I think that if you cannot maintain backwards compatability while fixing/improving a product, you shouldn't worry too much about it.
Take this example: Have you ever tried to program something for Windows? 50% of your program code ends up being random system calls that don't do anything anymore. Why is this? Because they can't sacrifice any backwards compatabilities, and thus remain stuck with miles of legacy code. hPrevInstance, for example, almost never comes in handy in Win95, but its still there nowadays because Win 3.1 apps use it.
And many programming languages remain unchanged because of the same reason- they have to maintain backwards compatability rather than becoming easier to program.
So, if for some bizarre reason, someone chooses to put a hard drive in their robot, why even bother with axes and chainsaws? Why not just attach a pretty strong electromagnet to your robot, and activate it when your opponent gets near? A heck of a lot more dangerous than the usual weaponry if the opposing robot relies on that HD...
I've found that chicken blood really makes my keyboard sticky, though Win98 is fairly stable...now if only I had a firstborn child to sell to Billgateskin to get rid of random crashes.
Windows port finally a possibility?
on
Qt Going GPL
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· Score: 2
From what I can ascertain, the license allows you to "distribute machine-executable forms of the Software or machine-executable forms of modified versions of the Software", and thus you could port Qt to windows- which means that some intreped developer could potentially make Qt an actual Cross platform development platform(I suppose that you could also port it to Mac, and various other OS's)
This would be REALLY nice for all those open source projects that have been residing only on Linux due to Trolltechs strange marketing scheme for the professional version.
From the trolltech website:
"Please note that the Qt Free Edition is an X11-only library. Qt for Microsoft Windows is only available in the Professional Edition."
Cost of Qt for windows: $ 1,550
I don't think the average freeware developer is about to shell out that much money. I wouldn't, if I could program anything worth releasing.
What I think is rather sad is that they have failed to provide a way to port Qt apps easily to Windows platforms. Ya, in an ideal world, we'd all use linux, but for some of us, especially with small hard drives on family computers, are unable to install a copy.
I think that trolltech, by selling the windows version for a hefty fee, is sabotaging the open source/cross platform movement. Many wonderful apps are being designed in Qt, many/most of them freeware. However, these apps are never going to make it to windows because hobbiest programmers aren't going to shell out $2000 just to port their program to another platform.
IMHO, selling the windows version of Qt for such an high price is a disservice to the freeware community.
Here's where I start to question the copyleft shirts:
From the conclusion of the ruling:
"Given the peculiar characteristics of computer programs for circumventing encryption and other access control measures, the DMCA *as applied to posting and linking here* does not contravene the First Amendment. Accordingly,plaintiffs are entitled to appropriate injunctive and declaratory relief."
So, did the ruling cover the T-Shirts, GIF files, etc, or just the posting and linking of the information? Do the arguments, presented regarding the T-Shirts, now fall under this catagory? Does he say anything about non-internet based media forms of DeCSS?
First a caveat- I in no way endorsing enforced attendance in school. I think that it is more hurtful to the student body that it is helpful, and to the entire schooling environment.
That said, I will now blatantly contradict myself: What we did(past tense, yes, my class did this) was program a system that could be used to record teh attendance for the entire school. The idea was that we would have an input device(ie, a keypad, or a barcode scanner), and when class started, everyone would walk into the room, input their student ID's, and the system would decide whether they were absent(either not in the right room,or just never inputed data), tardy(in after teh bell rang) or present and ontime. This would be sent to a database on a server somewhere(We had some friends at Magenic Technologies who gave us Visual Studio 6 Enterprise, and SQL server 7 enterprise), which would record the attendance for every day. Then, we created(or rather, almost finished creating) a web interface for parents to view their childs attendance, for teachers to view their classes' attendance, and for administrators to view attendance and personal information for individual students. This was all done in Visual Basic and Visual Basic Script(pretty much the same, but with no type casting)
This is a pretty basic project, if you have a knowlegable team, but pretty good to learn how to start from scratch- you need to know what features the teachers want, what features the parents want, and the administrators. You learn database design, programming, etc. You get a feel for both programs(the front end) and web interfaces.
