At first I was confused that they kept saying 'finite and small,' I mean, seriously, if you think 70 billion light years is small, what-are-you-smoking-and-can-I-have-some?
But towards the end they mention something about small-Universe and large-Universe models, and imply that the two are scientifically meaningful terms.
It seems to me that the proper way to do this is to explicitly call the superclass version. It's slightly a pain, but I don't see how you'd miss doing anything by doing it that way, rather than what you describe.
Though I am interested to hear what you'd like to do, under those specs... I can't think of too much that's that interesting. Mail me or something.
I've been programming for years. I taught myself C++ almost when it came out, back when it was so new, most people didn't understand why it was needed. It had almost no real features beyond the basic language stats.
And really, I'm not sure how I feel about this constant revisioning. It seems to me like the compilers are following Gates' Law (every 18 months, speed of software halves). While some things are nice (namespaces, etc.), I'm not sure how I feel about templates, and all of the other more minor features. I mean, feature extension after feature extension, it's getting a little tiresome keeping up with it all.
The upshot of this, of course, is that C compilers, which aren't following Gates' Law, are now faster than anything on modern processors.
When the net was originally created/designed, it was the child of ARPA. It was during the Cold War, and there was worry that the Russians, knowing we had an information network, could bomb it strategically, destroying the choke points and rendering us weaker.
So it was designed for any point to be physically destroyed, and for the whole to continue functioning. They did not, however, worry about an attack via less tangible means, like huge quantities of packets. So, the redundancy that you say is gone, isn't. The net will still function after a military strike or natural disaster, but a well-done DDoS attack can cripple it, and that's fine by the Day One specs.
You know, I hate to say this and all, AOL being the evil empire that it is... but has anyone thought that, given that AOL pays for the maintenance of the servers we all use, regardless of which client, then they should maybe get a little say in how they get used? ~Conor (The Odd One)
Here's how I see it. Speaking as someone with outdoor plumbing, I look at some of the things found in the articles a little strange. Maybe they're looking way too hard for symbolism, etc. But there are many points. On a brain level, females are more oriented towards interpersonal reaction than males, and males more towards things with fun buttons and blinking lights than females. I like to think that nurture is far more responsible than nature, at present, but I want to acknowledge both. That said, I wonder if the critics of "male-oriented games" on the grounds of gameplay/lack of realistic interaction with other people realize just how hard that is to program. Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying that programming 3D graphics is easy... but it is simpler than simulating a real person. That, and it sells more copies.
Buchanan (Elizabeth, not Patrick) bases everything on three categories:
'Victim,' which I see as most common... the fair maiden who needs to be rescued from the evil (fill-in-the-blank).
'Vixen,' which I see as runner up to Victim... the woman is present as a sex object, and usually in no other capacity. Methinks the much-discussed Lara Croft (wish I had an Onion link...) falls into this category... though she kicks a fair amount of ass, too... a rare, rare occurrence. A better example of this is StarCraft. My biggest quarrel with this otherwise-excellent game is that every female character hits on you. I find this kind of offensive, personally.
'Invisible.' I have problems with this one. Ms. Buchanan cites NHL/NFL games as prime examples of sans female games... but last I checked, neither organization had any female players, owners, managers, coaches, etc. If I am wrong, please correct me. I have problems with the term, too... this is not invisible, but absent. I think invisibility is something that Ms. Buchanan would agree with... if it meant that women were present just as people, and presented in a manner similar to the males (though perhaps with more polygons...).
I'm proud to say that I've never played any version of Tomb Raider... but from the commercials for it I've seen, I think 36-24-36 is just a wee bit too small in the chest for Lara. Try something in the mid 60's, maybe... And NO, I do not find it attractive at all.
I was very, very disappointed with this article. It has some very strong points, and I agree with most of them. But the support is lacking. For any given statement, a single quote from a single paper is made... this is disturbing behavior. I'm only used to seeing this from right-wing zealots, not from intelligent feminists. The repeated citing of Herring was bad... not just because I disagree with the 'no gender neutrality' conclusion, but because at one point it gets so bad that King, the writer, mentions something that Herring cites without listing it herself. Still, better than some things I've seen which had no bibliography at all. And definitely an issue worth discussing.
Okay, time for th e cyberpunk article. Ouch. Again, good points obscured by... I hesitate so much to say zealotry, but I have no other word. Metaphors and symbolism have never been my strong suit, but I still think that the author here is looking way too deep. I'm not going to discuss it all now... but I will say that I think I would truly enjoy a discussion with the author, she seems a very intelligent person. I definitely like the postscript, though I wonder how we can seriously worry about who has net access when 800 million go to sleep hungry every night. And yet, I worry too...
