In some fields, but not in CS. A masters doesn't get you more money. What gets you more money is experience, especially experience in the field you're looking for work in, and the ability to negotiate. There's just no point to extra years of school in CS, you learn on the job or through self study everything you'd learn in the masters courses.
Note that the OP has a Computer Engineering degree, rather than CS. As a Computer Engineer myself, I will say that there really is a lot you are able to do with a Masters that you can not do with a Bachelors + experience. Mostly because you can't get the experience without the Masters. One example is microcontroller and chip design. The big chip design firms won't hire a BS, no matter what.
So it's really about what you want to do, and when you want to get your degree. I have a educational reimbursement program at my company, which will allow me to get my Masters 100% paid for and a raise when I complete it. This is a good option if you want to take a short break from the classes, and make some money first. Really, it all depends on if you want to go into a field requiring a Master immediately, or find a company willing to train you. From personal experience, though, most EEs and CpEs I know end up with a Masters at some point.
Ya, I know this will blow your mind, but my dad grew up without computers, and managed to learn to use one. So having the technology in the school is not a prerequisite to learning about said technology.
Giving the students laptops is stupid; that's what computer labs are for. Low end desktops with the software you describe will be cheaper in the long run... because the computers will stay in the school and be available to the incoming students.
It's also possible to learn math, science, history, english, etc on your own. Of course, it's more difficult, and children who do not learn these skills in primary education will have a much harder time in secondary education.
FTA, it seems that this initiative is to get students constant computer access in order to explore on their own. Not sure about you, but the foundations of my tech education were in BASIC programming in my basement around age 8. I wouldn't have gotten this experience in a classroom for almost another decade had I not had a personal computer at my home. I might not have even known that I was interested in computers without that early experience, and wouldn't be a Computer Engineer today. Requiring the extra initiative from students seems like it will go a long way to encourage this type of growth beyond the common curriculum, and that's certainly worth the investment in a (relatively) cheap laptop.
Science for science sake is worth while no matter the cost or the expect benefit.
Fortunately, it sounds like Austria plans to take this money (70% of its international science budget) and put it towards multiple other projects. It's still going to be going toward science, just different science.
I think it's obvious that they don't understand what it means to provide an education. Just because you give kids some technology doesn't mean that they will be any more effectively taught than without the technology. In the end, these laptops are just a tool, and if the schools and teachers are not prepared to effectively use that tool (I doubt they are), it will all be a big waste of money. This is just another case of people having this idea that computers run on fairy dust.
How can you provide an education on technology without providing the tech to the student? How can you be considered educated in a technological society without learning to use the technology? How can a society participate in the global market without citizens who understand technology?
The technology is both the tool for learning, as well as one of the subjects. Sure you could learn all your other subjects with decades old textbooks, but not how to use a word processor, spreadsheet, web browser, file folder system, etc. It's not that computers magically make teaching better, it's that we need to teach students that computers don't run on fairy dust, and the only way to do that is get them comfortable with using them.
Nah, we'll just invade a few years later searching for weapons of mass destruction. Then, after a few short weeks, the dictator will be gone, we'll have our plutonium, and (as a side benefit) the North Korean people will love us! Foolproof plan.
The irony is, of course, that we would find weapons of mass destruction (hence the plutonium), but would probably use all of our oil to get it. We just can't win...
No doubt it's short of full first aid training, especially for combat situations. Of course, the question is how realistic should it be? How much beyond a game should it be? Obviously somewhere beyond simply jumping in to a firefight after downloading, but short of needing to guide your character to take a piss while heading to the mess for lunch. By comparison, though, AA certainly gives more of a view of what to expect than, for example, Call of Duty or any other FPS.
Google - search for websites.
Wolfram - search for answers.
I'd put it slightly differently:
Google - search for information
Alpha - search for data
However you state it, though, there's definitely a different niche for each. Alpha won't 'kill' Google on everything, but for some forms of research it will be ideal.
I have played AA for 6 years it's a great game, on the flip side I served as Infantry for 12 years. The AA game simulates the battle side of the army but nothing about the other phases (book training, guard duty, and cleaning the base) AA tends to glorify the battle side.
