Hm. A response is moderated down. Apparently the sorts of moderators we get these days don't read threads. Probably too much of a burden on their overloaded intellects.
Welcome to the post-literate society.
But then, that's why this is being discussed at all, isn't it?
It's ALL software. A "film" can be thought of a specialized program used to generate images by use of specialized hardware. The filmstock is the medium, the dyes and whatnot are the bits and bytes, and their arrangement is the software, and it does something useful when 'run' by the appropriate sort of hardware.
As others have indicated, similar analogies can be drawn to almost every other 'medium'.
But I'm still interested in how this can effect people.
I'm sitting in a lab with 6 working[1] Sun machines, several of them more than five years old. We have 8[2] "OEM" PC boxes, none more than three years old, and all but two on their last legs. Some of these OEM PCs are even Linux boxes, which gives them a little extra life, but they're still suffering from the slow hardware death typical for their kind.
There's a Sun SPARCStation 20[3] in the corner that arrived from an office where it sat for who-knows-how-long, never opened up, never cleaned. The dust is so thick, it has become part of the plastic of the case. And yet it runs. And runs. And runs.
I've heard a lot of stuff about how crappy Sun is, and how broken their equipment is, but I've never actually seen any evidence of this. My personal experience is that Sun equipment tends to degrade more or less gracefully, especially when compared to (IBM-compatible) PCs, and that is generally after a long and useful life, especially when compared to "PC"s.
I'll go with Sun equipment any day. (I did, in fact. I got a Sun Blade 100 for home, instead of Yet Another PC. I got tired of the constant upgrade cycle: HD dies, new HDs aren't supported by old MB, buy new MB, RAM isn't compatible, buy new RAM, why not a new video card....)
If you want quality, you gotta support those companies who make quality. If you want crap, then always buy from the lowest bidder.
(AFAIAC, the last _quality_ consumer PC was the Amiga 1000. But then, I'm biased.)
[1] And one broken machine. The built-in ethernet connection is broke. A replacement card is $100, but it's a SPARCStation 20 that we don't really need, so it's in the closet for parts, Just In Case.
[2] That's 8 *left*. We keep throwing away the PC machines when they get too old/broken.
[3] Next to the HP-UX dinosaur. Nobody uses the HP. Nobody wants to use the HP. The keyboard sucks, the OS sucks, the performance sucks, but it just won't die. I think it is the oldest machine in the lab. It probably has the longest uptime too...
We all record large amounts of REALLY BAD music, and post the.mp3's on our web-pages for anonymous downloads. We also offer to sell CDs of these.mp3s -- at $15 a shot.
We then download each other's.mp3s (and discard most of 'em). And we all make sure we get our pound of flesh from the RIAA's tax. Easy as pie.
1. Basically Brazil breaks the agreed internation law and makes the stuff for free, thereby forcing other nations to either follow their example of pay the difference. (see South Africa's example - do it or we take your companies assests)
Apparently you didn't read the article. Let me quote:
In a statement, ministry officials said the country would issue a compulsory license to make the drug, and domestic production would begin Friday. The drug would not be distributed until early next year.
The swiss company will get money. It's not like Brazil is stealing -- only resisting being raped for a foreign corporation.
Next:
2. Reduces the possibility of region specific drugs NOT being developed because companies rightfully fear losing all investment. (some diseases are more prevalent in certain areas of the world - that is an obvious statement).
IIRC, Brazil was pissed that not all countries were charged the same price. This is a matter of resisting the practice of charging what the market will bear [Caveat Emptor is a necessary philosophy for a buyer, but an evil one for the seller] -- Roche wasn't behaving ethically towards Brazil, so there's reason to "rightfully fear" losing anything. They [Roche]weren't in the right!
Next:
3. Raises spectre of loss of intellectual property on other levels, and more and more are confiscated for the "public good"
The problem with this is? If you abuse the IP laws, then you should be penalized by having that IP placed in the public domain. Brazil isn't going that far; commendable restraint, I think.
Next:
4. Increases the likelyhood of similar industries leaving "hostile" countries furthering the problem that country faces.
That just means that there is more compulsory licensing -- and if the company doesn't maintain a presence in those "hostile" countries, then someone in those countries can patent "external" inventions independently, locally. It is far more sensible for companies to try to avoid making countries "hostile" -- hopefully by some means other than corruption of high officials.
When do we stop? Who can judge what is a fair price for something? Who can judge what can fairly be patented?
