Every cable service agreement I've every signed (I move a lot) has had a line or two regarding how the channel lineup may change. They usually obligate themselves to send you a new list of channels whenever things change (eventually) but they are under no obligation to provide any particular channel or to keep their lineup the same over time.
They used to pull tricks like whichever "extended" basic cable channel was the most popular for half of a year would get moved to a premium channel list, but I think they got busted for that since it was a systematic trick used to get customers to initially sign up for cheaper packages but then have to upgrade to premium channels within a year. It's legal if they do it for legit reasons, so the customers can't do anything about it.
The only thing a customer might get in return is the ability to get out of an extended service agreement early, because the content provided changed. You might need a lawyer to make that work however.
That is what ABC stands for. Not just ABC, but all of them. All 'Bout Cash. People who think any differently or think they deserve "free" broadcast media are just fooling themselves. They have shareholders to satisfy and consumers are nothing but income sources. If any particular group of consumers aren't forking over enough money, they're gonna get cut out. Nothing personal, but they really can't possibly care less about a couple of million tv viewers using what they consider to be an under-paying cable provider.
And BTW, hooking up a crappy old antenna to the antenna plug on the back of the TV still works like a champ. Maybe you need a digital tuner if your TV doesn't have one, but the good old antenna will still pull down the basic channels for you.
I plan on copyrighting reporting on the sun, pointing a camera at it, and then charging anyone who ventures outdoors during daylight hours for the privledge of "reporting" on the sun.
I might go so far as to claim exclusive rights on distribution of the entire visible light spectrum, just to cover all my bases.
As for the original post, I thought most countries had verbage in their copyright laws that allowed anyone to report "news", no matter where it happened to occur. Maybe I should start up a disaster relief company and claim exclusive rights to report on anyone who dies while my company is responding to the disaster?
What about the crotch bomber, Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab? He ought to get at least a 2009 Darwin honorable mention since the misfired high explosives in his underpants simply burned his reproductive organs quite badly. Medical details have not been released, but as the effect of the botched suicide bombing was very similar to what you'd get if you shoved a lit road flare down your pants, it seems likely that he is no longer part of the gene pool.
People need to realize that the iphone isn't a pocket computer. It's an appliance. Apple didn't market it as a pocket computer, and iphone owners did not purchase the right to run whatever software they like on it. You buy that right when you buy any apple computer, but you can't purchase that right with an iphone.
Just because you're paying someone to store your data doesn't mean they care about that data as much as you do... That's one of the two big problems with cloud computing that can't be solved by technology. First, nobody cares about your data as much as you do. Second, nobody will protect your data (ie. control it's distribution and prevent unauthorized changes) to the level you find appropriate.
It's usually a good idea to avoid using broad generalities (like I just did), but it seems like in general it would be a bad idea to let someone else be the sole keeper of anything even remotely important or sensitive. There are exceptions, but those seem to be internal to a company (ie. the company runs it's own cloud and has all employees use it). Or military/government applications where centralized security and backup can keep user errors from becoming a real danger to the organization beyond "help I lost my email!".
The horse carriage manufacturers did ok (or at least they had options). They just had to shift production around a bit to make farm wagons, add a motor and call it a truck, etc.
The folks that got screwed where the buggy whip makers. There just aren't many ways to modify a buggy whip into something that meets a need in another market.
Moving the ISS is not such a crazy idea at all, and it's been proposed already by some smart people as a way to increase moon mission payoffs and reduce mission risks. A series of orbit boosts could eventually lead to a transfer orbit and lunar orbital insertion. Once in lunar orbit it would be at reduced risk of damage from orbital trash. Yes, sending up resupply and crew swapouts would be more difficult, but remember we would already be doing that for manned lunar operations so it's really not that much of a stretch.
Moving it to mars... Now that's a bit of a stretch but it might be possible with a propulsion efficiency breakthrough that could be powered by existing solar arrays or a bolt-on reactor. Still though, I think the idea of using it to support lunar operations might be an interesting idea especially as an alternative to letting it die after such a slow and expensive build-up with gross under-use as a science platform since it's been manned due to problems with the shuttle program.
The big question is: Once the shuttle is out of the picture, why keep the ISS where it is? Why not just put it wherever it is the most useful?
For his next trick, to highlight the need for stricter gun control laws, Bill Gates will fire a gun into a crowd while shouting "there is no reason why only poor people should suffer from gun crimes!"
