AppleScript, then Perl? Why not slap them upside the head while you're at it? Single color jigsaw puzzles come after AppleScript, and before Perl.
AppleScript is a very easy to learn language with immediate feedback. You can create very simple scripts to control apps, documents, etc. with it. It does some simple tasks, and teaches the formality of programming languages, without require the kind of discipline a real language requires.
Perl is a very scalable language. Learning how to do a "Hello World" program, or any of the sort of stuff those of us who learned Basic first learned in the early days (Eliza-like programs, etc.) is relatively simple in PERL, and doesn't require much more in the way of skill than an AppleScript. It also has a C-like syntax and so prepares the learner to move on to C or Java.
As a student moves forward, PERL gets more and more complex, and more and more powerful. And unlike Basic, PERL can be used to do some heavy duty things, and it is used in production environments to do real-world tasks. The same could not be said of most "learner's" languages.
But I see you didn't provide a counterexample. What would you suggest a 12-year old start programming with on an OS X platform?
As I said, NOT FOR BURNING. How common are carbonaceous chondrite meteorites with the monomers used for polymer synthesis? I am not a chemist, but my understanding is that building certain polymers from petroleum-derived monomers is a hell of a lot easier than from molecular carbon, hydrogen, and oxygen. But then again, I don't have recourse to ultraplasmagigatomic nonsense.
Can I assume that your "there's a lot of stuff that says 'well, this used to work in Mac OS 9'" refers to AppleScript in a Nutshell (ORA)?
That's what I've used, that, and the limited documentation on the Apple site.
Learn AppleScript, then Perl, then C (with GCC). All comes on the developer disk, or a free download.
If you can't get a Mac (and given how cheap the Macs are getting, that's a smaller proportion of the audience), why not start with command line batch programming, then download ActiveState Perl or Python, then learn some Java, then you can decide whether you want to sell your soul to MS and do VBA and VC++, or slap some Linux on that box.
Since you went to XMLSpy first, I assume you're not comfortable with the emacs keybindings. In that case, try XMLWriter before XMLSpy. It's much cheaper. If that does everything you need, great. If not, I'd really suggest trying a Windows build of emacs with PSGML, Xalan, etc. If you prefer XMLSpy to emacs, that's fine, but try out the cheaper, or OSS, tools first to spare your own wallet.
Finally, if all you're really doing is a lot of web-oriented stuff like RSS, try HTML-Kit, which has XML-oriented plugins that hook into parsers and transformation engines.
Also, from what I remember, the aliens weren't exactly subcontractors, they just did what they were told in some mysterious fashion. The "apocalypse" in Childhood's End is just an early version of Vernor Vinge's Singularity.
You've got the problem, though, that a lot of that software doesn't have a stable site. If the URL changes (URLs SHOULDN'T change, not for something like this, but they do), the URL in the book would be useless. So all in all, unfortunately, I think saying "Google-I'm-Feeling-Lucky > DragThing" is more useful than a URL at the moment.
It will only run on Windows. And works best on Win98. It's like if the bare ceiling of the Sistine chapel had been made out of Kraft Macaroni and Cheese packets, and Michelangelo had painted his masterpiece on that.
Probably because noone would have been able to understand a combined shorthand except himself. The key to shorthand is that if you use a standard, other people can read what you wrote.
The big problem is the fact that the "and" is emphasized. If it were
The Adventures of Tom Bombadil Leaf By Niggle and Smith of Wootton Major
you'd have parsed it correctly (though, yes, while one doesn't always have to put a comma after the penultimate item in a series, when the series is of phrases or clauses, especially titles, one should).
If the publishers keep insisting that it is, then perhaps we should remind them that copyrights on eBooks are an option that citizens currently grant, and not a necessity.
And the authors will point out that their work is something they provide for consideration, and the right to read it is not inalienable.
Seems to me that anyone grading it as an A+ growth stock (which I assume - IANASB - means that the reward/risk ratio is very good) is gambling on IBM getting sick of this and making it go away by throwing money/IBM stock at the SCO stockholders.
1. As the article notes, we need a format that is typographically rich. That means Unicode and style instructions. Maybe CSS3 or XSL:FO could do this, I haven't looked at the details of either closely enough. But plain text is NOT sufficient.
2. As the article notes, we need a format that is adaptable. Adaptable means that the style information will adapt to the reading environment: both hardware (PDA, ebook reader, desktop monitor, projected on a large screen for an audience, audio, braille, etc.) and wetware (people who are blind, people who are colorblind, people who need large text, etc.). In order to be able to properly apply the styles, you would therefore need semantic markup (meaning an *ML, like DocBook or better TEI) and the ability to create multiple style sheets, or apply user style sheets.
