It looks like the basic Flash engine that they are using also powered the Ark, an internet based reality game show that the Ship ran last year, featuring Biblical luminaries on a 40 day voyage around a mockup of Noah's Ark. If you examine the screenshots of Church of Fools, you can see Simon Peter, Jezebel, Mary Magdeline, Joseph (with rainbow coat), etc. You can still tour around the Ark by clicking the link above.
I said nothing of the sort. This person did. I only chimed in a little later. Accordingly, I apologize to you for the ignorant comment, as I am equally guilty in confusing who posted what -- I saw so many armchair atheists talking about how religion is for the weak-minded that I made an assumption I should not have. Use of the word "superstition" still rubs me the wrong way, but I think that is more because of its connotation than its actual definition.
I have also seen the same specious definition of cult vs religion, and I think that's just a function of people being so into their own rightness that they can't step out of it for a moment to consider another person's point of view. The issue with the Catholic church is particularly bothersome, since so many evangelical (and fundamentalist) Christians seem to forget that Catholicism WAS Christianity for 1600 years. Dismissing all of Catholicism as a cult is much like dismissing the Bible as an "old book," both acts demonstrate a profound lack of wisdom and knowledge about the subject being dismissed.
If there ever was a widespread cult (as you have defined it) in Christianity, it would not be the Catholic church. It would be the Word of Faith and prosperity theology movement (pretty much everything you see in the Trinity Broadcasting Network). Outside of ensnaring people into adopting dangerous hair styles, so many of these preachers confuses worldly success with spiritual success, practice an emotionally manipulative form of "healing," and promise God's great blessing if you send an unholy amount of money. Benny Hinn recently amassed several hundred million dollars for a "World Healing Center," and then cancelled the project because "Jesus told him not to build it after all."
If someone asks me an actual question about how I came to faith, I answer it graciously, even if the question was posed in a skeptical manner. The original poster was hardly complementary of any religious faith and prefaced that particular question with "So who did you turn your thinking over to?" The language he used in his question (charismatic person, old book, indoctrination and peer pressure) are also hardly complementary. In fact it was hardly a question at all, for questions are asked to obtain knowledge. Rather, this individual was simply making a statement in the form of a question.
As far as the rest of my comments go, do not misunderstand them. They were not directed at atheists and agnostics in general. I happen to be on good terms with a large number of thoughtful atheists and have had contact with many others. Likewise, my statements were also not intended as a statement about the certain truth of religious faith. I am as certain of my own faith as I am everything else in my life -- I operate believing it is true, but always acknowledge that I could be wrong.
Instead, my comments were directed at that individual in particular and everyone else who operates under the stereotype that religious faith is nothing more than simply a sickness that for the frightened and weak minded.
So who did you turn your thinking over to? What made you a "believer"? A charismatic person? An old book? Indoctrination from your community? Peer pressure?
Yes, because the only reason someone would hold religious faith is because of indoctrination, peer pressure, or a cult of personality. It also goes without saying that such people have stopped thinking for themselves.
WOW
You've hauled out so many tired charicatures of religious faith in so short a time that when I see you accuse someone else of not thinking, the words "plank" and "eye" come to mind.
Of course, that's a Biblical reference, which outs me as being a religious person as well. Accordingly, you're free to put my comments in whatever pigeonhole makes you most comfortable and continue a happy life of ignorance.
I don't have a large amount of experience with FPS, but let me throw in another vote for Tribes 2. It has several features that make it very newbie friendly:
1. The game design promotes teamwork, which mitigates the impact of a single experienced player running roughshod over an entire opposing team. Most powerful vehicles don't work properly without several players operating them, while the single player vehicles aren't that powerful. 2. There are lots of honestly useful roles for inexperienced players to play, while they get used to the game. Every large base needs a good medic to heal guards and repair turrets/generators. 3. It can be found on the bargain rack for about $10. 4. The single player missions can be challenging, albeit a little repetitive. Their AI bots are particularly worthy advesaries and will keep pushing your abilities. 5. People are generally friendly and well-behaved. Most of the immature 11 year old players have moved on to more popular games. In the absense of an admin, users can elect a temporary admin and/or vote troublesome people off of the island.
Pardon my ignorance, I was 31337 for only 37 seconds in 1997.
What do they mean when they say that two compilers are "binary compatible" Does it mean that XL produces identical machine code? Does it take identical switches so makefiles don't have to be rewritten? Does it simply mean that XL has the same foibles as gcc, so code written to gcc's foibles doesn't need tinkering? Use of the term doesn't quite fit with my current understanding of compilers.
If apple is guilty of anything it's making the battery not easy to replace. You know, when you buy the thing there's no easy battery door, and you know batteries don't last forever.
I think this is an overlooked point that deserves emphasis. Spending a week doing some product reseach will go a long way. When I shopped for my MP3, I considered all kinds of models and discarded the iPod BECAUSE of the battery issue (it was otherwise a superior product). Instead I when with an inferior but functional Archos product. When the product arrived, I double checked to be sure that battery replacement was convenient.
While I DO scratch my head at that aspect of the iPod's design and wonder about the $99 replacement cost, I also find it hard to feel too much pity for these guys. It appears they made a series of decisions that allowed them to get caught with their pants down. I know that if I bought a portable product with no battery door and no replacement instructions, I'd be asking questions. If I wasn't happy with the answers, I'd return it.
