There are MANY very interesting problems that have two approaches:
1) nasty heuristics, not guaranteed, but workable,
and
2) brute force, perhaps optimized, but still brute.
and since there are so very many brute force problems, software approaches change in KIND as the hardware scales up.
When I can take the time/space to do a brute force search on a problem, I can guarantee certain things about my answer, which is very valuable computationally.
Translation: software is a gas, it expands to use all the space/time given to it, and it will continue to do so.
If you disagree, well, I guess you wont be using any voice recognition software next year when it hits hard, because that is a clear example of the effect of increased resources.
One of my friends is fond of saying, that despite the fact that all the optimization math works so beautifuly, capitalism is still ineficient, because, basically, people dont want your money.
Really, they want control, or they want 'market share', or they want 'guaranteed revenue', but very few just want money, in big bundles, as often as they can get it.
And so we get companies doing things like this that just BEG to get people to jump ship to wireless broadband just as SOON as it is ready, all so they can fell a little more secure.
BTW, this type of TOS probably wouldn't hold up in court, as there are all kinds of fun and complex precedents in the telephone industry about your usage rights inside your house. But I'll leave that topic for the online-lawer types.
Flight or Flight happens FIRST in ALL responses. It is basic nurology. You cannot escape it (with out brain surgery) and you wouldn't want to. (You'd get hit by a car inside a week)
This is not 'determinism', it is how you are wired together. Fight or Flight is a demonstrable as the fact that most people have feet.
I cant stand all these people that spend so much time trying to be 'something more than an animal', if they aren't going to take the time to learn just how cool the 'animal' is. It's deliberate ignorance, and it really burns me.
Individuals which significantly diverge in ANY way from the population norm are usually at a much higher risk of congenital health problems. Its the bitch of mutation, it's much more likely to screw you.
So if some enzyme change makes you smarter, it stands a good chance of screwing with something else. It is only through evolution that your new advantage (lamda calculus in your head!) gets ironed out into something that is safe, because the genius can out compete most normals, but the SANE genius can out compete the genius.
Um, well, see, fundamentally our society ISN'T any different from those of the 'animal kingdom', which, you may have noticed, we belong to.
Go hang out with the gender studies people, the behavioural sciences people, the biology people, and the psych people for a bit, and you will be trully suprised at how much behaviour is based upon Sexual/Fight-Flight/Phermonal/Primate Group interactions.
Put simply, thats it. Everything 'else' that makes us 'different' is just a result of scaleing the intelligence up in the system (and simillar traits can be found in the cetaceans, so we aren't all that different, we just have hands, something they must find terribly amusing)
And if you think there is a differance between force and cooperation, you don't understand behaviour.
>the entire basis of civilization rests on
>respecting the desires of others _without_
>coercion.
And silly me, I thought that civilisation was an emergent property of each individual's attempts to maximize their scarce resource allocation and genetic proliferation.
Hate to tell you this, but force is, and always has been, and probably always will, be part of this system.
I wish someone had pointed me towards the Knuth when I was in high school. It is the ultimate source of CS projects, and the ultimate resource upon their theory.
The Knuth (aka The Art of Computer Programming) is available from all reputable bookstores. You can get the boxed set or just the first book from barnesandnoble.com.
Please believe, if there is a deep and magic tome of computer science, this is it, and if you will ever truly have the love for CS, then you will love these books NO MATER YOUR SKILL LEVEL! Every chapter is filled with projects ranging from in your head to graduate thesis level, and they are labeled by difficulty and mathematical requirements.
In case you didn't notice my email addy, I'm sorta busy on the work/programming front. But someday (years hence), I'd like to spend some time doing game work.
Remeber WAAAAY back (like, before the net even *smirk*) when you HAD to have friends to stand a chance at many of the (text) myster games?
Now imagine a game, like myst, but bigger, with more complete physics. And imagine that this game, has varying degrees of dificulty, not as a setting, but as a function of how many people are in the game playing with you.
"I can open this door, but there is only one potion, guess we'll have to find another way to get you onto the pirate ship"
and
"If only Bob were playing, he could turn that lever while I pull the switch, guess I'll have to find some other way to do it. Hmm, wonder if I could bully that troll in the dungeon to help me..."