Okay, more general things:
Sports games that feature all or nearly-all males do so because males play these games even more disproportionally than the others. And they could make sports games with women... I just don't forsee WNBA Jam coming out within my natural lifespan.
For that matter... we (males) disproportionally play video games in general... leaving aside the cause for a moment, let us examine the effect... game makers, wanting to capture the largest audience and make the most money, write games oriented towards males. This generally makes the area a bit less inviting to females, and the cycle repeats. Yay free market, right?
I know some female computer geeks. They fall into two categories: The ones pushed there by affirmative-action type programs, who are there because everyone told them they could, who are there, really because someone wanted nice(r) demographics. Then, there are the good ones. The ones that can take Linus Torvalds and Rich Stallman and code circles around them. These are the only ones to hang on, because, sadly, the industry involves a lot of hazing, a lot of aggresive behavior (to which the socially acceptable response is the instinctive male one), and yes, sometimes a "what-does-a-woman-know-about-computers" attitude. I agree with other statements I've seen here on Slashdot that no one, regardless of what they've got in their underpants, should be in the computer industry if it's not because they really belong here.
"The Internet is unfriendly to women," because of people hitting on you and stalking you or not listening to you or somehow discriminating because you're female. Welcome to the Western world. As I think you've noticed, this hemisphere is dominated by old rich white guys... why (and I ask this honestly) did you think it would be otherwise in cyberspace?
To close: I think you guys brought up some great points... I've said here only my disagreements. I am a feminist, going by the "women are people too" definition. I recently saw a copy of Bitch, and as soon as I stop being lazy I'm going to subscribe to it, etc. Please don't think me a lumbering heap of testosterone. I welcome any non-flame replies to this, on/. or via email... flames may be directed here. One more thing... It's 4am, I might be a little groggy. I'll probably rewrite and repost.
Jesus was born two years before Herod died... which places it at 6 BC. Which means that any millenial apocalypse from a Christian God would have happened on Dec. 31, 1993.
After doing a good amount of research on RSI/CTS, I've come to the conclusion that the reason I don't have CTS is because of my unusual typing style. I was never taught to type, I learned naturally. As a result, my hands move over the keyboard a good bit when I type, eliminating the penalties that Tom speaks of. I can hit the up/down arrow keys just as fast as I can the j-k keys. (I've been known to ramp up to 70+ wpm when in Zen state, I usually hover around 50 if my mind can keep up.)
I agree completely with what Tom said regarding the keypad's use in most apps... I like to use it for some FPSs where mousing is unavailable. As far as the banishment of the escape key, well... a lot of people have been known to hit it by accident... and it's being so isolated means, to me, that I can just toss my hand over there and slap it, and not worry about hitting anything else nearby. As opposed to the new USB mac [excuses for] keyboards which have an escape key that's half-sized. Fun.
And as regards the Zen of coding... it does exist. Those who say it does not have never felt the world melt away underneath the keyboard as they manipulate their own little digital world... It can be a hell of a feeling, and having ingested huge amounts of caffeine (as most of us do) sometimes adds a bit of an edge to it. If this feeling didn't exist, I wouldn't type in words, and I would never have started coding at age six with (I apologize in advance) the crappy little QBASIC that M$FT bundled with DOS.
(Can anyone explain to me why the HH keyboard costs $117?)
They did a really bad job with paintbrush. I have personally done better jobs. (I have a picture of Bill Clinton getting off AF-1 with an earring... I laughed my ass off when a worse one appeared in a tabloid two weeks after I made it.)
If it operates with almost no heat/power dissipation at 12 THz, why not raise it to 20 or so?
Wait... a hard drive doesn't have a frequency!
'...semiconducting microswitches...replacing transistors...', except that's what transistors are!
'Low Power TCAPS Technology drains only 1 ma/hr during operation.' Thoroughly impossible... the ampere is not something that can be measured over time... it's an instantaneous thing. It could draw a current of one mA for an hour of operation, but it would also draw the same for a minute or a year. The term for electricity over time, in this case, would be the Couloumb. (Amps*seconds)
This is most definitely a joke... but one that probably fooled a few. I really don't think that it deserves to be on Slashdot... The people who wrote this hoax obviously don't know the first thing about silicon or electronics in general. CC: CmdrTaco
Personally, I really think we should ditch 'hacker.' I like the word, but hate the image. And a small group can rarely overcome popular usage. So, a listing of alternatives as I see it:
Coder: I like it, and it suits me. But as was said, some are hardware hackers. And besides... not everyone who programs is a hacker. (Especially if they 'program' in HTML. Ugh!)
