The whole point about getting an IT degree isn't to learn specifics. If you only get taught all the features or XP Pro then what are you going to do in 2 years time when Longhorn is released?
A good university should only ever teach you general computing skills. It should teach you what should be possible so you at least know what to look for and can research the best way to achieve it yourself.
When I first learnt computing the first language I learnt was Pascal, the Prolog. Then I went to uni and learnt Modula. I have used NONE of those languages since leaving. All they did was teach me techniques. Every language I use today I taught myself.
A couple friends of mine did their thesis on 3D interfaces. Given the right tools to interact with a 3D environment (not a mouse) it can be very intuitive. 3D environments are natural.
Imagine your office. Mine looks like a dump, but if I need something 10 seconds of searching will usually uncover it for me. Which isn't always true on my computer. I could save a file in any numerous locations and lose it for months. The search/find features don't always help because I can't remember what the thing was called. The last matrix trailer was called "final_640.zip" for example.
It's all about making an intuitive, real life, environment that is easy to learn. 2D/Windows environments are not natural and for some people, hard to learn.
I'll try and extend this question into something that at least sounds more interesting, but still asks "why"?:)
Your own blog, with it's vote/cost comparisons pretty much says that you don't think you will win win. Campaigning for issues like legalised marijuana won't exactly help you gain votes from the conservative public. Even with all the drooling/. geek votes, a win would be very unlikely and probably be one of the greatest upsets in history. So what do you hope to achieve from this?
Re:PHP fragmentation, lack of cohesion
on
PHP 5 Beta 1
·
· Score: 1
I would just like to say now that I have now installed the PHP5 beta on my machine.
A script I am writing that uses A LOT of OOP and was written for PHP4 works perfectly.
Re:Kiss and say goodbye to Java language!!
on
PHP 5 Beta 1
·
· Score: 1
I would also like to add that PHP IS A virtual machine as well.
If you are not compiling your code down to a machine executable then you need to have an interpreter. In the case of Java they call it a 'Virtual Machine'. PHP runs the same way and thus must also have a 'Virtual Machine'.
Re:PHP fragmentation, lack of cohesion
on
PHP 5 Beta 1
·
· Score: 2, Informative
Actually if you go read that OOP page properly you will see that they added a lot of features needed to be a proper OO language. In every case they said "If you don't use this feature, the old method will be used". As far as I can tell this keeps compatability.
As for the new arrays that appeared in newer versions of PHP that broke everyone's scripts. It's a simple configuration change that will revert PHP back to the old methods while you change your scripts to get them working again.
Those new arrays ARE necessary. The old method of getting your form data is badly insecure. They explained all this, and gave example code as to why the old ways were bad. I believe it went something like this:
if (isAuthenticated()) {
$authenticated = true; }
In that example $authenticated would Never be set using a form. But, if register_globals is set to on, all a person would have to do is pass a 'authenticated' parrameter to the script and they have instant access. Yes it's a pretty stupid thing for a programmer to do, but these things do happen. I think everyone should be FORCED to upgrade to the new version.
PHP is Still simple. You can still write the basic code you want to write, but it now gives us the functionality we want to make really powerful scripts. At least I know I want them. I will use 90% of those new features as well. As far as I'm concerned these changes are LONG overdue and it's about time PHP caught up with the real world.
Re:Problems with newer versions
on
PHP 5 Beta 1
·
· Score: 1
Actually they have done other things.
They removed uploaded files from the $_REQUEST array. They only exist in the $_FILES array. I woudn't mind this so much except they just decided to do it. No deprecation or anything. It just disapeared one day. Took me Hours to work out why my scripts weren't working with the new version of PHP.
When I filed a bug report asking for them to put it back in they told me they "removed it for a reason" but they never provided the reason other than to say "$_REQUEST was 'sort of' broken"
Maybe next time they should "sort of" fix it, instead of just "sort of" removing it.
I would of thought that was fairly obvious why OSX has a better desktop.
