I guess I see a serious moral difference between a side that drops leaflets warning civilians of incoming attacks and encouraging them to move/leave, so that military targets and weapons caches can be destroyed with a minimum of civilian casualties, and a side that straps bombs to 15 year olds and sends them into a Sbarro's to blow up 40 people who are trying to enjoy lunch.
Perhaps you don't see any difference, and that's your prerogative, but that kind of thinking ("we're no better because we do rotten stuff too") is exactly what is going to lead to the downfall of Western civilization. What scares me even more is that a lot of people think we deserve it. What scares me even more than THAT is that the people who think we deserve it are almost without exception educated an enlightened liberal thinkers who cherish the progress made in the name of liberty - desegregation, women's sufferage, the gradual triumphs of the gay rights movement, etc. These things would fly right out the window across the globe in the absence of countries like the U.K. and U.S.
...because the "international community" has such a stellar track record for taking on difficult tasks and running them effectively and fairly without corruption. Snort.
Most banks offer CDs that you can mature at any time and you'll get a better interest rate than the 0.75% they offer with their crap-ass savings account. If you don't like that, get into a money market.
Battlegrounds killed open world PvP. The Honor System turned griefing from something that sometimes happens into something that ALWAYS happens. The Honor System also introduced a new grind to get good PvP gear, and you must grind both rep and enemy players. The system also sets you back if you don't keep playing so you can't just grind hard when you have time to play and eventually, although over a long period of time, collect your rewards. You MUST grind EVERY night for weeks, sometimes months on end. I called 'er quits at Rank 11, I couldn't stand it any more. Doing NOTHING but grinding battlegrounds night in and night out. I ran with one of the top Horde groups on our server, too, and it still took forever. I don't mind the "taking forever" part, I mind the, "if you stop now, you'll start losing the progress you've made" part.
Next up was PvE. Running Molten Core 120 times in hopes of getting the one drop you need. And you need it so you can get good enough gear to hit Blackwing Lair, whose gear you need to be good enough to tackle AQ40, whose gear you need to be good enough to tackle the Necropolis, whose gear you need to be.... well you get the idea.
What finally broke me though was the server lag. I was a MUD admin, I understand the internet, and I can tolerate some lag. But when Blizzard designs encounters that REQUIRE 40 people with a good connection to have a shot at beating that encounter (I'm thinking of Vael here) and the server lags to the point with only 3 groups working on that instance that the encounter is unbeatable, why should I keep playing? Our BWL group was up to Firemaw at one point. And then for MONTHS we couldn't get past Vael. We'd organize, gather, wade through the 8,983,391 paladins hanging around BRM to get into BWL and then we'd beat the General and throw ourselves at Vael for 4 hours before calling it quits. Our strategy was fine, but with the lag, we simply could not do enough damage quickly enough to beat her.
That, plus I'm starting law school this fall, it was just a good time to quit. That was in April. I checked back with my guild after the Shaman talent "improvement" was done, and the lag is still a problem. So to hell with it. I loved WoW and I wish I could still play but I've reached a point in the game's advancement where I have to schedule my life around gaming rather than schedule gaming to fit into my life. I don't want to be like that. I did that with EQ and DAoC and while I had some fun, I eventually found myself irritated and frustrated, throwing all my energy into something that wasn't giving me much back and wasn't all that fun. I decided that if I wanted my life to revolve around that kind of experience I'd just get married.:)
I'm sooooo glad I got out of WoW. As is usually the case with these games, the first year or so is the "glory era," after which everything that made the game fun is slowly eroded away. I went through this with EQ, DAoC, and now WoW. Even the stupid bugs and stuff didn't bother me. It was new and different and fun to explore, but the longer the game marches on, the more insane content and bad ideas find their way into the game. Cheerio, World of Warcraft.
I started playing Warcraft. It was fun. I picked a PvP server. I got to level 20 and every goddam alliance I found killed me and camped me. Guys who were level 60 and elite mounts would stop, dismount, and come kill me. It drove me nuts. I never griefed alliance, I didn't kill half of the ones that I could have for Honor.
This drove me nuts until I finally realized that I was going to get griefed no matter what, and the answer is to make sure I deserve it. I began griefing non-stop. I'd just hang out in lowbie zones and harrass and grief people. Eventually some 60's would show up and put a stop to it and/spit on me a thousand times.