3. As the article mentions, DRM is a necessity (we may not think so, but the authors and publishers do). It seems to me that an open PKC could be used: you exchange keys with the publisher, and you can decrypt the document on screen, but the software doesn't allow you to export unless the publisher's key permits it. But this would probably be pretty hackable, wouldn't it?
Yes, this should drive you nuts: Project Gutenberg probably can't touch them. Technically, any transcription of the texts is copyrighted - the transcription is the result of editorial work, and so is copyright by the editor (textual editing is necessary on anything older than a few generations, and the older, the more necessary). Of course, the ACTUAL text of the tablets is public domain, so if you read and transcribe them yourself, you can put your transcription into the public domain. And I am talking about TRANSCRIPTIONS, as in "cuneiform texts in the original languages and cuneiform writing." Translations, obviously, are copyright by the translators if the original text is in the public domain.
There's a hell of a lot of work involved in transcribing something like this (or translating, for that matter).
[In 1988] you had to actually communicate with people in person instead of email, and you had to go to the library and do your research from books.
I don't know about you, but I got my first undergrad email account in 1985. And I was NOT a CS student, or even a science or engineering student. It was BITNET, not Internet, but I could email to Internet accounts through a gateway, could telnet to other folks' accounts at different universities, could use finger, could play a game with a number of different users logged into the main university computer, and could also do a text IM (one 80-char line at a time) with different users logged into the main university computer. The fundamental differences are 1. graphics, 2. clientization of the system - now instead of going to the library or the computer room to do this, a student could do it from his dormroom - and 3. expansion to a larger community (but even in 1985, folks would IM who were not even remotely computer savvy).
On the other hand, even today you have to go to the library to do your research. Except for a handful of fields (CS, for instance) that have a high uebergeek quotient and a need for speed, most useful research is still published on dead trees.
Slashdot Mirror
AppleScript, then Perl? Why not slap them upside the head while you're at it? Single color jigsaw puzzles come after AppleScript, and before Perl.
AppleScript is a very easy to learn language with immediate feedback. You can create very simple scripts to control apps, documents, etc. with it. It does some simple tasks, and teaches the formality of programming languages, without require the kind of discipline a real language requires.
Perl is a very scalable language. Learning how to do a "Hello World" program, or any of the sort of stuff those of us who learned Basic first learned in the early days (Eliza-like programs, etc.) is relatively simple in PERL, and doesn't require much more in the way of skill than an AppleScript. It also has a C-like syntax and so prepares the learner to move on to C or Java.
As a student moves forward, PERL gets more and more complex, and more and more powerful. And unlike Basic, PERL can be used to do some heavy duty things, and it is used in production environments to do real-world tasks. The same could not be said of most "learner's" languages.
But I see you didn't provide a counterexample. What would you suggest a 12-year old start programming with on an OS X platform?
As I said, NOT FOR BURNING. How common are carbonaceous chondrite meteorites with the monomers used for polymer synthesis? I am not a chemist, but my understanding is that building certain polymers from petroleum-derived monomers is a hell of a lot easier than from molecular carbon, hydrogen, and oxygen. But then again, I don't have recourse to ultraplasmagigatomic nonsense.
Can I assume that your "there's a lot of stuff that says 'well, this used to work in Mac OS 9'" refers to AppleScript in a Nutshell (ORA)? That's what I've used, that, and the limited documentation on the Apple site.
OS X
Learn AppleScript, then Perl, then C (with GCC). All comes on the developer disk, or a free download.
If you can't get a Mac (and given how cheap the Macs are getting, that's a smaller proportion of the audience), why not start with command line batch programming, then download ActiveState Perl or Python, then learn some Java, then you can decide whether you want to sell your soul to MS and do VBA and VC++, or slap some Linux on that box.
Since you went to XMLSpy first, I assume you're not comfortable with the emacs keybindings. In that case, try XMLWriter before XMLSpy. It's much cheaper. If that does everything you need, great. If not, I'd really suggest trying a Windows build of emacs with PSGML, Xalan, etc. If you prefer XMLSpy to emacs, that's fine, but try out the cheaper, or OSS, tools first to spare your own wallet.
Finally, if all you're really doing is a lot of web-oriented stuff like RSS, try HTML-Kit, which has XML-oriented plugins that hook into parsers and transformation engines.
Actually, there is one resource you can get from earth that you can't get from another planet in our solar system: petroleum.
And no, I don't mean for burning.
