So, what's wrong with just saying "All work on this site, copyright Joe Blow. All characters, the site logo, and the strip name are trademarks of Joe Blow. This material is protected by all applicable laws, including international treaties"?
You're producing art. It's automatically protected under copyright, especially if you spend the twenty bucks and register your copyrights, and trademark fees (whatever they are) to register those.
It seems to me that saying ANYTHING about licensing opens you up to problems, while keeping mum (and saying a quick little blurb about copyright so-and-so) covers your butt.
I'll grant that in the past he seems to have done some significant work (of course, if he hadn't done it, somebody else would have) but he's behaving like a petulant child.
So what if he had some trouble with sound on Linux. Big deal; acting like it's personally betrayed him because he "can't play two sounds at once" is childish. If it's so important to him to "play two sounds at once" I suggest he farts while whistling.
Ah, well, what can you do? Somebody else will pick up XScreensaver. That's the nice thing about open source. A developer can't REALLY say "screw you guys"...
It's a good idea to take a home-study course, but you'll find that some of the material can tend to be on the light side (i.e. not enough technical "meat"). If I were you guys, I'd supplement my correspondence studies by picking up texts on the following subjects at Amazon (or borders, or whatever). This material amounts to a good, solid foundation in computer science and will turn her into a better programmer. Here's the list:
1. Pick a language and get a good, introductory text on it. I like Java, myself. A reasonably good book to get you started is "Learn Java in 21 Days" by SAMS.
(The rest of the choices should be chosen to mesh with your chosen language, perhaps java. These are listed in the order in which you should approach them, by the way.)
2. An algorithms text. Don't pick up any of the thin, softcover books which use the word "Algorithmics"; they're the equivalent of the "physics for poets" course liberal arts majors take in college. You want the equivalent of "Analytical Physics" here. Algorithms is the central course in computer science, the closest thing to "how to program" you'll ever see.
3. A data structures text. Yes, it's true that most modern languages provide you with data structures ready-made, but knowing their internals will help you choose the RIGHT data structure and when the day comes that you need to write one, you'll be able to.
4. A file structures text. These are getting harder to find, but they're valuable. You learn about how hard drives work, how the data is stored on them, etc, which helps you plan your file I/O better. Plus, you're usually introduced to some very good data processing algorithms.
5. An operating systems text, like the one I saw recently which describes BSD internals. Studying an existing O/S will take you leaps and bounds ahead of the people who just read theory.
6. A networking text, one that gets into TCP/IP especially. It's true you probably don't have to write sockets, but it's better to have at least tried it once or twice.
That's six books which together, add up to the spine of any computer science curriculum. With this particular set of knowledge, you'll be able to do just about anything.
Most people will suggest you study patterns also, but that's just light reading compared to this stuff, and you can do that anytime. Get through this, and patterns is a piece of cake.
I wish all these crazy computer-as-religion types would grow up and see the computer for what it really, truly is: a tool.
Computers are JUST TOOLS that help you accomplish useful tasks. That's it, guys. They're not religious artifacts, they're not fetish items, they're just the equivalent of a good set of socket wrenches.
You should choose the best tools available to you at the point when you're buying them, and you should try and squeeze some mileage out of them (this means, don't buy new tools every couple of years! Mechanics don't replace all their wrenches every two years, do they?).
Mac O/S is an excellent tool. So is Linux. The two are essentially interchangeable, given that Mac O/S is somewhat better at working with media files, and Linux is somewhat better for software development, especially web development.
Of course, whereas Mac O/S and Linux are roughly equivalent to Craftsman or Snap-On, well... Microsoft is kind of like the cheapo tools from Taiwan you see on Canal Street. They work, but they break a lot, and they don't have as fine a finish. Still, I suppose you might find a use for them.
Whatever! Back to the point! Relax, everybody! This shit isn't life and death, it's not even Red, white or Sangria! REEEEELLLLAAAAXXXXX!
1. Study your firewall logs, and try to determine some baseline criteria that identifies a spider. While you're at it, note the domains the spiders are coming from.
2. Create a small perl script that, when fed the IP address of a questionable domain, automatically does an add (creating a new "DROP" rule for that domain) and tacks the command onto your existing firewall script. This is your manual tool. Of course, you should debug it using your spider list from 1, above.
3. Once you've gotten better at identifying spiders, start your new hobby: tweaking a Perl script that peruses your firewall logs every now and then, and upon detecting a spider, runs the script from part 2, above.
