If you are looking to just replace typewriters and overhead projectors in the classroom that is one thing if you want computers to be used to add to educational experience that is a very different goal.
The question comes down to WHY do you need computers in the classroom. Identify your purpose, then your priorities and then an appropriate solution will present itself or at least you will have a much more precise question about which solutions are appropriate.
The most important factor is what is the pedagogical basis for use of computers in the classroom. To effectively implement IT in and educational environment you need a thought out concrete pedagogical justification and a detailed workflow diagramming how your IT infrastructure will operate to satisfy your pedagogy.
I have seen instances where computers provided opportunities that traditional resources did not provide. I have seen faculty use computer based technology to do real time distance learning, adding enrichment material available outside of class time, areas of abstract visualization particularly in math and science, collaborative writing and editing to name a few valuable uses. I have also seen a lot of expensive solutions that were essentially ignored by the students and were utterly ineffective.
In each case a specific purpose was identified, a curriculum was developed to include specific technologies and the role of the computer and the technology was identified in advanced and the tools were selected to match those specific needs and there was complete buy in to the tools by the instructors.
Even though you are not looking at specific applications and are looking at building an infrastructure that can support a broad array of educational implementations, you still need to identify which types of tools are going to be primarily used in your school and build around them to develop an effective solution.
To use computer based technology effectively in the classroom requires faculty educated in how to pedagogically incorporate IT into the curriculum and a administration willing to be purposeful in choices and implementation. Otherwise it tends to be a nightmare of wasted resources and frustration.
Essentiall mirrors my experience with Stephenson
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Anathem
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I would add Zodiac to Snow Crash, The Diamond Age, Cryptonomicon and In the Beginning...was the Command Line as great reads. Such that when I put them down I went looking for more. The rest of his stuff ahhh who cares. I couldn't even finish Quicksilver. By Cryptonomicon you started to see the germination of what would become the style of the Baroque cycle and evidently Anathem. It is really to bad because I do feel that it is just unfettered ego that has turned a once sharp witty intelligent writer into a ponderous one.
Who the hell uses encyclopedia brittanica or any other encyclopedia for mission critical anything. You use it for what are the names of the beatles or the seven dwarves or where is liberia. Ususally it is pretty on for such things. If you need to be sure you can then multiply reference your results somewhere else to verify your source. LIKE YOU SHOULD if it is important. This is acutally a topic my girlfriend and I got into a fight about. Having never looked at it she stated that it couldn't be usefull because it wasn't peer reviewed. Well Brittanica isn't peer reviewed like a journal either but that's irrelevant. I understand the issues and value of style, professionalism and accountablility that you get in a traditional encyclopedia. Still accesibility and speed are not irrelevant. Multiple "voices" and viewpoints are a definite advantage over traditional encyclopedias. Also if you are reasonably sophisticated reading the editing arguements on highly subjective topics can be very enlightening more so than the "facts" in the article. Sure rely on it as a only source at your own risk but used intelligently with an awareness of it's pitfalls it is a very useful and valuable resource. It is neither as great as it's best article or as bad as it's worst. Someone else did a comparison recently and on three out four topics it had more information, was more up to date and accurate than the traditional encyclopedia on the fourth in the reviewers opinion was awful. I can live with that.
I agree with most of what he says but I think the target populations for Best Buy etc... are not looking for Linux very often. Most people I know who are looking to try Linux have already discovered lower prices by shopping from web retailers. They are often also are savvy enough to build their own pc's and install operating systems. At this point I don't believe there is a large percentage of people who aren't classified as an advanced user who are looking for linux right now. I think there are other factors that are even keeping a lot of advanced Windows users from Linux both deliberate and circumstantial. Things like little or no support or time to learn at work. Desire to use software on existing Windows machines (like games etc) at home rather than taking the time to learn a whole new interface. I'd rather play Tiger Woods Golf than install operating systems. I realize I blow the geek cache with that opinion. I think there a lot of people like my parents for instance who are a customer base Linux needs to tap to break the Microsoft Monopoly that aren't willing or able to make the leap but will buy computer equipment at Best Buy. One of the best things Linux can do to penetrate the market is try why Apple tried in the 70's and early 80's and that is distribute their software in schools and get the kids accustomed to it as their prefered OS. That would also require having software beyond educational that kids are interested in such as highly desireable games, music, etc... Still schools are broke and need technology. I believe it would take a concerted community effort by Linux developers etc... to provide support and documentation directly to schools and I think most importantly initiative to go into school districts and pitch Linux as a viable alternative. This is where I think Microsoft excells and Linux suffers the social networking accross groups. How many times in history have we seen inferior technology win out because of simplicity or greater social engineering and marketing? It's not enough that Linux is better people have to want it.
