Men can't even dream how much of us are cheated on. Quite a few women have more sex than men - with more partners at least - and many a woman cheats on her husband / S.O. I would have never thought of my SO cheating on me, especially because she really didn't seem like the person to do so. Imagine my suprise when I discovered that she did. And intentionally so.
Humans obviously need this to spice up their sex life every once in so often.
Reading the comments here and pondering the article I was thinking about my own relation to IT. Yes, it has gotten tedious. But that could be the Baskin Robins effect kicking in after 8 years of professional web work. What was bright and flashy and avantgarde back then is a comodity today.
But that's not all what's to this issue. A big point today is that computers are rarely used for computing nowadays. They are communication devices, surrogates for books/libraries and data stores. Real computing, as in "Automating specific tasks as to help the people involved along" is only a fraction of the actuall work nowadays. And lets face it, folks, *thats* what makes computers and IT fun. When you acutally speed up the data migration process some secretary has to do from 10 hours per day to 10 seconds per day. You get straight to a *real* problem that *real* people have to go through great pains to get solved, you look at it and you automate the damn thing. Everybodies happy, the secretary gives you a huge hug the boss loves you and you take home a decent paycheck and feel great.... When was the last time that happend?
Today we have huge application stacks and have to build, setup and maintain massive pipelines for software developement and deployment, each element with its own tedious details that all need to be covered, before we even get the end-user connected to the automation process, let alone are able to develop on the damn thing without some bizar bug somewhere deep inside making our life hell.
I do web-stuff. With the OS, Apache, mod_php, php, MySQL, [Fill in your favourite web framework here], the Browsers, JavaScript, Mail, deployment automation, Devtools, remote debuggers the stack I have to deal with today has a minimum of 7 large layers that are impossible to overlook for a single person. No wonder the job is fucking boring. That's because I am no longer in control all of the time. And no wonder the customers understand less of what I'm doing and no wonder it takes longer and longer to get to the meat of what makes small business ERP worthwhile for all involved.
*This* is what makes IT boring and tedious for me. I kind of miss the times of the text interface, where GUI desktops where just a fad and you actually felt like having achieved something at the end of the day. It takes much more effort to get that feeling nowadays, and it doesn't allways work. On top of that we have to get used to working in teams. We are slowly but surely leaving the steam age of IT. Jacks of all trades - even in the web business - are quickly going the way of the dodo.
Just the other day I reviewed a contract where I'm going to drop LAMP/WebFramework/Ajax hodgepodgeing for a pure ActionScript3 focused job. The industries gotten huge, and is moving faster by the day. One-stop universal IT handyman heroes have finally turned into the equivalent of plumbing jobs. All else is professional work, serving professional pipelines. And yes, that means they also are somewhat boring at times. I bet Gutenbergs printing press only was exiting until his assistants where printing number 56 of page 200 of the bible.
At least we'll stay in business, as I can't see IT growth stopping any time soon. And with the younger ones thinking of IT as boring - all the better.
This, IMHO, goes to show that Ruby isn't any better than the other Open Source interpreted languages. Despite what the Ruby fanboys allways claim, it is actually far less mature then, let's say, Python or PHP. A matured, tested and established mod_ruby, unicode and a few years more in the field is what Ruby needs before I take a look at it.
I strongly suggest you see if you can get a few weeks of academic internship with these people. Also know as 'Those who write the right stuff. They actually do know how to write software.
Other places to look for: Linux Kernel team. Donald Knuths Tex/Latex. Or, believe it or not, Blizzard Entertainment. They actually are the only entertainment software company I know of with a proven track record of extremely high quality software compared to others in the field.
But any core team of non-trivial low-level open source software technology will do actually. Python core team, PHP core team, your favourite Linux IO crew, Apache, OpenLaszlo, KDE, Haxe, Blender,... whatever. And while people will start bickering that Apache or Blender code is oh so crappy in this or that area, rest asured that all projects of that kind, *incuding* the aforementioned *all* have core team members who are very well aware of the downsides of their software. And thus can help you out in your pursuit for details on professional software developement, because they also know the pitfalls.
