I fully addressed all your initial points, if you'd bother to read what I actually wrote. I never said the problem is purely technical. What I said is that part of the problem is poor usability -- even when users are given a choice over whether some operation should occur, users are not forcibly informed well enough by current OSes to make informed choices. That's a usability problem.
People shouldn't have to read a manual or spend half their lives keeping up with geek sites and security bulletings just to use their computer. If they absolutely MUST understand something in order to proceed, then the burden is ENTIRELY on the software to educate them properly. "User education" as a goal anywhere but in the UI of the software itself (and I'm not talking about "help topics" or "README" files, either) is wasted effort, because people won't read it (nor should software designers expect them to have to).
I think you've missed the point. Any 'foolproof design' has been a pipe-dream since humans have been creating... anything. An OS wth a foolproof design has been a pipe dream since computers were invented.
So instead of actually working toward that goal and getting as close as possible, you would rather that everyone just gave up and just keep things as screwed up as they are now?
I swear, some people are so negative I don't even know why they bother getting out of bed in the morning. I mean, you're going to eventually die anyway, so why bother?
You're not disagreeing with anything I actually said. I never said that OS X was a perfect example of how to make an OS.
I totally agree with you that the other half of the problem is that the OS needs to clearly inform and educate the user about the choice they are being presented with. Read my replies in the other branches off my original post for more info.
"Foolproof design", and "solid usability" don't go hand in hand. The more you try to prevent users from being able to do things that might infect themselves, the more you prevent them from being able to DO THINGS!
You're completely wrong. Security (of the user's own system, where the user IS their own sysadmin) doesn't mean blocking users from being able to do certain things. Security means always presenting users with an opportunity to confirm/decline a potentially dangerous operation, combined with explaining that choice to them clearly in layman's terms so they can be informed enough to make the right choice.
And when I say "choice", asking for admin credentials in order to carry out an operation is still just a form of confirmation. It simply has some authentication built in as well, so that from an organizational perspective, the "you don't have enough information to make the right choice" policy can be enforced by a separate sysadmin.
Stupid users only do dumb things because they lack information and understanding. If the OS did a truly good job of FORCING them to stop and read something before confirming it, and it did a truly good job of explaining, in layman's terms, WHAT they were being asked to decide and what the consequences of each choice were, then you would never have to BLOCK the user from doing anything. All you would ever need to do is stop and ask them to make a choice.
We have so many warnings and safety bubbles around us nowadays we're losing the ability to protect ourselves from our surroundings. We're creating a society of clueless, helpless retards.
We start our computers and watch as fifteen protection mechanisms automatically fire up and scan for anything malicious. Our ISPs filter our traffic to protect us from that which we cannot protect ourselves; heaven forbid a message should get through with an attachment and some retard on the other end of the ethernet clicks on the damned thing.
You've totally missed the point.
An OS with a foolproof design would be absolutely impossible to surreptitiously infect with malware/viruses/spyware. Things like that only get secretly installed because Windows is not architected in a bullet-proof way that requires interactive user confirmation before changing system-critical stuff. I'm running some post-beta2 dailies of Vista (I'm a MSFT employee), and one of the most obvious and significant changes is that they've rearchitected the system in exactly the way I've just described.
But a bullet-proof OS that always seeks user confirmation before letting programs do system-critical stuff is only half the solution. An OS with good usability is also needed, so that users are able to clearly decipher, in layman's terms, what it is the OS is asking them to confirm, and so that it's not easy for confirmations to be easily approved (out of habit) without forcing the user to carefully read them first. Not even OS X or various UNIXes do this right.
On a more serious note -- yes, there are real patches for user stupidity. They are called "foolproof design" and "solid usability". Too bad that only Apple gets it at all... and even they still only partially get it (for instance, the iTunes UI is atrocious).
Well, a lot of people falsely assume that if you like or work for Microsoft, then you must be against freedom or ethical corporate behavior. I assume your response is rooted in that false assumption.
Yes, I'm a Microsoft employee. No, that doesn't mean I think Microsoft does everything right, and no, that doesn't mean I've compromised my ethics.
