Interest? Necessity? Changes in technology?
on
Do Kids Still Program?
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
My first programming experience was with a Mattel Aquarius that I got for Christmas when I was quite young (five or six, maybe). There were some game (and other) cartridges. But, when you didn't put a cartridge in, you turned on the computer and got an "OK" prompt. Time to start entering BASIC code! Of course, most of us can't be expected to know what to do with that right away. Good thing the Aquarius came with two (if I remember right) manuals. One was a set of example programs to try to teach BASIC programming on the thing. Typing on the soft-key keyboard wasn't that great, even with the control-key macros for the most common BASIC tokens. The other manual was more of a language reference. Between the two manuals, I learned a whole lot about basic control structures (such as GOTO, unfortunately).
My next computer at home was an Apple IIgs. Guess what happened when you turned that on with no disks? An Applesoft BASIC prompt. And, it came with another programming manual, A Touch of Applesoft BASIC. Programming that got a little dull, though, as the manual had what I found to be less interesting examples. I talked my parents into getting me a subscription to Nibble. Then, I had example programs to type in, both in BASIC and assembly. Well, the assembly was just hex codes until I eventually got a compiler. But I found it all rather interesting at the time.
Now, computers come with no such resources. You don't get a BASIC prompt when you turn on your Intel x86 machine, and you don't get a programming manual in the box. I'm not saying that BASIC is the best way to go to learn programming at all, but at least it was something. Plus, there exists software to do most tasks now, at least most tasks that a kid would think of.
Also, the perceived identity of programmers seems to have changed. In my Apple IIgs days, there were a lot of programs developed entirely by one programmer, often distributed as shareware. Of course, these folks still exist, but kids probably think that programmers are adults who work for someone like Microsoft, if they even think about the subject at all. Few would probably think that they could try programming because it isn't presented with the computer and it isn't presented as something that an individual could actually do as a (geeky) hobby.
Well, it's rather easier to lug around a Sony Datman than it is to lug around a PC.
Well, actually, I did not mention in my original post that I now do record practice sessions occasionally on my laptop. I did not have a laptop when I was looking for a MiniDisc recorder.
None of this recording was ever going to production anyway; it was just so I could listen to something, probably right after I played it, to check for a number of different errors in my playing that can be difficult to detect while actually playing. So, DAT, unless it was really inexpensive, would be overkill for this (not that it wouldn't work).
About a year and a half or so ago, I was looking semi-seriously at buying a MiniDisc recorder of some kind. A couple of people in the saxophone studio where I study had them, and it could really be handy for portable, off-the-cuff recording and playback of practice sessions, which is what I wanted it for.
Unfortunately, I couldn't find one in production that fit my needs. I could not find any assurance that I could do what I wanted with a MiniDisc player from specs I was seeing online. I eventually figured out that the people who had the MiniDisc recorders all got them overseas (Japan for sure, maybe Australia as well?). I see the article author does have a recorder; I wonder if that's new or something, or if he got it somewhere other than the U.S. as well.
I have no other reason to want one of these devices, and with Sony's reputation of late, I don't need one that badly anyway.
SSHv2 supports tunneling/port forwarding. If there's a machine on the other end that can listen on SSH, set up port forwarding so that you can use, say, localhost:10025 as your SMTP server. If you like local e-mail clients, this method is transparent to them, provided that you have set up the SSH connection first. As an added bonus, your password and e-mail don't travel in cleartext from your computer to the server. That's not a huge bonus, of course, since TLS already would have encrypted your password, and the e-mail will be in cleartext after the SMTP server sends it unless you used GnuPG or something to encrypt it, but at least someone sitting in the same coffee shop as you won't be able to sniff the traffic.
of course that's why my school district gets sued, but the teachers themselves rarely do.
In my state, school districts are required by state law to indemnify teachers in any lawsuit related to duties as a teacher. So, it wouldn't matter if someone sued a teacher in their official capacity, because said teacher would not be a proper defendant in a lawsuit -- the school district is.
A number of posters have mentioned that college textbook pricing is generally ridiculous in a number of fields. One thing I haven't seen mentioned: has anyone wandered over to the selection of textbooks for business classes? I am not a business major and, fortunately, I have never had to buy one of these books. Most of these books are quite expensive, more than most tech books, I think. And what is in them? Marketing, mostly. The little bit of skimming through these books to see what justifies the price has shown me that many of them are (collections of) ads, thinly or thickly disguised. I would assume that, to get business professors to write these books, the publishers would have to pay a handsome sum. After all, if these business professors are any good at what they do, they are commanding a large salary from their universities plus making money continually on business opportunities, and it needs to be worth their time to write the books. It stands to reason that these writers would also see writing the books as a business opportunity to promote that with which they are affiliated. Publishers could hardly object (even if they wished) because it gets the books written. But what do the students actually learn from the books? Some tech books seem to fall into this vein as well, "advertising" a particular product or technology to the author's or publisher's benefit.
