Not at all. If the kid as any real brains and makes it to market with this thing and it prove marketable he'll easily amass a small fortune. With that kind of scratch he can easily have his pick of any number of willing women, for 250 an hour.
Might not even need to pay for it. This kid could potentially rock the "cute geeky guy" look when he grows up; he's barely hit puberty so he's got time. Plus, if continues to spend his school life in geeky circles, he'll probably be one of the best picks in the lot for other girls (and there's always at least one hot one).
Who needs an expensive college? Attend a cheap state school, use the leftover "living expense" money to start your own company.
Go to a public city school, get scholarships, and have them pay you, and pay for conferences where you can meet all the shiny people. Work with professors 'cause there aren't enough graduate students around and actually get published, and network at more conferences. And get great internships and jobs 'cause you're still in a metropolitan area and therefore have lots of options.
Here is comes, the excuse one why the smart innovative kids aren't really all that so somebody can feel better about themselves
Can I believe it having gone to a shiny magnet (US world news #20) high school and then honor's program deal? The overachievers aren't any different from anyone else, often just more neurotic. Some really are brilliant and some are overcompensating idiots.
I disagree with the parent that:
Without their parents to drive them, they went nuts (sometimes literally).
because for me (and plenty of others) we're motivated enough that parental interference does more harm than good. Most of the kid's I know have very hands off parents (hell, a few have parent's who weren't even in the city/state/country) and it doesn't matter. I'm burned out, but I take on the type of killer workload that would burn out anyone. My friends who are saner are doing just fine.
I think William Yuan's work is awesome and hope he lands in schools/programs that can push him further, but he seems like the type of kid who'll do okay where ever so long as he stays on track (which really doesn't have anything to with brains far as I've seen.) This kid's got killer potential.
I work in my school's writing center and have been doing voluntary tutoring (both at school and for a non-profit) since high school, so I've been there. It's difficult and requires a hell of a lot of patience. Better tutors know how to explain material in a variety of ways and on various levels and to pinpoint the origins of a problems and whether they're conceptual or practical and how to deal with students of all levels and temperaments and, but yeah it's not a job for everyone.
*shrugs* Just throwing a job out there for the op, and I figure that if he's had any decent leadership positions on his coding teams, he's probably had to do a lot of ad-hoc tutoring.
You've got a college degree in math/science, right? Tutoring hopeless college kids or high school kids from middle class families can net something like $50-75 an hour, more depending on your qualifications and neighborhood. Hours are totally flexible. Hell, if ethics aren't a problem, sell term papers and coding assignments while you're at it.
The reason for this is simple: Being willing to work as a Windows Vista evangelist without being under the influence of narcotics is a sure sign of dangerous mental illness.
$20 an hour or more, plus benefits? That's awesome for a job that doesn't seem to require much in the way of education or experience. I've never even used Vista and I'm tempted to apply 'cause it requires less effort and pays better than my on campus research/tutoring gigs.
One of our measures found that the Drudge Report is the most centrist of all media outlets in our sample. Our other measure found that Fox Newsâ(TM) Special Report is the most centrist. These findings refer strictly to the news stories of the outlets.
That (unverifiable) quote dates back to 1981, when computers were running a hell of a lot less than 512k. Misjudging how fast computers would become and how cheap they'd get isn't being technically incompetent, it's just being short sited.
*yes bad source, but all the links for this quote are blogs and mailing lists and the like
Why spend life daydreaming in fairyland when real life is so much more interesting?
Why choose? I fangirl HP, but I think Eli Wiesel writes some of the best prose on the planet. Sometimes I want my happy fluffy story where things turn out well after everything's gone to hell, and a lot of high literature has a very different payoff scale. Plus it's nice to read accessible books that don't require me asking my mom for translations every 10 minutes 'cause Dostoevsky's translator left in obscure Russian references. It's also all about the themes, and fantasy settings allow authors to explore themes in the same way as their realist counterparts, and to take it further; Le Guin has a great one on sexuality, and it works only 'cause she can play with a barren hermaphrodite culture. Potter covers the same life,death,rebirth-sin/punishment/redemption themes as most other Western lit, but succeeds in making it very reader friendly and not so bogged down in themes that the story gets lost.