Microsoft is a huge company with a lot of people and its hands in a variety of areas, and so of course sometimes one individual or one small group will make a bad choice or enact a bad policy. When that happens, it looks from the outside like all of "Microsoft" (the entire company) is to blame, but that's just not fair. Most of the people who work here, and the general company policies, are ethical and very concerned with pleasing end-users, but of course that's not what makes sensationalist headlines. People on the outside tend not to realize that "Microsoft" is more like a loose collection of independent product/technology/business teams than a monolithic company. The culture on one team can be very different from the culture on another team. Just because someone over on team X does something questionable, that doesn't mean everyone on team X agrees with the decision or was even aware of it, and it certainly doesn't mean that people over on team Y had anything to do with it.
If, as part of my job, I was ever asked to do something I fundamentally disagreed with on ethical grounds, I would fight it through every avenue at my disposal, not just to not be party to unethical behavior, but to try to stick up for customers and end-users. If all avenues were exhausted (all the way up the path of management escalation to SteveB or BillG, if necessary) and they were going ahead with their bad decision anyway, I'd just pick up and go work on a different team. I'm a very principled person who believes in not doing bad things, and Microsoft generally encourages its employees to be critical thinkers and raise their concerns appropriately.
As for working here rather than working for some FOSS project, that doesn't mean I'm against FOSS either. FOSS and commercial software are both free to coexist, and it's up to users to choose what they want to use. I think FOSS has one set of pros/cons, and commercial software has another set of pros/cons. Neither is good, and neither is evil, they're just different with different motivations behind them, and it's up to market forces to decide what gets used most.
Microsoft is a good company to work for. And I'm not talking about pay, benefits, or other rewards, although those are solid. It's a great place to work because of the people. Most people here are smart, friendly, ethical people who are all enthusiastic about creating the best stuff they can for the benefit of customers and users. Plus, Microsoft donates to the EFF on my behalf, which in my opinion is a very ethical cause to support, so simply by working here I'm helping to combat technology-related badness.
That's all fine and dandy, but what about when lack of speed itself is the problem? That's the questioner's entire point.
There comes a point when being too cautious and slow means that nothing constructive can ever get done at the pace it needs to get done. A well-run company is one that strikes the right balance.
This is pure genius because it utilizes such a simple, basic concept: accountability.
Every group or individual has an ethical responsibility to do no harm to others. If someone asks you to do something harmful to someone, and you choose to carry out their request, you are responsible, period.
Bravo to the EFF for this creative, yet totally legitimate, approach.
As a Microsoft employee, I already donate to the EFF year-round through the company's charitable giving campaign (and the part that really tickles me is that Microsoft matches whatever amount an employee contributes to any organization, so I'm getting Microsoft to help fund the EFF), but I may very well increase my donation amount during the next cycle. The EFF keeps fighting for the right positions when no one else is there to stand up and fight for them.
Mod parent up. This is obvious stuff. Analytical people and nonanalytical people have trouble connecting because they don't approach the world the same way.
Analytical people don't do anything without first having a well-founded reason for it, one which they have arrived at through logical lines of thinking and careful analysis of facts. Analytical people always have a reason for everything they do, and it's always a good reason. Furthermore, they always look for the reason for everything and try to make sense of everything around them, and they assume everyone must be using the same analytical approach. When confronted with a nonanalytical person or a senseless situation, analytical people are completely incapable of understanding because they try to look for the reason for things when there is simply no reason to be found.
Nonanalytical people never have a logical reason for anything they do. They do whatever they feel, and they never stop to think why they are doing something or to weigh the possible outcomes. Furthermore, they consider anyone who insists that there be a reason for everything to be "uptight" or "unfeeling", and they assume that anyone like that must have something wrong with them. They incorrectly assume that everyone else must have the same feelings they do, and they also incorrectly assume that other people make decisions based on feelings. When confronted with an analytical person or a situation requiring logical thought, nonanalytical people are completely incapable of understanding because they try to look for the feelings in things, when feelings are irrelevant.
Didn't all of these "rhythm games" really begin with the arcade game "Dragon's Lair"? Unlike all other video games before it, the gameplay was all about pushing the correct direction at precisely the right moment and stringing together and memorizing sequences. It was radically different from the "real time" movement of all other video games. It might not have been about "dancing", but it's a classic "rhythm game" in my opinion.
