While games are obviously the result of lots of code, there is very little that a 1st year college student could learn about how to program Grand Theft Auto in 2 or 3 courses... Pong might be a good start...
Modern day games use loads of very high end CS concepts, that are simply out of reach for novices. While getting people motivated for a discipline is the first step to teaching them, this tactic sounds more like advertising than actual teaching.
Growing a problem solving mind by the use of strict logic, and taking things one step at a time is the way to become a great programmer. Setting out to recreate the Crytek engine on your first day is bound to end in failure, and more important, disappointement.
For a geek, there's probably little you can find around London with your laptop that you can't find in Washington.
However, if you leave everything behind, and try to find some country side, there's much more to learn and experience than you ever would in a museum.
There's some sailing clubs in Brighton that would love to take you out of a spin: The decemember North Sea is vicious, but with the right crew you'll have a great adventure. Or take a ferry to some islands, Jersey maybe...
If you wanna stay on land, check out if there are any farms in Wales or Nothern England that need a helping hand. There's hundreds of "green" projects around the UK that would love to receive visitors.
Scottland really isn't that far away, and really is a different people and countryside. Again, try to stay out of the city, and just try to find an alternate lifestyle.
A holiday, especially when on your own, should be something totally different. Forget your fears, put an away message on you email box, pack some work boots and just see where your plane ticket takes you.
I've traveled to 6 continents and 27 countries in that way, and always found a way home... happier:)
While admittably, the technology of Star Wars wasn't terribly well conceived, this whole thing must be looked at retroactively.
When Jules Verne first wrote of a trip to the moon around 1880, he wrote of a large cannon, shooting a cannonball that would contain a passenger. Rockets hadn't been invented yet. Doesn't mean that Jules Verne was an idiot. One way or the other, we did land a man on the moon, and to be fair, it did take a whole lot of firepower.
It's laughable to consider Sci-Fi "wrong!". It's FICTION! Of course it's wrong...The fact is that a long of sci-fi writers imagine things long into the future, and come up with impossible ideas. Sometimes, those ideas become possible by research, and that's a great achievement, both for the author and the scientist.
Don't look for anything more... Unless you're reading Nostradamus, of course...
Lawsuits (or laws in general) perhaps really are built around a twisted, shortsighted version of sympathy: almost all of them are built around whether something someone does hurts someone else.
Since Amazon has refunded anyone who had bought the book on his Kindle, it all seems fair.
It is up to a customer to prove that this 'event' has hurt him in a specific way.
When we first of this on/. we all realized how silly Amazon's decision was. But this sort of legal bullsh*t is what it takes to rectify such a wrong... hopefully.
Squid, the http caching program, was conceived long before Akamai became a company.
All the services that Akamai propose can be achieved with localized Squid servers. Akamai's only benefit is it's market share, which allows it to provide it's (Squid) services at a lower cost.
These patents have no ground, as the technology was already invented by Squid programmers over a decade ago.
Thank God these US patents are not enforced in the EU.
The sad fact is that this law will not affect 99.9% of the population directly. The whole point of a legislation such as this is to hinder the "harmful" few 0.1% that are willing or able to fight against government legislations, all the while doing it secretly, so they may put pressures on those who act up before they really go public.
99.9% will never feel the effects of this kind of a law, and those 0.1% that do will be silenced, hence inching in a quiet totalitarianism that slowly, secretly creeps into the control over a nation.
I wouldn't say enough is enough. I personally think the US has crossed that line many years ago. What you're seeing now is not the birth of a totalitarian regime, but it's full out progress. Little less than a revolution can stop it now, and that's still a best case scenario... The worst case is of course big bad war...
The main difference is that Hurd is a kernel multithreaded and massively multithreaded OS. This is important for 5 years down the road because computers will probably start having several medium fast cheap processors instead of one really fast expensive processor. Kernel multithreading will enhance SMP and multitasking performance to it's peaks.
The main advantage of WinNT over Linux is exactly this, kernel multithreading, that's why a 32 processor WinNT will outperform a 32 processor Linux on most applications and low to medium loads.
As I grew up in France and spent the three years in an American high school and one year in college, I think I'm well placed to respond to this comparison.
