As you may already have noticed my name is Ian Rockefeller. That is because I'm a member of the Rockefeller clan (yes, THAT Rockefeller clan). To refreshend your memory, those are the people who sponsor this Campus, own the ground it stands on, own the building company that built it, the company that delivered the bricks that it was built with and also own teh g0dd4m quarry where the material comes from with which those bricks were made. (I think Jenny, one of my cousins, own's the county that quarry lies in aswell, but I'm not shure about that...) My Uncle Bob is the guy that sponsored your last hardware roundup (2 million worth of xserve pizzaboxen, wasn't it?) and it was daddy who had that arm thick bundle of T1 lines conected last summer when I asked him if he could do that for me. It's the ISP at which I personally hold 51% (my little project to ge me ready fo the real world when I've got my PhD) that subventions the campus' bandwidth. Having to read this mail from you during my 11 o'clock morning latte in the library makes me super pissed. I strongly suggest you inmediately open all the ports on my account again, file this whole thing under 'F' for 'forget' and pray to god that I don't have your dumb asses fired ASAP.
l05ers.
Sincerely, Ian Rockefeller, Student on Campus (0wnz0r of j00 a553s!)
I've been using Athlons for me and all the people I've been building custom Linux PCs for. I remeber a few years ago when AMD had one socket and Intel had 7. That was a major reason to use AMD. Now AMD has something like 3 (or more) adding up to 9 or 10 different PC CPU sockets. Add in the bazillion variants of RAM clockings, HDD (SATA, EIDE (3 different speeds), SCSI (god know how many different types, etc.) conection standards etc. and even for a hardwarefreak like me things are getting very confusing. I don't have the time for this anymore. And since configuring a PC with good hardware and a good OS (Linux) takes lots of time, in the end a Mac is cheaper. Much cheaper. Linux will be the future workhorse OS, OS X will be the appliance OS. Apple has gotten things just right for quite some time now, they deserve the market share they are just gaining.
... MS Windows in the middle. I bought an iBook half a year ago to develop for a larger flash project. I've been using Linux exclusively for almost 4 years (SuSE at first, then Debian). My next Computer is going to be a Mac. Why? Thats why.
1st of all: One Button Mice are a good thing. Copmutern00bs ask the famous question "With which button should I click" far to often. Every time I say "Left button unless said otherwise" but it just won't sink in. Single Buttons are good. 2nd: Multiple Button Mice are good aswell. Nothing beats operating Expose or other main WM functions with those extra Buttons on a modern Logitech mouse. If Apple does the multi-button thing they should do it the right way. One big, main Button, a wheel (with option-click) and at least three other, smaller ones for middlefinger or thumb, mapped to the expose functions. That way the switch would show the advantage imidiately and people would imidiately see that they should learn to use the buttons. Apple has 100% hard and software integration, they could test a solid default configuration for a multi-button mouse that convinces anyone of the concept without confusing n00bs.
No RPG's aren't 'usually' played with figures. Those are called tabletop games. D&D isn' or wasn't for a long period either. Allthough D&D did originally start out as a pure non-RPG tabletop. That's why it sucks so much as a pen and paper RPG compared to pure RPG systems like Torg or hybrid RPG systems such as Midgard or Silouette.
I studied and trained performing arts, have a diploma in that and I also consider myself somewhat firm at general visual/fine arts. The thing hat occured to me about watching and noticing the bad acting , as a lot of people here allready have done, is I thought that I would have done it better. Yet the other part of that is that it also occured to me how extremly difficult it would be to get it just right. For novices aswell as for me.
I've long considered starting a little independent film project and I think I would be the type of guy to a) not consider a fan project like this 'below' me and b) actually be able to aply my skills in such a way that everybody would profit from it. Like for instance the mentioned bad acting. There are a few extremly simple rules of acting that just sink in with the years that these people could have followed to greatly enhance even that short trailer. Very much like the simple rules you just know when to apply as an experienced programmer.
Some must-have basics: If you want to sound fierce, loud and evil, tone down on the vowels and emphasise the consonants. Do speech training. Do speech training with your lines. The moment you know your lines is the moment you START practicing them, you don't stop it there. (That's what differs a school play from professional acting btw)
When you act, your head and facial expression leads your motion, when you dance your body leads your motion and facial expression. For dancing: On at least one part of your body at a time the musical beat should be visible. (Cue stupid dirty jokes below:-) )
And finally, my performing arts process I've refined over 10 years of professional work - practice an act in this order (and in this order ONLY):
1) Learn to know the play and learn your lines by heart. Nothing else. Don't dare try to act at this stage. NEVER try to act at this stage. If you do, you WILL suck on stage/film. Trust me. I've studied with to many third class perfomers, the world has enough of them. In fact, you shouldn't even move very much when reciting your lines at this stage.
