I can hear my dad now: "We didn't have these fancy-schmancy high-level programming languages... sure, there was FORTRAN, but that was just for the wimps who couldn't handle real programming. When I was your age I wrote assembly programs on punched cards, and it took three days just to feed "Hello, World" into the card reader. I had to push an IBM 360 uphill to and from work everyday in a snowstorm. Kids these days with their VisualBASIC and their HTML, they don't know what real programming was."
I'm glad to see this. Today's web-server script kiddies won't have anything to be curmudgeonly about unless they learn to go under the hood.
"Dear Sir. I wish to object in the strongest possible terms to the article you have just published, the one about the Linux user who writes viruses. Many of my closest friends are Linux users, and only a few of them are virus writers.
Sincerely,
Brigadeer Sir Charles Arthur Strong (Mrs.)
P.S. I have never kissed the editor of Radio Times."
So your saying that to find out about Judaism you hang out at Natzi sites. To find out about Christianity you depend on the Moslems. You go to the SCO website to find out about Linux.
A truly thorough investigation of any ideology includes listening to its opponents, yes.
No wonder your ideas are so squeued. Maybe you should go to the source and ask a Mormon instead of depending on hearsay.
I am unfamiliar with the term "squeued," but I take it you mean I have incorrect ideas about Mormonism. I find it interesting that you have reached such a conclusion, as I have so far not said anything about Mormonism itself, only about the foolishness of expecting the official website or documents of any organization to give a complete and unbiased account.
You want to get the truth on SCO you go to the source, which is the court system. Unfortunately, where religion is involved there are no objective third parties. Posting a link to a misleading ant-mormon site is not going to win any arguments.
If you think the court system is an "objective third party," you have more faith in it than I do. The court system is designed so that people with differing opinions on an issue can present their arguments, and a jury of opinionated citizens and an opinionated judge decide on it. The idea is not that this exercise infallibly arrives at "objective truth," but that some sort of consensus can be arrived at from among the various subjective interpretations.
I see no reason why discussions of religion should be any different. If you only hear the official story told by members and leaders of the religion itself, you won't hear anything they don't want you to hear. Unless you listen to people critical of the religion (including many former members), you'll never be able to make an informed decision.
[IBM] was shpping mainframes to Germany to track Jews during WWII
And they managed to do this even before the most primitive vacuum-tube computers were built! The wonders of temporal distortions. I hear Hewlett-Packard supplied the mainframes to track runaway slaves in the 1850s.
Not much, but it doesn't really matter. Dell is sending a message to Redmond, wait a couple weeks until they get a new deal with M$...
Yes, and what a message it is: "If you don't do what we want, we'll make a crappy computer with a virtually useless OS that nobody will buy! Take that, Bill!"
I'm surprised they didn't mention this. For those who don't know (they weren't exceedingly popular), this was Subaru's answer to the mullet-car craze spurred by the Ford Ranchero, GMC Caballero, and Chevy El Camino. Picture a malformed Justy with a pathetic attempt at a truckbed welded on.
Then there was Dodge's entry, the Rampage, sort of a K-Car for Journey fans. But I think the Brat has even that beat.
Whatever you do, don't look at it!
on
Darl & SCO Overview
·
· Score: 5, Funny
From the article: But ever since determining it owns the "ark and the covenant to the enterprise software industry," says McBride, SCO's bad fortune is on the upswing.
Shouldn't that be "ark of the Covenant"? Maybe that explains their reluctance to actually open up the code and show what was "stolen." I, for one, would love to see Darl's head melt.
Wow, three posts in a row all claiming this article is a dupe. Now we just have to wait for five more people to notice the duplicate dupe claims. It's a never-ending cycle.
I've thought for some time that Python would be a great language for introducing someone to programming, and that a book like this, but with Python code instead of BASIC, might get another generation interested in programming. Granted, there are a number of features of Python that might be stumbling blocks to someone who goes on to learn a more traditional language-- significant whitespace, semi-weakly typed, etc. However, it's much closer to C than, say, BASIC, and I somehow learned to program by sorting through the rats' nests of GOTO statements that littered the programs in this book.
