I got one off the first shipment to Canada, and although it was a long while till it became mainstream enough to easily find software, mine came with a Choplifter cartridge - possibly one of the coolest games ever made.
I learned to read and write code parallel with learning to read and write english. I had no disk drive, there was no local source for software. I had to type them in out of Power Play and Compute! magazine's.
Eventually I was tracing the program flow before typing it it, picking out superflous routines (I was lazy, wouldnt type 4 pages of carefully formatted print statements for a goofy instructions scene).
I eventually moved on to compilers and assembler (Blitz! basic kicked ass) on it. I held on to it until the bitter end.
It made a huge impression on my employer during the interview. I told him I've been programming literally as long as I can remember, on my C64 as a kid. The stuff is second nature to me now.
I wonder what kids today will do, without that advantage. What's easy to hack with, program, and understand for my kids?
I mean, an 8 year old at a/bin/sh prompt with a nightmare of dependencies to get simple perl scripts running. PETBasic was a huge leg-up for my coding skills.
The first person to develop a mod chip and learn to press silvers will make cash hand over fist in Hong Kong - the land of piracy.
The various mobs have their hands in street level piracy (silvers, bootlegs) up to their elbows. The top warez groups get huge "donations" in exchange for 0-day access to new cracks and releases.
It spins normally, is read normally. It's even has full sized sled for the laser, the only thing seemingly preventing a full sized disc from being read is the plastic tray. I'd say one day, if we see a modchip, we'll see a replacement plastic top as well.
People said the same things (backwards spin, inside-out read) about Dreamcast, PS2 and Xbox.
Think of it - Nintendo would have to rebuild the entire infrastructure for pressing discs just to make a backwards spinning or inside out disc.
I don't see the point -- as long as I do my job and get my stuff done, whats the point and the problem?
You'll be at the same job doing the same stuff your entire "career", be the first to be outsourced or replaced with an automated tool, etc..
Lets say tomorrow your job is eliminated, and the boss can keep one person on in another position. His choice boils down to you, or someone he likes and works well with.
Don't kid yourself, your magical tech skills are nothing. Anyone can do what you do, it's how you do it that matters.
I work in a small company, and we've been through at least a half dozen guys in the last year, all perfectly capable of doing the work, but couldnt fit in with the group we have. The smaller the team, the more important the work dynamic.
Any dope can work on an assembly line. But, the guy whos amiable and responsible ends up being foreman or shop manager.
IT geeks tend to think that the more confusing their dialogue sounds, the smarter they'll be percieved. It's the most annoying thing in the world to me, they literally degrade into talking jibberish.
This is 100% not the case, hence so many folks here on slashdot complaining about unemployment.
IT folks need to learn a hard lesson to get it right. It's not rocket science. How computers work, how a network works, while full of fancy acronymns and techno-babble, is fundamentally quite simple and anyone can understand it. Memorizing Cisco's product line by part number is not useful knowledge. Knowing what a router does is.
Analogy: I'm not a gearhead, but a good mechanic can explain whats wrong with my car in terms I understand. If he says part X needs replacing, I should be able to ask him what the part is, what it does, and get a sensible answer. If a mechanic started deliberately trying to talk over my head, I'd smell a scam, and find someone else.
Who would it hurt to let you just download the listings without a ton of horseshit, like TV guide provides a stream and specs to retrieve 'em. Use them in your homebrewed PVR, on your PDA, or whatever.
It's not about intuitive interface, useful features, or ease of use.
It's about memorizing obscure commands to make you feel like you're a real computer genius, even if you only use your PC to write your ST:TNG/Farscape crossover erotic fanfiction.
Word Processors: What else can they add? Word integrates with every thing else in the Office suite, has about every feature I can imagine..
Programming tools: the Vis Studio IDE, frankly, rocks. I can dynamically recompile code, make changes in a C project as I'm stepping through it. Dyn-o-mite! Again, I can't think of anything I would want it to do that it doesnt.
If anything, these have too many features that I never use.
I'm using mozilla firebird. When I submit a comment here on slashdot, it doesn't render the comment approved page correctly. Sometimes it just shows the background, and never loads the text. When it does show the text, it's overlapping the toolbar on the side.
Is this a slashdot problem or a mozilla problem?