I want to play this kind of game. I would $PAY$ to play this kind of game. And I'd prefer regular releases of small games in a series to long seperated releases of HUGE games. (You and your buddies spend a weekend playing the New one every 2 months, maybe its an Add-on to the enginee.)
I mean, really, why not? The internet porn industry is a HUGE source of content/bandwidth suck/AND revenue. Its silly for the regulatory people to pretend it aint there. After all, adult clubs/shops are listed in the phone book.
I like this linux game initiative, but since when has having a "central company to enforce" been a trully good thing in standards? In fact, if one company controls it, isn't it an API, rather than a standard?
Beware the closed API my children, for it is the start of Evil. We cannot let companys get us to depend upon closed APIs as "Standards" again, I think we learned our lesson on that one the hard way.
I'll play the games, but I think the real future is in X 4.0, and all it's fun toys. Besides, the problem is not really the APIs, its the package system for games, and that's pretty much solved. -- Crutcher --
I liked the way that Humans were portrayed, depending upon which character was being followed.
When the movie followed the Humans, we saw them as civilized, when it followed the Psylocs, we saw them as apes, who talked in Grunts and used apelike body language. It was a neat storytelling trick, but it didn't save the movie. -- Crutcher --
Well, Eros is interface independant, and works form the assumption that "Everything is a Data Structure", and the GNU/HURD is Bizzare and Uber Flexible.
Command Line != UNIX-like
And besides, if you make the assumption that small programs are easier to debug, and that access modes should be uniform, then you tend to converge to something UNIX like as your basic system. Now, if memory or networking become cheap, things change a bit, but the bits that dont change will STAY unix like, because it WORKS, and it is near optimal. -- Crutcher --
I agree, mentoring is the best way. Not because of the things they can tell you, but because of the questions they can ask you. You'd be surprised how far a bright kid can go if you ask him the right question. That and finding people with the knowledge that WANT to mentor is a pain in the ass. I, a lowly undergrad, no more Perl and C/C++ than the overwhelming majority of my school's programming proffs. --- "Elegant, Commented, On Time; Pick any Two"
The main thing that I see is the evolution of several distinct facets of access, with a couple of parallel net experiences evolving to be seperate from each other. I will call these Domains, cause they a name.
The first Domain I will call CorpNet: Corporate/Media forces will continue to conglomerate, untill it is hard, or even imposible, to follow links from this top level net to anything non-corporate. They will even have their own search engines, that only search corporate sites (and are almost perfect, because the sites being searched are cooperating with the search engine). Everything will be beautiful, and big production. Most people wont even notice that they never leave CorpNet. Think of it as a Subspace (in the mathematical sense) of the internet.
The second domain I will call SchoolNet: It will be much the same as CorpNet, except it will take up the academic world, and will be much less flashy, but even better indexed. This will be another subspace.
The third domain I call GovNet, and I think you get the picture about what it will be. Subsapce again.
The fourth domain will be the loose conglomeration of personal sites, and small interest organizations. Lets call it OrgNet. It won't be very easy to search, because it will be so HUGE, and at the same time run by people that are largely ignorant of the underlying tech. But it will leak out to all the other Nets, and as such it will NOT be a subspace (ie. it is possible to leave OrgNet, from within OrgNet)
The next domain I want to talk about is DevNet. This is where the developers will hang, and it will have some ties to OrgNet, but will be much more cohessive, and better indexed.
And of course there will be countless ShadowNets, domains that are diliberately closed, and probably encrypted, because, for whatever reason, their users want them to be. (criminal, 1337 h4x0rs, artists, bored teeners, etc.) Think of the anoying people over at http://hell.com
And as to VR interfaces, well, I really, really have a problem with the visualization of both Stephenson and Gibbson.
The net will not ever be one uber vr world. There will be different Portals, the same as we have now, that coordinate how the net is accessable from the portals. But we will never get rid of command line access, it is simply so much faster than anything else could be, and serious users are not gonna give it up, and take "trains" through the net, or "fly" when we are searching for something.
Programming is one of the hardest things that we have ever asked the human mind to do. We are not built for the kind of internalization of flow and structure that it requires, and we are certainly not built for the level of perfection it demands.
As such, not every one CAN do it, and most that CAN do it, CANNOT do it easily, or well. (this is true, how many gurus do you know? How many midlevel people do you know? I rest the case.)
