I may be considered a socialist since I strongly support public run programs for the benefit of the general populace, but I do not support the idea of government acting as a babysitter. I understand your thoughts, but disagree that someone should be making the choice for those who refuse.
The government is not the one to be involved in enforced censorship of the people regardless of the justification... because in the end any censorship is promoted under the guise of 'for the good of the people'. What is needed is enforcement, putting the onus of parenting on the parent, holding them responsible (as well as the child, correction needs to apply to both) for the actions of any minors that they are the legal guardian for. But this should be attacked from the perspective of legal responsibility, not some misguided notion of preventative censorship in the belief that trying to restrict so-called 'dangerous' materials is going to have any effect.
On a slightly different note, do not mistake my condemnation of censorship for the protection of the people as willingness to accept the existence of child pornography. Child pornography is wrong, illegal, and should stay that way. The reason though, is not *because* it is pornography, but the fact that it is evidence of exploitation of children. Exploitation is *very* different than censorship, and deserves to be condemned. Child pornography itself are goods acquired through criminal action and hence, illegal.
Yes, and that's *your* job, to teach *your* child the difference between what's real and what isn't, and to decide what is appropriate for your child.
I don't need you to tell me what *my* child can and cannot handle, whether they are mature enough for certain content based on a value denoting the number of times they've made the circuit around the sun. Regardless of my child's age, I will make a value determination as to whether I think they should be exposed to something and regulations can be damned.
Guidelines, and suggestions are good... they can be a part of helping my decisions as to whether or not something is suitable. Regulation is not.
...in my experience, I've only ever had trouble with bosses in large companies. Be it absentee bosses who would rather leave you to your own devices without any sort of direction, or micromanagers who prefer to "drop-by" 20 times a day.
Generally at small companies you can be on much better terms with everyone, be friendly with everyone you work with and you can resolve issues instead of ignoring them or hiding from them like this article suggests. I've worked for a number of small companies, and have been fortunate that each of them has been a wonderful experience, and the people I worked with have all been team-focused and aware that if a team isn't working well together, that's going to be a great hinderance to the success of the business.
On the other hand, there's always a feeling of inertia around large companies. That your co-workers are just the people you run into at work and shouldn't be anything else. A bad boss can get away with how they are because they only worry about how their superiors see them, and then could always fire you on a whim if they wanted should they feel threatened.
Also, unambiguious characters make reading what you've written much easier. Being a math major, most of my pages of notes have letters and numbers interspersed where being able to distinguish 2, Z, 7, S, 5, T become vital, and the easier the better. So very quickly I learned how to cross my Z's and 7's and print clearly, quickly.
Then stick with using GPL v2. But just because it is adequate for your needs, doesn't mean that it neccisarily addresses the concerns of everyone who chooses to use it. Hence the rewrite.
Would you rather they played with weapons and armies? For all of recorded history we tried that, and all it got us was to the brink of destruction.
Open dialog is something new, we've only been really trying it since the Soviet Union fell. Give it time for us to learn how to get better at it and do it right before dismissing it.
That is the whole point, is to know more. I'm not a theoretical physicist (although I know someone who is and is working on quantum theory) so I can't tell you what will happen or what we will try when it confirms/fails the test, but either way they will keep working either on an improvement or on something else.
I'm in the same boat, at one time I thought it would be inevitable that to find a good paying job as a software developer I would have to move to the US. But, things changed and I have a great job with good enough pay here in Canada, and I haven't even visited the states since April 2001 even though I had an Aunt & Uncle just living 4 hours down the road in Detroit.
As well, another aunt & uncle got kicked out of the US when the government refused to renew my uncle's visa despite possessing a pretty unique skill, being steadily employed by the same company for 30 years, and having lived in the states for at least the last 5. Now he has to travel from Canada to the US every week or two for work.
At one time my parents used to drive to Grand Forks North Dakota once a year to go shopping, now I wouldn't set foot in the country unless I was passing through to Mexico or the Bahamas, or on a business trip. The uncle who is American, has been interrogated on his way back into the US on at least one occasion, worst I've ever had going through customs in my own country is being asked if I had any foreign fruits or veggies in my bag.
Ok, and what is Joe Blow American going to do when he can't buy his latest model Nokia cell phone over the internet because the DNS is misrouted? He is going to complain (who wouldn't?), but how are you going to complain to Nokia if they are based in Europe but you can't even send them an email?