Actually, to become a medic I remember needing to sit through an actual first aid training course, followed by an exam that you needed to pass. That's more than most other games, at least.
Company leadership would like people to think that the company has no failures. Ridiculous, of course, but there you have it.
Not just people, investors. Customers avoid a product based on the product. Investors will run if there are systematic problems, and that's the big worry. Since he was pointing out the organizational issues causing the products to be bad, I don't blame them for being skittish.
Call me crazy, but I actually think it's pretty noble for Colbert to volunteer his name for the swine flu.
He didn't volunteer his name. The original poster simply suggested it, for who knows what reason. As far as I know, Colbert has no desire to have the flu named after him.
As long as artists can dream, we will require more and more power from our graphics renderers.
I look at this from the opposite perspective. Now instead of buying a $500 card, having it be relevant for 2 years, and not replacing it for 5; you could buy a $100 card every year for 5 years, spending the same money, but having a more consistently powerful machine.
While we will always ask for more out of our GPUs, the point is that now (e-peen aside) a gamer can get a premium card without a premium pricetag.
I thought professors had legions of grad students to ferret this sort of thing out, why do they need these programs? Trusting a decision that could permanently impact a student's entire life to a computer program seems careless and dangerous.
Grad students might be good at catching factual errors, but not at catching plagiarism. The difference is the data they have available. It's nearly impossible to catch plagiarism without having knowledge of where they copied the work from. Unless the plagiarism is of a blatently different writing style, the only way to determine it is through comparison.
Grad students are good at reading and comparing, but probably remember few previous papers they have read, let alone well enough to know when they read plagiarised content from them. Computers are great at utilizing a large database of previous works, but rubbish at comparison if the two are not exactly equal.
So the point here is to use the current database of papers that students would plagiarise from, and to be able to compare them the way that a grad-student would if he were looking at both papers. Let the program do the searching and present the professor (or grad student) with a list of possibly plagiarised work, then let them make the final call. The more refined the results, and the more obfuscated the plagiarism it can catch, the better the system will be overall.
Search engines like this sound really interesting to me, and can be very useful, though it will never replace textbooks and encyclopedias. There is just so much more to answer to a query than just a straight number. And there are so many questions that can not be answered that way, such as "why is polcarbonate so much more temperature resistant than polyethylene?" for example. The full answer to this question includes details about the chemical make-up of the two polymers, and how polymer chains work. That is what textbooks are for.
Exactly, different niches. Alpha is data driven, while an encyclopedia is information driven. Both are highly useful for their own set of questions.
It seems you would be interested in seeing a kind of meta-encyclopedia using a similar system driven on data. If the language system and system for finding other relevent data works, I could see great things applied to encyclopedic information.
I would hope that Alpha provides additional information, such as melting point at given pressure with a graph, the viscosity at temperature, and basically all the other information that would be useful to someone melting iron. It remains to be seen how well the engine can determine the relevent additional information to provide, but when it works, it would be damn useful.
Well, Google does a lot less with the data it retreives. Google shows you links, with some relevent text and lets you find what you actually wanted on your own.
If this works the way it's supposed to, parsing all of the info and sorting through the cruft will be done automatically. In addition, the graphed outputs are another CPU-intensive function, but useful for many applications.
If this works, it will be the google-killer in the science, technology, and engineering realms.
Awesome. Do you know if the 2nd Circuit has mp3s available of oral arguments? My quick google search didn't find any. I know other circuits have them available.
No, but you can torrent them. Just be careful that the CSJA (Court System Judges of America) doesn't sue you for copyright infringement. I hear they've got a good legal team...
...until someone finds the buffer overflow error in your ethernet driver. Or maybe they find the vulnerability in your web browser (since those 'colored pixels' you're downloading are pretty pointless without being able to read HTML to find those pictures). If you think something can't be hacked, you're probably not as smart or creative as a hacker.
"In theory there is no difference between theory and practice. In practice there is."
Say that I have a brand new car with 150 miles on the battery. I go to one of these battery exchange stations and my new battery gets swapped out for a battery with 200,000 miles on it. That to me would be a big problem (and is why I have only used the BBQ propane exchanges when I have had very old tanks).
