I think part of the problem with getting people excited about programming these days is that the capabilities of the machine have grown so much, and talented people and teams are using that capability. It's hard to get something out that looks comparable to a "real computer program", at least with many of the "hard" languages. Thinking back, when you had 16k, 64k or 128k of RAM, and user-driven "Applications" weren't nearly as ubiquitous, the mere fact that you could throw up an image on the screen was exciting enough to get you to learn to program. I suppose, though, that this gap is filled by things like, as you said, Flex, memory-managed scripting languages, or even something like JavaScript+HTML, where you can make something respectable on the same sort of time/payoff scale.
On the flip-side, learning to program can give you a good leg-up on algebra. I ended up knowing some of the fundamentals long before it came up in school, just because I'd been working with functional examples since X=X+1; ?X; GOTO 10
Sounds like those "Domain Registry of America" "NOT A BILL" mailings I get all the time telling me that I need to pay to renew my domain, forgetting to mention that I don't actually have to pay *them* to do it.
Although I don't believe they really match up in the storage-capacity department, the SanDisk Sansa e200-series, Rockboxed, I use has most of that covered. It's an 8GB device with a MicroSD slot, which is nice for quick swaps of expandable storage-- the card fully slots securely into the device, stays put, and adds nothing at all to the form factor. The device itself is similar to the "function-factor" of the nano, with a video/nav screen at the top, a thumbwheel for menu nav and volume, a center "select" button, play/stop/forward/back buttons in a ring around that.
I'm not sure about the playlist ability on the stock firmware, but the Rockbox firmware (check the support on that before you buy) has pretty good support for playlists, including build-on-the-fly and uploading properly-formed.pls files (properly-formed, meaning no absolute paths) to the unit.
You can listen to and record FM radio, and it has a passable-quality voice recorder (although no line-in recording like the iRiver).
From the technical and hackability angle, it has a very hard-to-brick firmware (it has a recovery mode that allows the firmware-update partition to be mounted as a USB device, and even has a lower-level recovery option beyond that), and the battery is, AFAIK, user-serviceable.
The biggest downsides I've seen are...
- The sync/charge cable is non-standard, and finding an immediate replacement is difficult and costly. However, the $5 Amazon off-brand cable did the trick quite well. I just had to wait for the package to arrive.
- A screen protector is a must.
- It's a little less durable and "top shelf" than you describe the Nano as being. The paint on the on-off button, for instance, has started to wear, and I've dropped it and chipped a corner.
The Sansas (generally refurb) are a common item on Woot.com. I picked up the 8GB model for about $70 or so.
And contrary to popular belief, CSS hacks aren't really necessary anymore. The few bugs you have to work around can be put in a separate css file and included with an IE conditional comment. No bughacking needed.
Just because they aren't bug-fixes toward standards-compliance doesn't mean they aren't hacks. For instance: double-wrapping explicit-width content columns so you can have margins and padding without over-expanding the size. (For as anti-standard as it is, the IE box model got that one right, IMO.) Having to use "top: 50%; margin-top: [height/2];" instead of a "vertical-align" or vertical "margin: auto" to vertically center a block element. (Okay, you could use table-cell rendering, but that makes no logical sense, either.) That's unintuitive, hacky. Using floats for multi-column layout is hacky in and of itself, especially when you find that you may need to float and clear a legitimately floated object deeper in the hierarchy. (The CSS float model could use some work, too-- it needs "levels" of float clearing, so you have more options than just clearing every previous float on the page.) The fact that the 100% height of the root element isn't, at minimum, 100% of the viewport (and, the root element can't use percentage min-heights) has been cause for no end of hackery, often ending in some JavaScript to get things to go full-height. (It could be seen as a poor implementation decision, as I believe the W3C docs don't get specific in that regard, but it's still a lousy choice.)
Now, I'm not saying that there should be a return to table-based layouts. Those had their own problems and tended to be just as kludgy and finicky as CSS. CSS, however, does have some real flaws that should be acknowledged, and ought to be weeded out when they can.
As it stands, I'll just keep on learnin' the hacks, keep on desiginin' the pages, and hope IE6 withers to the point that implementable forward progress in CSS becomes feasible.
