We abhor students who turn in their fellow students for illegal acts (after all, the police can only be involved if a law is alledgedly broken), yet we condemn adults who aid criminals by refusing contact police when they are knowledgable about a crime. Should we be praising the communities whose code of silence allows crime to flourish?
Of course not (well, _I_ don't think so...). In other words, the problem is with the law itself, not the students response to it. Informing about known crimes is considered good citizenship and possibly even necessary to a functioning society. Instead of attempting to promote the code of silence that allows any number of illegal acts to go unreported, we should look at adjusting the laws to take into account situation and youth.
If they're not attempting anything illegal, is there anything that should stop a company from attempting to speak with its critics or even one's current employers?
Certainly there's nothing stopping an individual from doing the same.
Having said that, I'd certainly publicize the name of any jerk who tried to get me in trouble with my employer for remarks I posted elsewhere. And it's not that infrequent, especially if you're commenting about areas of high controversy (think abortion...)
> The differnece is that Microsoft has a poor track record for supporting alternate platforms. Java, OTOH, has been ported to quite a few architectures.
FUD! Microsoft has done as much as promised to port MISL to _any_ platform, MS or not, with over 200,000,000 users. (Anything less just doesn't make financial sense now, does it?)
Floppies have one big advantage over this thing. Floppy drives are accessed through the front of the machine!
I still can't believe that so few computer manufacurers put a USB port on the front of the machine. Every time I want to plug a nice "convenient" USB peripheral in, it takes 10 minutes of wrestling with the computer (with a 60 lb monitor on top) that's stuck against a wall...
This device would be thrice as sweet if my computers had USB ports in the front. As is, it's no floppy replacement.
Taking this speculation several steps further: If autism is the failure of these mirror neurons to work properly, what's the effect on individuals in cases where they are super-abundunt? ESP (or more accurately, the appearance of it) anyone?
I hate to break it to you, but every password we use is security through obscurity, at least until biometrics comes along.
We're just hoping that someone doesn't guess lucky and stumble on to our password. Much like closed source projects hope that nobody stumbles onto their bugs.
In the end, it's only a matter of "Can we make the entrance obscure enough?"
Unfortunately, if the reward for competing against Intel that you waste a lot of your investor's money in order to save Intel customers money, I doubt that, in a few years, there's going to be a lot of people stupid enough to even try and enter the microprocessor market.
There's only going to be competition if there's a chance that you can win. However, the general sentiment (especially around corporations) is "Thank goodness these alternatives exist. If they didn't, we'd have to spend much more on our industry standard stuff."
Don't expect to the reap the benefits of competition forever if you have no desire to look at a competitors product. Of course, that's hardly a warning that Slashdot-ites need to hear:-).
Funny, now that I'm a parent, the options aren't as clear to me.
Thinking about when my kids are old enough to enjoy surfing (maybe 10), I can either
Watch my kids like a hawk while they surf, ready to intervene at any moment (Big Brother, here I come),
I can give them some (illusory?) privacy while relying on some incompetently built firewall, or
I can just let them access the net when they're 21:-) and not likely to be traumatized(okay, my oldest is a sensitive type).
I'm really not certain whether option 1 is preferable. At age 10, I certainly preferred playing unsupervised in the backyard rather than outside under the watchful eye of adults. Somehow the chilling effect of parental stares interfered with our 10-year old gun battles (that would probably get the police called on us nowadays:-().
As for expectations of privacy... I've known almost as many who curse their parents for allowing allowing them the privacy to damage themselves as those who curse their parents for not allowing them the privacy that would enable them to do non-harmful things that their parents didn't like...
In other words, one size defintely doesn't fit all. Or to paraphrase, you can't win, you can't break even, and the spouse frowns if you try and get (even temporarily) out of the game:-).
Okay, let's get real. For an increasing number of schools and libraries, it's a question of filtered content or no content at all.
People here don't seem to be able to accept that depending on where you live, unfiltered access to the net is not acceptable to the majority of people concerned enough about the issue to raise a fuss. I think it's rather geek-centric thinking to assume that most people believe that net access is vital for education or is a right along with library books. If the cost is too high, then get rid of it.
