When people argue that we have to teach computer science to kids, it's Papert's approach we should be following. It's worth nothing to teach in cool new technologies, as grade school is not meant for work enablement. We don't need kids learning the concept of the fad-languge-of-the-week. We need kids to start learning algorithmic thinking, to understand how to translate a tangible problem into a computer program, and see a mathematically-described result. Many of us got that as kids, and I'm sure that's what sparked so many of the bright minds that pushed the free software movement from a pipe dream into a thriving reality. Programming can be fun. Programming teaches us new ways to think. It's not about marketability of our kids in 5, 10, 15 years - It's about teaching them tools to think, to create.
I have owned at least three different cheap Android phones (one with Android 2.2, one 4.1 and one 4.4) from three different cheap brands (ZTE, BLÜ and VeryKool), and they all offered a FM radio application. The second one had quite bad reception, but worked. They all used the same application (with the same silly "five favorite stations only" cap). I don't know if Android does not offer a standard API for FM radio, but it does offer a standard app at least — which, I guess, is left out or disabled by those that want/not/ to offer it.
I believe that all of the (not so many) cell phones I have bought since my first one, around 2003, have had FM radio capabilities. And it's always been one of the features I have most used. Except for the Nokia N95 I bought in 2008, my phones have always been at the cheap end of the category — I currently have a "Verykool" (yes, that's the brand) that costed under US$80, bought it because it's a dual-SIM, unlocked, decently-recent-Android, decent-camera phone. Anyway, a FM chip is probably one of the cheapest functions to implement in a phone. I never doubted that every phone should carry it, as it brings value that many of us still use. One more thing to check when my phone finally gives the ghost — hopefully a couple of years from now.
I currently have the cheapest available broadband connection I know of in Mexico — I pay MX$390 a month, which is a bit over US$20. My connection is 5MBps. Of course, we have much bigger data plans... I am just happy with 5. Can't you get such prices in the USA?
I use my mobile data very seldom, so I have little experience on this. Also, I am in Mexico, which might have somewhat inferior infrastructure — although I understand that, in major cities at least, it is very close to what you get in the USA.
I don't like mobile networking. It is quite laggier, and its quality variance (both in bandwidth and in latency) is much higher than wired Internet. Of course, it can be easily explained with many people walking into or out of my cell, with the antennas having to synchronize with all of the devices and whatnot.
Maybe it's not so annoying for people that don't use interactive sessions... But given the nature of most Web pages (and darned apps), every day interaction gets closer to "real" interactive sessions.
brute-forcing is not defeating. Building a computer that can outperform any previously existing architecture is not defeating. The Enigma still works, given its security parameter. RSA at 384 bits was enough in 1995, but is brute-forceable today - It does not mean it is broken, only that it's too weak.
Encryption (even more in such general terms, not even mentioning which algorithm or basic representing problem) has not been and cannot be "defeated" as such. It can be circumvented. And, besides some weak cryptosystems that have been proposed and found lacking after analysis (i.e. the knapsacks implementation), the only "useful" general attacks on cryptography are attacks on the implementation: Circumventing cryptography rather than breaking it.
That, or maybe the fact that the phone was left unplugged on a drawer until somebody's grandchild connected it after January 2038 just to see what is that thing.
Of course, your comment still applies: It's probably impossible to travel back to 1969 and have working wifi and NTP. But I think it's highly unlikely that by 2038 we will have Wifi networks compatible with today's standards, or NTP servers compatible with today's implementations.
Then again, today's Wifi is still compatible with what 802.11b, which I first used in the late 1990s, and NTP operates at least since 1985. If Wifi has survived for 20 years and NTP for 30, who says it won't last 22 more?
Make all those interactions more interesting by having people sitting together. Offer them some beer, wine, coffee. Maybe even food. You can also even charge some extra money for such amenities, people are known to be willing to pay for VIP treatment.
Suddenly, you will realize you are no longer stuck in the silly "you are the product" business. You are offering real goods and services.
Congratulations! You have reinvented the ages-old "restaurant/bar" concept.
Besides being too expensive, as malditaenvidia already pointed out, they are permanently exempt of the twice-yearly verification every other car must undergo.
