The better part is how they complain about firefox hogging memory by looking at their Task Manager. Its like they'd prefer 40% of their memory to sit idle instead of caching useful data. "Firefox is taking up xMB! That's horrible!" but as soon as the memory is required elsewhere its released and available. I don't want 4GB of memory wasted on my computer sitting idle.

"students need applicable exercises to show them why this stuff matters."

The students destined to be coders find this out on their own. As for the others I find a lesson plan that works backwards is best. Show them a functional product then show them the components that someone had to make in order for it to function. So show the kids where that circle they learned to draw the week before is in a massive UI environment.

"When we'd talk after class as juniors in college we wondered if we really knew anything at all, because it felt like we didn't."
You didn't know anything, and never should pretend that you do. Staying humble is one of the only ways I keep myself sane sometimes.

"Now, before they can walk, they have 3D games, music players, Facebook and all other forms of social media. I'm not saying it's all bad, but, where is the drive to get someone young interested in computing?"

Then the solution would be to engage them in those things:

• Write a simple mod on the Source engine
• Write a phone app for their iPhone/Android/Blackberry
• Write a plugin for mediamonkey or the like to categorize music
• Write a facebook app

Force the students to get involved with the community and let them choose if they want to dive in deeper or not. In my personal experiences as a student I hated Java because of the community but found home with C users who were more friendly (I was young and ignorant to the fact that one forum can be friendlier than another). Let them dive into an academic forum for phone development or what have you and you'll find students doing work on their own time to bring to school and tinker with.

And that's sort of another thing facebook has going for it. As crappy as the API is most developers looking to cache in on the social networking scheme see a greater opportunity tying in their idea to facebook rather than trying to compete with it.

Correct me if I'm wrong but hasn't there already been 2 or 3 "Next Big Things" that facebook beat out? The problem isn't innovation, capabilities or style, its that everyone is on facebook becase... everyone is on facebook. Sure you might get a hipster-esk crowd to jump to the new one to say "I was there BEFORE it was cool" but unless the masses follow suit it is doomed to fail quickly.

The only way out of the loop that I see is someone deriving a new business model to maintain themselves while struggling to steal facebook's popularity. If that's the case then it likely wont be a coder to innovate the idea and we'll see this whole winkle-burg toss up again.

The real issue is more simple than that I think. By stating (with reasonable probability) that they commited the crime they probably give the feds enough to gain a warrant. With that warrant they'll confinscate PCs/hard drives and scrub them for the factual evidence that will/willnot lead to a conviction.

I think this is a *whoosh* moment.... but I can't quite tell.

I'm not an apple dev or user so I'll blindly agree with the point you make regarding licensing. But you CANNOT tell me straight faced that Apple did not rip off the name & logo.

The modern gaming industry is very very young.

Quite personally I find myself expressing some of the view points from the article but see it from a different angle.

I'll fully admit my university was under-par. I came out near the top of my class and was one of the 25% of the graduating class that landed a job immediately (I actually had multiple offers). What I felt coming out was that all the work that *I* put into university was what caused my "successful" outcome. I try to stay humble and credit those who were there along the way (profs/peers) but I still often feel that it was a direct result of my efforts as to why I ended up where I am.

Having said that if you take that view point and twist it, it can sound as if I think I am here solely as a result of my own actions which is not true. I see many people in my field who share this view and as a result make the leap forward and say that their university had nothing to do with their success and their own drive would have landed them in the same position they are in now. Keep extending the argument and you come full circle to the idea that "college was a waste of time" which is more often then not very untrue.

Now the only real argument that I have against this view when people take it that far is to ask them what they've accomplished since graduation besides a job. Can they tell me they've continued to learn multiple programming languages or other related items at the same rate? What about practical applications of knowledge? What have they to show for their months/years post-degree? The obvious factor that I see people missing is the motivation that peers and others around you provide in the university or education environment...

/rant

Majority of Saskatchewan (~90% of population):
- 5Mbps @ $30/month, no cap
- 25Mbps @ $65/month, no cap

And I disagree. Although I've never "cybercheated" (from what I can recall at least, I always cite sources) I can see why it is appealing. I've taken more than a dozen courses in my Engineering degree that are beyond useless for my professional career, its how the education system works. So when I'm tasked to write a 20 page page on something in my Humanities Elective course I don't *really* lose anything when I come out with a passing grade and nothing else. The university wasted my time and money on that course and at best I'll be able to win bar arguments on the topic.

You are correct if you assume all cheating is done in relevant courses. If I stole my Digital Network class project from an online tutorial site then I'm cheating myself, but we really can't make that assumption

Sorry to break it to you, but I don't feel that jailing a random person is a fair trade off for losing a friend/family member permanently. We want prevention and not reaction. The law is a decent first step, make the cost/benefit for texting bad to reduce incentive to do it. It won't work for everyone but it works for many. Next, educate with the new income from fines and increased insurance costs.

Going 60 in a 55 zone isn't necessarily unsafe if you're capable of handling a vehicle at the speed. Going 85 in an 80 zone isn't necessarily bad either if you can handle it.

The problem is that you can't tell who can and who can't. Do you go by their word? I wouldn't trust a system that states everyone is capable until proven otherwise because the "proven otherwise" scenario usually means harm to others

Just a little something off topic, but do some research sometime in your car and figure out where you're going and if the 5mph is worth it. I did the work on my car and found that going 10km/h over the speed limit saved me (on average) 2 minutes at the cost of 10% fuel consumption.... wasn't worth the trade off in the long run