Yeah, that's a great point, and one well worth emphasizing:
Computers don't do anything magical or mysterious, they just do lots of simple things very, very quickly.
If you could somehow slow execution down to the point that they could see individual lines and screen sections being redrawn, pointer positions being calculated, text lines being positioned, etc, it would be a lot less impressive.
Talking about games (something they're familiar with and interested in) gives you a springboard for: - Graphics (screen drawing, rendering, vector math) - Physics simulations (particle physics, gravity, collisions) - Interfaces (Kinect, controllers, touch) - AI - Databases - Networking
Even thought they're interested in games because they're "cool" and "fun," you can use that interest to direct them to the deeper topics behind games. Games intersect with lots of hard, interesting CS topics.
They won't have to police it at our stadium. Drop an extra 70k people in town and you can barely make a cell call for a mile around the stadium, much less get net access inside of it.
There's not much need to spend effort enforcing something that's practically impossible anyway.
My home office desk has wheels, so it's easy to roll back from the wall, and it has a large solid panel in the back. So I screwed velcro strips in to the backside, labeled my wires on both ends and the middle, coiled them up, and strapped them to the back. The only wires that leave the desk are one coax and two power, so my desk is mobile and nearly self-contained, with few visible wires on the front or top.
I don't condone what Amazon did, and I think they should've gone to bat for their customers, but don't lose sight of what a problem this presents for Amazon's bottom line.
This could render them effectively unable to use any of the Kindle ebook revenue for non-public domain works, since they could conceivably be required to refund all of those funds at the demand of the publishers. They could be forced to collect the money, then just stuff it into an interest-bearing account in case they have to give it back.
So, in effect, we're not even renting the ebooks, we're just giving Amazon an interest-free loan in exchange for getting to borrow the books for a while.
There is a filter approaching that we already know about: the energy filter. I first read this in an SF book, but I don't recall which at the moment (probably either Isaac Asimov or Jack McDevitt). I've since seen the same idea in other places, though.
The basic idea is that not only does it take enormous amounts of energy to leave the planet, it actually takes enormous amounts of energy to harness that energy. Solar, wind, nuclear, and hydro power are great, but you need a base initial amount of easily usable resources to bootstrap them, and on Earth that means fossil fuels. Environmental concerns aside, it seems likely that there's only a relatively small window between the development of fossil fuels and the point at which there are no longer enough fuels left to bootstrap the next stage of energy evolution -- maybe only a few hundred years.
Civilizations that miss that window can begin devolving back through the stages of industrialization, and then exist nearly indefinitely in a pre-industrial state, but they'll never again have the resources necessary to leave their home planet. They will just putter along in a sort of Amish paradise until some natural disaster wipes them out.
That's why alternative energy research is essential. Not for environmental reasons, or political reasons, or economic reasons, or any of the other usual justifications, but because discovering how to make limitless energy via cold fusion doesn't do you any good if you no longer have enough fuels to jumpstart the reaction.
Everyone says the same thing -- you don't have to be an engineer to drive a car.
That's an imprecise analogy. You don't have to be an electrical engineer to program a computer any more than you have to be a mechanical engineer to drive a car.
People who know how to use a computer, but who have no concept of programming, are more like people who know how to ride public transportation, but who can't actually drive themselves.
You can get along fine with public transportation, but you'll be mostly confined to those places that have routes running to them. That's also much easier to live with if you live in a large, densely populated city rather than out on the frontier. Maybe that's why Windows is more popular than Linux: it's easier to get around in it without really learning how to drive.
In the end, I guess rudimentary programming skills aren't essential for computer literacy, but they should be considered essential for computer liberty, since without the ability to make the computer do your will, you will always be confined to the position of waiting around for declarations from on high of what you're allowed and able to do.
You'll be the 21st century equivalent of the medieval church laity, forever dependent on the literate clergy to relay the scripture to you.
