My experience as a Canadian working in IT (first as a Perl programmer, then as a webmaster for a dotcom startup) in the UK is that it's very easy to get an IT job in Europe, since the skill shortage is fairly accute. It's worse, as far as I know in the UK, since there are still very few IT graduates (CompSci/Engineering is not a cool thing to study here). Most UK IT companies have a serious staff shortage.
The situation is a little better on the continent (France, Italy, Spain) because there are more CompSCI/Engineering university graduates.
So I don't think you'll have too much trouble getting an IT job in Europe - though the UK might be quite a bit easier than France, especially if you don't speak much French. Good Luck!
Try Nortel Networks - big multinational corp. with a huge & well established internship program. The boxes on the desks are Windows NT, but they all run eXceed to access the UNIX back-end (don't ask about the pointy-haired management decision to throw away all the HP-UX workstations & use eXceed instead *sigh*) If you're *really* lucky you might get placed in a department that's doing Java development on Solaris.
(But shouldn't the people making Springboard modules be a little busier with my GPS reciever?)
Read & weep tim. Us Europeans get a Visor/GSM mobile phone/GPS combo: http://www.telamarkt.com/
(site in English & German)
I can not wait to get my hands on one of these. Sure it's a little big & clunky, but which would you rather carry - a Visor with a hefty clip-on module or all of: a) a palmtop, b) a mobile phone, and c) a GPS... --
... rain? How well to all those components work in a downpour? Or are you only supposed to ride the thing where there's guaranteed blue skies? Silly me - you can only afford one if you're a Silly Valley dotcom millionaire, so of course rain's not a problem. Doh.
For good talk all day try www.oneword.co.uk,
a spoken word digital radio station that is
"exclusively dedicated to the transmission of plays, books,comedy and reviews." The content is currently a little 'classic novel' heavy, for example today's playlist inlcudes Hard Times by Charles Dickens and Jude the Obscure by Thomas
Hardy, but there are also interviews and non-fiction readings. And if Thomas Hardy isn't your cup of tea, try one of the five other digital rasio stations currently available in the UK, and listed on
www.ukdigitalradio.com.
Miguel de Icaza gives it away when he says, "Software is written to solve people's problems. We should design software in such a way that the software adapts to the
needs of people, rather than the other way around. Unix is a complex system internally despite its simplicity in its design, but it is not a system ready for end users."
He has fallen for the biggest myth of today's software industry - the myth that the OS and the user-interface are two sides of the same coin.
They are not and they don't have to be. One size does not fit all. Most users do not want to administer their own systems, they just want the computer to work when they switch it on. Soccer-moms and business executives should not have to understand client-server architecture in order to use their PCs.
When he says "When you develop applications, keep the end user in mind." he is assuming that application development and user interface are so completely and utterly entertwined that the user interface must necessarily mirror the application development paradigm - and so he argues that changing the application development paradigm will simplify things for users. This is utter twaddle.
He then uses this argument for justification of his claim that a 'better way' to write Unix applications would be to use a component architecture built on top of CORBA.
I'm much more inclined to agree with esr,
who says
The only way to write complex software that won't fall on its face is hold its global complexity down -- to build it out of
simple pieces connected by well-defined interfaces, so that most problems are local and you can have some hope of
fixing or optimizing a part without breaking the whole.
Unix tradition puts a lot of emphasis on writing programs to read and write simple, textual, stream-oriented,
device-independent formats. Mythology to the contrary, this is not because Unix programmers hate graphical user
interfaces. It's because if you don't write programs this way, it's much more difficult to hook them together.
First, get a user-interface design specialist, and a bunch of users, and figure out how they would like to use your application. Then do your coding in whatever suits you/your environment/the application best. Your users will thank you, and your code will be better written.
Most public librabies I've been to have a clearly defined "children's section", where the books are suitable for younger readers, the colours are brighter, and the noise levels are higher. These sections have librarians, and sometimes they have computers. Children have parents or they have teachers who are responsable for their activities.
The censor-ware debate is a direct result of
a culture that has devolved into letting the TV set babysit children. A computer with an internet connection is just another kind of TV set, and it keeps kids nice and quite for long after they've tired of the 17th replay of Toy Story 2.
I hang out with a number of older geeks who have kids. They let their kids surf the net. They let their kids surf the net when they are in the room and can see what's on the screen. One father I know says his daughter "will be allowed surf unsupervised the day she can hack root on the house-lan firewall".
Technology isn't the problem, and technology isn't the solution. Children need to be raised, not babysat by electronic appliances. But that would be way too much effort for today's parents, wouldn't it?
A major advantage of state-run news services such as the BBC or CBC, or indeed the 'public supported' model like PBS is that they can not be bought by the likes of Time Warner. I'll take some (obvious) bias from a state news service over a supposedly-unbiased (but ruled first last and only by the almighty audience ratios, which in turn mean $$$) commercial news source.