2) Give your lines flow and vividness by supporting each one with an inner picture and vision. EACH AND EVERY SINGLE ONE. Give the string of visions a storytelling consistency. It's at this stage perfomers notice wether they've understood the playwrite or wether they have to correct their povs at some place or other. This is the stage at which storyboarders, and directors of photography double check their plans for shooting. Again: don't act yet. Do more of a reciting or storytelling thing. Good RPG Gamemasters enter this stage frequently for instance.
3) Forget your lines for this stage. Think of that other person whos lines you happen to know by heart and what kind of a character he might be. Pratice stances, poses and gestures emphasising basic emotions with the impitus of that character. Don't do that with the lines. Don't act the play! Do that with differen't things. Lines you make up. Best is to make up a little play by itself. You're on the safe side if you take - for instance - the tragic Anakin Skywalker (well he was a tragic character and the acting wasn't bad at all for such a 5th grade script) and try to play him as if he were a part in a comedy. Don't speak to early. Practice the stances, poses and gestures. Learn the difference between movement leading to pose and pose leading to movement.
4) Now practive stances, poses, gestures and movement of the play. Use the visions of 2). Don't speak your lines to much. Whisper them or speak them toneless. You want to concentrate on the moving part. You practice that seperately from speaking at first.
5) Add you lines and and your adversaries in play. Get in sync. If your coplayers are good, you won't even need a director. Do the stuff. The thing. In one word: Act. HERE is where the acting kicks in. And once again: Anybody who starts earlier in the process WILL suck in performance. When you
I don't know how long or indepth this fair thing is, so you might have to adjust. You should completely splitt between what you do on your job and what computers can do. Prepare a show-and-tell only lecture and pratice to explain things in a way kids of this age will find interessting. Maybe tell a story or two of interessting tidbits of your profession in general. Keep in mind that they (children) have a different sense of humor and less concepts of apstraction... which doesn't mean their to stupid to understand the interessting parts of what you do! In fact, 9 year olds can be even more on top of current scientific/technical things than the usual grown-up. It's just all about explaining it in a way that it doesn't bore them to death. The other thing is a practical one, which lot have provided suggestions to allready. I'd like to point out that you might want to explain to someone who isn't the usual future geek and all into gameboy and electronic toys allready the nature of computers and how to program them. I'd suggest a simple program that displays the fascination of automation. Maybe a very simple, tile based turtle program enviroment with your own simple set of commands (go, stop, on, off, forward, backward, left, right, north, south, east, west,... you get the point). It should be good enough to display the basic concept of computers (programmability and automation) but be easy enough to do in a time where a group of kids each can get their own shot and everybody can watch without getting bored. Both units, the show and tell and the little programming part shouldn't take any longer than 30-45 minutes each for a group of 10 children. Anyone more curious should have a chance to ask you more questions though.
My 2 cents from a geek who's been a teacher for some time aswell.
... you've got serious beowulf potential. In 10 years it will be like: "Imagine a traffic jam of these." here on/.
I remember boo.com. It was downhill from there on.
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The DotCom Crash Revisited
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· Score: 2, Interesting
I remember boo.com. The chiefs of that startup were hyping it quite a lot even by the standards of the roaring nineties. They had zero market testing and had people building 3D virtualizations of clothing and clubwear by hand. They were burning lots of money very very fast and the chiefs were roundtripping from Scandinavia to London and NYC every odd day and doing nothing much more than partying with VIPs. I generally was very upbeat at the time but even then thought that boo.com was doing some insane stunts and cutting it to thin for my taste. They were the first ones to incinerate on reentry afer their high-fly and they very well deseved to be the first. BTW: Their sad and sorry remains still exist. I do still think the original concept would work. It just can't work the way they aproached it.
Is the Licence so restricted? Can't anyone who would like to just fork the project?
It's open source people, this is how it works when heavy problems show up:
1) Gee cool project. I like the tool.
2) Gosh, I miss foo in this. But I guess someone would need to implement bar before that could work.
3) - "Hey folks, I've done this patch. Could you check it out, merge it in and may I join the devteam?" - "No. You stink. We don't want you. You know to much, and besides: I'm the big guru around here. Go away." - "Ok. Sorry for wasting your time."
That's what I love about Python. It end's such discussions instantaniously.:- ) Unless you get some prick that mixes spaces and tabs for indentation, that is. ' haven't run into someone like that though.
