This is exactly the wrong reason to teach any programming language. You teach a language to teach programming concepts and methodologies, and so you use languages that emphasize the concepts you want to teach.
Sometimes you teach a language for that purpose.
Sometimes you teach a language because it has particular utility in another field of study. If you are teaching it particularly to students in a particular, non-programming discipline, its utility in dealing with an existing body of legacy code that is important to work in that discipline may be as valid (and perhaps even more important) of a motivation for teaching a language as the desire to introduce general "programming concepts and methodologies".
You don't teach a language so someone will know it later. That makes no sense at all.
If it was anything other than a programming language, "so someone will know it later" would be a particularly normal, indeed the single most common, reason for teaching anything. While I would agree that there are other reasons for teaching programming languages that are also valid, I think it is ludicrous to suggest that it "makes no sense at all" to teach a programming language so that the student will know and be able to use that particular language later.
Or maybe, you know, until user starts spell-checking in the background? Or maybe pagination of a large document?
Those could benefit from parallelization of the engine, but there not so much the UI, where a fairly traditional single-threaded event-driven UI would probably do nearly as well as a multithreaded one, even with a parallel backend.
We've known for almost a hundred years (since Poincare more or less) that the 3 body problem is inherently chaotic and not terribly stable and here we have an n body problem for large n. All they seem to have done here is list some of the more catastrophic possible outcomes if the system becomes seriously unstable.
What's more interesting than the odds and particular outcomes is the advances in simulation methodology which enable them to reach those conclusions.
A paper textbook has its advantages, for example: it doesn't require power (electricity, that is); it doesn't require an expensive electronic reader; it is not covered by DRM (I can lend it to a friend w/o RIAA et al. coming after me); and can be annotated with a pencil!
From the point of view of a public school system as a purchaser, the last point is a disadvantage in most cases, not an advantage. The inability of a current user to either damage or loser the permanent version of the book is a point in favor of electronic books where the student gets view rights (and possibly the right to make linked personal annotations that don't alter the school's original), rather than physical control.
much. Spending $10 to print and spiralbind a textbook is a lot cheaper than paying $150 for a hardcover version.
Well, except that the hardcovers rarely cost that much, printing and spiral binding rarely costs that little, and a printed-and-spiralbound copy will be far less durable than a hardcover. Unlike universities, which require students to buy books and thus have no problem requiring a new version every other year (or sometimes every year), public schools often use the same book for many years.
Need someone to print and do the binding? Hire students over the summer and on breaks and have them do the work.
Which will probably, due to reduced efficiency and greater supervision costs, increase the costs beyond what they would otherwise be if the printing and binding was done either by regular paid staff or outsourced to a commercial vendor.
No widely spoken human natural language was "invented,"
There are too many qualifiers in this statement. It should simply be "no natural language is invented", since that is true by definition of a natural language. An "invented" language like Esperanto, Klingon, Lojban, or Elvish is a "constructed language", not a "natural language".
We still have not solved more complex parallelization tasks. For example, GUI is still mostly single-threaded.
This isn't because its a hard parallelization task, but because GUIs are generally user-bound, not CPU-bound. Until you parallelize the software running on the unit between the chair and the keyboard, you don't need to worry too much about parallizing the GUI.
No, but there is a disconnect between OOP and relational database (at least, as each is most commonly implemented; I'm well aware of the arguments from Date, et al., arguing that the Object-Relational Impedance Mismatch is a result of doing OOP, RDBMSs, or both wrong), which is why the rise of OOP in the form of Java and C++ as dominant languages, set back, or at least slowed the advance of, the use of relational constructs in place of imperative ones, even when the backing store was an RDBMS.
is that all the course numbers start with 0. This is usually a sign of either a) remedial courses or b) non-accredited programs.
Actually, course numbering policies differ from school to school. At at least one California community college I am familiar with, course numbers between 0 and 100 are those which are transferrable to the University of California, those from 100 - 200 are applicable toward degrees at the school (and, IIRC, may be transferrable to California State University schools) but are not transferrable to UC schools, and courses numbered 300 and above are not applicable toward a degree, but do count toward full-time status (mostly remedial programs).
Another dead give away that this is a totally bogus degree is that it's an Associates Degree of Liberal Arts. Physics, in any form, is NOT a liberal art. Being that it's not, at the very least, an Associates Degree of Science (which is still pretty shady for "astrophysics" since it's VERY theoretical) raises a huge red flag.
