A traitor pretends to be a friend, but betrays you behind your back. I, on the other hand, speak my opinions openly; thus I am not a traitor. In fact, I am not even an enemy of America. Whether I am your enemy is up to you - it takes two to be friends, but you can be an enemy all on your own.
It's true that we may never know the ultimate answer to everything - that is to be hoped; once we know everything, there will be nothing new to discover and no need for scientific inquistiveness. But I think we can and should always try to see if we can derive our understanding from more basic principles. Perhaps it is not massthat is the cause of gravity, but instead it is gravity that causes mass? Gravity on its own can be seen simply as "the shape of space-time", loosely speaking. Very loosely speaking. So perhaps mass is just an artifact of our perspective?
And while I am at it with the wild speculations, how about introducing complex mass: ie. masses that are not just real numbers, but may have imaginary parts too. Wouldn't an imaginary mass behave like an electric charge? The classical equation for electric force is very similar to the one for gravity, except the sign is opposite. Which is what you get if you put two imaginary masses into the equation for gravitational force.
If pressure attracts gravitationally, then negative pressure repels. This is dark energy.
But, pressure is caused by particles moving about and colliding with the walls of the confinement or the instrument used to measure with - particles with negative mass would intuitively have negative momentum and kinetic energy, and would thus cause negative pressure.
Surely Occam's Razor comes into play here? Surely it's obviously simpler to say 'we've got the maths wrong for gravity beyond solar system scale' and start again at the chalkboard?
Which is, in effect what we are saying. However, it makes little sense to simply scratch the whole, current understanding of the world and start over; introducing an assumption that gravity behaves differently outside a certain distance begs the question why it should be so, and we don't have any compelling answer to that.
My own favourite, which admittedly comes out of thin air, is that negative gravity corresponds to negative mass. If you look at the classical equation as a rough approximation, you'll see that a negative mass should repel a positive mass, but attract another negative mass. Intuitively this seems to potientially explain the "dark energy" phenomenon, and it might explain how, at the beginning, mass seems to have been created from nothing - perhaps an equal amount of positive and negative mass was created, so that mass was preserved, in total, and then it exploded apart. How about that for an explanation?
Good on you - but if you are going there to "Preach the White Man's Gospel", you will be considered an obnoxious idiot, and rightly so. If you go there to learn and to hear what they have to say for themselves, you will have a good time.
I bet 2.25 Million active duty soldiers of the PLA could be really effective in stopping the importation of electronics waste.
Yeah, sure. However, just like in most other countries, soldiers are there for a military purpose, not to carry out policing, which is a part of the civilian authorities. Apart from that, I don't think it is a simple as that - there are things the WTO and the possible impact on employment and economy to consider, among other things. I have no doubt the government intends to tackle this issue; they are not idiots, and they generally seem to want to do the right thing, but you know just as well as I do, that a government can't just make changes overnight. It is never just black or white - perhaps they ought to have done more to protect the environment, that is certainly a fair criticism, as opposed to yelling "You have to everything right, or else you're useless and evil".
You're a cunt, do you hear me? A cunt. Go kiss up to your Chinese overlord, you pussy.
There, there, feeling better now? Yes, I hear you. Would you care to elaborate? 'Cause I don't really see why facing reality is a bad thing. Loving our own country shouldn't blind us to how things are going in the world; whether America is a great nation has little to do with its military or economic power, and everything to do with the American people.
Have you ever seen some of the situations in China?
I am married to a Chinese, speak Chinese and have traveled extensively in China. So yes, I have. And you?
I could care less how "progressive" a government is if they've spent the last 20 years profiting from turning their nation into a giant dump for hazardous waste.
Not so long ago America was by far the greatest environmental sinner, yet nobody would say that it was the American government that committed those sins, despite the fact that they encouraged them by turning a blind eye. The Chinese government, by contrast, is not turning a blind eye - they are actively trying to repair the damage caused by overexploitation. But China is a huge country with far more people than the US and far less resources to push through their will than most Western countries. The many examples of environment destruction and corruption in China are caused, not by the Communist government, but by the scum the floats to the surface in the new, open-market economy. The Capitalists, in other words.