When I programm ERP Modules (in Python) I start with a large comment on what the module is supposed to do. I actually started doing this quite from the beginning. I write a litte summary of what the module does and comment heavily throughout the source. I even have debugging sessions were I only work on comments - often detailing them further. I also do a lot of other programming (ActionScript rich media and stuff). I don't do opening or other comments there that much. Why that? If a multimedia app doesn't work I get an e-mail or a call asking to check into it within the next 24 hrs. The customer is anoyed or says that this comes bad with the end-user. We talk a little, I et to work and fix it within the next 10 hrs. If a ERP module doesn't do what it's supposed to, I get a call on my mobile, with the CEO at the other end telling me that he's losing 200 Euro an hour because order processing has gone haywire. This is a good point to end all discussion wether commenting is good or bad. When you are debugging a piece of code that keeps 3 people breathing you shure as well want it to be well commented. The Lockheed Software Group, the people who write code for the space shuttle and other things, take this to the all-out extreme. They write EVERYTHING in a sort of human readable meta code, meta-comment THAT and then tranfer that to real code. They've had 3 bugs in 25 years - so I've heard. One of them being a counter problem that once would have nearly locked down a com-dish on an orbiter and prevented it from following it's target on earth after having rotated a certain amount. Figure: A millisecond of timing error in their code has the orbiter off course by 3 miles. I hear their comment line/code line ratio is about 7 to 1.
I know a woman who has electromagnetic field sensebility. She can feel a CRT Monitor being switched on in the other room or on another floor and feels it especially intense at certain angles (yepp, it's the vertical and horizontal coils). She's allready had the effect scientifically examined. She also senses mobile radiocell handshakes nearby (5-7 meters) and has a habbit of anouncing a phonecall just a second before a mobile rings. Quite irritating for people not knowing this/ believing her and funny to watch aswell.:-)
However, her life is hell most of the time. People usually don't believe her and think she's crazy. She's having a hard time asking the neighbor that lives above her (a copmuter geek) to switch of his CRT when he's not using it. Basically she's one of those candidates who would be best of sleeping in a faraday cage.
"It's not 'pinin'! It's passed on! This site is no more! It has ceased to be! It's expired and gone to meet it's maker! It's a stiff! Bereft of life, it rests in peace! If you hadn't hadn't posted it on slashdot it wouldn't be pushing up the daisies! It's metabolic processes are now 'istory! It's off the twig! It's kicked the bucket, It's shuffled off it's mortal coil, run down the curtain and joined the bleedin' choir invisibile!! THIS IS AN EX-SITE!!"
But thanks for the correction anyway. A freudian slide I guess.:-))
Linux will reach critical mass in germany within the next 12 months. Everybody with more than 2 braincells and some IT knowledge has predicted this for years. For more and more partners I work with it isn't a question of wether or not one should use Linux, but how to apply it. It's actually a thing I bet my business on two years ago and to date I haven't regreted it. MS Windows is done with. People allways call me insane when I say this, but even the most notorious Windows users here say they will migrate to Linux when Win2K support ceases. It could very well be that MS will pull a publicity stunt and start releasing their own Linux Distro, with DX9, NTFS and all. They'd have to admit having done a big mistake, they'd be 3 years late, but I guess with 40 billion on the bank it's not such a big problem taking hold of the 15% growth FOSS IT services market in something like 6 months flat. Anyway you look at it, the next years are going to be interessting and probably lot's of fun aswell.:-)
My fav Miniature Tabletop Wargame: Heavy Gear
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· Score: 1
If you're into something deeper than risk and A&A you might wan't to look into the potentially adictive/expensive world of tactical miniture tabletops. Heavy Gear has one of the best rulesets and is generally considered the better "giant robot wargame". If this is your type of game, be shure to check it out before you seek the dark side (read: Batteltech fraction;-) ). Yet both can be(come) addictive and very time consuming - especially if you start into miniature painting and landscape building and all that. You have been warned.:-)
On Carcasonne, Settlers, etc.
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Fun Tabletop Games?
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· Score: 2, Informative
Carcasonne, Settlers, Puerto Rico, Tikal,... each of these is a representative of a refreshing trend that has held on for at least a decade now: The decade of a new generation of german boardgames. It's the first time we actually see leasure products being translated en masse from german into english. I can say that any of these games are good for perfect passtime. http://www.brettspielwelt.de/ is a website that has many official web/internet variants of these types of games with english versions aswell. It's main gaming client runs with java and gives a chance to test games that you might want to purchase as hardcopy. If you find a game that you like I can strongly recommend getting the german version and a seperate translation of the rules, as german boradgames, especially the new generation, are of an impressive quality.
Java has vector grafics too. Infact, it has JMF (Java Media Framework) which is nothing other than Suns answer to Flash. Videostreaming, sound, vectorgrafics and all. Flash has one (1) IDE that sucks quite a bit (grafical features aside), Java has 10 Million, a lot of which are FOSS. The problem with Java is that Sun seems to have no interesst in achieving end-user ubiquity. That is the big advantage Flash has.
