a lot of this reluctance comes from the rigors of standardized testing. taking your class on a field trip takes away time needed to cram in information (and ways to manipulate multiple choice testing).
"reluctant teachers" should be summarily fired
after you've fired these teachers and the teachers whose classes didn't meet the testing requirements... well, there aren't any more teachers. oh well.
[snip]Don't underestimate joe sixpack. Just because he isn't an expert on the things YOU'RE expert on doesn't mean he's dumb or lazy. He may be quite the genius, and just focussed on other interests.[/snip]
[spit take]
say what? am I still reading Slashdot? what kind of comment is this? not a flamer, not a troll... some sort of new entity never before seen.
They make it sound very Gibson-esque in there. But it's not clear what these people are actually doing (except raking in millions of dollars). They have fancy displays and lots of data mining, packet sniffing and tracing technology and they're preventing... What? Well, nobody really knows.
Smoke and mirrors. Meanwhile you're being pumped for thousands a month. The price is quoted right in the article. A couple thousand a month seems reasonable. After all those Bulgarian hackers are vicious!
If you're interested in that then let me tell you about my company.
I've started a ghost-busting business. Using specially developed anti-ghost technology I am able to monitor minor disturbances along the walls of your house. From my Central Office of New Ghost Activity Monitoring Equipment I have been detecting thousands of intrusions each day! With the pattented Spectral Tracking Universal Psychic Intrusion Detector, I can see all over the world and into the cosmos to detect super-natural invasions even before they occur.
Ah! Even as we speak a spectral invasion fleet masses in Zaire to invade your kitchen!
SweatyB
Re:two strings
on
Science Askew
·
· Score: 1, Offtopic
hehehe...
note: if you too think this joke is funny, it's probably a sign that years of CS education have screwed with your sense of humor
judging by some of the posts here there are a lot of people who think it doesn't really matter. As long as their CPU isn't burning a hole through their desk, who cares.
And when the computer's thrown away and the components start to leak out... ah well, it isn't my computer anymore. I threw it away. I have this new shiny computer with twice the RAM and 120GB RAID-5 blah blah blah blah blah...
My point isn't that we techies should stop using computers, but that we should at least be a little concerned about what it's costing us in the long run.
Drilling a small hole in the tokens changes their internal structure enough to unleash the avalanche effect, so that the outputs from the same token before and after drilling differ by roughly half of their bits. Yet the process that transforms the speckle pattern into a string of digits can be modified to ignore accidental surface scratches.
I would imagine that since it's the internal structure of the token which determines the output, surface scratches don't have as dramatic an effect.
A and B have nothing to do with each other. And current software (especially the MS variety) is full of security (A) holes. Consumers are concerned that their computers are at risk and want to be more secure (A). And they enjoy the freedom that digital media (without security B) provides.
By saying that DRM addresses computer security, the industry is throwing up a smoke screen. The consumer believes that MS, Intel, et al. are addressing their security concerns when in fact they are really crippling their hardware and software. With no added security (A).
RIAA also wins using this technology because file-sharing and burning are thrown together with viri and hacking as "threats to computer security". Just a semantic turn away from making casual file-swappers into federal felons.
Security is the wrong word. I can't even imagine how it came into use in this sense, except as an incredibly succesful PR ploy. Just stick with "Copy-Protection" or better "Software Restriction" or more realistic "Software Crippling".
It's true that t-shirts and toys don't sell didley-squat, but don't tell everyone. Without those free t-shirts I might have to do laundry once in a while.
And without the toys on my desk I might have to do work!
Nuclear waste is as much a problem as air pollution. And with more Nuclear Power Plants in operation it will continue to be a problem. Radioactive byproducts are not something that can be easily overlooked. Ask the people of Nevada about the Yukka Mtn Project.
The key is to conserve energy and to invest in NEW technologies. Learn to use our sources of energy more efficiently with less pollution. The dangers inherent in nuclear energy plus the radiocative waste breeder plants produce make Nuclear Power repellent.
Moby's saying the file sharing is hurting his sale (but it's not such a bad thing). RIAA is saying that file sharing is hurting their sales (and that it's the end of the world).
