These are CDs, they're digital. Why not just make a small, unique change to the bytes they give each reviewer, and sue his ass off the planet if his version leaks?
If they step over the the line and lose their protection, they might be subject to the "hackers are terrorists" crap that the mainsteam never cared about. And the leaders who funded and ordered the terrorist attacks might be in trouble too.
Software can only be modified in its "unlocked" state when source code is viewable. Software's locked state is also described as its "executable" format.
Didn't they have even one programmer among the clowns that wrote this? The above is from a section labeled "In the Beginning". In the beginning, there was no source code. How do they think the first compiler was written?
[protaganists] pulled from their village by [druid, sorcerers, other heros] just before [ultimate bad guy's servants] arrive to get [protagonist or whatever item he possesses]. A chase ensues, the [bad guys servants] chasing the [protagonist] trying to [kill / steal item from] him. Throughout the chase the [protagonist] discovers his [powers] just in the nick of time to [kill very lethal enemies] until arriving at [his destination]. ... Anyone know any good fantasy that doesn't start off this way?
Gormenghast, by Mervyn Peake
The Earthsea books by Ursula LeGuin
The Amber series by Zelazny
Terry Pratchet's Diskworld books
So, like most popular science books currently available it will educate you, entertain you and keep you occupied while reading it or totally bore you. But it is not a book of philosophy to base life on, which thankfully, the author has
not tried to provide.
Or, with equal logic, "it is not a book of programming style and architecture to base applications on, which thankfully, the author has not tried to provide."
What's the point in saying that it isn't something it doesn't claim to be? So you were hoping for support of your personal beliefs and didn't get it? To bad. That isn't a reason to go from saying that the book will educate the reader (in the quote above) to calling it fiction:
I really wanted to like this book. But the level of information within it will make me put in into the light, popular
fiction section of my bookshelf.
StartRant:
A belief system must be pretty desperate for support when a science book gets relabeled to fiction, not for an attack, but merely for failing to provided the support the reviewer had hoped for. :EndRant
Oh great. Five years from now a computer generated chick named "Shoshkele" will start doing walk-ons on all my favorite TV shows, running out in front of the actors and trying to sell me soft drinks and insurance.
I think programmers, and geeks in general, naturally see things in new and unusual ways. This is a great tool for invention and problem solving. However, we also tend to suck at seeing things the way others see them. Some of us just can't do it, and thus have no social skills. Others of us have learned to do conciously what the majority does naturally, maybe RPGs help.:-)
Anyway, being unskilled at seeing things as others do, we tend to misjudge how obvious our code is. And when we do write comments or other docs, we have trouble judging their usefullness. Therefore, the quality of comments tends to be somewhat random, even when we believe in their importance. Also, lack of feedback means we can't hack documentation, so commenting is never as much fun as programming.
So, your plan is to stay with an employer who you know is going to cheat you, just to increase your I'm-a-victim sense of entitlement, which you plan to cash in for a minor revenge only their creditors will actually feel, and gear that's worth a fraction of what you'll be owed.
Yes, the job market sucks. (I know, I was layed off last week.) So start applying and interviewing now, instead of wasting time with these BS games.
Interpreters for some scripting languages, all written in Java, already exist. (Jacl, a Java implementation of Tcl, for example.) In theory, these could run in an applet. In practice, they would probabaly have to be rewritten so the user didn't have to wait for the whole interpreter to download before a simple script would run. Or maybe the download problem could be solved by browsers' caching features. A third option would be to compile scripts to Java bytecodes and put the resulting.class files on the web server.
These options would probably be slower than a native implementation of a scripting language, but they would work on most browsers without extra plugins. If a scripting language became popluar in "applet mode", it would encourage the major browser makers to include a native engine for it.
I don't think CGI always requires a new process anymore.
But the advantage of servlets is that they are part of Java, and Java and OO are a good way to deal with a big enterprise opperation with lots of business logic and connections to various DBs, legacy systems, and other such crap. In other words, if you have a big enterprise app that happens to have an HTML front end, Java and servlets are the way to go. On the other hand, if you are just wiring a few web pages into a DB, then perl/CGI or PHP are quicker and simpler.
