Actually, I have heard (and give a lot of weight to) the idea that MLB uses wood bats becaue of tradition, but not because the wood itself was what was used in the original game. It's the tradition of hearing a nice, sharp *crack* when a player hits the ball, instead of a metallic *ping*.
While I think that Apple was probably very aware of how iTunes 4.0's wide-area playlist streaming was viewed by the RIAA, etc., they also had other reasons to release iTunes 4.0.1 to limit the broadcast range of the program.
First of all, the documentation for 4.0 specifically had said that it was local sharing only, which seems to me to mean that they intended it to be that way from the start.
Add to that the fact that they have received bug reports about the wide-area broadcast from companies whose employees were streaming music from their home. (Repeating second-hand, but I might be able to dig up the original report I read of this.) For the companies, this was a bug, as many have to pay for the bandwidth used by their employees, and streaming music does use up a fair amount of bandwidth.
Finally, realize that the reason that the streams were being wide-area broadcast was, if I remember correctly, forgetting to set a field in the data packets sent out. A very simple fix, and they have fixed a bug, made corporate administrators happy, and not coincindentally, reassured the music industry that they are on top of these things.
Now, who knows what they will do about this new development? My guess is that they will do nothing, recognizing that, as you say, copyright protection can be an unending waste of human resource. However, I wouldn't be surprised if the next release, for whatever needs fixing/updating, just "accidentally" renders this inoperative. Then an update to this program will be made, and Apple will probably go along ignoring it as usual.
Whiteboards can also be a great time-saver when working up proofs, etc., with a group of people. You can write in big, somewhat sloppy letters, everyone can see what the current state of things is, and it is very easy to correct.
Whiteboards can also be great for diagramming things, such as finite-state machines, or working through the process of a Turing machine, etc.
As a side-benefit, it can also be useful for role-playing. I've had some friends use the whiteboard we all chipped in on for in that way. Just use a permanent grey (or light blue) marker to make a grid on it, and put your tokens on the new "map". A grid may even be useful for some of your schoolwork, as well.
I've never looked inside the case of one of Apple's new laptops, but if you're good you should be able to wire something up so that by pressing the new button, the option key and the regular mouse click signals are both emitted. That would save the necessity of another mouse board, and would appear to the operating system to be the default "contextual menu" key/mouse combo.
There might be a bit of timing involved in this solution, however.
Why are many popular artists (the Beatles for example) completely missing?
Actually, I could have sworn I saw the Beatles listed yesterday when I was browsing through the Rock section. Granted, the selection wasn't everything that I wanted (ideally, getting the recent 1 album for $9.99, but I can dream, can't I?) but there were some tracks there. I was quite sure of it.
I do recall that they didn't seem to have the artist alphabetization quite worked out like local songs yet, so perhaps they were under T, for The Beatles?
I was happy to hear this, and tried my best. However, anytime I modified the.plist file (according to the developer instructions on the website), I lost all syntax coloring completely. No matter what change I made, all color disappeared.
This is a shame, because I was really looking forward to changing these colors.
Of course, perhaps I should be sending an e-mail to the programmers instead of replying here, but that isn't in the slashdot spirit, is it?
First of all, for pair-programming or whatnot, I would imagine that this would of course work best with the two programmers sitting next to each other. However, this would allow both programmers to select/enter/point out stuff to the other person without having to shuffle keyboards and mice around, which I think would be very convenient.
Secondly, the changes that occur to the documents can be color-coded in order to show who has made what changes. I assume this is lost when the document is saved, closed, and reopened, but it does provide good feedback on who has done what to the document. I would imagine that, like pair-programming, this could be a decent learning tool, if you have mistakes that you made pointed out right away in this manner.
Third, until the syntax coloring can be modified via preferences, this isn't as useful to me as it could be. I like to have the same syntax coloring at work, school, and home in order to make my life a lot easier - and each area has different editors for me to use. Once that can be done, I imagine this could become quite useful to me, at least.
The university I used to attend (and still have friends at), Iowa State University, fairly recently had to look into something like this.
They started off by monitoring bandwidth, and cutting anyone off who had sent more than X amount of data outside the campus network. To get your connection back, you had to go to a certain office, plead your case, etc. And then you were put on a monitored connection.
Now, they have moved to a more tolerant policy. After a certain amount of uploads (I think it's just uploads) in a week, your connection is throttled down to a small amount. That amount is enough for simple things like page-requests for the web, but basically kills things like hosting multiplayer games.