I think you're looking at the extremes, though. I would agree that the infinity-minus-a-day copyright that Disney and the like seem to want is far too much, and the heavy-handed tactics that the RIAA and others use is overkill. Copyright, in its current "stock" form (un-altered by permissive licenses) does suffer from damaging overkill. This is a problem to be solved, but the complete disrespect of copyrights is not the solution. The solution of tying copyright to market utilization is debatable, but to debate tomorrow's evolution of copyright based upon completely separate abuses of today's implementation is irrelevant and antagonistic. If you treat it as a war, you're likely to lose. If you treat it as a problem, there's more chance of solving it.
While you may trot out the "I pay my taxes" line in regards to pirated content not being "free", that's a weak connection. Boycott is always an option. Political activism is always an option. My signature comes from people who, all too often, espouse piracy as some sort of legitimate civil disobedience, when, for most, the true motive lies in acquiring the product through the cheapest means necessary. These activists could have just as much of an effect on sales through boycott or political action, without the doubt as to their motives.
I'll admit that, practically, there may be no way to put piracy back in its box, but to let this lead to nothing more than the argument of "oh well, it's done, deal with it" is lazy, and is an insult to intelligence. Just as a flimsy lock doesn't justify a break-in, the abstract and unenforcable nature of copyright doesn't necessarily justify disregarding it.
That's what I'd say, as well. (Not sure on my letter-designated generation. 1981?) While it may collide with the letter of the law, it ends up being one of those "who cares" issues, where the diligence in having a legit "master copy" puts you on such a sound ethical standing that the only likely outcome of any sort of litigation would be the embarrassment of the person suing.
In one corner, you've got the free-for-all pirates swapping files and chipping away at legitimate business models. In the other corner, you've got the MaFIAA, SecuROM, and Disney's forever-minus-one copyright. Those are the people making the big noise and influencing policy.
Meanwhile, the reasonable content creator wanting reasonable protection gets lumped in with the RIAA et al, and the reasonable content consumer who wants to reasonably use things they've bought, or to reflect upon common artifacts from the culture, they get lumped with the pirates. And ne'er the twain shall meet.
The few glimmers of hope have been from places like Creative Commons, and from things like the myriad of community licenses (GPL, GFDL, countless others) out there. While functionally, community licenses can be seen as just a band-aid to put copyright where it should be, the greater benefit is that it presents copyright as a malleable and functional tool-- not just a brick-wall of a law--puts the tools of sane policy in the hands of the common creator, and gets people thinking about copyright.
I think this position misses one critical question: What is copyright a right to?
Those wanting copyrights dependent upon market availability seem to take the stance that copyright is a right to profit, especially monetary profit on the open market. While this is certainly an arguable point, it's not the be-all end-all.
This argument falters if copyright is framed, not as a right to monetary profit, but as a basic right to control. Although many creators will use the standard avenues of for-profit publishing, with the same aims of wide dissemination and agreed-upon compensation, there may be edge cases, both known and unknown, where the right of control, currently granted by copyright, is more valuable to the creator than the right to profit.
A creator may wish to exercise the right to only be publish through certain outlets, or only through publishers with certain standards, either quality or ideological. The public does not, and should not, have immediate right to override the wishes of the creator, simply because the technological means are readily available. In a capitalist society that values individual means fairly gained by individual achievement, the gains of copy-rights should be upheld.
(Of course, this is not to trample on consumers' first sale rights, fair use rights, or personal use rights such as personal format-shifting. The flip-side of the coin is that when the author releases a copy of a work into the world, that transaction was a legitimate trade of some degree of control for some degree of profit.)
Maybe I'm wrong, but in the file-share arena (excepting wholesale commercial piracy, for instance) I don't think there has been much, if any, prosecution or effort put toward prosecuting consumers of pirated content. Only people providing content get dinged.
If you're a downloader, even though downloading pirate content is illegal, it's all too easy to say "Well, how was I to know the person on the other end wasn't authorized to distribute that?". However, if you're an uploader, it can be quite much more easily proven that you were knowingly distributing content without the consent of the creator.
Legitimate work goes into both creating and distributing a work, and whether or not you find it up to your own standards of validity, the creators, as well as the publishers, promoters, logistics people, retailers, and all the others are part of getting you that final product. Yes, the author could have simply self-published, then the transaction would merely be between you and the author. However, they felt that they needed the services of the rest of the chain, and agreed to "cut them in".