In order to use a touch screen, you have to bring the screen closer than what is currently recommended; this will hurt people's eyesight. And then you will have to chose between an screen that lies flat down, which will avoid the gorilla arm syndrome, but will make your neck hurt, or a more vertical screen position, which will spare your neck, but gives you gorilla arm. I can't really see this being a winner, except on small, portable devices, where it would be difficult to handle a keyboard and mouse.
Daimonin: a better looking version of Crossfire. And The Mana World, which is a bit like WoW. Both are free and run on Linux as well as other OSes I shall not mention here.
The Chinese are not much worse than what most of us in the West have been, or in some cases still are. Based on hearsay, you judge a whole nation for what some of them do - the Chinese central government is among the most progressive when it comes to the environment, just to take one thing. And while you summarily judge the whole of China, I have a strong suspicion that you expect to get away with saying things like "Hey, I didn't vote for Bush" when people criticise the actions of your own nation. That's hypocrisy.
The simple fact is that China is fast becoming a strong contender for the leadership of the world, while America has been falling back for something like 8 years or so.
If you stick your neck out and actually question the candidates, you will become an overnight celebrity whether you want to or not. Look at the background checks that have been performed against Samuel J. Wurzelbacher and the fact that whether or not he is actually licensed as a plumber
Hey, this is America, where anybody who steps into the limelight is either an instant saint (rarely) or more commonly scrutinized in the most hostile way possible. Joe the-potentially-a-Plumber has been handled with a velvet glove, all things considered. Just think of all the "scandals" that have been in the media, like "So and so once smoked dope" and "GWB once yelled 'fuck you' after his mum". I think he's been let off easily, so far.
I agree with you, that this is wrong - but this is the way it is because 1) the news media are shamelessly pursuing anything that can be converted to profit, and 2) the general public are eager to soak up this kind of crap. Personally, whenever I see somebody hung out to dry on the frontpages of the gossip press, my sympathy for them goes up a fraction.
A computerised coffeemaker? I know there is a trend to put computers into everything from toilet paper to toothpaste, but just how far will it be pushed before somebody spots the utter idiocy of it?
I suppose it is harmless enough as such, but I can't help thinking that we should try taking the whole issue of technology and what we use it for just a little bit more serious. Then again, this kind of thing will probably die out in todays economical conditions, leaving the world slightly better.
I am not attacking the idea that somebody takes an existing gadget with a computer in it and gets it to run Linux - playing is a healthy thing and the best way to learn. It is the use of technology to solve non-existing problems and making complicated gadgets to perform trivial tasks; what could possibly be the purpose of it? Other than the entirely unworthy one of making people feel helpless in the face of simple, everyday tasks, such as cooking food or turning on your windscreen wipers (now, apparently, some cars detect the rain for you so you don't have to move your finger and flip a switch). It is the kind of thing that doesn't do the least bit to help people's lives, but which means that people will feel compelled to buy ready-made meals or little capsules of crappy coffee for their coffee maker at massively greater expense. Just another way of cheating you out of your hard earned cash.
I think the first thing is to do something to adjust expectations. My own son is one of these computer superkids, and he still hasn't seriously learned programming - not because he can't understand it, but because the things he wants to do are far too advanced, like making a game. When I learned programming at about his age, it was because I wanted to calculate the relative positions of the planets and print a table of it, which is a bit tricky mathematically, but straight forward to program.
So perhaps the answer to your question is to first ensure that they first find a project that doesn't require a decade of experience to implement; after that it doesn't matter which language you choose, as long as it is conceptually fairly simple. Which of course rules out object orientation; my choice would be C for any number of reasons. The actual language part of C is very close to the smallest possible, so it easily remembered; but the biggest advantage is that it allows you to make all the mistakes, because it does not protect you against sloppyness. As frustrating as mistakes and problems can be, they are unsurpassable as a pedagogical tool. And if you arm yourself with the Jargon Dictionary, you will find that there is a whole ocean of cool and mysterious names for all of them - the only ones that spring to mind at this time (5 am) is Obiwan ("out by one") and the banana problem ("I know how to spell banana, I just don't know when to stop"). To a teenage nerd, that is pure goldplated latinum.
