I just started teaching my 8 year old how to write code. We started with regular python and wrote a text base high/low game (Game where computer picks a number and you guess. It tells you whether you are high or low or if you guessed it). Of course my son was thrilled to add a cheat where it always made him win when he entered his name as the player.
Next, I bought some graph paper, down loaded pygame and had him draw a tank, then figure out what polygons to use from pygame to draw the tank. We drew it with 3 rectangles. Just the power of changing the tank size and changing location thrilled him. Over the next few weeks we started demonstrating how to make a bullet move out of the cannon, then how to move the tank with up/down arrows, what rgb values are and how to research those colors on the web and create your own. I had to read ahead and learn this stuff myself first.
This stuff is simple but starts to introduce them to the level of detail required to write something that works. We finished with a game where you had a rocket launcher and two rockets. A tank would come at you at random speeds. You had to pick a fuse time and hopefully the detonation happened on top of the tank.
Don't pressure her. My son's interest comes and goes. I'm there to support when he's inspired. Good luck.
>Apparently, the Exocet would have been more effective earlier in the war, if it had been set up correct.
I think this is wrong. The Exocet did it's job. The Argentines only had a limited number. (I think 8 or less) by the time the war started. They were also hampered in there ability to search for ships due to equipment maintenance issues. Had they had the missiles en mass and the ability to correctly search for ships, the brits would have been in trouble.
The bombs going through the ships unexploded were dumb bombs. It was a testament to the Argentinian pilots that in a day and age of smart weapons, they still managed to get the job done using old fashion approach and drop methods. What failed them was what you stated. The fuses on these bombs were set for too long a time period. They hit one side of the ship and came out the other side without exploding.
You don't really gain anything with the NT kernel. The problem is developers. They want to learn technologies that don't lock them down to one vendor or a "licensed" solution. Because of that chosen career paths follow toolkits that are portable. Java, python,ruby, mysql, apache, etc.. . Automation and installation of these type of tools are best handled through the GNU or GNU like products.
Even though the developer doesn't have the purchasing power, they do influence. If someone says, I need you to implement XYZ for my business. If the developer says, I need 3 linux boxes, it's done (because it's cheaper too). The purchaser has no power. MS needs to get rid of this factor. Non-techy people who do the buying would feel much more comfortable with windows machines. They need to empower the purchaser to say, look, I'll buy what I want, since you can develop on either.
Personally, I think it's still a failed strategy. If they see the writing on the wall, they should just port windows GUI part to linux or BSD and move on.
I'm seeing more like 4 to 4.5 hours with my kids OLPC. Even when I turn down the background light, it doesn't seem to extend the battery life that much.
This does not affect their income, but it affects their stock price.
Financially I think you might be right. They keep selling licenses. This is a HUGE failure for MS management. Essentially, they spent countless millions on something that is going nowhere and their revenue stream continues to come from a product that has already been established. Since the stock market is forward looking, this completely shakes investor confidence that MS management knows their head from their arse. I honestly don't know why they keep balmer at the helm. MS is making money on cruise control. They need someone who won't ef that up, and I'm pretty sure balmer and his "we threaten our customers with patents" philosophy puts that at risk.
My understanding is there are two new provisions in there: 1) Patent protection which I think nobody argues with
2) Anti-DRM, Anti-Tivoization. In my understanding this is the most controversial.
Personally for number 2) I think my opinion is related to the whatever the reality is. Basically, I have no problem with Tivo so I don't like #2. Now if MS stays dominant and coludes with HW platforms, #2 could basically prevent you from ever runnig changes to your source code. Maybe that might change my opinion, but I doubt it.
1) Yes, Darl and his brother probably pulled $3+ million from this scam, and a few other insiders sold their stock and walked with some cash early on, but Darl will never be CEO of another IT company again. He is a suicide pill for anybody who would even consider hiring him in the IT field. He can no longer attract investor money and he is an outcast. That three million will have to last him quite some time. Here is to hoping his lifestyle is used to higher income. Say mortgage, car payments, alimony.
