My old work computer would take 10 - 15 minutes to go from being turned off to ready to use, but that's only if you include the start up times of Outlook and Eclipse. Since I had to start those too, I couldn't really do something else for the entire time it took to boot up.
Now, I have a new Mac Book Pro, and it takes ~1.5 min.
Also, I am salaried, so the time it takes to boot doesn't matter as much, except for being frustrating.
I'm afraid I have to disagree. Lisp and Scheme are excellent languages for beginning computer science students. Functional languages in general are great for beginners. Mutation is a difficult thing to wrap your head around when you are starting out; functional programming is much easier when you have no other exposure to programming.
In high-school algebra, you learn that a function f(x) takes a single number as input, and returns another number. This idea of 'functions' translates perfectly to functional programming.
Functional programming also teaches kids who may have limited experience in other languages to think differently. If you are used to loops, you learn recursion. If you have never used loops, recursion makes sense as a way to simplify a complex problem.
I think that using C and Java to teach these concepts will introduce too much confusion, especially if these freshman students search Google when they get stuck with a problem. The solution on Google will be so much different that what they learned in class, and for a good reason.
Indeed, some authors are giving away electronic versions of their books as a way to drive sales. At face value, it may make as much sense to the business types as Open Source, but it seems to be working for some of them at least. Charles Sheehan-Miles's _Republic_ spent over four months on Amazon.com's Alternate History Bestseller List. It may not be the New York Times bestseller list, but it's still pretty good.
Ok, so that brings up a good point, and an important distinction. I think there is a big difference between someone that shoots up a school, and a mugger/burglar/career criminal. Note how quickly the Virginia Tech shooter was identified. I don't think that school shooters have any intention of "getting away with it"; in fact many times, I think they want to be caught (or kill themselves first) so they will be remembered for something big. Of course, I am not a psychologist, and I don't claim to have any real insight into why people do things like that, so I could be way off.
However, people that make a habit of mugging people on the streets, or breaking into homes to steal valuables aren't trying to make a statement by committing their crimes. They are trying to generate income. If they get caught, then they don't make any money.
As for your last comment about brick walls, I think we both know that we aren't going to change each others' minds. That's fine, but I don't think that resorting to name-calling is really constructive to the exchange of ideas that we have going on here.
If you feel perfectly safe without carrying a gun, then by all means, continue to not carry a gun. However, I'm not willing to buy the sensational argument that allowing legal gun ownership somehow increases violent crime or increases the number of guns in the hands of thugs. Thugs aren't going to go through the process of filling out paperwork, getting fingerprinted, waiting for a background check/waiting period, etc that is necessary to legally get a license to carry or buy a gun. They are going to continue to get illegal guns from illegal sources. If they used a legally-obtained, registered, etc gun in a crime, they would get caught so easily.
The fact that the next guy they try to mug might be carrying, though, probably acts as a deterrent for at least some of these thugs. This is why it is fine if you don't want to carry a gun, but you should be able to.
This is an interesting idea. While there are definitely very scary implications of having Big Brother watch everything, surveillance can benefit us as well. I am sure that many would-be thieves notice security cameras, and decide not to steal from that place, because the risk of getting caught is higher. I'm not claiming that it definitely reduces crime, because it is likely that the thieves simply move on to easier targets, but I think that making it harder/more risky to commit a crime reduces its profitability, at least for criminals who think rationally about it. Of course, many criminals don't think rationally about it, whether its because of drug addiction, mental illness, etc.
However, the whole idea of the panopticon is that the watchers can't be seen. There are too many cameras to watch for it to be cost-effective to watch them all. The reason they work is because there is the possibility that someone could be watching. If you could watch back, this paradigm wouldn't work very well.
In all, it will be interesting to see how this turns out.
This method of development is a great idea. However, I find that most of the IE bugs that trip me up only occur in IE6. It isn't possible (at least not without some black magic, three virgins, and a goat) to run both IE6 and IE7 on the same computer, though. I have IE7 installed on my computer, because that is how IT set it up when I was hired. In order to test in IE7, I need to use a virtual machine, which is extremely slow and frustrating. So, as a result, I generally write my code, and get it working in Firefox. Then I test in IE7, and then in IE6. I think I will install IEtab when I get to work, though, I like that idea a lot.
I don't think it's unreasonable to wait until he finishes his analysis/proof of concept before announcing it. When announcing it, he had better be sure of all the facts. That said, announcing it to the world prematurely like this is unprofessional.
When it is complete, he should announce it to Apple first, and then possibly the world, especially if Apple doesn't respond quickly enough.
