Tight security where it doesn't matter and sloppy security where it does
Amen to that. When I need a new password for my aeroplan account, I have to submit a request and wait for it to arrive by *snail mail* (or at least that was the case the last time I tried). Otoh, it's a snap to request a new password in paypal. I guess you could argue both need a reasonably high level of security, but I think snail mail is a little bit of overkill.
Actually, it *has* been contracted out. This MSNBC article talks about the robot, developed by MD Robotics, the company that brought you Canadarm 1 and 2 (aka the dextrous manipulator).
The problem with Hubble is that it's designed to be serviced by humans- there are very few targets for vison-based positioning, and just undoing the bolts requires a lot of dexterity. Imagine building a robot that could open up your machine and replace a pci card. (Watch out for those IDE and power supply cables!) Successfully deploying a robot to perform all the servicing tasks on the Hubble will be a major engineering triumph.
This is the first time I've seen it mentioned that carbon nanotubes are electrically conducting. That raises the question for me as to how the space elevator people intend to deal with what would essentially be the world's largest lightning rod, not to mention the effects of friction with the upper atmosphere as it rips past the cable.
Outsourcing data to american companies won't stop, for two reasons: 1. most corporations that outsource private data really don't give a shit. 2. American companies would likely have grounds to sue under NAFTA if they lost business on these grounds.
It's obvious that Bill's implying that it's perfectly safe to use IE, so long as you only browse Microsoft/Msn/Msnbc/Slate.com... It's your fault if you stray off the beaten path.
Um, you must be new here. I can't remember how many comments I've seen bitching about that. Put simply, it's a FF rendering bug which we've had for ages and can be solved by doing Ctrl-Scroll Wheel Up and then Ctrl-Scroll Wheel Down.
So, wait, it's a bug in slashdot's code, but then firefox changes the way it renders the page if you twiddle a nob? Shouldn't firefox consistently render it the same (broken) way every time?
2. Firefox renders slashdot correctly, since this is the site that promotes it the most.
Amen to that. Back in the early mozilla days, rendering bugs seemed to be a big priority. How many versions of firefox now have gone by with the slashdot bug unfixed? Or is it a problem with slashdot's html?
About AI, see this comment about good sci-fi. Blade Runner tackled anthropomorphism in a way that made you empathize with the replicants and their near-humanness. By contrast, I found myself squirming uncomfortably all through AI. There's something creepy about cute, cuddly robots and the more profound questions that Kubrick and Spielberg wanted to address were overshadowed by this problem. Notwithstanding the pseudo-science behind the uncanny vally, I think AI (and Furby) provides the proof that there's some truth to the theory.
I'm not a neurologist, but it seems to me that it's been long understood that the amygdala played a key role in emotions like compassion and empathy, and it's also a long-standing stereotype that liberals exhibit these traits-- so, whaddya know, there's a correlation between amygdala activity and political stance. Seems like a no-brainer to me. The bigger question concerns the nature-nurture debate-- is a more active amygdala the result of cultivating a compassionate personality (nurture) or is it the other way around, that stunted political views are the result of a stunted brain?;-)
My point is that marking territory as disputed reflects reality, as opposed to inventing boundaries that peddle to the more valuable customer. Maybe this isn't such a big deal for, say, a timezone dialog box, but on the other hand it would be a really big problem if these kinds of reality tweaks went into something like Encarta.
"Of course we offended Kurds by doing this but we had offended the Turks more and they were a much more important market for our products. It was a hard commercial decision, not political."
A commercial decision that has political ramifications. Does it not make more sense to mark disputed regions as disputed, rather than invent a world-order as dictated by the larger customer? If Microsoft is trying to combat ignorance from within, it should make some more enlightened decisions in handling political hot potatoes.
I think the single most important factor in learning to type properly is that it can make a major difference in preventing repetitive stress injuries. I'm a self-taught typist and somewhat abysmal at that. I really don't care how fast I can type, but I do care about the chronic pain I have in my neck, shoulders and wrists. If I had learned proper posture and hand positioning when I was a wee lad, some of these problems could probably have been prevented.
All that being said, the true culprit in my case is the mouse, combined with obsessive web browsing.
There is a market for fast typists, but really, if you were hiring a code jockey, would you make your decision based on their wpm?
We had our daughter while I was finishing up my PhD. If you can afford the pay cut, the flexibility of setting your own hours is a huge asset. Not many dads (or moms, for that matter) are lucky enough to spend as much time with their kids. Beyond that-- every minute you spend commuting is a minute less spent with your kids (not to mention the economical and environmental arguments against long commutes). Now that I'm done my degree, I live a five minute walk from my new workplace. I'm home for lunch every day, and in the door five minutes after I leave work. I also make a point of starting work earlier in the morning if I know I've got a lot to do, so I'm always home for dinner.
