I just finished reading this book about a week ago, and I'd wholeheartedly recommend it to anyone with an interest in technology and industry, and how one profits in/from them. Andy Kessler is an amusing and engaging storyteller, and every now and then he drops the kind of wordplay that brings a smile to a geek's face. There are lots of interesting threads and ideas in there, including a surprisingly interesting account of the development of the steam engine and its impact on industry, the story of the rise of fab-less chip companies, and Kessler's own breakdown of the intellectual property economy in which we now live and which challenges the usefulness of the old industrial models. Plenty of food for thought, and it all goes down pretty easy.
I think the iPod is the right analogy. I think the combination of usability and capacity makes it a breakthrough- too many people are averse to reading from luminous, pixelated displays. But carrying around a *readable* library in your pocket is invaluable- think of grabbing your corner table at the local coffee joint, hacking away on your laptop and having a separate, readable screen that can show you any O'Reilly book ever. It would be especially great for students- not to mention the possibilities of making course texts available at a reduced price, how many times have you had to load a pile of cumbersome books into your knapsack for a study session across campus at the library?
I have a lot of interesting books sitting on my shelf at home- it'd be great to have the ability to pile even just 2 or 3 of them into my pocket and take them anywhere.
> Little kids say things to get rises out of people...
Hm, then maybe we should let them, so they get it out of their systems before they turn 16 and are made into pop idols and they get to say/do/wear things to get rises out of people, only writ much larger...
I think before the OSS community can make a decision about -how- to code a competitive Linux desktop, it needs to decide -why- to code a competitive Linux desktop. The virtues of the system clearly come from their various kinds of openness and freedom, and we need to decide which are priorities. For example, do we want to produce:
-(free-ness)A free-as-in-beer system of comparable usability and functionality to commercial systems, that levels the playing field for developing countries, small businesses, or other entities without loads of cash to spend on commercial software;
-(Freedom)A free-as-in-speech system that empowers its users with useful technology, all of which they may apply to any non-exploitative purpose they like, without subjecting them to the whims and legal departments of the corporations who own it, and which therefore poses a significant threat to any single party which might try to restrict the way people can use their own computers and the software on it;
-(Openness)A system with an open architecture, where the kernel, file system, device drivers, window manager, desktop system, file browser, print manager, etc. are all decoupled and may be substituted or can even co-exist with any number of alternatives which might suit the user's needs more precisely;
-(Technical merit) A system that is guided by technical merit above any other purpose, that in its design and implementation represents the best effort of an entire meritocratic community beholden more to engineering principles than business strategies.
These are distinct but non-exclusive goals, each of which I see supported in the OSS community. I'm not convinced that we can effectively pursue all of these at once and hope to make significant achievements toward any of them on a competitive timeframe. Because of the forking problem, an uncoordinated step forward is also a step back. Perhaps one distribution will be a landmark of usability, but to achieve that goal its designers may have compromised on extensibility and designed it very specifically for particular implementations of assorted features, or may have used non-Free software. The accomplishments of this distro would liekly be useless to an ideal system which would meet all of the above goals- at the least, applying its improvements would require duplicated effort or extra work (opening up the architecture, developing and swapping in a Free alternative to the non-Free software).
Forking is always going to be an issue where there is complete freedom, and that's fine, but then the disparate goals of the system need to be prioritized, or else a significant strategy should be developed for how they'll be pursued concurrently.
I think Havoc's post states that C/C++ is proving an inadequate solution for pursuing (Technical merit) in a way that satisfies requirements for simultaneous (Openness) and high enough usability to make (free-ness) a significant advantage over commercial alternatives. The issue, though, is that the best alternatives compromise the goal of (Freedom).
Or how about this: Just flip the coin again and again until you've flipped it an even number of times and the last two flips give different results. You can have an arbitrarily biased coin, and Heads-Tails is still just as likely as Tails-Heads to end the sequence. If the bias is extreme, though, you may be there for a long time...
(Special thanks to D.R. Karger for working that into a problem set)
They should make a flower like a dandelion that disintegrates when you touch it. All of its neighbors that aren't on top of landmines should also disintegrate, leaving behind on the ground a number indicating the number of their neighbors who are growing on top of land mines.
You may have forgotten- the PS2 has USB, firewire (er, i-Link), and PCMCIA ports... Imagine all the applications... like missile guidance, if what the Japanese government says is true...
Before I say anything else, I should say that where this particular game is concerned, I wouldn't mind if they perhaps banished it to the bowels of hell, but...
