When you see people in places like Venezuela registering "secure-usbank.com," it sorta makes you wonder whether there should be stricter controls over domain registration. People would probably be less likely to trust a domain if it didn't contain the name of their bank in it.
Of course, too much control would hurt people who have legitimate reasons for using a name, such as, perhaps, "usbank-sucks.com" or some other sort of personal-opinion type of thing.
And on the flip side, it sometimes feels like maybe there's already too much control from corporations in particular, who take things like mikerowesoft way too seriously.
Still, there's a nagging thought in the back of my head that spammers in Venezuela should have a slightly more difficult time getting secure-usbank.com. Maybe US Bank should've taken a cue from Microsoft and more vigorously defended the use of their name online.
Honestly, I don't understand why it's listed outside of liberal arts, except that perhaps the authors of the report wanted liberal arts to show a greater rise. Typically history majors, as I understand it, get history degrees as precursors to graduate degrees in areas like politics or as a liberal arts base for doing law or other fields. Frankly, I think not lumping with liberal arts is a bit suspect.
I think it's more interesting to see what fell than what rose. Computer engineering, mechanical/industrial engineering, and history. Any ideas why those would fall?
Although in this political climate, doesn't seem like much attention is being paid to history, as the same mistakes keep being repeated.:-P
It says specifically "QuickTransit fully supports accelerated 3-D graphics and about 80 percent computational performance on the main processor" - that's 80% performance. Later, it says "The power user might notice the difference, but the other 95 percent won't notice.""
This means that there IS a performance hit, just that they don't expect the average user to notice (probably rightly so).
That "real state" comment is the reason that I periodically actually _look_ at my modem. If anything odd is going on, such as traffic when I'm not using the system, then (of course) I fire up a firewall just to check the traffic.
The crack/warez thing you're totally right about, and it's a risk I realize that I take, although typically I'm downloading a NOCD for something that I actually own. Still, there's always a risk involved with software designed to defeat a manufacturer's copy-protection, in that the creator of the crack may have negative motives. That's probably why I keep no actual important data on an internet-connected system.
Frankly, I think that with some common sense it's fairly safe to run Windows un-firewalled and un-virus-protected. The biggest issue really is knowledge. If I didn't know how to use a firewall or the various windows network diagnostic tools to monitor the state of my system, its ports, and the traffic on it, I would probably resort to running a firewall.
As it is, I value performance over the risk that I might have to reinstall Windows once in a while. So far, my luck has held. Check back in about 5 years to see if it continues.:-)
Sorry that I didn't make it clear. I've been using some form of always-on since 2000; currently it's cable internet and has been for the past 2.5 years.
Mostly agreed. However, I don't actually use a router. It's just straight cable internet in from the cable modem.
That said, when I briefly ran an Apache server last year, I had Sygate Personal Firewall running 24/7. I definitely got a lot of portscanning and an error/access log full of attempts to root it. That was interesting.
Still, for day-to-day use, I strongly suspect that IE and Outlook are the biggest culprits, which is why I use Firefox and webmail generally.
I have to say, I don't understand how people get into so much trouble.
Maybe I've been lucky, but I've ran a Windows XP system for about a year now (and a Windows 98SE system for about 2 years prior under the same conditions), doing the occasional patches from Windows Update, without a virus scanner or firewall. If I do something stupid that makes me suspect that I've contracted something, I'll drop over to http://housecall.antivirus.com/ and do a quick scan. This generally only happens when I'm trying to find a crack for something on a P2P network and the bastards have embedded a keystroke logger or some other little nasty in a trojan crack package.
Otherwise, I do an occasional glance-over at the list of processes running, and if my modem is lighting up like a Christmas tree I might fire up Sygate Personal Firewall or something just to see what's happening with the traffic, but I've never seen it give me real cause for concern. I still get some port traffic for the old Code Red worms and what not, but nothing that seems to have been really problematic.
As I said, maybe I'm just lucky. Then again, maybe I don't use Internet Explorer or Outlook Express, and maybe that helps a lot. Who knows.:-)
Yeah, hmmm, TNG did the exact same thing with Data, trial and all.
Its sad when you're ripping yourself off.
Agreed, Data was also fighting for equality with humans. However, that was a more classic Asimov-esque struggle. Voyager took it a step forward with the idea of a software-only construct that was not even embodied demanding the same rights and exhibiting the same creative powers as humans.
