I was required to take four classes in a foreign language in college. It wasn't something I really wanted to do, but in retrospect I'm glad I did it.
I chose Spanish. I recall some of it, which is occasionally useful, but more important was learning a (albeit slightly) different language than English, in order to view natural language from a more abstract point of view. I also found great value in learning more about Spanish / Central-South American culture as part of the course sequence.
If you really get into it, you may be able to make technical presentations in different languages, which would likely be useful to your career in some way, if you let it.
I too do not see anything in the Bible that states the earth is 6000 years old. The historical records suggest that God created Adam approximately 6000 years ago, but how old is the earth? The Bible really doesn't say, and I'm happy to accept whatever answers that science provides.
Noah Webster is considered one of the great American educators, and was also a devout Christian. He believed strongly in the utility of education, but also believed that teaching religion and Bible-based morality were a central part of education. I am inclined to agree, and when I look at science with the thought somewhere in mind, "where is God in this?", I see orderly design in the natural world. I see orderly design in mathematics that were developed to model the natural world. I think it's elegant, and beautiful, and to me, it points to the Creator.
Hmm. Well, I for one have been using Slashdot for a lot longer than I've had an account -- just reading and posting anonymously. When I finally made an account, the UIDs were approaching one million. I think it'd be cool to have gotten a low UID, but, oh well, I didn't.
I've been in and around the GNU Project for nearly ten years. For a while, a couple of years ago, they did have some major problems with spam on the mailing lists, but this has been largely cleared up now.
That said, a lot of the focus of the FSF employees seems to be on things administrative and political, with a lot less emphasis on software development than there used to be. While what they are doing now has its place, I would like to see them get some more development folks on staff, to work full-time and help coordinate volunteer programmers, but I don't know if this will be happening any time soon.
- Professor E. McSquared's Calculus Primer, by Howard Swann and John Johnson. What? 8th graders are too young for calculus? No problem. I discovered this book when I was about seven years old, as my mom was using it in a calculus class. It was years before I understood much of the math in the book, but I greatly enjoyed the comics and illustrations. As a seven-year-old, this book did not teach me math, but it made me decide that math must be something fun and enjoyable, and that notion has stuck with me ever since.
- The movie "I.Q.". A quaint romantic comedy, this doesn't even try to really teach math or science, but again, it inspires the viewer to think that math and science are fun and enjoyable topics.
- Good science fiction. This topic has already come up in this thread, but I'll toss out a few opinions of my own. If you can find them, there was a series of books, "The Spaceship Under the Apple Tree" by Louis Slobdikin. I remember reading these in 5th grade or so, and they might be "too young" for 8th graders. Sadly out of print either way, but these books also helped me see science as a fun and enjoyable thing. Some "Star Trek" and some "Dr. Who" is good for this sort of thing as well, but avoid newer "Star Trek", and either way, watch it first yourself to verify useful content. Some episodes are better than others in this regard.
- If you can persuade them, maybe get a hold of some of the old Infocom text adventure games, and have them play these. Especially the sci-fi oriented ones, like "Planetfall" and "Starcross". These not only build up interest in science, but also encourage reading skills, build vocabulary, and help teach problem solving. I don't know why these ever died off... but I shan't digress on that at this point in time.:-)
After seeing lots of colleagues with certifications framed and hanging on their cubicle walls, I thought maybe my career would be brighter if I too got some certifications. So I decided to get the CompTIA Security+ certification. I bought a "study guide", inhaled said study guide, and passed the exam on my first try.
While I certainly did learn some things about information security, the certification itself seems to serve basically as proof that I could read and understand the study guide.
I went ahead and framed the printed certificate and put it on my desk. I have no plans to get any more.
