It already is; people just don't see the connection.
Funny you say this: I'm in the Ph.D. in English program at the University of Arizona, and as a result I teach 50 freshmen divided into two classes in English 101/102 each semester. They're great for learning about society's views and prejudices, since they come pre-equipped with so many of them and so few tools for self-analysis. This time, I created a unit on technology, form, and myth, assigning an Asimov story and various other things, including Peter Wood's How Our Culture Keeps Students Out of Science, which the author of the New York Times article should have referenced, as well as Neal Stephenson's Turn On, Tune In, Veg Out. Students' responses to and associations with science in particular have been fascinating for how negative they are.
Many draw a distinction between "us" ("normal people") and "them" ("scientists and mathematicians," as well as others who focus on intellectual achievement), defining the two as utterly opposed to one another. Few if any perceived science or learning as a process, rather than a thing. Just like much of the fiction and many of the essays we read, many saw science as being not applicable to their lives. Actually, it's hard for me to discern what they do find applicable to their lives.
Anyhow, you're right -- they "just don't see the connection," and I'm not sure if my efforts, like pointing out the us vs. them tendencies, actually helped. I drew explicit comparisons between work and tenacity needed for significant achievement in virtually any field, including scholastic ones like English, but I'm not sure whether some of these subtler points were actually understood. For most of them, I'm guessing the answer was no, but maybe a few were genuinely affected.
You're renting instead of owning with the Kindle and the security of what you buy is a problem, along with price. The Kindle makes the most sense for people who are desperately short of time and value efficiency above all other things, including money and longevity. I'm not sure a sufficient number of those people exist to justify the Kindle and eReader, at least right now, as they give the impression of portable music devices pre-iPod.
What's needed is a social networking site with a concept of groups as containers for acquaintances and other groups, applying permissions in the order of default-deny, groups with permission, groups denied, individuals permitted, individuals denied.
Which will be far too complicated for your average beer-swilling 19-year-old, who is still Facebook's fundamental demographic. No one outside of *nix administrators will take the time to learn the grouping systems well enough to use them. The same applies to user fees. This is one of these ideas that sounds great on/., but/. isn't a representative sample of actual users.
[...] it is something I would want, but googling doesn't find me anything similar. My programming skills are not amazing, to say the least, but I can design and QA.
This is the sort of thing one encountered in dot coms: a bunch of MBAs who couldn't code had an idea and figured they just needed implementation help. This approach was and still is so wrongheaded that it's almost impossible to believe the number of investors who fell for it. Understanding what's wrong with it has been much covered elsewhere; see Joel on Software, especially here and here and here. Actually, you should spend an afternoon reading everything in his archives.
Then mosey over to Paul Graham, where you should read this and this. Actually, read about half his archive, including all the computer-related stuff. Chances are you could spend about a day with both; then read The Mythical Man Month and Peopleware. Once you're done with all four, you should have a much better idea of why what you're describing is virtually impossible--something many others on this thread are dancing around, but which I'll come out and say.
Freakonomics just had a post about wine drinkers and taste: "Their conclusion: fancy people with lots of training can tell cheap wine from expensive wine, but regular people cannot." Interesting stuff.
I used the same article as a component of a short essay on artistic taste.
I'm not convinced that culture, rather than genetics, has more to do with the groupings you describe, but that's a very large subject and one that's caused much strife in the 20th Century. On a lighter note, I really wanted to respond to this:
This is especially useful in understanding the difference between Georgia, Ossetia and Russia. For those who live in nation-states of an imperial nature, like the United States, Canada, Russia or UK, it's hard to grasp this, but not every country views itself as composed of generic people.
Quid Plura? has as an excellent post that deserves wider recognition on the subject of Georgia, Ossetia, Russia, and the Middle-ages. As often happens in events like this (see: Kosovo), the problems and issues go back much farther than is commonly reported.
James Fallows already did in The Great Firewall. The short version: China is worried chiefly about controlling its own people and setting bad internal precedents. It's not as worried about the rest of the world. In addition, the Chinese authorities are somewhat inept, as he explains here. Because neither can be excerpted effectively, you'll just have to follow the links.
And the usually unstated observation is that Finnish and most other European school systems have a much stronger tracking mechanism than U.S. schools--not in the sense of "knowing where the kids are," but in the sense of putting them into classes oriented towards universities or not, trade school or not, and such. As a result, kids at the lowest rungs aren't necessarily taking the tests if they've already left or enter vocational education, and the ones at the bottom aren't holding back the ones at the top.
This system has drawbacks for late-bloomers and others who are mis-tracked, but it makes schools look a hell of a lot better than the U.S. approach. The problem with comparing educational systems is that one first has to establish what you're comparing. If there were a panacea like your post implies ("Finish kids are not treated like babies"), it would've already been implemented, and the battles would be over.
We discuss some of the issues around education in Grant Writing Confidential, though the top posts are about other things at the moment.
Do the math; graduate with the same degree debt-free from a state university like I will, or owe hundreds of thousands of dollars as soon as the ceremony ends?
They probably have, and realized that not everything is summed up by the amount of money you pay or save.
