You're missing the point entirely. No consumer is going to buy 65,000 apps, but the sheer size and breadth of those iPad apps will: (1) allow consumers to find desired "long-tail" niche apps that wouldn't be found if there were, say, 100 apps like there is with Android tablet apps; and (2) force developers to constantly work on improving their apps since there is so much competition, which is a win for consumers.
Number of current Android tablet-specific apps (running Honeycomb): less than 100
Number of current iPad apps: over 65,000
Number of iPad apps at launch in April 2010: 2300 (citation)
I'm still not sure who would buy an Android tablet. Buying one is like buying a TV that gets only 3 channels. Why purchase a tablet hoping that the app inventory will grow when you can get a state-of-the-art iPad with 65,000 apps?
Kids go where the hardware is. Adults go where the applications are. I remember learning this when I switched from Sega to Playstation when I was in college and when I switched from MacOS 7.6 to Windows 2000 when I was in grad school.
Also, to get the Xoom's 3G, you have to commit to a 2-year contract, whereas the iPad's 3G has a monthly contract.
I think a better question is: Do these professors think their college should be an institution of higher learning or a trade school? (Disclaimer: I got a PhD from a top-20 university.)
Let me make a few points:
First, while it's true that numerical math is not used in many CS areas, discrete math is. Logic, set operations, and the like are used pervasively in CS. And learning numerical math is a core breadth area that instills mental discipline. Quite frankly, if math is not your strong point, then you should consider moving out of CS.
Second, the role of a university CS undergraduate curriculum is not to teach "cloud computing or multi-core systems or software engineering". It's to teach core CS topics. It's like like suggesting that a mechanical engineering student should be taught how to fix the engine of a Ford Mustang or that an electrical engineering student should be taught how to install video cards into a PC.
Let me make this clear: Any "hot topic" CS subject you teach in a university will be outdated in a few years, quite possibly between the student's freshman and senior year. This includes "cloud computing" and "multi-core systems". Back in my day, the hot topics du jour were ATM networking and grid computing, but fortunately I went to a good university that focused on core topics.
What's the difference, you ask? Here are you go:
Hot topic: cloud computing
Core CS topics: distributed systems, distributed algorithms, operating systems
Hot topic: programming in C#
Core CS topic: programming language structure, compilers, automata theory
Hot topic: multi-core systems
Core CS topic: computer architecture (x86, for example), instruction sets, digital systems
Hot topic: writing video games
Core CS topics: graphics, linear algebra, digital image processing
Learning math and these CS core topics allows students to learn new skills in the future. Case-in-point: Recently I have been working in a new area: machine learning algorithms (SVMs, bayesian inferencing, etc.). The importance of this area has grown in the Google-era and was not widely regarded when I was an undergraduate. My fundamental knowledge in mathematics is serving me well right now.
Finally, the professors quoted in the article are from U. of Tennessee and SMU, which are like 4th-tier universities. So don't take their word too seriously.
You mean my anti-PhD medication? If I wanted to lessen my level of education, I would have done so a long time ago, young lad. Furthermore, don't you have a Justin Bieber song to sing along with?
It seems an article is at least 10 times more relevant in the news, if the word "Smartphone" is in the headline.
You don't need that comma between "news" and "if". Don't go crying "grammar police." If your'e an adult, you should be able to write English sentences correctly; otherwise, don't post at all.
Indeed, I had a 4.25 GPA on a 4.0 scale way back in high school. I took a bunch of honours classes (chemistry, physics, calculus, english, US history) to get the extra grade points.
I have a minimal Facebook account, whereas I spend much more time on LinkedIn. I really don't care about my friends' personal lives. I don't care if they like Charlie Sheen, and I don't care if their little baby is so cute. What I do care about is the following:
Where they went to grad school and got their PhD
Where they work
What kind of accomplishments they've had
How many patents they've been granted
etc.
Basically, I want to know if they're worth my time. LinkedIn gives me that, and more.
The pay is pretty good, well into 6 figures and in line with a software architect at a large corporation. You can look on glassdoor.com to see for yourself.
The job openings are fairly competitive, especially for the large corporate research labs where there are a lot of applicants. The metrics for experienced job candidates are usually publications, patents, and tech transfers from idea to product. For fresh PhD students, the publication record and recommendations play a bigger role.
You don't have to spend your own money to get a PhD. If you're working, your company will usually pay a sizable amount of tuition. If you're a full-time student, then you can get a job being a TA or research assistant with the pay usually being about $25K/year, which barely covers tuition, food, and living.
