Two years or so ago I made a CS master thesis where I tried to find / create the perfect language and IDE for learning to program. I did a pretty thoroug study of what is available and what is desired in such an environment. And i came to the conclusion that Python is very close to a perfect place to start learning programming.
I starred to make som tweas in the environment and the language but "Unfortunatley" I got a job right after I finished so I didn't have time to finish the projec. In case someone is interested, more information and a manhandle beta can be found at:
When I wrote my CS thesis I had a look at number of different languages and paradigms to see what was best to start out with.
I found that Logo is just a little bit to simplistic and unusefull.
My maine idea was to take a way as much overhead as possible (think public static void main) and just keep the student focused on the fun parts, the pure algorithms and output.
What I would have wanted is a slightly tweaked Python in a simple IDE with integrated output window and a simplistic debugger.
Unfortunatley I never had time to finish the program (yet), it is a useable program and the code is open for anyone to read but it is still in early alpha and will so be for the foreseable future:(.
If anyone care to have a look at PyStarter a shortcut to programming http://www.gahnstrom.se/tim/pystarter/ feel free to. It would be fun if anyone could use it.
It was a small collider but unfortunatley not small enough to be carried, not even by the GOVERNATOR. <br> This article should no boubt be mandatory reading for all summies. <br>...The only summie who actually thought that T3 was as good as the other two movies
No doubt they have overcome a lot of obstacles and they have loads more to overcome.
But the most interesting part of your statement, methinks, were: <br>
<em> especially since I might one day be a user of this facility.</em> <p>
The grand plan is that all or most of us will use grid computing, atleast for everything that is resonably computing intensive. This makes sense to me, today most computers spend the better part part of there life in idle state or turned of.
If C&C / Starcraft were more realistic, it would also get more boring
That is a powerfull statment. The sole reason I quit playing those games was that the unrealism made them boring. I think they get boring because it gets so easy to figure out the optimal strategy. There was no real thinking in neither C&C of the follower Red Alert. The whining strategy was, and still is tank rush. Close your eyes, build as many tanks as posible and pray.
pretty much te same problem with AOE a few years later. The wining strategy is more often then not to focus on one thing and produce an imense amount of that particular thing.
In short, I think that alot of people would enjoy a game where you really have to think, and plan your killings:-)
Maybe 12 year old Joe Quaker wouldn't enyoy it but, as sadly as that is (:-)) a whole lot of the hardcore gamers of today are well past their 20...
All the time since i played C&C back then I have asked myself. Why do they put so much effort into graphics?
Wouldnt it be more fun to have a red square as a tank and a blue circle as a human if we instead could hav better strategy?
Where we need good supply lines, where the distances is more acurate to the time. Where the amount of damage is more real.
What I am trying to say, I think, is wouldnt it be alot of fun with a war simulator instead of a war game? Regardless of the graphics?
Whats the whole point of a corporation? Its a place for people to make money in an organized fashion. Its all about people making money, its all about creating jobs, its all about the economy.
Actually in the free part of the world, the purpose of a company is to provide money to the owners, all the owners and none but the owners.
If I start a company, it is not to provide jobs to people whom I don't know. It is to provide me and my family with a solid income, prepherably without doing any work.
This ofcourse is the purpose, there might be some ethicall issues and laws and legislations, but that is another matter. For that we have organized states and laws.
I am sorry I will never post again untill I have learnt perfect english and have time to run my post through a spellchecker.
Yes a few people are making money from programing free stuf, but they are verry few compared to the programers working in the propriatary world.
Tim
BTW: you made a verry good point in that post... verry interesting reading... (Read, to bad it is so many children around, so it gets impossible to create a discussion that is not a praise to opensource and Linus)
the new process is so efficient that it is hardly possible to make a profit from it
This is infact a problem that Microsoft have pointed at every once in a while. That most slashdotters don't see.
If no one can make any money out of making software. There will be verry few people making softare and in the long run we will have verry few improvments in the appz.
Yes I know that if there is a determined hacker that really need some softwahre he can start doing it during nights after work and get people to help him and in the end get a really good product out.
