Alright, I'm tired of hearing the same old arguement over and over again, so here's the reasons I use Kazaa now instead of buying CDs (I own several hundred CDs btw).
First, I'm into trance, a form of eletronic music, that I can't seem to buy ANYWHERE, not even online. Sure I can find some albums every once and awhile, but most of the time the stores have never heard of what I'm looking for, can't get it, or it will take weeks to get, etc...
Second, in the electronic music spectrum, there's alot of stuff I don't like. I used to try buying CDs, then find out they were junk. Waste of money. Sure, I'd buy CDs of artists I liked that I could actually get ahold of, but I'm listening to alot of bootlegs and things from Europe that can't be purchased, at least in the USA...
Third, I'm poor. Now more than ever, it's difficult being a college student. I couldn't buy albums at all (maybe a couple a year) if I even wanted to. I'm sure alot of other people feel the same way. Most of the people who are pirating on Kazaa (including me) I bet would not buy the album of the person they were pirating anyway, either because they don't like it that much, it's just something novelty they wanted, or they're too poor to go out and actually buy it. You can argue then that the person should not have that recording, but the artist still is not losing money anyways and perhaps smaller ones gain from sharing their music to people who would have never heard it otherwise.
Fourth, everywhere I look, record sales are booming. They're having no problems pushing CDs, even though they're generally $3 - $5 more than 5 - 10 years ago when I was in my teen popular artist CD buying phase.
The only thing I can find in my local record stores are asshole employees, limited selection (plenty of the MTV crap), and high prices. I could buy online, but it's more of the same except the salesperson is taken out and replaced by phony reviews.
I'm glad Kazaa exists, it has opened me up to music I would not have found otherwise and allows me to get my hands on things I wouldn't be able to get my hands on.
I find it a constant source of amazment that a group of people who think nothing of daming rivers for electricity to run their computers, (one of the more environmently friendly forms of energy creation actually).
How is tinkering with genetic codes more 'playing god' then creating new lakes where there were none before, changing ecological niches, probably causing new species to evolve, to fit the new ecological niches created.
How about the effect from electomagnetic fields? New roads through the countryside?
Face it people, we're playing God. We always have. Chaos theory argues that our existance on this planet will change things, even if we all stood perfectly still and didn't move for all our lives.
Like any technology, there will be ethical considerations, and we'll screw it up occasionaly.
Can we cause irreperable damage? Probably. Can we use the technology to save ourselves? Probably.
On the other hand, one of those cosmic rays could zap one of us just right and randomly cause any given mutation "naturally". Does that make it OK?
Let's face it, we already have plenty of technologies that let us wipe out the planet earth. Anyone who feels like it can use one of them, or the new one. What this gives us is a whole new way to solve problems.
Being an optimist, I like to assume that we will cause more good then harm from new techologies.
Unfortunatly, the media finds it easier to sell (insert medium here) using bad news. So we all hear about 'clones' being evil (most of which assume a clone will be of the memorex variety, not the identical twin reality), and nanotech will destroy the earth, and the internet will cause our children to become porn loving, rocket launcher shooting, black clothing wearing, 3l337 hax0rz.
I find it suprising that so many/.ers are biting on the same story we all rebel against when it's applied to us (internet bad, internet geeks evil) when it's applied to genetic engineering.
Nuff Said.
--
If the internet routes around failure, why does "www.microsoft.com" resolve? - me
It took me a while to figure out what this article is talking about. When the author says "free software" what he means is _not_ the same free as the FSF. He actually means "getting commercial software for free" and not "free software like Linux." The problem with this whole thesis is that I just can't imagine that it's particularly true of Linux writers, because the amount of money you save by getting a free copy of RedHat or Mandrake is pretty trivial, since you can just download them for free off the net.
However, in the world of non-free software, where "review copies" of software can cost hundreds or thousands of dollars, it gets a lot more tricky. I have had plenty of personal experience with people (myself included!) who want to write reviews of product X in order to get a free copy. And that can definitely influence what you write...
