and the ribbon is -dare I say it?- a clever and even innovative UI approachand the ribbon is -dare I say it?- a clever and even innovative UI approach.
Would this be a good place to mention that it took me at least ten minutes to figure out what they did with the File menu so that I could convert an OOXML document someone sent me into a different file format?
Software innovation is not damaged by piracy. It's damaged by software patents, restrictive licensing, and closed source. The only thing damaged by piracy is revenue (and by extension, funding for new development -- and in Microsoft's case, funding for marketing, buying out other companies' products, lawyers,...).
Interesting... I've been having a similar problem on my desktop PC ever since I put in that new GeForce 8600GT. There's about a 50/50 chance when I boot (cold or warm) that it won't display any video at all until it switches from text to graphics mode (which is very annoying when I have to change CMOS settings), and about a 1-5% chance that it won't even display video in graphics mode. Since I had that problem from day 1, I just thought it was some kind of compatibility issue between the video card and motherboard.
It's not enough to make me switch back to ATI though. I was a loyal ATI user until earlier this year, but when my Radeon X1900XT started flaking out with symptoms of overheating, I found that ATI's technical support was incredibly lousy.
No, let's be fair. The blame is with those who voted them in.
As if we had a choice. I live in California, where both my senators and congressperson are in the pockets of the **AA. In the current election, my representative is running unopposed.
Even in races where there are two or more candidates, you can't always tell what their position is on copyright issues until after they've been in office, because it isn't one of the "popular" issues covered by the media. Even if their positions are covered, it's likely (especially in this state) that all of the candidates will have been bought (or indoctrinated) by the **AA. This year's presidential candidates are a good example of that.
I was in the same situation when I graduated in 1991. In hindsight, I probably would have been better off if I had decreased my academic workload and gotten a part-time coding job like a lot of my classmates did. Instead, I took all the classes I could to finish college in 3 years (with AP credits + a summer term), and ended up with a degree but no work experience. It took me years to find each of my programming jobs, due to both my lack of experience and also market trends.
Two of the jobs I did eventually get were because I had relatively rare niche skills that the companies were looking for (MC680x0 assembly language programming). I developed that on my own for personal projects, and was able to demonstrate the programs I wrote to the employers, which in that case counted as experience even though it wasn't "paid" experience.
The last job I got, I started out doing system administration and later moved into a programming position when an opening came up. In this case I already had several years of paid tech support experience plus Red Hat administration both on the job and at home, so that got my foot in the door.
So my advice is to focus on the type of programming you want to do in your spare time, whether it's for your own projects or a community open-source project, to keep your skills up to date. Then keep an eye on job openings, and when an opportunity arises in the direction you want your career to go, grab it.
... to teach a new Computer Science/Programming course. I'm supposed to be teaching everything from the very-very basics (i.e. where that myspace thing is in your computer monitor, and how it knows who your friends are)...
IMO, computer basics have no place in a programming course. If your students don't know the fundamentals of operating a computer, they shouldn't be trying to program one.
Having said that, the first programming language I learned was BASIC (specifically Atari BASIC), which was great because it was easy to learn and we got immediate results/feedback from our efforts (no need to wait for a compiler or even have a completed code block). But that wasn't part of any course; the school just provided computers and instruction manuals and let the students explore programming on our own.
The first actual class I took in computers used Apple II. I actually don't remember whether our assignments were done in Apple BASIC or Pascal; it was probably the latter. Either way, it did introduce us to more structured programming (loops, subroutines, algorithms). I would imagine that most of those concepts can be taught using any procedural language, but I would advise picking just one language and sticking to it. Comparison of different computer languages should be saved until after the student is familiar with programming concepts in general.
I would also suggest not introducing students to object-oriented programming until they've learned procedural programming to the point that they understand what a data structure is.
but my middle school and high school encouraged me plenty with the Utah State Math Contest, which I see is still being held annually. I still have my trophies from that.:-)
I've seen the full video and looked at the article from the SIGGRAPH materials. All of the "after" pictures except one did look more or less better than the "before" picture, but there was one consistent change I noticed -- many of the subjects, especially among the female photos, appeared to be frowning or pouting in the original picture, and the modified picture turned up the corners of the mouth into more of a smile.
This tells me that simply smiling can enhance one's attractiveness a great deal!