Easy, you complain to everyone else, and very soon the media will catch wind of this and blow it into gigantic proportions, much larger than the issue deserves to be. And then what? The Democrats will jump all over the issue, because it is an excuse to bash the Republicans and paint the issue as a failure on their part. And that will only add more fuel to the fire to 'just fix it'.
Governments are built on different values, some on providing social services for their people. The US lives and dies by the dollar, and will follow the money. If the EU instigates the breakup, they already know what is in store for their citizens when things stop working, and you'd better believe that they won't be the first to give in. They are ready and prepared to do it come what may.
What is going to happen when the EU and a large number of countries splinter the Internet because the US refuses to release sole control of the primary DNS servers?
Sure, customers in those countries may be upset over not being able to access their favourite US-based websites, but how upset do you think the large US multinational corporations are going to be when the lose their entire overseas web customer base overnight?
I think the EU is playing it smart, betting on the fact that the buck has such powerful sway in the US that if the government doesn't agree, they will be made to in very short order when the large US corporations start pressing to get their customers back.
Not necessarily, in fact I would say if it is your job to argue a specific side of an argument, conviction in the truth of your argument is the *worst* way to do it. An unerring belief in the truth of your argument (or the argument of your opponent) is a hinderance to making a case because it blinds you.
I'm pretty sure both of them will be extremely well versed in both sides of the case, and understand the other's arguments and why the other side is making their case. Understanding your opponent is key to defeating them, but understanding also tends to lead to respect.
I would be surprised if such discussions occur to any extent more than a friendly chat over the merits of the case and precedent that was set.
You don't have much to worry about, because technically the government isn't going to turn on you. They aren't going to suddenly seize dictatorship power where everyone is a slave to their whims, they don't need to. They already have power, and all they need to do to keep it is retain public opinion which is much easier to do by presenting the voters with a threat, than by pleasing them.
Take a really close look at the circumstances of Hitler's rise to power. He promised his people an end to unemployment and poverty by giving them someone to blame that was accessible other than themselves. Now truthfully, the people of Germany were really hard off due to sanctions imposed after WWI, but he got them out of that by blaming jews, gypsies, and blacks as the cause of aryan suffering.
So you know whats going to happen? The government isn't going to become a rabid dog and bite the hand that feeds it. It's going to present the American public with a threat, something definable yet vague (terrorists) to blame for their problems. They will play on the public's fear (safety) to impose greater control and freedom for use of military resources to protect the public. Of course this threat must have a public face that is definable (middle-eastern descent) so in the interests of safety the government will start detaining people in the general populace that match this description and force them to prove their innocence and american heritage with papers, which if not presented completely and in order they will be detained without charge until they are eventually released (receiving the message) or deported (Maher Arar, Canadian deported to Syria).
Then the government will see that a vague internal threat is not enough, and will look outside its borders for someone that their people can turn their anger and fear against. They will present a chosen target to their people as sympathizers and harborours of the threat (Iraq, terrorists) previously presented to their people, and will use that as a platform from which to begin a campaign of preemptive attacks and conquests. They will then present this to their allies as a necessary and just course of action, that they are doing this to protect their people. And that any nation that is not allied with them, is supporting the enemy.
I look at it and I laugh, because it is history repeating itself once more, a different location, a different language, a different context and a different stylistic flair... but it is Rome and it is Germany all over again. (Interesting parallel btw between Britain and Australia as supporters of the US, and Italy and Japan as supporters of Germany)
And I just know that I will be one of those people labelled as an enemy sympathizer for expressing my opinion that these people aren't the cause of the problem, which is of course contrary to the opinion of the government.
Please don't even suggest it... the last thing we need is security checks on the morning commute. The one thing I absolutely loved about living in Toronto and working downtown is that I could go to the subway station, hop on a train in less than 5 minutes of getting there, and just hop off again right where I needed to be.
I wish planes were more like that, drop your bags onto a conveyor at the gate as you are getting your boarding pass checked, hop on the plane and just go. I think there is way too much stigma attached to security at airports... but I guess the potential damage is higher. A bomb on a plane vs a subway is the difference between ~300 people plus wherever you happen to crash vs (usually) a couple dozen, where the rest of the cars can be evacuated.
It might have less to do with environment and more to do with the personality or attitude of the person. I cannot recall a single incident where my parents blamed me unjustly, and my home was always a peaceful, quiet, and safe home and I was only ever smacked once (and trust me, I deserved it).
But even still, I am aware that I react the same way to 3 things, guilt, embarrasement, and unfounded accusation.
