I gotta assume this is a troll. This logic only applies if you do nothing else while your Linux iso downloads, but just sit and watch the progress bar grow.
If I was a 'minority' I would take great offense to this. In an effort to attract minorities, they are foregoing tests which measure the intelligence of a person, in favor of 'building stuff with blocks'?
The tests being used here are not simply 'building stuff with blocks'. The Lego building is only one part of a series of tests used to get a reading on the student's non-quantifiable intelligence (eg, interpersonal skills). As I read the article, it appears to me that students' success at duplicating the robot with Legos is not nearly as important as how they interact with each other as they try.
The problem is that standardized tests simply do not measure intelligence well. Or more correctly, they do not measure the full spectrum of intelligence well. An effort to include other measures is effort well-spent, even if it doesn't work on the first try.
But, if we switch over to the SOHO environment you'll be hard pressed to find any linux boxen. Ironically, this is the "market" linux ought to do best in - cheap, commodity, x86 hardware doing routine server work.
As a home-office worker, I'll attest to that (at least my experience of that). I would love to go all-Linux on my laptop, instead of clumsily switching from Linux to WinNT as I do now. But there are a few problems:
No Linux driver for my print/fax/copy/scanner. This is starting to change, as the HPOJ project picks up steam.
No Microsoft Office. This is deeply ingrained in the business community as the only software to use. I do use StarOffice, so this is a minimal concern for me, but frankly it's still a bigger pain than just using MSOffice.
I may work out of my home, but I don't work in a vacuum. As a programmer, I need to test my programs on the platform that my customers will be using. That means Windows. I can write the majority of code on the Linux side, but I've got to use Windows at some point.
So in the end, I end up using the Linux side considerably less. If I'm going to have to flip back and forth between OS's, why not stick in the one I have to use anyway?
Gotta love the sadism of the Carmageddon games. And a good baseball Sim (Triple Play, Hardball, whatever we can get) would be an automatic sell to me too.
I've been using SureTrade for a couple years now, and have no complaints. Trades are $7.95, and there is no minimum amount required to open an account. The monthly statements are easy to read as well. They also offer a dividend reinvestment plan for stocks that don't offer their own. (You can't purchase partial shares through this DRiP though.)
I now have six accounts with SureTrade: a regular taxable account, Roth IRAs for my wife and myself, Education IRAs for my children, and a rollover IRA for my wife. With all those accounts, there have only been two mixups:
I chose the wrong account when making a trade. This mixup was entirely my fault.
The funds for my wife's rollover IRA were put into her Roth instead. This one was SureTrade's fault. As soon as I pointed it out to them, however, they got the money transferred to the correct account. And since they pay interest on cash balances, the money was still getting a slight return during the time it took to get it correctly applied.
I can't say that SureTrade is better than the others, since I've never tried the others. But I can say that I have absolutely no complaints about SureTrade!
I've heard a couple people mention the Robolab system, which apparently is a more configurable version of the Invention System (correct me if I'm wrong). However, as far as I've been able to tell from Lego's website, Robolab is only for schools. Does anyone know if Robolab is available to individuals, and if it is worth checking out over the Invention System?
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I gotta assume this is a troll. This logic only applies if you do nothing else while your Linux iso downloads, but just sit and watch the progress bar grow.
The tests being used here are not simply 'building stuff with blocks'. The Lego building is only one part of a series of tests used to get a reading on the student's non-quantifiable intelligence (eg, interpersonal skills). As I read the article, it appears to me that students' success at duplicating the robot with Legos is not nearly as important as how they interact with each other as they try.
The problem is that standardized tests simply do not measure intelligence well. Or more correctly, they do not measure the full spectrum of intelligence well. An effort to include other measures is effort well-spent, even if it doesn't work on the first try.
As a home-office worker, I'll attest to that (at least my experience of that). I would love to go all-Linux on my laptop, instead of clumsily switching from Linux to WinNT as I do now. But there are a few problems:
So in the end, I end up using the Linux side considerably less. If I'm going to have to flip back and forth between OS's, why not stick in the one I have to use anyway?
Gotta love the sadism of the Carmageddon games. And a good baseball Sim (Triple Play, Hardball, whatever we can get) would be an automatic sell to me too.
I now have six accounts with SureTrade: a regular taxable account, Roth IRAs for my wife and myself, Education IRAs for my children, and a rollover IRA for my wife. With all those accounts, there have only been two mixups:
I can't say that SureTrade is better than the others, since I've never tried the others. But I can say that I have absolutely no complaints about SureTrade!
I've heard a couple people mention the Robolab system, which apparently is a more configurable version of the Invention System (correct me if I'm wrong). However, as far as I've been able to tell from Lego's website, Robolab is only for schools. Does anyone know if Robolab is available to individuals, and if it is worth checking out over the Invention System?