Hmmm I can touch type at about 90 words/min but it isn't the keyboard buttons that let me do that... it's the spatial memory in my hands or whatever part of my brain that holds spatial memory for my hands. I suspect that is true of a phone as well, ie: I've had the same phone for several years now, great buttons... but i can't touch dial it very well because I rarely use it for any length of time or at all really (I don't call people much, prefer email or just waiting til I see them) but I'm certain that a teen who texts all the time can do it behind their back in the dark with one hand...
Once you get used to the dimensions and location of where the input areas are on the iPhone, your local spatial memory for your hands will kick in the same as with a phone that has buttons, especially if you keep the audio feedback turned on while learning. In any case you're not going to hold the phone and reach your thumb all the way to the left of the device when you're wanting to type a 1, 4, or 7... likewise the 3, 6 and 9 will be found near the right edge and 2,5,8 will be in the middle... 123 at top, 456 in middle and 789 at bottom... not a very complicated grid to memorize really;-p and I'm fairly certain you won't be using google maps using any 'buttons' no matter which phone you pick... and the rest of the capability is going to demand your attention by it's nature, rather than due to it's input method.
I pity the poor test grader and thesis evaluator who're going to lose their jobs when someone finds out they let you through....
Nice comeback by the way, did you see that on CSI?
Are you a Trekkie? Should I hold that against you or just assume that you've hopefully wasted all the highly productive years a Ph.D. has in their early 30s watching reruns and chatting on forums about the Star Trek Universe and how it's physics model doesn't correspond 1:1 with ours, which is why they can teleport people, despite the laws of physics which say it's improbable to a 9 nines level of certainty.
(if you respond to that, I'll know for sure... it's what we like to call a red herring argument)
you're all over the road here. we're just another animal, we're special animals... then we're 'human' and have a bunch of special gifts that other social animals don't have... and that's what separates us from the animals, but again we're just successful animals, and DNA has got nothing to do with it?
I appreciate the effort. I do suspect that our DNA may have something to do with our pre-frontal cortex, large corpus callosum, opposable thumbs, color vision, stereoscopic vision, upright stance, aseasonal estrus cycle (meaning our females don't go into 'heat' at any particular time), our specific maturity rate and all the other factors that are unique to homo-sapien as influenced by our DNA and corresponding genetic expression patterns which set the stage for most if not all of our social behaviors and relationships, which in turn help to determine the basic pattern of our lives.
I suspect it may have a lot to do with what separates us from the rest of the animal kingdom... and there's really nothing mysterious about it anymore, though it is obviously intrinsic... (belonging naturally, essential).
Hmm that brings up the question of what differentiates us from animals.... most non-religious aka non-pro-life also believe in very strict evolution in that there is no soul, no specific thing that separates us from 'animals'... only biological and chemical differences that we arbitrarily liken as 'human' or non-animal qualities.
A fetus has all the DNA of a homo-sapien and therefore given time to develop, will become a homo-sapien. It's DNA is what differentiates it from an animal, not an environmentally supplied set of behaviors.
Having said that, you are an idiot as you didn't realize this yourself... and I could argue that you are obviously not as competent as a 'person/human' in today's society should be. We should probably just kill you off and redistribute the resources society has allocated to you amongst ourselves.
3D Graphics: You asked for it, and we delivered. Kick around your favorite Windows-only OpenGL and DirectX games and apps in a virtual machine on your Mac, without shutting down OS X!
On the moon our Macbook Pros take YOU to Boston...
they are still a great band here on the moon, we listen to them play live on a regular basis and if you don't agree that Boston is the greatest moon band ever I will be forced to disintegrate you with my moon laser....
probably isn't all that more informative than an email would be
While/. is more useful as a web site it could as easily be an email list. Even though/. manages to stay somewhat relevant as a forum without providing live updates to posts, this is going to change in the future. I'm not saying that/. is going to change, I haven't a clue what if any changes they have planned to improve the site, but very soon there are going to be forums such as/. that do a better job of providing the information and entertainment value niche it serves and they'll do so by giving users the option of seeing posts in near real time rather than having to refresh a page.
