Not totally. It has either been revived by someone or there is a new distro based on it. I forget which, but I see updates fairly often on Distrowatch.
They also love selling the expensive books at the school book store.
It would be interesting to know what kind of profit margin college bookstores run, with the crazy price of textbooks (even 20yrs ago when I was in college). I'm sure the publishers get most of it, but I bet there's still some kind of mark-up.
Textbooks are a great reference. As long as kids remember how to read and turn pages, so another half decade at least. The internet may be good for supplementary information, the textbook is generally laid out in a straightforward manner, it's compact, and it's all there.
I read a book a few years ago, titled "High Tech Heretic", which talked about how computer based education (at that time anyway) was less effective than traditional teaching methods. I can't really comment on that, as I'm not an educator, but in my opinion a physical textbook is a lot easier to page through and jump around in than is an eBook. (On the downside, you don't have an easy search function to locate specific information.)
Even though we are supposed to love the newest and latest kindle because of it's anti-reflective display and fantastic battery life, books are much more "Keep on task" friendly. I think this is much more useful in our attention deficit world.
I agree here, it's too easy to get sidetracked & tempted, not to mention smart kids would try to hack electronic devices to be able to surf & do social media. I think you also need to keep in mind that kids of different ages & abilities will learn best with different teaching methods; electronic may work best for some, direct verbal instruction from teachers for others, etc. Perhaps stick with traditional teaching for the first few years, then introduce newer formats?
You are correct, sir/madam/AC. I do not, therefore a small basic smartphone is more than enough for me. I do accept, however, that there is a large segment of the population for which the larger smartphones will be useful. I'm willing to bet there is still a market for smaller phones, though.
Sorry, Motorola, I'm still rocking your basic Moto G. When will you manufacturers comprehend that not everyone wants to lug around an overpriced tablet? Would it really kill you to at least try making a smaller phone - less than 5" - these days?
I'll definitely second this. I have two Moto G's - one that's activated for phone use and an older one I've had around the house for years just for wifi (to check email, play solitaire, and a little web browsing). Wouldn't want to go much smaller than this & definitely not bigger, it's just about the perfect size for a smart phone. (though the SE is a nice size too; if they'd bring it back, I'd think about it) Main problem with the Moto G is its older software; something like 5.1 is the newest you can get for the basic G.
Part of it's just the history for those of us who "came of age" in the 70s & 80s. I remember getting my first cassette waaay back in the 70s. (I want to say it was Alan Parsons "I Robot". Might be Captain & Tennielle, but I'd never admit to that.) And it was so much fun over the years making mix-tapes, once that became an option with dual cassette decks/boxes. Yeah, they had that annoying tendency to go bad. But they're just so ingrained in memories of growing up that I kinda miss them. And I swore I never go to those ugly, disgusting CDs!
... Which of course, I eventually did. Today, I've pretty much reluctantly disposed of most of my cassettes, now that I've been able to replace them either with CDs or with mp3s, with which I can make back-up copies so much more easily.
Likewise, I don't see myself buying any phone without a headphone jack in the near future. Think the two of us will have the buying power to force the manufacturers to change their minds?:)
I also refuse to lug around a frigging "phablet" too. My phone is still an old Motorola Moto G. Don't know what I'm going to do when quit making decent phones at 5" & under.
I think this comes under the heading of "if it ain't broke, don't fix it". A headphone is such a universal accessory that I would argue there is NO GOOD EXCUSE for removing this jack unless they can provide something better. A proprietary dongle or bluetooth wireless is *not* something I would consider a better option. Maybe they're doing this so they can make phones that are even thinner, but I just don't see myself ever buying a phone that doesn't have a headphone jack.
What about those of us with less than perfect hearing, who use stereo headphones just to be able to understand what people are saying? Are we going to be required to pickup yet another gadget/gizmo to have to worry about charging & buying batteries for, in order to use bluetooth? Guess if I have to, I'll dump all bloatphones & go back to a flip phone if they all dump the jack.