Presumably we apply some sort of good sense metric. Who can judge what is a fair price? Well, look at what is being charged elsewhere, and compare, and then look at the markup. If you're getting raped, then the price you're being charged is obviously not fair.
As for who can judge what can be fairly patented -- if you can't come up with an answer to that, then you shouldn't be allowing patents, full stop.
Personally, I feel that mathematics, biology, and physics should not be patentable; only engineering can be patented: you build a device that (a) is demonstrably new, innovative, or a significant improvement, and (b) you can provide a working model to a patent office, with instructions that allow for duplication. Anything less is just a trade secret dressed up in funny clothes.
All IP, by nature, is in the public domain. We want inventions -- and the ability to recreate them -- made public, so we grant a limited monopoly to the inventors. Patents aren't an enforcement of the right of an inventor to make money, they're an assurance that the Public will be able to recreate an invention and use it without restriction in exchange for a slight delay for the inventor to make his bit. Abuse of that limited monopoly voids the social contract.
It may be best in the long run, for 'merkins anyway, if Dmitri Sklyarov stays in jail and this mess does go to trial. This may offer a pretty good chance of getting the DMCA struck down.
Sucks for Dmitri, though.
It's a bit of a dilemma, f'shure. When it comes to trial, the outrage that (I hope) should result from detaining a foriegn citizen over something not done on American soil could go a long way in pointing out how the DMCA lends itself to abuse.
Helps the trial. Sucks for Dmitri.
Frankly, I'm (once again) embarassed by my (so-called) representative government.
When vendors ship operating systems that are inherently insecure, they're loudly blasted for doing such, and the administrators of those systems are often held responsible for "locking down" the default-insecure configuration. This is considered well, good, and normal by a great many folks, esp. here on/.
It may be that 90% of the people out there don't know what Javascript is, but I should hope that the percentage of/.ers that don't know anything about Javascript would be far, far, far less. I may be wrong (in fact, I probably am, considering that at least one person thought my original comment was a troll -- they're probably thinking "JAVASCRIPT RULZ DOODZ! U SUX!" when they read anything critical of Javscript or other client-side code), but I hope not.
You can't really blame the graphical browser vendors. Many sites require javascript to do trivial operations: to follow a link, to submit a form, etc. Many of the same end-users who don't know what Javascript is or that you CAN turn it off end up being those who shout for it loudest when it is disabled. It's scary when someone, in all apparent seriousness, claims that they use $BROWSER[A] because $BROWSER[B] allows Javascript to be disabled, and they don't think that's right.
A couple of times I've pushed further, and learned that "well, the web-developers wouldn't use it unless it was safe, so you're just full of it when you say that there are risks involved!" -- and I imagine that most of the folks who write Javascript do so because they need it to provide the behavior required by those same users.
So, yes, it's a bit much to expect any one newbie to know enough to disable Javascript. But that shouldn't apply here, right?
As I said, this isn't anything unexpected. Those who pay attention already disable Javscript and go around making sure the folks they care about know that Javascript can be disabled. So anyone that anyone on/. knows that has Javascript enabled either has (1) done so knowing the risks or (2) has really crappy friends/acquaintances.
Personally, I'd be happy to have a Javascript Guru devise a better resource-consumption script than what I currently have:
<script>s = "You asked for it"; while(1){ s = s + s; } </script>
One *could* hold the view that viruses (virii?) are a sort of public service. They can be considered an attempt to discourage live data (i.e. shipping around executables and expecting the receiver to run it), to promote good backups, to practice safe computing (do I *really* want to click on this link?), and so on and so forth.
Considering the MicroSoft has, apparently, successfully trained the average user to accept buggy software (that crashes the system, demonstrates many security and privacy holes, etc.), it is reasonable to desire some sort of countermeasure for breaking such habits.
Personally, I believe that artists must first demonstrate a mastery of their craft. A lot of so-called "artists" don't demonstrate their mastery, and so their art is of dubious value and status.
Picasso, Dali, etc. *demonstrated* that they could do *exactly* what they wanted to do. Their early artistic efforts often fit in one or another 'genres' (I forget what the "Art" community calls it -- periods? styles?) deliberately. They intended to paint an impressionistic painting, and they did; they didn't paint something, and then say "hey, that looks impressionistic, so that's what I'll call it".
In this era of computer graphics, what constitutes a "craft" is a fast-moving target. How can an artist demonstrate their art when there are "craftsmen" out their doing/better/ work? (Or are those craftsmen also artists?) It is probably worse now than it was several years ago, as the tools of the trade make it so easy to create stunning visual effects.