I guess the real question is how to balance your career and your kids. If you watch less TV, and avoid getting caught up in keeping up with the Joneses, you'll find that life can be incredibly rewarding when you put a little extra weight on spending time with the family. Obviously, job security, 401K's and putting food on the table are important, but if you can steer clear of the rat race, the intangible benefits far outweigh the tangibles.
The down-side as a parent is that you'll worry more that you won't have the money to ensure your child has access to the best possible education. But there's a simple solution to that.. move to Canada.;-)
(Congratulations all the same. Having kids changes your life in ways that you'll never fully grasp.)
By simple skills I mean concrete skills that are meaningful and accessible to the student. You don't need to learn quantum mechanics first to grok newtonian mechanics. In fact it's usually preferable to grasp the more concrete concept first. Similarly, starting with assembly language, or a bare-bones language like scheme is a sure-fire way to lose the student's interest. A simple class with get- and set- methods that encapsulates something meaningful is going to get a lot more mileage in the early going than two weeks of lambda calculus.
Modulo one level of complexity for bootstrapping a class into a running program (public static void main), the rest of a small java program is usually remarkably simple. Once you build up a few small classes you can get a lot of mileage.
The trouble with scheme is that to get from "Hello world!" to something more functional (pun unintended) can involve a lot of pain. In my opinion, a code snippet with a multitude of brackets that need careful matching is not something you want to throw at a newbie. Scheme is very powerful, but it takes some solid mathematical understanding to really become proficient-- that's not something your average adult student is going to be interested in.
Scheme is not a complicated language. In fact, that's its biggest advantage. It's dead freakin' simple, so much so that the entire language specification is only a few pages long.
That's exactly why scheme is a bad language to teach newbies. The simplicity of the language implies that you need to do a fair amount of work to do anything truly useful or interesting to the student. Not to mention all those braces can be intimidating. That's a serious criticism.
Accusing the student as just being lazy or stupid (points 1 & 2 of your comment) is not the mark of a good teacher. The last time the average adult engaged the 'basic mathematics' you're talking about would be 30 some-odd years ago-- you've got to get them working in a linguistic environment that's comfortable and that they can relate to.
The key is to keep it interesting, not get bogged down in constructs and concepts (like lambda-calculus), and build up a set of simple tools and skills one step at a time.
Java's a nice safe, powerful language to start with. The key thing is to keep the programming interesting. Start with a simple bank account class, with deposit and withdrawal methods, and simple input, like from a file or stdin. Then add some inheritance (checking vs savings accounts), and build up a simple personal finance manager. Finally, start adding gui components, first for displaying info, then for data entry, etc.
Other good examples are recipe databases or CD catalogues. It's got to be something the student will enjoy tinkering with.
You could take this approach with virtually any language, but java has a nice, clean, idiot-proof syntax, and lots of intense type- and index- checking. No leaks, seg faults, etc. Once a user's mastered some java, they'll have no trouble reading C or C++ or even some shell scripts and grokking what's going on.
I'd leave scheme and lisp and other languages out of the picture for a while. They have nice features, but it takes a lot more than just casual reading to understand a code snippet (usually a few tylenols and a bottle of scotch). Trying to teach these kinds of languages to someone who just wants casual programming skills is like giving someone who only drives automatic transmission a ferrari to get to the library. It looks pretty, and it seems powerful, but how do I make it go?
Once upon a time, like kernel 2.0, rogue processes would go haywire, consume all available memory (and swap), and then die quiet deaths without any real effect on system stability. When 2.2 came out, I remember submitting a bug because rogue processes could render the entire system unstable by consuming all the ram and swap. I haven't tried it on 2.4 or 2.6, but I remember the bug was squashed as NOTABUG. One would think that ensuring system stability against such a simple DOS attack would be a priority.
Re:On a laptop... yes, for the wrong reason
on
Is Swap Necessary?
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
It's all diskdrake's fault. I didn't choose my swap size, afair, although it's weird it's smaller than my RAM. Beyond that, acpi recommends you have swap about 30% larger than your RAM. While it would slow down the suspend, I don't see why acpi doesn't pipe/dev/mem through bzip first, or for that matter, why hibernate can't just dump to a file.
Slashdot Mirror
Tight security where it doesn't matter and sloppy security where it does
Amen to that. When I need a new password for my aeroplan account, I have to submit a request and wait for it to arrive by *snail mail* (or at least that was the case the last time I tried). Otoh, it's a snap to request a new password in paypal. I guess you could argue both need a reasonably high level of security, but I think snail mail is a little bit of overkill.
