So, what course was it and who was the prof? Heck, what school do I go to?
Re:Visual Studio .NET
on
Linus Is A Hero
·
· Score: 1, Offtopic
I'm not one to usually feed the trolls, but I think this is a great time to do this wonderful High-level vs. Low-level debate.
High-level languages can be useful. Visual Studio and the like can serve certain purposes.
However, there are many cases where it can severely hamper your abilities.
Let me give you an example. Visual Basic is an extremely high-level language. Very little programming is required for quick and easy programs. It all has hard-wired Access usage (*shudder*) so Databasing is actually pretty simple if you've ever used Microsoft Office and Access and the like.
However. (This is where the audience says "There's _always_ a however")
This semester that has most recently come to pass I was involved in a Software Engineering course in which we were given a term-long project to work on in development teams. Each group was 5 people each and picked from 4 different projects what they wanted to do. Our team and another team picked a PocketPC-based Application, based on making an E-guide for a Museum.
So, the Prototyping phase comes around, and we decide to do a simple throw-away prototype in HTML, which would just generally show how it would work, how it would look, and get customer feedback so as to clarify the requirements for the project.
The other team decided to do _theirs_ in Visual Basic, with a similar intention: code it in VB, then move on to either Java or C++ or something like that.
Now, after we finish with that, we say "Great. Let's now start coding this in Java."
The other team, however, said "Wait a minute... All we really need to do is implement a database into the VB code and spruce it up and boom, we have a working E-guide... this'll save us on a bunch of coding effort. Woohoo!"
Fast Forward to the end of the semester and we're all giving our presentations.
Ours is presented, it's slick as hell, really nice Graphical interface, simple, easy to use and looks really really nice, and it was entirely coded using text editors.
The other team presents, and theirs is pretty dull (I really don't want to shoot it down, cuz the people were really nice... but it was). The interface was a clunky windows UI which loses a lot of the ease-of-use that was required for the project. Heavy on the pull-down menus and the like, obviously making good use of the Visual Basic toolkit.
This basically gives contrast to those people who shoot down on Assembler purists who tell the story of the brilliant yet misguided hacker who makes a graphics engine in Assembler based on physical principles of matter, and spending an entire night making a slick and efficient wireframe animation of a spaceship flying across the screen, and then the C++ hacker makes, in one hour, an incredibly beatiful animation of a ship flying over Mars and around the moon and the like...
So my point is, yeah, High Level is nice, but going too high a level starts hampering your useability.
A lot of people would torment the kids for which this general website (Please, don't forget the big words at the top that say "News For Nerds") is geared. A lot of us (and I say us as being what I would consider a geek myself) got pushed around and picked on as a kid. God knows the number of times I've been stuffed in a locker (think it's a joke for Saved By The Bell? Think again) or had the shit kicked out of me for dressing in a way that was inappropriate (I swore by sweat pants right up until grade 6).
The point of the matter is that turning the word that tormented us so as kids around and saying "I'm a geek. So what?" in a true Revenge-Of-The-Nerds fashion helps people have their own identity. Sure, a lot of the stuff I do might not be considered "cool" or the "in" thing or whatever, but fuck it. I'm more than happy to do what I do simply because I'm doing it. People who proudly wear the name "geek" are people that truly just don't care that if they do geeky stuff, like say wear sweatpants on a regular basis, or sit around playing with your computer all day, or charge at Gallstaff with your Magic Missile spell with +5 damage because of your charm ring or whatever.
Point of the matter is, this is a website for basically self-proclaimed geeks and nerds. If you have a problem with that, then maybe you should have turned away when you saw the "News For Nerds" sign that is CLEARLY present on the front page.
Linux is still a big worldwide competitor, so much so that Microsoft has deemed it the "Enemy".
This is a volunteer-designed operating system with a few corporate elements working to bring Linux to the mainstream public, and it's a prime concern for Microsoft to be worrying about... Microsoft being one of the biggest Blue-Chips on the market today. To get that kind of recognition, I'd call Linux a success.
