I've had a safety deposit box for years that I keep sensitive paperwork in, master copies only. On location in my home I recently bought a fire safe with copies in it, see http://www.sentrysafe.com/
In concert with the Wachowski siblings, has a plan been formed for Sense8 as a series, or are we in for more run-of-the-mill monster of the week with no goal in sight?
Long time Babylon 5 fan wants to know.
Given how many computing devices that exist around us all day long, and how many we're likely to interact with (speaking globally here), I see no reason why everyone by the time they graduate high school shouldn't be required to at least write simple programs. It's unreasonable to expect that computing won't be with us for the future and likely playing a much more pertinent role than it does now.
In our shop we take on a lot of code from other firms and our rule is always "write your code in the style of the author if you can". Keeping it consistent on a per-project basis is a good rule of thumb.
For projects that we develop in house I tend to encourage the Allman style and I've setup our IDEs to perform, with a key combination, automatic formatting. That way, before you commit you hit the key combination and BAM, formatted code. I think someone playing the heavy on where you put your braces or white space should have a beer and chill out; I'd be more concerned with what the code was doing rather than it being presented on a silver platter.
If you don't comment your code you're a savage, though.:D
There is only one food item that has ever aroused me: cinnamon. Many of my male friends feel the same way about that spice. Perhaps it's the abundance of cinnamon in most pumpkin pie that's the culprit?
I often find it difficult to describe my love for KDE. I've used GNOME, WindowMaker, Enlightenment, Xfce and even CDE for a time. KDE will suck on your RAM more than the others will, most likely, but on a modern PC the only time I would need a GUI and all of my RAM for my PC to be responsive is if I were running VMs configured in a cluster on it. KDE is a pleasant environment that allows you, more than any other environment, to configure your workspace precisely to how you want to do business with your PC.
On a typical day on my PC I'm running: Firefox, Konqueror (for google searches, via krunner), Yakuake (always in memory, drop-down console), Eclipse, Kate, Dolphin (often on multiple desktops), Kopete (IM client), Konversation (IRC client), GIMP, OpenOffice/Kword (depending on what I'm doing), Amarok (music rules), VLC, Kontact (groupware software, mostly for KMail), etc., etc.
I have a 3.2Ghz processor and 4GB or RAM which I don't even fully use (32 bit Ubuntu, I suck at making the big leap) and some kind of Nvidia card that plays WoW well (and I run that via Wine with -opengl) that allows me to have crazy desktop effects that run as smoothly as the first time I ran WindowMaker on my P133.
Times are changing, the desktop is on Linux now too. I don't think it will ever be for everybody but Linux has the best UI configuration capability, in my opinion, over any other PC interface I've ever used; here's the kicker, it's because of KDE for me. GNOME has always kind of had ups and downs with respect to philosophy regarding applications and how the UI is laid out for each. All KDE apps, unless the author took the pain to build it piece by piece themselves, are pretty much uniform in presentation and usage. GNOME can't claim that and everything else is pretty much just a window manager.
Robustness is not bad if you feel you actually need it. Stick with what works for you, KDE works for me. Open source is about options, too.
From the out of the box distribution of KDE 4 to 3 hours after installation, this is how I configure it for my exact preferences..
http://imagebin.ca/view/xWPU0ck.html
You can turn off all the desktop effects and still have a more configurable desktop than GNOME. If you're having issues running the plasma desktop you should ditch your P133.
Buy a book on how to draw a flow chart and see if you can describe each step of a process using that knowledge. Once you're capable of handling the flow of logic through a diagram you'll be better off learning the flow of logic through a program (as, aside from syntax, it's the same idea.) After that learn what "types" exist, such as integers, floats, boolean, characters and strings. If you can hold all of this, thus far, in your head and make peace with what it all means then find a language that's easy for someone to pick up on, like PHP, which basically lets you write a program from the first statement typed.
Programming is something I honestly feel should be a fundamental skill for everyone; I think the reason why most people don't learn to do it is that they've convinced themselves they won't understand it. Have confidence that you'll get it and practice. Remember that good programming is learned over years and not days or weeks. Try not to get frustrated, the WWW has more than enough information available for anyone to learn.
