Of course there will be *some* identical code. A couple of lines here, a couple of lines there. But for nearly any function beyond the most absolutely trivial, the differences will greatly outweigh the similarities. I was once a TA for an introductory programming class, and graded student assignments. The tasks assigned were typically quite simple (e.g., "Write a program that determines whether or not a year is a leap year"). Even at this level of simplicity, cheaters (plagiarizers) tend to stick out immediately and conspicuously. Imagine how much worse it is with software that actually does something.
"Someone tell me why I can get a 15 inch LCD on my laptop with UXGA 1600x1200 pixel resolution, but can't find a 15 inch LCD monitor with the same resolution for any price."
Because most people don't want resolution that high on a screen that small. For non-portable systems, they'd rather take that same resolution and put it into a 21" display. On a laptop, they can't do that, so they have to make do with the 15".
"Original IMAX uses 70mm film to get 4x the negative area (hence they can resolve quite a bit more detail than standard film)."
Conventional 70mm movie film is 70mm wide by 5 perforations tall. IMAX is rotated 90 degrees, 70mm tall by 15 perforations wide. According to the online brochure, that is 10x the area of a conventional 35mm movie frame. (http://www.imax.com/)
National movie theater chains are starting to show mainstream films on IMAX screens.
Regal Cinemas lists a dozen IMAX locations, and Cinemark shows three locations, with 4 more under construction. Sony also has four locations. I know at least some of these theaters are showing mainstream films.
You are asking entirely the wrong question. It is never appropriate to ask, "Should I learn ?" Instead, you should ask, "Under what circumstances is it best to use ?" For nearly every language, there is a use for which it excels.
This attitude that "you kids" seem to have today of "is this language worth learning" drives me up the wall. Learning a language to the point where you can use it to do routine tasks should not take more than about 4 weeks. It's just not worth worrying about. I have used over 2 dozen programming and scripting languages, and won't hesitate to learn more.
If you know the fundamentals of software construction, you can see that most programming languages are about 95% similar. You can categorize most languages into one of a handful of classes of similar languages. Once you arrive at that point, whether or not to learn another language is almost a complete non-issue. If it fits the job, you do.
Who would run a lean, small-footprint second window manager ON TOP OF the first window manager that already takes 75% of their CPU resources? What is the world coming to? We already have window manager managers. I suppose someone might want to use Matchbox for their window manager manager window manager.
Re:Let's Get Back Our Access to the Courts
on
Copyright as Cudgel
·
· Score: 1
"the framers of our constitution didn't see that these huge corporations would have the power via money they now have."
Actually, they did. Just the other day, somebody posted a whole page full of quotes by such leading figures as James Madison, Thomas Jefferson, etc.
"Disney can keep making money from Mickey Mouse forever."
I have no problem with Disney making money on Mickey Mouse forever. It's even okay with me if Disney keeps trying to make money from specific titles such as "Steamboat Willie" forever. Where I draw the line is when they use their congressional clout to prevent anyone else from accessing that cultural material forever.
"- The Google cache is causing publishers to lose control over their material."
No more than the publisher loses control of a book, magazine or newspaper when somebody buys it off the shelf. Google is presenting the publisher's words as they were originally published. This is exactly the same as if you were to acquire a 1st edition of a text after the publisher may or may not have changed its content in a later edition.
I think it's a GOOD THING when online publishers cannot invisibly retract or retroactively alter what they print. Such invisible alterations may have subtle ramifications such as obscuring or distorting the message contained in commentary about the original story.
I'll be the first to admit I don't know much about building systems. However, those that do know tell me that a good place to start is AMD's Technical Resources pages (one link away from www.amd.com). I gather that, as far as motherboards go, (a) you can't go wrong with Asus and (b) the most important factor is the chipset (AMD 760 or Via KT). The Tyan Tiger is recommended for dual-processor systems. That's about the extent of my knowledge regarding motherboards.
