Alice is an innovative 3D programming environment that makes it easy to create an animation for telling a story, playing an interactive game, or a video to share on the web. Alice is a teaching tool for introductory computing.
If you live in an apartment where everybody has one, you just might be in a noise storm. I rarely have to restart my 54g. I am not an expert, but my $.02 is
1. Get rid of your 2.4Ghz phone. I actually bought my neighbors a new phone because they caused me problems. 2. Latest firmware 3. At least wpa security 4. use *stumbler and pick the least used channel in your area of 1,6, and 11 5. Try CTS protection mode if you find a lot of other APs 6. Turn up your DTIM (mine is 100) if you don't do much broadcast traffic. 7. Turn up your beacon interval (mine is 1,000) to save power on the laptop (some reports of up to 14% battery savings)
Wireless is just flakey, even our pimp daddy cisco equipment at the university has the occasional hiccup.
Carmudgeon:) I _like_ the idea of persistent state. All the goods of leaving the computer on with less energy consumption (of course the fab plant for memristors will probably destroy the environment worse). There seem to be all kinds of fun ideas and paradigm shifts to explore when it comes mainstream.
Imagine your proprietary OS comes in RAM (separate from user RAM). They use the GPL2 firmware loophole to goat you like tivo did with the linux kernel. Sure you have the source, but you can't meaningfully modify the image.
The article was trash. Subjective, factless, and ill informed.
Being a manager is hard enough without gitch religious trolls twitching their flaming tech tongues in a business vacuum. Hell no wonder they don't ask you all.
I'd add a counterpoint to, "There are no bad workers, only bad managers" that says, "There are no stupid managers, only ignorant teams." Meaning my manager's are as good as the facts, information, and delivery they receive.
Why are these old religious wars; tech v. phb, oss v. pss, win v. lin, so much fun?
The problem you face is trust; not technology. Trust requires rapport. Rapport requires experience. Try to think in terms of resource impact instead of "turf" or "stupidity." Consider these options, some mentioned before...
Trust them. Tell them you are trusting them. Give them a trial timeline. Then give them honest feedback after the trial.
Bill them. Tell them the resource impact of downtimes, restorals, and performance problems. Tell them they will be charged. Build an appropriate continuity plan.
Give them a replica. Then run their releases through your own QA.
Incorporate them in the dev cycle. Give them access to dev-test. Then you move their work to prod.
Show them they can trust you with a demonstration of the damage that can be done and the techniques you as an expert use to stop that from happening.
Try not to squelch their enthusiasm to explore. It will likely mean new business opportunities for your company.
If you are really "hiding" information as its owner and not "protecting" information as its custodian, then you should consider a different business model, one where the value is placed on the data and not the service.
I am constantly reminded to look away from the monitor for for a few minutes and talk to people by this great quote from an interview of famous programmers I found on slash a few years(?) ago.
The next big thing in computer programming will be eclipsed by the next-next big thing in programming, and so on, and so on. I'm kinda tired of the endless search for the big things, because while doing it people tend to forget about the real issues: getting the fundamentals right. We need to get a whole lot better at talking with our customers, focussing on delivering value, and taking pride in what we do. A developer who can do these things can deliver great software with any tool set, and won't need to worry about tracking the fads and fashions.
- Dave Thomas, Author or The Pragmatic Programmer -
Universities _must_ be bastions of information flow. Sociologists study porn, artists and biologists look at naked people, musicians seek mp3s, and lawyers study criminal activities. I work at a university in the northern US. We have unbridled internet access because of acadamia's unique needs. Throttle bandwidth, block malicious sites, but please please please don't censor content. If I was a student or prof I would protest and maybe even file suit depending on the agreements I signed when I enrolled/hired.
The porn and gambling overlay is just stupid. How many people waste equal amounts of time on cute puppies, lip syncing asians, or shopping for deals? Porn and gambling just happen. Almost anybody's work computer has stumbled on a popup that shows Jessica Simpson or a Poker site. This is a really misleading study and snippet.
