So what about not getting above a C (grade, not language) in a course. When I took my Operating Systems I course, the professor said that 35% would be considered A material and 40% would be considered Nobel prize material.
Well, the fact that a C- or below wouldn't count toward your major and thus was essentially failing the course is so what. This was the after-the-curve grading. I think it was partly a fault in how the curve was done in addition to the difficulty of the course, since there was a cluster of A's (people with previous exposure and really sharp/hard working students), basically no B's, and then a bunch of C's and D's. When faced with that kind of unusual distribution, I would ideally hope that the professor would push up the second groups' grades.
Yeah, the way I was taught at the beginning, and which I will with full knowledge of my bias say is the best, was the following EECS 100 curriculum at Michigan:
Lesson 1: Basic logic gates/circuits/boolean logic. Transistors are mentioned, but largely ignored. Logic gates explored up to the point of seeing how an ALU -could- be formed, and how basic control logic like a MUX works.
Lesson 2: Computer datapaths. It was a made-up computer, but it had all the important parts. You could see how a value in a register was sent on a bus to memory, and how the data that came back from memory went to the ALU, and how the output of the ALU got stuck back in a register.
Lesson 3: Machine code programming. 1s and 0s, make the computer do something.
Lesson 4: Assembly code programming. Make the computer do something more complicated. Interact with I/O hardware. Understand what a memory-mapped I/O device meant, and how to handle an interrupt.
Lesson 5 (the rest of the course): C programming, in particular emphasizing how the C code got turned into the underlying assembly and thus machine code and thus control logic guiding what the computer actually does. Including the concept of an optimizing compiler which replaces a naive translation with a more sophisticated but (hopefully) logically equivalent one.
The big advantage of this method in my mind is that if you follow it, a memory address actually means something. Understanding the difference between a pointer, the memory the pointer is stored at, and the memory the pointer points at is simple because you've actually twiddled each of those things at a low level. Things like a "compiler" or a "JIT" are not essentially voodoo magic. If you ever need to pull back the layers of abstraction between you and the hardware, you can.
Once you've done that, FINE, teach em C++, Java, C#, Ruby, whatever you want, it's all good. The point is you've built a foundation for understanding what the computer is actually doing. None of these things are mysterious. The problem isn't learning Java, the problem is learning Java when the concepts of how it is working are hidden, mysterious, and thus incomprehensible.
People keep talking about going to college to get a job. Personally, I studied computers in college in order to have a career. Languages come and go, especially ones designed for high-level applications. Binary computers, however, aren't going away for a long, long time, and while the details change the basic operation does not. Understanding that, and the connection between the hardware and [insert FOTM language here] is a way to be a better programmer in any language, even ones that won't be invented for another 20 years.
Oh, BTW, the big disadvantage of EECS 100 at least as it was implemented was that it was grueling, especially for your first semester out of high school. Relatively little of the class got above a C unless they were already computer nerds, just because there was so much content jammed into so little time, and that had to be discouraging for a lot of the students. Eventually they split it up into two courses which I think made it more manageable, while still giving the solid foundation in computer operation that honestly is what the first year of college should be all about.
Why would BioWare want this for themselves? Doesn't anyone inside gaming feel that EA needs less help than anyone? Stay independent! Fight the urge to conglomerate!
Sorry, Bioware can't hear your earnest plea over the clinking noise of the bag full of gold coins the EA rep is shaking in front of them.
Please tell me we aren't going to start using the term "next-next-gen".
Can't we just start calling the current consoles "current gen"?
No! Because then you give up the idea that these devices are The Future(tm), which is much more exciting than admitting that they are nothing more than the boring old Present.
The "next gen" will only become "current gen" when the companies selling these things want us to get excited about their next product that will be out in a year.
But, naturally, they would never follow you into a spray shop, nor would they realize that the same model car coming out, but repainted, is you.
I have always found it pretty funny how the cops are perfectly capable of tracking you when you get out of your current get-away car and steal a new one, but are completely baffled by you driving the exact same car in a different color.
Especially when the car in question is a tank.;)
Okay you can't drive a tank into the pay-and-spray, but you can leave the tank running right outside, drive another car in, and then drive off in the tank without the police minding one bit.
Yeah so what's your point? That Slashdot shouldn't have reported the error? Because Slashdot reported the original inaccurate NYT article, this is essentially a correction of the inaccurate Slashdot article as well.
