You can not take every word in the Bible literally. It was not meant to be a literal factual scientific document. It was written to teach people the Word of God.
How do I know which words are literal and which are not? How can I learn the Word of God if what is written in the Bible can't be understood by reading?
Do I read the book and know, in my heart, what is and what isn't? What if I find that none of it should be taken literally?
Do I seek out someone to tell me which words are literal and which are not? There are so many people that want to tell me how but they all tell me different things. Is an older church better? A newer church? A popular church? One that supports a more literal interpretation or a less literal interpretation?
Should I listen to you? You say you have it all figured out. So does the Pope. And Warren Jeffs. Why would I listen to you instead of one of them? Why would I listen to one of them instead of you?
Turning a computer on can take several minutes of repetitive, non-productive work. You need to boot the system, log in, open applications, open documents, and find you place in the documents. This can take several minutes.
Standby mode takes care of this hassle at the cost of a few Watts of power. Now they have a way to get the benefits without using those few Watts of power.
VMs aren't really an option for me because I'm testing multi-media software and the audio skips with some applications.
I'm using a Mac Mini that is multi-booted with
Windows XP, Windows Vista, Mac OS X 10.4, and Mac OS X 10.5. Linux is a little harder to get on there (EFI and all) and I'm not sure about BSD, Solaris, etc. Overall, it works well enough for me.
Triple booting a Mac isn't too bad; you can use Hybrid MBR/GUID. Quad booting and up is more difficult because you have to use MBR and get around the limitations of the Apple installer.
The following organizations have shut down DRM servers rendering content unaccessible:
Wal-Mart
Yahoo!
Major League Baseball
Microsoft (MSN Music and PlaysForSure)
Google (Video store)
Sony (Sony Connect and ATRAC)
Virgin Digital
These services were backed by large, credible companies. I bet the customers who bought into the promises are now regretting it. I would also bet that they are not insiginificant in number.
Just security updates would be fine with me - how hard can it be? Firefox3 et. al not supporting it anymore, I can live with that as FF2 does the job well, but again security updates would be nice.
Security updates can be costly. Different versions may be different under the hood and require extra work to backport security fixes. Testing is also expensive; a change to security may break another feature.
As long as software vendors come out with software that they can not guarantee to be secure and that is directly exposed to the Internet, I think it is not too much to asked, particularly for popular software or software that is sold bundled with hardware, to provide free security updates for at least eight, preferably ten years.
10 years is a long time in the computer world. Over that stretch of time, computers become 100 times as powerful. Is a Pentium II really a viable computer today? Many people upgrade for new features or because their old computer died.
Also, it's not feasible to support a 10 year old OS. How many people are still running Windows 98, as their sole OS or their primary OS? How many people are running hardware intended for Windows 98 (e.g., Pentium II)? How many manufacturers are making hardware that is compatible with 10 year old hardware? How many are still making drivers for Windows 98? 10 years after the release of an OS, it's ecosystem is pretty much dead and anyone supporting a 10 year old operating system is pretty much chucking money down a hole. The same goes with most software. Would a secure version of Netscape 3 be worth running?
If there were money in supporting software for 10 years, then companies would already be doing it. Some companies will support old OSes for a fee but keeping an old OS up-to-date will require a *lot* of money.
There is far more money is selling you Windows Vista today or Windows 7 tomorrow than there is in providing you with patches for 10 years ago.
Upgrades of OS/X still cost a few hundred US dollars last time I checked.
I can't guarantee prices now but a Leopard upgrade was $99 for a single license and $129 for a 5-pack when I picked it up some time ago.
A better solution for you may be to look into one of the PowerPC Linux distributions. It'll breathe some new life into old, but still good, hardware.
10.3.9 hasn't seen any kinds of updates from Apple for months. As of Friday, the following common internet software does not have the most recent version available:
Safari* (1.3.2 vs 3.2)
QuickTime* (7.5 vs 7.5.5)
Firefox (2.0.0.18 vs 3.0.4)
Flash Player (9.0.151.0 vs 10.0.12.36)
Adobe Reader* (7.1.0 vs 9.0.0)
Java* (1.4.2 update 12 vs 1.5.0 update 16) (6 is available for Leopard but isn't compatible with Safari)
* This item hasn't received any updates recently and is presumed to be unsupported.
