Re:For more Flatland antics...
on
Flatterland
·
· Score: 1
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0486234002/ qid=991301064/sr=1-46/ref=sc_b_46/103-1898435-2554 242
Always from Rudy Rucker. Small book, to read on the bus to school/work/home.
Well, both Computer Science and Computer Engineering require a lot of math, so I'll suggest you to take all your math courses the first semester (if that doesn't disgust you too much), so that you may discover that what you really like is math (I am a math majour, trying to spam), and talk to CS/CE majors in your school, get to know the faculty, or even discover that math can have CS applications.
That's what I did: since I had no computer as a kid and I had fun with math tricks I chose math and now I am majoring in math and I'll specialize in CS application (I hope signal processing).
I though that beta distribs and high version numbers were a Windows characteristic.
Global linux beta distribs began about 1 year ago (not sure, please correct me if the case!), but you can find a pioneer in that: RedHat produced some kind-of-betas something like 2 years ago.
I think that says a lot about the linux trend.
I can't find a distrib I completely like anymore.
... heavy... holes... sec holes... too much useless stuff... Debian!
No, that's hard to install...
At my college I experienced that. Not with the instructors, but with my classmates: "Do you know how to move a mouse?"
I took it easy, I just answered that I was trying to learn and that they should be patient with me and help me.
As a result I got a good grade with no work and I kicked their asses. Now they fear me.
Then there's the sex thing: being in a tech school where the "Daiel : Female ratio" is approaching 1:1 I got the interests of my classmates (hey before college nobody was looking at me!)
[Usually you may use the Dave:female ratio, but in order to stick to the data I put Daniel because we really hae as many Daniel as female]
I belong to that group of people who would tape the superbowl for the commercials.
I didn't, but I watched some. Well, most of them weren't that good. But they were expensive. With lots of important people.
Computers for kids: just another babysitter
on
Kids and Computers
·
· Score: 1
I was a kid without computer. I never had internet at home. But I had TV. Yes, TV is good, it keeps kids busy so that parents can not watch them. And TV is so educational.
The problem is, usually kids don't watch the history channel, they watch cartoons, and when they connect to the Internet they do not usually go to educational sites. At least I don't think so. All the small kids with a computer I know usually play or surf the web in search for information about cartoons.
I had no computer when I was a kid, so TV had to take care of me, and now I spend at least 2h per day in front of a computer (plus 3 hours a day in front of the TV, not necessarily paying attention... what a lazy life). I am lucky that TV did not ruin my studies, but I bet video games already spoiled somebody's life.
Then there's the social thing. Chatting with friends online is neat (at least I think so, I never did it before the age of 18), but I still prefer talking while walking in the woods.
Got to go out now. The sun is shining, the air is fresh, and I already had me than my daily 2 hrs of computer.
I come from a town where a lot of the teachers were hired for being in the right time with the right political ideas or for having a good daddy.
Which does not NECESSARILY mean they suck.
I remember my 3rd grade as hell. The teacher hated me so much that she told my parents I was retarded. Maybe she was partially right. I was so bored I found many EVIL ways of spending my times. But I don't think I am retarded, nor do my professors.
My only wish at that time was getting out of elementary school. But then middle school sucked too. Not because of the instructors: they all were very nice with me, but just one of them made me really work (the others at a certain point stopped giving me homework because they said there was no use in it since I could do it in front of the tv without thinking), and since I was a geek, well you know how geek life is.
Then High School, which is not mandatory in the town I lived at the time. There too just one professor made me really work: the (worst feared) physics instructor. That was so painful since by the time I got used to doing nothing, and he sometimes had non catholic methods for motivating students (like make you undreline the textbook in four different colours: blue for the definitions, green for the theorems, yellow the time-axis in the graphs, blue the space-axis, red the velocity... geez I remember all that useless stuff!), but something helped my mind in that subject instructors often neglect "learn to learn" and "how to get an A at an oral exam".
I think I abused of the last one during my freshman year. But it worked.
He also motivated imagination. Yep, in phisics problems. I never understood why or if he really meant to do that or what he wanted us to do. But he was happy when I called m,n,a,c the functions instead of "f1, f2, f3, f4".
By the way, everybody hated him while in High School. After High School some people start to appreciate him. Just some. (~5%)
All that stuff to say that bad teachers lead to evil and lazy students. At least for me.
And that bad teachers leave more memories than good ones.
Yeah, programs type "correct" html.
