Why would a soldier want to carry around canisters of flamable liquid in a battlefield?
These fuel cells are going to get their hydrogen from liquid fuels like gasoline, or diesel.
Seems like it would be a little dangerous to carry a fairly large container of gasoline on ones back while being shot at and dodging shrapnel. These would make easy targets for a sniper, just shoot it with a phosphorus tipped bullet and BAMMMM flaming soldier.
Re:How is this a Linux problem?
on
New Linux Worm
·
· Score: 2
Ok this is pissing me off. If this were another microsoft worm/virus we would be saying "M$ sucks of course their is a worm". But when it's linux we say,"it's just a minor problem in some distro/platform".
The correct way to respond to this is "we've found a problem now lets make sure this problem doesn't happen again". I want to be proud of linux, I want linux to be a great operating system, that's not going to happen as long as we, conctrate more on blaming others for their mistakes and downplaying ours, then working on solutions.
This comment in particular bothers me.
This is not a virus, its a worm that exploits a vulnerable bind to install a rootkit. Regardless, you should have tripwire or something running anyway.
Why should I need to run tripwire or any security software? If an OS is secure an idiot should be able to administer it and not worry about worms/backdoors/viruses.
I like the slogan "secure by default".
I'm a computer scientist, not a writer so no comments on the grammer or spelling please.
... poor software. I think windows should say on the box "insecure by default". Any network program that is designed for end users and not computer geeks should have safety built in. I can see a flaw slipping by the programmers that would allow a worm or security breach. I can't imagine selling a product that is so insecure that anyone with a little experiance can sit down and write a worm/virus/script to exploit, then never admit that the product was flawed.
Maybe these companies should be able to sue Microsoft, for lost time and money.
Any time you put metal in a magnetic field it causes a force on both the magnet and the metal.
This is the principle that is used in a rail gun.
I would think that this would be a little like trying pick yourself up off of the ground by your own hair. The forces involved will cancel themselves out. Maybe their is some physics involved that the article did not describe.
I'm 15 and I code using OpenGL under C++... Then again, I use Visual C++ and GLUT so that makes things alot easier:P
That's cool when I was fifteen I was learning assembly langauge on an outdated C64, basic, and C on an 8086. I'm sure in its way OpenGL is as complicated or more so then assembly language. I'm quite sure the math involved with some of the more advanced OpenGL programming is more complex. Keep it up maybe you'll get most programmers dream job and work for a game company.
By age 15 a smart young person should be able to handle C/C++ and a good graphics library with some work. But at age 12 just being able to create a game as simple as pong in basic would be really cool.
I remember the first animation I did in basic. All it did was make a line move around the screen and bounce off the edges but I was very proud of it. After that I was sure that I wanted to work with computers. Now I'm a college student about to graduate with a degree in computer science. Sometimes all it takes is a little push. Stay with it James.
To some extent your right. However many young people just thinking about programming might try PS2 programming while the idea of downloading a C compiler, the Allegro library, and setting it all up might seem intimidating.
While I agree that C is not that much more difficult then basic just setting everything up and understanding what's going on right away is a little difficult. Getting instant gratification with basic can be a big plus for young people. I suspect that anyone that learned how to program on a PS2 would quickly decide that they wanted to try something more powerfull. That person is more likely to try C, C++, or Java.
And with this a young person would not even have to own a computer. Most american households have at least one computer but sometimes parents are a little uneasy about letting Jr. set up new software on the computer.
When I was just learning to program I remember the coolest thing was figuring out how to make simple games. Kids today have a hard time making graphical programs under windows or even linux. If this makes it easy to make quick fun programs maybe more kids will become interested in programming.
I support anything that allows people to look under the hood and see how computers are programmed, this could be a good introduction to programming logic. Children could quickly learn the limitations and abilities of computers.
I don't particularly like basic, but it is an easy language to use for beginners.
This will eventually cause harm to people and industry. When something finally hits people in the wallets then the government will take notice. Maybe this is that one last staw that will break the camels back. Maybe this will push congress into doing something about technology patents.