Another consideration for the price of tech books is that up-to-date university engineering libraries buy lots of them. The engineering library here has a huge selection of books and is very good about keeping the collection up to date. It's expensive, but they have the budget to be able to keep buying these books. Most (not all) of the technology books seem to be of some quality. $40-$60 for a book for this collection does not stop the library from procuring more.
Finally, for buying books, http://isbn.nu/ (a shopbot) might save some time in comparison.
If those at the top have actually noticed a problem, and they know that the IT department is to blame, I can't imagine that you (as users) will have to do anything. I'm pretty sure they will take care of it, though not in a way friendly to the IT staff.
Probably, you'll be looking at a department totally torn down and replaced by something, which may or may not be better. Maybe try to get some input on what that new structure is.
I recall thinking, during the 2004 election campaigns, that television stations seemed to be paying a lot more attention to the conservative "sides" of issues than normal. The press, of course, has a history of being called biased toward the left. Then it hit me: around the same time, wasn't the Republican majority in Congress pushing to relax media ownership rules to allow companies to own more media outlets? More media outlets = more money for media companies. Does anyone think this was a coincidence?
The trouble with this kind of music (based on stock prices, etc.) is that the composition field, or at least those in it that I know, already consider this old hat and have for years. These techniques are not "populist" in any sense (that a lot of people would want to listen to this music), nor are these techniques considered imaginative enough to create interesting art music. I'm not sure why this is news, even for Slashdot.
That is not to say that mathematical principles have not been used, consciously or subconsciously, by composers throughout history. Be very skeptical, however, of any "research" indicating that principles like Fibonacci numbers were used consciously by any composer before the mid-nineteenth century. I have read a dissertation claiming that J. S. Bach used the golden section in certain compositions. The analysis was so far beyond contrived that it is hard to know where to begin. Another author said something to the effect of golden section analysis being easily turned into the type of analysis in which anything can be proved by looking hard enough. (If I remembered the author, I would give credit and actually look up the quote.) Starting around Debussy, golden section arguments get a lot easier to buy, but not for all composers or pieces.
Actually, there is at least one social practice the iPod made possible:
Carrying all your music with you; a soundtrack to your life.
I know of an instance where that idea was taken quite literally. A rather popular
professor at the university I attend recently passed away. His kids chose music for
the memorial service based on the most-played songs list on his iPod.
I'm guessing that's one Apple didn't think of when they included that feature.
IANAL, but if I understand correctly, an attorney defending a client in a criminal case in court must recuse himself or herself from the case if he or she finds out directly from the client that he or she (or it, I suppose) is guilty. I'm not saying that such a trial was taking place here, but is that correct?
I have to quibble with another reply to parent here. Certainly, every child needs to be able to explore some things at their own rate, but the opportunities need to be there. When I was six, I got a Mattel Aquarius for Christmas. I presume that my parents got it for me because of the games that came with it and because it wasn't terribly expensive ($30 -- for that time, not nothing, but not prohibitive either). The games were fine, but I got a lot more out of the manual that came with it. It had a number of programs in some dialect of BASIC, from which I basically learned by example. The logical constructs of programming, except the presence of that nifty GOTO statement, that I learned there have remained essentially unchanged in more "modern" languages. 4K of memory was even enough to write a few programs, including a digital clock program that was in the manual and filled up the 4K (I had to systematically remove REM statements to type in the listing).
Even something simple like that can get a child to start thinking logically, with little or no direction from parents at all. I would highly recommend such an approach to anyone. Get the tools in front of the kid and see what he or she does.
Some programs at the university I attend do this kind of thing already (fortunately, not my program). Specifications for one program of which I am aware require a specific Dell notebook with certain software, etc.
There are all kinds of issues with this approach. First, you lock students into a particular vendor. My university has this annoying tendency to do this all the time (let's start with soft drinks, i.e., the Coke-only contract we have here) because of financial incentives from the vendors for such monopolistic contracts. Frankly, these contracts should be illegal for a public university. I really don't care if it pays for a new scoreboard for the football stadium.
More specifically regarding computers, it forces students into unnecessary purchases. For example, say I have an HP laptop that meets all the technical requirements except for being a Dell. Why should I buy a new one? Well, because we have this requirement that you get a Dell because Dell computers are better... No, the requirement exists due to a contract with Dell, period. Never mind people such as myself who run a dual-boot system. I typically use the Debian side for everything and get by quite well. Rarely do I boot into WinXP -- the last time I did so was to read something off someone else's flash drive because I don't have support for it compiled into my kernel (I don't own one). The last time before that was at least two months before. I do my assignments in OpenOffice. Does it really matter? No.