Neither of them bothers to present any proof that their sales are actually aversely affected. I haven't seen any evidence, in fact, in Napster's hayday, sales were way up. So I'd say, sharing doesn't hurt record sales. Saying "It does too!" wont convince me. Even if you say it real loud.
Popularity is measured in sales because sales reflect the number of people that are willing to spend money to listen to an album. Moby's at 35 this week, something like 32,000 albums last week. Cry me a frickin' river.
He's not at the top because his album isn't getting into people's heads the way Play did. Personally, I think Eminem is a schmuck, but even I find myself humming his stupid assinine song. That's how you stay on the top of the charts. If your music can't penetrate outside your already established base, you're not going to sell a gadzillion records.
So Moby might be right that they shouldn't only measure music by its popularity, but his album's not suffering due to file sharing. It's suffering due to not being so good.
Moby says Weezer is also suffering from the "Pearl Jam Effect." "Weezer sold a lot of records in their first week of release, but since then their sales have dropped off considerably, even thought they have radio hits..."
What happened to Weezer (and Moby) is that the audience changed. They have a group of core fans who went out and bought their album as soon as it came out. But their sound, though solid, no longer bit the general audience as hard. Pearl Jam is a perfect example of this. It's not that their music is overshared, it's that no one in the larger audience cares, they've moved on to something else (not neccesarily something better).
I can't believe this FUD came from Moby. I can't believe he had this thought and then sat down at his computer and then typed his thought out and then sent his thought to his website. File sharing isn't hurting the record industry any more than MTV and the radio have.
Moby claims that he has "very technically savvy fans" and that everyone else who manages to sell records does not. That's such a silly argument, it's hard to believe he said it. Does he have numbers to show that his audience consists solely of super-intelligent computer geeks? Or that only computer geeks participate in file sharing or CD burning?
Poor Moby, you're album is at 35. Last week it was at 15! Sorry, buddy, I've heard it and this album isn't "Play", it's just another silly Moby album. The people that are dedicated Moby fans are going to run out and buy it immediately. Word of mouth is going to say, "It's not all that good, unless you're a big Moby fan", and then sales drop as people who aren't as into you (e.g. me) stay home in droves.
Saying that his fans are more savy is rediculous. Stealing music isn't technically difficult. You need only a computer and internet access (can you say "College Student"?). One person with ripping software gets the MP3s on the web and the rest is just the personal choice effect. I would bet that the most shared music is also the most sold music. Moby's music isn't getting shared more than Eminem's. That's the bottom line.
I'm assuming that DRM wont really work in this context without some seriously heavy-handed legislation. If any publisher pushes a DRM solution onto the public while still competing with MP3's then the situation is very different.
It doesn't seem likely that any DRM will beat out MP3 in a fair fight. MP3 is open(-ish) and free for use. It's also well established with many different platforms supporting it. Any DRM solution, especially one with fees, will come with rules, hassles and problems.
And it still wont solve the problem of Red-book CDs which people can still burn and rip to their hearts content. So even if every publisher that ever produces a digital version of the song uses a DRM, their songs will still be just as available as ever thanks to the prevalence of regular CD-Rom players.
The Salon article starts out okay; Liebowitz seems pretty level-headed and thoughtful on the subject of file-sharing and its effects on the recording industry. And then they ask him about DRM and he says (among other things):
DRM, as I see it, is merely the protection in the software, on a CD or whatever, that would allow micro-payments. It doesn't do this yet, but in principle it could. That's what I view as closer to ideal. They can let you do a lot and you pay a higher price, or let you do only a little in which case you'd be paying a lower price.
I read this with a sinking feeling in my stomach. What do you think he means by "higher" and "lower". In this case, I doubt that the price will be lower than the current cost of music. The record industry doesn't lower prices.
If DRM with micro-payments is succesfully introduced (read legislated) it wont mean that I pay less for music. The record companies will charge me for my copies. They'll charge me for each time I play it. And though initially I paid 99 cents for that song, after a year, I've payed $5 for that one song and I will keep paying for that song in perpetuity.
