I was 8 years old, and I was in the 'gifted' program in elementary school. The classroom had a single TRS-80 computer, probably the only computer in the school district. It was high-tech, and had an actual casett style tape drive. (Ooohh...)
I watched one of the older kids typing in a computer program in BASIC. After watching him for about 15 minuets, I wrote my first program, a simple text-based fantasy adventure game called 'orc attack'.
Throughout the 80's, I taught myself how to program on Apple ][e computers that the school district had, and I won a special award for being the best programmer in the district by middle school. I later taught myself PASCAL from a copy that had been purchased for the high school I was attending, and none of the teachers understood what it was. I worked out assembly language, binary math and logic on my own, too. I picked up C and C++, and about a half a dozen other languages in the 90's. In my free time I enjoy dabbling with writing video games and playing with computer AI Algorithims.
I am not saying this to brag or to try to look smart. There are far more clever people than myself lurking about/. I say this simply to point out that by giving an 8 year old kid access to a TRS-80 has lead me where I am today. Money for eduaction is NEVER wasted.
Get your kid an apple ][e emulator. Its free, and If they really enjoy building simple programs in BASIC then you can slowly let them grow into more advanced stuff.
Yes, yes, Justin...you are gay, we get the message. Comming out of the closet can be a traumatic experience, but just take the plunge.
You are amnong computer nerds, nobody cares what 'ports' you scan, as long as you have an admin's permission. Now just stop with the freaky application names, it's wierding out the AOLers...
You are oh so full of shit. I used to deliver papers when I was a kid and I had to pay a big bill at the end of each week for them. A week's subscription cost $1.40 and they charged for $1.20 of it- you made 20 cents per customer per week. You depend on the customers that pay you $2 without asking for change.
I'm not full of shit, it isn't my fault you are a stupid bitch who sold the Enquirer or something crappy like that. That is how much I paid per subscription when the bill showed up each month, and I made BANK. ~$200 per month in middle school.
People are spoiled by fast CPUs nowadays, consarnit.
Yes, yes, procs are very fast these days, and all these young whippursnappurs are impatient young wags. However, wouldn't you be pissed off if you shelled out several hundred dollars extra for a fast proc that always runs at half speed?
I'd rather have a guy on the street who, in the heat of passion, shot his wife when he caught her in bed with another man than somebody who is a habitual thief.
Ok, I'll byte: Why was the guy's wife doing in bed with someone on the street? And why did he shoot her as he climaxed?
Your comments are very true. But you know you can chase the busybodies off by simply being EVIL to them when they try to talk to you. Start screaming at them if they ask you to do something that you find annoying. Keep your house in good condition, so that nobody has any real reason to come talk to you about legitimate problems, and make anyone who trys to bother you over anything else reluctant to call again.
I even sent them a note saying as much when I cancelled my subscription.
You haven't cost them anything at all. The money you pay to have your paper delivered goes almost entirely to your paperboy/girl/whatever. Newspapers make money off of advertising. The greater their circulation, the more money their ads reach, and the more that they can justify charging for them. When I was a paperboy, I think I had to pay the newspaper about 1.50 of the 8.50 I collected for each regular customer I had. That probably just about covers their distribution infrastrusture costs.
...Which is why I my brain trys to throttle me when I think about how the NYT requires registration to read the articles. If I ran the NYT, I would be begging people to read articles without hassle on my site, as it would boost readership overall, and I could bill advertisers more. Stupid NYT..
He stole a list of e-mail addresses. Isn't that theft?
No, the **IA is EVIL! It's a backup copy! I bought it several years agon on vinyl, and so I am entitled to a space shifted copy! It isn't theft, because they still have a cop-
WAITAMINUET! I'm sorry. I didn't know that this was a story about spammers...
KILL the spammer! They are bandwidth thieves, stealing a 'commons' from all of us! This guy is a THIEF, he took a copy of a private list! Publish his address someone, so I can mail him a sack of POOP!
And, of course, while the gamer demographic is older and more affluent than a decade ago, it's still mostly males under 35. The movie audience demographic is much broader
Here is the whole point. Gamers are a young breed. Movie viewers are of all ages. When gamers are dying of old age, that would be the time to make side by side comparisons of the industries.
I am on a simialr program. I went to my doctor about a year ago, with a complaint that I was feeling thickheaded and mentally fuzzy all the time. He ran a few tests on me ang gave me a perscription for this great drug that enchances mental capacity, called Placebo. Now, I am WAAAAY smarter than everybody I meet. You should try it!
