There might not be people waiting for you to put their game together, but there's certainly an amount of computer graphic art people out there. Try Deviant-Art for starters. They offer a HUGE library of images made by PEOPLE. The images themselves probably aren't that useful, though there are a few people who make icons and pixel art that might be useful. The point here isn't to lift people's work but to find useful points of contact. Say hi, appreciate their art, and invite them to help. Expect a lot of rejections though. Artists need to eat, and lately there hasn't been much worry about selling out since nobody's buying =). The best you can do is graciously accept this, ask them a few questions (like would you feel more likely to help if we had a number of other people instead of just you? You know anyone who might be interested?, etc) and if you really like their style, try to keep in touch. Of course the interpersonal ability barrier innate in programmers makes the above process very rare;)
Nintendo Software Technology Corporation liscenced Bionic Commando from Capcom for the gbc, and wound up with a decent game called Bionic Commando: Elite Forces. This is in contrast from another game they resurrected, Crystalis. The addition of voices and complete overhaul of the music was unwelcome, im my opinion.
One of the things that is counter intuitive to people is the concept of utilization. Just because you buy more than your estimate (processing power?)doesn't mean it's guarenteed to work. In a real time class I just finished, we looked at several utilization based tests for feasibility. In most cases, you're fine as long as you can't go over about 75 to 80 percent utilization. But not all algorithms were made equal, and some may in fact require at least twice as much, perhaps more, to guarentee that all deadlines are met.
So SCO plans to punish IBM by revoking their right to sell Unix(tm) software after they allegedly copied code into Linux, a platform which they've increasingly become reliant on?
Perhaps Ford doesn't fire its (here, Ford is no longer a person, merely a company) designers is that the student designs were a) predictable, b) incredibly expensive and c) low power.
First off, its simple to replace the body with a lightweight material. Its obvious. The problem is that it gets expensive to replace the body with carbon-fiber, kevlar, or whatever material is the popular lightweight of the day. Whats far more tricky is safety. Carbon fiber has a tendency to be brittle when impacted in the wrong direction. Finally, replacing the engine with someting that produces lower emissions usually comes at a premium, unless you're willing to settle for less power, and shorter engine life.
I'm not in automobile marketing, but I'd say the students failed. As stupid as it sounds, nobody wants lower emissions.
Re:Linus' stuff?
on
Settling SCOres
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
Or more accurately, MINIX. When Linus started the kernel, there really wasn't an Operating Systems 101 textbook per se. There might have been a few books on high level concepts, but solid. My history of Operating Systems isn't quite solid, but my understanding is that the MINIX book had just been recently released (the project started in 87, so its fairly safe to assume the book was released around 89). Before MINIX there were no public operating system implementations. They were proprietary information that had to be guarded by at least an NDA. There was no HURD (and mostly still is no HURD;); there was no BSD (they reimplemented UNIX in circa 1994).
If code was 'borrowed' in Linux from anywhere, its likely MINIX. I believe Torvalds states that there is no MINUX code within Linux anymore, which is easy to believe given the time span and advancements in technology.
Really, schedulers are easily made unique, despite solving a central problem. Its simple to pick a design goal and make progress toward it. I highly doubt that MINUX and sysV were somehow related identically in that reguard. MINUX is by all accounts a simple yet functional implementation of an OS. SysV is reputatably a complex yet efficient beast. It may be the case that the code is duplicated, that much the german post implicates. But who stole from who is suspect, given the removal of dates. It may in fact be the case that SCO doesn't want to disclose the infringing code because the man submitting the patch was a) not liscenced or b) very poor and not IBM.
I appreciate QNX as an embedded platform, but I have yet to hear convincing arguments as to how QNX manages to overcome the address translation and additional costs reguarding interprocess communication, with respect to performance.
Why would linux kernel hackers be adding tools like HTTP servers and packet filtering into the kernel, if it was somehow the UNIX way to keep them as seperate processes managed by the kernel? The answer is that by keeping programs in the kernel space, context switching is lower costed, address translation is not required, and IPC generates two or three context switches compared to one or two with a kernelspace program. Even QNX has faculties for 'lightweight processes' that have independant stacks and a common global data sandbox.
Interesting question reguarding the software though. What should you do when the log writing (for now lets ignore error logging) fails? On one hand its not a catastrophic failure in itself. As you mentioned the device was working fine. On the other hand, if anything was going wrong imperceptibly then you're in big trouble.
