I've seen some strange cheap calculators in my life... like one that solved quadratic equations, or another that allowed expresions like 3^2+5^2. But I'd hardly call those standard. I'm not crazy about Windows' calculator, but it works like most normal calculators do (except for the weird "Inv" thing, which comes handy anyway)...... anyway, as a CS student taking math classes being able to type expressions like 3^2+5^2 in the calculator is not really useful. You actually need a reverse polish stack, like the one in the HP calculators, to do serious work easily. But reverse polish takes a while to get used to (specially since few people are taught in school how to do it), so it's no surprise that the Windows calculator doesn't feature it.
Along with the seeds they should put the frozen embryos of giant and savage man eating creatures and label them poorly.
According to movies I've seen that would be the only sensible thing to do.
The original clippy was good
on
The Death of Clippy
·
· Score: 4, Informative
When one of the developers/researchers working in MSN Search came to my university to give a one week course on probability based models for search applications he told us that originally Clippy was meant to run with a quite advanced AI (based on a probability model), but was changed before shipping for the much more simpler version we all knew. I'm not sure but I think it was to decrease CPU utilization.
The mostly crappy AI made it extra annoying, the rest is history.
I find it ironic when people complain that Calc and Notepad haven't changed. In fact, both programs have changed. (Notepad gained some additional menu and status bar options. Calc got a severe workover.)
I wouldn't be surprised if these are the same people who complain, "Why does Microsoft spend all its effort on making Windows 'look cool'? They should spend all their efforts on making technical improvements and just stop making visual improvements."
And with Calc, that's exactly what happened: Massive technical improvements. No visual improvement. And nobody noticed. In fact, the complaints just keep coming. "Look at Calc, same as it always was."
$400 might be too much... and "the right price" is a very subjective issue... but at 50 U$S MS Office would cost less than GTA St Andreas. As much as I loved playing GTA, if we compare how much use I gave my free Open Office suite over the years compared to the play time of GTA (which I finished), then I should be paying more than U$S 50 for an office productivity suite. Specially since I loose money playing GTA and make money using Open Office.
I know it's a silly comparison, but my point is that sometimes we're more willing to shell out cash for some stuff, and not for other... despite the actual merits.
In fact my main gripe with the price of software is not that U$S 600 for Photoshop is too expensive for business (which isn't) but rather than non professional home users and professionals that don't work mainly in graphic design (my case) have to pay the same price, or perhaps get a crippled version (like the one bundled with scanners and such). Through my life I've seen many people that learned using tools like Photoshop, 3D Studio, Visual Studio, Adobe Premiere, Flash, Visual Age for Smalltalk and such through illegal copies... which later allowed them to use those same tools in a professional environment, which was able to afford them.
There are tons of open source apps for Windows too... I use OpenOffice in my Windows instead of MS Office because of price. Even though I own a legal copy of Photoshop (more like 600 U$S, not anywhere near 50) because the Gimp can't compete with Adobe's program.
I believe MANY Linux users would gladly pay 50 U$S or more for MS Office under Linux (specially because of the Exchange compatibility) thing, and would be glad to pay whatever they're paying for Windows Photoshop for Linux Photoshop.
Linux adoption shouldn't be a cost issue... because that's a fight they won't win (except in the third world (where I live), iff DRM gets its way and copying commercial software is no longer an alternative). People that can afford a computer probably can afford commercial software... specially in companies, where you have the biggest number of legal Office and Photoshop licenses running.
It's funny reading in Slashdot about consoles, and the how the XBox 360 is cheaper than the PS3, and how everybody is getting a Wii, and stuff... with consoles being in the 200-600 u$S range and games at 50-70 a pop... yet when it comes to buying MS Office everybody's pockets are sadly empty and that's why Free (as in beer?) software will rule the world.
Linux would be more believable in the eyes of the public if all its evangelists would defend it even if it were priced the same as Vista.
