1) Computer Literacy: Should be required - everyone in the US needs to know how to basically operate a computer just as they need to know how to read and write English.
2) Computer Science: Should also be at minimum available if not required - this is Logic, Algorithms, Data encapsulation and functions. Actually you already do run into all of this in K-12 but not in a format where you can really explore any of it. I'd put it up on par with the Physical Sciences (Physics, Chemistry, Biology)
3) Software Engineering: This is like Electrical Engineering, Mechanical Engineering etc. This is an Engineering skill and should only be taught in vocational style classes as electives in high school along side car repair etc.
Incorrect. Arithmetic has almost nothing to do with Computer Science. Higher math does, but only tangentially. Arithmetic is rote memorization until you get to college and can actually prove that 1+1 = 1. High school geometry and basic proofs is as close as anything in K-12 gets to Computer Science right now unless you're lucky enough to be in a district that takes it seriously. Logic is what Computer Science is founded on, not Math.
Three year old children learn about Queues. It's called 'waiting in line'. They also lean about Resource Sharing (you did learn to share right?) and Binary Logic (True is not False).
There's no reason that can't be expanded upon to form the concept of Proof (Children finally getting answers to 'why?') and even Algorithms (You get green by mixing blue and yellow).
It's all there already - it just needs to be pointed out and used properly.
Basic Computer Science is far more useful than teaching 'American History from the Revolutionary War to the Civil War' for the fourth year in a row in Elementary School. You can drop one of those years for a course in 'Logic for Children' and get far more out of it.
I mostly agree but I think Algorithms has a place in there too. Data Structures would help as well - teaching children even just the Stack and Queue would be simple enough and would open many children's eyes to logical structures in the world around them. The ability to take a process apart and define it - even in English - is something that any child should be able to do. It's really the reverse of the Word Problem.
Actually it's reversed. Teaching Logic (which really is the core of Computer Science) would aid in the teaching of Mathematics. They really are two separate disciplines and teaching them as such would go a long way towards helping children who have problems in the current system grok both of them.
A year of just logic puzzles would go a long way towards recovering our education system.
It's not talking about teaching programming, or even computer use - but Computer Science.
At the basic level very little has changed in Computer Science since Turing. You can spend an entire year just on designing very basic algorithms for very basic things - and not in any current computer language - and teach far more to children about logic than current mathematics does.
That's why you run a new specialized line from the breaker panel to the garage and have it be 160A (leaving just enough while charging to run the basics of the house on). Most houses have 200A coming in.
That's about a 2.2 hour charge.
The better way to do it is just have another of these at home trickle charging and use a busbar style system to charge the car in minutes.
This isn't about DRM. This is about in-game advertisement as a second (or third in the case of subscription titles) revenue stream.
Piracy hurts primary sales. EA et all are worried about piracy (wrong or right, they're worried). Piracy doesn't hurt in-game ad sale revenue. In fact it can be argued that it helps in game add revenue.
Ergo it can be argued that in-game adds could be the answer to piracy: remove DRM and let people pirate the game (free advertisement) and make money off them anyway since you can claim that every torrent is a user watching those adds. Win for both sides - users get rid of DRM, developers get both the free publicity inherent in piracy as well as the add revenue from the real number of people playing the game - legit or not.
No, I work in the video game industry as a programmer (and no, not for EA either).
As for your thought to compare music to video games - don't. It doesn't cost 5-10 million to make a song to sell. It takes at most a few thousand dollars in studio time and everything else can be done in your garage.
Video games are a hell of a lot closer to movies than music. Try this tactic again when blockbuster level movies are treated that way.
EA is laying people off. Has it occurred to anyone that given the rate of piracy of any decent game that charging for the game itself isn't such a good business model anymore?
If adds can start to support some of the development costs of AAA titles we may start to see more dare taken in their design. As is who's willing to spend millions of dollars to develop these titles when they're not 'sure things'? Video games are falling into the same problem that Movies have.
who was able to control leaks so tightly that no one outside the circle knew who was being talked about for appointments
You haven't been looking hard enough. There was far more control over information when they were a campaign and not a proto-administration.
There hasn't been a single appointment that we haven't known about weeks ahead of time.
Sixteenth Amendment: The Congress shall have power to lay and collect taxes on incomes, from whatever source derived, without apportionment among the several States, and without regard to any census or enumeration.
Artical I Seciton 8:
To lay and collect taxes, duties, imposts and excises, to pay the debts and provide for the common defense and general welfare of the United States; but all duties, imposts and excises shall be uniform throughout the United States;
The disagreement is not 'is the US allowed by the Constitution to do this' but 'is this for the 'general welfare of the United States'. Please frame your arguments appropriately.
... or will he follow sound economic policy. You know, the one that notes that you get deflation in a recession so you need to print more money to combat this?
Should we also mention that Congress, not the President, makes the budget.
Incorrect.
Congress approves the budget. They also make some changes on the way through, but the bulk of the budget is created by the Executive branch. Specifically Office of Management and the Budget. I used to use it as a foot stool while I was working there. The sucker is a foot and a half thick.
Oil is one of the most elastic products in existence. The oil companies can charge almost anything they want for it and only recently (at over $4/gal at the pump) have we seen any real push back over just price. So long as the spice, I mean Oil, kept flowing they could charge most anything.
VP doesn't set policy - they're the left hand of the President. Obama needed a strong 'experience' and 'foreign policy' answer to make it through the campaign, so he picked one.
Slashdot Mirror
Yes! Teach them fundamentals early... like Logic, the core of all Computer Science.