As corporate "news" services have become increasingly under the control of fewer people tradional news sources don't even feign objectivity and seem clearly to be propaganda arms of government and industry "open source" news distribution is the only way we will hear what is actually going on. The problem is these sources will also have their own agendas and will suffer from lack of accountability, oversight, and lack of ethics that are plaguing our current news structure. Without some form of independent, accountable, verifiable and objective entity to act as "watchdog" and transparently evaluate all news providers we will have no way to know who is telling more of the truth.
This definitly gets to be a very iffy proposal. If someone calls me specifically seeking computer related assistance I have had some success with the following criteria. I live in the midwest so I assume if you are in Manhattan or something you can adjust to your economy.
Friend Rate: Close Friends and Family who aren't dirt broke 20$ per hour
Pro Rate: People I don't know who have been directed to me 40$ per hour with a one hour minimum charge. After that I tend to charge by the 1/4 hour.
I try not to have more than one or two "regulars" because it then becomes a legit second job and I really do it mostly to help people who need it and don't know where to go without donating my whole life to free tech support. I also charge for travel time at half the rate I am charging them if I have to drive more than 10-15 minutes to wherever they live. I make no guarantees to be able to fix any issue. If it looks like a really time consuming issue I tend to refer them elsewhere (either to a pro service desk or to buy new hardware) because it rapidly becomes more cost effective for them to buy a new pc and one hour of my time to tranfer the data than have me spend hours of trouble shooting a outdated boat anchor. The reality is for many people this is a excellent deal. To have a person whom they know and trust that will come to their home and fix their computer. Contrary what an other poster said I have found most people I have worked with in this way were very receptive to education as part of the service and have had good luck teaching people good computing habits that eliminated "service calls" from them. It may seem harsh but if you do it for free it can quickly spiral out of control. I also don't want to say no all of the time either because I know they could use the expertice and in moderation I enjoy it. This is the same issue that doctors go through except most people don't ask doctors to come over and give them a free physical.
Everytime I look at particularly moon shots but all space vehicles two thirds of the construction materials get jettisoned at some point. To bad there isn't a way to engineer some of those components to be useful for something else after their primary use has been accomplished. Have the booster shells be recoverable in space by the shuttle or something and towed to the space station to be retrofitted as an extra component. It costs so much to get a pound of weight up there finding a way to recycle the thousands of pounds they jettison on each mission would seem to be cost effective.
Micro$oft did everything they could to get a pro-industry administration into power to take the teeth out of the anti-trust settlement, looks like as part of the deal they get a built in veto in all future elections. Who says the system doesn't work. Well at least if you know who it serves.
I teach a class of high school students in a computer lab. Many of them are not particulary tech oriented. I use the class as a forum to introduce all kinds of ideas about the impact computers and technology are having on their world as subtext to the overall curiculum. I sometimes even assign slashdot as reading. Even tech competent people who can download mp3, surf the web, ftp, im, synch their pda whatever don't necessarily appreciate all of the other things that are available or involved. Things that apply directly to an english curriculum is the effect that e-mail and im has on language and language skills. How does cutting and pasting change the editing process from when you had to actually rewrite it each time. How do school policies on e-mail etc... affect free speech or anonymity which can directly affect or is it effect content. What is the impact of grammer and spell checkers on language skills. I talk about privacy and run ad-aware and show them the data miners that get downloaded onto the computers every day. I don't exclusively focus on any of this. Each day for the beginning of the class I spend 10min on a new topic, use the computers for examples, usually they have questions. When we went from handwritten to typewriters language and the process of writing changed. When we went from typewriters to computers everything about writing changed. Not only the process of writing but editing, research, publication, distribution, duplication, referencing etc... Some things got a lot easier some got harder partiularly learning the basics and not just shortcuts. While you are teaching those basics challenge them to see the good and the bad of how things are changing. Encourage them take an active role in choosing their relationship with technology and appreciate the implications of those choices.
Could some organization or individual (gates gov whomever) with a ton of money had a supercomputer of this size built but not allowed it to be listed or not told anyone that they built it or classified it as top top secret. I don't know what they would want it for but I there could be a couple out there.....