But there wont be a whole lot of hackers around when there is no job for them (no paying once atleast)
Tim...Ps I am not the devil himself... I am just making a point
Some time ago I bought an IBM z50 zub notebook. Since they dont sell these pupies in Europe I bought it new unopened on Ebay.
One day while I was using it, for no apperent reason, the screeen went black.
F**k! I said and, turned it around, restarted, removed baterys etc, etc. Then it sudenly started to operate.
Puh!
A few months later it happened again... it went black. From there on I havnt seen a sgin of life from it. (despite turning around and shaking it)
I called IBM tech-support and spoke to a verry nice and polite man and was told that I should return it with my reciept or guarantuee note
Okey I said and hung up.
3h later I had still not found the guarantee note I know I got when I bought it...
Now what? I havn't had time to call them again but I assume they politely will say... "Oh I am so sorry we canot fix it without that little pice of paper" Is there a way around such things? It sure is obvius it is an IBM machine.
In my opinion this is not a problem, it is actually both good and natural.
Let's keep Slashdot an open tech forum where no artickles is refused for political reasons.
If the devil himself invent something really cool I guess we al want to know about it even if we dont like him.
We don't like Sony going after mp3 so we diss them for that, but we sure like to klnow what we can do with our top of the line gaming console ok?
... not that I own one or care abou this particular thing tough...
My point is that verry verry few people need those Hz but alot of people WANT to have them.
Have a look at alt.comp.hardware.overclocking those Hz aint really there because thay are needed, overclocking and having top of the line stuff is a way of life.
I dont say I agree to all this, I have a p200mmx myself and is quite hapy with that.
Okey I know it is kind of extreme but my point is people can do alot for some mhz.
(Just look at the amount of work they put in to opverclock their high end PC:s.
I seem to have a verry similar box. p200mmx 64mb edo. I run w2k/w98/linux(doesnt work ofcourse:-() on it and everything run quite smooth untill I stumble on a game that is more advanced than tetris.
I am aslo interested in some more memory and have found that they are quite cheap on the second hand market. You should be able to get 2*32mb for about $60 without to much trouble.
BTW is there realy a good reason why to buy a new computer unless you play games? I have wanted a new one for years now but it have never came out anything really new or cool that have made it worth it:-(
If you have som spare cash I sugest that you get a notebok and a docing station.
That will reduce noise and give you the mobility as a bonus.
If that is not an option you might consider if you really need the high end mega pentium gigaflipflop computer to do your bookkeeping and websurfing.
I use my home-computer countless hours aday (all acording to my girlfriend:-)) and I am still sitting around with my old p200 with no problem and no noise.
That seems pretty much slashdotted... or os my conection teribly slow today?
Well here is the text anyway.
Today, for the first time in the world a
superconducting cable enters service in a public electricity supply
grid.
Energy savings, increased grid capacity and cheaper electricity
for consumers are in prospect as a result of new technology that is about to
undergo full-scale testing in Copenhagen.
From 11.45 today, for the first time anywhere in the world,
superconducting cables will be used to supply electricity to consumers. Some
150,000 residents in the Amager district of Co-penhagen will in future have
their electricity supplied by this new technology. Until now, superconducting
cables have only been tested - by laboratories and by the organisations across
the world that have been competing for more than a decade to develop the
technology for practical application. "We have focused on placing ourselves
among the five technologically leading manufacturers of supercables. Not
specifically on being first past the post", says Dag Willén, Project Manager of
NKT Research. And indeed, for a long time it looked as though first place would
go to a project in Detroit. But in the end Danish technology proved quickest to
overcome the legion of theoretical and practical challenges posed by supercable
development.
5-7% energy saving
Discovered as far back as 1911, the phenomenon of superconductivity occurs at extremely
cold temperatures and causes almost all
electrical resistance - and thus also energy loss - to disappear. However,
within the last 15 years new materials have been discovered that only require
cooling with liquid nitrogen (minus 196 Celsius). The Danish technology group
NKT has been involved in the research race since the end of the 1980s. With
widespread use of superconducting technology in grid 'highways' energy
consump-tion can be reduced by 5-7%, which means an equivalent reduction in CO2
emissions from electricity generation. But supercables can also become part of a
simplification of the electrical infrastructure. This is because they can
transmit massive currents, something which can further be utilised to reduce the
number of voltage levels (fewer transformer substations). At the end of the day
this will enable cheaper electricity for consumers.
