I've taken a High School CS course for AP and I'm not sure how I came out of it not hateing programing. For instance, when it came time to learn about linked lists, the book talked about what a linked list was. Then, it talked about what a linked list was. Then, it talked about what a linked list was. It never really said how to code the blasted thing. Not surprisingly, everyone failed the linked list test.
You took a high school class and from their you can extrapolate out the entire scope and range of all CS curriculum in world?
It's this kind of self delusional intellectual wanking that makes open source look so bad. Some manager somewhere read that and thought: "These linux kids a fucking morons". Now when I try to convince people that linux/apache/perl is the way to go the ghost of every halfwit moron post like that stands arrayed against me...
As a community, can we try to look at things when we say them and think about it and not be total tools?
The part about being told what a linked list is but not how to code it is icing on the cake.
1. Allow articles a range of 0-100. Start at 50. -1 to 5 isn't enough room to differentiate, and it gives a moderator too much power.
2. Give everyone 10 moderation points per day. Regardless
3. Give moderatoros infinite points for x hours/days/years.
4. Allow +- 1 point bumps on any story.
5. Screw meta moderation. Let the system meta moderate itself. If a person has a history of having their moderations overturned make them less likely to moderate in the future (at infinite level). If a person rarely gets turned over then let them moderate more often.
Hopefully the result would be that people who activly, intelligently moderated would do so often, and people who used their 10 per day to move up goatsex links would never get a shot at the good moderation style.
I got cracked via wu-ftp, and the cracker annhilated the logs in an effort to conceal his tracks.
So when I looked at the log at random one day and realized it was *much* smaller than it should have been (1 login from me and nothing else. No backups). Geez...
Remember that Card wrote Ender's Game in bits and pieces during his spare time when he was a 19 year old missionary. Oh, and LDS missionaries have about three hours per week of spare time (well, he got a bit more when he worked in the mission offices).
Did you notice any Mormon bias's in the book. (I personally didn't, but wondered if anyone else saw anything)
The reason that you see a huge contrast between fans' opinions of the book and your own reading of it is that EG is best read as an adolescent. Adults who fell in love with it as teenagers still love it. Those who see it for the first time as adults are puzzled by the adulation.
That's a good point (and very consistent with the discussion involved). I read it when I was 23. Maybe it's a book whose time I missed.
I read it again when I was 21, and I saw it from a totally different point of view. The second time I read it, it was an amusing book, but nothing profound. I'm also of the opinion that not everything I read has to be of the level of the classics (though I really don't like Dostevsky).
I'll agree wholeheartedly that not everything you read has to be at the level of a classic, but the reverence shown this book bestows some weight IMHO it doesn't deserve. The gist of what people have said is: It's entertaining leave it alone.
As for Card getting cut a lot of slack, most sci-fi writers get cut a lot of slack. I don't read sci-fi expecting everything I read to be dead on realistic.
I don't think realism is really that big of a deal, plausability, story, and ideas are far more important.
If I want that I'll go read some non-fiction, perhaps a historical work. Ender's Game works for the same reasons that Horatio Alger's works did, because the underdog prevails.
So basically empathy for Ender is the prime motivation for liking this book. Doesn't that bother you? As a community we bestow accalodes on this book because we empathize. A community that prides itself on vetting the weak code and on a rabid tradition of intellectual inquiry and debate, gives this book a free pass because it sounds like us.
A friend of mine kicked this down to me and I read it. It was a decent book, enjoyable.
But i've noticed that geeks seem drawn to it. My theory is that it's the quintissential geek fable. Smart kid ridiculed, society beats him up, but he saves world by virtue of his intelligence. How many people in the audience dreamed about killing their childhood nemisis? If you can seperate the plot from the wet dream of zero g space combat where hard work and intelligence defeats athletic ability the book is full of holes. Two kids (again super intelligent) dupe the world into thinking they are the new intelligensitia? Am I the only one in the world who smacked himself in the forhead when you read that? I mean please...
Play time in the battle area is analgous to fighter planes and space craft how?
It was an interesting book, if you look at the idea of duping someone into genocide. But the most interesting part of that was glossed over as Ender felt really bad. So he spent a long time talking about dead people and that made it better.