I hated ritalin I found it killed my creativity
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Working with ADHD?
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and the vibrance of living. It did help me focus more and be more "productive" but I wasn't terribly impressed with what I produced. A little background: I was diagnosed with ADHD "off the map" by a psychatrist at the age of 28. I have a very keen awareness of how I see/experience the world and although it is not terribly well recieved in the industrial higherarchy it beats the hell out of staring straight ahead in a daze. Over the years I have developed a lot of coping mechanisims to make it so that my way of being didn't collide with the way I should be as much as possible. Still there are times where conformity is required and conforming without medication for me is very hard. So I will spot use ritalin to get through trouble spots. I will also happen to find it a nice mixer with a couple of beers and _\|/_;) it's a nice trifecta cocktail. Seriously, I found using behavioral modifaction like a well organized palm pilot and a strong social support network to be an effective and preferable treatment plan for ADHD than being medicated all the time.
Their collecting your information often doesn't have anything to do with you or their product. Just having that information is valuable to marketing companies or spammers. A database of 100,000 verified identities with demographic data is incredibly valuable in the modern marketing world. Therefore if a company can get you to give them that information for free they will as another revenue stream. I would suspect that when they come up with the idea the concept of privacy and respecting the customer is completly overlooked. Not out of any intentional disrespect of their customers but rather out of a myopic focus on cash.
The question "why can't this be done?" was only the last part of the question. It was how can this be done specifically without stealing from and existing service i.e. piggy-backing on someone's paid for DSL. We all know about how business and govt tries to stand in the way of progress if they have an existing cash flow structure. So I find the repetitive naysaying and "you are stupid to even ask" posts to be part of the problem. It's answering the creative difficult side of the question where progress comes from. Speculation even daydreaming about what could be done to make some of these things possible is more productive than just bah humbuging around. How many things have been invented because of someone took somone elses flight of fancy and said "wait a minute that might just work". Sure many of those failed as well but without asking the question you will never find the answer. Now to be part of the solution I'll throw out one suggestion for one of the issues. Someone mentioned everyone would just hack their cell to not recieve routed calls. If we had a standard protocol and an organization to maintain (even an open source project) that portocol. Couldn't part of the protocol be that altered phones wouldn't be able to participate in the network because of some kind of built-in verification system? Not to say this would be easy to implement and I'm sure there are x number of roadblocks to this but in theory it could be done.
There may be more non-linux users reading Slashdot than some posters think. I happen to really like the technology, free speech, open source, and other information and breeze through most of the Linux specific stuff because I don't use it. Not that I wouldn't like to but time commitments at work and other interests outside of work have pushed adopting linux to the back burner. Nonetheless I advocate for it and talk about it regularly with non-tech people. Which makes up most the American population. Anything that makes open source software more accessable to the general public is a good thing. Posting reviews like this one on slashdot gives people who don't think non-linux using non-technology oriented people are unevolved neadrethals more tools with which to educate, support and encourage linux adoption among the general public. So even if only a couple people get introduced to Linux because someone read the review and used the book to get them started that accomplishes more than 1000 flames about the stupidity of non-linux users.
If you wanted to have a revolution or columbine 2 and didn't have the cash/access to real weapons this would be an alternative. Like they said in the artlcle cement filled etc... could cause a lot of damage. How about powdered laundry soap and gasoline filled projectiles. Instant napalm gun. How about a soup can filled with nails. Want to really protest the WTO and don't want your weapon traceable? Build your own. To the truly creative, and cheap this could be a great arsenal. Or it can just be fun like automatic rifles and tin cans.
Thie would most likely just create a group of underground businesses that do mods to your hardware to get around the rules like they do for DVD players and playstations. Then criminals and radicals will be able to do what they want and the average user will be limited. IF we really want to deal with this issue and all of the other similar legislative issues discussed on slashdot we need to go into our communities form active coalitions and participate actively in the legislative process. The only way to fight organizied money is organized people. The slashdot effect as political mobilization would overwhelming.
Ping Time has been running in madison wi for over a year. So it at least has moderate success. They spec out their machines prices and policies on their website. They also let players outside join on lan games they are playing so that friends without high speed access or the newest 50$ game du jour can play with their friends that do without hauling their machine around and pirating copies. I also know that they use a cloning product that rebuilds the machines automatically every night. It also lets them rebuild ones that go down quickly. I'm not sure what they do about hardware security. Every smart public lab has at least some kind of case locks and cable down components. I would also install something like VNC so I can see what is going on, on any machine and make sure that people aren't doing thing that are illegal from machines you are responsible for. They sell copies of all of the games they have available as well as gaming mice and keyboards and video cards. Not a large stock but it is the pro shop concept. They also do some console games. It's a nice pretty professionally organized place.
