For a while, I believed that increasing teacher salaries would only attract more lousy teachers to the job, assholes who were only in it for the money. A couple of my worst teachers in HS were people who didn't give a rat's ass about teaching, but who fell into a teaching job for one reason or another. I did have a number of good teachers, however, that I felt should be rewarded, so I found myself rather conflicted on the matter. Once I got out into the real world, however, I met a number of people (and came to suspect that there were many more who felt the same way) who would have loved to teach if the pay wasn't so much lower than their other options. I now believe that there are a lot of people out there who would be great teachers, if only they thought they could earn a reasonable living that way.
It was an episode of The Outer Limits; I thought it was pretty cheesy myself. IIRC, the "mad scientist" (is there any other kind on that show?) built "smart" nanites that would make any changes they deemed necessary for their host's survival. Meanwhile, back in the real world, scientists are in the early stages of developing specialized, non-replicating nanites to perform specific tasks within the human body. Somehow, I can't get really scared about such far-out disaster scenarios.
Folks, there is a long road from the molecular-scale manufacturing processes and primitive specialized nanites of today to the artificially intelligent assemblers of far-out science fiction. Nanotechnology may someday (possibly within our lifetimes, but I wouldn't count on it) become Clarke's "sufficiently advanced technology", but we still have a long way to go.
Can anyone show me a code fragment which outputs a '19100' date, and which would have worked correctly with a true 2-digit time format? A function which outputs '100' instead of a two-digit year might be based on a reasonable, if incorrect, assumption. I can even imagine a wrong-headed attempt to handle post-1999 dates producing the year '20100'. However, hard-coding a '19' is asking for trouble no matter what date format you think you're getting.
This reminds me of a passage in Heinlein's Stranger in a Strange Land. Mike (the main character, a human raised my Martians) has started a church to teach people the Martian Way (basically, Peace, Love, and Understanding). When Jubal (his human mentor) asks him why Mike takes a collection, when Mike has more money than ghod, Mike gives an answer along the lines of, "If you don't make the rubes pay, they don't pay attention." (Maybe someone else can get the quote right, haven't read it in years.)
I'm wondering how Corel Linux will affect the sale and marketing of commercial applications for Linux. So far, I believe several commercial applications (Metrowerks Codewarrior is the only one I can think of right now) have come out as "Red Hat" releases rather than "Linux" releases. I'm hoping that if other commercial distros are successful, distribution-agnostic commercial software will displace distribution-specific.
Of course, as a Debian user, I also hope that if Corel is successful, more non-commercial software will be released in.DEB format in addition to.RPM's. From the little I've used each, I like the Debian package format better.
I want all the presidential candidates to undergo Voight-Kampff testing. I'd be a lot happier about Al Gore if I knew for sure whether or not he was a replicant (Not That There's Anything Wrong With That). Also, given that Voight-Kampff tests for normal human empathic response, it might also prove whether such a thing as a "compassionate conservative" really exists.
Oh, go bother Microsoft and tell them to rename their operating system every time some random application install program starts replacing system DLL's.
Oops. I had the Dylan programming language mixed up with some other Apple product code-named "Sagan". Carl Sagan sued Apple over the name, and lost. Apple changed the development name anyway, to "BHA". When word got out that it stood for "Butt-Head Astronomer", Carl sued again, and lost again. Later, when Apple began work on its Dylan (dynamic language) programming language, Bob Dylan sued. I don't know how (or if) the suit was resolved, but I don't think Apple has had to rename it to "BHM". Yet.
This all sounds kind of suspect to me. AFAIK, there is a certain amount of noise involved in any existing method of digitally scanning an analog image. (In fact, SGI's LavaRand random-number system is based on this principle.) I find it hard to believe that any "watermark" as well hidden within the image as the article suggests wouldn't be lost in the process of scanning it back into digital form.