Or look at it another way, if the every library (school or civic) automatically had an annex for pornography, most people (again regionally divided) would prefer not to have libraries available at all.
However, just maybe, if we can prove that filters don't stop most kids from stumbling onto pornography, we can get schools and libraries to get internet access removed altogether!
I think that the author may have missed the point. The "walled garden" may not have any direct hyperlinks out of the garden, but all it takes is one "Google" in order to break out.
Far more dangerous and (in my opinion) more likely, is the idea that your ISP is part of a conglomerate which allows much faster interconnections with those in the garden than without. How many people give up surfing slow sites? As long as the conglomerate is large enough to encapsulate a large selection of services, they're not going to endanger themselves too much. Besides, most high speed ISP's are monopolies or duopolies.
I believe that a number of ISP's have already considered approaching vendors to pay for "preferred" status (i.e. better connectivity to their site).
Now *that* is the real way to slowly kill the internet.
How is exhaustive unit testing supposed to work? In any project that I've been involved in (all small, less than 100 KLOC), exhaustive testing would take anywhere between millions and trillions of test cases. It's the unexpected/untested corner conditions that nail software and the ability to find every possible variable that could effect software operation is next to impossible in a sane amount of time.
In a typical unit, there may be 25 variables all with perhaps 10 useful values that should be tested. (For example, for ints, I use a large negative value, a small negative value, -1, 0, +1, a small positive value, a large positive value, minint and maxint (amazing the number of programs that manipulate parameters without checking for integer over/underflow), one below the largest expected value, the largest expected value and one above the largest expected value) That makes 10^25 test cases!
Isolating programs into small enough independent units to make testing possible is usually a pipedream, especially in anything to do with GUIs, where there are usually 5 different ways to do anything, guaranteeing that every element of the GUI is connected to every other element.
Dealing with error conditions alone is a nightmare. Faced with GUI code that can generate a possible error condition every 5-10 lines of code, most programmers just give up and punt.
For a lark, I once did *proper* error handling in a few hundred line program. I gave up at over 3,000 lines of code (of which about 1/3 was dealing with error conditions that occurred when error conditions occurred...)
>> They make 24% profits on sales. Everyone else in free competitive markets is making 3 to 5% profit on sales.
> Book stores make 40-60% profit on sales. Grocery stores tend to make 20-30%.
I'm going to assume stupidity instead of malice.
You are quoting gross margins. i.e. a books costs a bookstore between 40 and 60% of the price that it sells it for.
The previous poster is quoting profit, i.e. what's left after you pay rent, employees, marketing and everything else.
The two are in no way comparable, except that they are both quoted in dollars:-).
Most bookstores I know about are making between -3% to +5% profit. I don't know about groceries. As for software, gross margins are about 95%. Software boxes don't cost an awful lot.
IBM's motives are pretty clear cut. They want to make a lot of money enabling e-commerce, (B2B, B2C, A2Z, you name it). Massive scaling of e-commerce requires certain elements. Simon Phipps, when we was working for IBM, explained IBM's support for Java, XML and Unix in a paper called "Why the Web Works" which he presented all over (an excellent speaker by the way, well worth catching if you get the chance). A version of the presentation is available here (minus the Linux content, unfortunately).
Anyway, the gist of it is that massive success of the internet requires a portable language (Java), portable data format (XML) and portable system services (Linux). Essentially, if you an put Linux everywhere, you can guarantee a set of portable system services that allow you disconnect the software from the platform.
What this does imply is that IBM might not be interested in making Linux vastly more efficient for certain classes of machines if it means that ease of portability is lost.
Speaking as someone employed by a company whose raison d'etre is computer science education, the reason is simple. The wave towards using Java in CS1 courses in high schools and universities is actually turning out to be a tsunami.
Programming language choice is most colleges and universities is a attempt to mix teachability with the appearance of industrial relevance. (Note I say appearance because in most cases, the whole industrial relevance thing is a bugaboo of students. The educators know that whatever they teach, the students will, in all likelihood, eventually use a different language. However, students (and some administrators) tend to freak if they are learning a language they've never heard of.)
