What's ironic is that Job's method could be improved on using wireless, by simply allowing people to stream their current song to other nearby Zunes. It would be basically be like plugging a set of speakers and turning up the volume, only more polite. Seriously, there are so many cool things that could have been done with a music player with wireless; as far as I can tell, the Zune does none of them. You can't buy music online from the device. You can share files, sort of. You can't "broadcast" anything. One wonders why it even has wireless...
No, dynamic linking counts, too. Both static and dynamic linking are considered creating a "derivative work". (The only exception is that the GPL allows linking if the library is something that is standard; e.g., distributed with an OS. So GPL'd Windows apps don't need to worry about linking to all the non-GPL DLLs that ship with Windows.)
Agreed. I've always thought that Bluetooth headsets were a kind of Emperor's-new-clothes type thing: Everybody says they look cool, but deep down inside, we all know they just look stupid.
Strangely enough, I did just upgrade from a B&W monitor, yesterday. I kept a tiny little 9 inch amber POS monitor plugged into my bedroom PC for fun, but it was getting hard on the eyes. If I hadn't upgraded, I never would have gotten the joke.
Most intelligent Christians (i.e., not young-Earther super-fundies) draw a distinction between microevolution and macroevolution. The former is small-scale changes, the kind of evolution which can be readily observed. Whereas macroevolution is large changes; e.g., reptile to bird. It's the latter that many Christians disbelieve, party because you can't just "see" major species transitions happening; it takes too long.
This is also how I learned my stuff. The problem is, whenever the $150/hour contractor techs come down to work on stuff, they're constantly showing me things I should have been doing for years. There are lots of things you can figure out along the way, but there's also a lot of stuff that you would never notice; either because ignoring it won't cause problems right away, or the problems don't seem related.
Of course, the end result was that the contractors talked my boss into having them come in once a week, to do all the "proactive" stuff that I wasn't doing. They don't really do much (defrag, save event logs, check backups, monitor drive space, etc.) but I didn't so now they get paid to.
If I remember correctly, it reads Sony's proprietary "BBeB" format natively as well as (maybe) PDF (the specs are a bit vague). HTML and other formats can be converted to BBeB via software provided with the device. Methinks this doth not bode well.
Speaking of Gutenberg, I personally hope that we'll eventually see devices like this with iPod-sized hard drives. Gutenberg's complete collection is about 17G; so add a 40 or 80G HD for good measure. But I imagine that wouldn't help battery life.
...then it's a sign that you're not teaching an obscure enough programming language. Using C++ is like asking the students to cheat. You want to require all answers in Unicon, or Lambda Prolog, or (worst of all) POPLOG-11.
If you're interested in reading about possible future extensions to C++, check out the official home of the C++ Standards Committee. The papers page links to all the "mailings" containing every paper submitted to the committee, as well as draft standards and such. There's a lot of interesting ideas floating around: true "metacode" macros (like Lisp), flexible initialization (so that the {...} initializer could be "overloaded" on your own classes), automatic type deduction, etc.
Re:and it's completely useless on OS X because...
on
Blender 2.40 Released
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· Score: 1
It's not so great on Windows, either. The fact that Blender uses OpenGL for it's GUI basically means that unless your video card is relatively new, and your drivers implement the spec perfectly, you will have problems, either with performance or graphical bugs. Of the five Win boxes in my house, Blender runs usably on none of them; it's either too slow, or the interface is corrupted.
Other 3D apps use the host windowing system's widgets (or at least, it's 2D drawing functions) for their interface, thus allowing them to work with reliably and with good performance, even on lesser cards. And many provide software rendering as a fallback when (good) 3D acceleration is not available. All of Blender is essentially at the mercy of your OpenGL drivers.
I think the point was that our efforts to "help" gifted kids might have the opposite effect on them. We, not being gifted ourselves, don't really know how to help the truly gifted; in trying to help we might end up hindering or even destroying their abilities. Who was it who said that if Wordsworth or Newton had been born in modern times the school system would have "cured" them within a month?
