Because technology is changing so quickly, having a lot of experience with a particular technology (in this case C++) can be both a good thing and a bad thing
I'm a little puzzled by this comment and a lot of comments that have been (sorry to pick on this one). Yes technology is changing, but not in the way implied here. Technology is changing our lives, but technology itself is not changing so quickly that C++ will be phased out any time soon.
Yes, now we have wireless computers when 5 or 6 years ago that wasn't possible for the consumer. And 10 years ago most people would've scratched their head if you said "World Wide Web" and email. But again, these technological changes aren't really THAT much of a quantum leap forward when it comes to programming. Its still a whole bunch of if/then, while/for loops, etc, put together cohesively to perform a job.
Further, think about how much legacy code is out there in C/C++. Look at Linux, FreeBSD etc. Companies are still looking for Cobol programmers. People aren't going to magically say "Oh my gosh! This program, that we've been writing for 10 years and 100s of programmers have worked on shouldn't be written in C! It should be written in Python! Let's rewrite it!"
So please don't sit there and say "C is dead! Long live X!" because of rapid technology change. TCP/IP has been around for over 20 years, and ethernet, C and the microprocessor for over 30 years. They're not going anywhere.
Baseball is a game played by a bunch of drunken, tobacco chewing goons, illiterates from third world countries, and other assorted misfits who make their living playing a kid's game.
Gee, this is only moderately offending.
not one single player had ever SEEN a rulebook let alone OWNED one, and none of them cared to even investigate rule changes.
Right, baseball players don't know what's going on. Obviously you've never heard of Questec and baseball's infinite wisdom to install these cameras to monitor umpires. And Curt Schilling and the Braves didn't like it. So, don't tell me that baseball players don't know know what's going and and aren't going to do something about it.
This is dependent on what your folks are running, but you if you're concerned about removing what they've installed (purposefully or inadvertently) you may want to reinstall Windows, get everything setup properly and then run System Restore to save the system state at that moment. This way, when they call you telling you "XYZ is happening! Gator has taken over everything!" you can run system restore and roll back to where you were before, and scold your parents that if they install more crap, they'll get more of the same. I realize this might seem overkill, but it does get to the root of the problem rather quickly (having to get rid of all the crap inexperienced users installed)
Why put this out there? When a train derails (Silver Lake, Kansas 3/27) or a tanker crashes on a bridge (Connecticut 3/28), you don't see people jumping up and saying "Its Al-Qaeda!" Sane people understand that life happens both good and bad and bad things happen all by themselves without terrorists.
How about the August blackout on the East coast of the US and Canada? Yes, people were panicky (and who wouldn't be trying to get home to New Jersey without the trains), but I didn't see anyone on TV screaming "Its the second coming of Osama!" The day after they were arguing whether it was the Canadians or the American's fault. In the end it was Ohio's fault. And yes I'm sure there were some who speculated, but I didn't see anyone coming and screaming and yelling and panicking.
"The gaming industry will shrink unless we start to see new games," said Toru Iwatani, who created Pac-Man, one of the first video games to become a worldwide hit.
I read the article, but I'm not really sure what Mr. Iwatani meant by "shrink." Consolidation of companies, ala EA? Or market shrink, which means people will stop buying video games?
If he means consolidation of companies, then its not a bygone conclusion that we're going to see fewer new games. Why? Well, why make 4 Lethal Weapon movies? Because we're familiar with the characters, we understand the back stories and we've grown to love these characters. And the studio feels that it can invest $100 million and get a return on the movie. So, its easier to bank on a familiar name than not. These are companies, and they're looking to make money. But these summer blockbusters take in millions to pay the bills and help bankroll smaller projects that normally wouldn't get a chance, and maybe shouldn't have been given a chance *cough*My Big Fat Greek Wedding*cough*. I sure hope its not going to be like this, because a few bad summers and Hollywood's gonna blink right off the map.