Note, however, that they are *not* zero emissions, much less negative emissions: Except for hydroelectric plants, all other electricity generation schemes also carry some sort of pollution tag. Yes, it's usually "freed" in a much less polluted area (is that good or bad?) and I understand it's much more efficient than burning fuel in the motor. But it's not "effectively negative".
Just adding to your comment: This program has yielded great results since 1989. You can check daily graphs showing the amount of different pollutants over time. I do remember the early 1990s as being terrible. Our air nowadays is mostly-OK... But yes, over 25 years have passed since this program started, and it should be reviewed for the city's newer reality.
In Mexico City, foreigners that come to visit do feel (lightly) the lack of oxygen, even in our best days pollution-wise. It is clearly not as impressive as what I have experienced, say, in El Alto, Bolivia, at 4070m.
The problem with smog is not lower oxygen, but higher irritation due to the other components in our air. In very bad, very polluted days, eyes sting due to ozone and PM10 particles, and it's easy to develop coughing also due to PM10 and airborne sulphur compounds. Carbon monoxyde does not decrease oxygen, but it decreases our body's capability of fully using it.
I know only one person that drives a hybrid car in Mexico City. Yes, they are exempt. But the cars are just too expensive for the population to even consider.
I believe this will be the solution at some point, but nowadays, we are still quite far from it being possible.
I live in Mexico City, have lived here for most of my life.
It does help. A lot. Of course, in my opinion, at least.
Buying a second car is not so much of a problem, but for many, finding where to park it every night would be an important deal. Also, paying ~MX$500 (nowadays, roughly US$25-30) for the twice-a-year verification, plus many other recurring costs, can seem like negligible – But it's not.
I believe I am in the middle to upper-middle class socioeconomic group. Still, I make close to the minimal wage in the USA or Europe. Of course, life expenses are correspondingly way cheaper than what it is there; I am quite happy getting around US$20,000 a year; I get to travel quite a bit, and have enough financial security. But that does not make me want to have a second car. Much less (root forbid!) going everywhere by car. We do have a good, although quite overcrowded, mass transit system. Yes, I now have two babies, and we have decided many times not to go to places we would want to because it's plainly uncomfortable to move with all of the needed gear — but that would be the case regardless of the way to get there.
Every car that complies with the standards now gets a "no restrictions" hologram ("0"). Depending on the emissions level, you might get "0", "1" or "2". A newer car with terrible motor conditions will surely get a higher hologram (which means, more restrictions). I sold last year my 12-year-old car, which was able to get a "0" as I kept it in good shape.
What we have now is a temporary "flattening" of conditions; we will all have effectively-"2" restrictions, as the air was too polluted for three days in a row. And, yes, the program is up for some checking. Things have changed since it was introduced back in 1989.
I do believe more circulation restrictions will be good. Higher prices for the privilege of owning a car, or higher gas prices for personal vehicles, will help as well. Of course, the extra income the city/federal government will get from that should go into improving our mass-transit systems.
Solaris and AIX were unfriendly as hell to use without the GNU tools. GNU accomodated a much freer form set of arguments (i.e. being able to say "ls/foo/bar -l" as well as "ls -l/foo/bar"), were usually better suited for interactive use (i.e. bash command history, command line editing via beats anything I've seen in "their" camp).
I was not a GNU user by 1991 (my first experience was with the MKS toolkit for MS-DOS around 1993, until switching to Linux in 1996), but I administered my fair share of non-GNUified Unix boxes.
All of the recent "open carry" debate are just nonsense to most of us earthlings. Yes, I live in what is perceived abroad as a violent society (Mexico). But no, I have never seen civilians "casually" owning or carrying a gun. Only people in law enforcement.
Of course, were I to be subject to a robbery (note: I have only been robbed once in my 40 years of living in Mexico City, and I tend not to take too much precautions on which neighbourhoods I cross. And it was by two guys, one of them armed with just a knife), owning a gun and carrying it would do absolutely no good: By just drawing it, I'd very much be hurt or killed. And most probably, anyway, my precious gun would be taken away.
