I'd hesitate to refer to the style of teaching in terms of linear vs. non-linear. Any method will fail if the student has no appreciation of the subject matter they're learning.
I initially disliked math, but my desire to create three dimensional simulations was a great inspiration. Once I had a goal, it was easier to understand the mathematics of Trigonometry, Calculus, and Linear Algebra because I wanted to put these concepts into use. If you can find personal applications that motivate you, the knowledge will come naturally.
But I do agree with one key point you raise. That is that more teachers than I care to remember *required* that students take notes in order to capture essential information. A student must be engaged visually, aurally, and kinesthetically in order to learn. And while note-taking does engage the latter, it often does so at the sake of all else. In my experience, the most successful instructors have been those that provided documentation detailing the concepts and drawings for the session. Students should be free to listen and watch, initially engaging problem solving through discussion.
It would be a gross misuse if teaching was limited to the universities and colleges.
Why not secondary education where the current limit of teachers has resulted in absurdly large class sizes? When I think of the negatives, they're outweighed by the culture such a program would create. To become a teacher, one must reach out to another and help them to grow.
While I agree that complex configuration files are a bane to development, I disagree with the assertion that J2EE requires them. ORM technologies like JPA are utilizing Java 5 annotations to declare configuration inline with code instead of XML. Frameworks like Wicket and GWT are providing developers with Java solutions to UI that are devoid of XML configuration, JSP, and markup-heavy implementations. IMHO, Wicket deserves to be called a breath of fresh air.
I do think it's a mistake for J2EE to include a particular view framework in its specification. JSF, while an innovation in the 90's, is simply a pig wearing lipstick compared to some of the new frameworks out there. Frameworks that, for example, are built on AJAX instead of including it as an afterthought.
I suppose the bewildering set of choices may be the root of the problem here. But if you make the effort to do your research, you'll find that many of your assumptions are incorrect.
Anything *D (at least optical) media needs to go. Why hold on to a storage medium that scratches, can be lost, has a shorter lifespan than most people realize, and is too big to fit into your back pocket?
No, reaching the stars is not only possible, it is inevitable. Though the energies required are far beyond our current capabilities, they are not beyond our imagination. And we have a long history of bringing our dreams to reality. It will just take time. We're barely a type I civilization on the Kardashev Scale. As we progress to type II and beyond, our ability to both harness and direct energy will enable several important innovations:
The ability to achieve high velocities (at least.5 C)
The ability to create vehicles of exceedingly large scale (100 - 10000 km in radius)
The ability to bend space time
It may take thousands, perhaps tens of thousands of years before such engineering feats are possible. But the idea is that we'll either figure out how to bend spacetime to travel great distances (a Star Gate scenario), or we'll develop vehicles that will be large enough to both sustain a population of people over multi-generational voyages as well as withstand collisions with interstellar debris at the velocities required. Such a vehicle would be more akin to a small moon hollowed out and outfitted with propulsion than anything in NASA's current fleet. Activities such as acceleration and deceleration might take several decades. Reaching even an intermediate destination could require hundreds of years. But given a large enough environment and a determined populace, reaching the stars is well within our grasp.
IIRC, particles from space, so-called "cosmic rays", strike the upper atmosphere with more energy than even the LHC will be able to manage. Therefore, if it's possible to make singularities on the quantum scale, it's already happening several miles above your head.
While projects like Azureus, Gimp, and countless others have originated or flourished in some form on SourceForge, far more telling cases for the power of open source are the repositories like the Apache Software Foundation. While most Apache projects are based on Java, it's impact on the open source community (and software in general) can't be overstated.
That aside, it's really hard to classify open source projects from the perspective of applications. Many of the projects are utilities, satisfying a narrow solution like reporting, connectivity, adaptation, etc. These types of releases will never see broad interest from end users, but will instead find their niche within the development community.
But, if the real focus is what open source has to offer the end user, SourceForge provides ranking for each of the projects. The higher the rank, the more activity the project has enjoyed, the more downloads that have been made. It's a fairly reliable indicator on the success of the project.
It will allow the US Navy to miss targets from much further away. They've been able to pair GPS with artillery shells, a system that can withstand the ~100g forces of cannon fire (see Excalibur). I imagine that this sort of configuration could be applied to railgun shells.
