Like most people who enjoy stomping butt in one of the best RTS games on the planet (Broodwar), I do not devote much time to getting around the cesspool of B.net. However, because of this new move by Blizzard, there is a chance I can get online, and find another way to get some buddies into a game without b.net at all. Screw this boycott crap. What I am looking forward to is the day when I can login to b.net and see only about 1/3rd of the users because people are hosting themselves. Now that is the stuff! And I hope they are scared shitless of that reality. Wonder how long it will be before some international company is pushing bots through IP space to look for illegal or unlicensed services/software--Just like M$ has been doing for the last six years? That's ok, because the true meausre of a firewall monkey is how well they can keep everyone except friendlies out of sensitive networks.
Seeing that Blizzard is part of that whole Vivendi scheme makes my skin crawl. Sure I buy music and software, but it is almost always second hand...for financial reasons.
On the point about Dell dropping linux...It might have had something to do with a sales-based initiative where their sales department, looking to make money on installed machines, was calling all the businesses who had purchased servers and asking them questions like:
Dell: Are you the person who maintains or admins the Dell servers in your company? me:Yeah, we have some powerapp 100's. Dell: We're calling to see if you need any support for your powerapps with windows licensing, or service packs. Anything you might need in order to keep your servers upgraded. me: Ok. But we're running linux on those powerapps. Dell: long pause me: Ok, thanks for the call. Bye. click
So, Linux, unlike the M$ monster, doesn't really make companies money like M$ does.
No government should seem weak before software developers. Really.
I look at M$ and I see the reformationist catholic church, sprawled across europe, selling indulgences (peeks into the source code), taking land (businesses), and raping choir boys (IT departments?) for the sport of it.
The classic view of transcendence of power, as fomented by the church was that power came from God, passed to the clergy, then to the king, and then to the people.
It took someone with stones, Louis the 14th., to step on the necks of the church, and proclaim himself above them...until that time, things were looking pretty damned corrupt. Brother Luther was a thesis wielding chap. Great stuff that Humanities.:-)
Anybody see a parallel here...
Anyway, when M$, the BSA, and their hired thugs take over any office, that office is losing money...imagine a city office, or offices, shutdown in order for some software developer to come in and perform a hologram-count, scan systems, and basically ensure compliance? It could take days. If I ran a city office, it would be the kind of nightmare that has me wearing weak-bladder protection, daily.
Why is there even a question about this issue?
Why should citizenry dump their tax dollars into a corporate interest when the government is there to serve the people, and not "one redmond way"?
Unless M$ generates revenue within that community, then all the money for licenses, upgrades, and office software are just one big sucking sound heading to the pacific northwest.
Oh, and if you're wondering if there's any real need for IT departments everywhere to question their base OS'en, there is. When you're business is FORCED to upgrade their software every year and maybe even more often, then things are out of control. Upgrades are becomming mandatory under M$, like buying a new car (or hundreds if you have a large business) every year. Every year you WILL pay for your licenses, and if there's a sharp decline be prepared for a visit from one of the local M$ bishops, who will frown, ask probing questions, and show up with the inquisition (Torquemada, anyone?) to torment you for not supporting their bleed-your-ass-white business model.
And for those who think this should be the status quo...you're slaves. Find freedom before it's too late.
MTV's Jackass would have fun with these...
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This is IT?
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The world is waiting for those gay bastards at "Jackass" to do Faceplant tests with these while wearing only socks on their junk. (shudder)
Can't stand watching that show any more, but it's exactly what those guys would do after zipping through a crowd of Nuns or startled bystanders on the "Segway" and then cross the street to get away and fail trying to hop a curb.
I have seldom had to fend off the urge to post (in bold) the word "boxen" two-dozen times in some juvinile effort to push the buttons of another poster.
You cannot, either by force of will, or anything short of a global meat-space altering act, change what people accept as slang. English, as we use it here, is a vibrant living language--new technologies and buzzwords are the flora and fauna of our mental environment, and they live against a backdrop of metaphors; our tools for dealing with the abstract and the complexities of this new environment. And you cannot argue people out of an idea.
As a sysadmin (that's not a word either) with a small herd of boxen (I use the term because they pull their weight, and they make me money, they're a massive ROI multiplier) I think of them as the work animals in my computer stable...where stability means everything.
I wonder what other admin's call their servers that work 24/7, pulling in the orders and dealing with attacks by virii, worms, and other pests? Every one of my BOXEN has a name. Heck I love my BOXEN. I look after them, and I don't mind anthropomorphing them into the great beasts of burden they are. Hey, is that a context? There ya go dublin, there is a real context for the word which grieves you.
But why stop there. There should be lucid missives about the use of "lite" instead of "Light" (calorie-speak), or "nite" instead of "night"? We can only admire your restraint, for you really must've held back by just venting your spleen on a single word--I'm sure you could have written at least a limrick including several. Next time you should invoke Nasi-Schinerman's studies about language and thought, or Chomsky's arguments for the justification of things, and somehow argued the moral, intellectual, and possibly even the spiritual harm and dammage to our shared mental environment...the outrage of Oxford, of Webster, or maybe even GAWD at the use of the word BOXEN.
In closing I can only wish you the best in this holiday season, and urge you to simply accept that MEMES, like sexually-transmitted diseases, are oblivious to even the most poignant of arguments. Check up on that brilliant chap Richard Dawkins, who has a real talent for explaining memes and such.
Unlike Von-Neuman machines, a DNA computer is more useful for path-based problems, and problems where the number of permutations and miscibility when handled by our current general puprose computers, would take more time than the universe has left to "brute force" an answer.
The big stumbling block with DNA computing is setting up the problems and interpreting the answers. For now, the hardware consists of arrays of test-tubes, DNA sources (mouse DNA does some great stuff), and enzymes which are used to setup and unlock/interpret the results based on how you setup the initial problem. Genetic computers, like life, will always deal with squishy, fluidic stuff, and as such should never, ever find itself in day-to-day home use.
There is an incredible paradigm differential between established Von-Neuman computer science and biological computing systems that everyone should equate the complexity of DNA computing with Quatumn Physics, and know that even when people think they "get it", they don't. Really-Really.
Anyone worried about having to feed their computers should relax, and consider themsevles very very lucky to live long enough to see that happen. Long before consumers have access to DNA-based computing, the NSF and Military will be using it as an excuse for billions in black-ops appropriations and maybe even declare it off-limits to the market once they figure out how to use it to crack encryption key namespaces.
To put it simply, there are many of us here who would rather be working on our own personal projects. And we're often conflicted and frustrated by our inability to fire-jump complex problems during the day and then try to do great stuff for ourselves that night...or we have legal binders, a company that's benevolent until we create something that they want, or just want to slap us down because we're doing things that could create a conflict of interest.
Whatever the reason, I think a Grant would rock. For some of us, it would enable us to walk away from some job that we've been laboring at for years; for others it would solve financial problems, and for some it would just be a bonus.
I suggest this because I know that for years I have dreamed of writing programs and doing things that I've never had the time or money to do...and it's frustrating to have even minor talents, but no leisure or legal standing to accomplish something. And the terms of the grant could be non-specific to the point where writing a working open-source program would suffice. Hey, maybe I'd finally have a reason to beat my head against CVS and finally learn it (I've been in denial and avoidance for too long).
If nothing else, it would be nice for those folks who have talent but have been layed off, to have some room to recoup their edge while hunting for a job. And nothing sucks like being unemployed through the winter holiday season.
With all the extensive tech-layoffs this year, I think we're going to see many proud people taking the easy way out this year. I hope I'm wrong.
