Overpackaging is just a tiny sliver of the waste this brave new digital world has brought. We were supposed to have "paperless" offices. But instead computers have made printing so easy that nobody thinks twice about printing anything out and we end up with more waste.
Why would you teach beginners something that they would never use, rather then something they would use everyday as programmers?
Because the point of *teaching* is for the student to *learn* the general concepts. That's why there are such things as intro courses. Because shoving info into the brain != learning.
Umm... Java is pure C/C++ syntax.
Um...wrong. Sure, superficially, a lot of the common flow control and scoping constructs use the same tokens, like braces and parenthesis, and some of the operators are the same. But that is where it stops. Method, variable and class declarations and definitions are very different. Java has no operator overloading or pointers, so all those operators go out the door. It has some unique keywords and operators and concepts. There is no such thing as structs or memory allocation, and besides a handful of primitives, everything else is a full-fledged object.
This is simply not true. I worked as a TA for an intro programming class taught in C++, and they never even mentioned pointers. The only discussion of memory was when I would explain to the students why their programs crashed when they went beyond the bounds of an array. Otherwise, they were perfectly functional without any such knowledge.
And likewise you can "learn" to drive without knowing with the lines on the road or signs mean. I would really like to be present to see how exactly C++ was taught without the mention of pointers or memory, and whether the "teaching" was actually resulting in learning and understanding, or just rote copying by the students. IMO to learn and use C/C++ *correctly*, an understanding of memory allocation, and pointers is fundamental and prerequisite. Arrays and objects themselves don't make sense in a C++ world without mention of memory allocation and pointers, and I can only guess that students were just blindly trusting the instructor that things worked the way they did instead of understanding. Learning C++ as a beginning language is like learning to drive a normal car, on a tank. Sure, in *general* things will be the same: you still need to know how to accelerate and decelerate and turn. But all the mechanisms will be different: you will have complicated levers and guages; and you will randomly blow up or smash stuff without understanding.
Of course, to be competent in C++ requires a thorough understanding of memory issues, but we're talking about beginners here.
Still, IMHO, the risk of being distracted by confusing high-level stuff, and the "scare" factor, indicate to me that C++ is not the ideal beginning language. I played with BASIC and officially "learned" on Pascal. Sure I don't use those today, but Pascal was really useful in easily cementing the general concepts.
But even the DUMBEST bot's solution is the optimal one - randomness. How can you apply a heuristic to randomness? How can you possibly "guess" what the opponent is going to do?
Congratulations England! You have now reached the pinnacle of stupidity previously occupied solely by the US law system. You may now stop flaming us ignorant Americans and join our ranks in trolling, and in making the presumption that we invented everything, and are better than everybody.
Is this a joke? I mean, if the "optimal" solution is a random distribution, then what possible good can using a heuristic to discover a "tendency" in the opponent be? The only thing you could possibly discover is flaws in the random number generator.
Some revolutions just aren't that tangible. Look around you. I bet a lot of what you see is made out of some form of plastic. Yet, who ever heard of the "plastic" revolution? Or how about the synthetic textiles revolution? The strength of many "revolutions" often lies in the fact that they are taken for granted. Perhaps we don't think there is a revolution now...but in a 100 years we will all be talking about the "digital revolution".
Did anybody actually/read/ the article? Hannibal argues that asking whether it is obsolete is not even a meaningful question. x86 was obsolete as soon as there was something more convenient to use. But that's not going to be really relevant anymore because of the advent of third generation chips which will support whatever ISA you want. If you don't like x86, use something else. People have been making fast, successful, "obsolete" x86 chips since x86 was around. Just look at AMD's and Intel's latest processors for evidence of that. The question is whether x86 will be relevant or not.
I'm still waiting for an IM client that doesn't SUCK. Resources that is. Every one I've used is an atrocious resource hog...especially ICQ with all it's bells and whistles and garish eye-gauging UI.
How about a good ole command line client? Messages (or notices of messages) could just pop up on the command line. Enter a command or two to look through the list of messages. Enter another command to set up a "talk"-like chat.
Well, actually I've travelled to at least 10 countries, my father being in the military. By the way he's *from* Calcutta...so yes, I've been to India.
But you cannot doubt that the market affects culture globally, when there is a McDonalds in communist Beijing, and Hindu New Delhi (where it is anathema to eat cow meat), and when the French have been trying to "cleanse" themselves of Americanisms for decades now.
Re:I've got a bridge to sell you
on
Mattel Spyware
·
· Score: 2
"If all it sent was a registration number, why would it need PGP"
Um, perhaps to ensure nobody sniffed the data on the wire maybe??
The point is, just because it CAN be done, doesn't mean it is happening. Slashdot gets all fired up about all sorts of hypotheticals then looks stupid when that isn't the case.
