Computer programming is a language skill, and the later you learn, the harder it is to learn.
Programming is not a language skill. Any reasonably skilled programmer with knowledge into multiple paradigms could pick up any new programming language quickly. Language skill does not matter.
Programming has its base in logic, in spatial thinking and in mathematics. To be able to learn programming and become a good programmer you will need to have a strong foundation in those concepts. Within maths, statistics and probability theory are important and those concepts are not taught until high school. Kids don't have a very good grasp of logic theory or fundamental maths before high school and many concepts that I would consider fundamental to programming are not even taught in high school at all.
When I went to high school, I was one of a number of kids who had privileged access passes to the computer halls. The first version of Doom we played was the Press-release version. It was date-limited, so we had to turn back the internal clock on the PC to make it run. The game's popularity spread immensely, and people with passes invited their friends into the computer halls as well. At one time, all PCs in all halls were occupied with kids playing Deathmatch. Because it had got out of hand, all access passes were revoked.
Doom also inspired me to learn more about 3D graphics and programming. At one time during a regular computing class, I had some extra time so I started Doom just to see if I could get any hints to how it worked. The teacher did not accept my excuse for running it, and subsequently threw me out.
Many of the props and sets in Star Wars (1977) were not meticulously designed like modern blockbusters. This was considered a low-budget movie. Lots of props and set details were therefore literally built from junk if only to save money. A lot of it was airplane scrap, in fact. The prop makers also had a manufacturer of high-end record players next door from which they got lots of small parts with minor defects.
As an extreme example there is Obi-Wan's lightsaber: it was built from an 1940's airplane engine, a WWI rifle grenade, a 1970's calculator, a WWII machine gun, a 1930's camera flash and a 1970's faucet knob. One of my hobbies is building replicas of props from movies, and the Star Wars movie in particular. For me it is great that there are real-parts that I could chase down to build something exactly like in the movies. However, it does sometimes get a bit expensive and there have been clashes with for instance, collectors of vintage cameras.
It fits here only so that we can gloat about Carly Fiorina not being the vice-presidential race any more. She was formerly the CEO of HP, responsible for changing HP's corporate culture and for massivie layoffs making her very unpopular among some.
I mean, a language is an encoding of copyrightable works, not the copyrightable works themselves.
If they wanted to protect a kind of encoding, shouldn't Paramount have applied for a patent on it before publishing a multitude of books encouraging people to use it?
I once saved a texting woman from being run-over by a train at a railroad crossing. She walked right out on the tracks despite blinking lights and a very loud audible signal. She stopped first after a boom stopped her path -- the boom on the opposite side: She was standing right on the railroad track! I had to enter the tracks and physically drag her out of there. She protested at first, but I got her to safety. She said "thanks" but at no time did her eyes even leave her frikkin' phone!
So, no, I don't think that even a physical barrier is going to be more effective than lights at "eye level". People just have to be taught some simple old-fashioned situational awareness. Maybe one way would be to publicly shame people who do wrong. Kids should be taught mobile do's and don'ts in schools.
I don't know about you, but I consider the chat with the taxi driver to be part of the taxi experience. When you are visiting somewhere you have never been, the driver might be able to tell you something interesting about the destination. At one time I would even have missed a train if the driver had not suggested an alternative destination -- which had meant a shorter ride for him.
The problem with "PC Desk Cases" of this type with flat tops is that when sitting down there is very limited room for the knees.
The posture for sitting in front of a desk that is most often recommended for ergonomics experts has the desk surface quite low because the forearms are supposed to be horizontal when using the keyboard, so that your wrists could be straight.
It is also recommended that the top of the monitor screen is at the same height as your eyes. Most adjustable monitor stands would be in the highest position to reach that. A very large number of monitor stands are still too short and have to stand on something to reach that height.
