Are you nuts? Listen, I hate the RIAA, passionately, but you CAN NOT say, oh, yeah, we're stealing, but it's really, really small stealing.
I mean, is this the result of a post-literate society, that this post and the posts below it offer this as an argument to the RIAA? You can't legally justify theft by saying that what you STOLE was small so they shouldn't even care.
It doesn't matter what the RIAA claims in that case. If theft has occurred, then all you're arguing is damages, not the CRIME. THAT is the problem here.
If you're going to argue against the RIAA then you need to establish that what you're DOING, by downloading music, is fundamentally all right, not that even though it's theft, well, they're just big whiners because you're not really stealing a lot.
My God. No wonder the RIAA is successfully filing lawsuits.
Maybe never. Been hard at work on any Self projects lately? Been using any Self-written software?
Self is a concept language, as far as I can determine, and the prototype concept has made its way into Prothon.
This prototyping feature must be the chief differentiator between Prothon and "Amateurthon", a language based on Python, but designed mainly just for fun, not for serious usage...
Anytime a programming language "combines" the power of X with the simplicity/power/convenience of Y, what it really means is, "Here's a new set of compromises and we're calling it this, but the marketing guys are making us say that it's a new way of slicing bread."
Bottom line, someone wanted Python with prototypes. I'm not sure that prototyping -- creating objects from other existing objects by copying, essentially making inheritance a "first class" consideration -- is an analogy that's going to truly redefine the way I look at programming. Or let me put it this way, I'm not at all sure that the benefits of prototyping are going to make me want to restructure -- yet again -- everything I know about programming so far. I mean, after a certain point, programming is a job and I have to produce, not just theorize all the time about new approaches.
Also, judging from
Sun's tutorial on Self, it doesn't seem ready
for primetime, so I'd be a little edgy about "Prothon".
Prothon. God.
I dunno. This may seem curmudgeonly, but it is, after all, yet ANOTHER language... Sigh.
Giving this guy attention, in fact, lends credence to his claims.
I remember when I scored my first writing job. My uncle, who is a successful journalist, tried to give me some good advice.
He asked, "What's the first job of a reporter?"
"To tell the story as accurately as possible?"
"No," he said. "The first job of a reporter is to create controversy."
Controversy, he explained, sells the news, engages readers, sparks conversation, and leads to follow-ups. Oh, and it sells the news.
So if you throw this nincompoop on "Coast to Coast", with 10 million readers, and you give him a voice, even if you do take shots at him, does this really count as "debunking" given the massive exposure he received?
I think it only counts as idiocy. Come on. The guy points at pictures of geological features and calls them faces. In a Communist society he'd be locked up and his family would be shamed. In America he's used to boost advertising rates.
Not that that's a criticism, mind you. I think we're all guilty of nuttiness here and there, so thank God we can be used to boost advertising rates...
I'll give you "toe the line", which I knew I had wrong as soon as I clicked submit. Leave it to Slashdot to have at least one reader spot it and view it as an opportunity to geekvent previous injustices wrought against his/her sensitive nerdsoul...
However, on the prepositional deal, you're flat-out wrong, bud. There is no such rule. It is simply good advice since ending a sentence with a preposition can lead to ambiguities. Winston Churchill, criticized for ending a sentence in a preposition, once responded, "This is a form of pedantry up with which I will no longer put." It's a style issue, not a grammar issue, and I would argue that my excerpted sentence did not create an ambiguity or lead to any grammatical awkwardness.
So -- you know, relax. Work out your issue with English majors, starting with that guy that corrected your grammar, and let those scars heal. It's a beautiful world, man. Just be at peace. Be at peace.
This article is a little scattered. One person is quitting his job as a *molecular biologist with a Ph.D." to work as a plumber, while another person is switching to training greyhounds and yet another is just moving to Canada. The reasons for all of these changes may be way unrelated to each other.
