is there anything wrong with pdf produced by pdflatex?
This probably isn't what GP is referring to, but most of the nice graphics packages (and many of the styles used by journals) emit raw postscript commands, which are not compatible with PDFLatex. Instead, you need to run "latex" (3x, if you have references, BibTex, etc.) to make a dvi file, "dvips" to turn that into a Postscript file, and then "pstopdf" to turn that into a PDF. You can set up a LaTeX IDE like Kile to do this with a single hotkey/button.
You can also get Latex into Powerpoint, and now Word as well, using TexPoint. A license is $30.00 USD -- not that bad. You use it in conjunction with a MikTex install.
It's this damned work ethic. Americans work too hard for what they produce, because they -- we -- have this idea that we somehow have a moral obligation to bust our balls. And if we're not feeling the whip, then we might just not be good enough.
The whole thing started as part of a religious ideology, and the point was to serve God. Funny thing is, the way the idea has evolved, half the people who ascribe to it don't believe in God at all. But damned if they don't feel bad if they aren't working hard enough. It's a great system for the upper classes, really.
wasting ridiculous sums of money on employee luxuries that only serve to create a complacent and unmotivated work force
Are you yourself a programmer? If so, why do you advocate giving programmers fewer carrots, and more often beating them with sticks? This would seem to be a rather masochistic attitude to me.
Oh I agree that dumping people into Java is foolish.
Indeed.
People just need a simple, clean language, and a simple, clean API for interacting with the outside world. There's too much "three pages of initialization code" crap when working with anything interesting, and it just distracts; it makes students think that programming is about magic incantations.
Python is nice. Scheme is good. Even C is a good starting point.
If students in CS101 are building GUIs with Swing, (I've seen this!) something is very wrong. They shouldn't have to interact with the system beyond using exceedingly simple APIs (e.g., "printf," "putpixel"); everything else should be algorithms (e.g., "write a parser for infix expressions.")
I applaud MIT for this. Too many other schools have opted for locked-down "Blackboard" or "T-Square" or "WebCT" systems. Whatever happened to plain old "http://department.school.edu/~professor/" websites? Viva la HTML 4.0!
Have you perhaps attended both a state school and an ivy league school and are thus qualified to speak on this issue?
Me, I have. Let me tell you; they are worlds apart. Want to know what the state school is like? Just real Neal's The Big U -- whereas the Ivy had small class sizes, professors interested in teaching, and genuinely smart classmates.
I'm not saying that there aren't smart people who graduate from state schools who are at the top of their game. There are plenty. What I am saying is that a lot of other students at state schools just spend their time getting railed by a bureaucratic machine that simply doesn't care about them.
In truth, simple size may play one of the biggest roles here.
Big-Name universities have nearly a single goal in mind: Published Papers.
Depends. A lot of Ivy-League schools are actually very undergrad-centric. I've definitely noticed a different attitude at the "Big-U" state school Georgia Tech (Publish! Publish! Publish! Climb to the top!) than at the Ivy-League school Dartmouth (Teach! You need to do research, sure, but undergrads are important; they pay the bills).
CS geeks claim that CS is more than banging out code.
It is! You can't just "bang out" a better-than O(n^3) matrix multiplication function, an O(n log(n)) intersection-of-halfspaces algorithm, or a longest-common-substring in O(mn) time -- especially if you're the first one to do it! CS is really a branch of applied math, with a little engineering. If it's done right, it's in the same part of the intellectual map as formal systems theory.
Less than half the Georgia Tech grads I've worked with could actually write decent code. My guess that the percentage Ivy league grads ability would be even lower.
Coincidentally, I am an Ivy League grad now at Georgia Tech. Your observation of Georgia Tech undergrads does not surprise me: They get screwed by the institution, and it's a wonder they learn anything at all given the horrendous instruction and soulless bureaucracy they have to deal with. As for Ivy League students being able to write code... It varies to be sure, but you shouldn't sell them short. If they're not great coders, then they're good theoreticians, because you're not going to keep doing CS if you can't do at least one of those. Most of the CS majors I knew were smart. A few were brilliant. Some were great coders. Some were great theoreticians. Some were both.
So if a guy graduates from an Ivy League CS program, goes out looking for work, gets a job as a programmer, and finds that he can't "bang out code," it's because he's in the wrong job: He should be developing new algorithms and proving theorems instead.
Sudikoff? I hear there's a foreign study program where people go there.. I think it's called CS 25: Your friends disappear and when you finally see them again next term they've had a life-changing experience.
