>Anyone worth their salt as a programmer who has a CS degree can MAKE THEIR OWN EXPERIENCE at ANY TIME! When you get home from your call center job, just put down the controller and write some software, and assuming you stick with it, 6 months later you'll have some experience.
This is the best advice you can give prospective CS students. Seriously, new CS people - follow this advice.
And even if you like games, there's still a lot of projects you can do that are relevant. Some AI code I wrote for a game got me hired at a defense contractor called Cyberdyne or something (I kid, I kid - it was a lot more fun than ending the world), and also wrote programs to calculate optimal tactics / AI for my favorite board games, and modded Quake extensively.
Actually, no. Coding is all well and good, but a lot of what makes me (allegedly) superior comes from having read other people's code. Learning style and technique from real-world applications.
I received college training, but - to parapharase Mark Twain - my education neither began there nor ended there. And, in fact, a lot of what I learned at college wasn't learned in the course, but in the course of plundering the college resources. Back when I didn't yet have a PC at home, but the college computers were freely available.
I learned from my classes, I learned from reading other people's code, I learned from writing and debugging my own code. I joined a computer book club and as a result obtained not only books that in some cases were being used as actual college textbooks and in others introduced me to concepts that to this day haven't yet found mainstream application (but in some cases probably should).
A lot of the comments I saw on TFA were highly critical of this idea that you could have a "proper" grounding without formal education, and I'll agree that one advantage of such a venue is that you get exposed to more than just the topics that interest you, but I think they protest too much. While I'm really rather tired of the old "the best programmer I ever hired was a Music Major" meme, I do happen to know more than one person who actually literally were. Although being Music Majors, starvation probably played a role there, as well.
What is the point in these "publishers" and "book retailers" when we can buy and sell our books online now?
Good luck selling eBooks from your collection.
The point in "publishers" is that they take care of the proofing, typesetting (yes, even an ePub looks better if it was formatted as something other than a raw text dump), marketing, artwork (nice covers sell better), and so forth.
The point in "booksellers" is that you get one-stop shopping, and the publisher and author don't have to set up and maintain retail accounting systems and delivery servers (or did you think the Internet is powered by fairies? Those books come from tangible source machines with tangible operators powered by real live electricity).
Yes, one person can do it all, but doing everything yourself doesn't always mean it gets done well. If my favorite author can be more creative and more productive because he or she or they or whatever have outsourced the grunt work, I'm willing to pay for a middleman or 2.
Not being an idiot (no matter what they say), I won't pay more for electronic books than their dead-tree versions, but I don't consider paying a resonable price for intermediary services as a complete waste of money.
Because we love to bash our keyboards into so much plastic scrap whenever we come across one of its many standards-defiant idiosyncracies?
You mean, idiosyncracies different from Oracle's idiosyncracies, Microsoft's idiosyncracies and IBM's idiosyncracies?
By the way, care to be specific? Oh yeah, posting anon. Right.
I think probably the idiosyncracy that keeps it from running on my Linux servers is probably sufficient. Although that extra level in the table naming hierarchy has been known to cause me to destroy things.
Proposal: Everybody go out and spend as much time as possible taking pictures of dams, power plants, government buildings, and anything else that makes the Spooks paranoid.
Also, let's agree to stop buying firearms, ammunition, fuels, adhesives, plumbing bits, et. al., with anything but cash.
Dress in cammies. All. The. Time. This is especially important to do when taking photographs of infrastructure as mentioned above.
Have a poker night with your buddies, or a member of a DnD club? Make your meetings (and communications regarding meetings) as cloak-and-dagger as possible, to give the impression that you're engaging in some sort of nefarious activity.
In essence, let's poison the holy living FUCK out of this well - give them so many false positives, they'll be forced to scrap the whole project.
The well is actually pretty polluted as it is. Name your kid "Guadalupe Ortiz". Or for that matter, "Ted Kennedy". They'll come pre-registered on certain government watch lists. Never mind that the actual "Guadalupe Ortiz" was apparently a Mexican travel agency allegedly laundering drug money - a couple of years back a certain Ortiz made the news in California by trying to buy a car and coming up as a "positive" on the list.
Ironically, this same list would come back with "Usama" bin Ladin (Fox News spelling), but not "Osama" bin Ladin (more common spelling).