The concept of a powerglove is a very "Rube Goldberg"-esque hardware persuit. I have a Nintendo Powerglove, and can say that first-hand experience with powergloves has been pretty damn abysmal. I played that "Superball" game that came with it for a hour straight (yep, same game, no restarts...not a bad game once you figure it out) and I had to modify my hand and body position repeatedly in order to keep going. The "glove" sucks for long-term, repetitive tasks. The mouse works because it allows us to sit on our butts and keep on going. Anybody with a glove isn't going to do a day at the 'puter. It might have a place with "Palm" (nice product tie-in too) and virtual keyboards and mice, but for the PC, and "Gaming all damn day", it's a white-oliphant.
Robotics research/development using the technologies pioneered in the DS1 program needs to be expanded, targeted, and applied to the science of microgravity mining using solar-powered orbital processing will allow us to create unique materials and bring them down the gravity well.
Once we do this, we will have materials which can be used to fabricate orbiting structures and vessels (with or without human involvement) and still send some very homogenous materials planet-side.
There's merit in being able to bring incredibly strong and light custom materials down the gravity well and fetch top-dollar for a product which cannot be made any other way. In turn, the revenue generated from this would make happy campers out of an agency that's been pulling at the Tax-teat forever.
The technologies to make this happen are only a couple of decades from perfection...limited use and operation would occur long before that.
Automated processing/manfuacturing technologies in orbit will springboard the development and sustainability of anything else we do in the solar system, even on our own world. And being able to make nearly _perfect_ metals will do more for us than some baked rocks from a dead world. Really.
And if you don't believe me/don't agree then think of history. The "Stone Age", the "Bronze Age", the "Iron Age"...we need to make a step in a new direction.
Re:So how about some mythical creatures?
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Robot Cat 'NeCoRo'
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How about some B5 TechnoMagi stuff, like proximinal holography with directed focus that interacts with the localized environment...like a dragon that blows kisses and winks at wonderfully symmetrical females as they walk by, or a succubus on the left shoulder and an angelic angel on the right who whisper words of encouragement ("Gut the worms!" or "Jeelezebubba luvs you--wet kiss sound--"), read your email to you, or start wicked fights with each other only to kiss and make-up later on the desk during lunch.
Of course this kind of stuff shouldn't be developed by Microsopht(screw us all industries) and made too customer friendly, where a simple worm would transform your dragon into some deformed carricature of what a 13yr old would like to think is them, say a bunch of weird profane crap, and leave holographic turds all over you with a glowing "hacked by" on your back before heading off to infect countless others.
The only way to protect their preciousss music
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As it stands, the public has been getting too much enrichment from music...we're spoiled rotten. Really. What they really want is for us to pay $5 US to listen to a song on a little disk...they sell that crap to kids and market it as _cool_. At 8 to 14 songs a CD they're really taking on the chin. And then there's that whole "reseller" gig, where they can't make a cent on it.
The only way they're ever going to truly protect their property and charge us per beat is to wrap the audio signal in an encrypted wireless stream which requires an implant that will contain the key that was used to purchase the song from a device and will be used to decrypt it in real time and play it back to the user through a direct neural overlay/shunt.
People who want to hear music played in public places would probably have to subscribe or the company playing it would have an "event license" which would service only a specific number of listeners within a specific radius...this kind of technology could be used to recieve broadcasts from a local relay. Because each implant also serves to identify the customer, it's easy to determine subscriber counts per performance delivery node, which gives advertisers a very good data stream...right down to the user's ID, which of course is going to be sniffed by about every market-device in the area...blocking "proximity ads" would probably cost you.
This technology will initially be developed to overcome hearing loss, or enable criminals to lead some kind of life/rehabilitiation, and eventually will be sold to the citzenry as an extremely cool way to interface with the environment, computers, and each other.
If a lowly bastard like myself can see this coming, don't think the greedy aren't working towards it right now. They're going to sell it to us, and we're going to assume that "come hither" position we always do...because it's what we're trained to do as good little citizens and we love our toys.
Mommies will love to know exactly where their vandals are, goverment will enjoy being able to track people--anywhere--and the RIAA will happily give you a reason to pay to hear music. Can you imagine a concert where someone with this technology would hear the music without any degredation or at least without their ears ringing, while the "unchipped" would just hear the crowd, and maybe the drums if they were close enough to the stage? That would be some weird shit.
Hey, on the upside, the rebels would just make their own music...too bad they'd have to do it in secret or face licensing issues.
After trying to "self-learn" lisp in the 80's I get this physical reaction to the word "lambda"...a cold sweat combined with the involuntary retraction of my testicles to a protected location in my abdomen (damn unpleasant shit)...I usually avoid that second one by mentally going through the mechanincs of "hello world" in C, or any half-a-dozen other programming languages.
Lisp is one of those meta-languages you either learn or avoid. I write practical stuff all the time, daily in fact, and I've never had something that required the arcane stuff in LISP.
Anybody who sells M$ server solutions as being safe, or reliable is probably really pissed that they're now taking a bus, a train, or paying for onsite support in one or more remote POP's in order to fix rooted M$ servers. I hope they take a bath. As time goes on, maybe we'll see a backlash at the IT level against M$ closedware.
Over the last year I've been praised by my company repeatedly for being instrumental in getting our services away from weak server solutions. And it's paid off with uptimes only interrupted by the addition of equipment into the cabinet and the addition of added remote power controllers. And even on the servers which do run NT, we don't bother with IIS.
I hope that the M$ strategy to pad netcraft results, and to reflect browser marketshare bite them in the ass (does anybody else have an explaination for the forced install and activation of services when NT is upgraded?), even if it's just in rooted servers in their pool. When it's all said and done smart people know who, how, and why they're being screwed. And because they're smart, they know what they have to do to stop it.
And it's not that I dislike M$. I just don't like being screwed. Sure it's an unusual stand to take, but if more people cared, maybe we wouldn't find so many people and companies willingly taking it up the ass every year for a new OS from a company that's just a few years from adding nifty gimmicks like tailfins in order to entice customers to buy their new exploit engine?
Flame me all you want, but getting people who tell it like is won't make the problem go away. (J.Biafra-derivative)
The less someone understands their system, the less empowered they are to seek something better...and I define better as:
A product which works on the hardware I have.
A product that doesn't spy on me.
A product that I own.
A product that has been reviewed independently, without worrying about political and financial obligations and obfuscations and omissions.
A product that doesn't reinvent file formats for the purpose of breaking compatibility with other products, or forcing upgrades.
A product that doesn't force me to abandon previous investments in order to reap a dubious reward...like being able to use conjoined apps that I never needed before, and probably won't use anyway.
By the very nature of the beasties involved, no M$ product meets any of the above criteria. YMMV, but hey, it's your money, and it's a free country. I'm not arguing from ideology here, I'm talking about using common sense. A computer is a durable product.
BTW...if you define innovation as Leveraging new and unusual ways to lock users into license verification and developer lock-in, then you're right. Just like the Pentium 4, XP is the definitive OS for making the marketing departments of many software vendors happy. But I'm not going to be running it. I'll be running winblows 98se and *nix until they're outlawed. If I want to play a game, I'll do it on a PSX2 or similar dedicated game machine, which is remarkably inexpensive and well-suited for the task. All my boxen are either 486DX or Pentium machines, and they still seem perfectly capable of programming, illustration, spreadsheets, and StarCraft.
