This what these open-source boneheads don't understand, just like they didn't understand how IBM used Linux was used to destroy Sun Microsystems, is that it's not about "open". Android is all about pushing the whatever new Samsung Galaxy OS version is. The shitty little Android phones are just collateral for those manufacturers (many of them in financial trouble), who want to jump on the bandwagon. That's just how the world goes. Fast food sells lots. It'll kill you, but it sells.
Google takes no responsibility for the users who've committed to Android. Pretty soon, they'll realize they can't really do much with their phone anymore, because it's so outdated (because developers can't really cope with the mess).
Makes you wonder how, Google being so big, couldn't handle a cross-compilation strategy, or a build farm - or something - to avoid that situation. But, if you've seen the not so recent slew of Google fails (Docs, Plus, APIs, etc.), then it's not so surprising. They really seem all over the place with everything they do (except the mighty search engine).
You Android fanboys have a general lack of big-picture understanding. Let me explain: places like China and India and Latin-America have shitty broadband connection for phones. And, the low-income middle class doesn't really like to pay (in China, in particular).
So, it seems, the real smart strategy for you guys is: - Write apps in Mandarin - Write apps in Tamil - Write apps in Urdu - Write a new Angry Birds - because that's probably all those customers will be willing to pay.
If you'd only realize the legion of smartphones users who don't even know what "apps" are...
Apple doesn't push. Apple has quality. People will probably want to upgrade their laptops to the new ones with the retina display because it is the best thing out there - don't you just wanna throw up when you see Microsoft's Clear Type technology? I know I do. I've yet to see a decent monitor on a Windows laptop.
When I see clueless journalists on cable saying "why would you buy an iPad, when it so much more expensive?", only to conclude in their next phrase that "people just keep wanting those nifty Apple products", I'm just flabbergasted. Apple products last a looong time. People upgrade because they want to, because it's a pretty sure bet that it's gonna be an awesome product. You can't really say that about the competition. At least, the market in general seems to agree with me.
WTF are you talking about, with this "declining societies"? The "middle-class" of Asia is...pathetic. They have no decent infrastructure. Probably, no decent broadband, cable, etc., except for a tiny percentage of their population (and the internet is censored in Corrupt Communist China, for fsck's sake!).
As you say, "the new kids" might use Android. do a little research, you'll probably find out what they really would like to have is the new iPhone! Besides, when you say "no one cares if Apple has great sales in Europe" you come accross as really stupid and clueless because, in your - I am assuming, from your lack of...worldliness - young mind, you demonstrate you haven't a fucking clue about "markets". Please, go see what the Apple stock is worth. Use Google.
In that context, the Android is nothing but a shiny little toy that the typical middle-class teen displays to say his dad's got more money than you. It's pathetic. You gotta see it up close and personal.
It's nothing but a huge marketing clusterfuck, just like Microsoft Windows is a huge marketing clusterfuck/sham.
Android users will, one day, have a rude awakening, when they finally come to realize what a mess the Android ecosystem is, when they learn that no one will cater to their upgrading needs, as Google aggressively marches on, with goose steps, to push its OS versions to new high-end devices, leaving them behind. Real case scenarios (just visit the forums): erase your google Market (actually, Play) app and you'll find out the gates of hell are open, when users find out their phones are nothing but electronic trash. Already my banking app "doesn't work on your (my) version of Android." Fuck you. My tablet is not old. I can't upgrade the fucking thing without going all Cyanogen-insane. I've got no time for that Linux-on-phones playtime. Neither should you.
Compare this to Apple: they will sell you a high-end device. They will make sure you use it for a long time. Because of this essential focus on *quality*, it has a legion of fans. They have better products. They care for their customers. They're unique in that way and, because of that, paradoxically, they have users who will eagerly upgrade their devices. And you *know* what devices you are programming for. And the Apple public is not a bunch of freeloaders/cheapskates who barely know what a smart phone is for (no, it's not for texting only).
If Android is going to rule the Third-world of smartphones, should *you* care? Most of the places where it's succeeding probably don't have good broadband connection for cell phones, anyways so Android is nothing but a shiny toy for the burgeoning "middle-class" of Asia, Latin-America, etc. Whoopee! Think of the marketing clusterfuck that feeds on Lady Gaga-like phenomenons + globish. You get the picture...