What's stable enough for real work? My Athlon currently shows uptime of 47 days. Interestingly, I upgraded the OS about a month and a half ago. I don't shut down or reboot this machine except to upgrade it; I typically go for a couple of months without even logging out. I don't even quit Emacs every month. Is that what you mean by stable?
I do use this system for what could fairly be called "real work"; I usually use the compute cluster only for jobs that require more than 512 MB or aren't X86 compatible.
I have 2 PCs, both 500-MHz (so not too old). Red Hat 5.2 and 6.2 both install perfectly on both machines. Debian installs perfectly in console mode. But I cannot for the life of me get Debian (Potato or Woody) to properly run X on either. If anyone has a pointer to a "really damn good HOWTO" for this, I'd love to see it.
... because when OS X kernel panics, it just barfs text straight to the screen, right over the graphical desktop. If you've ever seen SunOS or Solaris console messages tromp over the X-Windows display, you know what I'm talking about.
"It frightens me that we allow these sort of games to be played by our youth"
So don't allow your kids to play these kinds of games. Duh. The answer to mature subject matter is attentive parenting, not government curbs on basic rights.
This point is so basic... I don't even know why I'm letting you jerk my chain. You can't be serious. I should just mod "-1 troll" and move on.
"What the hell are you mad about? You say you do not swap music files, and all your music is legally obtained."
I'm mad that the RIAA is resorting to dirty tricks that will impede my (and everyone else's) use of lawfully obtained music in the name of a bogus war on "piracy". Their revenues are down 10% this year? Be still my beating heart; my whole industry's revenues are down 30%.
Could it maybe, possibly, be the case that the drop in revenues in the music industry has more to do with the fact that (a) we are in a recession, (b) their product is overpriced, and (c) they insult their customers rather than try to serve them, than it has with people illegally copying music?
I'm mad that the RIAA chooses to assume that we consumers are all criminals. Talk about the pot calling the kettle black! The real or imagined economic harm they claim to suffer from song swapping cannot be but a tiny fraction of the economic harm they themselves have inflicted on musicians (through exploitive contracts, spurious bookkeeping and even outright theft) and the public (through gouging and price fixing). That sort of hypocrisy really gets to me.
In a nutshell, I'm pissed off because, even though I'm not one of the people the RIAA is scapegoating right now, I will still suffer the loss of civil rights, higher prices, decreased utility, and societal harm that result from their campaign of greed (thinly and misleadingly disguised as a campaign against piracy).
This is the last straw. My music collection contains about 300 CDs, but the buck stops here. The RIAA has gone too far. Actually, they went too far quite a while ago; this is just an arbitrary point far beyond acceptable.
I do not download MP3s. I do not participate in file swapping. I do have enough money to buy all the CDs I want. And I am opting out.
The US is a nation of the people, by the people, and for the people; and the people have spoken. The people, by clear and obvious consensus, have decided that file swapping, ripping-mixing-burning, and format- and media-shifting are acceptable uses. It is up to the music creators to learn how to live with and profit from these fair uses without crushing the rights of the consumers. It is up to our government to recognize and protect this expression of our civil rights. Innovation on the part of musicians and their collaborators is called for. Widespread litigation and repressive new legislation is not.
I will not add one more cent to the coffers of any RIAA-affiliated music company as long as this insanity persists. From now on, my money supports only those artists that respect me and my rights. And I will listen to my legally acquired music whenever, however, and in whatever format I want.
You are defending the monoculture of one company providing a single, one-size-fits-all product for everyone. A product that they change whenever they want to, by the way. A monoculture of supplier.
What's wrong with a monoculture of well-defined standards instead? You can use any word processor you want, as long as it saves documents in "THIS" well-defined file format. Ditto for spreadsheets, presentations, address books, web browsers, web servers, etc. It's still reliable, compatible, and interoperable -- perhaps more so than that which is proposed by the single supplier who occasionally decides to redefine what they provide. Call it a monoculture of data, if you will.
