On the other hand, Windows does come with MS Paint, which the iPhone does not. A paint program must be downloaded. The leading iPhone paint app runs $1.99. So I guess that's something.
With the iPad, not only will we need to buy all these stupid little 5 dollar apps, but it will still be tethered to a regular computer running iTunes.
For what? Not for initial device activation, app loading, app purchasing, media purchasing/browsing/playback, content creation, USB connectivity, SD Card reading, LAN nor WAN connectivity, et FUCKING cetera. For fuck's sake, you don't even need a "regular computer" for 3G activation. It even has an accessory full-sized physical QWERTY keyboard/dock combo accessory (or you can use a BT keyboard)
While I am personally quite excited about using the iPad with VNC to work in conjunction with my "regular computer", for a large percentage of applications, a computer simply isn't necessary.
And further, there is much evidence to support the conclusion that Apple is working hard to make iPad a more general-purpose platform.
No, that was before it was officially announced, with prices and details. Everyone figured it'll be closer to $1000 based on rumors of such device coming from Apple. It was still when everyone thought it would actually have a good hardware, open, as in more closer to OSX than iPhone, OS and good features.
It wasn't anything like that, but useless device, which is overpriced for what it has actually has or does.
Your comment has now been entered in the world-famous "iPad failure prediction" contest, to take it's place in history with the now-laughable iPod and iPhone "failure prediction" comments we all enjoy trotting out on/.
If your can't figure out how to run whatever code you want on a iPhone or iPad then you are not smart enough to be making decisions about what code you run.
Seriously, its not rocket science
Because those who lined up for Vista didn't then line up for the newest versions of Exchange and SQL Server as well. The reason we mock Apple fans is that many of them buy *EVERY* *BLOODY* *PRODUCT* Apple releases then proceed to call it "groundbreaking" or such crap.
Right. That's why those Xserves, Apple TVs and Mac Pros just fly off the shelves...
For some Apple fanatics, Apple could sell them a kick in the balls and they'd stand in line for six days just to buy it.
I'm pretty sure that was called Apple TV.
Um, I think you will find that not only is the Apple TV NOT a great seller, even among those who prefer Apple products, but that even Jobs is on record as saying that Apple TV is "a hobby" for the company.
Same thing with XServe and Mac Pro; solid-enough sales to keep the product line going, and a few established markets; but you don't see lines around the block every time a new XServe or MacPro is available.
WahahahahHAHAHAHAHA! But seriously, I'll buy one...when the price drops to $300 or less.
So, with the BOM cost (alone) estimated at around $270, you really expect Apple to be able to retail that same device (with shipping, both to Apple and then to the customer, plus warranty, tech support, etc.) for what would be an estimated gross profit of $30 over the raw materials cost?
1. School gives laptop to student
2. Student reports laptop stolen, takes it home
3. School activates security feature, randomly catches student popping pills while doing homework
4. IT sends photo of student to principal to get laptop back
5. Idiot principal gives student "don't do drugs" talk instead
6. Student panics, tells parents the school is spying on everyone
7. Parents sue school
8. Media frenzy!
Have you even read one single bit of the facts in this situation?
Thought not.
Get the FUCK off Slashdot, FUCKTARD! With your IGNORANCE, you do NOTHING but LOWER the overall discussion.
Purchase text books? I think you're not American, but that'd force a lot of people here to drop out of primary and secondary school. Compulsory education or not, the majority of Americans simply couldn't financially support that idea.
Ahem.
Here in Indiana, the "public" schools make students (well, their parents) RENT the textbooks (so they pay for them, without actually even getting to keep them!).
Plus, at least here in Indianapolis (Marion County), they make the kids wear a specific "uniform", that AGAIN the parents have to pay for.
And there is no coordinated effort to alleviate this cost for low-income families. It is up to each "township" to VOLUNTARILY provide a solution for those who cannot afford these COMPULSORY charges. So, if the "township" you happen to live in has a indigent program in place (believe it or not, some actually DON'T!), then great. If not, then it's left up to the PARENTS to try to satisfy the arbitrary, but compulsory requirements.
Of course, if you then DON'T send your kids to school because you, as a parent, can't afford this bullshit, then Child "Protective" Services will swoop in and take your kids (thus costing the taxpayers MUCH more in foster care, etc. than it would cost just to have a STATEWIDE program to cover these arbitrary costs).
And yet, "education" is somehow by far the largest percentage of my property tax burden, at over 50% of the overall tax (and I don't even have children). That's not a guess. BTW, it's printed right on the tax invoice.