When MS first started talking about the Tablet PC at PDC 2001, this is the type of device they were predicting. Unfortunately, tablets got derailed by bad implementations and marketing that were beyond Microsoft's control.
Their first mistake was ever showing tablets that had the now-ubiquitous convertible spinning screen and keyboard. Tablets were originally conceived as a new platform, but the unimaginative laptop manufacturers seized on them as a mere laptop feature, and proceeded to produce small, underpowered, overpriced laptops with touch screens rather than capitalizing on the tablet's unique features and strengths. MS should never have even hinted at laptop-like tablets in the early presentations.
The other major mistake was that manufacturers didn't do enough to get tablets into the hands of users. Everyone I went to PDC with in 2001 came back raving about tablets, but almost none of the people we described the concept to got it. Without fail, though, everyone I know who eventually got to try one hands-on said, "Wow, this is really cool!" (followed shortly by: "I wish I could afford one.") Unfortunately, it was early 2005 before I ever saw one in a store where shoppers could try them, and even then it wasn't obviously labeled as a Tablet PC, nor was there any real indication what that meant.
It appears that MS is determined not to repeat the first mistake this time. At the very least, it should be interesting to see what new mistakes they can come up with.
The dispartity is far more pronounced in the US, where 20 year-old "bargain value" CDs at most retailers are US$10-12, while 20 year-old bargain DVDs are $5-8. Even new, most movies are in the $15-20 range, while most albums are in the...$15-20 range.
It seems unlikely to me that a Sony-BMG spends more on marketing a CD than Universal spends on marketing a movie (unless it's Serenity, apparently).
.NET - A complex framework unifying a virtual machine written in a functional programming language...Ships with a complete IDE, hundreds of low level OS functions... a full set of widgets covering graphics, database access, networking....
It's suggested that the thing can read PDFs this time
According to Sony's product website, it will only display their BroadBand eBook (BBeB) format. Anything else you want to read will have to be converted before loading to the reader. You have to dig around quite a bit and find the footnote to learn that, though.
I would hope that this is a technology-simplifying, cost-saving measure -- since it's easier to make a product that will display only one format -- rather than a DRM measure, but I have my doubts.
Re:Libraries are terrible, terrible institutions.
on
Reining in Google
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· Score: 1
In fact, here is exactly what you currently get when you search for "ozark cavefish".
Re:Libraries are terrible, terrible institutions.
on
Reining in Google
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· Score: 1
it is wrong to make a profit off of other people's work without their knowledge or at least without passing some of the profit along to the owner of the work.
Absolutely! And if that's what Google were doing, it would be completely wrong, and it would be necessarily to change the law. And you're correct in that we certainly do not want companies or individuals to unilaterally alter the law to suit their needs. However, Google is not reselling their works, or making movies based on it, or plagiarizing it, or posting it for free on the internet. They are, in essence, providing information about it, so I see no need to change the law in this case.
Out in the physical world, there are people and services which, for a fee, research topics for researchers/authors, essentially by finding the relevent material, reading it, and reporting on it. They do not, to my knowledge, compensate the creators of the resources they find, except insofar as they may purchase those items on behalf of their clients in order to save them the trouble of doing so themselves, or they may purchase copies of the originals to use in their research, much as the libraries have already done. There is also the good ol' Periodic Guide carried by most libraries, which provides topical information about articles in magazines, newspapers, and other periodicals. It doesn't reprint the articles, it just tells you where articles about those topics can be found.
Google is doing exactly the same thing, except with books. You'll search books for "ozark cave fish," and it'll give you a list of books that mention them. Based on the brief excerpts, similar to what you see now on their web search, you can weed out the books that mention them in passed from the books that are actually informative. There will probably even be links from either Google or advertisers to buy those books.
If I've written the best book ever about the Ozark Cavefish, but nobody outside the serious cavefish research community has ever heard of it, I desperately want Google's service! If I want more than the world's eight leading cavefish researchers to discover (and probably buy, or at least encourage a library to buy) my book, such a service is essential.