Trying to encourage mostly-grown women to go into technology fields is pointless because they've already got at least two decades of accumulated discouragement built up. You have to start at birth to have any real effect.
Young girls are constantly subjected in our society to advertisements, television shows, movies, video games, peer pressure, and stereotypes that all give them the idea that socializing, procreating, and "having fun" are the only things they should concern themselves with. That's why most females are only interested in things that support those goals (examples: fashion, trying to be popular, partying, dreaming of a perfect white wedding, wanting to have kids, etc). Note that nowhere in any of these goals are "learning" or "self-accomplishment".
If you want to raise a female geek, you have to actively combat all those influences and also actively teach the girl that other goals are actually more important in life. If you plant the seeds so that the main goals a girl cares about in life are learning and self-accomplishment, then everything else will fall into place.
But if we make kids work on dull stuff, it might be wise to tell them that tediousness is not the defining quality of work, and indeed that the reason they have to work on dull stuff now is so they can work on more interesting stuff later.
The author is simply describing the concept of "delayed gratification", but he fails to realize that this is the root of the problem.
Society keeps moving further away from the principle of delayed gratification. Everyone expects to get exactly what they want, right now, without having to wait and without having to work for it. And people have gotten this way because they've never been forced (by parents or by society) to endure hardship before receiving rewards.
This is why the national debt/savings picture keeps getting worse. It's why the national education level keeps declining. It's why we're in a downward spiral of oil consumption leading to societal collapse. It's why obesity is an epidemic while diet fads are a booming industry. It all boils down to the fact that no one wants to do the unpleasant things required to achieve the desired payoff.
Around all of this, a form of NIMBY-ism ("not in my backyard") is developing. Why work hard to achieve something when you can sit back and let somebody else do the hard work for you? Why study science in college and help society make scientific progress when you can instead drop out of school and play XBOX while somebody else cures cancer? Why get active in politics and fight against injustice when somebody else will deal with that and set things right so you can enjoy your civil liberties?
Failing to instill a good mastery of delayed gratification in people leads to all kinds of problems, including a shirking of personal responsibility and good citizenship.
Why is it that we can have organizations like the RIAA to protect industry interests, yet there is no one to protect the interests of consumers?
Because consumers aren't the ones who have all the money.
Well, that's not entirely true. After all, corporations only get rich because consumers buy their shit. As a group, consumers actually have all the money.
The problem is that consumers are a bottom-up bunch, so trying to convince them all to support a single agenda and allocate money toward it is nearly impossible. Even if you can get a bunch of consumers to agree on the same agenda, you can't easily and effeciently pool all their funds together toward pushing that agenda. Consumers are armed with frustration, consumer rights groups (such as the EFF) are starved for funding, and even if someone at the top sets an agenda, they don't have the resources to make it happen.
Corporations, on the other hand, are a top-down bunch, so a single CEO (or small group, aka the board) sets an agenda, and they can immediately throw the tons of money they've previously collected toward making it happen. They are armed with money, they make a decision, they make it happen.
You can bet that if consumers adequately funded an organization like the EFF, such that the EFF was financially armed better than the RIAA or MPAA, you'd start seeing things change in real ways. But you can also bet that will never happen as long as corporations offer mass-desirable tangible goods for sale while consumer-rights groups only offer intangible services or mass-undesirable tangibles such as T-shirts with their logos on them.
Apple didn't switch to Intel to improve performance.
They switched to Intel to get: (1) the ability to natively run the dominant platform (MS-Windows) on the same machine, thus making Macs an easier sell to PC users, and (2) a better low-power/low-heat mobile CPU and chipset for their laptops.
Even if performance gets slightly worse as a result of the switch to Intel architecture, the benefits of these other two points far outweigh that.
I don't get why everyone keeps wanting one console or another to dominate the marketplace. Fanboyism aside, is there any good reason why the market shouldn't be pretty evenly split among 3 or 4 consoles from 3 or 4 solid companies? Why does coming in second or third have to equate to failure? Why do gamers feel they have to buy the dominant thing just because it's dominant?
