Re:Robotic Battlefield?
on
Robot Wars
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
Maybe the friendly soldiers wear special "don't kill me" underwear that takes part in some sort of encrypted authentication with the killer robot dogs.
Of course the round trip for something like that would take a while... and we can't be storing all our private keys in robot dogs that could potentially be captured, nor would we necessarily want enemy soldiers depancing our POWs.
"TYPE THIS" doesn't leave much room for confusion. SO WHAT if some poor user has to type something they don't understand? They do that all day every day anyway, and they certainly don't fully comprehend the pointing and clicking.
"TYPE THIS" obscure command you will never remember doesn't do a lot fo rthe learning curve. Far more often in linux I find myself looking up the options of the same occassionaly used commands over and over again. Is it "route add default gw 192.168.0.1" or "route add gw default 192.168.0.1". With a UI, there is little if anything you need to remember because the visual cues you need to figure out how to use the program are right in front of your face.
If they flat out lie, or are unwilling to read the appropriate documentation, we don't want them.
When did running an OS become a club? Personally I couldn't care less if there were millions of lying non-documentation reading luS3rs out there. No wait I take that back, these people probably apply more ease of use pressure than any other group. Bring em on, we could really use their incessant whining.
To add to this, the How To's are usually 400 years old and completely linux generic meaning you have to follow the instructions the old fashion way... manually editting all your config files and scripts while learning the afore mentioned arcane incantations of various commands.
Just taking a glance at the Networking FAQ, under configuring a network interface, it starts off with ifconfig. There are many different user friendly tools out there which would aid a newbie or pro in configuring his network, but these never seem to make it into the how to's. Before people rip my head off, imagine if the only instructions you could find online for configuring your windows network had to be performed at a dos commandline.
I've found the people that constantly churn distros are either not skilled enough to use Linux, or don't want to put the time to learn how to do things properly, and hope that some other distro will let them get by without learning anything.
Not everyone wants to get into the guts of package management and other configuration. Is the "proper way" to read 10,000 man pages or to find a distribution where things are so easy you don't have to read nearly so much documentation. I use debian/potato as a server because of its package management (apt-get) and stability. I use RedHat as a file server/desktop because of its ease of use in hardware detection (kudzu) and it's easy to use preconfigured desktop. Doing everything out of one distribution isn't necessarily the best idea. People need to find the right choice for their ever changing needs and if that means hopping around from distro to distro for 3 years, so be it.
Average price of good 17" Monitor = $200 Average price of good 19" Monitor = $300
So the question becomes one of economics. If you want X amount of screen space and your software is going to waste an inch of it with ads (and annoy you in the process), wouldn't the utility of your 19" monitor decrease to that of a smaller monitor (a loss in value of say $100). In other words, if we are talking about a single primary application like an OS, window manager, or maybe web browser, it makes as much sense to buy something adfree as it does to use something with ads and a bigger monitor.
If an isolated application like Direct Connect has ads, well I don't have a problem with that. There's only one banner ad there. But if an application like a web browser starts out with an ad, then you get that ad and whatever ads are in the site. If a window manager has an ad, you get that ad, the ad in the web browser, and the ad in the web page... This kind of cumulative bombardment won't fly.
I never use -strong- and -em-, instead using -b- and -i-. Strong and Emphasis always seemed ambiguous to me... Is there a time when one should be used over another?
Personally, I've been meaning to learn to program my computer, but it has no keyboard (lost by previous owner). It only has a few tiny buttons on it: reset, power, turbo...
heh, I also have a universal remote which I've not been able to figure out how to use to program the vcr... which is not to say it can't be done. My 12 year old keyboard still works perfectly with my current computer. And incidentally I use my one keyboard to interact easily with all of my computers (something my remote does not easily do). Good point on the reset button though. Sometimes you practically need a pen/pencil to hit some of those. Why? Ah and the turbo button... that's another favorite of mine. I remember I used to have a turbo button on the old 286 that took it from 12 MHz to 16 MHz. What exactly was the point of that? I could turn off turbo if I wanted things to run slower?
Yes, while we're at it, let's whine about the expensive and near-impossible features we'd like to have and pretend it's an interface issue!
Sheesh, most of what I described is available in TIVO isn't it? The technology exists. It isn't unreasonably priced. TIVO uses the phone line to get the schedule... why couldn't this have been done cheaply 10 years ago with VHS in a vcr instead of a hard drive? If a device like this had come out for $400 ten years ago, it could have been $150 now.