I also said that stateless info is 'becoming' useless... meaning that there is so much info coming down the lines that unless We can impose live filters on it (much like being able to filter out unwanted flash content at the click of a button) there will be a ratio of noise much higher than signal... it's arguable that this is already the case and that much of what we could be exposed to that is relevant to us as individuals is getting lost in between spam, superfluous fluff and non-spam marketing cruft.
Google does it's best to find relevant results for a simple search and they do a great job but there are so many possible and easy to use tools they could be providing. These tools all require advances in client side interaction capabilities.
We need data visualization and UIs with visual models to filter and constrain data. I'd love to see sliders used for live results pagination... want 5 results, 10, 30 just move that little knob to the right a little... want less summary info, just move this one left a little, want to see more results from a particular site using the same criteria, just bump up the weight on it using this right pointing arrow next to it's name (3 more pages show up), want to see a list of analogous terms that have a higher relevance rating... click this button and select the new terms you'd like to see results for.
This is the kind of toolset that will require client side data manipulation, dom manipulation and asynchronous requests to the server/database. Nobody will use a tool like that if they have to wait for a refresh each time they make an adjustment.
These same tools can help you find the best price for a product, narrow it down to a zip code radius and provide fastest route info to the store from your job site or your home with a couple clicks... rather than 15 minutes of form entry and waiting for results that may or may not be what you're looking for.
This is coming if I have any say in it (and I do for some companies... prototypes are in development).
FYI I think Flash has it's uses for very creative UIs to locked down specifications, Kiosks are a great example, some online data browsers where the data is visual and the experience is as important as the accessibility (movie/game sites for instance), and for charting data with live interactivity (think google's stock charts). I don't think it's useful or necessary for fancy menus, slideshows of marketing messages, slide browsers or basically anything that can be done in a grid layout... javascript is now more than capable of all the special effects you can throw in, that won't get in the way of using it;-p
If you're referring to the psychological strain of instantly seeing a new room... maybe all teleporter rooms can look exactly the same, down to the smallest perceptible detail.
This would be no more straining on people than putting them under for surgery, then waking them up an hour later in a new room. Also people lose consciousness all the time, just pass out... then their buddies pull them out of the bar and into the car. They wake up later on their front lawn in a dress and pantyhose... apparently suffering nothing worse than a headache.
I suspect that the experience of teleporting will be less straining than either of these examples.
When the browsers provide support for seamless SVG that gets push data from a socket connection I'll stop using Flash. When browsers provide seamless client side data validation and inline error prompting for forms, I'll stop using Javascript.
Any web page that can't benefit from the above uses of the technology probably isn't all that more informative than an email would be.
Static information is useful but stateless information is becoming useless. This is interactive media... not a book that you can access over a phone line. Keeping state on the server is too slow... it's great for long term session storage but very bad for user-time interaction.
Re:The next "One major danger"...
on
GPLv2 Vs. GPLv3
·
· Score: 1
I believe the original poster was making a statement about the instability of the GPL and how it seems to encroach upon the rights of non-copyright holders to freely utilize this supposedly free software with each new GPL draft. IT seems to become more and more like any other shrink-wrap commercial license.
"You can use this FREE software, but only in the way I have outlined below: a) only in such a way as benefits me and my friends who like this license because it seem altruistic but is really very fascist and not free at all.... as in you can't really do much with out software except run it... unless you want to give us everything you own in return, then you can modify it slightly and redistribute under your name (but with a big graphic of our names plastered on top, and none of that cheap plaster... we want the Venetian kind)."
So if you are a man and you piss standing up, you automatically must aim poorly and hit the seat with a stream of urine? Or does it splatter from the bowl up on to the seat?