Or maybe even better Intel will get the patents. It will refuse to liscense them to anyone. Every other major chip vendor in the world will get together and create a pc based on a sane architecture. Linux will get ported over very quickly to the new improved architecture along with BSD, BeOs, and other alternatives. Windows being tied to the 80x86 architecture will take much longer to port. People seeing the vast improvements good hardware that is open standard can bring to desktop software will buy the new hardware and of course install linux, bsd,(insert operating system of choice) since windows is delayed for the next decade or so.
OK happy halloween. I was just kidding none of that will ever happen. Intel will probably get its patent and any other patent it wants, it will try to keep from liscensing it but will eventually give in because of the threat of monopoly charges.
----I promise never to write a responce drunk again I swear!!:)
Maybe if they had some polite pressure and a reminder that they've allowed online versions of their books before they would reconsider.
Also it might help if some of the contributors to the mathworld website made it known to CRC that they wanted a say in how their contributions were distributed.
I would think that the people that contributed the material would have a say about what their material can and can not be used for. I'm sure that most people didn't mind their material being used in a book so gave permision freely, but I'm sure that they had an understanding that their contributions would be freely avaliable on the internet.
What if some site that hosted gpl'd code written by other people were to make a book using that code and the publishing company tried to shut down that site. Would the gpl be the only thing protecting the material or would the writers of the code have a say about when and where the code could be published.
WTF???? C/C++ are worth the headache. What you lose in ease of use you gain in power and speed. Try programming an operating system in anything besides C or a derivative. It's not going to happen unless your willing to handcode assembly language. And you've obviously not tried that or you would be praising the simplicity and ease of use that is the C programming language.
Very high level languages have their places. But until computers are many times faster then they are now we will need low level languages. Todays machines are *very* fast compared to the machines of only a few years ago but their are still things that are to processor intensive to do in high level languages.
Because the newest and highest tech software always pushes the limits of what a computer can do people will continue to use low level languages to do those types of programs in.
BTW I do realise that C is/was considered a high level langauge but compared to most languages in use today it is very low level.
So if all you ever want to do is to make a few applets or a text editor the use java, but if you ever want to do something like virtual reality, or program for a 3d display were instead of dealing with 1024X860 pixels in 32 bits of color your dealing with 1024X1024X1024 voxels in 32 bits of color, you'll need C/C++. (now that was a run on sentence.;) )
Which editor has good support for editing Python source code?
On Unix, the first choice is Emacs/XEmacs. There's an elaborate mode for editing Python code, which is available from the Python source distribution (Misc/python-mode.el). It's also bundled with XEmacs (we're still working on legal details to make it possible to bundle it with FSF Emacs). And it has its own web page:
No flames necessary. Python forces programmers to be more clear and makes programs easier to read. In short I like the syntax and the knowledge that every program written in python will have the same basic look.
This is just my opinion, but to me comparing perl and python as far as reading other peoples code is like comparing GWBASIC to Java. Pythons programmers also seem to have a programming philosophy that is more in tune with the way that I think then perl.
I of course am just beginning to learn Python, so after I become more proficient in it and perl I may decide that perl is better for some reason.
All of this doesn't matter very much in the end since I mostly program in C, C++, and Java.
I bet ZDNet wouldn't have ran it if they had been giving out CueCats.
It's still nice to see a mainstream computer site getting the issues around reverse engineering right. Most of the time they seem to accuse hackers of breaking protections, and reverse engineering for piracy. Here they were highlighting the good points. Privacy, security and interoprability are all good reasons that reverse engineering should be important to us all.
If I buy something I want to own it not lisence it. If I take it apart to see how it works that is my right.
The above post is not offtopic. Discussing the posts is what you are supposed to do. Just because this post is critical of slashdot does not mean that it is offtopic.
