There are plenty of high schools that teach people the basics of programming in the course of ten months. The advanced courses do a pretty good job of covering everything from languages to algorithms to software engineering. Yet I don't see businesses jumping at the prospects of hiring these graduates.

There's a reason for that: they only touch upon the basics because they only have time to touch upon the basics. While that may be enough to put together a website for a small business or create a basic smartphone/tablet app, only the tiniest minority will come away with the skills to make something as advanced as a salable indie game.

To do anything innovative, you need both the training and experience to handle the mathematics and design that goes into larger applications. That takes years, which is why university programs take years. Without that extra effort and the dedication behind it, very few people are going to be able to develop anything beyond the most basic program.

(Note: I'm not suggesting that the training and experience has to be formal, since a lot of self-studies have done amazing stuff in this field. Yet even teenagers who have created sophisticated programs have been building upon their skills for more than a year, never mind a few months.)

The motivation to get an SUV may be different from the motivation to get a burger, but willpower is a good word in both cases.

In some circles, an SUV is a status symbol. The people who buy them as a status symbol don't actually need an SUV, but they buy them because they think that an SUV reflects who they are or who they want to be. Well, they probably don't think in exactly those terms. They probably think of what they can do with it, just like I think of what I can do with a new computer. Either way though, that extra performance is about how we present ourselves to ourselves or to others rather than an actual need. Either way, if we can't afford it due to our income or the cost, we are less likely to buy it.

Note: I'm not saying that nobody uses an SUV. There are certainly people who will find an SUV more practical than a minivan or a pickup truck. Yet it is doubtful that the people who needed an SUV stopped buying SUV's in the first place. Similarly, I doubt that people who need a quick family meal while on the road would shun that Big Mac (which is what fast food is about, rather than as a regular meal replacement as we seem to see it as today).

That is actually a very good idea, and it is something that I would appreciate given that I sometimes have difficulty hearing dialogue over background noise.

However, that would also entail some sort of arrangement between device manufacturers and theaters since the only way it's going to happen is if they're guaranteed that the device cannot record audio and video in the theater. While I'm not against that in principle, I am against it in practice. (Telling a device, "no recording," is one thing. The layers of malware that they'd layer on top of that, and resulting loss of control of the device both inside and outside of theaters, makes me jittery to the point of paranoia.)

It depends upon how stable orbiting systems are formed. There has to be a transfer of angular momentum. That angular momentum is probably transferred via magnetic fields. The magnetic field needs something to interact with, such as ionized particles. Ionizing particles requires an energy source, such as a hot central body. For Jupiter and it's moons, that could very well be the Sun.

(Note: it has been a while since I studied this stuff, so I may be a bit off. But the most important point is that it is difficult to create stable orbiting bodies.)

Everyone who receives a high school diploma is, in a sense, exposed to wiring a house. It is called the electricity unit in science. These units are a mandatory part of the science curriculum in the primary and secondary grades. They teach you everything you need to know to wire a house except how to do it to code.

In the same vein, I would argue that children and youth should be exposed to programming. It doesn't have to be a standalone course that you need to pass in order to graduate. It may be a unit in an existing course, such as mathematics. Regardless of what form it takes, it should be enough to give children/youth an idea of what programming is and whether they're interested in it. If those units/courses go a step further and teach transferable skills (e.g. various approaches to problem solving) it would be going far beyond most of the existing parts of the curriculum, such as those electricity units.

There are kits, and it would be nice if the museum picked up a few to create an interactive exhibit. Just imagine being able to walk into an exhibit hall where the original is maintained in working order, but also being able to use one of the kits to get a taste of computing back in the day.

The problem is that a lot of people either feel entitled to speed, or that they believe that they believe the whole thing is a government conspiracy to generate revenue by fiddling with the equipment and posted speed limits.

Quite frankly, I don't buy into any of that. People were trying to talk officers out of tickets even when there was an actual officer pulling you over after reading your speed off of a radar gun. If that didn't work out, a number of those people would still go to court to challenge the ticket.

