So how difficult/expensive is it to get a hold of one of those SP1SC10 development platforms? Say for an individual interested in hacking with some cool hardware, as opposed to a company developing a commercial product. I didn't really see anything on the website other than "contact a representative".
I don't think that's such a great idea - what if the developer needs the money, or doesn't care for the EFF?
I say send them them the money, and if they want to pass it along to the EFF, or put it in their own pocket, or give it to someone else of their choosing, that's more respectful than deciding for them, denying them their choice.
I've had some experience with using both languages in some game programming: Q2Java which merges Quake2 and Java, and QWPython, which merges QuakeWorld with Python (and uses a QuakeC->Python translator).
I can say that writing hybrid Java/C code and getting it to run across multiple platorms was a nightmare compared to getting Python/C running on multiple boxes. Q2Java on Linux barely worked, and I'm not sure if it still works with current JVMs, but QWPython even can build on both Win32 and FreeBSD platforms with the same distutils setup file (Python distutils rocks! - no makefile required!).
To be fair to Java though, Q2Java was embedding a JVM in another program, while QWPython was extending Python - a much simpler prospect. But I can attest that Python is no slouch in the portability department, and at least for game programming is very convenient. I have a hard time imagining writing quake-type game logic in Perl.
Senator William Proxmire represented Wisconsin from 1957-1988, famous for the "Golden Fleece Awards" for "wasteful, ridiculous or ironic use of the taxpayers' money." Some of the awards were
on-target, but probably tended to want to throw the baby out with the bathwater.
My local Taco place (Taco Johns) has stickers on their drive-up windows that says something like "Protected by Radio Shack Security". I always snicker to myself when I see that - I bet that strikes fear into the hearts of criminals.
The point of the "study" wasn't to tell you that cold pizza is good, it was to find out WHY cold pizza is good. Once you understand how a particular phenomenon works, then you can possibly apply it to other foods.
The notion that fibers in the tomato sauce trap moisture is probably not an obvious thing that people know from their tender childhoods.
RIGHT ON! Of all the innumerable posts on the GPL I've seen on Slashdot, this is probably the one I agree with the most. Moderate this up, please.
I've personally been very turned off to the GPL by all this navel-gazing, and debates that make about as much sense as: how many angels can dance on the head of a pin? All this negativity about how you can't do this, or that - or what license is compatible with what other license is nuts, and very off-putting.
The fact that there's so much controversy and debate as to what the GPL does or doesn't allow kind of tells me that it's a poorly written license. Why people would be so hell-bent on cramming such an unclear and confusing piece of crap down other people's throats is beyond me.
It's sort of turned into some kind of weird religion, the stupid thing could just as well start of with: "I am the GPL, thy license..thou shalt have no other licenses before me!"
That sort of absolute, mind-warping, conform or else, everything I touch belongs to me attitide the GPL is putting out is going to be really drive people away.
It's plenty fast, and does a whole slew of things that would be a real PITA to try and code in C (internationalization, security, dynamic loading of gamecode - so you can switch mods on-the-fly, and lots more).
If you want to be pedantic, "Netscape" was the name of the company, and "Navigator" and "Communicator" were the actual products you're thinking of.
So the statement "Netscape switched to the open-source model", makes sense - in that the COMPANY switched to the open source model (at least for their web-browser products).
Asking "where can I get a tarball for Netscape?" is like asking "where can I get a tarball for IBM? (or any other company-name)"
Actually, I think it's pretty obvious that that character was originally supposed to be Ensign Ro - but the actress didn't want to do it. Too bad, Ro (Michelle Forbes) would have been -way- better.
If Starfleet would just put the guys who do the Artificial gravity (their motto: "we -never- fail") in charge of transporters - the Federation would be unstoppable:)
USS Excellent, led by Captain Wayne Campbell, and his science officer G'Arth - on a five year mission to map gaseous anomalies...NOT! More like: find some hot alien babes and bring the legendary music of Aerosmith to them. No way? way! Party on then!
Actually...if you go back and watch even the pilot movie, you'll find foreshadowing of the coming war. One specific bit to watch for: G'Kar offhandedly mentions that "there are no Narn telepaths". The entire first season is strewn with things that didn't seem to mean much when first seen, but after seeing the entire 5 years - have great significance.
So it wasn't like they threw in a war to make things interesting (the way DS9 obviously did) - the entire series basically -was- the Shadow war..the leadup to it, the actual battles, and the aftermath (along with a few interesting asides).
JMS (the creator) basically had the entire thing planned out, beginning to end, and that's what made B5 so great..a single pretty coherent vision of a BIG story. Unlike the Treks, which have become: what are we gonna do -this- week? (Although DS9 did break from that a bit, but it was still kind of hacked-together)
Tetryon beams...I swear ever third show or so of TNG, DS9, and Voyager has had some crisis resolved by someone suggesting: "If we could just generate a phased/modulated/inverted tetyron beam, that would blah blah blah." I wish ST scripts were online somewhere, so I could search and find out how many times they've done that.
Countdowns...a favorite plot device of ST writers. "Sir, we will be stone cold dead in exactly 13 seconds! 13, 12, 11,..."
The crew finding an unknown piece of alien technology, and immediately knowing how to operate it/reprogram the computer
Episodes made up of a major, and a minor, but barely if ever related storys..TNG was terrible about this: "War breaks out with the Klingons! and Data struggles with litterbox training Spot..on the next exciting episode of..". It's like they couldn't get one decent idea, so would glom two half-assed ones together.
Transporters breaking down at critical moments..fix the damn things!
