A recently posted Slashdot article (I believe the original is at linux.com) railed against one of the failings of OSS, citing text editors in particular, arguing that people don't want to contribute to other projects, they always want to run their own. What originally possessed you to create your own editor, rather than extend another project (call it editor X)? And, if someone today feels the same way about NEdit that you did about editor X at the time, would you recommend that they create their own editor too?
Re:A must-read for any Open Source fan
on
Hackers
·
· Score: 2
I asked a similar ask slashdot question (fun literature for geeks for stocking a company library), but it never got posted.
Everybody's got their own definition. Levy spends lots of time in the book telling weird stories about hackers hacking a Chinese food restaurant, or a husband "debugging" his wife. Here's the way I explain it to people: "To hack is to see a problem, determine the resources available to you, and to creatively apply them to the solution." That allows me to say with equal validity "hack code", "hack management":), or just plain "hack life."
The two biggest selling points for the Visor over the palm have been the price and the springboard slot. Well, this new color is apparently priced at $450, which is back up in the range of the Palm IIIc. And the accompanying story that I saw talks about the long awaited cellphone module...which will cost about $300! I thought one of the early things that Handspring said was they were going after the more "everyday" market, not the corporate expense accounts.
This book is my bathroom reading :)
on
Hackers
·
· Score: 3
I "discovered" this book as part of a freshman sociology course at college where the professor (a specialist in "cognitive styles") used it to spark discussion about the good and bad of the CS world. (I went to WPI, which has it's own share of hacker history -- it's home of the hack variant "to gweep"). Anyway, this prof tended to use this as a definitive guide to the "hacker mentality". I always got a kick out of the idea that as I read it as an insider (albeit a "third generation hacker"), but not everybody could, some people used it as a translation guide.
Anyway, this is one of those books that I keep lying around to regularly browse through. I read sections randomly. My two favorite parts are the kid who made the robot that found a wallet thrown on the floor ("The grad students went nuts...") and some random Levy comment made when he said "Dance, phone lines, Dance!"
I've often wondered if Levy's interested in writing an updated version of this book. It doesn't have anything (much) to say on the subject of Microsoft, nor on the return of the rise of Unix/Linux. Might be interesting to see if he could find just as good a story today as he did back when he wrote Hackers.
I worked in retail when the original, DOS for Dummies, appeared (I believe by Chris Jamsa?) There was a type of customer that would come into the store and say stuff like this: "Just got a computer. Don't have the foggiest idea what to do. What have you got for a dummy like me?" They would use the word first, very often. I'd smile and say "As a matter of fact I have just the book!" and they would buy it, laughing, and leave the store a happy customer.
All it takes is a willingness for the person to acknowledge "I'm buying a beginner's book on the subject, therefore it's obvious I don't know anything about the subject, so it's ok for me to call myself a dummy regarding that subject". It works for anybody. I always find myself wanting to pick up "Mutual Funds for Dummies" and "Classical Music for Dummies", but I can just never find the time to read them.
I never had as much luck with the "Complete Idiots" series. The logic of "Ok, I call myself a dummy, so I guess it's ok for them to call me a dummy" does not extend to letting yourself be called a complete idiot.
I had a chance to contribute to a dummies book (StarOffice). They have a very specific template that says exactly how to write such a book, and they don't like you leaving the pattern at all. The template can pretty much be summed up as "Lots of numbered bullet lists, with plenty of screen shots.":)
Duane
Speaking of titles, I was once asked to work on a book that the guy said would be called "Kickass J++ Game Programming." I said that I thought that was a pretty risky title that people might find offensive. I never heard back from him, but I also never saw the book on the shelves, either.
Hmmmmm, it took him that long to answer half his questions with one-liners? That's pretty disappointing. Of course, maybe that's because we moderated up only very silly questions.
Ok, everybody reading this who is halfway through their first novel, raise your hand? How many of those will ever see the light of day? If you'd said that you have several published already, and were considering branching out on your own to self publish, I might take it more seriously. But what you just said is pretty equivalent to "Hey, I have an idea for a program, which company do you think I should sell it to in order to make the most money?" Worry about it when you have something to sell.
