Well, but that's not a fair comparison. You say that Apple *has* not remotely killed any apps, but that Google *could*... sure Google reserves the right to kill apps, but have they ever used it?
Now, I haven't been following the story in detail, but from what I understand, *both* Apple and Google reserve the right to delete apps that you (the phone user) have already bought and placed on your phone, but neither company has ever used that privilege. So Apple and Google are equal in those respects. The reason people are favoring Google here is that Android allows you to download apps from alternate sources which are not subject to Google's kill switch, while Apple does not.
I think the idea behind the PB&J exercise is that it's going to make the students figure out firsthand what the allowed operations are by trial and error. That way it's much more likely to make an impression on them than it would be if you just told them what they can and can't do - it *shows* them exactly why their regular intuition might not be sufficient. Computer programming is not just about logic, but about creativity, i.e. finding ways to express a complex procedure in terms of a limited set of simple instructions. (For what it's worth: theoretical computer science, as taught and studied at the university level, is typically different)
Anyway, in my experience there's almost no better way to learn something than by getting it wrong a few times, and the sandwich-making thing provides ample opportunity for that.
And for themselves - think about guessing an exponential solution to a linear ODE, it just turns it into algebra. Anyway, that's beside the point; depending on what a person's interests are, it may be pretty hard to convince them that they need to know calculus.
As much as I like Numb3rs, it's really just a crime drama in which a mathematician happens to be a major character. Most of the math they use is *way* over the average person's head and the explanations they give probably come across as mathematical mumbo-jumbo to the majority of viewers. I don't think it's going to do a lot of inspiring unless they bring down the level of technicality, to the point where people can better understand just how the math is playing an essential role in solving the cases, so the viewers can see that this stuff could be applicable to their own lives.
I actually think Cyberchase (on PBS) does a better job, but it's only for very young kids learning very simple math.
I completely agree, the privacy issue is a spectrum between total privacy (isolation) and total exposure. Everybody will have their own opinion on what position on that spectrum they're comfortable with, it's not just the case that one particular balance has to work for everyone. To a large extent I imagine it depends on how much you do things that are likely to get you in trouble (and notice I say *likely*...yes, as stated earlier in the page, things which are perfectly innocuous now could cause problems in the future as laws and values change, but for most people the chances of that happening are probably low). Sure, there are photos of me on Facebook, but none of them show me involved in anything that I wouldn't consider defensible. With that in mind I think it's actually a considerable advantage to have a profile on a social networking site like Facebook or, from what I've heard of it, LinkedIn (not so much MySpace, which seems to be mostly style over substance): it's kind of like an online resume, the same sort of thing many people put on personal websites.
Absolutely agreed, that'd be a great way to grab their attention. Although you should check with the teacher in advance to make sure it's okay to show that particular clip. And 15 minutes is too much (that might be where the Funny mod came from:-p)... just a minute or two (the right minute or two) of the movie is all you'd need to get started.
Actually I think what you're saying is that it would be a violation for it to have been deleted from two places at the same time;-) Like some sort of information (un)certainty principle...
Actually, at least on Facebook, you can't create a profile without having access to the email address that will be listed on it. So if an applicant has listed the same email address on their application form, whoever's reading it can be reasonably sure the Facebook profile and the application refer to the same person. I'd imagine MySpace has a similar system. Of course, admissions officers may or may not know to check that particular item...
Actually on Facebook at least, you can be retagged - although, I believe, only by people on your friend list. So you could remove someone from the list if you don't want them tagging pictures of you:?
Actually I beg to differ - if you're relying on a transaction clearing on a specific date in the future, or if the ability to cancel payment on an electric bill makes the difference between being able to pay for an ER visit or not, you're probably not practicing good money management. I try to use automatic payment whenever possible, since it's one less thing for me to remember and to do every month. However, I do make sure to get some kind of confirmation message every time one of these automatic bill payments is posted to my account; that way I can keep my own independent records of what transactions should be occurring. If my records don't match the bank's records at any time, it's easy to investigate and find out what the difference is.
Also, for the record, ACH transactions uniformly take 3 days to clear, at least from one institution to another. Depending on the type of transaction, a bank may add an additional day for internal processing, but still it's usually fairly predictable how long the transaction should take to clear. Although if you're relying on money coming into your account (or going out of it) on a certain specific date in the future, that's another symptom of bad money management. My principle: do not spend money until I've actually verified that it's in my account. (For automatic bills, I'll usually make a transfer using online banking a few days in advance, enough time to try other avenues - i.e. make an ATM deposit - if something goes wrong.)