I think it would be very beneficial for linux in general if some of the large, more trusted names in Linux got together to organize a Linux Certification system. The whole linux name would gain some credibility if Red Hat, Corel, Mandrake, Suse, VA Linux, etc., formed something by which they would have the power to give and take "Linux Certified" stickers or something and give out "Linux Certified System Administrator" certifications.
Linux Professional Institute is just starting to do this. They've written and beta tested exams for Linux System Administration 101 and 102. From the sample questions on the website, it looks like they've done a competant job. I'm planning to sit the exam in a month or two.
Certification needs to be judged by peer review. If competant people agree that the LPI only certifies competant people, then we have a de-facto standard that is worth something. It doesn't matter who set it up in the first place.
"The problem that I've always seen is that humans have stopped evolving."
Please back up this statement with some facts.
I'm not sure what you mean by facts; but I would back up the statement "Humans have stopped Evolving" by saying "the ability to survive the physical stresses of the environment is no longer the primary criterion for likelyhood to pass genetic material to offspring."
For instance, a significantly premature baby will now survive if it is born where successful medical intervention is possible.
I'm not saying modern medicine is bad, I am saying that we now use choice (do you want a boy or a girl), laws (200$ fine for not wearing a seatbelt of a motorcycle helmet) and medical technology of all kinds to decide who lives and who dies rather than leaving each individual to battle it out with their environment on their own, like the PCB-contaminated salmon and Brown bears still have to do.
The salmon and the bears are still evolving. We are engaging in selection based on other criterion.
Apparently, Perl, with it's famous TMTOWTDI (There's More Than One Way To Do It), allows the programmer to leave out a semicolon in a brace-enclosed single line (such as '{print $sip}').
A perl statement must end in a semicolon unless it is the last statement in a block (Camel, 2nd ed., p. 96). The 'single line' is, by definition, the last statement in the block and so the semicolon can safely be omitted. For instance, the script runs fine if you substitute
The real scary part about this, is that now the trolls will have the full source code to analyse for loopholes and bugs that will allow them further abuse of the system.
the real wonderful part is that there will now be lots more 'pairs of eyes' checking the slashcode for loopholes and bugs that will allow quicker bugfixes and a more robust system...
... i've heard this argument somewhere before - haven't you?
There's a couple of really good books about the history and phenomena of fan-fiction. For a pre-net historical look at fan fiction and it's relationship to media fandom, try the well-written ethnography: Enterprising Women (Television Fandom and the Creation of Popular Myth) by Camille Bacon-Smith. ISBN 0812213793
For a more 'media studies' approach, including some interesting ideas about why fan fiction tends to find/create sexual tension between TV-show duos like Kirk&Spock or Starksy&Hutch: Textual Poachers (Television Fans & Participatory Culture) by Henry Jenkins. ISBN: 0415905729
Both make very interesting reading for people involved in fan-fiction or media fandom.
ai731
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Re:technology and education
on
Laptop Exams?
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· Score: 1
Now we can envision a day when all students get individual attention, from computerized teaching systems that have instant access to information unobtainable scant years ago.
Computerized teaching systems have a long, long way to come before they are anywhere near as useful as a live teacher. The problems with computerized teaching systems are many:
First they are incredibly expensive to produce & maintain: very low end (power-point style presentation with multiple choice questions) require approximately 80-150 hours of production time per hour of instruction; mid-range (one with relevant animation, fill-in questions with a minimum of 'intelligent' processing, pre- and post-tests) run at 200-350 hours of production time per hour of instruction; and very, very good programs (pre-recorded video, multiple instruction paths, a live 'tutor' who responds to email questons) require 500+ hours of production time per hour of instruction.
The whole idea of "individualized" instruction by computer is a joke until some major advances in AI are made. The very, very best computer-based-training programs currently might have a pre-test that allows you to skip over material you already know; and 2 or 3 different instruction paths (which is fine if you happen to fit one of those 2 or 3 categories). Every program I have ever seen handles wrong answers by suggesting you review the material in the previous module. That is to say, the only option if you don't understand something is to read it again.
And finally, people have different, individual "learning styles". Some peple learn better by reading, others by listening, others by interaction or group work. Traditional classroom-based teaching with a live instructor provides multiple channels for different learning styles; the teacher speaks, writes on the board (or shows slides), draws diagrams, answers questions, sets individual and group exercises, and (in the case of good teachers) is willing to entertain conjecture or go off on the occasional (relevant) tangent. Computer-based systems are restricted to one channel - reading what's on the screen; with occasional diagrams, pictures & animation (yes many have the option of a pre-recorded voice talking the text at you - have you ever tried to listen to a pre-recorded voice for 8 hours?)