I think the idea should be a one-or-the-other type thing. Basically take one of two options: own the battery and recharge at your home, or use the battery swap station. Owning the battery is the system we have now, and the battery swap is the BBQ system. I expect there would be some kind of battery maintenance fee to cover some of the costs of batteries wearing out, but for the most part you would swap in for a new battery whenever you liked and get charged for the difference in energy from a full battery. Since it's not your battery (you're loaning it), then as long as the batteries you receive are well maintained you are fine. The advantages are fast 'recharging' and distribution of risk through the shared maintenence fee. Either way, I don't think you're supposed to take your new factory battery in and give it to them for a used battery.
This hits the nail right on the head. Children acting like kids and lying to spend more time playing is natural. Adults acting like children and lying in order to gamble (or have an affair, do drugs, etc) is pathological. And why compare to gambling addiction? Apples and oranges. They should be comparing to something like "pathological movie addiction".
Let's face it: children and adults are different psychologically. A good question to judge an adult's state of mind will likely not be accurate for children, since children are still learning how to behave appropriately. I wouldn't put too much faith into this number, except as perhaps an upper-bound.
In a secure area, you can't bring ANY data transmitters in or out. Not even a cell phone, let alone a laptop. This was NOT the attack vector, and even if it was, it's not feasible to collect multiple TB of data over an unsecured wireless connection.
This thing contains afaik 3 multi-axis accelerometers that are way more precise than what was possible during the launch of the Wii years back.
Actually, it uses a 3-axis gyroscope. Accelerometers can only measure movement, but the gyros can measure position. This is why you had to use a lot of "waggle" on wii games: the accelerometers couldn't tell the difference between flicking your wrist and an arm movement. The gyros can. http://arstechnica.com/gaming/news/2008/08/wii-motion-sensor.ars
As another fencer, I would have to disagree. There's still too many things that can't be measured with just a wiimote. Wrist angle is the most important, as the wiimote would have no way to verify the wrist was absolutely straight. Body lean, distance between the elbow and body, and foot position are also very important. Simply attempting to teach, or even practice, fencing with a wiimote could lead to poor habits that will be difficult to correct later on. The problems you would create would outweigh any benefit.
I agree with the earlier comment, leave the learning on the piste. Use the wiimote for what it is, a game. A Kendo or fencing game would be great, but a training tool is out of the question.
The reason we want to cancel the F-22 is that we can't get anyone in the world to fly against our F-15's. We just don't need the F-22, and can probably skip it entirely in favor of cheaper solutions like these UAV's. We need manned aircraft right now, and the F-15 is not only good enough, it's far far more than good enough.
The issue with the F22 is that it's trying to be everything at once. It's incredibly fast, incredible maneuverable, and it's stealth. A fighter really only needs 2/3 to be superior, the third has diminished returns for a HUGE investment. Honestly, the 160 we've bought already are plenty.
Of course, we have the F35 Joint Strike Fighter coming down the pipeline. This is a plane that's designed to be the new workhorse. Configurable, with versions meant for airfields, aircraft carriers, and V/STOL. The biggest benefit is that it uses many parts with similar capabilities to the F22, but more cost effective and building off the lessons learned from the F22.
UAVs are a huge part of air superiority and surveillance, especially due to their extended flight times, but they won't be replacing manned fighters yet. Maybe eventually, but limitations in sensor technology will prevent them from being equal to a manned jet for at least a few more decades.
By definition you wouldn't need a highway-capable car at the destination, so glorified golf cart would probably do.
It depends where you take the rail from and to. If you take the rail from Baltimore/DC to NYC, then you need nothing more than a commuter vehicle. It's a start, but what if your trip is longer?
I imagine a system that follows the biggest Interstate highways, and allows drivers to ferry their cars. Then, put a station every 100 miles or so along the highway. It might be cheaper than gas, and would get you there faster while letting you sleep or otherwise be distracted. Now you can drive 100 miles to the interstate, take the train 400 miles to the next big city, and drive another 100 miles to your destination. This expands the use past just urban-urban travel by allowing any long-haul trip to take advantage of the rail.