See, here, you're not making any kind of sense.
TNG Borg: RESISTANCE IS FUTILE, one, ONE Borg Cube defeated the entire Federation fleet and was only stopped by daring and clever hacking.
Voy Borg: A single lost Federation ship without ressources defeats the ENTIRE DAMN COLLECTIVE. Pussyfication galore!
Actually, the full story is something like "A single lost Federation ship, aided by technology from 35+ years in the future, manages to severely damage the collective while getting home at the same time." I don't really get the sense from the end of Voyager that the collective was actually destroyed, and the Borg Queen didn't seem to have that sense either. In any case, the point was that the Borg were not invulnerable. It may even be that the writers felt that the "invulnerability" of the Borg was too unrealistic.
Was explored in depth in TNG with Hugh, "I Borg" and the follow ups.
Voyager rehashed it.
Agreed, but this isn't a bad thing. I think Voyager did a very good job with it, and it's still a topic in society today so I see no reason why it can't be addressed again.
Kess. Was supposed to age very fast. After 3 years, they realised they had only untied her hair while she should have aged by about 30 human years. Also, they realised by that time that they had to cross Borg space, a daunting task. How did they solve these problems? MAGIC! Kess becomes Q-like, flings Voyager to the other side of Borg space (but no farther, that would have been too convenient), decides she's too hot for them, leaves, and they get a replacement babe in the same show. That disgusted me. That was...horrible.
Sure, the new babe was better, but the way they solved these problems... They painted themselves into a corner and pulled the magic powers card to solve it. Not worthy of Star Trek.
I'm not sure what this part is supposed to prove. Kes wasn't one of the characters I was particularly interested in. I found the Captain, the Doctor, Tom Paris, Neelix, Harry Kim, Tuvok, Belanna - ALL of them were more "human" to me than any characters in the previous series. It just felt like there was some actual character drama going on - the technology aside. I'm not a big enough Trek fan to really memorize the technology, and that's probably why Voyager stood out for me more than the previous series.
I think what this boils down to is that, like all entertainment, people feel very subjectively about these things. Personally, I care less about 100% continuity within the Trek universe than I do about interesting characters. All the technology in the world and all of the pseudoscientific babble is secondary to the characters, and it's here that I think Voyager stands out.
In my honest opinion, Voyager was the most interesting of the three that I've seen (TOS, TNG, and Voyager). I know a lot of people seem to be blasting Voyager on the basis of its technology or something of the like. However, Voyager tackled some real issues.
A few that I can recall offhand:
- Throughout the entire series, a lot of time was spent discussing what is basically Artificial Intelligence in the form of the ship's doctor. Over the course of the show, this 'program' develops a personality and actually some creativity, and at least one Voyager episode is a court case that closely parallels a recent real mock trial (although here the AI is arguing for life instead of the ownership of its intellectual property) http://www.kurzweilai.net/articles/art0594.html?pr intable=1
- Another aspect of the show is the characterization, which I felt is much better than previous Trek series. Capt. Janeway has to make some quite tough decisions, and the series finale is perhaps the most interesting episode for her as she encounters a future self and has to defend her decision to protect millions of strangers' lives at the risk of her own crew/family. This theme repeats throughout.
- The whole Borg thing was quite well explored, in my honest opinion (although it may be better so in DS9). Some people seem pissed that the Borg aren't all-powerful, but really, apart from the Species 8472, they don't face much real competition. The destruction of some of their collective at the end of Voyager is reflecting another long-lived Trek theme, individuality vs. the collective (and of course, individuality comes out ahead here - good or no, but that's what it was about).
It wasn't perfect, but overall I felt that the characters offered more to care about than previous Treks. I enjoyed the TNG crew, and was amused by the Western antics of the TOS crew, but Voyager actually had me caring about more than one character (I only found Picard interesting in TNG, and Spock was the main reason to watch TOS for me).
This is all quite personal, and I'm sure people quite disagree; however, I think that people might appreciate Voyager more if they paid more attention to the characters and less to the technology.
According to this BBC article I spotted a few months ago, some scientists are already working on growing new teeth using stem cell technology. Theoretically you could just get an injection and 6-8 weeks later, you hve a new tooth. Gotta say that this will be incredibly cool if they pull it off...
