Is there *any* actual information in this article at all (useful information, anyway)? The only tidbits I could find boil down to things like "my on-board controller didn't work", "I couldn't compile KDE myself", and "this and that specific option to this and that program gives a warning when you use it".
Outside of these things, the only pieces of information I could find boiled down to "there's two new ports", "it still doesn't include Apache 2.x", and "you get daily (in)security reports mailed to you". If it wasn't for the irrelevant fluff mentioned above, I'd assume the author of this article hasn't even installed OpenBSD and instead just looked through the website and maybe Google'd for some extra information.
I really hope the author didn't get payed too much for this, because no matter how much he got, the article wasn't worth it.
The article also mentions that another case (Holger Voss vs. Deutsche Telekom / T-Online) is currently being heard by a court; Wikipedia has some more background information on Holger Voss and on another case which is probably related.
Ah, yeah, that always works, right? Filesharing? OMGpedophiles, think of the children! Privacy? OMGpedophiles! Freedom of speech? OMGpedophiles!
It's just like screaming "if you allow that, the terrorists will already have won" - only that it also seems to work on Slashdot, where people are (usually) able to see through the "terrorism" argument at least.
The funny thing about all this is that the ISP is merely trying to *comply* with *existing laws*. It's not even like they have a choice in the matter really; they *have* to delete all data that is not required for accounting purposes, period.
That's one of the rules of Slashdot at work, actually: you can increase your chance of being modded up by including lines like "I know I'm gonna get modded down for saying this, but..."
Of course, you still don't (usually) get away with really blatant flamebait or obvious nonsense, but generally, it works.
I also know that I myself will get modded Offtopic now for saying this, but I think it's an interesting observation with regard to how Slashdot works.
I had that happen once. I was looking around a (small) net-based shop, and found a number of expensive items usually priced at a couple of thousand bucks for 1/1000th the actual price. Just for the fun of it, I ordered all those, but unfortunately, someone did notice the glitch and sent me a polite email, telling me that those prices were, unfortunately, not the real ones.
Ah well.:)
Strangely enough, there actually are people who seem to be attached to IE and/or Microsoft more than can be rationally explained - the opposite of GNU/Linux/*BSD/FOSS zealots, maybe.
I have a friend like that - she flat out refuses to use anything except IE, no matter how bad it is, no matter how sorely features like tabbed browsing are missing, and no matter how poor its standards compliance is.
When you mention it to her, though, you'll get answers like "I don't want to install another program, that would make my computer even more unstable", "IE is the standard, so people should write their pages in a way that works with IE, not adhere to published W3C standards", and so on. If you inquire more or point out flaws in her reasoning, she'll get defensive and possibly jump at your throat, accusing you of hating IE just because it's made by Microsoft and similar things.
She's otherwise a highly intelligent person, and I really like her a lot, but I just don't really understand this. Usually, I'd say that it may be due to the fact that in order to switch to another browser, people first have to admit that the one they're using now is inferior and that they might not be willing to do this since it'd seem to them that they'd be admitting that their judgement is poor (nobody likes to be on the loser's side, right?), but I think that she's intelligent enough to choose the best tool for the job rather than keeping an inferior one just so she doesn't have to admit it's inferior.
That's one example of a person who uses IE. Another example - and probably one that's more common - would be people like my parents; they use IE because it's what came with the computer, because it works for the few websites they look at, and because they're used to it. They probably would be equally happy with Mozilla, but there is no reason for them to switch, and I don't want to install another browser for them just for the sake of it, especially since it means that I'll be the one who gets blamed if anything goes wrong, ever. The only actual advantage would probably be that they'd be less vulnerable to spyware etc., but they never had any, anyway (and I think they don't visit the kind of site where you're likely to catch any, either ^_~).
So that's another example - the opposite of power users, so to speak. They hardly even understand what the word "browser" means (I pretty much have to explain that to them every time it comes up).
Re:We need to teach programming earlier and better
on
Johnny Can So Program
·
· Score: 1
Actually, it's no surprise the C/C++ example you give wouldn't make much sense to a budding young programmer - it doesn't make much sense, anyhow. If you're using cout, then you should include iostream.h, not stdio.h - that one's for printf and friends.