Discussing moderation of posts especially in a string that is incorrectly moderated is not offtopic. (but if your a moderator that disagrees go ahead and moderate me down instead of doing your job and moderating up the really good/interesting posts, I have the Karma to spare.)
It may not be legal, it may not be easy, but there is always a way to crack copy protection, and only by continually defeat these schemes can we fight against them.
Don't make the assumption that just because most copy protection schemes have been cracked that all can be cracked.
Take encryption when the algorithm is strong enough it can't be cracked in a useful amount of time.
Most of the success we've had with cracking copy protection thus far has been due to corporate screw ups. If CSS had been a stronger algorithm it would not have been cracked in the usefull life of DVD's. Sure we're smart and good at what we do but we are also arogant.
It is my belief that we've had some sympathetic programmers that have intentionally made weak copy protection thus far. It may actually have been incompetetance but in either case it won't last forever. We have to change the way things work in government and in the way society views these things. We can't with confidence claim that we will always be able to crack *any* copy protection scheme industry tries to use. Up until now we've been dealing with incompetance and short sitedness this will not last forever.
Pissed off:Anyone that has any intelligence that is watching what the RIAA and MPAA are doing.
Customer:Someone willing to give up their *rights* for the *privilage* of viewing the IP of RIAA and MPAA members.
Evil:1. Bill Gates 2. Politicians willing to trade peoples rights for enough money to win another term in office.
Puppets: Politicians -- see Evil
As long as politicians and judges can be swayed by money, laws will always be biased. Money may not be the root of all that's evil but it is the root of all power in the US.
When the average citizen can be swayed quite easily by high cost political adds and corporations provide the money to fuel those advertising campaigns, we get laws like the DMCA.
I will vote when I don't feel that I'm choosing between the lesser of two evils. Let my voter apathy be my vote. None of the above.
I followed the trial closely, it seemed to me that the judge was fairly well versed in the technological aspects of this case. In many cases Judge Kaplan seemed to know as much or more about the technical aspects of the case then the lawers.
Did your team have any trouble getting prepared for the technical parts of this trial, since even the langauge used was in many cases more technical then the average person would be comfortable with?
Before the appeal will your team focus on getting a better understanding of the technology involved, since this might give you a little edge over the attorneys on the other side?
Programming can be rather dry to a highschool student. Show them something flashy, something interesting. Show them how to do some graphics programming and then do some simple game. Pong, pac-man, tetris or something similiar. If your students are not advanced enough to do something as complex as a game. Program a simple game and make it their assignment to alter the program in specific ways. Maybe program a simple pong clone then have them program a second ball, or create a scoring system for the game. That you are trying to get the students interested shows that your a better teacher then I had in highschool. I knew more about computers then any of my computer teachers did, however I was always forced to bring myself down to the same level as the rest of the class when doing assignments. Your going to have to let each student do what their abilities dictate.
I don't agree with any decision to shut down what is essentially a file shareing utility. What next, how about anonymous ftp, or better yet IRC, lots of people use IRC to trade pirated software and mp3's both copyrighted and noncopyrighted.
Most people don't see it the way that I do, but this is all out war against the freedoms that most of us have come to enjoy on the internet. First the DMCA, which makes it illegal to make backup copies or fair use of legally purchased copyrighted material, that has an anti-piracy mechanism. Now shutting down a file sharing service. Soon anonimity may even be impossible. When is enough, enough. How many rights do the governments and the courts take away before people start doing something.
At least this will give the truly skilled black/grey hat hackers something new to play with. I would bet that this type of computer defense would be good against script kiddies but skilled computer intruders would be able to get around it. In and of itself this could make for several vulnerabilities. Imagine a Dos attack that only has to do a port scan to fool the computers defenses into closing it's ports. Although like all vulnerabilities it wouldn't last long.
Once this becomes more common and something people are familiar with attacks against it will get easier. I would imagine that in the realworld people will do like they always do and shut off many of the security features in order to make thier lives more conveniant.