I think Slashdot will always have an anti-Java bias because of the groups it represents. The small but highly respected percentage of people who work on Linux are, by definition, C programmers. The vast majority, who are non-programmers, will dislike Java as long as it is too slow for mass market desktop applications. And the programmers who write perl/CGI and other kinds of perl scripts will continue to prefer perl because their scripts are generally short enough to work nicely without the extra structure (and overhead!) of objects.
Each language has its purpose, however humble. Each language expresses the
Yin and Yang of software. Each language has its place within the Tao.
Most professional programmers writing Java are writing server-side code. Their users don't need Java, just a web browser. And if a business wants to install Java fat clients on their employees' machines, they can install a JVM at the same time. Therefore, XP's lack of Java will have almost no effect on the amount of work being done in that language.
If the alien was exactly like a human except for very minor details, like pointy ears and extreme calm and reasonableness, then his rights would probably be respected. However, that "alien's" characteristics were shaped by art, audience demographics, and a limited FX budget, not by reality.
On the other hand, if an alien looked like a used plumbers snake, had a completely different value system from ours, and lived by draining the body fluids of giant slugs, the chances it's rights would be respected are pretty slim.
It seems odd that they talk about what a bad representation text is, and then use text to represent their "representation independent" concepts. (Text with Greek letters is still text.)
I think every language has fundamentals that can be represented by many notations. But there's never a way of communicating these fundamentals without using notation(s).
So, they (kind of) have a new language, and they have a notation. Big deal.
I'd find multiple representations (including non-text representations) for any usable language, new or old, a lot more interesting.
The classic dungeon crawl is, from the PCs' point of view, purely positive sum but gets kind of boring because cooperation is often just assumed. What's more interesting is when an adventure or campaign becomes non-zero sum for PCs and at least one group of NPCs. A simple case is when the PCs negotiate and accept a paid mission. Diplomacy traditionally aims at being positive-sum, and fantasy worlds allow easy "first contact" scenarios. Trying to be as broadly positive-sum as possible might be a good trick for generating new adventure ideas.
Of course, the definition of zero vs. positive sum does often depend on who's views you count. A mission to get some magical or cure or SF wonderdrug would be zero sum if you count the disease the PCs are trying to cure.
Read both. JSP has its place, and if you're going to use it, or even make an educated decision not to use it, you need a JSP book. But that's just technology.
Even if you don't go their AOLServer/TCL route, _Philip and Alex's Guide to Web Publishing_ is the best book I've seen about the goals and issues relevant to all non-static sites (plus a lot that's useful for static sites too).
Maybe not a typical troll. Maybe more of a social hack, or a very sad sort of troll. Of course, I can't say 100% it isn't real, and this is somewhat a matter of gut feeling, but here's what seemed wrong to me:
Yes, I've already posted this, but someone moderated it down and I just want to have people hear my message. Please don't moderate
this down so others can hear me.
If I had a week, I wouldn't waste any of it trying to get modded up. Express and move on. There's a lot to wrap up before I go.
Hello, I'm a Linux kernel hacker.
Hello, I'm the thing most respected in this forum.
I just wanted to talk to the community one last time.
Slashdot is mostly a user community.
I'm uploading the
latest versions of my code so they'll be out there before I'm gone.
For a regular contributor, it think this would be too obvious to say, and "uploading the latest verions of my code" has too much of an aura around it, and uses only terms known to a user. Wrong jargon level.
The reason I'm posting anonymously is I don't want people to find
out about my illness over Slashdot. I want to spend my last remaining days with my family, not a bunch of people calling me and wishing
me luck.
Too much of a tease. Also, sounds like more of a sad fantasy.
I get angry when people in the Linux community do stuff for themselves.
A person may suggest a feature and people will say, "You got the source, go ahead and make it." Why not take the time to help that
person if they have trouble? Maybe they'll learn and help you later, or maybe they don't have time to do it themselves (too much work,
new baby, cancer).
Some of this might be real. "Take the time too..." would have been believable. "I get angry when..." smells seriously fishy. No one with a high level of skill has time to answer everything in the net that they have the knowledge to answer. Also, teaching is it's own reward. "Maybe they'll help you later" is bargaining form the POV of the side asking for help.
