Well, the university, about which I was speaking (writing), was the University of Kansas (KU) in Lawrence, KS. As a research university, their focus was, naturally, on research. However that isn't what they tell the undergraduates. I had heard, many times, that the undergraduates were just cash-cows to support the graduate program and the professors' research.
I do have to say that I transferred to a smaller college called Washburn University in Topeka, KS (yes, temporarily called Google, KS). There, the focus was less on theory and more on how to write code. In their data-structures class, we worked through all the code necessary to accomplish the goal at hand. In fact the teacher would first work out the logical problem as if we were inventing it for the first time, prompting the class to come up with ideas, then he would do the same thing to implement it in code. I think it really helped develop a gut feel for how the data-structures worked. They had a course or two on software engineering, some on database design and some on game development. However, as my plans had changed slightly when I went there, and I had already done plenty of database design as a network manager, I did not take any of those advanced courses. Therefore, I don't know exactly what was taught in them. That said, based on my overhearing of many discussions, I think the software engineering course was primarily about metrics, which are important but are still not what one needs to know to construct a complete, deploy-able, use-able application.
In the end, what I wish I had been taught - and couldn't get any professors at either university to explain or teach me - is how to design, build, and deploy a real application just like you can pick up off the shelf and install. How to design and build a real user interface rather than just putting some standard buttons and other widgets in a window. How to integrate the data access with the user interface so it all works smoothly and transparently to the user. How to design an entirely new user interface object, complete with event detection and graphical manipulation. How to load user preferences and make use of them within the program. And how to do all this within each of the various major platforms. The whole kit-and-kaboodle. Instead, I got a lot of pieces and parts that are mostly just enough to say we did them, but not quite enough to put the whole thing together into a complete application.
I don't hold anything against the second university, Washburn. As a small college, they were doing the best they could with the time and resources they had. But KU had no excuse. I guess I wish that there was a separate track that really did focus on building a whole application; perhaps coordinating all the courses so that a student would build on the same large-scale project over the entire course of his or her CS degree, similar to the way the Deitel &Deitel books build on the same program throughout the course of the book, but going much farther than Deitel &Deitel.
I don't know, maybe there are programs out there like that. But how does one tell such things before one has invested a couple of years in a college? Certainly not by reading the advertising on a university's web site. Perhaps we need a classification and rating system to indicate what each university really teaches. Maybe someone could set up a web-site to make this information available to everyone. Naturally, we would need to put our heads together and figure out the list of all the important skills that need to be taught - and learned - in order for students to be ready to hit the ground running in their new jobs. A curriculum, if you will. Does one already exist? It seems to me that some industry groups must have done this already.
OK, nitpick if you will, but "all x and y" is a common English idiom, generally understood to mean "almost all" or "a very significant portion."
At my university, I had two classes that were actually about how to write the code to get what you wanted done (AKA "programming"). All the rest were pure theory. Yes, they were called "Data Structures" et cetera, but the only thing that was discussed in lecture was the structures themselves and the general psuedocode for implementing them. Lab time was spent grilling the GTA about how to actually get the programming done. Most of the time he ended up simply writing all the code on the board, leaving to the student not much more than getting the syntax right.
Not that I really expected a CS degree at a research university to be "all" (there're those idioms again) programming techniques with little theory. But I didn't expect to be entirely on my own when it came to learning all the "real" stuff about writing good code. Even when I went in to office hours the answers I would get were "all" variations on, "I don't know. I haven't written any actual C++ code in years." So I started asking professors who I hadn't even had any classes with... same answer.
So it slowly dawned on me: If I wanted to really learn how to do professional development, I would have to get my degree, get a job, and throw myself at the feet of real programmers, begging them to tell me what I really wanted to know... how to write good code that really did something useful for real users.
I agree. Most of the CS programs, I have seen, advertise that they will get you a job as a computer programmer. But then they teach all math and theory while expecting you to pick up the actual languages on your own. At no point do they ever get to things like how to really read an API or how to find the info you need to make an application work properly on a particular platform or even how to build a complete application that can be installed and used by non-programmers. It is all theory and just enough code to show you understand the theory, regardless of how crappy the code itself is. The universities aren't preparing you for a job as a professional developer; they are preparing you for a job as a computer science researcher.
I feel this is a massive case of false advertising. Universities are essentially tricking students into massively expensive CS majors when what the student actually asked for - and was told he/she would get - is training to be a developer.
And then the industry wonders why there are so few qualified developers around.
As a semi-professional cynic and the guy who tore into the Rice University students who's PR dept. claimed they had invented a revolutionary solution to a huge health problem, I had initially thought, as many here have claimed, that this IR-beam touch-screen frame was nothing new. However, I was also trained at one of the the EloGraphics plants (I can't remember where the heck it was now) on how to install and repair those old IR-beam touch screens. I also serviced several other makes of IR-beam touch screens when I was a technician at the California Museum of Science and Industry in Los Angeles back in the late 1980s.
Those old IR-beam touch screens worked on a very basic principle. The beams went across the screen in a strict grid pattern of horizontal and vertical lines. Very simple hardware detected which horizontal beam and which vertical beam had been blocked and then reported a basic X-Y coordinate. This is why, as one commenter has mentioned, the data could be transmitted via serial connection. The data consisted of nothing but a series of coordinates.
The main thing that people complained about with this design was: If a user placed two fingers on the screen or laid their finger against the screen such that it blocked more than one horizontal and/or vertical beam, then the coordinate reported always indicated the top-most and left-most interrupted beams. There simply was no way to detect the correct position of more than one finger. This was because of the way the electronics were designed. The circuit simply polled each sensor in turn till it found the first blocked beam in each of the horizontal and vertical directions. Those sensor numbers were reported as the coordinates and the electronics reset and started polling from the top-left again. It seemed an intractable problem - at the time - to detect when fingers were blocking one horizontal beam but two vertical beams or any other combination other than just one of each.
