Exactly - when I read this "ask slashdot" question, I thought instantly, isn't that what I had when I took intro to programming in college? Yes, it was, hardly any textbook ever made the impression that "SICP" has made on me. Several folks have said it is hard going, maybe for some, for me it was like a light going on in my head - OH! I thought, Computer programming really is interesting and deep after all. Not something I'd thought after high school BASIC class.
I was lucky though, in many ways. Hal Abelson came to my college (Brandeis) to teach it once a week (with our own computer science professors filling in on the other sessions of the week), so probably my experience was more on target than those who didn't have the good fortune to have one of the authors teaching the class. It was an exciting, fun, mind expanding class - the kind of thing I went to college for in the first place (cause I wasn't much of a drinker;)
It did cover prolog style programming, and object oriented programming, as well as lambda calculus, and stream-based programming. Admittedly, the only one it teaches deeply is the lambda calculus; the others are covered more cursorily and need their own courses to deepen them. (I "understood" object oriented programming after that course and the lunar lander program, but I didn't *understand* object oriented programming till I'd been programming in Smalltalk for several months)
Anyway - there may well be other books that achieve this goal, because it's been years & years, but that one sure did.
Laurence Janifer, now there's a name I haven't even thought of in years. I have read a few of his books. The "Knave" series (Survivor, Knave in Hand, Knave and the Game) seems the most popular. I also think I have read "The Wonder War" and several of his short stories. Anyway reading your mention of him got me thinking about him after so many years so I pulled up a few links from Google:
Of other science fiction writers he reminds me of maybe L. E. Modessit and Mack Reynolds the most. His writing isn't quite as political as that of either, but to me it has that same feel. Maybe Mike Resnick too?
you're describing what sounds exactly like the economy of buying PCs.. no, not player characters... personal computers. If you keep your money for a month you can buy a better computer than you could have a month back.. etc!
The initial issue is whether the posting prohibition is content-neutral, since, as we have explained, this classification determines the applicable
constitutional standard. The Appellants contend that the anti-trafficking provisions of the DMCA and their application by means of the posting
prohibition of the injunction are content-based. They argue that the provisions "specifically target . . . scientific expression based on the particular topic
addressed by that expression--namely, techniques for circumventing CSS." Supplemental Brief for Appellants at 1. We disagree. The Appellants'
argument fails to recognize that the target of the posting provisions of the injunction- -DeCSS--has both a nonspeech and a speech component, and
that the DMCA, as applied to the Appellants, and the posting prohibition of the injunction target only the nonspeech component. Neither the DMCA
nor the posting prohibition is concerned with whatever capacity DeCSS might have for conveying information to a human being, and that capacity, as
previously explained, is what arguably creates a speech component of the decryption code. The DMCA and the posting prohibition are applied to
DeCSS solely because of its capacity to instruct a computer to decrypt CSS. That functional capability is not speech within the meaning of the First
Amendment. The Government seeks to "justif[y]," Hill, 530 U.S. at 720, both the application of the DMCA and the posting prohibition to the
Appellants solely on the basis of the functional capability of DeCSS to instruct a computer to decrypt CSS, i.e., "without reference to the content of
the regulated speech," id. This type of regulation is therefore content- neutral, just as would be a restriction on trafficking in skeleton keys identified
because of their capacity to unlock jail cells, even though some of the keys happened to bear a slogan or other legend that qualified as a speech
component.
Content neutral as to the speech component of the code! What this means is that it would be legal to post a "version" of DeCSS that would be non-functional. For example, if a bug were purposely inserted into the code and it would no longer run. If the code is not functional, it is not banned - the speech component of it is not what is being prohibited.
Ok, I suggest this to 2600 or anyone else who wants to post DeCSS or other decryption programs - add typo/bug's to it. Don't actually state where the bugs are, leave it as an excercise for the reader. Since the code is speech, I imagine most readers who can comprehend the speech can also mentally fix the typos - but computers cannot (typically) and, therefore, you've removed the objectionable portion of the code...
