Huh. That lame little application is just a design firm's way of snarking about The Gap's failed rebranding attempt. If you follow the link to their blog, you discover they know fuck all about web design. They actually allow the reader to choose either of two layouts, both using obsolete fixed-width designs. Kind of undercuts their smug satire of other people's failures.
My mother had a picture of what looked to be some kind of Catholic saint. Don't know why it appealed to her, especially since the lady was wearing a crucifix, which offended my mother's Jewish sensibilities. So she put a bit of tape over the crucifix. Which, of course, only called attention to it.
I agree with everything you say. Still, a good kid-oriented programming environment is not exactly dumbed down. What it does do is offer learning-oriented tools.
But you know, if a kid's having fun hacking out shell scripts, no harm in that. Just remind them to keep their resume up to date!
Open source is great mechanism for finding security holes, but it's hardly the only mechanism. OK, Windows is probably not as secure as Linux, but it's not totally insecure either.
Hey, I live in an apartment that doesn't have the best security, but enough for the neighborhood in which I live. By your logic, I should either beef up security to the max (iron bars on the windows, install a CCTV, maybe get a pit bull) or just forget all about it and leave never lock the front door or window by the fire escape. Makes no sense
You missed an important detail. (I missed it too, until somebody pointed it out to me.) The memo also reminds cabbies that payments have to go through the official system. This makes Uber useless, since they can't collect their cut unless they handle payment.
I think the big issue here is that cabs are supposed to charge based on time and mileage. The kind of service Uber provides is "black car" service (they actually use that term on their web site), which is quite a bit different. Cabbies that use Uber are basically freelancing as black cars, which is illegal.
Among other things, that process means that we can actually be sure who won.
Right, because ballot boxes magically reject illegitimate votes and are never tampered with. And of course, voters are always careful to mark their ballots in a clear and unambiguous way, so that nobody can ague about who they meant to vote for. Gee whiz, stealing an election based on paper ballots is impossible. Ask Richard Nixon if you don't believe me!
The idea that paper records are somehow more reliable than electronic ones is silly. There's something intuitive about a sheet of paper being more reliable than bits on a disk — but either can be faked. The secret, in both cases, is careful outside auditing. That's actually harder to do when you have millions of physical records that can only be organized and tabulated by (fallible and corruptable) humans.
Problems with electronic voting have nothing to do with the supposed inferiority of electronic records. It's about voting technology created by vendors who don't want to give up their trade secrets, so they can't prove that their machines can't be tampered with. If you make the whole process transparent (basically, hardware and software has to be open source, and there can be no secrets as to how the data is managed and protected) you have a system that's a lot more tamper-proof than any kind of physical record.
Yeah, pretty dramatic. But I've never heard anybody talk about "red counties" or "blue counties". The idea of entire states inhabited by "libtards" is what appeals. When I lived in California, any online mention of my residence was an invitation for right-wingers to blame my obvious mental incompetence on geography. Never mind that California is the state that gave the world Ronald Reagan!
I've used a cab or car service maybe 3 or 4 times in my entire life, so I haven't had occasion to use Uber. I just went to their web site, and I discovered that they quote fixed prices for specific point-to-point trips. That makes them more like a black car service than a taxi service, which charges based on distance and time. There's a further distinction in that black cars can't answer hails.
These distinctions are pretty important in NYC, where a fleet of on-hail cabs is seen as an essential part of the city infrastructure, and which need to be protected from competition by black cars — or cabbies that user Uber to freelance as black cars. They're probably less important in other cities, where taxis are less common and you mostly have to call for them to pick you up anyway.
Well, some kids will go to town with that. Most kids will just see a piece of junk that looks like it fell out of an old TV set and wonder, "what's the big deal"? The Raspberry Pi is a great product, but you have to have some technical savvy to see how great it is.
Ah gee, lighten up. All of what you say makes sense, but there's nothing to be gained by making the guy feel like an idiot. Save your flames for the vim/emacs wars.
So, building a computer is a good way to learn how to build a computer.
That said, I don't think building a computer would teach the kid the kind of skills this guy cares about. All you really learn is where the parts go. Modern computers modularize huge chunks of technology. So, you plug in a bunch of DIMMs, what have you learned?
Which is not to say it's a bad idea, provided both parent and child have fun. People forget that fun's main purpose is developing skills. So anything you do with your kids that's fun is not a total waste of time.
Cheap, mass-produced products tend to be little sealed boxes that don't tell you much about guts. Once upon a time you could have a lot of fun fiddling with electronic logic, but now products are all based on little prepackaged ICs containing millions of circuits that are light years ahead of anything you can do by hand. So forget about a system that "exposes the guts".
