Why is your school teaching it that way? My introductory programming course in college used Java, and we didn't learn OO principles or use standard libraries until the next semester. The intro course was strictly procedural code and programming constructs like if-then-else, the iterative loops, recursion and algorithms (sorting, etc.)
When we had a base established, THEN they started teaching us OO and data structures, and letting us use the Java Collections and stuff. It worked very well. I can see how if your school is teaching them that way that you are getting people who don't know anything. I deal with contractors all the time now in my job that know Jakarta Struts like the back of their hand, but otherwise can't program their way out of a paper bag. We had one guy quit because before we moved to struts we used our own minimal framework, and he couldn't cope with doing actual java programming.
I watched it exactly once for about 15 minutes, and it was so bad that I never watched it again. Take it as a troll if you like, but I've been a fan of star trek all the way through Deep Space Nine (voyager was written by people who didn't even know trek history apparently), and Enterprise was just not good.
United States code defines the militia as composing of the body of healthy adult male citizens, so it's not even like limiting firearm ownership to the militia is all that restrictive anyway. In context it effectively meant anyone who could pick up a gun was responsible for civil defense, and had a right to be armed for that end.
"Assault Weapon" is a fake term that was invented specifically because it had no meaning, and sounded like the well-defined term "Assault Rifle". Banning "assault rifles" was worthless to these people because by definition an assault rifle is fully automatic, which have already been banned since, like, 1924.
On the other hand, make up a phony word that means whatever you want it to, and you can ban anything, including those darn scary looking rifles with the foldable stock that function EXACTLY like a stinking normal hunting rifle. But they look scary. And banning them makes me look like I'm doing my job as a congresswoman.
The fun part is deciding which right is a collective right or a citizen's right. For example, the first amendment was decided to be a citizen's right, and the second was decided to be a state's right. Equal protection therefore can be extended to freedom of speech, but not the right to bear arms.
As far as I can tell, before the civil war, the entire bill of rights was considered states rights, and therefore your constitutional rights could be restricted at the state level. And they were.
The collective right as held by the state is still recognized selectively by people. One time I was talking to a supposedly knowledgeable person from Yale, who claimed that you don't have a right to own a gun because the bill of rights are collective rights held by the states. Whereupon I said "then you don't have freedom of speech, so shut up."
Beside the very particular wording of the second amendment, the general principle that decides if a right is a collective right or an individual right seems to be what the supreme court ruled on that particular amendment. This is done in spite of the fact that there does not appear to be any legal justification for the concept of a state having a "right", but rather "powers".
As a side note, the marriage issue is kind of hairy because to my recollection, the constitution requires that marriage licenses issued in one state are valid in all states. "full faith and credit shall be given in each state to the public acts and records and judicial proceedings of every other state." If your state wants to block gay marriage, it becomes a federal issue, or else every gay couple can just go to new hampshire to marry and the go back home and have their state recognize it.
The Defense of Marriage Act tried to get around this by declaring that no state had to recognize another state's "definition" of marriage. Well, too bad, you still have to honor the license. A constitutional amendment is the only way around this.
I've never seen a basketball program do anything but bring money into a school. When you fill up those stadiums full of fans, money comes in, and in most schools it's used.
I used to hate it too, then I realized that my high school forensics team wouldn't even EXIST if it wasn't for the fact that the football games made more in revenue than the football program was allocated.
Conservatives are strong proponents of civics classes and have been for years. But they get shot down by left wing reactionaries as patriotic propaganda, which is the EXACT reason so many schools have dropped the "controversial" programs. What the hell is patriotic propaganda anyway? America is SUPPOSED to be based on an idea, not an ethnic group or geographical location. I'd rather be the country that was founded on ideals than the country that was founded because everybody was the same skin color or whatever.
Your principle is called reductio ad absurdum in the real world, it works, and it works PRECISELY because people are inconsistent.
When people talk about "ending hunger" they are really talking about welfare programs to bring food to the needy, not vague crap like freeing people's time to feed themselves or whatever. So then the question becomes, what's the libertarian position on welfare? END IT! Proof is on their web site:
I've just learned that to assist those in third world countries by providing them with a familiar pointing interface, the provided mouse will be shaped like an AK-47.
However, it also has so many dependencies that compiling it can be a total nightmare. I personally could not get it working in OpenBSD. I only ever got the latest version working in Linux because of the awesomeness of Portage.