Three 30 metre supercooled
cables Copenhagen's new supercable is only 30 metres long, but that is ample for
practical full-scale testing in the public supply grid. The cable is installed
at 'Amager Substation', a central hub in the Danish capital's energy supply
system. The supercable is capable of supplying electricity to the whole of
Amager district and will be tested under all operating conditions. No operating
experience exists elsewhere of superca-bles installed in a public supply grid,
and in particular the use of extremely cold liquid nitro-gen to cool the cable
is a totally new element in electricity supply. The new cable has three phases,
ie. it consists of three separate superconducting cables each 30 metres long
spliced into the grid where the voltage is 30 kV. The supercable has a 2000 Amp
current rating.
The future electrical infrastructure
The increased energy
consumption expected in the future would demand expansion of the power network
and in many cases - especially in the industrialised part of the world - also
investments in replacement of existing networks. As technology evolves high
capacity super-cables at still more competitive prices will gradually play a
more important role in the future infrastructure. City of Copenhagen's
Environmental Mayor Bo Asmus Kjeldgaard stresses the importance of Copenhagen
pressing ahead with development of new environment-friendly technology: "All new
technology is expensive at first. Like solar cells in the past, superconducting
mate-rial is currently very expensive. That means it will have to come down in
price to compete with conventional technology. But I am certain that if this
project produces the right results, we will see the superconducting material
used not only in cables but also, for instance, in coils and transformers."
The supercable project
The actual power transmission in supercables takes place
through superconducting tapes. These tapes are the key component of the cable,
and the NKT subsidiary company NST (Nordic Superconductor Technologies) is among
the world's three or four leading manufacturers of these products. The tapes are
used in a large number of electrical applications, such as engines, generators,
current leads and MRI scanners. The high tech superconducting cable was
fa-bricated by NKT's cable company NKT Cables, and will now undergo full-scale
testing by Copenhagen Energy.
Please address any questions relating to this
press release to:
Bo Asmus Kjeldgaard, Environmental Mayor, City of Copenhagen,
phone + 45 26 15 58 21
Svend Kvorning, Project Manager, Copenhagen Energy, phone
+ 45 33 95 31 21
Asger Bundgaard-Jensen, CEO, NKT Cables Group, phone + 49 221
676 22 22
Dag Willén, Project Manager, NKT Research, phone + 45 43 48 35 77
"Don't panic, folks. Read the actual patent first. It is pretty narrow in scope. "
I just read the patent (rather briefley since my legaliese isn't that good) I dont see that it is so narrow as you imply.
Another thing that comes to my mind is this: Wh would anyone want to patent something if it is so narrow and useless?
Yet Another Curious Catch is this: how can they state that it is possible that their technique might alreade be in use in other places? Isn't that one of the first criterias to be filled to NOT GET THE ACTUAL PATENT?
Well, lets say I didnt include Instaling gimp with tuchscreen support in my first plans:-)
I'll get right on it... just waiting for my none existing spare time to show up.
In their FAQ they state this abouit puting midori on a standard PC:
"It's theoretically possible... but it wouldn't be a practical use of your computer. "
To me it seems like the perfect choice if you have an old PC with a slow processor.
Anyone know anyting about if this might be good, easy or how to do it and such things?
>and when I got there, they looked up at me,
>and went right back to what they were doing
Is it hard t ounderstand?
You are different, ofcourse they dont expected someone diferent. They would have done the same if you were a beautifull woman (just a little more hope in their eys;-)). It has nothing to do with racism.
I can tell you a storry from a CS course I took.
We vere doing a project, three "normal" people that knew eachother from before and two new guys.
One guy with a farmboy accent we hardly understod and the other guy belonged in the group of people you are supposed to be afraid of:-) Black leather jacket, boots and blak long hair. Purple nails and so on... we sure had our doubts... could these guys possibly be any good hackers?
But ofcourse we were proven wrong, both were way better then the three of us.
You would probably have said I am a racist if they had benn black but now they were as white as anyone but i guess I am wrong anywa.
