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  1. Re:Depends on the age. on Ask Slashdot: How Do I Engage 5th-8th Graders In Computing? · · Score: 1
    There is truth to this. There is a great deal of difference between a 10 year old and a 13 year old, and way more differences within children of the same age than if you were to be dealing with late teens.

    This age group is going to be deep into concrete thinking. They are going to spend most of their time challenging rules rather than working with them to develop a functional product. They want to see how rules can be broken and if the framework is still functional with broken rules. They are looking for a minimum set of constraints that will lead to maximizing the freedoms they are looking for, without additional responsibilities.

    These are all useful things if channeled properly.

    For instance, while I don't see robots as useful for higher grade levels, I think they are useful for the 10-14 year old. Robots can provide instant feedback that forces kids to follow rules, and allows the give and take that lets kids discover principles, like how to make a right turn. Robots can also easily be tailored for individual abilities.

    What is missing in many courses is that kids learn differently for older teens and adults. The assumptions they make are different, and they are more likely to spend time 'gaming the system' to look for vagaries.

    What kids don't have is the abstract ability to understand how something as abstract as a physical computer interface works. Even though it looks like a concrete representation, it is not. Just try to teach a kid to work a breadboard. Yes, you can teach them rote but are they going to understand what is really happening. My experience is not until they are in high school.

    So teach cause and effect. If they are old enough teach them how to solder. Get simple robots and let them play. For older students, get Inventor and 3D printer. If a kid seems to want to program, let them make a tic tac toe web page.

    What will happen is that some kids will try spend more time on the internet looking at porn than learning. That is the testing of rules thing.

  2. Re:Does It Matter? on VirtualBox Development At a Standstill · · Score: 1

    I paid for virtual machine software for the Mac to run Windows XP and 7. I did not want to reboot. I switched to virtual box not because it was free, but because I felt it was better. I have not needed to run windows for a couple years, so I do not know what the current state of development is in the market, but VirtualBox would be my initial choice if I needed a VM. One data point. For the modeling software I was using on Windows 7, Parallels made my machine run much hotter.

  3. Re:I work in Earth-observing satellite ground syst on Spire Plans To Use Tiny Satellites For More Accurate Weather Forecasts · · Score: 2

    The first question that popped into my mind was did they have a new model that would take data from 100 satellites and produce a more accurate forecast. I don't think that satellites alone are not going to create a more accurate forecast. This reminds me when I was talking to a teacher back in the 80's. He mentioned that at one point it was believed that if we could create a dense enough network of satellites and sensors, we could forecast the weather with great accuracy and for arbitrarily long periods. Theoretically, given an infinite array of sensors, the forecast would be perfect and long range. But then actual science interfered as the work of Lorentz propagated through the ranks. The sensitivity to initial conditions, and the inherent limitations of data collection, made such claims of better forecasting theoretically impossible. I have to think that the current configuration of satellites represents some compromise between cost and benefit. Not to say that more satellites will not provide a benefit. Whoever contracts with the service will be able to claim 'We have better forecasting because we have more satellites', which will help with marketing. It will help push forward the cubesat business and will test out these new technologies, which is of great benefit. And it is an experiment that might succeed in producing useful data that might be able to be put into better models.

  4. Re:Wouldn't a sorted table have been more useful ? on By the Numbers: The Highest-Paying States For Tech Professionals · · Score: 2
    This is advertisement from the parent company of /., so there is no need for any real information.

    Presenting things as maps is the 21st century method of establishing credibility. It is much cheaper than actually creating an informative graphic with useful data, a la Edward Tufte.

    As has been mentioned, this data is not all that useful. One still pretty much makes more money in places that are more expensive to live, but not nearly enough. For instance, in San Jose one might make 25% more than in Houston. On the other hand, the median price for a home in San Jose is 5 times the average pay listed on the site, while in Houston the median price for a home is only 1.4 times the average pay listed on the site. Doing this type of normalization is simple, but does not drive rubes to higher paying jobs that might pay higher commissions to places like Dice.

