It is, however, what AP Computer Science teaches you. Maybe it's massively improved since I took it, but when I took it we spent an inordinate amount of time learning really stupid detailed things about C++, like the idiosyncracies of iostreams.
Statistics is indeed quite important, and whether AP CS or AP Statistics is a more useful use of a high-school student's time is a useful question (assuming they have to choose, which maybe they don't?). But AP Statistics is not teaching computational thinking; it's teaching statistical thinking, which is not the same!
Computational thinking, or to use an older term, procedural literacy, is the idea that people should understand how to think in terms of processes, procedures, etc. Rather than teaching programming, which often (especially at introductory levels) focuses a lot on the mechanics of a programming language's syntax and other idiosyncracies, the idea is to teach people how to even think about the basic idea of a machine that can execute programs. Many people can't do that: even leaving aside that they don't know C or Java or Lisp, they also don't really understand what an algorithm or a computer program is conceptually, and have absolute no idea what kinds of things can be computed and what kinds can't, or which are easy or harder to compute. They lack the ability to interact meaningfully with non-code representations of computation and algorithms as well, like flow charts or (natural-language) instruction sequences.
Statistical thinking is quite a bit different, more about proper use of data, quantification of evidence and uncertainty, etc. It can be complementary to computational thinking, but it isn't the same skill.
I'm young-ish (~30) myself and have also not seen a discernible creativity/novelty advantage among younger people. Among people I've worked with there's no clear trend with people in their 20s being more creative and coming up with more good new ideas than people in their 50s. A lot of great stuff comes from people who have enough background to actually spot an opportunity for innovation.
You can see that even at big tech companies. New ideas coming out of Google largely come from their older staff. There are a ton of 20-somethings at Google, but the major projects tend to come from people like Rob Pike (age 58), Peter Norvig (58), Ken Thompson (age 71), Lars Bak (age 49), etc.
The latter is still really a remote-controlled plane. I think the "maker culture" people have taken to using grandiose names in order to make it look like they have more advanced tech than they do. "I 3d-printed a remote-control plane" doesn't have the same ring to it as "I 3d-printed a drone".
That might not be a bad target. The Russian space program has a history of reliable but fairly conservative designs, e.g. the Soyuz has a solid multi-decade track record. Versus the American space program, which goes for more cutting-edge stuff like the Space Shuttle, but has more reliability problems.
With a few exceptions like stocks (which are sold on the open market, since it's very established and liquid), law enforcement sells things by auction. In some jurisdictions they're required by law to sell things at public auction with a certain notice period, because it's considered more transparent. So if they seized 100 bikes this month, they sell them at the monthly police auction, rather than trying to find a used-bike shop to sell them to.
I believe after a certain point the naming convention wraps around into understatement: the next largest telescope after the Overwhelmingly Large Telescope will be the Pretty Big Telescope.
"Running the government like a business" has been a catchphrase used by both major parties for some years now. Outsourcing in order to save money is standard practice in business. Is it surprising that they did exactly that?
In the defense sector, corporations are more or less proxies of governments. American corporations won't go against U.S. government policy, of course, but other countries' corporations might. American defense corporations don't defy the American government, Russian ones don't defy the Russian government, Swedish ones don't defy the Swedish government, French ones don't defy the French government, etc.
When one is immunized, one can handle the real thing quickly. That means the sickness cannot take hold, or not for long.
Unfortunately that appears to be no longer be as true for whooping cough as it used to be: the currently circulating strains have diverged from the strains that were used to develop the vaccine, so protection is worse than it used to be.
That's true, but they can still collect stats on payment methods, which is pretty routine. What I'm curious about is whether switching to a payment processor that accepts Bitcoin results in anyone actually buying things with Bitcoin. Is it more like adding support for EUR, or more like adding support for the Kazakhstani tenge?
That's my suspicion, yes. The few numbers I've seen reported more or less boil down to "we implemented Bitcoin [purchasing | donations] and got like, $27.95 total from that route over six months". If there are stories of companies implementing a Bitcoin payment route and doing significant volume through it, I haven't been able to find them. Well, at least if you're looking at companies selling legal things.
Re:The new Firaxis title was surprisingly good....
on
OpenXcom 1.0 Released
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· Score: 1
Its different, but it captures the feel very well to me.
