I keep telling my colleagues to at least put in copyright notices when using other people's work. I know so many developers who use nothing but open source products but never acknowledge it. The acknowledgement alone is enough for us. That ensures that the open source message is passed on to users.
I might be rocking the boat by wondering this, but in most developed nations, if an unarmed person was gunned down the way Michael Brown was (regardless of what crime he had committed), you don't get rewarded with over USD 200 mil in gifts and training. Officer Wilson could have shot to disable rather than kill - but of course, someone will say he didn't get enough training. Officer Wilson could have toughed up and faced a charge by Michael Brown (if he was doing just that) without shooting his gun - but someone would point out that police training dictates another set of actions, and that the training was at fault. Officer Wilson could have just waited for backup to arrive instead of taking on two individuals by himself, and if he lost the suspects he wouldn't be losing mass murderers, since he would have been issued the code that the young man was wanted for.
By not doing what was needed, which was to make an example of Officer Wilson's incorrect decision-making, the US is creating a law enforcement precedent that allows blaming the training for bad decisions. IMO, the Obama administration is further highlighting this precedent by approving this funding for equipment and training. Does this not conflict with the legally established precedent of Graham v Connor, where it was determined that use of force must be governed by principles that any other reasonable officer would uphold? Is the US now saying that the majority of officers would have opted to shoot Michael Brown given the circumstances? Is that not what Obama is acceding to with his generous gift: that the current training dictates the same reaction across the board?
Will body cameras truly improve the reactionary measures taken by officers in the field? Had Officer Wilson been wearing a body camera, he may well have acted no differently. Officer Wilson did not take into account the audience on the street and in the buildings around him, nor did he wonder that there may be surveillance cameras of buildings, ATMs, etc., or the existence of smartphones. He was so caught up in the moment that he did not consider any of that. For an individual like that, would a body camera be a deterrent?
In the latest Tiobe index (of course you'll tell me that it's not an accurate representation of demographics), only one of the top 10 languages is not a derivative of C, and that too is at 10th spot. According to that index, about 60% of all developers use a language derived from C. A lot of the others have lexical similarities, if not syntactic ones, simply because the creators wanted C developers to feel at home.
Not saying C was the original, or would remain the most relevant root forever. But, at present, it is the dominant syntactic contributor to the most popular languages, which is a fact that newcomers to coding must be made aware of in order for them to decide what language to adopt. Sure, they could learn Haskell and start developing some of the most optimal software, but the likelihood of getting employed in a presently relevant software firm could be remote.
Speaking of parents, if you have a child, what programming language would you teach him/her? C or something else?
Technically copy on write improves efficiency in space management and not speed - because there has to be an indexing (or some other) mechanism to determine when an instance of a referenced (perhaps I'm not using the right vernacular) variable changes.
Meant, "Swift is Apple's attempt at preventing future generations of iOS developers from moving away to any other platforms by introducing a 'syntactically' different language to C."
Forgot to mention why Objective C and not Swift. Swift is Apple's attempt at forcing future generations to move away from any other platforms by introducing a 'syntactically' different language to C. Both Java (Android's primary language) and Objective C have basic syntactic (and to some extent, lexical) similarities, which allows a developer of one platform to easily transition to another. Yes, Swift provides all sorts of functionalities that make it easier to develop software, but Apple could have chosen to build that into Objective C.
So, will you go with a language that will empower Apple and cripple your options (IMO), or one that will give you the widest array of options?
That thread was started by an 'experienced C' developer. RegularDave is a regular guy without any real coding skills.
Since xcode is a sandboxed (meaning, you don't have to know anything else outside of xcode, except how to publish apps, in order to develop them) software development environment, all you need to know is how the xcode environment works and the ins and outs of Objective C. Once you learn the Interface Builder, basics of programming in Objective C (variables/data structures, flow control, math/logic, and selections) and the essential classes that get things done in an iOS environment you can start coding apps.
Fact is, it won't be an overnight affair. Learning the basics of coding in Objective C will take you a few days. Try Hillegass & Fenoglio's Objective C Programming book.
One question though. Since you're starting from a clean slate, why aren't you considering developing for Android? It's a much bigger marketplace, which means you'll have a bigger audience for whatever you develop.
