Most programming tools today require little more than the cookbook mentality of dragging and dropping things into place. Furthermore, a hideously inefficient program could still run reasonably fast on today's processors; performance does not rely on intelligent programming in many cases.
I could see a kid today with Visual Studio go through AppStudio, create, build and execute an entire program and think he's accomplished something without doing any programming at all.
When I learned basic on the venerable and legendary Apple ][ and TRS-80, I was so fascinated by the concept that I would sit around and write code on paper when I wasn't around a computer (which was almost all the time!)
My experience is that real programming talent and ability is as rare now as it was twenty years ago despite the ubiquitousness of PC's. I'm sure there are millions who read "Java for Dummies" or "HTML for Dingbats", etc, and consider themselves programmers (and are perhaps employed as such), but the real hackers that move and shake technology are still very few and far between.
Give the kid an Apple ][. I've got an old XT lying around that is waiting for my six-year-old to start programming. I bet he'll be ready in a year or two. He appreciates things like Descent III and Total Annihilation, but is also fascinated by a little program I wrote that counts numbers. I bet he'll get a lot of satisfaction making that 8088 do his will.
Now hold on there, Chester. Before you go putting words in my mouth, listen to what I am trying to say.
The fact of the matter is, that almost all artists have a choice: sell their souls to some faceless megacorp who will only not screw them when it's convenient and profitable, or not pursue their careers.
The system is broken, because too much power is in the hands of corporations that are _perfectly_ within their rights to screw the artists this way.
The Internet is changing all this. First, illicitly through MP3 sharing, but ultimately, a new music distribution system will emerge that puts more control in the hands of the artists and the customers.
The fact of the matter is, that there are recordings that have been made which are no longer available for entirely selfish reasons. if those recordings are available through illicit channels when legitimate channels no longer exist who's going to blame otherwise honest fans for pursuing those channels.
I personally will buy anything I download that I will listen to more than a couple times (i.e., I want to listen to it more). I _want_ to give Windham Hill and Sony my money for these recordings, but I can't! Perhaps, no one is breaking any laws here, but as a customer, I sure ain't happy about the situation.
Rick
p.s. A small clue: If someone else owns the rights to a piece of music you have recorded, then you cannot re-record it without their permission. That's what "owning the rights" means.
His analogy may be bad, but try buying a copy of Michael Manring's "Thonk" or the first 3 albums by echolyn. This is seriously good material and is not legally available in any format because the record companies who own the rights (Windham Hill and Sony) will not allow the albums to be published any more.
I'm not going to comment on the issue of pirating this material, but I would gladly buy copies of this stuff, even at a high price, but I cannot. I have made a substantial effort to find any copies that may still be available.
Rick
p.s. And guess how the artists feel about this situation?
Re:Why open source is nice, part LXXVIII
on
Mattel Spyware
·
· Score: 1
The fact of the matter is, in order to use a computer securely, and often, in order to use the computer effectively at all, you have to become an expert.
The average computer user doesn't want to be and shouldn't have to be an expert on the myriad issues concerning privacy and security when all he or she wants to do is buy some Britney Spears CD's on CDNow. After all, isn't everyone and his dog hyping hopw easy and secure it is?
Microsoft's attitude towards security is to throw a bunch of warnings at the user and hope for his sake that he follows them, even though it prevents him from using legitimate and harmless functionality, just because he is not an expert.
It might be reasonable to blame the folks at Apache for not setting up their Web site correctly so it wouldn't be hacked. It is not reasonable to blame Joe Sixpack when Mattel sends out personal info about his 7-year-old kid.
The Internet explosion is already happening. It would be nice if some of the parties involved (esp. Microsoft, AOL, etc) were not too stupid or too lazy to properly serve their customers. If cars were built like software the Washington Beltway would be a parking lot for smoking hulks of burned metal.
It's the same strategy used by food packaging people, which generate far more wasted packaging material than software ever will. It's typical to buy a package of Rice Pilaf mix or whatever and have the package be half empty.
Another factor to consider is weight. I worked for a company once that reformatted the user manual with larger type and wider margins to make the manual heavier. The idea is that a good hefty box feels better than an obviously almost empty one. I agree with the strategy as illogical and ecologically unsound as it is.
