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Submission + - Best computer for med school

Submitted by profBill
profBill writes: My son is applying for med school and his venerable Thinkpad T43 is getting a little flaky. He needs a new machine for his upcoming studies. The question is, what is the best, one computer to get someone for professional school where programming is not a big issue? His understanding is that what he needs is a machine that will allow him to watch lectures online (I guess med students can't get to all their classes regularly), write papers, do spreadsheets, read slides, do email. Pretty basic stuff. My inclination is to get the new Asus 1201n . Very portable, good battery life and enough power to do the basics. However, they are underpowered compared to a Macbook or the like. Assuming you aren't trying to do lots of games (and med students mostly aren't), what would you suggest? Real laptop, beefy netbook, even a desktop?
Operating Systems

Submission + - SPAM: The Good, Bad, and Ugly OSes of the Decade

Submitted by itwbennett
itwbennett writes: Hundreds of Operating Systems were released during the past decade, finding their way into microdevices, watches, refrigerators, mobile phones, cars, motorcycles, jets, even the International Space Station. Some worked; some even worked well. Others, sadly, didn't. And some were just ahead of their time. Blogger Tom Henderson takes a look back at the best and worst OSes of the decade. Among the worst? Vista, as you'd suspect, along with WinME. But what about GNU Hurd? And some of the best? Solaris/OpenSolaris 10, MacOS X, And newcomer Google Android.
Yahoo!

Submission + - Yahoo Imposes Weeklong Shutdown (wsj.com)

Submitted by Arvisp
Arvisp writes: Yahoo Inc. is shutting down its offices, except for "essential functions," from Dec. 25 through Jan. 1, as the Internet company searches for new ways to cut costs during the recession.

Comment Sprint Novatel727 + cradlepoint router (Score 0, Flamebait) 177

by profBill (#27765865) Attached to: Viability of Mobile Broadband For Home Use?

I live in the sticks where my options are few. Too far away from anything for cable or DSL and satellite is just a joke. I finally bit the bullet and bought a mobile card from sprint. I plug it into a cradlepoint (mbr1000 cellular, wireless N) router and the mobile card provides wireless service for the house. Yes, there is a 5Gb limit but the service is quite good. 200-300Kb down, 100Kb up on average. Sometimes quite a bit better, occasionally poorer but not often. Streaming video is not terrible and music seems good.

Anyway for rural use it is far and away the best solution
Programming

Survey Says C Dominated New '08 Open-Source Projects 378

Posted by timothy from the take-that-25-other-letters dept.
svonkie writes "C overwhelmingly proved to be the most popular programming language for thousands of new open-source projects in 2008, reports The Register (UK). According to license tracker Black Duck Software, which monitors 180,000 projects on nearly 4,000 sites, almost half — 47 per cent — of new projects last year used C. 17,000 new open-source projects were created in total. Next in popularity after C came Java, with 28 per cent. In scripting, JavaScript came out on top with 20 per cent, followed by Perl with 18 per cent. PHP attracted just 11 per cent, and Ruby six per cent. The numbers are a surprise, as open-source PHP has proved popular as a web-site development language, while Ruby's been a hot topic for many."
Apple

Apple Intros 17" Unibody MBP, DRM-Free iTunes 1079

Posted by kdawson from the life-after-jobs dept.
Phil Schiller delivered the keynote at MacWorld, the first after the Steve Jobs era of keynotes. Here is Engadget's live blog. The big news, predicted by many rumor sites, was the introduction of the unibody 17" MacBook Pro. As rumored, the battery is not removable, but it's claimed to provide 8 hours of battery life (7 hours with the discrete graphics): "3x the charges and lifespan of the industry standard." $2,799, 2.66 GHz and 4 GB of RAM, 320GB hard drive, shipping at the end of January. There is a battery exchange program, and there is an option for a matte display. The other big news is that iTunes is going DRM-free: 8M songs today, all 10+M by the end of March. Song pricing will be flexible, as the studios have been demanding; the lowest song price is $0.69. Apple also introduced the beta of a Google Docs-like service, iWork.com.
The Internet

The Wackiest Technology Tales of 2008 97

Posted by timothy from the hindsight-is-much-better-than-20/20 dept.
coondoggie writes "Despite the daily drumbeat of new and improved hardware or software, the tech industry isn't all bits and bytes. Some interesting things happen along the way too. Like floating data centers, space geekonauts, shape shifting robots and weird bedfellows (like Microsoft and Jerry Seinfeld). What we include here is an example of what we thought were the best, slightly off-center stories of 2008."

