The question is, whether schools should teach solely theory, solely practice, or a mix.
I think that it's the job of a (K-12) school to teach students the basic cognitive (not really the word I'm looking for, but "the three R's" isn't inclusive enough) skills of living in society. There's some theory, there, but there's also practice. Someone who's computer illiterate in 2010 would be like someone who was telephone illiterate in 1960.
Also, English is a changing language. I don't think anyone would argue that US (or UK, which the article is about) schools shouldn't teach the English language.
The problem is, because of the way the Federal Reserve system is set up, debt IS money, and therefore the system gets consumed by interest if it doesn't keep going along an accelerating, unsustainable path of more and more loans.
That's purely because of the monopoly that TI holds, though. Without the monopoly, you can run razor-thin profit margins and make a high quality device with a 70 MHz ARM9, higher resolution than the TI-81/82/83/84 line (that's not saying much,) and more storage, and sell it for $40 - HP does.
Also, there actually are a few advancements that can be made - faster CPUs (the Nspire has a 90 MHz ARM9, I believe,) smaller process sizes (for cheaper production costs and lower power consumption,) better screens (the Nspire is 320x240, which is a LOT on a calculator,) and more storage (allows for more bloated, cheap to develop code, as well as actually storing more user data.)
First off, on a TI-83+ or TI-84+, you don't need to hack the OS to do it - there's quite a few apps that look like the OS's menus, but are really just a fake shell that needs a certain key combo to drop out of.
Second, TI already has the educational market all locked up... but they prefer it the way it is. See, if they go after the schools, they'll have to bid against Casio and possibly HP. Now, they're as entrenched as Microsoft, so they'll probably win anyway, but schools will threaten to go Casio to get a better price.
Keep in mind that HP can profitably sell very, very nicely built calculators (the HP 39gs) built on the same hardware (except for the LCD and I believe the SD slot) as their top of the line calculator, for under $40, and that's with an ARM9.
So, TI could probably make a profit off of a $20 TI-84+. But, they make a hell of a lot more profit selling them for $120 or so. The way things are now, their customer and their purchasers are two different people. Their customers are the schools, textbook makers, and the standardized testing organizations that they optimize their calculators for. Their purchasers are the families that buy a TI-84+ for their kid, because their school requires it, and 4 or 5 years later, they stick it in a shoebox or something, and ditch it for a TI-89Ti that their college requires.
If the schools provide the calculators, though, TI only makes enough sales for enough to loan out and replace failed ones, and at a much, much lower price per unit.
See HP's calculator sales, where HP was making tools for engineers, TI was making calculators designed to fit exactly into standardized tests.
HP's calculator division almost completely died because many engineers switched to more powerful math applications that ran on a PC, whereas TI's calculator division makes ridiculous profits off of selling 15 MHz Z80 boxes with a pitiful amount of flash and RAM, and intentionally crippled functionality, for $130. (HP sells something with a 75 MHz ARM9, a far nicer screen, EXCELLENT key feel, MUCH nicer build quality, and much more I/O for $115. Actually, the same basic hardware platform, a lower-res (not as tall) screen, and an algebraic-only ROM goes for under $40 at Wal-Mart as the HP 39gs, and that thing competes against most of the TI range quite nicely - the main weakness, IIRC, is no CAS. Then again, that's not a weakness on standardized tests...)
TI behaves this way because, in the US, when you get into high school, teachers start requiring that you buy a TI calculator.
Not a graphing calculator with certain functions, but a TI calculator.
Standardized tests recommend TI calculators.
Textbooks say which buttons to push on TI calculators.
If TI calculators are considered hackable, though, TI might lose that preference... and the only thing that TI has over Casio, really, is their market position. (HP could even come back into contention, they've got a few quite strong calculators, although the problem HP has is that they tend to design their calculators to have a bunch of useful functions for the real world, TI calculators have exactly the right subsets of functions to be legal on standardized tests, and the HPs tend to have something that makes them illegal (although there are some things that prefer or even require HPs - accounting and civil engineering, IIRC, prefer HP RPN financial and scientific (not graphing) calcs.))
I wonder if it would be possible to set precedent, and completely wreck the entire economic system of the US, by having someone create enough to fill a large hard drive, and then having someone "pirate it," get sued, and intentionally lose and get the maximum judgement against them.
The contrast isn't terrible, although it's not great.
Colors, IMO, are fine on my T221, although admittedly mine is a DGM (variant of the DG5, the last version.)
I have one set of cables, and run mine at 33 Hz when I use it, off of a FireGL V3400. The low framerate doesn't matter because the card can't get data quick enough to even update that way, it's strapped to a PCIe x1 bus (that's all that's on my ThinkPad's docking station, and I don't have a desktop with PCIe.)
Given the viewing distances necessary, we already do - the IBM T221. 3840x2400, at 22.2". Straight from 2001. (And discontinued in 2005 or 2006, depending on market.)
204 PPI, but again, the viewing distances make it such that the T221 would have similar effective density to the iPhone 4.
