I understand that times are tight, but there's a reason they cut Computer Science and not "Math" or "Chemistry". That's what I was trying to figure out. Does the Florida legislature set tuition for state schools in Florida, or do the universities have that prerogative? If it's the university's prerogative, why not just raise tuition? Or if they want to lay the burden solely on CS students then create a per-class-hour fee that only applies to CS classes. That's what my alma mater did.
UF has the best overall academic reputation of any state school in Florida. You may not think of "engineering, CS, architecture" when you hear "UF", but that's also the case for the vast majority of state schools nationwide. Not everybody can be Berkeley, UCLA, Illinois, Wisconsin, Washington, Ga. Tech, Michigan or Texas. Does that imply everybody else (e.g. UF) should drop those programs?
As many commenters to the Forbes article have pointed out, the athletic department funds itself and actually donates money back to the University. If you eliminated athletics at UF entirely it would not generate any additional money to fund the CS Department.
I'm curious: why Computer Science? The program shouldn't be very expensive on a per-student basis, especially compared to the physical sciences. Was the department just uniquely dysfunctional or under-performing? Why not cut, say, physics? Not that Physics should be cut either, but the choice of Computer Science seems arbitrary.
If Apple could have replaced my logic board at no cost to themselves, then why in the hell did they drag this out for so long, and why did they send two people to court to try and make sure that I got absolutely nothing? Friends, this is a question I have been asking myself for three months, and it is a question that I do not have the answer to.
Really? Because the sheer volume of replacements that would have ensued would have damaged Apple's partner relationship with nvidia. There's your answer.
This is terrorism done right. Except the threat frequency should be dialed down to the point where each one must be viewed as credible. And the program should be duplicated across hundreds of campuses across the United States. Not to mention other facilities besides universities. And, every once in a while, one of the threats should turn out to be genuine, just to keep people honest. Cheap and effective.
I recommend C or Java, and echo others' recommendation of the K&R book. Big benefit = it's short. Recommend against dynamically typed scripting languages, e.g. ruby, python, php, perl, et. al. Other benefit = both C and Java are near-ubiquitous. Possible alternative is C#.
Four deaths in 8 years, given the number of children who are vaccinated, is a pretty small number. Out of curiosity, I wonder how many children died from severe reactions to the pertussis vaccine during this same period? (Not saying it's higher; just wondering).
1. Three types of companies: pipe providers, content providers, device providers. No one company covers more than one of those areas.
2. Pipe providers using a price structure that has a fixed component (affording a certain amount of "free" bandwidth) then charges per-byte-transferred above that limit. Separate prices for "in-network" and "out-of-network" bandwidth since the former is cheaper than the latter. Other than in-network vs. out-of-network for the purpose of billing pipe providers are completely "traffic agnostic".
3. Content providers competing to present the best "deal" to content producers. Providers handle the technical details of streaming content online, billing end users and marketing the service.
4. Device providers quit ignoring consumers who view over-the-air content and would like to record it. Device providers start producing do-it-all devices. For instance, one box that has wifi, ethernet, a digital TV receiver, blu-ray, dvr capabilities, support for hulu and netflix, and a simple on-screen interface to manage them all.
Sure. If enough taxpayers favor abolishing that particular policy then by all means make it so. So long as the policy's in place, though, it's not unreasonable to expect students to abide by it. Again, assuming there's actually a policy. My bet is there's a vague clause in the agreement they have students sign who're going to take school laptops home that stipulates the machines aren't to be used for "inappropriate" purposes.
School's computer = school gets to set policy. Violate policy = school infraction. If my employer gives me a laptop and I VPN in then post obscene crap on Twitter, I'm not sure I'd feel justified in complaining if they fired me. Assuming the policy was written down and provided to me beforehand.