By having the biggest box on the shelf, there is a strong implication that you are getting "more", in addition to any factors of improved visibility.
I've bought countless software packages that included only a jewel case and a few slips of paper in a sometimes phone-book-sized box. I don't think the practice is going to change like the CD industry dropping longboxes a few years back for one reason.
With a longbox, you still knew that there was only a CD in there, nothing more. With software, a larger box implies more manual (or a manual at all) and/or more CD's. I don't see this changing even though it really should.
I just bought and am downloading a whole collection of Infocom games "Masterpieces of Infocom" which has about 33 games, but not HHGG, and an Infocom SF collection which does for about US$20.
The download includes a PDF of manuals, etc, as well as another for hints.
Perhaps. It just bugs the crap out of me that poeple have to use the two i's, just 'cause it looks cool rather than "viri" which actually makes sense when compared to words like radius.
I both like and find amusing the idea of extrapolating Latin (and irregular English and Hebrew, et al) plurization rules with new rules, as documented so well in by ESR and GLS in the Jargon file. It's just that "Virii" is not consistent with anything, whereas "viri" is.
Now, I need to see if I can get different Unices to run on my Vaxen.
Sorry to reply to my own posting, but I did not mean to imply that Kaku's and Thorne's books were not accessible reading. Both were very easy to read for a non-expert without feeling dumbed down, and I highly recommend both. I just felt that TEU gave me insights that were perhaps a little deeper than the others.
I liked Michio Kaku's Hyperspace so much I read it twice. I liked Kip Thorne's recent book on similar topics (the name escapes me) even more, but I enjoyed TEU most of all. Taken together, these three made for very enjoyable, mentally expanding, but never tedious reading.
Greene covers many similar topics of the other two books, but his style of writing is very accessible to the non-expert reader (like me!). I found the descriptions of very abstract ideas to be very intuitive (or at least as intuitive as the bizarreness of modern physics can be). His thought experiment describing the relativistic effects of a spinning disc was a real epiphany for me and I spent several evening just pondering that one small part.
It's also really nice to read a good book that is still very current. I'm sure in another few years, another good author (or perhaps Greene himself) will need to catch us all up, but for now I feel very enlightened on the state-of-the-art.
>> the ISP really has little choice in the matter.
Sure they do... they can do their jobs right or go out of business. They just created a big neon sign telling everyone that they are vulnerable to Dos attacks and will take down sites rather than attempt to prevent the attacks.
Well, for one things. You are telling the script kiddies that if they attack a site, they can get it removed. I bet those folks are setting their sites on more sites, since their first attack was successful.
This was incredibly cowardly on the ISP's part and they deserve to lose the buisness of others who realize what they have done. Meanwhile, I would suspect that the owners of the site could bring a suit based on the fact that they were shut down based (indirectly, but definitely) on their exercise of protected free speech.
In any event, the ISP has shown their colors and if I were a script kiddie, I'd be targeting their other sites, because if they caved once, they'll cave again.
Those solutions will only attack the symptoms and not have any effect on voter apathy. If people took the time to be informed (and in the Information Age, that's becoming easier and easier). Neither term limits nor campaign finance reform would be necessary nor desired. But since 90% of the people vote for the name they saw emblazoned on bumper stickers the most or on content-free yet deceptive TV commercials, we have a problem.
Hooray for the Supreme Court. It's nice that someone other than Scalia is showing occasional common sense. But if there's a billion to one chance that the a child is endangered then all rights go out the door.
Anonymous attacks are becoming more and more effective in the U.S., you can anonymously rat out your neighbor to Child Protective Services and they have to prove to the authorities that you aren't beating your kids, and if you refuse to cooperate you are (to them) admitting your guilt and you will always be suspected.
Once NetPD fingers you as a copyright violator (even if they make up the information out of whole cloth, who can prove otherwise?), people like Metallica and the RIAA will assume you are scum of the earth, and but for the fact that most people don't have much money and wouldn't be worth the trouble, would probably sue you into the Stone Age.
And if they do pursaue it, as with any unfounded litigation, it will probably be easier and cheaper to settle.
IANAL, nor do I pretend to have any idea what I am talking about.
I thought I'd try it, just out of curiousity, although my experience with Shockwave is that no matter how many times you install the damn stuff, it still tries to reinstall most of the time you try to use it. Either that or they're releasing incompatible upgrades every week.