As far as topology is concerned, two-dimensional surfaces with no boundary (those that wrap around and close in on themselves, as our skin does) have essentially only one distinguishing feature: the number of holes in the surface. A surface with no holes is a sphere; a surface with one hole is a torus...
Slashdot Mirror
I'd hesitate to refer to the style of teaching in terms of linear vs. non-linear. Any method will fail if the student has no appreciation of the subject matter they're learning.
I initially disliked math, but my desire to create three dimensional simulations was a great inspiration. Once I had a goal, it was easier to understand the mathematics of Trigonometry, Calculus, and Linear Algebra because I wanted to put these concepts into use. If you can find personal applications that motivate you, the knowledge will come naturally.
But I do agree with one key point you raise. That is that more teachers than I care to remember *required* that students take notes in order to capture essential information. A student must be engaged visually, aurally, and kinesthetically in order to learn. And while note-taking does engage the latter, it often does so at the sake of all else. In my experience, the most successful instructors have been those that provided documentation detailing the concepts and drawings for the session. Students should be free to listen and watch, initially engaging problem solving through discussion.
It would be a gross misuse if teaching was limited to the universities and colleges.
Why not secondary education where the current limit of teachers has resulted in absurdly large class sizes? When I think of the negatives, they're outweighed by the culture such a program would create. To become a teacher, one must reach out to another and help them to grow.
While I agree that complex configuration files are a bane to development, I disagree with the assertion that J2EE requires them. ORM technologies like JPA are utilizing Java 5 annotations to declare configuration inline with code instead of XML. Frameworks like Wicket and GWT are providing developers with Java solutions to UI that are devoid of XML configuration, JSP, and markup-heavy implementations. IMHO, Wicket deserves to be called a breath of fresh air.
I do think it's a mistake for J2EE to include a particular view framework in its specification. JSF, while an innovation in the 90's, is simply a pig wearing lipstick compared to some of the new frameworks out there. Frameworks that, for example, are built on AJAX instead of including it as an afterthought.
I suppose the bewildering set of choices may be the root of the problem here. But if you make the effort to do your research, you'll find that many of your assumptions are incorrect.
Anything *D (at least optical) media needs to go. Why hold on to a storage medium that scratches, can be lost, has a shorter lifespan than most people realize, and is too big to fit into your back pocket?
- The ability to achieve high velocities (at least
.5 C)
- The ability to create vehicles of exceedingly large scale (100 - 10000 km in radius)
- The ability to bend space time
It may take thousands, perhaps tens of thousands of years before such engineering feats are possible. But the idea is that we'll either figure out how to bend spacetime to travel great distances (a Star Gate scenario), or we'll develop vehicles that will be large enough to both sustain a population of people over multi-generational voyages as well as withstand collisions with interstellar debris at the velocities required. Such a vehicle would be more akin to a small moon hollowed out and outfitted with propulsion than anything in NASA's current fleet. Activities such as acceleration and deceleration might take several decades. Reaching even an intermediate destination could require hundreds of years. But given a large enough environment and a determined populace, reaching the stars is well within our grasp.IIRC, particles from space, so-called "cosmic rays", strike the upper atmosphere with more energy than even the LHC will be able to manage. Therefore, if it's possible to make singularities on the quantum scale, it's already happening several miles above your head.
While projects like Azureus, Gimp, and countless others have originated or flourished in some form on SourceForge, far more telling cases for the power of open source are the repositories like the Apache Software Foundation. While most Apache projects are based on Java, it's impact on the open source community (and software in general) can't be overstated.
That aside, it's really hard to classify open source projects from the perspective of applications. Many of the projects are utilities, satisfying a narrow solution like reporting, connectivity, adaptation, etc. These types of releases will never see broad interest from end users, but will instead find their niche within the development community.
But, if the real focus is what open source has to offer the end user, SourceForge provides ranking for each of the projects. The higher the rank, the more activity the project has enjoyed, the more downloads that have been made. It's a fairly reliable indicator on the success of the project.
-jjk
-sig sent to bed without supper
As far as topology is concerned, two-dimensional surfaces with no boundary (those that wrap around and close in on themselves, as our skin does) have essentially only one distinguishing feature: the number of holes in the surface. A surface with no holes is a sphere; a surface with one hole is a torus...
And a donught with no holes is a danish.