From the article. A consumer release is at least three years away as Sandia says the agent must be "trained to protect a wider variety of services" before it can be of much use to the average household. One suspects it also needs to be dumbed down slightly so that it is not quite as clever as the military-grade version.
Besides it's like an arms race with both sides forever increasing the sophistication of their weapons. "What kind of attacks with these be? Well if these agents are as good as Sandia says you can bet it won't be long be before the bad guys get some bots of their own and start using them against governments, corporations and the general public. "
I thought the opening comment "A cool-sounding project, to be sure -- but how much control is too much to cede to the intelligent agents? " was a little paranoid until I read the end of the article. In time the agents may graduate from patrol to control. Intelligent agents would be ideal for the control of interplanetary robot swarm missions while at the same time protecting them from long distance hackers or practical jokers. Closer to home micro-satellite swarms or perhaps even remote-controlled jet fighters could be computer-coordinated with agent assistance. Come on doesn't that sound a little like a the start of a William Gibson book.
Java would be a good start. C/C++ style syntax, although not as complex for most tasks. Another good reason for using java is that they can create applets for web use. Lots of sample code and examples all over the internet as well.
When I started, I started with basic, moved to qbasic, then C, assembly, pascal, and more recently java, C++, and I've just started with python.
Qbasic is good for quick results. Pascal is good for teaching logic. -- I wouldn't recommend this one for starting with. C is form more advanced programmers. Java if you want them to start with a C style language.
Maybe something even easier like javascript or one of the other scripting languages.
Re:Some copyright is good (heresy, heresy!)
on
At The Crossroads
·
· Score: 2
Nice sentiment. In principal I can agree but like many a utopian ideal, it wouldn't float at all in reality. The problem is that if copyrights went to the writer/artist directly rather than to a corporation, snot-nosed teenagers and 20-somethings lacking moral centers and empathy for others would STILL rip off the copyright holder and then try and find some self-serving, selfish justification for their theft.
Sure some people might go ahead and steal your work but they might have less incentive to do so. Cheaper prices and all. Most snot-nosed teenagers and 20-somethings would not benifit from your type of work. Wouldn't it be nice if the artists instead of the corporations could make the profit and decide what to charge the public? The only difference between idealism and reality is implemetation.
The claim that one cannot own an idea is nonsense in many cases. If not for the person who wrote a given book or came up with a certain idea, then that book or idea would simply not ever have existed.
I never made that claim, although I do beleive it to be true. Your assertion that an idea or work of art would never have come about if not for a particular person is true in some cases but not in all. Many ideas, and discoveries have come from more then one source at the same time, although I will agree that art generally is a creative work of the artist and not something that more than one person would have come up with. I don't beleive that ideas can be owned. I do believe that the person that originates an idea that benifits society should for a limited time have rights to that idea. However the key here is limited time. Nothing should be kept from public domain for the lifetime of the artist plus 20 years.
Artists should be able to make a living off of their work. However any artist that is more interested in money then art is not an artist. Maybe a craftsman, for in my mind what seperates an artist from a craftsman is the objective of their work. An artist works for the sake of art a craftsman works for money. That does not mean that a craftsman has any less pride in the creation just that the goals are different.
Slashdot Mirror
These fuel cells are going to get their hydrogen from liquid fuels like gasoline, or diesel.
Seems like it would be a little dangerous to carry a fairly large container of gasoline on ones back while being shot at and dodging shrapnel. These would make easy targets for a sniper, just shoot it with a phosphorus tipped bullet and BAMMMM flaming soldier.
The correct way to respond to this is "we've found a problem now lets make sure this problem doesn't happen again". I want to be proud of linux, I want linux to be a great operating system, that's not going to happen as long as we, conctrate more on blaming others for their mistakes and downplaying ours, then working on solutions.
This comment in particular bothers me.
Why should I need to run tripwire or any security software? If an OS is secure an idiot should be able to administer it and not worry about worms/backdoors/viruses.I like the slogan "secure by default".
I'm a computer scientist, not a writer so no comments on the grammer or spelling please.
