.. Just buy an old P1 era machine (Or P2, or P3, or what have you, just a cheap, basic machine; or better yet, build one yourself) and load the following on it:
- Windows XP
Why? Because, like it or not, MS is the 'standard' right now. It can be a good, reasonably stable front end for the beginner. As has been stated here previously (and to satisfy all the Linux championers) - When the kid bumps up against the limits the system imposes, they'll find a way around them. If that means moving to Linux or a better (home built) box, so be it.
Of course, do make sure that the system has SP1a and any other available (stable) patches loaded, along with some basic levels of protection such as:
1) Up to date anti-virus protection. AVG Anti-Virus FE (Free Edition) is great for this.
2) Up to date software based firewall protection. Again, a free product can fit the bill here as well. ZoneAlarm FE works well.
3) A 'system restore' CD, preferably bootable. Just image the installed system onto a cd, so that if anything ever corrupts it beyond repair, even given your careful setup of the machine, that the kid can easily restore it back to working order with the CD. Nothing will sap a kid's interest faster than having the machine be inoperative when he/she wants to go learn on it, but it's unusable. A restore CD that they can use without you being around is a good idea to mitigate this.
Then, load the machine with:
- QBasic
Yes, I know MS made it. Yes I know/. has an almost immiediate bias towards MS. But for me as a kid, QWbasic was a wonderfully simple programming environment. And the fact that it had online help for all the commands, many with examples, cut and paste facilities, along with a built in debugger and example programs to pick apart, was a god send. It doesn't come with XP, but you can easily copy the latest version either off the 'Net, or the 98se install CD may have had it buried somewhere IIRC...
- Games
The games need not be overly resource hungry, your chice of what games to load should be guided by the power of the machine you are loading them on, and the tastes of the kid that will be using it. The games will serve a very useful purpose.
Kids sometimes have a short attention span. When they butt up against a wall in their programming, or their homework, or hat have you, the games will be a good way for them to relax. And a relaxed mind that comes back fresh can often find the answer to the problem much easier.
This should be a good starting point. Encourage the kids to learn on the machine, to poke around with the software (and hardware, but preferably under yur guidance.) Soon they will ask all sorts of "What would happen if I.." questions, and will use the PC to find out, which is the goal here.
Also, a good book on BASIC programming would be a nice addition. I don't know if your local public library would have any, but look around. And yes, you want this to be a physical book, not a CD. Why? Because it will encourage their typing skills, as well as be better for their eyes. Looking at a computer screen with no break is bad. Having to shift your eyes between a book and the screen is much better.
The tricorder was more or less a laptop computer with the same comminication capabilities of a standard communicator badge. (I'm referring to the TNG-era and newer tricorders here, not sure of TOS or ENT era versions.)
Dust off your old paperback copy of the Enterprise-D Technical Manual, and flip to page 119. (Section 10.6 - Tricorder)
The standard tricorder is a portable sensing, computing, and
data communications
device... its capabilities may be augmented with mission-specific peripherals"
"The internal electronics, on the other hand, were designed to provide the greatest number of possible options in managing sensor data, visual images,
and multi-channel communications
, in all incoming, outgoing, or recorded modes."
"The major electronic components include the primary power loop, sensor assemblies, parallel processing block, control and display interface,
subspace communication unit
, and multiple memory storage units."
"Power is provided to the total system through a rechargeable sarium crystal rated for eighteen hours of full instrument activity. True power usage rate and maximum useful time is, of course, dependant on which subsystems are active, and is continuously computed for call-up on the display. Typical power usage is 15.48 watts."
[Two paragraphs on its computing subsystem layout and speed, not quoted here.]
"Communications functions are carried out by tricorder through the subspace transceiver assembly (STA). Voice and data are uplink/downlinked along standard communicator frequencies. Transmission data rates are variable, with a maximum speed in Emergency Dump Mode of 825 TFP. Communication range is limited to 40,000 km intership, similar to the standard communicator badge."
[Paragraph on its data storage subsystem layout and speed, not quoted here.]
No one ever notices what's going on at a Radio Shack. Outside a lonely branch of the electronics store, on a government-issue San Diego day in a strip mall where no one is noticing much of anything, a bluff man with thinning, ginger hair and preternaturally white teeth is standing on the pavement, slowly waving a square metal plate toward people strolling in the distance. ''Watch that lady over there,'' he says, unable to conceal his boyish pride for the gadget in his giant hand. ''This is really cool.''
