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Comment Just for posterity (Score 1) 578

by whyde (#30248252) Attached to: Dumbing Down Programming?

(I'm only posting this because I want it archived with this article.)

This reminds me of the paper "The Camel Has Two Humps," which details the author's theory that some people just aren't cut out for computer programming because they lack the ability to conceptualize in a machine-friendly manner.

This is a problem that is not best served by "dumbing down" computers to be useable by people who have no business programming them, in the same manner as television shows should not be dumbed down to be readily accessible to the visually-impaired.

Why is so little effort being spent making it easy for me to repair my own car with soft, clean, lego-like tools?

If you want to be a plumber, you have to be willing to occasionally shove your arm into a pile of s#it to solve a problem.
If you want to program computers, you have to be willing to occasionally shove your brain into a pile of mathematics to solve a problem.

I'll believe computer programming is "ready for the masses" when plumbing is "ready for the masses".

It's all about the tubes, people.
Science

Why a High IQ Doesn't Mean You're Smart 808

Posted by CmdrTaco from the but-not-all-idiots-are-savant dept.
D1gital_Prob3 writes "How can a 'smart' person act foolishly? Keith Stanovich, professor of human development and applied psychology at the University of Toronto, Canada, has grappled with this apparent incongruity for 15 years. He says it applies to more people than you might think. To Stanovich, however, there is nothing incongruous about it. IQ tests are very good at measuring certain mental faculties, he says, including logic, abstract reasoning, learning ability and working-memory capacity — how much information you can hold in mind."

Comment It depends on what you're used to hearing (Score 4, Insightful) 567

by whyde (#29796501) Attached to: 1/3 of People Can't Tell 48Kbps Audio From 160Kbps

Today's low-bitrate MP3/AAC will be tomorrow's vinyl.

I firmly believe that you prefer what you're accustomed to hearing in the first place. Most kids today have grown up hearing nothing better than highly-compressed FM or low-bitrate MP3 music. They don't know anything better, and given the option of hearing better music, perhaps even uncompressed, with a much larger dynamic range and noise floor, they'll gravitate to what their ears and brain have been trained to appreciate.

Tomorrow's world will have "128Kbps MP3 Afficionado" publications extolling the virtues, "warmth", and "naturalness" of the low-bitrate MP3. And audiophiles will pay top-dollar for crippled hardware and overcompressed, undersampled music tracks.
Earth

Google Wants to Map Indoors, Too 174

Posted by timothy from the where's-the-good-silverware dept.
An anonymous reader writes "Google maps are getting extended indoors next month with a new app called Micello that takes over where conventional navigators leave off — mapping your route inside of buildings, malls, convention centers and other points of interest. You don't get a 'you are here' blinking dot yet — but they do promise to add one next year using WiFi triangulation. At the introduction next month, Micello will only work in California, but they plan to expand to other major US cities during 2010."
Privacy

EU Funding "Orwellian" Artificial Intelligence Snooping System 181

Posted by timothy from the why-does-this-bother-you? dept.
leonbenjamin writes "Britain's Telegraph reports on a five-year research programme, called Project Indect, which aims to develop computer programmes which act as 'agents' to monitor and process information from web sites, discussion forums, file servers, peer-to-peer networks and even individual computers. Its main objectives include the 'automatic detection of threats and abnormal behaviour or violence.' Shami Chakrabarti, head of the UK's Liberty human-rights NGO, said: 'Profiling whole populations instead of monitoring individual suspects is a sinister step in any society. ... It's dangerous enough at national level, but on a Europe-wide scale the idea becomes positively chilling.'"
Biotech

