I never understood the point of any kind of exams in a comp sci class really. Some of the more theoretical ones (like the logic classes that are 'comp sci' but are really math classes), sure, it makes sense...but for an actual programming class? You want me to hand write code? What the hell is the point of that? I'm never going to need to have these things memorized -- at worst I'll have an IDE to help, at best the internet (and hell, this is coming from the guy who does all his coding in text editors...) I'm pretty sure a lot of my comp sci classes just gave exams because they were supposed to though -- usually projects were most of your grade, they just had the exams to make the administration happy I guess...
At Penn State (graduated last year) we had some GREAT introductory science profs. I'll never forget my introductory physics prof -- every other lecture he'd have some big demo of the concept he was trying to teach. From "killing" Kenny from South Park (I think he hung him to demo something about pendulums) to shooting himself into the next room on a swivel chair with a fire extinguisher (newton's laws)...great class. And during lectures he'd usually wander through the lecture hall (we're talking two hundred kids or so) to get answers to questions.
Hell, I found it was the more advanced classes where the profs didn't give a damn. I mean, some were great, others couldn't care less if you learned anything. But I can't remember a single intro class where I felt like the prof didn't care -- except Calc II, if you count that as intro. LOTS of 300 and 400 levels where you'd come in (to any section, same shit; nobody cared), sit through it, and get a multiple choice (frequently online) test. And I think my massive intro freshman courses were the only time I ever had a full handwritten essay exam...which the TAs and prof spent days or weeks carefully reading and grading.
Are they still using the 'put the password in the file header and don't actually encrypt anything so you can just strip that part of the header out with notepad and read the file anyway' method? I remember "decrypting".zip files many years ago with nothing but Notepad....
Oh, and I wish I could edit my comment to add this...but...
I don't have a cell phone with a data plan. Hell I don't even have a working MP3 player right now -- and I haven't in almost a year. I find music online, I purchase it on my computer, and I burn it to CD. How hard is that? So you have to be sitting in front of your computer to discover music. Doesn't mean you have to be sitting in front of your computer to listen to it.
In any case, people who listen to music on MP3 players are listening to music that they've bought because they've heard it elsewhere. Now what "elsewhere" are you talking about? I was under the impression that in order to listen to Internet radio without a cellular data plan, you had to be sitting in front of your computer. You mentioned "YouTube, free song downloads", but in such cases, how do listeners become aware that a particular music video exists or particular free song downloads exist?"
OK, I know I'm probably a bit unusual here, but I can think of three songs in my entire life that I have found through the radio. The most recent one was in 2006.
I find new music from my friends. I find new music from online services like Last.fm and Pandora. I find new music by going directly to the artists website and looking for new releases. I find new music by asking for forums. By looking at who artists I enjoy have performed with. Or listen to. Or by YouTube's related videos.
I can't even remember the last time I really remember hearing a radio playing. I'm also possibly younger than you -- 22 -- and that may be part of it. I don't know anyone who regularly listens to the radio. I can tell you when the last time I was listening to the radio and didn't think whatever was playing was complete garbage was -- summer of 2006. Nobody I know listens to the radio, other than my mother. Hell I know people who use iPods plugged into casette adapters that only play out of the left channel and are of such poor quality that there's constant interference...but they still think that's better than the trash on most radio stations these days.
I wonder how (or even if) the labels do this... you can't compare every new song to every existing song. It seems like it would basically be intractable to prove that.
release it online independently (and to streaming sites)
How should they promote it to listeners who aren't already streaming music in their vehicles? These listeners use FM radio because they don't already have a sufficiently expensive data plan or they aren't aware of the streaming sites.