I also dislike Tolkien, but that's 'cause I find him mind-numbingly dense not 'cause I think he's simplistic or bad in any objective sense. I've learnt that Lewis is a matter of knowledge: for anyone well versed in Christianity it's blatantly obvious, otherwise not so much. Which is really all it boils down to-it's all just a matter of taste.
The ancillary to this is she could have given him tacit permission to make his lexicon
Which she basically did (and even kind of encouraged) for years, before he decided to publish it. I find all those talk about her alienating her fanbase over this kind of funny 'cause I was still in fandom when it first blew up and the majority were on JK's side 'cause she'd always been pretty supportive of fandom, so her saying "no" was something to be respected.
I've read HP and used to visit Lexicon all the time for reference back when I was in HP fandom. It was straight up copying at parts, just really well organized, which is why it became so used in fandom. It was a great reference for fanfic and debate precisely 'cause it was mostly facts and little interpretation (and therefore mostly unoriginal work.)
He didn't even use any user-provided content because he didn't want to share his profits.
There was tons of fan arguing about the whole mess in large parts 'cause of other people's contributions to his stuff (hell some of the articles there had co-authors.
Re:Tab/space mangling (was Re:The in-factor...)
on
Django 1.0 Released
·
· Score: 1
(Note: I haven't used Python enough to know if there's some way to do line continuations in it.)
I'm not certain that I would have been nearly as enthusiastic diving into C or Java at the age of 10.
While VB probably was a great choice 5 years ago,I think Python's getting lots of rightly deserved hype as the modern "kids" language. It's got VB's advantage of clean syntax, the bonus of having an interactive shell, and it's powerful enough that the kid can use the language for years and get a really solid foundation before having to learn another language.
Yes, but only forum ToS's, and even then it's so that I can explain why something's not allowed. Forums that don't use a boilerplat ToS tend to have really clear and understandable ones cause it's less of a headache if a mod can just quote the ToS when banning someone.
I just started playing with Django today, so I'm mostly just thrilled that the absolutely awesome tutorials still work. This is one of the most newbie friendly things I've ever worked with, in large part 'cause it's got awesome documentation and very clear tutorials and logically named well almost everything. (Plus it produces pretty and friendly sites.) I may not be as hyper about it once I start trying to use it for a real project, but it getting to a stable release is promising.
Do Slashdotters have any favorite textbooks that can help kids on their way to becoming junior sysadmins, programmers, networking professionals, etc.?
I was just answering the part I know something about, having taken two programming and one hardware course in high school. Never touched networking, aside from the one I've got at home. Also, nothing in his post implies that the job skills course isn't basically a programming one.
A good supplement (and stand alone if the students already have some programming experience) is Dive Into Python, one of the best python books around. It's free and available in print form. Its' a great intro book 'cause it's really well organized such that the chapters really build on each other for the most part. It's also awesome 'cause the author walks through every example program, explaining what each part does and how it all works together.
- to keep a guy around, women need to hide when they're fertile and when they're not so their breasts are swollen all the time (thus, boobs)
But for many girls, their breasts (boobs) are swollen (or sensitive) during their period (or right before it). Granted, it's minor enough that the only way for the guy to notice is if he's regularly feeling her up, but it does work as long as I'm not thinking of modern culture.
It also makes me wonder if a version of the theory will pop up in a how-to-keep-your-man book or magazine some day -- "Now girls, make sure he never knows if you're using birth control or if you're on your period, or he'll be evolutionarily driven to cheat on you!
Sounds too much like snagging him by getting pregnant.
*shrugs* I never said that the symbolism had any basis in biological fact (symbolism often doesn't), that's just the standard trace.