Android is the Microsoft Windows of smartphones: it is on cheap devices - hence, everywhere - and it's ruthlessly (mis)managed by Google, with no regards to customer satisfaction, aggressively breaking stuff up.
It's another Google failure, just like their lame Google Docs (a case in which the tech press cut them soooo much slack - can you really integrate data with that thing? Can you suck the whole internet into a spreadsheet? If not, why not?). The only thing Google does good is search engine. Please let's not claim they have a handle on the smartphone business just because they're selling like hot cakes. Like I said, compare it to Microsoft...Same non-sequitur.
The thing about X11 is that you can take a butt-ugly-looking Xt-based toolkit and sling C code from waaaaay back in the day and there's a good chance that it still runs.
You got any evidence of Linux dominance on embedded devices? You're probably thinking of routers or Android phones, etc. Most instrumentation hardware does not rely on Linux, to my knowledge.
And who are the Linux vendors "who offer great support". Can you name some use cases, in the medical device area? In the engineering lab? As for RTOS, most of them are proprietary. The number of BSD ones is almost the same as the GPL ones (which are probably copy-cats): http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_real-time_operating_systems Of the five major vendor, only one is Linux (and not really - it's a proprietary microkernel that runs Linux). And I'm glad you concede that I'm correct insofar as running stuff on kernel space being a wild ride.
If Linux is so stable and great, then why have vendors recommended that I use their Windows version, instead of Linux (clue: with the next kernel upgrade, who knows if their software is supported). You just might not want to chip in a 4 digit figure for something that will break in the next quarter. You're just one of those guys who thinks the GNU stack is *all* you need. There's a gazillion software out there that does not run on Linux (e.g., software for code verification). You can bet the GPL has a large part to do with it. It really is too bad people talk too much about Linux. But I did have a friend who worked with NetBSD in a provider for a satellite parts manufacturer (exactly doing what, I don't know). There's plenty of marketing behind Linux. You even see posters in airports, that sort of thing...And I find it odd when free software fanatics defend Red Hat and their per-seat licenses. What's the difference from Microsoft licenses, from a practical standpoint?
As I said if you're looking for a software to base. e.g., a CT scan on, you want a vendor that can, at least, take responsibility for their product - legal, that is. None of the Linux vendors can offer you that from a legal standpoint.
Anyways, your points about how Linux is great is moot. Linux has never made inroads in the engineering lab and the medical device industry - as the facts demonstrate (have you read the article?). And furthermore, industries that used to use Unix workstation (e.g., aviation) have long ago moved to Windows. Linux was all about IBM crushing their competitors (commercial Unixen). It has "succeeded". Is the world a safer, better place? Not in my opinion.
The fact that vendors started using Windows NT and others for mission critical stuff isn't really Microsoft's fault. IMHO, a huge part of the problem is that we don't have commercial Unixen anymore - and you can blame that on the fucking IBM-backed GPLed Linux. The naiveté of Free Software Church fanatics - never once did they understand the consequences - I find astounding. In 2012 we have Windows on radar equipment, the radiology department, the cardiology software - you name it. Vendors won't touch Linux because it is too unstable, breaks too much and is unsupported. Linux always took great pride in breaking shit all the time... And there you have it...Instead of Unix we got friggin' Windows *everywhere*. Also, we got medical devices implementing embedded TCP stacks, RFID, wi-fi, medical software on phones, etc..Oh, boy...
This is exactly right. So many people are bitching about Unity and Gnome3, all this would be moot if they'd just dump that crap and make KDE the default desktop
Right on! The sad truth is, many problems in the Linux arena are created by the community itself. One would hope Ubuntu to be the distro that unites the community (Shuttleworth - it must be said - has a vision) but they turned around and made a dumb choice, with a subpar GUI choice that went wrong in two different ways: 1) failed attempt to emulated Humanized's Enso modal interface; 2) failed attempt at "simple is better" with a horrible looking piece-of-shit no modern Windows 7 or Mac user would see the point in even going near the thing (hey, what's up with those horrible OpenOffice icons?). That stupid Unity interface is what you get when you take CSS web developers and let them design a desktop GUI... KDE is competitive. KDE has usability studies. This insistence on Gnome is insane. KDE is written in C++ this is a competitive advantage (compared to Gnome). That Gnome-based stuff is out-of-date is demonstrated by the article. Linux developers: are you gonna loose the C++11 bandwagon, too? If you do, you are dumb beyond belief...
