaks for itself! And in all of my years of eating I never even realized I needed a "spoon rest", but apparently I'll save up to $2000 by printing my own vs whatever barbaric technique I have been using to somehow keep my spoon on the table.
In silicon valley right now there is no room for ideas or the people who can't actually get their ideas into practice.
This is such a bullshit comment that you clearly have never been ANYWHERE near a real successful startup.
I have seen some great "ideas people" sell companies for many millions based on their pitch and a few cobbled together demos alone, and others raise $50M+, sign contracts with insanely favorable terms, and sometimes just convince companies to give them things for free just on their giant borderline lying cajones alone. Sure, in the end to ultimately succeed there is a lot of hard work required, but the vast majority of "hard working" engineers would never even get the chance without the crazy visionaries making the deals...
Used some potentially alike program on a PC when I was a child. Yes it's a great way to learn this stuff. But not bound to touch interfaces
In the park/museum/zoo while walking around (and in the car afterwards)? In a couple hours with a single device? (and probably not to the frankly amazing final results achievable for a young child given those parameters). It's not the *only* way to do it, but it's such a fun, approachable way it opens things up to so many more kids (and adults!) Remember an important point - not everyone is as technically-minded as we are (many people are just plain afraid of computers and complicated interfaces). There is a reason Apple has sold such an absurd number of smartphones and tablets (and also sometimes gets gripes from techies who think it's too "dumbed down"...)
What will you learn from using GPS you would not learn from an analog map? (honest question)
It's not just GPS itself, but GPS in *combination* with so many other things a static map can't easily provide. I love good old physical maps, my room as a kid was decorated with them on all of the walls, in fact:) But there are so many cool things a tablet with GPS adds... real time altitude, lat/long, weather (in so many ways - radar, regional weather patterns and how topography affects it, microclimates, etc), apps that track your walks with exact route, pace, and even estimated calories burned (any way to get kids in the cities more into exercise) - hell, there is even a Google Maps mod to show what a nuke would do to your neighborhood (frightening but eye opening). Even just watching a compass move - sure you could buy every kid a real compass, but it's free on the device. Of course that gets into an entirely different can of worms, which is that you have to understand many kids and school districts (probably in the US more than many 1st world countries where the educational system is managed nationally instead of locally) are so poor that as nice as it would be they just can't afford a single-tasking piece of electronics (DLSR, video camera, GPS unit, whatever) or many other non-electronic equipment for every child. Tablets aren't free, of course, but eventually (hopefully! and that's not a given...) the cost differences of software solutions could *potentially* make things much more cost effective, and each child could get their own experience, rather than having to share a few tools in an overcrowded classroom.
In my view it would be more important to get competent, enthusiastic teachers who get the kids interest in a subject and motivates why they are learning for example algebra. To further that knowledge a family PC or a terminal in the school library would maybe work out. I really don't know, though.
Absolutely! But sadly, as long as we pay our teachers way below what an intelligent person could make in other fields and generally otherwise treat them like crap and blame them for what is usually the parents' fault, that's never going to happen. Pay teachers a six figure salary with performance bonuses and no arbitrary tenure, and I *guarantee* you will get many of the best and brightest into the field. The absolute *most* dedicated will do it regardless of how they are treated, but the other 98% of teachers would probably like to be rewarded for their efforts once in a while.
Basically, the decision being made be the LA school district seems to be to embrace technology over teachers. Which seems kind of sad, and as I said I don't think it will work in their situation due to many reasons (not least of which is it's an absurdly expensive and huge experiment for the second biggest - and one of the more challenged - school districts in the US).
Honestly (but somewhat sadly) trying something like this in an affluent suburb would probably allow modern tablets to be uses as they should - an amazing and relatively inexpensive tool to enhance exiting education without the dis
I completely agree. If we leave textbook creation up to for-profit companies they can (and probably should be allowed to) charge whatever they want. So, given that grade school education is almost completely a monopsony (ie. 1 buyer), and the US educational system is massive, why on earth aren't there open-licensed textbooks covering every topic imaginable?