Why not complain that it doesn't just let you watch any show that's ever been aired?
My requests are feasible and essentially already in practice. This suggestion is virtually impossible due to legal/data storage limitations.
Heh, I have no idea how to program my vcr to record a show. For me, it is much easier to program my PVR to record something. Why is this?
Well, first my vcr has no remote (lost by previous owner). Second, it has only a few tiny buttons on it: RWND, FFWD, STOP, PLAY, PWR, CHUP CHDN, REC. The names are all abreviated. My first complaint here is do the buttons need to be tiny. Second complaint, do the buttons need to have abreviated names? Is it at all obvious how you would use the above buttons to record a show at a preordained time?
Now I could go to the FCC's website, look up the VCR number, and find an outdated copy of the manual. I could spend an hour finding/reading it to figure out my problem. Alternatively I could spend 0-2 hours trying various button combinations or holding various buttons down for X seconds until I found something that worked. Who knows maybe it might be the only way to program the thing is to have the remote. Anyways, the endeavor would litterally not be worth the time and effort it would take.
How easy should programming a vcr be? Well, first the VCR ought to have the tv listings. Then you ought to be able to search those listings specifiying any number of parameters like TIME, SHOW, EPISODE, CHANNEL, etc... Of course you should be able to do this through a menu driven user interface using either the mouse or the native vcr buttons. You also ought to be able to do it from the computer in the den but that's another story.
While we're on the subject, why oh why, doing I press Volume Up on my remote control to select a menu option. There's already a billion options on the thing (one of which is called select). Would it hurt that much to have an enter button or maybe something labelled a little better?
VCRs - Digital Watches - Complex Phones are what make normal people technophopbic. With these things the only way to figure out how to do something is to read the manual. With computer programs you can usually figure it out pretty quickly just by looking at menu options. In my experience most people who ask me for help have barely tried to solve the problem on their own because they assume it will be too difficult to solve without some kind of arcane consultation. And why not? The devices we use daily have trained us to think this way.
First you have to sign up for a local carier, then you have to sign up for a long distance carrier. Then you get called four times a day as various phone companies try to get you to switch or sign up for extra features.
Then you have to remember all these strange and bizarrely complicated numbers. 10-10-811-Charlie-Tango-Niner, 1-800-Collect, dialing 1 for long distance, dialing 8 to get an outside line, etc. When I think of my good friend Ben, the first thing to pop to mind isn't an arbitrary ten digit number. Using numbers for phones is no better than listing your website by ip address sans domain.
And all that's without getting into the kinds of things people are starting to use phones for... instant messaging, checking email, listening to mp3s, things the device's interface is piss poor at dealing with.
I used to know Kauffman (not very well), he was on my swim team a few years back. In addition my father also used to work in UDRI (University of Dayton Research Institute). UDRI is not composed of rodeo clowns and this is not the first time Kauffman has received large scale recognition for one of his projects:
For me, the professor was like the annoying paperclip in Office. Everytime I had a question about something in the text, I'd raise my hand to access the class help function and would then receive an incomplete answer... In the end,I'd look up the information through a 3rd party source online.
I would venture, that to someone with a strong interest in Math, a good math book could be a strong source of information. Sort of like all my computer books look like gibberish to all my friends but make perfect sense (well except the vb one) to me.
Back in college, I learned most of my practical Math from the text and used the classes/teacher as a supplement. You learn more principles and caveats from a class, but the vast quantity of information is best gotten from books. I mean, 5 yrs after the class is over, the professor is living as a hermit on the top of some mountain in the Andes, but you still have your copy of Haliday and Resnick on your shelf.
The amount companies will pay for ads in a magazine are determined through market studies based on the effectiveness of advertising in that medium. So if lots of people were cutting out Magazine ads and replacing them with other ads, the people who make the magazines would be forced to lower the cost of their advertising after market studies indicated the effectiveness of magazine ads was diminishing. Just because it is more difficult to accurately gauge the click back of traditional advertising does not mean that consumers gaining interest due to an ad in a certain medium does not get factored in to the pricing of ads in that medium.
Without getting into semantics, both you and the parent have valid points. One expresses by patriotism by protecting the symbol of the nation, the other expresses it by burning that symbol as a deliberate expression of the rights that symbol represents.
