French internet mogul Xavier Niel will open a new school in Paris just for software developers. Niel — who previously founded France’s first entrepreneurship school — is even putting up 20 million euros to keep tuition free. Known as 42, the school will focus on project-based learning and will allow students to set their own pace for learning, the French startup blog Rude Baguette reports. It’s expected to open in November.
In the late ’90s, Neil co-founded the first internet service provider in France, Worldnet, and in 2000, he sold the company for $50 million. By then, he had already founded Free, which is now the second-largest ISP in France. Last year, the company launched Free Mobile, which offers unlimited calls, texts and data for just $27 a month, about half the price of incumbent competitors, according to Forbes.
But Niel is very much the maverick, and controversy tends to follow him. When he was 19, he started an “erotic chat” service for Minitel, the French proto-internet that shut down just last year. In 1999, Free’s parent company, Iliad, was accused by France Télécom of pirating its reverse number look-up database — the companies settled out of court — and in 2005, Niel was arrested in relation to a prostitution scandal at some sex shops that he had invested in. He was cleared of the prostitution charges, but landed a two-year suspended sentence for failing to disclose income, Forbes reported. Free also caused a stir earlier this year when the company began blocking all web ads. The French government ended up stepping in and forcing Free to end the block, according to the Economist.
Niel is a self-taught programmer who never went to college, so it’s no surprise that 42 won’t be your ordinary school. There will be no lectures, according to the school’s FAQ. All the learning will be project-based, with an emphasis on “peer to peer” learning. And the school will teach not just programming skills, but also the habits that companies are looking for in programmers: productivity, collaboration and lifelong learning and self-investment, according to the school’s website. 42 won’t be an officially accredited school. Instead, Niel is banking on the school developing a reputation for itself.
The school will accept 1,000 students per year. Applicants must be between the ages of 18 and 30, but there will be no requirement for any sort of degree prior to enrollment. To apply, students will attempt to complete a series of games on the school’s website. Those who are able to complete the games will move on to a one-day “try out” at the school. Up to 1,000 students will be admitted per year. According to the FAQ, the students need not already know how to program to be selected.
The school echoes some U.S. educational initiatives, such as Code.org and Dev Bootcamp. Code.org — backed by the likes of Bill Gates and Mark Zuckerberg — is attempting to expand and improve computer science education in public schools in the United States. Dev Bootcamp offers a nine-week intensive training in programming and, like 42, it focuses on project-based learning and peer-to-peer education.
Wednesday, April 3, 2013
Monday, March 4, 2013
New Technology for Animation
New technology for animation film experts
Movie heroes are soon to be transferred to virtual worlds more easily and realistically
CEBIT 2013. Germany. February 27, 2013
Whenever computer-animated characters roam through wild landscapes, such a Gollum in Lord of the Rings, there were real actors at work. Film studios usually use a procedure called 'motion capture'. The actors wear skin-tight suits with markers attached to them reflecting beams of infrared light that are sent out and received by a special camera system. In this way, the movements of a real actor are recorded and can later be transferred to a virtual character, using animation software. “However, the suits are very uncomfortable for the actors, and the markers interfere with their movements”, says Nils Hasler from the Max Planck Institute for Informatics in Saarbrücken. For this reason, the Computer Graphics researchers there have developed a method that eliminates the need for markers but captures the movements quickly and realistically.
This method allows actors in their normal clothing to be filmed with ordinary cameras. The movements are then analysed with special computer software and transferred to a virtual character in the form of a skeleton. “We require only a few cameras instead of the several dozen cameras needed for the special effects in Hollywood. The movements are computed so quickly that we can transfer them directly to the animated character without time delay,” Hasler explains. The meanwhile patented computation method has been further refined in the past months. It can now deal with scenes in which several participants are simultaneously active and body parts overlap. “The system even detects a person’s movements when they are covered up by other objects or when there are disturbances in the background. This will allow us to shoot visual effects outside of the studio in the future, for example, out in open nature,” the Saarbrücken-based researcher reckons.
