My point wasn't necessarily "We all need graphic calculators in school", it was "we need to be taught using the tools available to us", which happens to include netbooks.
Because those '100' other features aren't certified, tested or controlled.
So? All TI has to do is explicilty state on the box "We only support the TI OS. Use other OSes at your own risk." They're free and clear, and the great majority of users aren't going to install a different OS anyway.
As for other apps, well, people can already distribute tons of apps, whether or not you're running TI's OS, and TI doesn't seem to care about that.
I think we've seen the end of high-end calculator development because the main market of those devices - college students - can't use them anymore in their classes.
Personally I think that shows a fundamental flaw in our schools - we should be taught using the tools available to us, we shouldn't be taught to ignore those tools.
If it's too easy to install custom software in a relatively undetectable fashion, then the calculators won't be approved for testing and classroom use.
They're already disallowed by many teachers because students learned they can simply type their notes into the calculator. (Who needs to remember equations when the calculator stores them for you?) The TI-89 and TI-92 are not allowed in ACT tests because they're designed to allow note-taking (the 92 more than the 89, but still). (That particular requirement made my parents buy a new TI-83+, even though I already had a TI-89.)
Honestly I've always disagreed with resistance to calculator use. Why can't I use a calculator to do calculus, or physics? The hard part isn't remembering the equations, anyway; the hard part is remembering which equation to use. Storing the list of equations in the calculator doesn't magically make you know which equation to use, it just helps you remember what the equations are in the first place. Sure, you could probably type notes into the calculator telling you which to use when, but all that effort is going to make you learn it anyway, so it most likely wouldn't make a difference.
I always hated losing points because I transposed two numbers or something somewhere in the calculation (which would not have happened had I been using a calculator), or because I'm simply terrible at doing math by hand. I honestly have no idea how I got a 4 on that AP Calculus test.
If I were hiring someone for a position that required a lot of math, and he proudly declared that he never uses a calculator, I don't think I would hire him. I would want my employees to use calculators - even if only to check their work.
They can't even argue that installing new stuff on them is going to lose them any income anyway. Its not like the average user upgrades his calculator OS every year!
But even if the average user did upgrade his OS every year, TI gives away their own OS updates for free; they make their money on the hardware, and allowing third-party OSes does not somehow remove the hardware requirement. TI would still be making the same amount of money.
The caveat is that TI also makes some amount of money (I don't know if it's big or small) from sales of add-on applications, and allowing third-party OSes would most probably dry up that revenue stream for some percentage of users. (Most calculator owners probably aren't going to install a different OS, but then, most calculator owners don't buy add-on apps, either.)
IMHO, blaming things on "this economic climate" is utter idiocy, if you're a competent programmer. Last November, I applied to exactly one company at a school career fair, and I was offered a job a few days later. I knew several people who weren't putting their eggs in one basket, and as a result were looking at three or four job offers. The situation repeated itself last March (minus me getting another offer, as I had already accepted the other).
Sure, if you're a sucky programmer (e.g. it becomes clear in the interview that you think "Java Beans" are what coffee is made from) you're going to have a hard time finding a job. But if you're competent it's going to be fairly easy, even "in this economic climate".
Now half of you are going to tell me that anecdotal evidence doesn't prove anything... but you know, Amazon.com (whose standards are high) is looking to hire lots of developers right now, and they're certainly not the only company in that position.
When I was a kid I dropped my original Game Boy onto some concrete while it was running some game or other. I don't think it noticed.
I think my brother still has that same Game Boy in a drawer somewhere, though he rarely uses it (in favor of his GBA or DS, depending on the game). Last time I checked (earlier this year) it still worked.
My original black-and-white Game Boy's direction keys started sticking after six years or so; the rubber pad that held the little pieces of metal under each direction button tore, making the metal stay stuck against the contact points. I eventually repaired it by stealing parts from a spare NES controller.
I believe it's normally used as a synonym of "gross"; hence my comparison between "private" and "gross (and therefore shouldn't be displayed publicly)".