Just for the record, I have been very happy with OpenHosting (www.openhosting.com). You don't get A LOT of storage space like some of the standard non-VPS hosting services offer, but the price is quite reasonable, support and up-time is good. Now, of course, I'm not sure that random people on Slashdot qualify as reliable sources of review material...:-)
Except in weird cases, you can photograph anything you want to from a public location. While you might not be able to go INSIDE Wal-Mart and take pictures [it's private property, and they have every right to make you stop], you're free to stand on the public sidewalk and take a picture of the exterior.
Many smaller businesses don't even care if you take pictures inside anyway... it's mostly the big chain stores that disallow it and, ironically enough, also tend to be less interesting to photograph in the first place.
Hal Leonard claimed that the tabs are inaccurate, made by kids. If the tabs are really inaccurate, then I would think that the users of the tabs wouldn't be happy with them, and this alleged tab black market would disappear.
The tabs must, on the contrary, be reasonably accurate for Hal Leonard to be noticing any loss of business, which, as TFA explains, they probably aren't.
I've taken classes in which programming languages were taught, and I've read books teaching programming languages and various web resources. But these are just ways of conveying facts about a language into your mind. The best way to really learn how to use a programming language is to use it.
If you're sharp, you can memorize the syntax of a language by inhaling reference manuals, and that's great! But to really KNOW the language in a meaningful way, you have to write programs in it.
To comment a bit on another topic brought up in this discussion... many "popular" languages are reasonably similar. C/C++/Java/C#... it would likely do you good to learn languages in a totally different "paradigm"... learn some Lisp, and some Ocaml, and some Python, and maybe even some assembly language. Learn them (i.e., use them) until you feel you really "get" the language. Why? Because languages really are just formality on top of general principles. The wider variety of languages you learn, the better you can understand the core principles... which do not change from language to language.
I first read about Fortress, oh, about a year ago. This is the version 0.1 release, coming out of Sun's research lab. Frankly, I'm surprised that they are releasing as much as they are so soon! I suspect that a good open source compiler will come along eventually.
They were a great live band, and you're right, "Please Please Me" does give us a good hint as to what they sounded like. Even around that time, though, when they first got started on EMI, Martin was helping to some degree.
I do not doubt that they would have been (and indeed were) a great band without EMI; all I was trying to say was that the label provided them with resources that, most likely, they wouldn't have otherwise had.
There can be real value in big labels. What if, say, the Beatles had tried to make it without a label. Would they be able to succeed today? Maybe. But part of what made them so great was the contributions made by folks like their producer George Martin and the various sound engineers they worked with. They added real tangible value to the music, especially as the Beatles started wanting more complex arrangements. They might not have ever come together if not for the recording label that employed Martin and the engineers.
On the other hand, today we have so much great music technology that it's much easier to make a whole wonderful recording without leaving your bedroom. But you still have to know how to use that technology. Some bands do. Some do not. For those that do not, the labels may still offer some benefits.
That said, some of the labels also seem to offer other things that aren't necessarily beneficial to the artists...
Spam has been my main problem with GMail as well, but not in the same way you describe. I don't recall ever seeing more than two spams per day sneak into my regular GMail inbox, but I get A LOT more spam into the spam-box with GMail than ever before. A large percentage of this spam is going directly to my gmail.com address.
This wouldn't be particularly odd, except I have rarely given out my gmail.com address, certainly far, far less than other addresses with I have forward to GMail. Perhaps the popularity of the GMail service prompts spammers to try boatloads of random gmail.com addresses moreso than they do with other less popular domains?
I still wear a watch. Up until a few months ago, it was a watch that did nothing but tell time, no less. The glass crystal was destroyed while someone presumably more capable than I was replacing the battery, and I now wear a replacement that also tells me the day of the month.
Why wear a watch? I spend many of my hours awake in front of a desktop or laptop computer. I spend my hours asleep right next to a digital clock. I carry a Palm Treo 650 that can tell me what time it is anywhere on the planet. Yet, I still find a wristwatch the most natural way to find out what time it is.