It has a Desktop Standard. Everything for OSX has to conform to ONE set of rules. There is only one interface. Interoperability is built in from the ground up, and all the OSX developers use the one set of tools to ensure their applications have that as well.
But on the linux destop you have dozens of different interfaces. KDE, Gnome, Enlightenment, Blackbox etc. Each one has it's own way of doing things. They have their own toolkits.
There is virtually no communication between the different parts of the linux system. One developer decides to write a really cool email client using GTK, another writes a really cool web browser using QT, and as a result they don't play nicely together.
The reason why OSX is better because it has standards. Linux lacks a desktop standard. If it were possible to tell everyone "Sorry but Everyone must now use this desktop, and all programmers Must use this toolkit" then the linux desktop would be just as good as Windows and OSX.
From the other comments I have read further up the page this isn't just about the 'Unix' name. Unix is a standard and you have to comply with that standard to use the unix name.
Here in Australia we have something called the Heart Foundation. They have a label that is put onto foods that meet the Heart Foundation standards (IE Low in salt, low in fat, generally good for your heart). What would you think if you saw a food product in the supermarket that said it was "Heart Foundation-based"? It's misleading isn't it? It's a company saying "We are low in salt, but screw the fat, thats not important, so we sort of conform to the Heart Foundation. But we aren't really Heart Foundation certified".
It's exactly the same for Unix. You can't say you are "Unix-like" or "Unix-based" because it's misleading.
OS X may have a unix kernel, but the whole operating system is NOT unix, and so it cannot use the unix name.
You CANNOT compare the CPU market (AMD and Intel) with the GPU market (ATI and NVidia).
How often do CPU manufacturers release completely new chip designs? Once every couple years maybe. I know it has certainly been a few years since the Athlon was released, and it has been a while since the P4 was released, and there is no sign of the next CPU from Intel yet.
Now think about how often new GPU's are released. Once a year at the most. The Radeon 9700 card hasn't even been out for a year, and ATI are already bringing out the Radeon 9800 which has a new core. It's only been a couple months for NVidia before they decided to scrap the NV30 and bring out the NV35.
The thing that doesn't make sense to me is from the couple of reviews I have read the new NVidia card outperforms the Radeon card on almost all the game tests. Not by much, but still a little bit.
And yet when it comes to the 3D Mark test ATI Creams NVidia when that new patch is applied.
To me that makes the 3DMark benchmark Very sus. The two possibilities I can see are NVidia's original complaints against the benchmark are justified, and yes they cheated to boost the score. OR 3DMark are bitter at NVidia and decided to release a patch that deliberatly made NVidia cards perform badly.
Now I doubt it's the second, and maybe there is another possibility that I missed, but in the end I think that the new NV card does perform Extremely well in real world applications no matter what 3DMark says.
I have no experience with the DareDevil comic and the movie did absolutly nothing for me.
I loved Spiderman, and also had no experience with the comic. But I loved Spiderman because I felt I got to know all the characters. Even the Bad guy was developed and had complex relationships with those people around him.
You got none of that in DareDevil. Every charcter was just a guy. I know nothing about the reporter or why he is so obsessed with DareDevil. I know nothing about KingPin except he is a big rich bad guy.
The character development is what is keeping me really interested in the Hulk (another comic I never read). In the Crouching Tiger commentary Ang Lee said something about how he likes flawed characters, and I don't know if you can get much more flawed than an intelligent guy who lets his Anger get the best of him and turns into a green destructive monster. I think the Hulk will be a good movie.
While the parent has been modded as a Troll he is sort of right.
The story in Half Life was very simplistic. There isn't really much to it. You don't really learn that much about what the scientists were trying to achieve there, or even what Gordan Freemans job was there. I know he was some sort of assistant, but beyond that I don't know anything.
What made Half Life so revolutionary is the immersion, and complexity of the environment you are in. You really Feel like everything is happening around you. There is nothing static about that world. But still, in the end you are nothing but someone with amnesia trying to survive (at least thats how I felt).
Deus Ex is the first FPS I think to have a really great story. It was able to take the immersive feel of the Half and combine it with a really interesting story.