I worked in coprporate training for a major multinational for 5 years, and spent half a million dollars a year on computer-based training programs. They are useful for learning the syntax of a new computer language, or for learning the basics of a protocol - oh and they're not bad for getting the absolute basics of a human language either. Anyone who would choose to learn from an O'Reilly book (learning styles, remember) will certainly learn something from a computer-based instructional program - O'Reilly books are cheaper and better written. Apart from that; keep the teachers in the classrooms...
as with the EU privacy regulations (where companies are not allowed to maintain databases of customers or use such information for focused marketing)
Not quite. In the UK at least, the law states that any company planning to store any information about you in electronic form must a) inform you of that fact and b) provide an option for you to ask that your information be removed. This applies to all organizations, not only commercial ones; so technically if a Boy Scout troup leader keeps a list of his scouts' addresses and phone numbers on his PalmPilot, he is leagally required to inform them (and probably their parents) that he is doing this...
Read it on slashdot, then tell your friends, families, co-workers, etc.
And spread it around the rest of the 'net as well. If there are newsgroups you read & post to regularly, or other online forums you hang out in, post a pointer to the Stallman's Linux Today article, and ask people to consider the issues, and join you in the boycot. You will probably get flamed some for it (depending on whaich newsgroups post to), but if everyone does their bit to spread the word, we can make Amazon feel the economic bite.
Gibson's books are each about transitions; the transition of the AIs into autonomous 'beings' that produces Count Zero's ghosts in the Matrix, Rei's transition from to 'humanity' in Idoru. The fine, spider-web threads of these transitions wove their way through Gibson's earlier novels, linking the characters, plot and setting - I found those threads missing from All Tomorow's Parties. The technological 'change' he introduces isn't linked into the characters and so they seem to simply drift with the weak current of the plot.
For me, All Tomorow's Parties doesn't have the power that the earlier books have. It's still a good read, and Gibson is a master of "setting the scene" (I would say 'the master', but I think P.K. Dick is equally skilled), such that the things he describes seem so unequivocably "right" and "true" that they become part of one's world-view. But I don't think I'll pull it off the shelf to re-read as often as I do with his other books.
Just as easy? Maybe, if you're a 19 year old CS major. I doubt if the majority of people out there, or even of people likely to become new Linux users, have such a friend. I mean, I'm a scientist and have lots of geek friends and I don't know a single experienced Debian user.
In that case, no offence intended, but I would wonder at the geek credentials of your friends... When I decided it was time to do the deed and install Linux on my home PC (a Toshiba laptop) I asked all my geek friends (that's probably redundant, I'm not sure I have any friends who aren't geeks, but anyway) which distro I should install. The answer was unanimously Debian.
Now I've been playing with computers since I was 12 (Commodore 64), and using Unix for 5 years, but my degree is in Film, not CompSci, and the most technical thing I had done up to that point was install & configure Apache for HP-UX. You do not need to be an ubergeek to install Debian, but you do need to RTMF, and read the FAQs, and ask questions about stuff you don't understand, and keep looking for the answers until you find them. It isn't hard; it just isn't self-explanatory...
Here's my experience with installing Debian as a geek who's not a software engineer:
Tuesday evening --------------- Right, I'm ready to try to install Linux (Debian) on my Laptop (Toshiba 440 CDX with Windoze95 on it); I've got:
the CD I burned with the Debian distribution
Linux rescue floppies (regular & tecra) made with rawrite
a dos boot floppy with fips on it
a ream of documentation, including:
the Debian installation guide
the dselect manual
the cfdisk docs
the fips instructions
the manual for my Toshiba
a faq about how to install linux on my model of laptop
19:50
* Backup all the files I care about from the HD; since these consist of a couple of dozen flat text files, they all fit on a floppy. * Go though the BIOS settings and try to disable all the stuff the debian guide recommends. Find out I can't disable the Shadow RAM. Wonder if this is important. Find out that all the BIOS settings I _do_ have access to are useless. * Realize that the manual for my Toshiba is useless. The index doesn't even have an entry for BIOS. There's a good chapter on how to use the mouse though... grrr...
20:20
* Run Scandisk. Read the cfdisk documentation again while Scandisk is running. Realize that I still don't understand it. Hope that all will become clear when I get there.
20:30
* Run Defrag. From Windows as instructed. Says my disk is 2% fragmented.
