Having first had Chai/Thai tea in a place that was very traditional Thai, I have to say it's not bad and fairly close to the 'real thing' in flavor. Starbucks's 'normal' version wasn't as heavy on the spices, and depending on the person's taste a little light on the dairy foam, but the real thing can be a... learning experience if you're not used to it, as the spices can be rather potent in their traditional incarnations. It may not be grade A1 stellar, but it's not bad for a mass-market version. Try a real recipe sometime for comparison.
I believe in markets, so let me point out that I understand that it is an attempt to jack up prices. A lack of DRM means that copying is essentially free and that improvement on the basic design may be possible, and profits based on that may accrue to someone other than the "rights holder," which cuts into the rights holder's pocketbook, as it is in their best interest to be able to force others to pay the rights holder to make such improvements. Beyond that It enables one to selectively decide to force other people to pay for products they may have not needed/wanted directly in addition to that which they do. In so doing, it allows the "rights holder" to force a person to pay twice for what they previously had paid for only once, while at the same time, in combination with the licensing rules, preventing others from making improvements that would negate such needs. Additionally, due to the problem of short-term downward inflexibility of nominal prices... when switching from a DRM-free system to a DRMed one, its probably unlikely that one will decrease prices by a margin large enough to make DRM financially viable, especially once one considers the problem with DRM that any given "rights management" scheme (patents are included here...) has to be crackable to be useful. By the way, that increased effective nominal income will then become the baseline for future price increases, as profits have probably increased, so over long scales, DRM becomes ever more appealing.
So yeah, DRM IS an excuse to jack up prices while at the same time crippling functionality. It's meant to force inventors to pay, users to pay, people making transfers to pay, admins to pay, non-users to pay... It's a "make once, get paid umpteen times" strategy.
(Which makes them even MORE of a fashion statement. After all, nothing says "I've got money to burn" quite like items which require wearing OTHER items in order to be able to wear them "appropriately.")
It's not just art that's like that... it's in every field. If there is a 'classical' tradition in a field, most of the greatest innovators that changed that tradition came up out of that tradition.
Those who don't understand history often can't move forward. They don't know where they are, so they are doomed to repeat the mistakes of others. It may sound like a cliche, but as far as artistry goes, that is the case. If you understand a tradition fully, you can understand it's strengths and weaknesses, and therefore learn over time to change a style to address a weakness it had. If you have not studied it, you cannot recognize the mistakes that have been made without great effort. Most innovators outside of that model simply were innovators because the field did not exist for a long time prior to their work, even in the sciences, because there were no mistakes that had yet been made.
Perhaps, but in this case, the home market is what is targeted with the 1M dollars in prizes. It doesn't matter that it's a smaller market than the corporate one; it matters that guaranteed money is there and that whosoever wins in the consumer market can potentially make a killing in the corporate one. After all, Dell started in the home market and made itself a corporate powerhouse by winning mindshare and marketshare there. It's now the number one corporate manufacturer. Guess what? Intel realizes that the home market influences the corporate one. There's other benefits to Intel too; if the VIIV platform works well enough, AV servers are likely to become big bucks, and while many US families have only one or two computers, most US families have a TV per person. If all of them are VIIV-enabled with Intel processors, Intel's just gotten a massive boost to their bottom line in the consumer markets.
Actually, the golf cart litigation was pretty reasonable. The man could not walk the length of a golf course unaided, but he was otherwise an excellent golfer, and was able to make it through to the PGA. The carts simply allowed him to golf at the same level of fatigue experienced by other golfers. IIRC, (I could look in the actual transcript of the arguments, as a copy exists somewhere in my house, I believe) even the other Tour players felt it was a reasonable request. It was solely Tour officials who decided to ignore the man's request.
Of course, IANADL. (I am not a Disability Lawywer)
I know the downside of poor scheduling and how timeshifting can alleviate that issue entirely, first hand.
I've nearly flunked out two different semesters due to the administrations of the universities scheduling low-level lecture courses at poor hours. I am by far a night person, and during certain periods of my life, I am almost physically unable to sleep during the night, if at all. This severely hinders my capacity to function and learn, and as a result, much of the time, going to class from 6:30 AM to about 9:30 AM means I will be incapable of retaining information learned in class, due to the strain of long hours spent awake. At the same time, I cannot afford to miss class, because while I may not be able to retain a lot of information, if I miss class, I lose all my potential capacity to learn.