When you do that, you basically destroy any chance of a tech industry emerging in Africa, because, there's not going to be any indigenous computer manufacturing.
Well there isn't any now, and in the future when a generation of tech-savvy students grow up (or long before), they may want to do things that are beyond what are lets say the modest computational capabilities of the OLPC.
Computers aren't like food crops, which minus flavor preferences are essentially identical everywhere and unchanged for centuries as far as the end-user is concerned. Unless there's a never-ending cycle of upgrades being planned, flooding Africa with low-power laptops is going to do anything but obviate the need for indigenous computer industry. The bigger question is whether the economies of these countries will grow enough to support such a high-cost industry in that time.
Of course there are precious few places on earth where actual computer hardware manufacture (especially the silicon chips) takes place, which hasn't stopped the rest of the developed world from growing local tech industry. So even to the extent that computer manufacture may be stunted by OLPC, tech industry in general is enabled, because a pre-requisite for that industry is having computers around in the first place.
Naw, you can tell because he said you were to be honored, and that you're special. If he worked for Sony, he would have called you an ingrate for complaining in the first place, and lazy for not getting a second job to buy the newest mega-storage format.
I meant "miss the presence of", not "miss with the laser". You can't fail to notice a helicopter hovering 500 feet above you or anywhere in the immediate area. Since the cops had to actually make an effort to find out who was shining the light at them rather than pointing straight down, I'm taking these things to mean the helicopter was a good distance distance away.
Your argument seems to presume they didn't start lying to cover their asses.
Well they may have, but it's a pretty plausible story -- they were jacking around with a laser, and happened to hit a helicopter some distance away. If it was right above them and they shone it through the floor, they'd have to pretty much be complete idiots to think they wouldn't be caught easily. And them being thoughtless and irresponsible just makes more sense than them being malicious and retarded.
They could make it illegal to have any hand-held or non-enclosed laser above some truly pathetic wattage outside of research labs which would have to be enclosed and well-labeled and the laser light would have to be entirely contained within the room, so there would still be lasers in your DVD player, but no green laser pointers on Think Geek. No more carrying around a laser to point at parts of the building your making, or the particular "third star from the big 'V'" you meant.
The fact that it would still be possible to rip the laser out of your dvd player doesn't mean they couldn't pass such a law -- for one, this is the law, so it's perfectly okay as far as lawmakers go for it to be stupid, and two, they could still arrest you if they found you out in the woods pointing at stars with your DVD player laser.
Many helicopters have transparent floors under the pilots so they can better see around the aircraft while flying/hovering. It is entirely possible that the laser shined up into the cockpit from below.
Ah, that's a very good point (and makes a lot of sense for a police helicopter). I'm still thinking they accidentally shined it at a helicopter far away since there's no way you could fail to notice a helicopter 500 feet above you, not to mention it'd be pretty foolish to think you could get away with deliberately shining the laser at the helicopter when they're looking right down at your house, and then claim that you didn't mean to. I think "irresponsible" fits the facts as a better explanation than "malicious/retarded".:)
Oh geeze. They might as well call that thing the "Shark Jumper".
Also, I noticed on that page a schematic. Granted they aren't secret plans stolen by the rebels and thus may be incomplete, but I noticed that there was no exhaust port leading directly to the power core, which is clearly an engineering impossibility.
case in point - if you go scuba diving greater than ~30 ft down, and cut yourself, you bleed green - all the red light from the sun is absorbed by that depth)
That's awesome! Oh man, I want to go take a scuba diving class now. Except I'm not sure the instructor will like it if I tell him why I'm taking it.
Well for the laser to shine into the cockpit and hit the pilot in the eye then it couldn't have been directly above them. The article says the helicopter was at 500 feet -- it would have been impossible to miss if that was anywhere near them. So it was likely quite some distance away, and over a city, so it's not an unreasonable supposition that they could neither hear nor see the helicopter.
However also according to the article, one of the couple said that they had been "taking turns shining the laser around watching the tracers in the sky."
Waving a green laser around at a relatively low angle at the horizon in a populated area just for kicks seems pretty irresponsible. If you want to do that just point it at the ground nearby where you know it's safe (and makes neat patterns on the grass =D). This is a far cry from pointing at the night's sky to point out stellar objects, especially since normally astronomy is done away from a city where the lights of a police helicopter would be obvious, and you aren't waving the laser around so the odds of someone moving -into- the beam are pretty minimal (as opposed to here, where they were sweeping large swaths of sky).