The record industry has a very bad record (no pun intended) at passing along savings to the consumer. The CD was supposed to make the whole process cheaper, lowering prices for the consumer. But that never happened. Instead, the prices went up (which they justified by saying that new technology costs money) and they stayed up.
So, if they can release music digitally in a way that prevents copying and tracks your use of that music, the price wont drop. It will increase, despite their cost savings on distribution.
Of course, the labels don't really want this to work. They want it to fail so that they can go back to Congress and say "See! We lowered prices and they're still stealing! They wont pay 99 cents! We're bleeding from our arteries here! You guys have to do something to protect our profits, er, the artists!"
If they want to make this work they have to devote themselves to it. But for a label there's not much reason to do it. There's no way that selling over the internet isn't going to cut into their gross for a while. People wont pay $16 for an album's worth of MP3s.
But it's not a zero-sum game, because RIAA can't control their end-users. Their music is digitalized and distributed for them, at no cost to anyone. Actually, for RIAA they may just be stuck.
Music distribution is no longer tricky. Just stick mp3s on your website. Finding new talent can be done just as well by a bunch of independents as it can by a giant music conglomeration.
In the next decade, music may just go back to being an art instead of an industry.
From what I understand, you're under no obligation to provide anything to the distributors of free software, just as they're not under obligation to continue developing it. Saying that someone just using free software is a freeloader because they don't devote any time or money to its continued development is two-faced. There's a term for software that's distributed freely and yet expects a return and it's Shareware.
The software the poster mentions is free. There may be some license out there that mandates that anyone who uses the software must contribute back to the project, but that sounds pretty close to not-free to me.
Linux is free, the GPLed software is generally free, copy-lefted things are really free. Free in the sense meant in the quote, in that they dont cost the user anything monetarily.
it's probable that "hunt and peck"-ers will have less damage to their wrists, but they'll also spend more time typing, hunched over their keyboards, neck down, eyes down, looking at the keypad. Pecking might remove the strain from the wrists, but it places more on the back and neck due to bad posture.
"Touch typists" who don't look at the keyboard, but look straight ahead at their monitors can, through proper placement of their monitors, maintain good posture throughout the work day.
I am not an ergonomics expert, but there's nothing inherently wrong with touch-typing either. More that the way keyboard are normally positioned force your wrist into a prone position.
BTW. there are exercises you can do to help prevent carpal-tunnel from keyboarding.
Right now, your average distro just loads on the options. Eight different text editors, six different shells, five ftp programs, and countless other duplicate items.
This is in general a good thing (tm) but when it comes to putting it in a school or giving it to a home user, it's overwhelming. I know because I am not an average user and all those options in the toolbar menu drive me up the wall.
Advice to distros. You want to put your product in schools and on home desktops? Make a distro that let's you pick (and set up for automation) one text editor, one word processor, one shell, etc... and then display the installed options prominently on the desktop and in the toolbar menu.
And on that note: call the text editor "TEXT EDITOR" and the word process "Word Processor". Don't call it Emacs unless you call it "Emacs - Text Editor" or better "Text Editor - Emacs".
If you look at a MS PC (even one that's been used for years) it's usually got one program for each task. Why? Because everything costs money, so the user picks one, pays for it, and sticks with it. It's not economical to buy multiple products with overlapping usages.
To make an analogy that's close to my heart, imagine you're driving a long way into an unfamiliar territory. The highway you're travelling on lists every possible route to any destination at each exit. Even if that route involves driving around back roads or dirt trails. Even if you knew what you wanted to do, there'd be so much signage and so many options that they'd be at best worthless and more than likely damn confusing. That's what Linux looks like to the new user.
Meanwhile, Linux is perfect for the classroom. It's a native programming environment. It's a lab in a box. A place for experimentation and exploration.
Kids don't want to make powerpoint presentations. Challenge them, do CS 101 in elementary school. Do Algorithms in high school. Then you'll be graduating problem solvers, not flow-chart-dependent middle-managers.
While I'm telling them what to teach in grade school. Teach English! Well! Enforce mastery and require that all your graduates can write a two page essay that could, say, get them a job or a raise or an A in college.