Bottom line: Join some tight crew of people that build stuff everybody uses or many people rely on to work. Hang with them for a month or two, then you'll have a better idea how exactly to approach your topic.
Summary has yet again a "Bullshit about Flash" factor in it.
The reference implementation of the Flash VM may be proprietary, but the formats and standards involved have been open source and independantly speced longer that Java has been open sourced. In fact it was Adobes SVG that was a reaction to Macromedia openin the flash swf format. That's how long Flash has been as open as you can wish for.
Eve Online has no native client. IIRC it has Cedegar tied in. So it breaks their own rules. Sort of.
Kohan has a pure native version *and* a version that comes autobundled with it's own Wine/Cedegar offering instant one-click install and play and it isn't even mentioned.
Where is Tribes 2? What about Rune or Heavy Metal?
The last time I tested Wurm Online (given, that was a while ago) it was crappy. I mean, really crappy.
I'm glad they mentioned Savage/Savage 2 though. The S2Games people deserve credit for a wonderfull game that runs natively on Linux since day one and was the first quality title that actually actively advertised their support for Linux.
But some of the games on this list are far outperformed by todays FOSS counterparts. The only indie game that I didn't know of and got me curious was "H-Craft Championship". Gotta check that out.
Take them apart. The pure platters are extremely usefull for all kinds of stuff. If you add thick felt to one side using doulb-sided carpet tape you'll have luxury coasters that go/sell well as avantgarde accessoire.
The aluminum distance rings are great for all kinds of purposes such as (but not limited to) replacing broken, bad, cheap D-rings on outdoor equiment, high tech juwelery, key rings, rope thimbles, etc. Replace all your plastic d-rings and ladderlocks on your baggage gear with those and it will look tres chic and much cooler.
The magnets are usefull for all sorts of creative non-sense, such as deleting the platters (and credit cards), building motors, etc. The torx screws may be handy for someone who needs that sort of sizes.
And last but not least the casings and such are valuable raw materials that can be recycled. Seperate and collect the controllers too. The electronics contain gold and other precious substances that special shops recycle aswell.
Build good hardware. Don't lock me in. And don't piss me off - as, f.i., with sort of like closing a fab in Germany shortly after scoring some x-hundred million Euros of gouverment subventions for said fab (*hint* *hint*).
On the issue at hand... let's put things into perspective here, shall we: It's only because of Linux and OSS in general that Non-DRM in cellphones even is on the agenda. Which goes to show which way the market is headed. Look over to Asus EEE PC craze to understand what I mean. Now get back to work, do your thing and call back your marketing bullshitters for now. We're pissed off enough as it is allready. (Especially here in Germany)
Varier, a scandinavian furniture brand formerly known as Stokke, has some very neat ergonomic desk chairs.
Vitra is a german classic manufacturer of desk and office chairs, they have some very nice high quality comfortable stuff and are available in the US as well. They look very good and high profile too, and are the prime choice for all official occasions in Germany (TV Talkshows and stuff like that).
The Swopper is a flexible high tech stool that is extremely back-friendly and especially well designed for extensive desk work of coders, multimedia professionals and DTP people. I've heard of agencies and software companies that use it almost exclusively. AFAIK it's also a german invention, but it's available all over the US aswell. This actually is my first recommendation, allthough it ain't cheap. Especially not for a stool.:-) The link to Swopper.com leads to a somewhat tacky site that doesn't look like the official manufacturers site. I presume it's a larger US distributer of the chair.
No wonder nobody buys your stuff. Your online presence gives me the creeps. Quite literally actually. I feel sick watching that presentation and listening to that irritating music. I wouldn't download your tool for free, let alone buy a product from a software company that presents itself like that. No f*ckin' way. And I'm a guy that actually does buy software.
How about wasting 5 minutes on a concept for an online presence and an online marketing strategy? And, please, *do* get a *professional* webdesigner to rebuild the site. You'll find plenty of them here.
