That depends only on your definition of "complex tasks" and "ideal". You wouldn't want to be writing an OS in BASIC (of any variant) - it would not be ideal. You wouldn't want to be writing a life-support-system in it, it would not be ideal. You would not want to be writing Google's codebase in it, it would not be ideal. There's lot of things that *any* variant of BASIC would not be ideal for. Doesn't mean you *can't* use them or that it's instantly a bad project *because* you used them (hell, you could write a space shuttle that ran on BASIC and, with the right people and checks, it would be as safe as any other - it's just that the people who *do* write those systems would not consider it as "ideal").
VB.NET is fine for the average desktop-wide program, in fact it's damn near ideal. Technically, if you added up all my programming time, I've probably done as much, if not more, BASIC than C in my lifetime. Certainly not very much Java (personal experiments plus the compulsory uni courses in it). The fact is that most of the stuff I churn out daily is *not* in BASIC of any kind. Hell, I've probably written more lines of shell script (bash) and DOS batch file than almost anything else, but there's no way I'd recommend that as the "ideal" language.
The simple fact, for me, is that VB.NET and C# are too new for me. They can't do anything that I can't do in an "old" language. They require heavy runtimes that are so large that most of my programming projects would instantly go up in size by an order of magnitude, would instantly be locked to an operating system (I've never used Mono and don't really intend to), and performance compared to the code I would write without them suffers. VB.NET and C# are *not* ideal for writing cross-platform, embedded, time-dependent or other classes of programs. However, some of the "old" languages *can* fit that criteria absolutely perfectly (C excels in all departments there, for example).
I use and manage any amount of programs that were written in VB.NET and C# - it's my job. But when it comes to *writing* them, I've been put off before I've even started most of the time (I've forced myself through several entire projects with them and just can't find anything that leaps out as a killer feature that I *must* tolerate them for). If MS produced a "VB7" that didn't use all that.NET crap, compiled to native code and even allowed you to plug in foreign compilers (so I could get a cross-platform version) I'd probably be using it now.
The fact is that lots of those people who vowed to never touch anything.NET based actually did just that. Desktop application developers love it, because it still has VB's rapid development, but everyone else tends to steer clear. To be honest, in my job, putting ".NET" on the end of your application name (which is surprisingly common nowadays with large school management programs, e.g. SIMS.NET etc.) is a good way to suddenly lose upgrades and custom. There are reasons for that that extend beyond programming language snobbery.
My degree is in mathematics. I certainly have heard of and used FORTRAN, especially having an older brother who did a maths degree too a few years before me. The problem with FORTRAN (leaving aside my personal prejudices against such things as the horrible pre-F90 DOS compiler / IDE we used to use which had any number of annoying quirks regarding code layout and naming) is mainly that it is not a good language to *teach*. Apart from having lots of inherent mathematical statements (built in complex variables!), it also suffers from heavy use of non-alphabetical characters to achieve its syntax (colons, brackets, etc.). You'll notice that BASIC, on the whole doesn't. It's certainly not a bad second step, though, and as you say quite a good transition to further things but in itself it's composed of so many standards and little foibles that it's not a good one to start with.
It's array manipulation is truly fabulous, though. You can tell it's written for mathematicians.
Though I sort-of agree, VB forms designer isn't really "programming". It *is* fabulous and quick and easy, but it's basically a pretty UI on a set of classes / function prototypes (depending on how far back you go - VB was pretty great just for UI work even for databases as far back as VB 3.0). That's not "the language", that's just a pretty damn well designed UI as a frontend. I have seen similar setups with some decent Java tools, for instance, that basically do the same thing in the same way. VB predates them by up to a decade in some cases but it's not really the "language", it's just a forms designer linked with a prototype of each function that each object generates when clicked etc.
Don't get me wrong, nothing does more for nice, quick visual programming than those VB interfaces but it's not really the language, they just happen to autogenerate a bit of code that uses sufficiently similar object references and is clever enough to link that with a forms designer in both directions. That interface could (patents aside) work wonders if it was tightly integrated into *any* language, as many expensive emulations of the same thing for Eclipse will show you. Though I agree it's fabulous, genuinely useful and very desirable if you ever do any UI work, there's nothing in the compiler specific to that - it's just calling functions from the Windows system files to do the magic from a predefined windowing API but doing it during *debug*/*design* stages too. There's nothing stopping you having something just that good on a PASCAL compiler in DOS, for example.
Though personally, I've found everything since VB v5 a bit of an abomination but as a younger lad I splashed out a whole year's present money on a copy of VB 3.0. It was worth every penny just for the functionality you describe. There's *nothing* stopping someone doing that using X-Windows, or SDL, or framebuffers, or anything else with any other windowing toolkit you care to mention (e.g. an SDL-based development environment that comes with QT libraries that let you design forms while programming them too and then generating code that displays the forms whenever a certain initialisation function is called. It's a development *tool* part of VB, not the actual language.
Just going by your simplest programs, and I know you mentioned this:
Your main function is declared incorrectly (two points - no return value and no parameters). You didn't include stdio.h
Almost all C compilers will thereby reject even that three-line C source program with at least one and maybe 3 errors (maybe 1 or 2 warnings instead). All those warnings/errors will say different things and point out different lines with different parts of them being the problems (smart ones might know the include is missing, other might just call it an undeclared function, insufficient prototype etc.). You've just scared off any teacher and any kid wanting to learn it. However, the BASIC is syntax-perfect and will execute on any conforming BASIC interpreter. You don't even need the line number. THAT'S why BASIC wins when teaching kids (especially a roomful of kids).
It depends who you're aiming at but this is EXACTLY why C isn't a good language to start with. In BASIC you don't *need* unexplained mysterious boilerplate. You can explain every damn character and every keyword of the language in an afternoon to a bunch of 11-year-olds (or younger). Even they will typo when copying that C down (colons instead of semi-colons, etc.) - hell, they'll typo the BASIC to death too, but to a less degree - and if you are expecting them to copy/paste, that's a bit pointless (it's like saying "You can write French!" by copying/pasting French words into a document).
BASIC can be learned by a 7-year-old. BASIC can be *self-taught* by a 7-year-old under their own attention span, from a book, with no adult help, and no previous experience. I know. I did it. C cannot (I work in schools, trust me). You have to have a bright kid, who knows what they want to do, and is dedicated enough to do it and see it through no matter what, and quite an extensive C reference / referee.
C is also an absolute PIG to get a working IDE / compile environment that the kids can take home to carry on with and it's all just "black-boxing" things that you think are too complex in order to make things simple (think about it - start with simple and get complex, or start with complex and have to force it into a simplification? How do you prefer your computer AI, for example? Starts easy and progressively gets cleverer, or is insanely perfect but deliberately makes huge mistakes - like standing still 99.9% of the time at the beginning of the game?). You don't need to black-box the complex stuff, it's only there for those people who NEED to use it anyway (even the semi-colons in C are pretty unnecessary, really). If you're not going to write programs long enough to include files yet, you don't *need* the inclusion commands, for example, and using them means explaining them or teaching "magic". Every kid in that class will be include'ing stdio.h in every program for the rest of their lives and have no idea why because you *won't* have time to explain every one of the little foibles of tiny programs like that. With that C program, suddenly you're saying "Don't worry about this bit" rather than "This is a complete, valid, perfect, program that will work anywhere."
BASIC was designed to be taught to children. Most people who started programming in my generation did so on BASIC as children. A lot of them taught themselves. There's nothing *wrong* with BASIC for kids. Sure, when they're older, teach what you like - you *can* teach a young adult any language you like and they'll pick it up if they have the vaguest interest. But for *kids*, BASIC wins hands-down every time, still after 40 years. Just don't learn ONLY BASIC. That's the mistake people should berate you for, it's like using a crayon-only for the rest of your life instead of learning to write with a biro - sometimes a crayon will do to jot down a note even today but you shouldn't be writing your CV (resume) with it.
Personally, I did BASIC -> Z80 assembler -> (moved into secondary school) FORTRAN -> PASCAL -> x86 assembler -> lots of others
So the *BEGINNER'S* All-purpose Symbolic Instruction Code, and a language created exclusively for educational use are great languages for demonstrating and teaching kids how to program? What a shocker. You "surprised" yourselves how/why? By having ridiculous notions that "any idiot" knows how to teach kids better than the experts who set out in the 60's and 70's to EXPRESSLY do just that ?
You've been suckered by language-purists, people who spend so long arguing about WHICH programming language to write something in that I could have written something in ten languages before they come to any conclusions whatsoever. BASIC is *wonderful* for teaching programming. I know, I've done it, from class-mates back in the 80's to modern-day kids nearly 30 years later. And yet my ENTIRE intake year for university sat through a whole year of Java lectures from a qualified professional and still didn't understand what half the statements they were using actually DID, while I didn't attend a single lecture and passed the course just by emailing in the assignments from home 30 mins before they were due. That's not to make me a genius, I was just taught properly, encouraged to learn, and started with simple tools - I wasn't forced to learn, by rote, a complex tool that requires deep understanding to know what it's actually doing. I started on something I *could* understand and progressed in steps. BASIC didn't corrupt me, it was a stepping stone that I outgrew.
When you teach a child to write, you don't teach a 2-year-old quill-calligraphy, or demand their first piece in iambic pentameter. You give them a crayon. If it hits the paper 3 times out of 10 you congratulate them. Then you progress to more advanced things as the need requires. But guess what? If you think that's the last time you'll ever write anything with a crayon, you're wrong. If you're still submitting your CV (resume) in orange crayon aged 30, you have a problem (the same as someone routinely programming important code in BASIC at the same level of experience). But neither should you go and hunt down a quill and parchment to scribble the note that says you're out of toilet roll.