In Canberra Australia there is a company doing exactly this calles Transact.
http://transact.com.au/
They are building a huge Optical fiber network across the whole city. Through it you can get your phone, internet, and TV.
For the internet they use ISPs to resell the network. You actually sign up with another ISP, and use that ISP's connection, but your connection to the ISP is through Transact.
The difficulty in cracking RSA, and PGP encryption isn't calculating prime numbers. If that were so we could easily crack it even if there were no such formula. Lists of discovered prime numbers exist. You could just use them.
The difficulty of cracking these codes is calculating factors of numbers is slow. The encryption and decryption keys are based on these prime numbers multiplied together. So you can get this number, but working out the prime numbers that were used is really hard. If this ever becomes easy then the encryption would fall apart.
I'm sure someone else could explain this better than me.
A magician had apparently created a machine that could beat anyone at a game of chess. Before the match he would open up the machine and show everyone an array of complicated gears and machinery.
The machine would then beat the person at chess.
People believe that it was actually a very talented midget who would sit inside the machine and watch the game played via magnets. Unfortunatly no one has been able to study the machine because it was destroyed in a fire.
The problem with Daikatana wasn't Romero. It was pressure to release the game.
Romero has stated many times that it was released way too early. It wasn't finished.
Half Life 2 has not been confirmed by Valve and is officially still a rumor.
I have spoken to people who work for valve and refuse to comment about Half Life 2.
The other thing not taken into account is Motion Blur.
In a movie which plays at approx 25fps if anything moves quickly then you get natural motion blur in the frame, so to the eye it looks natural, no stuttering, and all smooth.
In a game however you can't do that. Every frame is a clean crisp frame with no motion blur at all. So if anything moves Really quickly, then it will get noticably jittery. Like a strobe I guess.
Slashdot Mirror
Why would they require you to have XP Pro?
The whole point about getting an IT degree isn't to learn specifics. If you only get taught all the features or XP Pro then what are you going to do in 2 years time when Longhorn is released?
A good university should only ever teach you general computing skills. It should teach you what should be possible so you at least know what to look for and can research the best way to achieve it yourself.
When I first learnt computing the first language I learnt was Pascal, the Prolog. Then I went to uni and learnt Modula. I have used NONE of those languages since leaving. All they did was teach me techniques. Every language I use today I taught myself.
You should never be Required to learn on ANY OS.
Actually I would disagree with you.
A couple friends of mine did their thesis on 3D interfaces. Given the right tools to interact with a 3D environment (not a mouse) it can be very intuitive. 3D environments are natural.
Imagine your office. Mine looks like a dump, but if I need something 10 seconds of searching will usually uncover it for me. Which isn't always true on my computer. I could save a file in any numerous locations and lose it for months. The search/find features don't always help because I can't remember what the thing was called. The last matrix trailer was called "final_640.zip" for example.
It's all about making an intuitive, real life, environment that is easy to learn. 2D/Windows environments are not natural and for some people, hard to learn.
He may not be.
m ula.shtml)
I want to know what he drinks. Does he drink Coke? If so does he only drink Open Cola (http://www.opencola.com/products/3_softdrink/for
I'll try and extend this question into something that at least sounds more interesting, but still asks "why"? :)
/. geek votes, a win would be very unlikely and probably be one of the greatest upsets in history. So what do you hope to achieve from this?
Your own blog, with it's vote/cost comparisons pretty much says that you don't think you will win win. Campaigning for issues like legalised marijuana won't exactly help you gain votes from the conservative public. Even with all the drooling
I would just like to say now that I have now installed the PHP5 beta on my machine.
A script I am writing that uses A LOT of OOP and was written for PHP4 works perfectly.
I would also like to add that PHP IS A virtual machine as well.
If you are not compiling your code down to a machine executable then you need to have an interpreter. In the case of Java they call it a 'Virtual Machine'. PHP runs the same way and thus must also have a 'Virtual Machine'.
Actually if you go read that OOP page properly you will see that they added a lot of features needed to be a proper OO language. In every case they said "If you don't use this feature, the old method will be used". As far as I can tell this keeps compatability.