Unfortunately, until recently, the only language that passed the "appearance of industrial relevance" test was C++, perhaps the world's worst language for teaching (not counting BASIC). Educators realized this, but couldn't do much about it. One educator put is succinctly.
If we don't teach with C++, nobody takes the course. If we do teach with C++, nobody passes the course.
Our anecdotal evidence of the teachability of C++ was that a few years ago, our company attended the SIG-CSE (Computer Science Education) conference with a few hundred "C++ Sucks!" buttons, figuring a few educators might be unhappy with the language. (Our company does not provide C++ teaching materials because we feel that pedagogically, C++ is unsound.) Anyway, two hours after the conference began, we had to phone home to have the remainder of the buttons expressed to us. We gave away some 600 in about 8 hours of booth time:-). (Admittedly, we didn't make any converts to our language, but it sure gave a reflection of general sentiment about C++.)
Anyway, with the advent of Java, educators finally had a choice. It's not perfect (they had to keep with a C-like syntax (and those damn semi-colons) for marketing reasons), but it's got most of the features that allows educators to focus on concepts rather than language idiosynchrasies. (Safe pointers, array bounds checking and for heaven sakes, real booleans...). Even we, teachability bigots that we are, felt that we could support Java in education in good concience. And, most important of all, there are stacks of trade books and magazine articles about Java that most students equate with industrial relevance. When we surveyed American universities and colleges a few years ago, we found that even institutions that had just switched to C++ were considering switching to Java (and I can tell you, there's usually at least five years of recovery to bury the bodies and rebuild the facilities after a language switch war:-).)
Java use in CS1 and CS2 may never be as ubiquitous as Pascal was 10/15 years ago, but it may well be close (unless the next hot language is even more teachable).
Since AP is meant to replace introductory computer science courses, it only makes sense for AP to use the language it's replacing. This despite the fact that, as many have pointed out, most high school teachers do not have the background or the professional support that will make learning a new language easy. It's a major undertaking that will force a burden on computer science teachers for which there is no equivalent in other subjects. (Sort of like being told that your language in the workplace is switching to French in two years, so get started learning...) Sadly, if history is any guide, most states will not provide any form of professional development to teachers. I'd ask those who choose to disparage teacher's abilities whether they'd be willing to make teaching their career. It's funny how few are willing to take a 50-75% pay cut:-).
> As much as I hate to accept it, in the practical world the best way to evolve is a Darwinian approach where the best standard survives through the test of market approval.
If we'd use this approach in deciding the standard as to which side of the road to drive on, there'd have been no market left:-).
In many cases, the existence of a single standard is what makes the market exist at all.
> I'm a big believer that, public perception be damned, if your dealing in tech and you lose the respect of the technical community then, over time, you will lose the respect of the rest of the market.
That would explain why Microsoft is so close to bankruptcy:-).
I think it's crystal clear at this point that voting has error bounds. The vote totals really should read
Bush: 2,910,492* Gore: 2,910,192*
* Totals are accurate to +/- 6,000 votes 19 times out of 20.
This vote is within the error bounds and consequently any recounts may well change the result. The "winner" is merely the winner of the last recount.
What this means is that one either accepts that certain votes are a toss of the coin, rather than the mythical will of the majority, or one revamps the system so that votes that are essentially statistically tied (perhaps 0.1%) cause a divying up of the electoral college vote.
(Obviously, to avoid the same problem as we have now at a different edge condition, only the initial count would qualify for the "split". Any subsequent recounts would only split the vote if the the losing candidate was now numerically in the lead.)
Why do you think he wanted his lego bricks at work?
What about "OS = System Services"
on
Is UNIX An OS?
·
· Score: 1
The author may not be technically correct, however, I'll say he's on the money about one thing. Many if not most programmers expect the system services provided to an application to include a large number of elements lacking in UNIX.
