I'm guessing the reason you can't use multiple resident scanners is that just one will bring your system to a crawl.
I wrote: and not just the resident portion
I think the need for constantly running virus scanners is seriously overstated, at least for people who know not to run HorseSex.exe.
I got drive by downloaded 2 days ago. My antivirus didn't pick it up, but fortunately my firewall did (which prevented further virus downloads). I was looking for books on photography (reguarly non-sexual photography) and wasn't running horseanything.exe
Everyone's always touting the benefits of competition, but here's a clear example of competition serving to confuse the market. There are a number of problems:
1) Antivirus solutions do not co-exist - and not just the resident portion. I'd love to run a second or 3rd scanner like I can for spyware but Antivirus vendors have created a market that is use to the worst kind of lock in. Why can't I run 3 different products side by side and decide which one's resident scanner I want switched on? I'm sure there are technical issue but I'm also sure they're not insurmountable.
2) Antivirus vendors are now trying to police what you can and can't do. Look at the numerous reports of false positives for programs that are legally grey (or black) but aren't viruses. I've personally had network tools come up as false positives and it's a pain to unquarantine and exclude them so they don't quarantine themselves again.
3) The main form of collusion between vendors seems to be fitting into Microsoft frameworks so they show up as antivirus software in the appropriate control panel and so you don't get warnings about invalid or out of date antivirus. But this in itself makes them more vulnerable to attack
4) The products are often so badly written that they cause as many problems as they solve. A bad update here or there can (and has in the past) caused irrevocable system damage that has required a reinstall or restore from backup for users. What's the point of an antivirus that does this. Worse I've seen much subtler performance problems from minor antivirus updates - in one case it brought a company I worked for's client's machines to their knees and initially they blamed us. Turns out a change in the engine meant very big files were being opened and re-scanned for every write. Needless to say it wasn't out fault.
5) Every vendor seems to have their own names for a virus. For pity sake can we have some kind of standard naming mechanism?
Isn't competition suppose to improve such things and open up the market? In this case it just hasn't happened. There has been implicit collusion but not of the right sort to improve or provide a diverse range of products. There's not one product that will protect you well.
That's very unscientific. If you don't understand the problem in the first place, how do you know what the limits of the math are and under what circumstances it no longer works? We only know Newtonian mechanics is flawed because we've encountered problems that don't fit the math, but we also know the boundaries of where it does work well enough to get people to the moon.
For pity sake, a smartphone is not going to do everything a laptop or desktop will do as well, no matter how you design it. I'm all for using a smartphone, but not as a panacea. Just as I don't use a hammer when I want to saw something.
There are plenty of problems and solutions (some of which you have outlined) when it comes to phones, but that's not going to make them some piece of magic that does everything well. I don't want to do everything on a tiny screen with a tiny keyboard. Also note that some manufacturers and service providers have refused to offer the solutions you have outlined.
Did you read past the first paragraph. I was primarily attacking copyright, not your favourite pet coffee chain. I'm sorry that you believe that paying above minimum wage and offering benefits makes a company somehow beyond reproach. Just goes to show how low your standards are and how little respect you have for those you claim do "minimum wage work".
Has anyone thought yet to ask where the images came from? It seems obvious to me that what could have happened was that Starbucks took photographs taken by the government archaeological society, which the society may have used for post-cards, t-shirts, or other tourism items and placed them on Starbucks mugs without paying fees to the Mexican government for those photographs.
What you have here is an evil coffee company that underpays its workers vs a corrupt government that is gold digging instead of promoting it's culture for tourism etc, and you're talking rubbish about new ways to involve copyright?
The more I see of copyright law the more I'm convinced it can't be fixed. It has gotten so far out of hand that it needs to be abolished and we need to start again. People have become so greedy that they use copyright law to prevent instead of promote their products then wonder why they fail. Like those stupid warnings on DVDs that have made a movie night at a school or university illegal.
