there was a rising action, a crest, a climax, and a falling action/denoument
This probably falls under redundant, but I have to say it anyway: Even without the story arc, it is nice to see some textbook writing in sci-fi. People aren't interested in a last second fix to some fictional space ship fifteen seconds before the credits roll. Fans want to know how the resolution of the story affects the characters. B5 is great about that. -----
The movie could have ended when David jumps into the ocean - or it could have ended again when the narrator pipes up again after his plunge. But it doesn't, and it loses its vision and direction.
No. It doesn't loose vision; it just makes a 90-degree turn and becomes a new movie (a classic sign of a great Kubrick movie). Many people liked the AI and space exploration parts of 2001. Many people don't think Dave should have found the monolith. I have even heard people say they thought Full Metal Jacket should have been split into two separate movies. All those people have just been brainwashed by Hollywood. A film can have more than one theme. Just because the second was introduced late in the film, doesn't make it less interesting.
-----
Attention, We-Want-Linux-On-The-Desktop crowd: Support this and help out, it is a big step in the right direction. To a consumer, diagnostic messages are confusing and pointless.
Good point. The first time my brother saw my linux machine boot, he thought I had a problem. It never occured to me that Linux running correctly look just like the windows blue screen of death. -----
If you want to get anal about the wording, OOP would better be described as a design pattern. Yes, you could teach it in Fortran. I not only agree, but I think that type of exercise would be good for students.
I think we are looking at this from different perspectives. You seem to want to train C++ programmers. I just want programmers who know object oriented concepts. I think teaching students OOP early is the best time. They can learn easier before they have the preconceived notions that come with experience with procedural programming. I think of it as teaching a foreign language to a child. The best time to teach them is while they are young... before they rely on the crutches of their native language.
how about you make it so that you learn assembly, then low level c, then basic?! i think the AP class should be MicrosoftBasic!
You are totaly correct, imho. So many people are so stuck on themselves on slashdot, they are just not thinking. Yes, all programmers should understand how the entire system works... all the way down to the memory allocation - but what makes everyone here think that it is better to teach it from the details up?
There are a lot of very smart CS people here, but very few great teachers. Lets hear from them.. which is the better way to learn?
People are into Java servlets, but beyond that, I'd be at a loss to say where they are being used; perhaps you could help me out here? I know that our local metro uses Java to display bus schedules, but that's because it was a university project.
First, I want to complement you for asking. So many posts here preach first and ask questions somewhere else (I hope).
My company is using Java primarily on the server (although we have only one servlet). We have a swing client accessing the server via http. (we picked swing simply for the coolness factor; we originally planned on a VB front end). The client sends http requests to a servlet, which calls an EJB. The EJB access the database, performs any logic and sends it all back as xml. We plan on doing away with all the http/xml when soap becomes stable.
The beauty of the system I just described is the J2EE framework. We can redeploy on any number of application servers (which we have to do, as our clients buy our product and run it themselves). J2EE gives us transaction rollbacks not only on a single database transaction, but any number of database transactions from across many beans. It can even roll back values set in the beans themselves... all right out of the box. J2EE gives you messaging, session tracking and a robust environment which you can expect from any vendor. The programmer never has to worry about connection pooling or platform deployment in their code.
With all of the wonderful support from the open source community, we can log our work remotely into any number of formats, and even change that logging on the fly. We didn't have to write any of that either. We send email and print and display html, all from apis. I have no idea how SMTP works, but it doesn't slow us down a step. That's the real advantage of Java.
I have never in my life had a problem with running C++ code written using the Borland C++ tools on my GNU/Linux or NetBSD machine. I/have/ had troubles when people have been using extensions to the language, or as you call it "Borland C++ programs". The point is: Those programs are not C++. They are "Borland C++ programs". Those two things are not the same.
I think you pointed out some great reasons that Java should be used in the class room rather than C++. Rather than trying to explain to the students what parts of C++ are standard and which ones are not, the students can spend the entire semester learning object oriented concepts. Although I think it is very important for students to know how pointers work (which they would learn in thier C class), I don't think they are going to learn pointers and understand the power of MVC in the same class.