I think that a better "PC Desk Case" design would instead be more like a classic desktop case on a regular desk. Or rather, a desk that incorporates a shelf for the monitor to stand on with the PC components in the base of that shelf. Unlike a PC on a desk, it could draw in air from the bottom which would give it better cooling.
There [i]are[/i] some quite thin laptops with a smaller smarter type of RJ-45 socket. The bottom part is on a hinge that you open with the RJ-45 plug when you need to insert it, thereby making the port large enough to accept the plug. When you unplug the cable the hinge springs back to its small, closed state.
Of course this would need to be engineered as a part of the laptop's enclosure -- not just as a hole in it. And that might in turn imply patent licensing issues.
It is not as if Microsoft does not employ people who are competent at designing and testing proper user interfaces: People who know and expect how users will interface with Windows Update. They expect people to install it by mistake. The forced update is nothing else but intentional douchebaggery. To blame the users is probably what they had planned to do all along.
I would be more concerned with the room lights being used for displaying giant messages on the hotel's facade with one room per pixel. Could be used to shame the hotel for sure.
At least McAfee came clean and admitted that he had been lying instead of trying to perpetuate the lie and throwing insults at anyone who questions him.
The "FDA for Data and Algorithms" sounds a lot like the Data Inspection Board that we have in Sweden.
Every organisation over here (corp or non-profit) that keeps a record of personal information needs to be approved and registered with the agency. The agency performs inspections to see that the organisations comply with current laws.
The USB "Human Interface Device" protocol, which is used by USB keyboards, mice and gamepads is not only complex because it is a layered protocol. It is complex also because it has a very free-form model: it allows the device to specify which protocol it speaks. And when an implementation can do things in many different ways then things can also go wrong in many different ways.
For instance, there are actually a couple keyboard models that work well with Windows and Linux but not with Apple MacOS or iOS -- because Apple's USB HID stack follows a little bit stricter interpretation of the standard than the others.
The most well-known issue however is that some USB keyboards don't work with some BIOSes or don't work with some BIOSes that are set to "Fast Boot" mode (or whatever it is called). To keep the USB stack needed inside a BIOS simple, all keyboards have to support a simple keyboard protocol called the "Boot Protocol". This protocol is an example in the USB "Human Interface Device" standard's documentation and it works over Low-Speed USB so most cheap keyboards and ready-made keyboard controllers use only this protocol even in "normal" mode. However, to enable it, the BIOS has to send the keyboard a special request -- yet several popular BIOSes neglect to do that, because: Hey, it worked on all these cheap keyboards! When the BIOS does not work with the more expensive keyboards that run Full Speed USB with lower latency and features such as N-key rollover, Media keys etc.. people tend to blame the keyboard when it is really the BIOS's fault.
In Sweden, it is the existence of a receiver within the household that counts. If have a TV or a DVD player that contains a receiver (my DVD player is also a DVR) then you would have to pay a license. There is a max of one license per household though in case you would have multiple devices.
A year ago, the mandatory TV license applied also to PCs because they could be connected to the Internet and so it was reasoned that they could receive TV over the Internet that way.... Except that not all PCs were able to actually playback the content. I have a neighbour who has chosen to not own any TV, who had only a netbook -- which was too underpowered to play web-TV -- but she still had to pay the mandatory TV license for that. Ridiculous. Thankfully, common sense prevailed and the rule was changed.
Chrome's Incognito mode does have a separate set of cookies - which is empty when you open the first Incognito window and are deleted when the last window is closed. This means that web sites can't use cookies to track you between sessions. They could track you by your IP address, but the IP addresses are at a lower level than HTTP/HTTPS. If you are really paranoid then you would use something like Tor anyway.
However, there is one big flaw: All incognito windows are in the same session. If you forget to close the last window then the session will linger: when you open a new link "In Incognito Window" then the new link will be attached to the old Incognito session instead of a new one. This could be remedied by supporting multiple Incognito sessions at once. I think that a straightforward model for the user would be to let each Incognito Window represent a separate session.