OS X is BSD "with a ton of other stuff on top". If Apple had chosen "Linux" as the core of its operating system then, yes, I could see "Linux" succeeding on the desktop. When people use the term "Linux" here, though, they basically mean "existing distros" and not "just the kernel". As to large sponsors, yes, but I'd suggest that "any old large sponsor" wouldn't do. BSD (in the form of OS X) became successful due to the unique success of Apple. If Lenovo decided to roll out its own Linux-based OS on its devices I would be highly pessimistic about its chances.
1. It's free (legally).
2. It has a built-in *nix-like development environment (unlike Windows).
3. It's not tied to a particular set of hardware (unlike OS X).
These are balanced against:
1. "It just works" is much less true of Linux.
2. Lack of app support.
3. Spottier hardware support (than Windows).
Add them all up and I don't see much reason (personally) to consider Linux on the desktop. At my past three jobs I've been given a Mac for Java development, deploying to either Linux or Solaris servers. At home I run a free (illegal) copy of XP on fairly old hardware. If I were to upgrade my home machine I'd most likely go with Win7 (legal) on custom built hardware, though I'd strongly consider a Mac.
I'm reminded of the adage about horses, water and drinking. The amount of effort today's students are willing to put forth is pretty amazingly low. That's more or less because even with a low level of effort (and correspondingly low performance) they're in no danger of: 1) being kicked out of school, 2) being held back a grade, or 3) being routed onto a "non-college" track. You're left with self-motivation (which is semi-rare) and external consequences assigned by parents. Only many parents opt out, so often you don't even have that. Most recommendations for "fixing" education deal with tweaking "the water" in the horse analogy so that it's somehow more nourishing. The best, most effective water in the world isn't worth much, though, when the horse won't drink.
I'm centrally located in the continental U.S. I would consider anything over 100ms to a destination in the continental U.S. to be unsatisfactory. More than average latency, though, I'm concerned with the variability of latency. Spikes = bad, bad, bad.
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I understand that times are tight, but there's a reason they cut Computer Science and not "Math" or "Chemistry". That's what I was trying to figure out. Does the Florida legislature set tuition for state schools in Florida, or do the universities have that prerogative? If it's the university's prerogative, why not just raise tuition? Or if they want to lay the burden solely on CS students then create a per-class-hour fee that only applies to CS classes. That's what my alma mater did.
Separate budgets. Athletics pays its own way. Nuking the entire athletic dept. wouldn't create any additional money for CS.
UF has the best overall academic reputation of any state school in Florida. You may not think of "engineering, CS, architecture" when you hear "UF", but that's also the case for the vast majority of state schools nationwide. Not everybody can be Berkeley, UCLA, Illinois, Wisconsin, Washington, Ga. Tech, Michigan or Texas. Does that imply everybody else (e.g. UF) should drop those programs?
As many commenters to the Forbes article have pointed out, the athletic department funds itself and actually donates money back to the University. If you eliminated athletics at UF entirely it would not generate any additional money to fund the CS Department.
I'm curious: why Computer Science? The program shouldn't be very expensive on a per-student basis, especially compared to the physical sciences. Was the department just uniquely dysfunctional or under-performing? Why not cut, say, physics? Not that Physics should be cut either, but the choice of Computer Science seems arbitrary.
I never encrypt my email; I just don't send anything I'd be upset about the NSA seeing. Business dealings fall into that category.
Does anyone send anything sensitive in email that isn't strongly encrypted? Maybe terrorists are that dumb.
Really? Because the sheer volume of replacements that would have ensued would have damaged Apple's partner relationship with nvidia. There's your answer.
This is terrorism done right. Except the threat frequency should be dialed down to the point where each one must be viewed as credible. And the program should be duplicated across hundreds of campuses across the United States. Not to mention other facilities besides universities. And, every once in a while, one of the threats should turn out to be genuine, just to keep people honest. Cheap and effective.
I recommend C or Java, and echo others' recommendation of the K&R book. Big benefit = it's short. Recommend against dynamically typed scripting languages, e.g. ruby, python, php, perl, et. al. Other benefit = both C and Java are near-ubiquitous. Possible alternative is C#.