Same way anyone else does. My dad DJs on a local radio station. Most -- actually, ALL of the music he plays, he finds himself and acquires himself. The stations have blanket licenses that cover pretty much anything, and they tell him to play whatever he wants. A lot of the music comes from iTunes on Amazon. All of which he burns to CD, combines with physical CD purchases, and plays off of those. No reason he couldn't throw some more independent artists, the problem is only licensing of it. But if it's purely about gaining listeners (which I don't see why it shouldn't be for independent labels and with how few people use radio anymore) they can just put a notice with their song that your purchase counts as a license for limited radio plays or something.
Hell, a few years back I discovered one of my current favorite artists, Mayday!, through radio plays of their song Groundhog Day. They were on SouthBeat records at the time, and the information I can find indicates SouthBeat isn't RIAA-affiliated. So how'd that get on the radio? It got popular thanks to YouTube, got listener requests, and somehow made it. Dunno if the stations have separate licensing agreements under which SouthBeat was covered, or if they created one, or if they just played it without one...but it happened.
Yes, because just like a Ferrari, putting a new battery in that phone is going to take you months of work and thousands of dollars...
I mean, seriously? The iPhones would probably be a bit tougher, but any Android devices should be at most $25 (possibly as low as $15) and half an hour's work. iPhones should just be a bit more work. And hell, depending on who you donate it to, you could possibly claim the entire phone on your taxes as a donation, so if you can get the batteries cheap enough you may even _save_ money!
Most Europeans I have met, particularly those who were only staying for a year or so, never STOPPED complaining if they had any cause to visit a hospital while here. Months later they'd still be complaining about the costs to anyone who would listen. Of course, as a recent college grad, most of those were students here on visas...and I can't imagine how you'd get health insurance in such a situation...no work, no family, not gonna be here long term...
Interesting...a few weeks ago I recall seeing an article somewhere about supposedly leaked designs for new Microsoft devices -- I think it was a portable mouse and some other things, can't remember where I saw it. But one of the comments pointed out that it was probably fake, because the Microsoft logo on the devices didn't have their usual slant, didn't have the notch in the o.....it basically looked like this one. Perhaps they weren't fake after all?
The last several albums I've purchased have been $5-$10 for ~20 tracks. So that's $0.25-$0.50 per track, with not a single one I wouldn't have purchased on a per-track basis. Well, except one (album), but that was three CDs, in a massive book, shipped from London...for around $45...Which works out to $15 per CD, IF you consider the big hardcover book as a free bonus.
Soo...you must be buying RIAA music then?
If it's an EP, $0.99 per track makes sense, but usually only if you're comparing it to retail pricing. If you only want one track, $0.99 makes sense. But for people like me who have artists they actually like and plan on getting the entire album anyway, I agree with the GP -- $0.99 per track is a bit much.
The disagreement here, I think, stems from the assumption that left = democrat and right = republican. Pretty much every self-declared "leftist" I know is, at a minimum, VERY unhappy with the democratic party. Most of them would rather vote third party than support Obama any longer. Several of them have been requesting refunds for donations made to the campaign in 2008 (knowing full well they won't get them, but it's about the statement). Most self-declared "conservatives" that I know would rather vote for Obama than Romney. But then again, I'm not in the "bible belt".
Pretty much every engineer and physical scientist I know considers themselves to be on the Libertarian side of things. Some on the right, some on the left. Many people would categorize that as 'the right' (which, in many cases, is wrong...but in many cases is certainly accurate.) But there's a COLOSSAL difference between that and the current Republican party.
Most of the scientists and science-oriented people I know in other areas tend to be on the left. But a sizable percentage of those will be voting third party rather than supporting the Dems any further.
As someone who just graduated from PSU about four months ago...yes. This. Exactly.
Actually, though, he may have been going the other direction...the closer you get to the university, the more nutcases you find trying to make excuses and actually defend the actions of people like Paterno. Shit, there was nearly a riot over them tearing down a statue of him...