I'm not sure this should be a criminal offense in this instance, but a pilot was injured and could have been blinded, and people do need to learn how to use lasers responsibly before the gov. decides to take them away from us.:(
And humorously, frequently so too are their detractors -- the OP of this thread being a great example. And even more humorous is when the detractor is beaten into a corner and ends up complaining about the scientist's non-diplomatic arrogance "not helping", when what they are really complaining about is that arrogant knowledge beat out arrogant ignorance.
Bah, that's easy when the majority of your system is just running their idle loops! Out of the whole dang system only one core has any active clients, and it's been starting to look a little flakey lately as the client process is gobbling up all the resources.
Yeah, I don't see any reason to get riled up about it. It's just something they did for fun then released for fun. As if DNF's perpetual delays aren't a joke inside 3d realms as much as outside.
I don't get why the Slashdot groupthink is trashing this. It's been vaporware for way too long, I for one look forward to the possibility that it will get taken off the vaporware list in the foreseeable future.
Yeah I gotta advise you not to get your hopes up based on this video. The last video showed a much more complete game, and what did that lead to but another 6 years of vapor?
This isn't a trailer, it's a teaser. That's why it's only like a minute long.
I'll take the implication that they actually have more game worth showing that they're holding back in the name of building suspense as seriously as I take the implication that the existence of a new teaser means the game might actually be released some day.
But anyway, the real reason that it's only a minute long is because it's something some employees threw together on their own for a Christmas party, just for fun. I'm sure they have to have a sense of humor about it inside 3dRealms just like I do on the outside. So to take it seriously -- as in taking it to mean that this is pre-launch press buildup rather than something fun they decided to toss out there to keep the name DNF in our consciousness for another however many years -- seems like a bad idea.
Slashdot Mirror
So what about not getting above a C (grade, not language) in a course. When I took my Operating Systems I course, the professor said that 35% would be considered A material and 40% would be considered Nobel prize material.
Well, the fact that a C- or below wouldn't count toward your major and thus was essentially failing the course is so what. This was the after-the-curve grading. I think it was partly a fault in how the curve was done in addition to the difficulty of the course, since there was a cluster of A's (people with previous exposure and really sharp/hard working students), basically no B's, and then a bunch of C's and D's. When faced with that kind of unusual distribution, I would ideally hope that the professor would push up the second groups' grades.
Yeah, the way I was taught at the beginning, and which I will with full knowledge of my bias say is the best, was the following EECS 100 curriculum at Michigan:
Lesson 1: Basic logic gates/circuits/boolean logic. Transistors are mentioned, but largely ignored. Logic gates explored up to the point of seeing how an ALU -could- be formed, and how basic control logic like a MUX works.
Lesson 2: Computer datapaths. It was a made-up computer, but it had all the important parts. You could see how a value in a register was sent on a bus to memory, and how the data that came back from memory went to the ALU, and how the output of the ALU got stuck back in a register.
Lesson 3: Machine code programming. 1s and 0s, make the computer do something.
Lesson 4: Assembly code programming. Make the computer do something more complicated. Interact with I/O hardware. Understand what a memory-mapped I/O device meant, and how to handle an interrupt.
Lesson 5 (the rest of the course): C programming, in particular emphasizing how the C code got turned into the underlying assembly and thus machine code and thus control logic guiding what the computer actually does. Including the concept of an optimizing compiler which replaces a naive translation with a more sophisticated but (hopefully) logically equivalent one.
The big advantage of this method in my mind is that if you follow it, a memory address actually means something. Understanding the difference between a pointer, the memory the pointer is stored at, and the memory the pointer points at is simple because you've actually twiddled each of those things at a low level. Things like a "compiler" or a "JIT" are not essentially voodoo magic. If you ever need to pull back the layers of abstraction between you and the hardware, you can.
Once you've done that, FINE, teach em C++, Java, C#, Ruby, whatever you want, it's all good. The point is you've built a foundation for understanding what the computer is actually doing. None of these things are mysterious. The problem isn't learning Java, the problem is learning Java when the concepts of how it is working are hidden, mysterious, and thus incomprehensible.
People keep talking about going to college to get a job. Personally, I studied computers in college in order to have a career. Languages come and go, especially ones designed for high-level applications. Binary computers, however, aren't going away for a long, long time, and while the details change the basic operation does not. Understanding that, and the connection between the hardware and [insert FOTM language here] is a way to be a better programmer in any language, even ones that won't be invented for another 20 years.
