Achromus - Slashdot User

Submission + - Coding Academies -- Useful or Nonsense? (techcrunch.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward on Sunday October 25, 2015 @03:44PM

An anonymous reader writes: Stephen Nichols, CEO of a platform that helps non-coders create simple video games, thinks that so-called coding academies are essentially snake oil. "In 20+ years of professional coding, I’ve never seen someone go from novice to full-fledged programmer in a matter of weeks, yet that seems to be what coding academies are promising, alongside instant employment, a salary big enough to afford a Tesla and the ability to change lives." His point is reminiscent of Peter Norvig's in Teach Yourself Programming in Ten Years." Nichols also thinks coding tools will become powerful enough in the next decade that the demand for actual, dedicated coders will diminish (perhaps not surprising, given the business he's in). But he's probably right that the people likely to go to a coding academy are likely to be the ones using those tools, when they arrive. "Put succinctly, coding is writing text files in foreign languages containing instructions suitable for an absolute idiot to follow. ... For a little while, spending tens of thousands of dollars on a coding academy might feel like a good way to surmount the intimidation. ... More likely, it is just a new pathway into debt."

Submission + - The Myth of Basic Science (wsj.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward on Sunday October 25, 2015 @07:49AM

An anonymous reader writes: Blimey! In a Wall Street Journal op-ed piece, British aristocrat, businessman, and science journalist Matt Ridley argues that basic science research does not lead to technological innovation, and therefore isn't deserving of taxpayer funding.

Submission + - '55 Science Paper Retracted to Thwart Creationists

Submitted by i_like_spam on Thursday October 25, 2007 @12:55PM

i_like_spam writes: The New York Times has an interesting story about a paper published in 1955 by Homer Jacobson, a chemistry professor at Brooklyn College. The paper, entitled "Information, Reproduction and the Origin of Life", speculated on the chemical qualities of earth in the Hadean time, billions of years ago when the planet was beginning to cool down to the point where, as Dr. Jacobson put it, "one could imagine a few hardy compounds could survive." Nobody paid much attention to the paper at the time, but today it is winning Dr. Jacobson acclaim that he does not want — from creationists who cite it as proof that life could not have emerged on earth without divine intervention. So after 52 years, he has retracted it.

Comment Re:Religion vs Darwin vs Technology vs Society (Score 2, Insightful) 804

by Achromus on Friday October 19, 2007 @09:46AM (#21040587) Attached to: Evolution and the 'Wisdom of Crowds'

Parasites convey selective disadvantage to their individual hosts; but parasites still exist. As long as the parasites don't kill their hosts too quickly, and are good at reproducing and spreading to other hosts, the parasites succeed. It's because the parasites can reproduce between already existing hosts. Ideas can also reproduce between hosts. An idea doesn't [i]have[/i] to be helpful to succeed at spreading (although it can be). It just has to good at spreading.

Submission + - Internet Explorer Drops WGA Requirement (msdn.com)

Submitted by

Kelson

on Thursday October 04, 2007 @08:46PM

Kelson writes: "The Internet Explorer team has updated the installer for IE7. Mostly they've adjusted a few defaults and updated their tutorials, but one change stands out: The installer no longer requires Windows Genuine Advantage validation. Almost a year after its release, IE7 has yet to overtake its predecessor. Was WGA holding back a tide of potential upgrades, or did it just send people over to alternative browsers?"

Belgium May Prosecute the Church of Scientology 755

Posted by kdawson on Tuesday September 04, 2007 @04:05PM from the who-you-callin'-a-cult dept.

sheean.nl writes "A Belgian prosecutor recommended after a 10-year investigation that the government prosecute the church of Scientology. The church is accused of being a criminal organization involved in extortion, fraud, unfair trading, violation of privacy laws, and unlawfully practicing medicine. Both the Belgian and the European branches of the church should be brought to court, according to the authorities. The investigation was started in 1997 after former Scientologists complained about intimidation and extortion by the church. Other European countries such as Germany have problems with Scientology, but in the US it is officially recognized as a religion. Scientology has 10 million members including high-profile followers such as Tom Cruise and John Travolta." Scientology has long used heavy-handed legal and other tactics to suppress opposition on the Net.

Submission + - Replacing atime With relatime in the Kernel (kerneltrap.org)

Submitted by

eldavojohn

on Wednesday August 08, 2007 @09:35AM

eldavojohn writes: "Our friend Jeremy at the Kernal Trap has has dug up some interesting criticism of atime from god himself, Linus Torvalds. As Linus submitted patches to improve relatime he noted: "I cannot over-emphasize how much of a deal it is in practice. Atime updates are by far the biggest IO performance deficiency that Linux has today. Getting rid of atime updates would give us more everyday Linux performance than all the pagecache speedups of the past 10 years, _combined_." And later severely beat atime about the head with a pointed stick: "It's also perhaps the most stupid Unix design idea of all times. Unix is really nice and well done, but think about this a bit: 'For every file that is read from the disk, lets do a ... write to the disk! And, for every file that is already cached and which we read from the cache ... do a write to the disk!" Well, I guess I can expect my Linux machine to become a little bit faster!"

Submission + - Monkeys and humans learn the same way (sciencedaily.com)

Submitted by

Lucas123

on Thursday August 02, 2007 @01:33PM

Lucas123 writes: "A new study from UCLA showed that monkeys, like humans, learn faster by being actively involved in the learning process rather than just having information placed before them, according to a story in ScienceDaily. In the study, two rhesus macaque monkeys learned to put up to 18 photos on an ATM-like touch screen in a row. 'The monkeys did much better on the first three days when they had the help than when they didn't, but on the test day, it completely reversed.'"

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