"I'm not joking. I'm really running for President." - Pat Robertson
Well, going out on a limb here, I sincerely do not mean this as a troll. I am both a user of Windows and Linux, and I don't lean zealously in either direction. But, if nothing else, at least with Windows there's a large company with financial interest behind it all. Sure, Windows sucks in lots of ways, but at least you won't find them generally working toward what customers want.
With Linux, it's a bit scarier. Not so much with the kernel as with desktop environments and applications. With WordPerfect for Linux, I felt like I was just being used as a pawn by Corel to get a foothold in a new market, and the quality of the software was secondary. Miguel, of Gnome fame, often sounds an overly idealistic college student. It makes me stop and think "Should I really be letting this guy determine the direction of the software my company uses?" Sure, you can pick and choose different products, but with Windows you don't have to. If you go with Windows 2000 or XP and Microsoft Office (or just Word) then you don't have to worry about making the wrong choice. There's often too much personal agenda behind open source software for Linux.
"Life simply cannot exist in the solar system" - Dan Quayle
People, people, people: based on what we know about life what you say is fairly true. However, it is what we don't know about how life is formed and in what forms it may take that will be clincher in discovering life other than our own. We know that for life to exist in a form that we know it, we need conditions that are similar to what we find on earth. However, there is no evidence to support a conclusive claim that life cannot exist in environments that are dissimilar from where we exist. Life may very well exist on mars, but it may be in a form we have yet to discover. Scientist are always looking for water as signs to point to the possibility for life elsewhere. Maybe there is another ideal chemical combination that may also harvest life.
"I can't argue that I'm not an idiot." - Jon Katz
Don't judge Perl based on the article
on
Happy Birthday Perl!
·
· Score: 4, Offtopic
Look, a lot of you people come from what I call the Computer Science Student mentality. This unfortunately something I've noticed as a side effect of the way computer science is taught in most schools. It's quite unfortunate, because that clearly isn't the aim of the Professor's when they are teaching classes this way.
I'll use my school as an example. When I started at the University of Dayton, about 7 years ago, every class was taught in ADA. It was a horrible horrible expierence. The ADA compilers were horribly lacking at the time, and anybody who has done any work in ADA will know that it is an extremely strict and picky language. That has it's good and bad sides when it comes to teaching programming, but I'll save that for a different discussion. I had no problems, since, well, I had a good solid 4 years for Pascal and C/C++ programming experience before I even started college, but this seriously affected the other students in my class.
The problem was, about two years into the program, my school decided (thank god) to switch the department over to C++. This was a great move, because now the students were being taught a language that they could actually apply in the real world (beyond the confines of the Wright Patterson Air Force base anyway). It worked out quite well for the newer students, but my classmates were blindsided. Most of them suffered through half a semester of C (the other half of the semester was 360 assembler) and never even touched upon C++. They should have just been able to pick up a C++ book, apply the concepts they learned from their ADA classes and the syntax from the C++ book and their C course and move on, but most of them had a hard time doing it.
Why was that? They all knew the concepts. They all knew how to write their algorithms, and their trees, and their stacks and queues. Yeah, they weren't taught how to write real software, but they clearly knew the basics. I spent more time helping others learn these concepts than I did doing my own homework the first two years, so I know what they were capable of from first hand experience.
The problem was entirely in their minds. C++ is a huge ugly beast, and it is a bit imposing when you first start. But if you've got two solid years of programming behind you, it should be a relatively smooth and easy transition. Most of them didn't realize this though. They were scared of C++, they were scared of new languages, and they suffered as a result.
The simple fact of the matter is, if you know one language, you know them all. It's not the syntax that makes the difference, it's the concepts that you express within the framework of the language's syntax that are the real guts of programming. My classmates took awhile to realize this (and I'm sure many of them still don't). That's the same thing with Ruby, or Python, or Perl, or just about any language. Unless you are making the jump from procedural to OOP, or OOP to Functional for the first time, you *CAN* pick up a book and learn a new language in a days time. The only thing stopping you is yourself.