Although you can't replicate facial-expression-based judgement calls, you can absolutely gauge classroom "class material absorbtion rates". Throughout the US there are school districts that incorporate technology and measure student's progress through frequent computer-based comprehension tests. The teacher is able to pinpoint what are the bottlenecks and also pinpoint which areas are the most troublesome to particular students. The teachers save a lot of time, not having to grade a huge test pile....As a consequence, they can allocate more time to work on the areas in which a student is weaker.
College education worldwide, in fact, seems to be behind the curve when compared to the audacity and forward-thinking approach some grade-level schools in the US are willing to take.
Also, as the Udacity founder admitted himself, most college professors are in this game of making student's life harder, not easier. This is the wrong approach to take if the Western economies really want to face the rising Chinese world power. There is a worldwide shortage of engineers, and those idiots at faculty want to play silly games at exams. As most math students know, many "tricky" questions can simply be solved by reading a different chapter, in a different book. Experience is what makes the "genius" students (hence the nerd with no sex life and tons of hours of Math Olympics).
I was a medical student once. Do you think we were allowed to make mistakes when helping out at a surgery? That's why medical students have a high rate of stress. They're not allowed the margin of the error the above student wants for himself.
Civil engineers, mechanical engineers, aviation engineers, etc, are not allowed to make mistakes. Why is there this mentality that we must cut some slack for the software engineer?! What a bum!
Ha ha ha that's like saying a doctor can amputate the wrong arm! "I made a mistake. I forgot that it was the left arm! ONE mistake!"
Stupid little mistakes have caused space probes to do crazy things, X-ray machines to burn patients, planes to crash, and rockets to explode (*)
Of course, the real problem is that you were taught to use a power saw with no safety guards, and then you cut your fingers. If they had taught you about the tools that incorporated the advances of programming language research made during the last 20 years, that would not have happened (SML, OCaml, Haskell, F#, Lisps, etc.)
* Note: all the things I mentioned really happened.
What is exactly the point of going to classes, when you have a book that is well written, well though-out on how to be pedagogical, by someone who is possibly a better expert/professional at teaching the stuff, anyway? Most classes use the same material - worldwide. Books such as Stewart's or Anton's Calculus are adopted by dozens of countries! What can you possibly tell a student that is going to be really new information? Faculty should stop complaining about a high flunking rate and let their students GO HOME! Let them stay home, so they have time to read those thick books and do the gazillion exercises they've prescribed!. Exchange class time for office hours so that faculty can give supervision.
I absolutely hated Calculus and the whole Halliday-based physics college classes, linear algebra, differential equations etc.. In fact, I felt the only thing they were doing for me is making me spend time that would be much better spent if I could just go home and...study! Instead, they would make us waste whole mornings. Most of us were, as you say, just sleepy or zoned out. Taking notes was much more a matter of keeping yourself awake, than anything else.
Classes with presence required are really something from a time students didn't have books, and they would have to go to class to copy the material.
Don't be ridiculous, no it isn't. Lisp reads and writes Lisp, because it's parentheses all the way down. Javascript, OTOH, is a bad design.
Common Lisp is an engineering masterpiece (fact: Lisp is the 2nd oldest language still alive). There's some much thought put into it, it's baffling. Those guys, those engineers that worked on it were *serious* hackers, they were *heavy*. It's like they thought about *everything*. Of course, part of them coming from MIT, Berkeley, Japan, etc., sure helped. Smart stuff.
You can do serious stuff like this behaviour automated analysis of video feeds (heavy machine learning application - see the AIsight video): http://www.brslabs.com/
You can't do anything remotely close to that with Javascript. Common Lisp has great IDEs and fast compilers. That's a fact.
Microsoft is schizophrenic or deeply dysfunctional. They should've taken the Kinect technology and somehow developed it for notebooks and PC - and then develop a vocabulary on hand gestures.
Instead, they work with a the idea that greasy fingers and sticking out your arm 10,000 times per month is going to make you more productive.
Maybe if you're on Ritalin. But for the rest of us, I see a future of visits to the shoulder specialist.
- Who says I want to stick my arm out 300 times a day and put a greasy finger on the screen? I am lazy. At least, DEVELOP KINECT FOR NOTEBOOKS YOU DUMB FUCKS. That would be a smart move (I would sit back and do a hand gesture in the air, while eating my ice scream. Yummy!)