First, you clearly can't write another error to the log stating you cant write to the log. It sounds silly, but sometimes people write this and plan to consider the question later. When later never rolls around, problems can occur.
Second, you could shut the system down alltogether. After all, the system is failing and if left unchecked could cause loss of life and/or property. But it seems a bit paranoid to shutdown over a diagnostics error; downtime is money lost. But on the plus side, you know the problem will receive attention.
A third alternative is to add some form of low level error system. The downside is even the warning 'lights' can go unnoticed, or simply ignored. This happens especially with things like "error code: 4343." The THERAC 25, in part suffered from such an enigmatic design.
Another is to just wait for an error more catastrophic to come up, and decide what to do then. Indeed, the parent post implies that this is an acceptable procedure: rather preemptively strike the hardware down, and incur delays on production, one can just wait for a real problem to arise. But this surmounts to just ignoring the problem.
Sadly, I don't think any reliable consensus on what to do will be geared towards safety for a long time. Professional Engineers are liable for any disasters that may occur as a result of their failure in design or inspection. Until software designers (or perhaps "software engineers") are assigned the same level of liability, I doubt that anyone will consider these topics seriously.
I work for a collection agency. All our calls, debtor information and tools are centrally managed. When the computers go down, it costs. Our employees can't make calls, can't even recieve them. So we're paying people to sit there while the servers are down. And some of the contracts the company has come with time limits and restrictions. After a period of time the debt is placed on the credit record, and written off. Thats money the company loses because nobody could answer and document a call. Clearly this sort of company relies on uptime.
Sadly, the company runs a hodgepoge of windows servers. Why? Because they're cheap. The founder of the company has a habit of starting these businesses, getting them running and selling them off. Investors rarely investigate the technological aspects of their client, but instead focus on clients and contracts. "Oh you have a 1.3 million dollar deal with GE?" It doesn't help that some companies require software systems of their own to be run in order to collect, that appear to be windows only.
Java is nice in some ways, but I must disagree that its a learning language. I used to think along the same lines, but careful thought and argument has changed my mind (who would have thought that anyone's mind could change from the internet).
To begin with, procedural programming isn't diametrically opposed to OO, like many like to imply. OO is, in part, a way to organize those procedures into coherent wholes. I don't think you can write a OO program without knowing how to write a procedure. When I was going through my basic undergraduate programming classes, many fellow students were having problems using iteration to do something to an entire array. Hopefully the foreach concept won't have too high a barrier of entry.
Now the above understanding is easy enough to rectify without abandoning Java. Simply begin teaching them the basics using the classic "static void main(String[] args)" line. This is the real problem with Java as a learning language: there's a lot that the student must be told to remember but not understand. The meaning of many keywords nessecary to program in Java can be overbearing to teach and mostly serves as a hurdle to student's interests. Exceptions are a nice way of handling errors, but they require a lot of confusing ideas to beginner programmers, like the notion of execution control flow, the activation record, and the keywords throws, try, and catch. There used to be a very classic line in introductory Java texts, for doing standard commandline input. Something like BufferedStream keyboard = new BufferedStream(System.in()). Again most students are just taught 'Just memorize it for now, we'll discuss (or replace) it later.'
That said, there are worse choices than Java for a language. If you can skirt around the issues I've mentioned above, Java does have many nice benefits. The exceptions have a very handy benefit compared to other compiled languages; rather than get a Segment Fault, you get something like NullPointerException(MyClass.java:40). And of course, the lack of explicit pointers itself is just one less concept you need to teach, especially when you're simply trying to cover the basics that are present in nearly every language in use. The Javadocs are also handy.
So really it isn't a clear cut yes or no. If the student is dead set on learning to program then perhaps Java is the way to go. But for students on the fringe, every boring hurdle to get something done is another step towards middle management.;) I guess the real question is, should we cater to (read: dumb down) the fringe?
Actually the proof is based on the deterministic evaluation of a computer program. His claim is that the game isn't random at all. He does this by using what emulator afficionados call 'save states.' He basically stores the entire state of the machine, chooses an option, and tries the others. In his attempts he has discovered that your destiny is pretermined by the time you choose higher/10/lower.
Think of it like the first Zelda where you use the save states to always win at the gambling rooms to buy all your fancy keys without problem. Try one, if you win as big as you can, fine, if you don't restore the state and choose the previously revealed highest payout. The difference is that when you make your choice with these "fruit machines" the payout is all the same: win, or lose.
