Slashdot Mirror
Slashback: Pricedrops, Honor, Games
Making your computer worth even less. Acid-F1ux writes: "Advanced Micro Devices has slashed prices of its desktop and mobile Athlon processors just days after a similar move by rival Intel. The cuts range from 17 percent to 52 percent for mobile Athlon XP chips and between 11 percent and 32 percent for desktop Athlon XP chips. On Sunday, Intel dropped prices of its Pentium 4 processors by as much as 53 percent."
Progressive Education strikes a blow. darnellmc writes: "According to this Atlanta Journal-Constitution news article GA Tech had so many students violate the school's "honor code" that they have decided to change it.
"In the wake of the investigation, Tech officials have decided to allow students in introductory computer science courses to share information and collaborate on homework, previously prohibited under the school's academic honor code."
Of course code sharing also teaches the value of Open Source ;o) . Maybe now some young Computer Science student can spend more time on developing a good overall program, instead of spending a bunch of time writing simple things like their own sorting routine."
How many letters will the next big threat have? matthew writes: "LWN is carrying the notes from the Broadcast Protection Discussion Group (BPDG) conference (more info at the EFF). The BPDG is the body that will be suggesting future technological control measures; they make the DMCA and CBDTPA seem like trivial problems. The BPDG conference was last week and it was open to the public so anyone could call in. You can read about what the FSF's Bradley M. Kuhn digitalspeech.org's Jonathan Watterson thought of the conference. The basic summary is that we're screwed if people don't start fighting against this kind of injustice."
This is what's called taking license. infochuck writes "Back in January, this story on Slashdot focused on Borland's licensing PR fiasco, and how they promised to remedy the situation (in short, their license permitted them to search at any time any of your computers looking for stolen software). Well, here we are, five months later, and their license hasn't changed one bit - at least not the two most unreasonable clauses, 12 and 14.4, and not in the license included with the Windows version of the Personal Edition. Download for yourself to see, but be warned, you'll have to register, which involves many questions and no less than 5 checkboxes to uncheck, as well as at least a 25MB DL. I believe pr@borland.com is still the place to write..."
Playful is good. If the last month of pre-hype hype, pre-hype, actual hype and post-hype weren't enough, you'll be pleased to read that E3 coverage continues, at Gamespy (some cool reviews), Gamegal (good photos) and other sites beginning with "Game."
If enough people break the rules, they'll change em!
Never argue with an idiot, he'll just lower you to his level and beat you with experience.
When you are writing software for a company or a non-classroom project, reinventing the wheel is usually a bad idea. However, in the context of learning how to program, I think it is important for students to do their own work and not just copy code from the Internet or from the smart student down the hall.
The new rules are just a license to cheat.
My E3 photos. Note, there are more than just E3 photos there, but some 60+ of the show.
People think Microsoft is the answer. Microsoft is just the question, "No" is the answer.
They haven't used that "like a book" license in a long time.
I don't know anyone who's used their products in a long time.
They haven't made money in a long time.
Coincidence?
If all this should have a reason, we would be the last to know.
given the choice of Intel's price cut to 262$ on a 2.2 gigahertz Xeon processor, or AMD's linked price cut to 224 on its 2100+. I can honestly say that i feel that Intel has far better value for the cash right now.
:)
the competition however is great, we all stand to benefit from it
We had a similar sitution in regards to my physics course. The homework was turned in over the internet. This lead to several groups forming. Each group, however, ended up with several people doing the work and the rest 'collaborating'. Out of the 40 people the class started with, 12 remained at the end of the semester and only half of those students passed. It seems as though the students who were 'collaborating' didn't fare all that well on the IRL tests. Strangely, the one test conducted over the internet had an excellent pass rate ;-). Collaboration has great value in teaching students why it's not a good idea to screw yourself over by taking the easy road.
The best way to accelerate a windows box is at 9.8 meters per second square.
oooo Game theory.
Requirements:
1. If you take ballots, make sure the ballots are secret to avoid personal conflicts.
2. Make the system an accurate measurement of actual work.
3. The system should encourage more work, and less freeloading.
In any system, the person will be aware of any demerit or bonus due to participation grades. They will either see what the other group members got, or they will know that the project wasn't deserving of the grade they got.
Since they will be aware of the demerit or bonus, there is no way to implement this in groups of two people and still fulfill requrement 1. Groups of three are almost as bad.
The larger the group is, the better a system like this works.
Another alternative would be to use CVS and count lines of code checked in by a certain person. Of course this ignores possible planning/design work that one student did.
Yet another alternative would be to interview each member of the group, asking them what parts of the program do. This could be bluffed though.
I don't see an easy answer. Do you?
I've had enough abrasive sigs. Kittens are cute and fuzzy.