Other than elaborate PC games, is there really any reason someone _needs_ XP (besides the fat-cat software publishers, M$, and Big Brother)? You do understand that just like the Auto Industry, M$ wants consumers to buy a new OS (hopefully by buying a new system) every year. And as long as the luser-base is stoopid enough to throw away their money, the fat cats are going to happily churn out new crappy products to make the luser-base happy.
Sometimes it's not about FUD, it's about visualizing being on the business end of the M$ boot stepping a human face forever. Sure it's not so bad now, but someday they'll have those suckers resoled with cleats.
You're right, it's like paying a tens of millions dollars to take a red-eye to Las Vegas, on the way you exercise like a rabid hamster, get wicked radiation poisoning, brittle bones, and eat babyfood coming and going and are constantly asked to follow some list of crap to do. Oh yeah, and hope to hell the centrpetial toilet/vacuum thingy doesn't screw up.
Can't say I'm too impressed with the idea of a Mars base yet. I've followed the progress of the one up north (Devon Island--great job), and I don't see much in the way of returns. Maybe I just suffer from not having enough imagination to feel that putting people on Mars actually accomplishes much.
Personally, I'd like to see some of the technologies pioneered on the DeepSpace 1 mission applied to "Wildcatters", automated scouting vessels which would assay the mineral wealth of the asteroid belts. We need to get humanity up the gravity well and into orbit, and the only way to do that is to justify the expense, and if we can smelter and cast/synthesize perfect metals up in microgravity, it would go a long way towards paying the bills. We can do some wild stuff with metals in microgravity (Gundainium anyone?) and that's a technology that doesn't violate any religious beliefs, and it would possbily even make Greenpeace happy by reducing the potential for near-earth-objects.
Once space exploration pays it's bills, we're going to leapfrog through the system and eventually to other stars. Until then, the space programs of the planet are nothing more than a way to spy and play diplomacy games in a weak attempt to legitimately recoup multi-billion dollar RnD budgets and college research programs.
In Sci-Fi, anime, and whatnot, I think skin-tight spacesuits on women are probably there for more aesthetic reasons.:-)
What you're talking about is called a "positive pressure" suit. The premise being that if you can apply 15+lbs/sq.ft on someone's body in a consistent fashion, then you don't have to create a bubble around them by using pressurized air. The problem with elastic suits like this was the hands and the joints, which would comically bulge creating unequal areas of lesser pressure and rendering the suit somewhat useless.
Thank you for the comment, I couldn't believe I had _karma_ and had to find out why.
I'm a big fan of RTS games. My son and I play them all the time. But they're dubious "edutainment", esp. when you consider all the killing and great explosions. No parent/school are going to permit Starcraft as an educational tool. As a parent I'm allowed to use it as such, but I wouldn't expect an institution to use it in such a way (unless it's the Army--And they have their own flavor, I just can't remember its name).
From this reply, I can only hope you're not very close to the system...or you're just in love with the idea of kids learning something from a computer that they somehow can't get from another person. Most people who think computers belong in school don't have to actually prove that computers in school do something worthwhile. When I see something like proof, then I'll change my tune. Until that time, I'd like to see the proven methods of study win out over enthusiastic experimentation with taxpayer dollars which only seem to give kidiots license to shape themselves into keyboard punks...a punk is someone who does stupid willful acts of vandalism and thuggery because they can. Hand a little kid a gun and they'll shoot someone. Hand them a computer and they'll vandalize and mug networks. A computer is a tool. Like a weapon, it needs to be used wisely, and I wouldn't mind seeing fewer guns in the hands of kids, and fewer networks too.
I would challenge anyone to produce something like real facts/figures that prove computers do anything special in school (other than cost buttloads of money and add another layer of control complexity). From personal experience in the k-12 sector (as a parent and someone who help admin and had to listen to all the whining/bitching that k-12 network admins do) I know I'm standing at a point of reality. The problem with this point of view is that it doesn't line the pockets of fat-cat vendors and implementers who couldn't care less if a teacher makes a living, or if kids actually benefit from computers.
I didn't have access to one, and I bootstrapped myself, did college to learn data structures and some meta-languages, and I think I'm better off for not having had that distraction while I was learning the tools for self-study during the first 12 years of institutionalized violence, where there's a remarkably wide path of problems which are only complicated by admin-bots who loose their minds trying to man the walls (esp. the M$ ones which are built out of remarklably easy to defeat substance) against their student population.
Here's deal...do the ends justify the means? Does computer literacy have to be institutionalized when the majority of the population owns some form of general purpose/entertainment computing device? I think the answer is no. If there were more neighborhood organizations that could redistribute computers to family's, instead of just having old boxen dropped on the schools steps where they're discarded, every family in a school district could have enough computer to do something with (get online, setup a bbs, play games, whatever) and there wouldn't be all these issues invovling the school. The school computers would be for administration use(teachers armed with StarOffice and a laser printer can make homework and organizational miracles happen), and the kids would be learning on their own time, at their own pace, and discovering things without our love (yes, the joy of seeing a computer conquer yet another frontier) of computers wasting a student's time with their teacher or taxpayer dollars.
Pitch a better plan with some guaranteed beneficial result. I dare you.:-D
How many people think TV in the classroom is a good thing? I challenge you, reader, to view a computer as an interactive TV, and divorce yourself, even for a moment, from the love and enjoyment you may feel at your mad skillz with one. Using that association is a good definition of how and when we should roll out a computer in order to demonstrate a concept, illuminate an idea, or just be entertained. Because what we do invloves learning on comptuers (meta-languages, Networking, Data-Storage/retrieval, Games) we readily forget the true source of human learning. Each other, ourselves, and buttloads of complex interactions.
As someone who codes/admin's for a living I know (firsthand) that computers are a panacea to NOTHING. They don't teach our kids. They frustrate teachers, and only complicate the problem of forcing creative minds to do something difficult and less entertaining. Like learning something. Yeah, it's not fun. It sucks. But then every damn thing we do that means anything is tough. If that's too much of a thought to bear, then obviously it's a personal problem.
Like the old adage goes, "Everything I've learned, I learned from someone else", and that's what's important. And what I've learned from watching K-12 admins, teachers, and kids has taught me that computers have a very limited (extremely limited) role to play in education at the K-12 level; a role that's almost equivalent to TV use. The importance of computers to education for young children is extremely overplayed to the benefit of nearly everyone but the children and the teachers, so if you don't find a solution to the problem of good learning software it's because you're ignoring the best learning device (wetware) the planet has to offer...it's that idealistic, incredibly underpaid teacher who has to do without and somehow perform a minor miracle in this age of micro-burst attention spans in children(conditioned reflex to all those extravagant TV ads that peddle chinese plastic and wonder to the young in this country).
BTW...this isn't a Luddite point of view. It's just so damn obvious that only people who are in love with the concept of schools (fat cats and vendors making money selling firewater to the natives) sitting children down in classrooms full of computers and somehow letting the comptuers do something that is uniquely human.
Maybe we should get some lucky bastard to write up a socially acceptable study to determine the level of feral behavior a child would have if everything they learned came from a computer. That would be a good read. Maybe we could roll a little "operant conditioning" in there too. You know, force the little buggers to figure out the right sequence of actions they would need to perform correctly in order to get a caffine drink, or a piece of candy. Failure could result in a mild electric shock. Hey, now that would be progress, eh? We love you B.F. Skinner, and a big shout out to P.T. Barnum, who is to Human Nature, what Albert Einstien is to Physics.
First, let me thank you for your comment. Yeah, I know, you posted AC. But I appreciate the response anyway.
