It's not Java, but if you're looking for something to read, and you want to learn something in Java, then read this: http://designpatternsinruby.com/
Then, go back and figure out how to do the same things in Java.
You get the bang of learning Ruby, which is kinda fun, you get to learn OO design patterns which are very valuable, and you get the critical thinking of going from one language to another, and figuring out why they're different(or the same).
Actually, rather like so many "relativistic" types of things, we're all in space. We just happen to have this cool atmosphere thingy, and a really grabby big mass of dirt to fall down on.
Now, maybe what he's really broken is the amount of time spent at least x-many miles away from a planet of y mass or something. So, really, until he's the oldest man alive(space radiation extreme!), he's got nothing(beyond bone loss, and possibly being truly out of reach of a Jehosephat's Witness).
Am I the only one that misread this on the first go around? I read it as Japan to DESTROY satellite the first time. Maybe I've been watching too much Godzilla or something, but on first reading, it was much more interesting that way:)
Original Missile Command Cabaret-style standup. Original glowing buttons and giant ball. Replaced the display and power supply. Thing weighs a ton, but looks really cool in my living room. The girlfriend hates it and wants to relegate it to my project room. *shrug*
I agree. I'm at a 30 person startup( a dozen devvies), and we agreed to use Together. It isn't the answer to everything(nothing ever is), and the editor it comes with is no better than Kawa(my previous favorite), but it really does aid in communication between developers, and spoils you with features like snippets(write your own code block with parameters once, write the keyword you spec'd, hit ctl-j, and it fills in the block with tabbing between the fields you spec'd out. Repeat ad-nauseum). If you're doing EJB's, it makes your life completely easier. It does a great job of point-and-click EB's, SB's and MB's, with the right formatting, and then deploying them is easy as well. I personally don't use the cvs hookup(I like the command line), but others in my company do.
It is expensive, but for development of an EJB environment, and the "self-documentation" that it provides, I think it's worth it for your company to invest the money. One other noteworthy feature is the default and per-project options, that you can specify to your heart's desire. And the one lovely feature for you people that are touchy about formatting/spacing of your code: you can make it format to your liking, and then you can change it before check in to whatever your company standard is(if they have one of course). Takes an entire key-click, less if you set the option to actively perform it.
Have one of their guys(maybe two) come to your work and show you what it does. They're a very good company, with a very good product, and they have approachable and moderately knowledgeable tech support.
And no, I don't work for them, I just really like their product.
Another something to keep in mind is that expensive things tend to come in larger boxes than necessary so that they aren't so easy to pocket and walk out the door with. Many CD stores still have the plastic holders on their cds that get removed at the counter, as well as the tiny magnetic bits.
Personally, I think it would be much better if all software just came in little racks like cd's in a cd store(you just reduced compuseless' floor requirements from 4 rows of software to one). If it comes on a single floppy, then you should just package it in a modified jewel case. If it's a special box set with more than one cd, or has a large manual, the manual should be behind the counter, and given to the customer at check out time(this also is a boost for being able to read a manual before you buy the software.) Multi-cd sets are pretty easy to cope with, just look at the packaging on playstation games(FF7 comes to mind as having a lot of cd's, and Gran Turismo 2 is a dual slot case with only 2 cd's in it, and the other space taken up by manuals). Up to 4 cd's can be dropped into a standard "dual slot" jewel case, and I imagine you could fit more if you do stuff like the two cd's in a single slot jewel case.
Of course, all of this is out the window if you go with the future and just get rid of buying media from stores anyhow. Get a decent connection to the rest of the world, and download the software in a format that you can burn onto your own cd. You buy the rights to it online, and you have your own key/whatever to keep it from getting copied(yah right, anybody that believes you can copy-protect stuff is a bleeding heart that needs to make that popping sound) easily, and then if it has a substantial manual, it should have a copy online(micro$loth is actually pretty good at this for visual studio, I'm shocked every time I use it), or you can order the full treebased version delivered to your door. Bonus: you never have to see the light of day, and you never have to leave the house.