The problem is not limited to the US, nor is it a product the "religious right". The anti-intellectual attitude prevalent today is just a product of the vague "postmodern" philosophy unconciously accepted by virtually all of western society. Postmodern philosophy, in this sense, rejects the absolute view of truth required by science as too "rigid". Science is the embodiment of the Law of Noncontradiction, "A cannot be A and non-A". But this is too restraining, too offensive for modern thought.
This is, incedentally, also why intelligent design is even close to being taught in schools; not because Christians are becoming so powerful or influential, but because the great mass of people don't really care whether ID or evolution is actually true, so long as no one gets offended. When faced with the question of what to teach in schools, the prevailing consideration is not "Which is true?" but rather "Which won't hurt anyone's feelings?". The fact that ID and evolution are logically contradictory doesn't matter; some people are offended by ID, and others by evolution, so we'll just teach both and everyone will be happy.
...because it doesn't try to look/act like Windows Explorer. I liked the clean separation; archives should be used as archives, not as a stand-ing for compressed directories. You can't really run programs from within a zip file, not if they need to access any of the other files in there. Making archives act like folders seems like a good idea until you realize that there's a bunch of things that won't work unless they are integrated at the filesystem level.
Originally, of course, the idea was that certs would help non-IT folks weed out the losers when hiring. If you run a small office, how would you hire your first IT person? By definition, you don't already have someone competent (who could judge the qualifications of an applicant), thus, you would have no way of determining who was good and who was bad. If only the good IT people had some kind of certification, given by an independent body, to prove their skillfulness.
Unfortunately, there are two problems with this idea:
Since the people hiring don't know IT, they need certs to tell them who is good before they hire. But since they don't know IT they will also have a hard time judging who is good after they hire. It is relatively easy for someone who knows nothing to survive in IT for long periods.
The people giving the certifications make money by doing so. This include the direct funds made by people paying to take the certification tests, as well as by the indirect advertising companies like Microsoft and Cisco receive.
Taken together, these two factors almost ensure that certs will be worthless. Their correspondence to their recipients' actual skills cannot be verified, and there is money to be made by having lots of people get them. Thus, certs are easy to get, even for people who shouldn't have them.
That's why I can't stand it when I see universities teaching Java and C#.
OT, but there's kind of a Catch-22 in choosing a language for programming courses (particularly introductory courses).
You can teach Java, C++, or C#, knowing that your students (if they finish!) will have learned a language that can be used in the "real world", along with (hopefully) learning the underlying programming languages concepts OR
You can teach an "academic" language like Scheme, Haskell, ML, etc. This makes it much easier to focus on actually teaching programming (as opposed to programming in X), but of course your students won't directly get job skills.
The problem with using a "real" language is that these are generally designed for good programmers, as opposed to beginners who want to become good. E.g., Java somewhat forces you to think in OO, which makes writing simple programs to illustrate (say) basic control structures difficult. Students are forced to learn not just basic programming, but all sorts of other syntactic and semantic complexities that come with a real language ("Why do I need all this #include and main() stuff just to print something?").
It's interesting to note that many of the heavyweight schools use academic languages. MIT uses Scheme, and for a while UC Berkeley was using Common Lisp. By using a language which is conceptually close to the underlying ideas students hopefully learn faster, and are better prepared to then learn other languages. Of course, this principle applies to fields other than programming.
Seriously, if you can get to a small-town theatre, try it. It might take some driving but it's worth it, at least in terms of annoyances. Sure the sound may not be as good, but I'd trade that for the lack of jerks any day.
It also helps if you can get a matinee (but not during the summer). When I saw "Revenge of the Sith" I went with my cousin and my brother on a Wednesday afternoon. We were the only people there. Best movie watching experience ever.
Nope, that story is an urban legend. Although there is reasonable evidence that Hubbard did say something like, "The way to get rich is to start your own religion," or something similar, Heinlein had nothing to do with it. Not his style.
