It's the thought that counts
on
Why Kids Kill
·
· Score: 3
Katz claims that the instance count of violent crime perpetrated by teens is in decline. This may well be the case - though the stats he provides are inadequate to make the point stick.
What is significant, and contrary to Katz, is that the grandiosity of the crimes is on the upswing, as is the relative count of incidents of that scope. The number of kids going on a shooting rampage is at an all time high - even if gang warfare is in a recession.
The white-male-middle class is the fulcrum of society, we get no breaks, no quota, no glass ceiling to blame for our shortcomings. We are not discriminated against in ways the media is willing to make known. We are expected to be the hard working providers, to suck it up and deliver on the expectation of having had all the advantages while growing up.
This is where the problem lies. We are underprivileged and discriminated against as much as the next demographic, but we are branded as sissies if we voice that claim.
How many intelligent, non-sporting, geeks out there have had the proverbial sand kicked in their face? How many have gone on to become Charles Atlas? How many have gone on to become Charles Manson?
What the media is missing is not that these kids had a screw loose - it takes that to go berzerk. It isn't that they were desensitized to violence, I'll admit that I am... How many of you are dismayed that there is no UNDO button in your life? I am.
It is not NOT the fault of the parents, but a teen CAN hide things from a parent - even a pipe bomb and a gun. It's easy. If you can hide pot, you can hide ammo. This is not the issue. It isn't even the issue that parents are too busy to care - for the most part they're not, and it's more than a full time job to be completely aware.
Your kid needs some space from you - else you raise someone incapable of living their own life. Parental involvement, or lack thereof is not the issue either.
What is at issue is pure animal reactionism. Colorado was a suicide mission. So was the Kip incident. They just took their sources of pain with them when they died.
Consider: If you chain up a dog in your back yard, and beat it, and kick it, and underfeed it, and leave it in bad weather, and yell and alienate and hurt - will you dare wonder why it bites?
These kids were beaten and humiliated for at least their four years of highschool. They were abused by jocks, embarassed by the popular girls and looked down upon by the teachers that were there to help them into the 'real world'. Why was it a gym teacher that was killed? This was the only class they were failing, probably. It takes little thought to run laps, and you have to use the same locker room as the jocks that constantly give you wedgies. If you go to the teacher, you're labeled a panzie.
They grew up feeling like a minority, but seeing another minority get breaks and special treatment. There isn't a White History month, is there? There isn't a Geeky, Smart Male support group.
These kids saw the world as inherently unfair, hurtful and not worth living in. Their suicide was not an escape from responsibility or a resignation from the challenge of living - it was a singular assertion of control over their own destiny. They could not change the way the world treated them, so they took away the world's means to hurt them - they took their lives.
And, in the process of asserting their control over their lives, they chose to stick it to the world, just once. They got back at the people that had hurt them in a way that will forever be remembered. All the people that ignored them, saw through them and dismissed them as white thrash will remember them forever.
It's little wonder, from this perspective, to blame these kids for turing to neo-Nazism, racism and seclusion. These were the only niches of our demented culture that actually offered these misfits a sense of belonging to a community.
There's a whole treatise to be written on how a community of hate alters it's members mindset to serve it's own goals, but the point here is this: These kids were driven out of society proper by their inability to fit in. They were at the bottom of the pecking order, and they chose to separate themselves. They chose to associate themselves with a hateful mindset, and who can blame them? The mindset pushed their already well greased resentment buttons, and as life became more hopeless, they chose to go out in a blaze of glory - in their miswired frame of mind at least.
These kids were the children of our society, we let them down and they bit the hand that should have fed and nurtured them - but failed to do so.
Is anyone else as paranoid about M$ as I am? Let's look at an impromptu timeline:
Media says - under M$ guidance: Microsoft is great! Office is great! NT is the second coming! Buy M$!
Corporations sue M$ for unfair practices.
Media keeps exhalting M$.
DOJ stops investigating and goes to trial.
