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Comments · 26

  1. Re:ThinkGeek?? by AKAImBatman · · Score: 4, Informative · on Gadgets For a Budding Geek?

    I love getting things from ThinkGeek.com They have "toys" and stuff for all ages.

    Yeah, he already said that. Better answers include:

    - Kids Electronics Lab
    - Eyeclops Microscope
    - Commodore 64
    - Lego Mindstorms

    Those are just a few toys that can be used educationally to learn about science, engineering, and math.

  2. Re:Bingo by AKAImBatman · · Score: 1 · on Google Scoops Microsoft w/ Mesh Applications

    http://akaimbatman.intelligentblogger.com/wordpress/archives/date/2006/02/

  3. Re:Making it easier for China by AKAImBatman · · Score: 1 · on NASA Ares Rocket Specs to Be Open Source

    Do I think that China is run that way now? Absolutely not. I know it is.

    Wake the hell up!!!

  4. Re:HTML sucks... by AKAImBatman · · Score: 2, Informative · on Is It Time for a 'Kinder, Gentler HTML'?

    BTW, why not PSML, a markup language based on PostScript?

    It's called NeWS, and it's quite old. As you can see, What's Old is NeWS Again. :-P
  5. Re:who disturbs our meditation... by AKAImBatman · · Score: 1 · on Zero Day Hole In Google Desktop

    Merry Christmas:

    http://akaimbatman.intelligentblogger.com/wordpres s/archives/9

  6. Re:What?! by AKAImBatman · · Score: 5, Insightful · on MIT Media Lab Making Programming Fun For Kids

    Logo teaches them to think in terms of processes, as well as teaching the importance of syntax.

    No, Logo teaches them to push a turtle around the screen. It doesn't really convey a sense to young children that they're "programming" a computer. I technically had Logo before I ever had BASIC, and it took me years to realize that it was supposed to be an introduction to programming. Most of us saw it as an introduction to computer graphics.

    As for your comment that BASIC gets slagged on slashdot -- I think typically it's VisualBasic that gets slammed, for giving people the tools to get a bit of programming done without making sure they have programming concepts down.

    While Visual Basic is a poor tool to teach programming (most "programs" taught are simple GUI constructs with little to no code), the original BASIC regularly gets slammed because of Dijkstra's 1968 article, Go To Statement Considered Harmful. Dijkstra's core argument was that GOTO statements created spaghetti code. While this is unavoidable in assembler, his point was that it does not need to exist in high-level languages.

    That paper had a profound effect on languages that followed, resulting in many modern languages doing away with a GOTO keyword altogether. (e.g. Java reserves GOTO, but does not implement it.) Taken by itself, Dijkstra had a point. Unfortunately, he went on to say: "It is practically impossible to teach good programming to students that have had a prior exposure to BASIC: as potential programmers they are mentally mutilated beyond hope of regeneration." This started the idea that BASIC is somehow the "wrong" way to teach programming.

    The truth of the matter is that the design of BASIC will only limit programmers who are not interested in a long term career (or at least hobby) in computer programming. Most BASIC programmers quickly find the limitations of the GOTO statement on their own, and need little prodding to move to subroutines via GOSUB calls. From there, a programmer quickly learns the limitations of global variables. This makes the introduction to procedural functions much easier.

    Basically, it's easy to provide a student with new tools when they feel the need for them. If you simply give them the tools without giving them the background, they will never learn to use the tools correctly. That's why I personally believe that classic BASIC is still an excellent teaching tool. Besides having simple syntax that any child can understand (one instruction goes after the other, see?), the interpreter environment allows children to play around with the instructions without having to write complete programs for each experiment. This invaluable teaching feature is lacking in modern structured programming.

    Thus it is my personal belief that we need to STOP reinventing teaching languages, and just go back to what works. All we're doing with these new languages is giving them the CompSci version of "New Math". And all that "New Math" ever accomplished was to generally confuse children, and ensure that they never take up higher maths. Such is the result of providing highly structured coding tools to a child who wants to explore.