Also, from what I remember, the aliens weren't exactly subcontractors, they just did what they were told in some mysterious fashion. The "apocalypse" in Childhood's End is just an early version of Vernor Vinge's Singularity.
You've got the problem, though, that a lot of that software doesn't have a stable site. If the URL changes (URLs SHOULDN'T change, not for something like this, but they do), the URL in the book would be useless. So all in all, unfortunately, I think saying "Google-I'm-Feeling-Lucky > DragThing" is more useful than a URL at the moment.
It will only run on Windows. And works best on Win98. It's like if the bare ceiling of the Sistine chapel had been made out of Kraft Macaroni and Cheese packets, and Michelangelo had painted his masterpiece on that.
As a programmer writing software for spacecraft you must be able to anticipate every possible value and account for it.
As a programmer writing software for spacecraft, you should be able to implement an anti-gravity drive using no more than an RS-232 interface.
Oh, does my reponse not make any sense? Neither does the sentence it's responding to. Both are impossibilities.
Moderators: read the parent post first, mod it up, then come back and mod me down.
Damn. I mean, damn.
Probably because noone would have been able to understand a combined shorthand except himself. The key to shorthand is that if you use a standard, other people can read what you wrote.
Which illustrates how badly formatted the story text in fact is. QED, really.
No argument from me. You've got it.
Please pardon me, normally it isn't a problem
Normally the copyright holder isn't a slashdot reader.
I have some pretty long and complex conversations over ICQ. So I'd say your mileage may vary.
The only difference between our two postings is that I did not realize that "Leaf by Niggle" was a separate title from Tom Bombadil.
I believe IBM payed ESR for some of the SCO work. But he still deserves credit for doing the work.
The big problem is the fact that the "and" is emphasized. If it were
The Adventures of Tom Bombadil Leaf By Niggle and Smith of Wootton Major
you'd have parsed it correctly (though, yes, while one doesn't always have to put a comma after the penultimate item in a series, when the series is of phrases or clauses, especially titles, one should).
If the publishers keep insisting that it is, then perhaps we should remind them that copyrights on eBooks are an option that citizens currently grant, and not a necessity.
And the authors will point out that their work is something they provide for consideration, and the right to read it is not inalienable.
Seems to me that anyone grading it as an A+ growth stock (which I assume - IANASB - means that the reward/risk ratio is very good) is gambling on IBM getting sick of this and making it go away by throwing money/IBM stock at the SCO stockholders.
As a particle, light is photons while radio is electrons.
What imbecile told you that RF was made up of electrons? RF (radio frequency) is photons. So is microwave. So is gamma. So is IR. So is UV.
1. As the article notes, we need a format that is typographically rich. That means Unicode and style instructions. Maybe CSS3 or XSL:FO could do this, I haven't looked at the details of either closely enough. But plain text is NOT sufficient.
2. As the article notes, we need a format that is adaptable. Adaptable means that the style information will adapt to the reading environment: both hardware (PDA, ebook reader, desktop monitor, projected on a large screen for an audience, audio, braille, etc.) and wetware (people who are blind, people who are colorblind, people who need large text, etc.). In order to be able to properly apply the styles, you would therefore need semantic markup (meaning an *ML, like DocBook or better TEI) and the ability to create multiple style sheets, or apply user style sheets.
3. As the article mentions, DRM is a necessity (we may not think so, but the authors and publishers do). It seems to me that an open PKC could be used: you exchange keys with the publisher, and you can decrypt the document on screen, but the software doesn't allow you to export unless the publisher's key permits it. But this would probably be pretty hackable, wouldn't it?
There's a hell of a lot of work involved in transcribing something like this (or translating, for that matter).
PS: Obviously it doesn't come with VNC, but I've had it work on my comp...
[In 1988] you had to actually communicate with people in person instead of email, and you had to go to the library and do your research from books.
I don't know about you, but I got my first undergrad email account in 1985. And I was NOT a CS student, or even a science or engineering student. It was BITNET, not Internet, but I could email to Internet accounts through a gateway, could telnet to other folks' accounts at different universities, could use finger, could play a game with a number of different users logged into the main university computer, and could also do a text IM (one 80-char line at a time) with different users logged into the main university computer. The fundamental differences are 1. graphics, 2. clientization of the system - now instead of going to the library or the computer room to do this, a student could do it from his dormroom - and 3. expansion to a larger community (but even in 1985, folks would IM who were not even remotely computer savvy).
On the other hand, even today you have to go to the library to do your research. Except for a handful of fields (CS, for instance) that have a high uebergeek quotient and a need for speed, most useful research is still published on dead trees.