I don't think anyone pays for "content" in the sense of web content because it's something no one ever really considered paying for by itself, as opposed to value-added to something one was buying.
In paper magazines, one pays for the copy of the magazine. It's persistent, you can keep it and read it as often as you like. Some people throw them away but they do so on their own choice of schedule.
In the movies, people pay to go to a movie at a theater as a social event, more than for the individual experience. The individual experience part keeps the social event painless (no struggle to think of what to talk about, etc) rather than being what people pay for in its own sake. Similarly, when people rent movies, they do so to kill time, and watch the movie with someone.
Reading web sites is an individual, nonsocial experience which makes it unlike viewing movies or television. It is also ephemeral, you are paying for the experience alone, no physical item, so it is unlike magazines or newspapers. In addition, no "content" web site that I've ever seen provides the return for money that a pay-per-view TV channel or newspaper does, and less than most magazines as well. The pictures are lower quality, there is less sheer quantity.
For $6.00 a month, HBO gives you movies 24 hours a day plus The Sopranos and quite a few specials. And for about $40 a month you can get *all* the premium cable channels offered. If Web Content providers had that much richness of offering, for that kind of price - six bucks a month for one, forty a month for all the ones I could possibly want/need - I'd pay it. Probably a lot of people would.
People buy hardback books for $20, paperbacks for $6. It's the same exact information. They feel like they're paying for the physical book, NOT the words, and that's shown to be true in some sense by the economics of it. At this rate, they expect to be paying around $1.50 for the electronic version. I'd pay $1.50 for a download of the novel-before-the-latest of one of my favorite authors...
People will pay for content when content becomes worth what's being charged for it. Simple as that. They will expect to be able to re-view it without re-paying or what they pay will reduce compensatorily.
Mulan's mother isn't dead (only human exception I can think of, in original theatrical Disney releases). That might be part of why Mulan is my favorite disney movie (there's lots of other reasons).
...because it was the obvious way to implement something. I doubt it was that much less obvious in April. Basically I had to put stuff in the URL that was being put in cookies in the existing application I was modifying, so that it would work even if the user didn't accept cookies. The stuff in the URL/cookies was a pair of numbers identifying the user and the page to the application-server. I was using VisualWave which was created before April 97 (in 1995 I think?) so possibly someone had done it before me.
Hire a bunch of people at minimum wage to listen to possibly-copyrighted-infringing downloads. Take those lists from RIAA, get the first 15 seconds of each song from them for comparison purposes, then download something whose title makes it look as though it's infringing. Play each sample to one of your employees, then have them press a "same" or "different" button. If it's "same", the user gets booted off Napster.
To keep your employees honest, every 10 or 15 songs play some predetermined ones, either same or different. If they get it wrong, they're fired.
To pay for this, charge Napster users $10 when they create a new login name (starting now, existing users can keep their current accounts). $1 of it will go to Napster to pay the minimum wage employees and pay for the system they're using to download/compare; the rest will go to RIAA if the user is found to be infringing, as a fine. No profit, still not commercial, just a processing fee for costs, and an escrow so the user is guaranteeing they're honest. The fee will also prevent RIAA from complaining that booted users can just sign up again under a different name. Sure they can, but if they're infringing, it'll cost them.
With a few hundred employees, Napster should be able to be considered to be making a fair attempt to keep copyrighted materials off their servers, and in addition, it'll avoid the possible unfairness of banning anyone for having a parody or a song that just happens to be called "Why I love Metallica, by Jane Smith"
If you keep all negative things away from a child, you'll let them grow up to believe that Mommy or Daddy or the Government will always protect them from anything icky. But - if you let a child be overwhelmed by the negative things, they resign themselves to living in a world in which they'll never feel happy or loved. I'd say both are bad. Parents need to steer a course between protecting their children but not over-protecting.
Overall, I think you are correct about the problems with over-protectiveness of children from negative influences. However, it isn't quite as clear cut as you make out.
At various ages, children have differing capacities. A five year old must be protected from more things than a fifteen-year-old. Children under three should not be given toys with small parts lest they choke on them; children of age six can handle that danger easily.