But really, we are lazy. If we wanted to waste a lot of energy moving screens, we would be clamoring for a Wii platform on which we would perform a little tap dance to open a folder. Great cardio! But I just do it in my other room.
- Why did Microsoft ignore *tons* of research on user interfaces? TONS. Hear, hear, a f*ing former Xerox f*ing PARC f*ing expert says it's F*ING DUMB (By the way: Ubuntu - you suck too - big, big time).
- The best interface for Windows was made by an expert: http://humanized.com/enso/ It uses modal touch. What? Yeah. Something to do with airline carriers and pilots not screwing the flight plan. I don't use the Start Menu, I don't go looking for clickitty thingys, I just hold tab and write: "open firefox" and - abracadabra - it opens.
Please, "specialized press", check Enso out (it's free - now - and I am not affiliated with them) this out before coming to stupid conclusions about Windows 8 and its Grease Screen and Big Squares grand ideas for interfaces.
Typing beats the crap out of paper for liberal arts electives where you just have to take a lot of notes.
No it doesn't. Shorthand beats the shit out typing (with the exception of stenography - but stenographic machines might have less precision). Can you type at the same wpm (words per minute) speed than someone speaks? No you can't. Yet people who use shorthand systems can. See my other post on how I use a shorthand system in my medical class (medical class is probably the worst-case scenario - they throw huge words with Greek roots at a very fast rate at you. Just so you know, any medical student has learned around more than 50,000 new words by the end of medical school).
It's too bad people are not interested in shorthand systems. For the English language, the best option would be the Gregg shorthand system, which is simply beautiful, IMHO.
I use Let Me Type (GPL, for Windows) for predictive text on Windows. I use it extensively to transcribe my medical class notes (for which I use a shorthand (tachygraphic) system). I find OpenOffice's predictive text system to be an inferior solution, as it also has a cap of 10,000 words (too small for medical terminology, which is more like 50,000 words).
Let Me Type will paste text in any application you're using on Windows, which is a great feature (it uses the clipboard for that, but you don't need to copy and paste - it does this for you). It has a great associative autocomplete. Say you are working on a hematology text. If you're studying, e.g., hemolytic anemias, then anytime you type "hemolytic", not only will it complete that word, but it will also offer you "anemia" too. You'll end up typing 4 key strokes ("hem" + number option). It also keeps track of date and frequency, so when your class is about macrocytic anemias, it will notice the change in date and frequency and offer you this new association.
I actually think I write faster with my shorthand system than I would with a laptop with a good predictive text system like LetMeType. As for "normal" typing (i.e., non-predictive), yes, I take notes far, far faster than my class mates (anemia = 2 swift pen strokes, hemolytic = 2 strokes, etc). My shorthand system (my own creation) relies heavily on line positioning (like music notation does). This, together with a rich prefixing and termination system (e.g., like for -nation, which is frequent for a lot of words) makes for very fast note taking. Right now, I write so fast my last class topic had 73 written pages. I have professors that speak over 100 wpm for 2 hours non-stop. here is a sample. See if you can find the tachygram for "syndrome" (there's an eponym right next to it). Shorthand let's me draw, something you can't easily do on a laptop. It's important for Surgery topics.
As I said, after class I transcribe my shorthand notes. which is a good method of committing the material to long term memory. Shorthand note-taking is a complex activity that is probably great for the brain because, like music, it involves listening + fast thinking* + fine hand movements. You're also constantly challenged by new vocabulary thrown at you - specially in a medical class (my first shorthand teacher was from the legal profession, and the vocabulary was very repetitive, in contrast).
In the future, I should like to develop some sort of machine learning software (but that will likely take a lot of time) to decode my notes.
* You have to assemble the tachygrams quickly. You know how big and complicated medical terminology is...My recent favorite being: oligoasthenoteratozoospermy, which was like a stress-test for my shorthand system, because you have to keep precision too.
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This what these open-source boneheads don't understand, just like they didn't understand how IBM used Linux was used to destroy Sun Microsystems, is that it's not about "open". Android is all about pushing the whatever new Samsung Galaxy OS version is. The shitty little Android phones are just collateral for those manufacturers (many of them in financial trouble), who want to jump on the bandwagon. That's just how the world goes. Fast food sells lots. It'll kill you, but it sells.