As far I know - and I think I am in a better position to know - those are the very things I would like to learn about first. I started with things like Pascal, BASIC, FORTRAN, COBOL, and later C++, and looking back I can see that it would have helped me a good deal to know those things intimately.
If your only ambition is to let young people "get comfortable with the idea of telling computers what to do", let them learn a simple, but complete scripting language initially and then let them move on to C. It is silly to talk about "wasting time on learning the difference between pointers and arrays", when that difference is entirely artificial, created by your intended use of the pointer.
If we always try to "protect" young people from the reality of what they are working with, we make the task of educating them unnecessarily cumbersome. Look at it another way - a person who has learned that the HW and OS don't protect them from silly mistakes, may well appreciate the facilities of eg. C++ or Java, because they know the dangers; but somebody who has started in a nanny-environment, where all that is taken care of for them, will have a hard time understanding why it doesn't always work that way. What kind of system programmers does that produce?
Teaching Java to beginners is bold - but not a good idea, in my opinion. It is the old argument about learning to walk before you start running.
The merit of C is not just that it is a very simple language to learn, if not to master; the real merit is that C is almost as close to assembler as you can get without it being assembler. This is a good thing, because in order to handle computers well, you have to understand how they work at the lowest level, and that includes machine language. It may well be that a mediocre C programmer is not as productive as as mediocre Java programmer, but we are talking about beginners here - they are about to learn the basics, in principle from scratch.
Object oriented languages start at the other end - the finished SW product, the user interface and just about as far from the actual computer as you can get without ditching it altogether. Of course if your aim is only to produce programmers that can make software without knowing what lies beneath, Java is not a bad choice even for a beginner; however, if that is all you can do, you will end up writing a lot of fluffy interfaces and possibly even some very good ones, but what are they going to look like inside?
As far as I can see, it is a lot better to start from the bottom as they do in most other areas - on the other hand, it is necessary that students can see results of what they are doing in a fairly tangible way; which is why you should start with C - it is still the best compromise between low-level understanding and high-level productivity.
Not long ago all I saw was people whining and grumbling that the government didn't develop broadband access and technology. Now Obama talks about addressing that very issue - and, by golly, suddenly everybody hates him for that. Do you guys actually know what you want? I mean, other than complain?
Whatever else you may think and feel about the new president, he almost certainly wasn't behind the policies that have lead to all American manufacturers outsourcing to India and China. He has to play the hand he was dealt - we all have; let him at least make the attempt, since he has actually been elected, OK?
We in the West simply aren't in a position to compete with China or India on prices for manufacturing; so investing in education and infrastructure is a very good idea. I mean, propping up the car manufacturers may save jobs in the short term, but they will be lost in the long term, because 1) India and China can do it cheaper and will soon do it better than us, and 2) energy shortage and climate change means that the traditional car industry will never actuallly recover, at least in the form it has now.
What we need is innovation - and innovation very often mean that something will "die" to make room for something better. If previous governments had had the foresight, they could have helped this innovation happen in time, but they didn't, because they have always favoured the oil and car industry. And of course the same holds true for the other business sectors that are now foundering; and thus we now have to regroup in a somewhat desperate situation. We will get through eventually, but I suspect a lot of things will have changed when we emerge at the other end.
Like it or not, the internet will be regulated, so we should stop grumbling about it and instead start giving our own, constructive input to the debate. Otherwise we will end up with regulations that favour only the worst of the money-grabbers.
It seems to me that we can not only pull the rules in a more tolerable direction, but we may also be able to think up some that would make life less easy for what we see as the worst elements on the net. Any suggestions?
My daughter got the MMR a month or two ago and she ended up with a week of 106F fever
I'm sorry that your daughter got ill, but it is good to hear that she is better now.
