Indeed, practices like Extreme Programming (what a silly name) engender a zero liability situation. Of course I doubt that anyone strictly follows the guidelines involved, but it certainly helps. Your firm's laudable practice of strict control doesn't really exist at certain places. For instance, Microsoft's guidelines suggest not testing allocated memory if it's NULL in the production version of an app -- the exception catching system will grab it, right?
Regardless, the lemon laws can't hurt anything that is free as in beer. As was pointed out earlier, the GPL is a gift, not a contract -- it gives you rights, dependent on certain conditions. Someone else mentioned it being in a perpetual beta; that, too, is insurance, though not everything is unfinished.
The lemon laws will serve more to deter advertising scams and false claims. For instance, if Microsoft said that Access is enough for all database needs (which it has the sense not to), a hopsital could then sue them when it crashed and muddled up records. MySQL just says "I'm a database, look at my tested statistics and my source code -- decide for yourself."
Maybe adding something new that makes the software stop working is a bad idea. Perhaps a mail to root@localhost a la cron would be a good idea, but software that auto-updates or auto-dies is a bad idea. What if a Linux kernel auto-updated to 2.4.14? (Or was it.15? The one with the serious problem, you get the idea.) A monthly e-mail (which can be turned off, and the e-mail tells you how to turn it off) that provides the URL of the applications patches would in fact be useful; there's plenty of software which doesn't merit a subscription to a mailing list yet still could pose a security or stability risk.
Ultimately, there's no substitute for a competent administrator, but a bit of warning can't really hurt anybody. Shutting it down automagically takes the mickey out of the software and would be a Bad Thing.
I actually wrote a letter to my senator (Lugar, R-IN)...about Kevin Mitnick. Alright, so I was all of 13. But I got a personalized response. Lugar is actually a good guy (I met him -- wearing a 2600 IDEA shirt) so I can't account for your negative experience. Maybe they know you too well?
Means not playing the game. I don't think there should be any illusions of being ungeeky. You're pretending to be someone else on a computer. If your girlfriend/significant-other/voice-in-head doesn't make fun of you, then they're a geek, too. I mean, come on, how geeky is that? And posted to Slashdot? You, my friend, are living in a lie.
The cetera are no namespaces, an irritating class naming scheme (I'm a lower-case man myself), no templates (I may have just not learned this -- I must confess [as other posters have duly pointed out] that I gave up on Java rather early), and the return to C-style I/O. I was just getting used to streams, too...
I shouldn't shortchange Java, though. Java's multiple inheritance is easier to grok than C++'s, so it gets props for that. And the JIT compiling wasn't an altogether bad thing, just not enough. Java reminds me of the sub-notebook computers -- it's just looking for a use, but it can't find one. It's not really powerful or linguistically complete (that's an odd extension of programming 'language') to be used for the development of critical applications, but it's also not as light-weight or simple as JavaScript or (the hardly light-weight or simple) Perl.
I was waiting for this to happen. The two things between Java and me are non-native code and some OOP problems (no operator overloads, etc). It's good to see new work being done on the VM side of things. Now I have to consider JSP as a possibility -- good good good!
Oof. So IP is good when it protects your interests (Free and Open software), but it's bad when it protects other people's interests (monopolies)? Open Source is a kind of monopoly (more a virus); anything it touches becomes free (yes, I know, that is an oversimplification; I don't agree with the point that I'm arguing, I'm just making it). Some people still sell software, not just the services that come with it.
Anyway, yeah. I think it is actually in poor taste that the code was copied, but who, in reality, gives two shits about licenses? I don't read the EULA for Microsoft products; I don't read the GPL for Gnu/Linux stuff. I use BSD/Linux/etc. because they're free, because they're stable, and because they're more suitable as a server. Bollocks to "Free" and "Open" software.
The thing I've noticed about using command-line development tools is that you have to learn more than one tool. Gdb, gcc, lint, xemacs, manpages, and texinfo only begin to have the functionality that is found in Microsoft Visual C++. IDEs, I find, speed up the development and debugging process -- I spend less time reading (and rereading) manpages and more time writing and debugging code. I'm at the "newbie" level for all of the aforementioned tools (gdb, etc.) and am simply unable to do some things that I could do in MSVC++. I predict, however, that I'll be able to more than I could in MSVC++ once I know how to use all of the development tools I have on my *NIX machines.
