Actually, SIGGRAPH 2004 papers have been decided, although SIGGRAPH has obviously not published them yet and not everybody has their preprints up.
Tim Rowley's SIGGRAPH 2004 Index has links to available preprints or you can go straight to the SIGGRAPH 2004 program for the official program. There's a category called "Large Meshes and GPU Programming" this year, although there might be GPU related papers in some other categories too.
Most universities do not have a major like that, because it's not the type of thing you'd study at a university.
More absurdly, it's akin to asking "what's the name of the major for people who enjoy CREATING hairstyles, not just theorizing about anatomy/aesthetics/fashion?" Hairstyling is a trade. Nobody expects to be able to major in it college. If you want to do that, you go to cosmetology school, which is completely independent of a university. Programming is also a trade, but just happens to be one that's very practically necessary to Computer Science (as well as Physics and most other natural sciences). The bottom line is that programming (like costmetology) is just not academic enough on its own.
Likewise, people who want to build telescopes, probably go to trade school to become optics technicians and don't study astronomy at a university. People who want to put an electrical system in a building become electricians, not electrical engineers.
So to that, I would say if you like programming, major in something academic that you find interesting, for which computers are useful. For a lot of people, this subject is computer science, but there are plenty of people working as programmers who studied physics or math or even english lit. In fact, there are a lot of people working as programmers who didn't go to college at all. The problem of course, is that if you ever want to advance beyond being a low-level programmer, the concepts you'll learn in a Computer Science degree program will be necessary (although that doesn't always mean you HAVE to go get the degree to master that material).
That said though, lately some schools have been giving degrees in Software Engineering, which is supposed to focus more on producing software product and less on CS theory.
I remember reading (I think) the ACM Curriculum guidelines a while back. While this approach is mentioned as one possibility, I don't know of any school that actually does it (although it seems like there must be a couple). The other possibilites were starting an imperative language (the most common choice) and starting with a functional language (classes based on ML or Scheme, ala MIT's 6.001).
Personally, I think the imperative approach is probably the most flawed of the three. Educational studies have shown that students end up spending way more time futzing with for loop conditions and array indices than actually learning how to problem solve. By the end of a semester class, they still can't write anything interesting and are essentially still working on boring toy programs.
Starting out with a functional language is interesting though, because since they are so high level, you really can concentrate on teaching fundamental problem solving. Also, it's possible to expose students to interesting fields of actual Computer Science (not just programming).
While I think it's critical that students understand what's going on under the hood of high-level languages, the big problem I see with starting out with assembly is that it would be difficult to keep things interesting for most students. Intro classes are critical for getting a student interested in further study and frankly, an assembly class (while important and useful) is just not representative of the majority of what makes Computer Science as a whole interesting to study. I'd worry you'd lose students who would be good at and interested in the more common topics in Computer Science, while simultaneously retaining students interested in lower-level topics, who would several classes later realize that's not at all what CS is usually about.
Furthermore, I doubt doing assembly in the first class or doing it in the last class of 3 semester intro sequence would really make such a huge difference to how somebody is going to program after the sequence has been completed. The important thing is that students have a class relatively early, where they do get to figure out that it isn't magic that makes a function call in a higher-level language work. The point more is that you should be glad you actually learned assembly and paid attention, not that you learned it first.
I also question the wisdom (of the grandparent post) of having students learn C++ before having them learn Java. I have personally witnessed the following two scenarios as a teaching assistant for the second semester class:
1) First semester students learned Scheme (functional). In the second semester, they learned data structures and algorithms through Java.
2) First semester students learned ML (functional). In the second semester, they learned data structures and algorithms through C++.
The first group of students finished with an understanding of when to use a given data structure, as well as a good understanding of how to use OOP (although their understanding of OO design was pretty shaky I have to admit). The second group ended up much worse in my opinion. The students completely flailed around with C++, especially with things like references, pointers, and memory management (segfault central). Because of the additional complexity of C++, the instructor had to give more dumbed down assignments, so that they could be finished in a reasonable amount of time. In the end, this resulted in the students performing very poorly on the final exam, where the data structures and algorithms they were supposed to have learned were tested. For the most part the students that used Java could actually implement the data structures and algorithms in real code. The students in the second group could only regurgitate stuff they had read and the majority could not implement anything in C++ at all. A lot of them would get caught up in C++ details and never actually even finish coding the data structure. In the end, I think if those students had i
I'd like to also add that this is very similar to what many of us have said for years about the DARE program, in which cops come to public schools to push their political agenda.