I think Al Gore plans on having a volcano erupt in downtown Manhattan to emphasize that ecological disasters are not just some fringe pacific "ring of fire" problem, but I hear he's having trouble getting a permit from the city.
I have an Infrant ReadyNAS+ and it is not fast. It has a TON of features (most of which I don't use) but transfer speeds are pegged at approx 7% to 8% network utilization through a gigE switch even with jumbo frames on and an upgraded stick of ram for the NAS cache. I get the same transfer rates with 3 different computers of various types including an older laptop and a very fast gaming machine, and my transfer rates are fairly close to what others report, which tells me the bottleneck is the NAS device. There may have been some improvements in the device since infrant sold the product line, but you'll need to check their support forums to see what people are reporting with the newer ones.
If you don't need many of the easy to use features of most of the low-end NAS devices, you are probably better off rolling your own. Even using the cheap embedded raid chips on consumer mobos and what you would probably consider a bottom-end cpu (like a single core celeron) is going to get you faster transfer rates than many of the NAS devices on the market. There are a few ready to go home router linux distributions that ought to be fairly secure and feature-rich, and they will probably grossly outperform a consumer level NAS box. The only tradeoff will probably be power consumption, however if you pick decent components, allow the cpu to throttle down, and let the drives halt when not in use, you can minimize the difference in power usage to the point where it might cost an extra $50ish/year over a purpose-built NAS device.
Great lawsuit. Because shooting them or spending billions of dollars on some other non-lethal option (which will still probably turn out to be very painful or potentially lethal) is so much better than just playing some music.
If they win, I can't wait to hear the press conference... "We had the building surrounded but had no non-lethal options available to effect the hostage rescue, so we just went in and shot everyone."
Does that mean that Spielberg is gonna get sued for E.T.? What if I watch E.T. in winter 2010... Will they have to re-release an edited version with glowing heart censored out?
Anyone else wondering if the IOC has strayed so far from the original spirit and intent of the Olympics and become such business-focused greedy rat bastards, that we need to give them the big finger and start over with a governing body that is actually focused on the athletes and the games rather than the money?
I got a phone with a decent camera, micro-SD port, and GPS. But when I asked what I needed to do for basic stuff like using the GPS or sending photos, I was told that I had to sign up for their entire internet and data package, which would have added more than 50% to my monthly bill before data charges.
To hell with that. I don't need expensive data services I will never use just so I can use my phone as a GPS. I can buy a separate GPS for less than the cost of 5 months of the packaged data and internet services, and I can always put the photos I take onto the microSD card and use the SD adapter to sneakernet them to my computer.
If the phone companies would let me pay for only the features I want instead of making me pay for a huge package I won't ever use, then I'd probably use the nifty features my phone has. But for the same reason I won't buy an iphone (I don't want to spend money on features I know in advance I won't use), I won't pay for the service packages just to be able to send my wife a photo or find my location. Specialized devices are still cheaper and don't require expensive service plans (or 3-year contracts with early termination fees).
I bet it's possible to kill someone with a fork, possibly even with a well aimed rock. I think forks and rocks should also be banned in the UK. Videos depicting forks used in a stabbing fashion, and rocks being used in a... rockish smashing sort of manner, also need to be banned.
Save the children, ban teh forks and rocks!
What about very small rocks? Well, even a grain of sand at orbital velocity can kill. This is why the UK has banned all participation in manned spaceflight, but it is a simple matter of doing the math to determine how large of a rock (or grain of sand) would be required to kill someone at any arbitrary sub-orbital speed. So maybe the entire violent, child-killing gamut of objects from fine grains of sand to large boulders, should be categorized by threat and velocity likely to be encountered, and certain, common-sense restrictions should be applied. Like banning rocks. And videos of rocks, especially videos of rocks that are moving. Someone showing both a fork AND a rock in a video should of course be detained and questioned, for only a terrorist would have two such lethal and dangerous restricted objects.
Damned forks. And rocks. We'll be better off once we're rid of them for good. Let the colonists keep their dirty murdering forks out of our country, the savages.