As for the new arrays that appeared in newer versions of PHP that broke everyone's scripts. It's a simple configuration change that will revert PHP back to the old methods while you change your scripts to get them working again.
Those new arrays ARE necessary. The old method of getting your form data is badly insecure. They explained all this, and gave example code as to why the old ways were bad. I believe it went something like this:
if (isAuthenticated()) {
$authenticated = true;
}
In that example $authenticated would Never be set using a form. But, if register_globals is set to on, all a person would have to do is pass a 'authenticated' parrameter to the script and they have instant access. Yes it's a pretty stupid thing for a programmer to do, but these things do happen. I think everyone should be FORCED to upgrade to the new version.
PHP is Still simple. You can still write the basic code you want to write, but it now gives us the functionality we want to make really powerful scripts. At least I know I want them. I will use 90% of those new features as well. As far as I'm concerned these changes are LONG overdue and it's about time PHP caught up with the real world.
Actually they have done other things.
They removed uploaded files from the $_REQUEST array. They only exist in the $_FILES array. I woudn't mind this so much except they just decided to do it. No deprecation or anything. It just disapeared one day. Took me Hours to work out why my scripts weren't working with the new version of PHP.
When I filed a bug report asking for them to put it back in they told me they "removed it for a reason" but they never provided the reason other than to say "$_REQUEST was 'sort of' broken"
Maybe next time they should "sort of" fix it, instead of just "sort of" removing it.
I would of thought that was fairly obvious why OSX has a better desktop.
It has a Desktop Standard. Everything for OSX has to conform to ONE set of rules. There is only one interface. Interoperability is built in from the ground up, and all the OSX developers use the one set of tools to ensure their applications have that as well.
But on the linux destop you have dozens of different interfaces. KDE, Gnome, Enlightenment, Blackbox etc. Each one has it's own way of doing things. They have their own toolkits.
There is virtually no communication between the different parts of the linux system. One developer decides to write a really cool email client using GTK, another writes a really cool web browser using QT, and as a result they don't play nicely together.
The reason why OSX is better because it has standards. Linux lacks a desktop standard. If it were possible to tell everyone "Sorry but Everyone must now use this desktop, and all programmers Must use this toolkit" then the linux desktop would be just as good as Windows and OSX.
From the other comments I have read further up the page this isn't just about the 'Unix' name. Unix is a standard and you have to comply with that standard to use the unix name.
Here in Australia we have something called the Heart Foundation. They have a label that is put onto foods that meet the Heart Foundation standards (IE Low in salt, low in fat, generally good for your heart). What would you think if you saw a food product in the supermarket that said it was "Heart Foundation-based"? It's misleading isn't it? It's a company saying "We are low in salt, but screw the fat, thats not important, so we sort of conform to the Heart Foundation. But we aren't really Heart Foundation certified".
It's exactly the same for Unix. You can't say you are "Unix-like" or "Unix-based" because it's misleading.
OS X may have a unix kernel, but the whole operating system is NOT unix, and so it cannot use the unix name.
The only thing I would do is move the Audigy bay somewhere else.
Having up the top means that if you want to plug your headphones into it you are going to have the cable hanging down in front of your screen.
But I want to use my computer mouse from 3 km away.
It would really confuse my Grandmother who is currently trying to learn to use Linux.
You CANNOT compare the CPU market (AMD and Intel) with the GPU market (ATI and NVidia).
How often do CPU manufacturers release completely new chip designs? Once every couple years maybe. I know it has certainly been a few years since the Athlon was released, and it has been a while since the P4 was released, and there is no sign of the next CPU from Intel yet.
Now think about how often new GPU's are released. Once a year at the most. The Radeon 9700 card hasn't even been out for a year, and ATI are already bringing out the Radeon 9800 which has a new core. It's only been a couple months for NVidia before they decided to scrap the NV30 and bring out the NV35.
The thing that doesn't make sense to me is from the couple of reviews I have read the new NVidia card outperforms the Radeon card on almost all the game tests. Not by much, but still a little bit.
