While I'm sure that there are people who still use Slackware, I don't know why.
I used Slackware for about a year as my first Linux installation but I got so sick of compiling stuff, finding required libraries, etc etc that when it came time to upgrade the machine I installed Debian and havn't looked back.
I now run Debian "testing" distribution, and when I do have to compile stuff manually I install it using stow so I can uninstall it when deb packages become available (or I don't need it anymore). Installing stuff that is packaged is sooooo easy, just an "apt-get install blarg" to install blarg and everything it needs to do it's job, removing it is just as simple.
When I compile stuff manually if there is something required that I don't have I just do a quick search through dselect to see if I can find it first.
Pretty much off topic. But I have over the last week I've been writing, in python using pyGTK, python-gnome and libglade a little application for leeching files from FTP sites (getting only one file from a site at once, delaying between retries, getting recursive directory listings for selecting the files you want), it's multi-threaded but otherwise a fairly simple program.
Now, I hadn't coded Python at all before this, and similarly I hadn't coded GTK in any language before either.
Learning Python was a snap - nice language by the way. But working out how to use pyGTK, python-gnome and libglade in a nice OO way - what a joke !
There is basically no documentation on how to do this, the documentation that came with pyGTK et all basically said "look in the examples", but the examples were non-oo basically using the C gtk functions. If I was using an OO language I wanted to code in an OO way - it would make things simpler from my multi-threaded perspective anyway.
I ended up doing a search through the net to find a starting point for using libglade with python in a more OO way and using some posts I found to a mailing list converted that method to being truely OO (so I make classes that contain initialisation code to load up the XML, display the appropriate widgets, connect up the signals to handlers defined within the class (within the object instance) an anything else specific to that class, then when I want to make a `mainWindow' I can just do myMainWindow = mainWindow() and I have a self contained mainWindow object.
Even now I still have a guess half the time at what calling format I should be using for functions - which you have to `translate' from the GTK C reference documentation.
Now that I know roughly what I am doing, it is pretty straightforward (even if I am just hacking it togethor (design ?! who needs that:-))), but it would have been much simpler with some even basic documentation about how to write a nice OO way for using libglade in python.
NB : the reason I wanted to code in pyGTK/python-gnome was that TkInter didn't have the widgets that I wanted, whereas GTK does, and as a nice advantage it looks nice on my desktop:-)
Here in New Zealand we have the pleasure of seeing both BattleBots from the US and RobotWars from the UK.
There is no question which is the better.
RobotWars has far cooler, deadler robots, the 4 house robots in particular are not to be messed with. I'm talking chain saws, flame throwers, "jaws of life" (should that be jaws of death I wonder), real nasty stuff. Add to that the better hazards like a pit and a flame grill and you really do get more action.
They actually go through the pits and look at the robots.
The show lasts an hour, with twice as many bouts. No stupid "sports casting".
And best of all, it's not dumbed down for the American audience.
We also see Scrapheap Challenge, and don't have to endure the stupid rebadging to "Junkyard Wars".
It's a New Zealander's perspective, so perhaps it is also a British perspective. You are right in saying that without breaking Enigma the situation could still have been resolved by the Americans and thier blasted bomb, but it would have taken much longer, and Europe probably would not have recovered - destroyed by Germany, and then destroyed again by a few carefully placed bombs. If it wasn't for Alan Turing, the humankind would be a much worse off than we are now.
As many other posters have pointed out, how can you give a course about the history of computing and ignore Alan Turing ?!
Turing was undoubtably one of the great minds of the last century.
Have you ever stopped to think what the world would be like today if Alan had not been around when we needed him - the 2nd World War quite possibly would have been lost to Germany, stored program computers might not even exist or at least would be in their infancy, everythig stemming from stored computers would not exist. There are so many things we take for granted that Alan Turing through his brilliance has given us.
And for what thanks I ask you ? None, that's what. Denied when he was alive, possibly conspiratorily murdered (because of his at the time controversial & illegal sexuality (he was (fairly openly) gay)), and unknown to almost everybody now he is dead.