These obvious examples have more obscure counterparts when it comes to information and ideas. There are ideas that can be damaging to very young children and from which they should be protected. Children exposed too early to too much sexuality can (not always, but more often than one would wish) become over-sexualized, with higher risk of problems in their late teens than children who were kept relatively ignorant until say, age 10.
It is wrong to keep all negative things away from children and let them grow up to believe that mommy or daddy or the Government will always protect them from anything icky. But it is also wrong to let children be so overwhelmed with negative things in society that they are not yet ready to deal with, having none of the equipment and psychological tools and armor that adults have, so that they resign themselves to living in a world in which they'll never feel happy or loved. I'd say both are bad. Parents must protect their children but not over-protect.
I hope this middle road can be taken by thoughtful people, but it seems like the extremists always drown out the moderate voices. I hope that isn't the case today.
Actually, it would not be allowed. Routing around malfunctioning devices was only allowed for the category of (paraphrased) data compilations. Musical recordings are not an exception, even if the device is malfunctioning --only databases and other things that could legitimately be classified as data compilations.
Isaac Asimov (author of the original Foundation books) was a pioneer in continuing other author's worlds, not that he did it himself, but he promoted the idea of other writers doing it. Yes, I agree that the original author puts a stylistic imprimatur on their work, but sometimes, the story can carry on in others' inspirations. The Foundation sequels are actually pretty well done IMO.
Kevin Anderson, on the other hand, is just not that good a writer, and neither is Brian Herbert. I have read a few of the solo books of both and can confidently say that I have no interest in reading anything they collaborate on.
Sudanna, Sudanna, for example, was amusing, but eminently forgettable. Blindfold was an easier read, but a very generic piece of sci-fi. Of course the people who wrote reviews at Amazon loved them.
Personally I think Candle by John Barnes (which was sort of reviewed here last week) was better than anything by either of these two authors, and Barnes might have the potential to be as much of a classic in his time as Frank Herbert is.
Ok, I went and downloaded the free part. And I'm an avid reader. And I read the first 20 or so pages and it's the tritest, worst characterized stuff I've read in ages. First the depressed guy whose whole family was killed in a car crash. Then the manipulative scum who's trying to get his secretary to cheat on her husband. How about some real characters? This writer has NOTHING on Neal Stephenson - he isn't even favorably comparable to Danielle Steele. Ick, I'm not even gonna read past that point. I didn't even get to the neat techie stuff. Oh well.
Slashdot Mirror
Exactly - when I read this "ask slashdot" question, I thought instantly, isn't that what I had when I took intro to programming in college? Yes, it was, hardly any textbook ever made the impression that "SICP" has made on me. Several folks have said it is hard going, maybe for some, for me it was like a light going on in my head - OH! I thought, Computer programming really is interesting and deep after all. Not something I'd thought after high school BASIC class.
;)
I was lucky though, in many ways. Hal Abelson came to my college (Brandeis) to teach it once a week (with our own computer science professors filling in on the other sessions of the week), so probably my experience was more on target than those who didn't have the good fortune to have one of the authors teaching the class. It was an exciting, fun, mind expanding class - the kind of thing I went to college for in the first place (cause I wasn't much of a drinker
It did cover prolog style programming, and object oriented programming, as well as lambda calculus, and stream-based programming. Admittedly, the only one it teaches deeply is the lambda calculus; the others are covered more cursorily and need their own courses to deepen them. (I "understood" object oriented programming after that course and the lunar lander program, but I didn't *understand* object oriented programming till I'd been programming in Smalltalk for several months)
Anyway - there may well be other books that achieve this goal, because it's been years & years, but that one sure did.
Janifer Bibliography
What appears to be his homepage
Of other science fiction writers he reminds me of maybe L. E. Modessit and Mack Reynolds the most. His writing isn't quite as political as that of either, but to me it has that same feel. Maybe Mike Resnick too?
you're describing what sounds exactly like the economy of buying PCs.. no, not player characters... personal computers. If you keep your money for a month you can buy a better computer than you could have a month back.. etc!
