I have heard by word of mouth that the linux kernel depends upon bugs and quirks in gcc in order to compile and function correctly. I am not sure if this is absolutely true, but it's believable. If it is indeed true, then the linux kernel can't be compiled with the Intel compiler.
However, if it is false, then I would very much like someone to provide me with instructions (I am not L33t) on how to re-compile the kernel with the intel compiler. If it gives that much of a performance increase, even on AMD cpus (I myself have a P3-450, roomate has athlon 1ghz) then I'm there.
Anyone who says anything about it not being free as in speech can shut up now ^_^
I'm a CS major as well, and I know what it's like to learn many languages. I took a class called Programming Language Concepts (PLC). We learned LISP, PROLOG and Simulink(not really a language) in 10 weeks. The way I learned them so fast was to focus on the concept, not on the language itself. This has proved useful especially in the object oriented languages.
Once you know the concepts behind a certain type of language. Say object oriented languages. You know things that are true about every object oriented language. There are classes, methods, public, private, exceptions, threads, locks, static stuff, polymorphism, inheritance, etc. Once you understand all of these things, every object oriented language should come easily to you. It took me awhile to learn C++, and a little less time to learn vb, then java. I learned C# in a matter of days, and I learned all of the basics of python in a few minutes this morning (no joke). Perl is next on my list.
Get a book on object oriented/event driven programming. And get another book on procedural programming. Learn the concepts behind the languages, and not the languages themselves. The syntax and the API will be most of what you have to learn when picking up a new language. And those are things you can just reference repeatedly until you memorize them.
Well I was in CompUSA the other day and I heard a normal guy talking to one of the salesfolk. I myself was inspecting Viewsonic's tablet pcs and wireless monitors (oooh, ahhh). This guy was obviously not a techie. He also wasn't an idiot either, as many techies assume all non techies to be. He was asking the sales guy about one of HPs new machines. The questions he asked were pretty simple. Can this machine make CDs? Can I take video from my camera and edit it on here? Can I edit music on here? He didn't care if the machine was fast or slow, or what resolutiont he monitor ran at. He just wanted to know the capabilities of the machine.
When normal people buy computers they don't think of it the same way we do. They think of it just like buying a DVD player. It's a machine that is going to do a few things. The one I get has to be able to do the things I want. They don't care what OS, how fast, or anything. Because you can't care about what you don't know about. This guy wanted a machine that could help him do multimedia work. Sounded like amateur film making or home movies or something. And that particular machine did the job for him at the right price. That's why he left the store with it. He probably could have gotten a faster machine for less money, but what he got was adequate.
The reason people go to Windows so often is because some of the things they want their machine to do, can't be done with linux. The high quality polished interfaces and software just aren't there. Does linux have stuff as nice as After Effects and Premiere? No. So if someone wants to do video linux is already out of the picture. Does it have AutoCAD? no, so architects aren't goign to use it. Games? no.
Windows is and has been ready for the desktop for a long long time. It does EVERYTHING. It may not do it well, and it may crash sometimes, and linux may be more powerful, faster, more stable, or better, at certaint things. But if there is somethign you want your computer to do. And computers are capable of doing it. Then a computer with Windows is capable of doing it. That can't be said for any other operating system. When someone else is selling a machine that does everything, you need to sell a machine that does more than everything to even stand a chance.
True, in the united states children are not full blown citizesn with civil rights. But they SHOULD BE. Just because someone has been on this earth for a shorter period of time does not mean they should be denied the rights of every other human being. First there was discrimination based on skin color and gender. Then there was discrimination based on sexual preference. The last thing is discrimination based on age.
Children are PEOPLE. They do not BELONG to their parents, they aren't posessions like a car or a television. Parents have a right to bring up a child as they see fit, I agree. In fact I would go so far as to say parents have a duty to bring up their children as best as they can. However, when the child's human rights are infringed upon that is crossing the line.
Given, that playing video games, violent or not, is not a right in any form, it is still stupid. I mean its one thing if a five year old tries to go to the store to buy GTA 3. It's another thing if a 16 year old guy has an after school job and he wants to buy the newest FPS with his own money. They have every right to buy anything they want.
True that because you use UML it doesn't mean your program will be perfect. And in some cases, it does make you over design, especially on smaller projects. However, drawing a program's design is not the only purpose of UML.