Myself, I use Incognito mode primarily to be able to use gmail and Youtube with separate accounts. Commenting on cat videos requires much less security than my private emails. It is also convenient to log out just by closing the window.
I still run an old Ubuntu LTS install with Linux 2.6.32, but that is mostly because so that I would not have to run a Ubuntu version with that abomination called "Unity" or Gnome 3. I could not see that Ubuntu had offered any upgrade path to another LTS release that would not force any of that crap upon me. I also did not want to get a system that was a mix of installs from different sources. My old Ubuntu has served me well for this time. Time to look around for some other distribution then... Mint?
BTW. At work I installed CentOS 6 on a brand new machine, this Thursday. I installed CentOS 7 first but gave it up because of Gnome 3.
It is not just the extreme quality of LEGO's moulds. LEGO are also using a higher-quality process compared to regular run-of-the-mill injection moudling so as to reduce shrinkage/warping and avoid other defects. For instance, the injection inlets are heated so that there are no sprues left when demolding.
You hit the nails right on the heads there. Those are the same things that disappointed me. I had already tickets for multiple screenings when I got a free ticket for a pre-screening. After that I returned my tickets - so I did not contribute to the sales figures. I don't want to.
I intend to wait for the BluRay release (April 5) and participate in the fan-edit community. I think that because of the cast and the dialogue, the movie does have potential to be turned into a great movie in ways that the prequels did not - and the big thing that needs to be done is to turn the story around. A lot depends on which deleted scenes will be included in the release, however.
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Programming is not a language skill. Any reasonably skilled programmer with knowledge into multiple paradigms could pick up any new programming language quickly. Language skill does not matter.
Programming has its base in logic, in spatial thinking and in mathematics. To be able to learn programming and become a good programmer you will need to have a strong foundation in those concepts. Within maths, statistics and probability theory are important and those concepts are not taught until high school.
Kids don't have a very good grasp of logic theory or fundamental maths before high school and many concepts that I would consider fundamental to programming are not even taught in high school at all.
When I went to high school, I was one of a number of kids who had privileged access passes to the computer halls.
The first version of Doom we played was the Press-release version. It was date-limited, so we had to turn back the internal clock on the PC to make it run.
The game's popularity spread immensely, and people with passes invited their friends into the computer halls as well. At one time, all PCs in all halls were occupied with kids playing Deathmatch. Because it had got out of hand, all access passes were revoked.
Doom also inspired me to learn more about 3D graphics and programming.
At one time during a regular computing class, I had some extra time so I started Doom just to see if I could get any hints to how it worked. The teacher did not accept my excuse for running it, and subsequently threw me out.
I liked "Ace Biscuit", that James May had suggested.
Many of the props and sets in Star Wars (1977) were not meticulously designed like modern blockbusters. This was considered a low-budget movie.
Lots of props and set details were therefore literally built from junk if only to save money. A lot of it was airplane scrap, in fact. The prop makers also had a manufacturer of high-end record players next door from which they got lots of small parts with minor defects.
As an extreme example there is Obi-Wan's lightsaber: it was built from an 1940's airplane engine, a WWI rifle grenade, a 1970's calculator, a WWII machine gun, a 1930's camera flash and a 1970's faucet knob.
One of my hobbies is building replicas of props from movies, and the Star Wars movie in particular. For me it is great that there are real-parts that I could chase down to build something exactly like in the movies. However, it does sometimes get a bit expensive and there have been clashes with for instance, collectors of vintage cameras.
It fits here only so that we can gloat about Carly Fiorina not being the vice-presidential race any more.
She was formerly the CEO of HP, responsible for changing HP's corporate culture and for massivie layoffs making her very unpopular among some.
I mean, a language is an encoding of copyrightable works, not the copyrightable works themselves.
If they wanted to protect a kind of encoding, shouldn't Paramount have applied for a patent on it before publishing a multitude of books encouraging people to use it?
