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My uncle Alan his girlfriend have been working for years to get computers into the hands of South Africans, specifically in schools. It is a noble effort and has had some very good results. But my lord, the stories they bring back of trouble on so many levels. Getting computers through customs is very difficult, there's always someone there who will hold the goods up until you grease their palms. Travelling across the land you come across more questionable patrols that demand money to let you pass. Once in the school, there are so few technical people that it is very difficult to even keep a small local network running, forget about the internet. Theft is very high. Even teachers steal the computers to keep them at home... and not even to use: just to have as a decorative status symbol!

My uncle and his girlfriend are very tenacious and clever, so they've been able to succeed so far, but the problems are bigger than one would expect. Just sending computers or money or whatever won't help by itself. There's a whole layer of social disfunction that's got an amazing foothold, and it eliminates almost any motivation for the locals to be ethical. And South Africa is probably one of the easier places in Africa to do this kind of thing.

Anyways, I'm all for helping each other out, but there are political and social issues that need to be worked out before higher level stuff will have a major impact. Heck if I know how to do it.

I have wanted to help them put together a website of their experiences, but we haven't had the time yet.

Cheers.

http://www.riverdeep.net/current/2002/01/011402_sm ells.jhtml

We've heard an awful lot about the HardOCP/Phantom litigation, but there seems to be another story lurking. I direct your attention to the following section of Infinium Labs' now overly-linked-to 8-K financial form:

NOTE D - CONVERTIBLE PROMISSORY NOTE

At October 31, 2003, Infinium was involved in a legal dispute with a competitor. In January 2004 the Company, in conjunction with the settlement of litigation, issued a convertible promissory note in the amount of $100,000. The promissory note is non-interest bearing and must be paid or converted into common shares if Infinium has an anticipated merger with a corporation that has common stock trading on the over-the-counter or similar exchange within 241 days from the date of the note, or the liquidated damages total $150,000.

Now this makes less sense to me than most lawyerspeak. Could someone walk me through it?

The other interesting thing is that Infinium names at least one developer: Riverdeep, owner of Broderbund (that's how it's spelled on the site, folks. I know there's supposed to be an "o" in there, but they've changed).

It would be interesting to see if Riverdeep actually acknowledges such an agreement...

"Hey, there are plenty of great games for the Mac! Breakout, superbreakout.... photoshop."

Word Munchers!.

Anyone else find the spiral to their low light basement dwelling lifestyle rooting back to this dreadful classic?

"Come on, Timmy, it's time to do geography. Now, Timmy."

China and India have been at the forefront of biogas power production for decades.

In 1979, China had an estimated 7.2 million biogas plants, fueled primarily by pig manure.

In the same year, India had 80,000 of its own biogas plants fueled by the defecation of the sacred cow. (Holy Shit!)

They've even been doing this in the US for quite some time. Here is another article that provides an excellent explanation of the process, costs, and capabilities of such a system.

Well, take the word 'malapropism' that was highlighted in this review. It's find learning what it means, but if you rattle along to its dictionary.com entry you find out it comes from the word 'malaprop'. Digging further, you can learn what this really means.

The word was actually taken from the name of a fictitious character, Mrs. Malaprop which was indeed derived from the French mal à propos. Learning root meanings used to be an important part of elementary education. I don't think that's the case any longer.

"The world today needs some serious work to become even as good a world is was 30 years ago.
"
Cast your mind back...
1972...

Only in the last few years where minorities allowed to ride in the front of a bus.

Automobiles produced an ungodly amount of pollutant (There are 4 time as many cars on the roads in LA now, but only half the pollution.

Children were beaten regularly and this was considered normal (I'm not talking about a swat here)
It was very near impossible for a woman to get a decent career, and if she did, she could make half what her male counter part earned.

Wearing seatbelts was almost unheard of.

we were very close to a nuclear war.

Now if you go back to the fifties, it gets far worse. [Pinko hating, lynchings, internments]

People are more aware of other now then they have been for a long time.

I think you need to stop pining for "the good ol' days and start think about how you can make tomorrow good.

I suspect you are under 40 and confusing the realities of the early 70's with you fond childhood memories.

URL error correction :

Now chew on this, there are gigantic asteroids routinely passing by at a distance less than between the earth and moon, and there is an approaching black hole [GRO J1655-40] which could swallow earth in a little as 6000 years

Thank you for grounding that pontificating idiot. I have been the beneficiary of good will and goof treatment, and i try to give back. I don't his denigration of the western world rhetoric. Go live on a farm, butthead, no one is stopping you. And you can fornicate with Laura Ingles and have an Amish family.