As for marketing and advertising people that are worried about shelf presence and impulse appeal, these are the people that are worried about what color my pc is, and whether I think it needs a cupholder. These people should be shot in the leg and left for dead in the middle of the desert. The ones that find enlightenment will be the ones that survive, and will be the first ones to say that they wished they'd spent less time worrying about what color their cel-phone was, and more about whether it would save them from impending doom in the middle of an arid wasteland.
My opinions are your opinions. I just fixed them for you.
No matter what you do, there are still "switches" in the mouse of some sort or another. It's still a digital device. If I stretch a couple of layers of saran wrap around my mouse, spray it a crystal purple, and then cut holes for the sensors and sliders, I suddenly have a mouse w/o obvious buttons. Big freakin' deal.
Not having gone to CMU, I can't speak on the competitiveness of entry into it, but I can speak on my own experiences with Texas A&M, and the Computer Engineering program(a degree which is often overlooked in almost every discussion of "techie" degrees.) Also, I would like to say something on what I think is the biggest reason that girls/women/non-males(^_^) don't go into CS/CE programs.
A&M has a two stage program for Computer E., EE, and I believe for CS, where you take your first 60 hours of courses during the first stage. During that time, you take all of your basics(R^3) and hopefully you've been taking the lower numbered courses for your major cs120, cs210, math up through Cal [2,3](I forget the designators), histories, etc. When you hit 60 hours(or thereabout), you have to have proven(via gpa) to the university that you can hack it, so to speak. It's at this point where the business school picks up an awful lot of new students who never crack another book again because of not being able to make it into the upper level classes. It was at this point that the very few girls who were in my lower level cs courses tended to bail and go for something more "feminine" and acceptable than a real CS or CE degree, like MIS, business admin, what-have-you(my personal opinion of the business school at A&M is pretty low, it's really, in my experience, for dweebies that couldn't make it in any other degree plan, and not just CS/EE/CE).
I have no personal theories about the inability of women to handle the tough majors(I have two female friends who both double-majored in Math and Bio-chem, one of whom was also taking Russian at the same time). They go against what is "normal" and "accepted" for women in American society. They're out-spoken among males and females alike, and will call you on any bullshit you try and put over on them(I know guys that fit the female stereotype of quiet and non-confrontational as well). One of my room-mates is an art-student(I know, how cliche can I get), but she's nearly the same way. Both of her parents are programmers(just as an interesting reference for the fact she _definitely_ had exposure), and she's been brought up, much like the first two, to really believe that she can be as good at anything as she wants to be. This brings me back to the previous paragraph.
The girls that I've talked with who are "techie" majors are usually of the same type as the girls in the second paragraph. They had the personal drive to enter the society of engineers and techies and learn. The ones who moved to the business school or something else, I always knew would never make it as engineers(I use the term _very_ generically here, a CS degree is _not_ the same as working your ass off to become a professionally recognized Engineer, and no, I'm not bitter about it:)
So, what's my point to saying that I knew they'd never cut it? I know a lot of guys that I knew would never make it, and most of them didn't either. My room-mate, despite being capable of dealing with a computer as an appliance/tool, and having no fear of the computer, the software, or the people that know what to do with it, has no desire to learn how to do anything with a command-line, or anything else. I know guys that are that way too. She knows she could learn it if she was interested in it though. The ones(guys and girls) that I knew would never make it(and not just by reason of being complete feebs, which many were), were the ones who couldn't be bothered to really learn how to do something new. You know the type. The people that don't want to learn how to do anything so they can claim ignorance and not have to think(ow ow, I just had a thought!).
The thing I see as the biggest problem is that girls especially, from birth, seem to be told that thinking is bad for them(just spend 3 hours watching daytime television, if that's not a big sign that says: "you're all morons, so we'll lie to you and tell you what is good", I just don't know what is; and yes, a certain demographic of mostly women are a target audience for that time slot). This is _slowly_, _painfully_ going away, but I am STILL amazed how stupid(not dumb, which I equate with inability) people can be. I see this with guys too, but it's less accepted for guys to be stupid than for girls it seems(anyone remember a time when it was just expected that guys would know how to change a tire, and girls wouldn't? Remember a time when guys would stop their car to get out and help?)