That decision is between the author and their contractors, not you. While you may be purchasing a copy via a third party, and the author may not be doing the work of directly receiving income, then distributing service expense, the agreements for rights and percentages take the place of costs for services rendered. Basically, the author trades certain rights to payment for services in distribution and marketing. That's a service to the author, not you, and it's not your place to decide whether or not the third-party services are worthy of compensation.
It's like saying that I should be able to get a Coke for less than retail because I don't think Coca-Cola really needs the worldwide marketing effort. That's not my decision. That was Coke's decision, and my decision is whether to buy the product at an agreed-upon price, or not to.
If the author is being screwed by this system, then it's their prerogative to make better deals or re-vamp the system. If the consumer is being screwed by the system, then the author is just as much of an accessory-- they chose their bedfellows, even if the selection was slim.
Actually, there is such a magical device. It's called a "scanner". Granted, you'll want to use one with an automatic sheet-feeder, and you'll have to de-spine the book, but it is workable.
Sometimes, though, they'll have the EULA on the outside of the box, or the store will have EULA's available and that fact will be noted. Then, you're buying it under those terms, which you have seen beforehand.
I think it's an evolutionary result, though. Industrial manufacturing introduced a glut of consumer goods to the world, and made it possible that multiple players could be in the same market trying to sell essentially the same thing, or at least the same thing with normally imperceptible differences. One company who advertises could take a market-share far disproportionate to the comparative advantage they have against a company with a similar product, but no advertising. Increased publicity ability gave the means, and anyone outside the competition really just can't compete.
Re:Accurate anger different than troll please read
on
Houses With Tails
·
· Score: 1
If that was the case, I'm sure you could have summarized that in about 10 words, sans vitriol.
Okay, so here's what you do. You keep a padded, heat-resistant safe in an upstairs room of the house. Mount wheels on it, and place it on an inclined track, facing toward a pre-scored section of thinner wall. Rest it against a swing gate or chock held shut by a locking device made of lead. If your house starts on fire, the heat will melt the lead, the gate will open, and the safe will roll down the incline, bursting through the wall and landing safely in the yard, outside the major heat zone.
Of course, you have the problem of your house becoming a flaming safe-launcher as well as being on fire... I'm sure that can all be worked out in the implementation.
Personally, I think it could have used a bit more challenge. The skill tests were adequate in theory, but the levels were rushed and simplistic, and the continuation thresholds really set the bar low. Actually, I think I could have used a little clearer negative feedback when I didn't do the level fast enough. Granted, I've never played the game it's parodying, so perhaps I'm missing a connection there. It could have also used some more overall plot development, especially between "nasty, half-cleaned, half-cooked turkey" to "tofu lump" levels.
All in all, 2/5 stars. Too preachy for an arcade game, but not enough plot for a concept game.
Our 'sermons'? They're fucking asking us why we're vegetarians and now you call it our 'sermons'?
If you don't want to get into the discussion every single time, I'm sure there are certainly terse, simple methods of phrasing you could use to wrap up the matter quickly. The quarter-page foaming-mouth reply leads me to believe that you might-- long shot here, I know--you might tend to sermonize when confronted with a simple question.
I remember reading something pertinent regarding open-source drivers: If your business is your software, open-sourcing it is likely a bad move. If the software is merely a supporter to your core business (as drivers often are-- people are paying for the device, not the driver), then open-sourcing can be beneficial. In the case of Dreamweaver, etc., the software is the business. Their business isn't based upon support contracts, additional services, or on running the software on some piece of dedicated, optimized hardware. If they give the software away, they undercut their reason for being.
I was speaking merely of the free trial version, not the full purchased product. It would be a far less intrusive option than rootkits or leavebehinds on a trial program. Now, if it's something you've actually bought, there's a longer time you expect to keep it, and phone-homes can interfere with that in a number of ways.
Slashdot Mirror
Hear, hear.