I know that by mentioning that I have a LAN in the house I must seem elitist, maybe even isolationist...that I'm possibly saying, "Hey, I've got my kids covered, screw the rest." but there's precious little hacking/learning/discovery going on with regards to these machines.
What I'm trying to say is that I don't like the thought of some rabid k12-sysadmin losing their mind and basically getting my kid in trouble for administrative shortcomings. Nobody should have to deal with their kid being kicked out of school for being intelligent. There's simply no sense to it.
I can't help but think that many people, who have been out of the school system for more than six years, still think that kids enjoy being sat down in from of a gelded computer and told to do something, and can't help feeling bored at the lack of options, or worried that they're going to do something and get busted for it. To me, this translates into anxiety.
The means (giving kids in k12 classrooms computers with a buttload of disciplinary measures attached) does not justify the end (warm fuzzy feeling that said children know how to click on the "Start" button and perform tasks designed to make them useful to a corporation that would rather hire people from another country because they're cheaper and better educated because--surprise--those kids didn't have computers in the classroom; they did what I did and simply learned it all in college).
To me, that's the short and sweet of it. The tools to become a good programmer (immagination, interest in computers, and problem solving) are developed or should be developed independenlty of computers. Think about it in the context of 20th century scientists who didn't have Beowulf clusters or Cray super computers. We're only now starting to model and prove just how good their thought experiments were.
I love working with computers, solving problems, and having fun with technology. And I'll be completely honest and admit that if I had to go to work in some office where I couldn't go certain places on the Internet, or I couldn't read my mail, or any number of insane restricitons, I would rather dig ditches. At least I'd be getting some exercise.
I think there's a sinister logic to conditioning kids to not be intelligent with computers. Where we punish the creative and reward the monkey pushing buttons--which is exactly what lazy sysadmins and pointy-haired management types like. If B.F.Skinner were alive today, he'd be making serious money doing studies on K12 kids and knee-jerk admin practicies.
Yep, during the industrial revolution we trained the little buggers to respond to bells and be good factory workers, and now we're teaching them to live in fear and revile using a computer and expect a lack of options/opportunites to be assoicated with computer use.
The more I have to deal with the assholes at the k12 level, the more I look forward to having to deal with my kids getting suspension for doing common things which are beyond the teachers/staff to understand.
I'd like to see school districts come up with a wavier to keep my kids off their precious computers. I'd sign it in a heartbeat. So should any other person who understands the k12 computer situation.
I want my kids to be something more than monkeys pushing buttons (yep, k12 level computing is exactly that, or your kid's suspended). I'd rather have them playing music, doing art, or learning how to do math.
I have a multi-node network at home with all sorts of boxen for them to play/learn on. WTF does any kid in k12 need a computer for anyway? Teachers don't understand them. Computers are wasted in the classroom. We would all be better off if computers were there for just the memo-fetishists and poledit-fetishists to enjoy.
At least they had the balls to mention the evil M$ empire and their flaky server/services. ABC was a gelded wonder this morning and didn't mention any of the following words in their "the sky is falling because of the Code Red worm" hysteria:
Microsoft
Internet Information Server (IIS)
Windows NT
Windows 2000
Any layperson who was hearing about this issue for the first time would think that there was something malicious out there just disrupting the Internet in general, but they wouldn't have a clue about how, or why. And listening to spoo-brained dullards muse about who was responsible or where the worm came from was a joke.
What really made me want to shift into Nordic Stormgod Mode and beat the assholes within inches of their ignorant lives was the line
"Just reboot the machine and the worm will go away."
I watch both the "Free" as in "through the air" and "Pay" as in "Holy crap they raised my cable bill again!? Damn Icehole sucking bastiges!" news services, and the lies of ommision coming from the free side are shameful.
And what really sucked was listening to the newsreader/MC lie repeatedly about how he broke his wrist (hey, that isn't news!).
It all just goes to prove that it's not about news, it's about entertainment...and dodging the pit of lawyers large corporations have while giving Joe Public his morning brainwashing. Ahhh...lemony freshness.
Personally, I think the worm was the right thing to do. It exposed a closed-software tendency to create backdoors into a long-duration service which would permit government/M$/and anyone who knew about the weakness to exploit it.
Sysadmins are supposed to be smart people. What M$ has done is screw a couple hundred, maybe even tens of thousands of them. What I'm waiting for is an even bigger backlash at the Sysadmin level, where the words,
"We're not going to deploy on Internet Information Server because it has no security and there's no accountability for it from the vendor."
will be commonplace and more and more server farms will silently shift to *nix and Apache, and all those M$ developer subscriptions (useless firehoses of CD's and nifty binders to hold them) will silently wither away, and M$ zelots will not have their marketing mail answered and will endure mono-syllabic responses to their phone calls from smart people who have a right to be royally pissed. If there's no accountability, then why bother with a pay-to-play solution?
I look forward to the day when M$ server products are reviled for the exploits they are. Sure it may take a while, but somewhere out there right now several clever people are enjoying themselves, having made at least a partially successful run with this last worm, and will probably have the code for an inline resolver to use with the next worm.
Ok everyone, turn the way-back machine to 1998, and remember E-Rate. Hell, there's a line of financial victims still waiting their day in court (if they ever get permission) to resolve that mess. Charity, and good intention don't mean dick to making an Internet.
Before even warming up to the idea Africa, all of it, needs to stop being the rape-victim of western/asian business interests, and most importantly, Africans just need to develop their own Internet infrastructure sometime after they've uplifted enough to not have to worry about disease, incredibly brutal wars, slavery, and the kind of fundamental problems which completely overshadow something as useless as the Internet to the quality of life for human beings.
Give a people the tools and support to improve their lives and they'll get around to something as useless as an Internet sometime after the majority of people are well-fed, the crime/brigandry/slavery are brought down to acceptable limits, and the religious fundamentalists are warm and fuzzy with the idea of their "everyman" downloading snaps of shaved sluts.
I guess what I'm trying to say is that the demagouges need to shut up, or start promoting a truly unified African nation by helping improve the overall infrastructure of the country rather than pouring monies down an E-rate-esque rathole.
Back in the day, when 8-bit machines were all we had to work with, I remember having an invaluable tool called "Dr. C. Wacko's Guide to Game Programming". The flavor I had was the Atari version, but I think there was one for the Commodore machine also.
It was a clever, comical, well-made book which I still found myself as I programmed stuff in Turbo-Basic XL, and Action!. And what Linux could really use is an "Abstracted for the OS" version of Dr. C. Wacko to show up again for Linux.
Laugh will you?! Good, because that's part of the solution. A 13yr. old, addicited to games who wants to roll their own isn't going to pack around a 2500 pg. tome in order to do it, and they won't pick it back up again and again in order to cover something useful if it's buried in appendix XXI. And using that logic, neither should anyone else who's worth their weight in cheese-dip. Sheesh, you'd think we'd be smarter than to cater to such editorial/publisher whim.
Honestly, a book which covers the important stuff, like choosing a gaming library, low-balling the hardware spec, graphics, regionality, distribution and licensing could do it in a way which is both educational and entertaining.
What I find chilling is how many slick editors sell companies on cookie-cutter hardware/software tomes, filled with hundreds of pages of sleep-inducing pablum in order to make a quota.
One of the most useful books I've ever (yes, ever) purchased which actually helped pay the bills was the 1st. edition of the JavaScript Visual Quick Learning Guide (not 100% on the title, it's at home right now) by the PeachPit Press. That book did everything right. Unlike 99% of books published for this industry. It presented quick, cogent, and useful examples. Categorized them in a functional way, and even had a good layout for reference info.