Separation of Church and State does not mean separation of God and State...there is
plenty of room for good moral leadership in gov't. The problem I have with moral leadership coming out of government (to say nothing of the officials themselves) is that it is one voice from many people but saying one thing. TO say nothing of the way politics in this country run, I think it's almost impossible for the government to accurately portray the full spectrum of values that exist in this country. To then have them dictate in a conclusive, legislative manner what children should and should not be exposed to would be to make a judgement for the many based on the values of the few.
I disagree that moral leadership has a role in government, outside of the government providing good role models. (Yeah, I'm laughing too.) I think it's the government's job to be at the other end of the tunnel- to be there to impose order when people don't receive good values from their parents, teachers, community leaders, etc. and act on their skewed morals, or lack thereof.
True, parents these days aren't really serving that purpose well, but they're not going to start if the gov't keeps picking up the slack.
To be honest, I haven't given a lot of thought to those. What strikes a chord for me about this issue is not so much that the government is making decisions for people, as that that is how the society responds- with rules, not by being more responsible parents. I think there are still parallels to draw to those issues, but there are key differences.
I was very fortunate in that my parents were very involved in my interests (and often shared them) and they were the ones to choose what was and wasn't appropriate for me. My values came from them and not from a nameless organization that sticks a letter in the corner of the screen during movie commercials. That made those values more meaningful to me.
I'm all for ratings, I would just hate for a parent to send their kid to get a video game and think, "I have nothing to worry about. They won't let him out of the store with anything inappropriate."
I think if it gets to the point where the kids are buying things their parents don't know about, or are lying to their parents, then there are bigger problems at hand than who's setting the standards.
We don't need more legal restrictions, we need more responsible parents.
Look at what happens when you let a bunch of Puritans start a country!
We have to draw the line and the Canadian govt. has done just that.
I agree with that- there are some things you just don't put in front of a kid. But what's the advantage to having the government draw the line, rather than the kid's parents?
I seem to recall some of my friends having this exchange with their parents:
"Mom, why can't I? It's a free country."
"Not while you're under my roof, it's not."
Hmmm... hadn't considered the differing values angle... But I would hope that a generation of kids would be raised as individuals and not as a group. In the US each kid tends to be a little different from the rest, and based on the Canadians I've met, that seems to be the case up there, too:) Perhaps it's appropriate for the community to set the standards, but it should be left to individuals to enforce them, because kids are different from one another.
I agree with you on the point that if I had kids, I wouldn't want them playing, but for me that doesn't warrant imposing legal restrictions on the game. I think to do so sends parents the message that someone else will determine what their kids should and shouldn't be exposed to, which I think is more the parent's responsibility. Rather than waste the time of imposing restrictions which will be enforced shakily at best, they should play up the video game rating system and get more information out there so _parents_ can make more informed decisions about what their kids see.
I really liked the point about games being a maturing medium. I agree that to help it mature further, those kinds of distinctions are important to make, but I'd rather see it done in an informative rather than restrictive way.
Anime suki ja nakereba, sono posuto yomuna yo! Sonna ni kantan da. konpyuuta kankei no posuto to anime kankei no posuto to, konpyuuta no hou ga ooinda kara, anime posuto ga areba, komaranai deshou. Baka ja naide.
Koitsu... Konpyuuta no tsukaikata ha wakarukedo yasui hito ni narikata ha zenzen wakannai...
Anime no suki hito: Lain tanoshimou!
Nihongo dekinai nara, ki ni shinaide.
Sore wo paipu ni irete suiro.
I'd say the one thing I was sorely missing during my time with AP CS was graphics. Have them do anything that draws something on the screen. If you want to be really cool, set them up with some sort of way to read in JPGs or something like that and play around with them.
Other things I would have liked to do then: -Binary Files -Games -something USEFUL
If you're running something other than *nix, you could set up REBOL (http://www.rebol.com) for them (they could do it, but it would save time if you did) or something like that so they can easily grab their email to a text file, and then use the same sort of text processing that the AP curriculum calls for, so they can filter their email in some way.
Things I have since realized should have been covered in greater detail in APCS (when I took it): -How to use an API -How to handle multiple-file programs (Make, etc.) -How to understand extend existing code
The latter would be a really good way to get them to do something ambitious like a fairly complex game without having to take too much time to cover the rest of your curriculum.
Slashdot Mirror
"The code wakes us up in the middle of the night," said Doug Perseghetti
No wonder the code couldn't be maintained anymore- it's Perseghetti code!