I think part of the problem with getting people excited about programming these days is that the capabilities of the machine have grown so much, and talented people and teams are using that capability. It's hard to get something out that looks comparable to a "real computer program", at least with many of the "hard" languages. Thinking back, when you had 16k, 64k or 128k of RAM, and user-driven "Applications" weren't nearly as ubiquitous, the mere fact that you could throw up an image on the screen was exciting enough to get you to learn to program. I suppose, though, that this gap is filled by things like, as you said, Flex, memory-managed scripting languages, or even something like JavaScript+HTML, where you can make something respectable on the same sort of time/payoff scale.
I agree. Kids these days do need motivation to get out of the house more often.
On the flip-side, learning to program can give you a good leg-up on algebra. I ended up knowing some of the fundamentals long before it came up in school, just because I'd been working with functional examples since X=X+1; ?X; GOTO 10
Sounds like those "Domain Registry of America" "NOT A BILL" mailings I get all the time telling me that I need to pay to renew my domain, forgetting to mention that I don't actually have to pay *them* to do it.
Although I don't believe they really match up in the storage-capacity department, the SanDisk Sansa e200-series, Rockboxed, I use has most of that covered. It's an 8GB device with a MicroSD slot, which is nice for quick swaps of expandable storage-- the card fully slots securely into the device, stays put, and adds nothing at all to the form factor. The device itself is similar to the "function-factor" of the nano, with a video/nav screen at the top, a thumbwheel for menu nav and volume, a center "select" button, play/stop/forward/back buttons in a ring around that.
I'm not sure about the playlist ability on the stock firmware, but the Rockbox firmware (check the support on that before you buy) has pretty good support for playlists, including build-on-the-fly and uploading properly-formed .pls files (properly-formed, meaning no absolute paths) to the unit.
You can listen to and record FM radio, and it has a passable-quality voice recorder (although no line-in recording like the iRiver).
From the technical and hackability angle, it has a very hard-to-brick firmware (it has a recovery mode that allows the firmware-update partition to be mounted as a USB device, and even has a lower-level recovery option beyond that), and the battery is, AFAIK, user-serviceable.
The biggest downsides I've seen are...
- The sync/charge cable is non-standard, and finding an immediate replacement is difficult and costly. However, the $5 Amazon off-brand cable did the trick quite well. I just had to wait for the package to arrive.
- A screen protector is a must.
- It's a little less durable and "top shelf" than you describe the Nano as being. The paint on the on-off button, for instance, has started to wear, and I've dropped it and chipped a corner.
The Sansas (generally refurb) are a common item on Woot.com. I picked up the 8GB model for about $70 or so.
And contrary to popular belief, CSS hacks aren't really necessary anymore. The few bugs you have to work around can be put in a separate css file and included with an IE conditional comment. No bughacking needed.
Just because they aren't bug-fixes toward standards-compliance doesn't mean they aren't hacks. For instance: double-wrapping explicit-width content columns so you can have margins and padding without over-expanding the size. (For as anti-standard as it is, the IE box model got that one right, IMO.) Having to use "top: 50%; margin-top: [height/2];" instead of a "vertical-align" or vertical "margin: auto" to vertically center a block element. (Okay, you could use table-cell rendering, but that makes no logical sense, either.) That's unintuitive, hacky. Using floats for multi-column layout is hacky in and of itself, especially when you find that you may need to float and clear a legitimately floated object deeper in the hierarchy. (The CSS float model could use some work, too-- it needs "levels" of float clearing, so you have more options than just clearing every previous float on the page.) The fact that the 100% height of the root element isn't, at minimum, 100% of the viewport (and, the root element can't use percentage min-heights) has been cause for no end of hackery, often ending in some JavaScript to get things to go full-height. (It could be seen as a poor implementation decision, as I believe the W3C docs don't get specific in that regard, but it's still a lousy choice.)
Now, I'm not saying that there should be a return to table-based layouts. Those had their own problems and tended to be just as kludgy and finicky as CSS. CSS, however, does have some real flaws that should be acknowledged, and ought to be weeded out when they can.
As it stands, I'll just keep on learnin' the hacks, keep on desiginin' the pages, and hope IE6 withers to the point that implementable forward progress in CSS becomes feasible.
