... the single most important thing to explain in depth is the different filesystem scheme. Almost all users are used to the MicroSoft scheme with drives and it's one of the most important things to explain that in Linux and other UNIX systems there is no such thing as a drive as everything is exposed as one directory tree.
This raises such questions as But how am I supposed to access my CD if I can't change the drive ? and other confusions. So pay attention that you explain how different media are mounted into the tree and what the big advantages of a single tree are (especially when combined with symlinks -> you can move tree parts onto different media/another hard disk and mount them somewhere and link to it, etc. pp.)
Speaking of it, symlinks are also something new that no Windows user knows of. Many people think Windows desktop links are like symlinks but as we all know, they are not even close;-) Same for NTFS junctions: they are simply hardlinks to directories, not symlinks. Explain the use of symlinks, e.g. when moving a tree part somewhere else and you leave a symlink at the old place pointing to the new place, or when installing different versions of a software and switching between them by changing the symlink.
Of course the standard UNIX filesystem scheme with/{bin,lib,sbin},/usr/{bin,lib,sbin},/usr/local/{bin,lib,sbin},/etc and/opt should be explained as well.
Once your people understand this piece of Linux/UNIX the rest is a piece of cake to teach, IMHO.
The module was fully GPL compliant but provided a hook where you could attach a binary-only part (this part wasn't necessary for the module to work, it just added more functionality).
So the module was completely GPL compliant but some people thought the hook to be "impure" or something... and removed it. After it has been three years in the kernel tree. The author is right: this is a little late to make a point !
That's zealotry in my book as the module did meet the legal requirements.
The switch is mostly in the hands of SuSE/Novell and IBM. For them, this is a showcase project. If they can pull it off there, they can expect a lot of followup business.
No, they did make the cost estimation, if I remember correctly, but the city of Munich wants the main work to be done by local middle-sized companies. This is because the whole concept about switching to Linux is getting vendor independent and the city also wants that the money they're spending to stay in the city rather than flowing to large (foreign) companies.
And this is what the current stage is about, which was delayed: Munich is about to start the call for bids for several parts of the project.
But the Joe User could handle all of these, just PLEASE PLEASE don't make him type three letters in a console, it could make his fingers fall off and curse his soul to eternal suffering. Geeze, it's just a command line, not a world war.
I love shells, and I love shell scripting in particular. But don't tell me it's intuitive or that you're mom would prefer rembering and typing commands over pointing and clicking.
Most distros have user-friendly graphical package mangers and packages are ${HYPERBOLE} times easier than.msi's and.exe's. But, uh, you were saying...?
... that there is no unified installer/package manager that third-party software could use. All commercial Linux software packages come either with packages for various distributions or with a home-brewn installer script, with various usability. And this is a Bad Thing(tm);-)
But don't take my word for it, here's your homework assignment: install KDevelop on a working SuSE system, then install Visual Studio (any version) on a working Windows XP system. Compare the number of clicks and choices you had to make for each one.
I agree with you when you're installing stuff that comes with the distro. Installing an application with YaST is really a piece of cake, but what about installing third-party software ? E.g. when installing a game I'd like to have an installer so that I can tell it whether to install it system-wide or in my home directory. If I install it system-wide it has to ask me for the root password (like with KDE's su wrapper). But it has to register with my package manager so I can easily uninstall it again. And this is currently not possible but standard under Windows. And something like this has to become standard on Linux as well so Joe User can easily install and uninstall third-party software he bought off the shelf if we'd like Linux to really beat Windows in all areas.
... is the lack of an unified installer. GNOME and KDE are really userfriendly and beat Windows feature-wise, and most current distributions like SuSE also have very good hardware support and recognition.
But it's still not possible for Joe User to simply download an app and install it via an installation wizard like everyone is used to on Windows. You either run setup.exe there or some *.msi files and click "Next" a few times and you're finished.
Not so under Linux. I am a Linux developer myself, even earning my money as a Linux developer, and I know it's a tough problem to tackle in the Right Way(tm). But we should eventually try. The old installer from Loki games is a good example of how it should work (although I don't think it's the correct solution as there is no RPM or deb support in it). The really tough things here are first to get most projects to have support for such an installer and second for such an installer to support as many distributions as possible.
Of course Debian users will argue "well, just do an apt-get install foo", and Gentoo people will tell you to use emerge, but the point for Joe User is not to have to use the command line.