I don't think it's really about when LIFE begins -- sure, they'll say that, but that's not the question. Shit, a single cell is ALIVE. My skin cells are alive, but you don't consider it murder if I get a mole removed. The question is not when it becomes ALIVE, but when it becomes a HUMAN BEING...and more specifically, when it becomes conscious. Which is hard to decide, since as far as I know we still don't really know what consciousness _is_. Of course, if the person is a bit more radical, they start talking about when it stops being a parasite....
Some targeted advertising is nice though. When it's done well, I still find it a bit creepy, but at the same time I absolutely love it. Like when I'm pricing something on Newegg, then a couple days later get an email saying 'Hey, we noticed you were looking at X, here's a bunch of coupons and sales on items in category X in the same price range you were looking!'
If they could look at my recent searches and posts and suddenly every banner ad would be 'HOME THEATER PROJECTOR XYZ, throw ratio of 1.375! 5000:1 contrast! 720p! Only $650!' I would be damn pleased...instead of 'BUY THIS CAR' for talking about my recently purchased car...
I used to have all manner of problems with Firefox memory leaks, and did have noscript installed for quite a while because of it -- but that was mostly due to crappy Flash plugins on Linux. For the past year or two I've never noticed an issue. Might be time to give scripted browsing another shot, IF memory leaks are your only concern. And particularly if you're a Linux user.
1 cent per page is insanity. Hell I don't think Google gives a cent for an ad _per click_, let alone per view. If I could get one cent per pageview of any website I put up...shit, I'd never work again!
I had adsense on a site of mine for a while. I got 3634 views, and $8.61 in payment for those, with about a.5% click-through. A tenth to a fifth of a cent per view would be a bit more reasonable.
Side Note: When I turned to youtube for some tutorials I found myself losing patience with video because (to me any how) it just plods along, I could read a tutorial much faster than I can watch it.
That depends how well you know the subject. When I was attempting to use my mother's sewing machine for a quick repair while home from college a few years back, I couldn't figure out how to get the damn thing to work (It's an old machine -- much more complex than newer ones as I learned...). Every tutorial would have a step something along the lines of 'Next, thread the bobbin'. That's it. The really good ones maybe had a 'before' and 'after' photo, which was entirely useless. Once I figure out what the hell a bobbin even WAS, I still had no clue how to actually thread it. Finally managed to figure it out once I found a video tutorial with a similar aged machine.
Granted, that's more a problem with all the tutorials I found being crap...or maybe they just assumed you had _some_ idea of what you were doing. Even though the video pretty much assumed you knew how to do it already (probably in the instructions for the machine, which probably disappeared a few decades ago,) it still showed it happening because it was a video. Point being...videos can include a lot of things you may not think about and may not even intend to include. And those can help.
But yea, in 95% of cases...just gimme the damn text. Although I will say that I find video FAR preferable to audio. Can't even describe how annoyed I get when I find something that looks quite interesting online...only to find out it's only available as a podcast.
I live in _Rhode Island_ and I still see those 'known to cause cancer in the state of California' stickers on damn near everything I buy! Not on doors and shops and such of course, but absolutely any piece of furniture, pretty much any appliance, bedding...christ I think I saw one on my _towels_! Actually that was probably about not meeting California fire safety regs. But yea, everything except food that I buy up here on the opposite end of the country is known to the state of California to either cause cancer or be unacceptably flammable...
Unless it's genetically modified, in which case planting the seeds will get you sued by Monsanto for patent violation. Hell, they go after people who _don't even plant anything_. If your farm gets cross-pollinated by the GM crops at the farm next door, you can get sued by Monsanto. it's happened before.
Slashdot Mirror
I never understood the point of any kind of exams in a comp sci class really. Some of the more theoretical ones (like the logic classes that are 'comp sci' but are really math classes), sure, it makes sense...but for an actual programming class? You want me to hand write code? What the hell is the point of that? I'm never going to need to have these things memorized -- at worst I'll have an IDE to help, at best the internet (and hell, this is coming from the guy who does all his coding in text editors...) I'm pretty sure a lot of my comp sci classes just gave exams because they were supposed to though -- usually projects were most of your grade, they just had the exams to make the administration happy I guess...
