If you're not averse to Java, eXist (http://exist-db.org/ is open source and works reasonably well. It's still under heavy development, but the core functionality is fairly stable.
For those of you north of the border (the icy wastes known as Canada), Primus provides a decent service. For about 25 loonies per month, you get unlimited local service (in the area code of your choice, as long as they service it) and reasonable long distance. They send you the equipment and (supposedly) pick up the return postage as well when you cancel. No signup fees, which beats all the Bells and Telus right there. We've found sound quality to be reasonable, certainly no worse than a cell phone and much better than our first try at VoIP a couple years ago. Worth a try!
That's precisely what GoBack does for modern versions of Windows. It's saved my skin a few times, when I screwed up my video drivers or deleted the wrong directory by mistake...
I'm guessing that Sega is referring to patent 6,200,138. From a quick scan, the patent seems to claim 1) an algorithm to get pedestrians to leap out of the way of the player's car and 2) a directional arrow pointing to the player's destination. (There's also some mumbo-jumbo about "easy to understand" displays and "real driving feeling" -- make of it what you will.) I'll leave it to patent agents expert in the field (do such beasts exist?) to determine whether the patent is valid and whether it's been infringed.
Before making baseless assertions about new technologies, perhaps you should try out a new system that takes its lead from the infamous Minority Report interface. Kids love it and find it quite intuitive, even though it's only a first cut and could benefit from many improvements. There are many other similar projects out there that have met with varying degrees of success (I'll let you do your own research), but to spout aphorisms like "it won't work, because it's not a nipple" is stupid.
Where did you get that idea? Every OO philosophy that I know of accepts (nay, encourages!) abstract concepts being modeled as objects. Without this, OO becomes useless and pointless -- just like you imagine it to be.
The solution to this is to deny your default browser's abilities to access the internet before installing a new app like this and then applying a deny rule against the IP or hostname it tries to access.
If I were in a more cynical mood, I would suggest that you contact a lawyer and see if "balls to the wall" was evidence of a sexually hostile workplace.
Why doesn't Film88 locate their servers with HavenCo? To quote from their acceptable use agreement: "Sealand currently has no regulations regarding copyright"... It doesn't look like they'd just roll over to the MPAA.
My only guess is that they must charge too much for the service.
In my experience, even 3rd-year students are confused by the Gang of Four Design Patterns book. In my Object-Oriented Software Engineering course I prefer to use Craig Larman's "Applying UML and Patterns: an Introduction to Object-Oriented Analysis and Design", 2nd ed. It introduces some of the more useful patterns more gently, along with the other essential analysis and design principles. It has a good mix of concepts which makes it a fine all-in-one choice for teaching.
Do you wonder why GameSpy's article described the technology in such glowing terms? They're a member of the Java Game Profile JSR's Expert Group. Hardly an impartial observer; they should've at least mentioned their involvement in the article.
All the comments I've seen so far tend towards "Java is too slow", "it can't take advantage of custom hardware", "it won't push the cutting edge", etc. This may well be true for action games, but that still leaves a lot of other genres -- strategy, wargame, adventure, RPG, puzzle, etc.
For example, don't you think that Civ3 would've come off nicely in Java? The upcoming MOO3? Perhaps even Tropico? (OK, I'm showing my strategy bias, but I'm sure you can think of other examples.) Not all games need to take advantage of cutting-edge technology to be fun. This point has been made so often on Slashdot, you'd think people would remember this cliche by now.
And finally, I would've expected all Linux (game-loving) zealots to be cheering for this technology. It might actually bring some real games to their forsaken OS.
the nature of C/Pascal being close to assembler helps people to fundamentally understand what the machine is doing
Why do you think it's a good idea to start with teaching fundamental machine mechanics? While I agree that, to be a computer scientist, you do eventually have to learn the nitty-gritty details under the abstractions, I really think that's a bad place to start. The students will just get confused with the details and drop out before getting any clue as to how they might fit together. Understanding low-level computer functionality is intrinsically difficult; that's why we've come up with more abstract layers to make computers more approachable.
from our experience at U. of Victoria teaching java as a first language does harm because memory allocation, pointers, etc. are not taught. Even though most languages in heavy use today - java, perl, python, etc. all have garbage-collection, these concepts are KEY, and should be taught in 1st year.
