hmm.... sometimes it seems like windows makes my 32 bit machine run like a pentium 100. Why switch to 64 bit code when you can get the junk performance just by running MS Word, Excel, Access and Mozilla all at the same time? If you want to save money you can run Mozilla twice =)
Well I'm glad SuSE got pulled out. I've never actually used it myself, but I've seen them doing good things. Despite what most people say, I think it's important that there be more than one major distro. Do you need a distro? Not really, but these are companies that not only work on Linux itself, but work on figuring out how to make installing Linux easier - and from my experience that's sometimes the hardest part. I've been using RedHat for a while (and a couple versions) and I have yet to have an install come off clean the first time without some stupid problem cropping up. On the other hand a friend of mine has been using SuSE for a while and has never had a problem. Maybe it's just luck, or maybe I'm doing something wrong... or maybe it's time I switched.
there is another problem with the CL, and that's the fact that you have to know the command. Stick an average person on a CL and of course they wouldn't know what to do, why would they? They aren't born knowing UNIX commands, and rarely do people even bother reading a manual before they use a computer. For those of us with experience using "man" that's not TOO much of a problem but most people would have a hard time with it. It also doesn't help with the fact that some of the UNIX commands are fairly cryptic, and/or don't make much sense (renaming a file for example). Most people probably don't want to remember a bunch of commands, they just want to use the computer, and when you've double clicked one icon, it's all the same - even if you have to go through a large number of stupid menus, it has a much lower learning curve, and lets face it - many people can't type very well (or like me: can't spell) which is another CLI issue.
In hindsight I think one of the most valuable things is I you learned to make what you wanted with what you didn't have. It always seemed like I din't quite have enough or the right parts but I always figured out how to make it in the end. The ammount of problem solving I did with Legos as a kid is really mind boggling, and I doubt I've ever had as much fun solving problems since. One thing I liked about the article is how it pointed out how there isn't a wrong way to play with Legos. That's really true, and I don't think I can even think of another toy as versitile and actually teaches you some things that help you later on in life.
Probably the worst thing I can do while cleaning is come across my old lego bin... I can never leave it alone and always waiste 3 hours or so doing something with it. I think that's happened to me 3 times over the years since I eventually gave them up as a kid
I agree with most of what you say, except that Microsoft didn't invent the browser and what not. True they didn't invent this stuff (which is probably why it doesn't all suck =) but no one really invented all that stuff. All of it builds on something that came before it, and in each arena MS has contributed to it, even if in a very small way.
a generation raised on Microsofts products? I'll agree that most people start out on M$ products, but take a poll of how many people remember ANY of those products at Version 1 - I doubt you'll find many, and if you do find some, chances are they were scarred for life and use UNIX now.
I can see having a retro case, but not something that was origonally purple! If I were going to do something like this, I'd make it out of a toaster. One slot for floppies, one for cd's.
Re:Cartoony? How disappointing!
on
The New Zelda
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· Score: 1
When I saw the word "cartoon" I was thinking, cool Zelda is going to get some cool anime type form! Unfortunatly Link is now the lost power puff girl.
I really wonder if any of this really matters. I mean to me it seems like microsoft can do pretty much whatever they want and no matter how bad it is it ends up being a side note where the average person could care less. Now if president Bush had some equivalent scandal, people would demand his resignation and such. With the horrible security in just about anything relating to Microsoft, buggy software, and severely anti-competitive business practices - you'd THINK that MS would have a huge PR problem. In reality it seems to me that most people are either indifferent, or have only a slightly poor opinion of MS. People think I'm an anti-MS fanatic just because I say that 80% of their software is (in my opinion) crap. I really have to wonder how time after time MS can get away with this sort of thing with virtually no penalties.
maybe the Attorney General got suspicous when every 20th letter said "hacked by chinese".
generally I've found that the majority of web pages don't really discriminate against modem users, they just tend to be either A) lazy, or B) don't know any better. Personally, I come from the good ol days of using a 33.6 I'd go to college and be on a T1, and every summer I'd go back to using a 33.6 - and I sort of realized how easy it is to overlook loading times.
All this time (for like 4 years now) I've been making web pages. When I first started out, page loading time was a HUGE issue - for which I got praised many times for quick loading times. Now days I still optimize my page as much as possible since it's sort of a habit, but people couldn't care less. Other pages equivalent to mine are can be 5 to 10 times larger (in kilobytes) with less content. It's amazing how many people make web pages and don't even THINK about people using slow connections - and more often than not they don't care either.