Media starts touting the benefits of not only NOT M$, but the only thing non-corporate; Linux. This shows that not only does M$ have competition, it shows that anyone can write their own competing software - naming Linux keeps any company from getting media endorsement.
Now and again, M$ makes statements to keep people from going Linux - full bore, but it doesn't really cut it's marketing deptartment lose either. M$ could market the pants off of Linux, they know it, we know it. They don't do it because it's in their best interest to appear to have plenty of competition - without having that competition localized. M$ can't afford to have it's flagship product blown out of the water by the DOJ.
What does it mean when the popular media is spouting off about NT being deficient? It makes the public believe that NT is not a strong product. By the time the DOJ case is finished, NT2K will be ready, and the M$ marketing machine will turn it's guns on Linux.
As for the relative lack of buzz about Office (Melissa aside - since that sort of validated the ID# to the public with an accountability precedent), it just means that the NT2K version of Office, O2K will be either totally NT bound, or available for Linux - just in case the strategy backfires.
Point being - beware media bearing good press. It's a transitory thing.
Excellent point! I've been using JBuilder2 for some time now, and it does, in fact, seem to be written in Java - well, at least parts of it are. In a quick look through the dir structure, there are some.class files that seem responsible for the IDE and such pieces. The help system is particularly slow and clunky, so I suspect that this is Java as well. There is a traditional Win32 app install to it, there's an EXE and DLLs and INIs, but the system also relies heavily on JAR files, and things named IdeEnvironment.class. Hmmm...
At this time, it's definitely platform bound, but, unless it relies heavily on JNI, a Solaris Java should be run-anywhere - unless Sun has embraced and extended Java in it's own favor.
For those interested and not yet aware, There is a clone of JBuilder2, called FreeBuilder. Haven't used it, but it boasts the same features, and is available for Linux as well as Win32. Homesite is www.freebuilder.org, but is unresponsive today. Check FreshMeat.
One really interesting point in the rebuttal is in reference to Microsoft advancing in the market place by the mutation of acquired technologies.
This flies directly in the face of M$ primary criticism of Linux, that Linux developers are 'chasing tail-lights', and that's why they're doing so well...
Just thought I'd set that one aside by itself, as a point to ponder.
Another interesting point is the Steve Jobs vs stepfather dynamic. Wow! Here I thought business was cold and heartless - and heart is what's driving Jobs??
Makes me wonder if Gates is just trying to get back at all those people who kicked sand in his face when he was little.
Sure, true freedom is in the mind, since one can have everything, and still not be free. But, " If my mind and heart are free, then I will be free, even in chains. " smacks of 'slave mentality'.
I'm sorry, but a free mind in an enslaved body, will only more fully realize it's enslavement. I do not envy Stephen Hawking's condition, regardless of how free his mind is. What good does all that brainpower if you can not walk on a beach? Singing "Swing Low Sweet Chariot" only goes so far, and a cotton pickin' cotton picker is a cotton pickin' slave, unless he is picking HIS OWN cotton.
We are, each of us, a trinity onto ourselves. The mind, body and spirit all must be free for the entire being to know freedom.
Speaking as a caffeine addict and infrequent 'wine with formal dinner' drinker:
It strikes me as very strange that hackers would willingly let some chemical burn up their spare brain cycles. I mean, I'll occasionally wake up at four in the morning because I've had a slick code idea, and I want to get it on paper. I've even thought code during the slow parts of sex.
Why would someone who is a professional coder/S.E. or otherwise technophile, willingly give up headspace like that? It's not relaxing (tried pot), it's stupefying, it leaves you in a daze and it makes it hard to concentrate.
Maybe these 'IT professionals' they interviewed were actually full time graphic artists, web designers, or mostly management and marketting people with spare cycles to burn.
Me, I'd rather use idle time than lose it. If you have to relax that badly, take a nap or read a book.
This is not motivated by the desire for an invasion of privacy by the cable people. They want to generate a demorgaphic of their subscribers - to tailor their service and make more money. That much is obvious.