If I'm not mistaken, this is the same guy who was promoting some sort of campaign against high video game prices. At the time there were a few subtle voices suggesting he was a simple self promoting shill, and judging by the website, he has not disproved them.
The fairplay campaign was supposed to last the 1st through the 8th. Yet the last news update was the 2nd. Not even halfway through the supposed boycott, it appears he gave up. No further encouragement or updates, not even a fradulent statistic showing how his campaign has succeeded in some fashion.
Instead I would wager he's spent the intervining six months scrouging up some other claim against the 'gaming' industry (hah) involving fruit machines. I'd never heard of them before, though I haven't been known to frequent the bars either. His claim is as usual overexaggerated. This function is no different than if you purchased a scratcher style lottery ticket. Your fate has been pre-determined. I don't know if this somehow runs afowl of UK law, but if it was I'd imagine that the gentleman behind fairplay would have mentioned it. Additionally, its not clear exactly who owns the ROMS he's linked to, as the link appears to be a simple MAME fansite.
I doubt that site will last much longer thanks to./. But it probably will outlast fairplay's cries of foul play.
You know that both of those are sequals while Ender's Game is a novel adoptation of a short story by the same name and the first in a series, right? And that this pretty much demolishes your point, no?
I've read them all, sadly. Except maybe the last one, if it was recently released. Sure, in the later books the Xenocide is mentioned as a horrible even up there with the Holocost, within the context of the book itself there is little consequence. A book must be able to stand on its own. Especially the best one of a series.
Its not that Ender's Game is somehow mindbending, but that it affirms many reader's beliefs. It's often on the reading list for students, and it strikes a chord with them. Many (like myself) were students pressing through a difficult education and in high school, when disillusion and cynicism become a worldview. They see themselves as Ender, someone whos trouble they understand.
Personally, I enjoyed the internal dialoges of Ender, but perhaps that simply displays the undiagnoses Asperger's in me. I wouldn't say that Card has tapped any powerful positive human truths or displayed them in a particularly fascinating fashion.
In fact, most of the message is pretty negative. Survival is the first priority. To defeat your enemy you must love them (its written in the book but its not what I'd call supported). The people of the world (and even your parents!) are easily manipulated by children thanks to the power of the Internet and anonymity. People are out to trick you into doing bad things for them. You might argue that the book serves as some form of cautionary tale, like Das Boot, but the lack of consequence, carnage amd dispair makes it a poor one.
Its pretty clear why its popular. When most soon-to-be-fans read it, its what they want to hear, and they haven't looked back. If you want to see SF writing that works well, refer to the first halves of Neal Stephenson's books. Snow Crash was witty, fast paced and full of commentary. The introductory pages were a well written colloquial storytelling. Unfortunately Stephenson ususally lacks an overall plan of where things are going. Focus would benefit the man nicely. Snow Crash had too much going on with the virus, Y.T. and Hiro, Raven, Da5id and ultimately ran out of a point. Diamond age had something to do with the liberation of China from foreign dependence, something do with educating women in the sciences and something to do with a sexual computer. Cryptonomicon had to use two seperate timelines (and a lengthy pornographic letter to the editor concerning grandma's furnature) to accomadate his logorrhea. And apparently he's not done, and moved onto another toilet called 'Quicksilver.' If someone associated with Stephenson could show a little editorial restraint, its likely his works would be among the high eschelons.
I donno if you attended U of P or not, but functional languages are on their way in, and C++ out. One of the biggest promoters of C++ was microsoft's interfaces, and they're pushing C# now.
OCaml may not win the war, but its certainly not a bad language. It has a large and stable set of tools. It has a runtime interpreter, a byte code compiler and interpreter, and a native code compiler. It supports most unix platforms and x86 for windows. A version is being developed by microsoft for MSVS.NET called F#. Now maybe Haskell will win after all with its seeming appeal, but OCaml is hardly a joke.
Actually, looking at your user stats, it seems you attended Ohio State University. They seem to have recently converted to Java, though I'm not sure what the language used to be. Just realize that an if statement works the same in all languages, and you'll do fine.
It costs a lot of money to use the proper technologies to verify and secure a system. It takes months/years to verify software for critical DoD use. And even if you could afford it, nobody else wants to pay for it, making it that much more difficult.
