This is not to say that educators and educational researches are incompetent. It is just that the standards of research are often not as high. Research standards are, as they should be, focused on protecting the student. Really, the problem is isolating variables and proving causation. If you look at most results of the data analysis, one can still predict outcomes primarily on SES of the location of the school and whether the school is comprehensive or has some level of selectiveness. This is because no matter what the studies say, most researchers do not do a good enough job controlling for these variables. The problem is that flawed data will be used used against educations and students. Lets look at an extreme example. I know a very smart kid who got kicked out of every 'good' school in his city because he had a lack of impulse control. When confronted with tougher teachers who expected him to complete the AP and dual level classes he excelled, and matured. My concern about this database is stuff this kid did when he was 14 would effect his opportunities when he is 18. In general the 14 year old kid and 18 year old kid are completely different people. The good thing that might come out of this is that the good schools that failed the 14 year old kid would lose points for the failure, and the school the succeeded in helping him might gain points, but that did not happen. On a personal note, I went to a good good school, which is different from the average bad good school. They did the work to force me mature and excel. Every teacher there treated me as an individual to push to succeed, not a entry in database. I never felt like I was less of a student, even though I was below average for the school. This is what education is about. Not tracking who gets a job or goes to the best colleges, but conning kids into learning more that they think they might.
When I bought a TV I bought the cheapest TV I could with a big screen. I know that for most consumers, this is what they are looking at for a phone. Anyone can go down to the corner kiosk and get a phone for $100 and $50 a month, much cheaper than Apple.
What is interesting is that Apple is extraordinarily expensive but still has almost 20% of global market share. Samsung which tends to have more expensive phones, makes up the other 30%+. So half the market is samsung and Apple, not IOS on Android.
So a lot of world consumers are spending real money on phones. It will be whichever has the current novelty factor that they will buy. If you do not buy MS, there is no lockin.
No, Netflix negotiates with the Post office for a fixed fee, and the customer pays that fee both ways. Do you live in a country were private firms magically get money to pay for services they provide, or do most people live in the real world where the customer pays for services provided?
N>klcertain fee, and cannot negotiate outside of that construct. The courts have said so.
However the Comcast is a private firm, so is free to negotiate minimum service levels with customers. While this is obviously problematic, is does solve a basic problem with streaming video. That unlike broadcast which has minimal marginal costs as users increase, the marginal costs for the internet provider is pretty much linear.
One reasonable solution is to separate the data lines from those who are selling data plans over those lines. This is the way electricity is done. The challenges are that complete deregulation means that the resource can be scarce, as when some good old boys in Texas total crippled the California economy. Another problem is that in a significant event, like hurricane or earthquake, repair to the infrastructure is often paid for by additional fees to the end user. Also, there is no incentive for the firm that controls the physical infrastructure to move very quickly with repairs as they are not losing a great deal of money every hour. However, if we want free market solution that maximizes net neutrality this is probably the way to go.
The second issue is domain. At the time of newton nothing moved very fast, so no one apparently thought to 'for slow moving objects' to the theory. Therefore there was no limit to how fast things could go. Einstien added the limit to how fast things could go, making Newtonian mechanics a good approximation for slow moving objects, but still incorrect overall. As Newton had no concept of the speed of light as a limiting factor, and separated the concept of waves and matter, there again is no reasonable basis to retcon classical mechanics.
It is interesting that people fixate on relativity. Like any other modern theory it value is in what new phenomena is can predict that can then be verified. I am somewhat part of the class of physics people that rolls my eyes when people start taking about how great Einstein is and feel justified because after all, when they gave him the noble prize for the photoelectric effect, which was a clever experiment but proved nothing, they also included a grave insult by calling what he did epistemology, and after all it only indicated that the Photon might not be just a particle or a wave. I believe it was the Michaelson-Morley experiment did a much better job of leading us to wave-particle duality, along with the work of Max Plank.
In any case, Newton also left us with another problem. The mathematical distinction between gravitational and inertial mass. These two were never well connected even though they appeared to be the same thing. Einstein kind of circumvented the whole thing with his geometry interpretation. Again, Newton is correct in the interpretation.
I think where the teaching of Relativity fails is that it focuses too much on trains, rulers, and clock because those were things that existed in 1900 and we like to think that history will make things more concrete and acceptable to the student. But arguably Relativity is about whether it makes a difference if you are moving past the magnet or if the magnet is moving past you. Is a deeper concept, but maybe we should try to teach the deep concept instead of just focusing on the mathematical manipulations.
That said, the Kindle would be an excellent device if we would get away from the book motif. The kindle is not a book, and when someone figures out how reading on a tablet is different from reading a book, and puts those features together, that will be the kindle killer.
But honestly, what is going to let e-readers take off is lack of DRM. Right now the DRM mandated by publishers is allowing Amazon to control large parts of the market and reduces the incentive to innovate. I am not going to by a Apple iBook because the only thing I can read it on is an Apple product, while at least Amazon has readers for most products. I did buy songs from iTunes because I could play them anywhere. MS music was a little more restrictive so they failed.If publishers want e-book, and it far from clear that they do, but if they want Amazon to not control e-books, then the DRM has to go. That would provide an incentive for someone to create a kindle-killer.
Second, is the MOOC portion. To be honest, there is simply not a compelling case for this except in certain cases for K-12. We are not going to be setting 8 year old kids alone with a computer and expect them to learn. Maybe one day, but not with MS tools.
This initiative, however, will probably provide some value to MS and k-12 teachers. For the most part K-12 teachers know how use MS products. The presentations are in powerpoint, which is why they are generally useless, and the worksheets are in word, which is why they are ugly, and the one great part of MS Office, Excel, is so misused that even it does not survive the experience.However, these are the tools that teachers have and packaging them so that students can get experience learning on the computer is valuable.
I happily go to O'Reilly and pay $40 for a physical and unencumbered PDF copy of a book. What publishers aren't doing is moving with market forces. The value of book is not what it used to be. The average American is not making what was the previous expectation. We are in a deflationary period. Amazon is under pressure to show a better return on investment. They do not have to sell products when the supplier wants excessive value. It is like a restaurant not selling Coca Cola products. SOme don't because Pepsi cuts a better deal.
He who has but four and spends five has no need for a wallet.