The difference, typically, between an AA (Associate in [Liberal] Arts) and an AS (Associate in Science) is typically that the non-major requirements in the former are broader and include less math and science, while in the latter they are more focussed on math and science (the same distinction exists between the BA and BS.) Requirements for courses in the major are typically the same, where schools offer both, and its not all that uncommon for schools to offer both in the same field. OTOH, its also not that uncommon for schools to offer only one type of degree, because their requirements outside the major always fit one pattern.
Hum, being so precocious, he is probably very intelligent. Why then go to community college?
Some community colleges are much better at lower-division undergraduate education (in certain fields, which vary by college), than many universities, whose priorities for faculty are generally, in descending order of importance, research, graduate education, upper division undergraduate education, and lower division undergraduate education.
Also, community colleges are vastly less expensive, and (at least public ones in California) and four-year universities often will not even consider applicants under a certain age regardless of qualifications (I personally know of someone who was forced to delay entry into a prestigious southern California university for a year due to age alone.)
And how many of those cores are above 2% utilization for 90% of the day? Parallelization on the desktop is a solution is search of a problem-
The indication of the need to parallelization isn't the number of cores that are above 2% utilization for 90% of the day, but the number that are above 90% utilization for any part of the day.
My email, web browsing, word processor, etc aren't cpu limited.
Since the issue is their use of a library licensed under the LGPL, version 2.1, even if violating the "spirit" of a license was a problem, the "spirit" of a completely different license than the one applicable to the software they are using wouldn't be.
So, do you think that the RIAA was unable to obtain competent representation? I would think that they could afford it.
Having the resources to afford competent representation doesn't necessarily mean having the judgement to select competent representation. Its probably not all that uncommon that people with plenty of resources (particularly if the position they want to take is not well supported) end up with the representation most willing to tell them what they want to hear, not necessarily the most effective at providing useful advice and effective advocacy.
No, but let's be a bit realistic, here. 1 TB is enough space for some 100 hours of DVD-quality video. 1 PB is 100,000 hours of DVD video.
Sure -- of DVD-quality video. Of course, significantly less of HD video, and even less of, say, Ultra HD with 22.2 channel sound.
We went from a GB to a TB HDD in about 10 years, so it's not unreasonable to think that we'll have 1 PB in another 10.
Sure, if you assume that the growth rate is exponential without bound. OTOH, technologies of all types often flatten out as they mature, and a logistic growth pattern (which looks exponential in its early phase) is perhaps more reasonable of a long-term expectation.
At that time, you can record every second of your life on a single HDD, in RAW format.
Assuming that you are doing uncompressed, 8 bit/channel RGB images at a measly 640x480 resolution, 1 image per second, 1 PB will only get you less than 39 years of images, so your statement is only true with extremely low resolution images, or short lives.
In an RTS, this might be the case where you can build a defensive structure that is effectively impenetrable, neither one is going to win even though it could be the optimal strategy (if not losing is the goal, as opposed to winning).
I would argue that, if this is possible, it is a game-rules problem, not an AI problem, and that an AI approach which would tend to reveal such problems where they exist would be useful for identifying such problems whether or not it was the best AI approach for a shipping product. You don't usually, from a rewarding gameplay perspective, want a game where a player (human or AI) can viably turtle-up and deny the other player victory indefinitely.
You don't shut down a phone company (e.g. AT&T or Sprint) if someone is commiting crimes using a phone.
They didn't shut down the hosting company because third parties were using it to commit crimes, either. The temporary restraing order cutting off the hosting company was based on information that the hosting company itself was using its systems to actively commit crimes with some of its customers.
When one of these businesses goes under, or the soldier in Korea can't get the streaming video of his childs' birthday party, who do they call? The FTC?
If they think that the TRO is improper and that they are harmed as a result, they probably ought to contact the Court that issued the order.
The government is proud of itself for not doing its job. Actually prosecuting the criminals. If there haven't been any crimes, they had no right.
Not all unlawful activity that the government is responsible for taking action against is criminal, nor is the government limited to criminal processes in taking action against unlawful activity even where it is criminal. Of course, the activity alleged here is, at least in part, criminal activity, and the FTCs request for the TRO include an explicit request to issue the order in time to coordinate with action in the criminal investigation.
NO hospital is completely computerized. They ALL have paper work and patient files.
True, but I said nothing inconsistent with that.
My mother is a medical records coder and needed to take a certification test before she would even be considered as a candidate for the position in California. Anyways, several times the paper would would build up for one reason (coworkers on vacation) or another (computer system down) and when it does her boss would force her to take OT (time and a half) to finish the work, even if that means working over the weekends.
