The University of Oklahoma's College of Engineering has required all newly-enrolling students to purchase laptop computers since the fall 1998 semester. I was part of a small test group at OU when I was a freshman in the fall of 1997. At that time, a few classes were offered in "laptop" versions that attempted to make use of the laptops. Several buildings were outfitted with wireless networks so that you could connect to the campus network and the Internet in many places in and around those buildings. I believe this network has been expanding to more buildings across the campus, but I don't know to what degree. The program initially met with a varying degree of success; it was cool to have class materials online and deliverable to your web browser, but it was also too easy (and tempting) to goof off. This was, in fact, how I discovered Slashdot. Adoption of the laptop program has been somewhat slow from my point of view; the College of Engineering has not introduced laptop sections of upper-level CS classes fast enough for me to benefit.
Lets keep in mind that these
machines will build literally anything you can imagine and yes you can build moving parts, complex
shapes that can not be made using any other method. We have even take CT and MRI data and converted
it a solid model that can be made on these machines. There are no limitations!
Really? So if I had the right data, I could manufacture a LCD screen, spaceship parts made of diamond, a pound cake, or even a living miniature replication of <supermodel>? Sorry, mister with the pointed hair, but I don't think we're there yet.
...that those who are in leadership roles in the open source and free software movements are not only capable of managing people; they are also very technically adept. No PHBs here! In many cases the leaders are the original authors of the project, and in most, the leaders have assumed their role only through the development community's collective respect of the leader's technical merit.
So while our (open-source/free) development communities do, in fact, have leaders, our leaders are, in fact, better.
A unified BSD ports/packaging system is definitely a good and logical step forward. Despite the differences in focus of each BSD flavor, I believe that a unified ports tree will stop a lot of duplication of work. If this goes down, we BSD people should hope to see more ported apps with less failed builds.
One thing I must mention, though -- and since all I know about is FreeBSD, this might not be true for the other BSD distros. There need to be both source and binary packages available, and there needs to be only a MINIMUM amount of disparity between the two. Currenly, there is too big of a difference in what you can get with the ports tree (source) and the packages collection (binaries). The way applications are named and organized is different in either place, and the selection differs, too. Any unified ports tree needs to make it simple to choose whether you want to build from sources or just install binaries -- and offer both choices for each app unless licensing issues would prevent it.
Being a programmer, I prefer to build most of my third-party apps from source. However, I might not want to wait for some of the bigger ports (kde2, for instance) to build. Installing binaries should be equally accessible.
They used to be different, and you will still find a lot of people claiming that they still are. IMHO they are now interchangable; use whatever you think sounds better.
One of the things that pisses me off the most is the time it takes to cast a simple spell in many newer RPGs. I was watching my friend play FF8 the other night, and it was just plain horrible (the spells). Note to all game developers: we do most of the casting in battles, where we want to see action. That's right, ACTION, not five-minute CG sequences. Stuff like that will only alienate a bunch of customers (I'm one) and hurt the genre.
Experts are predicting that this latest "geek chic" will lead to even further technological advances in the future
How many of us are going to be fooled by the coming wave of "geek chic" fashion design? Blame it on the opening-up of Internet society to the average person, or whatever, but it's coming. The world will be barraged with semi-sentient 'designers' and fashion industry marketroids, telling everyone that they want to be geeks and they can be geeks by wearing these clothes. Think about these fashion people:
They aren't geeks.
They don't know any geeks.
They have no idea how a geek really thinks.
How exactly are these people going to create geek clothing? Easy: They aren't. What's most unfortunate about this trend is the potential stampede of sheep...err, people...who think themselves geeks just because they're wearing the geek chic clothes. We certainly don't need Cherry Cheerleader and Joe FootballPlayer going around saying "Behold, I am geek"! The geek subsociety has traditionally been our refuge from those people. If we let this fad catch on, it will destroy our heritage. We aren't, and will never be, mainstream; anyone saying so is a liar.
You don't have to pay attention to dependencies, if you know that your use of the program won't need the newer library
Wow! I find it totally RIDICULOUS that I would have to worry about what library calls the prog makes. I like the power and flexibility that a Unix-like OS provides, but this is ridiculous./Rant.
