Yeah, seriously I'd avoid teaching kids PERL. One problem basic DID have is it taught a few bad habits (Goto's, bad variable nameing , etc). Perl unfortunately in its quest for "More than one way to skin a cat", allows some shocking codeing, and unfortunately my eternal grip with perl, is it begets shocking code. "Hey , you have a language that lets you do cool stuff like closures and stuff (I think?) and you are using fucking $_@ variables and using regex's to traverse DOM trees. STOP PROGRAMMING, YOUR NOT GOOD AT IT!". ehh.
Python I thinks the clear choice. Its simple minded enough to teach to children (Kids, its all about hash's , lists and atoms), but is actually a real world language that allows some pretty fancy and efficient and READABLE stuff. It might not have the same eseoteric-beard status as lisp or scheme, but its a pretty damn nice language regardless, and you can actually get jobs codeing in it. And later on they can learn perl, once they've learned not to abuse perl.
I learned to code on a "Dick smith Wizard", a little australian rebranded "Funvision" or something like that. It had a whopping 4k of memory, and you could get a "BASIC" cartridge. The basic was primative as hell. It had the variables A to Z, I cant remember if it had string arrays, but I *THINK* it had scalar arrays. It had some simple graphics that revolved around redefining the pixel matrix for the 127 ascii characters, and you could assign some colours to them. At the age of ten I quickly figured out how to make a basic space invaders game , with the help of my equally fascinated dad, and soon I was pumping out nifty little games. A few years later, I got an Amstrad 6128, and my mind was blown. Real graphics, a mind boggling 128k of memory (I'd never really broken the limits on the 4k) and I promptly learned how to make some really really good (for its time) games. I tought myself machine code and before long I wrote my "Killer app", a Z80 TSR that you could freeze a program with a key press and then enter codes to for instance get infinite lifes on a game or whatever (These already existed in add on black boxes, my code however bypassed the need for hardware).
Then We got our first PC, and man seriously GWBasic was a drag. So I plodded unhappily on that until a friend gave me Turbo Pascal 2, and by god it was on for young and old.
Im still a coder to this day, but I do despair that without that background theres no way a younger coder will catch up to me without really seeking out tools that he or she might simply not be able to afford.
There also was "Alice", a python / 3d environment to teach kids object oriented coding. Python is of course a perfect first language for *anyone* as well.
However, its a crying shame that a good solid programming language, perhaps with game making potential or some other hook for kids, isnt included with every copy of windows.
Precisely, and its an inherently confused reasoning I'd add.
Absolutely someone will work those sorts of hours to feed the family, but you can bet they are resenting the hell of the boss and the situation.
Folks in the developing world know full well that western folk see normal hours as 35-40 , and expect to be paid handsomely for it.. They dont go "geez mister boss! $40 for 70 hours a week, now I can buy rice!", they go "I will never afford one of these ipods I am making. I am being screwed".
Seriously. Fuck sweatshops in the ass. There is nothing right about them, and personally those "economists" who justify their existance need to be hit in the head with cluebat and reminded their pseudoscience affects real humans outside the ivory tower. Its a dismal dismal science.
Your possibly missing the point. Eve-onlines genius is in the politics of the game and the mindboggling technology paths and economy.
I'll conceed its a bit dull at first , particularly if your stuck in empire. I got into 0.0 life pretty quick and its been nothing but large scale fleet battles, and complex war and politics.
Add to that the complexes (I guess eve's version of dungeons. Basically NPC enemy base shipyards and stuff. The 10/10 ones are terrifying), and the fact that loss in eve is quite real (If your ship dies, you dont get it back, you have to buy a new one), and its a really awesome game.
First time I was in a major 50 vs 50 fleet battle (the fleet battles have gone up to 200 vs 200, allegedly in the two or three "great northern wars") in a battleship, at the end my nerves where so shot from andrenaline and actual fear, I had to have a lie down just to calm down. Most eve PVPers experience the same from time to time, especially when its a last stand to defend a solar system or your struggling to escape in your last ship to your name or something.
And thats just the combat side of it. Except for skillbooks and a small handfull of NPC generated stuff, most everything is produced by players in games, starting from mining, to refining, to production, and so on. The economy is mindboggling.