My question: You ended your post with a quote from Voltaire, "I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." Are you saying honestly and truthfully that you are willing to defend, to the death if necessary, the right/privilege to burn a flag? Or are you indicating your willingness to defend, to the death if necessary, the poster's right to say what he said in his post sans actual flag burning. Considering that Americans are in favor of outlawing flag burning nearly 2 to 1, it may not be long before this controversial act of expression is deemed illegal.
why is it so unreasonable to ask citizens of a country to be loyal to it
The connotation of the word allegiance goes somewhat beyond legal obligation. What does it mean for you personally to pledge allegiance to someone? To me, pledging allegiance to something is an expression of absolute loyalty. To me, it means that I will support that entity in its actions regardless of what those actions may be. Anyways, perhaps it would be better for the members of our government to pledge allegiance to the citizens rather than having us pledge allegiance to our republic.
Perhaps somebody can start a site for rating local shops, so we can pool knowledge?
I'd really like to see something like that too. I've been trying to think of a way to rate shops, but can't. The underlying problem with pricewatch, is that companies have proven they will do whatever they can to scramble to the top of the list. How can we get data from random users but still prevent shops from voting themselves to the top? Maybe something like 1 vote per ip address per shop combined with a "write the number in the adjacent image" input? Even so, I'm not sure that would prevent stores from racking up votes for themselves. Any ideas?
I've seen a lot of sloppy code that could have been written much better in less than or equal the amount of time it took the author to write the sloppy code. If people would just stop and think about what they are about to write, things would go lots better.
Lack of modularization: I see procedures that are thousands of lines long when they could probably have been written faster with fewer lines if the author simply decomposed it into lesser funcitons.
Lack of Basic Documentation: Writing basic documentation for functions/procedures speeds up everyone's work and helps you clear up inconsistencies in your own design before you write code so it probably saves you time as well.
Naming variables in a logical manner: How much more time does it take to name something loop_counter than to name the same variable bob34?
More often than not, I see people site time to market as explanation for their buggy/sloppy code when they could have written it much neater in the same amount of time had they been better programmers. To me, time to market is definitely a strong factor, but so is programming discipline. Doing things quickly does not give someone a license to do things badly.
it is possible to write C++, and even C code, that does not contain memory leaks or buffer overflows
The question then is, is it possible to write C++ and even C code that will not contain memory leaks or buffer overflows after it has been modified by [me|random_recent_college_grad].
In my experience, the inability to find such a shop is the #1 reason for turning to Dell/Gateway.
You get the good components. (at a local shop)
While it is more likely you'll get good components from a trustworthy local vendor, it can be very hard to find one that is trustworthy. It's easy for me to spot the scum, but it is very hard for people who are not so tech savy like my parents. When a normal person goes computer shopping, they see some numbers like 1.4GHz, 512 MB Ram, 20 GB hard drive. They have no idea what an AGP/PCI slot is, what it means to have onboard sound/video/ethernet/modem. They don't recognize brand names like Asus and Abit. Local dealers often take advantage of this by selling you a system with cheap/slow RAM, crappy offbrand all in one motherboards, in a case with an inadequate power supply.
That said, 5 o'clock computers, best shop I know of. Won't buy anywhere else.
More to the point... there are usually courses where these subjects are supposed to be covered in depth. As an intro programming teacher, your job is to get the students to the level where they can absorb the information in those upper level courses.
Too much time in my upper division courses was wasted because some lower division classes/students didn't learn everything they were supposed to in the pre-reqs. Honestly, nothing pissed me off more than spending a week going over Discrete Math operations in course after course after course. It feels like you are paying $X thousand dollars a year to listen to a broken record.
My goal is to develop a set of resources that can be used in an introductory course that teaches students programming starting with conceptual models, as opposed to starting with syntax. (flowcharts, oo, Wirth's view, state machines, a knowledgebase, Functional languages, etc.
I sincerely hope this is not a true introductory to programming. Sounds like you are trying to teach someone to do a Triple Lutz who doesn't know how to ice skate. Most kids in intro programming classes are utterly befuddled by strange and bizzare things like pointers, procedures, and functions, and the difference between passing by reference and passing by value. Some people/programmers may go through life without ever making a flow chart or writing a single line of Scheme. If you try to teach all that stuff in an introductory course, your students heads will explode and chances are 80% of them won't understand what you were talking about for another two years, 10% never will.
Slashdot Mirror
Maybe the friendly soldiers wear special "don't kill me" underwear that takes part in some sort of encrypted authentication with the killer robot dogs.
... and we can't be storing all our private keys in robot dogs that could potentially be captured, nor would we necessarily want enemy soldiers depancing our POWs.