4. Every now and then, browse your firewall script to make sure you haven't banned anything you'll want later. Then laugh the deep belly laugh of a vengeful sysadmin and go have a beer.
The way private consultants build government software,
You'd order a one-story three bedroom ranch. The contractor would say "No problem; we have a framework we like to use, it should let us complete your house relatively quickly. You'll love it."
Then, the contractor would blow a whistle and several tractor trailer trucks, cement trucks, flatbeds, etc, would come out of nowhere, rolling over your lawn and disgorging hundreds of illegal aliens. They would scurry madly from truck to truck, pulling out rebar and tools, and get started on the 40,000 square foot basement.
"Hey, asshole, wait a minute!" you'd scream. "All I want is a fucking three bedroom ranch! What the fuck is all this?"
The contractor would act surprised and say, "But everyone is building them this way. What are you worried about? It's not YOUR money, it's the bank's money. And look how much activity it's causing! Why, the local economy is blooming. Do you know how much my guys spent at Krispy Kreme this morning?"
You would barely have time to splutter about this when you would almost get run over by a crane. Retreating to a safe distance, you would watch in horror as they erected a twenty story building on your lot.
On the top of the building would be a three bedroom, one story ranch house. With the longest front steps you've ever seen.
A bill for a hundred million dollars would be nailed to the mailbox.
1. The cheap intel machines for sale in Comp USA would look and work much better than they used to, would come bundled with all sorts of juicy Apple media-oriented software, and would have developer's tools built in (or at least, available on the OEM CD).
2. Because PCs wouldn't get hit by a virus or spyware thirty seconds after you plugged it in, you could get your grandparents/parents/siblings a good, cheap computer you would BARELY HAVE TO SUPPORT!
Think about this one: Your family would have computers they would be happy with and understand how to use, but you wouldn't have to spend all your weekends unfucking them.
3. Manufacturers would fall all over themselves producing gear that would work with OS/X (intel), so you would finally have a Unix box that you could use with all your toys. Don't get me wrong, Linux works with almost everything, but there's still that teensy chunk of cool gear that doesn't work. That problem goes away if a merger happens.
4. Microsoft dies the humiliating death it deserves, and over time, the number of Wintel boxes dwindles away, taking with it the huge crapflood of spam and virii that currently slows down the web. Utopia dawns!
Here's an interesting counterexample to their list of brilliant jews: MY list of people who were equally brilliant, but NOT jews.
Let's start with some philosophers who are DEFINITELY not jews:
Zeno, Aristotle, Plato, Socrates, Epictetus, Marcus Aurelius, Hume, Kant, Heidigger (I think), Nietzche;
How about some famous science figures?
Issaic Newton, Benjamin Franklin, Euclid, Archimedes, Thomas Edison (an inventor, strictly speaking, but quite bright), Galileo, Darwin;
How about some literary lights? Shakespeare, Edgar Allan Poe, Robert Frost, Homer, Dante, Cervantes, Plutarch, Emerson, Bacon, Milton;
I think that the number of brilliant people who are NOT Jewish dwarfs the number of brilliant people who ARE Jewish. From this one might reasonably conclude that being Jewish conveys no particular advantage when it comes to intelligence, and the fact that THREE people listed in the article are intelligent is most likely a coincidence.
Furthermore, I would like to point out that the Beastie Boys are Jewish, and have not formulated any scientific theories or brilliant works of psychoanalysis. There are three Beastie boys, and three brilliant men mentioned in the article. Those doofuses cancel out the authors geniuses, therefore we can formulate a NEW theory of Jewish intelligence that says "they average 100 or slightly lower".
Wow... That's pretty cool. What IDE do you use, Apple's, Netbeans, or Eclipse? I've been leaning towards Eclipse for applications and Netbeans for web apps... I bet you use Eclipse... ?
Pretend you're Indian. All you have to do is completely mangle the English language, lie like a maniac on your resume (you don't know.Net, you know EVERYTHING -- Java,.Net, Perl, C/C++, Lisp, assembler, etc -- and you've been doing it for ten years, even though you're only 21) and fake an accent if they call you.
Barring such subterfuge, you might as well forget about it. That whole "job" thing? Yeah, it's gone.
Good luck, though.
P.S. When you've completely given up, try civil service. It's a good living wage, you actually have job security, and the work is about the same as what you'd be doing in the private sector.