But so what? Just because you *can* do something doesn't mean that you should. I've made in excess of $100,000/year as a software consultant for four years. Now I'm finishing my English degree and studying poetry. People do this sort of thing all the time and it usually comes when they're a little older and have a better idea of what matters to them in life and what gives them the energy to get up in the morning and face the day. The molecular biologist has some big bills, perhaps. Or maybe he's just a smart guy that put in a ton of work -- Ph.D.'s, after all, aren't earned in a few weekends of spare time study, at least not from a reputable school -- and then found that the reality of research is different from the intellectual stimulation of textbooks.
Do I like software? Yes, I do. I compete on TopCoder, read books about functional programming, and throw mud at SCO. But writing and literature is, simply speaking, closer to my heart. For another person it's training an ancient breed of dogs. And for yet another person it's going to Canada to commune with, well, Canadians I guess.
The fact is that, given basic education, intelligence and wherewithal, we live in a world where you don't *have* to settle for doin' what yer daddy done, or towing the line, or staying "safe" if you don't want to.
This molecular plumber guy is just searching for a reward, I guess. After a few years of the realities of a plumber, it's possible yet he may look fondly back at his days as a molecular biologist...
Has anyone here installed Gentoo on a dual-boot configuration? I've got a 3.2GHz system with a Radeon 9700 and I'm running XP Pro on it. I was thinking of installing FreeBSD on it which I run with two other systems, but ultimately this system is my primary desktop and I'd like to have a Linux dist installed so I could take advantage of, well, Linux desktop ease-of-use (never thought I'd say that!). Still, I like BSD's ports system, which is why I'm interested in Gentoo (the portage system is supposed to be similar).
I've never installed Gentoo, though, so I'd be curious about what Gentoo users would have to say about this and how it compares to, say, Mandrake or Suse... Any info would be appreciated...
Even if this could work, which I doubt, would we want it? Doesn't this sound like other famous technology substitutes:
* Cooking without fire: Microwave rice bowls.
* Light without heat: Flourescent bulbs.
* Sex without pleasure: Marriage.
* TV without intelligence: TV.
I'm sure flight without fuel would get there, but somehow leave you feeling dissatisfied...
I'm not a physics major, I'm a math major, so someone correct me, please, if I'm wrong, but isn't this just yet another take on perpetual motion? Doesn't this proposal violate a couple laws of thermodynamics? And wouldn't this whole deal take some *serious* advances in materials engineering?
I'd be curious to hear if anyone in any of the fields of physics, materials sciences, or aviation would like to offer why this is bordering on revolutionary brilliance, or why this is a totally unmitigated crock of sh--.
Can we please not capitalize "the Maintainer"? It's a bit too "Logan's Run" for me, or for anyone I think. Geekness has overstepped boundaries when Those Who Are In Control of Software are afforded the same nobility in print as the King, the President, and the Messiah. Let's remember that software engineering is a discipline, a job, and that we, as a group, can't produce bugless office software, much less achieve such status in society that we must be addressed by our titles, that those titles must be honored, that the masses must gaze upon us and tremble... which, by and large and not incidentally, they do---but only geeks would assume that it's in awe of our deep knowledge of C++ and Java...
I totally agree. Talk about someone taking Larry Wall a little TOO seriously. It just seems to me like some bored computer science major has found a way to geek out on bad ego problems: "Everything has to do with me in some way." He just found a reverse take on it.
If further news: "Loss of Endangered Species Threatens Algorithmic Research". By studying the manner in which the spotted bison-bird chooses a mate, we can venture into whole new realms of genetic algorithms! The loss of these amazing creatures is a threat to computer science!
There's another point here, too, and that is there's plenty of reason to mourn the loss of a human language, a disappearance of human culture, so let's understand the correct reasons to do so and not get caught up in some pseudo-problem.
Sorry to butt in on your reminiscence, but Mel sounds like an unrepentant asshole.
His code was difficult for others to maintain. He didn't used standard tools. His code was poorly documented. He didn't work well with management. He didn't work well with team members, obviously, since other programmers such as yourself had to spend weeks deciphering his arcane nonsense.
He didn't want to modify his program to client specifications (in this case the client was the company itself, trying to sell computers to pay Mel's fucking salary). He didn't want to do this because he felt it was dishonest, but then after agreeing to do it he failed to do it, claiming his "subconscious" was uncontrollably ethical, which further implies that somehow forcing a computer to lose at blackjack in order to give a customer a thrill is somehow a foul lie.