Four deaths in 8 years, given the number of children who are vaccinated, is a pretty small number. Out of curiosity, I wonder how many children died from severe reactions to the pertussis vaccine during this same period? (Not saying it's higher; just wondering).
Can I say "I told you so" to all the folks who urged me to donate to the project some years ago?
1. Three types of companies: pipe providers, content providers, device providers. No one company covers more than one of those areas.
2. Pipe providers using a price structure that has a fixed component (affording a certain amount of "free" bandwidth) then charges per-byte-transferred above that limit. Separate prices for "in-network" and "out-of-network" bandwidth since the former is cheaper than the latter. Other than in-network vs. out-of-network for the purpose of billing pipe providers are completely "traffic agnostic".
3. Content providers competing to present the best "deal" to content producers. Providers handle the technical details of streaming content online, billing end users and marketing the service.
4. Device providers quit ignoring consumers who view over-the-air content and would like to record it. Device providers start producing do-it-all devices. For instance, one box that has wifi, ethernet, a digital TV receiver, blu-ray, dvr capabilities, support for hulu and netflix, and a simple on-screen interface to manage them all.
Sure. If enough taxpayers favor abolishing that particular policy then by all means make it so. So long as the policy's in place, though, it's not unreasonable to expect students to abide by it. Again, assuming there's actually a policy. My bet is there's a vague clause in the agreement they have students sign who're going to take school laptops home that stipulates the machines aren't to be used for "inappropriate" purposes.
School's computer = school gets to set policy. Violate policy = school infraction. If my employer gives me a laptop and I VPN in then post obscene crap on Twitter, I'm not sure I'd feel justified in complaining if they fired me. Assuming the policy was written down and provided to me beforehand.
More like saying "I'll drive Mercedes when they're allowed on normal roads instead of just the track."
OS X is BSD "with a ton of other stuff on top". If Apple had chosen "Linux" as the core of its operating system then, yes, I could see "Linux" succeeding on the desktop. When people use the term "Linux" here, though, they basically mean "existing distros" and not "just the kernel". As to large sponsors, yes, but I'd suggest that "any old large sponsor" wouldn't do. BSD (in the form of OS X) became successful due to the unique success of Apple. If Lenovo decided to roll out its own Linux-based OS on its devices I would be highly pessimistic about its chances.
The main benefits as I see them are:
1. It's free (legally).
2. It has a built-in *nix-like development environment (unlike Windows).
3. It's not tied to a particular set of hardware (unlike OS X).
These are balanced against:
1. "It just works" is much less true of Linux.
2. Lack of app support.
3. Spottier hardware support (than Windows).
Add them all up and I don't see much reason (personally) to consider Linux on the desktop. At my past three jobs I've been given a Mac for Java development, deploying to either Linux or Solaris servers. At home I run a free (illegal) copy of XP on fairly old hardware. If I were to upgrade my home machine I'd most likely go with Win7 (legal) on custom built hardware, though I'd strongly consider a Mac.
Here's one guy who thinks Ender's Game is porn, just not the "sex" kind.
Excellent.
I'm now anti-GMO. The danger of cross-contamination of the native coffee stock is just too great.
I'm reminded of the adage about horses, water and drinking. The amount of effort today's students are willing to put forth is pretty amazingly low. That's more or less because even with a low level of effort (and correspondingly low performance) they're in no danger of: 1) being kicked out of school, 2) being held back a grade, or 3) being routed onto a "non-college" track. You're left with self-motivation (which is semi-rare) and external consequences assigned by parents. Only many parents opt out, so often you don't even have that. Most recommendations for "fixing" education deal with tweaking "the water" in the horse analogy so that it's somehow more nourishing. The best, most effective water in the world isn't worth much, though, when the horse won't drink.
pwn3d.
I'm centrally located in the continental U.S. I would consider anything over 100ms to a destination in the continental U.S. to be unsatisfactory. More than average latency, though, I'm concerned with the variability of latency. Spikes = bad, bad, bad.
pwn3d.