The first thing I saw when I got to the third course beta was a picture of three goony looking creatures, two of whom were Gates and Schmuckerberg. Seriously. Then I clicked on "Computational Thinking" and there was a message "Students use the steps of computational thinking (decompose, pattern match, abstract, algorithm) to figure out how to play a game that comes with no instructions." and a button that said Finished. Continue to next stage. I'm thinking the developers of this website might want to learn how to program before they teach others. For a real hoot, checkout what happens when you click the aforementioned button. Seriously? If this is teachning kids how to program, I'm Rip Frigging Van Winkle.

"with a proper sys admin, the employee doesn't have a choice about what his company does and doesn't see on company time"

Someone should invent SSL!

"I'd expect someone with a low UID like yours would show that they have a little real world experience, yet you don't seem to."

Maybe it's because I have real world experience, and know from contracting at more than a dozen companies that your pipe dream of complete sysadmin control of everything in a software shop is anything but the norm. In fact, any company that allows sysadmins to dictate net access policies for their software development is wasting a shit ton of money. Even for non-software developers can you name a single company that blocks SSL for their employees?

ObGetAClue: With the sole exception of Classified Governement projects, that kind of behavior is the quickest way to guarantee that no qualified individuals choose to stay at your company.

"If you think parents still control where kids go to college (or that faculty control university policies) you are so out of touch with the overall higher education situation as to make your comments uninformed and pointless."

No. You're right. These days the kids are all independently wealthy, and I stated or implied that the faculty controlled University policies. Oh wait. No I didn't.

"ironic captcha: transfer"

You're right. That would be an ironic CAPTCHA, which shows that you agree with me; nobody's transfering over this.

No you're missing the point. What happens, for example, when quantum computing makes the transition from bleading edge to mundane? Nobody knows, but it's safe to say that this guy doesn't either. There is plenty of room for improvement even with current methods and understanding of physics, even if one makes the mistake of ruling out parallel advancements.

Actually, email is intended to be a file transfer method. It wasn't originally, but now it is. That's what the little paper clip is for. It isn't intended for large file transfers, but that is an ever changing definition as bandwidth becomes more cheap, fast, and ubiquitous. What was once considered a "large file", say 1 or 2 megabytes, is now considered not very large at all. E-Mail will still be here in 2055 if we are, but 25 GB will be a small file for the purposes of this discussion.

With properly configured IM systems the employer doesn't see it unless the employee shows the content to them. The employee may keep logs, but in a good organization the purpose of that is to have the information at hand for future reference, not to stab each other in the back. If employees are keeping the logs for the latter purpose, it doesn't matter what communication medium is used, as the company, or at least the department, is already fscked.

The right tool for the right job has always been an important maxim in any and all professional environments, including but by no means limited to software development. This is why email isn't going away. IM has a purpose, but it isn't the right tool for selective mass distribution or the sharing of content when said content is more than a couple of sentences or at most, paragraphs.

Yes, because whenever I look at job postings, they always say: Hit us up on the Facebookz! in the contact information section.

When's the last time you went out to eat at a sit-down restaurant? Just how many of the staff there had been replaced by technology?

The staff of restaurant A eats at restaurant B, and the other way around. At every iteration, each restaurant's income shrinks, because it's a fraction of what the other restaurant earned at last round, since even if these are nonprofits that don't need to pay shareholders, they still need supplies. Bankruptcy is inevitable unless the restaurants can lure some customers working at the manufacturers of said supplies and close the cycle of money. Too bad such customers get ever harder to find as industry gets automated.

Services have a supportive role and can't carry the economy. A wealth of society is roughly how much stuff it produces per citizen. As industrial workforce shrinks, a smaller and smaller proportion of that enters economy through Joe Average and higher and higher proportion enters through Joe Shareholder. But no matter how gluttonous Joe S is, there's physical limits to how much he can eat, so the restaurant is screwed, regardless of how many other people might like it - they simply don't have the buying power to keep it afloat. And as wealth concentration advances, economy gets ever more twisted into providing for Joe S, at the expense of Joe A being worse and worse off.

Bullshit. Unless you think they will tranfer elsewhere because they can't use the twittersOMFG! I can hear the coversation between student and pops now: But Daaadz! I wants to go to anotha univsty! They don't letz me use da twitterz!! I gatsta use da emailz to getz da helpz! I'm sure pops will start looking around for a different school pronto!

precious little snowflake

I see what you did here.

At upper Minnesota temps, all vehicles need some thermal considerations.

To start, yes. And badly designed ones might need engine compartment airflow to be altered. However, if Tesla can be damaged by merely standing in the cold for too long, it might be a problem.

Also, let's not forget that IC engines get heating for free from their waste heat. An electric car needs to use its precious battery charge to keep the windows clear. So colder locations might need their own specialized model.

"“There is no point in emailing students any more," he told The Times. "They get in touch with us by social media, especially Twitter, and we’ve had to employ people to reply that way. "

Only because "they" are idiots (both students and faculty apperently). An autoresponder that tweets back "Dear idiot student. It's called email. We use it for a reason. Use it or don't expect help." is all that they needed to "employ". Allowing students to dictate the use of inefficient mechanisms rather than teaching them the right way is pretty ironic for a school system that purports to be a University.

I think the informed among us can agree, this whole article combines a special lack of imagination, misunderstanding of physics, and a complete lack of understanding of how computers work, in order to come up with a ridiculous article that sounds like it was written by chicken little :-)

First of all, I did't notice that the IOP didn't include the whole question in his post. That being said, it is a VPN. I didn't realize his question was: How is having a VPN more secure than not having a VPN. If I had, I would have told him to use the very service he is complaining about.

Holy shit. You have to be one of the most misinformed idiots on the planet.

Err, what? I'd take air traffic controller over trash collector or working in a coal mine, or a long list of hideous jobs I could think of.