For example, expected system services provided to an application in most commercially successful OS's include media playing capability and access to the some form of HTML interpreter. (To say nothing about things like playing music of a CD a 3D API, etc.)
Most programmers I've talked to about the subject wouldn't dream of programming any non-text oriented application for UNIX because they'd either have to reinvent the wheel or rely on the user having installed a bunch of stuff that may or may not be there.
Argue the definition all one likes... Many application programmers won't consider UNIX a useable OS for writing applications until the "OS provided" system services include most of the items mentioned in the article.
No, it'd be more like calling a plank of wood with wheels and a motor a car, and it would be. It may not be the nicest car, but it is still a car. Actually, the analogy fits rather well. You could probably find a bunch of "car experts" who would reassure you that, indeed, it is a car.
You could then go out on the street and get laughed at for suggesting that a plank, wheels and a motor make a car.
Essentially, the de facto definition of an OS has changed. It will still be a decade or two before the experts catch up.
One advantage to pencil and paper research for projects and the like is that you actually have to read the source when copying it into a report, increasing the likelihood of retaining sat least some of the information that was found.
I find that research on the internet by school-age children is rife with cut/paste. The reports often look like a complete hodge-podge of writing styles (which they are) and the students show little to no knowledge of the topics they researched.
While there is nothing preventing students from actually rewriting the material in their own words when using the internet (nor is there anything preventing students from whole-sale copying of texts when using paper and pencil), I think the respective media encourage the above behaviour.
As for computers in the classroom in general: if those purchasing hardware were forced to spend at least an equal amount of money on supporting the teachers who would have the hardware in the classroom, I would strongly approve. It would also probably stop technology spending in its tracks. Spending money on teacher education seems to be anathema to most educational budgets.
Having a lab (or two) of computers for those students who have a natural interest in computers would seem to be an obvious alternative. Just as we have a chess club, drama club, chemistry club or various athletic organizations in schools which we supply with equipment, why not have a computer club? Obviously teachers should attempt to encourage interest in computers as they encourage interest in a variety of fields.
I would predict that if the feature stays and goes into wide spread usage, then sites will either stop tailoring their pages to Mozilla (and start using Explorer only features) or have their pages actively misdisplay on Mozilla.
After all, the unspoken compact is that if you visit a site with ads, you're gaining their content in exchange for the ads they will expose you to. If you aren't willing to "pay" for that content by being exposed to the ads, why should they let you look at the content at all?
I'd imagine that ad companies might well statr "discounting" hits from Mozilla users. (Only 25% of mozilla users see our ads, so they only count for.25 of a hit...)
If Mozilla is to be commercially viable, it *must* force the viewing of ads. Let third party utilities that work on either platform equally well do the blocking.
I think people have forgotten one of the most important reasons for a printed manual -- Browsing. I have noted that in my organization, programs that don't have any form of printed manual tend to be underutilized. People don't browse on-line help, the browse printed manuals (in the bathroom, on the subway, etc.) What this means is that, deprived of a printed manual, many users never even know what features exist in the program.
If it's a vital feature, then they'll look for it and find it in the on-line help, but if it's one of those features that would make them 50% more productive, they'll never look for it because they don't know it exists!
I would say that a lack of printed manual is equivalent to removing about 50% of the features for about 50% of the users (the 50% who would read the manuals...).
Is there even the slightest possibility that if the libraries *don't* censor their internet access terminals, they won't get sued?
If I was a hungry (and not very ethical) lawyer, I'd make a killing suing libraries that traumatized little Jimmy by providing him access to content he couldn't handle. After all, providing internet access is not a passive concern. Libraries are held responsible for the books they choose to purchase, and they *will* be held responsible for the content they choose to serve. A few million dollar lawsuits and that's the end of internet access in our libraries...
It doesn't help that libraries are back by deep pocketed municipal governments making them natural lawsuit targets.
At least censorware allows the library to make the case that it at least tried to protect the citizenry.
I'm not a big fan of censorware, but it's very possible that it beats the alternative. It's also very possible that given first amendment issues, libraries are caught between a rock and a hard place and should not offer internet access at all.