My main machine is a ThinkPad T60p with a 2048x1536 display retrofitted, that's "only" 171 PPI, but it gets the job done, and it's more flexible than a desktop.
I believe the Tegra2's ARM7 is dedicated to power management. So, unless you did away with the power management, for maximum compatibility, you'd need two ARM7s in a customized Tegra.
It can run ARM9 code, yes. (However, there are differences in unaligned load/store behavior that can break some ARM9 code.)
But, can it run it in a timing exact manner? Because the DS requires that it be timing exact - note that the DSi underclocks the entire system to run DS games.
As for my estimates, armchair technologist. $600 might be high, but look at the stuff available with a 1 GHz Snapdragon - and that's a single stretched-pipeline Cortex-A8, not two Cortex-A9s, and a much more primitive GPU. 4 hours battery life when you're slamming it hard isn't that far off, and those devices push $600. (And I'm not talking standby battery life, I'm talking gameplay over wifi.)
Right, I'm aware. I'm saying that an RJ-45 is something that laptop manufacturers are more willing to use than a DE-9.
And, just use the Cisco standard, and as for crossover vs. straight-through, use the same rules as RS-232, or even have a smarter UART that supports detecting?
Tegra2 would also need significant modifications (including two additional CPUs, an ARM7 and an ARM9) for backwards compatibility with the older systems, and would be significantly more expensive (as in, SIGNIFICANTLY below cost would have to be required,) and use significantly more power. So, if you want a 3DS that has 3 hours of battery life and costs $600, yes, Tegra2 would be great.
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The question is, whether schools should teach solely theory, solely practice, or a mix.
I think that it's the job of a (K-12) school to teach students the basic cognitive (not really the word I'm looking for, but "the three R's" isn't inclusive enough) skills of living in society. There's some theory, there, but there's also practice. Someone who's computer illiterate in 2010 would be like someone who was telephone illiterate in 1960.
Also, English is a changing language. I don't think anyone would argue that US (or UK, which the article is about) schools shouldn't teach the English language.
But you can still buy a Windows Mobile device today, and you can't buy a WP7 device today.
(Actually, I was wrong, some of the newer HTC devices don't have a directional pad. But, still, most do.)
It's called, oh, almost every Windows Mobile device.
The problem is, because of the way the Federal Reserve system is set up, debt IS money, and therefore the system gets consumed by interest if it doesn't keep going along an accelerating, unsustainable path of more and more loans.
That's purely because of the monopoly that TI holds, though. Without the monopoly, you can run razor-thin profit margins and make a high quality device with a 70 MHz ARM9, higher resolution than the TI-81/82/83/84 line (that's not saying much,) and more storage, and sell it for $40 - HP does.
Also, there actually are a few advancements that can be made - faster CPUs (the Nspire has a 90 MHz ARM9, I believe,) smaller process sizes (for cheaper production costs and lower power consumption,) better screens (the Nspire is 320x240, which is a LOT on a calculator,) and more storage (allows for more bloated, cheap to develop code, as well as actually storing more user data.)
First off, on a TI-83+ or TI-84+, you don't need to hack the OS to do it - there's quite a few apps that look like the OS's menus, but are really just a fake shell that needs a certain key combo to drop out of.
Second, TI already has the educational market all locked up... but they prefer it the way it is. See, if they go after the schools, they'll have to bid against Casio and possibly HP. Now, they're as entrenched as Microsoft, so they'll probably win anyway, but schools will threaten to go Casio to get a better price.
Keep in mind that HP can profitably sell very, very nicely built calculators (the HP 39gs) built on the same hardware (except for the LCD and I believe the SD slot) as their top of the line calculator, for under $40, and that's with an ARM9.
So, TI could probably make a profit off of a $20 TI-84+. But, they make a hell of a lot more profit selling them for $120 or so. The way things are now, their customer and their purchasers are two different people. Their customers are the schools, textbook makers, and the standardized testing organizations that they optimize their calculators for. Their purchasers are the families that buy a TI-84+ for their kid, because their school requires it, and 4 or 5 years later, they stick it in a shoebox or something, and ditch it for a TI-89Ti that their college requires.
If the schools provide the calculators, though, TI only makes enough sales for enough to loan out and replace failed ones, and at a much, much lower price per unit.
See HP's calculator sales, where HP was making tools for engineers, TI was making calculators designed to fit exactly into standardized tests.
HP's calculator division almost completely died because many engineers switched to more powerful math applications that ran on a PC, whereas TI's calculator division makes ridiculous profits off of selling 15 MHz Z80 boxes with a pitiful amount of flash and RAM, and intentionally crippled functionality, for $130. (HP sells something with a 75 MHz ARM9, a far nicer screen, EXCELLENT key feel, MUCH nicer build quality, and much more I/O for $115. Actually, the same basic hardware platform, a lower-res (not as tall) screen, and an algebraic-only ROM goes for under $40 at Wal-Mart as the HP 39gs, and that thing competes against most of the TI range quite nicely - the main weakness, IIRC, is no CAS. Then again, that's not a weakness on standardized tests...)