If he means the market will shrink because fewer people will buy games, I don't really buy into that. Again, 4 Lethal Weapon movies, as well as numerous others (Beverly Hills Cop, Superman/Batman/Spiderman/X-Men, The Whole Ten Yards, Star Wars, Star Trek, Bond,...) are bankrolled because they're familiar and people will go see these movies because they love the characters. Likewise, we love Viewtiful Joe (well, I love Viewtiful Joe) and we play because we have an affinity towards those characters.
I don't mean to nit pick but we're not talking about the Recording Industry Association of America . I realize we love vilifying them and for good reason too, but let's not blame them for the RIANZ's whining.
Did the parent read the article? I don't understand why you'd be puzzled. The author specifically states that game AI is different from research AI and almost all games use the same FSM and decision trees. Only games such as Creatures or Black and White use "advanced" research AI techniques like genetic algorithms or neural networks. FSMs and decisions tree operate at a basic level:
If in this state with these conditions move to state Q
otherwise move to state R
So, half-life and deux-ex II both use the same basic FSMs and decision trees, and "advancement" doesn't come simply from increasing CPU power or more RAM (those things obviously help though) but also the programmers/designers ability to conceive of possible scenarios that could occur. So, if you want an enemy to flank you and kill you then someone has to think ahead of time "Well gee, what state would this bot need to be in before he would go ahead and try to find a way to get behind the player to flank him?" Then, the programmer has to find a way to get the bot to flank you (i.e. find a path to get behind you without you seeing) and then kill you. That's not exactly a trivial task, especially with so many possible scenarios involved.
Let's hop in the WAY BACK machine, and put a different spin on this...
Okay, besides the endless references to Terminator I could make, this really sucks. So, we have high-school kids doing weapons research free of charge for the DOD now?
I sincerely wish that people would put more ethical concerns regarding science in the right place. While people are bemoaning the evils of stem cell research, we're happily spending money on this sort of thing.
The happy-go-lucky attitude of the article, the competition, and not to mention slashdot is a little disturbing as well. Heyhey! That's right kids, it's time for the Darpa Competition! Just build us a network that can connect computers to other computers, and we'll take care of making a weapon out of it. It's science-fun, just like Mr. Wizard! Even Dad's helping out!
This isn't just "neat" stuff - this is stuff that has an impact in the real world, and I suggest that those people involved consider what sorts of contributions they're making. Personally, I would appreciate them not building network of powerful computers for the DOD.
both ways to get to work! In snow! With no shoes on! With a bag full of rocks on our backs! And we crawled over jagged broken bottles with our zippers open! And we liked it! =)
I'm just a little too young to remember Pitfall! and such, but I think simplying saying "yesterday's games were harder than today's game" is an insult to good designers. One of the author's complaints, that we can save every few seconds, is true in many games, but some games, Splinter Cell comes to mind, have preset save points. And it should, because the game is friggin' long. I doubt most people could finish Splinter Cell in one sitting, no matter how hard they tried.
Other's here on Slashdot have commented on joysticks and their bazillion buttons. They have those buttons because the real world has more control in it than one button can offer. For instance, Pole Position for Atari 2600 could get away with just the joystick because push forward you go accelerate, back to brake, left and right. And that was a fairly simplistic simulation. Project Gotham Racing 2 has accelerate, brake, hand-brake, upshift, downshift, horn, and view change, along with an analog stick for turning. Splinter Cell also uses both sticks well, one to control world coordinate motion, another so you can rotate Sam around, as well as crouch, open/use, turn thermal cam on, etc etc. They're not there to be useless.
I don't know if the parent comment is true. In fact, I'm pretty sure sports cars have the worst blind spots. You sit extremely low in the vehicle, the door sill is very high, and there's usually a spoiler hogging up your rear view mirror or because today's sports cars are wedge shaped the view out the back is horrendous. Plus for "aerodynamic" purposes (yeah right), your side mirror's are small.