Languages aside for the moment, because there is no one true language. One major factor I remember from my earliest days is *seeing* source code, and then *typing* it in. It creates the connection between mind and fingers. It turns the code into "I typed it in, therefore I can change it." The problem with just getting all your sample code on disk is that there's a message associated of "Ooo, this came with it, I'd better not change it." And maybe you tweak here and there, but you're just not as intimate with the code that way. It takes you longer to find things, for example. You want the code to be yours. When you make your first change, you don't want to feel like a stranger inside somebody else's creation.
Also, while I'm at it, games are always a big plus. Kids love to hack games. Go to your local BestBuy, since I know they sell them, and pick up whatever's the equivalent to "Game Programmer's Development Kit". i first saw it in QBasic form, where it would come with an IDE, and the source for a bunch of games. These days they have a similar thing out, only for Java.
Friend of mine had his house built about 3 or so years ago. While it was still in the frame stages he invited us all over to string CAT5 thru the rafter so that he'd have net in every room (except bathrooms, but he did have it in the kitchen). While we were up there we also strung stereo wire.
I'm pretty sure he only has terminals in 2 rooms, though.:)
How does it remember where the burgers are, ya think? Vision? Does it account for possible slippage after it flips them onto the grill? I realize that they won't be going far, but still. Would the consistency of the pancake batter mean that the pancakes might come out different sizes, and thus make them harder to flip?
I love the vision of the arm taking a burger from grill to bun. I can just see the little robotic finger come out and hold the burger as it slips the spatula out from under it:).
I believe you'll find that most of those older games were written in assembly. Given that the processors used at the time (6502?) aren't terribly popular anymore, I'm not sure how educational you'd find it. You'd be able to read the source code, but not necessarily hack it or run it anywhere. Even to get it to run through the emulator you'd have to be able to compile it.
Whenever I am at at a mall, I seek out the stores that might have PC games and go ask for the latest Linux titles. Most frequently that is either the EBoutique or SoftwareETC at my local mall. The EB guy is clueless, and can't even reliably tell me whether the game in question (Heavy Gear II) is in the computer or not, but he does know who I am now. Disappointingly, he tells me that I'm the only one coming looking for games. I keep trying to tell him "If you have it, I will buy it." But he's not going to convince his main office to ship one copy of the game for me.
SoftwareETC, I have better luck with. I bought QuakeIII there, and although they have Myth, I didn't get it (I barely played CivCTP, I'm just not a fan of that type game). These days when I ask for HGII the people there can at least locate it in the computer (last checked 5/14, they told me 5/16. I'll have to go back.)
My point is that you can spread the word lots of ways. One is by getting out and talking about Linux and the fact that Hello, I am a potential buyer who will spend money in your store if you have Linux stuff. Sure, these days maybe 9 times out of 10 you'll walk out empty handed...but that doesn't mean you've accomplished nothing. If you do it enough times, and you're not the only one doing it, then some smart manager is going to see Linux scroll by his next "upcoming games" newsletter and think "Hmmm, maybe I should try this out and see if it sells..." and before you know it, we've got another store on our side.
And it's not just about games. Any chance you get, use it. Whenever I'm down BestBuy or CompUSA I always wander through the Linux section to see if there are any potential buyers that I might strike up a conversation with. When my cable company asked me if I wanted internet access, I asked if they supported Linux. When the operator said "What's linux?" I gave her a 15minute rundown of what it was and why it was good. Last week at the car dealer, when speaking of replacing my cd player, I got into a discussion of MP3 players, which got the girl behind the desk asking if I knew how to fix her computer after a bungled Win98 upgrade, which in turn led to me explaining to her about Linux. Will any of these people run out and buy Linux? Likely not. But now they've heard about it once more. And they are more likely to recognize it when they see it in a magazine or on a tv news story. And after they've done that a few times, maybe they'll convert.