Well - I can give you one reason already: because the states, local districts, etc school boards are mostly made up of politicians and non-educators who think that THEY should be dictating the content in the books rather than the educators who know what they are doing. Not only does this result in more expensive "custom" books for each state, but it allows selective censorship of the content as well. Sigh...
Learning photography with a smartphone or a tablet... Are you serious? Movie making, with a tablet? Seriously? Don't you think a real camera would be a better fit? Real lenses and everything can be set manually: focal length, focus, sensitivity (ISO), exposure time, aperture, white balance. More over you will get WAY better pictures
Of course I'm serious. An 8 year old doesn't need to start worrying about focal length and ISO - they need to be inspired and excited to learn and create. And in any case, you are talking about DLSRs at that point, which is obviously not an option to provide to every student (and is a complete "single tasking" device). If they want to get more serious about photography they can take a class in high school, the same as has already been the case. This all goes double for movies - there are perfectly capable (especially for 8-13 year olds!) video editing apps for the iPad that used to cost 100x more money to be able to use on a PC (and require a MUCH higher learning curve) 5-10 years ago.
You don't have any kids, do you? I want to assume you have tried a tablet (not smartphone) before, at least, but I have a hard time believing you have spent any significant amount of time trying to teach young children anything. It's amazing what amount of creativity a tablet like an iPad with some cheap $5-$10 software can inspire in even elementary school-age kids. The first time you see an 8-9 year old write, film, edit, and dub a short movie all by herself entirely with an iPad you quickly understand how powerful of a creative learning device it can be.
Also, try giving a 5 year old a set of paint and brushes and leaving him to his own devices for 30 minutes. I can almost guarantee disaster there. Now try doing it with 10 or more 5 year olds - I think they'd call that "Kindergeddon". Do the same thing with a simple child-focued paint app and you may still have your sanity after it's over. Does that mean children should never learn to use real paint, crayons, colored pencils, etc? Of course not. Digital art is just another technique, and can be a valuable tool to teach the basics (which are similar no matter the medium).
This kind of device is nothing I would ever consider for creating content, not even for using just a sequencer or to take pictures.
And you probably don't use wax crayons to create content any more, either. How is that relevant to a child? Your personal preference isn't very applicable here - even for adults, many many MANY millions in fact DO use them to take pictures and video. In fact, the percentage of photos taken with smartphones was estimated at over 30% last year, and expected to hit 50% in the next few years.
What should "real time dynamic geography with GPS" be? Please give me a specific example. Don't you think it would be preferable to teach those kids reading analog maps? That way they learn to perceive their surroundings and improve their visual thinking, too.
Why should I bother, you can go look it up yourself if you really care - there are dozens of examples on iTunes. My 9 year old niece could probably beat 90% of adults with her knowledge of basic geography by now - and importantly the app was *fun* so she actually wanted to learn the subject. I wish more adults (especially in the US, where world geography knowledge is pretty poor) would try some of these apps. And the GPS part - while it *is* very useful and teaches some things an "analog" map won't - again it's largely about interactivity and inspiration. As I have said/alluded to already several times, motivation, not information, is the most important factor when teaching young children. There is plenty of information out there; if you motivate kids you can get them to learn on their own, which almost anyone would agree is more effective (as different kids learn better in different ways).
Possibly... so they should also implement (and advertise heavily) that the device has an always-on taper-proof GPS (via backup battery). It won't take long for criminals to decide it's not worth stealing a device that will more often than not tell police exactly where their loot is at all times...
And in fact given the crime statistics of smartphones it's practically criminal in itself that these features haven't already been implemented in all GPS-capable smartphones already (yes, I know about "Find My iPhone", etc - they don't work if you turn the phone off or disable the network...)