SUV's on the other hand usually have thinner C pillars than cars, which reduce blind spots. Plus, there's no concern for aerodynamics, so side mirrors are usually rather large (and some of them have the convex mirror another poster talked about). And, you sit high in an SUV and the door sill doesn't encroach upon viewing angles for the side mirrors, so you don't have to crane your neck to see your side mirrors. The only concern with SUVs (and minivans, vans, and trucks) seems to be directly behind the vehicle, because SUVs/trucks/vans/minivans are higher than cars, its harder to see short objects (children for instance), but auto manufacturers offer warning systems for low speed detection so you won't run over children or hit poles you can't see.
I'd say that SUVs have the same if not smaller blind spots than most vehicles. If you're going to take SUVs to task, then go after things like high center of gravity, low MPGs (or kpl) or weight, try not to make stuff up.
*flame suit on*
Since I don't know too many nine year olds, I can't fathom what games they're playing (Pokemon still? Yuyu Hashuko?), but my suggestion is to first control his expectations. What I mean is, you should be aware that even though he is gifted in math and has an interest in programming, that he won't be able to recreate Max Payne 2 or WarCraft III. Or even Pokemon on the GBA. That simply requires money. Some of the simplest games like Tetris aren't instantly easy to program.
Deep breath.
With that out of the way, I'd suggest writing a text only RPG or something like that. You can learn a lot about how games work coding up MUDs and such, and you don't have to worry about making the eye candy to go with it. When I was nine I coded up a mud in Basic (of course that was in the late 80's but whatever). Once you've got a fairly fun text RPG, you can try making it into a 2d world (a la Zelda) which wouldn't be too hard to implement.
I realize I haven't answered your question about programming languages and websites mostly because that usually leads to flame wars ("Nu uh! Ruby/VBA/C++ Rocks! Python/C/Java Sux!"), but if he's try interested in programming a game, I think a mud is a good place to start. I have a preference for Python, so you may want to check out pygame.org as well.
You guys love putting words in my mouth. =) That's okay, I guess I should clarify. I use the terminal and X11 every day too. I'm not a huge fan of applescript, and there are things that you can do with a terminal that are faster than finder (grep being my favorite tool ever). I'm not arguing with you that using a terminal isn't faster than finder et al, rather that the book is not an "unnecessary manual" and it does speed up productivity.
My problem with people stating the greatness of the "unix underpinnings" is most of them have no idea what they're talking about, they just like extolling the greatness of Unix (and therefore the atrociousness of Microsoft). Its such a vague statement that it kinda makes me quesy...
Yes, you might not "NEED a manual in order to be able to use OS X productively," but the book is there to make you even more productive. For instance, my office mate did not know about the Open Apple + Tab feature to switch between windows. And how intuitive is F9-F11 to use Expose? Information like this does not magically pop into my head, I have to learn it somewhere.
And why is utilizing "the UNIX underpinnings to their full extent," so important? Most people who use Macs aren't looking to that to be productive. Increasing my productivity is more important to me than running apache/cron/sudo on my iBook.
Avoid NYT registration
on
Universal Goo
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· Score: 5, Informative
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No, OS X is based on Darwin, which is based on FreeBSD. NeXT was a company run by Steve Jobs, and among its contributions to OS X is Cocoa/Objective-C.
Check Apple'sUnix website. It clearly states "Panther integrates features from state-of-the-art FreeBSD 5 into Darwin, the Open Source base of Mac OS X, to provide enhanced performance, compatibility and usability. "
*putting my flame proof jacket on*
I like OS X's user interface, and I hated OS 9's user interface. I bought my iBook because OS X is based on FreeBSD (and I need a shell prompt and assorted other goodies), but I enjoy the user interface now that I've had time to adjust.
I think most of the problem is centered around "But the Dock is stupid because OS 9 did this instead." We have a natural tendency to resist change, and Finder and the Dock are huge changes to the Mac interface.
And yes, I did RTFA, and I do agree that there are some missteps (like all the Dock widgets looking the same) but a lot of the complaints here are "OS 9 is better! OS X sux!"