So, how to fix it? Don't tolerate it. Pretty simple eh? Parents make all the difference in a society. I'm in Germany right now(ex-eastern at that), and the number of women engineers that I work with(all of them extremely sharp and capable) is much higher than I work with in the US. The most important thing, I think, is to realize that they are still feminine, and they are still sharp as a razor. They weren't told that being a girl was bad, or that being a smart girl was bad, or any of this other kind of insinuated bullshit. They were supported in what they wanted to do BY THEIR PARENTS.
Engineering fields have a character to them, just like kinesiology, art, music(just TRY talking to a die-hard music-major sometime to get a cool perspective on how little you know about anything musical), poultry science(*gack* I shit you not), forestry, political science, etc. Engineers have been _engineers_ a VERY long time let's not forget. Not as long as artists have been flaky, or politicians have been weasly, but a very long time(DaVinci is an argued origin of the discipline, but I think it goes back further). Yes, these disciplines were born under a time where women couldn't vote, couldn't own land, etc. and that's important to remember, but let's not get too gung-ho about making equalities out of differences at the expense of destroying all tradition. Women and men are different, duh. These(CS/CE/EE) are "masculine" fields, *shrug*, if you say so. I say they're aggressive fields, which happen to suit males, on average, very well. Women can be aggressive/confident too, so if they have what it takes to make it across the bar, they need to be encouraged to do what the guys had to do to get there as well. I sure as hell know that it wasn't easy to get my degree. But if I had, goddess(sic) forbid, wanted to be like the fruity interior decorator guy on tv telling me how cute the curtains are with the little bows, I'm pretty damn sure I could do it at least as well as he does. That's the attitude it takes to succeed in anything. If you treat someone like they can't do anything long enough, they'll believe it. Most engineers are the kind of person that hates being told they can't do something. If that's not in the heart of someone, then they shouldn't be an engineer. Maybe Zoology(how many o's do ya put in that?) is for you, or Forestry, or architecture(not an easy discipline either).
As a pseudo-related side rant: Denying femininity to be accepted as an engineer is just stupid. I don't know about everyone else, but I'm tired of the bull-dike, gotta be better than everyone else, female engineer syndrome. Even other girls don't like them. Being confident, being right, and being able to argue your case is one thing(and yes, this is an important part of being in the industry. Suck it up. Technology is not for the weak of mind, nor of heart. I'm not about to go work in the hair-stylist(blatant stereotype) industry and insist that it change to fit me.), being as bullheaded and blind as the most pigheaded football coach is entirely different.
As an absolutely maniacal user of my hp48g(I wish I'd had the cash for the gx and the pspice card) in college, I certainly understand the incredible potential of just a calculator. If you put all of the hp48g functionality as a module into a palm-pilot, and then added in specific scientific instruments(software, and some manner of hardware link) then you've got one hell of a scientific tool.
However, that's in college(and I did play/write my fair share of games for the hp). In High School, I had a TI-81 and TI-85(the 81 died a horrible death). I didn't use it for jack except to cheat on tests and to play games in class.
If you look at the kinds of things professionals have done with hp48gx's(one of my all-time favorites is the survey crew kit that hooks the thing up to one of those sighting tools and takes measurements), imagine what you could do with more ram, and a standard hardware interface a la Visor.
As such, I think that computers have their place in classrooms: for labs and special projects inside of other courses. Computers are an incredible tool for that. There is jack added to a class by using a [lap,palm]top in a history class(outside of class for papers and research, it's a great tool, and should be available in a maintained and watched lab), and with the exception of really high-level math classes(dif-eq comes to mind as being one that gains a lot from computers) and advanced science courses(electromagnetics, chemistry theory), no reason to have them on a daily basis.
So, I can see a school buying a bunch of palms/visors/laptops for a lab, and then using them much like you would use a microscope: occasionally, and for very specific functionality. The exception to this might be AP courses. If you are in an AP course, then you're probably not one of the millions of future employees destined to have a name-patch on their shirt, and you're probably responsible enough to take care of and make use of a school-sponsored palm or laptop. That means a couple of things: the best students get rewarded for being the best, and the students who are the most likely not to abuse them are the ones who get them. Inside of a lab setting, then a palm should be dealt with just like you deal with an expensive electronic scale or microscope.