Re:It really didn't have this?
on
GIMP 2.6 Released
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
The article you linked to says: it has "box, circle or freehand lasso selection tools." The Gimp 2.4 already had box, circle, and freehand selection tools; that's old stuff. If you look at the Gimp 2.6 release notes (you don't even have to read it), you will see that a polygon selection tool is quite different.
The closest I've been able to get to this sort of functionality before has been to repeatedly add and subtract open-ended freehand regions, where the Gimp will automatically make a straight line between the end and starting points.
Currently there are perfectly good projects that have been abandoned by their developers despite being used by large corporations. Subsequently the projects fall out of use.
There are also perfectly good commercial products which have been abandoned by their corporations despite being used by a fair number of clients or having a larger market potential. I personally was involved with a company that dissolved when it could no longer financially support itself (which incidentally happened a few years after they let go most of their top software engineers and stopped new development). The difference is that with open source software, anyone else can come along, pick up the code, and continue maintaining it. With proprietary software, you're up the creek without a paddle. The CEO of the aforementioned company refused to open source the most recent software we were working on even at the request of the lead developer of the project, so the project is pretty much dead before it ever saw the light of day.
"High Dynamic Range display technology" was presented at SIGGRAPH 2004 by Sunnybrook Technologies. If I remember correctly, they used 16 bits of luminance as opposed to the usual 8 per color, and the display combined traditional LCD pixels with LED backing light, which is just what TFA states the HP monitors are now using. Not only did it give a very high contrast ratio (40000:1), but the images it displayed were absolutely stunning to see -- it's the difference between reflected light and transmitted light.
Imagine seeing a rendering of the inside of a cathedral, where the windows look as if there is actual sunlight shining through them. Or an oudtoor scene where the clouds have a silver lining that's considerably brighter than the rest of the scene. It's hard to describe.
I assume the 50% efficency quotes refers to the ethanol conversion process. What kind of mpg can we expect cars to get which run on ethanol? This article indicates it's only 66% as efficient as gas, so that needs to be accounted for in the comparison. Are current production automobiles equipped to run on ethanol as well as regular gas?
One factor that a lot of people seem to be overlooking is the L/Tg parameter of Drake's equation -- the age of an intelligent civilization (or the age of its interstellar communication, depending on whether you're interested in finding them) divided by the age of the universe. The former is so insignificantly small on a geological timescale and the latter so overwhelmingly huge that estimates of the number of intelligent civilizations in the entire galaxy *at this very moment* are in the single digit range. That's like looking for a needle in a barnfull of hay.
If Microsoft does end up getting barred, it's going to show just how dependent the government's IT infrastructure is on proprietary Microsoft products. If they've already started making the switch to open and interoperable standards then there should not be any problem switching to other applications and platforms. If not they may actually need to violate their own restrictions at least long enough to get everything converted over.
b) You must cause any work that you distribute or publish, that in whole or in part contains or is derived from the Program or any part thereof, to be licensed as a whole at no charge to all third parties under the terms of this License.
... the bulk of the White House email records are now stored in bundles of rotting PST files...
Why in the world are they using client-side PST files as mail archives in the first place? That's no proper place for record preservation. Personal email storage should only contain messages that are current and relevant to the user who they belong to.
The right way to archive email messages is on the server side. At my company, our MS Exchange server uses a mail archiver which automatically stores all incoming and outgoing messages as they pass through. So even if I delete a message from my mailbox (I use Evolution + IMAP), it's still available in the archive.
We also have a web-based archive search tool. Granted, it's slow as molasses and sometimes doesn't come back from an archive search at all, but the point is the deleted email messages are still there. I think...
Ironically, while Gravel was one of my top two choices for the Democratic party he was not on the California primary ballot; while on the other hand my other top choice, Kucinich, dropped out of the race just days after I mailed in my absentee ballot.
This just reinforces my dislike of the media. The uneducated masses pick the candidates who get the best press rather than bother to research what the candidates' positions and records are.
Of course, it doesn't help me that none of the presidential candidates mentioned any of the geek issues I'm really interested in, nor that the ones who did post their position on tech/science issues demonstrated less than the average layman's understanding of them.
Slashdot Mirror
Would this be a good place to mention that it took me at least ten minutes to figure out what they did with the File menu so that I could convert an OOXML document someone sent me into a different file format?
Software innovation is not damaged by piracy. It's damaged by software patents, restrictive licensing, and closed source. The only thing damaged by piracy is revenue (and by extension, funding for new development -- and in Microsoft's case, funding for marketing, buying out other companies' products, lawyers, ...).
