> Will a perceived lack of trust cripple the effectiveness of the program?"

Yes. Next obvious question?

The program you describe is highly unethical and you should have nothing to do with it. If you were ever to apply to me for a job and you told me about this program, I would treat you like you're radioactive.

The program you describe will succeed only in setting up an adversarial relationship between the students and the school, and teach them that adults are not to be trusted. Further, you're trying to extend the school's ability to censor and monitor into the home, where it doesn't belong. You are planning to MANDATE that students use a CENSORED, SPIED UPON computer IN THEIR HOMES. THE SCHOOL IS A BRANCH OF THE GOVERNMENT. WHEN A GOVERNMENT ORGANIZATION IS SPYING AND CENSORING IN THE HOME, THIS COUNTRY AND EVERYTHING IT WAS FOUNDED ON HAVE GONE TO HELL.

How do you think you're going to teach kids about freedom of speech and the right to privacy when you're carefully violating both?

If I were a parent, I would forbid the computer from entering my home, and if you tried to enforce it, I'd sue the school.

The lack of a degree is more of a problem at lower level jobs. For junior employees, employers need something to tell them whether the candidate is any good or not, and for a candidate that doesn't have years of experience, that means a degree.

For a candidate who has a lot of experience and references, it's less of an issue.

I advise that the best thing to do if you don't have a degree is not to list your college level education at all. If you list that you have some higher education but didn't complete it, employers hold it against you. If you don't list your college education at all, they're more likely to either not notice, or assume that you have a degree but didn't list it for some reason, such as that perhaps it's in an unrelated field. (A lot of people who work in computing didn't study computer science.)

One other thing to do if you want to work in IT is get some certifications, in topics that you see mentioned by employers you'd like to work for in their job ads. Certifications absolutely mesmerize many employers. I've been an IT director, and I've had experiences with HR trying to talk me into hiring an unqualified candidate with a bunch of certifications instead of a qualified candidate with a college degree and relevant experience. In fact, in one case HR even pressured me to hire a candidate with a bunch of certifications that <i>weren't even relevant to the position</i> and no relevant experience <i>after</i> I'd already hired my candidate of choice and was satisfied with their work.

A certification will probably cost you a few thousand dollars, but it's a lot cheaper than a college degree, and can get you in the door fast. You'll have to shell out to update your certifications every few years, but if you're working for an employer for whom your certs are relevant, they'll often be willing to pay for the refresher courses and testing.

It's not XML notation: XML is ambiguous in far too many ways, and was never intended for anything but markup. Water can be expressed in pure XML, but is usually written in ConciseXML, as was my example.

And last I heard MUMPS had been renamed to "M". (Somebody should teach it to Judi Dench...) While you discount it, I know that companies that use it are very happy with it, and I'm told by people who work with it that it's very effective for handling data for the health care industry, which is what it's designed for.

Computers are tools for getting stuff done, so I question your focus on whether or not the code is pretty over the fact that the code accomplishes the task in half the effort. (And I could knock off a few more lines if I want to work on it, I think.)

That's what I thought about the Python example. I find Water to be very readable. But seriously, would you rather type a few angles, or write twice as much code? Every language has admirers and people who think it's ugly, the really important part is whether it facilitates programmers to get things done.

It is, however, unfortunate that my line breaks got messed up. It should be slightly more readable than it shows. Also, to be honest, the line breaks and indentation are largely gratuitous, the parser generally ignores them. I could have made this "knight's tour in one line of Water" but it would have been a stupidly long line; I tried to put in logical line breaks to show a realistic scenario to compare to the Python example.

And I forgot to mention, it runs in about two seconds on the interpreter, it should run an order of magnitude faster when compiled but I don't have the compiler installed at the moment.

> Try beating this, fellow coders!

Here it is in 30 lines of Water. Oh, and it outputs in HTML.