-Troy
Using virtual desktops is a very good solution to the problem of managing a large number of open applications. However, it does have its limitations, such as what do you do when your categorization scheme falls short or fails to equally distribute apps among desktops. When you first starting using a scheme or modifying an existing one, there is a learning curve (especially for exceptionally stupid people like me).
What is nice about Expose (and related knock-offs) is that I only have to think about what I'm looking for when I use it. I click my 5th mouse button and all of my windows tile, only to untile when the window I select comes to the front of my screen. There is no "scheme" I have to remember to benefit from it. It works "out of the box" so to speak. Of course, Expose has its shortcomings too, as it only marginally helpful when wading through a very very large number of windows.
So I guess the moral of the story is to use whatever works for you, and not to assume that since something doesn't work for you, it must not work for most people.
I think that you are trying to paint with too broad a brush. You know zero (0) about the company that this gentleman represents, and you are accusing *him* of harassing you, scamming the elderly, being pushy, being sleazy, abusing workers and running over you pet puppy when you were 8.
These would be valid complaints if you knew the company that employs the original poster. But, you don't, so you can only work on supposition and probability. The gentleman states that his company is trying everything it can do to follow the rules, and unless you have actual evidence to the contrary I can't see how your comments have any merit.
Pen costs around $7, which is good for extremely forgetful people like myself
Granted, writing with one is not an orgasmic experience. Nevertheless, I've been more than happy with mine, especially since (as a teacher) I frequently have to switch between red and black ink. My hand also frequently cramps up with smaller pens. My fat pen reduces a great deal of that.
YMMV
While I also wince at feds calling the shots, the problem with the 100/0 ratio is that there are localities that, frankly, do not value education. A friend of mine grew up in a very blue colar school district with a "I never had much use for book learnin'" attitude among many of the residents. The result was that much of the education she got was a joke. She had to work very very hard to succeed in college because she had almost no background.
And I don't think her district is unique. A lot of people in economically depressed areas (like most of my extended family) devalue education. Even with federal involvement, that translates almost directly to the schools.
While in an ideal world we should be teaching as many OSes as possible, the run into material and personel storages.
I could teach my kids linux, bsd, xp, solaris, and os x, but there is no room in my schedule. Nor is there room in the schedule of any other teachers at my very average, suburban high school. Furthermore, very few of the other teachers in the district have the training that I have to reinforce it....and if they had the training offered they probably wouldn't want it (and I don't blame them). We're sufficiently swamped as it is with the state telling us what and when to teach.
I would sell my soul (and I'm a Christian!) to get the materials and the time to teach my kids all of those different OSes. Heck, I would sell my soul to have all of my XP boxes turn into Macintoshes.
Instead, I have to focus on teaching my students how to teach themselves, and the basic ideas guiding the design of different kinds of programs. I also bitch about how much I hate XP and how much I wish I had Macs or could run a BSD or a Linux.
Wasn't OS X server just a rehashed version of NeXT that Apple released in '99 to prove they can do a "modern" operating system? I believe it was disowned when OS X was released, and I pity anyone who has to use it.
Sure you can upgrade the ram in an x-serve, or the processor. But at what price?
From Pricewatch: G4 1.2GHZ upgrade: $465 Athlon XP 2100: $61
So it's about $400 cheaper to upgrade the X86 box...
I don't know a lot about enterprise hardware; its not in my job description. So I will cheerfully take correction, but it seems to me that there are additional costs with that processor upgrade, such as having to buy a new mainboard if your new processor isn't compatible with your old motherboard (and new RAM to boot).
One aspect of development tools in general that hasn't been discussed as much is the education value. In teaching programming, I don't want to become too bogged down in the tools and the equipment I use. Every class period I spend fixing Windows problems or getting the environment to work is a wasted period, because it is one less period I spend teaching the language.
Don't get me wrong, dealing with your "tools" is a part of programming and programmers need to learn these things. However, for an entry level C++ or Java programming course, I would rather spend a week at the end of the semester teaching some interesting language concept than spend a week at the beginning of the semester teaching the environment (which will inevitably change).
Beyond that, I want students to be able to use these tools at home. The automatically makes me prefer an IDE over a string of tools, because that everything I have to do to get the environment to work is what I have to write in a descriptive help file. Beyond that, students (of varying levels of maturity and motivation) have to follow this help file.
The things that I really like about Eclipse (as a teacher) are:
1) The simple setup/install -- Install the JRE and expand the eclipse.zip file and you're basically good to go. When I send burned CDs home, this minimizes the number of students who mess up the install because they missed an instruction. Students who do have problems end up having significant ones that I have to fix via VNC.
2) Focus on the language -- Eclipse does so many things for you that it really allows you to focus on your programming, rather than the host of tangential things related to programming. Granted, sometimes I think Eclipse does a little too much for you....for instance, creating class and method headers in new files prevent students from knowing how to write it.
3) Projects and CVS -- Oh God do I love how Eclipse does projects and CVS. The projects FORCE students to be organized, rather than throwing all of their files into one file. CVS' is so well integrated that students get all of the benefits of using CVS without having to jump through 15 hoops. Once again, there is an educationl benefit to learning how to jump through hoops, but that I have 67 hours a semester with these kids and I would rather focus on the language than the environment.
I think you misunderstand some essential aspects of living a Christian life*.