There's one way the school could be telling the truth about this. They didn't say this explicitly, so it's not clear, but:
The lawsuit alleges that the school accused the student of inappropriate behavior. That behavior could have been reporting his laptop as "stolen", then continuing to use it. The school maintains that they only use the webcams to take a still photo when a laptop has been reported stolen, to aid in recovering it. If the laptop was reported stolen, the school took a picture, they saw that the student who reported it was the one using it, and they confronted the student with this evidence, that would explain both the lawsuit and the school's position.
Sort of odd that the school's response wouldn't explain that, if that is indeed what happened. But people tend to omit important details like that when there's a lawsuit pending, on advice of counsel...
Except for the fact that they have already posted a statement, AND a FAQ. Neither of them mentions that the student have EVER "reported the laptop stolen".
Whoever modded this "insightful" wasn't very "insightful" themselves, methinks.
I am a self-taught programmer, who was actually programming "out of my element" (I'm an embedded software/hardware dev. by trade), writing in C/AL (a 4th gen Pascal-like scripting language used in the financial/ERP package, Navision (now Microsoft Dynamics NAV), for the company I was working as an embedded dev. for at the time.
The task at hand was a function of do "exploding" of multi-level Bills of Materials (BOMs).
In about 3 lines of C/AL code, I designed and wrote a clean, recursive, data-driven function, that iterated down through the BOM levels. Worked perfectly the first time. I might add that I was also the "architect" on this project as well, so the "idea" of using a recursive function was my own as well, arrived at after about 10 minutes of "design analysis'.
By the way, even the experts at Navision had no idea that C/AL could even be used recursively, and they developed the language!
Moral to this story: A bad programmer is a bad programmer; conversely, a good programmer is a good programmer. Anything else is simply flapping of gums by all concerned (including me).
Incidentally, not only is my recursive "exploder" function still (since 1997) being used by my (now) former employer; but it also made its way into a paid "add-on" still being sold by a third-party Navision (MS NAV) developer.
One of the biggest ones I've seen is that self-taught programmers tend to not think about algorithm efficiency
Speak for yourself. As in the vast majority of the "negative" comments to this article, what people are REALLY complaining about is BAD programmers.
As a self-taught embedded hardware/software developer (100% self-taught on both fronts), with 30 years of experience, specializing in real-time control and instrumentation systems (often with pretty puny computational power), I can assure you that "algorithm efficiency" is something I learned early, and well.
Self-taught folks tend to have less in their toolkits -- when all you've learned is a hammer, everything looks like a nail. Then, when trying to do something different, they try to take their hammer and "invent" a screwdriver out of it.
...and when all you're taught is algorithms, everything tends to look like a math problem.
In other words, what's your point, exactly? There are good and bad self-taught and degreed programmers alike. Having a degree (or lack thereof) is absolutely no guarantee that you will or will not get working, well-designed, well-factored code in either case.
The breadth of the slashdot crowd should have enough collective experience to realize that the incredible range of applications negates the practical usefulness of such blanket assumptions as "Degree good, self-taught bad", or vice-versa. Things just aren't that simple.
Yes, the solutions worked but looking at the code reminded me of a car built by collecting parts from every manufacturer and forcing them to work together with a bunch of adapter kits.
You DO realize, of course, that to a large extent, that is EXACTLY how cars ARE engineered, right?
You take a starter from Nippondenso, brake calipers from TRW, tires from Firestone, etc, and "force them to work together".
That's what engineering in the REAL (as opposed to academic) world is all about.
Just because your experience includes mostly Posers, doesn't make it a universal truth.
The plural form of "anecdote" is not "data".
What it sounds like to me (not looking at the actual code), is that the Poser/Coder didn't know how to properly factor "granularity" and "modularity" in their overall design. Such an error can make an unmodifiable, unmaintainable mess out of even 100% custom-built code.
It isn't "reusing" stuff that is a bad idea (who wants to write a JPEG decoder, or a WiFi or TCP/IP stack from scratch?), and in fact is a very good way (often the only way) to meet cost and time targets. It just sounds like the devs. you happen to have worked with were substituting "search engine skills" for actual programming chops.
But being good at math, is a strong positive in programming, obviously.
This is one of the longest-held misconceptions regarding programming.
Programming is about LOGIC FLOW. By an huge margin, pure "math" has VERY little to do with actual "programming".
Remember, to a computer, there are but two numbers: One and Zero.
EVERYthing else is just smoke and mirrors.