To be honest, somebody who needs to get a job done nearly cares squat wether a tool is free or costs 300$. It's only because the 300$ tools are just as crappy as the free ones (sic!) that they settle for the free ones. And damn the few bucks I have to shell out for it.
Best example: Zend Studio and PHP Eclipse or PDT Eclipse. If I have to go through the same fuss configging local remote debuggin in either, I see no point in spending 300$ for Zend Studio. That way I'll even learn to configure an open source tool - a skill not wasted - rather than learning to deal with some quirks of some prorprietary tool.
Counterexample: Mint is a web presence statistics tool with PHP backend logic. There are like a quarter bazillion of these in Free, FOSS and public domain scatterd all over the web. However, looking at this guys site (he happens to be a good designer *and* a good programmer) I haven't the slightest doubt that his statistics tool will deliver without hassle. Thus whenever I need a statistics tool, he'll be the first and last where I look for it.
I find it rather strange that in a community so bent on not being mainstream, only the prime mainstream RPG is discussed. Having played well over 20 RPG systems myself, I can safely say that D&D (no matter which edition) is one of the worst I've ever played. But that's just my impression. From a passionate RPG player, here are some alternatives to D&D Fantasy Roleplay:
This time I'm gonna shoot the guy who came up with the acronym. No, honestly, I'm gonna F*CKING BLAST HIS HEAD OFF WITH A 12 GAUGE SHOTGUN! This is no f*ckin' joke, man, I'm gonna kill him. I swear. Where's he at? Where you at, hu? Show yourself. You ain't gonna come up with no g*ddamned hairbrained acronym no more, I swear. SHOW YOUR FACE, MOTHERF*CKER!
"... We wanted to finish DNF, but on the other hand we also wanted Level 70 characters. Those are two important things you have to balance." *cut to WoW character screen* LOL! Very funny indeed. But probably true aswell.
Integration and standardisation annihilates the last Linux hurdle: Hardware vendors slowpoking around and not playing along.
Coming to think of it, HW vendors never actually had an interest in Linux gaining traction, as it was MS who would get them the sales via bloated and slow OSes. Thus the HW industry struck a deal with MS. We use your neat stickers on our hardware and you see to it that end-users need new hardware with each OS iteration.
However, that doesn't work in 70% of the world. Asia has tons of relatively poor people who can barely afford comodity hardware. And note that it was the underdogs AMD and Via with integrated universal standard chipsets and peripherals that opened up the market for zero-fuss linux - 1st party Linux drivers be damned.
We are seeing Linux fully adapted to commodity standard x86 hardware and gaining traction. To be honest, before now it never really occured to me that it would happen this way. But I think now is the time we will see Linux finally gaining critical mass. A few years later than I had hoped and expected - but I sure do hope it does finally happen. Let's hope so.
I still have it's successor, the Sharp PC-1403H. It has an uptime of 200+ hours on one set of batteries. It's from the 80s and I still have yet to see a computer that can beat that.
... I won't trust anybody with Rich Client technologies further than I can throw them. Be it Adobe, Curl, Wild Tangent, or - heavens forbid - Microsoft. Take that from an experienced Flash Application Developer. For years and years now Adobe has been keeping Linux on a short leash. Allways coming up late, now, once again, limiting proposed hardware acceleration and certain functions to certain host OSes, ect.
I like Flash and it's a remarkable asset. But I've never fully trusted these guys and my trust in them isn't growing.
Yet it looks as though after 10 years Sun is finally getting serious at attempting move towards RIA territory. If JavaFX is halfway decent, it could actually become the new king of all things RIA we've all been waiting for. If the core components of it are open source and the reference implementations aswell, then we're all set for a bright new future of RIAs.
CakePHP Framework (supports PHP5 & PHP4), Version 1.2 Stable due any time soon. Symfony. PHP 5 Meta Framework using Propel and other layer components. The accompaning book (free PDF, buyable dead-tree) is a very good documentation. Prado. Event-Oriented PHP 5 Framework. Very interesting. Code Igniter. Lightweight PHP Framework for smaller stuff. Neat website.