In the late 80's, Psygnosis came out with several games that felt quite artistic -- some of the images in the game (say, the slides between levels in _Agony_) would count as "Art" then, but probably not *now*. Why? The bar has been raised; rightfully so or not I leave up to the reader.
Another aspect of "Art" that has been suggested to me (in addition to the artist having to be a master) is that Art must both intend and succeed in providing a viewpoint to the recipient that causes him/her to "transcend". To cause another to "see" the world in a different way is the essential effect of "Art".
Or this all might be BS, and Warhol correct. Who knows?
I wouldn't be so quick to claim ownership, if I were them:
All bug reports, test results and other feedback provided to Microsoft by Recipient shall be the property of Microsoft and may be used by Microsoft for any purpose.
So what happens when some skr1pt k1dd13 postmaster in Tennessee sends them some child porn as feedback? They've just claimed ownership. Can you actually arrest a corporation?
Java is a crappy first programming language. The problem is, it's better than any of the 'serious' alternatives.
Those who want to use assembly for a first language are obnoxious gits who get off on sadomachism; it's HARD to learn the principles of programming when you're fighting the system. Sure, it may turn out higher-than-average quality students, but that because all of those who didn't already know what they were doing (or couldn't find a mentor) bailed. Even with all the concepts of programming and decent coding habits, folks still find that assembly code isn't their cup of tea. Assembly as a first language should be considered 'education by attrition'.
C is pretty close to assembly (it's been called a high-level assembler -- indeed, if you disable optimization, you can put blocks of assembly statements into a one-to-one correspondence with C statements), and therefore suffers from most of the same flaws.
Those who want to use C++ aren't much better, and are perhaps slightly more sadistic. C++ is far too complex, ugly, nasty, and error-prone to inflict upon someone who's trying to learn how to program.
Pascal is a good first programming language. It's restrictive enough to offer structure for the new programmer, while expressive enough to solve the sorts of assignments one finds in introductory courses. The biggest complaint about Pascal is that it is "too restrictive", but that's an asset in a first programming language -- it provides motivation for the student to learn _other_ languages. Once you know Pascal, learning C isn't all that hard, and the additional freedom of C is exciting, rather than frightening.
The problem with Pascal these days, it seems, is that more of the implementations are wrappers around p2c, which means you have all of the old C problems cropping up in unexpected places (try naming a Pascal procedure 'main' and then compile it with p2c). Thats simply not nice.
Other good first-languages might be scheme, or forth -- powerful enough to get across the basic concepts, but with enough motivation to learn *other* languages. (In fact, scheme AND forth are good languages to learn by CS students/anyway/, just for the exposure.)
Alas, Pascal, scheme, and forth are all 'unpopular' these days, and are no longer considered 'reasonable' languages to learn first.
Smalltalk would be a great first language, but it really requires a good mentor, and/or a group of people interacting closely, in order to explore the huge library of existing classes. This might not be a bad way to learn a language, but it's kinda hard to test the concepts.
Which leaves Java as the natural replacement for Pascal/Scheme/Forth. It's politically acceptable, and it's not as bad as the alternatives (especially C++ -- which was the other "serious" contendor[1]).
There's nothing wrong with learning more than one language -- in fact, it should be a requirement. If you can learn the concepts, then learning a reasonable language shouldn't be difficult (if it is, you didn't learn the concepts very well). I don't thing that CS should be a 'learn a language for a job' kind of degree -- that's what Tech schools and the IT track in the Business school are for. A CS graduate who can't explain what an Automata is, or why O(n^2) is better than O(2^n), or provide an example of when you'd need a mutex....is nothing more than a fraud.
[1] I taught two semesters of "Introduction to Programming" using Java. The alternative was C++[2], as Pascal was being "phased out".
[2] C++ sucks. I've done enough programming in the language to come to the conclusion that every major design decision was chosen poorly, or was forced by previous design decisions. You're better off writing structured programs in ANSI C.
"So who would decide what songs go on this 'opt-in' list? The copyright holder or the RIAA?
In other words, if I want to distribute a 3-hour recording of me gargling (to which I would own the copyright), would I be able to add it to the opt-in list?
I hope the RIAA wants to be the final arbitrator, and gets their wish, so long as they're required to listen to [all of] the submitted material.
If just one person submits a three-hour "techno-mix" of their daily gargling, they'll think they're dealing with a nut.