So we need help. And like everything else that people do, learning this task requires that we internallize certain things. If I am a golfer, I will be forced to internalize a representation of the ball and my club if I intend on getting good. This does not mean that I will be aware that I have done it, but If I want to be able to plan consequences, I have to have an internal model.
So in programming, if I am to become a Programmer, as opposed to just playing with a toy language for a bit and dropping it, I have to internalize as accurate a model of how a computer works as possible, and that means Data Structure and Flow Control.
I cannot do anything so rediculous as "Programming the way I think" because I AM NOT A COMPUTER. If I programm in a way that works, and seems to be "The way I think" then it is because I HAVE LEARNED TO THINK THAT WAY.
So, In conclusion, it is not programming languages that *should* force a programmer to think in certain ways, it is Programming At ALL that DOES force a programmer to think in certain ways. And programming is what we want to teach.
Do not confuse yourself, languages like BASIC are NOT good for teaching children. You may have learned it first, but that doesn't make it better.
The only thing that makes BASIC easier for anyone than C is that it is more like (bad) math. But this only helps if you've had lots of (bad) math. It doesn't really help those who haven't had the (bad) math.
What a programmer really needs is Data Structures and Flow Control. Until these things are internallized, you are not a programmer, after they are, you will always be one. BASIC doesn't do either well, so your children will not learn either well. C does both well, so your children will learn both well. (Actuall I would use C++, it's a little more forgiving, but still doesn't let you cheat like perl does (which is something you don't want newbies doing (as the wont fully learn those two lessons)))
Do not underestimate the flexibility of a child's mind. Look at baseball or pokemon stats. Give them a real language. After they learn it, even a little bit, it will stew in their brain. With many cognitive tasks, how LONG you have know something is more important than how WELL you know something, and they will NEVER need to have know BASIC for 20 years. (but if they are 10 year C/C++ veterans when they get to college?)
Do not underestimate how very MUCH time children will spend working on something they find interesting, so even hard tasks are mastered. Think of video games, sports, TV, reading. They HAVE the time, let them work on something real.
Also, C on UNIX is simpler than most things they can do on WinX boexen. File access and piping makes more sense, etc. If they have NEVER programmed, they have no legacy to overcome, so start them on the simpler system. --- "Elegant, Commented, On Time; Pick any Two"
This is a "Ready-for-Prime-Time" Technology (Rocket's eBook), run by a "Not-Quite-Ready" company. I own one, that I bought from a friend, but it is not an open protocol, and I can't use it unless I use their sync software on platforms they support, which should not be an issue for the purchased books, because the encryption is internall (each eBook has it's own key).
They work fine for reading material though. --- "Elegant, Commented, On Time; Pick any Two"
Utilitarianism in my post was just used as an example, I was not claiming that it was the only ethical theory that takes reality into account.
And yes, at some point our deffinitions become axiomatic, and there is nothing we can do about this, because language isn't sitting upon very much (hence all the fun the solipsists suppose that they are having), so you are free to challenge the axiom that I gave. But if you challenge the definition of "ethics" that I gave, then I can just call it "foobarianism", use the same definitions, and its propertys continue to hold, so you don't accomplish much by saying "well thats just an axiom".
I guess we should be glad that we have been strightended out about this issue.
And here I thought that when I was paid to do a specific job, I owned the skills that I used to do that job, even if it meant building new tools, or buying new clothes, to do that job.
So I guess every professor at every university does not own the papers that s/he publishes, but rather the university owns them.
I guess that bar owners own the novells that their waitresses write during their breaks (it happens), because "she wrote it on MY counter".
You can see where this is going.
And no, ethics is not about "right and wrong". Ethics is about finding an optimal way to apply an ordered value system to an action in the real world. (where resources are limited and competition for them exists. Thus the distinction between "Act Utilitarianism" and "Rule Utilitarianism". Ethics is about systems of decision making.
Morality is where people get their ordered values. Values like "Pain is Bad", "Freedom is Good", values which cannot all be satisfied all the time, and so we must order them (for me, "Freedom is Good" comes before "Pain is Bad"). Only after we know what we value, can we apply an ethical theory to it, and decide what actions are appropriate TO BEST SERVE OUR VALUES. So ethics is NOT about right and wrong.
And anyone who claims any bullsh*t about "Universal Ethics" either dosn't understand this, or is trying to confuse you to serve the things s/he values.