And then when my alts got griefed or ganked or whatever, I laughed at the dancing night elf who was/spitting on me a thousand times because, quite frankly, I knew that I really really had that coming. I gave better than I got.
The fact that I was der uber Shaman only made griefing more satisfying. Run the boards, little boys! Complain that you can't take a shaman 20 levels above you!
So yeah. Solve griefers with more griefing. The problem doesn't go away I guess but you enjoy the game anyhow. Flame away, I don't care, I cancelled months ago. After PvP grinding to get my elite super dooper PvP set I tried some PvE, but when they announced Necropolis I said fuggit. It's just another treadmill. I think I'm done with on-line gaming of that sort.
Good question. I'm playing Shadows of Amn right now for about the 4th time. I've had Neverwinter Nights sitting around since it came out and haven't managed to get more than about 2 hours into it. I couldn't tell you why. Partially I dislike that in NWN I can't form a party. Partially I dislike the single-player plot. Partially I dislike the interface.
It's a reasonable limitation. My only complaint about Apple has nothing to do with their DRM, but rather being locked into iTunes + iPod. If Microsoft did this, we'd scream bloody murder, monopology, technical hegemony, etc. Apple doing this is ok for whatever reason. Probably because their market share is paltry and when the underdog uses the overdog's tactics to score a victory, it's hard not to cheer. Anyway, I invite people who object to Apple's DRM to do so, and do so effectively, but if we send a message to the content cartels that even as generous a policy as Apple's isn't generous enough, I don't expect them to do anything but say, "fuck it" and crank it up. I suppose there's something to be said for not taking table scraps when you want the whole turkey and believe that you're entitled to it.
When I bought Warcraft, my roommate didn't have to buy a copy for us to play over the network. I could do a net install on his box and throw the CD in mine and we could play. But later when he wanted to play with another guy, one of the two of them had to have the CD. No problem, he borowed mine, until _I_ wanted to play again, and then I said, "Palmer, go buy your own goddam copy." And so on. What's that sound like? Indeed, "try before you buy."
I haven't seen a lot of mainstream politicians calling for the government to censor games. That is, disallow them from being published or alter their content. Not even that Jack Thompson idiot has called for that. Only that games be properly labeled for content and not marketed or sold to children if their content is inappropriate for kids. This is no more than what we demand of the tobacco companies. And they're great role models for how to run a responsible business. Right?
I prefer GCal to outlook and iCal. I actually like other mapping software MUCH MUCH better than Google maps. I use Mapquest or Yahoo before Google Maps. I like Gmail over over any mail client, including TB, although I use TB at home now and then. I like Google search fairly well, and answers.com isn't bad.
Because my life is actually interesting and consists of something besides IT-related books cluttering up a dusty bookshelf in an untidy basement apartment. It'd be selfish not to share it, especially when there are, obviously, so many people who desperately need to live vicariously through somebody else's life.
All joking aside, I also don't "get" the social networking sites, and I avoid them. My blog is sufficient for my friends and family and follow my various goings-on. At the risk of sounding like a snob, I guess I don't see the point of hanging out in chat rooms and social networking sites when there's a ton of people all over the place you could be actually meeting and hanging out with. Then again, I met my wife through the personals, mostly because I rarely find the kind of women I'm interested in at your typical thirtysomething watering hole. I suppose in the end people want a safe and largely anonymous way to say, "hey, here's who I am," and hope to God that people like them. Dunno. I smell a senior thesis in all of this somewhere.
I have not met a single soul outside of the medical and legal profession whose actual and typical workload could not be accomplished in 30-40 hours of real honest work. The problem is that most of them spend at least 2 hours a day screwing around, reading Slashdot, reading CNN, chatting in the aisles, or doing make-work while waiting for somebody else to deliver something that they need to continue their legitimate work. Now and then we get a rush ("I told the client you'd have it by tomorrow." "That's 2 weeks of work!" "Well, get started!") but by and large I don't know anybody who doesn't spend at least 2-3 hours of their 10 and 12 hour days goofing off to one degree or another. Or, more commonly, 2-3 hours of their 8 hour days, which means they have to come in the weekend. This is invariably blamed on the boss, who is also goofing around but never shows up on Saturday.
Freedom of speech is violated when there are legal consequences from government for saying what you think. This is not that. We had freedom of speech before the internet even existed, I don't see how we're losing it with a tiered system. Don't misunderstand, I don't agree with or like the "tiered" internet approach, but this hyperbolic language about what is and is not a loss of basic human rights is not conductive to the debate. It trivializes TRUE abuses and suspensions of human rights, and clouds the issue in people's minds. When people don't understand what something is, they can't make intelligent decisions about it.
