Learning to code at school isn't just about gaining employability, any more than physical education is about becoming a professional athlete.
An understanding of how to write software will teach skills around how to approach complex problems (decomposition, logical thinking, planning, separation of responsibilities, etc), how to troubleshoot systems (not just IT systems but other workflows), how to identify opportunities for optimisation and automation, and so on.
I did the International Baccalaureate (a European curriculum for high schoolers), in which you got to choose the subjects you wanted to study, within some constraints. However, there was one mandatory class called Theory of Knowledge. This was a combination of logic, ethics and philosophy, and was by far the most interesting class I ever took at school.
Up to a certain age, I'd say education is about giving kids a good all-round level of knowledge.
If it turned out that in my Perfect Education System, the class requiring students to learn to juggle 19 balls was causing a lot of people to drop out, I might reflect on whether it's really a necessary skill for most people. That seems to be the spirit of the story.
On a related matter, I do often reflect how much more useful it would have been for me to learn to cook, tile, plumb, repair electricals, etc. Sure, I can learn all that now as an adult, but equally I could read up on the Tudors or plate tectonics now if I really wanted to.
It's true, Google are renowned for hiring only morons. I'm told that at the interview people are asked stuff like, is MongoDB web scale? And I'm sure they only promote the total chumps to VP. All he had to do was post an "Ask Slashdot" and you'd have no doubt politely schooled him. What a wankpuffin he must be!
I see TOR kind of like HTTPS: it won't necessarily keep your transmission from being decrypted and deanonymized, but it probably makes it much harder to do so. As such it just sort of raises your default level of privacy (from plain HTTP).
I have some savings that earn approx 7% interest per year. You can argue the interest payments are the premium I'm paid for the risk of default, or perhaps that they represent the opportunity cost of spending the money, but it's pretty hard for me to understand how I'm "earning" them in any sense that relates to actual work. I could go into cryogenic suspension and the money would still roll in.
I'd wager that most rich people aren't really rich from earnings; they're rich from renting out their capital.
I was wondering the other day what the limits of tolerance should be in Western society. I concluded that the only thing we mustn't tolerate is attempts to replace tolerance with intolerance. In other words, sort of political GPL: you have the freedom to do anything you want, except take that freedom away from others. As an example, after the overthrow of Mubarak in Egypt, the democratically elected government set about using its mandate to dismantle democracy ("one person, one vote - one time"), and so had to be ousted by force.
I see the GPL in the same light. Freedom isn't free, its price is eternal vigilance. The GPL says, you're free to do anything you like with this code except remove that freedom from any users of the code.
I don't know whether it's less successful at delivering software than "free, do whatever" code; I suspect that if it is, then both are dwarfed by proprietary software. My point being, if there must be only one model of software development, by that metric we should ditch free software altogether. I'm happy with a variety of models, and would probably choose GPL for anything substantial I wrote in my spare time.
As to things like the Paris incident, it occurs to me to wonder how easy it would have been to wander through a crowded venue shooting people at random if some of those people had been armed themselves...
If what you fear is getting shot, by a terrorist or anyone else, then it's worth pointing out that that's much much less likely in a society where no one has weapons except the bad guys (and the state, though I suspect many don't make that distinction).
If what you fear is a cataclysmic situation where it makes sense for everyone to be armed at very short notice, then the ongoing cost of gun ownership may be acceptable.
Moral relativism and moral equivalence are separate things to me. Moral relativism is to say that different people have different morals, which seems obvious to me. Equivalence is to say that therefore you cannot say anyone is wrong. I'm not saying that. I'm saying that ISIS are wrong.
I agree with you about violence. But on evil, he's right of course, but as a politician he's a fool to have imagined a cerebral point about moral relativism wouldn't be misinterpreted by the people at large, or misrepresented by his enemies as support for ISIS.
ISIS are evil by my definition of evil, and I'd gladly see them all hang. By their definition of evil, I'm evil, and they'd gladly see me hang. So, I bomb them, and they abduct and decapitate me.
I still think I'm right - I'm not saying that I think there's any moral equivalence between me and them. But I'm able to see that they have exactly the reverse position, and thus that in their minds, they're not just not evil, but even rigtheously good.
Saying "ISIS aren't evil" as a shorthand for all that is not likely to get people's votes. Hell, even saying all that is likely to piss off people who see the world in simplistic black and white (as I believe the majority do).
Only 24 out of every 100 adults voted for the asshats. It's the electoral system that screws us, but the only people who can fix that are the very asshats themselves... well, until the revolution! Now if you'll excuse me, it's Nov 5, I must... attend to other matters.
I don't really know much about what this is all about (I only ever see stuff about it on Slashdot; I don't generally surf net gossip type sites) but wow, the upvoted comments seem to be entirely on one side of the argument.
Suddenly having a prime minister who'd at least hesitate at the height of a crisis before nuking a few million civilians doesn't sound like such a bad idea...
Slashdot Mirror
Learning to code at school isn't just about gaining employability, any more than physical education is about becoming a professional athlete.
An understanding of how to write software will teach skills around how to approach complex problems (decomposition, logical thinking, planning, separation of responsibilities, etc), how to troubleshoot systems (not just IT systems but other workflows), how to identify opportunities for optimisation and automation, and so on.
I did the International Baccalaureate (a European curriculum for high schoolers), in which you got to choose the subjects you wanted to study, within some constraints. However, there was one mandatory class called Theory of Knowledge. This was a combination of logic, ethics and philosophy, and was by far the most interesting class I ever took at school.
