Apple will continue. They still have strong leadership, Jobs will be chairman, and progress will continue. It's not like they're suddenly going to stop making Macbooks, iPhones, and iPads.
When Macbooks, iPhones, and iPads are old news and no long pushing the creative envelope, then things may well take a turn the other direction. Jobs drove those things to be what they are and it's hard to imagine someone else taking over and having the same impact and ability to drive the company forward.
AgentSheets combines a graphical, drag-and-drop user interface with a rule-based programming language to allow students to develop games and interactive applications of surprising sophistication. Projects built with AgentSheets incorporate not just code but images, sounds, and other multimedia.
Haven't we seen software like this many times before? Examples include (but are not limited to): Alice, the old GUI used to program Lego Mindstorms, and Labview. If those didn't "take off" in terms of generating interest in programming and computer science, why should we expect this one to be any different?
"President Obama wants to boost engineering graduation rates by 10,000 a year. (...) The US had just over 1.9 million engineers in 2010. The unemployment rate in 2010 for all engineers was 4.5%."
In other words, the US has a total of 85,500 unemployed engineers, but needs to produce an additional 10,000 per year?
Agreed. I know of several engineering graduates (Bachelor's) with decent grades and even technical internships that had a VERY hard time finding an engineering job. At least a few STILL cannot find engineering jobs.
I can imagine people think they're being green when voting down nuclear power, but actually their vote is causing much worse environmental impact and global warming by the necessary increase in conventional non-nuclear energy production.
I'd guess that the problem, as is all too often the case, is that the people behind nuclear power are simply not putting up enough money and/or aren't vocal enough to improve their image or knock on fossil fuel based power. That whole "clean coal" initiative seems to have done well enough for itself even without presenting any readily available (as in, in TV ads or on billboards) scienfitic proof.
What nuclear (and indeed solar, wind, hydroelectric, etc.) power needs is for someone to start an ad campaign that shows the real impact on human mortality and the environment coal and oil power have.
You could browse the web on Windows Mobile, but the experience was pretty painful. The iPhone was the first to make that feature actually useful enough to use all the time. Same with the iPod. I have a little MP3 player from Samsung and I can't for the life of me remember how to use it. It just isn't intuitive.
I'd argue that the iPod isn't that intuitive either. I've had to explain to my dad a few times how to use iTunes to get music on to the iPod and how to use it. He's remarked to me that it "isn't intuitive," a sentiment I've heard from a few others with regard to the iPod.
Even as a working professional, I still have my TI-83+ readily available in a desk drawer at work despite having tools like MATLAB and Octave available on my desktop machine. Why? When I just need to do a few quick calculations it's loads faster than booting up a program on my PC (or netbook, assuming these things are on in the first place) and, because of various classes that involved math (calculus, statistics, various electrical and computer engineering courses) I'm very familiar with the functions it provides. In contrast, if I used a MATLAB/Octave environment I'd have to go searching for special purpose statistical and mathematical functions that your standard scientific calculator readily provides. Personally, I much prefer using my graphing calculator in most situations.
This isn't an argument against calculators in the classroom, but graphing calculators are far from pointless.
Like most other expressions of concern that come from brother Stallman, the geeks hear him, and keep merrily on with technological progress. Not that his concerns are never valid, but he has become the Chicken Little of geekdom.
In this case, however, I believe his concerns are completely valid. People store personal information on Facebook, whose privacy policies are a constant subject of debate and, it seems, in constant flux. Information security aside, when I store my credit card information on my home computer I can feel safe that no one is going to get at it who I don't want to get at it. When I give it to some entity in the cloud, who knows what could happen without my knowledge or consent.
it IS unfair competition itself. it was what was done with ie against netscape, and media player against others.
Not quite. Media player and IE come pre-installed on your machine but this is explicitly labeled an optional download. Being part of the "optional updates" means it will be presented to users as an option. They will not be in any way forced to download it and in fact will have to go out of their way to deliberately check the box to get it, something most people (i.e. my mom) probably won't do assuming they even realize the option exists.
Actually major media player updates (e.g. version 11 if you have version 10) are listed as optional as well if I recall correctly.