When their work on pattern recognition, comes to fruition they could easily discover just how much you hate the government, how much you despise them, just how disaffected you are and how much you sorely need to spend the rest of your now very short life in a labor camp within the arctic circle - classified as a "security risk" and a suspended death sentence hanging over your head.
Unless your government becomes a totalitarian dictatorship you are free to despise and hate them. Under a democracy the government will have to convince the people that your hate is bad in order to be able to do something about it, and the ugly bit is that they probably will.
I live in Argentina, where the coming of the chip is the only shot the Wii has at being popular here. Chips tipically enable the use of pirate games, and that's the only reason the PS, PS2 and X-Box were able to take off.
The Argentine versions (there are two) of eBay are currently selling Wiis at about 700 U$S a pop. That might sound expensive to you, but it's worse if you consider that 700 U$S is considered to be quite a decent monthly salary here. Games are selling for about 100 U$S. Once chipped Wiis start showing up the machine will probably stay expensive for a while (though it should eventually drop to about twice whatever you're paying in the US) but games will cost between 7 and 3 U$S each (which is the typical street price for X-BOX and PS2 copied DVDs).
Perhaps I'm not understanding it right (I truly mean this)... but this is the way I see it:
- If Novell is right on the patent issue, then nobody can distribute certain parts of Linux under the GPL.
- If Novell is wrong on the patent issue, even if they believe they are and their understanding of the GPL is wrong, then everybody (even Novell) is free to distribute all of Linux under the GPL.
I don't see how Novell would be solely unable to distribute because of their beliefs. I can't think of any laws that only apply if you believe in them.
I started using Bugzilla, but then switched to Mantis which I think is much better and prettier. Have been using it for more than a year now, no complaints.
Exactly... a little bit more than 30k (less than 31k) should be enough to pay all taxes at 18%.
Re:Open Open Open? AROS!
on
AmigaOS 4
·
· Score: 1
1. Logical Volume Assignment : Assign "Webs" to your web site dir and point your web server at the Drive called Webs, not a hard path attatched to a hardware controlled drive letter. oh and if you want to move your website or switch to a backup just reassign Webs to point to the new location, only the underlying OS will know that you've moved it. Also works for removable media, ram drives, network mappings. Beautiful and not tied to a mysterious legacy drive structure peppered with acronyms like unix/linux wither
That sounds like UNIX's mount. I don't see the problem with that... acronyms are a human made convention, unix culture, not a technical impediment.
3. multiple screens, different software can open a new screen in a different resolution with different color depth. yeah you can kind of do this in windows when booting up a game but we all know it's actually re-setting the resolution of the system as a whole, illustrated by the fact that when a game bombs your desktop is f**ked. You can have as many as a like, so you can be tight with your desktop's video ram and run it in 256 colors if you wish, but imagine at the same time being able to host a HD movie on another screen, pause it, and switch back to the desktop instantly without waiting for the OS to have a fit first.
This "fit" you mention sounds like a problem with graphic boards, not the OS. Changing video modes is a jumpy operation even on linux...... and as long as Windows is concerned, it can handle multiple monitors with different video modes just fine. With my el-cheapo NVidia card I can watch full screen video on my TV (being played by WMP) while still working on the main desktop with the WMP window minimized.
4. actually well implimented multitasking, like being able to zip up a bunch of folders on your hard drive AND format a floppy ready to put them on at the same time. without a) a major slowdown or b) the whole system crashing and burning. and what's with windows totally stopping dead when you stick anything in an optical drive, does Vista still do that?
Haven't used Vista, but I know what you mean... still, I'd say it's not a problem with how multitasking itself (as process management goes) but rather with the FDD drivers (which seem to get top priority). This is not a problem with Linux, for instance, which also buffers floppy disks nicely.
