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Instead of a tuition free MIT, we should close all the "schools" of engineering and technics, and quit treating them as philosophical cultures. Any student of mechanics should be encouraged to see the poetry of force diagrams, any student of thermodynamics should be encouraged to explore the artistry of phase plane portraits. Let the masters be free to evaluate and choose their own apprentices. Let the journeymen maintain guild integrity. We cannot go backwards to a medieval society, but we can go forward to a healthier one, based on a more humble approach to the role of technics and a more exhalted approach to the human spirit. There is a deep pathology in the institution of higher education in America which took root in the twentieth century. Phillip Greenspun stands out as a remarkable critic speaking from within the context of higher education, but the real problem is much deeper than the economic infrastructure of tuition. Our society functions for the benefit of a f...
ISDN/ADSL
I got uswest dsl at home last march. I needed to set up a web server (on an nt 4 box) to run prototype pages outside my organizations firewall. It took a few phone calls to find out that I had to buy $165 a month worth of services to get static ip. It took three weeks and a lot of sweat and sitting on hold to get everything up and running, but once it was up it ran solid 99.1% of the time.
Suddenly in November my service disappeared.
I was coordinating a complex database driven web site project through my home server, and this was a disaster. USWEST said a change order had gone in on the 2nd of november to drop me from 512k continuous to 256k modem pool level of service on dsl. My equipment (cisco 675 router, external) didn't support the modem pool, so I explained that I couldn't have placed the order since I am not insane.
Checking my phone logs I found that I had called USWEST on the second to see if there was a...
Stearns and FosterI bought a S&F mattress in 1982 and am still sleeping on it. I have tried two other solutions to sleeping...an air mattress and a $30 coleman camp bed with spring-loaded mat. They were surprisingly comfortable, but nothing beats the S&F. Like Philip, I could not get the box spring up the stairs in my 1930's house, so I just sleep on the innerspring on the floor, like an old hippie. My wife was taken aback when she saw the arrangement, but agrees it is a damn fine bed for all that. The only drawback is that the entire floor becomes a kind of utility shelf around the bed, so there are usually 30 bookmarked books, three week's worth of Sunday NY Times, and numerous notebooks and pamplets etc mixed with the bedding, shoes, etc. The Stearns and Foster is not to blame for that, of course.