At Penn State (graduated last year) we had some GREAT introductory science profs. I'll never forget my introductory physics prof -- every other lecture he'd have some big demo of the concept he was trying to teach. From "killing" Kenny from South Park (I think he hung him to demo something about pendulums) to shooting himself into the next room on a swivel chair with a fire extinguisher (newton's laws)...great class. And during lectures he'd usually wander through the lecture hall (we're talking two hundred kids or so) to get answers to questions.
Hell, I found it was the more advanced classes where the profs didn't give a damn. I mean, some were great, others couldn't care less if you learned anything. But I can't remember a single intro class where I felt like the prof didn't care -- except Calc II, if you count that as intro. LOTS of 300 and 400 levels where you'd come in (to any section, same shit; nobody cared), sit through it, and get a multiple choice (frequently online) test. And I think my massive intro freshman courses were the only time I ever had a full handwritten essay exam...which the TAs and prof spent days or weeks carefully reading and grading.
Are they still using the 'put the password in the file header and don't actually encrypt anything so you can just strip that part of the header out with notepad and read the file anyway' method? I remember "decrypting" .zip files many years ago with nothing but Notepad....
In Capitalist Amerika, servers monitor YOU!
I bet these admins have some great server monitors^W^W monitor servers...
Oh, and I wish I could edit my comment to add this...but...
I don't have a cell phone with a data plan. Hell I don't even have a working MP3 player right now -- and I haven't in almost a year. I find music online, I purchase it on my computer, and I burn it to CD. How hard is that? So you have to be sitting in front of your computer to discover music. Doesn't mean you have to be sitting in front of your computer to listen to it.
In any case, people who listen to music on MP3 players are listening to music that they've bought because they've heard it elsewhere. Now what "elsewhere" are you talking about? I was under the impression that in order to listen to Internet radio without a cellular data plan, you had to be sitting in front of your computer. You mentioned "YouTube, free song downloads", but in such cases, how do listeners become aware that a particular music video exists or particular free song downloads exist?"
OK, I know I'm probably a bit unusual here, but I can think of three songs in my entire life that I have found through the radio. The most recent one was in 2006.
I find new music from my friends. I find new music from online services like Last.fm and Pandora. I find new music by going directly to the artists website and looking for new releases. I find new music by asking for forums. By looking at who artists I enjoy have performed with. Or listen to. Or by YouTube's related videos.
I can't even remember the last time I really remember hearing a radio playing. I'm also possibly younger than you -- 22 -- and that may be part of it. I don't know anyone who regularly listens to the radio. I can tell you when the last time I was listening to the radio and didn't think whatever was playing was complete garbage was -- summer of 2006. Nobody I know listens to the radio, other than my mother. Hell I know people who use iPods plugged into casette adapters that only play out of the left channel and are of such poor quality that there's constant interference...but they still think that's better than the trash on most radio stations these days.
I wonder how (or even if) the labels do this ... you can't compare every new song to every existing song. It seems like it would basically be intractable to prove that.
Easily -- release it and see who complains!
release it online independently (and to streaming sites)
How should they promote it to listeners who aren't already streaming music in their vehicles? These listeners use FM radio because they don't already have a sufficiently expensive data plan or they aren't aware of the streaming sites.
Same way anyone else does. My dad DJs on a local radio station. Most -- actually, ALL of the music he plays, he finds himself and acquires himself. The stations have blanket licenses that cover pretty much anything, and they tell him to play whatever he wants. A lot of the music comes from iTunes on Amazon. All of which he burns to CD, combines with physical CD purchases, and plays off of those. No reason he couldn't throw some more independent artists, the problem is only licensing of it. But if it's purely about gaining listeners (which I don't see why it shouldn't be for independent labels and with how few people use radio anymore) they can just put a notice with their song that your purchase counts as a license for limited radio plays or something.