Those two things, if you taught kids computer programming and english and that's all, they'd be ten times as prepared as I was. They wouldn't need to go to college to get a good job, because that's all employers are looking for right now. And college can go back to being a place for future scientists and researchers (and rich kids who have nothing to do after high school).
I like a clean toilet because I don't want to get some other persons waste products on me. It's not out of desire to stay away from poisonous microbes it's because that stuff is icky and smells bad and makes your clothes all nasty.
I wonder if this study came from the same group of people who tell us all the useful bit of information that dog's mouths have less bacteria than our own. Yeah, that's great. I still aint gonna kiss a dog on the lips.
Being clean and being free of bacteria have nothing to do with each other. Clean has everything to do with visual and tactile sensation. If I look at a counter top and it's got gravy and greese all over it, that's not a dirty counter. However, if I wipe off that stuff with a sponge, it's clean.
Internet TLDs mean nothing, they contribute no extra information. Slashdot.org is the same as Slashdot.com.
The reason RealNames got so much money is that it was actually conceivable that people might just prefer not to have to type.com. This is a "feature" that AOL provides as well.
I for one, would so much prefer to do away with TLDs altogether. Give Nabisco COOKIES if they want it. TLDs lead only to user confusion and annoyance as some bozo buys up YOURCOMPANY.NET or.TV or.ORG. And suddenly some of your clients are wondering when you got into the porn business.
Maybe TLDs would be useful if they meant something. But as it is right now, they're meaningless and a nuisance for site owners and web users. Apparently, enough was thought of this nuisance that they were able to raise $100M on the promise of removing.com from the vernacular of the internet.
Slashdot Mirror
a lot of this reluctance comes from the rigors of standardized testing. taking your class on a field trip takes away time needed to cram in information (and ways to manipulate multiple choice testing).
"reluctant teachers" should be summarily fired
after you've fired these teachers and the teachers whose classes didn't meet the testing requirements... well, there aren't any more teachers. oh well.
[snip]Don't underestimate joe sixpack. Just because he isn't an expert on the things YOU'RE expert on doesn't mean he's dumb or lazy. He may be quite the genius, and just focussed on other interests.[/snip]
[spit take]
say what? am I still reading Slashdot? what kind of comment is this? not a flamer, not a troll... some sort of new entity never before seen.
I think I need to lie down.
sweatyb
They make it sound very Gibson-esque in there. But it's not clear what these people are actually doing (except raking in millions of dollars). They have fancy displays and lots of data mining, packet sniffing and tracing technology and they're preventing... What? Well, nobody really knows.
Smoke and mirrors. Meanwhile you're being pumped for thousands a month. The price is quoted right in the article. A couple thousand a month seems reasonable. After all those Bulgarian hackers are vicious!
If you're interested in that then let me tell you about my company.
I've started a ghost-busting business. Using specially developed anti-ghost technology I am able to monitor minor disturbances along the walls of your house. From my Central Office of New Ghost Activity Monitoring Equipment I have been detecting thousands of intrusions each day! With the pattented Spectral Tracking Universal Psychic Intrusion Detector, I can see all over the world and into the cosmos to detect super-natural invasions even before they occur.
Ah! Even as we speak a spectral invasion fleet masses in Zaire to invade your kitchen!
SweatyB
hehehe...
note: if you too think this joke is funny, it's probably a sign that years of CS education have screwed with your sense of humor
man, that is the funniest thing
I'm still laughing
just imagine it.
SweatyB
this is like the best slashback ever. so much interesting stuff. wow. I feel so in the know.
/. people
no, I'm not kidding.
in all seriousness. good job
or perhaps a 'Regretfully True'
judging by some of the posts here there are a lot of people who think it doesn't really matter. As long as their CPU isn't burning a hole through their desk, who cares.
And when the computer's thrown away and the components start to leak out... ah well, it isn't my computer anymore. I threw it away. I have this new shiny computer with twice the RAM and 120GB RAID-5 blah blah blah blah blah...
My point isn't that we techies should stop using computers, but that we should at least be a little concerned about what it's costing us in the long run.