Maybe so. I work for a large engineering corporation, and I often have minimal idea what folks in other groups in my department are doing, much less those in other departments altogether.
There's nothing special about being a musician. You can (and, in my opinion, should) be seeking to do the exact same thing. It's about building assets.
When I go to work writing software for my employer, I help them build assets (goods or services that generate income) in exchange for a paycheck. If I stop working, I don't get any more paycheck, but the work that I did may very well continue to make money for my (then former) employer.
On the other hand, I could choose to write software for myself. Form my own business, market the software, and sell it directly. In that case, it's conceivable that I could write a software package that is useful and (sufficiently) bug-free, and continue selling copies of it long after I stopped working on it.
I could write a novel, market it, sell it, and continue selling copies of it long after I stopped working on writing it.
I could produce musical recordings, market them, sell them, and continue selling copies of them long after I stopped producing them.
Then the inheritance that I leave to my children consists not only of liquid cash, but assets in the form of music, writings, and software that will continue to generate cash as long as people are interested in buying them.
And it's not about assuming that your children will be unable to generate money of their own. Teach them what you have done. Teach them to build their own assets.
Yes, such a course would be very useful. Some people are already teaching courses like this. (See, for example, http://philip.greenspun.com/seia/ )
One difficulty with courses like this is that it puts a different kind of responsibility on the instructor as well as the students. The instructor doesn't merely stand before the class, pontificate for 45 minutes twice a week, and grade routine problems sets and examinations. Rather, the students have to (either independently or in consultation with a "client") build a real, working piece of software. The instructor has to do more mentoring than lecturing, and will have to spend more time and thought grading what the students come up with.
It's about turning CS students into engineers, rather than just programmers, and it's an extremely worthwhile thing to do.
Slashdot Mirror
I was required to take four classes in a foreign language in college. It wasn't something I really wanted to do, but in retrospect I'm glad I did it.
I chose Spanish. I recall some of it, which is occasionally useful, but more important was learning a (albeit slightly) different language than English, in order to view natural language from a more abstract point of view. I also found great value in learning more about Spanish / Central-South American culture as part of the course sequence.
If you really get into it, you may be able to make technical presentations in different languages, which would likely be useful to your career in some way, if you let it.
http://www.gazetteonline.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=2007711040001
Thank you, my sentiments exactly.
I too do not see anything in the Bible that states the earth is 6000 years old. The historical records suggest that God created Adam approximately 6000 years ago, but how old is the earth? The Bible really doesn't say, and I'm happy to accept whatever answers that science provides.
Noah Webster is considered one of the great American educators, and was also a devout Christian. He believed strongly in the utility of education, but also believed that teaching religion and Bible-based morality were a central part of education. I am inclined to agree, and when I look at science with the thought somewhere in mind, "where is God in this?", I see orderly design in the natural world. I see orderly design in mathematics that were developed to model the natural world. I think it's elegant, and beautiful, and to me, it points to the Creator.
Hmm. Well, I for one have been using Slashdot for a lot longer than I've had an account -- just reading and posting anonymously. When I finally made an account, the UIDs were approaching one million. I think it'd be cool to have gotten a low UID, but, oh well, I didn't.
I've been in and around the GNU Project for nearly ten years. For a while, a couple of years ago, they did have some major problems with spam on the mailing lists, but this has been largely cleared up now.
That said, a lot of the focus of the FSF employees seems to be on things administrative and political, with a lot less emphasis on software development than there used to be. While what they are doing now has its place, I would like to see them get some more development folks on staff, to work full-time and help coordinate volunteer programmers, but I don't know if this will be happening any time soon.
- Professor E. McSquared's Calculus Primer, by Howard Swann and John Johnson. What? 8th graders are too young for calculus? No problem. I discovered this book when I was about seven years old, as my mom was using it in a calculus class. It was years before I understood much of the math in the book, but I greatly enjoyed the comics and illustrations. As a seven-year-old, this book did not teach me math, but it made me decide that math must be something fun and enjoyable, and that notion has stuck with me ever since.