Societies fine in that respect, it's the governing body.
Unless you know something about the US election process that we don't, the governing body is (so far) getting its approval from society - or the voting members thereof.
Granted, some of our congress critters were voted in more because they claimed that their opponents were "too Liberal"* than on a platform like daily strip-searches at school bus-stops, but just because they didn't actively campaign on expanding the benefits of Guantanamo to all 57 states doesn't mean that we have to accept it when they do.
People do tend to get the government they deserve.
---- *Insert appropriate ideological position here, based on local vilification standards.
... IDE generated code is even less self-explanatory than most hand written code... How can that be when it is exactly the same code?
Because it usually isn't. For example, my IDE is far more to generate a prototype with "helpful" argument names like arg1, arg2, arg3. Which a lot of people don't bother to alter to more meaningful names.
But you're just using the IDE to generate stubs, and I do that. I start filling in the comments from there.
What I was referring to was when people use IDE wizards to generate big clots of one-size-fits-all chunks of code - usually platform-specific - which does things they don't understand because someone hired a monkey-with-an-IDE instead of paying more for someone with proper training. The monkeys then come running to me because they started to tweak the code and broke things because they didn't know what they were fooling around with.
I haven't coded since college, but I'm guessing that PLM is the "program logic manuals" referred to in the previous sentence.
Give the kid a cookie! Ironically, this is exactly why "self-explanatory code"... isn't.
To pick another example, consider mathematical equations. Many formulas are elegantly simple, but unless you know the context, what, exactly does E = mc^2 mean in real-world terms? Same thing with algorithms. They show the "how", but not the "what" or the "why". That's what the comments are supposed to be for, since most systems don't have that much of an external universal context to go back to for explanations.
Incidentally, one of the things I spend a fair amount of time doing is advising people who let an IDE write their programs not to rely on the IDE to write their programs. An IDE can be a wonderful help, but it's no excuse for actually knowing what the code is doing, and IDE-generated code is even less self-explanatory than most hand-written code.
Will we? I think it's more likely that people will be surprised and vow to never let it happen again, but it will quickly be forgotten. Look at how people are sacrificing freedom for safety left and right (TSA, Patriot Act, and all the other garbage) despite countless corrupt governments throughout history; it's as if they think the people in the government are perfect beings that could never hurt anyone but the 'bad guys'.
Ironically, these self-same people who think that the government would never abuse its power when it comes to handling terror are the ones who routinely scream about how the Goddam Gubmint is a thieving bunch of Socialistic power-abusers.
One of the reasons that Windows was so successful was that there was such a low buy-in cost to become a developer.
One of the reasons that OS/2 was such a failure what that there was such a HIGH buy-in cost to become a developer. Well, that and some backstabbing from Microsoft.
The only reason Windows 8 has a shot at becoming the #3 portable device OS platform after iOS and Android is that the other competitors are downright puny in comparison. Things like WebOS, Symbian, and so forth were already failing.
I was very amused when Donald Knuth announced Literate Programming, since I'd been doing something quite similar for years, although there weren't any automated tools back then.
First I wrote WHAT the function was supposed to do. This was the comments.
Then, I wrote the code to DO it.
If I did the job right - and kept the comments up to date (people really manage to do that?), then when I came back to make fixes or improvements, I'd know what the code was doing and what the likely consequences of changing it could be. Including the less obvious ones, such as things that depended on subsidiary routines.
I have extra incentive to write good comments these days. Back then, major systems often had program logic manuals. These days, the apps are more complex, but the time to sit down and write a PLM is rarely there. However, if the comments were well-done, tools like Oxygen and Javadoc can generate a fairly decent substitute.
Wow. We've got some major disconnects here. My original comment was to the effect that while I have nothing against teaching kids to program turles in LOGO, I have a major complaint that business thinks that that's ALL that you need to know to be a professional programmer.
Instead what I'm seeing has degenerated into something close to "emacs versus vi", with a side order of "You stupid elitist!"
Many distributions recommend ix86 for whatever reason.
Can someone who is experienced with binary distributions tell me whatever the binaries are still compiled to take advantage of newer processors (like more registers) and just using a least common instruction set or whatever they won't use whatever they could had used on newer processors except doing 64 bit instructions?