I agree with you about your stand on diamonds and personally will not buy diamonds. I also think diamonds aren't that attractive anyway. It sounds like your girlfriend knows you want to marry her and you have already told her about your very reasonable hesitations about diamonds. Why not sit down and talk to her about what she wants to wear everyday. You have tons of flexibility. Do you want a solitaire or a group of stones? Do you want one kind of stone or a variety of stones? I personally think that rubies, emeralds and sapphires are the three most attractive stones. If you want to have a diamond or a couple of diamonds you can use them as accents of the other featured stone(s). Once you have discussed with her what she likes as guidlines you can still sit down with a good jeweler that does custom designs and create her a unique and socially responsible engagement ring that will be the envy of all of her friends.
Ooops your bias is showing. I actually am working hand in hand with the faculty involved.The professor states his primary goal is to teach content not software. His grant, his lab, his decision. We also have way more student demand than we can handle. The stated goal of the lab is to push the frontier of the animation medium as a fine art. Which does not necessarily require fur, clothes etc... We have a decidedly non-commercial slant to the type of work we are trying to encourage. There are plenty of places where students can learn the software. Our local technical college has a very good two year modeling program that teaches maya and lightwave. Therefore this is not a thoughtless egocentric casual decision. It is a well thought out decision to explore the options within the philosophy that the lab is founded on.
I would love to buy a whole new setup but we can hardly keep up with our current expenses. We had to really compromise just to maintain our maya edu licenses. Also we have no desire to be a production lab. We want to teach concepts and content. We have no intention on being a software training center. Which tends to be the problem we get a lot of students that just want to have Maya on their resume. So using non-standard apps may help us attract the type of student we are looking for. Specifically those that want to do fine art which is what we teach. Which is not a slam against other forms of animation. It is just that is our chosen agenda and program. If we lose the students that want to recreate the dodge truck adds to get a modeling job great. We have 40 seats (2 classes) and a waiting list of of over 450 students. But that is a different post. Thanks for the input.
I now understand the line you were upset about. When I said anyone can just crank out something out of digital program I should have clarified. Almost all software programs can give you something quickly as demo or test or have defaults that let the unpracticed "crank something out" which we see a lot of on the web. Forinstance I-movies can very quickly make a movie of anything for anyone but is not representaional of what can be done in said software program when it is used well. Sorry about the misunderstanding.
You obviously missed my point entirely because I agree with you completly. I do fine art and it is all digital. My professor has been doing it and being shown since 1983. I thought the first poster was making unitelligent comments about something he knew nothing about. Fine art is media independent. As my professor who about as non arrogant and non-traditional as you get, says that fine art is that which exceeds itself. Meaning that if you look at it feel it hear it whatever and it provokes you to think about it beyond recognising it's existance and make meaning then it is fine art. I am also not against traditional media or mixed media. As for collaborating or having people do sketches that is part of the process just as a storyboard is part of the film making process. So if I was hard to understand I'm sorry but your return rant was just as arrogant and self rightous and got (score:0) so chill ok.
First there are many things in complex digital art programs expcially 3d that can't just be undone. Even if you save fastidiously things can get screwed up. Second art is about content not media. Remember how rock and roll, and jazz before that weren't considered music but noise. The paint by numbers crap that is hotel rooms is not fine art but a digital image can be. Is photography no longer art because of digital cameras? The priniting of a good digital still is as much an art as using an enlarger. Sometimes more so because the media is not as established. For those of you living in the fantasy that there is always a "pure original" sculpture has a long history of multiple originals. There are at least four of Auguste Rodin's the thinker that were made at the same time with equal credence to the term original. Perhaps it is because anyone can crank out something in a digital program. Well you can make hotel over the sofa art digitally as well but it doesn't discount the art that is done digiatally that would qualify for content if the media were disregarded. Why do I know these things because I am getting a masters of fine art with a specialty in digital media. Why am I offended the same reason many/.ers would be annoyed to have all free software written of by some eloquent hack "because if it's free it's gotta suck".
"those who can do, those who don't understand bitch about it." anonymous
What a great way to help children learn to think for themselves..."
