Totally agree - the pedagogical method in most universities is awful.
With lecturers more focussed on research and huge class sizes for many courses individual support is non-existent when compared to sub-18 education.
I think there is huge scope for improvement, but system is pretty old and change will take a long time, if occurring at all.
Actually I suspect the aforementioned issues are known by universities at some level, but they are seen as an effective way to weed out the "less able".
...DB and Web App development) just isn't done on a personal scale anymore. The small companies just outsource to big churn shops.
Totally wrong - the big churn shops increasingly outsource to the specialists; either sme specialist businesses or individual contractors, because even though their hourly rate is a lot higher, they have the benefit of knowing what the hell they're doing.
Everyone knows that solid state is the future - there are so many obvious benefits to having no mechanical parts (power/reliability/cost/longevity/size etc).
But there's less to be excited about here than everyone seems to think.
At 30 USD a Gigabyte thats around 18000 USD per card. Even the 32Gb version would cost 1k USD.
And my laptop resumes from sleep in little more than a second already.
And the number of write cycles on flash memory is severely limited AFAIK - does this company provide any information on this for their product?
Dude - I respect you for standing up for what you believe.
And thanks for the example of the UI issue (with its Vista screenshots and all!).
Linux has come a long way in the past few years - it really *is* now a viable desktop solution. I have been running Ubuntu Feisty on my desktop since it was released in April and it's been a revelation. The *only* thing I am left wanting for is native Photoshop. And even that I can run in a VM.
I remember watching some guy on TV descibing his first trip to Brazil, saying that all the amazingly hot women there actually made him *angry* that he hadn't known about it before and that he'd had to "put up" with the UK for his whole life.
For me, moving from Windows to Ubuntu was analogous to that. I've heard of similar experiences with the transition from Windows Mobile to the Apple iPhone.
When Gutsy the next release of Ubuntu is released in October, take a look (you don't need to install it, it'll run off the install CD). I think you'll be pleasantly surprised. And by then VMWare will probably have DirectX support so games will run in VMs.
Thanks for your clarification re the separation of the Gimp team and the ingimp developers.
It sounds to me like you have the z-order issue in hand for release 2.4.
Great stuff!
My criticism is meant in a constructive way because I would like to see the Gimp succeed.
The gimp team are creating a network-based data gathering system to conduct a usability study.
Hello?!
How about simply asking users to report their experiences? Or even watching people use the software?
Sure, it'll involve a bit of human to human interaction but come on - its a price worth paying!
Yes, the Gimp is already a great tool but:
1. It's nowhere near Photoshop in terms of out-of-the-box functionality 2. Please, if you insist on having a separate window for everything, write a little window z-order controller that ensures the relevant windows are visible (i.e. like photoshop does)
And you want to know what peoples' screen sizes are? Here I'll save you the effort - exactly the same size as all the customers who can happily use adobe photoshop.
Saying "Linux doesn't exist anymore" is a strong statement.
And implying that "open source developers" have a "dirty little secret" is groundless and unnecessarily emotive.
I read into this that MS are worried. They are starting to see open source software as the serious threat that it has become to them.
Open source software has proven itself in the first years of the 21st century more than able to match closed source in terms of security and quality. Every day I am impressed by the countless free programs I use; Ubuntu, Firefox, VLC, VNC, GAIM, Kate, Krita, Ruby on Rails and yes, Mr Hilf, the LAMP stack.
And I sigh a little everytime I use Redmond's latest offering (which I have to keep on my laptop to use photshop and view youtube) and explorer dies or an IPC service fails, or it simply refuses to shut down, or Outlook crashes, or the sound is marred by pops and crackles because of the new improved audio subsystem.
If Microsoft with billions of dollars and thousands of dedicated programmers cannot improve upon Ubuntu, the product of - to use his words - a "small commercial firm" - I think it's pretty clear which software movement is dead.
It'll take perhaps 10 or 15 years, but the beginning of the end for Microsoft is on the horizon.
Looking at the original story two questions arise:
1. Why was she using her satnav to find her boyfriend's house? I presume she's been there before, because it was *his* satnav.