A lot of the "whatever reason" has been Java and Flash. Loathe them or despise them, it's hard to travel the Internet without them.
At the age of 6, it's really all they can do. And, yes, it's a great way to introduce computer programming -- they could even toss REPEAT in to the mix.
You want conditional branching? Great, but that can come later. You know, when they've developed the cognitive capacity to actually understand and use those concepts. (See: Piaget's theory of cognitive development)
Oh, I think a 6-year old can probably figure out that kind of stuff. My complaint isn't with the 6-year olds, it's with the managers that think that real programming can be done by 6-year olds ("It's SIMPLE! All You Have To Do Is..."). That sort of attitude is what leads to hiring developers as commodities (IT doesn't matter), and thence to SQL Injection attacks and buffer overflows.
A lot of what is wrong with software today is that too many people think that "RIGHT 90, FORWARD 100, LEFT 80" is programming.
Applying a Band-Aid on someone's finger is medicine, too, but if someone stuck a serrated knife up your recturm, I think you'd probably want someone whose training was a lot further along than RIGHT 90, FORWARD 100, LEFT 80.
Real programming begins when the turtle impacts the wall and you have to figure out how to handle it properly.
While Amazon and others do a reasonable job of simplifying the process of getting an e-book, it's still DRM'd.
And Barnes and Noble (also reportedly Amazon) DO allow getting the book DRM-free, via their respective stores. So that addresses that complaint.
However, an off-the-shelf Nook will then download the book into its hidden memory, and *I* have a complaint with that.
As far as buying direct from TOR goes, while that would be nice, there is a difference between publisher and bookseller. TOR has done the work of acquiring the author, proofreading and typesetting, making editorial suggestions, and so forth in order to produce a product. However, it is their option to outsource actual distribution of the product.
Yes, it introduces a middleman, but there's still value there. TOR can keep their costs (and thus the product costs) down by not having to hire people and acquire assets needed to handle the retail sales transactions and distributions. And even over the Internet, that's a lot of work. Amazon, B&N, and their ilk provide the "one-stop shopping" experience so that you don't have to keep accounts with every single publisher whose authors you like and handle the merchant accounts, taxes, download servers & suport personnel, etc. etc.
It's actually not that bad a deal as long as you keep the hidden storage, "virtual ownership" and DRM out of the mix.
Whenever these kinds of articles are brought up, there is NO insightful discussion whatsoever. It's sickening, really. Instead of actually contributing to a logical discussion, every single comment on these kinds of articles says, more or less, "lol GNOME 3 sucks and only morons would like it because it's obviously trash; use a DE that actually makes sense". The problem with this kind of comment should be painfully obvious, but apparently it's not so simple with most of you. People say this in EVERY FREAKING COMMENT ON THESE ARTICLES! There is no originality whatsoever! Look, WE GET IT! You guys don't like GNOME 3! Just shut up then and leave the people who do like it alone!
It's not about you, it's about Gnome. I'm glad you like Gnome 3. I don't. It removed too many capabilities that I depended on all day every day, and not all of them have well-known ways to get them back. Or, from what I can tell in some cases, any way to get them back.
If Gnome 3 had been an alternative Gnome, or an option to something that preserved the capabilities of Gnome 2, I wouldn't care, but it was made the default desktop for Fedora 17. It took me from a cluttered but functional desktop to a clean desktop that did virtually nothing except show me what my social networking friends were up to (I don't HAVE friends!) and demolish my working space every time I overshot the mouse into a corner.
The developers of Gnome over the years have shown a consistent contempt for a large part - if not the actual majority of their users. And, since they refuse to listen on their own channels, the howling mobs have to make their voices heard where they can. Here, for instance. Besides, if all this forum offered was fulsome praise for Gnome 3, that would be too much like validation of something a lot of us don't consider valid.
If you enjoy Gnome 3, I'm happy for you, and your voice in the matter is just as valid as anyone else's. But we want the conversation to be democratic, and that means dissent as well. Be glad that there is dissent. Too much of today's discussion is conducted in echo chambers.
Sadly, the only way of getting without pains a DRM-free epub of many books is to download them from one of the many simple channels that offers them "illegaly". While Amazon and others do a reasonable job of simplifying the process of getting an e-book, it's still DRM'd.