What concerns me is that programming will be tailored to the tastes of the majority. I believe that my viewing habits are in the minority. I tend to watch Nova and PBS, Discovery, etc... While most people prefer 90210, Friends and Baywatch.
It concerns me that, if most viewers in my area, would rather view a sitcom than a science show, my sci channel may get bumped from the line-up entirely - or be 'blacked out' during prime-time hours, for the benefit of the masses that prefer QVC to PBS.
This is akin to the Stop&Shop 'coupon' card, that gives the customer the 'privilege' of buying items at a 'reduced' cost. A cost that is on par with the other supermarket's regular price.
The whole point of the M$ anti-trust trial is to determine wether M$ has an unfair advantage over it's competition in the market place.
Should M$ be proven monopolistic, steps will be required to take away it's unfair advantage, nothing more.
The spectrum of M$ competition ranges from Linux/GNU and BeOS to IBM, AOL and Apple, all employing different business practices. A level playing field is not possible without limiting all competitors to the lowest (least restrictive/competitive) common denominator. We're talking the economic version of Harrison Bergeron here - bad idea.
For Stallman's suggestions to work, and be morally right rather than anti-M$, they would have to be applied to the software industry as a whole. No way in hell will that ever work.
Now, a "world according to Stallman" might be a nice thought exercise, but it would render the computer industry (software, and hardware per item#3) impotent.
Hopefully, regardless of the outcome of the trial, the Fed (global is better) will be forced to re-evaluate the way M$ et al do business. The licensing policies, NDAs, costs, upgrade strategies, etc. are all to be questioned and an upper bound must be defined.
Regulations and restrictions must be industry-wide, not just levied against the most successful of contenders.
I would like to see a knowledgebase implemented and I'd like to contribute to it. As would I. What would it take? I've written minimal documentation for some of my programming efforts, but it was corporate work, and so the docs were not much more readable than the code by the time the reviewers got done. As for making something searchable, context sensitive, intuitive... Well, I know nothing about natural language querry processing, but I do like how helpful the Office 97 help system is. It's not concise, and it assumes ignorance, but it is pretty smart.
Who in freecode land knows how to structure such an effort?
So if the eye is somehow damaged, but the retina is intact, then vision can be restored??
How small can something like this be made? Self contained in a pair of sunglasses - including cameras, projectors and powersource? Ultimatelly, could these be implanted? I presume the tech is much like a TV, so there's quite a bit of power needed, as well as a non-negligible aperture size.
On the flip side - if code can be written to fry a monitor, could this fail and damage the eyes?
I can see it now: Instant-on Linux boxes, no more looking at clouds or little dots walking on the screen. FlashEEPROM OS that finishes the comparison test before the 'other' OS is even done booting. Mmmm - warm fuzzies all over.
What IS interesting is the question of why there exists a discrepancy between LOC/programmer in the study
Here's my guess: The people US programmers were compared against are not as sophisticated. Rather then knowing their API and using available libraries, they reinvent the wheel each and every time. They remember their academic exercises as gospel, and reimplement atoi() each time there's a need for it. They know basic control and data structures, but are not willing to roll their own, thereby requiring more code to accomplish the same task. They cut and paste rather than modularize and hide in a call.
See the taxonomy of programmer competence, and send a copy to the author of the CNN article.
It takes them significantly less time to build a building or dig a tunnel than it used to a hundred years ago. They cheat by using dynamite, jackhammers and other power tools, instead of good old fashioned elbow grease.
By that same metric, programmers are lazy as dirt. If I can write, in a single line of code, the instruction to generate a dialog box, then I am lazy. If I were to insist on writing the assembly instructions resulting in the same dialog box - well, I'd be stupid. It's about simplifying our job with tools.
It's truly a pity that the media is ignorant of the issues on which they report.
What the article should say is that American programmers have the best tools available. Tools that are at least twice as good as of their European counterparts. Since, with less resulting code, we manage to generate more software. I know, there'a bloatware argument here rearing it's ugly head..