In short, a variety of programs can do a lot more than the SuperApp of Doom, but the SuperApp of Doom puts it all into one place.
What's extremely interesting, is that the government subsidized initial railroad developments. Hundreds of thousands of acres were given away for free to railroad companies, and many of them failed! But a failed railroad company leaves behind tracks, and so the railroad system was built.
The difference between now and then is that instead of being entirely government subsidized, venture and stock capital are what helped to lay fiber across America and the World. I predict that, within the next two decades, fiber will become commonplace; not run to our houses -- are railroads run to your house? -- but enough so that any neighborhood will have at least a T3 backbone. (Yes, I know that it's a lot easier to run fiber than it is railroad, but I think that you can't expect everyone to get modern wiring (telephone and electic), much less fiber. Rural people and people who live in poorer areas will simply be treated worse. That socioeconomic problem will persist regardless of bandwidth, though. More well-to-do neighborhoods will most likely get an OC-3 at their doorstep, but the average guy in Newark, New Jersey or Gnaw Bone, Indiana won't.)
Ever optimistic, Mike Greenberg
Re:Recycled story on ABC's part
on
Lightning Research
·
· Score: 0, Offtopic
Yeah, this is definitely old. I saw the same guys (though I didn't get to see them "high-five" each other so enthusiastically multiple times) on TLC or Discovery. ABC's never really broken scientific news, so what do you expect?
What really surprises me is that I actually happened to see this -- I never watch TV!
I was taught Scheme in my first real CS class, but I learned BASIC and C on my own long before. A lot of code people will end up working on will either be stupid VB or legacy C.
Anyway, I thought Scheme was good because it's very abstract -- it's based around mathematics and (to a certain extent) symbolic logic. It's also really, really simple: (cmd1 arg1 (cmd2 arg2 arg3) arg4), and so forth. Never in Scheme did I see something and think, "Well, that's counter intuitive." After Scheme I recommend going with real-world choices -- C and C++. I've never taken Java as a serious option, because it feels to distant from the computer.
I must agree that CDC didn't seem to be very accurate, and am shocked to learn of that ad campaign. I do, however, trust the Department of Education report.
The statistics, however, are trivial, anyway. My point remains the same even if school violence is on the rise.
America has slowly become more aware of school violence in the past decade. This is perhaps a poor assessment of the reality: "less that 1% of all homicides among school-aged children (5-19 years of age) occur in or around school grounds or on the way to and from school." In addition, about 2% of all serious disciplinary offenses occurring in schools, during school hours were violent altercations involving a firearm or other weapon; approximately 105 violent deaths (1994 to 1996) (85 of which considered murder) occurred on campuses in a two year period, not all of them necessarily deliberate or with a gun. Perhaps a crusade against heart disease would save more lives than against school shootings, but the vivid imagery of "the media" presents school violence as a serious problem. While school violence is a problem, it is not the problem; the value placed upon school violence is absurd. Despite any irrationality behind its hubbub, school violence illuminates a more complex problem than bloodshed in schools. School violence demonstrates an utter depravity and lack of humanitarianism in the current generation; the carnage in schools represents a more acute difficulty than the deaths of 105 students. The carnage in schools represents the cruelty of an idle humanity.
America has, in a sense, become too luxurious for its own good. It has stagnated. Up until the end of World War II, America was occupied. The American Revolution, westerly expansion, the Civil War, industrialization, the Spanish-American War, World War I, a quick bout of depression, and World War II all kept America's hands full for almost 200 years. America is similar, in many ways, to the Roman Empire: it grew and grew, always occupied with an invasion (three Punic Wars kept Rome busy for almost 200 years, for instance) or further expansion. Rome's breaking point was reached, however, and its modus operandi failed it. An idle Senate and great class-battles weakened Rome, allowing northern barbarians to take over. The U.S. grew and was constantly occupied, mainly with fighting, but has reached the limit of the capitalist mode; like Rome, the classes have massive contrast, and, like Rome, there is no overriding societal goal. In short, America has ADHD and nothing to do.