The game starts off a bit dull and the learning curve is massive (hint: this is a verry geeky game) , but if you can join a corp and get out into low-sec or 0.0, I promise you the game is awesome.
Ah I remember that beat up. Jeremy malcolm, the lawyer who was the target of that beat up was one of the most ferocious advocates of FOSS Ive ever known in person (What other lawyer carries linux on a usb key to ambush corporate clients with a demonstration of?) and to see him kicked like that really upset alot of the perth linux community.
Thank god Linus (And PJ from groklaw) cleared that one up and explained what was going on and why Jeremy was the good guy for helping protect Linus's trademark.
I had a relative thats exactly the same. He's kinda improved. He's got chronic OCD and compounded it badly by a nasty run in with amphetamines (Hint to any OCD sufferers. NEVER play with amphetamines. Think your OCD is bad now? Get some speed psychosis in ya and you'll know just how bad OCD can be). He was *convinced* he had spiders under his skin, wierd 'fibres', you name it . Sometimes he's pick it out and show us screaming "LOOK! THE FUCKING PROOF IM NOT CRAZY" , and it'd be some pocket lint or something. He went from doctor to doctor going really crazy at them DEMANDING aggressively a cure for the insects. Then he got on the net and diagnosed himself with every god damn skin and/or infection known to man, and a few not known to man as well. What a nightmare.
He's kinda better now, but not really. He still spends the whole day everyday infront of the mirror checking and picking at his skin, but accepts that no there really aint skin spiders under there. In other words he can see its to some degree psychotic.
Folks think OCD and its myriad complications as just some cute personality trait. Its not. For some its a living hell. And thats fucking sad. I love the guy like a brother and just wish he got well.
Never underestimate the determination of a foe with nothing to lose and everything to win.
Thing is see, the iraq insurgency can't retreat. That means that guerilla warfare will play out its infernal logic. An undergeared but plenty staffed resistance will one at a time pick off our boys until it becomes clear that some wars simply cant be won.
Personally I think we are in deep shit over there.
Another thing, one little tip an army friend pointed out;- "Dont trust wireless. Unless you can see those wires, you cant visually see that the link is secure."
Based on my own take that wireless net is a fantastic, but flakey , tech, while I might trust my day-to-day to it, I'd certainly not trust my life to it. At least not until someone can explain to me why my trusty old microwave oven, despite a perfect faraday cage enclosure can completely jam any wireless networking within a 100m range of it.
Now some wireless tech is pretty trusty. A microwave link with clear line of sight is rock solid. But a hell of alot of wireless AINT trusty.
Linux has somewhat subverted this to a degree, but you used to be able to do MAD things with/dev.
One of my old fun tricks was to try and grab hold of the filehandles from the old uni unix terminals (lol root password = secret) and pipe them into each other in a script to make peoples terminals do batshit crazy things. Another trick on the more modern linux, is/was to pipe a core dump to/dev/dsp (sound system) and listen to the hiss. Aparently , Im told, theres a midi device that makes mad music when you pipe junk to it.
Heres the secret clue to all unixes and most of linux: Everythings a file. *Everything*
Well, I'm just going to fire up my MS Word and use its native PDF generation and native support for mysql backends.
oh wait....
I hate to break it to microsoft, with the glaring exception of a decent crossplatform exchange/outlook replacement, frankly I consider MS Office legacy at best.
Koreas not some backwoods little peasant country. Its as advanced as Japan and the USA and has a fairly decent western standard living style.
4th highest GDP. Mull it over man.
Regardless, when a country fines a company like microsoft 40 million odd dollars, it doesnt actually have a choice not to pay it. The court has the perogative to just *take* it, being that its a fine and all.
If you trade in a country, you follow its laws or face fines , jails or exile.
<a href="http://www.foxitsoftware.com/pdf/rd_intro.ph p">Foxit</a> is really small, is snappy, and best of all because it CANT be embedded into a browser........... It wont crash your brower. Yipee.
Hint;- Remove acrobat before installing this guy.
I deal with alot of PDF's and being able to purge acrobat from my life was such a relief.
Im seriously worried that now that Adobe has acquired Macromedia, flash is going to suck as well.