Memory allocation is taught in Java. Or at least, I've tried to teach it -- but most students never understood that declaring a reference variable is a completely separate thing from allocating the memory for an object. I spent a fair amount of time on this, and still saw code like: Thing t = new Thing();
t = someOtherExistingThing;
As for garbage collection, unless you're doing OS-level work, you might as well assume it's there. No high level language today would dare leave it out.
B. Sc. Computer Science Algorithms, language design, computability, structures of data, efficiency.
Software Engineering Handling obscene amounts of code and making it managable
Programming Diploma VB
Part of the problem (at least at UVic), is that our first year courses are "targeted" at all of the above people. This leads to a number of compromises that nobody is really happy with, but the money and teachers aren't there to split up the courses into separate streams. So while CS majors might benefit from an introduction to pointers and memory management in first year, the other two streams couldn't care less...
There are also, of course, the classical problems of people coming into the program with vastly varying amounts of experience, but these have been discussed to death before. So while I'm not entirely happy with UVic's CS and SENG programs, I don't think teaching low-level concepts in first year is the answer.
Any suggestins on good OO basics and theory books?
You could try Craig Larman's "Applying UML and Patterns." I'll be using it to teach a third-year O-O development course, and the book has gotten generally good feedback from people.
and hiding it under a blanket like "the plan isn't JUST about copy protection, but also about enhancing security" is an obvious and sad marketing effort to try to find some credibile partner function for copy protection.
Kind of like "Napster helps independent bands" is a sad effort to try to find some credible partner function for illegal music copying?
Not everybody wants an extra safety net. Why should it be right for a union to force this safety net on everybody who wants to do a particular kind of job?
Hear, hear! Unions are nothing but organized mobs, and rule by fear (and now by law, it seems). Once a union takes over an organization, even if it is with the majority support of the current set of employees, all new hires are forced to join the union as well. I was sure this somehow violated my (Canadian) rights, but apparently not.
Unions exist by dint of the right to assemble. What happened to my right to not assemble?
And yes, I know, I can always find another job... But employers who fire any and all unionized employees, or simply shut down the place when a union forms, have my full support.
Slashdot Mirror
If you're not averse to Java, eXist (http://exist-db.org/ is open source and works reasonably well. It's still under heavy development, but the core functionality is fairly stable.
For those of you north of the border (the icy wastes known as Canada), Primus provides a decent service. For about 25 loonies per month, you get unlimited local service (in the area code of your choice, as long as they service it) and reasonable long distance. They send you the equipment and (supposedly) pick up the return postage as well when you cancel. No signup fees, which beats all the Bells and Telus right there. We've found sound quality to be reasonable, certainly no worse than a cell phone and much better than our first try at VoIP a couple years ago. Worth a try!
That's precisely what GoBack does for modern versions of Windows. It's saved my skin a few times, when I screwed up my video drivers or deleted the wrong directory by mistake...
I'm guessing that Sega is referring to patent 6,200,138. From a quick scan, the patent seems to claim 1) an algorithm to get pedestrians to leap out of the way of the player's car and 2) a directional arrow pointing to the player's destination. (There's also some mumbo-jumbo about "easy to understand" displays and "real driving feeling" -- make of it what you will.) I'll leave it to patent agents expert in the field (do such beasts exist?) to determine whether the patent is valid and whether it's been infringed.
51 beats/sec is considered low these days? Wow, I really gotta get my heart looked at.
Before making baseless assertions about new technologies, perhaps you should try out a new system that takes its lead from the infamous Minority Report interface. Kids love it and find it quite intuitive, even though it's only a first cut and could benefit from many improvements. There are many other similar projects out there that have met with varying degrees of success (I'll let you do your own research), but to spout aphorisms like "it won't work, because it's not a nipple" is stupid.
Where did you get that idea? Every OO philosophy that I know of accepts (nay, encourages!) abstract concepts being modeled as objects. Without this, OO becomes useless and pointless -- just like you imagine it to be.