Ugly guess: "I'm pissed someone else won't build what I want, so I'll die of cancer."
Also, "do stuff for themselves" sounds totally wrong. Good programmers program "for themselves", ie. because it's fun.
You'll probably see a small release about my death when it
happens, maybe it'll be on Slashdot, maybe it won't.
Didn't quite peg the bogometer, but this one got close. If he knows this is going to happen, there's absolutely no reason to say it here. Also, I don't think people say when-I'm-gone's" when they're really dying. And who cares if it's on Slashdot?
But a good message otherwise. Heck, I hope even trolls have a nice Christmas.
Microsoft has a rather crude pure-business orientation in much of what it does. If they want to encourage something, they do it with cash or lawyers.
On the other hand, Java is free (as in beer). It also has the best online documention I am aware of, including a very good and complete tutorial, complete API docs, and every spec that relates to the language. Furthermore, the language was specified with the express intent of it being implemented by others. Sun releases many "products" only as specs and reference implementations. And the books jointly publised with Addision Wesley are mostly excelent. (And they are really books on the language, not thousands of pictures of GUIs.)
So you could say that Sun tries to cooperate with individuals they seem to respect but might never meet. This, to me at least, seems very different from the "features and wizards" attitude out of Redmond. Therefore, Microsoft has to pay businesses to do what Sun has individuals doing for the free.
Don't blame others for your choices, regardless of who "dares you" to do what.
The computers belong to the school. To students, teachers represent the school (as they will make absolutely clear in any other case but this).
The teacher, and a CS teacher no less, gave permission. So from the student's point of view, he was acting under instructions from the owner of the systems in question. Since this kind of work is part of a recognized, legitimate industry, the student had every right to take it seriously, and in that case he broke no laws (even stupid ones).
Now the teacher claims it was all a joke... being afraid to take responsibility for his actions.;-)
On the other hand, the student did take responsibility. He completed the task, then went to the teacher and said it was done. He wasn't trying to hide and then blaming the teacher when he got caught.
The analogy to teachers getting high with students is bogus, since the teacher clearly couldn't give legal permission for it.
You raise a good point. TV is mostly controled by a few networks which can do whatever they want as long as they all to it together, and the costs are too high for random rebels crash in and threaten them with new ideas.
Competition among web sites is a lot tougher, and the minimum cost to compete is much, much lower. If site annoys its audience too much, someone else will start a similar site without the annoyance (or at least with a different annoyance).
Also, most web sights (and individual pages) are much more focused than TV. So it's easier for companies to provide links to marketing info the reader wants. This is in contrast to TV ads, which are designed more for psychological conditioning than for transmitting product information.
The only way I know to turn off pop-ups is to turn off JavaScript. It's the JavaScript open(...) command that causes all the trouble. This is easy enough to do, and most sites work well enough without JavaScript. It does break all those so-cool "mouse over" images. However, I call that a feature. The only important thing it breaks is some client-side validation of html forms. But this is a small part of your daily surfing and it's easy to turn JavaScript back on just for that.
However, since JavaScript is executed by the browser, it would be no problem for future browser versions to allow you to disable the open(...) command while leaving the rest of JavaScript enabled.
Slashdot Mirror
These are CDs, they're digital. Why not just make a small, unique change to the bytes they give each reviewer, and sue his ass off the planet if his version leaks?
If they step over the the line and lose their protection, they might be subject to the "hackers are terrorists" crap that the mainsteam never cared about. And the leaders who funded and ordered the terrorist attacks might be in trouble too.
;-)
They might even violate the DMCA.
Didn't they have even one programmer among the clowns that wrote this? The above is from a section labeled "In the Beginning". In the beginning, there was no source code. How do they think the first compiler was written?
Morons.
Anyone know any good fantasy that doesn't start off this way?
Gormenghast, by Mervyn Peake
The Earthsea books by Ursula LeGuin
The Amber series by Zelazny
Terry Pratchet's Diskworld books
Or, with equal logic, "it is not a book of programming style and architecture to base applications on, which thankfully, the author has not tried to provide."