Woody Norris aims the silvery plate at his quarry. A burly brunette 200 feet away stops dead in her tracks and peers around, befuddled. She has walked straight into the noise of a Brazilian rain forest -- then out again. Even in her shopping reverie, here among the haircutters and storefront tax-preparers and dubious Middle Eastern bistros, her senses inform her that she has just stepped through a discrete column of sound, a sharply demarcated beam of unexpected sound. ''Look at that,'' Norris mutters, chuckling as the lady turns around. ''She doesn't know what hit her.''
Norris is demonstrating something called HyperSonic Sound (HSS). The aluminum plate is connected to a CD player and an odd amplifier -- actually, a very odd and very new amplifier -- that directs sound much as a laser beam directs light. Over the past few years, mainly in secret, he has shown the device to more than 300 major companies, and it has slackened a lot of jaws. In December, the editors of Popular Science magazine bestowed upon HSS its grand prize for new inventions of 2002, choosing it over the ferociously hyped Segway scooter. It is no exaggeration to say that HSS represents the first revolution in acoustics since the loudspeaker was invented 78 years ago -- and perhaps only the second since pilgrims used ''whispering tubes'' to convey their dour messages.
As Norris continues to baffle shoppers by sniping at them with the noises he has on this CD (ice cubes clanking into a glass, a Handel concerto, the plash of a waterfall), some are spooked, and some are drawn in. Two teenage girls drift over from 100 feet away and ask, in bizarre Diane Arbus-type unison, ''What is that?''
Norris responds with his affable mantra -- ''In'nat cool?'' -- before going into a bit of simplified detail: how the sound waves are actually made audible not at the surface of the metal plate but at the listener's ears. He doesn't bother to torment the girls with the scientific gymnastics of how data are being converted to ultrasound then back again to human-accessible frequencies along a confined column of air. ''See, the way your brain perceives it, the sound is being created right here,'' Norris explains to the Arbus girls, lifting a palm to the side of his head. ''That's why it's so clear. Feels like it's inside your skull, doesn't it?''
In the years Norris has demonstrated HSS, he says, that's been the universal reaction: the sound is inside my head. So that's the way he has started to describe it.
Just to check the distances, I pace out a hundred yards and see if the thing is really working. (I've tried this other times -- in a posh hotel in Manhattan, in another parking lot in San Diego -- but HSS is so often suspected of being a parlor trick that it always seems to bear checking.) Norris pelts me with the Handel and, to illustrate the directionality of the beam, subtly turns the plate side to side. And the sound is inside my head, roving between my ears in accord with each of Norris's turns.
The applications of directional sound go quite a bit beyond messing with people at strip malls, important as this work may be. Norris is enthusiastic about all of the possibilities he can propose and the ones he can't. Imagine, he says, walking by a soda machine (say, one of the five million in Japan that will soon employ HSS), triggering a proximity detector, then hearing what you alone hear -- the plink of ice cubes and the invocation, ''Wouldn't a Coke taste great
To stay on topic: I believe that Amazon trying to patent this is just sheer greed. They already make money from all the orders placed through them. They supplement this income by way of implementing a system that tracks your purchases and what you browse so that they can suggest products to you that you have a high chance of buying. Ads are simply a money grab my Amazon.com, in my opinion.
And now the offtopic part;) - Ads? What are those?..Umm, oh, those annoying things that waste my time and try to waste my money!
I haven't seen one in ages, especially since I use Ad Muncher;)
I beta test Ad Muncher for the developer, and it's a great piece of shareware. And it happens to be an excellent (and tiny!) program to help you take back control over what's displayed on your screen when you surf the web.
For example, in addition to having regular in-line ads, skyscraper ads, popups, mouseovers, and a bunch of other ads removed, I have Ad Muncher configured to block all SWF files, remove code that prevents me from right clicking, and a bunch of other stuff. Extremely handy, and the install file of the latest beta is only 136k. And yeah, that's the whole program, not just an installer stub. Last I heard, the beta is due to go gold within a week or less.
Some of you reading this might think that I'm insensitive to the webmasters of various popular sites, preventing them from staying on the 'Net by depriving them of a source of revenue. To that I say, how much do you think they make from advertisements? Not much, I can tell you.
