I looked at the AP exam a while back. I found it to be, like so many AP exams,too much trivia and minutia for my tastes. I am all for a clever well written exam, such exams can be a wonderful teaching tool, but it can be taken to extreme. Plus we are making the same mistake we made with pascal, choosing a language for pedagogy rather than practical application.

I myself was taught FORTRAN when I was 14 in a one year high school course. The first grading period we solved problems, wrote algorithms, learned the vagaries of pre-pc computing, and learned to behave. Then we spent the rest of year learning FORTRAN, complete with coding sheets I picked up at the university bookstore.

This included recursion, and we used the only reasonable example one can give a high school student. The Fibonacci series. I assume that everyone has coded this by the time they 18. Like the swap function.

It is not so much that there are not simple and meaningful things kids can code to learn the proper technique. It is just that most of these are already part of the library, so kids are going to balk or copy or just not do it. For instance it would be great for kids to learn linear algebra by coding it, but how we can justify it when the row reduction is already part of most libraries.

Here is a little bit of AP trivia. In AP Physics they want kids to collect data and practice a least squares fit by hand. They note that computers do this now, but it is good experience. It is like AP CS. The kids are not being trained in basics, so they really don't know how anything really works. CS should be a craft, physics should be a process, but it is not always being taught that way.

I find that some kids are just well protected. They never have to really deal with the consequences of their actions. We have seen some high profile cases where a kid gets to college, do some stupid thing, hacking, drinking, sex, and because they have never had to deal with consequences they fall apart, even commit suicide. In this case, who knows what other trouble he has caused and how he has been protected from consequences.

It is unfortunate the the law has to be called in because the kid did not have the guidance or the sense to stop anti social actions on his own.

A lot of this had to do with WWII and advancements in technology. WWII produced an increased literate adults who in turn produced children who read. It also lead to a shift in the demographics of readers, namely more men read, which lead to their sons reading. In the 1940's this was mostly lead by magazines who published short stories, novella, or series of science fiction written by most of the names we know from the classic period of science fiction.

One of these authors that was writing before 1950 was Robert Heinlein who first published in 1947 and had established serious science fiction by the mid 1950's.

What lead to the popularization of science fiction, arguably, was the technological innovation in print. That is, printing paperbacks was cheap enough so that even if very few books sold, it was still possible to at least break even. The advent of the paper back is like the advent of direct to video movie. Lower risk, more titles, profits are driven by the few that sell well, the rest are pulped.

So this is what those publishing houses invented. Pulp Fiction.

MS probably tests upgrades more than any, but a few computers usually go nuts after an upgrade. You can blame the open hardware of MS computers, but then think of apple. They have very closed hardware in the iPhone, but still a few iPhones go nuts after upgrade.

Automatically upgrading non critical systems makes sense. Upgrading the working of a car through a insecure interface is nuts, automatically more so. You leave work to go home, the upgrade failed, you are stranded. Someone hacks the interface, upgrades you car to their car, you no longer have a car.

I am sure people are going to attack dealers over this as well. But when I needed the firmware of my car upgraded to allow the new commutation standard, I drove the car to my friendly ane highly reputable dealer, they upgrade the software for free, made sure everything still worked, and I did not have to risk the upgrade would brick my car.

Not sure if ISIS a left leaning group. I mean it is made up of religious extremists, which are typically right leaning. Soerign nation people who go out and kill cops for fun probably don't consider themselves atheists. The people who protest abortion clinics with pornographic signs for anyone passing to see are probably not atheist. People who murder doctors often use right wing christian thinking to justify their actions. I think Fox News was able to post such a video because it's audience is desensitized to such things. When a cop kills an unarmed child, many Fox News viewers blame the child. Extremely graphic movies such as Passion of the Christ are of no issue to those who pay attention to Fox News. And, of course, as mentioned, they see no problem with walking around with pornography for all the children to see.