No, the solution is to give up on ACL-based security, and integrate proper capabilities-based security right into the operating system. Of course, the programming language must be safe as well, and preferably friendly to capabilities.
Government by hippos?
Why doesn't Film88 locate their servers with HavenCo? To quote from their acceptable use agreement: "Sealand currently has no regulations regarding copyright"... It doesn't look like they'd just roll over to the MPAA.
My only guess is that they must charge too much for the service.
In my experience, even 3rd-year students are confused by the Gang of Four Design Patterns book. In my Object-Oriented Software Engineering course I prefer to use Craig Larman's "Applying UML and Patterns: an Introduction to Object-Oriented Analysis and Design", 2nd ed. It introduces some of the more useful patterns more gently, along with the other essential analysis and design principles. It has a good mix of concepts which makes it a fine all-in-one choice for teaching.
Do you wonder why GameSpy's article described the technology in such glowing terms? They're a member of the Java Game Profile JSR's Expert Group. Hardly an impartial observer; they should've at least mentioned their involvement in the article.
All the comments I've seen so far tend towards "Java is too slow", "it can't take advantage of custom hardware", "it won't push the cutting edge", etc. This may well be true for action games, but that still leaves a lot of other genres -- strategy, wargame, adventure, RPG, puzzle, etc.
For example, don't you think that Civ3 would've come off nicely in Java? The upcoming MOO3? Perhaps even Tropico? (OK, I'm showing my strategy bias, but I'm sure you can think of other examples.) Not all games need to take advantage of cutting-edge technology to be fun. This point has been made so often on Slashdot, you'd think people would remember this cliche by now.
And finally, I would've expected all Linux (game-loving) zealots to be cheering for this technology. It might actually bring some real games to their forsaken OS.
the nature of C/Pascal being close to assembler helps people to fundamentally understand what the machine is doing
Why do you think it's a good idea to start with teaching fundamental machine mechanics? While I agree that, to be a computer scientist, you do eventually have to learn the nitty-gritty details under the abstractions, I really think that's a bad place to start. The students will just get confused with the details and drop out before getting any clue as to how they might fit together. Understanding low-level computer functionality is intrinsically difficult; that's why we've come up with more abstract layers to make computers more approachable.
from our experience at U. of Victoria teaching java as a first language does harm because memory allocation, pointers, etc. are not taught. Even though most languages in heavy use today - java, perl, python, etc. all have garbage-collection, these concepts are KEY, and should be taught in 1st year.
Memory allocation is taught in Java. Or at least, I've tried to teach it -- but most students never understood that declaring a reference variable is a completely separate thing from allocating the memory for an object. I spent a fair amount of time on this, and still saw code like:
Thing t = new Thing();
t = someOtherExistingThing;
As for garbage collection, unless you're doing OS-level work, you might as well assume it's there. No high level language today would dare leave it out.
B. Sc. Computer Science Algorithms, language design, computability, structures of data, efficiency. Software Engineering Handling obscene amounts of code and making it managable Programming Diploma VB
Part of the problem (at least at UVic), is that our first year courses are "targeted" at all of the above people. This leads to a number of compromises that nobody is really happy with, but the money and teachers aren't there to split up the courses into separate streams. So while CS majors might benefit from an introduction to pointers and memory management in first year, the other two streams couldn't care less...
There are also, of course, the classical problems of people coming into the program with vastly varying amounts of experience, but these have been discussed to death before. So while I'm not entirely happy with UVic's CS and SENG programs, I don't think teaching low-level concepts in first year is the answer.
You could try Craig Larman's "Applying UML and Patterns." I'll be using it to teach a third-year O-O development course, and the book has gotten generally good feedback from people.
Kind of like "Napster helps independent bands" is a sad effort to try to find some credible partner function for illegal music copying?
Not everybody wants an extra safety net. Why should it be right for a union to force this safety net on everybody who wants to do a particular kind of job?
Unions exist by dint of the right to assemble. What happened to my right to not assemble?
And yes, I know, I can always find another job... But employers who fire any and all unionized employees, or simply shut down the place when a union forms, have my full support.