TI behaves this way because, in the US, when you get into high school, teachers start requiring that you buy a TI calculator.
Not a graphing calculator with certain functions, but a TI calculator.
Standardized tests recommend TI calculators.
Textbooks say which buttons to push on TI calculators.
If TI calculators are considered hackable, though, TI might lose that preference... and the only thing that TI has over Casio, really, is their market position. (HP could even come back into contention, they've got a few quite strong calculators, although the problem HP has is that they tend to design their calculators to have a bunch of useful functions for the real world, TI calculators have exactly the right subsets of functions to be legal on standardized tests, and the HPs tend to have something that makes them illegal (although there are some things that prefer or even require HPs - accounting and civil engineering, IIRC, prefer HP RPN financial and scientific (not graphing) calcs.))
Nvidia GPU, Flash 10.1. That's why it didn't suck.
ATI GPUs are unsupported right now, Intel GPUs never will be, for Flash 10.1 acceleration.
The screen.
(Not quite 4096x2304 (the actual resolution), but it gets close.)
I'll just note that the US isn't a democracy, it's a republic.
And you can game any system that uses democratic elements by making all of the choices bad ones, and/or making it impractical for good choices to win.
IIRC, the LX is just a warmed over GX with faster clock speeds - it's a descendant of the original Cyrix MediaGX family.
As for the efficiency of the Geode NX... nope. It's on decade-old process technology, too. Looks to be in the same ballpark as a 1.6 GHz Atom on raw speed: http://www.cpubenchmark.net/cpu_lookup.php?cpu=AMD+Geode+NX+1750
But, TDP on the Geode NX 1750 is 25 watts - TEN TIMES the TDP of an Atom N270.
In the US, it's the other way around.
Companies swallowing up the government.
My rule with voting is, I will only vote for a candidate that I approve of.
If I don't approve of any candidates, I don't vote for anyone.
I wonder if it would be possible to set precedent, and completely wreck the entire economic system of the US, by having someone create enough to fill a large hard drive, and then having someone "pirate it," get sued, and intentionally lose and get the maximum judgement against them.
The contrast isn't terrible, although it's not great.
Colors, IMO, are fine on my T221, although admittedly mine is a DGM (variant of the DG5, the last version.)
I have one set of cables, and run mine at 33 Hz when I use it, off of a FireGL V3400. The low framerate doesn't matter because the card can't get data quick enough to even update that way, it's strapped to a PCIe x1 bus (that's all that's on my ThinkPad's docking station, and I don't have a desktop with PCIe.)
The LG CYON LU1400 is where it's at.
A dumbphone (granted, with a TV tuner) with 3 PPI more than the iPhone 4, in 2008. (800x480, 2.8")
http://www.displayblog.com/2008/12/25/lg-cyon-lu1400-28-dmb-tv-phone/
Given the viewing distances necessary, we already do - the IBM T221. 3840x2400, at 22.2". Straight from 2001. (And discontinued in 2005 or 2006, depending on market.)
204 PPI, but again, the viewing distances make it such that the T221 would have similar effective density to the iPhone 4.
My main machine is a ThinkPad T60p with a 2048x1536 display retrofitted, that's "only" 171 PPI, but it gets the job done, and it's more flexible than a desktop.
I believe the Tegra2's ARM7 is dedicated to power management. So, unless you did away with the power management, for maximum compatibility, you'd need two ARM7s in a customized Tegra.
It can run ARM9 code, yes. (However, there are differences in unaligned load/store behavior that can break some ARM9 code.)
But, can it run it in a timing exact manner? Because the DS requires that it be timing exact - note that the DSi underclocks the entire system to run DS games.
As for my estimates, armchair technologist. $600 might be high, but look at the stuff available with a 1 GHz Snapdragon - and that's a single stretched-pipeline Cortex-A8, not two Cortex-A9s, and a much more primitive GPU. 4 hours battery life when you're slamming it hard isn't that far off, and those devices push $600. (And I'm not talking standby battery life, I'm talking gameplay over wifi.)
Right, I'm aware. I'm saying that an RJ-45 is something that laptop manufacturers are more willing to use than a DE-9.
And, just use the Cisco standard, and as for crossover vs. straight-through, use the same rules as RS-232, or even have a smarter UART that supports detecting?
It has fixed-function pixel/vertex shader extensions, I believe. That's the "Maestro" extensions that they refer to.
The idea being that you get most of the benefit of an OpenGL ES 2.0 chip, with almost none of the additional power consumption, as I understand.
Tegra2 would also need significant modifications (including two additional CPUs, an ARM7 and an ARM9) for backwards compatibility with the older systems, and would be significantly more expensive (as in, SIGNIFICANTLY below cost would have to be required,) and use significantly more power. So, if you want a 3DS that has 3 hours of battery life and costs $600, yes, Tegra2 would be great.
Well, an RJ-45 will work, too, and laptop manufacturers already make room for one RJ-45.
Shouldn't the states decide that? Why unilaterally get rid of that?