Actually, it *has* been contracted out. This MSNBC article talks about the robot, developed by MD Robotics, the company that brought you Canadarm 1 and 2 (aka the dextrous manipulator).
The problem with Hubble is that it's designed to be serviced by humans- there are very few targets for vison-based positioning, and just undoing the bolts requires a lot of dexterity. Imagine building a robot that could open up your machine and replace a pci card. (Watch out for those IDE and power supply cables!) Successfully deploying a robot to perform all the servicing tasks on the Hubble will be a major engineering triumph.
This is the first time I've seen it mentioned that carbon nanotubes are electrically conducting. That raises the question for me as to how the space elevator people intend to deal with what would essentially be the world's largest lightning rod, not to mention the effects of friction with the upper atmosphere as it rips past the cable.
Outsourcing data to american companies won't stop, for two reasons: 1. most corporations that outsource private data really don't give a shit. 2. American companies would likely have grounds to sue under NAFTA if they lost business on these grounds.
... while all the blogger pundits get lathered up about Stewart's appearance on Crossfire, everyone misses the minor detail that Rowe appeared before a grad jury yesterday to testify in the Valerie Plame probe.
...oh, and watch out for those JPEG's!
It's obvious that Bill's implying that it's perfectly safe to use IE, so long as you only browse Microsoft/Msn/Msnbc/Slate.com... It's your fault if you stray off the beaten path.
Is this a problem with Firefox or with Slashdot?
Um, you must be new here. I can't remember how many comments I've seen bitching about that. Put simply, it's a FF rendering bug which we've had for ages and can be solved by doing Ctrl-Scroll Wheel Up and then Ctrl-Scroll Wheel Down.
So, wait, it's a bug in slashdot's code, but then firefox changes the way it renders the page if you twiddle a nob? Shouldn't firefox consistently render it the same (broken) way every time?
So why does a reload make the bug go away? Is it just a problem with ad placement?
2. Firefox renders slashdot correctly, since this is the site that promotes it the most.
Amen to that. Back in the early mozilla days, rendering bugs seemed to be a big priority. How many versions of firefox now have gone by with the slashdot bug unfixed? Or is it a problem with slashdot's html?
omg, like you're so right. I mean, like, where's Spy Kids 2?
About AI, see this comment about good sci-fi. Blade Runner tackled anthropomorphism in a way that made you empathize with the replicants and their near-humanness. By contrast, I found myself squirming uncomfortably all through AI. There's something creepy about cute, cuddly robots and the more profound questions that Kubrick and Spielberg wanted to address were overshadowed by this problem. Notwithstanding the pseudo-science behind the uncanny vally, I think AI (and Furby) provides the proof that there's some truth to the theory.
I'm not a neurologist, but it seems to me that it's been long understood that the amygdala played a key role in emotions like compassion and empathy, and it's also a long-standing stereotype that liberals exhibit these traits-- so, whaddya know, there's a correlation between amygdala activity and political stance. Seems like a no-brainer to me. The bigger question concerns the nature-nurture debate-- is a more active amygdala the result of cultivating a compassionate personality (nurture) or is it the other way around, that stunted political views are the result of a stunted brain? ;-)
My point is that marking territory as disputed reflects reality, as opposed to inventing boundaries that peddle to the more valuable customer. Maybe this isn't such a big deal for, say, a timezone dialog box, but on the other hand it would be a really big problem if these kinds of reality tweaks went into something like Encarta.
The world according to microsoft...
"Of course we offended Kurds by doing this but we had offended the Turks more and they were a much more important market for our products. It was a hard commercial decision, not political."
A commercial decision that has political ramifications. Does it not make more sense to mark disputed regions as disputed, rather than invent a world-order as dictated by the larger customer? If Microsoft is trying to combat ignorance from within, it should make some more enlightened decisions in handling political hot potatoes.
I think the single most important factor in learning to type properly is that it can make a major difference in preventing repetitive stress injuries. I'm a self-taught typist and somewhat abysmal at that. I really don't care how fast I can type, but I do care about the chronic pain I have in my neck, shoulders and wrists. If I had learned proper posture and hand positioning when I was a wee lad, some of these problems could probably have been prevented.
All that being said, the true culprit in my case is the mouse, combined with obsessive web browsing.
There is a market for fast typists, but really, if you were hiring a code jockey, would you make your decision based on their wpm?
... in a culture where ideology almost always trumps the truth?