Look at the banner on the VS/TS site. One, those sexy fashion model nouveau boys are using a CRT. Two the CRT is on a glass table. Three team system is so good that they have to use pencil and paper.
I'm 29 graduated in '94 after attending high schools in NM,WY,KS, and AK. I saw it all and have to give my small sample set a B in educating me. Mainly, they were all short on money and human resources.
Blaming technology like computers or calculators is a misguided attachment to the device. The problem seems to be modern educators (parents included) approach to technology. I'm sure the pencil-and-paper camp opposed the slide rule. Plus, why is is device use always mutually exclusive? I have a yellow pad next to my pc amd a calculator in the drawer.
Seriously, most problems come down to parenting and community. It takes a village...
-- Divide schools into 2 categories.
Red Schools would be for liberal arts types. They wouldn't have marshalled time, tests, or stringent repetition. They would aprecciate meaning over syntax.
Blue Schools would be for hard science t ypes. They would have structured classes, ranked exams, and plenty of drill. They would be sticklers for syntax. They would learn alternate and emerging technologies.
Then at the end of the year.... You know it! Red vs. Blue. You'd host mental (math olympics, literature-athon), physical (sports and baseball), and spiritual (figure skating, fasting, cooking) contests between school categories. Commencement could be so much more fun!
Then, just like the stock market's indicators of bear and bull, education could be rated by red or blue. One could say, "These high tech times are bluing education trends," or, "its been a red decade for educators."
We own an african gray, 5 years, Mr. Bean. He already has a 50+ word vocabulary, can mock many of my 27,000 mp3s (with an emphasis toward trumpets/horns and bird noise techno like BT's Lullaby for Gaeia), rings the phone/oven/microwave/doorbell to get our attention, and can distinguish between a number of different objects and containers we use as a game/rewardSystem. He says hello when we come home or wake him up. He says goodbye when you get your keys to leave the house. He knows how to request that he be let out, fed, pet, and showered. He's practically a child of ours. We jokingly call him our "autistic 5 year old." My wife and I have followed and enjoyed Alex's progress for years.
So, I'm amazed at the avian capability, but surprised at humanity's clunky, late, and worshipful grasp of zero. I read, "Zero: The Biography Of A Dangerous Idea" by Charles Seife, and it took us a hell of a long time to get a simple survival idea to cross from instinct into formalized intellect.
I'm not a behavioral science PhD. Yet, How surprising is it that any animal can recognize zero in respect to color? How many yellow fruits are on that green tree? "None, next tree." How many gray mates are there on the brown branches? "None, next area." We have to think that the loser parrots who hung out at the tree with zero fruit didn't do so well in the evolution crap shoot.
Zero is not so mystically intelligent as we think. Our belly and lungs definitely understand zero. But zero came late to our number systems. Our formalization of zero might well be a mystical leap of intellect, but only history will prove if we are as smart as we think we are. There are a lot of zeros out there we aren't grasping; zero dodos left, zero ozone defense in places, and zero vaccines for modern plagues.
I look forward to the day when Alex and Mr. Bean learn to solve calculus. Then he can exclaim that the limit of e^x as x approaches infinity is infinity. Negative numbers and imaginary numbers and he'll be doing better than most undergrads.
It should be noted Mr. Bean's QWERTY typing is abominable. So his C programming is not as strong as other posts might have suggested.
Been done. He didn't analyze anything, just recorded his experience (the screenplay of which was scripted by the giants whose shoulder he stands on). The fact of the matter is proprietary and defensive hardware prevents you from exerting your OSS/GNU/HaXHiPPie powers. So buy it for what it's worth and use your time meaningfully OR hack to your hearts content with a freevo or equiv.
The point still stands that Tivo is understandable by the majority of significant others out there. I got my wife a tivo. She loves it. We control TV and have more prime time together. End of story.
Lest we forget JWZ switching to Mac. Now we just need Sun to switch to ARM and start distributing free "utility computing" lego blocks in cracker jacks.
Surely we can leverage the/. effect to influence government purchases. Somebody find the WSDL for the Chinese procurement department and post it as a story. Few people would notice the difference from a real story.