I had a similar problem once , right back in the day, with a dead "wang" AT machine (you know, PC's XT's AT's) from some sort of hideous virus thing that was whacking bioses (I think).
Now my plan was to go and phone wang and get them to mail me a disk (pre internet as common household thing) with the bios on it, so I could reflash the bios with a rom burner, but in my frusturation I noticed another redundant old XT machine I had had the same prom part number, but with a different bios. I *think* it was an old DEC pc, I think.
So out of curiousity, and an understanding I might be about to start a fire, I pulled it out the old machine and dropped it in.
And it booted up perfectly. The silly thing never did understand after that that it was a WANG AT machine, but it booted into DOS perfectly.
It doesnt help that every word in the english language dot com has been squatted by "justiceforbilly.org: Your online place to be fleeced of credit cards!"
Far easier to register quango.bizbongb.org for all your AJAX XML RSS Calendar needs!
Thats nonsense. As a private institution, there is a contract. He's paid tuition fees, so he should get tuition. Note key word here. Contract. Unless that contract says "you cant say bad things about professor in your blog", then the school has breached its contract.
Your arguement is akin to saying "Well, apple have decided to not give you the computer you paid for because you said bad things about there service in a blog". Its not just immoral, its probably illegal.
Slashdot Mirror
Yeah, seriously I'd avoid teaching kids PERL. One problem basic DID have is it taught a few bad habits (Goto's, bad variable nameing , etc). Perl unfortunately in its quest for "More than one way to skin a cat", allows some shocking codeing, and unfortunately my eternal grip with perl, is it begets shocking code. "Hey , you have a language that lets you do cool stuff like closures and stuff (I think?) and you are using fucking $_@ variables and using regex's to traverse DOM trees. STOP PROGRAMMING, YOUR NOT GOOD AT IT!". ehh.
Python I thinks the clear choice. Its simple minded enough to teach to children (Kids, its all about hash's , lists and atoms), but is actually a real world language that allows some pretty fancy and efficient and READABLE stuff. It might not have the same eseoteric-beard status as lisp or scheme, but its a pretty damn nice language regardless, and you can actually get jobs codeing in it. And later on they can learn perl, once they've learned not to abuse perl.
The educational value in line numbers really was that it reminded the kid "These instructions happen in sequence".
Of course it begets the now despised goto. Man I dont think I could even *write* goto based programs anymore. How things have changed.
Mindyou when I started on pascal, it took me all of about a week to realise I didnt need them.
Actually wow, this article is so right.
I learned to code on a "Dick smith Wizard", a little australian rebranded "Funvision" or something like that. It had a whopping 4k of memory, and you could get a "BASIC" cartridge. The basic was primative as hell. It had the variables A to Z, I cant remember if it had string arrays, but I *THINK* it had scalar arrays. It had some simple graphics that revolved around redefining the pixel matrix for the 127 ascii characters, and you could assign some colours to them. At the age of ten I quickly figured out how to make a basic space invaders game , with the help of my equally fascinated dad, and soon I was pumping out nifty little games. A few years later, I got an Amstrad 6128, and my mind was blown. Real graphics, a mind boggling 128k of memory (I'd never really broken the limits on the 4k) and I promptly learned how to make some really really good (for its time) games. I tought myself machine code and before long I wrote my "Killer app", a Z80 TSR that you could freeze a program with a key press and then enter codes to for instance get infinite lifes on a game or whatever (These already existed in add on black boxes, my code however bypassed the need for hardware).
Then We got our first PC, and man seriously GWBasic was a drag. So I plodded unhappily on that until a friend gave me Turbo Pascal 2, and by god it was on for young and old.
Im still a coder to this day, but I do despair that without that background theres no way a younger coder will catch up to me without really seeking out tools that he or she might simply not be able to afford.
Buy your kids a C64. Do it.
There also was "Alice", a python / 3d environment to teach kids object oriented coding. Python is of course a perfect first language for *anyone* as well.
However, its a crying shame that a good solid programming language, perhaps with game making potential or some other hook for kids, isnt included with every copy of windows.
Oh yeah old school basic for Windows: http://www.nicholson.com/rhn/basic/#5
Its really really old school however.
Well I dunno. Dexamphetamines can produce psychosis in abuse levels.
