I started playing nethack before it was nethack, it was just hack. (I may well hold the record for longest time playing without an asencion, but that is beside the point.) I have played other roguelikes and keep coming back to nethack because it is the only one that keeps that same feel for me. It has had the same overall look my entire life. While the expanded character set in UTF would allow for significantly more characters to be used in drawing the map, and designating each monster with a different character, I beg of you not to do so. Keep the overall look the same, (or allow it as a compile time option at the very least) and just use UTF for the character name.
For which implimentation of UTF to use, I'd go with utf8 as it seems to have the widest adoption, or 32 because that will probably allow you the longest time before having to think about this again. I would avoid the middle ground.
Kim Dotcom knew what he was doing with megaupload. I wonder if this will be a way to have secure, semi-anonomous abilities to send a file point to point in the method of the IRC file-shares, but with an easier user interface.
I have filled out some applications that if the start date and end date of different jobs overlap, it kicks it out and doesn't allow it. Some people work more than one job at a time, I have one job that I had over five years, and periodically took on other side jobs for extra. It is impossible for me to list those side jobs on such applications, Or, if I do, I no longer have one job that lasts five years. Then they ask me to attest that the information is complete and accurate and that I've listed all jobs I've had in the last 10 years.
I started Elementary school in the late eighties. I went to a university laboratory school, so we had a bit better technology than some of the surrounding schools. We had a computer lab with multiple Apple II e systems, and an Apple II GS. Each classroom had Apple II e systems as well, but not enough for the whole class. During my fifth grade year, the school purchased several Pentium I computers which were slowly deployed, starting with the lowest grades, and working their way up, much to the annoyance of the fifth and sixth graders. Only one of these computers made it into my classroom, and it was for the teacher's station. The teacher's station had the computer, a laserdisk player, and a large CRT television that could display from either the computer or the laserdisk.
I remember some of the lessons about the technology itself, but mostly we used the technology for educational games, number munchers, Oregon Trail, Odell Lake, Carmen Sandiago, etc. I remember learning about floppy disks while they were still floppy, and thinking that the 3.5 floppies were what people were talking about when they said "hard disk" until my brothers (older) corrected me. I remember being told to always touch something metal before touching a computer, to ground myself.
Middle school it was completely back to Apple II E computers. I took a "programming" class, and was quite disapointed that all I learned was Apple II e BASIC, and nothing more complicated than simple arathmatic and printing out a block graphic we first drew on graph paper, then wrote the code on paper, then typed the code in. It was boring as hell.
My high school had pentium class computers in each classroom, although often just one. There were still some 386 computers in the hall outside the language arts (English) wing that were used for word processing only. I was in yearbook, and I was the most tech savvy person there, and I networked the OS 8 macs together (localtalk) and later oversaw the conversion of files when the yearbook upgraded from OS 8 with Adulus Pagemaker to Pentium class computers with Adobe Pagemaker.
LIke many here I imagine, I learned most of what I learned about computers at home, not at school, but there was technology instruction at my schools, even if it was fairly rudimentary.
I seem to be one of the few here who does not object to monitoring and key-logging software. Although I think key-logging is overkill (a logging proxy is my preferred solution) I think software monitors offer a good compromise. More than once a parent has come to me wanting me to install internet filters or netnanny type software and I convinced them to go with a logging solution instead. (Again, I didn't use key-loggers, just proxy loggers, so the parent knew exactly what sites the child went to online, but not what they did there.) I do not think this greatly erodes trust if the parent tells the child it is happening. A simple conversation about it is enough, and simply letting the child know, "hey, there is a logger set up so I can know what sites you are going to if I want to, I'm not going to be looking at every site you go to, but if I get worried about something I can go back through the logs." is not a huge deal, especially if it is done while the child is young. Springing it on a child WITHOUT telling them could cause some problems. I'm not as sure I agree with this solution for much older children, as I think a 16 year old would have a problem if such a plan were suddenly implemented (unless, perhaps, it goes along with first computer in the bedroom or another increase in privileges so can be seen not as reducing their rights, but expanding them less.)
I like these better. They actually give you the feeling of making a circuit board and make it much easier to visualize what is going on in the project. I got one for a 9 year old nephew, and his almost 6 year old brother has made over 60 of the projects. (You can buy these things at other locations than the link I posted, I just posted the first one I could find.)
I don't know the limit of efficiency that this new engine design will deliver, but at any sane value this does not solve our biggest problem here in the United States (and probably other nations as well.)
Everything we do is regulated by oil. Our food distribution runs on diesel, our manufacturing runs on diesel. Our military runs on diesel. Our workforce requires gas to get to work. Every facet of American life is dependent on oil based fuels without which our economy, our military, our industry, our agriculture and our commerce will fail. Even with extreme improvement in our ability to harness these fuels, it is extraordinarily unlikely that we can produce enough fuel to be self-sufficient. In short our national security and our very survival are in the hands of foreign powers.