For the curious, they track it based on the MAC address. When you hook a computer up to the network with a MAC address that isn't in their database, the only thing you can do is view a form over the web that requests your ID and password (the same as e-mail for most users). They reset this database once a year to clear out old info. It's certainly possible to spoof to an existing address and get that person's bandwidth limit, but since this is a permanent-on network, that would lead to general badness with the routers not being sure where to send things. At least, that is what the officials say, anyway...
A benefit of doing things this way, that I appreciated, was the ability for them to give you a "permanent" URL to use to access your machine. They mapped the DHCP address they gave you to your MAC, and allowed you to specify a hostname. Then you could access your machine from anywhere with the URL..iastate.edu. For instance (this doesn't exist anymore): cjhuitt.stures.iastate.edu.
Well, at work I wrote a quick utility to add debugging information to our code, and since I couldn't think of anything better I called it "debuggery". Knowing full well what buggery implies, of course.
Come a few weeks later, there's another utility to remove the debugging information. Called, of course, "rebuggery".
It's really quite easy. Offer any of a number of items for sale, and your account will soon be terminated. Just use the terms "mp3" and "cd-r" in the description of the product.
As an added bonus, for quick termination, send an anonymous e-mail to eBay mentioning the item. Then time how long it takes until you can't access your account any longer.
So far as I can tell, the APSL doesn't even apply here. The violation they are talking about has to do with the license that people agree to when they use the SDK (Software Development Kit) that Apple provides for making iTunes plugins. I haven't determined exactly what was violated in that agreement, but it wasn't the APSL, so far as I can tell.
I don't know how feasible this is, but you might want to look into magnetic cards. At more than one of my previous jobs, in order to get in the door you had to put a magnetic card up near a reader, which would then unlock the door. I seem to recall a few doors having this both ways, when they wanted to track who was entering and leaving certain places, such as server rooms.
Anyway, if you do this and then put the card on a necklace the child could wear, this might work. They would still have to not leave the card lying around, but on a necklace of some sort it shouldn't be much hassle to keep with them throughout the day.
For those who may be deceived, this is not, in fact, on snopes.com. For those who missed it, it is moderated as "Funny" (at least, as I write this), and it may be somewhat amusing. Also, the fact that the URL for the article was shown, but not linked, might be another indication of this. (Searches on snopes.com for "Felsenstein" also come up blank.)
Doubt is a good thing, but it is taken advantage of just as easily as gullibility.
Lots of people have replied talking about ThinkGeek, but pay particular attention to the Nerf guns that they have. If your company atmosphere is the same as mine (small, everyone knows everyone, and good-natured) there's nothing like having a Nerf gun handy to express your disagreements with.
Be sure to load up with extra darts, however. Those things can get themselves lost in the time it takes you to blink.
First get your government going, and get the basics of living working. Done that.
Next, democracy, by way of a monarchy. Done that.
Finally, 20% luxeries, 30% taxes, and 50% research. Also, turn any excess population into scientists, except as necessary in certain cities. Placate the masses with temples and cathedrals and coliseums, as necessary.
As my experience in Civ II shows, this is an easy way to first make numerous advances, and then kick everybody else's butts as you expand your empire - err, democracy - across the globe.
We've all heard the excuses about how a text-only medium is hard to interpret, there is no sense transmitted with the message, but only the message itself. He or she probably meant it to be funny. Maybe on another day, I might have found it funny - probably not, but maybe.
As is, though, it still sounds like a troll/extremist. And it looks like I'm not the only one to think so.
Right. And I bet all of the dinosaur extinctions were our fault as well?
While I admit that modern humans have a large negative impact on many species, I don't think you can realistically blame our ancestors, who had just learned to domesticate dogs, for winning the competition for food and land area. Just as the hyenas probably caused the species before them to die out, because they were better suited for the competition.
It's really nutcases like you that make me think bad thoughts about the larger groups of environmentalists, who are most likely made up of a large number of reasonable people.
I've actually purchased a couple of "for dummies" books...
The truth is, they can be a great intro to a subject that you don't know anything about. That said, however, they seem to be one-off books. That is, you read them once, and then never use them again. (The possible exception would be the "cheat-sheets" that some of the books include inside the back flap.)
So I would certainly consider getting, say, PHP for Dummies if I was looking for a quick intro into the basics of PHP, after which I would sell it again and by myself a good look-up reference for when I start getting into the details.
