What age are these targetted at? I honestly feel that, at least here in the US, computers are already too prevelant at the elementary level. Teaching kids computer skills is a noble goal, but IMO, not one they're ready for until, say, grade 9-ish.
What ends up happening is they teach the kid to use a crutch. Instead of practicing arithmetic, they let kids in grade 3 (!) just use calculators. My kids only know the times tables because I *made* them learn it. Flashcards and practice, just like I did (I had a hard time with it too). They already forgive me for it. My son is seen as a "math prodigy", to use his teachers words - and quite frankly (not to denigrate him), his abilities are what I would consider average for his age. He isn't like moved on to precalculus on his own, or anything like that. He can add, subtract, multiply and divide simple numbers in his head. This makes him a prodigy in the modern US education system. ouch.
Repeat for spelling. The school could give a shit. Here's how spelling is taught - "OK KIDS, CLICK SPELL CHECK". They're, there, their, who cares.
Eventually, yes, computer skills become important, fundamental even. I just worry how they're to be used in class, that's all. I sure hope they aren't going to be expected to replace teachers, and I hope budget-strapped schools favor good staff over 100 dollar laptops.
"One Laptop Per Child" just sounds so much like "No Child Left Behind" the mere association makes me raise an eyebrow.
In the long run, though, it could be good for the US, if we can make the rest of the worlds children as stupid and ill-prepared as our own. The question is, how to instill that false sense of entitlement in kids around the world.
I know we all, on the face, think this suit was ludicrous..
But, the Boy Scouts have been sued for allowing pedophiles as leaders, with no background checks, and the Church has come under a lot of fire for that.
Of course, both those (real world) organizations put these people in direct contact with children, whereas myspace is just a place for emos to "publish" their shitty poetry.
I do the same thing. I watch my kid's actions on WoW (though I just dont enjoy playing), I know who he plays with online - mostly his clique from school. I monitor my daughters myspace page constantly, and (I hope) have adequately drilled into both kids heads the mantra of "NEVER GIVE ANY PERSONAL INFORMATION". They both know to make something up every time.
The internet is full of assholes and sickos, because the world is full of assholes and sickos. I know this, so do people with common sense. So do this girls parents, but it's the lawyers and the american dream of the big paycheck from the courts that keep this sort of junk in the courts.
One episode of that show bothered me a lot, usually I actually "enjoy" it, in the sense that I see predators get what they deserve. Sick dudes showing up naked, expecting to meet an 8 year old boy, etc.
One episode, however, had them posing as a 15 year old girl. Just under the legal age of 16 - I remember them distinctly saying that, in the chat, something like "i'll be 16 in a month". They engaged in lots of explicit chat, and "come on over and visit me" type stuff with an 18 year old guy, some kid who'd just joined the army.
They grilled the guy forever, and portrayed him as some kind of sick monster, but I sat there watching this going "hey, the guy talked to someone only 3 years younger, every bit his peer, who actually enticed him over". At 18, I might have done the same thing. In fact, at 18, I did do the same thing (hit on 15/16 year olds). I hope that kid got a good lawyer, and I hope that lawyer successfully argued entrapment.
In reality, he was probably never even charged - lost aren't, the "evidence" they gather is usually pretty shakey heresay type stuff.
It just took the whole question of "child predators" out of the world of black and white, and slapped a nice thick coat of grey paint on it. Ever since then, I view that show (and programs like it) as witch hunts.
I should file a 30 million dollar suit against slashdot, because someone put up a link that said it was an article about the SCO/IBM lawsuit, but was really a picture of a mans grotesquely distended asshole.
Same thing, really.
I TRUSTED YOU SLASHDOT how could you let this happen.
I am proud that I have never read Charlotte's Web. I moved midway through third grade - just before the class I was in started reading it, and just after my new class had finished.
We did, however, read the Jacob Two-Two books, so I'm going to read your comment as "Who Submitted This? Jacob Two-Two?"