2. Why have the British Transport Police accepted the story that it was the satnav's fault? She drove onto a railway line in the path of an oncoming train causing thousands of pounds worth of damage and putting at risk people's lives. How is a mapping system responsible in any way for this?
Actually, I think I know what happened here. She didn't engage her brain. Mind you if she hasn't got the wit to apply fake tan to her hands as well as her face to avoid looking stupid it's probably to be expected.
>> but sometimes it pays to lay off the paranoia and think of the state as a force of improvement
Dude,
You've got it the wrong way around.
Those against the ID card scheme are not paranoid - they have merely reached the logical conclusion through reason.
It's those in favour (or some of those anyway) who are paranoid - about threats such as terrorism and illegal immigration. These guys use gut feeling and "common sense" to avoid rational thought - and they arrive at the conclusion that ID cards are a good idea.
OK, reasoning behind the anti-ID card vibe:
1.The cards will be forged, making them useless against the largest criminal operations (i.e. those with the capability to cause most harm) 2.The cards will be fundamentally insecure (because *millions* of humans will be in the loop) 3.The cards will *feel* very secure causing big problems with false positives and the like 4.It will be one of the largest IT projects ever conceived - please research the outcomes of large governmental IT projects for why this is relevant 5.The system will infringe upon civil liberties, change the implicit assumption of innocence ("where are your papers?! you must be an illegal!") 6.We already have the capability to identify ourselves with the appropriate level of accuracy for the vast majority of situations (birth cert., driving license), thus making the card redundant (because it wont be any more secure - see points 1 and 2) 7.It will cost a lot (which wouldn't be such an issue, but the system will be redundant (see point 6))
>>So my question is, why would you put this site up for people to raise petitions, if you don't plan to pay any attention to the petitions people put on it?
Because the Government is smart and knew that if they didn't do it, an NGO would.
Much as I dislike the current government, you've got to give them credit for forward-thinking when it comes to PR (excluding Iraq of course).
>>Clearly the british as a society are highly educated, yet are leading the way...
On what basis do you say this? As British subject I can tell you that the majority of Britons are poorly-educated, uninformed, apathetic and hold amazingly simple world-views.
Much like most nations I suspect....and this is a key problem with representative so-called democracies. With the majority of citizens having the above characteristics, elections and political issues are fought at base-level, stifling reform and intellectual debate.
One thing is certain: identity cards will be forged.
This will prevent the ID card scheme from having any preventative effect on the most serious crimes (because those with the intention to cause serious harm will undoutedly have the resources to procure forgeries).
The only remaining benefit of having a handy "ID" is nugatory because we already have such ID in the form of Birth Certificates, Driving Licences etc.
The multiple downsides of the system such as increased potential for serious abuse, impingements on civil liberties etc can only lead to the conclusion that ID cards are not merely unnecessary, but undesirable.
Web development *is* "narrow" in the sense that it is specialisation within a discipline. But the same could be said of Software Engineering (a specialisation of Computing?) or Astro-Physics (a specialisation of Physics?).
I don't expect most people to agree with me because I recognise that my arguments go against the prevailing wisdom, and that web development is a topic usually associated with Colleges rather than Universities - I am merely making the point that logically, it doesn't (and IMO shouldn't) have to be that way.
This discussion features a number of responses indicating disapproval or dismissiveness surrounding the field of web-development.
To all those who have responded in this tone, please stop being so fucking arrogant and elitist.
Just because you don't need to know how to code a bubble-sort in C to create a good website, doesn't make the endeavor any less valuable, significant or difficult.
Web development simply requires a different skillset than (for example) graphics programming, and is no less difficult.
Sure, its easy to build an awful website using Frontpage, but it's just as straightforward to create a crappy 3-d graphics application. Creating an excellent website or an excellent 3d graphics application are both "hard" endeavors.
Look, just because you understand math better than most people doesn't make you superior, it just makes you different (and probably more nerdy).
Get off your high horse and understand that there's more to intelligence than raw IQ.
You indicate your disapproval of web development as a university major, yet fail to explain why.
I don't see why web development cannot be run as a full degree course - web development encompasses a multitude of topics from usability to programming, testing and design.
