Dear Professor...

Dear Professor,

This course has been the best course I've taken in college so far. I now have an overview of science, art and innovation.
And in the world of structured outcome-based education, curiosity has been gradually replaced by school-enforced "discipline" or "if I don't do this (s)..." or "Is this on the exam...?"(s). Your course blew me away.

Now that I am heading back into the system I came out of for 4 weeks, I realize now what innovation, freedom of expression and life really meant and just why they are important. I figure that there is only one meaning of life and that is to live. I also found the meaning to I have the power to choose, but no power to escape the necessity of choice. I either choose, or someone else will. If I don't make my idea work, someone else will make it work for their profit.

I think I'm going to miss this class, but then I also know that it's up to me how I want to live now.

Thank you for getting me to realize so much in so little time. I hope you continue to be passionately curious and creative. We live in interesting times.

Eugene.

POLL on Declaration of Independence July 4th 2011

Analysis:

Based on a Rasmussen poll, Ron Paul should be aiming to get at least a third of the total national vote, if not ALREADY.

With so many people who are seriously concerned with the future of the US of A and holding the declaration of independence to be true, there is great potential for the liberty movement.

If most people simply spread the message to a few others, the power is unprecedented.

The following article is from

http://www.rasmussenreports.com/public_content/politics/general_politics/june_2011/americans_still_agree_with_ideals_set_forth_in_the_declaration_of_independence

The upcoming Fourth of July holiday marks the 235th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence's adoption by the Continental Congress, and most Americans still agree with the central tenets of the document that declared the nation's independence from Great Britain. Whether the United States meets those lofty goals is subject to debate.

The Declaration of Independence, written primarily by Thomas Jefferson, asserts that “governments derive their only just powers from the consent of the governed.” A new Rasmussen Reports national survey finds that 66% of American Adults agree with that statement, up 10 points from three years ago. Sixteen percent (16%) disagree. Another 18% are undecided. (To see survey question wording, click here.)

But just 23% of Likely U.S. Voters think the government currently has the consent of the governed. Sixty-nine percent (69%) are at least somewhat angry with the current policies of the federal government, including 38% who are Very Angry.

Forty-five percent (45%) of voters agree with the following statement: The gap between Americans who want to govern themselves and politicians who want to rule over them is now as big as the gap between the American colonies and England during the 18^th Century.

(Want a free daily e-mail update? If it's in the news, it's in our polls). Rasmussen Reports updates are also available on Twitter or Facebook.

The survey of 1,000 Adults was conducted on June 23-24, 2011 by Rasmussen Reports. The margin of sampling error is +/- 3 percentage points with a 95% level of confidence. Field work for all Rasmussen Reports surveys is conducted by Pulse Opinion Research, LLC. See methodology.

Seventy-eight percent (78%) of Americans agree that “all men are created equal.” Eighteen percent (18%) do not. A year ago, 84% agreed with the statement.

Yet over half say America is not yet a land of equal opportunity. Americans tend to think their fellow citizens talk too much about race, but most agree that we have yet to achieve a level playing field for all races in this country.

Working Americans are more skeptical than ever that men and women are equally paid for comparable work, although women believe this more strongly than men do.

However, most voters (66%) continue to believe U.S. society is generally fair and decent.

Ninety percent (90%) of adults agree with the Declaration of Independence's statement that “we are all endowed by our Creator with certain inalienable rights, among them life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.” Just four percent (4%) disagree.

But 53% of Americans now believe the federal government is more of a threat to individual rights than a protector. Only 47% think the U.S. system of justice is fair to most Americans, an eight-point drop from a year ago.

At the same time, voters appear less concerned these days with protecting individual rights when it comes to national security and public safety.
Men tend to agree with all of the Declaration statements more than women do. Eighty percent (80%) of men, for example, agree that the federal government derives its powers from the consent of the governed, but just 52% of women share that view.
Eighty percent (80%) of whites and 81% of Americans of other races agree that “we are all endowed by our Creator with certain inalienable rights.” But only 63% of blacks agree. Similarly, whites and adults of other races are more likely than blacks to agree that “all men are created equal.”

There is little partisan difference of opinion, except with regards to consent of the governed. Seventy-three percent (73%) of both Republicans and those not affiliated with either major political party agree that the government gets its powers from the consent of the governed. Just 51% of Democrats agree.

Most Americans still believe the U.S. Constitution has a positive impact on American life and think it should be left as is. But a sizable number also feels the document does not put enough restrictions on government.

More Americans than ever see danger in a government that is too powerful as opposed to a one that is not powerful enough.

University

After 1 year of university, I conclude that the essential product of a university is not graduates or papers or research,
but the spirit people feel when they are in it.

What does your university feel like?

Dedicated CS students

The mentality of most Mainland CS students is just incredible. Most are experienced in at least 2 languages and there are quite a lot of people who have already written android apps. They do the most undergraduate level research and always want to do more.

It's awesome to know what capable CS students can do, because while I'm writing UI programs, they are writing GUI games.

Summer/Spring?

Who would have known that the chilly night yesterday would be the last night of winter?

Today the sun is out the fog has cleared and the clouds are puffy once again!

We await the first sound of thunder!

Bugs

Systematic bugs: Due to some misunderstanding of the syntax or grammar of the programming language.

Random Bugs: Your bugs that you didn't know about.
Defined as either problems WITH your thinking or problems that materialized from the process of turning thinking into code.

Problems with thinking just have to do with unclear thinking, or even misunderstanding your own thinking.
Problems from thinking to code have to be sorted out by making the process as transparent and traceable as possible without ambiguity, so that little issues all become apparent.

Debugging aids are not optional. They are actually necessary, yet in the coding frenzy we have to put everything down on the source files, we forget that we must be able to repeat all the thinking in its entirety. Now, some people are less prone to human errors, but given a long enough program, everyone will make errors.
Testing is useful only if you know what you're doing. While it closes the gap between actual results and desired results, it cannot be a substitute for transparency in the coding process.

Combining testing and the coding/documentation process gives you the ability to detect all types of bugs. If done perfectly.

Now, even documentation may fail, because even documentation may be wrong. In this case, we try to catch these errors early by debugging certain blocks of code completed. The time taken to find and fix the bug tends to be smaller in a smaller piece of code.

Printing everything out is a classical approach to detect run-time errors and if the program crashes, we get to know where it crashed.

I am trying to implement all this, starting with small coding projects.

These lessons were learned in a painstaking debugging effort, in which I know that these things are the minimum that must be done to make a program generally correct.