I agree that it is fear based, but not out of any punishment I might receive. When I've been guilty I've always accepted my punishment readily (be it a grounding, or washing desks after school, or a fine for illegal parking), but the fear for me has always been how others view me. In many cases I'm less concerned when I am actually guilty because I know I've brought it on myself, than if I've been unjustly accused because I know I didn't.
"a flaw in Amazon that lets me download the entirety of the book for free. So the sale is lost,"
That is a false generalization (aren't all of them?). Presuming that downloading the entirety of a book will cause a lost sale ignores the fact that many people who read books place a higher value in a physical copy than an electronic one because it has many advantages that electronic copy does not.
I will not get into a long dissertation on the flaws of electronic books and why providing electronic copies for free often improve sales for an author, but I will state a counter example to your generalization thus proving it false. Last month I bought a complete copy of Dante's Divine Comedy despite having read the entire work through Project Gutenberg so that I could read it and enjoy it in a format that I much prefer. I have also done the same with Dostoyevsky's Crime and Punishment. I also downloaded (illegally) copies of a number of Margaret Weiss and Tracy Hickeman's Dragonlance novels and read them to determine whether it was something I wanted to read or not. I now own every Dragonlance novel that the two of them produced in paperback as well as the complete Death Gate Cycle.
You cannot define an infinitely repeating wave pattern with a polynomial algebraic equation. So it's not going to happen. Polynomial equations can only approximate certain trig functions like sin and cos up to a certain point before the higher order terms become dominant and the function shoots off to infinity. This is the whole point of computational curve approximations, is that the approximations are only *so* good and to be truely accurate you require either an infinite number of terms, or an infinite number of equations each defined over a small period.
Trig functions will not go away because they can define a very specific type of repeating function over an infinite domain. At best resorting to algebraic approximations will allow for calculation of simple everyday problems that an average person would have to do.
They teach Java and C* (C/C++/C#/...) because it's current, it's relavent, and we have to start somewhere. The primary focus is on education, principles, and the like but not everything can be done in pseudo code. At some point you do have to implement it, and it might as well be in a language thats current.
Really, in university (I just graduated recently) they don't teach you very much in the way of languages. There was 1 first-year class that taught the principles of OO languages and taught Java at the same time. 1 second-year class that taught advanced data structures and did C++ at the same time. Everything else I ever had to do in terms of practical work was "You are using this language (Java, C++, C, Assembly, etc.) and this course will teach you about (embedded programming, algorithms, graphics theory, etc).
There is the expectation that you will pick up and learn what you need to accomplish these goals on your own, because that is part of the teaching. They are teaching you how to learn new languages, how to pick up these things so that you can apply what you are learning in the classroom with whatever technology is at hand.
An additional note, you can't expect every student to come to you with the skills or even basic knowledge about how to program. When I was in university I noticed two distinct classes of students, the first were those who were there because it is their passion. They are the ones who are really interested, and are learning because they want to. The second group are those who don't have any particular knowledge or passion for computers, and are at university to learn them for a variety of reasons. Money, Steady job, and often, to bring those skills back to their home country.
In conclusion, you have to make sure the students have a basic grounding, they know how to construct basic programs in SOME language or other so that they have the capability to understand the abstract theory and apply it. There is a reason we teach addition, multiplication, and division before giving students differential calculus theory. If you taught them how to integrate and say 'oh don't worry, we'll train you in basic mathematics eventually', they'd never get anywhere.
Just don't take it out on the highway. I'm a Canadian, a couple weeks ago saw a guy in a smartcar out on the highway bringing something (it was a largish flat piece of wood, no idea what for) that in order to fit was sticking out of his sunroof like a sail. He was barely pushing 75 klicks in a 100 zone and had people lined up behind him.
Great for city driving, to date it looks like the ultimate commuter vehicle, just don't take them on the expressway (well, with the exception of the 401 in Toronto... its a parking lot.)
Re:Bogged down by sample code??
on
Spring Into PHP 5
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· Score: 2, Funny
I don't know... I rather enjoy learning by counter-example.
Though I imagine for a beginner those nasty regexs of invalid code could bog you down a bit...
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I may be considered a socialist since I strongly support public run programs for the benefit of the general populace, but I do not support the idea of government acting as a babysitter. I understand your thoughts, but disagree that someone should be making the choice for those who refuse.