As a user already familiar with MS Office, I had no difficulty at all learning how to use StarOffice. The migration was almost completely painless. The only hangup I've hit so far is that OLE controls on speadsheets (buttons, checkboxes, etc.) don't translate -- but that's a very esoteric feature. 90% of users will not see any significant difference.
DVD has significantly lower resolution than even 35mm film, not to mention 70mm. Besides which, unless you plan to watch your DVD on an LCD display with a 1:1 mapping of LCD pixels to DVD pixels, you are going to get digital-to-analog conversion and scaling artifacts anyway. If you are going to see it, it will probably be much better in the theater.
You may safely blow your $9.50, secure in the knowledge that it will still be better than what you'd see at home.
I agree with all posters that say to go to college. However, not everyone is ready to go to college at the same time. If you go before you *really know* why you are going, you will probably lack motivation, not do well, and piss away $thousands in tuition while you would rather be somewhere else.
On the other hand, a part-time sysadmin position while you are in college is an excellent way to get your foot in the door, even for non-sysadmin positions.
So my advice is, figure out what you really want to do, and do that. Take no action before its time, and take the right action for the time. When possible.:-)
"There is a court case to the Supreme Court that is worth supporting, Ashcroft vs. Eldred [harvard.edu]. They are trying to fight the Sonny Bono act. If this act get repealed, Mickey Mouse and other copyrighted materials will become public domain."
Not only does this argument hurt the case of Public Domain (vs. Disney), it is just plain NOT TRUE. Mickey Mouse WILL NOT BECOME PUBLIC DOMIAN. Mickey Mouse will continue to be a protected trademark of Disney, as long as they use it. DISNEY DOES NOT NEED THE BONO ACT TO PROTECT ITS TRADEMARK USE OF MICKEY MOUSE. What will enter the public domain are specific works containing Mickey, e.g., Steamboat Willie. It's not the same thing at all.
Slashdot Mirror
Of course there will be *some* identical code. A couple of lines here, a couple of lines there. But for nearly any function beyond the most absolutely trivial, the differences will greatly outweigh the similarities. I was once a TA for an introductory programming class, and graded student assignments. The tasks assigned were typically quite simple (e.g., "Write a program that determines whether or not a year is a leap year"). Even at this level of simplicity, cheaters (plagiarizers) tend to stick out immediately and conspicuously. Imagine how much worse it is with software that actually does something.
"Someone tell me why I can get a 15 inch LCD on my
laptop with UXGA 1600x1200 pixel resolution, but
can't find a 15 inch LCD monitor with the same
resolution for any price."
Because most people don't want resolution that high on a screen that small. For non-portable systems, they'd rather take that same resolution and put it into a 21" display. On a laptop, they can't do that, so they have to make do with the 15".
"Original IMAX uses 70mm film to get 4x the negative area (hence they can resolve quite a bit more detail than standard film)."
Conventional 70mm movie film is 70mm wide by 5 perforations tall. IMAX is rotated 90 degrees, 70mm tall by 15 perforations wide. According to the online brochure, that is 10x the area of a conventional 35mm movie frame. (http://www.imax.com/)
National movie theater chains are starting to show mainstream films on IMAX screens. Regal Cinemas lists a dozen IMAX locations, and Cinemark shows three locations, with 4 more under construction. Sony also has four locations. I know at least some of these theaters are showing mainstream films.
You are asking entirely the wrong question. It is never appropriate to ask, "Should I learn ?" Instead, you should ask, "Under what circumstances is it best to use ?" For nearly every language, there is a use for which it excels.
This attitude that "you kids" seem to have today of "is this language worth learning" drives me up the wall. Learning a language to the point where you can use it to do routine tasks should not take more than about 4 weeks. It's just not worth worrying about. I have used over 2 dozen programming and scripting languages, and won't hesitate to learn more.
If you know the fundamentals of software construction, you can see that most programming languages are about 95% similar. You can categorize most languages into one of a handful of classes of similar languages. Once you arrive at that point, whether or not to learn another language is almost a complete non-issue. If it fits the job, you do.