In the best of circumstances this would be worrying, depending on close allies for your ability to survive is harrowing, but sustainable. We are not in the best of circumstances, The nations that produce the majority of oil are not staunch allies, but nations with populaces that are predominantly anti-US. At any time the structure in these countries could break down and we could find ourselves at war with them. This would be a war that even if we win could destroy us as a nation. If we conserve all our fuel resources for the War effort, which we would have to do if we want to win with conventional weapons, we would find ourselves bereft of fuel and the fuel production infrastructure itself most likely in shambles due to the war. Our way of life would be over just as surely as if we had been conquered by a foreign power.
We need to switch to electric not because it is more efficient (although it is) not because it will create jobs (though it will) not because it can be more environmentally sound (although it could be); we need to switch to electrical power because it keeps our vital infrastructure requirements in our own hands. It is a matter of national security, no nation can prosper if it id dependent on unfriendly nations for its very survival.
I have volunteered at my local library's booksale many times. We know that we can make more money selling online. Many of the books we have available for $1 we already know we could sell to Amazon for $10. We sell our books for $1 because we think people who can't (or even people who won't) buy books for $10 should still be able to own books.
The people who go through the library sales with scanners are basically equivalent to people going to a food-bank, getting food items, then selling them for profit.
Forthermore, they tend to be some of our rudest customers. They grab a book of a shelf, scan it, and move onto the next book, often sorting books into two piles, one pile for the books they want, another (larger) pile for the books they don't. They often do not pick back up the pile they do not want.
There are other booksellers who come in we mind less. They buy all the books for $1 each, and scan them at home, sell the expensive ones and return the ones they do not want to the library for a sale. Yes, they are still preventing others from getting the best of the books for a price, but they are quite willing to "donate" the cost of the books they do not buy.
Our library has had the no electronic devices sign up for three years now, and every year someone tries to sneak one in. They hide them in purses, pockets, anywhere they can. They do not care about other people's rules. They do not care when we explain to them what we are doing that people are able to get good books at low prices. All they care about is their own profits. They truly are scum.
You can purchase some really high end equipment to manage multiple monitors on a videowall, but you shouldn't. Use standard PC level hardware (or lower end rackmount depending on space requirements) with no more than two display cards each. Drive all your monitors separately then tie them together with Synnergy. You can still administer them all from a single workstation, fairly seamlessly, but you don't have a single point of failure, and you've probably saved hundreds of dollars. The videowall systems can also run some light duty servers especially system monitoring. (I like Xymon over Nagios, but it depends on what you want to do with it.)
So far as the monitors themselves, purchase flat-panel HDTV's. They are likely to be cheaper than similarly sized monitors, and you won't want greater resolution than an HDTV can handle for a video wall anyway. This gives you the added benefit of being able to tie in training videos, or third shift entertainment on to one or more screens if needed. Also, if one of your videowall servers goes down right before clients come to view the installation, you can quickly switch those monitors over to CNN, CNBC or another relevant channel.
The workstation tables should be glass or some other surface that can support either dry erase or grease-pen writing. Being able do simple notes on your desk will reduce scratch paper usage and make maximum use of available areas. Glass cubicle walls will cut down on noise like a cubicle would, but does not give as much of the feeling of being in a box as standard cubicles. They allow unobstructed view of the video-wall and you can write on them with grease pens.
Have more workstations than you need, and do not tie people their workstations. If someone wants to claim one that is fine, but some people will really like being able to log off, walk across the room, and log back on. This will also allow you to bring in off-shift workers when shit hits the fan.
As a security measure, get a dot-matrix printer on your firewall. Feed tail -f/var/log/authlog directly to it. If anyone gets in that shouldn't they will NOT be able to erase their tracks.
Put in a breakroom or break area that still has a view of the common videowall. When your people are taking a break during downtime, they should still be able to see if it is suddenly no longer downtime.
For the love of God (and your staff) put in a drink fridge or soda fountain and a coffee pot.
In Tennessee many of the state colleges are under a single authority called the Tennessee Board of Regents. The board a few years back instituted an online program called, quite imaginatively, the Regents Online Degree Program, or RODP.
You will have much LESS of the problems you were mentioning at such a school, since the regents do not wish to water down the name of every member school. Furthermore, if you enroll in any member school, you can take as many online classes as you want, so the thing to do would be to enroll in the physical school, talk in real life to professors to get department approval to skip the low level classes and enter the higher level classes directly. This will NOT save you time, as you will still need the same number of hours to graduate, but it WILL make it so you are learning more while they are siphoning money away from you.
The only problem is that the only Board of Regents school I ever attended, MTSU, has a really crappy CS department. (I literally had a professor tell me my Linux box was not possible in the late 90's)
If you can find a similar situation elsewhere, or if one of the other TBR has a better computer program, it would be a good thing to look into.
I'm already seeing all the BS going on about how a class-action lawsuit only helps the lawyers at the expense of the plaintiffs. I do not know if this is usually the case or not, but the only Class-Action lawsuit I have ever been a part of, (interestingly against apple) resulted in a solution that I found quite suitable for the offense.
I didn't get a dime, but I didn't want one. I wanted the system I paid for to work. I got a box in the mail with express shipping paid for me to ship my laptop back to Apple. Apple replaced my defective motherboard, and shipped my computer back. All at no charge to me. I did not even pay shipping either direction.