A lot of the fencers in my club are engineers and the like - or at least, engineers in training, as it's a university club. But fencing can be easily practiced individually, and all you need is two people to have a friendly match. The competitions are a blast, and a well-executed parry-riposte can keep you feeling good for days afterwards.
Look here for fencing clubs in your area. Most clubs will have all of the equipment that you will need in the beginning, as long as you own comfortable shoes and moderately loose exercise clothes. Be warned, however, that as you get more involved, you will want to get some of your own equipment.
Be warned again that some of your past enjoyment of flashy sword-fights in movies might diminish, but you can gain some enjoyment as well from criticizing what they do, and knowing that if you were faced with someone using a sword like that, you could probably take it out of their hand in next to no time.
It is my impression that this release is "officially" MacOS 10.2. So to use roman numerals instead, that would be, I guess, X.II, if you're into that sort of thing.
I think my favorite names from the series have to be Majickthise and Vroomfondel. Just classic, especially if you hear the names pronounced in the radio series.
(For those of you who haven't, try working them out phonetically. Yep, that's right. Phonetics actually work for once.)
Not only that, but if you get a chance to look at the keyboard from above, look at where the touchpad is.
Now, I don't know about most people, but when I had a laptop, I rested my wrists on the laptop below the keyboard when I was typing.
Looking again at the picture, and noting where the spacebar is, it looks like the trackpad is perfectly positioned for me to rest my right wrist on top of it while typing. So, either I have to hold my wrists up in the air (perhaps better posture, but I hate doing so) or put up with the chance of my mouse flying all over the screen.
And don't even get me started on how often I'd probably accidentally click the buttons above the trackpad.
Borland C++ variable values incorrect
on
Pet Bugs?
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
One of the most frustrating bugs was one I encountered in an early programming class in college. I had finished my program, and was testing it. Of course, it wasn't correct. I fixed every bug I could find, but it still wasn't correct.
So, not knowing about fun things like debuggers, I started putting some cout statements in the code, to check the value of variable at different locations.
The variables were all correct. And so was the output.
I started removing cout statements, and found out that when I removed one particular statement, the program started giving incorrect values again.
Print the value, program output was correct. Don't print the value, it was incorrect.
So, I experimented some more, and found that I could do a variety of things, such as swapping a couple of my statements, and the program ran correctly without the output of the value.
I pretty much forgot about this, until another class a couple of years later. We were using the same compiler (I beleive it was Borland 5), and I found the exact same problem. This time, however, I couldn't swap statements around to get it to go away. I needed a statement that would do nothing.
So, I gave up and assigned the variable to itself. (i = i;).
Imagine my surprise when the program worked correctly. I brought over my TA, and she couldn't make heads or tails of it either. But every time, if that assignment was commented out, the program was wrong, but if it was left in, the program was correct.
I eventually learned about pipelined instructions, and how a compiler has to be careful that a memory address has the correct value before using it for another statement. I'm pretty sure that's what was going wrong, but I always remember my magical solution of assigning a variable to itself to make it the correct value.
A post that started well, then failed miserably...
> Now when did you ever hear of teachers being laid off?
Both of my parents are teachers, and my grandfather was shocked to find how little they made. You see, he lived through the great depression, and he could remember when teachers were the ones who had things, because they had jobs. His best tip as a paper carrier came from a teacher. So when he found out that my parents make the same or less than he did (he was a farmer) he was quite surprised. In fact, I'm about to graduate, and in a couple of years, I can expect to be making nearly as much a year as my father, who has more than 25 years experience teaching.
> but teachers work 9 am to 3:30 pm every day and get > 10 weeks vacation a year.
I hear this a lot, and let me tell you, it's not true. At least not here in the USA. I live in Iowa, which is supposed to have one of the best k-12 education systems in the nation, and my parents work their butts off. During the school year, they generally have to supervise students in one form or another for 7 out of the 8 hours (8 am to 4 pm) they are required to be there. That one hour isn't nearly enough to grade all the tests, quizzes, and papers that they need to grade, as well as prepare the ones to be used in the future, as well as prepare lesson plans for the school board/government/parents to view to see what will be happening in the next two weeks, as well as help any students who come in asking for help.
Above and beyond those 8 hours a day they are supposed to work, they are also expected to alternate being faculty advisors for a grade; so when, say, they sophomore class wants to make some money for their class by holding a car wash, if my dad is one of their advisors, he is expected to be at that car was as well to supervise. As well as any other class-related activity, such as whatever the class ends up using that money for.