The following internet software has a most recent version available:
Opera (9.62)
Shockwave Player (11.0.3.470)
Flip4Mac (2.2.1.11)
While this list is not exhaustive, these are commonly used applications that are exposed to the internet. The lack of OS, Safari, and QuickTime updates says that the platform is no longer supported Apple. The lack of recent major versions says that other companies are stopping support for Mac OS X 10.3.
Alive? Yes. Well? No. 10.3 is living in an iron lung.
It's not impossible that we're being secretly monitored by aliens that don't want to be seen, yet are seen by drunks and paranoidians anyways.
This a classic strawman: reference the least credible claims, discredit them, then assume/imply that all claims are similarly uncredible. When seeking to discredit a phenomenon, the most powerful attack is on the strongest cases (e.g., claims made by experience Air Force personnel).
Alien visitations and monitoring can be considered a scientific theory: it is testable and falsifiable. We may not have the means to test the idea right now but that does not mean that it is wrong.
Extraordinary claims demand extraordinary evidence, and all that.
Such evidence is needed to prove that something is true. However, less evidence is needed to prove that something could be true. It's important to not dismiss valid possibilities because they can not be proven at this time.
Some people liken aliens to supernatural creatures (e.g., unicorns); however there are important qualitative differences: unicorns are supernatural creatures that would be somewhere on earth; aliens are natural creatures that exist at too far of a distance to observe on our own terms.
Why is the possibility of of earth being observed by alien xenobiologists and xenoanthropologists always immediately dismissed? It certainly falls within the realm of possible when compared against our current understanding of physics.
Astronomers are regularly finding extrasolar planets and are, in some cases, able to determine the atmospheric composition.
Biology is slowly moving toward transgenic creatures, cloning, and cyborgs.
Physics and nanotechnology continually revealing new information about how the universe works. Some of this information is finding practical uses in controlling information and energy.
In the past 100 years, computers have gone from laughably simple to being capable of modeling the climate of an entire planet. It's still innacurate and slow but it's getting faster and better.
If it were possible right now, we'd have all kinds of people exploring the galaxy. Within the next 1,000 years, it will be possible to find planets that have a high chance of sustaining higher life forms and deliver some kind of observers to those planets for further study.
What would prevent there from being one or more alien races from undertaking a similar mission of exploration? Why would Earth automatically be disqualified as a target of such a mission?
One of the biggest complaints about OpenGL is that it is slow to evolve and doesn't reflect real world needs as well as Direct X. By opening it up, this allows for unofficial extensions that will be based on the standard but will help fill in some of these gaps. The most popular of these extensions will become part of future standards with the added benefits of already having an existing implementation and having been used in the real-world.
MS invents an idea, Apple profits from it. That demonstrates the difference between invention and innovation. MS spends way more than Apple on R&D and, somehow, Apple is able to seem more cutting edge and profits as a result. Marketing plays a role, of course, but it's not the whole story.
From my experience,.NET feels like a cheap knock off of Java. There are nifty things but API issues, missing features, etc. detract from the experience. Overall, I can sum up my feelings onC# and.NET as "I started with Java 8 years ago. Why do I want to learn it all over again?"
Mac OS X may not be the most pragmatic route but it is more fun than Windows. If I'm going to study a programming toolset on my own time, it needs to be fun. That's why OS X will draw more enthusiastic programmers than Windows. The only semi-exciting thing.NET has going for it is XNA.
A polished turd still reeks. Messy code is inefficient and prone to bugs.
.NET can be inconsistent with itself. For example, generic vs. non-generic data structures (e.g., lists, vectors, etc.) have different member functions. Why?
.NET lacks the mandatory exception handling of Java. Rather than have the compiler complain that I'm not handling my errors, I have to sort through buckets of documentation. The reason for this? "We found too many Java developers were using empty catch statements." So the answer was to make shoddy exception handling easier and good error handling harder?
I hope these have been addressed but I doubt it.
In general, C# and.NET are a breath of fresh air for those used to Win32. Compared to any of dozens of alternate languages and tools (e.g., Python, Ruby, Haskell, Java, etc.), it's stale fare.
The new VM is pretty slick but, otherwise, C# and.NET are just a cheap copy of Java.