Websites now live and die based on search engine rankings and availability, but they don't particularly mind because those things give them access to a wider audience than they would've ever had otherwise. Take a survey of webmasters and ask how many of them would like to be removed from Google's index because it may infringe their copyright. I suspect the vast majority of authors would feel the same way.
Heh heh. Yes, unfortunately, those qualities seem to be lacking all around these days.
But for many people, the reason they don't "have" those talents is because the media establishment has determined they don't. Or, more precisely, the studios have filled their available slots with what they perceive as the very cream of the crop.
The idea that imagination and talent are in short supply is a myth. What's really in short supply is the means to apply them and the will to do so. The barriers to entry are falling, though, so means are no longer an issue. Likewise, as it becomes easier, it will take less will.
A century ago, photography took a lot of materials and will. It was time-consuming, expensive, and involved working with dangerous chemicals. As the barriers to entry fell, many more people became amateur and professional photographers.Fifty years ago, audio recording was difficult and expensive. As the barriers to entry have fallen, more people have started making audio recordings. Today, video production is expensive and difficult...at least for now.
As technology makes things easier, more people become better at it, with whatever imagination and talent they have. Just ask weekend golfers who use new high tech clubs. Granted, there are only so many slots available on the tour, but there are a lot more and better tournaments now than there were 100 years ago, and there are more good golfers available to fill them.
Video is becoming more and more mainstream, with the average consumer having access via traditional video camera's, webcams, and even phone's. And if I buy the recording device and shoot the video footage, don't I "own" it anyway.
Now you're starting to get the idea! The MPAA/RIAA crusade against "digital piracy" has never been about protecting the artists or protecting their intellectual property or even solely about preserving their current business models. It has always been about control! First, control of distribution. Then control of consumption. And finally control of production.
It isn't individuals in their bedrooms sharing albums and movies that scares the studios, it is individuals in their garages making albums and movies.
If people are free to create and distribute their own content, it does two things:
It diminishes that person's role as a consumer. People who are busy creating new things will naturally find less time to consume the studios' products. Thousands and millions of producers will inevitably have an impact media consumption.
It diminishes the value of particular productions. The demand for new content won't increase significantly, because people only have 24 hours in a day (and it may decrease per #1), but the available content will increase significantly. More supply plus equal (or less deman) implies lower values.
Of course, they also run the risk of small, independent producers creating content that is superior to their own. To use an analogy, the big media companies are in the same position now that the Big Three auto makers were in the early 70s. They've had a cooperative oligarchy for decades. Now there are smaller, cheaper,faster (and potentially better) competitors entering their market. Rather than compete in the new world of smaller cars and expensive gas (or, for the studios, independent content and cheap distribution), they react by lobbying for import restrictions and spreading FUD about unsafe foreign cars (or lobbying for content controls and spreading FUD about destroying the incentive to create).
They probably realize this, and they've seen what the failure to successfully lobby has done to the American car industry. Rather than choosing the alternative route and rapidly adapting to the new world, the lesson they've learned from the past is that they need to lobby more effectively.
...Samuel L. Jackson was cool. This pretty much erases any cool points he had ever accumulated for Pulp Fiction and other cool film roles (not to mention points for being the only useful Jedi in the prequels), and puts him firmly in negative coolness territory.
I can't believe they're airing this garbage show again. It's a horrible abomination of television even by SpikeTV's standards.
I don't know about the world the rest of you Slashdotters live in, but around my neighborhood there wouldn't be much considered simple about any trail of blood, much less a long, wide, dried one.
Amen! Programming is a skill that one often learns in the course of a CS degree, but it is not the purpose of the degree itself. I got my BS in math, and I had to learn a fair amount of programming for the upper-level courses. In fact, I probably wrote more programs for my math classes than my CS classes.
Programming for CS is probably comparable in many ways to electrical engineers using oscilloscopes, MBAs using spreadsheets, or physicists using cyclotrons. They're all just tools that get used during the course of their research and/or jobs. The fact that it's currently possible to get a job specifically as a computer programmer is an accident of history, economics, and technology. You could once get a good job as a dedicated typist, as well.