For every story you see, for every person that warns you, remember to explain nicely and calmly to them that these things wouldn't happen if Microsoft didn't have an operating systems monopoly. Seriously. People can believe all the MS propaganda and FUD they want, but if you can show them how MS is directly responsible for them getting a virus, maybe that they'll understand.
I think an important issue here is that XML's strength lies in the abstraction of data from presentation. I would hate to see an XML file that says < bold > Bold stuff </bold >. That's what XSL is for! XML is for saying < title > This is my title </title > and then having XSL say "title==bold, Helvetica, 12pt, blinking." So instead of having a generic word processor DTD, you need DTDs for "business letter", or "press release", stuff like that. You won't get everything broken down perfectly, but getting some of the structure specified ((book)(titlepage)(author)...(contents)(chapter).. .) is significantly better than nothing.
Now, having said that, tools become the next major piece. There is only 1 HTML -- but there are as many XMLs as there are DTDs. This is very intimidating. Nobody wants to write XML tags directly. They expect a tool to do it. Therefore, if you want to have your news department crank out press releases in XML format, you're going to need to supply them with a tool that specifies press releases in XML format. That means telling them where to type the title, the date, the byline, and so on....NOT giving them the same old word processor. And they're not going to like it.
I'm dealing with this problem right now at work. We want all the departments to start sharing content. I convinced them that the first step in doing that is to get rid of the HTML and Word formats, and store things in raw XML, and then everybody can pick and choose what they want and slap their own look and feel on it. They all agreed this was a wonderful idea. Then somebody pointed out that they'd have to start creating their content using this new format, and they said "Oh..uh...that sounds like alot of work.....no."
-d
(P.S. - And why the hell doesn't plain text formatted messaging work?? Do you know how much of a royal pain it is to talk about XML without being able to use angle brackets?!)
Wait a second...so, if you identify the quotes, then you need to get people's permission to use them. And, of course, there'll be somebody out there that wants money or something. Blah blah blah, too much hassle. So instead you choose to just take everybody's work without their permission, by denying them attribution? How does that make it right? If I started grabbing source code off newsgroups and mailing lists (public forums, no?) and pulling out all the comments, does it make it ok for me to sell it? Doesn't that fundamentally contradict one of the most important principles that we talk about around here?
Come on, Commander! The original date is in the freaking URL -- Feb 8,2000. Do you really think that the slashdot submitters would have *missed* this story two months ago? No. They didn't. You already posted it.
disappointed, and waiting to get moderated down:(.
By we I don't mean society, mind you, I mean Slashdot.
Godwin's Law on USENET says that once somebody made comparisons to Hitler or the Nazis, then the flamewar was immediately declared over because no further intelligent discourse could continue (*). Has Slashdot gone so rabid as to make USENET look polite?? Your battle against geek profiling is hereby declared over, Jon. Find a new dead horse to beat on.
(*) The original law says that "As a thread goes longer, the probability of a comparison to Hitler approaches one." Katz still proves it to hold true.
How do you figure? If they changed the machine's spec from what you ordered, then sure, absolutely. But if you bought the machine based on what somebody on the net told you, and then you get it and find out that's not true, well, it's not Netpliance's problem. They never said anything about providing you with a hackable machine.
I'm surprised more of the geeks around these parts, likely being Heinlein readers, don't think of "there ain't no such thing as a free lunch" as soon as they hear something like this. Instead they go out and order dozens, and when the loophole is shut down they get all indignant.
This device sounds exactly like what FreePC tried. Remember them? Hey, get a free PC, all you have to do is agree to look at our ads. Every geek I know said "Dude, I'll hack the system! I'll fix it so i never have to look at ads, *and* I'll get a free computer! I'll set up fake accounts and get a dozen!" There ain't no such thing as a free lunch. The PC was free because it was a loss leader. At least they were smart enough to put you into a contract right from the beginning. To get around that deal by simply failing to hold up your end of the contract, well, that's not a hack, that's just plain illegal and doesn't take a great deal of intelligence.