I have to admit first off here that I haven't read up as much as I should about quantum computing. Nontheless, I find myself wondering: what will it be like writing software for a quantum computer? Will quantum machines even be stored-program computers?
otherwise grab
the latest and greatest from the "unstable" tree if you really need it
Look, I don't know if I did this wrong back in my Debian days, but I wanted to try just one package from unstable. Just ONE. Well, that required me to update to the unstable libc. Next, the new libc required me to update every other damn program to unstable. All for just one package. About that time, I tried FreeBSD, and the rest is history.
I wouldn't know how easy it is to put together a Linux distribution by hand; I haven't had enough experience with it to form any kind of educated opinion. However, I do know a bit about doing this with BSD -- FreeBSD in particular. It's pretty easy to do, actually. I went from zero to finish in just one day by reading sections from The Complete FreeBSD and by looking at the PicoBSD scripts. Sorry, no links as I've gotta run. I would suggest you include BSD in your considerations.
I think all the worry about protecting programmers from the dangers of multiple inheritance is about as stupid as protecting airline passengers from theor peanut bags ("Warning: May Contain Peanuts").
There are many other options. Here's one: governments have been contacted, and it's being covered up to prevent socioeconomic meltdown. Just a possibility...
Since no alien race has contacted us yet, they're probably all less advanced than we are.
Wow. Is humanity really this cocky?
How do you know we haven't been contacted by an alien race?
Assume temporarily that we have not been contacted. Maybe that's because they're more advanced than we are. For instance: Aliens:Humans::Humans:Roaches. Everything's relative here.
Should we educate them, and perhaps send religious missionaries? Or are these other lifeforms even capable of salvation?
I think that statement proves that all aliens are much more advanced than us!:)
Yes. I also recommend SecureCRT. I am evaluating it currently and will surely purchase it. Not only does it support SSH1/SSH2/Telnet, but it supports serial connections, making it a good replacement for that blasted HyperTerminal application. I affirm the statements of the post I'm replying to.
Note that PuTTY cannot handle the SSH2 and above protocols as yet. Their website says they are working on it, or that it is at least planned; I don't remember which.
So... What you are basicly saying is that when I'm going out to buy a new car, totally unprepared, and end up with a Ferarri because I told the salesman that "I want to drive really fast to work" the salesman is to blaim for selling me this Ferarri? Yeah right...
No. That's not what I'm claiming. The more appropriate analogy would be following:
So... What you are basicly saying is that when I'm going out to buy a new Ferarri, totally unprepared, and end up with the most expensive Ferarri because I got swept up in buzzwords and hype, the salesman is to blaim for selling me this Ferarri? Oh, I understand. Wow, SecretAsianMan, you really hit the head of the nail on that one!
Well, I'd be willing to bet that most BSD people would welcome additional growth to the community. After all, BSD thereby gets more users, attracts more developers, and gains more/better software. With the increasing popularity of Linux -- or if I may, free UNIX -- I can only see growth as inevitable as *BSD gets swept up in the whole thing.
However, there's something to be said when you've got such a small, tight community as the BSD communities. Take the FreeBSD community, for instance. It's decidedly the largest group of *BSD afficionados out there, but it's still tiny compared to the Linux community. You can still get in touch with all of the main hackers. Greg Lehey, who wrote the book on FreeBSD (that is, literally the one printed book), still participates on several of the official mailing lists and answers when contacted by e-mail. I'm a complete nobody in the FreeBSD community, but I've talked (e-mail) with Greg many times.
Let us savor these things, us BSD people, because like it or not, the times they are a-changin'. I hope we can be as good big as we have been small
Yes, you can actually hurt your sales by having the customer get into the "so why is it so cheap" way of thinking
I'm just arguing that trying to shake off that way of thinking by providing great cheap software is better than perpetuating that way of thinking. The commercial distro makers are, however, more interested in 'profit' than 'better'. All of this IMHO, of course.
I hate bigotted people who misunderstand what the word free means in free software
Ahem. FLAME ON!