... poor software. I think windows should say on the box "insecure by default". Any network program that is designed for end users and not computer geeks should have safety built in. I can see a flaw slipping by the programmers that would allow a worm or security breach. I can't imagine selling a product that is so insecure that anyone with a little experiance can sit down and write a worm/virus/script to exploit, then never admit that the product was flawed.
Maybe these companies should be able to sue Microsoft, for lost time and money.
Any time you put metal in a magnetic field it causes a force on both the magnet and the metal.
This is the principle that is used in a rail gun.
I would think that this would be a little like trying pick yourself up off of the ground by your own hair. The forces involved will cancel themselves out. Maybe their is some physics involved that the article did not describe.
That's cool when I was fifteen I was learning assembly langauge on an outdated C64, basic, and C on an 8086. I'm sure in its way OpenGL is as complicated or more so then assembly language. I'm quite sure the math involved with some of the more advanced OpenGL programming is more complex. Keep it up maybe you'll get most programmers dream job and work for a game company.
By age 15 a smart young person should be able to handle C/C++ and a good graphics library with some work. But at age 12 just being able to create a game as simple as pong in basic would be really cool.
I remember the first animation I did in basic. All it did was make a line move around the screen and bounce off the edges but I was very proud of it. After that I was sure that I wanted to work with computers. Now I'm a college student about to graduate with a degree in computer science. Sometimes all it takes is a little push. Stay with it James.
While I agree that C is not that much more difficult then basic just setting everything up and understanding what's going on right away is a little difficult. Getting instant gratification with basic can be a big plus for young people. I suspect that anyone that learned how to program on a PS2 would quickly decide that they wanted to try something more powerfull. That person is more likely to try C, C++, or Java.
And with this a young person would not even have to own a computer. Most american households have at least one computer but sometimes parents are a little uneasy about letting Jr. set up new software on the computer.
I support anything that allows people to look under the hood and see how computers are programmed, this could be a good introduction to programming logic. Children could quickly learn the limitations and abilities of computers.
I don't particularly like basic, but it is an easy language to use for beginners.
Chaos rules man! (;(left handed emoticon)
:)
This will eventually cause harm to people and industry. When something finally hits people in the wallets then the government will take notice. Maybe this is that one last staw that will break the camels back. Maybe this will push congress into doing something about technology patents.
Or maybe even better Intel will get the patents. It will refuse to liscense them to anyone. Every other major chip vendor in the world will get together and create a pc based on a sane architecture. Linux will get ported over very quickly to the new improved architecture along with BSD, BeOs, and other alternatives. Windows being tied to the 80x86 architecture will take much longer to port. People seeing the vast improvements good hardware that is open standard can bring to desktop software will buy the new hardware and of course install linux, bsd,(insert operating system of choice) since windows is delayed for the next decade or so.
OK happy halloween. I was just kidding none of that will ever happen. Intel will probably get its patent and any other patent it wants, it will try to keep from liscensing it but will eventually give in because of the threat of monopoly charges.
----I promise never to write a responce drunk again I swear!!
Also it might help if some of the contributors to the mathworld website made it known to CRC that they wanted a say in how their contributions were distributed.
What if some site that hosted gpl'd code written by other people were to make a book using that code and the publishing company tried to shut down that site. Would the gpl be the only thing protecting the material or would the writers of the code have a say about when and where the code could be published.
Very high level languages have their places. But until computers are many times faster then they are now we will need low level languages. Todays machines are *very* fast compared to the machines of only a few years ago but their are still things that are to processor intensive to do in high level languages.
Because the newest and highest tech software always pushes the limits of what a computer can do people will continue to use low level languages to do those types of programs in.
BTW I do realise that C is/was considered a high level langauge but compared to most languages in use today it is very low level.
So if all you ever want to do is to make a few applets or a text editor the use java, but if you ever want to do something like virtual reality, or program for a 3d display were instead of dealing with 1024X860 pixels in 32 bits of color your dealing with 1024X1024X1024 voxels in 32 bits of color, you'll need C/C++. (now that was a run on sentence.;) )
Which editor has good support for editing Python source code?