Less than a year later they re-released it, and I guess they made some sweeping changes to bring the 2nd. edition up to the untenably bad level the majority of PeachPit press books and many other technical books seek to aspire to.
So, if any editors are out there, and being gracious enough to read this, then please take this moment to be reminded of what makes a geninuely useful how-to book:
It shouldn't be more than an inch thick. If you need more than an inch of book to cover your subject, throw out some fluff. I don't buy a working book if I can't carry it with me. Sam's publishing hasn't gotten a red-cent out of me because all their crap is full of pablum and asides that don't go anywhere. Need more than an inch...use a URL, Oreilly does.
Small examples which demonstrate exactly what needs to be illuminated. Three pages of source is unnecessary and only marches towards a quota.
Use a common, free, and easily written for language. Of course there's a buttload of zealots out there who unpack their pulpit and invoke their lists of language X rocks for game programming because... reasons, but they're not important. The end-user, the person who needs to be infected with all those good memes involving timing, and inputs, and outputs--they are the target. Chances are most gurus talk a great talk but somehow never find the time to actually write a game. Isn't it funny how that works?
Write to the industry, not the consumer. Don't be afraid to tell people how to really make a game. Don't leave out important stuff, things used by the trade. Game writing is almost like writing about a guild. Don't be afraid to publish things like the value of Pi. Don't be afraid to talk about sorting matricies, or at least put in links to best result algorithms, or lacking links, make them yourself. Telling someone what needs to be done, and omitting important things makes any book a hollow reference. Omission is the great editorial lie.
I know this is a woefully incomplete list, but I think it's enough to establish criteria for what is commonly left out of books which are sold as being something they're not.
There's a buttload of uses for old hardware. Turning old motherboards/CPU's into I/O handlers, and process controllers would only take a bit of custom code (C and or Assembly to manage the serial/parallel ports) and some simple devices.
It makes we want to write the assholes who put on "Robot Wars" to change their name everytime I see a meatbeast controlling a bot...truth is, creating a good API for process controls would be a good step in the right direction. Hell, everyone I know would get a kick out of watching bots based on different OS'sgo up against each other.
Taking the meatbeasts out of the actual competition would give the concept of "Robot Wars" more credibility...yeah, I know programming an autonomous bot isn't for the faint of heart, but if some dedicated individuals out there cobble up a decent API to use some simple stuff (frequency transponders for enemy location would be enough, motion detectors and IR sensors would sweeten the deal when whitenoise generators are brought into play) to direct the bot, most of the existing platforms under meat control now could be liberated pretty quick, and it wouldn't take much more than a 486.
Most of these old systems are hobbled by their BIOS limitations for HD size/speeds, and 3rd party driver support. But these issues don't interfere with regards to serial port operations, or the use of custom code to read data from an I/O port . The hardware itself is still very useful for many tasks which don't require a GUI.
And anyone interested in creating a BOTAPI, or anyone who knows if such a thing is already underway, please chime in.
Slashdot Mirror
Seeing that Blizzard is part of that whole Vivendi scheme makes my skin crawl. Sure I buy music and software, but it is almost always second hand...for financial reasons.
IMHO...that's money better spent elsewhere.
I look at M$ and I see the reformationist catholic church, sprawled across europe, selling indulgences (peeks into the source code), taking land (businesses), and raping choir boys (IT departments?) for the sport of it.
The classic view of transcendence of power, as fomented by the church was that power came from God, passed to the clergy, then to the king, and then to the people.
It took someone with stones, Louis the 14th., to step on the necks of the church, and proclaim himself above them...until that time, things were looking pretty damned corrupt. Brother Luther was a thesis wielding chap. Great stuff that Humanities. :-)
Anybody see a parallel here...
Anyway, when M$, the BSA, and their hired thugs take over any office, that office is losing money. ..imagine a city office, or offices, shutdown in order for some software developer to come in and perform a hologram-count, scan systems, and basically ensure compliance? It could take days. If I ran a city office, it would be the kind of nightmare that has me wearing weak-bladder protection, daily.
Why is there even a question about this issue?
Why should citizenry dump their tax dollars into a corporate interest when the government is there to serve the people, and not "one redmond way"?
Unless M$ generates revenue within that community, then all the money for licenses, upgrades, and office software are just one big sucking sound heading to the pacific northwest.
Oh, and if you're wondering if there's any real need for IT departments everywhere to question their base OS'en, there is. When you're business is FORCED to upgrade their software every year and maybe even more often, then things are out of control. Upgrades are becomming mandatory under M$, like buying a new car (or hundreds if you have a large business) every year. Every year you WILL pay for your licenses, and if there's a sharp decline be prepared for a visit from one of the local M$ bishops, who will frown, ask probing questions, and show up with the inquisition (Torquemada, anyone?) to torment you for not supporting their bleed-your-ass-white business model.
And for those who think this should be the status quo...you're slaves. Find freedom before it's too late.
Can't stand watching that show any more, but it's exactly what those guys would do after zipping through a crowd of Nuns or startled bystanders on the "Segway" and then cross the street to get away and fail trying to hop a curb.
You cannot, either by force of will, or anything short of a global meat-space altering act, change what people accept as slang. English, as we use it here, is a vibrant living language--new technologies and buzzwords are the flora and fauna of our mental environment, and they live against a backdrop of metaphors; our tools for dealing with the abstract and the complexities of this new environment. And you cannot argue people out of an idea.
As a sysadmin (that's not a word either) with a small herd of boxen (I use the term because they pull their weight, and they make me money, they're a massive ROI multiplier) I think of them as the work animals in my computer stable...where stability means everything.
I wonder what other admin's call their servers that work 24/7, pulling in the orders and dealing with attacks by virii, worms, and other pests? Every one of my BOXEN has a name. Heck I love my BOXEN. I look after them, and I don't mind anthropomorphing them into the great beasts of burden they are. Hey, is that a context? There ya go dublin, there is a real context for the word which grieves you.
But why stop there. There should be lucid missives about the use of "lite" instead of "Light" (calorie-speak), or "nite" instead of "night"? We can only admire your restraint, for you really must've held back by just venting your spleen on a single word--I'm sure you could have written at least a limrick including several. Next time you should invoke Nasi-Schinerman's studies about language and thought, or Chomsky's arguments for the justification of things, and somehow argued the moral, intellectual, and possibly even the spiritual harm and dammage to our shared mental environment...the outrage of Oxford, of Webster, or maybe even GAWD at the use of the word BOXEN.
In closing I can only wish you the best in this holiday season, and urge you to simply accept that MEMES, like sexually-transmitted diseases, are oblivious to even the most poignant of arguments. Check up on that brilliant chap Richard Dawkins, who has a real talent for explaining memes and such.
The big stumbling block with DNA computing is setting up the problems and interpreting the answers. For now, the hardware consists of arrays of test-tubes, DNA sources (mouse DNA does some great stuff), and enzymes which are used to setup and unlock/interpret the results based on how you setup the initial problem. Genetic computers, like life, will always deal with squishy, fluidic stuff, and as such should never, ever find itself in day-to-day home use.
There is an incredible paradigm differential between established Von-Neuman computer science and biological computing systems that everyone should equate the complexity of DNA computing with Quatumn Physics, and know that even when people think they "get it", they don't. Really-Really.
Anyone worried about having to feed their computers should relax, and consider themsevles very very lucky to live long enough to see that happen. Long before consumers have access to DNA-based computing, the NSF and Military will be using it as an excuse for billions in black-ops appropriations and maybe even declare it off-limits to the market once they figure out how to use it to crack encryption key namespaces.