I know all you moderators out there aren't going to be happy with this, but there are a lot of people out there, including me, who (omigod) think that free-as-in-beer is just as important, if not more, that free-as-in-freedom. I'm not saying that I'm an uberhacker, but I have learned quite a bit in the 10 years that I have been coding. Much of that knowledge has only been made possible through free-as-in-beer software. I 'grew up' as a programmer while in high school and the first years of college, when money was scarce. I didn't exactly have Kdollars lying around to buy operating systems and tools. And then I see a FreeBSD CD-ROM set at Hastings for around $17 and it says something to the effect of "Full-featured UNIX operating system, free compilers, free networking software, 1000's of free applicatons (and I mead beer). Everything you need to start soaking up that knowledge you so greatly desire. $17 for 4 CDs. HELLO!" If that CD had not been there, my life would be totally different at this point.
I'm not saying that the freedom issue isn't important. Sometimes we just get so caught up in the politics of it all that we forget how we got where we are.
"There's a sucker born every minute", the saying goes
How true this old adage must seem to many of us now. There is no telling how many people are going to be totally, unknowingly suckered by this one.
I can imagine it now; yes, imagine a company named Acme Corp. The traditional, pointy-haired IT manager at Acme has heard all about this new "line-uks" wave that's sweeping through the IT world. Of course, he wants his employees to "maintain a proactive stance towards technology" (read: hype and attempt to do something with all new buzzwords, something that we're taught by Micro$oft). He decides that his IT department should put Line-uks to work.
So he goes and shops around for Line-ucks. "Wow, there are so many of these Line-ucks-es; I'd better get the very best model." And instantly, he's hooked by the promise of "high availability". And he pays. Why? Because he's been taught over the years that better software costs more. He's actually attracted to the product because it is so pricey. Sucker!
Honestly, though: it's evil of Red Hat and the other commercial Linux distro-makers to take advantage of all these stupid people. Imagine what we could accomplish if more effort was actually made to educate these people instead of defund them. But that's never, ever going to happen, because like it or not, deep down, Red Hat, cronies, and my beloved BSD, Inc. are only Big Dumb Companies.
...I really got my big programming impetus when I met an old lady in the hospital who knew and had worked with Grace Hopper! Sadly, though, I didn't get her name; when I went back to see her the next day, she had already been discharged from the hospital. I'm not the religious type by any means, but I cannot attribute that magical encounter to chance alone...
Slashdot Mirror
The University of Oklahoma's College of Engineering has required all newly-enrolling students to purchase laptop computers since the fall 1998 semester. I was part of a small test group at OU when I was a freshman in the fall of 1997. At that time, a few classes were offered in "laptop" versions that attempted to make use of the laptops. Several buildings were outfitted with wireless networks so that you could connect to the campus network and the Internet in many places in and around those buildings. I believe this network has been expanding to more buildings across the campus, but I don't know to what degree. The program initially met with a varying degree of success; it was cool to have class materials online and deliverable to your web browser, but it was also too easy (and tempting) to goof off. This was, in fact, how I discovered Slashdot. Adoption of the laptop program has been somewhat slow from my point of view; the College of Engineering has not introduced laptop sections of upper-level CS classes fast enough for me to benefit.
Really? So if I had the right data, I could manufacture a LCD screen, spaceship parts made of diamond, a pound cake, or even a living miniature replication of <supermodel>? Sorry, mister with the pointed hair, but I don't think we're there yet.
...that those who are in leadership roles in the open source and free software movements are not only capable of managing people; they are also very technically adept. No PHBs here! In many cases the leaders are the original authors of the project, and in most, the leaders have assumed their role only through the development community's collective respect of the leader's technical merit.
So while our (open-source/free) development communities do, in fact, have leaders, our leaders are, in fact, better.
Moderate that up, PLEASE!
Are we not programmers? The endless license quarreling is making us lose touch with our souls. Let's shut up and write some code!
Honestly, I think the best license is this: "Do whatever the hell you want to do with this. I don't really care."
A unified BSD ports/packaging system is definitely a good and logical step forward. Despite the differences in focus of each BSD flavor, I believe that a unified ports tree will stop a lot of duplication of work. If this goes down, we BSD people should hope to see more ported apps with less failed builds.
One thing I must mention, though -- and since all I know about is Free BSD, this might not be true for the other BSD distros. There need to be both source and binary packages available, and there needs to be only a MINIMUM amount of disparity between the two. Currenly, there is too big of a difference in what you can get with the ports tree (source) and the packages collection (binaries). The way applications are named and organized is different in either place, and the selection differs, too. Any unified ports tree needs to make it simple to choose whether you want to build from sources or just install binaries -- and offer both choices for each app unless licensing issues would prevent it.