KDE has never been impressive during it's initial releases of new major versions, and I admit that as a KDE user. However, overall, once you reach a stable KDE version I find that KDE is miles better than GNOME. I've tried, many times, to get into GNOME to see what others find special about it and all I ever find is that it's still the same old GNOME. The only single benefit I credit to GNOME over KDE is speed; however, on a modern PC the only noticeable speed increase in GNOME over KDE is startup time.
If you haven't yet, download Kubuntu 10.04 and patch up to the latest version of KDE. Once you see how the plasma desktop can be configured I'm confident that you'll begin to reconsider.
Thing is, the PC is a better gaming experience. I can't play an FPS on a console, it's far too slow to turn, move, etc. Consoles traditionally had games that PCs didn't, like Square RPGs, enix RPGS, side-scrollers. Some games work better with a console, some with a PC. The only FPS on a console that worked out for me was the Metroid Prime series. Perfect control, fast-paced gameplay delivered with Nintendo-style game control.
I think another issue is that though the recent games are coming with pretty graphics and usually good sound design, they are, mostly, a variation on a theme. Fun-factor in games has always been the most important thing to me. Immersion the close second. And if you can bother to make me laugh and not just swear in frustration, that'd be nice too. :P
If, by reading all of the material and going through all of the exercises you have thus far, you are preparing to write a test... congratulations, you're probably finished learning what you need to know. If you're preparing to get a job, you have some work ahead of you. I've been writing software professionally since 1997 (not as long as some, but long enough to impart *some* knowledge.) The more time you spend trying to solve real problems by writing software, the better you will become at doing just that. Having knowledge of an API, system, class library or a language's syntax will never compare to actually doing something useful with that language.
When you get out of school you'll end up running into languages you've never worked with before, didn't spend any time learning and you will be able to pick up their syntax in a very short period of time (for me, recently, it's within hours.) Learning the gotchas of each language/platform combination can take a very long time. Learning how not to shoot yourself in the foot in those languages can take even longer. If I were you, I would create a project for yourself, define a list of requirements. Then, go through the list of requirements and attach an hourly amount to each one, your estimate of how long you think it will take you to perform those tasks. Then, perform them. Don't necessarily focus on making sure you stay within the time you set for yourself, just focus on providing the best solution per task that you know how.
Your first self-made project might go over the hourly allotment, it may not, but either way you'll be well on your way. The next self-made project you assign yourself should be longer, more complex and involve more features (perhaps additions to the project you assigned yourself the first time.) Practice makes perfect. Also, do your best to try not to be "creative" necessarily, solve the problem, don't try to be a code hero, and you should do fine from there.
I haven't posted on/. for quite some time, but... I need to know what part of the world you live in that it's not taking over? More and more I'm meeting people, normal honest-to-God human people just out there who have converted to Linux. I meet people all the time in coffee shops, book stores, shopping malls, whathaveyou, and there really aren't many Windows users where I live anymore. I've been running KDE 4.3.2 for a few weeks now; more than ever I'm advocating this software. Linux isn't about propaganda, it's not about winning or losing, it's organically ending up on desktops, laptops, servers, cell phones, etc. Try out Kubuntu, if you don't find it easy to support your hardware and set your desktop up, then you'd have a hard time doing it on Windows too.
I both agree and disagree with this. I'm of the mind that so long as I take care of everything I have to take care of, everything else is fair game. I play video games, I watch cartoons, I like to have stupid, mary-jane fun with my friends, but I am responsible about everything I do. I think adult maturity is accountability, respect for others, proper use of empathy, comprehensive communication and being responsible for yourself. You can still be a complete ass and be an adult so long as you follow these precepts. The lines blur in the middle these days.
I'm certain Tom didn't engineer this young girl and this 19 year old getting together for a rapefest. I'm also certain that it has been for centuries, and should continue to be, the responsibility of her parents to monitor her online activity and to be certain that when she leaves her house she's not going out to meet "some guy" she met on the internet. I turned 29 recently, and if I meet someone online I'll be certain to meet them in a public place the first few times in the interest of not randomly falling victim to some psychotic chick.