To be honest, I plan on taking advantage of some of the computer courses at some point in the future. I got a bachelors degree in comp sci, but my career has taken an entirely different course so I'll need quite a bit of remedial education if I ever want to get back in the computer biz in any serious way. Still, I found myself wondering how my "below average" high school buddy would benefit from these courses, and the answer was not at all. He really could have used a course or two on various other subjects that would have led to jobs. Practical math, wood or metal working, auto shop, etc. would all have helped him out. As it worked out, he ended up as an insurance salesman, which is I suppose a fitting job for some guy who never learned in high school what he really needed to know.
I'm saying that an awful lot of people will not benefit from being forced into an educational track that leads to a bachelors degree, when they are not capable of achieving at that level. We must recognize that 50% of students are below average, and the education we offer them must be applicable to their future, not some fairy-tale future where everyone can pass differential equations and get a degree in aero engineering if they only had a fair chance. Guess what - even really smart people fail out of engineering degrees, and it is grossly unfair to the 50% "below average" people to force them into college prep courses.
Our enthusiasm for the ability to audit Stanford courses for free is understandable, but we really should temper our response with the realization that there are a ton of people failing high school algebra right now that would benefit a lot more by being offered some technical courses that lead to jobs instead of online engineering or comp sci courses they can't possibly understand.
I'm trying to not point fingers here, but the "no child left behind" program explicitly ignores the fact that not all students are equally capable, and that 50% of students are below average. These kids need to be offered programs that give them the education they need to succeed in LIFE, not an education they can't understand in order to prepare them for a college education they can't possibly graduate or benefit from.
Those who go to Stanford with a reasonable expectation to graduate have already far surpassed the cut line - they are far on the right side of the bell curve, and it's very tough to imagine living life on the other side of the curve, let alone imagine what sort of education those people would benefit from. They need knowledge that leads to a JOB, not college prep courses or free Stanford engineering courses.
Simply by replying, and specifically by your spelling, you are NOT "them". You can benefit by a higher education that focuses not only on the practical application of our knowledge base that would be applicable in earning a respectable living doing a productive job (ie. a tech school), but on an education that uses theoretical considerations to go beyond simple application, towards synthesis that leads to new applications, new knowledge.
A simple example is the requirement that algebra must be passed in order to get a high school diploma... I would argue that for a fairly significant portion of our society, passing an application-focused class such as auto shop is much more valuable and pertinent to graduating from high school than passing an algebra test. I grew up with a number of people who can't possibly grasp algebra, but who benefited greatly from various "tech school" high school courses, got their high school diplomas, and got decent jobs right out of school. They would have been very poorly abused by any system that required them to pass algebra to get their diploma, and they never would have graduated if the school system in place at the time had cut shop class in order to attempt to force these below average students to pass college-prep courses. They were much better served by being offered application-level courses that taught them practical skills that led directly to productive jobs.
One friend of mine was particularly affected by the current philosophy that no student is "below average", and that all students deserve a college education. He got all the opportunities anyone could imagine including a free ride to a good university based on an intercollegiate athletic scholarship, and he was completely unsuited for the academic challenge. When he failed out of college, he found himself unsuited for any job other than fast-food shift supervisor because his high school refused to recognize that he was "below average", and refused to tailor his education towards something he could have actually used. He ended up with few practical skills since they forced him into math courses that he barely passed instead of letting him take skills-application courses, and was unable to get a job that paid well enough to support himself.
That's what I'm talking about when I say as slashdotters we should temper our response to these education opportunities. They are not the answer to all our problems, because the vast majority of people in the US are incapable of benefitting from the and trying to tailor high school education to force the no-shit 50% of students who are "below average" to go to college, is a gross injustice. We need to recognize that an awful lot of people have absolutely no use for a Stanford level of education, and ensure that rather than trying to force them into a particular college-prep track that they are not prepared or capable of following, we should provide application-level educational opportunities that lead to jobs, not a future involving washing out of college and ending up on the street with a bruised ego and no practical education that they'll find useful in finding a job they can handle.
As slashdotters go ape over this sort of thing, one fact should be kept in mind...
Slashdotters are largely made up of people on the far right side of the bell curve distribution of intelligence. Although our current federal government refuses to acknowledge that half of the people are "below average" and insists that everyone would benefit from a college education, the fact is that only a minority of people are actually capable of benefitting from the kind of advanced education Stanford can provide. The vast majority of people would be much better served with an education focused on practical application of the knowledge humanity has accumulated over the last couple thousand years.