Sweaty
In other news: Hollywood has perfected human cloning. Until this post I too thought they were the same person.
or perhaps the original poster was saying that the show hasn't been the same since it began... without James Spader.
Drilling a small hole in the tokens changes their internal structure enough to unleash the avalanche effect, so that the outputs from the same token before and after drilling differ by roughly half of their bits. Yet the process that transforms the speckle pattern into a string of digits can be modified to ignore accidental surface scratches.
I would imagine that since it's the internal structure of the token which determines the output, surface scratches don't have as dramatic an effect.
words are just words and they mean what we use them to mean. But I am sick of this use of the word "security".
Security A: protection from hackers, SPAM, viruses, spies, corruption
Security B: copy/cartel protection
A and B have nothing to do with each other. And current software (especially the MS variety) is full of security (A) holes. Consumers are concerned that their computers are at risk and want to be more secure (A). And they enjoy the freedom that digital media (without security B) provides.
By saying that DRM addresses computer security, the industry is throwing up a smoke screen. The consumer believes that MS, Intel, et al. are addressing their security concerns when in fact they are really crippling their hardware and software. With no added security (A).
RIAA also wins using this technology because file-sharing and burning are thrown together with viri and hacking as "threats to computer security". Just a semantic turn away from making casual file-swappers into federal felons.
Security is the wrong word. I can't even imagine how it came into use in this sense, except as an incredibly succesful PR ploy. Just stick with "Copy-Protection" or better "Software Restriction" or more realistic "Software Crippling".
Sweat
Shhhhh! Man!
It's true that t-shirts and toys don't sell didley-squat, but don't tell everyone.
Without those free t-shirts I might have to do laundry once in a while.
And without the toys on my desk I might have to do work!
So mums the word.
Sweat
Nuclear waste is as much a problem as air pollution. And with more Nuclear Power Plants in operation it will continue to be a problem. Radioactive byproducts are not something that can be easily overlooked. Ask the people of Nevada about the Yukka Mtn Project.
The key is to conserve energy and to invest in NEW technologies. Learn to use our sources of energy more efficiently with less pollution. The dangers inherent in nuclear energy plus the radiocative waste breeder plants produce make Nuclear Power repellent.
info on
nuclear waste and the Yukka Mountain NWD
Moby's saying the file sharing is hurting his sale (but it's not such a bad thing). RIAA is saying that file sharing is hurting their sales (and that it's the end of the world).
Neither of them bothers to present any proof that their sales are actually aversely affected. I haven't seen any evidence, in fact, in Napster's hayday, sales were way up. So I'd say, sharing doesn't hurt record sales. Saying "It does too!" wont convince me. Even if you say it real loud.
Popularity is measured in sales because sales reflect the number of people that are willing to spend money to listen to an album. Moby's at 35 this week, something like 32,000 albums last week. Cry me a frickin' river.
He's not at the top because his album isn't getting into people's heads the way Play did. Personally, I think Eminem is a schmuck, but even I find myself humming his stupid assinine song. That's how you stay on the top of the charts. If your music can't penetrate outside your already established base, you're not going to sell a gadzillion records.
So Moby might be right that they shouldn't only measure music by its popularity, but his album's not suffering due to file sharing. It's suffering due to not being so good.
Sweat
The Pearl Jam effect is not what Moby says it is.
Moby says Weezer is also suffering from the "Pearl Jam Effect." "Weezer sold a lot of records in their first week of release, but since then their sales have dropped off considerably, even thought they have radio hits..."
What happened to Weezer (and Moby) is that the audience changed. They have a group of core fans who went out and bought their album as soon as it came out. But their sound, though solid, no longer bit the general audience as hard. Pearl Jam is a perfect example of this. It's not that their music is overshared, it's that no one in the larger audience cares, they've moved on to something else (not neccesarily something better).
I can't believe this FUD came from Moby. I can't believe he had this thought and then sat down at his computer and then typed his thought out and then sent his thought to his website. File sharing isn't hurting the record industry any more than MTV and the radio have.
