Last year was a lot of fun. I'm registered for this year as well, but I'm halfway hoping that I don't get to make it (for the right reasons - I'm doing a series of phone interviews with a company a long way from Columbus).
If I get the job before then, I probably won't make it. If not, then I hope I am able to be there again.
But at the same time, I can see some school officials actually reacting in that manner.
There are a lot of places where the people running the school figure that if they don't know what it is, it's probably bad. It's even worse if it sounds sort of like something they *know* they perceive as bad.
However, the first recorded spam (unless you want to count the ones listed during the age of the telegraph) was from a DEC marketing rep to every Arpanet address on the west coast in 1978.
Actually, if memory serves, the first real spam was from a group of lawyers that were trying to advertise back when the net was a much smaller place and the fines for unsolicited emails were taken very seriously.
When I was an admin for a non-profit, there were days when it would have been basically impossible to do my job without net access. Dealing with problems involving equipment that was aquired through inter-department purchasing at the university where the manuals had been lost to time was fun even *with* net access. I'd hate to think what it would have been like without it.
Some of the information was just basically impossible to find period. The maintinance guy from Canon and I got to be fairly good acquaintances.
(And before you ask what an admin is doing futzing around with something like a networked printer - first, while there were about 200 people working there, it wasn't a huge org. second, you see what happens when the director gets told by one of his upper level people that they can't finish the funding requests that are due right now because the printer isn't working).
Now that I write code, I have much the same problem only with functions and libraries instead of equipment. The reference books make vauge mentions of something and you're left going "example, please?"
I've been training with a sword for about 16 years now and have used everything from butterfly swords to a claymore. The weight on a short sword really isn't bad at all. I've trained people with no experience before, and they built up the necessary strength and endurance within a couple of weeks (twice a week).
As far as young, slender women packing heavy weapons and needing steriods to use them, I have a counterexample (although I admit that it's a rare one.). One of the other blacksmiths at the forge where I volunteered (the senior apprentice) was a very slender 16 year old that had more strength in her upper body than a lot of fully grown men that I've known. She was just really wirey. Appearances can, at times, be really deceiving.
Swords aren't actually that bad. Most one hand and hand and a half swords made for actual use top out at about 5lbs with most of those being around the 3lb range. Two handed swords can creep up to 8-10lbs (with a few, like the kwan do - a type of pole sword, being really heavy), but the high end of the scale isn't that common.
Prolonged use can be an issue, but for bursts of less than an hour it's not much of a problem at all. Unlike what most people think, using a blade is generally as much about finess and timing as it is about force, and you tend to use your full body instead of just your arm.
Granted, I'm a little bigger than your typical geek, but I've trained people who were 105lbs or so and it didn't take them all that long to build up the necessary strength and endurance.
Finally! Someone else who actually knows what a freaking operating system is.
I got so tired of making the argument because people just would not listen despite the fact that it is clearly layed out in the very early pages of "Operating System Concepts" (aka The Dinosuar Book).
I even quoted it at one point, and people were saying that was wrong. That's right, they were saying that what could basically be considered the canonical book on operating systems was wrong =]
Have you ever actually read the BSD license? You can do practically anything with BSD licensed code that you want.
Actually, the main reason Linux took off as opposed to BSD is that Linux was developed to run on cheap x86 hardware and, due to legal issues with AT&T, BSD wasn't able to move to that platform until after 1994 (3 years after the beginning of Linux). Before then, BSD was basically restricted to PDP and VAX.
quothe the wiki "The lawsuit slowed development of the free-software descendants of BSD for nearly two years while their legal status was in question, and as a result systems based on the Linux kernel, which did not have such legal ambiguity, gained greater support. Linux and 386BSD began development at about the same time, and Linus Torvalds has said that if there had been a free Unix-like operating system on the 386 at the time, he likely would not have created Linux. Although it is debatable exactly what effect that would have had on the software landscape since, there is little doubt that it would have been substantial."
You're off on why Linux took off. Linux took off because it let the sysadmins and programmers that were used to using unix at work to use something like it at home without having to shell out thousands and thousands of dollars for the hardware and software necessary to do so.
After that, they just started making it more and more like the unix systems that they used at work and eventually it became an enterprise useable system (for the most part).
It was a hobby project (Linus admits that himself) that people thought was neat, so they kept tacking things onto it. They didn't do it because it was "Free". They did it because it was sort of kind of like what they were used to using, so they took steps to make it more like the commercial programs that they were using.
The license allowed them to do it, but it was not the driving motivation. If it wasn't for the fact that people thought the project itself was neat or useful, it would never have gotten anywhere at all.
How does IBM's contributing to the Linux kernel compare to Sun open sourcing an entire OS?
Not to mention having made such things as OpenOffice and NFS available. Oh, and that whole well-used language (which is now being open sourced) that a lot of projects are built on.
I know what you mean. MTV used to be what I had on in the mornings when I was getting ready for school - back when they still actually played music.