Strange isn't it - ask somebody who "Bill Gates" is, and chances are they know, ask somebody who "Alan Turing" is - they won't have a clue. But who is/was more important to the world.
</RANT>
Some will spend it doodling, as the article noted, but that's the price we pay for a sophisticated environmentally-holistic educational approach.
I don't think doodling is something that we conciously do. In general when a person doodles thier mind is in a completely different place, working over some problem, or thought, or feeling.
Sometimes the thought can be trivial, which is good - it's pleasing, possibly relaxing, to think about things we want to think about.
Sometimes the thought can be much more useful.
Personnally I am not a doodler, I'm a pen twiddler. When I have to solve a problem, or design a new system etc then I sit back in my chair, pen in hand, disconnect my brain from the outside world and twiddle away.
I've had many Eureka moments twiddling my pen, I'm sure many people have had Eureka moments doodling too.
I don't like DS9 at all I find it dull, boring and just very "un-Start Trek", but Voyager is sweet.
I have to agree though that you don't need any reason above the fact that Seven Of Nine appears in it... mmmm...Seven Of Nine. That sounded so good I'll say it again... mmmm...Seven Of Nine.
Did I get across the fact that 7of9 has a great body (and that uniform shows it off too), not to mention a incredible mind and that incredibly attractive hard, logical, efficient manner... I'll just make sure... mmmm...Seven Of Nine.
You havn't watched the Stargate episode where a Maup's radio emmisions cause immense destruction to the life forms on another planet, life forms which take the form of basically a whopping great computer program (it just screened last night here in NZ). The code is fed back into Cheyenne mountain through the Maups transmission to try and destroy the threat to it's worlds survival. Needless to say it doesn't, but some interesting things happen along the way.
Couldn't agree more. Anything not directly associated with the CS dept. is likely to be a serious mistake if you want a career as a techie. (ie, programming, not just managing programmers.) What you get from a Computer Science degree are the fundamental concepts that help you learn new languages/techniques/etc. I always thought that Scheme might just be a waste of time, but over and over again I've found the concepts I used in writing good Scheme code (high-level stuff like abstraction & simplicity, as well as techniques like continuation/closure passing) useful in my every-day programming.
I disagree with you here. I am a BSc in Comp. Sci. and I included in my first and second stage es (it's a 3 stage degree here in NZ) Philosophy, Logic (2nd stage), Psychology, Cognitive Psychology (2nd stage), Statistics and Discreet Mathematics. Granted Stats & Math were quite closely related to CS courses, but the philosphy and psychology were also very useful and highly related. In philosphy and logic we went into such delights and programming Turing machines, proving computability, Godel numbers... in Cognitive Pshycology we went into such areas as Artificial Intelligence, perception (important for interface design), useability.
All of these courses helped and stimulated my mind immensly with respect to my CS major.
Not to mention, you go to University, not to learn how to do a job, but to learn how to learn.
LIRC supports the infra-red under Linux, your remote can do basically anything with the tools supplied with Lirc (make it execute other software, send X keyevents to windows, move the mouse around), and XawTV supports lirc directly so you can also do al your standard TV remote type stuff. Lirc can switch in and out of different modes etc.. I can press `TV' to bring up xawtv, hit `PWR' to turn off/on my monitor, standard channel buttons, video button, volume etc all work in XawTV. When I get around to it I'm going to write a little menu so I can select and play DivX files with aviplay - including pause, FF, RW, vol, sync etc... all from in bed:-)
I was the first kid inmy primary school class to get a Transformer - a cool little car, can't remember the name now. In time I got many more transformers, Optimus Prime, Lynx (a cool space-shuttle that transformed into a sort of pteradactyl (sp?) with a motorised landing trolley that transformed into some animal thing IIRC), Omega Supreme (mother of all transformers but fiddly to take apart and put togethor lots of parts to remove and put in different places - lots of parts to lose), and a whole pile of others that I can't remember the names of now.
Let's not forget the rip-off of transformers - MASK, they were more of a cross between GI-JOE and Transformers though.
I mean what programming language is complete without something as basic as variables?