And, BTW- this project was attempted by a very motly crew of students. About 4 of the 12 students involved were up on their VB. None of the students new jack about SQL, and what we did learn was mostly ad hoc. Only a few of us had any decent HTML and webdesign experience. And it took us about two trimesters to complete the project, so a more advanced class could probably finish it in a single trimester. And they could probably use open source tools if they can't get rich benefactors. The advantage of doing this project is that it can be immediately applicable to the school setting.
I did enjoy the various methods of transcribing the DeCSS code; However, I think the most lucid method was a picture. For example, if I were to take a picture of the innards of some mechanical device, say a light bulb, what keeps that from being a copyright violation? Has a company ever before challenged say, a diagram of a toaster in a book, or upon some other medium?(_The Way Things Work_ comes to mind)Seeing a picture of a device, even all of the innards, doesn't violate copyrights, AFAIK, so why would a picture that requires almost the same number of steps of assembly as that picture of a lightbulb be illegal, and pictures of lightbulbs not?
I strongly oppose color coding things because no one ever takes into consideration the color blind. Word is no fun for those of us who can't tell if we have a grammer problem or a spelling problem based soley on color.
If there is going to be color coding, please, please please think of the color blind. Red and green are not that different! Use blue, and make the world a better place!
Though, I suppose, some cultures don't even linguistically differentiate between blue and green...well, use very different colors! Especially you web designers out there!
While education is not supposed to be simply about the transfer of information, it remains a simple tranfer of information in most of my classes. Teachers rarely have the energy to delve into the deeper reaches of the subject, and to link it together, and give the children an "algorithm" as it were for learning more. Instead, its just a very slow download of information from teacher to student, followed by a few bursts of upload. Many classes focus more on factoids than themes, and so the easiest method of storage is short term. Why should you fully memorize something when instead, you can memorize it for two days, and voila, you pass the test. You won't usually be tested on it again. So you pass. Woopdiedoo. These problems are compounded by the endless antagonism between teacher and student. Many teachers that I've had have been worthy of my respect. However, I've had a much greater number who did not gain by respect, but instead simply demanded it of me. Total lack of teacher student solidarity leads to teacher-student antagonism. Soon, the students intentionally do work as poorly as possible to make teh grade. Within days of starting a new class, students learn exactly how much work is actually looked over by the teacher, and exploit that. If we know that a teacher only checks every otehr problem, we do every other problem. This doesn't exactly lend itself to learning, but why would we learn more by doing twice the number of problems? Many of the exercises that teachers have their students do seem to us, the students, to be either busy work, or of dubious pedagogical value. Soon, slacking is no longer a way to get out of work, but a protest against teh system. Also, while multiuser systems in school are fascist, so are classrooms themselves. I've been verbally abused by a teacher for correcting her.(She, among other errors, said, "hydroglyphics", and believed that the nile river flowed southwards, to lake victoria...) Questioning their authority, and above all, questioning their methods of "teaching" is to many of them an unforgivable faux pas. The student is given almost no input on their learning whatsoever, and this results in even more antagonism. Computers, on the other hand, can be highly educational. A student who learns on a computer can typically choose what they wish to learn. If you have access to the internet, its a simple matter of some cruising for students to find matter that interests them. My friends use the computers for a variety of purposes at my school- some to research plasma propulsion(of this persons own volition and interest), some to constantly reload the WTO website in a primitive DOS attack, some to make their own webpages. But the overwhelming theme here is that the students are pursuing their interests, and enjoy doing this. There is no antagonism between the computer and the student. It is simply a research tool. I willingly admit that many "educational" games today are terrible. The educational aspects are far too obvious, and students can smell education from miles off. No matter how many aliens you get to zap, you still have to do a dozen rather obvious math problems to get to it. This is the basic problem with educational software today- it operates on a reward based system rather than integrating the material fully into the game. However, there are many games that do not conform to this mold. I remember greatly enjoying the game Midnight Rescue(The Learning Company...does this company still exist?), wherein the player had to read lengthy clues, followed by a reading comprehension question that would give them a clue. You used these clues to help deduce which robot was the evil mad scientist(wow, this is a terrible description). This was all very well integrated into the game, and didn't seem like some educational block