I think you're looking at the extremes, though. I would agree that the infinity-minus-a-day copyright that Disney and the like seem to want is far too much, and the heavy-handed tactics that the RIAA and others use is overkill. Copyright, in its current "stock" form (un-altered by permissive licenses) does suffer from damaging overkill. This is a problem to be solved, but the complete disrespect of copyrights is not the solution. The solution of tying copyright to market utilization is debatable, but to debate tomorrow's evolution of copyright based upon completely separate abuses of today's implementation is irrelevant and antagonistic. If you treat it as a war, you're likely to lose. If you treat it as a problem, there's more chance of solving it.
While you may trot out the "I pay my taxes" line in regards to pirated content not being "free", that's a weak connection. Boycott is always an option. Political activism is always an option. My signature comes from people who, all too often, espouse piracy as some sort of legitimate civil disobedience, when, for most, the true motive lies in acquiring the product through the cheapest means necessary. These activists could have just as much of an effect on sales through boycott or political action, without the doubt as to their motives.
I'll admit that, practically, there may be no way to put piracy back in its box, but to let this lead to nothing more than the argument of "oh well, it's done, deal with it" is lazy, and is an insult to intelligence. Just as a flimsy lock doesn't justify a break-in, the abstract and unenforcable nature of copyright doesn't necessarily justify disregarding it.
That's what I'd say, as well. (Not sure on my letter-designated generation. 1981?) While it may collide with the letter of the law, it ends up being one of those "who cares" issues, where the diligence in having a legit "master copy" puts you on such a sound ethical standing that the only likely outcome of any sort of litigation would be the embarrassment of the person suing.
In one corner, you've got the free-for-all pirates swapping files and chipping away at legitimate business models. In the other corner, you've got the MaFIAA, SecuROM, and Disney's forever-minus-one copyright. Those are the people making the big noise and influencing policy.
Meanwhile, the reasonable content creator wanting reasonable protection gets lumped in with the RIAA et al, and the reasonable content consumer who wants to reasonably use things they've bought, or to reflect upon common artifacts from the culture, they get lumped with the pirates. And ne'er the twain shall meet.
The few glimmers of hope have been from places like Creative Commons, and from things like the myriad of community licenses (GPL, GFDL, countless others) out there. While functionally, community licenses can be seen as just a band-aid to put copyright where it should be, the greater benefit is that it presents copyright as a malleable and functional tool-- not just a brick-wall of a law--puts the tools of sane policy in the hands of the common creator, and gets people thinking about copyright.
I think this position misses one critical question: What is copyright a right to?
Those wanting copyrights dependent upon market availability seem to take the stance that copyright is a right to profit, especially monetary profit on the open market. While this is certainly an arguable point, it's not the be-all end-all.
This argument falters if copyright is framed, not as a right to monetary profit, but as a basic right to control. Although many creators will use the standard avenues of for-profit publishing, with the same aims of wide dissemination and agreed-upon compensation, there may be edge cases, both known and unknown, where the right of control, currently granted by copyright, is more valuable to the creator than the right to profit.
A creator may wish to exercise the right to only be publish through certain outlets, or only through publishers with certain standards, either quality or ideological. The public does not, and should not, have immediate right to override the wishes of the creator, simply because the technological means are readily available. In a capitalist society that values individual means fairly gained by individual achievement, the gains of copy-rights should be upheld.
(Of course, this is not to trample on consumers' first sale rights, fair use rights, or personal use rights such as personal format-shifting. The flip-side of the coin is that when the author releases a copy of a work into the world, that transaction was a legitimate trade of some degree of control for some degree of profit.)
so you are stealing from the original book buyers. That's not a huge deal.
Like hell. You come to my yard sale and try that, you leave missing an arm.*
* This message sponsored by the International Association of Internet Tough Guys. All talk, no Action: ITG.
Maybe I'm wrong, but in the file-share arena (excepting wholesale commercial piracy, for instance) I don't think there has been much, if any, prosecution or effort put toward prosecuting consumers of pirated content. Only people providing content get dinged.
If you're a downloader, even though downloading pirate content is illegal, it's all too easy to say "Well, how was I to know the person on the other end wasn't authorized to distribute that?". However, if you're an uploader, it can be quite much more easily proven that you were knowingly distributing content without the consent of the creator.
A lot of rant, but you lack basis or backing.