Guns should be strictly controlled. Yes, our government fails in this strictness, and there's a lot of gun overpopulation in the wrong hands (thanks, oh dear neighbours across the border!). But still, not having so many guns in the street make us much safer.
I understand the end of the comment perfectly in such a light. America is America's biggest problem — Read it several possible ways:
The USA is most of Spanish-speaking countries biggest problem (because it creates a drug market and requires it to be stomped over at its production/transit places; because it imposes puppet, nondemocratic governments; because it distorts local economies; a very long etc.)
The countries in our continent are the USA's biggest problem (because of migration, lets empower Trump to fight those illegals; because of cheap hand labor, the wages are kept artificially low; because of a very long etc.)
You say, original project priorities? As a Debian Developer, I can assure you, there are no original project priorities to speak of. Each one of us has their own priorities. The nice and happy thing is that many of those priorities have huge areas of overlap, so our common prioritarial prerequisites are a *very* large area. Add more, more people to the mix — Everybody in this boat needs a stable, reliable, fast, friendly operating system, with a decent package management software that can empower each of us to scratch our personal itches. Very few people have my very specific itch, and that's the reason some of my packages are maintained by myself only. If you were to see my work environment, you will recognize this particular developer is nowhere near the "shiny things" or "bloated environments", and my environment is quite typical to others I've seen at DebConfs. Of course, I also see lots of GNOMEs, and there's no reason to deny an important reason for GNOME to be default is because many people like it and care for it enough to keep it in good shape.
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When people argue that we have to teach computer science to kids, it's Papert's approach we should be following. It's worth nothing to teach in cool new technologies, as grade school is not meant for work enablement. We don't need kids learning the concept of the fad-languge-of-the-week. We need kids to start learning algorithmic thinking, to understand how to translate a tangible problem into a computer program, and see a mathematically-described result. Many of us got that as kids, and I'm sure that's what sparked so many of the bright minds that pushed the free software movement from a pipe dream into a thriving reality. Programming can be fun. Programming teaches us new ways to think. It's not about marketability of our kids in 5, 10, 15 years - It's about teaching them tools to think, to create.
Thanks for all of your great work, Dr. Papert.
That, upon reading "minicomputer", thinks about things shaped (and sized) more or less like a PDP11, and never anything smaller than a microcomputer?
Maybe the Raspberry-like form-factor should be called a "picocomputer"?
I have owned at least three different cheap Android phones (one with Android 2.2, one 4.1 and one 4.4) from three different cheap brands (ZTE, BLÜ and VeryKool), and they all offered a FM radio application. The second one had quite bad reception, but worked. They all used the same application (with the same silly "five favorite stations only" cap). /not/ to offer it.
I don't know if Android does not offer a standard API for FM radio, but it does offer a standard app at least — which, I guess, is left out or disabled by those that want
I believe that all of the (not so many) cell phones I have bought since my first one, around 2003, have had FM radio capabilities. And it's always been one of the features I have most used. Except for the Nokia N95 I bought in 2008, my phones have always been at the cheap end of the category — I currently have a "Verykool" (yes, that's the brand) that costed under US$80, bought it because it's a dual-SIM, unlocked, decently-recent-Android, decent-camera phone.
Anyway, a FM chip is probably one of the cheapest functions to implement in a phone. I never doubted that every phone should carry it, as it brings value that many of us still use. One more thing to check when my phone finally gives the ghost — hopefully a couple of years from now.
I currently have the cheapest available broadband connection I know of in Mexico — I pay MX$390 a month, which is a bit over US$20. My connection is 5MBps. Of course, we have much bigger data plans... I am just happy with 5. Can't you get such prices in the USA?
I use my mobile data very seldom, so I have little experience on this. Also, I am in Mexico, which might have somewhat inferior infrastructure — although I understand that, in major cities at least, it is very close to what you get in the USA.
I don't like mobile networking. It is quite laggier, and its quality variance (both in bandwidth and in latency) is much higher than wired Internet. Of course, it can be easily explained with many people walking into or out of my cell, with the antennas having to synchronize with all of the devices and whatnot.
Maybe it's not so annoying for people that don't use interactive sessions... But given the nature of most Web pages (and darned apps), every day interaction gets closer to "real" interactive sessions.