If two people submite their own three-hour techno-mix of gargling, they'll think it's an in-joke, and write 'em both off as wierdos.
If everyone who reads/. submits their own personal three-hour techno-mix of gargling, and the RIAA has to pay somebody to actually listen to each and every one, all the way through, well, more power to 'em.
You seem to be laboring under the illusion that our voting system can be made to be "fair". It can't. Arrow's Theorem pretty much demolishes the concept.
If you're going to talk about changing how we vote, other than just the mechanics, you really need to read up on this stuff. Yeah, it's all academic and abstract, but it's quite relevent (imagine that!).
Think it through, folks. Go read the RISKS digests or the comp.risks newsgroup. Pay special attention to issues 21.10 and 21.11 . For balance, you can also read a term paper about using computers in voting; he recommendes a touch-screen type system.
The advantage of physical ballots are many and clear, especially when something goes wrong. And something will go wrong, even without having to deal with corruption. My big problem with all of these electronic voting schemes is that I have no way to assure myself that my vote is actually being cast the way I want it. If the software is corrupted to change my (actual) vote, how would I know? How could I check?
JavaScript shouldn't be considered a requirement for "Internet Standards" anyway. Most of points of the article seemed to be whining about JavaScript, and yet the first thing I do when I sit down to use Netscape is to disable JavaScript.
Lynx, naturally, doesn't require that extra step. This Is A Good Thing.
I voted this morning. Apparently at 7AM there were long lines, but at 7:30 AM it wasn't bad at all -- voting is a lot more fun if you pick your times right!
So once again I find myself voting *against* candidates. I crossed out (on my sample ballot) any candidate that tried to garner support by calling my phone and playing a recorded message (to me or to my answering machine). This makes voting a lot easier -- just choose among the entries that aren't crossed out.
I should have kept track of the crap showing up in my mailbox, and used that as an elimination mechanism as well: more than one flyer per day, or any non-recyclable -> automatic disqualification. Next time.
Then I get into work... and discover that I've been spammed with a anti-Gore pro-Bush junkmail. Forged, of course.
30 * * * * echo "Please remove me from your database" | mail -s "Opt Out" admin@digitalconvergence.com
Oh, and I really wish domain name registration started at $10 and increased exponentially with every additional domain-name... they have an awful lot of 'em.
You forgot "run interference between the people getting the job done and everyone else". A manager is the first line of defense for a group of programmers.
Good managers are worth their weight in $PRECIOUS_METAL any day of the week. Someone able to say "No, we're not going to do that for next tuesday's release." is a productivity booster, a morale booster, and worth keeping around and keeping happy. Alas, good managers seem quite rare. It seems that most of them *are* suits.
Ultimately, it may be that open-source succeeds because of a lack of deadlines.... and thus the need for managers is diminished.
I am 25 years old, however I can still remember when I was a teenager, and how I felt about age discrimination against teenagers: unfair.
I'm a bit past 25, but when I was a teenager, I recall the same sort of whining by those my own age. The response is still the same: suck it up.
After all, it's no big deal. Get your parents to buy the game. Oh, they won't approve? Then WHY ARE YOU TRYING TO BUY THE GAME ANYWAY? Seems to me that you have more pressing issues to be worried about.
The comment about rites-of-passage is a good one, but the rite-of-passage isn't at 21, it's at 18. If you're old enough to be drafted (presumably in times of war where it's not unlikely that you'll die) then you're old enough to be considered an adult. For some, that's old, for others, it's young, so until we get an actual rite, we're stuck with an arbitrary age.
I sucked it up and dealt with it. Sure enough, I didn't stay a teen forever. Odd how that works.
Just a quick point....Parents should watch the kids not the government.
Correct. And governments should not get in the way of this. If a parent objects to such things, then minors (all of them, just to be fair) should not be able to rent, access, etc. such things without explicit parental/guardian consent.
Oh, wait. Lynx doesn't care, and I tell netscape to "always use my colors" and "always use my fonts".
I mean, isn't this the point of web-browsers? To give the reader control because the web-designers of the world have, on average, the design sense of a slug on LSD?
Everyone involved in creating web-pages should at least read Edward Tufte's Envisioning Information. Good stuff.
A GUI makes things even easier - you just point at the
right icons. In this respect being able to see what you are doing as you are doing it may make it better than a voice interface. How many times have you made a verbal slip-up in conversation today? And how many times did you pick the wrong icon in comparison?