I really don't think it should be too hard to find talented young people who can become security experts with the right push. And it shouldn't take an army of people to provide this push given all the cheap information propagation means that the Internet has afforded us.
As for cost of security systems, how expensive would it be to setup 6 layers of proxies or multiple firewalls using Linux? My mobile phone would probably handle the screening and NAT tasks for an agency with 1000s of employees.
I just don't see how it's so easy to accomplish these insurgencies when lesser systems managed by organisations with smaller funding are able to keep their systems better protected. It's not like we don't already know 99++% of the possible attack vectors, and not like the US government won't have enough bandwidth to fend off any sort of DoS attack.
Perhaps we'll soon get wind of an appropriation bill floated by the meteorological agencies...
True, I should have been a little more technically apt in belittling the dependency conundrums of Linux. I should not have blamed it on X11, even if manual xconf edits are required since, as you mention in correcting me, the nvidia drivers bundled with a system will keep working until a kernel upgrade happens (and if the driver becomes incompatible).
However, the layman would put the blame on the whole package. I'd like to view this from the perspective of a layman, since my old lecturers always emphasised that the only people we need to please are customers (if they don't buy, we won't get paid).
I said I replaced all my Linux boxes with MacOS ones: the ones I use for all my development and testing. I still keep a couple of Windows rigs for my gaming. Unfortunately, Windows and D3D still beats the current generation consoles to pulp.
I've never had a reliance on Windows-based productivity solutions like M$Office and such, so transitioning to iWork was easy. Almost everything else I can get on app store.
Please clarify how a call for a unified Linux standard (and I don't mean in terms of the kernel dev process, but particularly in terms of opengl, windowing and package management implementations) could be construed as a person's ignorance of Linux (do people still clarify it as GNU/Linux with all these distro's going around, and since Hurd is a different species)?
Yes. An opengl game does not require X11, and usually runs faster in Linux. However, a lot of the effects that are flawlessly rendered in D3D are rendered weirdly on opengl, especially shadow mapping. I'm betting this is mostly down to porting issues. Even if a game runs flawlessly on Linux, I'm not giving up my Windows rig or buying any Linux game licenses if a Windows alternative is available simply cos I don't trust the Linux option.
As for X11/window managers not being an issue in hampering 3D games, I disagree. Sure, the game does not run on X11, but you install it using a window manager. A normal gamer would not know how to resolve all the issues related to missing libraries and the like when installing a game. Linux has not come to the point where it guarantees a user painless interactivity, and that means it's still not attractive to average users.
What about before PS2 (and I would include PS3 too), when advanced 3D visuals like atmospheric effects and dynamic lighting (remember that Splinter Cell was released in 2002, just about 5 years before PS3 made dynamic lighting possible for console games) would have been impossible on consoles? Even now, I see distinctions between my PS4's rendering of Metro: Last Light and that of my PC (even when the graphics card is a dilapidated 680GTX).
True, the quality gap has reduced considerably enough to discard the reliance on PC's to get the best experience. Furthermore, the console has enough horsepower to host all the AI and still run the most demanding network protocols without much difficulty. However, this is a whole different topic.
Even before the demise of PC gaming, Linux has been suffering from gaining popularity amongst gamers. SteamOS is a good step in the right direction, but it will take time as did the Steam market itself (I remember the old days of Steam with Half Life 2, having to get the connections sorted). I think the saviour for PC gaming will be Nvidia with their cloud-based rendering technology. In fact, Linux should be at the core of it, if Satya Nadella doesn't pull off another MSDOS and fool them into submitting exclusivity.
On the mobile front, Linux is already being avenged by the mighty Android.
You're only proving that Linux has still not matured as a full-fledged desktop OS. 20 years ago the only excuse we had for owning a copy of Windows was for the sake of gaming. 10 years ago it was the same. And now you're saying it's still the same.
Not all developers need to commit to creating those public server APIs or the integrated environments you use to code. However, enough of us have to continue specialising in the science in order to ensure that those technologies are sustained and innovated. You might know how to create these tools, because by your own admission you have undertaken C/assembler coding, but the concern is that not enough of us are focus on that area. Languages/environments like Java, Objective-C and.NET are generally Turing-complete unto themselves.
