Why people would even try cheating in a CS class at a decent university is a mystery to me. At my school in Cambridge, Mass. (not MIT, the other one), every line of code turned in for intro CS classes was run through a code analysis and similarity detection system.
I wonder what it was like for the first two or three years using that detection system. It must have been rough, expelling entire Intro to CS classes from the university after their "Hello World" assignment.
Reminds me of some great software from the late 80s/early 90s by the late Dave Ransom. JPLClock made its way around the BBSes pretty rapidly, and was one of my favorite pieces of freeware.
4. How many super duper Level 5 trained people want to move to Cow's Butt, Kansas?
The Manhattan, Topeka, Lawrence, and Kansas City are all reasonably close to each other, and offer fairly decent living accomodations. Lawrence and Manhattan are classic large-university cities, Topeka is the state capital (and a reasonable sized city), and Kansas City is a contiguous metropolitan area of about two million people.
There are plenty of desolate places in Kansas, but the area where this research facility has been proposed is not one of them.
This hardly seems like 'grasping at straws', and the issue is not minor. I think you severely underestimate the number of people who will download and use the XP virtual machine to run software that doesn't run (or run well) under 7.
If Windows 7 is supposed to be the release that gets people with XP to upgrade, then it is going to need to be a worthwhile upgrade. That means it must do one of two things:
1. Be so unbelievably awesome that I don't care that my old programs don't work, or
2. Do its thing well, AND support my old programs.
Since operating systems are reaching 'appliance' stage, it is exceedingly unlikely that (1) is going to be the case. Therefore it must be (2). Looking at the computers I might want to upgrade, I find that the processors do not have the necessary virtualization built in. My newest machine is a Core 2 Duo, T5300.
Some of my daily use software is still with me from Windows 98 (e.g., Matlab 5), and some of the software that I run 'once in a while' extends back another decade or so. I am not inclined to re-purchase software that already does what I need it to do.
If both (1) and (2) are false, then Windows 7 is not a reasonable upgrade path for me.
Please forgive my ignorance, but wouldn't you have 3 months a year to do some other work to make up a chunk of that difference? Or do teachers end up working during summer break?
The break varies, in my district it is 9-10 weeks. Most teachers are required to take continuing education to maintain their licenses, and many of those classes, workshops, and other professional activities are done in the summer to accommodate teacher schedules.
For example, I would love to get a part time job this summer--and I am looking--but I have a week-long workshop in June, and a few other job-related full-day commitments before the end of the summer. Many employers are not interested due to the swiss-cheese scheduling that is required to accommodate my professional obligations.
I pay X amount of dollars to have Y data download rate (and Z data upload rate). My ISP advertised the rate, I bought the rate, that's what I expect them to be able to deliver "most" of the time.
Now, if they want to put a cap on my useage, say C gigabytes per month, then if that limit is less than (2592000 s * X bits/s), I expect my useage fee to decrease proportionately to however much smaller my new download limit becomes.
DECREASE. Not increase. They will be taking away value that I expect based on the advertised service. I expect to pay less for less value.
I know lots of old displays still use DSub VGA but when can I get one with HDMI?
It'd be really cool if I could just hook this up to a digital TV which everyone seems to have these days.
Wow. Full circle...from plugging my TRS-80 MC-10 into the television, through several generations of specialized monitors, to the "wonder" of watching TV/video on the computer screen, and now back to plugging the computer into the TV.
I think that CS topics, especially as part of a curriculum that promotes logical thinking and well-structured design, would have value as a core educational component.
CS integrates well with much of science and math, too. I'm in the beginning stages of including programming in my regular high school physics course, and so far the students think it (through VPython) is at least 'interesting'.
After leading the renaissance of the computer type now known as the "netbook", it is utterly baffling why Asus insists on destroying their own competitiveness in this very class.
MOST people I know who have these have the Linux version, including high school students. MOST people I know who choose one of these over a sub-$500 regular notebook chose it for SMALL SIZE and FUNCTIONALITY, not screen size and Windows.
At least we have other options now--but it seems unexplainable why Asus would, at every turn, choose to abandon the market they almost created and leave it to their competitors.
III. We protect each library user's right to privacy and confidentiality with respect to information sought or received and resources consulted, borrowed, acquired or transmitted.
In practice, this means that patron privacy is protected--period. No search warrant, no information, no cooperation. It is not difficult for an investigator pursuing a valid investigation of a legitimate crime to obtain a warrant. They shouldn't even bother showing up without the paperwork. The ALA statement on confidentiality goes into more detail about this.