$DISTURBING_INTERNET_LINK_MEME = gross and shouldn't be displayed in public.
$GENITALIA = private.
Disagree if you wish... that's just the way I see it.
Er... you're saying that everything not done by mammals in nature is something that we should be waving around in public? That's silly at best, but mostly disturbing.
(Besides, you're wrong; a cow's udder is the equivalent of a human breast, despite being quite a bit uglier, and it's as obvious as can be...)
I don't think teaching our kids not to wave their naked genitals around public is the same as teaching them that genitals are "obscene".
Why don't people understand that there's a difference between "private" and "gross"?
Your car analogy is fatally flawed. I'm not teaching my kids that nobody should be driving. (I'm not teaching my kids that nobody should be having sex.) I'm teaching my kids that only licensed drivers should be driving. (I'm teaching my kids that sex is for married couples.)
See the difference? You can disagree if you want, but don't misrepresent my position.
I'm not going to teach my kids that breasts are obscene; I'm going to teach my kids that we don't (shouldn't) go around in public waving our genitals (and breasts) in people's faces, and by extension we don't (shouldn't) let other people do the same thing.
I see your point, but the nitpicker in me is making me continue:
I don't know that I'd call Gandalf a magic user in the same sense that Moiraine is a magic user. The only time the Hobbits ever really see him do anything extraordinary is when he uses his staff as a flashlight in the Mines of Moria. (Ok, facing down the Balrog was "extraordinary" but there was no visible magic, if I remember right.) By contrast, Moiraine repeatedly uses saidar in highly visible ways, even before they leave the Two Rivers.
Furthermore, several years pass between when Gandalf said "you'll have to leave the Shire" and when they actually left (though the movies just ignore it), and when they did finally leave, Gandalf wasn't even with them. Rand and his friends left the Two Rivers almost immediately in the company of both the Aes Sedai and her Warder (Aragorn's counterpart).
My point is, there are only so many ways to start a story; nobody should hold a grudge against Jordan for the vague similarities to LotR that one could find in the beginning of the Wheel of Time, especially because (as you point out) he did make the series very much his own.
Really? Wow. That sucks. My school doesn't care what A/V you're running, as long as your machine passes their tests.
Though, disallowing nod32 and bitdefender is understandable, as both of those suck (speaking as someone who managed a network of ~50 machines that used nod32 and later bitdefender)...... and now I expect a half dozen replies telling me that I must have been doing it wrong. No need to trouble yourselves.
Why should you need to bypass it? (If memory serves, they only check for an anti-virus program if you're running Windows.)
I guess if you want to run Windows without anti-virus, you'd want to bypass it, but if you're running a Windows box on a university network without anti-virus you're a braver soul than I.
My school just port-scans you when you connect to make sure your machine is firewalled, and they test to see whether you're running antivirus. If it all looks good, they let you on, otherwise you're redirected to an informational screen telling you how to fix the problem (or where to go for help). They don't care what OS you're running.
You certainly couldn't win if they provide free access to computer labs where students can use that required software. In other words, it's not OS-based discrimination if they give you free access to the required software some other way. Remember, plenty of courses require computers, but you're not required to own one; they're not contradictory.
Now, I rarely used the school's CS lab to do my CS assignments, but there were people who didn't do any CS programming at all outside of the lab. (IANAL, YMMV, to each his own, etc.)
Brandon guessed at around 800k words for the three books together. If memory serves, The Gathering Storm ended up around 250k words, which I think is about normal for a Wheel of Time book, putting the final three books between 800 and 1000 pages each.
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What makes programmers with three years of experience less hireable than programmers with zero years of experience?
FWIW, I had three years of experience myself (concurrent with school), and I didn't have any trouble getting a job.
My point wasn't necessarily "We all need graphic calculators in school", it was "we need to be taught using the tools available to us", which happens to include netbooks.
Because those '100' other features aren't certified, tested or controlled.
So? All TI has to do is explicilty state on the box "We only support the TI OS. Use other OSes at your own risk." They're free and clear, and the great majority of users aren't going to install a different OS anyway.