That's also the argument of this paper (PDF) comparing them, though it does also concede that the new game somewhat reduces tension and difficulty in order to accommodate a streamlined UX that players expect from modern titles.
The two biggest changes to the feel imo are: 1) scrapping of the whole time-unit system; and 2) much less in the way of ambushes because the line-of-sight visibility mechanic was replaced by a much broader visibility field.
I've seen a reasonable number of announcements regarding accepting Bitcoins, but am still looking for a good case where it accounts for a significant proportion of someone's business. People either seem never to report the numbers, or only those with relatively poor Bitcoin numbers report them.
Threatening someone that if they do X, you won't hire them and will do your best to convince others not to hire them, is perfectly compatible with a free market. In some regulated markets it might not be allowed (e.g. some such tactics might fall afoul of anti-trust or collusion laws), but in a completely free market, such tactics would be allowed.
A decades-long lead time is common in medicine. Research on implantable artificial kidneys has already been going on for about 30 years (the first patents date from around 1981-82), with no actual result yet. Here's a survey article from 20 years ago on biohybrid artificial organs. This kind of stuff takes a long time.
As with many things in the U.S., it boils down to the complex relationship between different levels of government. Telecom is regulated largely at the national level, but in part at the local level. The right to sign monopoly deals with local providers is one right that is delegated to local government, under current law anyway. So if a given local government actually signs such a deal, they're stuck with it.
That's a good point, if this is more like a polished, well-tested kit solution, then it won't be nearly as time-consuming as a one-off DIY system to build and maintain.
Their goal is to launch an open-source hardware movement in neuroscience, so researchers can spend less time worrying about the gear they need and more time doing experiments.
My experiences with lab-built equipment in academia suggest that building your own equipment is not really a good way to "spend less time worrying about the gear". Usually you will spend quite a lot of your time worrying about DIY gear. The advantages are not in time saved, but in two other things: 1) you can build gear that would be prohibitively expensive to purchase; and 2) you can customize it in-house.
Slashdot Mirror
It is, however, what AP Computer Science teaches you. Maybe it's massively improved since I took it, but when I took it we spent an inordinate amount of time learning really stupid detailed things about C++, like the idiosyncracies of iostreams.
Statistics is indeed quite important, and whether AP CS or AP Statistics is a more useful use of a high-school student's time is a useful question (assuming they have to choose, which maybe they don't?). But AP Statistics is not teaching computational thinking; it's teaching statistical thinking, which is not the same!
Computational thinking, or to use an older term, procedural literacy, is the idea that people should understand how to think in terms of processes, procedures, etc. Rather than teaching programming, which often (especially at introductory levels) focuses a lot on the mechanics of a programming language's syntax and other idiosyncracies, the idea is to teach people how to even think about the basic idea of a machine that can execute programs. Many people can't do that: even leaving aside that they don't know C or Java or Lisp, they also don't really understand what an algorithm or a computer program is conceptually, and have absolute no idea what kinds of things can be computed and what kinds can't, or which are easy or harder to compute. They lack the ability to interact meaningfully with non-code representations of computation and algorithms as well, like flow charts or (natural-language) instruction sequences.
Statistical thinking is quite a bit different, more about proper use of data, quantification of evidence and uncertainty, etc. It can be complementary to computational thinking, but it isn't the same skill.
I'm young-ish (~30) myself and have also not seen a discernible creativity/novelty advantage among younger people. Among people I've worked with there's no clear trend with people in their 20s being more creative and coming up with more good new ideas than people in their 50s. A lot of great stuff comes from people who have enough background to actually spot an opportunity for innovation.
You can see that even at big tech companies. New ideas coming out of Google largely come from their older staff. There are a ton of 20-somethings at Google, but the major projects tend to come from people like Rob Pike (age 58), Peter Norvig (58), Ken Thompson (age 71), Lars Bak (age 49), etc.
You don't think that it's been proven that coal power plants emit significant levels of pollution?
that doesn't count though
The latter is still really a remote-controlled plane. I think the "maker culture" people have taken to using grandiose names in order to make it look like they have more advanced tech than they do. "I 3d-printed a remote-control plane" doesn't have the same ring to it as "I 3d-printed a drone".
That might not be a bad target. The Russian space program has a history of reliable but fairly conservative designs, e.g. the Soyuz has a solid multi-decade track record. Versus the American space program, which goes for more cutting-edge stuff like the Space Shuttle, but has more reliability problems.