Ever think maybe the Government wants to get all of the illicit traffic flowing over the open network?
Assuming that anonymizer services (e.g. Tor) are easier to break than strong encryption, that would certainly help you to set up a contacts web (who knows who), even if you can't decrypt the contents of the messages themselves.
The most alarming aspect of merit-pay systems is the metric. How do we judge the effectiveness of a teacher? Is a teacher who takes a class that knows 70% of the material pre-instruction, and increases their knowledge to 85%, a good teacher? What about someone who takes a class that begins at 15% and ends at 45%? Are they worse than the first teacher, because their class only achieves to the 45% mark, or are they better than the first teacher because their class improved 30% instead of 15%?
For that matter, does standardized testing as it currently exists actually test useful indicators of learning? In science, testing is focused almost exclusively on knowledge of facts, where current science education research reveals that instruction needs to encompass the four strands of scientific proficiency. When testing focuses almost exclusively on the first strand, but research shows that effective science teachers need to address all four strands--how relevant are the tests?
We need to have a better evaluation system before we shift into merit based pay.
Even knowing it was coming, and coming sooner rather than later, it is still a tremendous shock to know that we have lost such an inspirational man.
How lucky we are to have his message.
For his wife Jai and his beautiful children, I hope that it is eventually some comfort to know that humanity recognizes what a unique gift we were privileged to share with you.
One idea might be to run news stories about the problem of informing the future about nuclear waste. Just keep running them every six months to two years, indefinitely.
That way you don't have to worry about translation problems. The news stories will follow any language evolution. So long as we can avoid the "telephone game" problem. Purple monkey dishwasher.
You assume that a "Library" is merely a collection of books.
This overlooks many important functions served by the other major asset in a library--the Librarian. Among them are teaching research methods, assisting with book, journal and online research, guiding students in how to choose appropriate sources of information, and helping students resolve citations.
When I assign my students their first research paper in my class, I co-teach the second and third class periods after the assignment with the school librarian; her expertise is extremely valuable.
I remember reading a truly mind-boggling article about the textbook development and selection process, but I can't find it now. If somebody else knows about this, please post a link.
You are probably referring to Feynman's essay about his experience in participating in a school book review committee.
How I miss the general purpose technics sets. I haven't seen them at a store in years.
I could do more with a bunch of bricks, gears, axles, connectors, pulleys, rubber bands, and a couple of electric motors as a kid than I can even imagine now.
Every archaeological dig I go on at my parent's house I keep an eye out for old Lego component.
Why take a job paying such a pittance when you could take a potential lab or research job that would pay more? I have both bachelor's and master's degrees in physics, and toward the end of my master's degree I decided to go into teaching.
I had other options, and I have since had other offers for higher pay, but there are tangible benefits to teaching for someone who genuinely loves the subject or loves learning.
You continue to study and increase mastery of the fundamental concepts in your discipline.
Developing courses and course materials is a rigorous academic exercise.
You are encouraged to continue to study and take coursework of interest to you.
You have the opportunity to interact with others from your discipline and other disciplines at all academic levels.
Teaching, as a profession, allows for some independent decision-making and self-guidance at a level not usually found in research positions unless you are a principal investigator.
Aside from coursework, you have two to three months during the summer to do research, write, collaborate with others, work, travel, or pursue other intellectual endeavors.
If money is your only concern, then obviously education is not a good career choice. However, teachers are not (as a rule) starving, and the pay is sufficient in most areas to maintain a decent lower middle-class lifestyle.
know I will probably get modded down as a troll for not advocating openoffice and linux, but I am going to say its not fully compatible and writer is nearly useless for my papers in the apa format required for college. How exactly is a word processor useless for a particular paper format?
A colleague of mine wrote his thesis using OO Writer, and I used MS Office (I had a lot of formulae already produced in Office, and didn't want to switch mid-stream). Both worked just fine and produced identically formatted output.
Considering that you can use APA format with a typewriter, I have a hard time believing that OO Writer has any sort of problem with it.
Proliferation is a "...rapid and often excessive spread or increase."
I do not see where posession of nuclear weapons somehow prohibits us from discouraging proliferation of nuclear weapons.
The cold war, largely first world nuclear nations were just barely able to prevent a nuclear war from erupting. I am not confident that second and third tier nations will be able to restrain themselves when they acquire the "ultimate weapon".
This sort of story always reminds me of the book by Arthur Clarke (and another guy...Baxter?) called "The Light of Other Days".
Basically, some invention is created that lets people see what's going on elsewhere, and then it is modified to allow you to see back in time...basically, all privacy is gone.