2) Yes, MS, did win the FUD campaign, but I'll argue that the FUD campaign only lasted a year and a half MAX. Now the suit is having the opposite affect. People feel linux has been vetted, so MS has to change the precious IP story to patents since the whole copyright thing did not work out. Patents are a much harder game for MS. They might claim that linux steps on many patents, but they themselves step on as many patents if not more. They run a risk of starting a war where the person with the most money loses. I think MS has the most money.
I think the net result of this smear campaign has been great publicity for IBM in the geek world (not sure what that is worth). And overall confidence that linux is safe, being backed by companies like RH and Oracle. Finally, MS, comes off looking bad. Vista has been delayed, DRM is a complete cluserf*#k and it does not help when it seems like MS was part of a massive, possibly illegal smear campaign that failed. How much confidence does that give you in Vista?
"...posture themselves in this way now. For all these years they really have not gone after anyone for patent violations..."
You know, that makes me wonder if we are seeing the difference between Gates at the helm and Balmer at the helm.
While all my knowledge of balmer is superficial, he just scares me. Looking at the monkey boy video and looking at his face, he really seems psychotic.
This is all AT&T wants to do. They say "we lay down all this cable now we want to recoup our costs". Imagine how this would have been applied back in the day when they were improving phone lines. They would hold back the quality of your phone call unless you paid them an extra bribe^H^H^H^H^H fee above and beyond what you pay just to have a phone so you can get calls. With this artificial market, they can create bidding wars in which nothing is gained for the consumer. Another example is caller ID and call blocking. Both services (used to) cost consumers. The end result of both services being used is that nothing changes, yet they make more money.
I would be all for it if it wasn't for the fact that they are a government approved monopoly. When they start paying rent to the taxpayer for all the lines they run over governement land, then hell yes, forget net neutrality.
One thing open source projects do not have is deadlines set by market droids. These projects tend to be driven mainly by software engineers who take pride in their work and they do not have to answer to upper management.
Nobody gets fired when an opens source project is late, and to that end, must open source projects have not been promised unrealistically to waiting customers.
Market and Sales droids generate upstream revenue for the company. A good open source project generates downstream revenues for the engineers.
Can I ask a question? For people who believe in Evolution and Darwinism, doesn't Genetically Engineered food fit into natures plan? It just seems like Nature has created a species that can accelerate evolution. It does seem that that might be the only way a CO2 infested hotter planet might be able to sustain 10 billion people anyway.
I always thought the knee jerk hatred of GE foods came from Intellectual property laws. IE. I plant GE seeds on my farm, they blow onto your farm, now you get sued by the GE company for growing their "patented" crops. Seems like we need IP patent law reform and it seems like things like the Research In Motion patent lawsuit will help the common legislature the need for this reform.
Good point, but why stop there? Why not just dive into areas that make money guaranteed. Pr0n, Drugs and violent entertainment. That would really help the bottom line.
"The GPL violations lie firmly on the shoulders of F4I. If Sony did not disassemble the code or inspect the source, they had no way of knowing."
Well I guess we could look at Sony the same way they look at peer to peer networks. While the act of distributing CD's is not illegal as the act of file sharing is not illegal, it seems unfortunately that SONY has enabled the violations of copyrights as peer to peer networks have done as well. Maybe Sony should not be allowed to distribute CD's anymore until they have a proven program in place that ensures no illegally copied material is on their CD's. Kind of like what they are trying to do with ISP's and peer to peer.
Slashdot Mirror
If you are willing to teach/learn yourself ...
I just started teaching my 8 year old how to write code. We started with regular python and wrote a text base high/low game (Game where computer picks a number and you guess. It tells you whether you are high or low or if you guessed it). Of course my son was thrilled to add a cheat where it always made him win when he entered his name as the player.
Next, I bought some graph paper, down loaded pygame and had him draw a tank, then figure out what polygons to use from pygame to draw the tank. We drew it with 3 rectangles. Just the power of changing the tank size and changing location thrilled him. Over the next few weeks we started demonstrating how to make a bullet move out of the cannon, then how to move the tank with up/down arrows, what rgb values are and how to research those colors on the web and create your own. I had to read ahead and learn this stuff myself first.