I bought a product that didn't work as it should. I signed up on the Class-Action, I got a product that worked as it should.
BUT LAWYERS ARE TEH EVILZ! CLASS ACTION LAWSUITS ARE ABOUT LINING TEH LAWYERZ POCKETS NOT GETTING ANYTHING TO THE PLAINTIFF!
Did they test those same kids for computer literacy before and after they got computers in their homes?
Computer literacy is an important skill. In today's world it is possibly more important than elementary math or spelling, as it to a large extent can substitute for either skill.
Trying to get entry level pseudo professional jobs, computer literacy is more important than the difference between a diploma and a GED. It is more important than how quickly you can add, subtract, multiply or divide. It is more important than your ability to analyze literature.
So my question is, on these important tests that the student did poorly in, did they test computer literacy? If their literacy went up 300% and they had a fairly minor drop in other scores, having the computer are getting them much more prepared for their futures than not having them would have.
So you say that after leaving high school people use a pen for almost nothing, then in the same breath say that we should teach more penmanship? Really? We should focus MORE on the skills that are least likely to be used in any professional setting? Penmanship is on the decline for the same reason that horsemanship has greatly declined in the last three hundred years. It isn't as needed anymore.
Today, if you want to do well in the real world, you don't need to know how to ride a horse, you need to learn how to drive a car. Today if you want to do well in the real world you don't need to study penmanship, you need to learn to type.
Get rid of cursive writing in the third grade (or second or whenever your school system teaches it) and teach touch-typing instead. Let high schools teach cursive as an elective. Don't teach something just because of tradition. Look at the real world and figure out what the value of what your teaching is. If something has more value than another, teach the more valuable lesson first. Then do the other lesson if you have time.
Hmm, either you made an absolutely wonderful analogy, or you just proved you don't understand two different areas of medical science.
Acupuncture has been shown to effective for the treatment of pain. It would be effective in mitigating the pain associated with everything from cancer to cuts and scrapes. It would not, however, treat the root causes. If you were using acupuncture as an example of "junk" medicine that really doesn't work, you fail. On the other hand, if you were using it as an example of something that seems like it would be counterproductive, but actually works for treatment of some conditions, you've hit a home run.
Almost all ADHD drugs are stimulant medication. If you give them to someone who doesn't have ADD/ADHD you will see an increase in hyperactivity, decrease in attention control and a the subject might get a mild sence of euphoria (but only if to much was given).
But in an ADHD patient, the stimulant medication have a CALMING effect. This is strikingly counterintuitive, yet is real double-blind tested science. (Acupuncture, by its nature cannot be tested with a double blind test, so the evidence for its effectiveness might be slightly less conclusive.)
However, from your last paragraph, I'm guessing you understand NEITHER aspects of medical science. Sadly, not understanding something does not make it any less true. You were blessed with sons with "easy" personalities. Congratulations, your sons probably do not have ADD. This is not a result of your parenting methods, it is a result of your genetics. Some people have ADD, for some of these children medication is required so that they CAN learn not to "stand up, escape, run out of the room, [or] throw a random object."
Asking people with diagnosed medical conditions to stop taking their medication, or worse, asking people who's CHILDREN have diagnosed medical conditions to stop treatment because you do not understand the mechanism of the condition or treatment is irresponsible. When penicillin was first discovered, there was a small amount of backlash against it. People claimed that the old folk treatments were more effective, and that the penicillin craze was caused by manufacturers wanting to make more money off an injection. Indeed, the very notion of an injection was, at one time, considered barbarous. Yet again and again controlled, scientific studies show the same results: acupuncture is effective in the mitigation of pain, Ritalin is effective in the treatment of ADD and ADHD, antibiotics are effective in the treatment of bacterial infections. Refusing your child any of the three of these, if he or she has been properly diagnosed with a condition for which they are the most appropriate treatment, should be considered child abuse. Giving any of these to your child if he or she does not have the condition for which they are appropriate treatment is likewise abusive.
I'm confused here, are you saying only a scumbag would say that blind people should be able to access books as inexpensively as a sighted person? Are you implying that people who try to fight for legal protections for the disabled are scumbags?
Or is scumbag simply your euphemism for lawyer? (Which is understandable.)
"Free Will" and "Deterministic" are both linguistic constructions that have no meaning beyond what they are given. Their utility in arguments depends on their having the same meaning on all sides of the arguments. Many, but not all philosophers define "Free Will" and "Deterministic" in such a way as to make them logically mutually exclusive. The argument that this article is relevant to makes that assumption. Arguing otherwise is not adding to the argument, it is just an emotional or political attempt to change the definitions of the words, while you take one side of the argument or another. (You are taking the hard deterministic argument, and changing the meaning of "Free Will".)
Although semantic arguments sound reasonable. And often are well thought out. They add nothing to the debate, and even often cloud the waters of established debates, as sometimes the meaning shifts go unnoticed on first reading. When involved in a Philosophical argument, try to first find out what definitions for words are being used then use those definitions yourself, even when they differ from how you usually use them.