Agreed, logging every 2 to 5 lines gives you the kind of information that you should really be getting with a debugger. Of course, when you're trying to diagnose a specific problem, sometimes it can be easier to put log messages every line or two than to repeatedly step through the code with a debugger, but that's sort of the same thing, just a temporary debugging aid - most of that logging output should be removed once you've figured out what's going on. For general use, I think about one log call per function might be reasonable - more if it's a long function, or none if it's a short function that does something really simple. And even most of those should probably be disabled once you release the software.
I use Kile as well (with KBibTex) and I think it's an excellent program, but it's really just a front-end to LaTeX (actually, a text editor with many LaTeX-specific features) and in that respect I don't think it's what the original submitter is looking for. Using Kile doesn't completely excuse you from learning about the complexities of LaTeX, although I don't deny it can make things easier.
Agreed, Scribus (like InDesign etc.) is designed to let you place content like text and images exactly where you want on the page. In a sense it serves a complementary purpose to LaTeX - while LaTeX is meant to allow you to write without worrying about layout, Scribus lets you do layout without worrying about writing.
I have several years of experience using both Scribus and LaTeX and I would NEVER use Scribus to create a technical or scientific document. It's completely the wrong sort of program. (For one thing, there's no equation editor - if you're going to use formulas you'd still have to create them as images with another tool i.e. LaTeX). If you're *really* set on not using TeX/LaTeX, then I would recommend OpenOffice or (gasp) even MS Word as its replacement, rather than Scribus/InDesign.
The teacher was under the impression that the student was not doing his work. So the request to 'close the program and resume work' was, well, nonsense. I'm not going to bother entertaining the idea of this being a 'reasonable' request, because the reasoning behind it was faulty to begin with. With this in mind, and with regards to your comment, should there be no issue taken up with teachers enforcing 'unreasonable' requests?
I think this is the point to get all excited about, that the teacher thought the student was not doing his work simply because the teacher didn't recognize the program. As far as I can see in the original post and the detention letter, there is no mention of the student having been required to use Internet Explorer (or any other particular browser); if that were the case, I imagine it's the kind of thing that would have been mentioned in the detention letter. A teacher who knows enough to require his/her students to use IE is almost certainly a teacher who knows to recognize Firefox for what it is, and I certainly get the impression that the teacher in question here is not one of those.
Slashdot Mirror
Well, but that's not a fair comparison. You say that Apple *has* not remotely killed any apps, but that Google *could*... sure Google reserves the right to kill apps, but have they ever used it?
Now, I haven't been following the story in detail, but from what I understand, *both* Apple and Google reserve the right to delete apps that you (the phone user) have already bought and placed on your phone, but neither company has ever used that privilege. So Apple and Google are equal in those respects. The reason people are favoring Google here is that Android allows you to download apps from alternate sources which are not subject to Google's kill switch, while Apple does not.
I think the idea behind the PB&J exercise is that it's going to make the students figure out firsthand what the allowed operations are by trial and error. That way it's much more likely to make an impression on them than it would be if you just told them what they can and can't do - it *shows* them exactly why their regular intuition might not be sufficient. Computer programming is not just about logic, but about creativity, i.e. finding ways to express a complex procedure in terms of a limited set of simple instructions. (For what it's worth: theoretical computer science, as taught and studied at the university level, is typically different)
Anyway, in my experience there's almost no better way to learn something than by getting it wrong a few times, and the sandwich-making thing provides ample opportunity for that.
Actually in Java, 1./0. is infinity (Float.POSITIVE_INFINITY iirc). So I guess it depends on the language.
;-P
In the language of mathematics, of course, 1/0 is undefined...but mathematicians have been a bit slow to recognize the notation NaN
And for themselves - think about guessing an exponential solution to a linear ODE, it just turns it into algebra. Anyway, that's beside the point; depending on what a person's interests are, it may be pretty hard to convince them that they need to know calculus.
Couldn't resist... :-P)
(B+A)(B-A+1)/2
by Gauss's method. It probably would have taken him *5* minutes though (he'd have to learn algebra first
As much as I like Numb3rs, it's really just a crime drama in which a mathematician happens to be a major character. Most of the math they use is *way* over the average person's head and the explanations they give probably come across as mathematical mumbo-jumbo to the majority of viewers. I don't think it's going to do a lot of inspiring unless they bring down the level of technicality, to the point where people can better understand just how the math is playing an essential role in solving the cases, so the viewers can see that this stuff could be applicable to their own lives.
I actually think Cyberchase (on PBS) does a better job, but it's only for very young kids learning very simple math.