The fact that I run Linux on my home box is just another symptom of that. I'm a computer-literate person with some programming knowledge, and playing around with Mandrake is bloody EASY. Only complaint I've had with my box is shit resolution, but I just today figured out that my problem was actually that my video card had only 2M memory (Never seen the specs before today).
GPL's not a failure. To have acheived what it has today is quite a landmark.
I'll quote it here, in case you're missing it: "News for Nerds".
So if we go on some nerd-like tangeant, then cope.
Anyways. The steps you took are perfectly reasonable for the domain old != 0.
It's a simple matter of stating limits. This isn't the type of stuff they conventionally teach in high school mathematics, and it goes into algebraic theory.
And I apologize for not acknowledging it's a joke and persuing on this tangeant. But if you don't understand how something like this would happen, then you must not hang out with a lot of geeks.
1) Better GUI tools. My drake distro is almost happy about this, but the help documentation is bloody atrocious. Howtos are almost useful, but require administrative knowledge on the most part. Not to say that I don't eventually want said knowledge, but that J. Random User won't want to have to wade through a big book on how to recompile your kernal.
2) A debian system with a Red Hat install. Honestly. The Red Hat installation was probably the easiest install I've seen. Only problem I had was it had dick-all for configuration tools, so I was up shit's creek when I got it all installed, everything worked happily, except I had no sound or ethernet. And it bugs me that rpms are such a nuisance. I really _REALLY_ want to see an apt-get in a system with as much ease of use as my 'drake box.
I think that's all that's really needed to turn Linux, and as such the entire open-source community, to a household name that every Joe User will be more than pleased to have on their computer, putting aside obvious market domination of Windows. But with WineX and OpenOffice, I honestly don't think that those are that far behind...
"Only a very small percent (perhaps 1% of the population) pirate enough music to fill an entire CD"
Where have you been living?
I used to live on SFU residence. The sad thing about this is we get no leeway on our coveted "Backbone of BC Internet" insofar as Res goes. We got zero T1 connection. In fact, every single person on campus had to rely on 28.8bps dialup.
About 50% of the computer users I knew up there (probably more... that's being very generous) used Napster (at the time), and soon after its demise were quick to pick up on whatever tickled their fancy afterwards (Morpheous, Kazaa, and I was on Audiogalaxy long before Napster died, so I didn't really care anyways).
Now, consider that about 90% of all University students own computers. That's 40% right there of University students who pirate music (And I mean a SHITLOAD... everybody had at least one MP3 CD... remember this is all being done via dialup no less).
The math isn't so hard to do. Now, you might be thinking "Dave, you sex god you, what the hell are you talking about? That's just University students... what about the countless other people in the world."
Well, The number of Uni students versus High School students that participate in this filesharing service I'd estimate would be about the same, and LO AND BEHOLD, these people are mostly responsible for the main demographic of musical consumers.
So yeah. Piracy is abundant, but it's not to say that it's damaging sales in RIAA companies. In fact, the only damage that I've seen out of it has been from Boycotts of the way the RIAA has been acting out of this whole filesharing issue.
I've bought a good number of CDs since this all started, even though I'm a big person on downloading music. In fact, I have a 40 gig partition on my hard drive specifically for the purposes of copywrite infringement (mostly mp3s).
I still buy CDs, but always used now, ever since I hit my limit of "Bullshit RIAA is trying to cram down my throat" and decided to boycott the RIAA. Who knows. At least EMI has gotten one step closer to convincing me to buy new CDs again.
Anyways... Since it seems now all writeable CDs are going to start costing $4 apiece (to alleviate piracy) it should be perfectly legal for me to download whatever the fuck I want and burn it to CD. Seriously! If parliament soon realizes the double standard of illegalising piracy and taxing it all the same as if it were legal, then Canada will pretty much have the answer to the whole piracy debate. Download all you want, but tax the CDs and that way the RIAA gets their coveted money and can focus on giving us more quality music, which is the one thing they've been failing to do.