As for other apps, well, people can already distribute tons of apps, whether or not you're running TI's OS, and TI doesn't seem to care about that.
I think we've seen the end of high-end calculator development because the main market of those devices - college students - can't use them anymore in their classes.
Personally I think that shows a fundamental flaw in our schools - we should be taught using the tools available to us, we shouldn't be taught to ignore those tools.
If it's too easy to install custom software in a relatively undetectable fashion, then the calculators won't be approved for testing and classroom use.
They're already disallowed by many teachers because students learned they can simply type their notes into the calculator. (Who needs to remember equations when the calculator stores them for you?) The TI-89 and TI-92 are not allowed in ACT tests because they're designed to allow note-taking (the 92 more than the 89, but still). (That particular requirement made my parents buy a new TI-83+, even though I already had a TI-89.)
Honestly I've always disagreed with resistance to calculator use. Why can't I use a calculator to do calculus, or physics? The hard part isn't remembering the equations, anyway; the hard part is remembering which equation to use. Storing the list of equations in the calculator doesn't magically make you know which equation to use, it just helps you remember what the equations are in the first place. Sure, you could probably type notes into the calculator telling you which to use when, but all that effort is going to make you learn it anyway, so it most likely wouldn't make a difference.
I always hated losing points because I transposed two numbers or something somewhere in the calculation (which would not have happened had I been using a calculator), or because I'm simply terrible at doing math by hand. I honestly have no idea how I got a 4 on that AP Calculus test.
If I were hiring someone for a position that required a lot of math, and he proudly declared that he never uses a calculator, I don't think I would hire him. I would want my employees to use calculators - even if only to check their work.
Um... end rant.
They can't even argue that installing new stuff on them is going to lose them any income anyway. Its not like the average user upgrades his calculator OS every year!
But even if the average user did upgrade his OS every year, TI gives away their own OS updates for free; they make their money on the hardware, and allowing third-party OSes does not somehow remove the hardware requirement. TI would still be making the same amount of money.
The caveat is that TI also makes some amount of money (I don't know if it's big or small) from sales of add-on applications, and allowing third-party OSes would most probably dry up that revenue stream for some percentage of users. (Most calculator owners probably aren't going to install a different OS, but then, most calculator owners don't buy add-on apps, either.)
IMHO, blaming things on "this economic climate" is utter idiocy, if you're a competent programmer. Last November, I applied to exactly one company at a school career fair, and I was offered a job a few days later. I knew several people who weren't putting their eggs in one basket, and as a result were looking at three or four job offers. The situation repeated itself last March (minus me getting another offer, as I had already accepted the other).
Sure, if you're a sucky programmer (e.g. it becomes clear in the interview that you think "Java Beans" are what coffee is made from) you're going to have a hard time finding a job. But if you're competent it's going to be fairly easy, even "in this economic climate".
Now half of you are going to tell me that anecdotal evidence doesn't prove anything... but you know, Amazon.com (whose standards are high) is looking to hire lots of developers right now, and they're certainly not the only company in that position.
Oh, and just so I have my bases covered: YMMV
When I was a kid I dropped my original Game Boy onto some concrete while it was running some game or other. I don't think it noticed.
I think my brother still has that same Game Boy in a drawer somewhere, though he rarely uses it (in favor of his GBA or DS, depending on the game). Last time I checked (earlier this year) it still worked.
My original black-and-white Game Boy's direction keys started sticking after six years or so; the rubber pad that held the little pieces of metal under each direction button tore, making the metal stay stuck against the contact points. I eventually repaired it by stealing parts from a spare NES controller.
Religion. (And now you're going to complain about how I shouldn't brainwash my children or somesuch. I'm not interested.)
I believe it's normally used as a synonym of "gross"; hence my comparison between "private" and "gross (and therefore shouldn't be displayed publicly)".
$DISTURBING_INTERNET_LINK_MEME = gross and shouldn't be displayed in public.
$GENITALIA = private.
Disagree if you wish... that's just the way I see it.