He didn't used established APIs. He used terminology others had to "figure out".
The guy sounds like the same walking egomaniacal dink that somehow finds a job in every software department in every software company. Some antisocial nitwit who can tell you exactly where every instruction of his compiled and linked code ends up in memory, but who absolutely will not just get the job done if it doesn't fit in with his otherwise arbitrary sense of whatever-is-filling-in-for-his-personal-philosophy.
Okay, so you admired the guy's prowess. Well, neato. But if I had to spend three weeks sifting through this nut's undocumented code so I could discover the nature of some arcane loop he'd written, I certainly would *not* got to management with some pseudo-romantic drivel such as, "Oh, I searched and I could not find it -- it was his brilliance you know -- there will never be another like him -- A REAL PROGRAMMER!"
Believe me, I've met dozens of Mels. I wish they were rarer.
I want to try to explain how BSD works in a way that Linux people can absorb.
It should be pointed out that if ever the Slashdot community believes that the editors of Slashdot are immune to pot-stirring tendencies, then this post should serve as proof that sometimes they get bored and message each other: "The servers are slooooowww today. What can we do to get a few hundred angry comments? Oh, I KNOW!!!"
I want to try to explain how BSD works in a way that Linux people can absorb.
Well, my suggestion would be to use a lot of pretty pictures interspersed with interludes on where Linus is, what Linus is doing, what Linus was wearing, what Linus said, what Linus' facial expression was as he said it, if Linus will be say something like that again, perhaps, in the future, and where Linus might be living or moving to, maybe, perhaps, possibly.
Then I'd lead all the Linux users out to a fertile field where they could graze for the day, protected by a couple of good dogs, herding them in, keeping them together, where I'd sit back and enjoy their gentle baying in the summer sun: Liiiiinnnnux, Liiiiiinux...
I'm interested to see how this turns out. If it's successful then it should bode well for my own lawsuit against humanity for my patent on bipedal, air-breathing mammals equipped with a bio-CPU and soundwave-based communications apparatus.
After this I'm going to sue Cirque du Soleil's "Zumanity" for naming their show based on my "Sue Humanity" platform.
When I'm done with all this, should be just a couple months, I'm planning on suing my parents for creating my brother, an unintentional, but still inappropriate and unlicensed, I assure you, copy of myself. In my own EULA I specifically stipulate that I was only to be used in one location at a time, and that no copies were to be made without my express permission.
That should set everything straight. God bless attorneys.
Cool! I got modded down AND insulted for speaking the truth.
Now I KNOW I'm on the right track. The Emperor really IS naked. What I didn't understand as completely as I do know is that you sourcies *like* him that way. Well, that's typical.
Maybe I'm going out on a limb here, maybe I'll be the lonely voice in the wilderness, but for general purposes outside of a learning tool, I can't stand GCC. Why? There are so many reasons, I just don't know where to start.
I hesitate a little to say this because everyone seems to speak so highly of it, at least everyone that I've ever heard. But I'm sorry, the Emperor has no clothes. Whenever I start a compile on GCC I can go downstairs, have dinner, watch an episode of the Simpsons and come upstairs to check on its progress, where the same compile on Borland (yes, I know, it's PROPRIETARY), or for that matter MSVC will have been done for quite some time. And with fewer complaints, moans and bitches from the compiler. And yes, I know full well that those moans and bitches are important, yadda, yadda, and maybe if I watched my warnings and cleaned my code, yadda, yadda, but call me crazy, call me wacky, I just like it when a compiler does its job and shuts up, unless it really has something important to say.
Watcom is great, open, cross-platform, and cool. Do yourself a favor and use it. Just do it -- no! NO! Zip! Zip it! Shut! Zip! Zippity zip!
The law recognizes certain individuals as "public figures" with a set of rights that are separate from normal individuals.
And before you go all, "that's not fair!", just remember that the differences in rights of public figures aren't *always* (although frequently they are, I will grant you) in their favor.