What JVM will be added? Is there an issue with including Sun's VM? Specificly, I would like to see jdk 1.4 on a browser as soon as it's released this year... with web start, xml parsing and the latest swing enhancements.
Basic intelligence is not effected by education, or the tools used to acquire information. A computer will allow someone to take advantage of a superior intellect, but it will not increase the intellect.
Great post. Tog had a great chapter in his book Tog on Software Design were he explains some of the downfalls of our educational system.
He pointed out that teachers didn't allow calculators in the classroom for years. I graduated in '93, yet I was still required to learn out to calculate square roots (a button that has been on every calculator in the US since I was born). Did that increase my intelligence? No. Did it improve my ability to understand the situations that I might need to apply square roots? No.
Too many people (including our own schools) confuse knowledge with content. Rather than memorizing facts and dates, we should teach our children how to find those facts and dates, should they ever need them. We should then spend the remaining 7.5 hours in the school day to teach them the concepts - how those facts effect the world, and their lives.
Computers are simply the next misunderstood technology. What people fail to realize about computers, is that they will never go away. Computers are here to stay. Those who are familiar with them will have the world's knowledge at their fingertips (a phrase that finally has meaning).
As you pointed out, the children who are growing up with the internet will not end up any smarter than the rest of us... but their knowledge will be much more applicable in the future, than will be the content I was forced to memorize when I was young.
I understand the spirit of the license and the feeling everyone gets when they set it next to the LGPL, but if the GPL has a hole, it has a hole. If the GPL isn't legally binding in this situation, it doesn't matter what the writers meant or what their emotional state was when they wrote it.
I know everyone here loves this stuff. I think open source software is a great concept, and I use it every day; but I can't help but think there is a real problem with the GPL.
Creating a dll out of a GPL'd program is not a violation... everyone seems to agree to that. Linking to it requires the original headers, which theoretically constitutes a breach in the GPL.. but the reliance on headers from the calling code is simply a limitation of the programming language.
Had the GPL'd code been written in Java, another programmer could wrap it into a Jar and treat it as a linked library. That code could be expected to be in the classpath, and accessed as if it were part of the same program.
How can a syntactical limitation to the C programming language keep a language independent contract binding?
Personally I'd rather see a standard stereo component sized box, a UI that operates through your television and normal remote, and 30+ gigs, but this one is looking like a great start.
I could really give a rats-ass about hard drive space. If it has an ethernet port, it has access to all the drive space I will ever need. What I really need is on screen programming. How hard could that really be? What are all these players doing out there that support all kinds of strange features, but don't have a screen that fits more than 8 characters?
It pivots slightly so that when the hand rests on it in a typing position
I hate to sound like your high school typing teacher, but your hands should never rest on the keyboard. I always thought it was stupid for companies to put wrist rests on keyboards for that very reason... but now we are depending on people to type incorrectly in order for the keyboard to work at all!
Now, if that was patented technology, then why were he specs on the web for all to see???
That is the whole point of getting a patent! Companies get patents so they don't have to worry about people taking what is theirs. Part of the patent process, after all, is submiting your application (with a full description of what you have), after which everyone gets to see it. If you want it to stay secret you DONT put a patent on it!
The real problem here, is that interfaces should not be patentable (although I don't know that they even tried to patent the interface). If all the freedb is using is the interface, then I don't see what the problem is. -----
if (System.getProperty("java.vendor").equals("Microso ft ")
Using DeCSS to access the media in it's inteneded use, ie. watching the bloody movie, never seems to be mentioned.
I would think this would go right along with the crowbar metaphor. Crowbars are not illegal because they were made for legal reasons. If I decide to use that crowbar for breaking into houses or killing people, I go to jail for it... but you can still buy the crowbar the next day. This is how things should work!
If someone wants to use DeCSS to copy movies, then maybe those people should be taken to court.
Slashdot has continually said that the MPAA should got after individual copyright infrigers rather than services like Napster. Yet as soon as the MPAA does that it becomes labelled "intimidation tactics". I read the article and from what I gathered Excite@Home told people if they didn't stop sharing copyright material they would lose their service.