I would like to submit to you that since every product ever made has a manufacturer that the only way to get an image that doesn't violate someone else's copyright is to go out into the wilderness (but make sure it's public land and that the government doesn't want a cut).
I challenge you to come up with one object that you can sharp in focus well exposed photograph in your immediate surroundigns where some bozo can't claim you violated their copyright and demand that you pay them. At the same time good luck getting their permission even if you are willing to pay. The current law is just ridiculous.
Why not use existing laws? Verbal abuse, making a nuisance of yourself etc. should all be covered under existing laws that aren't specific to your partner. Just enforce them instead of dreaming up new ones to score stupid political brownie points.
Is there any way to write data and then 10 years later get that same data back?
Yes. I call it MRBAM. Multiple Redundant Backup At Mother's.
For important data, photos etc, I keep a copy locally. Periodically I dump the data to another hard drive. One goes at my mother's house. One stays local. Every few years I buy more disks and copy drive to drive off a backup. I don't erase the old ones.
Co-incidentally I have exactly 10 years worth of photos. Haven't lost one yet. Latest drives are Terabyte size and are half full. (I don't delete pictures, even test pictures).
A hard drive in your house is just as accessible as data in the cloud
Last I checked, a hard drive in my house is controlled by me and I decide on what security I put around it. If I stuff up, it's my stuff up. I have no such control over anything in "the cloud".
The whole buzz phrase just needs to die. "The cloud" is nothing other than short term rental and loan space on 3rd party machines.
As you get older, your priorities shift. Putting in extra hours is something you do because you have to do it in order to do your job well, not because you are enthusiastic. You have other demands on your time, and other responsibilities such as family. So the fact that the IT boom is long gone, job security is low due to outsourcing, and respect for the industries that pay most is at an all time low means you're not attracting as much new blood.
There is also a (somewhat well earned by some, unfortunately) pervasive view that IT staff are propeller heads with no business sense or social skills. Most work with absolutes that are either right or wrong that are difficult to describe to the IT layperson (ie most business customers). So a lot of the time when a techie goes the extra mile and comes up with a good solution it is not implemented, or worse they are chastised for wasting their time on it. Again this is even prevalent in the currently depressed economy where decreasing costs and expenses is more important than new innovative ideas in the eyes of many business people. There are only so many times an intelligent person will go that extra mile, get rewarded with a proverbial kick in the teeth, before they learn not to bother.
If you want innovation, people doing crazy hours and going the extra mile etc, I think we'll need another tech boom - one that doesn't revolve around outsourcing.
The film "Office Space" is so well known around here because it can be a very accurate picture of the life of a programmer in many companies. Complete with bureaucratic paperwork and outsourcing of jobs. A case of "it's funny because it's true".
Christianity does not have both - one replaced the other, quite explicitly.
If that were true you'd have discarded the old testament. Half the book is way too long a prelude for historical purposes. In any case, there's violence even in the new testament. But I digress.
People who choose "an eye for an eye" over "do no harm" are, as I said, ignoring the teachings of the religion they claim to follow.
Interpretations of the Bible are many and varied. You can't speak for all Christians regarding what they believe. That's my point. There's no logical vigour to the tennants of any religion, and it can be interpretted many ways. Who are you to decide who's interpretation of the Bible is correct. These people simply are ignoring the teachings YOU claim to follow.
That could mean any number of things; the story of the creation of the universe related by the Bible is entirely compatible with modern scientific theory. Unless of course you insist on believing "day" is literal, despite the fact that the Hebrew didn't say "day"... in which case I'd agree with you.
I'm sorry but the creation myth in the Bible is NOT compatible with modern scientific theory, and it's not just a matter of time frame. Nothing in the Bible says "And the dinosaur begateth many generations, some of which had minor mutations, and lo the chicken came into being". I suggest you take a good look at modern scientific theory before you make such claims.
I'm interested in why you think it's dangerous for me to base my morals on my religion (I'm Mormon). Do you have examples?
