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Comment: Re:Less demand (Score 2) 269

by colinnwn (#42791261) Attached to: Hard Drive Revenue About To Take a Double-Digit Dip

optical drives could eventually be abandoned by PC makers altogether.

And won't be missed.

That means prices will go down, right?

At first as the market searches for a new equilibrium. Later, at least one or 2 big name makers will exit the market. As the size of the market contracts, you'll see the price of HDDs per GB creep up a little, or at least stop going down ignoring the effect of the Taiwanese floods. But HDDs aren't going away. They'll be the cheapest highest density quickly accessible storage for many years into the future.

Comment: Re:Not the problem? (Score 2) 104

Well, this was also for regulatory and safety testing, not just for signal quality to the end user. You also want to ensure every seat on the aircraft at least has a decent signal to not compound potential backhaul problems. Finally next gen ground data service is in development for both ground and AC users, as well there is decently high speed satellite service for AC like Row44.

Comment: Re:To all Office Naysayers (Score 1) 480

The ribbon is not an upgrade. at best it should have been an optional menu enhancement. It together with new Excel 2007 and 10 bugs killed my productivity to no good affect, and I am still constantly hitting the wrong ribbon tab and wasting my screen real estate. And I have barely used OO, so I am not one of those OO lovers.

Comment: Re:Serious question time... (Score 1) 480

I used to have the same complaint at MS Word compared to WordPerfect where you could easily turn on and off the hidden formatting characters and fix the atrocious Word formatting assumptions and model. Haven't had as much trouble with it since 2003, though I write a lot less now. Amusing it took MS abat least years to catch up to the best in class.

Comment: Re:education reform (Score 1) 729

by colinnwn (#41222487) Attached to: Do We Need a Longer School Year?
The problem would be making the school schedule that flexible would either require independent study (which I think I would have excelled at, but probably less than half the kids in school could manage that without intensive guidance) or a radical change in how school is structured, how subjects are taught, how teachers facilitate, how the school day and year is planned, with the monetary and political will to make it happen. I might like to see it, but I think it will happen outside of a few progressive private schools on a cold day in hell.

Comment: Re:education reform (Score 1) 729

by colinnwn (#41217345) Attached to: Do We Need a Longer School Year?
I still think 9 month schooling should be available for high school kids if they need/want to work, or want to take advanced classes in summer school. Taking geometry in 3 weeks my sophomore year is still one of my fondest summer memories. But otherwise, I think you summed up how to fix the US education system. Though I'd also add some form of teacher pay to performance as well.

Comment: Re:How does this miss the only relevant issues? (Score 1) 729

by colinnwn (#41217291) Attached to: Do We Need a Longer School Year?
I'm one of the kids that hated school so much, even since elementary, that I needed a 2 month break to reduce my depression and maintain my sanity. But honestly I can't say I did much productive with them. Up until high school, I can see the advantage of having a month off at Christmas, spring break, and summer, rather than a 11 week summer.

But I still dont' think it is a good idea for high school kids to have year round schooling. Once you get to that age, you have the maturity and ability to get summer jobs, or take summer classes for advanced high school or college credit. Despite hating school, one of my favorite summers was taking Geometry ahead of schedule over the summer at Rice University in 3 weeks. We went to class for 7 hours a day, would do a whole chapter per day and take the test on it the first thing each morning. It was the best time I had in school.

I want other kids to have the opportunity to work to save money for college, or take extra courses, without the additional stress of their regular schooling day. I feel like there is a lot of wasted time in schools taking roll, dealing with problem kids, doing route unnessary work. If schools would rethink their classes, I think an hour could be chopped out of the school day and given back to the kids to do homework, so they aren't going to class for 7 hours, commute for an hour or more, then be expected to do an hour or 2 of homework at night.

Comment: Is the aviation field demonstrably better? (Score 1) 267

by colinnwn (#40946011) Attached to: Wall Street and the Mismanagement of Software
There have been several accidents caused by, or a significant contributing factor, of software glitches. Boeing and Airbus and their systems builders do have tight coding and testing controls for flight critical code, at least partly driven by FAA and EASA requirements. Have there been more critical or expensive failures of financial trading code?

The economy depends about as much on economists as the weather does on weather forecasters. -- Jean-Paul Kauffmann

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