20:40
* Run fips. Create a second DOS partition * fips exits with the message "memory allocation error". Uh Oh. * Reboot Win95. It boots successfully. I now have a D: partition! * Double-check that I have all the necessary files for the debian installation loaded into c:\linux
20:55
* Boot to DOS * Run Install.bat * Stuff happens in black & white on the monitor. * The debian install screen comes up and asks me if I would like the display to be in colour. I tell it yes. Next it wants to set my keyboard. I scroll all the way down to the bottom of the screen to select the UK keyboard configuration. * cfdisk comes up. It finds the second DOS partition created by fips. After a little fumbling around, I realize that I have to delete the DOS partition and re-create it as a Linux partition. * I create /dev/hda1 primary DOS FAT 16 500MG /dev/hda2 primary Linux 860MG /dev/hda5 logical LinuxSwap 15.75 MG
... because it seems the right thing to do. I still don't understand the cfdisk documentation.
21:05
* "Writing partition table to disk". * cfdisk quits. Linux installation continues. Initialize the swap partition. Initialize/dev/hd2a. * Installation bombs out at the kernel install. The install can't find the files on c:\debian. I can't get it to mount the CDROM drive to read the files from there. * Try to reboot from the rescue floppy. Doesn't work. Neither does the tecra rescue floppy. Try to boot win95 "invalid partition table". Uh Oh. * I'm an idiot. It couldn't find the files in c:\debian, because I put them in c:\linux
21:45
* Reboot to DOS. restart the install. * Go though the previous stages of the install a second time. Choose drivers, configure the (nonexistant) network, call my machine 'ibid'. * Tell it to make a boot floppy. write fails. 3 times. * Tell it to boot from the HD. * Reboot. LILO starts, and fails. *...that is to say LILO goes into a reboot loop... The rescue floppies do the same thing (both the regular and the tecra)... I'm beginning to suspect a BIOS setting or other hardware problem...
22:30
* Can boot to DOS from the system floppy, but that's all. Otherwise I am now the proud owner of a bunch of expensive chips in a grey plastic case. I give up and go to bed.
Wednesday Evening ----------------- Having spent some time on comp.os.linux.setup reading about everyone else's disk partitioning woes, I'm going to give it another shot before yelling for help.
20:00
* Run cfdisk again. make the Linux Swap partition physical rather than logical. I now have /dev/hda1 primary bootable DOS FAT 16 500MG /dev/hda2 primary bootable Linux 860MG /dev/hda3 logical LinuxSwap 15.75 MG
* Re-arrange my Toshiba's hardware so that the floppy drive is in the on-board bay rather than the peripheral one. * Go through the debian install from scratch. * Creating a boot floppy succeeds! * Try to boot linux from the boot floppy. Same problem as before; a re-boot loop. * Boot win95 successfully. That's something, anyway. * Boot DOS. Run the DOS BIOS setup. Shoulda done this before. Disable everything in sight, including the CPU cache. * Boot linux from the floppy. Success!!! * Give root a password. I have a root password. I am logged in as root! I feel omnipotent! I can install software. I can run a webserver without resorting to a > 100 port number. Bwahahaha! (sorry - I've been using Unix for 5 years, but this is the first time I've ever been root...)
20:45
* Fumble blindly through dselect for a while. my friends were right, it's a royal pain. I _think_ I've got everything I need installed, but I'm sure I also have with a bunch of stuff I don't need taking up hard drive space. * Log out. Reboot. Log in as user. vi works. Perl is where it should be. Wayhey, I've got Linux!
Article 1: Communication between state offices and local offices should be by email/internet. The translation of hard-copy documents to electronic formats should be done where appropriate.
Article 2: In order to assure that business has fast access to information, request for proposals will be issued electronically. Replies will similarly be accepted electronically. During a transition period, electronic communication can be backed up by hard copy documentation.
Article 3: The state and regional offices, notwithstanding Article 4, will use "free software" [lit. 'logicels libres'] for which the source code is available.
Article 4: Certain specific software [presumably "non-free"] can be bought and used with special authorisation.
Article 5: In order to facilitate rapid implimentation of this law, an information service will be set up for the state and regional offices and the affected businesses.
Certainly not a perfect translation - French beurocrateze isn't my specialty (Quebecois street French is), but it gives you a rough idea.
A gene for a toxin that will kill the seed late in development, but that will not kill any other part of the plant.
A method for allowing a plant breeder to grow several generations of cotton plants, already genetically-engineered to contain the seed-specific toxin gene, without any seeds dying. This is required to produce enough seeds to sell for farmers to plant.
A method for activating the engineered seed-specific toxin gene after the farmer plants the seeds, so that the farmer's second generation will be killed.
Do we start to intervene in natural selection with a species refinement process. That's what this boils down to.
We've been intervening in natural selection since the advent of modern medicine. Since before modern medicine, actually, from the first Cesarian-section...
Seat-belt laws and motorcycle helmet laws, and warning lables telling you not to drink bleach are intervening in "natural selection".
In part this issue only comes up becuase we've created it. Pre-natal screening and feotal heart monitors let us know that a baby is in distress, we rush in and preform an emergency C-section, put the infant in a neo-natal intensive care unit, and then begins the agony over questions of "quality of life".