Slashdot Mirror
Alice is an innovative 3D programming environment that makes it easy to create an animation for telling a story, playing an interactive game, or a video to share on the web. Alice is a teaching tool for introductory computing.
http://www.alice.org/
Two things come from Texas...
It has two usb jacks.
If you live in an apartment where everybody has one, you just might be in a noise storm. I rarely have to restart my 54g. I am not an expert, but my $.02 is
1. Get rid of your 2.4Ghz phone. I actually bought my neighbors a new phone because they caused me problems.
2. Latest firmware
3. At least wpa security
4. use *stumbler and pick the least used channel in your area of 1,6, and 11
5. Try CTS protection mode if you find a lot of other APs
6. Turn up your DTIM (mine is 100) if you don't do much broadcast traffic.
7. Turn up your beacon interval (mine is 1,000) to save power on the laptop (some reports of up to 14% battery savings)
Wireless is just flakey, even our pimp daddy cisco equipment at the university has the occasional hiccup.
Carmudgeon :) I _like_ the idea of persistent state. All the goods of leaving the computer on with less energy consumption (of course the fab plant for memristors will probably destroy the environment worse). There seem to be all kinds of fun ideas and paradigm shifts to explore when it comes mainstream.
Imagine your proprietary OS comes in RAM (separate from user RAM). They use the GPL2 firmware loophole to goat you like tivo did with the linux kernel. Sure you have the source, but you can't meaningfully modify the image.
The article was trash. Subjective, factless, and ill informed.
Being a manager is hard enough without gitch religious trolls twitching their flaming tech tongues in a business vacuum. Hell no wonder they don't ask you all.
I'd add a counterpoint to, "There are no bad workers, only bad managers" that says, "There are no stupid managers, only ignorant teams." Meaning my manager's are as good as the facts, information, and delivery they receive.
Why are these old religious wars; tech v. phb, oss v. pss, win v. lin, so much fun?
Try not to squelch their enthusiasm to explore. It will likely mean new business opportunities for your company.
If you are really "hiding" information as its owner and not "protecting" information as its custodian, then you should consider a different business model, one where the value is placed on the data and not the service.
I am constantly reminded to look away from the monitor for for a few minutes and talk to people by this great quote from an interview of famous programmers I found on slash a few years(?) ago.
The next big thing in computer programming will be eclipsed by the next-next big thing in programming, and so on, and so on. I'm kinda tired of the endless search for the big things, because while doing it people tend to forget about the real issues: getting the fundamentals right. We need to get a whole lot better at talking with our customers, focussing on delivering value, and taking pride in what we do. A developer who can do these things can deliver great software with any tool set, and won't need to worry about tracking the fads and fashions.- Dave Thomas, Author or The Pragmatic Programmer -
It's formally called "Developer Gold Plating"
[Object Oriented Software Engineering, Bruegge & Dutoit, 2nd ed, 2004]
Now just beat the bios password, surveillance camera, and warm body in the labs smart aleck. People solve (or beat) systems, not technology.
How about quit breaking the law (no matter how asinine the law might be) and get to studying?
The whole article is based on the flawed assumption that both camps can't co-exist. I think they can.
Universities _must_ be bastions of information flow. Sociologists study porn, artists and biologists look at naked people, musicians seek mp3s, and lawyers study criminal activities. I work at a university in the northern US. We have unbridled internet access because of acadamia's unique needs. Throttle bandwidth, block malicious sites, but please please please don't censor content. If I was a student or prof I would protest and maybe even file suit depending on the agreements I signed when I enrolled/hired.
The porn and gambling overlay is just stupid. How many people waste equal amounts of time on cute puppies, lip syncing asians, or shopping for deals? Porn and gambling just happen. Almost anybody's work computer has stumbled on a popup that shows Jessica Simpson or a Poker site. This is a really misleading study and snippet.
You should not get caught selling dope or jacking cars since you can't seem to get a minimum wage job.
Talk to people and just do it. It sounds like you don't really know what you want.
That's quite the assumptive leap. Maybe iPod owners (Apple one-buttoners) are just less tech/computer savvy?