Thanks for this posting. It's one of the most thought provoking things I've come across in a long while. It's rational and shows a rare clarity of thought.
In my uni, there was a 70% drop out rate in first year CS when I started in 1997. The reason seemed to be that, approximately, 70% of the class had no background in programming or, in some cases, basic operation of a computer. It was during the dot com boom and it seemed that most of the people were there because they thought it would be a lucrative career.
While there is far more to CS than programming, being comfortable in operating a computer and basic programming should be pre-requisites. Without these fundamental skills, jumping into a CS program is akin to jumping into a Math degree without high school math. In order to prepare students for success in CS, the students need to be exposed to the basic concepts and skills used in that field. This is no different than any other subject.
I think that the reason that this has been allowed to go on for so long is because CS is still considered new and it's fairly expensive. Teachers and administrators don't understand the value of making computer courses available and, if they do, they often can't afford to outfit and maintain a lab of PCs. Staffing could also be a major issue; how many teachers know enough about programming to teach it?
I know that the CS program at my uni was allowed to have a dropout rate that was much higher than the other programs; they knew that the students coming out of high school were ill prepared and let them figure it out the hard way. If other schools are still having this failure rate, it means the issue hasn't been addressed.
I wouldn't consider myself the average Mac user, so take this with a grain of salt.
I am a contractor that needs a laptop. I had the following requirements: - POSIX environment for development for higher productivity. Linux good, Windows not so much (I wouldn't want to use Cygwin all the time; it's quite usable but it's slow and feels a bit hackish). - Low maintenance for lower TCO. Windows good, Linux not so much (I've had too many issues with Linux drivers and updates hosing the system). Mac provided both of these for me.
Apple has put together a system that's powerful, stable, easy to use, and easy to administer. They are continually refining and improving their products, adding new capabilities and streamlining existing ones. If someone else could do it better (or cheaper), I would certainly consider them.
Specific tools come and go but paradigms stick around awhile. C, C++, assembly, C#, Java, Python, etc. are all imperative programming languages and the concepts in one should be mostly applicable to another. Try to grok a predicate logic language (e.g., Prolog) and a functional language (e.g., Haskell, Lisp, Erlang, etc.). Doing so will let you see programming in an entirely new light.
Spending time with different languages and toolkits is a good thing. However, not all languages and toolkits are worth learning. Rather that trying to learn every toolkit and language, study them to see what makes them unique. Tcl is a great example; it's not in demand but it does things much differently and for a good reason. Ruby is a good language to look at (closures, etc.) and Ruby on Rails is a good framework to look at (convention vs configuration).
Also, try to nail some of the easier technologies. XML is in demand and it's very easy to learn and the related XSL, XSchema, and XQuery languages are easy enough to get familiar with.
If you are more interested in theoretical, talk to your professors and get them to recommend subjects and texts for further study. Parallel programming is an area that will be especially in demand.
"Optional" is a more politically viable way of saying "testing the waters". If there is no major outcry and the trial run isn't publicly disasterous, they will be mandatory in the future. There is little cost to making the cards mandatory; the equipment to read them is already in place and the holders of the cards pay for each card.
An important problem with these cards is the technology is assumed to be infallible and it will take a lot of work to shake that perception. Many things can go wrong with a system like this (e.g., card cloning, database synchronization errors) and any problems will be buried under the guise of national security. It has the potential to be like the TSA's No-Fly list but with a flaky, expensive computer system in the middle. It could easily turn into a debacle like the Diebold voting machines.
I'd like to see a completely open console that is has good gaming hardware and a spec that is guaranteed to be static for at least 5 years. Something similar to the but for hooking up to a TV or monitor. It would be a great system for the home-brew crowd and could be cheap enough to make it a worthwhile purchase. Also, since it's completely open, it would be easy and legal to write emulators for it.
Some more thoughts: - Of the $1 billion in sales, how much of that is profit? At 20%, that's $200 million in profits. - What are the costs of ramping up production? If current facilities are churning out as many as possible, stepping up production may be expensive. - How long will the increased production be needed?
Of course, this all ties into what you were saying about people buying Wiis in 2008. Especially since certain retailers (and Nintendo?) offering rain checks for them.