Well, we all know how well DARE worked out. The similarity between DARE and this RIAA supported program makes me think that this will quite possibly result in no change in downloading behavior at all. Before DARE, kids already knew drugs were illegal, just like kids already know that downloading music usually (at least most music with RIAA sources) is illegal. One of DARE's big failings was that it exaggerated and oversimplified the dangers and evilness of drug use. All drugs were portrayed as being equally bad and equally likely to completely ruin your life, which was not really true (ie, heroin is much more likely to ruin your life than pot). At some point, most former participants figured out how much DARE exaggerated and then promptly dismissed everything they were taught there.
Similarly, the RIAA will exaggerate the ethical issues (ie, saying downloading is a heinous crime) as well as oversimplify the legal issues by saying all free music is illegal. Then, kids will possibly discard it just like with DARE because at some point they'll realize it was all overblown.
I don't know about local Dutch accents, but I can recognize various German accents even when the people are speaking English
I have to agree here with recognizing German accents in English--at least the more major variants. I'm a native English speaker, but I can instantly recognize if somebody is Swiss or Austrian or German based on the way they speak English. At a finer level though, it seems to get more difficult, especially since regional variation in English education tends to have a larger impact. There are still a lot of people in the former East Germany, who never learned English in school. Even in the Saarland (where I live), a lot of people learn English as a second foreign language (after French), which means they may not have started learning it until high school. For whatever reason, this seems to lead to an accent that sounds like one straight out of a bad American WW2 movie.
Well, almost by definition ALL variants of English have evolved from Old English, including American, Canadian, English, South African, Australian, etc. Old English certainly has no monopoly on "true and natural" English either. If anything, all native speakers of English speak "true and natural English".
I thought it was the language in the satellite countries that changed the least.
I've heard this before too. One key example that comes to mind is Icelandic. Both modern Norwegian and Icelandic are largely decended from Old Norse, which of course was spoken in what is now Norway. A long time ago, some people from there went off to settle in Iceland. Interestingly, the language as spoken in modern Iceland is much more similar to Old Norse than Norwegian is to it. I think the usual explanation given is that Iceland was very isolated over those 1000 or so years.
Now, to know how people spoke English in North America at the time of the American Revolution seems difficult. At that time (and certainly say 100 years before) English as spoken in England (of course this is complicated too, since the variation of accents in Great Britain is more dramatic than the variations in North America) would have been largely the same as English spoken in the New World. Since then, both have probably diverged a lot from that ancestor, because neither country was particularly isolated linguistically (unlike Iceland).
However, I know I stumbled across something a few years ago that claimed modern North American English is closer to what was spoken back in the 17th and 18th centuries than modern BBC or The Queen's English is to it. I wish I could remember the reference for it, but I can't.
Finally, the whole situation is complicated by continued linguistic contact between the UK, the USA, and Canada. One interesting (although maybe dubious) claim is that the way, for example, southern US English, Boston English, and London English all have a tendency to drop r's at the ends of words came about from the upper class in the states sending their children to boarding schools in England in the 19th century. The story goes that in Philadelphia and rural areas further away from the coast (in particular) this was not a common practice and so that sound never really took hold there. Interesting stuff...
Actually, you don't have to be perfect at counting cards to get things going in your favor. The advantage in games won vs. games lost can in fact be pretty crummy and you can still win a lot of money.
The trick in card counting is that you bet more money when you know the deck is in your favor and less when it's not. Overall, you still may lose 51% of the hands, but you just bet on average more on the 49% you're winning. Because of this, it's easy for casinos to detect card counters. It's not that they notice you're winning a lot of hands . It's that they'll notice that your bets will erratically change in correspondence with the state of the deck.
They CANNOT spend _my_ money so that they may be profitable. How could anyone disagree!?
Two disagreements come to mind. Firist, they're a relatively independent third party, whose interest is in protecting both casino and players. They don't just protect casinos from cheaters. They also protect players from fraudulent casinos. Second, governments make a lot of tax revenue off of gambling (or "gaming" as they like to call it). I imagine that Vegas casinos more than pay for the costs to run the Nevada Gaming Commission.
The computer Science Facility won't be bulging at the seams any more
This is something the article doesn't really mention at all. From the late 90s into the peak of the bubble (and then really even a bit after its collapse), enrollments skyrocketed. The author makes it sound like a 19% drop is the end of the field as we know it. I don't know how much enrollments increased during the boom, but I'd hazard to guess that there may still be more people studying CS now than in the mid-90s.