I completely agree, the privacy issue is a spectrum between total privacy (isolation) and total exposure. Everybody will have their own opinion on what position on that spectrum they're comfortable with, it's not just the case that one particular balance has to work for everyone.
To a large extent I imagine it depends on how much you do things that are likely to get you in trouble (and notice I say *likely*...yes, as stated earlier in the page, things which are perfectly innocuous now could cause problems in the future as laws and values change, but for most people the chances of that happening are probably low). Sure, there are photos of me on Facebook, but none of them show me involved in anything that I wouldn't consider defensible. With that in mind I think it's actually a considerable advantage to have a profile on a social networking site like Facebook or, from what I've heard of it, LinkedIn (not so much MySpace, which seems to be mostly style over substance): it's kind of like an online resume, the same sort of thing many people put on personal websites.
Absolutely agreed, that'd be a great way to grab their attention. Although you should check with the teacher in advance to make sure it's okay to show that particular clip. And 15 minutes is too much (that might be where the Funny mod came from :-p)... just a minute or two (the right minute or two) of the movie is all you'd need to get started.
Actually I think what you're saying is that it would be a violation for it to have been deleted from two places at the same time ;-) Like some sort of information (un)certainty principle...
Actually, at least on Facebook, you can't create a profile without having access to the email address that will be listed on it. So if an applicant has listed the same email address on their application form, whoever's reading it can be reasonably sure the Facebook profile and the application refer to the same person. I'd imagine MySpace has a similar system. Of course, admissions officers may or may not know to check that particular item...
Actually on Facebook at least, you can be retagged - although, I believe, only by people on your friend list. So you could remove someone from the list if you don't want them tagging pictures of you :?
All the cool geeks use generics these days ;-) ...
public class MessageBody<T> {
}
Actually I beg to differ - if you're relying on a transaction clearing on a specific date in the future, or if the ability to cancel payment on an electric bill makes the difference between being able to pay for an ER visit or not, you're probably not practicing good money management. I try to use automatic payment whenever possible, since it's one less thing for me to remember and to do every month. However, I do make sure to get some kind of confirmation message every time one of these automatic bill payments is posted to my account; that way I can keep my own independent records of what transactions should be occurring. If my records don't match the bank's records at any time, it's easy to investigate and find out what the difference is.
Also, for the record, ACH transactions uniformly take 3 days to clear, at least from one institution to another. Depending on the type of transaction, a bank may add an additional day for internal processing, but still it's usually fairly predictable how long the transaction should take to clear. Although if you're relying on money coming into your account (or going out of it) on a certain specific date in the future, that's another symptom of bad money management. My principle: do not spend money until I've actually verified that it's in my account. (For automatic bills, I'll usually make a transfer using online banking a few days in advance, enough time to try other avenues - i.e. make an ATM deposit - if something goes wrong.)
Yeah... the 31 MB figure is for an arbitrary 10 million digit number.
10 million digits would be more than 31 MB. It's a simple conversion from digits to bits, you just multiply by 3.32 (the base-2 log of 10).
Agreed, logging every 2 to 5 lines gives you the kind of information that you should really be getting with a debugger. Of course, when you're trying to diagnose a specific problem, sometimes it can be easier to put log messages every line or two than to repeatedly step through the code with a debugger, but that's sort of the same thing, just a temporary debugging aid - most of that logging output should be removed once you've figured out what's going on. For general use, I think about one log call per function might be reasonable - more if it's a long function, or none if it's a short function that does something really simple. And even most of those should probably be disabled once you release the software.
I use Kile as well (with KBibTex) and I think it's an excellent program, but it's really just a front-end to LaTeX (actually, a text editor with many LaTeX-specific features) and in that respect I don't think it's what the original submitter is looking for. Using Kile doesn't completely excuse you from learning about the complexities of LaTeX, although I don't deny it can make things easier.
Agreed, Scribus (like InDesign etc.) is designed to let you place content like text and images exactly where you want on the page. In a sense it serves a complementary purpose to LaTeX - while LaTeX is meant to allow you to write without worrying about layout, Scribus lets you do layout without worrying about writing. I have several years of experience using both Scribus and LaTeX and I would NEVER use Scribus to create a technical or scientific document. It's completely the wrong sort of program. (For one thing, there's no equation editor - if you're going to use formulas you'd still have to create them as images with another tool i.e. LaTeX). If you're *really* set on not using TeX/LaTeX, then I would recommend OpenOffice or (gasp) even MS Word as its replacement, rather than Scribus/InDesign.