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My old work computer would take 10 - 15 minutes to go from being turned off to ready to use, but that's only if you include the start up times of Outlook and Eclipse. Since I had to start those too, I couldn't really do something else for the entire time it took to boot up.
Now, I have a new Mac Book Pro, and it takes ~1.5 min.
Also, I am salaried, so the time it takes to boot doesn't matter as much, except for being frustrating.
I'm afraid I have to disagree. Lisp and Scheme are excellent languages for beginning computer science students. Functional languages in general are great for beginners. Mutation is a difficult thing to wrap your head around when you are starting out; functional programming is much easier when you have no other exposure to programming.
In high-school algebra, you learn that a function f(x) takes a single number as input, and returns another number. This idea of 'functions' translates perfectly to functional programming.
Functional programming also teaches kids who may have limited experience in other languages to think differently. If you are used to loops, you learn recursion. If you have never used loops, recursion makes sense as a way to simplify a complex problem.
I think that using C and Java to teach these concepts will introduce too much confusion, especially if these freshman students search Google when they get stuck with a problem. The solution on Google will be so much different that what they learned in class, and for a good reason.
Indeed, some authors are giving away electronic versions of their books as a way to drive sales. At face value, it may make as much sense to the business types as Open Source, but it seems to be working for some of them at least. Charles Sheehan-Miles's _Republic_ spent over four months on Amazon.com's Alternate History Bestseller List. It may not be the New York Times bestseller list, but it's still pretty good.
Ok, so that brings up a good point, and an important distinction. I think there is a big difference between someone that shoots up a school, and a mugger/burglar/career criminal. Note how quickly the Virginia Tech shooter was identified. I don't think that school shooters have any intention of "getting away with it"; in fact many times, I think they want to be caught (or kill themselves first) so they will be remembered for something big. Of course, I am not a psychologist, and I don't claim to have any real insight into why people do things like that, so I could be way off.
However, people that make a habit of mugging people on the streets, or breaking into homes to steal valuables aren't trying to make a statement by committing their crimes. They are trying to generate income. If they get caught, then they don't make any money.
As for your last comment about brick walls, I think we both know that we aren't going to change each others' minds. That's fine, but I don't think that resorting to name-calling is really constructive to the exchange of ideas that we have going on here.
If you feel perfectly safe without carrying a gun, then by all means, continue to not carry a gun. However, I'm not willing to buy the sensational argument that allowing legal gun ownership somehow increases violent crime or increases the number of guns in the hands of thugs. Thugs aren't going to go through the process of filling out paperwork, getting fingerprinted, waiting for a background check/waiting period, etc that is necessary to legally get a license to carry or buy a gun. They are going to continue to get illegal guns from illegal sources. If they used a legally-obtained, registered, etc gun in a crime, they would get caught so easily. The fact that the next guy they try to mug might be carrying, though, probably acts as a deterrent for at least some of these thugs. This is why it is fine if you don't want to carry a gun, but you should be able to.
This is an interesting idea. While there are definitely very scary implications of having Big Brother watch everything, surveillance can benefit us as well. I am sure that many would-be thieves notice security cameras, and decide not to steal from that place, because the risk of getting caught is higher. I'm not claiming that it definitely reduces crime, because it is likely that the thieves simply move on to easier targets, but I think that making it harder/more risky to commit a crime reduces its profitability, at least for criminals who think rationally about it. Of course, many criminals don't think rationally about it, whether its because of drug addiction, mental illness, etc.
However, the whole idea of the panopticon is that the watchers can't be seen. There are too many cameras to watch for it to be cost-effective to watch them all. The reason they work is because there is the possibility that someone could be watching. If you could watch back, this paradigm wouldn't work very well.
In all, it will be interesting to see how this turns out.
This method of development is a great idea. However, I find that most of the IE bugs that trip me up only occur in IE6. It isn't possible (at least not without some black magic, three virgins, and a goat) to run both IE6 and IE7 on the same computer, though. I have IE7 installed on my computer, because that is how IT set it up when I was hired. In order to test in IE7, I need to use a virtual machine, which is extremely slow and frustrating. So, as a result, I generally write my code, and get it working in Firefox. Then I test in IE7, and then in IE6. I think I will install IEtab when I get to work, though, I like that idea a lot.
Well, you know, 87.3% of all statistics are made up on the spot to prove a point.
I don't think it's unreasonable to wait until he finishes his analysis/proof of concept before announcing it. When announcing it, he had better be sure of all the facts. That said, announcing it to the world prematurely like this is unprofessional.
When it is complete, he should announce it to Apple first, and then possibly the world, especially if Apple doesn't respond quickly enough.