You're right; I just looked it up in a very dusty old book I still have (I can't believe I've still got it).
There was a lesson on decompression stops, but they say something along the lines of "this isn't a good idea, but if you stay down too long, this is how you do it". So, you're right, it's not the kind of thing you're supposed to do.
A bunch of years ago, I took a NAUI scuba course (and ultimately couldn't complete it because I couldn't go on the test dive, which sucked). They taught us that you had to always plan for decompression stops every 15 feet on your way back up, and the tools they gave us (dive time calculators, etc) accounted for this.
Well, I agree with you on that one. I'm sure he thinks of himself as a wily propagandist, just as Pinky and The Brain actually think they have a shot at taking over the entire world. Man -- that's actually a pretty good simile for him.
But, you can't turn a sow's ear into a silk purse, and you can't turn Enderle's sad little diatribe into real propaganda. He's not even a wannabe; he's more of a "wishedhewas". Sad, really.
In order for propaganda to actually work, it has to be competently fashioned. This means, the would-be propagandist has to ensure that:
A) He has thoroughly researched the topic at hand, and knows it inside and out,
B) He has fashioned a position that is reasonable-sounding enough that people will consider it, and which is supportable by some subset of actual information;
C) He has formulated reasonable-sounding arguments against all of the counter-claims that might be thrown at his position, and which will take effort to debunk (making it easier for the average joe to accept them than to disprove them, thus capitalizing on the average joe's innate laziness).
Enderle has failed A, B, and C. Therefore, it isn't propaganda so much as it is uninsightful rambling.
Show of hands: who has only one game console? Anybody? Hmm...
Ok, show of hands: who has two game consoles? Ok, that's about three quarters of you... Interesting.
Alright, let's see who has at least three game consoles? Wow. I didn't expect that many. Holy cow, there's a guy in the back with FIVE. And he games on his PC, too! Wow.
Well, it seems to me that the gaming companies aren't really competitors, because most people end up getting more than one console anyway. So, and this is just a hypothesis, maybe the game companies can just relax and share the market? It's not like any one of them is going to dominate in any real way, not with people splitting their energies between two or more.
I'd start with a one-week brief blitz of typesetting concepts (how text can be aligned so as to draw the eye, etc), formatting, design/graphics, and overall layout, with a description of some common layouts in use on large sites. This would be a nice way to kick things off -- show them how to make a site that isn't hideous.
Then, I'd spend a couple of weeks on sound HTML, how to integrate scriptlets properly, how to handle server-side includes and CSS so your code is cross-browser, how to limit your table use to positioning (if even that), how to make your site small and tight, and avoid huge load times.
Next I'd start wading out into deeper water, going into server-side code, handling form posts, working with files and mime types, and configuring the server to handle specific file types correctly.
Next, I'd touch middleware, because no complex site lets its DMZ servers anywhere NEAR a database. I'd give them some sample code implementing something simple, maybe a user account system with a simple mySQL database. This will let you introduce them to transactions (inserts and updates) and regular queries. It'll let you touch on record locking and how it's used, too. You'd be surprised how many grad-level people don't actually understand this stuff as well as they're supposed to.
Once they've got all these bases basically covered, you can start getting funky, storing binary files in a database, uploading them and downloading them via a website, streaming them to a client, arranging access (how to handle user logins and etc) which in turn leads to sessions and how to manage them, and lets you play around with SSL and look at different commercial providers of related tools.
You might want to look at GIS integration, too, because lots of sites are integrating mapping functionality these days. That's a nice advanced topic, worth a week or so...
And, of course, there's always the topic of anonymous proxies, i.e. how to set them up, etc.
And, security of course. You could look at Snort as an example of an IDS, and iptables as a reasonable firewall, and have your students set both up and monitor them over the course of a week. You could have your students pair up, one hunting around with nmap and the other trying to catch him in his logs...
This is a pretty rich subject. How many weeks do you have?:)
Yeah, no kidding. This Enderle guy rolled out three or four issues he clearly didn't understand or take the time to research, described them from a very limited and bent point of view, and tried to make one bad point while sneakily trying to advocate several more.
This is the kind of article that, if presented to a freshman composition instructor, would be returned with red text in the margin saying "I'm not accepting this until you actually do some research. This work is unacceptable."