For instance, in most states if I photograph or videotape you I can't use your image for personal financial gain (like, say, showing you on my reality TV show) without your permission, in most cases. But in the case of public figures, such as celebrities, sports figures, politicians, I most certainly can, as long as I'm telling the truth and as long as I'm being fair. Their image is recognized as having a symbolic value to the public over and above the value it has to that individual. This is why paparazzi can do what they do.
However, because these individuals are public figures, they own a piece of property that has value to them as well: their name. You can't call something Celine Dion Ice Cream, not unless the Celine Dion whose name is most likely meant to be used as a selling point gives her permission. It doesn't matter that there's another Celine Dion out there. Unless your other Celine Dion has established that her name has equal value in advertising or commerce, well, then the famous Celine trumps her because it's the famous Celine's name that is logically being used to pump the value of the ice cream, or what have you.
It's a great place to meet lots of smart people...
Gosh, this isn't biased. Well, I'm sure it is, in fact, one place to meet smart people, but I wish whomever was organizing this thing wasn't basing it in D.C., which is also a great place to get shot, spend money on mediocre food, either freeze to death or fry in ridiculous humidity, and generally hang out with interns working for lawyers, students wanting to become lawyers, or lawyers.
Yeah, granted, the PyCon people will probably not be lawyers, but it is D.C. so you never know. And who decided D.C. was a likely meeting place for programmers? George Washington University? Yawn.
At least Perl people go on cruises. Nah. Sign me up for the PyCon when they hold it in Vegas, like normal technology conventioneers, and we do Twisted seminars by day and other twisted things by night.
Dude, first lax then relax. Remember, SCO is evil, but it is the evil of banality, not some eternal, overreaching darkness, m'kay? The way this post goes you'd think that if Linux fell then the next thing we'd all see is some shot of space with letters fading into the distance:
EPISODE IV: A NEW HOPE --- It is a time of rebellion. The Great Operating System, Linux, fell to the evil machinations of the Dark Lord of the Sys, Lord SCO...
Um... Well, you didn't give a LOT of info. I mean, in many ways, the situation that you described is the same situation for a lot of students regardless of their technical inclination. If you don't have intense financial need then you're going based on merit, at least for scholarships, and there are a great deal of merit-based scholarships for all kinds of students, but the merit must be legitimate. In other words, you'd best be sporting some serious grades and some serious potential.
When I was first applying, among other schools, I applied to UCI, UCLA, and UC Berkeley. They all gave varying degrees of financial aid and scholarship opportunities. In fact, the degrees of aid varied so much that it taught me some schools want you more than others. Are you dead set on going to the school you want to attend? If so, why? Will a degree from the school you've chosen make a truly night-and-day difference in career opportunities for you?
I mean, if you want to attend MIT or Harvard, then you may, in fact, initially have more opportunities as a result of graduating from those schools. But my own experience has taught me that the cream rises to the top, regardless of the school you attend. Yes, as an MIT grad you might be given extra consideration for certain jobs in the future. But your co-workers will very quickly find out who you are, no matter where you've gotten your degree. I've worked with some brilliant people that came from some very modest schools, that have done extremely well for themselves. I've worked with some smart people, too, that have come from some amazing schools, that have done just so-so. A school's name might get you consideration, but it never guarantees success.
My advice? Just get your freakin' degree, and don't be so picky about where you go. If another school offers you better opportunities, go there. Remember, both Roy Fielding, the architect of HTTP and founder of the Apache HTTP Server Project, and Paul Mockapetris, author of the first implementation of Simple Mail Transfer Protocol (SMTP) and creator of the Domain Name System (DNS), graduated from UCI (Go Anteaters!). It's how good you are that matters. The rest will come to you after you demonstrate that you can do stuff.
As far as specific scholarships go, well, hit up companies, bud. Sun, IBM, Microsoft, Oracle, Novell, all those dudes, they're the ones with the need, the bucks, and the motivation, and I'll bet they all have some kind of academic assistance programs, including internships and scholarship opportunities. But they'll be merit-based, you can count on that, and the competition will be stiff, so start competing on TopCoder, join the ACM, and start competing with them, too, because you're going to need some serious chops.