I used to have a boss in my first job who liked to say (being a lifelong salesman), "Give away the razor. Sell the blades." During meetings when a good idea came up, he would ask "What's the razor? What's the blade?" The razor is the PC. The blade is the monthly service.
Netpliance's problem seems to have been that they forgot to lock in the contract up front. Somebody in there must have figured that only people who want the service would get the machine, since after all that's all the machine was good for. That was their mistake, underestimating the power of geeks who smell a free lunch. Yes, to hack their device was very cool indeed. But to set up a small business whose purpose was solely to buy them by the dozen, hack them, and then resell them? I'm glad netpliance closed the loophole. (Note, I don't know for a fact that anybody did that -- but almost everybody I heard did say that they were buying them in plurals, so I can quite logically assume that the most rabid free lunchers would be buying them by the dozen).
And how many people actually did the math? Ok, $100 box. Personally for me, not being a hardware hacker, I figure it's going to take me several hours to do the necessary soldering and such. The first time (since I'd only buy one), it might take what, 4? If somebody wanted me to work on installing software and hard drives for a living, what would I ask for pay? $150/hr? Ok, so now it's a $700 device. I have to put a hard drive in the thing, right? How big do I want to go? Plus what do the other parts cost? So maybe I throw another $200 or so into it? Now it's a $900 device. Throw in the shipping most people paid, the throw-away first month of ISP service, etc etc... and you're up over $1000 very likely. For those that primarily wanted the flat screen, ok, this is still a good deal. But it's one hell of an expensive MP3 player, if that was your plan.
Lastly, I love the logic of people that say "This is actually good for Netpliance, because most of the hardware hackers that buy them will never hack them, and just end up giving them away as gifts or something." How pray tell does that make Netpliance any more money? It doesn't, unless you count the slashdot effect as a marketing technique.
So, to sum up. Some clever hacker found a loophole, and benefited from it. Many followed. But there ain't no such thing as a free lunch, it was never Netpliance's intention to give away $100 machines for no return, and now it's closed. Don't whine about it. Go be a clever hacker and find the next loophole to exploit, and act a little quicker next time.
Yes, I was only doing it to have fun with the man, not because I thought it was a particularly good sort:). For comparison, a friend wrote "random sort", which would grab two indices randomly, and if they were in the wrong order, swap them. Then scan the whole array to see if it was in order.:)
Algorithm was basically the same as bubble until you get to the comparison, which said "If you find two indices that are swappable, swap them and then recursively call this function again." Teacher marked it wrong because he didn't see a terminating condition. I guess he expected to see something like "if sorted then return;" at the top. I explained to him that it terminates when there are no more swaps, thus it falls through. So he marked it right.
This is what used to happen in high school when the only programming class that was available just barely covered the stuff you'd taught yourself 3 years previously, and you were bored by the first day. When we had to write Conway's Life, I made mine 3D. It was a real bitch to print out my results to hand them in, let me tell you.:)
If I remember the idea correctly, the reason it took Kubrick so long is because he wanted to use one actor from childhood through adult, and was actually filming the kid growing up in the movie...as he grew up in real life. I wondered whether that was urban legend, or what, but if he's been working on the movie for almost 20 years, it sounds very plausible.
The story is based on...let's see if I can remember...something about toys, an attic, and lasting all summer? Damnit, IMDB used to have an entry for it, too, but I can't find it.:(
Something's weird about this question. Personally they didn't have "Software Development" classes when I was in HS, but maybe that's just my school. Second, exactly what answer was she expecting? If you take out the GPL, and presumably all other open-source variants, what does that leave? "You buy it and then use it"? "Site license"? Not too many. It's not like she asked "How is software licensed?" She specifically seems to have asked him to name any license he could think of. As if there were lots of them that would be potentially correct answers. This isn't college where studying business is part of the equation, it's HS, and most HS students are only going to be familiar with how they personally (or their parents) buy software, not how the corporations do it. Unless she already told them the latter, and this was a test question.