From the perspective of a conservative, his is THE most left-leaning and partisan Presidency to date. GWB had a record of reaching across the aisle even with a majority (NCLB is the big one there, written by Ted Kennedy).
NCLB's first generation is arriving in college and they're shockingly unprepared. Never in recent history have entering college students been so inept at writing papers and discussing ideas. They still seem skilled at filling in bubbles, at least. The kids from wealthier or better schools haven't suffered much because their programs exceed the minimum requirements and still cover all the same material. The rural and urban kids, however, are being taught in such a way to ensure funding that's contingent on standardized tests. When a college student has never heard of a bibliography or encountered the idea of writing a paper based on research, I die a little inside. Then I stop whining and try to fill in the gaps.
NCLB was indeed a broad bipartisan effort and it should be a reminder that when the idiots on the left and the idiots on the right agree on something, it might just be due to its overwhelming idiocy.
I don't know why everyone on slashdot seems to give him a free pass
I don't know what comment threshold you browse at to think that EVERYONE (or even close to that) gives Jobs a free pass.
Maybe not EVERYONE but "tech journalism," in general, seems to be enthralled with whatever Jobs and Apple turn out. Basically a "Apple can do no wrong and Microsoft can do no right" scenario.
Why not put out the fire and then bill him for the $75?
As stated in TFA, if people only paid the fee when services were needed, then no one would pay. Then there's no money to maintain the trucks, equipment, etc. for when a fire DOES occur.
It would be interesting to know what sorts of questions that the participants were asked to perform. That is to say, were these puzzles that involved logical thought or ones that, while still having right and wrong answers, could be considered "quick decisions" in their own right?
I'm willing to put down $2,000 for a decent one, but there are several options and they all seem so archaic and limited. I'm happy to use something that must be controlled through a PC if that gives me more measuring features.
For $2k, you're probably stuck with "archaic and limited" scopes.
That being said, depending on what you want to do check these out:
This one ranges from a few hundred to about $1500. In my limited experience with it I wasn't impressed but also didn't spend a lot of time figuring stuff out. http://www.bitscope.com/
This one's a digital logic analyzer only but it's $150, will analyze SPI, I2C, and asynchronous serial for you. I've found it very useful. http://www.saleae.com/logic/
"We suck at educating our kids, so we'll just change the standards!"
Isn't that a bit like covering up a gaping chest wound with a shirt and pretending like nothing is wrong?
I think that's more like what happens when no one fails and schools pass everyone. I think the idea here is that they're trying to get kids to learn more by saying something akin to "you'll have to perform at least on par with your peers or you'll repeat the grade."
As long as developers know that next year there will be something around that is twice as fast, with twice as much memory, they know they can get away with being sloppy. (Thank you Windows)
I'm pretty sure that Windows has absolutely nothing to do with the advancement of hardware.
They may be polished and cheap, but I don't think they were ever particularly good compared to the state of the art.
Seriously? Visual Studio is best and most polished IDE I've ever used. Especially coming from embedded development where IDE refactoring tools, auto-completion, variable/function reference searches, and other such are horribly broken at best. Eclipse has, IMHO, a not-so-friendly learning curve and the Borland alternatives lack the polish.
People might slam Microsoft for Windows and for Office being quirky and difficult to use in some cases, but their dev tools are hands down the best.
Slashdot Mirror
Apple will continue. They still have strong leadership, Jobs will be chairman, and progress will continue. It's not like they're suddenly going to stop making Macbooks, iPhones, and iPads.
When Macbooks, iPhones, and iPads are old news and no long pushing the creative envelope, then things may well take a turn the other direction. Jobs drove those things to be what they are and it's hard to imagine someone else taking over and having the same impact and ability to drive the company forward.
Does that mean it makes unintelligible speech-like noises when the student asks a question with tools still in the mouth of the "patient?"
AgentSheets combines a graphical, drag-and-drop user interface with a rule-based programming language to allow students to develop games and interactive applications of surprising sophistication. Projects built with AgentSheets incorporate not just code but images, sounds, and other multimedia.
Haven't we seen software like this many times before? Examples include (but are not limited to): Alice, the old GUI used to program Lego Mindstorms, and Labview. If those didn't "take off" in terms of generating interest in programming and computer science, why should we expect this one to be any different?