How many slashdotters actually associate on a daily basis with people who would have to stretch to achieve a 100 score on an IQ test? I would submit that very few of "us" associate regularly with "them", and therefore our attitudes towards the desirable nature of higher education is heavily biased by our own capabilities. A great number of people simply can not benefit by any level of exposure to a Stanford provided higher education, no matter what the cost or ease of access.
We need to temper our response to these programs, and especially temper our response to government programs that attempt to force higher education goals onto the masses, by the realization that an awful lot of people would get a lot more out of a more practical approach to education instead of the current myth that everyone can earn an advanced degree if they were only given a fair shot. The average person couldn't graduate from Stanford no matter how fair of a shot they were given... That's why Stanford graduates are expected to rise above the average and achieve beyond the norm.
By "slides", I meant "powerpoint slides", not film or transparencies. But your points are very valid.
I also see your point about low-quality DVD, but that seems like a pretty tiny market, people for whom a $350 device to show low quality video to a small group is a better solution than a variety of alternatives.
My job required me to give numerous presentations using projectors for about a year, and even when the audience was just a handful of people I wouldn't have been able to give a reasonable presentation with such a low resolution projector. In every one of the situations where such a small projector would have been useful, I simply printed my slides and handed them out, which was more than satisfactory to my bosses and the presentation audience sitting around the table.
I can't imagine what the market would be for this thing. Even if the brightness isn't a problem, the resolution is too low for almost any worthwhile use I can imagine. 800x600 is about the lowest I would want for even the simplest tasks.
What kind of idiot decided it would be a good idea to hook up that network to the outside world? Are they anticipating researchers waking up at 1am and thinking "hey, I want to run one more experiment from home before I go to bed..."?
Their internal network ought to be completely physically segregated, and results transferred via sneaker-net. Anything else is just inviting outsiders to break in and play with really large magnets and particle guns. It's no different than them securing the entry doors with those plastic child-proof doorknob covers... If the door exists, someone is going to look for a way through. Simple answer - don't provide ANY connection between the outside world and the control network. *duh*
Maybe we really *should* be taking out black-hole insurance...?
Slashdot Mirror
Yea, you're wrong.
Every cable service agreement I've every signed (I move a lot) has had a line or two regarding how the channel lineup may change. They usually obligate themselves to send you a new list of channels whenever things change (eventually) but they are under no obligation to provide any particular channel or to keep their lineup the same over time.
They used to pull tricks like whichever "extended" basic cable channel was the most popular for half of a year would get moved to a premium channel list, but I think they got busted for that since it was a systematic trick used to get customers to initially sign up for cheaper packages but then have to upgrade to premium channels within a year. It's legal if they do it for legit reasons, so the customers can't do anything about it.
The only thing a customer might get in return is the ability to get out of an extended service agreement early, because the content provided changed. You might need a lawyer to make that work however.
That is what ABC stands for. Not just ABC, but all of them. All 'Bout Cash. People who think any differently or think they deserve "free" broadcast media are just fooling themselves. They have shareholders to satisfy and consumers are nothing but income sources. If any particular group of consumers aren't forking over enough money, they're gonna get cut out. Nothing personal, but they really can't possibly care less about a couple of million tv viewers using what they consider to be an under-paying cable provider.
And BTW, hooking up a crappy old antenna to the antenna plug on the back of the TV still works like a champ. Maybe you need a digital tuner if your TV doesn't have one, but the good old antenna will still pull down the basic channels for you.
all they need to do is send Danica over to ask for it.
I plan on copyrighting reporting on the sun, pointing a camera at it, and then charging anyone who ventures outdoors during daylight hours for the privledge of "reporting" on the sun.
I might go so far as to claim exclusive rights on distribution of the entire visible light spectrum, just to cover all my bases.
As for the original post, I thought most countries had verbage in their copyright laws that allowed anyone to report "news", no matter where it happened to occur. Maybe I should start up a disaster relief company and claim exclusive rights to report on anyone who dies while my company is responding to the disaster?
What about the crotch bomber, Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab? He ought to get at least a 2009 Darwin honorable mention since the misfired high explosives in his underpants simply burned his reproductive organs quite badly. Medical details have not been released, but as the effect of the botched suicide bombing was very similar to what you'd get if you shoved a lit road flare down your pants, it seems likely that he is no longer part of the gene pool.
