It isn't funny at all that I've been hearing the same argument, children's short attention spans, as the reason that education is the shit-pit it has ever been. And that truth covers the last fifty years. First it was TV, they they added music TV as the extended cause, then computers, now it's smart devices, and the list is rather endless. That doesn't even bring into the discussion theories about diet, parental involvement, etc., although I will give parental involvement a nod as something useful in disciplinary cases.

I have been teaching, very successfully I might add, for the last forty years, since my early teens, at the grade levels, university, military, and in the classroom and out. I haven't had any trouble. Then again, every time I have taught, I have had to prove my effectiveness as a teacher.

I have yet to see it discussed outside certain, very limited, academic circles the qualifications required to become a teacher, especially when it comes to academic rigor outside the education departments on our campuses, nor are they required to prove that they can teach effectively before being hired on a permanent basis, let alone had a lifetime sinecure. Should I have failed, my stint at teaching would have ended right away with no doubt as to why my condition was terminated.

I have discussed this topic with many an effective, retired (notice that qualification), teacher over my lifetime and the constant refrain has always been that those that can't teach should be fired.

Only if you provide the keycap code ;-).

Probably due to the fact that all of IT consumes about 1% of all power globally. And notice in that statistic "about" which, if it comes above 0.0000...01% somehow gets magically gets rounded up (apparently using ceil (APL) function rather than a real rounding function). If they really want to save power generated capacity, they really should look at replacing all those power bricks out there with something remotely efficient before thinking about the power consumption drawn from an, also admittedly, inefficient battery, on the way to the power amps.

Matters not much, methinks, as no one is going to take advantage of the new designs until (1) they are incorporated into "stock" parts and (2) they are cheaper than the designs they are replacing. Almost forgot, and no one is still running a fire sale on the old chips.

Articles like these, long on promise, short on economics, or long on threat, and short on the same thing, economics, piss me off.

32.1 MB file names with magnet links. 1.15 GB for the whole database (add comments, etc). I find it in Other/Other under Browse Torrents.

Heck, if you want, you can get a (reasonably) current copy of the database right on TPB.

You might want to check out ReDigi before making that assertion again.This one is already wending its way through the court system (Capitol Records brought the suit).

And it's not even "good English." This is what you get when the CEO-speak is run through legal first. The one "nice" thing about Larry Ellison is that not everything he says get screened first. It's pretty refreshing in a bull in a China shop kind of way.

Actually they'll do what Hollywood and the others, such as patent trolling firms and that new entity created to house NorTel's patents, just spin off a LLC or LLP which has no real assets to speak of, houses just one, or a few, patent[s], and which can sue everyone in sight. Whatever you can think of, the lawyers and those politicians beholden to the corporate interests will circumvent either using loopholes embodied in the new law or via court cases that gut the new law on point. We have the best politicians money can buy. And honest because they generally stay bought.

Hell, you can't even limit patents just to individuals or small groups of individuals since corporations are people too, in the eyes of the law. I used to be both a realist about "the system" since I grew up knowing the warts as well as the good and the good kept me somewhat optimistic. Now I can't see much good, if any, left. Thank Bastet that I don't have any kids.

What with the "anti-terror" regulations, I'd give serious thought to a full online backup and leaving pretty much just the basics on the hard drives. And I'd zero the "empty" sectors. I know I'm being paranoid, its why I'm "trusted" about this kind of thing, but it removes one more, possible, reason for seizure (or delay).

Which is why I reserve judgement. Until some of us, no longer under NDA, get our (sweaty) paws on one and see what the performance is like on comparable apps, who knows? If it is nicer to develop for, without all the prior API bloat, it might actually be a pleasure to write for it.

One of the early Android apps (7+ at the very least) seem to be virtualization hosts for console games. Naw, nobody wants to run console games on their tablet, do they?

You do know that tablets can have 3G (4G)? How about tethering? Even better, in my case since I loathe cellphones, a mobile hot-spot. Just from a security standpoint, I wouldn't use public Wi-Fi anyway, especially if I'm connecting into and operating my network!

I can't speak for anyone else since cervical bone-spurs are doing a number on my typing, or anything else requiring a lot of motor-control so scratch most non-strategy games right off the bat. For almost everything, I use voice and the Nexus 7 does voice recognition very nicely indeed. Next GUI and yes even on my servers. If a keyboard is required for commands, or my master password, well as I said, typing ain't that good now. A dozen or so weird characters are fine, else use handlers. Frankly, aside from CLI wienies, typing is overrated, especially in the face of handhelds with superior voice-recognition. Do recall that the Unix syntax style was created for TeleTypes, the real deal. As in TTY's! I've used them and I can't see why anyone, save someone who considers cryptic interfaces a "good" thing to keep the unwashed (unanointed) masses away from their altar (OS), would like them. [Aside: The ONLY thing I have good to say about PowerShell is that voice works well there if you keep a finger over the hyphen key.]

I forgot to address your point about keyboards/mice/portability issue, well all told, my 7" tablet, bluetooth keyboard (in the same case), bluetooth mouse, and even bluetooth headset wrap into a small bundle that goes in one cargo pocket, although I usually toss it into my small backpack. I wouldn't want to use anything smaller than 7", but that's due to equally old eyes, and I have no use for 10" here which is pure Goldilock's here.

In the future I can eventually see that we'll go to something like a wrist-bracelet, glasses, headset rig with a roll-out display, all equally comfortable with Swype-type on-screen keyboards, Kinect-style user interaction, voice-recognition, etc. (multi-modal in-depth), as part of a personal network that ties in, and imports our environment, wherever we are and whatever we are doing (and that's context sensitive as well). We are still only in the fourth generation of these devices, at best, or more like second-generation by my count, so change will happen fast. Still, multi-modal, distributed, multi-networked devices seem to be the trend. [Until the Next Big Thing comes along, DNI. Direct-Nueral Interface, probably brought to you by Sony who is doing a lot of work in this area.]

Tablets have the potential to become a disabled (I don't mince words) individuals best friend, especially as Google and Android developers have been approaching things of late. 24/7 access to my medical team, anywhere, the 'net's millions of books, and my own personal (legal) collection of literally (pun intended) thousands more, and all through a device with enough compute power to be voice operated even without a 3G/4G connection. Under $500 even with all the widgets above. Wow! Being bed-ridden was my future before. What's next? [Or as MS used to put it, where do you want to go today?]

I have no idea of how the Microsoft tablet market will turn out and frankly, I don't think anyone really does either. What I do know is the potential is there, despite the crap said in these threads. Talk about FUD! Whatever. We need hands-on by the developer community not blarney. Once the NDA's clear, of course.

That's the direction I'm going here. Seriously overpowered workstation to server with virtual machines (coin-flip which server OS/hyper-visor combo) and my Nexus 7 as my goes-everywhere machine. Now it becomes a question of tapping into all the data-streams coming into this place ;-)

And that's the point that should be hammered at them, that if a voluntary scheme isn't followed, we resort to tools that allow us to pollute their data. I already have the code to 'weaponize' this, should I go that route, and it wouldn't exactly take a whole lot of people (percentage-wise) to pollute the databases. Question is: when/if we organize?

at the time when the Whitehouse was pushing for the utilities to have an open portal where people could go and read their smart meter's data for exactly this reason. Any reasonably astute burgler, or home invasion robber, would be an idiot not to try to get access to this information. True, there are a lot of stupid criminals out there, but there are stupid criminals with smart friends.