The computer scientists in Christian Theobalt’s “Graphics, Vision & Video” team were able to solve yet another problem in the past few months, as Hasler explains proudly: “It was difficult for our software to reconstruct the body movements of actors wearing big coats or women entering a scene in long ballroom dresses. Our new computation method enables us to capture surfaces in such precise detail that, e.g., the draping folds of clothing can be reproduced realistically.” The new technology is also useful in areas outside the film and game industry. Athletes could use it to analyse specific, individual body movements without bothersome markers. Sports journalists would be able to comment on motion sequences, like in pole vault and discus competitions, in live television broadcasts.
“The field of medicine would also profit. It would be easier for doctors to depict and track the degree of recovery after operations on joints,” Hasler explains. The researcher from the Max Planck Institute for Informatics wants to establish a company together with Professor Christian Theobalt and his research colleague, Carsten Stoll, in order to offer their software as a commercial product. “We have already had quite a few inquiries from companies in the film and sports marketing industries,” Hasler reveals.
Technical Background
The technology used in this method is quite affordable. Anywhere from five to twelve ordinary video cameras are needed. The computer scientists use their software to produce a 3-D model of the depicted person from a skeleton with 58 joints. In order to capture the movements, the computation method continuously works on overlaying the two-dimensional image from the video camera and the 3-D model as exactly as possible. The researchers can solve the necessary equations for this task efficiently and quickly. With this method, they capture filmed movements and visualize them in the virtual characters within just a few milliseconds.
Computer Science on Saarland University Campus
Movie heroes are soon to be transferred to virtual worlds more easily and realistically
CEBIT 2013. Germany. February 27, 2013
Whenever computer-animated characters roam through wild landscapes, such a Gollum in Lord of the Rings, there were real actors at work. Film studios usually use a procedure called 'motion capture'. The actors wear skin-tight suits with markers attached to them reflecting beams of infrared light that are sent out and received by a special camera system. In this way, the movements of a real actor are recorded and can later be transferred to a virtual character, using animation software. “However, the suits are very uncomfortable for the actors, and the markers interfere with their movements”, says Nils Hasler from the Max Planck Institute for Informatics in Saarbrücken. For this reason, the Computer Graphics researchers there have developed a method that eliminates the need for markers but captures the movements quickly and realistically.
This method allows actors in their normal clothing to be filmed with ordinary cameras. The movements are then analysed with special computer software and transferred to a virtual character in the form of a skeleton. “We require only a few cameras instead of the several dozen cameras needed for the special effects in Hollywood. The movements are computed so quickly that we can transfer them directly to the animated character without time delay,” Hasler explains. The meanwhile patented computation method has been further refined in the past months. It can now deal with scenes in which several participants are simultaneously active and body parts overlap. “The system even detects a person’s movements when they are covered up by other objects or when there are disturbances in the background. This will allow us to shoot visual effects outside of the studio in the future, for example, out in open nature,” the Saarbrücken-based researcher reckons.
The computer scientists in Christian Theobalt’s “Graphics, Vision & Video” team were able to solve yet another problem in the past few months, as Hasler explains proudly: “It was difficult for our software to reconstruct the body movements of actors wearing big coats or women entering a scene in long ballroom dresses. Our new computation method enables us to capture surfaces in such precise detail that, e.g., the draping folds of clothing can be reproduced realistically.” The new technology is also useful in areas outside the film and game industry. Athletes could use it to analyse specific, individual body movements without bothersome markers. Sports journalists would be able to comment on motion sequences, like in pole vault and discus competitions, in live television broadcasts.
“The field of medicine would also profit. It would be easier for doctors to depict and track the degree of recovery after operations on joints,” Hasler explains. The researcher from the Max Planck Institute for Informatics wants to establish a company together with Professor Christian Theobalt and his research colleague, Carsten Stoll, in order to offer their software as a commercial product. “We have already had quite a few inquiries from companies in the film and sports marketing industries,” Hasler reveals.