I have to confess, I make pretty good money writing programs. I think of myself primarily as a computer scientist who happens to make a living programming, though, not as a programmer. And, frankly, if programming is still all I'm doing in ten more years, I'll be sorely disappointed in my career.
Now we know why Apple switched to Intel! I can't wait for a PowerBook running one of these, complete with the Ghostbusters-style backpack pumping liquid nitrogen to my laptop!
That's absolutely correct, yet it's the perception by society at large that really matters. Perception, and what society rewards.
Case in point:
In my high school, the football team had only had one winning season in the past ten years. During my three years in high school (sophomore thru senior there), the team's records were 1-9, 1-9, 0-10. To my knowledge, no one from any of those teams received a college football scholarship at any level.
During the same period, the band consistently won region, state, and national competitions. Scores of band members were selected for all-region and all-state bands, and several even tried out (and were accepted) for national honor bands. Out of my graduating class, the one before mine, and the one after mine (the only ones I have direct knowledge of) every single band member who went to college and played in the college band had a band scholarship of some sort. That's about 25 out of 30.
25 of 30 for the band compared to 0 of 50 for the football team.
Yet guess which group got more financial support from the school and community. Guess which group got charter buses to go to state competitions. Guess which group got a brand new practice facility.
Guess which group had to hawk over-priced candy and hold countless carwashes to buy uniforms. Guess which group rode school buses 500+ miles to a competition. Guess which group has to split up into three smaller groups to practice because they no longer fit in their current facility.
Replace "band" with "science major" and "football" with "business major" or "PE major" and nearly everything still holds at different levels. American society not only holds thinkers and researchers and scientists and engineers in less admiration than celebrities and athletes and managers, but it increasingly seems to be actively punishing people in those fields.
Who gets paid millions of dollars to play games? Athletes and coaches
Who gets put on the covers of countless magazines?
Athletes and coaches
Who gets multimillion dollar contract buy-outs when they fail to perform?
Athletes and coaches
Who gets invited on Leno and Letterman?
Athletes and coaches
Who gets multimillion dollar endorsement deals?
Athletes and coaches
Who gets put on posters and tacked to the walls of thousands of teenagers?
Athletes and coaches
Who gets worshipped and forgiven for all sins for being successful?
Athletes and coaches
Who gets teased mercilessly throughout their school years?
Science geeks and nerds
Who gets fired to raise stock prices even after successful work?
Science geeks and nerds
Who gets taunted and degraded by society at large?
Science geeks and nerds
Who gets underpaid for long hours and little security?
Science geeks and nerds
Who gets to spend 4-8 years in school in a difficult, demanding major with perceived diminishing job opportunities?
Science geeks and nerds
The perception is that you have to be born with certain talents and abilities to become a great athlete, but you can be trained to be a coach (even a mediocre one) and at least be in that field, so something fun, and bask in the reflected glory of the truly talented. Plus, we're not outsourcing football yet.
Yeah, I can't imagine why so many people are choosing PE over CS.
IANA Auto Mechanic, but I'm going to go out on a limb and guess that the diesel engines on trucks, buses, and vans are significantly different from those found in TDI Volkswagens.
Slashdot Mirror
Yeah, that's a great point, and one well worth emphasizing:
Computers don't do anything magical or mysterious, they just do lots of simple things very, very quickly.
If you could somehow slow execution down to the point that they could see individual lines and screen sections being redrawn, pointer positions being calculated, text lines being positioned, etc, it would be a lot less impressive.
Talking about games (something they're familiar with and interested in) gives you a springboard for:
- Graphics (screen drawing, rendering, vector math)
- Physics simulations (particle physics, gravity, collisions)
- Interfaces (Kinect, controllers, touch)
- AI
- Databases
- Networking
Even thought they're interested in games because they're "cool" and "fun," you can use that interest to direct them to the deeper topics behind games. Games intersect with lots of hard, interesting CS topics.
