One thing about a mature coder is that they know the value of good documentation. They know this because they have 30+ years of coding experience cluttering their brain and know if they don't document something properly they will not remember it in 6 months time. When you're 20 you remember it, simply because you've never done anything like it before in your life and have an otherwise empty head.
A mature coder also knows the value of documentation on 15 year old code, because they've got 15 year old code in their own portfolio. A youngster thinks 15 years old code ago is prehistoric, must be written in roman numerals, and not worth even attempting to understand.
So if you want quick and dirty, and be totally reliant on the admittedly more agile mind of a 20 year old remembering how it works, hire the young gun. But if you want tidy code and clear documentation; go with the aged programmer.
So for $250 I get a non-standard headless, keyboardless, mouseless system running on unsupported propriety hardware, that uses an external harddrive working at USB bus speeds. The manufacturer is openly obstructive towards my efforts, so don't expect any help from them. I have to install, configure and maintain it all myself.
Just so that it can do exactly the same media system stuff it already did out the box.
Sounds like a complete waste of time and effort to me. Sure fine, if you like doing that kind of thing, but ultimately a very ineffective way to get a cheap PC.
On word; "latency". Has always been an issue on Linux. Still is an issue. Perhaps if I used my time machine to jump to 2050, Linux developers will have finally sorted it. I don't hold out much hope though because it is not a priority. Why isn't a priority? Because Linux is not a gaming or music OS.
The problems with dual boot are two fold; Firstly we have scary installer options that sound like a serious amount of change that may break their computer. Like many Linux devotees, you are not thinking as a user. Users are not happy doing anything that may leave their computer disabled in a way they can't recover from. Secondly, we have the antiquated idea that users are happy to reboot just so they can switch between applications. Welcome to 1984. Just because they require different operating systems. Why would anyone force that on themselves?
The last Linux desktop I set up had a wifi card. It worked maybe 50% of the time. Repeated booting would eventually persuade it to start correctly. And to get it working at allI had to do a lot of fiddling and combing through help forums. Plug and play, out of the box, it certainly wasn't.
I gave up an installed a copy of Windows XP. It wasn't as nice as a shiny new Ubuntu UI, but at least it worked straight off.
Not only does the average kid in middle/high school not know how to do stuff like set up a dual boot environment, or find appropriate working drivers, they shouldn't have to. As long as Linux desktop devotees remain convinced that people actually enjoy "performance tweaking", they'll continue to be deluded to its viability as a games and desktop computer.
From my perspective, as long as Linux remains so resolutely crap at sound (and like most users I don't care whose fault that is) it will never be a gaming machine.
And in your utopian vision it would be impossible to find anything about anything you might actual wish to know about, because it's hidden amongst 100 similarly named articles, each written by one single person according to their own viewpoint. That's 99% of the articles that are impossible to verify because no-one else gives a damn to write about them outside of Wikipedia, far less read about them inside Wikipedia.
Subtitles are still freely and easily available on all BBC channels, just using different technology. So it's not as if anyone's going to miss Ceefax's ancient and quirky provision of them.
In fact studies have generally shown smokers to be more productive than their non-smoking counterparts
What, even after the cancers, heart disease, thumbrosis, pulmonary disease, and ulcers ? Cos those sorts of things tend to slow you down a little. Or we only counting smokers up to the point they are forced out of employment due to ill health?
Ah yes. Something that always annoyed me intensely in the bad old days when we use to pander to smokers' nasty hobby being acted out in public.
They'd sit purposely holding their cancer stick to the side or behind them, so that it was blowing smoke away from themselves and their companions. After all, who wants smoke wafted in their face, hair and clothes? Not them! Meanwhile, anyone unfortunate enough to be behind or to the side of them would be getting exactly that.
Let them smoke in a closed, unventilated box someplace. Maximize the experience if it's such a joy.
When you are directly quoting someone's writing it is usually considered a professional courtesy not to change the spelling to suit your own preferences.
He did not say "not a single one was in favor of it", he said "not a single one was in favour of it.
If all software is going to look like Facebook we can look forward to ever application having a confusing interface that contradicts itself on every page in its style and functionality. It will also shuffle where to find things every month, so things are never in the same place twice.
Users will also always have to think twice before doing anything, least they accidentally sign up to some spam feed, or being whisked away to some ad and javascript infested website, or inadvertently share all their work with the entire internet. Of course, that's what the software would prefer you to do, so it won't make it easy to avoid.