All politics are local, make things pleasant around you, and if everyone does it, it manifests on a grand scale. This top down legislation of morality from figures and soap box artists like the aforementioned deacon of moral authority fucks it up worse. Your moral-mettling is the problem.

This idiot stumbled like one poster said on a Rand novel, but his ruminations plain suck.

And I get sick of this anti corporate and anti rich people drivel. My health care is paid by the companies I work for, and I've been given generous tips and opportunities by rich folk in this life. I don't buy your gloom and doom terminator 2 movie crap. Everyone I know who is doing well is hardworking and a bit lucky, and they feel lucky because they were endorsed by someone, probably better off than themselves, and this was the inroad to their success. Kissing a little ass and then performing when you get your foot in the door does wonders to one's lifestyle.

We aren't good, we aren't evil, we JUST ARE. Chew on that for a while. I've seen people that make me sick, and that make me happy. Surround yourself with those that make you happy, crack a beer, fuck a lover, and be fucking glad you aren't starving to death, have a keyboard to type shit on and aren't getting bombed or forced into labor.

Now chew on this, , and there is an approaching black hole [GRO J1655-40] which could swallow earth in a little as 6000 years, thank you Hubble Telescope [the symbol of CORPORATE GREED right? Not.], and many, many extinction level events possible in the near future, with nuclear war probably the LEAST likely to wipe life on earth away. This is all coming, inevitably - if not in a human time frame, in a geological time frame, if not geological, then it's a guaranteed certainty in the universal time frame. We better focus on getting off the third rock from the Sun and stop fucking around so much or our whole civilization, existence, way of life, our genetic code, our will to survive will be preempted, extinguished, put out to pasture, end, finito, gone. And we will be space dust with no one to tell our story and no way of any other sentient life of finding out. Ashes to ashes, baby. This is where we all hope [secretly] there s a God, otherwise it's cold and dark, and we are fucking around with precious little time.

I would post as me, but since this isnt a me too post and its critical of some sap who got a +5 from groupthinkers, I'll go AC. Sorry.

Young children are fantastically good at learning languages by example, but often not good at predicate logic or deductive reasoning, which takes a lot of training. (As an aside, the book Reading Reflex applies this insight to teaching reading - instead of teaching deductive rules parrot fashion, it groups different representations of the same sound and gets the children to work through them until they derive an unconscious model that way).

The best 'programming' exercise with small children is the 'I am a robot' game. You play their robot slave, and do what you are told, but very literally, and in small stages, with 'error messages' returned in a robot voice. Just getting you to walk from the sofa to the bedroom can take ages and they love it. They naturally want to be the simple-minded robot too (just make sure they don't get too attached to it, or they may end up working in telephone support).

I've seen a huge amount of 'educational' software - I used to work in the CD-ROM business, and I buy up remaindered CD's from Marshalls for my 2 boys and watch how they use them. Most of them are dross, with the same few ideas (Pelmanism, missing words etc.) recycled with a different character or brand attached. Some have genuine insight, and I can see them learning to reason using them. Here are a selection:

Logical Journey of the Zoombinis is a wonderful introduction to deductive logic through a compelling game. It was designed with this in mind and my boys have been playing this since they were 3, and are still enjoying it now at 5 and 7 (as do I).

The Pajama Sam series of adventures from Humongous are good at teaching the global/local focus, but one that is great fun and teaches valuable debugging skills is Pajama Sam's SockWorks which features a long series of machines that have socks in them that you have to get into the right coloured baskets. As you can also build your own puzzles, the idea of solvable and unsolvable problems naturally comes up.

Zap! is another great game that teaches by stealth. You have to help 3 wisecracking cartoon charcters to fix their electrical, optical and audio-visual gadgets to get their show on the road. It manages to include a compelte circuit simulator, an optical workbench simulator and sound environment simulator, and still be lots of fun for Kindergarten children.

To teach programming concepts without writing textual code, Cocoa is perfect (if you have a Mac). It is a tool that enables you to create 2d video games by drawing the characters and defining what happens when they encounter each other by example. Andrew has made about 65 games with this, some original, some homages to TV programs or his brother's films.

Finally, if you want a comprehensible textual language, use Runtime Revolution, whose language Transcript is based on the old Apple HyperCard language, and as such has completely human-readable programs. This is what I plan to get Andrew into next.
(republished from my blog, May 12th 2002)