Apparently, luring kids into programming are all the rave today. This morning I came across an article from arstechnica (via Digg) about Scratch that makes programming as easy as building LEGO bricks. From the creator of the programmable Lego Mindstorms themselves, Scratch provides an easy-to-use and colorful IDE for kids to do their programming through a drag-and-drop interface. Supposedly, this teaches them basic programming constructs such as if-then-else and loop patterns.
Also, another post from The Third Bit mentions that there’s a NSA-sponsored site for kids. This is all good although I don’t know if the target audience members even know anything about cryptography yet, or let alone pronounce it. Thus, the next time your 3-year old asks you how to decrypt a rainbow table or how quicksort works, you need not to worry.
Filed under: Computer Science, brainwashing, toddlers
Out of all places, NOW Toronto has an interesting tech article about a software that lets people share unfettered internet access to internet-censoring countries. Spawned by the Citizen Lab of University of Toronto since December 2006, Psiphon acts as a proxy for the regulated user and provides access to an uncensored internet. Psiphonodes would be able to monitor and regulate incoming/outgoing traffic as well if they feel that the psiphonites (I swear that’s what the website calls them) are getting out of bounds of what they’re surfing on the web. One good thing about this is that Psiphon servers gets to choose who uses the service which means less people using it, thus staying pretty off the radar and avoid the fate of regular proxy servers that eventually gets shut down.
If you have relatives or friends that reside in those countries, I encourage you to try out this program and “psiphon” information freely.
Filed under: alma mater, social software
This should be somewhat old news by now, but an article from Slashdot last week stirred controversy about a book that tries to discredit math in its role in the field of computer science. From iTWire:
A new book seeks to demolish the concept that computer science is rooted in mathematics and, in particular that the notion of the algorithm is fundamental to computer science.
As some blogs have adequately responded, “[s]hould training of engineers include some Physics? My answer would be yes, but not to the degree as a student specialising to become a Physicist.” Read the rest of this entry »
Filed under: Computer Science, Math, academia, algorithms
