When I first saw the BASIC and LOGO programming at elementary school, my impression was that they weren't do it in the 'fun' way at all: we were supposed to just copy down what they did and no there was no real opportunity for exploration. The purpose of copying a program designed by someone else (taking their listing in a book or whatever and typing it in) serves three purposes:
1) gets you familiar with the process of inputting code, so that when you write your own code, you'll already be familiar with how to type it into the computer and execute it
2) demonstrates that by just typing in a program, it's possible to make the computer do something really cool, even though you haven't yet learned how to design something that complex yet
3) gives you a working example of a program with source code, so you can try to understand what various parts of the code do, and you can try changing something and see how the change affects the program's output
It's not a bad way to introduce kids to programming, although of course it needs to be followed by actual learning.
There may not be anything stopping you; I didn't read the license agreement though... It's a couple of plainly-worded paragraphs at the bottom of the page. You're pretty lazy, if you couldn't be bothered to read that.
A four-port USB hub has five lights: one for power, and one for each port. Except that all five lights are on solid, 100% of the time that the computer is running, regardless of whether any devices are plugged in or whether any data is being transferred. Apparently, some genius decided "hey, we should have a light on each port, because that will look cool, but we can't be bothered to actually make them indicate anything, so we'll just wire them all together with the power light."
Maybe routers (which seem to be the worst offenders) will take the hint. We might know how to read the indicators, but very few broadband customers know or care. They'll just call customer support, and customer support will just tell them to make sure the cables are connected and cycle the power. The recorded message that plays while the customer is waiting on hold will tell them to do that. Hopefully by the time they actually talk to someone, they'll have already done the obvious and are ready for the next step. Tell me, if I'm a tech support rep, how am I supposed to figure out why your router isn't doing what you expect unless the router has enough lights to convey sufficient information about its status?
A single tri-color LED should work for that and be a lot less annoying. Obviously you've never worked in tech support. You'd be very surprised how many customers are color-blind, and really cannot tell the difference between a blinking red light and a blinking green light. Also, some devices try to indicate one status with a slow blink and a different status with a fast blink; it's very difficult to get a customer to correctly judge whether a particular blinking pattern is "slow" or "fast" if they're not familiar with what the other blinking pattern looks like.
(Power? Upstream connection present but disabled? Upstream connection enabled?) Let people connect to an embedded webserver if they need more information. Once again, you've never worked in tech support. Let's assume we're talking about a DSL modem that does PPPoE. I need to know whether the device has power, whether it has detected a DSL signal and is attempting to train up, whether it has actually established sync, whether it has successfully established a PPPoE connection, and if not, why that connection failed (authentication failure? no response?). Of course I need a link light for the Ethernet port. Also, I need blinky lights to indicate data being sent or received, both on the WAN side and the LAN side, so that I can (for example) try to ping the customer's modem and see if the lights blink when I do. And I need to be able to do all of this without a computer being connected to the device, because I'm probably going to ask the customer to go through all of this with me while standing outside the front of their house with their DSL modem, an extension cord, a flashlight, a screwdriver, and a cell phone.
Yeah, the tech support rep is going to tell you to unplug it, plug it back in, and hope for the best. Why? Because that usually makes it work again, almost every time. If that doesn't work, THEN the real fun begins, and the more information that the device can communicate about its status, the more possible problems can be immediately eliminated and the faster we can fix what's really causing the problem.
(By the way, if you're wondering about the extension cord and the screwdriver, it's so the customer can open up the little gray plastic box where the phone line comes into the house, disconnect their inside telephone wiring, and plug the DSL modem directly into the test jack. That little gray box is the point of demarcation between the phone company's responsibility and the customer's responsibility; if the DSL connection isn't working when the modem is plugged into the test jack at the NID, then the problem must be either the DSL modem itself, a problem at the ISP (unlikely), or something for the phone company to fix. Of course we already knew this, but now we can tell the phone company that inside wiring has been eliminated, and convince them to actually fix it. It saves all kinds of time.)
He's right about aluminum foil hats. Here's the research to back it up. I don't believe I've seen any scientific studies of pointy felt hats, but anecdotal evidence seems plentiful...
That Viagra spam is NOT complying with CAN-SPAM, no matter what they say at the bottom. The fine print is just there to trick you into thinking what they're doing is somehow legal, so you'll assume you can't take action against them.