Not sure what distro you're running, but having had Mint on my desktop for a few years now, I almost never have occasion to open up a terminal window. I see this as similar to the cmd prompt/Powershell in Windows - there if you need it or for power users, but most users can work just fine in the GUI for day-to-day fun & games.
I might be wrong, but "Windows as a service" seems to be about the same thing as the "rolling release" model being used by a number of Linux distributions. In a way, this seems like a good thing, as you'd never need to do a major reinstall to upgrade to a new version.
Of course, the downside is that you also need to be able to trust that the software authors will do adequate testing before putting out updates, which appears to be where Microsoft is not doing so well. Another issue is that there needs to be a built-in way to stop the updates that you don't want (e.g. interface changes), another area where MS is failing.
If you use their app or webmail interface, Protonmail is okay, as long as you don't need a large amount of storage. (I believe the free accounts are limited to 500 meg or something like that.)
The main downside to Proton for me is that, because of the encryption feature, you can't use 3rd part email clients.
My main email these days is with Zoho. They seem to be pretty reliable (other than a 1 day outage not long ago, which has been the exception). And they claim not to read your email. Believe that or not.
How about rolling the basic functionality back to Windows 7, then giving an option at login to go with a desktop interface in the style of any past or present Win version the user would prefer, like you can do with many Linux distros? I personally liked how win98 looked (like the very basic look), but I wouldn't want to push that on everyone because each user has a right to their own preference.
I'm kind of curious about this too. I'm sure that pretty much every email service out there has been used by unscrupulous users to send out spam, phishing emails, etc. Why single out one service that's probably not even one of the biggest?
And that brings up the question of why ebooks cost as much as they do. Once a book is written, edited, and 'packaged', I'd think there are virtually no other publishing costs to justify the current prices. Am I just a tinfoil-hat conspiracy theorist to think there must still be price-fixing going on here?
It probably reflects just more of a transition of one sector of capitalism to another.
But in the long run, I'm thinking owning less stuff per capita can only be good for the planet. Though less so for the people trying to sell that stuff.
Slashdot Mirror
Won't that be fun?
Not totally. It has either been revived by someone or there is a new distro based on it. I forget which, but I see updates fairly often on Distrowatch.
It would be interesting to know what kind of profit margin college bookstores run, with the crazy price of textbooks (even 20yrs ago when I was in college). I'm sure the publishers get most of it, but I bet there's still some kind of mark-up.
Pretty much what I was going to suggest: A tabbed format for the e-reader software, so you can have multiple windows open.
I read a book a few years ago, titled "High Tech Heretic", which talked about how computer based education (at that time anyway) was less effective than traditional teaching methods. I can't really comment on that, as I'm not an educator, but in my opinion a physical textbook is a lot easier to page through and jump around in than is an eBook. (On the downside, you don't have an easy search function to locate specific information.)
I agree here, it's too easy to get sidetracked & tempted, not to mention smart kids would try to hack electronic devices to be able to surf & do social media. I think you also need to keep in mind that kids of different ages & abilities will learn best with different teaching methods; electronic may work best for some, direct verbal instruction from teachers for others, etc. Perhaps stick with traditional teaching for the first few years, then introduce newer formats?
You are correct, sir/madam/AC. I do not, therefore a small basic smartphone is more than enough for me. I do accept, however, that there is a large segment of the population for which the larger smartphones will be useful. I'm willing to bet there is still a market for smaller phones, though.
Sorry, Motorola, I'm still rocking your basic Moto G. When will you manufacturers comprehend that not everyone wants to lug around an overpriced tablet? Would it really kill you to at least try making a smaller phone - less than 5" - these days?
Defender is doing its job then. It's protecting Windows machines from MS updates!
I'll definitely second this. I have two Moto G's - one that's activated for phone use and an older one I've had around the house for years just for wifi (to check email, play solitaire, and a little web browsing). Wouldn't want to go much smaller than this & definitely not bigger, it's just about the perfect size for a smart phone. (though the SE is a nice size too; if they'd bring it back, I'd think about it) Main problem with the Moto G is its older software; something like 5.1 is the newest you can get for the basic G.