There is also the case of physical illness; If I've got a flu that's keeping me from attending class, I will attend to my physical health first. Professors get that luxury, why shouldn't I? I am paying for the service, after all. I am willing to accede that testing and other situations may throw a monkey wrench into that, but for the general case, I feel that I should get the same opportunities the well students have had.
The overall situation is that I don't understand why I should be punished for trying to maintain my physical and mental health in a stressful environment. I feel that if a course is mostly lecture and transcripts/audio/videos of lectures are available, then time-shifting should be allowed, period. Furthermore, if a course is heavily discussion oriented, then it should be done at times conducive to the maximum number of students' abilities to succeed.
I say, keep that podcasts as high quality as possible, and throw it out as fast as possible after the class. Don't limit them solely to attendees or to students, if possible. Try and give them as wide of a circulation as possible, for maximum effect. If there is still a worry, consider asking the individual departments to start labeling courses in a fashion so that it is relatively easy for students to determine which classes are suitable for timeshifting, which should be attended though records would be available for review and backup emergency purposes, and which classes would not have a record component. THAT is the way to encourage appropriate student behavior, not some draconian system that second-guesses students' judgement in a totally unnecessary fashion.
Have they said whether or not the SD cards usable with the Wii will be ordinary SD cards or specially modified Nintendo-branded ones? I've got other reasons to invest in high-capacity SD cards, so if I can pop in any standard SD card, I'd be thrilled.
I wouldn't call Ticketmaster a reputable source! They are the prime reason scalpers are able to effectively function today. Now, the illegal scalpers will be gone, but there will instead be a legal one... who's making even more profit than they already do.
Personally, I completely disagree with the auction idea. I'd consider partial auctions, for limited quantities of seats (season boxes, charity auctions) where only small numbers would be affected, but auctions for every seat in the house not previously taken by the promoter or group buyers directly? Puhleeze. That's just asking for scalping to get worse, by pricing event tickets for popular events even farther out of the average person's reach. Most people who keep up with a team or a star do so because they feel that they can get tickets when they want to, even if it's somewhat expensive. This will sorely disillusion them to this.
Scalpers win huge numbers of tickets by having mass numbers of workers getting tickets for them, then collecting the tickets and reselling at high markup or at auction. This is essentially the same strategy Ticketmaster uses, except that they lock in contracts requiring the use of Ticketmaster as the sole official sales force, so they get to legally kick around every other scalper with C&D orders, but don't, because the scalpers make them so much money. Instead, they C&D the people promoting the events Ticketmaster sells tickets to, even if it's private sales to individuals/groups, so Ticketmaster gets all the sales profit that they can.
Same. I can generally tell when a person WASN'T a moron by their textbook. If they aren't scribbling all over it, chances are better they weren't a moron, or didn't look at it much anyway. Both of which increase the value to me.
Sure, there's the occasional 'wonder book' but generally, that's not the case, since people who sell off textbooks weren't usually planning to keep them in the first place, because they wouldn't be useful to them later.
I keep my marked textbooks, because they're the ones I'll use later, in my more advanced classes, or when I'm working professionally. I'm not going to sell them unless I have to.
Honestly, episodic content's great across all demographics. Because there's not this drive to complete a game instantly, it makes it far more replayable. If you get tired of a game for a while, it's easy to put down, but when that urge comes back, it's right there again. That's not just an "older gamer" thing, that's across all age categories. Little kids do it, teenagers do that, college students go through it, and older gamers do it. I suspect it's one of the great successes of the early eras: those games, when they did have story, were easy to pick up and play and put back down. Sure, you could marathon finish the game, but you don't feel the driving NEED to finish it in a marathon. So, of course, you play it for longer.
The next-gen Unreal engine is already being built with the capacity to use the PhysX PPU chips, so if it has already been finalized, then there are at least 2 physics engines that have the capacity to off-load physics calculations to the Ageia PPU chip.
Not surprising at all. Manufacturers do want to get the most positive reviews after all. Look at the hardware sites. Only rarely do you ever see reviews of value equipment rather than the latest top-end equipment. I do find it a bit of a shame though. 50 Mhz may not look like much, but for the enthusiasts that go after the best equipment regardless of price, or the person who needs the best possible specs for a system and is willing to pay, that 50 Mhz can mean the difference between a purchase and a pass-by. While I don't think Geil's doing anything different than any other manufacturer is likely to try, it does make me think twice about the claimed specs of their products.