CAN-SPAM doesn't ban SPAM, what it does do is legitimise the sending of unsolicited commercial e-mail and specifically forbids e-mail recipients from suing the spammers. It's one of those Acts that do the exact opposite of what the name means. As such it should really be called the ENABLE-SPAM Act of 2003. Not quite. CAN-SPAM does legitimize the sending of unsolicited commercial e-mail with certain restrictions, but it also clearly defines e-mail that doesn't meet those requirements as being illegal. Virtually every single piece of spam I get violates the requirements of CAN-SPAM and is therefore illegal under US law. If CAN-SPAM were aggressively enforced, it would have a huge impact in reducing the amount of spam that gets sent. Any spam that is legal under CAN-SPAM is trivially easy to filter out through technical means, and if we did start to see legal spam, Congress could simply amend the law to address the problem.
To reiterate: while CAN-SPAM does define certain types of spam as legitimate, that's OK because none of the spam being sent is that kind of spam. If this changes, the law can be fixed later.
However, you are correct that CAN-SPAM also prohibits individuals from suing spammers. If the government were doing its job and aggressively prosecuting them, then private lawsuits would be redundant and unnecessary, and I'm sure that was the original thinking. However, that's not happening. That's a problem.
LANL does work on weapons. It seems like erring on the side of not giving out information will inconvenience some researchers but it might be a good thing for everyone else. And as someone pointed out, most of this information needed Q clearance even before privatization, which most researchers don't have, so the number of people inconvenienced is rather small. You're forgetting that the research being done by this small handful of researchers who have the appropriate security clearance may lead to all kinds of scientific or medical breakthroughs that could be hugely beneficial to the rest of us. So yeah, it's a rather small number of people who are currently being inconvenienced, but it might be a rather large number of people who will be missing out on something great as a result.
You don't understand how lossy compression works, do you? Transcoding is bad.
As for stripping the DRM but maintaining the original compression, it's been done (jHymn), but Apple released a new version of iTunes that broke compatibility with that, so it doesn't work anymore. If you think you can fix it, by all means, give it a try.
I'm not opposed to copyright, I'm opposed to current copyright terms.
20 years, renewable for 20 more if the copyright holder chooses to file a renewal. After that it falls into the public domain. This is not unreasonable.
Some would argue that 20 years is still too long, to which I say it's a lot better that what we have now and if we need to reduce it further we can revisit the issue in another 20 years.
Some would argue that 40 years is not long enough, to which I say anything longer than that can't possibly promote the progress of science and useful arts, and the current situation is in fact stifling the progress of science and useful arts.
I heard part of a radio interview the other day where someone was saying they've talked to a lot of Republican voters who are very angry at the way Bush has handled the Iraq war (or some of the other stupid things he's done), but when asked whether they would be more likely to vote for a Democrat in '08, they're completely surprised by the suggestion; they sort of laugh and say "of course not, why would I do that?"
Re:Things like this are easy to fix.
on
Google's Evil NDA
·
· Score: 1
They're not saying you can't talk about it, just that you can't release an article about it. For those of us who are too lazy to blog about our every waking moment, and who aren't involved in journalism, it's just not that big a deal.
No, what Ballmer said is that he's hoping he can get his own uncle to buy a Zune before he dies. No, read that quote again.
Ballmer is hoping he can get his own uncle to accept a Zune as a gift for free. Ballmer currently doesn't think such a gift would be accepted, and is still working on it.
Our legal/justice system is built around the idea that people don't want to kill themselves, and the threat of punishment if they are caught is enough to deter most people from committing crimes. You want to rob a bank, but you don't, because there's a good chance you won't get away with it, and if they do catch you, you'll be pretty miserable for a long time. But if you plan to take your own life anyway, then there is no threat we can make that will deter you from attempting whatever your plan is. And there's no practical way we can prevent you from doing it, if you're determined enough. So the only way to prevent these kinds of tragedies is......find a way of improving people's self-esteem and understanding of the world so that they are no longer interested in escaping from this life by killing themselves.
That's it. Make people not want to die, and let the threat of prison deter everybody else.
Voters are missing out on the ability to actually have an engaged conversation about the candidates and their debate performances because of NBC's greed. NBC's greed? I'd be surprised if it weren't the candidates (or their campaign managers) who pushed for this. This isn't about money, it's about control.
Well, it seems to me like forcing people to have a license to sell, print, or publish books. If you start making it illegal to put up hotspots then you are de facto preempting a channel (no pun intended) for free speech. Requiring a license to print books is a restriction of freedom of the press. Prohibiting me from allowing others to freely connect to my LAN does not infringe on my free speech/press rights unless the purpose of allowing them to connect to my LAN was so I could communicate my ideas to them. If the purpose of allowing them to connect to my LAN was to allow them to access the Internet, then my First Amendment rights are not being infringed if the government prohibits me from doing so.
Maybe you could argue that their First Amendment rights are being infringed because the government is restricting their access to the Internet, but since the government isn't directly doing anything to the people who could theoretically want to use my wifi, I don't think that argument holds water. The whole point of it being open is that I don't even know who these people are. How can the government infringe on the rights of people who might not even exist?