Now, neither the article nor the video mentions it, but by looking carefully at the first few seconds of the video, one can see that this sensor array works in an entirely different way. It appears that they use - as they said - "thousands of beams" but not in a simple horizontal-vertical grid. Instead, they send them out at dozens of different angles from each of hundreds of points along the edge of the frame. Then by compiling the list of all the different beams that are blocked at any given time they can build up a picture of exactly where something is blocking all of those beams, no matter how big it is or how many there are. Again, take a close look at the video from seconds 3 - 6 and seconds 42 - 45. You will see them display "what the computer sees" represented by lines for each beam that isn't blocked and the blank space where no beams cross from any direction. It is almost like one of those lame string-art things we used to make in the 1970s, except you just put a string from every point to every point on the frame, then remove just enough to make some holes in the webbing.
I have to say, this is definitely a significant advance on what I know of the current technology. Now, it is possible - in the intervening 30 years - that other technologies have come up which used this multi-angle beam system. But I haven't seen any. And certainly none with the software behind it to sus out the full size and shape of each object blocking the beams.
Using generic parts of a kind you can find in the local hardware store is a Good Thing.
Pardon me, but an autoclave is not a generic part that can be picked up at the local hardware store. Besides, remote areas of underdeveloped countries do not have hardware stores. So claiming anything that requires parts from YOUR local hardware store is suitable for people who have never seen a hardware store shows a complete lack of empathy for the problems of the people who make up a large part of the world's population.
Dude, chill. The problems we're discussing affect about 85% of the population of the country I live in right now.
Which is exactly why you should be paying more attention to what is actually claimed in some of these arguments. I say thing A and people keep arguing about thing B, which distracts from the actual facts of this issue. Rice University's PR claimed their students had "invented" a "revolutionary" solution to the problem of sterilization of medical instruments when they had, in fact done nothing of the sort. While it may be a good thing to design useful devices such that they can be made out of commonly available parts, this is not, repeat NOT, what these students did. Based on the article which triggered my complaint, the students simply sat an existing autoclave - likely normally only available from a medical supply house - down onto a steam powered hot-plate. As it turns out this is not what they did. Instead they created a custom designed and manufactured coupling along with some heat transfer coils to apply high-temp, high-pressure steam to an existing autoclave - again, likely normally only available from a medical supply house. A tough student engineering project, but still not a revolutionary invention.
What has me completely flummoxed is why every time I reiterate this point someone chimes in and says that some other thing that has no bearing on this issue is a good thing and therefore I am wrong to state that the students did not invent anything new. I say "Thing A is not a new invention" and people respond with "But Thing B is good" even when Thing B has absolutely nothing to do with the issue at hand. I agree, Thing B is a good thing. But neither I nor the Rice students said or did anything remotely near Thing B and that is one of the reasons why Thing A is not such a great thing after all.
To your points: First, that 'people who have never seen a hardware store' line is a little disingenuous.
While I may have been generalizing some and some in these areas may have reason to feel insulted - to which I apologize - I can't see how you could claim I am being "disingenuous." The word means to intentionally mislead in a subtle manner, not to simply be wrong.
We're obviously using shorthand for generic consumer-grade materials that are readily available via standard distribution channels. Yes, there is no hardware store in the village to which these parts are destined, but it's a damn sight easier to get generic parts shipped from the nearest city (no matter how far away that might be) than it is to get a medical supply company to ship to the same place.
Actually, I was responding to a single individual. He/she spoke of a local hardware store. I was trying to get him/her to see that it is more difficult to get repair parts than he/she may think. In addition, the parts designed by the Rice students cannot be obtained anywhere. They were custom machined. And, from other comments, it seems it took quite a long time to make them. So, while it is important that parts for any solution to the sterilization problem should be readily available - just as you said - neither the article under discussion, nor the actual project inaccurately described in that article, did much of anything to make said parts less expensive or more readily available.
So, the students solved the problem stated in their assignment. I was not commenting on their ability to do their assigned engineering task. I was commenting on the article - linked to in this Slashdot post - claiming that the combination was revolutionary in some way or that it actually solved the problem of sterilizing instruments in remote areas of underdeveloped countries.
Actually, I am not a software developer. I am a former network manager. And I did not feel insulted that someone "insinuated that Gnome + Linux = Ubuntu was child's play." My claim was that Gnome + Linux does not equal Ubuntu at all. My complaint was about comparing something that takes a great deal of integration skill with something that requires nothing more than setting thing A down on top of thing B. Remember, software, by its nature is "easily replicable" in that one can easily and cheaply make copies. In the case of Ubuntu, it is also actually legal to do so. However, it is not "easily replicable" in terms of creating a new piece of software from scratch that does the same thing. Especially if one has not seen the code for the previously existing software. Ask Linus Torvolds.
This project, on the other hand, seems to be exactly the opposite. It would be easy for anyone else to take an autoclave and set it down on to a stovetop which got it's heat from some other source. However, building the device from scratch - even from existing plans - is relatively difficult. Keep in mind, I did not have access to the original assignment given to the students. Nor would anyone else had you not posted them here. My comments were based on what was written in TFA, to whit: "the Rice team's big idea was to use the steam to heat a custom-designed conductive hotplate" and "It basically becomes a stovetop, and you can heat anything you need to," thus indicating that the autoclave was simply sat down on top of said hotplate.
I should be insulted by your assumption of my ignorance as to the "difficulties of coupling and interface design" but I am not, because I know you are young and do not know better. I know full well the mathematical and mechanical difficulties involved with connecting high pressure steam pipes and achieving efficient heat transfer without leaking any of the possibly-toxin-contaminated steam into the sterile environment of an autoclave. Not to mention the craftsmanship required to actually execute such designs by hand. It is just that none of these problems were discussed in the article. The difficulties you expressed are exactly why I don't think it is a good idea to expect people in remote areas of underdeveloped countries to be able to affect repairs when necessary. Not because they are ignorant, but because they are not likely to have the necessary resources readily available. Besides, achieving an efficient heat transfer, while it may be a difficult engineering task for students, is still not the equivalent of a "revolutionary invention" that will solve a "a long-standing health issue for developing countries."
So it seems we all have a common "frenemy" as it were: the PR department at Rice. Not only are they assigning credit where credit is not due, but they are also making students look bad while doing so. Perhaps you need to talk to them about that.