My Background: I use all three major Workstation OSes (Linux, OS X and Windows) on a regular, professional basis.
Of course Windows 2K/XP has massive suckage potential, but no one can deny that it still is a de-facto monopoly which unfortunately is an advantage in itself. Available Software, everybody knows it, etc... Yet it's universal desktop usability is far behind anything a generation 2005 Unix derivate setup has to offer (Aqua/KDE/Gnome/E/whatever).
KDE has improved massively in the last releases. It's usable out of the box, has siezed 100% of Font and Clipboard management without fuckups and it only takes a little configuration to rid it of the windows crappiness it still thinks it needs to ape. The usability of a well configured KDE is just about at the heels of a well configured and tweaked Mac OS X. Bad hardware vendor support of OSS is currently the biggest no-go for professionals at the desktop. Everything else is way ahead of Windows. It's what Steve Ballmers nightmares are made of.
Finally OS X. I have to mostly agree with the linked article. Apple pays people good salaries to 'just sit around' and think of ways to improve user experience. Apple is an appliance. Apple has literally zero hardware fuss they have to cope with. Even the first iMacs came in a package that had a first in not needing Monitor adjustment. That allready greatly enhances end user experience. I've seen countless desktops with expensive CRTs flickering at 60Hz because the users didn't know how to set up a CRT screen. How do you install a printer on a Mac? Plug it in. It's start's right there and end's with things like MacMini, 'Expose all programms' and Tiger's upcoming Automator. It's what Michael Dell's nightmares are made of.
That's the reason Apple is leading the way in usability and productivity, OSS is closely following and MS is sweating bullets over the trouble at the horizon.
... arrogant, pseudo-academic assholes aswell. I guess you find them everywhere.
Coming to think of it, this reaction isn't suprising. The Bloggersphere is the toughest competitor to this kind of people in the world of new media. This is nothing but yet another display of the standard defense of pseudo-intellectuals of the opinion-sovereignty they claim over society.
Luckly nowadays we don't have to put up with this crap 'cause that monopoly is slowly dimishing. Thanks to the bloggersphere - the nuisance it can be aside.
It's actually IS funny if you understand english and german.:-) Much as "I speak english very well but I can noch nicht so schnell." or "Equal goes it lose!" or "By your english there get I yes a circle-run-together-break." *Hihihi* And now prepare for jokes on my sig in 5,4,3,2...
Browsergames are often nothing more then a set of grafically 'enhanced' spreadsheets. Yet I've heard that they, much like the good ol'e play by mail games, are extremely fun and addictive once you get into them. For someone who has nearly zero ability to physically move around himself this would be a nice option for a passtime. If you use a wheelchair you could add a PDA to the gadgets attached to it. The browsers these things can run with no sweat is all it takes to play these very copmlex and deep games. Also keep in mind that Browsergames are mostly run by volunteers and hobbyists. I'm shure there would be no problem for most Operators to set up a frameless advertising free (that's how these games off their servers) PHP template that has zero accessability issues for you so can do your turns with less overhead of movements.
Quick: What was the biggest war in the last ten years? Ruanda. The Tutsi/Hutu masacre. A huge mass histeria with millions dead, slaughtered by machetes and clubs. Hardly anyone in the western world cared or even noticed. I wonder if that 'big event' showed up on their future prediction device. There are a massive amount of really BIG events going on that people of the 'western culture' don't even notice. I'm absolutely shure I'd have no problem finding events I consider eventfull to be cohering with some gadgets random twitching. Let's get this straight: Earthquakes are predictable. It's pratically proven that they cause changes of electrical state in the atmosphere in the places they are about to occur. (Nearly no animals were killed in the recent Tsunami) The near and even distant future of individuals and societies is - to an astonishing extent - predictable for people who have their senses trained to people and societies and the way the thing we call destiny unfolds around the biography and psychology of individuals and groups of people. And I'm 100% shure that disasters (natural and man-made) are foreseeable aswell. But I don't think a box churning out random numbers is anywhere near to predicting the future. On the other hand, a box churning out random numbers could be to a scientist what a cristal ball is to a fortuneteller. A thing ocultists call a 'focus'. Not a device that forsees, but a device that is used by people to tune their senses in on states, movements and conditions that lie behind what is directly apparent to the eye. There is nothing unscientific about - as it at first appears - being able 'to predict the future'. Much unlike it is magic for Steve Jobs to build a product that will make him rich because he seemingly 'instictively' knows what people will like and buy.
Slashdot Mirror
Dear Sh1theads at teh Campus IT department!