They won't have to police it at our stadium. Drop an extra 70k people in town and you can barely make a cell call for a mile around the stadium, much less get net access inside of it.
There's not much need to spend effort enforcing something that's practically impossible anyway.
My home office desk has wheels, so it's easy to roll back from the wall, and it has a large solid panel in the back. So I screwed velcro strips in to the backside, labeled my wires on both ends and the middle, coiled them up, and strapped them to the back. The only wires that leave the desk are one coax and two power, so my desk is mobile and nearly self-contained, with few visible wires on the front or top.
Admittedly, though, it's also enormous.
I don't condone what Amazon did, and I think they should've gone to bat for their customers, but don't lose sight of what a problem this presents for Amazon's bottom line.
This could render them effectively unable to use any of the Kindle ebook revenue for non-public domain works, since they could conceivably be required to refund all of those funds at the demand of the publishers. They could be forced to collect the money, then just stuff it into an interest-bearing account in case they have to give it back.
So, in effect, we're not even renting the ebooks, we're just giving Amazon an interest-free loan in exchange for getting to borrow the books for a while.
The basic idea is that not only does it take enormous amounts of energy to leave the planet, it actually takes enormous amounts of energy to harness that energy. Solar, wind, nuclear, and hydro power are great, but you need a base initial amount of easily usable resources to bootstrap them, and on Earth that means fossil fuels. Environmental concerns aside, it seems likely that there's only a relatively small window between the development of fossil fuels and the point at which there are no longer enough fuels left to bootstrap the next stage of energy evolution -- maybe only a few hundred years.
Civilizations that miss that window can begin devolving back through the stages of industrialization, and then exist nearly indefinitely in a pre-industrial state, but they'll never again have the resources necessary to leave their home planet. They will just putter along in a sort of Amish paradise until some natural disaster wipes them out.
That's why alternative energy research is essential. Not for environmental reasons, or political reasons, or economic reasons, or any of the other usual justifications, but because discovering how to make limitless energy via cold fusion doesn't do you any good if you no longer have enough fuels to jumpstart the reaction.
An iPod killer? Looks more like a Vista killer to me.
Honestly, which would you rather give up -- your iPod or Windows?
In all seriousness, though, if it'll mess up an iPod, what is it going to do to my thumb drive, digital camera, or other USB storage devices?
People who know how to use a computer, but who have no concept of programming, are more like people who know how to ride public transportation, but who can't actually drive themselves.
You can get along fine with public transportation, but you'll be mostly confined to those places that have routes running to them. That's also much easier to live with if you live in a large, densely populated city rather than out on the frontier. Maybe that's why Windows is more popular than Linux: it's easier to get around in it without really learning how to drive.
In the end, I guess rudimentary programming skills aren't essential for computer literacy, but they should be considered essential for computer liberty, since without the ability to make the computer do your will, you will always be confined to the position of waiting around for declarations from on high of what you're allowed and able to do.
You'll be the 21st century equivalent of the medieval church laity, forever dependent on the literate clergy to relay the scripture to you.
Their first mistake was ever showing tablets that had the now-ubiquitous convertible spinning screen and keyboard. Tablets were originally conceived as a new platform, but the unimaginative laptop manufacturers seized on them as a mere laptop feature, and proceeded to produce small, underpowered, overpriced laptops with touch screens rather than capitalizing on the tablet's unique features and strengths. MS should never have even hinted at laptop-like tablets in the early presentations.
The other major mistake was that manufacturers didn't do enough to get tablets into the hands of users. Everyone I went to PDC with in 2001 came back raving about tablets, but almost none of the people we described the concept to got it. Without fail, though, everyone I know who eventually got to try one hands-on said, "Wow, this is really cool!" (followed shortly by: "I wish I could afford one.") Unfortunately, it was early 2005 before I ever saw one in a store where shoppers could try them, and even then it wasn't obviously labeled as a Tablet PC, nor was there any real indication what that meant.