Learning to use dull safety scissors and Elmer's glue: limited. Learning photography, movie making, music, and editing of all of those: greatly expanded from anything *I* did in grade school.
If you want more examples - for chrissakes, pick up a tablet or smartphone and use it for 30 seconds. Yes, physical manipulation becomes more limited (but hey, finger painting is supported and a hell of a lot less messy!) but if you can't quickly come up with a half dozen examples of things you just couldn't trivially do without a tablet (here's a few more: real time dynamic geography lessons with GPS; interesting physics simulations using the accelerometer, etc; multiplication table exercises that don't require tedious photocopying and teacher grading) you are just being lazy...
Question is - is this per student *per year* or per student per career? It sounds like the latter... Personally I think locking the educational system into specific software contract is even worse than locking them into a bad textbook purchase contract, but (as stated by someone else in this discussion) - $650 goes towards the iPad and apps, and the rest to support/maintenance, new administrative payroll, insurance, etc (i.e. overhead).
So that's about $200 per student for the course material. Not as bad as I originally thought on pure price alone given that's comparable to the cost of a year of textbooks for a grade school student and a physical textbook should last ~10 years.
And that first sale case - while being generally applicable - was more relevant for college textbooks where students have to purchase their own - in CA the schools purchase and own the books, so as you said they would expect to re-use the same book many times.
Then again the article was still sketchy on these details... if I cared more about it I'd probably research the rest, but fortunately I don't live in LA. (And maybe ironically I live about 5 miles from Apple's HQ in the Cupertino school district, which is both one of the best in the country and currently not stupid enough to jump so recklessly into this crazy experiment...)
Yeah, I think this is going to be a disaster (and dislike Apple's walled garden model in general), but honestly they should probably put up as many walls around this garden as possible. Hell, put something in the firmware to prevent any apps from being installed or the device from being repurposed in any way - might make the poor grade school kids carrying them somewhat less of an obvious target to criminals. Otherwise the LA police will soon be opening up a dedicated "iPad Crimes Division" (can't wait for the "Law & Order: ICD" TV adaptation...)
It has nothing to do with Android. Pilots operate $100M machinery every day and work in a locked cockpit with absurd security. Spending $1000 for a tablet to replace their manuals is a good idea.
On the other hand, an 8 year old with an iPad walking home from school in Los Angeles is what you would call "fresh meat".
how is this different than buying all the books that a current student uses?
One thing that came to mind immediately to me: no one really wants to steal a grade school textbook. But they would be happy to take an iPad that happens to have grade school textbook apps.
It was recently announced that over 50% of *all* crime reported in NY, SF, and LA involved a smartphone theft/robbery. If they don't have a 100% effective way of bricking these devices when they go missing there's going to be a crime epidemic in LA.
At first I was thinking "well, just don't let them take them home" - which is still an awful idea when the iPad *replaces* the textbooks (yay, no more homework!) But that probably wouldn't matter, who wants to go steal an iPad from each kid when they can break into any random elementary school and steal hundreds of them at once...
From the article, it looks like that also includes all of the necessary apps and textbook/workbook resources ("Pearson common core system of courses").
Though at almost $1000 per student, that's still $500 allotted to a few apps and digital textbook licensing per student. If mega-mass-produced digital textbooks are costing $500 per *grade school* student no wonder the public school systems have no money...
It's not a "ripoff" since the lead designer of Starflight (Greg Johnson) worked on Star Control 2, and the lead designer of Star Control 2 worked on Starflight. How do you rip YOURSELF off?! You might as well just call Black & White a ripoff of Populous or Mass Effect a ripoff of KOTOR. Same people, similar concepts, different titles. Big deal...
Of course, someone should take odds on whether or not a reboot can come close to doing as well as the orignal (the original #2 that is.. StarCon was a fine but simplistic game and StarCon 3 did not exist. IT DID NOT EXIST I TELL YOU). Still, I'll play a sequel just on the chance it comes close.
