So there's an actual law in California that you can't have an unlicensed school? That raises all kinds of questions, like, what constitutes a school?

I don't live in California, but after the local school system failed my child (diagnosed by several doctors as severely dyslexic, a diagnosis that was not recognized by the school despite a mountain of paperwork, diagnosed BY THE SCHOOL as ADHD in third grade and "retarded" (the teacher actually used that word) in fourth grade) I pulled her out of the system and started looking for alternates.

We applied to a private art school but they were full at the time. Then I learned of a homeschool consortium close by, a collection of high tech families banded together to teach their children, with each parent teaching the subject they knew best. For instance, daughter's math teacher was formerly a nuclear engineer.

Many of the children were outcasts from the school system for various reasons. Daughter thrived there for three years, then transferred to the art school when they had an opening, and thrived there. I would read the assignments to her in the evenings and she would dictate responses to me. Her papers were good enough to prompt an investigation for cheating, but alone in front of the board she could recite from memory and draw conclusions on the subject. (Having a good memory was a way to compensate for a fifth grade reading level.) Her hour long capstone presentation was made without notes. The principal attended.

Sorry, I drifted from the point. Which was, without those three years at the consortium, she would not be the person she is now, and considering how terrible the local school system was (in fairness, I don't know what Palo Alto is like), I just can't imagine a law that requires children to attend broken schools.

I'd argue that Apple has been making low-cost laptops for some time. They've just been charging a lot for them.

That's a really good point. If you create the content yourself, it might be slower and headache inducing, but you will at least know the material.

Seriously, it's hardly a surprise. Doing research and putting words together takes cogitation which stimulates the brain. A stimulated brain is a sharp brain. We've known this for decades, perhaps centuries.

The people in my workgroup lean heavily on ChatGPT and Copilot and the like because it's faster and easier, but I wonder if it's more effective. Is it faster only initially? After we've used these tools for a while, and our brains have atrophied, maybe we slow to the point where the time saved is a wash.

Where does this lead? Are we condemned to become Eloi?

They were going down on their own.

I wasn't aware that Calc didn't do live pivot tables. Heck, even I've done that in various jobs. I'm working a project right now that requires we pick up a huge spreadsheet, pivot and burst.

I can see where Excel might be a special case, as there are people who really use a large number of its features, which don't necessarily translate to Calc. I'm glad your wife found a solution, and hopefully she won't get stuck when Microsoft changes the file format or something.

Another reason for having the bits local, I'm really uncomfortable with my content being solely in the cloud. I do occasionally use the free cloud version of Visio (for probably similar reasons why your wife uses Excel -- a long history with the tool) but I always save local.

Ok, yeah, that's fair enough. Point taken.

I personally think that Microsoft Office is way over valued. I have a license for Office 2000, and had been using that way beyond its sell-by date [1] before switching to LibreOffice, with which I've been very happy.

I'm aware that the web version of MS Office is technically free, but I prefer to have my bits local and LibreOffice fits well into my workflow. In my opinion, there's no technical reason to use MS Office anymore, except that large entities tend to fall to pressure from Microsoft.

[1] In fairness, the REASON I'd been able to use Office 2000 for so long is that Microsoft for a long time kept it up with patches to support new file format and so forth. But it was finally time to move on.

Oh yeah, wrong environment. There should be a way to like an article.

I honestly did not know that AOL still existed. I'm astonished that it's market value is so high.

I listened to a security guy's podcast yesterday, and he went over why security programs like Norton and Mcafee were useful at one time but are just junk bloatware these days. It was his opinion that Windows Defender is good enough for most things. The same with PC vpn software -- most of them don't do what you think they do. Apparently the security and privacy industries are big scam opportunities.

To be honest, I've been out of that industry long enough that I don't have a feel for the current status. So I note without commenting.

That's a good point. Netflix is ideal as a home for indie movies. Keep the budget down, so that you can experiment without blowing too much money. It's where they try to make tentpoles happen that they fail spectacularly.

Seriously, the Electric State cost $320M? What did they do, use all practical effects? Build all the robots?

Stålenhag's novel was absolutely brilliant. The movie was terrible. It could be a textbook case in how to create a dumbed-down, overly-literal, rather feeble film that absolutely misses the point of the source material.

He's gonna enjoy prison...

Fandango is owned by the studios. Rotten Tomatoes is owned by Fandango. Do you really expect them to say "yeah, that last film we pushed out, wow, that one really sucked"?

"Professional" critics are kept in line by threatening to limit their access, without which they can't do their job. Huge negative differentials between critic ratings and audience ratings are passed off as review bombing.

Not to say this always happens. But if there's a half billion dollars at stake, you can bet the studios will call Fandango and tell them to bring RT in line.

So, I'll have to figure out another interface when all I really want is to get my work done. Fabulous.

As usual, Microsoft sees Windows as an application rather than an OS. So we'll get something really dramatic and unusable, there will be a huge outcry, and they'll eventually, grudgingly withdraw some of the more onerous "features". Just like last time. And the time before.

And Ma and Pa Kettle will continue to use their ancient PC as-is because they lack the patience and expertise to migrate to a new OS.