Only every single war that used religion as a basis and every cult that sprang up based on an extreme view of a religion. If you want more and very specific examples of superstition being dangerous a good easy read is "The Demon Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark" by Carl Sagan. The essential premise of every religion is that you must have faith in things you can't prove, and are discouraged from testing. That is incompatible with having a thorough understanding of the world, which is a necessary basis for achieving your goals.
I don't like your chances of suing the Slovak police in Slovakia....but it's a proven fact that 1 in 8 terrorists have a chance of blowing them up as revenge.
Ban religion? Don't be silly; that wouldn't solve anything.
You're right but your reasoning is wrong. You can't FORCE people to hold a belief. It just doesn't work. If they want to believe in magic sky people they will do so. If you "ban" them they'll do it anyway and become more fanatical about it because now they're being oppressed making their cause more legimate (not to mention the forbidden fruit element - pun intended).
Generally speaking, people who commit violent acts in the name of religion are ignoring the teachings of the religion they claim to follow (e.g. the Crusades).
No. They're just choosing which parts of their religious doctrines to follow. Most religions have both the equivalent of "do no harm" and "an eye for an eye". It's left to the practitioner to decide which to follow. No religion is consistent, because even when you try to adhere to reality there are paradox, but when you throw reality out with the bath water (creation myth for a start) you're left with no hope of anything remotely like a consistent moral code. People talk about religion being the basis of their morality but I can think of nothing more dangerous than basing your morality on fairy stories.
I still don't think I'll sign over my credit card to a MM online game, but a game that lets you destroy THOUSANDS of dollars of stuff that other people value for the sheer malicious joy . . . well, that's perversely COOL!
Destroy thousands of dollars of stuff? You mean donate it to CCP games don't you?
You've made your point clear. You think genius is bad, and you too stupid to read with comprehensions.
Hey genius, you've made it clear you're interested in nothing but straw men and mis-quoting. The cult of genius is bad. That's nothing personal. Get over yourself.
Also you grammar needs work.
So much so as to take exact opposite meaning from simple sentences.
Hey, you're the one demonstrating the ability to completely mis-comprehend a sentence. Very well I might add.
You then get offended by these simple concepts that you cannot understand.
There's nothing complex about simple snobbery.
I get it.
You've proven you don't "get it" at all.
You don't have to keep explaining your embracing of stupidity.
Were you home schooled too? Is this an example of the dazzling social skill and debating prowess you intend to pass on to your children? There's nothing remotely intelligent about resorting to petty name calling, childish putdowns and VERY VERY bad strawmen and reductio ad absurdum - the weakest and last resort of the poor debater - when you lose an argument.
For the last time, you don't need to be a snob to embrace the intellectual. And you don't need to be an attention seeking gimboid and show pony to appreciate it. Oh and for pity sake, get some social skills.
You think it's clever to quote things out of context? Is that really the best you can do? Is this an example of your above average intelligence?
I called you a moron and a snob after you demonstrated traits that well and truly earnt it. Thumbing your nose at people who do jobs you consider menial is just plain snobbery. YOU rely on that grease monkey to fix your brakes correctly. You put your life in the man's hands. The guy that cleans your toilets and empties your bins at work also deserves respect. What you said was disgraceful. You absolutely are a snob. And I find such snobbery moronic.
Yes, being a genius is hard. It usually means not being understood and being ridiculed until and unless people realise what you've said makes sense. Do you think Einstein was a celebrated genius when he came up with relativity? He had trouble getting a job at all. If you are recognised, you wind up being used by others to advance their own goals. Classic case is Beethoven. You really don't get it do you? The life of a "genius" isn't usually a happy one. That isn't anti-intellectual - it's a simple statement of truth. Obviously one that you can't accept.