Final note: even in American English, the GGP is valid English, Microsoft can buy them out. No it isn't. You're adding the word "can", which is a verb, which allows you to use the infinitive form of the verb "buy" (you could also use "will buy" for the same reason). Without that, if the subject (Microsoft) is singular (which it is in American English), the only correct verb conjugation (without changing other words) is "buys".
I'm pretty sure the problem isn't fonts and kerning.
When they come up with a practical way to display text online that isn't backlit, I'll be interested. Paper reflects ambient light from the room. Computer displays don't (with occasional exceptions where the background is usually a medium gray, not white). Solve that, and e-books will take off.
I don't really care what they do with HTML. As long as support for the old versions doesn't go away (and as long as you include the appropriate DOCTYPE there's no reason why it should), I'll always have the option of using the old version if I like it better, or using the new version if they make real improvements. I use the W3C validator, and a Firefox plugin to do the same (although the Mac version seems to be broken at the moment). HTML is great. I'm sure they'll make it better. Fine.
But CSS is a nightmare. I've got two books on CSS on my bookshelf; neither seems in any way comprehensive, and I don't think it's the fault of the book authors. My horribly broken stylesheets always pass validation anyway, because the syntax is fine, they just don't work the way I wanted. I'm not looking forward to building a new site a client wants me to make, partly because I know I'll have to build a new stylesheet for it. I love what CSS is capable of doing, I love the concept of using a stylesheet instead of splattering layout and style markup all over the HTML. But CSS, it its current form, is painful.
Guess what is cheaper than natural gas and a furnace? WOOD! Then, all you need is a wood stove or two, an axe, and some elbow grease. Only if you have a cheap supply of wood. Not everyone does. Not everyone even has a wood stove, and can't get one without spending thousands of dollars to have it installed properly.
If there is only one company willing to sell me beef and milk, I can always buy chicken and orange juice instead. That's not the same as having multiple suppliers of beef and milk.
Well, I didn't know you lacked a yard, but I was pointing out that for people who think windmills are too expensive in general, they can get money back for it from the electric company, so the cost really comes down quite a bit. And his point that if you don't have the money up front, it doesn't matter how much you can get back from the electric company by dumping excess power onto the grid. If you don't have the money to buy a windmill, and the additional expertise or money to set it up correctly (the money would be to hire someone who has the expertise), then it's simply not an option.
Slashdot Mirror
1) gets you familiar with the process of inputting code, so that when you write your own code, you'll already be familiar with how to type it into the computer and execute it
2) demonstrates that by just typing in a program, it's possible to make the computer do something really cool, even though you haven't yet learned how to design something that complex yet
3) gives you a working example of a program with source code, so you can try to understand what various parts of the code do, and you can try changing something and see how the change affects the program's output
It's not a bad way to introduce kids to programming, although of course it needs to be followed by actual learning.
Yes, and then with a bit of perl they hacked a Roomba to make the Wii controller control the Roomba. Google for it.
Windows Vista is actually about as easy to install as a typical modern Linux distribution. It's sorta eerie how similar the installer looks.
There may not be anything stopping you; I didn't read the license agreement though... It's a couple of plainly-worded paragraphs at the bottom of the page. You're pretty lazy, if you couldn't be bothered to read that.
You know what else bothers me?
A four-port USB hub has five lights: one for power, and one for each port. Except that all five lights are on solid, 100% of the time that the computer is running, regardless of whether any devices are plugged in or whether any data is being transferred. Apparently, some genius decided "hey, we should have a light on each port, because that will look cool, but we can't be bothered to actually make them indicate anything, so we'll just wire them all together with the power light."
And then all their competitors copied the idea.
Yeah, the tech support rep is going to tell you to unplug it, plug it back in, and hope for the best. Why? Because that usually makes it work again, almost every time. If that doesn't work, THEN the real fun begins, and the more information that the device can communicate about its status, the more possible problems can be immediately eliminated and the faster we can fix what's really causing the problem.
(By the way, if you're wondering about the extension cord and the screwdriver, it's so the customer can open up the little gray plastic box where the phone line comes into the house, disconnect their inside telephone wiring, and plug the DSL modem directly into the test jack. That little gray box is the point of demarcation between the phone company's responsibility and the customer's responsibility; if the DSL connection isn't working when the modem is plugged into the test jack at the NID, then the problem must be either the DSL modem itself, a problem at the ISP (unlikely), or something for the phone company to fix. Of course we already knew this, but now we can tell the phone company that inside wiring has been eliminated, and convince them to actually fix it. It saves all kinds of time.)
He's right about aluminum foil hats. Here's the research to back it up. I don't believe I've seen any scientific studies of pointy felt hats, but anecdotal evidence seems plentiful...
