``I stumbled upon a solution while taking an online course... watching the lecture at 2x speed helped me focus.''

I devised a solution to a similar problem some years ago. We were required to listen to a series of audio training sessions. If the topics weren't boring enough already, to top it off, they were done by a couple of people from the Texas office who were unable to talk in anything but a slow (a painfully slow) drawl. I found that playing the sessions back at about 120% or so of normal speed made them a bit more tolerable for my Midwestern ears. At least they didn't put me to sleep. (New Yorkers might have needed to crank up the speed a bit higher.)

... the trips we'd take to my technology-challenged in-laws used to be frustrating as you can imagine. These are folks that still had a rotary dial phone up until the mid-90s. They have internet access now but it's on the cheap -- a fixed amount of data transfer before you need to get out a credit card to buy more access -- and it's usually maxed out before we arrive there. I take those weekends as an opportunity to a.) bring along a good book that I haven't had time to read and/or b.) bring along my notes, reference books, and my laptop to work on a coding project that I might have in the works. Not being connected to the internet actually is a boon when I have those two things to do. There is no temptation to just check out the news or what's on my favorite web sites. (Which invariably leads to an hour or more of following links to other pages.) Disconnect from the 'net from time to time. You can actually retrain your brain to not need the constant stimulation from the web.

Now I'm off to read some actual fiction...

"...reading every comment ever made on all of the Internet fora and passing along potential terrierist threats to the government!"

Exactly how does the idjit Cameron think an ISP is supposed to do this? Doesn't your vaunted government capture of everything that transpires on the Internet work any more?

Like others I found the headline confusing. I read it as "Researchers are predicting the use of Wikipedia as a vector for the spread of disease". This may mean that:

• Disinformation and ignorance are diseases.
• Memes and computer viruses are diseases.
• Wilipedia contains information that leads to depression.
• Instructions on Wikipedia lead to substance abuse.
• This is getting entertaining, fill in your own reason here.

I think the point of the story is that Duncan has never shown any curiosity once he got out of college. His degree is in Sociology and not Education so I think there are some valid questions as to his qualifications. I think it's rather telling that he doesn't even know what's been done in the past in the field in which he's employed. You have to wonder just that the heck he does all day. He's never done anything in education other than be an administrator. And he's never been much good at doing that. Chicago's pubic schools were a mess when he started running them and they were a mess when he left. Actual educators can't stand the guy.

BTW, PLATO was hardly a "niche" system and it was certainly never considered "irrelevant" by anyone who knows what the heck they're talking about. I first encountered it while on a two week high school trip (JETS) to UofI but didn't have as much time to access it as I would have liked. There were PLATO terminals in many colleges back in the '70s; I know there was at least a couple of them where I did my undergraduate work. The PLATO terminals were heavily used and getting time on them required signing up for a time slot well in advance. It's may be "cool" nowadays to consider the PLATO system "niche" but people need to remember that the world of computing and computer-aided education didn't begin with the Internet. PLATO was in use while Duncan was going to college at Harvard; maybe they just didn't have a terminal in the Sociology Department.

In a previous life, I had put a humorous phrase -- a reference to ``Real Programming'' -- in a technical report that was support to be submitted to a government agency that we were working for under contract. None of the others who reviewed the report noticed it -- maybe they were too busy that day and didn't pay as much attention as they normally did. They'd typically spot any questionable grammar that I might have used and I was sure someone would catch it and send it back to me to change. Nobody did, though, and I was lucky enough to get it back and delete the phrase before the report went went out the door. Learned a valuable lessen about trusting proofreaders that day: Don't.

... was all but dead anyway. Replaced by the (OMG! it costs how much?) 4K fad.

``... in their style and draw from what you submit to them. You HAVE the RIGHT to see what it is that they are submitted to their client on your behalf. Ask for it.''