With a few exceptions like stocks (which are sold on the open market, since it's very established and liquid), law enforcement sells things by auction. In some jurisdictions they're required by law to sell things at public auction with a certain notice period, because it's considered more transparent. So if they seized 100 bikes this month, they sell them at the monthly police auction, rather than trying to find a used-bike shop to sell them to.
I believe after a certain point the naming convention wraps around into understatement: the next largest telescope after the Overwhelmingly Large Telescope will be the Pretty Big Telescope.
By two decades, don't you mean six? It's not like it started recently; what do you think Adenauer was doing?
Quoting a guy named "The Arbitrageur (@FiatMoneyEnd)", complaining about how he had lost his money, was a particularly dry touch.
WTFIWWYM (What The Fuck Is Wrong With You Morons)?
ACAB
How compatible are Clojure and ClojureScript? Can you expect a typical program to run in both?
"Running the government like a business" has been a catchphrase used by both major parties for some years now. Outsourcing in order to save money is standard practice in business. Is it surprising that they did exactly that?
In the defense sector, corporations are more or less proxies of governments. American corporations won't go against U.S. government policy, of course, but other countries' corporations might. American defense corporations don't defy the American government, Russian ones don't defy the Russian government, Swedish ones don't defy the Swedish government, French ones don't defy the French government, etc.
When one is immunized, one can handle the real thing quickly. That means the sickness cannot take hold, or not for long.
Unfortunately that appears to be no longer be as true for whooping cough as it used to be: the currently circulating strains have diverged from the strains that were used to develop the vaccine, so protection is worse than it used to be.
That's true, but they can still collect stats on payment methods, which is pretty routine. What I'm curious about is whether switching to a payment processor that accepts Bitcoin results in anyone actually buying things with Bitcoin. Is it more like adding support for EUR, or more like adding support for the Kazakhstani tenge?
That's my suspicion, yes. The few numbers I've seen reported more or less boil down to "we implemented Bitcoin [purchasing | donations] and got like, $27.95 total from that route over six months". If there are stories of companies implementing a Bitcoin payment route and doing significant volume through it, I haven't been able to find them. Well, at least if you're looking at companies selling legal things.
Its different, but it captures the feel very well to me.
That's also the argument of this paper (PDF) comparing them, though it does also concede that the new game somewhat reduces tension and difficulty in order to accommodate a streamlined UX that players expect from modern titles.
The two biggest changes to the feel imo are: 1) scrapping of the whole time-unit system; and 2) much less in the way of ambushes because the line-of-sight visibility mechanic was replaced by a much broader visibility field.
I've seen a reasonable number of announcements regarding accepting Bitcoins, but am still looking for a good case where it accounts for a significant proportion of someone's business. People either seem never to report the numbers, or only those with relatively poor Bitcoin numbers report them.
Threatening someone that if they do X, you won't hire them and will do your best to convince others not to hire them, is perfectly compatible with a free market. In some regulated markets it might not be allowed (e.g. some such tactics might fall afoul of anti-trust or collusion laws), but in a completely free market, such tactics would be allowed.
A decades-long lead time is common in medicine. Research on implantable artificial kidneys has already been going on for about 30 years (the first patents date from around 1981-82), with no actual result yet. Here's a survey article from 20 years ago on biohybrid artificial organs. This kind of stuff takes a long time.
As with many things in the U.S., it boils down to the complex relationship between different levels of government. Telecom is regulated largely at the national level, but in part at the local level. The right to sign monopoly deals with local providers is one right that is delegated to local government, under current law anyway. So if a given local government actually signs such a deal, they're stuck with it.
That's a good point, if this is more like a polished, well-tested kit solution, then it won't be nearly as time-consuming as a one-off DIY system to build and maintain.
Their goal is to launch an open-source hardware movement in neuroscience, so researchers can spend less time worrying about the gear they need and more time doing experiments.
My experiences with lab-built equipment in academia suggest that building your own equipment is not really a good way to "spend less time worrying about the gear". Usually you will spend quite a lot of your time worrying about DIY gear. The advantages are not in time saved, but in two other things: 1) you can build gear that would be prohibitively expensive to purchase; and 2) you can customize it in-house.