Personally I aim for the back of the bowl, just above the waterline.... this is where the angle of deflection will disperse the urine stream effectively in a way similar to a urinal... which is also designed to not spray urine back on to the urinator... which of course is where the concept comes from.
Now if for some reason I do get a couple drops of pee on the seat... I grab some toilet paper and wipe it off. Urine is a combination of uric acid and ammonia mixed with whatever waste chemicals your body decided it didn't need and could expel via your bladder. These chemicals could probably be put into a gel capsule and sold as vitamins if you separated them from the uric acid and ammonia. What I'm saying is that urine is pretty damn safe and really doesn't do anything bad to you at all (unlike fecal matter which can contain Hepatitus, Flu and lot of other nasties).
So here's my questions... if you always get urine on the seat, do you also always get urine on the rim? Who cleans that once a month? Wouldn't it be easier to just clean up after yourself when you make the mess, rather than letting it sit for weeks?
I think the point is that a Geek from New York has flown to LA for a 2 week gig, said geek loves watching Mets games (?) but they aren't available in LA, even at Sports Bars like ESPN Zone who get all the TV packages they can, because MLB says 'Thou shalt not watch the Mets in LA" for some unknown reason (deal with broadcaster to get more money).
So Geek from NY goes with buddies to ESPN Zone but brings along his slingbox enabled phone and some earbuds, proceeds to sit in the booth with new temporary co-workers drinking a beer but while they are watching an Angels game (?), he keeps an eye on his phone's screen instead and has one earbud in his ear to hear any excited announcements.
To make a long story short... no one from Geek's party even says hi to a single female and mostly talk about a new Java class that's sweeping the net, but they each have a good time and were able to keep track of and even enjoy a few minutes of excitement related to the sports team they follow.
I think you're right on that one. I've never installed Google Desktop.... never saw the benefit... just eats up more space with things I need maybe 2 times a day.
So maybe this is evolutionary for Google rather than revolutionary. The biggest change would be adding the local DB/File store.
Will be interesting to see if the FF3 team gets into the ring now that they're including SQLite in the browser by default. Most likely it will just mean that you can a) write your own plugins using the basic-basic hooks provided by FF3 plugin API OR b) use Google Gears and get access to a more feature rich API that will handle the heavy lifting for you so you can focus on writing your feature code.
And the chance of someone getting your music out of it at that point is? Can just hear you now:
"Damn low tide took my laptop and posted torrents of my music all over the web, now the RIAA is after me because of the watermark Apple put in their stupid 'DRM Free' song files!" **angry look towards Cupertino California**
Hey Yahoo called, they want their idea back... well not exactly... actually if i read this correctly, Google's tool works across the browser divide and back again.
Yahoo's Konfab is desktop only. They have a UI lib but it isn't the same API as Konfab.
Google Gadgets is web only.
Apple Widgets are desktop/dashboard only.
MS Gadgets are desktop only.
Adobe Apollo apps are desktop only.
So I give Google kudos for making the first implementation of a javascript based application engine that works both with/through the browser and standalone on the desktop.
A UI is only as hideous as the UI designer has made it. I personally make amazing and intuitive UI using javascript, html and css. You'll never see them on the web though. You may see one in a Kiosk at a museum or on the back of an airplane in first class sometime though. They run locally via a browser pulling data from a central server but pulling UI assets and logic from a client side cache.
You can do some amazing things with today's Javascript libraries, DOM scripting, CSS manipulation and a SQL store. Look at Apple's Dashboard widgets, Konfabulator widgets, etc. for examples of what can be done (and yes when you turn an amateur developer base loose with easy to use tools, they'll come up with some pretty ugly and pointless things too).
BTW Javascript is only as memory sucking as the implementation, ie the browser in most cases. A good javascript engine will not leak memory like a sieve... and a good javascript library will minimize memory leaks even in a poor implementation.