Slashdot Mirror
Are you nuts? Listen, I hate the RIAA, passionately, but you CAN NOT say, oh, yeah, we're stealing, but it's really, really small stealing.
I mean, is this the result of a post-literate society, that this post and the posts below it offer this as an argument to the RIAA? You can't legally justify theft by saying that what you STOLE was small so they shouldn't even care.
It doesn't matter what the RIAA claims in that case. If theft has occurred, then all you're arguing is damages, not the CRIME. THAT is the problem here.
If you're going to argue against the RIAA then you need to establish that what you're DOING, by downloading music, is fundamentally all right, not that even though it's theft, well, they're just big whiners because you're not really stealing a lot.
My God. No wonder the RIAA is successfully filing lawsuits.
Okaaaaayyyy,
...
If 1,000,000 files are downloaded per day -- just for example, and not at all unreasonable -- that's 200 CDs per day that the RIAA loses.
That's roughly 6,060 CDs per month, or over 72 thousand CDs per year.
Now go to them and tell them that this is not at all a concern and that they should just shut up.
This study is not heeelllllpiiinnnng
Yes, thank you for asking.
Oh. You're the guy.
Maybe never. Been hard at work on any Self projects lately? Been using any Self-written software?
...
Self is a concept language, as far as I can determine, and the prototype concept has made its way into Prothon.
This prototyping feature must be the chief differentiator between Prothon and "Amateurthon", a language based on Python, but designed mainly just for fun, not for serious usage
Bottom line, someone wanted Python with prototypes. I'm not sure that prototyping -- creating objects from other existing objects by copying, essentially making inheritance a "first class" consideration -- is an analogy that's going to truly redefine the way I look at programming. Or let me put it this way, I'm not at all sure that the benefits of prototyping are going to make me want to restructure -- yet again -- everything I know about programming so far. I mean, after a certain point, programming is a job and I have to produce, not just theorize all the time about new approaches.
Also, judging from Sun's tutorial on Self, it doesn't seem ready for primetime, so I'd be a little edgy about "Prothon".
Prothon. God.
I dunno. This may seem curmudgeonly, but it is, after all, yet ANOTHER language ... Sigh.
"Extreme Programming Refactored Refactored"?
3rd Edition: "Extreme Programming Refactored Refactored Extremely Refactored"?
Giving this guy attention, in fact, lends credence to his claims.
...
I remember when I scored my first writing job. My uncle, who is a successful journalist, tried to give me some good advice.
He asked, "What's the first job of a reporter?"
"To tell the story as accurately as possible?"
"No," he said. "The first job of a reporter is to create controversy."
Controversy, he explained, sells the news, engages readers, sparks conversation, and leads to follow-ups. Oh, and it sells the news.
So if you throw this nincompoop on "Coast to Coast", with 10 million readers, and you give him a voice, even if you do take shots at him, does this really count as "debunking" given the massive exposure he received?
I think it only counts as idiocy. Come on. The guy points at pictures of geological features and calls them faces. In a Communist society he'd be locked up and his family would be shamed. In America he's used to boost advertising rates.
Not that that's a criticism, mind you. I think we're all guilty of nuttiness here and there, so thank God we can be used to boost advertising rates
Hey Correctoboy,
...
I'll give you "toe the line", which I knew I had wrong as soon as I clicked submit. Leave it to Slashdot to have at least one reader spot it and view it as an opportunity to geekvent previous injustices wrought against his/her sensitive nerdsoul
However, on the prepositional deal, you're flat-out wrong, bud. There is no such rule. It is simply good advice since ending a sentence with a preposition can lead to ambiguities. Winston Churchill, criticized for ending a sentence in a preposition, once responded, "This is a form of pedantry up with which I will no longer put." It's a style issue, not a grammar issue, and I would argue that my excerpted sentence did not create an ambiguity or lead to any grammatical awkwardness.
So -- you know, relax. Work out your issue with English majors, starting with that guy that corrected your grammar, and let those scars heal. It's a beautiful world, man. Just be at peace. Be at peace.