At first, it is shocking, and embarassing, and then everyone gets used to the idea that nothing is private, and then it's no big deal.
There's a lot more to it (and I haven't read it in, oh, six years) but it always crosses my mind when this employer-overreacts-to-personal-data story meme shows up.
Slashdot Mirror
Why people would even try cheating in a CS class at a decent university is a mystery to me. At my school in Cambridge, Mass. (not MIT, the other one), every line of code turned in for intro CS classes was run through a code analysis and similarity detection system.
I wonder what it was like for the first two or three years using that detection system. It must have been rough, expelling entire Intro to CS classes from the university after their "Hello World" assignment.
Reminds me of some great software from the late 80s/early 90s by the late Dave Ransom. JPLClock made its way around the BBSes pretty rapidly, and was one of my favorite pieces of freeware.
Cyberpunk raid ring a bell?
4. How many super duper Level 5 trained people want to move to Cow's Butt, Kansas?
The Manhattan, Topeka, Lawrence, and Kansas City are all reasonably close to each other, and offer fairly decent living accomodations. Lawrence and Manhattan are classic large-university cities, Topeka is the state capital (and a reasonable sized city), and Kansas City is a contiguous metropolitan area of about two million people.
There are plenty of desolate places in Kansas, but the area where this research facility has been proposed is not one of them.
Planck is famously paraphrased as saying "science advances one funeral at a time."
In many respects, so does society in general.
This hardly seems like 'grasping at straws', and the issue is not minor. I think you severely underestimate the number of people who will download and use the XP virtual machine to run software that doesn't run (or run well) under 7.
If Windows 7 is supposed to be the release that gets people with XP to upgrade, then it is going to need to be a worthwhile upgrade. That means it must do one of two things:
1. Be so unbelievably awesome that I don't care that my old programs don't work, or
2. Do its thing well, AND support my old programs.
Since operating systems are reaching 'appliance' stage, it is exceedingly unlikely that (1) is going to be the case. Therefore it must be (2). Looking at the computers I might want to upgrade, I find that the processors do not have the necessary virtualization built in. My newest machine is a Core 2 Duo, T5300.
Some of my daily use software is still with me from Windows 98 (e.g., Matlab 5), and some of the software that I run 'once in a while' extends back another decade or so. I am not inclined to re-purchase software that already does what I need it to do.
If both (1) and (2) are false, then Windows 7 is not a reasonable upgrade path for me.
Please forgive my ignorance, but wouldn't you have 3 months a year to do some other work to make up a chunk of that difference? Or do teachers end up working during summer break?
The break varies, in my district it is 9-10 weeks. Most teachers are required to take continuing education to maintain their licenses, and many of those classes, workshops, and other professional activities are done in the summer to accommodate teacher schedules.
For example, I would love to get a part time job this summer--and I am looking--but I have a week-long workshop in June, and a few other job-related full-day commitments before the end of the summer. Many employers are not interested due to the swiss-cheese scheduling that is required to accommodate my professional obligations.
I pay X amount of dollars to have Y data download rate (and Z data upload rate). My ISP advertised the rate, I bought the rate, that's what I expect them to be able to deliver "most" of the time.
Now, if they want to put a cap on my useage, say C gigabytes per month, then if that limit is less than (2592000 s * X bits/s), I expect my useage fee to decrease proportionately to however much smaller my new download limit becomes.
DECREASE. Not increase. They will be taking away value that I expect based on the advertised service. I expect to pay less for less value.
I know lots of old displays still use DSub VGA but when can I get one with HDMI?
It'd be really cool if I could just hook this up to a digital TV which everyone seems to have these days.
Wow. Full circle...from plugging my TRS-80 MC-10 into the television, through several generations of specialized monitors, to the "wonder" of watching TV/video on the computer screen, and now back to plugging the computer into the TV.
I think that CS topics, especially as part of a curriculum that promotes logical thinking and well-structured design, would have value as a core educational component.
CS integrates well with much of science and math, too. I'm in the beginning stages of including programming in my regular high school physics course, and so far the students think it (through VPython) is at least 'interesting'.
After leading the renaissance of the computer type now known as the "netbook", it is utterly baffling why Asus insists on destroying their own competitiveness in this very class.
MOST people I know who have these have the Linux version, including high school students. MOST people I know who choose one of these over a sub-$500 regular notebook chose it for SMALL SIZE and FUNCTIONALITY, not screen size and Windows.
At least we have other options now--but it seems unexplainable why Asus would, at every turn, choose to abandon the market they almost created and leave it to their competitors.
