I took the AP Computer Science test. Its garbage. Many of the libraries (done in C++) are just half-thought-out versions of libraries already done in plain C.
I strongly suggest against anyone with real computer knowlege (i.e., you don't know everything you do from just one class) to not take the AP Computer Science test.
As an example, last year's AP case study for C++ was a BigInt library. Once they showed a perfectly reasonable solution to a problem, but said they couldn't use it because it wouldn't port to a Cray. So instead of doing the logical thing and using the otherwise-pefectly good system, we add a few hundred lines of code just so it can run on a Cray. As if their crappy code is ever going to be on a Cray.
I don't know about any of the other AP tests (Calc, Foreign Language, etc.), but the CS test needs as much improving as all the CS programs in the US do.
If you really want to have a good CS program, don't focus on the AP tests or on just learning the syntax of a language. From what I have seen of CS programs in the US, their biggest problem is teaching lots of syntax but not tuching the two most important skills of programing: logical problem solving and always looking for a better way.
Heres an example that happend in my CS class: The teacher assigned us to write a program that would keep track of employee hours. We were to store the employees in an array, refranced by employee name. After I started coding, I determined that refrance by name was horribly inelegant and would add significant complexity to the program. Thus, I opted for refrancing by employee numbers (just as similar real-world programs do). I didn't check with my teacher before doing this, but went right ahead. Several of my classmates came to the same conclusion. However, one was adament that he was going to refrance by name. Later, the teacher steped out and said "OK, I think refrance by name is too hard; why don't you just refrance by employee number." I was grinning, because I had already turned into my program and was browsing Slashdot. At the same time, my classmate was letting out some of the most colorful speach I've heard in a long time.
The point is, create programs which challenge the student to come up with a new, innovative solution. As an example, drop hints as to how a binary search works, like showing (offhand) the students a card trick where you figure out their card with only six to eight questions. This way, the student won't reailze what you're teaching them, but they actualy ended up learning how to binary search. You can then easily tell who caught on by their source code. Thats just one example; a good teacher should be able to come up with lots more.
here are two problems with Freenet. 1) There is no search capability, and no promises of ever having one, and
Not true; if you were on the Freenet mailing lists (as I am) you may notice quite a bit of disscussion about searching. There are several proposals in line for searching already, and I would suspect that it will be put in after 0.3 (0.2 is current, 0.3 should be here in a week or so). This isn't all just vapor. The ideas are in place so it just has to be coded now.
Have you tryed TFC 1.5? Its extreamly buggy. There are times when your keys are randomly remaped in the middle of the game. The new net code is very beta. Yes, Half-Life is one of the best games of all time, but TFC really needs some improvement.
I personaly find the stress easy to manage. I like my job. It provides intresting challenges and when it doesn't keep me busy, I can surf all I want or play Half-Life (I've become a master sniper in TFC), or even hack some programs if I feel like it. Sometimes the workplace politics gets to me, but I'm otherwise happy.
As a major corperation, you are probably concerned about the spread of truthful information on the Internet about your company. We understand. Thats why we provide quick and efficent finding of anyone who dares to oppose your control. You may have lawyers, but they can't do anything if you can't find out who doesn't like you! And remeber: The Bill of Rights was only ment for people like you!
Admitedly, I haven't gotten to reading the article yet, but let me speak what I think needs to be said.
Apple is a great company. They've always focused on the needs of the regular user. Apple would be in Microsoft's postion today if Gates and the rest of his pirates hadn't come along. The diffrence is that Apple would have actualy had a great OS for the regualr user.
Macs are great for UI, but they suck at networking. Also, it wouldn't work on a PDA very well. But Linux can do both. With MacOS X, they can have the end users. Let Linux dominate the servers and PDAs and other embededs (with a good, light X-Window interface) and let Apple take back the desktops.
I know a lot of people on Slashdot don't like the Mac, but lighten up. You may think it sucks, but your grandma would probably say otherwise. You can keep Linux, it just won't be everywhere. And Microsoft will be nowhere!
people are pretty accustomed to just doing whatever it is they want to do (no matter how slowly), that they may resent being forced to learn a new keyboard
If this was for normal operations, I would agree. But this is for Palms and other such small computers. In that situation, you really need an input optimized for one-finger/pen typing. I think that if people are willing to put up with the quirks of Graffiti, they will put up with this.