Slashdot Mirror
In some fields, but not in CS. A masters doesn't get you more money. What gets you more money is experience, especially experience in the field you're looking for work in, and the ability to negotiate. There's just no point to extra years of school in CS, you learn on the job or through self study everything you'd learn in the masters courses.
Note that the OP has a Computer Engineering degree, rather than CS. As a Computer Engineer myself, I will say that there really is a lot you are able to do with a Masters that you can not do with a Bachelors + experience. Mostly because you can't get the experience without the Masters. One example is microcontroller and chip design. The big chip design firms won't hire a BS, no matter what.
So it's really about what you want to do, and when you want to get your degree. I have a educational reimbursement program at my company, which will allow me to get my Masters 100% paid for and a raise when I complete it. This is a good option if you want to take a short break from the classes, and make some money first. Really, it all depends on if you want to go into a field requiring a Master immediately, or find a company willing to train you. From personal experience, though, most EEs and CpEs I know end up with a Masters at some point.
Ya, I know this will blow your mind, but my dad grew up without computers, and managed to learn to use one. So having the technology in the school is not a prerequisite to learning about said technology.
Giving the students laptops is stupid; that's what computer labs are for. Low end desktops with the software you describe will be cheaper in the long run... because the computers will stay in the school and be available to the incoming students.
It's also possible to learn math, science, history, english, etc on your own. Of course, it's more difficult, and children who do not learn these skills in primary education will have a much harder time in secondary education.
FTA, it seems that this initiative is to get students constant computer access in order to explore on their own. Not sure about you, but the foundations of my tech education were in BASIC programming in my basement around age 8. I wouldn't have gotten this experience in a classroom for almost another decade had I not had a personal computer at my home. I might not have even known that I was interested in computers without that early experience, and wouldn't be a Computer Engineer today. Requiring the extra initiative from students seems like it will go a long way to encourage this type of growth beyond the common curriculum, and that's certainly worth the investment in a (relatively) cheap laptop.
Science for science sake is worth while no matter the cost or the expect benefit.
Fortunately, it sounds like Austria plans to take this money (70% of its international science budget) and put it towards multiple other projects. It's still going to be going toward science, just different science.
I think it's obvious that they don't understand what it means to provide an education. Just because you give kids some technology doesn't mean that they will be any more effectively taught than without the technology. In the end, these laptops are just a tool, and if the schools and teachers are not prepared to effectively use that tool (I doubt they are), it will all be a big waste of money. This is just another case of people having this idea that computers run on fairy dust.
How can you provide an education on technology without providing the tech to the student? How can you be considered educated in a technological society without learning to use the technology? How can a society participate in the global market without citizens who understand technology?
The technology is both the tool for learning, as well as one of the subjects. Sure you could learn all your other subjects with decades old textbooks, but not how to use a word processor, spreadsheet, web browser, file folder system, etc. It's not that computers magically make teaching better, it's that we need to teach students that computers don't run on fairy dust, and the only way to do that is get them comfortable with using them.
Nah, we'll just invade a few years later searching for weapons of mass destruction. Then, after a few short weeks, the dictator will be gone, we'll have our plutonium, and (as a side benefit) the North Korean people will love us! Foolproof plan.
The irony is, of course, that we would find weapons of mass destruction (hence the plutonium), but would probably use all of our oil to get it. We just can't win...
No doubt it's short of full first aid training, especially for combat situations. Of course, the question is how realistic should it be? How much beyond a game should it be? Obviously somewhere beyond simply jumping in to a firefight after downloading, but short of needing to guide your character to take a piss while heading to the mess for lunch. By comparison, though, AA certainly gives more of a view of what to expect than, for example, Call of Duty or any other FPS.
Google - search for websites.
Wolfram - search for answers.
I'd put it slightly differently:
Google - search for information
Alpha - search for data
However you state it, though, there's definitely a different niche for each. Alpha won't 'kill' Google on everything, but for some forms of research it will be ideal.