We had our daughter while I was finishing up my PhD. If you can afford the pay cut, the flexibility of setting your own hours is a huge asset. Not many dads (or moms, for that matter) are lucky enough to spend as much time with their kids. Beyond that-- every minute you spend commuting is a minute less spent with your kids (not to mention the economical and environmental arguments against long commutes). Now that I'm done my degree, I live a five minute walk from my new workplace. I'm home for lunch every day, and in the door five minutes after I leave work. I also make a point of starting work earlier in the morning if I know I've got a lot to do, so I'm always home for dinner.
;-)
I guess the real question is how to balance your career and your kids. If you watch less TV, and avoid getting caught up in keeping up with the Joneses, you'll find that life can be incredibly rewarding when you put a little extra weight on spending time with the family. Obviously, job security, 401K's and putting food on the table are important, but if you can steer clear of the rat race, the intangible benefits far outweigh the tangibles.
The down-side as a parent is that you'll worry more that you won't have the money to ensure your child has access to the best possible education. But there's a simple solution to that.. move to Canada.
(Congratulations all the same. Having kids changes your life in ways that you'll never fully grasp.)
By simple skills I mean concrete skills that are meaningful and accessible to the student. You don't need to learn quantum mechanics first to grok newtonian mechanics. In fact it's usually preferable to grasp the more concrete concept first. Similarly, starting with assembly language, or a bare-bones language like scheme is a sure-fire way to lose the student's interest. A simple class with get- and set- methods that encapsulates something meaningful is going to get a lot more mileage in the early going than two weeks of lambda calculus.
Modulo one level of complexity for bootstrapping a class into a running program (public static void main), the rest of a small java program is usually remarkably simple. Once you build up a few small classes you can get a lot of mileage.
The trouble with scheme is that to get from "Hello world!" to something more functional (pun unintended) can involve a lot of pain. In my opinion, a code snippet with a multitude of brackets that need careful matching is not something you want to throw at a newbie. Scheme is very powerful, but it takes some solid mathematical understanding to really become proficient-- that's not something your average adult student is going to be interested in.
Scheme is not a complicated language. In fact, that's its biggest advantage. It's dead freakin' simple, so much so that the entire language specification is only a few pages long.
That's exactly why scheme is a bad language to teach newbies. The simplicity of the language implies that you need to do a fair amount of work to do anything truly useful or interesting to the student. Not to mention all those braces can be intimidating. That's a serious criticism.
Accusing the student as just being lazy or stupid (points 1 & 2 of your comment) is not the mark of a good teacher. The last time the average adult engaged the 'basic mathematics' you're talking about would be 30 some-odd years ago-- you've got to get them working in a linguistic environment that's comfortable and that they can relate to.
The key is to keep it interesting, not get bogged down in constructs and concepts (like lambda-calculus), and build up a set of simple tools and skills one step at a time.
Java's a nice safe, powerful language to start with. The key thing is to keep the programming interesting. Start with a simple bank account class, with deposit and withdrawal methods, and simple input, like from a file or stdin. Then add some inheritance (checking vs savings accounts), and build up a simple personal finance manager. Finally, start adding gui components, first for displaying info, then for data entry, etc.
Other good examples are recipe databases or CD catalogues. It's got to be something the student will enjoy tinkering with.
You could take this approach with virtually any language, but java has a nice, clean, idiot-proof syntax, and lots of intense type- and index- checking. No leaks, seg faults, etc. Once a user's mastered some java, they'll have no trouble reading C or C++ or even some shell scripts and grokking what's going on.
I'd leave scheme and lisp and other languages out of the picture for a while. They have nice features, but it takes a lot more than just casual reading to understand a code snippet (usually a few tylenols and a bottle of scotch). Trying to teach these kinds of languages to someone who just wants casual programming skills is like giving someone who only drives automatic transmission a ferrari to get to the library. It looks pretty, and it seems powerful, but how do I make it go?
Once upon a time, like kernel 2.0, rogue processes would go haywire, consume all available memory (and swap), and then die quiet deaths without any real effect on system stability. When 2.2 came out, I remember submitting a bug because rogue processes could render the entire system unstable by consuming all the ram and swap. I haven't tried it on 2.4 or 2.6, but I remember the bug was squashed as NOTABUG.
One would think that ensuring system stability against such a simple DOS attack would be a priority.
It's all diskdrake's fault. I didn't choose my swap size, afair, although it's weird it's smaller than my RAM. Beyond that, acpi recommends you have swap about 30% larger than your RAM. While it would slow down the suspend, I don't see why acpi doesn't pipe /dev/mem through bzip first, or for that matter, why hibernate can't just dump to a file.