This is like suing blockbuster because my membership card says "Gulliver" (which isn't my name - but they didn't check!), and somebody were to accept my (written in ink) blockbuster card as some form of ID. Say the bank were to loan a hundered thousand dollars to "Gulliver McMadeUpName", and then sue Blockbuster when I defaulted.
This was a ridiculous and frivolous suit. MySpace has no obligation to verify the truth of any information any random person posts. They aren't bondsmen.
The ramifications if this were taken seriously would be huge. Every web forum, including slashdot, would have to perform thorough background checks with 3 forms of government ID, before accepting members.
I use the local park in my community, but have never once volunteered to go clean it up, or help rake the sandboxes, or whatever.
I don't feel guilty, it's there for my use, free of charge.
Companies aren't going to contribute to any OSS project out of a feeling of guilt or obligation. Companies that allocate resources like that don't stay in business.
The fact is, Asterix is free, and you shouldn't expect anyone using it to contribute anything.
Tivo didn't give any implied blessing, Tivo locked down the Series 2 cryptographically to prevent me from copying off the shows I recorded, and making the only conduit the slow and broken TivoToGo. 2 hours to copy a half hour show, I'm glad they take the time to encrypt it on the fly for my protection.
Let me reiterate: Tivo saw hackers doing neat things, based largely on the openness of linux, and locked the system down to prevent it.
The only "hack" I can pull off is 'put in a bigger harddrive with exact same system partition', and that explicitly voids my license. I don't know if they've ever done so, but they could as easily blacklist me off the service for doing this, as MSFT could boot me from XBox live for having a mod chip.
Actually, I heard that the above hack no longer works on Series 3, which include the partition tables in the cryptographic jibber jabber somehow.
I like Tivo as a product, but as a company, they behave as a company, and the fact that they use linux is irrelevant.
Actually, linux is probably the reason it takes 5 minutes for a tivo to reboot.
Mods available? I made no mods to the kernel, or shorewall, or anything else.
No, the few shell scripts I set up to do various things, I wrote myself. I'll choose whatever license I want.
The end result to the consumer, is the same as if it was all proprietary. But I get to save a bunch of $$ not licensing some other OS, or set of technologies (arguable, dev cost vs licensing costs).
And I'd be doing nothing different than about every other wireless router on the shelves at best buy. I bought a cheap Belkin Pre-N router, which I know runs linux, but they give me no way to modify it.
Rogers specifically wrote to tell him that connecting to port 1194 is forbidden?
To be honest, I really have no idea how much he downloads, he could be leeching terabytes of gay porn he's ashamed to tell me about. He told me the cap was something like 10 gigabytes. He's pretty rural, so maybe it's a "in the boonies" thing, maybe Metro TO folks have no issues.
Yes, VPN's are specifically outlawed in his Fair Use Policy, in or out. They thought he could be connecting to work, which would be a commercial use, which requires the commercial service, which is several times more per month.
They are, technically, on mine - I can see why, they don't want me using my "home use" connection commercially. But, they obviously just dont watch the ports, since I regularly VPN into my office, other sites, to and from home, and have used about everything under the sun - PPTP, P2TP, IPSec (cisco, et al), OpenVPN, and ip tunnels through ssh. They watch the amount of traffic, and probably don't give a crap about the 2kbit tunnel I set up so I can check my email from home.
Actually, I route most of my traffic through my home network when I'm at work. I should be way afoul of their rules. They should be crying bloody murder, and retroactively trying to make me pay for commercial services.
Luckily, in my case, they have stiff competition, and if they even slightly annoyed me I'd drop them. The only reason I keep them, really, is because I'm inherently lazy and they've given me no reason to crawl under my desk to unplug the cablemodem. Hard to do when the government subsidizes and sets up a monopoly for you. My brother has no choice.
I know Tivo pisses some people off, while at the same time they are sort of a poster child for "what linux can do".