People need to realize that the iphone isn't a pocket computer. It's an appliance. Apple didn't market it as a pocket computer, and iphone owners did not purchase the right to run whatever software they like on it. You buy that right when you buy any apple computer, but you can't purchase that right with an iphone.
Just because you're paying someone to store your data doesn't mean they care about that data as much as you do... That's one of the two big problems with cloud computing that can't be solved by technology. First, nobody cares about your data as much as you do. Second, nobody will protect your data (ie. control it's distribution and prevent unauthorized changes) to the level you find appropriate.
It's usually a good idea to avoid using broad generalities (like I just did), but it seems like in general it would be a bad idea to let someone else be the sole keeper of anything even remotely important or sensitive. There are exceptions, but those seem to be internal to a company (ie. the company runs it's own cloud and has all employees use it). Or military/government applications where centralized security and backup can keep user errors from becoming a real danger to the organization beyond "help I lost my email!".
The horse carriage manufacturers did ok (or at least they had options). They just had to shift production around a bit to make farm wagons, add a motor and call it a truck, etc.
The folks that got screwed where the buggy whip makers. There just aren't many ways to modify a buggy whip into something that meets a need in another market.
There is an achievement for submitting a story, but how about a counter for number of discarded submissions?
Moving the ISS is not such a crazy idea at all, and it's been proposed already by some smart people as a way to increase moon mission payoffs and reduce mission risks. A series of orbit boosts could eventually lead to a transfer orbit and lunar orbital insertion. Once in lunar orbit it would be at reduced risk of damage from orbital trash. Yes, sending up resupply and crew swapouts would be more difficult, but remember we would already be doing that for manned lunar operations so it's really not that much of a stretch.
Moving it to mars... Now that's a bit of a stretch but it might be possible with a propulsion efficiency breakthrough that could be powered by existing solar arrays or a bolt-on reactor. Still though, I think the idea of using it to support lunar operations might be an interesting idea especially as an alternative to letting it die after such a slow and expensive build-up with gross under-use as a science platform since it's been manned due to problems with the shuttle program.
The big question is: Once the shuttle is out of the picture, why keep the ISS where it is? Why not just put it wherever it is the most useful?
For his next trick, to highlight the need for stricter gun control laws, Bill Gates will fire a gun into a crowd while shouting "there is no reason why only poor people should suffer from gun crimes!"
I think Al Gore plans on having a volcano erupt in downtown Manhattan to emphasize that ecological disasters are not just some fringe pacific "ring of fire" problem, but I hear he's having trouble getting a permit from the city.
I have an Infrant ReadyNAS+ and it is not fast. It has a TON of features (most of which I don't use) but transfer speeds are pegged at approx 7% to 8% network utilization through a gigE switch even with jumbo frames on and an upgraded stick of ram for the NAS cache. I get the same transfer rates with 3 different computers of various types including an older laptop and a very fast gaming machine, and my transfer rates are fairly close to what others report, which tells me the bottleneck is the NAS device. There may have been some improvements in the device since infrant sold the product line, but you'll need to check their support forums to see what people are reporting with the newer ones.
If you don't need many of the easy to use features of most of the low-end NAS devices, you are probably better off rolling your own. Even using the cheap embedded raid chips on consumer mobos and what you would probably consider a bottom-end cpu (like a single core celeron) is going to get you faster transfer rates than many of the NAS devices on the market. There are a few ready to go home router linux distributions that ought to be fairly secure and feature-rich, and they will probably grossly outperform a consumer level NAS box. The only tradeoff will probably be power
consumption, however if you pick decent components, allow the cpu to throttle down, and let the drives halt when not in use, you can minimize the difference in power usage to the point where it might cost an extra $50ish/year over a purpose-built NAS device.
Great lawsuit. Because shooting them or spending billions of dollars on some other non-lethal option (which will still probably turn out to be very painful or potentially lethal) is so much better than just playing some music.
If they win, I can't wait to hear the press conference... "We had the building surrounded but had no non-lethal options available to effect the hostage rescue, so we just went in and shot everyone."
Does that mean that Spielberg is gonna get sued for E.T.? What if I watch E.T. in winter 2010... Will they have to re-release an edited version with glowing heart censored out?
Anyone else wondering if the IOC has strayed so far from the original spirit and intent of the Olympics and become such business-focused greedy rat bastards, that we need to give them the big finger and start over with a governing body that is actually focused on the athletes and the games rather than the money?