The government is not the one to be involved in enforced censorship of the people regardless of the justification... because in the end any censorship is promoted under the guise of 'for the good of the people'. What is needed is enforcement, putting the onus of parenting on the parent, holding them responsible (as well as the child, correction needs to apply to both) for the actions of any minors that they are the legal guardian for. But this should be attacked from the perspective of legal responsibility, not some misguided notion of preventative censorship in the belief that trying to restrict so-called 'dangerous' materials is going to have any effect.
On a slightly different note, do not mistake my condemnation of censorship for the protection of the people as willingness to accept the existence of child pornography. Child pornography is wrong, illegal, and should stay that way. The reason though, is not *because* it is pornography, but the fact that it is evidence of exploitation of children. Exploitation is *very* different than censorship, and deserves to be condemned. Child pornography itself are goods acquired through criminal action and hence, illegal.
Yes, and that's *your* job, to teach *your* child the difference between what's real and what isn't, and to decide what is appropriate for your child.
I don't need you to tell me what *my* child can and cannot handle, whether they are mature enough for certain content based on a value denoting the number of times they've made the circuit around the sun. Regardless of my child's age, I will make a value determination as to whether I think they should be exposed to something and regulations can be damned.
Guidelines, and suggestions are good... they can be a part of helping my decisions as to whether or not something is suitable. Regulation is not.
Mine had 7.
Liberal
Conservative
NDP
Green
Progressive Canadian (PCP)
Canadian Action (CAP)
and 1 Independant.
...in my experience, I've only ever had trouble with bosses in large companies. Be it absentee bosses who would rather leave you to your own devices without any sort of direction, or micromanagers who prefer to "drop-by" 20 times a day.
Generally at small companies you can be on much better terms with everyone, be friendly with everyone you work with and you can resolve issues instead of ignoring them or hiding from them like this article suggests. I've worked for a number of small companies, and have been fortunate that each of them has been a wonderful experience, and the people I worked with have all been team-focused and aware that if a team isn't working well together, that's going to be a great hinderance to the success of the business.
On the other hand, there's always a feeling of inertia around large companies. That your co-workers are just the people you run into at work and shouldn't be anything else. A bad boss can get away with how they are because they only worry about how their superiors see them, and then could always fire you on a whim if they wanted should they feel threatened.
Yes, but teaching people to think for themselves is only a dangerous idea to those who would seek to control the thoughts of others.
Also, unambiguious characters make reading what you've written much easier. Being a math major, most of my pages of notes have letters and numbers interspersed where being able to distinguish 2, Z, 7, S, 5, T become vital, and the easier the better. So very quickly I learned how to cross my Z's and 7's and print clearly, quickly.
Take a closer look, the story says 1 yen = 0.83 Cents US which does equal 0.0083 USD, which is close enough for practical purposes.
Then stick with using GPL v2. But just because it is adequate for your needs, doesn't mean that it neccisarily addresses the concerns of everyone who chooses to use it. Hence the rewrite.
Would you rather they played with weapons and armies? For all of recorded history we tried that, and all it got us was to the brink of destruction.
Open dialog is something new, we've only been really trying it since the Soviet Union fell. Give it time for us to learn how to get better at it and do it right before dismissing it.
If the results are negative, then what?
The answer is: We know a little more.
That is the whole point, is to know more. I'm not a theoretical physicist (although I know someone who is and is working on quantum theory) so I can't tell you what will happen or what we will try when it confirms/fails the test, but either way they will keep working either on an improvement or on something else.
We will learn from either success or failure.
I'm in the same boat, at one time I thought it would be inevitable that to find a good paying job as a software developer I would have to move to the US. But, things changed and I have a great job with good enough pay here in Canada, and I haven't even visited the states since April 2001 even though I had an Aunt & Uncle just living 4 hours down the road in Detroit.
As well, another aunt & uncle got kicked out of the US when the government refused to renew my uncle's visa despite possessing a pretty unique skill, being steadily employed by the same company for 30 years, and having lived in the states for at least the last 5. Now he has to travel from Canada to the US every week or two for work.
At one time my parents used to drive to Grand Forks North Dakota once a year to go shopping, now I wouldn't set foot in the country unless I was passing through to Mexico or the Bahamas, or on a business trip. The uncle who is American, has been interrogated on his way back into the US on at least one occasion, worst I've ever had going through customs in my own country is being asked if I had any foreign fruits or veggies in my bag.
Ok, and what is Joe Blow American going to do when he can't buy his latest model Nokia cell phone over the internet because the DNS is misrouted? He is going to complain (who wouldn't?), but how are you going to complain to Nokia if they are based in Europe but you can't even send them an email?