I submitted this story as an "ask Slashdot" focusing on exactly that line. It was rejected, and this turd was posted in its place. Slashdot would be so much cooler if I was in charge.
So, seen the price of a CD lately? If 'the market' had 'sorted it out', it ought to be around a few cents for the more widely produced mass produced products. Oops, nope, not there. And the amortized cost of Windows should be a couple of bucks. Oh, not there either.
This doesn't mean the market failed. It means the market has been slow to respond. I agree that this is because there were no other options. Well, now there are, and CD prices may or not be falling, I wouldn't know, I haven't bought one in about six years. And that alone ought to be proof enough that the market is functioning properly. No legal interference is needed, not to ban DRM, nor to requir eit.
Seems the market isnt sorting things out that good, eh?
No, it's working just fine. The real problem with digital music is that we can't solve the "piracy" issue the same way we did with tapes. With audio cassettes, you pay a royalty for blank tapes that goes to the industry to offset the cost of any potential piracy you may do with that tape. What if the tape is for original recordings? Then you buy a studio master that costs more but has no such royalty.
You can't really tax the sale of hard drives and computers on the grounds that piracy can be done with it. The primary purpose of the audio cassette was to record music. It is engineered for no other use. Computers are different animals, and we'd never tolerate an RIAA royalty on a GB of disk space. Again, the market is working. It has prevented a stupid solution from being proposed and implemented.
Indeed. Intellectual monopoly legislation needs to be removed. There is nothing that justifies the legal intervention of copyrights or patents in the market, and the damage is obvious.
Yes there is. Most people will not continue to create if their ability to financially benefit is removed or damaged. IP laws exist to encourage society continue to innovate. If the first guy who invents something and pours all the time and resaerch into inventing it ends up poor and bankrupt because somebody else just took the idea and did the same thing cheaper (or used his resource to bully the inventer out of the market), most people would sit around waiting to hijack the Next Big Thing. This is what Microsoft tries to do, and we hate them for it. Why is it wrong for MS but we expect all IP laws to be repealed or reformed so we can do it to whomever we wish?
Retaining the color scheme was a requirement. Blame Taco and his perplexing and dogged insistance that Slashdot continue to use the second-latest and secnod-greatest technologies to keep Slashdot looking like crap.
The shooter is responsible for what he does with his gun. The driver is responsible for what he does with his car, and the individual is responsible for what he does with his games. The eater is responsible for how much mcDonald's he shoves in his maw. I tend to agree. This "get rich quick via torts" mentality is reaching the end of its tenure. People who constantly accuse products and businesses of destroying America and her precious children trivialize real and legit cases of product liability, and give people the false impression that the courts always side with these ludicrous claims.
$string = qq|But wait- How can it be wrong if the MPAA does it? laws only apply to us mortals...|;
$string =~ s/MPAA/United States congress/;
print $string;
Computer literacy is becoming an increasingly used term in education, and more and more schools are being asked to set computer literacy goals for their students. Unfortunately for too many, it means being able to use Microsoft products, and that's all. However, I see it much differently, and I cannot help but think that computer literacy is all about using computers to be able to communicate more effectively. With that in mind does anyone have any recommendations for computer literacy goals, and how to measure them?
For most people, this is all you need. People should have a basic understanding of what the various parts are. You may not know how to fix your brakes, but you know what purpose they serve. You may not know how to repair an engine, but you know the car won't move without one. You don't know the power steering works, but you can tell when it's broken.
That's all people need. They need to understand the very basics. Nobody needs to know how to program, but we should be taught the basics of how computers work, enough to be able to guess what's wrong. When I hit the brakes and my car makes a squealing sound, I know enough to call the brake shop, and not a body shop. When the thing won't shift out of second, I know it's the gearbox/transmission, and I don't call a glass shop. That's what computer users need: a basic intuitive understanding of what's most likely causing your problem. Too often I see people calling up Charter to complain about how the network is down when they've just got a bad NIC or their router lost its DNS. We don't need to know how DNS works to guess that a bad or missing DNS configuration could be causing our problem.