I have played AA for 6 years it's a great game, on the flip side I served as Infantry for 12 years. The AA game simulates the battle side of the army but nothing about the other phases (book training, guard duty, and cleaning the base) AA tends to glorify the battle side.
Actually, to become a medic I remember needing to sit through an actual first aid training course, followed by an exam that you needed to pass. That's more than most other games, at least.
Company leadership would like people to think that the company has no failures. Ridiculous, of course, but there you have it.
Not just people, investors. Customers avoid a product based on the product. Investors will run if there are systematic problems, and that's the big worry. Since he was pointing out the organizational issues causing the products to be bad, I don't blame them for being skittish.
Call me crazy, but I actually think it's pretty noble for Colbert to volunteer his name for the swine flu.
He didn't volunteer his name. The original poster simply suggested it, for who knows what reason. As far as I know, Colbert has no desire to have the flu named after him.
How does that work? You're still producing the same amount of heat. Water cooling just moves it away from the electronics and into the room faster.
Easy, he refrigerates the water so it's colder. Don't see how this is so hard for you to understand...
/s
As long as artists can dream, we will require more and more power from our graphics renderers.
I look at this from the opposite perspective. Now instead of buying a $500 card, having it be relevant for 2 years, and not replacing it for 5; you could buy a $100 card every year for 5 years, spending the same money, but having a more consistently powerful machine.
While we will always ask for more out of our GPUs, the point is that now (e-peen aside) a gamer can get a premium card without a premium pricetag.
I thought professors had legions of grad students to ferret this sort of thing out, why do they need these programs? Trusting a decision that could permanently impact a student's entire life to a computer program seems careless and dangerous.
Grad students might be good at catching factual errors, but not at catching plagiarism. The difference is the data they have available. It's nearly impossible to catch plagiarism without having knowledge of where they copied the work from. Unless the plagiarism is of a blatently different writing style, the only way to determine it is through comparison.
Grad students are good at reading and comparing, but probably remember few previous papers they have read, let alone well enough to know when they read plagiarised content from them. Computers are great at utilizing a large database of previous works, but rubbish at comparison if the two are not exactly equal.
So the point here is to use the current database of papers that students would plagiarise from, and to be able to compare them the way that a grad-student would if he were looking at both papers. Let the program do the searching and present the professor (or grad student) with a list of possibly plagiarised work, then let them make the final call. The more refined the results, and the more obfuscated the plagiarism it can catch, the better the system will be overall.
Search engines like this sound really interesting to me, and can be very useful, though it will never replace textbooks and encyclopedias. There is just so much more to answer to a query than just a straight number. And there are so many questions that can not be answered that way, such as "why is polcarbonate so much more temperature resistant than polyethylene?" for example. The full answer to this question includes details about the chemical make-up of the two polymers, and how polymer chains work. That is what textbooks are for.
Exactly, different niches. Alpha is data driven, while an encyclopedia is information driven. Both are highly useful for their own set of questions.
It seems you would be interested in seeing a kind of meta-encyclopedia using a similar system driven on data. If the language system and system for finding other relevent data works, I could see great things applied to encyclopedic information.
I would hope that Alpha provides additional information, such as melting point at given pressure with a graph, the viscosity at temperature, and basically all the other information that would be useful to someone melting iron. It remains to be seen how well the engine can determine the relevent additional information to provide, but when it works, it would be damn useful.
Well, Google does a lot less with the data it retreives. Google shows you links, with some relevent text and lets you find what you actually wanted on your own.
If this works the way it's supposed to, parsing all of the info and sorting through the cruft will be done automatically. In addition, the graphed outputs are another CPU-intensive function, but useful for many applications.
If this works, it will be the google-killer in the science, technology, and engineering realms.
Awesome. Do you know if the 2nd Circuit has mp3s available of oral arguments? My quick google search didn't find any. I know other circuits have them available.
No, but you can torrent them. Just be careful that the CSJA (Court System Judges of America) doesn't sue you for copyright infringement. I hear they've got a good legal team...