Ever tried to:
1) clean up generated html? That's hard work. But then you'll half the size of the document and that's so rewarding.
2) verify if the code respects w3c standards?
oh, anyway no browser respects them.
I have tried something like five linux distribs lately, and the first distrib I tried (oh that makes six) was RedHat. Why? Cuz I was a Linux-illiterate and I took the first distrib I found. A friend of mine bought it in a store.
But then I realized there was better, and that RH is the most used distrib just because it's the most popular. But let us analyze what that lead to:
1) Stocks!
=> Somebody is earning money on programmers that do stuff for free. Isn't that exploitation?
2) The will to come up with new versions and high version numbers, becaure "big" numbers are soooo cool! Hey, I know that trend... (See IE-NS number war, aka where is NS 5). The need for new version leads to new features/bugs. When first RH 7 was out well, security was relative. Dunno how it is now.
3) RH is popular => a lot of people use it => they adapt to it => they won't try anything else => Linux is directy associated with RH => RH casts a shadow on other distribs. This is bad. Hey reminds me of another OS everybody uses...
Now a PRO (I feel guilty cuz I sid bad thing about a Linux distrib):
It's easy to install and configure. And KDE is sooo user-friendly.
I use LaTeX because I have to. I mean, is there some other software that can give you such pretty and professional-looking results (exclude WYSIWYG software which produces LaTeX code)?
I invested some time in learning LaTeX and I am happy about that.
It is REALLY difficult to produce ugly documents with LaTeX, since it's relatively easy with HTML, but I do not think LaTeX should replace HTML, just because it is too hard to create simple documents. Hey, but that's a nice idea to exclude from web publishing those people whose cat has a homepage, you know what I mean... But then WYSIWYG-LaTeX-disgusting-code generators will proliferate... no, no please (fear!)! Ok I go back to the previous idea: let HTML (and other - useless or not- addons) rule the www. LaTeX is for writing stuff that will be on paper.
LaTex is a free software, that means I can use it without paying and without feeling guilty for not paying it, and the documentation is complete.
Ok I should beter go and write my philosophy paper. In LaTeX of course.
Slashdot Mirror
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0486234002/ qid=991301064/sr=1-46/ref=sc_b_46/103-1898435-2554 242
Always from Rudy Rucker. Small book, to read on the bus to school/work/home.
New version = new security holes.
Wow! Time to have some fun... just as college ends and I have all the summer to play with computers.
Well, both Computer Science and Computer Engineering require a lot of math, so I'll suggest you to take all your math courses the first semester (if that doesn't disgust you too much), so that you may discover that what you really like is math (I am a math majour, trying to spam), and talk to CS/CE majors in your school, get to know the faculty, or even discover that math can have CS applications.
That's what I did: since I had no computer as a kid and I had fun with math tricks I chose math and now I am majoring in math and I'll specialize in CS application (I hope signal processing).
I though that beta distribs and high version numbers were a Windows characteristic.
... holes ... sec holes ... too much useless stuff ... Debian!
Global linux beta distribs began about 1 year ago (not sure, please correct me if the case!), but you can find a pioneer in that: RedHat produced some kind-of-betas something like 2 years ago.
I think that says a lot about the linux trend.
I can't find a distrib I completely like anymore.
... heavy
No, that's hard to install...
Vic
At my college I experienced that. Not with the instructors, but with my classmates: "Do you know how to move a mouse?"
I took it easy, I just answered that I was trying to learn and that they should be patient with me and help me.
As a result I got a good grade with no work and I kicked their asses. Now they fear me.
Then there's the sex thing: being in a tech school where the "Daiel : Female ratio" is approaching 1:1 I got the interests of my classmates (hey before college nobody was looking at me!)
[Usually you may use the Dave:female ratio, but in order to stick to the data I put Daniel because we really hae as many Daniel as female]
There was an Iron Chef Special: the door-knocking Iron Chef.
They knocked at an "average person's door" and used the contents of his/her fridge as the theme ingredient.
Isn't that "Iron chef Leftovers"?
I belong to that group of people who would tape the superbowl for the commercials.
I didn't, but I watched some. Well, most of them weren't that good. But they were expensive. With lots of important people.
I was a kid without computer. I never had internet at home. But I had TV. Yes, TV is good, it keeps kids busy so that parents can not watch them. And TV is so educational.
The problem is, usually kids don't watch the history channel, they watch cartoons, and when they connect to the Internet they do not usually go to educational sites. At least I don't think so. All the small kids with a computer I know usually play or surf the web in search for information about cartoons.