I for one love my GameCube. I never got into XBOX because of the type of games that were mainly available for it, and I never got as much into PS2 because you had to hunt harder to weed out the good games from the crap and the games and system both cost more. I don't care that the GameCube is reaching its end-of-life phase, nor do I care that it isn't the dominant console or is frequently ridiculed by "hardcore" gamers as being "for kids". It's fun, it's simple, the games don't require a 4-hour time investment just to learn how to play them, it always works, and the price is right. Why should anything else matter?
Your attitude makes sense only if you actually do a good job of helping your students to understand and learn the material in the first place.
A large number of my engineering college courses at Rice University (a very reputable engineering school) were taught by TAs or professors with indecipherably thick foreign accents (I recall one teaching "wektor calkoolus"), no apparent knowledge of the material (they just mindlessly rehashed the textbook or professor's written notes and were incapable of answering any question), and no desire to help students (they would give off bad/unapproachable/annoyed attitudes if you asked them for help or to explain something more slowly, or they would make a point of never being available to talk to students during their supposed office hours). Most of the time the courses didn't even vaguely follow the organization or material provided in the listed course textbook, so reading -- no, owning -- the textbook was completely unhelpful toward learning the material that was to be tested later.
As a student, when you're up against that kind of total bullshit, it's almost impossible to learn and understand the material. You do your best to try, you form study groups with your other equally-lost classmates and try to decipher things as best you can and come to some kind of consensus as to what in the hell the teacher was trying to teach, and that's all you can do. When exams come, of course you don't thoroughly understand the material. You're lucky if you can understand some random bits of it here and there, so you use up all your allotted exam time working through the bits you know something about, then panicking when you realize that's only about 30% of the exam, then trying for another two hours to come up with creatively plausible-sounding BS to write in for the other questions.
Now, ask yourself again... why would students cheat? Gee, I wonder. It's not because they are incapable of learning. It's because the college environment is incapable of teaching. It probably also doesn't help matters that failing a course can result in you needing to take another semester of school, where a semester of school costs more than an SUV.
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I fully addressed all your initial points, if you'd bother to read what I actually wrote. I never said the problem is purely technical. What I said is that part of the problem is poor usability -- even when users are given a choice over whether some operation should occur, users are not forcibly informed well enough by current OSes to make informed choices. That's a usability problem.
People shouldn't have to read a manual or spend half their lives keeping up with geek sites and security bulletings just to use their computer. If they absolutely MUST understand something in order to proceed, then the burden is ENTIRELY on the software to educate them properly. "User education" as a goal anywhere but in the UI of the software itself (and I'm not talking about "help topics" or "README" files, either) is wasted effort, because people won't read it (nor should software designers expect them to have to).
I think you've missed the point. Any 'foolproof design' has been a pipe-dream since humans have been creating ... anything. An OS wth a foolproof design has been a pipe dream since computers were invented.
So instead of actually working toward that goal and getting as close as possible, you would rather that everyone just gave up and just keep things as screwed up as they are now?
I swear, some people are so negative I don't even know why they bother getting out of bed in the morning. I mean, you're going to eventually die anyway, so why bother?
You're not disagreeing with anything I actually said. I never said that OS X was a perfect example of how to make an OS.
I totally agree with you that the other half of the problem is that the OS needs to clearly inform and educate the user about the choice they are being presented with. Read my replies in the other branches off my original post for more info.
"Foolproof design", and "solid usability" don't go hand in hand. The more you try to prevent users from being able to do things that might infect themselves, the more you prevent them from being able to DO THINGS!
You're completely wrong. Security (of the user's own system, where the user IS their own sysadmin) doesn't mean blocking users from being able to do certain things. Security means always presenting users with an opportunity to confirm/decline a potentially dangerous operation, combined with explaining that choice to them clearly in layman's terms so they can be informed enough to make the right choice.
And when I say "choice", asking for admin credentials in order to carry out an operation is still just a form of confirmation. It simply has some authentication built in as well, so that from an organizational perspective, the "you don't have enough information to make the right choice" policy can be enforced by a separate sysadmin.
Stupid users only do dumb things because they lack information and understanding. If the OS did a truly good job of FORCING them to stop and read something before confirming it, and it did a truly good job of explaining, in layman's terms, WHAT they were being asked to decide and what the consequences of each choice were, then you would never have to BLOCK the user from doing anything. All you would ever need to do is stop and ask them to make a choice.
