You won't get a blow by blow mathematical post, I don't see how I could manage it convincingly, unless you accept the Chewbacca defense.
Well ok, the main difference between you and I is that I know Dr Anderson personally. My mathematics is confined to it's use as applied to evolutionary algorithms, his work is not even close to my field. I recall seeing a paper on Perspex Machine when I first turned up at Reading, and it was baffling, though highly interesting. I respect his work, and I'm very interested by this particular result. More understanding would require applying it to some problem.
Anyhow, what improvements are not small increments based on the work of others?
Children though, I'd far rather children were subjected to interesting new science then bland nonsense (I'm currently having to deal with a niece who's teacher has taught her that jesus made the world, which is aggravating in the extreme).
were your comment not so infantile, I would refute it, as it is I will confine myself to saying that expletives and irrelevant statements do not a cutting reply make
he's not an idiot, the guy gave me a break and let me do my degree as a mature student with no formal qualifications. Therefore I'll always tend to think of him as amazingly nice.
He's done some very impressive math in the past, so I'm not at all surprised to see this from him
basic C does have some advantages for early teaching. Provided of course you steer clear of memory management/pointers and the like. By basic I mean the for loop/switch statement level, real basic stuff.
I did pascal before C, but thought I'd have preferred the other way round once I was finished.
I learned Modula 2 first, then Pascal, then Miranda, Lisp then C, before moving on to more 'modern' languages like Standard C++ and Delphi.
So I started on the Wirth tree too, which is a decent way I guess. C was a bit of a shock to start with, but I rapidly began to enjoy the runtime benefits of that language on complex/time consuming problems.
"Coding it? Why? Only to prove to yourself that you can do it! I did it when I was younger. "
No No no no no!
To learn it in the first place! Weren't you paying attention? You even demonstrated my point by saying 'I did it when I was younger'.
Yes, you did, so did I, would I re-write something when someone had a better implementation than me? Perhaps, if I wanted to learn how to do it, but not if I needed it soon, or had reasonable assurance that the existing implementation was better then I could do myself. However I have yet to move into a new area of coding without getting my feet wet by implementing some of the code used in that domain myself, just to know what I was talking about.
What's more use, a programmer who has learned about a thing, then produced on his own an implementation of same, however basic, or one who studied it just to pass an exam and never built it in the real world?
I don't object to java being taught, just the use of premade code to replace having to do stuff yourself.
Do ensure you widen your skillset well beyond java though, single language knowledge is a bad idea. Knowing several and specialising in one is better, since you can move to different languages as the need arises with ease.
I think that students should start with C, move to pascal, then onto perl/python/lisp, and after that C++, or perhaps java (even though I hate that language, and I've had to teach it, so I'm not blindly critical). A smattering of php wouldn't be bad.
yes, for Rapid Application Development. However that is *not* the point of studying computer programming.
While a good coder knows when to re-use code. A coder incapable of originating complex code is little more then an automaton.
I'm sick of the 'don't re-invent the wheel' argument being dragged out and used to justify people not studying properly, or for that matter, not teaching properly. I was lucky, I attended a course where most lecturers believed that students should code their own assignments.
Examples being recursive functions, sorting functions, Dijkstra's shortest path algorithm, stuff like that. However I have recently had to cope with people being given exactly the same type of assignment, and being allowed to download pre-built classes for them! What, I ask you, is the point of that?
If you think about it, playgrounds nowadays usually have fences and gates around them. They didn't when I was a kid. Now it's routine basic security, you're kid has to go through a gate or someone has to act suspicious and grab them over the fence/drag them through a gate.
Should I think 'well, playgrounds never had fences before, so I'll forgoe that level of security'?
To be quite frank, paranioa is part of good parenting, realising that there are dangerous people from whom children need to be protected, and utilising such protection.
Comparing child safety to liberty isssues is a non starter. Children have no liberty, they are entirely at the whim of others.
I'd prefer bsd as a number cruncher. I run long experiments, and a nice rock solid system is good.
Linux is what I use for normal dev work, where I like the tools and stability.
I like windows for one thing only, games. And that only because I have no choice. I don't especially despise windows, or evangelise against it, I just prefer to avoid it when possible.
Aeroglass perhaps on machines in reception, or in offices of executives who want a pretty computer screen. The latter will be quite likely. Ordinary workers probably won't have it allowed, and that will be the majority. It probably won't impact costs at all.
It's not even slightly a feature required for day to day work, which ms must know. The problem is that linux will soon have stable opengl desktop stuff (just as pointless, tried it, removed it...), and OSX is just plain pretty in it's normal mode. Basically they're trying to stay ahead in the looks department.
what makes me laugh is that they were talking up their desktop innovations a while back, and all I see is a cluttered/overburdoned iteration of the XP/2000 desktop that will irritate people switching from XP, or who still use it at home. That's not innovation, it's pointless fluff. Saying that here is also pointless though..