Well the introductory sentence is a all wrong anyway, Currently it starts off discussing how common eclipses are on Earth, which makes no sense at all. What does the the frequency of eclipses on Earth have to do with anything, unless it is used as a comparison to those on Mars? But that comparison never appears. We still don't know how common they are on Mars,
So perhaps it should say
"Though solar eclipses are fairly common on Mars (much more in the southern hemisphere)......"
Seeing a CPU chip, sitting on a motherboard, is the first step towards being a computer engineer. It's the first step in being able to perform your own upgrades. It's the first step in having the slightest clue as to what's wrong when the little lights don't come on. In short, it's giving a start in understanding how computers work and what they are, instead of being a slab of white plastic and glass. Maybe not what everyone would find interesting, or even what everyone needs to know. But part of being a parent is providing exposure to as many of these things so your child can decide for themselves.
Being able to see rather than conceptualize these things is helpful when you're 7 years old. What happens within a CPU can remain a magic, but that does not mean it is pointless knowing of its presence, and knowing about all the other components that make up a computer. You don't have to know exactly what goes on within each to have an appreciation of what it is doing. And it's taking it a step beyond "Here's a computer. It does stuff. Do not look inside, there's nothing there you need to know about." What a depressing message that would be to give to any curious child.
Following your logic all education is pointless, unless you're willing to get down to a quantum level everything is a magic box you don't need to understand. There is no value to understanding anything around you, because you can no more alter the forces that shape them than stop the Earth from spinning!
Seriously, you think an iPad is a "magic object" and a CPU chip isn't?
I understood what the OP is asking, even if you don't. Shall I explain it to you? Seeing the 'guts' of a computer is like seeing the engine of an old mechanical car. It removes the "magic box" aspect of the featureless slab that an iPad is.
Wittering on about oscilloscopes and multimeters is like saying a 7 year old cannot understand car engines without an electron microscope to understand the exothermic chemistry at the heart of combustion. He's a 7 year old. All you want to show is what a spark plug does and where the oil goes.
This is about as muddled and confusing a statement as I've ever read in an Ask Slashdot
Again, shall I explain for you? The OP wishes his son to understand computers rather than just be a computer user, so that they are more self reliant. It's a quite an orthodox use of child education that I'm surprised confused you. Did the references to zombies throw you? It's an analogy, admittedly a rather tired one. People use them to make their conversation more interesting. Perhaps you should try getting the hang of them.
You're the Slashdot version of a cargo cultist.
You are the Slashdot equivalent of an arrogant jerk. Happy to waste time telling people how stupid they are (and therefore how much smarter you are), but blinded by arrogance to the fact that you have no idea what is being asked.
I'd like to know where you get your figures. I would think that having been shown the very real risks of a lengthy stretch on prison, you'll find those willing to 'replacing' those who 'fall' are in the decline.
There will always be criminals, does that making locking up criminals futile? Should we just give up on doing that?
The "War On Drugs" is an example of what happens when you try to legislate against market demand. There is a demand for drugs, there will always be those willing to sell to that market. On the other hand, there is no market demand for self-righteous, self-appointed internet vigilantes.
You are making the mistake of thinking that these "hackers" motivations are what they say they are. What's far more likely is they did what they did for the usual reason; a desire for peer recognition and status.
To achieve this you need to do something the demonstrates you have in abundance attributes admired by your peers; rebelliousness and intelligence. There's no point in doing this on the quiet, you have to make sure everyone knows you are rebellious and smart. Which takes us to your basic attention seeking stunt of publishing the hacked data.
Unfortunately there's nothing more likely to lose you peer recognition and status than by telling people you desire them. Hence the transparently false and dumb motivations to justify things.
The idea that spambots come back and check what's happened to their forum spam is as ridiculous as thinking they care if their email spam bounces or is blocked. That takes intelligence, something spambots don't have.
Spambots move on, never looking back, relentlessly spamming regardless. They work to quantity, not quality.
Slashdot Mirror
One thing about a mature coder is that they know the value of good documentation. They know this because they have 30+ years of coding experience cluttering their brain and know if they don't document something properly they will not remember it in 6 months time. When you're 20 you remember it, simply because you've never done anything like it before in your life and have an otherwise empty head.
A mature coder also knows the value of documentation on 15 year old code, because they've got 15 year old code in their own portfolio. A youngster thinks 15 years old code ago is prehistoric, must be written in roman numerals, and not worth even attempting to understand.
So if you want quick and dirty, and be totally reliant on the admittedly more agile mind of a 20 year old remembering how it works, hire the young gun. But if you want tidy code and clear documentation; go with the aged programmer.