Last year, there was talk about the shortage being a result of Nintendo not wanting to scale up production because increase sales wouldn't justify the increased production costs. It wouldn't surprise me to see the exact same situation this year and possibly next year, too.
The BBFC is body that is legally empowered by the government to censor materials without justifying their decisions to the public.
- If a movie is rated NC-17 by the MPAA, retailers may decline to carry it but it will play on all DVD players. You can order it online or find another less "moral" source. This is weak corporate censorship. - If a game is rated AO by the ESRB, it won't play on consoles (due to the decisions of Microsoft, Nintendo, and Sony). It may still be bought and played on the PC. This is stronger corporate censorship. - If the BBFC rejects the game, you may not buy it and play it on any platform (without resorting to extra-national suppliers). This is government backed, total censorship.
Comments about the bleak and callous tone and casual sadism are particularly worrisome. These traits could easily be part of other controversial works with a strong social value. Would they censor media that tries to give the "player" a first person view of what it was like to be in Auschwitz? Would they censor media about the use of extreme rendition and torture techniques used in current conflicts? Would they censor media that portrayed the IRA in a sympathetic light?
In light of the statements around Manhunt 2, I can not take it for granted that the BBFC will defend artistic expression when confronted with controversial media.
At the least, it looks like Linux is becoming viable for the desktop. One of the challenges that Be Inc. faced with their BeOS was that they could not get any mainstream distributor to ship it (this was largely due to the secret contract that Microsoft forced OEMs to sign). Linux appears to have cleared this hurdle with multiple vendors supporting it and even more on the way. It probably won't see the popularity of Mac OS X any time soon, let alone compete with Windows, but it now has the potential to do so.
Areas where there needs to be improvement: - Advanced file system (i.e., better than FAT32) that Windows, Mac OS X, and Linux understand. - Major vendors shipping and supporting multi-boot systems. Even better if each OS can run the other(s) in a VM out of the box.
The easier it is for Linux and Windows to interoperate, the faster Linux's market share will grow.
Re:Not just DRM...all protection is useless...
on
The DRM Scorecard
·
· Score: 1
Especially when said sneakernets may consist of laptops with SMB shares and FTP servers or multi-terabyte external drives...
The smelter in Trail, BC primarily smelts lead and zinc. During this process, they also extract a lot of other metals that are present in lower quantities. Since they smelt lead, the lead in CRTs should pose no greater risk than smelting lead ore. I'm guessing that they also have the necessary equipment in place to handle mercury in ore and, as a result, should be able to handle it in electronics. I don't know much about their ability to handle the products of burning plastic but I don't think it's a stretch to think that there is a solution in place; byproducts of the smelter are already used to create fertilizer at a nearby plant.
(Supposedly) the existing smelter has everything in place to safely extract metals from the used equipment and re-integrate them into the manufacturing chain. All that's left is collection from the owners and transportation to the smelter (which is probably where the fee comes in). It's not as good as refurbishing but it's easier and probably better than letting it sit in a landfill.
As individuals, we can do a lot to help channel electronics down the refurbish path instead of the resmelt path. Organizations like craiglist and FreeMesa.org help connect people that want to give away equipment with those that want it. Some repair shops will accept old equipment because they can repair it and sell it. (I knew a guy who got $3 per dead CD-ROM drive. A repair company would buy a bunch and give them to their techs to repair instead of letting them sit idle.) Also, if you want to get involved on a larger scale, it may be possible to start or promote a swap meet or some other way of connecting people.
As a side note, the smelter in Trail has had its share of problems over the years. In particular, contamination of the surrounding areas with lead has been a major concern. However, I don't think that this program will create or exacerbate issues around the normal operation of the smelter.
Fast, light-weight, and a deliciously easy-to-program API. It would boot on a K6 II in less time that common OSes boot on modern hardware and remained incredibly responsive, even when the processors were maxed. File system with integrated metadata allowing searching. Devices were also managed in a nifty way. It also had support for 8 processors in a day when multi-processor machines were a rarity. The little tabs that could be moved across the top of the window.
Cause of Death: Could be blamed on Microsoft and their secret OEM bootloader licence and the DoJ not wanting to include that part in the anti-trust case. (If an OEM shipped a computer with a Microsoft OS, they had to use a Microsoft bootloader. In those days, MS didn't play well with other OSes.) Eventually ran out of money and sold to Palm for a few cents a share.