Programmer: Not only does it fall victim to what's above, it's dry!
Wizard: Well... I like it... especially because of the possible Who reference. But it sounds too egotistical to me. Also liable to be picked up by crackers fast. Not liable to be picked up by media in a negative connotation, though!
[Computer] Geek/Nerd: These are old terms, very old. Both derogatory. I'm willing to and do use them, but I don't think everyone is by any means.
Tech[ie]: A good general term, but... I don't think it should be used to describe the real hackers.
Wetware: Programming isn't a matter of thought for me. I've been doing it since age 5 (if you count batch files and/or basic), so my brain runs like a VLSI chip. Sort of. I imagine it's similar for a lot of the real good coders. You don't think... you simply know. But... the term, however accurate it may be, sucks and will be snapped up by the PHBs real fast, and not in a good way.
Code pimp: I like this one, it makes me laugh. But no, for obvious (I hope?) reasons.
Camel rider: In honor of Perl? My favorite language overall.
Code Jockey: Nah. Sounds too much like techie, and a little diminutive.
Wizard, for all it's downside, is looking good to me. As much as this sounds like a sucking-up-to-Rob type thing, I think there should be some sort of poll-like thing. Slashdot is arguably geek central, and as such about as good place as any. But there has to be a better term out there. Anyone want to invent a word?
I should like to consider myself, some day, a hacker. Via the ESR definition. But... I was once into cracking. I still think it's mildly fun, but only if all you do is (maybe) leave a note that says 'Hi, your system has a hole in it because of [...]'. Recently, I needed to write something that would append to.EXE files, and to do that I took a look at some virii to see how they did it. I learned (sort of) assembly to do this, and I think it's nifty for other things too. What does this make me?
There there are the "zero tolerance" policies. This is shorthand for zero intelligence in my opinion. Teachers can simply say bring a steak knife to school to cut the chicken breast your Mom packed for lunch, you're expelled (this happened in Indianapolis). <snip>
It gets worse. In Rhode Island, some 8-year-old got sent home for bringing in a butter knife to cut his cookies. Now, I think cutting cookies is a little silly, but sending him home with that thing is sillier...
Sounds like what I was trying to do with my old 486/66 DX2... but the only thing I could play without skipping was 24Kb/s MP3s... forget 128. I wonder if a P100 is necessary, or if a 75 or 90 would do. Any thoughts?
Well, yeah./dev/zero would be just a little bit better. But I think the point behind the article (which I skimmed) is that on a hardware level, or lower still on a magnetic level, electromagnetic traces will remain, and you need to use that nifty shred program, which I guess writes zeroes and ones over and over or something. (Anyone know for sure what it does?)
Note to Rob/Hemos/anyone else: I think the comments are overcounted by one on the main page. Not a major bug, but weird. At least to me..
Okay, maybe I should mail Rob or someone with this... but shouldn't the title be InterNIC? And there are some other weird typos too... "no long is the cgi/whois..." should probably be "no longer"... right? The Interinc thing I can decipher, but some errors are too subtle... ?
I've heard that a term sometimes used was faux-fighters, faux being French for false. It sounds like foo, a little bit. Perhaps it was anglicized. Although I suppose this has little to do with FUBAR, the full explanation of which has been posted many times now. But still, it may explain the band name... Now if I could only remember where I heard of faux-fighters from....
May I point you over to the newsgroup specifically for flaming? You know, guys, I think the supposed-Microserfs we get here are really just spambots or something. Trying to build mailing lists. On a side note, I'm beginning to seriously dislike the large number of Anonymous Coward posts. I wonder if there's a better way, that maintains privacy. Okay, that's enough rambling.
Dongle? And how long is "a while?" On some subjects, I am a veritable oracle... but on most I unashamedly ask for more information. Now is the time for the second. Well?
Slashdot Mirror
I like how at the end of the article, the man who likes to run around underground talks about how much he loves the outdoors.
...when I was a wee programmer, I was taught that the solution to this problem was to write better code.
At first I was confused that they kept saying 'finite and small,' I mean, seriously, if you think 70 billion light years is small, what-are-you-smoking-and-can-I-have-some?
But towards the end they mention something about small-Universe and large-Universe models, and imply that the two are scientifically meaningful terms.
Anyone out there got a clue?
The name is T'Pau.
Sorry 'bout that.
It seems to me that the proper way to do this is to explicitly call the superclass version. It's slightly a pain, but I don't see how you'd miss doing anything by doing it that way, rather than what you describe.
Though I am interested to hear what you'd like to do, under those specs... I can't think of too much that's that interesting. Mail me or something.