For one, you've now got a common currency among other EU member states. Which in turn makes it more attractive to move among EU countries easily. If I could move to Turin (my favorite Northern Italian city, believe it or not) I'd do it in a heartbeat. It's in close proximity to other great European cities. What is Mumbai close to?
Switzerland is not a member of the EU and does not use the Euro. Granted, it is part of the EEC (like Norway and Iceland), which makes it easy for EU citizens to work in Switzerland (and Swiss citizens in the EU).
Not a troll, actually curious... why do you say no iodine?
It's some weird German thing. A lot of salt (or packaged foods made with salt) you buy here is labeled "JODsalz" = jod (iodine) + salz (salt). Sometimes when I'm bored at lunch, I read the back of the brand name Bad Reichenhaller salt (it's not just Salz, but *Markensalz*), which goes into detailed marketing speak about how Germany is a low iodine region, extolling the values of getting enough iodine in one's diet.
I'm glad this crap isn't taking place in the Netherlands. For now downloading is legal here, uploading isn't.
I'm afraid, it's likely just a matter of time before this really starts to happen in Europe (I live in Germany).
What is the approx. price of cd's in the US?
It varies a bit from CD to CD, but list price for new stuff on major labels tends to be around 17-19 USD. Older music and CDs from non-major labels are often as low as 12 USD. All of that is without sales taxes/VAT of course. Prices are similar in Canada, but in CDN$ (so, a bit cheaper). Looking on amazon.de, prices in euros seem to be roughly comparable (but because of the exchange rate, more expensive). It seems like stuff is usually more expensive in the Netherlands than Germany though.
There was a great article in the New York Times a few months back about the rise of WU. The gist of the article was that while it had been a respectable regional university for a long time, its recent step into the national spotlight was driven by manipulation of the US News and World Report rankings. The article basically argued that by getting better rankings (it had something to do with spending money in some different ways), it made the school seem more desirable. This in turn brought many more competitive applicants, thus causing the rankings to rise even more. Similarly, as the rankings and prestige have risen, the school has been able to get more top faculty. A very interesting read that might make you feel better about not getting in.
Question, is UofToronto regarded highly for computer people? I'm in Ontario and just curious what the "world" thinks outside of Canada about it. Application deadlines aren't for a little while yet cause I'm a mature student and might consider it. Right now my main goal is Waterloo
Of course, it depends a lot on who you talk to and what the nature of their business is. Heads up: I'm from the States (BA from Berkeley in CS and German), but have studied (MS in CS from the U of the Saarland) and now work in an academic research job in Germany. My impressions are based mostly on Canadians and non-Candians (mostly Germans), who I've worked or studied with and who have also worked and/or studied in Canada.
On the academic side of things (i.e. research), Toronto, in general (not for every subfield, but over all) is probably the best CS program in Canada. There was an article in an ACM publication many years ago (1989 I think, so it's kinda old) that ranked Toronto 8th and Waterloo 15th in North America (US + Canada) for graduate computer science programs. Like all rankings, this list is to be taken with a grain of salt, but it shows that these are both probably top 25 programs. Toronto also has the advantage (well, I would consider it one) of being in the middle of a major world metropolis. There's lots of other cool stuff to do there in between studying (or is it the other way around?).
Waterloo on the other hand is much more focused on their undergraduate program and is in general a much more practical and industry-focused department. A lot of important companies heavily recruit there and are involved in their co-op program (which I hear is very integral to the undergrad degree programs). Another interesting factoid about Waterloo is that their team always does very well in the ACM Programming Contest each year. Of course Waterloo is not in Toronto, but rather kinda in the middle of nowhere, although, this is not necessarily a bad thing. I went to school in Berkeley (an urban place with fairly easy access with public transportation to San Francisco) and really never went anywhere (mostly hung out with friends at home).
This is not to say that all Waterloo grads go into industry or that all Toronto grads go into academia. I've met several very bright grad students in my studies, who did undergrad at either Waterloo or Toronto. The ones from Waterloo seemed more nerdy to me (ya, I know, this is slashdot), while the ones from other places in Canada (Toronto, McGill, UBC) seemed more well-adjusted, but that's really neither here nor there. My *impression* (not sure if this is true) is that Waterloo's program is more selective (lots of talented people applying for far fewer spots), while Toronto's program has a broader variation of student quality (let more people in who are qualified and see who floats to the top). Both are large schools with lots of faculty (over 60 members at both) and students (250 grads/1200 undergrads at Toronto).