I went to an AI discussion that my school's math department had a few years ago, and the speaker put forth the idea that a sentinet AI might just be the same as a human in cognetive ability, because out brain's power and complexity makes us the way we are.
As the complexity of a system grows, perhaps the precision diminishes. We cannot process a million math equations per second, but we can do unbelievelably complex patern matching in real time. We can recall events that happened years ago, but not perfectly. Simple software performs perfectly, but as you start writing more complex programs, more and more bugs start creeping into the mix. I would say your brain is a chemical version of Windows 2253. It works, but not quite as quickly or stably as you might like.
Can't say I've heard of any civilization-ending events in my lifetime. BR>
I don't know about that, I'd say the recent US election pretty much ended civilization as we know it...
I recall playing that old apple ][e text based star wars game where you had to wander around the Death Star trying to deactivate the tractor beam. I had a copy that someone had hacked so that whenever darth vader appeared, he called you a 'faggot'.
but crashed harmlessly into the ocean as the interceptor missile based on an atoll in the Pacific Ocean shut itself down due to an unknown "anomaly".
Whatever, I know the government tries to cover up his activites, but this one has Superman's hand writing all over it. Bruce would have blown it up with the batjet.
Yeah, huge fines are going to discourage people trying to steal credit card data. Suppose you hit them with a non-trivial fine of 500,000. What do you think the odds are that any hacker that has ever broken into a server is going to be able to pay even a tenth of that?
How about this, quit wasting time, money and prison space busting people for drugs by legalizing the stuff, and use all the space created in prisons for hackers, and other white collar criminals who commit 'nice crimes' where nobody gets 'hurt'.
Anyone who writes a worm that makes the national news because it cripples half the internet deserves some jail time.
REALLY? That is soooo sweet! I knew the guy was cool, but man oh man! Wales started Wikipedia AND shoots pictures of nudie girls, how awesome. I am deffinitely paypalling him some cash...
Having worked there, there are a lot of really smart people there. However, it is a large corp, so I'd say 90% of the employess are not the 'uber geeks' that you picture them as. Most people that work there are only slightly more techno-savy than the average white collar workers.
Several years ago while working there, I had to explain what an.ASP page was to my boss. He wasn't stupid or anything, just not a coder. I'm not sure that he really fully got the idea.
ZDNet is reporting that virus writers could take advantage of the technology to produce more efficient malware.
It's about bloody time that someone devoted some effort to writting better viruses. Just because we have faster processes, doesn't mean that I want a virus infecting my comuter to be wasting valueable clock cycles becuase the author didn't know how to optimize the inner loop. I mean, really. Virus writers have gotten lazy in recent years. Everyone knows that a well optimized assembly virus will shred a harddrive WAY faster than some 'meetoo' script kiddy.vbs trash. I think I am speaking for all slashdotters when I say 'We demand the best viruses that can be made!'.
It seems to me that MS has as much to lose as ith *nix people. If there is no copyright on software then the only way to prevent piracy from becomming legal is the click through agreements, and they seems sort of shakey to me, legally. (IANAL. However, as an example, how do you sell a game to a minor since they can't enter legal agreements?)
It seems to me this guy has it backwards. Software Copyright GOOD. Software Patents BAD.
From a national economic standpoint, even the US has an incentive to pump out as many patents as possible, no matter how frivolous, in order to extract money from corporations in other countries, since the US is using the WTO to push its "intellectual property" regime onto as many countries as it can
This only works for a short time, once a country sees it is getting screwed by the process, it just ignores patent law. It's in everybody's interest to have a system that is ligitimate and encourages inovation, and not blocking patents.
The US doesn't recruit the mad geniuses the way Japan does. Japan has an aggressive program that attracts and subsidizes their research in many important fields, such as mecha research, mind control rays, cellular reanimation techniques, and psychic enhancement. As a result, we are trailing behind Japan in the tech race.
Some have pointed out that we don't have giant robots battling in the strees, gangs of psychic mutant orphans roaming the streets, and little to no defense against nude female aliens with magical powers, but I for one don't really find that to be a realistic assesment of the situation. As anyone in Japan can tell you, those problems are more than adequately delt with by the superhero cyborg schoolgirls that roam the countryside.
You are completely correct, I am wrong. There is no difference between a communist dicatorship and modern America. I was obviously mistaken for suggesting otherwise. To borrow a line from a movie: 'Truly you have a dizzying intellect'. I salute you.
Slashdot Mirror
the construction industry has been doing huge projects of equal complexity for centuries.
...and yet, they strangely still go over budget and past deadlines on occasion. Hmmmm...