Emphasis mine. A GUI is not necessarily easier. The mouse is a lousy control device; a few millimeters of error can result in disaster, and often does. A keyboard (CLI interface!) can often handle a millimeter or two of error without noticing, and a few more causes simple failure for anything to occur, plus provides an opportunity to review an action before actually taking it (action).
It's a lot easer to type "yes" than to position a pointer over a small section of the screen, and then hope it doesn't slip off when the button is pushed.
Aside from an accidental "rm -rf.", I've lost more data to mis-clicks than typos; if you merely count the number of times I've lost data, misclicks greatly outnumber typos.
As you say:
A simple command line interface is very likely to throw something back in your face if you make a speling mistake.
This is good. If I make a mistake, then the computer should not do *anything*, other than telling me that it doesn't understand what I want it to do.
And if you ever try to provide tech-support help to a complete novice over the phone, pray they have a CLI interface available. Verbal directions (such as telephone tech support or, say, paper books) work best with verbal interfaces.
Slashdot Mirror
Hm. A response is moderated down. Apparently the sorts of moderators we get these days don't read threads. Probably too much of a burden on their overloaded intellects.
Welcome to the post-literate society.
But then, that's why this is being discussed at all, isn't it?
It's ALL software. A "film" can be thought of a specialized program used to generate images by use of specialized hardware. The filmstock is the medium, the dyes and whatnot are the bits and bytes, and their arrangement is the software, and it does something useful when 'run' by the appropriate sort of hardware.
As others have indicated, similar analogies can be drawn to almost every other 'medium'.
But I'm still interested in how this can effect people.
It's practically a Usenet tradition.
t ml #618
http://www-rohan.sdsu.edu/~stremler/sigs/sigs.h
Is that where those sort of people come from?
I'm sitting in a lab with 6 working[1] Sun machines, several of them more than five years old. We have 8[2] "OEM" PC boxes, none more than three years old, and all but two on their last legs. Some of these OEM PCs are even Linux boxes, which gives them a little extra life, but they're still suffering from the slow hardware death typical for their kind.
There's a Sun SPARCStation 20[3] in the corner that arrived from an office where it sat for who-knows-how-long, never opened up, never cleaned. The dust is so thick, it has become part of the plastic of the case. And yet it runs. And runs. And runs.
I've heard a lot of stuff about how crappy Sun is, and how broken their equipment is, but I've never actually seen any evidence of this. My personal experience is that Sun equipment tends to degrade more or less gracefully, especially when compared to (IBM-compatible) PCs, and that is generally after a long and useful life, especially when compared to "PC"s.
I'll go with Sun equipment any day. (I did, in fact. I got a Sun Blade 100 for home, instead of Yet Another PC. I got tired of the constant upgrade cycle: HD dies, new HDs aren't supported by old MB, buy new MB, RAM isn't compatible, buy new RAM, why not a new video card....)
If you want quality, you gotta support those companies who make quality. If you want crap, then always buy from the lowest bidder.
(AFAIAC, the last _quality_ consumer PC was the Amiga 1000. But then, I'm biased.)
[1] And one broken machine. The built-in ethernet connection is broke. A replacement card is $100, but it's a SPARCStation 20 that we don't really need, so it's in the closet for parts, Just In Case.
[2] That's 8 *left*. We keep throwing away the PC machines when they get too old/broken.
[3] Next to the HP-UX dinosaur. Nobody uses the HP. Nobody wants to use the HP. The keyboard sucks, the OS sucks, the performance sucks, but it just won't die. I think it is the oldest machine in the lab. It probably has the longest uptime too...
Hey, what's the problem?
.mp3's on our web-pages for anonymous downloads. We also offer to sell CDs of these .mp3s -- at $15 a shot.
.mp3s (and discard most of 'em). And we all make sure we get our pound of flesh from the RIAA's tax. Easy as pie.