Some people can't understand that BASIC is *excellent* for teaching. It was *designed* that way, and beats 99% of mainstream languages for that. But if your company is still running exclusively off it in 2010, it's a bit like sending out invoices in crayon. However, even in a modern office, sometimes you just need a tool for a small, simple job and sometimes BASIC works fine there (in the same way that scribbling "pay the caterers" in crayon on a post-it is perfectly acceptable as an aide-memoire). There are schools that, without a bit of BASIC, or shell-script, or DOS batch file, etc. wouldn't be filing their accounts, or importing the new student-intake data each year, I know that. When the job is once-a-year, with changing requirements, with specific needs, with various "mental hacks" that have to be applied anyway (i.e. "we need to drop column X this year if column Y is less than 20 because that old law no longer applies"), and needs to be done quickly it can happen in any language you like.
I have taught BASIC only a year or so ago, to a top-class prep-school student, in a single one-to-one session, in a single afternoon. That was from *zero* programming knowledge (but a keen mind), exclusively on paper and the next day they were writing (working) games and hadn't required a single extra tool, library, download, reference or command-lookup - we ran them through QBASIC to see them in action but they worked perfectly. I have also spent several HOURS trying to clean up a single function written by a top-class MSc CS-student that had only ever been exposed to Java in order to find out WHICH of the several dozen syntax errors, scoping errors, operator-precedence errors, etc. was actually the main cause of their function returning junk. I could have taught them a whole programming language AND done the same job quicker than I could teach them to d
Because, once the Y2K bug was fixed, those systems that were already probably working just fine with 20-30 years of minimal maintenance and one huge spurge of Y2K updates will carry on running, most probably. Or people took it as a sign that maybe it's *not* a good idea to be relying on code that nobody on your staff can understand in order to run your business.
See what happens come 2038. That'll be the interesting bit.
The UK has recycling, for everything from paper to plastic to car batteries.
News reports revealed recently that what mostly happens to that stuff is that we cherry-pick the obviously easily recyclable stuff (e.g. the lead, the simple plastics, the clean paper) and send the rest (95% or more) off to India and China who will happily sign off that they were "recycle" it, only for the stuff to end up on landfill. Same with WEEE (waste electrical and electronic equipment) regulations - you basically pay someone to drop it off at Heathrow where's it's shipped to a 3rd world country who are happy to charge to pollute their own country so long as they get regular money. I used to hire a guy who had a government-authorised WEEE certificate that I had to check every time he visited - so long as we threw in a bunch of copper cables, he'd take anything. He got paid by the people to collect the gear, paid £1 a monitor by a guy at Heathrow and neither would cover his transport of heavy IT gear to Heathrow from a local business - but the copper in the cables meant that he made a living by stripping off the plastic and melting down the copper. The monitors were shipped abroad (by a guy paying £1 per monitor because some government could subsidise his "recycling" business) - all with proper paperwork - and invariably ended up in landfill abroad.
Just saying "it's gone into the recycling bin" doesn't mean it was ever recycled. Or that it could ever be recycled *sensibly* (i.e. does a hot wash that's required to sterilise old food containers actually cost more to occur than recycling would ever save? Does the collection costs for THREE separate bins - usually by three separate trucks and three separate workforces in the UK - outweigh the advantages gained? Does the product have a nature that it *can* be recycled without expending more energy than it would save to recycle?)
Don't fall for the greenie line - most waste still ends up in landfill, but nowadays after incredibly expensive transport to countries that JUST DON'T CARE, and that stuff that doesn't actually probably costs MORE to recycle than the sum total damage it would do to just landfill it. To recycle plastic you usually have to grind it and melt it - already you're into significantly more energy expense than the plastic took to be put into a landfill - how much energy do you need to melt a tonne of plastic?
*Some* recycling works, but it's a TINY proportion and really not even made up for by the damage that just having another bin, or someone transporting it to a recycling centre, costs.
Funnily, that's exactly what happened to me - I wondered what people were talking about when they said it was a dupe. This is the only website I've ever had to block a submitter on, and kdawson the ONLY author I've ever had to block on any website because every submission I read from them annoyed me or was blatantly complete bollocks.
What backdoor? Nobody has found ANYTHING yet. They just have a rumour, duly propogated onwards because of its *potential* security applications, that someone may have once been paid to do such a thing. Doesn't mean it's true, that they succeeded, or that it hasn't been removed since.
It's impossible to prove something *isn't* there, of course, but it would be a cinch to prove it *was*. Nobody has yet stepped forward with anything even approaching a slight vulnerability in their IPSec implementation that isn't well documented and patched already (or even suspected of being planted maliciously). That's the beauty of OS - we can go back and check and see and hold people accountable, and YOU can take a look if you don't believe us, or think we're in league with the FBI. There's absolutely *nothing* to stop you. Now go ask about proprietry software vendors and *their* relationships with the FBI and see how many answers you get.
And I don't even care about BSD - I've only ever used it once, and Linux has a *completely* independent IPSec implementation made by completely separate people. If it's a concern for you, audit the code, or pay someone to do it. Chances are you'll never be *allowed* to audit similar code from, say, Microsoft and certainly not allowed to publish your findings if you *did* find a backdoor in it. In the OS world, though, we publish even potential RUMOURS of a possible hole, so that you can be the judge and not anyone else.
Hell, I've probably spent more on ZX Spectrum emulators than I ever did on ZX Spectrum hardware when it was current - through Gerton Lunter's original "Z80" emulator to modern-day "Spectactulator". The free ones don't cut the mustard and don't have the licensed ROM's for certain add-ons, and I can play all my old games again. There is *nothing* like a quick blast on Chaos at 16x speed (if you can control the cursor okay) in a window while you're doing other stuff. And Batty still kick arse too.
Buying "old" stuff isn't a bad thing. Buying "shit" from any era is. I am more likely to laugh at someone who spends £60 on a game that they'll complete or throw away in an hour than someone who spends £100 on emulators (yes, there are plenty of free ones but the more niche systems tend to be on a pay-for basis - hell, I own a CD-i emulator!) so they can have thousands of hours of gaming. Cost per hour of entertainment - that's my statistic. If that's too low, I won't bother. Currently I consider anything over £1 / hour a waste of money and most of my Steam games get me a LOT more than that (one is currently on it's 256th hour for just under £5... work it our for yourself). Now think how much people piss away on DVD's, Bluray, and cinema, arcade games, fruit machines, pinball, etc. not to mention modern full-price video games (including the costs of having the appropriate equipment for all of those things) and how much they actually get out of it. Some of them are in the "more than £15 / hour" category at times! Besides the fact, if they are actually any good as games, you'll be picking them up next year for half the price (and half the price again the year after) and have a better-bugfixed version of the EXACT SAME game for much cheaper.
Gimme a hundred games from when I was a kid than a single modern-day one, any day. It's called sensible buying, and getting your money's worth. I *do* own Keen on Steam. It cost me £1 or so I think, on a deal. If I play it for an hour, that's my money's worth out of it. Now, how many times would I have to play through the "newest" game, and enjoy every second of doing that, in order to bring it down to the same amount per hour of entertainment?
"(published commercially only by FormGen, Apogee resold it as a retailer; now discontinued)"
Is what the wiki says. And I have the Steam "Keen Complete" pack and it's not included either. That said, I really don't miss it - I only ever played episode 3 or 4 because I found it in a bargain bin when I was much younger so that's the only one that holds any memories for me.
Voyager has taken since 1977 to get where it is and is currently hitting 14km/s. At those speeds, dusts rips you apart let alone anything else (it's 50400 km/h or 31317 mph). It takes YEARS to accelerate to that speed even with a constant acceleration from a nuclear powered engine that has had to work, unattended, since before I was born.
If you *do* somehow manage to fund a mission (impossible) to do the exact same thing as an existing successful mission (extremely dubious given the "why bother?" factor), manage to overcome the several MILLION risks to getting a craft near to that sort of state (even launching to Earth orbit isn't better than an 80% chance on an unmanned rocket), manage to do it in, say, half the time (so only 17 years), and then somehow manage to cross several planets on perfectly projected orbits (that you have to wait for *decades* to align nicely so you *CAN* slingshot), and manage to get anywhere near where Voyager 1 is (incredibly unlikely - probably less than 1% if you consider the mission as a whole) and make some *useful* measurements (unlikely) and return the signal to Earth. Then yeah, you could do it. Or for the same price you could send 50 men to Mars to build a shelter. Or 100 men to the moon.
And you won't see a flyby of another star for several centuries, certainly not KNOW about it until at least 8 years AFTER we do it (information cannot travel faster than the speed of light), and that's assuming we through ALL our efforts into doing something just that expensive at the moment (as a planet). Let's get back to the Moon, first, eh? Something we haven't done in 40 years either but that's achievable in a handful of years and may actually return some decent science and have a practical purpose other than saying "Yeah. We sent a probe there once. We'll find out what colour it is close-up in another decade."
And the database goes back to 1989. Your point is? That a town of population 150,000 has a recorded incident once every hour or so on average? Hardly shocking. And that's assuming that each individual record only names one person per incident.