Traditionalists would argue that you go to university to "learn how to learn". A well thought-out web development course would be a great vehicle for this. Plus such a course would give students some valuable commercially applicable expertise.
I suspect your elitist and somewhat dismissive remark regarding web development comes from an insecurity on your own part.
Just because mathematics is seen as being a "tough" subject by most doesn't make it any more valid as a course. It merely requires a different *type* of intelligence and/or personality.
1. Noticeably slower out of the box than 2k3/XP (for obvious reasons like Aero, but also for non-obvious reasons like the HDD indexer running incessantly)
2. Retarded Explorer UI - each explorer window has about 50% of it's real-estate wasted through useless "information bars" etc. And you can't remove most of it.
3. Awful sound - on a laptop I purchased only 2 months ago the sound is awful replete with popping sounds and unexpected sound sub-system deaths (i.e. the sound frequently just stops working, requiring a reboot).
4. DRM
5. Poor as ever security (because no matter what anyone says, Vista has not been built from the ground up - it is NT version 6).
6. God-awful sleep/hibernate support - this is an area that is meant to have been improved, but it worked flawlessly on XP and 2k3, on my 2 HP laptops I frequently have to hard re-boot because they will not wake-up.
On the flip side, there are positives such as improved out of the box hardware support and the inclusion of a chess game;), but Vista has serious issues that should have been fixed in the 5 years MS had to fix them.
Slashdot Mirror
Totally agree - the pedagogical method in most universities is awful.
With lecturers more focussed on research and huge class sizes for many courses individual support is non-existent when compared to sub-18 education.
I think there is huge scope for improvement, but system is pretty old and change will take a long time, if occurring at all.
Actually I suspect the aforementioned issues are known by universities at some level, but they are seen as an effective way to weed out the "less able".
...DB and Web App development) just isn't done on a personal scale anymore. The small companies just outsource to big churn shops.
Totally wrong - the big churn shops increasingly outsource to the specialists; either sme specialist businesses or individual contractors, because even though their hourly rate is a lot higher, they have the benefit of knowing what the hell they're doing.
It seems to me that a big issue for external cameras is keeping the window clean (i.e. the glass/plastic through which the camera sees).
Anyone got any tips to help with this?
I recommend you check out the MythBusters episode where they prove you wrong pretty conclusively in the fingerprint recognition space.
You can find the episode here:
http://www.surfthechannel.com/info/television/Mythbusters/38926/S4E16.html
This came as a real shock. I haven't found a video website that offers the same video resolution and strong content.
Can anyone point me to a replacement site?
Everyone knows that solid state is the future - there are so many obvious benefits to having no mechanical parts (power/reliability/cost/longevity/size etc).
But there's less to be excited about here than everyone seems to think.
At 30 USD a Gigabyte thats around 18000 USD per card. Even the 32Gb version would cost 1k USD.
And my laptop resumes from sleep in little more than a second already.
And the number of write cycles on flash memory is severely limited AFAIK - does this company provide any information on this for their product?
Dude - I respect you for standing up for what you believe.
And thanks for the example of the UI issue (with its Vista screenshots and all!).
Linux has come a long way in the past few years - it really *is* now a viable desktop solution. I have been running Ubuntu Feisty on my desktop since it was released in April and it's been a revelation. The *only* thing I am left wanting for is native Photoshop. And even that I can run in a VM.
I remember watching some guy on TV descibing his first trip to Brazil, saying that all the amazingly hot women there actually made him *angry* that he hadn't known about it before and that he'd had to "put up" with the UK for his whole life.
For me, moving from Windows to Ubuntu was analogous to that. I've heard of similar experiences with the transition from Windows Mobile to the Apple iPhone.
When Gutsy the next release of Ubuntu is released in October, take a look (you don't need to install it, it'll run off the install CD). I think you'll be pleasantly surprised. And by then VMWare will probably have DirectX support so games will run in VMs.
I'd love to see you post that "long list" and have it smashed to smithereens by Linux users.
The only valid thing I can see on that list is computer games.
Everything else is either native or can be run in a VM.