As an aside, my doctor worked for Heinlein many years ago. When he quit, Heinlein gave him autographed copies of all his books, as well as the typewriter that he used to write Stranger.
With most binary modules this part is done by the user, not by the distributor, and this is clearly your right - you just cannot distribute the binary.
That's an interesting point, although it ignores the fact that in order to create a kernel module you have to #include some header files which are GPL (and which have inlines, etc., resulting in GPL code being spliced into your module). Suppose, for a moment, that these header files were distributed under a less restrictive license, say, BSD. Since the creation of a "derived work" is done at run time, by dynamically linking, it is not possible for the resulting "binary" to be distributed; it exists only in memory. If I understand correctly, the GPL only requires you to distribute sources if you are distributing binaries. In this case, no binaries are being distributed (indeed, that's impossible!), so the sources for the dynamically loaded kernel modules would not need to be GPL.
Traditionally, GPL apps that wanted to allow dynamic linking with non-GPL code could not be written. E.g., the GIMP does not dynamically link with its plugins; they are completely separate processes that communicate via pipes. However, if kju is correct, then there would actually be no problems with dynamically linking non-GPL plugins, as long as the API headers used were not GPLed. It doesn't matter that dynamic linking results in the creation of a "derived (binary) work", since no one is distributing binaries.
Around here we use Altiris's Deployment Solution. Although this isn't really intended for one-off machine upgrades, its great for managing a bunch of physically identical boxes. You can image a single machine (set up with the OS and applications that you want everyone to have), create a bunch of profiles for new machines, and then all you have to do to set up a new machine is network boot it and select the profile you want.
You can also build packages, essentially by doing an OS-wide diff to build a "patch". You can use these to deploy individual applications, configuration setttings, or whatever. So, for example, around here I have an image containing Windows XP and Office, and then I have packages for the optional stuff. Packages are usually deployed remotely, from the server, but they're just normal EXEs, so you can run them manually.
Although I haven't tried it yet, you could migrate a user's settings by making a package from the differences between his/her current machine, and the original image.
You can also do fun things like schedule deployments (complete with Wake on LAN) remote-control computers, or just spy on people.
I mean, I like root beer. Therefore, I think that all fast food chains should make it the default, and not provide user choice... after all, I like it.
No, this would just mean that if you ask for a beverage (or entree) that they don't have, they give you root beer, and you can't return it.
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What's ironic is that Job's method could be improved on using wireless, by simply allowing people to stream their current song to other nearby Zunes. It would be basically be like plugging a set of speakers and turning up the volume, only more polite. Seriously, there are so many cool things that could have been done with a music player with wireless; as far as I can tell, the Zune does none of them. You can't buy music online from the device. You can share files, sort of. You can't "broadcast" anything. One wonders why it even has wireless...
While dynamic linking to DLL's doesn't.
No, dynamic linking counts, too. Both static and dynamic linking are considered creating a "derivative work". (The only exception is that the GPL allows linking if the library is something that is standard; e.g., distributed with an OS. So GPL'd Windows apps don't need to worry about linking to all the non-GPL DLLs that ship with Windows.)
What I would think would be really cool is a Lua plugin for Apache.
Google for "mod_lua".
Agreed. I've always thought that Bluetooth headsets were a kind of Emperor's-new-clothes type thing: Everybody says they look cool, but deep down inside, we all know they just look stupid.
Strangely enough, I did just upgrade from a B&W monitor, yesterday. I kept a tiny little 9 inch amber POS monitor plugged into my bedroom PC for fun, but it was getting hard on the eyes. If I hadn't upgraded, I never would have gotten the joke.
Indeed. If he used a backhoe you'd expect him to take out somebody's fiber.