It might sound odd at first, that you can be asked to completely change definitions you use in every-day life when talking in a specific field, but every field does something similar. Just think of the following words that mean very different things to a programmer than a non-programmer: arguments, objects, languages, environment, variables, functions, etc.
The kid, from what I read is already showing interest, yet most posts I've seen here are about how to get the kid interested. What the submitter was asking is how to teach and possibly WHAT to teach.
I am a substitute teacher, and am slowly working towards my teacher license. The most important thing I can tell you, for teaching one-on-one is to find out how the kid learns.
Everybody learns best in different ways. If your son learns best by reading books and going with it, you are lucky, your job consists of buying the right books and letting him go at it. If he learns best by watching, you need to do some simple programming yourself, with EXTRA comments, then letting him tweak the source code. If he learns by doing, walk him through the steps of creating a program to do a simple but useful (I use the word loosely) task. (Converting metric to imperial or putting words into pig-latin make good starting projects.)
Find out how visual vrs conceptual he is. If he enjoys the visual start with a visual IDE. Sadly, I do not know of anything in *nix that is better for this than Windows-only visual studio. If he is more of a mix, go for console-based graphics programming, which requires more conceptual awareness, but still hits the visual areas as well. If he is a pure conceptual person, go for a pure functional console based start.
What language you use is fundamentally unimportant. Some may be slightly better than others, but he will use what he learns, then decide he dislikes that language and move on to something else. We all do.
Now, so far as finding out how he learns best, find out what subjects in school he likes most, and which ones he does best in.
If he loves math, and does well in it, you have a good case for going with abstract instruction. Explain the concepts of functional decompisition, object oriented programming, flow-charts etc.
If he is an English/Language person, start with the syntax of the language, or better yet, pseudocode. Make projects that manipulate strings, and focus on the language, instead of programming in general.
If he is an art person, start with graphical manipulation. Something simple, but fun. Fractals are good here.
If he is an layout/design/yearbook person, I cannot recomend anything better than Visual Studio as it will allow him to START with the layout, then do the work after-wards.
If he is a science person, dig deeper, does he prefer just knowing scientific "facts" or does he like the quest for empirical experimentation that SHOULD be the underpinning of science. If the former, focus on code snippets that perform specific tasks. I would highly recomend an OO language. If he prefers the experimental aspects, he will actualy probably be more intrested in a lower level language. You might even start with electronics theory, then expand to assembly.
If he is a music student, I have no clue, but you might want to consider things that deal with timing loops or counters.
If he is a Gym-jock.. erm uh, hmm.
Whatever the case, WATCH HIM LEARN. Find out where he is learning fast, and where he is learning slow. Make sure you keep adding more where he is learning fast, but don't cut the slow parts. Just don't add more to the areas he is doing slow in until he masters the previous step. You may well end up with a kid who knows esoteric compiler options before he understands bubble-sort, but he will be constantly learning SOMETHING. He will keep the interest he is already showing. Keep him challenged, without making it hard. That is the perfect level for teaching.
Do not focus on the language. Do not focus on the program. Do not focus on the computer. Focus on your son. Everything else doesn't matter.
If you use a "role-based" nameing scheme. Lie. Do NOT name systems with high-security needs what they are. billing.yourcompany.local should be a honeypot. Let the REAL billing be done on something like dns-b.yourcompany.local. (Actual DNS systems would be dns-1.yourcompany.local, dns-2.yourcompany.local etc.)
That being said, I strongly prefer theme names for security reasons. People on the inside know that meowth has next year's production plans, but an intruder would not know meowth from zubat. (Zubat being the CEO's kid's laptop which is only on the network at all because the CEO insists, and the last guy with your job was fired for refusing).
(http://slashdot.org/~eldavojohn/journal/ | Last Journal: Tuesday April 04, @01:06PM)
Uh, this is a reply to the 8th post down from the top (remember to use this like an array and zero reference). Yes, I'm talking to you, admdrew.
You claim that the 16,777,216th comment would have broke it but I contest that actually the 16,777,217th comment poster would be the culprit. Since it should be able to handle that many comments if it is zero referenced, and it would actually be the one after that one that would break it. You laugh but these kinds of problems plague a lot of coders?
If you don't agree with me, please respond below and reference my comment ID.
Yes, but you forgot to start counting with 0
/Hey, this whole no threading thing reminds me of something. //Obscure?
Ok, I looked at your link to Wikitruth a little. It is intresting, and while it is obviously biased, I'm sure there is a strong nugget of truth behind it. I don't care. Wikipedia is a wonderful service for getting a brief overview of nearly any topic and a few links to look for more information. It is still far from perfect, but it is better today than it was yesterday. When I first heard about wikipedia, a place anybody could put whatever they wanted, I thought it would end up full of adds and porn (I didn't even know about Jimbo's other buisnesses) what I see now is without a doubt the best general light refrence sources in existance. No, you shouldn't cite it in a master's thesis. You shouldn't cite Worldbook or Britanica either. Encylcopedias are not, and are not intended to be, scholorly authroitative texts. They are supposed to be general refrence for the basics on a topic. Wikipedia manages this wonderfully.