That being said, most of us are only ever going to use MS and its various products for the foreseeable future. Just like most of us are going to be driving cars with four wheels and automatic transmissions for the foreseeable future. That assumption may change, but it's a safe bet for now, and expecting every driver to be adept with a clutch is not reasonable. It may make for a better all-around driver who is more competant, more knowledgable, safer, more versatile, more able to help out in an emergency, even. But it's not necessary on a day-to-day basis. Some people, quite a few, still like the clutch over an automatic, but they're not in the majority.
Likewise, most users don't need to know how to program, they need to know how to use their computer to accomplish what they wish to accomplish. To a degree, this means divorcing them from MS and making them understand that there's more to the web than what they see in IE, and that the Internet is not synonymous with Microsoft. Then they need to know how to safely use the tools on their computer to use the 'net. For most people, that's MS. And that's about it.
Slashdot Mirror
I guess I see a serious moral difference between a side that drops leaflets warning civilians of incoming attacks and encouraging them to move/leave, so that military targets and weapons caches can be destroyed with a minimum of civilian casualties, and a side that straps bombs to 15 year olds and sends them into a Sbarro's to blow up 40 people who are trying to enjoy lunch.
Perhaps you don't see any difference, and that's your prerogative, but that kind of thinking ("we're no better because we do rotten stuff too") is exactly what is going to lead to the downfall of Western civilization. What scares me even more is that a lot of people think we deserve it. What scares me even more than THAT is that the people who think we deserve it are almost without exception educated an enlightened liberal thinkers who cherish the progress made in the name of liberty - desegregation, women's sufferage, the gradual triumphs of the gay rights movement, etc. These things would fly right out the window across the globe in the absence of countries like the U.K. and U.S.
...because the "international community" has such a stellar track record for taking on difficult tasks and running them effectively and fairly without corruption. Snort.
Most banks offer CDs that you can mature at any time and you'll get a better interest rate than the 0.75% they offer with their crap-ass savings account. If you don't like that, get into a money market.
Next up was PvE. Running Molten Core 120 times in hopes of getting the one drop you need. And you need it so you can get good enough gear to hit Blackwing Lair, whose gear you need to be good enough to tackle AQ40, whose gear you need to be good enough to tackle the Necropolis, whose gear you need to be .... well you get the idea.
What finally broke me though was the server lag. I was a MUD admin, I understand the internet, and I can tolerate some lag. But when Blizzard designs encounters that REQUIRE 40 people with a good connection to have a shot at beating that encounter (I'm thinking of Vael here) and the server lags to the point with only 3 groups working on that instance that the encounter is unbeatable, why should I keep playing? Our BWL group was up to Firemaw at one point. And then for MONTHS we couldn't get past Vael. We'd organize, gather, wade through the 8,983,391 paladins hanging around BRM to get into BWL and then we'd beat the General and throw ourselves at Vael for 4 hours before calling it quits. Our strategy was fine, but with the lag, we simply could not do enough damage quickly enough to beat her.
That, plus I'm starting law school this fall, it was just a good time to quit. That was in April. I checked back with my guild after the Shaman talent "improvement" was done, and the lag is still a problem. So to hell with it. I loved WoW and I wish I could still play but I've reached a point in the game's advancement where I have to schedule my life around gaming rather than schedule gaming to fit into my life. I don't want to be like that. I did that with EQ and DAoC and while I had some fun, I eventually found myself irritated and frustrated, throwing all my energy into something that wasn't giving me much back and wasn't all that fun. I decided that if I wanted my life to revolve around that kind of experience I'd just get married. :)
I'm sooooo glad I got out of WoW. As is usually the case with these games, the first year or so is the "glory era," after which everything that made the game fun is slowly eroded away. I went through this with EQ, DAoC, and now WoW. Even the stupid bugs and stuff didn't bother me. It was new and different and fun to explore, but the longer the game marches on, the more insane content and bad ideas find their way into the game. Cheerio, World of Warcraft.
Chris Lambert should voice Raistlin. Just check out his Raiden in Mortal Combat.
Why? Her solution is to throw her hands up, run away, and bitch that nobody else is doing anything about it. She doesn't need to prepare for anything.
This drove me nuts until I finally realized that I was going to get griefed no matter what, and the answer is to make sure I deserve it. I began griefing non-stop. I'd just hang out in lowbie zones and harrass and grief people. Eventually some 60's would show up and put a stop to it and /spit on me a thousand times.
And then when my alts got griefed or ganked or whatever, I laughed at the dancing night elf who was /spitting on me a thousand times because, quite frankly, I knew that I really really had that coming. I gave better than I got.