I think they could have dropped the current destop system into vista as is, and it would have been just fine. All the important improvements are under the hood anyhow. I remember that they left the olf file explorer in windows 95 to make it easy for people converting from workgroups/3.1 and so on. I rather liked that. The same should happen for the desktop from xp.
you hit it right on the button there. This is why my thinking tends towards paranioa and away from trust in a system that is most likely being sold to make a profit rather then to keep kids safe. Or perhaps to be fair, being sold to keep kids safe, but with profit in mind.
'anyone' would by definition include me, and I'd be watching any location beacon constantly if I couldn't see my boy (not that this is likely to happen).
no, pretty much the park exits or perimiter. This is unfeasablble today I know, which is why I keep a constant watch (not that I'd stop if it was in place).
I think it would be good if implemented properly is all.
your point is a valid one. However, paedophiles don't need rfid to locate a lone child, just reasonable observation skills.
Where they to find a way to utilise rfid, they likely couldn't stop me simultaniously using the same system to find him. I hope not anyhow.
The possibility exists that the very person who is after my child is the same person who is operating the system in the first place. I know of no way beyond complete paranoia to guard against this.
Shit, I get scared that my boy wants to walk home from school on his own, I may not be the best person to comment on rfid...
As a parent I have to say that having my child chipped at an amusement park is just fine.
I get scared every time I take my child to a fair or any other public gathering. I constantly watch him to ensure he's no more then ten feet away from me. I know that there are people who prowl such places on the lookout for unnattended children. paranoid? Perhaps, but I'd far rather be paranoid then the father of a dead child. No amount of paranoia is too much in such situations, so far as I'm concerned.
If a chip meant his location could be tracked constantly I'd feel a lot happier. It's not likely that I'd lose sight of him, but I can say with absolute certainty that if I did *any* means of locating him would be acceptable.
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You won't get a blow by blow mathematical post, I don't see how I could manage it convincingly, unless you accept the Chewbacca defense.
Well ok, the main difference between you and I is that I know Dr Anderson personally. My mathematics is confined to it's use as applied to evolutionary algorithms, his work is not even close to my field. I recall seeing a paper on Perspex Machine when I first turned up at Reading, and it was baffling, though highly interesting. I respect his work, and I'm very interested by this particular result. More understanding would require applying it to some problem.
Anyhow, what improvements are not small increments based on the work of others?
Children though, I'd far rather children were subjected to interesting new science then bland nonsense (I'm currently having to deal with a niece who's teacher has taught her that jesus made the world, which is aggravating in the extreme).
were your comment not so infantile, I would refute it, as it is I will confine myself to saying that expletives and irrelevant statements do not a cutting reply make
he's not an idiot, the guy gave me a break and let me do my degree as a mature student with no formal qualifications. Therefore I'll always tend to think of him as amazingly nice.
He's done some very impressive math in the past, so I'm not at all surprised to see this from him
basic C does have some advantages for early teaching. Provided of course you steer clear of memory management/pointers and the like. By basic I mean the for loop/switch statement level, real basic stuff.
I did pascal before C, but thought I'd have preferred the other way round once I was finished.
I learned Modula 2 first, then Pascal, then Miranda, Lisp then C, before moving on to more 'modern' languages like Standard C++ and Delphi.
So I started on the Wirth tree too, which is a decent way I guess. C was a bit of a shock to start with, but I rapidly began to enjoy the runtime benefits of that language on complex/time consuming problems.
I wasn't talking about huge complexity, this is all pretty basic stuff. Heck, if it isn't, then the industry is screwed.
"Coding it? Why? Only to prove to yourself that you can do it! I did it when I was younger. "
No No no no no!
To learn it in the first place! Weren't you paying attention? You even demonstrated my point by saying 'I did it when I was younger'.
Yes, you did, so did I, would I re-write something when someone had a better implementation than me? Perhaps, if I wanted to learn how to do it, but not if I needed it soon, or had reasonable assurance that the existing implementation was better then I could do myself. However I have yet to move into a new area of coding without getting my feet wet by implementing some of the code used in that domain myself, just to know what I was talking about.
What's more use, a programmer who has learned about a thing, then produced on his own an implementation of same, however basic, or one who studied it just to pass an exam and never built it in the real world?
nice.
I don't object to java being taught, just the use of premade code to replace having to do stuff yourself.
Do ensure you widen your skillset well beyond java though, single language knowledge is a bad idea. Knowing several and specialising in one is better, since you can move to different languages as the need arises with ease.