So for $250 I get a non-standard headless, keyboardless, mouseless system running on unsupported propriety hardware, that uses an external harddrive working at USB bus speeds. The manufacturer is openly obstructive towards my efforts, so don't expect any help from them. I have to install, configure and maintain it all myself.
Just so that it can do exactly the same media system stuff it already did out the box.
Sounds like a complete waste of time and effort to me. Sure fine, if you like doing that kind of thing, but ultimately a very ineffective way to get a cheap PC.
On word; "latency". Has always been an issue on Linux. Still is an issue. Perhaps if I used my time machine to jump to 2050, Linux developers will have finally sorted it. I don't hold out much hope though because it is not a priority. Why isn't a priority? Because Linux is not a gaming or music OS.
The problems with dual boot are two fold; Firstly we have scary installer options that sound like a serious amount of change that may break their computer. Like many Linux devotees, you are not thinking as a user. Users are not happy doing anything that may leave their computer disabled in a way they can't recover from. Secondly, we have the antiquated idea that users are happy to reboot just so they can switch between applications. Welcome to 1984. Just because they require different operating systems. Why would anyone force that on themselves?
The last Linux desktop I set up had a wifi card. It worked maybe 50% of the time. Repeated booting would eventually persuade it to start correctly. And to get it working at allI had to do a lot of fiddling and combing through help forums. Plug and play, out of the box, it certainly wasn't.
I gave up an installed a copy of Windows XP. It wasn't as nice as a shiny new Ubuntu UI, but at least it worked straight off.
Linux hasn't been bad
Excellent, this is what I demand from a games machine, sound that "isn't bad".
for at least like 3 years now.
Wow, a whole 3 years. So how many years behind other desktop systems does that make it? About 15?
Not only does the average kid in middle/high school not know how to do stuff like set up a dual boot environment, or find appropriate working drivers, they shouldn't have to. As long as Linux desktop devotees remain convinced that people actually enjoy "performance tweaking", they'll continue to be deluded to its viability as a games and desktop computer.
From my perspective, as long as Linux remains so resolutely crap at sound (and like most users I don't care whose fault that is) it will never be a gaming machine.
Cool, like play DVDs, and MP3s, and stream stuff off the internet.
If only the PS3 did this already ... no... hang on....
And in your utopian vision it would be impossible to find anything about anything you might actual wish to know about, because it's hidden amongst 100 similarly named articles, each written by one single person according to their own viewpoint. That's 99% of the articles that are impossible to verify because no-one else gives a damn to write about them outside of Wikipedia, far less read about them inside Wikipedia.
I remain mystified to why anyone would want to load Linux onto a PS3.
I mean, I guess it might be a fun hacker thing to do if that's your idea of fun, but the practical use?
Subtitles are still freely and easily available on all BBC channels, just using different technology. So it's not as if anyone's going to miss Ceefax's ancient and quirky provision of them.
In fact studies have generally shown smokers to be more productive than their non-smoking counterparts
What, even after the cancers, heart disease, thumbrosis, pulmonary disease, and ulcers ? Cos those sorts of things tend to slow you down a little. Or we only counting smokers up to the point they are forced out of employment due to ill health?
Ah yes. Something that always annoyed me intensely in the bad old days when we use to pander to smokers' nasty hobby being acted out in public.
They'd sit purposely holding their cancer stick to the side or behind them, so that it was blowing smoke away from themselves and their companions. After all, who wants smoke wafted in their face, hair and clothes? Not them! Meanwhile, anyone unfortunate enough to be behind or to the side of them would be getting exactly that.
Let them smoke in a closed, unventilated box someplace. Maximize the experience if it's such a joy.
My mistake, I should not assume that people have RTFA.
I should have written;
He did not write "not a single one was in favor of it", he wrote "not a single one was in favour of it."
Not the same thing. In your Japanese case it is not a direct quote and it would be obvious you have done this.
The change here gives the misleading impression that it is an American's opinion of UK legislation, which subtly changes the context of everything.
When you are directly quoting someone's writing it is usually considered a professional courtesy not to change the spelling to suit your own preferences.
He did not say "not a single one was in favor of it", he said "not a single one was in favour of it.
And I'm sure 90% will say "Huh?" and click the nearest button to make the question go away.
If all software is going to look like Facebook we can look forward to ever application having a confusing interface that contradicts itself on every page in its style and functionality. It will also shuffle where to find things every month, so things are never in the same place twice.