(*The basic ideas probably also apply to other religions -- I'm using Christian because I am one, so it is convenient.)
Lesson 1 of Christian living is that we are sinful....if you don't like the word sinful, then substitute "disproportionately selfish". It does not mean that we are evil 24/7, but it does mean that we have frickin' huge moral blindspots and half of the time we really don't care.
Lesson 2 shows us our goal -- we want to be more like Christ. We want to free ourselves from our own petty desires (but not our needs) and live lives of love for the world around us. While simulataneously loving everyone around us unconditionally, we also want to acheive moral perfection, because (at least half of the time) acting morally and being loving go hand-in-hand.
Lesson 3 tells us that our goal is absolutely unachievable. We can't do it, no matter how hard we work. From here comes the Christ story and the Cross and Resurrection which points us down a REALLY REALLY REALLY good path to take if we even want to get close. As we go down this path, however, we continue to mess up....a lot. We continue to do wrong to ourselves and to others because of our disproportionate selfishness. In fact this is the most difficult and frustrating thing about being a Christian -- because you strive for a goal that you know you will never ever reach no matter how hard you strive, but you continue to strive because you find that you can stand to do no less. Self-discipline and willpower are good things, but ultimately fall short because JUST one mistake is really too much. I've also ancedotally found that people with a lot of self-discipline and willpower tend to be lacking in compassion and sympathy for those who struggle -- so they have different blindspots that they have to work through.
Christians have developed a lot of techniques to help us down this path. A very old and very young one is the idea of a prayer partner -- someone with whom you can pray, share your joys and pains with, who loves you unconditionally and constantly encourages and pushes you to be and do better. Christian spouses typically act this way for each other, though many Christias also have same sex prayer partners too.
This program is meant for those kinds of people. The idea is NOT to let a church or a religious group enforce rules of behavior on its members. The idea is that if Internet porn is a problem for you -- if it is one of your moral blindspots -- then you let a "prayer partner" type person monitor where you go. Knowing the problem that porn is amongst Christian men, reciprocality is likely. It becomes yet another way that the person can encourage and push you to do and be a better person.
Now, like everything else, this could be used for emotional manipulation and censorship. However, the intent is to enable people to be more accountable to each other if the Internet presents a moral problem.
Disclaimers: 1) This is not an invitation to debate to merits of religion. I'm simply explaining how many Christians think about these issues. 2) If you're not a Christian and this doesn't make sense to you, that is probably a function of you not being a Christian (and thus having different goals than many Christians do). It is not necessarily a function of it being dumb or lame. 3) If you really really want to discuss religious issues, consider a visit to the forums at http://www.ship-of-fools.com. Well-spoken/argued peoeple of all persuations are always welcome on the Ship.
"You are launching proceedure $FOO without condition $BAR being properly set. Do you no longer wish to avoid autocorrecting the object status and reimplementing the enterprise settings? [Yes] [No] [Cancel]"
Uh, yes????
[Click]
NO! NO! I meant NO! ....
SHIT!
Fair enough....point me to a place where I can examine European math curricula and I will reconsider my stance. Until then, I can only go on the experience that, by age 14, most of my students' abstract minds are just starting to open up.
Most of these statements about 6th graders doing algebra probably comes from Piaget's Formal stage of development, which he believed (IIRC) started at around 11 or 12 years old. Once again, IIRC, there was some stastical research done in the early/mid 90s about this assumption that showed that many many people hit the Formal stage much later. Some hit it MUCH MUCH later.
Maybe there is a psychologist reading that can shed some light on this issue.
Because the fundemental theorem of algebra tells us that any polynomial in R completely factors into linear components in C. This is problematic for Algebra I students for a couple of reasons. 1. In Algebra I, kids are just starting to see what factoring realy means to a polynomial in R. Making them look at what that means in C is pushing the concept just a little too much. 2. Complex numbers are way too abstract for the average algebra I student. Explaining what a+bi means raises a litany of questions such as 1. How big is it? 2. Where is it 3. What is i 4. What does i equal 4a. No, what does i equal 4b. Yeah, but what does i equal 5. Fine then, what does a+bi equal 5a. That doesn't answer my question....
Students in Algebra I still want to assign a concrete, discrete value to everything. It was a major step for kids to be at peace with leaving x^2+3x+2 as an answer. Many kids wanted to try to condense that down into a single monomial or a single number. Likewise, the average algebra I student would have a hard time seeing a+bi as a single number, without trying to simplify it...and this is just looking at C as a number system, much less polynomials in C.
One of the largest problems with US math curricula is that there are too many teachers such as yourself that keep encouraging arithmetic. In today's US curricula, students start arithmetic in 2nd grade and keep studying it in 7th and 8th. That's 7 years of math that can be done on a $2 calculator.
The result of students doing arithmetic on that $2 calculator is that they have no number sense. Their brains can't make connections between this concept and that because they have no clue what their neighborhood is like. They aren't familiar at all with the "world" of numbers. They don't immediately see the connection between points (1,2) and (3,6) and equation y=2x. They don't see what numbers to use when factoring x^2+4x-21. They have to run the numbers through their calculator.
You say that students already know arithmetic, and really, they don't. They can add and subtract well. Multiplying if they are lucky. Long division is anxiety producing. Fractions are downright scary. Decimals are ok as far as addition, subtraction and multiplication goes, but division is again tough. They get mixed up with negatives and positives -- is -3 - 2 = -5 or -1 or 1...or is it 5, since -3 and -2 have the same sign?