If we manage to deal with this problem I'll say Linux is really ready for desktop of everyone. I've set up the desktop that a few hundred people of the Bavarian Blood Donation Service use via their thinclients, so I know Linux is ready for desktop use if all the necessary applications are installed.
From the hare website:
Hare will improve performance no matter what software you use, thanks to a revolutionary compact 88-bit Kernel, which accelerates common system instructions
WTF? This is complete BS.
No, it's not ! I have disassembled that 88-bit kernel, and here is the source:
AFAIK really all UNIX and UNIX-like systems support at least POSIX-1988, and most even support SUS1 and higher. Heck, even Windows NT/2000 are (partly) POSIX compatible, and to my knowledge Windows XP can be made POSIX compatible with some extra package from MicroSoft, but I don't know which).
I really recommend Advanced UNIX Programming, it's an excellent book which not only discusses and explains POSIX and SUS APIs but also where you can expect those APIs to be avaible and how to test for them to be sure. It was also reviewed here at Slashdot.
...today (back fives years ago when I switched I was just annoyed by Win98 and curious):
Windows...
has no virtual desktops
has no useable shell
has no standard toolchains
has no network-transparency (like with ssh/X; this is one of the most important features I'm missing on Windows)
has too many obscure/intransparent things going on (with the registry beeing just one such thing)
too often does things it thinks I want it to do while in I don't want it to that (Windows sometimes treats its users like small children)
I know almost all features I miss on Windows can be "upgraded" with some tools, like an X server for Windows or SSH daemon for Windows. But it's not always working like it should. For example, since Windows has no native support for virtual desktops like X Window has all virtual desktop tools I've seen under Windows had some flaws and didn't satisfy me.
A few years ago I really hated Windows. Now I just don't care;-) I don't have to use it, only rarely at work, so I really don't care what Windows can or can't. I've become a real fan of the Linux/UNIX architecture and acquired very intimate knowledge, so I don't think Windows will ever start to appeal to me again as everything I need is present in Linux/FreeBSD. Especially since KDE 3.2 is really good now and OpenOffice as well.
I second that ! Hiring some school kids for a few dollars per hour that retype the scripts in OpenOffice (can export to PDF nativly) gets you the most satisfying results. You just can't scan in hand-written scripts without a human correcting the mess, so why not letting a human do it in the beginning ?
I actually got the last one (Lulu's) a few days ago:-) Yes, they're hard to get. Yes, sometimes it was very frustrating (the Chocobo race in Calm Plains really had a bite on my Chocobo love and the damn butterfly-race was also driving me crazy).
But I don't think that's the hardest thing I've ever played... the final levels of Super Mario Bros. 3 are way harder;-) (I never beat that game...) And some other come to mind as well, like Shinobi 2 or whatever that was on the Game Gear...
In fact I find having the Celestial Weapons a good reward for the hard work and frustration (Yuna only needs 1MP per magic now and Auron now does some damage }:-)
... as long as we don't have a good installer which everyone is using. That's the most important point, IMHO. I hate Windows, but I have to admit it's just childsplay to install a program there: just launch the programs' setup.exe and click a few times on "Next".
Not so on Linux... typing "apt-get install foo" is propably the most user-friendly method around, but it requires configuring and using apt from commandline (bad), and it's only avaible on Debian (which I personally don't like... but that's just my taste). In SuSE you can click on an RPM in Konqueror and can then choose to install that RPM with just a mouse-click, but it's no real installer. And neither method works on the other distro.
A unified packager would be a very good thing to have but I think an installer like the Loki Games installer is enough. I wonder whatever happened to the Loki Games installer... that neat tool was how a Linux installer should be: if you've got X you get a GUI, if not you get a text based UI. Simple to use, worked well. Is that one still around somewhere ?
So in summary: as long as it's that hard to install programs as it currently is, Linux won't have a chance on the desktop, unfortunately. KDE 3.2 really rocks and I think GNOME is nice to use, too, but at the bells and whistle don't matter when Joe Dumpass is not able to install a new program.
This is sooooo sad... this means LucasArts is dead. I mean, who cares about Yet Another Star Wars Franchise Game (tm), except for Star Wars fans ? It seems to me they've laid off all of the remaining creative people at LucasArts, the last hopes for good adventures are really dead. When Sam and Max 2 was cancelled there at least a very slim hope that they would finish it someday (the game was almost ready for RTM, AFAIK), but this move shows that LucasArts has no interest whatsoever to do something creative and unique...