Of course the round trip for something like that would take a while
"TYPE THIS" doesn't leave much room for confusion. SO WHAT if some poor user has to type something they don't understand? They do that all day every day anyway, and they certainly don't fully comprehend the pointing and clicking.
"TYPE THIS" obscure command you will never remember doesn't do a lot fo rthe learning curve. Far more often in linux I find myself looking up the options of the same occassionaly used commands over and over again. Is it "route add default gw 192.168.0.1" or "route add gw default 192.168.0.1". With a UI, there is little if anything you need to remember because the visual cues you need to figure out how to use the program are right in front of your face.
If they flat out lie, or are unwilling to read the appropriate documentation, we don't want them.
When did running an OS become a club? Personally I couldn't care less if there were millions of lying non-documentation reading luS3rs out there. No wait I take that back, these people probably apply more ease of use pressure than any other group. Bring em on, we could really use their incessant whining.
To add to this, the How To's are usually 400 years old and completely linux generic meaning you have to follow the instructions the old fashion way... manually editting all your config files and scripts while learning the afore mentioned arcane incantations of various commands.
Just taking a glance at the Networking FAQ, under configuring a network interface, it starts off with ifconfig. There are many different user friendly tools out there which would aid a newbie or pro in configuring his network, but these never seem to make it into the how to's. Before people rip my head off, imagine if the only instructions you could find online for configuring your windows network had to be performed at a dos commandline.
I've found the people that constantly churn distros are either not skilled enough to use Linux, or don't want to put the time to learn how to do things properly, and hope that some other distro will let them get by without learning anything.
Not everyone wants to get into the guts of package management and other configuration. Is the "proper way" to read 10,000 man pages or to find a distribution where things are so easy you don't have to read nearly so much documentation. I use debian/potato as a server because of its package management (apt-get) and stability. I use RedHat as a file server/desktop because of its ease of use in hardware detection (kudzu) and it's easy to use preconfigured desktop. Doing everything out of one distribution isn't necessarily the best idea. People need to find the right choice for their ever changing needs and if that means hopping around from distro to distro for 3 years, so be it.
Average price of good 17" Monitor = $200
Average price of good 19" Monitor = $300
So the question becomes one of economics. If you want X amount of screen space and your software is going to waste an inch of it with ads (and annoy you in the process), wouldn't the utility of your 19" monitor decrease to that of a smaller monitor (a loss in value of say $100). In other words, if we are talking about a single primary application like an OS, window manager, or maybe web browser, it makes as much sense to buy something adfree as it does to use something with ads and a bigger monitor.
If an isolated application like Direct Connect has ads, well I don't have a problem with that. There's only one banner ad there. But if an application like a web browser starts out with an ad, then you get that ad and whatever ads are in the site. If a window manager has an ad, you get that ad, the ad in the web browser, and the ad in the web page... This kind of cumulative bombardment won't fly.
Amen, GNOME was a truly awful game... although I suppose it's possible they've made improvements over the last 5 years.
I never use -strong- and -em-, instead using -b- and -i-. Strong and Emphasis always seemed ambiguous to me... Is there a time when one should be used over another?
Personally, I've been meaning to learn to program my computer, but it has no keyboard (lost by previous owner). It only has a few tiny buttons on it: reset, power, turbo...
heh, I also have a universal remote which I've not been able to figure out how to use to program the vcr... which is not to say it can't be done. My 12 year old keyboard still works perfectly with my current computer. And incidentally I use my one keyboard to interact easily with all of my computers (something my remote does not easily do). Good point on the reset button though. Sometimes you practically need a pen/pencil to hit some of those. Why? Ah and the turbo button... that's another favorite of mine. I remember I used to have a turbo button on the old 286 that took it from 12 MHz to 16 MHz. What exactly was the point of that? I could turn off turbo if I wanted things to run slower?
Yes, while we're at it, let's whine about the expensive and near-impossible features we'd like to have and pretend it's an interface issue!
Sheesh, most of what I described is available in TIVO isn't it? The technology exists. It isn't unreasonably priced. TIVO uses the phone line to get the schedule... why couldn't this have been done cheaply 10 years ago with VHS in a vcr instead of a hard drive? If a device like this had come out for $400 ten years ago, it could have been $150 now.
Why not complain that it doesn't just let you watch any show that's ever been aired?
My requests are feasible and essentially already in practice. This suggestion is virtually impossible due to legal/data storage limitations.