Since you are not questioning the usefulness of the context menu, the question then becomes which is more intuitive for the beginning user, right-click or control-click? hold-down click is the automatic loser. I contend that the second mouse button is more intuitive than the concept of control keys with the mouse.
I envision the creation of the second mouse button as being "this control click stuff would be a lot easier if I just had a second stupid mouse button!", and someone actually inventing it.
Also, if you only had one hand, you'd probably end up having to use a keyboard mouse control, or else have OS support to map context menus to holding down the mouse button.
I think the real problem here is that there was never a clean instruction that the right mouse button should ONLY be for context menus, not other goofy stuff like in GIMP, where there's a hundred items on it when you right click the canvas. This seems to be where much argument comes from, that many context menus in Windows are just plain wrong. I have not actually seen this so much in windows anymore, at least not for a very, very long time. Most developers in the Windows world have figured out what the context button is for, and use it appropriately.
Jesus said "let he who is without sin cast the first stone."
Jesus never really came out against the oppresive regimes of the day. He didn't go up against the roman empire, against slavery, against the routine opression of women in all aspects of Jewish culture.
He wanted people to save themselves. He gave them the tools to do so. I'm sure he'd want people to abhor war and killing and greed, but other than casting the merchants out of the temple and accusing pharisees, he mostly focused on people fixing themselves rather than direct confrontation.
What I got out of this was that christians should be accountable to their own. In other words, if you think that Bush is falsely invoking religion to justify war, you should very strongly oppose Bush as a christian. As for other world problems, you shouldn't support them, but jesus never really said to end injustice. He didn't care about the world, he cared about people's souls. If a slave dies a christian, then the expectation is that he will go to heaven for eternity. The servitude he spent on earth is trivial by comparison. Someone may disagree with that premise, but I'm pretty sure that's what Jesus preached.
This reminds me of the statement by Carl Sagan that "if someone expects to find evidence of something, they will usually find it" in regards to the UFO controversy and other blather. Even so, the corollary is true as well. If you don't wish to see evidence of something, you wont.
If his findings are testable and repeatable, it will have been good science even if he is already sure it's authentic. Scientists presuppose things all the time, it's probably a key component in what they choose to research.
I cannot read the article, so I might as well detail why the lack of a second mouse button is wrong by addressing common arguments to the negative. I am not a troll, I am sick of bad arguments that get repeated ENDLESSLY on here whenever this stupid topic comes up.
1. not having context menus forces you to plan your UI.
OK, first of all, macintosh has had context menus forever. They are control-click, and holding down the single button. So the premise isn't even true.
Secondly, let's say you rightly expect that no one will ever use control-click or holding down the mouse button. So, you add all your options to menu items. Depending on the, wait for it, CONTEXT of the usage of the item, it may or may not be enabled. Everyone has had the experience of trying to figure out how the flip to enable a greyed out menu item. Guess what. That's what context menus were invented to solve. So tell me, how the hell does this help UI design by making menus MORE confusing?
2. Old people cannot figure out the second mouse button.
Besides the blatant prejudice of this statement, I have not seen anything beside anecdotal evidence that this is the case. I have in fact met people that do not understand right-clicking. There is a good chance that they also do not understand control-clicking, and as slashdot has demonstrated, MOST people, including mac users, are not aware of holding down the mouse button for context menus. I have also met people that cannot double click without practice. I've met people (who were NOT even "old" by the way) who don't know what the "desktop" and "icons" are. If an application _needs_ context menus, you have established a minimum level of competency needed to operate that application. Frankly, nearly every person I have seen, old or otherwise who pisses and moans about not being able to work the simplest fuctions of a MACINTOSH, was intentionally refusing to learn. I personally have no interest in catering to these people. If the macintosh had a second mouse button as standard, the vast majority of these people would suddenly cope.
Don't agree with me? The great thing about both your and my anecdotal evidence is that neither proves anything. Back it up with some studies. In the meantime, I have explained logically what context menus are for, what they fix, and by extension, why they are better.
3. I know better than the developers what I want on the context menu.
Unless you are using a CAD or 3D modelling program, I doubt it. There's usually as menu context menu items as normally used context options.
On the other hand, if you are arguing that program menus should be user-configurable, I agree 100%. But, that's not a standard on any platform at all, macintosh, windows or otherwise.