If you have a good UML software package it will be able to create stubs for all the classes in your object oriented project. It's not an amazing thing, but it saves a lot of time in typing. The main use of UML is if you have a team of say 40 guys working on a project. You can all meet, discuss the design, get a complete UML cranked out. Then break off a piece for everyone. Theoretically everybody will be able to code their portion correctly without having to worry about whether anyone else messed up or not. Since the UML tells them what objects they should be using and all the public methods and such.
So if you're coding something small at home. UML isn't entirely useful. But as project size increases UMLs usefulness does as well. Besides overdesigning is much more preferable than underdesignin.
If they try to take this device and compete with Nintendo, MS and Sony they have no chance to survive. The product is too ahead of its time to make any money. However, it could be succesful if they market it to hotels, airlines, trains, doctors, dentists, cafes, etc. Put a money slot on it and put it in various public places. I think if they market it this way they can be quite profitable.
I don't know why nobody but me sees it, but DVD players are quickly becoming the key component of a "media hub". I mean we've got a shitty cheap Apex, which we cracked for PAL and region free-ness. It's got logos on it for mp3, jpeg, dts, dolby digital, it plays cds and of course dvds. That's a lot of stuff. If someone made a divx playing pvr dvd player that would be the be all end all to home entertainment. All you would need would be digital cable or sattelite, a television with digital in and out, a reciever, speakers, and one of those. Maybe a VCR or a cassette deck or turntable. That's it! Console gaming is a nice thing too, but hey. If you throw like an xbox/ps2 emulator in the box you are the winner. And as other people have stated the XboX just doesn't have the technical capabilities to be this device without some serious additions. And considering price of xbox and add-ons and the limited hard drive space, I think I'm going to get working on this right away!
Depends on what you use it for. The money I pay when I stop at a toll on the road is a tax used to pay to improve the roads. The social security tax I pay on my paycheck is used, for social security (the fact that it's dying is anohter story). So if there is an internet tax, it should be used to improve/maintain the infrastructure of the internet. Otherwise, screw it.
Looking at non cyber-crime punishments they are all out of whack in the first place. Petty thieves going to jail longer than drunk drivers and such. So of course when you throw cracking into the mix the punishments aren't going to make sense either. Presently they are set way to high, but for a reason. The law enforcement isn't very capable of catching anyone. Seriously, how many police stations actually hire IT guys? Well, they should, so they dont' mess up when say using a search warrant against a l33t h4x0r. So because the enforcement is poor the penalty is high, to scare people away from doing crimes they will get away with.
I'm a guy in a CS program, and the women are lacking, but not completely absent. There are a lot of Software Engineering women actually than CS, but men are still the vast majority in tech programs. Anyway, as for why more women don't go for CS or other tech degrees I am uncertain, but I believe I have pinpointed the reason that they drop out. My College (RIT) will tell you that you don't need to have prior experience to go into CS. This is a lie. If you haven't coded before in your life, you're dead where you stand. First day of CS 1, objects and UNIX. loops? printf? int x? forget about it if you don't know the basics your screwed. The other problem is high school guidance counselors. They see a student who likes computers. Where do they send them? well computer...science! Even when IT was the correct choice for this person. More CS majors go to IT in my school, its rediculous. And there are quite a few girls in IT that do well, I know some of them. So the reason that people drop out of CS is because they really wanted IT, but their guidance counselor was stupid, and they've never coded before in their lives. So why more women? Well you've got a major where coming in you've got very few women. An equal percentage of women and men belong in IT, so now you've got less of each, but losing 2 in 20 women hurts a lot more than losing 8 in 80 men. This is just an educated guess, but I didn't know any girls that could code in high school. Not one. So it would be a good guess to say that a higher percentage of women had no prior experience. So the smaller group loses a higher percentage of people. You end up with say 70 guys and 3 girls. And you started with 80 and 20. How to get more women in CS? Teach computers in high school. High schools buy all these computers and they use them to facilitate learning in other subjects. Use them to teach computers! That's all they're really good for. Hire a techie, there are lots who need jobs, and make every kid learn basic C, basic object oriented concepts, and binary math. Have a hardware class, teach everyone how a PC works, and how to build one. If its mandatory just as many guys and girls will be interested. Nobody is going to go for a CS degree in college if they've never done it before in their lives. Oh yeah, I'm going to commit to lots of money and 4-5 years at a university doing something I've never tried. Yeah, sure.