  5. Re:Or: on Smartphones, Tablets and EBay Send SkyMall To Chapter 11 · · Score: 5, Interesting
    This seems to be the narrative that the parent company, Xhibit Corp,is pushing. Perhaps blaming 'the market' will help it in bankruptcy with creditors, and protect the owners from personal liability.

    What is not being widely reported is that Xhibit Corp sold the customer loyalty fulfillment part of the business last year for around $20 million. This was the unit that apparently generated the vast majority of the revenue and probably all the profit. Why would a firm who expected to stay solvent sell of the unit that generated most of the revenue, a unit with guaranteed sales?

    It really seems like a scam to create liquidity of the profitable assets and then screw the creditors. The fact that the business was a failing was probably known at the time of the sale. For instance, it was probably known that Southwest Air was going to stop carrying the catalog.

  6. Re:oh good grief on Fake Engine Noise Is the Auto Industry's Dirty Little Secret · · Score: 1
    The Miata is a highly tuned engined with a highly tuned exhaust system in an attempt to create a pleasant engine noise experience.

    What we are talking about here is noise for those who need others to notice them. Who buy the big truck or the loud motorcycle because they do not get enough attention at home.

    This of course is different from an electric car which needs fake noise so that others are not startled.

    In any case the Miata has one of the most expensive engines, and that along with the suspension contributes the majority cost to the car. There is nothing else that one buys a Miata for.

  7. Re:We've sold the spectrum here; wouldn't be allow on Where Cellular Networks Don't Exist, People Are Building Their Own · · Score: 1
    Another thing to consider it that is not as necessary. For many in developing world there is no landline, or at least affordable landline.

    I remember about 20 years ago I knew many more people in South America who had cell phones that in the US. I, at that time, did not have a cell phone. OTOH, many of those in SA that had cell phones did not have land lines because the lines either did run into the mountains, or the land line was too expensive. In particular, the local service would not sell what we call residential lines, instead requiring the higher business rates.

    What they did have outside the US were reletively strong repeaters, and many had then. The cell phones would work in urban areas, then fade, then work again when they were in range of the home signal booster.

    Now, as in many places outside the US, the coverage is excellent and one is never very far away from a shop that will top off your data.

  8. Re:You don't say !! on How To Hijack Your Own Windows System With Bundled Downloads · · Score: 4, Interesting
    This is old news, but still of a concern because of Google. I have noticed lately that sometimes when I search for software to install on a new machine or try out for a project, one of the download services comes up as the first result instead of the actual place hosting the repositories and packages.

    This reminds me when link farms were more of an issue than they are today, and when just doing a search could kill your windows machine.

    Really it is the search engines that keep these people in business, and modifications of the algorithm could minimize the damage just like it did with link farms.

  9. Re:We don't need to stinkin' badges ... on Chicago E-Learning Scheme Embraces Virtual Badges For Public Schoolers · · Score: 1

    "gamerfication" is something that some educators want to try. I see no problem with this as some students will respond to this kind of motivation. I see it as worthy as grades. Long term, however, the value will be no more than grades or a high school diploma. There will be issues with validity and value. Did the kid earn the badge or was given the badge. Were the requirements for the badge the same everywhere, or were some people give lower requirements.

  10. Re:Rewriting history to favor India/Arabs? on Fields Medal Winner Manjul Bhargava On the Pythagorean Theorem Controversy · · Score: 1

    The reality is, for instance, that Algebra is derived from Arabic, that Algebra as we know it today was refined in the middle east, and is of particular Arabic origin. Much of the origin myths of the west have been written to exclude non-western contributions. This can be as simple as US children not being taught that the Russians were instrumental in defeating Hitler, to including stirrups on horses in B.C.E Europe even though such technology only existed in China until the 5th or 6th century C.E.