Finally, I would add that at least at some universities, you can get aid for any computer purchase. Ours allows an increase in subsidized loan amount for one computer purchase per student per degree (basically, one every four years). I am unsure whether such an allowance is available only at the university's discretion or if it is available to all students receiving federal financial aid loans.
I know this isn't exactly the "data" that was desired, and I know that most students in your school probably are not wanting to run Linux on their laptops and don't care about anti-trust issues, so they would be quite happy with the university requirements. But, I think the arguments against such a requirement are rather logical.
I am curious whether the individual capsules will "stick" on or off. Some forms of digital-looking transit bus scrolls are just collections of little movable things that are black on one face and, say, green on another with a light shining on the whole thing. Those individual capsules eventually can get stuck on or off, giving the effect of a burned-out light bulb or one that is permanently on.
That effect could get really annoying in an e-book if enough of the capsules did that.
I have been in the education field, though not technically as a sysadmin. I have done a lot of my own system administration in at least one school, though, because the actual designated IT person was clueless and the security was so poor that I could change any setting I wanted.
For example, we had two computers in a teacher's lounge, one of which was connected to a simple inkjet printer. This computer got some virus, and the cure was apparently to wipe the hard drive and start over. I had nothing to do with that part. However, the clueless admin had no idea how to reinstall the print driver after messing with it for allegedly half an hour.
This was Win98, so there was no real concept of "administrator." I had to log in, but once on the system I could change anything I wanted. I was sick of the printer not working, so I poked around on the HP website, found the driver, and installed it. The whole thing took less than five minutes. The other computer was already set up to connect to this computer over the network for printing, so it immediately had print capabilities too.
About a month later, I was in this lounge using the computer and another teacher was using the other one. The "admin" walked in. The other teacher asked her some sort of question about printing, to which the admin answered, "Well, printing won't work because I couldn't get the print driver to install." The other teacher replied, saying that, no, she was able to print just a moment ago from this other program, just not from the one she was using. The "admin" replied, "Well, it must be magic then, since there is no print driver on that computer." I just stayed out of it. Later, I told the teacher (since it was one I trusted) what I had done, and she thought it was hilarious.
Frankly, in a lot of schools, the IT person is designated by an administrator. Quite often, that person is a school librarian that has a little bit of a clue how to do research and use programs on the computer, and that is it. Security is a joke most of the time.
What's worse is that what is often done in the guise of "security" makes computers practically inoperable. I can't even begin to explain the annoyances of the Novell "security" system for Win98 PC's (this was a different school system). No start menu; everything had to be accessed through desktop icons. File browsing on the computer was similarly prohibited, but all you had to do was open up, say, Word, and "open" a file. Then you could see whatever was on the computer. The proxy for "safe" web browsing was a joke; simply change your browser settings, and presto, you have a direct internet connection. I didn't bother because I had no reason to, but if a student had any knowledge of how to do this kind of thing, that student could easily bypass security.
As others have mentioned, the pay is pretty dismal, since if you actually are hired as a full-time system administrator with real qualifications, you could use those qualifications to get a much better-paying and more satisfying job elsewhere. So, as I said in the subject line, my recommendation is: don't bother.
There are several problems with going to a consumption tax as the sole basis for revenue. By consumption tax I think you are referring to what is generally called sales tax where I am. Another poster pointed out (in so many words) that sales tax is regressive. A greater percentage of a poorer person's income goes to sales tax than of a wealthy person's income simply because the poorer person does not save much money and because wealthier people probably spend a greater percentage of their income on services (and real estate!), some or all of which is not subject to sales tax, depending on the state's tax laws. This regression happens (to a lesser degree) even if there are exemptions on basic needs like food.
Further, property taxes do affect the poor more disproportionately than one might imagine. Often, they do not own real estate, but rent instead. You can be sure that landlords pass along the property tax bills to tenants through their rent. In my state, homeowners qualify for a homestead exemption for their primary residences (limit one per homeowner), which reduces the property tax bill some. Since the poor are more likely to be renting, they do not benefit from the homestead exemption and therefore pay a greater share of taxes.
It probably looks as though I am arguing for the income tax. In a way, it seems fairest, but the fairness of the income tax system in the U.S. is certainly debatable. Is income tax a good way to fund municipalities? I don't know; it seems like it would cost more for most small- to medium-sized cities to administer than it would be worth. In my state, school districts can charge a surtax that is tacked on to the state income tax bill. The surtax can be up to 20%, but it has to be approved by voters (actually, the school board can pass the surtax, but if enough citizens petition, a vote is required; the vote almost always happens in practice). There are still many problems with the income tax system, but it seems quite preferable to using sales tax for everything.