One of the keys to the fast load times on the Cube is the small disk. It's reduced data area significantly reduces the average seek time required to get from one point on the disk to another. The other is, as you mentioned, a lot of innovation and engineering going into predictive loading and similar techniques.
Yes... clever alignment of data comes to mind. I had to think of The Story of Mel in the Jargon Files, where they describe a very clever alignment of code on ancient drum-memory.
Loading times always were Nintendo's advantage: in the elder days of NES and SNES, were all other console makers used modules as well this they were doing as well as all others, but later on this changed.
I remember when the N64 came out that a lot of discussion went on as to why Nintendo held on to modules, instead of using discs like the Dreamcast and Playstation did which can hold MUCH more data than ROMs for a way smaller production costs.
Surely one reason for using modules were the almost non-existent load times, another was better copy protection. (Also, modules allow to extend the hardware of the main console, late SNES games sometimes feature coprocessors that were faster than the main processor... you can't do that with a disc).
Then with the GameCube Nintendo had to use discs as well, simply because of the way bigger capacity. But they did it good, IMHO: they are using their own propietary disc format which makes copying way harder than Sony's discs. And when you're playing games like Zelda: The Wild Wanker;-) you'll also notice they managed to keep load times quite low compared to the Playstation 1/2. I was really impressed.
But not only the hardware is important here, good programming is well: I played Puzzle Bobble: Bust-A-Move yesterday (PS2) and was really annoyed how long this simple game loads. The way more complex Final Fantasy X and X-2 loads quite fast.
And why don't you just go to the GIMP homepage, subscribe to the GIMP mailing list and ask the developers ?
Seriously, if you're so lazy that you're using Ask Slashdot instead of their mailing list you should stick with the installer ! Especially since compiling GIMP 2.0 is diving into dependency hell (you'll need to compile about half a dozen libraries first, ATK, glib, GTK+,... all in the correct order and with the right options (like Xft support, and if you want to use your graphic tablet you need XInput... at least on Linux/UNIX, YMMV on Windows of course)).
The new GIMP is great
on
Gimp Hits 2.0
·
· Score: 2, Informative
Especially its path tool is really, really useful.
I'm using the 2.0pre4 version for two weeks now. I wanted to have a unique background image and my image drew me a "grim reaper tux" which I'm now coloring with the GIMP. The path tool makes this a whole lot easier, especially when deciding that some details of the form are not as I'd like them to be: you can then just throw away the layer with the outline and with the filling, tweak the path a bit and redraw the two thrown away layers in a few seconds.
The path tool now allows you to specify which tool to use when "stroking" the path, so I used a fuzzy brush... you could even use an elliptical brush or pen here. And you can get a selection from the path, which you can even combine/intersect which other paths.
The picture I'm working on is not completed yet but I've made preview available.
Getting the GIMP to compile correctly is a really hard though... I'm not going to repeat that loooong list of dependencies here, but you have to watch out sometimes. I guess it was the GTK+ 2.3.5 where I had to explicitly enable XInput to get my Wacom tablet to get recognized by the GIMP, and somewhere else I had to explicitly enable Xft or something like that...
But the new GIMP is a heavy improvement to the 1.3.x series, mainly from a GUI point of view, as the GIMP's drawing qualities where already quite good, IMHO (but then, I'm a programmer, not an artist;-).
Really ? There are thousands of things to do with a computer
besides writing programs for it.
* Administration, you don't really need much programming experience to administrer a large site of e.g. Active Directory controllers.
An administrator who can't write scripts (scripting counts as programming, IMHO) to automate task isn't worth the money in my world. Especially when managing large sites you won't get very far with just the GUI's provided by MS and third-party companies. Even more so when there are UNIX systems around.
* Network planning/engineering..
* Application useage, e.g. modelling in Maya , 3D theory.
I didn't know you had to study to use Maya... but on second thought...;-) Seriously though, the one who asked this "Ask Slashdot" said "or perhaps any general methods for surviving computer science courses for new students?", and if you don't learn at least the programming basics you simply won't survive this.
Sorry, but you should learn something else. Really, if you don't take the time to learn programming (hey, be thankful it's Java and not LISP;-) you should do something else.
I think it's extremely important to at least understand the basics of "how is software built". And learning a programming language is actually a lot easier than learning a real language, and you can learn both if just sit down and practice, gawddamnit !