As I recall from France, the 'geeks' were at most tagged as the 'intello' and the goths were maybe called accordingly, but everyone could talk to everyone and it would be perfectly okay to invite people of all kind to a party. Sure, people of the same kind would stick together more...
In contrast, American high schools keep tight cliques which set groups of jocks, geeks, blacks, etc. strictly apart from each other. This is partially because the difference between the groups is a bit more pregnant, but mainly it's because that's the way it's always been, since the days of Puritans or slavery.
Thanks... In the past, I've always had a good feeling about what I wanted to do or should do, and anytime I followed the path that my innards told me to follow, everything turned out well, most of the time better that I had expected. Justifying myself for taking that decision is getting old, and so I'm not going to discuss it anymore... I've wasted enough breath and typing muscles on that subject. I'm going to be stubborn and follow through, see where it takes me... and I'm sure as hell looking forward to it:)
And slowly I become more and more convinced that I don't necessarily need to ask questions anymore... the answers will come... and I'll figure out the next step from there...
Sorry if none of this makes much sense, these little chunks of commentaries strewn about under an entirely different topic. All this is more for myself than for others... - Skander
I'm 19, in love with a girl who I hope to be my wife someday. My passion is system administration, and that's where I'm heading professionally, more or less no matter what. I was about to head for college, for Comp.sci, but three days ago I decided to give up that plan, and follow the gut feeling that I've had for 2 years now. I want to make my own way, continue hacking around like I've done it in the past two years. I have plans for my own company, and also a solid product plan.
The only question I have left... Is whether this girl, who, if I'm lucky enough, may be my wife, and whether, if I'm lucky enough to have kids, my future kids will be (a) satisfied and proud of my carreer (b) sufficiently supported.
... and now I've lost all hope that it may ever get better...
NSI is the biggest pile of bureaucracy I've ever come accross... they copy/paste from the license agreement when you ask for help, their database registration process is very buggy...
How can you even trust an organisation like that with so much power over the net??
Slashdot Mirror
While games are obviously the result of lots of code, there is very little that a 1st year college student could learn about how to program Grand Theft Auto in 2 or 3 courses... Pong might be a good start...
Modern day games use loads of very high end CS concepts, that are simply out of reach for novices. While getting people motivated for a discipline is the first step to teaching them, this tactic sounds more like advertising than actual teaching.
Growing a problem solving mind by the use of strict logic, and taking things one step at a time is the way to become a great programmer. Setting out to recreate the Crytek engine on your first day is bound to end in failure, and more important, disappointement.
For a geek, there's probably little you can find around London with your laptop that you can't find in Washington.
However, if you leave everything behind, and try to find some country side, there's much more to learn and experience than you ever would in a museum.
There's some sailing clubs in Brighton that would love to take you out of a spin: The decemember North Sea is vicious, but with the right crew you'll have a great adventure. Or take a ferry to some islands, Jersey maybe...
If you wanna stay on land, check out if there are any farms in Wales or Nothern England that need a helping hand. There's hundreds of "green" projects around the UK that would love to receive visitors.
Scottland really isn't that far away, and really is a different people and countryside. Again, try to stay out of the city, and just try to find an alternate lifestyle.
A holiday, especially when on your own, should be something totally different. Forget your fears, put an away message on you email box, pack some work boots and just see where your plane ticket takes you.
I've traveled to 6 continents and 27 countries in that way, and always found a way home... happier :)
OMG FISH ARE GOING EXTINCT?
what a surprise, we've never heard of this before... *cough*
While admittably, the technology of Star Wars wasn't terribly well conceived, this whole thing must be looked at retroactively.
When Jules Verne first wrote of a trip to the moon around 1880, he wrote of a large cannon, shooting a cannonball that would contain a passenger. Rockets hadn't been invented yet. Doesn't mean that Jules Verne was an idiot. One way or the other, we did land a man on the moon, and to be fair, it did take a whole lot of firepower.
It's laughable to consider Sci-Fi "wrong!". It's FICTION! Of course it's wrong...The fact is that a long of sci-fi writers imagine things long into the future, and come up with impossible ideas. Sometimes, those ideas become possible by research, and that's a great achievement, both for the author and the scientist.
Don't look for anything more... Unless you're reading Nostradamus, of course...
Those who know how to use the net use Firefox or Opera.