Now, the other part of this is, why would you do that? I love learning new languages, and I love learning new languages for a few reasons. These reasons apply to every programmer, and I honestly don't understand why some people are so opposed to learning something new. I guess that's what seperates a good programmer from a bad programmer. So if you want to know why you should learn Perl, or LISP, or Haskell, or even Visual Basic, I'll tell you why.
1. It helps keep your skills in tip top shape. Perusing a computer manual may remind you of algorithms or techniques you haven't used in a long time and forgotten.
2. You always seem to learn something new. Not some new technical trick that only works in one lanuage (although that definitely happens), but just a different way of approaching problems that sometimes can transcend language boundaries.
3. You may find a new language that allows you to get the job done faster!
4. You're enhanced knowlege of languages looks great on your resume no matter what you use as your primary language.
5. You learn the way other people think. And I don't want to gloss over this one. As a programmer, you frequently have to work with other programmers. Learning new languages is a *GREAT* way to see how other people do things. To learn the way other people think, so to speak. By learning Perl and Smalltalk, you start to learn why people in those communities are so die hard about OOP programming styles. By learning LISP or Haskell you start to learn why Functional styles even exist! And it all comes back full circle. Techniques I learned from Haskell I now use when writing C++ programs and vice versa. It only made my C++ code better.
Knowlege is power, and learning new languages is one (of many) ways of increasing your knowlege. Go ahead and try it, even if you think you won't use the language, and even if you're just starting out and don't think the transition from your learning language to a new one will be easy. You just might be surprised by how much you already know, and how much you have yet to learn. That's the real benefit of it.
It's overkill, of course. But you can never have too much overkill." - Anonymous Slashdot Coward
Because it has all the great functional features that can make Lisp programmers happy.
Because it has a wonderful OO model which can make all OO programmers happy.
Because it has super fast compilers that can make C and C++ programmers happy.
Because it is great for imperative programming and for functional programming.
Because it is great for procedural programming and for OO programming.
Because it is as multiplatform and portable as Java.
Because it is designed to please everyone without compromising on anything, and, put more simply, because it can reconciliate the C, Java, Lisp and C++ community.
Because it can even be used indifferently as a scripting or a system language.
Because it is great for teaching AND for the real world.
Because its compilers are libre software and its design and developement are made in a very open fashion.
--
"buckle your seatbelt, dorothy - kansas is going bye-bye."
...is to film the area in question twice: before and after. Then superimpose the two images, you would be able to visually "subtract" the heat-loss giving an idea of the effectiveness of your insulation.
;-)
Yeah, but remember these are ~64MB. So that would take what? 60 seconds? Not that bad considering you can hold a shiat load more than a floppy, with no drive to mess with.
I sometimes wonder if my thoughts are encrypted (by whom? God?) and thus a violation of the DMCA.
Personally, I long for the day when *all* thoughts are clear text and can be read by an organic Tempest-like device. That way I could read my sysadmin's thoughts, solve all sorts of complex coding problems and fix my *own* gosh-darn Win9x workstation.
At my company developers are called "archtiectural engineers." We also have full-time architects that *don't* code which are like project managers. The screwy thing is the coders ("archtiectural engineers") are supposed to leave their individual fingerprints on their projects, whatever that's supposed to mean. In the end, it just tramples on the domain of the architects leaving everyone scratching their heads wondering who's doing what. It's sort of like a "doctor-nurse." Makes no sense: you're either one or the other, not both. The engineers should simply be called that and should build out what the architects design, not try to design and build their own projects.
Slashdot Mirror
Alright, I'm tired of hearing the same old arguement over and over again, so here's the reasons I use Kazaa now instead of buying CDs (I own several hundred CDs btw).