And I'm sure that, to the extent that this was possible, this hospital did that with their clerical staff. That doesn't necessarily prevent any impact to patient care, though it ought to mitigate the impacts somewhat. Hopsitals have to go on diversion sometimes even when their internal data systems are working smoothly; an interruption to such systems will impact patient care, and even where it is mitigated somewhat by measures such as pulling in extra staff, increases the probability that a hospital will need to go on diversion.
There is a serious flaw in thinking that computers can accurately model macroeconomics, or predict systematic collapses, any better than commonsense and basic logic can.
Well, duh.
Because computers simply implement basic logic, rigorously; they can't do anything basic logic can't do.
OTOH, "common sense" is mostly just what people use to describe their own unexamined prejudices.
The story quotes a former Justice Dept. expert saying the FTC action may be a smoke screen for a larger criminal investigation by the federal government in 3FN's activities.
Really? A smokescreen -- as in "An action or statement used to conceal actual plans or intentions" -- for a larger criminal investigation? No, clearly not. If it was supposed to conceal the actual plan or intention of a larger criminal investigation, the FTC probably wouldn't have announced the existence of such an investigation in a court filing on the case, specifically requested the timing of the order to go along with the the service of a search warrant in the criminal investigation, and then published the document detailing that on its website, on a page linked from the page with the press release about the injunction.
The FTC press release is here. The link on the case under "related items" takes you here. From that page, you click on the Memorandum of Points and Authorities and you get this document that was filed with the court, in which the FTC says (footnote, page 1):
It is the Commission's understanding that a parallel criminal investigation of the Defendant is underway. Although the Commission is not privy to the details of that investigation, the Commission is informed that a search warrant will be executed at the Defendant's data center on or about Wednesday, June 3, 2009. The Commission respectfully requests that this Court rule on the Commission's Ex Parte Motion for Temporary Restraining Order prior to June 3, 2009, so that - ifthe Commission's Motion is granted - service ofthe TRO can be effected at the same time the search warrant is executed.
The "larger criminal investigation" is hardly a secret for which the restraining order serves as any kind of "smokescreen".
If you get into Harvard, aren't you pretty much going to go there, regardless of whether it is 1st, 2nd or 15th on the school rankings. And doesn't the same go with most Ivy League schools, as well as schools like Stanford, MIT, and a few others.
I've certainly known people to apply to more than one school on that list (and get into more than one), so, no, it is not the case that if you get in, you are going to go. Further, rankings could inform where people apply, in the first place, before consdiering whether or not they get in.
Of course, I would hope that anyone applying to any top-rank university (other than, perhaps, legacies; and they wouldn't be applying based on rankings, either) would be savvy enough to not to give much weight, if any, to the USN&WR rankings.
It appears that the European efforts have triggered a new trend whereby EVERY country a multinational corporation operates in that isn't its native country can start engaging in the MoneyGrab(tm) technique.
That a company is subject to the laws of every soveriegn nation in which it operates is not a new trend. (Including cases where those national laws subject it to supranational institutions like the EU.)
Even, for the sake of argument, assuming that the EU action was a purely corrupt shakedown, the fact that some sovereign nations systems may subject firms to corrupt shakedowns would also not be a new trend.
So, I'm really not sure what "new trend" you are referring to.
Can someone explain to me why this isn't a WTO issue and why these kinds of taxes...
Well, for one thing it would only be a WTO issue if countries were erecting this as a trade barrier against foreign competitors; since the countries involved (including the US, which also conducted a lengthy antitrust probe of Microsoft and continues to impose sanctions on Microsoft as a result of that action), for the most part, engage in such probes against both foreign and domestic headquartered multinationals, it isn't, for the most part, the kind of thing the WTO is chartered to deal with.
I mean fines aren't regulated under the trade agreements?
For the most part, no, fines are not regulated under the trade agreements. They might be an issue if they are de facto tariffs.
Slashdot Mirror
Sometimes you teach a language for that purpose.
Sometimes you teach a language because it has particular utility in another field of study. If you are teaching it particularly to students in a particular, non-programming discipline, its utility in dealing with an existing body of legacy code that is important to work in that discipline may be as valid (and perhaps even more important) of a motivation for teaching a language as the desire to introduce general "programming concepts and methodologies".
If it was anything other than a programming language, "so someone will know it later" would be a particularly normal, indeed the single most common, reason for teaching anything. While I would agree that there are other reasons for teaching programming languages that are also valid, I think it is ludicrous to suggest that it "makes no sense at all" to teach a programming language so that the student will know and be able to use that particular language later.
Those could benefit from parallelization of the engine, but there not so much the UI, where a fairly traditional single-threaded event-driven UI would probably do nearly as well as a multithreaded one, even with a parallel backend.