He was so far off the mark it was almost comical. He reminded me of an old man sitting in the park, mumbling about how we "oughta just nuke all them arabians, and dem Frenchies, too". You hear him talk, you marvel at the absolute lack of clue, and you wonder if he's just putting you on... Then you realize, no, he really IS that feeble-minded.
And you go have lunch, completely putting the weird old fart out of your mind.
No problem -- I hope you do ok as far as your asperger's goes. As I've said, I would never disparage someone with a medical condition like asperger's or autism.:)
a. Actually, I didn't use the caps lock key. I have unnaturally long pinkies and I held down the "shift" key. And it was only for one little bit of text, so relax -- don't be such a netiquette nazi.
b. Everyone is completely bonkers. I fully understand this. What's that got to do with my righteous indignation at people throwing the term "asperger's" at every smart person they hear about? Whenever someone's smart, the rest of our society starts cooking up ways to "cut him down to size". It's annoying, and I wish people would knock it off. And, hey! If there are people who really suffer from this, aren't people trivializing their problems by bandying the term about? That's not fair either.
c. It's true. I'm very bitter. I hate almost everybody. I think human beings in general are kind of irritating. However, I don't pursue "geekiness" in and of itself. Actually, my thing is physics, math, and farting around with Linux and Java. Although, to be honest, the main reason I got into physics was a strong childhood desire to become a mad scientist and do something that completely annoys/freaks out the entire world.
I always thought it was kind of sad that all the Bond villains lost. They worked so hard to (insert cataclysmic activity here) and that poofter Bond came along and screwed up everything.
The one I really felt sorry for was Jaws. Always getting his butt kicked by a poofty little spy half his size... But at least he got that heidi-looking chick at the end of Moonraker. She was cute.
Slashdot Mirror
AKA "Gooch" or alternately, if you're English, "Barse" (Balls/arse).
So, what's wrong with just saying "All work on this site, copyright Joe Blow. All characters, the site logo, and the strip name are trademarks of Joe Blow. This material is protected by all applicable laws, including international treaties"?
You're producing art. It's automatically protected under copyright, especially if you spend the twenty bucks and register your copyrights, and trademark fees (whatever they are) to register those.
It seems to me that saying ANYTHING about licensing opens you up to problems, while keeping mum (and saying a quick little blurb about copyright so-and-so) covers your butt.
I'll grant that in the past he seems to have done some significant work (of course, if he hadn't done it, somebody else would have) but he's behaving like a petulant child.
So what if he had some trouble with sound on Linux. Big deal; acting like it's personally betrayed him because he "can't play two sounds at once" is childish. If it's so important to him to "play two sounds at once" I suggest he farts while whistling.
Ah, well, what can you do? Somebody else will pick up XScreensaver. That's the nice thing about open source. A developer can't REALLY say "screw you guys"...
It's a good idea to take a home-study course, but you'll find that some of the material can tend to be on the light side (i.e. not enough technical "meat"). If I were you guys, I'd supplement my correspondence studies by picking up texts on the following subjects at Amazon (or borders, or whatever). This material amounts to a good, solid foundation in computer science and will turn her into a better programmer. Here's the list:
1. Pick a language and get a good, introductory text on it. I like Java, myself. A reasonably good book to get you started is "Learn Java in 21 Days" by SAMS.
(The rest of the choices should be chosen to mesh with your chosen language, perhaps java. These are listed in the order in which you should approach them, by the way.)
2. An algorithms text. Don't pick up any of the thin, softcover books which use the word "Algorithmics"; they're the equivalent of the "physics for poets" course liberal arts majors take in college. You want the equivalent of "Analytical Physics" here. Algorithms is the central course in computer science, the closest thing to "how to program" you'll ever see.
3. A data structures text. Yes, it's true that most modern languages provide you with data structures ready-made, but knowing their internals will help you choose the RIGHT data structure and when the day comes that you need to write one, you'll be able to.
4. A file structures text. These are getting harder to find, but they're valuable. You learn about how hard drives work, how the data is stored on them, etc, which helps you plan your file I/O better. Plus, you're usually introduced to some very good data processing algorithms.
5. An operating systems text, like the one I saw recently which describes BSD internals. Studying an existing O/S will take you leaps and bounds ahead of the people who just read theory.
6. A networking text, one that gets into TCP/IP especially. It's true you probably don't have to write sockets, but it's better to have at least tried it once or twice.