Wow, you're considering upgrading from your 2.4 P4. I just upgraded TO a 2.4 P4. *sigh*
Anyways, my question is, what do you do that requires THAT much horsepower? If you're web surfing, writing emails and writing letters in Word, then I'd recommend that you not upgrade to anything and that your P4 should be more than adequate. Details are important here. For instance, you want to work on porting XXXXXXX to run natively at 64 bits. Then of course its a good time to upgrade, and it probably makes sense for what you're doing. Or perhaps you want to frag some people when HL2 comes out. Then I'd say "probably not worth it" or ask "What kind of video card do you have?"
We can't give you a recommendation off the top of our head without any details.
Yeah, definitely try Video Lan Client. Why? Because they've developed their own codecs for playing videos and do not rely on codecs that are installed on the system (so there's no codec confusion, which sometimes occurs on Windows Media Player)
" Security specialists in the Netherlands said the device could threaten criminal investigation by the Dutch police, which is one of the world's most active phone tappers, listening in to 12,000 phone numbers every year."
The article states "one of the world's most active phone tappers" not "the world's most active phone tappers". The US had fairly stringent policies against phone tapping citizens (ie the police and FBI, not the NSA). I'm sure the NSA is not giving out statistics on how many wiretaps it does a year, but the NSA is (supposedly) forbidden from investigating within the US.
Does anyone else find it weird that its collectively called "the Dutch police?" Are they referring to all local law officials or some national law enforcement agency? Just curious...
Re:the talking is the distraction, not the device
on
Cell Phone Headsets?
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· Score: 1
If you leave three car lengths between you and another car, you get a call and suddenly it's four car lengths. Multiply that times just about every car you see, and what do you get?
I don't know, what we get? Four car lengths is a good thing. And, if we're following you're argument, if everyone talked on their cell phone, everyone would drive four car lengths apart, which again is a good thing.
Traffic may be composed of "mostly the space between cars" but accidents happen because we don't leave enough space in front of us, or because of the cascade effect of someone braking (ie you're the nth car in a line of cars braking, and s fractions of seconds have been eaten up by the n-1 cars in front of you so that you just don't have enough time/distance to stop). If we leave more space between cars, then we have more reaction time, and more space to avoid the accident.
Or maybe you're talking about creating more congestion if everyone drove at four car lengths instead of three because each car is taking up five car lenghts instead of four. Ideally then, instead of 3, why not two? Or one? Why don't we all glue ourselves to the guy in front of us? Again, that safety issue comes back.
I'm in total agreement with you that talking on a cellphone is a distraction and a safety issue, but I'm not quite following you're reasoning.
I notice you said you didn't see a speed increase in the finder on your G4 PB and a Dual G5. Well, considering the hardware you're running, I'm not surprised (I'm jealous). My 800Mhz iBook (G3) is noticably "snappier" and a lot of the pausing and waiting has disappeared. I find it money well spent for the speed increases alone. IIRC, the Ars article specifically states that for older hardware upgrading is a good thing because you will see noticable increases in speed.
I like having separate tech pieces, ie my Clie, VX4400, iBook, and Minidisc player. Why? Well, $40 for the Clie, $100 for VX4400, and $100 for the MD player (and $1200 for the iBook, but that's not part of the equation), so that's $240. A "smartphone" costs $499. And if it breaks, *POOF*, I don't have a my PDA, my cell phone and my music. If I want to upgrade my phone, I have to buy another $500 piece of equipment and learn how to use THAT interface. Instead, if my MD player breaks or I want to buy a newer NetMD player, then that's $100. Or my cell phone breaks, I don't lose all my phone numbers and contacts. Convergence is nice, but losing everything because I dropped my "phone" sucks.
The minus is none of these pieces sync up (unless I'm anal retentive about keeping things together). I have to sync my Clie with my iBook, my phone doesn't sync with anything, and I have to make MDs to listen to mp3s (maybe I could get an mp3 player...). Bluetooth to the rescue???
I've always been under the impression that Esperanto is "easy" and a "middle ground" for European languages: French, English, German etc, but not other languages such as Farsi, Chinese, Japanese or the language of my parents, Korean, which all have very different structures from the Romantic or Germanic languages. So, lets be clear that its not really a "middle ground" language.