I agree with you on Star Control 2. I almost never play through an adventure game more than once, but I think I have been through it 3 times over the years...
I will have to grudgingly acknowledge SC3's existence because I bought it the day it came out. And then returned it 3 days later. Funny thing is, you usually can't return video games after they are opened unless the media is defective. In this case the employee at the Fry's return counter must have been a SC2 fan as well, because when he asked me what was wrong with it, I just said "it's a horrible game!" and he took it back without any more questions:)
Though at some point he had the choice between working on Bee Movie or Kung Fu Panda. He chose Bee Movie ("Jerry Seinfeld is writing, producing, and starring in it!") and will always regret that decision;)
Oddly, they seem to have been produced in parallel, with neither inspiring the other. Bugs's Life was released just 2 months after Antz, with both in production for quite some time beforehand (the final render pass for each likely took more than 2 months).
A friend of mine worked on Antz (and is still at PDI/Dreamworks). The movie itself was in development for more like 3 years, not 2 months. And WAAY more than 2 months to render the final frames. Remember, this was 1998. Each frame took hours to render, depending on the complexity. A Bug's Life reportedly took up to 100 hours to render some frames (though Pixar's tools were notably not as efficient as PDI's).
Not coincidence, but synchronicity: computer animation had just reached the point where you could take a leap forward in realism, as long as you didn't try for hair or muscles-under-skin. Toy Story was the breakthrough, but "what else doesn't have hair or muscles?"
Well... not quite. The real story of the two movies is fairly interesting, and revolves around Jeffrey Katzenberg (who left Disney to start Dreamworks). Turns out the Antz concept came first (almost 10 years earlier) but Katzenberg decided to make it largely in response to Pixar's project and feeling slighted by its competition with another Dreamworks release (The Prince of Egypt).
Profiling gives criminals a way to game the system; if you don't look like the profile then you don't get tagged as a potential criminal (it also allows some unfortunate biases to come into play by the profiler). The solution, Schneier suggests, is a system that by its simple randomness, does not allow profiling or gaming.
But your previous post said that using the random screening plus the likely *added* profiling would be a negative thing - I was just saying there is no statistical way random screening + profiling would be worse than random screening alone...
Or alternately, we could stop pissing off three-quarters of the world so they all don't want to blow us up.
Honestly, it's not as bad as you think, then. While there are people in China, India, Africa, etc, who have issues with many US policies (just like many US citizens have issues with US policies!), the VAST majority have no interest in violence and also (gasp) even appreciate some aspects of American culture - and the boost our rabid consumerism provides their economies. The tiny fraction who commit terrorist acts are as happy to do it to innocent civilians in their home country as they are to do it on US airplanes.
IMO we *should* actively and forcefully oppose (and therefore piss off) anyone who has no moral qualms with blowing up a bunch of innocent people in their country or ours. That behavior is not one of a protestor, it's of a psychopath. To be honest, there are some people in the US government/military who probably qualify for that label, as well, and they should be opposed (and removed from their positions of power), too!
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I have had a stainless steel stove for years, don't particularly care for it (beyond occasional cleaning, but not anally) and there has been zero pitting. So either your stove is cheap or whoever told you it would "pit badly" was wrong and you shouldn't worry so much.
Not that it matters... I have no grudge against spoon rests! :) Just (like you are saying, I think) don't agree 3D printing the, will somehow solve the world's domestic budget issues...
And in all my years of *cooking* I have never needed one, either. My kitchen is in perfect order, no useless crap crowding the counters necessary!
But the point is someone who would buy such an absurdly unnecessary device (let alone 4!) is clearly not worried about saving a few extra bucks a year by printing one themselves. And if you are worried about that, I'd wager you will be on an episode of "Hoarders" in a few years with a few thousand useless 3D printed widgets piling up in your garage...