Finally, I want to apologize to these students once again for assuming they were the ones making these overblown claims. In the future I will remember to turn first to the author of said overblown claims when expressing my frustration with the frequency of same.
So it was an engineering task? Well, then I apologize to the students for asserting that they were making this claim. But the claim is baseless, none-the-less.
Using generic parts of a kind you can find in the local hardware store is a Good Thing.
Pardon me, but an autoclave is not a generic part that can be picked up at the local hardware store. Besides, remote areas of underdeveloped countries do not have hardware stores. So claiming anything that requires parts from YOUR local hardware store is suitable for people who have never seen a hardware store shows a complete lack of empathy for the problems of the people who make up a large part of the world's population.
I did not say "These things" are "no-brainers" - with the implication that a solution to the problem of sterilization was obvious or easy. Naturally, if that were the case then, as you say, there wouldn't be a problem to be solved.
What I said was that the solution being passed off as "revolutionary" is nothing more than plunking an existing piece of equipment down on a source of heat. Exactly what the existing piece of equipment was designed for in the first place. This does not meet the definition of an "invention" by any means. An invention - when made of existing components - must produce a new and unexpected result. Placing an existing device, designed to be heated, down on a hot-plate and having that device get hot, is not a new or unexpected result. Your argument about the obviousness of this "invention" being apparent only "after the fact" is misguided at best. But it is definitely moot.
Next you engage in the "fallacy of equivocation." You use two different definitions for the term "re-purpose." The first definition - the one I used - is to take an existing piece of equipment with an existing function and simply make a claim that it can be used in a different environment - the cause de jour - and stake a claim to a "revolutionary" "invention." Your definition - stretched at best - is the use of existing components to make a new device that does, in fact, produce a new and unexpected result. This definition more correctly fits the term "invention" (as defined by the USPTO) than the term "re-purpose," (as I used it) which patent law specifically says is not an invention.
The fallacy in your equivocation is even more evident in your claim that programmers "re-purpose" computer languages. In fact, programmers use computer languages for exactly what they were designed for: to write programs. The language is a tool not a component. Just because a saw is used to cut a board for a different house does not mean the saw has been "re-purposed." Anyone who claims so is confused at best and disingenuous at worst.
Your claim that Ubuntu is nothing more than slapping Gnome on top of Linux in the same manner that these students just slapped an existing autoclave on top of a different - yet currently existing - source of heat is either an insult to the Ubuntu team or exhibits a complete lack of understanding of what makes a Linux distribution successful. The Ubuntu team put years into writing and re-writing installers along with other custom code and modifications to layer on top of Gnome and Linux. These customizations made Ubuntu relatively unique among Linux distributions in that it was easy to install and use for a much larger segment of the regular populace than previous Linux distributions. If all they had done was slap Gnome on top of Linux then you would never have heard about it - that is, unless it was done at a prestigious university with a good PR department.
So, perhaps I should have been less concise and more precise in my choice of words. Perhaps I should have defined my use of the term "re-purpose" to mean "taking something that already exists in its entirety and claiming it can be used in a slightly different situation." But my point still stands. What these Rice students did is not new or novel in any way.
In addition, these students did not even solve the stated problem. The problem with sterilization in underdeveloped countries is not that they do not have a source of heat. The problem is that functioning autoclaves are A) Too expensive for distribution in all the places where they are needed; B) May not be durable enough to withstand the rigors of use in remote areas; and C) Require special tools, skills, and parts to maintain and repair which are not likely to be available in remote areas of underdeveloped countries. Simply plopping
I am sorry but I am getting really sick of reading about all these students at prestigious universities who do nothing more than re-purpose existing technology, give it a fancy name, say it will solve some problem for the underdeveloped world, and get international accolades for doing the technological equivalent of buying a paper off the internet and putting their name on it.
Every single piece of this "revolutionary" "invention" can be bought off the shelf and is in current use. The main difference between an autoclave and a standard pressure cooker is that the autoclave is guaranteed to get up to the proper temperature and pressure and then stay there for the specified period of time. Considering that this contraption must be hand adjusted, and it requires at least an hour just to get up to temp, and then it has to stay at that temp for around an hour - being constantly adjusted all the time - there is no guarantee whatsoever that the instruments will actually be sterilized. If the operator gets distracted for a while then all you get is a bunch of hot - but still infectious - instruments.
Sure, if these students built every single piece of their solar steam generator by hand, it would be a good exercise - akin to an art student copying an old master - but that is all. If I was their professor and they tried to pass this off as their own creation I would have failed them and turned them in for plagiarism.
Drop whatever you are doing right now and start writing a grant proposal. Here is what you will propose to do:
Create a set of guidelines to encourage reuseability of software. These will include:
General guidelines as to modularity, reusability, liscensing, and documentation rather than specific instructions about languages.
General guidelines as to revision control, and the posting of resulting software, similar to the Data Management Plans referred to by another commenter.
Minimum standards as to openness of licenses and future availability of resulting software.
Restrictions against going around the rules to produce proprietary software.
Create a clearinghouse web site with the following features:
Explanations of the above guidelines with help for researchers to follow the guidelines, including forums, online courses, and perhaps seminars.
A repository where researchers can publish their software in such a way that the version they used for their research is maintained in "stasis" in perpetuity, while also allowing others to fork, branch, borrow, or part out that software as their needs require.
(While common revision management applications and schemes allow only a hierarchical, "branching," structure for the repositories, this repository will likely require the ability to track a very complex "graph" of the evolution of software and all the ways that researchers mix, combine, and improve the software.)
A system which allows users to rate and review software placed into the repository for both usefulness and adhearance to the guidelines. (Researchers who regularly post software which does not adheare to the guidelines will be less likely to get grants in the future.)
If you play your cards right you could end up with a lifetime career managing this clearinghouse. Why am I not writing this proposal? Because I am working on something else which I consider to be even more important.
Now it is plain for all to see that Apple's secret weapon is their network of dedicated Apple stores worldwide where dedicated sales people are not only able to better explain its tablet to consumers but Apple also captures more margin than competitors who have to share margin with retail partners.