In any case, "Among Others" is NOT SF, but fantasy, and quite good at that.
Buying a book from an ebbok bookseller doesn't have to mean DRM. While Amazon might force it, their competition does not.
A recent TOR ePub in the Barnes & Noble Nook shop carried a very explicit notice that due to the insistence of the publisher, that book did not carry DRM.
I worked down in the Tampa Bay area for a while. I'd leave a frozen dinner on the dash when I went in to work and by lunchtime it was fully thawed and hot. In January. I had a thermometer stuck in a shady area. Its top reading was 140 F, but there were times when it was jammed up so hard against the peg I was afraid it was permanently stuck there.
For small electronics and meltables (CDs, for instance), I've often jammed them under the seat, since it's shaded, and the lowest place in the car, although sitting on hot asphalt can reduce the benefits somewhat. But there's not much space there. The trunk/boot is roomier, but while it doesn't "greenhouse", hot sun on dark paint will radiate through the metal and into the interior. I recommend getting a "pizza carrier" or other insulated bag/container and stuffing the gear into that then putting the whole thing into the trunk. If you're really paranoid, add a "blue ice" pack or 3, but don't make it really cold or you could have issues with condensation and/or thermal expansion/contraction.
Cracking the windows can help in reducing greenhouse heating of the body of the vehicle, although in Florida, you risk finding the car full of water in Summer. The solar fans are probably not powerful enough. Then again, the days I need one the most, are the days it's most likely to rain, and you have to keep the windows cracked to mount the fan and provide air intake.
Slashdot Mirror
>Anyone worth their salt as a programmer who has a CS degree can MAKE THEIR OWN EXPERIENCE at ANY TIME! When you get home from your call center job, just put down the controller and write some software, and assuming you stick with it, 6 months later you'll have some experience.
This is the best advice you can give prospective CS students. Seriously, new CS people - follow this advice.
And even if you like games, there's still a lot of projects you can do that are relevant. Some AI code I wrote for a game got me hired at a defense contractor called Cyberdyne or something (I kid, I kid - it was a lot more fun than ending the world), and also wrote programs to calculate optimal tactics / AI for my favorite board games, and modded Quake extensively.
Actually, no. Coding is all well and good, but a lot of what makes me (allegedly) superior comes from having read other people's code. Learning style and technique from real-world applications.
I received college training, but - to parapharase Mark Twain - my education neither began there nor ended there. And, in fact, a lot of what I learned at college wasn't learned in the course, but in the course of plundering the college resources. Back when I didn't yet have a PC at home, but the college computers were freely available.
I learned from my classes, I learned from reading other people's code, I learned from writing and debugging my own code. I joined a computer book club and as a result obtained not only books that in some cases were being used as actual college textbooks and in others introduced me to concepts that to this day haven't yet found mainstream application (but in some cases probably should).
A lot of the comments I saw on TFA were highly critical of this idea that you could have a "proper" grounding without formal education, and I'll agree that one advantage of such a venue is that you get exposed to more than just the topics that interest you, but I think they protest too much. While I'm really rather tired of the old "the best programmer I ever hired was a Music Major" meme, I do happen to know more than one person who actually literally were. Although being Music Majors, starvation probably played a role there, as well.
What is the point in these "publishers" and "book retailers" when we can buy and sell our books online now?
Good luck selling eBooks from your collection.
The point in "publishers" is that they take care of the proofing, typesetting (yes, even an ePub looks better if it was formatted as something other than a raw text dump), marketing, artwork (nice covers sell better), and so forth.
The point in "booksellers" is that you get one-stop shopping, and the publisher and author don't have to set up and maintain retail accounting systems and delivery servers (or did you think the Internet is powered by fairies? Those books come from tangible source machines with tangible operators powered by real live electricity).
Yes, one person can do it all, but doing everything yourself doesn't always mean it gets done well. If my favorite author can be more creative and more productive because he or she or they or whatever have outsourced the grunt work, I'm willing to pay for a middleman or 2.
Not being an idiot (no matter what they say), I won't pay more for electronic books than their dead-tree versions, but I don't consider paying a resonable price for intermediary services as a complete waste of money.