Music theory actually does have something to do with why popular songs are popular, but only in a very rudimentary way. For example, it is not terribly likely that serial atonality is going to be used to come up with the melody of a pop tune. Most popular songs today are in major keys. There might be a few in minor, but more "upbeat" and "happy" songs (those two words are the bane of every music appreciation teacher's existence) will please the general populace, hence the major keys. A lot of these tunes can be, and perhaps are, accompanied by no more than three chords. It's easy to listen to but does not hold much depth for anyone actually wanting interesting harmony. (According to [I think] Hugo Riemann, there really are only three types of harmonies in tonal music anyway. It's just that popular music seems only to use one variety of each type too often.)
There are other formulaic aspects to popular music as well. Drop the proverbial record needle in the middle of a well-known pop tune, and see if anyone can figure out what it is. People tend to remember only the "hook" part of the tune. How many times is that hook repeated? Usually three times per time the "hook" shows up, with the hook showing up three times per song. How long are the songs? Anymore, it seems like about two and a half to three minutes. The length of popular songs has generally decreased over the past few decades. Shorter attention spans, maybe?
Obviously, I have stated a lot of generalizations here, but these are some things one might try to notice about what actually makes popular music popular.
Then, having each box doing an update on its own is an unnecessary waste of band. There is stuff like apt-proxy.
I find that apt-cacher is much simpler and nicer. It doesn't support every possible method of fetching packages like apt-proxy purports to, but how many do you really need? HTTP seems plenty good enough.
Another trick is to copy the.deb packages (ONLY the.deb packages) from the/var/cache/apt/archive of an updated machine to the one to be updated. Apt recognizes it already have a local copy of the packages and refrains from obtaining it again from the network. Handy when installing a slightly old debian version on a new partition.
Or, you could use the tool that comes with apt-cacher to import them into the apt-cacher archive, then just distribute them over the network quite simply using normal apt-cacher methods. This is what actually drove me to abandon apt-proxy in favor of apt-cacher; the apt-cacher import actually works. I could not get apt-proxy's import to work correctly, and I was unable to find useful help online at the time. I did modify the source of the import code to allow import of.udeb's also because I was doing an entire system install of sarge on another machine from my laptop, but other than that, it worked perfectly.
Google has not entirely capitulated in China. It has pared back the services it offers--no e-mail accounts, for example--so that it doesn't put itself in the position where it might have to violate users' privacy. . . . At the same time, in America, Google has taken a healthy stand against the DoJ, refusing to give the government what it seeks.
This article unintentionally makes a rather negative case for Google when comparing alleged motives for actions in China to what is happening in the U.S. So Google doesn't offer e-mail accounts in China for privacy reasons? Sure, the direct reference here is to Yahoo, but by implication, the article essentially argues that e-mail accounts in the U.S. could be a real privacy problem. Further, Google is having to make its case against the Department of Justice in part because they recorded search results. While there might be good technological reasons for doing so, it flies in the face of privacy altogether, if that is their goal. How long before some government, U.S. or Chinese or other, wants IP addresses (at the least) for specific searches? Is Google recording this data, either in the U.S. or in China? If they are, it doesn't matter that Google is filtering results in China or that they tell the Chinese users about it, because by the very act of searching for something "contraband," the user places himself or herself at risk of government action. If the Chinese government asked for the same kind of information that the U.S. government is, that is, searches, would Google put up the same fight as they appear to be in the U.S.?
And, to bring matters back home, what if the Department of Justice wins this battle -- a real possibility -- and starts asking questions about gmail, now that there is a precedent for asking such questions? What if they just ask for the searches done within gmail? Even if the e-mail addresses and IP addresses are withheld, the contents of the search queries could in some cases be quite personally identifiable.
Now, obviously, the article cited is not necessarily coming from the mouth of anyone at Google, and we all know journalists do not always have the story straight. But, the comparison of Google's services in China and the U.S. should raise some eyebrows.
In terms of your question around Internet Explorer, there are two real aspects of this: 1) the platform implications of having IE in Windows, and 2) the user experiences that are possible with having IE in Windows.
What isn't mentioned here is the real reason the IE integration happened in the first place: as an excuse to require bundling it with Windows during the antitrust proceedings regarding their browser. So, there is another aspect: 3) the legal arguments we could make by tightly coupling IE into the OS, allowing us to say that the OS needs IE to run.
From a platform point of view, decoupling IE would break a lot of things. There are many applications that depend on IE for rendering HTML and for accessing the Internet. Think about email applications, Internet-aware clients like the AOL Explorer or even Microsoft Money that use IE to render HTML in the application. Not only would this break a lot of applications, but it would also put a huge burden on developers who would now have to write their own HTML rendering capability.