Basically, obviously bigger isn't better as population distributions on breast and penis size fall out such that most people are at sizes that the other sex feels comfortable with), but fertility symbolism since the beginning of time has highlighted those two regions for their obvious importance and in turn that importance has stimulated a bigger=better relationship to take root in peoples minds (even though that isn't true.)
Dietel & Dietel publish a bunch of intro books (c++, java, a few others) that have a bunch of supplements/coding examples/etc. on their website. They're very newbie friendly and cover a good deal of information. Actually, so do some of the AP comp sci review books (my Baron's AP Java book has a lot of clear examples.)
Look at other high schools and community colleges that teach the same thing you do and see what books they're using.
Certification prep is a double edged sword. The books may be accessible, but they also may be too focused on the test and therefore teach to it rather than teach general skills.
Also, you don't need to use a book for everything. All my intro programming books do a brief overview of hardware, and my profs add when needed. I didn't even have a textbook for my high school computer hardware class (basically a build your own computer thing, but we also learned about karnough maps, logic, and other basics.)
Apparently, it's not at all limited to modern western society. Tribal dress designed to make the penis seem larger as well as tribal and primitive art depicting gods and kings with rather large penises.
A lot of that had to do with fertility symbolism; Female statuettes from the same groups often have engorged breasts for the same reason. There's actually an evolutionary psychology explanation for our societies breast/penis size fixiation centering around the same idea: men with bigger sizes are more likely to produce healthier children (and having a bigger penis are likely to be bigger/more powerful/better protectors/providers) and women with bigger breasts can produce more milk and therefore give their babies better nutrition. So basically marketing just exploited preferences built into DNA.
(There's also a Freudian explanation, but it's loopy and it's better parts fit nicely with evolutionary psych theory anyway.)
Slashdot Mirror
Not at all. If the kid as any real brains and makes it to market with this thing and it prove marketable he'll easily amass a small fortune. With that kind of scratch he can easily have his pick of any number of willing women, for 250 an hour.
Might not even need to pay for it. This kid could potentially rock the "cute geeky guy" look when he grows up; he's barely hit puberty so he's got time. Plus, if continues to spend his school life in geeky circles, he'll probably be one of the best picks in the lot for other girls (and there's always at least one hot one).
Or go to an expensive school and meet people who can get you money for your company, as well as inside contacts.
That's what grad school is for, and if you've done well enough at work/in school hopefully it'll be paid for too.
Who needs an expensive college? Attend a cheap state school, use the leftover "living expense" money to start your own company.
Go to a public city school, get scholarships, and have them pay you, and pay for conferences where you can meet all the shiny people. Work with professors 'cause there aren't enough graduate students around and actually get published, and network at more conferences. And get great internships and jobs 'cause you're still in a metropolitan area and therefore have lots of options.
Here is comes, the excuse one why the smart innovative kids aren't really all that so somebody can feel better about themselves
Can I believe it having gone to a shiny magnet (US world news #20) high school and then honor's program deal? The overachievers aren't any different from anyone else, often just more neurotic. Some really are brilliant and some are overcompensating idiots.
I disagree with the parent that:
Without their parents to drive them, they went nuts (sometimes literally).
because for me (and plenty of others) we're motivated enough that parental interference does more harm than good. Most of the kid's I know have very hands off parents (hell, a few have parent's who weren't even in the city/state/country) and it doesn't matter. I'm burned out, but I take on the type of killer workload that would burn out anyone. My friends who are saner are doing just fine.
I think William Yuan's work is awesome and hope he lands in schools/programs that can push him further, but he seems like the type of kid who'll do okay where ever so long as he stays on track (which really doesn't have anything to with brains far as I've seen.) This kid's got killer potential.
I work in my school's writing center and have been doing voluntary tutoring (both at school and for a non-profit) since high school, so I've been there. It's difficult and requires a hell of a lot of patience. Better tutors know how to explain material in a variety of ways and on various levels and to pinpoint the origins of a problems and whether they're conceptual or practical and how to deal with students of all levels and temperaments and, but yeah it's not a job for everyone.