Oh, BTW, the big disadvantage of EECS 100 at least as it was implemented was that it was grueling, especially for your first semester out of high school. Relatively little of the class got above a C unless they were already computer nerds, just because there was so much content jammed into so little time, and that had to be discouraging for a lot of the students. Eventually they split it up into two courses which I think made it more manageable, while still giving the solid foundation in computer operation that honestly is what the first year of college should be all about.
1. English is not my first language.
;)
3. I read only books full of pictures!
Just some advice for a non-native speaker... In English, Penthouse is referred to as a "magazine" not a "book".
Why would BioWare want this for themselves? Doesn't anyone inside gaming feel that EA needs less help than anyone? Stay independent! Fight the urge to conglomerate!
Sorry, Bioware can't hear your earnest plea over the clinking noise of the bag full of gold coins the EA rep is shaking in front of them.
Please tell me we aren't going to start using the term "next-next-gen".
Can't we just start calling the current consoles "current gen"?
No! Because then you give up the idea that these devices are The Future(tm), which is much more exciting than admitting that they are nothing more than the boring old Present.
The "next gen" will only become "current gen" when the companies selling these things want us to get excited about their next product that will be out in a year.
The first one, of course. He was making fun of the "magical" ley-line people.
But, naturally, they would never follow you into a spray shop, nor would they realize that the same model car coming out, but repainted, is you.
;)
I have always found it pretty funny how the cops are perfectly capable of tracking you when you get out of your current get-away car and steal a new one, but are completely baffled by you driving the exact same car in a different color.
Especially when the car in question is a tank.
Okay you can't drive a tank into the pay-and-spray, but you can leave the tank running right outside, drive another car in, and then drive off in the tank without the police minding one bit.
The game is only as fun as the people you play with.
Ah, well that makes sense of why I always have so much fun with my games, while everyone else I'm playing with hates them.
Yeah so what's your point? That Slashdot shouldn't have reported the error? Because Slashdot reported the original inaccurate NYT article, this is essentially a correction of the inaccurate Slashdot article as well.
When you do that, you basically destroy any chance of a tech industry emerging in Africa, because, there's not going to be any indigenous computer manufacturing.
Well there isn't any now, and in the future when a generation of tech-savvy students grow up (or long before), they may want to do things that are beyond what are lets say the modest computational capabilities of the OLPC.
Computers aren't like food crops, which minus flavor preferences are essentially identical everywhere and unchanged for centuries as far as the end-user is concerned. Unless there's a never-ending cycle of upgrades being planned, flooding Africa with low-power laptops is going to do anything but obviate the need for indigenous computer industry. The bigger question is whether the economies of these countries will grow enough to support such a high-cost industry in that time.
Of course there are precious few places on earth where actual computer hardware manufacture (especially the silicon chips) takes place, which hasn't stopped the rest of the developed world from growing local tech industry. So even to the extent that computer manufacture may be stunted by OLPC, tech industry in general is enabled, because a pre-requisite for that industry is having computers around in the first place.
Say, you don't happen to work for Sony, do you?
Naw, you can tell because he said you were to be honored, and that you're special. If he worked for Sony, he would have called you an ingrate for complaining in the first place, and lazy for not getting a second job to buy the newest mega-storage format.
Spoiler warning next time, please?
Wow an expensive sports car. What will they think of next.
They didn't miss.
I meant "miss the presence of", not "miss with the laser". You can't fail to notice a helicopter hovering 500 feet above you or anywhere in the immediate area. Since the cops had to actually make an effort to find out who was shining the light at them rather than pointing straight down, I'm taking these things to mean the helicopter was a good distance distance away.
Your argument seems to presume they didn't start lying to cover their asses.
Well they may have, but it's a pretty plausible story -- they were jacking around with a laser, and happened to hit a helicopter some distance away. If it was right above them and they shone it through the floor, they'd have to pretty much be complete idiots to think they wouldn't be caught easily. And them being thoughtless and irresponsible just makes more sense than them being malicious and retarded.
They could make it illegal to have any hand-held or non-enclosed laser above some truly pathetic wattage outside of research labs which would have to be enclosed and well-labeled and the laser light would have to be entirely contained within the room, so there would still be lasers in your DVD player, but no green laser pointers on Think Geek. No more carrying around a laser to point at parts of the building your making, or the particular "third star from the big 'V'" you meant.