Funny, that was the exact reason given for the demise of Gateway 2000. All the pundits said that maintaining their own retail outlets was too expensive.
I no longer find it surprising that supposed tech journalists continue to dote over just about everything Apple does, calling all Apple's actions genius when they have been preceded and/or superseded by others at almost every turn over the last few years. There are two things that Apple is better at than others: style and attracting the upscale market. By building machines that do less, look pretty, and are marketed to the wealthy, Apple thereby attracts all the other people who want to pretend they are wealthy too. Sure, iOS may have more apps than Android but that isn't necessarily because it is a better platform. I believe it is merely because the developers are chasing all that disposable income available to the types of people who fall for Apple's marketing. I seriously doubt that any Android device owners would have purchased the "I Am Rich" app.
Agreed
I dropped my Verizon contract and went back to Sprint because I couldn't afford the data plan any more. (Yes, I saved money even after paying the $150 contract breaking fee.) Ever since, I've been using my Droid doing all the same things I used to do before - except talking on the phone - as long as I can get a Wi-Fi connection, which is just about everywhere I go. Heck, I could never use the thing outside anyway because the screen is awful for reading in sunlight. So, in the end, I am getting just about the same functionality without paying for a data plan.
What we need is something akin to a Motorola Atrix but with a much bigger screen.
Take a convertible laptop with the power to run a full fledged OS like Linux (with a real desktop like Gnome or KDE), Windows 7, or OSX. Now, make the screen detachable. (I know, we've seen that before, but not on a full powered convertible laptop.) When the screen is detached, have it fire up a tablet OS like Android or iOS. Keep the "legacy" CPU, HDD, optical drive, and all that other "laptop-ish" stuff in the keyboard base. Just put the screen and a tablet-level processor in the screen part. Make sure to include a stylus digitizer beneath the screen as well as a capacitive touch in front of it like I have on my Fujitsu Lifebook T4310. Give the user the ability to switch to the tablet OS while the screen is still attached to the base for easy typing in tablet OS apps.
Now you've got the best of both worlds. You can carry around all the power and storage you might need for "real work" and you can also just hold the screen and do the kinds of things that people like to do while holding a screen in one hand. How many people really want to carry around the extra weight of two screens just so they can have the functionality of both types of devices?
This is great! Thanks for the link.
I was going to suggest that the OP "just do what libraries do" but I I didn't have specific info to reference what exactly libraries use other than the high-dollar programs they have to get grants to buy.
Publicly traded companies have a fiduciary duty to behave responsibly with the money their stockholders have entrusted to them. Even though they are owned by a relatively small portion of the public, any member of the public could be an owner or be considering becoming an owner. Therefore, the public has a right to know what is going on inside of that company. That is the concession the company makes in order to be allowed to sell stock on the publicly traded markets. That is why publicly traded companies are required to file corporate reports. Unfortunately, many publicly traded companies have learned how to hide their activities from the very people they are asking to invest in them - the public. Therefore, even more transparency is likely needed in order to protect the public.
What? You never heard of a Sony screwdriver? When I worked at the California Museum of Science and Industry in LA back in the late 80s, they sent me to a training class to learn how to work on the Sony 3/4 video tape players - which we used a lot in the museum because they had better video quality and were built like tanks. Anyway, only people who had attended that class were allowed to purchase a special screwdriver that would work with certain screws in that VCR.
Tamper resistant screws have been around for ages. The problem isn't the screws. The problem is using them to jack up revenues at the customer's expense for things that could otherwise be easily done by an average customer or electronics technician. In Sony's case the screws only protected parts of the VCR that one would not know how to adjust properly if one had not taken the class. In Apple's case the screws only protect Apple's bottom line.
In the years since the iPod came out Apple has shown their true nature. Anyone who has purchased an Apple product since then deserves what they get and should not complain.
I am really getting tired of the argument that users can fix open-source software. This assumes that all users are developers, that they know the language the software was written in very well, and that they can get the information they need about how the code works or is supposed to work - information that is not always obvious when looking at the code - without making a career of the whole endeavor. So, out of all the - perhaps tens or hundreds of thousands of - real-world users of an open source program, maybe 100 people can "fix" what they don't like about it. And twenty of those are the original developers.
So please, please, stop using this argument. Or at least fine tune it so that it actually valid in the real world. To continue to use this argument, when every non-developer person who ever hears it knows it does not apply to them, only convinces those people that open-source software must not be for them either. Now, is that what you want?
This is exactly why we need a constitutional amendment banning unrelated riders and amendments on legislation. That would effectively ban earmarks as well as these insane riders that force the few decent legislators we have to vote against things that are desperately needed.
... honestly and completely reveals his salary, other compensations, and expenses. Non-profits are supposed to report expenses but his are hidden in vague, general categories.
P.S. I posted a similar message on Huffington Post and they deleted it.
The government will decide to do earthquake (building damage) mitigation only when they figure out a way to funnel the money to a small group of select contractors who have spent a lot of money getting them elected. So when Haliburton decides it has milked the Middle-East situation for all it can get and decides Mid-West earthquake mitigation is its next profit center, then we will see more mitigation than there is any need for. Suddenly the media will be up in arms about the pending disaster to the Mid-West, the Mississippi river will be predicted to stop flowing, and they will be spending billions shoring up buildings that are better off bulldozed.
To further that analogy, when you put one end of the rubber band around the end of your finger, say, and pull it back with the other hand, the end around your finger will start to roll up closer to the end of your finger as you pull harder and harder until it finally snaps off the end of your finger. The small movements geologists look for as a warning of impending earthquakes are similar to the rubber band rolling up your finger as more and more energy is stored in the rubber band. Just because the end of the rubber band moves a little bit closer to the end of your finger does not mean the rubber band as a whole is not storing lots more energy as it is being pulled harder and harder. Similarly, small areas of tectonic plates may slip and slide, causing small earth quakes, while at the same time pressure builds up in much greater areas. Geologists look for movement of the plates as a whole, analogous to the rubber band as a whole being pulled back. They also look for small earth quakes, which are analogous to the end of the rubber band rolling up your finger. They can calculate how much energy is being stored up by the plates moving and compare that to the energy released by the small quakes. If the amount being stored up is much greater than that released then they know something big is building up. Just as you learn from experience when that rubber band is about to pop off the end of your finger, geologists have learned from experience and studying the geology of an area how to tell when an earthquake is pending. Some areas are more "stretchy" than others and some areas tend to release all their energy in a series of small quakes. As far as I know, the New Madrid fault, where my family originally came from, tends to do a little of both. That is why it is a long time between big quakes.