Indeed, the problem is that the dominant philosophy in mathematics education in the past decade has been a bastardization of NCTM Standards. Standards can be boiled down to one [very astute] statement: Most of a student's work should be related to what you are teaching. In other words, (for example) students doing graphing shouldn't be bogged down in long division. This statement got twisted to become "You're in 4th grade now. You can use that calculator for your all of your arithmetic. Look! It even does fractions for you!"
They've just returned from summer break and haven't cracked a textbook in three months. There arithmetic consists of punching numbers into the calculator as it is presented in the textbook. They can substitute, but they do so without direction. Think you can turn them into stars?
This is what we call a strawman -- misrepresenting a statement so that you can knock it down. If students' arithmetic was all calculator based (which is pretty much the size of it now), and if students' really didn't get substitution (which is pretty much the size of it now), I would be spending 2-3 weeks on both mechanics and meaning.
THAT all said, you're right in that students' (not necessarily numerical) problem solving skills do need to be stretched AND celebrated in math as well (read my previous post about the dyslexic student). You can't go wrong getting a kid to exercise those parts of their brain. Though, you do have finite time and you do have to teach stuff that is explicitly math too, so you have to balance your time that way.
Last year I did a week long project at the end of each quarter. This year I would like to put a smaller logic problem at the end of each chapter to replace half of the larger problems (I have a couple of *REALLY* good projects that I don't want to give up...my group theory project is one of those!)
This is why the focus needs to be on as much meaning as mechanics. You mentioned solving a system of 2 equations. I can't tell you how many of my students had a hard time *UNDERSTANDING* exactly what we were doing. Most of them could do it mechanically, but only 10% understood that the answer was a solution to both equations AND understood what a solution was.
I know it is difficult for advanced mathematicians to understand, but teaching a class of 9th graders is very illuminating here. While you want push them and not underestimate their intelligence, "pushing" most kids is giving them a graph and asking them questions about the equation that made the graph....or giving them a system and asking them to solve it 2 different ways and relate how the ways are similar and WHY the methods work.
I also think you underestimate the sheer size of high school algebra. There is a lot there!! My current algebra I curriculum goes something like
*Review of Arithmetic (2 weeks) *Solving all varieties of linear equations: x+a=b, ax=b, ax+b=c, ax+b=cx+d, a(x+b)=cx+d, etc etc (2 chapters, 6 weeks) *Graphing linear equations six ways of Sunday (4 weeks) *Systems (3 weeks) *Exponents (3 weeks) *Polynomials and Factoring Quadratics (5 weeks) *Review of old, important stuff like proportions, percents, etc (3 weeks) *Statistics and Probability (2 weeks) *Rational Functions (4 weeks) *Radicals and Geometry Connections (3 weeks)
This is 35 weeks. The year is 36 weeks. Not a lot of room for error!
Of course, you're saying "Com'on Troy! 4 weeks for graphing?!?! That's 2 weeks tops!" *TRUST ME*, you need a good month to give a full treatment to graphing so that the kids actually *understand* what they are doing. All of the time frames are based on experience with actual students, rather than "I should only take...." estimates.
And this still leaves VOLUMES of material to be covered in Alg II, Precalc, or accelerated track courses.
I got this far before I realized that I needed to bust out some analysis and lost interest (I'm more of an algebraist:-) ).
d/dx sin x = lim(a->0) (sin(x+a)-sin x)/a = lim(a->0) (sin x cos a + cos x sin a - sin x)/a = lim(a->0) (sin x (cos a - 1)+ cos x sin a)/a = lim(a->0) (sin x)((cos a - 1)/a) + (cos x)((sin a)/a)
It gets less pretty from here. The jist of the proof that follows is that as a goes to 0, (cos a - 1) / a goes to zero and sin a / a goes to 1. Proof of that involves some squeezing, and that's the part that I left out because 1) I don't remember it, though I looked it up 2) The actual proof of that portion is long
Slashdot Mirror
It looks like the basic Flash engine that they are using also powered the Ark, an internet based reality game show that the Ship ran last year, featuring Biblical luminaries on a 40 day voyage around a mockup of Noah's Ark. If you examine the screenshots of Church of Fools, you can see Simon Peter, Jezebel, Mary Magdeline, Joseph (with rainbow coat), etc. You can still tour around the Ark by clicking the link above.
-Troy
Proud Shipmate
I said nothing of the sort. This person did. I only chimed in a little later. Accordingly, I apologize to you for the ignorant comment, as I am equally guilty in confusing who posted what -- I saw so many armchair atheists talking about how religion is for the weak-minded that I made an assumption I should not have. Use of the word "superstition" still rubs me the wrong way, but I think that is more because of its connotation than its actual definition.
I have also seen the same specious definition of cult vs religion, and I think that's just a function of people being so into their own rightness that they can't step out of it for a moment to consider another person's point of view. The issue with the Catholic church is particularly bothersome, since so many evangelical (and fundamentalist) Christians seem to forget that Catholicism WAS Christianity for 1600 years. Dismissing all of Catholicism as a cult is much like dismissing the Bible as an "old book," both acts demonstrate a profound lack of wisdom and knowledge about the subject being dismissed.