Damn, ANOTHER version of Myst? First it's Myst, then Riven, then Myst Gold, Myst Online Edition, Myst Still the Same Edition, Myst We've Played this Enough Already
Now Myst 3d? Give me a break. The only thing worse than a boring serial plotline...is repeating that over and over...
Couldn't they have made a new story at least? All those images look straight out of the original Myst. Who wants to play Myst all over *again* but just in 3D?
Ok, this is partly Slashdot's fault for labeling this article with such a misleading title. No, this is not spyware. From what the rep says, information only goes TO your computer. The only thing that comes FROM it is some registration number, the last time contact was made being used to see if an upgrade is available.
This is no different than when you start up some antivirus software and it wants to check for updates. Many programs do this sort of this. Just because this "technology" (wow, what a "technology" talking to a server is) COULD send sensitive information doesn't mean it DOES. Heck, ANY native app can send sensitive information somewhere. So just pre-emptively cool down.
I don't think you can waive rights like that, can you? I mean, if somebody has me agree that I will not sue them if they attack me, and then sneaks into my house and attacks me, then does their private contract really overrule federal law???
HINT: If you're married to someone who won't let you buy your own Lego sets, have a kid. Then you can play with your child's Legos. My son is only 2 years old & "his" collection is already almost as big as "mine". That also applies to model trains.
I'm not married, but my girlfried does have a younger brother that stays over sometimes. So we're always buying stuff and using him as an excuse. "Boy, wouldn't Paul like some legos to play with when he comes over next?" "I bet Paul would like that board game. We should get it and play test it" "Paul would really think this video game is cool. Let's get it"
We all know all the GOOD pieces were in the original space series of the 80s. Now they have ludicrously stupid garish neon glowing crap, and some stupid Time Traveller's series which apparently was just created because they had no imagination and decided to just throw pieces from all their other series together to make a new series.
God help children today...
I still hold a grudge against my mom for giving my Legos away to charity when I "grew up". I still want my fscking Legos...
Slashdot Mirror
Overpackaging is just a tiny sliver of the waste this brave new digital world has brought. We were supposed to have "paperless" offices. But instead computers have made printing so easy that nobody thinks twice about printing anything out and we end up with more waste.
Because the point of *teaching* is for the student to *learn* the general concepts. That's why there are such things as intro courses. Because shoving info into the brain != learning.
Um...wrong. Sure, superficially, a lot of the common flow control and scoping constructs use the same tokens, like braces and parenthesis, and some of the operators are the same. But that is where it stops. Method, variable and class declarations and definitions are very different. Java has no operator overloading or pointers, so all those operators go out the door. It has some unique keywords and operators and concepts. There is no such thing as structs or memory allocation, and besides a handful of primitives, everything else is a full-fledged object.
And likewise you can "learn" to drive without knowing with the lines on the road or signs mean. I would really like to be present to see how exactly C++ was taught without the mention of pointers or memory, and whether the "teaching" was actually resulting in learning and understanding, or just rote copying by the students. IMO to learn and use C/C++ *correctly*, an understanding of memory allocation, and pointers is fundamental and prerequisite. Arrays and objects themselves don't make sense in a C++ world without mention of memory allocation and pointers, and I can only guess that students were just blindly trusting the instructor that things worked the way they did instead of understanding. Learning C++ as a beginning language is like learning to drive a normal car, on a tank. Sure, in *general* things will be the same: you still need to know how to accelerate and decelerate and turn. But all the mechanisms will be different: you will have complicated levers and guages; and you will randomly blow up or smash stuff without understanding.
Still, IMHO, the risk of being distracted by confusing high-level stuff, and the "scare" factor, indicate to me that C++ is not the ideal beginning language. I played with BASIC and officially "learned" on Pascal. Sure I don't use those today, but Pascal was really useful in easily cementing the general concepts.
But even the DUMBEST bot's solution is the optimal one - randomness. How can you apply a heuristic to randomness? How can you possibly "guess" what the opponent is going to do?
Congratulations England! You have now reached the pinnacle of stupidity previously occupied solely by the US law system. You may now stop flaming us ignorant Americans and join our ranks in trolling, and in making the presumption that we invented everything, and are better than everybody.
Now that just leaves Canada...
We have all sorts of encryption and compression to keep our wireless communications secure...to aliens we must just seem like line noise...
Homer's brain: Rock. Nothing beats rock. Go rock!
Homer: ROCK!
Bart: Paper
Homer: DOH!
Is this a joke? I mean, if the "optimal" solution is a random distribution, then what possible good can using a heuristic to discover a "tendency" in the opponent be? The only thing you could possibly discover is flaws in the random number generator.
I bought some nice quiet Panaflo fans. You can't even hear them, they're great.
However, when my 52x CD ROM is accessed it spins up like a jet engine.