Being good at LOGIC (not the same as being good at MATH, obviously), is what is REALLY important in programming (most of the time!).
I SUUUUUUCK at math; but, unless the PROBLEM is actually a pure-math one (and very few actually are), I'll put my programming skills up against the best of 'em. Oh, and I am self-taught, and have been making a fairly decent living doing embedded hardware and software development for the past three decades.
Have there been times when I wish I had more math chops? Sure, but those times have been few and far between, and in the long run, that lack of knowledge more often caused me to re-approach a "math-heavy" problem, breaking it down into what turned out to be a much more cycle-efficient (and often even more code-efficient) algorithm for the (simple-minded, like me!) CPU/MCU.
And one more thing.. what's the big deal about teaching people hexadecimal? What's the purpose? I can do it, but I've never once thought of a reason I'd want to. Isn't the whole point of the compiler that it does that stuff for you?
If you want to be a high-level "applications" developer, then maybe (just maybe) you'll never need to mess with hex (and/or binary). However, if you are an embedded developer (like me, for the past 30 years), you will find DAILY applications for being able to "think in hex".
Conversely, in embedded development (most of my experience is in real-time control systems), I have NEVER had to even consider which sort algorithm is more efficient, since I never need to sort more than a handful of anything, and quite frankly, only rarely have had to actually SORT anything!
So, from my point of view, hex is much more important than a lot of the stuff that is taught in a CS curriculum.
Slashdot Mirror
Once again the "netbook" approach here blows the pretentious apple-whatever approach clear off the counter.
We'll see on launch day, won't we?
On the other hand, Windows does come with MS Paint, which the iPhone does not. A paint program must be downloaded. The leading iPhone paint app runs $1.99. So I guess that's something.
Yes, but one of the coolest is free (as in beer).
With the iPad, not only will we need to buy all these stupid little 5 dollar apps, but it will still be tethered to a regular computer running iTunes.
For what? Not for initial device activation, app loading, app purchasing, media purchasing/browsing/playback, content creation, USB connectivity, SD Card reading, LAN nor WAN connectivity, et FUCKING cetera. For fuck's sake, you don't even need a "regular computer" for 3G activation. It even has an accessory full-sized physical QWERTY keyboard/dock combo accessory (or you can use a BT keyboard)
Did you even watch the iPad Keynote?
While I am personally quite excited about using the iPad with VNC to work in conjunction with my "regular computer", for a large percentage of applications, a computer simply isn't necessary.
And further, there is much evidence to support the conclusion that Apple is working hard to make iPad a more general-purpose platform.
Having a "custom CPU" is not an advantage. It just means that it's overpriced becase you're missing the economy of scale.
And you're missing the economy (not to mention power and PCB real-estate advantages) of large-scale SoC integration.
/. has some of the least technology-savvy people around.
Ya know, for a "geek" site,
No, that was before it was officially announced, with prices and details. Everyone figured it'll be closer to $1000 based on rumors of such device coming from Apple. It was still when everyone thought it would actually have a good hardware, open, as in more closer to OSX than iPhone, OS and good features.
It wasn't anything like that, but useless device, which is overpriced for what it has actually has or does.
And that is why, for example, that pre-orders in Norway, and especially orders for the most expensive version, are overwhelming.
/.
Your comment has now been entered in the world-famous "iPad failure prediction" contest, to take it's place in history with the now-laughable iPod and iPhone "failure prediction" comments we all enjoy trotting out on
Now go back and contemplate why Linux still has, after nearly 20 years, a marketshare that is 5 times less than OS X's, and why Android is well on its way to becoming an unmitigated clusterfuck of increasingly incompatible versions and devices.
If your can't figure out how to run whatever code you want on a iPhone or iPad then you are not smart enough to be making decisions about what code you run. Seriously, its not rocket science
Precisely.
Because those who lined up for Vista didn't then line up for the newest versions of Exchange and SQL Server as well. The reason we mock Apple fans is that many of them buy *EVERY* *BLOODY* *PRODUCT* Apple releases then proceed to call it "groundbreaking" or such crap.
Right. That's why those Xserves, Apple TVs and Mac Pros just fly off the shelves...
NOT!
Now go back to your cave, Troll.
For some Apple fanatics, Apple could sell them a kick in the balls and they'd stand in line for six days just to buy it.
I'm pretty sure that was called Apple TV.
Um, I think you will find that not only is the Apple TV NOT a great seller, even among those who prefer Apple products, but that even Jobs is on record as saying that Apple TV is "a hobby" for the company.