4. Just buy a stupid mouse with a stupid second mouse button, you moron anti-apple troll.
I like the implication that I am an "anti-apple troll" who owns or is forced to use an Apple for some reason despite hating them to the core (yuck yuck.) I own several apples, probably more than the majority of Apple owners. I like Apples. The single mouse button is still stupid.
Because you can't expect people to have a second mouse button, and because you can't even expect people to know about ANY context menus once you get down to that level of patronization, you get no benefits of the second mouse button. It's not enough that it's available, it should be standard. If a developer chooses not to implement it, it then becomes solely the fault of the developer, same as on windows or unix or any other platform with a standard of more than one button.
As it stands right now, I use apps all the time that don't have any right-click functionality at all, even though it would be entirely appropriate. Finder supports it, which is some consolation, but it's still annoying.
5. Plenty of people get along just fine with one mouse button.
That's not a justification, but ok. More people HATE it, so I guess by your own reasoning, you're wr
No, one mouse button sucks, and the fact that developing for the macintosh means you have to expect that people don't have a second mouse button sucks. No one bother pointing out holding down the mouse button, because that's just an admission that one mouse button is insufficient. Even if you think I'm wrong, the fact that you still have delayed context menus negates the idea that you have to think about how you design the UI without them. That doesn't even make sense anyway. What do they have to think about that not having a context menu makes them aware of? The how to confuse the crap out of users with a ton of disabled menu items they don't know how to make enabled becaue they are, in fact, context-related options?
Context menus were designed to fix confusing menus full of options that are not always available (because _surprise!_ they are contextual menu items!) greyed out menu options confuse EVERYONE, not just grandma. Mac developers often still use context menus, they just assign them to a control key plus mouse click. I wonder if this is easier or harder for old people to understand? I'm betting harder, because it takes two actions instead of one, and you would be less likely to find it by accident unless someone actually notified you of the control-clicks.
Slashdot Mirror
Why is your school teaching it that way? My introductory programming course in college used Java, and we didn't learn OO principles or use standard libraries until the next semester. The intro course was strictly procedural code and programming constructs like if-then-else, the iterative loops, recursion and algorithms (sorting, etc.)
When we had a base established, THEN they started teaching us OO and data structures, and letting us use the Java Collections and stuff. It worked very well. I can see how if your school is teaching them that way that you are getting people who don't know anything. I deal with contractors all the time now in my job that know Jakarta Struts like the back of their hand, but otherwise can't program their way out of a paper bag. We had one guy quit because before we moved to struts we used our own minimal framework, and he couldn't cope with doing actual java programming.
I watched it exactly once for about 15 minutes, and it was so bad that I never watched it again. Take it as a troll if you like, but I've been a fan of star trek all the way through Deep Space Nine (voyager was written by people who didn't even know trek history apparently), and Enterprise was just not good.
Your information is contrary to judicial ruling.
We didn't have a national guard in 1791, so I don't see very well how it couldn't have meant able bodied citizens.
He's gonna be more impressed you're running a production server on a PENTIUM 160.
United States code defines the militia as composing of the body of healthy adult male citizens, so it's not even like limiting firearm ownership to the militia is all that restrictive anyway. In context it effectively meant anyone who could pick up a gun was responsible for civil defense, and had a right to be armed for that end.
"Assault Weapon" is a fake term that was invented specifically because it had no meaning, and sounded like the well-defined term "Assault Rifle". Banning "assault rifles" was worthless to these people because by definition an assault rifle is fully automatic, which have already been banned since, like, 1924.
On the other hand, make up a phony word that means whatever you want it to, and you can ban anything, including those darn scary looking rifles with the foldable stock that function EXACTLY like a stinking normal hunting rifle. But they look scary. And banning them makes me look like I'm doing my job as a congresswoman.
The fun part is deciding which right is a collective right or a citizen's right. For example, the first amendment was decided to be a citizen's right, and the second was decided to be a state's right. Equal protection therefore can be extended to freedom of speech, but not the right to bear arms.
As far as I can tell, before the civil war, the entire bill of rights was considered states rights, and therefore your constitutional rights could be restricted at the state level. And they were.
The collective right as held by the state is still recognized selectively by people. One time I was talking to a supposedly knowledgeable person from Yale, who claimed that you don't have a right to own a gun because the bill of rights are collective rights held by the states. Whereupon I said "then you don't have freedom of speech, so shut up."
