The original edition, and the sequel More Programming Pearls. Also, Introduction to Algorithms by Cormen, Leiserson and Rivest is a good basic algorithm reference. ---
There's a volunteer project that sends geeks to Ghana to help businesses. You can read about it at geekhalla. I'm pretty sure/. has even had a story about it at some point in the past. ---
Fundamentally, there are really only a few different types of languages. Procedural, OO, functional. Once you've learned a few (e.g. C, Java, Scheme) you should have a basic idea of how any of them work and be able to pick them up from a book.
As far as for a CS course, it depends on what that course is trying to teach. In my university courses, we are never taught a language, we have to pick that up ourselves, the language is used as a tool to express CS ideas. In this way, a language which has many drawbacks overall may still be a useful tool.
For an introduction to OO ideas, Java may be very useful because students don't have to deal with explicit pointers/references or garbage collection, they can focus more on the ideas of OO.
Something like Pascal is often considered outdated today, but I found that it was a good language to use for learning about procedural programming and CS fundamentals in a 1st year course.
Overall, my point is that every language that could be used has faults, but if it assists students in learning about the ideas of the course, then it is useful. IMO, courses that only teach languages are a waste of time. Languages in use will change, the ideas behind them and that for which we use them is what we need to learn. ---
The more you control your children, the more likely you are to have a mindless robot. Maybe that's exactly what some parents want... a minion to do their bidding... but it's the last thing society needs more of. ---
I don't see what the big deal is. This censorship is self imposed and we do that all the time anyways when we make choices of where to go, who to talk to, what to read, what to see, etc.
Parents have been dumping kids in front of TV sets for ages... this way there's some rating, which is better than none (as far as little kids are concerned). I doubt that parents who have watched tv with their kids are going to be the ones who use this... it will be the parents who ignored what their kids were doing. So at least there'd be some restriction as to what kids get to see. ---
In my experience Google decides which page to give you based on your browser preferences. Since these are set by the user, I don't think there's anything wrong with that.
(If you use Netscape, look in the preferences area under language, you probably have French set as 1 in the order.) ---
The police record bit is explained towards the end. It's not quite a record... but they are keeping a file on the guy.
"The police questioned them for a couple of hours. The "killer" profile was brought up again. Questions were raised about S.'s psychological state, whether he had made threats before, and whether the family had guns in the house. His father repeated to me twice, as if he couldn't quite believe the whole thing had actually happened, that the police gave him a case number and are keeping the report on file." ---
I repeat MS doesn't offer a service like that... they've said they will be, but how can you compete with something that doesn't exist yet. (OK, so IANAL, but it seems pretty dumb)> ---
>Crossgain is a startup that aims to "create a service that runs a company's big software programs over the Web" (in competition with "we know who").
Competition? with what? MS doesn't offer a service like that... IMO it's a pretty weak charge.
>Micro$oft sued the guy ( and the other Micro$ofties ) and they had to fire themselfs from Crossgain.
No, MS threatened to sue and offered them a deal requiring them to use MS software instead of Sun and Oracle stuff. They decided the legal battle wasn't worth the time and money, but they didn't want to be forced to use MS software, so they fired themselves instead. Thus, giving them the freedom to choose their own software... pretty evil shenanigans from MS IMO.
---
At many universities, you will find that comp.sci majors learn languages because they use them on assignments for a course whereas comp.eng majors take courses whose sole purpose is to teach a language. Also, engineering students (at least at Canadian univs.) tend to have less freedom in choosing electives. They often take more than the usual course load (6-8 vs. the 5 in other faculties - in a 4month semester). This may or may not be to your taste. In general, as a CS student, you'll have more opportunity to direct your education, since you get to choose more of the courses yourself. If you are interested in non-traditional pairings with CS such as History, Fine Art, etc you may prefer the freedom to choose your own electives. Most comp.eng's I know don't get to choose any of their non-major courses until their last couple terms. At the U of Waterloo (where I'm in CS), computer science contains a lot more math courses (it's part of the math faculty) than comp.eng. ---
I also remember driving past one of the campuses the next day, and seeing a huge banner on the front of one of the buildings that read, "APPROVED YOUNG WOMENS HOUSING". I had to ask someone what that meant.