Maybe we should start to think about these things before we roll the medical machinery into gear in the first place? How often do we take "doing everything humanly possible" too far? How come cancer and AIDS patients have councelling about how to make DNR decisions; but people are scandalised when we talk about giving parents the right to make similar decisions...
Do our friends from the UK realize...that reruns of Monty Python are one of the main sources of information that many of us Yanks have about British culture? But if I were a Brit I would worry about people who don't realize how completely over the top it all was.
You seem to be labouring under the misaprehension that Brits care what Americans think of them. HTH. HAND.
the intermediate steps between here and there are worse than how things are right now. It doesn't matter how much better things could be, because greedy optimization algorithms have rule the world.
Canada switched from English units to Metric about thirty years ago (before I started school, anyway). There was not mass confusion. Nothing blew up. There was an education campaign, and the media reported (eg. weather reports) in both for a few years. Here in the UK, they've done a partial switch, due to EU regs. All food items are labled in Metric, and you get both Celcius and Farenheight in the weather report; but distances are still labled in miles, and beer still sold in pints. Believe it or not, people are flexible enough to deal with this without their brains seizing up.
GSM was designed from the outset to support data services, such as SMS, which are widely available in the Rest of the World, but pretty much unknown in N.A. where few cellphones use GSM.
Good to know we're ahead of the game in some respects. I didn't realise that SMS wasn't used over in NA, in Europe it's the norm, I get SMS messages on my mobile phone almost as often as I get voice calls.
On a recent trip to Switzerland, we geeked over the public phone boxes, all of which are equipped with little keyboards & 8-line mono displays from which you can send SMS messages, faxes & email, at 50 Swiss centimes for a 128 character message.
Of course, you probably couldn't install this equipment in any country other than Switzerland, due to vandalism...
gaze avoidance, ability to talk long and well on technical issues, but no clue as to how to make small-talk, a kind of analness for precision in language, the ability to learn social graces only via rote repitition
I think we need to be careful about assigning a "syndrome" or "disorder" name for every collection of behaviour patterns that cause a substancial group of individuals to differ from the "norm". Like someone said in an earlier post, what is "normal" is socially defined based on the views of the time.
Also, IMNSHO, personality type (Myers-Briggs), etc. can account for a large majority of these so-called 'symptoms'. I'm a Myers-Briggs INTJ; as are the vast majority of geeks, that means I have all of the 'symptoms' you list above with the exception of 'gaze avoidance'...
ai731 -- "My oppinions are my own. You may consider them as shareware if you wish."
Slashdot Mirror
The situation is a little better on the continent (France, Italy, Spain) because there are more CompSCI/Engineering university graduates.
So I don't think you'll have too much trouble getting an IT job in Europe - though the UK might be quite a bit easier than France, especially if you don't speak much French. Good Luck!
Cheers,
Janice
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ai731
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cheers,
ai731
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He has fallen for the biggest myth of today's software industry - the myth that the OS and the user-interface are two sides of the same coin.
They are not and they don't have to be. One size does not fit all. Most users do not want to administer their own systems, they just want the computer to work when they switch it on. Soccer-moms and business executives should not have to understand client-server architecture in order to use their PCs.
When he says "When you develop applications, keep the end user in mind." he is assuming that application development and user interface are so completely and utterly entertwined that the user interface must necessarily mirror the application development paradigm - and so he argues that changing the application development paradigm will simplify things for users. This is utter twaddle.
He then uses this argument for justification of his claim that a 'better way' to write Unix applications would be to use a component architecture built on top of CORBA.
I'm much more inclined to agree with esr, who says
First, get a user-interface design specialist, and a bunch of users, and figure out how they would like to use your application. Then do your coding in whatever suits you/your environment/the application best. Your users will thank you, and your code will be better written.
ai731
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The censor-ware debate is a direct result of a culture that has devolved into letting the TV set babysit children. A computer with an internet connection is just another kind of TV set, and it keeps kids nice and quite for long after they've tired of the 17th replay of Toy Story 2.
I hang out with a number of older geeks who have kids. They let their kids surf the net. They let their kids surf the net when they are in the room and can see what's on the screen. One father I know says his daughter "will be allowed surf unsupervised the day she can hack root on the house-lan firewall".
Technology isn't the problem, and technology isn't the solution. Children need to be raised, not babysat by electronic appliances. But that would be way too much effort for today's parents, wouldn't it?
ai731
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just my $currency 0.02
ai731
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Linux Professional Institute is just starting to do this. They've written and beta tested exams for Linux System Administration 101 and 102. From the sample questions on the website, it looks like they've done a competant job. I'm planning to sit the exam in a month or two.