If I could mod up the comments to my own post I would :)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2XbCWmY0eqY
Yep, they led with the stupidest example. I just looked on Amazon, you can buy a dozen plastic shower curtain rings for about $3-5, depending on how "fancy" you want to get. And those are actually guaranteed not to decompose or melt in a hot, humid environment, unlike several of the common materials used by 3D printers...
Seriously... shower rings. Yes, that's the future of 3D printing that will save the world.
But I can't fault the summary, the article is even worse: "It blows my mind you can print your own shower curtains and beat the retail price," said Joshua Pearce, an associate professor in the Materials Science and Engineering Department at MTU.
So now printing a couple 1" diameter pieces of hard plastic more or less equates to an entire shower curtain? Seriously, go Michigan Technical University, your academic rigor speaks for itself! And in all of my years of eating I never even realized I needed a "spoon rest", but apparently I'll save up to $2000 by printing my own vs whatever barbaric technique I have been using to somehow keep my spoon on the table.
And that's *another* reason to hate Javascript...
In silicon valley right now there is no room for ideas or the people who can't actually get their ideas into practice.
This is such a bullshit comment that you clearly have never been ANYWHERE near a real successful startup.
I have seen some great "ideas people" sell companies for many millions based on their pitch and a few cobbled together demos alone, and others raise $50M+, sign contracts with insanely favorable terms, and sometimes just convince companies to give them things for free just on their giant borderline lying cajones alone. Sure, in the end to ultimately succeed there is a lot of hard work required, but the vast majority of "hard working" engineers would never even get the chance without the crazy visionaries making the deals...
Nah, I think that would be talented working...
If you can optimize integer math, you can think big picture, and vice versa.
Actually, after interviewing literally thousands of software developers over my career, I can tell you that is absolutely NOT true...
Used some potentially alike program on a PC when I was a child. Yes it's a great way to learn this stuff. But not bound to touch interfaces
In the park/museum/zoo while walking around (and in the car afterwards)? In a couple hours with a single device? (and probably not to the frankly amazing final results achievable for a young child given those parameters). It's not the *only* way to do it, but it's such a fun, approachable way it opens things up to so many more kids (and adults!) Remember an important point - not everyone is as technically-minded as we are (many people are just plain afraid of computers and complicated interfaces). There is a reason Apple has sold such an absurd number of smartphones and tablets (and also sometimes gets gripes from techies who think it's too "dumbed down"...)
What will you learn from using GPS you would not learn from an analog map? (honest question)
It's not just GPS itself, but GPS in *combination* with so many other things a static map can't easily provide. I love good old physical maps, my room as a kid was decorated with them on all of the walls, in fact :) But there are so many cool things a tablet with GPS adds... real time altitude, lat/long, weather (in so many ways - radar, regional weather patterns and how topography affects it, microclimates, etc), apps that track your walks with exact route, pace, and even estimated calories burned (any way to get kids in the cities more into exercise) - hell, there is even a Google Maps mod to show what a nuke would do to your neighborhood (frightening but eye opening). Even just watching a compass move - sure you could buy every kid a real compass, but it's free on the device. Of course that gets into an entirely different can of worms, which is that you have to understand many kids and school districts (probably in the US more than many 1st world countries where the educational system is managed nationally instead of locally) are so poor that as nice as it would be they just can't afford a single-tasking piece of electronics (DLSR, video camera, GPS unit, whatever) or many other non-electronic equipment for every child. Tablets aren't free, of course, but eventually (hopefully! and that's not a given...) the cost differences of software solutions could *potentially* make things much more cost effective, and each child could get their own experience, rather than having to share a few tools in an overcrowded classroom.
In my view it would be more important to get competent, enthusiastic teachers who get the kids interest in a subject and motivates why they are learning for example algebra. To further that knowledge a family PC or a terminal in the school library would maybe work out. I really don't know, though.