I understood that recruiters would sometimes do this -- usually replacing your address information with that of the recruiting firm, largely to protect themselves from companies that would do something underhanded like contact the candidate directly after telling the recruiter that they were taking a pass on the candidate -- but I found out that that's not the only reason. Back when I was working with VMS (early '90s), I went into an interview for a job as a VMS system manager only to get bombarded with programming questions. And, while I've done a fair amount of programming over the years, these questions were completely off the wall so I asked the interviewer if I could see the copy of my resume he was referring to. The recruiter had inserted wording that made it seem as though I had years of experience as a COBOL programmer -- which I most definitely was not. I apologized and ended the interview. The phone call I made to the recruiter after the interview was no fun. For the recruiter. I never worked with him or anyone else at that firm again.

Argh! Make that: "I haven't seen that for years..."

``LinkedIn allows you to directly apply to companies, without having to go through recruiters.''

I think most, if not all, jobs that you apply to via LinkedIn still take you to the company's ATS, no?

One cool feature that I recall seeing on LinkedIn were job postings that were exclusive to LinkedIn and which, allegedly, got preferential attention by the company recruiters. I have seen that for some years, though.

Name names. Or at least the company she worked for. Behavior like this should be publicized.

I've gotten the same sort of calls: poor English, jobs that were barely applicable (in most cases I suspect my resume was flagged based on only one or two keywords), and then almost demanding that I authorize them to submit me to their client. Nearly always these calls come with my never having seen an email containing the job description (which would have been extremely helpful given their thick accent) so I can't tell whether this is something I'd even consider. Most of the time, when I ask for them to send me a copy of the job description (getting them to actually do this is like pulling teeth), quite often it never arrives. If the description does arrive, I'm usually flabbergasted to find that it's either an entry level position (with a corresponding hourly rate) or their client appears to be looking for an entire IT department in a single person (sysadmin, DBA, network admin, Java developer, and more). When we talk again about the position and I explain that it's not a good fit -- based on a mismatch of skill set, rate, location, whatever -- they won't take "no" for an answer and, nearly always, follow up with 'authorization to submit' email. Even after, I've pointed out "Hey... the job description says that such-n-such a technology is mandatory and I don't have experience with that" they'll come back with "Oh... that's not a problem." Really?

You used to see this (and probably still do today; I haven't looked in years) in the employment section of, say, IEEE journals. Extremely detailed job descriptions for research associate positions, post-docs, etc. that we all laughed at knowing that this was one of those job adverts that was done to satisfy a legal requirement and that the job description was nothing more than a slightly watered down abstract of the thesis or dissertation written by the person they already knew they wanted to hire.

``I have a resume with very diverse experience and my skill set is that of a generalist which means recruiters have NO idea what to do with me. In years past I've been blown off by more recruiters than I care to think about.''

I have a similar background: developer, sysadmin, storage admin, backups, capacity planning, performance management, disaster recovery planning, management, project management, with great troubleshooting/diagnostics skills and I get calls from "recruiters" who home in like a laser beam on one single keyword in my resume thinking that I'll be interested in a low salary job working as a technician. On a 3-4 month contract. Third shift. In Mudhole, Idaho. Oy! Fortunately, I do have a few recruiters that I've worked with who understand someone with a varied background. Now if only more hiring managers would stop to consider what someone with a background that isn't completely monochromatic could be doing for their team, the three of us might be come up with a win-win-win outcome.

The other situation I ran into was taking a call from a recruiter about a job where it seems their clients are only interested in finding someone with 5-7 years experience in the advertised skill set but only looking to make a parallel move. As one person described it:

``... employers want candidates who have been doing the exact job for years already, and who are willing to take a pay cut to do it some more.''

Pass. And shame on the recruiters that feed that sick hiring strategy.

``In 2000, not that long before he left office, President Clinton got rid of selective availability and freed the world from ever depending on paper maps or confusing directions from relatives again.''

And one more skill disappears from the public's toolkit. (Along with being able to make change and others.)

I remember when the Iowa Basics tests taken in grade school used to include a section on map reading. Nowadays, it seems most people don't even know how to open a map let alone read one.