Certification needs to be judged by peer review. If competant people agree that the LPI only certifies competant people, then we have a de-facto standard that is worth something. It doesn't matter who set it up in the first place.
ai731
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Please back up this statement with some facts.
I'm not sure what you mean by facts; but I would back up the statement "Humans have stopped Evolving" by saying "the ability to survive the physical stresses of the environment is no longer the primary criterion for likelyhood to pass genetic material to offspring."
For instance, a significantly premature baby will now survive if it is born where successful medical intervention is possible.
I'm not saying modern medicine is bad, I am saying that we now use choice (do you want a boy or a girl), laws (200$ fine for not wearing a seatbelt of a motorcycle helmet) and medical technology of all kinds to decide who lives and who dies rather than leaving each individual to battle it out with their environment on their own, like the PCB-contaminated salmon and Brown bears still have to do.
The salmon and the bears are still evolving. We are engaging in selection based on other criterion.
ai731
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A perl statement must end in a semicolon unless it is the last statement in a block (Camel, 2nd ed., p. 96). The 'single line' is, by definition, the last statement in the block and so the semicolon can safely be omitted. For instance, the script runs fine if you substitute
{if ($reallyThirsty) {$chug}else {print $sip}}
for {if ($reallyThirsty) {$chug;}else {print $sip};}
ai731
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the real wonderful part is that there will now be lots more 'pairs of eyes' checking the slashcode for loopholes and bugs that will allow quicker bugfixes and a more robust system...
ai731
--
For a more 'media studies' approach, including some interesting ideas about why fan fiction tends to find/create sexual tension between TV-show duos like Kirk&Spock or Starksy&Hutch: Textual Poachers (Television Fans & Participatory Culture) by Henry Jenkins. ISBN: 0415905729
Both make very interesting reading for people involved in fan-fiction or media fandom.
ai731
--
Computerized teaching systems have a long, long way to come before they are anywhere near as useful as a live teacher. The problems with computerized teaching systems are many:
First they are incredibly expensive to produce & maintain: very low end (power-point style presentation with multiple choice questions) require approximately 80-150 hours of production time per hour of instruction; mid-range (one with relevant animation, fill-in questions with a minimum of 'intelligent' processing, pre- and post-tests) run at 200-350 hours of production time per hour of instruction; and very, very good programs (pre-recorded video, multiple instruction paths, a live 'tutor' who responds to email questons) require 500+ hours of production time per hour of instruction.
The whole idea of "individualized" instruction by computer is a joke until some major advances in AI are made. The very, very best computer-based-training programs currently might have a pre-test that allows you to skip over material you already know; and 2 or 3 different instruction paths (which is fine if you happen to fit one of those 2 or 3 categories). Every program I have ever seen handles wrong answers by suggesting you review the material in the previous module. That is to say, the only option if you don't understand something is to read it again.
And finally, people have different, individual "learning styles". Some peple learn better by reading, others by listening, others by interaction or group work. Traditional classroom-based teaching with a live instructor provides multiple channels for different learning styles; the teacher speaks, writes on the board (or shows slides), draws diagrams, answers questions, sets individual and group exercises, and (in the case of good teachers) is willing to entertain conjecture or go off on the occasional (relevant) tangent. Computer-based systems are restricted to one channel - reading what's on the screen; with occasional diagrams, pictures & animation (yes many have the option of a pre-recorded voice talking the text at you - have you ever tried to listen to a pre-recorded voice for 8 hours?)
I worked in coprporate training for a major multinational for 5 years, and spent half a million dollars a year on computer-based training programs. They are useful for learning the syntax of a new computer language, or for learning the basics of a protocol - oh and they're not bad for getting the absolute basics of a human language either. Anyone who would choose to learn from an O'Reilly book (learning styles, remember) will certainly learn something from a computer-based instructional program - O'Reilly books are cheaper and better written. Apart from that; keep the teachers in the classrooms...
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Not quite. In the UK at least, the law states that any company planning to store any information about you in electronic form must a) inform you of that fact and b) provide an option for you to ask that your information be removed. This applies to all organizations, not only commercial ones; so technically if a Boy Scout troup leader keeps a list of his scouts' addresses and phone numbers on his PalmPilot, he is leagally required to inform them (and probably their parents) that he is doing this...
ai731
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And spread it around the rest of the 'net as well. If there are newsgroups you read & post to regularly, or other online forums you hang out in, post a pointer to the Stallman's Linux Today article, and ask people to consider the issues, and join you in the boycot. You will probably get flamed some for it (depending on whaich newsgroups post to), but if everyone does their bit to spread the word, we can make Amazon feel the economic bite.
ai731
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For me, All Tomorow's Parties doesn't have the power that the earlier books have. It's still a good read, and Gibson is a master of "setting the scene" (I would say 'the master', but I think P.K. Dick is equally skilled), such that the things he describes seem so unequivocably "right" and "true" that they become part of one's world-view. But I don't think I'll pull it off the shelf to re-read as often as I do with his other books.
ai731
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In that case, no offence intended, but I would wonder at the geek credentials of your friends... When I decided it was time to do the deed and install Linux on my home PC (a Toshiba laptop) I asked all my geek friends (that's probably redundant, I'm not sure I have any friends who aren't geeks, but anyway) which distro I should install. The answer was unanimously Debian.
