Asimov's "Profession" is one of my favorites. I teach Computer Science at a 4 year university, and my goal is to teach skills that transcend a particular technology/language/API, while at the same time being relevant to current developments. As a student, you are pretty much out of luck, but as an instructor it takes a lot of effort to resolve the tension between timely and timeless content.
OpenGL: A Primer by Edward Angel is very readable and a thin little book that is also inexpensive. I use in my class where I teach OpenGL. The Red Book and others are great references, but Angel is the best way to get your feet wet.
For a scientist, FORTRAN is still a valuable skill since there are so many libraries and applications that represent many years worth of development to draw from. Plus it is efficient, etc.
The question here is what is the best way to introduce students as a first exposure to programming. FORTRAN has many quirks so it is debatable whether it is really the best language to learn first. You can write truly horrible code in FORTRAN, but that is true to some extent of all languages, although Python does make it harder.
On balance, if students are taught a modern dialect of FORTRAN and the instructor stresses good programming practices, it remains a good way to introduce students to solving a problem numerically and of getting the job done for people who may not code for a living.
If a few clowns with $500 worth of equipment can essentially deny the military the use of the system, it is not going to be of any use in a conflict when the opposing force has a lot more sophisticated equipment.
FTA: With IP, SWN can upgrade radio software over the network and provide mobile data support.
The state of software security being what it is, I wonder if the next major attack would not be accompanied by a day zero exploit of a bug in the radio software that renders all the radios useless because the bad guys uploads some bad software. Vendor diversity in radios may be beneficial just as it is in operating systems.
I may take the record here: I'm running Debian on a Dell 316LT. That is a 16 MHz 386SX laptop with 8MB of RAM and a 120 MB hard drive and a 10BaseT ethernet card that I needed to grind the end off to make it fit.
It doesn't really run Linux, it is more like a walk.
Re:Avoid Tiger
on
Open Maps?
·
· Score: 2, Informative
This is correct. Unfortunately, when the TIGER data was first derived from the USGS 1:100,000 data, they omitted some of the points along lines to keep the file sizes down. This was done on an ad hoc basis. If you compare the original Tiger '90 data with the same vintage DLGs (about the time this became generally available), you can track this in great detail. Things diverged from there and the newer TIGER data has been improved a great deal. Unfortunately, there doesn't seem to be a lot of cross-pollination between the USGS and Census folks.
Avoid using the TIGER data. It is topologically correct (junctions are correct), but the absolute position location is poor. The USGS Digital Line Graphs (DLGs) are much better. The DLG-3 Optional format is quite easy to decode and has the entire USA at 1:100,000 scale. This is accurate to about 100 feet but a bit dated (80s and 90s). The 1:24,000 (quadrangle) scale maps are also available but in SDTS format which is pretty hard to decode, but open source code is available to decode it. Accuracy is about 50' or better, more detail, but coverage is often spotty. The EROS data center is your best source: http://edc.usgs.gov/geodata/
In spite of advances in battery technology, it is my impression that batteries are getting worse! I have a Dell Inspiron 4000 that has had the exact same problem and, fo course, Dell just want to sell you another battery. I have an older Dell 7500, and its battery is till going strong despite being three times as old.
Anybody remember the Apollo workstations and the object file system from circa 1984? It was a neat system, good performance, but got killed by HP when they bought Apollo Computer.
Slashdot Mirror
Remember Explorer vs. Nautilus and the rest?
Asimov's "Profession" is one of my favorites. I teach Computer Science at a 4 year university, and my goal is to teach skills that transcend a particular technology/language/API, while at the same time being relevant to current developments. As a student, you are pretty much out of luck, but as an instructor it takes a lot of effort to resolve the tension between timely and timeless content.
It hosed my Win7 machine. YMMV
How long between being awarded the prize and it decaying?
Since a shortage of fresh water is our next big crisis, doesn't that mean that global warming is a good thing?
OpenGL: A Primer by Edward Angel is very readable and a thin little book that is also inexpensive. I use in my class where I teach OpenGL. The Red Book and others are great references, but Angel is the best way to get your feet wet.
For a scientist, FORTRAN is still a valuable skill since there are so many libraries and applications that represent many years worth of development to draw from. Plus it is efficient, etc.
The question here is what is the best way to introduce students as a first exposure to programming. FORTRAN has many quirks so it is debatable whether it is really the best language to learn first. You can write truly horrible code in FORTRAN, but that is true to some extent of all languages, although Python does make it harder.
On balance, if students are taught a modern dialect of FORTRAN and the instructor stresses good programming practices, it remains a good way to introduce students to solving a problem numerically and of getting the job done for people who may not code for a living.
If a few clowns with $500 worth of equipment can essentially deny the military the use of the system, it is not going to be of any use in a conflict when the opposing force has a lot more sophisticated equipment.
FTA: With IP, SWN can upgrade radio software over the network and provide mobile data support.
The state of software security being what it is, I wonder if the next major attack would not be accompanied by a day zero exploit of a bug in the radio software that renders all the radios useless because the bad guys uploads some bad software. Vendor diversity in radios may be beneficial just as it is in operating systems.
I may take the record here: I'm running Debian on a Dell 316LT. That is a 16 MHz 386SX laptop with 8MB of RAM and a 120 MB hard drive and a 10BaseT ethernet card that I needed to grind the end off to make it fit.
It doesn't really run Linux, it is more like a walk.
This is correct. Unfortunately, when the TIGER data was first derived from the USGS 1:100,000 data, they omitted some of the points along lines to keep the file sizes down. This was done on an ad hoc basis. If you compare the original Tiger '90 data with the same vintage DLGs (about the time this became generally available), you can track this in great detail. Things diverged from there and the newer TIGER data has been improved a great deal. Unfortunately, there doesn't seem to be a lot of cross-pollination between the USGS and Census folks.
Avoid using the TIGER data. It is topologically correct (junctions are correct), but the absolute position location is poor. The USGS Digital Line Graphs (DLGs) are much better. The DLG-3 Optional format is quite easy to decode and has the entire USA at 1:100,000 scale. This is accurate to about 100 feet but a bit dated (80s and 90s). The 1:24,000 (quadrangle) scale maps are also available but in SDTS format which is pretty hard to decode, but open source code is available to decode it. Accuracy is about 50' or better, more detail, but coverage is often spotty. The EROS data center is your best source: http://edc.usgs.gov/geodata/
In spite of advances in battery technology, it is my impression that batteries are getting worse! I have a Dell Inspiron 4000 that has had the exact same problem and, fo course, Dell just want to sell you another battery. I have an older Dell 7500, and its battery is till going strong despite being three times as old.
Anybody remember the Apollo workstations and the object file system from circa 1984? It was a neat system, good performance, but got killed by HP when they bought Apollo Computer.