If Nintendo starts manufacturing old hardware again that will mess up the prices of used games in a big way. I we at the mall days ago and they has NESs for 40 bucks, SNES for 30 and N64s for an amount I forget, but cheap. They might have been cheaper than the NESs I dont' remember so well. Bit it was messed up! We've got like 3 NESs in the house. Well actually 1 physically here. I own one that is far away. We won one at a duck hunt tournament (people SUCK at duck hunt!) and my roomate's got one. We gave one to his brother.
Oh yeah, that's another thing. At that very same duck hunt tournament there was a guy who was collecting Mario/Duck Hunt cartridges. He had so many he made a suit of armor out of them. However, he performed very poorly compared to us in the tourney. Apparently he collected so many that the price went from 15 cents to 95 cents a cart in his time. If nintendo manufactures more old Nintendo stuff wont that not work. I mean people can get carts for 95 cents they aren't going to pay more than that. And making more supply just lowers prices.
I'm fairly certain Nintendo will only be manufacturing N64 stuff if anything. They aren't that stupid.
Wow dude, thanks a bunch. I've been trying to figure out how to do that urpmi stuff for the longest frickin' time. One question though. You say you have the nvidia drivers working perfectly. Like the ones that you download from nvidia.com? if so, can you tell me how to do it for a TNT2 in Mdk9? I tried following the directions that came with the driver, and it ruined my whole X. Had to re-install mandrake because I wasn't saavy enough to fix it.
The video player sounds good, but I heard mac was making an ipod with video, so the video ipod kind of wins by default. As for the watch it is totally awesome. If only it used a different messenger than MSN. Give me a watch running gaim and then it will be worth your subscription fee.
I agree. Why use a CD-ROM to play cds when you can get *gasp* a cd player? it's a new invention! They even have mp3 ones now. And they have some that hold multiple cds. Some even have two lasers so you can copy cds. Indeed, Sony does make quite a few quality ones.
If Microsoft made a windows media player for linux, I'd use it in a heartbeat. When I was using linux of course. It would be more stable, easier to install, and easier to use than any of the current linux equivalents. Sure it might not be as powerful, but its easy. I still really want winamp for linux. I can't stand playing mp3s in wmp. But for video it's ok. As far as I'm concerned any commercial software for linux is a good thing, even if it is MS.
And I think that most people who haven't been poisoned by the media think the same.
Smoking tobacco causes lung disease. Every single person who smokes tobacco, no matter how much, will damage their lungs to some degree. The more you smoke the more you damage your lungs. This is a fact.
Playing violent video games does NOT cause violence. In fact, most people who play violent video games do not commit violent acts. The same goes for violent movies and tv shows.
Now, there are some people in this world who should not play violent video games. These people are really disturbed people and really immature people. Really disturbed people were probably going to commit a violent act anyway. The violent video games they play do not cause them to be violent, but it gives them the idea of HOW to be violent. Some disturbed person who is going to kill someone might decide that instead of just shooting someone that they will take out their heart and hold it aloft after playing mortal kombat. Because they are disturbed. Then the video game gets blamed because some guy happened to be a nut.
Really immature people will act out anything they see. They have a difficult time telling the difference between fantasy and reality. Not being able to tell the difference between fantasy and reality is actually part of the definition of insanity. Some children CAN play violent games. I played violent games when I was little, yet I am very adamant against violence. But I still play counter-strike, because I realize I'm not actually killing anyone.
Legislation against violent video games is just a continuation of an ongoing american trend of the government forcing stupid americans to do things that they should. Social Security forces people to save for retirement (even though its not working so well). Curfews force parents to not let their kids out at night. Violent media laws force parents to not let their 5 year olds play GTA. This is ok because all the stupid parents who have immature kids are now forced into being slightly better parents. The problem is that some parents who teach their kids right lose the freedom to allow their children to do things that they are mature enough to do, but not old enough. Just like someone who is smart enough to save for their own retirement shouldn't have to pay social security.
Tobacco causes lung cancer. Violent video games dont' cause violence. They give violent people new ideas. They were going to be violent anyway. If anythign it draws these loonies out so we can lock them up. All anti-violent video game legislation infringes on the rights of parents to let their 8 year old play GTA if that parent is a good parent and the 8 year old is indeed mature enough. Instead we should fund schools on "how not to suck at being a parent". Parents these days all go to work, leave kids home alone, and let the television and the video game console, and not the internet, be the parent. This is where the problem lies. It should be a crime not to bring up your children properly. It shouldn't be a crime to play counter-strike.
Everything you said is awesome, but. I think being graphical is an absolute must.