Just as shareware asks you to pay nominal fee if you find the software to be of use, I have no problem with a website asking for a nominal fee if I find their content to be of use.
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- Windows XP Why? Because, like it or not, MS is the 'standard' right now. It can be a good, reasonably stable front end for the beginner. As has been stated here previously (and to satisfy all the Linux championers) - When the kid bumps up against the limits the system imposes, they'll find a way around them. If that means moving to Linux or a better (home built) box, so be it.
Of course, do make sure that the system has SP1a and any other available (stable) patches loaded, along with some basic levels of protection such as:
1) Up to date anti-virus protection. AVG Anti-Virus FE (Free Edition) is great for this.
2) Up to date software based firewall protection. Again, a free product can fit the bill here as well. ZoneAlarm FE works well.
3) A 'system restore' CD, preferably bootable. Just image the installed system onto a cd, so that if anything ever corrupts it beyond repair, even given your careful setup of the machine, that the kid can easily restore it back to working order with the CD. Nothing will sap a kid's interest faster than having the machine be inoperative when he/she wants to go learn on it, but it's unusable. A restore CD that they can use without you being around is a good idea to mitigate this.
Then, load the machine with:
- QBasic
Yes, I know MS made it. Yes I know /. has an almost immiediate bias towards MS. But for me as a kid, QWbasic was a wonderfully simple programming environment. And the fact that it had online help for all the commands, many with examples, cut and paste facilities, along with a built in debugger and example programs to pick apart, was a god send. It doesn't come with XP, but you can easily copy the latest version either off the 'Net, or the 98se install CD may have had it buried somewhere IIRC...
- Games
The games need not be overly resource hungry, your chice of what games to load should be guided by the power of the machine you are loading them on, and the tastes of the kid that will be using it. The games will serve a very useful purpose.
Kids sometimes have a short attention span. When they butt up against a wall in their programming, or their homework, or hat have you, the games will be a good way for them to relax. And a relaxed mind that comes back fresh can often find the answer to the problem much easier.
This should be a good starting point. Encourage the kids to learn on the machine, to poke around with the software (and hardware, but preferably under yur guidance.) Soon they will ask all sorts of "What would happen if I.." questions, and will use the PC to find out, which is the goal here.
Also, a good book on BASIC programming would be a nice addition. I don't know if your local public library would have any, but look around. And yes, you want this to be a physical book, not a CD. Why? Because it will encourage their typing skills, as well as be better for their eyes. Looking at a computer screen with no break is bad. Having to shift your eyes between a book and the screen is much better.
Good luck, and Qapla'!
The tricorder was more or less a laptop computer with the same comminication capabilities of a standard communicator badge. (I'm referring to the TNG-era and newer tricorders here, not sure of TOS or ENT era versions.)
Dust off your old paperback copy of the Enterprise-D Technical Manual, and flip to page 119. (Section 10.6 - Tricorder)
The standard tricorder is a portable sensing, computing, and data communications device ... its capabilities may be augmented with mission-specific peripherals"
"The internal electronics, on the other hand, were designed to provide the greatest number of possible options in managing sensor data, visual images, and multi-channel communications , in all incoming, outgoing, or recorded modes."
"The major electronic components include the primary power loop, sensor assemblies, parallel processing block, control and display interface, subspace communication unit , and multiple memory storage units."
"Power is provided to the total system through a rechargeable sarium crystal rated for eighteen hours of full instrument activity. True power usage rate and maximum useful time is, of course, dependant on which subsystems are active, and is continuously computed for call-up on the display. Typical power usage is 15.48 watts."
[Two paragraphs on its computing subsystem layout and speed, not quoted here.]
"Communications functions are carried out by tricorder through the subspace transceiver assembly (STA). Voice and data are uplink/downlinked along standard communicator frequencies. Transmission data rates are variable, with a maximum speed in Emergency Dump Mode of 825 TFP. Communication range is limited to 40,000 km intership, similar to the standard communicator badge." [Paragraph on its data storage subsystem layout and speed, not quoted here.]
