Yeah, I know. But it is an improvement from the way things used to be. I only see this gaining inertia too.

I think Unions have been one of the biggest sources of Luddite thinking in many fields. I'm just guessing. But I'll bet the teacher's unions would not support a path of innovation that allowed for fewer instructors. Heck, if banks were unionized there wouldn't be any such thing as an ATM.

I now do much of my shopping online. If I want a pair of Levi 501's, it doesn''t matter where they come from. As long as it is convenient and cheap. This is what has been dooming many brick and mortar stores. If this is true for stores, it may be more so for brick and mortar schools. With online courses and lectures, much of the need to waste gas money and driving time has evaporated too. My youngest son is taking college math classes and more online from an good University. The cost is far lower for him and class size is almost irrelevant. This goes way beyond white boards and tablets.

The older I get, the harder it gets to fight off becoming a cynical old coot. I have wondered why the USA is militarily involved in a country like Afghanistan. On the surface it does not appear to have anything in the national interest. Sure there were some terrorist training camps there. From the sparse media coverage of this war, the country appears to be run by 7th century goat herders. The drone war has been flattening those bases and the bad guys over there for a while though. What has been peculiar is this:

Why do we have boots on the ground when drones are working so well?
Why are we spending so much effort at "Nation Building".

Well well well. It appears there is a huge deposit of rare earths that were discovered by some of our geologists. Try Googling "rare earths Afganistan". Some reports claim a trillion dollar cache of the stuff has been discovered. I suspect there maybe a larger deposit than that. Check out just this one article.

http://www.livescience.com/16315-rare-earth-elements-afghanistan.html

Me cynical? Naaaa.

I control my oven using DOS and DESQview with the command line. Weasels!

The system you have detailed could be inadequate. But I just read that the development system will have this:

The development-stage system in question is known as “Piston,” and it’s based on Xi3s X7A modular system. That system has a quad-core processor, up to 8 GB of DDR3 RAM, up to a terabyte of solid state storage and support for three monitors. The starting price for the X7A is $999. Again, those specs don’t necessarily reflect what’s inside of Piston, or what the price would be if it hit the market.

http://techland.time.com/2013/01/08/xi3s-piston-a-steam-box-emerges-sort-of/

There are lots of people claiming that the little SFF computer called the Piston does not have the power to adequately run Steam games under Linux. But I have Linux Mint KDE 14 AMD64 installed on an HP nx9420 laptop which is 5 years old. It only has a dual core 2.16GHz processor, the equivalent of an Nvidia GT 7900 GPU and 4GB of ram. I was playing Dark Descent, Team Fortress 2 and Killing Floor all weekend. It worked great. If this laptop will do this well, I'm sure that little SFF computer will be just fine also. I wonder if Valve will release them with a subscription like mobile phone companies do.

Granted, the license terms of FLOSS definitely has the look and feel of a socialist ideology. And yes, the military is very conservative. I actually am the father of two sons in the USMC. But aside from the politics (which makes me cringe) FLOSS is "open". One is free to dissect the code and alter it on a whim. I actually also think Windows 7 is a decent product.. I do not like 8 at all. But right now I am doing this reply using Linux Mint 14 KDE. With Microsoft as a partner, the software also becomes an extra security risk from an outside source. I wonder how much code is actually written in the US now and not outsourced to India or another county.

I am also not a Microsoft hater, as is fashionable in many circles. I just think this is a poor and expensive choice. It is not the job of the military to subsidize US companies either. Their job is to kill people and break things. I know this sounds brutal. But it is what it is.

I am in the semiconductor business. Of course we know how heavily dependent the military is on this technology. But yet, often times when a piece of military hardware is built, there is a requirement for a second source. This is in case the first source should falter in delivery. It's a security issue based on that. Why is this any different with software? If the military were to commit themselves to free open source software, they would be more soundly in control of their own security and destiny. This Microsoft deal doesn't make sense at all.

I love space exploration and think it has tremendous potential for mankind. But I have often thought that the Space Shuttle was a kluge designed by a committee. It was also a huge government make work project. Thankfully, projects like SpaceX and private industry is taking over from where NASA blew it. Though there were plenty of hard working and smart people there. In the end they remind me of the DMV or Post Office of space technology.

Oh, but wait. She did it from her iPad. Nice endorsement.

http://www.cnn.com/2012/11/20/tech/social-media/oprah-surface-tweet/index.html

I think it's ironic that a journalism flop like the LA Times has the guts to call anything else a flop. I cancled my subscription to that rag years ago. These dinosaurs should be allowed to go extinct.

Seriously. I always thought the press was unfair on IBM for the whole OS/2 debacle. OS/2 actually worked good, till MS decided to kill it with good anti-marketing. IBM helped kill it themselves with their ad campaign stating that OS/2 "obliterated" your software. Oh, I guess the karma thing is coming back on Microsoft now. Instead of Charlie Chaplin friendly ads, there are ones showing me how stupid I am because a 3 year old can do Windows 8. Really? I think MS obliterated my software. Seriously.

Dad is a retired 85 year old dude on a fixed budget. He can't afford the luxury of Apple products. Regardless of what he was running, he is still my dad. I would help him no matter what. I just want my life to be simpler, so this is why I did this. Now my brothers......That's another story. But they are teachable. ;-)

No political bias there. Uh huh.