So, which article did you try to post a pseudo-scientific bunch of mombo jumbo to?
Slashdot Mirror
I started playing nethack before it was nethack, it was just hack. (I may well hold the record for longest time playing without an asencion, but that is beside the point.) I have played other roguelikes and keep coming back to nethack because it is the only one that keeps that same feel for me. It has had the same overall look my entire life. While the expanded character set in UTF would allow for significantly more characters to be used in drawing the map, and designating each monster with a different character, I beg of you not to do so. Keep the overall look the same, (or allow it as a compile time option at the very least) and just use UTF for the character name.
For which implimentation of UTF to use, I'd go with utf8 as it seems to have the widest adoption, or 32 because that will probably allow you the longest time before having to think about this again. I would avoid the middle ground.
How about the clip-clop of horse's hooves on cobblestones? Or does it have to be things that became rare in our lifetime?
If the latter I'd go with the sound of a telephone bell. The mechanical ringing bell that was on so many different models of phones.
What do I win?
Kim Dotcom knew what he was doing with megaupload. I wonder if this will be a way to have secure, semi-anonomous abilities to send a file point to point in the method of the IRC file-shares, but with an easier user interface.
I have filled out some applications that if the start date and end date of different jobs overlap, it kicks it out and doesn't allow it. Some people work more than one job at a time, I have one job that I had over five years, and periodically took on other side jobs for extra. It is impossible for me to list those side jobs on such applications, Or, if I do, I no longer have one job that lasts five years. Then they ask me to attest that the information is complete and accurate and that I've listed all jobs I've had in the last 10 years.
I started Elementary school in the late eighties. I went to a university laboratory school, so we had a bit better technology than some of the surrounding schools. We had a computer lab with multiple Apple II e systems, and an Apple II GS. Each classroom had Apple II e systems as well, but not enough for the whole class. During my fifth grade year, the school purchased several Pentium I computers which were slowly deployed, starting with the lowest grades, and working their way up, much to the annoyance of the fifth and sixth graders. Only one of these computers made it into my classroom, and it was for the teacher's station. The teacher's station had the computer, a laserdisk player, and a large CRT television that could display from either the computer or the laserdisk.
I remember some of the lessons about the technology itself, but mostly we used the technology for educational games, number munchers, Oregon Trail, Odell Lake, Carmen Sandiago, etc. I remember learning about floppy disks while they were still floppy, and thinking that the 3.5 floppies were what people were talking about when they said "hard disk" until my brothers (older) corrected me. I remember being told to always touch something metal before touching a computer, to ground myself.
Middle school it was completely back to Apple II E computers. I took a "programming" class, and was quite disapointed that all I learned was Apple II e BASIC, and nothing more complicated than simple arathmatic and printing out a block graphic we first drew on graph paper, then wrote the code on paper, then typed the code in. It was boring as hell.
My high school had pentium class computers in each classroom, although often just one. There were still some 386 computers in the hall outside the language arts (English) wing that were used for word processing only. I was in yearbook, and I was the most tech savvy person there, and I networked the OS 8 macs together (localtalk) and later oversaw the conversion of files when the yearbook upgraded from OS 8 with Adulus Pagemaker to Pentium class computers with Adobe Pagemaker.
LIke many here I imagine, I learned most of what I learned about computers at home, not at school, but there was technology instruction at my schools, even if it was fairly rudimentary.
And if it were something so bad I would have a problem with it, yes I would rather that shit be traced to someone else's IP.
I would most likely just have no problem with the hot site being visited at home.
I seem to be one of the few here who does not object to monitoring and key-logging software. Although I think key-logging is overkill (a logging proxy is my preferred solution) I think software monitors offer a good compromise. More than once a parent has come to me wanting me to install internet filters or netnanny type software and I convinced them to go with a logging solution instead. (Again, I didn't use key-loggers, just proxy loggers, so the parent knew exactly what sites the child went to online, but not what they did there.) I do not think this greatly erodes trust if the parent tells the child it is happening. A simple conversation about it is enough, and simply letting the child know, "hey, there is a logger set up so I can know what sites you are going to if I want to, I'm not going to be looking at every site you go to, but if I get worried about something I can go back through the logs." is not a huge deal, especially if it is done while the child is young. Springing it on a child WITHOUT telling them could cause some problems. I'm not as sure I agree with this solution for much older children, as I think a 16 year old would have a problem if such a plan were suddenly implemented (unless, perhaps, it goes along with first computer in the bedroom or another increase in privileges so can be seen not as reducing their rights, but expanding them less.)
I like these better. They actually give you the feeling of making a circuit board and make it much easier to visualize what is going on in the project. I got one for a 9 year old nephew, and his almost 6 year old brother has made over 60 of the projects. (You can buy these things at other locations than the link I posted, I just posted the first one I could find.)
I don't know the limit of efficiency that this new engine design will deliver, but at any sane value this does not solve our biggest problem here in the United States (and probably other nations as well.)
