Does anyone remember the controversy (one of many) about Windows 95 when it would do the same thing? When you went to register it, it would supposedly tell Microsoft what programs you had installed. When I got my Win95 machine in December 1995 I watched carefully to see what it did. The phoning home and telling them what you had installed was voluntary, and the only program that Win95 could accurately detect was MS Office 95. It couldn't detect any of the DOS games I had installed, nor did it seem to recognize the 3rd party email apps, etc I had installed.

You're absolutely right. My older brother is a licensed engineer who operates heating systems. He had to learn mechanics and physics, the real thing.

On Slashdot and other fora people seem to think only civil engineers who build bridges are real engineers. If a steam engineer doesn't know what he's doing the boiler could blow, taking out an entire building full of people.

I grew up in the 1970's and had to listen to my parents complain about how great things used to be and how they sucked now (then). Didn't hear it so much in the late 1980's. When the recession hit in the early 1990's it was in all the newspaper editorials that the US was a fading empire like the Greeks, Romans, and British before us. Basically everything we're hearing now. Once we bounced back and had a big economic boom in the late 90's it wasn't the case anymore. Then the recession of the early 2000s hit and it was the same thing all over again. Our empire such as it is may be fading but whenever there is a economic downturn, we hear the same complaints.

I graduated from a Maryland High School (a Catholic private one though) in 1984 and I'm pretty sure Algebra II was required as well, along with Geometry and Chemistry. I don't remember if Trig was required or not. People who were bad at math struggled to get the requirements out of the way. They would take one year of "Algebra 1 part 1" and then Algebra 1 part 2". Most everyone took Algebra 1 Freshman year, Algebra 2 sophomore year, Geometry/Trig Junior year (1 semester for each course) and were highly encouraged to take either Pre-Calc or Calculus 1 their senior year. I took Calc 1 but it was nothing like college level Calc 1. What took us 3-4 weeks to cover in high school we covered in 1-1.5 weeks in college. The pace was way too fast for me and I had to drop the course.

Graduation requirements come and go with whatever is in fashion. Studying a foreign language was optional back then but it might be mandatory now. One religion class I had made us do some volunteer charity work and I think now it is a requirement for graduation, although I don't know if this applies to state schools as well.

Even though foreign language was optional when I was there, we were told that some colleges required it and we were encouraged to take two years of it. They offered Spanish, French, and Latin. I really wanted to learn a cool language like German, or Japanese but they didn't offer anything like that.

I agree. Back in the old days all you needed was a computer, web browser, an internet connection, and maybe a few plug-ins. Now you need an app for this website and an app for that website, etc etc.

My college friends used to complain about "Anthrospeak" quite often, and when I took a upper divisional Anthropology class I found out exactly what they meant.

For example, we read a paper written by our teacher (an Anthropologist) who was studying a primitive tribe in Africa (it might have been the Bushmen) and tried to teach them how to play the game Monopoly. It took a lot of work, and the whole thing turned out to be a failure because of cultural differences. People didn't want to charge their friends rent when they landed on their properties, and they would haggle down to the last dollar. They also didn't like the fact you couldn't use pennies for setting prices.

I just paraphrased the article to make it sound interesting, and it could have been an interesting story, but the way it was written, filled with obscure jargon and twisted narrative made it a terrible bore. I can't really describe it any better than that. In reading Anthropology/Sociology Journals (the two were a combined major for a while at my school) I'd see what would look like an interesting topic but the writing would be so bad it turned me off to the field completely. I'm pretty sure it gave me some bad writing habits since I thought this is how you're supposed to write.

I grew up in the 70's and had a chemistry set. It was fun, but the child safety caps they put on the chemical bottles were industrial strength. You needed either a special key, or as I found out later, a heavy duty screw driver to get the lids off. But it was still a lot of fun.

Around the same time, an older relative gave me an old chemistry set that had belonged to her older brother. No child safety caps, more interesting chemicals and experiments to run, and more interesting glassware (beakers, you could order a thistle funnel, etc). I wanted to order the more cool stuff out of their catalog but it was no longer available.

In high school chemistry, our class was 95% lecture. We only did lab work 2 or 3 times that I recall. The lab was there, but gathering dust. This was an honors chemistry class too.

From the early 1990's on, Ektachrome had some excellent emulsions. I believe it was up until the mid to late 1980's when Kodachrome was king, before Fujichrome started to take over market share. Then Kodak spent most of its R&D on improving E-6 films (Ektachrome) and let Kodachrome alone.

I used a fair amount of Kodachrome when I first started with slides but mostly moved on to Ektachrome and Fujichrome before going digital. I found Kodachrome excellent for certain situations, like on a sunny beach or high noon on a summer day when other slide films couldn't handle the contrast. Kodachrome would soak up all the light without losing shadow detail. I read that even though Kodachrome didn't have the fine granularity of more modern slide films, it had a excellent accutance (edge sharpness) which help make up for that.

I read the book too before seeing the movie (on broadcast TV, so I'm sure it was heavily edited) and I'm guessing they changed the age to 30 for practical reasons. They had actors in mind and didn't think they could all pass for under 21.

I was about 11 or 12 when I read the book, it may have been too mature for me, but I loved it anyway.

Worthless in the sense that I want a hi def TV, but I don't have any hope of selling my current standard def TV for any kind of money.

Not only that, I'm worried about how I'm going to dispose of it. Like I said, it weighs about 100 lbs and would need two guys with a dolly to move. I'd need to get a truck from somewhere and find a proper place to dispose of it. I can't exactly put it in the dumpster. What I may try is putting an ad on craigslist and if I can't get money for it, see if anyone will take it for free.

They're not useless, more like worthless? I have a 32" Sony Wega TV that I bought in 2002. It has a fantastic picture, but is only standard def. Last fall I was dropping some things off at a thrift store and someone had dropped the exact same size and model of my TV in their donations pile. There it sat, free for the taking for anyone who wanted it. Well, it weighs 100 lbs and would need two men, a dolly and a truck to haul away, but there it was.

I'm still using my old TV, it may not be high def, but I paid a lot of money for it at the time and it is paid for.

My elderly mother still has OTA for her TV reception. The picture is pretty good now that its digital, but watching broadcast only TV is like torture. When I go to visit we mostly have it on PBS stations, because if you watch regular network TV, its nothing but pharmaceutical commercials. I feel like a doctor in training.

If anyone ever asked me in a job interview to show them my facebook page, I'd laugh out loud. If they persisted, I'd tell them to kiss my ass and go to hell. I'm not kidding.

I had almost the same thing happen to me. A user "couldn't get into his email". After troubleshooting over the phone for a while:

1. His laptop was infected with MS Blaster
2. Which caused it to reboot as soon as Windows loaded
3. Which prevented him from launching Outlook.
4. Which meant his email didn't work

Strange logic, but once we cleared off the MS Blaster his email worked again. If only he had started off saying that his laptop kept rebooting and wouldn't let him do anything we could have figured it out a lot faster.

Phonics is one of those things that goes into and out of favor over the years. Growing up in the 1970's we learned phonics. From what I've heard it fell out of fashion, maybe sometime in the 1980's? Then parents were upset their children weren't learning reading and grammar as they felt they should, so we got hooked on phonics and it came back into fashion again. Now it looks like people are becoming critical of it again.