Heh, I have no idea how to program my vcr to record a show. For me, it is much easier to program my PVR to record something. Why is this?
Well, first my vcr has no remote (lost by previous owner). Second, it has only a few tiny buttons on it: RWND, FFWD, STOP, PLAY, PWR, CHUP CHDN, REC. The names are all abreviated. My first complaint here is do the buttons need to be tiny. Second complaint, do the buttons need to have abreviated names? Is it at all obvious how you would use the above buttons to record a show at a preordained time?
Now I could go to the FCC's website, look up the VCR number, and find an outdated copy of the manual. I could spend an hour finding/reading it to figure out my problem. Alternatively I could spend 0-2 hours trying various button combinations or holding various buttons down for X seconds until I found something that worked. Who knows maybe it might be the only way to program the thing is to have the remote. Anyways, the endeavor would litterally not be worth the time and effort it would take.
How easy should programming a vcr be? Well, first the VCR ought to have the tv listings. Then you ought to be able to search those listings specifiying any number of parameters like TIME, SHOW, EPISODE, CHANNEL, etc... Of course you should be able to do this through a menu driven user interface using either the mouse or the native vcr buttons. You also ought to be able to do it from the computer in the den but that's another story.
While we're on the subject, why oh why, doing I press Volume Up on my remote control to select a menu option. There's already a billion options on the thing (one of which is called select). Would it hurt that much to have an enter button or maybe something labelled a little better?
VCRs - Digital Watches - Complex Phones are what make normal people technophopbic. With these things the only way to figure out how to do something is to read the manual. With computer programs you can usually figure it out pretty quickly just by looking at menu options. In my experience most people who ask me for help have barely tried to solve the problem on their own because they assume it will be too difficult to solve without some kind of arcane consultation. And why not? The devices we use daily have trained us to think this way.
Ba, phones are too complicated.
First you have to sign up for a local carier, then you have to sign up for a long distance carrier. Then you get called four times a day as various phone companies try to get you to switch or sign up for extra features.
Then you have to remember all these strange and bizarrely complicated numbers. 10-10-811-Charlie-Tango-Niner, 1-800-Collect, dialing 1 for long distance, dialing 8 to get an outside line, etc. When I think of my good friend Ben, the first thing to pop to mind isn't an arbitrary ten digit number. Using numbers for phones is no better than listing your website by ip address sans domain.
And all that's without getting into the kinds of things people are starting to use phones for... instant messaging, checking email, listening to mp3s, things the device's interface is piss poor at dealing with.
I used to know Kauffman (not very well), he was on my swim team a few years back. In addition my father also used to work in UDRI (University of Dayton Research Institute). UDRI is not composed of rodeo clowns and this is not the first time Kauffman has received large scale recognition for one of his projects:
http://www.udayton.edu/news/nr/062397.html
For me, the professor was like the annoying paperclip in Office. Everytime I had a question about something in the text, I'd raise my hand to access the class help function and would then receive an incomplete answer... In the end,I'd look up the information through a 3rd party source online.
I would venture, that to someone with a strong interest in Math, a good math book could be a strong source of information. Sort of like all my computer books look like gibberish to all my friends but make perfect sense (well except the vb one) to me.
Back in college, I learned most of my practical Math from the text and used the classes/teacher as a supplement. You learn more principles and caveats from a class, but the vast quantity of information is best gotten from books. I mean, 5 yrs after the class is over, the professor is living as a hermit on the top of some mountain in the Andes, but you still have your copy of Haliday and Resnick on your shelf.
Now if only the load balancer could also fetch the AUP of each ISP to dynamically determine which connections were permitted to host which services...
The amount companies will pay for ads in a magazine are determined through market studies based on the effectiveness of advertising in that medium. So if lots of people were cutting out Magazine ads and replacing them with other ads, the people who make the magazines would be forced to lower the cost of their advertising after market studies indicated the effectiveness of magazine ads was diminishing. Just because it is more difficult to accurately gauge the click back of traditional advertising does not mean that consumers gaining interest due to an ad in a certain medium does not get factored in to the pricing of ads in that medium.
Without getting into semantics, both you and the parent have valid points. One expresses by patriotism by protecting the symbol of the nation, the other expresses it by burning that symbol as a deliberate expression of the rights that symbol represents.