~Conor (The Odd One)
I've been programming for years. I taught myself C++ almost when it came out, back when it was so new, most people didn't understand why it was needed. It had almost no real features beyond the basic language stats.
And really, I'm not sure how I feel about this constant revisioning. It seems to me like the compilers are following Gates' Law (every 18 months, speed of software halves). While some things are nice (namespaces, etc.), I'm not sure how I feel about templates, and all of the other more minor features. I mean, feature extension after feature extension, it's getting a little tiresome keeping up with it all.
The upshot of this, of course, is that C compilers, which aren't following Gates' Law, are now faster than anything on modern processors.
~Conor (The Odd One)
So it was designed for any point to be physically destroyed, and for the whole to continue functioning. They did not, however, worry about an attack via less tangible means, like huge quantities of packets. So, the redundancy that you say is gone, isn't. The net will still function after a military strike or natural disaster, but a well-done DDoS attack can cripple it, and that's fine by the Day One specs.
~Conor (The Odd One)
You know, I hate to say this and all, AOL being the evil empire that it is... but has anyone thought that, given that AOL pays for the maintenance of the servers we all use, regardless of which client, then they should maybe get a little say in how they get used?
~Conor (The Odd One)
But there are many points. On a brain level, females are more oriented towards interpersonal reaction than males, and males more towards things with fun buttons and blinking lights than females. I like to think that nurture is far more responsible than nature, at present, but I want to acknowledge both. That said, I wonder if the critics of "male-oriented games" on the grounds of gameplay/lack of realistic interaction with other people realize just how hard that is to program. Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying that programming 3D graphics is easy... but it is simpler than simulating a real person. That, and it sells more copies.
Buchanan (Elizabeth, not Patrick) bases everything on three categories:
I'm proud to say that I've never played any version of Tomb Raider... but from the commercials for it I've seen, I think 36-24-36 is just a wee bit too small in the chest for Lara. Try something in the mid 60's, maybe... And NO, I do not find it attractive at all.
I was very, very disappointed with this article. It has some very strong points, and I agree with most of them. But the support is lacking. For any given statement, a single quote from a single paper is made... this is disturbing behavior. I'm only used to seeing this from right-wing zealots, not from intelligent feminists. The repeated citing of Herring was bad... not just because I disagree with the 'no gender neutrality' conclusion, but because at one point it gets so bad that King, the writer, mentions something that Herring cites without listing it herself. Still, better than some things I've seen which had no bibliography at all. And definitely an issue worth discussing.
Okay, time for th e cyberpunk article. Ouch. Again, good points obscured by... I hesitate so much to say zealotry, but I have no other word. Metaphors and symbolism have never been my strong suit, but I still think that the author here is looking way too deep. I'm not going to discuss it all now... but I will say that I think I would truly enjoy a discussion with the author, she seems a very intelligent person. I definitely like the postscript, though I wonder how we can seriously worry about who has net access when 800 million go to sleep hungry every night. And yet, I worry too...
Okay, more general things:
To close: I think you guys brought up some great points... I've said here only my disagreements. I am a feminist, going by the "women are people too" definition. I recently saw a copy of Bitch, and as soon as I stop being lazy I'm going to subscribe to it, etc. Please don't think me a lumbering heap of testosterone. I welcome any non-flame replies to this, on
His site.
Jesus was born two years before Herod died... which places it at 6 BC. Which means that any millenial apocalypse from a Christian God would have happened on Dec. 31, 1993.
I agree completely with what Tom said regarding the keypad's use in most apps... I like to use it for some FPSs where mousing is unavailable. As far as the banishment of the escape key, well... a lot of people have been known to hit it by accident... and it's being so isolated means, to me, that I can just toss my hand over there and slap it, and not worry about hitting anything else nearby. As opposed to the new USB mac [excuses for] keyboards which have an escape key that's half-sized. Fun.
And as regards the Zen of coding... it does exist. Those who say it does not have never felt the world melt away underneath the keyboard as they manipulate their own little digital world... It can be a hell of a feeling, and having ingested huge amounts of caffeine (as most of us do) sometimes adds a bit of an edge to it. If this feeling didn't exist, I wouldn't type in words, and I would never have started coding at age six with (I apologize in advance) the crappy little QBASIC that M$FT bundled with DOS.
(Can anyone explain to me why the HH keyboard costs $117?)
They can't spell 'terahertz' properly.
They did a really bad job with paintbrush. I have personally done better jobs. (I have a picture of Bill Clinton getting off AF-1 with an earring... I laughed my ass off when a worse one appeared in a tabloid two weeks after I made it.)
If it operates with almost no heat/power dissipation at 12 THz, why not raise it to 20 or so?
