And how do you know these "Dark ages" weren't caused on purpose by aliens or humans from the future to stop us from achiving an even worse future? How do you know???
Getting serious, imagine what our future generations will say about these days: Patriot act, Trusted computing, DRM, Intellectual copyright, HD TV bit flag, etc, etc, etc. All of them setting us back, maybe, thousands of years. And what do we do? We keep buying iPods and other closed-source stuff and software. It's all about preserving Status Quo...
I'm going to answer your question: What's the best way to encourage his curiosity and enable him to learn?
If you really want to reach him, buy a Mac (I know you prefered Unix or Linux, please keep reading), download the developer tools and start Quartz Composer. Man I wish I had this when I was a kid. I'm dead serious and I'm not a Mac fanatic. I was raised between computers and I've used PCs most part of my life. I'm about 30 years old now.
Now, it's way more than a cutie program to make visuals.
You start by dragging patches and connecting points with instant ultra cool results. That's good, you don't want your kid to get frustrated by pointers and such (yet)
Back to QC, once you've tried every possible patch, you'll want to apply some kind of logic to the compositions so you need to know what operators are, structures, etc (Learning has already begun).
The most basic example of a Quartz composition I can think of: Drag a video input patch and a billboard patch, connect the output image from the video to the billboard and you can make the composition take the input from the webcam and display it onscreen. That was 2 drag-n-drops and connecting 2 dots. Try beating that. After that you can apply tons of filters to the image. This would be the hello world in Quartz Composer. Much simpler than a C hello world and way much more rewarding.
Other things you can easily do:
Make a composition react to sound, video movement, any USB interface, keyboard, wiimotes, Mac's motion sensors, etc.
Use particle systems, make screensavers, animations and games
Mix videos, apply effects to videos and images
Make the composition read XMLs provided by a website and do stuff with the data.
So, to answer your question, IMHO, this would be the BEST way to encourage his couriosity and enable him to learn a programming language. Think of it as today's logo (My apologies to anyone involved in Quartz or QC development, I'm trying to make a point)
Hope you and your kid find this as interesting as I did.
Cheers
When will Starcraft II be available?? Are we there yet? Are we there yet? You know, I was going to post an on-topic question, but this is what I really care about.
Roughly half of America's young people reach the age of 18 at being virtually retarded these days.
Do you realize that's what older people thought of you when you were 18?
It also might be used to teach people what Islam really is in places like Iraq where an entire religion has been subverted and perverted into a really nasty mess. Teaching real Islam to the public might cure this problem.
Yeah, why do we have to burn books when we can toast thoughts!
And why not whisper to your skull who you should vote for, when you are about to do it?
I really hope you are joking.
Yes, HTML, or anything that produces some form of open, text-based, code I can grep through. I don't want to have to disassembly a binary to view the code. I don't care how it's generated so it can be, PHP, RubyOnRails, Perl, ASP.Net, etc.
No, you got it wrong. They'll use a kid fueled reactor (they must be out of kitten or something). So, answering your question, it depends on how fast you can feed them to the engine.
Flash doesn't suck, it's a great tool when properly used. The thing is that HTML was so hard to learn for the common "web designer" that they've used Flash to solve all their needs. Even Adobe doesn't use Flash for the entire site, they never did, including Maromedia. It's great for videos and when you need some rich media experience INDISE a web site, but making a WHOLE site using Flash is like using glass to build an entire house, including the pipes.
Back to the point, I guess there's nothing wrong to index flash content meanwhile they refer to those little spaces with media inside HTML web sites. I'd hate this to rocket the entire-Flash sites industry.
I want PicLens to be able to browse FTP servers and to show the folders like translucent buildings you can flying by. Also, it must have random lighning-like stripes going from one place to the other doing a "swish" sound in surround sound, so I can feel information is travelling in every direction. Also, I want to be able to use my Light Cycle to cruise redtube.com and pick up virtual hookers.
Slashdot Mirror
I'd like to add:
OMG Ponnies!
and:
[Insert favourite flying chair Ballmer joke]
And how do you know these "Dark ages" weren't caused on purpose by aliens or humans from the future to stop us from achiving an even worse future? How do you know???
Getting serious, imagine what our future generations will say about these days: Patriot act, Trusted computing, DRM, Intellectual copyright, HD TV bit flag, etc, etc, etc. All of them setting us back, maybe, thousands of years. And what do we do? We keep buying iPods and other closed-source stuff and software. It's all about preserving Status Quo...
I can get a ziploc for much less than that.
I propose a security through obscurity approach. When we know an asteroid comes our way, we do a massive blackout so the asteroind won't hit us.
We better make a china.slashdot.org or the chinese /. equivalent will be able to DoS us!