No one ever notices what's going on at a Radio Shack. Outside a lonely branch of the electronics store, on a government-issue San Diego day in a strip mall where no one is noticing much of anything, a bluff man with thinning, ginger hair and preternaturally white teeth is standing on the pavement, slowly waving a square metal plate toward people strolling in the distance. ''Watch that lady over there,'' he says, unable to conceal his boyish pride for the gadget in his giant hand. ''This is really cool.''
Woody Norris aims the silvery plate at his quarry. A burly brunette 200 feet away stops dead in her tracks and peers around, befuddled. She has walked straight into the noise of a Brazilian rain forest -- then out again. Even in her shopping reverie, here among the haircutters and storefront tax-preparers and dubious Middle Eastern bistros, her senses inform her that she has just stepped through a discrete column of sound, a sharply demarcated beam of unexpected sound. ''Look at that,'' Norris mutters, chuckling as the lady turns around. ''She doesn't know what hit her.''
Norris is demonstrating something called HyperSonic Sound (HSS). The aluminum plate is connected to a CD player and an odd amplifier -- actually, a very odd and very new amplifier -- that directs sound much as a laser beam directs light. Over the past few years, mainly in secret, he has shown the device to more than 300 major companies, and it has slackened a lot of jaws. In December, the editors of Popular Science magazine bestowed upon HSS its grand prize for new inventions of 2002, choosing it over the ferociously hyped Segway scooter. It is no exaggeration to say that HSS represents the first revolution in acoustics since the loudspeaker was invented 78 years ago -- and perhaps only the second since pilgrims used ''whispering tubes'' to convey their dour messages.
As Norris continues to baffle shoppers by sniping at them with the noises he has on this CD (ice cubes clanking into a glass, a Handel concerto, the plash of a waterfall), some are spooked, and some are drawn in. Two teenage girls drift over from 100 feet away and ask, in bizarre Diane Arbus-type unison, ''What is that?''
Norris responds with his affable mantra -- ''In'nat cool?'' -- before going into a bit of simplified detail: how the sound waves are actually made audible not at the surface of the metal plate but at the listener's ears. He doesn't bother to torment the girls with the scientific gymnastics of how data are being converted to ultrasound then back again to human-accessible frequencies along a confined column of air. ''See, the way your brain perceives it, the sound is being created right here,'' Norris explains to the Arbus girls, lifting a palm to the side of his head. ''That's why it's so clear. Feels like it's inside your skull, doesn't it?''
In the years Norris has demonstrated HSS, he says, that's been the universal reaction: the sound is inside my head. So that's the way he has started to describe it.
Just to check the distances, I pace out a hundred yards and see if the thing is really working. (I've tried this other times -- in a posh hotel in Manhattan, in another parking lot in San Diego -- but HSS is so often suspected of being a parlor trick that it always seems to bear checking.) Norris pelts me with the Handel and, to illustrate the directionality of the beam, subtly turns the plate side to side. And the sound is inside my head, roving between my ears in accord with each of Norris's turns.
The applications of directional sound go quite a bit beyond messing with people at strip malls, important as this work may be. Norris is enthusiastic about all of the possibilities he can propose and the ones he can't. Imagine, he says, walking by a soda machine (say, one of the five million in Japan that will soon employ HSS), triggering a proximity detector, then hearing what you alone hear -- the plink of ice cubes and the invocation, ''Wouldn't a Coke taste great
And now the offtopic part ;) - Ads? What are those? ..Umm, oh, those annoying things that waste my time and try to waste my money!
I haven't seen one in ages, especially since I use Ad Muncher ;)
I beta test Ad Muncher for the developer, and it's a great piece of shareware. And it happens to be an excellent (and tiny!) program to help you take back control over what's displayed on your screen when you surf the web.
For example, in addition to having regular in-line ads, skyscraper ads, popups, mouseovers, and a bunch of other ads removed, I have Ad Muncher configured to block all SWF files, remove code that prevents me from right clicking, and a bunch of other stuff. Extremely handy, and the install file of the latest beta is only 136k. And yeah, that's the whole program, not just an installer stub. Last I heard, the beta is due to go gold within a week or less.
Some of you reading this might think that I'm insensitive to the webmasters of various popular sites, preventing them from staying on the 'Net by depriving them of a source of revenue. To that I say, how much do you think they make from advertisements? Not much, I can tell you.
Just as shareware asks you to pay nominal fee if you find the software to be of use, I have no problem with a website asking for a nominal fee if I find their content to be of use.