Because we love to bash our keyboards into so much plastic scrap whenever we come across one of its many standards-defiant idiosyncracies?
You mean, idiosyncracies different from Oracle's idiosyncracies, Microsoft's idiosyncracies and IBM's idiosyncracies?
By the way, care to be specific? Oh yeah, posting anon. Right.
I think probably the idiosyncracy that keeps it from running on my Linux servers is probably sufficient. Although that extra level in the table naming hierarchy has been known to cause me to destroy things.
Proposal: Everybody go out and spend as much time as possible taking pictures of dams, power plants, government buildings, and anything else that makes the Spooks paranoid.
Also, let's agree to stop buying firearms, ammunition, fuels, adhesives, plumbing bits, et. al., with anything but cash.
Dress in cammies. All. The. Time. This is especially important to do when taking photographs of infrastructure as mentioned above.
Have a poker night with your buddies, or a member of a DnD club? Make your meetings (and communications regarding meetings) as cloak-and-dagger as possible, to give the impression that you're engaging in some sort of nefarious activity.
In essence, let's poison the holy living FUCK out of this well - give them so many false positives, they'll be forced to scrap the whole project.
The well is actually pretty polluted as it is. Name your kid "Guadalupe Ortiz". Or for that matter, "Ted Kennedy". They'll come pre-registered on certain government watch lists. Never mind that the actual "Guadalupe Ortiz" was apparently a Mexican travel agency allegedly laundering drug money - a couple of years back a certain Ortiz made the news in California by trying to buy a car and coming up as a "positive" on the list.
Ironically, this same list would come back with "Usama" bin Ladin (Fox News spelling), but not "Osama" bin Ladin (more common spelling).
Garbage In, Gospel Out.
Societies fine in that respect, it's the governing body.
Unless you know something about the US election process that we don't, the governing body is (so far) getting its approval from society - or the voting members thereof.
Granted, some of our congress critters were voted in more because they claimed that their opponents were "too Liberal"* than on a platform like daily strip-searches at school bus-stops, but just because they didn't actively campaign on expanding the benefits of Guantanamo to all 57 states doesn't mean that we have to accept it when they do.
People do tend to get the government they deserve.
----
*Insert appropriate ideological position here, based on local vilification standards.
How can that be when it is exactly the same code?
Because it usually isn't. For example, my IDE is far more to generate a prototype with "helpful" argument names like arg1, arg2, arg3. Which a lot of people don't bother to alter to more meaningful names.
But you're just using the IDE to generate stubs, and I do that. I start filling in the comments from there.
What I was referring to was when people use IDE wizards to generate big clots of one-size-fits-all chunks of code - usually platform-specific - which does things they don't understand because someone hired a monkey-with-an-IDE instead of paying more for someone with proper training. The monkeys then come running to me because they started to tweak the code and broke things because they didn't know what they were fooling around with.
I haven't coded since college, but I'm guessing that PLM is the "program logic manuals" referred to in the previous sentence.
Give the kid a cookie! Ironically, this is exactly why "self-explanatory code" ... isn't.
To pick another example, consider mathematical equations. Many formulas are elegantly simple, but unless you know the context, what, exactly does E = mc^2 mean in real-world terms? Same thing with algorithms. They show the "how", but not the "what" or the "why". That's what the comments are supposed to be for, since most systems don't have that much of an external universal context to go back to for explanations.
Incidentally, one of the things I spend a fair amount of time doing is advising people who let an IDE write their programs not to rely on the IDE to write their programs. An IDE can be a wonderful help, but it's no excuse for actually knowing what the code is doing, and IDE-generated code is even less self-explanatory than most hand-written code.
but we'll learn!
Will we? I think it's more likely that people will be surprised and vow to never let it happen again, but it will quickly be forgotten. Look at how people are sacrificing freedom for safety left and right (TSA, Patriot Act, and all the other garbage) despite countless corrupt governments throughout history; it's as if they think the people in the government are perfect beings that could never hurt anyone but the 'bad guys'.
Ironically, these self-same people who think that the government would never abuse its power when it comes to handling terror are the ones who routinely scream about how the Goddam Gubmint is a thieving bunch of Socialistic power-abusers.
sure, throw caution to the wind.
what's the worst that can happen?