Slashdot Mirror
Because technology is changing so quickly, having a lot of experience with a particular technology (in this case C++) can be both a good thing and a bad thing
I'm a little puzzled by this comment and a lot of comments that have been (sorry to pick on this one). Yes technology is changing, but not in the way implied here. Technology is changing our lives, but technology itself is not changing so quickly that C++ will be phased out any time soon.
Yes, now we have wireless computers when 5 or 6 years ago that wasn't possible for the consumer. And 10 years ago most people would've scratched their head if you said "World Wide Web" and email. But again, these technological changes aren't really THAT much of a quantum leap forward when it comes to programming. Its still a whole bunch of if/then, while/for loops, etc, put together cohesively to perform a job.
Further, think about how much legacy code is out there in C/C++. Look at Linux, FreeBSD etc. Companies are still looking for Cobol programmers. People aren't going to magically say "Oh my gosh! This program, that we've been writing for 10 years and 100s of programmers have worked on shouldn't be written in C! It should be written in Python! Let's rewrite it!"
So please don't sit there and say "C is dead! Long live X!" because of rapid technology change. TCP/IP has been around for over 20 years, and ethernet, C and the microprocessor for over 30 years. They're not going anywhere.
Baseball is a game played by a bunch of drunken, tobacco chewing goons, illiterates from third world countries, and other assorted misfits who make their living playing a kid's game.
Gee, this is only moderately offending.
not one single player had ever SEEN a rulebook let alone OWNED one, and none of them cared to even investigate rule changes.
Right, baseball players don't know what's going on. Obviously you've never heard of Questec and baseball's infinite wisdom to install these cameras to monitor umpires. And Curt Schilling and the Braves didn't like it. So, don't tell me that baseball players don't know know what's going and and aren't going to do something about it.
This is dependent on what your folks are running, but you if you're concerned about removing what they've installed (purposefully or inadvertently) you may want to reinstall Windows, get everything setup properly and then run System Restore to save the system state at that moment. This way, when they call you telling you "XYZ is happening! Gator has taken over everything!" you can run system restore and roll back to where you were before, and scold your parents that if they install more crap, they'll get more of the same. I realize this might seem overkill, but it does get to the root of the problem rather quickly (having to get rid of all the crap inexperienced users installed)
Why put this out there? When a train derails (Silver Lake, Kansas 3/27) or a tanker crashes on a bridge (Connecticut 3/28), you don't see people jumping up and saying "Its Al-Qaeda!" Sane people understand that life happens both good and bad and bad things happen all by themselves without terrorists.
How about the August blackout on the East coast of the US and Canada? Yes, people were panicky (and who wouldn't be trying to get home to New Jersey without the trains), but I didn't see anyone on TV screaming "Its the second coming of Osama!" The day after they were arguing whether it was the Canadians or the American's fault. In the end it was Ohio's fault. And yes I'm sure there were some who speculated, but I didn't see anyone coming and screaming and yelling and panicking.
"The gaming industry will shrink unless we start to see new games," said Toru Iwatani, who created Pac-Man, one of the first video games to become a worldwide hit.
...) are bankrolled because they're familiar and people will go see these movies because they love the characters. Likewise, we love Viewtiful Joe (well, I love Viewtiful Joe) and we play because we have an affinity towards those characters.
I read the article, but I'm not really sure what Mr. Iwatani meant by "shrink." Consolidation of companies, ala EA? Or market shrink, which means people will stop buying video games?
If he means consolidation of companies, then its not a bygone conclusion that we're going to see fewer new games. Why? Well, why make 4 Lethal Weapon movies? Because we're familiar with the characters, we understand the back stories and we've grown to love these characters. And the studio feels that it can invest $100 million and get a return on the movie. So, its easier to bank on a familiar name than not. These are companies, and they're looking to make money. But these summer blockbusters take in millions to pay the bills and help bankroll smaller projects that normally wouldn't get a chance, and maybe shouldn't have been given a chance *cough*My Big Fat Greek Wedding*cough*. I sure hope its not going to be like this, because a few bad summers and Hollywood's gonna blink right off the map.