American schools do not have any intention on helping children think for themselves. This is not due to some conspiracy or intention it is because if children think for themselves it poses problems for the administration. As with all institutions the primary goal is to protect the institution itself and threrefore it's leadership. For example schoolboards, superentendents (sp) and principals make decisions that are going to protect their jobs and their reputations first and if there is room for teachers and students after the fact great. This is not because they are bad people it is just how you survive. Therefore, unless the students are in line with the administration they are a threat to it. At a very real level students are commodities. To most schools as organizations the individuals are not important, their test scores, gpa, particpation in student orgs,etc.. are what is important because those are what are used to validate and ensure the survival of the institution. That is why we see so many policies that fly in the face of educational research such as high stakes exit testing. This kind of testing gives a medium for the schools to validate their existance even though it shows that it forces teachers to teach to the test rather than actually content.
--Nothing makes a good technical man angrier than to have some incompetent nitwit with a check book telling him how to do his job.--Robert A. Heinlein
Slashdot Mirror
If you are looking to just replace typewriters and overhead projectors in the classroom that is one thing if you want computers to be used to add to educational experience that is a very different goal.
The question comes down to WHY do you need computers in the classroom. Identify your purpose, then your priorities and then an appropriate solution will present itself or at least you will have a much more precise question about which solutions are appropriate.
The most important factor is what is the pedagogical basis for use of computers in the classroom. To effectively implement IT in and educational environment you need a thought out concrete pedagogical justification and a detailed workflow diagramming how your IT infrastructure will operate to satisfy your pedagogy.
I have seen instances where computers provided opportunities that traditional resources did not provide. I have seen faculty use computer based technology to do real time distance learning, adding enrichment material available outside of class time, areas of abstract visualization particularly in math and science, collaborative writing and editing to name a few valuable uses. I have also seen a lot of expensive solutions that were essentially ignored by the students and were utterly ineffective.
In each case a specific purpose was identified, a curriculum was developed to include specific technologies and the role of the computer and the technology was identified in advanced and the tools were selected to match those specific needs and there was complete buy in to the tools by the instructors.
Even though you are not looking at specific applications and are looking at building an infrastructure that can support a broad array of educational implementations, you still need to identify which types of tools are going to be primarily used in your school and build around them to develop an effective solution.
To use computer based technology effectively in the classroom requires faculty educated in how to pedagogically incorporate IT into the curriculum and a administration willing to be purposeful in choices and implementation. Otherwise it tends to be a nightmare of wasted resources and frustration.
I would add Zodiac to Snow Crash, The Diamond Age, Cryptonomicon and In the Beginning...was the Command Line as great reads. Such that when I put them down I went looking for more. The rest of his stuff ahhh who cares. I couldn't even finish Quicksilver. By Cryptonomicon you started to see the germination of what would become the style of the Baroque cycle and evidently Anathem. It is really to bad because I do feel that it is just unfettered ego that has turned a once sharp witty intelligent writer into a ponderous one.
Who the hell uses encyclopedia brittanica or any other encyclopedia for mission critical anything. You use it for what are the names of the beatles or the seven dwarves or where is liberia. Ususally it is pretty on for such things. If you need to be sure you can then multiply reference your results somewhere else to verify your source. LIKE YOU SHOULD if it is important. This is acutally a topic my girlfriend and I got into a fight about. Having never looked at it she stated that it couldn't be usefull because it wasn't peer reviewed. Well Brittanica isn't peer reviewed like a journal either but that's irrelevant. I understand the issues and value of style, professionalism and accountablility that you get in a traditional encyclopedia. Still accesibility and speed are not irrelevant. Multiple "voices" and viewpoints are a definite advantage over traditional encyclopedias. Also if you are reasonably sophisticated reading the editing arguements on highly subjective topics can be very enlightening more so than the "facts" in the article. Sure rely on it as a only source at your own risk but used intelligently with an awareness of it's pitfalls it is a very useful and valuable resource. It is neither as great as it's best article or as bad as it's worst. Someone else did a comparison recently and on three out four topics it had more information, was more up to date and accurate than the traditional encyclopedia on the fourth in the reviewers opinion was awful. I can live with that.