First, I'm into trance, a form of eletronic music, that I can't seem to buy ANYWHERE, not even online. Sure I can find some albums every once and awhile, but most of the time the stores have never heard of what I'm looking for, can't get it, or it will take weeks to get, etc...
Second, in the electronic music spectrum, there's alot of stuff I don't like. I used to try buying CDs, then find out they were junk. Waste of money. Sure, I'd buy CDs of artists I liked that I could actually get ahold of, but I'm listening to alot of bootlegs and things from Europe that can't be purchased, at least in the USA...
Third, I'm poor. Now more than ever, it's difficult being a college student. I couldn't buy albums at all (maybe a couple a year) if I even wanted to. I'm sure alot of other people feel the same way. Most of the people who are pirating on Kazaa (including me) I bet would not buy the album of the person they were pirating anyway, either because they don't like it that much, it's just something novelty they wanted, or they're too poor to go out and actually buy it. You can argue then that the person should not have that recording, but the artist still is not losing money anyways and perhaps smaller ones gain from sharing their music to people who would have never heard it otherwise.
Fourth, everywhere I look, record sales are booming. They're having no problems pushing CDs, even though they're generally $3 - $5 more than 5 - 10 years ago when I was in my teen popular artist CD buying phase.
The only thing I can find in my local record stores are asshole employees, limited selection (plenty of the MTV crap), and high prices. I could buy online, but it's more of the same except the salesperson is taken out and replaced by phony reviews.
I'm glad Kazaa exists, it has opened me up to music I would not have found otherwise and allows me to get my hands on things I wouldn't be able to get my hands on.
I find it a constant source of amazment that a group of people who think nothing of daming rivers for electricity to run their computers, (one of the more environmently friendly forms of energy creation actually).
/.ers are biting on the same story we all rebel against when it's applied to us (internet bad, internet geeks evil) when it's applied to genetic engineering.
How is tinkering with genetic codes more 'playing god' then creating new lakes where there were none before, changing ecological niches, probably causing new species to evolve, to fit the new ecological niches created.
How about the effect from electomagnetic fields? New roads through the countryside?
Face it people, we're playing God. We always have. Chaos theory argues that our existance on this planet will change things, even if we all stood perfectly still and didn't move for all our lives.
Like any technology, there will be ethical considerations, and we'll screw it up occasionaly.
Can we cause irreperable damage? Probably. Can we use the technology to save ourselves? Probably.
On the other hand, one of those cosmic rays could zap one of us just right and randomly cause any given mutation "naturally". Does that make it OK?
Let's face it, we already have plenty of technologies that let us wipe out the planet earth. Anyone who feels like it can use one of them, or the new one. What this gives us is a whole new way to solve problems.
Being an optimist, I like to assume that we will cause more good then harm from new techologies.
Unfortunatly, the media finds it easier to sell (insert medium here) using bad news. So we all hear about 'clones' being evil (most of which assume a clone will be of the memorex variety, not the identical twin reality), and nanotech will destroy the earth, and the internet will cause our children to become porn loving, rocket launcher shooting, black clothing wearing, 3l337 hax0rz.
I find it suprising that so many
Nuff Said.
-- If the internet routes around failure, why does "www.microsoft.com" resolve? - me
It took me a while to figure out what this article is talking about. When the author says "free software" what he means is _not_ the same free as the FSF. He actually means "getting commercial software for free" and not "free software like Linux." The problem with this whole thesis is that I just can't imagine that it's particularly true of Linux writers, because the amount of money you save by getting a free copy of RedHat or Mandrake is pretty trivial, since you can just download them for free off the net.
However, in the world of non-free software, where "review copies" of software can cost hundreds or thousands of dollars, it gets a lot more tricky. I have had plenty of personal experience with people (myself included!) who want to write reviews of product X in order to get a free copy. And that can definitely influence what you write...
"I'm not joking. I'm really running for President." - Pat Robertson
C'mon Taco... high time for a LOTR/Tolkien icon on slashdot methinks...