I finished my CS PhD a few years ago. Your professor should be paying for you if you're presenting a paper where his name is a co-author. He should have the funds to pay for the whole trip. If that's not possible, each conference usually has a "student travel grant" that you can apply for. If that's still not the case, then conferences sometimes have "student volunteer grants" where you work as a student volunteer, handing out brochures and conference programs.
You have "used" both devices, meaning you have browsed Best Buy and could not afford either device, so now you think you are an expert. Everything you wrote about the iPad is a lie, and what's worse, applies directly to the Tab. On the Tab, scrolling is laggy and erratic. Generally, it's much slower. Also, iOS has over 350K apps and over 150K iPad apps. Android has 0 tablet-specific apps. Nice.
There is not a single Android tablet in the market now or in the near future that comes even remotely close to the user experience provided by the iPad. I've had one since April of last year, and it's pretty much the only thing I use when I get home.
$132K as an upper bound sounds about right for mid-level engineers but is a bit low as an upper bound for senior software engineers at large corporations. Principal software engineers at Microsoft are paid at around $160K with fairly huge bonuses that push their yearly pay to nearly $200K. Staff software engineers at Google and others are in the neighbourhood. Note that these are cream-of-the-crop engineers who have chosen to stay as ICs rather than go into management. Source: personal knowledge and glassdoor.com.
I took his one-day course in Seattle. The hall was absolutely packed, and I had to sit in the back. He goes through a lot of material that's from his books, and it's all wonderful. Hearing it from him in person is a lot better than reading; for example, the example of the cholera map from London didn't impress me in print as much as it did when he went over its history at the lecture. He also discusses why Powerpoint lends itself to abuse and how you can avoid information overload on slides. And he makes the point that he really, really loves high-density displays. When I took the course in 2008, he was raving about the high-resolution screen of the iPhone and how it's great from a high-density-information point of view.
The prize of the class is the collection of his four books in a nice cardboard box. They're all terrific reads and look great on one's bookshelf next to Knuth's masterpieces.
Linux use has dropped from a high of 2.5% in 2004 to a rounding error this year.
Paraphrasing Principal Skinner: Why, there are no children using Linux, either!
Am I so out of touch? (pauses to think) No, it's the children who are wrong.
The search results are not just a regex matching. A modern search engine, like Google's, returns a ranked list of search results to you, and this ranking already has bias: the Pagerank algorithm sorts the results based on how popular the page is, as measured by the number of incoming links to that page. Of course, that is the general gyst of Pagerank as of the Google founders' research paper back in the late 1990s, and undoubtedly Google and other search engines have fine-tuned their algorithms since then to return "better" results to the user. But the point is still that there is already bias in the results.
Make no mistake that Google has not already thought of similar search result ranking algorithms similar to that posed in this Yahoo Research paper. The difference is that Google does not have a research arm like Yahoo, so they do not publish ideas like this. In hindsight, the Google founders were foolish to publish their Pagerank algorithm in the first place, but they were still at Stanford then.
The original posting cites a May report from NPD that says that Android beat iPhone sales in Q1 of this year. However, that was now found to be erroneous: that survey was only for the consumer market. When business/enterprise sales were counted and reported in June by Nielsen, then iPhone beat Android by 3-to-1 and is closing in on RIM. Furthermore, most likely the only reason Android beat out iPhone in Q1 for consumers was because people were already anticipating the newest iPhone 4 released today. Apple sold 600K iPhone 4 during pre-orders, which as 10x the sales for the iPhone 3GS.
Call me naive, but I trust Apple. I've been using Mobile Me since late 2004. I just migrated away from the Palm phone after three years; I now have an iPhone as my primary phone. My calendar, my contacts, etc. are in the Apple cloud. And guess what? They've never done ANYTHING to erode my trust in them. In the age of telecom companies trying to cap mobile data plans, and place arbitrary restrictions on IP-delivered media content, Apple is busy trying to roll out fiber and generally make the Internet better. I believe that not only do they live by their "think different" mantra, but that they realize the days of the free Internet may be numbered. They're doing their best to save the Internet as we know it. Granted, they have something to gain. But other companies' failure to evolve leaves the door wide open for a company which we should trust far more than AT&T, Time Warner, etc. to preserve the landscape that slashdotters are so eager to protect. The tag is correct, it's a witch hunt. Apple admitted their mistake, we move on.