To some extent, the problem lies with the language (some languages have more secure features and software than others), but a large part lies with Microsoft's liscence to print money and Windows. Its a large code base, partially due to backwards compatibility. There's little financial incentive to work on the problem. It appears that people are convinced that crashes and viruses are a fact of computers, and put up with it rather than seek alternatives.
And its not just Operating Systems. How much would you pay for a web brower that didn't crash? IE crashes, Opera crashes, and even Mozilla can crash. At the software level, there isn't much one can do against random hardware failure (bits flipping in RAM). Sure, you could pretend to address the problem by operating on redunant variables, but what if the code bits are affected instead?
"voter-verifiable audit trail," meaning a permanent record of each vote that can be checked for accuracy even after the election.
After discussing with Dr. Dill for a presentation, the meaning of voter verifiable is very specific. It means that the voter can look at their ballot, and verify that their vote reflects their intention before they hand it in. Nobody I know can inspect the electrical charges to determine whether their vote was recorded correctly or not (or even at all!).
I happen to live in Johnson County, Kansas, one of the sites mentioned. There's two things to keep in mind there. 1. Its an off year so turnout is usually very low. 2. The feedback card is optional, so unless you have something specific to say, you're not likely to fill it out. 3. Its difficult to evaluate the system as a whole until the vote is canvassed. Even fraud can be user friendly.
The independent testers aren't exactly trustworthy either. There's only 3 nationwide. VoteHere machines were verified from these ITAs (VoteHere is currently facing a wrongful termination suit for firing a QA Engineer who put too many bugs on the 'Critical' list.)
The fact that you have yet to describe where and how this picture actually parodies is not supportive of your argument, really. To ease your apparent burden, I'll go ahead and give you a definition of parody:
parody - A literary or artistic work that imitates the characteristic style of an author or a work for comic effect or ridicule.
Hopefully you can agree that the above is an accurate definition, and you might even go so far as to find legal and court references to the definition of a parody. With that in mind, I'd love to hear how you can call the artwork a parody of Strawberry Shortcake(R).
Slashdot Mirror
There might not be people waiting for you to put their game together, but there's certainly an amount of computer graphic art people out there. Try Deviant-Art for starters. They offer a HUGE library of images made by PEOPLE. The images themselves probably aren't that useful, though there are a few people who make icons and pixel art that might be useful. The point here isn't to lift people's work but to find useful points of contact. Say hi, appreciate their art, and invite them to help. Expect a lot of rejections though. Artists need to eat, and lately there hasn't been much worry about selling out since nobody's buying =). The best you can do is graciously accept this, ask them a few questions (like would you feel more likely to help if we had a number of other people instead of just you? You know anyone who might be interested?, etc) and if you really like their style, try to keep in touch. Of course the interpersonal ability barrier innate in programmers makes the above process very rare ;)
Nintendo Software Technology Corporation liscenced Bionic Commando from Capcom for the gbc, and wound up with a decent game called Bionic Commando: Elite Forces. This is in contrast from another game they resurrected, Crystalis. The addition of voices and complete overhaul of the music was unwelcome, im my opinion.
One of the things that is counter intuitive to people is the concept of utilization. Just because you buy more than your estimate (processing power?)doesn't mean it's guarenteed to work. In a real time class I just finished, we looked at several utilization based tests for feasibility. In most cases, you're fine as long as you can't go over about 75 to 80 percent utilization. But not all algorithms were made equal, and some may in fact require at least twice as much, perhaps more, to guarentee that all deadlines are met.
So SCO plans to punish IBM by revoking their right to sell Unix(tm) software after they allegedly copied code into Linux, a platform which they've increasingly become reliant on?
Perhaps Ford doesn't fire its (here, Ford is no longer a person, merely a company) designers is that the student designs were a) predictable, b) incredibly expensive and c) low power.
First off, its simple to replace the body with a lightweight material. Its obvious. The problem is that it gets expensive to replace the body with carbon-fiber, kevlar, or whatever material is the popular lightweight of the day. Whats far more tricky is safety. Carbon fiber has a tendency to be brittle when impacted in the wrong direction. Finally, replacing the engine with someting that produces lower emissions usually comes at a premium, unless you're willing to settle for less power, and shorter engine life.
I'm not in automobile marketing, but I'd say the students failed. As stupid as it sounds, nobody wants lower emissions.