I'm a guy who ordered a copy of Redhat all the way from Maldives back in 1996 (the shipping of which cost a bomb then), because it promised a new way to power our computers. From '96 till about 2007 I have exclusively used Linux in all my work. However, I've always had to keep a high-powered PC just for my games. With all the promise of different types of Wines and opengl implementations, games simply did not look as good or work as seamlessly (with few exceptions) as they did in Windows.
Since 2007, I have been using MacOS primarily for all my work, replacing all my Linux machines. Despite using Redhat, Turbo Linux, Slackware with Enlightenment, SUSE and Ubuntu, no Linux seemed to have the seamless productivity options boasted by the more mature MacOS or Windows applications, and some of these applications did not work proper with any of the Wines.
I think Linux as a desktop OS never really happened. I've mostly used it as my coding environment, and when I needed to author a document I swivel the chair and wake up the Windows (and these days MacOS) machine. All the various X, opengl and windowing implementations are just making applications ported to (or even originally developed in) Linux acquire quirks that aren't there in Windows and MacOS. Maybe instead of complaining about games developers, all the vendors should get together and conjure up a more unified Linux standard.
The flourish of automated tools appeared as a result of the 90s and early 2000s generations assimilating advanced programming skills. These generations knew how to directly handle hardware interrupts (and write peripheral drivers), write a tcp socket from scratch, code proper random access file management, program a perspective calculator for 3D rendering, etc. Now all these are deemed unnecessary because it's considered reinventing the wheel.
The question is who will continue the tradition of scientific innovation in computing if the younger generations aren't taught these basic skills? We should all ensure that our children go through the ritual of learning the fundamentals as we did, even if they eventually end up primarily using xcode (or whatever other heavily sandboxed coding environment exists then).
Too bad these machines aren't real AI units capable of autonomous policing. That might actually reduce the potential for extortionist behaviour (not that I'm saying this will be the case...).
Slashdot Mirror
We'll soon treat the phrase 'pirates of the silicon valley' in a whole new way. Gotta go spray-paint the jolly roger onto my dji.
Time to repurpose the interferometer to try all the old experiments, especially Michelson-Morley one.
I keep telling my colleagues to at least put in copyright notices when using other people's work. I know so many developers who use nothing but open source products but never acknowledge it. The acknowledgement alone is enough for us. That ensures that the open source message is passed on to users.
I might be rocking the boat by wondering this, but in most developed nations, if an unarmed person was gunned down the way Michael Brown was (regardless of what crime he had committed), you don't get rewarded with over USD 200 mil in gifts and training. Officer Wilson could have shot to disable rather than kill - but of course, someone will say he didn't get enough training. Officer Wilson could have toughed up and faced a charge by Michael Brown (if he was doing just that) without shooting his gun - but someone would point out that police training dictates another set of actions, and that the training was at fault. Officer Wilson could have just waited for backup to arrive instead of taking on two individuals by himself, and if he lost the suspects he wouldn't be losing mass murderers, since he would have been issued the code that the young man was wanted for.
By not doing what was needed, which was to make an example of Officer Wilson's incorrect decision-making, the US is creating a law enforcement precedent that allows blaming the training for bad decisions. IMO, the Obama administration is further highlighting this precedent by approving this funding for equipment and training. Does this not conflict with the legally established precedent of Graham v Connor, where it was determined that use of force must be governed by principles that any other reasonable officer would uphold? Is the US now saying that the majority of officers would have opted to shoot Michael Brown given the circumstances? Is that not what Obama is acceding to with his generous gift: that the current training dictates the same reaction across the board?
Will body cameras truly improve the reactionary measures taken by officers in the field? Had Officer Wilson been wearing a body camera, he may well have acted no differently. Officer Wilson did not take into account the audience on the street and in the buildings around him, nor did he wonder that there may be surveillance cameras of buildings, ATMs, etc., or the existence of smartphones. He was so caught up in the moment that he did not consider any of that. For an individual like that, would a body camera be a deterrent?
In the latest Tiobe index (of course you'll tell me that it's not an accurate representation of demographics), only one of the top 10 languages is not a derivative of C, and that too is at 10th spot. According to that index, about 60% of all developers use a language derived from C. A lot of the others have lexical similarities, if not syntactic ones, simply because the creators wanted C developers to feel at home.