Of course, outside of that, I agree with what you said (even though I'd say Perl is better than Python - any language which depends on whitespace to determine block structure should be taken out and shot), and this minor confusion just is another example of why C and C++ are quite useless when you want to teach someone how to program for the first time.
Although, one might add, it does get even worse than that. The first CS courses I had myself used SML/NJ as the programming language; I don't want to say anything against ML really, but while it is a powerful language, I think it's just about as userfriendly and suitable for introducing students to programming as C++ is. The reason why we used it, BTW, was that the professor's personal opinion was that anything that's not a functional programming language is inherently evil and inferior - it often seemed like he was on a personal vendetta against "normal" (imperative) programming languages.
We did ultimately get one of those, too, but it was Modula-2 - arguably one of the most useless languages ever invented, one that squeezes even the last remaining bits of life out of Pascal and makes it difficult to do just about anything useful.
Fortunately, both me and (most of) my friends already had a background in programming; but there were others that were not so lucky, and I think ML and Modula-2 managed to destroy just about any actual interest they might have had in learning how to program properly.
That's certainly interesting, but the screen (with a size of 7,5") really seems a bit small. I understand that you can't attach a huge screen to a laptop and still be able to charge a low price like that, but I'm not sure whether this is big enough to actually use the thing as a real computer instead of as a better PDA or cell phone.
Stanford University, of all places, is not a hobbyist site, though. If they can't handle the load that a mention on Slashdot generates, then I'd say it's their own fault.
That being said, a slashdot-provided torrent for the video would be nice, of course, but there's a working one a bit further up in the discussion, too, so you can still get the video even though they're slashdotted.
Not necessarily. It was a very poor choice of words, but I think what he meant was that he created (or at least, helped create) the Internet as we know it today. I.e., while he was not politically involved in the creation of the "early" Internet, he did play a role in turning it from a university network with a few hundred nodes into what it is today.
I don't know whether that statement is actually true, mind you - but if that's what he meant when he talked about "creating the Internet", then it's not a statement that's obviously untrue anymore, either.
So, yeah, REALLY bad choice of words - but we should concentrate on what he actually meant, not what one might (falsely) think he meant. Assuming that what I said above really *is* what he meant, of course.
Where in China were you, though, and how did you connect to the Internet? If you're using your own laptop and the free Internet access provided by your first class hotel in Hongkong, then you probably will see much, much less censorship than the average citizen from $medium_sized_city using a public Internet café.
1) The vast number of people aren't geeks; technologies like Freenet etc. that would allow you to bypass most forms of censorship are simply not ready for them. Most people just won't know how to install, configure and use those tools - and even less so when the computers they use are in public internet cafés.
2) Even for those do know how to get around censorship, there still is the question "is it worth the risk for me?" You might be annoyed that you can't read the BBC's website, but if you know that trying to do so anyway might cause some goons to be sent to your house who will "have a word with you", then you may just decide that it isn't really worth the risk.
Remember, censorship does not have to take care that NOONE can see ANYTHING in order to be effective - it just has to make sure that MOST people can't see MOST stuff.
I'm not sure about that, actually. Child porn and "terrorism", sure. But hate literature? Most Americans I've talked to didn't seem to care about hate speech and just cited "free speech" - as long as it wasn't THEM who were the targets of said hate speech.
But of course, you could always label hate speech as "terrorism", and nobody'd care anymore about what freedoms they might lose.
That's what routing protocols are for. *You* don't need to know, but if your router knows how to talk BGP to its peers and exchange this kind of information, then everything's fine.
Or at least, the problem of "how do I get this packet closer to $targetip" is solved.
On the other hand, though, most scientific applications require a full OpenGL implementation, which is something that consumer cards typically don't have.
Did you look into RapidSVN? I haven't tried it myself, but it may be an interesting alternative to TortoiseSVN if you want support for platforms other than windows.
There's also a Subversion plugin for Eclipse, in case you're using that.
Slashdot Mirror
Wait, that's NEWS? Everyone in Europe at least already knows that, whether they watch the, um, show or not. :)
Is there *any* actual information in this article at all (useful information, anyway)? The only tidbits I could find boil down to things like "my on-board controller didn't work", "I couldn't compile KDE myself", and "this and that specific option to this and that program gives a warning when you use it".