I agree with most of what he says but I think the target populations for Best Buy etc... are not looking for Linux very often. Most people I know who are looking to try Linux have already discovered lower prices by shopping from web retailers. They are often also are savvy enough to build their own pc's and install operating systems. At this point I don't believe there is a large percentage of people who aren't classified as an advanced user who are looking for linux right now. I think there are other factors that are even keeping a lot of advanced Windows users from Linux both deliberate and circumstantial. Things like little or no support or time to learn at work. Desire to use software on existing Windows machines (like games etc) at home rather than taking the time to learn a whole new interface. I'd rather play Tiger Woods Golf than install operating systems. I realize I blow the geek cache with that opinion. I think there a lot of people like my parents for instance who are a customer base Linux needs to tap to break the Microsoft Monopoly that aren't willing or able to make the leap but will buy computer equipment at Best Buy. One of the best things Linux can do to penetrate the market is try why Apple tried in the 70's and early 80's and that is distribute their software in schools and get the kids accustomed to it as their prefered OS. That would also require having software beyond educational that kids are interested in such as highly desireable games, music, etc... Still schools are broke and need technology. I believe it would take a concerted community effort by Linux developers etc... to provide support and documentation directly to schools and I think most importantly initiative to go into school districts and pitch Linux as a viable alternative. This is where I think Microsoft excells and Linux suffers the social networking accross groups. How many times in history have we seen inferior technology win out because of simplicity or greater social engineering and marketing? It's not enough that Linux is better people have to want it.
As corporate "news" services have become increasingly under the control of fewer people tradional news sources don't even feign objectivity and seem clearly to be propaganda arms of government and industry "open source" news distribution is the only way we will hear what is actually going on. The problem is these sources will also have their own agendas and will suffer from lack of accountability, oversight, and lack of ethics that are plaguing our current news structure. Without some form of independent, accountable, verifiable and objective entity to act as "watchdog" and transparently evaluate all news providers we will have no way to know who is telling more of the truth.
Friend Rate: Close Friends and Family who aren't dirt broke 20$ per hour
Pro Rate: People I don't know who have been directed to me 40$ per hour with a one hour minimum charge. After that I tend to charge by the 1/4 hour.
I try not to have more than one or two "regulars" because it then becomes a legit second job and I really do it mostly to help people who need it and don't know where to go without donating my whole life to free tech support. I also charge for travel time at half the rate I am charging them if I have to drive more than 10-15 minutes to wherever they live. I make no guarantees to be able to fix any issue. If it looks like a really time consuming issue I tend to refer them elsewhere (either to a pro service desk or to buy new hardware) because it rapidly becomes more cost effective for them to buy a new pc and one hour of my time to tranfer the data than have me spend hours of trouble shooting a outdated boat anchor. The reality is for many people this is a excellent deal. To have a person whom they know and trust that will come to their home and fix their computer. Contrary what an other poster said I have found most people I have worked with in this way were very receptive to education as part of the service and have had good luck teaching people good computing habits that eliminated "service calls" from them. It may seem harsh but if you do it for free it can quickly spiral out of control. I also don't want to say no all of the time either because I know they could use the expertice and in moderation I enjoy it. This is the same issue that doctors go through except most people don't ask doctors to come over and give them a free physical.
Everytime I look at particularly moon shots but all space vehicles two thirds of the construction materials get jettisoned at some point. To bad there isn't a way to engineer some of those components to be useful for something else after their primary use has been accomplished. Have the booster shells be recoverable in space by the shuttle or something and towed to the space station to be retrofitted as an extra component. It costs so much to get a pound of weight up there finding a way to recycle the thousands of pounds they jettison on each mission would seem to be cost effective.
Viagra the little Graphite diamond? Diamonds for her and grahpite for him.
Micro$oft did everything they could to get a pro-industry administration into power to take the teeth out of the anti-trust settlement, looks like as part of the deal they get a built in veto in all future elections. Who says the system doesn't work. Well at least if you know who it serves.
I teach a class of high school students in a computer lab. Many of them are not particulary tech oriented. I use the class as a forum to introduce all kinds of ideas about the impact computers and technology are having on their world as subtext to the overall curiculum. I sometimes even assign slashdot as reading. Even tech competent people who can download mp3, surf the web, ftp, im, synch their pda whatever don't necessarily appreciate all of the other things that are available or involved. Things that apply directly to an english curriculum is the effect that e-mail and im has on language and language skills. How does cutting and pasting change the editing process from when you had to actually rewrite it each time. How do school policies on e-mail etc... affect free speech or anonymity which can directly affect or is it effect content. What is the impact of grammer and spell checkers on language skills. I talk about privacy and run ad-aware and show them the data miners that get downloaded onto the computers every day. I don't exclusively focus on any of this. Each day for the beginning of the class I spend 10min on a new topic, use the computers for examples, usually they have questions. When we went from handwritten to typewriters language and the process of writing changed. When we went from typewriters to computers everything about writing changed. Not only the process of writing but editing, research, publication, distribution, duplication, referencing etc... Some things got a lot easier some got harder partiularly learning the basics and not just shortcuts. While you are teaching those basics challenge them to see the good and the bad of how things are changing. Encourage them take an active role in choosing their relationship with technology and appreciate the implications of those choices.