Google takes no responsibility for the users who've committed to Android. Pretty soon, they'll realize they can't really do much with their phone anymore, because it's so outdated (because developers can't really cope with the mess).
Makes you wonder how, Google being so big, couldn't handle a cross-compilation strategy, or a build farm - or something - to avoid that situation. But, if you've seen the not so recent slew of Google fails (Docs, Plus, APIs, etc.), then it's not so surprising. They really seem all over the place with everything they do (except the mighty search engine).
You Android fanboys have a general lack of big-picture understanding. Let me explain: places like China and India and Latin-America have shitty broadband connection for phones. And, the low-income middle class doesn't really like to pay (in China, in particular).
So, it seems, the real smart strategy for you guys is:
- Write apps in Mandarin
- Write apps in Tamil
- Write apps in Urdu
- Write a new Angry Birds - because that's probably all those customers will be willing to pay.
If you'd only realize the legion of smartphones users who don't even know what "apps" are...
Apple doesn't push. Apple has quality. People will probably want to upgrade their laptops to the new ones with the retina display because it is the best thing out there - don't you just wanna throw up when you see Microsoft's Clear Type technology? I know I do. I've yet to see a decent monitor on a Windows laptop.
When I see clueless journalists on cable saying "why would you buy an iPad, when it so much more expensive?", only to conclude in their next phrase that "people just keep wanting those nifty Apple products", I'm just flabbergasted. Apple products last a looong time. People upgrade because they want to, because it's a pretty sure bet that it's gonna be an awesome product. You can't really say that about the competition. At least, the market in general seems to agree with me.
WTF are you talking about, with this "declining societies"? The "middle-class" of Asia is...pathetic. They have no decent infrastructure. Probably, no decent broadband, cable, etc., except for a tiny percentage of their population (and the internet is censored in Corrupt Communist China, for fsck's sake!).
As you say, "the new kids" might use Android. do a little research, you'll probably find out what they really would like to have is the new iPhone! Besides, when you say "no one cares if Apple has great sales in Europe" you come accross as really stupid and clueless because, in your - I am assuming, from your lack of...worldliness - young mind, you demonstrate you haven't a fucking clue about "markets". Please, go see what the Apple stock is worth. Use Google.
In that context, the Android is nothing but a shiny little toy that the typical middle-class teen displays to say his dad's got more money than you. It's pathetic. You gotta see it up close and personal.
It's nothing but a huge marketing clusterfuck, just like Microsoft Windows is a huge marketing clusterfuck/sham.
Android users will, one day, have a rude awakening, when they finally come to realize what a mess the Android ecosystem is, when they learn that no one will cater to their upgrading needs, as Google aggressively marches on, with goose steps, to push its OS versions to new high-end devices, leaving them behind. Real case scenarios (just visit the forums): erase your google Market (actually, Play) app and you'll find out the gates of hell are open, when users find out their phones are nothing but electronic trash. Already my banking app "doesn't work on your (my) version of Android." Fuck you. My tablet is not old. I can't upgrade the fucking thing without going all Cyanogen-insane. I've got no time for that Linux-on-phones playtime. Neither should you.
Compare this to Apple: they will sell you a high-end device. They will make sure you use it for a long time. Because of this essential focus on *quality*, it has a legion of fans. They have better products. They care for their customers. They're unique in that way and, because of that, paradoxically, they have users who will eagerly upgrade their devices. And you *know* what devices you are programming for. And the Apple public is not a bunch of freeloaders/cheapskates who barely know what a smart phone is for (no, it's not for texting only).
If Android is going to rule the Third-world of smartphones, should *you* care? Most of the places where it's succeeding probably don't have good broadband connection for cell phones, anyways so Android is nothing but a shiny toy for the burgeoning "middle-class" of Asia, Latin-America, etc. Whoopee! Think of the marketing clusterfuck that feeds on Lady Gaga-like phenomenons + globish. You get the picture...
Android is the Microsoft Windows of smartphones: it is on cheap devices - hence, everywhere - and it's ruthlessly (mis)managed by Google, with no regards to customer satisfaction, aggressively breaking stuff up.