I think that students should start with C, move to pascal, then onto perl/python/lisp, and after that C++, or perhaps java (even though I hate that language, and I've had to teach it, so I'm not blindly critical). A smattering of php wouldn't be bad.
yes, for Rapid Application Development. However that is *not* the point of studying computer programming.
While a good coder knows when to re-use code. A coder incapable of originating complex code is little more then an automaton.
I'm sick of the 'don't re-invent the wheel' argument being dragged out and used to justify people not studying properly, or for that matter, not teaching properly. I was lucky, I attended a course where most lecturers believed that students should code their own assignments.
Examples being recursive functions, sorting functions, Dijkstra's shortest path algorithm, stuff like that. However I have recently had to cope with people being given exactly the same type of assignment, and being allowed to download pre-built classes for them! What, I ask you, is the point of that?
mine teaches java prediminantly, and I've had to tutor third year students who seem to lack more then rudimentary programming skills.
The logic they go by seems to be 'Download a class for it, no need to code it yourself'. It drives me crazy.
nice idea, difficult in the execution.
If you think about it, playgrounds nowadays usually have fences and gates around them. They didn't when I was a kid. Now it's routine basic security, you're kid has to go through a gate or someone has to act suspicious and grab them over the fence/drag them through a gate.
Should I think 'well, playgrounds never had fences before, so I'll forgoe that level of security'?
To be quite frank, paranioa is part of good parenting, realising that there are dangerous people from whom children need to be protected, and utilising such protection.
Comparing child safety to liberty isssues is a non starter. Children have no liberty, they are entirely at the whim of others.
personal preference?
I'd prefer bsd as a number cruncher. I run long experiments, and a nice rock solid system is good.
Linux is what I use for normal dev work, where I like the tools and stability.
I like windows for one thing only, games. And that only because I have no choice. I don't especially despise windows, or evangelise against it, I just prefer to avoid it when possible.
well I haven't written a windows program for a while.
oh wait...
I installed it, ran it, and boom, out go the lights, windows crashed spectaculerly, requiring two restarts to work properly again.
Not the best example of stability I've seen.
I doubt it will be final, but out of beta when it hits 1.0
Aeroglass perhaps on machines in reception, or in offices of executives who want a pretty computer screen. The latter will be quite likely. Ordinary workers probably won't have it allowed, and that will be the majority. It probably won't impact costs at all.
It's not even slightly a feature required for day to day work, which ms must know. The problem is that linux will soon have stable opengl desktop stuff (just as pointless, tried it, removed it...), and OSX is just plain pretty in it's normal mode. Basically they're trying to stay ahead in the looks department.
what makes me laugh is that they were talking up their desktop innovations a while back, and all I see is a cluttered/overburdoned iteration of the XP/2000 desktop that will irritate people switching from XP, or who still use it at home. That's not innovation, it's pointless fluff. Saying that here is also pointless though..
I think they could have dropped the current destop system into vista as is, and it would have been just fine. All the important improvements are under the hood anyhow. I remember that they left the olf file explorer in windows 95 to make it easy for people converting from workgroups/3.1 and so on. I rather liked that. The same should happen for the desktop from xp.
I bet they'd stop them next year if they could get away with it.
you hit it right on the button there. This is why my thinking tends towards paranioa and away from trust in a system that is most likely being sold to make a profit rather then to keep kids safe. Or perhaps to be fair, being sold to keep kids safe, but with profit in mind.
'anyone' would by definition include me, and I'd be watching any location beacon constantly if I couldn't see my boy (not that this is likely to happen).
no, pretty much the park exits or perimiter. This is unfeasablble today I know, which is why I keep a constant watch (not that I'd stop if it was in place).
I think it would be good if implemented properly is all.
your point is a valid one. However, paedophiles don't need rfid to locate a lone child, just reasonable observation skills.
Where they to find a way to utilise rfid, they likely couldn't stop me simultaniously using the same system to find him. I hope not anyhow.
The possibility exists that the very person who is after my child is the same person who is operating the system in the first place. I know of no way beyond complete paranoia to guard against this.
Shit, I get scared that my boy wants to walk home from school on his own, I may not be the best person to comment on rfid...
As a parent I have to say that having my child chipped at an amusement park is just fine.
I get scared every time I take my child to a fair or any other public gathering. I constantly watch him to ensure he's no more then ten feet away from me. I know that there are people who prowl such places on the lookout for unnattended children. paranoid? Perhaps, but I'd far rather be paranoid then the father of a dead child. No amount of paranoia is too much in such situations, so far as I'm concerned.
If a chip meant his location could be tracked constantly I'd feel a lot happier. It's not likely that I'd lose sight of him, but I can say with absolute certainty that if I did *any* means of locating him would be acceptable.
yes, I know its offtopic, I said so, but still, an answer?
can someone please tell me how this tagging thing works? I can't seem to work out how to do that..