it's kinda scary how some people view us (those who know about technology). there's two types I've run across:
those who fear us
and those who almost worship us
it's like we're back in the Dark Ages and I'm some sort of black magician that can raise the dead and heal lepers or something. what a silly society.
From what I can recall, Napster started sometime last year. I've been playing and sharing mp3's on my campus local network since I was a wee little freshman back in '97. I "stole" my share of Metallica songs. Why weren't they getting hopping mad then?
Ok, that's a silly question. But seriously, even if all universities started to ban Napster, there's still the local area networks, which, last time I checked on mine, had plenty of gigs of mp3s along with gigs of pirated software. Someone has even made a search engine for our campus to make it easier to find what we are looking for. Maybe my school is not normal?
I think this issue is getting beat to death. Could someone please nuke the RIAA?
Just as an exmaple.... advaya.com is doing this through spam (or as they call it, direct mail marketing). And they sell this service to other companies. The spams contain "1x1 gifs" along with links that point to places you wouldn't normally think they would point at. Like this:
Check out these <A href=3D"http://bigstar.ad6.net:8080/jsp/t/bigstar? b=4BF5Y7ESKTJH34789T5HTJKLGN489EI495T> hot magazines for 90 days for FREE </A>
It points to some server which records that you have clicked on this link, using that funky long string as your identifier. The string possibly holds some sort of demographic information.
There's also a 1x1 gif that comes with the spam...
At age 5 I started progamming on a TRS-80 (Radio Shack CoCo) in Color BASIC. Boy was it fun! Graphics were pretty easy and low and behold ten years later I used the CoCo for a science project and won!
The programming manuals that came with it were the best. They had this crazy cartoon dude with a tv for a head and TRS-80 for a body. Because of my past, I must have my xterm colors set to lime-green background and black text. Murder on the eyes but the nostalgia more than makes up for it.
Anyways, I think BASIC might be your best bet. It isn't quite as intimidating as other langugaes can be, and you can do some funky stuff without too much knowledge, keeping your kids' interests which is always necessary. One problem though - BASIC may enforce bad programming practices if you're not careful (GOTOS! globals!). But hey, I turned out fine, except for my lime green fetish.
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it's kinda scary how some people view us (those who know about technology). there's two types I've run across:
those who fear us
and those who almost worship us
it's like we're back in the Dark Ages and I'm some sort of black magician that can raise the dead and heal lepers or something. what a silly society.
From what I can recall, Napster started sometime last year. I've been playing and sharing mp3's on my campus local network since I was a wee little freshman back in '97. I "stole" my share of Metallica songs. Why weren't they getting hopping mad then? Ok, that's a silly question. But seriously, even if all universities started to ban Napster, there's still the local area networks, which, last time I checked on mine, had plenty of gigs of mp3s along with gigs of pirated software. Someone has even made a search engine for our campus to make it easier to find what we are looking for. Maybe my school is not normal? I think this issue is getting beat to death. Could someone please nuke the RIAA?
Just as an exmaple.... advaya.com is doing this through spam (or as they call it, direct mail marketing). And they sell this service to other companies. The spams contain "1x1 gifs" along with links that point to places you wouldn't normally think they would point at. Like this:
? b=4BF5Y7ESKTJH34789T5HTJKLGN489EI495T> hot magazines for 90 days for FREE </A>
g if?b=56HJTY90JKHHJGGIJ5476">
:P
Check out these <A href=3D"http://bigstar.ad6.net:8080/jsp/t/bigstar
It points to some server which records that you have clicked on this link, using that funky long string as your identifier. The string possibly holds some sort of demographic information.
There's also a 1x1 gif that comes with the spam...
<IMG src=3D"http://bigstar.ad6.net:8080/jsp/t/bigstar.
who knows what that does
i'll let you judge for yourself if this is evil or not. i just wanted to point out a specific exmaple of where its being used. bye
At age 5 I started progamming on a TRS-80 (Radio Shack CoCo) in Color BASIC. Boy was it fun! Graphics were pretty easy and low and behold ten years later I used the CoCo for a science project and won!
The programming manuals that came with it were the best. They had this crazy cartoon dude with a tv for a head and TRS-80 for a body. Because of my past, I must have my xterm colors set to lime-green background and black text. Murder on the eyes but the nostalgia more than makes up for it.
Anyways, I think BASIC might be your best bet. It isn't quite as intimidating as other langugaes can be, and you can do some funky stuff without too much knowledge, keeping your kids' interests which is always necessary. One problem though - BASIC may enforce bad programming practices if you're not careful (GOTOS! globals!). But hey, I turned out fine, except for my lime green fetish.