It's another Google failure, just like their lame Google Docs (a case in which the tech press cut them soooo much slack - can you really integrate data with that thing? Can you suck the whole internet into a spreadsheet? If not, why not?). The only thing Google does good is search engine. Please let's not claim they have a handle on the smartphone business just because they're selling like hot cakes. Like I said, compare it to Microsoft...Same non-sequitur.
The thing about X11 is that you can take a butt-ugly-looking Xt-based toolkit and sling C code from waaaaay back in the day and there's a good chance that it still runs.
You got any evidence of Linux dominance on embedded devices? You're probably thinking of routers or Android phones, etc. Most instrumentation hardware does not rely on Linux, to my knowledge.
And who are the Linux vendors "who offer great support". Can you name some use cases, in the medical device area? In the engineering lab? As for RTOS, most of them are proprietary. The number of BSD ones is almost the same as the GPL ones (which are probably copy-cats): http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_real-time_operating_systems
Of the five major vendor, only one is Linux (and not really - it's a proprietary microkernel that runs Linux).
And I'm glad you concede that I'm correct insofar as running stuff on kernel space being a wild ride.
If Linux is so stable and great, then why have vendors recommended that I use their Windows version, instead of Linux (clue: with the next kernel upgrade, who knows if their software is supported). You just might not want to chip in a 4 digit figure for something that will break in the next quarter. You're just one of those guys who thinks the GNU stack is *all* you need. There's a gazillion software out there that does not run on Linux (e.g., software for code verification). You can bet the GPL has a large part to do with it. It really is too bad people talk too much about Linux. But I did have a friend who worked with NetBSD in a provider for a satellite parts manufacturer (exactly doing what, I don't know). There's plenty of marketing behind Linux. You even see posters in airports, that sort of thing...And I find it odd when free software fanatics defend Red Hat and their per-seat licenses. What's the difference from Microsoft licenses, from a practical standpoint?
As I said if you're looking for a software to base. e.g., a CT scan on, you want a vendor that can, at least, take responsibility for their product - legal, that is. None of the Linux vendors can offer you that from a legal standpoint.
Anyways, your points about how Linux is great is moot. Linux has never made inroads in the engineering lab and the medical device industry - as the facts demonstrate (have you read the article?). And furthermore, industries that used to use Unix workstation (e.g., aviation) have long ago moved to Windows. Linux was all about IBM crushing their competitors (commercial Unixen). It has "succeeded". Is the world a safer, better place? Not in my opinion.
The fact that vendors started using Windows NT and others for mission critical stuff isn't really Microsoft's fault.
IMHO, a huge part of the problem is that we don't have commercial Unixen anymore - and you can blame that on the fucking IBM-backed GPLed Linux. The naiveté of Free Software Church fanatics - never once did they understand the consequences - I find astounding. In 2012 we have Windows on radar equipment, the radiology department, the cardiology software - you name it. Vendors won't touch Linux because it is too unstable, breaks too much and is unsupported. Linux always took great pride in breaking shit all the time... And there you have it...Instead of Unix we got friggin' Windows *everywhere*.
Also, we got medical devices implementing embedded TCP stacks, RFID, wi-fi, medical software on phones, etc..Oh, boy...
Right on! The sad truth is, many problems in the Linux arena are created by the community itself.
One would hope Ubuntu to be the distro that unites the community (Shuttleworth - it must be said - has a vision) but they turned around and made a dumb choice, with a subpar GUI choice that went wrong in two different ways: 1) failed attempt to emulated Humanized's Enso modal interface; 2) failed attempt at "simple is better" with a horrible looking piece-of-shit no modern Windows 7 or Mac user would see the point in even going near the thing (hey, what's up with those horrible OpenOffice icons?). That stupid Unity interface is what you get when you take CSS web developers and let them design a desktop GUI...
KDE is competitive. KDE has usability studies.
This insistence on Gnome is insane.
KDE is written in C++ this is a competitive advantage (compared to Gnome). That Gnome-based stuff is out-of-date is demonstrated by the article.
Linux developers: are you gonna loose the C++11 bandwagon, too? If you do, you are dumb beyond belief...
Although you can't replicate facial-expression-based judgement calls, you can absolutely gauge classroom "class material absorbtion rates". Throughout the US there are school districts that incorporate technology and measure student's progress through frequent computer-based comprehension tests. The teacher is able to pinpoint what are the bottlenecks and also pinpoint which areas are the most troublesome to particular students. The teachers save a lot of time, not having to grade a huge test pile....As a consequence, they can allocate more time to work on the areas in which a student is weaker.