Indeed, the only real issue with these cameras is the slow feedback via post. Yet the only issue with that are successive tickets being issues prior to notification, since the motorist isn't given an opportunity to modify their behavior. Even so it is possible to provide immediate feedback to motorists by posting their measured speed on electronic signage. (This sort of thing is common in awareness campaigns in school zones, where volunteers with radar guns and electronic signage will measure and post your speed, without ticketing.)

He may have been screened. Airport security measures seem to depend upon the type of airport and the type of flight. This means that it is possible to enter some secure areas of an airport with no screening whatsoever by simply booking a flight to that airport.

Sigh. May I suggest working on your reading skills? Determining meaning from context and imagery are important aspects of literacy. While they may not have a place in technical writing, where the precision of language is essential, they do allow for more engaging reading experiences.

Reading on a 3.2" screen isn't all that bad, but I wouldn't present that as a solution for children. Books for the youngest are illustrated, and present part of the story as part of those illustrations. Early chapter books use larger text, presumably because the audience is still learning the shape of letters. Even later chapter books have illustrations that would be difficult to enjoy on a small screen.

Yet the real problem with closing libraries in favor of elending is the lack of availability of ebooks for lending. (That, and libraries offer much more than books.)

I wouldn't be so sure of that. I've heard of plenty of motorist-cyclist and motorists pedestrian collisions where the motorist was at fault, yet the penalty was negligible: a fine, points against their license, the inconvenience of enduring an investigation, and putting up with the public outcry (where the actual motorist is usually anonymous anyhow).

The sad fact is, you're a third class citizen unless you are behind the wheel of a vehicle at the time of the incident. (Not that I think that stiff penalties will change things. While these are incidents, rather than accidents, they involve behaviors that people don't put much thought into at the moment of the crime.)

There appear to be a bunch of exemptions that prevent people from purchasing and frivolously returning a product. In effect, the only way that a consumer can legitimately return a product is if it doesn't reflect advertised claims or if they did not make the system requirements clear (i.e. it didn't work properly on a consumer's system because Valve did not list or listed misleading system requirements).

On top of that, anything sold through Steam with DRM cannot be returned fraudulently (e.g. the consumer can't buy then return a product while maintaining a functional copy for themselves, at least not without jumping through hoops).

So exactly why does their illegal-in-Australia policy exist in Australia? An unwillingness to learn the laws of a country that they sell to? A desire to reduce the support costs of managing software returns (e.g. validating that the reason for return is legitimate probably involves costly human interaction)?

It clearly shows a relationship between atmospheric temperature, energy stored in the ocean, and salinity. Whether you agree or disagree with the interpretation of the data in terms of global warming, at least they have provided us with a nice visual demonstrating the relationship between the ocean and the atmosphere.

If you are comparing a dedicated ereader to a printed book, I would be wondering why retention would be better with the print version. That is particularly true when you are looking at a short text, where things like pages read is less relevant.

Now if you're talking about real reading situations, I can understand there being a difference. I would imagine that people are more likely to pickup and drop the book at different intervals (the benefit of portability). I would imagine that people are also more prone to jumping between books (the benefit of large memories). For general purpose devices, I would imagine that people are more prone to responding to notifications (the benefit of integrated and connected devices). But that's not what the study is examining.

... would have ended the computer revolution before it even began. Keep in mind that computers, automobiles, air planes, etc. were all incredibly primitive in their days. At best they provided an incremental step forwards in some applications while being a huge step backwards in most other applications. Yet people plugged away at the technology and created something that was truly amazing in the long run.

Remember those first computers. They were unreliable number crunchers that could barely be programmed and certainly weren't programmable in the way we think of programming today. There were applications to be sure: in domains like ballistics and finance, but even then only a limited subset of problems. If a particular problem wasn't big enough, it was faster and cheaper to use traditional techniques. Now they enable complex global communications networks and are cheap enough to turn sophisticated simulations into entertainment.

And that is just one example.