So I wonder what kind of a speed increase this scheme really offers. Finally, what is wrong with the graffiti system built into current Palm Pilots
Speed apears to be about 50 WPM for most people. That even goes for people who have trubble typing on a QWERTY.
As for Graffiti, well, I've had a Handspring Visor for about two months now and I just can't get used to it. I can form letters fine, but its not very fast or acurate. I get 15-30 WPM on Graffiti, but about 55 on a QWERTY. This will improve with time, I know, but I look at this and ask myself why I should bother. If I could enter stuff into my Visor faster it would be of much more use to me.
Washington, Jefferson, et. al. were fighting a government that offered them no options, and responded to their dissent by threatening their life and liberty.
This brings up an intresting point about the American Revolution. Specificly, the Boston Tea Party. Why did they throw the tea into the harbor? Because there was a high tax on, as the British gov. was supporting a state-sponsered monopoly on tea (the India Tea Company, which, BTW, had its own Navy with cannons and all).
An intresting side note was that all taxes on products for the American Colonies were lifted except the ones on tea. So why did they still have problems? This would seem like a deal to the common people. Perhaps they were just looking for a good excuse to attack Brittan.
Actualy, they weren't. The merchants, however, were. They incited the people to throw that tea overboard. Yep, the corperatism that Katz raves about has been intrenched in American culture since the beggining. Every once in a while, it gets out of hand and has to be shoved back down again.
I fear that this time around the corpertists have gotten so powerful that if they are not stoped, there will be no way to get rid of them without violent conflict. Even that may not work.
know that our little Galileo will burn up fast in the gargantuan planets atmosphere, But it's still contamination isn't it? If one's goal is to not unknowingly alter another planet, shouldn't another form of disposal be pursued?
But will it matter? Is there going to be some little piece of life down there to contaminate? Probably not. So Jupiter is the lesser of the evils. Even if someday somebody can get down there and find the reckage (however thin a pancake that reckage has been made into), anyone that advanced would be smart enought to take adaquate percautions. And it would be like finding a lost pyramid or something.
(It's what World War III was about in TOS, and came up again in DS9)
To nitpick for a moment, in Star Trek, WW3 was not about genitc engineering. The "Eugenics Wars" were. These were supposed to end in 1998 (or '96, I don't have my trusty Star Trek Timeline book with me). To explain away why we haven't had the Eugenics Wars yet, and why in one particular episode of Voyager why they beamed down in 1996 and everything was normal, they just say that Kirk's prior medling with the timeline changed the date (with good reason, nobody's established a new date). Keep in mind that the 90's date for the war was estabilished in the orginal series, and genitic engineering by this time seemed plausable enough for Star Trek. Perhaps they were only off by a few years.
Now on to the lesson: The Eugenics Wars were about geniticly enhanced humans coming together to fight off the "imperfect" masses of non-geniticaly engineered humans. The "perfect" humans lost, and boarded a sleeper ship off the planet (which is how they later caught up with Kirk). As a result, humans just thought it too dangerous to have genitic engineering, and the belief in this danger still kept with them to the founding of the Federation. Thus, by that time, laws were passed to ban genitic engineering except in cases of birth defects (apparently, baldness doesn't count:).
In other words, the population became smart enough to weed out the bad stuff about gentic engineering while still gaining its most important benifits. However, they had to have a big nasty war before learning this lesson.
There were cases of illegal genetic engineering going on, though, such as in the case of Dr. Bashir (of DS9). I beleive that in the real world, as long as it is made clear that genetic engineering isn't OK, but we will still accept such people into our society, such people can still have valuable contributions. This will keep the ammount of cases down while still getting a few benifits.
Now the question is, do we have to go through a real Eugenics War before banning the bad parts of genetic engineering? I know the Klingons just plain think that genetic engineering is dishonorable. I doubt the Cardassians would be above it, and the Borg probably do it at will. Wait, the Klingons? Yep, apparently they were far sighted enough to realize that unbridled genetic engineering is a bad idea. Can we be like that? Not likely, and perhaps the future really doesn't need us.
maybe the best comparison for Napster is with radar detectors.