Idiot admirals giving riduculous orders (a favorite of TNG again)
exploding bridge consoles...does Starfleet build them with pyrotechnics already installed? They're just computers for chrissakes..why is anything combustable in them?
General lameness in science/technology..the writers obviously don't know or care about sci/tech, and the fact that they write scripts and fill in techie-sounding words later shows their disdain/lack of interest in science - which is pretty sad given it's a sci-fi show.
That's a step backwards IMHO...people are getting terribly carried away with version numbers. I like the idea of a simple floating point number - this X.Y.Zfoobar2-pl1-yadda.yadda.yadda stuff is getting out of hand.
Slashdot Mirror
So how difficult/expensive is it to get a hold of one of those SP1SC10 development platforms? Say for an individual interested in hacking with some cool hardware, as opposed to a company developing a commercial product. I didn't really see anything on the website other than "contact a representative".
I don't think that's such a great idea - what if the developer needs the money, or doesn't care for the EFF?
I say send them them the money, and if they want to pass it along to the EFF, or put it in their own pocket, or give it to someone else of their choosing, that's more respectful than deciding for them, denying them their choice.
I've had some experience with using both languages in some game programming: Q2Java which merges Quake2 and Java, and QWPython, which merges QuakeWorld with Python (and uses a QuakeC->Python translator).
I can say that writing hybrid Java/C code and getting it to run across multiple platorms was a nightmare compared to getting Python/C running on multiple boxes. Q2Java on Linux barely worked, and I'm not sure if it still works with current JVMs, but QWPython even can build on both Win32 and FreeBSD platforms with the same distutils setup file (Python distutils rocks! - no makefile required!).
To be fair to Java though, Q2Java was embedding a JVM in another program, while QWPython was extending Python - a much simpler prospect. But I can attest that Python is no slouch in the portability department, and at least for game programming is very convenient. I have a hard time imagining writing quake-type game logic in Perl.
Senator William Proxmire represented Wisconsin from 1957-1988, famous for the "Golden Fleece Awards" for "wasteful, ridiculous or ironic use of the taxpayers' money." Some of the awards were
on-target, but probably tended to want to throw the baby out with the bathwater.
My local Taco place (Taco Johns) has stickers on their drive-up windows that says something like "Protected by Radio Shack Security". I always snicker to myself when I see that - I bet that strikes fear into the hearts of criminals.
The notion that fibers in the tomato sauce trap moisture is probably not an obvious thing that people know from their tender childhoods.
RIGHT ON! Of all the innumerable posts on the GPL I've seen on Slashdot, this is probably the one I agree with the most. Moderate this up, please.
I've personally been very turned off to the GPL by all this navel-gazing, and debates that make about as much sense as: how many angels can dance on the head of a pin? All this negativity about how you can't do this, or that - or what license is compatible with what other license is nuts, and very off-putting.
The fact that there's so much controversy and debate as to what the GPL does or doesn't allow kind of tells me that it's a poorly written license. Why people would be so hell-bent on cramming such an unclear and confusing piece of crap down other people's throats is beyond me.
It's sort of turned into some kind of weird religion, the stupid thing could just as well start of with: "I am the GPL, thy license..thou shalt have no other licenses before me!"
That sort of absolute, mind-warping, conform or else, everything I touch belongs to me attitide the GPL is putting out is going to be really drive people away.
Been there, done that..check it out at:
http://www.planetquake.com/q2java
It's plenty fast, and does a whole slew of things that would be a real PITA to try and code in C (internationalization, security, dynamic loading of gamecode - so you can switch mods on-the-fly, and lots more).
If you want to be pedantic, "Netscape" was the name of the company, and "Navigator" and "Communicator" were the actual products you're thinking of.
So the statement "Netscape switched to the open-source model", makes sense - in that the COMPANY switched to the open source model (at least for their web-browser products).
Asking "where can I get a tarball for Netscape?" is like asking "where can I get a tarball for IBM? (or any other company-name)"
I believe you're right about the missiles...but we do still have the B-52's in Minot - to keep those nutcases from Montana in line :)
Actually, I think it's pretty obvious that that character was originally supposed to be Ensign Ro - but the actress didn't want to do it. Too bad, Ro (Michelle Forbes) would have been -way- better.
If Starfleet would just put the guys who do the Artificial gravity (their motto: "we -never- fail") in charge of transporters - the Federation would be unstoppable :)
USS Excellent, led by Captain Wayne Campbell, and his science officer G'Arth - on a five year mission to map gaseous anomalies...NOT! More like: find some hot alien babes and bring the legendary music of Aerosmith to them. No way? way! Party on then!
Actually...if you go back and watch even the pilot movie, you'll find foreshadowing of the coming war. One specific bit to watch for: G'Kar offhandedly mentions that "there are no Narn telepaths". The entire first season is strewn with things that didn't seem to mean much when first seen, but after seeing the entire 5 years - have great significance.
So it wasn't like they threw in a war to make things interesting (the way DS9 obviously did) - the entire series basically -was- the Shadow war..the leadup to it, the actual battles, and the aftermath (along with a few interesting asides).
JMS (the creator) basically had the entire thing planned out, beginning to end, and that's what made B5 so great..a single pretty coherent vision of a BIG story. Unlike the Treks, which have become: what are we gonna do -this- week? (Although DS9 did break from that a bit, but it was still kind of hacked-together)
That's a step backwards IMHO...people are getting terribly carried away with version numbers. I like the idea of a simple floating point number - this X.Y.Zfoobar2-pl1-yadda.yadda.yadda stuff is getting out of hand.
Barry