I mean, they follow the letter of the GPL - I can get the source - but since the kernel must be cryptographically signed to execute on the device, this source is useless.
But the GPL never said anything about me being able to hack my device. Tivo is just like any other corporation in that respect, they don't want me adding functionality, they want me to pay for it.
They've taken from the community, made a good deal of money, and really have given nothing back, and really don't have to.
The GPL, and OSS in general, really isn't about giving back. It's about taking advantage of the altruism of others. I don't mean that in a negative way either. When I set up linux on old hardware as a router, I was doing the same thing. I've never released the firewall scripts I tweaked up, or even told anybody upstream of a couple of bugs I've fixed for myself. Tivo, and for that matter, IBM, HP or Novell all have the same rights that I do.
It's a really good time to be Nintendo, with the only "affordable" (everyone has a different definition of that word, I'm looking at it from a casual persons concept of "what I'd pay for a video game console") system out there. 360 is a little more tenable, but still sort of in the "hardcore" price range.
With no HDTV, there's no compelling reason at this point to own either PS3 or 360. Eventually they'll have some more (and some *subjective word* good) exclusive titles, but as it is, almost everything is available for regular Xbox or PS2. So far I've yet to be blown away by any next-gen games, and here I sit with a Wii, and a 360, and really no games out there asking me to buy them. I have twilight princess and dead rising, respectively.
It'll be a slower growth this time around. People aren't all that stupid, they know that despite all the techno-specs, they see the PS2/Xbox doing pretty much the same thing with pretty much the same controller. Developers don't necessarily want to jump onto 360/PS3, because the installed base of Xbox/PS2s is so large, there's much less room for profit.
Also, interviews with MSFT and Sony reps are boring. They don't make video games, they just sell hardware.
He's on Rogers cable, he get's threatening letters every month about him going over his bandwidth cap. I live in the US, have comcast, and have never gotten a complaint - and I'm the leech/pirate/dude-who-pegs-his-bandwidth-at-100%-f or-months, not him. He plays xbox live, uses skype, and grabs the occaisional mp3. His cap is something ridiculous, a few gigabytes. They also f with him, blocking ports seemingly at random. They sent him a threatening letter for connecting to me using OpenVPN (we found the easiest way to play SNES roms online was to bridge him onto my LAN). The bandwidth we used on that session was minimal, but just the connection to 1194 pissed them off, I changed ports for him.
I'd imagine if he ever downloads HDDVD movies, it'll have to be from rogers. He couldn't download them on XBox Video Marketplace, like I can right now, even if he wanted to. He'd hit the cap.
My point is, yes, more of them have access to broadband, but what good does it do if it's basically capped at-or-around dial-up per-month limits, and has other arbitrary restrictions on it?
I never said teachers or other staff couldn't have internet, just see no reason to provide it in public school. At least not at the elementary level.
And wikipedia is not an encyclopedia. You cannot site it, there is no fact checking done. Citing wikipedia is basically saying "some guy on the internet told me "
My anecdote before was based on fact, I was searching shakespeare one day looking to settle an argument about somehting in one of his plays. I discovered that he was a "big fag" and Hamlet chiefly concerns "fudgepackers doing each other in teh ass"
It bothers me because teachers are portraying it as some source of knowledge. Which it could be, but you have to realize that anything you read could very well be an outright lie by someone with an agenda, or just out for kicks.
Slashdot comments are about as useful as wikipedia, or asking the fat guy who paints miniatures all day at the game store (20sided die kind, not joystick kind)
IMHO, the only people who harp about this are the companies trying to get a govt subsidy.
You pretty much hit the nail on the head. I like my cablemodem, because I'm a geek, but up until just a couple years ago I was landlocked on a dial-up modem, for my entire life. I managed to make it through Uni with a comp sci degree, get a job programming, and all of that. My lack of broadband at home didn't hamper me one bit.
I still don't see what else I need it for. Dialup was and is a bit of a hassle, but I still have some sites to maintain via dialup. I'd prefer a vpn and a snappy connection and all, but I can still get the job done.