Still, I wouldn't mind if Microsoft didn't fix this... I really want FDDs to dissapear, just like in the Mac. I tried not installing a FDD in my new PC (one year ago), but had to because of Motherboard drivers that had to be installed right in the middle of the XP installation. I'm not too crazy about the way my DVD-R drive works under Windows (locks quite a bit if the disc is not perfect, etc.), CD-ROM drives always seem to work better under Linux, but I really can't say because 80% of the drives I ever used were cheap OEM drives, so it might not be an issue with good hardware.
Did you ever notice how Windows allows to do drag and drop from almost anywhere to almost anywhere? You can drag selected text from the notepad to the address bar of the explorer, drag an image from the explorer to the desktop, drag a file inside a program to open it, etc. That's mostly COM/OLE technology, which implies extra levels of indirection and thus extra CPU and memory overhead.
There's also library modularity, where many Windows programs use standard OS libraries (like TAPI, MAPI, HTML rendering, DirectX, DirectShow, etc.) which provide very rich APIs compared to BIOS services and other interfaces from times of yore.
And most overhead can be traced to a lot of background services whose convenience we already take for granted... like DHCP, USB Plug and Play, Instant Messaging, Firewall, Antivirus, background mail checking and spam detection, HDD indexing (like Google Desktop does), automatic software update checks, background printing, background MP3 playing (my P-100 could hardly play MP3s in DOS as the only task... it depended on bitrate) and all manners of widgets, taskbars, tray icons, etc.
We also got used to high definition non-interlaced true-color desktops, possibly with 3D acceleration, Clear-Type, virtual Desktops, fonts with soft edges, etc. I remember when I first saw a full color (probably 8-bit color, actually) photo in an old Amiga (Amiga 1000 I think), and you could see it render on the screen one line at a time. The same with any SVGA slideshow in my ancient 486 SX under DOS.
Also worth mentioning OOo's Draw program. It's an excellent thing for flowcharts, and very easy to find. I'm sure a similar function is somewhere in Microsoft Office... but what crazy name does it have?
Office has its small draw program I think...... but the good one is called Visio, and it's part of the larger Office suite. It's a great product, BTW, albeit a little bloated in its professional version.
once I learned how to use styles to structure the document, and found that the various styles would produce a clickable, nested table of contents in the final pdf file, I was hooked. MS Office just doesn't do that.
Yes it does!
I learned to do it in MS Office long before I found out how to do it in Open Office... in fact, it took me a while to get used to the way it's done in Open Office and found it to be more intuitive in MS Office. To be fair, this functionality is quite similar in both products. I had my share of problems with Open Office, but mostly with advanced layout (different sections, columned text, etc.)
I once met this kid, couldn't have been more than eleven at the time, that was accidentally left home alone when his parents and brothers took a trip to France. During the first days the kid managed to do the cooking, cleaning and shopping all by himself, no problem. But then, he found out that some burglars had targeted the house assuming it was empty for the holidays, so this brilliant kid first tried to make the house appear occupied by a full family through some clever tactics and minor inventions (like cardboard cut-outs which he animated with ropes and then projected through the curtains).
Eventually the burglars found out the house was just occupied by a very small kid and did the same as the GP here, and assumed 11 year olds are helpless morons. They found they were wrong the hard way, when the kid rigged the whole house making it a lethal burglar trap by using the coolest rube goldberg contraptions you can imagine.
I could also tell you about very young kids who found a pirate's gold while exploring some sewers... but I think I made my point.
Counterstrike stuck around for long in Argentina due to the popularity of small shops which offer cheap internet access. Some of these places have low end machines (due to the high prices we pay for imported hardware) and Counterstrike runs very well in them... our internet connections are nothing to write about either, and the game doesn't have big bandwidth requirements.
Since I was a child I love reading, and have done so a lot. I'm convinced about the benefits of reading itself as an activity (regardless of the subject matter of the book you're reading).
