They are.

In order to apply critical thinking skills, however, you have to establish a corpus of information (knowledge) from which to operate as a base when testing new information for validity.

In other words, you can't start from a phenomenological basis from the start, you have to assume language in order to be able to communicate about concepts, and then adequately judge their validity or invalidity.

What this means is that you have to shovel their heads full of as much rote knowledge as you can possibly shovel in, prior to their critical thinking filter slamming into place and interfering with the process o communicating things like "rules of grammar", "mathematical concepts", "tigonometric identities", and so on. Because once those filters slam into place, they are going to be thinking for themselves, and so busy questioning the validity of what an authority is saying, and their motives for saying it, that it's going to be difficult to jam anything in.

As to the validity of the rote knowledge you've already jammed into their heads prior to that event - effectively, where they stop being sponges, and wake up into themselves as human beings - well, hopefully the event that throws up the gates occurs after you have taught them Aristotelian logic, and Platonic/Homeric introspective self examination ("The unexamined life is not worth living"), so that they can selectively filter for any "bullshit" that was inserted, along with their times tables or the idea that sin(x) + cos(x) = 1.

So while their motivations may be impure, I have to agree with them that, at least through High School, you want to just shovel as fast as you possibly can, and then when they get to their Sophomore year in college, you send them to the philosophy department to teach them symbolic logic, and you send them to the physics department to teach them how to think rationally about problem solving (something physics is good at, because it's as unforgiving about facts as gravity in a "Road Runner" cartoon isn't).

And if they never make it to their Sophomore year in college, because they stop after the mandatory public schooling, and don't pursue further education... well, they will likely be happier as people not having had their delusions challenged, particularly since those delusions were probably shoveled into their heads at a young age - say 5 or so - and all you are going to do by having taught them critical thinking skills early is to make them miserable as adults.

T-Mobile that is.

I had Verizon, before that AT&T. So far I've been happier with T-Mobile than any of them...

T-Mobile I think gives you a free 200mb/month no matter what, so if you use cell network lightly that can be fantastic.

If you do pay for a plan, T-Mobile has free international data. It's not LTE unless you pay more but 3G is fine for most needs.

It's only been a month so I may be in the honeymoon phase but the very fact there is a honeymoon phase instead of a gnawing fear in the pit of my stomach that I've attached myself to a monster speaks volumes about T-Mobile I think.

Reading the entirely of the responses to your post I think it's pretty clear why he left the alligators in that particular swamp the hell alone.

The demand for jobs didn't go down until the government did two things.

1. Ruined the finance market by manipulating prices which directly led to the 2008 collapse.

2. Started artificially increasing the cost of employing people.

You fuck with corporate and market finance and then raise the cost of labor... SHOCKER demand for labor falls as corporations act defensively to preserve capital.

Corps have lots of money and interested in hiring people. They just want competitive labor in a stable market.

Now here someone is going to say "I don't want to work 3rd world wages!"... no one does. The third world isn't paying them anymore these days. Wages in china are coming up fast. That said, the issue is not what you're paid but what the company pays TOTAL to produce goods or services in your country.

There are a lot of things the US can do to make its labor more competitive. There are a lot of good things about doing business in the US versus china. You just have to leverage those while minimizing the negatives.

Already we're getting manufacturing come BACK from china because those pros and cons balanced out.

1. Your constant use of Scumbag. Why? What harm has facebook done?

2 "Better still would be to give them nothing by not using Facebook."
Why? I get value out of Facebook.

3. "As does everyone. What is your point? You're still giving them more information than you should."
Than I should? You need to learn the term opinion. Your judgment is not backed by any overwhelming proof or frankly any proof at all. BTW calling Facebook "scumbag" is in no way proof.

Fine stay off of facebook. I wonder if you are using TOR to post to slashdot since the time of post could be used to connect your posts to an ip address and then use that to find your identity.

I hear he's challenged Chuck Norris to a biplane duel for the last leg.

I don't have to share my IP with you or anyone. I can make it and keep it for myself. Who's is it now?

And what incentive do I have to share it with you or make it if you're just going to jack it?

You're effectively justifying behavior that undermines the whole information economy. It's fucking retarded.

Wrong. The transition happened concurrently and that is a matter of historical record.

The pain and disruption came from people attempting to stay on farms or having a hard time transitioning to factory labor. They didn't have the correct skill sets. They had the wrong culture for the work. And it basically forced a lot of people to start all over again in life.

Which is hard. But tell me this... you want to go back to the farm? Want to turn the clock back and shuck hay all your life?

Tell me now? Yes or no?

Because if not... then don't fight the future. It is coming whether you like it or not. And this infantile talk of rebellion is little more then a temper tantrum.

You're going to lose your job because all human work is going through a transformative change that will inconvenience you?

Allow me to break out the smallest violin in the world. It will suck for many. No doubt. Change is hard. But we do have welfare and EBT cards and stuff if you're totally incapable or unwilling to change. So you won't literally starve.

And the following generations will adapt and the things will be better.

There's no point bitching about it. Its like complaining about the weather. Its going to happen whether you complain or not.

You can tell it was a REAL computer scientist because there was no "test first", just pure perfect action.

What if we can cure macular degeneration but the cure takes a dedicated team of people 20 days to grow the new cells and then costs $1,000,000 dollars? so a person can see for the last 10 years of life?
When that same $1,000,000 dollars can provide clean water to a village of 200 people?
While it is not a zero sum game what happens when it gets more and more expensive and adds value for less and less of a persons life?
What happens when you can live forever but at a cost of a billion dollars a year?

The chip itself was an unlicensed knock off that used the same drivers.

No mercy.

... If your students are critical thinkers.

Refusing to consider hypotheticals renders any conceptual discussion beyond your ability to analyze. You cannot talk about WHY things are the way they are if you cannot consider hypotheticals.

This is why politicians hate hypothetical questions because the actually address the consequences of their policies. They only want to talk about what is and what was. Never mind they're changing legislation all the time that will effect what will be. But if you talk about that before what will be "is" they refuse to talk about it until it "is".

The conflict is that you can't rationally project into the future. under that logic. And so you sacrifice any ability to tell me WHY things are they way they are or what things will be like in the future because YOU refuse to consider hypotheticals.

Its a dumb defense. Consider hypotheticals or you can't participate rationally in any discussion of this nature.

It isn't in the interest of the rich for the economy to crash. If they have all the money then you can't buy anything and the economy crashes.

It isn't in their interest for that to happen.

It works out best for everyone if everyone does well and at the same time... the rich do a bit better.

Violent revolution and slaughter isn't a natural consequence of economic change.

Consider that when we went into the industrial revolution millions of people that worked on farms lost their jobs. What did they do? They went to work in factories where they were generally better paid then they were on the farms and though there was some privation everything ultimately worked out better for everyone.

Before the industrial revolution, about 60-80 percent of the work force worked on a farm. Think about that. Today, in the US... that number is less then 3 percent. Think about that.

Which means in many existing industries you could see similar job loss. But at the same time, something else should open up. Likely in some sort of information segment of the economy. The jobs will be different.

And this will continue until robots are better at doing everything and anything then a human being.

What happens after that is anyone's guess. But until then I wouldn't worry too much about it. Our society in general will be enriched by automation enormously. And that wealth will be made available to the people as it always has in the past. Will the rich live better then you? Yep. But you'll live better then you're living now. So why complain?

" It is obvious that any current contributors would be most interested in working on it future, more than any other potential contributor."
No it isn't. I worked on a device driver for a Linux based SBC at my last job.
I have zero interest in working on that for free now that I have a different job.