BTW, some of what these countries call broadband really amount to about a 5-10k downlink. Ie; 56kbits over coaxial cable = broadband. Encoded over POTS = dial-up. People call ISDN broadband, and it's only marginally more useful in the real world.
Only very recently have I even been able to justify having broadband to my wife - we've rented some HD movies online via XBox 360.
So without access to broadband, these people won't be able to buy movies on the internet and will have to use netflix or go to the store, and somehow this is going to topple our economy.
The US is big, very big, and sprawling. Don't be surprised that comcast hasn't opened up shop in every Pop. 200 town in the midwest, instead be amazed at the reach of our phone and power grid.
Many people simply don't see a need for broadband, dial-up does them just fine (or reading email at a friends/work/library)
Realistically, everybody in the contiguous states has 2-way satellite as a broadband option. So really, it's just a matter of a product people don't necessarily want yet.
Because these bad/orwellian ideas are usually complete fantasy from either the far right, or far left, and are usually idiotic on their face.
Seriously, do you think the US government is capable of the infrastructure needed to do such a thing? Why dust a crowd with RFID tags to ID who's there, why not take a fucking picture? Facial recognicion technology is pretty much mature. Casinos use it to flag "high rollers" as they walk in. The idea of "tagging" people like this is goofy, since the tags would easily transfer to every cat you pet, person you touch, etc, and basically generate an assload of false positives. It's a retarded idea at just about every level. If I found out the government was doing this, I'd be pissed more because of the waste of taxpayer dollars on some ridiculous goofy scheme, than the "privacy invasion" implications - though I don't see how someone who chooses to protest publically thinks he should retain any privacy.
Any particular bill banning "bad uses of technology" would be infinately long if we had to explicitly list every retarded conspiracy theory somebody comes up with.
What if these RFID tags become self aware? Should the newly sentient RFID tag being have the right to vote? Should it be illegal for an employer to discriminiate against a being made entirely of RFID tags?
What if some government agent makes a giant hammer of RFID tags glued together, then uses it to hit people indiscriminately? I think we should start focusing on this problem now.
And they're already there as a means of anti-counterfeiting.
Do you really think our government is capable of putting into place the infrastructure you'd need to "track cash"?
Every POS machine would need to have this "secert uber reader chip" installed, and have some means of connectivity to report movements.
And still, they might know someone spend a particular $20 at 7-11 for a pack of camels and a bag of chex mix, but how do they track that to a who? I guess they install the video cameras with the face-matching technology to line it up. Which woul dmake me wonder, what useful information does the cash hold, that the video camera system wouldn't?
It's just so absolutely ludicrious on the face of it. If our government was capable of even launching such a program, then we'd have much, much scarier things to worry about.
I really don't see how "tracking cash" could be any scarier, or more useful to anybody, than playing the "wheres george" game online with singles.
Nothing ties you to a note of currency, unlike cheques and credit cards.
The rules may be draconian, but it seems fair enough. Plenty of libraries and schools aren't federally funded, and the people who fund those can make their own decisions.
I'd like to see them shut the internet right off in public schools, except for maybe "internet class". It's just a giant source of bullshit. Another crutch that teachers can use instead of teaching - send the kids online to "research".
Tangent: Wikipedia has no place in a school. It's only good at illustrating how the stupidest in society can always trump the masses.
When kids graduate they can find out how easily Sonic the Hedgehog could beat up a Pokemon, or how "faggy" shakespeare was.
Slashdot Mirror
I've never played one. Are they any good? Judging by the summary, and the fanbase, I'd say no, they are not.
Now every kid can be molested through MySpace.
What age are these targetted at? I honestly feel that, at least here in the US, computers are already too prevelant at the elementary level. Teaching kids computer skills is a noble goal, but IMO, not one they're ready for until, say, grade 9-ish.