My ideal package manager would be where everything installs graphically, like in windows, or like mozilla. It installs in a location in the filesystem specified by the user. And this should be predictable, no making extra folders in folders like windows apps do. If something has dependencies it should check for them and automatically upgrade/install them if they are not present without ruining compatability for any other app.
There should also be a seperate piece of software with a list of all installed packages organized by type of application. The packages should have real names like "Mozilla Version 1.2.1" not "mozilla-i686-pc-linux-gnu-1.2.1-sea". From this graphical application I should be able to automatically upgrade install and remove new packages. The program should also "just know" where to get updates to packages and how to install them.
Not only would this be a vast improvement in ease of use over current linux options, but it's easier than windows. And the only thing I've seen yet that's easier than windows is knoppix. So it's saying a lot.
What about the other side? MS wrote a lot of windows libraries. And a lot of people write open source programs that use those proprietary libraries. Ooooh.
Know what else? Commercial software companies write programs that use MS libraries too. And they profit from MS labor. And if they don't give any money to MS in the process (such as buying VS.NET or something) then MS don't get crap from it.
The problem here is determining whether using a program withing a program is derivitive. And is a library a seperate piece of software or part of the software that uses it, or part of the OS. If you were to argue technically it could go on for days. What we need is to know legally which it is. Which wont happen until we upgrade our laws to better ones that take into account modern technology.
for the longest time. I would load up Moz if I was browsing in pop-up land, but it was slow and used a lot of memory (and my cpu sucks) so I used IE for my daily browsing. Then I discovered phoenix, holy crap. I wrote a whole thing about phoenix's amazingness in my journal, so there's no reason to repeat it here. But it has made a significant positive impact on my daily routine.
Nobody who is serious about threatening computer security is after home users. They have more to worry about ad/spy ware than viruses. There are 4 things any home user can do to avoid all viruses/trojans. In order of effectiveness
1. Don't download e-mail attatchments. Avoid attatchments to e-mails entirely if possible, use IM file transfers instead.
2. Don't use Outlook.
3. Don't visit untrustworthy websites. like warezprontrojanforyou.com
4. Use a firewall if you are on a LAN.
Anti-virus software is almost useless for a home user, unless they are incredibly stupid. All it does is interfere with other programs and waste memory. Seriously if you are a home user who the crap wants to crack into your pc? You probably haven't even configured it properly so it can't even have enough uptime to get anything useful from it.
And do hax0rz really want to steal your family photo album? The best they can hope for is your quicken files or your credit card number. They can get thousands of CC#s by cracking a business database better than getting home users through windows holes. Computer security is somethign only business have to worry about.
It's just my personal preference
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DVI Flat Panels?
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· Score: 1, Informative
But whenever I think about buying a monitor of any kind there are two places I go.
First I head to http://www.viewsonic.com Then I head to http://www.buy.com free shipping!
Actually diamonds are neither rare nor intrinsically valuable. The only reason that they cost so much at the jewelry store is because of the monopoly of debeers. They pretty much control all the diamonds in the world. if they wanted they could manufacture diamonds out of coal instead of mining them. It is not a lack of supply that makes them expensive but the fact that one company controls all the supply.
Diamonds are expensive for the same reason that Win2k costs $200 per seat. Actually, I prefer emeralds myself.
Independent game developement is really cool. It's a lot like independent movie developement. You get games from "dead" genres like adventure games. And you get RPGs with plots that just wouldn't work for a commercial game.
However, there is one problem. Independent film succeeds because the equipment necessary to create a modern film is difficult, but not impossible to come by. And those who are truly going to make a quality movie can obtain it.
In order to make a modern video game with the latest in graphics, sound, etc. You need the dev kits and the info that the "real" game companies get. John Carmack at Id had GeForce3's before anyone else so he could make Doom 3. The guys who made Metroid prime had GameCube kits before there were GameCubes. Even if I had the money I doubt I could acquire a GameCube developement box. But if you're strictly talking PC here, just think of DirectX9. It's out, but there's no SDK, yet. But you know what? I bet you all the fancy games under developement right now know what's up with DX9 and they have NDAs not to tell us.
Independent games are really cool. But they will always be a step behind commercial games because they don't have access to the latest and greatest technology. It takes years to make a game and unless you have graphics hardware that is as good as what consumers will have in 2 years your game wont be top of the line, graphics wise. Not to say that graphics are a necessity, Moonbase Commander rules.
