00_NOP - Slashdot User

"FatFonts" to add to infographic accuracy? -> 0

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00_NOP

on Saturday May 05, @09:40AM

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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OLPC project disappoints in Peru-> 0

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00_NOP

on Saturday April 07, @08:17AM

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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"Radical manifesto" for computer teaching in English schools-> 0

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00_NOP

on Saturday March 31, @04:24PM

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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Linux kernel hacking: these days its just another job?-> 0

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00_NOP

on Saturday March 24, @10:23PM

00_NOP writes "Using GitHub's "punchcard" tool we can see when commits go into the kernel and the pattern is pretty clear: it's between 9 and 5 on a weekday. Hardly any work is done at the weekend and not much overnight. So these days building the kernel seems to be just another job."
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Why do computer scientists use such lousy citation systems?-> 0

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00_NOP

on Saturday February 25, @08:17AM

00_NOP writes "Computer scientists often use the citation systems of the American Mathematical Society or the IEEE which seem to make it very difficult indeed for anyone to grasp what paper or book is being referenced without checking the bibliography directly. Given that one of the giants of the computing world, the ACM, promotes a reference system that does not have this problem and that there are pelnty of other systems about (eg., the Chicago system) which are clear as well as concise, why do computer scientists persist with such obfuscated systems? Is it something in our/their nature?"
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Herb Sutter on "Moore's End"-> 0

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00_NOP

on Friday February 03, @12:53PM

00_NOP writes "Over a Dr Dobb's website, Herb Sutter discusses what he calls "Moore's End", in other words the effective end of the popular interpretation of Moore's Law — that computing power doubles every 18 — 24 months — and tells us all not to panic but to adapt our development styles to a world of multicore heterogeneity and to embrace parallel computing as it is never going away. At my own blog I also suggest we should be focusing more than ever on better algorithms in response to Moore'sEnd/Peak Silicon. Of course, if we could prove P=NP maybe we could get a second helping of what Sutter calls a "free lunch" — ever faster computing. Otherwise the future looks as though it will be hard work."
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Computing not to be taught in flagship school in E-> 0

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00_NOP

on Sunday January 22, @07:06AM

00_NOP writes "About two weeks ago the British education secretary waxed lyrical about the prospects and opportunities for pupils in English schools that will come from his plans to reform the schools computing curriculum.
This week, though, it has been revealed that his department is to spend some of its money — in short supply because of spending cuts — on a new school that will not teach computing because it is only a "skill" and not suitable for an institution that aims to copy the ethos of England's top public (ie fee paying) schools. Languages are to be taught, though: why they are something more than a mere "skill" is not so clear.
The headteacher of the new school is Katharine Birbalsingh, who quit her previous job after launching a very public attack on the education system at the 2010 conference of the ruling Conservative Party."
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Forget the hardware, improve the algorithm-> 0

Submitted by 00_NOP on Thursday January 19, @03:23AM

00_NOP writes "A new algorithm for fast fourier transforms (FFT) — which promises a 10x improvement on current methods and which could therefore have wide application in mobile and wireless technologies and lossy compression more generally — is about to be revealed. When algorithms are driving speed improvements faster than Moore's Law why are we so obsessed with hardware, and how will the patient situation affect this latest discovery in applied maths?"
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IT curriculum for English schools to be scrapped-> 0

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00_NOP

on Tuesday January 10, @10:42PM

00_NOP writes "UK education secretary Michael Gove is today (11 Jan) to announce that the "Information and Communications Technology" (ICT) curriculum for schools in England (he does not have this power for the other parts of the UK) is to be scrapped. The English ICT curriculum has been attacked from all sides in recent weeks and IT business leaders have led the charge in calling for the teaching of computer science as opposed to the current emphasis on how to use a word processor or spreadsheet or other commonly used applications. But given that the curriculum will be scrapped without a replacement, will this make things better or worse?"
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Remembering the first digital watches-> 0

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00_NOP

on Friday January 06, @06:45AM

00_NOP writes "This has been the first week back at school after Christmas for my own children and this article on LED watches has taken me right back to the same week in 1974, when they were what all the cool kids (ie not me) were wearing when they turned up at school after the Christmas holidays. Anybody have similar memories of this or other tech Christmas trends? What has it been this week? An iPhone or iPad? They seem to have the similar match of hype and price as the LED watches anyway!"
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