Or more accurately, MINIX. When Linus started the kernel, there really wasn't an Operating Systems 101 textbook per se. There might have been a few books on high level concepts, but solid. My history of Operating Systems isn't quite solid, but my understanding is that the MINIX book had just been recently released (the project started in 87, so its fairly safe to assume the book was released around 89). Before MINIX there were no public operating system implementations. They were proprietary information that had to be guarded by at least an NDA. There was no HURD (and mostly still is no HURD ;); there was no BSD (they reimplemented UNIX in circa 1994).
If code was 'borrowed' in Linux from anywhere, its likely MINIX. I believe Torvalds states that there is no MINUX code within Linux anymore, which is easy to believe given the time span and advancements in technology.
Really, schedulers are easily made unique, despite solving a central problem. Its simple to pick a design goal and make progress toward it. I highly doubt that MINUX and sysV were somehow related identically in that reguard. MINUX is by all accounts a simple yet functional implementation of an OS. SysV is reputatably a complex yet efficient beast. It may be the case that the code is duplicated, that much the german post implicates. But who stole from who is suspect, given the removal of dates. It may in fact be the case that SCO doesn't want to disclose the infringing code because the man submitting the patch was a) not liscenced or b) very poor and not IBM.
I appreciate QNX as an embedded platform, but I have yet to hear convincing arguments as to how QNX manages to overcome the address translation and additional costs reguarding interprocess communication, with respect to performance.
Why would linux kernel hackers be adding tools like HTTP servers and packet filtering into the kernel, if it was somehow the UNIX way to keep them as seperate processes managed by the kernel? The answer is that by keeping programs in the kernel space, context switching is lower costed, address translation is not required, and IPC generates two or three context switches compared to one or two with a kernelspace program. Even QNX has faculties for 'lightweight processes' that have independant stacks and a common global data sandbox.
Interesting question reguarding the software though. What should you do when the log writing (for now lets ignore error logging) fails? On one hand its not a catastrophic failure in itself. As you mentioned the device was working fine. On the other hand, if anything was going wrong imperceptibly then you're in big trouble.
First, you clearly can't write another error to the log stating you cant write to the log. It sounds silly, but sometimes people write this and plan to consider the question later. When later never rolls around, problems can occur.
Second, you could shut the system down alltogether. After all, the system is failing and if left unchecked could cause loss of life and/or property. But it seems a bit paranoid to shutdown over a diagnostics error; downtime is money lost. But on the plus side, you know the problem will receive attention.
A third alternative is to add some form of low level error system. The downside is even the warning 'lights' can go unnoticed, or simply ignored. This happens especially with things like "error code: 4343." The THERAC 25, in part suffered from such an enigmatic design.
Another is to just wait for an error more catastrophic to come up, and decide what to do then. Indeed, the parent post implies that this is an acceptable procedure: rather preemptively strike the hardware down, and incur delays on production, one can just wait for a real problem to arise. But this surmounts to just ignoring the problem.
Sadly, I don't think any reliable consensus on what to do will be geared towards safety for a long time. Professional Engineers are liable for any disasters that may occur as a result of their failure in design or inspection. Until software designers (or perhaps "software engineers") are assigned the same level of liability, I doubt that anyone will consider these topics seriously.
I work for a collection agency. All our calls, debtor information and tools are centrally managed. When the computers go down, it costs. Our employees can't make calls, can't even recieve them. So we're paying people to sit there while the servers are down. And some of the contracts the company has come with time limits and restrictions. After a period of time the debt is placed on the credit record, and written off. Thats money the company loses because nobody could answer and document a call. Clearly this sort of company relies on uptime.
Sadly, the company runs a hodgepoge of windows servers. Why? Because they're cheap. The founder of the company has a habit of starting these businesses, getting them running and selling them off. Investors rarely investigate the technological aspects of their client, but instead focus on clients and contracts. "Oh you have a 1.3 million dollar deal with GE?" It doesn't help that some companies require software systems of their own to be run in order to collect, that appear to be windows only.
Java is nice in some ways, but I must disagree that its a learning language. I used to think along the same lines, but careful thought and argument has changed my mind (who would have thought that anyone's mind could change from the internet).
;) I guess the real question is, should we cater to (read: dumb down) the fringe?
