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mamamaon At M.I.T., Large Lectures Are Going the Way of the Blackboard

"the professor covered multiple blackboards with mathematical formulas and explained the principles of Newtonian mechanics and electromagnetism."

Walter Lewin did a lot more than just that.

mamamaon Now you can choose which SATs you want colleges to see and which you don't

Just another way for the ETS to sandwich more money.

mamamaon ACM Urges Obama To Include Computer Science in k-12 Education

This is an interesting exchange between Mark Guzdial and Alan Kay: http://www.amazon.com/gp/blog/post/PLNKVUNBWIDAS9YQ

The focal point of the argument seems to be whether CS "education" and "vocational training" should be separated.

P.S. Nice to see another UIUC student. I've been accepted there and would possibly end up enrolling unless I get into some long shot universities. How is the scene there?

mamamaon Ask HN: Mac, Windows, Or Linux?

I feel Expose is quite counter-productive.

The golden rule any developer must know: never use the mouse. Multiple desktops and Quicksilver (instead of the dock, which is quite distracting) are far more efficient.

mamamaon Photo of the racks in the original Google datacenter

Yes, they are:

http://www.acm.uiuc.edu/conference/2007/speakers http://www.acm.uiuc.edu/conference/2008/

I remember seeing videos of Yegge's and Munroe's talks. Yegge's is worth watching.

mamamaon Seth's Blog: Gravity is just a theory

Theory: a well-substantiated explanation of some aspect of the natural world, based on a body of facts that have been repeatedly confirmed through observation and experiment. e.g. General relativity has a lot of mathematics backing it up.

Law: a scientific generalization based on empirical observations of physical behavior. e.g F = ma. We don't know why it's true, it just is some sort of an axiom.

mamamaon Ask HN: Should I drop out or not?

I'm a high school senior student who has applied to several public universities; mainly a subset of Berkeley, UIUC, UWash, Michigan, UT Austin, GATech, and Purdue.

I'm wondering if you are at one of these these places (or a university of a similar reputation.) Do you think attending a private university such as Chicago or CMU is a better option?

mamamaon What did you use to teach yourself Python?

The Hazel Tree: http://thehazeltree.org/

mamamaon Ask YC: What would you tell your younger self?

What if working hard on what I like could potentially get me into debt? Or what if I like to impress people?

mamamaon Unhappy people watch TV, happy people read/socialize

mamamaon India successfully launches first mission to the Moon

Yeah, but we really ought to stop using extraneous punctuation.

mamamaon India successfully launches first mission to the Moon

A big cultural problem also amplifies this: a majority of the middle and upper class families want their children to become engineers.

Our country does not need any more corporate drones, we need better politicians.

mamamaon India successfully launches first mission to the Moon

It's actually the education system that is largely responsible for the "extremely corrupted political system", among other issues.

mamamaon Ask HN: No, seriously, what is the best distro for web applications?

Windows 7

mamamaon Nerd library to end all nerd libraries

No.

mamamaon We're Not Rock Stars Anymore

Wow, that reporter sure is attractive.

mamamaon Ask HN: Good python code for code reading

The Cookbook (Amazon it, I'm too sleepy to link) contains examples of idiomatic code that you should use.

mamamaon Ask HN: Good python code for code reading

The BitTorrent code looked awful the last time I saw it; complete with 20 arguments for one function.

mamamaon America's Most Overrated Product: the Bachelor's Degree

Not all of us went to MIT.

mamamaon Mark Cuban on How to Get Rich

Mark Cuban on how to become an innumerate tool: http://bramcohen.livejournal.com/35949.html?thread=516461.

mamamaon PG - "The Papa Bear" - on BusinessWeek's list of most influential people on the web

...or google RMS!

mamamaon Learning the craft (of programming)

These two books look interesting, too: http://www.spinellis.gr/codereading/ http://www.spinellis.gr/codequality/

As for your suggestion on reading Understanding the Linux Kernel, is it readable even if I haven't taken a course on Operating Systems or something equivalent?

mamamaon How to recognise a good programmer

Then you've got other problems.

mamamaon The Google Chrome download link is live.

True. And fairly polished, too.

mamamaon Detailed review of MIT's OCW course "Introduction to Algorithms", Part I: Analysis of Algorithms and Asymptotic Notation

However, Charles Leiserson is a pedantic douche.

mamamaon China's children buckling under the pressure of their parents' deferred dreams

Are you referring to Chinese immigrants? Because if China is anything like India, kids would actually be discouraged to play the piano, as it would prove to be a "distraction from their studies."

mamamaon China's children buckling under the pressure of their parents' deferred dreams

I feel only a small fraction of them are actually smart... the entire K-12 education in India is little more that an exercise in rote memorization. College education isn't that great either, even in the elite universities.

mamamaon The Emperor: The ultimate geek workstation

But can it run Crysis?

mamamaon JK Rowling's Commencement speech at Harvard

Not as good as "Larry Ellison's speech" at Yale:

http://www.snopes.com/quotes/ellison.asp

mamamaon Breaking News: Girls don't become engineers because they don't want to

These pointless "women in computer science" articles really make my trigger finger itchy.