However, it is important to be clearminded about the issues here. For one thing - it is quite possible that this was not the MMR, but something else. For example, any vaccine is likely to make you a (very) little bit ill; this may have allowed in something else that made her a lot worse. Apart from that it is well known that some people do react strongly to a vaccine - there is no medicine or treatment that is completely free from risk. If you are unlucky enough, you could die from taking a vitamin tablet.
Nothing is more frightening for a parent than a perceived threat to their child - and that is the real reason why these stories have traction. It isn't the newpapers as such - they are just vultures feeding on it; but of course they know about this fear, and of course they exploit whenever they can get away with it.
As far as I am concerned, these domains might as well not exist. I can't read Chinese.
But your children or grandchildren are likely to be able to. Like it or not, China is already one of the major players and will continue to grow in influence. Chinese will continue to become increasingly relevant to everybody; after all, there are more Chinese than any other single cultural group, and the advantage of speaking Chinese is already significant, not least in research. They are already very close to the top when it comes to mathematical research, and I doubt they produce all of that in English.
I don't think it is bad, really. English is just a language, and a language is only a tool.
I think at the center of this whole issue is the question of whether we want to face up to the problem or not.
There is no doubt that drug use is a problem, or at least causes problems; but research clearly shows that there are several drugs that are less dangerous than alcohol and tobacco. Still, the overwhelming majority of people are able to live a productive life, even while enjoying alcohol or using tobacco regularly, and the reality is that it is perfectly possible to use several other drugs in a responsible way - it is a simple matter of learning how to handle it. Information campaigns and teaching about it in schools should do the trick.
As it is now, people are being kept in a state of permanent hysteria about it - and I can't see why, really. There are certain factors that contribute, like the far too influential religious conservatives, to whom anything that might look like Wild Wantonness - such as feeling happy, relaxing and enjoying yourself - is a Sin. As I think it is becoming clear to most, there isn't any rational argument in favour of the kind of prohibition we have now in most countries, so all we are left with is the irrational fear of those we allow into power, one way or the other; but should be really let fear make the decisions for us? Isn't that what got into the Iraq mess, just to whip that old, dead horse once more?
There are many benefits to changing the way this is handled: enormous savings on unnecessary policing and jailing people, just to mention one. The increased tax revenue from putting a tax on the now legal drugs, as well as income tax from the now legal drug traders. Alcohol consumption may even fall, because mixing alcohol with eg. cannabis will probably not appeal to most people - and of course, while drunk drivers are likely to drive too fast, a person under the influence of cannabis is much more likely to drive too slowly, thus reducing the likelyhood of fatal accidents.
In fact, the only people that would suffer a serious blow from the legalisation and regulation of drugs, are the ones that now benefit the most from it being illegal. As always it is a question of following the money.
How can this be news? Or even an issue for any but the most braindead of the gossip magazine crowd?
It's only a gadget, and he probably doesn't really care whether it is one or the other. That is in fact the kind of sentiment we should hope for in a president: that he is pragmatic enough to use whichever tool is at hand. Ot doesn't matter one bit whether he uses an iPod, wears an Armani suit, or indeed which deodorant he uses. Is he doing a good job? That's what I want to know, and I think that ought to be the important issue for everybody, whether they are Democrats, Republicans or something entirely different.
I'm not sure that DNA archives are all that bad. Many of the fears that are discussed seem a bit insubstantial if you think about it. I don't think I buy the one about privacy fears; the only one I can see that may be real is that insurers might use certain genetic markers as an excuse for not providing insurance, but there are ways around that, such as universal, public health care, which I am sure is going to be adopted everywhere.
The benefits, on the other hand, are substantial, not least in identifying people and relatives, but even more in medical and other research. Quite apart from that, I think there are many who would be very curious to know as much as possible about their own genes; I wonder how many would simply volunteer their DNA to a national - or even international - permanent register? I probably would.
Slashdot Mirror
You are a Communist traitor and should be shot.
A traitor pretends to be a friend, but betrays you behind your back. I, on the other hand, speak my opinions openly; thus I am not a traitor. In fact, I am not even an enemy of America. Whether I am your enemy is up to you - it takes two to be friends, but you can be an enemy all on your own.