I'm all for intellectual pursuit. I think children are talked down to way too much. Once they've gotten a grasp on the general idea, they should be shown more specifics. They have to learn what a bird is before they learn what a lark or crow is, but the progression shouldn't wait 5 or 6 years. There's a big wonderful universe out there to explore that most people literally pay no attention to. But if a person wants to earn their living as a mechanic instead of a doctor there's nothing wrong with that. Science, mathematics music, history, language. All good pursuits to fill a lifetime with. Wake up and get a clue before you make your kid's life a living hell.
Another thing: In the real world no one is going to give a shit if your kid could read at 3 or not. That's not anti-intellectual. It is simply not of any practical importance. Einstein struggled with math into his teens and it's partially as a result of struggling to overcome that that he got to be a world icon.
I value education. I'm going to surround my children with all the knowledge I can. I did an Astronomy masters for fun (ie no intention of switching careers). Calling me anti-intellectual is just fucking hilarious. The real difference between you and I is the snob factor. I grew up in a working class home and you can sure as fuck bet I don't look down on my mother for struggling with a relatively menial job (rail ticket sales, and cleaning including cleaning toilets) to give me the best education she could afford.
Using icons is not being "proficient" at computing. The irony of someone that delusional calling me "stupid" is quite amusing. You may be helping your child learn the 3 R's but if this kind of snobbery and self aggrandizement is what you are teaching your child, heaven help him, because he's going to need it.
I'll just remain one of the stupid shall I? Send my son to a public school and supplement his education while teaching him some goddamn humility and that he doesn't need to be a genius to be worthwhile.
By the way there's nothing wrong with changing the oil in cars, you utter snob. That's what you're going to teach your kid? That if you don't do something world changing you're worthless. Fucking moron.
Slashdot Mirror
Facebook would be better off.
This show is a sit com in which Schrodenger's cat was explained.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Big_Bang_Theory#U.S._standard_ratings
The reason most sci-fi tanks is that it's so poorly done.
I'm guessing the reason you can't use multiple resident scanners is that just one will bring your system to a crawl.
I wrote: and not just the resident portion
I think the need for constantly running virus scanners is seriously overstated, at least for people who know not to run HorseSex.exe.
I got drive by downloaded 2 days ago. My antivirus didn't pick it up, but fortunately my firewall did (which prevented further virus downloads). I was looking for books on photography (reguarly non-sexual photography) and wasn't running horseanything.exe
Everyone's always touting the benefits of competition, but here's a clear example of competition serving to confuse the market. There are a number of problems:
1) Antivirus solutions do not co-exist - and not just the resident portion. I'd love to run a second or 3rd scanner like I can for spyware but Antivirus vendors have created a market that is use to the worst kind of lock in. Why can't I run 3 different products side by side and decide which one's resident scanner I want switched on? I'm sure there are technical issue but I'm also sure they're not insurmountable.
2) Antivirus vendors are now trying to police what you can and can't do. Look at the numerous reports of false positives for programs that are legally grey (or black) but aren't viruses. I've personally had network tools come up as false positives and it's a pain to unquarantine and exclude them so they don't quarantine themselves again.
3) The main form of collusion between vendors seems to be fitting into Microsoft frameworks so they show up as antivirus software in the appropriate control panel and so you don't get warnings about invalid or out of date antivirus. But this in itself makes them more vulnerable to attack
4) The products are often so badly written that they cause as many problems as they solve. A bad update here or there can (and has in the past) caused irrevocable system damage that has required a reinstall or restore from backup for users. What's the point of an antivirus that does this. Worse I've seen much subtler performance problems from minor antivirus updates - in one case it brought a company I worked for's client's machines to their knees and initially they blamed us. Turns out a change in the engine meant very big files were being opened and re-scanned for every write. Needless to say it wasn't out fault.
5) Every vendor seems to have their own names for a virus. For pity sake can we have some kind of standard naming mechanism?
Isn't competition suppose to improve such things and open up the market? In this case it just hasn't happened. There has been implicit collusion but not of the right sort to improve or provide a diverse range of products. There's not one product that will protect you well.