ISTR reading that in the old Soviet Union, anyone who bought a typewriter was required to register a sample of their type with the state. (For you young pups out there, old mechanical typewriters used to have enough variations in the print heads that you could supposedly identify a typewriter from a print sample. I doubt that survived the invention of replacable daisy wheels, IBM "ball" print heads, etc. Modern manufacturing techniques may well have started producing identical print heads well before that.) The CCCP supposdly wanted to be able to identify the source of any subversive propaganda. I suspect this may have been an urband legend; it has a sort of "too good to be true" feel.
The best introductory Java book I've seen is Beginning Java from Wrox Press (can't remember the author). Don't know how good it would be for a rank newbie, but every other Java book I've seen has been even more newbie-unfriendly. Bruce Eckel's Thinking in Java might be better for an experienced programmer trying to pick up a new language, but might cause a porr non-programmer's head to explode.
BASIC, check. Unfortunately, that includes VB, QBasic, and VBscript.
Modula, no, though I've heard it's a bastard child of Pascal (check) or vice-versa.
Fortan, check. Hate it, but I can see why scientists love its math features.
C, check.
Java, half-check, since I've only done textbook exercises in it.
C++, check.
awk, half-check.
Lisp, check.
Prolog, half-check.
ML: is there an actual language named ML, or is this shorthand for machine language? Never touched the former, done 68000 assembly and machine code down to the bit-twiddling level.
Perl, working on it; there is a llama in my backpack.
sh, check.
Python, working on it. Hopefully, the rat and the llama won't start fighting.
Cobol, nope, nobody's put a gun to my head yet.
What, no mention of Smalltalk (check), Ada(check), or Dylan^WButt-Head Musician (nope)? After the first three or four languages you learn, the next twenty become easier. Not that I remember most of these languages, but I did assimilate the basic principles once upon a time. I keep telling myself that I could pick them up again pretty quick if anyone ever did take my resume seriously.
Other folks have already posted the press release about the deal, which looks like a Good Thing to me. My bad. Hey, Rob, ever thought about letting posters moderate their own posts down?
Similar, hell; from the small shots shown by the links, they look identical in all but color. The curved bit on the front is a dead giveaway. Could this be the result of some kind of deal between Cobalt and Gateway? Unless Gateway licensed the case design, or Cobalt is building these things for Gateway, I smell a lawsuit brewing. At least, I assume Cobalt's box is a custom design and not an off-the-shelf product from a big case maker.
I picked up Lutz & Ascher's Learning Python just over a week ago, and I already love it. One of the great things about Python as a learning language is its "interactive" mode; run the interpreter without a program file ("module" in Python terminology), and you get an interactive prompt. Just start typing in statements; you can define functions, set variables, load modules, etc. Anything with a return value displays that value. It's a lot easier for experimenting with different statements than the usual cycle of edit a file, run it, edit it again, run it again, etc.
I've seen Python described as "pseudocode that runs", and so far, I have to agree; it pushes you toward writing more readable code. Yeah, yeah, yeah, "you can write readable or unreadable code in any language", and that's true. But where Perl seems to require additional effort to write readable code, Python seems to require extra effort to write unreadable code.
My own take on the events in Seattle (assembled piecemeal from a jumble of different slanted accounbts) is that the rioters and protesters can be split into a bunch of different groups. A handful of politically-motivated thugs and vandals who tried to use the peaceful protesters as protection against the police. A larger number of initially peaceful protesters who freaked out when the cops moved in and blew the situation out of control. An even larger assortment of peaceful protesters who tried (with varying degrees of success) to stay out of trouble. A lot of non-political vandals and looters who used the breakdown in order to give in to their baser instincts. And, most of all, a lot of scared Seattlites who suddenly found a riot going on outside their front doors.
Benjy "Monkeybagel" Feen has posted another account of the riots. He lives right on Capitol Hill in Seattle, where much of the rioting took place, and works for Amazon in the middle of the curfew zone. I understand his geek culture site got Slashdotted the first time it was mentioned here; wanna give it another shot?