As you may already have noticed my name is Ian Rockefeller. That is because I'm a member of the Rockefeller clan (yes, THAT Rockefeller clan).
To refreshend your memory, those are the people who sponsor this Campus, own the ground it stands on, own the building company that built it, the company that delivered the bricks that it was built with and also own teh g0dd4m quarry where the material comes from with which those bricks were made. (I think Jenny, one of my cousins, own's the county that quarry lies in aswell, but I'm not shure about that...)
My Uncle Bob is the guy that sponsored your last hardware roundup (2 million worth of xserve pizzaboxen, wasn't it?) and it was daddy who had that arm thick bundle of T1 lines conected last summer when I asked him if he could do that for me. It's the ISP at which I personally hold 51% (my little project to ge me ready fo the real world when I've got my PhD) that subventions the campus' bandwidth.
Having to read this mail from you during my 11 o'clock morning latte in the library makes me super pissed. I strongly suggest you inmediately open all the ports on my account again, file this whole thing under 'F' for 'forget' and pray to god that I don't have your dumb asses fired ASAP.
l05ers.
Sincerely,
Ian Rockefeller, Student on Campus (0wnz0r of j00 a553s!)
I've been using Athlons for me and all the people I've been building custom Linux PCs for. I remeber a few years ago when AMD had one socket and Intel had 7. That was a major reason to use AMD.
Now AMD has something like 3 (or more) adding up to 9 or 10 different PC CPU sockets. Add in the bazillion variants of RAM clockings, HDD (SATA, EIDE (3 different speeds), SCSI (god know how many different types, etc.) conection standards etc. and even for a hardwarefreak like me things are getting very confusing.
I don't have the time for this anymore. And since configuring a PC with good hardware and a good OS (Linux) takes lots of time, in the end a Mac is cheaper. Much cheaper.
Linux will be the future workhorse OS, OS X will be the appliance OS.
Apple has gotten things just right for quite some time now, they deserve the market share they are just gaining.
... MS Windows in the middle.
I bought an iBook half a year ago to develop for a larger flash project. I've been using Linux exclusively for almost 4 years (SuSE at first, then Debian).
My next Computer is going to be a Mac.
Why?
Thats why.
1st of all:
One Button Mice are a good thing. Copmutern00bs ask the famous question "With which button should I click" far to often. Every time I say "Left button unless said otherwise" but it just won't sink in. Single Buttons are good.
2nd: Multiple Button Mice are good aswell. Nothing beats operating Expose or other main WM functions with those extra Buttons on a modern Logitech mouse. If Apple does the multi-button thing they should do it the right way. One big, main Button, a wheel (with option-click) and at least three other, smaller ones for middlefinger or thumb, mapped to the expose functions.
That way the switch would show the advantage imidiately and people would imidiately see that they should learn to use the buttons. Apple has 100% hard and software integration, they could test a solid default configuration for a multi-button mouse that convinces anyone of the concept without confusing n00bs.
No RPG's aren't 'usually' played with figures. Those are called tabletop games. D&D isn' or wasn't for a long period either. Allthough D&D did originally start out as a pure non-RPG tabletop. That's why it sucks so much as a pen and paper RPG compared to pure RPG systems like Torg or hybrid RPG systems such as Midgard or Silouette.
I studied and trained performing arts, have a diploma in that and I also consider myself somewhat firm at general visual/fine arts.
:-) )
The thing hat occured to me about watching and noticing the bad acting , as a lot of people here allready have done, is I thought that I would have done it better. Yet the other part of that is that it also occured to me how extremly difficult it would be to get it just right. For novices aswell as for me.
I've long considered starting a little independent film project and I think I would be the type of guy to a) not consider a fan project like this 'below' me and b) actually be able to aply my skills in such a way that everybody would profit from it. Like for instance the mentioned bad acting. There are a few extremly simple rules of acting that just sink in with the years that these people could have followed to greatly enhance even that short trailer. Very much like the simple rules you just know when to apply as an experienced programmer.
Some must-have basics:
If you want to sound fierce, loud and evil, tone down on the vowels and emphasise the consonants. Do speech training. Do speech training with your lines.
The moment you know your lines is the moment you START practicing them, you don't stop it there. (That's what differs a school play from professional acting btw)
When you act, your head and facial expression leads your motion, when you dance your body leads your motion and facial expression. For dancing: On at least one part of your body at a time the musical beat should be visible. (Cue stupid dirty jokes below
And finally, my performing arts process I've refined over 10 years of professional work -
practice an act in this order (and in this order ONLY):
1) Learn to know the play and learn your lines by heart. Nothing else. Don't dare try to act at this stage. NEVER try to act at this stage. If you do, you WILL suck on stage/film. Trust me. I've studied with to many third class perfomers, the world has enough of them. In fact, you shouldn't even move very much when reciting your lines at this stage.