Some comments about Delta Tao games:
Strategic Conquest (not Command)
Spaceward Ho! - Being ported to OS X
Eric's Ultimate Solitaire - Was ported to Linux by Loki
Who would run a lean, small-footprint second window manager ON TOP OF the first window manager that already takes 75% of their CPU resources? What is the world coming to? We already have window manager managers. I suppose someone might want to use Matchbox for their window manager manager window manager.
"the framers of our constitution didn't see that these huge corporations would have the power via money they now have."
Actually, they did. Just the other day, somebody posted a whole page full of quotes by such leading figures as James Madison, Thomas Jefferson, etc.
"Disney can keep making money from Mickey Mouse forever."
I have no problem with Disney making money on Mickey Mouse forever. It's even okay with me if Disney keeps trying to make money from specific titles such as "Steamboat Willie" forever. Where I draw the line is when they use their congressional clout to prevent anyone else from accessing that cultural material forever.
"- The Google cache is causing publishers to lose control over their material."
No more than the publisher loses control of a book, magazine or newspaper when somebody buys it off the shelf. Google is presenting the publisher's words as they were originally published. This is exactly the same as if you were to acquire a 1st edition of a text after the publisher may or may not have changed its content in a later edition.
I think it's a GOOD THING when online publishers cannot invisibly retract or retroactively alter what they print. Such invisible alterations may have subtle ramifications such as obscuring or distorting the message contained in commentary about the original story.
I'll be the first to admit I don't know much about building systems. However, those that do know tell me that a good place to start is AMD's Technical Resources pages (one link away from www.amd.com). I gather that, as far as motherboards go, (a) you can't go wrong with Asus and (b) the most important factor is the chipset (AMD 760 or Via KT). The Tyan Tiger is recommended for dual-processor systems. That's about the extent of my knowledge regarding motherboards.
What's stable enough for real work? My Athlon currently shows uptime of 47 days. Interestingly, I upgraded the OS about a month and a half ago. I don't shut down or reboot this machine except to upgrade it; I typically go for a couple of months without even logging out. I don't even quit Emacs every month. Is that what you mean by stable?
I do use this system for what could fairly be called "real work"; I usually use the compute cluster only for jobs that require more than 512 MB or aren't X86 compatible.
I have 2 PCs, both 500-MHz (so not too old). Red Hat 5.2 and 6.2 both install perfectly on both machines. Debian installs perfectly in console mode. But I cannot for the life of me get Debian (Potato or Woody) to properly run X on either. If anyone has a pointer to a "really damn good HOWTO" for this, I'd love to see it.
Bones, is that you? :-D
... because when OS X kernel panics, it just barfs text straight to the screen, right over the graphical desktop. If you've ever seen SunOS or Solaris console messages tromp over the X-Windows display, you know what I'm talking about.
Anyone who blocks Yahoo.com won't get any mail from me. I like Yahoo's web mail, and use it in preference to the one I actually pay for.
"It frightens me that we allow these sort of games to be played by our youth"
So don't allow your kids to play these kinds of games. Duh. The answer to mature subject matter is attentive parenting, not government curbs on basic rights.
This point is so basic... I don't even know why I'm letting you jerk my chain. You can't be serious. I should just mod "-1 troll" and move on.
"What the hell are you mad about? You say you do not swap music files, and all your music is legally obtained."
I'm mad that the RIAA is resorting to dirty tricks that will impede my (and everyone else's) use of lawfully obtained music in the name of a bogus war on "piracy". Their revenues are down 10% this year? Be still my beating heart; my whole industry's revenues are down 30%.
Could it maybe, possibly, be the case that the drop in revenues in the music industry has more to do with the fact that (a) we are in a recession, (b) their product is overpriced, and (c) they insult their customers rather than try to serve them, than it has with people illegally copying music?
I'm mad that the RIAA chooses to assume that we consumers are all criminals. Talk about the pot calling the kettle black! The real or imagined economic harm they claim to suffer from song swapping cannot be but a tiny fraction of the economic harm they themselves have inflicted on musicians (through exploitive contracts, spurious bookkeeping and even outright theft) and the public (through gouging and price fixing). That sort of hypocrisy really gets to me.
