cooleric1234 - Slashdot User

How Should I Teach a Basic Programming Course? 452

Posted by Soulskill on Saturday October 11, 2008 @10:48AM from the week-one:-beards dept.

riverman writes "I have been 'provisioned' at the school where I work to teach a new Computer Science/Programming course. I'm supposed to be teaching everything from the very-very basics (i.e. where that myspace thing is in your computer monitor, and how it knows who your friends are) to the easy-advanced (i.e. PHP classes and Python/Google App Engine). I'm an experienced programmer, but I'm not sure where to start — I could easily assume that my students know something basic they don't. Are there any resources on the internet that could help me find a solid curriculum? What are your suggestions?" I'm sure many of us have gone through intro-level programming courses of some sort; what are some things your teacher or professor did that worked well, and what didn't work at all?

Disappointing Cancer Study Results Go Unreported 77

Posted by timothy on Saturday September 27, 2008 @07:01PM from the laetrile-is-delicious dept.

An anonymous reader writes "Science News reports on a new study showing that most cancer drug trial results are never published, probably leaving patients vulnerable to cocktails that have already been shown to be dangerous or useless."

Red Hat HPC Linux Cometh 34

Posted by timothy on Saturday September 27, 2008 @03:01PM from the oh-doeth-it? dept.

Slatterz writes "Red Hat will announce its first high-performance computing optimised distro, Red Hat HPC, on 7 October. The distro is a step forward from the current Red Hat Enterprise Linux for HPC Compute Nodes. A part of the new distro is, by the way, created by a small Project Kusu team in Singapore. Kusu is the foundation for Platform Open Cluster Stack (OCS) which is an integral feature of Red Hat HPC. It might be sign of things to come, as more of hardware and software development moves to the Far East — even top-of-the-line computing performance."

DARPA Developing Super Scope 44

Posted by Soulskill on Saturday September 27, 2008 @01:19PM from the i-can-see-my-house-from-here dept.

Iddo Genuth writes "Researchers at the Strategic Technology Office of the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) are developing new high-resolution scopes that extend the range of viable image recognition and reduce atmospheric interference. Still in the early prototyping stage, DARPA hopes the new optical system (PPT presentation) will eventually result in a decrease of friendly fire incidents and collateral damage from military operations. 'Called the Super-Resolution Vision System (SRVS), this new system exploits atmospheric turbulence effects that magnify pieces of images behind heat haze. The formal name for this phenomenon is atmospheric turbulence-generated micro-lensing and it creates a brief, high resolution image behind the haze. The SRVS takes many such images and collates them to create a cohesive image of the entire larger area under observation using new advances in signal processing made possible by advances in computer processing power and increased storage capabilities.'"

Wal-Mart Ends DRM Support 231

Posted by Soulskill on Saturday September 27, 2008 @12:17PM from the enjoy-your-rights dept.

An anonymous reader writes "So, you thought you did well to support the fledgling music industry by purchasing your tracks legally from the Wal-Mart store? Well, forget about moving these tracks to a new PC! Since they started selling DRM-free tracks last year, there's no money to be made in maintaining the DRM support systems, and in fact, support is being shut down. Make sure you circumvent the restrictions by burning the tracks to an old-fashioned CD before Wal-mart 'will no longer be able to assist with digital rights management issues for protected WMA files purchased from Walmart.com.' Support ends October 9th."

Simple Device Claimed To Boost Fuel Efficiency By Up To 20% 674

Posted by Soulskill on Saturday September 27, 2008 @05:02AM from the innovation-is-a-real-gas dept.

Ponca City, We love you writes "Temple University physics professor Rongjia Tao has developed a simple device that could dramatically improve fuel efficiency in automobiles by as much as 20 percent. The device, attached to the fuel line of a car's engine near the fuel injector, creates an electric field that thins fuel, reducing its viscosity so that smaller droplets are injected into the engine. Because combustion starts at the droplet surface, smaller droplets lead to cleaner and more efficient combustion. Six months of road testing in a diesel-powered Mercedes-Benz automobile showed an increase from 32 miles per gallon to 38 mpg, a 20 percent boost, and a 12-15 percent gain in city driving. 'We expect the device will have wide applications on all types of internal combustion engines, present ones and future ones,' Tao wrote in the study published in Energy & Fuels. 'This discovery promises to significantly improve fuel efficiency in all types of internal combustion engine powered vehicles and at the same time will have far-reaching effects in reducing pollution of our environment,' says Larry F. Lemanski, Senior Vice President for Research and Strategic Initiatives at Temple."

Comment Re:The people as Congress's enemy? (Score 1) 630

by cooleric1234 on Tuesday June 06, 2006 @04:59PM (#15482986) Attached to: The Worst Bill You've Never Heard Of

Is there any way in the USA for the people to legally take back their own government?

Yes, it's called voting. Seriously though, personally I find this as just more evidence that government should be smaller, less powerful, and less intrusive (think libertarian). If there is little power given to the government, then you will reduce corruption, special interests, and lobbyist influences.

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