I think the specific computer you want matters a lot less than the software you put on it. Nowadays, software represents the "guts" you want your kid to learn about. That suggests that maybe you should just get him a cheap Linux laptop, show him how to open a terminal window, give him a book on shell programming, and stand back. Kids are really good at making the most of that scenario.
OK, maybe shell programming is not something that will get the attention of a 7-year-old. There are a ton of child-specific programming platforms that might be the ticket. Your judgement as to which one would best suit your son is certainly better than anybody else's.
The Thomas Friedman column you link talks about an Estonian program for grade-schoolers that sounds kind of cool. But you seem to come away from it with the notion that you owe it to your kid to fill his head with technical skills so he'll be a competitive when he enters the job market. IMHO, that's a pretty good way to destroy a child's love of a topic. (I'm thinking of the unpleasant music lessons I had with my own father; my love of music will never be what it might have been.) You should focus instead on something Friedman says further down.
There is a quote attributed to the futurist Alvin Toffler that captures this new reality: In the future “illiteracy will not be defined by those who cannot read and write, but by those who cannot learn and relearn.” Any form of standing still is deadly.
That suggests that the imperative is not to learn a specific set of skills, but to learn to learn.
Please. People are barely aware of recent history ("Obama is socialist and a facist!"). They'e not going to be worrying about war games. Hey, the left thinks the military is evil and the right thinks of the military in terms of expensive DOD contracts and sending other people sons and daughters off to fix the world.
The coolness factor wears off quickly. There's a bit in the story about how people have problems with being constantly distracted by all the embedded media that's everywhere.
I often link that OTM story too. Notice that the producer wasn't anxious to spend all that money on clearance. She only did so because her clearance insurance provider insisted. So it's really yet another case of corporate stupidity enforcing IP rights when none are being violated.
Huh. That's like the way the GOP insists on referring to the Democratic Party as the Democrat Party. China isn't capitalistic, they just call themselves capitalists.
Slashdot Mirror
Huh. That lame little application is just a design firm's way of snarking about The Gap's failed rebranding attempt. If you follow the link to their blog, you discover they know fuck all about web design. They actually allow the reader to choose either of two layouts, both using obsolete fixed-width designs. Kind of undercuts their smug satire of other people's failures.
In the name of the Holy Command Line, I demand that we switch to Courier!!!!!!
Yeah, and the Trail of Tears is an important part of U.S. history, but I don't seem anybody proposing a dead Indian as national symbol.
Amusing to see those old Slashdot headlines. Since I was working at Sun at the time this one is particularly poignant.
Sorry, I can't prove anything to you, because I can't see through my rose-tinted glasses.
Whatever. The point is that Android is a really bad desktop GUI. If you think that's BS tell me why, but spare me your quibbling over language.
Fresh water red tides do happen. However, to my inexpert eye, this event looks like some red substance suspended in the water, rather than red algae.
My mother had a picture of what looked to be some kind of Catholic saint. Don't know why it appealed to her, especially since the lady was wearing a crucifix, which offended my mother's Jewish sensibilities. So she put a bit of tape over the crucifix. Which, of course, only called attention to it.
I agree with everything you say. Still, a good kid-oriented programming environment is not exactly dumbed down. What it does do is offer learning-oriented tools.
But you know, if a kid's having fun hacking out shell scripts, no harm in that. Just remind them to keep their resume up to date!
Open source is great mechanism for finding security holes, but it's hardly the only mechanism. OK, Windows is probably not as secure as Linux, but it's not totally insecure either.
Hey, I live in an apartment that doesn't have the best security, but enough for the neighborhood in which I live. By your logic, I should either beef up security to the max (iron bars on the windows, install a CCTV, maybe get a pit bull) or just forget all about it and leave never lock the front door or window by the fire escape. Makes no sense
You missed an important detail. (I missed it too, until somebody pointed it out to me.) The memo also reminds cabbies that payments have to go through the official system. This makes Uber useless, since they can't collect their cut unless they handle payment.
I think the big issue here is that cabs are supposed to charge based on time and mileage. The kind of service Uber provides is "black car" service (they actually use that term on their web site), which is quite a bit different. Cabbies that use Uber are basically freelancing as black cars, which is illegal.
Among other things, that process means that we can actually be sure who won.
Right, because ballot boxes magically reject illegitimate votes and are never tampered with. And of course, voters are always careful to mark their ballots in a clear and unambiguous way, so that nobody can ague about who they meant to vote for. Gee whiz, stealing an election based on paper ballots is impossible. Ask Richard Nixon if you don't believe me!
The idea that paper records are somehow more reliable than electronic ones is silly. There's something intuitive about a sheet of paper being more reliable than bits on a disk — but either can be faked. The secret, in both cases, is careful outside auditing. That's actually harder to do when you have millions of physical records that can only be organized and tabulated by (fallible and corruptable) humans.