That's six books which together, add up to the spine of any computer science curriculum. With this particular set of knowledge, you'll be able to do just about anything.
Most people will suggest you study patterns also, but that's just light reading compared to this stuff, and you can do that anytime. Get through this, and patterns is a piece of cake.
Good luck!
I wish all these crazy computer-as-religion types would grow up and see the computer for what it really, truly is: a tool.
Computers are JUST TOOLS that help you accomplish useful tasks. That's it, guys. They're not religious artifacts, they're not fetish items, they're just the equivalent of a good set of socket wrenches.
You should choose the best tools available to you at the point when you're buying them, and you should try and squeeze some mileage out of them (this means, don't buy new tools every couple of years! Mechanics don't replace all their wrenches every two years, do they?).
Mac O/S is an excellent tool. So is Linux. The two are essentially interchangeable, given that Mac O/S is somewhat better at working with media files, and Linux is somewhat better for software development, especially web development.
Of course, whereas Mac O/S and Linux are roughly equivalent to Craftsman or Snap-On, well... Microsoft is kind of like the cheapo tools from Taiwan you see on Canal Street. They work, but they break a lot, and they don't have as fine a finish. Still, I suppose you might find a use for them.
Whatever! Back to the point! Relax, everybody! This shit isn't life and death, it's not even Red, white or Sangria! REEEEELLLLAAAAXXXXX!
Here's the programmer solution:
1. Study your firewall logs, and try to determine some baseline criteria that identifies a spider. While you're at it, note the domains the spiders are coming from.
2. Create a small perl script that, when fed the IP address of a questionable domain, automatically does an add (creating a new "DROP" rule for that domain) and tacks the command onto your existing firewall script. This is your manual tool. Of course, you should debug it using your spider list from 1, above.
3. Once you've gotten better at identifying spiders, start your new hobby: tweaking a Perl script that peruses your firewall logs every now and then, and upon detecting a spider, runs the script from part 2, above.
4. Every now and then, browse your firewall script to make sure you haven't banned anything you'll want later. Then laugh the deep belly laugh of a vengeful sysadmin and go have a beer.
The way private consultants build government software,
You'd order a one-story three bedroom ranch. The contractor would say "No problem; we have a framework we like to use, it should let us complete your house relatively quickly. You'll love it."
Then, the contractor would blow a whistle and several tractor trailer trucks, cement trucks, flatbeds, etc, would come out of nowhere, rolling over your lawn and disgorging hundreds of illegal aliens. They would scurry madly from truck to truck, pulling out rebar and tools, and get started on the 40,000 square foot basement.
"Hey, asshole, wait a minute!" you'd scream. "All I want is a fucking three bedroom ranch! What the fuck is all this?"
The contractor would act surprised and say, "But everyone is building them this way. What are you worried about? It's not YOUR money, it's the bank's money. And look how much activity it's causing! Why, the local economy is blooming. Do you know how much my guys spent at Krispy Kreme this morning?"
You would barely have time to splutter about this when you would almost get run over by a crane. Retreating to a safe distance, you would watch in horror as they erected a twenty story building on your lot.
On the top of the building would be a three bedroom, one story ranch house. With the longest front steps you've ever seen.
A bill for a hundred million dollars would be nailed to the mailbox.
1. The cheap intel machines for sale in Comp USA would look and work much better than they used to, would come bundled with all sorts of juicy Apple media-oriented software, and would have developer's tools built in (or at least, available on the OEM CD).
2. Because PCs wouldn't get hit by a virus or spyware thirty seconds after you plugged it in, you could get your grandparents/parents/siblings a good, cheap computer you would BARELY HAVE TO SUPPORT!
Think about this one: Your family would have computers they would be happy with and understand how to use, but you wouldn't have to spend all your weekends unfucking them.
3. Manufacturers would fall all over themselves producing gear that would work with OS/X (intel), so you would finally have a Unix box that you could use with all your toys. Don't get me wrong, Linux works with almost everything, but there's still that teensy chunk of cool gear that doesn't work. That problem goes away if a merger happens.
4. Microsoft dies the humiliating death it deserves, and over time, the number of Wintel boxes dwindles away, taking with it the huge crapflood of spam and virii that currently slows down the web. Utopia dawns!
I'm for it. Go, Steve, Go!
Here's an interesting counterexample to their list of brilliant jews: MY list of people who were equally brilliant, but NOT jews.