"babies" != "children"
No, but that doesn't mean women should be waving their naked boobs around in public.
Er... you're saying that everything not done by mammals in nature is something that we should be waving around in public? That's silly at best, but mostly disturbing.
(Besides, you're wrong; a cow's udder is the equivalent of a human breast, despite being quite a bit uglier, and it's as obvious as can be...)
I don't think teaching our kids not to wave their naked genitals around public is the same as teaching them that genitals are "obscene".
Why don't people understand that there's a difference between "private" and "gross"?
Your car analogy is fatally flawed. I'm not teaching my kids that nobody should be driving. (I'm not teaching my kids that nobody should be having sex.) I'm teaching my kids that only licensed drivers should be driving. (I'm teaching my kids that sex is for married couples.)
See the difference? You can disagree if you want, but don't misrepresent my position.
Yeah... they're for feeding babies. That doesn't mean women should go waving their breasts around in people's faces in public.
I'm not going to teach my kids that breasts are obscene; I'm going to teach my kids that we don't (shouldn't) go around in public waving our genitals (and breasts) in people's faces, and by extension we don't (shouldn't) let other people do the same thing.
It didn't traumatize the whole country. It traumatized a vocal minority - and most of them probably didn't even see it themselves.
I'm opposed to intentionally displaying that sort of thing where children can see it, but I'm not going to get into an uproar about an accident.
I see your point, but the nitpicker in me is making me continue:
I don't know that I'd call Gandalf a magic user in the same sense that Moiraine is a magic user. The only time the Hobbits ever really see him do anything extraordinary is when he uses his staff as a flashlight in the Mines of Moria. (Ok, facing down the Balrog was "extraordinary" but there was no visible magic, if I remember right.) By contrast, Moiraine repeatedly uses saidar in highly visible ways, even before they leave the Two Rivers.
Furthermore, several years pass between when Gandalf said "you'll have to leave the Shire" and when they actually left (though the movies just ignore it), and when they did finally leave, Gandalf wasn't even with them. Rand and his friends left the Two Rivers almost immediately in the company of both the Aes Sedai and her Warder (Aragorn's counterpart).
My point is, there are only so many ways to start a story; nobody should hold a grudge against Jordan for the vague similarities to LotR that one could find in the beginning of the Wheel of Time, especially because (as you point out) he did make the series very much his own.
Really? Wow. That sucks. My school doesn't care what A/V you're running, as long as your machine passes their tests.
Though, disallowing nod32 and bitdefender is understandable, as both of those suck (speaking as someone who managed a network of ~50 machines that used nod32 and later bitdefender)... ... and now I expect a half dozen replies telling me that I must have been doing it wrong. No need to trouble yourselves.
Why should you need to bypass it? (If memory serves, they only check for an anti-virus program if you're running Windows.)
I guess if you want to run Windows without anti-virus, you'd want to bypass it, but if you're running a Windows box on a university network without anti-virus you're a braver soul than I.
My school just port-scans you when you connect to make sure your machine is firewalled, and they test to see whether you're running antivirus. If it all looks good, they let you on, otherwise you're redirected to an informational screen telling you how to fix the problem (or where to go for help). They don't care what OS you're running.
You certainly couldn't win if they provide free access to computer labs where students can use that required software. In other words, it's not OS-based discrimination if they give you free access to the required software some other way. Remember, plenty of courses require computers, but you're not required to own one; they're not contradictory.
Now, I rarely used the school's CS lab to do my CS assignments, but there were people who didn't do any CS programming at all outside of the lab. (IANAL, YMMV, to each his own, etc.)
That just sounds painful. I'm with the others though, the books are far too long.
Oh, I agree that they're longer than necessary for the plot, but I still enjoy them.
As for whether it's painful... I seem to have an unnaturally quick reading speed, so it goes rather quickly for me. Maybe that's why I enjoy WoT...
Brandon guessed at around 800k words for the three books together. If memory serves, The Gathering Storm ended up around 250k words, which I think is about normal for a Wheel of Time book, putting the final three books between 800 and 1000 pages each.