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I have heard by word of mouth that the linux kernel depends upon bugs and quirks in gcc in order to compile and function correctly. I am not sure if this is absolutely true, but it's believable. If it is indeed true, then the linux kernel can't be compiled with the Intel compiler.
However, if it is false, then I would very much like someone to provide me with instructions (I am not L33t) on how to re-compile the kernel with the intel compiler. If it gives that much of a performance increase, even on AMD cpus (I myself have a P3-450, roomate has athlon 1ghz) then I'm there.
Anyone who says anything about it not being free as in speech can shut up now ^_^
I'm a CS major as well, and I know what it's like to learn many languages. I took a class called Programming Language Concepts (PLC). We learned LISP, PROLOG and Simulink(not really a language) in 10 weeks. The way I learned them so fast was to focus on the concept, not on the language itself. This has proved useful especially in the object oriented languages.
Once you know the concepts behind a certain type of language. Say object oriented languages. You know things that are true about every object oriented language. There are classes, methods, public, private, exceptions, threads, locks, static stuff, polymorphism, inheritance, etc. Once you understand all of these things, every object oriented language should come easily to you. It took me awhile to learn C++, and a little less time to learn vb, then java. I learned C# in a matter of days, and I learned all of the basics of python in a few minutes this morning (no joke). Perl is next on my list.
Get a book on object oriented/event driven programming. And get another book on procedural programming. Learn the concepts behind the languages, and not the languages themselves. The syntax and the API will be most of what you have to learn when picking up a new language. And those are things you can just reference repeatedly until you memorize them.
Well I was in CompUSA the other day and I heard a normal guy talking to one of the salesfolk. I myself was inspecting Viewsonic's tablet pcs and wireless monitors (oooh, ahhh). This guy was obviously not a techie. He also wasn't an idiot either, as many techies assume all non techies to be. He was asking the sales guy about one of HPs new machines. The questions he asked were pretty simple. Can this machine make CDs? Can I take video from my camera and edit it on here? Can I edit music on here? He didn't care if the machine was fast or slow, or what resolutiont he monitor ran at. He just wanted to know the capabilities of the machine.
When normal people buy computers they don't think of it the same way we do. They think of it just like buying a DVD player. It's a machine that is going to do a few things. The one I get has to be able to do the things I want. They don't care what OS, how fast, or anything. Because you can't care about what you don't know about. This guy wanted a machine that could help him do multimedia work. Sounded like amateur film making or home movies or something. And that particular machine did the job for him at the right price. That's why he left the store with it. He probably could have gotten a faster machine for less money, but what he got was adequate.
The reason people go to Windows so often is because some of the things they want their machine to do, can't be done with linux. The high quality polished interfaces and software just aren't there. Does linux have stuff as nice as After Effects and Premiere? No. So if someone wants to do video linux is already out of the picture. Does it have AutoCAD? no, so architects aren't goign to use it. Games? no.
Windows is and has been ready for the desktop for a long long time. It does EVERYTHING. It may not do it well, and it may crash sometimes, and linux may be more powerful, faster, more stable, or better, at certaint things. But if there is somethign you want your computer to do. And computers are capable of doing it. Then a computer with Windows is capable of doing it. That can't be said for any other operating system. When someone else is selling a machine that does everything, you need to sell a machine that does more than everything to even stand a chance.
True, in the united states children are not full blown citizesn with civil rights. But they SHOULD BE. Just because someone has been on this earth for a shorter period of time does not mean they should be denied the rights of every other human being. First there was discrimination based on skin color and gender. Then there was discrimination based on sexual preference. The last thing is discrimination based on age.
Children are PEOPLE. They do not BELONG to their parents, they aren't posessions like a car or a television. Parents have a right to bring up a child as they see fit, I agree. In fact I would go so far as to say parents have a duty to bring up their children as best as they can. However, when the child's human rights are infringed upon that is crossing the line.
Given, that playing video games, violent or not, is not a right in any form, it is still stupid. I mean its one thing if a five year old tries to go to the store to buy GTA 3. It's another thing if a 16 year old guy has an after school job and he wants to buy the newest FPS with his own money. They have every right to buy anything they want.
True that because you use UML it doesn't mean your program will be perfect. And in some cases, it does make you over design, especially on smaller projects. However, drawing a program's design is not the only purpose of UML.