Outside of these things, the only pieces of information I could find boiled down to "there's two new ports", "it still doesn't include Apache 2.x", and "you get daily (in)security reports mailed to you". If it wasn't for the irrelevant fluff mentioned above, I'd assume the author of this article hasn't even installed OpenBSD and instead just looked through the website and maybe Google'd for some extra information.
I really hope the author didn't get payed too much for this, because no matter how much he got, the article wasn't worth it.
T-Online is a subsidiary of the Deutsche Telekom (one of many), so the "tentacle" part was probably an intentional side blow.
The article also mentions that another case (Holger Voss vs. Deutsche Telekom / T-Online) is currently being heard by a court; Wikipedia has some more background information on Holger Voss and on another case which is probably related.
Ah, yeah, that always works, right? Filesharing? OMGpedophiles, think of the children! Privacy? OMGpedophiles! Freedom of speech? OMGpedophiles!
It's just like screaming "if you allow that, the terrorists will already have won" - only that it also seems to work on Slashdot, where people are (usually) able to see through the "terrorism" argument at least.
The funny thing about all this is that the ISP is merely trying to *comply* with *existing laws*. It's not even like they have a choice in the matter really; they *have* to delete all data that is not required for accounting purposes, period.
That's one of the rules of Slashdot at work, actually: you can increase your chance of being modded up by including lines like "I know I'm gonna get modded down for saying this, but..."
Of course, you still don't (usually) get away with really blatant flamebait or obvious nonsense, but generally, it works.
I also know that I myself will get modded Offtopic now for saying this, but I think it's an interesting observation with regard to how Slashdot works.
I had that happen once. I was looking around a (small) net-based shop, and found a number of expensive items usually priced at a couple of thousand bucks for 1/1000th the actual price. Just for the fun of it, I ordered all those, but unfortunately, someone did notice the glitch and sent me a polite email, telling me that those prices were, unfortunately, not the real ones. Ah well. :)
Strangely enough, there actually are people who seem to be attached to IE and/or Microsoft more than can be rationally explained - the opposite of GNU/Linux/*BSD/FOSS zealots, maybe.
I have a friend like that - she flat out refuses to use anything except IE, no matter how bad it is, no matter how sorely features like tabbed browsing are missing, and no matter how poor its standards compliance is.
When you mention it to her, though, you'll get answers like "I don't want to install another program, that would make my computer even more unstable", "IE is the standard, so people should write their pages in a way that works with IE, not adhere to published W3C standards", and so on. If you inquire more or point out flaws in her reasoning, she'll get defensive and possibly jump at your throat, accusing you of hating IE just because it's made by Microsoft and similar things.
She's otherwise a highly intelligent person, and I really like her a lot, but I just don't really understand this. Usually, I'd say that it may be due to the fact that in order to switch to another browser, people first have to admit that the one they're using now is inferior and that they might not be willing to do this since it'd seem to them that they'd be admitting that their judgement is poor (nobody likes to be on the loser's side, right?), but I think that she's intelligent enough to choose the best tool for the job rather than keeping an inferior one just so she doesn't have to admit it's inferior.
That's one example of a person who uses IE. Another example - and probably one that's more common - would be people like my parents; they use IE because it's what came with the computer, because it works for the few websites they look at, and because they're used to it. They probably would be equally happy with Mozilla, but there is no reason for them to switch, and I don't want to install another browser for them just for the sake of it, especially since it means that I'll be the one who gets blamed if anything goes wrong, ever. The only actual advantage would probably be that they'd be less vulnerable to spyware etc., but they never had any, anyway (and I think they don't visit the kind of site where you're likely to catch any, either ^_~).
So that's another example - the opposite of power users, so to speak. They hardly even understand what the word "browser" means (I pretty much have to explain that to them every time it comes up).
"Remember the little goats"?
You're welcome. :)
No problem. :) Have you seen "The 11 evolutionary stages of a programmer", BTW? The C++ examples in there don't need any comments, I think. :)
Actually, it's no surprise the C/C++ example you give wouldn't make much sense to a budding young programmer - it doesn't make much sense, anyhow. If you're using cout, then you should include iostream.h, not stdio.h - that one's for printf and friends.
Of course, outside of that, I agree with what you said (even though I'd say Perl is better than Python - any language which depends on whitespace to determine block structure should be taken out and shot), and this minor confusion just is another example of why C and C++ are quite useless when you want to teach someone how to program for the first time.