  11. Re:Broadcast Radio? Eeew.... on Radio, Not YouTube, Is Still King of Music Discovery · · Score: 1
    who is going to pay $200 a year for radio. I pay almost that much for contributions to non profit stations, but if I listen to commercial radio it is streaming from my phone, mostly non-US stations to discover movie.

    In any case Sirius does not solve the basic problem, which is the payments to the artists for airplay. Streaming services are going to tend to much better than radio to target new music to listeners, and are not running ads to pay for excessive fees to allow artists to publicize their music, so while these services need to pay artists, they cannot be as much as radio. Likewise, the big publishers should be removed from the process, otherwise we are going to end up with same lame formats we have on radio.

  12. Re:The great lie of the market. on Startups: the Crazy Ones, the Misfits, the Rebels ... the Dumb · · Score: 2

    So a diamond is essentially worthless, but good upselling makes it worth a lot. This values pays for the processing and marketing of the stone. In the US, for instance, 50 years of brainwashing has made couples forgo homes and food to buy a rock. In the case of the apparently paid link, they are a delivery service. The problem is that it is hard to create enough value for delivery. Overhead, profits, and minimum wage means that someone is not going to pay a large delivery fee, the value is not going to create a viable business. Of course you could do what Uber and Lyft does, which is essentially externalize all real costs to contractors, but even in that case profit is apparently not possible without surge pricing which tricks customers into paying multiples of the expected price.

  13. Re:Not all bad, some middling to good-ish reviews on Ars: Final Hobbit Movie Is 'Soulless End' To 'Flawed' Trilogy · · Score: 1
    My take on it is that there are higher expectations for movies, not just in terms of the production values but in terms of the actors. This was the sixth middle earth movie, and everyone is showing a bit of fatigue. The cameras angles, thankfully sparingly used, to make hobbits seem small are getting increasingly passe. There were few landscapes which though also getting a bit old were at least entertaining. The actual battle could have used a some lesson from TV on how to shoot on a budget.

    In fact the entire movie reminded me of an elevator episode from a TV series. These episodes are made when on has blown one's budget for the season, but still need to get 24 in the can. So you have everyone stuck on an elevator, or locked in a room, or the like, and have some dramatic events happening. Of course it is hard to carry an entire movie on this premise, but when one has promised a mini series, one has to deliver.

  14. Yes, idiocy on Reaction To the Sony Hack Is 'Beyond the Realm of Stupid' · · Score: 1
    We are not talking about the risk of an attack on the level of 9/11. We are talking about a risk of an attack like Newtown, or Littleton, or the Holocaust Museum, or the Knoxville church, or, to be apropos, Aurora.

    We are talking a movie that has a lot of hype, but may not last past the first weekend. A lot of people were planning on seeing it, but are people going to make a statement and risk some lone gun nut coming in and killing several people

    Is it commercially responsible to pay for the distribution of a film when people may be afraid of the consequences of seeing it? Might it be more commercially responsible to release it when the heat dies down. Are parents going to allow their kids to see this movie know a lone gun nut might kill them?

    Again, we really don't know what is going on here. Team America already killed this guy in the movies, and made fun of him in the most racist of ways(I so ronery). But this is just a movie. It's purpose is to generate revenue for sony. It is not an 'film' so it's sole purpose is to generate revenue for Sony. It has some hype, but it also has some risk. Again, not of movie theaters being bombed, but of someone, who does not necessarily have and national backing, coming in with tactical shotguns and 100 round rifles and killing several people. This is not that hard to imagine as it happens with some regularity.

  15. Re:So which came first on How Birds Lost Their Teeth · · Score: 1

    If dinosaurs had gizzards, then that would indicate that teeth were loss after this organ was in place.

  16. good will on Why Didn't Sidecar's Flex Pricing Work? · · Score: -1, Offtopic
    There is also a surcharge of good will in economics. When one company buys another, there is good will. When people pya $1000 for a MS license instead of much less for Google docs, some of that is good will.