Absolutely! But sadly, as long as we pay our teachers way below what an intelligent person could make in other fields and generally otherwise treat them like crap and blame them for what is usually the parents' fault, that's never going to happen. Pay teachers a six figure salary with performance bonuses and no arbitrary tenure, and I *guarantee* you will get many of the best and brightest into the field. The absolute *most* dedicated will do it regardless of how they are treated, but the other 98% of teachers would probably like to be rewarded for their efforts once in a while.
Basically, the decision being made be the LA school district seems to be to embrace technology over teachers. Which seems kind of sad, and as I said I don't think it will work in their situation due to many reasons (not least of which is it's an absurdly expensive and huge experiment for the second biggest - and one of the more challenged - school districts in the US).
Honestly (but somewhat sadly) trying something like this in an affluent suburb would probably allow modern tablets to be uses as they should - an amazing and relatively inexpensive tool to enhance exiting education without the dis
I completely agree. If we leave textbook creation up to for-profit companies they can (and probably should be allowed to) charge whatever they want. So, given that grade school education is almost completely a monopsony (ie. 1 buyer), and the US educational system is massive, why on earth aren't there open-licensed textbooks covering every topic imaginable?
Well - I can give you one reason already: because the states, local districts, etc school boards are mostly made up of politicians and non-educators who think that THEY should be dictating the content in the books rather than the educators who know what they are doing. Not only does this result in more expensive "custom" books for each state, but it allows selective censorship of the content as well. Sigh...
Learning photography with a smartphone or a tablet... Are you serious? Movie making, with a tablet? Seriously? Don't you think a real camera would be a better fit? Real lenses and everything can be set manually: focal length, focus, sensitivity (ISO), exposure time, aperture, white balance. More over you will get WAY better pictures
Of course I'm serious. An 8 year old doesn't need to start worrying about focal length and ISO - they need to be inspired and excited to learn and create. And in any case, you are talking about DLSRs at that point, which is obviously not an option to provide to every student (and is a complete "single tasking" device). If they want to get more serious about photography they can take a class in high school, the same as has already been the case. This all goes double for movies - there are perfectly capable (especially for 8-13 year olds!) video editing apps for the iPad that used to cost 100x more money to be able to use on a PC (and require a MUCH higher learning curve) 5-10 years ago.
You don't have any kids, do you? I want to assume you have tried a tablet (not smartphone) before, at least, but I have a hard time believing you have spent any significant amount of time trying to teach young children anything. It's amazing what amount of creativity a tablet like an iPad with some cheap $5-$10 software can inspire in even elementary school-age kids. The first time you see an 8-9 year old write, film, edit, and dub a short movie all by herself entirely with an iPad you quickly understand how powerful of a creative learning device it can be.
Also, try giving a 5 year old a set of paint and brushes and leaving him to his own devices for 30 minutes. I can almost guarantee disaster there. Now try doing it with 10 or more 5 year olds - I think they'd call that "Kindergeddon". Do the same thing with a simple child-focued paint app and you may still have your sanity after it's over. Does that mean children should never learn to use real paint, crayons, colored pencils, etc? Of course not. Digital art is just another technique, and can be a valuable tool to teach the basics (which are similar no matter the medium).
This kind of device is nothing I would ever consider for creating content, not even for using just a sequencer or to take pictures.
And you probably don't use wax crayons to create content any more, either. How is that relevant to a child? Your personal preference isn't very applicable here - even for adults, many many MANY millions in fact DO use them to take pictures and video. In fact, the percentage of photos taken with smartphones was estimated at over 30% last year, and expected to hit 50% in the next few years.
What should "real time dynamic geography with GPS" be? Please give me a specific example. Don't you think it would be preferable to teach those kids reading analog maps? That way they learn to perceive their surroundings and improve their visual thinking, too.