They upped mine yesterday to 250; funny thing is, I have two accounts and only the first is increased. Starts with an M.....second one is a T...am wondering if they do it alphabetically.
..that a big obstacle to a lot of would-be graduate students (and indeed, university students) is cost. The US middle class is significantly smaller than most people think, and the working class much larger. It can be a real struggle to get a university education if you aren't brilliant enough to attract scholarships, even if you are willing to study hard. In addition, there isn't much incentive to get a $100,000 Ivy League education if you have to take on that much debt to get a job that pays $40k/year. Lots of factors at work here, these are only a few but worth mentioning.
Stealing a car is exactly like stealing a DVD. I just run my handy deCAR utility, stick the car into my trusty duplicator, and voila, my stolen car is ready for me to drive away. Sure is handy, and much less likely to attract the notice of the authorities since the owner doesn't even know his car has been stolen....MUAHHAHAHAHAHAHA
The networking point that I'm trying to make is that it would make more sense to teach methods of dealing with network security than it does to spend time trying to teach children how to use Microsoft Word. Wordpad works quite well for anything that Notepad can't handle. If we're going to teach kids specific applications, teach them how to use applications that will contribute to a healthier network; don't just remove the network.
I see little difference between teaching kids to 'use' a book and to 'use' a computer. Sure, the book is easier to teach, but it's a lot less efficient when it comes to locating information that you need. The warm-n-fuzzy arguments about books aside, why not teach kids how to use search engines?
I have to call BS on the 'handwriting forces students to plan ahead of time'. I've had the experience of grading both middle school essays and university term papers and I saw little or no difference between papers handed in based on whether they were handwritten or typed. Frankly, most people simply don't know how to write. This is not something that handwriting or typing has any effect on.
The problem overall with education isn't that we teach kids books vs. computers, or that we teach them networking vs. MSWord. The problem is that children are not being taught how to learn on their own; rather, they're being taught how to perform rote tasks and they can't handle a variation on a theme.
I think my point ultimately comes down to this: the computer is a legitimate and highly useful tool for children and something that they should learn to use so early that they don't even _think_ about it being computerized. When I sit down at the computer, I don't think "Oh, I have to open XXXX email program, click these buttons, etc..." to send an email, it's just something that I _do_. We need to make computer technology so familiar that by the time kids reach the 6th grade, there are no scenarios where kids are spending time trying to play with fonts in Word, just as we also hope that 6th graders can effectively use a dictionary or a thesaurus.
This is still incomplete, and obviously it's a topic that a book can be written about. Just don't have a knee-jerk response to computer technology just because things have been done differently in the past.
However, the problem isn't that we have computers in schools or *gasp* networked computers.
The problem is simply that most educators are (and I speak by experience both from an academic and a tech-support perspective, everything from kindergarten to grad school to a retail computer store that sold consulting and support to schools) incapable of properly instructing people to use computers.
Face it. I'd venture to say that most educators (and almost certainly most politicians) have _not_ grown up with computers, but are rather attempting to synthesize computer technology into their policies and curricula. This is a good thing, but they simply don't have the _feel_ of it; this is something that comes with vast amounts of experience with computer technology.
Handwriting essays? Give me a break; I wrote my grade-school essays on IBM XTs and printed them out on dot matrix printers whenever allowed. When it wasn't allowed, I wrote them on the XT and then copied them onto paper after they're done.
I would venture to say that few things suck harder than drafting essays by hand. Don't like a paragraph? You're screwed - rewrite. Don't like that paragraph? You're screwed again - rewrite. Not to mention that I can type ~100wpm, and I can only handwrite about...I dunno, 30-40wpm if that. Better, my hands aren't being contorted around some pen, but rather drifting in a pseudo-natural position above a keyboard. This hurts so much less, and I can write longer without needing to take a break while being more productive. I fail to see a problem.
A lot of people are scared of technology, but the US education system has far bigger problems (lack of funding, lack of instructors, etc) that are to blame for poor academic performance.
To add a last little rant, the network thing is idiotic. The future, and the past, have always been about networks. You're teaching your students programming, but they don't have any idea of how to do network programming? You're teaching them how to use computers, but god forbid they learn any of the _important_ facets of network use, like basic networking hygeine (virus scanners, firewall use, maybe how to do spam filtering) that will help to slow down future network chokage.