Explain to your boss that: A) You are the copyright holder, and are known for charging exhorbinant rates for licensces. B) For some goofy reason, in a moment of weakness, you GPL'd the code back in the day. C) You were not the one who installed the program. D) There is no way that the compant could afford a licesnse for the program, but you would be happy to work on it as a contributor to an existing OS project, and as such all additions would have to be GPL'd.
Or, since you do own the copyright, you could allways sell them a closed license (which would not weaken the GPL'd license for the code already out there.)
Managers have a tendancy to accept that "It is the Law", and to move on.
The problem (IMHO) is that while we have tools for doing this sort of thing (NFS and NIS), tools which work wonderfully in the UNIX world, No one who fully understands them is willing to spend enough time in a Window$ Programming Environment to write strong, flexible, and stable clients for Window$, and as a result, we have this proliferation.
If there were a concerted project to write Window$ network file services drivers that used the full potetial of NFS and NIS, then Window$ boxen could finally join the rest of the world in *real* networks.
But I'm not gonna write it (out of ignorance, not eliteism. I don't know that much about how Window$ does its networking and file mounting, and I don't want to take the time to learn.)
Slashdot Mirror
There are MANY very interesting problems that have two approaches:
1) nasty heuristics, not guaranteed, but workable,
and
2) brute force, perhaps optimized, but still brute.
and since there are so very many brute force problems, software approaches change in KIND as the hardware scales up.
When I can take the time/space to do a brute force search on a problem, I can guarantee certain things about my answer, which is very valuable computationally.
Translation: software is a gas, it expands to use all the space/time given to it, and it will continue to do so.
If you disagree, well, I guess you wont be using any voice recognition software next year when it hits hard, because that is a clear example of the effect of increased resources.
-- Crutcher --
#include <disclaimer.h>
One of my friends is fond of saying, that despite the fact that all the optimization math works so beautifuly, capitalism is still ineficient, because, basically, people dont want your money.
Really, they want control, or they want 'market share', or they want 'guaranteed revenue', but very few just want money, in big bundles, as often as they can get it.
And so we get companies doing things like this that just BEG to get people to jump ship to wireless broadband just as SOON as it is ready, all so they can fell a little more secure.
BTW, this type of TOS probably wouldn't hold up in court, as there are all kinds of fun and complex precedents in the telephone industry about your usage rights inside your house. But I'll leave that topic for the online-lawer types.
-- Crutcher --
#include <disclaimer.h>
You are. This is not a troll, or flame bait.
Flight or Flight happens FIRST in ALL responses. It is basic nurology. You cannot escape it (with out brain surgery) and you wouldn't want to. (You'd get hit by a car inside a week)
This is not 'determinism', it is how you are wired together. Fight or Flight is a demonstrable as the fact that most people have feet.
I cant stand all these people that spend so much time trying to be 'something more than an animal', if they aren't going to take the time to learn just how cool the 'animal' is. It's deliberate ignorance, and it really burns me.
-- Crutcher --
#include <disclaimer.h>
Individuals which significantly diverge in ANY way from the population norm are usually at a much higher risk of congenital health problems. Its the bitch of mutation, it's much more likely to screw you.
So if some enzyme change makes you smarter, it stands a good chance of screwing with something else. It is only through evolution that your new advantage (lamda calculus in your head!) gets ironed out into something that is safe, because the genius can out compete most normals, but the SANE genius can out compete the genius.
-- Crutcher --
#include <disclaimer.h>
Um, well, see, fundamentally our society ISN'T any different from those of the 'animal kingdom', which, you may have noticed, we belong to.
Go hang out with the gender studies people, the behavioural sciences people, the biology people, and the psych people for a bit, and you will be trully suprised at how much behaviour is based upon Sexual/Fight-Flight/Phermonal/Primate Group interactions.
Put simply, thats it. Everything 'else' that makes us 'different' is just a result of scaleing the intelligence up in the system (and simillar traits can be found in the cetaceans, so we aren't all that different, we just have hands, something they must find terribly amusing)
And if you think there is a differance between force and cooperation, you don't understand behaviour.
-- Crutcher --
#include <disclaimer.h>
>the entire basis of civilization rests on
>respecting the desires of others _without_
>coercion.