We have so many warnings and safety bubbles around us nowadays we're losing the ability to protect ourselves from our surroundings. We're creating a society of clueless, helpless retards.
We start our computers and watch as fifteen protection mechanisms automatically fire up and scan for anything malicious. Our ISPs filter our traffic to protect us from that which we cannot protect ourselves; heaven forbid a message should get through with an attachment and some retard on the other end of the ethernet clicks on the damned thing.
You've totally missed the point.
An OS with a foolproof design would be absolutely impossible to surreptitiously infect with malware/viruses/spyware. Things like that only get secretly installed because Windows is not architected in a bullet-proof way that requires interactive user confirmation before changing system-critical stuff. I'm running some post-beta2 dailies of Vista (I'm a MSFT employee), and one of the most obvious and significant changes is that they've rearchitected the system in exactly the way I've just described.
But a bullet-proof OS that always seeks user confirmation before letting programs do system-critical stuff is only half the solution. An OS with good usability is also needed, so that users are able to clearly decipher, in layman's terms, what it is the OS is asking them to confirm, and so that it's not easy for confirmations to be easily approved (out of habit) without forcing the user to carefully read them first. Not even OS X or various UNIXes do this right.
On a more serious note -- yes, there are real patches for user stupidity. They are called "foolproof design" and "solid usability". Too bad that only Apple gets it at all ... and even they still only partially get it (for instance, the iTunes UI is atrocious).
"Man sues greedy industry conglomerate that has never used a brain"
LMAO! This is the funniest damn thing I've read all week.
Well, a lot of people falsely assume that if you like or work for Microsoft, then you must be against freedom or ethical corporate behavior. I assume your response is rooted in that false assumption.
Yes, I'm a Microsoft employee. No, that doesn't mean I think Microsoft does everything right, and no, that doesn't mean I've compromised my ethics.
Microsoft is a huge company with a lot of people and its hands in a variety of areas, and so of course sometimes one individual or one small group will make a bad choice or enact a bad policy. When that happens, it looks from the outside like all of "Microsoft" (the entire company) is to blame, but that's just not fair. Most of the people who work here, and the general company policies, are ethical and very concerned with pleasing end-users, but of course that's not what makes sensationalist headlines. People on the outside tend not to realize that "Microsoft" is more like a loose collection of independent product/technology/business teams than a monolithic company. The culture on one team can be very different from the culture on another team. Just because someone over on team X does something questionable, that doesn't mean everyone on team X agrees with the decision or was even aware of it, and it certainly doesn't mean that people over on team Y had anything to do with it.
If, as part of my job, I was ever asked to do something I fundamentally disagreed with on ethical grounds, I would fight it through every avenue at my disposal, not just to not be party to unethical behavior, but to try to stick up for customers and end-users. If all avenues were exhausted (all the way up the path of management escalation to SteveB or BillG, if necessary) and they were going ahead with their bad decision anyway, I'd just pick up and go work on a different team. I'm a very principled person who believes in not doing bad things, and Microsoft generally encourages its employees to be critical thinkers and raise their concerns appropriately.
As for working here rather than working for some FOSS project, that doesn't mean I'm against FOSS either. FOSS and commercial software are both free to coexist, and it's up to users to choose what they want to use. I think FOSS has one set of pros/cons, and commercial software has another set of pros/cons. Neither is good, and neither is evil, they're just different with different motivations behind them, and it's up to market forces to decide what gets used most.
Microsoft is a good company to work for. And I'm not talking about pay, benefits, or other rewards, although those are solid. It's a great place to work because of the people. Most people here are smart, friendly, ethical people who are all enthusiastic about creating the best stuff they can for the benefit of customers and users. Plus, Microsoft donates to the EFF on my behalf, which in my opinion is a very ethical cause to support, so simply by working here I'm helping to combat technology-related badness.
That's all fine and dandy, but what about when lack of speed itself is the problem? That's the questioner's entire point.
There comes a point when being too cautious and slow means that nothing constructive can ever get done at the pace it needs to get done. A well-run company is one that strikes the right balance.
This is pure genius because it utilizes such a simple, basic concept: accountability.
Every group or individual has an ethical responsibility to do no harm to others. If someone asks you to do something harmful to someone, and you choose to carry out their request, you are responsible, period.