I take these rumours about a port of MacOS to a different processor with a truckload of salt. However, one argument being made against the likelihood of such a port rings false.
There is absolutely no reason that a x86 (or IA-64) system would have to be open. Apple could control the hardware exactly as it does now, regardless of processor. MacOS would not run on standard PC motherboards. Apple would lose no hardware sales, nor would it in any way change its business model. There would be, of course, major issues along the 68K -> PowerPC change, but that's an entirely different issue.
Of course, there would be the difficulty with the perception that just because the Apple happened to be use the same processor that the motherboards should be "compatible". But that's marketing perception, not a physical reality.
Slashdot Mirror
We abhor students who turn in their fellow students for illegal acts (after all, the police can only be involved if a law is alledgedly broken), yet we condemn adults who aid criminals by refusing contact police when they are knowledgable about a crime. Should we be praising the communities whose code of silence allows crime to flourish?
Of course not (well, _I_ don't think so...). In other words, the problem is with the law itself, not the students response to it. Informing about known crimes is considered good citizenship and possibly even necessary to a functioning society. Instead of attempting to promote the code of silence that allows any number of illegal acts to go unreported, we should look at adjusting the laws to take into account situation and youth.
If they're not attempting anything illegal, is there anything that should stop a company from attempting to speak with its critics or even one's current employers?
Certainly there's nothing stopping an individual from doing the same.
Having said that, I'd certainly publicize the name of any jerk who tried to get me in trouble with my employer for remarks I posted elsewhere. And it's not that infrequent, especially if you're commenting about areas of high controversy (think abortion...)
> The differnece is that Microsoft has a poor track record for supporting alternate platforms. Java, OTOH, has been ported to quite a few architectures.
FUD! Microsoft has done as much as promised to port MISL to _any_ platform, MS or not, with over 200,000,000 users. (Anything less just doesn't make financial sense now, does it?)
Floppies have one big advantage over this thing. Floppy drives are accessed through the front of the machine!
I still can't believe that so few computer manufacurers put a USB port on the front of the machine. Every time I want to plug a nice "convenient" USB peripheral in, it takes 10 minutes of wrestling with the computer (with a 60 lb monitor on top) that's stuck against a wall...
This device would be thrice as sweet if my computers had USB ports in the front. As is, it's no floppy replacement.
Taking this speculation several steps further: If autism is the failure of these mirror neurons to work properly, what's the effect on individuals in cases where they are super-abundunt? ESP (or more accurately, the appearance of it) anyone?
I hate to break it to you, but every password we use is security through obscurity, at least until biometrics comes along.
We're just hoping that someone doesn't guess lucky and stumble on to our password. Much like closed source projects hope that nobody stumbles onto their bugs.
In the end, it's only a matter of "Can we make the entrance obscure enough?"
Unfortunately, if the reward for competing against Intel that you waste a lot of your investor's money in order to save Intel customers money, I doubt that, in a few years, there's going to be a lot of people stupid enough to even try and enter the microprocessor market.
:-).
There's only going to be competition if there's a chance that you can win. However, the general sentiment (especially around corporations) is "Thank goodness these alternatives exist. If they didn't, we'd have to spend much more on our industry standard stuff."
Don't expect to the reap the benefits of competition forever if you have no desire to look at a competitors product. Of course, that's hardly a warning that Slashdot-ites need to hear
Thinking about when my kids are old enough to enjoy surfing (maybe 10), I can either
I'm really not certain whether option 1 is preferable. At age 10, I certainly preferred playing unsupervised in the backyard rather than outside under the watchful eye of adults. Somehow the chilling effect of parental stares interfered with our 10-year old gun battles (that would probably get the police called on us nowadays
As for expectations of privacy... I've known almost as many who curse their parents for allowing allowing them the privacy to damage themselves as those who curse their parents for not allowing them the privacy that would enable them to do non-harmful things that their parents didn't like...
In other words, one size defintely doesn't fit all. Or to paraphrase, you can't win, you can't break even, and the spouse frowns if you try and get (even temporarily) out of the game
Okay, let's get real. For an increasing number of schools and libraries, it's a question of filtered content or no content at all.