before every reward. There are also games that don't even advertise themselves as educational, but are. Look at Mindrover: The Europa Project- it teaches event based programming through a graphical interface thats really not that intimadating compared to line after line of code. Many school districts these days are bemoaning the lack of problem solving among the student body. They claim that while many students can easily assimilate concepts in math and science, they can't apply them to real world situations. Well, programming fits perfectly as a solution to this problem. You take an abstract concept(teh design) and make it into a concrete product(the program) through another abstract process(programming). You could have students write their own programs, and it could teach them quite a bit about problem solving. Have students in a class covering fractals make a program to form a sierpinsky(sp?) pyramid. This would teach problem solving much better than the "Farmer joe have two chickens, four cows, and three pigs. Each of these is worth xxxxxx. How much money does farmer joe have worth of livestock?" This is an extremely valuable use of computers. And most computers are very programmable. There are droves of freeware compilers and even IDE's out there that students can use to program on virtually any operating system. And a cheap school district could put linux and gnome on the machines, have a nice GUI thats not too intimidating and a host of free programming tools. There are reasons why computers can be bad, and there are reasons why teachers can be bad. I personally think that teachers have done more damage to my 'education' and my belief in the educational system than computers have or ever will. I also think that some teachers have taught me more than a computer and hours of research on hte internet ever will, but I am not about to chuck the computer out the window. Nor is my school. Computers have real world educational value, not to mention preparing many of the students in my school without computers at home to work in a high tech industry, which is one of the easier ways out of poverty these days(my school is made up of primarily of lower income youth, it being in the center of the poorer neighborhood of the city)
Actually, the octohexal-CPU mother board lives up to that long sought interconnectivity between appliances...no need for complicated communication software- House cold? Turn on teh computer! Need to cook something? Load up a game of quake XVII, slap the griddle over the heatsinks, and voila! Want that hot shower? Not to mention the possible applications as boiler, water heater- hell, these will be central to our lifestyles one day! See! Its far from obsolete!
hmm...I wonder how many easter eggs there are involving breakout. In the wonderful(and pretty amazing, seeing as its written in assembly) game Budokan(circa 1989), walking to teh lower right edge of the screen, behind a pagoda, and pressing shift would bring up a game of breakout.
I can't exactly remember every one,but I do recall that sierra games(especially teh quest games) had lots of easter eggs...arg, I need to play those games again. That was when they actually knew HOW to make a a decent game... well, back to DOOM MCVIII...
um, I was unaware that anyone used the word solvency outside of debate circles....according to good old websters, its able to pay all debts or something of the like. Especially in the context. Well, if its going to be debate like, then we might as well work up a case for ban the UN,using everyones favorite, stock issues: Inherency: 1. The UN exists. So there. 2. The UN has power over copyright. Harms: 1. The UN will use its power to enforce its decisions. 2. The UN's power is primarily military. 3. Since the prevalence of online distributed file exchanges is almost all consuming, the UN will conduct surgical strikes upon all copyright infringers. 4. With teh destruction of the national intellectual infrastructure there will be chaos and mass human extinction. 5. Since most immoral people with computers will be dead, the 'moral' majority will rule. This will send the nation into a spiral of seriousness, leading to everyone calling each other "goody" or "brother", morality plays becoming the popular form of entertainment, and all books not published by the gideons will be burned. Such a massive amount of boredom will be disastrous, and destroy the rest of the human population. Solvency: 1. Put Napster on all the UN's computers. 2. They will become so addicted to napster that they won't even consider pursuing afformentioned bombings. 3. Napster will become a required computer program, and will be part of the bios. 4. All will rejoice. Wow, I love debate logic.
I think that if you have enough really big things that blow up lots of stuff, you can claim jurisdiction over anything, can't you? Look, for example at the Korean War(Thats what we call it in the US. I think its aka the first indochina conflict or something elsewhere)- the UN didn't have any jurisdiction giving it power over korea. They hadn't signed a treaty with the UN or anything, saying that they could send thousands of planes to bomb refugees. But the UN did it nontheless. I think that kind of jurisdiction is called "peacekeeping"...
why would it being rare make the normal plural rules invalid? Wouldn't it make more sense for them to be invalid for an irregular, commonly used word, as is often the case in most languages(hell, latin has tons of fun irregulars like that(eg, Fero, ferre, tuli, latus) but they're all very common words) But then again, I might just be stupid.