But, given the right tool for the job, the reams of code needed are easily reduced to a handful of instructions. Take Java for UI implementation, Perl for text processing, C/C++ for the grunge, and you've got a great toolset.
Also, good programmers write lots of code, great programmers steal lots of code. Not only is laziness a virtue; code reuse, de-redundification of source code, modularity and OO are all sound software design.
It's just too bad that the general public, whose opinion is formed by the ignorant media, is equally ignorant of the facts.
Mostly Java at this point. Some C/C++, and looking into Delphi. As recently as two months ago, I worked with FORTRAN every day, and swatted at VB(A). Also looking for an excuse to pick up Perl and maybe Python skills on the side.
Actually, here's a kick - speaking of lines of code written: Just the other day I needed to write a really ugly if-elseif in Java... Went on for, oh hundreds of lines... I whipped up a ksh script to write it for me. Took 7 lines. Which counts? The script or the generated code??
And, while on the subject of LOC: If I use VC++6.0, and run wizards, do I get to count those gen'd lines toward my raise??
I don't think RedHat was ever given the ball to begin with. Mindcraft seems to have made only a token attempt at finding Linux tuning information.
As I recall from the original story discussion, there was a single posting, from a private individual, requesting information. That request never even mentioned the fact that the comparison was to result in publication. Had they made the disclaimer, and admitted to being an 'independent' test lab - the Linux community would have surely innundated them with helpful suggestions.
In effect, they shouted a question off a mountaintop and never stuck around long enough to hear the echo.
I'm sure that the querry they submitted to RedHat was equally low-key; probably to accentuate the documentation deficit that Linux suffers. I imagine is went something like this: Mindcraft: "Hi, I'm Joe Shmoe. I just bought Linux and I want to fine tune it." RedHat: "We'd be glad to help, but you need to be more specific." Mindcraft: "Well, you're not at all helpful, are you?" CLICK!
I'm mipfed about the graphic. A geeky herd of penguins, the leader wearing a pocket protector, marching off a cliff?? It bodes ill.
But the article makes an excellent point - the same point made by ZDNN in their otherwise favorable and objective rebuttal to the recent NT vs Linux test - that the documentation for Linux is 'expert friendly'.
A nice, searchable, online knowledgebase a'la M$ would be a boon for new converts and cutting edge hackers alike.
Not a glamorous undertaking by any stretch. Perhaps the new Academia-centric Linux 'regulatory committee' would care to tackle this one?
I took a few minutes to respond to this article, and all of a sudden, life is passing me by. Isn't this always the case, has it not been the point of some of the greatest literature of all time?
Care Diem! Go live out by a Massatchussetts pond and watch ants battle it out for dear life.
This is nothing new at all, and we've always known that computers serve to accelerate things. Hell, that's what they're for.
The invention of fire made life faster. Suddenly Groag couldn't understand why his children liked antelope so much.. The printing press increased literacy - I'm sure the clergy needed some time to figure that one out. The industial revolution is the single event most responsible for the growth of global economy, the development of cities, and the pollution explosion. Suddenly the old folks just didn't get why you lived in a one room apartment, fed a machine 16 hours a day, and got by without milking a cow.
Especially notable is that the author writes from a perspective inside the generational box, and bemoans how things have changed. "I have to reinvent myself" says he. Right. And his folks had to reinvent themselves when rock&roll first appeared, when man walked on the moon, and when we nuked Japan.
Hypertext is not a big deal. Technological advancement is a part of human life, and the accelerated rate thereof is a natural consequence. So rather than piss and moan, let's go and learn something new.
Slashdot Mirror
Katz claims that the instance count of violent crime perpetrated by teens is in decline. This may well be the case - though the stats he provides are inadequate to make the point stick.
What is significant, and contrary to Katz, is that the grandiosity of the crimes is on the upswing, as is the relative count of incidents of that scope. The number of kids going on a shooting rampage is at an all time high - even if gang warfare is in a recession.