Hell, a few years back I discovered one of my current favorite artists, Mayday!, through radio plays of their song Groundhog Day. They were on SouthBeat records at the time, and the information I can find indicates SouthBeat isn't RIAA-affiliated. So how'd that get on the radio? It got popular thanks to YouTube, got listener requests, and somehow made it. Dunno if the stations have separate licensing agreements under which SouthBeat was covered, or if they created one, or if they just played it without one...but it happened.
Yes, because just like a Ferrari, putting a new battery in that phone is going to take you months of work and thousands of dollars...
I mean, seriously? The iPhones would probably be a bit tougher, but any Android devices should be at most $25 (possibly as low as $15) and half an hour's work. iPhones should just be a bit more work. And hell, depending on who you donate it to, you could possibly claim the entire phone on your taxes as a donation, so if you can get the batteries cheap enough you may even _save_ money!
Most Europeans I have met, particularly those who were only staying for a year or so, never STOPPED complaining if they had any cause to visit a hospital while here. Months later they'd still be complaining about the costs to anyone who would listen. Of course, as a recent college grad, most of those were students here on visas...and I can't imagine how you'd get health insurance in such a situation...no work, no family, not gonna be here long term...
Oh, it was the 'wedge' mouse, and it's already official. Well, guess that clears that one up!
Interesting...a few weeks ago I recall seeing an article somewhere about supposedly leaked designs for new Microsoft devices -- I think it was a portable mouse and some other things, can't remember where I saw it. But one of the comments pointed out that it was probably fake, because the Microsoft logo on the devices didn't have their usual slant, didn't have the notch in the o.....it basically looked like this one. Perhaps they weren't fake after all?
Dear rest of the world,
We're trying, but as you can see in the other replies, we've got some real idiots to deal with...
- the (intelligent citizens of the) USA
The last several albums I've purchased have been $5-$10 for ~20 tracks. So that's $0.25-$0.50 per track, with not a single one I wouldn't have purchased on a per-track basis. Well, except one (album), but that was three CDs, in a massive book, shipped from London...for around $45...Which works out to $15 per CD, IF you consider the big hardcover book as a free bonus.
Soo...you must be buying RIAA music then?
If it's an EP, $0.99 per track makes sense, but usually only if you're comparing it to retail pricing. If you only want one track, $0.99 makes sense. But for people like me who have artists they actually like and plan on getting the entire album anyway, I agree with the GP -- $0.99 per track is a bit much.
Tells you what, that he reads Slashdot?
http://news.slashdot.org/story/12/08/07/1910238/bitcoin-based-drug-market-silk-road-thriving-with-2-million-in-monthly-sales (posted about two weeks ago if you missed it)
Other than some T-shirts and novelty things, and the (no longer accepted) EFF donations, that's the only use of Bitcoin I've yet read about...
The disagreement here, I think, stems from the assumption that left = democrat and right = republican. Pretty much every self-declared "leftist" I know is, at a minimum, VERY unhappy with the democratic party. Most of them would rather vote third party than support Obama any longer. Several of them have been requesting refunds for donations made to the campaign in 2008 (knowing full well they won't get them, but it's about the statement). Most self-declared "conservatives" that I know would rather vote for Obama than Romney. But then again, I'm not in the "bible belt".
Pretty much every engineer and physical scientist I know considers themselves to be on the Libertarian side of things. Some on the right, some on the left. Many people would categorize that as 'the right' (which, in many cases, is wrong...but in many cases is certainly accurate.) But there's a COLOSSAL difference between that and the current Republican party.
Most of the scientists and science-oriented people I know in other areas tend to be on the left. But a sizable percentage of those will be voting third party rather than supporting the Dems any further.
As someone who just graduated from PSU about four months ago...yes. This. Exactly.
