Notwithstanding the detail of who used what for what, thereʼs a trend here of discouraging acceptance of simple utilities. (Which even the Guardian article yesterday did nothing to improve on.) In the UK this may be partly attributable to the ‘lost’ generation of computer-as-appliance thinking promulgated through schools by Microsoft et al. (Approximately, we give you cheap licenses, you pretend computer = Win+MSO+IE+games.)
But now (according to gov.uk) kids are to be taught computer-as-programmable-tool thinking again. So I propose: The next step to tackle this climate of ignorance should be that all schools, or – anyone really, should teach kids (or anyone) to write scripts that use wget to do something simple and obvious, like download a monthʼs worth of BoingBoing articles and sort into daily directories. Or maybe even something creative and useful, who knows. ;-p
Not sure if this would benefit from an award scheme or anything…? The most creative use of wget by an 8-12 yr old; the most annoying use; the most likely to be imprisoned, etc. Oh, and most likely to land a GCHQ job, couldnʼt leave that out.
(Sorry world outside UK; nothing specific for you here. Also, application in rumpUK and Scotland may vary.)