I hope she loses the suit and I hope society remembers that parents are the guardians of their children, not Tom of all fucking people.
First of all, you should teach formal logic on a blackboard. I wouldn't let someone touch a computer unless they knew the difference between a scalar and a list.
Secondly, they should learn how to implement this knowledge in the most simple language possible. BASIC, Pascal, etc. Don't confuse them with an advanced tool when it's the code that matters at this point.
After that, keep raising the bar and exposing them to more and more of the language, then introduce the IDE. How code translates to the machine, to the project, to the enterprise is irrelevant if they would-be software developer doesn't understand a control statement. Keep the focus on the code before you introduce a way to make it easier. The learning curve is steep enough for some.
Sure... I would imagine it's slow and bloated if you're still running it on a PII 233 with 128MB of RAM...
But for those of us who are running on modern hardware KDE runs quite well and is far more robust than GNOME. When folks compare KDE to Window Managers, I always groan considering they're two separate things. KDE is the K Desktop Environment, it's not *just* the Window Manager. GNOME's slight speed improvement on modern hardware isn't noticable enough to make up for it's inability to provide a feature-rich computing experience.
I think this is an awesome idea as a KDE user. I love using Wikipedia, and have often spent hours just reading through inane trivia I've found there. Integrating this with a desktop application is a smart idea, and I honestly can't believe someone hasn't thought about it before.
I hope GNOME and the folks in Redmond follow this lead and create a Wikipedia desktop app to interact with this webservice.
...in about 95% of all cases I would say that running as root really isn't going to run you into trouble, but let's put this out there.
Bob runs his system as root, and Susie doesn't. Bob downloads something from the internet which (*gasp*) has a virus attached to it which *can* affect a Linux system. Bob infects his whole system. Susie, who downloads the same file, infects her user account. Running as a user reminds you that you are not in control of the system, and to be in control you have to enter a password. This usually makes people more wary about what they do and do not do as root.
Slashdot Mirror
I've had a safety deposit box for years that I keep sensitive paperwork in, master copies only. On location in my home I recently bought a fire safe with copies in it, see http://www.sentrysafe.com/
In concert with the Wachowski siblings, has a plan been formed for Sense8 as a series, or are we in for more run-of-the-mill monster of the week with no goal in sight? Long time Babylon 5 fan wants to know.
Given how many computing devices that exist around us all day long, and how many we're likely to interact with (speaking globally here), I see no reason why everyone by the time they graduate high school shouldn't be required to at least write simple programs. It's unreasonable to expect that computing won't be with us for the future and likely playing a much more pertinent role than it does now.
In our shop we take on a lot of code from other firms and our rule is always "write your code in the style of the author if you can". Keeping it consistent on a per-project basis is a good rule of thumb.
For projects that we develop in house I tend to encourage the Allman style and I've setup our IDEs to perform, with a key combination, automatic formatting. That way, before you commit you hit the key combination and BAM, formatted code. I think someone playing the heavy on where you put your braces or white space should have a beer and chill out; I'd be more concerned with what the code was doing rather than it being presented on a silver platter.
If you don't comment your code you're a savage, though. :D
...spam sends you.
Every user has a choice not to update.
There is only one food item that has ever aroused me: cinnamon. Many of my male friends feel the same way about that spice. Perhaps it's the abundance of cinnamon in most pumpkin pie that's the culprit?
I seem to keep having this conversation. :D
I often find it difficult to describe my love for KDE. I've used GNOME, WindowMaker, Enlightenment, Xfce and even CDE for a time. KDE will suck on your RAM more than the others will, most likely, but on a modern PC the only time I would need a GUI and all of my RAM for my PC to be responsive is if I were running VMs configured in a cluster on it. KDE is a pleasant environment that allows you, more than any other environment, to configure your workspace precisely to how you want to do business with your PC.
On a typical day on my PC I'm running: Firefox, Konqueror (for google searches, via krunner), Yakuake (always in memory, drop-down console), Eclipse, Kate, Dolphin (often on multiple desktops), Kopete (IM client), Konversation (IRC client), GIMP, OpenOffice/Kword (depending on what I'm doing), Amarok (music rules), VLC, Kontact (groupware software, mostly for KMail), etc., etc.