This is the route that NCSoft took with Guild Wars. The closest things Guild Wars has to official open fan forums are "elite" fansites with forums, which are routinely watched by devs, and have been around for a long time. There is fairly little dev input on many of these sites, so when devs show up, it tends to be primarily to announce happenings and to act as soundboards between the devs and the players on those things that have created mass havoc through the entire community, such as cheating/exploits/smurfing and one or two patches and balances that really upset large portions of the community. There is whining, yes, but surprisingly much of the whining is centered in the threads on the latest patches, PvP threads, and those threads asking for the last few announced items that have yet to be implemented that are to show up for "Chapter 1." The rest tends to be a nice mix of humor, thought, and the occasional impromptu community celebration.
I did the MU system thing as well. The course was entirely online in my case, and frankly, I thought it was worse than non-online, but primarily due to the lack of interaction with other people. Had I decided to go to a larger university than the one I attend, there might not be such a large difference, but I still noticed the lack even while I was doing the course.
I can see the reasoning why it isn't "real", because it didn't feel so at times, although I did manage to keep a rein on that tendency by reminding myself of the real fact of a grade on my transcript. The disconnect of taking a class over the internet does that. It doesn't feel like class to someone raised on today's public school systems or the majority of private schools.
The length of lectures are a problem, as is finding time to do work. The class wasn't CS, but if you have any sort of long-term project, it can be difficult to find the time to fit the project in if it requires long sessions of work, and you don't have the time in large enough chunks. I would have to agree entirely with what freidog said, and personally didn't find that I liked online courses.
During the course I took, I did an average of 12 hours a week of work for 3 credit hours, primarily because the material was difficult to understand and I only had the book and e-mail to work with, although some of it was merely spent catching up because I accidentally entered late. This gave me the impression that the course material itself is going to be a sign of difficulty. An English course may not be too different, and potentially more beneficial in an online form, because discussion can happen more slowly and there is more anonymity and thus less chance people will hold back arguments. On the other hand, beware art, science, or CS courses where the material might be arcane and esoteric or merely not easily translatable to an online realm.
The program may have become better since I did it, as it was experimental during my time, but from what I have seen, online isn't the way to go unless its the only way to go. There needs to be some improvement in technology in terms before I would do an online course again. It doesn't feel ready enough. VoIP and streaming video need to improve so that online lectures can happen more easily for those without great connections. Finding a program in your area is a good idea as well. E-mail and the like are good, but nothing beats asking the professor a question during office hours. Go to your local "big-name" state university and see what they have. It has a pretty decent likelihood of not being noted as "online" on your transcript, and you will still have a chance to talk to a professor during office hours. Not only that, but some have secondary campuses that might be easier for you to attend, and will offer night classes, and those will give you the benefits of the on-campus experience.
It definitely seems to be easier to integrate online components into a on-campus course than doing a solely online course.
I agree with your statements, and yet I feel that some of them are a bit misleading. Epic Games makes UT and they left their publisher for essentially the reason you describe. Whenever any game does not innovate, there is no reason to play it over an earlier version, and the market makes it a loss. Even games like Madden must innovate. Madden of today is a vastly different game than the original. However, the essential feeling captured by the sequel must remain the same as the feeling the original game's.
Do you consider being able to check the oil level basic usage? Do you wash your car to keep it from breaking down due to wear and tear. Frankly, all of those take very little time to learn to do. And what do you get? A car that runs well and looks nice. Defragging, anti-virus programs, pop-up blockers and the like are the equivalents. They keep performance high and take very little user know-how to use well. Guess what? Its still laziness. I have had people complain that I changed the screensize for my user profile only and still ask me to PLEASE change it because it might affect them. It takes 5 seconds to learn to do. Do people learn to do it? no. They are like car owners without any knowledge of what a road is, or any basic knowledge of laws about driving. Call me a troll or flamebait, but there is a often unmet level of skill to be able to use a computer safely.
Slashdot Mirror
EWRD + mouse here. dropping back is easy, but you've got good access to all the right keys. No strain, even after 20 hour marathon sessions.