Basically, the issue of locking them out for a class should never come up. If you're in a high school math class, then you don't need anything beyond an abacus. I was personally taught how to effectively use an abacus, and I think that it's a crime that they aren't used in schools anymore except as a toy in 3rd grade classes.
I saw that a school in Austin, TX was giving freshman laptops, and I thought that was a horrible idea(the school had been given a huge endowment), and while it would be wonderful if they got some serious use out of them at school, I think that they'll be abused, destroyed, and used to surf net-porn long before they'll be used for schoolwork. The idea of palms in public schools is almost as silly as far as the students really using them for schoolwork. At least with palms it's a little more inconvenient to use to surf porn, and the obvious "just getting organized" factor is there.
*blink blink* Failure? What kinda crack are you on? The reason our stock hasn't done anything yet is that the serious investors live and die by earnings reports, and are long-term buyers. In the past, we've had manufacturing problems, which is all people seem to remember about us. The yield ratios on Athlon's are downright awesome. Production problems, in my view, are a thing of the past(as Jerry has mentioned before). I'm not allowed to tell you how good the yields are, but it's easier to produce the FASTER versions of this chip design than it is to produce the slower versions. Athlon-copper(and yes, we've seen them) is just too cool for school. Gigahertz Athlon? Been there, done that, it's easy. Business calls for us to hold back on release of the faster products, just like Intel used to do. Notice how quick Intel announced the future release of a faster-than-athlon chip? Notice how quick AMD released an announcement of the 800? It's now a matter of does Intel still have anything? I personally don't think they do. I think we tapped them hard, because the semiconductor rumors I've been hearing at Semicon point towards Intel having some production issues because they've maxed out the performance curve on their current chip design. AMD did that last year, when the K6's were so hard to come by(our well known manufacturing problems, that we solved), but copper K6's are some scary little chips. For under $500, you can have an Athlon 500 and a FIC motherboard. Is that anything like a $60 K6 and a $90 momma-plank? No, but it's a lot cheaper than you can get from Intel, and its faster.
Yes, the movie has some serious time-line issues, but I really didn't have a problem with them fluffing up the Jobs/Lisa issues. The movie wasn't intended to be an anthology on the great technical(or, in MS' case, not so great) advances made during the time period, but was meant to try and capture some of the emotions and desire that started what we think of as computer culture. The whole idea that Jobs wanted absolute genius and creativity is very art-house inspired(before the laid-back computer geek atmosphere of many technical companies today, almost no workplace would have allowed t-shirts for employees, much less sandals, shorts, and long hair.) I think the LSD scene will be taken way out of proportion by a huge chunk of the viewing audience, but it was a way of showing that Jobs was a little further out there than Woz and the others. I think they used it as a cumbersome way to show how much Jobs wanted the world to move to his 'divine vision' as well. I haven't read much on Jobs' issues with his baby, so I can't argue much for or against the way they dealt with it. Given the other 'Jobs' attributes, it seems plausible.
But most of all, I appreciated the fact that they captured a lot of the spirit that was the personality of both Microsoft and Apple, and became the spirit that continued on into the popularization of the web, which I think caused some serious changes in the way computer companies worked. I had no issues with them dropping the distance between the birthday party and Jobs' return to Apple, nor did I have issues with downplaying Woz's quitting. They could quite easily have a separate story about Woz, but this was not Woz's movie. They made it obvious that Woz quitting was a punch in the gut for Jobs, but he continued on.
Overall, I liked the movie, despite a few inconsistencies with RL. It was a good presentation of the excitement, devotion, and range of emotions that computers caused among a (then) new sector of American society. I made my non-techie roomie sit down and watch one of the repeats, and he started asking me all sorts of questions about whether it was really like that and was that really how it happened. I think it did more good for the image of the origins of "Computer Cowboys" than it did harm. Especially in the light of such awful made for theater horrors as _Hackers_.