I'm reading Crime and Punishment and the contrast in abilities (dostevsky and Card) is brutal. But because of the central , geek friendly, theme Card gets cut a lot of slack. Has anyone else noticed this? Am I wrong? Missing something?
Ahh, there's nothing like playing Civ in 16 colors with the nice ol' bleepy pc speaker sounds. Now, those were the days. Any of you remember the first time he heard speech out of a Soundblaster/Adlib card? For me that was with Dune II...
Memories! Civ is where i learned how to use a hex editor. Dune is the game that almost destroyed me in highschool. I bought a soundblaster for that game. I remember the whoosh of the rockets when your turrets would fire. I remember the obsession....
The gist of your argument seems to be that you can't support bad code. If something is done poorly then yes it's going to be difficult to maintain. I can write C code that is nasty as a pissy matress, but that doesn't mean I'll argue C isn't a good language for large scale development.
Yet, time and time again, we see that for most people this is the case. They don't care about good software, only about "good enough" software.
As well, I don't think it makes any difference, as long as a system does what it is supposed to do.
This is a fairly asinine thing to say, especially since the second post had a very good point (Micro vs Monolithic kernels). My opinion of Theo is fairly low after this. Instead of responding with a mea culpa (yes a micro kernal is better, of course it's better to keep privledged code to a minimum, but it's also difficult to totally re-engineer a kernel especially when it works) we get mindless thrashing about micro kernals..
(an operating system based on 70's technology dissing ideas from the 80's as obsolete? Kind of ironic..)
Has anyone noticed a decline of service once a new location matures?
Definitly, I moved in about three months ago to a nearly empty apartment complex. As it's started to fill up I've noticed my speed dropping over time till it's about 90% of what I started with.
We used a "complete the arrow" thing here in NC. Personally, just once I'd like to pull the levers in one of those old stand-up-behind-the-curtain things. I think THAT would be cool.
Yes! There is something unsatifsying about connecting an arrow, I want machinery involved somehow.
I've looked at the ballot and there are BIG ARROWS by each candidates name pointing to the, how on earth can you miss that?
Moreover when the election winner gets less than 50% of the popular vote, they do not have a mandate to do anything, which means they are less able to implement the corrupt objectives of their big bucks contributors. The lower the better.
This is really important, because in such a close election neither party will have a clear mandate for the administration that follows, and they will be forced to address 3rd party concerns in order to corral so sort of power.
but you'd have to have a LOT of friends to skew the polls that much!...
Yeah, So you'd have to have a party set it up (lots of people with similiar ideas) or know where the exit polls that were being used by national media were being conducted.
I have a feeling that they (media outlets) are not going to do real good knee jerk polls, so a small, surgical vote could get it done.
I was thinking about this last night and wanted to run it buy some people:
How does the time of day you vote affect the election. Say I have access to a large block of PARTY_X voters on the east coast. If I get them to vote en masse when the polling places open then early polls will show PARTY_X's candidate out in front.
The question is: Will this affect people who havn't voted yet? I would guess it would discourage people from voting against CANDIDATE_X, people who supported him (or were undecided) would run out to back a winner, and people who opposed him would be less likely to vote since they were already losing.
If I could find 30 libertarians and know where cnn was taking exit polls, bringing those libertarians to that voting place could drastically skew that poll.... Thus providing a net political benefit
And regardless of whether it's legal or illegal, distributing the stolen Microsoft code is wrong.
Amen. Despite your feelings about microsoft they do have the right to choose how their work is distributed. If it doesn't match your views that doesn't make it acceptable to steal it.
Imagine how slashdot would go up in arms if microsoft took some GPL'd code and schlepped it into windows, ignoring the license. By advocating the release of microsofts source against their will you are doing the exact same thing.
If you really want lame, look at early games like "Superman", "Football", "Dodge Em", and the like. (Although, don't talk shit about "Outlaw", or I WILL KICK YOUR ASS.)
I used to love football, push up to block up, down to block down and then run behind him. That game rocked! Much better than later football games (tecmo bowl) that had players doing god knows what after the snap.
Screw affording them, can a man keep that much crap in his living room? My little brother has a playstation, genesis, dreamcast, and N64 hooked up to his tv and it's like a shuttle launch when you try to play a game. Flip this, plug in that, move this, grab those controllers...