You've broken this up into three pieces.
1) Computer Literacy: Should be required - everyone in the US needs to know how to basically operate a computer just as they need to know how to read and write English.
2) Computer Science: Should also be at minimum available if not required - this is Logic, Algorithms, Data encapsulation and functions. Actually you already do run into all of this in K-12 but not in a format where you can really explore any of it. I'd put it up on par with the Physical Sciences (Physics, Chemistry, Biology)
3) Software Engineering: This is like Electrical Engineering, Mechanical Engineering etc. This is an Engineering skill and should only be taught in vocational style classes as electives in high school along side car repair etc.
sigh Yea... my bad.
Incorrect. Arithmetic has almost nothing to do with Computer Science. Higher math does, but only tangentially. Arithmetic is rote memorization until you get to college and can actually prove that 1+1 = 1. High school geometry and basic proofs is as close as anything in K-12 gets to Computer Science right now unless you're lucky enough to be in a district that takes it seriously. Logic is what Computer Science is founded on, not Math.
No, but we did use his book in college.
Why not send all children to a vocational school?
Three year old children learn about Queues. It's called 'waiting in line'. They also lean about Resource Sharing (you did learn to share right?) and Binary Logic (True is not False).
There's no reason that can't be expanded upon to form the concept of Proof (Children finally getting answers to 'why?') and even Algorithms (You get green by mixing blue and yellow).
It's all there already - it just needs to be pointed out and used properly.
Basic Computer Science is far more useful than teaching 'American History from the Revolutionary War to the Civil War' for the fourth year in a row in Elementary School. You can drop one of those years for a course in 'Logic for Children' and get far more out of it.
I mostly agree but I think Algorithms has a place in there too. Data Structures would help as well - teaching children even just the Stack and Queue would be simple enough and would open many children's eyes to logical structures in the world around them. The ability to take a process apart and define it - even in English - is something that any child should be able to do. It's really the reverse of the Word Problem.
A year of just logic puzzles would go a long way towards recovering our education system.
It's not talking about teaching programming, or even computer use - but Computer Science. At the basic level very little has changed in Computer Science since Turing. You can spend an entire year just on designing very basic algorithms for very basic things - and not in any current computer language - and teach far more to children about logic than current mathematics does.
That's why you run a new specialized line from the breaker panel to the garage and have it be 160A (leaving just enough while charging to run the basics of the house on). Most houses have 200A coming in.
That's about a 2.2 hour charge.
The better way to do it is just have another of these at home trickle charging and use a busbar style system to charge the car in minutes.
Citation Please
This isn't about DRM. This is about in-game advertisement as a second (or third in the case of subscription titles) revenue stream.
Piracy hurts primary sales. EA et all are worried about piracy (wrong or right, they're worried). Piracy doesn't hurt in-game ad sale revenue. In fact it can be argued that it helps in game add revenue.
Ergo it can be argued that in-game adds could be the answer to piracy: remove DRM and let people pirate the game (free advertisement) and make money off them anyway since you can claim that every torrent is a user watching those adds. Win for both sides - users get rid of DRM, developers get both the free publicity inherent in piracy as well as the add revenue from the real number of people playing the game - legit or not.
As for your thought to compare music to video games - don't. It doesn't cost 5-10 million to make a song to sell. It takes at most a few thousand dollars in studio time and everything else can be done in your garage.
Video games are a hell of a lot closer to movies than music. Try this tactic again when blockbuster level movies are treated that way.
EA is laying people off. Has it occurred to anyone that given the rate of piracy of any decent game that charging for the game itself isn't such a good business model anymore?
If adds can start to support some of the development costs of AAA titles we may start to see more dare taken in their design. As is who's willing to spend millions of dollars to develop these titles when they're not 'sure things'? Video games are falling into the same problem that Movies have.
who was able to control leaks so tightly that no one outside the circle knew who was being talked about for appointments You haven't been looking hard enough. There was far more control over information when they were a campaign and not a proto-administration. There hasn't been a single appointment that we haven't known about weeks ahead of time.
Obviously not given MA's Question 2 that passed this last election.
It was.
Sixteenth Amendment: The Congress shall have power to lay and collect taxes on incomes, from whatever source derived, without apportionment among the several States, and without regard to any census or enumeration.
Artical I Seciton 8:
To lay and collect taxes, duties, imposts and excises, to pay the debts and provide for the common defense and general welfare of the United States; but all duties, imposts and excises shall be uniform throughout the United States;
The disagreement is not 'is the US allowed by the Constitution to do this' but 'is this for the 'general welfare of the United States'. Please frame your arguments appropriately.
... or will he follow sound economic policy. You know, the one that notes that you get deflation in a recession so you need to print more money to combat this?
Just as Obama said he'd go through the budget with a scalpel and lower or outright cut anything we can do without.
Also to note reducing spending during a recession is one of the major factors that turns it into a Depression.
Should we also mention that Congress, not the President, makes the budget.
Incorrect.
Congress approves the budget. They also make some changes on the way through, but the bulk of the budget is created by the Executive branch. Specifically Office of Management and the Budget. I used to use it as a foot stool while I was working there. The sucker is a foot and a half thick.
In the case of Obama it's Warren Buffet
Oil is one of the most elastic products in existence. The oil companies can charge almost anything they want for it and only recently (at over $4/gal at the pump) have we seen any real push back over just price. So long as the spice, I mean Oil, kept flowing they could charge most anything.
VP doesn't set policy - they're the left hand of the President. Obama needed a strong 'experience' and 'foreign policy' answer to make it through the campaign, so he picked one.