Yet... I'm also convinced about the benefits of practicing sports, taking acting classes, taking singing lessons, learning how to play an instrument, studying hard science, doing outdoor activities, keeping up with current political issues and learning to debate, learning how to cook, taking art lessons (any discipline), learning electronics and/or hacking hardware, traveling to different countries, and countless other activities. Yet, though I do many of the activities I mentioned, I don't do every single one of them... and would never expect someone to do them all.
What I'm not convinced of is that reading as a regular activity is more important than all of the others... even though it was very important for me. I believe than there might be different paths to exercising the brain, and the real problem would be apathy. Educators should encourage kids to read, but not consider it a panacea. They should instead try to develop the full potential of the kid through alternate paths which might be more appropriate for him.
I guess they don't see the potential of video chat... or perhaps they see the potential of sex video chat, since you can point the camera to your genitals while looking at the other party's.
I live in Argentina, which is one of the target countries for OLPC. Daily through the streets of Buenos Aires I come across many many indigent children who either beg for money, perform little juggling acts for coins, sell small items or collect cardboard and other materials from the trash which they later sell. These kids were usually found as well in Arcades, playing with some hard earned coins, out of someone's good will, or hungrily peeking over someone's shoulder. They normally play real good and act as on-site advisers for kids with money to play. When Arcades started disappearing in favor of small joints dedicated to on-line games, they moved over... and now they sometimes spend hard earned change for an hour of Counterstrike (historically the most successful on-line game for this kind of places).... So I assure you... poor kids certainly do care about games, and I have no reason to think they'd rather read a book.
And if you aim higher, towards the working class children, the lower middle class, or middle class, then there's no question either: as a rule kids don't like to read in this country. I think it's likely that overall children books are less popular here than in the US, and reading in adults is less popular as well. Kids normally don't like school or studying (no surprise here, I guess), and they avoid it as much as they can. We don't have SAT exams here, or any other kind of exam which require a certain level (except for some high schools which have an acceptance exam), so most kids stick to getting marks just high enough as to pass the class.
So I can't imagine why someone would think that kids would rather use the computer to read a book than to play games. What I would believe, is that many kids would rather chat and browse through social network sites (Fotolog.com is very popular in Argentina and Brasil) than play games. Girls specially. In fact, I'm really happy that thanks to SMS and IM apps, kids now have a reason to read and write ten times more than they did before... even if they do it in garbled kl00l3z-5p34k. I'd like teachers to embrace this fact and help kids improve their on-line writing.
I signed up for the beta, but it ruined my standard dial up internet connection, so I never got to use it more than two hours. I had to enter my credit card information, but they said it was just to test the system thoroughly and I wouldn't be charged. Some months later I got a charge for AOL, so I called them... they explained that beta testers were automatically signed up when the system went live. I asked how was I supposed to know, and they explained they sent an email letting us know and giving us a chance to stop the process... but the mail was sent through the AOL system, which never really worked for me. When I complained that I got charged and didn't even know I had AOL access they offered a free month...... I eventually contested the charges with the credit card company, got them cancelled and never heard from them again.
Slashdot Mirror
I've seen some strange cheap calculators in my life... like one that solved quadratic equations, or another that allowed expresions like 3^2+5^2. But I'd hardly call those standard. I'm not crazy about Windows' calculator, but it works like most normal calculators do (except for the weird "Inv" thing, which comes handy anyway)... ... anyway, as a CS student taking math classes being able to type expressions like 3^2+5^2 in the calculator is not really useful. You actually need a reverse polish stack, like the one in the HP calculators, to do serious work easily. But reverse polish takes a while to get used to (specially since few people are taught in school how to do it), so it's no surprise that the Windows calculator doesn't feature it.
Is that a joke that just flew over my head?
I can do the equation just fine...
3
^2
M+
4
^2
M+
MR
Inv(^2)
Along with the seeds they should put the frozen embryos of giant and savage man eating creatures and label them poorly.
According to movies I've seen that would be the only sensible thing to do.