I wrote a short post critical of Clearwire, the company that provides wireless Internet access. A customer service person called to ask about the problems, and he helped me learn that it's actually policy of Clearwire to restrict its customers' bandwidth usage.
The good: Clearwire is paying attention to its customers if those customers complain publicly. The bad: they haven't changed their methods and you still shouldn't use them as your ISP.
Here's my guess: the web, TV, movies, games, and other forms of "entertainment" will be riddled with product placements, product storylines, and an overall commercialized experience.
Fortunately, books are still there; for example, and unlike the movie version, I haven't seen much product placement in The Lord of the Rings, except for one-of-a-kind swords, and there isn't much PR, either, except for the Elves, who come off pretty well.
This trailer, as far as I can tell, says nothing about the plot, the action, or why it's different from the 30 other superhero movies that have come out over the last seven or eight years.
Come on, can I get something other than cool FX shots and people striking poses?
The point is, if Microsoft isn't automatic, then people (developers, admins, corporations, schools, whatever) have to focus more on standards than on specific platforms. That opens the door to the OSS stuff you're implicitly endorsing. Think of Apple as an intermediary step for people who are never going to read man pages and believe firmly in death before inconvenience. If enough of them start using Macs, you get what you want.
On its own, it isn't, but it seems that network effects often break down when fewer than 90% of something are networked. For example, you get herd vaccination if more than 90 - 95% of the population is vaccinated; less than that, and diseases can reemerge. This is becoming a major problem WRT the lunatics who are afraid of childhood vaccines. Something not dissimilar happened with Internet browsers: until Firefox had more than 5% of the market, relatively few sites coded for Mozilla/Firefox.
The hope is that if Apple cracks 10%, developers will have to pay more attention, Microsoft won't just be the default choice, and peace and happiness will reign. Or something.
So have I, and the most persistent irritant is the lack of a way to instantly and consistently maximize a window to fullscreen. But the problems have by and large been smaller and less problematic than Windows XP, the crashes less frequent, and the overall experience more pleasant. All computers have problems: OS X has fewer of them. Someday, I hope that description fits Linux.
XP works beautifully for me and everyone i know. Worked really well for the 100+ users and 150+ machines for which i was sys admin.
Four years ago, I bought a PowerBook in college not long after my Dell XP box somehow acquired a virus. I don't know how: virtually all the ports were closed; I'd installed Norton or MacAfee to the tune of $50 a year; I used Mozilla's mail client (remember those pre-Thunderbird days?) and had all the mandatory Windows security updates installed. I spent all evening when I should've been working. That was after the struggle to get Windows to recognize a second hard drive and the many other miscellaneous problems, the nature of which have faded over time.
Maybe XP works wonderfully for pre-defined tasks and when you have a handy sys admin to call when things go wrong. For me, it was a vast improvement over 95/98, but not good enough. Another poster observed that any geek can get Windows to work, but the question is whether you want to invest the time and effort. My answer was "no," and apparently a growing percentage of people in the U.S. think likewise.
Was that information correct? Your answer should then beg the broader question: Since I now have identified a news report as being wrong/misleading/grossly inaccurate, is anything these talking heads/ink purveyors spew forth accurate?
It often is, but usually only from two major sources: The New Yorker and The Atlantic. The New York Times and Wall Street Journal sit a tier below them. Below that, there's not much worth reading, and below that, TV news starts.
But why latch onto the tail end of a 20-year-old monopoly who by all rights is beginning to falter, and seems to have no vision at all for the next 20?
Because they, you know, pay you a lot of money, that's why. The jackpot days at Google are over, and in pure cash terms, Microsoft appears to be winning the race in absolute dollars and cost-of-living. Only in comparison to Silicon Valley/SF, L.A., New York, Boston, or Chicago could Seattle claim victory in that field, but Google happens to be located in one of those areas.
Because the windows keys are really, really useful?
Right: I bought and use an Unicomp Customizer precisely because I can remap the keys for command, option, and control on OS X, which the link demonstrates. Otherwise, I'd probably have stuck with an old-school Model M with an adaptor.
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Funny you say this: I'm in the Ph.D. in English program at the University of Arizona, and as a result I teach 50 freshmen divided into two classes in English 101/102 each semester. They're great for learning about society's views and prejudices, since they come pre-equipped with so many of them and so few tools for self-analysis. This time, I created a unit on technology, form, and myth, assigning an Asimov story and various other things, including Peter Wood's How Our Culture Keeps Students Out of Science, which the author of the New York Times article should have referenced, as well as Neal Stephenson's Turn On, Tune In, Veg Out. Students' responses to and associations with science in particular have been fascinating for how negative they are.
Many draw a distinction between "us" ("normal people") and "them" ("scientists and mathematicians," as well as others who focus on intellectual achievement), defining the two as utterly opposed to one another. Few if any perceived science or learning as a process, rather than a thing. Just like much of the fiction and many of the essays we read, many saw science as being not applicable to their lives. Actually, it's hard for me to discern what they do find applicable to their lives.