On Unix, the first choice is Emacs/XEmacs. There's an elaborate mode for editing Python code, which is available from the Python source distribution (Misc/python-mode.el). It's also bundled with XEmacs (we're still working on legal details to make it possible to bundle it with FSF Emacs). And it has its own web page:
http://www.python.org/emacs/python-mode/index.html
There are many other choices, for Unix, Windows or Macintosh. Richard Jones compiled a table from postings on the Python newsgroup:
http://www.bofh.asn.au/~richard/editors.html See also FAQ question 7.10 for some more Mac and Win options.
Hope this helps. Like I said above I'm just beginning to learn python so my knowledge is somewhat limited. I just like what I've seen so far.
This is just my opinion, but to me comparing perl and python as far as reading other peoples code is like comparing GWBASIC to Java. Pythons programmers also seem to have a programming philosophy that is more in tune with the way that I think then perl.
I of course am just beginning to learn Python, so after I become more proficient in it and perl I may decide that perl is better for some reason.
All of this doesn't matter very much in the end since I mostly program in C, C++, and Java.
Oh well I'm just starting to learn python but I already like it better then perl.
I bet ZDNet wouldn't have ran it if they had been giving out CueCats.
It's still nice to see a mainstream computer site getting the issues around reverse engineering right. Most of the time they seem to accuse hackers of breaking protections, and reverse engineering for piracy. Here they were highlighting the good points. Privacy, security and interoprability are all good reasons that reverse engineering should be important to us all.
If I buy something I want to own it not lisence it. If I take it apart to see how it works that is my right.
The above post is not offtopic. Discussing the posts is what you are supposed to do. Just because this post is critical of slashdot does not mean that it is offtopic.
Discussing moderation of posts especially in a string that is incorrectly moderated is not offtopic. (but if your a moderator that disagrees go ahead and moderate me down instead of doing your job and moderating up the really good/interesting posts, I have the Karma to spare.)
Don't make the assumption that just because most copy protection schemes have been cracked that all can be cracked.
Take encryption when the algorithm is strong enough it can't be cracked in a useful amount of time.
Most of the success we've had with cracking copy protection thus far has been due to corporate screw ups. If CSS had been a stronger algorithm it would not have been cracked in the usefull life of DVD's. Sure we're smart and good at what we do but we are also arogant.
It is my belief that we've had some sympathetic programmers that have intentionally made weak copy protection thus far. It may actually have been incompetetance but in either case it won't last forever. We have to change the way things work in government and in the way society views these things. We can't with confidence claim that we will always be able to crack *any* copy protection scheme industry tries to use. Up until now we've been dealing with incompetance and short sitedness this will not last forever.
Pissed off:Anyone that has any intelligence that is watching what the RIAA and MPAA are doing. Customer:Someone willing to give up their *rights* for the *privilage* of viewing the IP of RIAA and MPAA members. Evil:1. Bill Gates 2. Politicians willing to trade peoples rights for enough money to win another term in office. Puppets: Politicians -- see Evil
As long as politicians and judges can be swayed by money, laws will always be biased. Money may not be the root of all that's evil but it is the root of all power in the US.
When the average citizen can be swayed quite easily by high cost political adds and corporations provide the money to fuel those advertising campaigns, we get laws like the DMCA.
I will vote when I don't feel that I'm choosing between the lesser of two evils. Let my voter apathy be my vote. None of the above.
I followed the trial closely, it seemed to me that the judge was fairly well versed in the technological aspects of this case. In many cases Judge Kaplan seemed to know as much or more about the technical aspects of the case then the lawers.
Did your team have any trouble getting prepared for the technical parts of this trial, since even the langauge used was in many cases more technical then the average person would be comfortable with?
Before the appeal will your team focus on getting a better understanding of the technology involved, since this might give you a little edge over the attorneys on the other side?