Technical Background
The technology used in this method is quite affordable. Anywhere from five to twelve ordinary video cameras are needed. The computer scientists use their software to produce a 3-D model of the depicted person from a skeleton with 58 joints. In order to capture the movements, the computation method continuously works on overlaying the two-dimensional image from the video camera and the 3-D model as exactly as possible. The researchers can solve the necessary equations for this task efficiently and quickly. With this method, they capture filmed movements and visualize them in the virtual characters within just a few milliseconds.
Computer Science on Saarland University Campus
Saturday, March 2, 2013
The Learning Virtues
The Learning Virtues
By DAVID BROOKS
New York Times, February 28, 2013
Jin Li grew up in China during the Cultural Revolution. When the madness was over, the Chinese awoke to discover that far from overleaping the West, they were “economically destitute and culturally barren.” This inspired an arduous catch-up campaign. Students were recruited to learn what the West had to offer.
Li was one of the students. In university, she abandoned Confucian values, which were then blamed for Chinese backwardness, and embraced German culture. In her book, “Cultural Foundations of Learning: East and West,” she writes that Chinese students at that time were aflame — excited by the sudden openness and the desire to catch up.
Li wound up marrying an American, moved to the States and became a teacher. She was stunned. American high school students had great facilities but didn’t seem much interested in learning. They giggled in class and goofed around.
This contrast between the Chinese superstudent and the American slacker could be described with the usual tired stereotypes. The Chinese are robots who unimaginatively memorize facts to score well on tests. The Americans are spoiled brats who love TV but don’t know how to work. But Li wasn’t satisfied with those clichés. She has spent her career, first at Harvard and now at Brown, trying to understand how Asians and Westerners think about learning.
The simplest way to summarize her findings is that Westerners tend to define learning cognitively while Asians tend to define it morally. Westerners tend to see learning as something people do in order to understand and master the external world. Asians tend to see learning as an arduous process they undertake in order to cultivate virtues inside the self.
You can look at the slogans on university crests to get a glimpse of the difference. Western mottos emphasize knowledge acquisition. Harvard’s motto is “Truth.” Yale’s is “Light and truth.” The University of Chicago’s is “Let knowledge grow from more to more; and so be human life enriched.”
Chinese universities usually take Confucian sayings that emphasize personal elevation. Tsinghua’s motto is “Strengthen self ceaselessly and cultivate virtue to nurture the world.” Nanjing’s motto is “Be sincere and hold high aspirations, learn diligently and practice earnestly.”
When Li asked Americans to randomly talk about learning they used words like: thinking, school, brain, discovery, understand and information. Chinese, on the other hand, tended to use phrases common in their culture: learn assiduously, study as if thirsting or hungering, be diligent in one’s learning.
In the Western understanding, students come to school with levels of innate intelligence and curiosity. Teachers try to further arouse that curiosity in specific subjects. There’s a lot of active learning — going on field trips, building things. There’s great emphasis on questioning authority, critical inquiry and sharing ideas in classroom discussion.
In the Chinese understanding, there’s less emphasis on innate curiosity or even on specific subject matter. Instead, the learning process itself is the crucial thing. The idea is to perfect the learning virtues in order to become, ultimately, a sage, which is equally a moral and intellectual state. These virtues include: sincerity (an authentic commitment to the task) as well as diligence, perseverance, concentration and respect for teachers.
In Chinese culture, the heroic scholar may possess less innate intelligence but triumphs over hardship. Li cites the story of the scholar who tied his hair to a ceiling beam so he could study through the night. Every time his head dropped from fatigue, the yank of his hair kept him awake.
Li argues that Westerners emphasize the Aha moment of sudden insight, while Chinese are more likely to emphasize the arduous accumulation of understanding. American high school students tease nerds, while there is no such concept in the Chinese vocabulary. Western schools want students to be proud of their achievements, while the Chinese emphasize that humility enables self-examination. Western students often work harder after you praise them, while Asian students sometimes work harder after you criticize them.
These cultures are surprisingly enduring, Li notes, even with all the cross-pollination that goes on in the world today. Each has its advantages. I’m mostly struck by the way the intellectual and moral impulses are fused in the Chinese culture and separated in the West.