If you have a good UML software package it will be able to create stubs for all the classes in your object oriented project. It's not an amazing thing, but it saves a lot of time in typing. The main use of UML is if you have a team of say 40 guys working on a project. You can all meet, discuss the design, get a complete UML cranked out. Then break off a piece for everyone. Theoretically everybody will be able to code their portion correctly without having to worry about whether anyone else messed up or not. Since the UML tells them what objects they should be using and all the public methods and such.
So if you're coding something small at home. UML isn't entirely useful. But as project size increases UMLs usefulness does as well. Besides overdesigning is much more preferable than underdesignin.
If they try to take this device and compete with Nintendo, MS and Sony they have no chance to survive. The product is too ahead of its time to make any money. However, it could be succesful if they market it to hotels, airlines, trains, doctors, dentists, cafes, etc. Put a money slot on it and put it in various public places. I think if they market it this way they can be quite profitable.
I don't know why nobody but me sees it, but DVD players are quickly becoming the key component of a "media hub". I mean we've got a shitty cheap Apex, which we cracked for PAL and region free-ness. It's got logos on it for mp3, jpeg, dts, dolby digital, it plays cds and of course dvds. That's a lot of stuff. If someone made a divx playing pvr dvd player that would be the be all end all to home entertainment. All you would need would be digital cable or sattelite, a television with digital in and out, a reciever, speakers, and one of those. Maybe a VCR or a cassette deck or turntable. That's it! Console gaming is a nice thing too, but hey. If you throw like an xbox/ps2 emulator in the box you are the winner. And as other people have stated the XboX just doesn't have the technical capabilities to be this device without some serious additions. And considering price of xbox and add-ons and the limited hard drive space, I think I'm going to get working on this right away!
I predict that the music business will have a 0% change in their business model.
I'll wager that both of our predictions are correct.
Depends on what you use it for. The money I pay when I stop at a toll on the road is a tax used to pay to improve the roads. The social security tax I pay on my paycheck is used, for social security (the fact that it's dying is anohter story). So if there is an internet tax, it should be used to improve/maintain the infrastructure of the internet. Otherwise, screw it.
Looking at non cyber-crime punishments they are all out of whack in the first place. Petty thieves going to jail longer than drunk drivers and such. So of course when you throw cracking into the mix the punishments aren't going to make sense either. Presently they are set way to high, but for a reason. The law enforcement isn't very capable of catching anyone. Seriously, how many police stations actually hire IT guys? Well, they should, so they dont' mess up when say using a search warrant against a l33t h4x0r. So because the enforcement is poor the penalty is high, to scare people away from doing crimes they will get away with.
I'm a guy in a CS program, and the women are lacking, but not completely absent. There are a lot of Software Engineering women actually than CS, but men are still the vast majority in tech programs.
Anyway, as for why more women don't go for CS or other tech degrees I am uncertain, but I believe I have pinpointed the reason that they drop out. My College (RIT) will tell you that you don't need to have prior experience to go into CS. This is a lie. If you haven't coded before in your life, you're dead where you stand. First day of CS 1, objects and UNIX. loops? printf? int x? forget about it if you don't know the basics your screwed. The other problem is high school guidance counselors. They see a student who likes computers. Where do they send them? well computer...science! Even when IT was the correct choice for this person. More CS majors go to IT in my school, its rediculous. And there are quite a few girls in IT that do well, I know some of them.
So the reason that people drop out of CS is because they really wanted IT, but their guidance counselor was stupid, and they've never coded before in their lives.
So why more women? Well you've got a major where coming in you've got very few women. An equal percentage of women and men belong in IT, so now you've got less of each, but losing 2 in 20 women hurts a lot more than losing 8 in 80 men. This is just an educated guess, but I didn't know any girls that could code in high school. Not one. So it would be a good guess to say that a higher percentage of women had no prior experience. So the smaller group loses a higher percentage of people. You end up with say 70 guys and 3 girls. And you started with 80 and 20.
How to get more women in CS? Teach computers in high school. High schools buy all these computers and they use them to facilitate learning in other subjects. Use them to teach computers! That's all they're really good for. Hire a techie, there are lots who need jobs, and make every kid learn basic C, basic object oriented concepts, and binary math. Have a hardware class, teach everyone how a PC works, and how to build one. If its mandatory just as many guys and girls will be interested. Nobody is going to go for a CS degree in college if they've never done it before in their lives. Oh yeah, I'm going to commit to lots of money and 4-5 years at a university doing something I've never tried. Yeah, sure.