If the math works, then "shut up and calculate"
That's very unscientific. If you don't understand the problem in the first place, how do you know what the limits of the math are and under what circumstances it no longer works? We only know Newtonian mechanics is flawed because we've encountered problems that don't fit the math, but we also know the boundaries of where it does work well enough to get people to the moon.
For pity sake, a smartphone is not going to do everything a laptop or desktop will do as well, no matter how you design it. I'm all for using a smartphone, but not as a panacea. Just as I don't use a hammer when I want to saw something.
There are plenty of problems and solutions (some of which you have outlined) when it comes to phones, but that's not going to make them some piece of magic that does everything well. I don't want to do everything on a tiny screen with a tiny keyboard. Also note that some manufacturers and service providers have refused to offer the solutions you have outlined.
Maybe one day we'll all be using super smartphones as our primary computing platforms.
Oh I sure hope not. Sounds like hell to me, and I'm an aetheist!
Did you read past the first paragraph. I was primarily attacking copyright, not your favourite pet coffee chain. I'm sorry that you believe that paying above minimum wage and offering benefits makes a company somehow beyond reproach. Just goes to show how low your standards are and how little respect you have for those you claim do "minimum wage work".
Has anyone thought yet to ask where the images came from? It seems obvious to me that what could have happened was that Starbucks took photographs taken by the government archaeological society, which the society may have used for post-cards, t-shirts, or other tourism items and placed them on Starbucks mugs without paying fees to the Mexican government for those photographs.
What you have here is an evil coffee company that underpays its workers vs a corrupt government that is gold digging instead of promoting it's culture for tourism etc, and you're talking rubbish about new ways to involve copyright?
The more I see of copyright law the more I'm convinced it can't be fixed. It has gotten so far out of hand that it needs to be abolished and we need to start again. People have become so greedy that they use copyright law to prevent instead of promote their products then wonder why they fail. Like those stupid warnings on DVDs that have made a movie night at a school or university illegal.
I would like to submit to you that since every product ever made has a manufacturer that the only way to get an image that doesn't violate someone else's copyright is to go out into the wilderness (but make sure it's public land and that the government doesn't want a cut).
I challenge you to come up with one object that you can sharp in focus well exposed photograph in your immediate surroundigns where some bozo can't claim you violated their copyright and demand that you pay them. At the same time good luck getting their permission even if you are willing to pay. The current law is just ridiculous.
Why not use existing laws? Verbal abuse, making a nuisance of yourself etc. should all be covered under existing laws that aren't specific to your partner. Just enforce them instead of dreaming up new ones to score stupid political brownie points.
....save up and take a trip somewhere dark.
Is there any way to write data and then 10 years later get that same data back?
Yes. I call it MRBAM. Multiple Redundant Backup At Mother's.
For important data, photos etc, I keep a copy locally. Periodically I dump the data to another hard drive. One goes at my mother's house. One stays local. Every few years I buy more disks and copy drive to drive off a backup. I don't erase the old ones.
Co-incidentally I have exactly 10 years worth of photos. Haven't lost one yet. Latest drives are Terabyte size and are half full. (I don't delete pictures, even test pictures).
A hard drive in your house is just as accessible as data in the cloud
Last I checked, a hard drive in my house is controlled by me and I decide on what security I put around it. If I stuff up, it's my stuff up. I have no such control over anything in "the cloud".
The whole buzz phrase just needs to die. "The cloud" is nothing other than short term rental and loan space on 3rd party machines.
As you get older, your priorities shift. Putting in extra hours is something you do because you have to do it in order to do your job well, not because you are enthusiastic. You have other demands on your time, and other responsibilities such as family. So the fact that the IT boom is long gone, job security is low due to outsourcing, and respect for the industries that pay most is at an all time low means you're not attracting as much new blood.