If he means the market will shrink because fewer people will buy games, I don't really buy into that. Again, 4 Lethal Weapon movies, as well as numerous others (Beverly Hills Cop, Superman/Batman/Spiderman/X-Men, The Whole Ten Yards, Star Wars, Star Trek, Bond,
I don't mean to nit pick but we're not talking about the Recording Industry Association of America . I realize we love vilifying them and for good reason too, but let's not blame them for the RIANZ's whining.
Did the parent read the article? I don't understand why you'd be puzzled. The author specifically states that game AI is different from research AI and almost all games use the same FSM and decision trees. Only games such as Creatures or Black and White use "advanced" research AI techniques like genetic algorithms or neural networks. FSMs and decisions tree operate at a basic level:
If in this state with these conditions move to state Q
otherwise move to state R
So, half-life and deux-ex II both use the same basic FSMs and decision trees, and "advancement" doesn't come simply from increasing CPU power or more RAM (those things obviously help though) but also the programmers/designers ability to conceive of possible scenarios that could occur. So, if you want an enemy to flank you and kill you then someone has to think ahead of time "Well gee, what state would this bot need to be in before he would go ahead and try to find a way to get behind the player to flank him?" Then, the programmer has to find a way to get the bot to flank you (i.e. find a path to get behind you without you seeing) and then kill you. That's not exactly a trivial task, especially with so many possible scenarios involved.
Let's hop in the WAY BACK machine, and put a different spin on this...
Okay, besides the endless references to Terminator I could make, this really sucks. So, we have high-school kids doing weapons research free of charge for the DOD now?
I sincerely wish that people would put more ethical concerns regarding science in the right place. While people are bemoaning the evils of stem cell research, we're happily spending money on this sort of thing.
The happy-go-lucky attitude of the article, the competition, and not to mention slashdot is a little disturbing as well. Heyhey! That's right kids, it's time for the Darpa Competition! Just build us a network that can connect computers to other computers, and we'll take care of making a weapon out of it. It's science-fun, just like Mr. Wizard! Even Dad's helping out!
This isn't just "neat" stuff - this is stuff that has an impact in the real world, and I suggest that those people involved consider what sorts of contributions they're making. Personally, I would appreciate them not building network of powerful computers for the DOD.
both ways to get to work! In snow! With no shoes on! With a bag full of rocks on our backs! And we crawled over jagged broken bottles with our zippers open! And we liked it! =)
I'm just a little too young to remember Pitfall! and such, but I think simplying saying "yesterday's games were harder than today's game" is an insult to good designers. One of the author's complaints, that we can save every few seconds, is true in many games, but some games, Splinter Cell comes to mind, have preset save points. And it should, because the game is friggin' long. I doubt most people could finish Splinter Cell in one sitting, no matter how hard they tried.
Other's here on Slashdot have commented on joysticks and their bazillion buttons. They have those buttons because the real world has more control in it than one button can offer. For instance, Pole Position for Atari 2600 could get away with just the joystick because push forward you go accelerate, back to brake, left and right. And that was a fairly simplistic simulation. Project Gotham Racing 2 has accelerate, brake, hand-brake, upshift, downshift, horn, and view change, along with an analog stick for turning. Splinter Cell also uses both sticks well, one to control world coordinate motion, another so you can rotate Sam around, as well as crouch, open/use, turn thermal cam on, etc etc. They're not there to be useless.
I don't know if the parent comment is true. In fact, I'm pretty sure sports cars have the worst blind spots. You sit extremely low in the vehicle, the door sill is very high, and there's usually a spoiler hogging up your rear view mirror or because today's sports cars are wedge shaped the view out the back is horrendous. Plus for "aerodynamic" purposes (yeah right), your side mirror's are small.