The white-male-middle class is the fulcrum of society, we get no breaks, no quota, no glass ceiling to blame for our shortcomings. We are not discriminated against in ways the media is willing to make known. We are expected to be the hard working providers, to suck it up and deliver on the expectation of having had all the advantages while growing up.
This is where the problem lies. We are underprivileged and discriminated against as much as the next demographic, but we are branded as sissies if we voice that claim.
How many intelligent, non-sporting, geeks out there have had the proverbial sand kicked in their face? How many have gone on to become Charles Atlas? How many have gone on to become Charles Manson?
What the media is missing is not that these kids had a screw loose - it takes that to go berzerk. It isn't that they were desensitized to violence, I'll admit that I am... How many of you are dismayed that there is no UNDO button in your life? I am.
It is not NOT the fault of the parents, but a teen CAN hide things from a parent - even a pipe bomb and a gun. It's easy. If you can hide pot, you can hide ammo. This is not the issue. It isn't even the issue that parents are too busy to care - for the most part they're not, and it's more than a full time job to be completely aware.
Your kid needs some space from you - else you raise someone incapable of living their own life. Parental involvement, or lack thereof is not the issue either.
What is at issue is pure animal reactionism. Colorado was a suicide mission. So was the Kip incident. They just took their sources of pain with them when they died.
Consider: If you chain up a dog in your back yard, and beat it, and kick it, and underfeed it, and leave it in bad weather, and yell and alienate and hurt - will you dare wonder why it bites?
These kids were beaten and humiliated for at least their four years of highschool. They were abused by jocks, embarassed by the popular girls and looked down upon by the teachers that were there to help them into the 'real world'. Why was it a gym teacher that was killed? This was the only class they were failing, probably. It takes little thought to run laps, and you have to use the same locker room as the jocks that constantly give you wedgies. If you go to the teacher, you're labeled a panzie.
They grew up feeling like a minority, but seeing another minority get breaks and special treatment. There isn't a White History month, is there? There isn't a Geeky, Smart Male support group.
These kids saw the world as inherently unfair, hurtful and not worth living in. Their suicide was not an escape from responsibility or a resignation from the challenge of living - it was a singular assertion of control over their own destiny. They could not change the way the world treated them, so they took away the world's means to hurt them - they took their lives.
And, in the process of asserting their control over their lives, they chose to stick it to the world, just once. They got back at the people that had hurt them in a way that will forever be remembered. All the people that ignored them, saw through them and dismissed them as white thrash will remember them forever.
It's little wonder, from this perspective, to blame these kids for turing to neo-Nazism, racism and seclusion. These were the only niches of our demented culture that actually offered these misfits a sense of belonging to a community.
There's a whole treatise to be written on how a community of hate alters it's members mindset to serve it's own goals, but the point here is this: These kids were driven out of society proper by their inability to fit in. They were at the bottom of the pecking order, and they chose to separate themselves. They chose to associate themselves with a hateful mindset, and who can blame them? The mindset pushed their already well greased resentment buttons, and as life became more hopeless, they chose to go out in a blaze of glory - in their miswired frame of mind at least.
These kids were the children of our society, we let them down and they bit the hand that should have fed and nurtured them - but failed to do so.
Is anyone else as paranoid about M$ as I am?
Let's look at an impromptu timeline:
Media says - under M$ guidance: Microsoft is great! Office is great! NT is the second coming! Buy M$!
Corporations sue M$ for unfair practices.
Media keeps exhalting M$.
DOJ stops investigating and goes to trial.
Media starts touting the benefits of not only NOT M$, but the only thing non-corporate; Linux.
This shows that not only does M$ have competition, it shows that anyone can write their own competing software - naming Linux keeps any company from getting media endorsement.
Now and again, M$ makes statements to keep people from going Linux - full bore, but it doesn't really cut it's marketing deptartment lose either. M$ could market the pants off of Linux, they know it, we know it. They don't do it because it's in their best interest to appear to have plenty of competition - without having that competition localized. M$ can't afford to have it's flagship product blown out of the water by the DOJ.