People here don't seem to be able to accept that depending on where you live, unfiltered access to the net is not acceptable to the majority of people concerned enough about the issue to raise a fuss. I think it's rather geek-centric thinking to assume that most people believe that net access is vital for education or is a right along with library books. If the cost is too high, then get rid of it.
Or look at it another way, if the every library (school or civic) automatically had an annex for pornography, most people (again regionally divided) would prefer not to have libraries available at all.
However, just maybe, if we can prove that filters don't stop most kids from stumbling onto pornography, we can get schools and libraries to get internet access removed altogether!
I think that the author may have missed the point. The "walled garden" may not have any direct hyperlinks out of the garden, but all it takes is one "Google" in order to break out.
Far more dangerous and (in my opinion) more likely, is the idea that your ISP is part of a conglomerate which allows much faster interconnections with those in the garden than without. How many people give up surfing slow sites? As long as the conglomerate is large enough to encapsulate a large selection of services, they're not going to endanger themselves too much. Besides, most high speed ISP's are monopolies or duopolies.
I believe that a number of ISP's have already considered approaching vendors to pay for "preferred" status (i.e. better connectivity to their site).
Now *that* is the real way to slowly kill the internet.
How is exhaustive unit testing supposed to work? In any project that I've been involved in (all small, less than 100 KLOC), exhaustive testing would take anywhere between millions and trillions of test cases. It's the unexpected/untested corner conditions that nail software and the ability to find every possible variable that could effect software operation is next to impossible in a sane amount of time.
In a typical unit, there may be 25 variables all with perhaps 10 useful values that should be tested. (For example, for ints, I use a large negative value, a small negative value, -1, 0, +1, a small positive value, a large positive value, minint and maxint (amazing the number of programs that manipulate parameters without checking for integer over/underflow), one below the largest expected value, the largest expected value and one above the largest expected value) That makes 10^25 test cases!
Isolating programs into small enough independent units to make testing possible is usually a pipedream, especially in anything to do with GUIs, where there are usually 5 different ways to do anything, guaranteeing that every element of the GUI is connected to every other element.
Dealing with error conditions alone is a nightmare. Faced with GUI code that can generate a possible error condition every 5-10 lines of code, most programmers just give up and punt.
For a lark, I once did *proper* error handling in a few hundred line program. I gave up at over 3,000 lines of code (of which about 1/3 was dealing with error conditions that occurred when error conditions occurred...)
Just my observations from the trenches...
>> They make 24% profits on sales. Everyone else in free competitive markets is making 3 to 5% profit on sales.
> Book stores make 40-60% profit on sales. Grocery stores tend to make 20-30%.
I'm going to assume stupidity instead of malice.
You are quoting gross margins. i.e. a books costs a bookstore between 40 and 60% of the price that it sells it for.
The previous poster is quoting profit, i.e. what's left after you pay rent, employees, marketing and everything else.
The two are in no way comparable, except that they are both quoted in dollars
Most bookstores I know about are making between -3% to +5% profit. I don't know about groceries. As for software, gross margins are about 95%. Software boxes don't cost an awful lot.
Anyway, the gist of it is that massive success of the internet requires a portable language (Java), portable data format (XML) and portable system services (Linux). Essentially, if you an put Linux everywhere, you can guarantee a set of portable system services that allow you disconnect the software from the platform.
What this does imply is that IBM might not be interested in making Linux vastly more efficient for certain classes of machines if it means that ease of portability is lost.
Programming language choice is most colleges and universities is a attempt to mix teachability with the appearance of industrial relevance. (Note I say appearance because in most cases, the whole industrial relevance thing is a bugaboo of students. The educators know that whatever they teach, the students will, in all likelihood, eventually use a different language. However, students (and some administrators) tend to freak if they are learning a language they've never heard of.)
Unfortunately, until recently, the only language that passed the "appearance of industrial relevance" test was C++, perhaps the world's worst language for teaching (not counting BASIC). Educators realized this, but couldn't do much about it. One educator put is succinctly.