Being a programmer, I prefer to build most of my third-party apps from source. However, I might not want to wait for some of the bigger ports (kde2, for instance) to build. Installing binaries should be equally accessible.
They used to be different, and you will still find a lot of people claiming that they still are. IMHO they are now interchangable; use whatever you think sounds better.
One of the things that pisses me off the most is the time it takes to cast a simple spell in many newer RPGs. I was watching my friend play FF8 the other night, and it was just plain horrible (the spells). Note to all game developers: we do most of the casting in battles, where we want to see action. That's right, ACTION, not five-minute CG sequences. Stuff like that will only alienate a bunch of customers (I'm one) and hurt the genre.
Experts are predicting that this latest "geek chic" will lead to even further technological advances in the future
How many of us are going to be fooled by the coming wave of "geek chic" fashion design? Blame it on the opening-up of Internet society to the average person, or whatever, but it's coming. The world will be barraged with semi-sentient 'designers' and fashion industry marketroids, telling everyone that they want to be geeks and they can be geeks by wearing these clothes. Think about these fashion people:
- They aren't geeks.
- They don't know any geeks.
- They have no idea how a geek really thinks.
How exactly are these people going to create geek clothing? Easy: They aren't. What's most unfortunate about this trend is the potential stampede of sheep...err, people...who think themselves geeks just because they're wearing the geek chic clothes. We certainly don't need Cherry Cheerleader and Joe FootballPlayer going around saying "Behold, I am geek"! The geek subsociety has traditionally been our refuge from those people. If we let this fad catch on, it will destroy our heritage. We aren't, and will never be, mainstream; anyone saying so is a liar.All of that IMHO. Or maybe I should calm down. :P)
You don't have to pay attention to dependencies, if you know that your use of the program won't need the newer library
Wow! I find it totally RIDICULOUS that I would have to worry about what library calls the prog makes. I like the power and flexibility that a Unix-like OS provides, but this is ridiculous. /Rant.
I have to admit first off here that I haven't read up as much as I should about quantum computing. Nontheless, I find myself wondering: what will it be like writing software for a quantum computer? Will quantum machines even be stored-program computers?
otherwise grab the latest and greatest from the "unstable" tree if you really need it
Look, I don't know if I did this wrong back in my Debian days, but I wanted to try just one package from unstable. Just ONE. Well, that required me to update to the unstable libc. Next, the new libc required me to update every other damn program to unstable. All for just one package. About that time, I tried FreeBSD, and the rest is history.
I wouldn't know how easy it is to put together a Linux distribution by hand; I haven't had enough experience with it to form any kind of educated opinion. However, I do know a bit about doing this with BSD -- FreeBSD in particular. It's pretty easy to do, actually. I went from zero to finish in just one day by reading sections from The Complete FreeBSD and by looking at the PicoBSD scripts. Sorry, no links as I've gotta run. I would suggest you include BSD in your considerations.
I think all the worry about protecting programmers from the dangers of multiple inheritance is about as stupid as protecting airline passengers from theor peanut bags ("Warning: May Contain Peanuts").
We've got a couple options here...
There are many other options. Here's one: governments have been contacted, and it's being covered up to prevent socioeconomic meltdown. Just a possibility...
Since no alien race has contacted us yet, they're probably all less advanced than we are.
Wow. Is humanity really this cocky?
Should we educate them, and perhaps send religious missionaries? Or are these other lifeforms even capable of salvation?
I think that statement proves that all aliens are much more advanced than us! :)
Yes. I also recommend SecureCRT. I am evaluating it currently and will surely purchase it. Not only does it support SSH1/SSH2/Telnet, but it supports serial connections, making it a good replacement for that blasted HyperTerminal application. I affirm the statements of the post I'm replying to.
Note that PuTTY cannot handle the SSH2 and above protocols as yet. Their website says they are working on it, or that it is at least planned; I don't remember which.
So... What you are basicly saying is that when I'm going out to buy a new car, totally unprepared, and end up with a Ferarri because I told the salesman that "I want to drive really fast to work" the salesman is to blaim for selling me this Ferarri? Yeah right...