Having first had Chai/Thai tea in a place that was very traditional Thai, I have to say it's not bad and fairly close to the 'real thing' in flavor. Starbucks's 'normal' version wasn't as heavy on the spices, and depending on the person's taste a little light on the dairy foam, but the real thing can be a... learning experience if you're not used to it, as the spices can be rather potent in their traditional incarnations. It may not be grade A1 stellar, but it's not bad for a mass-market version. Try a real recipe sometime for comparison.
But Slashdot seems to use the "Starbucks logo color scheme... coincidence? I think not.
I believe in markets, so let me point out that I understand that it is an attempt to jack up prices. A lack of DRM means that copying is essentially free and that improvement on the basic design may be possible, and profits based on that may accrue to someone other than the "rights holder," which cuts into the rights holder's pocketbook, as it is in their best interest to be able to force others to pay the rights holder to make such improvements. Beyond that It enables one to selectively decide to force other people to pay for products they may have not needed/wanted directly in addition to that which they do. In so doing, it allows the "rights holder" to force a person to pay twice for what they previously had paid for only once, while at the same time, in combination with the licensing rules, preventing others from making improvements that would negate such needs. Additionally, due to the problem of short-term downward inflexibility of nominal prices... when switching from a DRM-free system to a DRMed one, its probably unlikely that one will decrease prices by a margin large enough to make DRM financially viable, especially once one considers the problem with DRM that any given "rights management" scheme (patents are included here...) has to be crackable to be useful. By the way, that increased effective nominal income will then become the baseline for future price increases, as profits have probably increased, so over long scales, DRM becomes ever more appealing. So yeah, DRM IS an excuse to jack up prices while at the same time crippling functionality. It's meant to force inventors to pay, users to pay, people making transfers to pay, admins to pay, non-users to pay... It's a "make once, get paid umpteen times" strategy.
And not very often by anyone else!
(Which makes them even MORE of a fashion statement. After all, nothing says "I've got money to burn" quite like items which require wearing OTHER items in order to be able to wear them "appropriately.")
You mean Froogle and Google Base ARE combining into one service. Google's announced that at least those two products are being merged.
It's not just art that's like that... it's in every field. If there is a 'classical' tradition in a field, most of the greatest innovators that changed that tradition came up out of that tradition.
Those who don't understand history often can't move forward. They don't know where they are, so they are doomed to repeat the mistakes of others. It may sound like a cliche, but as far as artistry goes, that is the case. If you understand a tradition fully, you can understand it's strengths and weaknesses, and therefore learn over time to change a style to address a weakness it had. If you have not studied it, you cannot recognize the mistakes that have been made without great effort. Most innovators outside of that model simply were innovators because the field did not exist for a long time prior to their work, even in the sciences, because there were no mistakes that had yet been made.
Perhaps, but in this case, the home market is what is targeted with the 1M dollars in prizes. It doesn't matter that it's a smaller market than the corporate one; it matters that guaranteed money is there and that whosoever wins in the consumer market can potentially make a killing in the corporate one. After all, Dell started in the home market and made itself a corporate powerhouse by winning mindshare and marketshare there. It's now the number one corporate manufacturer. Guess what? Intel realizes that the home market influences the corporate one. There's other benefits to Intel too; if the VIIV platform works well enough, AV servers are likely to become big bucks, and while many US families have only one or two computers, most US families have a TV per person. If all of them are VIIV-enabled with Intel processors, Intel's just gotten a massive boost to their bottom line in the consumer markets.
Actually, the golf cart litigation was pretty reasonable. The man could not walk the length of a golf course unaided, but he was otherwise an excellent golfer, and was able to make it through to the PGA. The carts simply allowed him to golf at the same level of fatigue experienced by other golfers. IIRC, (I could look in the actual transcript of the arguments, as a copy exists somewhere in my house, I believe) even the other Tour players felt it was a reasonable request. It was solely Tour officials who decided to ignore the man's request.
Of course, IANADL. (I am not a Disability Lawywer)
I agree with the parent and grandparent.
I know the downside of poor scheduling and how timeshifting can alleviate that issue entirely, first hand.
