Oh yes. I agree that people should be trained in using computers. However, stocking schools up with computers only makes it so that these kids use them for anything but training.
Perhaps juniors and seniors should be trained in using PCs. However, kids younger than that should be trained in working and thinking, in real terms.
The problem is that using computers to do things restricts you to that particular environment. I know of teachers, who after a few years of using computers, cannot teach without PowerPoint.
I was blessed, one could say, to have been taught just before computers penetrated schools, where teachers prepared their lessons and you would focus on black-/white-boards and on the teacher, which stimulated attention. Now, students are so focused on Powerpoint slides that the teachers usually have a tough time garnering any attention at all.
Word processors, spreadsheets and presentation-builders do not help high school students.
As a result of using such tools, the students rely on them so greatly that they become crutches for students. Moreover, they teach students bad habits such as spending time thinking about format rather than content.
I'm no Luddite, but I believe learning how to do things without computers (even if you are a CS student) helps you to improve your own abilities and lateral thinking. I don't have any statistics to back me up, but ponder this: how many students nowadays can write a paper by hand and proofread it themselves?
Why would kernel developers use CVS when McVoy was not committed to supporting it? He urged them to use BK as it provided them with all the metadata they wanted to view, except he owned it.
I do not know what legal threat Tridge is facing. But from what I know, he is innocent. And I like to base my judgments on facts. Just because he's quiet doesn't mean he's guilty.
Had the money not gone to charity, only part of it would have been taxed. As such, even less, after administrative expenses and so on, would have reached those who need it.
If you're worried that Google trying to screw the system over by giving to charity, you have your priorities mixed up.
How is the Register biased? They said exactly what you said, but in a different article (which I submitted, but wasn't accepted).
So what if Tridge just wanted to mess around with the protocols? He was trying to get at the metadata, which McVoy believed was his, but which thousands of kernel developers believed was theirs.
Without McVoy's "contribution", there would be no need to reverse engineer the software. He didn't do it because it was there, and he was twiddling this thumbs; he was trying to get back what was theirs already.
Proprietary software isn't evil. People are evil. And people who blast others, knowing full well that they cannot respond because of the threat of legal action, are evil.
Using a closed-source, proprietary SCM while being the poster-child for the open-source movement is a bit hypocritical, no?
You learn about it, and if it appeals to you, you have a demand for it. World peace is a demand everyone from Talib Kweli to Miss Congeniality has, yet no one's getting it.
If the demand is large enough, it will be offered, because there is someone out there who believes or knows of a way he can make money off it.
If the government and other institutions offered more services online, there would be a demand because of convenience. It may not push broadband penetration to 90%, but it will drum up support for more. After all, this is a consumer's world.
Comparing US to developing countries like India and China is ludicrous. The US has had development in IT for far longer than either of those two countries, and has had far more resources for far fewer people.
Broadband penetration is a matter of public interest, not geography. If there was a demand for it, it would be provided even in the remotest regions, especially in a country as developed as the US.
A small country in a global leadership position? Right. How are they supposed to cajole countries like North Korea, China, India and the US to get along?
Global leadership roles, like other leadership roles, should be filled by those with power, not because it's right, but because it would be effective. The EU has significant economic power, and the EU is led by France and Germany, not Netherlands.
Why stop there? Why not just ban all forms of media, as it has to censor them too? But then the citizens could start talking and who knows what they'll talk about. Let's ban people from China too.
China has to balance its modernizing cities and urban population with its authoritarian communism. It's a fine line. I'm not saying it's right, I'm just saying I understand.
Call me crazy, but I think it was an attempt at humor.
Whenever Redmond is found to have broken something, it's usually a competitor's product. And now it is being reported that 1394b is slowed down because of XP SP2. I'm guessing that Slashdot's filters discarded the <sarcasm> tags.
I think the fact that you actually posted your response on the web proves your point wrong. With blogs and news sites like Fark, Technocrat and Slashdot, end-users can use the web.
With products like Dreamweaver, OOo and MS Office, users can create their own webpages too. It might have been an exclusive one-way information system in the 90s, but it is definitely no longer so.
This is true. However, as more people use Linux, or any Unix variant, we'll see more people running as root by default.
I've seen seasoned Mac users who hate typing passwords for messing with protected files and folders, effectively putting them in the same class as Windows users who run as Administrator. Although they understand the security implications of this, they just wish it wasn't so annoying.
Even though Linux applications generally tend to stay simple, and thus don't add features like running Javascript in emails or executing binaries, this just reduces the chance that an exploit could occur. Linux users must nevertheless be vigilant in ensuring the security of their boxes, just as Windows users must.
I understand the user's frustration when it comes to computers. After all, they're used to technology just working, after using products like cars, microwaves and TVs.
However, learning how to use computers doesn't come easy to some people. The fact is that even as hard as the IT industry has tried to analogize different parts of the computer to real-life, with things such as files, folders, recycle bins, the fact is that computers are different from anything in the past. It's a general-purpose machine, and not a specialized one like a car or a toaster.