Whatever the reason, I think a Grant would rock. For some of us, it would enable us to walk away from some job that we've been laboring at for years; for others it would solve financial problems, and for some it would just be a bonus.
I suggest this because I know that for years I have dreamed of writing programs and doing things that I've never had the time or money to do...and it's frustrating to have even minor talents, but no leisure or legal standing to accomplish something. And the terms of the grant could be non-specific to the point where writing a working open-source program would suffice. Hey, maybe I'd finally have a reason to beat my head against CVS and finally learn it (I've been in denial and avoidance for too long).
If nothing else, it would be nice for those folks who have talent but have been layed off, to have some room to recoup their edge while hunting for a job. And nothing sucks like being unemployed through the winter holiday season.
With all the extensive tech-layoffs this year, I think we're going to see many proud people taking the easy way out this year. I hope I'm wrong.
The concept of a powerglove is a very "Rube Goldberg"-esque hardware persuit. I have a Nintendo Powerglove, and can say that first-hand experience with powergloves has been pretty damn abysmal. I played that "Superball" game that came with it for a hour straight (yep, same game, no restarts...not a bad game once you figure it out) and I had to modify my hand and body position repeatedly in order to keep going. The "glove" sucks for long-term, repetitive tasks. The mouse works because it allows us to sit on our butts and keep on going. Anybody with a glove isn't going to do a day at the 'puter. It might have a place with "Palm" (nice product tie-in too) and virtual keyboards and mice, but for the PC, and "Gaming all damn day", it's a white-oliphant.
Once we do this, we will have materials which can be used to fabricate orbiting structures and vessels (with or without human involvement) and still send some very homogenous materials planet-side.
There's merit in being able to bring incredibly strong and light custom materials down the gravity well and fetch top-dollar for a product which cannot be made any other way. In turn, the revenue generated from this would make happy campers out of an agency that's been pulling at the Tax-teat forever.
The technologies to make this happen are only a couple of decades from perfection...limited use and operation would occur long before that.
Automated processing/manfuacturing technologies in orbit will springboard the development and sustainability of anything else we do in the solar system, even on our own world. And being able to make nearly _perfect_ metals will do more for us than some baked rocks from a dead world. Really.
And if you don't believe me/don't agree then think of history. The "Stone Age", the "Bronze Age", the "Iron Age"...we need to make a step in a new direction.
Of course this kind of stuff shouldn't be developed by Microsopht(screw us all industries) and made too customer friendly, where a simple worm would transform your dragon into some deformed carricature of what a 13yr old would like to think is them, say a bunch of weird profane crap, and leave holographic turds all over you with a glowing "hacked by" on your back before heading off to infect countless others.
The only way they're ever going to truly protect their property and charge us per beat is to wrap the audio signal in an encrypted wireless stream which requires an implant that will contain the key that was used to purchase the song from a device and will be used to decrypt it in real time and play it back to the user through a direct neural overlay/shunt.
People who want to hear music played in public places would probably have to subscribe or the company playing it would have an "event license" which would service only a specific number of listeners within a specific radius...this kind of technology could be used to recieve broadcasts from a local relay. Because each implant also serves to identify the customer, it's easy to determine subscriber counts per performance delivery node, which gives advertisers a very good data stream...right down to the user's ID, which of course is going to be sniffed by about every market-device in the area...blocking "proximity ads" would probably cost you.
This technology will initially be developed to overcome hearing loss, or enable criminals to lead some kind of life/rehabilitiation, and eventually will be sold to the citzenry as an extremely cool way to interface with the environment, computers, and each other.
If a lowly bastard like myself can see this coming, don't think the greedy aren't working towards it right now. They're going to sell it to us, and we're going to assume that "come hither" position we always do...because it's what we're trained to do as good little citizens and we love our toys.
Mommies will love to know exactly where their vandals are, goverment will enjoy being able to track people--anywhere--and the RIAA will happily give you a reason to pay to hear music. Can you imagine a concert where someone with this technology would hear the music without any degredation or at least without their ears ringing, while the "unchipped" would just hear the crowd, and maybe the drums if they were close enough to the stage? That would be some weird shit.
Hey, on the upside, the rebels would just make their own music...too bad they'd have to do it in secret or face licensing issues.
Lisp is one of those meta-languages you either learn or avoid. I write practical stuff all the time, daily in fact, and I've never had something that required the arcane stuff in LISP.
Over the last year I've been praised by my company repeatedly for being instrumental in getting our services away from weak server solutions. And it's paid off with uptimes only interrupted by the addition of equipment into the cabinet and the addition of added remote power controllers. And even on the servers which do run NT, we don't bother with IIS.
I hope that the M$ strategy to pad netcraft results, and to reflect browser marketshare bite them in the ass (does anybody else have an explaination for the forced install and activation of services when NT is upgraded?), even if it's just in rooted servers in their pool. When it's all said and done smart people know who, how, and why they're being screwed. And because they're smart, they know what they have to do to stop it.
And it's not that I dislike M$. I just don't like being screwed. Sure it's an unusual stand to take, but if more people cared, maybe we wouldn't find so many people and companies willingly taking it up the ass every year for a new OS from a company that's just a few years from adding nifty gimmicks like tailfins in order to entice customers to buy their new exploit engine?
Flame me all you want, but getting people who tell it like is won't make the problem go away. (J.Biafra-derivative)
By the very nature of the beasties involved, no M$ product meets any of the above criteria. YMMV, but hey, it's your money, and it's a free country. I'm not arguing from ideology here, I'm talking about using common sense. A computer is a durable product.
BTW...if you define innovation as Leveraging new and unusual ways to lock users into license verification and developer lock-in, then you're right. Just like the Pentium 4, XP is the definitive OS for making the marketing departments of many software vendors happy. But I'm not going to be running it. I'll be running winblows 98se and *nix until they're outlawed. If I want to play a game, I'll do it on a PSX2 or similar dedicated game machine, which is remarkably inexpensive and well-suited for the task. All my boxen are either 486DX or Pentium machines, and they still seem perfectly capable of programming, illustration, spreadsheets, and StarCraft.
Other than elaborate PC games, is there really any reason someone _needs_ XP (besides the fat-cat software publishers, M$, and Big Brother)? You do understand that just like the Auto Industry, M$ wants consumers to buy a new OS (hopefully by buying a new system) every year. And as long as the luser-base is stoopid enough to throw away their money, the fat cats are going to happily churn out new crappy products to make the luser-base happy.
Sometimes it's not about FUD, it's about visualizing being on the business end of the M$ boot stepping a human face forever. Sure it's not so bad now, but someday they'll have those suckers resoled with cleats.
Can't say I'm too impressed with the idea of a Mars base yet. I've followed the progress of the one up north (Devon Island--great job), and I don't see much in the way of returns. Maybe I just suffer from not having enough imagination to feel that putting people on Mars actually accomplishes much.
Personally, I'd like to see some of the technologies pioneered on the DeepSpace 1 mission applied to "Wildcatters", automated scouting vessels which would assay the mineral wealth of the asteroid belts. We need to get humanity up the gravity well and into orbit, and the only way to do that is to justify the expense, and if we can smelter and cast/synthesize perfect metals up in microgravity, it would go a long way towards paying the bills. We can do some wild stuff with metals in microgravity (Gundainium anyone?) and that's a technology that doesn't violate any religious beliefs, and it would possbily even make Greenpeace happy by reducing the potential for near-earth-objects.