God forbid you want to watch TV
I really wanted a PS2 today, but couldn't bring myself to drop $500 for a usable system (ps2, controller, memory, games), plus the time to sit in line...
Do you have any idea how many god damn stoners there would be if you decided to legalize drugs? I would estimate that emergency rooms would be filled with countless pot heads, coke addicts, and heroin junkies that you wouldn't be able to get a bed. Top that with a large increase in teen use of drugs and the like and you will find that America will be in pretty bad shape. Plus you then get the hard core addicts who have addiction in their family and you are even worse off.
What? Do you think a lot of people are sitting around thinking, "Damn I wish drugs were legal I wanna get stoned, oh well off to boy scout camp". Drugs are available to the point that anyone who wants to get stoned will. The only thing that keeping drugs illegal does is make people who harm no one criminals.
If someone smokes crack in their bedroom at night and is a law abiding citizen the rest of their day how can we justify making them a criminal? If anybody who does something unhealthy is a criminal then lets imprison all the meat eaters.
This remenant of puritan ideal left over from colonial america is pointless and stupid. Lets grow up and acknowledge that the government has no business enforcing morality.
The best way that I've found to deal with creative block is to hit a baseball. Go to batting cages or buy a little nerf pitching machine (20$). And then focus completly on your swing. Do that for 10-15 minutes and I can usually continue programming unimpeeded.
My guess is that it's not the baseball but the concentration. Find something mindless to concentrate on that you can really focus on....
How would I go about getting a job in london? Is there any special immigration paperwork I'd have to fill out? Any good conduits for finding a job? I currently live in the US and am a US citizen and I'd really like to find out (generally) what it takes to transplant yourself accross the ocean.
Why has no one pointed out the fact that you can't ID users on the net? IP address's do not map 1 to 1 with users, if I use an ISP and someone else uses same ISP we can have the same IP if we pick one out of a pool when we log in. Who cares if you can get somebody's IP, unless they have a fixed IP (which I would guess few do) it won't help. It was definily an AOL user...bob31337
"Hacking" is what people use it to mean: that is, breaking into computers illegally. Sorry, but you can't just redefine words because you don't like what they mean.
Actually you can. Language isn't defined by dictionaries, it's defined by usage. Think of any number of slang words and what they mean and what the dictionary means. A good example: Venture into your local hood and ask some young male where they're from. Do the same thing in a corporate enviornment. Notice the difference in response's.
The problem is when those two contexts mix, and when the two are ignorant of each other. Bob the gangbanger will likely recognize where you're coming from, but would you recognize the veiled threat from said gangbanger?
We know where the writer is coming from, but the writer knows nothing about computer culture. So a writer will perpetuate the hacker==cracker misconception.
What can we do about it? Eventually language will correct itself, enough people will use the word in certain way, and it will become common. If it's really important to you then use it correctly with explanations and mold the language to your taste's.
This points to the fundamental problem with popular music: Theres a lot of shitty music out there. Band A will put out a single thats decent, you hear it on the radio, like it, go pick up the CD. It sucks. You spent $15 bucks to get a single you're already getting sick of. This happens long enough and you're ready to stop buying CD's all together.
Record labels need to lose some money. They need to feel some hurt so that they stop pushing all this bullshit music. Theres like 10 britny spears clones out now! We don't need that!
A good band will make you buy the album. Finding whole albums on napster is pretty hard. Finding whole albums of decent quality is almost impossible. And if a group puts out good music, I'll buy the CD, so will a lot of other people.
But record labels know good bands will sell CD's. Its the crummy 1 radio hit bands that they're worried about. Because the lure of that one overhyped overplayed viraly catchy song will get a lot of people to shell out the cash for all 10 tracks, but if people can get those easily for free? Goodbye album sales!
And when the record companies can't make big money off of their rehashed acts and are dependent on talented groups, the talented groups will have the leverage. And that is the record industry's nightmare...
Let them lose some money, and shift the balance of power back where it belongs.
Slashdot Mirror
You took a high school class and from their you can extrapolate out the entire scope and range of all CS curriculum in world?
It's this kind of self delusional intellectual wanking that makes open source look so bad. Some manager somewhere read that and thought: "These linux kids a fucking morons". Now when I try to convince people that linux/apache/perl is the way to go the ghost of every halfwit moron post like that stands arrayed against me...