If it wasn't where you left it when you return, it was stolen.
ie: you leave your car unattended somewhere unlocked... with the keys in the ignition and someone decides to drive it away... that's still grand theft auto. You're still a dumb-ass for leaving it the way you did but it doesn't somehow excuse the thief from the act of stealing a vehicle they know is not in their possession.
File a police report stating that your mp3 player or laptop was stolen which included your vast collection of music in digital form. Voila. Now they'll have to go the extra mile to prove that it was you (via an ip address or whatnot) that made the file available and not the thief....
Like any stolen good which could involve you vicariously in a crime, you should report it.
Not/. but certainly every popular science fiction author who ever wrote about future style computers;-p
OR, have you been avoiding the written word for the last 40 years and just now took a peak at/. for some guilty pleasure? That would be the worst possible scenario.
If we did that and held our teens to the same standards as adults... most of them would be in jail, pregnant, dead or possibly all three. It'll be a long road of converting our educational system from teaching academics to teaching the rules of life before we can turn loose our teens on the streets with all the rights and responsibilities of adults.
Where do you draw the line in any case? 14? So you want a 14 year old deciding whether it is safe to have a beer (at 65lbs it will only take one to get him/her drunk) go pick up his friends to see a film about a violent rapist then get a hotel room for the night so they can party and get laid with the 14 year old (well she said she was 14, really just 12 with some makeup on) and find out that they are now on the hook for statutory and will serve time as an adult, possibly 4 years or more......when they should be at home under lock and key studying for their first ever mid-term exam as a freshman in high school?
With no experience in life to draw upon and brand new raging hormones they don't even realize are affecting their judgement, the 14 year old is likely to choose the first sequence of events, and pay for it the rest of their life.
oh I RTFA and see that they never bought the software to begin with. Hmm what a pity. The cost would have been amortized over 4 years at least, probably as good a deal as what MS gave them ("But you'll get free upgrades whenever they come out (hehehehe every 3 years that is) %-$").
Well this is what you get when you lease. Lease is out and you're locked in, so the company doing the leasing has you over a barrel.
OTOH 25,000 copies at the student/teacher price of $149 for a full version only comes to 3.75 Million, today. That's pretty dirt cheap for what you get. Surely they can find a sponsor somewhere (Oprah, I know you read/.) to donate this much as a write off.
Slashdot Mirror
Hmmm I can touch type at about 90 words/min but it isn't the keyboard buttons that let me do that... it's the spatial memory in my hands or whatever part of my brain that holds spatial memory for my hands. I suspect that is true of a phone as well, ie: I've had the same phone for several years now, great buttons... but i can't touch dial it very well because I rarely use it for any length of time or at all really (I don't call people much, prefer email or just waiting til I see them) but I'm certain that a teen who texts all the time can do it behind their back in the dark with one hand...
;-p and I'm fairly certain you won't be using google maps using any 'buttons' no matter which phone you pick... and the rest of the capability is going to demand your attention by it's nature, rather than due to it's input method.
Once you get used to the dimensions and location of where the input areas are on the iPhone, your local spatial memory for your hands will kick in the same as with a phone that has buttons, especially if you keep the audio feedback turned on while learning. In any case you're not going to hold the phone and reach your thumb all the way to the left of the device when you're wanting to type a 1, 4, or 7... likewise the 3, 6 and 9 will be found near the right edge and 2,5,8 will be in the middle... 123 at top, 456 in middle and 789 at bottom... not a very complicated grid to memorize really
"Ask again later"? - oh wait that's the magic 8 ball, sorry.
I pity the poor test grader and thesis evaluator who're going to lose their jobs when someone finds out they let you through....
Nice comeback by the way, did you see that on CSI?
Are you a Trekkie? Should I hold that against you or just assume that you've hopefully wasted all the highly productive years a Ph.D. has in their early 30s watching reruns and chatting on forums about the Star Trek Universe and how it's physics model doesn't correspond 1:1 with ours, which is why they can teleport people, despite the laws of physics which say it's improbable to a 9 nines level of certainty.