This stuff is simple but starts to introduce them to the level of detail required to write something that works. We finished with a game where you had a rocket launcher and two rockets. A tank would come at you at random speeds. You had to pick a fuse time and hopefully the detonation happened on top of the tank.
Don't pressure her. My son's interest comes and goes. I'm there to support when he's inspired. Good luck.
Just a fair warning. It is a worthless blurb.
steal... sigh
I love it. and I am going to shamelessly steel this.
>Apparently, the Exocet would have been more effective earlier in the war, if it had been set up correct.
I think this is wrong. The Exocet did it's job. The Argentines only had a limited number. (I think 8 or less) by the time the war started. They were also hampered in there ability to search for ships due to equipment maintenance issues. Had they had the missiles en mass and the ability to correctly search for ships, the brits would have been in trouble.
The bombs going through the ships unexploded were dumb bombs. It was a testament to the Argentinian pilots that in a day and age of smart weapons, they still managed to get the job done using old fashion approach and drop methods. What failed them was what you stated. The fuses on these bombs were set for too long a time period. They hit one side of the ship and came out the other side without exploding.
You don't really gain anything with the NT kernel. The problem is developers. They want to learn technologies that don't lock them down to one vendor or a "licensed" solution. Because of that chosen career paths follow toolkits that are portable. Java, python,ruby, mysql, apache, etc.. . Automation and installation of these type of tools are best handled through the GNU or GNU like products.
Even though the developer doesn't have the purchasing power, they do influence. If someone says, I need you to implement XYZ for my business. If the developer says, I need 3 linux boxes, it's done (because it's cheaper too). The purchaser has no power. MS needs to get rid of this factor. Non-techy people who do the buying would feel much more comfortable with windows machines. They need to empower the purchaser to say, look, I'll buy what I want, since you can develop on either.
Personally, I think it's still a failed strategy. If they see the writing on the wall, they should just port windows GUI part to linux or BSD and move on.
FYI,
I'm seeing more like 4 to 4.5 hours with my kids OLPC. Even when I turn down the background light, it doesn't seem to extend the battery life that much.
This does not affect their income, but it affects their stock price.
Financially I think you might be right. They keep selling licenses. This is a HUGE failure for MS management. Essentially, they spent countless millions on something that is going nowhere and their revenue stream continues to come from a product that has already been established. Since the stock market is forward looking, this completely shakes investor confidence that MS management knows their head from their arse. I honestly don't know why they keep balmer at the helm. MS is making money on cruise control. They need someone who won't ef that up, and I'm pretty sure balmer and his "we threaten our customers with patents" philosophy puts that at risk.
They will only see the diaper when it's full.
The other concern is what is this going to look like when a male astronaut gets a boner.
What about dash cams and microphones on police cars used as evidence?
My understanding is there are two new provisions in there:
1) Patent protection which I think nobody argues with
2) Anti-DRM, Anti-Tivoization. In my understanding this is the most controversial.
Personally for number 2) I think my opinion is related to the whatever the reality is. Basically, I have no problem with Tivo so I don't like #2. Now if MS stays dominant and coludes with HW platforms, #2 could basically prevent you from ever runnig changes to your source code. Maybe that might change my opinion, but I doubt it.
Are these the only two issues? or are there more?
1) Yes, Darl and his brother probably pulled $3+ million from this scam, and a few other insiders sold their stock and walked with some cash early on, but Darl will never be CEO of another IT company again. He is a suicide pill for anybody who would even consider hiring him in the IT field. He can no longer attract investor money and he is an outcast. That three million will have to last him quite some time. Here is to hoping his lifestyle is used to higher income. Say mortgage, car payments, alimony.