Legitimate work goes into both creating and distributing a work, and whether or not you find it up to your own standards of validity, the creators, as well as the publishers, promoters, logistics people, retailers, and all the others are part of getting you that final product. Yes, the author could have simply self-published, then the transaction would merely be between you and the author. However, they felt that they needed the services of the rest of the chain, and agreed to "cut them in".
That decision is between the author and their contractors, not you. While you may be purchasing a copy via a third party, and the author may not be doing the work of directly receiving income, then distributing service expense, the agreements for rights and percentages take the place of costs for services rendered. Basically, the author trades certain rights to payment for services in distribution and marketing. That's a service to the author, not you, and it's not your place to decide whether or not the third-party services are worthy of compensation.
It's like saying that I should be able to get a Coke for less than retail because I don't think Coca-Cola really needs the worldwide marketing effort. That's not my decision. That was Coke's decision, and my decision is whether to buy the product at an agreed-upon price, or not to.
If the author is being screwed by this system, then it's their prerogative to make better deals or re-vamp the system. If the consumer is being screwed by the system, then the author is just as much of an accessory-- they chose their bedfellows, even if the selection was slim.
Actually, there is such a magical device. It's called a "scanner". Granted, you'll want to use one with an automatic sheet-feeder, and you'll have to de-spine the book, but it is workable.
Sometimes, though, they'll have the EULA on the outside of the box, or the store will have EULA's available and that fact will be noted. Then, you're buying it under those terms, which you have seen beforehand.
I think it's an evolutionary result, though. Industrial manufacturing introduced a glut of consumer goods to the world, and made it possible that multiple players could be in the same market trying to sell essentially the same thing, or at least the same thing with normally imperceptible differences. One company who advertises could take a market-share far disproportionate to the comparative advantage they have against a company with a similar product, but no advertising. Increased publicity ability gave the means, and anyone outside the competition really just can't compete.
If that was the case, I'm sure you could have summarized that in about 10 words, sans vitriol.
(What's a "greed ball"?)
Okay, so here's what you do. You keep a padded, heat-resistant safe in an upstairs room of the house. Mount wheels on it, and place it on an inclined track, facing toward a pre-scored section of thinner wall. Rest it against a swing gate or chock held shut by a locking device made of lead. If your house starts on fire, the heat will melt the lead, the gate will open, and the safe will roll down the incline, bursting through the wall and landing safely in the yard, outside the major heat zone.
Of course, you have the problem of your house becoming a flaming safe-launcher as well as being on fire... I'm sure that can all be worked out in the implementation.
Personally, I think it could have used a bit more challenge. The skill tests were adequate in theory, but the levels were rushed and simplistic, and the continuation thresholds really set the bar low. Actually, I think I could have used a little clearer negative feedback when I didn't do the level fast enough. Granted, I've never played the game it's parodying, so perhaps I'm missing a connection there. It could have also used some more overall plot development, especially between "nasty, half-cleaned, half-cooked turkey" to "tofu lump" levels.
All in all, 2/5 stars. Too preachy for an arcade game, but not enough plot for a concept game.
Our 'sermons'? They're fucking asking us why we're vegetarians and now you call it our 'sermons'?
If you don't want to get into the discussion every single time, I'm sure there are certainly terse, simple methods of phrasing you could use to wrap up the matter quickly. The quarter-page foaming-mouth reply leads me to believe that you might-- long shot here, I know--you might tend to sermonize when confronted with a simple question.
I remember reading something pertinent regarding open-source drivers: If your business is your software, open-sourcing it is likely a bad move. If the software is merely a supporter to your core business (as drivers often are-- people are paying for the device, not the driver), then open-sourcing can be beneficial. In the case of Dreamweaver, etc., the software is the business. Their business isn't based upon support contracts, additional services, or on running the software on some piece of dedicated, optimized hardware. If they give the software away, they undercut their reason for being.
For those of you playing along at home...
Not a girl, but I'd be more likely to call a doctor and initiate CPR.
I was speaking merely of the free trial version, not the full purchased product. It would be a far less intrusive option than rootkits or leavebehinds on a trial program. Now, if it's something you've actually bought, there's a longer time you expect to keep it, and phone-homes can interfere with that in a number of ways.
Just curious-- do you know of any examples? It would be interesting to poke and prod and see what they're actually doing.