Some revolutions just aren't that tangible. Look around you. I bet a lot of what you see is made out of some form of plastic. Yet, who ever heard of the "plastic" revolution? Or how about the synthetic textiles revolution? The strength of many "revolutions" often lies in the fact that they are taken for granted. Perhaps we don't think there is a revolution now...but in a 100 years we will all be talking about the "digital revolution".
[spaceship lands on the burnings ruin of a once flourishing planet]
[2 aliens come out of the ship]
Alien1: Wow...this planet is in ruins, but from the wreckage I can guess that once a properous and flourishing culture lived here.
Alien2: No...I searched all recorded data and only found meaningless random garbage. Let's go home.
[aliens enter ship and fly away]
"Now, why can't Corel, Lotus, Sun, etc. band together and reverse-engineer Microsoft's file formats properly?"
Because the formats suck...?
...but can't you do word processing 10 times faster on a 330 mhz machine than on a 33 mhz machine??
Did anybody actually /read/ the article? Hannibal argues that asking whether it is obsolete is not even a meaningful question. x86 was obsolete as soon as there was something more convenient to use. But that's not going to be really relevant anymore because of the advent of third generation chips which will support whatever ISA you want. If you don't like x86, use something else. People have been making fast, successful, "obsolete" x86 chips since x86 was around. Just look at AMD's and Intel's latest processors for evidence of that. The question is whether x86 will be relevant or not.
Man, first its kids getting all hopped up on "Placebo", now this "Wireless" stuff!? When will the madness end?!
I'm still waiting for an IM client that doesn't SUCK. Resources that is. Every one I've used is an atrocious resource hog...especially ICQ with all it's bells and whistles and garish eye-gauging UI.
How about a good ole command line client? Messages (or notices of messages) could just pop up on the command line. Enter a command or two to look through the list of messages. Enter another command to set up a "talk"-like chat.
dammit, where are my moderator points
somebody moderate this up....
THIS IS THE FBI. STAY WHERE YOU ARE. WE ARE SENDING A SQUAD TO APPREHEND YOU.
"Lameness filter encountered. Post aborted.
PLEASE DON'T USE SO MANY CAPS. USING CAPS IS LIKE YELLING!"
I guess Slashdot doesn't know what being facetious is.
Well, actually I've travelled to at least 10 countries, my father being in the military. By the way he's *from* Calcutta...so yes, I've been to India.
But you cannot doubt that the market affects culture globally, when there is a McDonalds in communist Beijing, and Hindu New Delhi (where it is anathema to eat cow meat), and when the French have been trying to "cleanse" themselves of Americanisms for decades now.
"If all it sent was a registration number, why would it need PGP"
Um, perhaps to ensure nobody sniffed the data on the wire maybe??
The point is, just because it CAN be done, doesn't mean it is happening. Slashdot gets all fired up about all sorts of hypotheticals then looks stupid when that isn't the case.
"or she's waaaay smarter than she's let on for the past 8 years."
Or, given the content of her article, she's way smarter than the record and media companies have allowed to let us on...
Damn, ANOTHER version of Myst? First it's Myst, then Riven, then Myst Gold, Myst Online Edition, Myst Still the Same Edition, Myst We've Played this Enough Already
Now Myst 3d? Give me a break. The only thing worse than a boring serial plotline...is repeating that over and over...
Couldn't they have made a new story at least? All those images look straight out of the original Myst. Who wants to play Myst all over *again* but just in 3D?
Ok, this is partly Slashdot's fault for labeling this article with such a misleading title. No, this is not spyware. From what the rep says, information only goes TO your computer. The only thing that comes FROM it is some registration number, the last time contact was made being used to see if an upgrade is available.
This is no different than when you start up some antivirus software and it wants to check for updates. Many programs do this sort of this. Just because this "technology" (wow, what a "technology" talking to a server is) COULD send sensitive information doesn't mean it DOES. Heck, ANY native app can send sensitive information somewhere. So just pre-emptively cool down.
I don't think you can waive rights like that, can you? I mean, if somebody has me agree that I will not sue them if they attack me, and then sneaks into my house and attacks me, then does their private contract really overrule federal law???
I'm not married, but my girlfried does have a younger brother that stays over sometimes. So we're always buying stuff and using him as an excuse. "Boy, wouldn't Paul like some legos to play with when he comes over next?" "I bet Paul would like that board game. We should get it and play test it" "Paul would really think this video game is cool. Let's get it"
Feh! Just the house-building junk.
We all know all the GOOD pieces were in the original space series of the 80s. Now they have ludicrously stupid garish neon glowing crap, and some stupid Time Traveller's series which apparently was just created because they had no imagination and decided to just throw pieces from all their other series together to make a new series.
God help children today...
I still hold a grudge against my mom for giving my Legos away to charity when I "grew up". I still want my fscking Legos...