Well, going out on a limb here, I sincerely do not mean this as a troll. I am both a user of Windows and Linux, and I don't lean zealously in either direction. But, if nothing else, at least with Windows there's a large company with financial interest behind it all. Sure, Windows sucks in lots of ways, but at least you won't find them generally working toward what customers want.
With Linux, it's a bit scarier. Not so much with the kernel as with desktop environments and applications. With WordPerfect for Linux, I felt like I was just being used as a pawn by Corel to get a foothold in a new market, and the quality of the software was secondary. Miguel, of Gnome fame, often sounds an overly idealistic college student. It makes me stop and think "Should I really be letting this guy determine the direction of the software my company uses?" Sure, you can pick and choose different products, but with Windows you don't have to. If you go with Windows 2000 or XP and Microsoft Office (or just Word) then you don't have to worry about making the wrong choice. There's often too much personal agenda behind open source software for Linux.
"Life simply cannot exist in the solar system" - Dan Quayle
People, people, people: based on what we know about life what you say is fairly true. However, it is what we don't know about how life is formed and in what forms it may take that will be clincher in discovering life other than our own. We know that for life to exist in a form that we know it, we need conditions that are similar to what we find on earth. However, there is no evidence to support a conclusive claim that life cannot exist in environments that are dissimilar from where we exist. Life may very well exist on mars, but it may be in a form we have yet to discover. Scientist are always looking for water as signs to point to the possibility for life elsewhere. Maybe there is another ideal chemical combination that may also harvest life.
"I can't argue that I'm not an idiot." - Jon Katz
Look, a lot of you people come from what I call the Computer Science Student mentality. This unfortunately something I've noticed as a side effect of the way computer science is taught in most schools. It's quite unfortunate, because that clearly isn't the aim of the Professor's when they are teaching classes this way.
I'll use my school as an example. When I started at the University of Dayton, about 7 years ago, every class was taught in ADA. It was a horrible horrible expierence. The ADA compilers were horribly lacking at the time, and anybody who has done any work in ADA will know that it is an extremely strict and picky language. That has it's good and bad sides when it comes to teaching programming, but I'll save that for a different discussion. I had no problems, since, well, I had a good solid 4 years for Pascal and C/C++ programming experience before I even started college, but this seriously affected the other students in my class.
The problem was, about two years into the program, my school decided (thank god) to switch the department over to C++. This was a great move, because now the students were being taught a language that they could actually apply in the real world (beyond the confines of the Wright Patterson Air Force base anyway). It worked out quite well for the newer students, but my classmates were blindsided. Most of them suffered through half a semester of C (the other half of the semester was 360 assembler) and never even touched upon C++. They should have just been able to pick up a C++ book, apply the concepts they learned from their ADA classes and the syntax from the C++ book and their C course and move on, but most of them had a hard time doing it.
Why was that? They all knew the concepts. They all knew how to write their algorithms, and their trees, and their stacks and queues. Yeah, they weren't taught how to write real software, but they clearly knew the basics. I spent more time helping others learn these concepts than I did doing my own homework the first two years, so I know what they were capable of from first hand experience.
The problem was entirely in their minds. C++ is a huge ugly beast, and it is a bit imposing when you first start. But if you've got two solid years of programming behind you, it should be a relatively smooth and easy transition. Most of them didn't realize this though. They were scared of C++, they were scared of new languages, and they suffered as a result.
The simple fact of the matter is, if you know one language, you know them all. It's not the syntax that makes the difference, it's the concepts that you express within the framework of the language's syntax that are the real guts of programming. My classmates took awhile to realize this (and I'm sure many of them still don't). That's the same thing with Ruby, or Python, or Perl, or just about any language. Unless you are making the jump from procedural to OOP, or OOP to Functional for the first time, you *CAN* pick up a book and learn a new language in a days time. The only thing stopping you is yourself.