A kid not in preschool is part of the 50% who are still home schooled until kindergarten, so you compare development to others who have been schooled. That said not all public schools are the same. If you live in the suburbs your choices are pretty limited, but if you are in a city and your kid is a good test takers, there are lots of options. That is what saved me. While many people I knew moved to suburbs to get a half descent education, I aced my test and by the time I was 8 was going to the top and challenging public schools. At these schools I had access to equipment and professionals beyond what most home schooled can get. I would say for the first few years school would be good. If you can't bare public school, charter schools are acceptable for the young who educational needs are often basic. Private schools are a good option.

It would probably be useful to check the use of effect or affect. Or maybe lay or lie.

I see this a lot. People know one thing, and want to make sure that everyone else are made miserable.

There was a time when Radio Shack had the parts that one needed to build stuff. I remember going with my father to get a vacuum tube to fix the stereo amplifier. Then I would go by myself to get soldering irons, potentiometers, whatever I needed. It was expensive, but not outrageously so for single pieces. It also had the first handheld that competed with the HP, the TRS-80 handheld. I spent many hours programing. I also spent many hours writing on my Model 100 and Model 200.

I blame the demise of Radio Shack on the fact that no one building electrical equipment or electronics anymore. I don't mean plugging boards together, or hooking up an Arduino, but actually taking components and building.

20 years ago the only other electronics parts store moved out of our city. Without radio shack there really is no place for a inner city kid to go with a little cash to buy some stuff and throw it together.

Not only can they sue you,they might win.

This is because the NFL is not an ordinary business. It is a cartel of independent teams. Such cartels, for example OPEC, are illigal in the US since 1890 but is allowed through special acts of congress. This allows it to set rules for all teams, set TV contracts, and set pay scales without any competition.

This leads to the ability to generate profits only available to socialist organizations. For instance, excessively high payment from TV networks require excessively high fees to cable providers which are paid by all cable subscribers, even if they never watch the channel. The cartel is also able to leverage national monies to convince localities to force taxpayer to fund stadiums, even if those that are never going to use the stadiums. These monies then go into individual pockets as profits.

I have heard people saying the same about music halls, but there is certainly no national cartel of music lovers that bribe local officials, that transfers the risk of the building from a for profit organization the taxpayer.

There are other costs to society. Because the rules are set, public tax dollars can be used to train kids for the NFL through public school funds. Because salaries are set, the players, though well paid, do not have the ability to truly negotiate a contract. Recall that tech firms have gotten in trouble for this, even though the employees were generally well paid.

And of course there is a fundamental loss to a society that depends on the free market that kids are taught about fair play and rules within a socialist construct where there is in fact a rule book and powerful referees. While this is useful for a 10 year old, it is disastrous when an adult goes into a work place believing her or his life is really going to be controlled by a rule book. It kills innovation and creativity. At leas in baseball you can steal a base. The immaturity of football can be characterized by the fact that everyone got their panties in bunch over deflate gate. In the real free market world that would just be considered a necessary cost of doing business.

Which is to say that the NFL basically lives within it's own bubble. It has the ability to bribe congress, or throw enough lawyers at the problem, to bend the rules no matter what previous legislation or case law says.

And I don't think the NFL is a natural cartel, like the electric company. I think real competition, not the fake thing taught to kids by the NFL structure and games, is good. I don't think sports fans are nearly as dumb as the average sports cartel thinks they are. The current structure is merely a way to maximize profit at taxpayer expense, and to create a world where fundamental rights are infringed for the sake of the bottom line or a corporation.

There is truth to this. There is a great deal of difference between a 10 year old and a 13 year old, and way more differences within children of the same age than if you were to be dealing with late teens.

This age group is going to be deep into concrete thinking. They are going to spend most of their time challenging rules rather than working with them to develop a functional product. They want to see how rules can be broken and if the framework is still functional with broken rules. They are looking for a minimum set of constraints that will lead to maximizing the freedoms they are looking for, without additional responsibilities.

These are all useful things if channeled properly.