d
(In my HS days I got asked to "Write any sort routine you want." I wrote recursive bubble sort. Teacher marked it wrong because he didn't understand my code.:))
Slashdot Mirror
A recently posted Slashdot article (I believe the original is at linux.com) railed against one of the failings of OSS, citing text editors in particular, arguing that people don't want to contribute to other projects, they always want to run their own. What originally possessed you to create your own editor, rather than extend another project (call it editor X)? And, if someone today feels the same way about NEdit that you did about editor X at the time, would you recommend that they create their own editor too?
I asked a similar ask slashdot question (fun literature for geeks for stocking a company library), but it never got posted.
Same as always, credit where credit is due :).
Everybody's got their own definition. Levy spends lots of time in the book telling weird stories about hackers hacking a Chinese food restaurant, or a husband "debugging" his wife. Here's the way I explain it to people: "To hack is to see a problem, determine the resources available to you, and to creatively apply them to the solution." That allows me to say with equal validity "hack code", "hack management" :), or just plain "hack life."
The two biggest selling points for the Visor over the palm have been the price and the springboard slot. Well, this new color is apparently priced at $450, which is back up in the range of the Palm IIIc. And the accompanying story that I saw talks about the long awaited cellphone module...which will cost about $300! I thought one of the early things that Handspring said was they were going after the more "everyday" market, not the corporate expense accounts.
Anyway, this is one of those books that I keep lying around to regularly browse through. I read sections randomly. My two favorite parts are the kid who made the robot that found a wallet thrown on the floor ("The grad students went nuts...") and some random Levy comment made when he said "Dance, phone lines, Dance!"
I've often wondered if Levy's interested in writing an updated version of this book. It doesn't have anything (much) to say on the subject of Microsoft, nor on the return of the rise of Unix/Linux. Might be interesting to see if he could find just as good a story today as he did back when he wrote Hackers.
All it takes is a willingness for the person to acknowledge "I'm buying a beginner's book on the subject, therefore it's obvious I don't know anything about the subject, so it's ok for me to call myself a dummy regarding that subject". It works for anybody. I always find myself wanting to pick up "Mutual Funds for Dummies" and "Classical Music for Dummies", but I can just never find the time to read them.
I never had as much luck with the "Complete Idiots" series. The logic of "Ok, I call myself a dummy, so I guess it's ok for them to call me a dummy" does not extend to letting yourself be called a complete idiot.
I had a chance to contribute to a dummies book (StarOffice). They have a very specific template that says exactly how to write such a book, and they don't like you leaving the pattern at all. The template can pretty much be summed up as "Lots of numbered bullet lists, with plenty of screen shots." :)
Duane
Speaking of titles, I was once asked to work on a book that the guy said would be called "Kickass J++ Game Programming." I said that I thought that was a pretty risky title that people might find offensive. I never heard back from him, but I also never saw the book on the shelves, either.
Hmmmmm, it took him that long to answer half his questions with one-liners? That's pretty disappointing. Of course, maybe that's because we moderated up only very silly questions.
Ok, everybody reading this who is halfway through their first novel, raise your hand? How many of those will ever see the light of day? If you'd said that you have several published already, and were considering branching out on your own to self publish, I might take it more seriously. But what you just said is pretty equivalent to "Hey, I have an idea for a program, which company do you think I should sell it to in order to make the most money?" Worry about it when you have something to sell.
Also, while I'm at it, games are always a big plus. Kids love to hack games. Go to your local BestBuy, since I know they sell them, and pick up whatever's the equivalent to "Game Programmer's Development Kit". i first saw it in QBasic form, where it would come with an IDE, and the source for a bunch of games. These days they have a similar thing out, only for Java.
I'm pretty sure he only has terminals in 2 rooms, though. :)
d
I love the vision of the arm taking a burger from grill to bun. I can just see the little robotic finger come out and hold the burger as it slips the spatula out from under it :).