Radar detector companies are another big corperate evil. Doing some research, you will find that the same companies that create radar detectors make the police radar. First, they go to the police, saying they have a new technology that can't be detected by current detectors. Wait a few years for all the police to have them. Then realease a detector for that radar. Repeat.
So maybe the court system was willing to turn a blind eye to those companies because they also create the radar police use.
Actualy, there was some disscussion of DNS over Freenet sometime back. Check the Freenet-chat archives.
The idea got passed around a lot. Eventualy, we just decided that it was a good idea but there was no reason to implement it now, but maybe in the future. Freenet would also have to get a lot faster at doing requests (hey, its only in 0.2 beta!)
Do you really want the company who brought you Outlook to give accsess to your computer anywhere in the world? I bet if somebody reverse enginered this thing that they would find a slightly-modified version of Back Orfice 2000.
Yes, Star Trek IV (yes, thats the one with the whales if you must know!) got about $200 Million at the theaters and has made around $4 Billion since then.
VCRs are completely diffrent from Internet distribution meathods. This is because people think for themselves on the Internet. Please realize this fact before posting again or you will have to be sent to a re-education camp.
Brain Kernel Message: Clue Destroyed
.
------
Just last night on CNBC . . .
on
Copyrant
·
· Score: 1
. . . I heard some jerk saying "even if Microsoft is a bully, it has never hurt consumers." The next time you hear sombody tell you that, pull out this story and begin your best forced laughter.
On CNBC "Hardball" last night (CNBC is very much tied with MSNBC, you know), they had a panel of three discussing the recent DOJ decision. Only one of them was against MS, and they only let him talk for one minute while the other two spewed FUD for ten.
By breaking up Microsoft, you're just going to make them appeal and drag this thing out for 2-4 more years.
I like the plan of forcing them to document the Windows API. You could go as far as a full open source license, but I don't think it would really be nessary. Documenting the APIs might seem somewhat foolish at first (what harm could it really do?), which is exactly what we would hope Microsoft would think, so they thought they were getting off easy. But with fully documented APIs, the WINE project could make a system fully binary compatible with Windows programs, thus removing any nessesity of keeping that sad OS on your hard drive.
With every Windows application on Linux and other alt-OSes, nobody needs Microsoft anymore. A year or so later, almost all the developers figure that they might as well just make programs for Linux first, since everybody is doing that way anyway and it makes things run a little better. They'll port it to Windows if they feel like it, but its not a priority.
For this to work right, you would probably need the DirectX APIs (I wonder how Loki does that?) and any other major add-ons to Windows that I can't think of right now. But no ActiveX and VB Script! Keep those away from the Penguin!
Have you ever heard of the Freenet project? This open source project has many of the same goals as HavenCo; its totaly for free speach and totaly against censorship of any kind. The biggest diffrence between the two is that Freenet is dedicated to keeping the network distributed; an understandable diffrence.
I ask primarily because as soon as the HavenCo story broke, there was some disscussion on the Freenet mailing list about asking you guys to host a Freenet node. The project knows that a lot of people are just going to view Freenet as a way for people to get away with terrorism and kiddie porn. I know HavenCo has policies against child porn, but Freenet still needs a place where we can have a node without fear of it becoming an outlaw program.
I know someone at my school who had something similar happen, although the police didn't bust in and take all his stuff.
This was in middle school, and yes, it was immature. However, no school proprety was used in creating the webpage; it was just that a few other students going to that school were in his "vote for the biggest geek" contest.
The school prohibited him from using the computers for the rest of the year (this was at the end of the year, so it wasn't that big of a deal). Whenever he wants to do something special for the systems at our high school, the admins allways point back to this incident and forbid it.
We all agree that it is wrong to go out and rent a movie tape it off then give copies away. But would we blame blockbuster for it if people were caught doing just that?
No, because Blockbuster has deeply rooted associations with the Motion Picture industry.
Slashdot Mirror
. . . Linux powerd Coffe Maker . . .
Click here.
------
I took the AP Computer Science test. Its garbage. Many of the libraries (done in C++) are just half-thought-out versions of libraries already done in plain C.