Photos of the damage to STS-118 can be found: here, here and here..
Ok thanks for that.
For completeness, the US link is here.
I can't for the life of me find these laptops on the Dell website.
Can anyone else supply links to them (Inspiron 530N and Inspiron 6400)?
Funniest post I have ever seen. Period.
Thanks for your clarification re the separation of the Gimp team and the ingimp developers. It sounds to me like you have the z-order issue in hand for release 2.4. Great stuff! My criticism is meant in a constructive way because I would like to see the Gimp succeed.
The gimp team are creating a network-based data gathering system to conduct a usability study.
Hello?!
How about simply asking users to report their experiences? Or even watching people use the software?
Sure, it'll involve a bit of human to human interaction but come on - its a price worth paying!
Yes, the Gimp is already a great tool but:
1. It's nowhere near Photoshop in terms of out-of-the-box functionality
2. Please, if you insist on having a separate window for everything, write a little window z-order controller that ensures the relevant windows are visible (i.e. like photoshop does)
And you want to know what peoples' screen sizes are? Here I'll save you the effort - exactly the same size as all the customers who can happily use adobe photoshop.
Saying "Linux doesn't exist anymore" is a strong statement.
And implying that "open source developers" have a "dirty little secret" is groundless and unnecessarily emotive.
I read into this that MS are worried. They are starting to see open source software as the serious threat that it has become to them.
Open source software has proven itself in the first years of the 21st century more than able to match closed source in terms of security and quality. Every day I am impressed by the countless free programs I use; Ubuntu, Firefox, VLC, VNC, GAIM, Kate, Krita, Ruby on Rails and yes, Mr Hilf, the LAMP stack.
And I sigh a little everytime I use Redmond's latest offering (which I have to keep on my laptop to use photshop and view youtube) and explorer dies or an IPC service fails, or it simply refuses to shut down, or Outlook crashes, or the sound is marred by pops and crackles because of the new improved audio subsystem.
If Microsoft with billions of dollars and thousands of dedicated programmers cannot improve upon Ubuntu, the product of - to use his words - a "small commercial firm" - I think it's pretty clear which software movement is dead.
It'll take perhaps 10 or 15 years, but the beginning of the end for Microsoft is on the horizon.
But please don't tell them.
Looking at the original story two questions arise:
1. Why was she using her satnav to find her boyfriend's house? I presume she's been there before, because it was *his* satnav.
2. Why have the British Transport Police accepted the story that it was the satnav's fault? She drove onto a railway line in the path of an oncoming train causing thousands of pounds worth of damage and putting at risk people's lives. How is a mapping system responsible in any way for this?
Actually, I think I know what happened here. She didn't engage her brain. Mind you if she hasn't got the wit to apply fake tan to her hands as well as her face to avoid looking stupid it's probably to be expected.
>> but sometimes it pays to lay off the paranoia and think of the state as a force of improvement
Dude,
You've got it the wrong way around.
Those against the ID card scheme are not paranoid - they have merely reached the logical conclusion through reason.
It's those in favour (or some of those anyway) who are paranoid - about threats such as terrorism and illegal immigration. These guys use gut feeling and "common sense" to avoid rational thought - and they arrive at the conclusion that ID cards are a good idea.
OK, reasoning behind the anti-ID card vibe:
1.The cards will be forged, making them useless against the largest criminal operations (i.e. those with the capability to cause most harm)
2.The cards will be fundamentally insecure (because *millions* of humans will be in the loop)
3.The cards will *feel* very secure causing big problems with false positives and the like
4.It will be one of the largest IT projects ever conceived - please research the outcomes of large governmental IT projects for why this is relevant
5.The system will infringe upon civil liberties, change the implicit assumption of innocence ("where are your papers?! you must be an illegal!")
6.We already have the capability to identify ourselves with the appropriate level of accuracy for the vast majority of situations (birth cert., driving license), thus making the card redundant (because it wont be any more secure - see points 1 and 2)
7.It will cost a lot (which wouldn't be such an issue, but the system will be redundant (see point 6))
plus more reasons, but it's late...