2) Give your lines flow and vividness by supporting each one with an inner picture and vision. EACH AND EVERY SINGLE ONE. Give the string of visions a storytelling consistency. It's at this stage perfomers notice wether they've understood the playwrite or wether they have to correct their povs at some place or other. This is the stage at which storyboarders, and directors of photography double check their plans for shooting. Again: don't act yet. Do more of a reciting or storytelling thing. Good RPG Gamemasters enter this stage frequently for instance.
3) Forget your lines for this stage. Think of that other person whos lines you happen to know by heart and what kind of a character he might be. Pratice stances, poses and gestures emphasising basic emotions with the impitus of that character. Don't do that with the lines. Don't act the play! Do that with differen't things. Lines you make up. Best is to make up a little play by itself. You're on the safe side if you take - for instance - the tragic Anakin Skywalker (well he was a tragic character and the acting wasn't bad at all for such a 5th grade script) and try to play him as if he were a part in a comedy. Don't speak to early. Practice the stances, poses and gestures. Learn the difference between movement leading to pose and pose leading to movement.
4) Now practive stances, poses, gestures and movement of the play. Use the visions of 2). Don't speak your lines to much. Whisper them or speak them toneless. You want to concentrate on the moving part. You practice that seperately from speaking at first.
5) Add you lines and and your adversaries in play. Get in sync. If your coplayers are good, you won't even need a director. Do the stuff. The thing. In one word: Act.
HERE is where the acting kicks in. And once again: Anybody who starts earlier in the process WILL suck in performance. When you
I don't know how long or indepth this fair thing is, so you might have to adjust. ... which doesn't mean their to stupid to understand the interessting parts of what you do! In fact, 9 year olds can be even more on top of current scientific/technical things than the usual grown-up. It's just all about explaining it in a way that it doesn't bore them to death.
You should completely splitt between what you do on your job and what computers can do. Prepare a show-and-tell only lecture and pratice to explain things in a way kids of this age will find interessting. Maybe tell a story or two of interessting tidbits of your profession in general. Keep in mind that they (children) have a different sense of humor and less concepts of apstraction
The other thing is a practical one, which lot have provided suggestions to allready. I'd like to point out that you might want to explain to someone who isn't the usual future geek and all into gameboy and electronic toys allready the nature of computers and how to program them. I'd suggest a simple program that displays the fascination of automation. Maybe a very simple, tile based turtle program enviroment with your own simple set of commands (go, stop, on, off, forward, backward, left, right, north, south, east, west,... you get the point). It should be good enough to display the basic concept of computers (programmability and automation) but be easy enough to do in a time where a group of kids each can get their own shot and everybody can watch without getting bored. Both units, the show and tell and the little programming part shouldn't take any longer than 30-45 minutes each for a group of 10 children. Anyone more curious should have a chance to ask you more questions though.
My 2 cents from a geek who's been a teacher for some time aswell.
... you've got serious beowulf potential. /.
In 10 years it will be like: "Imagine a traffic jam of these." here on
I remember boo.com. The chiefs of that startup were hyping it quite a lot even by the standards of the roaring nineties. They had zero market testing and had people building 3D virtualizations of clothing and clubwear by hand. They were burning lots of money very very fast and the chiefs were roundtripping from Scandinavia to London and NYC every odd day and doing nothing much more than partying with VIPs.
I generally was very upbeat at the time but even then thought that boo.com was doing some insane stunts and cutting it to thin for my taste. They were the first ones to incinerate on reentry afer their high-fly and they very well deseved to be the first. BTW: Their sad and sorry remains still exist.
I do still think the original concept would work. It just can't work the way they aproached it.
Is the Licence so restricted? Can't anyone who would like to just fork the project?
.
It's open source people, this is how it works when heavy problems show up:
1) Gee cool project. I like the tool
2) Gosh, I miss foo in this. But I guess someone would need to implement bar before that could work.
3)
- "Hey folks, I've done this patch. Could you check it out, merge it in and may I join the devteam?"
- "No. You stink. We don't want you. You know to much, and besides: I'm the big guru around here. Go away."
- "Ok. Sorry for wasting your time."
4) sf.net/my/.makeNewProject( my tool );
Or did I miss something here?
That's what I love about Python. It end's such discussions instantaniously. :- )
Unless you get some prick that mixes spaces and tabs for indentation, that is. ' haven't run into someone like that though.
When I programm ERP Modules (in Python) I start with a large comment on what the module is supposed to do. I actually started doing this quite from the beginning. I write a litte summary of what the module does and comment heavily throughout the source. I even have debugging sessions were I only work on comments - often detailing them further.