Bravo to the EFF for this creative, yet totally legitimate, approach.
As a Microsoft employee, I already donate to the EFF year-round through the company's charitable giving campaign (and the part that really tickles me is that Microsoft matches whatever amount an employee contributes to any organization, so I'm getting Microsoft to help fund the EFF), but I may very well increase my donation amount during the next cycle. The EFF keeps fighting for the right positions when no one else is there to stand up and fight for them.
Hah! That's nothing! Back in my days, we had storage closets the size of dump trucks.
Did you know that Moore's Law gets roughly twice as annoying every year?
Mod parent up. This is obvious stuff. Analytical people and nonanalytical people have trouble connecting because they don't approach the world the same way.
Analytical people don't do anything without first having a well-founded reason for it, one which they have arrived at through logical lines of thinking and careful analysis of facts. Analytical people always have a reason for everything they do, and it's always a good reason. Furthermore, they always look for the reason for everything and try to make sense of everything around them, and they assume everyone must be using the same analytical approach. When confronted with a nonanalytical person or a senseless situation, analytical people are completely incapable of understanding because they try to look for the reason for things when there is simply no reason to be found.
Nonanalytical people never have a logical reason for anything they do. They do whatever they feel, and they never stop to think why they are doing something or to weigh the possible outcomes. Furthermore, they consider anyone who insists that there be a reason for everything to be "uptight" or "unfeeling", and they assume that anyone like that must have something wrong with them. They incorrectly assume that everyone else must have the same feelings they do, and they also incorrectly assume that other people make decisions based on feelings. When confronted with an analytical person or a situation requiring logical thought, nonanalytical people are completely incapable of understanding because they try to look for the feelings in things, when feelings are irrelevant.
Didn't all of these "rhythm games" really begin with the arcade game "Dragon's Lair"? Unlike all other video games before it, the gameplay was all about pushing the correct direction at precisely the right moment and stringing together and memorizing sequences. It was radically different from the "real time" movement of all other video games. It might not have been about "dancing", but it's a classic "rhythm game" in my opinion.
Trying to encourage mostly-grown women to go into technology fields is pointless because they've already got at least two decades of accumulated discouragement built up. You have to start at birth to have any real effect.
Young girls are constantly subjected in our society to advertisements, television shows, movies, video games, peer pressure, and stereotypes that all give them the idea that socializing, procreating, and "having fun" are the only things they should concern themselves with. That's why most females are only interested in things that support those goals (examples: fashion, trying to be popular, partying, dreaming of a perfect white wedding, wanting to have kids, etc). Note that nowhere in any of these goals are "learning" or "self-accomplishment".
If you want to raise a female geek, you have to actively combat all those influences and also actively teach the girl that other goals are actually more important in life. If you plant the seeds so that the main goals a girl cares about in life are learning and self-accomplishment, then everything else will fall into place.
But if we make kids work on dull stuff, it might be wise to tell them that tediousness is not the defining quality of work, and indeed that the reason they have to work on dull stuff now is so they can work on more interesting stuff later.
The author is simply describing the concept of "delayed gratification", but he fails to realize that this is the root of the problem.
Society keeps moving further away from the principle of delayed gratification. Everyone expects to get exactly what they want, right now, without having to wait and without having to work for it. And people have gotten this way because they've never been forced (by parents or by society) to endure hardship before receiving rewards.
This is why the national debt/savings picture keeps getting worse. It's why the national education level keeps declining. It's why we're in a downward spiral of oil consumption leading to societal collapse. It's why obesity is an epidemic while diet fads are a booming industry. It all boils down to the fact that no one wants to do the unpleasant things required to achieve the desired payoff.
Around all of this, a form of NIMBY-ism ("not in my backyard") is developing. Why work hard to achieve something when you can sit back and let somebody else do the hard work for you? Why study science in college and help society make scientific progress when you can instead drop out of school and play XBOX while somebody else cures cancer? Why get active in politics and fight against injustice when somebody else will deal with that and set things right so you can enjoy your civil liberties?
Failing to instill a good mastery of delayed gratification in people leads to all kinds of problems, including a shirking of personal responsibility and good citizenship.