Universal "Death Stench" Repels Bugs of All Types 248

Posted by kdawson from the was-it-something-i-said dept.
Hugh Pickens writes "Wired reports that scientists have discovered that insects from cockroaches to caterpillars all emit the same stinky blend of fatty acids when they die and that the death mix may represent a universal, ancient warning signal to avoid their dead or injured. 'Recognizing and avoiding the dead could reduce the chances of catching the disease,' says Biologist David Rollo of McMaster University 'or allow you to get away with just enough exposure to activate your immunity.' Researchers isolated unsaturated fatty acids containing oleic and linoleic acids from the corpses of dead cockroaches and found that their concoction repelled not just cockroaches, but ants and caterpillars. 'It was amazing to find that the cockroaches avoided places treated with these extracts like the plague,' says Rollo. Even crustaceans like woodlice and pillbugs, which diverged from insects 400 million years ago, were repelled leading scientists to think the death mix represents a universal warning signal. Scientists hope the right concoction of death smells might protect crops. Thankfully, human noses can't detect the fatty acid extracts. 'I've tried smelling papers treated with them and don't smell anything strong and certainly not repellent,' writes Rollo in an e-mail. 'Not like the rotting of corpses that occurs later and is detectable from great distances.'"
Hardware Hacking

Apple Working On Tech To Detect Purchasers' "Abuse" 539

Posted by timothy from the if-not-expressly-allowed-then-goto-prohibited dept.
Toe, The writes "Apple has submitted a patent application for technologies which would detect device-abuse by consumers. The intent presumably being to aid in determining the validity of warranty claims. 'Consumer abuse events' would be recorded by liquid and thermal sensors detecting extreme environmental exposures, a shock sensor detecting drops or other impacts, and a continuity sensor to detect jailbreaking or other tampering. The article also notes that liquid submersion detectors are already deployed in MacBook Pros, iPhones and iPods. It does seem reasonable that a corporation would wish to protect itself from fraudulent warranty claims; however the idea of sensors inside your portable devices detecting what you do with them might raise eyebrows even beyond the tinfoil-hat community."
Hardware

Fifteen Classic PC Design Mistakes 806

Posted by CmdrTaco from the i've-made-seven-so-far-today dept.
Harry writes "Once upon a time, it wasn't a given that PC owners should be able to format their own floppy disks. Or that ports should be standard, not proprietary. Or that it was a lousy idea to hardwire a PC's AC adapter, or to put the power supply in the printer so that a printer failure rendered the PC unusable, too. Over at Technologizer, Benj Edwards has taken a look at some of the worst design decisions from personal computing's early years — including ones involving famous flops such as the PCJr, obscure failures such as Mattel's Aquarius, and machines that succeeded despite flaws, like the first Mac. In most instances — but not all — their bad decisions taught the rest of the industry not to make the same errors again."

Comment Re:17,000 mph (Score 4, Interesting) 132

by whyde (#27946603) Attached to: Atlantis Links Up To Hubble For Repairs

I've told this story before on slashdot, but once--about 10 years ago--the shuttle flew over Austin, TX on descent to land in FL not long after sunset. We went outside to see the boiling plasma trail it left in the atmosphere, then went back inside to see it touch down 9 MINUTES LATER.

Fast, indeed.

Comment AI programming class at UNI (Score 1) 739

by whyde (#27717643) Attached to: What Did You Do First With Linux?

Slackware Linux, pre-1.0 kernel, roughly 1992 (my memory is hazy)... I was using it to run Common LISP much more effectively than the unfortunate ones who were using the class-provided DOS-based version of LISP with horrible memory management limitations.

This let me solve larger problems in a much more friendly development environment (including basic X windows w/ TWM) than they could. It made my university days much more tolerable and productive, right up until I was forced to use OS/2 2.1, which I also fondly remember for no other reason than I could communicate with the actual developers via email and they'd respond about issues I was having writing device drivers.

Good times.

Comment Re:Cubic Inches (Score 2, Insightful) 379

by whyde (#27196949) Attached to: iPod Shuffle Finds Its Voice

It is disingenuous to measure the "size" of the new shuffle without including the size of the cord up to and including the "remote control" portion of the headphones. In fact, since the device is nigh unusable without the bundled headphones, you should just probably find the total displacement of the whole shebang before you've found the true size of it all.

Comment Wall-Wart + DisplayLink + BlueTooth (Score 1) 464

by whyde (#26975233) Attached to: $100 Linux Wall-Wart Now Available

I could almost picture one of these Wall-Warts hooked up via USB2 to a DisplayLink adapter and a TV/Monitor, using a nice BlueTooth keyboard (Apple Wireless Keyboard) for a sweet little noiseless media center front-end.

Too bad the CPU is not quite capable of HD content decoding, and DisplayLink does not have Linux support yet.

That's just me dreaming and wishing...

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