If there ever was a widespread cult (as you have defined it) in Christianity, it would not be the Catholic church. It would be the Word of Faith and prosperity theology movement (pretty much everything you see in the Trinity Broadcasting Network). Outside of ensnaring people into adopting dangerous hair styles, so many of these preachers confuses worldly success with spiritual success, practice an emotionally manipulative form of "healing," and promise God's great blessing if you send an unholy amount of money. Benny Hinn recently amassed several hundred million dollars for a "World Healing Center," and then cancelled the project because "Jesus told him not to build it after all."
If someone asks me an actual question about how I came to faith, I answer it graciously, even if the question was posed in a skeptical manner. The original poster was hardly complementary of any religious faith and prefaced that particular question with "So who did you turn your thinking over to?" The language he used in his question (charismatic person, old book, indoctrination and peer pressure) are also hardly complementary. In fact it was hardly a question at all, for questions are asked to obtain knowledge. Rather, this individual was simply making a statement in the form of a question.
As far as the rest of my comments go, do not misunderstand them. They were not directed at atheists and agnostics in general. I happen to be on good terms with a large number of thoughtful atheists and have had contact with many others. Likewise, my statements were also not intended as a statement about the certain truth of religious faith. I am as certain of my own faith as I am everything else in my life -- I operate believing it is true, but always acknowledge that I could be wrong.
Instead, my comments were directed at that individual in particular and everyone else who operates under the stereotype that religious faith is nothing more than simply a sickness that for the frightened and weak minded.
Yes, because the only reason someone would hold religious faith is because of indoctrination, peer pressure, or a cult of personality. It also goes without saying that such people have stopped thinking for themselves.
WOW
You've hauled out so many tired charicatures of religious faith in so short a time that when I see you accuse someone else of not thinking, the words "plank" and "eye" come to mind.
Of course, that's a Biblical reference, which outs me as being a religious person as well. Accordingly, you're free to put my comments in whatever pigeonhole makes you most comfortable and continue a happy life of ignorance.
XOXO,
Some mindless religious guy
There is something redundant about this sentiment, but I can't quite figure out what it is.
Sorry....low blow
Here is a formatting-free, cut-and-paste, hack job.
ftp://ftp.planetmirror.com/pub/gimp// g /l and / (web access)p /g /
http://ftp.snt.utwente.nl/pub/software/gimp/gimp/ (web access)n ia/ r /i mp/
mmmmm.....karma...
Africa
ftp://ftp.is.co.za/applications/gimp/
Australia
http://ftp.planetmirror.com/pub/gimp/ (web access)
ftp://mirror.aarnet.edu.au/pub/gimp/
http://mirror.aarnet.edu.au/pub/gimp/ (web access)
ftp://gimp.zeta.org.au/
Austria
ftp://gd.tuwien.ac.at/graphics/gimp/
Denmark
ftp://ftp.jaquet.dk/pub/gimp/
Finland
ftp://ftp.funet.fi/pub/sci/graphics/packages/gimp
France
ftp://ftp.minet.net/pub/gimp/
http://ftp.iut-bm.univ-fcomte.fr/pub/gimp/ (web access)
Germany
ftp://ftp.fh-heilbronn.de/pub/mirrors/ftp.gimp.or
ftp://ftp.gwdg.de/pub/misc/grafik/gimp/
http://ftp.gwdg.de/pub/misc/grafik/gimp/ (web access)
Greece
ftp://sunsite.ics.forth.gr/sunsite/pub/gimp/
Ire
ftp://ftp.esat.net/mirrors/ftp.gimp.org/pub/gimp/
http://ftp.esat.net/mirrors/ftp.gimp.org/pub/gimp
Japan
ftp://SunSITE.sut.ac.jp/pub/archives/packages/gim
ftp://ftp.u-aizu.ac.jp/pub/graphics/tools/gimp/
ftp://ftp.ring.gr.jp/pub/graphics/gimp/
http://www.ring.gr.jp/pub/graphics/gimp/ (web access)
http://mirror.nucba.ac.jp/mirror/gimp/ (web access)
ftp://mirror.nucba.ac.jp/mirror/gimp/
Korea
ftp://ftp.kreonet.re.kr/pub/tools/X11/ftp.gimp.or
Netherlands
ftp://gnu.kookel.org/pub/gimp/
http://gnu.kookel.org/ftp/gimp/ (web access)
ftp://ftp.snt.utwente.nl/pub/software/gimp/gimp/
Norway
ftp://sunsite.uio.no/pub/gimp/
Poland
ftp://ftp.tuniv.szczecin.pl/pub/Linux/gimp/
ftp://sunsite.icm.edu.pl/pub/graphics/gimp/
Roma
ftp://ftp.kappa.ro/pub/mirrors/ftp.gimp.org/
ftp://ftp.iasi.roedu.net/pub/mirrors/ftp.gimp.org
http://ftp.iasi.roedu.net/mirrors/ftp.gimp.org/ (web access)
Russia
ftp://ftp.sai.msu.su/pub/unix/graphics/gimp/mirro
http://gimp.tsuren.net/mirror/gimp/ (web access)
Spain
http://sunsite.rediris.es/mirror/gimp/ (web access)
ftp://ftp.rediris.es/mirror/gimp/
Sweden
ftp://ftp.acc.umu.se/pub/gimp/
ftp://ftp.sunet.se/pub/gnu/gimp/
http://ftp.sunet.se/pub/gnu/gimp/ (web access)
Turkey
ftp://ftp.hun.edu.tr/pub/linux/gimp/
United Kingdom
ftp://ftp.flirble.org/pub/X/gimp/gimp/
ftp://unix.hensa.ac.uk/mirrors/ftp.gimp.org/pub/g
United States
ftp://ftp.cs.umn.edu/pub/gimp/
Where is the picture of the bunny?