I've nearly flunked out two different semesters due to the administrations of the universities scheduling low-level lecture courses at poor hours. I am by far a night person, and during certain periods of my life, I am almost physically unable to sleep during the night, if at all. This severely hinders my capacity to function and learn, and as a result, much of the time, going to class from 6:30 AM to about 9:30 AM means I will be incapable of retaining information learned in class, due to the strain of long hours spent awake. At the same time, I cannot afford to miss class, because while I may not be able to retain a lot of information, if I miss class, I lose all my potential capacity to learn.
There is also the case of physical illness; If I've got a flu that's keeping me from attending class, I will attend to my physical health first. Professors get that luxury, why shouldn't I? I am paying for the service, after all. I am willing to accede that testing and other situations may throw a monkey wrench into that, but for the general case, I feel that I should get the same opportunities the well students have had.
The overall situation is that I don't understand why I should be punished for trying to maintain my physical and mental health in a stressful environment. I feel that if a course is mostly lecture and transcripts/audio/videos of lectures are available, then time-shifting should be allowed, period. Furthermore, if a course is heavily discussion oriented, then it should be done at times conducive to the maximum number of students' abilities to succeed.
I say, keep that podcasts as high quality as possible, and throw it out as fast as possible after the class. Don't limit them solely to attendees or to students, if possible. Try and give them as wide of a circulation as possible, for maximum effect. If there is still a worry, consider asking the individual departments to start labeling courses in a fashion so that it is relatively easy for students to determine which classes are suitable for timeshifting, which should be attended though records would be available for review and backup emergency purposes, and which classes would not have a record component. THAT is the way to encourage appropriate student behavior, not some draconian system that second-guesses students' judgement in a totally unnecessary fashion.
Have they said whether or not the SD cards usable with the Wii will be ordinary SD cards or specially modified Nintendo-branded ones? I've got other reasons to invest in high-capacity SD cards, so if I can pop in any standard SD card, I'd be thrilled.
I wouldn't call Ticketmaster a reputable source! They are the prime reason scalpers are able to effectively function today. Now, the illegal scalpers will be gone, but there will instead be a legal one... who's making even more profit than they already do.
Personally, I completely disagree with the auction idea. I'd consider partial auctions, for limited quantities of seats (season boxes, charity auctions) where only small numbers would be affected, but auctions for every seat in the house not previously taken by the promoter or group buyers directly? Puhleeze. That's just asking for scalping to get worse, by pricing event tickets for popular events even farther out of the average person's reach. Most people who keep up with a team or a star do so because they feel that they can get tickets when they want to, even if it's somewhat expensive. This will sorely disillusion them to this.
Scalpers win huge numbers of tickets by having mass numbers of workers getting tickets for them, then collecting the tickets and reselling at high markup or at auction. This is essentially the same strategy Ticketmaster uses, except that they lock in contracts requiring the use of Ticketmaster as the sole official sales force, so they get to legally kick around every other scalper with C&D orders, but don't, because the scalpers make them so much money. Instead, they C&D the people promoting the events Ticketmaster sells tickets to, even if it's private sales to individuals/groups, so Ticketmaster gets all the sales profit that they can.
Same. I can generally tell when a person WASN'T a moron by their textbook. If they aren't scribbling all over it, chances are better they weren't a moron, or didn't look at it much anyway. Both of which increase the value to me.
Sure, there's the occasional 'wonder book' but generally, that's not the case, since people who sell off textbooks weren't usually planning to keep them in the first place, because they wouldn't be useful to them later.
I keep my marked textbooks, because they're the ones I'll use later, in my more advanced classes, or when I'm working professionally. I'm not going to sell them unless I have to.
Honestly, episodic content's great across all demographics. Because there's not this drive to complete a game instantly, it makes it far more replayable. If you get tired of a game for a while, it's easy to put down, but when that urge comes back, it's right there again. That's not just an "older gamer" thing, that's across all age categories. Little kids do it, teenagers do that, college students go through it, and older gamers do it. I suspect it's one of the great successes of the early eras: those games, when they did have story, were easy to pick up and play and put back down. Sure, you could marathon finish the game, but you don't feel the driving NEED to finish it in a marathon. So, of course, you play it for longer.
The next-gen Unreal engine is already being built with the capacity to use the PhysX PPU chips, so if it has already been finalized, then there are at least 2 physics engines that have the capacity to off-load physics calculations to the Ageia PPU chip.