Anyways, improve mozilla, and get the word out, and people *will* use it. Developers - stop kludging your sites for IE, stop putting "this site is best viewed by IE" on your front page, put "this site is best viewed by mozilla firebird or Opera" instead. Tell people why, give them sensible logical reasons, not a rant about MS world domination and capital F Free.
Firebird seems the best hope, since it's nice and robust, and pops up almost as fast as IE does, and doesnt make you dizzy with feature bloat.
OT: In fact, slashdot is the only site I browse that has any real problems being rendered by firebird. What the hell is the deal with that? This would be the last website I would expect to work properly only with IE.
I have two PCs on my desk, my main one sits straight in front of me, the one I stole from marketing sits off to the side on a slight angle, positioned about where you would sit a paper copy holder. The second machine is real handy to pop up documentation on.
My real problem, though, is I work on a system with several components - essentially there's a desktop, mobile laptop, and now a palmOS based version of the software, that all need to play nice with each other. Testing them all together is a nightmare.
All's I want is dual monitors on one machine, and a hand me down laptop from marketing I can sit to the side to read docs on.
Marketing just got new P4 2.4ghz based laptops to replace their "old" P4 1.8ghz based laptops. When I go on site I have a 266mhz piece of crap. Which makes a lot of sense, they need a lot of cpu to power their bullshit generators and make powerpoint slides. I only have to compile 50-100 megs of code on-site to fix a given bug, so a 4 hour wait is acceptable.
I've been bitching for two monitors and more RAM for months.
I'm working on a project that includes a desktop version of the app, a mobile version (small laptop out in the field) and an application server (middle ware, tier 2 whatever) in the middle. Running all this stuff in dev. mode on a single monitor is frustrating, to say the least. Running out of memory doesn't help my stress level all that much either. (A gigabyte isn't enough, boss, since SQL server sucks up at least half to be usable to me)
Though I've known this forever. At home I have an old 386 laptop connected via a nullmodem cabel, and run a dumb terminal on it. Even that's handy, to have a man page or HOWTO open on a seperate screen next to me while I tinker on the main machine.
Too bad noone in my office takes slashdot seriously , else maybe I could show them this article.
noone really thinks aliens will see it. And we pretty much know there's no martians.
If an alien race came a bazillion light years to mars, and didn't notice earth with all its satellites and radio waves, well then, the pre-school drawings and poetry will be way over their head.
Firstly, why two seperate lists? are they saying there are as many unix security violations and windows? I wonder what colour the sky is in their world.
Because these aren't zealot slashdorks with a lame "you suck!" agenda. They're merely listing what can and has been successfully hacked.
If you want to stick your head in the sand and pretend all unix boxes are inherently impenetrable, go ahead.
This has nothing to do with "threat ratings" or ego stroking, or a wang sucking contest between linus and bill.
It's about letting admins know where the vulnerabilities are on their machines.
Of course, with Unix, at least you have that choice.....
Noone forces anyone use IE, IIS, SQL Server, Outlook or Outlook express. I have none but IE on my machine, and I don't use IE to browse outside of my local network (seeing as explorer is the same thing).
Of course, with Windows, at least you have alternatives......
How do I replace ssh, or ssl? Which VPN do you propose, all the open source ones are pretty damn insecure by themselves.
I'm sick of the retarded nerd wangstroking. It's completely counterproductive, and gives unix users a false sense of security, and windows users a false sense of alarm.
471 years in prison for spamming? 100s of millions in fines?
I dont care how much you nerds hate spam. Prison is for people dangerous to society. Murderers, rapists, other assorted thugs. Society isn't helped because a spammer is in jail.
Why this the first case they pick up on, because this guy dared to screw with the media? (Think Lamo and the NYT thing). Government/media go hand in hand these days.
Slashdot Mirror
I got one off the first shipment to Canada, and although it was a long while till it became mainstream enough to easily find software, mine came with a Choplifter cartridge - possibly one of the coolest games ever made.
I learned to read and write code parallel with learning to read and write english. I had no disk drive, there was no local source for software. I had to type them in out of Power Play and Compute! magazine's.
/bin/sh prompt with a nightmare of dependencies to get simple perl scripts running. PETBasic was a huge leg-up for my coding skills.
Eventually I was tracing the program flow before typing it it, picking out superflous routines (I was lazy, wouldnt type 4 pages of carefully formatted print statements for a goofy instructions scene).
