==== * If you have an Apple Mac or Linux computer - please note that you can only use it for this course by running Windows on it using Boot Camp or a similar dual-boot system.
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Can you believe it? How they've degenerated to Coke & KFC ..since the war?
Who?
Which War?
Coke & KFC - sounds like troll food :-)
The OU's first VC was appointed in 1969 - some time after WW2 if that was the war what you meant.
Seriously though, the OU is seriously underfunded and as the vast majority use a MS OS it makes sense when funds and effort are limited.
Charlie.
-- M0WYM Sales @ radiowymsey http://stores.ebay.co.uk/Sales-At-Radio-Wymsey/
Hmm do they still have the habit of providing vast swathes of reading material
- most of which has little or nothing to do with the course?
Hmmm, in my day they actually supplied you with a loan computer and printer along with system and user 5.25in floppies.
-- W J G
remember them saying windows 3.1 was required when the course did not touch windows at all. when asked why it was "so you can copy files from one disk to another"
-- A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush. -- Cervantes
No. For science modules, nicely printed books with all material relevant. (Though the threat is that in future they may be in the form of pdf files.) You are expected to have a (Windows) computer, and they use online conferencing software for some/all tutorials. You also get DVDs. It would be pretty hard (and expensive) to make all the software work on Macs and/or Linux.
Philip.
--
Philip Draper
Philip@borehamh.demon.co.uk
It's fair enough in my view. For most modules the IT requirements are fairly general - web browser, word processor, that sort of thing. However some modules inevitably need specialist software
- for example one I considered a few years ago used Mathcad extensively. They supplied you with a student copy as part of the deal. Guess what - Mathcad is Windows only.
What are they supposed to do? Spend a load of money developing their own softwre in e.g. Java for the handful of students that will use it each year? When it will inevitably be nowhere near as capable and skills in it will assist no one in their future careers? Restructure the course so that it doesn't need that software when the committee setting the syllabus have decided that it is an important skill in that field?
Yes, I'll try and avoid Windows as much as possible, but you've got to understand that specialist tasks need specialist software. If the course teaches you to use an app you need that app, and yes it might not be available on any arbitrary platform.
-- Andrew Smallshaw andrews@sdf.lonestar.org
virtual machine, pirate copy of XP, job done.
-- Everything you read in newspapers is absolutely true, except for the rare story of which you happen to have first-hand knowledge. ? Erwin Knoll
WINE ?
-- Q: What is printed on the bottom of beer bottles in Minnesota? A: Open other end.
No they should be teaching basic principles in a way that enables the student to think & migrate to any platform with relative ease ( My first word processor was Wordstar, followed by word perfect & then various incarnations of office, I am confident I can pick up any word processor & make effective use of very quickly.) not simply training mindless operators on a particular package
-- I'm ZIPPY the PINHEAD and I'm totally committed to the festive mode.
Nice idea in theory, in practice you'll want everyone doing course material to be using the same software to keep it simple, and the platform that students are most likely to have is Windows. In industry some software products are so dominant in certain fields that a proficiency with that product is a key requirement to finding work in that industry. Lots of people with a computer science background will be using other platforms and products, but they're very much the exception and, as mentioned somewhere above, are likely to be able to obtain and run other softwware without too much trouble.
Correct. *UNIVERSITIES* shouldn't be promoting WinTel computing, or CocaCola Mathematics...
WinTel screwed OLPC; will rPi survive?
If their current offering is the best they can do, rPi has nothing to worry about - totally missed the target!
-- W J G
In the 1960s nearly all commercial software was written in COBOL and nearly all scientific software in FORTRAN. These two were thoroughly dominant and yet by the end of the 70s they were in severe decline and C was on the rise, then C++ became popular and of course Java. I started my career designing hardware, then writing BCPL and assembler, over the years I've used C, C++, perl, python and Java heavily and a handful of other languages to lesser extent, many of which did not exist when I started out.
Technology is about change.
Before you claim that this is all computer science and other fields are different, consider the changes in the hardware design business. When I started out the basic tools were an A0 drafting board, and graph paper for making timing diagrams, most components were discrete or small to medium scale integration, building a hand wired prototype was essential before going to board layout. Board layout was done by hand using tape and transfers on at least six pieces of drafting film that could be overlayed. Now hardware design is heavily software assisted with most designs run in emulation long before anything is built and the first build is usually straight to silicon.
Proficiency with the basics is a key requirement to keeping a job and to keeping up with developments as the world changes around you.