    You can read more of my thoughts on this subject in this article.
  7. Re:Anonymous Coward Claims Hilf is Braindead by AKAImBatman · · Score: 1 · on Hilf Claims Free Software Movement Dead

    Oh noes! A troll posted my email address unscrambled! OMG, OMG, OMG! Not like I've never done that before. Oh, look! I can even link to it too!

    You, my good friend, are just one in a long line of trolls who've pestered me. Here's a hint, though: Don't enemy me just before you decide to go on a trolling spree. It kind of gives away who you are.

  8. Re:AJAX Going Away? Oh noes! by AKAImBatman · · Score: 5, Insightful · on Sun Debuts JavaFX As Alternative To AJAX
    Seems I confused you with my slightly sarcastic tone. "for(var i in object)" is a core part of Javascript and the way it works. That feature (and what it implies) are why it's so simple to fix different browsers to work like one another. If you don't know how to use it, you shouldn't be coding web apps.

    Also, OOP is not bolted on in Javascript. It's been there since nearly the beginning. It's just that 99% of web coders never actually learned how to code Javascript.

    How do you know JavaFX will be so bad when they have only announced it and haven't previewed it?

    I've been a Java programmer for about 11 years. In that time, I've explored the VM and libraries inside-out, upside-down, and sideways. The conclusion I've come to is that Java in the browser is a bad idea. At least in the form of the J2SE. If it had been developed more like a J2ME plugin with access to the DOM, it might have been a decent replacement for Javascript. But it wasn't developed that way, and now I think it's not in a very good position to compete in that space.

    This sounds like it is targeting more than just "fetch this list box dynamically" by trying to be a way to make web pages that are currently only realistically implementable by making the entire thing in Flash.

    You bring me requirements, and I'll show you the magic that modern web technology can perform. And it's only going to get better. My comments about Server Side Events and XMLSocket are meant to mention how much better it's going to get. SSE will effectively obsolete Comet-style requests, resulting in rich server "push" systems that can transmit nearly anything to the client on demand. No need to worry about different XMLHttpRequest implementations, it will all be automatic in the browser. Opera already supports this, and thanks to the magic of Javascript, it's easy to branch to code that makes use of it when available. Wrap it in your libraries, and you're ready. to. ROCK! :)

    Java has the ability to do static typing.

    Which is its strength as a platform, and its weakness as a scripting language. Don't get me wrong, the computer scientist in me wants to go with static typing. I love static typing. It makes all the bad problems go away. But the web coder in me knows that distributed document technology needs something more flexible. Dynamic typing as in Javascript is that flexibility.

    It's slightly out of date, but you might find this article I wrote to be interesting. Web technologies are really accomplishing what Sun envisioned all those years ago.
  9. Re:Not enough to make me buy Commodore again by AKAImBatman · · Score: 1 · on The Commodore Comeback at CeBIT

    If you want to know what they should really do, read the second page of my latest blog article. I didn't realize it before, but it seems I came prepared for this article! :P

  10. Re:Privateer Remake by AKAImBatman · · Score: 1 · on 7 Game Franchises They Drove Into the Ground

    Now that you mention it... :D

  11. Re:Ouch... by AKAImBatman · · Score: 4, Informative · on 101 Free PC Games

    Works fine for me. If you really can't get to it, try the Coral Cache mirror:

    http://www.1up.com.nyud.net:8090/do/feature?cId=31 56339

    I wouldn't worry too much, though. It's just another "look at all the free games!" list with very little time spent on trying to separate the wheat from the chaff. Some of the "games" are expansion packs, some are flash games, some are OSS games that everyone knows about, some are clear copyright violations, some are just plain weird, and some are repeated more than once.

    The worst part of it all is that they missed a huge number of great games. For example, Privateer Remake is not on the list, but a Babylon 5 expansion pack is? Go figure.

    If you're looking for a smaller list of free game recommendations, try my Top 10 OSS Games You've Never Played article. I have personally played all of them, and enjoyed them to a varying degree. Not everyone has the same tastes as I do, but it might be an interesting list for you to check out in addition to this article. :)

  12. Re:Free Software games by jambarama · · Score: 1 · on Slashdot's Games of the Year

    None of these are new, but they are the ones that I keep coming back to. Neverball (my wife likes Neverputt more), and Tremulous. I occasionally play Sauerbraten, Nexuiz, and a few others, but the first two listed are my favorites (and in the Debian repos).