>>So my question is, why would you put this site up for people to raise petitions, if you don't plan to pay any attention to the petitions people put on it?
Because the Government is smart and knew that if they didn't do it, an NGO would.
Much as I dislike the current government, you've got to give them credit for forward-thinking when it comes to PR (excluding Iraq of course).
>>Clearly the british as a society are highly educated, yet are leading the way...
...and this is a key problem with representative so-called democracies. With the majority of citizens having the above characteristics, elections and political issues are fought at base-level, stifling reform and intellectual debate.
On what basis do you say this? As British subject I can tell you that the majority of Britons are poorly-educated, uninformed, apathetic and hold amazingly simple world-views.
Much like most nations I suspect.
My question posed to the webchat here in advance:
One thing is certain: identity cards will be forged.
This will prevent the ID card scheme from having any preventative effect on the most serious crimes (because those with the intention to cause serious harm will undoutedly have the resources to procure forgeries).
The only remaining benefit of having a handy "ID" is nugatory because we already have such ID in the form of Birth Certificates, Driving Licences etc.
The multiple downsides of the system such as increased potential for serious abuse, impingements on civil liberties etc can only lead to the conclusion that ID cards are not merely unnecessary, but undesirable.
How do you respond to this?
I disagree.
Web development *is* "narrow" in the sense that it is specialisation within a discipline. But the same could be said of Software Engineering (a specialisation of Computing?) or Astro-Physics (a specialisation of Physics?).
I don't expect most people to agree with me because I recognise that my arguments go against the prevailing wisdom, and that web development is a topic usually associated with Colleges rather than Universities - I am merely making the point that logically, it doesn't (and IMO shouldn't) have to be that way.
OK, fair point - my post was only tangentally related to the topic.
But I felt there was a point that needed to be made given a couple of posts earlier in the discussion.
This discussion features a number of responses indicating disapproval or dismissiveness surrounding the field of web-development.
To all those who have responded in this tone, please stop being so fucking arrogant and elitist.
Just because you don't need to know how to code a bubble-sort in C to create a good website, doesn't make the endeavor any less valuable, significant or difficult.
Web development simply requires a different skillset than (for example) graphics programming, and is no less difficult.
Sure, its easy to build an awful website using Frontpage, but it's just as straightforward to create a crappy 3-d graphics application. Creating an excellent website or an excellent 3d graphics application are both "hard" endeavors.
Look, just because you understand math better than most people doesn't make you superior, it just makes you different (and probably more nerdy).
Get off your high horse and understand that there's more to intelligence than raw IQ.
You indicate your disapproval of web development as a university major, yet fail to explain why.
I don't see why web development cannot be run as a full degree course - web development encompasses a multitude of topics from usability to programming, testing and design.
Traditionalists would argue that you go to university to "learn how to learn". A well thought-out web development course would be a great vehicle for this. Plus such a course would give students some valuable commercially applicable expertise.
I suspect your elitist and somewhat dismissive remark regarding web development comes from an insecurity on your own part.
Just because mathematics is seen as being a "tough" subject by most doesn't make it any more valid as a course. It merely requires a different *type* of intelligence and/or personality.
1. Noticeably slower out of the box than 2k3/XP (for obvious reasons like Aero, but also for non-obvious reasons like the HDD indexer running incessantly)
;), but Vista has serious issues that should have been fixed in the 5 years MS had to fix them.
2. Retarded Explorer UI - each explorer window has about 50% of it's real-estate wasted through useless "information bars" etc. And you can't remove most of it.
3. Awful sound - on a laptop I purchased only 2 months ago the sound is awful replete with popping sounds and unexpected sound sub-system deaths (i.e. the sound frequently just stops working, requiring a reboot).
4. DRM
5. Poor as ever security (because no matter what anyone says, Vista has not been built from the ground up - it is NT version 6).
6. God-awful sleep/hibernate support - this is an area that is meant to have been improved, but it worked flawlessly on XP and 2k3, on my 2 HP laptops I frequently have to hard re-boot because they will not wake-up.
On the flip side, there are positives such as improved out of the box hardware support and the inclusion of a chess game