In the brief this portion was clarified:
1. Posting
The initial issue is whether the posting prohibition is content-neutral, since, as we have explained, this classification determines the applicable
constitutional standard. The Appellants contend that the anti-trafficking provisions of the DMCA and their application by means of the posting
prohibition of the injunction are content-based. They argue that the provisions "specifically target . . . scientific expression based on the particular topic
addressed by that expression--namely, techniques for circumventing CSS." Supplemental Brief for Appellants at 1. We disagree. The Appellants'
argument fails to recognize that the target of the posting provisions of the injunction- -DeCSS--has both a nonspeech and a speech component, and
that the DMCA, as applied to the Appellants, and the posting prohibition of the injunction target only the nonspeech component. Neither the DMCA
nor the posting prohibition is concerned with whatever capacity DeCSS might have for conveying information to a human being, and that capacity, as
previously explained, is what arguably creates a speech component of the decryption code. The DMCA and the posting prohibition are applied to
DeCSS solely because of its capacity to instruct a computer to decrypt CSS. That functional capability is not speech within the meaning of the First
Amendment. The Government seeks to "justif[y]," Hill, 530 U.S. at 720, both the application of the DMCA and the posting prohibition to the
Appellants solely on the basis of the functional capability of DeCSS to instruct a computer to decrypt CSS, i.e., "without reference to the content of
the regulated speech," id. This type of regulation is therefore content- neutral, just as would be a restriction on trafficking in skeleton keys identified
because of their capacity to unlock jail cells, even though some of the keys happened to bear a slogan or other legend that qualified as a speech
component.
Content neutral as to the speech component of the code! What this means is that it would be legal to post a "version" of DeCSS that would be non-functional. For example, if a bug were purposely inserted into the code and it would no longer run. If the code is not functional, it is not banned - the speech component of it is not what is being prohibited.
Ok, I suggest this to 2600 or anyone else who wants to post DeCSS or other decryption programs - add typo/bug's to it. Don't actually state where the bugs are, leave it as an excercise for the reader. Since the code is speech, I imagine most readers who can comprehend the speech can also mentally fix the typos - but computers cannot (typically) and, therefore, you've removed the objectionable portion of the code...
In paper magazines, one pays for the copy of the magazine. It's persistent, you can keep it and read it as often as you like. Some people throw them away but they do so on their own choice of schedule.
In the movies, people pay to go to a movie at a theater as a social event, more than for the individual experience. The individual experience part keeps the social event painless (no struggle to think of what to talk about, etc) rather than being what people pay for in its own sake. Similarly, when people rent movies, they do so to kill time, and watch the movie with someone.
Reading web sites is an individual, nonsocial experience which makes it unlike viewing movies or television. It is also ephemeral, you are paying for the experience alone, no physical item, so it is unlike magazines or newspapers. In addition, no "content" web site that I've ever seen provides the return for money that a pay-per-view TV channel or newspaper does, and less than most magazines as well. The pictures are lower quality, there is less sheer quantity.
For $6.00 a month, HBO gives you movies 24 hours a day plus The Sopranos and quite a few specials. And for about $40 a month you can get *all* the premium cable channels offered. If Web Content providers had that much richness of offering, for that kind of price - six bucks a month for one, forty a month for all the ones I could possibly want/need - I'd pay it. Probably a lot of people would.
People buy hardback books for $20, paperbacks for $6. It's the same exact information. They feel like they're paying for the physical book, NOT the words, and that's shown to be true in some sense by the economics of it. At this rate, they expect to be paying around $1.50 for the electronic version. I'd pay $1.50 for a download of the novel-before-the-latest of one of my favorite authors...
People will pay for content when content becomes worth what's being charged for it. Simple as that. They will expect to be able to re-view it without re-paying or what they pay will reduce compensatorily.
Mulan's mother isn't dead (only human exception I can think of, in original theatrical Disney releases). That might be part of why Mulan is my favorite disney movie (there's lots of other reasons).
