| Sunday, July 25, 2004 |
12:37 - It's a good time to be a college student
http://www.contracostatimes.com/mld/cctimes/9239597.htm
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Steven ran across this—an article in the Contra Costa Times (registration required) that's a general overview of digital music, but with this blinkworthy item buried in the middle:
Ready or not, the changes are coming. Case in point: Duke University announced it's giving iPods to this year's incoming freshmen, complete with downloaded academic information, as well as the ability to store music.
Oh, and I'm sure every student will use it purely for educational purposes.
What is this, Silicon Valley circa 1998? Free Porsche Boxster if you work for us! It reminds me of when I was at Caltech in the mid-90s; SGI, then the unstoppable behemoth of high-end graphics, would park a big-rig, painted jet black, right in the path between the student houses and the Jorgensen Lab (where all the computing clusters were); doors would burst open at both ends of the trailer, spewing steam and dry-ice smoke, and blonde supermodels would waft down the diamond-pattern steel steps and pose in the doorways, backlit with purple lights, and seductively beckon gaping students inside. "There are no men on our planet!" they'd croon. "Come work for SGI!" And students would pour inside, to marvel at the technological wonders showcased within, and—for some—never to come out again.
It isn't that way anymore... by the time I graduated in 1999, SGI had fallen on harder times; the supermodels in the doorways of the trailer had aged a bit, and stood there dispassionately smoking cigarettes under frizzed red hair. "Sorry, the smoke machine's broken this year. We still got that file-manager thing from Jurassic Park, though, if you wanna see it."
But thanks to Apple, the wonderland has returned to the campus. At least to Duke. So far.
UPDATE: By the way, who else has iPods? Well, Lance Armstrong, the Bush daughters, and every one of the finalists on the Celebrity World Poker Championships...
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Brian Tiemann
