What's especially nice is that the book walks you thru the various steps - minimum redundancy coding, adaptive huffman coding, arithmetic coding... so the improvements are introduced gradually and logically. Good stuff.
> they may be raised to contribute > something back to society
Bingo.
> a couple more happy cogs in the > corporate machine does.
Hm. I not sure that homeschoolers end up as happy cogs...
> parents would participate > in the education system
Home schooling definitely involves the parents in educating children...
> there's always private school or > moving to another district.
Right, or home school. Maybe we're in violent agreement...
> public school teaches [...]
Put differently - public school teaches quiet kids that they can avoid notice, loud kids that they can disrupt everything, bullies that they can bully slyly... etc. Point, counterpoint.
> the only people they see until the > leave for college
This is a mischaracterization of the rich experiences of many home schooled children. Guest teachers, field trips, other kids who home school, church involvement, etc... lots of interaction there.
> other than as weird sequestered > academic types.
But wait, those are the public school teachers you're placing your hope in!:-)
> When a new technology allows you > to do something better USE IT.
Convergence achieved!
> a religious passage
I've got the King James Mythical Man Month... "and thou shalt make a first version, and this thou shalt throw outside the gates, upon the rubbish heap".
> In 30 years my kids are going to be > asking me why I keep referring > to "disk space" and "RAM."
But if that's the case, I daresay you won't be talking about disk space and RAM anymore.
I think this review is a backlash to the adulation that's usually given to this particular book. I mean, some of the concepts in there are fine, but some of them have been superseded by tech improvements.
> you too are going to sound like > and old fart one day
Hm, hopefully that's avoidable....
> the respect you show or don't show
Of course, one should be respectful. But, at the same time, it's important to know what to learn from older books and what has changed since then.
"The most serious objection is the increase in the size of the source code that must be stored. As the discipline moves more and more toward on-line storage of source code, this has become a growing consideration. I find myself being briefer in comments to an APL program, which will live on disk, then on a PL/I one that I will store as cards."
For who among us is this not true? Honestly, you just can't shut me up on cards. ================
I think the analogy breaks down a bit at this point... after all, if homeschooling works well, the children's experience will benefit everyone. There's a bit of "tending ones own fields to the benefit of all" here, I think...
FWIW, you may want to procure a Slashdot account to post under... it would get your comments a wider audience since many people browse at +1 or +2, I think...
> Your social obligation is to the community > , not to just your children
I daresay homeschooling benefits both of them.
> giving the schools LESS money is not > going to fix it
Hm. Giving them more doesn't seem to be producing good results...
> Kids learn how to interact, survive, > and deal with problems socially in school
To the contrary, public schools are the height of artificiality. Sitting in a room with 30 people of the same age ends once college is over. Homescholing allows children to interact with folks of all ages, which is a much more socially enriching experience.
> god forbid teach raise your kids > to enjoy learning
> The US public school system is > tremendously wasteful.
The worst thing is that even if you homeschool your kids, you still pay taxes to support public schools. So you pay double - once for the homeschool books/supplies/etc and once into the maw of the Dept of Education.
> comprehensive documentation > about the Microsoft APIs
I don't know... some seem to be better than others. The MAPI docs aren't so hot, especially if you want to do something with Extended MAPI. Granted, simple MAPI was documented very well... but try hooking some of the events and dealing with long IDs and all that... whew.
The best resource I found was an out-of-print book. Looks like Les has made it available on CD now, which is nice... a few years ago I had to buy a used copy off Amazon for $70 or so.
Better still, they've released some stuff under a BSD-style license, including this excellent Java Memory Profiler.
Re:Is it just me...
on
Linux Unwired
·
· Score: 4, Insightful
> wireless seem a bit overhyped?
I thought the same thing for a while... but after working on my laptop at home with no wires for the kids to yank on/trip over, I'll never go back. If I run across something interesting, I can carry my laptop in to another room to show my wife. If the living room gets too loud, I can move into the dining room. It's very handy.