What's the point in saying that it isn't something it doesn't claim to be? So you were hoping for support of your personal beliefs and didn't get it? To bad. That isn't a reason to go from saying that the book will educate the reader (in the quote above) to calling it fiction:
I really wanted to like this book. But the level of information within it will make me put in into the light, popular fiction section of my bookshelf.
StartRant:
:EndRant
A belief system must be pretty desperate for support when a science book gets relabeled to fiction, not for an attack, but merely for failing to provided the support the reviewer had hoped for.
Oh great. Five years from now a computer generated chick named "Shoshkele" will start doing walk-ons on all my favorite TV shows, running out in front of the actors and trying to sell me soft drinks and insurance.
I think programmers, and geeks in general, naturally see things in new and unusual ways. This is a great tool for invention and problem solving. However, we also tend to suck at seeing things the way others see them. Some of us just can't do it, and thus have no social skills. Others of us have learned to do conciously what the majority does naturally, maybe RPGs help. :-)
Anyway, being unskilled at seeing things as others do, we tend to misjudge how obvious our code is. And when we do write comments or other docs, we have trouble judging their usefullness. Therefore, the quality of comments tends to be somewhat random, even when we believe in their importance. Also, lack of feedback means we can't hack documentation, so commenting is never as much fun as programming.
Code reviews.
So, your plan is to stay with an employer who you know is going to cheat you, just to increase your I'm-a-victim sense of entitlement, which you plan to cash in for a minor revenge only their creditors will actually feel, and gear that's worth a fraction of what you'll be owed.
Yes, the job market sucks. (I know, I was layed off last week.) So start applying and interviewing now, instead of wasting time with these BS games.
Interpreters for some scripting languages, all written in Java, already exist. (Jacl, a Java implementation of Tcl, for example.) In theory, these could run in an applet. In practice, they would probabaly have to be rewritten so the user didn't have to wait for the whole interpreter to download before a simple script would run. Or maybe the download problem could be solved by browsers' caching features. A third option would be to compile scripts to Java bytecodes and put the resulting .class files on the web server.
These options would probably be slower than a native implementation of a scripting language, but they would work on most browsers without extra plugins. If a scripting language became popluar in "applet mode", it would encourage the major browser makers to include a native engine for it.
So, what they're saying is, "The Network is the Computer".
But the advantage of servlets is that they are part of Java, and Java and OO are a good way to deal with a big enterprise opperation with lots of business logic and connections to various DBs, legacy systems, and other such crap. In other words, if you have a big enterprise app that happens to have an HTML front end, Java and servlets are the way to go. On the other hand, if you are just wiring a few web pages into a DB, then perl/CGI or PHP are quicker and simpler.
Each language has its purpose, however humble. Each language expresses the Yin and Yang of software. Each language has its place within the Tao.
But do not program in COBOL if you can avoid it.
--from The Tao of Programming
Most professional programmers writing Java are writing server-side code. Their users don't need Java, just a web browser. And if a business wants to install Java fat clients on their employees' machines, they can install a JVM at the same time. Therefore, XP's lack of Java will have almost no effect on the amount of work being done in that language.
On the other hand, the acronym is likely to remain available...
Litigious idiots are, unfortunately, a recognized feature of Western culture. Therefore, his suit violates my IP.
On the other hand, if an alien looked like a used plumbers snake, had a completely different value system from ours, and lived by draining the body fluids of giant slugs, the chances it's rights would be respected are pretty slim.
I think every language has fundamentals that can be represented by many notations. But there's never a way of communicating these fundamentals without using notation(s).
So, they (kind of) have a new language, and they have a notation. Big deal.
I'd find multiple representations (including non-text representations) for any usable language, new or old, a lot more interesting.
Of course, the definition of zero vs. positive sum does often depend on who's views you count. A mission to get some magical or cure or SF wonderdrug would be zero sum if you count the disease the PCs are trying to cure.
Even if you don't go their AOLServer/TCL route, _Philip and Alex's Guide to Web Publishing_ is the best book I've seen about the goals and issues relevant to all non-static sites (plus a lot that's useful for static sites too).