:-)
- The movie "I.Q.". A quaint romantic comedy, this doesn't even try to really teach math or science, but again, it inspires the viewer to think that math and science are fun and enjoyable topics.
- Good science fiction. This topic has already come up in this thread, but I'll toss out a few opinions of my own. If you can find them, there was a series of books, "The Spaceship Under the Apple Tree" by Louis Slobdikin. I remember reading these in 5th grade or so, and they might be "too young" for 8th graders. Sadly out of print either way, but these books also helped me see science as a fun and enjoyable thing. Some "Star Trek" and some "Dr. Who" is good for this sort of thing as well, but avoid newer "Star Trek", and either way, watch it first yourself to verify useful content. Some episodes are better than others in this regard.
- If you can persuade them, maybe get a hold of some of the old Infocom text adventure games, and have them play these. Especially the sci-fi oriented ones, like "Planetfall" and "Starcross". These not only build up interest in science, but also encourage reading skills, build vocabulary, and help teach problem solving. I don't know why these ever died off... but I shan't digress on that at this point in time.
Well, then, any novices who join in here may gain some experience!
After seeing lots of colleagues with certifications framed and hanging on their cubicle walls, I thought maybe my career would be brighter if I too got some certifications. So I decided to get the CompTIA Security+ certification. I bought a "study guide", inhaled said study guide, and passed the exam on my first try.
While I certainly did learn some things about information security, the certification itself seems to serve basically as proof that I could read and understand the study guide.
I went ahead and framed the printed certificate and put it on my desk. I have no plans to get any more.
GNU's Not Unix!
Just for the record, I have been very happy with OpenHosting (www.openhosting.com). You don't get A LOT of storage space like some of the standard non-VPS hosting services offer, but the price is quite reasonable, support and up-time is good. Now, of course, I'm not sure that random people on Slashdot qualify as reliable sources of review material... :-)
Except in weird cases, you can photograph anything you want to from a public location. While you might not be able to go INSIDE Wal-Mart and take pictures [it's private property, and they have every right to make you stop], you're free to stand on the public sidewalk and take a picture of the exterior.
Many smaller businesses don't even care if you take pictures inside anyway... it's mostly the big chain stores that disallow it and, ironically enough, also tend to be less interesting to photograph in the first place.
No mod points today, but just because it's true doesn't mean it's not funny. :-)
Hal Leonard claimed that the tabs are inaccurate, made by kids. If the tabs are really inaccurate, then I would think that the users of the tabs wouldn't be happy with them, and this alleged tab black market would disappear.
The tabs must, on the contrary, be reasonably accurate for Hal Leonard to be noticing any loss of business, which, as TFA explains, they probably aren't.
If they aren't going to discuss it publicly, then who exactly are they going to discuss it with privately?
I've taken classes in which programming languages were taught, and I've read books teaching programming languages and various web resources. But these are just ways of conveying facts about a language into your mind. The best way to really learn how to use a programming language is to use it.
If you're sharp, you can memorize the syntax of a language by inhaling reference manuals, and that's great! But to really KNOW the language in a meaningful way, you have to write programs in it.
To comment a bit on another topic brought up in this discussion... many "popular" languages are reasonably similar. C/C++/Java/C#... it would likely do you good to learn languages in a totally different "paradigm"... learn some Lisp, and some Ocaml, and some Python, and maybe even some assembly language. Learn them (i.e., use them) until you feel you really "get" the language. Why? Because languages really are just formality on top of general principles. The wider variety of languages you learn, the better you can understand the core principles... which do not change from language to language.
I first read about Fortress, oh, about a year ago. This is the version 0.1 release, coming out of Sun's research lab. Frankly, I'm surprised that they are releasing as much as they are so soon! I suspect that a good open source compiler will come along eventually.