What, exactly, is the problem with that?
When "Slashdot" says the MPAA should go after the users, we meant legaly. We didn't mean buring putting on a cape and dealing with the users on their own. There is nothing legal about using your clout to shut down the user's internet connection. They might as well be getting the electric company to shut off power to their homes. If you have a legal problem with me, then SUE ME!
XP has some very cool concepts that really work (it's not just another buzz word for trolls to make fun of on/.). What I really can't stand, however is how easily XP is being sliced into catch phrases and trivialized. My supervisors here have decided that "refactoring" is a good idea... therefore we should just rush through everything the first time, and go back and do it right later (much later). Had they bothered to read the rest of the chapter, they would have found out that refactoring involves changing the internal design of the program... not it's functionality, or interface. Now we just change software without forethought.. after all.. we can always refactor!
As with any process, it won't work if it isn't given a chance; and it certainly won't work if those giving it a chance are too stupid to figure it out.
How can we possibly claim that one way us more natural than another to do an unnatural task?
I hate to raise Tog's name again (I have seen it quite a bit on/. lately), but he has a very interesting article on this subject: Intuitive vs. Familiar.
Writing with a pen isn't more natural... it's just more familiar (to most of the world). Personaly, I would rather use a keyboard... but then again, I choose vi over most gui text pads. Had the simpler interface always been available, I might have not become so familiar with my keyboard.
This doesn't even begin to address the problem. Why have open source hackers submit ideas (at $20 a pop)? So we can sue IBM if they try to patent the same idea? As if I have the resources to sue IBM - even if I CAN prove them to be wrong!
The real solution isn't an intellectual arms race... the best solution is to fix the patent system as a whole.
- and who really believes the US Patent office is looking up anything before awarding patents?
Slashdot Mirror
there was a rising action, a crest, a climax, and a falling action/denoument This probably falls under redundant, but I have to say it anyway: Even without the story arc, it is nice to see some textbook writing in sci-fi. People aren't interested in a last second fix to some fictional space ship fifteen seconds before the credits roll. Fans want to know how the resolution of the story affects the characters. B5 is great about that.
-----
The movie could have ended when David jumps into the ocean - or it could have ended again when the narrator pipes up again after his plunge. But it doesn't, and it loses its vision and direction. No. It doesn't loose vision; it just makes a 90-degree turn and becomes a new movie (a classic sign of a great Kubrick movie). Many people liked the AI and space exploration parts of 2001. Many people don't think Dave should have found the monolith. I have even heard people say they thought Full Metal Jacket should have been split into two separate movies. All those people have just been brainwashed by Hollywood. A film can have more than one theme. Just because the second was introduced late in the film, doesn't make it less interesting.
-----
I guess I would have to be careful not to kick my computer anymore when mozilla crashes on me... I may never find the damn thing if I did!
-----
Attention, We-Want-Linux-On-The-Desktop crowd: Support this and help out, it is a big step in the right direction. To a consumer, diagnostic messages are confusing and pointless. Good point. The first time my brother saw my linux machine boot, he thought I had a problem. It never occured to me that Linux running correctly look just like the windows blue screen of death.
-----
If you want to get anal about the wording, OOP would better be described as a design pattern. Yes, you could teach it in Fortran. I not only agree, but I think that type of exercise would be good for students. I think we are looking at this from different perspectives. You seem to want to train C++ programmers. I just want programmers who know object oriented concepts. I think teaching students OOP early is the best time. They can learn easier before they have the preconceived notions that come with experience with procedural programming. I think of it as teaching a foreign language to a child. The best time to teach them is while they are young... before they rely on the crutches of their native language.
ps: About your sig: there _are_ no old Java programmers. Sure there are... I work with one guy who's 38!
how about you make it so that you learn assembly, then low level c, then basic?! i think the AP class should be MicrosoftBasic! You are totaly correct, imho. So many people are so stuck on themselves on slashdot, they are just not thinking. Yes, all programmers should understand how the entire system works... all the way down to the memory allocation - but what makes everyone here think that it is better to teach it from the details up? There are a lot of very smart CS people here, but very few great teachers. Lets hear from them.. which is the better way to learn?