Did it have any painted eggs with it?
How about small, colored, sugary spheroids?
Was it munching a carrot?
I don't have a large amount of experience with FPS, but let me throw in another vote for Tribes 2. It has several features that make it very newbie friendly:
1. The game design promotes teamwork, which mitigates the impact of a single experienced player running roughshod over an entire opposing team. Most powerful vehicles don't work properly without several players operating them, while the single player vehicles aren't that powerful.
2. There are lots of honestly useful roles for inexperienced players to play, while they get used to the game. Every large base needs a good medic to heal guards and repair turrets/generators.
3. It can be found on the bargain rack for about $10.
4. The single player missions can be challenging, albeit a little repetitive. Their AI bots are particularly worthy advesaries and will keep pushing your abilities.
5. People are generally friendly and well-behaved. Most of the immature 11 year old players have moved on to more popular games. In the absense of an admin, users can elect a temporary admin and/or vote troublesome people off of the island.
-Troy
-Troy
Pardon my ignorance, I was 31337 for only 37 seconds in 1997.
What do they mean when they say that two compilers are "binary compatible" Does it mean that XL produces identical machine code? Does it take identical switches so makefiles don't have to be rewritten? Does it simply mean that XL has the same foibles as gcc, so code written to gcc's foibles doesn't need tinkering? Use of the term doesn't quite fit with my current understanding of compilers.
-Troy
Using virtual desktops is a very good solution to the problem of managing a large number of open applications. However, it does have its limitations, such as what do you do when your categorization scheme falls short or fails to equally distribute apps among desktops. When you first starting using a scheme or modifying an existing one, there is a learning curve (especially for exceptionally stupid people like me).
What is nice about Expose (and related knock-offs) is that I only have to think about what I'm looking for when I use it. I click my 5th mouse button and all of my windows tile, only to untile when the window I select comes to the front of my screen. There is no "scheme" I have to remember to benefit from it. It works "out of the box" so to speak. Of course, Expose has its shortcomings too, as it only marginally helpful when wading through a very very large number of windows.
So I guess the moral of the story is to use whatever works for you, and not to assume that since something doesn't work for you, it must not work for most people.
-Troy
I think that you are trying to paint with too broad a brush. You know zero (0) about the company that this gentleman represents, and you are accusing *him* of harassing you, scamming the elderly, being pushy, being sleazy, abusing workers and running over you pet puppy when you were 8.
These would be valid complaints if you knew the company that employs the original poster. But, you don't, so you can only work on supposition and probability. The gentleman states that his company is trying everything it can do to follow the rules, and unless you have actual evidence to the contrary I can't see how your comments have any merit.
-Troy
- 3 in 1 pen...some models come w/PDA Stylus
- Ink is cheap and easy to replace
- Fat, ergonomic grip to reduce cramping
- Pen costs around $7, which is good for extremely forgetful people like myself
Granted, writing with one is not an orgasmic experience. Nevertheless, I've been more than happy with mine, especially since (as a teacher) I frequently have to switch between red and black ink. My hand also frequently cramps up with smaller pens. My fat pen reduces a great deal of that. YMMVWhile I also wince at feds calling the shots, the problem with the 100/0 ratio is that there are localities that, frankly, do not value education. A friend of mine grew up in a very blue colar school district with a "I never had much use for book learnin'" attitude among many of the residents. The result was that much of the education she got was a joke. She had to work very very hard to succeed in college because she had almost no background.
And I don't think her district is unique. A lot of people in economically depressed areas (like most of my extended family) devalue education. Even with federal involvement, that translates almost directly to the schools.
-Troy
While in an ideal world we should be teaching as many OSes as possible, the run into material and personel storages.
I could teach my kids linux, bsd, xp, solaris, and os x, but there is no room in my schedule. Nor is there room in the schedule of any other teachers at my very average, suburban high school. Furthermore, very few of the other teachers in the district have the training that I have to reinforce it....and if they had the training offered they probably wouldn't want it (and I don't blame them). We're sufficiently swamped as it is with the state telling us what and when to teach.
I would sell my soul (and I'm a Christian!) to get the materials and the time to teach my kids all of those different OSes. Heck, I would sell my soul to have all of my XP boxes turn into Macintoshes.
Instead, I have to focus on teaching my students how to teach themselves, and the basic ideas guiding the design of different kinds of programs. I also bitch about how much I hate XP and how much I wish I had Macs or could run a BSD or a Linux.
Wasn't OS X server just a rehashed version of NeXT that Apple released in '99 to prove they can do a "modern" operating system? I believe it was disowned when OS X was released, and I pity anyone who has to use it.
-Troy
I don't know a lot about enterprise hardware; its not in my job description. So I will cheerfully take correction, but it seems to me that there are additional costs with that processor upgrade, such as having to buy a new mainboard if your new processor isn't compatible with your old motherboard (and new RAM to boot).
One aspect of development tools in general that hasn't been discussed as much is the education value. In teaching programming, I don't want to become too bogged down in the tools and the equipment I use. Every class period I spend fixing Windows problems or getting the environment to work is a wasted period, because it is one less period I spend teaching the language.