In any event it doesn't work for me far more often than it does (just like Real, another product I wish would just die).
Shockwave is becoming worse and worse functionality-wise while it becomes more and more popular. I'm trying to convince the company I work for to stay away from it no matter how cute it looks. However, the marketing side is in love with it and the Web experts think it's cool.
What's even funnier is that the site says it doesn't support my browser (IE 5.5 beta) and I couldn't even view their Web pages. Now Microsoft screws with the standards with impunity, but IE 5.5 has always worked fine for me 99.5% of the time.
I made a prediction about two years ago that with the plethora of kludgy technology of dubious value and crappy implementations that the Web would get a lot worse before it ever got better. I was being cynical at the time. I wish I hadn't been right.
You know correlation != causation and I know correlation != causation, but most people do not make a distinction. Furthermore, even if their govermental representative _can_ make the distinction, their general lack of spine and principles will cause them to knuckle under to the hysteria.
It sounds like a good study with clearly stated results, but I'm sure the anti video game crusaders are already drooling.
I'm sure it's people like you that end up running the gas chambers and ovens.
Don't you think it's a tragedy to his family and friends, regardless of what he achieved in his life? Don't you think we also lose out on any other things he might have accomplished?
This callous disregard for the value of human life is what leads to its wholesale destruction.
Let's not only mourn the loss of someone who contributed to our industry, but also mourn the loss of someone who died decades before he should have, and that he and those around him have lost something they can never get back.
Slashdot Mirror
Little advantage? I'd say big disadvantage!
Most programming tools today require little more than the cookbook mentality of dragging and dropping things into place. Furthermore, a hideously inefficient program could still run reasonably fast on today's processors; performance does not rely on intelligent programming in many cases.
I could see a kid today with Visual Studio go through AppStudio, create, build and execute an entire program and think he's accomplished something without doing any programming at all.
When I learned basic on the venerable and legendary Apple ][ and TRS-80, I was so fascinated by the concept that I would sit around and write code on paper when I wasn't around a computer (which was almost all the time!)
My experience is that real programming talent and ability is as rare now as it was twenty years ago despite the ubiquitousness of PC's. I'm sure there are millions who read "Java for Dummies" or "HTML for Dingbats", etc, and consider themselves programmers (and are perhaps employed as such), but the real hackers that move and shake technology are still very few and far between.
Give the kid an Apple ][. I've got an old XT lying around that is waiting for my six-year-old to start programming. I bet he'll be ready in a year or two. He appreciates things like Descent III and Total Annihilation, but is also fascinated by a little program I wrote that counts numbers. I bet he'll get a lot of satisfaction making that 8088 do his will.
Rick
Now hold on there, Chester. Before you go putting words in my mouth, listen to what I am trying to say.
The fact of the matter is, that almost all artists have a choice: sell their souls to some faceless megacorp who will only not screw them when it's convenient and profitable, or not pursue their careers.
The system is broken, because too much power is in the hands of corporations that are _perfectly_ within their rights to screw the artists this way.
The Internet is changing all this. First, illicitly through MP3 sharing, but ultimately, a new music distribution system will emerge that puts more control in the hands of the artists and the customers.
The fact of the matter is, that there are recordings that have been made which are no longer available for entirely selfish reasons. if those recordings are available through illicit channels when legitimate channels no longer exist who's going to blame otherwise honest fans for pursuing those channels.
I personally will buy anything I download that I will listen to more than a couple times (i.e., I want to listen to it more). I _want_ to give Windham Hill and Sony my money for these recordings, but I can't! Perhaps, no one is breaking any laws here, but as a customer, I sure ain't happy about the situation.
Rick
p.s. A small clue: If someone else owns the rights to a piece of music you have recorded, then you cannot re-record it without their permission. That's what "owning the rights" means.
His analogy may be bad, but try buying a copy of Michael Manring's "Thonk" or the first 3 albums by echolyn. This is seriously good material and is not legally available in any format because the record companies who own the rights (Windham Hill and Sony) will not allow the albums to be published any more.
I'm not going to comment on the issue of pirating this material, but I would gladly buy copies of this stuff, even at a high price, but I cannot. I have made a substantial effort to find any copies that may still be available.