I think one of the major problems is the proposed purpose of the human cloning in this case. If a couple wants a child but they cannot conceive naturally, or with one of the already existing methods like invitro... maybe they should listen to what nature is saying: Don't reproduce!
If they want a child, they should adopt. Yes, it sucks that they can't have their own, but there is likely a reason for it, and if their only option is to copy their current genetic makeup, they aren't really doing their offspring a favour. Much as we hate to think it, we are animals and the same sorts of rules of survival apply. Cloning is just asking for trouble and propogating the problem. It seems like there would be a much higher probability that this cloned child would not be able to have children of their own. And most importantly, as the article pointed out, the success rate is miniscule to the point of futility.
(This is not to mention the ethical considerations which are certainly pretty murky. I think it's pretty dumb to trust that all future scientists would use this ability in a humane/ethical manner.) ---
A lot of the comments around here seem to suggest that change is always a good thing. This is just ridiculous. If you had a useable design that people liked, why change it?!
Suggstion: keep the old design/formatting an option for those who prefer it. ---
I must agree and elaborate. The "adventure" played out by the characters was just far too easy. It had all the ingredients right, but they fell together too easily. (Not to mention that the DM favoured the theif;). I mean, the idea of randomly asking the purple 3-eyed guy about where to find the theives guild, for example. It was clearly constructed by someone who knew the parts of a game, but had never really played. (I mean really... when have you ever played a game where everything you did was the right thing to do next?!)
There was also never any real character development and throughout the movie I found myself wondering how come they all started acting almost as friends and why I was supposed to care about them. ---
No. According to the article:
"Here it gets interesting. Suppose a woman inherits one X chromosome with two slightly different green photopigment genes. And let's say her other X chromosome has the normal complement of red and green photopigment genes. Because of a well-known biological phenomenon called X inactivation -- which causes some cells to rely on one X chromosome and others to rely on the other -- that woman's retinas would have four different types of photopigments: blue, red, green, and the slightly shifted green. (It would also be possible, through a different genetic sequence, to produce blue, green, red, and a shifted red.) X inactivation is only possible in women, so there has never been, and probably never will be, a male tetrachromat."
So you see, it doesn't matter which parent has the tetrachromacy, a "normal XY" male child will not have the opportunity for tetrachromatic vision, because he will only have one X chromosome. ---
For those who are stuck in the romantic vision of hacking, think about it this way:
How would you react to someone picking the lock on your door, then installing a new one and leaving you a note saying your old lock was not very good?
Personally, I wouldn't find that very reassuring. Someone obviously was just wandering around TRYING to break into your house. How...uh...nice and thoughtful?!?! I don't think so.