Users use computers like specialized machines, expecting them to process text and download stuff flawlessly. After all, when was the last time your type-writer tried to recover a document? The fact is that as we try to sync computing to the real-world, we're creating false hopes that the "stuff" in the computer will work like stuff in the real world.
Application development on the web is at best immature. ActiveX, more than the web, pushed back UI development as well as web application development, as it bastardized an open platform.
Java applets had a future, but Sun screwed it up by bloating JREs. Flash had a future, but it is used mainly for annoying ads. Javascript is making a resurgence, but it will fail, as we've seen the amount of exploits written in JS.
The web is a far more promising platform than any other I can think of. It is something many people are comfortable with, while it has the ability to grow, something that the desktop world, entrenched in a window-based environment, can't.
At this point, with the number of users around the world, I can't see Archy taking hold. Most can't be bothered to learn new UIs. It's up to the web to deliver something.
Hmm. Interesting. I always thought the point of technology was not to create the most perfect product out there, but to create a product that users would feel comfortable with.
While theoretically, UI development may have been set back, users are comfortable with the web. Therefore, that is the way technology should progress, i.e. working for the user, not getting the user to work with the product.
What is the point of this? After at least a decade of GUI-based computing, how many users will shift from the familiar windows-based (note the lack of capitalization) to an Archy-based one?
The web, rather than Archy, seems to be the way forward, as that is what most people are used to. Rather than focusing on the latest scientific research, they should have focused on the eccentricities of the everyday PC user.
Actually, the **AA is gaining ground around the world. China, Europe and other countries are willing to protect the rights of these companies over their citizens for further foreign investment.
There have been BitTorrent-related arrests in Hong Kong, and movie-piracy related arrests in Sweden, both of which are amongst the freest countries in the world.
Slashdot Mirror
Your right to privacy? Your right not to be tracked by the government? It's sort of like RFIDs, except in cars.
Personally, if this works out, it's worth the amount of lives saved, just as long as it isn't abused.
Oh yes. I agree that people should be trained in using computers. However, stocking schools up with computers only makes it so that these kids use them for anything but training.
Perhaps juniors and seniors should be trained in using PCs. However, kids younger than that should be trained in working and thinking, in real terms.
The problem is that using computers to do things restricts you to that particular environment. I know of teachers, who after a few years of using computers, cannot teach without PowerPoint.
I was blessed, one could say, to have been taught just before computers penetrated schools, where teachers prepared their lessons and you would focus on black-/white-boards and on the teacher, which stimulated attention. Now, students are so focused on Powerpoint slides that the teachers usually have a tough time garnering any attention at all.
Word processors, spreadsheets and presentation-builders do not help high school students.
As a result of using such tools, the students rely on them so greatly that they become crutches for students. Moreover, they teach students bad habits such as spending time thinking about format rather than content.
I'm no Luddite, but I believe learning how to do things without computers (even if you are a CS student) helps you to improve your own abilities and lateral thinking. I don't have any statistics to back me up, but ponder this: how many students nowadays can write a paper by hand and proofread it themselves?
Trackers and monitors installed by schools and companies, as well as by concerned parents.
Also, the vast number of IE-themed Firefoxes installed by geeks fed up of cleaning out adware and spyware.
By passing along a chain letter.
Ah yes, the CVS gateway. Read what Larry himself has to say about the CVS gateway
Why would kernel developers use CVS when McVoy was not committed to supporting it? He urged them to use BK as it provided them with all the metadata they wanted to view, except he owned it.
I do not know what legal threat Tridge is facing. But from what I know, he is innocent. And I like to base my judgments on facts. Just because he's quiet doesn't mean he's guilty.
I didn't mean evil in a vicious, sinister sort of way. I meant "morally wrong".
I guess I was evil for calling Linus evil. How's that for karma (I mean the Hindu karma, not Slashdot karma)?
Had the money not gone to charity, only part of it would have been taxed. As such, even less, after administrative expenses and so on, would have reached those who need it.
If you're worried that Google trying to screw the system over by giving to charity, you have your priorities mixed up.
How is the Register biased? They said exactly what you said, but in a different article (which I submitted, but wasn't accepted).
So what if Tridge just wanted to mess around with the protocols? He was trying to get at the metadata, which McVoy believed was his, but which thousands of kernel developers believed was theirs.
Without McVoy's "contribution", there would be no need to reverse engineer the software. He didn't do it because it was there, and he was twiddling this thumbs; he was trying to get back what was theirs already.
Proprietary software isn't evil. People are evil. And people who blast others, knowing full well that they cannot respond because of the threat of legal action, are evil.
Using a closed-source, proprietary SCM while being the poster-child for the open-source movement is a bit hypocritical, no?
You learn about it, and if it appeals to you, you have a demand for it. World peace is a demand everyone from Talib Kweli to Miss Congeniality has, yet no one's getting it.
