Does Anyone Else Find Watching Simpletons Discuss Technology To Be Oddly Reassuring?

[Wiglaf]

For the record, I have no official comment on the Surface products. Microsoft may or may not be paying my company millions of dollars to have my team port our software to Surface RT to run on the $900M worth of tablets they've essentially donated to schools.

I will simply say, I'm very happy the Surface happened.

Jesus the RT is pathetic. How could Microsoft be so desperate for a ported phone book app?

[Asher]

:furious: :redneckinagaybar:

I no longer write phone book apps. I write an app used in 10 million classrooms around the world in 58 languages.

[MikeH]

No wonder kids can't read anymore.

[Wiglaf]

:furious: :redneckinagaybar:

I no longer write phone book apps. I write an app used in 10 million classrooms around the world in 58 languages.

Schools are notorious for purchasing outdated, expensive, showy and needless technology, especially private schools with 10 million classrooms that speak 58 languages. I was more impressed with the phone book app. At least it let me find drug dealers and prostitutes without worrying about getting involved in interstate commerce and attracting the feds craigslist-style.

[Sava]

he also drives a dodge stratus

[MRT144]

I dont - technophiles are just as dumb as anyone else.

[The Mad Monk]

I keep reading "Simpletons" as "Simpsons"

[The Mad Monk]

[Asher]

Schools are notorious for purchasing outdated, expensive, showy and needless technology, especially private schools with 10 million classrooms that speak 58 languages.

So you approve of the business model, then?

[Wiglaf]

You haven't swung and missed that hard since you bought the Stratus. All the tech I own serves a purpose -- my Macbook Air is an all-day workhorse, my iPad keeps me entertained on the plane, my Amazon Kindle helps convince women I read books so much that I need to store 2 GB worth of them, and my digital thermostat makes sure that my living areas are the right temperature to trigger the famale sex hormone (this is legally NOT considered a roofie -- quite a loophole I have found).

[Hauldren Collider]

I can't remember a time in high school when I thought "gee wiz, I'm glad we had a smartboard." My physics teacher (who is the early-adopter type, gets every new gadget as soon as it comes out) tried the smartboard out. He realized he could do better by projecting onto a whiteboard and using dry erase markers. Which he then proceeded to do. To be fair, the idea didn't occur to him until he got the smartboard, so I guess we can thank it for reminding us that sometimes the situation calls for low-tech ingenuity, not high tech expense.

[Wiglaf]

It's telling that literally no universities use Smartboards. It's something they can only pawn off on fat principals trying to raise three fat kids while making $57,000.

[Hauldren Collider]

Correct. I have not seen anything like a smartboard here at CMU. The closest we have are these document cameras that basically allow you to use the projector station as an overhead. During my freshman year some CS professors tried using tablet computers smartboard style, but it sucked, so they stopped.

[MRT144]

Universities expect students to provide their own technology, so I dont really see how theres a greater point to "universities don't do it, therefore its invalid as a tool".

[Hauldren Collider]

The smartboard is like a whiteboard for people who think that whiteboards somehow don't manage to do the job of getting words onto a wall so people can see them. Universities have realized that the premise is false and so do not pay for them. It's not something students would provide.