I detest the modern versions of Office. Word 5 was a productive tool - versions after that were increasingly bloatware; Office 2010 was the last straw. I spent the last year transitioning to LaTeX. I have templates for technical reports, presentations, and reports of analysis (I specialize in microscopy and image analysis.) The combination of R, Sweave, and LaTeX, and shell scripts or batch files makes many projects very fast to reproduce when new data is added. This tool chain works quite well with git for version control - much better than the Microsoft "track changes." Microsoft keep breaking VBA to the point I will not use it for anything new.

The best part that I have found as a scientist is that I can create a directory hierarchy for a project, keep the source code and report under version control with git and have all the needed data in the appropriate place in the path. When the project is done, i do one final build of the analysis/report as a quality check and then use tar/gzip to make a compendium for archiving. When I need to reproduce an analysis, months later - everything is there. This has improved the quality of my work significantly compared to when there was a lot of point/click/copy/paste involved. it is also especially helpful in the middle of a project when I want to try a "what if" scenario or if a client wants to fine tune the sample set - or tosses in "just one more" before a tight deadline. Really reduced the number of "Mylanta moments" for me.

Been there. Done that. Don't need another T-shirt... Most of our machines are on 24x7 and I tried to convince our WWIS folks to schedule updates and virus scans for after 7 p.m., but no.... Made my job impossible - I'd be on deadline with an internal client screaming for analytical results because a production line was down or a customer was upset about some imperfection and we needed to diagnose and fix the problem yesterday and some auto process would kick in. Our IS folks treated us all like office workers writing memos. That's why I wiped all the lab computers and and set them up as stand-alone systems in my own workgroup. My office system is the only one left in the domain and there are still times I am trying to generate a big report with R, Sweave, and LaTeX and some IT autoprocess starts sucking up all my CPU and thrashing my disk. I really want to move to a model of scientist as artisan - where I administer and use my own system and send results to my internal and external clients in the cloud. I am starting the transition, trying to use OpenSource tools wherever possible.

I could not agree more. Nvidia has been very responsive.

The latest version on Ubuntu 12.04 beta2 doesn't cut it on my hardware. I am thankful for Nvidia's support of Linux.

I agree. I was recently pulled into a project to develop some software that was going to run on a system with a highly-customized real-time Linux kernel built from scratch from the 2009 version of Ubuntu (Karmic Koala.) I needed to make sure my code ran on that platform, so I grabbed an old (2007 vintage) laptop and installed Karmic. I was surprised how peppy it was. I suspect that it would do 99% of what most students and office workers would need. The problem is that designers keep putting out content that use new versions of Flash and other plug-ins and I suspect that these kind of annoyances are what will force people to upgrade otherwise fully functional systems. Note that vendors do this to force upgrading to new hardware and software to drive sales, not because of true need by customers. But that IS how the world works...

Ding ding ding - we have a winner. Our IT folks put so much crapware on our corporate image, that I had to take all my lab computers out of the domain and run vanilla installs w/ minimal antivirus and our imaging hardware/software. Makes a BIG difference.

Why not give Xubuntu a shot? Might be less of a headache. I just migrated to it from Mandriva.

Uh, this is done by default with DropBox. There is a DropBox folder on each local PC. It the site just goes down, it will just stop synching. Now if the feds force them to delete local copies and then shut down, that would be a bigger problem. I think the same is true with iCloud.

Well put!

Totally disagree with you. As evidence I cite the effectiveness of the videos at Kahn Academy and Andrew Ng's Machine Learning course (Stanford.) Students prefer video lectures because they can pause them and think about a concept or try an example.

Depends on the quality. Lots of people have watched Prof. Andrew Ng's (Stanford) Machine Learning video lectures. The latest version (2011) are much better than the 2008/2009 version as one would expect from someone who refines his methods. Highly recommended.

Me too. Just thought it was spam...

Sorry, but human religious beliefs/assertions make contradictory claims. They cannot all be equally true and valid at the same time. A and (not A) cannot be true at the same time. It is possible that all could be wrong simultaneously, but all simply cannot be equally true and valid at the same time.

In a multi-cultural society - especially one with unprecedented access to information - the solution which provides individual liberty and responsibility for choice is to have free and open discourse among willing participants. Truth does not fear scrutiny. This requires listening and not talking past one another. No one is served by strawman arguments. A Christian professor, Gordon Fee, put it like this, "I cannot say, 'I agree,' until I can say, 'I understand.' " For Fee, the test was that one party could express the other party's argument in their own words with the result that the second party agreed this accurately represented their belief. Fee's position (and I agree) is that then and only then, could one have meaningful dialog. By the way, I think Fee's standards work in any venue prone to disagreement.

That said, one should be able to opt out of those conversations by choice.

Let me answer your first objection. if done poorly, you are correct. We home schooled our children from grades 3-8. They went to public high school from grades 9-12. We augmented home lessons with group lessons, church youth group, and scouting. When our children entered high school, they were already well-socialized and made new friends easily. Their teachers were pleased that they were already self-directed learners. This enabled our daughter to take a second year of calculus in high school as independent study under the direction of their most senior math teacher. The decision of whether to choose home schooling, private schooling, or public schools is a decision that needs to be carefully considered by parents. I would note that the optimum choice may be different at different stages for any specific child.

I will address your second point by noting that a parent's primary responsibility is to see to the needs of their own children. When feasible, this is done in community because we are interdependent. That said, there are times when our neighbors make choices - such as not enforcing sufficient discipline in schools or forcing values that a parent finds repugnant, that the parent must vote with their feet. I agree that we are a multicultural society and there are benefits to learning about other value systems We always taught our children to treat others with different views with courtesy and respect, trying to truly understand the position before deciding whether to agree or disagree. That did not mean that we needed to embrace every belief and accept that all beliefs were equally true or valid.

I could not agree more with the importance of the "other factors" you listed. I think they are more important than technology. Technology is simply a tool - and like any tool it can be used well or abused. Consider the work of Salman Kahn of Kahn Academy. He started tutoring his cousins in math. Because he was doing this long distance, he started making you-tube videos. He reports that his cousins preferred the videos to "live sessions" because they could pause them and fit them into their own schedule. His work has grown into Kahn Academy that many schools are using effectively. At a higher level, I would point to the on-line machine Leaning class by Prof. Andrew Ng of Stanford. This uses technology very effectively but requires a self-directed and self-disciplined student. These same tools are abused by those who make poor choices.

At the elementary and secondary level, I view education like a three leg stool - where the parents, teachers, and administration are the three legs supporting the student (the seat.) If any part fails to perform, the whole system suffers. Parents must value education and require respectful, disciplined behavior from their children at all times; teachers must use all the tools at their disposal to create instruction plans that effectively communicate the material to the student. Technology is only one of many tools. The administration must make sure that teachers have the needed tools and help enforce discipline. When rowdy, disrespectful, and non-performing students are kept in the classroom, it ruins the environment for everyone. if the state must educate these problem students, they need to be segregated to a boot-camp like school that deals with their special needs. At some point, you cut your losses. It is a question of return on investment. The ultimate objective is to turn the student into a self-directed, life-long learner who takes responsibility for their own education. We now have unprecedented access to information - more than at any other time in history. Ignorance is the result of a string of bad choices and the individual bears significant responsibility.