Our anecdotal evidence of the teachability of C++ was that a few years ago, our company attended the SIG-CSE (Computer Science Education) conference with a few hundred "C++ Sucks!" buttons, figuring a few educators might be unhappy with the language. (Our company does not provide C++ teaching materials because we feel that pedagogically, C++ is unsound.) Anyway, two hours after the conference began, we had to phone home to have the remainder of the buttons expressed to us. We gave away some 600 in about 8 hours of booth time :-). (Admittedly, we didn't make any converts to our language, but it sure gave a reflection of general sentiment about C++.)
Anyway, with the advent of Java, educators finally had a choice. It's not perfect (they had to keep with a C-like syntax (and those damn semi-colons) for marketing reasons), but it's got most of the features that allows educators to focus on concepts rather than language idiosynchrasies. (Safe pointers, array bounds checking and for heaven sakes, real booleans...). Even we, teachability bigots that we are, felt that we could support Java in education in good concience. And, most important of all, there are stacks of trade books and magazine articles about Java that most students equate with industrial relevance. When we surveyed American universities and colleges a few years ago, we found that even institutions that had just switched to C++ were considering switching to Java (and I can tell you, there's usually at least five years of recovery to bury the bodies and rebuild the facilities after a language switch war :-).)
Java use in CS1 and CS2 may never be as ubiquitous as Pascal was 10/15 years ago, but it may well be close (unless the next hot language is even more teachable).
Since AP is meant to replace introductory computer science courses, it only makes sense for AP to use the language it's replacing. This despite the fact that, as many have pointed out, most high school teachers do not have the background or the professional support that will make learning a new language easy. It's a major undertaking that will force a burden on computer science teachers for which there is no equivalent in other subjects. (Sort of like being told that your language in the workplace is switching to French in two years, so get started learning...) Sadly, if history is any guide, most states will not provide any form of professional development to teachers. I'd ask those who choose to disparage teacher's abilities whether they'd be willing to make teaching their career. It's funny how few are willing to take a 50-75% pay cut :-).
> As much as I hate to accept it, in the practical world the best way to evolve is a Darwinian approach where the best standard survives through the test of market approval.
:-).
If we'd use this approach in deciding the standard as to which side of the road to drive on, there'd have been no market left
In many cases, the existence of a single standard is what makes the market exist at all.
> I'm a big believer that, public perception be damned, if your dealing in tech and you lose the respect of the technical community then, over time, you will lose the respect of the rest of the market.
:-).
That would explain why Microsoft is so close to bankruptcy
I think it's crystal clear at this point that voting has error bounds. The vote totals really should read
Bush: 2,910,492* Gore: 2,910,192*
* Totals are accurate to +/- 6,000 votes 19 times out of 20.
This vote is within the error bounds and consequently any recounts may well change the result. The "winner" is merely the winner of the last recount.
What this means is that one either accepts that certain votes are a toss of the coin, rather than the mythical will of the majority, or one revamps the system so that votes that are essentially statistically tied (perhaps 0.1%) cause a divying up of the electoral college vote.
(Obviously, to avoid the same problem as we have now at a different edge condition, only the initial count would qualify for the "split". Any subsequent recounts would only split the vote if the the losing candidate was now numerically in the lead.)
Why do you think he wanted his lego bricks at work?
The author may not be technically correct, however, I'll say he's on the money about one thing. Many if not most programmers expect the system services provided to an application to include a large number of elements lacking in UNIX.
For example, expected system services provided to an application in most commercially successful OS's include media playing capability and access to the some form of HTML interpreter. (To say nothing about things like playing music of a CD a 3D API, etc.)
Most programmers I've talked to about the subject wouldn't dream of programming any non-text oriented application for UNIX because they'd either have to reinvent the wheel or rely on the user having installed a bunch of stuff that may or may not be there.
Argue the definition all one likes... Many application programmers won't consider UNIX a useable OS for writing applications until the "OS provided" system services include most of the items mentioned in the article.