Ugh. I just find myself having a somewhat visceral reaction to this, considering that I literally grew up with computers (since I was 5) and _in spite of_ crappy education systems, I find myself in possession of a master's degree and a high-tech, managerial job.
Pardon any organizational or grammatical flaws; this is off the top of my head.
Re: Okay, call me crazy
on
The Face Detector
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
I don't believe I have actual face blindness, but I definitely suffer from face-recognition problems. It has been one of the defining factors of my personality, to the point that most of my friends know not to be offended if I do not recognize them until they actually speak to me. Interestingly enough, my face recognition is quite good within small time periods (1 or 2 days) but degrades quite quickly; if I haven't seen you in a week or two, then no matter how long I've known you, odds are that I won't recognize you if we meet on the street or in a small crowd of people.
This also goes along with an inability to remember faces; I can't remember at this moment what my girlfriend's face looks like, even tho I saw her a few hours ago. Hell, I can't even remember my family's faces, and I spent years around them.
"...you can delete them once, they hide in some other start-up file reinfecting the machine. Trust me, some of these are near totally uninstallable by anything else but a clean reinstall."
That's why you check autoexec.bat, config.sys, system.ini, win.ini and the registry */Software/Microsoft/CurrentVersion/Run* keys.
I love 98SE for this - it's extremely easy to un-fuck-up provided that no important system files were replaced with trojans, and even then a date check and extract/a from the CD usually fixes it.
Absolute worst case, an install of 98 OVER the existing install usually fixes any problems, while retaining your files and a lot of Windows settings.
that all people lack technical proficiency. This allows me to be pleasantly surprised, rather than disappointed, when I find out that the support technician on the other end actually knows how to turn his/her _own_ computer on, and that no, it really isn't a drink holder.:-P
Slashdot Mirror
When you see people in places like Venezuela registering "secure-usbank.com," it sorta makes you wonder whether there should be stricter controls over domain registration. People would probably be less likely to trust a domain if it didn't contain the name of their bank in it.
Of course, too much control would hurt people who have legitimate reasons for using a name, such as, perhaps, "usbank-sucks.com" or some other sort of personal-opinion type of thing.
And on the flip side, it sometimes feels like maybe there's already too much control from corporations in particular, who take things like mikerowesoft way too seriously.Still, there's a nagging thought in the back of my head that spammers in Venezuela should have a slightly more difficult time getting secure-usbank.com. Maybe US Bank should've taken a cue from Microsoft and more vigorously defended the use of their name online.
Decomposition releases all sorts of gases, possibly methane and carbon dioxide, although I'm not a biologist.
Obviously then, dying isn't green. And since you suggested it, I can tell that you're an evil RED spy masquerading as a GREEN supporter.:-)
Honestly, I don't understand why it's listed outside of liberal arts, except that perhaps the authors of the report wanted liberal arts to show a greater rise. Typically history majors, as I understand it, get history degrees as precursors to graduate degrees in areas like politics or as a liberal arts base for doing law or other fields. Frankly, I think not lumping with liberal arts is a bit suspect.
I think it's more interesting to see what fell than what rose. Computer engineering, mechanical/industrial engineering, and history. Any ideas why those would fall?
Although in this political climate, doesn't seem like much attention is being paid to history, as the same mistakes keep being repeated.:-P
It says specifically "QuickTransit fully supports accelerated 3-D graphics and about 80 percent computational performance on the main processor" - that's 80% performance. Later, it says "The power user might notice the difference, but the other 95 percent won't notice.""
This means that there IS a performance hit, just that they don't expect the average user to notice (probably rightly so).
That "real state" comment is the reason that I periodically actually _look_ at my modem. If anything odd is going on, such as traffic when I'm not using the system, then (of course) I fire up a firewall just to check the traffic.
The crack/warez thing you're totally right about, and it's a risk I realize that I take, although typically I'm downloading a NOCD for something that I actually own. Still, there's always a risk involved with software designed to defeat a manufacturer's copy-protection, in that the creator of the crack may have negative motives. That's probably why I keep no actual important data on an internet-connected system.