Beside the very particular wording of the second amendment, the general principle that decides if a right is a collective right or an individual right seems to be what the supreme court ruled on that particular amendment. This is done in spite of the fact that there does not appear to be any legal justification for the concept of a state having a "right", but rather "powers".
As a side note, the marriage issue is kind of hairy because to my recollection, the constitution requires that marriage licenses issued in one state are valid in all states. "full faith and credit shall be given in each state to the public acts and records and judicial proceedings of every other state." If your state wants to block gay marriage, it becomes a federal issue, or else every gay couple can just go to new hampshire to marry and the go back home and have their state recognize it.
The Defense of Marriage Act tried to get around this by declaring that no state had to recognize another state's "definition" of marriage. Well, too bad, you still have to honor the license. A constitutional amendment is the only way around this.
I've never seen a basketball program do anything but bring money into a school. When you fill up those stadiums full of fans, money comes in, and in most schools it's used. I used to hate it too, then I realized that my high school forensics team wouldn't even EXIST if it wasn't for the fact that the football games made more in revenue than the football program was allocated.
Conservatives are strong proponents of civics classes and have been for years. But they get shot down by left wing reactionaries as patriotic propaganda, which is the EXACT reason so many schools have dropped the "controversial" programs. What the hell is patriotic propaganda anyway? America is SUPPOSED to be based on an idea, not an ethnic group or geographical location. I'd rather be the country that was founded on ideals than the country that was founded because everybody was the same skin color or whatever.
Correction, it is a COMPONENT of reduction ad absurdum.
When people talk about "ending hunger" they are really talking about welfare programs to bring food to the needy, not vague crap like freeing people's time to feed themselves or whatever. So then the question becomes, what's the libertarian position on welfare? END IT! Proof is on their web site:
Libertarian party advocates ending welfare
He looks like Dennis Hopper playing King Koopa in the Super Mario Brothers movie. That doesn't exactly lend him the air of authority one would like.
I've just learned that to assist those in third world countries by providing them with a familiar pointing interface, the provided mouse will be shaped like an AK-47.
How many mouse buttons does it have, dammit?
It exists, it's called a "kit car", and they have been popular for years.
UML is so torturous that using it for fun is out of the question. It's useful, but it's also annoying to actually use :-(
However, it also has so many dependencies that compiling it can be a total nightmare. I personally could not get it working in OpenBSD. I only ever got the latest version working in Linux because of the awesomeness of Portage.
Since you are not questioning the usefulness of the context menu, the question then becomes which is more intuitive for the beginning user, right-click or control-click? hold-down click is the automatic loser. I contend that the second mouse button is more intuitive than the concept of control keys with the mouse.
I envision the creation of the second mouse button as being "this control click stuff would be a lot easier if I just had a second stupid mouse button!", and someone actually inventing it.
Also, if you only had one hand, you'd probably end up having to use a keyboard mouse control, or else have OS support to map context menus to holding down the mouse button.
I think the real problem here is that there was never a clean instruction that the right mouse button should ONLY be for context menus, not other goofy stuff like in GIMP, where there's a hundred items on it when you right click the canvas. This seems to be where much argument comes from, that many context menus in Windows are just plain wrong. I have not actually seen this so much in windows anymore, at least not for a very, very long time. Most developers in the Windows world have figured out what the context button is for, and use it appropriately.
Jesus said "let he who is without sin cast the first stone."
Jesus never really came out against the oppresive regimes of the day. He didn't go up against the roman empire, against slavery, against the routine opression of women in all aspects of Jewish culture.
He wanted people to save themselves. He gave them the tools to do so. I'm sure he'd want people to abhor war and killing and greed, but other than casting the merchants out of the temple and accusing pharisees, he mostly focused on people fixing themselves rather than direct confrontation.
What I got out of this was that christians should be accountable to their own. In other words, if you think that Bush is falsely invoking religion to justify war, you should very strongly oppose Bush as a christian. As for other world problems, you shouldn't support them, but jesus never really said to end injustice. He didn't care about the world, he cared about people's souls. If a slave dies a christian, then the expectation is that he will go to heaven for eternity. The servitude he spent on earth is trivial by comparison. Someone may disagree with that premise, but I'm pretty sure that's what Jesus preached.
