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Is Code.org Too Soulless To Make an Impact? 384

Posted by Unknown Lamer from the whatever-works dept.
theodp writes "By trotting out politicians (Bill Clinton, Mike Bloomberg, Marco Rubio, Al Gore) and celebrities (Chris Bosh, will.i.am, Ashton Kutcher), Tuesday's Code.org launch certainly was a home run with the media. But will it actually strike a chord with kids and inspire them to code? Dave Winer has his doubts, and explains why — as someone who truly loves programming — code.org rubbed him the wrong way. 'I don't like who is doing the pitching,' says Winer, 'and who isn't. Out of the 83 people they quote, I doubt if many of them have written code recently, and most of them have never done it, and have no idea what they're talking about.' Code.org's because-you-can-make-a-lot of-money-doing-it pitch also leaves Dave cold. So, why should one code, Dave? 'Primarily you should do it because you love it, because it's fun — because it's wonderful to create machines with your mind. Hugely empowering. Emotionally gratifying. Software is math-in-motion. It's a miracle of the mind. And if you can do it, really well, there's absolutely nothing like it.' Nice. So, could Code.org use less soulless prattle from 'leaders and trendsetters' and more genuine passion from programmers?" Just force all ninth graders to learn Scheme instead of Microsoft Word.
Operating Systems

Ask Slashdot: Buying a Laptop That Doesn't Have Windows 8 570

Posted by timothy from the craigslist-if-available dept.
First time accepted submitter Sagan's Pie writes "I'm starting to look for a laptop for college, and the only thing I seem to find are laptops or tablets that have Windows 8. I have used Windows 7 for a long time now, and would not have a problem giving it up, but not for Windows 8. After visiting many major online retail sites, I've found that finding either a Windows 7 laptop, or even a laptop without an operating system is nearly impossible. So where should I go if looking for laptops sans os, or at the very least sans Windows 8?"
Bug

Linus Chews Up Kernel Maintainer For Introducing Userspace Bug 1051

Posted by timothy from the otherwise-of-course-I'd-be-a-kernel-rockstar dept.
An anonymous reader points out just how thick a skin it takes to be a kernel developer sometimes, linking to a chain of emails on the Linux Kernel Mailing List in which Linus lets loose on a kernel developer for introducing a change that breaks userspace apps (in this case, PulseAudio). "Shut up, Mauro. And I don't _ever_ want to hear that kind of obvious garbage and idiocy from a kernel maintainer again. Seriously. I'd wait for Rafael's patch to go through you, but I have another error report in my mailbox of all KDE media applications being broken by v3.8-rc1, and I bet it's the same kernel bug. And you've shown yourself to not be competent in this issue, so I'll apply it directly and immediately myself. WE DO NOT BREAK USERSPACE! Seriously. How hard is this rule to understand? We particularly don't break user space with TOTAL CRAP. I'm angry, because your whole email was so _horribly_ wrong, and the patch that broke things was so obviously crap. ... The fact that you then try to make *excuses* for breaking user space, and blaming some external program that *used* to work, is just shameful. It's not how we work," writes Linus, and that's just the part we can print. Maybe it's a good thing, but there's certainly no handholding when it comes to changes to the heart of Linux.

Comment Re:What, exactly, are they suing for, again? (Score 2) 304

by bAdministrator (#40728247) Attached to: Patent Troll Claims <em>Minecraft</em> Infringement

Fingerprinting, it seems. I guess even relaying a MAC (the unique identifier attached to network interface cards) address would infringe on this patent.

It's basically what programmers did back in the day to check whether the processor was supported by their program, or to conditionally execute floating point instructions, if the platform had a floating point unit. The *only* difference here is that the same information is used to form an identifier to check whether the system platform has changed since the last time the program started, and it stores this information somewhere to run a comparison against.