Which actually raises a question-- why is (or was) BASIC considered to be such a great language for beginners? I remember when I first learned Pascal (the first function-oriented language I learned) it was like a breath of fresh air. The language pretty much forced you to structure your code that was (more or less) elegant, and I found it made much more sense than the spaghetti code I had grown up with. Had I started out with such a language instead of BASIC I doubt the learning curve would have been as steep. Another question: do kids even learn BASIC these days? What language do they typically start out on?
When I got my Albertson's club card after they first introduced them, I skimmed through it before filling anything out, and noticed the checkbox at the bottom that said "I prefer not to give out any personal information, but give me a bonus card anyway"
Half the time when I go to Albertson's and they ask if I have a card and I say no, the cashier scans the store's card and I get the savings anyway. One day when this happened, she asked if I wanted a card. "Sure, why not?" She said, "Well, I can give you a card, but we're out of applications. You can fill out one the next time you come in." I have used the card she gave me several times since then, and have never even bothered to fill out an application. This suggests to me that the application process is mainly to get your mailing address for junk mail, rather than, as many have assumed, to collect information about the types of products you buy to go in some nefarious consumer database. After all, were that their intention, it seems like when she scanned this un-applied-for card it would give some sort of "unregistered user" message and prompt her to make me fill out an application. I haven't had the opportunity to compare two different cards yet, but it wouldn't surprise me in the least if they all bore identical barcodes.
> How about if SCO loses? Do they have to refund everyone who was coerced into buying licenses?
No, because at the time, the people "chose" to pay the license.
That's not my understanding of how fraud cases work. If I choose to pay someone $14 million for the Brooklyn Bridge, and he's convicted of fraud on the grounds that he doesn't actually own said bridge, he is not entitled to keep the $14 million.
Slashdot Mirror
...when you're being attacked by an Aleutian terrorist armed with obsidian blades.
If his lawsuit is successful and these penis-enlargement companies get put out of business, my inbox should become considerably less cluttered.
And I, for one, welcome our new rodent overlords.
I can hear my dad now: "We didn't have these fancy-schmancy high-level programming languages... sure, there was FORTRAN, but that was just for the wimps who couldn't handle real programming. When I was your age I wrote assembly programs on punched cards, and it took three days just to feed "Hello, World" into the card reader. I had to push an IBM 360 uphill to and from work everyday in a snowstorm. Kids these days with their VisualBASIC and their HTML, they don't know what real programming was."
I'm glad to see this. Today's web-server script kiddies won't have anything to be curmudgeonly about unless they learn to go under the hood.
Here's mine:
"Dear Sir. I wish to object in the strongest possible terms to the article you have just published, the one about the Linux user who writes viruses. Many of my closest friends are Linux users, and only a few of them are virus writers.
Sincerely,
Brigadeer Sir Charles Arthur Strong (Mrs.)
P.S. I have never kissed the editor of Radio Times."
A Hollerith isn't a "mainframe" any more than an Osbourne-1 is a PDA.
So your saying that to find out about Judaism you hang out at Natzi sites. To find out about Christianity you depend on the Moslems. You go to the SCO website to find out about Linux.
A truly thorough investigation of any ideology includes listening to its opponents, yes.
No wonder your ideas are so squeued. Maybe you should go to the source and ask a Mormon instead of depending on hearsay.
I am unfamiliar with the term "squeued," but I take it you mean I have incorrect ideas about Mormonism. I find it interesting that you have reached such a conclusion, as I have so far not said anything about Mormonism itself, only about the foolishness of expecting the official website or documents of any organization to give a complete and unbiased account.
You want to get the truth on SCO you go to the source, which is the court system. Unfortunately, where religion is involved there are no objective third parties. Posting a link to a misleading ant-mormon site is not going to win any arguments.
If you think the court system is an "objective third party," you have more faith in it than I do. The court system is designed so that people with differing opinions on an issue can present their arguments, and a jury of opinionated citizens and an opinionated judge decide on it. The idea is not that this exercise infallibly arrives at "objective truth," but that some sort of consensus can be arrived at from among the various subjective interpretations.
I see no reason why discussions of religion should be any different. If you only hear the official story told by members and leaders of the religion itself, you won't hear anything they don't want you to hear. Unless you listen to people critical of the religion (including many former members), you'll never be able to make an informed decision.
They have acheived the impossible: their article has generated the most posts defending Microsoft ever seen on Slashdot!