Now, beyond this even, the teachers are expected to show up and support the various extracurricular activities that students participate in, such as sports, band, etc. Additionally, when the sports games are hosted at the school, the teachers alternate in manning the concession area, so they absolutely have to be there for those times. At least for those times, they aren't charged admission as well.
So, from my experience, my parents usually end up working 9-10 hours a day. And it can be a stressfull job, too. My mom started teaching full time a couple of years ago, when I was in college, and she went from mostly blond when I left for college in Augest to completely silver when I got back for Thanksgiving, in November. It was a startling change.
I know, I know, you (and most people) still think that teachers get the summer off, at least, right? Well, that's not exactly true either. Granted, they can usually find a week or two to take off for themselves, in addition to the couple of weeks that they get at Christmastime, so maybe they do get a bit more vacation than most jobs. However, teachers are never considered "good enough" in our teaching system. Once every three summers, my parents have to take classes themselves, to make sure that they are keeping up on all the latest teaching techniques. Some teachers take a class or two every summer. Again, and this is a newer law I believe, once every three summers a teacher is required to work in a job related to what they are teaching. So my father, for instance, teaches Spanish, and once every three summers he has to look around and find a job that allows him to use spanish on the job, and do whatever he can to be able to work at that job. It usually means working for a very reduced salary, because most companies either have someone there already, or don't want to hire someone for just the summer. That leaves one summer every three years. For that summer, my dad looks around and finds a summer job to try and supplement the money that he actually makes teaching, so that my parents can have silly things like running cars to take them to work and back. (Carpools are a possiblity, but no other form of alternative transportation exists.) And whatever is left over from that usually goes into repairing the house they live in. They don't really have much time for luxeries, although I've found that they have more now that all of us kids are on our own, and not draining them completely dry.
So no, teachers may have a lot of things, but they don't have the cush hours that most people think. At least, not basic-education teachers. College/University professors may be different, but from my experience, they're pressured pretty hard to work on research when they aren't teaching classes, so they don't seem to have a life of luxery either.
Slashdot Mirror
Actually, I have heard (and give a lot of weight to) the idea that MLB uses wood bats becaue of tradition, but not because the wood itself was what was used in the original game. It's the tradition of hearing a nice, sharp *crack* when a player hits the ball, instead of a metallic *ping*.
While I think that Apple was probably very aware of how iTunes 4.0's wide-area playlist streaming was viewed by the RIAA, etc., they also had other reasons to release iTunes 4.0.1 to limit the broadcast range of the program.
First of all, the documentation for 4.0 specifically had said that it was local sharing only, which seems to me to mean that they intended it to be that way from the start.
Add to that the fact that they have received bug reports about the wide-area broadcast from companies whose employees were streaming music from their home. (Repeating second-hand, but I might be able to dig up the original report I read of this.) For the companies, this was a bug, as many have to pay for the bandwidth used by their employees, and streaming music does use up a fair amount of bandwidth.
Finally, realize that the reason that the streams were being wide-area broadcast was, if I remember correctly, forgetting to set a field in the data packets sent out. A very simple fix, and they have fixed a bug, made corporate administrators happy, and not coincindentally, reassured the music industry that they are on top of these things.
Now, who knows what they will do about this new development? My guess is that they will do nothing, recognizing that, as you say, copyright protection can be an unending waste of human resource. However, I wouldn't be surprised if the next release, for whatever needs fixing/updating, just "accidentally" renders this inoperative. Then an update to this program will be made, and Apple will probably go along ignoring it as usual.
Whiteboards can also be a great time-saver when working up proofs, etc., with a group of people. You can write in big, somewhat sloppy letters, everyone can see what the current state of things is, and it is very easy to correct.
Whiteboards can also be great for diagramming things, such as finite-state machines, or working through the process of a Turing machine, etc.
As a side-benefit, it can also be useful for role-playing. I've had some friends use the whiteboard we all chipped in on for in that way. Just use a permanent grey (or light blue) marker to make a grid on it, and put your tokens on the new "map". A grid may even be useful for some of your schoolwork, as well.
I've never looked inside the case of one of Apple's new laptops, but if you're good you should be able to wire something up so that by pressing the new button, the option key and the regular mouse click signals are both emitted. That would save the necessity of another mouse board, and would appear to the operating system to be the default "contextual menu" key/mouse combo.