"Yes mommy, my grades are now all A++ ARGHHHHH GHOSTS MUST EAT!"
Precisely, and its an inherently confused reasoning I'd add.
Absolutely someone will work those sorts of hours to feed the family, but you can bet they are resenting the hell of the boss and the situation.
Folks in the developing world know full well that western folk see normal hours as 35-40 , and expect to be paid handsomely for it.. They dont go "geez mister boss! $40 for 70 hours a week, now I can buy rice!", they go "I will never afford one of these ipods I am making. I am being screwed".
Seriously. Fuck sweatshops in the ass. There is nothing right about them, and personally those "economists" who justify their existance need to be hit in the head with cluebat and reminded their pseudoscience affects real humans outside the ivory tower. Its a dismal dismal science.
Your possibly missing the point. Eve-onlines genius is in the politics of the game and the mindboggling technology paths and economy.
I'll conceed its a bit dull at first , particularly if your stuck in empire. I got into 0.0 life pretty quick and its been nothing but large scale fleet battles, and complex war and politics.
Add to that the complexes (I guess eve's version of dungeons. Basically NPC enemy base shipyards and stuff. The 10/10 ones are terrifying), and the fact that loss in eve is quite real (If your ship dies, you dont get it back, you have to buy a new one), and its a really awesome game.
First time I was in a major 50 vs 50 fleet battle (the fleet battles have gone up to 200 vs 200, allegedly in the two or three "great northern wars") in a battleship, at the end my nerves where so shot from andrenaline and actual fear, I had to have a lie down just to calm down. Most eve PVPers experience the same from time to time, especially when its a last stand to defend a solar system or your struggling to escape in your last ship to your name or something.
And thats just the combat side of it. Except for skillbooks and a small handfull of NPC generated stuff, most everything is produced by players in games, starting from mining, to refining, to production, and so on. The economy is mindboggling.
The game starts off a bit dull and the learning curve is massive (hint: this is a verry geeky game) , but if you can join a corp and get out into low-sec or 0.0, I promise you the game is awesome.
He said routers, not dinky DIY nat setups.
Ah I remember that beat up. Jeremy malcolm, the lawyer who was the target of that beat up was one of the most ferocious advocates of FOSS Ive ever known in person (What other lawyer carries linux on a usb key to ambush corporate clients with a demonstration of?) and to see him kicked like that really upset alot of the perth linux community.
Thank god Linus (And PJ from groklaw) cleared that one up and explained what was going on and why Jeremy was the good guy for helping protect Linus's trademark.
I had a relative thats exactly the same. He's kinda improved. He's got chronic OCD and compounded it badly by a nasty run in with amphetamines (Hint to any OCD sufferers. NEVER play with amphetamines. Think your OCD is bad now? Get some speed psychosis in ya and you'll know just how bad OCD can be). He was *convinced* he had spiders under his skin, wierd 'fibres', you name it . Sometimes he's pick it out and show us screaming "LOOK! THE FUCKING PROOF IM NOT CRAZY" , and it'd be some pocket lint or something. He went from doctor to doctor going really crazy at them DEMANDING aggressively a cure for the insects. Then he got on the net and diagnosed himself with every god damn skin and/or infection known to man, and a few not known to man as well. What a nightmare.
He's kinda better now, but not really. He still spends the whole day everyday infront of the mirror checking and picking at his skin, but accepts that no there really aint skin spiders under there. In other words he can see its to some degree psychotic.
Folks think OCD and its myriad complications as just some cute personality trait. Its not. For some its a living hell. And thats fucking sad. I love the guy like a brother and just wish he got well.
If you reduce things to numbers, we won vietnam.
But we didnt.
Never underestimate the determination of a foe with nothing to lose and everything to win.
Thing is see, the iraq insurgency can't retreat. That means that guerilla warfare will play out its infernal logic. An undergeared but plenty staffed resistance will one at a time pick off our boys until it becomes clear that some wars simply cant be won.
Personally I think we are in deep shit over there.
Another thing, one little tip an army friend pointed out;- "Dont trust wireless. Unless you can see those wires, you cant visually see that the link is secure."