It's kind of reminiscent of the public key system.
Programming

HTML5 Splits Into Two Standards 395

Posted by timothy from the so-many-to-choose-from dept.
mikejuk writes "Until now the two standards bodies working on HTML5 (WHATWG and W3C) have cooperated. An announcement by WHATWG makes it clear that this is no longer true. WHATWG is going to work on a living standard for HTML which will continue to evolve as more technologies are added. W3C is going the traditional and much more time consuming route of creating a traditional standard which WHATWG refers to as a 'snapshot' of their living standard. Of course now being free of W3C's slower methods WHATWG can accelerate the pace of introducing new technologies to HTML5. Whatever happens, the future has just become more complicated — now you have to ask yourself 'Which HTML5?'"
Programming

JavaScript For the Rest of Us 285

Posted by timothy from the error-messages-go-universal dept.
First time accepted submitter my2iu writes "The JavaScript programming language is both widely available and very powerful. Unfortunately, since only 6% of the world's population are native English speakers, the other 94% of the world are forced to learn English before they can start using JavaScript. Babylscript is an open source project that aims to translate JavaScript to all the world's languages, including French, Spanish, Chinese, and Arabic. The project has recently completed its 12th translation, enough so that the native languages of over 50% of the world's population are now supported!"
Math

Brain Scan Can Predict Math Mistakes 133

Posted by samzenpus from the what-wrong-looks-like dept.
itwbennett writes "Computer Science Ph.D. candidate Federico Cirett says that he can predict with 80 percent accuracy when someone is about to make a mistake on a math question. Using an EEG machine, Cirett can identify the patterns in a volunteer's thinking that are likely to result in an error 20 seconds or so before it's made. 'If we can detect when they are going to fail, maybe we can change the text or switch the question to give them another one at a different level of difficulty, but also to keep them engaged,' Cirett said. 'Brain wave data is the nearest thing we have to really know when the students are having problems.' He will present a paper on his findings at the User Modeling, Adaptation and Personalization conference in July."

Comment it's still theft (Score 1) 125

by bAdministrator (#39668387) Attached to: Court Rules Code Not Physical Property

So, if I make a copy of a database with user names and passwords, then set the bits of the database to all zeroes on the server; it's theft? Because I now moved a "painting" from one area of space to another?

The thing is, the original state was reconstructed somewhere else without the permission of the property owner (the one/ones who arranged the original state), and that's what theft is. It's the same as moving a painting (a collection of state) to another region of space, but it's not easy to replicate a painting, so it gets exclusivity as well, but it's still the same concept; one thing appearing somewhere else in space.

The less obvious part is that you always HAVE to destroy (change) some other region of space in order to replicate the state you want a copy of, but you don't have to destroy the state in the source space. Due to the ease at which one can copy state within the realm of digital computers, the default behavior is to leave the state in tact, or you may not even have access to modify the source space.

As with the painting; less energy is required to move the state from one location in space to another, compared to replicating the state. This naturally adds exclusivity to the state, but still, you did not have permission to move the state, and that's what you are doing when you copy; you move state (not in a cut/paste manner) from one region of space to another.

Comment How is anything not a physical property? (Score 1) 125

by bAdministrator (#39662965) Attached to: Court Rules Code Not Physical Property

Everything is a collection of state in space.
The property concept comes from the "shell" we perceive to surround a collection of state so that we can tell things apart; an egg is a property, but is it really no different from a file?

When you download a file, an exclusive region of space must be reserved on your end to hold it, which is then synched to match the state of the source space.

It's free, if you disregard the energy required to synch the state or keep it, but someone arranged the state to begin with.

Comment Other factors are cloud services and anti-spam (Score 1) 75

by bAdministrator (#39596059) Attached to: Good News: A Sustained Drop In Spam Levels

Businesses--or rather small businesses that are more prone to vulnerabilities due to poor maintenance--are largely going over to cloud services which filter outbound and inbound e-mail. The cloud service anti-spam engines gain more data for heuristics which applies to all customers.

IT administrators have probably also become more aware of restricting outbound SMTP traffic at the firewall or client level.
Software

Submission + - 7 Essential Free Linux Speech Tools (linuxlinks.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Speech synthesizers are text-to-speech systems used with computers. This type of software is programmed to include phonemes and the grammatical rules of a language, so that words are pronounced correctly.

This article identifies the finest open source speech synthesizers that are available for the Linux platform. This category of software is particularly useful for increasing the accessibility of the internet, but there are many other applications for speech synthesizers.

This article also highlights the best speech recognition software for Linux. Speech recognition is the translation of spoken words into text. This type of software helps users to operate their computer by speaking to it, and is a real blessing for anyone who finds it difficult to type, such as the elderly, or people with physical disabilities. Using speech recognition software, users can easily write emails, surf the net, manage their finances, chat to other users online, and perform many other computer activities.

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