When one of the developers/researchers working in MSN Search came to my university to give a one week course on probability based models for search applications he told us that originally Clippy was meant to run with a quite advanced AI (based on a probability model), but was changed before shipping for the much more simpler version we all knew. I'm not sure but I think it was to decrease CPU utilization.
The mostly crappy AI made it extra annoying, the rest is history.
http://blogs.msdn.com/oldnewthing/archive/2004/05
Just a small preview of what you'll find inside:
$400 might be too much... and "the right price" is a very subjective issue... but at 50 U$S MS Office would cost less than GTA St Andreas. As much as I loved playing GTA, if we compare how much use I gave my free Open Office suite over the years compared to the play time of GTA (which I finished), then I should be paying more than U$S 50 for an office productivity suite. Specially since I loose money playing GTA and make money using Open Office.
I know it's a silly comparison, but my point is that sometimes we're more willing to shell out cash for some stuff, and not for other... despite the actual merits.
In fact my main gripe with the price of software is not that U$S 600 for Photoshop is too expensive for business (which isn't) but rather than non professional home users and professionals that don't work mainly in graphic design (my case) have to pay the same price, or perhaps get a crippled version (like the one bundled with scanners and such). Through my life I've seen many people that learned using tools like Photoshop, 3D Studio, Visual Studio, Adobe Premiere, Flash, Visual Age for Smalltalk and such through illegal copies... which later allowed them to use those same tools in a professional environment, which was able to afford them.
There are tons of open source apps for Windows too... I use OpenOffice in my Windows instead of MS Office because of price. Even though I own a legal copy of Photoshop (more like 600 U$S, not anywhere near 50) because the Gimp can't compete with Adobe's program.
I believe MANY Linux users would gladly pay 50 U$S or more for MS Office under Linux (specially because of the Exchange compatibility) thing, and would be glad to pay whatever they're paying for Windows Photoshop for Linux Photoshop.
Linux adoption shouldn't be a cost issue... because that's a fight they won't win (except in the third world (where I live), iff DRM gets its way and copying commercial software is no longer an alternative). People that can afford a computer probably can afford commercial software... specially in companies, where you have the biggest number of legal Office and Photoshop licenses running.
It's funny reading in Slashdot about consoles, and the how the XBox 360 is cheaper than the PS3, and how everybody is getting a Wii, and stuff... with consoles being in the 200-600 u$S range and games at 50-70 a pop... yet when it comes to buying MS Office everybody's pockets are sadly empty and that's why Free (as in beer?) software will rule the world.
Linux would be more believable in the eyes of the public if all its evangelists would defend it even if it were priced the same as Vista.
Unless your government becomes a totalitarian dictatorship you are free to despise and hate them. Under a democracy the government will have to convince the people that your hate is bad in order to be able to do something about it, and the ugly bit is that they probably will.
If you have the intention to attempt an act, you're still innocent until you do.
I live in Argentina, where the coming of the chip is the only shot the Wii has at being popular here. Chips tipically enable the use of pirate games, and that's the only reason the PS, PS2 and X-Box were able to take off.
The Argentine versions (there are two) of eBay are currently selling Wiis at about 700 U$S a pop. That might sound expensive to you, but it's worse if you consider that 700 U$S is considered to be quite a decent monthly salary here. Games are selling for about 100 U$S. Once chipped Wiis start showing up the machine will probably stay expensive for a while (though it should eventually drop to about twice whatever you're paying in the US) but games will cost between 7 and 3 U$S each (which is the typical street price for X-BOX and PS2 copied DVDs).
Perhaps I'm not understanding it right (I truly mean this)... but this is the way I see it:
- If Novell is right on the patent issue, then nobody can distribute certain parts of Linux under the GPL.
- If Novell is wrong on the patent issue, even if they believe they are and their understanding of the GPL is wrong, then everybody (even Novell) is free to distribute all of Linux under the GPL.