Now I've been playing with computers since I was 12 (Commodore 64), and using Unix for 5 years, but my degree is in Film, not CompSci, and the most technical thing I had done up to that point was install & configure Apache for HP-UX. You do not need to be an ubergeek to install Debian, but you do need to RTMF, and read the FAQs, and ask questions about stuff you don't understand, and keep looking for the answers until you find them. It isn't hard; it just isn't self-explanatory...
Here's my experience with installing Debian as a geek who's not a software engineer:
Tuesday evening
---------------
Right, I'm ready to try to install Linux (Debian) on my Laptop (Toshiba 440 CDX with Windoze95 on it); I've got:
- the CD I burned with the Debian distribution
- Linux rescue floppies (regular & tecra) made with rawrite
- a dos boot floppy with fips on it
- a ream of documentation, including:
- the Debian installation guide
- the dselect manual
- the cfdisk docs
- the fips instructions
- the manual for my Toshiba
- a faq about how to install linux on my model of laptop
19:50* Backup all the files I care about from the HD; since these consist of a couple of dozen flat text files, they all fit on a floppy.
* Go though the BIOS settings and try to disable all the stuff the debian guide recommends. Find out I can't disable the Shadow RAM. Wonder if this is important. Find out that all the BIOS settings I _do_ have access to are useless.
* Realize that the manual for my Toshiba is useless. The index doesn't even have an entry for BIOS. There's a good chapter on how to use the mouse though... grrr...
20:20
* Run Scandisk. Read the cfdisk documentation again while Scandisk is running. Realize that I still don't understand it. Hope that all will become clear when I get there.
20:30
* Run Defrag. From Windows as instructed. Says my disk is 2% fragmented.
20:40
* Run fips. Create a second DOS partition
* fips exits with the message "memory allocation error". Uh Oh.
* Reboot Win95. It boots successfully. I now have a D: partition!
* Double-check that I have all the necessary files for the debian installation loaded into c:\linux
20:55
/dev/hda1 primary DOS FAT 16 500MG
/dev/hda2 primary Linux 860MG
/dev/hda5 logical LinuxSwap 15.75 MG
... because it seems the right thing to do. I still don't understand the cfdisk documentation.
* Boot to DOS
* Run Install.bat
* Stuff happens in black & white on the monitor.
* The debian install screen comes up and asks me if I would like the display to be in colour. I tell it yes. Next it wants to set my keyboard. I scroll all the way down to the bottom of the screen to select the UK keyboard configuration.
* cfdisk comes up. It finds the second DOS partition created by fips. After a little fumbling around, I realize that I have to delete the DOS partition and re-create it as a Linux partition.
* I create
21:05
/dev/hd2a.
* "Writing partition table to disk".
* cfdisk quits. Linux installation continues. Initialize the swap partition. Initialize
* Installation bombs out at the kernel install. The install can't find the files on c:\debian. I can't get it to mount the CDROM drive to read the files from there.
* Try to reboot from the rescue floppy. Doesn't work. Neither does the tecra rescue floppy. Try to boot win95 "invalid partition table". Uh Oh.
* I'm an idiot. It couldn't find the files in c:\debian, because I put them in c:\linux
21:45
...that is to say LILO goes into a reboot loop... The rescue floppies do the same thing (both the regular and the tecra)... I'm beginning to suspect a BIOS setting or other hardware problem...
* Reboot to DOS. restart the install.
* Go though the previous stages of the install a second time. Choose drivers, configure the (nonexistant) network, call my machine 'ibid'.
* Tell it to make a boot floppy. write fails. 3 times.
* Tell it to boot from the HD.
* Reboot. LILO starts, and fails.
*
22:30
* Can boot to DOS from the system floppy, but that's all. Otherwise I am now the proud owner of a bunch of expensive chips in a grey plastic case. I give up and go to bed.
Wednesday Evening
-----------------
Having spent some time on comp.os.linux.setup reading about everyone else's disk partitioning woes, I'm going to give it another shot before yelling for help.
20:00
/dev/hda1 primary bootable DOS FAT 16 500MG
/dev/hda2 primary bootable Linux 860MG
/dev/hda3 logical LinuxSwap 15.75 MG
* Run cfdisk again. make the Linux Swap partition physical rather than logical.