No. That's not what I'm claiming. The more appropriate analogy would be following:
So... What you are basicly saying is that when I'm going out to buy a new Ferarri, totally unprepared, and end up with the most expensive Ferarri because I got swept up in buzzwords and hype, the salesman is to blaim for selling me this Ferarri? Oh, I understand. Wow, SecretAsianMan, you really hit the head of the nail on that one!
Well, I'd be willing to bet that most BSD people would welcome additional growth to the community. After all, BSD thereby gets more users, attracts more developers, and gains more/better software. With the increasing popularity of Linux -- or if I may, free UNIX -- I can only see growth as inevitable as *BSD gets swept up in the whole thing.
However, there's something to be said when you've got such a small, tight community as the BSD communities. Take the FreeBSD community, for instance. It's decidedly the largest group of *BSD afficionados out there, but it's still tiny compared to the Linux community. You can still get in touch with all of the main hackers. Greg Lehey, who wrote the book on FreeBSD (that is, literally the one printed book), still participates on several of the official mailing lists and answers when contacted by e-mail. I'm a complete nobody in the FreeBSD community, but I've talked (e-mail) with Greg many times.
Let us savor these things, us BSD people, because like it or not, the times they are a-changin'. I hope we can be as good big as we have been small
Yes, you can actually hurt your sales by having the customer get into the "so why is it so cheap" way of thinking
I'm just arguing that trying to shake off that way of thinking by providing great cheap software is better than perpetuating that way of thinking. The commercial distro makers are, however, more interested in 'profit' than 'better'. All of this IMHO, of course.
I hate bigotted people who misunderstand what the word free means in free software
Ahem. FLAME ON!
I know all you moderators out there aren't going to be happy with this, but there are a lot of people out there, including me, who (omigod) think that free-as-in-beer is just as important, if not more, that free-as-in-freedom. I'm not saying that I'm an uberhacker, but I have learned quite a bit in the 10 years that I have been coding. Much of that knowledge has only been made possible through free-as-in-beer software. I 'grew up' as a programmer while in high school and the first years of college, when money was scarce. I didn't exactly have Kdollars lying around to buy operating systems and tools. And then I see a FreeBSD CD-ROM set at Hastings for around $17 and it says something to the effect of "Full-featured UNIX operating system, free compilers, free networking software, 1000's of free applicatons (and I mead beer). Everything you need to start soaking up that knowledge you so greatly desire. $17 for 4 CDs. HELLO!" If that CD had not been there, my life would be totally different at this point.
I'm not saying that the freedom issue isn't important. Sometimes we just get so caught up in the politics of it all that we forget how we got where we are.
I read it. Thanks for the information. I'm actually using DHCP (I have a cable modem), not PPP, but your information has helped out nonetheless.
Thanks everyone, for setting me straight about DHCP. :)
"There's a sucker born every minute", the saying goes
How true this old adage must seem to many of us now. There is no telling how many people are going to be totally, unknowingly suckered by this one.
I can imagine it now; yes, imagine a company named Acme Corp. The traditional, pointy-haired IT manager at Acme has heard all about this new "line-uks" wave that's sweeping through the IT world. Of course, he wants his employees to "maintain a proactive stance towards technology" (read: hype and attempt to do something with all new buzzwords, something that we're taught by Micro$oft). He decides that his IT department should put Line-uks to work.
So he goes and shops around for Line-ucks. "Wow, there are so many of these Line-ucks-es; I'd better get the very best model." And instantly, he's hooked by the promise of "high availability". And he pays. Why? Because he's been taught over the years that better software costs more. He's actually attracted to the product because it is so pricey. Sucker!
Honestly, though: it's evil of Red Hat and the other commercial Linux distro-makers to take advantage of all these stupid people. Imagine what we could accomplish if more effort was actually made to educate these people instead of defund them. But that's never, ever going to happen, because like it or not, deep down, Red Hat, cronies, and my beloved BSD, Inc. are only Big Dumb Companies.
...I really got my big programming impetus when I met an old lady in the hospital who knew and had worked with Grace Hopper! Sadly, though, I didn't get her name; when I went back to see her the next day, she had already been discharged from the hospital. I'm not the religious type by any means, but I cannot attribute that magical encounter to chance alone...