The only solution for so great a problem - the dawdling of a society - is collapse. Society is a phoenix, and it hastily approaches its nadir. America has two choices: either attempt a societal, cultural, and political revolution and suffer the fate of Bolshevik Russia; or accept its own demise gracefully and come out that much the better for it.
We use contractors to help with some of our operations. Some of these contractors will have access to our databases of Subscriber Information on a temporary basis for specific tasks. TiVo also uses third parties to help with certain aspects of its operations, which may require disclosure of your Subscriber Information to them. For example, TiVo may use a third party to communicate with you (via telephone, email, or letter) about your account or upcoming features or services, to mail rebate checks, to process and collect payment for your TiVo Service via your credit card, to generate demographic profiles based on Subscriber Information of current TiVo subscribers, and to perform other work that we may need to outsource. TiVo contractually binds these contractors and third parties to use your Subscriber Information only as necessary to perform the services they are asked to perform; such contractors and third parties are legally liable for misuse of Subscriber Information.
Now, I don't even have a TiVo, but if I did, I certainly wouldn't appreciate getting any extra phone calls about it. I must admit, however, that TiVo's policy is suprisingly understanding of consumer concerns and seems rather responsible. God help us all if the AOL/Time-Warner/Satan partnership buys them up, though.
I thinkt he whole idea of "getting" and "dropping" files and having an inventory is fantastic. Having a series of already known MUD commands for file manipulation makes file-handling rather easy. Throw in regexp support in your get statements, ditch the whole "go north" thing, and this is a great shell. Kudos for the whole MUD thing, anyway, though, as I find it very nifty.
The concept of -- in fact, the necessity for -- time zones is a tribute to human ingenuity. So when you say, "Hello from millenium later than you!" you should recognize why we have them; we have them because we have surpassed our natural boundaries and can travel at speeds relative to the revolution of the earth. To what will we travel relative to next? Our orbit? The sun's movement? The movement of light itself? Something as yet unimagined? Yes, but let's take it one step at a time, shall we?
What surprises me is that they deem a revelation of source code a security risk. That, if anything, shows a lack of faith in OSS.
As much as it may chagrin me to admit it, Microsoft has some thirty-five thousand people working for it, and while they may not be able to or want to audit their code in an OpenBSD-like manner, I am sure they have an entire security department. And I am also pretty sure that they know that security through obscurity doesn't work.
My point, and I do have one, is that Microsoft does have its stuff together, to a certain extent. W2K and NT4, while not suitable for an Internet server, do well in a Microsoft only Intranet environment. If the government gets scared because of 9x or NTKRNL code being let out, what must they think about things who's code has always been available? Yes, it allows for public contributions and improvements, but it also allows for public analysis, scrutiny, and discovery of bugs.
Definitely not a Karma whore, Mike "My Bucket's Got a Hole in It" Greenberg
I know as well some people who install for @home, and they get to to whatever they want. @home has some "anti-virus software" which is a backdoor that they can use to "expedite the troubleshooting process." They never install it. On top of that, they repeatedly tell customers that a firewall will make them more secure and will be very cheap; they're thinking about selling some Windows 98 firewall software in-house to (well, make more money, really) let users get firewalls more easily.
On a side note, a lot of people are using routers for their DSL/Cable access that have firewalls built into firmware, with (LAN only!) remote administration and updates. Good stuff, for a guy who can't afford the overhead of/doesn't know how to run a software firewall.
Procedural languages are taught first, and for a reason: they mirror lower mathematics better than a functional language. The concepts of functions and recursion aren't even present in mathematics until high Algebra and Calculus, the latter only in Calculus.
If someone learned all the math they were going to, and then began programming, functional languages would be rather easy to understand. If someone, like myself, learned QBASIC when they were seven or eight -- when they knew only lower mathematics -- they'd find functional programming obtuse and clumsy, useful only for higher math.
I see no flaw with this system, though. Imperative languages don't tend to lend themselves to very high math and certain functional tricks. Functional languages do. Each has their place, but both are versatile enough to do the job of the other (perhaps not as well).