For those of us who don't have buckets of money, it DOES make a big difference. I already have a computer with a DVD drive. Why would I want to buy a DVD Player too? I don't have a TV, so I'd have to buy that too. I'm a student, I don't have that kinda cash. I do, however, have enough cash to rent and/or buy DVD's. But I use Linux, not Windows. So I'm effectively unable to use DVD's in any manner, without DeCSS. ---
From the review, I got the understanding that the entire TOP of the mouse was a 'button'... how do you avoid accidentally clicking it all the time> ---
Neal Stephenson's A Diamond Age has some of this sort of thing. There are moving displays on EVERYTHING... including milk cartons.:) I think this sounds like very cool tech, but I can see it getting overused and making everything gaudy. I sure hope architects don't do as you suggest. Ignoring the natural play of shadows and shape would really limit the artistic possibilities. I can picture an amazing variety of buildings incorporating traditional techniques as well as LEP displays. My only worry is that these would increase the omnipresence of advertising. ---
That's exactly the point... but you still don't get it. WHY don't women want to go into these fields and why are they generally less interested in math and science at school? I don't think it's because they are "wired differently". I think it's because of unconcious social conditioning. Subtly, our parents and schools have molded our expectations, based on theirs. Most girls, no matter how 'progressive' their parents are, have dolls, and most boys, have action figures. The mode of play encouraged is very different. What does this suggest? Sure, you can brush this off as of no real importance, but these small differences when we are children is what make us into the adults we are and what controls what we want to do. I bet if girls had more of a chance to play with computers when they were young, and if they were not discouraged, there would be more women in technology. Note: when I say 'discouraged', I don't mean directly being told they aren't smart or that computers are for boys. I refer to the subtle pressures of their teachers and classmates. (Don't kid yourself, they are certainly there. Despite being in the same classroom, boys and girls often DON'T receive the "same" education. Reliable studies have shown that boys are more likely to get chosen to answer questions, for instance.) ---
While your observation might be entirely valid, I don't think it has much to do with the capability of a particular gender. Most parents, unintentionally, will treat their children differently based on their preconcieved notions of that gender. It is most likely very unconcious, but it happens. It is this social conditioning that I think really creates the disparity in technology careers. By the time girls (and boys) first reach school, these concepts are already programmed in. It doesn't just affect interest in math/science/comp.sci... but that is one effect. (For example, in the average grade 1 class, most girls are much better with "fine motor skills"... they can use scissors much more effectively than the average boy. This is likely because boys are encouraged to play outside more often when they are young.)
These sort of seemingly trivial differences end up affecting how girls view math and science, and they are less likely to pursue those topics in high school and university. It becomes a vicious circle, because there are few women in these fields, there are fewer role models. ---
Considering the world-wide effort put into this project, if everyone was being extremely secretive about their research, we wouldn't have a complete mapping at this point, we'd have dozens of incomplete mappings. ---
Medical Applications a long way off
on
Frankenstein Time
·
· Score: 2
As cool as mapping the human genome is... it's not going to produce instant cures. There is a lot more involved, not to mention that once you develop something, there's years of testing to boot.
Yes, it will assist in studying disease and it will likely get ethically misused, but this information is not really the instant gold mine that the media makes it out to be... there's a heck of a lot of research to be done to really understand how to use this new information.
My best analogy is that this is like having a road map to a country you know very little about, in a language you only know a few phrases in. There is still a long way to go... ---
While I'm sure there are many good reasons to be against personal information storage, I would really like an explanation as to what's wrong with credit histories and prison records. IMHO, those serve a useful purpose: it means that the company who lets you borrow money knows they aren't going to get ripped off, and it means that prospective employers know they aren't going to be hiring someone who is a risk to their organization. (If you're a bank, would you really want to hire someone convicted of embezzlement?)
Of course these information facilities can be grossly abused, but I don't think it's necessarily that great a solution to simply abolish them. Am I misunderstanding your point of view here? Please explain. ---
Slashdot Mirror
The original edition, and the sequel More Programming Pearls. Also, Introduction to Algorithms by Cormen, Leiserson and Rivest is a good basic algorithm reference.
---
Just because he has an arrow in his back doesn't mean it was a murder. Maybe he was hit accidentally.
---
There's a volunteer project that sends geeks to Ghana to help businesses. You can read about it at geekhalla. I'm pretty sure /. has even had a story about it at some point in the past.
---
As far as for a CS course, it depends on what that course is trying to teach. In my university courses, we are never taught a language, we have to pick that up ourselves, the language is used as a tool to express CS ideas. In this way, a language which has many drawbacks overall may still be a useful tool.
For an introduction to OO ideas, Java may be very useful because students don't have to deal with explicit pointers/references or garbage collection, they can focus more on the ideas of OO.
Something like Pascal is often considered outdated today, but I found that it was a good language to use for learning about procedural programming and CS fundamentals in a 1st year course.