Languages of the `(pure) functional' class do not have variables of any kind. They are still very complete and useful work can easily be performed with them. See for example HUGS although IIRC HUGS (and Haskell) is not a strict/pure functional language.
Slashdot Mirror
While I'm sure that there are people who still use Slackware, I don't know why.
I used Slackware for about a year as my first Linux installation but I got so sick of compiling stuff, finding required libraries, etc etc that when it came time to upgrade the machine I installed Debian and havn't looked back.
I now run Debian "testing" distribution, and when I do have to compile stuff manually I install it using stow so I can uninstall it when deb packages become available (or I don't need it anymore). Installing stuff that is packaged is sooooo easy, just an "apt-get install blarg" to install blarg and everything it needs to do it's job, removing it is just as simple.
When I compile stuff manually if there is something required that I don't have I just do a quick search through dselect to see if I can find it first.
---
James Sleeman
Pretty much off topic. But I have over the last week I've been writing, in python using pyGTK, python-gnome and libglade a little application for leeching files from FTP sites (getting only one file from a site at once, delaying between retries, getting recursive directory listings for selecting the files you want), it's multi-threaded but otherwise a fairly simple program.
:-))), but it would have been much simpler with some even basic documentation about how to write a nice OO way for using libglade in python.
:-)
Now, I hadn't coded Python at all before this, and similarly I hadn't coded GTK in any language before either.
Learning Python was a snap - nice language by the way. But working out how to use pyGTK, python-gnome and libglade in a nice OO way - what a joke !
There is basically no documentation on how to do this, the documentation that came with pyGTK et all basically said "look in the examples", but the examples were non-oo basically using the C gtk functions. If I was using an OO language I wanted to code in an OO way - it would make things simpler from my multi-threaded perspective anyway.
I ended up doing a search through the net to find a starting point for using libglade with python in a more OO way and using some posts I found to a mailing list converted that method to being truely OO (so I make classes that contain initialisation code to load up the XML, display the appropriate widgets, connect up the signals to handlers defined within the class (within the object instance) an anything else specific to that class, then when I want to make a `mainWindow' I can just do myMainWindow = mainWindow() and I have a self contained mainWindow object.
Even now I still have a guess half the time at what calling format I should be using for functions - which you have to `translate' from the GTK C reference documentation.
Now that I know roughly what I am doing, it is pretty straightforward (even if I am just hacking it togethor (design ?! who needs that
NB : the reason I wanted to code in pyGTK/python-gnome was that TkInter didn't have the widgets that I wanted, whereas GTK does, and as a nice advantage it looks nice on my desktop
---
James Sleeman
Here in New Zealand we have the pleasure of seeing both BattleBots from the US and RobotWars from the UK.
There is no question which is the better.
RobotWars has far cooler, deadler robots, the 4 house robots in particular are not to be messed with. I'm talking chain saws, flame throwers, "jaws of life" (should that be jaws of death I wonder), real nasty stuff. Add to that the better hazards like a pit and a flame grill and you really do get more action.
They actually go through the pits and look at the robots.
The show lasts an hour, with twice as many bouts. No stupid "sports casting".
And best of all, it's not dumbed down for the American audience.
We also see Scrapheap Challenge, and don't have to endure the stupid rebadging to "Junkyard Wars".
---
James Sleeman
How much more inspiring can you get than the answer to life, the universe and everything --- 42.
I'm glad I'm not the only one who had a vision of Cartman getting fried when he read the articile headline :-)
---
James Sleeman
It's a New Zealander's perspective, so perhaps it is also a British perspective. You are right in saying that without breaking Enigma the situation could still have been resolved by the Americans and thier blasted bomb, but it would have taken much longer, and Europe probably would not have recovered - destroyed by Germany, and then destroyed again by a few carefully placed bombs. If it wasn't for Alan Turing, the humankind would be a much worse off than we are now.
As many other posters have pointed out, how can you give a course about the history of computing and ignore Alan Turing ?!
Turing was undoubtably one of the great minds of the last century.
Have you ever stopped to think what the world would be like today if Alan had not been around when we needed him - the 2nd World War quite possibly would have been lost to Germany, stored program computers might not even exist or at least would be in their infancy, everythig stemming from stored computers would not exist. There are so many things we take for granted that Alan Turing through his brilliance has given us.