Most intelligent Christians (i.e., not young-Earther super-fundies) draw a distinction between microevolution and macroevolution. The former is small-scale changes, the kind of evolution which can be readily observed. Whereas macroevolution is large changes; e.g., reptile to bird. It's the latter that many Christians disbelieve, party because you can't just "see" major species transitions happening; it takes too long.
Same here. A few show up, but most are blank. Suggestions, anyone?
This is also how I learned my stuff. The problem is, whenever the $150/hour contractor techs come down to work on stuff, they're constantly showing me things I should have been doing for years. There are lots of things you can figure out along the way, but there's also a lot of stuff that you would never notice; either because ignoring it won't cause problems right away, or the problems don't seem related.
Of course, the end result was that the contractors talked my boss into having them come in once a week, to do all the "proactive" stuff that I wasn't doing. They don't really do much (defrag, save event logs, check backups, monitor drive space, etc.) but I didn't so now they get paid to.
If I remember correctly, it reads Sony's proprietary "BBeB" format natively as well as (maybe) PDF (the specs are a bit vague). HTML and other formats can be converted to BBeB via software provided with the device. Methinks this doth not bode well.
Speaking of Gutenberg, I personally hope that we'll eventually see devices like this with iPod-sized hard drives. Gutenberg's complete collection is about 17G; so add a 40 or 80G HD for good measure. But I imagine that wouldn't help battery life.
...then it's a sign that you're not teaching an obscure enough programming language. Using C++ is like asking the students to cheat. You want to require all answers in Unicon, or Lambda Prolog, or (worst of all) POPLOG-11.
If you're interested in reading about possible future extensions to C++, check out the official home of the C++ Standards Committee. The papers page links to all the "mailings" containing every paper submitted to the committee, as well as draft standards and such. There's a lot of interesting ideas floating around: true "metacode" macros (like Lisp), flexible initialization (so that the {...} initializer could be "overloaded" on your own classes), automatic type deduction, etc.
Other 3D apps use the host windowing system's widgets (or at least, it's 2D drawing functions) for their interface, thus allowing them to work with reliably and with good performance, even on lesser cards. And many provide software rendering as a fallback when (good) 3D acceleration is not available. All of Blender is essentially at the mercy of your OpenGL drivers.
So you're saying you had no choice but to post that, regardless of whether it's actually true?
I think the point was that our efforts to "help" gifted kids might have the opposite effect on them. We, not being gifted ourselves, don't really know how to help the truly gifted; in trying to help we might end up hindering or even destroying their abilities. Who was it who said that if Wordsworth or Newton had been born in modern times the school system would have "cured" them within a month?
The problem is not limited to the US, nor is it a product the "religious right". The anti-intellectual attitude prevalent today is just a product of the vague "postmodern" philosophy unconciously accepted by virtually all of western society. Postmodern philosophy, in this sense, rejects the absolute view of truth required by science as too "rigid". Science is the embodiment of the Law of Noncontradiction, "A cannot be A and non-A". But this is too restraining, too offensive for modern thought.
This is, incedentally, also why intelligent design is even close to being taught in schools; not because Christians are becoming so powerful or influential, but because the great mass of people don't really care whether ID or evolution is actually true, so long as no one gets offended. When faced with the question of what to teach in schools, the prevailing consideration is not "Which is true?" but rather "Which won't hurt anyone's feelings?". The fact that ID and evolution are logically contradictory doesn't matter; some people are offended by ID, and others by evolution, so we'll just teach both and everyone will be happy.
...because it doesn't try to look/act like Windows Explorer. I liked the clean separation; archives should be used as archives, not as a stand-ing for compressed directories. You can't really run programs from within a zip file, not if they need to access any of the other files in there. Making archives act like folders seems like a good idea until you realize that there's a bunch of things that won't work unless they are integrated at the filesystem level.
Originally, of course, the idea was that certs would help non-IT folks weed out the losers when hiring. If you run a small office, how would you hire your first IT person? By definition, you don't already have someone competent (who could judge the qualifications of an applicant), thus, you would have no way of determining who was good and who was bad. If only the good IT people had some kind of certification, given by an independent body, to prove their skillfulness.