P.S. In fear of creating yet another acronym, IANAG.
Slashdot Mirror
I, too, use Dreamweaver. It has been around a long time and I don't expect Adobe to be going anywhere any time soon.
Well, the university, about which I was speaking (writing), was the University of Kansas (KU) in Lawrence, KS. As a research university, their focus was, naturally, on research. However that isn't what they tell the undergraduates. I had heard, many times, that the undergraduates were just cash-cows to support the graduate program and the professors' research.
I do have to say that I transferred to a smaller college called Washburn University in Topeka, KS (yes, temporarily called Google, KS). There, the focus was less on theory and more on how to write code. In their data-structures class, we worked through all the code necessary to accomplish the goal at hand. In fact the teacher would first work out the logical problem as if we were inventing it for the first time, prompting the class to come up with ideas, then he would do the same thing to implement it in code. I think it really helped develop a gut feel for how the data-structures worked. They had a course or two on software engineering, some on database design and some on game development. However, as my plans had changed slightly when I went there, and I had already done plenty of database design as a network manager, I did not take any of those advanced courses. Therefore, I don't know exactly what was taught in them. That said, based on my overhearing of many discussions, I think the software engineering course was primarily about metrics, which are important but are still not what one needs to know to construct a complete, deploy-able, use-able application.
In the end, what I wish I had been taught - and couldn't get any professors at either university to explain or teach me - is how to design, build, and deploy a real application just like you can pick up off the shelf and install. How to design and build a real user interface rather than just putting some standard buttons and other widgets in a window. How to integrate the data access with the user interface so it all works smoothly and transparently to the user. How to design an entirely new user interface object, complete with event detection and graphical manipulation. How to load user preferences and make use of them within the program. And how to do all this within each of the various major platforms. The whole kit-and-kaboodle. Instead, I got a lot of pieces and parts that are mostly just enough to say we did them, but not quite enough to put the whole thing together into a complete application.
I don't hold anything against the second university, Washburn. As a small college, they were doing the best they could with the time and resources they had. But KU had no excuse. I guess I wish that there was a separate track that really did focus on building a whole application; perhaps coordinating all the courses so that a student would build on the same large-scale project over the entire course of his or her CS degree, similar to the way the Deitel &Deitel books build on the same program throughout the course of the book, but going much farther than Deitel &Deitel.
I don't know, maybe there are programs out there like that. But how does one tell such things before one has invested a couple of years in a college? Certainly not by reading the advertising on a university's web site. Perhaps we need a classification and rating system to indicate what each university really teaches. Maybe someone could set up a web-site to make this information available to everyone. Naturally, we would need to put our heads together and figure out the list of all the important skills that need to be taught - and learned - in order for students to be ready to hit the ground running in their new jobs. A curriculum, if you will. Does one already exist? It seems to me that some industry groups must have done this already.
OK, nitpick if you will, but "all x and y" is a common English idiom, generally understood to mean "almost all" or "a very significant portion."
At my university, I had two classes that were actually about how to write the code to get what you wanted done (AKA "programming"). All the rest were pure theory. Yes, they were called "Data Structures" et cetera, but the only thing that was discussed in lecture was the structures themselves and the general psuedocode for implementing them. Lab time was spent grilling the GTA about how to actually get the programming done. Most of the time he ended up simply writing all the code on the board, leaving to the student not much more than getting the syntax right.
Not that I really expected a CS degree at a research university to be "all" (there're those idioms again) programming techniques with little theory. But I didn't expect to be entirely on my own when it came to learning all the "real" stuff about writing good code. Even when I went in to office hours the answers I would get were "all" variations on, "I don't know. I haven't written any actual C++ code in years." So I started asking professors who I hadn't even had any classes with ... same answer.
So it slowly dawned on me: If I wanted to really learn how to do professional development, I would have to get my degree, get a job, and throw myself at the feet of real programmers, begging them to tell me what I really wanted to know ... how to write good code that really did something useful for real users.
I agree. Most of the CS programs, I have seen, advertise that they will get you a job as a computer programmer. But then they teach all math and theory while expecting you to pick up the actual languages on your own. At no point do they ever get to things like how to really read an API or how to find the info you need to make an application work properly on a particular platform or even how to build a complete application that can be installed and used by non-programmers. It is all theory and just enough code to show you understand the theory, regardless of how crappy the code itself is. The universities aren't preparing you for a job as a professional developer; they are preparing you for a job as a computer science researcher.
I feel this is a massive case of false advertising. Universities are essentially tricking students into massively expensive CS majors when what the student actually asked for - and was told he/she would get - is training to be a developer.
And then the industry wonders why there are so few qualified developers around.
As a semi-professional cynic and the guy who tore into the Rice University students who's PR dept. claimed they had invented a revolutionary solution to a huge health problem, I had initially thought, as many here have claimed, that this IR-beam touch-screen frame was nothing new. However, I was also trained at one of the the EloGraphics plants (I can't remember where the heck it was now) on how to install and repair those old IR-beam touch screens. I also serviced several other makes of IR-beam touch screens when I was a technician at the California Museum of Science and Industry in Los Angeles back in the late 1980s.
Those old IR-beam touch screens worked on a very basic principle. The beams went across the screen in a strict grid pattern of horizontal and vertical lines. Very simple hardware detected which horizontal beam and which vertical beam had been blocked and then reported a basic X-Y coordinate. This is why, as one commenter has mentioned, the data could be transmitted via serial connection. The data consisted of nothing but a series of coordinates.