On a side note, Scheme is the first language taught here at IU, in Intro to Computer Science, and no one really likes it. We've got Dybvig here at IU (big guy with ANSI Scheme), but that doesn't seem to help people's appreciation. Maybe some good IDEs and GUI toolkits would bring it more into the mainstream. I doubt it, though.
Well, with this story being posted on the internet in all sorts of places, including mainstream news sites, this can't go unnoticed. I would be utterly shocked if this bill made it to signature; it'd be a huge target for challenging before the Supreme Court, too. The ACLU'll be all over this.
Mike "Thanks for the (Meaningless) Input" Greenberg
Perhaps I'm an exception. I'm Mike Greenberg; I'm 15 and go to Bloomington High School North in Indiana. I'd call myself a programmer, I guess. I can program in C/C++, Visual/QBASIC (QBASIC I learned when I was 8, Visual Basic when I was 12), Perl, and a modicum of Intel architecture assembler. I mostly program in C (occaisionally C++) and Perl, though Perl is more for quick and dirty scripting, while C and C++ are for programming utilities for myself. My skills are adequate, but not at a professional level (merely good enough to write programs that will take down my school's network via D/DoS and various mischievous things like that).
The majority of my programming language skill is self-taught; I read a book, then I exercise the knowledge (and, most often, read the book again). I took a class at my local college (Indiana University), last year, in C++, much of which focused on MFC, which was my only formal education in programming (I wrote about that experience on an article a while back about ageism).
On top of all that, though, I am incredibly interested in the inner workings of things. I work as a tech at PC Max, a local computer store, where I repair and build computers. I plan on learning electronics and delving even deeper into the bowels of computers. Now, none of my computing friends have the same vigor towards the internals (so far as I know). While some are excellent programmers, they are less interested in the guts than I.
In all truth, I have no idea where I'm going with this.:) I guess I'm trying to say that it's difficult to generalize an entire generation. From what I've seen of most of my parents' generation, they're all inept technophobes. But I know that's not true.
I'm a 15 year-old, and I'm going into my Sophomore year at Bloomington High School North, in Indiana. We, naturally, have (slow: a shared ISDN line or two for the entire school system) Internet access, and at least one computer in every room. There are labs in the library and almost every other department. There is, however, no real computer instruction; only basic, "this is a mouse" instruction is given. In the vocational school there are more serious classes, but those make it difficult to graduate for an academically oriented student.
The most frequent use of our computer system is to check Hotmail and other web-mails. The second most frequent use is to play the (classic) game, Drug Wars. A distant third would be looking up books in the library's on-line catalog and doing research for school on the Internet. Fourth would be messing with the network.
That's the basis of my opinions about computers in schools. My opinions differ from those of the article, though. The Calvert school, in Baltimore, seems to be an all-around better school (and is, most likely, private) than most public schools. (Public schools in America, should you not have children or live outside of the States, are abysmal; apathetic or misguided teachers and officials are abound, with corruption and stupidy in spades.) The article talks about possible developmental hazards; of course there are developmental dangers in forcing children to use computers. There's developmental hazards in forcing children to do anything. I must, however, digress.
Computers can be, and often are, useful tools. As a "computer person," I have rather poor handwriting and somewhat exceptional typing ability. I type all of my schoolwork. Were I to do otherwise, there would be a noticable drop in the quality of my work. However, my classmates prefer to write things by hand, as that's what they're more comfortable with. Unfortunately, because computers are the "wave of the future," we are often times forced to have Internet resources when writing reports and papers. Again, I'd best digress.
In conclusion (finally), computers and the Internet are fabulous tools. That, however, does not mean that they are the be-all, end-all of research and learning. America's public school system would be able to afford the classrooms and teachers (should they be available; the education industry has a gigantic demand for teachers and a rather small supply) that it needs if it would take the Internet out of classrooms and put teachers in.
Mike "Excuse the Rant, It's Just That I Care" Greenberg
If I bought a house, I wouldn't expect the architectural blueprints...
Actually, when you buy a house you do get the blueprints. Access to them, rather. There's a city department (Zoning? I dunno.) that holds the blueprints of all of the buildings, and you can ask them for yours. Do it, it's fun!