What's more interesting than the odds and particular outcomes is the advances in simulation methodology which enable them to reach those conclusions.
No, again, its because users aren't parallel, so there is very little to gain by parallelizing the UI.
Yes, and because users only do one thing at a time, that isn't a problem.
And Microsoft Word won't benefit from a parallelized UI until you have users trying to click on menu buttons at the same time they are typing text.
From the point of view of a public school system as a purchaser, the last point is a disadvantage in most cases, not an advantage. The inability of a current user to either damage or loser the permanent version of the book is a point in favor of electronic books where the student gets view rights (and possibly the right to make linked personal annotations that don't alter the school's original), rather than physical control.
Well, except that the hardcovers rarely cost that much, printing and spiral binding rarely costs that little, and a printed-and-spiralbound copy will be far less durable than a hardcover. Unlike universities, which require students to buy books and thus have no problem requiring a new version every other year (or sometimes every year), public schools often use the same book for many years.
Which will probably, due to reduced efficiency and greater supervision costs, increase the costs beyond what they would otherwise be if the printing and binding was done either by regular paid staff or outsourced to a commercial vendor.
All a compiler does is write programming code, given an input which is also programming code (usually, in different languages.)
So, if you don't want a compiler to do that for you, do you hand code all your object code, and then just run a linker?
There are too many qualifiers in this statement. It should simply be "no natural language is invented", since that is true by definition of a natural language. An "invented" language like Esperanto, Klingon, Lojban, or Elvish is a "constructed language", not a "natural language".
This isn't because its a hard parallelization task, but because GUIs are generally user-bound, not CPU-bound. Until you parallelize the software running on the unit between the chair and the keyboard, you don't need to worry too much about parallizing the GUI.
If someone wanted to put a dual-core Atom N330 into a netbook, how would Intel (much less Microsoft) stop them?
No, but there is a disconnect between OOP and relational database (at least, as each is most commonly implemented; I'm well aware of the arguments from Date, et al., arguing that the Object-Relational Impedance Mismatch is a result of doing OOP, RDBMSs, or both wrong), which is why the rise of OOP in the form of Java and C++ as dominant languages, set back, or at least slowed the advance of, the use of relational constructs in place of imperative ones, even when the backing store was an RDBMS.
Actually, course numbering policies differ from school to school. At at least one California community college I am familiar with, course numbers between 0 and 100 are those which are transferrable to the University of California, those from 100 - 200 are applicable toward degrees at the school (and, IIRC, may be transferrable to California State University schools) but are not transferrable to UC schools, and courses numbered 300 and above are not applicable toward a degree, but do count toward full-time status (mostly remedial programs).
The difference, typically, between an AA (Associate in [Liberal] Arts) and an AS (Associate in Science) is typically that the non-major requirements in the former are broader and include less math and science, while in the latter they are more focussed on math and science (the same distinction exists between the BA and BS.) Requirements for courses in the major are typically the same, where schools offer both, and its not all that uncommon for schools to offer both in the same field. OTOH, its also not that uncommon for schools to offer only one type of degree, because their requirements outside the major always fit one pattern.
Some community colleges are much better at lower-division undergraduate education (in certain fields, which vary by college), than many universities, whose priorities for faculty are generally, in descending order of importance, research, graduate education, upper division undergraduate education, and lower division undergraduate education.
Also, community colleges are vastly less expensive, and (at least public ones in California) and four-year universities often will not even consider applicants under a certain age regardless of qualifications (I personally know of someone who was forced to delay entry into a prestigious southern California university for a year due to age alone.)
And how many of those cores are above 2% utilization for 90% of the day? Parallelization on the desktop is a solution is search of a problem-
The indication of the need to parallelization isn't the number of cores that are above 2% utilization for 90% of the day, but the number that are above 90% utilization for any part of the day.
Some of use our computers for more than that.
Since the issue is their use of a library licensed under the LGPL, version 2.1, even if violating the "spirit" of a license was a problem, the "spirit" of a completely different license than the one applicable to the software they are using wouldn't be.
Having the resources to afford competent representation doesn't necessarily mean having the judgement to select competent representation. Its probably not all that uncommon that people with plenty of resources (particularly if the position they want to take is not well supported) end up with the representation most willing to tell them what they want to hear, not necessarily the most effective at providing useful advice and effective advocacy.
Sure -- of DVD-quality video. Of course, significantly less of HD video, and even less of, say, Ultra HD with 22.2 channel sound.