Hey! What's all this chatter about it being a distraction to real world problems??
Is that how we welcome our alien overlords these days?
Could I have handled this better?
Well, you could have posted a link to his IP in the summary, that router should be fried by now.
Time to set up a remote bittorrent box in other country, you can then download an encrypted B4tManTheD4rkN1ght.zip to your box from there.
Anascape, you have just unleashed the fury of zillions of Slashdot zealots!
Take no prisioners!
What's the best way to encourage his curiosity and enable him to learn?
If you really want to reach him, buy a Mac (I know you prefered Unix or Linux, please keep reading), download the developer tools and start Quartz Composer. Man I wish I had this when I was a kid. I'm dead serious and I'm not a Mac fanatic. I was raised between computers and I've used PCs most part of my life. I'm about 30 years old now.
If you haven't heard from it: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quartz_composer
Here you can see just the tip of the iceberg of what you can do with it: http://vimeo.com/videos/search:quartz
And you don't want to miss these: http://www.zugakousaku.com/index.php?ref=study-quartz-jp
Now, it's way more than a cutie program to make visuals.
You start by dragging patches and connecting points with instant ultra cool results. That's good, you don't want your kid to get frustrated by pointers and such (yet)
Back to QC, once you've tried every possible patch, you'll want to apply some kind of logic to the compositions so you need to know what operators are, structures, etc (Learning has already begun).
The most basic example of a Quartz composition I can think of: Drag a video input patch and a billboard patch, connect the output image from the video to the billboard and you can make the composition take the input from the webcam and display it onscreen. That was 2 drag-n-drops and connecting 2 dots. Try beating that. After that you can apply tons of filters to the image. This would be the hello world in Quartz Composer. Much simpler than a C hello world and way much more rewarding.
Other things you can easily do:
So, to answer your question, IMHO, this would be the BEST way to encourage his couriosity and enable him to learn a programming language. Think of it as today's logo (My apologies to anyone involved in Quartz or QC development, I'm trying to make a point)
Hope you and your kid find this as interesting as I did.
Cheers
Amen brother! Please make parent a sticky or a front page story.
So, how come Internet openness is good to China but at the same time bad to Cuba? Where are those people claiming a "free" China now?
Someone has to be the firestarter!
Do they already have tons of it?
Japanese Scientists Develop Long-Life Flash Memory
Anyone else thought they've mutated by experimenting on themselves? I have to stop seeing anime...
You can't get out. You'll come back, eventually. So, see you in the next post!
When will Starcraft II be available?? Are we there yet? Are we there yet?
You know, I was going to post an on-topic question, but this is what I really care about.
Roughly half of America's young people reach the age of 18 at being virtually retarded these days.
Do you realize that's what older people thought of you when you were 18?
It also might be used to teach people what Islam really is in places like Iraq where an entire religion has been subverted and perverted into a really nasty mess. Teaching real Islam to the public might cure this problem.
Yeah, why do we have to burn books when we can toast thoughts! And why not whisper to your skull who you should vote for, when you are about to do it? I really hope you are joking.
-Harry, there's someone in the house! Call 911!
-Can't you see it's compiling, woman?!?!? C'MON!!
They are the "First IMAGES of Solar System's INVISIBLE Frontier" I was glad it wasn't any goatse or April's fools kind of thing.
Yes, HTML, or anything that produces some form of open, text-based, code I can grep through. I don't want to have to disassembly a binary to view the code.
I don't care how it's generated so it can be, PHP, RubyOnRails, Perl, ASP.Net, etc.
No, you got it wrong. They'll use a kid fueled reactor (they must be out of kitten or something). So, answering your question, it depends on how fast you can feed them to the engine.
Flash doesn't suck, it's a great tool when properly used. The thing is that HTML was so hard to learn for the common "web designer" that they've used Flash to solve all their needs. Even Adobe doesn't use Flash for the entire site, they never did, including Maromedia. It's great for videos and when you need some rich media experience INDISE a web site, but making a WHOLE site using Flash is like using glass to build an entire house, including the pipes.
Back to the point, I guess there's nothing wrong to index flash content meanwhile they refer to those little spaces with media inside HTML web sites. I'd hate this to rocket the entire-Flash sites industry.
I want PicLens to be able to browse FTP servers and to show the folders like translucent buildings you can flying by. Also, it must have random lighning-like stripes going from one place to the other doing a "swish" sound in surround sound, so I can feel information is travelling in every direction.
Also, I want to be able to use my Light Cycle to cruise redtube.com and pick up virtual hookers.
So, what is the worst case scenario, and, would I notice it?
... as if millions of naive americans suddenly cried out in terror and were suddenly silenced...