Part of it's just the history for those of us who "came of age" in the 70s & 80s. I remember getting my first cassette waaay back in the 70s. (I want to say it was Alan Parsons "I Robot". Might be Captain & Tennielle, but I'd never admit to that.) And it was so much fun over the years making mix-tapes, once that became an option with dual cassette decks/boxes. Yeah, they had that annoying tendency to go bad. But they're just so ingrained in memories of growing up that I kinda miss them. And I swore I never go to those ugly, disgusting CDs!
... Which of course, I eventually did. Today, I've pretty much reluctantly disposed of most of my cassettes, now that I've been able to replace them either with CDs or with mp3s, with which I can make back-up copies so much more easily.
Wait, wasn't that what Rudolph said as he took off, leading the sleigh through the fog?
I also refuse to lug around a frigging "phablet" too. My phone is still an old Motorola Moto G. Don't know what I'm going to do when quit making decent phones at 5" & under.
I think this comes under the heading of "if it ain't broke, don't fix it". A headphone is such a universal accessory that I would argue there is NO GOOD EXCUSE for removing this jack unless they can provide something better. A proprietary dongle or bluetooth wireless is *not* something I would consider a better option. Maybe they're doing this so they can make phones that are even thinner, but I just don't see myself ever buying a phone that doesn't have a headphone jack.
What about those of us with less than perfect hearing, who use stereo headphones just to be able to understand what people are saying? Are we going to be required to pickup yet another gadget/gizmo to have to worry about charging & buying batteries for, in order to use bluetooth? Guess if I have to, I'll dump all bloatphones & go back to a flip phone if they all dump the jack.
Not sure what distro you're running, but having had Mint on my desktop for a few years now, I almost never have occasion to open up a terminal window. I see this as similar to the cmd prompt/Powershell in Windows - there if you need it or for power users, but most users can work just fine in the GUI for day-to-day fun & games.
Fine - as long as they give me lots of 'soma' to keep me stoned! ('Brave New World' joke there.... or was that '1984'?)
Me too. So basically, I'm going to die before I retire. :(
I might be wrong, but "Windows as a service" seems to be about the same thing as the "rolling release" model being used by a number of Linux distributions. In a way, this seems like a good thing, as you'd never need to do a major reinstall to upgrade to a new version.
Of course, the downside is that you also need to be able to trust that the software authors will do adequate testing before putting out updates, which appears to be where Microsoft is not doing so well. Another issue is that there needs to be a built-in way to stop the updates that you don't want (e.g. interface changes), another area where MS is failing.
If you use their app or webmail interface, Protonmail is okay, as long as you don't need a large amount of storage. (I believe the free accounts are limited to 500 meg or something like that.) The main downside to Proton for me is that, because of the encryption feature, you can't use 3rd part email clients. My main email these days is with Zoho. They seem to be pretty reliable (other than a 1 day outage not long ago, which has been the exception). And they claim not to read your email. Believe that or not.
How about rolling the basic functionality back to Windows 7, then giving an option at login to go with a desktop interface in the style of any past or present Win version the user would prefer, like you can do with many Linux distros? I personally liked how win98 looked (like the very basic look), but I wouldn't want to push that on everyone because each user has a right to their own preference.
I'm kind of curious about this too. I'm sure that pretty much every email service out there has been used by unscrupulous users to send out spam, phishing emails, etc. Why single out one service that's probably not even one of the biggest?
Who did you migrate to, hopefully someone more reliable?
And that brings up the question of why ebooks cost as much as they do. Once a book is written, edited, and 'packaged', I'd think there are virtually no other publishing costs to justify the current prices. Am I just a tinfoil-hat conspiracy theorist to think there must still be price-fixing going on here?
It probably reflects just more of a transition of one sector of capitalism to another.
But in the long run, I'm thinking owning less stuff per capita can only be good for the planet. Though less so for the people trying to sell that stuff.