That's surely not in the Netherlands.
brute-forcing is not defeating. Building a computer that can outperform any previously existing architecture is not defeating. The Enigma still works, given its security parameter. RSA at 384 bits was enough in 1995, but is brute-forceable today - It does not mean it is broken, only that it's too weak.
Encryption (even more in such general terms, not even mentioning which algorithm or basic representing problem) has not been and cannot be "defeated" as such. It can be circumvented. And, besides some weak cryptosystems that have been proposed and found lacking after analysis (i.e. the knapsacks implementation), the only "useful" general attacks on cryptography are attacks on the implementation: Circumventing cryptography rather than breaking it.
That, or maybe the fact that the phone was left unplugged on a drawer until somebody's grandchild connected it after January 2038 just to see what is that thing.
Of course, your comment still applies: It's probably impossible to travel back to 1969 and have working wifi and NTP. But I think it's highly unlikely that by 2038 we will have Wifi networks compatible with today's standards, or NTP servers compatible with today's implementations.
Then again, today's Wifi is still compatible with what 802.11b, which I first used in the late 1990s, and NTP operates at least since 1985. If Wifi has survived for 20 years and NTP for 30, who says it won't last 22 more?
Make all those interactions more interesting by having people sitting together. Offer them some beer, wine, coffee. Maybe even food. You can also even charge some extra money for such amenities, people are known to be willing to pay for VIP treatment.
Suddenly, you will realize you are no longer stuck in the silly "you are the product" business. You are offering real goods and services.
Congratulations! You have reinvented the ages-old "restaurant/bar" concept.
If you believe sex dolls talk to you, I strongly advise you to get professional help from a psychiatrist.
Much preferably, one whose chemistry is carbon-based.
Besides being too expensive, as malditaenvidia already pointed out, they are permanently exempt of the twice-yearly verification every other car must undergo.
Note, however, that they are *not* zero emissions, much less negative emissions: Except for hydroelectric plants, all other electricity generation schemes also carry some sort of pollution tag. Yes, it's usually "freed" in a much less polluted area (is that good or bad?) and I understand it's much more efficient than burning fuel in the motor. But it's not "effectively negative".
Nice to read you, old friend! ;-)
Just adding to your comment: This program has yielded great results since 1989. You can check daily graphs showing the amount of different pollutants over time. I do remember the early 1990s as being terrible. Our air nowadays is mostly-OK... But yes, over 25 years have passed since this program started, and it should be reviewed for the city's newer reality.
FWIW, Quito sits at 2700m above sea level, and Mexico City at 2240 — Both cities are in valleys, and the suburbs rise quite higher than their "downtowns" (although Quito is a much smaller, steeper valley). As a comparison, Beijing is 43m above sea level. A completely different picture.
In Mexico City, foreigners that come to visit do feel (lightly) the lack of oxygen, even in our best days pollution-wise. It is clearly not as impressive as what I have experienced, say, in El Alto, Bolivia, at 4070m.
The problem with smog is not lower oxygen, but higher irritation due to the other components in our air. In very bad, very polluted days, eyes sting due to ozone and PM10 particles, and it's easy to develop coughing also due to PM10 and airborne sulphur compounds. Carbon monoxyde does not decrease oxygen, but it decreases our body's capability of fully using it.
I know only one person that drives a hybrid car in Mexico City. Yes, they are exempt. But the cars are just too expensive for the population to even consider.
I believe this will be the solution at some point, but nowadays, we are still quite far from it being possible.
I live in Mexico City, have lived here for most of my life.
It does help. A lot. Of course, in my opinion, at least.
Buying a second car is not so much of a problem, but for many, finding where to park it every night would be an important deal. Also, paying ~MX$500 (nowadays, roughly US$25-30) for the twice-a-year verification, plus many other recurring costs, can seem like negligible – But it's not.