And silly me, I thought that civilisation was an emergent property of each individual's attempts to maximize their scarce resource allocation and genetic proliferation.
Hate to tell you this, but force is, and always has been, and probably always will, be part of this system.
-- Crutcher --
#include <disclaimer.h>
The GPL and BSD licenses exist to use copyright laws againts themselves, to prevent people from closing up and claiming source ownership.
Without copyright, you dont NEED protection from copyright, so your argument does not hold.
-- Crutcher --
#include <disclaimer.h>
I wish someone had pointed me towards the Knuth when I was in high school. It is the ultimate source of CS projects, and the ultimate resource upon their theory.
The Knuth (aka The Art of Computer Programming) is available from all reputable bookstores. You can get the boxed set or just the first book from barnesandnoble.com.
You can also go to Donald E. Knuth's homepage, or to his TAOP page
Please believe, if there is a deep and magic tome of computer science, this is it, and if you will ever truly have the love for CS, then you will love these books NO MATER YOUR SKILL LEVEL! Every chapter is filled with projects ranging from in your head to graduate thesis level, and they are labeled by difficulty and mathematical requirements.
-- Crutcher --
#include <disclaimer.h>
I mean really, if you're going to spend that many THOUSANDS of hours programming to implement an OS, why remimplement a broken one?
-- Crutcher --
#include <disclaimer.h>
In case you didn't notice my email addy, I'm sorta busy on the work/programming front. But someday (years hence), I'd like to spend some time doing game work.
-- Crutcher --
#include <disclaimer.h>
Remeber WAAAAY back (like, before the net even *smirk*) when you HAD to have friends to stand a chance at many of the (text) myster games?
..."
Now imagine a game, like myst, but bigger, with more complete physics. And imagine that this game, has varying degrees of dificulty, not as a setting, but as a function of how many people are in the game playing with you.
"I can open this door, but there is only one potion, guess we'll have to find another way to get you onto the pirate ship"
and
"If only Bob were playing, he could turn that lever while I pull the switch, guess I'll have to find some other way to do it. Hmm, wonder if I could bully that troll in the dungeon to help me
I want to play this kind of game. I would $PAY$ to play this kind of game. And I'd prefer regular releases of small games in a series to long seperated releases of HUGE games. (You and your buddies spend a weekend playing the New one every 2 months, maybe its an Add-on to the enginee.)
-- Crutcher --
#include <disclaimer.h>
I mean, really, why not? The internet porn industry is a HUGE source of content/bandwidth suck/AND revenue. Its silly for the regulatory people to pretend it aint there. After all, adult clubs/shops are listed in the phone book.
#include
-- Crutcher --
#include "disclaimer.h"
I love this bit, check it out:
A) It's a platform-agnostic method of building these rapidly distributed applications."
and then,
B) Goodhew added that C# allows "developers (to) access any hardware and software." C# provides "complete access to (the) underlying platform."
REALLY? Wow, C# simultaneously CAN and CANNOT see the implementation details of the hardware upon which it is running. I'm impressed.
Next, I suppose, is Microsoft's new DWIM compiler, which only supports one instruction.
-- Crutcher --
I like this linux game initiative, but since when has having a "central company to enforce" been a trully good thing in standards? In fact, if one company controls it, isn't it an API, rather than a standard?
Beware the closed API my children, for it is the start of Evil. We cannot let companys get us to depend upon closed APIs as "Standards" again, I think we learned our lesson on that one the hard way.
I'll play the games, but I think the real future is in X 4.0, and all it's fun toys. Besides, the problem is not really the APIs, its the package system for games, and that's pretty much solved.
-- Crutcher --
Okay, so MANY things sucked. But...
I liked the way that Humans were portrayed, depending upon which character was being followed.
When the movie followed the Humans, we saw them as civilized, when it followed the Psylocs, we saw them as apes, who talked in Grunts and used apelike body language. It was a neat storytelling trick, but it didn't save the movie.
-- Crutcher --
Well, Eros is interface independant, and works form the assumption that "Everything is a Data Structure", and the GNU/HURD is Bizzare and Uber Flexible.
Command Line != UNIX-like
And besides, if you make the assumption that small programs are easier to debug, and that access modes should be uniform, then you tend to converge to something UNIX like as your basic system. Now, if memory or networking become cheap, things change a bit, but the bits that dont change will STAY unix like, because it WORKS, and it is near optimal.