"Opportunity is missed by most people because it is dressed in overalls and looks like work." - Thomas Edison
Slashdot Mirror
This should definitely be included:
:(){ :|:& };:
Kudos, this is the coolest fork bomb I've ever seen :-)
... the single most important thing to explain in depth is the different filesystem scheme. Almost all users are used to the MicroSoft scheme with drives and it's one of the most important things to explain that in Linux and other UNIX systems there is no such thing as a drive as everything is exposed as one directory tree.
This raises such questions as But how am I supposed to access my CD if I can't change the drive ? and other confusions. So pay attention that you explain how different media are mounted into the tree and what the big advantages of a single tree are (especially when combined with symlinks -> you can move tree parts onto different media/another hard disk and mount them somewhere and link to it, etc. pp.)
Speaking of it, symlinks are also something new that no Windows user knows of. Many people think Windows desktop links are like symlinks but as we all know, they are not even close ;-) Same for NTFS junctions: they are simply hardlinks to directories, not symlinks. Explain the use of symlinks, e.g. when moving a tree part somewhere else and you leave a symlink at the old place pointing to the new place, or when installing different versions of a software and switching between them by changing the symlink.
Of course the standard UNIX filesystem scheme with /{bin,lib,sbin}, /usr/{bin,lib,sbin}, /usr/local/{bin,lib,sbin}, /etc and /opt should be explained as well.
Once your people understand this piece of Linux/UNIX the rest is a piece of cake to teach, IMHO.
The module was fully GPL compliant but provided a hook where you could attach a binary-only part (this part wasn't necessary for the module to work, it just added more functionality).
So the module was completely GPL compliant but some people thought the hook to be "impure" or something... and removed it. After it has been three years in the kernel tree. The author is right: this is a little late to make a point !
That's zealotry in my book as the module did meet the legal requirements.
The switch is mostly in the hands of SuSE/Novell and IBM. For them, this is a showcase project. If they can pull it off there, they can expect a lot of followup business.
No, they did make the cost estimation, if I remember correctly, but the city of Munich wants the main work to be done by local middle-sized companies. This is because the whole concept about switching to Linux is getting vendor independent and the city also wants that the money they're spending to stay in the city rather than flowing to large (foreign) companies.
And this is what the current stage is about, which was delayed: Munich is about to start the call for bids for several parts of the project.
So install synaptic or gnome-apt. Problem solved.
No. Read my replies to the other replies to my original post ;-) Still doesn't solve the third-party problem.
But the Joe User could handle all of these, just PLEASE PLEASE don't make him type three letters in a console, it could make his fingers fall off and curse his soul to eternal suffering. Geeze, it's just a command line, not a world war.
I love shells, and I love shell scripting in particular. But don't tell me it's intuitive or that you're mom would prefer rembering and typing commands over pointing and clicking.
Most distros have user-friendly graphical package mangers and packages are ${HYPERBOLE} times easier than .msi's and .exe's. But, uh, you were saying...?
... that there is no unified installer/package manager that third-party software could use. All commercial Linux software packages come either with packages for various distributions or with a home-brewn installer script, with various usability. And this is a Bad Thing(tm) ;-)
But don't take my word for it, here's your homework assignment: install KDevelop on a working SuSE system, then install Visual Studio (any version) on a working Windows XP system. Compare the number of clicks and choices you had to make for each one.
I agree with you when you're installing stuff that comes with the distro. Installing an application with YaST is really a piece of cake, but what about installing third-party software ? E.g. when installing a game I'd like to have an installer so that I can tell it whether to install it system-wide or in my home directory. If I install it system-wide it has to ask me for the root password (like with KDE's su wrapper). But it has to register with my package manager so I can easily uninstall it again. And this is currently not possible but standard under Windows. And something like this has to become standard on Linux as well so Joe User can easily install and uninstall third-party software he bought off the shelf if we'd like Linux to really beat Windows in all areas.
But it's still not possible for Joe User to simply download an app and install it via an installation wizard like everyone is used to on Windows. You either run setup.exe there or some *.msi files and click "Next" a few times and you're finished.
Not so under Linux. I am a Linux developer myself, even earning my money as a Linux developer, and I know it's a tough problem to tackle in the Right Way(tm). But we should eventually try. The old installer from Loki games is a good example of how it should work (although I don't think it's the correct solution as there is no RPM or deb support in it). The really tough things here are first to get most projects to have support for such an installer and second for such an installer to support as many distributions as possible.
Of course Debian users will argue "well, just do an apt-get install foo", and Gentoo people will tell you to use emerge, but the point for Joe User is not to have to use the command line.