[IBM] was shpping mainframes to Germany to track Jews during WWII
And they managed to do this even before the most primitive vacuum-tube computers were built! The wonders of temporal distortions. I hear Hewlett-Packard supplied the mainframes to track runaway slaves in the 1850s.
Hello!?! That's some anti-mormon website. You want real info on the church goto www.lds.org.
Slashdot? That's some anti-SCO website. You want real info on the company goto www.sco.com.
SCO: A bunch of mindless jerks who were the first against the wall when the revolution came.
That's Simpsons, not Simpson's. Never use an apostrophe to make a plural.
Heh. I can finally say something like that and (probably) not get modded OT!
Somehow, they alway
No, I won't... that's just too easy...
...a "ticked-off Jodie Foster fan"?
Awww, crap. Bad ideas never die.
>Yes but what can you honestly do with FreeDOS?
...
Not much, but it doesn't really matter. Dell is sending a message to Redmond, wait a couple weeks until they get a new deal with M$
Yes, and what a message it is: "If you don't do what we want, we'll make a crappy computer with a virtually useless OS that nobody will buy! Take that, Bill!"
I'm surprised they didn't mention this. For those who don't know (they weren't exceedingly popular), this was Subaru's answer to the mullet-car craze spurred by the Ford Ranchero, GMC Caballero, and Chevy El Camino. Picture a malformed Justy with a pathetic attempt at a truckbed welded on.
Then there was Dodge's entry, the Rampage, sort of a K-Car for Journey fans. But I think the Brat has even that beat.
From the article:
But ever since determining it owns the "ark and the covenant to the enterprise software industry," says McBride, SCO's bad fortune is on the upswing.
Shouldn't that be "ark of the Covenant"? Maybe that explains their reluctance to actually open up the code and show what was "stolen." I, for one, would love to see Darl's head melt.
Wow, three posts in a row all claiming this article is a dupe. Now we just have to wait for five more people to notice the duplicate dupe claims. It's a never-ending cycle.
-- The Queen Mother
um, she's deceased...
I've thought for some time that Python would be a great language for introducing someone to programming, and that a book like this, but with Python code instead of BASIC, might get another generation interested in programming. Granted, there are a number of features of Python that might be stumbling blocks to someone who goes on to learn a more traditional language-- significant whitespace, semi-weakly typed, etc. However, it's much closer to C than, say, BASIC, and I somehow learned to program by sorting through the rats' nests of GOTO statements that littered the programs in this book.
Which actually raises a question-- why is (or was) BASIC considered to be such a great language for beginners? I remember when I first learned Pascal (the first function-oriented language I learned) it was like a breath of fresh air. The language pretty much forced you to structure your code that was (more or less) elegant, and I found it made much more sense than the spaghetti code I had grown up with. Had I started out with such a language instead of BASIC I doubt the learning curve would have been as steep. Another question: do kids even learn BASIC these days? What language do they typically start out on?
When I got my Albertson's club card after they first introduced them, I skimmed through it before filling anything out, and noticed the checkbox at the bottom that said "I prefer not to give out any personal information, but give me a bonus card anyway"
Half the time when I go to Albertson's and they ask if I have a card and I say no, the cashier scans the store's card and I get the savings anyway. One day when this happened, she asked if I wanted a card. "Sure, why not?" She said, "Well, I can give you a card, but we're out of applications. You can fill out one the next time you come in." I have used the card she gave me several times since then, and have never even bothered to fill out an application. This suggests to me that the application process is mainly to get your mailing address for junk mail, rather than, as many have assumed, to collect information about the types of products you buy to go in some nefarious consumer database. After all, were that their intention, it seems like when she scanned this un-applied-for card it would give some sort of "unregistered user" message and prompt her to make me fill out an application. I haven't had the opportunity to compare two different cards yet, but it wouldn't surprise me in the least if they all bore identical barcodes.
Is the other entitled to get it all back, though?
No, the lawyers usually walk away with most of it.
> How about if SCO loses? Do they have to refund everyone who was coerced into buying licenses?
No, because at the time, the people "chose" to pay the license.
That's not my understanding of how fraud cases work. If I choose to pay someone $14 million for the Brooklyn Bridge, and he's convicted of fraud on the grounds that he doesn't actually own said bridge, he is not entitled to keep the $14 million.