Y'know, with all the people bitching and moaning "moderation this moderation that", has it ever occurred to you that this site is (primarily) Taco's site so he can do whatever the fuck he wants to within the bounds of what OSDN lets him do? I mean, seriously. If you're not paying subscription, maybe you should march up and demand your $0 back. If you are paying subscription, the site hasn't changed at all in the last 3 years and you should have known what you were getting yourself into.
"Well, we need to trim it down a little bit, so rather than bringing down the 45-minute battle scene, we're just cut out a MAJOR JOSEPH CAMPBELL PLOT POINT."
*sigh*
Another spoiler:
So if they cut out the Shire-saving, when the hell is Frodo going to actually be a hero? When he doesn't cast the ring in the pit and puts it on and runs away? Pretty damn heroic if you ask me.
Seriously, it seems pretty silly to have your main character go through all that and not end up a hero in the end. The Shire bit was what made me think so highly of Frodo. I thought it was pretty anti-climactic the way that the ring was destroyed, and the Sharkey/Shire bit really salvaged the character IMO.
Slashdot Mirror
Heh.
That's funny.
Someone pretending to be someone in my class.
Hee hee...
So, what course was it and who was the prof? Heck, what school do I go to?
I'm not one to usually feed the trolls, but I think this is a great time to do this wonderful High-level vs. Low-level debate.
High-level languages can be useful. Visual Studio and the like can serve certain purposes.
However, there are many cases where it can severely hamper your abilities.
Let me give you an example. Visual Basic is an extremely high-level language. Very little programming is required for quick and easy programs. It all has hard-wired Access usage (*shudder*) so Databasing is actually pretty simple if you've ever used Microsoft Office and Access and the like.
However. (This is where the audience says "There's _always_ a however")
This semester that has most recently come to pass I was involved in a Software Engineering course in which we were given a term-long project to work on in development teams. Each group was 5 people each and picked from 4 different projects what they wanted to do. Our team and another team picked a PocketPC-based Application, based on making an E-guide for a Museum.
So, the Prototyping phase comes around, and we decide to do a simple throw-away prototype in HTML, which would just generally show how it would work, how it would look, and get customer feedback so as to clarify the requirements for the project.
The other team decided to do _theirs_ in Visual Basic, with a similar intention: code it in VB, then move on to either Java or C++ or something like that.
Now, after we finish with that, we say "Great. Let's now start coding this in Java."
The other team, however, said "Wait a minute... All we really need to do is implement a database into the VB code and spruce it up and boom, we have a working E-guide... this'll save us on a bunch of coding effort. Woohoo!"
Fast Forward to the end of the semester and we're all giving our presentations.
Ours is presented, it's slick as hell, really nice Graphical interface, simple, easy to use and looks really really nice, and it was entirely coded using text editors.
The other team presents, and theirs is pretty dull (I really don't want to shoot it down, cuz the people were really nice... but it was). The interface was a clunky windows UI which loses a lot of the ease-of-use that was required for the project. Heavy on the pull-down menus and the like, obviously making good use of the Visual Basic toolkit.
This basically gives contrast to those people who shoot down on Assembler purists who tell the story of the brilliant yet misguided hacker who makes a graphics engine in Assembler based on physical principles of matter, and spending an entire night making a slick and efficient wireframe animation of a spaceship flying across the screen, and then the C++ hacker makes, in one hour, an incredibly beatiful animation of a ship flying over Mars and around the moon and the like...
So my point is, yeah, High Level is nice, but going too high a level starts hampering your useability.
"Hey loser, I'll stuff your ass back into the locker where you belong. I'm more technically able, more cultured, more socially able than you."
I'm sorry, but this juxtapositioning is just too damn funny.
4:11 am? How is that morning? It's not even noon yet!
You sure told them slashcomma types. =)
The thing about it is this.