<class knights_tour size=8 board=opt >
    <method make> .<set board=.size.<for_each combiner=insert> .size.<for_each combiner=insert> false </for_each> </for_each> /> .<fill/>
        _subject
    </method>
    <method in_range_and_empty x=req y=req>
        <and .board.<has y/> .board.<get y/>.<has x/> .board.<get y/>.<get x/>.<not/> />
    </method>
    <method fill x=0 y=0 counter=0> .board.<get y/>.<set <do x/>=counter/>
        <if>
            counter.<is_not .size.<times .size/> />
                <v <v -2 1/> <v -1 2/> <v 1 2/> <v 2 1/> <v 2 -1/> <v 1 -2/> <v -1 -2/> <v -2 -1/> />.<for_each>
                    <set new_y=y.<plus value.0/> new_x=x.<plus value.1/> />
                    <if> .<in_range_and_empty x=new_x y=new_y/> .<fill x=new_x y=new_y counter=counter.<plus 1/> /> </if>
                </for_each>
        </if>
    </method>
    <method htm_inst>
        <set a_table=<table border=1/> /> .board.<for_each>
            <set a_row=<tr/>/>
            value.<for_each> a_row.<insert <td value/>/> </for_each>
            a_table.<insert a_row/>
        </for_each>
        a_table
    </method>
</class>
<knights_tour/>

(My formatting is getting messed up. Should be 30. It's merging a few lines in the preview, but not in a way that would break anything.)

Yeah yeah. You think it's a good joke... and it is... until the day a user calls you and says that. And I not only have had it happen to me, I know several other people who had it happen to them.

I think the thing that pleases me most is the fact that the Foundation books were largely about the idea that while religion and irrationality tend to mess up a society, science always kinda works. If they manage to convey this idea in the movies, it could be a great message for our culture at this time.

It's also worth noting that the founder of Greenpeace thinks they're a bunch of kooks. See the Penn & Teller's Bulls*** episode on environmentalism.

I believe in protecting the environment, but I'd like to sanely focus on serious problems first, and do so in a logical and dignified manner, instead of just attacking companies just because they're prominent and it generates publicity.

Better: register them, and if possible, use them to send commands to the botnet to shut down. Not sure if these crooks would build such commands in, but if they did, time to use 'em.

Thank you, grammar police.

My wording error aside, to claim to the patent office that you invented something when you know darn well you didn't because you carefully went about the process of stealing somebody's trade secret, and even filed a patent with the government stating your intent to do so, seems to indicate that your claim of invention is fraudulent. Moreover, while unknowingly filing a patent application for which there is prior art is not illegal, knowingly filing a fraudulent statement (patent application) with a US government office probably is.

This is precisely the kind of thing that I find really offensive: the assumption that the fact that I feel I need a relationship means that there's something wrong with me and/or my self image.

How dare you assume I have poor self image just because I feel I need a relationship? I happen to be a terrific guy with fabulous skills, intelligence, style, manners, and class, who just happens to need a relationship.

The fact that I am single is proof that I am smart enough to look for a *good* relationship rather than settling for any random slob that might want me, and that I have enough self respect to suffer my loneliness until the right man comes along.

If you feel societally pressured to not be single, that's your problem. Don't project your problems onto me.

In my state, you can't have straight-only or gay-only dating services. It's illegal discrimination, and if one of these web sites was headquartered here, you could file a complaint against them for it. And should.

And speaking as a gay man, if a gay bar here in Massachusetts refused to serve you for being straight, I would hope you would march to the Massachusetts Commission Against Discrimination and file a complaint, and if I saw it happen, I would offer to file a sworn statement to support your complaint and I would stop patronizing the establishment. Minority-focused businesses are not and should not be above the law. I have spoken with gay friends about this situation in the past, and while some felt it's a bit rude for straight people to "invade" a gay bar, everyone agreed that they should be served, politely.

Moreover, their attempt to patent this procedure would seem to indicate that they were knowingly violating prior art, in fact intentionally doing so, which would seem to imply that they could be charged with fraud or something similar.

I'm surprised they filed this patent attempt, and that their lawyers let it happen - it's like saying "I would like explicit government recognition of my plans to violate the law to ensure that when I do so everyone will recognize exactly what I did."

I agree, firmly. In most contemporary business applications, relatively little processor time is spent on serious computing tasks; if the UI is slow, it slows down the person. If the UI is zippy, the computer is probably spending its time waiting for the person. Bulky computing tasks like video rendering can be offloaded to a server somewhere.

Well, I for one checked out one of those web sites and found that they discriminate against single gay people. I thought about reporting them to the Massachusetts Commission Against Discrimination, but I haven't had the time to go file the complaint, and I figure if they don't think my money is as green as everyone else's, I'll take it to someone who does.