I have a 3.2Ghz processor and 4GB or RAM which I don't even fully use (32 bit Ubuntu, I suck at making the big leap) and some kind of Nvidia card that plays WoW well (and I run that via Wine with -opengl) that allows me to have crazy desktop effects that run as smoothly as the first time I ran WindowMaker on my P133.
Times are changing, the desktop is on Linux now too. I don't think it will ever be for everybody but Linux has the best UI configuration capability, in my opinion, over any other PC interface I've ever used; here's the kicker, it's because of KDE for me. GNOME has always kind of had ups and downs with respect to philosophy regarding applications and how the UI is laid out for each. All KDE apps, unless the author took the pain to build it piece by piece themselves, are pretty much uniform in presentation and usage. GNOME can't claim that and everything else is pretty much just a window manager.
Robustness is not bad if you feel you actually need it. Stick with what works for you, KDE works for me. Open source is about options, too.
From the out of the box distribution of KDE 4 to 3 hours after installation, this is how I configure it for my exact preferences.. http://imagebin.ca/view/xWPU0ck.html
You can turn off all the desktop effects and still have a more configurable desktop than GNOME. If you're having issues running the plasma desktop you should ditch your P133.
I would much prefer to have a plain-jane installation and customize it myself than install whatever the boys over at Novell try to push on me.
Buy a book on how to draw a flow chart and see if you can describe each step of a process using that knowledge. Once you're capable of handling the flow of logic through a diagram you'll be better off learning the flow of logic through a program (as, aside from syntax, it's the same idea.) After that learn what "types" exist, such as integers, floats, boolean, characters and strings. If you can hold all of this, thus far, in your head and make peace with what it all means then find a language that's easy for someone to pick up on, like PHP, which basically lets you write a program from the first statement typed.
Programming is something I honestly feel should be a fundamental skill for everyone; I think the reason why most people don't learn to do it is that they've convinced themselves they won't understand it. Have confidence that you'll get it and practice. Remember that good programming is learned over years and not days or weeks. Try not to get frustrated, the WWW has more than enough information available for anyone to learn.
KDE has never been impressive during it's initial releases of new major versions, and I admit that as a KDE user. However, overall, once you reach a stable KDE version I find that KDE is miles better than GNOME. I've tried, many times, to get into GNOME to see what others find special about it and all I ever find is that it's still the same old GNOME. The only single benefit I credit to GNOME over KDE is speed; however, on a modern PC the only noticeable speed increase in GNOME over KDE is startup time.
If you haven't yet, download Kubuntu 10.04 and patch up to the latest version of KDE. Once you see how the plasma desktop can be configured I'm confident that you'll begin to reconsider.
I find it's more stable actually, and runs better in Linux than in WindowsXP.
"C:\Program Files\World of Warcraft\wow.exe" -opengl
No config file, btw.
Thing is, the PC is a better gaming experience. I can't play an FPS on a console, it's far too slow to turn, move, etc. Consoles traditionally had games that PCs didn't, like Square RPGs, enix RPGS, side-scrollers. Some games work better with a console, some with a PC. The only FPS on a console that worked out for me was the Metroid Prime series. Perfect control, fast-paced gameplay delivered with Nintendo-style game control.
:P
I think another issue is that though the recent games are coming with pretty graphics and usually good sound design, they are, mostly, a variation on a theme. Fun-factor in games has always been the most important thing to me. Immersion the close second. And if you can bother to make me laugh and not just swear in frustration, that'd be nice too.
class Example
{
public static void main(String[] args)
{
consolen("If you design your classes correctly, you won't have to type so much.");
}
public static void consolen(String out)
{
System.out.println( out );
}
}
I'm not a US citizen, but I'm pretty certain that Posse Comitatus is violated by such actions on behalf of your government.
If, by reading all of the material and going through all of the exercises you have thus far, you are preparing to write a test... congratulations, you're probably finished learning what you need to know. If you're preparing to get a job, you have some work ahead of you. I've been writing software professionally since 1997 (not as long as some, but long enough to impart *some* knowledge.) The more time you spend trying to solve real problems by writing software, the better you will become at doing just that. Having knowledge of an API, system, class library or a language's syntax will never compare to actually doing something useful with that language.