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Don't get me wrong, dealing with your "tools" is a part of programming and programmers need to learn these things. However, for an entry level C++ or Java programming course, I would rather spend a week at the end of the semester teaching some interesting language concept than spend a week at the beginning of the semester teaching the environment (which will inevitably change).
Beyond that, I want students to be able to use these tools at home. The automatically makes me prefer an IDE over a string of tools, because that everything I have to do to get the environment to work is what I have to write in a descriptive help file. Beyond that, students (of varying levels of maturity and motivation) have to follow this help file.
The things that I really like about Eclipse (as a teacher) are:
1) The simple setup/install -- Install the JRE and expand the eclipse.zip file and you're basically good to go. When I send burned CDs home, this minimizes the number of students who mess up the install because they missed an instruction. Students who do have problems end up having significant ones that I have to fix via VNC.
2) Focus on the language -- Eclipse does so many things for you that it really allows you to focus on your programming, rather than the host of tangential things related to programming. Granted, sometimes I think Eclipse does a little too much for you....for instance, creating class and method headers in new files prevent students from knowing how to write it
3) Projects and CVS -- Oh God do I love how Eclipse does projects and CVS. The projects FORCE students to be organized, rather than throwing all of their files into one file. CVS' is so well integrated that students get all of the benefits of using CVS without having to jump through 15 hoops. Once again, there is an educationl benefit to learning how to jump through hoops, but that I have 67 hours a semester with these kids and I would rather focus on the language than the environment.
-Troy
I think you misunderstand some essential aspects of living a Christian life*.
(*The basic ideas probably also apply to other religions -- I'm using Christian because I am one, so it is convenient.)
Lesson 1 of Christian living is that we are sinful....if you don't like the word sinful, then substitute "disproportionately selfish". It does not mean that we are evil 24/7, but it does mean that we have frickin' huge moral blindspots and half of the time we really don't care.
Lesson 2 shows us our goal -- we want to be more like Christ. We want to free ourselves from our own petty desires (but not our needs) and live lives of love for the world around us. While simulataneously loving everyone around us unconditionally, we also want to acheive moral perfection, because (at least half of the time) acting morally and being loving go hand-in-hand.
Lesson 3 tells us that our goal is absolutely unachievable. We can't do it, no matter how hard we work. From here comes the Christ story and the Cross and Resurrection which points us down a REALLY REALLY REALLY good path to take if we even want to get close. As we go down this path, however, we continue to mess up....a lot. We continue to do wrong to ourselves and to others because of our disproportionate selfishness. In fact this is the most difficult and frustrating thing about being a Christian -- because you strive for a goal that you know you will never ever reach no matter how hard you strive, but you continue to strive because you find that you can stand to do no less. Self-discipline and willpower are good things, but ultimately fall short because JUST one mistake is really too much. I've also ancedotally found that people with a lot of self-discipline and willpower tend to be lacking in compassion and sympathy for those who struggle -- so they have different blindspots that they have to work through.
Christians have developed a lot of techniques to help us down this path. A very old and very young one is the idea of a prayer partner -- someone with whom you can pray, share your joys and pains with, who loves you unconditionally and constantly encourages and pushes you to be and do better. Christian spouses typically act this way for each other, though many Christias also have same sex prayer partners too.
This program is meant for those kinds of people. The idea is NOT to let a church or a religious group enforce rules of behavior on its members. The idea is that if Internet porn is a problem for you -- if it is one of your moral blindspots -- then you let a "prayer partner" type person monitor where you go. Knowing the problem that porn is amongst Christian men, reciprocality is likely. It becomes yet another way that the person can encourage and push you to do and be a better person.
Now, like everything else, this could be used for emotional manipulation and censorship. However, the intent is to enable people to be more accountable to each other if the Internet presents a moral problem.
Disclaimers:
1) This is not an invitation to debate to merits of religion. I'm simply explaining how many Christians think about these issues.
2) If you're not a Christian and this doesn't make sense to you, that is probably a function of you not being a Christian (and thus having different goals than many Christians do). It is not necessarily a function of it being dumb or lame.
3) If you really really want to discuss religious issues, consider a visit to the forums at http://www.ship-of-fools.com. Well-spoken/argued peoeple of all persuations are always welcome on the Ship.
"You are launching proceedure $FOO without condition $BAR being properly set. Do you no longer wish to avoid autocorrecting the object status and reimplementing the enterprise settings? [Yes] [No] [Cancel]"
Uh, yes????
[Click]
NO! NO! I meant NO!
....
SHIT!
[Alt-F4]
[File....New]
Fair enough....point me to a place where I can examine European math curricula and I will reconsider my stance. Until then, I can only go on the experience that, by age 14, most of my students' abstract minds are just starting to open up.
Most of these statements about 6th graders doing algebra probably comes from Piaget's Formal stage of development, which he believed (IIRC) started at around 11 or 12 years old. Once again, IIRC, there was some stastical research done in the early/mid 90s about this assumption that showed that many many people hit the Formal stage much later. Some hit it MUCH MUCH later.
Maybe there is a psychologist reading that can shed some light on this issue.
Because the fundemental theorem of algebra tells us that any polynomial in R completely factors into linear components in C. This is problematic for Algebra I students for a couple of reasons.