Slashdot Mirror
Indeed, practices like Extreme Programming (what a silly name) engender a zero liability situation. Of course I doubt that anyone strictly follows the guidelines involved, but it certainly helps. Your firm's laudable practice of strict control doesn't really exist at certain places. For instance, Microsoft's guidelines suggest not testing allocated memory if it's NULL in the production version of an app -- the exception catching system will grab it, right?
Regardless, the lemon laws can't hurt anything that is free as in beer. As was pointed out earlier, the GPL is a gift, not a contract -- it gives you rights, dependent on certain conditions. Someone else mentioned it being in a perpetual beta; that, too, is insurance, though not everything is unfinished.
The lemon laws will serve more to deter advertising scams and false claims. For instance, if Microsoft said that Access is enough for all database needs (which it has the sense not to), a hopsital could then sue them when it crashed and muddled up records. MySQL just says "I'm a database, look at my tested statistics and my source code -- decide for yourself."
Mike GreenbergMaybe adding something new that makes the software stop working is a bad idea. Perhaps a mail to root@localhost a la cron would be a good idea, but software that auto-updates or auto-dies is a bad idea. What if a Linux kernel auto-updated to 2.4.14? (Or was it .15? The one with the serious problem, you get the idea.) A monthly e-mail (which can be turned off, and the e-mail tells you how to turn it off) that provides the URL of the applications patches would in fact be useful; there's plenty of software which doesn't merit a subscription to a mailing list yet still could pose a security or stability risk.
Ultimately, there's no substitute for a competent administrator, but a bit of warning can't really hurt anybody. Shutting it down automagically takes the mickey out of the software and would be a Bad Thing.
Mike.I actually wrote a letter to my senator (Lugar, R-IN)...about Kevin Mitnick. Alright, so I was all of 13. But I got a personalized response. Lugar is actually a good guy (I met him -- wearing a 2600 IDEA shirt) so I can't account for your negative experience. Maybe they know you too well?
Mike.Means not playing the game. I don't think there should be any illusions of being ungeeky. You're pretending to be someone else on a computer. If your girlfriend/significant-other/voice-in-head doesn't make fun of you, then they're a geek, too. I mean, come on, how geeky is that? And posted to Slashdot? You, my friend, are living in a lie.
Mike.
...while driving.
The cetera are no namespaces, an irritating class naming scheme (I'm a lower-case man myself), no templates (I may have just not learned this -- I must confess [as other posters have duly pointed out] that I gave up on Java rather early), and the return to C-style I/O. I was just getting used to streams, too...
I shouldn't shortchange Java, though. Java's multiple inheritance is easier to grok than C++'s, so it gets props for that. And the JIT compiling wasn't an altogether bad thing, just not enough. Java reminds me of the sub-notebook computers -- it's just looking for a use, but it can't find one. It's not really powerful or linguistically complete (that's an odd extension of programming 'language') to be used for the development of critical applications, but it's also not as light-weight or simple as JavaScript or (the hardly light-weight or simple) Perl.
MikeI was waiting for this to happen. The two things between Java and me are non-native code and some OOP problems (no operator overloads, etc). It's good to see new work being done on the VM side of things. Now I have to consider JSP as a possibility -- good good good!
Mike.
My movement isn't real; it's artificial. Synthetic. My movement is like nylon, only it moves more.
Mike Greenberg
Oof. So IP is good when it protects your interests (Free and Open software), but it's bad when it protects other people's interests (monopolies)? Open Source is a kind of monopoly (more a virus); anything it touches becomes free (yes, I know, that is an oversimplification; I don't agree with the point that I'm arguing, I'm just making it). Some people still sell software, not just the services that come with it.
Anyway, yeah. I think it is actually in poor taste that the code was copied, but who, in reality, gives two shits about licenses? I don't read the EULA for Microsoft products; I don't read the GPL for Gnu/Linux stuff. I use BSD/Linux/etc. because they're free, because they're stable, and because they're more suitable as a server. Bollocks to "Free" and "Open" software.
Not really this abrasive,
Mike Greenberg.