They were a great live band, and you're right, "Please Please Me" does give us a good hint as to what they sounded like. Even around that time, though, when they first got started on EMI, Martin was helping to some degree.
I do not doubt that they would have been (and indeed were) a great band without EMI; all I was trying to say was that the label provided them with resources that, most likely, they wouldn't have otherwise had.
There can be real value in big labels. What if, say, the Beatles had tried to make it without a label. Would they be able to succeed today? Maybe. But part of what made them so great was the contributions made by folks like their producer George Martin and the various sound engineers they worked with. They added real tangible value to the music, especially as the Beatles started wanting more complex arrangements. They might not have ever come together if not for the recording label that employed Martin and the engineers. On the other hand, today we have so much great music technology that it's much easier to make a whole wonderful recording without leaving your bedroom. But you still have to know how to use that technology. Some bands do. Some do not. For those that do not, the labels may still offer some benefits. That said, some of the labels also seem to offer other things that aren't necessarily beneficial to the artists...
Spam has been my main problem with GMail as well, but not in the same way you describe. I don't recall ever seeing more than two spams per day sneak into my regular GMail inbox, but I get A LOT more spam into the spam-box with GMail than ever before. A large percentage of this spam is going directly to my gmail.com address.
This wouldn't be particularly odd, except I have rarely given out my gmail.com address, certainly far, far less than other addresses with I have forward to GMail. Perhaps the popularity of the GMail service prompts spammers to try boatloads of random gmail.com addresses moreso than they do with other less popular domains?
Eh, I've been using a lot of webmail for a few years now (it IS convenient), but I still use RMAIL in GNU Emacs too... :-)
I still wear a watch. Up until a few months ago, it was a watch that did nothing but tell time, no less. The glass crystal was destroyed while someone presumably more capable than I was replacing the battery, and I now wear a replacement that also tells me the day of the month.
Why wear a watch? I spend many of my hours awake in front of a desktop or laptop computer. I spend my hours asleep right next to a digital clock. I carry a Palm Treo 650 that can tell me what time it is anywhere on the planet. Yet, I still find a wristwatch the most natural way to find out what time it is.
Maybe so. I work for a large engineering corporation, and I often have minimal idea what folks in other groups in my department are doing, much less those in other departments altogether.
There's nothing special about being a musician. You can (and, in my opinion, should) be seeking to do the exact same thing. It's about building assets.
When I go to work writing software for my employer, I help them build assets (goods or services that generate income) in exchange for a paycheck. If I stop working, I don't get any more paycheck, but the work that I did may very well continue to make money for my (then former) employer.
On the other hand, I could choose to write software for myself. Form my own business, market the software, and sell it directly. In that case, it's conceivable that I could write a software package that is useful and (sufficiently) bug-free, and continue selling copies of it long after I stopped working on it.
I could write a novel, market it, sell it, and continue selling copies of it long after I stopped working on writing it.
I could produce musical recordings, market them, sell them, and continue selling copies of them long after I stopped producing them.
Then the inheritance that I leave to my children consists not only of liquid cash, but assets in the form of music, writings, and software that will continue to generate cash as long as people are interested in buying them.
And it's not about assuming that your children will be unable to generate money of their own. Teach them what you have done. Teach them to build their own assets.
Yes, such a course would be very useful. Some people are already teaching courses like this. (See, for example, http://philip.greenspun.com/seia/ )
One difficulty with courses like this is that it puts a different kind of responsibility on the instructor as well as the students. The instructor doesn't merely stand before the class, pontificate for 45 minutes twice a week, and grade routine problems sets and examinations. Rather, the students have to (either independently or in consultation with a "client") build a real, working piece of software. The instructor has to do more mentoring than lecturing, and will have to spend more time and thought grading what the students come up with.
It's about turning CS students into engineers, rather than just programmers, and it's an extremely worthwhile thing to do.
Time waits for neither ant nor pie.