The main thing that people complained about with this design was: If a user placed two fingers on the screen or laid their finger against the screen such that it blocked more than one horizontal and/or vertical beam, then the coordinate reported always indicated the top-most and left-most interrupted beams. There simply was no way to detect the correct position of more than one finger. This was because of the way the electronics were designed. The circuit simply polled each sensor in turn till it found the first blocked beam in each of the horizontal and vertical directions. Those sensor numbers were reported as the coordinates and the electronics reset and started polling from the top-left again. It seemed an intractable problem - at the time - to detect when fingers were blocking one horizontal beam but two vertical beams or any other combination other than just one of each.
Now, neither the article nor the video mentions it, but by looking carefully at the first few seconds of the video, one can see that this sensor array works in an entirely different way. It appears that they use - as they said - "thousands of beams" but not in a simple horizontal-vertical grid. Instead, they send them out at dozens of different angles from each of hundreds of points along the edge of the frame. Then by compiling the list of all the different beams that are blocked at any given time they can build up a picture of exactly where something is blocking all of those beams, no matter how big it is or how many there are. Again, take a close look at the video from seconds 3 - 6 and seconds 42 - 45. You will see them display "what the computer sees" represented by lines for each beam that isn't blocked and the blank space where no beams cross from any direction. It is almost like one of those lame string-art things we used to make in the 1970s, except you just put a string from every point to every point on the frame, then remove just enough to make some holes in the webbing.
I have to say, this is definitely a significant advance on what I know of the current technology. Now, it is possible - in the intervening 30 years - that other technologies have come up which used this multi-angle beam system. But I haven't seen any. And certainly none with the software behind it to sus out the full size and shape of each object blocking the beams.
Pardon me, but an autoclave is not a generic part that can be picked up at the local hardware store. Besides, remote areas of underdeveloped countries do not have hardware stores. So claiming anything that requires parts from YOUR local hardware store is suitable for people who have never seen a hardware store shows a complete lack of empathy for the problems of the people who make up a large part of the world's population.
Dude, chill. The problems we're discussing affect about 85% of the population of the country I live in right now.
Which is exactly why you should be paying more attention to what is actually claimed in some of these arguments. I say thing A and people keep arguing about thing B, which distracts from the actual facts of this issue. Rice University's PR claimed their students had "invented" a "revolutionary" solution to the problem of sterilization of medical instruments when they had, in fact done nothing of the sort. While it may be a good thing to design useful devices such that they can be made out of commonly available parts, this is not, repeat NOT, what these students did. Based on the article which triggered my complaint, the students simply sat an existing autoclave - likely normally only available from a medical supply house - down onto a steam powered hot-plate. As it turns out this is not what they did. Instead they created a custom designed and manufactured coupling along with some heat transfer coils to apply high-temp, high-pressure steam to an existing autoclave - again, likely normally only available from a medical supply house. A tough student engineering project, but still not a revolutionary invention.
What has me completely flummoxed is why every time I reiterate this point someone chimes in and says that some other thing that has no bearing on this issue is a good thing and therefore I am wrong to state that the students did not invent anything new. I say "Thing A is not a new invention" and people respond with "But Thing B is good" even when Thing B has absolutely nothing to do with the issue at hand. I agree, Thing B is a good thing. But neither I nor the Rice students said or did anything remotely near Thing B and that is one of the reasons why Thing A is not such a great thing after all.
While I may have been generalizing some and some in these areas may have reason to feel insulted - to which I apologize - I can't see how you could claim I am being "disingenuous." The word means to intentionally mislead in a subtle manner, not to simply be wrong.
Actually, I was responding to a single individual. He/she spoke of a local hardware store. I was trying to get him/her to see that it is more difficult to get repair parts than he/she may think. In addition, the parts designed by the Rice students cannot be obtained anywhere. They were custom machined. And, from other comments, it seems it took quite a long time to make them. So, while it is important that parts for any solution to the sterilization problem should be readily available - just as you said - neither the article under discussion, nor the actual project inaccurately described in that article, did much of anything to make said parts less expensive or more readily available.
Antipater,
So, the students solved the problem stated in their assignment. I was not commenting on their ability to do their assigned engineering task. I was commenting on the article - linked to in this Slashdot post - claiming that the combination was revolutionary in some way or that it actually solved the problem of sterilizing instruments in remote areas of underdeveloped countries.
Actually, I am not a software developer. I am a former network manager. And I did not feel insulted that someone "insinuated that Gnome + Linux = Ubuntu was child's play." My claim was that Gnome + Linux does not equal Ubuntu at all. My complaint was about comparing something that takes a great deal of integration skill with something that requires nothing more than setting thing A down on top of thing B. Remember, software, by its nature is "easily replicable" in that one can easily and cheaply make copies. In the case of Ubuntu, it is also actually legal to do so. However, it is not "easily replicable" in terms of creating a new piece of software from scratch that does the same thing. Especially if one has not seen the code for the previously existing software. Ask Linus Torvolds.
This project, on the other hand, seems to be exactly the opposite. It would be easy for anyone else to take an autoclave and set it down on to a stovetop which got it's heat from some other source. However, building the device from scratch - even from existing plans - is relatively difficult. Keep in mind, I did not have access to the original assignment given to the students. Nor would anyone else had you not posted them here. My comments were based on what was written in TFA, to whit: "the Rice team's big idea was to use the steam to heat a custom-designed conductive hotplate" and "It basically becomes a stovetop, and you can heat anything you need to," thus indicating that the autoclave was simply sat down on top of said hotplate.
I should be insulted by your assumption of my ignorance as to the "difficulties of coupling and interface design" but I am not, because I know you are young and do not know better. I know full well the mathematical and mechanical difficulties involved with connecting high pressure steam pipes and achieving efficient heat transfer without leaking any of the possibly-toxin-contaminated steam into the sterile environment of an autoclave. Not to mention the craftsmanship required to actually execute such designs by hand. It is just that none of these problems were discussed in the article. The difficulties you expressed are exactly why I don't think it is a good idea to expect people in remote areas of underdeveloped countries to be able to affect repairs when necessary. Not because they are ignorant, but because they are not likely to have the necessary resources readily available. Besides, achieving an efficient heat transfer, while it may be a difficult engineering task for students, is still not the equivalent of a "revolutionary invention" that will solve a "a long-standing health issue for developing countries."