Problems with electronic voting have nothing to do with the supposed inferiority of electronic records. It's about voting technology created by vendors who don't want to give up their trade secrets, so they can't prove that their machines can't be tampered with. If you make the whole process transparent (basically, hardware and software has to be open source, and there can be no secrets as to how the data is managed and protected) you have a system that's a lot more tamper-proof than any kind of physical record.
You call that a flame? No snide remarks about my IQ? No complicated explanation of the innate superiority of elisp?
That's the problem with Slashdot these days. Nobody has any passion!
Yeah, pretty dramatic. But I've never heard anybody talk about "red counties" or "blue counties". The idea of entire states inhabited by "libtards" is what appeals. When I lived in California, any online mention of my residence was an invitation for right-wingers to blame my obvious mental incompetence on geography. Never mind that California is the state that gave the world Ronald Reagan!
OK, good point.
I've used a cab or car service maybe 3 or 4 times in my entire life, so I haven't had occasion to use Uber. I just went to their web site, and I discovered that they quote fixed prices for specific point-to-point trips. That makes them more like a black car service than a taxi service, which charges based on distance and time. There's a further distinction in that black cars can't answer hails.
These distinctions are pretty important in NYC, where a fleet of on-hail cabs is seen as an essential part of the city infrastructure, and which need to be protected from competition by black cars — or cabbies that user Uber to freelance as black cars. They're probably less important in other cities, where taxis are less common and you mostly have to call for them to pick you up anyway.
Well, some kids will go to town with that. Most kids will just see a piece of junk that looks like it fell out of an old TV set and wonder, "what's the big deal"? The Raspberry Pi is a great product, but you have to have some technical savvy to see how great it is.
Ah gee, lighten up. All of what you say makes sense, but there's nothing to be gained by making the guy feel like an idiot. Save your flames for the vim/emacs wars.
So, building a computer is a good way to learn how to build a computer.
That said, I don't think building a computer would teach the kid the kind of skills this guy cares about. All you really learn is where the parts go. Modern computers modularize huge chunks of technology. So, you plug in a bunch of DIMMs, what have you learned?
Which is not to say it's a bad idea, provided both parent and child have fun. People forget that fun's main purpose is developing skills. So anything you do with your kids that's fun is not a total waste of time.
I made a mistake pasting the link to child-specific programming languages. Here's the link I meant to use:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_educational_programming_languages#Children
Something to be said for that approach. But clearly one this techie father is not open to.
Cheap, mass-produced products tend to be little sealed boxes that don't tell you much about guts. Once upon a time you could have a lot of fun fiddling with electronic logic, but now products are all based on little prepackaged ICs containing millions of circuits that are light years ahead of anything you can do by hand. So forget about a system that "exposes the guts".
I think the specific computer you want matters a lot less than the software you put on it. Nowadays, software represents the "guts" you want your kid to learn about. That suggests that maybe you should just get him a cheap Linux laptop, show him how to open a terminal window, give him a book on shell programming, and stand back. Kids are really good at making the most of that scenario.
OK, maybe shell programming is not something that will get the attention of a 7-year-old. There are a ton of child-specific programming platforms that might be the ticket. Your judgement as to which one would best suit your son is certainly better than anybody else's.
The Thomas Friedman column you link talks about an Estonian program for grade-schoolers that sounds kind of cool. But you seem to come away from it with the notion that you owe it to your kid to fill his head with technical skills so he'll be a competitive when he enters the job market. IMHO, that's a pretty good way to destroy a child's love of a topic. (I'm thinking of the unpleasant music lessons I had with my own father; my love of music will never be what it might have been.) You should focus instead on something Friedman says further down.
There is a quote attributed to the futurist Alvin Toffler that captures this new reality: In the future “illiteracy will not be defined by those who cannot read and write, but by those who cannot learn and relearn.” Any form of standing still is deadly.
That suggests that the imperative is not to learn a specific set of skills, but to learn to learn.
Please. People are barely aware of recent history ("Obama is socialist and a facist!"). They'e not going to be worrying about war games. Hey, the left thinks the military is evil and the right thinks of the military in terms of expensive DOD contracts and sending other people sons and daughters off to fix the world.
The coolness factor wears off quickly. There's a bit in the story about how people have problems with being constantly distracted by all the embedded media that's everywhere.
I often link that OTM story too. Notice that the producer wasn't anxious to spend all that money on clearance. She only did so because her clearance insurance provider insisted. So it's really yet another case of corporate stupidity enforcing IP rights when none are being violated.
Huh. That's like the way the GOP insists on referring to the Democratic Party as the Democrat Party. China isn't capitalistic, they just call themselves capitalists.