We had a similar program at Thayer School; it was called ENGS 190/290.;-)
I should also clarify: GATech undergrads are plenty smart. What I'm saying is that they get a raw deal. They work a ton but don't seem to learn that much in the process. I think they're so worried about getting crap done that they don't have time to think about what they're doing. I saw this over and over as a TA: They'll buckle down and put in a lot of effort, but they don't have the basics down that you'd expect, since those courses were taught so poorly: You're left trying to play catch-up with them.
For an undergrad, there's a lot to be said for the Dartmouth environment, with its emphasis on teaching. GATech's emphasis is research, so that's what you should go there for, not undergraduate education.
I can speak from experience in the Dartmouth CS program, [...] more tech-minded schools have superior programs for instruction in CS.
I think "superior" is off the mark. Computer Science at Dartmouth has close ties (historically) to its math department, so the curriculum emphasizes theory rather than "how do I get XYZ done in language Q." It is very good at the former, and not so hot with the latter -- but I'd always considered the latter to be Software Engineering rather than real computer science, anyway.
I speak as a Dartmouth grad who is now at the "real" engineering school Georgia Tech, and I have to say that, compared to Dartmouth, I have been surprised and unimpressed by the undergraduate-level instruction that I've seen here. There are a lot of opportunities for PhD students here, but I really think that the undergrads at Dartmouth learn a lot more.
Gamedev.net (The forums are the best I've found anywhere.)
cprogramming.com (Going through the C tutorials is a great, grea way to get started with the language.
Also give him one (or both) of these:
1 - A pointer to the framebuffer.
2 - Nice OpenGL initialization code.
In fact, I'd say that there is almost nothing as rewarding as starting with just a "putpixel(x, y, color)" function and finishing with a 3d cube spinning around. Programming graphics teaches so much: Math [motivation to learn linear algebra! A concrete way to understand parametric functions... and calculus (If you start coding before you take Calc I, you will reinvent Euler integration yourself)... and functions... and recursion/induction... and... well, everything...], abstraction (putpixel is inside drawscanline which is inside drawtriangle which is inside drawmodel which is inside drawbadguys which is inside...), etc, etc, etc. And since it requires speed (you want to run at interactive framerates), it'll motivate efficient algorithms, too.
And -- I should really emphasize this -- people are visual. Nothing taught me math like watching it draw pictures. Concepts that confused my classmates came intuitively to me (me! The kid who couldn't memorize his times tables in third grade! The kid who kept making sign errors! The kid who everyone thought was bad at math! The kid who's now a PhD student in Control Theory!) -- because I'd seen them draw pictures. The visual cortex is a huge part of our brains, and harnessing it does incredible things. So teaching graphics programming is bigger than just teaching graphics programming: It's making connections so that your son can visualize math. And that is huge.
Graphics and games. Give your son a pointer to the framebuffer. The rest will follow.
Have you ever noticed how bars tend to have parking lots next to them? That always makes me chuckle in a "Wow, everyone is really good at doublethink" kind of way...
Everybody bashes the Windows/DOS filename extension idea, but it's not bad. Personally, I think it's a heck of a lot more noticeable and transparent than some metadata (e.g., MIME type) that you never look at.
a good chunk of the activism and money goes towards woman now.
"You see, women are weak, and need the help. Men should be able to take care of themselves."
I really think that this belief lies at the heart of it. It's not spoken; it's probably not even consciously thought. But I am sure that these modern endeavors to "help women" (or girls) really owe a lot of their success to the gender roles that these policies' implementers probably like to think think they're subverting.
English speakers in NA, do very poorly with anything that seems remotely foreign in spelling or pronunciation, and mostly seem non-motivated to try to get it even remotely correct
Wow. Every time I think that my countrymen couldn't get any dumber, they turn around and do it. It's as though it were a challenge that they rise to.
The torque output depends how you supply power. If you use pulse width modulation, you achieve better torque across the range than simply pushing DC.
So, it makes sense to me that you want to use a current source (which you can achieve with PWM and feedback) if you want constant torque. Is this what you mean, or are you referring to something else?
Slashdot Mirror
is there anything wrong with pdf produced by pdflatex?
This probably isn't what GP is referring to, but most of the nice graphics packages (and many of the styles used by journals) emit raw postscript commands, which are not compatible with PDFLatex. Instead, you need to run "latex" (3x, if you have references, BibTex, etc.) to make a dvi file, "dvips" to turn that into a Postscript file, and then "pstopdf" to turn that into a PDF. You can set up a LaTeX IDE like Kile to do this with a single hotkey/button.