I strongly suggest against anyone with real computer knowlege (i.e., you don't know everything you do from just one class) to not take the AP Computer Science test.
As an example, last year's AP case study for C++ was a BigInt library. Once they showed a perfectly reasonable solution to a problem, but said they couldn't use it because it wouldn't port to a Cray. So instead of doing the logical thing and using the otherwise-pefectly good system, we add a few hundred lines of code just so it can run on a Cray. As if their crappy code is ever going to be on a Cray.
I don't know about any of the other AP tests (Calc, Foreign Language, etc.), but the CS test needs as much improving as all the CS programs in the US do.
If you really want to have a good CS program, don't focus on the AP tests or on just learning the syntax of a language. From what I have seen of CS programs in the US, their biggest problem is teaching lots of syntax but not tuching the two most important skills of programing: logical problem solving and always looking for a better way.
Heres an example that happend in my CS class: The teacher assigned us to write a program that would keep track of employee hours. We were to store the employees in an array, refranced by employee name. After I started coding, I determined that refrance by name was horribly inelegant and would add significant complexity to the program. Thus, I opted for refrancing by employee numbers (just as similar real-world programs do). I didn't check with my teacher before doing this, but went right ahead. Several of my classmates came to the same conclusion. However, one was adament that he was going to refrance by name. Later, the teacher steped out and said "OK, I think refrance by name is too hard; why don't you just refrance by employee number." I was grinning, because I had already turned into my program and was browsing Slashdot. At the same time, my classmate was letting out some of the most colorful speach I've heard in a long time.
The point is, create programs which challenge the student to come up with a new, innovative solution. As an example, drop hints as to how a binary search works, like showing (offhand) the students a card trick where you figure out their card with only six to eight questions. This way, the student won't reailze what you're teaching them, but they actualy ended up learning how to binary search. You can then easily tell who caught on by their source code. Thats just one example; a good teacher should be able to come up with lots more.
------
here are two problems with Freenet. 1) There is no search capability, and no promises of ever having one, and
Not true; if you were on the Freenet mailing lists (as I am) you may notice quite a bit of disscussion about searching. There are several proposals in line for searching already, and I would suspect that it will be put in after 0.3 (0.2 is current, 0.3 should be here in a week or so). This isn't all just vapor. The ideas are in place so it just has to be coded now.
------
Have you tryed TFC 1.5? Its extreamly buggy. There are times when your keys are randomly remaped in the middle of the game. The new net code is very beta. Yes, Half-Life is one of the best games of all time, but TFC really needs some improvement.
------
I personaly find the stress easy to manage. I like my job. It provides intresting challenges and when it doesn't keep me busy, I can surf all I want or play Half-Life (I've become a master sniper in TFC), or even hack some programs if I feel like it. Sometimes the workplace politics gets to me, but I'm otherwise happy.
------
As a major corperation, you are probably concerned about the spread of truthful information on the Internet about your company. We understand. Thats why we provide quick and efficent finding of anyone who dares to oppose your control. You may have lawyers, but they can't do anything if you can't find out who doesn't like you! And remeber: The Bill of Rights was only ment for people like you!
------
Admitedly, I haven't gotten to reading the article yet, but let me speak what I think needs to be said.
Apple is a great company. They've always focused on the needs of the regular user. Apple would be in Microsoft's postion today if Gates and the rest of his pirates hadn't come along. The diffrence is that Apple would have actualy had a great OS for the regualr user.
Macs are great for UI, but they suck at networking. Also, it wouldn't work on a PDA very well. But Linux can do both. With MacOS X, they can have the end users. Let Linux dominate the servers and PDAs and other embededs (with a good, light X-Window interface) and let Apple take back the desktops.
I know a lot of people on Slashdot don't like the Mac, but lighten up. You may think it sucks, but your grandma would probably say otherwise. You can keep Linux, it just won't be everywhere. And Microsoft will be nowhere!
------
people are pretty accustomed to just doing whatever it is they want to do (no matter how slowly), that they may resent being forced to learn a new keyboard
If this was for normal operations, I would agree. But this is for Palms and other such small computers. In that situation, you really need an input optimized for one-finger/pen typing. I think that if people are willing to put up with the quirks of Graffiti, they will put up with this.