What ends up happening is they teach the kid to use a crutch. Instead of practicing arithmetic, they let kids in grade 3 (!) just use calculators. My kids only know the times tables because I *made* them learn it. Flashcards and practice, just like I did (I had a hard time with it too). They already forgive me for it. My son is seen as a "math prodigy", to use his teachers words - and quite frankly (not to denigrate him), his abilities are what I would consider average for his age. He isn't like moved on to precalculus on his own, or anything like that. He can add, subtract, multiply and divide simple numbers in his head. This makes him a prodigy in the modern US education system. ouch.
Repeat for spelling. The school could give a shit. Here's how spelling is taught - "OK KIDS, CLICK SPELL CHECK". They're, there, their, who cares.
Eventually, yes, computer skills become important, fundamental even. I just worry how they're to be used in class, that's all. I sure hope they aren't going to be expected to replace teachers, and I hope budget-strapped schools favor good staff over 100 dollar laptops.
"One Laptop Per Child" just sounds so much like "No Child Left Behind" the mere association makes me raise an eyebrow.
In the long run, though, it could be good for the US, if we can make the rest of the worlds children as stupid and ill-prepared as our own. The question is, how to instill that false sense of entitlement in kids around the world.
I know we all, on the face, think this suit was ludicrous..
But, the Boy Scouts have been sued for allowing pedophiles as leaders, with no background checks, and the Church has come under a lot of fire for that.
Of course, both those (real world) organizations put these people in direct contact with children, whereas myspace is just a place for emos to "publish" their shitty poetry.
I do the same thing. I watch my kid's actions on WoW (though I just dont enjoy playing), I know who he plays with online - mostly his clique from school. I monitor my daughters myspace page constantly, and (I hope) have adequately drilled into both kids heads the mantra of "NEVER GIVE ANY PERSONAL INFORMATION". They both know to make something up every time.
The internet is full of assholes and sickos, because the world is full of assholes and sickos. I know this, so do people with common sense. So do this girls parents, but it's the lawyers and the american dream of the big paycheck from the courts that keep this sort of junk in the courts.
One episode of that show bothered me a lot, usually I actually "enjoy" it, in the sense that I see predators get what they deserve. Sick dudes showing up naked, expecting to meet an 8 year old boy, etc.
One episode, however, had them posing as a 15 year old girl. Just under the legal age of 16 - I remember them distinctly saying that, in the chat, something like "i'll be 16 in a month". They engaged in lots of explicit chat, and "come on over and visit me" type stuff with an 18 year old guy, some kid who'd just joined the army.
They grilled the guy forever, and portrayed him as some kind of sick monster, but I sat there watching this going "hey, the guy talked to someone only 3 years younger, every bit his peer, who actually enticed him over". At 18, I might have done the same thing. In fact, at 18, I did do the same thing (hit on 15/16 year olds). I hope that kid got a good lawyer, and I hope that lawyer successfully argued entrapment.
In reality, he was probably never even charged - lost aren't, the "evidence" they gather is usually pretty shakey heresay type stuff.
It just took the whole question of "child predators" out of the world of black and white, and slapped a nice thick coat of grey paint on it. Ever since then, I view that show (and programs like it) as witch hunts.
Actually, I had a thought.
I should file a 30 million dollar suit against slashdot, because someone put up a link that said it was an article about the SCO/IBM lawsuit, but was really a picture of a mans grotesquely distended asshole.
Same thing, really.
I TRUSTED YOU SLASHDOT how could you let this happen.
I would also have accepted Newton from the old Hercules cartoons.
I am proud that I have never read Charlotte's Web. I moved midway through third grade - just before the class I was in started reading it, and just after my new class had finished.
We did, however, read the Jacob Two-Two books, so I'm going to read your comment as "Who Submitted This? Jacob Two-Two?"
This is like suing blockbuster because my membership card says "Gulliver" (which isn't my name - but they didn't check!), and somebody were to accept my (written in ink) blockbuster card as some form of ID. Say the bank were to loan a hundered thousand dollars to "Gulliver McMadeUpName", and then sue Blockbuster when I defaulted.
