Of course, as other articles in different papers have said, you won't be able to walk down to your local computer chain and buy one of these. They're strictly for developing countries.
That sounds like a social problem, one that I remember from high-school but not from university. Social problems tend to require social solutions, and if students fear "potential scorn", then there is a culture problem. These are rarely solved by technological means. And I do mean _solved_, rather than just hidden away.
Where clickers are most useful are in large lecture classes. When you have 100+ students out in the audience, you simply don't have the time to tailyr education to individuals without giving short shrift to a lot of other individuals. It's also frequently very difficult to understand just where the students as a whole are. Clickers, when well used, can help with all of that.
I think that's a fair point. Knowing your students is, I think, the hardest aspect of teaching, and big classes is going to make that very hard.
I think you're missing the point here. Most people who have problems with clickers won't find those problems disappearing with an "open-source" clicker. Their problems are either with the hardware (which it seems you are not trying to improve), or with the whole concept of using clickers.
Personally, as an educator, I would find clickers to be a nuisance, and wouldn't find them useful anyway. It is far more effective to try to interact with the students and understand where their learning is at, individually, then tailor my teaching to whatever common problems or such need the most attention.
I do! It's quite close to the research area for my PhD! I'm looking at this kind of thing, but from a link-layer perspective. I'm not very far into it, but this is big stuff.
Residential area networks with fat broadband connections are great uses for this stuff. How about routing VoIP through one reliable connection, whilst sending all bittorrent traffic (and other delay-insensitive traffic) through the other connections? This would be a boon for reliability, too!
What? You obviously haven't used LaTeX very much, have you? LaTeX is oriented precisely away from presentation - it is oriented towards describing the document's structure rather than how it should look. That's why the majority of academic papers and theses are written using LaTeX.
It's a GTK-based program that has its own i18n/l10n functionality (mainly because I don't like how gettext is designed) for investigating graph theoretic mathematics.
"Concrete Mathematics" by Graham, Patashnik and Knuth
I've personally used both, and they are both great for what they cover. The Wehrhahn book would probably suit you best, whilst the GPK book would be good as a solid reference tome.
As a free software author myself, I feel qualified to talk on this matter. I'll drop a hint to everybody right now: if you have a feature that you want, or think would be really useful, REQUEST IT!
Send me an email, and ask. What's the worst I'll do? Say "no". I personally wouldn't do that (I'd probably explain why I thought so), but it wouldn't hurt! I'm guessing a huge number of free software developers are sitting out there, very lonely. I *know* I have quite a few users, since I get a steady trickle of downloads, averaging over 20 a day - some of them *have* to be trying it out!
I'd have to say no, at least with the current CDDB. Albums are non-uniquely identified by Artist and Title; for example, I have two versions of "US Forces" by Midnight Oil, from different albums. How is it going to be possible to distinguish between them without examining the audio data?
Beats having people install Windows on it and then spending all your time using those slow, shoddy Win32 X servers.
The ideal situation would be if they were loaded with linux, and ran an X server that connected to our Solaris machines. At least that way we could use them for something useful when the login servers die (which happens quite often).
Lemme guess... Sydney University? I'm there myself, and I heartily agree that there aren't enough terminals available. There's far too many Celeron 700s that are used as dumb X11 terminals, too!
I'd guess because in the first case (Yoda, Obi Wan, Anakin) they were prepared (in a sense) for their death. They could probably prepare themselves for the end. For poor old Qai Gon, however, he died pretty quickly after Darth Maul impaled him, and so I guess that's why his body needed to be burned.
Are you sure you want this? Chances are you don't. Perhaps what you really want is key resetting.
Can we enforce non-trivial PINs
Be careful of the scope with this. You might want to ban affine PIN sequences (e.g. "1234", "3579", etc.), but if you ban too many things it will massively reduce the keyspace, making brute-force attacks easier.
An interesting approach to PIN "goodness" that I just thought up would be to look at the (algorithmic information theory) complexity of the string. This would also easily generalise to whole passwords, too.
Just remember that the weakest point in your security is almost certainly going to be the people involved. An ultra high-tech security door is no good when someone leaves the side window open.
Any product that tries to cash in on the "Linux is cool" will find that people are looking for substance, not gimmicks.
Unfortunately this will reflect badly on linux, rather than the product's vendor. Let's watch linux's "underdog" reputation mutate into a "buzzword" reputation, like thin clients did.
Thin clients have been around for 20 years, yet Sun decided to make it sound like they invented it! When they never got around to shipping anything of substance (besides Java), lots of suits thought that "thin clients" were vapourware, and a buzzword that was not worth bothering with.
What? You obviously didn't read the previous story on slashdot about the graphical LILO, with built-in game!
Re:a resounding yes--people r stupid & inconsi
on
Quoting in Emails?
·
· Score: 3, Insightful
The worst has to be when you send a long email to somebody, and it makes it way back to you with the original message and "YES!!!!!!!!" at the top, but let's not talk about top-posting in email.
And it's even better when they put the "YES!!!!" right at the bottom, so you have to scroll past your own message to see a single word of theirs!
Personally I think ANYONE gullible to believe in a fairy tale religion (buddism, hinduism, islam, christianity, whatever) enough to die for it, or kill others for it, is a fucking moron and I look forward for their elimination from the human gene pool.
Really? What about all those atheists who were involved in either World War who "believed in freedom enough to die for it"? Or is it only people with a religious alignment (i.e. those who are courageous enough to make any decision) who are stupid for having ideals?
Get over it, man. An intelligent argument needs not this kind of banter.
Re:Who be da fatman?
on
Merry Christmas
·
· Score: 2, Informative
That would be Santa Claus.
