For the curious, a recent alert recieved by UMD students:
August 1, 2008
CAMPUS ALERT
Late this afternoon, a Department of Public Safety surveillance camera observed a large feline at the edge of the same wooded area where the two previous sighting of the suspected cougar were made. A search of the area was conducted and the feline was also observed at close range by a university police officer. Images of the feline were viewed by personnel at the MD Department of Natural Resources and they have confirmed that the feline that we observed and recorded is not a cougar.
The markings and size of the feline do appear consistent with a type of cat called a Savannah Cat. This is a hybrid of a Domestic Short Hair cat and a Serval, which is a larger African feline. Savannahs can grow to be as large as 35 pounds and can be a great deal larger than normal domesticated cats. They have been referred to as the Great Danes of the cat family. At this time, the feline is still loose. University police will continue their efforts to positively identify the animal. If you should observe this feline, please do not approach it; call the university police, at 301-405-3555 and report the sighting.
For generalized game engines, it's probably true that writing your own rasterizer is pointless, but there are many more specialized domains that have less general needs, and might well benefit from their own software rasterizer.
Why would you take into account whether the student has a history of infractions? You don't discipline a person more just because they've caused you trouble in the past. As for the rest, if the student put Firefox on IE-only machines, it doesn't matter whether he had authorization; he did them a favor, period. Think schools, not prisons.
There are over a hundred different organizations available to choose from, and many possible projects for each organization. Pick something you are comfortable with; if you consider yourself a novice, you should probably don't want to start out with a project for gcc, but there are many options for simpler projects.
Most organizations also encourage potential applicants to chat with them on IRC about projects the student is interested in doing; that's a good way to find out in advance of completing an application whether you have the skills necessary to complete a project.
One last thing to keep in mind is that you don't need to know everything before you start. Over the course of a three month project you can learn quite a lot about writing good code; you'll develop skills as you go along.
Google doesn't decide which students work for a particular project; the students apply to whatever project they want, and that project's administrators rank the proposals. The only thing Google decides is how many students each project gets to 'hire'.
This article seems to assume that UI design has already reached its peak, that no new innovations can work. It's easy to see where that assumption comes from; my Ubuntu desktop still presents an interface that basically conforms to the same paradigms used in Windows 95. I agree that current UI design has gone about as far as it can go, but only _for existing hardware_. There's an excellent video on YouTube showing an interface somewhat reminiscent of Minority Report; it takes the interface to the next level by first advancing the hardware.
The internet is not something you just dump something on. It's not a truck.
It's a series of tubes.
I just the other day got, an internet was sent by my staff at 10 o'clock in the morning on Friday and I just got it yesterday.
Well, one good reason to accept the possibility of segfaults is speed. C and C++ allow you to get down as close as you want to the underlying hardware, which (if the programmer is sufficiently skilled) can produce much faster code. Obviously this doesn't matter much in your average desktop software, but there are are any number of application types (3D games, simulations, animation/rendering systems, system libraries) where speed is still very much a concern.
Hiya,
I happen to be the developer of SharpConstruct. SharpConstruct is no longer under active development; I've been moving the source code into Blender over the summer (Google Summer of Code 2006) and the sculpting tools will probably be in the next version of Blender. I don't plan to develop SharpConstruct any further as an independent app.
Not so long ago, it was black people that scientists could "prove" had lower intelligence. Now that we can't use that one anymore, thank god we've found a new target for society to discriminate against!
Right now, probably very few people need it. But the (admittedly brief) history of computers shows pretty clearly that applications will always expand to fill the new space opened up by more powerful hardware, whether it be storage (RAM, Harddrives), or speed (Processor's GHz, ISA/PCI/AGP/PCIe).
And of course, there are some applications that will always benefit from more processing power -- calculating more digits of pi, running simulations, adding more polygons to game levels, etc.
Slashdot Mirror
*sigh*, how does this get modded offtopic. did the moderator bother to read it? oh well...
For the curious, a recent alert recieved by UMD students:
August 1, 2008
CAMPUS ALERT
Late this afternoon, a Department of Public Safety surveillance camera
observed a large feline at the edge of the same wooded area where the
two previous sighting of the suspected cougar were made. A search of the
area was conducted and the feline was also observed at close range by a
university police officer. Images of the feline were viewed by personnel
at the MD Department of Natural Resources and they have confirmed that
the feline that we observed and recorded is not a cougar.