Now I never even flip over there because I know that there's never anything on that I want to see. Personally, I think what started it going downhill was The Real World. It was, after all, basically the first non-music thing on the station.
I've been thinking the same thing while reading this part of the thread. Production code is expensive to replace, so language makers leave the deprecated methods in there.
The C/C++ fanboys are going to hate hearing this, but if they want the deprecated methods removed from Java, they should push to remove the deprecated functions/methods/whathaveyou from C and C++ first. I'd love to see how far they get before they realize that there are still very important production systems in use that were written back when C was very young and use parts of the language that have since been deprecated...
It just seems to me that most of the people screaming for the removal of deprecated portions of a language are either hobbists or students who have never had to look at something that has to be maintained over the long term.
Hey, at least I'm not the one making that speach anymore =]
I just do not understand why the people who hate java want to add all sorts of things to it that would either make it a total pain to use or to undermine the security of the platform.
Java isn't C. It was made for different reasons. People need to learn to live with it. Don't get me wrong, I use C as well, but I just don't know why the heck it is that some people want everything to look like C.
Personally, I like Duran Duran, but I decided to be kind of minimalist when it came to buying the cds and just got the greatest hits album. It had basically everything I wanted from them. I took that route with a few bands that I had a lot of stuff for on tape and lp just because, while I liked them, I didn't want to deal with all of the filler.
On the upside, their greatest cd makes for really fun driving music =]
There is only one reason for not doing this: saving the environment. Otherwise, spending on top of the line computers is always a bad investment.
Or heavy duty photo and video editing, or animation, or developing extremely large and complex systems, or anything else that takes a lot of processing power or memory....
Some people actually need the power of high end systems.
$20-$30 a month? Man are you off. When I stopped playing (around 1998), People were dropping $100+ per month. The only reason I was able to keep up at all was because I started winning tounaments that had entire boxes of sealed boosters and starters as top prizes.
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Last year was a lot of fun. I'm registered for this year as well, but I'm halfway hoping that I don't get to make it (for the right reasons - I'm doing a series of phone interviews with a company a long way from Columbus).
If I get the job before then, I probably won't make it. If not, then I hope I am able to be there again.
The first time I saw this (I'm in central Ohio as well), I nearly fell out of my chair laughing.
The sad this is that people will believe it.
But at the same time, I can see some school officials actually reacting in that manner.
There are a lot of places where the people running the school figure that if they don't know what it is, it's probably bad. It's even worse if it sounds sort of like something they *know* they perceive as bad.
Seeing everyone in the lab where I used to work jump and hit the floor when a cap blew loud enough to sound like a gunshot was just amusing.
Doing a bit of digging, I found that I was partially right. In 1994, A law firm was indeed among the first of the commercial spammers.
However, the first recorded spam (unless you want to count the ones listed during the age of the telegraph) was from a DEC marketing rep to every Arpanet address on the west coast in 1978.
Actually, if memory serves, the first real spam was from a group of lawyers that were trying to advertise back when the net was a much smaller place and the fines for unsolicited emails were taken very seriously.
When I was an admin for a non-profit, there were days when it would have been basically impossible to do my job without net access. Dealing with problems involving equipment that was aquired through inter-department purchasing at the university where the manuals had been lost to time was fun even *with* net access. I'd hate to think what it would have been like without it.
Some of the information was just basically impossible to find period. The maintinance guy from Canon and I got to be fairly good acquaintances.
(And before you ask what an admin is doing futzing around with something like a networked printer - first, while there were about 200 people working there, it wasn't a huge org. second, you see what happens when the director gets told by one of his upper level people that they can't finish the funding requests that are due right now because the printer isn't working).
Now that I write code, I have much the same problem only with functions and libraries instead of equipment. The reference books make vauge mentions of something and you're left going "example, please?"
I've been training with a sword for about 16 years now and have used everything from butterfly swords to a claymore. The weight on a short sword really isn't bad at all. I've trained people with no experience before, and they built up the necessary strength and endurance within a couple of weeks (twice a week).
As far as young, slender women packing heavy weapons and needing steriods to use them, I have a counterexample (although I admit that it's a rare one.). One of the other blacksmiths at the forge where I volunteered (the senior apprentice) was a very slender 16 year old that had more strength in her upper body than a lot of fully grown men that I've known. She was just really wirey. Appearances can, at times, be really deceiving.
Swords aren't actually that bad. Most one hand and hand and a half swords made for actual use top out at about 5lbs with most of those being around the 3lb range. Two handed swords can creep up to 8-10lbs (with a few, like the kwan do - a type of pole sword, being really heavy), but the high end of the scale isn't that common.
Prolonged use can be an issue, but for bursts of less than an hour it's not much of a problem at all. Unlike what most people think, using a blade is generally as much about finess and timing as it is about force, and you tend to use your full body instead of just your arm.