Django. Python Framework. TurboGears. Python Meta Framework using some 3rd Party stuff like Templating layers and such. Zope Web Application Server. To date unmatched. What Rails wants to be when it grows up.
I'm not an academic, but you should be able to fit in 50 hours of real programming somewhere in the third semester or so (somewhere near Math 3), no matter how your curriculum is designed. If done correctly this should be enough to get anyone going on the subject. Especially those smart enough to survive into the 3rd semester of physics. You can then let them sort out wether they want to emphasise in programming or not. A practicum or two in the lab later on will help each of them figure that out by themselves.
Take one of the faviourite PLs used in number crunching (since that's presumably the main area of physics programming), preferrably an open source implementation, and walk your sheep through SOPs of number crunching on various examples. Maybe have them do some practical stuff by having them optimize some outdated simulation algorithims for speed / efficiency. A little graphics stuff or maybe even an open physics 3D kit might be a neat extra if you have time to spare. I know of physics people and universities visualising stuff in Blender.
My 2 cents. I'd suggest *nix or anything that somehow resembles a non-desktop super-computer OS - do *not* do the mistake and have your scholars mess around with MS Visual Studio or even Eclipse for that matter. We've got enough IT junkies as it is. Unless you yourself work in a field where a more generic PL like Java is actually used (which probalby is rather unusual). You want your students to gain knowledge of the principles and learn to apply them effectively when the need arises. And we all know that number crunching is about the most effective use of a computer in existance. No need to spoil the bastion of hard science with bad end-user habits that aren't really related to real math programming. This is about problem solving. Having them dick around with regular desktop OSes on lecture time is a complete waste of time.
As far as number crunching is concerned, I presume that most code doesn't go beyond a few hundred lines per module and that even OOP isn't an issue. Correct me if I'm wrong, but it's mostly procedural implementation of physics formulas. If so, leave OOP out and only get knowledgable low-level and C people on board from CS if you intend to ask for inter-disciplinary support. Considering all that it's probably best to just have them work with the command line and an editor. When they've learned the basics of automating tasks that way, they'll be very thankfull later on in their jobs.
Well, I personally think the eyes are a bit big, the mouth a little to wide and it lacks the sideburns but then again the only version of Wolverine I know and care about is the one played by Hugh Jackman in the recent X-Men movies. Maybe the older comic version of Wolverine are closer to the mark... that would explain why I'm not really interested in them.:-)
*Ta-Dum!* *Crash!* *Thud!*... Thank you, thank you, I'm here all week. Try the fish.
He said it in that interview with Walt Mossberg and Steve Jobs: Before Win95 there was still a debate wether text UI or grafical UI was the way to go. After Win95 that debate was concluded in favour of the grafical UI.
The Windows line since 95 has one thing going for it (and I really can't believe I'm actually saying something like this) in that is has a strange way of rounding up all the manufacturers. Wonder why Vista is such a performance hog? So vendors can justify selling new hardware. That's why they go along with it. Remember when those bizar Windows Keyboards popped up all over the place with Win95? Same thing. Now they are commonplace.
I remember the interest rounding hack of the 80s. Bank IT personell at a few occasions got the smart idea to transfer rounding remainders from interest calculations onto an internal bank account. The extra small micro sums (fractions of currency units) from all interest calculations would quickly add up to many millions, virtually producing money from nothing. A few got caught, but I wonder how many IT guys at banks actually got away with that.
AFAICT the same thing should still be possible today when interests are calculated. Probably such tapering is prevented by tighter controll of IT personell and independant reviewing.
However I think it's still the most elegant form of bank-'robbery'. Has anyone heard of simular more recent incidents of this sort of thing?
Slashdot Mirror
Men can't even dream how much of us are cheated on. Quite a few women have more sex than men - with more partners at least - and many a woman cheats on her husband / S.O. I would have never thought of my SO cheating on me, especially because she really didn't seem like the person to do so. Imagine my suprise when I discovered that she did. And intentionally so.
