Today on Sky News, there was a news report talking about the state of computer education in the UK. They had a computer teacher on (I believe he was the equivalent of a US high school teacher) who made the point that as it stands today, computer education in the UK is worthless. He went on to describe it as teaching kids how to download apps to accomplish a task. Wow! Unfortunately, I don’t have a link to that, but I’ve found a link where the government is making changes to computer education.
Now, I have a BS degree in Computer Science and Software Engineering. I think that most people don’t have a clue about computers because they have never been taught how to think. At Marshall, I had a teacher (who was not very good) but he loved to say there was a difference between education and training. I never knew what he meant until I graduated and was placed in the work world. I then discovered what he meant. I found a plethora of people who didn’t know how to do anything unless it was laid out step by step in front of them. Those people had been trained. If you forgot one small thing, the people couldn’t think and determine what to do next.
I think that is the problem with computer education in general. Having a class to teach a person how to use word and calling it computer education is a joke. Sure, they might come away knowing how to use word…but then they can’t use open office (even though the concepts are 75% or more the same). They’ve been trained how to use word but haven’t ever been taught how to think about a problem.
In my mind, 50% (or more) of working with computers is nothing but problem solving (perhaps more like 80%). You have a problem and you have to find a solution. Then you have to determine how to make that solution work. Then you have to determine how to implement it and fix problems because you did it wrong. You see where that goes….more and more problem solving.
Therefore, I think the solution lies in teaching kids less how to do simple tasks and more in teaching them to think. Sure, you’ve got to teach kids tasks (how to tie shoes, how to write, how to cypher, etc….) but there needs to be a way to make certain computer classes don’t focus on the ctrl+b bolds text in word (or similar concepts in other disciplines). As I learned from the Mythical Man Month, computer engineering/software engineering isn’t exactly like other disciplines. Well, it may be; however, software engineering has only been around less than 75 years….people have been building bridges since preRoman times.
For Christmas, we got a Kinect for the xBox. It was simply a piece of hardware so we bought it here. it came with a game that I assumed wouldn’t work (because of region encoding as well as the PAL vs NTSC stuff). After I hooked up the kinect, I put the game in just got grins. What do you know….it worked just fine. After doing some more research, it looks like most games will work just fine….I think I’m going to start taking a chance on some used games and see how they work. As I do, I’ll keep a list here…just in case anyone is looking and finds this thread.
Today at work, I had a minor moment of “holy cow I can’t believe that is how it is but I guess so.| With Mac OSx 10.7 (aka Lion), Apple is offering full disk encryption as an option out of the box. When you set it up at first, you get to choose the users who will have the ability to unlock the disk at startup. I had to add a few users to an already encrypted machine but couldn’t figure out how to add them to the FV2 disk unlock list. I found this apple kb about fv2 which proved useless. It didn’t mention anything about adding users. ARG. From the article, I thought I would have to decrypt and re-encrypt. Well, that process only takes about 10 hours and I wasn’t happy.
Before I started, I wondered if it added them by default. I rebooted and, sure enough, there they were. Why the documentation can’t say that is beyond me. So, if you are in this
10.7/Lion with FileVault 2 (FV2) auto adds any new users to the disk unlock list.
Well, 1.5 weeks ago, we finally got internet hooked up at our place. It is a long story but it involved planning, the BT guy showing up late, and having to reschedule to finally get this done.
Part of what we brought with us was an asus rt n16 to use with our VPN provider. The plan was to have the router make the VPN connection (we use StrongVPN…for $55/year with no caps or other limits) for us so the WDTVLiveHub we brought could stream Netflix to our TV. Well, we set it up and everything worked ok…most of the time. However, there were times when DNS requests wouldn’t resolve (even using opendns). Yesterday I gave up and installed ddwrt. So far, it seems to be working great….much better than with the stock firmware.
One of the extras I got with ddwrt was a graph that tracks our usage. Why is this important you ask? Well, instead of paying £7.50/month for internet, we are paying £25/month. That is a hunk of money (with the £/$ ratio at about $1.55 to £1). But, the £7.50 internet would have been limited to 40GB transfer/month. I figured we would use more than that, but wasn’t really sure. Well, after a day and a half of using ddwrt, I’m glad we did go with it. At the moment, we’ve sucked up 4GB off the internet….that was 1 movie for Cyndi and I, and about 4 30 min TV shows for the kids. Looks like we would have been way way over our cap.
[Update 2011-11-27 17:44:41] I just realized…ddwrt is only on our VPN router. it doesn’t count what we’ll use streaming TV with the BBC iPlayer and LoveFilm
1) Because of Android’s open nature, most handset manufactures have taken to adding their own “skins” onto Android. Do you know that HTC Touch interface? Yep…a skin. 2) Just like with other things, the manufacture has to update their skin whenever a new version comes out. This takes time. 3) Can you imagine Apple allowing people to “skin” IOS? Heck, no one else even manufactures the device.
While I agree it there is a problem, we disagree on where the problem lies. The problem isn’t Google or Android….the problem is handset manufactures who think the stock interface needs “help.” Just like those horrid, rubbish helper apps on a PC, you don’t need them. Make sure blame is placed at the correct place.
Full disclosure here….I had to hear the guy twice before I figured out he was asking the phone to create a reminder (I couldn’t figure out what a remainder was…well, I knew but it didn’t make sense).
Now, if you don’t live in the UK, you may not realize, but the UK has TONS and TONS of different accents. What we Americans typically think of a a British accent is really limited to the South East of England. The best suggestion I saw (which I can’t find out) was to have English (Scottish) in addition to English (International), English (US), English (Australian), and English (UK). It makes sense to me
Now, do I think it is that big of a deal? No…simply knowing your IP address isn’t that bad (heck, if you can see the packets on the wire you can find that out) but it is still a flaw. A flaw that may have been discovered if their code were open for peer review.
So, I will continue my practice of not using skype for important conversations. We’ll still us it do Lydia and Isaac can talk to their grandparents…but not much more.
Oh, before it comes up…you may be thinking that you don’t do anything bad so what does it matter. Well, would you write a love letter on a post-card? Read this article on why you should care.
Last year, Google announced ICS and said that the Nexus S would eventually get the update. They started OTA updates but had problems so they pulled the update. Today, I read that Google has announced within the next few weeks ICS will be headed to my Nexus S. YAY!