2) Yes, MS, did win the FUD campaign, but I'll argue that the FUD campaign only lasted a year and a half MAX. Now the suit is having the opposite affect. People feel linux has been vetted, so MS has to change the precious IP story to patents since the whole copyright thing did not work out. Patents are a much harder game for MS. They might claim that linux steps on many patents, but they themselves step on as many patents if not more. They run a risk of starting a war where the person with the most money loses. I think MS has the most money.
I think the net result of this smear campaign has been great publicity for IBM in the geek world (not sure what that is worth). And overall confidence that linux is safe, being backed by companies like RH and Oracle. Finally, MS, comes off looking bad. Vista has been delayed, DRM is a complete cluserf*#k and it does not help when it seems like MS was part of a massive, possibly illegal smear campaign that failed. How much confidence does that give you in Vista?
"...posture themselves in this way now. For all these years they really have not gone after anyone for patent violations ..."
You know, that makes me wonder if we are seeing the difference between Gates at the helm and Balmer at the helm.
While all my knowledge of balmer is superficial, he just scares me. Looking at the monkey boy video and looking at his face, he really seems psychotic.
Nobody asking if it's a robosexual?
This is all AT&T wants to do. They say "we lay down all this cable now we want to recoup our costs". Imagine how this would have been applied back in the day when they were improving phone lines. They would hold back the quality of your phone call unless you paid them an extra bribe^H^H^H^H^H fee above and beyond what you pay just to have a phone so you can get calls. With this artificial market, they can create bidding wars in which nothing is gained for the consumer. Another example is caller ID and call blocking. Both services (used to) cost consumers. The end result of both services being used is that nothing changes, yet they make more money.
I would be all for it if it wasn't for the fact that they are a government approved monopoly. When they start paying rent to the taxpayer for all the lines they run over governement land, then hell yes, forget net neutrality.
If this link is "the dirt", then I'm not too impressed.
One thing open source projects do not have is deadlines set by market droids. These projects tend to be driven mainly by software engineers who take pride in their work and they do not have to answer to upper management.
Nobody gets fired when an opens source project is late, and to that end, must open source projects have not been promised unrealistically to waiting customers.
Market and Sales droids generate upstream revenue for the company. A good open source project generates downstream revenues for the engineers.
How hard would it be to create a dll that overrides getCPUId() and put that in front of skype's library path.
This really seems like a foolish way to conduct business.
"We don't offer you more, but we beat our competitors down with a stick so they offer you less"
Can I ask a question? For people who believe in Evolution and Darwinism, doesn't Genetically Engineered food fit into natures plan? It just seems like Nature has created a species that can accelerate evolution. It does seem that that might be the only way a CO2 infested hotter planet might be able to sustain 10 billion people anyway.
I always thought the knee jerk hatred of GE foods came from Intellectual property laws.
IE. I plant GE seeds on my farm, they blow onto your farm, now you get sued by the GE company for growing their "patented" crops. Seems like we need IP patent law reform and it seems like things like the Research In Motion patent lawsuit will help the common legislature the need for this reform.
Good point, but why stop there? Why not just dive into areas that make money guaranteed. Pr0n, Drugs and violent entertainment. That would really help the bottom line.
This perl based python interpreter imbedded in a java environment with C# syntax is all the rage.
After that, learn jerlthon sharp on rails with AJAX. You'll be the darling of any MBA
"The GPL violations lie firmly on the shoulders of F4I. If Sony did not disassemble the code or inspect the source, they had no way of knowing."
Well I guess we could look at Sony the same way they look at peer to peer networks. While the act of distributing CD's is not illegal as the act of file sharing is not illegal, it seems unfortunately that SONY has enabled the violations of copyrights as peer to peer networks have done as well.
Maybe Sony should not be allowed to distribute CD's anymore until they have a proven program in place that ensures no illegally copied material is on their CD's. Kind of like what they are trying to do with ISP's and peer to peer.
I believe that argument works for the automobile during the times of the horse and buggy. Progress has a cost.
Speaking of 002, Next job I intend to tell them my name is Rick Oot. When I get my new login ID of 'root', I'll rule the company!
1) Post some controversial anti-FOSS article ...
2) Show boss how many page hits your article generates
3)
4) Profit