The thing I've noticed about using command-line development tools is that you have to learn more than one tool. Gdb, gcc, lint, xemacs, manpages, and texinfo only begin to have the functionality that is found in Microsoft Visual C++. IDEs, I find, speed up the development and debugging process -- I spend less time reading (and rereading) manpages and more time writing and debugging code. I'm at the "newbie" level for all of the aforementioned tools (gdb, etc.) and am simply unable to do some things that I could do in MSVC++. I predict, however, that I'll be able to more than I could in MSVC++ once I know how to use all of the development tools I have on my *NIX machines.
In short, a variety of programs can do a lot more than the SuperApp of Doom, but the SuperApp of Doom puts it all into one place.
Mike.
What's extremely interesting, is that the government subsidized initial railroad developments. Hundreds of thousands of acres were given away for free to railroad companies, and many of them failed! But a failed railroad company leaves behind tracks, and so the railroad system was built.
The difference between now and then is that instead of being entirely government subsidized, venture and stock capital are what helped to lay fiber across America and the World. I predict that, within the next two decades, fiber will become commonplace; not run to our houses -- are railroads run to your house? -- but enough so that any neighborhood will have at least a T3 backbone. (Yes, I know that it's a lot easier to run fiber than it is railroad, but I think that you can't expect everyone to get modern wiring (telephone and electic), much less fiber. Rural people and people who live in poorer areas will simply be treated worse. That socioeconomic problem will persist regardless of bandwidth, though. More well-to-do neighborhoods will most likely get an OC-3 at their doorstep, but the average guy in Newark, New Jersey or Gnaw Bone, Indiana won't.)
Ever optimistic,
Mike Greenberg
Yeah, this is definitely old. I saw the same guys (though I didn't get to see them "high-five" each other so enthusiastically multiple times) on TLC or Discovery. ABC's never really broken scientific news, so what do you expect?
What really surprises me is that I actually happened to see this -- I never watch TV!
I was taught Scheme in my first real CS class, but I learned BASIC and C on my own long before. A lot of code people will end up working on will either be stupid VB or legacy C.
Anyway, I thought Scheme was good because it's very abstract -- it's based around mathematics and (to a certain extent) symbolic logic. It's also really, really simple: (cmd1 arg1 (cmd2 arg2 arg3) arg4), and so forth. Never in Scheme did I see something and think, "Well, that's counter intuitive." After Scheme I recommend going with real-world choices -- C and C++. I've never taken Java as a serious option, because it feels to distant from the computer.
Mike Greenberg
I must agree that CDC didn't seem to be very accurate, and am shocked to learn of that ad campaign. I do, however, trust the Department of Education report.
The statistics, however, are trivial, anyway. My point remains the same even if school violence is on the rise.
Mike Greenberg
America has slowly become more aware of school violence in the past decade. This is perhaps a poor assessment of the reality: "less that 1% of all homicides among school-aged children (5-19 years of age) occur in or around school grounds or on the way to and from school." In addition, about 2% of all serious disciplinary offenses occurring in schools, during school hours were violent altercations involving a firearm or other weapon; approximately 105 violent deaths (1994 to 1996) (85 of which considered murder) occurred on campuses in a two year period, not all of them necessarily deliberate or with a gun. Perhaps a crusade against heart disease would save more lives than against school shootings, but the vivid imagery of "the media" presents school violence as a serious problem. While school violence is a problem, it is not the problem; the value placed upon school violence is absurd. Despite any irrationality behind its hubbub, school violence illuminates a more complex problem than bloodshed in schools. School violence demonstrates an utter depravity and lack of humanitarianism in the current generation; the carnage in schools represents a more acute difficulty than the deaths of 105 students. The carnage in schools represents the cruelty of an idle humanity.
America has, in a sense, become too luxurious for its own good. It has stagnated. Up until the end of World War II, America was occupied. The American Revolution, westerly expansion, the Civil War, industrialization, the Spanish-American War, World War I, a quick bout of depression, and World War II all kept America's hands full for almost 200 years. America is similar, in many ways, to the Roman Empire: it grew and grew, always occupied with an invasion (three Punic Wars kept Rome busy for almost 200 years, for instance) or further expansion. Rome's breaking point was reached, however, and its modus operandi failed it. An idle Senate and great class-battles weakened Rome, allowing northern barbarians to take over. The U.S. grew and was constantly occupied, mainly with fighting, but has reached the limit of the capitalist mode; like Rome, the classes have massive contrast, and, like Rome, there is no overriding societal goal. In short, America has ADHD and nothing to do.