Exactly.
That Viagra spam is NOT complying with CAN-SPAM, no matter what they say at the bottom. The fine print is just there to trick you into thinking what they're doing is somehow legal, so you'll assume you can't take action against them.
To reiterate: while CAN-SPAM does define certain types of spam as legitimate, that's OK because none of the spam being sent is that kind of spam. If this changes, the law can be fixed later.
However, you are correct that CAN-SPAM also prohibits individuals from suing spammers. If the government were doing its job and aggressively prosecuting them, then private lawsuits would be redundant and unnecessary, and I'm sure that was the original thinking. However, that's not happening. That's a problem.
You don't understand how lossy compression works, do you? Transcoding is bad.
As for stripping the DRM but maintaining the original compression, it's been done (jHymn), but Apple released a new version of iTunes that broke compatibility with that, so it doesn't work anymore. If you think you can fix it, by all means, give it a try.
I'm not opposed to copyright, I'm opposed to current copyright terms.
20 years, renewable for 20 more if the copyright holder chooses to file a renewal. After that it falls into the public domain. This is not unreasonable.
Some would argue that 20 years is still too long, to which I say it's a lot better that what we have now and if we need to reduce it further we can revisit the issue in another 20 years.
Some would argue that 40 years is not long enough, to which I say anything longer than that can't possibly promote the progress of science and useful arts, and the current situation is in fact stifling the progress of science and useful arts.
I heard part of a radio interview the other day where someone was saying they've talked to a lot of Republican voters who are very angry at the way Bush has handled the Iraq war (or some of the other stupid things he's done), but when asked whether they would be more likely to vote for a Democrat in '08, they're completely surprised by the suggestion; they sort of laugh and say "of course not, why would I do that?"
They're not saying you can't talk about it, just that you can't release an article about it. For those of us who are too lazy to blog about our every waking moment, and who aren't involved in journalism, it's just not that big a deal.
Ballmer is hoping he can get his own uncle to accept a Zune as a gift for free. Ballmer currently doesn't think such a gift would be accepted, and is still working on it.
Our legal/justice system is built around the idea that people don't want to kill themselves, and the threat of punishment if they are caught is enough to deter most people from committing crimes. You want to rob a bank, but you don't, because there's a good chance you won't get away with it, and if they do catch you, you'll be pretty miserable for a long time. But if you plan to take your own life anyway, then there is no threat we can make that will deter you from attempting whatever your plan is. And there's no practical way we can prevent you from doing it, if you're determined enough. So the only way to prevent these kinds of tragedies is... ...find a way of improving people's self-esteem and understanding of the world so that they are no longer interested in escaping from this life by killing themselves.
That's it. Make people not want to die, and let the threat of prison deter everybody else.
Anyone disagree?
Maybe you could argue that their First Amendment rights are being infringed because the government is restricting their access to the Internet, but since the government isn't directly doing anything to the people who could theoretically want to use my wifi, I don't think that argument holds water. The whole point of it being open is that I don't even know who these people are. How can the government infringe on the rights of people who might not even exist?
Setting up a free wireless access point isn't speech. Sorry, but I fail to see how you can make a First Amendment claim on this issue.
Of course I totally agree that making free access points illegal is offensively stupid, but you'll have to look somewhere else for the reason why.
I'm pretty sure the problem isn't fonts and kerning.
When they come up with a practical way to display text online that isn't backlit, I'll be interested. Paper reflects ambient light from the room. Computer displays don't (with occasional exceptions where the background is usually a medium gray, not white). Solve that, and e-books will take off.
Does anyone ever get any work done? Of course!
The IT department gets LOTS of work done! Very efficient.
Thank you.
I don't really care what they do with HTML. As long as support for the old versions doesn't go away (and as long as you include the appropriate DOCTYPE there's no reason why it should), I'll always have the option of using the old version if I like it better, or using the new version if they make real improvements. I use the W3C validator, and a Firefox plugin to do the same (although the Mac version seems to be broken at the moment). HTML is great. I'm sure they'll make it better. Fine.
But CSS is a nightmare. I've got two books on CSS on my bookshelf; neither seems in any way comprehensive, and I don't think it's the fault of the book authors. My horribly broken stylesheets always pass validation anyway, because the syntax is fine, they just don't work the way I wanted. I'm not looking forward to building a new site a client wants me to make, partly because I know I'll have to build a new stylesheet for it. I love what CSS is capable of doing, I love the concept of using a stylesheet instead of splattering layout and style markup all over the HTML. But CSS, it its current form, is painful.
If there is only one company willing to sell me beef and milk, I can always buy chicken and orange juice instead. That's not the same as having multiple suppliers of beef and milk.