I got a phone with a decent camera, micro-SD port, and GPS. But when I asked what I needed to do for basic stuff like using the GPS or sending photos, I was told that I had to sign up for their entire internet and data package, which would have added more than 50% to my monthly bill before data charges.
To hell with that. I don't need expensive data services I will never use just so I can use my phone as a GPS. I can buy a separate GPS for less than the cost of 5 months of the packaged data and internet services, and I can always put the photos I take onto the microSD card and use the SD adapter to sneakernet them to my computer.
If the phone companies would let me pay for only the features I want instead of making me pay for a huge package I won't ever use, then I'd probably use the nifty features my phone has. But for the same reason I won't buy an iphone (I don't want to spend money on features I know in advance I won't use), I won't pay for the service packages just to be able to send my wife a photo or find my location. Specialized devices are still cheaper and don't require expensive service plans (or 3-year contracts with early termination fees).
Yea... It's turtles ALL THE WAY DOWN. Didn't anybody tell you?
I bet it's possible to kill someone with a fork, possibly even with a well aimed rock. I think forks and rocks should also be banned in the UK. Videos depicting forks used in a stabbing fashion, and rocks being used in a... rockish smashing sort of manner, also need to be banned.
Save the children, ban teh forks and rocks!
What about very small rocks? Well, even a grain of sand at orbital velocity can kill. This is why the UK has banned all participation in manned spaceflight, but it is a simple matter of doing the math to determine how large of a rock (or grain of sand) would be required to kill someone at any arbitrary sub-orbital speed. So maybe the entire violent, child-killing gamut of objects from fine grains of sand to large boulders, should be categorized by threat and velocity likely to be encountered, and certain, common-sense restrictions should be applied. Like banning rocks. And videos of rocks, especially videos of rocks that are moving. Someone showing both a fork AND a rock in a video should of course be detained and questioned, for only a terrorist would have two such lethal and dangerous restricted objects.
Damned forks. And rocks. We'll be better off once we're rid of them for good. Let the colonists keep their dirty murdering forks out of our country, the savages.
To be honest, I plan on taking advantage of some of the computer courses at some point in the future. I got a bachelors degree in comp sci, but my career has taken an entirely different course so I'll need quite a bit of remedial education if I ever want to get back in the computer biz in any serious way. Still, I found myself wondering how my "below average" high school buddy would benefit from these courses, and the answer was not at all. He really could have used a course or two on various other subjects that would have led to jobs. Practical math, wood or metal working, auto shop, etc. would all have helped him out. As it worked out, he ended up as an insurance salesman, which is I suppose a fitting job for some guy who never learned in high school what he really needed to know.
I'm saying that an awful lot of people will not benefit from being forced into an educational track that leads to a bachelors degree, when they are not capable of achieving at that level. We must recognize that 50% of students are below average, and the education we offer them must be applicable to their future, not some fairy-tale future where everyone can pass differential equations and get a degree in aero engineering if they only had a fair chance. Guess what - even really smart people fail out of engineering degrees, and it is grossly unfair to the 50% "below average" people to force them into college prep courses.
Our enthusiasm for the ability to audit Stanford courses for free is understandable, but we really should temper our response with the realization that there are a ton of people failing high school algebra right now that would benefit a lot more by being offered some technical courses that lead to jobs instead of online engineering or comp sci courses they can't possibly understand.
I'm trying to not point fingers here, but the "no child left behind" program explicitly ignores the fact that not all students are equally capable, and that 50% of students are below average. These kids need to be offered programs that give them the education they need to succeed in LIFE, not an education they can't understand in order to prepare them for a college education they can't possibly graduate or benefit from.
Those who go to Stanford with a reasonable expectation to graduate have already far surpassed the cut line - they are far on the right side of the bell curve, and it's very tough to imagine living life on the other side of the curve, let alone imagine what sort of education those people would benefit from. They need knowledge that leads to a JOB, not college prep courses or free Stanford engineering courses.
Simply by replying, and specifically by your spelling, you are NOT "them". You can benefit by a higher education that focuses not only on the practical application of our knowledge base that would be applicable in earning a respectable living doing a productive job (ie. a tech school), but on an education that uses theoretical considerations to go beyond simple application, towards synthesis that leads to new applications, new knowledge.