Frankly, I think that with some common sense it's fairly safe to run Windows un-firewalled and un-virus-protected. The biggest issue really is knowledge. If I didn't know how to use a firewall or the various windows network diagnostic tools to monitor the state of my system, its ports, and the traffic on it, I would probably resort to running a firewall.
As it is, I value performance over the risk that I might have to reinstall Windows once in a while. So far, my luck has held. Check back in about 5 years to see if it continues.:-)
Sorry that I didn't make it clear. I've been using some form of always-on since 2000; currently it's cable internet and has been for the past 2.5 years.
Mostly agreed. However, I don't actually use a router. It's just straight cable internet in from the cable modem.
That said, when I briefly ran an Apache server last year, I had Sygate Personal Firewall running 24/7. I definitely got a lot of portscanning and an error/access log full of attempts to root it. That was interesting.
Still, for day-to-day use, I strongly suspect that IE and Outlook are the biggest culprits, which is why I use Firefox and webmail generally.
I have to say, I don't understand how people get into so much trouble.
Maybe I've been lucky, but I've ran a Windows XP system for about a year now (and a Windows 98SE system for about 2 years prior under the same conditions), doing the occasional patches from Windows Update, without a virus scanner or firewall. If I do something stupid that makes me suspect that I've contracted something, I'll drop over to http://housecall.antivirus.com/ and do a quick scan. This generally only happens when I'm trying to find a crack for something on a P2P network and the bastards have embedded a keystroke logger or some other little nasty in a trojan crack package.
Otherwise, I do an occasional glance-over at the list of processes running, and if my modem is lighting up like a Christmas tree I might fire up Sygate Personal Firewall or something just to see what's happening with the traffic, but I've never seen it give me real cause for concern. I still get some port traffic for the old Code Red worms and what not, but nothing that seems to have been really problematic.
As I said, maybe I'm just lucky. Then again, maybe I don't use Internet Explorer or Outlook Express, and maybe that helps a lot. Who knows.:-)
Agreed, Data was also fighting for equality with humans. However, that was a more classic Asimov-esque struggle. Voyager took it a step forward with the idea of a software-only construct that was not even embodied demanding the same rights and exhibiting the same creative powers as humans.
See, here, you're not making any kind of sense. TNG Borg: RESISTANCE IS FUTILE, one, ONE Borg Cube defeated the entire Federation fleet and was only stopped by daring and clever hacking. Voy Borg: A single lost Federation ship without ressources defeats the ENTIRE DAMN COLLECTIVE. Pussyfication galore!Actually, the full story is something like "A single lost Federation ship, aided by technology from 35+ years in the future, manages to severely damage the collective while getting home at the same time." I don't really get the sense from the end of Voyager that the collective was actually destroyed, and the Borg Queen didn't seem to have that sense either. In any case, the point was that the Borg were not invulnerable. It may even be that the writers felt that the "invulnerability" of the Borg was too unrealistic.
Was explored in depth in TNG with Hugh, "I Borg" and the follow ups. Voyager rehashed it.Agreed, but this isn't a bad thing. I think Voyager did a very good job with it, and it's still a topic in society today so I see no reason why it can't be addressed again.
Kess. Was supposed to age very fast. After 3 years, they realised they had only untied her hair while she should have aged by about 30 human years. Also, they realised by that time that they had to cross Borg space, a daunting task. How did they solve these problems? MAGIC! Kess becomes Q-like, flings Voyager to the other side of Borg space (but no farther, that would have been too convenient), decides she's too hot for them, leaves, and they get a replacement babe in the same show. That disgusted me. That was...horrible. Sure, the new babe was better, but the way they solved these problems... They painted themselves into a corner and pulled the magic powers card to solve it. Not worthy of Star Trek.I'm not sure what this part is supposed to prove. Kes wasn't one of the characters I was particularly interested in. I found the Captain, the Doctor, Tom Paris, Neelix, Harry Kim, Tuvok, Belanna - ALL of them were more "human" to me than any characters in the previous series. It just felt like there was some actual character drama going on - the technology aside. I'm not a big enough Trek fan to really memorize the technology, and that's probably why Voyager stood out for me more than the previous series.
I think what this boils down to is that, like all entertainment, people feel very subjectively about these things. Personally, I care less about 100% continuity within the Trek universe than I do about interesting characters. All the technology in the world and all of the pseudoscientific babble is secondary to the characters, and it's here that I think Voyager stands out.