Humans obviously need this to spice up their sex life every once in so often.
Reading the comments here and pondering the article I was thinking about my own relation to IT. Yes, it has gotten tedious. But that could be the Baskin Robins effect kicking in after 8 years of professional web work. What was bright and flashy and avantgarde back then is a comodity today.
But that's not all what's to this issue. A big point today is that computers are rarely used for computing nowadays. They are communication devices, surrogates for books/libraries and data stores. Real computing, as in "Automating specific tasks as to help the people involved along" is only a fraction of the actuall work nowadays. And lets face it, folks, *thats* what makes computers and IT fun. When you acutally speed up the data migration process some secretary has to do from 10 hours per day to 10 seconds per day. You get straight to a *real* problem that *real* people have to go through great pains to get solved, you look at it and you automate the damn thing. Everybodies happy, the secretary gives you a huge hug the boss loves you and you take home a decent paycheck and feel great. ... When was the last time that happend?
Today we have huge application stacks and have to build, setup and maintain massive pipelines for software developement and deployment, each element with its own tedious details that all need to be covered, before we even get the end-user connected to the automation process, let alone are able to develop on the damn thing without some bizar bug somewhere deep inside making our life hell.
I do web-stuff. With the OS, Apache, mod_php, php, MySQL, [Fill in your favourite web framework here], the Browsers, JavaScript, Mail, deployment automation, Devtools, remote debuggers the stack I have to deal with today has a minimum of 7 large layers that are impossible to overlook for a single person. No wonder the job is fucking boring. That's because I am no longer in control all of the time. And no wonder the customers understand less of what I'm doing and no wonder it takes longer and longer to get to the meat of what makes small business ERP worthwhile for all involved.
*This* is what makes IT boring and tedious for me. I kind of miss the times of the text interface, where GUI desktops where just a fad and you actually felt like having achieved something at the end of the day. It takes much more effort to get that feeling nowadays, and it doesn't allways work. On top of that we have to get used to working in teams. We are slowly but surely leaving the steam age of IT. Jacks of all trades - even in the web business - are quickly going the way of the dodo.
Just the other day I reviewed a contract where I'm going to drop LAMP/WebFramework/Ajax hodgepodgeing for a pure ActionScript3 focused job. The industries gotten huge, and is moving faster by the day. One-stop universal IT handyman heroes have finally turned into the equivalent of plumbing jobs. All else is professional work, serving professional pipelines. And yes, that means they also are somewhat boring at times. I bet Gutenbergs printing press only was exiting until his assistants where printing number 56 of page 200 of the bible.
At least we'll stay in business, as I can't see IT growth stopping any time soon. And with the younger ones thinking of IT as boring - all the better.
My Parent is getting modded all the way up and down the scale.
Looks like I struck a cord right there. Hehe.
Flamewar-A-GoGo!
This, IMHO, goes to show that Ruby isn't any better than the other Open Source interpreted languages. Despite what the Ruby fanboys allways claim, it is actually far less mature then, let's say, Python or PHP.
A matured, tested and established mod_ruby, unicode and a few years more in the field is what Ruby needs before I take a look at it.
My 2 cents.
... the archeoligists who discovered the parrot sceleton described its plumage as 'lovely'.
You guys are really trying to be funny by perforce.
I strongly suggest you see if you can get a few weeks of academic internship with these people. Also know as 'Those who write the right stuff. They actually do know how to write software.
... whatever. And while people will start bickering that Apache or Blender code is oh so crappy in this or that area, rest asured that all projects of that kind, *incuding* the aforementioned *all* have core team members who are very well aware of the downsides of their software. And thus can help you out in your pursuit for details on professional software developement, because they also know the pitfalls.
Other places to look for: Linux Kernel team. Donald Knuths Tex/Latex.
Or, believe it or not, Blizzard Entertainment. They actually are the only entertainment software company I know of with a proven track record of extremely high quality software compared to others in the field.