My question: You ended your post with a quote from Voltaire, "I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." Are you saying honestly and truthfully that you are willing to defend, to the death if necessary, the right/privilege to burn a flag? Or are you indicating your willingness to defend, to the death if necessary, the poster's right to say what he said in his post sans actual flag burning. Considering that Americans are in favor of outlawing flag burning nearly 2 to 1, it may not be long before this controversial act of expression is deemed illegal.
why is it so unreasonable to ask citizens of a country to be loyal to it
The connotation of the word allegiance goes somewhat beyond legal obligation. What does it mean for you personally to pledge allegiance to someone? To me, pledging allegiance to something is an expression of absolute loyalty. To me, it means that I will support that entity in its actions regardless of what those actions may be. Anyways, perhaps it would be better for the members of our government to pledge allegiance to the citizens rather than having us pledge allegiance to our republic.
Perhaps somebody can start a site for rating local shops, so we can pool knowledge?
I'd really like to see something like that too. I've been trying to think of a way to rate shops, but can't. The underlying problem with pricewatch, is that companies have proven they will do whatever they can to scramble to the top of the list. How can we get data from random users but still prevent shops from voting themselves to the top? Maybe something like 1 vote per ip address per shop combined with a "write the number in the adjacent image" input? Even so, I'm not sure that would prevent stores from racking up votes for themselves. Any ideas?
"Sloppy code" vs. market realities
I've seen a lot of sloppy code that could have been written much better in less than or equal the amount of time it took the author to write the sloppy code. If people would just stop and think about what they are about to write, things would go lots better.
Lack of modularization: I see procedures that are thousands of lines long when they could probably have been written faster with fewer lines if the author simply decomposed it into lesser funcitons.
Lack of Basic Documentation: Writing basic documentation for functions/procedures speeds up everyone's work and helps you clear up inconsistencies in your own design before you write code so it probably saves you time as well.
Naming variables in a logical manner: How much more time does it take to name something loop_counter than to name the same variable bob34?
More often than not, I see people site time to market as explanation for their buggy/sloppy code when they could have written it much neater in the same amount of time had they been better programmers. To me, time to market is definitely a strong factor, but so is programming discipline. Doing things quickly does not give someone a license to do things badly.
it is possible to write C++, and even C code, that does not contain memory leaks or buffer overflows
The question then is, is it possible to write C++ and even C code that will not contain memory leaks or buffer overflows after it has been modified by [me|random_recent_college_grad].
If you can find a local shop with good support...
In my experience, the inability to find such a shop is the #1 reason for turning to Dell/Gateway.
You get the good components. (at a local shop)
While it is more likely you'll get good components from a trustworthy local vendor, it can be very hard to find one that is trustworthy. It's easy for me to spot the scum, but it is very hard for people who are not so tech savy like my parents. When a normal person goes computer shopping, they see some numbers like 1.4GHz, 512 MB Ram, 20 GB hard drive. They have no idea what an AGP/PCI slot is, what it means to have onboard sound/video/ethernet/modem. They don't recognize brand names like Asus and Abit. Local dealers often take advantage of this by selling you a system with cheap/slow RAM, crappy offbrand all in one motherboards, in a case with an inadequate power supply.
That said, 5 o'clock computers, best shop I know of. Won't buy anywhere else.
More to the point... there are usually courses where these subjects are supposed to be covered in depth. As an intro programming teacher, your job is to get the students to the level where they can absorb the information in those upper level courses.
Too much time in my upper division courses was wasted because some lower division classes/students didn't learn everything they were supposed to in the pre-reqs. Honestly, nothing pissed me off more than spending a week going over Discrete Math operations in course after course after course. It feels like you are paying $X thousand dollars a year to listen to a broken record.
Agreed.
My goal is to develop a set of resources that can be used in an introductory course that teaches students programming starting with conceptual models, as opposed to starting with syntax. (flowcharts, oo, Wirth's view, state machines, a knowledgebase, Functional languages, etc.
I sincerely hope this is not a true introductory to programming. Sounds like you are trying to teach someone to do a Triple Lutz who doesn't know how to ice skate. Most kids in intro programming classes are utterly befuddled by strange and bizzare things like pointers, procedures, and functions, and the difference between passing by reference and passing by value. Some people/programmers may go through life without ever making a flow chart or writing a single line of Scheme. If you try to teach all that stuff in an introductory course, your students heads will explode and chances are 80% of them won't understand what you were talking about for another two years, 10% never will.
After several more years of research, scientists conclude that the higher density of a Snickers is more conducive to life than a low density Milkyway.