This was a ridiculous and frivolous suit. MySpace has no obligation to verify the truth of any information any random person posts. They aren't bondsmen.
The ramifications if this were taken seriously would be huge. Every web forum, including slashdot, would have to perform thorough background checks with 3 forms of government ID, before accepting members.
Why should they?
I use the local park in my community, but have never once volunteered to go clean it up, or help rake the sandboxes, or whatever.
I don't feel guilty, it's there for my use, free of charge.
Companies aren't going to contribute to any OSS project out of a feeling of guilt or obligation. Companies that allocate resources like that don't stay in business.
The fact is, Asterix is free, and you shouldn't expect anyone using it to contribute anything.
Tell me how I can hack my Tivo to do neat things?
Tivo didn't give any implied blessing, Tivo locked down the Series 2 cryptographically to prevent me from copying off the shows I recorded, and making the only conduit the slow and broken TivoToGo. 2 hours to copy a half hour show, I'm glad they take the time to encrypt it on the fly for my protection.
Let me reiterate: Tivo saw hackers doing neat things, based largely on the openness of linux, and locked the system down to prevent it.
The only "hack" I can pull off is 'put in a bigger harddrive with exact same system partition', and that explicitly voids my license. I don't know if they've ever done so, but they could as easily blacklist me off the service for doing this, as MSFT could boot me from XBox live for having a mod chip.
Actually, I heard that the above hack no longer works on Series 3, which include the partition tables in the cryptographic jibber jabber somehow.
I like Tivo as a product, but as a company, they behave as a company, and the fact that they use linux is irrelevant.
Actually, linux is probably the reason it takes 5 minutes for a tivo to reboot.
Mods available? I made no mods to the kernel, or shorewall, or anything else.
No, the few shell scripts I set up to do various things, I wrote myself. I'll choose whatever license I want.
The end result to the consumer, is the same as if it was all proprietary. But I get to save a bunch of $$ not licensing some other OS, or set of technologies (arguable, dev cost vs licensing costs).
And I'd be doing nothing different than about every other wireless router on the shelves at best buy. I bought a cheap Belkin Pre-N router, which I know runs linux, but they give me no way to modify it.
Rogers specifically wrote to tell him that connecting to port 1194 is forbidden?
To be honest, I really have no idea how much he downloads, he could be leeching terabytes of gay porn he's ashamed to tell me about. He told me the cap was something like 10 gigabytes. He's pretty rural, so maybe it's a "in the boonies" thing, maybe Metro TO folks have no issues.
Yes, VPN's are specifically outlawed in his Fair Use Policy, in or out. They thought he could be connecting to work, which would be a commercial use, which requires the commercial service, which is several times more per month.
They are, technically, on mine - I can see why, they don't want me using my "home use" connection commercially. But, they obviously just dont watch the ports, since I regularly VPN into my office, other sites, to and from home, and have used about everything under the sun - PPTP, P2TP, IPSec (cisco, et al), OpenVPN, and ip tunnels through ssh. They watch the amount of traffic, and probably don't give a crap about the 2kbit tunnel I set up so I can check my email from home.
Actually, I route most of my traffic through my home network when I'm at work. I should be way afoul of their rules. They should be crying bloody murder, and retroactively trying to make me pay for commercial services.
Luckily, in my case, they have stiff competition, and if they even slightly annoyed me I'd drop them. The only reason I keep them, really, is because I'm inherently lazy and they've given me no reason to crawl under my desk to unplug the cablemodem. Hard to do when the government subsidizes and sets up a monopoly for you. My brother has no choice.
I know Tivo pisses some people off, while at the same time they are sort of a poster child for "what linux can do".
I mean, they follow the letter of the GPL - I can get the source - but since the kernel must be cryptographically signed to execute on the device, this source is useless.