Call me naive, but I trust Microsoft. I've been using Hotmail since late 2004. I just migrated away from the iPhone after three years; I now have a Windows Mobile smartphone as my primary phone. My calendar, my contacts, etc. are in the Microsoft cloud. And guess what? They've never done ANYTHING to erode my trust in them. In the age of telecom companies trying to cap mobile data plans, and place arbitrary restrictions on IP-delivered media content, Microsoft is busy trying to roll out fiber and generally make the Internet better. I believe that not only do they live by their "I'm a PC" mantra, but that they realize the days of the free Internet may be numbered. They're doing their best to save the Internet as we know it. Granted, they have something to gain. But other companies' failure to evolve leaves the door wide open for a company which we should trust far more than AT&T, Time Warner, etc. to preserve the landscape that slashdotters are so eager to protect. The tag is correct, it's a witch hunt. Microsoft admitted their mistake (the whole monopoly thing), we move on.
you'd be bitching and whining about it until your lungs bled. The only reason you're defending Google's reprehensible actions is because you're deeply in love with Google. Indeed, imagine for a moment if the government were going around sniffing wifi data in the name of "protecting the children" or if Microsoft did it for "collecting data to improve the Windows experience." You'd cry all day and night saying that they have no right to do so. But no, you love Google so much that you can't even see straight. What Google did was wrong, plain and simple.
Google was clearly wrong in illegally collecting this wifi data. Didn't your mom ever teach you basic ethics? Just because you can do something doesn't mean you should do it. Suppose you left your house unlocked, and I went in and stole everything inside; sorry, buddy, you shouldn't have left your house unlocked, thereby inviting me in take everything. You see, in America and other parts of the world, we live in a civilised society, and civilised people do not go around taking advantage of other people's mistakes like Google. If you can't plainly see this, then you need to GTFO and go back to whatever Taliban-infested country you come from, because the civilised adults are talking here, m' kay?
A lot of you neckbeards will complain that people shouldn't leave their wifi unencrypted. I've got news for you, neckbeard, a lot of people don't know what that means, that's why they hire you neckbeards for $10/hour to do it for them. In summary, Google did something wrong, and they will be punished for getting caught with their hands in the cookie jar. It's funny that they only came out and admitted this after Germany caught them. Sorry to disappoint you Google fanboys, all three of you.
Slashdot Mirror
You're missing the point entirely. No consumer is going to buy 65,000 apps, but the sheer size and breadth of those iPad apps will: (1) allow consumers to find desired "long-tail" niche apps that wouldn't be found if there were, say, 100 apps like there is with Android tablet apps; and (2) force developers to constantly work on improving their apps since there is so much competition, which is a win for consumers.
Number of current Android tablet-specific apps (running Honeycomb): less than 100
Number of current iPad apps: over 65,000
Number of iPad apps at launch in April 2010: 2300 (citation)
I'm still not sure who would buy an Android tablet. Buying one is like buying a TV that gets only 3 channels. Why purchase a tablet hoping that the app inventory will grow when you can get a state-of-the-art iPad with 65,000 apps?
Kids go where the hardware is. Adults go where the applications are. I remember learning this when I switched from Sega to Playstation when I was in college and when I switched from MacOS 7.6 to Windows 2000 when I was in grad school.
Also, to get the Xoom's 3G, you have to commit to a 2-year contract, whereas the iPad's 3G has a monthly contract.
I think a better question is: Do these professors think their college should be an institution of higher learning or a trade school? (Disclaimer: I got a PhD from a top-20 university.)
Let me make a few points:
First, while it's true that numerical math is not used in many CS areas, discrete math is. Logic, set operations, and the like are used pervasively in CS. And learning numerical math is a core breadth area that instills mental discipline. Quite frankly, if math is not your strong point, then you should consider moving out of CS.
Second, the role of a university CS undergraduate curriculum is not to teach "cloud computing or multi-core systems or software engineering". It's to teach core CS topics. It's like like suggesting that a mechanical engineering student should be taught how to fix the engine of a Ford Mustang or that an electrical engineering student should be taught how to install video cards into a PC.
Let me make this clear: Any "hot topic" CS subject you teach in a university will be outdated in a few years, quite possibly between the student's freshman and senior year. This includes "cloud computing" and "multi-core systems". Back in my day, the hot topics du jour were ATM networking and grid computing, but fortunately I went to a good university that focused on core topics.
What's the difference, you ask? Here are you go:
Hot topic: cloud computing
Core CS topics: distributed systems, distributed algorithms, operating systems
Hot topic: programming in C#
Core CS topic: programming language structure, compilers, automata theory
Hot topic: multi-core systems
Core CS topic: computer architecture (x86, for example), instruction sets, digital systems
Hot topic: writing video games
Core CS topics: graphics, linear algebra, digital image processing
Learning math and these CS core topics allows students to learn new skills in the future. Case-in-point: Recently I have been working in a new area: machine learning algorithms (SVMs, bayesian inferencing, etc.). The importance of this area has grown in the Google-era and was not widely regarded when I was an undergraduate. My fundamental knowledge in mathematics is serving me well right now.