So it seems we all have a common "frenemy" as it were: the PR department at Rice. Not only are they assigning credit where credit is not due, but they are also making students look bad while doing so. Perhaps you need to talk to them about that.
Finally, I want to apologize to these students once again for assuming they were the ones making these overblown claims. In the future I will remember to turn first to the author of said overblown claims when expressing my frustration with the frequency of same.
So it was an engineering task? Well, then I apologize to the students for asserting that they were making this claim. But the claim is baseless, none-the-less.
Pardon me, but an autoclave is not a generic part that can be picked up at the local hardware store. Besides, remote areas of underdeveloped countries do not have hardware stores. So claiming anything that requires parts from YOUR local hardware store is suitable for people who have never seen a hardware store shows a complete lack of empathy for the problems of the people who make up a large part of the world's population.
jenningsthecat,
I'll take your argument one piece at a time:
I did not say "These things" are "no-brainers" - with the implication that a solution to the problem of sterilization was obvious or easy. Naturally, if that were the case then, as you say, there wouldn't be a problem to be solved.
What I said was that the solution being passed off as "revolutionary" is nothing more than plunking an existing piece of equipment down on a source of heat. Exactly what the existing piece of equipment was designed for in the first place. This does not meet the definition of an "invention" by any means. An invention - when made of existing components - must produce a new and unexpected result. Placing an existing device, designed to be heated, down on a hot-plate and having that device get hot, is not a new or unexpected result. Your argument about the obviousness of this "invention" being apparent only "after the fact" is misguided at best. But it is definitely moot.
Next you engage in the "fallacy of equivocation." You use two different definitions for the term "re-purpose." The first definition - the one I used - is to take an existing piece of equipment with an existing function and simply make a claim that it can be used in a different environment - the cause de jour - and stake a claim to a "revolutionary" "invention." Your definition - stretched at best - is the use of existing components to make a new device that does, in fact, produce a new and unexpected result. This definition more correctly fits the term "invention" (as defined by the USPTO) than the term "re-purpose," (as I used it) which patent law specifically says is not an invention.
The fallacy in your equivocation is even more evident in your claim that programmers "re-purpose" computer languages. In fact, programmers use computer languages for exactly what they were designed for: to write programs. The language is a tool not a component. Just because a saw is used to cut a board for a different house does not mean the saw has been "re-purposed." Anyone who claims so is confused at best and disingenuous at worst.
Your claim that Ubuntu is nothing more than slapping Gnome on top of Linux in the same manner that these students just slapped an existing autoclave on top of a different - yet currently existing - source of heat is either an insult to the Ubuntu team or exhibits a complete lack of understanding of what makes a Linux distribution successful. The Ubuntu team put years into writing and re-writing installers along with other custom code and modifications to layer on top of Gnome and Linux. These customizations made Ubuntu relatively unique among Linux distributions in that it was easy to install and use for a much larger segment of the regular populace than previous Linux distributions. If all they had done was slap Gnome on top of Linux then you would never have heard about it - that is, unless it was done at a prestigious university with a good PR department.
So, perhaps I should have been less concise and more precise in my choice of words. Perhaps I should have defined my use of the term "re-purpose" to mean "taking something that already exists in its entirety and claiming it can be used in a slightly different situation." But my point still stands. What these Rice students did is not new or novel in any way.
In addition, these students did not even solve the stated problem. The problem with sterilization in underdeveloped countries is not that they do not have a source of heat. The problem is that functioning autoclaves are A) Too expensive for distribution in all the places where they are needed; B) May not be durable enough to withstand the rigors of use in remote areas; and C) Require special tools, skills, and parts to maintain and repair which are not likely to be available in remote areas of underdeveloped countries. Simply plopping
I am sorry but I am getting really sick of reading about all these students at prestigious universities who do nothing more than re-purpose existing technology, give it a fancy name, say it will solve some problem for the underdeveloped world, and get international accolades for doing the technological equivalent of buying a paper off the internet and putting their name on it.
Every single piece of this "revolutionary" "invention" can be bought off the shelf and is in current use. The main difference between an autoclave and a standard pressure cooker is that the autoclave is guaranteed to get up to the proper temperature and pressure and then stay there for the specified period of time. Considering that this contraption must be hand adjusted, and it requires at least an hour just to get up to temp, and then it has to stay at that temp for around an hour - being constantly adjusted all the time - there is no guarantee whatsoever that the instruments will actually be sterilized. If the operator gets distracted for a while then all you get is a bunch of hot - but still infectious - instruments.
Sure, if these students built every single piece of their solar steam generator by hand, it would be a good exercise - akin to an art student copying an old master - but that is all. If I was their professor and they tried to pass this off as their own creation I would have failed them and turned them in for plagiarism.
Drop whatever you are doing right now and start writing a grant proposal. Here is what you will propose to do:
(While common revision management applications and schemes allow only a hierarchical, "branching," structure for the repositories, this repository will likely require the ability to track a very complex "graph" of the evolution of software and all the ways that researchers mix, combine, and improve the software.)
If you play your cards right you could end up with a lifetime career managing this clearinghouse. Why am I not writing this proposal? Because I am working on something else which I consider to be even more important.
Funny, that was the exact reason given for the demise of Gateway 2000. All the pundits said that maintaining their own retail outlets was too expensive.
I no longer find it surprising that supposed tech journalists continue to dote over just about everything Apple does, calling all Apple's actions genius when they have been preceded and/or superseded by others at almost every turn over the last few years. There are two things that Apple is better at than others: style and attracting the upscale market. By building machines that do less, look pretty, and are marketed to the wealthy, Apple thereby attracts all the other people who want to pretend they are wealthy too. Sure, iOS may have more apps than Android but that isn't necessarily because it is a better platform. I believe it is merely because the developers are chasing all that disposable income available to the types of people who fall for Apple's marketing. I seriously doubt that any Android device owners would have purchased the "I Am Rich" app.