The only solution for so great a problem - the dawdling of a society - is collapse. Society is a phoenix, and it hastily approaches its nadir. America has two choices: either attempt a societal, cultural, and political revolution and suffer the fate of Bolshevik Russia; or accept its own demise gracefully and come out that much the better for it.
Sources:
CDC Media: Facts About Violence Among Youth and Violence in Schools
U.S. Department of Education: Principal/School Disciplinarian Survey on School Violence (see second table)
Mike Greenberg
From the TiVo privacy policy:
Now, I don't even have a TiVo, but if I did, I certainly wouldn't appreciate getting any extra phone calls about it. I must admit, however, that TiVo's policy is suprisingly understanding of consumer concerns and seems rather responsible. God help us all if the AOL/Time-Warner/Satan partnership buys them up, though.
Mike Greenberg
I thinkt he whole idea of "getting" and "dropping" files and having an inventory is fantastic. Having a series of already known MUD commands for file manipulation makes file-handling rather easy. Throw in regexp support in your get statements, ditch the whole "go north" thing, and this is a great shell. Kudos for the whole MUD thing, anyway, though, as I find it very nifty.
Mike GreenbergThe concept of -- in fact, the necessity for -- time zones is a tribute to human ingenuity. So when you say, "Hello from millenium later than you!" you should recognize why we have them; we have them because we have surpassed our natural boundaries and can travel at speeds relative to the revolution of the earth. To what will we travel relative to next? Our orbit? The sun's movement? The movement of light itself? Something as yet unimagined? Yes, but let's take it one step at a time, shall we?
Mike Greenberg
What surprises me is that they deem a revelation of source code a security risk. That, if anything, shows a lack of faith in OSS.
As much as it may chagrin me to admit it, Microsoft has some thirty-five thousand people working for it, and while they may not be able to or want to audit their code in an OpenBSD-like manner, I am sure they have an entire security department. And I am also pretty sure that they know that security through obscurity doesn't work.
My point, and I do have one, is that Microsoft does have its stuff together, to a certain extent. W2K and NT4, while not suitable for an Internet server, do well in a Microsoft only Intranet environment. If the government gets scared because of 9x or NTKRNL code being let out, what must they think about things who's code has always been available? Yes, it allows for public contributions and improvements, but it also allows for public analysis, scrutiny, and discovery of bugs.
Definitely not a Karma whore,
Mike "My Bucket's Got a Hole in It" Greenberg
I know as well some people who install for @home, and they get to to whatever they want. @home has some "anti-virus software" which is a backdoor that they can use to "expedite the troubleshooting process." They never install it. On top of that, they repeatedly tell customers that a firewall will make them more secure and will be very cheap; they're thinking about selling some Windows 98 firewall software in-house to (well, make more money, really) let users get firewalls more easily.
On a side note, a lot of people are using routers for their DSL/Cable access that have firewalls built into firmware, with (LAN only!) remote administration and updates. Good stuff, for a guy who can't afford the overhead of/doesn't know how to run a software firewall.
Mikey G
Procedural languages are taught first, and for a reason: they mirror lower mathematics better than a functional language. The concepts of functions and recursion aren't even present in mathematics until high Algebra and Calculus, the latter only in Calculus.
If someone learned all the math they were going to, and then began programming, functional languages would be rather easy to understand. If someone, like myself, learned QBASIC when they were seven or eight -- when they knew only lower mathematics -- they'd find functional programming obtuse and clumsy, useful only for higher math.
I see no flaw with this system, though. Imperative languages don't tend to lend themselves to very high math and certain functional tricks. Functional languages do. Each has their place, but both are versatile enough to do the job of the other (perhaps not as well).
