There was an Apple ][ in every classroom when I was a kid. We used it to die of dysentery on the Oregon Trail. Did we learn anything about history? No.

I was class of 1990, so I'm thinking that we are probably the same age. When I was in 5th grade, I was exposed for the first time to a Commodore Vic-20 in the classroom which caused my parents to buy me a Commodore 64 when I was 10. I got my first modem (Mitey Mo 300 baud) when I was 13. Started my own bulletin board when I was 14. Started a computer company when I was 20. Bought my first house when I was 21. Sold my computer company when I was 25. Got a job in corporate America. Became the CTO at the 3000+ publicly traded company I've worked at for the last 12 years.

Despite being extremely intelligent, I did not do well in school and never spent a minute in college. Never had a career interest outside of computers. If it weren't for that Vic-20 and the occasional Apple IIe I was exposed to in school, I very likely would be homeless right now. Instead, I am very financially successful, married with 3 fantastic kids.

Playing with crayons and chalk and playing outside are important, but so is exposure to the machines that run the world today. As with anything, it's the balance that's important.

Touch screens are ok for older students, but tactile reinforcement of buttons is good for younger kids.

Both my 3 year old daughter and my 5 year old son have used my iPhone for about 18 months now. They fly through the thing. I never even had to teach my son how to use it - he knew how to unlock it from the first time he saw me do it.

Touch screens are just natural to use.

I'm no user of Bing, but it was pretty obvious reading the article that this guy has an axe to grind against Bing. First he supposedly finds a security flaw that enables you to game the system, uses that security flaw personally and posts for others how to do it on his site and now he's posting about this.

And to top it off, he's a competitor. Pretty slimy.

A 33 MHz 486 was several times faster than a 33 MHz 386.

MHz is almost meaningless when comparing speed, even in CPUs that are very similar. Even somewhat technical people fail to realize this frequently.

Blackberry has an emulator for every model they've made that I could see. They are freely available and easy to download and set up.

Visual Studio comes with emulators for every Windows Mobile phone that is out there. I believe you can also freely download them without Visual Studio.

The iPhone has an emulator as well - but you have to be running a Mac. But it's freely available and easy to download.

Nokia? Yeah, they have emulators too.

Not every manufacturer has them of course, but most do.

How can there be a rule about something that was destroyed years ago by the legitimate and merciful actions of the RIAA and MPAA?

BitTorrent, IRC and Usenet have been shut down for years. I dare you to try to get anything from them! It's impossible. They have been literally shut down by the MPAA and RIAA.

We are left with one alternative: Rapidshare. Sure, it's not perfect but that's all we have after the effective campaigns of the RIAA and MPAA. Now it looks like they'll have to focus all their attention on Rapidshare. Darn. Then we will be left with nothing.

But to reiterate, no need to focus on BitTorrent, IRC or Usenet - those are already dead. Yup. Dead and buried. Nothing to see there.

Since 9/15/2008:

Sent: 226 MB
Received: 2.1 GB

I'm usually on WiFi when I'm at home which is probably where I do most of my usage. The people that are on 400 MB per month probably don't have WiFi where they use it most often.

While we the people believe the principles involved are moot. The RIAA believes we the people should be mute.

I see what you did there...

My review is on this review of the original review of the book. I found it to be a snarky piece that questions the worth of the original review and even the book it reviews. Its main argument is that the book and review only contain obvious points.

There I saved everyone the time needed to read that 10 paragraph Review of the Review of the book.

The Yellow Pages are more invasive. They give your home address and name.

That's assuming you have a name like "Dominos Pizza" or "Allstate Insurance".

For the rest of us with people names, we're generally more concerned about the White Pages.

No one installs and uses "Linux," they install an operating system that happens to use the Linux kernel's functionality

You have officially won the "semantics of the year" award!!

I have a brown Zune too. When I first got it, I absolutely loved it. 30 GB of storage, ability to play photos, videos and music either in headphones or on my TV. Then a strange thing happened... Last September I wanted to get a mobile device that allowed me to surf the web. I saw my friends' iPhones and thought it was a good experience. "No problem" I thought. I'll just check out this Windows Mobile 6 stuff. I started on a hunt to find a non-iPhone that browsed the web as well as an iPhone. I went to AT&T stores (since I had their service already though my contract had expired), Verizon stores and Sprint stores. At the time, every other phone's web surfing was a J-O-K-E compared to the iPhone. A joke. I can't tell you how much it pains me to say that, since I am in reality a Microsoft fan and have used their development products professionally for over a decade and a half.

So I got the iPhone 3G. My Zune was then in the glove compartment of my car for a few months. I pulled it out a few weeks ago to try out the Zune games that seemed to be taking off. What I used to think was a sleek, intuitive interface on the Zune now looked clunky. The entire device actually felt cheap. The Zune hadn't changed though - I did. I got used to the iPhone. But anyway, I upgraded my Zune firmware, installed the Zune Games and actually tried the default ones out. Texas Hold'em was actually fun. But man, the experience is nothing - NOTHING - like the iPhone.

I guess I'll try selling my brown Zune on eBay before they become totally worthless.

From the moment they entered primary school 15 years ago, they have been under the boot of a "one-strike" "zero-tolerance" public school system

You have officially scared the shit out of me. The first of my three kids enters kindergarten next fall, and I don't want him to be a mindlessly obedient robot, but I agree with you that is the natural consequence of these stupid policies.