Reminds me of the first Chrome EULA, stating that all intellectual property created while using the browser belonged to Google.
( http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2008/09/google-on-chrome-eula-controversy-our-bad-well-change-it.ars )
Lawsuits (or laws in general) perhaps really are built around a twisted, shortsighted version of sympathy: almost all of them are built around whether something someone does hurts someone else.
Since Amazon has refunded anyone who had bought the book on his Kindle, it all seems fair.
It is up to a customer to prove that this 'event' has hurt him in a specific way.
When we first of this on /. we all realized how silly Amazon's decision was. But this sort of legal bullsh*t is what it takes to rectify such a wrong... hopefully.
Squid, the http caching program, was conceived long before Akamai became a company.
All the services that Akamai propose can be achieved with localized Squid servers. Akamai's only benefit is it's market share, which allows it to provide it's (Squid) services at a lower cost.
These patents have no ground, as the technology was already invented by Squid programmers over a decade ago.
Thank God these US patents are not enforced in the EU.
http://www.squid-cache.org/
Live Patent Free! Contact your Govt representatives to abolish Patent Laws!
The sad fact is that this law will not affect 99.9% of the population directly. The whole point of a legislation such as this is to hinder the "harmful" few 0.1% that are willing or able to fight against government legislations, all the while doing it secretly, so they may put pressures on those who act up before they really go public.
99.9% will never feel the effects of this kind of a law, and those 0.1% that do will be silenced, hence inching in a quiet totalitarianism that slowly, secretly creeps into the control over a nation.
I wouldn't say enough is enough. I personally think the US has crossed that line many years ago. What you're seeing now is not the birth of a totalitarian regime, but it's full out progress. Little less than a revolution can stop it now, and that's still a best case scenario... The worst case is of course big bad war...
World Trade Center made of bendable concrete: 262m $US
747: 5m $US
Razor Blade to hijack plane: 2.95 $US
The look on Osama's face as the plane bounces off the building: priceless.
The main advantage of WinNT over Linux is exactly this, kernel multithreading, that's why a 32 processor WinNT will outperform a 32 processor Linux on most applications and low to medium loads.
As I grew up in France and spent the three years in an American high school and one year in college, I think I'm well placed to respond to this comparison.
As I recall from France, the 'geeks' were at most tagged as the 'intello' and the goths were maybe called accordingly, but everyone could talk to everyone and it would be perfectly okay to invite people of all kind to a party. Sure, people of the same kind would stick together more...
In contrast, American high schools keep tight cliques which set groups of jocks, geeks, blacks, etc. strictly apart from each other. This is partially because the difference between the groups is a bit more pregnant, but mainly it's because that's the way it's always been, since the days of Puritans or slavery.
Thanks... In the past, I've always had a good feeling about what I wanted to do or should do, and anytime I followed the path that my innards told me to follow, everything turned out well, most of the time better that I had expected. Justifying myself for taking that decision is getting old, and so I'm not going to discuss it anymore... I've wasted enough breath and typing muscles on that subject. I'm going to be stubborn and follow through, see where it takes me... and I'm sure as hell looking forward to it :)
And slowly I become more and more convinced that I don't necessarily need to ask questions anymore... the answers will come... and I'll figure out the next step from there...
Sorry if none of this makes much sense, these little chunks of commentaries strewn about under an entirely different topic. All this is more for myself than for others...
- Skander
thoughts you want...
I'm 19, in love with a girl who I hope to be my wife someday. My passion is system administration, and that's where I'm heading professionally, more or less no matter what. I was about to head for college, for Comp.sci, but three days ago I decided to give up that plan, and follow the gut feeling that I've had for 2 years now. I want to make my own way, continue hacking around like I've done it in the past two years. I have plans for my own company, and also a solid product plan.
The only question I have left... Is whether this girl, who, if I'm lucky enough, may be my wife, and whether, if I'm lucky enough to have kids, my future kids will be (a) satisfied and proud of my carreer (b) sufficiently supported.
- Skander.
... and now I've lost all hope that it may ever get better...
NSI is the biggest pile of bureaucracy I've ever come accross... they copy/paste from the license agreement when you ask for help, their database registration process is very buggy...
How can you even trust an organisation like that with so much power over the net??
what a shame... a true shame.