I also do a lot of other programming (ActionScript rich media and stuff). I don't do opening or other comments there that much.
Why that?
If a multimedia app doesn't work I get an e-mail or a call asking to check into it within the next 24 hrs. The customer is anoyed or says that this comes bad with the end-user. We talk a little, I et to work and fix it within the next 10 hrs.
If a ERP module doesn't do what it's supposed to, I get a call on my mobile, with the CEO at the other end telling me that he's losing 200 Euro an hour because order processing has gone haywire.
This is a good point to end all discussion wether commenting is good or bad. When you are debugging a piece of code that keeps 3 people breathing you shure as well want it to be well commented.
The Lockheed Software Group, the people who write code for the space shuttle and other things, take this to the all-out extreme. They write EVERYTHING in a sort of human readable meta code, meta-comment THAT and then tranfer that to real code. They've had 3 bugs in 25 years - so I've heard. One of them being a counter problem that once would have nearly locked down a com-dish on an orbiter and prevented it from following it's target on earth after having rotated a certain amount. Figure: A millisecond of timing error in their code has the orbiter off course by 3 miles. I hear their comment line/code line ratio is about 7 to 1.
So much for "overcommenting is unprofessional".
I know a woman who has electromagnetic field sensebility. She can feel a CRT Monitor being switched on in the other room or on another floor and feels it especially intense at certain angles (yepp, it's the vertical and horizontal coils). She's allready had the effect scientifically examined. :-)
She also senses mobile radiocell handshakes nearby (5-7 meters) and has a habbit of anouncing a phonecall just a second before a mobile rings. Quite irritating for people not knowing this/ believing her and funny to watch aswell.
However, her life is hell most of the time. People usually don't believe her and think she's crazy. She's having a hard time asking the neighbor that lives above her (a copmuter geek) to switch of his CRT when he's not using it. Basically she's one of those candidates who would be best of sleeping in a faraday cage.
Actually it would have to go this way:
:-))
"It's not 'pinin'! It's passed on! This site is no more! It has ceased to be! It's expired and gone to meet it's maker! It's a stiff! Bereft of life, it rests in peace! If you hadn't hadn't posted it on slashdot it wouldn't be pushing up the daisies! It's metabolic processes are now 'istory! It's off the twig! It's kicked the bucket, It's shuffled off it's mortal coil, run down the curtain and joined the bleedin' choir invisibile!! THIS IS AN EX-SITE!!"
But thanks for the correction anyway. A freudian slide I guess.
.. to see it's maker. It is an ex-site.
Mirrors anyone?
Linux will reach critical mass in germany within the next 12 months. Everybody with more than 2 braincells and some IT knowledge has predicted this for years. For more and more partners I work with it isn't a question of wether or not one should use Linux, but how to apply it. It's actually a thing I bet my business on two years ago and to date I haven't regreted it. :-)
MS Windows is done with. People allways call me insane when I say this, but even the most notorious Windows users here say they will migrate to Linux when Win2K support ceases.
It could very well be that MS will pull a publicity stunt and start releasing their own Linux Distro, with DX9, NTFS and all. They'd have to admit having done a big mistake, they'd be 3 years late, but I guess with 40 billion on the bank it's not such a big problem taking hold of the 15% growth FOSS IT services market in something like 6 months flat.
Anyway you look at it, the next years are going to be interessting and probably lot's of fun aswell.
Thank you.
If you're into something deeper than risk and A&A you might wan't to look into the potentially adictive/expensive world of tactical miniture tabletops. Heavy Gear has one of the best rulesets and is generally considered the better "giant robot wargame". If this is your type of game, be shure to check it out before you seek the dark side (read: Batteltech fraction ;-) ). :-)
Yet both can be(come) addictive and very time consuming - especially if you start into miniature painting and landscape building and all that. You have been warned.
Carcasonne, Settlers, Puerto Rico, Tikal, ... each of these is a representative of a refreshing trend that has held on for at least a decade now: The decade of a new generation of german boardgames. It's the first time we actually see leasure products being translated en masse from german into english. I can say that any of these games are good for perfect passtime.
http://www.brettspielwelt.de/ is a website that has many official web/internet variants of these types of games with english versions aswell. It's main gaming client runs with java and gives a chance to test games that you might want to purchase as hardcopy. If you find a game that you like I can strongly recommend getting the german version and a seperate translation of the rules, as german boradgames, especially the new generation, are of an impressive quality.
Java has vector grafics too. Infact, it has JMF (Java Media Framework) which is nothing other than Suns answer to Flash. Videostreaming, sound, vectorgrafics and all. Flash has one (1) IDE that sucks quite a bit (grafical features aside), Java has 10 Million, a lot of which are FOSS. The problem with Java is that Sun seems to have no interesst in achieving end-user ubiquity. That is the big advantage Flash has.