Actually, the analogy fits rather well. You could probably find a bunch of "car experts" who would reassure you that, indeed, it is a car.
You could then go out on the street and get laughed at for suggesting that a plank, wheels and a motor make a car.
Essentially, the de facto definition of an OS has changed. It will still be a decade or two before the experts catch up.
One advantage to pencil and paper research for projects and the like is that you actually have to read the source when copying it into a report, increasing the likelihood of retaining sat least some of the information that was found.
I find that research on the internet by school-age children is rife with cut/paste. The reports often look like a complete hodge-podge of writing styles (which they are) and the students show little to no knowledge of the topics they researched.
While there is nothing preventing students from actually rewriting the material in their own words when using the internet (nor is there anything preventing students from whole-sale copying of texts when using paper and pencil), I think the respective media encourage the above behaviour.
As for computers in the classroom in general: if those purchasing hardware were forced to spend at least an equal amount of money on supporting the teachers who would have the hardware in the classroom, I would strongly approve. It would also probably stop technology spending in its tracks. Spending money on teacher education seems to be anathema to most educational budgets.
Having a lab (or two) of computers for those students who have a natural interest in computers would seem to be an obvious alternative. Just as we have a chess club, drama club, chemistry club or various athletic organizations in schools which we supply with equipment, why not have a computer club? Obviously teachers should attempt to encourage interest in computers as they encourage interest in a variety of fields.
I would predict that if the feature stays and goes into wide spread usage, then sites will either stop tailoring their pages to Mozilla (and start using Explorer only features) or have their pages actively misdisplay on Mozilla.
.25 of a hit...)
After all, the unspoken compact is that if you visit a site with ads, you're gaining their content in exchange for the ads they will expose you to. If you aren't willing to "pay" for that content by being exposed to the ads, why should they let you look at the content at all?
I'd imagine that ad companies might well statr "discounting" hits from Mozilla users. (Only 25% of mozilla users see our ads, so they only count for
If Mozilla is to be commercially viable, it *must* force the viewing of ads. Let third party utilities that work on either platform equally well do the blocking.
I think people have forgotten one of the most important reasons for a printed manual -- Browsing. I have noted that in my organization, programs that don't have any form of printed manual tend to be underutilized. People don't browse on-line help, the browse printed manuals (in the bathroom, on the subway, etc.) What this means is that, deprived of a printed manual, many users never even know what features exist in the program.
If it's a vital feature, then they'll look for it and find it in the on-line help, but if it's one of those features that would make them 50% more productive, they'll never look for it because they don't know it exists!
I would say that a lack of printed manual is equivalent to removing about 50% of the features for about 50% of the users (the 50% who would read the manuals...).
Is there even the slightest possibility that if the libraries *don't* censor their internet access terminals, they won't get sued?
If I was a hungry (and not very ethical) lawyer, I'd make a killing suing libraries that traumatized little Jimmy by providing him access to content he couldn't handle. After all, providing internet access is not a passive concern. Libraries are held responsible for the books they choose to purchase, and they *will* be held responsible for the content they choose to serve. A few million dollar lawsuits and that's the end of internet access in our libraries...
It doesn't help that libraries are back by deep pocketed municipal governments making them natural lawsuit targets.
At least censorware allows the library to make the case that it at least tried to protect the citizenry.
I'm not a big fan of censorware, but it's very possible that it beats the alternative. It's also very possible that given first amendment issues, libraries are caught between a rock and a hard place and should not offer internet access at all.
I take these rumours about a port of MacOS to a different processor with a truckload of salt. However, one argument being made against the likelihood of such a port rings false.
There is absolutely no reason that a x86 (or IA-64) system would have to be open. Apple could control the hardware exactly as it does now, regardless of processor. MacOS would not run on standard PC motherboards. Apple would lose no hardware sales, nor would it in any way change its business model. There would be, of course, major issues along the 68K -> PowerPC change, but that's an entirely different issue.
Of course, there would be the difficulty with the perception that just because the Apple happened to be use the same processor that the motherboards should be "compatible". But that's marketing perception, not a physical reality.