Everything we do is regulated by oil. Our food distribution runs on diesel, our manufacturing runs on diesel. Our military runs on diesel. Our workforce requires gas to get to work. Every facet of American life is dependent on oil based fuels without which our economy, our military, our industry, our agriculture and our commerce will fail. Even with extreme improvement in our ability to harness these fuels, it is extraordinarily unlikely that we can produce enough fuel to be self-sufficient. In short our national security and our very survival are in the hands of foreign powers.
In the best of circumstances this would be worrying, depending on close allies for your ability to survive is harrowing, but sustainable. We are not in the best of circumstances, The nations that produce the majority of oil are not staunch allies, but nations with populaces that are predominantly anti-US. At any time the structure in these countries could break down and we could find ourselves at war with them. This would be a war that even if we win could destroy us as a nation. If we conserve all our fuel resources for the War effort, which we would have to do if we want to win with conventional weapons, we would find ourselves bereft of fuel and the fuel production infrastructure itself most likely in shambles due to the war. Our way of life would be over just as surely as if we had been conquered by a foreign power.
We need to switch to electric not because it is more efficient (although it is) not because it will create jobs (though it will) not because it can be more environmentally sound (although it could be); we need to switch to electrical power because it keeps our vital infrastructure requirements in our own hands. It is a matter of national security, no nation can prosper if it id dependent on unfriendly nations for its very survival.
I have volunteered at my local library's booksale many times. We know that we can make more money selling online. Many of the books we have available for $1 we already know we could sell to Amazon for $10. We sell our books for $1 because we think people who can't (or even people who won't) buy books for $10 should still be able to own books.
The people who go through the library sales with scanners are basically equivalent to people going to a food-bank, getting food items, then selling them for profit.
Forthermore, they tend to be some of our rudest customers. They grab a book of a shelf, scan it, and move onto the next book, often sorting books into two piles, one pile for the books they want, another (larger) pile for the books they don't. They often do not pick back up the pile they do not want.
There are other booksellers who come in we mind less. They buy all the books for $1 each, and scan them at home, sell the expensive ones and return the ones they do not want to the library for a sale. Yes, they are still preventing others from getting the best of the books for a price, but they are quite willing to "donate" the cost of the books they do not buy.
Our library has had the no electronic devices sign up for three years now, and every year someone tries to sneak one in. They hide them in purses, pockets, anywhere they can. They do not care about other people's rules. They do not care when we explain to them what we are doing that people are able to get good books at low prices. All they care about is their own profits. They truly are scum.
You can purchase some really high end equipment to manage multiple monitors on a videowall, but you shouldn't. Use standard PC level hardware (or lower end rackmount depending on space requirements) with no more than two display cards each. Drive all your monitors separately then tie them together with Synnergy. You can still administer them all from a single workstation, fairly seamlessly, but you don't have a single point of failure, and you've probably saved hundreds of dollars. The videowall systems can also run some light duty servers especially system monitoring. (I like Xymon over Nagios, but it depends on what you want to do with it.)
So far as the monitors themselves, purchase flat-panel HDTV's. They are likely to be cheaper than similarly sized monitors, and you won't want greater resolution than an HDTV can handle for a video wall anyway. This gives you the added benefit of being able to tie in training videos, or third shift entertainment on to one or more screens if needed. Also, if one of your videowall servers goes down right before clients come to view the installation, you can quickly switch those monitors over to CNN, CNBC or another relevant channel.
The workstation tables should be glass or some other surface that can support either dry erase or grease-pen writing. Being able do simple notes on your desk will reduce scratch paper usage and make maximum use of available areas. Glass cubicle walls will cut down on noise like a cubicle would, but does not give as much of the feeling of being in a box as standard cubicles. They allow unobstructed view of the video-wall and you can write on them with grease pens.
Have more workstations than you need, and do not tie people their workstations. If someone wants to claim one that is fine, but some people will really like being able to log off, walk across the room, and log back on. This will also allow you to bring in off-shift workers when shit hits the fan.
As a security measure, get a dot-matrix printer on your firewall. Feed tail -f /var/log/authlog directly to it. If anyone gets in that shouldn't they will NOT be able to erase their tracks.
Put in a breakroom or break area that still has a view of the common videowall. When your people are taking a break during downtime, they should still be able to see if it is suddenly no longer downtime.
For the love of God (and your staff) put in a drink fridge or soda fountain and a coffee pot.
In Tennessee many of the state colleges are under a single authority called the Tennessee Board of Regents. The board a few years back instituted an online program called, quite imaginatively, the Regents Online Degree Program, or RODP.
You will have much LESS of the problems you were mentioning at such a school, since the regents do not wish to water down the name of every member school. Furthermore, if you enroll in any member school, you can take as many online classes as you want, so the thing to do would be to enroll in the physical school, talk in real life to professors to get department approval to skip the low level classes and enter the higher level classes directly. This will NOT save you time, as you will still need the same number of hours to graduate, but it WILL make it so you are learning more while they are siphoning money away from you.
The only problem is that the only Board of Regents school I ever attended, MTSU, has a really crappy CS department. (I literally had a professor tell me my Linux box was not possible in the late 90's)
If you can find a similar situation elsewhere, or if one of the other TBR has a better computer program, it would be a good thing to look into.