I believe you'll find that most of those older games were written in assembly. Given that the processors used at the time (6502?) aren't terribly popular anymore, I'm not sure how educational you'd find it. You'd be able to read the source code, but not necessarily hack it or run it anywhere. Even to get it to run through the emulator you'd have to be able to compile it.
SoftwareETC, I have better luck with. I bought QuakeIII there, and although they have Myth, I didn't get it (I barely played CivCTP, I'm just not a fan of that type game). These days when I ask for HGII the people there can at least locate it in the computer (last checked 5/14, they told me 5/16. I'll have to go back.)
My point is that you can spread the word lots of ways. One is by getting out and talking about Linux and the fact that Hello, I am a potential buyer who will spend money in your store if you have Linux stuff. Sure, these days maybe 9 times out of 10 you'll walk out empty handed...but that doesn't mean you've accomplished nothing. If you do it enough times, and you're not the only one doing it, then some smart manager is going to see Linux scroll by his next "upcoming games" newsletter and think "Hmmm, maybe I should try this out and see if it sells..." and before you know it, we've got another store on our side.
And it's not just about games. Any chance you get, use it. Whenever I'm down BestBuy or CompUSA I always wander through the Linux section to see if there are any potential buyers that I might strike up a conversation with. When my cable company asked me if I wanted internet access, I asked if they supported Linux. When the operator said "What's linux?" I gave her a 15minute rundown of what it was and why it was good. Last week at the car dealer, when speaking of replacing my cd player, I got into a discussion of MP3 players, which got the girl behind the desk asking if I knew how to fix her computer after a bungled Win98 upgrade, which in turn led to me explaining to her about Linux. Will any of these people run out and buy Linux? Likely not. But now they've heard about it once more. And they are more likely to recognize it when they see it in a magazine or on a tv news story. And after they've done that a few times, maybe they'll convert.
-d, laughing with the rest of the Linux users
Now, having said that, tools become the next major piece. There is only 1 HTML -- but there are as many XMLs as there are DTDs. This is very intimidating. Nobody wants to write XML tags directly. They expect a tool to do it. Therefore, if you want to have your news department crank out press releases in XML format, you're going to need to supply them with a tool that specifies press releases in XML format. That means telling them where to type the title, the date, the byline, and so on....NOT giving them the same old word processor. And they're not going to like it.
I'm dealing with this problem right now at work. We want all the departments to start sharing content. I convinced them that the first step in doing that is to get rid of the HTML and Word formats, and store things in raw XML, and then everybody can pick and choose what they want and slap their own look and feel on it. They all agreed this was a wonderful idea. Then somebody pointed out that they'd have to start creating their content using this new format, and they said "Oh..uh...that sounds like alot of work.....no."
-d
(P.S. - And why the hell doesn't plain text formatted messaging work?? Do you know how much of a royal pain it is to talk about XML without being able to use angle brackets?!)
Wait a second...so, if you identify the quotes, then you need to get people's permission to use them. And, of course, there'll be somebody out there that wants money or something. Blah blah blah, too much hassle. So instead you choose to just take everybody's work without their permission, by denying them attribution? How does that make it right? If I started grabbing source code off newsgroups and mailing lists (public forums, no?) and pulling out all the comments, does it make it ok for me to sell it? Doesn't that fundamentally contradict one of the most important principles that we talk about around here?
disappointed, and waiting to get moderated down :(.
Godwin's Law on USENET says that once somebody made comparisons to Hitler or the Nazis, then the flamewar was immediately declared over because no further intelligent discourse could continue (*). Has Slashdot gone so rabid as to make USENET look polite?? Your battle against geek profiling is hereby declared over, Jon. Find a new dead horse to beat on.
(*) The original law says that "As a thread goes longer, the probability of a comparison to Hitler approaches one." Katz still proves it to hold true.
How do you figure? If they changed the machine's spec from what you ordered, then sure, absolutely. But if you bought the machine based on what somebody on the net told you, and then you get it and find out that's not true, well, it's not Netpliance's problem. They never said anything about providing you with a hackable machine.