Nope...sorry, I would defer to you, you having had 6 more years of latin, but I am unaware of where that second i came from. Look, heres a second declension noun: lupus(wolf) lupus in the vocative is lupe. lupus in the dative is lupo. lupus in the nominative plural is lupi Thus, virus becomes viri. Only one i. Lucius, however, becomes lucii in the plural(and the vocative, but that d/n matter). So if there was more than one lucius, you could have: lucii scripserunt insanum rem omnibus. Such as virii. Sorry, that was puerile....but basically, the -us stem BECOMES -i. Never -ii, unless there is a leading i before the -us stem(making it sort of a -ius stem, really). PJPII
Re:Particularly scary- OEM Power?
on
Copyrant
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· Score: 1
Ok, here's my question. What if you, or say, the corner computer shop says, "hey, lets build myself a computer. Do you, or the local, non-national chain based computer shop get the CD for Windows? Or does M$ just laugh in your faces and sell another CD to best buy? What about upgrading your machine? Is M$ turning this into a world of unconfigurable machines? While there's no real way for them to do this perfectly, it seems as though it'd favor monopoly of larger companies, and put small computer building and repair companies on the street. Is anyone else mortified by this possibility? Here in Mpls, MN, we have the coolest store in teh world- they sell computers, and used computer games(where else can you get a CD of Ultima Underworld I & II?) How are thye going to be affected when they can't even buy a CD of Windows? Time to get a linux partition, I guess.
Actually, its seems reasonable that there is more attention paid to linux here in the states because of the ongoing justice dept. trial of m$. Newspapers, whenever they report about Windows, they hold up linux as one of the alterantives to Windows.
I have always had a love of programming(I'm 16 now)- when I was nine, I tried to learn basic, but all I could read were awful books that had dozens of sample programs and little structural theory. When I turned 11 or 12(don't remember), my mom took me to the store to buy me a compiler. Arbitrarily, I chose Borland Turbo C++ 3.1(ya, pretty dumb to be arbitrary with the kind of money that costs, but I didn't really mind). I spent weeks trying to learn it, and even tried to program a quick program. Everything I'd learned soley from the manuals- not a single real beginners book. I was discouraged by the weird ; syntax, and by mispelling my variable names. However, 2 years later, I set back to working on learning it, and voila! I finally had figured it out. However, I think that if I'd been given instruction at age 11, I would have learned it then. No one I knew was a programmer, and I didn't have any internet access, so I didn't have any way to answer my questions. I think in the end, that if the child is willing(as you said, if they don't want to be programmers, don't force them) then they will be able to learn just about anything they like. If I'd had formal instruction of some kind in C, regardless of applications, I would have learned it instantly(or nearly). Another thing- as much fun as it is to program, kids need structure(hell, many adults do as well). Be sure to give them assignments of some sort if they don't have any ideas for what to program, and if they do have an idea, help them out with it as much as you can. Repititio est mater studiorum.
While I've not played system schock, I have played Thief, and while there were a few bad design decisions(ZOMBIES!?!?!?!?!WHAT THE HELL WERE THEY THINKING!), it was one of the few FPS that I actually really enjoyed. It requires skill, and cunning. You don't just go around killing. When you do kill and opponenet, its suspensful- I remember clearly killing a guard, rushing to a door, trying desperately to pick its lock, then opening it just in time to avoid the next guard. Additionally, the AI is amazing. Its not a "good shot" or some silly virtue that is seen in Quake games. Its a really intellegent, almost human opponnent. Also, I'm a great fan of both their Ultima Underworld(which I never really got into when they were first out, but I purchased at a used games store), and Terra Nova, which was really quite fun. Almost like Starship Troopers. And the graphics were even fairly good. Same with UU.