Maybe not a typical troll. Maybe more of a social hack, or a very sad sort of troll. Of course, I can't say 100% it isn't real, and this is somewhat a matter of gut feeling, but here's what seemed wrong to me:
Yes, I've already posted this, but someone moderated it down and I just want to have people hear my message. Please don't moderate this down so others can hear me.
If I had a week, I wouldn't waste any of it trying to get modded up. Express and move on. There's a lot to wrap up before I go.
Hello, I'm a Linux kernel hacker.
Hello, I'm the thing most respected in this forum.
I just wanted to talk to the community one last time.
Slashdot is mostly a user community.
I'm uploading the latest versions of my code so they'll be out there before I'm gone.
For a regular contributor, it think this would be too obvious to say, and "uploading the latest verions of my code" has too much of an aura around it, and uses only terms known to a user. Wrong jargon level.
The reason I'm posting anonymously is I don't want people to find out about my illness over Slashdot. I want to spend my last remaining days with my family, not a bunch of people calling me and wishing me luck.
Too much of a tease. Also, sounds like more of a sad fantasy.
I get angry when people in the Linux community do stuff for themselves. A person may suggest a feature and people will say, "You got the source, go ahead and make it." Why not take the time to help that person if they have trouble? Maybe they'll learn and help you later, or maybe they don't have time to do it themselves (too much work, new baby, cancer).
Some of this might be real. "Take the time too..." would have been believable. "I get angry when..." smells seriously fishy. No one with a high level of skill has time to answer everything in the net that they have the knowledge to answer. Also, teaching is it's own reward. "Maybe they'll help you later" is bargaining form the POV of the side asking for help.
Ugly guess: "I'm pissed someone else won't build what I want, so I'll die of cancer."
Also, "do stuff for themselves" sounds totally wrong. Good programmers program "for themselves", ie. because it's fun.
You'll probably see a small release about my death when it happens, maybe it'll be on Slashdot, maybe it won't.
Didn't quite peg the bogometer, but this one got close. If he knows this is going to happen, there's absolutely no reason to say it here. Also, I don't think people say when-I'm-gone's" when they're really dying. And who cares if it's on Slashdot?
But a good message otherwise. Heck, I hope even trolls have a nice Christmas.
Microsoft has a rather crude pure-business orientation in much of what it does. If they want to encourage something, they do it with cash or lawyers.
On the other hand, Java is free (as in beer). It also has the best online documention I am aware of, including a very good and complete tutorial, complete API docs, and every spec that relates to the language. Furthermore, the language was specified with the express intent of it being implemented by others. Sun releases many "products" only as specs and reference implementations. And the books jointly publised with Addision Wesley are mostly excelent. (And they are really books on the language, not thousands of pictures of GUIs.)
So you could say that Sun tries to cooperate with individuals they seem to respect but might never meet. This, to me at least, seems very different from the "features and wizards" attitude out of Redmond. Therefore, Microsoft has to pay businesses to do what Sun has individuals doing for the free.
The computers belong to the school. To students, teachers represent the school (as they will make absolutely clear in any other case but this). The teacher, and a CS teacher no less, gave permission. So from the student's point of view, he was acting under instructions from the owner of the systems in question. Since this kind of work is part of a recognized, legitimate industry, the student had every right to take it seriously, and in that case he broke no laws (even stupid ones).
Now the teacher claims it was all a joke... being afraid to take responsibility for his actions. ;-)
On the other hand, the student did take responsibility. He completed the task, then went to the teacher and said it was done. He wasn't trying to hide and then blaming the teacher when he got caught.
The analogy to teachers getting high with students is bogus, since the teacher clearly couldn't give legal permission for it.
Competition among web sites is a lot tougher, and the minimum cost to compete is much, much lower. If site annoys its audience too much, someone else will start a similar site without the annoyance (or at least with a different annoyance).
Also, most web sights (and individual pages) are much more focused than TV. So it's easier for companies to provide links to marketing info the reader wants. This is in contrast to TV ads, which are designed more for psychological conditioning than for transmitting product information.
However, since JavaScript is executed by the browser, it would be no problem for future browser versions to allow you to disable the open(...) command while leaving the rest of JavaScript enabled.