Perche' non abbiamo anche noi Slashdot? Forse perche' siamo italiani..

STAVO SEGUENDO UNA notizia trovata su Slashdot, il sito-comunita' americano il cui scopo e' fornire "News for Nerds. Stuff that matters". Insomma, inciampo in questo articolo, relativo a un professore di computer science che da anni va dicendo a Cisco che i manuali dei suoi router sono fatti con i piedi. Loro non lo ascoltano? Allora lui si scrive il manuale di uso perfetto e lo mette a disposizione online. Un tomo da 800 pagine.

Niente di eccezionale come notizia, direte voi. Infatti. A meno che, ovviamente, non possediate un router della Cisco e col manuale non ci abbiate capito niente. Poi, pero', leggendo i commenti (che sono la vera forza di Slashdot) si incoccia in questo tipo di osservazioni (notare, proprio mentre da noi si fantastica di manuali scolastici online, per i quali viene preservato solo il diritto di autore):

I'm still wondering why the governments don't require free and "open source" text for public schools. In college, the professors used to change the text every semester so that the students couldn't sell the books back at the end of the semester (likely getting kick-backs from the text manufacturers, no doubt).

If just one state would sit down and even purchase some good works and make them freely available for modification and distribution, then the cost of education would be greatly reduced. Profs would be free to make changes at it fits their style so long as those changes are re-posted to the public. Students could read the texts online and/or print them

E poi:

You're exactly right about getting kick-backs, as well as the fact that they collect royalties for every book they put out. My Biology teacher is friends with the author of my Biology book (this is the reason that we use it, actually) and he has stated that to stay current with the class, you need the new book. Unless, you're really cheap, in which case, you'll need to know that Chapter Five is now Chapter Seven, and other trifle changes like that. At $100 a pop, these guys are milking college students (and their delicious scholarships) for as much as they can.

Ancora:

i'm not sure that would work...you need to have some "standard" teaching material somewhere...if you let every individual professor/teacher alter their text book according to their spercifications, things could get out of control...think about the viewpoint an affrican high school teacher in mississippi might have while teaching about the civil war...or a staunch anti-war believer when teaching about vietnam...children's views of events would eventually become skewed...that's why it's good to have standardized text books...

of course, this relates mostly to elementary school & high school...obviously once you get into college, many teachers don't even use text books to begin with...

Ancora, di nuovo sui manuali di Cisco:

good to see somebody doing this. I took the first semester Cisco course at my college, and yeah, the books weren't all that good. I haven't seen his work yet, but I do recall the first semester is exclusively going over the seven layers of the OSI model in sometimes painful detail. Can tend to throw the beginning student off, especially considering the OSI model is not much more than an academic tool anyway, TCP/IP is were its at in the 'real world'.

Ancora:

They probably figured, "we can charge a ton for our cert's forever, because no one is going to take the time to write a book." OOPS! I hope other people follow suit and finally we will be rid of the "if you're not certified, you can't have learned it" business principle.

Ecco, queste cose da noi mica ci sono. Da noi sarebbero solo troll, incazzati, oppure eminenti linguisti che confabulano tra di loro con linguaggi ostici e aulici. Mah... Saranno anche coglioni, 'sti americani. Pero'...