Room 101.
I fall more in the, "if you didn't do anything wrong you have nothing to worry about" camp.
And just what makes you thing that you are going to determine what's "wrong"?
They want to, but Bruce Willis already died in space saving the world from that asteroid.
So who inherits his iTunes collection?
One of the reasons that Windows was so successful was that there was such a low buy-in cost to become a developer.
One of the reasons that OS/2 was such a failure what that there was such a HIGH buy-in cost to become a developer. Well, that and some backstabbing from Microsoft.
The only reason Windows 8 has a shot at becoming the #3 portable device OS platform after iOS and Android is that the other competitors are downright puny in comparison. Things like WebOS, Symbian, and so forth were already failing.
I was very amused when Donald Knuth announced Literate Programming, since I'd been doing something quite similar for years, although there weren't any automated tools back then.
First I wrote WHAT the function was supposed to do. This was the comments.
Then, I wrote the code to DO it.
If I did the job right - and kept the comments up to date (people really manage to do that?), then when I came back to make fixes or improvements, I'd know what the code was doing and what the likely consequences of changing it could be. Including the less obvious ones, such as things that depended on subsidiary routines.
I have extra incentive to write good comments these days. Back then, major systems often had program logic manuals. These days, the apps are more complex, but the time to sit down and write a PLM is rarely there. However, if the comments were well-done, tools like Oxygen and Javadoc can generate a fairly decent substitute.
I thought it was e-ink with a special kind of backlighting.
But I can't really tell from the story link, it doesn't say lcd or e-ink...
No, it's e-ink with a special kind of FRONTlighting.
How does a bill like this even get proposed in this day and age? What ever happened to privacy?
I'd hate to make the ridiculous V for Vendetta reference.. but yikes. The UK really isn't supposed to be going that way.
Smile for the cameras, now!
Smith! 6079 Smith W! Sit up straight!
Wow. We've got some major disconnects here. My original comment was to the effect that while I have nothing against teaching kids to program turles in LOGO, I have a major complaint that business thinks that that's ALL that you need to know to be a professional programmer.
Instead what I'm seeing has degenerated into something close to "emacs versus vi", with a side order of "You stupid elitist!"
Many distributions recommend ix86 for whatever reason.
Can someone who is experienced with binary distributions tell me whatever the binaries are still compiled to take advantage of newer processors (like more registers) and just using a least common instruction set or whatever they won't use whatever they could had used on newer processors except doing 64 bit instructions?
A lot of the "whatever reason" has been Java and Flash. Loathe them or despise them, it's hard to travel the Internet without them.
At the age of 6, it's really all they can do. And, yes, it's a great way to introduce computer programming -- they could even toss REPEAT in to the mix.
You want conditional branching? Great, but that can come later. You know, when they've developed the cognitive capacity to actually understand and use those concepts. (See: Piaget's theory of cognitive development)
Oh, I think a 6-year old can probably figure out that kind of stuff. My complaint isn't with the 6-year olds, it's with the managers that think that real programming can be done by 6-year olds ("It's SIMPLE! All You Have To Do Is..."). That sort of attitude is what leads to hiring developers as commodities (IT doesn't matter), and thence to SQL Injection attacks and buffer overflows.
Dang. I was looking forward to flying Tang and freeze-dried ice cream.
Can't the idiotologues leave ANYTHING in peace?
A lot of what is wrong with software today is that too many people think that "RIGHT 90, FORWARD 100, LEFT 80" is programming.
Applying a Band-Aid on someone's finger is medicine, too, but if someone stuck a serrated knife up your recturm, I think you'd probably want someone whose training was a lot further along than RIGHT 90, FORWARD 100, LEFT 80.
Real programming begins when the turtle impacts the wall and you have to figure out how to handle it properly.
I think we have some confusion here.
The original complaint was
While Amazon and others do a reasonable job of simplifying the process of getting an e-book, it's still DRM'd.
And Barnes and Noble (also reportedly Amazon) DO allow getting the book DRM-free, via their respective stores. So that addresses that complaint.
However, an off-the-shelf Nook will then download the book into its hidden memory, and *I* have a complaint with that.