As a community, can we try to look at things when we say them and think about it and not be total tools?
The part about being told what a linked list is but not how to code it is icing on the cake.
2. Give everyone 10 moderation points per day. Regardless
3. Give moderatoros infinite points for x hours/days/years.
4. Allow +- 1 point bumps on any story.
5. Screw meta moderation. Let the system meta moderate itself. If a person has a history of having their moderations overturned make them less likely to moderate in the future (at infinite level). If a person rarely gets turned over then let them moderate more often.
Hopefully the result would be that people who activly, intelligently moderated would do so often, and people who used their 10 per day to move up goatsex links would never get a shot at the good moderation style.
I got cracked via wu-ftp, and the cracker annhilated the logs in an effort to conceal his tracks.
So when I looked at the log at random one day and realized it was *much* smaller than it should have been (1 login from me and nothing else. No backups). Geez...
at least try kids...
Did you notice any Mormon bias's in the book. (I personally didn't, but wondered if anyone else saw anything)
The reason that you see a huge contrast between fans' opinions of the book and your own reading of it is that EG is best read as an adolescent. Adults who fell in love with it as teenagers still love it. Those who see it for the first time as adults are puzzled by the adulation.
That's a good point (and very consistent with the discussion involved). I read it when I was 23. Maybe it's a book whose time I missed.
I'll agree wholeheartedly that not everything you read has to be at the level of a classic, but the reverence shown this book bestows some weight IMHO it doesn't deserve. The gist of what people have said is: It's entertaining leave it alone.
As for Card getting cut a lot of slack, most sci-fi writers get cut a lot of slack. I don't read sci-fi expecting everything I read to be dead on realistic.
I don't think realism is really that big of a deal, plausability, story, and ideas are far more important.
If I want that I'll go read some non-fiction, perhaps a historical work. Ender's Game works for the same reasons that Horatio Alger's works did, because the underdog prevails.
So basically empathy for Ender is the prime motivation for liking this book. Doesn't that bother you? As a community we bestow accalodes on this book because we empathize. A community that prides itself on vetting the weak code and on a rabid tradition of intellectual inquiry and debate, gives this book a free pass because it sounds like us.
That sucks.
It smacks of intellectual weakness...
But i've noticed that geeks seem drawn to it. My theory is that it's the quintissential geek fable. Smart kid ridiculed, society beats him up, but he saves world by virtue of his intelligence. How many people in the audience dreamed about killing their childhood nemisis? If you can seperate the plot from the wet dream of zero g space combat where hard work and intelligence defeats athletic ability the book is full of holes. Two kids (again super intelligent) dupe the world into thinking they are the new intelligensitia? Am I the only one in the world who smacked himself in the forhead when you read that? I mean please...
Play time in the battle area is analgous to fighter planes and space craft how?
It was an interesting book, if you look at the idea of duping someone into genocide. But the most interesting part of that was glossed over as Ender felt really bad. So he spent a long time talking about dead people and that made it better.
I'm reading Crime and Punishment and the contrast in abilities (dostevsky and Card) is brutal. But because of the central , geek friendly, theme Card gets cut a lot of slack. Has anyone else noticed this? Am I wrong? Missing something?
Memories! Civ is where i learned how to use a hex editor. Dune is the game that almost destroyed me in highschool. I bought a soundblaster for that game. I remember the whoosh of the rockets when your turrets would fire. I remember the obsession....
As well, I don't think it makes any difference, as long as a system does what it is supposed to do.
This is a fairly asinine thing to say, especially since the second post had a very good point (Micro vs Monolithic kernels). My opinion of Theo is fairly low after this. Instead of responding with a mea culpa (yes a micro kernal is better, of course it's better to keep privledged code to a minimum, but it's also difficult to totally re-engineer a kernel especially when it works) we get mindless thrashing about micro kernals..
(an operating system based on 70's technology dissing ideas from the 80's as obsolete? Kind of ironic..)
Definitly, I moved in about three months ago to a nearly empty apartment complex. As it's started to fill up I've noticed my speed dropping over time till it's about 90% of what I started with.
Yes! There is something unsatifsying about connecting an arrow, I want machinery involved somehow.