Easy, you complain to everyone else, and very soon the media will catch wind of this and blow it into gigantic proportions, much larger than the issue deserves to be. And then what? The Democrats will jump all over the issue, because it is an excuse to bash the Republicans and paint the issue as a failure on their part. And that will only add more fuel to the fire to 'just fix it'.
Governments are built on different values, some on providing social services for their people. The US lives and dies by the dollar, and will follow the money. If the EU instigates the breakup, they already know what is in store for their citizens when things stop working, and you'd better believe that they won't be the first to give in. They are ready and prepared to do it come what may.
What is going to happen when the EU and a large number of countries splinter the Internet because the US refuses to release sole control of the primary DNS servers?
Sure, customers in those countries may be upset over not being able to access their favourite US-based websites, but how upset do you think the large US multinational corporations are going to be when the lose their entire overseas web customer base overnight?
I think the EU is playing it smart, betting on the fact that the buck has such powerful sway in the US that if the government doesn't agree, they will be made to in very short order when the large US corporations start pressing to get their customers back.
Not necessarily, in fact I would say if it is your job to argue a specific side of an argument, conviction in the truth of your argument is the *worst* way to do it. An unerring belief in the truth of your argument (or the argument of your opponent) is a hinderance to making a case because it blinds you.
I'm pretty sure both of them will be extremely well versed in both sides of the case, and understand the other's arguments and why the other side is making their case. Understanding your opponent is key to defeating them, but understanding also tends to lead to respect.
I would be surprised if such discussions occur to any extent more than a friendly chat over the merits of the case and precedent that was set.
You don't have much to worry about, because technically the government isn't going to turn on you. They aren't going to suddenly seize dictatorship power where everyone is a slave to their whims, they don't need to. They already have power, and all they need to do to keep it is retain public opinion which is much easier to do by presenting the voters with a threat, than by pleasing them.
Take a really close look at the circumstances of Hitler's rise to power. He promised his people an end to unemployment and poverty by giving them someone to blame that was accessible other than themselves. Now truthfully, the people of Germany were really hard off due to sanctions imposed after WWI, but he got them out of that by blaming jews, gypsies, and blacks as the cause of aryan suffering.
So you know whats going to happen? The government isn't going to become a rabid dog and bite the hand that feeds it. It's going to present the American public with a threat, something definable yet vague (terrorists) to blame for their problems. They will play on the public's fear (safety) to impose greater control and freedom for use of military resources to protect the public. Of course this threat must have a public face that is definable (middle-eastern descent) so in the interests of safety the government will start detaining people in the general populace that match this description and force them to prove their innocence and american heritage with papers, which if not presented completely and in order they will be detained without charge until they are eventually released (receiving the message) or deported (Maher Arar, Canadian deported to Syria).
Then the government will see that a vague internal threat is not enough, and will look outside its borders for someone that their people can turn their anger and fear against. They will present a chosen target to their people as sympathizers and harborours of the threat (Iraq, terrorists) previously presented to their people, and will use that as a platform from which to begin a campaign of preemptive attacks and conquests. They will then present this to their allies as a necessary and just course of action, that they are doing this to protect their people. And that any nation that is not allied with them, is supporting the enemy.
I look at it and I laugh, because it is history repeating itself once more, a different location, a different language, a different context and a different stylistic flair... but it is Rome and it is Germany all over again. (Interesting parallel btw between Britain and Australia as supporters of the US, and Italy and Japan as supporters of Germany)
And I just know that I will be one of those people labelled as an enemy sympathizer for expressing my opinion that these people aren't the cause of the problem, which is of course contrary to the opinion of the government.
Please don't even suggest it... the last thing we need is security checks on the morning commute. The one thing I absolutely loved about living in Toronto and working downtown is that I could go to the subway station, hop on a train in less than 5 minutes of getting there, and just hop off again right where I needed to be.
I wish planes were more like that, drop your bags onto a conveyor at the gate as you are getting your boarding pass checked, hop on the plane and just go. I think there is way too much stigma attached to security at airports... but I guess the potential damage is higher. A bomb on a plane vs a subway is the difference between ~300 people plus wherever you happen to crash vs (usually) a couple dozen, where the rest of the cars can be evacuated.
It might have less to do with environment and more to do with the personality or attitude of the person. I cannot recall a single incident where my parents blamed me unjustly, and my home was always a peaceful, quiet, and safe home and I was only ever smacked once (and trust me, I deserved it).