Good call, root_42. (=6.48?)
You can also get Latex into Powerpoint, and now Word as well, using TexPoint. A license is $30.00 USD -- not that bad. You use it in conjunction with a MikTex install.
I don't think your trick can use an eye socket. Would you like to try the other end of a WB exec?
Something about the way you said this sounded like a Vista UAC dialog.
"You have requested to insert a sharpened pencil in a CEO's rectum. Cancel or Allow?"
One billion points for the Anonymous Coward.
It's this damned work ethic. Americans work too hard for what they produce, because they -- we -- have this idea that we somehow have a moral obligation to bust our balls. And if we're not feeling the whip, then we might just not be good enough.
The whole thing started as part of a religious ideology, and the point was to serve God. Funny thing is, the way the idea has evolved, half the people who ascribe to it don't believe in God at all. But damned if they don't feel bad if they aren't working hard enough. It's a great system for the upper classes, really.
wasting ridiculous sums of money on employee luxuries that only serve to create a complacent and unmotivated work force
Are you yourself a programmer? If so, why do you advocate giving programmers fewer carrots, and more often beating them with sticks? This would seem to be a rather masochistic attitude to me.
egregious pandering to employees
And this company makes a nice profit. So what's the problem? Happy people?
Oh I agree that dumping people into Java is foolish.
Indeed.
People just need a simple, clean language, and a simple, clean API for interacting with the outside world. There's too much "three pages of initialization code" crap when working with anything interesting, and it just distracts; it makes students think that programming is about magic incantations.
Python is nice. Scheme is good. Even C is a good starting point.
If students in CS101 are building GUIs with Swing, (I've seen this!) something is very wrong. They shouldn't have to interact with the system beyond using exceedingly simple APIs (e.g., "printf," "putpixel"); everything else should be algorithms (e.g., "write a parser for infix expressions.")
I applaud MIT for this. Too many other schools have opted for locked-down "Blackboard" or "T-Square" or "WebCT" systems. Whatever happened to plain old "http://department.school.edu/~professor/" websites? Viva la HTML 4.0!
The GP wrote,
Have you perhaps attended both a state school and an ivy league school and are thus qualified to speak on this issue?
Me, I have. Let me tell you; they are worlds apart. Want to know what the state school is like? Just real Neal's The Big U -- whereas the Ivy had small class sizes, professors interested in teaching, and genuinely smart classmates.
I'm not saying that there aren't smart people who graduate from state schools who are at the top of their game. There are plenty. What I am saying is that a lot of other students at state schools just spend their time getting railed by a bureaucratic machine that simply doesn't care about them.
In truth, simple size may play one of the biggest roles here.
Big-Name universities have nearly a single goal in mind: Published Papers.
Depends. A lot of Ivy-League schools are actually very undergrad-centric. I've definitely noticed a different attitude at the "Big-U" state school Georgia Tech (Publish! Publish! Publish! Climb to the top!) than at the Ivy-League school Dartmouth (Teach! You need to do research, sure, but undergrads are important; they pay the bills).
CS geeks claim that CS is more than banging out code.
It is! You can't just "bang out" a better-than O(n^3) matrix multiplication function, an O(n log(n)) intersection-of-halfspaces algorithm, or a longest-common-substring in O(mn) time -- especially if you're the first one to do it! CS is really a branch of applied math, with a little engineering. If it's done right, it's in the same part of the intellectual map as formal systems theory.
Less than half the Georgia Tech grads I've worked with could actually write decent code. My guess that the percentage Ivy league grads ability would be even lower.
Coincidentally, I am an Ivy League grad now at Georgia Tech. Your observation of Georgia Tech undergrads does not surprise me: They get screwed by the institution, and it's a wonder they learn anything at all given the horrendous instruction and soulless bureaucracy they have to deal with. As for Ivy League students being able to write code... It varies to be sure, but you shouldn't sell them short. If they're not great coders, then they're good theoreticians, because you're not going to keep doing CS if you can't do at least one of those. Most of the CS majors I knew were smart. A few were brilliant. Some were great coders. Some were great theoreticians. Some were both.
So if a guy graduates from an Ivy League CS program, goes out looking for work, gets a job as a programmer, and finds that he can't "bang out code," it's because he's in the wrong job: He should be developing new algorithms and proving theorems instead.
Sudikoff? I hear there's a foreign study program where people go there.. I think it's called CS 25: Your friends disappear and when you finally see them again next term they've had a life-changing experience.