But the GPL never said anything about me being able to hack my device. Tivo is just like any other corporation in that respect, they don't want me adding functionality, they want me to pay for it.
They've taken from the community, made a good deal of money, and really have given nothing back, and really don't have to.
The GPL, and OSS in general, really isn't about giving back. It's about taking advantage of the altruism of others. I don't mean that in a negative way either. When I set up linux on old hardware as a router, I was doing the same thing. I've never released the firewall scripts I tweaked up, or even told anybody upstream of a couple of bugs I've fixed for myself. Tivo, and for that matter, IBM, HP or Novell all have the same rights that I do.
It's a really good time to be Nintendo, with the only "affordable" (everyone has a different definition of that word, I'm looking at it from a casual persons concept of "what I'd pay for a video game console") system out there. 360 is a little more tenable, but still sort of in the "hardcore" price range.
With no HDTV, there's no compelling reason at this point to own either PS3 or 360. Eventually they'll have some more (and some *subjective word* good) exclusive titles, but as it is, almost everything is available for regular Xbox or PS2. So far I've yet to be blown away by any next-gen games, and here I sit with a Wii, and a 360, and really no games out there asking me to buy them. I have twilight princess and dead rising, respectively.
It'll be a slower growth this time around. People aren't all that stupid, they know that despite all the techno-specs, they see the PS2/Xbox doing pretty much the same thing with pretty much the same controller. Developers don't necessarily want to jump onto 360/PS3, because the installed base of Xbox/PS2s is so large, there's much less room for profit.
Also, interviews with MSFT and Sony reps are boring. They don't make video games, they just sell hardware.
Exact same thing they can do to American citizens. They could take you to court.
This "US lobby group" shit is slashdot spin to whip you into an anti-US frenzy. Arrr how dare bush interfere!
The BSA is an international group, and the BSA certainly had a presence in Canada when I lived there.
It's not a fee, it's a tax. It is to compensate those industries hurt by piracy, not to give you a license to pirate.
Your logic goes as follows:
"tax money goes to womens relief shelters, I pay taxes, therefore I have the right to beat and rape women."
That guy lives Dangerously.
He's on Rogers cable, he get's threatening letters every month about him going over his bandwidth cap. I live in the US, have comcast, and have never gotten a complaint - and I'm the leech/pirate/dude-who-pegs-his-bandwidth-at-100%-f or-months, not him. He plays xbox live, uses skype, and grabs the occaisional mp3. His cap is something ridiculous, a few gigabytes. They also f with him, blocking ports seemingly at random. They sent him a threatening letter for connecting to me using OpenVPN (we found the easiest way to play SNES roms online was to bridge him onto my LAN). The bandwidth we used on that session was minimal, but just the connection to 1194 pissed them off, I changed ports for him.
I'd imagine if he ever downloads HDDVD movies, it'll have to be from rogers. He couldn't download them on XBox Video Marketplace, like I can right now, even if he wanted to. He'd hit the cap.
My point is, yes, more of them have access to broadband, but what good does it do if it's basically capped at-or-around dial-up per-month limits, and has other arbitrary restrictions on it?
I never said teachers or other staff couldn't have internet, just see no reason to provide it in public school. At least not at the elementary level.
And wikipedia is not an encyclopedia. You cannot site it, there is no fact checking done. Citing wikipedia is basically saying "some guy on the internet told me "
My anecdote before was based on fact, I was searching shakespeare one day looking to settle an argument about somehting in one of his plays. I discovered that he was a "big fag" and Hamlet chiefly concerns "fudgepackers doing each other in teh ass"
It bothers me because teachers are portraying it as some source of knowledge. Which it could be, but you have to realize that anything you read could very well be an outright lie by someone with an agenda, or just out for kicks.
Slashdot comments are about as useful as wikipedia, or asking the fat guy who paints miniatures all day at the game store (20sided die kind, not joystick kind)
IMHO, the only people who harp about this are the companies trying to get a govt subsidy.