Programming can be rather dry to a highschool student. Show them something flashy, something interesting. Show them how to do some graphics programming and then do some simple game. Pong, pac-man, tetris or something similiar. If your students are not advanced enough to do something as complex as a game. Program a simple game and make it their assignment to alter the program in specific ways. Maybe program a simple pong clone then have them program a second ball, or create a scoring system for the game. That you are trying to get the students interested shows that your a better teacher then I had in highschool. I knew more about computers then any of my computer teachers did, however I was always forced to bring myself down to the same level as the rest of the class when doing assignments. Your going to have to let each student do what their abilities dictate.
I don't agree with any decision to shut down what is essentially a file shareing utility. What next, how about anonymous ftp, or better yet IRC, lots of people use IRC to trade pirated software and mp3's both copyrighted and noncopyrighted.
Most people don't see it the way that I do, but this is all out war against the freedoms that most of us have come to enjoy on the internet. First the DMCA, which makes it illegal to make backup copies or fair use of legally purchased copyrighted material, that has an anti-piracy mechanism. Now shutting down a file sharing service. Soon anonimity may even be impossible. When is enough, enough. How many rights do the governments and the courts take away before people start doing something.
Once this becomes more common and something people are familiar with attacks against it will get easier. I would imagine that in the realworld people will do like they always do and shut off many of the security features in order to make thier lives more conveniant.
From the article. A consumer release is at least three years away as Sandia says the agent must be "trained to protect a wider variety of services" before it can be of much use to the average household. One suspects it also needs to be dumbed down slightly so that it is not quite as clever as the military-grade version.
Besides it's like an arms race with both sides forever increasing the sophistication of their weapons. "What kind of attacks with these be? Well if these agents are as good as Sandia says you can bet it won't be long be before the bad guys get some bots of their own and start using them against governments, corporations and the general public. "
I thought the opening comment "A cool-sounding project, to be sure -- but how much control is too much to cede to the intelligent agents? " was a little paranoid until I read the end of the article. In time the agents may graduate from patrol to control. Intelligent agents would be ideal for the control of interplanetary robot swarm missions while at the same time protecting them from long distance hackers or practical jokers. Closer to home micro-satellite swarms or perhaps even remote-controlled jet fighters could be computer-coordinated with agent assistance. Come on doesn't that sound a little like a the start of a William Gibson book.
When I started, I started with basic, moved to qbasic, then C, assembly, pascal, and more recently java, C++, and I've just started with python.
Qbasic is good for quick results.
Pascal is good for teaching logic. -- I wouldn't recommend this one for starting with.
C is form more advanced programmers.
Java if you want them to start with a C style language.
Maybe something even easier like javascript or one of the other scripting languages.
Sure some people might go ahead and steal your work but they might have less incentive to do so. Cheaper prices and all. Most snot-nosed teenagers and 20-somethings would not benifit from your type of work. Wouldn't it be nice if the artists instead of the corporations could make the profit and decide what to charge the public? The only difference between idealism and reality is implemetation.
The claim that one cannot own an idea is nonsense in many cases. If not for the person who wrote a given book or came up with a certain idea, then that book or idea would simply not ever have existed.
I never made that claim, although I do beleive it to be true. Your assertion that an idea or work of art would never have come about if not for a particular person is true in some cases but not in all. Many ideas, and discoveries have come from more then one source at the same time, although I will agree that art generally is a creative work of the artist and not something that more than one person would have come up with. I don't beleive that ideas can be owned. I do believe that the person that originates an idea that benifits society should for a limited time have rights to that idea. However the key here is limited time. Nothing should be kept from public domain for the lifetime of the artist plus 20 years.
Artists should be able to make a living off of their work. However any artist that is more interested in money then art is not an artist. Maybe a craftsman, for in my mind what seperates an artist from a craftsman is the objective of their work. An artist works for the sake of art a craftsman works for money. That does not mean that a craftsman has any less pride in the creation just that the goals are different.