It's true that we may never know the ultimate answer to everything - that is to be hoped; once we know everything, there will be nothing new to discover and no need for scientific inquistiveness. But I think we can and should always try to see if we can derive our understanding from more basic principles. Perhaps it is not massthat is the cause of gravity, but instead it is gravity that causes mass? Gravity on its own can be seen simply as "the shape of space-time", loosely speaking. Very loosely speaking. So perhaps mass is just an artifact of our perspective?
And while I am at it with the wild speculations, how about introducing complex mass: ie. masses that are not just real numbers, but may have imaginary parts too. Wouldn't an imaginary mass behave like an electric charge? The classical equation for electric force is very similar to the one for gravity, except the sign is opposite. Which is what you get if you put two imaginary masses into the equation for gravitational force.
If pressure attracts gravitationally, then negative pressure repels. This is dark energy.
But, pressure is caused by particles moving about and colliding with the walls of the confinement or the instrument used to measure with - particles with negative mass would intuitively have negative momentum and kinetic energy, and would thus cause negative pressure.
I am a fundamentalist crhistian (java) AND a satanist (visual basic)? LOL!
I am the incarnated paradox :)
How so?
that people going to MacWorld will be without Jobs?
Surely Occam's Razor comes into play here? Surely it's obviously simpler to say 'we've got the maths wrong for gravity beyond solar system scale' and start again at the chalkboard?
Which is, in effect what we are saying. However, it makes little sense to simply scratch the whole, current understanding of the world and start over; introducing an assumption that gravity behaves differently outside a certain distance begs the question why it should be so, and we don't have any compelling answer to that.
My own favourite, which admittedly comes out of thin air, is that negative gravity corresponds to negative mass. If you look at the classical equation as a rough approximation, you'll see that a negative mass should repel a positive mass, but attract another negative mass. Intuitively this seems to potientially explain the "dark energy" phenomenon, and it might explain how, at the beginning, mass seems to have been created from nothing - perhaps an equal amount of positive and negative mass was created, so that mass was preserved, in total, and then it exploded apart. How about that for an explanation?
I''m headed to China in about 6 months
Good on you - but if you are going there to "Preach the White Man's Gospel", you will be considered an obnoxious idiot, and rightly so. If you go there to learn and to hear what they have to say for themselves, you will have a good time.
I bet 2.25 Million active duty soldiers of the PLA could be really effective in stopping the importation of electronics waste.
Yeah, sure. However, just like in most other countries, soldiers are there for a military purpose, not to carry out policing, which is a part of the civilian authorities. Apart from that, I don't think it is a simple as that - there are things the WTO and the possible impact on employment and economy to consider, among other things. I have no doubt the government intends to tackle this issue; they are not idiots, and they generally seem to want to do the right thing, but you know just as well as I do, that a government can't just make changes overnight. It is never just black or white - perhaps they ought to have done more to protect the environment, that is certainly a fair criticism, as opposed to yelling "You have to everything right, or else you're useless and evil".
You're a cunt, do you hear me? A cunt. Go kiss up to your Chinese overlord, you pussy.
There, there, feeling better now? Yes, I hear you. Would you care to elaborate? 'Cause I don't really see why facing reality is a bad thing. Loving our own country shouldn't blind us to how things are going in the world; whether America is a great nation has little to do with its military or economic power, and everything to do with the American people.
Have you ever seen some of the situations in China?
I am married to a Chinese, speak Chinese and have traveled extensively in China. So yes, I have. And you?
I could care less how "progressive" a government is if they've spent the last 20 years profiting from turning their nation into a giant dump for hazardous waste.
Not so long ago America was by far the greatest environmental sinner, yet nobody would say that it was the American government that committed those sins, despite the fact that they encouraged them by turning a blind eye. The Chinese government, by contrast, is not turning a blind eye - they are actively trying to repair the damage caused by overexploitation. But China is a huge country with far more people than the US and far less resources to push through their will than most Western countries. The many examples of environment destruction and corruption in China are caused, not by the Communist government, but by the scum the floats to the surface in the new, open-market economy. The Capitalists, in other words.