It's been weird
on
Merry Christmas
·
· Score: 3, Informative
Yes, it's been weird in Australia today... stinking hot, and some bushfires got started (deliberately) today unfortunately.
Hmmm... now *that's* something I can't blame on Microsoft.
Slashdot Mirror
Of course, as other articles in different papers have said, you won't be able to walk down to your local computer chain and buy one of these. They're strictly for developing countries.
That sounds like a social problem, one that I remember from high-school but not from university. Social problems tend to require social solutions, and if students fear "potential scorn", then there is a culture problem. These are rarely solved by technological means. And I do mean _solved_, rather than just hidden away.
Where clickers are most useful are in large lecture classes. When you have 100+ students out in the audience, you simply don't have the time to tailyr education to individuals without giving short shrift to a lot of other individuals. It's also frequently very difficult to understand just where the students as a whole are. Clickers, when well used, can help with all of that.
I think that's a fair point. Knowing your students is, I think, the hardest aspect of teaching, and big classes is going to make that very hard.
I think you're missing the point here. Most people who have problems with clickers won't find those problems disappearing with an "open-source" clicker. Their problems are either with the hardware (which it seems you are not trying to improve), or with the whole concept of using clickers.
Personally, as an educator, I would find clickers to be a nuisance, and wouldn't find them useful anyway. It is far more effective to try to interact with the students and understand where their learning is at, individually, then tailor my teaching to whatever common problems or such need the most attention.
You must be new here. Read the FAQ.
I do! It's quite close to the research area for my PhD! I'm looking at this kind of thing, but from a link-layer perspective. I'm not very far into it, but this is big stuff.
Residential area networks with fat broadband connections are great uses for this stuff. How about routing VoIP through one reliable connection, whilst sending all bittorrent traffic (and other delay-insensitive traffic) through the other connections? This would be a boon for reliability, too!
What? You obviously haven't used LaTeX very much, have you? LaTeX is oriented precisely away from presentation - it is oriented towards describing the document's structure rather than how it should look. That's why the majority of academic papers and theses are written using LaTeX.
It's a GTK-based program that has its own i18n/l10n functionality (mainly because I don't like how gettext is designed) for investigating graph theoretic mathematics.
"Combinatorics: An Introduction" by K.H.Wehrhahn
"Concrete Mathematics" by Graham, Patashnik and Knuth
I've personally used both, and they are both great for what they cover. The Wehrhahn book would probably suit you best, whilst the GPK book would be good as a solid reference tome.
As a free software author myself, I feel qualified to talk on this matter. I'll drop a hint to everybody right now: if you have a feature that you want, or think would be really useful, REQUEST IT!
Send me an email, and ask. What's the worst I'll do? Say "no". I personally wouldn't do that (I'd probably explain why I thought so), but it wouldn't hurt! I'm guessing a huge number of free software developers are sitting out there, very lonely. I *know* I have quite a few users, since I get a steady trickle of downloads, averaging over 20 a day - some of them *have* to be trying it out!
Why not dress up as a CEO of a large corporation?
I'd have to say no, at least with the current CDDB. Albums are non-uniquely identified by Artist and Title; for example, I have two versions of "US Forces" by Midnight Oil, from different albums. How is it going to be possible to distinguish between them without examining the audio data?
The ideal situation would be if they were loaded with linux, and ran an X server that connected to our Solaris machines. At least that way we could use them for something useful when the login servers die (which happens quite often).
Lemme guess... Sydney University? I'm there myself, and I heartily agree that there aren't enough terminals available. There's far too many Celeron 700s that are used as dumb X11 terminals, too!
I'd guess because in the first case (Yoda, Obi Wan, Anakin) they were prepared (in a sense) for their death. They could probably prepare themselves for the end. For poor old Qai Gon, however, he died pretty quickly after Darth Maul impaled him, and so I guess that's why his body needed to be burned.
Are you sure you want this? Chances are you don't. Perhaps what you really want is key resetting.
Can we enforce non-trivial PINs
Be careful of the scope with this. You might want to ban affine PIN sequences (e.g. "1234", "3579", etc.), but if you ban too many things it will massively reduce the keyspace, making brute-force attacks easier.
An interesting approach to PIN "goodness" that I just thought up would be to look at the (algorithmic information theory) complexity of the string. This would also easily generalise to whole passwords, too.
Just remember that the weakest point in your security is almost certainly going to be the people involved. An ultra high-tech security door is no good when someone leaves the side window open.
Hehehe... it'd be funny if they actually did, though.
Just a thought ... would it be possible for these small companies to sue the US Patent Office for costs relating to bad patents?
Any product that tries to cash in on the "Linux is cool" will find that people are looking for substance, not gimmicks.
Unfortunately this will reflect badly on linux, rather than the product's vendor. Let's watch linux's "underdog" reputation mutate into a "buzzword" reputation, like thin clients did.
Thin clients have been around for 20 years, yet Sun decided to make it sound like they invented it! When they never got around to shipping anything of substance (besides Java), lots of suits thought that "thin clients" were vapourware, and a buzzword that was not worth bothering with.
Low Feature Creep
What? You obviously didn't read the previous story on slashdot about the graphical LILO, with built-in game!
And it's even better when they put the "YES!!!!" right at the bottom, so you have to scroll past your own message to see a single word of theirs!
Really? What about all those atheists who were involved in either World War who "believed in freedom enough to die for it"? Or is it only people with a religious alignment (i.e. those who are courageous enough to make any decision) who are stupid for having ideals?
Get over it, man. An intelligent argument needs not this kind of banter.
That would be Santa Claus.
Yes, it's been weird in Australia today... stinking hot, and some bushfires got started (deliberately) today unfortunately.
Hmmm... now *that's* something I can't blame on Microsoft.