Finally, the professors quoted in the article are from U. of Tennessee and SMU, which are like 4th-tier universities. So don't take their word too seriously.
You mean my anti-PhD medication? If I wanted to lessen my level of education, I would have done so a long time ago, young lad. Furthermore, don't you have a Justin Bieber song to sing along with?
It seems an article is at least 10 times more relevant in the news, if the word "Smartphone" is in the headline.
You don't need that comma between "news" and "if". Don't go crying "grammar police." If your'e an adult, you should be able to write English sentences correctly; otherwise, don't post at all.
Indeed, I had a 4.25 GPA on a 4.0 scale way back in high school. I took a bunch of honours classes (chemistry, physics, calculus, english, US history) to get the extra grade points.
and it still is. Here's list of the real Unixes I've used in college, grad school, and professionally:
I've also used Linux (mostly Fedora), but since (re-)discovering MacOS, I've come to realise that Apple is the last great Unix.
I have a minimal Facebook account, whereas I spend much more time on LinkedIn. I really don't care about my friends' personal lives. I don't care if they like Charlie Sheen, and I don't care if their little baby is so cute. What I do care about is the following:
Basically, I want to know if they're worth my time. LinkedIn gives me that, and more.
The pay is pretty good, well into 6 figures and in line with a software architect at a large corporation. You can look on glassdoor.com to see for yourself.
The job openings are fairly competitive, especially for the large corporate research labs where there are a lot of applicants. The metrics for experienced job candidates are usually publications, patents, and tech transfers from idea to product. For fresh PhD students, the publication record and recommendations play a bigger role.
You don't have to spend your own money to get a PhD. If you're working, your company will usually pay a sizable amount of tuition. If you're a full-time student, then you can get a job being a TA or research assistant with the pay usually being about $25K/year, which barely covers tuition, food, and living.
Here's a list of CS labs in the United States:
That's off the top of my head.
Disclaimer: I have a PhD doing research work at one of the above places.
I finished my CS PhD a few years ago. Your professor should be paying for you if you're presenting a paper where his name is a co-author. He should have the funds to pay for the whole trip. If that's not possible, each conference usually has a "student travel grant" that you can apply for. If that's still not the case, then conferences sometimes have "student volunteer grants" where you work as a student volunteer, handing out brochures and conference programs.
You have "used" both devices, meaning you have browsed Best Buy and could not afford either device, so now you think you are an expert. Everything you wrote about the iPad is a lie, and what's worse, applies directly to the Tab. On the Tab, scrolling is laggy and erratic. Generally, it's much slower. Also, iOS has over 350K apps and over 150K iPad apps. Android has 0 tablet-specific apps. Nice.
There is not a single Android tablet in the market now or in the near future that comes even remotely close to the user experience provided by the iPad. I've had one since April of last year, and it's pretty much the only thing I use when I get home.
There is precedent. They're called anti-dumping laws.
It is roughly the same distinction between an electrical engineer and an electrician. Sorry, I didn't have a good car analogy.
$132K as an upper bound sounds about right for mid-level engineers but is a bit low as an upper bound for senior software engineers at large corporations. Principal software engineers at Microsoft are paid at around $160K with fairly huge bonuses that push their yearly pay to nearly $200K. Staff software engineers at Google and others are in the neighbourhood. Note that these are cream-of-the-crop engineers who have chosen to stay as ICs rather than go into management. Source: personal knowledge and glassdoor.com.
I took his one-day course in Seattle. The hall was absolutely packed, and I had to sit in the back. He goes through a lot of material that's from his books, and it's all wonderful. Hearing it from him in person is a lot better than reading; for example, the example of the cholera map from London didn't impress me in print as much as it did when he went over its history at the lecture. He also discusses why Powerpoint lends itself to abuse and how you can avoid information overload on slides. And he makes the point that he really, really loves high-density displays. When I took the course in 2008, he was raving about the high-resolution screen of the iPhone and how it's great from a high-density-information point of view.
The prize of the class is the collection of his four books in a nice cardboard box. They're all terrific reads and look great on one's bookshelf next to Knuth's masterpieces.
Just out of curiosity, what are "the big 3 in California"? Stanford, Berkeley, and ...?
Linux use has dropped from a high of 2.5% in 2004 to a rounding error this year.