Bottom line though, they're both good schools for Computer Science and I don't think either is going to limit future work or study opportunities. If I were a Canadian (the scope of both is definitely beyond the provincial level) high school student, I would look at both. They offer different experiences and environments though, which are usually a matter of personal preference.
Do yourself a favor and look up the IIT, Indian Institute of Technology. It's _the_ technical school in the world. MIT, Berkeley, CalTech, CWRU, Carnegie Melon, etc. take those who can't get accepted into this school.
First of there's not just one IIT; they are a system of seven institutions of higher education (Kharagpur, Mumbai (Bombay), Chennai (Madras), Kanpur, Delhi, Guwahati and the newest Roorkee).
Second, it's important to realize that many of the students from India who do the best in their undergraduate class become graduate students at those American institutions you listed as well as other institutions (some not very impressive at all) in North America and Europe. It is still a big deal in India to go a major American university. I have a few friends who did their undergad at an IIT campus. All of them left India for graduate study, because the research opportunities there are just not as good as in the West (although the situation has been improving steadily over the years). I will grant that the undergraduate education there seems to be particularly strong though.
Furthermore, it's important to realize that just because IIT admits such a small fraction of its applicants does not necessarily make the educational opportunities there better. Selectivity does not always equal quality. If anything, it calls into question India's ability to offer access to quality higher education for its population.
Learning is a cultural thing. While many american kids are focused on TV, Britney Spears, video games, etc, these kids start training hard for school at a young age, in the hope of their families to be able to enter IIT years later.
I do have to agree with this in general. In America, there is a very anti-academic tone culturally (even in schools). However, you have to question the quality of a life where from the womb all you do is study in order to get into a good university where all you do is work in order to get a code-monkey job which is your life.
Even when I went to highschool, there were probably a couple kids in a graduating class of ~400 I'd consider truly gifted students. Often I'm seeing the gifted students were foreign born, because their parents don't indulge their children with crap culture, but expect them to start preparing themselves to be citizens at a young age. It's usually the second and third generation parents who fall into the typical american lack of concern and discipline.
For this, I think you have to look at what kind of people are first-generation Americans. It doesn't just take a lot of work and/or a lot of money to immigrate to a foreign country. It takes ambition as well. Immigrants are therefore more likely to be ambitious about themselves and their kids.
Actually, nothing outside the US is in meters or liters. The official units are litre and metre, and it's ONLY in the US that anyone believes differently.
Actually... in German speaking areas, Dutch speaking areas, and probably other areas where Germanic languages are spoken, these official units are the meter (der Meter/de meter) and the liter (der Liter/de liter).
Not quite -- the width in Europe is pretty standard up until as eastwards as the ex-USSR countries.
It's not just in eastern Europe. Spain and Portugal (for the most part) have a different standard. Finland does too (maybe it's the former USSR standard?).
On the Talgo high speed trains that run between France and Spain, apparently they can change the width without the passengers deboarding (I've heard this is not the case when entering the former USSR from Poland though for example).
In Spain though this has become more of a problem recently. Some new high speed trains have been built recently that run entirely within Spain that use the standard gauge. The plan is that all new rail will meet the EU standard.
So, what should show up when you search for Windows? How about Ford or Apple, Stanley, Nissan, Fuji, Campbells,...
This just reminded me of a very similar thing, which happens every day in supermarkets (at least many US ones). If you buy a can of Campell's soup, often with your receipt you get a coupon for some competing brand (and vice-versa too). Obviously, (say) Progresso is paying the supermarket money to print these coupons for their product when somebody buys a Cambell's product.
However, I guess the whole process does not strictly rely on the specific trademarked brand name, but probably UPCs for the match. Still, I assume a company initiates this sort of thing with the supermarket by saying "Hey, we'd like the get a coupon for X(TM) printed out when a customer buys product Y(TM)".
Doesn't it usually follow that a less educated nation is a poorer nation? If not, what nation is an example?
While in general countries with higher incomes tend to have higher education levels, it isn't always true. The big example that comes to mind is Russia. It ranks 6th in the world for the percent of the "college-aged" (age of finishing high school to 5 years later) population enrolled in tertiary education, yet is 77th in per capita income. That contrasts with Swtizerland, which is 6th highest in GPD, but 35th in tertiary education.