To begin with, procedural programming isn't diametrically opposed to OO, like many like to imply. OO is, in part, a way to organize those procedures into coherent wholes. I don't think you can write a OO program without knowing how to write a procedure. When I was going through my basic undergraduate programming classes, many fellow students were having problems using iteration to do something to an entire array. Hopefully the foreach concept won't have too high a barrier of entry.
Now the above understanding is easy enough to rectify without abandoning Java. Simply begin teaching them the basics using the classic "static void main(String[] args)" line. This is the real problem with Java as a learning language: there's a lot that the student must be told to remember but not understand. The meaning of many keywords nessecary to program in Java can be overbearing to teach and mostly serves as a hurdle to student's interests. Exceptions are a nice way of handling errors, but they require a lot of confusing ideas to beginner programmers, like the notion of execution control flow, the activation record, and the keywords throws, try, and catch. There used to be a very classic line in introductory Java texts, for doing standard commandline input. Something like BufferedStream keyboard = new BufferedStream(System.in()). Again most students are just taught 'Just memorize it for now, we'll discuss (or replace) it later.'
That said, there are worse choices than Java for a language. If you can skirt around the issues I've mentioned above, Java does have many nice benefits. The exceptions have a very handy benefit compared to other compiled languages; rather than get a Segment Fault, you get something like NullPointerException(MyClass.java:40). And of course, the lack of explicit pointers itself is just one less concept you need to teach, especially when you're simply trying to cover the basics that are present in nearly every language in use. The Javadocs are also handy.
So really it isn't a clear cut yes or no. If the student is dead set on learning to program then perhaps Java is the way to go. But for students on the fringe, every boring hurdle to get something done is another step towards middle management.
Actually the proof is based on the deterministic evaluation of a computer program. His claim is that the game isn't random at all. He does this by using what emulator afficionados call 'save states.' He basically stores the entire state of the machine, chooses an option, and tries the others. In his attempts he has discovered that your destiny is pretermined by the time you choose higher/10/lower.
Think of it like the first Zelda where you use the save states to always win at the gambling rooms to buy all your fancy keys without problem. Try one, if you win as big as you can, fine, if you don't restore the state and choose the previously revealed highest payout. The difference is that when you make your choice with these "fruit machines" the payout is all the same: win, or lose.
If I'm not mistaken, this is the same guy who was promoting some sort of campaign against high video game prices. At the time there were a few subtle voices suggesting he was a simple self promoting shill, and judging by the website, he has not disproved them.
./. But it probably will outlast fairplay's cries of foul play.
The fairplay campaign was supposed to last the 1st through the 8th. Yet the last news update was the 2nd. Not even halfway through the supposed boycott, it appears he gave up. No further encouragement or updates, not even a fradulent statistic showing how his campaign has succeeded in some fashion.
Instead I would wager he's spent the intervining six months scrouging up some other claim against the 'gaming' industry (hah) involving fruit machines. I'd never heard of them before, though I haven't been known to frequent the bars either. His claim is as usual overexaggerated. This function is no different than if you purchased a scratcher style lottery ticket. Your fate has been pre-determined. I don't know if this somehow runs afowl of UK law, but if it was I'd imagine that the gentleman behind fairplay would have mentioned it. Additionally, its not clear exactly who owns the ROMS he's linked to, as the link appears to be a simple MAME fansite.
I doubt that site will last much longer thanks to
Maybe Sprint? They deal in a wide range of communication activities, which would benefit from a relaxed DRM standpoint.
You know that both of those are sequals while Ender's Game is a novel adoptation of a short story by the same name and the first in a series, right? And that this pretty much demolishes your point, no?
I've read them all, sadly. Except maybe the last one, if it was recently released. Sure, in the later books the Xenocide is mentioned as a horrible even up there with the Holocost, within the context of the book itself there is little consequence. A book must be able to stand on its own. Especially the best one of a series.
Its not that Ender's Game is somehow mindbending, but that it affirms many reader's beliefs. It's often on the reading list for students, and it strikes a chord with them. Many (like myself) were students pressing through a difficult education and in high school, when disillusion and cynicism become a worldview. They see themselves as Ender, someone whos trouble they understand.
Personally, I enjoyed the internal dialoges of Ender, but perhaps that simply displays the undiagnoses Asperger's in me. I wouldn't say that Card has tapped any powerful positive human truths or displayed them in a particularly fascinating fashion.