I'm already seeing all the BS going on about how a class-action lawsuit only helps the lawyers at the expense of the plaintiffs. I do not know if this is usually the case or not, but the only Class-Action lawsuit I have ever been a part of, (interestingly against apple) resulted in a solution that I found quite suitable for the offense.
I didn't get a dime, but I didn't want one. I wanted the system I paid for to work. I got a box in the mail with express shipping paid for me to ship my laptop back to Apple. Apple replaced my defective motherboard, and shipped my computer back. All at no charge to me. I did not even pay shipping either direction.
I bought a product that didn't work as it should. I signed up on the Class-Action, I got a product that worked as it should.
BUT LAWYERS ARE TEH EVILZ! CLASS ACTION LAWSUITS ARE ABOUT LINING TEH LAWYERZ POCKETS NOT GETTING ANYTHING TO THE PLAINTIFF!
Did they test those same kids for computer literacy before and after they got computers in their homes?
Computer literacy is an important skill. In today's world it is possibly more important than elementary math or spelling, as it to a large extent can substitute for either skill.
Trying to get entry level pseudo professional jobs, computer literacy is more important than the difference between a diploma and a GED. It is more important than how quickly you can add, subtract, multiply or divide. It is more important than your ability to analyze literature.
So my question is, on these important tests that the student did poorly in, did they test computer literacy? If their literacy went up 300% and they had a fairly minor drop in other scores, having the computer are getting them much more prepared for their futures than not having them would have.
So you say that after leaving high school people use a pen for almost nothing, then in the same breath say that we should teach more penmanship? Really? We should focus MORE on the skills that are least likely to be used in any professional setting? Penmanship is on the decline for the same reason that horsemanship has greatly declined in the last three hundred years. It isn't as needed anymore.
Today, if you want to do well in the real world, you don't need to know how to ride a horse, you need to learn how to drive a car. Today if you want to do well in the real world you don't need to study penmanship, you need to learn to type.
Get rid of cursive writing in the third grade (or second or whenever your school system teaches it) and teach touch-typing instead. Let high schools teach cursive as an elective. Don't teach something just because of tradition. Look at the real world and figure out what the value of what your teaching is. If something has more value than another, teach the more valuable lesson first. Then do the other lesson if you have time.
Hmm, either you made an absolutely wonderful analogy, or you just proved you don't understand two different areas of medical science.
Acupuncture has been shown to effective for the treatment of pain. It would be effective in mitigating the pain associated with everything from cancer to cuts and scrapes. It would not, however, treat the root causes. If you were using acupuncture as an example of "junk" medicine that really doesn't work, you fail. On the other hand, if you were using it as an example of something that seems like it would be counterproductive, but actually works for treatment of some conditions, you've hit a home run.
Almost all ADHD drugs are stimulant medication. If you give them to someone who doesn't have ADD/ADHD you will see an increase in hyperactivity, decrease in attention control and a the subject might get a mild sence of euphoria (but only if to much was given).
But in an ADHD patient, the stimulant medication have a CALMING effect. This is strikingly counterintuitive, yet is real double-blind tested science. (Acupuncture, by its nature cannot be tested with a double blind test, so the evidence for its effectiveness might be slightly less conclusive.)
However, from your last paragraph, I'm guessing you understand NEITHER aspects of medical science. Sadly, not understanding something does not make it any less true. You were blessed with sons with "easy" personalities. Congratulations, your sons probably do not have ADD. This is not a result of your parenting methods, it is a result of your genetics. Some people have ADD, for some of these children medication is required so that they CAN learn not to "stand up, escape, run out of the room, [or] throw a random object."
Asking people with diagnosed medical conditions to stop taking their medication, or worse, asking people who's CHILDREN have diagnosed medical conditions to stop treatment because you do not understand the mechanism of the condition or treatment is irresponsible. When penicillin was first discovered, there was a small amount of backlash against it. People claimed that the old folk treatments were more effective, and that the penicillin craze was caused by manufacturers wanting to make more money off an injection. Indeed, the very notion of an injection was, at one time, considered barbarous. Yet again and again controlled, scientific studies show the same results: acupuncture is effective in the mitigation of pain, Ritalin is effective in the treatment of ADD and ADHD, antibiotics are effective in the treatment of bacterial infections. Refusing your child any of the three of these, if he or she has been properly diagnosed with a condition for which they are the most appropriate treatment, should be considered child abuse. Giving any of these to your child if he or she does not have the condition for which they are appropriate treatment is likewise abusive.
Okay, I see, you're a bit harsher than I am, but not as bad as it looked to begin with.
I'm confused here, are you saying only a scumbag would say that blind people should be able to access books as inexpensively as a sighted person? Are you implying that people who try to fight for legal protections for the disabled are scumbags?
Or is scumbag simply your euphemism for lawyer? (Which is understandable.)
Or did I miss something else?