In my honest opinion, Voyager was the most interesting of the three that I've seen (TOS, TNG, and Voyager). I know a lot of people seem to be blasting Voyager on the basis of its technology or something of the like. However, Voyager tackled some real issues.
r intable=1
A few that I can recall offhand:
- Throughout the entire series, a lot of time was spent discussing what is basically Artificial Intelligence in the form of the ship's doctor. Over the course of the show, this 'program' develops a personality and actually some creativity, and at least one Voyager episode is a court case that closely parallels a recent real mock trial (although here the AI is arguing for life instead of the ownership of its intellectual property) http://www.kurzweilai.net/articles/art0594.html?p
- Another aspect of the show is the characterization, which I felt is much better than previous Trek series. Capt. Janeway has to make some quite tough decisions, and the series finale is perhaps the most interesting episode for her as she encounters a future self and has to defend her decision to protect millions of strangers' lives at the risk of her own crew/family. This theme repeats throughout.
- The whole Borg thing was quite well explored, in my honest opinion (although it may be better so in DS9). Some people seem pissed that the Borg aren't all-powerful, but really, apart from the Species 8472, they don't face much real competition. The destruction of some of their collective at the end of Voyager is reflecting another long-lived Trek theme, individuality vs. the collective (and of course, individuality comes out ahead here - good or no, but that's what it was about).
It wasn't perfect, but overall I felt that the characters offered more to care about than previous Treks. I enjoyed the TNG crew, and was amused by the Western antics of the TOS crew, but Voyager actually had me caring about more than one character (I only found Picard interesting in TNG, and Spock was the main reason to watch TOS for me).
This is all quite personal, and I'm sure people quite disagree; however, I think that people might appreciate Voyager more if they paid more attention to the characters and less to the technology.
Dude, your fantasies are truly scary.
According to this BBC article I spotted a few months ago, some scientists are already working on growing new teeth using stem cell technology. Theoretically you could just get an injection and 6-8 weeks later, you hve a new tooth. Gotta say that this will be incredibly cool if they pull it off...
They upped mine yesterday to 250; funny thing is, I have two accounts and only the first is increased. Starts with an M.....second one is a T...am wondering if they do it alphabetically.
..that a big obstacle to a lot of would-be graduate students (and indeed, university students) is cost. The US middle class is significantly smaller than most people think, and the working class much larger. It can be a real struggle to get a university education if you aren't brilliant enough to attract scholarships, even if you are willing to study hard. In addition, there isn't much incentive to get a $100,000 Ivy League education if you have to take on that much debt to get a job that pays $40k/year. Lots of factors at work here, these are only a few but worth mentioning.
Stealing a car is exactly like stealing a DVD. I just run my handy deCAR utility, stick the car into my trusty duplicator, and voila, my stolen car is ready for me to drive away. Sure is handy, and much less likely to attract the notice of the authorities since the owner doesn't even know his car has been stolen....MUAHHAHAHAHAHAHA
The networking point that I'm trying to make is that it would make more sense to teach methods of dealing with network security than it does to spend time trying to teach children how to use Microsoft Word. Wordpad works quite well for anything that Notepad can't handle. If we're going to teach kids specific applications, teach them how to use applications that will contribute to a healthier network; don't just remove the network.
I see little difference between teaching kids to 'use' a book and to 'use' a computer. Sure, the book is easier to teach, but it's a lot less efficient when it comes to locating information that you need. The warm-n-fuzzy arguments about books aside, why not teach kids how to use search engines?
I have to call BS on the 'handwriting forces students to plan ahead of time'. I've had the experience of grading both middle school essays and university term papers and I saw little or no difference between papers handed in based on whether they were handwritten or typed. Frankly, most people simply don't know how to write. This is not something that handwriting or typing has any effect on.
The problem overall with education isn't that we teach kids books vs. computers, or that we teach them networking vs. MSWord. The problem is that children are not being taught how to learn on their own; rather, they're being taught how to perform rote tasks and they can't handle a variation on a theme.