But isn't this inconsistent with what he is saying about a security model of having the least functionality enabled by default? Now, any security issue within IE becomes a security issue with every application that uses it. One might argue that it would be less secure for each application to have its own HTML rendering engine because it would be that many more parts of an application to look at. But, really, do all these applications even need HTML presentation? Wouldn't designing for security preclude making some applications capable of HTML rendering? Why does Microsoft Money need HTML capabilities as part of its core functionality?
Slashdot Mirror
My first programming experience was with a Mattel Aquarius that I got for Christmas when I was quite young (five or six, maybe). There were some game (and other) cartridges. But, when you didn't put a cartridge in, you turned on the computer and got an "OK" prompt. Time to start entering BASIC code! Of course, most of us can't be expected to know what to do with that right away. Good thing the Aquarius came with two (if I remember right) manuals. One was a set of example programs to try to teach BASIC programming on the thing. Typing on the soft-key keyboard wasn't that great, even with the control-key macros for the most common BASIC tokens. The other manual was more of a language reference. Between the two manuals, I learned a whole lot about basic control structures (such as GOTO, unfortunately).
My next computer at home was an Apple IIgs. Guess what happened when you turned that on with no disks? An Applesoft BASIC prompt. And, it came with another programming manual, A Touch of Applesoft BASIC. Programming that got a little dull, though, as the manual had what I found to be less interesting examples. I talked my parents into getting me a subscription to Nibble. Then, I had example programs to type in, both in BASIC and assembly. Well, the assembly was just hex codes until I eventually got a compiler. But I found it all rather interesting at the time.
Now, computers come with no such resources. You don't get a BASIC prompt when you turn on your Intel x86 machine, and you don't get a programming manual in the box. I'm not saying that BASIC is the best way to go to learn programming at all, but at least it was something. Plus, there exists software to do most tasks now, at least most tasks that a kid would think of.
Also, the perceived identity of programmers seems to have changed. In my Apple IIgs days, there were a lot of programs developed entirely by one programmer, often distributed as shareware. Of course, these folks still exist, but kids probably think that programmers are adults who work for someone like Microsoft, if they even think about the subject at all. Few would probably think that they could try programming because it isn't presented with the computer and it isn't presented as something that an individual could actually do as a (geeky) hobby.
It's a shame, really.
That's how long it would take for your project to get canned, right?
Well, actually, I did not mention in my original post that I now do record practice sessions occasionally on my laptop. I did not have a laptop when I was looking for a MiniDisc recorder.
None of this recording was ever going to production anyway; it was just so I could listen to something, probably right after I played it, to check for a number of different errors in my playing that can be difficult to detect while actually playing. So, DAT, unless it was really inexpensive, would be overkill for this (not that it wouldn't work).
(44100 (samples/sec)/channel * 16 bits/sample * 2 channels * 60 sec/min * 90 min) /
(8 bits/byte * 1024 bytes/kb * 1024 kb/Mb)
equals 908.432006836 Mb.
(Sorry, lameness filter wouldn't let me type a horizontal fraction bar.)
About a year and a half or so ago, I was looking semi-seriously at buying a MiniDisc recorder of some kind. A couple of people in the saxophone studio where I study had them, and it could really be handy for portable, off-the-cuff recording and playback of practice sessions, which is what I wanted it for.
Unfortunately, I couldn't find one in production that fit my needs. I could not find any assurance that I could do what I wanted with a MiniDisc player from specs I was seeing online. I eventually figured out that the people who had the MiniDisc recorders all got them overseas (Japan for sure, maybe Australia as well?). I see the article author does have a recorder; I wonder if that's new or something, or if he got it somewhere other than the U.S. as well.
I have no other reason to want one of these devices, and with Sony's reputation of late, I don't need one that badly anyway.
SSHv2 supports tunneling/port forwarding. If there's a machine on the other end that can listen on SSH, set up port forwarding so that you can use, say, localhost:10025 as your SMTP server. If you like local e-mail clients, this method is transparent to them, provided that you have set up the SSH connection first. As an added bonus, your password and e-mail don't travel in cleartext from your computer to the server. That's not a huge bonus, of course, since TLS already would have encrypted your password, and the e-mail will be in cleartext after the SMTP server sends it unless you used GnuPG or something to encrypt it, but at least someone sitting in the same coffee shop as you won't be able to sniff the traffic.
In my state, school districts are required by state law to indemnify teachers in any lawsuit related to duties as a teacher. So, it wouldn't matter if someone sued a teacher in their official capacity, because said teacher would not be a proper defendant in a lawsuit -- the school district is.
IANAL. YMMV.