There is also a (somewhat well earned by some, unfortunately) pervasive view that IT staff are propeller heads with no business sense or social skills. Most work with absolutes that are either right or wrong that are difficult to describe to the IT layperson (ie most business customers). So a lot of the time when a techie goes the extra mile and comes up with a good solution it is not implemented, or worse they are chastised for wasting their time on it. Again this is even prevalent in the currently depressed economy where decreasing costs and expenses is more important than new innovative ideas in the eyes of many business people. There are only so many times an intelligent person will go that extra mile, get rewarded with a proverbial kick in the teeth, before they learn not to bother.
If you want innovation, people doing crazy hours and going the extra mile etc, I think we'll need another tech boom - one that doesn't revolve around outsourcing.
The film "Office Space" is so well known around here because it can be a very accurate picture of the life of a programmer in many companies. Complete with bureaucratic paperwork and outsourcing of jobs. A case of "it's funny because it's true".
Christianity does not have both - one replaced the other, quite explicitly.
If that were true you'd have discarded the old testament. Half the book is way too long a prelude for historical purposes. In any case, there's violence even in the new testament. But I digress.
People who choose "an eye for an eye" over "do no harm" are, as I said, ignoring the teachings of the religion they claim to follow.
Interpretations of the Bible are many and varied. You can't speak for all Christians regarding what they believe. That's my point. There's no logical vigour to the tennants of any religion, and it can be interpretted many ways. Who are you to decide who's interpretation of the Bible is correct. These people simply are ignoring the teachings YOU claim to follow.
That could mean any number of things; the story of the creation of the universe related by the Bible is entirely compatible with modern scientific theory. Unless of course you insist on believing "day" is literal, despite the fact that the Hebrew didn't say "day"... in which case I'd agree with you.
I'm sorry but the creation myth in the Bible is NOT compatible with modern scientific theory, and it's not just a matter of time frame. Nothing in the Bible says "And the dinosaur begateth many generations, some of which had minor mutations, and lo the chicken came into being". I suggest you take a good look at modern scientific theory before you make such claims.
I'm interested in why you think it's dangerous for me to base my morals on my religion (I'm Mormon). Do you have examples?
Only every single war that used religion as a basis and every cult that sprang up based on an extreme view of a religion. If you want more and very specific examples of superstition being dangerous a good easy read is "The Demon Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark" by Carl Sagan. The essential premise of every religion is that you must have faith in things you can't prove, and are discouraged from testing. That is incompatible with having a thorough understanding of the world, which is a necessary basis for achieving your goals.
I don't like your chances of suing the Slovak police in Slovakia. ...but it's a proven fact that 1 in 8 terrorists have a chance of blowing them up as revenge.
Ban religion? Don't be silly; that wouldn't solve anything.
You're right but your reasoning is wrong. You can't FORCE people to hold a belief. It just doesn't work. If they want to believe in magic sky people they will do so. If you "ban" them they'll do it anyway and become more fanatical about it because now they're being oppressed making their cause more legimate (not to mention the forbidden fruit element - pun intended).
Generally speaking, people who commit violent acts in the name of religion are ignoring the teachings of the religion they claim to follow (e.g. the Crusades).
No. They're just choosing which parts of their religious doctrines to follow. Most religions have both the equivalent of "do no harm" and "an eye for an eye". It's left to the practitioner to decide which to follow. No religion is consistent, because even when you try to adhere to reality there are paradox, but when you throw reality out with the bath water (creation myth for a start) you're left with no hope of anything remotely like a consistent moral code. People talk about religion being the basis of their morality but I can think of nothing more dangerous than basing your morality on fairy stories.
What if terrorists are in the administration of every school district and are indoctrinating our children?
Don't worry. Terrorists are tough but even they won't enter an American district school. Those are some rough places, man!
With Schrodinger jokes, on the other hand, you never know whether it's going to be funny or not until you tell it, and by then it's too late.
The solution of course is to tell the joke in a box with no one else there and never come out.
I still don't think I'll sign over my credit card to a MM online game, but a game that lets you destroy THOUSANDS of dollars of stuff that other people value for the sheer malicious joy . . . well, that's perversely COOL!