Overall, my point is that every language that could be used has faults, but if it assists students in learning about the ideas of the course, then it is useful. IMO, courses that only teach languages are a waste of time. Languages in use will change, the ideas behind them and that for which we use them is what we need to learn.
---
The more you control your children, the more likely you are to have a mindless robot. Maybe that's exactly what some parents want ... a minion to do their bidding... but it's the last thing society needs more of.
---
Parents have been dumping kids in front of TV sets for ages... this way there's some rating, which is better than none (as far as little kids are concerned). I doubt that parents who have watched tv with their kids are going to be the ones who use this... it will be the parents who ignored what their kids were doing. So at least there'd be some restriction as to what kids get to see.
---
(If you use Netscape, look in the preferences area under language, you probably have French set as 1 in the order.)
---
"The police questioned them for a couple of hours. The "killer" profile was brought up again. Questions were raised about S.'s psychological state, whether he had made threats before, and whether the family had guns in the house. His father repeated to me twice, as if he couldn't quite believe the whole thing had actually happened, that the police gave him a case number and are keeping the report on file."
---
I repeat MS doesn't offer a service like that... they've said they will be, but how can you compete with something that doesn't exist yet. (OK, so IANAL, but it seems pretty dumb)>
---
Competition? with what? MS doesn't offer a service like that... IMO it's a pretty weak charge.
>Micro$oft sued the guy ( and the other Micro$ofties ) and they had to fire themselfs from Crossgain.
No, MS threatened to sue and offered them a deal requiring them to use MS software instead of Sun and Oracle stuff. They decided the legal battle wasn't worth the time and money, but they didn't want to be forced to use MS software, so they fired themselves instead. Thus, giving them the freedom to choose their own software... pretty evil shenanigans from MS IMO.
---
At many universities, you will find that comp.sci majors learn languages because they use them on assignments for a course whereas comp.eng majors take courses whose sole purpose is to teach a language. Also, engineering students (at least at Canadian univs.) tend to have less freedom in choosing electives. They often take more than the usual course load (6-8 vs. the 5 in other faculties - in a 4month semester). This may or may not be to your taste. In general, as a CS student, you'll have more opportunity to direct your education, since you get to choose more of the courses yourself. If you are interested in non-traditional pairings with CS such as History, Fine Art, etc you may prefer the freedom to choose your own electives. Most comp.eng's I know don't get to choose any of their non-major courses until their last couple terms. At the U of Waterloo (where I'm in CS), computer science contains a lot more math courses (it's part of the math faculty) than comp.eng.
---
What does it mean, just out of curiousity?
---
If they want a child, they should adopt. Yes, it sucks that they can't have their own, but there is likely a reason for it, and if their only option is to copy their current genetic makeup, they aren't really doing their offspring a favour. Much as we hate to think it, we are animals and the same sorts of rules of survival apply. Cloning is just asking for trouble and propogating the problem. It seems like there would be a much higher probability that this cloned child would not be able to have children of their own. And most importantly, as the article pointed out, the success rate is miniscule to the point of futility.
(This is not to mention the ethical considerations which are certainly pretty murky. I think it's pretty dumb to trust that all future scientists would use this ability in a humane/ethical manner.)
---
Suggstion: keep the old design/formatting an option for those who prefer it.
---
There was also never any real character development and throughout the movie I found myself wondering how come they all started acting almost as friends and why I was supposed to care about them.
---
"Here it gets interesting. Suppose a woman inherits one X chromosome with two slightly different green photopigment genes. And let's say her other X chromosome has the normal complement of red and green photopigment genes. Because of a well-known biological phenomenon called X inactivation -- which causes some cells to rely on one X chromosome and others to rely on the other -- that woman's retinas would have four different types of photopigments: blue, red, green, and the slightly shifted green. (It would also be possible, through a different genetic sequence, to produce blue, green, red, and a shifted red.) X inactivation is only possible in women, so there has never been, and probably never will be, a male tetrachromat."