In order to use a touch screen, you have to bring the screen closer than what is currently recommended; this will hurt people's eyesight. And then you will have to chose between an screen that lies flat down, which will avoid the gorilla arm syndrome, but will make your neck hurt, or a more vertical screen position, which will spare your neck, but gives you gorilla arm. I can't really see this being a winner, except on small, portable devices, where it would be difficult to handle a keyboard and mouse.
Daimonin: a better looking version of Crossfire. And The Mana World, which is a bit like WoW. Both are free and run on Linux as well as other OSes I shall not mention here.
Do I hear the whine of a sorry loser here?
The Chinese are not much worse than what most of us in the West have been, or in some cases still are. Based on hearsay, you judge a whole nation for what some of them do - the Chinese central government is among the most progressive when it comes to the environment, just to take one thing. And while you summarily judge the whole of China, I have a strong suspicion that you expect to get away with saying things like "Hey, I didn't vote for Bush" when people criticise the actions of your own nation. That's hypocrisy.
The simple fact is that China is fast becoming a strong contender for the leadership of the world, while America has been falling back for something like 8 years or so.
If you stick your neck out and actually question the candidates, you will become an overnight celebrity whether you want to or not. Look at the background checks that have been performed against Samuel J. Wurzelbacher and the fact that whether or not he is actually licensed as a plumber
Hey, this is America, where anybody who steps into the limelight is either an instant saint (rarely) or more commonly scrutinized in the most hostile way possible. Joe the-potentially-a-Plumber has been handled with a velvet glove, all things considered. Just think of all the "scandals" that have been in the media, like "So and so once smoked dope" and "GWB once yelled 'fuck you' after his mum". I think he's been let off easily, so far.
I agree with you, that this is wrong - but this is the way it is because 1) the news media are shamelessly pursuing anything that can be converted to profit, and 2) the general public are eager to soak up this kind of crap. Personally, whenever I see somebody hung out to dry on the frontpages of the gossip press, my sympathy for them goes up a fraction.
A computerised coffeemaker? I know there is a trend to put computers into everything from toilet paper to toothpaste, but just how far will it be pushed before somebody spots the utter idiocy of it?
I suppose it is harmless enough as such, but I can't help thinking that we should try taking the whole issue of technology and what we use it for just a little bit more serious. Then again, this kind of thing will probably die out in todays economical conditions, leaving the world slightly better.
I am not attacking the idea that somebody takes an existing gadget with a computer in it and gets it to run Linux - playing is a healthy thing and the best way to learn. It is the use of technology to solve non-existing problems and making complicated gadgets to perform trivial tasks; what could possibly be the purpose of it? Other than the entirely unworthy one of making people feel helpless in the face of simple, everyday tasks, such as cooking food or turning on your windscreen wipers (now, apparently, some cars detect the rain for you so you don't have to move your finger and flip a switch). It is the kind of thing that doesn't do the least bit to help people's lives, but which means that people will feel compelled to buy ready-made meals or little capsules of crappy coffee for their coffee maker at massively greater expense. Just another way of cheating you out of your hard earned cash.
I think the first thing is to do something to adjust expectations. My own son is one of these computer superkids, and he still hasn't seriously learned programming - not because he can't understand it, but because the things he wants to do are far too advanced, like making a game. When I learned programming at about his age, it was because I wanted to calculate the relative positions of the planets and print a table of it, which is a bit tricky mathematically, but straight forward to program.
So perhaps the answer to your question is to first ensure that they first find a project that doesn't require a decade of experience to implement; after that it doesn't matter which language you choose, as long as it is conceptually fairly simple. Which of course rules out object orientation; my choice would be C for any number of reasons. The actual language part of C is very close to the smallest possible, so it easily remembered; but the biggest advantage is that it allows you to make all the mistakes, because it does not protect you against sloppyness. As frustrating as mistakes and problems can be, they are unsurpassable as a pedagogical tool. And if you arm yourself with the Jargon Dictionary, you will find that there is a whole ocean of cool and mysterious names for all of them - the only ones that spring to mind at this time (5 am) is Obiwan ("out by one") and the banana problem ("I know how to spell banana, I just don't know when to stop"). To a teenage nerd, that is pure goldplated latinum.