Why should I bother, you can go look it up yourself if you really care - there are dozens of examples on iTunes. My 9 year old niece could probably beat 90% of adults with her knowledge of basic geography by now - and importantly the app was *fun* so she actually wanted to learn the subject. I wish more adults (especially in the US, where world geography knowledge is pretty poor) would try some of these apps. And the GPS part - while it *is* very useful and teaches some things an "analog" map won't - again it's largely about interactivity and inspiration. As I have said/alluded to already several times, motivation, not information, is the most important factor when teaching young children. There is plenty of information out there; if you motivate kids you can get them to learn on their own, which almost anyone would agree is more effective (as different kids learn better in different ways).
Not to you or others
Possibly... so they should also implement (and advertise heavily) that the device has an always-on taper-proof GPS (via backup battery). It won't take long for criminals to decide it's not worth stealing a device that will more often than not tell police exactly where their loot is at all times...
And in fact given the crime statistics of smartphones it's practically criminal in itself that these features haven't already been implemented in all GPS-capable smartphones already (yes, I know about "Find My iPhone", etc - they don't work if you turn the phone off or disable the network...)
Learning to use dull safety scissors and Elmer's glue: limited.
Learning photography, movie making, music, and editing of all of those: greatly expanded from anything *I* did in grade school.
If you want more examples - for chrissakes, pick up a tablet or smartphone and use it for 30 seconds. Yes, physical manipulation becomes more limited (but hey, finger painting is supported and a hell of a lot less messy!) but if you can't quickly come up with a half dozen examples of things you just couldn't trivially do without a tablet (here's a few more: real time dynamic geography lessons with GPS; interesting physics simulations using the accelerometer, etc; multiplication table exercises that don't require tedious photocopying and teacher grading) you are just being lazy...
Question is - is this per student *per year* or per student per career? It sounds like the latter... Personally I think locking the educational system into specific software contract is even worse than locking them into a bad textbook purchase contract, but (as stated by someone else in this discussion) - $650 goes towards the iPad and apps, and the rest to support/maintenance, new administrative payroll, insurance, etc (i.e. overhead).
So that's about $200 per student for the course material. Not as bad as I originally thought on pure price alone given that's comparable to the cost of a year of textbooks for a grade school student and a physical textbook should last ~10 years.
And that first sale case - while being generally applicable - was more relevant for college textbooks where students have to purchase their own - in CA the schools purchase and own the books, so as you said they would expect to re-use the same book many times.
Then again the article was still sketchy on these details... if I cared more about it I'd probably research the rest, but fortunately I don't live in LA. (And maybe ironically I live about 5 miles from Apple's HQ in the Cupertino school district, which is both one of the best in the country and currently not stupid enough to jump so recklessly into this crazy experiment...)
Yeah, I think this is going to be a disaster (and dislike Apple's walled garden model in general), but honestly they should probably put up as many walls around this garden as possible. Hell, put something in the firmware to prevent any apps from being installed or the device from being repurposed in any way - might make the poor grade school kids carrying them somewhat less of an obvious target to criminals. Otherwise the LA police will soon be opening up a dedicated "iPad Crimes Division" (can't wait for the "Law & Order: ICD" TV adaptation...)
Limit in some ways, GREATLY expand in many others.
It has nothing to do with Android. Pilots operate $100M machinery every day and work in a locked cockpit with absurd security. Spending $1000 for a tablet to replace their manuals is a good idea.
On the other hand, an 8 year old with an iPad walking home from school in Los Angeles is what you would call "fresh meat".
how is this different than buying all the books that a current student uses?
One thing that came to mind immediately to me: no one really wants to steal a grade school textbook. But they would be happy to take an iPad that happens to have grade school textbook apps.
It was recently announced that over 50% of *all* crime reported in NY, SF, and LA involved a smartphone theft/robbery. If they don't have a 100% effective way of bricking these devices when they go missing there's going to be a crime epidemic in LA.
At first I was thinking "well, just don't let them take them home" - which is still an awful idea when the iPad *replaces* the textbooks (yay, no more homework!) But that probably wouldn't matter, who wants to go steal an iPad from each kid when they can break into any random elementary school and steal hundreds of them at once...