But even still, I am aware that I react the same way to 3 things, guilt, embarrasement, and unfounded accusation.
I agree that it is fear based, but not out of any punishment I might receive. When I've been guilty I've always accepted my punishment readily (be it a grounding, or washing desks after school, or a fine for illegal parking), but the fear for me has always been how others view me. In many cases I'm less concerned when I am actually guilty because I know I've brought it on myself, than if I've been unjustly accused because I know I didn't.
"a flaw in Amazon that lets me download the entirety of the book for free. So the sale is lost,"
That is a false generalization (aren't all of them?). Presuming that downloading the entirety of a book will cause a lost sale ignores the fact that many people who read books place a higher value in a physical copy than an electronic one because it has many advantages that electronic copy does not.
I will not get into a long dissertation on the flaws of electronic books and why providing electronic copies for free often improve sales for an author, but I will state a counter example to your generalization thus proving it false. Last month I bought a complete copy of Dante's Divine Comedy despite having read the entire work through Project Gutenberg so that I could read it and enjoy it in a format that I much prefer. I have also done the same with Dostoyevsky's Crime and Punishment. I also downloaded (illegally) copies of a number of Margaret Weiss and Tracy Hickeman's Dragonlance novels and read them to determine whether it was something I wanted to read or not. I now own every Dragonlance novel that the two of them produced in paperback as well as the complete Death Gate Cycle.
You cannot define an infinitely repeating wave pattern with a polynomial algebraic equation. So it's not going to happen. Polynomial equations can only approximate certain trig functions like sin and cos up to a certain point before the higher order terms become dominant and the function shoots off to infinity. This is the whole point of computational curve approximations, is that the approximations are only *so* good and to be truely accurate you require either an infinite number of terms, or an infinite number of equations each defined over a small period.
Trig functions will not go away because they can define a very specific type of repeating function over an infinite domain. At best resorting to algebraic approximations will allow for calculation of simple everyday problems that an average person would have to do.
- Bachelor of Mathematics, 2005.
There are some companies that already have this kind of policy well established as a business model.
It's called 'Insurance'.
Or none, as dai kaise might be.
They teach Java and C* (C/C++/C#/...) because it's current, it's relavent, and we have to start somewhere. The primary focus is on education, principles, and the like but not everything can be done in pseudo code. At some point you do have to implement it, and it might as well be in a language thats current.
Really, in university (I just graduated recently) they don't teach you very much in the way of languages. There was 1 first-year class that taught the principles of OO languages and taught Java at the same time. 1 second-year class that taught advanced data structures and did C++ at the same time. Everything else I ever had to do in terms of practical work was "You are using this language (Java, C++, C, Assembly, etc.) and this course will teach you about (embedded programming, algorithms, graphics theory, etc).
There is the expectation that you will pick up and learn what you need to accomplish these goals on your own, because that is part of the teaching. They are teaching you how to learn new languages, how to pick up these things so that you can apply what you are learning in the classroom with whatever technology is at hand.
An additional note, you can't expect every student to come to you with the skills or even basic knowledge about how to program. When I was in university I noticed two distinct classes of students, the first were those who were there because it is their passion. They are the ones who are really interested, and are learning because they want to.
The second group are those who don't have any particular knowledge or passion for computers, and are at university to learn them for a variety of reasons. Money, Steady job, and often, to bring those skills back to their home country.
In conclusion, you have to make sure the students have a basic grounding, they know how to construct basic programs in SOME language or other so that they have the capability to understand the abstract theory and apply it. There is a reason we teach addition, multiplication, and division before giving students differential calculus theory. If you taught them how to integrate and say 'oh don't worry, we'll train you in basic mathematics eventually', they'd never get anywhere.
Wow... I need to start paying more attention to VB code! Usually I don't find it that erotic, but I might have to give it another try.
Just don't take it out on the highway. I'm a Canadian, a couple weeks ago saw a guy in a smartcar out on the highway bringing something (it was a largish flat piece of wood, no idea what for) that in order to fit was sticking out of his sunroof like a sail. He was barely pushing 75 klicks in a 100 zone and had people lined up behind him.
Great for city driving, to date it looks like the ultimate commuter vehicle, just don't take them on the expressway (well, with the exception of the 401 in Toronto... its a parking lot.)
I don't know... I rather enjoy learning by counter-example.
Though I imagine for a beginner those nasty regexs of invalid code could bog you down a bit...