People are into Java servlets, but beyond that, I'd be at a loss to say where they are being used; perhaps you could help me out here? I know that our local metro uses Java to display bus schedules, but that's because it was a university project. First, I want to complement you for asking. So many posts here preach first and ask questions somewhere else (I hope). My company is using Java primarily on the server (although we have only one servlet). We have a swing client accessing the server via http. (we picked swing simply for the coolness factor; we originally planned on a VB front end). The client sends http requests to a servlet, which calls an EJB. The EJB access the database, performs any logic and sends it all back as xml. We plan on doing away with all the http/xml when soap becomes stable. The beauty of the system I just described is the J2EE framework. We can redeploy on any number of application servers (which we have to do, as our clients buy our product and run it themselves). J2EE gives us transaction rollbacks not only on a single database transaction, but any number of database transactions from across many beans. It can even roll back values set in the beans themselves... all right out of the box. J2EE gives you messaging, session tracking and a robust environment which you can expect from any vendor. The programmer never has to worry about connection pooling or platform deployment in their code. With all of the wonderful support from the open source community, we can log our work remotely into any number of formats, and even change that logging on the fly. We didn't have to write any of that either. We send email and print and display html, all from apis. I have no idea how SMTP works, but it doesn't slow us down a step. That's the real advantage of Java.
I have never in my life had a problem with running C++ code written using the Borland C++ tools on my GNU/Linux or NetBSD machine. I /have/ had troubles when people have been using extensions to the language, or as you call it "Borland C++ programs". The point is: Those programs are not C++. They are "Borland C++ programs". Those two things are not the same.
I think you pointed out some great reasons that Java should be used in the class room rather than C++. Rather than trying to explain to the students what parts of C++ are standard and which ones are not, the students can spend the entire semester learning object oriented concepts. Although I think it is very important for students to know how pointers work (which they would learn in thier C class), I don't think they are going to learn pointers and understand the power of MVC in the same class.
What JVM will be added? Is there an issue with including Sun's VM? Specificly, I would like to see jdk 1.4 on a browser as soon as it's released this year... with web start, xml parsing and the latest swing enhancements.
Go ahead... don't buy cds. They're just going to blame it on napster!
Sun has the press release for thier Sony deal.
How much Karma do we need before we can mod the entire article down as a troll?
Basic intelligence is not effected by education, or the tools used to acquire information. A computer will allow someone to take advantage of a superior intellect, but it will not increase the intellect. Great post. Tog had a great chapter in his book Tog on Software Design were he explains some of the downfalls of our educational system. He pointed out that teachers didn't allow calculators in the classroom for years. I graduated in '93, yet I was still required to learn out to calculate square roots (a button that has been on every calculator in the US since I was born). Did that increase my intelligence? No. Did it improve my ability to understand the situations that I might need to apply square roots? No. Too many people (including our own schools) confuse knowledge with content. Rather than memorizing facts and dates, we should teach our children how to find those facts and dates, should they ever need them. We should then spend the remaining 7.5 hours in the school day to teach them the concepts - how those facts effect the world, and their lives. Computers are simply the next misunderstood technology. What people fail to realize about computers, is that they will never go away. Computers are here to stay. Those who are familiar with them will have the world's knowledge at their fingertips (a phrase that finally has meaning). As you pointed out, the children who are growing up with the internet will not end up any smarter than the rest of us... but their knowledge will be much more applicable in the future, than will be the content I was forced to memorize when I was young.
I understand the spirit of the license and the feeling everyone gets when they set it next to the LGPL, but if the GPL has a hole, it has a hole. If the GPL isn't legally binding in this situation, it doesn't matter what the writers meant or what their emotional state was when they wrote it. I know everyone here loves this stuff. I think open source software is a great concept, and I use it every day; but I can't help but think there is a real problem with the GPL. Creating a dll out of a GPL'd program is not a violation... everyone seems to agree to that. Linking to it requires the original headers, which theoretically constitutes a breach in the GPL.. but the reliance on headers from the calling code is simply a limitation of the programming language. Had the GPL'd code been written in Java, another programmer could wrap it into a Jar and treat it as a linked library. That code could be expected to be in the classpath, and accessed as if it were part of the same program. How can a syntactical limitation to the C programming language keep a language independent contract binding?