Actually, though, he may have been going the other direction...the closer you get to the university, the more nutcases you find trying to make excuses and actually defend the actions of people like Paterno. Shit, there was nearly a riot over them tearing down a statue of him...
I don't think it's really about when LIFE begins -- sure, they'll say that, but that's not the question. Shit, a single cell is ALIVE. My skin cells are alive, but you don't consider it murder if I get a mole removed. The question is not when it becomes ALIVE, but when it becomes a HUMAN BEING...and more specifically, when it becomes conscious. Which is hard to decide, since as far as I know we still don't really know what consciousness _is_. Of course, if the person is a bit more radical, they start talking about when it stops being a parasite....
Some targeted advertising is nice though. When it's done well, I still find it a bit creepy, but at the same time I absolutely love it. Like when I'm pricing something on Newegg, then a couple days later get an email saying 'Hey, we noticed you were looking at X, here's a bunch of coupons and sales on items in category X in the same price range you were looking!'
If they could look at my recent searches and posts and suddenly every banner ad would be 'HOME THEATER PROJECTOR XYZ, throw ratio of 1.375! 5000:1 contrast! 720p! Only $650!' I would be damn pleased...instead of 'BUY THIS CAR' for talking about my recently purchased car...
I used to have all manner of problems with Firefox memory leaks, and did have noscript installed for quite a while because of it -- but that was mostly due to crappy Flash plugins on Linux. For the past year or two I've never noticed an issue. Might be time to give scripted browsing another shot, IF memory leaks are your only concern. And particularly if you're a Linux user.
1 cent per page is insanity. Hell I don't think Google gives a cent for an ad _per click_, let alone per view. If I could get one cent per pageview of any website I put up...shit, I'd never work again!
I had adsense on a site of mine for a while. I got 3634 views, and $8.61 in payment for those, with about a .5% click-through. A tenth to a fifth of a cent per view would be a bit more reasonable.
Side Note: When I turned to youtube for some tutorials I found myself losing patience with video because (to me any how) it just plods along, I could read a tutorial much faster than I can watch it.
That depends how well you know the subject. When I was attempting to use my mother's sewing machine for a quick repair while home from college a few years back, I couldn't figure out how to get the damn thing to work (It's an old machine -- much more complex than newer ones as I learned...). Every tutorial would have a step something along the lines of 'Next, thread the bobbin'. That's it. The really good ones maybe had a 'before' and 'after' photo, which was entirely useless. Once I figure out what the hell a bobbin even WAS, I still had no clue how to actually thread it. Finally managed to figure it out once I found a video tutorial with a similar aged machine.
Granted, that's more a problem with all the tutorials I found being crap...or maybe they just assumed you had _some_ idea of what you were doing. Even though the video pretty much assumed you knew how to do it already (probably in the instructions for the machine, which probably disappeared a few decades ago,) it still showed it happening because it was a video. Point being...videos can include a lot of things you may not think about and may not even intend to include. And those can help.
But yea, in 95% of cases...just gimme the damn text. Although I will say that I find video FAR preferable to audio. Can't even describe how annoyed I get when I find something that looks quite interesting online...only to find out it's only available as a podcast.
Actually I'm pretty sure at least the case I had in mind was in Canada...
I live in _Rhode Island_ and I still see those 'known to cause cancer in the state of California' stickers on damn near everything I buy! Not on doors and shops and such of course, but absolutely any piece of furniture, pretty much any appliance, bedding...christ I think I saw one on my _towels_! Actually that was probably about not meeting California fire safety regs. But yea, everything except food that I buy up here on the opposite end of the country is known to the state of California to either cause cancer or be unacceptably flammable...
Unless it's genetically modified, in which case planting the seeds will get you sued by Monsanto for patent violation. Hell, they go after people who _don't even plant anything_. If your farm gets cross-pollinated by the GM crops at the farm next door, you can get sued by Monsanto. it's happened before.