"Free Will" and "Deterministic" are both linguistic constructions that have no meaning beyond what they are given. Their utility in arguments depends on their having the same meaning on all sides of the arguments. Many, but not all philosophers define "Free Will" and "Deterministic" in such a way as to make them logically mutually exclusive. The argument that this article is relevant to makes that assumption. Arguing otherwise is not adding to the argument, it is just an emotional or political attempt to change the definitions of the words, while you take one side of the argument or another. (You are taking the hard deterministic argument, and changing the meaning of "Free Will".)
Although semantic arguments sound reasonable. And often are well thought out. They add nothing to the debate, and even often cloud the waters of established debates, as sometimes the meaning shifts go unnoticed on first reading. When involved in a Philosophical argument, try to first find out what definitions for words are being used then use those definitions yourself, even when they differ from how you usually use them.
It might sound odd at first, that you can be asked to completely change definitions you use in every-day life when talking in a specific field, but every field does something similar. Just think of the following words that mean very different things to a programmer than a non-programmer: arguments, objects, languages, environment, variables, functions, etc.
The kid, from what I read is already showing interest, yet most posts I've seen here are about how to get the kid interested. What the submitter was asking is how to teach and possibly WHAT to teach.
I am a substitute teacher, and am slowly working towards my teacher license. The most important thing I can tell you, for teaching one-on-one is to find out how the kid learns.
Everybody learns best in different ways. If your son learns best by reading books and going with it, you are lucky, your job consists of buying the right books and letting him go at it. If he learns best by watching, you need to do some simple programming yourself, with EXTRA comments, then letting him tweak the source code. If he learns by doing, walk him through the steps of creating a program to do a simple but useful (I use the word loosely) task. (Converting metric to imperial or putting words into pig-latin make good starting projects.)
Find out how visual vrs conceptual he is. If he enjoys the visual start with a visual IDE. Sadly, I do not know of anything in *nix that is better for this than Windows-only visual studio. If he is more of a mix, go for console-based graphics programming, which requires more conceptual awareness, but still hits the visual areas as well. If he is a pure conceptual person, go for a pure functional console based start.
What language you use is fundamentally unimportant. Some may be slightly better than others, but he will use what he learns, then decide he dislikes that language and move on to something else. We all do.
Now, so far as finding out how he learns best, find out what subjects in school he likes most, and which ones he does best in.
If he loves math, and does well in it, you have a good case for going with abstract instruction. Explain the concepts of functional decompisition, object oriented programming, flow-charts etc.
If he is an English/Language person, start with the syntax of the language, or better yet, pseudocode. Make projects that manipulate strings, and focus on the language, instead of programming in general.
If he is an art person, start with graphical manipulation. Something simple, but fun. Fractals are good here.
If he is an layout/design/yearbook person, I cannot recomend anything better than Visual Studio as it will allow him to START with the layout, then do the work after-wards.
If he is a science person, dig deeper, does he prefer just knowing scientific "facts" or does he like the quest for empirical experimentation that SHOULD be the underpinning of science. If the former, focus on code snippets that perform specific tasks. I would highly recomend an OO language. If he prefers the experimental aspects, he will actualy probably be more intrested in a lower level language. You might even start with electronics theory, then expand to assembly.
If he is a music student, I have no clue, but you might want to consider things that deal with timing loops or counters.
If he is a Gym-jock.. erm uh, hmm.
Whatever the case, WATCH HIM LEARN. Find out where he is learning fast, and where he is learning slow. Make sure you keep adding more where he is learning fast, but don't cut the slow parts. Just don't add more to the areas he is doing slow in until he masters the previous step. You may well end up with a kid who knows esoteric compiler options before he understands bubble-sort, but he will be constantly learning SOMETHING. He will keep the interest he is already showing. Keep him challenged, without making it hard. That is the perfect level for teaching.
Do not focus on the language. Do not focus on the program. Do not focus on the computer. Focus on your son. Everything else doesn't matter.
If you use a "role-based" nameing scheme. Lie. Do NOT name systems with high-security needs what they are. billing.yourcompany.local should be a honeypot. Let the REAL billing be done on something like dns-b.yourcompany.local. (Actual DNS systems would be dns-1.yourcompany.local, dns-2.yourcompany.local etc.)
That being said, I strongly prefer theme names for security reasons. People on the inside know that meowth has next year's production plans, but an intruder would not know meowth from zubat. (Zubat being the CEO's kid's laptop which is only on the network at all because the CEO insists, and the last guy with your job was fired for refusing).
Hey, if you want one enough I'd be willing to middle-man it. (It would not have a pound or euro sign on the keyboard most likely though)
(http://slashdot.org/~eldavojohn/journal/ | Last Journal: Tuesday April 04, @01:06PM) Uh, this is a reply to the 8th post down from the top (remember to use this like an array and zero reference). Yes, I'm talking to you, admdrew. You claim that the 16,777,216th comment would have broke it but I contest that actually the 16,777,217th comment poster would be the culprit. Since it should be able to handle that many comments if it is zero referenced, and it would actually be the one after that one that would break it. You laugh but these kinds of problems plague a lot of coders? If you don't agree with me, please respond below and reference my comment ID.
Yes, but you forgot to start counting with 0
So, which article did you try to post a pseudo-scientific bunch of mombo jumbo to?