*shrugs* Just throwing a job out there for the op, and I figure that if he's had any decent leadership positions on his coding teams, he's probably had to do a lot of ad-hoc tutoring.
You've got a college degree in math/science, right? Tutoring hopeless college kids or high school kids from middle class families can net something like $50-75 an hour, more depending on your qualifications and neighborhood. Hours are totally flexible. Hell, if ethics aren't a problem, sell term papers and coding assignments while you're at it.
The reason for this is simple: Being willing to work as a Windows Vista evangelist without being under the influence of narcotics is a sure sign of dangerous mental illness.
$20 an hour or more, plus benefits? That's awesome for a job that doesn't seem to require much in the way of education or experience. I've never even used Vista and I'm tempted to apply 'cause it requires less effort and pays better than my on campus research/tutoring gigs.
A Measure of Media Bias
UCLA study backs up parent:
One of our measures found that the Drudge Report is the most centrist of all media outlets in our sample. Our other measure found that Fox Newsâ(TM) Special Report is the most centrist. These findings refer strictly to the news stories of the outlets.
source: A Measure of Media Bias
To pre-empt the grammer Nazi's: I know I screwed up and it should be sighted, not sited.
That (unverifiable) quote dates back to 1981, when computers were running a hell of a lot less than 512k. Misjudging how fast computers would become and how cheap they'd get isn't being technically incompetent, it's just being short sited.
*yes bad source, but all the links for this quote are blogs and mailing lists and the like
Why spend life daydreaming in fairyland when real life is so much more interesting?
Why choose? I fangirl HP, but I think Eli Wiesel writes some of the best prose on the planet. Sometimes I want my happy fluffy story where things turn out well after everything's gone to hell, and a lot of high literature has a very different payoff scale. Plus it's nice to read accessible books that don't require me asking my mom for translations every 10 minutes 'cause Dostoevsky's translator left in obscure Russian references. It's also all about the themes, and fantasy settings allow authors to explore themes in the same way as their realist counterparts, and to take it further; Le Guin has a great one on sexuality, and it works only 'cause she can play with a barren hermaphrodite culture. Potter covers the same life,death,rebirth-sin/punishment/redemption themes as most other Western lit, but succeeds in making it very reader friendly and not so bogged down in themes that the story gets lost.
I also dislike Tolkien, but that's 'cause I find him mind-numbingly dense not 'cause I think he's simplistic or bad in any objective sense. I've learnt that Lewis is a matter of knowledge: for anyone well versed in Christianity it's blatantly obvious, otherwise not so much. Which is really all it boils down to-it's all just a matter of taste.
The ancillary to this is she could have given him tacit permission to make his lexicon
Which she basically did (and even kind of encouraged) for years, before he decided to publish it. I find all those talk about her alienating her fanbase over this kind of funny 'cause I was still in fandom when it first blew up and the majority were on JK's side 'cause she'd always been pretty supportive of fandom, so her saying "no" was something to be respected.
I've read HP and used to visit Lexicon all the time for reference back when I was in HP fandom. It was straight up copying at parts, just really well organized, which is why it became so used in fandom. It was a great reference for fanfic and debate precisely 'cause it was mostly facts and little interpretation (and therefore mostly unoriginal work.)
He didn't even use any user-provided content because he didn't want to share his profits.
There was tons of fan arguing about the whole mess in large parts 'cause of other people's contributions to his stuff (hell some of the articles there had co-authors.
(Note: I haven't used Python enough to know if there's some way to do line continuations in it.)
implicit line joining and explicit line joining
basically, a \ for explicit and just continue the comprehension/function call/etc. for the implicit.
I'm not certain that I would have been nearly as enthusiastic diving into C or Java at the age of 10.
While VB probably was a great choice 5 years ago,I think Python's getting lots of rightly deserved hype as the modern "kids" language. It's got VB's advantage of clean syntax, the bonus of having an interactive shell, and it's powerful enough that the kid can use the language for years and get a really solid foundation before having to learn another language.