It’s easy to see historically why this came about. Hellenic culture emphasized skeptical scientific inquiry. With us, religion and science have often been at odds. We’re a diverse society, so it’s easier to teach our common academic standards in the classroom and relegate our diverse moralities to the privacy of the home.
I’d just note that cultures that do fuse the academic and the moral, like Confucianism or Jewish Torah study, produce these awesome motivation explosions. It might be possible to champion other moral/academic codes to boost motivation in places where it is absent.
By DAVID BROOKS
New York Times, February 28, 2013
Jin Li grew up in China during the Cultural Revolution. When the madness was over, the Chinese awoke to discover that far from overleaping the West, they were “economically destitute and culturally barren.” This inspired an arduous catch-up campaign. Students were recruited to learn what the West had to offer.
Li was one of the students. In university, she abandoned Confucian values, which were then blamed for Chinese backwardness, and embraced German culture. In her book, “Cultural Foundations of Learning: East and West,” she writes that Chinese students at that time were aflame — excited by the sudden openness and the desire to catch up.
Li wound up marrying an American, moved to the States and became a teacher. She was stunned. American high school students had great facilities but didn’t seem much interested in learning. They giggled in class and goofed around.
This contrast between the Chinese superstudent and the American slacker could be described with the usual tired stereotypes. The Chinese are robots who unimaginatively memorize facts to score well on tests. The Americans are spoiled brats who love TV but don’t know how to work. But Li wasn’t satisfied with those clichés. She has spent her career, first at Harvard and now at Brown, trying to understand how Asians and Westerners think about learning.
The simplest way to summarize her findings is that Westerners tend to define learning cognitively while Asians tend to define it morally. Westerners tend to see learning as something people do in order to understand and master the external world. Asians tend to see learning as an arduous process they undertake in order to cultivate virtues inside the self.
You can look at the slogans on university crests to get a glimpse of the difference. Western mottos emphasize knowledge acquisition. Harvard’s motto is “Truth.” Yale’s is “Light and truth.” The University of Chicago’s is “Let knowledge grow from more to more; and so be human life enriched.”
Chinese universities usually take Confucian sayings that emphasize personal elevation. Tsinghua’s motto is “Strengthen self ceaselessly and cultivate virtue to nurture the world.” Nanjing’s motto is “Be sincere and hold high aspirations, learn diligently and practice earnestly.”
When Li asked Americans to randomly talk about learning they used words like: thinking, school, brain, discovery, understand and information. Chinese, on the other hand, tended to use phrases common in their culture: learn assiduously, study as if thirsting or hungering, be diligent in one’s learning.
In the Western understanding, students come to school with levels of innate intelligence and curiosity. Teachers try to further arouse that curiosity in specific subjects. There’s a lot of active learning — going on field trips, building things. There’s great emphasis on questioning authority, critical inquiry and sharing ideas in classroom discussion.
In the Chinese understanding, there’s less emphasis on innate curiosity or even on specific subject matter. Instead, the learning process itself is the crucial thing. The idea is to perfect the learning virtues in order to become, ultimately, a sage, which is equally a moral and intellectual state. These virtues include: sincerity (an authentic commitment to the task) as well as diligence, perseverance, concentration and respect for teachers.
In Chinese culture, the heroic scholar may possess less innate intelligence but triumphs over hardship. Li cites the story of the scholar who tied his hair to a ceiling beam so he could study through the night. Every time his head dropped from fatigue, the yank of his hair kept him awake.
Li argues that Westerners emphasize the Aha moment of sudden insight, while Chinese are more likely to emphasize the arduous accumulation of understanding. American high school students tease nerds, while there is no such concept in the Chinese vocabulary. Western schools want students to be proud of their achievements, while the Chinese emphasize that humility enables self-examination. Western students often work harder after you praise them, while Asian students sometimes work harder after you criticize them.
These cultures are surprisingly enduring, Li notes, even with all the cross-pollination that goes on in the world today. Each has its advantages. I’m mostly struck by the way the intellectual and moral impulses are fused in the Chinese culture and separated in the West.