Personally I'd rather see a standard stereo component sized box, a UI that operates through your television and normal remote, and 30+ gigs, but this one is looking like a great start. I could really give a rats-ass about hard drive space. If it has an ethernet port, it has access to all the drive space I will ever need. What I really need is on screen programming. How hard could that really be? What are all these players doing out there that support all kinds of strange features, but don't have a screen that fits more than 8 characters?
It pivots slightly so that when the hand rests on it in a typing position I hate to sound like your high school typing teacher, but your hands should never rest on the keyboard. I always thought it was stupid for companies to put wrist rests on keyboards for that very reason... but now we are depending on people to type incorrectly in order for the keyboard to work at all!
Now, if that was patented technology, then why were he specs on the web for all to see??? That is the whole point of getting a patent! Companies get patents so they don't have to worry about people taking what is theirs. Part of the patent process, after all, is submiting your application (with a full description of what you have), after which everyone gets to see it. If you want it to stay secret you DONT put a patent on it! The real problem here, is that interfaces should not be patentable (although I don't know that they even tried to patent the interface). If all the freedb is using is the interface, then I don't see what the problem is.o ft ")
-----
if (System.getProperty("java.vendor").equals("Micros
Using DeCSS to access the media in it's inteneded use, ie. watching the bloody movie, never seems to be mentioned. I would think this would go right along with the crowbar metaphor. Crowbars are not illegal because they were made for legal reasons. If I decide to use that crowbar for breaking into houses or killing people, I go to jail for it... but you can still buy the crowbar the next day. This is how things should work! If someone wants to use DeCSS to copy movies, then maybe those people should be taken to court.
Slashdot has continually said that the MPAA should got after individual copyright infrigers rather than services like Napster. Yet as soon as the MPAA does that it becomes labelled "intimidation tactics". I read the article and from what I gathered Excite@Home told people if they didn't stop sharing copyright material they would lose their service. What, exactly, is the problem with that? When "Slashdot" says the MPAA should go after the users, we meant legaly. We didn't mean buring putting on a cape and dealing with the users on their own. There is nothing legal about using your clout to shut down the user's internet connection. They might as well be getting the electric company to shut off power to their homes. If you have a legal problem with me, then SUE ME!
Beowulf clusters linked through the IR port?
XP has some very cool concepts that really work (it's not just another buzz word for trolls to make fun of on /.). What I really can't stand, however is how easily XP is being sliced into catch phrases and trivialized. My supervisors here have decided that "refactoring" is a good idea... therefore we should just rush through everything the first time, and go back and do it right later (much later). Had they bothered to read the rest of the chapter, they would have found out that refactoring involves changing the internal design of the program... not it's functionality, or interface. Now we just change software without forethought.. after all.. we can always refactor!
As with any process, it won't work if it isn't given a chance; and it certainly won't work if those giving it a chance are too stupid to figure it out.
What is this I see?
The brethren of Slashdot joining together to praise Microsoft? Well, we still have the RIAA
How can we possibly claim that one way us more natural than another to do an unnatural task? I hate to raise Tog's name again (I have seen it quite a bit on /. lately), but he has a very interesting article on this subject: Intuitive vs. Familiar.
Writing with a pen isn't more natural... it's just more familiar (to most of the world). Personaly, I would rather use a keyboard... but then again, I choose vi over most gui text pads. Had the simpler interface always been available, I might have not become so familiar with my keyboard.
This doesn't even begin to address the problem. Why have open source hackers submit ideas (at $20 a pop)? So we can sue IBM if they try to patent the same idea? As if I have the resources to sue IBM - even if I CAN prove them to be wrong! The real solution isn't an intellectual arms race... the best solution is to fix the patent system as a whole. - and who really believes the US Patent office is looking up anything before awarding patents?