(if you respond to that, I'll know for sure... it's what we like to call a red herring argument)
blah blah blah.. yawwwnnnn ok bye
you're all over the road here. we're just another animal, we're special animals... then we're 'human' and have a bunch of special gifts that other social animals don't have... and that's what separates us from the animals, but again we're just successful animals, and DNA has got nothing to do with it?
I appreciate the effort. I do suspect that our DNA may have something to do with our pre-frontal cortex, large corpus callosum, opposable thumbs, color vision, stereoscopic vision, upright stance, aseasonal estrus cycle (meaning our females don't go into 'heat' at any particular time), our specific maturity rate and all the other factors that are unique to homo-sapien as influenced by our DNA and corresponding genetic expression patterns which set the stage for most if not all of our social behaviors and relationships, which in turn help to determine the basic pattern of our lives.
I suspect it may have a lot to do with what separates us from the rest of the animal kingdom... and there's really nothing mysterious about it anymore, though it is obviously intrinsic... (belonging naturally, essential).
Hmm that brings up the question of what differentiates us from animals.... most non-religious aka non-pro-life also believe in very strict evolution in that there is no soul, no specific thing that separates us from 'animals'... only biological and chemical differences that we arbitrarily liken as 'human' or non-animal qualities.
A fetus has all the DNA of a homo-sapien and therefore given time to develop, will become a homo-sapien. It's DNA is what differentiates it from an animal, not an environmentally supplied set of behaviors.
Having said that, you are an idiot as you didn't realize this yourself... and I could argue that you are obviously not as competent as a 'person/human' in today's society should be. We should probably just kill you off and redistribute the resources society has allocated to you amongst ourselves.
On the moon our Macbook Pros take YOU to Boston...
they are still a great band here on the moon, we listen to them play live on a regular basis and if you don't agree that Boston is the greatest moon band ever I will be forced to disintegrate you with my moon laser....
While
I also said that stateless info is 'becoming' useless... meaning that there is so much info coming down the lines that unless We can impose live filters on it (much like being able to filter out unwanted flash content at the click of a button) there will be a ratio of noise much higher than signal... it's arguable that this is already the case and that much of what we could be exposed to that is relevant to us as individuals is getting lost in between spam, superfluous fluff and non-spam marketing cruft.
Google does it's best to find relevant results for a simple search and they do a great job but there are so many possible and easy to use tools they could be providing. These tools all require advances in client side interaction capabilities.
We need data visualization and UIs with visual models to filter and constrain data. I'd love to see sliders used for live results pagination... want 5 results, 10, 30 just move that little knob to the right a little... want less summary info, just move this one left a little, want to see more results from a particular site using the same criteria, just bump up the weight on it using this right pointing arrow next to it's name (3 more pages show up), want to see a list of analogous terms that have a higher relevance rating... click this button and select the new terms you'd like to see results for.
This is the kind of toolset that will require client side data manipulation, dom manipulation and asynchronous requests to the server/database. Nobody will use a tool like that if they have to wait for a refresh each time they make an adjustment.
These same tools can help you find the best price for a product, narrow it down to a zip code radius and provide fastest route info to the store from your job site or your home with a couple clicks... rather than 15 minutes of form entry and waiting for results that may or may not be what you're looking for.
This is coming if I have any say in it (and I do for some companies... prototypes are in development).
FYI I think Flash has it's uses for very creative UIs to locked down specifications, Kiosks are a great example, some online data browsers where the data is visual and the experience is as important as the accessibility (movie/game sites for instance), and for charting data with live interactivity (think google's stock charts). I don't think it's useful or necessary for fancy menus, slideshows of marketing messages, slide browsers or basically anything that can be done in a grid layout... javascript is now more than capable of all the special effects you can throw in, that won't get in the way of using it
This would be no more straining on people than putting them under for surgery, then waking them up an hour later in a new room. Also people lose consciousness all the time, just pass out... then their buddies pull them out of the bar and into the car. They wake up later on their front lawn in a dress and pantyhose... apparently suffering nothing worse than a headache.