This article is a little scattered. One person is quitting his job as a *molecular biologist with a Ph.D." to work as a plumber, while another person is switching to training greyhounds and yet another is just moving to Canada. The reasons for all of these changes may be way unrelated to each other.
...
But so what? Just because you *can* do something doesn't mean that you should. I've made in excess of $100,000/year as a software consultant for four years. Now I'm finishing my English degree and studying poetry. People do this sort of thing all the time and it usually comes when they're a little older and have a better idea of what matters to them in life and what gives them the energy to get up in the morning and face the day. The molecular biologist has some big bills, perhaps. Or maybe he's just a smart guy that put in a ton of work -- Ph.D.'s, after all, aren't earned in a few weekends of spare time study, at least not from a reputable school -- and then found that the reality of research is different from the intellectual stimulation of textbooks.
Do I like software? Yes, I do. I compete on TopCoder, read books about functional programming, and throw mud at SCO. But writing and literature is, simply speaking, closer to my heart. For another person it's training an ancient breed of dogs. And for yet another person it's going to Canada to commune with, well, Canadians I guess.
The fact is that, given basic education, intelligence and wherewithal, we live in a world where you don't *have* to settle for doin' what yer daddy done, or towing the line, or staying "safe" if you don't want to.
This molecular plumber guy is just searching for a reward, I guess. After a few years of the realities of a plumber, it's possible yet he may look fondly back at his days as a molecular biologist
Has anyone here installed Gentoo on a dual-boot configuration? I've got a 3.2GHz system with a Radeon 9700 and I'm running XP Pro on it. I was thinking of installing FreeBSD on it which I run with two other systems, but ultimately this system is my primary desktop and I'd like to have a Linux dist installed so I could take advantage of, well, Linux desktop ease-of-use (never thought I'd say that!). Still, I like BSD's ports system, which is why I'm interested in Gentoo (the portage system is supposed to be similar).
... Any info would be appreciated ...
I've never installed Gentoo, though, so I'd be curious about what Gentoo users would have to say about this and how it compares to, say, Mandrake or Suse
Even if this could work, which I doubt, would we want it? Doesn't this sound like other famous technology substitutes: * Cooking without fire: Microwave rice bowls. * Light without heat: Flourescent bulbs. * Sex without pleasure: Marriage. * TV without intelligence: TV. I'm sure flight without fuel would get there, but somehow leave you feeling dissatisfied ...
I'm not a physics major, I'm a math major, so someone correct me, please, if I'm wrong, but isn't this just yet another take on perpetual motion? Doesn't this proposal violate a couple laws of thermodynamics? And wouldn't this whole deal take some *serious* advances in materials engineering?
I'd be curious to hear if anyone in any of the fields of physics, materials sciences, or aviation would like to offer why this is bordering on revolutionary brilliance, or why this is a totally unmitigated crock of sh--.
Peace.
Can we please not capitalize "the Maintainer"? It's a bit too "Logan's Run" for me, or for anyone I think. Geekness has overstepped boundaries when Those Who Are In Control of Software are afforded the same nobility in print as the King, the President, and the Messiah. Let's remember that software engineering is a discipline, a job, and that we, as a group, can't produce bugless office software, much less achieve such status in society that we must be addressed by our titles, that those titles must be honored, that the masses must gaze upon us and tremble ... which, by and large and not incidentally, they do---but only geeks would assume that it's in awe of our deep knowledge of C++ and Java ...
I totally agree. Talk about someone taking Larry Wall a little TOO seriously. It just seems to me like some bored computer science major has found a way to geek out on bad ego problems: "Everything has to do with me in some way." He just found a reverse take on it.
If further news: "Loss of Endangered Species Threatens Algorithmic Research". By studying the manner in which the spotted bison-bird chooses a mate, we can venture into whole new realms of genetic algorithms! The loss of these amazing creatures is a threat to computer science!
There's another point here, too, and that is there's plenty of reason to mourn the loss of a human language, a disappearance of human culture, so let's understand the correct reasons to do so and not get caught up in some pseudo-problem.
Another Slashdot winning headline.
Yeah, okay ...
y .
Sorry to butt in on your reminiscence, but Mel sounds like an unrepentant asshole.