So I wonder what kind of a speed increase this scheme really offers. Finally, what is wrong with the graffiti system built into current Palm Pilots
Speed apears to be about 50 WPM for most people. That even goes for people who have trubble typing on a QWERTY.
As for Graffiti, well, I've had a Handspring Visor for about two months now and I just can't get used to it. I can form letters fine, but its not very fast or acurate. I get 15-30 WPM on Graffiti, but about 55 on a QWERTY. This will improve with time, I know, but I look at this and ask myself why I should bother. If I could enter stuff into my Visor faster it would be of much more use to me.
------
Washington, Jefferson, et. al. were fighting a government that offered them no options, and responded to their dissent by threatening their life and liberty.
This brings up an intresting point about the American Revolution. Specificly, the Boston Tea Party. Why did they throw the tea into the harbor? Because there was a high tax on, as the British gov. was supporting a state-sponsered monopoly on tea (the India Tea Company, which, BTW, had its own Navy with cannons and all).
An intresting side note was that all taxes on products for the American Colonies were lifted except the ones on tea. So why did they still have problems? This would seem like a deal to the common people. Perhaps they were just looking for a good excuse to attack Brittan.
Actualy, they weren't. The merchants, however, were. They incited the people to throw that tea overboard. Yep, the corperatism that Katz raves about has been intrenched in American culture since the beggining. Every once in a while, it gets out of hand and has to be shoved back down again.
I fear that this time around the corpertists have gotten so powerful that if they are not stoped, there will be no way to get rid of them without violent conflict. Even that may not work.
------
know that our little Galileo will burn up fast in the gargantuan planets atmosphere, But it's still contamination isn't it? If one's goal is to not unknowingly alter another planet, shouldn't another form of disposal be pursued?
But will it matter? Is there going to be some little piece of life down there to contaminate? Probably not. So Jupiter is the lesser of the evils. Even if someday somebody can get down there and find the reckage (however thin a pancake that reckage has been made into), anyone that advanced would be smart enought to take adaquate percautions. And it would be like finding a lost pyramid or something.
------
(It's what World War III was about in TOS, and came up again in DS9)
To nitpick for a moment, in Star Trek, WW3 was not about genitc engineering. The "Eugenics Wars" were. These were supposed to end in 1998 (or '96, I don't have my trusty Star Trek Timeline book with me). To explain away why we haven't had the Eugenics Wars yet, and why in one particular episode of Voyager why they beamed down in 1996 and everything was normal, they just say that Kirk's prior medling with the timeline changed the date (with good reason, nobody's established a new date). Keep in mind that the 90's date for the war was estabilished in the orginal series, and genitic engineering by this time seemed plausable enough for Star Trek. Perhaps they were only off by a few years.
Now on to the lesson: The Eugenics Wars were about geniticly enhanced humans coming together to fight off the "imperfect" masses of non-geniticaly engineered humans. The "perfect" humans lost, and boarded a sleeper ship off the planet (which is how they later caught up with Kirk). As a result, humans just thought it too dangerous to have genitic engineering, and the belief in this danger still kept with them to the founding of the Federation. Thus, by that time, laws were passed to ban genitic engineering except in cases of birth defects (apparently, baldness doesn't count :).
In other words, the population became smart enough to weed out the bad stuff about gentic engineering while still gaining its most important benifits. However, they had to have a big nasty war before learning this lesson.
There were cases of illegal genetic engineering going on, though, such as in the case of Dr. Bashir (of DS9). I beleive that in the real world, as long as it is made clear that genetic engineering isn't OK, but we will still accept such people into our society, such people can still have valuable contributions. This will keep the ammount of cases down while still getting a few benifits.
Now the question is, do we have to go through a real Eugenics War before banning the bad parts of genetic engineering? I know the Klingons just plain think that genetic engineering is dishonorable. I doubt the Cardassians would be above it, and the Borg probably do it at will. Wait, the Klingons? Yep, apparently they were far sighted enough to realize that unbridled genetic engineering is a bad idea. Can we be like that? Not likely, and perhaps the future really doesn't need us.
------
maybe the best comparison for Napster is with radar detectors.