Rebirth: Haiku-OS is a binary compatible open source version. Rumors of Apple replacing the Mach kernel with a lighter-weight kernel could see the same performance again in 10.6 or 10.7.
Slashdot Mirror
You can not take every word in the Bible literally. It was not meant to be a literal factual scientific document. It was written to teach people the Word of God.
How do I know which words are literal and which are not? How can I learn the Word of God if what is written in the Bible can't be understood by reading?
Do I read the book and know, in my heart, what is and what isn't? What if I find that none of it should be taken literally?
Do I seek out someone to tell me which words are literal and which are not? There are so many people that want to tell me how but they all tell me different things. Is an older church better? A newer church? A popular church? One that supports a more literal interpretation or a less literal interpretation?
Should I listen to you? You say you have it all figured out. So does the Pope. And Warren Jeffs. Why would I listen to you instead of one of them? Why would I listen to one of them instead of you?
A system controllable relay in the power supply would do the trick.
Turning a computer on can take several minutes of repetitive, non-productive work. You need to boot the system, log in, open applications, open documents, and find you place in the documents. This can take several minutes.
Standby mode takes care of this hassle at the cost of a few Watts of power. Now they have a way to get the benefits without using those few Watts of power.
"...uphill both ways..."
Check out www.learnalberta.ca
There are a lot of web-based resources that may help students with difficult concepts. Math and science are particularly well represented, of course.
Windows XP, Windows Vista, Mac OS X 10.4, and Mac OS X 10.5. Linux is a little harder to get on there (EFI and all) and I'm not sure about BSD, Solaris, etc. Overall, it works well enough for me.
Triple booting a Mac isn't too bad; you can use Hybrid MBR/GUID. Quad booting and up is more difficult because you have to use MBR and get around the limitations of the Apple installer.
The following organizations have shut down DRM servers rendering content unaccessible:
These services were backed by large, credible companies. I bet the customers who bought into the promises are now regretting it. I would also bet that they are not insiginificant in number.
Just security updates would be fine with me - how hard can it be? Firefox3 et. al not supporting it anymore, I can live with that as FF2 does the job well, but again security updates would be nice.
Security updates can be costly. Different versions may be different under the hood and require extra work to backport security fixes. Testing is also expensive; a change to security may break another feature.
As long as software vendors come out with software that they can not guarantee to be secure and that is directly exposed to the Internet, I think it is not too much to asked, particularly for popular software or software that is sold bundled with hardware, to provide free security updates for at least eight, preferably ten years.
10 years is a long time in the computer world. Over that stretch of time, computers become 100 times as powerful. Is a Pentium II really a viable computer today? Many people upgrade for new features or because their old computer died.
Also, it's not feasible to support a 10 year old OS. How many people are still running Windows 98, as their sole OS or their primary OS? How many people are running hardware intended for Windows 98 (e.g., Pentium II)? How many manufacturers are making hardware that is compatible with 10 year old hardware? How many are still making drivers for Windows 98? 10 years after the release of an OS, it's ecosystem is pretty much dead and anyone supporting a 10 year old operating system is pretty much chucking money down a hole. The same goes with most software. Would a secure version of Netscape 3 be worth running?
If there were money in supporting software for 10 years, then companies would already be doing it. Some companies will support old OSes for a fee but keeping an old OS up-to-date will require a *lot* of money.
There is far more money is selling you Windows Vista today or Windows 7 tomorrow than there is in providing you with patches for 10 years ago.
Upgrades of OS/X still cost a few hundred US dollars last time I checked.
I can't guarantee prices now but a Leopard upgrade was $99 for a single license and $129 for a 5-pack when I picked it up some time ago.
A better solution for you may be to look into one of the PowerPC Linux distributions. It'll breathe some new life into old, but still good, hardware.
10.3.9 hasn't seen any kinds of updates from Apple for months. As of Friday, the following common internet software does not have the most recent version available:
* This item hasn't received any updates recently and is presumed to be unsupported.
The following internet software has a most recent version available:
While this list is not exhaustive, these are commonly used applications that are exposed to the internet. The lack of OS, Safari, and QuickTime updates says that the platform is no longer supported Apple. The lack of recent major versions says that other companies are stopping support for Mac OS X 10.3.