Same thing with XServe and Mac Pro; solid-enough sales to keep the product line going, and a few established markets; but you don't see lines around the block every time a new XServe or MacPro is available.
WahahahahHAHAHAHAHA! But seriously, I'll buy one...when the price drops to $300 or less.
So, with the BOM cost (alone) estimated at around $270, you really expect Apple to be able to retail that same device (with shipping, both to Apple and then to the customer, plus warranty, tech support, etc.) for what would be an estimated gross profit of $30 over the raw materials cost?
Riiiiight.
I agree (obviously!)
1. School gives laptop to student 2. Student reports laptop stolen, takes it home 3. School activates security feature, randomly catches student popping pills while doing homework 4. IT sends photo of student to principal to get laptop back 5. Idiot principal gives student "don't do drugs" talk instead 6. Student panics, tells parents the school is spying on everyone 7. Parents sue school 8. Media frenzy!
Have you even read one single bit of the facts in this situation?
Thought not.
Get the FUCK off Slashdot, FUCKTARD! With your IGNORANCE, you do NOTHING but LOWER the overall discussion.
Purchase text books? I think you're not American, but that'd force a lot of people here to drop out of primary and secondary school. Compulsory education or not, the majority of Americans simply couldn't financially support that idea.
Ahem.
Here in Indiana, the "public" schools make students (well, their parents) RENT the textbooks (so they pay for them, without actually even getting to keep them!).
Plus, at least here in Indianapolis (Marion County), they make the kids wear a specific "uniform", that AGAIN the parents have to pay for.
And there is no coordinated effort to alleviate this cost for low-income families. It is up to each "township" to VOLUNTARILY provide a solution for those who cannot afford these COMPULSORY charges. So, if the "township" you happen to live in has a indigent program in place (believe it or not, some actually DON'T!), then great. If not, then it's left up to the PARENTS to try to satisfy the arbitrary, but compulsory requirements.
Of course, if you then DON'T send your kids to school because you, as a parent, can't afford this bullshit, then Child "Protective" Services will swoop in and take your kids (thus costing the taxpayers MUCH more in foster care, etc. than it would cost just to have a STATEWIDE program to cover these arbitrary costs).
And yet, "education" is somehow by far the largest percentage of my property tax burden, at over 50% of the overall tax (and I don't even have children). That's not a guess. BTW, it's printed right on the tax invoice.
There's one way the school could be telling the truth about this. They didn't say this explicitly, so it's not clear, but: The lawsuit alleges that the school accused the student of inappropriate behavior. That behavior could have been reporting his laptop as "stolen", then continuing to use it. The school maintains that they only use the webcams to take a still photo when a laptop has been reported stolen, to aid in recovering it. If the laptop was reported stolen, the school took a picture, they saw that the student who reported it was the one using it, and they confronted the student with this evidence, that would explain both the lawsuit and the school's position. Sort of odd that the school's response wouldn't explain that, if that is indeed what happened. But people tend to omit important details like that when there's a lawsuit pending, on advice of counsel...
Except for the fact that they have already posted a statement, AND a FAQ. Neither of them mentions that the student have EVER "reported the laptop stolen".
Whoever modded this "insightful" wasn't very "insightful" themselves, methinks.
...or the Lost Electrical Reclamation League.
Being self-taught, you've missed our entire discussion on math.
Nobody's talking about adding and subtracting numbers here.
Could your comment be more effete?
BTW, your arrogance is only exceeded by your ignorance.
Perhaps you'd like to tell him, or him that they would "miss" an "entire discussion on math", eh?
Isn't the FBI in charge of invading our privacy, not protecting it?
That's truly funny, man! You made my day, thanx.
I might add to this list: Recursion.
I am a self-taught programmer, who was actually programming "out of my element" (I'm an embedded software/hardware dev. by trade), writing in C/AL (a 4th gen Pascal-like scripting language used in the financial/ERP package, Navision (now Microsoft Dynamics NAV), for the company I was working as an embedded dev. for at the time.
The task at hand was a function of do "exploding" of multi-level Bills of Materials (BOMs).
In about 3 lines of C/AL code, I designed and wrote a clean, recursive, data-driven function, that iterated down through the BOM levels. Worked perfectly the first time. I might add that I was also the "architect" on this project as well, so the "idea" of using a recursive function was my own as well, arrived at after about 10 minutes of "design analysis'.
By the way, even the experts at Navision had no idea that C/AL could even be used recursively, and they developed the language!