Slashdot Mirror
I think that if you cannot maintain backwards compatability while fixing/improving a product, you shouldn't worry too much about it.
Take this example: Have you ever tried to program something for Windows? 50% of your program code ends up being random system calls that don't do anything anymore. Why is this? Because they can't sacrifice any backwards compatabilities, and thus remain stuck with miles of legacy code. hPrevInstance, for example, almost never comes in handy in Win95, but its still there nowadays because Win 3.1 apps use it.
And many programming languages remain unchanged because of the same reason- they have to maintain backwards compatability rather than becoming easier to program.
Anyway, those are just my thoughts on the matter.
So, if for some bizarre reason, someone chooses to put a hard drive in their robot, why even bother with axes and chainsaws? Why not just attach a pretty strong electromagnet to your robot, and activate it when your opponent gets near? A heck of a lot more dangerous than the usual weaponry if the opposing robot relies on that HD...
Does anybody at all notice the pun in the name of the html page...Quakers- pacifists, or FPS players?
I've found that chicken blood really makes my keyboard sticky, though Win98 is fairly stable...now if only I had a firstborn child to sell to Billgateskin to get rid of random crashes.
From what I can ascertain, the license allows you to "distribute machine-executable forms of the Software or machine-executable forms of modified versions of the Software", and thus you could port Qt to windows- which means that some intreped developer could potentially make Qt an actual Cross platform development platform(I suppose that you could also port it to Mac, and various other OS's)
This would be REALLY nice for all those open source projects that have been residing only on Linux due to Trolltechs strange marketing scheme for the professional version.
From the trolltech website:
"Please note that the Qt Free Edition is an X11-only library. Qt for Microsoft Windows is only available in the Professional Edition."
Cost of Qt for windows: $ 1,550
I don't think the average freeware developer is about to shell out that much money. I wouldn't, if I could program anything worth releasing.
Alex Magidow
What I think is rather sad is that they have failed to provide a way to port Qt apps easily to Windows platforms. Ya, in an ideal world, we'd all use linux, but for some of us, especially with small hard drives on family computers, are unable to install a copy.
I think that trolltech, by selling the windows version for a hefty fee, is sabotaging the open source/cross platform movement. Many wonderful apps are being designed in Qt, many/most of them freeware. However, these apps are never going to make it to windows because hobbiest programmers aren't going to shell out $2000 just to port their program to another platform.
IMHO, selling the windows version of Qt for such an high price is a disservice to the freeware community.
Alex Magidow
Here's where I start to question the copyleft shirts:
From the conclusion of the ruling:
"Given the peculiar characteristics of computer programs for circumventing encryption and other access control measures, the DMCA *as applied to posting and linking here* does not contravene the First Amendment. Accordingly,plaintiffs are entitled to appropriate injunctive and declaratory relief."
So, did the ruling cover the T-Shirts, GIF files, etc, or just the posting and linking of the information? Do the arguments, presented regarding the T-Shirts, now fall under this catagory? Does he say anything about non-internet based media forms of DeCSS?
First a caveat- I in no way endorsing enforced attendance in school. I think that it is more hurtful to the student body that it is helpful, and to the entire schooling environment.
That said, I will now blatantly contradict myself:
What we did(past tense, yes, my class did this) was program a system that could be used to record teh attendance for the entire school. The idea was that we would have an input device(ie, a keypad, or a barcode scanner), and when class started, everyone would walk into the room, input their student ID's, and the system would decide whether they were absent(either not in the right room,or just never inputed data), tardy(in after teh bell rang) or present and ontime. This would be sent to a database on a server somewhere(We had some friends at Magenic Technologies who gave us Visual Studio 6 Enterprise, and SQL server 7 enterprise), which would record the attendance for every day. Then, we created(or rather, almost finished creating) a web interface for parents to view their childs attendance, for teachers to view their classes' attendance, and for administrators to view attendance and personal information for individual students. This was all done in Visual Basic and Visual Basic Script(pretty much the same, but with no type casting)
This is a pretty basic project, if you have a knowlegable team, but pretty good to learn how to start from scratch- you need to know what features the teachers want, what features the parents want, and the administrators. You learn database design, programming, etc. You get a feel for both programs(the front end) and web interfaces.