Anyhow, you're right -- they "just don't see the connection," and I'm not sure if my efforts, like pointing out the us vs. them tendencies, actually helped. I drew explicit comparisons between work and tenacity needed for significant achievement in virtually any field, including scholastic ones like English, but I'm not sure whether some of these subtler points were actually understood. For most of them, I'm guessing the answer was no, but maybe a few were genuinely affected.
In addition, EFF discussed some issues here.
Which will be far too complicated for your average beer-swilling 19-year-old, who is still Facebook's fundamental demographic. No one outside of *nix administrators will take the time to learn the grouping systems well enough to use them. The same applies to user fees. This is one of these ideas that sounds great on /., but /. isn't a representative sample of actual users.
This is the sort of thing one encountered in dot coms: a bunch of MBAs who couldn't code had an idea and figured they just needed implementation help. This approach was and still is so wrongheaded that it's almost impossible to believe the number of investors who fell for it. Understanding what's wrong with it has been much covered elsewhere; see Joel on Software, especially here and here and here. Actually, you should spend an afternoon reading everything in his archives.
Then mosey over to Paul Graham, where you should read this and this. Actually, read about half his archive, including all the computer-related stuff. Chances are you could spend about a day with both; then read The Mythical Man Month and Peopleware. Once you're done with all four, you should have a much better idea of why what you're describing is virtually impossible--something many others on this thread are dancing around, but which I'll come out and say.
I used the same article as a component of a short essay on artistic taste.
Quid Plura? has as an excellent post that deserves wider recognition on the subject of Georgia, Ossetia, Russia, and the Middle-ages. As often happens in events like this (see: Kosovo), the problems and issues go back much farther than is commonly reported.
Fortunately, a steady diet of US Weekly, People, and OK! will make us the world leaders in this "brain" battlefield of the future.
James Fallows already did in The Great Firewall. The short version: China is worried chiefly about controlling its own people and setting bad internal precedents. It's not as worried about the rest of the world. In addition, the Chinese authorities are somewhat inept, as he explains here. Because neither can be excerpted effectively, you'll just have to follow the links.
It's going about as well as the War on Terror; both led us to invade Iraq.
This system has drawbacks for late-bloomers and others who are mis-tracked, but it makes schools look a hell of a lot better than the U.S. approach. The problem with comparing educational systems is that one first has to establish what you're comparing. If there were a panacea like your post implies ("Finish kids are not treated like babies"), it would've already been implemented, and the battles would be over.
We discuss some of the issues around education in Grant Writing Confidential, though the top posts are about other things at the moment.
They probably have, and realized that not everything is summed up by the amount of money you pay or save.
The good: Clearwire is paying attention to its customers if those customers complain publicly. The bad: they haven't changed their methods and you still shouldn't use them as your ISP.
Fortunately, books are still there; for example, and unlike the movie version, I haven't seen much product placement in The Lord of the Rings, except for one-of-a-kind swords, and there isn't much PR, either, except for the Elves, who come off pretty well.
Come on, can I get something other than cool FX shots and people striking poses?
This theory is elaborated in another comment.
The hope is that if Apple cracks 10%, developers will have to pay more attention, Microsoft won't just be the default choice, and peace and happiness will reign. Or something.
So have I, and the most persistent irritant is the lack of a way to instantly and consistently maximize a window to fullscreen. But the problems have by and large been smaller and less problematic than Windows XP, the crashes less frequent, and the overall experience more pleasant. All computers have problems: OS X has fewer of them. Someday, I hope that description fits Linux.
Four years ago, I bought a PowerBook in college not long after my Dell XP box somehow acquired a virus. I don't know how: virtually all the ports were closed; I'd installed Norton or MacAfee to the tune of $50 a year; I used Mozilla's mail client (remember those pre-Thunderbird days?) and had all the mandatory Windows security updates installed. I spent all evening when I should've been working. That was after the struggle to get Windows to recognize a second hard drive and the many other miscellaneous problems, the nature of which have faded over time.
Maybe XP works wonderfully for pre-defined tasks and when you have a handy sys admin to call when things go wrong. For me, it was a vast improvement over 95/98, but not good enough. Another poster observed that any geek can get Windows to work, but the question is whether you want to invest the time and effort. My answer was "no," and apparently a growing percentage of people in the U.S. think likewise.
And you do, but have no citations to demonstrate it. Strange, that.
Do you have any citations for these claims? My impression is that Dell R&D has never been big.
It often is, but usually only from two major sources: The New Yorker and The Atlantic. The New York Times and Wall Street Journal sit a tier below them. Below that, there's not much worth reading, and below that, TV news starts.
Because they, you know, pay you a lot of money, that's why. The jackpot days at Google are over, and in pure cash terms, Microsoft appears to be winning the race in absolute dollars and cost-of-living. Only in comparison to Silicon Valley/SF, L.A., New York, Boston, or Chicago could Seattle claim victory in that field, but Google happens to be located in one of those areas.
Right: as described by me here, in an article that appeared on /. about a month ago.
Right: I bought and use an Unicomp Customizer precisely because I can remap the keys for command, option, and control on OS X, which the link demonstrates. Otherwise, I'd probably have stuck with an old-school Model M with an adaptor.
The important question: how does it compare to a Unicomp Customizer?