We had a similar program at Thayer School; it was called ENGS 190/290. ;-)
I should also clarify: GATech undergrads are plenty smart. What I'm saying is that they get a raw deal. They work a ton but don't seem to learn that much in the process. I think they're so worried about getting crap done that they don't have time to think about what they're doing. I saw this over and over as a TA: They'll buckle down and put in a lot of effort, but they don't have the basics down that you'd expect, since those courses were taught so poorly: You're left trying to play catch-up with them.
For an undergrad, there's a lot to be said for the Dartmouth environment, with its emphasis on teaching. GATech's emphasis is research, so that's what you should go there for, not undergraduate education.
I can speak from experience in the Dartmouth CS program, [...] more tech-minded schools have superior programs for instruction in CS.
I think "superior" is off the mark. Computer Science at Dartmouth has close ties (historically) to its math department, so the curriculum emphasizes theory rather than "how do I get XYZ done in language Q." It is very good at the former, and not so hot with the latter -- but I'd always considered the latter to be Software Engineering rather than real computer science, anyway.
I speak as a Dartmouth grad who is now at the "real" engineering school Georgia Tech, and I have to say that, compared to Dartmouth, I have been surprised and unimpressed by the undergraduate-level instruction that I've seen here. There are a lot of opportunities for PhD students here, but I really think that the undergrads at Dartmouth learn a lot more.
No offspring will result from congress with a space alien
I think that goes in the "Plus" column...
It's about the journey, man. Where you end up hardly matters with Neal.
I didn't want Crypto to end. I'm glad it didn't. ;-)
By the way: I thought The Diamond Age was his best novel.
What to teach? Video games and graphics.
In a nutshell: Point him to,
Gamedev.net (The forums are the best I've found anywhere.)
cprogramming.com (Going through the C tutorials is a great, grea way to get started with the language.
Also give him one (or both) of these:
1 - A pointer to the framebuffer.
2 - Nice OpenGL initialization code.
In fact, I'd say that there is almost nothing as rewarding as starting with just a "putpixel(x, y, color)" function and finishing with a 3d cube spinning around. Programming graphics teaches so much: Math [motivation to learn linear algebra! A concrete way to understand parametric functions... and calculus (If you start coding before you take Calc I, you will reinvent Euler integration yourself)... and functions... and recursion/induction... and... well, everything...], abstraction (putpixel is inside drawscanline which is inside drawtriangle which is inside drawmodel which is inside drawbadguys which is inside...), etc, etc, etc. And since it requires speed (you want to run at interactive framerates), it'll motivate efficient algorithms, too.
And -- I should really emphasize this -- people are visual. Nothing taught me math like watching it draw pictures. Concepts that confused my classmates came intuitively to me (me! The kid who couldn't memorize his times tables in third grade! The kid who kept making sign errors! The kid who everyone thought was bad at math! The kid who's now a PhD student in Control Theory!) -- because I'd seen them draw pictures. The visual cortex is a huge part of our brains, and harnessing it does incredible things. So teaching graphics programming is bigger than just teaching graphics programming: It's making connections so that your son can visualize math. And that is huge.
Graphics and games. Give your son a pointer to the framebuffer. The rest will follow.
The address for Apple H.Q. is "1 Infinite Loop." So this conversation is kind of appropriate....
Have you ever noticed how bars tend to have parking lots next to them? That always makes me chuckle in a "Wow, everyone is really good at doublethink" kind of way...
Everybody bashes the Windows/DOS filename extension idea, but it's not bad. Personally, I think it's a heck of a lot more noticeable and transparent than some metadata (e.g., MIME type) that you never look at.
Thanks.
a good chunk of the activism and money goes towards woman now.
"You see, women are weak, and need the help. Men should be able to take care of themselves."
I really think that this belief lies at the heart of it. It's not spoken; it's probably not even consciously thought. But I am sure that these modern endeavors to "help women" (or girls) really owe a lot of their success to the gender roles that these policies' implementers probably like to think think they're subverting.
English speakers in NA, do very poorly with anything that seems remotely foreign in spelling or pronunciation, and mostly seem non-motivated to try to get it even remotely correct
Wow. Every time I think that my countrymen couldn't get any dumber, they turn around and do it. It's as though it were a challenge that they rise to.
The torque output depends how you supply power. If you use pulse width modulation, you achieve better torque across the range than simply pushing DC.
So, it makes sense to me that you want to use a current source (which you can achieve with PWM and feedback) if you want constant torque. Is this what you mean, or are you referring to something else?