Any reason not to have it in Canada. Accomodation is way cheaper than most US cities and Toronto is way cooler than most places (literally:))
I had a conversation once with a Canadian professor about SIGGRAPH locations one time. A few years ago, the conference was getting such large attendance that the list of North American cities that could sustain the attendance (facilities, transportation, hotels, etc.) was quite short. Toronto was capable of being on the list, but apparently many companies were strongly against it for logistical reasons.
The big reason given was that they didn't want to have to deal with getting all of the exhibition stuff (i.e. fancy booths, hardware for demonstration, mercandise to give away, etc.) through customs. For events in the US, they just load everything (of which often there's only one set which is used at all conferences) on a truck and off it goes.
In California motorcycles above a certain displacement are required to have an exhaust catalyst and be certified by the California Air Resources Board. I'd be a little surprised if the same wasn't true in at least parts of Europe.
I would guess that pollution restrictions for cars in California are stricter than those in Europe actually. As far as I know, car inspections in Europe don't require a smog check. Catalytic converters only became legally mandatory in 1992 in Europe (1974 in the US). Also, leaded gasoline was not phased out until 2000 in the EU as a whole (1986 in the US) and it's still available in places (supposedly until 2005).
Slashdot Mirror
Tim Rowley's SIGGRAPH 2004 Index has links to available preprints or you can go straight to the SIGGRAPH 2004 program for the official program. There's a category called "Large Meshes and GPU Programming" this year, although there might be GPU related papers in some other categories too.
More absurdly, it's akin to asking "what's the name of the major for people who enjoy CREATING hairstyles, not just theorizing about anatomy/aesthetics/fashion?" Hairstyling is a trade. Nobody expects to be able to major in it college. If you want to do that, you go to cosmetology school, which is completely independent of a university. Programming is also a trade, but just happens to be one that's very practically necessary to Computer Science (as well as Physics and most other natural sciences). The bottom line is that programming (like costmetology) is just not academic enough on its own.
Likewise, people who want to build telescopes, probably go to trade school to become optics technicians and don't study astronomy at a university. People who want to put an electrical system in a building become electricians, not electrical engineers.
So to that, I would say if you like programming, major in something academic that you find interesting, for which computers are useful. For a lot of people, this subject is computer science, but there are plenty of people working as programmers who studied physics or math or even english lit. In fact, there are a lot of people working as programmers who didn't go to college at all. The problem of course, is that if you ever want to advance beyond being a low-level programmer, the concepts you'll learn in a Computer Science degree program will be necessary (although that doesn't always mean you HAVE to go get the degree to master that material).
That said though, lately some schools have been giving degrees in Software Engineering, which is supposed to focus more on producing software product and less on CS theory.
Personally, I think the imperative approach is probably the most flawed of the three. Educational studies have shown that students end up spending way more time futzing with for loop conditions and array indices than actually learning how to problem solve. By the end of a semester class, they still can't write anything interesting and are essentially still working on boring toy programs.
Starting out with a functional language is interesting though, because since they are so high level, you really can concentrate on teaching fundamental problem solving. Also, it's possible to expose students to interesting fields of actual Computer Science (not just programming).
While I think it's critical that students understand what's going on under the hood of high-level languages, the big problem I see with starting out with assembly is that it would be difficult to keep things interesting for most students. Intro classes are critical for getting a student interested in further study and frankly, an assembly class (while important and useful) is just not representative of the majority of what makes Computer Science as a whole interesting to study. I'd worry you'd lose students who would be good at and interested in the more common topics in Computer Science, while simultaneously retaining students interested in lower-level topics, who would several classes later realize that's not at all what CS is usually about.
Furthermore, I doubt doing assembly in the first class or doing it in the last class of 3 semester intro sequence would really make such a huge difference to how somebody is going to program after the sequence has been completed. The important thing is that students have a class relatively early, where they do get to figure out that it isn't magic that makes a function call in a higher-level language work. The point more is that you should be glad you actually learned assembly and paid attention, not that you learned it first.
I also question the wisdom (of the grandparent post) of having students learn C++ before having them learn Java. I have personally witnessed the following two scenarios as a teaching assistant for the second semester class:
1) First semester students learned Scheme (functional). In the second semester, they learned data structures and algorithms through Java.
2) First semester students learned ML (functional). In the second semester, they learned data structures and algorithms through C++.