Moby claims that he has "very technically savvy fans" and that everyone else who manages to sell records does not. That's such a silly argument, it's hard to believe he said it. Does he have numbers to show that his audience consists solely of super-intelligent computer geeks? Or that only computer geeks participate in file sharing or CD burning?
Poor Moby, you're album is at 35. Last week it was at 15! Sorry, buddy, I've heard it and this album isn't "Play", it's just another silly Moby album. The people that are dedicated Moby fans are going to run out and buy it immediately. Word of mouth is going to say, "It's not all that good, unless you're a big Moby fan", and then sales drop as people who aren't as into you (e.g. me) stay home in droves.
Saying that his fans are more savy is rediculous. Stealing music isn't technically difficult. You need only a computer and internet access (can you say "College Student"?). One person with ripping software gets the MP3s on the web and the rest is just the personal choice effect. I would bet that the most shared music is also the most sold music. Moby's music isn't getting shared more than Eminem's. That's the bottom line.
Sweat
If I had mod points right now... Well, it's at 5 already.
I'm assuming that DRM wont really work in this context without some seriously heavy-handed legislation. If any publisher pushes a DRM solution onto the public while still competing with MP3's then the situation is very different.
It doesn't seem likely that any DRM will beat out MP3 in a fair fight. MP3 is open(-ish) and free for use. It's also well established with many different platforms supporting it. Any DRM solution, especially one with fees, will come with rules, hassles and problems.
And it still wont solve the problem of Red-book CDs which people can still burn and rip to their hearts content. So even if every publisher that ever produces a digital version of the song uses a DRM, their songs will still be just as available as ever thanks to the prevalence of regular CD-Rom players.
Sweat
DRM, as I see it, is merely the protection in the software, on a CD or whatever, that would allow micro-payments. It doesn't do this yet, but in principle it could. That's what I view as closer to ideal. They can let you do a lot and you pay a higher price, or let you do only a little in which case you'd be paying a lower price.
I read this with a sinking feeling in my stomach. What do you think he means by "higher" and "lower". In this case, I doubt that the price will be lower than the current cost of music. The record industry doesn't lower prices.
If DRM with micro-payments is succesfully introduced (read legislated) it wont mean that I pay less for music. The record companies will charge me for my copies. They'll charge me for each time I play it. And though initially I paid 99 cents for that song, after a year, I've payed $5 for that one song and I will keep paying for that song in perpetuity.
The record industry has a very bad record (no pun intended) at passing along savings to the consumer. The CD was supposed to make the whole process cheaper, lowering prices for the consumer. But that never happened. Instead, the prices went up (which they justified by saying that new technology costs money) and they stayed up.
So, if they can release music digitally in a way that prevents copying and tracks your use of that music, the price wont drop. It will increase, despite their cost savings on distribution.
sweat
Of course, the labels don't really want this to work. They want it to fail so that they can go back to Congress and say "See! We lowered prices and they're still stealing! They wont pay 99 cents! We're bleeding from our arteries here! You guys have to do something to protect our profits, er, the artists!"
If they want to make this work they have to devote themselves to it. But for a label there's not much reason to do it. There's no way that selling over the internet isn't going to cut into their gross for a while. People wont pay $16 for an album's worth of MP3s.
But it's not a zero-sum game, because RIAA can't control their end-users. Their music is digitalized and distributed for them, at no cost to anyone. Actually, for RIAA they may just be stuck.
Music distribution is no longer tricky. Just stick mp3s on your website. Finding new talent can be done just as well by a bunch of independents as it can by a giant music conglomeration.
In the next decade, music may just go back to being an art instead of an industry.
From what I understand, you're under no obligation to provide anything to the distributors of free software, just as they're not under obligation to continue developing it. Saying that someone just using free software is a freeloader because they don't devote any time or money to its continued development is two-faced. There's a term for software that's distributed freely and yet expects a return and it's Shareware.
The software the poster mentions is free. There may be some license out there that mandates that anyone who uses the software must contribute back to the project, but that sounds pretty close to not-free to me.