Slashdot Mirror
Two years or so ago I made a CS master thesis where I tried to find / create the perfect language and IDE for learning to program. I did a pretty thoroug study of what is available and what is desired in such an environment. And i came to the conclusion that Python is very close to a perfect place to start learning programming.
I starred to make som tweas in the environment and the language but "Unfortunatley" I got a job right after I finished so I didn't have time to finish the projec. In case someone is interested, more information and a manhandle beta can be found at:
http://www.gahnstrom.se/tim/pystarter/
Tim
I found that Logo is just a little bit to simplistic and unusefull.
My maine idea was to take a way as much overhead as possible (think public static void main) and just keep the student focused on the fun parts, the pure algorithms and output.
What I would have wanted is a slightly tweaked Python in a simple IDE with integrated output window and a simplistic debugger.
Unfortunatley I never had time to finish the program (yet), it is a useable program and the code is open for anyone to read but it is still in early alpha and will so be for the foreseable future :(.
If anyone care to have a look at PyStarter a shortcut to programming http://www.gahnstrom.se/tim/pystarter/ feel free to. It would be fun if anyone could use it.
Tim
the 2,500kg of gunpowder Guy Fawkes was found with, would be equivalent to the same amount of TNT today
So TNT is no better then gunpowder? What is so special with this guys gunpowder?
It was a small collider but unfortunatley not small enough to be carried, not even by the GOVERNATOR. ...The only summie who actually thought that T3 was as good as the other two movies
<br>
This article should no boubt be mandatory reading for all summies.
<br>
No doubt they have overcome a lot of obstacles and they have loads more to overcome.
But the most interesting part of your statement, methinks, were: <br>
<em> especially since I might one day be a user of this facility.</em>
<p>
The grand plan is that all or most of us will use grid computing, atleast for everything that is resonably computing intensive. This makes sense to me, today most computers spend the better part part of there life in idle state or turned of.
That is a powerfull statment. The sole reason I quit playing those games was that the unrealism made them boring.
I think they get boring because it gets so easy to figure out the optimal strategy. There was no real thinking in neither C&C of the follower Red Alert. The whining strategy was, and still is tank rush. Close your eyes, build as many tanks as posible and pray.
pretty much te same problem with AOE a few years later. The wining strategy is more often then not to focus on one thing and produce an imense amount of that particular thing.
In short, I think that alot of people would enjoy a game where you really have to think, and plan your killings :-)
Maybe 12 year old Joe Quaker wouldn't enyoy it but, as sadly as that is (:-)) a whole lot of the hardcore gamers of today are well past their 20...
Wouldnt it be more fun to have a red square as a tank and a blue circle as a human if we instead could hav better strategy?
Where we need good supply lines, where the distances is more acurate to the time. Where the amount of damage is more real.
What I am trying to say, I think, is wouldnt it be alot of fun with a war simulator instead of a war game? Regardless of the graphics?
Actually in the free part of the world, the purpose of a company is to provide money to the owners, all the owners and none but the owners.
If I start a company, it is not to provide jobs to people whom I don't know. It is to provide me and my family with a solid income, prepherably without doing any work.
This ofcourse is the purpose, there might be some ethicall issues and laws and legislations, but that is another matter.
For that we have organized states and laws.
The two first sure didnt work if windows is installed on e:
The other two worked fin tough.
Fully patched ie 5.5 on w2k pro
That argument is about as good as the one you had.
I gues everyone will figure out a reason why they shouldn't pay...
I am sorry I will never post again untill I have learnt perfect english and have time to run my post through a spellchecker.
Yes a few people are making money from programing free stuf, but they are verry few compared to the programers working in the propriatary world.
Tim
BTW: you made a verry good point in that post... verry interesting reading... (Read, to bad it is so many children around, so it gets impossible to create a discussion that is not a praise to opensource and Linus)
This is infact a problem that Microsoft have pointed at every once in a while. That most slashdotters don't see.
If no one can make any money out of making software. There will be verry few people making softare and in the long run we will have verry few improvments in the appz.
Yes I know that if there is a determined hacker that really need some softwahre he can start doing it during nights after work and get people to help him and in the end get a really good product out. But there wont be a whole lot of hackers around when there is no job for them (no paying once atleast)
Tim ...Ps I am not the devil himself... I am just making a point
Some time ago I bought an IBM z50 zub notebook. Since they dont sell these pupies in Europe I bought it new unopened on Ebay.