If Nintendo starts manufacturing old hardware again that will mess up the prices of used games in a big way. I we at the mall days ago and they has NESs for 40 bucks, SNES for 30 and N64s for an amount I forget, but cheap. They might have been cheaper than the NESs I dont' remember so well. Bit it was messed up! We've got like 3 NESs in the house. Well actually 1 physically here. I own one that is far away. We won one at a duck hunt tournament (people SUCK at duck hunt!) and my roomate's got one. We gave one to his brother.
Oh yeah, that's another thing. At that very same duck hunt tournament there was a guy who was collecting Mario/Duck Hunt cartridges. He had so many he made a suit of armor out of them. However, he performed very poorly compared to us in the tourney. Apparently he collected so many that the price went from 15 cents to 95 cents a cart in his time. If nintendo manufactures more old Nintendo stuff wont that not work. I mean people can get carts for 95 cents they aren't going to pay more than that. And making more supply just lowers prices.
I'm fairly certain Nintendo will only be manufacturing N64 stuff if anything. They aren't that stupid.
Wow dude, thanks a bunch. I've been trying to figure out how to do that urpmi stuff for the longest frickin' time. One question though. You say you have the nvidia drivers working perfectly. Like the ones that you download from nvidia.com? if so, can you tell me how to do it for a TNT2 in Mdk9? I tried following the directions that came with the driver, and it ruined my whole X. Had to re-install mandrake because I wasn't saavy enough to fix it.
The video player sounds good, but I heard mac was making an ipod with video, so the video ipod kind of wins by default. As for the watch it is totally awesome. If only it used a different messenger than MSN. Give me a watch running gaim and then it will be worth your subscription fee.
I agree. Why use a CD-ROM to play cds when you can get *gasp* a cd player? it's a new invention! They even have mp3 ones now. And they have some that hold multiple cds. Some even have two lasers so you can copy cds. Indeed, Sony does make quite a few quality ones.
If Microsoft made a windows media player for linux, I'd use it in a heartbeat. When I was using linux of course. It would be more stable, easier to install, and easier to use than any of the current linux equivalents. Sure it might not be as powerful, but its easy. I still really want winamp for linux. I can't stand playing mp3s in wmp. But for video it's ok. As far as I'm concerned any commercial software for linux is a good thing, even if it is MS.
And I think that most people who haven't been poisoned by the media think the same.
Smoking tobacco causes lung disease. Every single person who smokes tobacco, no matter how much, will damage their lungs to some degree. The more you smoke the more you damage your lungs. This is a fact.
Playing violent video games does NOT cause violence. In fact, most people who play violent video games do not commit violent acts. The same goes for violent movies and tv shows.
Now, there are some people in this world who should not play violent video games. These people are really disturbed people and really immature people. Really disturbed people were probably going to commit a violent act anyway. The violent video games they play do not cause them to be violent, but it gives them the idea of HOW to be violent. Some disturbed person who is going to kill someone might decide that instead of just shooting someone that they will take out their heart and hold it aloft after playing mortal kombat. Because they are disturbed. Then the video game gets blamed because some guy happened to be a nut.
Really immature people will act out anything they see. They have a difficult time telling the difference between fantasy and reality. Not being able to tell the difference between fantasy and reality is actually part of the definition of insanity. Some children CAN play violent games. I played violent games when I was little, yet I am very adamant against violence. But I still play counter-strike, because I realize I'm not actually killing anyone.
Legislation against violent video games is just a continuation of an ongoing american trend of the government forcing stupid americans to do things that they should. Social Security forces people to save for retirement (even though its not working so well). Curfews force parents to not let their kids out at night. Violent media laws force parents to not let their 5 year olds play GTA. This is ok because all the stupid parents who have immature kids are now forced into being slightly better parents. The problem is that some parents who teach their kids right lose the freedom to allow their children to do things that they are mature enough to do, but not old enough. Just like someone who is smart enough to save for their own retirement shouldn't have to pay social security.
Tobacco causes lung cancer. Violent video games dont' cause violence. They give violent people new ideas. They were going to be violent anyway. If anythign it draws these loonies out so we can lock them up. All anti-violent video game legislation infringes on the rights of parents to let their 8 year old play GTA if that parent is a good parent and the 8 year old is indeed mature enough. Instead we should fund schools on "how not to suck at being a parent". Parents these days all go to work, leave kids home alone, and let the television and the video game console, and not the internet, be the parent. This is where the problem lies. It should be a crime not to bring up your children properly. It shouldn't be a crime to play counter-strike.
Everything you said is awesome, but. I think being graphical is an absolute must.