There might be a bit of timing involved in this solution, however.
Why are many popular artists (the Beatles for example) completely missing?
Actually, I could have sworn I saw the Beatles listed yesterday when I was browsing through the Rock section. Granted, the selection wasn't everything that I wanted (ideally, getting the recent 1 album for $9.99, but I can dream, can't I?) but there were some tracks there. I was quite sure of it.
I do recall that they didn't seem to have the artist alphabetization quite worked out like local songs yet, so perhaps they were under T, for The Beatles?
I was happy to hear this, and tried my best. However, anytime I modified the .plist file (according to the developer instructions on the website), I lost all syntax coloring completely. No matter what change I made, all color disappeared.
This is a shame, because I was really looking forward to changing these colors.
Of course, perhaps I should be sending an e-mail to the programmers instead of replying here, but that isn't in the slashdot spirit, is it?
A couple of things not yet mentioned here...
First of all, for pair-programming or whatnot, I would imagine that this would of course work best with the two programmers sitting next to each other. However, this would allow both programmers to select/enter/point out stuff to the other person without having to shuffle keyboards and mice around, which I think would be very convenient.
Secondly, the changes that occur to the documents can be color-coded in order to show who has made what changes. I assume this is lost when the document is saved, closed, and reopened, but it does provide good feedback on who has done what to the document. I would imagine that, like pair-programming, this could be a decent learning tool, if you have mistakes that you made pointed out right away in this manner.
Third, until the syntax coloring can be modified via preferences, this isn't as useful to me as it could be. I like to have the same syntax coloring at work, school, and home in order to make my life a lot easier - and each area has different editors for me to use. Once that can be done, I imagine this could become quite useful to me, at least.
The university I used to attend (and still have friends at), Iowa State University, fairly recently had to look into something like this.
..iastate.edu. For instance (this doesn't exist anymore): cjhuitt.stures.iastate.edu.
They started off by monitoring bandwidth, and cutting anyone off who had sent more than X amount of data outside the campus network. To get your connection back, you had to go to a certain office, plead your case, etc. And then you were put on a monitored connection.
Now, they have moved to a more tolerant policy. After a certain amount of uploads (I think it's just uploads) in a week, your connection is throttled down to a small amount. That amount is enough for simple things like page-requests for the web, but basically kills things like hosting multiplayer games.
For the curious, they track it based on the MAC address. When you hook a computer up to the network with a MAC address that isn't in their database, the only thing you can do is view a form over the web that requests your ID and password (the same as e-mail for most users). They reset this database once a year to clear out old info. It's certainly possible to spoof to an existing address and get that person's bandwidth limit, but since this is a permanent-on network, that would lead to general badness with the routers not being sure where to send things. At least, that is what the officials say, anyway...
A benefit of doing things this way, that I appreciated, was the ability for them to give you a "permanent" URL to use to access your machine. They mapped the DHCP address they gave you to your MAC, and allowed you to specify a hostname. Then you could access your machine from anywhere with the URL
Well, at work I wrote a quick utility to add debugging information to our code, and since I couldn't think of anything better I called it "debuggery". Knowing full well what buggery implies, of course.
Come a few weeks later, there's another utility to remove the debugging information. Called, of course, "rebuggery".
It's really quite easy. Offer any of a number of items for sale, and your account will soon be terminated. Just use the terms "mp3" and "cd-r" in the description of the product.
As an added bonus, for quick termination, send an anonymous e-mail to eBay mentioning the item. Then time how long it takes until you can't access your account any longer.
So far as I can tell, the APSL doesn't even apply here. The violation they are talking about has to do with the license that people agree to when they use the SDK (Software Development Kit) that Apple provides for making iTunes plugins. I haven't determined exactly what was violated in that agreement, but it wasn't the APSL, so far as I can tell.
I don't know how feasible this is, but you might want to look into magnetic cards. At more than one of my previous jobs, in order to get in the door you had to put a magnetic card up near a reader, which would then unlock the door. I seem to recall a few doors having this both ways, when they wanted to track who was entering and leaving certain places, such as server rooms.
Anyway, if you do this and then put the card on a necklace the child could wear, this might work. They would still have to not leave the card lying around, but on a necklace of some sort it shouldn't be much hassle to keep with them throughout the day.