Agreed
I dropped my Verizon contract and went back to Sprint because I couldn't afford the data plan any more. (Yes, I saved money even after paying the $150 contract breaking fee.) Ever since, I've been using my Droid doing all the same things I used to do before - except talking on the phone - as long as I can get a Wi-Fi connection, which is just about everywhere I go. Heck, I could never use the thing outside anyway because the screen is awful for reading in sunlight. So, in the end, I am getting just about the same functionality without paying for a data plan.
What we need is something akin to a Motorola Atrix but with a much bigger screen.
Take a convertible laptop with the power to run a full fledged OS like Linux (with a real desktop like Gnome or KDE), Windows 7, or OSX. Now, make the screen detachable. (I know, we've seen that before, but not on a full powered convertible laptop.) When the screen is detached, have it fire up a tablet OS like Android or iOS. Keep the "legacy" CPU, HDD, optical drive, and all that other "laptop-ish" stuff in the keyboard base. Just put the screen and a tablet-level processor in the screen part. Make sure to include a stylus digitizer beneath the screen as well as a capacitive touch in front of it like I have on my Fujitsu Lifebook T4310. Give the user the ability to switch to the tablet OS while the screen is still attached to the base for easy typing in tablet OS apps.
Now you've got the best of both worlds. You can carry around all the power and storage you might need for "real work" and you can also just hold the screen and do the kinds of things that people like to do while holding a screen in one hand. How many people really want to carry around the extra weight of two screens just so they can have the functionality of both types of devices?
This is great! Thanks for the link. I was going to suggest that the OP "just do what libraries do" but I I didn't have specific info to reference what exactly libraries use other than the high-dollar programs they have to get grants to buy.
Publicly traded companies have a fiduciary duty to behave responsibly with the money their stockholders have entrusted to them. Even though they are owned by a relatively small portion of the public, any member of the public could be an owner or be considering becoming an owner. Therefore, the public has a right to know what is going on inside of that company. That is the concession the company makes in order to be allowed to sell stock on the publicly traded markets. That is why publicly traded companies are required to file corporate reports. Unfortunately, many publicly traded companies have learned how to hide their activities from the very people they are asking to invest in them - the public. Therefore, even more transparency is likely needed in order to protect the public.
What? You never heard of a Sony screwdriver? When I worked at the California Museum of Science and Industry in LA back in the late 80s, they sent me to a training class to learn how to work on the Sony 3/4 video tape players - which we used a lot in the museum because they had better video quality and were built like tanks. Anyway, only people who had attended that class were allowed to purchase a special screwdriver that would work with certain screws in that VCR.
Tamper resistant screws have been around for ages. The problem isn't the screws. The problem is using them to jack up revenues at the customer's expense for things that could otherwise be easily done by an average customer or electronics technician. In Sony's case the screws only protected parts of the VCR that one would not know how to adjust properly if one had not taken the class. In Apple's case the screws only protect Apple's bottom line.
In the years since the iPod came out Apple has shown their true nature. Anyone who has purchased an Apple product since then deserves what they get and should not complain.
I am really getting tired of the argument that users can fix open-source software. This assumes that all users are developers, that they know the language the software was written in very well, and that they can get the information they need about how the code works or is supposed to work - information that is not always obvious when looking at the code - without making a career of the whole endeavor. So, out of all the - perhaps tens or hundreds of thousands of - real-world users of an open source program, maybe 100 people can "fix" what they don't like about it. And twenty of those are the original developers.
So please, please, stop using this argument. Or at least fine tune it so that it actually valid in the real world. To continue to use this argument, when every non-developer person who ever hears it knows it does not apply to them, only convinces those people that open-source software must not be for them either. Now, is that what you want?
This is exactly why we need a constitutional amendment banning unrelated riders and amendments on legislation. That would effectively ban earmarks as well as these insane riders that force the few decent legislators we have to vote against things that are desperately needed.
... is an ignorant citizenry.
"Citizen led" initiatives are great when the rich and powerful know they can easily manipulate what the masses want and believe.
... honestly and completely reveals his salary, other compensations, and expenses. Non-profits are supposed to report expenses but his are hidden in vague, general categories.
P.S. I posted a similar message on Huffington Post and they deleted it.
The government will decide to do earthquake (building damage) mitigation only when they figure out a way to funnel the money to a small group of select contractors who have spent a lot of money getting them elected. So when Haliburton decides it has milked the Middle-East situation for all it can get and decides Mid-West earthquake mitigation is its next profit center, then we will see more mitigation than there is any need for. Suddenly the media will be up in arms about the pending disaster to the Mid-West, the Mississippi river will be predicted to stop flowing, and they will be spending billions shoring up buildings that are better off bulldozed.
To further that analogy, when you put one end of the rubber band around the end of your finger, say, and pull it back with the other hand, the end around your finger will start to roll up closer to the end of your finger as you pull harder and harder until it finally snaps off the end of your finger. The small movements geologists look for as a warning of impending earthquakes are similar to the rubber band rolling up your finger as more and more energy is stored in the rubber band. Just because the end of the rubber band moves a little bit closer to the end of your finger does not mean the rubber band as a whole is not storing lots more energy as it is being pulled harder and harder. Similarly, small areas of tectonic plates may slip and slide, causing small earth quakes, while at the same time pressure builds up in much greater areas. Geologists look for movement of the plates as a whole, analogous to the rubber band as a whole being pulled back. They also look for small earth quakes, which are analogous to the end of the rubber band rolling up your finger. They can calculate how much energy is being stored up by the plates moving and compare that to the energy released by the small quakes. If the amount being stored up is much greater than that released then they know something big is building up. Just as you learn from experience when that rubber band is about to pop off the end of your finger, geologists have learned from experience and studying the geology of an area how to tell when an earthquake is pending. Some areas are more "stretchy" than others and some areas tend to release all their energy in a series of small quakes. As far as I know, the New Madrid fault, where my family originally came from, tends to do a little of both. That is why it is a long time between big quakes.
P.S. In fear of creating yet another acronym, IANAG.
The latter. If you ask me this is how they should teach math to grade school kids.