Linux is free, the GPLed software is generally free, copy-lefted things are really free. Free in the sense meant in the quote, in that they dont cost the user anything monetarily.
Sweat
"Touch typists" who don't look at the keyboard, but look straight ahead at their monitors can, through proper placement of their monitors, maintain good posture throughout the work day.
I am not an ergonomics expert, but there's nothing inherently wrong with touch-typing either. More that the way keyboard are normally positioned force your wrist into a prone position.
BTW. there are exercises you can do to help prevent carpal-tunnel from keyboarding.
Those things hurt like a mofo. Watch out Taco!
Right now, your average distro just loads on the options. Eight different text editors, six different shells, five ftp programs, and countless other duplicate items.
This is in general a good thing (tm) but when it comes to putting it in a school or giving it to a home user, it's overwhelming. I know because I am not an average user and all those options in the toolbar menu drive me up the wall.
Advice to distros. You want to put your product in schools and on home desktops? Make a distro that let's you pick (and set up for automation) one text editor, one word processor, one shell, etc... and then display the installed options prominently on the desktop and in the toolbar menu.
And on that note: call the text editor "TEXT EDITOR" and the word process "Word Processor". Don't call it Emacs unless you call it "Emacs - Text Editor" or better "Text Editor - Emacs".
If you look at a MS PC (even one that's been used for years) it's usually got one program for each task. Why? Because everything costs money, so the user picks one, pays for it, and sticks with it. It's not economical to buy multiple products with overlapping usages.
To make an analogy that's close to my heart, imagine you're driving a long way into an unfamiliar territory. The highway you're travelling on lists every possible route to any destination at each exit. Even if that route involves driving around back roads or dirt trails. Even if you knew what you wanted to do, there'd be so much signage and so many options that they'd be at best worthless and more than likely damn confusing. That's what Linux looks like to the new user.
Meanwhile, Linux is perfect for the classroom. It's a native programming environment. It's a lab in a box. A place for experimentation and exploration.
Kids don't want to make powerpoint presentations. Challenge them, do CS 101 in elementary school. Do Algorithms in high school. Then you'll be graduating problem solvers, not flow-chart-dependent middle-managers.
While I'm telling them what to teach in grade school. Teach English! Well! Enforce mastery and require that all your graduates can write a two page essay that could, say, get them a job or a raise or an A in college.
Those two things, if you taught kids computer programming and english and that's all, they'd be ten times as prepared as I was. They wouldn't need to go to college to get a good job, because that's all employers are looking for right now. And college can go back to being a place for future scientists and researchers (and rich kids who have nothing to do after high school).
Argh! I'm all riled up now!
Sweat
dang... gravy and "grease" and it is a dirty counter. Cod sarnit, sassa-frassin'...
I like a clean toilet because I don't want to get some other persons waste products on me. It's not out of desire to stay away from poisonous microbes it's because that stuff is icky and smells bad and makes your clothes all nasty.
I wonder if this study came from the same group of people who tell us all the useful bit of information that dog's mouths have less bacteria than our own. Yeah, that's great. I still aint gonna kiss a dog on the lips.
Being clean and being free of bacteria have nothing to do with each other. Clean has everything to do with visual and tactile sensation. If I look at a counter top and it's got gravy and greese all over it, that's not a dirty counter. However, if I wipe off that stuff with a sponge, it's clean.
Eat it Proctor and Gamble.
Sweat
Internet TLDs mean nothing, they contribute no extra information. Slashdot.org is the same as Slashdot.com.
.com. This is a "feature" that AOL provides as well.
.TV or .ORG. And suddenly some of your clients are wondering when you got into the porn business.
.com from the vernacular of the internet.
The reason RealNames got so much money is that it was actually conceivable that people might just prefer not to have to type
I for one, would so much prefer to do away with TLDs altogether. Give Nabisco COOKIES if they want it. TLDs lead only to user confusion and annoyance as some bozo buys up YOURCOMPANY.NET or
Maybe TLDs would be useful if they meant something. But as it is right now, they're meaningless and a nuisance for site owners and web users. Apparently, enough was thought of this nuisance that they were able to raise $100M on the promise of removing
Sweat