I suspect that the experience of teleporting will be less straining than either of these examples.
When the browsers provide support for seamless SVG that gets push data from a socket connection I'll stop using Flash. When browsers provide seamless client side data validation and inline error prompting for forms, I'll stop using Javascript.
Any web page that can't benefit from the above uses of the technology probably isn't all that more informative than an email would be.
Static information is useful but stateless information is becoming useless. This is interactive media... not a book that you can access over a phone line. Keeping state on the server is too slow... it's great for long term session storage but very bad for user-time interaction.
I believe the original poster was making a statement about the instability of the GPL and how it seems to encroach upon the rights of non-copyright holders to freely utilize this supposedly free software with each new GPL draft. IT seems to become more and more like any other shrink-wrap commercial license.
"You can use this FREE software, but only in the way I have outlined below: a) only in such a way as benefits me and my friends who like this license because it seem altruistic but is really very fascist and not free at all.... as in you can't really do much with out software except run it... unless you want to give us everything you own in return, then you can modify it slightly and redistribute under your name (but with a big graphic of our names plastered on top, and none of that cheap plaster... we want the Venetian kind)."
So if you are a man and you piss standing up, you automatically must aim poorly and hit the seat with a stream of urine? Or does it splatter from the bowl up on to the seat?
Personally I aim for the back of the bowl, just above the waterline.... this is where the angle of deflection will disperse the urine stream effectively in a way similar to a urinal... which is also designed to not spray urine back on to the urinator... which of course is where the concept comes from.
Now if for some reason I do get a couple drops of pee on the seat... I grab some toilet paper and wipe it off. Urine is a combination of uric acid and ammonia mixed with whatever waste chemicals your body decided it didn't need and could expel via your bladder. These chemicals could probably be put into a gel capsule and sold as vitamins if you separated them from the uric acid and ammonia. What I'm saying is that urine is pretty damn safe and really doesn't do anything bad to you at all (unlike fecal matter which can contain Hepatitus, Flu and lot of other nasties).
So here's my questions... if you always get urine on the seat, do you also always get urine on the rim? Who cleans that once a month? Wouldn't it be easier to just clean up after yourself when you make the mess, rather than letting it sit for weeks?
You have to search for 'apples' plural....
I think the point is that a Geek from New York has flown to LA for a 2 week gig, said geek loves watching Mets games (?) but they aren't available in LA, even at Sports Bars like ESPN Zone who get all the TV packages they can, because MLB says 'Thou shalt not watch the Mets in LA" for some unknown reason (deal with broadcaster to get more money).
So Geek from NY goes with buddies to ESPN Zone but brings along his slingbox enabled phone and some earbuds, proceeds to sit in the booth with new temporary co-workers drinking a beer but while they are watching an Angels game (?), he keeps an eye on his phone's screen instead and has one earbud in his ear to hear any excited announcements.
To make a long story short... no one from Geek's party even says hi to a single female and mostly talk about a new Java class that's sweeping the net, but they each have a good time and were able to keep track of and even enjoy a few minutes of excitement related to the sports team they follow.
Like getting a hunting license or a license to carry a firearm, maybe there should be a license to hack.
Just a thought.
I see that you are familiar with the Chubakka defense.
"If a wookie lives on Endor, you must acquit!"
I think you're right on that one. I've never installed Google Desktop.... never saw the benefit... just eats up more space with things I need maybe 2 times a day.
So maybe this is evolutionary for Google rather than revolutionary. The biggest change would be adding the local DB/File store.
Will be interesting to see if the FF3 team gets into the ring now that they're including SQLite in the browser by default. Most likely it will just mean that you can a) write your own plugins using the basic-basic hooks provided by FF3 plugin API OR b) use Google Gears and get access to a more feature rich API that will handle the heavy lifting for you so you can focus on writing your feature code.