Besides which, doesn't mozilla (and opera) have image blocking capabilities?
Re:How my friend had his hotmail acct hacked...
on
Hotmail Hacked
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· Score: 2, Funny
actually, that's why I always lie to answers of questions like that. Typically I have a smart ass answer that i would probably only think of.
Although I think Java is a good language, I think it's not very good for teaching at a college level. I consider myself lucky having gone through my college program in C++ right before their switch to Java. I have some resons for thinking like I do.
Java forces OOP down your throat. I'll admit that I like OOP (with the exception of the Fortran implementation), but I think it's a mistake to stuff it out front right off. Understanding how programs are structured and how the logic works is more important. In C++ you can have a simple assignment with a cout statment to show the results. With Java you immediatly have to start bouncing around with OOP. This assumes that every problem has an object oriented approach, which I think is very untrue. There are many times when a program is very strait foreward, and OOP should even be involved. C++ gives you the flexibility to choose your own path, but gives you the power in whatever way you choose.
Most importantly I think C++ is better for teaching because it forces you to learn about pointers. Now I hate pointers myself, but I understand that "this" points to "that" in memory, and that you allocate, and deallocate, or point it somewhere else. I mean probably the two most fundamental building blocks in a computer (non hardware wise) are the pointer and the datatype. Just from talking to underclassmen, I tend to get blank stares from them whenever I talk about ponters since they hardly understand the concept... which I think is pretty important.
I know C++ probably isn't going anywhere simply because it's flexible, powerful, (dangerous), and fairly efficent. But I wonder where Java will be if OOP loses popularity in favor of something better.
Or if they will both become obsolite once D#++ comes out being the successor to brainfuck. Yes, object oriented brainfuck, that's where the future is.
"Some advise quenching the red-hot blade in the urine of a red-haired boy"
Which brings me to the question, where in the hell do you find a red haired boy in the middle east? I'll admit I'm not culturally adept, but this strikes me as inconvineint since from what i know, most people in the middle east don't have red hair.
Boy: can I go now? I have to pee! Smith: dammit boy, shut up and wait for me to forge the sword.
sircam is not an Outlook virus. You can for instance download the attachment in Netscape's mail, and open it. Sircam doesn't rely on Outlook, since if it cannot find the outlook address book, it just uses the IE browser cache. Sircam is a trojan which is different, and usually prays upon less knowledgeable computer users --> most of whom use M$ outlook & and outlook making it much easier to spread the virus. I guess if you were using netscape only and there wasn't anything in the IE cache, then it wouldn't spread, it would simply sit around doing nothing.
you know the future truly sucks when you get up one morning and try to make a pot of coffee only to find the coffee pot display says "Hacked by Chinese".
still, you tend to run the risk of getting a build which has regressed farther. Getting nightly builds is sort of like playing darts - sometimes you get a good one, sometimes a bad. But that makes it more fun in my opinion.
I think the "end of innovation" is going a bit far. Although no one wants to hear it, big corperations innovate too. I feel that the "little guy" gets stepped on all to often, but we tend to simply ignore the time and money large corperations spend on what is more or less innovation (so they can make more money)
I wouldn't say that's the biggest problem with PNG. It's probably as accepted as anything else (I'd say as accepted as TIF in fact). Netscape (4+), Mozilla, Opera, IE, and pretty much any paint program will offer support them. I myself also consider gifs to be evil, so why do I still use gifs? One word TRANSPARENCY.
Sure PNG is supposed to support transparency, but use the above software and see how many of them crash and burn trying to do it. Mozilla has been fighting this for quite a while, and I think IE 6 Might support it. What I end up with is png for clear pictures (or black and white) jpeg for smaller complicated pictures, and gif for transparent pictures (or animated I suppose). Before png can replace gif, it has to do everything that a gif can (which it does) AND all of it has to be supported (which it is not), and of course you have to wait a while for everyone to upgrade... which will take a while.