When you get out of school you'll end up running into languages you've never worked with before, didn't spend any time learning and you will be able to pick up their syntax in a very short period of time (for me, recently, it's within hours.) Learning the gotchas of each language/platform combination can take a very long time. Learning how not to shoot yourself in the foot in those languages can take even longer. If I were you, I would create a project for yourself, define a list of requirements. Then, go through the list of requirements and attach an hourly amount to each one, your estimate of how long you think it will take you to perform those tasks. Then, perform them. Don't necessarily focus on making sure you stay within the time you set for yourself, just focus on providing the best solution per task that you know how.
Your first self-made project might go over the hourly allotment, it may not, but either way you'll be well on your way. The next self-made project you assign yourself should be longer, more complex and involve more features (perhaps additions to the project you assigned yourself the first time.) Practice makes perfect. Also, do your best to try not to be "creative" necessarily, solve the problem, don't try to be a code hero, and you should do fine from there.
I haven't posted on /. for quite some time, but... I need to know what part of the world you live in that it's not taking over? More and more I'm meeting people, normal honest-to-God human people just out there who have converted to Linux. I meet people all the time in coffee shops, book stores, shopping malls, whathaveyou, and there really aren't many Windows users where I live anymore. I've been running KDE 4.3.2 for a few weeks now; more than ever I'm advocating this software. Linux isn't about propaganda, it's not about winning or losing, it's organically ending up on desktops, laptops, servers, cell phones, etc. Try out Kubuntu, if you don't find it easy to support your hardware and set your desktop up, then you'd have a hard time doing it on Windows too.
I both agree and disagree with this. I'm of the mind that so long as I take care of everything I have to take care of, everything else is fair game. I play video games, I watch cartoons, I like to have stupid, mary-jane fun with my friends, but I am responsible about everything I do. I think adult maturity is accountability, respect for others, proper use of empathy, comprehensive communication and being responsible for yourself. You can still be a complete ass and be an adult so long as you follow these precepts. The lines blur in the middle these days.
I'm certain Tom didn't engineer this young girl and this 19 year old getting together for a rapefest. I'm also certain that it has been for centuries, and should continue to be, the responsibility of her parents to monitor her online activity and to be certain that when she leaves her house she's not going out to meet "some guy" she met on the internet. I turned 29 recently, and if I meet someone online I'll be certain to meet them in a public place the first few times in the interest of not randomly falling victim to some psychotic chick.
I hope she loses the suit and I hope society remembers that parents are the guardians of their children, not Tom of all fucking people.
First of all, you should teach formal logic on a blackboard. I wouldn't let someone touch a computer unless they knew the difference between a scalar and a list.
Secondly, they should learn how to implement this knowledge in the most simple language possible. BASIC, Pascal, etc. Don't confuse them with an advanced tool when it's the code that matters at this point.
After that, keep raising the bar and exposing them to more and more of the language, then introduce the IDE. How code translates to the machine, to the project, to the enterprise is irrelevant if they would-be software developer doesn't understand a control statement. Keep the focus on the code before you introduce a way to make it easier. The learning curve is steep enough for some.
That's my two cents.
Sure... I would imagine it's slow and bloated if you're still running it on a PII 233 with 128MB of RAM...
But for those of us who are running on modern hardware KDE runs quite well and is far more robust than GNOME. When folks compare KDE to Window Managers, I always groan considering they're two separate things. KDE is the K Desktop Environment, it's not *just* the Window Manager. GNOME's slight speed improvement on modern hardware isn't noticable enough to make up for it's inability to provide a feature-rich computing experience.
I hope GNOME and the folks in Redmond follow this lead and create a Wikipedia desktop app to interact with this webservice.
Bob runs his system as root, and Susie doesn't. Bob downloads something from the internet which (*gasp*) has a virus attached to it which *can* affect a Linux system. Bob infects his whole system. Susie, who downloads the same file, infects her user account. Running as a user reminds you that you are not in control of the system, and to be in control you have to enter a password. This usually makes people more wary about what they do and do not do as root.
Make sense?