[OT] Mediocre Britain

[Richmond Mathewson]

On 08/28/2011 08:56 PM, John Dixon wrote:
> Richmond...
>
> You often make me smile when you vent about something that obviously gets right up your nose...

Well, I'm glad I make somebody smile . . .  :) Mind you, if I didn't I 
might smite you over the head with my slide-rule . . .  :)

> so, I thought I would feed give you the link to a little story about some people who are obviously morons... they go by the names of Mark Smith and Dan Abelow... and I'm sat here laughing just wondering what your take it going to be on this one... :-)
>
> http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-14682700
>
> It might be of interest to those who are trying to develop and sell their 'cottage industry' apps... as it seems to me that these morons have decided it might be clever to try and patent the wheel...

Well, speaking as someone who has been spending buckets of time over the 
last 2 years on his 'cottage industry' app I feel really very sorry for 
Mark and Dan; they
cannot be complete morons if they managed to write some reasonable software.

Obviously the people at Lodsys are very, very intelligent, and evil!

Actually (err, sorry; "aksherlly") the thing that worries me about about 
90% of education regardless of where it is, is that it seems to consist 
of fact-cramming
and licking young folk into towing the accepted social line. Things that 
are missing are How To Think Outside the Box, How To Take Nothing For 
Granted and How To
Say Boo to a Goose.

Last month a whole lot of kids at my school told me that they really 
didn't want me to teach them that day; so I lay down on the sofa, closed 
my eyes and said "get on with it then"; and they did; occasionally 
prodding me for information or help; meanwhile
I was able to get my head round a Unicode-with-Livecode problem that had 
given me an itch in one of my cerebral succuli for quite some time.
The kids achieved, that day, at least as much without my "direct 
teaching" as they
would have achieved with me ramming stuff at them like a pile-driver.

That is education!
>
> Dixie
>
>
>