From snopes.com (www.snopes.com/spoons/felsenstein.html):
For those who may be deceived, this is not, in fact, on snopes.com. For those who missed it, it is moderated as "Funny" (at least, as I write this), and it may be somewhat amusing. Also, the fact that the URL for the article was shown, but not linked, might be another indication of this. (Searches on snopes.com for "Felsenstein" also come up blank.)
Doubt is a good thing, but it is taken advantage of just as easily as gullibility.
Lots of people have replied talking about ThinkGeek, but pay particular attention to the Nerf guns that they have. If your company atmosphere is the same as mine (small, everyone knows everyone, and good-natured) there's nothing like having a Nerf gun handy to express your disagreements with.
Be sure to load up with extra darts, however. Those things can get themselves lost in the time it takes you to blink.
Civ II experience says...
First get your government going, and get the basics of living working. Done that.
Next, democracy, by way of a monarchy. Done that.
Finally, 20% luxeries, 30% taxes, and 50% research. Also, turn any excess population into scientists, except as necessary in certain cities. Placate the masses with temples and cathedrals and coliseums, as necessary.
As my experience in Civ II shows, this is an easy way to first make numerous advances, and then kick everybody else's butts as you expand your empire - err, democracy - across the globe.
Well, perhaps heard in person, etc.
We've all heard the excuses about how a text-only medium is hard to interpret, there is no sense transmitted with the message, but only the message itself. He or she probably meant it to be funny. Maybe on another day, I might have found it funny - probably not, but maybe.
As is, though, it still sounds like a troll/extremist. And it looks like I'm not the only one to think so.
Right. And I bet all of the dinosaur extinctions were our fault as well?
While I admit that modern humans have a large negative impact on many species, I don't think you can realistically blame our ancestors, who had just learned to domesticate dogs, for winning the competition for food and land area. Just as the hyenas probably caused the species before them to die out, because they were better suited for the competition.
It's really nutcases like you that make me think bad thoughts about the larger groups of environmentalists, who are most likely made up of a large number of reasonable people.
I've actually purchased a couple of "for dummies" books...
The truth is, they can be a great intro to a subject that you don't know anything about. That said, however, they seem to be one-off books. That is, you read them once, and then never use them again. (The possible exception would be the "cheat-sheets" that some of the books include inside the back flap.)
So I would certainly consider getting, say, PHP for Dummies if I was looking for a quick intro into the basics of PHP, after which I would sell it again and by myself a good look-up reference for when I start getting into the details.
A lot of the fencers in my club are engineers and the like - or at least, engineers in training, as it's a university club. But fencing can be easily practiced individually, and all you need is two people to have a friendly match. The competitions are a blast, and a well-executed parry-riposte can keep you feeling good for days afterwards.
Look here for fencing clubs in your area. Most clubs will have all of the equipment that you will need in the beginning, as long as you own comfortable shoes and moderately loose exercise clothes. Be warned, however, that as you get more involved, you will want to get some of your own equipment.
Be warned again that some of your past enjoyment of flashy sword-fights in movies might diminish, but you can gain some enjoyment as well from criticizing what they do, and knowing that if you were faced with someone using a sword like that, you could probably take it out of their hand in next to no time.
It is my impression that this release is "officially" MacOS 10.2. So to use roman numerals instead, that would be, I guess, X.II, if you're into that sort of thing.
I think my favorite names from the series have to be Majickthise and Vroomfondel. Just classic, especially if you hear the names pronounced in the radio series.
(For those of you who haven't, try working them out phonetically. Yep, that's right. Phonetics actually work for once.)
Not only that, but if you get a chance to look at the keyboard from above, look at where the touchpad is.
Now, I don't know about most people, but when I had a laptop, I rested my wrists on the laptop below the keyboard when I was typing.
Looking again at the picture, and noting where the spacebar is, it looks like the trackpad is perfectly positioned for me to rest my right wrist on top of it while typing. So, either I have to hold my wrists up in the air (perhaps better posture, but I hate doing so) or put up with the chance of my mouse flying all over the screen.
And don't even get me started on how often I'd probably accidentally click the buttons above the trackpad.
Does it? I guess I wouldn't know.
Thanks once again, Mozilla!
One of the most frustrating bugs was one I encountered in an early programming class in college. I had finished my program, and was testing it. Of course, it wasn't correct. I fixed every bug I could find, but it still wasn't correct.
So, not knowing about fun things like debuggers, I started putting some cout statements in the code, to check the value of variable at different locations.
The variables were all correct. And so was the output.
I started removing cout statements, and found out that when I removed one particular statement, the program started giving incorrect values again.