The first group of students finished with an understanding of when to use a given data structure, as well as a good understanding of how to use OOP (although their understanding of OO design was pretty shaky I have to admit). The second group ended up much worse in my opinion. The students completely flailed around with C++, especially with things like references, pointers, and memory management (segfault central). Because of the additional complexity of C++, the instructor had to give more dumbed down assignments, so that they could be finished in a reasonable amount of time. In the end, this resulted in the students performing very poorly on the final exam, where the data structures and algorithms they were supposed to have learned were tested. For the most part the students that used Java could actually implement the data structures and algorithms in real code. The students in the second group could only regurgitate stuff they had read and the majority could not implement anything in C++ at all. A lot of them would get caught up in C++ details and never actually even finish coding the data structure. In the end, I think if those students had i
I thought of this too. Automated debugging really is a new technique. Of course, it's still experimental and what not, but it is different.
Well, we all know how well DARE worked out. The similarity between DARE and this RIAA supported program makes me think that this will quite possibly result in no change in downloading behavior at all. Before DARE, kids already knew drugs were illegal, just like kids already know that downloading music usually (at least most music with RIAA sources) is illegal. One of DARE's big failings was that it exaggerated and oversimplified the dangers and evilness of drug use. All drugs were portrayed as being equally bad and equally likely to completely ruin your life, which was not really true (ie, heroin is much more likely to ruin your life than pot). At some point, most former participants figured out how much DARE exaggerated and then promptly dismissed everything they were taught there.
Similarly, the RIAA will exaggerate the ethical issues (ie, saying downloading is a heinous crime) as well as oversimplify the legal issues by saying all free music is illegal. Then, kids will possibly discard it just like with DARE because at some point they'll realize it was all overblown.
I have to agree here with recognizing German accents in English--at least the more major variants. I'm a native English speaker, but I can instantly recognize if somebody is Swiss or Austrian or German based on the way they speak English. At a finer level though, it seems to get more difficult, especially since regional variation in English education tends to have a larger impact. There are still a lot of people in the former East Germany, who never learned English in school. Even in the Saarland (where I live), a lot of people learn English as a second foreign language (after French), which means they may not have started learning it until high school. For whatever reason, this seems to lead to an accent that sounds like one straight out of a bad American WW2 movie.
Well, almost by definition ALL variants of English have evolved from Old English, including American, Canadian, English, South African, Australian, etc. Old English certainly has no monopoly on "true and natural" English either. If anything, all native speakers of English speak "true and natural English".
Well, there is of course that little issue, where there are approximately 5 times as many American English speakers as English English speakers.
I've heard this before too. One key example that comes to mind is Icelandic. Both modern Norwegian and Icelandic are largely decended from Old Norse, which of course was spoken in what is now Norway. A long time ago, some people from there went off to settle in Iceland. Interestingly, the language as spoken in modern Iceland is much more similar to Old Norse than Norwegian is to it. I think the usual explanation given is that Iceland was very isolated over those 1000 or so years.
Now, to know how people spoke English in North America at the time of the American Revolution seems difficult. At that time (and certainly say 100 years before) English as spoken in England (of course this is complicated too, since the variation of accents in Great Britain is more dramatic than the variations in North America) would have been largely the same as English spoken in the New World. Since then, both have probably diverged a lot from that ancestor, because neither country was particularly isolated linguistically (unlike Iceland).
However, I know I stumbled across something a few years ago that claimed modern North American English is closer to what was spoken back in the 17th and 18th centuries than modern BBC or The Queen's English is to it. I wish I could remember the reference for it, but I can't.
Finally, the whole situation is complicated by continued linguistic contact between the UK, the USA, and Canada. One interesting (although maybe dubious) claim is that the way, for example, southern US English, Boston English, and London English all have a tendency to drop r's at the ends of words came about from the upper class in the states sending their children to boarding schools in England in the 19th century. The story goes that in Philadelphia and rural areas further away from the coast (in particular) this was not a common practice and so that sound never really took hold there. Interesting stuff...
The trick in card counting is that you bet more money when you know the deck is in your favor and less when it's not. Overall, you still may lose 51% of the hands, but you just bet on average more on the 49% you're winning. Because of this, it's easy for casinos to detect card counters. It's not that they notice you're winning a lot of hands . It's that they'll notice that your bets will erratically change in correspondence with the state of the deck.
Two disagreements come to mind. Firist, they're a relatively independent third party, whose interest is in protecting both casino and players. They don't just protect casinos from cheaters. They also protect players from fraudulent casinos. Second, governments make a lot of tax revenue off of gambling (or "gaming" as they like to call it). I imagine that Vegas casinos more than pay for the costs to run the Nevada Gaming Commission.