Not surprising at all. Manufacturers do want to get the most positive reviews after all. Look at the hardware sites. Only rarely do you ever see reviews of value equipment rather than the latest top-end equipment. I do find it a bit of a shame though. 50 Mhz may not look like much, but for the enthusiasts that go after the best equipment regardless of price, or the person who needs the best possible specs for a system and is willing to pay, that 50 Mhz can mean the difference between a purchase and a pass-by. While I don't think Geil's doing anything different than any other manufacturer is likely to try, it does make me think twice about the claimed specs of their products.
This is the route that NCSoft took with Guild Wars. The closest things Guild Wars has to official open fan forums are "elite" fansites with forums, which are routinely watched by devs, and have been around for a long time. There is fairly little dev input on many of these sites, so when devs show up, it tends to be primarily to announce happenings and to act as soundboards between the devs and the players on those things that have created mass havoc through the entire community, such as cheating/exploits/smurfing and one or two patches and balances that really upset large portions of the community. There is whining, yes, but surprisingly much of the whining is centered in the threads on the latest patches, PvP threads, and those threads asking for the last few announced items that have yet to be implemented that are to show up for "Chapter 1." The rest tends to be a nice mix of humor, thought, and the occasional impromptu community celebration.
I did the MU system thing as well. The course was entirely online in my case, and frankly, I thought it was worse than non-online, but primarily due to the lack of interaction with other people. Had I decided to go to a larger university than the one I attend, there might not be such a large difference, but I still noticed the lack even while I was doing the course. I can see the reasoning why it isn't "real", because it didn't feel so at times, although I did manage to keep a rein on that tendency by reminding myself of the real fact of a grade on my transcript. The disconnect of taking a class over the internet does that. It doesn't feel like class to someone raised on today's public school systems or the majority of private schools. The length of lectures are a problem, as is finding time to do work. The class wasn't CS, but if you have any sort of long-term project, it can be difficult to find the time to fit the project in if it requires long sessions of work, and you don't have the time in large enough chunks. I would have to agree entirely with what freidog said, and personally didn't find that I liked online courses. During the course I took, I did an average of 12 hours a week of work for 3 credit hours, primarily because the material was difficult to understand and I only had the book and e-mail to work with, although some of it was merely spent catching up because I accidentally entered late. This gave me the impression that the course material itself is going to be a sign of difficulty. An English course may not be too different, and potentially more beneficial in an online form, because discussion can happen more slowly and there is more anonymity and thus less chance people will hold back arguments. On the other hand, beware art, science, or CS courses where the material might be arcane and esoteric or merely not easily translatable to an online realm. The program may have become better since I did it, as it was experimental during my time, but from what I have seen, online isn't the way to go unless its the only way to go. There needs to be some improvement in technology in terms before I would do an online course again. It doesn't feel ready enough. VoIP and streaming video need to improve so that online lectures can happen more easily for those without great connections. Finding a program in your area is a good idea as well. E-mail and the like are good, but nothing beats asking the professor a question during office hours. Go to your local "big-name" state university and see what they have. It has a pretty decent likelihood of not being noted as "online" on your transcript, and you will still have a chance to talk to a professor during office hours. Not only that, but some have secondary campuses that might be easier for you to attend, and will offer night classes, and those will give you the benefits of the on-campus experience. It definitely seems to be easier to integrate online components into a on-campus course than doing a solely online course.
I agree with your statements, and yet I feel that some of them are a bit misleading. Epic Games makes UT and they left their publisher for essentially the reason you describe. Whenever any game does not innovate, there is no reason to play it over an earlier version, and the market makes it a loss. Even games like Madden must innovate. Madden of today is a vastly different game than the original. However, the essential feeling captured by the sequel must remain the same as the feeling the original game's.
Do you consider being able to check the oil level basic usage? Do you wash your car to keep it from breaking down due to wear and tear. Frankly, all of those take very little time to learn to do. And what do you get? A car that runs well and looks nice. Defragging, anti-virus programs, pop-up blockers and the like are the equivalents. They keep performance high and take very little user know-how to use well. Guess what? Its still laziness. I have had people complain that I changed the screensize for my user profile only and still ask me to PLEASE change it because it might affect them. It takes 5 seconds to learn to do. Do people learn to do it? no. They are like car owners without any knowledge of what a road is, or any basic knowledge of laws about driving. Call me a troll or flamebait, but there is a often unmet level of skill to be able to use a computer safely.