I think my point ultimately comes down to this: the computer is a legitimate and highly useful tool for children and something that they should learn to use so early that they don't even _think_ about it being computerized. When I sit down at the computer, I don't think "Oh, I have to open XXXX email program, click these buttons, etc..." to send an email, it's just something that I _do_. We need to make computer technology so familiar that by the time kids reach the 6th grade, there are no scenarios where kids are spending time trying to play with fonts in Word, just as we also hope that 6th graders can effectively use a dictionary or a thesaurus.
This is still incomplete, and obviously it's a topic that a book can be written about. Just don't have a knee-jerk response to computer technology just because things have been done differently in the past.
Granted, I have not read this book myself.
However, the problem isn't that we have computers in schools or *gasp* networked computers.
The problem is simply that most educators are (and I speak by experience both from an academic and a tech-support perspective, everything from kindergarten to grad school to a retail computer store that sold consulting and support to schools) incapable of properly instructing people to use computers.
Face it. I'd venture to say that most educators (and almost certainly most politicians) have _not_ grown up with computers, but are rather attempting to synthesize computer technology into their policies and curricula. This is a good thing, but they simply don't have the _feel_ of it; this is something that comes with vast amounts of experience with computer technology.
Handwriting essays? Give me a break; I wrote my grade-school essays on IBM XTs and printed them out on dot matrix printers whenever allowed. When it wasn't allowed, I wrote them on the XT and then copied them onto paper after they're done.
I would venture to say that few things suck harder than drafting essays by hand. Don't like a paragraph? You're screwed - rewrite. Don't like that paragraph? You're screwed again - rewrite. Not to mention that I can type ~100wpm, and I can only handwrite about...I dunno, 30-40wpm if that. Better, my hands aren't being contorted around some pen, but rather drifting in a pseudo-natural position above a keyboard. This hurts so much less, and I can write longer without needing to take a break while being more productive. I fail to see a problem.
A lot of people are scared of technology, but the US education system has far bigger problems (lack of funding, lack of instructors, etc) that are to blame for poor academic performance.
To add a last little rant, the network thing is idiotic. The future, and the past, have always been about networks. You're teaching your students programming, but they don't have any idea of how to do network programming? You're teaching them how to use computers, but god forbid they learn any of the _important_ facets of network use, like basic networking hygeine (virus scanners, firewall use, maybe how to do spam filtering) that will help to slow down future network chokage.
Ugh. I just find myself having a somewhat visceral reaction to this, considering that I literally grew up with computers (since I was 5) and _in spite of_ crappy education systems, I find myself in possession of a master's degree and a high-tech, managerial job.
Pardon any organizational or grammatical flaws; this is off the top of my head.
I don't believe I have actual face blindness, but I definitely suffer from face-recognition problems. It has been one of the defining factors of my personality, to the point that most of my friends know not to be offended if I do not recognize them until they actually speak to me. Interestingly enough, my face recognition is quite good within small time periods (1 or 2 days) but degrades quite quickly; if I haven't seen you in a week or two, then no matter how long I've known you, odds are that I won't recognize you if we meet on the street or in a small crowd of people.
This also goes along with an inability to remember faces; I can't remember at this moment what my girlfriend's face looks like, even tho I saw her a few hours ago. Hell, I can't even remember my family's faces, and I spent years around them.
Just amusing thoughts from experience..
...that the missing letters are PE - isn't that the part of school geeks hate the most?
Ahh...ignore my prior response then, this is indeed what was said.
In all fairness, I think the question was "how much electrified rail," not "how much rail?"
60-65% of 1200km = ~780km
~780km > 499km
"...you can delete them once, they hide in some other start-up file reinfecting the machine. Trust me, some of these are near totally uninstallable by anything else but a clean reinstall."
/a from the CD usually fixes it.
That's why you check autoexec.bat, config.sys, system.ini, win.ini and the registry */Software/Microsoft/CurrentVersion/Run* keys.
I love 98SE for this - it's extremely easy to un-fuck-up provided that no important system files were replaced with trojans, and even then a date check and extract
Absolute worst case, an install of 98 OVER the existing install usually fixes any problems, while retaining your files and a lot of Windows settings.
Makes you wonder how much of this cash ever makes it back to the station.;-) My guess is, not much!
that all people lack technical proficiency. This allows me to be pleasantly surprised, rather than disappointed, when I find out that the support technician on the other end actually knows how to turn his/her _own_ computer on, and that no, it really isn't a drink holder.:-P