SUV's on the other hand usually have thinner C pillars than cars, which reduce blind spots. Plus, there's no concern for aerodynamics, so side mirrors are usually rather large (and some of them have the convex mirror another poster talked about). And, you sit high in an SUV and the door sill doesn't encroach upon viewing angles for the side mirrors, so you don't have to crane your neck to see your side mirrors. The only concern with SUVs (and minivans, vans, and trucks) seems to be directly behind the vehicle, because SUVs/trucks/vans/minivans are higher than cars, its harder to see short objects (children for instance), but auto manufacturers offer warning systems for low speed detection so you won't run over children or hit poles you can't see.
I'd say that SUVs have the same if not smaller blind spots than most vehicles. If you're going to take SUVs to task, then go after things like high center of gravity, low MPGs (or kpl) or weight, try not to make stuff up.
Sorry to reply to my own post but I also remembered Alice put out by CMU's CS dept.
*flame suit on*
Since I don't know too many nine year olds, I can't fathom what games they're playing (Pokemon still? Yuyu Hashuko?), but my suggestion is to first control his expectations. What I mean is, you should be aware that even though he is gifted in math and has an interest in programming, that he won't be able to recreate Max Payne 2 or WarCraft III. Or even Pokemon on the GBA. That simply requires money. Some of the simplest games like Tetris aren't instantly easy to program.
Deep breath.
With that out of the way, I'd suggest writing a text only RPG or something like that. You can learn a lot about how games work coding up MUDs and such, and you don't have to worry about making the eye candy to go with it. When I was nine I coded up a mud in Basic (of course that was in the late 80's but whatever). Once you've got a fairly fun text RPG, you can try making it into a 2d world (a la Zelda) which wouldn't be too hard to implement.
I realize I haven't answered your question about programming languages and websites mostly because that usually leads to flame wars ("Nu uh! Ruby/VBA/C++ Rocks! Python/C/Java Sux!"), but if he's try interested in programming a game, I think a mud is a good place to start. I have a preference for Python, so you may want to check out pygame.org as well.
You guys love putting words in my mouth. =) That's okay, I guess I should clarify. I use the terminal and X11 every day too. I'm not a huge fan of applescript, and there are things that you can do with a terminal that are faster than finder (grep being my favorite tool ever). I'm not arguing with you that using a terminal isn't faster than finder et al, rather that the book is not an "unnecessary manual" and it does speed up productivity.
My problem with people stating the greatness of the "unix underpinnings" is most of them have no idea what they're talking about, they just like extolling the greatness of Unix (and therefore the atrociousness of Microsoft). Its such a vague statement that it kinda makes me quesy...
Yes, you might not "NEED a manual in order to be able to use OS X productively," but the book is there to make you even more productive. For instance, my office mate did not know about the Open Apple + Tab feature to switch between windows. And how intuitive is F9-F11 to use Expose? Information like this does not magically pop into my head, I have to learn it somewhere.
And why is utilizing "the UNIX underpinnings to their full extent," so important? Most people who use Macs aren't looking to that to be productive. Increasing my productivity is more important to me than running apache/cron/sudo on my iBook.
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No, OS X is based on Darwin, which is based on FreeBSD. NeXT was a company run by Steve Jobs, and among its contributions to OS X is Cocoa/Objective-C.
Check Apple's Unix website. It clearly states "Panther integrates features from state-of-the-art FreeBSD 5 into Darwin, the Open Source base of Mac OS X, to provide enhanced performance, compatibility and usability. "
*putting my flame proof jacket on* I like OS X's user interface, and I hated OS 9's user interface. I bought my iBook because OS X is based on FreeBSD (and I need a shell prompt and assorted other goodies), but I enjoy the user interface now that I've had time to adjust.
I think most of the problem is centered around "But the Dock is stupid because OS 9 did this instead." We have a natural tendency to resist change, and Finder and the Dock are huge changes to the Mac interface.
And yes, I did RTFA, and I do agree that there are some missteps (like all the Dock widgets looking the same) but a lot of the complaints here are "OS 9 is better! OS X sux!"