And for what thanks I ask you ? None, that's what. Denied when he was alive, possibly conspiratorily murdered (because of his at the time controversial & illegal sexuality (he was (fairly openly) gay)), and unknown to almost everybody now he is dead.
Strange isn't it - ask somebody who "Bill Gates" is, and chances are they know, ask somebody who "Alan Turing" is - they won't have a clue. But who is/was more important to the world.
</RANT>
---
James Sleeman
I don't think doodling is something that we conciously do. In general when a person doodles thier mind is in a completely different place, working over some problem, or thought, or feeling.
Sometimes the thought can be trivial, which is good - it's pleasing, possibly relaxing, to think about things we want to think about. Sometimes the thought can be much more useful.
Personnally I am not a doodler, I'm a pen twiddler. When I have to solve a problem, or design a new system etc then I sit back in my chair, pen in hand, disconnect my brain from the outside world and twiddle away.
I've had many Eureka moments twiddling my pen, I'm sure many people have had Eureka moments doodling too.
--- James Sleeman
I don't like DS9 at all I find it dull, boring and just very "un-Start Trek", but Voyager is sweet.
... mmmm...Seven Of Nine. That sounded so good I'll say it again ... mmmm...Seven Of Nine.
I have to agree though that you don't need any reason above the fact that Seven Of Nine appears in it
Did I get across the fact that 7of9 has a great body (and that uniform shows it off too), not to mention a incredible mind and that incredibly attractive hard, logical, efficient manner... I'll just make sure... mmmm...Seven Of Nine.
You havn't watched the Stargate episode where a Maup's radio emmisions cause immense destruction to the life forms on another planet, life forms which take the form of basically a whopping great computer program (it just screened last night here in NZ). The code is fed back into Cheyenne mountain through the Maups transmission to try and destroy the threat to it's worlds survival. Needless to say it doesn't, but some interesting things happen along the way.
I disagree with you here. I am a BSc in Comp. Sci. and I included in my first and second stage es (it's a 3 stage degree here in NZ) Philosophy, Logic (2nd stage), Psychology, Cognitive Psychology (2nd stage), Statistics and Discreet Mathematics. Granted Stats & Math were quite closely related to CS courses, but the philosphy and psychology were also very useful and highly related. In philosphy and logic we went into such delights and programming Turing machines, proving computability, Godel numbers... in Cognitive Pshycology we went into such areas as Artificial Intelligence, perception (important for interface design), useability.
All of these courses helped and stimulated my mind immensly with respect to my CS major.
Not to mention, you go to University, not to learn how to do a job, but to learn how to learn.
Canterbury University CS Dept.LIRC supports the infra-red under Linux, your remote can do basically anything with the tools supplied with Lirc (make it execute other software, send X keyevents to windows, move the mouse around), and XawTV supports lirc directly so you can also do al your standard TV remote type stuff. Lirc can switch in and out of different modes etc.. I can press `TV' to bring up xawtv, hit `PWR' to turn off/on my monitor, standard channel buttons, video button, volume etc all work in XawTV. When I get around to it I'm going to write a little menu so I can select and play DivX files with aviplay - including pause, FF, RW, vol, sync etc ... all from in bed :-)
I was the first kid inmy primary school class to get a Transformer - a cool little car, can't remember the name now. In time I got many more transformers, Optimus Prime, Lynx (a cool space-shuttle that transformed into a sort of pteradactyl (sp?) with a motorised landing trolley that transformed into some animal thing IIRC), Omega Supreme (mother of all transformers but fiddly to take apart and put togethor lots of parts to remove and put in different places - lots of parts to lose), and a whole pile of others that I can't remember the names of now. Let's not forget the rip-off of transformers - MASK, they were more of a cross between GI-JOE and Transformers though.
Languages of the `(pure) functional' class do not have variables of any kind. They are still very complete and useful work can easily be performed with them. See for example HUGS although IIRC HUGS (and Haskell) is not a strict/pure functional language.