Slashdot Mirror
It's not Java, but if you're looking for something to read, and you want to learn something in Java, then read this: http://designpatternsinruby.com/
Then, go back and figure out how to do the same things in Java.
You get the bang of learning Ruby, which is kinda fun, you get to learn OO design patterns which are very valuable, and you get the critical thinking of going from one language to another, and figuring out why they're different(or the same).
Actually, rather like so many "relativistic" types of things, we're all in space. We just happen to have this cool atmosphere thingy, and a really grabby big mass of dirt to fall down on.
Now, maybe what he's really broken is the amount of time spent at least x-many miles away from a planet of y mass or something. So, really, until he's the oldest man alive(space radiation extreme!), he's got nothing(beyond bone loss, and possibly being truly out of reach of a Jehosephat's Witness).
Am I the only one that misread this on the first go around? I read it as Japan to DESTROY satellite the first time. Maybe I've been watching too much Godzilla or something, but on first reading, it was much more interesting that way :)
Mad Monk
Original Missile Command Cabaret-style standup. Original glowing buttons and giant ball. Replaced the display and power supply. Thing weighs a ton, but looks really cool in my living room. The girlfriend hates it and wants to relegate it to my project room. *shrug*
I agree. I'm at a 30 person startup( a dozen devvies), and we agreed to use Together. It isn't the answer to everything(nothing ever is), and the editor it comes with is no better than Kawa(my previous favorite), but it really does aid in communication between developers, and spoils you with features like snippets(write your own code block with parameters once, write the keyword you spec'd, hit ctl-j, and it fills in the block with tabbing between the fields you spec'd out. Repeat ad-nauseum). If you're doing EJB's, it makes your life completely easier. It does a great job of point-and-click EB's, SB's and MB's, with the right formatting, and then deploying them is easy as well. I personally don't use the cvs hookup(I like the command line), but others in my company do.
It is expensive, but for development of an EJB environment, and the "self-documentation" that it provides, I think it's worth it for your company to invest the money. One other noteworthy feature is the default and per-project options, that you can specify to your heart's desire. And the one lovely feature for you people that are touchy about formatting/spacing of your code: you can make it format to your liking, and then you can change it before check in to whatever your company standard is(if they have one of course). Takes an entire key-click, less if you set the option to actively perform it.
Have one of their guys(maybe two) come to your work and show you what it does. They're a very good company, with a very good product, and they have approachable and moderately knowledgeable tech support.
And no, I don't work for them, I just really like their product.
Mad Monk
Another something to keep in mind is that expensive things tend to come in larger boxes than necessary so that they aren't so easy to pocket and walk out the door with. Many CD stores still have the plastic holders on their cds that get removed at the counter, as well as the tiny magnetic bits.
Personally, I think it would be much better if all software just came in little racks like cd's in a cd store(you just reduced compuseless' floor requirements from 4 rows of software to one). If it comes on a single floppy, then you should just package it in a modified jewel case. If it's a special box set with more than one cd, or has a large manual, the manual should be behind the counter, and given to the customer at check out time(this also is a boost for being able to read a manual before you buy the software.) Multi-cd sets are pretty easy to cope with, just look at the packaging on playstation games(FF7 comes to mind as having a lot of cd's, and Gran Turismo 2 is a dual slot case with only 2 cd's in it, and the other space taken up by manuals). Up to 4 cd's can be dropped into a standard "dual slot" jewel case, and I imagine you could fit more if you do stuff like the two cd's in a single slot jewel case.
Of course, all of this is out the window if you go with the future and just get rid of buying media from stores anyhow. Get a decent connection to the rest of the world, and download the software in a format that you can burn onto your own cd. You buy the rights to it online, and you have your own key/whatever to keep it from getting copied(yah right, anybody that believes you can copy-protect stuff is a bleeding heart that needs to make that popping sound) easily, and then if it has a substantial manual, it should have a copy online(micro$loth is actually pretty good at this for visual studio, I'm shocked every time I use it), or you can order the full treebased version delivered to your door. Bonus: you never have to see the light of day, and you never have to leave the house.