Wait... a hard drive doesn't have a frequency!
'...semiconducting microswitches...replacing transistors...', except that's what transistors are!
'Low Power TCAPS Technology drains only 1 ma/hr during operation.' Thoroughly impossible... the ampere is not something that can be measured over time... it's an instantaneous thing. It could draw a current of one mA for an hour of operation, but it would also draw the same for a minute or a year. The term for electricity over time, in this case, would be the Couloumb. (Amps*seconds)
This is most definitely a joke... but one that probably fooled a few. I really don't think that it deserves to be on Slashdot... The people who wrote this hoax obviously don't know the first thing about silicon or electronics in general.
CC: CmdrTaco
Coder: I like it, and it suits me. But as was said, some are hardware hackers. And besides... not everyone who programs is a hacker. (Especially if they 'program' in HTML. Ugh!)
Programmer: Not only does it fall victim to what's above, it's dry!
Wizard: Well... I like it... especially because of the possible Who reference. But it sounds too egotistical to me. Also liable to be picked up by crackers fast. Not liable to be picked up by media in a negative connotation, though!
[Computer] Geek/Nerd: These are old terms, very old. Both derogatory. I'm willing to and do use them, but I don't think everyone is by any means.
Tech[ie]: A good general term, but... I don't think it should be used to describe the real hackers.
Wetware: Programming isn't a matter of thought for me. I've been doing it since age 5 (if you count batch files and/or basic), so my brain runs like a VLSI chip. Sort of. I imagine it's similar for a lot of the real good coders. You don't think... you simply know. But... the term, however accurate it may be, sucks and will be snapped up by the PHBs real fast, and not in a good way.
Code pimp: I like this one, it makes me laugh. But no, for obvious (I hope?) reasons.
Camel rider: In honor of Perl? My favorite language overall.
Code Jockey: Nah. Sounds too much like techie, and a little diminutive.
Wizard, for all it's downside, is looking good to me. As much as this sounds like a sucking-up-to-Rob type thing, I think there should be some sort of poll-like thing. Slashdot is arguably geek central, and as such about as good place as any. But there has to be a better term out there. Anyone want to invent a word?
Katz... you're cool.
/me dons asbestos suit.
I should like to consider myself, some day, a hacker. Via the ESR definition. But... I was once into cracking. I still think it's mildly fun, but only if all you do is (maybe) leave a note that says 'Hi, your system has a hole in it because of [...]'. .EXE files, and to do that I took a look at some virii to see how they did it. I learned (sort of) assembly to do this, and I think it's nifty for other things too. What does this make me?
Recently, I needed to write something that would append to
It gets worse. In Rhode Island, some 8-year-old got sent home for bringing in a butter knife to cut his cookies. Now, I think cutting cookies is a little silly, but sending him home with that thing is sillier...
Sounds like what I was trying to do with my old 486/66 DX2... but the only thing I could play without skipping was 24Kb/s MP3s... forget 128. I wonder if a P100 is necessary, or if a 75 or 90 would do. Any thoughts?
Reminds me of a segfault.org story last month, Slashdot Gets Slashdotted...
I think if he doesn't tell us, we'll be forced to pick a random day and inundate him with well-wishings. Yeah, that sounds about right.
Well, yeah. /dev/zero would be just a little bit better. But I think the point behind the article (which I skimmed) is that on a hardware level, or lower still on a magnetic level, electromagnetic traces will remain, and you need to use that nifty shred program, which I guess writes zeroes and ones over and over or something. (Anyone know for sure what it does?)
Note to Rob/Hemos/anyone else: I think the comments are overcounted by one on the main page. Not a major bug, but weird. At least to me..
Okay, maybe I should mail Rob or someone with this... but shouldn't the title be InterNIC? And there are some other weird typos too... "no long is the cgi/whois..." should probably be "no longer"... right? The Interinc thing I can decipher, but some errors are too subtle... ?
I've heard that a term sometimes used was faux-fighters, faux being French for false. It sounds like foo, a little bit. Perhaps it was anglicized. Although I suppose this has little to do with FUBAR, the full explanation of which has been posted many times now. But still, it may explain the band name... Now if I could only remember where I heard of faux-fighters from....
May I point you over to the newsgroup specifically for flaming?
You know, guys, I think the supposed-Microserfs we get here are really just spambots or something. Trying to build mailing lists.
On a side note, I'm beginning to seriously dislike the large number of Anonymous Coward posts. I wonder if there's a better way, that maintains privacy. Okay, that's enough rambling.
Dongle? And how long is "a while?" On some subjects, I am a veritable oracle... but on most I unashamedly ask for more information. Now is the time for the second. Well?