Alive? Yes. Well? No. 10.3 is living in an iron lung.
It's not impossible that we're being secretly monitored by aliens that don't want to be seen, yet are seen by drunks and paranoidians anyways.
This a classic strawman: reference the least credible claims, discredit them, then assume/imply that all claims are similarly uncredible. When seeking to discredit a phenomenon, the most powerful attack is on the strongest cases (e.g., claims made by experience Air Force personnel).
Alien visitations and monitoring can be considered a scientific theory: it is testable and falsifiable. We may not have the means to test the idea right now but that does not mean that it is wrong.
Extraordinary claims demand extraordinary evidence, and all that.
Such evidence is needed to prove that something is true. However, less evidence is needed to prove that something could be true. It's important to not dismiss valid possibilities because they can not be proven at this time.
Some people liken aliens to supernatural creatures (e.g., unicorns); however there are important qualitative differences: unicorns are supernatural creatures that would be somewhere on earth; aliens are natural creatures that exist at too far of a distance to observe on our own terms.
Why is the possibility of of earth being observed by alien xenobiologists and xenoanthropologists always immediately dismissed? It certainly falls within the realm of possible when compared against our current understanding of physics.
Astronomers are regularly finding extrasolar planets and are, in some cases, able to determine the atmospheric composition.
Biology is slowly moving toward transgenic creatures, cloning, and cyborgs.
Physics and nanotechnology continually revealing new information about how the universe works. Some of this information is finding practical uses in controlling information and energy.
In the past 100 years, computers have gone from laughably simple to being capable of modeling the climate of an entire planet. It's still innacurate and slow but it's getting faster and better.
If it were possible right now, we'd have all kinds of people exploring the galaxy. Within the next 1,000 years, it will be possible to find planets that have a high chance of sustaining higher life forms and deliver some kind of observers to those planets for further study.
What would prevent there from being one or more alien races from undertaking a similar mission of exploration? Why would Earth automatically be disqualified as a target of such a mission?
One of the biggest complaints about OpenGL is that it is slow to evolve and doesn't reflect real world needs as well as Direct X. By opening it up, this allows for unofficial extensions that will be based on the standard but will help fill in some of these gaps. The most popular of these extensions will become part of future standards with the added benefits of already having an existing implementation and having been used in the real-world.
MS invents an idea, Apple profits from it. That demonstrates the difference between invention and innovation. MS spends way more than Apple on R&D and, somehow, Apple is able to seem more cutting edge and profits as a result. Marketing plays a role, of course, but it's not the whole story.
.NET feels like a cheap knock off of Java. There are nifty things but API issues, missing features, etc. detract from the experience. Overall, I can sum up my feelings onC# and .NET as "I started with Java 8 years ago. Why do I want to learn it all over again?"
.NET has going for it is XNA.
From my experience,
Mac OS X may not be the most pragmatic route but it is more fun than Windows. If I'm going to study a programming toolset on my own time, it needs to be fun. That's why OS X will draw more enthusiastic programmers than Windows. The only semi-exciting thing
A polished turd still reeks. Messy code is inefficient and prone to bugs.
.NET can be inconsistent with itself. For example, generic vs. non-generic data structures (e.g., lists, vectors, etc.) have different member functions. Why?
.NET lacks the mandatory exception handling of Java. Rather than have the compiler complain that I'm not handling my errors, I have to sort through buckets of documentation. The reason for this? "We found too many Java developers were using empty catch statements." So the answer was to make shoddy exception handling easier and good error handling harder?
.NET are a breath of fresh air for those used to Win32. Compared to any of dozens of alternate languages and tools (e.g., Python, Ruby, Haskell, Java, etc.), it's stale fare.
.NET are just a cheap copy of Java.
I hope these have been addressed but I doubt it.
In general, C# and
The new VM is pretty slick but, otherwise, C# and
Thanks for this posting. It's one of the most thought provoking things I've come across in a long while. It's rational and shows a rare clarity of thought.
MB
In my uni, there was a 70% drop out rate in first year CS when I started in 1997. The reason seemed to be that, approximately, 70% of the class had no background in programming or, in some cases, basic operation of a computer. It was during the dot com boom and it seemed that most of the people were there because they thought it would be a lucrative career.
