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Graphics

"FatFonts" to add to infographic accuracy? ->

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00_NOP
00_NOP writes "FontFonts — a font where the weight of the number on screen or paper is proportional to the number itself — have been developed by researchers in Scotland and Canada as a way of adding numerical rigour to inforgraphic type displays, reports the New Scientist. A '2' has twice as much ink on the page as a '1' and so on. The magazine provides at example based on mapping Sicily and Mount Etna and reports that the fonts are to be tested with users and compared to alternatives such as heat maps. The big advantage is that the graphics can included detailed figures (with 0.1% accuracy) as well as be easy to understand and absorb for the casual reader."
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Education

OLPC project disappoints in Peru->

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00_NOP
00_NOP writes "The One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) project has disappointed in Peru, reports the Economist, apparently because in general teachers did not make creative use of the technology. As in other cases the computers seem to have been regarded as ends in themselves rather than tools to help change the ways kids are taught. Quite disappointing for those of us looking for Linux-Global-Domination but not really much of a surprise given the experience in richer countries either."
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Science

Scientists Find Evidence that Human Ancestors Used fire One Million Years Ago->

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes "An international team led by the University of Toronto and Hebrew University has identified the earliest known evidence of the use of fire by human ancestors. Microscopic traces of wood ash, alongside animal bones and stone tools, were found in a layer dated to one million years ago at the Wonderwerk Cave in South Africa.

"The analysis pushes the timing for the human use of fire back by 300,000 years, suggesting that human ancestors as early as Homo erectus may have begun using fire as part of their way of life," said U of T anthropologist Michael Chazan, co-director of the project and director of U of T's Archaeology Centre.
The research will be published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences on April 2."
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Comment: Re:Why stop there? (Score 1) 108

Incidentally you have mixed streamaing up with setting. Setting - which is "absolutely set in each subject according to ability, moving people up and down at intervals according to performance" is very much used in English secondary schools as I know from my own children's experience. Streaming is something very different - and it is a good thing it has been wiped out.

The idea that state education has been "demolished" is of course offensive nonsense.

Comment: Re:Why stop there? (Score 1) 108

I was taught a substantial amount of matrix maths for 'O' level - part of the "new maths" curriculum. As I am just on the cusp of the "micro revolution generation" there was no obvious connection with computers or computer graphics made and it seemed like pretty much a waste of time back then (sat the exam in 1982). For instance it was not taught at A level at all.

Now I can see its use (and obviously it also has uses in the physical sciences - eg describing relativistic space-time and so on) but not back then.

Education

"Radical manifesto" for computer teaching in English schools->

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00_NOP
00_NOP writes "Everybody (or almost everybody) in England agrees that computing teaching to kids in high school is broken. In response the government promised a radical overhaul and a new curriculum. But then last week it was discovered the government had scrapped the bit of the education department that would develop any such curriculum. Not to be deterred John Naughton, the Cambridge University academic who wrote the "Short History of the Future" has now published his own "radical" manifesto on how computing should be taught."
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Apple

Apple's Package Apocalypse->

Submitted by ithyus
ithyus writes "Earlier this week a certificate Apple had used to sign flat packages over the last couple of years or so expired. Those of us running Apple Software Update servers had to rebuild our precious software caches. It's been recently discovered that the same certificate expiration issue also affects some *.pkg files downloaded from http://support.apple.com/downloads, as well as the iLife '11 DVD many Apple admins purchased specifically for redeployment.

If you are an Apple shop who depends on some flavor of package management solution (e.g. Munki, Casper, AbsoluteManage), now might be a good time to head on over to the Package Apocalypse to read up and grab some tools to help dig yourself out from under the rubble."
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