Slashdot Mirror
For a while, I believed that increasing teacher salaries would only attract more lousy teachers to the job, assholes who were only in it for the money. A couple of my worst teachers in HS were people who didn't give a rat's ass about teaching, but who fell into a teaching job for one reason or another. I did have a number of good teachers, however, that I felt should be rewarded, so I found myself rather conflicted on the matter. Once I got out into the real world, however, I met a number of people (and came to suspect that there were many more who felt the same way) who would have loved to teach if the pay wasn't so much lower than their other options. I now believe that there are a lot of people out there who would be great teachers, if only they thought they could earn a reasonable living that way.
It was an episode of The Outer Limits; I thought it was pretty cheesy myself. IIRC, the "mad scientist" (is there any other kind on that show?) built "smart" nanites that would make any changes they deemed necessary for their host's survival. Meanwhile, back in the real world, scientists are in the early stages of developing specialized, non-replicating nanites to perform specific tasks within the human body. Somehow, I can't get really scared about such far-out disaster scenarios.
Folks, there is a long road from the molecular-scale manufacturing processes and primitive specialized nanites of today to the artificially intelligent assemblers of far-out science fiction. Nanotechnology may someday (possibly within our lifetimes, but I wouldn't count on it) become Clarke's "sufficiently advanced technology", but we still have a long way to go.
I'm toying with removing anonymous moderation, but I'm concerned about the moderation becoming the topic instead of the topic. Maybe that's good.
Good that you're concerned, or good that moderation is becoming the topic?
Maybe it's just me, but I'm already getting tired of the amount of blather about the moderation of individual messages:
There Is No Spoof.
Can anyone show me a code fragment which outputs a '19100' date, and which would have worked correctly with a true 2-digit time format? A function which outputs '100' instead of a two-digit year might be based on a reasonable, if incorrect, assumption. I can even imagine a wrong-headed attempt to handle post-1999 dates producing the year '20100'. However, hard-coding a '19' is asking for trouble no matter what date format you think you're getting.
This reminds me of a passage in Heinlein's Stranger in a Strange Land. Mike (the main character, a human raised my Martians) has started a church to teach people the Martian Way (basically, Peace, Love, and Understanding). When Jubal (his human mentor) asks him why Mike takes a collection, when Mike has more money than ghod, Mike gives an answer along the lines of, "If you don't make the rubes pay, they don't pay attention." (Maybe someone else can get the quote right, haven't read it in years.)
I'm wondering how Corel Linux will affect the sale and marketing of commercial applications for Linux. So far, I believe several commercial applications (Metrowerks Codewarrior is the only one I can think of right now) have come out as "Red Hat" releases rather than "Linux" releases. I'm hoping that if other commercial distros are successful, distribution-agnostic commercial software will displace distribution-specific.
Of course, as a Debian user, I also hope that if Corel is successful, more non-commercial software will be released in .DEB format in addition to .RPM's. From the little I've used each, I like the Debian package format better.
I want all the presidential candidates to undergo Voight-Kampff testing. I'd be a lot happier about Al Gore if I knew for sure whether or not he was a replicant (Not That There's Anything Wrong With That). Also, given that Voight-Kampff tests for normal human empathic response, it might also prove whether such a thing as a "compassionate conservative" really exists.
Thank you, Mr. Bush, but your time is up. Would any of the other Republican candidates care to add any further comments?
Oh, go bother Microsoft and tell them to rename their operating system every time some random application install program starts replacing system DLL's.
IHNJH, IJLS "bumping up against physical limits"
My Ghod! They must be writing the microcode in Intercal!!!
"...this addition to the PIII design is responsible for supercharging Microsoft Office apps."
For some reason, I had trouble taking the rest of the article seriously after I read this line.
Check out The Science of Discworld . Besides, I thought everybody only bought Brief History to look impressive on their coffee tables.