As for marketing and advertising people that are worried about shelf presence and impulse appeal, these are the people that are worried about what color my pc is, and whether I think it needs a cupholder. These people should be shot in the leg and left for dead in the middle of the desert. The ones that find enlightenment will be the ones that survive, and will be the first ones to say that they wished they'd spent less time worrying about what color their cel-phone was, and more about whether it would save them from impending doom in the middle of an arid wasteland.
My opinions are your opinions. I just fixed them for you.
No matter what you do, there are still "switches" in the mouse of some sort or another. It's still a digital device. If I stretch a couple of layers of saran wrap around my mouse, spray it a crystal purple, and then cut holes for the sensors and sliders, I suddenly have a mouse w/o obvious buttons. Big freakin' deal.
Mad Monk!
Not having gone to CMU, I can't speak on the competitiveness of entry into it, but I can speak on my own experiences with Texas A&M, and the Computer Engineering program(a degree which is often overlooked in almost every discussion of "techie" degrees.) Also, I would like to say something on what I think is the biggest reason that girls/women/non-males(^_^) don't go into CS/CE programs.
:)
A&M has a two stage program for Computer E., EE, and I believe for CS, where you take your first 60 hours of courses during the first stage. During that time, you take all of your basics(R^3) and hopefully you've been taking the lower numbered courses for your major cs120, cs210, math up through Cal [2,3](I forget the designators), histories, etc. When you hit 60 hours(or thereabout), you have to have proven(via gpa) to the university that you can hack it, so to speak. It's at this point where the business school picks up an awful lot of new students who never crack another book again because of not being able to make it into the upper level classes. It was at this point that the very few girls who were in my lower level cs courses tended to bail and go for something more "feminine" and acceptable than a real CS or CE degree, like MIS, business admin, what-have-you(my personal opinion of the business school at A&M is pretty low, it's really, in my experience, for dweebies that couldn't make it in any other degree plan, and not just CS/EE/CE).
I have no personal theories about the inability of women to handle the tough majors(I have two female friends who both double-majored in Math and Bio-chem, one of whom was also taking Russian at the same time). They go against what is "normal" and "accepted" for women in American society. They're out-spoken among males and females alike, and will call you on any bullshit you try and put over on them(I know guys that fit the female stereotype of quiet and non-confrontational as well). One of my room-mates is an art-student(I know, how cliche can I get), but she's nearly the same way. Both of her parents are programmers(just as an interesting reference for the fact she _definitely_ had exposure), and she's been brought up, much like the first two, to really believe that she can be as good at anything as she wants to be. This brings me back to the previous paragraph.
The girls that I've talked with who are "techie" majors are usually of the same type as the girls in the second paragraph. They had the personal drive to enter the society of engineers and techies and learn. The ones who moved to the business school or something else, I always knew would never make it as engineers(I use the term _very_ generically here, a CS degree is _not_ the same as working your ass off to become a professionally recognized Engineer, and no, I'm not bitter about it
So, what's my point to saying that I knew they'd never cut it? I know a lot of guys that I knew would never make it, and most of them didn't either. My room-mate, despite being capable of dealing with a computer as an appliance/tool, and having no fear of the computer, the software, or the people that know what to do with it, has no desire to learn how to do anything with a command-line, or anything else. I know guys that are that way too. She knows she could learn it if she was interested in it though. The ones(guys and girls) that I knew would never make it(and not just by reason of being complete feebs, which many were), were the ones who couldn't be bothered to really learn how to do something new. You know the type. The people that don't want to learn how to do anything so they can claim ignorance and not have to think(ow ow, I just had a thought!).
The thing I see as the biggest problem is that girls especially, from birth, seem to be told that thinking is bad for them(just spend 3 hours watching daytime television, if that's not a big sign that says: "you're all morons, so we'll lie to you and tell you what is good", I just don't know what is; and yes, a certain demographic of mostly women are a target audience for that time slot). This is _slowly_, _painfully_ going away, but I am STILL amazed how stupid(not dumb, which I equate with inability) people can be. I see this with guys too, but it's less accepted for guys to be stupid than for girls it seems(anyone remember a time when it was just expected that guys would know how to change a tire, and girls wouldn't? Remember a time when guys would stop their car to get out and help?)