Once space exploration pays it's bills, we're going to leapfrog through the system and eventually to other stars. Until then, the space programs of the planet are nothing more than a way to spy and play diplomacy games in a weak attempt to legitimately recoup multi-billion dollar RnD budgets and college research programs.
Yow! Guess I had space on the brain tonite!
What you're talking about is called a "positive pressure" suit. The premise being that if you can apply 15+lbs/sq.ft on someone's body in a consistent fashion, then you don't have to create a bubble around them by using pressurized air. The problem with elastic suits like this was the hands and the joints, which would comically bulge creating unequal areas of lesser pressure and rendering the suit somewhat useless.
Enjoy the karma...
I'm a big fan of RTS games. My son and I play them all the time. But they're dubious "edutainment", esp. when you consider all the killing and great explosions. No parent/school are going to permit Starcraft as an educational tool. As a parent I'm allowed to use it as such, but I wouldn't expect an institution to use it in such a way (unless it's the Army--And they have their own flavor, I just can't remember its name).
From this reply, I can only hope you're not very close to the system...or you're just in love with the idea of kids learning something from a computer that they somehow can't get from another person. Most people who think computers belong in school don't have to actually prove that computers in school do something worthwhile. When I see something like proof, then I'll change my tune. Until that time, I'd like to see the proven methods of study win out over enthusiastic experimentation with taxpayer dollars which only seem to give kidiots license to shape themselves into keyboard punks...a punk is someone who does stupid willful acts of vandalism and thuggery because they can. Hand a little kid a gun and they'll shoot someone. Hand them a computer and they'll vandalize and mug networks. A computer is a tool. Like a weapon, it needs to be used wisely, and I wouldn't mind seeing fewer guns in the hands of kids, and fewer networks too.
I would challenge anyone to produce something like real facts/figures that prove computers do anything special in school (other than cost buttloads of money and add another layer of control complexity). From personal experience in the k-12 sector (as a parent and someone who help admin and had to listen to all the whining/bitching that k-12 network admins do) I know I'm standing at a point of reality. The problem with this point of view is that it doesn't line the pockets of fat-cat vendors and implementers who couldn't care less if a teacher makes a living, or if kids actually benefit from computers.
I didn't have access to one, and I bootstrapped myself, did college to learn data structures and some meta-languages, and I think I'm better off for not having had that distraction while I was learning the tools for self-study during the first 12 years of institutionalized violence, where there's a remarkably wide path of problems which are only complicated by admin-bots who loose their minds trying to man the walls (esp. the M$ ones which are built out of remarklably easy to defeat substance) against their student population.
Here's deal...do the ends justify the means? Does computer literacy have to be institutionalized when the majority of the population owns some form of general purpose/entertainment computing device? I think the answer is no. If there were more neighborhood organizations that could redistribute computers to family's, instead of just having old boxen dropped on the schools steps where they're discarded, every family in a school district could have enough computer to do something with (get online, setup a bbs, play games, whatever) and there wouldn't be all these issues invovling the school. The school computers would be for administration use(teachers armed with StarOffice and a laser printer can make homework and organizational miracles happen), and the kids would be learning on their own time, at their own pace, and discovering things without our love (yes, the joy of seeing a computer conquer yet another frontier) of computers wasting a student's time with their teacher or taxpayer dollars.
Pitch a better plan with some guaranteed beneficial result. I dare you. :-D
As someone who codes/admin's for a living I know (firsthand) that computers are a panacea to NOTHING. They don't teach our kids. They frustrate teachers, and only complicate the problem of forcing creative minds to do something difficult and less entertaining. Like learning something. Yeah, it's not fun. It sucks. But then every damn thing we do that means anything is tough. If that's too much of a thought to bear, then obviously it's a personal problem.
Like the old adage goes, "Everything I've learned, I learned from someone else", and that's what's important. And what I've learned from watching K-12 admins, teachers, and kids has taught me that computers have a very limited (extremely limited) role to play in education at the K-12 level; a role that's almost equivalent to TV use. The importance of computers to education for young children is extremely overplayed to the benefit of nearly everyone but the children and the teachers, so if you don't find a solution to the problem of good learning software it's because you're ignoring the best learning device (wetware) the planet has to offer...it's that idealistic, incredibly underpaid teacher who has to do without and somehow perform a minor miracle in this age of micro-burst attention spans in children(conditioned reflex to all those extravagant TV ads that peddle chinese plastic and wonder to the young in this country).
BTW...this isn't a Luddite point of view. It's just so damn obvious that only people who are in love with the concept of schools (fat cats and vendors making money selling firewater to the natives) sitting children down in classrooms full of computers and somehow letting the comptuers do something that is uniquely human.
Maybe we should get some lucky bastard to write up a socially acceptable study to determine the level of feral behavior a child would have if everything they learned came from a computer. That would be a good read. Maybe we could roll a little "operant conditioning" in there too. You know, force the little buggers to figure out the right sequence of actions they would need to perform correctly in order to get a caffine drink, or a piece of candy. Failure could result in a mild electric shock. Hey, now that would be progress, eh? We love you B.F. Skinner, and a big shout out to P.T. Barnum, who is to Human Nature, what Albert Einstien is to Physics.
I know that by mentioning that I have a LAN in the house I must seem elitist, maybe even isolationist...that I'm possibly saying, "Hey, I've got my kids covered, screw the rest." but there's precious little hacking/learning/discovery going on with regards to these machines.
What I'm trying to say is that I don't like the thought of some rabid k12-sysadmin losing their mind and basically getting my kid in trouble for administrative shortcomings. Nobody should have to deal with their kid being kicked out of school for being intelligent. There's simply no sense to it.
I can't help but think that many people, who have been out of the school system for more than six years, still think that kids enjoy being sat down in from of a gelded computer and told to do something, and can't help feeling bored at the lack of options, or worried that they're going to do something and get busted for it. To me, this translates into anxiety.
The means (giving kids in k12 classrooms computers with a buttload of disciplinary measures attached) does not justify the end (warm fuzzy feeling that said children know how to click on the "Start" button and perform tasks designed to make them useful to a corporation that would rather hire people from another country because they're cheaper and better educated because--surprise--those kids didn't have computers in the classroom; they did what I did and simply learned it all in college).
To me, that's the short and sweet of it. The tools to become a good programmer (immagination, interest in computers, and problem solving) are developed or should be developed independenlty of computers. Think about it in the context of 20th century scientists who didn't have Beowulf clusters or Cray super computers. We're only now starting to model and prove just how good their thought experiments were.
I love working with computers, solving problems, and having fun with technology. And I'll be completely honest and admit that if I had to go to work in some office where I couldn't go certain places on the Internet, or I couldn't read my mail, or any number of insane restricitons, I would rather dig ditches. At least I'd be getting some exercise.
I think there's a sinister logic to conditioning kids to not be intelligent with computers. Where we punish the creative and reward the monkey pushing buttons--which is exactly what lazy sysadmins and pointy-haired management types like. If B.F.Skinner were alive today, he'd be making serious money doing studies on K12 kids and knee-jerk admin practicies.
Yep, during the industrial revolution we trained the little buggers to respond to bells and be good factory workers, and now we're teaching them to live in fear and revile using a computer and expect a lack of options/opportunites to be assoicated with computer use.
Someday this is bound to bite us in the ass.
I'll be sure to check out the book.
I'd like to see school districts come up with a wavier to keep my kids off their precious computers. I'd sign it in a heartbeat. So should any other person who understands the k12 computer situation.