Comment Re:No. (Score 1) 901

by profBill (#26037759) Attached to: Obama Wants Broadband, Computers Part of Stimulus

The recurrent cry of "we need more technology in the classroom" is nothing more than a panacea for all things labeled education. Instead of focusing on educational issues, technology is a convenient place to thrown money and "address" the problem. A computer does not make you smarter, does not make you more job worthy, does not make you a better problem solver. It is just a big lump of junk unless someone can teach you how to use it as a tool. Few presently can. Instead, the fact that young people "use" their computers makes educators feel like they are making big progress.

What do young people do with their computers? Read Systems Software is Irrelevant by Rob Pike. Written in 2000 and somewhat dated, the "Grandma" effect is still clear. People, read young people, typically use computers for three things: networking (blogs, web pages, chat, twitter, ...), entertainment (music, videos, games) and maybe, MAYBE, word processing.

I teach introductory computer science and encourage students to bring their laptops. For the small percentage, it works great. Everyone else is off playing around. They may be "literate", but they are not better educated. They are, however, much more distracted. That is what computers have brought this generation
Image

OpenGL ES 2.0 Programming Guide Screenshot-sm 48

Posted by samzenpus from the read-all-about-it dept.
Martin Ecker writes "Mobile phones and other embedded devices are getting more and more powerful each year. The availability of dedicated hardware for 3D rendering is becoming increasingly ubiquitous, and the latest mobile phones come with 3D hardware acceleration that rivals the power of desktop graphics hardware. OpenGL ES 2.0 is the latest version of a cross-platform, low-level graphics API to utilize these new resources available in embedded devices. The OpenGL ES 2.0 Programming Guide published by Addison-Wesley Publishing aims to help the reader make use of the full power of OpenGL ES 2.0 to create interesting 3D applications." Keep reading for the rest of Martin's review.
Education

Submission + - Richard Lenski vs conservepedia

Submitted by profBill
profBill writes: Richard Lenski , a National Academy of Science biologist at Michigan State University, has been working for more than 20 years to track a single strain of E. Coli and how it evolves. Divided originally into 12 populations, he discovered that one population evolved the ability to utilize citrate, a trait that had yet to be observed (see the abstract for more details). The folks at Conservapedia, particularly Andrew Schlafly, took exception and demanded, in typical offense-oriented lawyerly fashion, copies of all the data.

A back and forth of letters ensued, and it seems clear the Dr. Lenski has more than defended himself. This is becoming quite a cause célèbre on the internet in recent weeks. The folks at rationalwiki have documented the The Lenski affair for your enjoyment. There are a number of other places that are commenting on it as well.

Interestingly, the Conservadpedia's web site seems to be struggling. Wonder why?
Education

Submission + - The impaticence of the Google Generation 1

Submitted by profBill
profBill writes: As a fifty something professor who teaches introductory computer science, I am very aware that the 20 somethings in my class are much more at ease with computers than any other generation. However, does that mean they are more adept at using those computers? Apparently not, according to the researchers at University College of London (http://www.bl.uk/news/2008/pressrelease20080116.html). Their research indicates that while more adept at conducting searches, they also show "impatience in search and navigation, and zero tolerance for any delay in satisfying their information needs". Moreover, this behavior "(is) now becoming the norm for all age-groups, from younger pupils and undergraduates through to professors".

The panel makes two conclusions: That libraries (and I wonder what a library will be come the future anyway) will have to adapt, and that the information processing skills of todays young people are lacking.

The question is, why are those skills lacking and, if they are, what can be done about it?

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