So, how to fix it? Don't tolerate it. Pretty simple eh? Parents make all the difference in a society. I'm in Germany right now(ex-eastern at that), and the number of women engineers that I work with(all of them extremely sharp and capable) is much higher than I work with in the US. The most important thing, I think, is to realize that they are still feminine, and they are still sharp as a razor. They weren't told that being a girl was bad, or that being a smart girl was bad, or any of this other kind of insinuated bullshit. They were supported in what they wanted to do BY THEIR PARENTS.
Engineering fields have a character to them, just like kinesiology, art, music(just TRY talking to a die-hard music-major sometime to get a cool perspective on how little you know about anything musical), poultry science(*gack* I shit you not), forestry, political science, etc. Engineers have been _engineers_ a VERY long time let's not forget. Not as long as artists have been flaky, or politicians have been weasly, but a very long time(DaVinci is an argued origin of the discipline, but I think it goes back further). Yes, these disciplines were born under a time where women couldn't vote, couldn't own land, etc. and that's important to remember, but let's not get too gung-ho about making equalities out of differences at the expense of destroying all tradition. Women and men are different, duh. These(CS/CE/EE) are "masculine" fields, *shrug*, if you say so. I say they're aggressive fields, which happen to suit males, on average, very well. Women can be aggressive/confident too, so if they have what it takes to make it across the bar, they need to be encouraged to do what the guys had to do to get there as well. I sure as hell know that it wasn't easy to get my degree. But if I had, goddess(sic) forbid, wanted to be like the fruity interior decorator guy on tv telling me how cute the curtains are with the little bows, I'm pretty damn sure I could do it at least as well as he does. That's the attitude it takes to succeed in anything. If you treat someone like they can't do anything long enough, they'll believe it. Most engineers are the kind of person that hates being told they can't do something. If that's not in the heart of someone, then they shouldn't be an engineer. Maybe Zoology(how many o's do ya put in that?) is for you, or Forestry, or architecture(not an easy discipline either).
As a pseudo-related side rant: Denying femininity to be accepted as an engineer is just stupid. I don't know about everyone else, but I'm tired of the bull-dike, gotta be better than everyone else, female engineer syndrome. Even other girls don't like them. Being confident, being right, and being able to argue your case is one thing(and yes, this is an important part of being in the industry. Suck it up. Technology is not for the weak of mind, nor of heart. I'm not about to go work in the hair-stylist(blatant stereotype) industry and insist that it change to fit me.), being as bullheaded and blind as the most pigheaded football coach is entirely different.
Mad Monk!
As an absolutely maniacal user of my hp48g(I wish I'd had the cash for the gx and the pspice card) in college, I certainly understand the incredible potential of just a calculator. If you put all of the hp48g functionality as a module into a palm-pilot, and then added in specific scientific instruments(software, and some manner of hardware link) then you've got one hell of a scientific tool.
However, that's in college(and I did play/write my fair share of games for the hp). In High School, I had a TI-81 and TI-85(the 81 died a horrible death). I didn't use it for jack except to cheat on tests and to play games in class.
If you look at the kinds of things professionals have done with hp48gx's(one of my all-time favorites is the survey crew kit that hooks the thing up to one of those sighting tools and takes measurements), imagine what you could do with more ram, and a standard hardware interface a la Visor.
As such, I think that computers have their place in classrooms: for labs and special projects inside of other courses. Computers are an incredible tool for that. There is jack added to a class by using a [lap,palm]top in a history class(outside of class for papers and research, it's a great tool, and should be available in a maintained and watched lab), and with the exception of really high-level math classes(dif-eq comes to mind as being one that gains a lot from computers) and advanced science courses(electromagnetics, chemistry theory), no reason to have them on a daily basis.
So, I can see a school buying a bunch of palms/visors/laptops for a lab, and then using them much like you would use a microscope: occasionally, and for very specific functionality. The exception to this might be AP courses. If you are in an AP course, then you're probably not one of the millions of future employees destined to have a name-patch on their shirt, and you're probably responsible enough to take care of and make use of a school-sponsored palm or laptop. That means a couple of things: the best students get rewarded for being the best, and the students who are the most likely not to abuse them are the ones who get them. Inside of a lab setting, then a palm should be dealt with just like you deal with an expensive electronic scale or microscope.