Moral to this story: A bad programmer is a bad programmer; conversely, a good programmer is a good programmer. Anything else is simply flapping of gums by all concerned (including me).
Incidentally, not only is my recursive "exploder" function still (since 1997) being used by my (now) former employer; but it also made its way into a paid "add-on" still being sold by a third-party Navision (MS NAV) developer.
One of the biggest ones I've seen is that self-taught programmers tend to not think about algorithm efficiency
Speak for yourself. As in the vast majority of the "negative" comments to this article, what people are REALLY complaining about is BAD programmers.
As a self-taught embedded hardware/software developer (100% self-taught on both fronts), with 30 years of experience, specializing in real-time control and instrumentation systems (often with pretty puny computational power), I can assure you that "algorithm efficiency" is something I learned early, and well.
Self-taught = passionate = "talent" not teachable in class I know who I'd rather hire
Are you hiring (seriously!)?
But most self-taught programmers I met just learned syntax.
I said it before, and I'll say it again: The plural form of "anecdote" is not "data".
Self-taught folks tend to have less in their toolkits -- when all you've learned is a hammer, everything looks like a nail. Then, when trying to do something different, they try to take their hammer and "invent" a screwdriver out of it.
...and when all you're taught is algorithms, everything tends to look like a math problem.
In other words, what's your point, exactly? There are good and bad self-taught and degreed programmers alike. Having a degree (or lack thereof) is absolutely no guarantee that you will or will not get working, well-designed, well-factored code in either case.
The breadth of the slashdot crowd should have enough collective experience to realize that the incredible range of applications negates the practical usefulness of such blanket assumptions as "Degree good, self-taught bad", or vice-versa. Things just aren't that simple.
Yes, the solutions worked but looking at the code reminded me of a car built by collecting parts from every manufacturer and forcing them to work together with a bunch of adapter kits.
You DO realize, of course, that to a large extent, that is EXACTLY how cars ARE engineered, right?
You take a starter from Nippondenso, brake calipers from TRW, tires from Firestone, etc, and "force them to work together".
That's what engineering in the REAL (as opposed to academic) world is all about.
Just because your experience includes mostly Posers, doesn't make it a universal truth.
The plural form of "anecdote" is not "data".
What it sounds like to me (not looking at the actual code), is that the Poser/Coder didn't know how to properly factor "granularity" and "modularity" in their overall design. Such an error can make an unmodifiable, unmaintainable mess out of even 100% custom-built code.
It isn't "reusing" stuff that is a bad idea (who wants to write a JPEG decoder, or a WiFi or TCP/IP stack from scratch?), and in fact is a very good way (often the only way) to meet cost and time targets. It just sounds like the devs. you happen to have worked with were substituting "search engine skills" for actual programming chops.
But being good at math, is a strong positive in programming, obviously.
This is one of the longest-held misconceptions regarding programming.
Programming is about LOGIC FLOW. By an huge margin, pure "math" has VERY little to do with actual "programming".
Remember, to a computer, there are but two numbers: One and Zero.
EVERYthing else is just smoke and mirrors.
Being good at LOGIC (not the same as being good at MATH, obviously), is what is REALLY important in programming (most of the time!).
I SUUUUUUCK at math; but, unless the PROBLEM is actually a pure-math one (and very few actually are), I'll put my programming skills up against the best of 'em. Oh, and I am self-taught, and have been making a fairly decent living doing embedded hardware and software development for the past three decades.
Have there been times when I wish I had more math chops? Sure, but those times have been few and far between, and in the long run, that lack of knowledge more often caused me to re-approach a "math-heavy" problem, breaking it down into what turned out to be a much more cycle-efficient (and often even more code-efficient) algorithm for the (simple-minded, like me!) CPU/MCU.
And one more thing.. what's the big deal about teaching people hexadecimal? What's the purpose? I can do it, but I've never once thought of a reason I'd want to. Isn't the whole point of the compiler that it does that stuff for you?
If you want to be a high-level "applications" developer, then maybe (just maybe) you'll never need to mess with hex (and/or binary). However, if you are an embedded developer (like me, for the past 30 years), you will find DAILY applications for being able to "think in hex".
Conversely, in embedded development (most of my experience is in real-time control systems), I have NEVER had to even consider which sort algorithm is more efficient, since I never need to sort more than a handful of anything, and quite frankly, only rarely have had to actually SORT anything!
So, from my point of view, hex is much more important than a lot of the stuff that is taught in a CS curriculum.
This is taking the whole "school as babysitter" thing a bit to far.
A bit too far???