Now we were poor and didn't have a video camera, but I'm pretty sure my parent's photo album still has several shots of me zipping through the alfalfa. Perhaps the following will help your perception of what a five year old kid can do:
This one has a 3 YO But mine didn't have training wheels.
My parents weren't reckless though; I was at least 6 before my dad removed the speed governor.
It's the parenting and maturity of the kid that counts; environment plays a role too.
Another problem with a statement like this is that "unsupervised" can mean a lot of things. When I was on a farm I had "unsupervised" access to my dirt bike at age five or so - even had chores which required its use about a mile away from the house (although I don't remember when the close in tasks/riding moved up to the further away ones). I bet my parents still kept an ear open and an eye on the clock while I was out on it and it's a sure thing that they spent the time making sure I knew what I was doing and how much trouble I'd be in if I went past the limits.
Other tools are the same way - knives, hand tools, power tools, guns (again environment is important - I was on a farm out in the country where there were active bounties on certain pests as well as other hazards (suspected rabid animals which needed putting down, etc...)), and even the internet. So, either parents these days are being reckless with their children's safety, or they've gotten a reasonable handle on how to teach their kids about limits and safety on the 'net. Personally, I think it's more of the latter than the former - but of course there's no test required to become a parent other than the physical.
Oh, if someone want's to play the "what if a pedophile targets your kid" card, I'll just say that there are tools to deal with that situation too - pretty much the same list as earlier
I don't think MS is treating this as the trendy electronics game. I think they're trying to build an enterprise case for changing the whole computer interface model. A quality tablet should be able to replace every laptop within a company (and once people get used to it) be a far more natural tool (the laptop's design constraints decided its form factor). With the ability to run native Windows programs, you also don't have to worry about multiple styles of program licensing (i.e. corporate iPads, etc...), can use enterprise ready solutions, and not worry about separate policies or what happens inside of the firewall (other than the regular nightmares).
While I personally think education for the sake of learning is valuable, the real challenge is getting mainstream HR departments to acknowledge the worth of the system. It's not often that you see an entry level job description list qualifications like this:
1. A 3 years technical experience in a related field, or
2. A B.S. within the field, or
3. A self directed series of (possibly free) online courses which requires us to perform a detailed analysis of your coursework and somehow compute its equivalence to a couple of capital letters from a more traditional education background and then rank you accordingly with every other applicant
It may fly for tech start-ups and direct hires which bypass HR screening, but most resumes still go through HR and if they can't figure out which check box to tic... or worse, if they think you're making up some fly by night claims, the application will never make it to the technical people involved with hiring. Until open learning manages to make a substantial dent on the traditional models for education, it will still be seen as third rate to a few capital letters after ones name. I think that's extremely unfortunate, but I suspect that's the way it will be for a while yet. I applaud the efforts of Future Learn and their partners for one more option. But you're certainly right about needing to maintain quality and an image of quality with the associated courses - and not diluting that for mere "market share".
I dream of the day when anyone from the sub Saharan or Alaskan wilds to the neighborhood barista can complete a standardized set of courses (with automated assignments and exams) and simply claim their degree. To offer master levels with the same thing for graduate courses and a thesis stamped with approval by a certain number of others in the field, and a Ph.D. up for grabs to anyone with the master's coursework and a collection of peer reviewed journal articles.
Actually, a number of big pharma companies do give away (or sell at cost) to poor regions like sub-Saharan Africa the same medications they charge an arm and a leg for in the richer parts of the world. Where the process breaks down is when a disease disproportionally affects a poor region (like malaria) such that there is not a fiscally sound business model for pursuing the high risk/benefit research involved with drug development.
As an aside, I think that one of the most commendable fields of the Gates Foundation is their promotion of research for malaria (see the TED talk where Gates releases a jar of mosquitoes into the audience).
... The truth, it's just a leak away, it's just a leak awaaay....
And if you have potatoes, then the truth can bring some awesome soup with it
In the case of a signed (and dated) statement, you still hold the controlling factor and would necessitate coercion on the behalf of the other party. If the other party (government or individual) is willing and able to bear sufficient coercion upon you to acquiesce to perjury, than the system fails. So, one should only implement such a model if one believes that the level of coercion is within the limits of one's conviction to resist - otherwise you're setting yourself and your "trusted" parties up for compromise.
A "dead man switch" system like this certainly lends itself to a civil disobedience of passive resistance in the tradition of Gandhi, and MLK Jr. But what level do you go for? If I recall right (and strongly paraphrasing), Gandhi's solution to the atomic threat was to allow yourself to be nuked so that the children of the "victor" would express enough horror at the methods that they would reject the philosophy used for the strike and therefore giving the "victim" the final moral victory. Personally, I suspect that I am vulnerable to coercion threatening the annihilation of my entire nation - and probably even a lesser version closer to home.
One thing I've learned about the country with the Bill of Rights is that there are times when the government does exceed its authority, and sometimes even the courts rubber stamp it (although not always - look at Jackson and the Supreme Court), but ultimately a correction factor is applied. Sometimes this is a groundswell of public ire, a brave confrontation like Ed Murrow, and often a combination of the two (i.e. civil rights in the '60s). Although occasionally, due to lack of notoriety or some such, the lesson isn't completely learned until the next generation reads it in their history books (i.e. syphilis study).
Finally, one also need to make sure that anyone else with the authentication to substitute for you holds the same convictions. For example, Thoreau only spent the one night in jail because someone else paid his poll taxes.
Oh come on! We've got to do something to stay number one!
I wonder how many other people interpreted "bandwidth" as a monthly data limit. I suppose the units are technically accurate, but the concept of bandwidth should be like how fast you can get water through a pipe (aka how big the pipe is), not how much you are rationed.
(Is there a data drought)?
Make sure your code does nothing gracefully.
