actually, powerpoint is a very good tool for students to use.
Sure, if you define 'good' as 'making it easier to present information orally while boring the hell out of those present'.
PowerPoint is inferior because it encourages Byzantine, bulleted
hierarchies
of
thought
and severely restricts and fragments the quantity of information conveyed in comparison to, say, a printed handout.
Edward Tufte, who has written some superb books on presenting visual evidence, was angry enough at PowerPoint to write The Cognitive Style of PowerPoint (ISBN 0961392150), which could justly have been named Why PowerPoint is Evil because, in the sense of 'highly unpleasant or harmful', it is evil. Tufte spends a few pages (each of which, I might add, bears as much data as about a dozen PP slides) discussing how bad (perhaps needless to say) PP presentations given to NASA higher-ups while Columbia was in flight recognized that, for example, 'once tile is penetrated SOFI [Spray On Foam Insulation] can cause significant damage'. However, the full body cast of PowerPoint prevented the engineers from expressing themselves clearly enough to the decision-makers, who ultimately received diluted and misleading information.
In other words, PowerPoint helped to kill seven people as they re-entered the atmosphere on 1 February 2003.
/If/ you decide on Debian, at least consider waiting a few months until the next stable release: the current one is ancient, and you'll enjoy better hardware support, an easier install, etc. by using 3.1. Don't even think about using the testing distro.
Government Information Awareness (cached copy; the site has been dodgy lately) is "a research effort by the Computing Culture group of the MIT Media Lab. It aims to provide software and data to help citizens understand the complexities of their government". I find it entertaining, at least.
Is a port to Windows. Indeed, switching people to another OS entirely would be ideal, but sometimes change requires a transitional phase. And it would allow Scribus to compete with the big boys.
Slashdot Mirror
Shall we eat the soft tissue now or later?
actually, powerpoint is a very good tool for students to use.
Sure, if you define 'good' as 'making it easier to present information orally while boring the hell out of those present'.
PowerPoint is inferior because it encourages Byzantine, bulleted
- of
- thought
and severely restricts and fragments the quantity of information conveyed in comparison to, say, a printed handout.Edward Tufte, who has written some superb books on presenting visual evidence, was angry enough at PowerPoint to write The Cognitive Style of PowerPoint (ISBN 0961392150), which could justly have been named Why PowerPoint is Evil because, in the sense of 'highly unpleasant or harmful', it is evil. Tufte spends a few pages (each of which, I might add, bears as much data as about a dozen PP slides) discussing how bad (perhaps needless to say) PP presentations given to NASA higher-ups while Columbia was in flight recognized that, for example, 'once tile is penetrated SOFI [Spray On Foam Insulation] can cause significant damage'. However, the full body cast of PowerPoint prevented the engineers from expressing themselves clearly enough to the decision-makers, who ultimately received diluted and misleading information.
In other words, PowerPoint helped to kill seven people as they re-entered the atmosphere on 1 February 2003.
It's worse than that, IE has security vulnerabilities too. I have to use NCSA Mosaic again!
Ack, the bleeding edge. I have to use WorldWideWeb again!
He didn't give it a numerical rating!
/If/ you decide on Debian, at least consider waiting a few months until the next stable release: the current one is ancient, and you'll enjoy better hardware support, an easier install, etc. by using 3.1. Don't even think about using the testing distro.
Project Vote-Smart has a ton of unbiased information, including profiles of politicians such as VP Cheney.
Government Information Awareness (cached copy; the site has been dodgy lately) is "a research effort by the Computing Culture group of the MIT Media Lab. It aims to provide software and data to help citizens understand the complexities of their government". I find it entertaining, at least.
Your sig confused me! :-)
As an annoyed Wikipedian, I'd try to slashdot slashdot, but someone would just edit the page with the link and coralize it. :-(
Is a port to Windows. Indeed, switching people to another OS entirely would be ideal, but sometimes change requires a transitional phase. And it would allow Scribus to compete with the big boys.
An excellent free antivirus app that I haven't seen mentioned is avast!.
Of course, one could always convert their parents to GNU/Linux. :-)