And the chance of someone getting your music out of it at that point is? Can just hear you now:
"Damn low tide took my laptop and posted torrents of my music all over the web, now the RIAA is after me because of the watermark Apple put in their stupid 'DRM Free' song files!" **angry look towards Cupertino California**
OK, my work here is done.
Hey Yahoo called, they want their idea back... well not exactly... actually if i read this correctly, Google's tool works across the browser divide and back again.
Yahoo's Konfab is desktop only. They have a UI lib but it isn't the same API as Konfab.
Google Gadgets is web only.
Apple Widgets are desktop/dashboard only.
MS Gadgets are desktop only.
Adobe Apollo apps are desktop only.
So I give Google kudos for making the first implementation of a javascript based application engine that works both with/through the browser and standalone on the desktop.
A UI is only as hideous as the UI designer has made it. I personally make amazing and intuitive UI using javascript, html and css. You'll never see them on the web though. You may see one in a Kiosk at a museum or on the back of an airplane in first class sometime though. They run locally via a browser pulling data from a central server but pulling UI assets and logic from a client side cache.
You can do some amazing things with today's Javascript libraries, DOM scripting, CSS manipulation and a SQL store. Look at Apple's Dashboard widgets, Konfabulator widgets, etc. for examples of what can be done (and yes when you turn an amateur developer base loose with easy to use tools, they'll come up with some pretty ugly and pointless things too).
BTW Javascript is only as memory sucking as the implementation, ie the browser in most cases. A good javascript engine will not leak memory like a sieve... and a good javascript library will minimize memory leaks even in a poor implementation.
If it wasn't where you left it when you return, it was stolen.
ie: you leave your car unattended somewhere unlocked... with the keys in the ignition and someone decides to drive it away... that's still grand theft auto. You're still a dumb-ass for leaving it the way you did but it doesn't somehow excuse the thief from the act of stealing a vehicle they know is not in their possession.
File a police report stating that your mp3 player or laptop was stolen which included your vast collection of music in digital form. Voila. Now they'll have to go the extra mile to prove that it was you (via an ip address or whatnot) that made the file available and not the thief....
Like any stolen good which could involve you vicariously in a crime, you should report it.
Not /. but certainly every popular science fiction author who ever wrote about future style computers ;-p
/. for some guilty pleasure? That would be the worst possible scenario.
OR, have you been avoiding the written word for the last 40 years and just now took a peak at
If we did that and held our teens to the same standards as adults... most of them would be in jail, pregnant, dead or possibly all three. It'll be a long road of converting our educational system from teaching academics to teaching the rules of life before we can turn loose our teens on the streets with all the rights and responsibilities of adults.
...when they should be at home under lock and key studying for their first ever mid-term exam as a freshman in high school?
Where do you draw the line in any case? 14? So you want a 14 year old deciding whether it is safe to have a beer (at 65lbs it will only take one to get him/her drunk) go pick up his friends to see a film about a violent rapist then get a hotel room for the night so they can party and get laid with the 14 year old (well she said she was 14, really just 12 with some makeup on) and find out that they are now on the hook for statutory and will serve time as an adult, possibly 4 years or more...
With no experience in life to draw upon and brand new raging hormones they don't even realize are affecting their judgement, the 14 year old is likely to choose the first sequence of events, and pay for it the rest of their life.
oh I RTFA and see that they never bought the software to begin with. Hmm what a pity. The cost would have been amortized over 4 years at least, probably as good a deal as what MS gave them ("But you'll get free upgrades whenever they come out (hehehehe every 3 years that is) %-$").
/.) to donate this much as a write off.
Well this is what you get when you lease. Lease is out and you're locked in, so the company doing the leasing has you over a barrel.
OTOH 25,000 copies at the student/teacher price of $149 for a full version only comes to 3.75 Million, today. That's pretty dirt cheap for what you get. Surely they can find a sponsor somewhere (Oprah, I know you read