You pretty much hit the nail on the head. I like my cablemodem, because I'm a geek, but up until just a couple years ago I was landlocked on a dial-up modem, for my entire life. I managed to make it through Uni with a comp sci degree, get a job programming, and all of that. My lack of broadband at home didn't hamper me one bit.
I still don't see what else I need it for. Dialup was and is a bit of a hassle, but I still have some sites to maintain via dialup. I'd prefer a vpn and a snappy connection and all, but I can still get the job done.
BTW, some of what these countries call broadband really amount to about a 5-10k downlink. Ie; 56kbits over coaxial cable = broadband. Encoded over POTS = dial-up. People call ISDN broadband, and it's only marginally more useful in the real world.
Only very recently have I even been able to justify having broadband to my wife - we've rented some HD movies online via XBox 360.
So without access to broadband, these people won't be able to buy movies on the internet and will have to use netflix or go to the store, and somehow this is going to topple our economy.
Get out a population map of the US.
The US is big, very big, and sprawling. Don't be surprised that comcast hasn't opened up shop in every Pop. 200 town in the midwest, instead be amazed at the reach of our phone and power grid.
Many people simply don't see a need for broadband, dial-up does them just fine (or reading email at a friends/work/library)
Realistically, everybody in the contiguous states has 2-way satellite as a broadband option. So really, it's just a matter of a product people don't necessarily want yet.
Because these bad/orwellian ideas are usually complete fantasy from either the far right, or far left, and are usually idiotic on their face.
Seriously, do you think the US government is capable of the infrastructure needed to do such a thing? Why dust a crowd with RFID tags to ID who's there, why not take a fucking picture? Facial recognicion technology is pretty much mature. Casinos use it to flag "high rollers" as they walk in. The idea of "tagging" people like this is goofy, since the tags would easily transfer to every cat you pet, person you touch, etc, and basically generate an assload of false positives. It's a retarded idea at just about every level. If I found out the government was doing this, I'd be pissed more because of the waste of taxpayer dollars on some ridiculous goofy scheme, than the "privacy invasion" implications - though I don't see how someone who chooses to protest publically thinks he should retain any privacy.
Any particular bill banning "bad uses of technology" would be infinately long if we had to explicitly list every retarded conspiracy theory somebody comes up with.
What if these RFID tags become self aware? Should the newly sentient RFID tag being have the right to vote? Should it be illegal for an employer to discriminiate against a being made entirely of RFID tags?
What if some government agent makes a giant hammer of RFID tags glued together, then uses it to hit people indiscriminately? I think we should start focusing on this problem now.
And they're already there as a means of anti-counterfeiting.
Do you really think our government is capable of putting into place the infrastructure you'd need to "track cash"?
Every POS machine would need to have this "secert uber reader chip" installed, and have some means of connectivity to report movements.
And still, they might know someone spend a particular $20 at 7-11 for a pack of camels and a bag of chex mix, but how do they track that to a who? I guess they install the video cameras with the face-matching technology to line it up. Which woul dmake me wonder, what useful information does the cash hold, that the video camera system wouldn't?
It's just so absolutely ludicrious on the face of it. If our government was capable of even launching such a program, then we'd have much, much scarier things to worry about.
I really don't see how "tracking cash" could be any scarier, or more useful to anybody, than playing the "wheres george" game online with singles.
Nothing ties you to a note of currency, unlike cheques and credit cards.
The rules may be draconian, but it seems fair enough. Plenty of libraries and schools aren't federally funded, and the people who fund those can make their own decisions.
I'd like to see them shut the internet right off in public schools, except for maybe "internet class". It's just a giant source of bullshit. Another crutch that teachers can use instead of teaching - send the kids online to "research".
Tangent: Wikipedia has no place in a school. It's only good at illustrating how the stupidest in society can always trump the masses.
When kids graduate they can find out how easily Sonic the Hedgehog could beat up a Pokemon, or how "faggy" shakespeare was.