And, BTW- this project was attempted by a very motly crew of students. About 4 of the 12 students involved were up on their VB. None of the students new jack about SQL, and what we did learn was mostly ad hoc. Only a few of us had any decent HTML and webdesign experience. And it took us about two trimesters to complete the project, so a more advanced class could probably finish it in a single trimester. And they could probably use open source tools if they can't get rich benefactors. The advantage of doing this project is that it can be immediately applicable to the school setting.
Hope this is helpful,
Alex Magidow
I did enjoy the various methods of transcribing the DeCSS code; However, I think the most lucid method was a picture. For example, if I were to take a picture of the innards of some mechanical device, say a light bulb, what keeps that from being a copyright violation? Has a company ever before challenged say, a diagram of a toaster in a book, or upon some other medium?(_The Way Things Work_ comes to mind)Seeing a picture of a device, even all of the innards, doesn't violate copyrights, AFAIK, so why would a picture that requires almost the same number of steps of assembly as that picture of a lightbulb be illegal, and pictures of lightbulbs not?
I strongly oppose color coding things because no one ever takes into consideration the color blind. Word is no fun for those of us who can't tell if we have a grammer problem or a spelling problem based soley on color.
If there is going to be color coding, please, please please think of the color blind. Red and green are not that different! Use blue, and make the world a better place!
Though, I suppose, some cultures don't even linguistically differentiate between blue and green...well, use very different colors! Especially you web designers out there!
While education is not supposed to be simply about the transfer of information, it remains a simple tranfer of information in most of my classes. Teachers rarely have the energy to delve into the deeper reaches of the subject, and to link it together, and give the children an "algorithm" as it were for learning more. Instead, its just a very slow download of information from teacher to student, followed by a few bursts of upload. Many classes focus more on factoids than themes, and so the easiest method of storage is short term. Why should you fully memorize something when instead, you can memorize it for two days, and voila, you pass the test. You won't usually be tested on it again. So you pass. Woopdiedoo. These problems are compounded by the endless antagonism between teacher and student. Many teachers that I've had have been worthy of my respect. However, I've had a much greater number who did not gain by respect, but instead simply demanded it of me. Total lack of teacher student solidarity leads to teacher-student antagonism. Soon, the students intentionally do work as poorly as possible to make teh grade. Within days of starting a new class, students learn exactly how much work is actually looked over by the teacher, and exploit that. If we know that a teacher only checks every otehr problem, we do every other problem. This doesn't exactly lend itself to learning, but why would we learn more by doing twice the number of problems? Many of the exercises that teachers have their students do seem to us, the students, to be either busy work, or of dubious pedagogical value. Soon, slacking is no longer a way to get out of work, but a protest against teh system. Also, while multiuser systems in school are fascist, so are classrooms themselves. I've been verbally abused by a teacher for correcting her.(She, among other errors, said, "hydroglyphics", and believed that the nile river flowed southwards, to lake victoria...) Questioning their authority, and above all, questioning their methods of "teaching" is to many of them an unforgivable faux pas. The student is given almost no input on their learning whatsoever, and this results in even more antagonism. Computers, on the other hand, can be highly educational. A student who learns on a computer can typically choose what they wish to learn. If you have access to the internet, its a simple matter of some cruising for students to find matter that interests them. My friends use the computers for a variety of purposes at my school- some to research plasma propulsion(of this persons own volition and interest), some to constantly reload the WTO website in a primitive DOS attack, some to make their own webpages. But the overwhelming theme here is that the students are pursuing their interests, and enjoy doing this. There is no antagonism between the computer and the student. It is simply a research tool. I willingly admit that many "educational" games today are terrible. The educational aspects are far too obvious, and students can smell education from miles off. No matter how many aliens you get to zap, you still have to do a dozen rather obvious math problems to get to it. This is the basic problem with educational software today- it operates on a reward based system rather than integrating the material fully into the game. However, there are many games that do