So you see, it doesn't matter which parent has the tetrachromacy, a "normal XY" male child will not have the opportunity for tetrachromatic vision, because he will only have one X chromosome.
---
How would you react to someone picking the lock on your door, then installing a new one and leaving you a note saying your old lock was not very good?
Personally, I wouldn't find that very reassuring. Someone obviously was just wandering around TRYING to break into your house. How...uh...nice and thoughtful?!?! I don't think so.
---
For those of us who don't have buckets of money, it DOES make a big difference. I already have a computer with a DVD drive. Why would I want to buy a DVD Player too? I don't have a TV, so I'd have to buy that too. I'm a student, I don't have that kinda cash. I do, however, have enough cash to rent and/or buy DVD's. But I use Linux, not Windows. So I'm effectively unable to use DVD's in any manner, without DeCSS.
---
From the review, I got the understanding that the entire TOP of the mouse was a 'button'... how do you avoid accidentally clicking it all the time>
---
Neal Stephenson's A Diamond Age has some of this sort of thing. There are moving displays on EVERYTHING... including milk cartons. :)
I think this sounds like very cool tech, but I can see it getting overused and making everything gaudy. I sure hope architects don't do as you suggest. Ignoring the natural play of shadows and shape would really limit the artistic possibilities. I can picture an amazing variety of buildings incorporating traditional techniques as well as LEP displays. My only worry is that these would increase the omnipresence of advertising.
---
That's exactly the point... but you still don't get it. WHY don't women want to go into these fields and why are they generally less interested in math and science at school?
I don't think it's because they are "wired differently". I think it's because of unconcious social conditioning. Subtly, our parents and schools have molded our expectations, based on theirs. Most girls, no matter how 'progressive' their parents are, have dolls, and most boys, have action figures. The mode of play encouraged is very different. What does this suggest? Sure, you can brush this off as of no real importance, but these small differences when we are children is what make us into the adults we are and what controls what we want to do. I bet if girls had more of a chance to play with computers when they were young, and if they were not discouraged, there would be more women in technology.
Note: when I say 'discouraged', I don't mean directly being told they aren't smart or that computers are for boys. I refer to the subtle pressures of their teachers and classmates. (Don't kid yourself, they are certainly there. Despite being in the same classroom, boys and girls often DON'T receive the "same" education. Reliable studies have shown that boys are more likely to get chosen to answer questions, for instance.)
---
Most parents, unintentionally, will treat their children differently based on their preconcieved notions of that gender. It is most likely very unconcious, but it happens. It is this social conditioning that I think really creates the disparity in technology careers. By the time girls (and boys) first reach school, these concepts are already programmed in. It doesn't just affect interest in math/science/comp.sci... but that is one effect.
(For example, in the average grade 1 class, most girls are much better with "fine motor skills"... they can use scissors much more effectively than the average boy. This is likely because boys are encouraged to play outside more often when they are young.)
These sort of seemingly trivial differences end up affecting how girls view math and science, and they are less likely to pursue those topics in high school and university. It becomes a vicious circle, because there are few women in these fields, there are fewer role models.
---
Considering the world-wide effort put into this project, if everyone was being extremely secretive about their research, we wouldn't have a complete mapping at this point, we'd have dozens of incomplete mappings.
---
There is a lot more involved, not to mention that once you develop something, there's years of testing to boot.
Yes, it will assist in studying disease and it will likely get ethically misused, but this information is not really the instant gold mine that the media makes it out to be... there's a heck of a lot of research to be done to really understand how to use this new information.
My best analogy is that this is like having a road map to a country you know very little about, in a language you only know a few phrases in.
There is still a long way to go...
---
Of course these information facilities can be grossly abused, but I don't think it's necessarily that great a solution to simply abolish them. Am I misunderstanding your point of view here? Please explain.
---