Print the value, program output was correct. Don't print the value, it was incorrect.
So, I experimented some more, and found that I could do a variety of things, such as swapping a couple of my statements, and the program ran correctly without the output of the value.
I pretty much forgot about this, until another class a couple of years later. We were using the same compiler (I beleive it was Borland 5), and I found the exact same problem. This time, however, I couldn't swap statements around to get it to go away. I needed a statement that would do nothing.
So, I gave up and assigned the variable to itself. (i = i;).
Imagine my surprise when the program worked correctly. I brought over my TA, and she couldn't make heads or tails of it either. But every time, if that assignment was commented out, the program was wrong, but if it was left in, the program was correct.
I eventually learned about pipelined instructions, and how a compiler has to be careful that a memory address has the correct value before using it for another statement. I'm pretty sure that's what was going wrong, but I always remember my magical solution of assigning a variable to itself to make it the correct value.
A post that started well, then failed miserably...
> Now when did you ever hear of teachers being laid off?
Both of my parents are teachers, and my grandfather was shocked to find how little they made. You see, he lived through the great depression, and he could remember when teachers were the ones who had things, because they had jobs. His best tip as a paper carrier came from a teacher. So when he found out that my parents make the same or less than he did (he was a farmer) he was quite surprised. In fact, I'm about to graduate, and in a couple of years, I can expect to be making nearly as much a year as my father, who has more than 25 years experience teaching.
> but teachers work 9 am to 3:30 pm every day and get
> 10 weeks vacation a year.
I hear this a lot, and let me tell you, it's not true. At least not here in the USA. I live in Iowa, which is supposed to have one of the best k-12 education systems in the nation, and my parents work their butts off. During the school year, they generally have to supervise students in one form or another for 7 out of the 8 hours (8 am to 4 pm) they are required to be there. That one hour isn't nearly enough to grade all the tests, quizzes, and papers that they need to grade, as well as prepare the ones to be used in the future, as well as prepare lesson plans for the school board/government/parents to view to see what will be happening in the next two weeks, as well as help any students who come in asking for help.
Above and beyond those 8 hours a day they are supposed to work, they are also expected to alternate being faculty advisors for a grade; so when, say, they sophomore class wants to make some money for their class by holding a car wash, if my dad is one of their advisors, he is expected to be at that car was as well to supervise. As well as any other class-related activity, such as whatever the class ends up using that money for.
Now, beyond this even, the teachers are expected to show up and support the various extracurricular activities that students participate in, such as sports, band, etc. Additionally, when the sports games are hosted at the school, the teachers alternate in manning the concession area, so they absolutely have to be there for those times. At least for those times, they aren't charged admission as well.
So, from my experience, my parents usually end up working 9-10 hours a day. And it can be a stressfull job, too. My mom started teaching full time a couple of years ago, when I was in college, and she went from mostly blond when I left for college in Augest to completely silver when I got back for Thanksgiving, in November. It was a startling change.
I know, I know, you (and most people) still think that teachers get the summer off, at least, right? Well, that's not exactly true either. Granted, they can usually find a week or two to take off for themselves, in addition to the couple of weeks that they get at Christmastime, so maybe they do get a bit more vacation than most jobs. However, teachers are never considered "good enough" in our teaching system. Once every three summers, my parents have to take classes themselves, to make sure that they are keeping up on all the latest teaching techniques. Some teachers take a class or two every summer. Again, and this is a newer law I believe, once every three summers a teacher is required to work in a job related to what they are teaching. So my father, for instance, teaches Spanish, and once every three summers he has to look around and find a job that allows him to use spanish on the job, and do whatever he can to be able to work at that job. It usually means working for a very reduced salary, because most companies either have someone there already, or don't want to hire someone for just the summer. That leaves one summer every three years. For that summer, my dad looks around and finds a summer job to try and supplement the money that he actually makes teaching, so that my parents can have silly things like running cars to take them to work and back. (Carpools are a possiblity, but no other form of alternative transportation exists.) And whatever is left over from that usually goes into repairing the house they live in. They don't really have much time for luxeries, although I've found that they have more now that all of us kids are on our own, and not draining them completely dry.
So no, teachers may have a lot of things, but they don't have the cush hours that most people think. At least, not basic-education teachers. College/University professors may be different, but from my experience, they're pressured pretty hard to work on research when they aren't teaching classes, so they don't seem to have a life of luxery either.