Based on my own take that wireless net is a fantastic, but flakey , tech, while I might trust my day-to-day to it, I'd certainly not trust my life to it. At least not until someone can explain to me why my trusty old microwave oven, despite a perfect faraday cage enclosure can completely jam any wireless networking within a 100m range of it.
Now some wireless tech is pretty trusty. A microwave link with clear line of sight is rock solid. But a hell of alot of wireless AINT trusty.
Oh, and regarding that root password, this was a good 12-13 years ago. Don't even bother script kiddies.
He's talking about /dev dude.
/dev.
/dev/dsp (sound system) and listen to the hiss. Aparently , Im told, theres a midi device that makes mad music when you pipe junk to it.
Linux has somewhat subverted this to a degree, but you used to be able to do MAD things with
One of my old fun tricks was to try and grab hold of the filehandles from the old uni unix terminals (lol root password = secret) and pipe them into each other in a script to make peoples terminals do batshit crazy things. Another trick on the more modern linux, is/was to pipe a core dump to
Heres the secret clue to all unixes and most of linux: Everythings a file. *Everything*
Remember the glory days when Wired told us we where all going to be free?
:(
Remember when folks like me said "I dont know how but this cant last"
Told y'all so.
What a fucking shame
Yeah, but only lisp fiends and star trek fans use closures anyway.
Well, I'm just going to fire up my MS Word and use its native PDF generation and native support for mysql backends.
oh wait....
I hate to break it to microsoft, with the glaring exception of a decent crossplatform exchange/outlook replacement, frankly I consider MS Office legacy at best.
What exactly *IS* flex. I've googled it and all I find is marketing buzz.
But in a nutshell, what's flex?
Is it like.. flash or something?
Hows that any different to the US, or Europe?
Koreas not some backwoods little peasant country. Its as advanced as Japan and the USA and has a fairly decent western standard living style.
4th highest GDP. Mull it over man.
Regardless, when a country fines a company like microsoft 40 million odd dollars, it doesnt actually have a choice not to pay it. The court has the perogative to just *take* it, being that its a fine and all.
If you trade in a country, you follow its laws or face fines , jails or exile.
....or you can just throw it thru a genlock to fix up the buggy colorbursts.
This post is in violation of the DMCA, if I was american.
Ahem. Apologies. That URL should be http://www.foxitsoftware.com/pdf/rd_intro.php
There *IS* an alternative to acrobat:
h p">Foxit</a> is really small, is snappy, and best of all because it CANT be embedded into a browser........... It wont crash your brower. Yipee.
<a href="http://www.foxitsoftware.com/pdf/rd_intro.p
Hint;- Remove acrobat before installing this guy.
I deal with alot of PDF's and being able to purge acrobat from my life was such a relief.
Im seriously worried that now that Adobe has acquired Macromedia, flash is going to suck as well.
You know that one has always been able to run linux on regular old macs for a good decade now yeah?
I've recycled a bunch of old 'colourful' macs that are too crusty for OS/X into nice linux X-terminals and stuff.
Thats a mad hack.
I had a similar problem once , right back in the day, with a dead "wang" AT machine (you know, PC's XT's AT's) from some sort of hideous virus thing that was whacking bioses (I think).
Now my plan was to go and phone wang and get them to mail me a disk (pre internet as common household thing) with the bios on it, so I could reflash the bios with a rom burner, but in my frusturation I noticed another redundant old XT machine I had had the same prom part number, but with a different bios. I *think* it was an old DEC pc, I think.
So out of curiousity, and an understanding I might be about to start a fire, I pulled it out the old machine and dropped it in.
And it booted up perfectly. The silly thing never did understand after that that it was a WANG AT machine, but it booted into DOS perfectly.
Neato.
It doesnt help that every word in the english language dot com has been squatted by "justiceforbilly.org: Your online place to be fleeced of credit cards!"
Far easier to register quango.bizbongb.org for all your AJAX XML RSS Calendar needs!
Thats nonsense. As a private institution, there is a contract. He's paid tuition fees, so he should get tuition. Note key word here. Contract. Unless that contract says "you cant say bad things about professor in your blog", then the school has breached its contract.
Your arguement is akin to saying "Well, apple have decided to not give you the computer you paid for because you said bad things about there service in a blog". Its not just immoral, its probably illegal.