On a side note, Scheme is the first language taught here at IU, in Intro to Computer Science, and no one really likes it. We've got Dybvig here at IU (big guy with ANSI Scheme), but that doesn't seem to help people's appreciation. Maybe some good IDEs and GUI toolkits would bring it more into the mainstream. I doubt it, though.
Mike Greenberg
Well, with this story being posted on the internet in all sorts of places, including mainstream news sites, this can't go unnoticed. I would be utterly shocked if this bill made it to signature; it'd be a huge target for challenging before the Supreme Court, too. The ACLU'll be all over this.
Mike "Thanks for the (Meaningless) Input" Greenberg
Perhaps I'm an exception. I'm Mike Greenberg; I'm 15 and go to Bloomington High School North in Indiana. I'd call myself a programmer, I guess. I can program in C/C++, Visual/QBASIC (QBASIC I learned when I was 8, Visual Basic when I was 12), Perl, and a modicum of Intel architecture assembler. I mostly program in C (occaisionally C++) and Perl, though Perl is more for quick and dirty scripting, while C and C++ are for programming utilities for myself. My skills are adequate, but not at a professional level (merely good enough to write programs that will take down my school's network via D/DoS and various mischievous things like that).
The majority of my programming language skill is self-taught; I read a book, then I exercise the knowledge (and, most often, read the book again). I took a class at my local college (Indiana University), last year, in C++, much of which focused on MFC, which was my only formal education in programming (I wrote about that experience on an article a while back about ageism).
On top of all that, though, I am incredibly interested in the inner workings of things. I work as a tech at PC Max, a local computer store, where I repair and build computers. I plan on learning electronics and delving even deeper into the bowels of computers. Now, none of my computing friends have the same vigor towards the internals (so far as I know). While some are excellent programmers, they are less interested in the guts than I.
In all truth, I have no idea where I'm going with this. :) I guess I'm trying to say that it's difficult to generalize an entire generation. From what I've seen of most of my parents' generation, they're all inept technophobes. But I know that's not true.
Mike "Despises Ageism" Greenberg
I'm a 15 year-old, and I'm going into my Sophomore year at Bloomington High School North, in Indiana. We, naturally, have (slow: a shared ISDN line or two for the entire school system) Internet access, and at least one computer in every room. There are labs in the library and almost every other department. There is, however, no real computer instruction; only basic, "this is a mouse" instruction is given. In the vocational school there are more serious classes, but those make it difficult to graduate for an academically oriented student.
The most frequent use of our computer system is to check Hotmail and other web-mails. The second most frequent use is to play the (classic) game, Drug Wars. A distant third would be looking up books in the library's on-line catalog and doing research for school on the Internet. Fourth would be messing with the network.
That's the basis of my opinions about computers in schools. My opinions differ from those of the article, though. The Calvert school, in Baltimore, seems to be an all-around better school (and is, most likely, private) than most public schools. (Public schools in America, should you not have children or live outside of the States, are abysmal; apathetic or misguided teachers and officials are abound, with corruption and stupidy in spades.) The article talks about possible developmental hazards; of course there are developmental dangers in forcing children to use computers. There's developmental hazards in forcing children to do anything. I must, however, digress.
Computers can be, and often are, useful tools. As a "computer person," I have rather poor handwriting and somewhat exceptional typing ability. I type all of my schoolwork. Were I to do otherwise, there would be a noticable drop in the quality of my work. However, my classmates prefer to write things by hand, as that's what they're more comfortable with. Unfortunately, because computers are the "wave of the future," we are often times forced to have Internet resources when writing reports and papers. Again, I'd best digress.
In conclusion (finally), computers and the Internet are fabulous tools. That, however, does not mean that they are the be-all, end-all of research and learning. America's public school system would be able to afford the classrooms and teachers (should they be available; the education industry has a gigantic demand for teachers and a rather small supply) that it needs if it would take the Internet out of classrooms and put teachers in.
Mike "Excuse the Rant, It's Just That I Care" Greenberg
If I bought a house, I wouldn't expect the architectural blueprints...
Actually, when you buy a house you do get the blueprints. Access to them, rather. There's a city department (Zoning? I dunno.) that holds the blueprints of all of the buildings, and you can ask them for yours. Do it, it's fun!
Mike Greenberg