If the demand is large enough, it will be offered, because there is someone out there who believes or knows of a way he can make money off it.
If the government and other institutions offered more services online, there would be a demand because of convenience. It may not push broadband penetration to 90%, but it will drum up support for more. After all, this is a consumer's world.
Comparing US to developing countries like India and China is ludicrous. The US has had development in IT for far longer than either of those two countries, and has had far more resources for far fewer people.
Broadband penetration is a matter of public interest, not geography. If there was a demand for it, it would be provided even in the remotest regions, especially in a country as developed as the US.
A small country in a global leadership position? Right. How are they supposed to cajole countries like North Korea, China, India and the US to get along?
Global leadership roles, like other leadership roles, should be filled by those with power, not because it's right, but because it would be effective. The EU has significant economic power, and the EU is led by France and Germany, not Netherlands.
Yeah, the world is dumb.
Why stop there? Why not just ban all forms of media, as it has to censor them too? But then the citizens could start talking and who knows what they'll talk about. Let's ban people from China too.
China has to balance its modernizing cities and urban population with its authoritarian communism. It's a fine line. I'm not saying it's right, I'm just saying I understand.
Call me crazy, but I think it was an attempt at humor.
Whenever Redmond is found to have broken something, it's usually a competitor's product. And now it is being reported that 1394b is slowed down because of XP SP2. I'm guessing that Slashdot's filters discarded the <sarcasm> tags.
Sean Penn, is that you? How've you been since your outburst at the Oscars?
if NetBSD 2 SP2 breaks compatibility with Halo.
And therein lies SP2's solution to improving security.
Now only if an IE update would install Firefox.
I guess they're doing what parents do to stop their kids from doing things they don't like: they do it too to make it uncool.
I mean really how many 1337 war3zers would want to continue releasing stuff if you could get Revenge.of.the.Sith.DVDScr.XVID.AC3-MPAA ?
I think the fact that you actually posted your response on the web proves your point wrong. With blogs and news sites like Fark, Technocrat and Slashdot, end-users can use the web.
With products like Dreamweaver, OOo and MS Office, users can create their own webpages too. It might have been an exclusive one-way information system in the 90s, but it is definitely no longer so.
This is true. However, as more people use Linux, or any Unix variant, we'll see more people running as root by default.
I've seen seasoned Mac users who hate typing passwords for messing with protected files and folders, effectively putting them in the same class as Windows users who run as Administrator. Although they understand the security implications of this, they just wish it wasn't so annoying.
Even though Linux applications generally tend to stay simple, and thus don't add features like running Javascript in emails or executing binaries, this just reduces the chance that an exploit could occur. Linux users must nevertheless be vigilant in ensuring the security of their boxes, just as Windows users must.
I understand the user's frustration when it comes to computers. After all, they're used to technology just working, after using products like cars, microwaves and TVs.
However, learning how to use computers doesn't come easy to some people. The fact is that even as hard as the IT industry has tried to analogize different parts of the computer to real-life, with things such as files, folders, recycle bins, the fact is that computers are different from anything in the past. It's a general-purpose machine, and not a specialized one like a car or a toaster.
Users use computers like specialized machines, expecting them to process text and download stuff flawlessly. After all, when was the last time your type-writer tried to recover a document? The fact is that as we try to sync computing to the real-world, we're creating false hopes that the "stuff" in the computer will work like stuff in the real world.
Application development on the web is at best immature. ActiveX, more than the web, pushed back UI development as well as web application development, as it bastardized an open platform.
Java applets had a future, but Sun screwed it up by bloating JREs. Flash had a future, but it is used mainly for annoying ads. Javascript is making a resurgence, but it will fail, as we've seen the amount of exploits written in JS.
The web is a far more promising platform than any other I can think of. It is something many people are comfortable with, while it has the ability to grow, something that the desktop world, entrenched in a window-based environment, can't.
At this point, with the number of users around the world, I can't see Archy taking hold. Most can't be bothered to learn new UIs. It's up to the web to deliver something.
Hmm. Interesting. I always thought the point of technology was not to create the most perfect product out there, but to create a product that users would feel comfortable with.
While theoretically, UI development may have been set back, users are comfortable with the web. Therefore, that is the way technology should progress, i.e. working for the user, not getting the user to work with the product.
I believe that is the motto of Archy itself.
What is the point of this? After at least a decade of GUI-based computing, how many users will shift from the familiar windows-based (note the lack of capitalization) to an Archy-based one?
The web, rather than Archy, seems to be the way forward, as that is what most people are used to. Rather than focusing on the latest scientific research, they should have focused on the eccentricities of the everyday PC user.
Actually, the **AA is gaining ground around the world. China, Europe and other countries are willing to protect the rights of these companies over their citizens for further foreign investment.
There have been BitTorrent-related arrests in Hong Kong, and movie-piracy related arrests in Sweden, both of which are amongst the freest countries in the world.