What does it mean when the popular media is spouting off about NT being deficient? It makes the public believe that NT is not a strong product. By the time the DOJ case is finished, NT2K will be ready, and the M$ marketing machine will turn it's guns on Linux.
As for the relative lack of buzz about Office (Melissa aside - since that sort of validated the ID# to the public with an accountability precedent), it just means that the NT2K version of Office, O2K will be either totally NT bound, or available for Linux - just in case the strategy backfires.
Point being - beware media bearing good press. It's a transitory thing.
-end rant.
Wow. Now THAT is impressive.
Maybe Linus was wrong in his assertion that Java was promissing, but got overhyped on it's portability.
Now if only it ran as fast as native code.. Hmm maybe TransMeta will see to that.
Excellent point! .class files that seem responsible for the IDE and such pieces. The help system is particularly slow and clunky, so I suspect that this is Java as well. There is a traditional Win32 app install to it, there's an EXE and DLLs and INIs, but the system also relies heavily on JAR files, and things named IdeEnvironment.class. Hmmm...
I've been using JBuilder2 for some time now, and it does, in fact, seem to be written in Java - well, at least parts of it are. In a quick look through the dir structure, there are some
At this time, it's definitely platform bound, but, unless it relies heavily on JNI, a Solaris Java should be run-anywhere - unless Sun has embraced and extended Java in it's own favor.
For those interested and not yet aware,
There is a clone of JBuilder2, called FreeBuilder.
Haven't used it, but it boasts the same features, and is available for Linux as well as Win32.
Homesite is www.freebuilder.org, but is unresponsive today. Check FreshMeat.
One really interesting point in the rebuttal is in reference to Microsoft advancing in the market place by the mutation of acquired technologies.
This flies directly in the face of M$ primary criticism of Linux, that Linux developers are 'chasing tail-lights', and that's why they're doing so well...
Just thought I'd set that one aside by itself, as a point to ponder.
Another interesting point is the Steve Jobs vs stepfather dynamic. Wow! Here I thought business was cold and heartless - and heart is what's driving Jobs??
Makes me wonder if Gates is just trying to get back at all those people who kicked sand in his face when he was little.
Sure, true freedom is in the mind, since one can have everything, and still not be free. But, " If my mind and heart are free, then I will be free, even in chains. " smacks of 'slave mentality'.
I'm sorry, but a free mind in an enslaved body, will only more fully realize it's enslavement. I do not envy Stephen Hawking's condition, regardless of how free his mind is. What good does all that brainpower if you can not walk on a beach? Singing "Swing Low Sweet Chariot" only goes so far, and a cotton pickin' cotton picker is a cotton pickin' slave, unless he is picking HIS OWN cotton.
We are, each of us, a trinity onto ourselves. The mind, body and spirit all must be free for the entire being to know freedom.
Speaking as a caffeine addict and infrequent 'wine with formal dinner' drinker:
It strikes me as very strange that hackers would willingly let some chemical burn up their spare brain cycles. I mean, I'll occasionally wake up at four in the morning because I've had a slick code idea, and I want to get it on paper. I've even thought code during the slow parts of sex.
Why would someone who is a professional coder/S.E. or otherwise technophile, willingly give up headspace like that? It's not relaxing (tried pot), it's stupefying, it leaves you in a daze and it makes it hard to concentrate.
Maybe these 'IT professionals' they interviewed were actually full time graphic artists, web designers, or mostly management and marketting people with spare cycles to burn.
Me, I'd rather use idle time than lose it.
If you have to relax that badly, take a nap or read a book.
This is not motivated by the desire for an invasion of privacy by the cable people. They want to generate a demorgaphic of their subscribers - to tailor their service and make more money. That much is obvious.
What concerns me is that programming will be tailored to the tastes of the majority. I believe that my viewing habits are in the minority. I tend to watch Nova and PBS, Discovery, etc... While most people prefer 90210, Friends and Baywatch.