Although, one might add, it does get even worse than that. The first CS courses I had myself used SML/NJ as the programming language; I don't want to say anything against ML really, but while it is a powerful language, I think it's just about as userfriendly and suitable for introducing students to programming as C++ is. The reason why we used it, BTW, was that the professor's personal opinion was that anything that's not a functional programming language is inherently evil and inferior - it often seemed like he was on a personal vendetta against "normal" (imperative) programming languages.
We did ultimately get one of those, too, but it was Modula-2 - arguably one of the most useless languages ever invented, one that squeezes even the last remaining bits of life out of Pascal and makes it difficult to do just about anything useful.
Fortunately, both me and (most of) my friends already had a background in programming; but there were others that were not so lucky, and I think ML and Modula-2 managed to destroy just about any actual interest they might have had in learning how to program properly.
Ah well. The good (?) old days.
That's certainly interesting, but the screen (with a size of 7,5") really seems a bit small. I understand that you can't attach a huge screen to a laptop and still be able to charge a low price like that, but I'm not sure whether this is big enough to actually use the thing as a real computer instead of as a better PDA or cell phone.
Stanford University, of all places, is not a hobbyist site, though. If they can't handle the load that a mention on Slashdot generates, then I'd say it's their own fault.
That being said, a slashdot-provided torrent for the video would be nice, of course, but there's a working one a bit further up in the discussion, too, so you can still get the video even though they're slashdotted.
Let me be the first to say... darn, that's an ugly console if I ever saw one.
Not necessarily. It was a very poor choice of words, but I think what he meant was that he created (or at least, helped create) the Internet as we know it today. I.e., while he was not politically involved in the creation of the "early" Internet, he did play a role in turning it from a university network with a few hundred nodes into what it is today.
I don't know whether that statement is actually true, mind you - but if that's what he meant when he talked about "creating the Internet", then it's not a statement that's obviously untrue anymore, either.
So, yeah, REALLY bad choice of words - but we should concentrate on what he actually meant, not what one might (falsely) think he meant. Assuming that what I said above really *is* what he meant, of course.
Where in China were you, though, and how did you connect to the Internet? If you're using your own laptop and the free Internet access provided by your first class hotel in Hongkong, then you probably will see much, much less censorship than the average citizen from $medium_sized_city using a public Internet café.
Sorry, make that http://www.opennic.unrated.net/ - this should teach me to check links before posting them.
Maybe use another DNS server. OpenNIC has several around the world, so unless your ISP is throttling/proxying *all* DNS traffic, you should be fine.
You're missing two important points, though.
1) The vast number of people aren't geeks; technologies like Freenet etc. that would allow you to bypass most forms of censorship are simply not ready for them. Most people just won't know how to install, configure and use those tools - and even less so when the computers they use are in public internet cafés.
2) Even for those do know how to get around censorship, there still is the question "is it worth the risk for me?" You might be annoyed that you can't read the BBC's website, but if you know that trying to do so anyway might cause some goons to be sent to your house who will "have a word with you", then you may just decide that it isn't really worth the risk.
Remember, censorship does not have to take care that NOONE can see ANYTHING in order to be effective - it just has to make sure that MOST people can't see MOST stuff.
I'm not sure about that, actually. Child porn and "terrorism", sure. But hate literature? Most Americans I've talked to didn't seem to care about hate speech and just cited "free speech" - as long as it wasn't THEM who were the targets of said hate speech.
But of course, you could always label hate speech as "terrorism", and nobody'd care anymore about what freedoms they might lose.
It's a sad day for democracy when "the defendant is allowed to have a lawyer" has to be considered an accomplishment.
That's what routing protocols are for. *You* don't need to know, but if your router knows how to talk BGP to its peers and exchange this kind of information, then everything's fine.
Or at least, the problem of "how do I get this packet closer to $targetip" is solved.
On the other hand, though, most scientific applications require a full OpenGL implementation, which is something that consumer cards typically don't have.
Did you look into RapidSVN? I haven't tried it myself, but it may be an interesting alternative to TortoiseSVN if you want support for platforms other than windows.
There's also a Subversion plugin for Eclipse, in case you're using that.