It appears that MS is determined not to repeat the first mistake this time. At the very least, it should be interesting to see what new mistakes they can come up with.
It seems unlikely to me that a Sony-BMG spends more on marketing a CD than Universal spends on marketing a movie (unless it's Serenity, apparently).
I would hope that this is a technology-simplifying, cost-saving measure -- since it's easier to make a product that will display only one format -- rather than a DRM measure, but I have my doubts.
In fact, here is exactly what you currently get when you search for "ozark cavefish".
Absolutely! And if that's what Google were doing, it would be completely wrong, and it would be necessarily to change the law. And you're correct in that we certainly do not want companies or individuals to unilaterally alter the law to suit their needs. However, Google is not reselling their works, or making movies based on it, or plagiarizing it, or posting it for free on the internet. They are, in essence, providing information about it, so I see no need to change the law in this case.
Out in the physical world, there are people and services which, for a fee, research topics for researchers/authors, essentially by finding the relevent material, reading it, and reporting on it. They do not, to my knowledge, compensate the creators of the resources they find, except insofar as they may purchase those items on behalf of their clients in order to save them the trouble of doing so themselves, or they may purchase copies of the originals to use in their research, much as the libraries have already done. There is also the good ol' Periodic Guide carried by most libraries, which provides topical information about articles in magazines, newspapers, and other periodicals. It doesn't reprint the articles, it just tells you where articles about those topics can be found.
Google is doing exactly the same thing, except with books. You'll search books for "ozark cave fish," and it'll give you a list of books that mention them. Based on the brief excerpts, similar to what you see now on their web search, you can weed out the books that mention them in passed from the books that are actually informative. There will probably even be links from either Google or advertisers to buy those books.
If I've written the best book ever about the Ozark Cavefish, but nobody outside the serious cavefish research community has ever heard of it, I desperately want Google's service! If I want more than the world's eight leading cavefish researchers to discover (and probably buy, or at least encourage a library to buy) my book, such a service is essential.
Websites now live and die based on search engine rankings and availability, but they don't particularly mind because those things give them access to a wider audience than they would've ever had otherwise. Take a survey of webmasters and ask how many of them would like to be removed from Google's index because it may infringe their copyright. I suspect the vast majority of authors would feel the same way.
Exactly. I never said they learned the right lesson from the auto industry.
But for many people, the reason they don't "have" those talents is because the media establishment has determined they don't. Or, more precisely, the studios have filled their available slots with what they perceive as the very cream of the crop.
The idea that imagination and talent are in short supply is a myth. What's really in short supply is the means to apply them and the will to do so. The barriers to entry are falling, though, so means are no longer an issue. Likewise, as it becomes easier, it will take less will.
A century ago, photography took a lot of materials and will. It was time-consuming, expensive, and involved working with dangerous chemicals. As the barriers to entry fell, many more people became amateur and professional photographers.Fifty years ago, audio recording was difficult and expensive. As the barriers to entry have fallen, more people have started making audio recordings. Today, video production is expensive and difficult...at least for now.
As technology makes things easier, more people become better at it, with whatever imagination and talent they have. Just ask weekend golfers who use new high tech clubs. Granted, there are only so many slots available on the tour, but there are a lot more and better tournaments now than there were 100 years ago, and there are more good golfers available to fill them.
It isn't individuals in their bedrooms sharing albums and movies that scares the studios, it is individuals in their garages making albums and movies.
If people are free to create and distribute their own content, it does two things:
Of course, they also run the risk of small, independent producers creating content that is superior to their own. To use an analogy, the big media companies are in the same position now that the Big Three auto makers were in the early 70s. They've had a cooperative oligarchy for decades. Now there are smaller, cheaper,faster (and potentially better) competitors entering their market. Rather than compete in the new world of smaller cars and expensive gas (or, for the studios, independent content and cheap distribution), they react by lobbying for import restrictions and spreading FUD about unsafe foreign cars (or lobbying for content controls and spreading FUD about destroying the incentive to create).