Rick
p.s. And guess how the artists feel about this situation?
The fact of the matter is, in order to use a computer securely, and often, in order to use the computer effectively at all, you have to become an expert.
The average computer user doesn't want to be and shouldn't have to be an expert on the myriad issues concerning privacy and security when all he or she wants to do is buy some Britney Spears CD's on CDNow. After all, isn't everyone and his dog hyping hopw easy and secure it is?
Microsoft's attitude towards security is to throw a bunch of warnings at the user and hope for his sake that he follows them, even though it prevents him from using legitimate and harmless functionality, just because he is not an expert.
It might be reasonable to blame the folks at Apache for not setting up their Web site correctly so it wouldn't be hacked. It is not reasonable to blame Joe Sixpack when Mattel sends out personal info about his 7-year-old kid.
The Internet explosion is already happening. It would be nice if some of the parties involved (esp. Microsoft, AOL, etc) were not too stupid or too lazy to properly serve their customers. If cars were built like software the Washington Beltway would be a parking lot for smoking hulks of burned metal.
...unless the holy penguin was asking for RED herring.
It's the same strategy used by food packaging people, which generate far more wasted packaging material than software ever will. It's typical to buy a package of Rice Pilaf mix or whatever and have the package be half empty.
Another factor to consider is weight. I worked for a company once that reformatted the user manual with larger type and wider margins to make the manual heavier. The idea is that a good hefty box feels better than an obviously almost empty one. I agree with the strategy as illogical and ecologically unsound as it is.
By having the biggest box on the shelf, there is a strong implication that you are getting "more", in addition to any factors of improved visibility.
I've bought countless software packages that included only a jewel case and a few slips of paper in a sometimes phone-book-sized box. I don't think the practice is going to change like the CD industry dropping longboxes a few years back for one reason.
With a longbox, you still knew that there was only a CD in there, nothing more. With software, a larger box implies more manual (or a manual at all) and/or more CD's. I don't see this changing even though it really should.
Rick
OK, let's settle it then.
:)
I vote for "Virim" or "viren", just to be completely bizarre.
Yeah, "viri" is already used. Isn't there that old quote of Alexander (or some Historical Figure (tm)):
Veni, Vici, Viri
"I came, I saw, I got an e-mail titled 'ILOVEYOU'"
?
I just bought and am downloading a whole collection of Infocom games "Masterpieces of Infocom" which has about 33 games, but not HHGG, and an Infocom SF collection which does for about US$20.
1 5371/2
The download includes a PDF of manuals, etc, as well as another for hints.
http://www.netsales.net/pk.wcgi/pgmmicro/comp/1
p.s. I'm not associated with the vendor in any way, I just figured poeple would love to get a legit copy of these great old games.
Perhaps. It just bugs the crap out of me that poeple have to use the two i's, just 'cause it looks cool rather than "viri" which actually makes sense when compared to words like radius.
I both like and find amusing the idea of extrapolating Latin (and irregular English and Hebrew, et al) plurization rules with new rules, as documented so well in by ESR and GLS in the Jargon file. It's just that "Virii" is not consistent with anything, whereas "viri" is.
Now, I need to see if I can get different Unices to run on my Vaxen.
If the plural of virus is virii, shouldn't the plural of radius be radiii?
Sorry to reply to my own posting, but I did not mean to imply that Kaku's and Thorne's books were not accessible reading. Both were very easy to read for a non-expert without feeling dumbed down, and I highly recommend both. I just felt that TEU gave me insights that were perhaps a little deeper than the others.
I liked Michio Kaku's Hyperspace so much I read it twice. I liked Kip Thorne's recent book on similar topics (the name escapes me) even more, but I enjoyed TEU most of all. Taken together, these three made for very enjoyable, mentally expanding, but never tedious reading.
Greene covers many similar topics of the other two books, but his style of writing is very accessible to the non-expert reader (like me!). I found the descriptions of very abstract ideas to be very intuitive (or at least as intuitive as the bizarreness of modern physics can be). His thought experiment describing the relativistic effects of a spinning disc was a real epiphany for me and I spent several evening just pondering that one small part.