How do you know what I want?
As far I know - and I think I am in a better position to know - those are the very things I would like to learn about first. I started with things like Pascal, BASIC, FORTRAN, COBOL, and later C++, and looking back I can see that it would have helped me a good deal to know those things intimately.
If your only ambition is to let young people "get comfortable with the idea of telling computers what to do", let them learn a simple, but complete scripting language initially and then let them move on to C. It is silly to talk about "wasting time on learning the difference between pointers and arrays", when that difference is entirely artificial, created by your intended use of the pointer.
If we always try to "protect" young people from the reality of what they are working with, we make the task of educating them unnecessarily cumbersome. Look at it another way - a person who has learned that the HW and OS don't protect them from silly mistakes, may well appreciate the facilities of eg. C++ or Java, because they know the dangers; but somebody who has started in a nanny-environment, where all that is taken care of for them, will have a hard time understanding why it doesn't always work that way. What kind of system programmers does that produce?
This is the kind of nonsense that you can expect from eDiots.
Teaching Java to beginners is bold - but not a good idea, in my opinion. It is the old argument about learning to walk before you start running.
The merit of C is not just that it is a very simple language to learn, if not to master; the real merit is that C is almost as close to assembler as you can get without it being assembler. This is a good thing, because in order to handle computers well, you have to understand how they work at the lowest level, and that includes machine language. It may well be that a mediocre C programmer is not as productive as as mediocre Java programmer, but we are talking about beginners here - they are about to learn the basics, in principle from scratch.
Object oriented languages start at the other end - the finished SW product, the user interface and just about as far from the actual computer as you can get without ditching it altogether. Of course if your aim is only to produce programmers that can make software without knowing what lies beneath, Java is not a bad choice even for a beginner; however, if that is all you can do, you will end up writing a lot of fluffy interfaces and possibly even some very good ones, but what are they going to look like inside?
As far as I can see, it is a lot better to start from the bottom as they do in most other areas - on the other hand, it is necessary that students can see results of what they are doing in a fairly tangible way; which is why you should start with C - it is still the best compromise between low-level understanding and high-level productivity.
Good grief, Slashdotters, grow up already.
Not long ago all I saw was people whining and grumbling that the government didn't develop broadband access and technology. Now Obama talks about addressing that very issue - and, by golly, suddenly everybody hates him for that. Do you guys actually know what you want? I mean, other than complain?
Whatever else you may think and feel about the new president, he almost certainly wasn't behind the policies that have lead to all American manufacturers outsourcing to India and China. He has to play the hand he was dealt - we all have; let him at least make the attempt, since he has actually been elected, OK?
We in the West simply aren't in a position to compete with China or India on prices for manufacturing; so investing in education and infrastructure is a very good idea. I mean, propping up the car manufacturers may save jobs in the short term, but they will be lost in the long term, because 1) India and China can do it cheaper and will soon do it better than us, and 2) energy shortage and climate change means that the traditional car industry will never actuallly recover, at least in the form it has now.
What we need is innovation - and innovation very often mean that something will "die" to make room for something better. If previous governments had had the foresight, they could have helped this innovation happen in time, but they didn't, because they have always favoured the oil and car industry. And of course the same holds true for the other business sectors that are now foundering; and thus we now have to regroup in a somewhat desperate situation. We will get through eventually, but I suspect a lot of things will have changed when we emerge at the other end.
Like it or not, the internet will be regulated, so we should stop grumbling about it and instead start giving our own, constructive input to the debate. Otherwise we will end up with regulations that favour only the worst of the money-grabbers.
It seems to me that we can not only pull the rules in a more tolerable direction, but we may also be able to think up some that would make life less easy for what we see as the worst elements on the net. Any suggestions?
