somebody please mod this +1 Awesome....

heh... I remember when it used to be you had to hit the guy... times are changin'...

no. for instance, 2^11 = 2048. 2048 - 1 = 2047 which is divisible by 23. n HAS to be prime, but not every prime n will give a prime result

Hmm... maybe you're right about the length of the books. I took an AP english class in our high school, so length of the books really didn't matter. You stayed up reading them until you were done =^3

I suppose if you were offering a class to people who just liked science fiction, but didn't want to do the heavy reading of an advanced lit class then you'd cut down to short stories.

Re: Asimov, iRobot and the First Foundation book are short enough that you could read every short story in them with relative ease. Plus, you really NEED to read all of the stories of the First foundation book to "get" the book.

About 451, I suppose it is done to death these days. I'll give you that one :)

Anyway, it is QUITE possible to read all of those books (yes, even tolkien) in one year if your students really care about Sci-Fi/Fantasy novels. Hell, just reading a Game of Thrones for fun takes me only 2 days, all of the LOTR took me 1 week. It all depends on how much you really want to read the books ^_^

Frank Herbert most definitely for western Sci/Fi - I wouldn't call it a sci fi class if it didn't have Dune! Though, to be honest, you could spend an entire year on that book alone.

Mikhail Bulgakov's "The Master and Margarita" is a crazy dark Fantasy which makes incredible social commentary about early Soviet Society. Oh yeah, it also features Satan in an almost positive light (well... he kills and maims, but he only kills and maims people who had it coming in the first place, mostly the greedy hypocritical high class members of the communist party)

To really get a good feel over the books, I think you should spend around 2 to 3 weeks on the short ones, and up to 4 weeks on the longer/more dense reads. You should have frequent in class discussions, probably 3 per week (a discussion a day is even better! with the exclusion of some days for writing practice). so, 1.5 books a month should give a reading list of 4-5 books a semester. 10 books total in the year (maybe 12 if you are fast, but no more or you start to lose depth).

in no particular order.

• Isaac Asimov's Foundation
• Isaac Asimov's I Robot
• Ray Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451
• Ray Bradbury's Martian Chronicles
• Frank Herbert's Dune
• Mikhail Bulgakov's Master and Margarita
• George R.R. Martin's A Game of Thrones
• A study of some of HP Lovecraft's best stories, The Mountains of Madness, Herbert West Reanimator, etc
• Edgar Allen Poe's works right after or right before Lovecraft's, to see some of poe's influence on Lovecraft
• Tolkien's Fellowship
• Tolkien's Towers
• Tolkien's Return

• and that's 12... hmm... you need more for backup :D. Frankenstein is a good book, as well as 1984, Ender's Game, Brave New World, and probably alot more that I can't think of right now.
  
  I wish I had a class like this in high school :(

Parent is correct, but kinda moved off the point.

Social Networking != Cloud Computing

Yes you can run some applications from facebook's/myspace's severs, but they are hardly the scale you'd need for say, a cloud based OS.

Until I can store/edit documents, compile code, host my own virtual server, run complex applications (GIMP, Blender Publisher) and basically do everything else that I use a computer for from what is basically a thin client connected to a gigantic central cluster, then it isn't cloud computing.

Though to be honest, I don't think I'd want to. Something about controlling my own hardware is appealing to me ;)

About social networking being "hotel california"... WTF? "I can't transfer my info from myspace to facebook easily, so it must be lockin!" I'm sorry but that argument makes almost no sense. These are separate sites running on their own systems, they have their own way of communicating. Maybe if you can write a program to transfer data from one to the other, you could release it and solve this problem :) But the sites aren't trying to block each other out.

About the concept of cloud computing being "hotel california"... Maybe. IF MS and Apple come out with cloud computing solutions, I assure you that they will be subscription based. If you want more features, you WILL pay a higher premium. And they will be orchestrated to stop you from using the other system, even though the hardware that you'd be using to connect to the cloud would be almost identical in both cases (A monitor, Mouse, Keyboard, and computer with just enough horsepower to run SSH)

Who knows though! Perhaps cloud computing will spawn the year of the linux desktop! Think about it, free servers run by philanthropists, serving people the content they want for a fraction of the price of running your own box! /sarcasm

In reality, MS and Apple will continue to do their best to keep linux under the public radar, a good deal of people will still own their own computers, but will probably use very lightweight cloud based laptops to do work portably. These people will pay high premiums for their right to use the system, while Linux/BSD/Solaris/Haiku users will have the same laptops running off of their own personal servers. Normal people's privacy will be marginalized and the large companies will have more control over most people's lives. And the cycle will continue...

Again, yes to vimperator!

Seriously, a modal interface maximises screen real estate AND makes every shortcut available without touching the mouse (which is often the slowest part of the interface).

The problem is that people have been coddled with the mouse ui and with buttons to click.

Bad analogy: When you were young, you looked at the pictures in books. Then you learned how to read. Now when you use a computer, you look at the pictures, let's learn how to read :)

err... it looks nothing like a dragunov
http://www.militarypictures.info/d/273-2/Dragunov.jpg

But symphonies make MOST of their money selling tickets to shows and playing venues. the vast majority of people who go to symphonies don't buy all of the CDs of the orchestra they have just seen play. playing over and over again at different venues and earning your money every step of the way is called an honest living. It requires work and dedication and can be quite rewarding, financially or otherwise. tricking a musician who has already written music into spending his time with you for a short period of time (a few days of recording). Then making millions of dollars by reselling that musician's work millions of times, then giving the musician just over minimum wage is NOT an honest living. It's called shitty parasitic business practice and unfortunately it is the norm in most modern countries.

4k7[_]aLly, \/\/12iT1[\]g 1n "1337" |s aL07 m04R |)1FfiK[_]Lt t[-]4n "Traditional" 7yP1|\|9.

i wish i could mod this up.

I was being completely serious

http://www.pbm.com/~lindahl/real.programmers.html

Apple stole their GUI (and mouse) from Xerox.

Not the perfect solution.
"perfect solutions" include many linux distros, as well as any of the BSDs.

you fool! Java's 50,000% speed increase in respect to C, C++ will never overcome the benefits of programming in FORTRAN!

Real programmers program in FORTRAN! It is the perfect and most complete programming language! FORTRAN is simultaneously the language of the future AND the past!

Anything C can do, FORTRAN can do better AND automatically! FORTRAN will take us to new heights as a human race!

FORTRAN will make your computer do work before you even think it!