This reminds me of the statement by Carl Sagan that "if someone expects to find evidence of something, they will usually find it" in regards to the UFO controversy and other blather. Even so, the corollary is true as well. If you don't wish to see evidence of something, you wont.
If his findings are testable and repeatable, it will have been good science even if he is already sure it's authentic. Scientists presuppose things all the time, it's probably a key component in what they choose to research.
I cannot read the article, so I might as well detail why the lack of a second mouse button is wrong by addressing common arguments to the negative. I am not a troll, I am sick of bad arguments that get repeated ENDLESSLY on here whenever this stupid topic comes up.
1. not having context menus forces you to plan your UI.
OK, first of all, macintosh has had context menus forever. They are control-click, and holding down the single button. So the premise isn't even true.
Secondly, let's say you rightly expect that no one will ever use control-click or holding down the mouse button. So, you add all your options to menu items. Depending on the, wait for it, CONTEXT of the usage of the item, it may or may not be enabled. Everyone has had the experience of trying to figure out how the flip to enable a greyed out menu item. Guess what. That's what context menus were invented to solve. So tell me, how the hell does this help UI design by making menus MORE confusing?
2. Old people cannot figure out the second mouse button.
Besides the blatant prejudice of this statement, I have not seen anything beside anecdotal evidence that this is the case. I have in fact met people that do not understand right-clicking. There is a good chance that they also do not understand control-clicking, and as slashdot has demonstrated, MOST people, including mac users, are not aware of holding down the mouse button for context menus. I have also met people that cannot double click without practice. I've met people (who were NOT even "old" by the way) who don't know what the "desktop" and "icons" are. If an application _needs_ context menus, you have established a minimum level of competency needed to operate that application. Frankly, nearly every person I have seen, old or otherwise who pisses and moans about not being able to work the simplest fuctions of a MACINTOSH, was intentionally refusing to learn. I personally have no interest in catering to these people. If the macintosh had a second mouse button as standard, the vast majority of these people would suddenly cope.
Don't agree with me? The great thing about both your and my anecdotal evidence is that neither proves anything. Back it up with some studies. In the meantime, I have explained logically what context menus are for, what they fix, and by extension, why they are better.
3. I know better than the developers what I want on the context menu.
Unless you are using a CAD or 3D modelling program, I doubt it. There's usually as menu context menu items as normally used context options.
On the other hand, if you are arguing that program menus should be user-configurable, I agree 100%. But, that's not a standard on any platform at all, macintosh, windows or otherwise.
4. Just buy a stupid mouse with a stupid second mouse button, you moron anti-apple troll.
I like the implication that I am an "anti-apple troll" who owns or is forced to use an Apple for some reason despite hating them to the core (yuck yuck.) I own several apples, probably more than the majority of Apple owners. I like Apples. The single mouse button is still stupid.
Because you can't expect people to have a second mouse button, and because you can't even expect people to know about ANY context menus once you get down to that level of patronization, you get no benefits of the second mouse button. It's not enough that it's available, it should be standard. If a developer chooses not to implement it, it then becomes solely the fault of the developer, same as on windows or unix or any other platform with a standard of more than one button.
As it stands right now, I use apps all the time that don't have any right-click functionality at all, even though it would be entirely appropriate. Finder supports it, which is some consolation, but it's still annoying.
5. Plenty of people get along just fine with one mouse button.
That's not a justification, but ok. More people HATE it, so I guess by your own reasoning, you're wr
No, one mouse button sucks, and the fact that developing for the macintosh means you have to expect that people don't have a second mouse button sucks. No one bother pointing out holding down the mouse button, because that's just an admission that one mouse button is insufficient. Even if you think I'm wrong, the fact that you still have delayed context menus negates the idea that you have to think about how you design the UI without them. That doesn't even make sense anyway. What do they have to think about that not having a context menu makes them aware of? The how to confuse the crap out of users with a ton of disabled menu items they don't know how to make enabled becaue they are, in fact, context-related options?
Context menus were designed to fix confusing menus full of options that are not always available (because _surprise!_ they are contextual menu items!) greyed out menu options confuse EVERYONE, not just grandma. Mac developers often still use context menus, they just assign them to a control key plus mouse click. I wonder if this is easier or harder for old people to understand? I'm betting harder, because it takes two actions instead of one, and you would be less likely to find it by accident unless someone actually notified you of the control-clicks.