-- Crutcher --
I agree, mentoring is the best way. Not because of the things they can tell you, but because of the questions they can ask you. You'd be surprised how far a bright kid can go if you ask him the right question. That and finding people with the knowledge that WANT to mentor is a pain in the ass. I, a lowly undergrad, no more Perl and C/C++ than the overwhelming majority of my school's programming proffs.
---
"Elegant, Commented, On Time; Pick any Two"
The main thing that I see is the evolution of several distinct facets of access, with a couple of parallel net experiences evolving to be seperate from each other. I will call these Domains, cause they a name.
The first Domain I will call CorpNet:
Corporate/Media forces will continue to conglomerate, untill it is hard, or even imposible, to follow links from this top level net to anything non-corporate. They will even have their own search engines, that only search corporate sites (and are almost perfect, because the sites being searched are cooperating with the search engine). Everything will be beautiful, and big production. Most people wont even notice that they never leave CorpNet. Think of it as a Subspace (in the mathematical sense) of the internet.
The second domain I will call SchoolNet:
It will be much the same as CorpNet, except it will take up the academic world, and will be much less flashy, but even better indexed. This will be another subspace.
The third domain I call GovNet, and I think you get the picture about what it will be. Subsapce again.
The fourth domain will be the loose conglomeration of personal sites, and small interest organizations. Lets call it OrgNet. It won't be very easy to search, because it will be so HUGE, and at the same time run by people that are largely ignorant of the underlying tech. But it will leak out to all the other Nets, and as such it will NOT be a subspace (ie. it is possible to leave OrgNet, from within OrgNet)
The next domain I want to talk about is DevNet. This is where the developers will hang, and it will have some ties to OrgNet, but will be much more cohessive, and better indexed.
And of course there will be countless ShadowNets, domains that are diliberately closed, and probably encrypted, because, for whatever reason, their users want them to be. (criminal, 1337 h4x0rs, artists, bored teeners, etc.) Think of the anoying people over at http://hell.com
And as to VR interfaces, well, I really, really have a problem with the visualization of both Stephenson and Gibbson.
The net will not ever be one uber vr world. There will be different Portals, the same as we have now, that coordinate how the net is accessable from the portals. But we will never get rid of command line access, it is simply so much faster than anything else could be, and serious users are not gonna give it up, and take "trains" through the net, or "fly" when we are searching for something.
---
"Elegant, Commented, On Time; Pick any Two"
Programming is one of the hardest things that we have ever asked the human mind to do. We are not built for the kind of internalization of flow and structure that it requires, and we are certainly not built for the level of perfection it demands.
As such, not every one CAN do it, and most that CAN do it, CANNOT do it easily, or well. (this is true, how many gurus do you know? How many midlevel people do you know? I rest the case.)
So we need help. And like everything else that people do, learning this task requires that we internallize certain things. If I am a golfer, I will be forced to internalize a representation of the ball and my club if I intend on getting good. This does not mean that I will be aware that I have done it, but If I want to be able to plan consequences, I have to have an internal model.
So in programming, if I am to become a Programmer, as opposed to just playing with a toy language for a bit and dropping it, I have to internalize as accurate a model of how a computer works as possible, and that means Data Structure and Flow Control.
I cannot do anything so rediculous as "Programming the way I think" because I AM NOT A COMPUTER. If I programm in a way that works, and seems to be "The way I think" then it is because I HAVE LEARNED TO THINK THAT WAY.
So, In conclusion, it is not programming languages that *should* force a programmer to think in certain ways, it is Programming At ALL that DOES force a programmer to think in certain ways. And programming is what we want to teach.
---
"Elegant, Commented, On Time; Pick any Two"
Do not confuse yourself, languages like BASIC are NOT good for teaching children. You may have learned it first, but that doesn't make it better.
The only thing that makes BASIC easier for anyone than C is that it is more like (bad) math. But this only helps if you've had lots of (bad) math. It doesn't really help those who haven't had the (bad) math.