I eventually moved on to compilers and assembler (Blitz! basic kicked ass) on it. I held on to it until the bitter end.
It made a huge impression on my employer during the interview. I told him I've been programming literally as long as I can remember, on my C64 as a kid. The stuff is second nature to me now.
I wonder what kids today will do, without that advantage. What's easy to hack with, program, and understand for my kids?
I mean, an 8 year old at a
The first person to develop a mod chip and learn to press silvers will make cash hand over fist in Hong Kong - the land of piracy.
The various mobs have their hands in street level piracy (silvers, bootlegs) up to their elbows. The top warez groups get huge "donations" in exchange for 0-day access to new cracks and releases.
It's neither.
It spins normally, is read normally. It's even has full sized sled for the laser, the only thing seemingly preventing a full sized disc from being read is the plastic tray. I'd say one day, if we see a modchip, we'll see a replacement plastic top as well.
People said the same things (backwards spin, inside-out read) about Dreamcast, PS2 and Xbox.
Think of it - Nintendo would have to rebuild the entire infrastructure for pressing discs just to make a backwards spinning or inside out disc.
I don't see the point -- as long as I do my job and get my stuff done, whats the point and the problem?
You'll be at the same job doing the same stuff your entire "career", be the first to be outsourced or replaced with an automated tool, etc..
Lets say tomorrow your job is eliminated, and the boss can keep one person on in another position. His choice boils down to you, or someone he likes and works well with.
Don't kid yourself, your magical tech skills are nothing. Anyone can do what you do, it's how you do it that matters.
I work in a small company, and we've been through at least a half dozen guys in the last year, all perfectly capable of doing the work, but couldnt fit in with the group we have. The smaller the team, the more important the work dynamic.
Any dope can work on an assembly line. But, the guy whos amiable and responsible ends up being foreman or shop manager.
IT geeks tend to think that the more confusing their dialogue sounds, the smarter they'll be percieved. It's the most annoying thing in the world to me, they literally degrade into talking jibberish.
This is 100% not the case, hence so many folks here on slashdot complaining about unemployment.
IT folks need to learn a hard lesson to get it right. It's not rocket science. How computers work, how a network works, while full of fancy acronymns and techno-babble, is fundamentally quite simple and anyone can understand it. Memorizing Cisco's product line by part number is not useful knowledge. Knowing what a router does is.
Analogy: I'm not a gearhead, but a good mechanic can explain whats wrong with my car in terms I understand. If he says part X needs replacing, I should be able to ask him what the part is, what it does, and get a sensible answer. If a mechanic started deliberately trying to talk over my head, I'd smell a scam, and find someone else.
The drama of sports is seeing what the human body can achieve through disciplined training and talent. Not what some scientist can cook up in his lab.
So, if people want to do that to their bodies, let them. But dont let them compete against others and pretend that they're accomplishing anything.
Don't you dare post another damned fileplanet link ever again.
Sheesh. I'll go to kazaa before I go to fileplanet.
Not that I find another WWII game all that enticing in the first place.
Why no free/easy way to download TV listings?
Who would it hurt to let you just download the listings without a ton of horseshit, like TV guide provides a stream and specs to retrieve 'em. Use them in your homebrewed PVR, on your PDA, or whatever.
That annoys me to no end.
It's not about intuitive interface, useful features, or ease of use.
It's about memorizing obscure commands to make you feel like you're a real computer genius, even if you only use your PC to write your ST:TNG/Farscape crossover erotic fanfiction.
blah blah blah bayesian filter spam blah blah spam spam blacklist spam blah blah blah
challenge blah blah response blah blah spam spam blah blah filter spam blah blah blah
That doesn't mean shit. If you get a trojan somehow, you're machine will connect to the hacker (usually joining an irc channel or something similar).
Cutting off inbound ports wouldn't do jack.
Word Processors: What else can they add? Word integrates with every thing else in the Office suite, has about every feature I can imagine..
Programming tools: the Vis Studio IDE, frankly, rocks. I can dynamically recompile code, make changes in a C project as I'm stepping through it. Dyn-o-mite! Again, I can't think of anything I would want it to do that it doesnt.
If anything, these have too many features that I never use.
I'm using mozilla firebird. When I submit a comment here on slashdot, it doesn't render the comment approved page correctly. Sometimes it just shows the background, and never loads the text. When it does show the text, it's overlapping the toolbar on the side.