But any core team of non-trivial low-level open source software technology will do actually. Python core team, PHP core team, your favourite Linux IO crew, Apache, OpenLaszlo, KDE, Haxe, Blender,
Bottom line: Join some tight crew of people that build stuff everybody uses or many people rely on to work. Hang with them for a month or two, then you'll have a better idea how exactly to approach your topic.
Summary has yet again a "Bullshit about Flash" factor in it.
The reference implementation of the Flash VM may be proprietary, but the formats and standards involved have been open source and independantly speced longer that Java has been open sourced. In fact it was Adobes SVG that was a reaction to Macromedia openin the flash swf format. That's how long Flash has been as open as you can wish for.
Eve Online has no native client. IIRC it has Cedegar tied in. So it breaks their own rules. Sort of.
Kohan has a pure native version *and* a version that comes autobundled with it's own Wine/Cedegar offering instant one-click install and play and it isn't even mentioned.
Where is Tribes 2?
What about Rune or Heavy Metal?
The last time I tested Wurm Online (given, that was a while ago) it was crappy. I mean, really crappy.
I'm glad they mentioned Savage/Savage 2 though. The S2Games people deserve credit for a wonderfull game that runs natively on Linux since day one and was the first quality title that actually actively advertised their support for Linux.
But some of the games on this list are far outperformed by todays FOSS counterparts. The only indie game that I didn't know of and got me curious was "H-Craft Championship". Gotta check that out.
Take them apart. The pure platters are extremely usefull for all kinds of stuff. If you add thick felt to one side using doulb-sided carpet tape you'll have luxury coasters that go/sell well as avantgarde accessoire.
The aluminum distance rings are great for all kinds of purposes such as (but not limited to) replacing broken, bad, cheap D-rings on outdoor equiment, high tech juwelery, key rings, rope thimbles, etc. Replace all your plastic d-rings and ladderlocks on your baggage gear with those and it will look tres chic and much cooler.
The magnets are usefull for all sorts of creative non-sense, such as deleting the platters (and credit cards), building motors, etc.
The torx screws may be handy for someone who needs that sort of sizes.
And last but not least the casings and such are valuable raw materials that can be recycled. Seperate and collect the controllers too. The electronics contain gold and other precious substances that special shops recycle aswell.
Build good hardware. Don't lock me in. And don't piss me off - as, f.i., with sort of like closing a fab in Germany shortly after scoring some x-hundred million Euros of gouverment subventions for said fab (*hint* *hint*).
... let's put things into perspective here, shall we:
On the issue at hand
It's only because of Linux and OSS in general that Non-DRM in cellphones even is on the agenda. Which goes to show which way the market is headed. Look over to Asus EEE PC craze to understand what I mean. Now get back to work, do your thing and call back your marketing bullshitters for now. We're pissed off enough as it is allready. (Especially here in Germany)
Varier, a scandinavian furniture brand formerly known as Stokke, has some very neat ergonomic desk chairs.
:-) The link to Swopper.com leads to a somewhat tacky site that doesn't look like the official manufacturers site. I presume it's a larger US distributer of the chair.
Vitra is a german classic manufacturer of desk and office chairs, they have some very nice high quality comfortable stuff and are available in the US as well. They look very good and high profile too, and are the prime choice for all official occasions in Germany (TV Talkshows and stuff like that).
The Swopper is a flexible high tech stool that is extremely back-friendly and especially well designed for extensive desk work of coders, multimedia professionals and DTP people. I've heard of agencies and software companies that use it almost exclusively. AFAIK it's also a german invention, but it's available all over the US aswell. This actually is my first recommendation, allthough it ain't cheap. Especially not for a stool.
I am over-f*cking-welmed.
No wonder nobody buys your stuff. Your online presence gives me the creeps. Quite literally actually. I feel sick watching that presentation and listening to that irritating music. I wouldn't download your tool for free, let alone buy a product from a software company that presents itself like that. No f*ckin' way. And I'm a guy that actually does buy software.
How about wasting 5 minutes on a concept for an online presence and an online marketing strategy? And, please, *do* get a *professional* webdesigner to rebuild the site. You'll find plenty of them here.