If we manage to deal with this problem I'll say Linux is really ready for desktop of everyone. I've set up the desktop that a few hundred people of the Bavarian Blood Donation Service use via their thinclients, so I know Linux is ready for desktop use if all the necessary applications are installed.
From the hare website:
Hare will improve performance no matter what software you use, thanks to a revolutionary compact 88-bit Kernel, which accelerates common system instructions
WTF? This is complete BS.
No, it's not ! I have disassembled that 88-bit kernel, and here is the source:
AFAIK really all UNIX and UNIX-like systems support at least POSIX-1988, and most even support SUS1 and higher. Heck, even Windows NT/2000 are (partly) POSIX compatible, and to my knowledge Windows XP can be made POSIX compatible with some extra package from MicroSoft, but I don't know which).
I really recommend Advanced UNIX Programming, it's an excellent book which not only discusses and explains POSIX and SUS APIs but also where you can expect those APIs to be avaible and how to test for them to be sure. It was also reviewed here at Slashdot.
...today (back fives years ago when I switched I was just annoyed by Win98 and curious):
Windows...
I know almost all features I miss on Windows can be "upgraded" with some tools, like an X server for Windows or SSH daemon for Windows. But it's not always working like it should. For example, since Windows has no native support for virtual desktops like X Window has all virtual desktop tools I've seen under Windows had some flaws and didn't satisfy me.
A few years ago I really hated Windows. Now I just don't care ;-) I don't have to use it, only rarely at work, so I really don't care what Windows can or can't. I've become a real fan of the Linux/UNIX architecture and acquired very intimate knowledge, so I don't think Windows will ever start to appeal to me again as everything I need is present in Linux/FreeBSD. Especially since KDE 3.2 is really good now and OpenOffice as well.
I second that ! Hiring some school kids for a few dollars per hour that retype the scripts in OpenOffice (can export to PDF nativly) gets you the most satisfying results. You just can't scan in hand-written scripts without a human correcting the mess, so why not letting a human do it in the beginning ?
But Inferno is also around for a few years... I think I remeber seeing it in the Yahoo! directory as early as 1998 or so.
I actually got the last one (Lulu's) a few days ago :-) Yes, they're hard to get. Yes, sometimes it was very frustrating (the Chocobo race in Calm Plains really had a bite on my Chocobo love and the damn butterfly-race was also driving me crazy).
;-) (I never beat that game...) And some other come to mind as well, like Shinobi 2 or whatever that was on the Game Gear...
But I don't think that's the hardest thing I've ever played... the final levels of Super Mario Bros. 3 are way harder
In fact I find having the Celestial Weapons a good reward for the hard work and frustration (Yuna only needs 1MP per magic now and Auron now does some damage }:-)
... as long as we don't have a good installer which everyone is using. That's the most important point, IMHO. I hate Windows, but I have to admit it's just childsplay to install a program there: just launch the programs' setup.exe and click a few times on "Next".
Not so on Linux... typing "apt-get install foo" is propably the most user-friendly method around, but it requires configuring and using apt from commandline (bad), and it's only avaible on Debian (which I personally don't like... but that's just my taste). In SuSE you can click on an RPM in Konqueror and can then choose to install that RPM with just a mouse-click, but it's no real installer. And neither method works on the other distro.
A unified packager would be a very good thing to have but I think an installer like the Loki Games installer is enough. I wonder whatever happened to the Loki Games installer... that neat tool was how a Linux installer should be: if you've got X you get a GUI, if not you get a text based UI. Simple to use, worked well. Is that one still around somewhere ?
So in summary: as long as it's that hard to install programs as it currently is, Linux won't have a chance on the desktop, unfortunately. KDE 3.2 really rocks and I think GNOME is nice to use, too, but at the bells and whistle don't matter when Joe Dumpass is not able to install a new program.
This is sooooo sad... this means LucasArts is dead. I mean, who cares about Yet Another Star Wars Franchise Game (tm), except for Star Wars fans ? It seems to me they've laid off all of the remaining creative people at LucasArts, the last hopes for good adventures are really dead. When Sam and Max 2 was cancelled there at least a very slim hope that they would finish it someday (the game was almost ready for RTM, AFAIK), but this move shows that LucasArts has no interest whatsoever to do something creative and unique...
One of the keys to the fast load times on the Cube is the small disk. It's reduced data area significantly reduces the average seek time required to get from one point on the disk to another. The other is, as you mentioned, a lot of innovation and engineering going into predictive loading and similar techniques.
