And now for a rebuttal to this inane garbage, McGarnagle:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hjbl9QBrM50

Never talk to the police!

"After all, you don't get tenure by dazzling 18-year-olds with PowerPoints. "

I don't know about the study, but the article is garbage.

The professor's job is not to entertain students, it's to teach them. Sometimes, students don't like the teachers who force them to work hard and learn the material.

That's why we have tenure.

Although my significant other simply will not engage in any online activities with me... or with anyone else, pretty much, I do have a good idea for other people.

Gary's Mod Theater Mode!

Yes, it's true, you are limited to watching stuff on Youtube, but there is a lot of good stuff on there. And it isn't as taxing as playing a real game type game.

If an individual holds the copyright, it isn't folk music.

It's called folk music.

It was pretty much inevitable that after being taught how to make world class devices by Apple, Foxconn would eventually question why a bunch of foriegners living off in the States should get a cut of their hard work. This means that Apple's big advantages will be:

1. Hardware patents: How easy it will be for Foxconn to get around these to sell to the US and Europe I'm not sure, since I'm no lawyer. If they have to do their own redesigns or are even completely stymied by overbroad patents they may have a limited market for their devices.

2. Software (and Software patents): Foxconn can now make world class hardware, no mistake about that. However, I don't know how well they will do with software, since that isn't part of their core competencies. Also, they'll have the same software patent issues that Android devices have.

I'm not a fan of Foxconn's horrible labor practices, but it will be interesting to watch this develop.

This is pretty absurd, the idea that Larry Ellison can own the sixth largest Hawaiian Island.

On the one hand, it means the Hawaiians, on that island at least, have a royal family again.

On the other hand, he holds it due to fictitious numbers in a database, so what this really means is that the United States gave it to him.

The United States will take it back whenever it likes, unless he decides to be a king like Leopold and establish his own military to torment the inhabitants. In which case the United States will take it back after a rather short war.

But I'm sure he'll enjoy pretending to be king for a while.

Wii U looks a damn sight better than the new Xbox, which I believe Microsoft has named the Xbox Catastrophe. (It goes along with the Calamity operating system that they released for PC/Tablets.)

Well, the first thing to understand about this article is that it treats software engineering as a pure meritocracy.

Maybe at some places it is.

However, for me the important film is that timeless documentary, Office Space, which drummed into my head two things that I actually found to be true:

1. If you are good at office politics, you will be called "a straight shooter with upper management written all over him," if you are merely good at creating software you will be "Mr. Samir Naga... Naga... Naga... Not gonna work here anymore, anyway."

2. Even being a successful office politicker like Peter Gibbons or Bill Lumbergh, you will still possibly find that you have a hateful, soul crushing job that drains away your life and enthusiasm every day.

What does this mean? Well, it means that you have to decide early on whether you are chasing a good life or an early retirement. chasing the good life means hanging on until you get a job you can tolerate, early retirement means making as much as you can so you can get out as fast as you can. Or perhaps being hit by a truck so you can work at your real passion, "A Jump to Conclusions" mat.

All in all, I think wire fraud and armed robbery are probably more satisfying careers much of the time.

What laws have the Kochs demonstrably violated?

Trading with Iran.

For starters, and there's more if you look.

They should be swinging from lampposts right next to the one Bloomberg is swinging from, maybe across from the ones Jamie Dimon and Don Blankenship are strung up from.

The main problems will be really fat crows and running out of lamp posts.

It's a culture that lives in fear. Constantly. Daily. Days on, or days off.

If you like what you do, you aren't reading the TPS reports about your job, you are actually doing your job. There have been times when I got so much more work done off the clock (yes, working for free is stupid, but that stupidity is mitigated with a hard deadline and your job on the line) because I only worked, I didn't check every stupid piece of corporate sponsored spam in my inbox, and they never scheduled meetings about the proper way to fill in a request for more TPS pre-printed cover sheet request forms.

Checking Email? That's usually not work, that's corporate politics. The fine art of brown-nosing.

Look, police informants are not whistle blowers. You may think they deserve to be protected, but the term whistle blower has a specific meaning that does not equate to police informant.

There's no point in even comparing a smartphone to an Xbox. Conflating smartphones (still primarily used as phones, therefore always connected to network) with tablets (often WiFi only and connected only when an available network is within range) actually hurts your argument. (Xboxes are stationary so they don't have the same connectivity problems of Wifi tablets.)

No one I know uses Xbox Live, and of the 4 360 owners I know (myself and 3 others) I'm the only one who has it connected to the Internet. Two of the others are typical gamers who like shooting things, the other is a lady who bought it so she could use Kinect for... whatever it is one uses Kinect for. I think it's yoga or dancing or something... but I don't really know.

Now, the main reason those others never connected is because they don't have WiFi for their Xboxes and they don't have a hub near it due to the layout of their homes. Which brings us to our next difficulty and a fatal flaw in the current Microsoft strategy.

Microsoft, like many before them, has contempt for video games. They want a system that's an "everything box" and "used by the whole family." "Women are the new core, " is not just a pickup line for Microsoft executives, it signals a major change in how they are positioning the Xbox in the home.

Currently, my Xbox is hooked up in my office to a computer monitor with HDMI inputs. Why isn't it hooked to the big screen TV in the living room, one might ask? Because if it were, my wife would literally have killed me by now. Then she'd have all that blood to clean up off the carpet, not to mention disposing of the body. I love my wife, so I don't want to put her through that.

So, our set up now assures her that she will never have to miss a single episode of Law & Order: SVU, and I will never have to watch a single episode of Law & Order: SVU. Marital Bliss!

But it means I don't need to use the TV functions of the Xbox. If I want to watch Netflix, or Amazon, or HBOGo, I just switch the monitor over to my computer, although when I'm watching TV I prefer to do it with my wife (unless it's SVU or something about those non-Star Trek Cardassians.)

Now, if I do what Microsoft wants, and hook the Xbox One (which I'm not planning to ever get, but I said that about 360, so you never know) up in the living room, I will no longer be able to use it to play video games.

In which case, aren't I better off with a Web connected Blu Ray player, or a Roku Player?

Sounds like someone doesn't like their Telescreen....