While there is far more to CS than programming, being comfortable in operating a computer and basic programming should be pre-requisites. Without these fundamental skills, jumping into a CS program is akin to jumping into a Math degree without high school math. In order to prepare students for success in CS, the students need to be exposed to the basic concepts and skills used in that field. This is no different than any other subject.
I think that the reason that this has been allowed to go on for so long is because CS is still considered new and it's fairly expensive. Teachers and administrators don't understand the value of making computer courses available and, if they do, they often can't afford to outfit and maintain a lab of PCs. Staffing could also be a major issue; how many teachers know enough about programming to teach it?
I know that the CS program at my uni was allowed to have a dropout rate that was much higher than the other programs; they knew that the students coming out of high school were ill prepared and let them figure it out the hard way. If other schools are still having this failure rate, it means the issue hasn't been addressed.
I wouldn't consider myself the average Mac user, so take this with a grain of salt.
I am a contractor that needs a laptop. I had the following requirements:
- POSIX environment for development for higher productivity. Linux good, Windows not so much (I wouldn't want to use Cygwin all the time; it's quite usable but it's slow and feels a bit hackish).
- Low maintenance for lower TCO. Windows good, Linux not so much (I've had too many issues with Linux drivers and updates hosing the system).
Mac provided both of these for me.
Apple has put together a system that's powerful, stable, easy to use, and easy to administer. They are continually refining and improving their products, adding new capabilities and streamlining existing ones. If someone else could do it better (or cheaper), I would certainly consider them.
Specific tools come and go but paradigms stick around awhile. C, C++, assembly, C#, Java, Python, etc. are all imperative programming languages and the concepts in one should be mostly applicable to another. Try to grok a predicate logic language (e.g., Prolog) and a functional language (e.g., Haskell, Lisp, Erlang, etc.). Doing so will let you see programming in an entirely new light.
Spending time with different languages and toolkits is a good thing. However, not all languages and toolkits are worth learning. Rather that trying to learn every toolkit and language, study them to see what makes them unique. Tcl is a great example; it's not in demand but it does things much differently and for a good reason. Ruby is a good language to look at (closures, etc.) and Ruby on Rails is a good framework to look at (convention vs configuration).
Also, try to nail some of the easier technologies. XML is in demand and it's very easy to learn and the related XSL, XSchema, and XQuery languages are easy enough to get familiar with.
If you are more interested in theoretical, talk to your professors and get them to recommend subjects and texts for further study. Parallel programming is an area that will be especially in demand.
"Optional" is a more politically viable way of saying "testing the waters". If there is no major outcry and the trial run isn't publicly disasterous, they will be mandatory in the future. There is little cost to making the cards mandatory; the equipment to read them is already in place and the holders of the cards pay for each card.
An important problem with these cards is the technology is assumed to be infallible and it will take a lot of work to shake that perception. Many things can go wrong with a system like this (e.g., card cloning, database synchronization errors) and any problems will be buried under the guise of national security. It has the potential to be like the TSA's No-Fly list but with a flaky, expensive computer system in the middle. It could easily turn into a debacle like the Diebold voting machines.
I'd like to see a completely open console that is has good gaming hardware and a spec that is guaranteed to be static for at least 5 years. Something similar to the but for hooking up to a TV or monitor. It would be a great system for the home-brew crowd and could be cheap enough to make it a worthwhile purchase. Also, since it's completely open, it would be easy and legal to write emulators for it.
It seems unlikely to happen, but I can dream.
Great points.
Some more thoughts:
- Of the $1 billion in sales, how much of that is profit? At 20%, that's $200 million in profits.
- What are the costs of ramping up production? If current facilities are churning out as many as possible, stepping up production may be expensive.
- How long will the increased production be needed?
Of course, this all ties into what you were saying about people buying Wiis in 2008. Especially since certain retailers (and Nintendo?) offering rain checks for them.
Last year, there was talk about the shortage being a result of Nintendo not wanting to scale up production because increase sales wouldn't justify the increased production costs. It wouldn't surprise me to see the exact same situation this year and possibly next year, too.
The BBFC is body that is legally empowered by the government to censor materials without justifying their decisions to the public.