Sure, if you assume that the growth rate is exponential without bound. OTOH, technologies of all types often flatten out as they mature, and a logistic growth pattern (which looks exponential in its early phase) is perhaps more reasonable of a long-term expectation.
Assuming that you are doing uncompressed, 8 bit/channel RGB images at a measly 640x480 resolution, 1 image per second, 1 PB will only get you less than 39 years of images, so your statement is only true with extremely low resolution images, or short lives.
Traditional non-web programming for the desktop/laptop (that is, not a resource-constrained mobile device or embedded system) environment?
I would argue that, if this is possible, it is a game-rules problem, not an AI problem, and that an AI approach which would tend to reveal such problems where they exist would be useful for identifying such problems whether or not it was the best AI approach for a shipping product. You don't usually, from a rewarding gameplay perspective, want a game where a player (human or AI) can viably turtle-up and deny the other player victory indefinitely.
They didn't shut down the hosting company because third parties were using it to commit crimes, either. The temporary restraing order cutting off the hosting company was based on information that the hosting company itself was using its systems to actively commit crimes with some of its customers.
If they think that the TRO is improper and that they are harmed as a result, they probably ought to contact the Court that issued the order.
Not all unlawful activity that the government is responsible for taking action against is criminal, nor is the government limited to criminal processes in taking action against unlawful activity even where it is criminal. Of course, the activity alleged here is, at least in part, criminal activity, and the FTCs request for the TRO include an explicit request to issue the order in time to coordinate with action in the criminal investigation.
No.
True, but I said nothing inconsistent with that.
And I'm sure that, to the extent that this was possible, this hospital did that with their clerical staff. That doesn't necessarily prevent any impact to patient care, though it ought to mitigate the impacts somewhat. Hopsitals have to go on diversion sometimes even when their internal data systems are working smoothly; an interruption to such systems will impact patient care, and even where it is mitigated somewhat by measures such as pulling in extra staff, increases the probability that a hospital will need to go on diversion.
Well, duh.
Because computers simply implement basic logic, rigorously; they can't do anything basic logic can't do.
OTOH, "common sense" is mostly just what people use to describe their own unexamined prejudices.
Really? A smokescreen -- as in "An action or statement used to conceal actual plans or intentions" -- for a larger criminal investigation? No, clearly not. If it was supposed to conceal the actual plan or intention of a larger criminal investigation, the FTC probably wouldn't have announced the existence of such an investigation in a court filing on the case, specifically requested the timing of the order to go along with the the service of a search warrant in the criminal investigation, and then published the document detailing that on its website, on a page linked from the page with the press release about the injunction.
The FTC press release is here. The link on the case under "related items" takes you here. From that page, you click on the Memorandum of Points and Authorities and you get this document that was filed with the court, in which the FTC says (footnote, page 1):
It is the Commission's understanding that a parallel criminal investigation of the Defendant is underway. Although the Commission is not privy to the details of that investigation, the Commission is informed that a search warrant will be executed at the Defendant's data center on or about Wednesday, June 3, 2009. The Commission respectfully requests that this Court rule on the Commission's Ex Parte Motion for Temporary Restraining Order prior to June 3, 2009, so that - ifthe Commission's Motion is granted - service ofthe TRO can be effected at the same time the search warrant is executed.
The "larger criminal investigation" is hardly a secret for which the restraining order serves as any kind of "smokescreen".
I've certainly known people to apply to more than one school on that list (and get into more than one), so, no, it is not the case that if you get in, you are going to go. Further, rankings could inform where people apply, in the first place, before consdiering whether or not they get in.
Of course, I would hope that anyone applying to any top-rank university (other than, perhaps, legacies; and they wouldn't be applying based on rankings, either) would be savvy enough to not to give much weight, if any, to the USN&WR rankings.
That a company is subject to the laws of every soveriegn nation in which it operates is not a new trend. (Including cases where those national laws subject it to supranational institutions like the EU.)
Even, for the sake of argument, assuming that the EU action was a purely corrupt shakedown, the fact that some sovereign nations systems may subject firms to corrupt shakedowns would also not be a new trend.
So, I'm really not sure what "new trend" you are referring to.
Well, for one thing it would only be a WTO issue if countries were erecting this as a trade barrier against foreign competitors; since the countries involved (including the US, which also conducted a lengthy antitrust probe of Microsoft and continues to impose sanctions on Microsoft as a result of that action), for the most part, engage in such probes against both foreign and domestic headquartered multinationals, it isn't, for the most part, the kind of thing the WTO is chartered to deal with.
For the most part, no, fines are not regulated under the trade agreements. They might be an issue if they are de facto tariffs.