Now, the other part of this is, why would you do that? I love learning new languages, and I love learning new languages for a few reasons. These reasons apply to every programmer, and I honestly don't understand why some people are so opposed to learning something new. I guess that's what seperates a good programmer from a bad programmer. So if you want to know why you should learn Perl, or LISP, or Haskell, or even Visual Basic, I'll tell you why.
1. It helps keep your skills in tip top shape. Perusing a computer manual may remind you of algorithms or techniques you haven't used in a long time and forgotten.
2. You always seem to learn something new. Not some new technical trick that only works in one lanuage (although that definitely happens), but just a different way of approaching problems that sometimes can transcend language boundaries.
3. You may find a new language that allows you to get the job done faster!
4. You're enhanced knowlege of languages looks great on your resume no matter what you use as your primary language.
5. You learn the way other people think. And I don't want to gloss over this one. As a programmer, you frequently have to work with other programmers. Learning new languages is a *GREAT* way to see how other people do things. To learn the way other people think, so to speak. By learning Perl and Smalltalk, you start to learn why people in those communities are so die hard about OOP programming styles. By learning LISP or Haskell you start to learn why Functional styles even exist! And it all comes back full circle. Techniques I learned from Haskell I now use when writing C++ programs and vice versa. It only made my C++ code better.
Knowlege is power, and learning new languages is one (of many) ways of increasing your knowlege. Go ahead and try it, even if you think you won't use the language, and even if you're just starting out and don't think the transition from your learning language to a new one will be easy. You just might be surprised by how much you already know, and how much you have yet to learn. That's the real benefit of it.
It's overkill, of course. But you can never have too much overkill." - Anonymous Slashdot Coward
Because it has all the great functional features that can make Lisp programmers happy.
Because it has a wonderful OO model which can make all OO programmers happy.
Because it has super fast compilers that can make C and C++ programmers happy.
Because it is great for imperative programming and for functional programming.
Because it is great for procedural programming and for OO programming.
Because it is as multiplatform and portable as Java.
Because it is designed to please everyone without compromising on anything, and, put more simply, because it can reconciliate the C, Java, Lisp and C++ community.
Because it can even be used indifferently as a scripting or a system language.
Because it is great for teaching AND for the real world.
Because its compilers are libre software and its design and developement are made in a very open fashion.
--
"buckle your seatbelt, dorothy - kansas is going bye-bye."
Like I can't write a note and put it on your desk or door for you to read at your conveinence?
----->>>>Back to the future!!
"I need a drink." - Dr. Who
Duh. I think it's called pr0n.
--Oh how I crave a nice drink. Alcoholic, of course, after the heavy lectures involving particle physics.
Yep. It's called Zen Buddhism. No joke.
Yes, and in other news everything is crystal clear in the theoretical and never possible in the actual.
Get a life, kid.
...is to film the area in question twice: before and after. Then superimpose the two images, you would be able to visually "subtract" the heat-loss giving an idea of the effectiveness of your insulation.
;-)
Yeah, but remember these are ~64MB. So that would take what? 60 seconds? Not that bad considering you can hold a shiat load more than a floppy, with no drive to mess with.
"Activation code."
if (!code){ you don't come out of suspend in the morning; }
Well, somebody had to say it!
I sometimes wonder if my thoughts are encrypted (by whom? God?) and thus a violation of the DMCA.
Personally, I long for the day when *all* thoughts are clear text and can be read by an organic Tempest-like device. That way I could read my sysadmin's thoughts, solve all sorts of complex coding problems and fix my *own* gosh-darn Win9x workstation.
At my company developers are called "archtiectural engineers." We also have full-time architects that *don't* code which are like project managers. The screwy thing is the coders ("archtiectural engineers") are supposed to leave their individual fingerprints on their projects, whatever that's supposed to mean. In the end, it just tramples on the domain of the architects leaving everyone scratching their heads wondering who's doing what. It's sort of like a "doctor-nurse." Makes no sense: you're either one or the other, not both.
The engineers should simply be called that and should build out what the architects design, not try to design and build their own projects.