So that's the only standard by which decisions should be made, whether the foundations of society will crumble? Well, let's see. Will the foundations of society crumble because I set fire to your house? Nope, nothing to worry about there. Will the foundations of society crumble if police are allowed to set up cameras and record anyone in their homes without a warrant? Ehhh, a few people might complain but no crumbling going on here.

Dismissing a concern on the grounds of ridiculous hyperbole is about as rude and ignorant as you can make yourself. How about "will society benefit from wider access to creative works that might otherwise be forgotten?"

If you have an objection or disagree with a concern that's being raised, how about putting some effort into a counterargument with some relevance and at least a shred of understanding of the issues involved?

At my company it came to a head several years ago when somebody complained about a perceived threat to her territory -- missing red stapler, missing chair, something like that -- and sent it out to the group for the entire company -- I mean *entire* company, at the time about 1000 folks including all top executives, offices in several cities around the US, etc. Of course the flames rose higher and higher, culminating with a bouquet of roses sent by way of apology from our San Francisco office for the abuse they heaped on the girl who started it all.

Yeah, good luck with that. Might as well say he plans to fund the project by buying lots and lots of lottery tickets.

In addition to the points others have made, the big issue is interactivity. If I am confused by an explanation, I can't stop the Khan Academy video and ask it "Wait, what about...?" Likewise any other static media. Oh, I might be able to find a website where I can ask my question and if there's enough traffic I'll probably get an answer in a few days or weeks, and if I'm really lucky one of the people who answered actually knows what he or she is talking about... although since I don't know the answer myself, knowing which answers I got are correct and which aren't is a bit of a gamble.

Until technology can assess a student's problem areas and provide on-the-fly additional material to strengthen those areas, AND identify the most effective method for delivering that information (some students learn best visually while auditory information goes in one ear and out the other; some process auditory information best; others don't really grok it until they get their hands on it), we need real teachers.

Finally, there's the less tangible value of social interaction. Even if an automated teaching system managed to understand my questions about a specific point and produce an explanation that addresses my confusion, a human teacher provides affirmation and encouragement in a uniquely human way that no computer ever can; this is particularly important in the early years when "you're doing great!" can do more to inspire a student than "No, that's wrong. Try it again." A smile, a touch... we jaded cynical self-starters may think that's irrelevant to education, but to a six-year-old struggling with addition they can make all the difference in the world.

When I google someone, I cross-check the results against what I do know about them and/or include things I know (such as the city where they currently live) in the search terms, and I filter out anyone that is obviously not the person I am stalking... I mean, getting to know better. As often as not I have an email address, and I simply google that.

Ten years ago, I wouldn't find much if anything, except for the few people who had a blog. Now, it's almost always their Facebook page.

When does it cross the line? I wish I knew. I'm not trying to dig up dirt; I'm genuinely interested in knowing more about the people I meet and I figure if they posted it in public it's not meant to be a secret. But I think I disturbed someone the other day when I blurted out "So, you're a Canuck!" at a meeting -- I also was born in Canada and her Facebook page (which she does not limit to friends) mentions a school in Ontario she attended. I've sent her a few emails since (including one that explained why the subject came up) and she has not responded to any of them. oops.

The alternative, in the case of friends whose preferred form of communication is Facebook, is to use Facebook exclusively for actual friends. I don't add people I met online (and rarely even know their real names). I don't add friends-of-friends. I don't even add relatives of friends unless I know the relative personally. I don't add people I have encountered briefly in the recent past. I don't add people I went to school with and now don't remember their names or anything about them. With two or three exceptions, I don't add people I have never met in person. I don't add people who work at the same company I do (some 2000+ employees worldwide) unless I actually work with them on a regular basis.

The result? I actually know and care about and trust the people I call friends on Facebook, and have no trouble calling them friends in the classic sense. Facebook, like any other tool, can be used to improve your life or destroy it. Unfortunately most people can't tell the difference and allow it to do more harm than good.

Why are they storing CCs at all on the terminals? The terminals should be just that, data entry points that transmit data to and from a secure location.

That's exactly why our answering machine just as a flat "Please leave your name and number at the sound of the tone."

Ha! See my above comments about my small rural high school in 1979-1981. I too was one of the few boys in a typing class, but in my case I took it *specifically* because I had already decided that one way or another my life's work would involve computers and I figured I'd better make friends with Mr. Qwerty or my career was headed for pain.

We had all newfangled Selectrics, but I remember one special day the teacher took us on a sort of field trip to the admin office where they had a shiny new electronic typewriter with a little LED screen that showed your current line; you could correct mistakes on the screen and it wouldn't commit to paper until you hit {ENTER}.

Crockett. I assume you mean Timpson; I couldn't find a nearby Timson. I'm embarrassed to say that even though we lived less than 100 miles away, I never heard of Timpson before today. For us the "big city" was Palestine.

In 1979, I entered an experimental new class in a Houston high school that taught BASIC programming. No Commodore PETs for us (although I saved up my McPay and bought one of my own); we could only afford a big teletype terminal and a paper tape machine so we could save our programs on spools of punched tape.

In 1980, before I could complete that class, my family moved to a very small town in the innards of Deep East Texas where I was literally the only person in town with a computer of any kind. The student advisor finally decided that a statistics class was the closest thing she could get me into that was kind of like computer programming. I actually won the science fair with a cheap-assed video game I wrote that let you fire missiles at approaching targets. Hey, when all you've got to work with is 8K you don't write Space Invaders!

Man, I am so glad you posted that. I see all these discussions and benchmarks and reports where it seems like average speeds are in the double-digits, and I was starting to feel like Oliver Douglas climbing the telephone pole to manually hook up a headset every time I wanted to make a call. Now my meager 3.5 up / 300K down doesn't seem so bad after all. I'm out here in rural Wyoming where there's no hope of ever getting cable and DSL is an overpriced joke; a local wireless carrier is doing a superb job with what little infrastructure they can get.

That's Millhouse Electronics, for all the thousands of Cheyenne-area Slashdot readers (ha!) who need to know.

I hope I can convince my wife to have the same reaction. Years ago, when Open Office was still a fairly new option and several versions behind MSO in its functionality, I talked her into trying it and she was very disappointed in the incompatibility and lack of features. Not too long ago I really built up the latest Libre Office and pointed out the cost of continuing with Microsoft. As it happens I needed her to print something (my printer had died) so I sent it to her. It was a simple, one-page flyer with a banner of pictures across the top, a few standard fonts of various sizes, etc. When she loaded it up in Word [tm], the whole document was wrong -- images overflowed with text, paragraph alignment had not been preserved, etc. Since many of the documents she works with are either sent to or received from other people, 100% compatibility is an essential requirement. I could understand if there were compatibility issues only with the newer, infrequently-used bells and whistles that only the most advanced users would ever even know exist, but basic page layout should be a no-brainer.

If you had what it takes to be a real programmer, your answer would have been:
0

If that's humanity, where do I apply for a transfer to another species?