What a programmer really needs is Data Structures and Flow Control. Until these things are internallized, you are not a programmer, after they are, you will always be one. BASIC doesn't do either well, so your children will not learn either well. C does both well, so your children will learn both well. (Actuall I would use C++, it's a little more forgiving, but still doesn't let you cheat like perl does (which is something you don't want newbies doing (as the wont fully learn those two lessons)))
Do not underestimate the flexibility of a child's mind. Look at baseball or pokemon stats. Give them a real language. After they learn it, even a little bit, it will stew in their brain. With many cognitive tasks, how LONG you have know something is more important than how WELL you know something, and they will NEVER need to have know BASIC for 20 years. (but if they are 10 year C/C++ veterans when they get to college?)
Do not underestimate how very MUCH time children will spend working on something they find interesting, so even hard tasks are mastered. Think of video games, sports, TV, reading. They HAVE the time, let them work on something real.
Also, C on UNIX is simpler than most things they can do on WinX boexen. File access and piping makes more sense, etc. If they have NEVER programmed, they have no legacy to overcome, so start them on the simpler system.
---
"Elegant, Commented, On Time; Pick any Two"
This is a "Ready-for-Prime-Time" Technology (Rocket's eBook), run by a "Not-Quite-Ready" company. I own one, that I bought from a friend, but it is not an open protocol, and I can't use it unless I use their sync software on platforms they support, which should not be an issue for the purchased books, because the encryption is internall (each eBook has it's own key).
They work fine for reading material though.
---
"Elegant, Commented, On Time; Pick any Two"
Utilitarianism in my post was just used as an example, I was not claiming that it was the only ethical theory that takes reality into account.
And yes, at some point our deffinitions become axiomatic, and there is nothing we can do about this, because language isn't sitting upon very much (hence all the fun the solipsists suppose that they are having), so you are free to challenge the axiom that I gave. But if you challenge the definition of "ethics" that I gave, then I can just call it "foobarianism", use the same definitions, and its propertys continue to hold, so you don't accomplish much by saying "well thats just an axiom".
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"Elegant, Commented, On Time; Pick any Two"
I guess we should be glad that we have been strightended out about this issue.
And here I thought that when I was paid to do a specific job, I owned the skills that I used to do that job, even if it meant building new tools, or buying new clothes, to do that job.
So I guess every professor at every university does not own the papers that s/he publishes, but rather the university owns them.
I guess that bar owners own the novells that their waitresses write during their breaks (it happens), because "she wrote it on MY counter".
You can see where this is going.
And no, ethics is not about "right and wrong". Ethics is about finding an optimal way to apply an ordered value system to an action in the real world. (where resources are limited and competition for them exists. Thus the distinction between "Act Utilitarianism" and "Rule Utilitarianism". Ethics is about systems of decision making.
Morality is where people get their ordered values. Values like "Pain is Bad", "Freedom is Good", values which cannot all be satisfied all the time, and so we must order them (for me, "Freedom is Good" comes before "Pain is Bad"). Only after we know what we value, can we apply an ethical theory to it, and decide what actions are appropriate TO BEST SERVE OUR VALUES. So ethics is NOT about right and wrong.
And anyone who claims any bullsh*t about "Universal Ethics" either dosn't understand this, or is trying to confuse you to serve the things s/he values.
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"Elegant, Commented, On Time; Pick any Two"
Explain to your boss that:
A) You are the copyright holder, and are known for charging exhorbinant rates for licensces.
B) For some goofy reason, in a moment of weakness, you GPL'd the code back in the day.
C) You were not the one who installed the program.
D) There is no way that the compant could afford a licesnse for the program, but you would be happy to work on it as a contributor to an existing OS project, and as such all additions would have to be GPL'd.
Or, since you do own the copyright, you could allways sell them a closed license (which would not weaken the GPL'd license for the code already out there.)
Managers have a tendancy to accept that "It is the Law", and to move on.
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"Elegant, Commented, On Time; Pick any Two"
The problem (IMHO) is that while we have tools for doing this sort of thing (NFS and NIS), tools which work wonderfully in the UNIX world, No one who fully understands them is willing to spend enough time in a Window$ Programming Environment to write strong, flexible, and stable clients for Window$, and as a result, we have this proliferation.
If there were a concerted project to write Window$ network file services drivers that used the full potetial of NFS and NIS, then Window$ boxen could finally join the rest of the world in *real* networks.
But I'm not gonna write it (out of ignorance, not eliteism. I don't know that much about how Window$ does its networking and file mounting, and I don't want to take the time to learn.)
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"Elegant, Commented, On Time; Pick any Two"