    A /. user, akaimbatman, wrote a pretty good article on this very topic in his blog:
    http://akaimbatman.intelligentblogger.com/wordpres s/archives/27#comments

    Enjoy

  13. Re:Ouch by AKAImBatman · · Score: 1 · on Sony, Analysts React To PS3 Launch
    The 300 floppies were from the time when the C64 was still an active system.

    That's a lot of floppies. Especially if some of them were flippies! You must have been spending a heck of a lot of time modem-jockeying back then! ;)

    Unfortunately my brother sold our C64 system on eBay about two years ago and before that it was sitting in the basement. I almost wish that I set it up to let my kids play with the "old" computer.

    You might consider getting another one. The C64 itself doesn't cost much (got mine for about $10), but a 1541 in good condition might run you a few tens of dollars. I don't know if you can see my sig or not, but I recently let my kid have-at a C64 with rather interesting results!
  14. Other great one-liners by AKAImBatman · · Score: 1, Funny · on China - We Don't Censor the Internet
    In China, we don't have software blocking Internet sites. Sometimes we have trouble accessing them.

    I didn't lose it, I just don't remember where I put it.

    I'm not lost, I just don't know where I am.

    I'm not paranoid, everyone IS out to get me!

    I'm not sleeping, I'm just resting my eyes.

    Are we really going to trust a nation that doesn't even follow its own constitution*? Oh, that's right. There's an escape clause in there that says, "the government can steamroll the people, no matter what the Constitution says. You just can't steamroll each other." Well that's peachy keen.

    * Disclaimer: Link is to an article on my blog. Do not click if you're afraid of people who link to their own blogs. P.S. Boo.
  15. Re:Wow, and accurate assessment! by WilliamSChips · · Score: 1 · on Make Linux "Gorgeous," Says Ubuntu Leader

    Less distros? Absolutely not.

  16. My Own Followup to David Brin's Article by AKAImBatman · · Score: 2, Informative · on Slashback: IceWeasel, Online Gambling, GPU Folding, Evolution

    I chose to use a Commodore 64 for educating my own son:

    http://akaimbatman.intelligentblogger.com/wordpres s/archives/42

  17. Re:He missed... by AKAImBatman · · Score: 3, Informative · on A History of Computers, As Seen in Old TV Ads

    Hmmm... wrong link on the blog. It looks like the copy/paste failed and I ended up with a second link to YouTube. Oops. Here's the right link:

    http://akaimbatman.intelligentblogger.com/wordpres s/archives/42

  18. Re:Two words... by WilliamSChips · · Score: 1 · on Vista Licenses Limit OS Transfers, Ban VM Use
    - Play games (Tux Racer doesn't count)
    Your wish My command
    - Use Photoshop (don't say Gimp)
    Wine.
    - Use 3D Studio Max (yes, there are some alternatives, but 3ds Max is an industry standard)
    There are alternatives that will deal with 3DSMax files.
  19. My Thoughts on the Issue by AKAImBatman · · Score: 4, Insightful · on IceWeasel — Why Closed Source Wins
    My first reaction to this entire situation is that, it's more complicated than it looks. On one hand, Mozilla doesn't want binaries being redistributed that they didn't build themselves. On the other hand, Debian wants to be able to handle source patches of their entire source tree. The result is that you get two competing ideals, both seemingly valid, creating this bit of a mess.

    After stepping back for a moment, however, I realized that the problem isn't as complex as it seems. In fact, I think it highlights something I've been saying for a while: Package systems under Linux are a broken concept.

    When I was working on the Linux Desktop Distribution of the Future article, I received quite a bit of criticism for calling the package management systems a major source of breakage. In the follow-up, I was forced to point out that complete system packaging creates a massive, monolithic code base:

    There is no way to fully test a package repository. Since every package modifies the base system, the only way to prove that a package will work is to test it against every possible package configuration available! In case you're wondering, the math for that is P * P, where P is the number of packages available. A mere 100 packages could potentially result in 10,000 available configurations! That's a lot of potential for breakage! Now consider that most distros today have thousands of packages under their care, and the number is not declining.