His code was difficult for others to maintain. He didn't used standard tools. His code was poorly documented. He didn't work well with management. He didn't work well with team members, obviously, since other programmers such as yourself had to spend weeks deciphering his arcane nonsense.
He didn't want to modify his program to client specifications (in this case the client was the company itself, trying to sell computers to pay Mel's fucking salary). He didn't want to do this because he felt it was dishonest, but then after agreeing to do it he failed to do it, claiming his "subconscious" was uncontrollably ethical, which further implies that somehow forcing a computer to lose at blackjack in order to give a customer a thrill is somehow a foul lie.
He didn't used established APIs. He used terminology others had to "figure out".
The guy sounds like the same walking egomaniacal dink that somehow finds a job in every software department in every software company. Some antisocial nitwit who can tell you exactly where every instruction of his compiled and linked code ends up in memory, but who absolutely will not just get the job done if it doesn't fit in with his otherwise arbitrary sense of whatever-is-filling-in-for-his-personal-philosoph
Okay, so you admired the guy's prowess. Well, neato. But if I had to spend three weeks sifting through this nut's undocumented code so I could discover the nature of some arcane loop he'd written, I certainly would *not* got to management with some pseudo-romantic drivel such as, "Oh, I searched and I could not find it -- it was his brilliance you know -- there will never be another like him -- A REAL PROGRAMMER!"
Believe me, I've met dozens of Mels. I wish they were rarer.
It should be pointed out that if ever the Slashdot community believes that the editors of Slashdot are immune to pot-stirring tendencies, then this post should serve as proof that sometimes they get bored and message each other: "The servers are slooooowww today. What can we do to get a few hundred angry comments? Oh, I KNOW!!!"
Well, my suggestion would be to use a lot of pretty pictures interspersed with interludes on where Linus is, what Linus is doing, what Linus was wearing, what Linus said, what Linus' facial expression was as he said it, if Linus will be say something like that again, perhaps, in the future, and where Linus might be living or moving to, maybe, perhaps, possibly.
Then I'd lead all the Linux users out to a fertile field where they could graze for the day, protected by a couple of good dogs, herding them in, keeping them together, where I'd sit back and enjoy their gentle baying in the summer sun: Liiiiinnnnux, Liiiiiinux ...
I'm interested to see how this turns out. If it's successful then it should bode well for my own lawsuit against humanity for my patent on bipedal, air-breathing mammals equipped with a bio-CPU and soundwave-based communications apparatus.
After this I'm going to sue Cirque du Soleil's "Zumanity" for naming their show based on my "Sue Humanity" platform.
When I'm done with all this, should be just a couple months, I'm planning on suing my parents for creating my brother, an unintentional, but still inappropriate and unlicensed, I assure you, copy of myself. In my own EULA I specifically stipulate that I was only to be used in one location at a time, and that no copies were to be made without my express permission.
That should set everything straight. God bless attorneys.
Cool! I got modded down AND insulted for speaking the truth.
Now I KNOW I'm on the right track. The Emperor really IS naked. What I didn't understand as completely as I do know is that you sourcies *like* him that way. Well, that's typical.
... if you're a code masochist.
Maybe I'm going out on a limb here, maybe I'll be the lonely voice in the wilderness, but for general purposes outside of a learning tool, I can't stand GCC. Why? There are so many reasons, I just don't know where to start.
I hesitate a little to say this because everyone seems to speak so highly of it, at least everyone that I've ever heard. But I'm sorry, the Emperor has no clothes. Whenever I start a compile on GCC I can go downstairs, have dinner, watch an episode of the Simpsons and come upstairs to check on its progress, where the same compile on Borland (yes, I know, it's PROPRIETARY), or for that matter MSVC will have been done for quite some time. And with fewer complaints, moans and bitches from the compiler. And yes, I know full well that those moans and bitches are important, yadda, yadda, and maybe if I watched my warnings and cleaned my code, yadda, yadda, but call me crazy, call me wacky, I just like it when a compiler does its job and shuts up, unless it really has something important to say.
Watcom is great, open, cross-platform, and cool. Do yourself a favor and use it. Just do it -- no! NO! Zip! Zip it! Shut! Zip! Zippity zip!