And for some reason I still get a kick out of printing something over a wireless LAN connection. Just something odd about clicking the "print" button, with no wires attached, and then hearing my printer downstairs leap into action:-) I don't know why that still amazes me, but it does:-)
> the audience for this will be > much smaller than that for kernel traffic
I think that's mostly true... but I also think that there are plenty of folks interested in compiler-ish development notes.
For example, I work on the open source utility PMD, which does static analysis of Java code. So there are all sorts of things it can check for - dead code, algebraic simplifications, unused assignments, and so on. It's almost like working on the front end of a compiler - i.e., parsing, tokenizing, symbol table - without having to do the code generation backend. Looking at the current GCC news issue, there's at least one thing there that seems useful to me - the improvements to the constant propagation techniques.
So, anyhow, I agree that there will be a smaller audience - but perhaps the people reading it will be from diverse backgrounds and very focused on the topics that arise.
sakusha, I salute thee! When I saw the headline, that's the first thing I thought of...
Where have all the VCs gone? No more funding Where have all the VCs gone? Funding all gone Where have all the VCs gone? No more lovely Aeron chairs It seems that they have learned It seems that they have learned
Slashdot Mirror
...and the server already seems to be having problems, it's mirrored here.
There's a Ruby-Eclipse project... last release was in May of this year, so perhaps it's pretty active...
...is in Mark Nelson's "The Data Compression Book".
What's especially nice is that the book walks you thru the various steps - minimum redundancy coding, adaptive huffman coding, arithmetic coding... so the improvements are introduced gradually and logically. Good stuff.
> project his voice back across time and death
Dr Dan Streetmentioner would approve - "Douglas Adams willion have be recorded an excellent radio series!"
...Slashdot's past, that is.
Definitely serving up new ads... five ads on the front page alone. Argh.
> I can't help but shed a tear
> when I hear Pete Seeger sing it
So true. I've got a Pete Seeger greatest hits album... "We Shall Overcome" is especially poignant. Classic stuff.
...are available here.
:wq.
To close, let me just say this....
> they may be raised to contribute
:-)
> something back to society
Bingo.
> a couple more happy cogs in the
> corporate machine does.
Hm. I not sure that homeschoolers end up as happy cogs...
> parents would participate
> in the education system
Home schooling definitely involves the parents in educating children...
> there's always private school or
> moving to another district.
Right, or home school. Maybe we're in violent agreement...
> public school teaches [...]
Put differently - public school teaches quiet kids that they can avoid notice, loud kids that they can disrupt everything, bullies that they can bully slyly... etc. Point, counterpoint.
> the only people they see until the
> leave for college
This is a mischaracterization of the rich experiences of many home schooled children. Guest teachers, field trips, other kids who home school, church involvement, etc... lots of interaction there.
> other than as weird sequestered
> academic types.
But wait, those are the public school teachers you're placing your hope in!
> When a new technology allows you
> to do something better USE IT.
Convergence achieved!
> a religious passage
I've got the King James Mythical Man Month... "and thou shalt make a first version, and this thou shalt throw outside the gates, upon the rubbish heap".
> In 30 years my kids are going to be
> asking me why I keep referring
> to "disk space" and "RAM."
But if that's the case, I daresay you won't be talking about disk space and RAM anymore.
I think this review is a backlash to the adulation that's usually given to this particular book. I mean, some of the concepts in there are fine, but some of them have been superseded by tech improvements.
> you too are going to sound like
> and old fart one day
Hm, hopefully that's avoidable....
> the respect you show or don't show
Of course, one should be respectful. But, at the same time, it's important to know what to learn from older books and what has changed since then.
Well done indeed:
================
Regarding source code documentation:
"The most serious objection is the increase in the size of the source code that must be stored. As the discipline moves more and more toward on-line storage of source code, this has become a growing consideration. I find myself being briefer in comments to an APL program, which will live on disk, then on a PL/I one that I will store as cards."
For who among us is this not true? Honestly, you just can't shut me up on cards.
================
Definitely worth a read. To coin a phrase: LOL.