It’s easy to see historically why this came about. Hellenic culture emphasized skeptical scientific inquiry. With us, religion and science have often been at odds. We’re a diverse society, so it’s easier to teach our common academic standards in the classroom and relegate our diverse moralities to the privacy of the home.
I’d just note that cultures that do fuse the academic and the moral, like Confucianism or Jewish Torah study, produce these awesome motivation explosions. It might be possible to champion other moral/academic codes to boost motivation in places where it is absent.
Wednesday, February 27, 2013
IT Security Skills Needed
IT Security Organizations Facing Shortage of Skilled Professionals
eWeek (02/25/13) Brian Prince
There is a severe shortage of skilled cybersecurity professionals, according to an International Information Systems Security Certification Consortium survey of more than 12,000 information security professionals from around the world. The survey found that 56 percent of respondents said their organizations are short-staffed. Among the study's notable findings, communication skills was the second most commonly cited factor for success, cited by 91 percent, right behind "a broad understanding of the security field," and leadership skills were mentioned by 68 percent of respondents. "I think there's an understanding--not only on the part of professionals in this industry but also on the part of hiring managers--that a really good information security professional not only has the technical knowledge but also has a desire to stay on top of their field and have those broad managerial skills," says the consortium's Julie Peeler. Security certifications are viewed as a reliable indicator of competency when hiring, cited by nearly 70 percent. The average annual salary is $101,014 and is 33 percent higher than the average annual salary of those without the certification. The number of security professionals is expected to rise steadily around the globe by more than 11 percent annually over the next five years.
eWeek (02/25/13) Brian Prince
There is a severe shortage of skilled cybersecurity professionals, according to an International Information Systems Security Certification Consortium survey of more than 12,000 information security professionals from around the world. The survey found that 56 percent of respondents said their organizations are short-staffed. Among the study's notable findings, communication skills was the second most commonly cited factor for success, cited by 91 percent, right behind "a broad understanding of the security field," and leadership skills were mentioned by 68 percent of respondents. "I think there's an understanding--not only on the part of professionals in this industry but also on the part of hiring managers--that a really good information security professional not only has the technical knowledge but also has a desire to stay on top of their field and have those broad managerial skills," says the consortium's Julie Peeler. Security certifications are viewed as a reliable indicator of competency when hiring, cited by nearly 70 percent. The average annual salary is $101,014 and is 33 percent higher than the average annual salary of those without the certification. The number of security professionals is expected to rise steadily around the globe by more than 11 percent annually over the next five years.
Thursday, February 7, 2013
What is a PC?
Article by Doug Aamot (Time Magazine) Feb 7, 2013
The question that makes up the title of this post was the very same question that led a post written by my colleague Harry roughly a year ago.
Harry’s post cited a report by research firm Canalys that said tablets, which Canalys refers to as “pads,” made up 22% of worldwide PC sales during the fourth quarter of 2011. Yes, Canalys was counting tablets as PCs.
Fast forward to today, and Canalys has just released the numbers of PC sales for the fourth quarter of 2012. Still counting tablets as PCs, that 22% grew to 33%. Canalys also relays that “one in six PCs shipped in Q4 2012 was an iPad.”
This brings us back to the “What is a PC?” question. Last year, Harry informally surveyed his Twitter followers and found the following general consensus:
But in the not-too-distant future, if you’re using a personal device that computes things, it’s not going to matter what you call it. It might not even be referred to as a PC or a tablet or a smartphone. Within the next 10 years or so, my bet’s on each person carrying a single highly portable, super powerful device that docks into inexpensive desktop, laptop, tablet, TV, car dashboard and smartphone shells, depending upon the usage scenario. One tiny computer that can shape-shift as needed: that’s the definition of the PC I want.
The question that makes up the title of this post was the very same question that led a post written by my colleague Harry roughly a year ago.
Harry’s post cited a report by research firm Canalys that said tablets, which Canalys refers to as “pads,” made up 22% of worldwide PC sales during the fourth quarter of 2011. Yes, Canalys was counting tablets as PCs.
Fast forward to today, and Canalys has just released the numbers of PC sales for the fourth quarter of 2012. Still counting tablets as PCs, that 22% grew to 33%. Canalys also relays that “one in six PCs shipped in Q4 2012 was an iPad.”