A lot of people would torment the kids for which this general website (Please, don't forget the big words at the top that say "News For Nerds") is geared. A lot of us (and I say us as being what I would consider a geek myself) got pushed around and picked on as a kid. God knows the number of times I've been stuffed in a locker (think it's a joke for Saved By The Bell? Think again) or had the shit kicked out of me for dressing in a way that was inappropriate (I swore by sweat pants right up until grade 6).
The point of the matter is that turning the word that tormented us so as kids around and saying "I'm a geek. So what?" in a true Revenge-Of-The-Nerds fashion helps people have their own identity. Sure, a lot of the stuff I do might not be considered "cool" or the "in" thing or whatever, but fuck it. I'm more than happy to do what I do simply because I'm doing it. People who proudly wear the name "geek" are people that truly just don't care that if they do geeky stuff, like say wear sweatpants on a regular basis, or sit around playing with your computer all day, or charge at Gallstaff with your Magic Missile spell with +5 damage because of your charm ring or whatever.
Point of the matter is, this is a website for basically self-proclaimed geeks and nerds. If you have a problem with that, then maybe you should have turned away when you saw the "News For Nerds" sign that is CLEARLY present on the front page.
Are you kidding?
Who says the GPL failed/is failing?
Linux is still a big worldwide competitor, so much so that Microsoft has deemed it the "Enemy".
This is a volunteer-designed operating system with a few corporate elements working to bring Linux to the mainstream public, and it's a prime concern for Microsoft to be worrying about... Microsoft being one of the biggest Blue-Chips on the market today. To get that kind of recognition, I'd call Linux a success.
The fact that I run Linux on my home box is just another symptom of that. I'm a computer-literate person with some programming knowledge, and playing around with Mandrake is bloody EASY. Only complaint I've had with my box is shit resolution, but I just today figured out that my problem was actually that my video card had only 2M memory (Never seen the specs before today).
GPL's not a failure. To have acheived what it has today is quite a landmark.
Yeah. Because we all know that Windows is the cheapest OS out there.
*distributes card*
Asking about rules!
You miss the thing on the front page?
I'll quote it here, in case you're missing it:
"News for Nerds".
So if we go on some nerd-like tangeant, then cope.
Anyways. The steps you took are perfectly reasonable for the domain old != 0.
It's a simple matter of stating limits. This isn't the type of stuff they conventionally teach in high school mathematics, and it goes into algebraic theory.
And I apologize for not acknowledging it's a joke and persuing on this tangeant. But if you don't understand how something like this would happen, then you must not hang out with a lot of geeks.
1) Better GUI tools. My drake distro is almost happy about this, but the help documentation is bloody atrocious. Howtos are almost useful, but require administrative knowledge on the most part. Not to say that I don't eventually want said knowledge, but that J. Random User won't want to have to wade through a big book on how to recompile your kernal.
2) A debian system with a Red Hat install. Honestly. The Red Hat installation was probably the easiest install I've seen. Only problem I had was it had dick-all for configuration tools, so I was up shit's creek when I got it all installed, everything worked happily, except I had no sound or ethernet. And it bugs me that rpms are such a nuisance. I really _REALLY_ want to see an apt-get in a system with as much ease of use as my 'drake box.
I think that's all that's really needed to turn Linux, and as such the entire open-source community, to a household name that every Joe User will be more than pleased to have on their computer, putting aside obvious market domination of Windows. But with WineX and OpenOffice, I honestly don't think that those are that far behind...
Wrong equation.
Percent off means subtracting a certain percentile of the old price.... you put the new price on the rhs, which resulted in a divide by zero error.
new = old - (%off/100)*old
new = 0 - (0/100)* 0
new = 0
Perfectly fine to me.
Oh, then it's not extortion, it's blackmail. Thank you for clearing that up.
We should illegalize lawn chairs as well, then.
Sweet! There's still a Communist party in Canada, which means Communism must technically still be legal! Noice! I can pirate to my heart's content!
Yeah, except the first 12 jokes will be "FIRST JOKE MUTHAFUKKAS!!!!" And half of them would involve
Step 1) [Something innate]
Step 2) ????
