I pity anyone whose knowledge of the pre-web role of encyclopedias is limited to the poster's comment.

In 1968, my parents acquired a set of Enclopaedia Britannica ( == Yes that is the correct spelling). This was just prior to my experiencing a soccer injury that would confine me to bed for most of the next two years. I spent most of that time reading EB. (Yes, I also went to the library every week.) My time with EB did more to prepare me for college than any other single aspect of my high school education.

(And I came from a household that housed more than a thousand books and multiple sets of competing encyclopedias as well.)

Your "two paragraph" assertion is misleading. I still remember reading a biography of Rene Descarte that went on for pages. The article on World War II was even longer. Also, encyclopedias were never meant to be one's only source of information. Just a "jumping off" point in case the reader needed a starting point. This is the same way Wikipedia is used today. Need basic information? Use Wiki. Need more? That is what the iPad, Kindle, Nook, and the library are for.

Many years later, EB became one of my clients. It was during that experience that I learned that almost every article was written by a college professor likely to be an authority on the subject and proofread by another prior to publication. That many articles were also written by experts in their field (i.e. Albert Einstein authored an article on Physics in one edition) is also overlooked by the poster.

When my own daughters needed a resource in the early eighties, I did buy the Encarta, Grolier, and much later, the Britannica discs. In the internet age, my sons have no need for any of these.

But just to rant because one did not sit still, read, and appreciate this wonderful resource for what it was, is more a reflection on the poster and less a reflection on the value of such tools prior to the internet.

'nuff said.

In November of 2011, I visited a large physicians' practice located on the first floor of a major hospital in Center City, Philadelphia. They had chairs with bendable arms on one wall. On each arm, an iPad was securely mounted and permanently plugged into power. I think the power cables were securely wired to the chairs, arms, and iPads. Each iPad was securely affixed to the bendable arm. With regard to the cabling, I'm pretty sure the setup was compliant with OSHA rules. The iPads were used (among other things) for patients to fill out "New Patient Forms" and "Medical History." There may have been some other disclosures for some patients to read.

Most of the users were elderly. Many of the people using the devices had never touched an iPad (and for some, I'm sure they had never touched a computer before). As this office seemed to be pretty much focused on people requiring drugs and/or surgery for severe spinal and joint conditions, more than a few of these users were in pain and/or medications and reduction of user confusion may a priority.

With more than 50 people in the rest of the waiting room and about a dozen of the iPad chairs, there always seemed to be a physician's assistant close by to insure the iPad was only being used as intended. I can understand their desire to prevent unauthorized uses of the iPad as very personal information is being entered through these devices and potential for installation of monitoring software would make some people uncomfortable.

Even without the paranoia factor, I can understand the desire keep these iPads locked down to a few icons just to reduce end-user support and related confusion.

While marketed as a "platform," BBx combines an old version of Basic (Business Basic from the 1980's) that runs on a pseudo PICK O/S environment which in turn runs under Solaris, Linux, and Windows.

Basis International developed BBj as the "next generation" of BBx that would move from Basic to Java back in the days when everyone thought Java would take over the world.

To the dismay of Basis, thousands of older customers have been perfectly happy not to migrate their commercial legacy apps off of BBx.

In other words, they WISH they had put BBx to "sleep" years ago, but have been unsuccessful. (Sounds like a lot of COBOL shops.)

What RIM has done is to use a trademark that among BBx customers means old, creaky language who vendor doesn't even like it much any more.

On the undergraduate level, college is around 40 opportunities to increase skills at every level. This includes reading, critical thinking, social interactive skills including active listening, and exposure to individuals with different backgrounds, cultures, and differing points-of-view.

If you are looking for narrowly defined technical training or need to satisfy your employer's requirement for credits or a diploma, then online options abound.

Every other option robs you of one or more learning aspects noted above. You may still have good reasons to pursue online schooling. Your budget may be limited; your work schedule hellish; you may be disabled and without transportation or heck, maybe you hate sitting in a room with other people. But don't be fooled.

I've pursued both routes and learned a lot in both online and classroom environments. (I have multiple of the above excuses.). But don't be fooled into thinking that your learning experience without a classroom is as good (at least on the undergraduate level) as the traditional method.

And don't be fooled into thinking that I won't k ow that when I interview you for your first job out of college.

Defeat! Sorry for the typo.

Users of noscript have long benefitted from fast loading of web pages as distracting ads pulled from other domains were suppressed.

If entire web pages are "constructed in the cloud" and then presented to users, the additional overhead of ads,
including annoying animation, would once again turn perfectly readable pages into aggravating distractions that
eventually drive readers away. Anyone remember answer.com? AskJeeves? Or cnn.com before noscript?

Bah humbug to this "improvement" in technology.

Dude, paste-without-formatting is essential for anyone who spends a lot of time cutting and pasting between applications into compound documents.

There are so many whiney paste-related comments in this chain that it is time for one of my rarer than Haley's Comet posts to /.

Immediately (if not sooner), get thy focus to CNET.com, click on the downloads tab, and search on Pure Text.

Both Pure Text and Pure Text Plus are free and legal programs that turn your Windows-Key-V combination into a paste-without-format key.

(Be sure to decline the offer to install the Bing toolbar upon installation.)

I use Pure Text so much, it is one of the few programs I run in my start-up group.

My work here is done.

Over any 5-year period, I hire an average of 1 to 3 IT professionals a month. The performance of each directly reflects on my ability to provide my clients with individuals whose judgement is sound, and who can accept that"at will" employment means they can be laid off at any time without a reason.

With this "little" lapse in judgement, I can assure you that he is not likely to get past HR and background checks, and even less likely to get past me.

If he left with drama elsewhere, he is probably a risk to leave with drama in a future job as well.

I want the best people I can find, and part of that is to figure out the extent to which each individual is likely to suppress personal and professional issues when it makes sense to do so.

I do my best to leave every client and employer on a positive note, regardless of what frustrating shortcomings on their part I discovered along the way.

If you can't do so, just hope you don't want your resume to be embraced by me or anyone in any company who thinks like me,

You don't have to agree with all of my positions on the issue. But if you can't disagree without being disagreeable, I really don't want you on my team.

Every morning. 180 mornings a year. For 13 years. (Year 1 = Kindergarten).

My teacher had us stand at attention, face the flag, a recite the pledge of allegiance as approved as law by the US congress.

That is 2,340 recitations where I swore "I pledge my allegiance to the flag of the United States of America. And to the REPUBLIC, for which it stands, one nation, under god, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all."

Note that the congress did not ask me to pledge my allegiance to a democracy. In a democracy, each citizen gets an equal vote. Had we been a democracy, Al Gore, not George Bush would have been elected in the year 2000. In a republic, our state "electors" get to override the popular vote if they so choose. (And in 2000, for the 4th time in US history, that is just what happened.)

No matter what the conspiracy theorists say, GW did not "steal" the election. He played by the rules. The rules of our REPUBLIC.

That is the way things are and I don't expect either party to amend the constitution to make us a democracy in my lifetime.

The upper chamber of congress is little better with voters in small states having up to 17 times the power of voters in big states. (I.e. little Utah and big California each get 2 and only two votes.)

However, as I love my country, this is where I'll stay and exercise my right to be a curmudgeon.

To arrive at the comment above is exactly why reading /. is worth every prior moment of drivel. Irony! Humor! jkyrlach, I am now your fan!