A number of posters have mentioned that college textbook pricing is generally ridiculous in a number of fields. One thing I haven't seen mentioned: has anyone wandered over to the selection of textbooks for business classes? I am not a business major and, fortunately, I have never had to buy one of these books. Most of these books are quite expensive, more than most tech books, I think. And what is in them? Marketing, mostly. The little bit of skimming through these books to see what justifies the price has shown me that many of them are (collections of) ads, thinly or thickly disguised. I would assume that, to get business professors to write these books, the publishers would have to pay a handsome sum. After all, if these business professors are any good at what they do, they are commanding a large salary from their universities plus making money continually on business opportunities, and it needs to be worth their time to write the books. It stands to reason that these writers would also see writing the books as a business opportunity to promote that with which they are affiliated. Publishers could hardly object (even if they wished) because it gets the books written. But what do the students actually learn from the books? Some tech books seem to fall into this vein as well, "advertising" a particular product or technology to the author's or publisher's benefit.
Another consideration for the price of tech books is that up-to-date university engineering libraries buy lots of them. The engineering library here has a huge selection of books and is very good about keeping the collection up to date. It's expensive, but they have the budget to be able to keep buying these books. Most (not all) of the technology books seem to be of some quality. $40-$60 for a book for this collection does not stop the library from procuring more.
Finally, for buying books, http://isbn.nu/ (a shopbot) might save some time in comparison.
If those at the top have actually noticed a problem, and they know that the IT department is to blame, I can't imagine that you (as users) will have to do anything. I'm pretty sure they will take care of it, though not in a way friendly to the IT staff.
Probably, you'll be looking at a department totally torn down and replaced by something, which may or may not be better. Maybe try to get some input on what that new structure is.
I recall thinking, during the 2004 election campaigns, that television stations seemed to be paying a lot more attention to the conservative "sides" of issues than normal. The press, of course, has a history of being called biased toward the left. Then it hit me: around the same time, wasn't the Republican majority in Congress pushing to relax media ownership rules to allow companies to own more media outlets? More media outlets = more money for media companies. Does anyone think this was a coincidence?
The trouble with this kind of music (based on stock prices, etc.) is that the composition field, or at least those in it that I know, already consider this old hat and have for years. These techniques are not "populist" in any sense (that a lot of people would want to listen to this music), nor are these techniques considered imaginative enough to create interesting art music. I'm not sure why this is news, even for Slashdot.
That is not to say that mathematical principles have not been used, consciously or subconsciously, by composers throughout history. Be very skeptical, however, of any "research" indicating that principles like Fibonacci numbers were used consciously by any composer before the mid-nineteenth century. I have read a dissertation claiming that J. S. Bach used the golden section in certain compositions. The analysis was so far beyond contrived that it is hard to know where to begin. Another author said something to the effect of golden section analysis being easily turned into the type of analysis in which anything can be proved by looking hard enough. (If I remembered the author, I would give credit and actually look up the quote.) Starting around Debussy, golden section arguments get a lot easier to buy, but not for all composers or pieces.
I know of an instance where that idea was taken quite literally. A rather popular professor at the university I attend recently passed away. His kids chose music for the memorial service based on the most-played songs list on his iPod.
I'm guessing that's one Apple didn't think of when they included that feature.
IANAL, but if I understand correctly, an attorney defending a client in a criminal case in court must recuse himself or herself from the case if he or she finds out directly from the client that he or she (or it, I suppose) is guilty. I'm not saying that such a trial was taking place here, but is that correct?
I have to quibble with another reply to parent here. Certainly, every child needs to be able to explore some things at their own rate, but the opportunities need to be there. When I was six, I got a Mattel Aquarius for Christmas. I presume that my parents got it for me because of the games that came with it and because it wasn't terribly expensive ($30 -- for that time, not nothing, but not prohibitive either). The games were fine, but I got a lot more out of the manual that came with it. It had a number of programs in some dialect of BASIC, from which I basically learned by example. The logical constructs of programming, except the presence of that nifty GOTO statement, that I learned there have remained essentially unchanged in more "modern" languages. 4K of memory was even enough to write a few programs, including a digital clock program that was in the manual and filled up the 4K (I had to systematically remove REM statements to type in the listing).
Even something simple like that can get a child to start thinking logically, with little or no direction from parents at all. I would highly recommend such an approach to anyone. Get the tools in front of the kid and see what he or she does.
Some programs at the university I attend do this kind of thing already (fortunately, not my program). Specifications for one program of which I am aware require a specific Dell notebook with certain software, etc.
There are all kinds of issues with this approach. First, you lock students into a particular vendor. My university has this annoying tendency to do this all the time (let's start with soft drinks, i.e., the Coke-only contract we have here) because of financial incentives from the vendors for such monopolistic contracts. Frankly, these contracts should be illegal for a public university. I really don't care if it pays for a new scoreboard for the football stadium.