In fact, most of the message is pretty negative. Survival is the first priority. To defeat your enemy you must love them (its written in the book but its not what I'd call supported). The people of the world (and even your parents!) are easily manipulated by children thanks to the power of the Internet and anonymity. People are out to trick you into doing bad things for them. You might argue that the book serves as some form of cautionary tale, like Das Boot, but the lack of consequence, carnage amd dispair makes it a poor one.
Its pretty clear why its popular. When most soon-to-be-fans read it, its what they want to hear, and they haven't looked back. If you want to see SF writing that works well, refer to the first halves of Neal Stephenson's books. Snow Crash was witty, fast paced and full of commentary. The introductory pages were a well written colloquial storytelling. Unfortunately Stephenson ususally lacks an overall plan of where things are going. Focus would benefit the man nicely. Snow Crash had too much going on with the virus, Y.T. and Hiro, Raven, Da5id and ultimately ran out of a point. Diamond age had something to do with the liberation of China from foreign dependence, something do with educating women in the sciences and something to do with a sexual computer. Cryptonomicon had to use two seperate timelines (and a lengthy pornographic letter to the editor concerning grandma's furnature) to accomadate his logorrhea. And apparently he's not done, and moved onto another toilet called 'Quicksilver.' If someone associated with Stephenson could show a little editorial restraint, its likely his works would be among the high eschelons.
Plus most ML dialects offer side effects and other non-functional tools.
Which only goes to show how much cleaner mapping functions to lists is.
map (fun x -> x*x) list
I donno if you attended U of P or not, but functional languages are on their way in, and C++ out. One of the biggest promoters of C++ was microsoft's interfaces, and they're pushing C# now.
OCaml may not win the war, but its certainly not a bad language. It has a large and stable set of tools. It has a runtime interpreter, a byte code compiler and interpreter, and a native code compiler. It supports most unix platforms and x86 for windows. A version is being developed by microsoft for MSVS.NET called F#. Now maybe Haskell will win after all with its seeming appeal, but OCaml is hardly a joke.
Actually, looking at your user stats, it seems you attended Ohio State University. They seem to have recently converted to Java, though I'm not sure what the language used to be. Just realize that an if statement works the same in all languages, and you'll do fine.
Every time you need to assure higher management that you're on time and under budget, those skills come in handy.
Or maybe they'll just go out and kill cops instead!
It costs a lot of money to use the proper technologies to verify and secure a system. It takes months/years to verify software for critical DoD use. And even if you could afford it, nobody else wants to pay for it, making it that much more difficult.
To some extent, the problem lies with the language (some languages have more secure features and software than others), but a large part lies with Microsoft's liscence to print money and Windows. Its a large code base, partially due to backwards compatibility. There's little financial incentive to work on the problem. It appears that people are convinced that crashes and viruses are a fact of computers, and put up with it rather than seek alternatives.
And its not just Operating Systems. How much would you pay for a web brower that didn't crash? IE crashes, Opera crashes, and even Mozilla can crash. At the software level, there isn't much one can do against random hardware failure (bits flipping in RAM). Sure, you could pretend to address the problem by operating on redunant variables, but what if the code bits are affected instead?
After discussing with Dr. Dill for a presentation, the meaning of voter verifiable is very specific. It means that the voter can look at their ballot, and verify that their vote reflects their intention before they hand it in. Nobody I know can inspect the electrical charges to determine whether their vote was recorded correctly or not (or even at all!).
I happen to live in Johnson County, Kansas, one of the sites mentioned. There's two things to keep in mind there. 1. Its an off year so turnout is usually very low. 2. The feedback card is optional, so unless you have something specific to say, you're not likely to fill it out. 3. Its difficult to evaluate the system as a whole until the vote is canvassed. Even fraud can be user friendly.
The independent testers aren't exactly trustworthy either. There's only 3 nationwide. VoteHere machines were verified from these ITAs (VoteHere is currently facing a wrongful termination suit for firing a QA Engineer who put too many bugs on the 'Critical' list.)
Terwilliger? That alone should be enough to not trust these people. The last thing the world needs is yet another Frasier guest appearance!
parody - A literary or artistic work that imitates the characteristic style of an author or a work for comic effect or ridicule.
Hopefully you can agree that the above is an accurate definition, and you might even go so far as to find legal and court references to the definition of a parody. With that in mind, I'd love to hear how you can call the artwork a parody of Strawberry Shortcake(R).