Could some organization or individual (gates gov whomever) with a ton of money had a supercomputer of this size built but not allowed it to be listed or not told anyone that they built it or classified it as top top secret. I don't know what they would want it for but I there could be a couple out there.....
and the vibrance of living. It did help me focus more and be more "productive" but I wasn't terribly impressed with what I produced. A little background: I was diagnosed with ADHD "off the map" by a psychatrist at the age of 28. I have a very keen awareness of how I see/experience the world and although it is not terribly well recieved in the industrial higherarchy it beats the hell out of staring straight ahead in a daze. Over the years I have developed a lot of coping mechanisims to make it so that my way of being didn't collide with the way I should be as much as possible. Still there are times where conformity is required and conforming without medication for me is very hard. So I will spot use ritalin to get through trouble spots. I will also happen to find it a nice mixer with a couple of beers and _\|/_ ;) it's a nice trifecta cocktail. Seriously, I found using behavioral modifaction like a well organized palm pilot and a strong social support network to be an effective and preferable treatment plan for ADHD than being medicated all the time.
Their collecting your information often doesn't have anything to do with you or their product. Just having that information is valuable to marketing companies or spammers. A database of 100,000 verified identities with demographic data is incredibly valuable in the modern marketing world. Therefore if a company can get you to give them that information for free they will as another revenue stream. I would suspect that when they come up with the idea the concept of privacy and respecting the customer is completly overlooked. Not out of any intentional disrespect of their customers but rather out of a myopic focus on cash.
The question "why can't this be done?" was only the last part of the question. It was how can this be done specifically without stealing from and existing service i.e. piggy-backing on someone's paid for DSL. We all know about how business and govt tries to stand in the way of progress if they have an existing cash flow structure. So I find the repetitive naysaying and "you are stupid to even ask" posts to be part of the problem. It's answering the creative difficult side of the question where progress comes from. Speculation even daydreaming about what could be done to make some of these things possible is more productive than just bah humbuging around. How many things have been invented because of someone took somone elses flight of fancy and said "wait a minute that might just work". Sure many of those failed as well but without asking the question you will never find the answer. Now to be part of the solution I'll throw out one suggestion for one of the issues. Someone mentioned everyone would just hack their cell to not recieve routed calls. If we had a standard protocol and an organization to maintain (even an open source project) that portocol. Couldn't part of the protocol be that altered phones wouldn't be able to participate in the network because of some kind of built-in verification system? Not to say this would be easy to implement and I'm sure there are x number of roadblocks to this but in theory it could be done.
There may be more non-linux users reading Slashdot than some posters think. I happen to really like the technology, free speech, open source, and other information and breeze through most of the Linux specific stuff because I don't use it. Not that I wouldn't like to but time commitments at work and other interests outside of work have pushed adopting linux to the back burner. Nonetheless I advocate for it and talk about it regularly with non-tech people. Which makes up most the American population. Anything that makes open source software more accessable to the general public is a good thing. Posting reviews like this one on slashdot gives people who don't think non-linux using non-technology oriented people are unevolved neadrethals more tools with which to educate, support and encourage linux adoption among the general public. So even if only a couple people get introduced to Linux because someone read the review and used the book to get them started that accomplishes more than 1000 flames about the stupidity of non-linux users.
If you wanted to have a revolution or columbine 2 and didn't have the cash/access to real weapons this would be an alternative. Like they said in the artlcle cement filled etc... could cause a lot of damage. How about powdered laundry soap and gasoline filled projectiles. Instant napalm gun. How about a soup can filled with nails. Want to really protest the WTO and don't want your weapon traceable? Build your own. To the truly creative, and cheap this could be a great arsenal. Or it can just be fun like automatic rifles and tin cans.