For instance, while I don't see robots as useful for higher grade levels, I think they are useful for the 10-14 year old. Robots can provide instant feedback that forces kids to follow rules, and allows the give and take that lets kids discover principles, like how to make a right turn. Robots can also easily be tailored for individual abilities.

What is missing in many courses is that kids learn differently for older teens and adults. The assumptions they make are different, and they are more likely to spend time 'gaming the system' to look for vagaries.

What kids don't have is the abstract ability to understand how something as abstract as a physical computer interface works. Even though it looks like a concrete representation, it is not. Just try to teach a kid to work a breadboard. Yes, you can teach them rote but are they going to understand what is really happening. My experience is not until they are in high school.

So teach cause and effect. If they are old enough teach them how to solder. Get simple robots and let them play. For older students, get Inventor and 3D printer. If a kid seems to want to program, let them make a tic tac toe web page.

What will happen is that some kids will try spend more time on the internet looking at porn than learning. That is the testing of rules thing.

I paid for virtual machine software for the Mac to run Windows XP and 7. I did not want to reboot. I switched to virtual box not because it was free, but because I felt it was better. I have not needed to run windows for a couple years, so I do not know what the current state of development is in the market, but VirtualBox would be my initial choice if I needed a VM. One data point. For the modeling software I was using on Windows 7, Parallels made my machine run much hotter.

The first question that popped into my mind was did they have a new model that would take data from 100 satellites and produce a more accurate forecast. I don't think that satellites alone are not going to create a more accurate forecast. This reminds me when I was talking to a teacher back in the 80's. He mentioned that at one point it was believed that if we could create a dense enough network of satellites and sensors, we could forecast the weather with great accuracy and for arbitrarily long periods. Theoretically, given an infinite array of sensors, the forecast would be perfect and long range. But then actual science interfered as the work of Lorentz propagated through the ranks. The sensitivity to initial conditions, and the inherent limitations of data collection, made such claims of better forecasting theoretically impossible. I have to think that the current configuration of satellites represents some compromise between cost and benefit. Not to say that more satellites will not provide a benefit. Whoever contracts with the service will be able to claim 'We have better forecasting because we have more satellites', which will help with marketing. It will help push forward the cubesat business and will test out these new technologies, which is of great benefit. And it is an experiment that might succeed in producing useful data that might be able to be put into better models.

This is advertisement from the parent company of /., so there is no need for any real information.

Presenting things as maps is the 21st century method of establishing credibility. It is much cheaper than actually creating an informative graphic with useful data, a la Edward Tufte.

As has been mentioned, this data is not all that useful. One still pretty much makes more money in places that are more expensive to live, but not nearly enough. For instance, in San Jose one might make 25% more than in Houston. On the other hand, the median price for a home in San Jose is 5 times the average pay listed on the site, while in Houston the median price for a home is only 1.4 times the average pay listed on the site. Doing this type of normalization is simple, but does not drive rubes to higher paying jobs that might pay higher commissions to places like Dice.

This seems to be the narrative that the parent company, Xhibit Corp,is pushing. Perhaps blaming 'the market' will help it in bankruptcy with creditors, and protect the owners from personal liability.

What is not being widely reported is that Xhibit Corp sold the customer loyalty fulfillment part of the business last year for around $20 million. This was the unit that apparently generated the vast majority of the revenue and probably all the profit. Why would a firm who expected to stay solvent sell of the unit that generated most of the revenue, a unit with guaranteed sales?

It really seems like a scam to create liquidity of the profitable assets and then screw the creditors. The fact that the business was a failing was probably known at the time of the sale. For instance, it was probably known that Southwest Air was going to stop carrying the catalog.

The Miata is a highly tuned engined with a highly tuned exhaust system in an attempt to create a pleasant engine noise experience.

What we are talking about here is noise for those who need others to notice them. Who buy the big truck or the loud motorcycle because they do not get enough attention at home.

This of course is different from an electric car which needs fake noise so that others are not startled.

In any case the Miata has one of the most expensive engines, and that along with the suspension contributes the majority cost to the car. There is nothing else that one buys a Miata for.