This is something the article doesn't really mention at all. From the late 90s into the peak of the bubble (and then really even a bit after its collapse), enrollments skyrocketed. The author makes it sound like a 19% drop is the end of the field as we know it. I don't know how much enrollments increased during the boom, but I'd hazard to guess that there may still be more people studying CS now than in the mid-90s.
Switzerland is not a member of the EU and does not use the Euro. Granted, it is part of the EEC (like Norway and Iceland), which makes it easy for EU citizens to work in Switzerland (and Swiss citizens in the EU).
It's some weird German thing. A lot of salt (or packaged foods made with salt) you buy here is labeled "JODsalz" = jod (iodine) + salz (salt). Sometimes when I'm bored at lunch, I read the back of the brand name Bad Reichenhaller salt (it's not just Salz, but *Markensalz*), which goes into detailed marketing speak about how Germany is a low iodine region, extolling the values of getting enough iodine in one's diet.
I'm afraid, it's likely just a matter of time before this really starts to happen in Europe (I live in Germany).
What is the approx. price of cd's in the US?
It varies a bit from CD to CD, but list price for new stuff on major labels tends to be around 17-19 USD. Older music and CDs from non-major labels are often as low as 12 USD. All of that is without sales taxes/VAT of course. Prices are similar in Canada, but in CDN$ (so, a bit cheaper). Looking on amazon.de, prices in euros seem to be roughly comparable (but because of the exchange rate, more expensive). It seems like stuff is usually more expensive in the Netherlands than Germany though.
Hey, don't forget Anne Murray, Alanis Morissette, and Celine Dion.
Actually, the world would probably be a better place, if we all could forget them...
There was a great article in the New York Times a few months back about the rise of WU. The gist of the article was that while it had been a respectable regional university for a long time, its recent step into the national spotlight was driven by manipulation of the US News and World Report rankings. The article basically argued that by getting better rankings (it had something to do with spending money in some different ways), it made the school seem more desirable. This in turn brought many more competitive applicants, thus causing the rankings to rise even more. Similarly, as the rankings and prestige have risen, the school has been able to get more top faculty. A very interesting read that might make you feel better about not getting in.
Of course, it depends a lot on who you talk to and what the nature of their business is. Heads up: I'm from the States (BA from Berkeley in CS and German), but have studied (MS in CS from the U of the Saarland) and now work in an academic research job in Germany. My impressions are based mostly on Canadians and non-Candians (mostly Germans), who I've worked or studied with and who have also worked and/or studied in Canada.
On the academic side of things (i.e. research), Toronto, in general (not for every subfield, but over all) is probably the best CS program in Canada. There was an article in an ACM publication many years ago (1989 I think, so it's kinda old) that ranked Toronto 8th and Waterloo 15th in North America (US + Canada) for graduate computer science programs. Like all rankings, this list is to be taken with a grain of salt, but it shows that these are both probably top 25 programs. Toronto also has the advantage (well, I would consider it one) of being in the middle of a major world metropolis. There's lots of other cool stuff to do there in between studying (or is it the other way around?).
Waterloo on the other hand is much more focused on their undergraduate program and is in general a much more practical and industry-focused department. A lot of important companies heavily recruit there and are involved in their co-op program (which I hear is very integral to the undergrad degree programs). Another interesting factoid about Waterloo is that their team always does very well in the ACM Programming Contest each year. Of course Waterloo is not in Toronto, but rather kinda in the middle of nowhere, although, this is not necessarily a bad thing. I went to school in Berkeley (an urban place with fairly easy access with public transportation to San Francisco) and really never went anywhere (mostly hung out with friends at home).
This is not to say that all Waterloo grads go into industry or that all Toronto grads go into academia. I've met several very bright grad students in my studies, who did undergrad at either Waterloo or Toronto. The ones from Waterloo seemed more nerdy to me (ya, I know, this is slashdot), while the ones from other places in Canada (Toronto, McGill, UBC) seemed more well-adjusted, but that's really neither here nor there. My *impression* (not sure if this is true) is that Waterloo's program is more selective (lots of talented people applying for far fewer spots), while Toronto's program has a broader variation of student quality (let more people in who are qualified and see who floats to the top). Both are large schools with lots of faculty (over 60 members at both) and students (250 grads/1200 undergrads at Toronto).