You could make a movie out of Half-life 2. Or even the original Half-life. It's not difficult at all. You have established characters, half-decent plot, tons of special-FX opportunities, at least an hour and a half of actual movement and things happening and people explaining plot, characters and sub-plots all the way through, and it fits in well with other movies which have (to be honest) not dissimilar plots, scenes, dialogue, etc.
But then you'd have to find someone who knew that game well enough to direct it (I think almost every video-game conversion has been awful because the people behind it want to turn it into a cheap, shit movie rather than treat the game *as* a movie and work from there, just padding it out). Then you'd have to find an audience - with Half-life 2, you could probably introduce anyone to that plot and it would be understandable without even knowing the games - people would love to hate the G-man. Then you'd have to find someone who can gauge that audience and "take a risk" in their eyes on investing many millions (rather than throw it a few mil like you would some Youtube kid who wanted to make a movie - "Yeah, son, it's really good, here, that's all your getting because you're not one of us"). Then you need to find people who can actually act (apparently that's REALLY difficult when it comes to video-game-movies).
It's actually easy: no harder than getting any other thing movie-ised, or any movie game-ised (and look at the disasters there have been there!). You just need to actually take it seriously, not rely on the "nerds will love it" factor and actually make a MOVIE from an established franchise. You already have plot. You'd need some screenwriting. Your artistic direction is set in stone. Your characterisation is done for you. Your casting will be pretty easy, provided you can get the cash to have someone actually good in it. The acting won't be difficult or intense. Your special FX budget will probably be largest but that's not shock in today's Hollywood. And if in doubt, half your CGI is done for you at the games studio already.
Too often, it's seen as "this'll make us 50% profit on a couple of million and who cares if nobody goes back for a second screening or buys the DVD?" rather than actually *making a movie*. How much was pored into the Aliens movies? How much was pored into EVERY Aliens video game ever made ever since? If it's as close as a 10-1 ratio (in adjusted-for-inflation terms), I'll be impressed. And how many of those games actually come *close* to capturing the right atmosphere compared to their rivals (Few... the closest are actually Aliens-rip-off-clones that do a better job even if they can't use the same characters / aliens / lines)? I love the Aliens movies - still yet to find an Aliens game that actually grips my interest or makes me feel like I'm in the movie. It's the same thing, but the other way around. Hell, even most of the Games Workshop crap (Blood Bowl, Warhammer, etc.) would make and sell movies if someone picked it up and fleshed it out to a couple of hours of consistent content, but nobody bothers.
Hollywood is about quick returns - that's why they only ever advertise the first-week-returns and things like that. They expect to make their money back in a week and if they can do that by only investing a handful of millions, they will. It's probably quite good business sense. In the UK, we had a TV series Red Dwarf. It ran for eight series, was wildly popular and it would be FABULOUS to make a comedy movie of it - it's just *designed* for that, and there's been talk with studios for DECADES - there's supposedly even several finished scripts that were carved out with major movie studios. The interest wanes when they hear it needs money, when they can't replace the main character with a blonde-haired, blue-eyed hunk to keep the ladies' interest, can't cut out the more risky jokes because "the US audience might not understand them" (hell, they wanted to change the title when it was trialled in the US because
It has to be said - most UK broadband is ADSL, and there the "asymmetric" is in the name of the protocol. And most people genuinely, honestly, don't need that much upload and if they do, it's a small, rare burst compared to their overall usage (yeah, it would be good to have 8Mb down AND up, but to be honest you're very unlikely to get a constant average measured over 24 hours where upload is anywhere NEAR download). Even back in the days of modems you were lucky to see 14.4 or 28.8 up even on a 56K down (and in fact upload was ALWAYS less because of the technology).
The cable companies are offering upload speeds on a 10:1 ratio with the download - e.g. Virgin media has a 10Mb / 1Mb or a 50Mb / 5Mb and that maps across to the ADSL providers pretty well too. It's not a conspiracy - most people genuinely don't need anywhere near as much upload as download and every byte in either direction counts against their data tariffs (e.g. over BT's ADSL infrastructure), and almost all technology from modems to DSL to 3G is heavily biased to support higher download than upload (most "8Mb" ADSL routers can't actually do anything past 1\Mb for upload, most "24Mb" ADSL2+ routers can't do more than 1.4 Mb up) - it's not just the particular setup, it's the technology and protocols. Look at the tech specs of ADSL2+, which is what we have deployed in the UK - it's 1.4Mb up MAXIMUM.
If you want more upload, it's there - go look at the prices for SDSL, for instance. It's ridiculous, and that *probably* is the price-gouging. But who, at home, needs more than 5Mb up? Or who needs 5Mb up for any purpose where they CAN'T buy themselves a decent symmetric connection? When you word it like that, it pretty much is only the pirates who are left and you could be reasonably sure that if Torrents demand upload as well as download, they wouldn't want more upload either.
There are cases of huge upload, but I can get a decent sized upload on a £5.99 / month contract, or a 5Mb upload on a not-prohbibitive home contract. That's way before you ever get into business services, SDSL, leased lines, etc. I maintain several websites. Yeah, a better upload would be nice but it's really not worth the money except for that one day every five years where I have to restore a remote server from an FTP backup. And even then, it's quicker to just send the host a DVD to slot into the machine. And such rare usage means it *does* become more expensive just because few people actually complain about their upload being too low, so ADSL2+ etc. technologies become the norm and anything higher is "special".
A school I work for has 450 students and dozens of staff, online with everything from iPhones to netbooks to laptops to desktops. They upload photos, I manage the websites from on-site, they share videos with other schools, do video-conferencing, and upload a huge backup of the main school database to a remote server every night. We have two 1Mb uploads on two lines giving 24Mbps each. It's never been seen as "limiting". Hell, when our last ISP cut us off (ironically for "using more than a residential broadband line") we ran on 3G sticks for a fortnight. Upload *is* different - it's rarer, the technology doesn't aim at it, it's smaller bursts than download and it's generally somewhere between 10:1 and 2:1 in terms of down/up ratios. Most people don't need it higher, so it costs you more to MAKE it higher. And a simple package upgrade can get you to 5Mb up in even a bog-standard cable-serviced area.
Costs nothing to write a letter. Costs nothing (99% of the time) to hire a lawyer on no win, no fee (which almost all the people here would have done) basis. Costs nothing for the first hour or so of a lawyer's time. Costs literally a few quid to get a lawyer that would take this on and write a couple of letters for you that would stop it going to court in the first place. And if it *does* go to court, you'll end up with almost all of those fees back if you were innocent (if you're guilty, that's a different matter entirely!).
But sending a letter and informing the court that you contest the allegation costs *NOTHING*. That's why so many people never heard from ACS:Law again, even if they had no legal training whatsoever.
Er... and what's shocking about that? It's called a *default* judgement (hence, the judgement that would be entered unless you changed the circumstances). Literally one line of a piece of paper or turning up at court when notified would immediately change the *default* judgement into "innocent until proven guilty" (if applicable). If someone does actually serve a legal paper against you then you are a true idiot to just ignore it - it's like ignoring a parking fine or a tax bill, it will NOT improve the situation. At the most basic level, it's also the rudest thing you can do - you're basically telling the *COURT* to fuck off, not the person filing and even if that person is an idiot, you've just insulted the court system that decides what happens to you. That's THE single most stupid thing you can ever do. "Contempt of court" is an offence in itself, remember, not that you'd get that far for this particular incident.
Plus, it takes a matter of minutes to write any letter that basically says "I don't understand what I'm accused of", "Fine, I'll see you in court", or "I didn't do it", or even "Contact my lawyer, here's his number". If someone files a legal case against you - RESPOND. You don't need to say "I did it" or "I didn't do it" (as the other people who did respond almost certainly didn't admit either way), you just need to tell the court "I heard. I'll be cooperating with the legal system." Whether the case itself is a heap of shit of not is another matter and really needs a properly worded reply to avoid further insult. That's why at *that* point, even a LAWYER receiving that threat would consult another independent lawyer. Simple things like failing to get the correct form in on time can result in a default judgement against you and, yes, you probably can appeal that in some fashion but it just shows the court that you're going to be troublesome and time-wasting before you even start.
Even without a lawyer's help, a politely worded letter would work wonders in your favour:
Dear Mr Whatever,
I understand from your previous correspondence that you intend to initiate court action against me for the alleged act of XXX. Without admitting or denying these allegations, I am informing you that I will participate fully in any properly-filed case that you bring against me in these matters, however my initial reaction is that they may be indiscriminately targeted at the innocent and guilty alike based on the media coverage surrounding your company and its recent actions in similar cases against innocent people. I am currently reviewing my legal options but I consider any action out-of-court to be ill-advised and without merit. If you wish to proceed with legal action, my legal representative is XXX.
Yours,
Mr Someone
I *guarantee* that ACS:Law got hundreds of those letters and none of those people ever ended up anywhere near a court, or needed to. You didn't even need to file a defence in court to "win" - just turn up and cooperate, a defence is for when the allegations are clear and you've had time to respond, hire representation, gather evidence and it's actually *going* to court. A friend of mine got one of those letters that demanded cash and a signed statement that they wouldn't infringe again on the basis of zero evidence. My wife was legally-trained. They wrote a letter (not a legal one, just a letter that basically said "Nope... if you think I did wrong, take me to court."). They *NEVER* heard from them again. It was all an elaborate bluff but there's always ONE idiot who ignores the letters, misses the court date, gets a default judgement against them and then people like ACS:Law can say "We won a case already, wasn't even contested, the court gave us our costs and the money we demanded from the other side, now we'll go pick on someone else with a case history on our side too!".