One day while I was using it, for no apperent reason, the screeen went black.
F**k! I said and, turned it around, restarted, removed baterys etc, etc. Then it sudenly started to operate.
Puh!
A few months later it happened again... it went black. From there on I havnt seen a sgin of life from it. (despite turning around and shaking it)
I called IBM tech-support and spoke to a verry nice and polite man and was told that I should return it with my reciept or guarantuee note
Okey I said and hung up.
3h later I had still not found the guarantee note I know I got when I bought it...
Now what? I havn't had time to call them again but I assume they politely will say... "Oh I am so sorry we canot fix it without that little pice of paper" Is there a way around such things? It sure is obvius it is an IBM machine.
Tim
In my opinion this is not a problem, it is actually both good and natural.
Let's keep Slashdot an open tech forum where no artickles is refused for political reasons.
If the devil himself invent something really cool I guess we al want to know about it even if we dont like him.
We don't like Sony going after mp3 so we diss them for that, but we sure like to klnow what we can do with our top of the line gaming console ok?
... not that I own one or care abou this particular thing tough...
My point is that verry verry few people need those Hz but alot of people WANT to have them.
Have a look at alt.comp.hardware.overclocking those Hz aint really there because thay are needed, overclocking and having top of the line stuff is a way of life.
I dont say I agree to all this, I have a p200mmx myself and is quite hapy with that.
Actually some people think 0.1 GHz is worth about $400.
Prise comparision from a randomly selected computerstore: (http://www.chapsat.com/)
Intel P4 1.9GHz 478pin FC-PGA $910
Intel P4 2.0GHz 478pin FC-PGA $1330
Okey I know it is kind of extreme but my point is people can do alot for some mhz.
(Just look at the amount of work they put in to opverclock their high end PC:s.
Yup... thats my point
I am aslo interested in some more memory and have found that they are quite cheap on the second hand market. You should be able to get 2*32mb for about $60 without to much trouble.
BTW is there realy a good reason why to buy a new computer unless you play games? I have wanted a new one for years now but it have never came out anything really new or cool that have made it worth it :-(
If you have som spare cash I sugest that you get a notebok and a docing station. :-)) and I am still sitting around with my old p200 with no problem and no noise.
That will reduce noise and give you the mobility as a bonus.
If that is not an option you might consider if you really need the high end mega pentium gigaflipflop computer to do your bookkeeping and websurfing.
I use my home-computer countless hours aday (all acording to my girlfriend
Well here is the text anyway.
Today, for the first time in the world a superconducting cable enters service in a public electricity supply grid.
Energy savings, increased grid capacity and cheaper electricity for consumers are in prospect as a result of new technology that is about to undergo full-scale testing in Copenhagen. From 11.45 today, for the first time anywhere in the world, superconducting cables will be used to supply electricity to consumers. Some 150,000 residents in the Amager district of Co-penhagen will in future have their electricity supplied by this new technology. Until now, superconducting cables have only been tested - by laboratories and by the organisations across the world that have been competing for more than a decade to develop the technology for practical application. "We have focused on placing ourselves among the five technologically leading manufacturers of supercables. Not specifically on being first past the post", says Dag Willén, Project Manager of NKT Research. And indeed, for a long time it looked as though first place would go to a project in Detroit. But in the end Danish technology proved quickest to overcome the legion of theoretical and practical challenges posed by supercable development. 5-7% energy savingDiscovered as far back as 1911, the phenomenon of superconductivity occurs at extremely cold temperatures and causes almost all electrical resistance - and thus also energy loss - to disappear. However, within the last 15 years new materials have been discovered that only require cooling with liquid nitrogen (minus 196 Celsius). The Danish technology group NKT has been involved in the research race since the end of the 1980s. With widespread use of superconducting technology in grid 'highways' energy consump-tion can be reduced by 5-7%, which means an equivalent reduction in CO2 emissions from electricity generation. But supercables can also become part of a simplification of the electrical infrastructure. This is because they can transmit massive currents, something which can further be utilised to reduce the number of voltage levels (fewer transformer substations). At the end of the day this will enable cheaper electricity for consumers. Three 30 metre supercooled