As far as buying direct from TOR goes, while that would be nice, there is a difference between publisher and bookseller. TOR has done the work of acquiring the author, proofreading and typesetting, making editorial suggestions, and so forth in order to produce a product. However, it is their option to outsource actual distribution of the product.
Yes, it introduces a middleman, but there's still value there. TOR can keep their costs (and thus the product costs) down by not having to hire people and acquire assets needed to handle the retail sales transactions and distributions. And even over the Internet, that's a lot of work. Amazon, B&N, and their ilk provide the "one-stop shopping" experience so that you don't have to keep accounts with every single publisher whose authors you like and handle the merchant accounts, taxes, download servers & suport personnel, etc. etc.
It's actually not that bad a deal as long as you keep the hidden storage, "virtual ownership" and DRM out of the mix.
Whenever these kinds of articles are brought up, there is NO insightful discussion whatsoever. It's sickening, really. Instead of actually contributing to a logical discussion, every single comment on these kinds of articles says, more or less, "lol GNOME 3 sucks and only morons would like it because it's obviously trash; use a DE that actually makes sense". The problem with this kind of comment should be painfully obvious, but apparently it's not so simple with most of you. People say this in EVERY FREAKING COMMENT ON THESE ARTICLES! There is no originality whatsoever! Look, WE GET IT! You guys don't like GNOME 3! Just shut up then and leave the people who do like it alone!
It's not about you, it's about Gnome. I'm glad you like Gnome 3. I don't. It removed too many capabilities that I depended on all day every day, and not all of them have well-known ways to get them back. Or, from what I can tell in some cases, any way to get them back.
If Gnome 3 had been an alternative Gnome, or an option to something that preserved the capabilities of Gnome 2, I wouldn't care, but it was made the default desktop for Fedora 17. It took me from a cluttered but functional desktop to a clean desktop that did virtually nothing except show me what my social networking friends were up to (I don't HAVE friends!) and demolish my working space every time I overshot the mouse into a corner.
The developers of Gnome over the years have shown a consistent contempt for a large part - if not the actual majority of their users. And, since they refuse to listen on their own channels, the howling mobs have to make their voices heard where they can. Here, for instance. Besides, if all this forum offered was fulsome praise for Gnome 3, that would be too much like validation of something a lot of us don't consider valid.
If you enjoy Gnome 3, I'm happy for you, and your voice in the matter is just as valid as anyone else's. But we want the conversation to be democratic, and that means dissent as well. Be glad that there is dissent. Too much of today's discussion is conducted in echo chambers.
Sadly, the only way of getting without pains a DRM-free epub of many books is to download them from one of the many simple channels that offers them "illegaly". While Amazon and others do a reasonable job of simplifying the process of getting an e-book, it's still DRM'd.
In any case, "Among Others" is NOT SF, but fantasy, and quite good at that.
Buying a book from an ebbok bookseller doesn't have to mean DRM. While Amazon might force it, their competition does not.
A recent TOR ePub in the Barnes & Noble Nook shop carried a very explicit notice that due to the insistence of the publisher, that book did not carry DRM.
I thought they were supposed to use lawyers for this.
I worked down in the Tampa Bay area for a while. I'd leave a frozen dinner on the dash when I went in to work and by lunchtime it was fully thawed and hot. In January. I had a thermometer stuck in a shady area. Its top reading was 140 F, but there were times when it was jammed up so hard against the peg I was afraid it was permanently stuck there.
For small electronics and meltables (CDs, for instance), I've often jammed them under the seat, since it's shaded, and the lowest place in the car, although sitting on hot asphalt can reduce the benefits somewhat. But there's not much space there. The trunk/boot is roomier, but while it doesn't "greenhouse", hot sun on dark paint will radiate through the metal and into the interior. I recommend getting a "pizza carrier" or other insulated bag/container and stuffing the gear into that then putting the whole thing into the trunk. If you're really paranoid, add a "blue ice" pack or 3, but don't make it really cold or you could have issues with condensation and/or thermal expansion/contraction.
Cracking the windows can help in reducing greenhouse heating of the body of the vehicle, although in Florida, you risk finding the car full of water in Summer. The solar fans are probably not powerful enough. Then again, the days I need one the most, are the days it's most likely to rain, and you have to keep the windows cracked to mount the fan and provide air intake.