    The taxi service in my area has had tracking of the cabs for a while and the ability to get a cab with an app for a very long while. The wait on the phone is not long at all. I am not in an area where cabs are used a lot, but sometimes a cab is better than a bus or driving.

    I specifically use cabs because of lack of surge pricing. There have been times when I have had to get home at midnight, and it good that i can just take a cab and not get gouged. If one want to show appreciation, tip better.

    In some ways I see these ride buying service as Walmart. Come in, chage less to drive out others, then raise the prices and the consumer is at the mercy of an unregulated monopoly.

  17. Re:What planet are you from? on Utilities Face Billions In Losses From Distributed Renewables · · Score: 1
  18. Re:They have good reason to be nervous on Utilities Face Billions In Losses From Distributed Renewables · · Score: 1

    it is an interesting theory, but misses a couple facts. First, the owners of the grid are protected. For instance, in disasters in the recent past the repair costs for the grid have been passed directly to rate payers even though the gird operators should have reserved cash to pay for those repairs. It is like the owner of corner grocery charging everyone a dollar extra because he was robbed the previous evening. Likewise, many people buy electricity through resellers. The producers mostly know just sell bulk, so they are not really interested in how much electricity is used, just that enough is sold to support the plants. And the solar panel is only going to allow them to reduce capacity, and increase profits. Here is how. There is such an overcapacity of overnight electricity that resellers give it away. The generators have to provide an excess during the day, and have to charge more to cover the costs. With a bunch of residential solar panels feeding electricity back into the grid during the day when people are not home, the providers can afford to supply electricity at night when they were giving it away for free before. In my a typical use case in my area, a family might spend $300 on electricity when there is a lot of sun, and $100 when there is little sun. With solar panels, such a family might see no money going to electric company, but maybe extra electricity feeding the grid at peak times when before there might have been brownouts. The only problem is this grid, which obviously is going to have to be funded separately, maybe $20 a month for a connection.

  19. Re:Nonsense on Overly Familiar Sci-Fi · · Score: 1
    Absolutely. I really hope this was written by some adolescent who is fustrated because no publisher will accept the book, and not by someone anyone considers a real writer. First, the world has changed but no changed so much. For instance, my mother who was born a few years after the first war had little trouble assimilating late 20th and 21st century technology, or adapting that technology to her own uses. She owned a computer and a flat screen TV.

    Second, most writers still use the novel format, which is around 400 years old in it's current format. This is different from older western forms, which tended to be more spoken word, such as Beowulf You can still buy 400 year old novels such Don Quixote. I would suspect that if one were doing something new, then moving from the novel format, or at least messing with it as Kurt Vonnegut did, would be the minimal requirement.

    Third, the world has changed significantly in 500 years, but if one reads the old works we still identify the humans as humans and understand the motivation. Yes, most of us would die quickly because we did not bow down to the king, or because we helped a slave escape, or because we did not know to avoid the emptying of chamber pot, but I think the reason to read literature is to learn that we are not all that removed from our forebears.

    And fourth, in this brave new world no one can make an author throw away 50 pages of work. If one thinks they through away 50 good pages, then that is a matter of one's own integrity, nothing else. Write the book you want to write, publish it, slip it into bookstore, no one is stopping you. If one is willing to give up one's artistic integrity for greed and actually sell books, then that is something different.

    Science fiction helps us explore our relationship with the technology that allows us to amplify our creative abilities. It is different from fantasy that allows us to imagine a world where the rules are different. Imagining a different culture is not that useful because the world that is going to interact with the technology is our present culture. We do not live in a world that everyone, all of the sudden, is going to accept that their way of life is obsolete and immediately embrace new ideas.

  20. Re:Circular logic on A Case Against Further Government Spectrum Auctions · · Score: 1
    I would say a lease, say 10 years, that would long enough for infrastructure investment, but closed ended so if that others can have a regular opportunity to bid.

