Leaving aside the meme that anything besides typing cryptic alphabetic strings into a command line interface is dumbing down, the world needs multiple perspectives.

Some of the things that non-nerds would like (at the version several years ago) were short movies showing the history, huts with photos or recreations of what was happening then, the Polish story (forgotten by most), or the shop with interesting toys. Not everyone cares about a shift register/accumulator made of ferrite cores.

The bigger issue here does not seem to be dumbing down however, it seems to be a power grab to displace the magnificient volunteers who really care about computing (and were only mildly chiding when we went into a closed section to look at some computers of our youth, was it so long ago I worked on a Univac or a 1401?). Bletchley was as much as anything a story about computing.

While I think it takes some commercial thinking, the trust has gone too far. It does not look like a reasonable comprimise is likely:

Tony Carroll, an elderly volunteer at Bletchley Park was fired after daring to show a tour group round the National Museum of Computing, which is based in the famous Block H which housed six Colossus computers during World War II. ...
Carroll said: "They are ruining this place. We are all very upset about not being able to tell the story we want to."

The Trust is planning for a bright future which does not include the National Museum of Computing. Visitors to Bletchley Park will no longer be allowed to visit the Colossus machine in Block H and fences may soon be erected to stop them visitors wandering between the two attractions.

In a statement, The National Museum of Computing said that visitor numbers have been dropping since the Trust began its war of attrition.

"Today most Bletchley Park Trust visitors miss the key experience of seeing the Colossus Rebuild and the Tunny machine in action and thereby miss out on key working exhibits representing the outstanding pinnacle of the World War II code-breaking story," a spokesman wrote.

"Negotiations with the Bletchley Park Trust to achieve a fair and equitable financial arrangement to give all Bletchley Park fee-paying visitors access to Colossus and Tunny have proved exceedingly difficult."

The BBC's footage showed Iain Standen, CEO of the Bletchley Park Trust, discussing getting rid of the volunteers.

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2...

I went there with two other nerds and we spend hours looking at the engines, parts, huts, and the computer museum also on the site. I liked the simple nature of the displays (technically complex of course, but simply presented). Something had to be done for the huts of course because wood.

I went again with my wife later (English teacher) and she was very impatient. "Why are you spending 15 minutes looking at a electronic part?" (custom rotor for the bombe.

You have to have the place be self sustaining and provide something for everyone.

Tricky balance.

Your main point was that most Americans never leave the country. Based on local newspapers and TV stations, most never hear much about the rest of the world.

For Europeans, and most of the world, people deal with other who have a different first language. Learning any other language gives a lot of insight about learning languages and about your own language. Three years of French might be too much, but some language study widens the mind.

War is God's way of teaching Americans geography. H L Mencken

Goon show what time is it
http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=-...

Or self inflicted hereditary disease or self inflicted chronic injury from a car accident or self inflicted random disease that can hit anyone.

Most state ER rooms will only stabilize a patient, they will not do long term treatments. Even if there is a drug that will treat their condition, it is not given freely.

The only people who can benefit from Medicaid (intended for poor people without insurance) are people who have nothing that can be reposses by the bankrupcy court.

All anyone need to know about public care in America is the large numbers of volunteer doctors (often from outside the US) who set up free clinics in different areas for a week and have people sleeping in the street to be inline for treatment.

Obviously not faith based as they were doing experiments. Faith based is reading a book and then closing your eyes.

whatever your interpretation of the law is, he is in jail. I think that is a good outcome. He did not say he forgot, he made damands and threatened people.
His crime, and the adoration of him by slashdoters as some kind of IP hero, only makes it more likely that others copying this will also be imprisoned. In the absense of some illegal activity on the part of the owners of the equipment which should be handled as a whistle blower, I am glad to see this happen.
This is the real Atlas Shrugged, some loopy IT worker makes trouble and is sent to jail by the people who actually have the power.

If you pay is above the national average (even more so if it is twice the national average) you have good pay for the country you are in.

80k is intrinsically pretty good. That sense of entitlement won't serve you well in the long term.

Not you

Many of the European connections to Christianity are mostly historical and nominal. The UK has a state religion (CoE) but very low church attendance. Germany has a Christian Democrat party that is mainly concerned with secular issues. Denmark and some scandinavian countries collect tax and give some of it to the national religion (Luthernism iirc) but you can opt out of any of your money going to the church. My relatives in France and Finland go to church for weddings and christenings because it is a social event but do not attend church otherwise.

There is an official status to Christianity, but in practice very few people take the conventional biblical story seriously. The only exception here in England is the Eastern European Catholics who are coming here now to find work. The local Catholic church now does masses in Polish.

Someone has to say it: "you must be new around here"

This is the central point to why copyright exists.

The cost of production is spread over many individual sales (either as tickets or rentals or whatever).

Saying that the marginal cost is zero or that the person who stole the item would not have brought it does not address the big question "Do we want expensive movies, books that take years to write, music from people who do prefer studio work?" Then there is has to be a way for money to go back to the producers.

Saying "I'm ripping off the companies, not the artists" is just another lie.

This is why Slashdot isn't worth reading anymore.
I clicked on this just to remind myself how silly the comments would be on this.

14nm is expensive to make. At least double patterning, relatively low yield, and only worth it if you want an expensive high performance part.
ARM chips are aleady being made in 14/20 so this is size is not a long term advantage for Intel.
A lot of chips are still made greater thon 60 because it's cheap. Some are even made at 160 to reduce mask cost by single patterning.
There is no doubt that Intel currently makes the highest performance parts with an equivalent power dissipation.