And yet when it comes to the 3D Mark test ATI Creams NVidia when that new patch is applied.
To me that makes the 3DMark benchmark Very sus. The two possibilities I can see are NVidia's original complaints against the benchmark are justified, and yes they cheated to boost the score. OR 3DMark are bitter at NVidia and decided to release a patch that deliberatly made NVidia cards perform badly.
Now I doubt it's the second, and maybe there is another possibility that I missed, but in the end I think that the new NV card does perform Extremely well in real world applications no matter what 3DMark says.
I have no experience with the DareDevil comic and the movie did absolutly nothing for me.
I loved Spiderman, and also had no experience with the comic. But I loved Spiderman because I felt I got to know all the characters. Even the Bad guy was developed and had complex relationships with those people around him.
You got none of that in DareDevil. Every charcter was just a guy. I know nothing about the reporter or why he is so obsessed with DareDevil. I know nothing about KingPin except he is a big rich bad guy.
The character development is what is keeping me really interested in the Hulk (another comic I never read). In the Crouching Tiger commentary Ang Lee said something about how he likes flawed characters, and I don't know if you can get much more flawed than an intelligent guy who lets his Anger get the best of him and turns into a green destructive monster. I think the Hulk will be a good movie.
The story in Half Life was very simplistic. There isn't really much to it. You don't really learn that much about what the scientists were trying to achieve there, or even what Gordan Freemans job was there. I know he was some sort of assistant, but beyond that I don't know anything.
What made Half Life so revolutionary is the immersion, and complexity of the environment you are in. You really Feel like everything is happening around you. There is nothing static about that world. But still, in the end you are nothing but someone with amnesia trying to survive (at least thats how I felt).
Deus Ex is the first FPS I think to have a really great story. It was able to take the immersive feel of the Half and combine it with a really interesting story.
In Canberra Australia there is a company doing exactly this calles Transact.
http://transact.com.au/
They are building a huge Optical fiber network across the whole city. Through it you can get your phone, internet, and TV.
For the internet they use ISPs to resell the network. You actually sign up with another ISP, and use that ISP's connection, but your connection to the ISP is through Transact.
The difficulty in cracking RSA, and PGP encryption isn't calculating prime numbers. If that were so we could easily crack it even if there were no such formula. Lists of discovered prime numbers exist. You could just use them.
The difficulty of cracking these codes is calculating factors of numbers is slow. The encryption and decryption keys are based on these prime numbers multiplied together. So you can get this number, but working out the prime numbers that were used is really hard. If this ever becomes easy then the encryption would fall apart.
I'm sure someone else could explain this better than me.
The Turk was a machine from the 18th century.
A magician had apparently created a machine that could beat anyone at a game of chess. Before the match he would open up the machine and show everyone an array of complicated gears and machinery.
The machine would then beat the person at chess.
People believe that it was actually a very talented midget who would sit inside the machine and watch the game played via magnets. Unfortunatly no one has been able to study the machine because it was destroyed in a fire.
Maybe Deep Blue is the modern day Turk.
Last time I checked Korea was spelt with a K, not a C. You really should of watched more seasame street when you were younger.
The problem with Daikatana wasn't Romero. It was pressure to release the game. Romero has stated many times that it was released way too early. It wasn't finished.
Half Life 2 has not been confirmed by Valve and is officially still a rumor. I have spoken to people who work for valve and refuse to comment about Half Life 2.
The other thing not taken into account is Motion Blur. In a movie which plays at approx 25fps if anything moves quickly then you get natural motion blur in the frame, so to the eye it looks natural, no stuttering, and all smooth. In a game however you can't do that. Every frame is a clean crisp frame with no motion blur at all. So if anything moves Really quickly, then it will get noticably jittery. Like a strobe I guess.
An ISP in Australia has just released some unlimited data ADSL plans.
i al _dsl_prices
http://www.ozforces.com/pnews.php?page=resident
Sorry. For some reason a space was put into the link. http://www.ozforums.com/showthread.php?s=&threadid =49120