Interesting... I've been having a similar problem on my desktop PC ever since I put in that new GeForce 8600GT. There's about a 50/50 chance when I boot (cold or warm) that it won't display any video at all until it switches from text to graphics mode (which is very annoying when I have to change CMOS settings), and about a 1-5% chance that it won't even display video in graphics mode. Since I had that problem from day 1, I just thought it was some kind of compatibility issue between the video card and motherboard.
It's not enough to make me switch back to ATI though. I was a loyal ATI user until earlier this year, but when my Radeon X1900XT started flaking out with symptoms of overheating, I found that ATI's technical support was incredibly lousy.
As if we had a choice. I live in California, where both my senators and congressperson are in the pockets of the **AA. In the current election, my representative is running unopposed.
Even in races where there are two or more candidates, you can't always tell what their position is on copyright issues until after they've been in office, because it isn't one of the "popular" issues covered by the media. Even if their positions are covered, it's likely (especially in this state) that all of the candidates will have been bought (or indoctrinated) by the **AA. This year's presidential candidates are a good example of that.
I was in the same situation when I graduated in 1991. In hindsight, I probably would have been better off if I had decreased my academic workload and gotten a part-time coding job like a lot of my classmates did. Instead, I took all the classes I could to finish college in 3 years (with AP credits + a summer term), and ended up with a degree but no work experience. It took me years to find each of my programming jobs, due to both my lack of experience and also market trends.
Two of the jobs I did eventually get were because I had relatively rare niche skills that the companies were looking for (MC680x0 assembly language programming). I developed that on my own for personal projects, and was able to demonstrate the programs I wrote to the employers, which in that case counted as experience even though it wasn't "paid" experience.
The last job I got, I started out doing system administration and later moved into a programming position when an opening came up. In this case I already had several years of paid tech support experience plus Red Hat administration both on the job and at home, so that got my foot in the door.
So my advice is to focus on the type of programming you want to do in your spare time, whether it's for your own projects or a community open-source project, to keep your skills up to date. Then keep an eye on job openings, and when an opportunity arises in the direction you want your career to go, grab it.
IMO, computer basics have no place in a programming course. If your students don't know the fundamentals of operating a computer, they shouldn't be trying to program one.
Having said that, the first programming language I learned was BASIC (specifically Atari BASIC), which was great because it was easy to learn and we got immediate results/feedback from our efforts (no need to wait for a compiler or even have a completed code block). But that wasn't part of any course; the school just provided computers and instruction manuals and let the students explore programming on our own.
The first actual class I took in computers used Apple II. I actually don't remember whether our assignments were done in Apple BASIC or Pascal; it was probably the latter. Either way, it did introduce us to more structured programming (loops, subroutines, algorithms). I would imagine that most of those concepts can be taught using any procedural language, but I would advise picking just one language and sticking to it. Comparison of different computer languages should be saved until after the student is familiar with programming concepts in general.
I would also suggest not introducing students to object-oriented programming until they've learned procedural programming to the point that they understand what a data structure is.
but my middle school and high school encouraged me plenty with the Utah State Math Contest, which I see is still being held annually. I still have my trophies from that. :-)
Have they fixed the aacraid driver yet? The new kernel doesn't do me a bit of good if all I get on boot is a continuous stream of:
aac_srb: aac_fib_send failed with status: 8195
and my disk array is not recognized.
http://lkml.org/lkml/2008/5/12/365
https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=450444
http://bugs.gentoo.org/show_bug.cgi?id=233364
http://bugs.centos.org/bug_view_advanced_page.php?bug_id=2911
http://marc.info/?l=linux-kernel&m=122166454808377&w=2
http://linux.derkeiler.com/Mailing-Lists/Kernel/2008-10/msg02493.html
I've seen the full video and looked at the article from the SIGGRAPH materials. All of the "after" pictures except one did look more or less better than the "before" picture, but there was one consistent change I noticed -- many of the subjects, especially among the female photos, appeared to be frowning or pouting in the original picture, and the modified picture turned up the corners of the mouth into more of a smile.
This tells me that simply smiling can enhance one's attractiveness a great deal!
The article you linked to says: it has "box, circle or freehand lasso selection tools." The Gimp 2.4 already had box, circle, and freehand selection tools; that's old stuff. If you look at the Gimp 2.6 release notes (you don't even have to read it), you will see that a polygon selection tool is quite different.