cables Copenhagen's new supercable is only 30 metres long, but that is ample for practical full-scale testing in the public supply grid. The cable is installed at 'Amager Substation', a central hub in the Danish capital's energy supply system. The supercable is capable of supplying electricity to the whole of Amager district and will be tested under all operating conditions. No operating experience exists elsewhere of superca-bles installed in a public supply grid, and in particular the use of extremely cold liquid nitro-gen to cool the cable is a totally new element in electricity supply. The new cable has three phases, ie. it consists of three separate superconducting cables each 30 metres long spliced into the grid where the voltage is 30 kV. The supercable has a 2000 Amp current rating. The future electrical infrastructure
The increased energy consumption expected in the future would demand expansion of the power network and in many cases - especially in the industrialised part of the world - also investments in replacement of existing networks. As technology evolves high capacity super-cables at still more competitive prices will gradually play a more important role in the future infrastructure. City of Copenhagen's Environmental Mayor Bo Asmus Kjeldgaard stresses the importance of Copenhagen pressing ahead with development of new environment-friendly technology: "All new technology is expensive at first. Like solar cells in the past, superconducting mate-rial is currently very expensive. That means it will have to come down in price to compete with conventional technology. But I am certain that if this project produces the right results, we will see the superconducting material used not only in cables but also, for instance, in coils and transformers." The supercable project
The actual power transmission in supercables takes place through superconducting tapes. These tapes are the key component of the cable, and the NKT subsidiary company NST (Nordic Superconductor Technologies) is among the world's three or four leading manufacturers of these products. The tapes are used in a large number of electrical applications, such as engines, generators, current leads and MRI scanners. The high tech superconducting cable was fa-bricated by NKT's cable company NKT Cables, and will now undergo full-scale testing by Copenhagen Energy. Please address any questions relating to this press release to: Bo Asmus Kjeldgaard, Environmental Mayor, City of Copenhagen, phone + 45 26 15 58 21
Svend Kvorning, Project Manager, Copenhagen Energy, phone + 45 33 95 31 21
Asger Bundgaard-Jensen, CEO, NKT Cables Group, phone + 49 221 676 22 22
Dag Willén, Project Manager, NKT Research, phone + 45 43 48 35 77
I just read the patent (rather briefley since my legaliese isn't that good) I dont see that it is so narrow as you imply.
Another thing that comes to my mind is this: Wh would anyone want to patent something if it is so narrow and useless?
Yet Another Curious Catch is this: how can they state that it is possible that their technique might alreade be in use in other places? Isn't that one of the first criterias to be filled to NOT GET THE ACTUAL PATENT?
Well, lets say I didnt include Instaling gimp with tuchscreen support in my first plans :-)
I'll get right on it... just waiting for my none existing spare time to show up.
Speeking of solid state. Shouldn't this puppy be able to be loaded into the ram and run from there?
In their FAQ they state this abouit puting midori on a standard PC:
"It's theoretically possible... but it wouldn't be a practical use of your computer. "
To me it seems like the perfect choice if you have an old PC with a slow processor.
Anyone know anyting about if this might be good, easy or how to do it and such things?
A good point.
Anotherone is, if it only cost a million, why is it mostly interesting for the military?
Seems like a good time to stop flying Concord?
>and when I got there, they looked up at me,
;-)). It has nothing to do with racism.
:-) Black leather jacket, boots and blak long hair. Purple nails and so on... we sure had our doubts... could these guys possibly be any good hackers?
>and went right back to what they were doing
Is it hard t ounderstand?
You are different, ofcourse they dont expected someone diferent. They would have done the same if you were a beautifull woman (just a little more hope in their eys
I can tell you a storry from a CS course I took.
We vere doing a project, three "normal" people that knew eachother from before and two new guys.
One guy with a farmboy accent we hardly understod and the other guy belonged in the group of people you are supposed to be afraid of
But ofcourse we were proven wrong, both were way better then the three of us.
You would probably have said I am a racist if they had benn black but now they were as white as anyone but i guess I am wrong anywa.
Tim