I had no computer when I was a kid, so TV had to take care of me, and now I spend at least 2h per day in front of a computer (plus 3 hours a day in front of the TV, not necessarily paying attention... what a lazy life). I am lucky that TV did not ruin my studies, but I bet video games already spoiled somebody's life.
Then there's the social thing. Chatting with friends online is neat (at least I think so, I never did it before the age of 18), but I still prefer talking while walking in the woods.
Got to go out now. The sun is shining, the air is fresh, and I already had me than my daily 2 hrs of computer.
I come from a town where a lot of the teachers were hired for being in the right time with the right political ideas or for having a good daddy.
Which does not NECESSARILY mean they suck.
I remember my 3rd grade as hell. The teacher hated me so much that she told my parents I was retarded. Maybe she was partially right. I was so bored I found many EVIL ways of spending my times. But I don't think I am retarded, nor do my professors.
My only wish at that time was getting out of elementary school. But then middle school sucked too. Not because of the instructors: they all were very nice with me, but just one of them made me really work (the others at a certain point stopped giving me homework because they said there was no use in it since I could do it in front of the tv without thinking), and since I was a geek, well you know how geek life is.
Then High School, which is not mandatory in the town I lived at the time. There too just one professor made me really work: the (worst feared) physics instructor. That was so painful since by the time I got used to doing nothing, and he sometimes had non catholic methods for motivating students (like make you undreline the textbook in four different colours: blue for the definitions, green for the theorems, yellow the time-axis in the graphs, blue the space-axis, red the velocity... geez I remember all that useless stuff!), but something helped my mind in that subject instructors often neglect "learn to learn" and "how to get an A at an oral exam".
I think I abused of the last one during my freshman year. But it worked.
He also motivated imagination. Yep, in phisics problems. I never understood why or if he really meant to do that or what he wanted us to do. But he was happy when I called m,n,a,c the functions instead of "f1, f2, f3, f4".
By the way, everybody hated him while in High School. After High School some people start to appreciate him. Just some. (~5%)
All that stuff to say that bad teachers lead to evil and lazy students. At least for me.
And that bad teachers leave more memories than good ones.
Or good ones which get less than 5% of the popular consense
Hey that reminds me your elections.
Yeah, programs type "correct" html.
Ever tried to:
1) clean up generated html? That's hard work. But then you'll half the size of the document and that's so rewarding.
2) verify if the code respects w3c standards?
oh, anyway no browser respects them.
But .tex files are so tiny! And what do you write your PDF files with? I use LaTeX, and then dvips, ps2pdf.
I have tried something like five linux distribs lately, and the first distrib I tried (oh that makes six) was RedHat. Why? Cuz I was a Linux-illiterate and I took the first distrib I found. A friend of mine bought it in a store.
But then I realized there was better, and that RH is the most used distrib just because it's the most popular. But let us analyze what that lead to:
1) Stocks!
=> Somebody is earning money on programmers that do stuff for free. Isn't that exploitation?
2) The will to come up with new versions and high version numbers, becaure "big" numbers are soooo cool! Hey, I know that trend... (See IE-NS number war, aka where is NS 5). The need for new version leads to new features/bugs. When first RH 7 was out well, security was relative. Dunno how it is now.
3) RH is popular => a lot of people use it => they adapt to it => they won't try anything else => Linux is directy associated with RH => RH casts a shadow on other distribs. This is bad. Hey reminds me of another OS everybody uses...
Now a PRO (I feel guilty cuz I sid bad thing about a Linux distrib):
It's easy to install and configure. And KDE is sooo user-friendly.
I use LaTeX because I have to. I mean, is there some other software that can give you such pretty and professional-looking results (exclude WYSIWYG software which produces LaTeX code)?
I invested some time in learning LaTeX and I am happy about that.
It is REALLY difficult to produce ugly documents with LaTeX, since it's relatively easy with HTML, but I do not think LaTeX should replace HTML, just because it is too hard to create simple documents. Hey, but that's a nice idea to exclude from web publishing those people whose cat has a homepage, you know what I mean... But then WYSIWYG-LaTeX-disgusting-code generators will proliferate... no, no please (fear!)! Ok I go back to the previous idea: let HTML (and other - useless or not- addons) rule the www. LaTeX is for writing stuff that will be on paper.
LaTex is a free software, that means I can use it without paying and without feeling guilty for not paying it, and the documentation is complete.
Ok I should beter go and write my philosophy paper. In LaTeX of course.