College education worldwide, in fact, seems to be behind the curve when compared to the audacity and forward-thinking approach some grade-level schools in the US are willing to take.
Also, as the Udacity founder admitted himself, most college professors are in this game of making student's life harder, not easier. This is the wrong approach to take if the Western economies really want to face the rising Chinese world power. There is a worldwide shortage of engineers, and those idiots at faculty want to play silly games at exams. As most math students know, many "tricky" questions can simply be solved by reading a different chapter, in a different book. Experience is what makes the "genius" students (hence the nerd with no sex life and tons of hours of Math Olympics).
I agree.
I was a medical student once. Do you think we were allowed to make mistakes when helping out at a surgery? That's why medical students have a high rate of stress. They're not allowed the margin of the error the above student wants for himself.
Civil engineers, mechanical engineers, aviation engineers, etc, are not allowed to make mistakes. Why is there this mentality that we must cut some slack for the software engineer?! What a bum!
Ha ha ha that's like saying a doctor can amputate the wrong arm! "I made a mistake. I forgot that it was the left arm! ONE mistake!"
Stupid little mistakes have caused space probes to do crazy things, X-ray machines to burn patients, planes to crash, and rockets to explode (*)
Of course, the real problem is that you were taught to use a power saw with no safety guards, and then you cut your fingers. If they had taught you about the tools that incorporated the advances of programming language research made during the last 20 years, that would not have happened (SML, OCaml, Haskell, F#, Lisps, etc.)
* Note: all the things I mentioned really happened.
I absolutely agree with you.
What is exactly the point of going to classes, when you have a book that is well written, well though-out on how to be pedagogical, by someone who is possibly a better expert/professional at teaching the stuff, anyway? Most classes use the same material - worldwide. Books such as Stewart's or Anton's Calculus are adopted by dozens of countries! What can you possibly tell a student that is going to be really new information? Faculty should stop complaining about a high flunking rate and let their students GO HOME! Let them stay home, so they have time to read those thick books and do the gazillion exercises they've prescribed!. Exchange class time for office hours so that faculty can give supervision.
I absolutely hated Calculus and the whole Halliday-based physics college classes, linear algebra, differential equations etc.. In fact, I felt the only thing they were doing for me is making me spend time that would be much better spent if I could just go home and...study! Instead, they would make us waste whole mornings. Most of us were, as you say, just sleepy or zoned out. Taking notes was much more a matter of keeping yourself awake, than anything else.
Classes with presence required are really something from a time students didn't have books, and they would have to go to class to copy the material.
s/some/so much
Don't be ridiculous, no it isn't. Lisp reads and writes Lisp, because it's parentheses all the way down. Javascript, OTOH, is a bad design.
Common Lisp is an engineering masterpiece (fact: Lisp is the 2nd oldest language still alive). There's some much thought put into it, it's baffling. Those guys, those engineers that worked on it were *serious* hackers, they were *heavy*. It's like they thought about *everything*. Of course, part of them coming from MIT, Berkeley, Japan, etc., sure helped. Smart stuff.
You can do serious stuff like this behaviour automated analysis of video feeds (heavy machine learning application - see the AIsight video): http://www.brslabs.com/
You can't do anything remotely close to that with Javascript. Common Lisp has great IDEs and fast compilers. That's a fact.
You want to talk about "windows flow"? I know nothing better then Mac OS X Automator.
It's like lego block for tasks. Apple should take it to a higher level.
What are you talking about ??? Metro is all about "manual windows".
Microsoft is schizophrenic or deeply dysfunctional. They should've taken the Kinect technology and somehow developed it for notebooks and PC - and then develop a vocabulary on hand gestures.
Instead, they work with a the idea that greasy fingers and sticking out your arm 10,000 times per month is going to make you more productive.
Maybe if you're on Ritalin. But for the rest of us, I see a future of visits to the shoulder specialist.
- Who says I want to stick my arm out 300 times a day and put a greasy finger on the screen? I am lazy. At least, DEVELOP KINECT FOR NOTEBOOKS YOU DUMB FUCKS. That would be a smart move (I would sit back and do a hand gesture in the air, while eating my ice scream. Yummy!)