not conform to this mold. I remember greatly enjoying the game Midnight Rescue(The Learning Company...does this company still exist?), wherein the player had to read lengthy clues, followed by a reading comprehension question that would give them a clue. You used these clues to help deduce which robot was the evil mad scientist(wow, this is a terrible description). This was all very well integrated into the game, and didn't seem like some educational block before every reward. There are also games that don't even advertise themselves as educational, but are. Look at Mindrover: The Europa Project- it teaches event based programming through a graphical interface thats really not that intimadating compared to line after line of code. Many school districts these days are bemoaning the lack of problem solving among the student body. They claim that while many students can easily assimilate concepts in math and science, they can't apply them to real world situations. Well, programming fits perfectly as a solution to this problem. You take an abstract concept(teh design) and make it into a concrete product(the program) through another abstract process(programming). You could have students write their own programs, and it could teach them quite a bit about problem solving. Have students in a class covering fractals make a program to form a sierpinsky(sp?) pyramid. This would teach problem solving much better than the "Farmer joe have two chickens, four cows, and three pigs. Each of these is worth xxxxxx. How much money does farmer joe have worth of livestock?" This is an extremely valuable use of computers. And most computers are very programmable. There are droves of freeware compilers and even IDE's out there that students can use to program on virtually any operating system. And a cheap school district could put linux and gnome on the machines, have a nice GUI thats not too intimidating and a host of free programming tools. There are reasons why computers can be bad, and there are reasons why teachers can be bad. I personally think that teachers have done more damage to my 'education' and my belief in the educational system than computers have or ever will. I also think that some teachers have taught me more than a computer and hours of research on hte internet ever will, but I am not about to chuck the computer out the window. Nor is my school. Computers have real world educational value, not to mention preparing many of the students in my school without computers at home to work in a high tech industry, which is one of the easier ways out of poverty these days(my school is made up of primarily of lower income youth, it being in the center of the poorer neighborhood of the city)
Actually, the octohexal-CPU mother board lives up to that long sought interconnectivity between appliances...no need for complicated communication software- House cold? Turn on teh computer! Need to cook something? Load up a game of quake XVII, slap the griddle over the heatsinks, and voila! Want that hot shower? Not to mention the possible applications as boiler, water heater- hell, these will be central to our lifestyles one day! See! Its far from obsolete!
hmm...I wonder how many easter eggs there are involving breakout. In the wonderful(and pretty amazing, seeing as its written in assembly) game Budokan(circa 1989), walking to teh lower right edge of the screen, behind a pagoda, and pressing shift would bring up a game of breakout.
I can't exactly remember every one ,but I do recall that sierra games(especially teh quest games) had lots of easter eggs...arg, I need to play those games again. That was when they actually knew HOW to make a a decent game... well, back to DOOM MCVIII...
um, I was unaware that anyone used the word solvency outside of debate circles....according to good old websters, its able to pay all debts or something of the like. Especially in the context. Well, if its going to be debate like, then we might as well work up a case for ban the UN,using everyones favorite, stock issues: Inherency: 1. The UN exists. So there. 2. The UN has power over copyright. Harms: 1. The UN will use its power to enforce its decisions. 2. The UN's power is primarily military. 3. Since the prevalence of online distributed file exchanges is almost all consuming, the UN will conduct surgical strikes upon all copyright infringers. 4. With teh destruction of the national intellectual infrastructure there will be chaos and mass human extinction. 5. Since most immoral people with computers will be dead, the 'moral' majority will rule. This will send the nation into a spiral of seriousness, leading to everyone calling each other "goody" or "brother", morality plays becoming the popular form of entertainment, and all books not published by the gideons will be burned. Such a massive amount of boredom will be disastrous, and destroy the rest of the human population. Solvency: 1. Put Napster on all the UN's computers. 2. They will become so addicted to napster that they won't even consider pursuing afformentioned bombings. 3. Napster will become a required computer program, and will be part of the bios. 4. All will rejoice. Wow, I love debate logic.