Is this a slashdot problem or a mozilla problem?
Anyways, improve mozilla, and get the word out, and people *will* use it. Developers - stop kludging your sites for IE, stop putting "this site is best viewed by IE" on your front page, put "this site is best viewed by mozilla firebird or Opera" instead. Tell people why, give them sensible logical reasons, not a rant about MS world domination and capital F Free.
Firebird seems the best hope, since it's nice and robust, and pops up almost as fast as IE does, and doesnt make you dizzy with feature bloat.
OT: In fact, slashdot is the only site I browse that has any real problems being rendered by firebird. What the hell is the deal with that? This would be the last website I would expect to work properly only with IE.
I have two PCs on my desk, my main one sits straight in front of me, the one I stole from marketing sits off to the side on a slight angle, positioned about where you would sit a paper copy holder. The second machine is real handy to pop up documentation on.
My real problem, though, is I work on a system with several components - essentially there's a desktop, mobile laptop, and now a palmOS based version of the software, that all need to play nice with each other. Testing them all together is a nightmare.
All's I want is dual monitors on one machine, and a hand me down laptop from marketing I can sit to the side to read docs on.
Marketing just got new P4 2.4ghz based laptops to replace their "old" P4 1.8ghz based laptops. When I go on site I have a 266mhz piece of crap. Which makes a lot of sense, they need a lot of cpu to power their bullshit generators and make powerpoint slides. I only have to compile 50-100 megs of code on-site to fix a given bug, so a 4 hour wait is acceptable.
I've been bitching for two monitors and more RAM for months.
I'm working on a project that includes a desktop version of the app, a mobile version (small laptop out in the field) and an application server (middle ware, tier 2 whatever) in the middle. Running all this stuff in dev. mode on a single monitor is frustrating, to say the least. Running out of memory doesn't help my stress level all that much either. (A gigabyte isn't enough, boss, since SQL server sucks up at least half to be usable to me)
Though I've known this forever. At home I have an old 386 laptop connected via a nullmodem cabel, and run a dumb terminal on it. Even that's handy, to have a man page or HOWTO open on a seperate screen next to me while I tinker on the main machine.
Too bad noone in my office takes slashdot seriously , else maybe I could show them this article.
noone really thinks aliens will see it. And we pretty much know there's no martians.
If an alien race came a bazillion light years to mars, and didn't notice earth with all its satellites and radio waves, well then, the pre-school drawings and poetry will be way over their head.
a sundial is many times less complex than a digital watch.
You think you're 20 dollar "water resistant" timex can survive a trip to the red planet?
I think they got elementary school kids to draw those pictures.
oh wait, you're being hilarious. my bad
good point
i'll keep that in mind and stop checking the 'no karma bonus' box
It's a human vs human. One human has his skill and experience/talent, the other has a very complex tool.
Machines dont "compete". They perform a function.
Firstly, why two seperate lists? are they saying there are as many unix security violations and windows? I wonder what colour the sky is in their world.
Because these aren't zealot slashdorks with a lame "you suck!" agenda. They're merely listing what can and has been successfully hacked.
If you want to stick your head in the sand and pretend all unix boxes are inherently impenetrable, go ahead.
This has nothing to do with "threat ratings" or ego stroking, or a wang sucking contest between linus and bill.
It's about letting admins know where the vulnerabilities are on their machines.
Of course, with Unix, at least you have that choice.....
Noone forces anyone use IE, IIS, SQL Server, Outlook or Outlook express. I have none but IE on my machine, and I don't use IE to browse outside of my local network (seeing as explorer is the same thing).
Of course, with Windows, at least you have alternatives......
How do I replace ssh, or ssl? Which VPN do you propose, all the open source ones are pretty damn insecure by themselves.
I'm sick of the retarded nerd wangstroking. It's completely counterproductive, and gives unix users a false sense of security, and windows users a false sense of alarm.
Oh, c'mon you expect me to believe this?
Rod and Peter working with protein?!
Surrre, whatever. Sounds made up to me.
471 years in prison for spamming? 100s of millions in fines?
I dont care how much you nerds hate spam. Prison is for people dangerous to society. Murderers, rapists, other assorted thugs. Society isn't helped because a spammer is in jail.
Why this the first case they pick up on, because this guy dared to screw with the media? (Think Lamo and the NYT thing). Government/media go hand in hand these days.