Today's universally dominant technology is tomorrow's history, a working life covers several generations of technology these days.
-- Steve O'Hara-Smith | Directable Mirror Arrays C:>WIN | A better way to focus the sun The computer obeys and wins. | licences available see You lose and Bill collects. | http://www.sohara.org/
So far so good...
Totally, totally wrong. COBOL and Fortran are both still here. It's hard to understand how severe 35+ years of decline could be when it's still not terminal. COBOL still has more lines of code in production than all the other languages combined, possibly more than all of them multiplied by each other.
An intelligent person would be looking at the usefulness of those winning language designs and try to understand how they lived so long and remain to this very day so irreplaceable instead of signing off on premature death warrants decade after decade like some kind of quack doctor.
You seem to be taking the opposite approach. And you sound like kind of an idiot armchair historian from DEC who got turned down for an interview at IBM. Multiple times...
but that has nothing to do with the areas of business that were being addressed with COBOL and FORTRAN. C is unsuitable for anything that was ever done in COBOL and FORTRAN. And it didn't run on real machines until much later and never caught on anyway.
A DEC minicomputer isn't something businesses ever used in mission critical applications. C didn't send men to the moon or the tax collector to your door. Don't you UNIX-weenies ever learn? You're just about Lunar Lander and while we can all agree that is fun it doesn't get the job done.
"Double Face-Palm"
You forgot the ALGOL->A->B->C route
then C++ became popular and of course Java. I started my
Exactly. Sad really.
don't it just. I was born at or before transistors and programming languages.
Things that happened in my life? computers, small electronics, speed of sound exceeded in air, satellites, lasers, GPS, mobile phones the internet, the word processor, the spreadsheet, 3D CAD/CAM..the LP, cassette tape CD DVD and Blue ray. Colour telly. And the rise of snooker.Soft toilet paper. Never forget soft toilet paper. One of civilsations great inventions...
-- Everything you read in newspapers is absolutely true, except for the rare story of which you happen to have first-hand knowledge. ? Erwin Knoll
I would challenge that, although C is a lot more compact with longer lines than COBOL.
FORTRAN never went away because its a perfectly respectable language fit for purpose.
C is just a better systems programming and all-round language.
You can write a decent program in almost any language. COBOL reflects the use of small memory few variables big storage machines. C reflects the use of innate temporary variables and parameter passing - Did COBOL or FORTRAN have such concept?
No, you sound like kind of an idiot armchair historian from IBM who got turned down for an interview at DEC. Multiple times...
C is highly suitable for all FORTRAN applications and is reasonably usable for business programming. And is used massively by banks these days in usually c++ guise.
IBM operating systems written in C these days dear boy.
C is definitely the language that more is written in than anything else, if you include C++.
Oracle don't write database software in COBOL..
Indeed.
-- Everything you read in newspapers is absolutely true, except for the rare story of which you happen to have first-hand knowledge. ? Erwin Knoll
You must be pretty close to my age, perhaps a little older, Sputnik one was launched a couple of years before I was born.
-- Steve O'Hara-Smith | Directable Mirror Arrays C:>WIN | A better way to focus the sun The computer obeys and wins. | licences available see You lose and Bill collects. | http://www.sohara.org/
a lot older.
First memories are of about the coronation.
-- Everything you read in newspapers is absolutely true, except for the rare story of which you happen to have first-hand knowledge. ? Erwin Knoll
Sputnik
Same here - I remember being taken to the nearest town's cinema to see the Coronation film. The first 7-transistor radios appeared when I was 11 or 12 and the Mills 1.3 was the must-have model engine.
-- martin@ | Martin Gregorie gregorie. | Essex, UK org |
s/longer/shorter/ - there, fixed it for you.
Better for systems programming, yes, and for technical tasks, but not for dealing with business processes. Java and COBOL are both better for that.
One of the better hybrid systems I've worked on used C for the systems stuff (thread management, and interfacing to various networks, i.e. X.25,
3270 Bisync and SNA as well as TCP/IP) and used Microfocus COBOL for the business logic, packaged in large subroutines that were run in the C- managed threads.COBOL has always had the concept of parameter passing when external subroutines are called and can call code written in other languages. Its numeric field editing abilities are considerably better then any other language I've used and don't involve writing and code: you just describe what you want in a PICTURE and MOVE the value to that field.
It's main problem is that its so bloody verbose.
-- martin@ | Martin Gregorie gregorie. | Essex, UK org |
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