My Background: I use all three major Workstation OSes (Linux, OS X and Windows) on a regular, professional basis.
Of course Windows 2K/XP has massive suckage potential, but no one can deny that it still is a de-facto monopoly which unfortunately is an advantage in itself. Available Software, everybody knows it, etc... Yet it's universal desktop usability is far behind anything a generation 2005 Unix derivate setup has to offer (Aqua/KDE/Gnome/E/whatever).
KDE has improved massively in the last releases. It's usable out of the box, has siezed 100% of Font and Clipboard management without fuckups and it only takes a little configuration to rid it of the windows crappiness it still thinks it needs to ape. The usability of a well configured KDE is just about at the heels of a well configured and tweaked Mac OS X. Bad hardware vendor support of OSS is currently the biggest no-go for professionals at the desktop. Everything else is way ahead of Windows. It's what Steve Ballmers nightmares are made of.
Finally OS X. I have to mostly agree with the linked article. Apple pays people good salaries to 'just sit around' and think of ways to improve user experience. Apple is an appliance. Apple has literally zero hardware fuss they have to cope with. Even the first iMacs came in a package that had a first in not needing Monitor adjustment. That allready greatly enhances end user experience. I've seen countless desktops with expensive CRTs flickering at 60Hz because the users didn't know how to set up a CRT screen. How do you install a printer on a Mac? Plug it in. It's start's right there and end's with things like MacMini, 'Expose all programms' and Tiger's upcoming Automator. It's what Michael Dell's nightmares are made of.
That's the reason Apple is leading the way in usability and productivity, OSS is closely following and MS is sweating bullets over the trouble at the horizon.
... arrogant, pseudo-academic assholes aswell. I guess you find them everywhere.
Coming to think of it, this reaction isn't suprising. The Bloggersphere is the toughest competitor to this kind of people in the world of new media. This is nothing but yet another display of the standard defense of pseudo-intellectuals of the opinion-sovereignty they claim over society.
Luckly nowadays we don't have to put up with this crap 'cause that monopoly is slowly dimishing. Thanks to the bloggersphere - the nuisance it can be aside.
It's actually IS funny if you understand english and german. :-) ...
Much as "I speak english very well but I can noch nicht so schnell."
or "Equal goes it lose!"
or "By your english there get I yes a circle-run-together-break."
*Hihihi*
And now prepare for jokes on my sig in 5,4,3,2
Browsergames are often nothing more then a set of grafically 'enhanced' spreadsheets. Yet I've heard that they, much like the good ol'e play by mail games, are extremely fun and addictive once you get into them. For someone who has nearly zero ability to physically move around himself this would be a nice option for a passtime.
If you use a wheelchair you could add a PDA to the gadgets attached to it. The browsers these things can run with no sweat is all it takes to play these very copmlex and deep games. Also keep in mind that Browsergames are mostly run by volunteers and hobbyists. I'm shure there would be no problem for most Operators to set up a frameless advertising free (that's how these games off their servers) PHP template that has zero accessability issues for you so can do your turns with less overhead of movements.
My 2 cents.
Quick: What was the biggest war in the last ten years?
Ruanda. The Tutsi/Hutu masacre. A huge mass histeria with millions dead, slaughtered by machetes and clubs.
Hardly anyone in the western world cared or even noticed.
I wonder if that 'big event' showed up on their future prediction device.
There are a massive amount of really BIG events going on that people of the 'western culture' don't even notice. I'm absolutely shure I'd have no problem finding events I consider eventfull to be cohering with some gadgets random twitching.
Let's get this straight: Earthquakes are predictable. It's pratically proven that they cause changes of electrical state in the atmosphere in the places they are about to occur. (Nearly no animals were killed in the recent Tsunami) The near and even distant future of individuals and societies is - to an astonishing extent - predictable for people who have their senses trained to people and societies and the way the thing we call destiny unfolds around the biography and psychology of individuals and groups of people. And I'm 100% shure that disasters (natural and man-made) are foreseeable aswell. But I don't think a box churning out random numbers is anywhere near to predicting the future.
On the other hand, a box churning out random numbers could be to a scientist what a cristal ball is to a fortuneteller. A thing ocultists call a 'focus'. Not a device that forsees, but a device that is used by people to tune their senses in on states, movements and conditions that lie behind what is directly apparent to the eye.
There is nothing unscientific about - as it at first appears - being able 'to predict the future'. Much unlike it is magic for Steve Jobs to build a product that will make him rich because he seemingly 'instictively' knows what people will like and buy.