Let's start with some philosophers who are DEFINITELY not jews:
Zeno, Aristotle, Plato, Socrates, Epictetus, Marcus Aurelius, Hume, Kant, Heidigger (I think), Nietzche;
How about some famous science figures?
Issaic Newton, Benjamin Franklin, Euclid, Archimedes, Thomas Edison (an inventor, strictly speaking, but quite bright), Galileo, Darwin;
How about some literary lights? Shakespeare, Edgar Allan Poe, Robert Frost, Homer, Dante, Cervantes, Plutarch, Emerson, Bacon, Milton;
I think that the number of brilliant people who are NOT Jewish dwarfs the number of brilliant people who ARE Jewish. From this one might reasonably conclude that being Jewish conveys no particular advantage when it comes to intelligence, and the fact that THREE people listed in the article are intelligent is most likely a coincidence.
Furthermore, I would like to point out that the Beastie Boys are Jewish, and have not formulated any scientific theories or brilliant works of psychoanalysis. There are three Beastie boys, and three brilliant men mentioned in the article. Those doofuses cancel out the authors geniuses, therefore we can formulate a NEW theory of Jewish intelligence that says "they average 100 or slightly lower".
Wow... That's pretty cool. What IDE do you use, Apple's, Netbeans, or Eclipse? I've been leaning towards Eclipse for applications and Netbeans for web apps... I bet you use Eclipse... ?
Mac O/S has excellent Java support. Write your code in Java, and it should be able to run on whatever hardware macs currently have under the hood.
Yeah, man, she was a hottie. Especially in those "thermal bandages"... Yum!
The punk chick the big lizard was camoflaged as was kinda hot too.
And, man... All them stewardesses! With FRECKLES!!!
FRECKLES!!!! I thank God every day for freckled chicks... They're proof he likes us.
So I guess their product logo will be a huge, flaming ball flying through space on its way to destroy all life in the universe?
:)
Or will it be the weird little squishy piggy thing Zorn kept as a pet in his desk?
Maybe... Just a coughed up cherry.
Ah. You're one of those.
Pretend you're Indian. All you have to do is completely mangle the English language, lie like a maniac on your resume (you don't know .Net, you know EVERYTHING -- Java, .Net, Perl, C/C++, Lisp, assembler, etc -- and you've been doing it for ten years, even though you're only 21) and fake an accent if they call you.
Barring such subterfuge, you might as well forget about it. That whole "job" thing? Yeah, it's gone.
Good luck, though.
P.S. When you've completely given up, try civil service. It's a good living wage, you actually have job security, and the work is about the same as what you'd be doing in the private sector.
You're right; I just looked it up in a very dusty old book I still have (I can't believe I've still got it).
There was a lesson on decompression stops, but they say something along the lines of "this isn't a good idea, but if you stay down too long, this is how you do it". So, you're right, it's not the kind of thing you're supposed to do.
My bad; like I say, it's been a while.
Well, it's been a long time, I don't remember the exact wording. But I trust you. :)
A bunch of years ago, I took a NAUI scuba course (and ultimately couldn't complete it because I couldn't go on the test dive, which sucked). They taught us that you had to always plan for decompression stops every 15 feet on your way back up, and the tools they gave us (dive time calculators, etc) accounted for this.
People don't do that anymore?
Well, I agree with you on that one. I'm sure he thinks of himself as a wily propagandist, just as Pinky and The Brain actually think they have a shot at taking over the entire world. Man -- that's actually a pretty good simile for him.
But, you can't turn a sow's ear into a silk purse, and you can't turn Enderle's sad little diatribe into real propaganda. He's not even a wannabe; he's more of a "wishedhewas". Sad, really.
In order for propaganda to actually work, it has to be competently fashioned. This means, the would-be propagandist has to ensure that:
A) He has thoroughly researched the topic at hand, and knows it inside and out,
B) He has fashioned a position that is reasonable-sounding enough that people will consider it, and which is supportable by some subset of actual information;
C) He has formulated reasonable-sounding arguments against all of the counter-claims that might be thrown at his position, and which will take effort to debunk (making it easier for the average joe to accept them than to disprove them, thus capitalizing on the average joe's innate laziness).
Enderle has failed A, B, and C. Therefore, it isn't propaganda so much as it is uninsightful rambling.
Show of hands: who has only one game console? Anybody? Hmm...