> for your own private playground
I think the analogy breaks down a bit at this point... after all, if homeschooling works well, the children's experience will benefit everyone. There's a bit of "tending ones own fields to the benefit of all" here, I think...
FWIW, you may want to procure a Slashdot account to post under... it would get your comments a wider audience since many people browse at +1 or +2, I think...
> Your social obligation is to the community
:-)
> , not to just your children
I daresay homeschooling benefits both of them.
> giving the schools LESS money is not
> going to fix it
Hm. Giving them more doesn't seem to be producing good results...
> Kids learn how to interact, survive,
> and deal with problems socially in school
To the contrary, public schools are the height of artificiality. Sitting in a room with 30 people of the same age ends once college is over. Homescholing allows children to interact with folks of all ages, which is a much more socially enriching experience.
> god forbid teach raise your kids
> to enjoy learning
By homeschooling, exactly
> the portion of my taxes earmarked
> for foreign policy if I don't agree with it?
Hm. Don't you get a tax break if you go in the Peace Corps or some such?
Also, just because it's impossible to fix everywhere doesn't mean we should give up trying to fix what we can.
> nobody expects that the government
> is going to give me "vouchers" to help
> pay for my work.
Having never built a park, I'm not sure what the tax implications are...
> It's a social obligation
And I'm fulfulling it by homeschooling my kids - why should I pay into the public school system as well?
> Take it up with the school board.
I doubt they have the authority to issue vouchers...
> you pay taxes to execute our foreign policy
Returning costs could be done (and is already being done in the form of tax breaks) in other ways for the areas you mention - foreign policy, parks.
> What's your point?
That vouchers would return some of the costs to those who are doing the work.
> The US public school system is
> tremendously wasteful.
The worst thing is that even if you homeschool your kids, you still pay taxes to support public schools. So you pay double - once for the homeschool books/supplies/etc and once into the maw of the Dept of Education.
....right on.
VIM and the VIM/Ruby syntax/indent files... that's all you need for some mad Ruby programming.
> comprehensive documentation
> about the Microsoft APIs
I don't know... some seem to be better than others. The MAPI docs aren't so hot, especially if you want to do something with Extended MAPI. Granted, simple MAPI was documented very well... but try hooking some of the events and dealing with long IDs and all that... whew.
The best resource I found was an out-of-print book. Looks like Les has made it available on CD now, which is nice... a few years ago I had to buy a used copy off Amazon for $70 or so.
> US Federal Government has agreed to GPL
Better still, they've released some stuff under a BSD-style license, including this excellent Java Memory Profiler.
> wireless seem a bit overhyped?
:-) I don't know why that still amazes me, but it does :-)
I thought the same thing for a while... but after working on my laptop at home with no wires for the kids to yank on/trip over, I'll never go back. If I run across something interesting, I can carry my laptop in to another room to show my wife. If the living room gets too loud, I can move into the dining room. It's very handy.
And for some reason I still get a kick out of printing something over a wireless LAN connection. Just something odd about clicking the "print" button, with no wires attached, and then hearing my printer downstairs leap into action
> the audience for this will be
> much smaller than that for kernel traffic
I think that's mostly true... but I also think that there are plenty of folks interested in compiler-ish development notes.
For example, I work on the open source utility PMD, which does static analysis of Java code. So there are all sorts of things it can check for - dead code, algebraic simplifications, unused assignments, and so on. It's almost like working on the front end of a compiler - i.e., parsing, tokenizing, symbol table - without having to do the code generation backend. Looking at the current GCC news issue, there's at least one thing there that seems useful to me - the improvements to the constant propagation techniques.
So, anyhow, I agree that there will be a smaller audience - but perhaps the people reading it will be from diverse backgrounds and very focused on the topics that arise.
sakusha, I salute thee! When I saw the headline, that's the first thing I thought of...
Where have all the VCs gone?
No more funding
Where have all the VCs gone?
Funding all gone
Where have all the VCs gone?
No more lovely Aeron chairs
It seems that they have learned
It seems that they have learned
....right here.