I just finished reading this book about a week ago, and I'd wholeheartedly recommend it to anyone with an interest in technology and industry, and how one profits in/from them. Andy Kessler is an amusing and engaging storyteller, and every now and then he drops the kind of wordplay that brings a smile to a geek's face. There are lots of interesting threads and ideas in there, including a surprisingly interesting account of the development of the steam engine and its impact on industry, the story of the rise of fab-less chip companies, and Kessler's own breakdown of the intellectual property economy in which we now live and which challenges the usefulness of the old industrial models. Plenty of food for thought, and it all goes down pretty easy.
OMG, that does NOT go with my bathroom's color scheme at ALL.
50% more distance is 125% more area, though.
I think the iPod is the right analogy. I think the combination of usability and capacity makes it a breakthrough- too many people are averse to reading from luminous, pixelated displays. But carrying around a *readable* library in your pocket is invaluable- think of grabbing your corner table at the local coffee joint, hacking away on your laptop and having a separate, readable screen that can show you any O'Reilly book ever. It would be especially great for students- not to mention the possibilities of making course texts available at a reduced price, how many times have you had to load a pile of cumbersome books into your knapsack for a study session across campus at the library?
I have a lot of interesting books sitting on my shelf at home- it'd be great to have the ability to pile even just 2 or 3 of them into my pocket and take them anywhere.
> Little kids say things to get rises out of people...
Hm, then maybe we should let them, so they get it out of their systems before they turn 16 and are made into pop idols and they get to say/do/wear things to get rises out of people, only writ much larger...
I think before the OSS community can make a decision about -how- to code a competitive Linux desktop, it needs to decide -why- to code a competitive Linux desktop. The virtues of the system clearly come from their various kinds of openness and freedom, and we need to decide which are priorities. For example, do we want to produce:
-(free-ness)A free-as-in-beer system of comparable usability and functionality to commercial systems, that levels the playing field for developing countries, small businesses, or other entities without loads of cash to spend on commercial software;
-(Freedom)A free-as-in-speech system that empowers its users with useful technology, all of which they may apply to any non-exploitative purpose they like, without subjecting them to the whims and legal departments of the corporations who own it, and which therefore poses a significant threat to any single party which might try to restrict the way people can use their own computers and the software on it;
-(Openness)A system with an open architecture, where the kernel, file system, device drivers, window manager, desktop system, file browser, print manager, etc. are all decoupled and may be substituted or can even co-exist with any number of alternatives which might suit the user's needs more precisely;
-(Technical merit) A system that is guided by technical merit above any other purpose, that in its design and implementation represents the best effort of an entire meritocratic community beholden more to engineering principles than business strategies.
These are distinct but non-exclusive goals, each of which I see supported in the OSS community. I'm not convinced that we can effectively pursue all of these at once and hope to make significant achievements toward any of them on a competitive timeframe. Because of the forking problem, an uncoordinated step forward is also a step back. Perhaps one distribution will be a landmark of usability, but to achieve that goal its designers may have compromised on extensibility and designed it very specifically for particular implementations of assorted features, or may have used non-Free software. The accomplishments of this distro would liekly be useless to an ideal system which would meet all of the above goals- at the least, applying its improvements would require duplicated effort or extra work (opening up the architecture, developing and swapping in a Free alternative to the non-Free software).
Forking is always going to be an issue where there is complete freedom, and that's fine, but then the disparate goals of the system need to be prioritized, or else a significant strategy should be developed for how they'll be pursued concurrently.
I think Havoc's post states that C/C++ is proving an inadequate solution for pursuing (Technical merit) in a way that satisfies requirements for simultaneous (Openness) and high enough usability to make (free-ness) a significant advantage over commercial alternatives. The issue, though, is that the best alternatives compromise the goal of (Freedom).
Or how about this: Just flip the coin again and again until you've flipped it an even number of times and the last two flips give different results. You can have an arbitrarily biased coin, and Heads-Tails is still just as likely as Tails-Heads to end the sequence. If the bias is extreme, though, you may be there for a long time...
(Special thanks to D.R. Karger for working that into a problem set)
They should make a flower like a dandelion that disintegrates when you touch it. All of its neighbors that aren't on top of landmines should also disintegrate, leaving behind on the ground a number indicating the number of their neighbors who are growing on top of land mines.
This sounds an awful lot like Six/Four, though I don't know what the status of that project is.
Oh, right... whoops. I got mine in Japan, and did a quick inventory of its ports before posting.
You may have forgotten- the PS2 has USB, firewire (er, i-Link), and PCMCIA ports... Imagine all the applications... like missile guidance, if what the Japanese government says is true...
Yo, so like, can this thing play MP3's?
Well, if cameras and watches do...
Before I say anything else, I should say that where this particular game is concerned, I wouldn't mind if they perhaps banished it to the bowels of hell, but...