The law recognizes certain individuals as "public figures" with a set of rights that are separate from normal individuals.
And before you go all, "that's not fair!", just remember that the differences in rights of public figures aren't *always* (although frequently they are, I will grant you) in their favor.
For instance, in most states if I photograph or videotape you I can't use your image for personal financial gain (like, say, showing you on my reality TV show) without your permission, in most cases. But in the case of public figures, such as celebrities, sports figures, politicians, I most certainly can, as long as I'm telling the truth and as long as I'm being fair. Their image is recognized as having a symbolic value to the public over and above the value it has to that individual. This is why paparazzi can do what they do.
However, because these individuals are public figures, they own a piece of property that has value to them as well: their name. You can't call something Celine Dion Ice Cream, not unless the Celine Dion whose name is most likely meant to be used as a selling point gives her permission. It doesn't matter that there's another Celine Dion out there. Unless your other Celine Dion has established that her name has equal value in advertising or commerce, well, then the famous Celine trumps her because it's the famous Celine's name that is logically being used to pump the value of the ice cream, or what have you.
Linux is D E A D.
Gosh, this isn't biased. Well, I'm sure it is, in fact, one place to meet smart people, but I wish whomever was organizing this thing wasn't basing it in D.C., which is also a great place to get shot, spend money on mediocre food, either freeze to death or fry in ridiculous humidity, and generally hang out with interns working for lawyers, students wanting to become lawyers, or lawyers.
Yeah, granted, the PyCon people will probably not be lawyers, but it is D.C. so you never know. And who decided D.C. was a likely meeting place for programmers? George Washington University? Yawn.
At least Perl people go on cruises. Nah. Sign me up for the PyCon when they hold it in Vegas, like normal technology conventioneers, and we do Twisted seminars by day and other twisted things by night.
Dude, first lax then relax. Remember, SCO is evil, but it is the evil of banality, not some eternal, overreaching darkness, m'kay? The way this post goes you'd think that if Linux fell then the next thing we'd all see is some shot of space with letters fading into the distance:
EPISODE IV: A NEW HOPE --- It is a time of rebellion. The Great Operating System, Linux, fell to the evil machinations of the Dark Lord of the Sys, Lord SCO ...
When I was first applying, among other schools, I applied to UCI, UCLA, and UC Berkeley. They all gave varying degrees of financial aid and scholarship opportunities. In fact, the degrees of aid varied so much that it taught me some schools want you more than others. Are you dead set on going to the school you want to attend? If so, why? Will a degree from the school you've chosen make a truly night-and-day difference in career opportunities for you?
I mean, if you want to attend MIT or Harvard, then you may, in fact, initially have more opportunities as a result of graduating from those schools. But my own experience has taught me that the cream rises to the top, regardless of the school you attend. Yes, as an MIT grad you might be given extra consideration for certain jobs in the future. But your co-workers will very quickly find out who you are, no matter where you've gotten your degree. I've worked with some brilliant people that came from some very modest schools, that have done extremely well for themselves. I've worked with some smart people, too, that have come from some amazing schools, that have done just so-so. A school's name might get you consideration, but it never guarantees success.
My advice? Just get your freakin' degree, and don't be so picky about where you go. If another school offers you better opportunities, go there. Remember, both Roy Fielding, the architect of HTTP and founder of the Apache HTTP Server Project, and Paul Mockapetris, author of the first implementation of Simple Mail Transfer Protocol (SMTP) and creator of the Domain Name System (DNS), graduated from UCI (Go Anteaters!). It's how good you are that matters. The rest will come to you after you demonstrate that you can do stuff.
As far as specific scholarships go, well, hit up companies, bud. Sun, IBM, Microsoft, Oracle, Novell, all those dudes, they're the ones with the need, the bucks, and the motivation, and I'll bet they all have some kind of academic assistance programs, including internships and scholarship opportunities. But they'll be merit-based, you can count on that, and the competition will be stiff, so start competing on TopCoder, join the ACM, and start competing with them, too, because you're going to need some serious chops.
Good Luck!