I don't see how Novell would be solely unable to distribute because of their beliefs. I can't think of any laws that only apply if you believe in them.
I started using Bugzilla, but then switched to Mantis which I think is much better and prettier. Have been using it for more than a year now, no complaints.
Exactly... a little bit more than 30k (less than 31k) should be enough to pay all taxes at 18%.
That sounds like UNIX's mount. I don't see the problem with that... acronyms are a human made convention, unix culture, not a technical impediment.
This "fit" you mention sounds like a problem with graphic boards, not the OS. Changing video modes is a jumpy operation even on linux...
Haven't used Vista, but I know what you mean... still, I'd say it's not a problem with how multitasking itself (as process management goes) but rather with the FDD drivers (which seem to get top priority). This is not a problem with Linux, for instance, which also buffers floppy disks nicely.
Still, I wouldn't mind if Microsoft didn't fix this... I really want FDDs to dissapear, just like in the Mac. I tried not installing a FDD in my new PC (one year ago), but had to because of Motherboard drivers that had to be installed right in the middle of the XP installation. I'm not too crazy about the way my DVD-R drive works under Windows (locks quite a bit if the disc is not perfect, etc.), CD-ROM drives always seem to work better under Linux, but I really can't say because 80% of the drives I ever used were cheap OEM drives, so it might not be an issue with good hardware.
Not only network services...
Did you ever notice how Windows allows to do drag and drop from almost anywhere to almost anywhere? You can drag selected text from the notepad to the address bar of the explorer, drag an image from the explorer to the desktop, drag a file inside a program to open it, etc. That's mostly COM/OLE technology, which implies extra levels of indirection and thus extra CPU and memory overhead.
There's also library modularity, where many Windows programs use standard OS libraries (like TAPI, MAPI, HTML rendering, DirectX, DirectShow, etc.) which provide very rich APIs compared to BIOS services and other interfaces from times of yore.
And most overhead can be traced to a lot of background services whose convenience we already take for granted... like DHCP, USB Plug and Play, Instant Messaging, Firewall, Antivirus, background mail checking and spam detection, HDD indexing (like Google Desktop does), automatic software update checks, background printing, background MP3 playing (my P-100 could hardly play MP3s in DOS as the only task... it depended on bitrate) and all manners of widgets, taskbars, tray icons, etc.
We also got used to high definition non-interlaced true-color desktops, possibly with 3D acceleration, Clear-Type, virtual Desktops, fonts with soft edges, etc. I remember when I first saw a full color (probably 8-bit color, actually) photo in an old Amiga (Amiga 1000 I think), and you could see it render on the screen one line at a time. The same with any SVGA slideshow in my ancient 486 SX under DOS.
Office has its small draw program I think...
Yes it does!
I learned to do it in MS Office long before I found out how to do it in Open Office... in fact, it took me a while to get used to the way it's done in Open Office and found it to be more intuitive in MS Office. To be fair, this functionality is quite similar in both products. I had my share of problems with Open Office, but mostly with advanced layout (different sections, columned text, etc.)
I completely agree with you.
I once met this kid, couldn't have been more than eleven at the time, that was accidentally left home alone when his parents and brothers took a trip to France. During the first days the kid managed to do the cooking, cleaning and shopping all by himself, no problem. But then, he found out that some burglars had targeted the house assuming it was empty for the holidays, so this brilliant kid first tried to make the house appear occupied by a full family through some clever tactics and minor inventions (like cardboard cut-outs which he animated with ropes and then projected through the curtains).
Eventually the burglars found out the house was just occupied by a very small kid and did the same as the GP here, and assumed 11 year olds are helpless morons. They found they were wrong the hard way, when the kid rigged the whole house making it a lethal burglar trap by using the coolest rube goldberg contraptions you can imagine.
I could also tell you about very young kids who found a pirate's gold while exploring some sewers... but I think I made my point.