    Minor Correction: Reader Bradley Momberger has correctly pointed out that my math was a little screwy on this one. The correct forumla for the number of combinations is 2^P, which is actually quite a bit worse. 100 packages yields 1.26e30 possible combinations!


    What we're seeing here is a legal extension of that same problem. By integrating the software into the codebase, Debian is attempting to take legal responsibility for the software. Yet the software provider (Mozilla) is already handling that responsibiity, and does not wish to give it up. On any other operating system, the binaries would get bundled (or not at all, if they're too untrustworthy) as a self-contained application, and the software provider would be allowed to continue handling updates. End of story.

    In this case, Debian wants this software to be managed like all the other software they manage. Which means that taking responsibility becomes easier for them, rather than allowing the software producer to handle their own software. While this theoretically allows for a more cohesive system, that cohesiveness only goes as far as the packages checked into Debian's repository. Mozilla should be outside of that repository, but any software that's not in the repository is not well supported by the packaging system. Ergo, the process breaks down.

    That's just my thoughts, anyway. I'm sure many will disagree. Loudly. And rudely. Oh well. :P
  20. My Thoughts on the Issue by AKAImBatman · · Score: 4, Insightful · on IceWeasel — Why Closed Source Wins
    My first reaction to this entire situation is that, it's more complicated than it looks. On one hand, Mozilla doesn't want binaries being redistributed that they didn't build themselves. On the other hand, Debian wants to be able to handle source patches of their entire source tree. The result is that you get two competing ideals, both seemingly valid, creating this bit of a mess.

    After stepping back for a moment, however, I realized that the problem isn't as complex as it seems. In fact, I think it highlights something I've been saying for a while: Package systems under Linux are a broken concept.

    When I was working on the Linux Desktop Distribution of the Future article, I received quite a bit of criticism for calling the package management systems a major source of breakage. In the follow-up, I was forced to point out that complete system packaging creates a massive, monolithic code base:

    There is no way to fully test a package repository. Since every package modifies the base system, the only way to prove that a package will work is to test it against every possible package configuration available! In case you're wondering, the math for that is P * P, where P is the number of packages available. A mere 100 packages could potentially result in 10,000 available configurations! That's a lot of potential for breakage! Now consider that most distros today have thousands of packages under their care, and the number is not declining.

    Minor Correction: Reader Bradley Momberger has correctly pointed out that my math was a little screwy on this one. The correct forumla for the number of combinations is 2^P, which is actually quite a bit worse. 100 packages yields 1.26e30 possible combinations!


    What we're seeing here is a legal extension of that same problem. By integrating the software into the codebase, Debian is attempting to take legal responsibility for the software. Yet the software provider (Mozilla) is already handling that responsibiity, and does not wish to give it up. On any other operating system, the binaries would get bundled (or not at all, if they're too untrustworthy) as a self-contained application, and the software provider would be allowed to continue handling updates. End of story.

    In this case, Debian wants this software to be managed like all the other software they manage. Which means that taking responsibility becomes easier for them, rather than allowing the software producer to handle their own software. While this theoretically allows for a more cohesive system, that cohesiveness only goes as far as the packages checked into Debian's repository. Mozilla should be outside of that repository, but any software that's not in the repository is not well supported by the packaging system. Ergo, the process breaks down.

    That's just my thoughts, anyway. I'm sure many will disagree. Loudly. And rudely. Oh well. :P
  21. Re:Interesting, but not new by AKAImBatman · · Score: 2, Informative · on Electric Car Faster Than A Ferrari or Porsche

    Why not a hybrid where the engine is not connected to the tranmission?

    Conversion losses. Everytime you switch between mechanical and electric power, you're losing some of your energy in the process. As a result, hybrids are designed to accept losses only in power requirement profiles where the gain outweighs the loss. e.g. Acceleration is often handled by the more efficient electric motors while the gasoline motor is reserved for crusing.

    As it so happens, alternative engines such as Stirlings work much better in a full hybrid configuration like you describe.