The best part is the "+1: Insightful" moderation :-)
Next news item:
One-eyed Parents Found Wandering Aimlessly Outside New Jersey School
Kidnapper arrested with bag full of eyeballs
Why is it that we can have organizations like the RIAA to protect industry interests, yet there is no one to protect the interests of consumers?
Because consumers aren't the ones who have all the money.
Well, that's not entirely true. After all, corporations only get rich because consumers buy their shit. As a group, consumers actually have all the money.
The problem is that consumers are a bottom-up bunch, so trying to convince them all to support a single agenda and allocate money toward it is nearly impossible. Even if you can get a bunch of consumers to agree on the same agenda, you can't easily and effeciently pool all their funds together toward pushing that agenda. Consumers are armed with frustration, consumer rights groups (such as the EFF) are starved for funding, and even if someone at the top sets an agenda, they don't have the resources to make it happen.
Corporations, on the other hand, are a top-down bunch, so a single CEO (or small group, aka the board) sets an agenda, and they can immediately throw the tons of money they've previously collected toward making it happen. They are armed with money, they make a decision, they make it happen.
You can bet that if consumers adequately funded an organization like the EFF, such that the EFF was financially armed better than the RIAA or MPAA, you'd start seeing things change in real ways. But you can also bet that will never happen as long as corporations offer mass-desirable tangible goods for sale while consumer-rights groups only offer intangible services or mass-undesirable tangibles such as T-shirts with their logos on them.
Haven't you ever heard of line breaks?
Apple didn't switch to Intel to improve performance.
They switched to Intel to get: (1) the ability to natively run the dominant platform (MS-Windows) on the same machine, thus making Macs an easier sell to PC users, and (2) a better low-power/low-heat mobile CPU and chipset for their laptops.
Even if performance gets slightly worse as a result of the switch to Intel architecture, the benefits of these other two points far outweigh that.
I don't get why everyone keeps wanting one console or another to dominate the marketplace. Fanboyism aside, is there any good reason why the market shouldn't be pretty evenly split among 3 or 4 consoles from 3 or 4 solid companies? Why does coming in second or third have to equate to failure? Why do gamers feel they have to buy the dominant thing just because it's dominant?
I for one love my GameCube. I never got into XBOX because of the type of games that were mainly available for it, and I never got as much into PS2 because you had to hunt harder to weed out the good games from the crap and the games and system both cost more. I don't care that the GameCube is reaching its end-of-life phase, nor do I care that it isn't the dominant console or is frequently ridiculed by "hardcore" gamers as being "for kids". It's fun, it's simple, the games don't require a 4-hour time investment just to learn how to play them, it always works, and the price is right. Why should anything else matter?
Too bad they didn't build the Godzilla of Servers to go with it.
Your attitude makes sense only if you actually do a good job of helping your students to understand and learn the material in the first place.
A large number of my engineering college courses at Rice University (a very reputable engineering school) were taught by TAs or professors with indecipherably thick foreign accents (I recall one teaching "wektor calkoolus"), no apparent knowledge of the material (they just mindlessly rehashed the textbook or professor's written notes and were incapable of answering any question), and no desire to help students (they would give off bad/unapproachable/annoyed attitudes if you asked them for help or to explain something more slowly, or they would make a point of never being available to talk to students during their supposed office hours). Most of the time the courses didn't even vaguely follow the organization or material provided in the listed course textbook, so reading -- no, owning -- the textbook was completely unhelpful toward learning the material that was to be tested later.
As a student, when you're up against that kind of total bullshit, it's almost impossible to learn and understand the material. You do your best to try, you form study groups with your other equally-lost classmates and try to decipher things as best you can and come to some kind of consensus as to what in the hell the teacher was trying to teach, and that's all you can do. When exams come, of course you don't thoroughly understand the material. You're lucky if you can understand some random bits of it here and there, so you use up all your allotted exam time working through the bits you know something about, then panicking when you realize that's only about 30% of the exam, then trying for another two hours to come up with creatively plausible-sounding BS to write in for the other questions.
Now, ask yourself again... why would students cheat? Gee, I wonder. It's not because they are incapable of learning. It's because the college environment is incapable of teaching. It probably also doesn't help matters that failing a course can result in you needing to take another semester of school, where a semester of school costs more than an SUV.