To be honest, somebody who needs to get a job done nearly cares squat wether a tool is free or costs 300$. It's only because the 300$ tools are just as crappy as the free ones (sic!) that they settle for the free ones. And damn the few bucks I have to shell out for it.
Best example: Zend Studio and PHP Eclipse or PDT Eclipse. If I have to go through the same fuss configging local remote debuggin in either, I see no point in spending 300$ for Zend Studio. That way I'll even learn to configure an open source tool - a skill not wasted - rather than learning to deal with some quirks of some prorprietary tool.
Counterexample: Mint is a web presence statistics tool with PHP backend logic. There are like a quarter bazillion of these in Free, FOSS and public domain scatterd all over the web. However, looking at this guys site (he happens to be a good designer *and* a good programmer) I haven't the slightest doubt that his statistics tool will deliver without hassle. Thus whenever I need a statistics tool, he'll be the first and last where I look for it.
I find it rather strange that in a community so bent on not being mainstream, only the prime mainstream RPG is discussed.
Having played well over 20 RPG systems myself, I can safely say that D&D (no matter which edition) is one of the worst I've ever played. But that's just my impression. From a passionate RPG player, here are some alternatives to D&D Fantasy Roleplay:
Palladium & Rifts
Exalted
Runequest
Harnmaster
GURPS
Torg
If you haven't played at least one of the above besides D&D, you should do it ASAP.
This time I'm gonna shoot the guy who came up with the acronym. No, honestly, I'm gonna F*CKING BLAST HIS HEAD OFF WITH A 12 GAUGE SHOTGUN! This is no f*ckin' joke, man, I'm gonna kill him. I swear. Where's he at? Where you at, hu? Show yourself. You ain't gonna come up with no g*ddamned hairbrained acronym no more, I swear.
SHOW YOUR FACE, MOTHERF*CKER!
"... We wanted to finish DNF, but on the other hand we also wanted Level 70 characters. Those are two important things you have to balance." *cut to WoW character screen*
LOL! Very funny indeed. But probably true aswell.
Integration and standardisation annihilates the last Linux hurdle: Hardware vendors slowpoking around and not playing along.
Coming to think of it, HW vendors never actually had an interest in Linux gaining traction, as it was MS who would get them the sales via bloated and slow OSes. Thus the HW industry struck a deal with MS. We use your neat stickers on our hardware and you see to it that end-users need new hardware with each OS iteration.
However, that doesn't work in 70% of the world. Asia has tons of relatively poor people who can barely afford comodity hardware. And note that it was the underdogs AMD and Via with integrated universal standard chipsets and peripherals that opened up the market for zero-fuss linux - 1st party Linux drivers be damned.
We are seeing Linux fully adapted to commodity standard x86 hardware and gaining traction. To be honest, before now it never really occured to me that it would happen this way. But I think now is the time we will see Linux finally gaining critical mass. A few years later than I had hoped and expected - but I sure do hope it does finally happen. Let's hope so.
I still have it's successor, the Sharp PC-1403H. It has an uptime of 200+ hours on one set of batteries. It's from the 80s and I still have yet to see a computer that can beat that.
... I won't trust anybody with Rich Client technologies further than I can throw them. Be it Adobe, Curl, Wild Tangent, or - heavens forbid - Microsoft. Take that from an experienced Flash Application Developer. For years and years now Adobe has been keeping Linux on a short leash. Allways coming up late, now, once again, limiting proposed hardware acceleration and certain functions to certain host OSes, ect.
I like Flash and it's a remarkable asset. But I've never fully trusted these guys and my trust in them isn't growing.
Yet it looks as though after 10 years Sun is finally getting serious at attempting move towards RIA territory. If JavaFX is halfway decent, it could actually become the new king of all things RIA we've all been waiting for. If the core components of it are open source and the reference implementations aswell, then we're all set for a bright new future of RIAs.
CakePHP Framework (supports PHP5 & PHP4), Version 1.2 Stable due any time soon.