  22. Self-hosting by AKAImBatman · · Score: 2, Informative · on Spam War Takes Out Blog Services

    Ah, it's so nice to be self-hosted. Back when I was on Blogger.com, myself and many other users who received links from Slashdot stories or news sites became the target of a spammer who's sole purpose was to screw up the service for everyone. He had a script that would bomb a blog with hundreds of racist messages, overloading the system in the process. (Sorry, blogger.com's software isn't that good.) I was forced to disable the comments, delete the entry, and recreate it. Thankfully, there were only a few anonymous comments on the current entry which were easy to recreate.

    While Blogger eventually added a captcha to solve the problem (after being non-responsive to support requests), it left a bad taste in my mouth. It was at that point that I decided to go self-hosted. I've never looked back. For the cost of a cheap hosting provider, you can setup a Wordpress installation that looks better, is more feature-rich, and automatically queues suspcious messages rather than allowing them to pass through. So while my site could be DDOSed if it was specifically targetted, it can't be overloaded with spam or used to take down other bloggers.

  23. Allow me to explain by AKAImBatman · · Score: 5, Insightful · on Why Are Tech Books So Expensive?

    Tech books started as an extreme niche market, with well-researched books chock full of useful information. Because of the amount of time and resources that it would take to put a book together (compared to the number of sales over its lifetime), books used to be more expensive.

    Somewhere along the way, though, publishers got an idea. If they could fill 300 pages with the literary equivalent of shovelware, they could sell you the book for the same amount of money (since buyers were used to it), but save huge amounts on the research of the title. Thus you ended up with books on VR that did nothing but describe commercial software packages, then in the appendix copy the instructions for a headboom from a far better book. That way they could advertise it as a "build your own VR system!" book, without really doing anything.

    This worked so well that publishers got another idea. They could publish even more of these books, and make MORE money! People would still pay it. So they flooded the shelves with whatever was popular at the moment. Be it the Sound Blaster, PERL, Java, XML, LDAP, whatever. It got to the point where if it could be extended from a magazine article, it went to a book form.

    And that's how we got to today. If someone can write an entire book on XML DTDs consisting of 30 pages of content, plus 250 pages of source code, manual pages, and descriptions of available parser packages, they will. As a result, the signal to noise ratio is pretty low. If the wannabe programmers would stop buying this crud, we might be able to send a message to the publishers that we want real books. Until then, though, you can only try to sift through the mess of garbage for the good stuff. Check out Bruce Perens' books. I can't vouch for all the content, but at least you can preview them online to see if they're worth the purchase.

    Oh, and in case you want to save a tree: Free Online Books (That are worth more than the paper they're printed on.)

  24. Re:Far from "brutal" by AKAImBatman · · Score: 1 · on Ubuntu, Macintosh and Windows XP

    You may find this article interesting. :-)

  25. Re:This is truly a sad day by AKAImBatman · · Score: 4, Interesting · on Mandriva Fires Founder Gael Duval, Who Plans to Sue

    I've tried out Mandrake/Mandriva a number of times in the past. (I even did a review on version 10 here.) While they gained a lot of good will for being "user friendly", I always found them to be not worth the effort. The desktop feels nice and all, but the system always had some sort of problems that could never quite be resolved. It's hard to say why Mandrake always was so difficult to work with, but if I were to take a guess, I'd point a finger at their bleeding edge software. They are infamous for always packing in the latest and greatest. That same bleeding edge mentality is what got them in trouble with version 9.2.

    Bye bye, CD Drive.

  26. Re:Boys who cried wolf by AKAImBatman · · Score: 2, Interesting · on Chinese Bloggers Stage Hoax

    Falun Gong is a rung away from Scientology on the crazy ladder to spiritual enlightenment.

    It was also both officially and unofficially endorsed by the Chinese government. Then at some point they changed their minds (likely because it was becomes too powerful of a religion), and started a disinformation campaign against them.

    I'm not a supporter of Falun Gong, but I have known a few practitioners who have escaped China. They are certainly no Church of Scientology, and they definitely don't represent such a significant threat that the Chinese government ignores its own constitution to persecute them.

    I've had quite a few Chinese coworkers and friends. I also have a high respect for the Chinese people and much of their culture. But I spit on the farce they call a "government of the people." It's a government of selfish power that attempts to subvert the thinking of the common person into believing that such subjigation is what they want.