- If a movie is rated NC-17 by the MPAA, retailers may decline to carry it but it will play on all DVD players. You can order it online or find another less "moral" source. This is weak corporate censorship.
- If a game is rated AO by the ESRB, it won't play on consoles (due to the decisions of Microsoft, Nintendo, and Sony). It may still be bought and played on the PC. This is stronger corporate censorship.
- If the BBFC rejects the game, you may not buy it and play it on any platform (without resorting to extra-national suppliers). This is government backed, total censorship.
Comments about the bleak and callous tone and casual sadism are particularly worrisome. These traits could easily be part of other controversial works with a strong social value. Would they censor media that tries to give the "player" a first person view of what it was like to be in Auschwitz? Would they censor media about the use of extreme rendition and torture techniques used in current conflicts? Would they censor media that portrayed the IRA in a sympathetic light?
In light of the statements around Manhunt 2, I can not take it for granted that the BBFC will defend artistic expression when confronted with controversial media.
At the least, it looks like Linux is becoming viable for the desktop. One of the challenges that Be Inc. faced with their BeOS was that they could not get any mainstream distributor to ship it (this was largely due to the secret contract that Microsoft forced OEMs to sign). Linux appears to have cleared this hurdle with multiple vendors supporting it and even more on the way. It probably won't see the popularity of Mac OS X any time soon, let alone compete with Windows, but it now has the potential to do so.
Areas where there needs to be improvement:
- Advanced file system (i.e., better than FAT32) that Windows, Mac OS X, and Linux understand.
- Major vendors shipping and supporting multi-boot systems. Even better if each OS can run the other(s) in a VM out of the box.
The easier it is for Linux and Windows to interoperate, the faster Linux's market share will grow.
Especially when said sneakernets may consist of laptops with SMB shares and FTP servers or multi-terabyte external drives...
The smelter in Trail, BC primarily smelts lead and zinc. During this process, they also extract a lot of other metals that are present in lower quantities. Since they smelt lead, the lead in CRTs should pose no greater risk than smelting lead ore. I'm guessing that they also have the necessary equipment in place to handle mercury in ore and, as a result, should be able to handle it in electronics. I don't know much about their ability to handle the products of burning plastic but I don't think it's a stretch to think that there is a solution in place; byproducts of the smelter are already used to create fertilizer at a nearby plant.
u mbia
(Supposedly) the existing smelter has everything in place to safely extract metals from the used equipment and re-integrate them into the manufacturing chain. All that's left is collection from the owners and transportation to the smelter (which is probably where the fee comes in). It's not as good as refurbishing but it's easier and probably better than letting it sit in a landfill.
As individuals, we can do a lot to help channel electronics down the refurbish path instead of the resmelt path. Organizations like craiglist and FreeMesa.org help connect people that want to give away equipment with those that want it. Some repair shops will accept old equipment because they can repair it and sell it. (I knew a guy who got $3 per dead CD-ROM drive. A repair company would buy a bunch and give them to their techs to repair instead of letting them sit idle.) Also, if you want to get involved on a larger scale, it may be possible to start or promote a swap meet or some other way of connecting people.
As a side note, the smelter in Trail has had its share of problems over the years. In particular, contamination of the surrounding areas with lead has been a major concern. However, I don't think that this program will create or exacerbate issues around the normal operation of the smelter.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trail%2C_British_Col
http://www.freemesa.org/
http://www.craigslist.org/
Fast, light-weight, and a deliciously easy-to-program API. It would boot on a K6 II in less time that common OSes boot on modern hardware and remained incredibly responsive, even when the processors were maxed. File system with integrated metadata allowing searching. Devices were also managed in a nifty way. It also had support for 8 processors in a day when multi-processor machines were a rarity. The little tabs that could be moved across the top of the window.
Cause of Death: Could be blamed on Microsoft and their secret OEM bootloader licence and the DoJ not wanting to include that part in the anti-trust case. (If an OEM shipped a computer with a Microsoft OS, they had to use a Microsoft bootloader. In those days, MS didn't play well with other OSes.) Eventually ran out of money and sold to Palm for a few cents a share.
Rebirth: Haiku-OS is a binary compatible open source version. Rumors of Apple replacing the Mach kernel with a lighter-weight kernel could see the same performance again in 10.6 or 10.7.