I believe I am in the middle to upper-middle class socioeconomic group. Still, I make close to the minimal wage in the USA or Europe. Of course, life expenses are correspondingly way cheaper than what it is there; I am quite happy getting around US$20,000 a year; I get to travel quite a bit, and have enough financial security. But that does not make me want to have a second car. Much less (root forbid!) going everywhere by car. We do have a good, although quite overcrowded, mass transit system. Yes, I now have two babies, and we have decided many times not to go to places we would want to because it's plainly uncomfortable to move with all of the needed gear — but that would be the case regardless of the way to get there.
You are missing some bits.
Every car that complies with the standards now gets a "no restrictions" hologram ("0"). Depending on the emissions level, you might get "0", "1" or "2". A newer car with terrible motor conditions will surely get a higher hologram (which means, more restrictions). I sold last year my 12-year-old car, which was able to get a "0" as I kept it in good shape.
What we have now is a temporary "flattening" of conditions; we will all have effectively-"2" restrictions, as the air was too polluted for three days in a row. And, yes, the program is up for some checking. Things have changed since it was introduced back in 1989.
I do believe more circulation restrictions will be good. Higher prices for the privilege of owning a car, or higher gas prices for personal vehicles, will help as well. Of course, the extra income the city/federal government will get from that should go into improving our mass-transit systems.
Solaris and AIX were unfriendly as hell to use without the GNU tools. GNU accomodated a much freer form set of arguments (i.e. being able to say "ls /foo/bar -l" as well as "ls -l /foo/bar"), were usually better suited for interactive use (i.e. bash command history, command line editing via beats anything I've seen in "their" camp).
I was not a GNU user by 1991 (my first experience was with the MKS toolkit for MS-DOS around 1993, until switching to Linux in 1996), but I administered my fair share of non-GNUified Unix boxes.
If you like guns for sports, great! Get a license and practice it. Remember to unload your weapon before carrying it in a decent enclosure.
But please tell me, what is the percentage of the population that has competitive uses for guns?
Repeat the same argument for hunting, of course. What are the odds of you being a hunter (for food) if you live in downtown Chicago?
All of the recent "open carry" debate are just nonsense to most of us earthlings. Yes, I live in what is perceived abroad as a violent society (Mexico). But no, I have never seen civilians "casually" owning or carrying a gun. Only people in law enforcement.
Of course, were I to be subject to a robbery (note: I have only been robbed once in my 40 years of living in Mexico City, and I tend not to take too much precautions on which neighbourhoods I cross. And it was by two guys, one of them armed with just a knife), owning a gun and carrying it would do absolutely no good: By just drawing it, I'd very much be hurt or killed. And most probably, anyway, my precious gun would be taken away.
Guns should be strictly controlled. Yes, our government fails in this strictness, and there's a lot of gun overpopulation in the wrong hands (thanks, oh dear neighbours across the border!). But still, not having so many guns in the street make us much safer.
Approximate scripting...
$ python -c 'print 22/7'; ruby -e 'puts 22/7';echo $(( 22/7 ))
3
3
3
I understand the end of the comment perfectly in such a light. America is America's biggest problem — Read it several possible ways:
The USA is most of Spanish-speaking countries biggest problem (because it creates a drug market and requires it to be stomped over at its production/transit places; because it imposes puppet, nondemocratic governments; because it distorts local economies; a very long etc.)
The countries in our continent are the USA's biggest problem (because of migration, lets empower Trump to fight those illegals; because of cheap hand labor, the wages are kept artificially low; because of a very long etc.)
Polysemy rules!
You say, original project priorities?
As a Debian Developer, I can assure you, there are no original project priorities to speak of.
Each one of us has their own priorities. The nice and happy thing is that many of those priorities have huge areas of overlap, so our common prioritarial prerequisites are a *very* large area.
Add more, more people to the mix — Everybody in this boat needs a stable, reliable, fast, friendly operating system, with a decent package management software that can empower each of us to scratch our personal itches.
Very few people have my very specific itch, and that's the reason some of my packages are maintained by myself only.
If you were to see my work environment, you will recognize this particular developer is nowhere near the "shiny things" or "bloated environments", and my environment is quite typical to others I've seen at DebConfs. Of course, I also see lots of GNOMEs, and there's no reason to deny an important reason for GNOME to be default is because many people like it and care for it enough to keep it in good shape.
Every 3 or 4 months