I once saved a texting woman from being run-over by a train at a railroad crossing.
She walked right out on the tracks despite blinking lights and a very loud audible signal. She stopped first after a boom stopped her path -- the boom on the opposite side: She was standing right on the railroad track!
I had to enter the tracks and physically drag her out of there. She protested at first, but I got her to safety. She said "thanks" but at no time did her eyes even leave her frikkin' phone!
So, no, I don't think that even a physical barrier is going to be more effective than lights at "eye level". People just have to be taught some simple old-fashioned situational awareness. Maybe one way would be to publicly shame people who do wrong.
Kids should be taught mobile do's and don'ts in schools.
You mean like the Headz up App - Saturday Night Live ?
I don't know about you, but I consider the chat with the taxi driver to be part of the taxi experience.
When you are visiting somewhere you have never been, the driver might be able to tell you something interesting about the destination.
At one time I would even have missed a train if the driver had not suggested an alternative destination -- which had meant a shorter ride for him.
The problem with "PC Desk Cases" of this type with flat tops is that when sitting down there is very limited room for the knees.
The posture for sitting in front of a desk that is most often recommended for ergonomics experts has the desk surface quite low because the forearms are supposed to be horizontal when using the keyboard, so that your wrists could be straight.
It is also recommended that the top of the monitor screen is at the same height as your eyes. Most adjustable monitor stands would be in the highest position to reach that. A very large number of monitor stands are still too short and have to stand on something to reach that height.
I think that a better "PC Desk Case" design would instead be more like a classic desktop case on a regular desk. Or rather, a desk that incorporates a shelf for the monitor to stand on with the PC components in the base of that shelf. Unlike a PC on a desk, it could draw in air from the bottom which would give it better cooling.
When I was in college, I preferred to take notes on a printout of the slides for that lecture. 2Ã--3 layout of slides so as to not be too much.
The benefit of that is that notes would be in context to the slides.
I could add notes and arrows on the slides. The brain learns by associating.
If I would take notes on blank paper then I would also be copying what was on the slides, which would be more of an effort.
* People who type URLs into Google because ... bug in Chrome.
Has happened to me too many times. And I use DuckDuckGo, BTW, which makes it even worse.
Apple releases an iPhone-sized iPhone ... and that is considered news?
There [i]are[/i] some quite thin laptops with a smaller smarter type of RJ-45 socket.
The bottom part is on a hinge that you open with the RJ-45 plug when you need to insert it, thereby making the port large enough to accept the plug.
When you unplug the cable the hinge springs back to its small, closed state.
Of course this would need to be engineered as a part of the laptop's enclosure -- not just as a hole in it. And that might in turn imply patent licensing issues.
It is not as if Microsoft does not employ people who are competent at designing and testing proper user interfaces: People who know and expect how users will interface with Windows Update.
They expect people to install it by mistake.
The forced update is nothing else but intentional douchebaggery.
To blame the users is probably what they had planned to do all along.
I would be more concerned with the room lights being used for displaying giant messages on the hotel's facade with one room per pixel.
Could be used to shame the hotel for sure.
The end scene of the movie Hackers comes to mind.
That said. I trust him more than Donald Trump.
At least McAfee came clean and admitted that he had been lying instead of trying to perpetuate the lie and throwing insults at anyone who questions him.
The "FDA for Data and Algorithms" sounds a lot like the Data Inspection Board that we have in Sweden.
Every organisation over here (corp or non-profit) that keeps a record of personal information needs to be approved and registered with the agency. The agency performs inspections to see that the organisations comply with current laws.
The USB "Human Interface Device" protocol, which is used by USB keyboards, mice and gamepads is not only complex because it is a layered protocol.
It is complex also because it has a very free-form model: it allows the device to specify which protocol it speaks. And when an implementation can do things in many different ways then things can also go wrong in many different ways.