...until someone finds the buffer overflow error in your ethernet driver. Or maybe they find the vulnerability in your web browser (since those 'colored pixels' you're downloading are pretty pointless without being able to read HTML to find those pictures). If you think something can't be hacked, you're probably not as smart or creative as a hacker.
"In theory there is no difference between theory and practice. In practice there is."
I think the idea should be a one-or-the-other type thing. Basically take one of two options: own the battery and recharge at your home, or use the battery swap station. Owning the battery is the system we have now, and the battery swap is the BBQ system. I expect there would be some kind of battery maintenance fee to cover some of the costs of batteries wearing out, but for the most part you would swap in for a new battery whenever you liked and get charged for the difference in energy from a full battery. Since it's not your battery (you're loaning it), then as long as the batteries you receive are well maintained you are fine. The advantages are fast 'recharging' and distribution of risk through the shared maintenence fee. Either way, I don't think you're supposed to take your new factory battery in and give it to them for a used battery.
This hits the nail right on the head. Children acting like kids and lying to spend more time playing is natural. Adults acting like children and lying in order to gamble (or have an affair, do drugs, etc) is pathological. And why compare to gambling addiction? Apples and oranges. They should be comparing to something like "pathological movie addiction".
Let's face it: children and adults are different psychologically. A good question to judge an adult's state of mind will likely not be accurate for children, since children are still learning how to behave appropriately. I wouldn't put too much faith into this number, except as perhaps an upper-bound.
In a secure area, you can't bring ANY data transmitters in or out. Not even a cell phone, let alone a laptop. This was NOT the attack vector, and even if it was, it's not feasible to collect multiple TB of data over an unsecured wireless connection.
Actually, it uses a 3-axis gyroscope. Accelerometers can only measure movement, but the gyros can measure position. This is why you had to use a lot of "waggle" on wii games: the accelerometers couldn't tell the difference between flicking your wrist and an arm movement. The gyros can.
http://arstechnica.com/gaming/news/2008/08/wii-motion-sensor.ars
As another fencer, I would have to disagree. There's still too many things that can't be measured with just a wiimote. Wrist angle is the most important, as the wiimote would have no way to verify the wrist was absolutely straight. Body lean, distance between the elbow and body, and foot position are also very important. Simply attempting to teach, or even practice, fencing with a wiimote could lead to poor habits that will be difficult to correct later on. The problems you would create would outweigh any benefit.
I agree with the earlier comment, leave the learning on the piste. Use the wiimote for what it is, a game. A Kendo or fencing game would be great, but a training tool is out of the question.
The reason we want to cancel the F-22 is that we can't get anyone in the world to fly against our F-15's. We just don't need the F-22, and can probably skip it entirely in favor of cheaper solutions like these UAV's. We need manned aircraft right now, and the F-15 is not only good enough, it's far far more than good enough.
The issue with the F22 is that it's trying to be everything at once. It's incredibly fast, incredible maneuverable, and it's stealth. A fighter really only needs 2/3 to be superior, the third has diminished returns for a HUGE investment. Honestly, the 160 we've bought already are plenty.
Of course, we have the F35 Joint Strike Fighter coming down the pipeline. This is a plane that's designed to be the new workhorse. Configurable, with versions meant for airfields, aircraft carriers, and V/STOL. The biggest benefit is that it uses many parts with similar capabilities to the F22, but more cost effective and building off the lessons learned from the F22. UAVs are a huge part of air superiority and surveillance, especially due to their extended flight times, but they won't be replacing manned fighters yet. Maybe eventually, but limitations in sensor technology will prevent them from being equal to a manned jet for at least a few more decades.
It depends where you take the rail from and to. If you take the rail from Baltimore/DC to NYC, then you need nothing more than a commuter vehicle. It's a start, but what if your trip is longer?
I imagine a system that follows the biggest Interstate highways, and allows drivers to ferry their cars. Then, put a station every 100 miles or so along the highway. It might be cheaper than gas, and would get you there faster while letting you sleep or otherwise be distracted. Now you can drive 100 miles to the interstate, take the train 400 miles to the next big city, and drive another 100 miles to your destination. This expands the use past just urban-urban travel by allowing any long-haul trip to take advantage of the rail.