This device sounds exactly like what FreePC tried. Remember them? Hey, get a free PC, all you have to do is agree to look at our ads. Every geek I know said "Dude, I'll hack the system! I'll fix it so i never have to look at ads, *and* I'll get a free computer! I'll set up fake accounts and get a dozen!" There ain't no such thing as a free lunch. The PC was free because it was a loss leader. At least they were smart enough to put you into a contract right from the beginning. To get around that deal by simply failing to hold up your end of the contract, well, that's not a hack, that's just plain illegal and doesn't take a great deal of intelligence.
I used to have a boss in my first job who liked to say (being a lifelong salesman), "Give away the razor. Sell the blades." During meetings when a good idea came up, he would ask "What's the razor? What's the blade?" The razor is the PC. The blade is the monthly service.
Netpliance's problem seems to have been that they forgot to lock in the contract up front. Somebody in there must have figured that only people who want the service would get the machine, since after all that's all the machine was good for. That was their mistake, underestimating the power of geeks who smell a free lunch. Yes, to hack their device was very cool indeed. But to set up a small business whose purpose was solely to buy them by the dozen, hack them, and then resell them? I'm glad netpliance closed the loophole. (Note, I don't know for a fact that anybody did that -- but almost everybody I heard did say that they were buying them in plurals, so I can quite logically assume that the most rabid free lunchers would be buying them by the dozen).
And how many people actually did the math? Ok, $100 box. Personally for me, not being a hardware hacker, I figure it's going to take me several hours to do the necessary soldering and such. The first time (since I'd only buy one), it might take what, 4? If somebody wanted me to work on installing software and hard drives for a living, what would I ask for pay? $150/hr? Ok, so now it's a $700 device. I have to put a hard drive in the thing, right? How big do I want to go? Plus what do the other parts cost? So maybe I throw another $200 or so into it? Now it's a $900 device. Throw in the shipping most people paid, the throw-away first month of ISP service, etc etc... and you're up over $1000 very likely. For those that primarily wanted the flat screen, ok, this is still a good deal. But it's one hell of an expensive MP3 player, if that was your plan.
Lastly, I love the logic of people that say "This is actually good for Netpliance, because most of the hardware hackers that buy them will never hack them, and just end up giving them away as gifts or something." How pray tell does that make Netpliance any more money? It doesn't, unless you count the slashdot effect as a marketing technique.
So, to sum up. Some clever hacker found a loophole, and benefited from it. Many followed. But there ain't no such thing as a free lunch, it was never Netpliance's intention to give away $100 machines for no return, and now it's closed. Don't whine about it. Go be a clever hacker and find the next loophole to exploit, and act a little quicker next time.
d
Algorithm was basically the same as bubble until you get to the comparison, which said "If you find two indices that are swappable, swap them and then recursively call this function again." Teacher marked it wrong because he didn't see a terminating condition. I guess he expected to see something like "if sorted then return;" at the top. I explained to him that it terminates when there are no more swaps, thus it falls through. So he marked it right.
This is what used to happen in high school when the only programming class that was available just barely covered the stuff you'd taught yourself 3 years previously, and you were bored by the first day. When we had to write Conway's Life, I made mine 3D. It was a real bitch to print out my results to hand them in, let me tell you. :)
d
If I remember the idea correctly, the reason it took Kubrick so long is because he wanted to use one actor from childhood through adult, and was actually filming the kid growing up in the movie...as he grew up in real life. I wondered whether that was urban legend, or what, but if he's been working on the movie for almost 20 years, it sounds very plausible.
The story is based on...let's see if I can remember...something about toys, an attic, and lasting all summer? Damnit, IMDB used to have an entry for it, too, but I can't find it. :(
d
d
(In my HS days I got asked to "Write any sort routine you want." I wrote recursive bubble sort. Teacher marked it wrong because he didn't understand my code. :))