Slashdot Mirror
hmm.... sometimes it seems like windows makes my 32 bit machine run like a pentium 100. Why switch to 64 bit code when you can get the junk performance just by running MS Word, Excel, Access and Mozilla all at the same time? If you want to save money you can run Mozilla twice =)
Well I'm glad SuSE got pulled out. I've never actually used it myself, but I've seen them doing good things. Despite what most people say, I think it's important that there be more than one major distro. Do you need a distro? Not really, but these are companies that not only work on Linux itself, but work on figuring out how to make installing Linux easier - and from my experience that's sometimes the hardest part. I've been using RedHat for a while (and a couple versions) and I have yet to have an install come off clean the first time without some stupid problem cropping up. On the other hand a friend of mine has been using SuSE for a while and has never had a problem. Maybe it's just luck, or maybe I'm doing something wrong... or maybe it's time I switched.
I like the lizard logo too
there is another problem with the CL, and that's the fact that you have to know the command. Stick an average person on a CL and of course they wouldn't know what to do, why would they? They aren't born knowing UNIX commands, and rarely do people even bother reading a manual before they use a computer. For those of us with experience using "man" that's not TOO much of a problem but most people would have a hard time with it. It also doesn't help with the fact that some of the UNIX commands are fairly cryptic, and/or don't make much sense (renaming a file for example). Most people probably don't want to remember a bunch of commands, they just want to use the computer, and when you've double clicked one icon, it's all the same - even if you have to go through a large number of stupid menus, it has a much lower learning curve, and lets face it - many people can't type very well (or like me: can't spell) which is another CLI issue.
In hindsight I think one of the most valuable things is I you learned to make what you wanted with what you didn't have. It always seemed like I din't quite have enough or the right parts but I always figured out how to make it in the end. The ammount of problem solving I did with Legos as a kid is really mind boggling, and I doubt I've ever had as much fun solving problems since. One thing I liked about the article is how it pointed out how there isn't a wrong way to play with Legos. That's really true, and I don't think I can even think of another toy as versitile and actually teaches you some things that help you later on in life.
Probably the worst thing I can do while cleaning is come across my old lego bin... I can never leave it alone and always waiste 3 hours or so doing something with it. I think that's happened to me 3 times over the years since I eventually gave them up as a kid
Person A: Hey, I just overclocked my Athlon!
Person B: Cool, how fast is it now?
Person A: Um... Actually I don't know.... Faster I guess
I agree with most of what you say, except that Microsoft didn't invent the browser and what not. True they didn't invent this stuff (which is probably why it doesn't all suck =) but no one really invented all that stuff. All of it builds on something that came before it, and in each arena MS has contributed to it, even if in a very small way.
you mean like IE fits on a floppy disk? yeah right
a generation raised on Microsofts products? I'll agree that most people start out on M$ products, but take a poll of how many people remember ANY of those products at Version 1 - I doubt you'll find many, and if you do find some, chances are they were scarred for life and use UNIX now.
I can see having a retro case, but not something that was origonally purple! If I were going to do something like this, I'd make it out of a toaster. One slot for floppies, one for cd's.
When I saw the word "cartoon" I was thinking, cool Zelda is going to get some cool anime type form! Unfortunatly Link is now the lost power puff girl.
Sorry, but no thanks.
I only trust PBS. I mean how can you not trust a network with "Sewing with Nancy" and that guy who paints "Happy little trees".
I really wonder if any of this really matters. I mean to me it seems like microsoft can do pretty much whatever they want and no matter how bad it is it ends up being a side note where the average person could care less. Now if president Bush had some equivalent scandal, people would demand his resignation and such. With the horrible security in just about anything relating to Microsoft, buggy software, and severely anti-competitive business practices - you'd THINK that MS would have a huge PR problem. In reality it seems to me that most people are either indifferent, or have only a slightly poor opinion of MS. People think I'm an anti-MS fanatic just because I say that 80% of their software is (in my opinion) crap. I really have to wonder how time after time MS can get away with this sort of thing with virtually no penalties.
maybe the Attorney General got suspicous when every 20th letter said "hacked by chinese".
They use Free BSD?
generally I've found that the majority of web pages don't really discriminate against modem users, they just tend to be either A) lazy, or B) don't know any better. Personally, I come from the good ol days of using a 33.6 I'd go to college and be on a T1, and every summer I'd go back to using a 33.6 - and I sort of realized how easy it is to overlook loading times.