For instance, there are actually a couple keyboard models that work well with Windows and Linux but not with Apple MacOS or iOS -- because Apple's USB HID stack follows a little bit stricter interpretation of the standard than the others.
The most well-known issue however is that some USB keyboards don't work with some BIOSes or don't work with some BIOSes that are set to "Fast Boot" mode (or whatever it is called).
To keep the USB stack needed inside a BIOS simple, all keyboards have to support a simple keyboard protocol called the "Boot Protocol". This protocol is an example in the USB "Human Interface Device" standard's documentation and it works over Low-Speed USB so most cheap keyboards and ready-made keyboard controllers use only this protocol even in "normal" mode.
However, to enable it, the BIOS has to send the keyboard a special request -- yet several popular BIOSes neglect to do that, because: Hey, it worked on all these cheap keyboards!
When the BIOS does not work with the more expensive keyboards that run Full Speed USB with lower latency and features such as N-key rollover, Media keys etc.. people tend to blame the keyboard when it is really the BIOS's fault.
No, they were shut off today. I am one of the affected customers.
In Sweden, it is the existence of a receiver within the household that counts. If have a TV or a DVD player that contains a receiver (my DVD player is also a DVR) then you would have to pay a license. There is a max of one license per household though in case you would have multiple devices.
A year ago, the mandatory TV license applied also to PCs because they could be connected to the Internet and so it was reasoned that they could receive TV over the Internet that way. ... Except that not all PCs were able to actually playback the content.
I have a neighbour who has chosen to not own any TV, who had only a netbook -- which was too underpowered to play web-TV -- but she still had to pay the mandatory TV license for that. Ridiculous.
Thankfully, common sense prevailed and the rule was changed.
Chrome's Incognito mode does have a separate set of cookies - which is empty when you open the first Incognito window and are deleted when the last window is closed.
This means that web sites can't use cookies to track you between sessions. They could track you by your IP address, but the IP addresses are at a lower level than HTTP/HTTPS. If you are really paranoid then you would use something like Tor anyway.
However, there is one big flaw: All incognito windows are in the same session. If you forget to close the last window then the session will linger: when you open a new link "In Incognito Window" then the new link will be attached to the old Incognito session instead of a new one.
This could be remedied by supporting multiple Incognito sessions at once. I think that a straightforward model for the user would be to let each Incognito Window represent a separate session.
Myself, I use Incognito mode primarily to be able to use gmail and Youtube with separate accounts. Commenting on cat videos requires much less security than my private emails.
It is also convenient to log out just by closing the window.
I still run an old Ubuntu LTS install with Linux 2.6.32, but that is mostly because so that I would not have to run a Ubuntu version with that abomination called "Unity" or Gnome 3. I could not see that Ubuntu had offered any upgrade path to another LTS release that would not force any of that crap upon me. I also did not want to get a system that was a mix of installs from different sources.
My old Ubuntu has served me well for this time. Time to look around for some other distribution then... Mint?
BTW. At work I installed CentOS 6 on a brand new machine, this Thursday. I installed CentOS 7 first but gave it up because of Gnome 3.
It is not just the extreme quality of LEGO's moulds. LEGO are also using a higher-quality process compared to regular run-of-the-mill injection moudling so as to reduce shrinkage/warping and avoid other defects.
For instance, the injection inlets are heated so that there are no sprues left when demolding.
You hit the nails right on the heads there. Those are the same things that disappointed me. I had already tickets for multiple screenings when I got a free ticket for a pre-screening. After that I returned my tickets - so I did not contribute to the sales figures. I don't want to.
I intend to wait for the BluRay release (April 5) and participate in the fan-edit community.
I think that because of the cast and the dialogue, the movie does have potential to be turned into a great movie in ways that the prequels did not - and the big thing that needs to be done is to turn the story around.
A lot depends on which deleted scenes will be included in the release, however.