Granted, I'm a little bigger than your typical geek, but I've trained people who were 105lbs or so and it didn't take them all that long to build up the necessary strength and endurance.
Finally! Someone else who actually knows what a freaking operating system is.
I got so tired of making the argument because people just would not listen despite the fact that it is clearly layed out in the very early pages of "Operating System Concepts" (aka The Dinosuar Book).
I even quoted it at one point, and people were saying that was wrong. That's right, they were saying that what could basically be considered the canonical book on operating systems was wrong =]
Have you ever actually read the BSD license? You can do practically anything with BSD licensed code that you want.
Actually, the main reason Linux took off as opposed to BSD is that Linux was developed to run on cheap x86 hardware and, due to legal issues with AT&T, BSD wasn't able to move to that platform until after 1994 (3 years after the beginning of Linux). Before then, BSD was basically restricted to PDP and VAX.
quothe the wiki
"The lawsuit slowed development of the free-software descendants of BSD for nearly two years while their legal status was in question, and as a result systems based on the Linux kernel, which did not have such legal ambiguity, gained greater support. Linux and 386BSD began development at about the same time, and Linus Torvalds has said that if there had been a free Unix-like operating system on the 386 at the time, he likely would not have created Linux. Although it is debatable exactly what effect that would have had on the software landscape since, there is little doubt that it would have been substantial."
You're off on why Linux took off. Linux took off because it let the sysadmins and programmers that were used to using unix at work to use something like it at home without having to shell out thousands and thousands of dollars for the hardware and software necessary to do so.
After that, they just started making it more and more like the unix systems that they used at work and eventually it became an enterprise useable system (for the most part).
It was a hobby project (Linus admits that himself) that people thought was neat, so they kept tacking things onto it. They didn't do it because it was "Free". They did it because it was sort of kind of like what they were used to using, so they took steps to make it more like the commercial programs that they were using.
The license allowed them to do it, but it was not the driving motivation. If it wasn't for the fact that people thought the project itself was neat or useful, it would never have gotten anywhere at all.
How does IBM's contributing to the Linux kernel compare to Sun open sourcing an entire OS?
Not to mention having made such things as OpenOffice and NFS available. Oh, and that whole well-used language (which is now being open sourced) that a lot of projects are built on.
I know what you mean. MTV used to be what I had on in the mornings when I was getting ready for school - back when they still actually played music.
Now I never even flip over there because I know that there's never anything on that I want to see. Personally, I think what started it going downhill was The Real World. It was, after all, basically the first non-music thing on the station.
I've been thinking the same thing while reading this part of the thread. Production code is expensive to replace, so language makers leave the deprecated methods in there.
The C/C++ fanboys are going to hate hearing this, but if they want the deprecated methods removed from Java, they should push to remove the deprecated functions/methods/whathaveyou from C and C++ first. I'd love to see how far they get before they realize that there are still very important production systems in use that were written back when C was very young and use parts of the language that have since been deprecated...
It just seems to me that most of the people screaming for the removal of deprecated portions of a language are either hobbists or students who have never had to look at something that has to be maintained over the long term.
Hey, at least I'm not the one making that speach anymore =]
I just do not understand why the people who hate java want to add all sorts of things to it that would either make it a total pain to use or to undermine the security of the platform.
Java isn't C. It was made for different reasons. People need to learn to live with it. Don't get me wrong, I use C as well, but I just don't know why the heck it is that some people want everything to look like C.
Duran Duran is a staple in my driving music selection. It's right up there with Placebo, ZZ Top, Tom Petty, and Garbage.
Personally, I like Duran Duran, but I decided to be kind of minimalist when it came to buying the cds and just got the greatest hits album. It had basically everything I wanted from them. I took that route with a few bands that I had a lot of stuff for on tape and lp just because, while I liked them, I didn't want to deal with all of the filler.
On the upside, their greatest cd makes for really fun driving music =]
There is only one reason for not doing this: saving the environment.
Otherwise, spending on top of the line computers is always a bad investment.
Or heavy duty photo and video editing, or animation, or developing extremely large and complex systems, or anything else that takes a lot of processing power or memory....
Some people actually need the power of high end systems.
I'd settle for a slightly modified phone and a sonic screwdriver =]
Not a problem, man. Hope you enjoy the memories.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0590443143/sr=1-1 /qid=1154815827/ref=sr_1_1/102-0969231-6065720?ie= UTF8&s=books
There you go. Prices start at a penny.
$20-$30 a month? Man are you off. When I stopped playing (around 1998), People were dropping $100+ per month. The only reason I was able to keep up at all was because I started winning tounaments that had entire boxes of sealed boosters and starters as top prizes.
You've got to be kidding me. That is a part of the story that I seem to have missed.
You made me grin. I remember sending news about that incident to a bunch of friends when it first hit El Reg.
I guess that guy got so many calls, emails, and faxes that it wasn't even funny. =]