I've looked at the ballot and there are BIG ARROWS by each candidates name pointing to the, how on earth can you miss that?
Sour grapes by the losing party....
This is really important, because in such a close election neither party will have a clear mandate for the administration that follows, and they will be forced to address 3rd party concerns in order to corral so sort of power.
Yeah, So you'd have to have a party set it up (lots of people with similiar ideas) or know where the exit polls that were being used by national media were being conducted.
I have a feeling that they (media outlets) are not going to do real good knee jerk polls, so a small, surgical vote could get it done.
4 years to plan.......
How does the time of day you vote affect the election. Say I have access to a large block of PARTY_X voters on the east coast. If I get them to vote en masse when the polling places open then early polls will show PARTY_X's candidate out in front.
The question is: Will this affect people who havn't voted yet? I would guess it would discourage people from voting against CANDIDATE_X, people who supported him (or were undecided) would run out to back a winner, and people who opposed him would be less likely to vote since they were already losing.
If I could find 30 libertarians and know where cnn was taking exit polls, bringing those libertarians to that voting place could drastically skew that poll.... Thus providing a net political benefit
Imagine how slashdot would go up in arms if microsoft took some GPL'd code and schlepped it into windows, ignoring the license. By advocating the release of microsofts source against their will you are doing the exact same thing.
Some poor shmuck better enjoy their 2 weeks of coolness..
I used to love football, push up to block up, down to block down and then run behind him. That game rocked! Much better than later football games (tecmo bowl) that had players doing god knows what after the snap.
God forbid you want to watch TV
I really wanted a PS2 today, but couldn't bring myself to drop $500 for a usable system (ps2, controller, memory, games), plus the time to sit in line...
If someone smokes crack in their bedroom at night and is a law abiding citizen the rest of their day how can we justify making them a criminal? If anybody who does something unhealthy is a criminal then lets imprison all the meat eaters.
This remenant of puritan ideal left over from colonial america is pointless and stupid. Lets grow up and acknowledge that the government has no business enforcing morality.
Hey me too!
The best way that I've found to deal with creative block is to hit a baseball. Go to batting cages or buy a little nerf pitching machine (20$). And then focus completly on your swing. Do that for 10-15 minutes and I can usually continue programming unimpeeded.
My guess is that it's not the baseball but the concentration. Find something mindless to concentrate on that you can really focus on ....
How would I go about getting a job in london? Is there any special immigration paperwork I'd have to fill out? Any good conduits for finding a job? I currently live in the US and am a US citizen and I'd really like to find out (generally) what it takes to transplant yourself accross the ocean.
If he gets busted do all ISP users lose access?
Actually you can. Language isn't defined by dictionaries, it's defined by usage. Think of any number of slang words and what they mean and what the dictionary means. A good example: Venture into your local hood and ask some young male where they're from. Do the same thing in a corporate enviornment. Notice the difference in response's.
The problem is when those two contexts mix, and when the two are ignorant of each other. Bob the gangbanger will likely recognize where you're coming from, but would you recognize the veiled threat from said gangbanger?
We know where the writer is coming from, but the writer knows nothing about computer culture. So a writer will perpetuate the hacker==cracker misconception.
What can we do about it? Eventually language will correct itself, enough people will use the word in certain way, and it will become common. If it's really important to you then use it correctly with explanations and mold the language to your taste's.
I'm not alone! I usually try to count the lines in the CGI that won't print, then add that to the number javascript gave me then use VI...
Record labels need to lose some money. They need to feel some hurt so that they stop pushing all this bullshit music. Theres like 10 britny spears clones out now! We don't need that!
A good band will make you buy the album. Finding whole albums on napster is pretty hard. Finding whole albums of decent quality is almost impossible. And if a group puts out good music, I'll buy the CD, so will a lot of other people.
But record labels know good bands will sell CD's. Its the crummy 1 radio hit bands that they're worried about. Because the lure of that one overhyped overplayed viraly catchy song will get a lot of people to shell out the cash for all 10 tracks, but if people can get those easily for free? Goodbye album sales!
And when the record companies can't make big money off of their rehashed acts and are dependent on talented groups, the talented groups will have the leverage. And that is the record industry's nightmare...
Let them lose some money, and shift the balance of power back where it belongs.