Ok, show of hands: who has two game consoles? Ok, that's about three quarters of you... Interesting.
Alright, let's see who has at least three game consoles? Wow. I didn't expect that many. Holy cow, there's a guy in the back with FIVE. And he games on his PC, too! Wow.
Well, it seems to me that the gaming companies aren't really competitors, because most people end up getting more than one console anyway. So, and this is just a hypothesis, maybe the game companies can just relax and share the market? It's not like any one of them is going to dominate in any real way, not with people splitting their energies between two or more.
Really.
I'd start with a one-week brief blitz of typesetting concepts (how text can be aligned so as to draw the eye, etc), formatting, design/graphics, and overall layout, with a description of some common layouts in use on large sites. This would be a nice way to kick things off -- show them how to make a site that isn't hideous.
:)
Then, I'd spend a couple of weeks on sound HTML, how to integrate scriptlets properly, how to handle server-side includes and CSS so your code is cross-browser, how to limit your table use to positioning (if even that), how to make your site small and tight, and avoid huge load times.
Next I'd start wading out into deeper water, going into server-side code, handling form posts, working with files and mime types, and configuring the server to handle specific file types correctly.
Next, I'd touch middleware, because no complex site lets its DMZ servers anywhere NEAR a database. I'd give them some sample code implementing something simple, maybe a user account system with a simple mySQL database. This will let you introduce them to transactions (inserts and updates) and regular queries. It'll let you touch on record locking and how it's used, too. You'd be surprised how many grad-level people don't actually understand this stuff as well as they're supposed to.
Once they've got all these bases basically covered, you can start getting funky, storing binary files in a database, uploading them and downloading them via a website, streaming them to a client, arranging access (how to handle user logins and etc) which in turn leads to sessions and how to manage them, and lets you play around with SSL and look at different commercial providers of related tools.
You might want to look at GIS integration, too, because lots of sites are integrating mapping functionality these days. That's a nice advanced topic, worth a week or so...
And, of course, there's always the topic of anonymous proxies, i.e. how to set them up, etc.
And, security of course. You could look at Snort as an example of an IDS, and iptables as a reasonable firewall, and have your students set both up and monitor them over the course of a week. You could have your students pair up, one hunting around with nmap and the other trying to catch him in his logs...
This is a pretty rich subject. How many weeks do you have?
Yeah, no kidding. This Enderle guy rolled out three or four issues he clearly didn't understand or take the time to research, described them from a very limited and bent point of view, and tried to make one bad point while sneakily trying to advocate several more.
This is the kind of article that, if presented to a freshman composition instructor, would be returned with red text in the margin saying "I'm not accepting this until you actually do some research. This work is unacceptable."
He was so far off the mark it was almost comical. He reminded me of an old man sitting in the park, mumbling about how we "oughta just nuke all them arabians, and dem Frenchies, too". You hear him talk, you marvel at the absolute lack of clue, and you wonder if he's just putting you on... Then you realize, no, he really IS that feeble-minded.
And you go have lunch, completely putting the weird old fart out of your mind.
No problem -- I hope you do ok as far as your asperger's goes. As I've said, I would never disparage someone with a medical condition like asperger's or autism. :)
a. Actually, I didn't use the caps lock key. I have unnaturally long pinkies and I held down the "shift" key. And it was only for one little bit of text, so relax -- don't be such a netiquette nazi.
b. Everyone is completely bonkers. I fully understand this. What's that got to do with my righteous indignation at people throwing the term "asperger's" at every smart person they hear about? Whenever someone's smart, the rest of our society starts cooking up ways to "cut him down to size". It's annoying, and I wish people would knock it off. And, hey! If there are people who really suffer from this, aren't people trivializing their problems by bandying the term about? That's not fair either.
c. It's true. I'm very bitter. I hate almost everybody. I think human beings in general are kind of irritating. However, I don't pursue "geekiness" in and of itself. Actually, my thing is physics, math, and farting around with Linux and Java. Although, to be honest, the main reason I got into physics was a strong childhood desire to become a mad scientist and do something that completely annoys/freaks out the entire world.
I always thought it was kind of sad that all the Bond villains lost. They worked so hard to (insert cataclysmic activity here) and that poofter Bond came along and screwed up everything.
The one I really felt sorry for was Jaws. Always getting his butt kicked by a poofty little spy half his size... But at least he got that heidi-looking chick at the end of Moonraker. She was cute.