It concerns me that, if most viewers in my area, would rather view a sitcom than a science show, my sci channel may get bumped from the line-up entirely - or be 'blacked out' during prime-time hours, for the benefit of the masses that prefer QVC to PBS.
This is akin to the Stop&Shop 'coupon' card, that gives the customer the 'privilege' of buying items at a 'reduced' cost. A cost that is on par with the other supermarket's regular price.
The whole point of the M$ anti-trust trial is to determine wether M$ has an unfair advantage over it's competition in the market place.
Should M$ be proven monopolistic, steps will be required to take away it's unfair advantage, nothing more.
The spectrum of M$ competition ranges from Linux/GNU and BeOS to IBM, AOL and Apple, all employing different business practices. A level playing field is not possible without limiting all competitors to the lowest (least restrictive/competitive) common denominator. We're talking the economic version of Harrison Bergeron here - bad idea.
For Stallman's suggestions to work, and be morally right rather than anti-M$, they would have to be applied to the software industry as a whole. No way in hell will that ever work.
Now, a "world according to Stallman" might be a nice thought exercise, but it would render the computer industry (software, and hardware per item#3) impotent.
Hopefully, regardless of the outcome of the trial, the Fed (global is better) will be forced to re-evaluate the way M$ et al do business. The licensing policies, NDAs, costs, upgrade strategies, etc. are all to be questioned and an upper bound must be defined.
Regulations and restrictions must be industry-wide, not just levied against the most successful of contenders.
Embrace and extend-o man!!
Half the size of MP3, huh? On a propriatary format, that you have to license to code for I bet... Hmm.
I would like to see a knowledgebase implemented and I'd like to contribute to it.
As would I. What would it take?
I've written minimal documentation for some of my programming efforts, but it was corporate work, and so the docs were not much more readable than the code by the time the reviewers got done.
As for making something searchable, context sensitive, intuitive... Well, I know nothing about natural language querry processing, but I do like how helpful the Office 97 help system is. It's not concise, and it assumes ignorance, but it is pretty smart.
Who in freecode land knows how to structure such an effort?
Hey Moe, nyuk, nyuk!
POKE!
So if the eye is somehow damaged, but the retina is intact, then vision can be restored??
How small can something like this be made? Self contained in a pair of sunglasses - including cameras, projectors and powersource?
Ultimatelly, could these be implanted? I presume the tech is much like a TV, so there's quite a bit of power needed, as well as a non-negligible aperture size.
On the flip side - if code can be written to fry a monitor, could this fail and damage the eyes?
Woo-hoo!
I can see it now:
Instant-on Linux boxes, no more looking at clouds or little dots walking on the screen.
FlashEEPROM OS that finishes the comparison test before the 'other' OS is even done booting.
Mmmm - warm fuzzies all over.
As in BIOS??
A firmware Linux?
to die, knowing without the shadow of a doubt, that we are not alone.
What IS interesting is the question of why there exists a discrepancy between LOC/programmer in the study
Here's my guess: The people US programmers were compared against are not as sophisticated. Rather then knowing their API and using available libraries, they reinvent the wheel each and every time. They remember their academic exercises as gospel, and reimplement atoi() each time there's a need for it. They know basic control and data structures, but are not willing to roll their own, thereby requiring more code to accomplish the same task. They cut and paste rather than modularize and hide in a call.
See the taxonomy of programmer competence, and send a copy to the author of the CNN article.
It takes them significantly less time to build a building or dig a tunnel than it used to a hundred years ago. They cheat by using dynamite, jackhammers and other power tools, instead of good old fashioned elbow grease.
By that same metric, programmers are lazy as dirt.
If I can write, in a single line of code, the instruction to generate a dialog box, then I am lazy.
If I were to insist on writing the assembly instructions resulting in the same dialog box - well, I'd be stupid. It's about simplifying our job with tools.
It's truly a pity that the media is ignorant of the issues on which they report.