Not saying C was the original, or would remain the most relevant root forever. But, at present, it is the dominant syntactic contributor to the most popular languages, which is a fact that newcomers to coding must be made aware of in order for them to decide what language to adopt. Sure, they could learn Haskell and start developing some of the most optimal software, but the likelihood of getting employed in a presently relevant software firm could be remote.
Speaking of parents, if you have a child, what programming language would you teach him/her? C or something else?
Plenty of successful languages? (Even Microsoft adopted a flavour of C in the end, with their C#)
Technically copy on write improves efficiency in space management and not speed - because there has to be an indexing (or some other) mechanism to determine when an instance of a referenced (perhaps I'm not using the right vernacular) variable changes.
Meant, "Swift is Apple's attempt at preventing future generations of iOS developers from moving away to any other platforms by introducing a 'syntactically' different language to C."
"...move away TO any other platforms..."
Forgot to mention why Objective C and not Swift. Swift is Apple's attempt at forcing future generations to move away from any other platforms by introducing a 'syntactically' different language to C. Both Java (Android's primary language) and Objective C have basic syntactic (and to some extent, lexical) similarities, which allows a developer of one platform to easily transition to another. Yes, Swift provides all sorts of functionalities that make it easier to develop software, but Apple could have chosen to build that into Objective C.
So, will you go with a language that will empower Apple and cripple your options (IMO), or one that will give you the widest array of options?
That thread was started by an 'experienced C' developer. RegularDave is a regular guy without any real coding skills.
Since xcode is a sandboxed (meaning, you don't have to know anything else outside of xcode, except how to publish apps, in order to develop them) software development environment, all you need to know is how the xcode environment works and the ins and outs of Objective C. Once you learn the Interface Builder, basics of programming in Objective C (variables/data structures, flow control, math/logic, and selections) and the essential classes that get things done in an iOS environment you can start coding apps.
Fact is, it won't be an overnight affair. Learning the basics of coding in Objective C will take you a few days. Try Hillegass & Fenoglio's Objective C Programming book.
One question though. Since you're starting from a clean slate, why aren't you considering developing for Android? It's a much bigger marketplace, which means you'll have a bigger audience for whatever you develop.
Perhaps to Maldives, if y'all want to know what propaganda really means.
That's what Balotelli said...
I really don't think it should be too hard to find talented young people who can become security experts with the right push. And it shouldn't take an army of people to provide this push given all the cheap information propagation means that the Internet has afforded us.
As for cost of security systems, how expensive would it be to setup 6 layers of proxies or multiple firewalls using Linux? My mobile phone would probably handle the screening and NAT tasks for an agency with 1000s of employees.
I just don't see how it's so easy to accomplish these insurgencies when lesser systems managed by organisations with smaller funding are able to keep their systems better protected. It's not like we don't already know 99++% of the possible attack vectors, and not like the US government won't have enough bandwidth to fend off any sort of DoS attack.
Perhaps we'll soon get wind of an appropriation bill floated by the meteorological agencies...
True, I should have been a little more technically apt in belittling the dependency conundrums of Linux. I should not have blamed it on X11, even if manual xconf edits are required since, as you mention in correcting me, the nvidia drivers bundled with a system will keep working until a kernel upgrade happens (and if the driver becomes incompatible).
However, the layman would put the blame on the whole package. I'd like to view this from the perspective of a layman, since my old lecturers always emphasised that the only people we need to please are customers (if they don't buy, we won't get paid).
I said I replaced all my Linux boxes with MacOS ones: the ones I use for all my development and testing. I still keep a couple of Windows rigs for my gaming. Unfortunately, Windows and D3D still beats the current generation consoles to pulp.
I've never had a reliance on Windows-based productivity solutions like M$Office and such, so transitioning to iWork was easy. Almost everything else I can get on app store.
Please clarify how a call for a unified Linux standard (and I don't mean in terms of the kernel dev process, but particularly in terms of opengl, windowing and package management implementations) could be construed as a person's ignorance of Linux (do people still clarify it as GNU/Linux with all these distro's going around, and since Hurd is a different species)?