Step 3) Profit!
Not to mention a couple billion Beowulf cluster jokes and "all your base" references.
"Only a very small percent (perhaps 1% of the population) pirate enough music to fill an entire CD"
Where have you been living?
I used to live on SFU residence. The sad thing about this is we get no leeway on our coveted "Backbone of BC Internet" insofar as Res goes. We got zero T1 connection. In fact, every single person on campus had to rely on 28.8bps dialup.
About 50% of the computer users I knew up there (probably more... that's being very generous) used Napster (at the time), and soon after its demise were quick to pick up on whatever tickled their fancy afterwards (Morpheous, Kazaa, and I was on Audiogalaxy long before Napster died, so I didn't really care anyways).
Now, consider that about 90% of all University students own computers. That's 40% right there of University students who pirate music (And I mean a SHITLOAD... everybody had at least one MP3 CD... remember this is all being done via dialup no less).
The math isn't so hard to do. Now, you might be thinking "Dave, you sex god you, what the hell are you talking about? That's just University students... what about the countless other people in the world."
Well, The number of Uni students versus High School students that participate in this filesharing service I'd estimate would be about the same, and LO AND BEHOLD, these people are mostly responsible for the main demographic of musical consumers.
So yeah. Piracy is abundant, but it's not to say that it's damaging sales in RIAA companies. In fact, the only damage that I've seen out of it has been from Boycotts of the way the RIAA has been acting out of this whole filesharing issue.
I've bought a good number of CDs since this all started, even though I'm a big person on downloading music. In fact, I have a 40 gig partition on my hard drive specifically for the purposes of copywrite infringement (mostly mp3s).
I still buy CDs, but always used now, ever since I hit my limit of "Bullshit RIAA is trying to cram down my throat" and decided to boycott the RIAA. Who knows. At least EMI has gotten one step closer to convincing me to buy new CDs again.
$5 CDs get you!
No... wait... that didn't work at all...
Anyways... Since it seems now all writeable CDs are going to start costing $4 apiece (to alleviate piracy) it should be perfectly legal for me to download whatever the fuck I want and burn it to CD. Seriously! If parliament soon realizes the double standard of illegalising piracy and taxing it all the same as if it were legal, then Canada will pretty much have the answer to the whole piracy debate. Download all you want, but tax the CDs and that way the RIAA gets their coveted money and can focus on giving us more quality music, which is the one thing they've been failing to do.
Say again?
Why is everybody always so incredibly quick to point out lack of a sex life on a website entitled "News for Nerds"?
Something about this reeks of overcompensation. Do you by chance drive a big car?
I never expected in anywhere other than a dating service for this type of comment to be "Informative"...
Heck, mods. Let's go with the trend. Somebody quickly mod him for insightful!
Too bad it's just fiction. *sigh*
This was a lot funnier the first time!
*sigh*
Y'know, with all the people bitching and moaning "moderation this moderation that", has it ever occurred to you that this site is (primarily) Taco's site so he can do whatever the fuck he wants to within the bounds of what OSDN lets him do? I mean, seriously. If you're not paying subscription, maybe you should march up and demand your $0 back. If you are paying subscription, the site hasn't changed at all in the last 3 years and you should have known what you were getting yourself into.
If you dislike it so much, leave.
How's that work?
"Well, we need to trim it down a little bit, so rather than bringing down the 45-minute battle scene, we're just cut out a MAJOR JOSEPH CAMPBELL PLOT POINT."
*sigh*
Another spoiler:
So if they cut out the Shire-saving, when the hell is Frodo going to actually be a hero? When he doesn't cast the ring in the pit and puts it on and runs away? Pretty damn heroic if you ask me.
Seriously, it seems pretty silly to have your main character go through all that and not end up a hero in the end. The Shire bit was what made me think so highly of Frodo. I thought it was pretty anti-climactic the way that the ring was destroyed, and the Sharkey/Shire bit really salvaged the character IMO.
Oh well. Two Towers will rock...