The American Library Association, ALA, has a professional code of ethics. It includes the following:
In practice, this means that patron privacy is protected--period. No search warrant, no information, no cooperation. It is not difficult for an investigator pursuing a valid investigation of a legitimate crime to obtain a warrant. They shouldn't even bother showing up without the paperwork. The ALA statement on confidentiality goes into more detail about this.
Ever think maybe the Government wants to get all of the illicit traffic flowing over the open network?
Assuming that anonymizer services (e.g. Tor) are easier to break than strong encryption, that would certainly help you to set up a contacts web (who knows who), even if you can't decrypt the contents of the messages themselves.
The most alarming aspect of merit-pay systems is the metric. How do we judge the effectiveness of a teacher? Is a teacher who takes a class that knows 70% of the material pre-instruction, and increases their knowledge to 85%, a good teacher? What about someone who takes a class that begins at 15% and ends at 45%? Are they worse than the first teacher, because their class only achieves to the 45% mark, or are they better than the first teacher because their class improved 30% instead of 15%?
For that matter, does standardized testing as it currently exists actually test useful indicators of learning? In science, testing is focused almost exclusively on knowledge of facts, where current science education research reveals that instruction needs to encompass the four strands of scientific proficiency. When testing focuses almost exclusively on the first strand, but research shows that effective science teachers need to address all four strands--how relevant are the tests?
We need to have a better evaluation system before we shift into merit based pay.
Even knowing it was coming, and coming sooner rather than later, it is still a tremendous shock to know that we have lost such an inspirational man.
How lucky we are to have his message.
For his wife Jai and his beautiful children, I hope that it is eventually some comfort to know that humanity recognizes what a unique gift we were privileged to share with you.
One idea might be to run news stories about the problem of informing the future about nuclear waste. Just keep running them every six months to two years, indefinitely.
That way you don't have to worry about translation problems. The news stories will follow any language evolution. So long as we can avoid the "telephone game" problem. Purple monkey dishwasher.
I think there's still space for a "Fourthed".
Carrol and Ostlie was a great text in my intro to astrophysics class several years ago, and it remains on my shelf as a great reference.
You assume that a "Library" is merely a collection of books.
This overlooks many important functions served by the other major asset in a library--the Librarian. Among them are teaching research methods, assisting with book, journal and online research, guiding students in how to choose appropriate sources of information, and helping students resolve citations.
When I assign my students their first research paper in my class, I co-teach the second and third class periods after the assignment with the school librarian; her expertise is extremely valuable.
You are probably referring to Feynman's essay about his experience in participating in a school book review committee.
http://www.textbookleague.org/103feyn.htm
How I miss the general purpose technics sets. I haven't seen them at a store in years.
I could do more with a bunch of bricks, gears, axles, connectors, pulleys, rubber bands, and a couple of electric motors as a kid than I can even imagine now.
Every archaeological dig I go on at my parent's house I keep an eye out for old Lego component.
I had other options, and I have since had other offers for higher pay, but there are tangible benefits to teaching for someone who genuinely loves the subject or loves learning.
If money is your only concern, then obviously education is not a good career choice. However, teachers are not (as a rule) starving, and the pay is sufficient in most areas to maintain a decent lower middle-class lifestyle.
A colleague of mine wrote his thesis using OO Writer, and I used MS Office (I had a lot of formulae already produced in Office, and didn't want to switch mid-stream). Both worked just fine and produced identically formatted output.
Considering that you can use APA format with a typewriter, I have a hard time believing that OO Writer has any sort of problem with it.
No problem. I'm laminating a copy of my Robots.txt file as we speak. I will post it at the entrance to my neighborhood.
Problem solved.
Proliferation is a "...rapid and often excessive spread or increase."
I do not see where posession of nuclear weapons somehow prohibits us from discouraging proliferation of nuclear weapons.
The cold war, largely first world nuclear nations were just barely able to prevent a nuclear war from erupting. I am not confident that second and third tier nations will be able to restrain themselves when they acquire the "ultimate weapon".
This sort of story always reminds me of the book by Arthur Clarke (and another guy...Baxter?) called "The Light of Other Days".
Basically, some invention is created that lets people see what's going on elsewhere, and then it is modified to allow you to see back in time...basically, all privacy is gone.
At first, it is shocking, and embarassing, and then everyone gets used to the idea that nothing is private, and then it's no big deal.
There's a lot more to it (and I haven't read it in, oh, six years) but it always crosses my mind when this employer-overreacts-to-personal-data story meme shows up.