Basically, the issue of locking them out for a class should never come up. If you're in a high school math class, then you don't need anything beyond an abacus. I was personally taught how to effectively use an abacus, and I think that it's a crime that they aren't used in schools anymore except as a toy in 3rd grade classes.
I saw that a school in Austin, TX was giving freshman laptops, and I thought that was a horrible idea(the school had been given a huge endowment), and while it would be wonderful if they got some serious use out of them at school, I think that they'll be abused, destroyed, and used to surf net-porn long before they'll be used for schoolwork. The idea of palms in public schools is almost as silly as far as the students really using them for schoolwork. At least with palms it's a little more inconvenient to use to surf porn, and the obvious "just getting organized" factor is there.
*blink blink* Failure? What kinda crack are you on? The reason our stock hasn't done anything yet is that the serious investors live and die by earnings reports, and are long-term buyers. In the past, we've had manufacturing problems, which is all people seem to remember about us. The yield ratios on Athlon's are downright awesome. Production problems, in my view, are a thing of the past(as Jerry has mentioned before). I'm not allowed to tell you how good the yields are, but it's easier to produce the FASTER versions of this chip design than it is to produce the slower versions. Athlon-copper(and yes, we've seen them) is just too cool for school. Gigahertz Athlon? Been there, done that, it's easy. Business calls for us to hold back on release of the faster products, just like Intel used to do. Notice how quick Intel announced the future release of a faster-than-athlon chip? Notice how quick AMD released an announcement of the 800? It's now a matter of does Intel still have anything? I personally don't think they do. I think we tapped them hard, because the semiconductor rumors I've been hearing at Semicon point towards Intel having some production issues because they've maxed out the performance curve on their current chip design. AMD did that last year, when the K6's were so hard to come by(our well known manufacturing problems, that we solved), but copper K6's are some scary little chips. For under $500, you can have an Athlon 500 and a FIC motherboard. Is that anything like a $60 K6 and a $90 momma-plank? No, but it's a lot cheaper than you can get from Intel, and its faster.
Yes, the movie has some serious time-line issues, but I really didn't have a problem with them fluffing up the Jobs/Lisa issues. The movie wasn't intended to be an anthology on the great technical(or, in MS' case, not so great) advances made during the time period, but was meant to try and capture some of the emotions and desire that started what we think of as computer culture. The whole idea that Jobs wanted absolute genius and creativity is very art-house inspired(before the laid-back computer geek atmosphere of many technical companies today, almost no workplace would have allowed t-shirts for employees, much less sandals, shorts, and long hair.) I think the LSD scene will be taken way out of proportion by a huge chunk of the viewing audience, but it was a way of showing that Jobs was a little further out there than Woz and the others. I think they used it as a cumbersome way to show how much Jobs wanted the world to move to his 'divine vision' as well. I haven't read much on Jobs' issues with his baby, so I can't argue much for or against the way they dealt with it. Given the other 'Jobs' attributes, it seems plausible.
But most of all, I appreciated the fact that they captured a lot of the spirit that was the personality of both Microsoft and Apple, and became the spirit that continued on into the popularization of the web, which I think caused some serious changes in the way computer companies worked. I had no issues with them dropping the distance between the birthday party and Jobs' return to Apple, nor did I have issues with downplaying Woz's quitting. They could quite easily have a separate story about Woz, but this was not Woz's movie. They made it obvious that Woz quitting was a punch in the gut for Jobs, but he continued on.
Overall, I liked the movie, despite a few inconsistencies with RL. It was a good presentation of the excitement, devotion, and range of emotions that computers caused among a (then) new sector of American society. I made my non-techie roomie sit down and watch one of the repeats, and he started asking me all sorts of questions about whether it was really like that and was that really how it happened. I think it did more good for the image of the origins of "Computer Cowboys" than it did harm. Especially in the light of such awful made for theater horrors as _Hackers_.