I think that if you have enough really big things that blow up lots of stuff, you can claim jurisdiction over anything, can't you? Look, for example at the Korean War(Thats what we call it in the US. I think its aka the first indochina conflict or something elsewhere)- the UN didn't have any jurisdiction giving it power over korea. They hadn't signed a treaty with the UN or anything, saying that they could send thousands of planes to bomb refugees. But the UN did it nontheless. I think that kind of jurisdiction is called "peacekeeping"...
why would it being rare make the normal plural rules invalid? Wouldn't it make more sense for them to be invalid for an irregular, commonly used word, as is often the case in most languages(hell, latin has tons of fun irregulars like that(eg, Fero, ferre, tuli, latus) but they're all very common words) But then again, I might just be stupid.
Nope...sorry, I would defer to you, you having had 6 more years of latin, but I am unaware of where that second i came from. Look, heres a second declension noun: lupus(wolf) lupus in the vocative is lupe. lupus in the dative is lupo. lupus in the nominative plural is lupi Thus, virus becomes viri. Only one i. Lucius, however, becomes lucii in the plural(and the vocative, but that d/n matter). So if there was more than one lucius, you could have: lucii scripserunt insanum rem omnibus. Such as virii. Sorry, that was puerile....but basically, the -us stem BECOMES -i. Never -ii, unless there is a leading i before the -us stem(making it sort of a -ius stem, really). PJPII
Ok, here's my question. What if you, or say, the corner computer shop says, "hey, lets build myself a computer. Do you, or the local, non-national chain based computer shop get the CD for Windows? Or does M$ just laugh in your faces and sell another CD to best buy? What about upgrading your machine? Is M$ turning this into a world of unconfigurable machines? While there's no real way for them to do this perfectly, it seems as though it'd favor monopoly of larger companies, and put small computer building and repair companies on the street. Is anyone else mortified by this possibility? Here in Mpls, MN, we have the coolest store in teh world- they sell computers, and used computer games(where else can you get a CD of Ultima Underworld I & II?) How are thye going to be affected when they can't even buy a CD of Windows? Time to get a linux partition, I guess.
Actually, its seems reasonable that there is more attention paid to linux here in the states because of the ongoing justice dept. trial of m$. Newspapers, whenever they report about Windows, they hold up linux as one of the alterantives to Windows.
I have always had a love of programming(I'm 16 now)- when I was nine, I tried to learn basic, but all I could read were awful books that had dozens of sample programs and little structural theory. When I turned 11 or 12(don't remember), my mom took me to the store to buy me a compiler. Arbitrarily, I chose Borland Turbo C++ 3.1(ya, pretty dumb to be arbitrary with the kind of money that costs, but I didn't really mind). I spent weeks trying to learn it, and even tried to program a quick program. Everything I'd learned soley from the manuals- not a single real beginners book. I was discouraged by the weird ; syntax, and by mispelling my variable names. However, 2 years later, I set back to working on learning it, and voila! I finally had figured it out. However, I think that if I'd been given instruction at age 11, I would have learned it then. No one I knew was a programmer, and I didn't have any internet access, so I didn't have any way to answer my questions. I think in the end, that if the child is willing(as you said, if they don't want to be programmers, don't force them) then they will be able to learn just about anything they like. If I'd had formal instruction of some kind in C, regardless of applications, I would have learned it instantly(or nearly). Another thing- as much fun as it is to program, kids need structure(hell, many adults do as well). Be sure to give them assignments of some sort if they don't have any ideas for what to program, and if they do have an idea, help them out with it as much as you can. Repititio est mater studiorum.
While I've not played system schock, I have played Thief, and while there were a few bad design decisions(ZOMBIES!?!?!?!?!WHAT THE HELL WERE THEY THINKING!), it was one of the few FPS that I actually really enjoyed. It requires skill, and cunning. You don't just go around killing. When you do kill and opponenet, its suspensful- I remember clearly killing a guard, rushing to a door, trying desperately to pick its lock, then opening it just in time to avoid the next guard. Additionally, the AI is amazing. Its not a "good shot" or some silly virtue that is seen in Quake games. Its a really intellegent, almost human opponnent. Also, I'm a great fan of both their Ultima Underworld(which I never really got into when they were first out, but I purchased at a used games store), and Terra Nova, which was really quite fun. Almost like Starship Troopers. And the graphics were even fairly good. Same with UU.