More specifically regarding computers, it forces students into unnecessary purchases. For example, say I have an HP laptop that meets all the technical requirements except for being a Dell. Why should I buy a new one? Well, because we have this requirement that you get a Dell because Dell computers are better... No, the requirement exists due to a contract with Dell, period. Never mind people such as myself who run a dual-boot system. I typically use the Debian side for everything and get by quite well. Rarely do I boot into WinXP -- the last time I did so was to read something off someone else's flash drive because I don't have support for it compiled into my kernel (I don't own one). The last time before that was at least two months before. I do my assignments in OpenOffice. Does it really matter? No.
Finally, I would add that at least at some universities, you can get aid for any computer purchase. Ours allows an increase in subsidized loan amount for one computer purchase per student per degree (basically, one every four years). I am unsure whether such an allowance is available only at the university's discretion or if it is available to all students receiving federal financial aid loans.
I know this isn't exactly the "data" that was desired, and I know that most students in your school probably are not wanting to run Linux on their laptops and don't care about anti-trust issues, so they would be quite happy with the university requirements. But, I think the arguments against such a requirement are rather logical.
I am curious whether the individual capsules will "stick" on or off. Some forms of digital-looking transit bus scrolls are just collections of little movable things that are black on one face and, say, green on another with a light shining on the whole thing. Those individual capsules eventually can get stuck on or off, giving the effect of a burned-out light bulb or one that is permanently on.
That effect could get really annoying in an e-book if enough of the capsules did that.
I have been in the education field, though not technically as a sysadmin. I have done a lot of my own system administration in at least one school, though, because the actual designated IT person was clueless and the security was so poor that I could change any setting I wanted.
For example, we had two computers in a teacher's lounge, one of which was connected to a simple inkjet printer. This computer got some virus, and the cure was apparently to wipe the hard drive and start over. I had nothing to do with that part. However, the clueless admin had no idea how to reinstall the print driver after messing with it for allegedly half an hour.
This was Win98, so there was no real concept of "administrator." I had to log in, but once on the system I could change anything I wanted. I was sick of the printer not working, so I poked around on the HP website, found the driver, and installed it. The whole thing took less than five minutes. The other computer was already set up to connect to this computer over the network for printing, so it immediately had print capabilities too.
About a month later, I was in this lounge using the computer and another teacher was using the other one. The "admin" walked in. The other teacher asked her some sort of question about printing, to which the admin answered, "Well, printing won't work because I couldn't get the print driver to install." The other teacher replied, saying that, no, she was able to print just a moment ago from this other program, just not from the one she was using. The "admin" replied, "Well, it must be magic then, since there is no print driver on that computer." I just stayed out of it. Later, I told the teacher (since it was one I trusted) what I had done, and she thought it was hilarious.
Frankly, in a lot of schools, the IT person is designated by an administrator. Quite often, that person is a school librarian that has a little bit of a clue how to do research and use programs on the computer, and that is it. Security is a joke most of the time.
What's worse is that what is often done in the guise of "security" makes computers practically inoperable. I can't even begin to explain the annoyances of the Novell "security" system for Win98 PC's (this was a different school system). No start menu; everything had to be accessed through desktop icons. File browsing on the computer was similarly prohibited, but all you had to do was open up, say, Word, and "open" a file. Then you could see whatever was on the computer. The proxy for "safe" web browsing was a joke; simply change your browser settings, and presto, you have a direct internet connection. I didn't bother because I had no reason to, but if a student had any knowledge of how to do this kind of thing, that student could easily bypass security.
As others have mentioned, the pay is pretty dismal, since if you actually are hired as a full-time system administrator with real qualifications, you could use those qualifications to get a much better-paying and more satisfying job elsewhere. So, as I said in the subject line, my recommendation is: don't bother.
In other news, the guy who coded Microsoft Solitaire gets invited to a similar awards ceremony in New York, hosted by Mayor Bloomberg.
There are several problems with going to a consumption tax as the sole basis for revenue. By consumption tax I think you are referring to what is generally called sales tax where I am. Another poster pointed out (in so many words) that sales tax is regressive. A greater percentage of a poorer person's income goes to sales tax than of a wealthy person's income simply because the poorer person does not save much money and because wealthier people probably spend a greater percentage of their income on services (and real estate!), some or all of which is not subject to sales tax, depending on the state's tax laws. This regression happens (to a lesser degree) even if there are exemptions on basic needs like food.
Further, property taxes do affect the poor more disproportionately than one might imagine. Often, they do not own real estate, but rent instead. You can be sure that landlords pass along the property tax bills to tenants through their rent. In my state, homeowners qualify for a homestead exemption for their primary residences (limit one per homeowner), which reduces the property tax bill some. Since the poor are more likely to be renting, they do not benefit from the homestead exemption and therefore pay a greater share of taxes.