Radar detector companies are another big corperate evil. Doing some research, you will find that the same companies that create radar detectors make the police radar. First, they go to the police, saying they have a new technology that can't be detected by current detectors. Wait a few years for all the police to have them. Then realease a detector for that radar. Repeat.
So maybe the court system was willing to turn a blind eye to those companies because they also create the radar police use.
------
Actualy, there was some disscussion of DNS over Freenet sometime back. Check the Freenet-chat archives.
The idea got passed around a lot. Eventualy, we just decided that it was a good idea but there was no reason to implement it now, but maybe in the future. Freenet would also have to get a lot faster at doing requests (hey, its only in 0.2 beta!)
------
Do you really want the company who brought you Outlook to give accsess to your computer anywhere in the world? I bet if somebody reverse enginered this thing that they would find a slightly-modified version of Back Orfice 2000.
------
I really do hope that you know I was joking.
------
Yes, Star Trek IV (yes, thats the one with the whales if you must know!) got about $200 Million at the theaters and has made around $4 Billion since then.
------
Brain Kernel Panic: Clue Detected
VCRs are completely diffrent from Internet distribution meathods. This is because people think for themselves on the Internet. Please realize this fact before posting again or you will have to be sent to a re-education camp.
Brain Kernel Message: Clue Destroyed
.------
. . . I heard some jerk saying "even if Microsoft is a bully, it has never hurt consumers." The next time you hear sombody tell you that, pull out this story and begin your best forced laughter.
On CNBC "Hardball" last night (CNBC is very much tied with MSNBC, you know), they had a panel of three discussing the recent DOJ decision. Only one of them was against MS, and they only let him talk for one minute while the other two spewed FUD for ten.
------
By breaking up Microsoft, you're just going to make them appeal and drag this thing out for 2-4 more years.
I like the plan of forcing them to document the Windows API. You could go as far as a full open source license, but I don't think it would really be nessary. Documenting the APIs might seem somewhat foolish at first (what harm could it really do?), which is exactly what we would hope Microsoft would think, so they thought they were getting off easy. But with fully documented APIs, the WINE project could make a system fully binary compatible with Windows programs, thus removing any nessesity of keeping that sad OS on your hard drive.
With every Windows application on Linux and other alt-OSes, nobody needs Microsoft anymore. A year or so later, almost all the developers figure that they might as well just make programs for Linux first, since everybody is doing that way anyway and it makes things run a little better. They'll port it to Windows if they feel like it, but its not a priority.
For this to work right, you would probably need the DirectX APIs (I wonder how Loki does that?) and any other major add-ons to Windows that I can't think of right now. But no ActiveX and VB Script! Keep those away from the Penguin!
------
Have you ever heard of the Freenet project? This open source project has many of the same goals as HavenCo; its totaly for free speach and totaly against censorship of any kind. The biggest diffrence between the two is that Freenet is dedicated to keeping the network distributed; an understandable diffrence.
I ask primarily because as soon as the HavenCo story broke, there was some disscussion on the Freenet mailing list about asking you guys to host a Freenet node. The project knows that a lot of people are just going to view Freenet as a way for people to get away with terrorism and kiddie porn. I know HavenCo has policies against child porn, but Freenet still needs a place where we can have a node without fear of it becoming an outlaw program.
------
I know someone at my school who had something similar happen, although the police didn't bust in and take all his stuff.
This was in middle school, and yes, it was immature. However, no school proprety was used in creating the webpage; it was just that a few other students going to that school were in his "vote for the biggest geek" contest.
The school prohibited him from using the computers for the rest of the year (this was at the end of the year, so it wasn't that big of a deal). Whenever he wants to do something special for the systems at our high school, the admins allways point back to this incident and forbid it.
------
Only authorized persons directly involved in the HavenCo project are permitted to land on the island.
I'm sure a team of Navy SEALS could take care of that :)
------
I mean, I can just barely ... I know how to get onto AOL.
I bet you never thought you'd see that in a Slashdot interview :P
We all agree that it is wrong to go out and rent a movie tape it off then give copies away. But would we blame blockbuster for it if people were caught doing just that?
No, because Blockbuster has deeply rooted associations with the Motion Picture industry.
I know. I've been on the Freenet mailing list since the Slashdot inteview :).