The markings and size of the feline do appear consistent with a type of
cat called a Savannah Cat. This is a hybrid of a Domestic Short Hair cat
and a Serval, which is a larger African feline. Savannahs can grow to be
as large as 35 pounds and can be a great deal larger than normal
domesticated cats. They have been referred to as the Great Danes of the
cat family.
At this time, the feline is still loose. University police will continue
their efforts to positively identify the animal. If you should observe
this feline, please do not approach it; call the university police, at
301-405-3555 and report the sighting.
Prepared by:
Captain John Brandt
Public Information Officer
For generalized game engines, it's probably true that writing your own rasterizer is pointless, but there are many more specialized domains that have less general needs, and might well benefit from their own software rasterizer.
The article says it's in North Carolina, not SC. Much as I wish it were here...
Why would you take into account whether the student has a history of infractions? You don't discipline a person more just because they've caused you trouble in the past. As for the rest, if the student put Firefox on IE-only machines, it doesn't matter whether he had authorization; he did them a favor, period. Think schools, not prisons.
Said one computer scientist getting his day in the sun:
"I'm melting, I'm melting!"
There are over a hundred different organizations available to choose from, and many possible projects for each organization. Pick something you are comfortable with; if you consider yourself a novice, you should probably don't want to start out with a project for gcc, but there are many options for simpler projects.
Most organizations also encourage potential applicants to chat with them on IRC about projects the student is interested in doing; that's a good way to find out in advance of completing an application whether you have the skills necessary to complete a project.
One last thing to keep in mind is that you don't need to know everything before you start. Over the course of a three month project you can learn quite a lot about writing good code; you'll develop skills as you go along.
Actually, you don't have to be in college, so long as you've been accepted to one (and you must be 18, of course.)
Google doesn't decide which students work for a particular project; the students apply to whatever project they want, and that project's administrators rank the proposals. The only thing Google decides is how many students each project gets to 'hire'.
Er... A Modest Proposal? Perhaps we should eat some of the male engineers?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Modest_Proposal
Oops, forgot the link: http://youtube.com/watch?v=QKh1Rv0PlOQ
This article seems to assume that UI design has already reached its peak, that no new innovations can work. It's easy to see where that assumption comes from; my Ubuntu desktop still presents an interface that basically conforms to the same paradigms used in Windows 95. I agree that current UI design has gone about as far as it can go, but only _for existing hardware_. There's an excellent video on YouTube showing an interface somewhat reminiscent of Minority Report; it takes the interface to the next level by first advancing the hardware.
The internet is not something you just dump something on. It's not a truck. It's a series of tubes. I just the other day got, an internet was sent by my staff at 10 o'clock in the morning on Friday and I just got it yesterday.
Those benchmarks look fairly artificial. I'm not sure it makes sense to generalize such results up to an entire application.
Well, one good reason to accept the possibility of segfaults is speed. C and C++ allow you to get down as close as you want to the underlying hardware, which (if the programmer is sufficiently skilled) can produce much faster code. Obviously this doesn't matter much in your average desktop software, but there are are any number of application types (3D games, simulations, animation/rendering systems, system libraries) where speed is still very much a concern.
Hiya, I happen to be the developer of SharpConstruct. SharpConstruct is no longer under active development; I've been moving the source code into Blender over the summer (Google Summer of Code 2006) and the sculpting tools will probably be in the next version of Blender. I don't plan to develop SharpConstruct any further as an independent app.
Not so long ago, it was black people that scientists could "prove" had lower intelligence. Now that we can't use that one anymore, thank god we've found a new target for society to discriminate against!
Right now, probably very few people need it. But the (admittedly brief) history of computers shows pretty clearly that applications will always expand to fill the new space opened up by more powerful hardware, whether it be storage (RAM, Harddrives), or speed (Processor's GHz, ISA/PCI/AGP/PCIe). And of course, there are some applications that will always benefit from more processing power -- calculating more digits of pi, running simulations, adding more polygons to game levels, etc.