I believe EZBoard is written in Smalltalk
Volkswagen Beetles with code in Smalltalk
Extreme Programming was invented while Kent Beck was consulting on Smalltalk projects
I think that's enough for a start :)
...because it was the obvious way to implement something. I doubt it was that much less obvious in April. Basically I had to put stuff in the URL that was being put in cookies in the existing application I was modifying, so that it would work even if the user didn't accept cookies. The stuff in the URL/cookies was a pair of numbers identifying the user and the page to the application-server. I was using VisualWave which was created before April 97 (in 1995 I think?) so possibly someone had done it before me.
Hire a bunch of people at minimum wage to listen to possibly-copyrighted-infringing downloads. Take those lists from RIAA, get the first 15 seconds of each song from them for comparison purposes, then download something whose title makes it look as though it's infringing. Play each sample to one of your employees, then have them press a "same" or "different" button. If it's "same", the user gets booted off Napster.
To keep your employees honest, every 10 or 15 songs play some predetermined ones, either same or different. If they get it wrong, they're fired.
To pay for this, charge Napster users $10 when they create a new login name (starting now, existing users can keep their current accounts). $1 of it will go to Napster to pay the minimum wage employees and pay for the system they're using to download/compare; the rest will go to RIAA if the user is found to be infringing, as a fine. No profit, still not commercial, just a processing fee for costs, and an escrow so the user is guaranteeing they're honest. The fee will also prevent RIAA from complaining that booted users can just sign up again under a different name. Sure they can, but if they're infringing, it'll cost them.
With a few hundred employees, Napster should be able to be considered to be making a fair attempt to keep copyrighted materials off their servers, and in addition, it'll avoid the possible unfairness of banning anyone for having a parody or a song that just happens to be called "Why I love Metallica, by Jane Smith"
Overall, I think you are correct about the problems with over-protectiveness of children from negative influences. However, it isn't quite as clear cut as you make out.
At various ages, children have differing capacities. A five year old must be protected from more things than a fifteen-year-old. Children under three should not be given toys with small parts lest they choke on them; children of age six can handle that danger easily.
These obvious examples have more obscure counterparts when it comes to information and ideas. There are ideas that can be damaging to very young children and from which they should be protected. Children exposed too early to too much sexuality can (not always, but more often than one would wish) become over-sexualized, with higher risk of problems in their late teens than children who were kept relatively ignorant until say, age 10.
It is wrong to keep all negative things away from children and let them grow up to believe that mommy or daddy or the Government will always protect them from anything icky. But it is also wrong to let children be so overwhelmed with negative things in society that they are not yet ready to deal with, having none of the equipment and psychological tools and armor that adults have, so that they resign themselves to living in a world in which they'll never feel happy or loved. I'd say both are bad. Parents must protect their children but not over-protect.
I hope this middle road can be taken by thoughtful people, but it seems like the extremists always drown out the moderate voices. I hope that isn't the case today.
Actually, it would not be allowed. Routing around malfunctioning devices was only allowed for the category of (paraphrased) data compilations. Musical recordings are not an exception, even if the device is malfunctioning --only databases and other things that could legitimately be classified as data compilations.
Kevin Anderson, on the other hand, is just not that good a writer, and neither is Brian Herbert. I have read a few of the solo books of both and can confidently say that I have no interest in reading anything they collaborate on. Sudanna, Sudanna, for example, was amusing, but eminently forgettable. Blindfold was an easier read, but a very generic piece of sci-fi. Of course the people who wrote reviews at Amazon loved them.
Personally I think Candle by John Barnes (which was sort of reviewed here last week) was better than anything by either of these two authors, and Barnes might have the potential to be as much of a classic in his time as Frank Herbert is.
Ok, I went and downloaded the free part. And I'm an avid reader. And I read the first 20 or so pages and it's the tritest, worst characterized stuff I've read in ages. First the depressed guy whose whole family was killed in a car crash. Then the manipulative scum who's trying to get his secretary to cheat on her husband. How about some real characters? This writer has NOTHING on Neal Stephenson - he isn't even favorably comparable to Danielle Steele. Ick, I'm not even gonna read past that point. I didn't even get to the neat techie stuff. Oh well.