They probably realize this, and they've seen what the failure to successfully lobby has done to the American car industry. Rather than choosing the alternative route and rapidly adapting to the new world, the lesson they've learned from the past is that they need to lobby more effectively.
I can't believe they're airing this garbage show again. It's a horrible abomination of television even by SpikeTV's standards.
Programming for CS is probably comparable in many ways to electrical engineers using oscilloscopes, MBAs using spreadsheets, or physicists using cyclotrons. They're all just tools that get used during the course of their research and/or jobs. The fact that it's currently possible to get a job specifically as a computer programmer is an accident of history, economics, and technology. You could once get a good job as a dedicated typist, as well.
I have to confess, I make pretty good money writing programs. I think of myself primarily as a computer scientist who happens to make a living programming, though, not as a programmer. And, frankly, if programming is still all I'm doing in ten more years, I'll be sorely disappointed in my career.
That's just countering the other effects of laptops.
Now we know why Apple switched to Intel! I can't wait for a PowerBook running one of these, complete with the Ghostbusters-style backpack pumping liquid nitrogen to my laptop!
Case in point:
In my high school, the football team had only had one winning season in the past ten years. During my three years in high school (sophomore thru senior there), the team's records were 1-9, 1-9, 0-10. To my knowledge, no one from any of those teams received a college football scholarship at any level.
During the same period, the band consistently won region, state, and national competitions. Scores of band members were selected for all-region and all-state bands, and several even tried out (and were accepted) for national honor bands. Out of my graduating class, the one before mine, and the one after mine (the only ones I have direct knowledge of) every single band member who went to college and played in the college band had a band scholarship of some sort. That's about 25 out of 30.
25 of 30 for the band compared to 0 of 50 for the football team.
Yet guess which group got more financial support from the school and community. Guess which group got charter buses to go to state competitions. Guess which group got a brand new practice facility.
Guess which group had to hawk over-priced candy and hold countless carwashes to buy uniforms. Guess which group rode school buses 500+ miles to a competition. Guess which group has to split up into three smaller groups to practice because they no longer fit in their current facility.
Replace "band" with "science major" and "football" with "business major" or "PE major" and nearly everything still holds at different levels. American society not only holds thinkers and researchers and scientists and engineers in less admiration than celebrities and athletes and managers, but it increasingly seems to be actively punishing people in those fields.
Me, bitter? Nah! ;-)
Who gets paid millions of dollars to play games?
Athletes and coaches
Who gets put on the covers of countless magazines?
Athletes and coaches
Who gets multimillion dollar contract buy-outs when they fail to perform?
Athletes and coaches
Who gets invited on Leno and Letterman?
Athletes and coaches
Who gets multimillion dollar endorsement deals?
Athletes and coaches
Who gets put on posters and tacked to the walls of thousands of teenagers?
Athletes and coaches
Who gets worshipped and forgiven for all sins for being successful?
Athletes and coaches
Who gets teased mercilessly throughout their school years?
Science geeks and nerds
Who gets fired to raise stock prices even after successful work?
Science geeks and nerds
Who gets taunted and degraded by society at large?
Science geeks and nerds
Who gets underpaid for long hours and little security?
Science geeks and nerds
Who gets to spend 4-8 years in school in a difficult, demanding major with perceived diminishing job opportunities?
Science geeks and nerds
The perception is that you have to be born with certain talents and abilities to become a great athlete, but you can be trained to be a coach (even a mediocre one) and at least be in that field, so something fun, and bask in the reflected glory of the truly talented. Plus, we're not outsourcing football yet.
Yeah, I can't imagine why so many people are choosing PE over CS.
IANA Auto Mechanic, but I'm going to go out on a limb and guess that the diesel engines on trucks, buses, and vans are significantly different from those found in TDI Volkswagens.