If you receive any legal correspondence whatsoever, write back or get your lawyer to. Hell write back and say "I received your letter, I'm consulting my lawyer, deal
Last few years I've worked in at least eight schools, several dozen or more interactive whiteboards / classroom projectors / computer suites in every single one, used 8 hours a day, every day, in every classroom with 30 kids in each class. Every single connector has been VGA over a VGA cable (either in the wall with sockets on the wall and a M-M VGA cable to a laptop, or directly between a computer and VGA monitor). I think maybe two of them had a DVI-VGA connector because the installers didn't know any better but it was still a VGA analog signal going into the device and being displayed. And most places really used the cheapest shit they could afford over 5-10m VGA cables that went through walls and into ceilings and were basically abused on installation.
Not *ONE* single complaint about image quality that can be put down to a VGA cable rather than a DVI. In fact, the only complaints were - single pin missing contact on the cable, "colourising" the output because of the missing RGB signal, projectors out of focus / dull or dead lamps. I had infinitely more complaints about the resolution being TOO high (and thus making it hard to select text on an interactive whiteboard with a finger), and not one single complaint about the setup not being good enough quality, irritating eyes, flickering for some people, etc. Considering that means several THOUSAND students, of every age from 5-18, all of whom have to stare at those displays output for hours each day and concentrate on it, I think *you're* in the minority here. And don't think that if even one student had complained we wouldn't have had to do something about it - the potential liability for eye problems, photosensitivity etc. there is HUGE, and parents would happily sue the school / borough if they even *imagined* there could be a problem (we had parent protests in one school about using wireless networks, and having a mobile phone mast near the school and had to stop using both).
For 99.99% (at least) of people, VGA has absolutely no disadvantage to them. Some people are more fussy or have higher requirements (yeah, if you want to do stupidly high resolution, or run it over a hugely long cable (e.g. for a city-size advertising display) then yes, you need something slightly better) - but for mere mortals, VGA cables and signals have been absolutely fine since 1987. Strange that VGA has survived since the birth of the personal computer without anyone really noticing had terrible that signal is, isn't it? If it was that bad, *everything* would have been DVI a *long* time ago. As it is, one single company has *just* announced that it might stop production of VGA ports (but not the underlying signal technology, which is carried through on DVI pins just the same) in the future.
Yeah, that's why everyone is still waiting and crying out for HL2:Ep3, Duke Nukem Forever, etc. It's got nothing to do with whether the game is single- or multi-player. It's just that single-player games you have to actually put more work in so the player *doesn't* feel alone (or feels *suitably* alone in the game's environment). Whereas any shit that has a multiplayer mode saves you from having to write tons of AI and instead just keep a couple of servers up.
Multiplayer was/is a twist on a game to increase longevity. Now it's *replaced* bothering to make the game's have longevity themselves. I play tons of multiplayer games, but as they age, they die except for the ones that were *always* going to be played by people anyway (e.g. Counterstrike). Single-player games and LAN-playable games and games that you can just connect to random IP addresses TOO last forever.
Stop tacking on "multiplayer" as a feature and instead make a decent game. Apart from a handful of exceptions, almost every Steam game I own is primarily single-player. I own very, very few multiplayer-only games for the same reasons.
Re:Conference rooms
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Goodbye, VGA
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· Score: 3, Insightful
Every school I've ever worked in has VGA equipment as default. PC's, laptop connectors, projectors, monitors, video distribution system and digital signage all have/had VGA connectors. They might have HDMI / DVI *as well* but they all operate on a VGA basis primarily. I can see why - it's simple, it's compatible back to their oldest available machines without having to spend extra money on adapters and convertors (that half the time break or just plain don't work because they bought the wrong pins on their DVI adaptor and expect it to work). The rest of the advantages don't have any bearing - they can get whatever resolution they like going through meters of inexpensive 15-core cable that's been in the walls for years to their projectors over VGA and *not* notice any performance degradation. The only places that I would argue NEED better connectors are those places that are specialist anyway - CAD, Video and huge display signs.
In general use, what advantages does anyone with significant investment in VGA really see from a DVI / HDMI conversion? Hell, I ran a 1024x768 VGA signal over a 75m CAT5e cable with an adaptor (the Cat5e was actually already there, by luck, so wasn't installed with that usage in mind) and that's STILL running a school's main entrance signage on a HUGE TV and nobody cries about the signal quality (the TV also has HDMI, SCART, S-Video, Component, Composite, RF, etc. in and works fine for them all but why bother when the lowest common denominator just works for everyone?).
If something works, that's good enough. Especially if it works on ALL machines you can get (up until now, obviously). If you chose DVI-only then it wouldn't work on older machines without adapters. If you chose HDMI-only, it would work on even less. The transition has taken place so now the other way is beginning to start but it'll be another 3-4 years before schools and large businesses have to go to special efforts (e.g. special order, pick up particular models, or use adaptors) to get VGA inputs/outputs on their devices.
This isn't a shock, like getting rid of PS/2 ports isn't a shock, because there are several alternatives already existing. The problem is that it's an enforced obsolescence of something for not-very-convincing reasons. Give it three years and there'll still be places with VGA convertors everywhere until hardware replacement time is due. VGA isn't a chore to use, or a problem to configure (hell, teachers can manage it - it's just a matter of Fn-Whatever and plugging a cable in). I have *just* been given my first work laptop that had something more than a VGA or S-Video port, and that's because it's really a gaming laptop in order to meet my minimum spec.
Computers will come with VGA. People will buy adaptors for a few years until they buy a non-VGA device on both ends. Then the world will carry on as normal. It wasn't a "disaster" that actually needed to be fixed in the first place - I still have no use for DVI or HDMI devices myself - and thus there are probably millions of people that will have to do something in the future, but they would have to eventually anyway, and it'll be absorbed into their ordinary replacement costs anyway. All it means is that I don't budget quite so much for VGA cables next year and I have to convince my employers that all those perfectly-working interactive whiteboards and projectors really do need, at minimum, a new cable run, a new socket or a new adaptor unless they want me to overhaul the entire place. Big deal, I have to have that conversation about once every six months about *something*.
The sky isn't falling. It wasn't even cracked to start with. We just have this new, brighter, hi-def sky that apparently needs a pair of sunglasses to view properly.
If you ever think that any scientific paper on weather, atmosphere and planetary scales is a proof, you really don't understand science and are probably extremely misled. Without even paying attention to the scientific validity of either link, I fully expect such contradictions to arise hundreds of times a day around the world and not one decent scientist would use the word "proof" to refer to their results with a straight face. The only place you can have a cast-iron "proof" is possibly mathematics and even that's pushing it.
This is why the *good* scientific journals are very careful how they word things, because they can be easily misconstrued by further reporting. "Study finds...", "According to a new study...", "the study underscores the importance of...", "The researchers also found that their model predicted...". You've got to be a bit thick, as a scientist, to say "my science PROVES the Earth is going to get hotter." Any "scientist" who says something like that should be wholly ignored for the rest of their career.
You can assume PERFECT scientific principle application on both sides and still end up with this situation - their model DOES predict one thing, and the other model DOES predict another. The question is not that - it's whether either model is more accurate a simulation of the entire Earth and which is actually closest in the elements that *matter* when it comes to global warming effects alone. It's no good having a physically-perfect simulation of every molecule on the entire Earth if we *know* that the model isn't actually any more accurate than a statistical average of several models that treat it as a perfect sphere in a ideal vacuum. And it's very easy to put TOO much detail into a model and come up with nonsense where a simpler model actually does a better job.
You want the facts about global warming: We don't know. We have no way to know at the moment. There is no span of time to experiment over that you can ever say will be "enough" to predict or not whether the Earth will get hotter next year or cooler. There are 10,000 year cycles, local effects, pollutants, sunlight variations, hell even the amount of farts that cows produce that affect the result wildly. We can *guess* but that's about as good as it gets. Less than half of scientists in relevant areas *guess* that we're causing a problem for ourselves with greenhouse effects, the rest guess the opposite or abstain from the discussion.
What really matters is the here and now - if something that humans do is causing a change in *ANYTHING* natural, we're probably jeopardising some kind of local balance that will have a knock-on effect. Whether that means 5 fish in the river instead of 6, or the whole planet burning up and killing us off, it's extraordinarily unlikely to be a positive thing. We spotted the holes in the ozone and they are starting to fix themselves. We know that we tear down lots of tress and that's affected local climate in some countries. We also know that we fish too much, eliminate habitat, pump unnatural pollutants into the water and all sorts. It's *sensible* to try to reduce all that to an absolute minimum because we *aren't* capable of affecting global climate positively if we're wrong (we can't pump ozone back into the upper atmospheres and have it "fix" things), but we *are* capable of affecting it negatively. So we COULD break it and never be able to FIX it. That's cause in itself to do everything we can to reduce even the possibility of breakage.
I'm not a greenie. I'm about as far as you can get from being a greenie, mainly because most green policies are unresearched knee-jerk nonsense of the highest order. But there are human interactions that have knock-on effects. The questions are: Is it within the bounds of natural repair processes? Are we actually going to be overwhelmed by a longer-term natural process that will make the problem moot? If we stopped doing certain things, just to be on the safe side, does it actually affect us more negatively than if we
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That depends only on your definition of "complex tasks" and "ideal". You wouldn't want to be writing an OS in BASIC (of any variant) - it would not be ideal. You wouldn't want to be writing a life-support-system in it, it would not be ideal. You would not want to be writing Google's codebase in it, it would not be ideal. There's lot of things that *any* variant of BASIC would not be ideal for. Doesn't mean you *can't* use them or that it's instantly a bad project *because* you used them (hell, you could write a space shuttle that ran on BASIC and, with the right people and checks, it would be as safe as any other - it's just that the people who *do* write those systems would not consider it as "ideal").