My daughter got the MMR a month or two ago and she ended up with a week of 106F fever
I'm sorry that your daughter got ill, but it is good to hear that she is better now.
However, it is important to be clearminded about the issues here. For one thing - it is quite possible that this was not the MMR, but something else. For example, any vaccine is likely to make you a (very) little bit ill; this may have allowed in something else that made her a lot worse. Apart from that it is well known that some people do react strongly to a vaccine - there is no medicine or treatment that is completely free from risk. If you are unlucky enough, you could die from taking a vitamin tablet.
Nothing is more frightening for a parent than a perceived threat to their child - and that is the real reason why these stories have traction. It isn't the newpapers as such - they are just vultures feeding on it; but of course they know about this fear, and of course they exploit whenever they can get away with it.
As far as I am concerned, these domains might as well not exist. I can't read Chinese.
But your children or grandchildren are likely to be able to. Like it or not, China is already one of the major players and will continue to grow in influence. Chinese will continue to become increasingly relevant to everybody; after all, there are more Chinese than any other single cultural group, and the advantage of speaking Chinese is already significant, not least in research. They are already very close to the top when it comes to mathematical research, and I doubt they produce all of that in English.
I don't think it is bad, really. English is just a language, and a language is only a tool.
I think at the center of this whole issue is the question of whether we want to face up to the problem or not.
There is no doubt that drug use is a problem, or at least causes problems; but research clearly shows that there are several drugs that are less dangerous than alcohol and tobacco. Still, the overwhelming majority of people are able to live a productive life, even while enjoying alcohol or using tobacco regularly, and the reality is that it is perfectly possible to use several other drugs in a responsible way - it is a simple matter of learning how to handle it. Information campaigns and teaching about it in schools should do the trick.
As it is now, people are being kept in a state of permanent hysteria about it - and I can't see why, really. There are certain factors that contribute, like the far too influential religious conservatives, to whom anything that might look like Wild Wantonness - such as feeling happy, relaxing and enjoying yourself - is a Sin. As I think it is becoming clear to most, there isn't any rational argument in favour of the kind of prohibition we have now in most countries, so all we are left with is the irrational fear of those we allow into power, one way or the other; but should be really let fear make the decisions for us? Isn't that what got into the Iraq mess, just to whip that old, dead horse once more?
There are many benefits to changing the way this is handled: enormous savings on unnecessary policing and jailing people, just to mention one. The increased tax revenue from putting a tax on the now legal drugs, as well as income tax from the now legal drug traders. Alcohol consumption may even fall, because mixing alcohol with eg. cannabis will probably not appeal to most people - and of course, while drunk drivers are likely to drive too fast, a person under the influence of cannabis is much more likely to drive too slowly, thus reducing the likelyhood of fatal accidents.
In fact, the only people that would suffer a serious blow from the legalisation and regulation of drugs, are the ones that now benefit the most from it being illegal. As always it is a question of following the money.
How can this be news? Or even an issue for any but the most braindead of the gossip magazine crowd?
It's only a gadget, and he probably doesn't really care whether it is one or the other. That is in fact the kind of sentiment we should hope for in a president: that he is pragmatic enough to use whichever tool is at hand. Ot doesn't matter one bit whether he uses an iPod, wears an Armani suit, or indeed which deodorant he uses. Is he doing a good job? That's what I want to know, and I think that ought to be the important issue for everybody, whether they are Democrats, Republicans or something entirely different.
I'm not sure that DNA archives are all that bad. Many of the fears that are discussed seem a bit insubstantial if you think about it. I don't think I buy the one about privacy fears; the only one I can see that may be real is that insurers might use certain genetic markers as an excuse for not providing insurance, but there are ways around that, such as universal, public health care, which I am sure is going to be adopted everywhere.
The benefits, on the other hand, are substantial, not least in identifying people and relatives, but even more in medical and other research. Quite apart from that, I think there are many who would be very curious to know as much as possible about their own genes; I wonder how many would simply volunteer their DNA to a national - or even international - permanent register? I probably would.