Does anyone read these things?
Yes, but only forum ToS's, and even then it's so that I can explain why something's not allowed. Forums that don't use a boilerplat ToS tend to have really clear and understandable ones cause it's less of a headache if a mod can just quote the ToS when banning someone.
I just started playing with Django today, so I'm mostly just thrilled that the absolutely awesome tutorials still work. This is one of the most newbie friendly things I've ever worked with, in large part 'cause it's got awesome documentation and very clear tutorials and logically named well almost everything. (Plus it produces pretty and friendly sites.) I may not be as hyper about it once I start trying to use it for a real project, but it getting to a stable release is promising.
Um, from the orginal post:
Do Slashdotters have any favorite textbooks that can help kids on their way to becoming junior sysadmins, programmers, networking professionals, etc.?
I was just answering the part I know something about, having taken two programming and one hardware course in high school. Never touched networking, aside from the one I've got at home. Also, nothing in his post implies that the job skills course isn't basically a programming one.
A good supplement (and stand alone if the students already have some programming experience) is Dive Into Python, one of the best python books around. It's free and available in print form. Its' a great intro book 'cause it's really well organized such that the chapters really build on each other for the most part. It's also awesome 'cause the author walks through every example program, explaining what each part does and how it all works together.
- to keep a guy around, women need to hide when they're fertile and when they're not so their breasts are swollen all the time (thus, boobs)
But for many girls, their breasts (boobs) are swollen (or sensitive) during their period (or right before it). Granted, it's minor enough that the only way for the guy to notice is if he's regularly feeling her up, but it does work as long as I'm not thinking of modern culture.
It also makes me wonder if a version of the theory will pop up in a how-to-keep-your-man book or magazine some day -- "Now girls, make sure he never knows if you're using birth control or if you're on your period, or he'll be evolutionarily driven to cheat on you!
Sounds too much like snagging him by getting pregnant.
*shrugs* I never said that the symbolism had any basis in biological fact (symbolism often doesn't), that's just the standard trace.
Basically, obviously bigger isn't better as population distributions on breast and penis size fall out such that most people are at sizes that the other sex feels comfortable with), but fertility symbolism since the beginning of time has highlighted those two regions for their obvious importance and in turn that importance has stimulated a bigger=better relationship to take root in peoples minds (even though that isn't true.)
Dietel & Dietel publish a bunch of intro books (c++, java, a few others) that have a bunch of supplements/coding examples/etc. on their website. They're very newbie friendly and cover a good deal of information. Actually, so do some of the AP comp sci review books (my Baron's AP Java book has a lot of clear examples.)
Look at other high schools and community colleges that teach the same thing you do and see what books they're using.
Certification prep is a double edged sword. The books may be accessible, but they also may be too focused on the test and therefore teach to it rather than teach general skills.
Also, you don't need to use a book for everything. All my intro programming books do a brief overview of hardware, and my profs add when needed. I didn't even have a textbook for my high school computer hardware class (basically a build your own computer thing, but we also learned about karnough maps, logic, and other basics.)
Apparently, it's not at all limited to modern western society. Tribal dress designed to make the penis seem larger as well as tribal and primitive art depicting gods and kings with rather large penises.
A lot of that had to do with fertility symbolism; Female statuettes from the same groups often have engorged breasts for the same reason. There's actually an evolutionary psychology explanation for our societies breast/penis size fixiation centering around the same idea: men with bigger sizes are more likely to produce healthier children (and having a bigger penis are likely to be bigger/more powerful/better protectors/providers) and women with bigger breasts can produce more milk and therefore give their babies better nutrition. So basically marketing just exploited preferences built into DNA.
(There's also a Freudian explanation, but it's loopy and it's better parts fit nicely with evolutionary psych theory anyway.)
*shrugs* It's actually somewhat on topic, so I think it'd be sort of encouraged.
I'm just disappointed that the commercials will continue 'cause they always make me crack up uncomfortably. (Yeah, I'm an immature girl, oh well.)