I was 8 years old, and I was in the 'gifted' program in elementary school. The classroom had a single TRS-80 computer, probably the only computer in the school district. It was high-tech, and had an actual casett style tape drive. (Ooohh...)
/. I say this simply to point out that by giving an 8 year old kid access to a TRS-80 has lead me where I am today. Money for eduaction is NEVER wasted.
I watched one of the older kids typing in a computer program in BASIC. After watching him for about 15 minuets, I wrote my first program, a simple text-based fantasy adventure game called 'orc attack'.
Throughout the 80's, I taught myself how to program on Apple ][e computers that the school district had, and I won a special award for being the best programmer in the district by middle school. I later taught myself PASCAL from a copy that had been purchased for the high school I was attending, and none of the teachers understood what it was. I worked out assembly language, binary math and logic on my own, too. I picked up C and C++, and about a half a dozen other languages in the 90's. In my free time I enjoy dabbling with writing video games and playing with computer AI Algorithims.
I am not saying this to brag or to try to look smart. There are far more clever people than myself lurking about
Get your kid an apple ][e emulator. Its free, and If they really enjoy building simple programs in BASIC then you can slowly let them grow into more advanced stuff.
Yes, yes, Justin...you are gay, we get the message. Comming out of the closet can be a traumatic experience, but just take the plunge.
You are amnong computer nerds, nobody cares what 'ports' you scan, as long as you have an admin's permission. Now just stop with the freaky application names, it's wierding out the AOLers...
You are oh so full of shit. I used to deliver papers when I was a kid and I had to pay a big bill at the end of each week for them. A week's subscription cost $1.40 and they charged for $1.20 of it- you made 20 cents per customer per week. You depend on the customers that pay you $2 without asking for change.
I'm not full of shit, it isn't my fault you are a stupid bitch who sold the Enquirer or something crappy like that. That is how much I paid per subscription when the bill showed up each month, and I made BANK. ~$200 per month in middle school.
People are spoiled by fast CPUs nowadays, consarnit.
Yes, yes, procs are very fast these days, and all these young whippursnappurs are impatient young wags. However, wouldn't you be pissed off if you shelled out several hundred dollars extra for a fast proc that always runs at half speed?
I'd rather have a guy on the street who, in the heat of passion, shot his wife when he caught her in bed with another man than somebody who is a habitual thief.
Ok, I'll byte: Why was the guy's wife doing in bed with someone on the street? And why did he shoot her as he climaxed?
Your comments are very true. But you know you can chase the busybodies off by simply being EVIL to them when they try to talk to you. Start screaming at them if they ask you to do something that you find annoying. Keep your house in good condition, so that nobody has any real reason to come talk to you about legitimate problems, and make anyone who trys to bother you over anything else reluctant to call again.
I even sent them a note saying as much when I cancelled my subscription.
...Which is why I my brain trys to throttle me when I think about how the NYT requires registration to read the articles. If I ran the NYT, I would be begging people to read articles without hassle on my site, as it would boost readership overall, and I could bill advertisers more. Stupid NYT..
You haven't cost them anything at all. The money you pay to have your paper delivered goes almost entirely to your paperboy/girl/whatever. Newspapers make money off of advertising. The greater their circulation, the more money their ads reach, and the more that they can justify charging for them. When I was a paperboy, I think I had to pay the newspaper about 1.50 of the 8.50 I collected for each regular customer I had. That probably just about covers their distribution infrastrusture costs.
He stole a list of e-mail addresses. Isn't that theft?
No, the **IA is EVIL! It's a backup copy! I bought it several years agon on vinyl, and so I am entitled to a space shifted copy! It isn't theft, because they still have a cop-
WAITAMINUET! I'm sorry. I didn't know that this was a story about spammers...
KILL the spammer! They are bandwidth thieves, stealing a 'commons' from all of us! This guy is a THIEF, he took a copy of a private list! Publish his address someone, so I can mail him a sack of POOP!
And, of course, while the gamer demographic is older and more affluent than a decade ago, it's still mostly males under 35. The movie audience demographic is much broader
Here is the whole point. Gamers are a young breed. Movie viewers are of all ages. When gamers are dying of old age, that would be the time to make side by side comparisons of the industries.
I am on a simialr program. I went to my doctor about a year ago, with a complaint that I was feeling thickheaded and mentally fuzzy all the time. He ran a few tests on me ang gave me a perscription for this great drug that enchances mental capacity, called Placebo. Now, I am WAAAAY smarter than everybody I meet. You should try it!
I went to an AI discussion that my school's math department had a few years ago, and the speaker put forth the idea that a sentinet AI might just be the same as a human in cognetive ability, because out brain's power and complexity makes us the way we are.