My ideal package manager would be where everything installs graphically, like in windows, or like mozilla. It installs in a location in the filesystem specified by the user. And this should be predictable, no making extra folders in folders like windows apps do. If something has dependencies it should check for them and automatically upgrade/install them if they are not present without ruining compatability for any other app.
There should also be a seperate piece of software with a list of all installed packages organized by type of application. The packages should have real names like "Mozilla Version 1.2.1" not "mozilla-i686-pc-linux-gnu-1.2.1-sea". From this graphical application I should be able to automatically upgrade install and remove new packages. The program should also "just know" where to get updates to packages and how to install them.
Not only would this be a vast improvement in ease of use over current linux options, but it's easier than windows. And the only thing I've seen yet that's easier than windows is knoppix. So it's saying a lot.
What about the other side? MS wrote a lot of windows libraries. And a lot of people write open source programs that use those proprietary libraries. Ooooh.
Know what else? Commercial software companies write programs that use MS libraries too. And they profit from MS labor. And if they don't give any money to MS in the process (such as buying VS.NET or something) then MS don't get crap from it.
The problem here is determining whether using a program withing a program is derivitive. And is a library a seperate piece of software or part of the software that uses it, or part of the OS. If you were to argue technically it could go on for days. What we need is to know legally which it is. Which wont happen until we upgrade our laws to better ones that take into account modern technology.
The same way winzip does. Winzip is free, yet everyone and their mother has it on their computers. Winamp is the same way. Do what they do.
for the longest time. I would load up Moz if I was browsing in pop-up land, but it was slow and used a lot of memory (and my cpu sucks) so I used IE for my daily browsing. Then I discovered phoenix, holy crap. I wrote a whole thing about phoenix's amazingness in my journal, so there's no reason to repeat it here. But it has made a significant positive impact on my daily routine.
Nobody who is serious about threatening computer security is after home users. They have more to worry about ad/spy ware than viruses. There are 4 things any home user can do to avoid all viruses/trojans. In order of effectiveness
1. Don't download e-mail attatchments. Avoid attatchments to e-mails entirely if possible, use IM file transfers instead.
2. Don't use Outlook.
3. Don't visit untrustworthy websites. like warezprontrojanforyou.com
4. Use a firewall if you are on a LAN.
Anti-virus software is almost useless for a home user, unless they are incredibly stupid. All it does is interfere with other programs and waste memory. Seriously if you are a home user who the crap wants to crack into your pc? You probably haven't even configured it properly so it can't even have enough uptime to get anything useful from it.
And do hax0rz really want to steal your family photo album? The best they can hope for is your quicken files or your credit card number. They can get thousands of CC#s by cracking a business database better than getting home users through windows holes. Computer security is somethign only business have to worry about.
But whenever I think about buying a monitor of any kind there are two places I go.
First I head to http://www.viewsonic.com
Then
I head to http://www.buy.com
free shipping!
Actually diamonds are neither rare nor intrinsically valuable. The only reason that they cost so much at the jewelry store is because of the monopoly of debeers. They pretty much control all the diamonds in the world. if they wanted they could manufacture diamonds out of coal instead of mining them. It is not a lack of supply that makes them expensive but the fact that one company controls all the supply.
Diamonds are expensive for the same reason that Win2k costs $200 per seat. Actually, I prefer emeralds myself.
Independent game developement is really cool. It's a lot like independent movie developement. You get games from "dead" genres like adventure games. And you get RPGs with plots that just wouldn't work for a commercial game.
However, there is one problem. Independent film succeeds because the equipment necessary to create a modern film is difficult, but not impossible to come by. And those who are truly going to make a quality movie can obtain it.
In order to make a modern video game with the latest in graphics, sound, etc. You need the dev kits and the info that the "real" game companies get. John Carmack at Id had GeForce3's before anyone else so he could make Doom 3. The guys who made Metroid prime had GameCube kits before there were GameCubes. Even if I had the money I doubt I could acquire a GameCube developement box. But if you're strictly talking PC here, just think of DirectX9. It's out, but there's no SDK, yet. But you know what? I bet you all the fancy games under developement right now know what's up with DX9 and they have NDAs not to tell us.
Independent games are really cool. But they will always be a step behind commercial games because they don't have access to the latest and greatest technology. It takes years to make a game and unless you have graphics hardware that is as good as what consumers will have in 2 years your game wont be top of the line, graphics wise. Not to say that graphics are a necessity, Moonbase Commander rules.