Symfony. PHP 5 Meta Framework using Propel and other layer components. The accompaning book (free PDF, buyable dead-tree) is a very good documentation.
Prado. Event-Oriented PHP 5 Framework. Very interesting.
Code Igniter. Lightweight PHP Framework for smaller stuff. Neat website.
Django. Python Framework.
TurboGears. Python Meta Framework using some 3rd Party stuff like Templating layers and such.
Zope Web Application Server. To date unmatched. What Rails wants to be when it grows up.
I'm not an academic, but you should be able to fit in 50 hours of real programming somewhere in the third semester or so (somewhere near Math 3), no matter how your curriculum is designed. If done correctly this should be enough to get anyone going on the subject. Especially those smart enough to survive into the 3rd semester of physics. You can then let them sort out wether they want to emphasise in programming or not. A practicum or two in the lab later on will help each of them figure that out by themselves.
Take one of the faviourite PLs used in number crunching (since that's presumably the main area of physics programming), preferrably an open source implementation, and walk your sheep through SOPs of number crunching on various examples. Maybe have them do some practical stuff by having them optimize some outdated simulation algorithims for speed / efficiency. A little graphics stuff or maybe even an open physics 3D kit might be a neat extra if you have time to spare. I know of physics people and universities visualising stuff in Blender.
My 2 cents.
I'd suggest *nix or anything that somehow resembles a non-desktop super-computer OS - do *not* do the mistake and have your scholars mess around with MS Visual Studio or even Eclipse for that matter. We've got enough IT junkies as it is. Unless you yourself work in a field where a more generic PL like Java is actually used (which probalby is rather unusual). You want your students to gain knowledge of the principles and learn to apply them effectively when the need arises. And we all know that number crunching is about the most effective use of a computer in existance. No need to spoil the bastion of hard science with bad end-user habits that aren't really related to real math programming. This is about problem solving. Having them dick around with regular desktop OSes on lecture time is a complete waste of time.
As far as number crunching is concerned, I presume that most code doesn't go beyond a few hundred lines per module and that even OOP isn't an issue. Correct me if I'm wrong, but it's mostly procedural implementation of physics formulas. If so, leave OOP out and only get knowledgable low-level and C people on board from CS if you intend to ask for inter-disciplinary support. Considering all that it's probably best to just have them work with the command line and an editor. When they've learned the basics of automating tasks that way, they'll be very thankfull later on in their jobs.
Well, I personally think the eyes are a bit big, the mouth a little to wide and it lacks the sideburns but then again the only version of Wolverine I know and care about is the one played by Hugh Jackman in the recent X-Men movies. ... that would explain why I'm not really interested in them. :-)
... Thank you, thank you, I'm here all week. Try the fish.
Maybe the older comic version of Wolverine are closer to the mark
*Ta-Dum!* *Crash!* *Thud!*
He said it in that interview with Walt Mossberg and Steve Jobs: Before Win95 there was still a debate wether text UI or grafical UI was the way to go. After Win95 that debate was concluded in favour of the grafical UI.
The Windows line since 95 has one thing going for it (and I really can't believe I'm actually saying something like this) in that is has a strange way of rounding up all the manufacturers. Wonder why Vista is such a performance hog? So vendors can justify selling new hardware. That's why they go along with it. Remember when those bizar Windows Keyboards popped up all over the place with Win95? Same thing. Now they are commonplace.
I remember the interest rounding hack of the 80s. Bank IT personell at a few occasions got the smart idea to transfer rounding remainders from interest calculations onto an internal bank account. The extra small micro sums (fractions of currency units) from all interest calculations would quickly add up to many millions, virtually producing money from nothing. A few got caught, but I wonder how many IT guys at banks actually got away with that.
AFAICT the same thing should still be possible today when interests are calculated. Probably such tapering is prevented by tighter controll of IT personell and independant reviewing.
However I think it's still the most elegant form of bank-'robbery'. Has anyone heard of simular more recent incidents of this sort of thing?