1. In Algebra I, kids are just starting to see what factoring realy means to a polynomial in R. Making them look at what that means in C is pushing the concept just a little too much.
2. Complex numbers are way too abstract for the average algebra I student. Explaining what a+bi means raises a litany of questions such as
1. How big is it?
2. Where is it
3. What is i
4. What does i equal
4a. No, what does i equal
4b. Yeah, but what does i equal
5. Fine then, what does a+bi equal
5a. That doesn't answer my question....
Students in Algebra I still want to assign a concrete, discrete value to everything. It was a major step for kids to be at peace with leaving x^2+3x+2 as an answer. Many kids wanted to try to condense that down into a single monomial or a single number. Likewise, the average algebra I student would have a hard time seeing a+bi as a single number, without trying to simplify it...and this is just looking at C as a number system, much less polynomials in C.
The result of students doing arithmetic on that $2 calculator is that they have no number sense. Their brains can't make connections between this concept and that because they have no clue what their neighborhood is like. They aren't familiar at all with the "world" of numbers. They don't immediately see the connection between points (1,2) and (3,6) and equation y=2x. They don't see what numbers to use when factoring x^2+4x-21. They have to run the numbers through their calculator.
You say that students already know arithmetic, and really, they don't. They can add and subtract well. Multiplying if they are lucky. Long division is anxiety producing. Fractions are downright scary. Decimals are ok as far as addition, subtraction and multiplication goes, but division is again tough. They get mixed up with negatives and positives -- is -3 - 2 = -5 or -1 or 1...or is it 5, since -3 and -2 have the same sign?
Indeed, the problem is that the dominant philosophy in mathematics education in the past decade has been a bastardization of NCTM Standards. Standards can be boiled down to one [very astute] statement: Most of a student's work should be related to what you are teaching. In other words, (for example) students doing graphing shouldn't be bogged down in long division. This statement got twisted to become "You're in 4th grade now. You can use that calculator for your all of your arithmetic. Look! It even does fractions for you!"
This is what we call a strawman -- misrepresenting a statement so that you can knock it down. If students' arithmetic was all calculator based (which is pretty much the size of it now), and if students' really didn't get substitution (which is pretty much the size of it now), I would be spending 2-3 weeks on both mechanics and meaning.
THAT all said, you're right in that students' (not necessarily numerical) problem solving skills do need to be stretched AND celebrated in math as well (read my previous post about the dyslexic student). You can't go wrong getting a kid to exercise those parts of their brain. Though, you do have finite time and you do have to teach stuff that is explicitly math too, so you have to balance your time that way.
Last year I did a week long project at the end of each quarter. This year I would like to put a smaller logic problem at the end of each chapter to replace half of the larger problems (I have a couple of *REALLY* good projects that I don't want to give up...my group theory project is one of those!)
This is why the focus needs to be on as much meaning as mechanics. You mentioned solving a system of 2 equations. I can't tell you how many of my students had a hard time *UNDERSTANDING* exactly what we were doing. Most of them could do it mechanically, but only 10% understood that the answer was a solution to both equations AND understood what a solution was.
I know it is difficult for advanced mathematicians to understand, but teaching a class of 9th graders is very illuminating here. While you want push them and not underestimate their intelligence, "pushing" most kids is giving them a graph and asking them questions about the equation that made the graph....or giving them a system and asking them to solve it 2 different ways and relate how the ways are similar and WHY the methods work.
I also think you underestimate the sheer size of high school algebra. There is a lot there!! My current algebra I curriculum goes something like
*Review of Arithmetic (2 weeks)
*Solving all varieties of linear equations: x+a=b, ax=b, ax+b=c, ax+b=cx+d, a(x+b)=cx+d, etc etc (2 chapters, 6 weeks)
*Graphing linear equations six ways of Sunday (4 weeks)
*Systems (3 weeks)
*Exponents (3 weeks)
*Polynomials and Factoring Quadratics (5 weeks)
*Review of old, important stuff like proportions, percents, etc (3 weeks)
*Statistics and Probability (2 weeks)
*Rational Functions (4 weeks)
*Radicals and Geometry Connections (3 weeks)
This is 35 weeks. The year is 36 weeks. Not a lot of room for error!
Of course, you're saying "Com'on Troy! 4 weeks for graphing?!?! That's 2 weeks tops!" *TRUST ME*, you need a good month to give a full treatment to graphing so that the kids actually *understand* what they are doing. All of the time frames are based on experience with actual students, rather than "I should only take...." estimates.
And this still leaves VOLUMES of material to be covered in Alg II, Precalc, or accelerated track courses.
I got this far before I realized that I needed to bust out some analysis and lost interest (I'm more of an algebraist :-) ).
d/dx sin x = lim(a->0) (sin(x+a)-sin x)/a =
lim(a->0) (sin x cos a + cos x sin a - sin x)/a =
lim(a->0) (sin x (cos a - 1)+ cos x sin a)/a =
lim(a->0) (sin x)((cos a - 1)/a) + (cos x)((sin a)/a)
It gets less pretty from here. The jist of the proof that follows is that as a goes to 0, (cos a - 1) / a goes to zero and sin a / a goes to 1. Proof of that involves some squeezing, and that's the part that I left out because
1) I don't remember it, though I looked it up
2) The actual proof of that portion is long
What's left is cos x, so
d/dx sin x = cos x