The closest I've been able to get to this sort of functionality before has been to repeatedly add and subtract open-ended freehand regions, where the Gimp will automatically make a straight line between the end and starting points.
Which engine is closer to being fully compliant with W3C standards? I can't tell how WebKit rates.
http://www.webdevout.net/browser-support?IE7=on&FX3=on&OP9=on&SF2=on&uas=CUSTOM
Nute Gunray: Ah, my lord, is that... legal?
Darth Sidious: I will make it legal.
Sorry, circular arguments just don't hold any weight with me.
If the chips are heating the water, shouldn't it flow up?
There are also perfectly good commercial products which have been abandoned by their corporations despite being used by a fair number of clients or having a larger market potential. I personally was involved with a company that dissolved when it could no longer financially support itself (which incidentally happened a few years after they let go most of their top software engineers and stopped new development). The difference is that with open source software, anyone else can come along, pick up the code, and continue maintaining it. With proprietary software, you're up the creek without a paddle. The CEO of the aforementioned company refused to open source the most recent software we were working on even at the request of the lead developer of the project, so the project is pretty much dead before it ever saw the light of day.
"High Dynamic Range display technology" was presented at SIGGRAPH 2004 by Sunnybrook Technologies. If I remember correctly, they used 16 bits of luminance as opposed to the usual 8 per color, and the display combined traditional LCD pixels with LED backing light, which is just what TFA states the HP monitors are now using. Not only did it give a very high contrast ratio (40000:1), but the images it displayed were absolutely stunning to see -- it's the difference between reflected light and transmitted light.
Imagine seeing a rendering of the inside of a cathedral, where the windows look as if there is actual sunlight shining through them. Or an oudtoor scene where the clouds have a silver lining that's considerably brighter than the rest of the scene. It's hard to describe.
I assume the 50% efficency quotes refers to the ethanol conversion process. What kind of mpg can we expect cars to get which run on ethanol? This article indicates it's only 66% as efficient as gas, so that needs to be accounted for in the comparison. Are current production automobiles equipped to run on ethanol as well as regular gas?
One factor that a lot of people seem to be overlooking is the L/Tg parameter of Drake's equation -- the age of an intelligent civilization (or the age of its interstellar communication, depending on whether you're interested in finding them) divided by the age of the universe. The former is so insignificantly small on a geological timescale and the latter so overwhelmingly huge that estimates of the number of intelligent civilizations in the entire galaxy *at this very moment* are in the single digit range. That's like looking for a needle in a barnfull of hay.
Actually, diabetic or not, we should all be demanding that sugar not be used.
If Microsoft does end up getting barred, it's going to show just how dependent the government's IT infrastructure is on proprietary Microsoft products. If they've already started making the switch to open and interoperable standards then there should not be any problem switching to other applications and platforms. If not they may actually need to violate their own restrictions at least long enough to get everything converted over.
Hmm... "Multiple Use Labor Element" ... "Multifunction Utility/Logistics and Equipment"
:-)
I'm thinking they didn't come up with that acronym by coincidence.
If course, when I saw the pictures my impression immediately changed from M.U.L.E. to "Rise of the Machines".
Quite the contrary. From the GPL (version 2) item #2:
Why in the world are they using client-side PST files as mail archives in the first place? That's no proper place for record preservation. Personal email storage should only contain messages that are current and relevant to the user who they belong to.
The right way to archive email messages is on the server side. At my company, our MS Exchange server uses a mail archiver which automatically stores all incoming and outgoing messages as they pass through. So even if I delete a message from my mailbox (I use Evolution + IMAP), it's still available in the archive.
We also have a web-based archive search tool. Granted, it's slow as molasses and sometimes doesn't come back from an archive search at all, but the point is the deleted email messages are still there. I think...
There. Fixed it for ya.
Ironically, while Gravel was one of my top two choices for the Democratic party he was not on the California primary ballot; while on the other hand my other top choice, Kucinich, dropped out of the race just days after I mailed in my absentee ballot.
This just reinforces my dislike of the media. The uneducated masses pick the candidates who get the best press rather than bother to research what the candidates' positions and records are.
Of course, it doesn't help me that none of the presidential candidates mentioned any of the geek issues I'm really interested in, nor that the ones who did post their position on tech/science issues demonstrated less than the average layman's understanding of them.