Up to a certain age, I'd say education is about giving kids a good all-round level of knowledge.
If it turned out that in my Perfect Education System, the class requiring students to learn to juggle 19 balls was causing a lot of people to drop out, I might reflect on whether it's really a necessary skill for most people. That seems to be the spirit of the story.
On a related matter, I do often reflect how much more useful it would have been for me to learn to cook, tile, plumb, repair electricals, etc. Sure, I can learn all that now as an adult, but equally I could read up on the Tudors or plate tectonics now if I really wanted to.
I encrypt everything as a Perl program.
Unfortunately it's then also uncrackable even by me.
It's true, Google are renowned for hiring only morons. I'm told that at the interview people are asked stuff like, is MongoDB web scale? And I'm sure they only promote the total chumps to VP. All he had to do was post an "Ask Slashdot" and you'd have no doubt politely schooled him. What a wankpuffin he must be!
I see TOR kind of like HTTPS: it won't necessarily keep your transmission from being decrypted and deanonymized, but it probably makes it much harder to do so. As such it just sort of raises your default level of privacy (from plain HTTP).
I have some savings that earn approx 7% interest per year. You can argue the interest payments are the premium I'm paid for the risk of default, or perhaps that they represent the opportunity cost of spending the money, but it's pretty hard for me to understand how I'm "earning" them in any sense that relates to actual work. I could go into cryogenic suspension and the money would still roll in.
I'd wager that most rich people aren't really rich from earnings; they're rich from renting out their capital.
I think I would have handled this with just a simple "I don't understand your query, please rephrase".
That is, assuming it's not possible to make Cortana deliver a withering put-down, though that wouldn't get past legal.
I was wondering the other day what the limits of tolerance should be in Western society. I concluded that the only thing we mustn't tolerate is attempts to replace tolerance with intolerance. In other words, sort of political GPL: you have the freedom to do anything you want, except take that freedom away from others. As an example, after the overthrow of Mubarak in Egypt, the democratically elected government set about using its mandate to dismantle democracy ("one person, one vote - one time"), and so had to be ousted by force.
I see the GPL in the same light. Freedom isn't free, its price is eternal vigilance. The GPL says, you're free to do anything you like with this code except remove that freedom from any users of the code.
I don't know whether it's less successful at delivering software than "free, do whatever" code; I suspect that if it is, then both are dwarfed by proprietary software. My point being, if there must be only one model of software development, by that metric we should ditch free software altogether. I'm happy with a variety of models, and would probably choose GPL for anything substantial I wrote in my spare time.
Why do you assume there's only one female, and that she has multiple machines?
Yours,
The Grammar Nazi.
I'm reminded of "Installing a network PostScript printer on a Sun workstation running SunOS -- As illustrated through interpretive dance."
http://web.archive.org/web/199...
I do most things at my physical height.
I don't know what budget funds this, but I'd be pleased if it were foreign aid rather than the BBC licence fee.
If what you fear is getting shot, by a terrorist or anyone else, then it's worth pointing out that that's much much less likely in a society where no one has weapons except the bad guys (and the state, though I suspect many don't make that distinction).
If what you fear is a cataclysmic situation where it makes sense for everyone to be armed at very short notice, then the ongoing cost of gun ownership may be acceptable.
Moral relativism and moral equivalence are separate things to me. Moral relativism is to say that different people have different morals, which seems obvious to me. Equivalence is to say that therefore you cannot say anyone is wrong. I'm not saying that. I'm saying that ISIS are wrong.
I agree with you about violence. But on evil, he's right of course, but as a politician he's a fool to have imagined a cerebral point about moral relativism wouldn't be misinterpreted by the people at large, or misrepresented by his enemies as support for ISIS.
ISIS are evil by my definition of evil, and I'd gladly see them all hang. By their definition of evil, I'm evil, and they'd gladly see me hang. So, I bomb them, and they abduct and decapitate me.
I still think I'm right - I'm not saying that I think there's any moral equivalence between me and them. But I'm able to see that they have exactly the reverse position, and thus that in their minds, they're not just not evil, but even rigtheously good.
Saying "ISIS aren't evil" as a shorthand for all that is not likely to get people's votes. Hell, even saying all that is likely to piss off people who see the world in simplistic black and white (as I believe the majority do).
Only 24 out of every 100 adults voted for the asshats. It's the electoral system that screws us, but the only people who can fix that are the very asshats themselves... well, until the revolution! Now if you'll excuse me, it's Nov 5, I must... attend to other matters.
Yeah - at the time they even had the nerve to claim they'd be 600% accurate.
Not to be autistic, but...
Depends on the scale. If 21.9 represents the maximum on the scale, and 0 the minimum, then a difference of 3 would be ~13.7%.
I don't really know much about what this is all about (I only ever see stuff about it on Slashdot; I don't generally surf net gossip type sites) but wow, the upvoted comments seem to be entirely on one side of the argument.
Fairly illuminating TED talk on understanding population growth:
http://www.ted.com/talks/hans_...
...and a skewing towards males, for cultural reasons, that means there's a pretty big gender gap.
http://i2.cdn.turner.com/cnn/2...
Suddenly having a prime minister who'd at least hesitate at the height of a crisis before nuking a few million civilians doesn't sound like such a bad idea...
http://blogs.new.spectator.co....
(FWIW I think you're also calling BSD users fat.)
I reject your gender categories, oppressor!