I now have
* Re-arrange my Toshiba's hardware so that the floppy drive is in the on-board bay rather than the peripheral one.
* Go through the debian install from scratch.
* Creating a boot floppy succeeds!
* Try to boot linux from the boot floppy. Same problem as before; a re-boot loop.
* Boot win95 successfully. That's something, anyway.
* Boot DOS. Run the DOS BIOS setup. Shoulda done this before. Disable everything in sight, including the CPU cache.
* Boot linux from the floppy. Success!!!
* Give root a password. I have a root password. I am logged in as root! I feel omnipotent! I can install software. I can run a webserver without resorting to a > 100 port number. Bwahahaha! (sorry - I've been using Unix for 5 years, but this is the first time I've ever been root...)
20:45
* Fumble blindly through dselect for a while. my friends were right, it's a royal pain. I _think_ I've got everything I need installed, but I'm sure I also have with a bunch of stuff I don't need taking up hard drive space.
* Log out. Reboot. Log in as user. vi works. Perl is where it should be. Wayhey, I've got Linux!
Cheers,
ai731
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Article 1:
Communication between state offices and local offices should be by email/internet. The translation of hard-copy documents to electronic formats should be done where appropriate.
Article 2:
In order to assure that business has fast access to information, request for proposals will be issued electronically. Replies will similarly be accepted electronically. During a transition period, electronic communication can be backed up by hard copy documentation.
Article 3:
The state and regional offices, notwithstanding Article 4, will use "free software" [lit. 'logicels libres'] for which the source code is available.
Article 4:
Certain specific software [presumably "non-free"] can be bought and used with special authorisation.
Article 5:
In order to facilitate rapid implimentation of this law, an information service will be set up for the state and regional offices and the affected businesses.
Certainly not a perfect translation - French beurocrateze isn't my specialty (Quebecois street French is), but it gives you a rough idea.
ai731
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- A gene for a toxin that will kill the seed late in development, but that will not kill any other part of the plant.
- A method for allowing a plant breeder to grow several generations of cotton plants, already genetically-engineered to contain the seed-specific toxin gene, without any seeds dying. This is required to produce enough seeds to sell for farmers to plant.
- A method for activating the engineered seed-specific toxin gene after the farmer plants the seeds, so that the farmer's second generation will be killed.
Full technical description on the Edmonds Institute Websiteai731
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We've been intervening in natural selection since the advent of modern medicine. Since before modern medicine, actually, from the first Cesarian-section...
Seat-belt laws and motorcycle helmet laws, and warning lables telling you not to drink bleach are intervening in "natural selection".
In part this issue only comes up becuase we've created it. Pre-natal screening and feotal heart monitors let us know that a baby is in distress, we rush in and preform an emergency C-section, put the infant in a neo-natal intensive care unit, and then begins the agony over questions of "quality of life".
Maybe we should start to think about these things before we roll the medical machinery into gear in the first place? How often do we take "doing everything humanly possible" too far? How come cancer and AIDS patients have councelling about how to make DNR decisions; but people are scandalised when we talk about giving parents the right to make similar decisions...
ai731
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You seem to be labouring under the misaprehension that Brits care what Americans think of them.
HTH. HAND.
ai731
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Canada switched from English units to Metric about thirty years ago (before I started school, anyway). There was not mass confusion. Nothing blew up. There was an education campaign, and the media reported (eg. weather reports) in both for a few years. Here in the UK, they've done a partial switch, due to EU regs. All food items are labled in Metric, and you get both Celcius and Farenheight in the weather report; but distances are still labled in miles, and beer still sold in pints. Believe it or not, people are flexible enough to deal with this without their brains seizing up.
ai731
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Good to know we're ahead of the game in some respects. I didn't realise that SMS wasn't used over in NA, in Europe it's the norm, I get SMS messages on my mobile phone almost as often as I get voice calls.
On a recent trip to Switzerland, we geeked over the public phone boxes, all of which are equipped with little keyboards & 8-line mono displays from which you can send SMS messages, faxes & email, at 50 Swiss centimes for a 128 character message.
Of course, you probably couldn't install this equipment in any country other than Switzerland, due to vandalism...
ai731
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I think we need to be careful about assigning a "syndrome" or "disorder" name for every collection of behaviour patterns that cause a substancial group of individuals to differ from the "norm". Like someone said in an earlier post, what is "normal" is socially defined based on the views of the time.
Also, IMNSHO, personality type (Myers-Briggs), etc. can account for a large majority of these so-called 'symptoms'. I'm a Myers-Briggs INTJ; as are the vast majority of geeks, that means I have all of the 'symptoms' you list above with the exception of 'gaze avoidance'...
ai731
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"My oppinions are my own. You may consider them as shareware if you wish."