What the article should say is that American programmers have the best tools available. Tools that are at least twice as good as of their European counterparts. Since, with less resulting code, we manage to generate more software. I know, there'a bloatware argument here rearing it's ugly head..
But, given the right tool for the job, the reams of code needed are easily reduced to a handful of instructions. Take Java for UI implementation, Perl for text processing, C/C++ for the grunge, and you've got a great toolset.
Also, good programmers write lots of code, great programmers steal lots of code. Not only is laziness a virtue; code reuse, de-redundification of source code, modularity and OO are all sound software design.
It's just too bad that the general public, whose opinion is formed by the ignorant media, is equally ignorant of the facts.
Mostly Java at this point. Some C/C++, and looking into Delphi. As recently as two months ago, I worked with FORTRAN every day, and swatted at VB(A). Also looking for an excuse to pick up Perl and maybe Python skills on the side.
Actually, here's a kick - speaking of lines of code written: Just the other day I needed to write a really ugly if-elseif in Java... Went on for, oh hundreds of lines... I whipped up a ksh script to write it for me. Took 7 lines. Which counts? The script or the generated code??
And, while on the subject of LOC: If I use VC++6.0, and run wizards, do I get to count those gen'd lines toward my raise??
I don't think RedHat was ever given the ball to begin with. Mindcraft seems to have made only a token attempt at finding Linux tuning information.
:)
As I recall from the original story discussion, there was a single posting, from a private individual, requesting information. That request never even mentioned the fact that the comparison was to result in publication. Had they made the disclaimer, and admitted to being an 'independent' test lab - the Linux community would have surely innundated them with helpful suggestions.
In effect, they shouted a question off a mountaintop and never stuck around long enough to hear the echo.
I'm sure that the querry they submitted to RedHat was equally low-key; probably to accentuate the documentation deficit that Linux suffers.
I imagine is went something like this:
Mindcraft: "Hi, I'm Joe Shmoe. I just bought Linux and I want to fine tune it."
RedHat: "We'd be glad to help, but you need to be more specific."
Mindcraft: "Well, you're not at all helpful, are you?" CLICK!
Gee, RedHat wasn't very helpful, were they?
I'm mipfed about the graphic. A geeky herd of penguins, the leader wearing a pocket protector, marching off a cliff?? It bodes ill.
But the article makes an excellent point - the same point made by ZDNN in their otherwise favorable and objective rebuttal to the recent NT vs Linux test - that the documentation for Linux is 'expert friendly'.
A nice, searchable, online knowledgebase a'la M$ would be a boon for new converts and cutting edge hackers alike.
Not a glamorous undertaking by any stretch. Perhaps the new Academia-centric Linux 'regulatory committee' would care to tackle this one?
No one is making money "off of" anyone clicking the link. If Amazon is willing to pay /. for that link seeing usage, more power to them.
/. Win-win.
If I follow the link to read the Amazon reader reviews of the book - I get something out of it, and so does
I took a few minutes to respond to this article, and all of a sudden, life is passing me by. Isn't this always the case, has it not been the point of some of the greatest literature of all time?
Care Diem! Go live out by a Massatchussetts pond and watch ants battle it out for dear life.
This is nothing new at all, and we've always known that computers serve to accelerate things. Hell, that's what they're for.
The invention of fire made life faster. Suddenly Groag couldn't understand why his children liked antelope so much..
The printing press increased literacy - I'm sure the clergy needed some time to figure that one out.
The industial revolution is the single event most responsible for the growth of global economy, the development of cities, and the pollution explosion. Suddenly the old folks just didn't get why you lived in a one room apartment, fed a machine 16 hours a day, and got by without milking a cow.
Especially notable is that the author writes from a perspective inside the generational box, and bemoans how things have changed. "I have to reinvent myself" says he. Right. And his folks had to reinvent themselves when rock&roll first appeared, when man walked on the moon, and when we nuked Japan.
Hypertext is not a big deal. Technological advancement is a part of human life, and the accelerated rate thereof is a natural consequence. So rather than piss and moan, let's go and learn something new.