But really, we are lazy. If we wanted to waste a lot of energy moving screens, we would be clamoring for a Wii platform on which we would perform a little tap dance to open a folder. Great cardio! But I just do it in my other room.
- Why did Microsoft ignore *tons* of research on user interfaces? TONS. Hear, hear, a f*ing former Xerox f*ing PARC f*ing expert says it's F*ING DUMB (By the way: Ubuntu - you suck too - big, big time).
- The best interface for Windows was made by an expert: http://humanized.com/enso/ It uses modal touch. What? Yeah. Something to do with airline carriers and pilots not screwing the flight plan. I don't use the Start Menu, I don't go looking for clickitty thingys, I just hold tab and write: "open firefox" and - abracadabra - it opens.
Please, "specialized press", check Enso out (it's free - now - and I am not affiliated with them) this out before coming to stupid conclusions about Windows 8 and its Grease Screen and Big Squares grand ideas for interfaces.
...Except that to do a lot "discrete" stuff, you're gonna need your Calculus foundation - that's why it's a foundation course!
Until you seize Ukrainian carbon units of XX genotype, you ARE NOT THERE YET.
No, it's not weed. It's a fucking memory hog, that's why I hate it.
Love it? 'Cause it really sets the standard, right? It just works on every site.
Listening and writing is something that is probably great for the brain, helping to keep focus too. I'm all for it.
Typing beats the crap out of paper for liberal arts electives where you just have to take a lot of notes.
No it doesn't. Shorthand beats the shit out typing (with the exception of stenography - but stenographic machines might have less precision). Can you type at the same wpm (words per minute) speed than someone speaks? No you can't. Yet people who use shorthand systems can. See my other post on how I use a shorthand system in my medical class (medical class is probably the worst-case scenario - they throw huge words with Greek roots at a very fast rate at you. Just so you know, any medical student has learned around more than 50,000 new words by the end of medical school).
It's too bad people are not interested in shorthand systems. For the English language, the best option would be the Gregg shorthand system, which is simply beautiful, IMHO.
I use Let Me Type (GPL, for Windows) for predictive text on Windows. I use it extensively to transcribe my medical class notes (for which I use a shorthand (tachygraphic) system). I find OpenOffice's predictive text system to be an inferior solution, as it also has a cap of 10,000 words (too small for medical terminology, which is more like 50,000 words).
Let Me Type will paste text in any application you're using on Windows, which is a great feature (it uses the clipboard for that, but you don't need to copy and paste - it does this for you). It has a great associative autocomplete. Say you are working on a hematology text. If you're studying, e.g., hemolytic anemias, then anytime you type "hemolytic", not only will it complete that word, but it will also offer you "anemia" too. You'll end up typing 4 key strokes ("hem" + number option). It also keeps track of date and frequency, so when your class is about macrocytic anemias, it will notice the change in date and frequency and offer you this new association.
I actually think I write faster with my shorthand system than I would with a laptop with a good predictive text system like LetMeType. As for "normal" typing (i.e., non-predictive), yes, I take notes far, far faster than my class mates (anemia = 2 swift pen strokes, hemolytic = 2 strokes, etc). My shorthand system (my own creation) relies heavily on line positioning (like music notation does). This, together with a rich prefixing and termination system (e.g., like for -nation, which is frequent for a lot of words) makes for very fast note taking. Right now, I write so fast my last class topic had 73 written pages. I have professors that speak over 100 wpm for 2 hours non-stop. here is a sample. See if you can find the tachygram for "syndrome" (there's an eponym right next to it). Shorthand let's me draw, something you can't easily do on a laptop. It's important for Surgery topics.
As I said, after class I transcribe my shorthand notes. which is a good method of committing the material to long term memory. Shorthand note-taking is a complex activity that is probably great for the brain because, like music, it involves listening + fast thinking* + fine hand movements. You're also constantly challenged by new vocabulary thrown at you - specially in a medical class (my first shorthand teacher was from the legal profession, and the vocabulary was very repetitive, in contrast).
In the future, I should like to develop some sort of machine learning software (but that will likely take a lot of time) to decode my notes.
* You have to assemble the tachygrams quickly. You know how big and complicated medical terminology is...My recent favorite being: oligoasthenoteratozoospermy, which was like a stress-test for my shorthand system, because you have to keep precision too.