Oops. I had the Dylan programming language mixed up with some other Apple product code-named "Sagan". Carl Sagan sued Apple over the name, and lost. Apple changed the development name anyway, to "BHA". When word got out that it stood for "Butt-Head Astronomer", Carl sued again, and lost again. Later, when Apple began work on its Dylan (dynamic language) programming language, Bob Dylan sued. I don't know how (or if) the suit was resolved, but I don't think Apple has had to rename it to "BHM". Yet.
I'm impressed. I'm surprised you could identify the original image after an ordeal like that.
This all sounds kind of suspect to me. AFAIK, there is a certain amount of noise involved in any existing method of digitally scanning an analog image. (In fact, SGI's LavaRand random-number system is based on this principle.) I find it hard to believe that any "watermark" as well hidden within the image as the article suggests wouldn't be lost in the process of scanning it back into digital form.
ISTR reading that in the old Soviet Union, anyone who bought a typewriter was required to register a sample of their type with the state. (For you young pups out there, old mechanical typewriters used to have enough variations in the print heads that you could supposedly identify a typewriter from a print sample. I doubt that survived the invention of replacable daisy wheels, IBM "ball" print heads, etc. Modern manufacturing techniques may well have started producing identical print heads well before that.) The CCCP supposdly wanted to be able to identify the source of any subversive propaganda. I suspect this may have been an urband legend; it has a sort of "too good to be true" feel.
The best introductory Java book I've seen is Beginning Java from Wrox Press (can't remember the author). Don't know how good it would be for a rank newbie, but every other Java book I've seen has been even more newbie-unfriendly. Bruce Eckel's Thinking in Java might be better for an experienced programmer trying to pick up a new language, but might cause a porr non-programmer's head to explode.
What, no mention of Smalltalk (check), Ada(check), or Dylan^WButt-Head Musician (nope)? After the first three or four languages you learn, the next twenty become easier. Not that I remember most of these languages, but I did assimilate the basic principles once upon a time. I keep telling myself that I could pick them up again pretty quick if anyone ever did take my resume seriously.
Other folks have already posted the press release about the deal, which looks like a Good Thing to me. My bad. Hey, Rob, ever thought about letting posters moderate their own posts down?
Similar, hell; from the small shots shown by the links, they look identical in all but color. The curved bit on the front is a dead giveaway. Could this be the result of some kind of deal between Cobalt and Gateway? Unless Gateway licensed the case design, or Cobalt is building these things for Gateway, I smell a lawsuit brewing. At least, I assume Cobalt's box is a custom design and not an off-the-shelf product from a big case maker.
I picked up Lutz & Ascher's Learning Python just over a week ago, and I already love it. One of the great things about Python as a learning language is its "interactive" mode; run the interpreter without a program file ("module" in Python terminology), and you get an interactive prompt. Just start typing in statements; you can define functions, set variables, load modules, etc. Anything with a return value displays that value. It's a lot easier for experimenting with different statements than the usual cycle of edit a file, run it, edit it again, run it again, etc.
I've seen Python described as "pseudocode that runs", and so far, I have to agree; it pushes you toward writing more readable code. Yeah, yeah, yeah, "you can write readable or unreadable code in any language", and that's true. But where Perl seems to require additional effort to write readable code, Python seems to require extra effort to write unreadable code.
My own take on the events in Seattle (assembled piecemeal from a jumble of different slanted accounbts) is that the rioters and protesters can be split into a bunch of different groups. A handful of politically-motivated thugs and vandals who tried to use the peaceful protesters as protection against the police. A larger number of initially peaceful protesters who freaked out when the cops moved in and blew the situation out of control. An even larger assortment of peaceful protesters who tried (with varying degrees of success) to stay out of trouble. A lot of non-political vandals and looters who used the breakdown in order to give in to their baser instincts. And, most of all, a lot of scared Seattlites who suddenly found a riot going on outside their front doors.
Benjy "Monkeybagel" Feen has posted another account of the riots. He lives right on Capitol Hill in Seattle, where much of the rioting took place, and works for Amazon in the middle of the curfew zone. I understand his geek culture site got Slashdotted the first time it was mentioned here; wanna give it another shot?