From the article, it looks like that also includes all of the necessary apps and textbook/workbook resources ("Pearson common core system of courses").
Though at almost $1000 per student, that's still $500 allotted to a few apps and digital textbook licensing per student. If mega-mass-produced digital textbooks are costing $500 per *grade school* student no wonder the public school systems have no money...
It's not a "ripoff" since the lead designer of Starflight (Greg Johnson) worked on Star Control 2, and the lead designer of Star Control 2 worked on Starflight. How do you rip YOURSELF off?! You might as well just call Black & White a ripoff of Populous or Mass Effect a ripoff of KOTOR. Same people, similar concepts, different titles. Big deal...
Of course, someone should take odds on whether or not a reboot can come close to doing as well as the orignal (the original #2 that is.. StarCon was a fine but simplistic game and StarCon 3 did not exist. IT DID NOT EXIST I TELL YOU). Still, I'll play a sequel just on the chance it comes close.
I agree with you on Star Control 2. I almost never play through an adventure game more than once, but I think I have been through it 3 times over the years...
I will have to grudgingly acknowledge SC3's existence because I bought it the day it came out. And then returned it 3 days later. Funny thing is, you usually can't return video games after they are opened unless the media is defective. In this case the employee at the Fry's return counter must have been a SC2 fan as well, because when he asked me what was wrong with it, I just said "it's a horrible game!" and he took it back without any more questions :)
I agree...
Though at some point he had the choice between working on Bee Movie or Kung Fu Panda. He chose Bee Movie ("Jerry Seinfeld is writing, producing, and starring in it!") and will always regret that decision ;)
Oddly, they seem to have been produced in parallel, with neither inspiring the other. Bugs's Life was released just 2 months after Antz, with both in production for quite some time beforehand (the final render pass for each likely took more than 2 months).
A friend of mine worked on Antz (and is still at PDI/Dreamworks). The movie itself was in development for more like 3 years, not 2 months. And WAAY more than 2 months to render the final frames. Remember, this was 1998. Each frame took hours to render, depending on the complexity. A Bug's Life reportedly took up to 100 hours to render some frames (though Pixar's tools were notably not as efficient as PDI's).
Not coincidence, but synchronicity: computer animation had just reached the point where you could take a leap forward in realism, as long as you didn't try for hair or muscles-under-skin. Toy Story was the breakthrough, but "what else doesn't have hair or muscles?"
Well... not quite. The real story of the two movies is fairly interesting, and revolves around Jeffrey Katzenberg (who left Disney to start Dreamworks). Turns out the Antz concept came first (almost 10 years earlier) but Katzenberg decided to make it largely in response to Pixar's project and feeling slighted by its competition with another Dreamworks release (The Prince of Egypt).
Profiling gives criminals a way to game the system; if you don't look like the profile then you don't get tagged as a potential criminal (it also allows some unfortunate biases to come into play by the profiler). The solution, Schneier suggests, is a system that by its simple randomness, does not allow profiling or gaming.
But your previous post said that using the random screening plus the likely *added* profiling would be a negative thing - I was just saying there is no statistical way random screening + profiling would be worse than random screening alone...
Or alternately, we could stop pissing off three-quarters of the world so they all don't want to blow us up.
Honestly, it's not as bad as you think, then. While there are people in China, India, Africa, etc, who have issues with many US policies (just like many US citizens have issues with US policies!), the VAST majority have no interest in violence and also (gasp) even appreciate some aspects of American culture - and the boost our rabid consumerism provides their economies. The tiny fraction who commit terrorist acts are as happy to do it to innocent civilians in their home country as they are to do it on US airplanes.
IMO we *should* actively and forcefully oppose (and therefore piss off) anyone who has no moral qualms with blowing up a bunch of innocent people in their country or ours. That behavior is not one of a protestor, it's of a psychopath. To be honest, there are some people in the US government/military who probably qualify for that label, as well, and they should be opposed (and removed from their positions of power), too!