I want my kids to be something more than monkeys pushing buttons (yep, k12 level computing is exactly that, or your kid's suspended). I'd rather have them playing music, doing art, or learning how to do math.
I have a multi-node network at home with all sorts of boxen for them to play/learn on. WTF does any kid in k12 need a computer for anyway? Teachers don't understand them. Computers are wasted in the classroom. We would all be better off if computers were there for just the memo-fetishists and poledit-fetishists to enjoy.
At least they had the balls to mention the evil M$ empire and their flaky server/services. ABC was a gelded wonder this morning and didn't mention any of the following words in their "the sky is falling because of the Code Red worm" hysteria:
- Microsoft
- Internet Information Server (IIS)
- Windows NT
- Windows 2000
Any layperson who was hearing about this issue for the first time would think that there was something malicious out there just disrupting the Internet in general, but they wouldn't have a clue about how, or why. And listening to spoo-brained dullards muse about who was responsible or where the worm came from was a joke.What really made me want to shift into Nordic Stormgod Mode and beat the assholes within inches of their ignorant lives was the line
- "Just reboot the machine and the worm will go away."
I watch both the "Free" as in "through the air" and "Pay" as in "Holy crap they raised my cable bill again!? Damn Icehole sucking bastiges!" news services, and the lies of ommision coming from the free side are shameful.And what really sucked was listening to the newsreader/MC lie repeatedly about how he broke his wrist (hey, that isn't news!).
It all just goes to prove that it's not about news, it's about entertainment...and dodging the pit of lawyers large corporations have while giving Joe Public his morning brainwashing. Ahhh...lemony freshness.
Personally, I think the worm was the right thing to do. It exposed a closed-software tendency to create backdoors into a long-duration service which would permit government/M$/and anyone who knew about the weakness to exploit it.
Sysadmins are supposed to be smart people. What M$ has done is screw a couple hundred, maybe even tens of thousands of them. What I'm waiting for is an even bigger backlash at the Sysadmin level, where the words,
- "We're not going to deploy on Internet Information Server because it has no security and there's no accountability for it from the vendor."
will be commonplace and more and more server farms will silently shift to *nix and Apache, and all those M$ developer subscriptions (useless firehoses of CD's and nifty binders to hold them) will silently wither away, and M$ zelots will not have their marketing mail answered and will endure mono-syllabic responses to their phone calls from smart people who have a right to be royally pissed. If there's no accountability, then why bother with a pay-to-play solution?I look forward to the day when M$ server products are reviled for the exploits they are. Sure it may take a while, but somewhere out there right now several clever people are enjoying themselves, having made at least a partially successful run with this last worm, and will probably have the code for an inline resolver to use with the next worm.
Before even warming up to the idea Africa, all of it, needs to stop being the rape-victim of western/asian business interests, and most importantly, Africans just need to develop their own Internet infrastructure sometime after they've uplifted enough to not have to worry about disease, incredibly brutal wars, slavery, and the kind of fundamental problems which completely overshadow something as useless as the Internet to the quality of life for human beings.
Give a people the tools and support to improve their lives and they'll get around to something as useless as an Internet sometime after the majority of people are well-fed, the crime/brigandry/slavery are brought down to acceptable limits, and the religious fundamentalists are warm and fuzzy with the idea of their "everyman" downloading snaps of shaved sluts.
I guess what I'm trying to say is that the demagouges need to shut up, or start promoting a truly unified African nation by helping improve the overall infrastructure of the country rather than pouring monies down an E-rate-esque rathole.
It was a clever, comical, well-made book which I still found myself as I programmed stuff in Turbo-Basic XL, and Action!. And what Linux could really use is an "Abstracted for the OS" version of Dr. C. Wacko to show up again for Linux.
Laugh will you?! Good, because that's part of the solution. A 13yr. old, addicited to games who wants to roll their own isn't going to pack around a 2500 pg. tome in order to do it, and they won't pick it back up again and again in order to cover something useful if it's buried in appendix XXI. And using that logic, neither should anyone else who's worth their weight in cheese-dip. Sheesh, you'd think we'd be smarter than to cater to such editorial/publisher whim.
Honestly, a book which covers the important stuff, like choosing a gaming library, low-balling the hardware spec, graphics, regionality, distribution and licensing could do it in a way which is both educational and entertaining.
What I find chilling is how many slick editors sell companies on cookie-cutter hardware/software tomes, filled with hundreds of pages of sleep-inducing pablum in order to make a quota.
One of the most useful books I've ever (yes, ever) purchased which actually helped pay the bills was the 1st. edition of the JavaScript Visual Quick Learning Guide (not 100% on the title, it's at home right now) by the PeachPit Press. That book did everything right. Unlike 99% of books published for this industry. It presented quick, cogent, and useful examples. Categorized them in a functional way, and even had a good layout for reference info.
Less than a year later they re-released it, and I guess they made some sweeping changes to bring the 2nd. edition up to the untenably bad level the majority of PeachPit press books and many other technical books seek to aspire to.
So, if any editors are out there, and being gracious enough to read this, then please take this moment to be reminded of what makes a geninuely useful how-to book:
- It shouldn't be more than an inch thick. If you need more than an inch of book to cover your subject, throw out some fluff. I don't buy a working book if I can't carry it with me. Sam's publishing hasn't gotten a red-cent out of me because all their crap is full of pablum and asides that don't go anywhere. Need more than an inch...use a URL, Oreilly does.
- Small examples which demonstrate exactly what needs to be illuminated. Three pages of source is unnecessary and only marches towards a quota.
- Use a common, free, and easily written for language. Of course there's a buttload of zealots out there who unpack their pulpit and invoke their lists of language X rocks for game programming because... reasons, but they're not important. The end-user, the person who needs to be infected with all those good memes involving timing, and inputs, and outputs--they are the target. Chances are most gurus talk a great talk but somehow never find the time to actually write a game. Isn't it funny how that works?
- Write to the industry, not the consumer. Don't be afraid to tell people how to really make a game. Don't leave out important stuff, things used by the trade. Game writing is almost like writing about a guild. Don't be afraid to publish things like the value of Pi. Don't be afraid to talk about sorting matricies, or at least put in links to best result algorithms, or lacking links, make them yourself. Telling someone what needs to be done, and omitting important things makes any book a hollow reference. Omission is the great editorial lie.
I know this is a woefully incomplete list, but I think it's enough to establish criteria for what is commonly left out of books which are sold as being something they're not.It makes we want to write the assholes who put on "Robot Wars" to change their name everytime I see a meatbeast controlling a bot...truth is, creating a good API for process controls would be a good step in the right direction. Hell, everyone I know would get a kick out of watching bots based on different OS'sgo up against each other.
Taking the meatbeasts out of the actual competition would give the concept of "Robot Wars" more credibility...yeah, I know programming an autonomous bot isn't for the faint of heart, but if some dedicated individuals out there cobble up a decent API to use some simple stuff (frequency transponders for enemy location would be enough, motion detectors and IR sensors would sweeten the deal when whitenoise generators are brought into play) to direct the bot, most of the existing platforms under meat control now could be liberated pretty quick, and it wouldn't take much more than a 486.
Most of these old systems are hobbled by their BIOS limitations for HD size/speeds, and 3rd party driver support. But these issues don't interfere with regards to serial port operations, or the use of custom code to read data from an I/O port . The hardware itself is still very useful for many tasks which don't require a GUI.
And anyone interested in creating a BOTAPI, or anyone who knows if such a thing is already underway, please chime in.