Wow, you're considering upgrading from your 2.4 P4. I just upgraded TO a 2.4 P4. *sigh*
Anyways, my question is, what do you do that requires THAT much horsepower? If you're web surfing, writing emails and writing letters in Word, then I'd recommend that you not upgrade to anything and that your P4 should be more than adequate. Details are important here. For instance, you want to work on porting XXXXXXX to run natively at 64 bits. Then of course its a good time to upgrade, and it probably makes sense for what you're doing. Or perhaps you want to frag some people when HL2 comes out. Then I'd say "probably not worth it" or ask "What kind of video card do you have?"
We can't give you a recommendation off the top of our head without any details.
Yeah, definitely try Video Lan Client. Why? Because they've developed their own codecs for playing videos and do not rely on codecs that are installed on the system (so there's no codec confusion, which sometimes occurs on Windows Media Player)
I should note that I did not say "has" I said "had." I am aware of the PATRIOT ACT and thus my use of the past tense.
" Security specialists in the Netherlands said the device could threaten criminal investigation by the Dutch police, which is one of the world's most active phone tappers, listening in to 12,000 phone numbers every year."
The article states "one of the world's most active phone tappers" not "the world's most active phone tappers". The US had fairly stringent policies against phone tapping citizens (ie the police and FBI, not the NSA). I'm sure the NSA is not giving out statistics on how many wiretaps it does a year, but the NSA is (supposedly) forbidden from investigating within the US.
Does anyone else find it weird that its collectively called "the Dutch police?" Are they referring to all local law officials or some national law enforcement agency? Just curious...
If you leave three car lengths between you and another car, you get a call and suddenly it's four car lengths. Multiply that times just about every car you see, and what do you get?
I don't know, what we get? Four car lengths is a good thing. And, if we're following you're argument, if everyone talked on their cell phone, everyone would drive four car lengths apart, which again is a good thing.
Traffic may be composed of "mostly the space between cars" but accidents happen because we don't leave enough space in front of us, or because of the cascade effect of someone braking (ie you're the nth car in a line of cars braking, and s fractions of seconds have been eaten up by the n-1 cars in front of you so that you just don't have enough time/distance to stop). If we leave more space between cars, then we have more reaction time, and more space to avoid the accident.
Or maybe you're talking about creating more congestion if everyone drove at four car lengths instead of three because each car is taking up five car lenghts instead of four. Ideally then, instead of 3, why not two? Or one? Why don't we all glue ourselves to the guy in front of us? Again, that safety issue comes back.
I'm in total agreement with you that talking on a cellphone is a distraction and a safety issue, but I'm not quite following you're reasoning.
I notice you said you didn't see a speed increase in the finder on your G4 PB and a Dual G5. Well, considering the hardware you're running, I'm not surprised (I'm jealous). My 800Mhz iBook (G3) is noticably "snappier" and a lot of the pausing and waiting has disappeared. I find it money well spent for the speed increases alone. IIRC, the Ars article specifically states that for older hardware upgrading is a good thing because you will see noticable increases in speed.
I like having separate tech pieces, ie my Clie, VX4400, iBook, and Minidisc player. Why? Well, $40 for the Clie, $100 for VX4400, and $100 for the MD player (and $1200 for the iBook, but that's not part of the equation), so that's $240. A "smartphone" costs $499. And if it breaks, *POOF*, I don't have a my PDA, my cell phone and my music. If I want to upgrade my phone, I have to buy another $500 piece of equipment and learn how to use THAT interface. Instead, if my MD player breaks or I want to buy a newer NetMD player, then that's $100. Or my cell phone breaks, I don't lose all my phone numbers and contacts. Convergence is nice, but losing everything because I dropped my "phone" sucks.
The minus is none of these pieces sync up (unless I'm anal retentive about keeping things together). I have to sync my Clie with my iBook, my phone doesn't sync with anything, and I have to make MDs to listen to mp3s (maybe I could get an mp3 player...). Bluetooth to the rescue???
I've always been under the impression that Esperanto is "easy" and a "middle ground" for European languages: French, English, German etc, but not other languages such as Farsi, Chinese, Japanese or the language of my parents, Korean, which all have very different structures from the Romantic or Germanic languages. So, lets be clear that its not really a "middle ground" language.