As the complexity of a system grows, perhaps the precision diminishes. We cannot process a million math equations per second, but we can do unbelievelably complex patern matching in real time. We can recall events that happened years ago, but not perfectly. Simple software performs perfectly, but as you start writing more complex programs, more and more bugs start creeping into the mix. I would say your brain is a chemical version of Windows 2253. It works, but not quite as quickly or stably as you might like.
Can't say I've heard of any civilization-ending events in my lifetime.
BR> I don't know about that, I'd say the recent US election pretty much ended civilization as we know it...
I recall playing that old apple ][e text based star wars game where you had to wander around the Death Star trying to deactivate the tractor beam. I had a copy that someone had hacked so that whenever darth vader appeared, he called you a 'faggot'.
It was pretty special.
but crashed harmlessly into the ocean as the interceptor missile based on an atoll in the Pacific Ocean shut itself down due to an unknown "anomaly".
Whatever, I know the government tries to cover up his activites, but this one has Superman's hand writing all over it. Bruce would have blown it up with the batjet.
Yeah, huge fines are going to discourage people trying to steal credit card data. Suppose you hit them with a non-trivial fine of 500,000. What do you think the odds are that any hacker that has ever broken into a server is going to be able to pay even a tenth of that?
How about this, quit wasting time, money and prison space busting people for drugs by legalizing the stuff, and use all the space created in prisons for hackers, and other white collar criminals who commit 'nice crimes' where nobody gets 'hurt'.
Anyone who writes a worm that makes the national news because it cripples half the internet deserves some jail time.
sollog claims that wales is a pornographer...
REALLY? That is soooo sweet! I knew the guy was cool, but man oh man! Wales started Wikipedia AND shoots pictures of nudie girls, how awesome. I am deffinitely paypalling him some cash...
Because MS is such a geek culture...
.ASP page was to my boss. He wasn't stupid or anything, just not a coder. I'm not sure that he really fully got the idea.
Having worked there, there are a lot of really smart people there. However, it is a large corp, so I'd say 90% of the employess are not the 'uber geeks' that you picture them as. Most people that work there are only slightly more techno-savy than the average white collar workers.
Several years ago while working there, I had to explain what an
ZDNet is reporting that virus writers could take advantage of the technology to produce more efficient malware.
.vbs trash. I think I am speaking for all slashdotters when I say 'We demand the best viruses that can be made!'.
It's about bloody time that someone devoted some effort to writting better viruses. Just because we have faster processes, doesn't mean that I want a virus infecting my comuter to be wasting valueable clock cycles becuase the author didn't know how to optimize the inner loop. I mean, really. Virus writers have gotten lazy in recent years. Everyone knows that a well optimized assembly virus will shred a harddrive WAY faster than some 'meetoo' script kiddy
It seems to me that MS has as much to lose as ith *nix people. If there is no copyright on software then the only way to prevent piracy from becomming legal is the click through agreements, and they seems sort of shakey to me, legally. (IANAL. However, as an example, how do you sell a game to a minor since they can't enter legal agreements?) It seems to me this guy has it backwards. Software Copyright GOOD. Software Patents BAD.
You can't get it off of Bit Torrent, duh! You have to get it off of a swarm torrent clien....uh, never mind.
From a national economic standpoint, even the US has an incentive to pump out as many patents as possible, no matter how frivolous, in order to extract money from corporations in other countries, since the US is using the WTO to push its "intellectual property" regime onto as many countries as it can
This only works for a short time, once a country sees it is getting screwed by the process, it just ignores patent law. It's in everybody's interest to have a system that is ligitimate and encourages inovation, and not blocking patents.
Our problem is that the smart and educated people aren't having enough children.
No No No, you have it all wrong. The problem is, smart and educated people aren't eating enough poor, dumb babies.
The US doesn't recruit the mad geniuses the way Japan does. Japan has an aggressive program that attracts and subsidizes their research in many important fields, such as mecha research, mind control rays, cellular reanimation techniques, and psychic enhancement. As a result, we are trailing behind Japan in the tech race.
Some have pointed out that we don't have giant robots battling in the strees, gangs of psychic mutant orphans roaming the streets, and little to no defense against nude female aliens with magical powers, but I for one don't really find that to be a realistic assesment of the situation. As anyone in Japan can tell you, those problems are more than adequately delt with by the superhero cyborg schoolgirls that roam the countryside.
You are completely correct, I am wrong. There is no difference between a communist dicatorship and modern America. I was obviously mistaken for suggesting otherwise. To borrow a line from a movie: 'Truly you have a dizzying intellect'. I salute you.