Counterstrike stuck around for long in Argentina due to the popularity of small shops which offer cheap internet access. Some of these places have low end machines (due to the high prices we pay for imported hardware) and Counterstrike runs very well in them... our internet connections are nothing to write about either, and the game doesn't have big bandwidth requirements.
Since I was a child I love reading, and have done so a lot. I'm convinced about the benefits of reading itself as an activity (regardless of the subject matter of the book you're reading).
Yet... I'm also convinced about the benefits of practicing sports, taking acting classes, taking singing lessons, learning how to play an instrument, studying hard science, doing outdoor activities, keeping up with current political issues and learning to debate, learning how to cook, taking art lessons (any discipline), learning electronics and/or hacking hardware, traveling to different countries, and countless other activities. Yet, though I do many of the activities I mentioned, I don't do every single one of them... and would never expect someone to do them all.
What I'm not convinced of is that reading as a regular activity is more important than all of the others... even though it was very important for me. I believe than there might be different paths to exercising the brain, and the real problem would be apathy. Educators should encourage kids to read, but not consider it a panacea. They should instead try to develop the full potential of the kid through alternate paths which might be more appropriate for him.
Is 7 gigaton a year a lot in the planetary scale? I haven't got a clue... ... neither if it's a significant amount.
I can only marvel at the word "gigaton" and picture myself trying to carry a bag filled with 7 gigatons of gas.
This is why reasoning in "common sense" terms about an issue like this is next to impossible.
The camera is in the back????
I guess they don't see the potential of video chat... or perhaps they see the potential of sex video chat, since you can point the camera to your genitals while looking at the other party's.
I live in Argentina, which is one of the target countries for OLPC. Daily through the streets of Buenos Aires I come across many many indigent children who either beg for money, perform little juggling acts for coins, sell small items or collect cardboard and other materials from the trash which they later sell. These kids were usually found as well in Arcades, playing with some hard earned coins, out of someone's good will, or hungrily peeking over someone's shoulder. They normally play real good and act as on-site advisers for kids with money to play. When Arcades started disappearing in favor of small joints dedicated to on-line games, they moved over... and now they sometimes spend hard earned change for an hour of Counterstrike (historically the most successful on-line game for this kind of places). ... So I assure you... poor kids certainly do care about games, and I have no reason to think they'd rather read a book.
And if you aim higher, towards the working class children, the lower middle class, or middle class, then there's no question either: as a rule kids don't like to read in this country. I think it's likely that overall children books are less popular here than in the US, and reading in adults is less popular as well. Kids normally don't like school or studying (no surprise here, I guess), and they avoid it as much as they can. We don't have SAT exams here, or any other kind of exam which require a certain level (except for some high schools which have an acceptance exam), so most kids stick to getting marks just high enough as to pass the class.
So I can't imagine why someone would think that kids would rather use the computer to read a book than to play games. What I would believe, is that many kids would rather chat and browse through social network sites (Fotolog.com is very popular in Argentina and Brasil) than play games. Girls specially. In fact, I'm really happy that thanks to SMS and IM apps, kids now have a reason to read and write ten times more than they did before... even if they do it in garbled kl00l3z-5p34k. I'd like teachers to embrace this fact and help kids improve their on-line writing.
Cousins usually share only one grandmother with you, unless something is really wrong with your family.
I had a similar problem in Argentina.
... I eventually contested the charges with the credit card company, got them cancelled and never heard from them again.
I signed up for the beta, but it ruined my standard dial up internet connection, so I never got to use it more than two hours. I had to enter my credit card information, but they said it was just to test the system thoroughly and I wouldn't be charged. Some months later I got a charge for AOL, so I called them... they explained that beta testers were automatically signed up when the system went live. I asked how was I supposed to know, and they explained they sent an email letting us know and giving us a chance to stop the process... but the mail was sent through the AOL system, which never really worked for me. When I complained that I got charged and didn't even know I had AOL access they offered a free month...