Yes. An opengl game does not require X11, and usually runs faster in Linux. However, a lot of the effects that are flawlessly rendered in D3D are rendered weirdly on opengl, especially shadow mapping. I'm betting this is mostly down to porting issues. Even if a game runs flawlessly on Linux, I'm not giving up my Windows rig or buying any Linux game licenses if a Windows alternative is available simply cos I don't trust the Linux option.
As for X11/window managers not being an issue in hampering 3D games, I disagree. Sure, the game does not run on X11, but you install it using a window manager. A normal gamer would not know how to resolve all the issues related to missing libraries and the like when installing a game. Linux has not come to the point where it guarantees a user painless interactivity, and that means it's still not attractive to average users.
What about before PS2 (and I would include PS3 too), when advanced 3D visuals like atmospheric effects and dynamic lighting (remember that Splinter Cell was released in 2002, just about 5 years before PS3 made dynamic lighting possible for console games) would have been impossible on consoles? Even now, I see distinctions between my PS4's rendering of Metro: Last Light and that of my PC (even when the graphics card is a dilapidated 680GTX).
True, the quality gap has reduced considerably enough to discard the reliance on PC's to get the best experience. Furthermore, the console has enough horsepower to host all the AI and still run the most demanding network protocols without much difficulty. However, this is a whole different topic.
Even before the demise of PC gaming, Linux has been suffering from gaining popularity amongst gamers. SteamOS is a good step in the right direction, but it will take time as did the Steam market itself (I remember the old days of Steam with Half Life 2, having to get the connections sorted). I think the saviour for PC gaming will be Nvidia with their cloud-based rendering technology. In fact, Linux should be at the core of it, if Satya Nadella doesn't pull off another MSDOS and fool them into submitting exclusivity.
On the mobile front, Linux is already being avenged by the mighty Android.
You're only proving that Linux has still not matured as a full-fledged desktop OS. 20 years ago the only excuse we had for owning a copy of Windows was for the sake of gaming. 10 years ago it was the same. And now you're saying it's still the same.
Not all developers need to commit to creating those public server APIs or the integrated environments you use to code. However, enough of us have to continue specialising in the science in order to ensure that those technologies are sustained and innovated. You might know how to create these tools, because by your own admission you have undertaken C/assembler coding, but the concern is that not enough of us are focus on that area. Languages/environments like Java, Objective-C and .NET are generally Turing-complete unto themselves.
I'm a guy who ordered a copy of Redhat all the way from Maldives back in 1996 (the shipping of which cost a bomb then), because it promised a new way to power our computers. From '96 till about 2007 I have exclusively used Linux in all my work. However, I've always had to keep a high-powered PC just for my games. With all the promise of different types of Wines and opengl implementations, games simply did not look as good or work as seamlessly (with few exceptions) as they did in Windows.
Since 2007, I have been using MacOS primarily for all my work, replacing all my Linux machines. Despite using Redhat, Turbo Linux, Slackware with Enlightenment, SUSE and Ubuntu, no Linux seemed to have the seamless productivity options boasted by the more mature MacOS or Windows applications, and some of these applications did not work proper with any of the Wines.
I think Linux as a desktop OS never really happened. I've mostly used it as my coding environment, and when I needed to author a document I swivel the chair and wake up the Windows (and these days MacOS) machine. All the various X, opengl and windowing implementations are just making applications ported to (or even originally developed in) Linux acquire quirks that aren't there in Windows and MacOS. Maybe instead of complaining about games developers, all the vendors should get together and conjure up a more unified Linux standard.
The flourish of automated tools appeared as a result of the 90s and early 2000s generations assimilating advanced programming skills. These generations knew how to directly handle hardware interrupts (and write peripheral drivers), write a tcp socket from scratch, code proper random access file management, program a perspective calculator for 3D rendering, etc. Now all these are deemed unnecessary because it's considered reinventing the wheel.
The question is who will continue the tradition of scientific innovation in computing if the younger generations aren't taught these basic skills? We should all ensure that our children go through the ritual of learning the fundamentals as we did, even if they eventually end up primarily using xcode (or whatever other heavily sandboxed coding environment exists then).
Too bad these machines aren't real AI units capable of autonomous policing. That might actually reduce the potential for extortionist behaviour (not that I'm saying this will be the case...).