A simple example is the requirement that algebra must be passed in order to get a high school diploma... I would argue that for a fairly significant portion of our society, passing an application-focused class such as auto shop is much more valuable and pertinent to graduating from high school than passing an algebra test. I grew up with a number of people who can't possibly grasp algebra, but who benefited greatly from various "tech school" high school courses, got their high school diplomas, and got decent jobs right out of school. They would have been very poorly abused by any system that required them to pass algebra to get their diploma, and they never would have graduated if the school system in place at the time had cut shop class in order to attempt to force these below average students to pass college-prep courses. They were much better served by being offered application-level courses that taught them practical skills that led directly to productive jobs.
One friend of mine was particularly affected by the current philosophy that no student is "below average", and that all students deserve a college education. He got all the opportunities anyone could imagine including a free ride to a good university based on an intercollegiate athletic scholarship, and he was completely unsuited for the academic challenge. When he failed out of college, he found himself unsuited for any job other than fast-food shift supervisor because his high school refused to recognize that he was "below average", and refused to tailor his education towards something he could have actually used. He ended up with few practical skills since they forced him into math courses that he barely passed instead of letting him take skills-application courses, and was unable to get a job that paid well enough to support himself.
That's what I'm talking about when I say as slashdotters we should temper our response to these education opportunities. They are not the answer to all our problems, because the vast majority of people in the US are incapable of benefitting from the and trying to tailor high school education to force the no-shit 50% of students who are "below average" to go to college, is a gross injustice. We need to recognize that an awful lot of people have absolutely no use for a Stanford level of education, and ensure that rather than trying to force them into a particular college-prep track that they are not prepared or capable of following, we should provide application-level educational opportunities that lead to jobs, not a future involving washing out of college and ending up on the street with a bruised ego and no practical education that they'll find useful in finding a job they can handle.
As slashdotters go ape over this sort of thing, one fact should be kept in mind...
Slashdotters are largely made up of people on the far right side of the bell curve distribution of intelligence. Although our current federal government refuses to acknowledge that half of the people are "below average" and insists that everyone would benefit from a college education, the fact is that only a minority of people are actually capable of benefitting from the kind of advanced education Stanford can provide. The vast majority of people would be much better served with an education focused on practical application of the knowledge humanity has accumulated over the last couple thousand years.
How many slashdotters actually associate on a daily basis with people who would have to stretch to achieve a 100 score on an IQ test? I would submit that very few of "us" associate regularly with "them", and therefore our attitudes towards the desirable nature of higher education is heavily biased by our own capabilities. A great number of people simply can not benefit by any level of exposure to a Stanford provided higher education, no matter what the cost or ease of access.
We need to temper our response to these programs, and especially temper our response to government programs that attempt to force higher education goals onto the masses, by the realization that an awful lot of people would get a lot more out of a more practical approach to education instead of the current myth that everyone can earn an advanced degree if they were only given a fair shot. The average person couldn't graduate from Stanford no matter how fair of a shot they were given... That's why Stanford graduates are expected to rise above the average and achieve beyond the norm.
By "slides", I meant "powerpoint slides", not film or transparencies. But your points are very valid.
I also see your point about low-quality DVD, but that seems like a pretty tiny market, people for whom a $350 device to show low quality video to a small group is a better solution than a variety of alternatives.
My job required me to give numerous presentations using projectors for about a year, and even when the audience was just a handful of people I wouldn't have been able to give a reasonable presentation with such a low resolution projector. In every one of the situations where such a small projector would have been useful, I simply printed my slides and handed them out, which was more than satisfactory to my bosses and the presentation audience sitting around the table.
I can't imagine what the market would be for this thing. Even if the brightness isn't a problem, the resolution is too low for almost any worthwhile use I can imagine. 800x600 is about the lowest I would want for even the simplest tasks.
What kind of idiot decided it would be a good idea to hook up that network to the outside world? Are they anticipating researchers waking up at 1am and thinking "hey, I want to run one more experiment from home before I go to bed..."?
Their internal network ought to be completely physically segregated, and results transferred via sneaker-net. Anything else is just inviting outsiders to break in and play with really large magnets and particle guns. It's no different than them securing the entry doors with those plastic child-proof doorknob covers... If the door exists, someone is going to look for a way through. Simple answer - don't provide ANY connection between the outside world and the control network. *duh*
Maybe we really *should* be taking out black-hole insurance...?