It probably looks as though I am arguing for the income tax. In a way, it seems fairest, but the fairness of the income tax system in the U.S. is certainly debatable. Is income tax a good way to fund municipalities? I don't know; it seems like it would cost more for most small- to medium-sized cities to administer than it would be worth. In my state, school districts can charge a surtax that is tacked on to the state income tax bill. The surtax can be up to 20%, but it has to be approved by voters (actually, the school board can pass the surtax, but if enough citizens petition, a vote is required; the vote almost always happens in practice). There are still many problems with the income tax system, but it seems quite preferable to using sales tax for everything.
Music theory actually does have something to do with why popular songs are popular, but only in a very rudimentary way. For example, it is not terribly likely that serial atonality is going to be used to come up with the melody of a pop tune. Most popular songs today are in major keys. There might be a few in minor, but more "upbeat" and "happy" songs (those two words are the bane of every music appreciation teacher's existence) will please the general populace, hence the major keys. A lot of these tunes can be, and perhaps are, accompanied by no more than three chords. It's easy to listen to but does not hold much depth for anyone actually wanting interesting harmony. (According to [I think] Hugo Riemann, there really are only three types of harmonies in tonal music anyway. It's just that popular music seems only to use one variety of each type too often.)
There are other formulaic aspects to popular music as well. Drop the proverbial record needle in the middle of a well-known pop tune, and see if anyone can figure out what it is. People tend to remember only the "hook" part of the tune. How many times is that hook repeated? Usually three times per time the "hook" shows up, with the hook showing up three times per song. How long are the songs? Anymore, it seems like about two and a half to three minutes. The length of popular songs has generally decreased over the past few decades. Shorter attention spans, maybe?
Obviously, I have stated a lot of generalizations here, but these are some things one might try to notice about what actually makes popular music popular.
And of course, marketing plays a huge role too.
Wow! I can't wait until this hits Debian stable, probably in the Debian 15.8 release in 2028.
I find that apt-cacher is much simpler and nicer. It doesn't support every possible method of fetching packages like apt-proxy purports to, but how many do you really need? HTTP seems plenty good enough.
Or, you could use the tool that comes with apt-cacher to import them into the apt-cacher archive, then just distribute them over the network quite simply using normal apt-cacher methods. This is what actually drove me to abandon apt-proxy in favor of apt-cacher; the apt-cacher import actually works. I could not get apt-proxy's import to work correctly, and I was unable to find useful help online at the time. I did modify the source of the import code to allow import of .udeb's also because I was doing an entire system install of sarge on another machine from my laptop, but other than that, it worked perfectly.
This article unintentionally makes a rather negative case for Google when comparing alleged motives for actions in China to what is happening in the U.S. So Google doesn't offer e-mail accounts in China for privacy reasons? Sure, the direct reference here is to Yahoo, but by implication, the article essentially argues that e-mail accounts in the U.S. could be a real privacy problem. Further, Google is having to make its case against the Department of Justice in part because they recorded search results. While there might be good technological reasons for doing so, it flies in the face of privacy altogether, if that is their goal. How long before some government, U.S. or Chinese or other, wants IP addresses (at the least) for specific searches? Is Google recording this data, either in the U.S. or in China? If they are, it doesn't matter that Google is filtering results in China or that they tell the Chinese users about it, because by the very act of searching for something "contraband," the user places himself or herself at risk of government action. If the Chinese government asked for the same kind of information that the U.S. government is, that is, searches, would Google put up the same fight as they appear to be in the U.S.?
And, to bring matters back home, what if the Department of Justice wins this battle -- a real possibility -- and starts asking questions about gmail, now that there is a precedent for asking such questions? What if they just ask for the searches done within gmail? Even if the e-mail addresses and IP addresses are withheld, the contents of the search queries could in some cases be quite personally identifiable.
Now, obviously, the article cited is not necessarily coming from the mouth of anyone at Google, and we all know journalists do not always have the story straight. But, the comparison of Google's services in China and the U.S. should raise some eyebrows.
What isn't mentioned here is the real reason the IE integration happened in the first place: as an excuse to require bundling it with Windows during the antitrust proceedings regarding their browser. So, there is another aspect: 3) the legal arguments we could make by tightly coupling IE into the OS, allowing us to say that the OS needs IE to run.
But isn't this inconsistent with what he is saying about a security model of having the least functionality enabled by default? Now, any security issue within IE becomes a security issue with every application that uses it. One might argue that it would be less secure for each application to have its own HTML rendering engine because it would be that many more parts of an application to look at. But, really, do all these applications even need HTML presentation? Wouldn't designing for security preclude making some applications capable of HTML rendering? Why does Microsoft Money need HTML capabilities as part of its core functionality?
So, when are we going to start seeing Kool-Aid at the pumps?