Paraphrasing Principal Skinner: Why, there are no children using Linux, either! Am I so out of touch? (pauses to think) No, it's the children who are wrong.
The search results are not just a regex matching. A modern search engine, like Google's, returns a ranked list of search results to you, and this ranking already has bias: the Pagerank algorithm sorts the results based on how popular the page is, as measured by the number of incoming links to that page. Of course, that is the general gyst of Pagerank as of the Google founders' research paper back in the late 1990s, and undoubtedly Google and other search engines have fine-tuned their algorithms since then to return "better" results to the user. But the point is still that there is already bias in the results.
Make no mistake that Google has not already thought of similar search result ranking algorithms similar to that posed in this Yahoo Research paper. The difference is that Google does not have a research arm like Yahoo, so they do not publish ideas like this. In hindsight, the Google founders were foolish to publish their Pagerank algorithm in the first place, but they were still at Stanford then.
The original posting cites a May report from NPD that says that Android beat iPhone sales in Q1 of this year. However, that was now found to be erroneous: that survey was only for the consumer market. When business/enterprise sales were counted and reported in June by Nielsen, then iPhone beat Android by 3-to-1 and is closing in on RIM. Furthermore, most likely the only reason Android beat out iPhone in Q1 for consumers was because people were already anticipating the newest iPhone 4 released today. Apple sold 600K iPhone 4 during pre-orders, which as 10x the sales for the iPhone 3GS.
Call me naive, but I trust Apple. I've been using Mobile Me since late 2004. I just migrated away from the Palm phone after three years; I now have an iPhone as my primary phone. My calendar, my contacts, etc. are in the Apple cloud. And guess what? They've never done ANYTHING to erode my trust in them. In the age of telecom companies trying to cap mobile data plans, and place arbitrary restrictions on IP-delivered media content, Apple is busy trying to roll out fiber and generally make the Internet better. I believe that not only do they live by their "think different" mantra, but that they realize the days of the free Internet may be numbered. They're doing their best to save the Internet as we know it. Granted, they have something to gain. But other companies' failure to evolve leaves the door wide open for a company which we should trust far more than AT&T, Time Warner, etc. to preserve the landscape that slashdotters are so eager to protect. The tag is correct, it's a witch hunt. Apple admitted their mistake, we move on.
Call me naive, but I trust Microsoft. I've been using Hotmail since late 2004. I just migrated away from the iPhone after three years; I now have a Windows Mobile smartphone as my primary phone. My calendar, my contacts, etc. are in the Microsoft cloud. And guess what? They've never done ANYTHING to erode my trust in them. In the age of telecom companies trying to cap mobile data plans, and place arbitrary restrictions on IP-delivered media content, Microsoft is busy trying to roll out fiber and generally make the Internet better. I believe that not only do they live by their "I'm a PC" mantra, but that they realize the days of the free Internet may be numbered. They're doing their best to save the Internet as we know it. Granted, they have something to gain. But other companies' failure to evolve leaves the door wide open for a company which we should trust far more than AT&T, Time Warner, etc. to preserve the landscape that slashdotters are so eager to protect. The tag is correct, it's a witch hunt. Microsoft admitted their mistake (the whole monopoly thing), we move on.
you'd be bitching and whining about it until your lungs bled. The only reason you're defending Google's reprehensible actions is because you're deeply in love with Google. Indeed, imagine for a moment if the government were going around sniffing wifi data in the name of "protecting the children" or if Microsoft did it for "collecting data to improve the Windows experience." You'd cry all day and night saying that they have no right to do so. But no, you love Google so much that you can't even see straight. What Google did was wrong, plain and simple.
Google was clearly wrong in illegally collecting this wifi data. Didn't your mom ever teach you basic ethics? Just because you can do something doesn't mean you should do it. Suppose you left your house unlocked, and I went in and stole everything inside; sorry, buddy, you shouldn't have left your house unlocked, thereby inviting me in take everything. You see, in America and other parts of the world, we live in a civilised society, and civilised people do not go around taking advantage of other people's mistakes like Google. If you can't plainly see this, then you need to GTFO and go back to whatever Taliban-infested country you come from, because the civilised adults are talking here, m' kay?
A lot of you neckbeards will complain that people shouldn't leave their wifi unencrypted. I've got news for you, neckbeard, a lot of people don't know what that means, that's why they hire you neckbeards for $10/hour to do it for them. In summary, Google did something wrong, and they will be punished for getting caught with their hands in the cookie jar. It's funny that they only came out and admitted this after Germany caught them. Sorry to disappoint you Google fanboys, all three of you.