Bottom line though, they're both good schools for Computer Science and I don't think either is going to limit future work or study opportunities. If I were a Canadian (the scope of both is definitely beyond the provincial level) high school student, I would look at both. They offer different experiences and environments though, which are usually a matter of personal preference.
First of there's not just one IIT; they are a system of seven institutions of higher education (Kharagpur, Mumbai (Bombay), Chennai (Madras), Kanpur, Delhi, Guwahati and the newest Roorkee).
Second, it's important to realize that many of the students from India who do the best in their undergraduate class become graduate students at those American institutions you listed as well as other institutions (some not very impressive at all) in North America and Europe. It is still a big deal in India to go a major American university. I have a few friends who did their undergad at an IIT campus. All of them left India for graduate study, because the research opportunities there are just not as good as in the West (although the situation has been improving steadily over the years). I will grant that the undergraduate education there seems to be particularly strong though.
Furthermore, it's important to realize that just because IIT admits such a small fraction of its applicants does not necessarily make the educational opportunities there better. Selectivity does not always equal quality. If anything, it calls into question India's ability to offer access to quality higher education for its population.
Learning is a cultural thing. While many american kids are focused on TV, Britney Spears, video games, etc, these kids start training hard for school at a young age, in the hope of their families to be able to enter IIT years later.
I do have to agree with this in general. In America, there is a very anti-academic tone culturally (even in schools). However, you have to question the quality of a life where from the womb all you do is study in order to get into a good university where all you do is work in order to get a code-monkey job which is your life.
Even when I went to highschool, there were probably a couple kids in a graduating class of ~400 I'd consider truly gifted students. Often I'm seeing the gifted students were foreign born, because their parents don't indulge their children with crap culture, but expect them to start preparing themselves to be citizens at a young age. It's usually the second and third generation parents who fall into the typical american lack of concern and discipline.
For this, I think you have to look at what kind of people are first-generation Americans. It doesn't just take a lot of work and/or a lot of money to immigrate to a foreign country. It takes ambition as well. Immigrants are therefore more likely to be ambitious about themselves and their kids.
Actually... in German speaking areas, Dutch speaking areas, and probably other areas where Germanic languages are spoken, these official units are the meter (der Meter/de meter) and the liter (der Liter/de liter).
It's not just in eastern Europe. Spain and Portugal (for the most part) have a different standard. Finland does too (maybe it's the former USSR standard?). On the Talgo high speed trains that run between France and Spain, apparently they can change the width without the passengers deboarding (I've heard this is not the case when entering the former USSR from Poland though for example).
In Spain though this has become more of a problem recently. Some new high speed trains have been built recently that run entirely within Spain that use the standard gauge. The plan is that all new rail will meet the EU standard.
This just reminded me of a very similar thing, which happens every day in supermarkets (at least many US ones). If you buy a can of Campell's soup, often with your receipt you get a coupon for some competing brand (and vice-versa too). Obviously, (say) Progresso is paying the supermarket money to print these coupons for their product when somebody buys a Cambell's product.
However, I guess the whole process does not strictly rely on the specific trademarked brand name, but probably UPCs for the match. Still, I assume a company initiates this sort of thing with the supermarket by saying "Hey, we'd like the get a coupon for X(TM) printed out when a customer buys product Y(TM)".
While in general countries with higher incomes tend to have higher education levels, it isn't always true. The big example that comes to mind is Russia. It ranks 6th in the world for the percent of the "college-aged" (age of finishing high school to 5 years later) population enrolled in tertiary education, yet is 77th in per capita income. That contrasts with Swtizerland, which is 6th highest in GPD, but 35th in tertiary education.
I had a conversation once with a Canadian professor about SIGGRAPH locations one time. A few years ago, the conference was getting such large attendance that the list of North American cities that could sustain the attendance (facilities, transportation, hotels, etc.) was quite short. Toronto was capable of being on the list, but apparently many companies were strongly against it for logistical reasons.
The big reason given was that they didn't want to have to deal with getting all of the exhibition stuff (i.e. fancy booths, hardware for demonstration, mercandise to give away, etc.) through customs. For events in the US, they just load everything (of which often there's only one set which is used at all conferences) on a truck and off it goes.
I would guess that pollution restrictions for cars in California are stricter than those in Europe actually. As far as I know, car inspections in Europe don't require a smog check. Catalytic converters only became legally mandatory in 1992 in Europe (1974 in the US). Also, leaded gasoline was not phased out until 2000 in the EU as a whole (1986 in the US) and it's still available in places (supposedly until 2005).