The fact that I was der uber Shaman only made griefing more satisfying. Run the boards, little boys! Complain that you can't take a shaman 20 levels above you!
So yeah. Solve griefers with more griefing. The problem doesn't go away I guess but you enjoy the game anyhow. Flame away, I don't care, I cancelled months ago. After PvP grinding to get my elite super dooper PvP set I tried some PvE, but when they announced Necropolis I said fuggit. It's just another treadmill. I think I'm done with on-line gaming of that sort.
Good question. I'm playing Shadows of Amn right now for about the 4th time. I've had Neverwinter Nights sitting around since it came out and haven't managed to get more than about 2 hours into it. I couldn't tell you why. Partially I dislike that in NWN I can't form a party. Partially I dislike the single-player plot. Partially I dislike the interface.
I know we were all worried about this.
It's a reasonable limitation. My only complaint about Apple has nothing to do with their DRM, but rather being locked into iTunes + iPod. If Microsoft did this, we'd scream bloody murder, monopology, technical hegemony, etc. Apple doing this is ok for whatever reason. Probably because their market share is paltry and when the underdog uses the overdog's tactics to score a victory, it's hard not to cheer. Anyway, I invite people who object to Apple's DRM to do so, and do so effectively, but if we send a message to the content cartels that even as generous a policy as Apple's isn't generous enough, I don't expect them to do anything but say, "fuck it" and crank it up. I suppose there's something to be said for not taking table scraps when you want the whole turkey and believe that you're entitled to it.
Wait. Hondas are a "POS" but you're oozling over the Camaro IROC Z28 with extra hoosier sauce? Ouch.
When I bought Warcraft, my roommate didn't have to buy a copy for us to play over the network. I could do a net install on his box and throw the CD in mine and we could play. But later when he wanted to play with another guy, one of the two of them had to have the CD. No problem, he borowed mine, until _I_ wanted to play again, and then I said, "Palmer, go buy your own goddam copy." And so on. What's that sound like? Indeed, "try before you buy."
I haven't seen a lot of mainstream politicians calling for the government to censor games. That is, disallow them from being published or alter their content. Not even that Jack Thompson idiot has called for that. Only that games be properly labeled for content and not marketed or sold to children if their content is inappropriate for kids. This is no more than what we demand of the tobacco companies. And they're great role models for how to run a responsible business. Right?
I prefer GCal to outlook and iCal. I actually like other mapping software MUCH MUCH better than Google maps. I use Mapquest or Yahoo before Google Maps. I like Gmail over over any mail client, including TB, although I use TB at home now and then. I like Google search fairly well, and answers.com isn't bad.
All joking aside, I also don't "get" the social networking sites, and I avoid them. My blog is sufficient for my friends and family and follow my various goings-on. At the risk of sounding like a snob, I guess I don't see the point of hanging out in chat rooms and social networking sites when there's a ton of people all over the place you could be actually meeting and hanging out with. Then again, I met my wife through the personals, mostly because I rarely find the kind of women I'm interested in at your typical thirtysomething watering hole. I suppose in the end people want a safe and largely anonymous way to say, "hey, here's who I am," and hope to God that people like them. Dunno. I smell a senior thesis in all of this somewhere.
The first two provisions are fine. The third is a carte blanche to criminalize the sale of any game they want to kids.
I have not met a single soul outside of the medical and legal profession whose actual and typical workload could not be accomplished in 30-40 hours of real honest work. The problem is that most of them spend at least 2 hours a day screwing around, reading Slashdot, reading CNN, chatting in the aisles, or doing make-work while waiting for somebody else to deliver something that they need to continue their legitimate work. Now and then we get a rush ("I told the client you'd have it by tomorrow." "That's 2 weeks of work!" "Well, get started!") but by and large I don't know anybody who doesn't spend at least 2-3 hours of their 10 and 12 hour days goofing off to one degree or another. Or, more commonly, 2-3 hours of their 8 hour days, which means they have to come in the weekend. This is invariably blamed on the boss, who is also goofing around but never shows up on Saturday.
Freedom of speech is violated when there are legal consequences from government for saying what you think. This is not that. We had freedom of speech before the internet even existed, I don't see how we're losing it with a tiered system. Don't misunderstand, I don't agree with or like the "tiered" internet approach, but this hyperbolic language about what is and is not a loss of basic human rights is not conductive to the debate. It trivializes TRUE abuses and suspensions of human rights, and clouds the issue in people's minds. When people don't understand what something is, they can't make intelligent decisions about it.