Destroy thousands of dollars of stuff? You mean donate it to CCP games don't you?
You've made your point clear. You think genius is bad, and you too stupid to read with comprehensions.
Hey genius, you've made it clear you're interested in nothing but straw men and mis-quoting. The cult of genius is bad. That's nothing personal. Get over yourself.
Also you grammar needs work.
So much so as to take exact opposite meaning from simple sentences.
Hey, you're the one demonstrating the ability to completely mis-comprehend a sentence. Very well I might add.
You then get offended by these simple concepts that you cannot understand.
There's nothing complex about simple snobbery.
I get it.
You've proven you don't "get it" at all.
You don't have to keep explaining your embracing of stupidity.
Were you home schooled too? Is this an example of the dazzling social skill and debating prowess you intend to pass on to your children? There's nothing remotely intelligent about resorting to petty name calling, childish putdowns and VERY VERY bad strawmen and reductio ad absurdum - the weakest and last resort of the poor debater - when you lose an argument.
For the last time, you don't need to be a snob to embrace the intellectual. And you don't need to be an attention seeking gimboid and show pony to appreciate it. Oh and for pity sake, get some social skills.
You think it's clever to quote things out of context? Is that really the best you can do? Is this an example of your above average intelligence?
I called you a moron and a snob after you demonstrated traits that well and truly earnt it. Thumbing your nose at people who do jobs you consider menial is just plain snobbery. YOU rely on that grease monkey to fix your brakes correctly. You put your life in the man's hands. The guy that cleans your toilets and empties your bins at work also deserves respect. What you said was disgraceful. You absolutely are a snob. And I find such snobbery moronic.
Yes, being a genius is hard. It usually means not being understood and being ridiculed until and unless people realise what you've said makes sense. Do you think Einstein was a celebrated genius when he came up with relativity? He had trouble getting a job at all. If you are recognised, you wind up being used by others to advance their own goals. Classic case is Beethoven. You really don't get it do you? The life of a "genius" isn't usually a happy one. That isn't anti-intellectual - it's a simple statement of truth. Obviously one that you can't accept.
I'm all for intellectual pursuit. I think children are talked down to way too much. Once they've gotten a grasp on the general idea, they should be shown more specifics. They have to learn what a bird is before they learn what a lark or crow is, but the progression shouldn't wait 5 or 6 years. There's a big wonderful universe out there to explore that most people literally pay no attention to. But if a person wants to earn their living as a mechanic instead of a doctor there's nothing wrong with that. Science, mathematics music, history, language. All good pursuits to fill a lifetime with. Wake up and get a clue before you make your kid's life a living hell.
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0403508/
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1018785/
Those movies are a complete waste of time. The chick flicks from hell. Probably still more worthwhile than this book.
Another thing: In the real world no one is going to give a shit if your kid could read at 3 or not. That's not anti-intellectual. It is simply not of any practical importance. Einstein struggled with math into his teens and it's partially as a result of struggling to overcome that that he got to be a world icon.
I value education. I'm going to surround my children with all the knowledge I can. I did an Astronomy masters for fun (ie no intention of switching careers). Calling me anti-intellectual is just fucking hilarious. The real difference between you and I is the snob factor. I grew up in a working class home and you can sure as fuck bet I don't look down on my mother for struggling with a relatively menial job (rail ticket sales, and cleaning including cleaning toilets) to give me the best education she could afford.
Using icons is not being "proficient" at computing. The irony of someone that delusional calling me "stupid" is quite amusing. You may be helping your child learn the 3 R's but if this kind of snobbery and self aggrandizement is what you are teaching your child, heaven help him, because he's going to need it.
I'll just remain one of the stupid shall I? Send my son to a public school and supplement his education while teaching him some goddamn humility and that he doesn't need to be a genius to be worthwhile.
By the way there's nothing wrong with changing the oil in cars, you utter snob. That's what you're going to teach your kid? That if you don't do something world changing you're worthless. Fucking moron.