It's also really nice to read a good book that is still very current. I'm sure in another few years, another good author (or perhaps Greene himself) will need to catch us all up, but for now I feel very enlightened on the state-of-the-art.
>> the ISP really has little choice in the matter.
Sure they do... they can do their jobs right or go out of business. They just created a big neon sign telling everyone that they are vulnerable to Dos attacks and will take down sites rather than attempt to prevent the attacks.
Well, for one things. You are telling the script kiddies that if they attack a site, they can get it removed. I bet those folks are setting their sites on more sites, since their first attack was successful.
This was incredibly cowardly on the ISP's part and they deserve to lose the buisness of others who realize what they have done. Meanwhile, I would suspect that the owners of the site could bring a suit based on the fact that they were shut down based (indirectly, but definitely) on their exercise of protected free speech.
In any event, the ISP has shown their colors and if I were a script kiddie, I'd be targeting their other sites, because if they caved once, they'll cave again.
Rick
Those solutions will only attack the symptoms and not have any effect on voter apathy. If people took the time to be informed (and in the Information Age, that's becoming easier and easier). Neither term limits nor campaign finance reform would be necessary nor desired. But since 90% of the people vote for the name they saw emblazoned on bumper stickers the most or on content-free yet deceptive TV commercials, we have a problem.
The Federal Income Tax was enacted to finance the Great War. I don't recall the exact date, but I believe it was around 1916.
I started that a long time ago. It hasn't changed anything.
Rick
After downloading and installing the WMP 7.0 beta under NT 4.0, I found out that they don't recommend installing it under NT 4.0 or Win95.
Wotta crock!
Of course the installer keeps crapping out so I can't get the latest beta update anyway.
If it's not MP3 or MPEG video, I just don't bother anymore.
If you really did that, tell us what you did!
Otherwise, keep to yourself.
Rick
Hooray for the Supreme Court. It's nice that someone other than Scalia is showing occasional common sense. But if there's a billion to one chance that the a child is endangered then all rights go out the door.
Anonymous attacks are becoming more and more effective in the U.S., you can anonymously rat out your neighbor to Child Protective Services and they have to prove to the authorities that you aren't beating your kids, and if you refuse to cooperate you are (to them) admitting your guilt and you will always be suspected.
Once NetPD fingers you as a copyright violator (even if they make up the information out of whole cloth, who can prove otherwise?), people like Metallica and the RIAA will assume you are scum of the earth, and but for the fact that most people don't have much money and wouldn't be worth the trouble, would probably sue you into the Stone Age.
And if they do pursaue it, as with any unfounded litigation, it will probably be easier and cheaper to settle.
IANAL, nor do I pretend to have any idea what I am talking about.
I thought I'd try it, just out of curiousity, although my experience with Shockwave is that no matter how many times you install the damn stuff, it still tries to reinstall most of the time you try to use it. Either that or they're releasing incompatible upgrades every week.
In any event it doesn't work for me far more often than it does (just like Real, another product I wish would just die).
Shockwave is becoming worse and worse functionality-wise while it becomes more and more popular. I'm trying to convince the company I work for to stay away from it no matter how cute it looks. However, the marketing side is in love with it and the Web experts think it's cool.
What's even funnier is that the site says it doesn't support my browser (IE 5.5 beta) and I couldn't even view their Web pages. Now Microsoft screws with the standards with impunity, but IE 5.5 has always worked fine for me 99.5% of the time.
I made a prediction about two years ago that with the plethora of kludgy technology of dubious value and crappy implementations that the Web would get a lot worse before it ever got better. I was being cynical at the time. I wish I hadn't been right.
You know correlation != causation and I know correlation != causation, but most people do not make a distinction. Furthermore, even if their govermental representative _can_ make the distinction, their general lack of spine and principles will cause them to knuckle under to the hysteria.
It sounds like a good study with clearly stated results, but I'm sure the anti video game crusaders are already drooling.
I'm sure it's people like you that end up running the gas chambers and ovens.
Don't you think it's a tragedy to his family and friends, regardless of what he achieved in his life? Don't you think we also lose out on any other things he might have accomplished?
This callous disregard for the value of human life is what leads to its wholesale destruction.
Let's not only mourn the loss of someone who contributed to our industry, but also mourn the loss of someone who died decades before he should have, and that he and those around him have lost something they can never get back.