This brings us back to the “What is a PC?” question. Last year, Harry informally surveyed his Twitter followers and found the following general consensus:
A PC runs apps. The owner gets to define the device’s capabilities by installing software on it–and, these days, by using it with Web-based services.I’d say that consensus still holds up today, and I’d add that as each year passes, we’ll probably put less and less effort into trying to define what constitutes a personal computer and what doesn’t. Though some have argued that we’re in the “post-PC” era, I’d argue the so-called era to be a short one. “Post-PC” simply acts as a temporary phrase used to differentiate between a box on your desk or something with a hinge on your lap, a slab you poke at with your finger or a smaller slab you poke at with your finger and that fits in your front pocket and can make phone calls.
It’s a general-purpose device. You can use one to write a novel, balance a checkbook, listen to a symphony, design a jumbo jet or pretend you’re Batman. True, most people don’t use a single PC for quite so dizzying an array of tasks–but they could.
It’s designed principally for use by one person at a time. That’s where the “personal” in “personal computer” comes in. It’s a computer for you, which was a pretty radical notion when the PC first got going in the mid-1970s, and still a liberating one.
It can be of any size. Which means that smartphones are PCs, since they run general-purpose software and are generally used by one person. In an era of products such as Samsung’s Galaxy Note, which is as much tablet as phone, I see no reason to declare that something isn’t a PC simply because it fits (just barely) into a pocket.
But in the not-too-distant future, if you’re using a personal device that computes things, it’s not going to matter what you call it. It might not even be referred to as a PC or a tablet or a smartphone. Within the next 10 years or so, my bet’s on each person carrying a single highly portable, super powerful device that docks into inexpensive desktop, laptop, tablet, TV, car dashboard and smartphone shells, depending upon the usage scenario. One tiny computer that can shape-shift as needed: that’s the definition of the PC I want.
Wednesday, September 12, 2012
New Online Courses from Stanford
Stanford University launched 16 new online courses and two new
home-grown platforms for interactive learning this fall. Stanford's new
online courses cover topics in computer science, mathematics,
linguistics, science writing, sociology, and education. The two
platforms each have distinct features and capabilities, such as video
lectures, discussion forums, peer assessment, problem sets, quizzes, and
team projects. Class2Go is a new open source platform developed by
Stanford engineers that will host "An Introduction to Computer Networks"
and a course on solar cells. The other new platform, called Venture
Lab, will host "Technology Entrepreneurship," which attracted 37,000
students when it was first offered last spring, as well as other
courses. Venture Lab, developed by Stanford's Amin Saberi, was designed
for use by students working in teams. Meanwhile, the Coursera online
learning platform will host nine Stanford courses this fall, including
"Writing in the Sciences" and "Human-Computer Interaction." Other
online courses include those on machine learning, cryptography,
probabilistic graphical models, organizational analysis, and finance.
(From Stanford University News, September 7, 2012)
Friday, August 24, 2012
Is Massive Open Online Courses, the Future of Education?
Elon University researchers recently launched the Imagining the Internet
project, which presented two scenarios describing higher education in
2020 and asked Internet experts, researchers, observers, and users which
of the two they most agreed with and why. Once scenario suggested that
it would be similar to the way it is now, and the other suggested it
would be very different. Sixty percent of the 1,021 respondents agreed
with the statement that by 2020 "there will be mass adoption of
teleconferencing and distance learning to leverage expert resources
[and] a transition to 'hybrid' classes that combine online learning
components with less-frequent on-campus, in-person class meetings."
About 39 percent of respondents thought that the change would be more
modest, and most universities would still require in-person, on-campus
attendance of students and would still feature many traditional
lectures. Although most respondents expect greater change and greater
dependence on technology in higher education, many also are
unenthusiastic about the transition. "They are worried over the
adoption of technology-mediated approaches that they fear will lack the
personal, face-to-face touch they feel is necessary for effective
education," says Pew Internet Project director Lee Rainie. (From Campus Technology, August 20, 2012)
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