    I would also suggest that the spectrum has to be used and sold to the public as a competitive product. If not the lease has to be forfeited and the firm or it subsidiaries cannot big on it again for one cycle.

    Given the way the Aero case went, where the public was not allowed to access the public airwaves through leased equipment, I would like to see the TV stations be subject to the same rules. Pay for the spectrum they use. If they are going to claim that the public cannot access the public spectrum without payment, then let the broadcast stations pay as well. Honestly, they no longer serve a public interest.

  21. Re:Who cares... on Facebook Founder Presents Vision For The New Republic, Many Resign In Protest · · Score: 4, Interesting
    It matters as this is seen as some upstart with no experience taking control away from experienced men who cannot by themselves move into the 21st century. This interpretation is right and wrong

    For the past 40 years TNR has apparently been owned by a incredibly bigoted person who used the liberal credibility of the magazine to push his white supremacists ideas. Certainly these ideals are accepted in some circles, but not the target audience of the TNR. As a new generation who was not raised on overt bigotry came into being, a generation that pretty uniformly saw the assassination of MLK through history books, not newscasts, and were not raised on magazine subscriptions, the new century saw the circulation of the new republic cut in half. The white supremacy could no longer be covered with the inertia of the respect of the magazine.

    In this way we see the problems of TNR firmly rooted in old ideas and the destruction of the brand by the previous owner. If the brand is to be rehabilitated it is going to require the jettison of the previous ideas that are not consistent with far left ideology, and those who think that white supremacy is consistent with anything real in the US were free to leave with the editors.

    TNR is only going to be saved by re branding as an online source of liberal news and analysis. While the editors did not promote any kind of white supremacy, they were complicit in the past, and that may have been a problem in the present.

  22. Re:Better Teachers... on FBI Seizes Los Angeles Schools' iPad Documents · · Score: 1

    The counterpoint here is that when someone has no choice, then one ends up with a lot of unqualified people because they are it involuntarily. The reason we don't have good teachers because teaching is a trade with skills that are only acquired with experience. For instance, if you are going to be a master plumber, there is education and then two years experience. Programs like Teach For America, on the other hand, put teachers in schools but the vast majority leave the classroom before they have the experience to become a good teacher. The financial incentives also limit the retention of good teachers. Keeping a teacher more than 10 years becomes very expensive, so there is financial pressure to let teachers go in the 5-10 years frame, just when they are becoming master teachers.

  23. Re:Raining on the parade on Study: HIV Becoming Less Deadly, Less Infectious · · Score: 1

    Also, infection rates are going up, particularly young teens and early adults,particularly men. HIV may now be a less virulent disease that is chronic instead of fatal, but is still a huge short term problem. I don't know if kids think there is less risk, or parent's are more conservative and not teaching safe sex, but something is going to have to change short term if the epidemic is not going to grow.

  24. Re:I agree, except: on First Star War Episode 7 Trailer Released · · Score: 1
    So Ford evidently got injured on the Falcon set.

    Tie fighter over water was just them playing with special effects. Very gratuitous.

    Guards on the light saber was definitely the silliest addition.

  25. Re:Error: They did not use LaTeX on What Happens When Nobody Proofreads an Academic Paper · · Score: 1
    Absolutely agree. I remember when I was helping put papers together how painful Word was to get to work, and how nice it was when I finally learned LaTex. I recently had to put a piece of research together, and now of course everyone uses MS Word and one has to use it. For collaboration.

    That said the error might not have been prevented with LaTex. If it was a conversion error from different versions of word, in which a comment was exposed, that might have been prevented. If it was a human error, a comment accidently exposed in the editing process, that is easier to do with LaTex.

    In any case this likely has little to do with the process, and much to do with the technology. A typesetter would never copy marginal notes left in the draft, or would check. Also, things like twitter makes it easy and cheap for such trivial mistakes to be amplified to 15 minutes of fame.