I submitted this story as an "ask Slashdot" focusing on exactly that line. It was rejected, and this turd was posted in its place. Slashdot would be so much cooler if I was in charge.
This doesn't mean the market failed. It means the market has been slow to respond. I agree that this is because there were no other options. Well, now there are, and CD prices may or not be falling, I wouldn't know, I haven't bought one in about six years. And that alone ought to be proof enough that the market is functioning properly. No legal interference is needed, not to ban DRM, nor to requir eit.
Seems the market isnt sorting things out that good, eh?
No, it's working just fine. The real problem with digital music is that we can't solve the "piracy" issue the same way we did with tapes. With audio cassettes, you pay a royalty for blank tapes that goes to the industry to offset the cost of any potential piracy you may do with that tape. What if the tape is for original recordings? Then you buy a studio master that costs more but has no such royalty.
You can't really tax the sale of hard drives and computers on the grounds that piracy can be done with it. The primary purpose of the audio cassette was to record music. It is engineered for no other use. Computers are different animals, and we'd never tolerate an RIAA royalty on a GB of disk space. Again, the market is working. It has prevented a stupid solution from being proposed and implemented.
Indeed. Intellectual monopoly legislation needs to be removed. There is nothing that justifies the legal intervention of copyrights or patents in the market, and the damage is obvious.
Yes there is. Most people will not continue to create if their ability to financially benefit is removed or damaged. IP laws exist to encourage society continue to innovate. If the first guy who invents something and pours all the time and resaerch into inventing it ends up poor and bankrupt because somebody else just took the idea and did the same thing cheaper (or used his resource to bully the inventer out of the market), most people would sit around waiting to hijack the Next Big Thing. This is what Microsoft tries to do, and we hate them for it. Why is it wrong for MS but we expect all IP laws to be repealed or reformed so we can do it to whomever we wish?
Retaining the color scheme was a requirement. Blame Taco and his perplexing and dogged insistance that Slashdot continue to use the second-latest and secnod-greatest technologies to keep Slashdot looking like crap.
The shooter is responsible for what he does with his gun. The driver is responsible for what he does with his car, and the individual is responsible for what he does with his games. The eater is responsible for how much mcDonald's he shoves in his maw. I tend to agree. This "get rich quick via torts" mentality is reaching the end of its tenure. People who constantly accuse products and businesses of destroying America and her precious children trivialize real and legit cases of product liability, and give people the false impression that the courts always side with these ludicrous claims.
$string = qq|But wait- How can it be wrong if the MPAA does it? laws only apply to us mortals...|;
$string =~ s/MPAA/United States congress/;
print $string;
For most people, this is all you need. People should have a basic understanding of what the various parts are. You may not know how to fix your brakes, but you know what purpose they serve. You may not know how to repair an engine, but you know the car won't move without one. You don't know the power steering works, but you can tell when it's broken.
That's all people need. They need to understand the very basics. Nobody needs to know how to program, but we should be taught the basics of how computers work, enough to be able to guess what's wrong. When I hit the brakes and my car makes a squealing sound, I know enough to call the brake shop, and not a body shop. When the thing won't shift out of second, I know it's the gearbox/transmission, and I don't call a glass shop. That's what computer users need: a basic intuitive understanding of what's most likely causing your problem. Too often I see people calling up Charter to complain about how the network is down when they've just got a bad NIC or their router lost its DNS. We don't need to know how DNS works to guess that a bad or missing DNS configuration could be causing our problem.
That being said, most of us are only ever going to use MS and its various products for the foreseeable future. Just like most of us are going to be driving cars with four wheels and automatic transmissions for the foreseeable future. That assumption may change, but it's a safe bet for now, and expecting every driver to be adept with a clutch is not reasonable. It may make for a better all-around driver who is more competant, more knowledgable, safer, more versatile, more able to help out in an emergency, even. But it's not necessary on a day-to-day basis. Some people, quite a few, still like the clutch over an automatic, but they're not in the majority.
Likewise, most users don't need to know how to program, they need to know how to use their computer to accomplish what they wish to accomplish. To a degree, this means divorcing them from MS and making them understand that there's more to the web than what they see in IE, and that the Internet is not synonymous with Microsoft. Then they need to know how to safely use the tools on their computer to use the 'net. For most people, that's MS. And that's about it.