VB.NET is fine for the average desktop-wide program, in fact it's damn near ideal. Technically, if you added up all my programming time, I've probably done as much, if not more, BASIC than C in my lifetime. Certainly not very much Java (personal experiments plus the compulsory uni courses in it). The fact is that most of the stuff I churn out daily is *not* in BASIC of any kind. Hell, I've probably written more lines of shell script (bash) and DOS batch file than almost anything else, but there's no way I'd recommend that as the "ideal" language.
The simple fact, for me, is that VB.NET and C# are too new for me. They can't do anything that I can't do in an "old" language. They require heavy runtimes that are so large that most of my programming projects would instantly go up in size by an order of magnitude, would instantly be locked to an operating system (I've never used Mono and don't really intend to), and performance compared to the code I would write without them suffers. VB.NET and C# are *not* ideal for writing cross-platform, embedded, time-dependent or other classes of programs. However, some of the "old" languages *can* fit that criteria absolutely perfectly (C excels in all departments there, for example).
I use and manage any amount of programs that were written in VB.NET and C# - it's my job. But when it comes to *writing* them, I've been put off before I've even started most of the time (I've forced myself through several entire projects with them and just can't find anything that leaps out as a killer feature that I *must* tolerate them for). If MS produced a "VB7" that didn't use all that .NET crap, compiled to native code and even allowed you to plug in foreign compilers (so I could get a cross-platform version) I'd probably be using it now.
The fact is that lots of those people who vowed to never touch anything .NET based actually did just that. Desktop application developers love it, because it still has VB's rapid development, but everyone else tends to steer clear. To be honest, in my job, putting ".NET" on the end of your application name (which is surprisingly common nowadays with large school management programs, e.g. SIMS.NET etc.) is a good way to suddenly lose upgrades and custom. There are reasons for that that extend beyond programming language snobbery.
My degree is in mathematics. I certainly have heard of and used FORTRAN, especially having an older brother who did a maths degree too a few years before me. The problem with FORTRAN (leaving aside my personal prejudices against such things as the horrible pre-F90 DOS compiler / IDE we used to use which had any number of annoying quirks regarding code layout and naming) is mainly that it is not a good language to *teach*. Apart from having lots of inherent mathematical statements (built in complex variables!), it also suffers from heavy use of non-alphabetical characters to achieve its syntax (colons, brackets, etc.). You'll notice that BASIC, on the whole doesn't. It's certainly not a bad second step, though, and as you say quite a good transition to further things but in itself it's composed of so many standards and little foibles that it's not a good one to start with.
It's array manipulation is truly fabulous, though. You can tell it's written for mathematicians.
Though I sort-of agree, VB forms designer isn't really "programming". It *is* fabulous and quick and easy, but it's basically a pretty UI on a set of classes / function prototypes (depending on how far back you go - VB was pretty great just for UI work even for databases as far back as VB 3.0). That's not "the language", that's just a pretty damn well designed UI as a frontend. I have seen similar setups with some decent Java tools, for instance, that basically do the same thing in the same way. VB predates them by up to a decade in some cases but it's not really the "language", it's just a forms designer linked with a prototype of each function that each object generates when clicked etc.
Don't get me wrong, nothing does more for nice, quick visual programming than those VB interfaces but it's not really the language, they just happen to autogenerate a bit of code that uses sufficiently similar object references and is clever enough to link that with a forms designer in both directions. That interface could (patents aside) work wonders if it was tightly integrated into *any* language, as many expensive emulations of the same thing for Eclipse will show you. Though I agree it's fabulous, genuinely useful and very desirable if you ever do any UI work, there's nothing in the compiler specific to that - it's just calling functions from the Windows system files to do the magic from a predefined windowing API but doing it during *debug*/*design* stages too. There's nothing stopping you having something just that good on a PASCAL compiler in DOS, for example.
Though personally, I've found everything since VB v5 a bit of an abomination but as a younger lad I splashed out a whole year's present money on a copy of VB 3.0. It was worth every penny just for the functionality you describe. There's *nothing* stopping someone doing that using X-Windows, or SDL, or framebuffers, or anything else with any other windowing toolkit you care to mention (e.g. an SDL-based development environment that comes with QT libraries that let you design forms while programming them too and then generating code that displays the forms whenever a certain initialisation function is called. It's a development *tool* part of VB, not the actual language.
Just going by your simplest programs, and I know you mentioned this:
Your main function is declared incorrectly (two points - no return value and no parameters).
You didn't include stdio.h
Almost all C compilers will thereby reject even that three-line C source program with at least one and maybe 3 errors (maybe 1 or 2 warnings instead). All those warnings/errors will say different things and point out different lines with different parts of them being the problems (smart ones might know the include is missing, other might just call it an undeclared function, insufficient prototype etc.). You've just scared off any teacher and any kid wanting to learn it. However, the BASIC is syntax-perfect and will execute on any conforming BASIC interpreter. You don't even need the line number. THAT'S why BASIC wins when teaching kids (especially a roomful of kids).
It depends who you're aiming at but this is EXACTLY why C isn't a good language to start with. In BASIC you don't *need* unexplained mysterious boilerplate. You can explain every damn character and every keyword of the language in an afternoon to a bunch of 11-year-olds (or younger). Even they will typo when copying that C down (colons instead of semi-colons, etc.) - hell, they'll typo the BASIC to death too, but to a less degree - and if you are expecting them to copy/paste, that's a bit pointless (it's like saying "You can write French!" by copying/pasting French words into a document).
BASIC can be learned by a 7-year-old. BASIC can be *self-taught* by a 7-year-old under their own attention span, from a book, with no adult help, and no previous experience. I know. I did it. C cannot (I work in schools, trust me). You have to have a bright kid, who knows what they want to do, and is dedicated enough to do it and see it through no matter what, and quite an extensive C reference / referee.
C is also an absolute PIG to get a working IDE / compile environment that the kids can take home to carry on with and it's all just "black-boxing" things that you think are too complex in order to make things simple (think about it - start with simple and get complex, or start with complex and have to force it into a simplification? How do you prefer your computer AI, for example? Starts easy and progressively gets cleverer, or is insanely perfect but deliberately makes huge mistakes - like standing still 99.9% of the time at the beginning of the game?). You don't need to black-box the complex stuff, it's only there for those people who NEED to use it anyway (even the semi-colons in C are pretty unnecessary, really). If you're not going to write programs long enough to include files yet, you don't *need* the inclusion commands, for example, and using them means explaining them or teaching "magic". Every kid in that class will be include'ing stdio.h in every program for the rest of their lives and have no idea why because you *won't* have time to explain every one of the little foibles of tiny programs like that. With that C program, suddenly you're saying "Don't worry about this bit" rather than "This is a complete, valid, perfect, program that will work anywhere."
BASIC was designed to be taught to children. Most people who started programming in my generation did so on BASIC as children. A lot of them taught themselves. There's nothing *wrong* with BASIC for kids. Sure, when they're older, teach what you like - you *can* teach a young adult any language you like and they'll pick it up if they have the vaguest interest. But for *kids*, BASIC wins hands-down every time, still after 40 years. Just don't learn ONLY BASIC. That's the mistake people should berate you for, it's like using a crayon-only for the rest of your life instead of learning to write with a biro - sometimes a crayon will do to jot down a note even today but you shouldn't be writing your CV (resume) with it.
Personally, I did BASIC -> Z80 assembler -> (moved into secondary school) FORTRAN -> PASCAL -> x86 assembler -> lots of others
So the *BEGINNER'S* All-purpose Symbolic Instruction Code, and a language created exclusively for educational use are great languages for demonstrating and teaching kids how to program? What a shocker. You "surprised" yourselves how/why? By having ridiculous notions that "any idiot" knows how to teach kids better than the experts who set out in the 60's and 70's to EXPRESSLY do just that ?
You've been suckered by language-purists, people who spend so long arguing about WHICH programming language to write something in that I could have written something in ten languages before they come to any conclusions whatsoever. BASIC is *wonderful* for teaching programming. I know, I've done it, from class-mates back in the 80's to modern-day kids nearly 30 years later. And yet my ENTIRE intake year for university sat through a whole year of Java lectures from a qualified professional and still didn't understand what half the statements they were using actually DID, while I didn't attend a single lecture and passed the course just by emailing in the assignments from home 30 mins before they were due. That's not to make me a genius, I was just taught properly, encouraged to learn, and started with simple tools - I wasn't forced to learn, by rote, a complex tool that requires deep understanding to know what it's actually doing. I started on something I *could* understand and progressed in steps. BASIC didn't corrupt me, it was a stepping stone that I outgrew.
When you teach a child to write, you don't teach a 2-year-old quill-calligraphy, or demand their first piece in iambic pentameter. You give them a crayon. If it hits the paper 3 times out of 10 you congratulate them. Then you progress to more advanced things as the need requires. But guess what? If you think that's the last time you'll ever write anything with a crayon, you're wrong. If you're still submitting your CV (resume) in orange crayon aged 30, you have a problem (the same as someone routinely programming important code in BASIC at the same level of experience). But neither should you go and hunt down a quill and parchment to scribble the note that says you're out of toilet roll.
