The Parallax Propeller is an 8-core microcontroller (with each core named a "cog") with very small amounts of memory on each core. The Propeller can fairly easily interface with PS/2 keyboards and mice, VGA monitors, and RCA Composite screens. You can code on it with ASM, a language with an onboard-interpreter called SPIN, some free but proprietary-and-slightly-limited C compilers, a tiny implementation of Basic that works, or a very robust Forth.
Give it to the kids in your life, and they too will be able to write "Ian Rules!" :)
Why stop at the American Midwest? I'm fairly certain that there's no "inherent virtue" in Africa. Oh, and let's add China too. India maybe. Everyone should just come to America. Yes, you Canadians playing peekaboo in the corner too.
The Midwest and its way of life depended on a technology and an industry that is not anymore experiencing growth. This could happen in coastal cities tomorrow too. Trying to adapt your town to meet the needs of a modern economy is, I think, a much nobler cause than letting it wither and die because it lacks some sort of abstract "inherent virtue" thing.
I'm pretty sure there's no "inherent virtue" in having kids anymore either. I mean think about it, kids increase net environmental impact by humans. :|
You could have saved keystrokes by saying "I totally believe in the Capitalist version of Marx's Socialism-Wins theory. All socialist things will fall! MUAHAHAHA"
Please, approach the debate with some sensibility or an eye to analysis. This isn't a debate of ideologies, this isn't Marx vs. Smith, this is real people trying to get real health care, and not being able to.
Our intro to computing class involves learning about gates, an academic architecture (LC-3), programming in bytecode, programming in assembler, learning how we assemble the bytecode into assembler, then learning C. Our final project is a basic compiler from C to ASM given an AST.
I think it's a great way to learn about the way a machine works in one semester :)
Now I'm no expert on this but, wouldn't it be a security risk if any old citizen could inquire about the credentials of another person? Recent homegrown terrorists come to mind.
That said, he could just be a phony who invented degrees. The White House really should say something about this.
Perhaps what most interests me about the article is not the dichotomy of the two cultures, but in the area between them.
I'm a college sophomore studying EE in a notable university, but I spent most of my free time (and much of my homework time!) coding in high school. I had been using Linux from middle school, so my way of learning coding was picking up K&R's C book, learning the ropes, and starting to code on Linux. Linux really was an incredible atmosphere to learn to code in, and I learned more than just C. The ability to look at the source of other applications, to submit bugfixes for projects, and the incredible POSIX standard that makes C and other languages just ... whistle ... was great.
That said, I later abandoned Linux (several reasons: time, laptop incompatibility, much more time spent fiddling with radios, I "sold out", whatever) for day-to-day use. I still code and do it on Windows, but it's not the same. Now there are a lot of things of the "Windows culture" that I really like -- a shiny GUI for everyone, a huge smattering of applications which means that if I don't want to write it I don't have to, not having to deal with finding obscure driver patches so that my out-of-date hardware can stay supported, package management clashes, etc. But when I want to code, and I do so intermittently, I feel the intellectual gap.
I want that great POSIX interface, but more importantly I want an atmosphere that works around the code that I write. And here's where I feel the gap the most -- what about those of us who really enjoy a satisfying, intellectual coding experience, the "Unix culture" (and I don't code often enough to want to want to grind out consumer software), but still want the benefits felt for other users of the OS somewhat appreciably, and still want this end-user directed drag-and-drop "Windows culture".
I've heard that the Mac bridges the gap, but I'm an impoverished student, and spending $1000 on a Mac laptop is something in my semi-distant future.
http://www.parallax.com/tabid/407/Default.aspx
The Parallax Propeller is an 8-core microcontroller (with each core named a "cog") with very small amounts of memory on each core. The Propeller can fairly easily interface with PS/2 keyboards and mice, VGA monitors, and RCA Composite screens. You can code on it with ASM, a language with an onboard-interpreter called SPIN, some free but proprietary-and-slightly-limited C compilers, a tiny implementation of Basic that works, or a very robust Forth.
Give it to the kids in your life, and they too will be able to write "Ian Rules!" :)