Users will also always have to think twice before doing anything, least they accidentally sign up to some spam feed, or being whisked away to some ad and javascript infested website, or inadvertently share all their work with the entire internet. Of course, that's what the software would prefer you to do, so it won't make it easy to avoid.
Can't wait.
Well the introductory sentence is a all wrong anyway, Currently it starts off discussing how common eclipses are on Earth, which makes no sense at all. What does the the frequency of eclipses on Earth have to do with anything, unless it is used as a comparison to those on Mars? But that comparison never appears. We still don't know how common they are on Mars,
So perhaps it should say
"Though solar eclipses are fairly common on Mars (much more in the southern hemisphere)......"
And whether they like you or not will be dependant on whether what you say is trolling or not.
At what point you enter this circular reasoning is optional, but the result is the same; restrictions on free speech.
And how does seeing a CPU chip accomplish that?
Seeing a CPU chip, sitting on a motherboard, is the first step towards being a computer engineer. It's the first step in being able to perform your own upgrades. It's the first step in having the slightest clue as to what's wrong when the little lights don't come on. In short, it's giving a start in understanding how computers work and what they are, instead of being a slab of white plastic and glass. Maybe not what everyone would find interesting, or even what everyone needs to know. But part of being a parent is providing exposure to as many of these things so your child can decide for themselves.
Being able to see rather than conceptualize these things is helpful when you're 7 years old. What happens within a CPU can remain a magic, but that does not mean it is pointless knowing of its presence, and knowing about all the other components that make up a computer. You don't have to know exactly what goes on within each to have an appreciation of what it is doing. And it's taking it a step beyond "Here's a computer. It does stuff. Do not look inside, there's nothing there you need to know about." What a depressing message that would be to give to any curious child.
Following your logic all education is pointless, unless you're willing to get down to a quantum level everything is a magic box you don't need to understand. There is no value to understanding anything around you, because you can no more alter the forces that shape them than stop the Earth from spinning!
Seriously, you think an iPad is a "magic object" and a CPU chip isn't?
I understood what the OP is asking, even if you don't. Shall I explain it to you? Seeing the 'guts' of a computer is like seeing the engine of an old mechanical car. It removes the "magic box" aspect of the featureless slab that an iPad is.
Wittering on about oscilloscopes and multimeters is like saying a 7 year old cannot understand car engines without an electron microscope to understand the exothermic chemistry at the heart of combustion. He's a 7 year old. All you want to show is what a spark plug does and where the oil goes.
This is about as muddled and confusing a statement as I've ever read in an Ask Slashdot
Again, shall I explain for you? The OP wishes his son to understand computers rather than just be a computer user, so that they are more self reliant. It's a quite an orthodox use of child education that I'm surprised confused you. Did the references to zombies throw you? It's an analogy, admittedly a rather tired one. People use them to make their conversation more interesting. Perhaps you should try getting the hang of them.
You're the Slashdot version of a cargo cultist.
You are the Slashdot equivalent of an arrogant jerk. Happy to waste time telling people how stupid they are (and therefore how much smarter you are), but blinded by arrogance to the fact that you have no idea what is being asked.
I'd like to know where you get your figures. I would think that having been shown the very real risks of a lengthy stretch on prison, you'll find those willing to 'replacing' those who 'fall' are in the decline.
There will always be criminals, does that making locking up criminals futile? Should we just give up on doing that?
The "War On Drugs" is an example of what happens when you try to legislate against market demand. There is a demand for drugs, there will always be those willing to sell to that market. On the other hand, there is no market demand for self-righteous, self-appointed internet vigilantes.
You are making the mistake of thinking that these "hackers" motivations are what they say they are. What's far more likely is they did what they did for the usual reason; a desire for peer recognition and status.
To achieve this you need to do something the demonstrates you have in abundance attributes admired by your peers; rebelliousness and intelligence. There's no point in doing this on the quiet, you have to make sure everyone knows you are rebellious and smart. Which takes us to your basic attention seeking stunt of publishing the hacked data.
Unfortunately there's nothing more likely to lose you peer recognition and status than by telling people you desire them. Hence the transparently false and dumb motivations to justify things.
Well clearly they are totally different in that case!
Geniuses are born. Tutors can be trained.
The idea that spambots come back and check what's happened to their forum spam is as ridiculous as thinking they care if their email spam bounces or is blocked. That takes intelligence, something spambots don't have.
Spambots move on, never looking back, relentlessly spamming regardless. They work to quantity, not quality.