"President Obama wants to boost engineering graduation rates by 10,000 a year. (...) The US had just over 1.9 million engineers in 2010. The unemployment rate in 2010 for all engineers was 4.5%." In other words, the US has a total of 85,500 unemployed engineers, but needs to produce an additional 10,000 per year?
Agreed. I know of several engineering graduates (Bachelor's) with decent grades and even technical internships that had a VERY hard time finding an engineering job. At least a few STILL cannot find engineering jobs.
I can imagine people think they're being green when voting down nuclear power, but actually their vote is causing much worse environmental impact and global warming by the necessary increase in conventional non-nuclear energy production.
I'd guess that the problem, as is all too often the case, is that the people behind nuclear power are simply not putting up enough money and/or aren't vocal enough to improve their image or knock on fossil fuel based power. That whole "clean coal" initiative seems to have done well enough for itself even without presenting any readily available (as in, in TV ads or on billboards) scienfitic proof.
What nuclear (and indeed solar, wind, hydroelectric, etc.) power needs is for someone to start an ad campaign that shows the real impact on human mortality and the environment coal and oil power have.
You could browse the web on Windows Mobile, but the experience was pretty painful. The iPhone was the first to make that feature actually useful enough to use all the time. Same with the iPod. I have a little MP3 player from Samsung and I can't for the life of me remember how to use it. It just isn't intuitive.
I'd argue that the iPod isn't that intuitive either. I've had to explain to my dad a few times how to use iTunes to get music on to the iPod and how to use it. He's remarked to me that it "isn't intuitive," a sentiment I've heard from a few others with regard to the iPod.
Even as a working professional, I still have my TI-83+ readily available in a desk drawer at work despite having tools like MATLAB and Octave available on my desktop machine. Why? When I just need to do a few quick calculations it's loads faster than booting up a program on my PC (or netbook, assuming these things are on in the first place) and, because of various classes that involved math (calculus, statistics, various electrical and computer engineering courses) I'm very familiar with the functions it provides. In contrast, if I used a MATLAB/Octave environment I'd have to go searching for special purpose statistical and mathematical functions that your standard scientific calculator readily provides. Personally, I much prefer using my graphing calculator in most situations. This isn't an argument against calculators in the classroom, but graphing calculators are far from pointless.
Like most other expressions of concern that come from brother Stallman, the geeks hear him, and keep merrily on with technological progress. Not that his concerns are never valid, but he has become the Chicken Little of geekdom.
In this case, however, I believe his concerns are completely valid. People store personal information on Facebook, whose privacy policies are a constant subject of debate and, it seems, in constant flux. Information security aside, when I store my credit card information on my home computer I can feel safe that no one is going to get at it who I don't want to get at it. When I give it to some entity in the cloud, who knows what could happen without my knowledge or consent.
it IS unfair competition itself. it was what was done with ie against netscape, and media player against others.
Not quite. Media player and IE come pre-installed on your machine but this is explicitly labeled an optional download. Being part of the "optional updates" means it will be presented to users as an option. They will not be in any way forced to download it and in fact will have to go out of their way to deliberately check the box to get it, something most people (i.e. my mom) probably won't do assuming they even realize the option exists.
Actually major media player updates (e.g. version 11 if you have version 10) are listed as optional as well if I recall correctly.
From the perspective of a conservative, his is THE most left-leaning and partisan Presidency to date. GWB had a record of reaching across the aisle even with a majority (NCLB is the big one there, written by Ted Kennedy).
NCLB's first generation is arriving in college and they're shockingly unprepared. Never in recent history have entering college students been so inept at writing papers and discussing ideas. They still seem skilled at filling in bubbles, at least. The kids from wealthier or better schools haven't suffered much because their programs exceed the minimum requirements and still cover all the same material. The rural and urban kids, however, are being taught in such a way to ensure funding that's contingent on standardized tests. When a college student has never heard of a bibliography or encountered the idea of writing a paper based on research, I die a little inside. Then I stop whining and try to fill in the gaps.