Some people can't understand that BASIC is *excellent* for teaching. It was *designed* that way, and beats 99% of mainstream languages for that. But if your company is still running exclusively off it in 2010, it's a bit like sending out invoices in crayon. However, even in a modern office, sometimes you just need a tool for a small, simple job and sometimes BASIC works fine there (in the same way that scribbling "pay the caterers" in crayon on a post-it is perfectly acceptable as an aide-memoire). There are schools that, without a bit of BASIC, or shell-script, or DOS batch file, etc. wouldn't be filing their accounts, or importing the new student-intake data each year, I know that. When the job is once-a-year, with changing requirements, with specific needs, with various "mental hacks" that have to be applied anyway (i.e. "we need to drop column X this year if column Y is less than 20 because that old law no longer applies"), and needs to be done quickly it can happen in any language you like.
I have taught BASIC only a year or so ago, to a top-class prep-school student, in a single one-to-one session, in a single afternoon. That was from *zero* programming knowledge (but a keen mind), exclusively on paper and the next day they were writing (working) games and hadn't required a single extra tool, library, download, reference or command-lookup - we ran them through QBASIC to see them in action but they worked perfectly. I have also spent several HOURS trying to clean up a single function written by a top-class MSc CS-student that had only ever been exposed to Java in order to find out WHICH of the several dozen syntax errors, scoping errors, operator-precedence errors, etc. was actually the main cause of their function returning junk. I could have taught them a whole programming language AND done the same job quicker than I could teach them to d
It's Java. That's where my interest ends, especially after Google's own fight with Oracle.
Now if you do integrate a couple of decent C profiling tools, I'd be interested.
Because, once the Y2K bug was fixed, those systems that were already probably working just fine with 20-30 years of minimal maintenance and one huge spurge of Y2K updates will carry on running, most probably. Or people took it as a sign that maybe it's *not* a good idea to be relying on code that nobody on your staff can understand in order to run your business.
See what happens come 2038. That'll be the interesting bit.
Simple. The Creator obviously didn't NULL-terminate. Hence his strings have no black hole at the end.
The UK has recycling, for everything from paper to plastic to car batteries.
News reports revealed recently that what mostly happens to that stuff is that we cherry-pick the obviously easily recyclable stuff (e.g. the lead, the simple plastics, the clean paper) and send the rest (95% or more) off to India and China who will happily sign off that they were "recycle" it, only for the stuff to end up on landfill. Same with WEEE (waste electrical and electronic equipment) regulations - you basically pay someone to drop it off at Heathrow where's it's shipped to a 3rd world country who are happy to charge to pollute their own country so long as they get regular money. I used to hire a guy who had a government-authorised WEEE certificate that I had to check every time he visited - so long as we threw in a bunch of copper cables, he'd take anything. He got paid by the people to collect the gear, paid £1 a monitor by a guy at Heathrow and neither would cover his transport of heavy IT gear to Heathrow from a local business - but the copper in the cables meant that he made a living by stripping off the plastic and melting down the copper. The monitors were shipped abroad (by a guy paying £1 per monitor because some government could subsidise his "recycling" business) - all with proper paperwork - and invariably ended up in landfill abroad.
Just saying "it's gone into the recycling bin" doesn't mean it was ever recycled. Or that it could ever be recycled *sensibly* (i.e. does a hot wash that's required to sterilise old food containers actually cost more to occur than recycling would ever save? Does the collection costs for THREE separate bins - usually by three separate trucks and three separate workforces in the UK - outweigh the advantages gained? Does the product have a nature that it *can* be recycled without expending more energy than it would save to recycle?)
Don't fall for the greenie line - most waste still ends up in landfill, but nowadays after incredibly expensive transport to countries that JUST DON'T CARE, and that stuff that doesn't actually probably costs MORE to recycle than the sum total damage it would do to just landfill it. To recycle plastic you usually have to grind it and melt it - already you're into significantly more energy expense than the plastic took to be put into a landfill - how much energy do you need to melt a tonne of plastic?
*Some* recycling works, but it's a TINY proportion and really not even made up for by the damage that just having another bin, or someone transporting it to a recycling centre, costs.
Funnily, that's exactly what happened to me - I wondered what people were talking about when they said it was a dupe. This is the only website I've ever had to block a submitter on, and kdawson the ONLY author I've ever had to block on any website because every submission I read from them annoyed me or was blatantly complete bollocks.
What backdoor? Nobody has found ANYTHING yet. They just have a rumour, duly propogated onwards because of its *potential* security applications, that someone may have once been paid to do such a thing. Doesn't mean it's true, that they succeeded, or that it hasn't been removed since.
It's impossible to prove something *isn't* there, of course, but it would be a cinch to prove it *was*. Nobody has yet stepped forward with anything even approaching a slight vulnerability in their IPSec implementation that isn't well documented and patched already (or even suspected of being planted maliciously). That's the beauty of OS - we can go back and check and see and hold people accountable, and YOU can take a look if you don't believe us, or think we're in league with the FBI. There's absolutely *nothing* to stop you. Now go ask about proprietry software vendors and *their* relationships with the FBI and see how many answers you get.
And I don't even care about BSD - I've only ever used it once, and Linux has a *completely* independent IPSec implementation made by completely separate people. If it's a concern for you, audit the code, or pay someone to do it. Chances are you'll never be *allowed* to audit similar code from, say, Microsoft and certainly not allowed to publish your findings if you *did* find a backdoor in it. In the OS world, though, we publish even potential RUMOURS of a possible hole, so that you can be the judge and not anyone else.
Hell, I've probably spent more on ZX Spectrum emulators than I ever did on ZX Spectrum hardware when it was current - through Gerton Lunter's original "Z80" emulator to modern-day "Spectactulator". The free ones don't cut the mustard and don't have the licensed ROM's for certain add-ons, and I can play all my old games again. There is *nothing* like a quick blast on Chaos at 16x speed (if you can control the cursor okay) in a window while you're doing other stuff. And Batty still kick arse too.
Buying "old" stuff isn't a bad thing. Buying "shit" from any era is. I am more likely to laugh at someone who spends £60 on a game that they'll complete or throw away in an hour than someone who spends £100 on emulators (yes, there are plenty of free ones but the more niche systems tend to be on a pay-for basis - hell, I own a CD-i emulator!) so they can have thousands of hours of gaming. Cost per hour of entertainment - that's my statistic. If that's too low, I won't bother. Currently I consider anything over £1 / hour a waste of money and most of my Steam games get me a LOT more than that (one is currently on it's 256th hour for just under £5... work it our for yourself). Now think how much people piss away on DVD's, Bluray, and cinema, arcade games, fruit machines, pinball, etc. not to mention modern full-price video games (including the costs of having the appropriate equipment for all of those things) and how much they actually get out of it. Some of them are in the "more than £15 / hour" category at times! Besides the fact, if they are actually any good as games, you'll be picking them up next year for half the price (and half the price again the year after) and have a better-bugfixed version of the EXACT SAME game for much cheaper.
Gimme a hundred games from when I was a kid than a single modern-day one, any day. It's called sensible buying, and getting your money's worth. I *do* own Keen on Steam. It cost me £1 or so I think, on a deal. If I play it for an hour, that's my money's worth out of it. Now, how many times would I have to play through the "newest" game, and enjoy every second of doing that, in order to bring it down to the same amount per hour of entertainment?
"(published commercially only by FormGen, Apogee resold it as a retailer; now discontinued)"
Is what the wiki says. And I have the Steam "Keen Complete" pack and it's not included either. That said, I really don't miss it - I only ever played episode 3 or 4 because I found it in a bargain bin when I was much younger so that's the only one that holds any memories for me.
Voyager costs billions.
Voyager has taken since 1977 to get where it is and is currently hitting 14km/s. At those speeds, dusts rips you apart let alone anything else (it's 50400 km/h or 31317 mph). It takes YEARS to accelerate to that speed even with a constant acceleration from a nuclear powered engine that has had to work, unattended, since before I was born.
If you *do* somehow manage to fund a mission (impossible) to do the exact same thing as an existing successful mission (extremely dubious given the "why bother?" factor), manage to overcome the several MILLION risks to getting a craft near to that sort of state (even launching to Earth orbit isn't better than an 80% chance on an unmanned rocket), manage to do it in, say, half the time (so only 17 years), and then somehow manage to cross several planets on perfectly projected orbits (that you have to wait for *decades* to align nicely so you *CAN* slingshot), and manage to get anywhere near where Voyager 1 is (incredibly unlikely - probably less than 1% if you consider the mission as a whole) and make some *useful* measurements (unlikely) and return the signal to Earth. Then yeah, you could do it. Or for the same price you could send 50 men to Mars to build a shelter. Or 100 men to the moon.
And you won't see a flyby of another star for several centuries, certainly not KNOW about it until at least 8 years AFTER we do it (information cannot travel faster than the speed of light), and that's assuming we through ALL our efforts into doing something just that expensive at the moment (as a planet). Let's get back to the Moon, first, eh? Something we haven't done in 40 years either but that's achievable in a handful of years and may actually return some decent science and have a practical purpose other than saying "Yeah. We sent a probe there once. We'll find out what colour it is close-up in another decade."
And the database goes back to 1989. Your point is? That a town of population 150,000 has a recorded incident once every hour or so on average? Hardly shocking. And that's assuming that each individual record only names one person per incident.