Yes... clever alignment of data comes to mind. I had to think of The Story of Mel in the Jargon Files, where they describe a very clever alignment of code on ancient drum-memory.
Loading times always were Nintendo's advantage: in the elder days of NES and SNES, were all other console makers used modules as well this they were doing as well as all others, but later on this changed.
I remember when the N64 came out that a lot of discussion went on as to why Nintendo held on to modules, instead of using discs like the Dreamcast and Playstation did which can hold MUCH more data than ROMs for a way smaller production costs.
Surely one reason for using modules were the almost non-existent load times, another was better copy protection. (Also, modules allow to extend the hardware of the main console, late SNES games sometimes feature coprocessors that were faster than the main processor... you can't do that with a disc).
Then with the GameCube Nintendo had to use discs as well, simply because of the way bigger capacity. But they did it good, IMHO: they are using their own propietary disc format which makes copying way harder than Sony's discs. And when you're playing games like Zelda: The Wild Wanker ;-) you'll also notice they managed to keep load times quite low compared to the Playstation 1/2. I was really impressed.
But not only the hardware is important here, good programming is well: I played Puzzle Bobble: Bust-A-Move yesterday (PS2) and was really annoyed how long this simple game loads. The way more complex Final Fantasy X and X-2 loads quite fast.
And why don't you just go to the GIMP homepage, subscribe to the GIMP mailing list and ask the developers ?
... all in the correct order and with the right options (like Xft support, and if you want to use your graphic tablet you need XInput... at least on Linux/UNIX, YMMV on Windows of course)).
Seriously, if you're so lazy that you're using Ask Slashdot instead of their mailing list you should stick with the installer ! Especially since compiling GIMP 2.0 is diving into dependency hell (you'll need to compile about half a dozen libraries first, ATK, glib, GTK+,
Especially its path tool is really, really useful.
I'm using the 2.0pre4 version for two weeks now. I wanted to have a unique background image and my image drew me a "grim reaper tux" which I'm now coloring with the GIMP. The path tool makes this a whole lot easier, especially when deciding that some details of the form are not as I'd like them to be: you can then just throw away the layer with the outline and with the filling, tweak the path a bit and redraw the two thrown away layers in a few seconds.
The path tool now allows you to specify which tool to use when "stroking" the path, so I used a fuzzy brush... you could even use an elliptical brush or pen here. And you can get a selection from the path, which you can even combine/intersect which other paths.
The picture I'm working on is not completed yet but I've made preview available.
Getting the GIMP to compile correctly is a really hard though... I'm not going to repeat that loooong list of dependencies here, but you have to watch out sometimes. I guess it was the GTK+ 2.3.5 where I had to explicitly enable XInput to get my Wacom tablet to get recognized by the GIMP, and somewhere else I had to explicitly enable Xft or something like that...
But the new GIMP is a heavy improvement to the 1.3.x series, mainly from a GUI point of view, as the GIMP's drawing qualities where already quite good, IMHO (but then, I'm a programmer, not an artist ;-).
whether EV1Servers has something to do with the Canopy Group... somehow I wouldn't be surprised.
Really ? There are thousands of things to do with a computer besides writing programs for it.
* Administration, you don't really need much programming experience to administrer a large site of e.g. Active Directory controllers.
An administrator who can't write scripts (scripting counts as programming, IMHO) to automate task isn't worth the money in my world. Especially when managing large sites you won't get very far with just the GUI's provided by MS and third-party companies. Even more so when there are UNIX systems around.
* Network planning/engineering..
* Application useage, e.g. modelling in Maya , 3D theory.
I didn't know you had to study to use Maya... but on second thought... ;-) Seriously though, the one who asked this "Ask Slashdot" said "or perhaps any general methods for surviving computer science courses for new students?", and if you don't learn at least the programming basics you simply won't survive this.
Sorry, but you should learn something else. Really, if you don't take the time to learn programming (hey, be thankful it's Java and not LISP ;-) you should do something else.
I think it's extremely important to at least understand the basics of "how is software built". And learning a programming language is actually a lot easier than learning a real language, and you can learn both if just sit down and practice, gawddamnit !
"Opportunity is missed by most people because it is dressed in overalls and looks like work." - Thomas Edison
This should actually read: Broadband Over Power Lines: Coming Real Soon Now(tm) ? like in all those past years :-)
Frankly, I don't think we'll ever see this hardware vaporware...