All this time (for like 4 years now) I've been making web pages. When I first started out, page loading time was a HUGE issue - for which I got praised many times for quick loading times. Now days I still optimize my page as much as possible since it's sort of a habit, but people couldn't care less. Other pages equivalent to mine are can be 5 to 10 times larger (in kilobytes) with less content. It's amazing how many people make web pages and don't even THINK about people using slow connections - and more often than not they don't care either.
Besides which, doesn't mozilla (and opera) have image blocking capabilities?
actually, that's why I always lie to answers of questions like that. Typically I have a smart ass answer that i would probably only think of.
Although I think Java is a good language, I think it's not very good for teaching at a college level. I consider myself lucky having gone through my college program in C++ right before their switch to Java. I have some resons for thinking like I do.
Java forces OOP down your throat. I'll admit that I like OOP (with the exception of the Fortran implementation), but I think it's a mistake to stuff it out front right off. Understanding how programs are structured and how the logic works is more important. In C++ you can have a simple assignment with a cout statment to show the results. With Java you immediatly have to start bouncing around with OOP. This assumes that every problem has an object oriented approach, which I think is very untrue. There are many times when a program is very strait foreward, and OOP should even be involved. C++ gives you the flexibility to choose your own path, but gives you the power in whatever way you choose.
Most importantly I think C++ is better for teaching because it forces you to learn about pointers. Now I hate pointers myself, but I understand that "this" points to "that" in memory, and that you allocate, and deallocate, or point it somewhere else. I mean probably the two most fundamental building blocks in a computer (non hardware wise) are the pointer and the datatype. Just from talking to underclassmen, I tend to get blank stares from them whenever I talk about ponters since they hardly understand the concept... which I think is pretty important.
I know C++ probably isn't going anywhere simply because it's flexible, powerful, (dangerous), and fairly efficent. But I wonder where Java will be if OOP loses popularity in favor of something better.
Or if they will both become obsolite once D#++ comes out being the successor to brainfuck. Yes, object oriented brainfuck, that's where the future is.
Anyone know how long the Free BSD ports usually take?
"Some advise quenching the red-hot blade in the urine of a red-haired boy"
Which brings me to the question, where in the hell do you find a red haired boy in the middle east? I'll admit I'm not culturally adept, but this strikes me as inconvineint since from what i know, most people in the middle east don't have red hair.
Boy: can I go now? I have to pee!
Smith: dammit boy, shut up and wait for me to forge the sword.
Good... bad.... I'm the guy with the gun
- Army of Darkness
sircam is not an Outlook virus. You can for instance download the attachment in Netscape's mail, and open it. Sircam doesn't rely on Outlook, since if it cannot find the outlook address book, it just uses the IE browser cache. Sircam is a trojan which is different, and usually prays upon less knowledgeable computer users --> most of whom use M$ outlook & and outlook making it much easier to spread the virus. I guess if you were using netscape only and there wasn't anything in the IE cache, then it wouldn't spread, it would simply sit around doing nothing.
Okay, I just felt like pointing that out...
you know the future truly sucks when you get up one morning and try to make a pot of coffee only to find the coffee pot display says "Hacked by Chinese".
still, you tend to run the risk of getting a build which has regressed farther. Getting nightly builds is sort of like playing darts - sometimes you get a good one, sometimes a bad. But that makes it more fun in my opinion.
I think the "end of innovation" is going a bit far. Although no one wants to hear it, big corperations innovate too. I feel that the "little guy" gets stepped on all to often, but we tend to simply ignore the time and money large corperations spend on what is more or less innovation (so they can make more money)
Every game that is possible has been played before
Um, so... did I win? I don't want to waiste my time playing again.
I wouldn't say that's the biggest problem with PNG. It's probably as accepted as anything else (I'd say as accepted as TIF in fact). Netscape (4+), Mozilla, Opera, IE, and pretty much any paint program will offer support them. I myself also consider gifs to be evil, so why do I still use gifs? One word TRANSPARENCY.
Sure PNG is supposed to support transparency, but use the above software and see how many of them crash and burn trying to do it. Mozilla has been fighting this for quite a while, and I think IE 6 Might support it. What I end up with is png for clear pictures (or black and white) jpeg for smaller complicated pictures, and gif for transparent pictures (or animated I suppose). Before png can replace gif, it has to do everything that a gif can (which it does) AND all of it has to be supported (which it is not), and of course you have to wait a while for everyone to upgrade... which will take a while.