We all record large amounts of REALLY BAD music, and post the
We then download each other's
Next:
IIRC, Brazil was pissed that not all countries were charged the same price. This is a matter of resisting the practice of charging what the market will bear [Caveat Emptor is a necessary philosophy for a buyer, but an evil one for the seller] -- Roche wasn't behaving ethically towards Brazil, so there's reason to "rightfully fear" losing anything. They [Roche]weren't in the right!Next:
The problem with this is? If you abuse the IP laws, then you should be penalized by having that IP placed in the public domain. Brazil isn't going that far; commendable restraint, I think.Next:
That just means that there is more compulsory licensing -- and if the company doesn't maintain a presence in those "hostile" countries, then someone in those countries can patent "external" inventions independently, locally. It is far more sensible for companies to try to avoid making countries "hostile" -- hopefully by some means other than corruption of high officials. Presumably we apply some sort of good sense metric. Who can judge what is a fair price? Well, look at what is being charged elsewhere, and compare, and then look at the markup. If you're getting raped, then the price you're being charged is obviously not fair.As for who can judge what can be fairly patented -- if you can't come up with an answer to that, then you shouldn't be allowing patents, full stop. Personally, I feel that mathematics, biology, and physics should not be patentable; only engineering can be patented: you build a device that (a) is demonstrably new, innovative, or a significant improvement, and (b) you can provide a working model to a patent office, with instructions that allow for duplication. Anything less is just a trade secret dressed up in funny clothes.
All IP, by nature, is in the public domain. We want inventions -- and the ability to recreate them -- made public, so we grant a limited monopoly to the inventors. Patents aren't an enforcement of the right of an inventor to make money, they're an assurance that the Public will be able to recreate an invention and use it without restriction in exchange for a slight delay for the inventor to make his bit. Abuse of that limited monopoly voids the social contract.
Brazil is being more than fair.
What about the Lion (Linux BIND) worm?
Sucks for Dmitri, though.
It's a bit of a dilemma, f'shure. When it comes to trial, the outrage that (I hope) should result from detaining a foriegn citizen over something not done on American soil could go a long way in pointing out how the DMCA lends itself to abuse.
Helps the trial. Sucks for Dmitri.
Frankly, I'm (once again) embarassed by my (so-called) representative government.
When vendors ship operating systems that are inherently insecure, they're loudly blasted for doing such, and the administrators of those systems are often held responsible for "locking down" the default-insecure configuration. This is considered well, good, and normal by a great many folks, esp. here on /.
It may be that 90% of the people out there don't know what Javascript is, but I should hope that the percentage of /.ers that don't know anything about Javascript would be far, far, far less. I may be wrong (in fact, I probably am, considering that at least one person thought my original comment was a troll -- they're probably thinking "JAVASCRIPT RULZ DOODZ! U SUX!" when they read anything critical of Javscript or other client-side code), but I hope not.
You can't really blame the graphical browser vendors. Many sites require javascript to do trivial operations: to follow a link, to submit a form, etc. Many of the same end-users who don't know what Javascript is or that you CAN turn it off end up being those who shout for it loudest when it is disabled. It's scary when someone, in all apparent seriousness, claims that they use $BROWSER[A] because $BROWSER[B] allows Javascript to be disabled, and they don't think that's right.
A couple of times I've pushed further, and learned that "well, the web-developers wouldn't use it unless it was safe, so you're just full of it when you say that there are risks involved!" -- and I imagine that most of the folks who write Javascript do so because they need it to provide the behavior required by those same users.
So, yes, it's a bit much to expect any one newbie to know enough to disable Javascript. But that shouldn't apply here, right?
As I said, this isn't anything unexpected. Those who pay attention already disable Javscript and go around making sure the folks they care about know that Javascript can be disabled. So anyone that anyone on /. knows that has Javascript enabled either has (1) done so knowing the risks or (2) has really crappy friends/acquaintances.
Personally, I'd be happy to have a Javascript Guru devise a better resource-consumption script than what I currently have:
Ah. In other words, "suck it up".
One *could* hold the view that viruses (virii?) are a sort of public service. They can be considered an attempt to discourage live data (i.e. shipping around executables and expecting the receiver to run it), to promote good backups, to practice safe computing (do I *really* want to click on this link?), and so on and so forth.
Considering the MicroSoft has, apparently, successfully trained the average user to accept buggy software (that crashes the system, demonstrates many security and privacy holes, etc.), it is reasonable to desire some sort of countermeasure for breaking such habits.
set prompt = "%m %~ > "
on another:
set prompt='[%n@%m %c]$ '
on another:
set prompt = '[\!] %m %~ > '
on another:
set prompt = "Stremler> "
on another:
set prompt="[${SHLVL}]${HOST}% "
Etc. Etc.
Hm. All pretty simple.
Amen!
Picasso, Dali, etc. *demonstrated* that they could do *exactly* what they wanted to do. Their early artistic efforts often fit in one or another 'genres' (I forget what the "Art" community calls it -- periods? styles?) deliberately. They intended to paint an impressionistic painting, and they did; they didn't paint something, and then say "hey, that looks impressionistic, so that's what I'll call it".