The fact that it would still be possible to rip the laser out of your dvd player doesn't mean they couldn't pass such a law -- for one, this is the law, so it's perfectly okay as far as lawmakers go for it to be stupid, and two, they could still arrest you if they found you out in the woods pointing at stars with your DVD player laser.
Many helicopters have transparent floors under the pilots so they can better see around the aircraft while flying/hovering. It is entirely possible that the laser shined up into the cockpit from below.
:)
Ah, that's a very good point (and makes a lot of sense for a police helicopter). I'm still thinking they accidentally shined it at a helicopter far away since there's no way you could fail to notice a helicopter 500 feet above you, not to mention it'd be pretty foolish to think you could get away with deliberately shining the laser at the helicopter when they're looking right down at your house, and then claim that you didn't mean to. I think "irresponsible" fits the facts as a better explanation than "malicious/retarded".
:checks the sky for supernovas before walking outside:
Bah, just walk outside as if nothing is wrong! If you live in fear, then the supernovas win!
Oh geeze. They might as well call that thing the "Shark Jumper".
Also, I noticed on that page a schematic. Granted they aren't secret plans stolen by the rebels and thus may be incomplete, but I noticed that there was no exhaust port leading directly to the power core, which is clearly an engineering impossibility.
case in point - if you go scuba diving greater than ~30 ft down, and cut yourself, you bleed green - all the red light from the sun is absorbed by that depth)
That's awesome! Oh man, I want to go take a scuba diving class now. Except I'm not sure the instructor will like it if I tell him why I'm taking it.
Well for the laser to shine into the cockpit and hit the pilot in the eye then it couldn't have been directly above them. The article says the helicopter was at 500 feet -- it would have been impossible to miss if that was anywhere near them. So it was likely quite some distance away, and over a city, so it's not an unreasonable supposition that they could neither hear nor see the helicopter.
:(
However also according to the article, one of the couple said that they had been "taking turns shining the laser around watching the tracers in the sky."
Waving a green laser around at a relatively low angle at the horizon in a populated area just for kicks seems pretty irresponsible. If you want to do that just point it at the ground nearby where you know it's safe (and makes neat patterns on the grass =D). This is a far cry from pointing at the night's sky to point out stellar objects, especially since normally astronomy is done away from a city where the lights of a police helicopter would be obvious, and you aren't waving the laser around so the odds of someone moving -into- the beam are pretty minimal (as opposed to here, where they were sweeping large swaths of sky).
I'm not sure this should be a criminal offense in this instance, but a pilot was injured and could have been blinded, and people do need to learn how to use lasers responsibly before the gov. decides to take them away from us.
Scientists are frequently arrogant
And humorously, frequently so too are their detractors -- the OP of this thread being a great example. And even more humorous is when the detractor is beaten into a corner and ends up complaining about the scientist's non-diplomatic arrogance "not helping", when what they are really complaining about is that arrogant knowledge beat out arrogant ignorance.
Do you suppose this will cause contention between Google and Mozilla?
Mozilla's still open source, right?
Then I don't really care.
It has had a pretty good uptime since then.
Bah, that's easy when the majority of your system is just running their idle loops! Out of the whole dang system only one core has any active clients, and it's been starting to look a little flakey lately as the client process is gobbling up all the resources.
Yeah, I don't see any reason to get riled up about it. It's just something they did for fun then released for fun. As if DNF's perpetual delays aren't a joke inside 3d realms as much as outside.
I don't get why the Slashdot groupthink is trashing this. It's been vaporware for way too long, I for one look forward to the possibility that it will get taken off the vaporware list in the foreseeable future.
Yeah I gotta advise you not to get your hopes up based on this video. The last video showed a much more complete game, and what did that lead to but another 6 years of vapor?
This isn't a trailer, it's a teaser. That's why it's only like a minute long.
I'll take the implication that they actually have more game worth showing that they're holding back in the name of building suspense as seriously as I take the implication that the existence of a new teaser means the game might actually be released some day.
But anyway, the real reason that it's only a minute long is because it's something some employees threw together on their own for a Christmas party, just for fun. I'm sure they have to have a sense of humor about it inside 3dRealms just like I do on the outside. So to take it seriously -- as in taking it to mean that this is pre-launch press buildup rather than something fun they decided to toss out there to keep the name DNF in our consciousness for another however many years -- seems like a bad idea.