In a nutshell, I'm pissed off because, even though I'm not one of the people the RIAA is scapegoating right now, I will still suffer the loss of civil rights, higher prices, decreased utility, and societal harm that result from their campaign of greed (thinly and misleadingly disguised as a campaign against piracy).
This is the last straw. My music collection contains about 300 CDs, but the buck stops here. The RIAA has gone too far. Actually, they went too far quite a while ago; this is just an arbitrary point far beyond acceptable.
I do not download MP3s. I do not participate in file swapping. I do have enough money to buy all the CDs I want. And I am opting out.
The US is a nation of the people, by the people, and for the people; and the people have spoken. The people, by clear and obvious consensus, have decided that file swapping, ripping-mixing-burning, and format- and media-shifting are acceptable uses. It is up to the music creators to learn how to live with and profit from these fair uses without crushing the rights of the consumers. It is up to our government to recognize and protect this expression of our civil rights. Innovation on the part of musicians and their collaborators is called for. Widespread litigation and repressive new legislation is not.
I will not add one more cent to the coffers of any RIAA-affiliated music company as long as this insanity persists. From now on, my money supports only those artists that respect me and my rights. And I will listen to my legally acquired music whenever, however, and in whatever format I want.
And the RIAA can rot in hell.
Never heard of him.
Gee, could that be why he isn't selling any albums?
You are defending the monoculture of one company providing a single, one-size-fits-all product for everyone. A product that they change whenever they want to, by the way. A monoculture of supplier.
What's wrong with a monoculture of well-defined standards instead? You can use any word processor you want, as long as it saves documents in "THIS" well-defined file format. Ditto for spreadsheets, presentations, address books, web browsers, web servers, etc. It's still reliable, compatible, and interoperable -- perhaps more so than that which is proposed by the single supplier who occasionally decides to redefine what they provide. Call it a monoculture of data, if you will.
You had it almost right. :-)
As a user already familiar with MS Office, I had no difficulty at all learning how to use StarOffice. The migration was almost completely painless. The only hangup I've hit so far is that OLE controls on speadsheets (buttons, checkboxes, etc.) don't translate -- but that's a very esoteric feature. 90% of users will not see any significant difference.
DVD has significantly lower resolution than even 35mm film, not to mention 70mm. Besides which, unless you plan to watch your DVD on an LCD display with a 1:1 mapping of LCD pixels to DVD pixels, you are going to get digital-to-analog conversion and scaling artifacts anyway. If you are going to see it, it will probably be much better in the theater.
You may safely blow your $9.50, secure in the knowledge that it will still be better than what you'd see at home.
And you'll buy the DVD anyway.
I agree with all posters that say to go to college. However, not everyone is ready to go to college at the same time. If you go before you *really know* why you are going, you will probably lack motivation, not do well, and piss away $thousands in tuition while you would rather be somewhere else.
:-)
On the other hand, a part-time sysadmin position while you are in college is an excellent way to get your foot in the door, even for non-sysadmin positions.
So my advice is, figure out what you really want to do, and do that. Take no action before its time, and take the right action for the time. When possible.
"There is a court case to the Supreme Court that is worth supporting, Ashcroft vs. Eldred [harvard.edu]. They are trying to fight the Sonny Bono act. If this act get repealed, Mickey Mouse and other copyrighted materials will become public domain."
Not only does this argument hurt the case of Public Domain (vs. Disney), it is just plain NOT TRUE. Mickey Mouse WILL NOT BECOME PUBLIC DOMIAN. Mickey Mouse will continue to be a protected trademark of Disney, as long as they use it. DISNEY DOES NOT NEED THE BONO ACT TO PROTECT ITS TRADEMARK USE OF MICKEY MOUSE. What will enter the public domain are specific works containing Mickey, e.g., Steamboat Willie. It's not the same thing at all.