Nobody said "unique names". It could be the same person listed 200,000 times, or anything in between.
You could make a movie out of Half-life 2. Or even the original Half-life. It's not difficult at all. You have established characters, half-decent plot, tons of special-FX opportunities, at least an hour and a half of actual movement and things happening and people explaining plot, characters and sub-plots all the way through, and it fits in well with other movies which have (to be honest) not dissimilar plots, scenes, dialogue, etc.
But then you'd have to find someone who knew that game well enough to direct it (I think almost every video-game conversion has been awful because the people behind it want to turn it into a cheap, shit movie rather than treat the game *as* a movie and work from there, just padding it out). Then you'd have to find an audience - with Half-life 2, you could probably introduce anyone to that plot and it would be understandable without even knowing the games - people would love to hate the G-man. Then you'd have to find someone who can gauge that audience and "take a risk" in their eyes on investing many millions (rather than throw it a few mil like you would some Youtube kid who wanted to make a movie - "Yeah, son, it's really good, here, that's all your getting because you're not one of us"). Then you need to find people who can actually act (apparently that's REALLY difficult when it comes to video-game-movies).
It's actually easy: no harder than getting any other thing movie-ised, or any movie game-ised (and look at the disasters there have been there!). You just need to actually take it seriously, not rely on the "nerds will love it" factor and actually make a MOVIE from an established franchise. You already have plot. You'd need some screenwriting. Your artistic direction is set in stone. Your characterisation is done for you. Your casting will be pretty easy, provided you can get the cash to have someone actually good in it. The acting won't be difficult or intense. Your special FX budget will probably be largest but that's not shock in today's Hollywood. And if in doubt, half your CGI is done for you at the games studio already.
Too often, it's seen as "this'll make us 50% profit on a couple of million and who cares if nobody goes back for a second screening or buys the DVD?" rather than actually *making a movie*. How much was pored into the Aliens movies? How much was pored into EVERY Aliens video game ever made ever since? If it's as close as a 10-1 ratio (in adjusted-for-inflation terms), I'll be impressed. And how many of those games actually come *close* to capturing the right atmosphere compared to their rivals (Few... the closest are actually Aliens-rip-off-clones that do a better job even if they can't use the same characters / aliens / lines)? I love the Aliens movies - still yet to find an Aliens game that actually grips my interest or makes me feel like I'm in the movie. It's the same thing, but the other way around. Hell, even most of the Games Workshop crap (Blood Bowl, Warhammer, etc.) would make and sell movies if someone picked it up and fleshed it out to a couple of hours of consistent content, but nobody bothers.
Hollywood is about quick returns - that's why they only ever advertise the first-week-returns and things like that. They expect to make their money back in a week and if they can do that by only investing a handful of millions, they will. It's probably quite good business sense. In the UK, we had a TV series Red Dwarf. It ran for eight series, was wildly popular and it would be FABULOUS to make a comedy movie of it - it's just *designed* for that, and there's been talk with studios for DECADES - there's supposedly even several finished scripts that were carved out with major movie studios. The interest wanes when they hear it needs money, when they can't replace the main character with a blonde-haired, blue-eyed hunk to keep the ladies' interest, can't cut out the more risky jokes because "the US audience might not understand them" (hell, they wanted to change the title when it was trialled in the US because
It has to be said - most UK broadband is ADSL, and there the "asymmetric" is in the name of the protocol. And most people genuinely, honestly, don't need that much upload and if they do, it's a small, rare burst compared to their overall usage (yeah, it would be good to have 8Mb down AND up, but to be honest you're very unlikely to get a constant average measured over 24 hours where upload is anywhere NEAR download). Even back in the days of modems you were lucky to see 14.4 or 28.8 up even on a 56K down (and in fact upload was ALWAYS less because of the technology).
The cable companies are offering upload speeds on a 10:1 ratio with the download - e.g. Virgin media has a 10Mb / 1Mb or a 50Mb / 5Mb and that maps across to the ADSL providers pretty well too. It's not a conspiracy - most people genuinely don't need anywhere near as much upload as download and every byte in either direction counts against their data tariffs (e.g. over BT's ADSL infrastructure), and almost all technology from modems to DSL to 3G is heavily biased to support higher download than upload (most "8Mb" ADSL routers can't actually do anything past 1\Mb for upload, most "24Mb" ADSL2+ routers can't do more than 1.4 Mb up) - it's not just the particular setup, it's the technology and protocols. Look at the tech specs of ADSL2+, which is what we have deployed in the UK - it's 1.4Mb up MAXIMUM.
If you want more upload, it's there - go look at the prices for SDSL, for instance. It's ridiculous, and that *probably* is the price-gouging. But who, at home, needs more than 5Mb up? Or who needs 5Mb up for any purpose where they CAN'T buy themselves a decent symmetric connection? When you word it like that, it pretty much is only the pirates who are left and you could be reasonably sure that if Torrents demand upload as well as download, they wouldn't want more upload either.
There are cases of huge upload, but I can get a decent sized upload on a £5.99 / month contract, or a 5Mb upload on a not-prohbibitive home contract. That's way before you ever get into business services, SDSL, leased lines, etc. I maintain several websites. Yeah, a better upload would be nice but it's really not worth the money except for that one day every five years where I have to restore a remote server from an FTP backup. And even then, it's quicker to just send the host a DVD to slot into the machine. And such rare usage means it *does* become more expensive just because few people actually complain about their upload being too low, so ADSL2+ etc. technologies become the norm and anything higher is "special".
A school I work for has 450 students and dozens of staff, online with everything from iPhones to netbooks to laptops to desktops. They upload photos, I manage the websites from on-site, they share videos with other schools, do video-conferencing, and upload a huge backup of the main school database to a remote server every night. We have two 1Mb uploads on two lines giving 24Mbps each. It's never been seen as "limiting". Hell, when our last ISP cut us off (ironically for "using more than a residential broadband line") we ran on 3G sticks for a fortnight. Upload *is* different - it's rarer, the technology doesn't aim at it, it's smaller bursts than download and it's generally somewhere between 10:1 and 2:1 in terms of down/up ratios. Most people don't need it higher, so it costs you more to MAKE it higher. And a simple package upgrade can get you to 5Mb up in even a bog-standard cable-serviced area.
Red Dwarf anyone? A programmable virus? We need never peel potatoes again!
Costs nothing to write a letter. Costs nothing (99% of the time) to hire a lawyer on no win, no fee (which almost all the people here would have done) basis. Costs nothing for the first hour or so of a lawyer's time. Costs literally a few quid to get a lawyer that would take this on and write a couple of letters for you that would stop it going to court in the first place. And if it *does* go to court, you'll end up with almost all of those fees back if you were innocent (if you're guilty, that's a different matter entirely!).
But sending a letter and informing the court that you contest the allegation costs *NOTHING*. That's why so many people never heard from ACS:Law again, even if they had no legal training whatsoever.
Er... and what's shocking about that? It's called a *default* judgement (hence, the judgement that would be entered unless you changed the circumstances). Literally one line of a piece of paper or turning up at court when notified would immediately change the *default* judgement into "innocent until proven guilty" (if applicable). If someone does actually serve a legal paper against you then you are a true idiot to just ignore it - it's like ignoring a parking fine or a tax bill, it will NOT improve the situation. At the most basic level, it's also the rudest thing you can do - you're basically telling the *COURT* to fuck off, not the person filing and even if that person is an idiot, you've just insulted the court system that decides what happens to you. That's THE single most stupid thing you can ever do. "Contempt of court" is an offence in itself, remember, not that you'd get that far for this particular incident.
Plus, it takes a matter of minutes to write any letter that basically says "I don't understand what I'm accused of", "Fine, I'll see you in court", or "I didn't do it", or even "Contact my lawyer, here's his number". If someone files a legal case against you - RESPOND. You don't need to say "I did it" or "I didn't do it" (as the other people who did respond almost certainly didn't admit either way), you just need to tell the court "I heard. I'll be cooperating with the legal system." Whether the case itself is a heap of shit of not is another matter and really needs a properly worded reply to avoid further insult. That's why at *that* point, even a LAWYER receiving that threat would consult another independent lawyer. Simple things like failing to get the correct form in on time can result in a default judgement against you and, yes, you probably can appeal that in some fashion but it just shows the court that you're going to be troublesome and time-wasting before you even start.
Even without a lawyer's help, a politely worded letter would work wonders in your favour:
Dear Mr Whatever,
I understand from your previous correspondence that you intend to initiate court action against me for the alleged act of XXX. Without admitting or denying these allegations, I am informing you that I will participate fully in any properly-filed case that you bring against me in these matters, however my initial reaction is that they may be indiscriminately targeted at the innocent and guilty alike based on the media coverage surrounding your company and its recent actions in similar cases against innocent people. I am currently reviewing my legal options but I consider any action out-of-court to be ill-advised and without merit. If you wish to proceed with legal action, my legal representative is XXX.
Yours,
Mr Someone
I *guarantee* that ACS:Law got hundreds of those letters and none of those people ever ended up anywhere near a court, or needed to. You didn't even need to file a defence in court to "win" - just turn up and cooperate, a defence is for when the allegations are clear and you've had time to respond, hire representation, gather evidence and it's actually *going* to court. A friend of mine got one of those letters that demanded cash and a signed statement that they wouldn't infringe again on the basis of zero evidence. My wife was legally-trained. They wrote a letter (not a legal one, just a letter that basically said "Nope... if you think I did wrong, take me to court."). They *NEVER* heard from them again. It was all an elaborate bluff but there's always ONE idiot who ignores the letters, misses the court date, gets a default judgement against them and then people like ACS:Law can say "We won a case already, wasn't even contested, the court gave us our costs and the money we demanded from the other side, now we'll go pick on someone else with a case history on our side too!".