Separation of Church and State does not mean separation of God and State...there is
plenty of room for good moral leadership in gov't.
The problem I have with moral leadership coming out of government (to say nothing of the officials themselves) is that it is one voice from many people but saying one thing. TO say nothing of the way politics in this country run, I think it's almost impossible for the government to accurately portray the full spectrum of values that exist in this country. To then have them dictate in a conclusive, legislative manner what children should and should not be exposed to would be to make a judgement for the many based on the values of the few.
I disagree that moral leadership has a role in government, outside of the government providing good role models. (Yeah, I'm laughing too.) I think it's the government's job to be at the other end of the tunnel- to be there to impose order when people don't receive good values from their parents, teachers, community leaders, etc. and act on their skewed morals, or lack thereof.
True, parents these days aren't really serving that purpose well, but they're not going to start if the gov't keeps picking up the slack.
To be honest, I haven't given a lot of thought to those. What strikes a chord for me about this issue is not so much that the government is making decisions for people, as that that is how the society responds- with rules, not by being more responsible parents. I think there are still parallels to draw to those issues, but there are key differences.
I was very fortunate in that my parents were very involved in my interests (and often shared them) and they were the ones to choose what was and wasn't appropriate for me. My values came from them and not from a nameless organization that sticks a letter in the corner of the screen during movie commercials. That made those values more meaningful to me.
I'm all for ratings, I would just hate for a parent to send their kid to get a video game and think, "I have nothing to worry about. They won't let him out of the store with anything inappropriate."
I think if it gets to the point where the kids are buying things their parents don't know about, or are lying to their parents, then there are bigger problems at hand than who's setting the standards.
We don't need more legal restrictions, we need more responsible parents.
Look at what happens when you let a bunch of Puritans start a country!
We have to draw the line and the Canadian govt. has done just that.
I agree with that- there are some things you just don't put in front of a kid. But what's the advantage to having the government draw the line, rather than the kid's parents?
I seem to recall some of my friends having this exchange with their parents:
"Mom, why can't I? It's a free country."
"Not while you're under my roof, it's not."
My thoughts exactly! There's too much that's going wrong these days that people attempt to solve with laws.
Hmmm... hadn't considered the differing values angle... But I would hope that a generation of kids would be raised as individuals and not as a group. In the US each kid tends to be a little different from the rest, and based on the Canadians I've met, that seems to be the case up there, too :) Perhaps it's appropriate for the community to set the standards, but it should be left to individuals to enforce them, because kids are different from one another.
I agree with you on the point that if I had kids, I wouldn't want them playing, but for me that doesn't warrant imposing legal restrictions on the game. I think to do so sends parents the message that someone else will determine what their kids should and shouldn't be exposed to, which I think is more the parent's responsibility. Rather than waste the time of imposing restrictions which will be enforced shakily at best, they should play up the video game rating system and get more information out there so _parents_ can make more informed decisions about what their kids see.
I really liked the point about games being a maturing medium. I agree that to help it mature further, those kinds of distinctions are important to make, but I'd rather see it done in an informative rather than restrictive way.
Oi, anime kankei suru posuto uke irerarenai hito!
Anime suki ja nakereba, sono posuto yomuna yo! Sonna ni kantan da. konpyuuta kankei no posuto to anime kankei no posuto to, konpyuuta no hou ga ooinda kara, anime posuto ga areba, komaranai deshou. Baka ja naide.
Koitsu... Konpyuuta no tsukaikata ha wakarukedo yasui hito ni narikata ha zenzen wakannai...
Anime no suki hito: Lain tanoshimou!
Nihongo dekinai nara, ki ni shinaide.
Sore wo paipu ni irete suiro.
I'd say the one thing I was sorely missing during my time with AP CS was graphics. Have them do anything that draws something on the screen. If you want to be really cool, set them up with some sort of way to read in JPGs or something like that and play around with them.
Other things I would have liked to do then:
-Binary Files
-Games
-something USEFUL
If you're running something other than *nix, you could set up REBOL (http://www.rebol.com) for them (they could do it, but it would save time if you did) or something like that so they can easily grab their email to a text file, and then use the same sort of text processing that the AP curriculum calls for, so they can filter their email in some way.
Things I have since realized should have been covered in greater detail in APCS (when I took it):
-How to use an API
-How to handle multiple-file programs (Make, etc.)
-How to understand extend existing code
The latter would be a really good way to get them to do something ambitious like a fairly complex game without having to take too much time to cover the rest of your curriculum.
Hope this helps!
I went to the first two of these and aparently they're planning on publishing the transcripts in hardcopy.