Why killing Media was killing an investment in the future

Mon Jul 23 14:12:52 EDT 2012

Hi Richmmond,

Richmond Mathewson-2 wrote
> 
> Mummy and Daddy should NOT provide little Twinkle-toes
> with a computer hooked up to the internet so s/he can
> go blotto on online games and associated crap.
> 

That particular phrase brings me memories of this video:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=erun7qmpXds
Amazing... How much passion devoted to a single endevour...
Don't you think??? :-|

Richmond Mathewson-2 wrote
> 
> I remember part of my Master's degree from the "University" of Abertay 
> (the only bit worth anything)
> involved my trialling my Agent-led Software generation system 
> (completely authored in RR/LC) at
> the Primary School in St Andrews (Greyfriars RC). The teachers loved it 
> as they were sick-to-death of teaching 7/8/9/10 year olds how to write 
> "Dear Mummy and Daddy" letters in WORD, and endless PAINT programs. 
> However the headmistress (a very sharp Irish lady) told me that I had 
> about as much hope getting funding to continue development from the 
> local council (Fife) as a bar of gold falling on my head out of a tree. 
> She said that the unpleasant truth was that education was always pitched 
> at the lowest common denominator in the state sector.
> 

Yes, I have a very similar experience.
Actually, it's a lot worse if you have any kind of
success, because your effort is not only ignored,
but dismissed as "non-important"...

Richmond Mathewson-2 wrote
> 
> Britain, particularly, hates success and thrives on a culture of 
> mediocrity. What I liked a lot about the United States when I stayed 
> there was that success was admired and there were not so many things to 
> stand in your way as there are in Britain.
> 
> In Bulgaria, you are dead on the ground, unless you are a big business 
> interest in bed with a
> government that encourages business monopolies.
> 

I just keep wondering how far is USA going in worshiping 
successful people who get their way at any cost.
In the country where I live, if you are going to work
for the goverment, there are only two ways in which
you could receive a full payment for your work:
1) Bribe a goverment worker or have him as partner
2) Have a foreign partner who ask their Embassy to
press the goverment to fulfill their payments.

Richmond Mathewson-2 wrote
> 
> [snip]
> Bulgarian children are told the first computer was built by John 
> Atanasov (a Bulgarian born in America to Bulgarian parents); which is 
> palpably NOT true. Arguably the second computer was built by Charles 
> Babbage (and programmed by Ada Lovelace), the first by some 
> Graeco-phoenician some 2,500 years ago. And where are Turing and so forth?
> 
> While Atanasov may have co-authored the first software reprogrammable 
> computer, that is not the same thing at all as what is claimed for him 
> here in Bulgarian schools. In context his achievement can be seen for 
> what it is, rather than some impossibility.
> 

Richmmond, everyone needs a hero. No big harm in that.
History if full of these kinds of divergent "points of views"...
http://listverse.com/2009/04/10/top-10-wrongly-attributed-inventions/

But it's a fact that special geniuses only appears in the correct
enviroment.
In most societies, they are already "Dead on Arrival"...

Richmond Mathewson-2 wrote
> 
> All of these young people worked with Runtime Revolution 2.2.1 (a FREE 
> version offered by NOVELL via a chap called 'Stompfi' for Linux), and 
> have computers running Linux either as the sole OS or on a partition at 
> home.
> 

Wow! Runtime Revolution 2.2.1 from NOVELL tutorials...
I have almost forgotten about this version of Livecode.

According to your descriptions, you have a really sharp eye about the
qualities of your students.
Don't you think that they could benefit of a different learning strategy
suited to their particular learning style?...
Instead of applying the same didactical method for all of them?

Applying the same didactical method for all of the students is, in my
humble opinion, one of the greatest failures of modern education.

Richmond Mathewson-2 wrote
> 
> 4. (23 year old man/boy) Now authoring stuff for my language school; 
> have a meeting set up for the last week of August to see if I like what 
> I see and am ready to pay him for the work. He has also worked his way 
> through the code of about 90% of my EFL standalones. I have given him a 
> list of criteria as well as copies of the textbooks I use with 
> guidelines on the topic areas that I feel I have not provided adequate 
> coverage on. As this fellow has a degree in tourism from a shitty 
> college here in Bulgaria that is worth next to nothing, but has enrolled 
> to do an MA in Applied Linguistics at the one semi-decent University 
> here in Plovdiv, he is extremely happy that he has found a skill that is 
> sellable, and is now putting his nose to the grindstone like nobody's 
> business; I have suggested that IF his programs for the summer are worth 
> having I will find a way to buy him some sort of LC licence so he can 
> produce standalones for Windows as well as Linux.
> 
> This is Ilko Birov: 
> http://lists.runrev.com/pipermail/use-livecode/2012-June/173435.html
> 

God bless, Ilko. And hopefully he would find joy and profit
in the wild wide world of computer programming.
(Hint for Ilko: Learn Databases: SQL et al... )

Richmond Mathewson-2 wrote
> 
> As this "course" consisted of 4 x 180 minutes (each class starting with 
> 30 minutes with the computers
> OFF and my explaining concepts such as local and global variables on a 
> whiteboard and with cups and beans, followed by 150 minutes of hands-on 
> with my sitting amidst the 4 computers) we progressed as far as 
> modelling a simple pocket calculator (+, -, *,/,=,M,M+,M-), a 
> fortune-telling program based on a person's birthdate, image movement 
> and drop-targets.
> 

Ah, this is dissapointing. You do not included an exercise
for them to create an interactive story:
http://games.renpy.org/game/the_groozle.shtml
http://lemmasoft.renai.us/forums/viewtopic.php?f=11&t=9882

Richmond Mathewson-2 wrote
> 
> I will use this occasion to beg for something of the order of RunRev 
> 2.0.1 for Mac, Win and Linux to be released for FREE; possibly with a 
> fair few of the capabilities removed.
> 

Just remember that this kind of gift is not free for RunRev,
because associated cost with supporting a free version could
go a lot higher that paid versions. But, I agree with you
that a free, but limited version could be useful to attract
new educators and their students. 

Al

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