Or really push the assumptions. Maybe they are controlled by aliens or canadian politicians?
Look at the banner on the VS/TS site. One, those sexy fashion model nouveau boys are using a CRT. Two the CRT is on a glass table. Three team system is so good that they have to use pencil and paper.
Now that is some cutting edge software company.
I concur and want to scrutinize the mehodology.
I'm 29 graduated in '94 after attending high schools in NM,WY,KS, and AK. I saw it all and have to give my small sample set a B in educating me. Mainly, they were all short on money and human resources.
Blaming technology like computers or calculators is a misguided attachment to the device. The problem seems to be modern educators (parents included) approach to technology. I'm sure the pencil-and-paper camp opposed the slide rule. Plus, why is is device use always mutually exclusive? I have a yellow pad next to my pc amd a calculator in the drawer.
Seriously, most problems come down to parenting and community. It takes a village...
--
Divide schools into 2 categories.
Red Schools would be for liberal arts types. They wouldn't have marshalled time, tests, or stringent repetition. They would aprecciate meaning over syntax.
Blue Schools would be for hard science t ypes. They would have structured classes, ranked exams, and plenty of drill. They would be sticklers for syntax. They would learn alternate and emerging technologies.
Then at the end of the year.... You know it! Red vs. Blue. You'd host mental (math olympics, literature-athon), physical (sports and baseball), and spiritual (figure skating, fasting, cooking) contests between school categories. Commencement could be so much more fun!
Then, just like the stock market's indicators of bear and bull, education could be rated by red or blue. One could say, "These high tech times are bluing education trends," or, "its been a red decade for educators."
So, I'm amazed at the avian capability, but surprised at humanity's clunky, late, and worshipful grasp of zero. I read, "Zero: The Biography Of A Dangerous Idea" by Charles Seife, and it took us a hell of a long time to get a simple survival idea to cross from instinct into formalized intellect.
I'm not a behavioral science PhD. Yet, How surprising is it that any animal can recognize zero in respect to color? How many yellow fruits are on that green tree? "None, next tree." How many gray mates are there on the brown branches? "None, next area." We have to think that the loser parrots who hung out at the tree with zero fruit didn't do so well in the evolution crap shoot.
Zero is not so mystically intelligent as we think. Our belly and lungs definitely understand zero. But zero came late to our number systems. Our formalization of zero might well be a mystical leap of intellect, but only history will prove if we are as smart as we think we are. There are a lot of zeros out there we aren't grasping; zero dodos left, zero ozone defense in places, and zero vaccines for modern plagues.
I look forward to the day when Alex and Mr. Bean learn to solve calculus. Then he can exclaim that the limit of e^x as x approaches infinity is infinity. Negative numbers and imaginary numbers and he'll be doing better than most undergrads.
It should be noted Mr. Bean's QWERTY typing is abominable. So his C programming is not as strong as other posts might have suggested.
Been done. He didn't analyze anything, just recorded his experience (the screenplay of which was scripted by the giants whose shoulder he stands on). The fact of the matter is proprietary and defensive hardware prevents you from exerting your OSS/GNU/HaXHiPPie powers. So buy it for what it's worth and use your time meaningfully OR hack to your hearts content with a freevo or equiv.
The point still stands that Tivo is understandable by the majority of significant others out there. I got my wife a tivo. She loves it. We control TV and have more prime time together. End of story.
Lest we forget JWZ switching to Mac. Now we just need Sun to switch to ARM and start distributing free "utility computing" lego blocks in cracker jacks.
Your more in the realm of a voice recorder. PDA, tape, solid state or otherwise. Otherwise, carry a pencil. Otherwise carry a laptop.
What the hell? Did you think somebody was going to show you OpenOffice running on an 80's wrist band?
Come on slash...
The FCC can't mandate broadcast flag. The FCC can mandate what goes in space.
Religion can't stop suicide, but it can stop stem cell research.
I'm so damn confused.
Won't it be nice when nationalism fades?
Surely we can leverage the /. effect to influence government purchases. Somebody find the WSDL for the Chinese procurement department and post it as a story. Few people would notice the difference from a real story.