Unfortunately, there are two problems with this idea:
- Since the people hiring don't know IT, they need certs to tell them who is good before they hire. But since they don't know IT they will also have a hard time judging who is good after they hire. It is relatively easy for someone who knows nothing to survive in IT for long periods.
- The people giving the certifications make money by doing so. This include the direct funds made by people paying to take the certification tests, as well as by the indirect advertising companies like Microsoft and Cisco receive.
Taken together, these two factors almost ensure that certs will be worthless. Their correspondence to their recipients' actual skills cannot be verified, and there is money to be made by having lots of people get them. Thus, certs are easy to get, even for people who shouldn't have them.OT, but there's kind of a Catch-22 in choosing a language for programming courses (particularly introductory courses).
The problem with using a "real" language is that these are generally designed for good programmers, as opposed to beginners who want to become good. E.g., Java somewhat forces you to think in OO, which makes writing simple programs to illustrate (say) basic control structures difficult. Students are forced to learn not just basic programming, but all sorts of other syntactic and semantic complexities that come with a real language ("Why do I need all this #include and main() stuff just to print something?").
It's interesting to note that many of the heavyweight schools use academic languages. MIT uses Scheme, and for a while UC Berkeley was using Common Lisp. By using a language which is conceptually close to the underlying ideas students hopefully learn faster, and are better prepared to then learn other languages. Of course, this principle applies to fields other than programming.
Seriously, if you can get to a small-town theatre, try it. It might take some driving but it's worth it, at least in terms of annoyances. Sure the sound may not be as good, but I'd trade that for the lack of jerks any day.
It also helps if you can get a matinee (but not during the summer). When I saw "Revenge of the Sith" I went with my cousin and my brother on a Wednesday afternoon. We were the only people there. Best movie watching experience ever.
So use 'first' instead of 'car' and 'rest' instead of 'cdr'. Of course, this messes with the jokes.
As an aside, my doctor worked for Heinlein many years ago. When he quit, Heinlein gave him autographed copies of all his books, as well as the typewriter that he used to write Stranger.
That's an interesting point, although it ignores the fact that in order to create a kernel module you have to #include some header files which are GPL (and which have inlines, etc., resulting in GPL code being spliced into your module). Suppose, for a moment, that these header files were distributed under a less restrictive license, say, BSD. Since the creation of a "derived work" is done at run time, by dynamically linking, it is not possible for the resulting "binary" to be distributed; it exists only in memory. If I understand correctly, the GPL only requires you to distribute sources if you are distributing binaries. In this case, no binaries are being distributed (indeed, that's impossible!), so the sources for the dynamically loaded kernel modules would not need to be GPL.
Traditionally, GPL apps that wanted to allow dynamic linking with non-GPL code could not be written. E.g., the GIMP does not dynamically link with its plugins; they are completely separate processes that communicate via pipes. However, if kju is correct, then there would actually be no problems with dynamically linking non-GPL plugins, as long as the API headers used were not GPLed. It doesn't matter that dynamic linking results in the creation of a "derived (binary) work", since no one is distributing binaries.
You can also build packages, essentially by doing an OS-wide diff to build a "patch". You can use these to deploy individual applications, configuration setttings, or whatever. So, for example, around here I have an image containing Windows XP and Office, and then I have packages for the optional stuff. Packages are usually deployed remotely, from the server, but they're just normal EXEs, so you can run them manually.
Although I haven't tried it yet, you could migrate a user's settings by making a package from the differences between his/her current machine, and the original image.
You can also do fun things like schedule deployments (complete with Wake on LAN) remote-control computers, or just spy on people.
I mean, I like root beer. Therefore, I think that all fast food chains should make it the default, and not provide user choice... after all, I like it.
No, this would just mean that if you ask for a beverage (or entree) that they don't have, they give you root beer, and you can't return it.