NCLB was indeed a broad bipartisan effort and it should be a reminder that when the idiots on the left and the idiots on the right agree on something, it might just be due to its overwhelming idiocy.
Agreed.
The real question is: do I get a copy of the game when I buy the Jeep? Maybe with some in game bonus content?
I don't know why everyone on slashdot seems to give him a free pass
I don't know what comment threshold you browse at to think that EVERYONE (or even close to that) gives Jobs a free pass.
Maybe not EVERYONE but "tech journalism," in general, seems to be enthralled with whatever Jobs and Apple turn out. Basically a "Apple can do no wrong and Microsoft can do no right" scenario.
My fiance here in the US has had her Wii streaming disc for at LEAST a month.
Why not put out the fire and then bill him for the $75?
As stated in TFA, if people only paid the fee when services were needed, then no one would pay. Then there's no money to maintain the trucks, equipment, etc. for when a fire DOES occur.
It would be interesting to know what sorts of questions that the participants were asked to perform. That is to say, were these puzzles that involved logical thought or ones that, while still having right and wrong answers, could be considered "quick decisions" in their own right?
I'm willing to put down $2,000 for a decent one, but there are several options and they all seem so archaic and limited. I'm happy to use something that must be controlled through a PC if that gives me more measuring features.
For $2k, you're probably stuck with "archaic and limited" scopes. That being said, depending on what you want to do check these out:
This one ranges from a few hundred to about $1500. In my limited experience with it I wasn't impressed but also didn't spend a lot of time figuring stuff out.
http://www.bitscope.com/
This one's a digital logic analyzer only but it's $150, will analyze SPI, I2C, and asynchronous serial for you. I've found it very useful.
http://www.saleae.com/logic/
Increasing the passing grade, if it has anything at all, will just artificially cause slackers to work a little harder to be able to scrape by again.
True, but by working harder they will (theoretically) be learning that much more.
"We suck at educating our kids, so we'll just change the standards!"
Isn't that a bit like covering up a gaping chest wound with a shirt and pretending like nothing is wrong?
I think that's more like what happens when no one fails and schools pass everyone. I think the idea here is that they're trying to get kids to learn more by saying something akin to "you'll have to perform at least on par with your peers or you'll repeat the grade."
I don't want a chore list.
So don't do the achievements. They aren't required to finish any games.
I don't want notifications popping up whenever I do something (note that on the 360 you can turn them off, but not on the PS3 or in Steam).
Point taken.
I don't want my online games to be filled with people who are standing near the spawn point shooting each other in the foot 5000 times.
So join a different game.
I don't want to see 54ad0w5n1p3r's ePeen achievement list.
So don't open it up. No one's forcing you to look
I don't want people looking at my achievement list and knowing that I play Super Faggot Noob Game 2.
You can either not play it or just don't go online or use a different profile.
I don't want developers adding meaningless tasks and grinding in lieu of content.
Point taken.
I don't want some "score" attached to me that's simply a measure of how much time I've wasted.
So don't look at it.
Remove the benefits of PC gaming, and gamers won't game on a PC..
The PC still has one thing the console doesn't: The use of a keyboard and mouse to control my games instead of the awkward thumbsticks.
As long as developers know that next year there will be something around that is twice as fast, with twice as much memory, they know they can get away with being sloppy. (Thank you Windows)
I'm pretty sure that Windows has absolutely nothing to do with the advancement of hardware.
If 10^27 is hella then clearly the next steps are:
- assloda = 10^30
- shitloada = 10^33
- shittona = 10^36
- f*ckloada = 10^39 and so on
Should be from the "no good can come from this" department.
They may be polished and cheap, but I don't think they were ever particularly good compared to the state of the art.
Seriously? Visual Studio is best and most polished IDE I've ever used. Especially coming from embedded development where IDE refactoring tools, auto-completion, variable/function reference searches, and other such are horribly broken at best. Eclipse has, IMHO, a not-so-friendly learning curve and the Borland alternatives lack the polish.
People might slam Microsoft for Windows and for Office being quirky and difficult to use in some cases, but their dev tools are hands down the best.
That so many people in "the industry" for some reason hate C++, which is what is taught these days at college, probably has something to do with it.