If you receive any legal correspondence whatsoever, write back or get your lawyer to. Hell write back and say "I received your letter, I'm consulting my lawyer, deal
Last few years I've worked in at least eight schools, several dozen or more interactive whiteboards / classroom projectors / computer suites in every single one, used 8 hours a day, every day, in every classroom with 30 kids in each class. Every single connector has been VGA over a VGA cable (either in the wall with sockets on the wall and a M-M VGA cable to a laptop, or directly between a computer and VGA monitor). I think maybe two of them had a DVI-VGA connector because the installers didn't know any better but it was still a VGA analog signal going into the device and being displayed. And most places really used the cheapest shit they could afford over 5-10m VGA cables that went through walls and into ceilings and were basically abused on installation.
Not *ONE* single complaint about image quality that can be put down to a VGA cable rather than a DVI. In fact, the only complaints were - single pin missing contact on the cable, "colourising" the output because of the missing RGB signal, projectors out of focus / dull or dead lamps. I had infinitely more complaints about the resolution being TOO high (and thus making it hard to select text on an interactive whiteboard with a finger), and not one single complaint about the setup not being good enough quality, irritating eyes, flickering for some people, etc. Considering that means several THOUSAND students, of every age from 5-18, all of whom have to stare at those displays output for hours each day and concentrate on it, I think *you're* in the minority here. And don't think that if even one student had complained we wouldn't have had to do something about it - the potential liability for eye problems, photosensitivity etc. there is HUGE, and parents would happily sue the school / borough if they even *imagined* there could be a problem (we had parent protests in one school about using wireless networks, and having a mobile phone mast near the school and had to stop using both).
For 99.99% (at least) of people, VGA has absolutely no disadvantage to them. Some people are more fussy or have higher requirements (yeah, if you want to do stupidly high resolution, or run it over a hugely long cable (e.g. for a city-size advertising display) then yes, you need something slightly better) - but for mere mortals, VGA cables and signals have been absolutely fine since 1987. Strange that VGA has survived since the birth of the personal computer without anyone really noticing had terrible that signal is, isn't it? If it was that bad, *everything* would have been DVI a *long* time ago. As it is, one single company has *just* announced that it might stop production of VGA ports (but not the underlying signal technology, which is carried through on DVI pins just the same) in the future.
Yeah, that's why everyone is still waiting and crying out for HL2:Ep3, Duke Nukem Forever, etc. It's got nothing to do with whether the game is single- or multi-player. It's just that single-player games you have to actually put more work in so the player *doesn't* feel alone (or feels *suitably* alone in the game's environment). Whereas any shit that has a multiplayer mode saves you from having to write tons of AI and instead just keep a couple of servers up.
Multiplayer was/is a twist on a game to increase longevity. Now it's *replaced* bothering to make the game's have longevity themselves. I play tons of multiplayer games, but as they age, they die except for the ones that were *always* going to be played by people anyway (e.g. Counterstrike). Single-player games and LAN-playable games and games that you can just connect to random IP addresses TOO last forever.
Stop tacking on "multiplayer" as a feature and instead make a decent game. Apart from a handful of exceptions, almost every Steam game I own is primarily single-player. I own very, very few multiplayer-only games for the same reasons.
Every school I've ever worked in has VGA equipment as default. PC's, laptop connectors, projectors, monitors, video distribution system and digital signage all have/had VGA connectors. They might have HDMI / DVI *as well* but they all operate on a VGA basis primarily. I can see why - it's simple, it's compatible back to their oldest available machines without having to spend extra money on adapters and convertors (that half the time break or just plain don't work because they bought the wrong pins on their DVI adaptor and expect it to work). The rest of the advantages don't have any bearing - they can get whatever resolution they like going through meters of inexpensive 15-core cable that's been in the walls for years to their projectors over VGA and *not* notice any performance degradation. The only places that I would argue NEED better connectors are those places that are specialist anyway - CAD, Video and huge display signs.
In general use, what advantages does anyone with significant investment in VGA really see from a DVI / HDMI conversion? Hell, I ran a 1024x768 VGA signal over a 75m CAT5e cable with an adaptor (the Cat5e was actually already there, by luck, so wasn't installed with that usage in mind) and that's STILL running a school's main entrance signage on a HUGE TV and nobody cries about the signal quality (the TV also has HDMI, SCART, S-Video, Component, Composite, RF, etc. in and works fine for them all but why bother when the lowest common denominator just works for everyone?).
If something works, that's good enough. Especially if it works on ALL machines you can get (up until now, obviously). If you chose DVI-only then it wouldn't work on older machines without adapters. If you chose HDMI-only, it would work on even less. The transition has taken place so now the other way is beginning to start but it'll be another 3-4 years before schools and large businesses have to go to special efforts (e.g. special order, pick up particular models, or use adaptors) to get VGA inputs/outputs on their devices.
This isn't a shock, like getting rid of PS/2 ports isn't a shock, because there are several alternatives already existing. The problem is that it's an enforced obsolescence of something for not-very-convincing reasons. Give it three years and there'll still be places with VGA convertors everywhere until hardware replacement time is due. VGA isn't a chore to use, or a problem to configure (hell, teachers can manage it - it's just a matter of Fn-Whatever and plugging a cable in). I have *just* been given my first work laptop that had something more than a VGA or S-Video port, and that's because it's really a gaming laptop in order to meet my minimum spec.
Computers will come with VGA. People will buy adaptors for a few years until they buy a non-VGA device on both ends. Then the world will carry on as normal. It wasn't a "disaster" that actually needed to be fixed in the first place - I still have no use for DVI or HDMI devices myself - and thus there are probably millions of people that will have to do something in the future, but they would have to eventually anyway, and it'll be absorbed into their ordinary replacement costs anyway. All it means is that I don't budget quite so much for VGA cables next year and I have to convince my employers that all those perfectly-working interactive whiteboards and projectors really do need, at minimum, a new cable run, a new socket or a new adaptor unless they want me to overhaul the entire place. Big deal, I have to have that conversation about once every six months about *something*.
The sky isn't falling. It wasn't even cracked to start with. We just have this new, brighter, hi-def sky that apparently needs a pair of sunglasses to view properly.
If you ever think that any scientific paper on weather, atmosphere and planetary scales is a proof, you really don't understand science and are probably extremely misled. Without even paying attention to the scientific validity of either link, I fully expect such contradictions to arise hundreds of times a day around the world and not one decent scientist would use the word "proof" to refer to their results with a straight face. The only place you can have a cast-iron "proof" is possibly mathematics and even that's pushing it.
This is why the *good* scientific journals are very careful how they word things, because they can be easily misconstrued by further reporting. "Study finds...", "According to a new study...", "the study underscores the importance of...", "The researchers also found that their model predicted...". You've got to be a bit thick, as a scientist, to say "my science PROVES the Earth is going to get hotter." Any "scientist" who says something like that should be wholly ignored for the rest of their career.
You can assume PERFECT scientific principle application on both sides and still end up with this situation - their model DOES predict one thing, and the other model DOES predict another. The question is not that - it's whether either model is more accurate a simulation of the entire Earth and which is actually closest in the elements that *matter* when it comes to global warming effects alone. It's no good having a physically-perfect simulation of every molecule on the entire Earth if we *know* that the model isn't actually any more accurate than a statistical average of several models that treat it as a perfect sphere in a ideal vacuum. And it's very easy to put TOO much detail into a model and come up with nonsense where a simpler model actually does a better job.
You want the facts about global warming: We don't know. We have no way to know at the moment. There is no span of time to experiment over that you can ever say will be "enough" to predict or not whether the Earth will get hotter next year or cooler. There are 10,000 year cycles, local effects, pollutants, sunlight variations, hell even the amount of farts that cows produce that affect the result wildly. We can *guess* but that's about as good as it gets. Less than half of scientists in relevant areas *guess* that we're causing a problem for ourselves with greenhouse effects, the rest guess the opposite or abstain from the discussion.
What really matters is the here and now - if something that humans do is causing a change in *ANYTHING* natural, we're probably jeopardising some kind of local balance that will have a knock-on effect. Whether that means 5 fish in the river instead of 6, or the whole planet burning up and killing us off, it's extraordinarily unlikely to be a positive thing. We spotted the holes in the ozone and they are starting to fix themselves. We know that we tear down lots of tress and that's affected local climate in some countries. We also know that we fish too much, eliminate habitat, pump unnatural pollutants into the water and all sorts. It's *sensible* to try to reduce all that to an absolute minimum because we *aren't* capable of affecting global climate positively if we're wrong (we can't pump ozone back into the upper atmospheres and have it "fix" things), but we *are* capable of affecting it negatively. So we COULD break it and never be able to FIX it. That's cause in itself to do everything we can to reduce even the possibility of breakage.
I'm not a greenie. I'm about as far as you can get from being a greenie, mainly because most green policies are unresearched knee-jerk nonsense of the highest order. But there are human interactions that have knock-on effects. The questions are: Is it within the bounds of natural repair processes? Are we actually going to be overwhelmed by a longer-term natural process that will make the problem moot? If we stopped doing certain things, just to be on the safe side, does it actually affect us more negatively than if we