Thie would most likely just create a group of underground businesses that do mods to your hardware to get around the rules like they do for DVD players and playstations. Then criminals and radicals will be able to do what they want and the average user will be limited. IF we really want to deal with this issue and all of the other similar legislative issues discussed on slashdot we need to go into our communities form active coalitions and participate actively in the legislative process. The only way to fight organizied money is organized people. The slashdot effect as political mobilization would overwhelming.
Ping Time has been running in madison wi for over a year. So it at least has moderate success. They spec out their machines prices and policies on their website. They also let players outside join on lan games they are playing so that friends without high speed access or the newest 50$ game du jour can play with their friends that do without hauling their machine around and pirating copies. I also know that they use a cloning product that rebuilds the machines automatically every night. It also lets them rebuild ones that go down quickly. I'm not sure what they do about hardware security. Every smart public lab has at least some kind of case locks and cable down components. I would also install something like VNC so I can see what is going on, on any machine and make sure that people aren't doing thing that are illegal from machines you are responsible for. They sell copies of all of the games they have available as well as gaming mice and keyboards and video cards. Not a large stock but it is the pro shop concept. They also do some console games. It's a nice pretty professionally organized place.
I agree with you about your stand on diamonds and personally will not buy diamonds. I also think diamonds aren't that attractive anyway. It sounds like your girlfriend knows you want to marry her and you have already told her about your very reasonable hesitations about diamonds. Why not sit down and talk to her about what she wants to wear everyday. You have tons of flexibility. Do you want a solitaire or a group of stones? Do you want one kind of stone or a variety of stones? I personally think that rubies, emeralds and sapphires are the three most attractive stones. If you want to have a diamond or a couple of diamonds you can use them as accents of the other featured stone(s). Once you have discussed with her what she likes as guidlines you can still sit down with a good jeweler that does custom designs and create her a unique and socially responsible engagement ring that will be the envy of all of her friends.
Ooops your bias is showing. I actually am working hand in hand with the faculty involved.The professor states his primary goal is to teach content not software. His grant, his lab, his decision. We also have way more student demand than we can handle. The stated goal of the lab is to push the frontier of the animation medium as a fine art. Which does not necessarily require fur, clothes etc... We have a decidedly non-commercial slant to the type of work we are trying to encourage. There are plenty of places where students can learn the software. Our local technical college has a very good two year modeling program that teaches maya and lightwave. Therefore this is not a thoughtless egocentric casual decision. It is a well thought out decision to explore the options within the philosophy that the lab is founded on.
I would love to buy a whole new setup but we can hardly keep up with our current expenses. We had to really compromise just to maintain our maya edu licenses. Also we have no desire to be a production lab. We want to teach concepts and content. We have no intention on being a software training center. Which tends to be the problem we get a lot of students that just want to have Maya on their resume. So using non-standard apps may help us attract the type of student we are looking for. Specifically those that want to do fine art which is what we teach. Which is not a slam against other forms of animation. It is just that is our chosen agenda and program. If we lose the students that want to recreate the dodge truck adds to get a modeling job great. We have 40 seats (2 classes) and a waiting list of of over 450 students. But that is a different post. Thanks for the input.
I now understand the line you were upset about. When I said anyone can just crank out something out of digital program I should have clarified. Almost all software programs can give you something quickly as demo or test or have defaults that let the unpracticed "crank something out" which we see a lot of on the web. Forinstance I-movies can very quickly make a movie of anything for anyone but is not representaional of what can be done in said software program when it is used well. Sorry about the misunderstanding.
"Make art" -george cramer
"those who can do, those who don't understand bitch about it." anonymous
What a great way to help children learn to think for themselves ..."
American schools do not have any intention on helping children think for themselves. This is not due to some conspiracy or intention it is because if children think for themselves it poses problems for the administration. As with all institutions the primary goal is to protect the institution itself and threrefore it's leadership. For example schoolboards, superentendents (sp) and principals make decisions that are going to protect their jobs and their reputations first and if there is room for teachers and students after the fact great. This is not because they are bad people it is just how you survive. Therefore, unless the students are in line with the administration they are a threat to it. At a very real level students are commodities. To most schools as organizations the individuals are not important, their test scores, gpa, particpation in student orgs,etc.. are what is important because those are what are used to validate and ensure the survival of the institution. That is why we see so many policies that fly in the face of educational research such as high stakes exit testing. This kind of testing gives a medium for the schools to validate their existance even though it shows that it forces teachers to teach to the test rather than actually content.
--Nothing makes a good technical man angrier than to have some incompetent nitwit with a check book telling him how to do his job.--Robert A. Heinlein