In this era of computer graphics, what constitutes a "craft" is a fast-moving target. How can an artist demonstrate their art when there are "craftsmen" out their doing
In the late 80's, Psygnosis came out with several games that felt quite artistic -- some of the images in the game (say, the slides between levels in _Agony_) would count as "Art" then, but probably not *now*. Why? The bar has been raised; rightfully so or not I leave up to the reader.
Another aspect of "Art" that has been suggested to me (in addition to the artist having to be a master) is that Art must both intend and succeed in providing a viewpoint to the recipient that causes him/her to "transcend". To cause another to "see" the world in a different way is the essential effect of "Art".
Or this all might be BS, and Warhol correct. Who knows?
So what happens when some skr1pt k1dd13 postmaster in Tennessee sends them some child porn as feedback? They've just claimed ownership. Can you actually arrest a corporation?
Those who want to use assembly for a first language are obnoxious gits who get off on sadomachism; it's HARD to learn the principles of programming when you're fighting the system. Sure, it may turn out higher-than-average quality students, but that because all of those who didn't already know what they were doing (or couldn't find a mentor) bailed. Even with all the concepts of programming and decent coding habits, folks still find that assembly code isn't their cup of tea. Assembly as a first language should be considered 'education by attrition'.
C is pretty close to assembly (it's been called a high-level assembler -- indeed, if you disable optimization, you can put blocks of assembly statements into a one-to-one correspondence with C statements), and therefore suffers from most of the same flaws.
Those who want to use C++ aren't much better, and are perhaps slightly more sadistic. C++ is far too complex, ugly, nasty, and error-prone to inflict upon someone who's trying to learn how to program.
Pascal is a good first programming language. It's restrictive enough to offer structure for the new programmer, while expressive enough to solve the sorts of assignments one finds in introductory courses. The biggest complaint about Pascal is that it is "too restrictive", but that's an asset in a first programming language -- it provides motivation for the student to learn _other_ languages. Once you know Pascal, learning C isn't all that hard, and the additional freedom of C is exciting, rather than frightening.
The problem with Pascal these days, it seems, is that more of the implementations are wrappers around p2c, which means you have all of the old C problems cropping up in unexpected places (try naming a Pascal procedure 'main' and then compile it with p2c). Thats simply not nice.
Other good first-languages might be scheme, or forth -- powerful enough to get across the basic concepts, but with enough motivation to learn *other* languages. (In fact, scheme AND forth are good languages to learn by CS students
Alas, Pascal, scheme, and forth are all 'unpopular' these days, and are no longer considered 'reasonable' languages to learn first.
Smalltalk would be a great first language, but it really requires a good mentor, and/or a group of people interacting closely, in order to explore the huge library of existing classes. This might not be a bad way to learn a language, but it's kinda hard to test the concepts.
Which leaves Java as the natural replacement for Pascal/Scheme/Forth. It's politically acceptable, and it's not as bad as the alternatives (especially C++ -- which was the other "serious" contendor[1]).
There's nothing wrong with learning more than one language -- in fact, it should be a requirement. If you can learn the concepts, then learning a reasonable language shouldn't be difficult (if it is, you didn't learn the concepts very well). I don't thing that CS should be a 'learn a language for a job' kind of degree -- that's what Tech schools and the IT track in the Business school are for. A CS graduate who can't explain what an Automata is, or why O(n^2) is better than O(2^n), or provide an example of when you'd need a mutex....is nothing more than a fraud.
[1] I taught two semesters of "Introduction to Programming" using Java. The alternative was C++[2], as Pascal was being "phased out".
[2] C++ sucks. I've done enough programming in the language to come to the conclusion that every major design decision was chosen poorly, or was forced by previous design decisions. You're better off writing structured programs in ANSI C.
I hope the RIAA wants to be the final arbitrator, and gets their wish, so long as they're required to listen to [all of] the submitted material.
If just one person submits a three-hour "techno-mix" of their daily gargling, they'll think they're dealing with a nut.
If two people submite their own three-hour techno-mix of gargling, they'll think it's an in-joke, and write 'em both off as wierdos.
If everyone who reads
It would count as a victory. For the good guys.
[Apologies to AG & _Alice's Restaurant_]
Katz,
You seem to be laboring under the illusion that our voting system can be made to be "fair". It can't. Arrow's Theorem pretty much demolishes the concept.
A google search for "Arrow's Theorem" will turn up lots of useful links, like this on path-voting or this collection of notes.
If you're going to talk about changing how we vote, other than just the mechanics, you really need to read up on this stuff. Yeah, it's all academic and abstract, but it's quite relevent (imagine that!).
Think it through, folks. Go read the RISKS digests or the comp.risks newsgroup. Pay special attention to issues 21.10 and 21.11 . For balance, you can also read a term paper about using computers in voting; he recommendes a touch-screen type system.
The advantage of physical ballots are many and clear, especially when something goes wrong. And something will go wrong, even without having to deal with corruption. My big problem with all of these electronic voting schemes is that I have no way to assure myself that my vote is actually being cast the way I want it. If the software is corrupted to change my (actual) vote, how would I know? How could I check?
Remember, KISS. Computers ain't simple.
JavaScript shouldn't be considered a requirement for "Internet Standards" anyway. Most of points of the article seemed to be whining about JavaScript, and yet the first thing I do when I sit down to use Netscape is to disable JavaScript.
Lynx, naturally, doesn't require that extra step. This Is A Good Thing.
I voted this morning. Apparently at 7AM there were long lines, but at 7:30 AM it wasn't bad at all -- voting is a lot more fun if you pick your times right!
So once again I find myself voting *against* candidates. I crossed out (on my sample ballot) any candidate that tried to garner support by calling my phone and playing a recorded message (to me or to my answering machine). This makes voting a lot easier -- just choose among the entries that aren't crossed out.
I should have kept track of the crap showing up in my mailbox, and used that as an elimination mechanism as well: more than one flyer per day, or any non-recyclable -> automatic disqualification. Next time.
Then I get into work... and discover that I've been spammed with a anti-Gore pro-Bush junkmail. Forged, of course.
*sigh*
I wonder if I will ever get to vote FOR someone?
Hm. Put this into your crontab:
30 * * * * echo "Please remove me from your database" | mail -s "Opt Out" admin@digitalconvergence.com
Oh, and I really wish domain name registration started at $10 and increased exponentially with every additional domain-name... they have an awful lot of 'em.
Good points.
You forgot "run interference between the people getting the job done and everyone else". A manager is the first line of defense for a group of programmers.
Good managers are worth their weight in $PRECIOUS_METAL any day of the week. Someone able to say "No, we're not going to do that for next tuesday's release." is a productivity booster, a morale booster, and worth keeping around and keeping happy. Alas, good managers seem quite rare. It seems that most of them *are* suits.
Ultimately, it may be that open-source succeeds because of a lack of deadlines.... and thus the need for managers is diminished.
I'm a bit past 25, but when I was a teenager, I recall the same sort of whining by those my own age. The response is still the same: suck it up.
After all, it's no big deal. Get your parents to buy the game. Oh, they won't approve? Then WHY ARE YOU TRYING TO BUY THE GAME ANYWAY? Seems to me that you have more pressing issues to be worried about.
The comment about rites-of-passage is a good one, but the rite-of-passage isn't at 21, it's at 18. If you're old enough to be drafted (presumably in times of war where it's not unlikely that you'll die) then you're old enough to be considered an adult. For some, that's old, for others, it's young, so until we get an actual rite, we're stuck with an arbitrary age.
I sucked it up and dealt with it. Sure enough, I didn't stay a teen forever. Odd how that works.
Correct. And governments should not get in the way of this. If a parent objects to such things, then minors (all of them, just to be fair) should not be able to rent, access, etc. such things without explicit parental/guardian consent.
End of problem.
Oh, wait. Lynx doesn't care, and I tell netscape to "always use my colors" and "always use my fonts".
I mean, isn't this the point of web-browsers? To give the reader control because the web-designers of the world have, on average, the design sense of a slug on LSD?
Everyone involved in creating web-pages should at least read Edward Tufte's Envisioning Information. Good stuff.
It's a lot easer to type "yes" than to position a pointer over a small section of the screen, and then hope it doesn't slip off when the button is pushed.
Aside from an accidental "rm -rf .", I've lost more data to mis-clicks than typos; if you merely count the number of times I've lost data, misclicks greatly outnumber typos.
As you say:
This is good. If I make a mistake, then the computer should not do *anything*, other than telling me that it doesn't understand what I want it to do.And if you ever try to provide tech-support help to a complete novice over the phone, pray they have a CLI interface available. Verbal directions (such as telephone tech support or, say, paper books) work best with verbal interfaces.