"I figured it was illegal to have a job in something you learned easily and out of pure enjoyment.:)" I totally agree! I still can't believe they pay me for my job sometimes! Just don't tell my boss!;)
You've a few good points in there yourself, Enoch!:). I think we both agree that anything that gets you curious is a Good Thing. It just does my head in (and sorely distresses me) having to explain what an Instruction Pointer is to recent graduates, and then further explain to them that "a CPU dump is not an Active X component"... I guess that's what I'm scared of here, removing curiosity at this young age.
I wonder when the Stock markets will tire of YAICIPO (Yet Another Internet Company Initial Purchase Offer) ? * I am the geek who learnt Karate then kicked your sorry butt in front of the entire school. And now I'm waiting for you...
"Did you have time to design neural networks when you were a kid?" Nope. But then, when I was a kid, I'm fairly sure even Minsky himself was only just out of short trousers, far less getting into neurotransmitters & NN topologies:). Or are you saying at 16 I should have been publishing the seminal works on AI?:)
"This is exactly like the calculator argument... Sure, having calculators readily available means that kids nowadays can't calculate anything [...] But it also means they can move on more quickly to stuff like Calculus". And still have no clue about what the numbers mean! Would you prefer to run before you could walk?
"...difficult for everyone out of "fairness" for the "old guard". I for one am happy to see that today, it is as easy building a robot as building Lego sets." I wasn't talking about "fairness". But when a kid gets used to having it easy all the time because the knowledge base required is too low, it gets dangerous for their future development. Like how will they deal with any problems that crop up? If you already understand the nature of the beast, you're already halfway there to finding a solution. It just worries me that as soon as the learning curve is no longer spoon fed, kids with their ever decreasing attention spans will just walk away. That said, you make the entry level too hard and no kid will even get the box open!:) I guess what I'm saying is there's a fine line between spoon fed and encouraging an interest in learning for it's own sake. The ORA book can only be a positive step in this direction - sort of a next step bible, by the sounds of things.
"Like designing more complex AI, for instance." :) Jeez, when I was in my final year of CS, I had a hard enough time configuring a NN for even basic recognition tasks!!! You really think there are minors out there who are writing cutting edge AI algorithms? Hmmm.....
To answer your question on OSS: what do you mean, an "equivalent" to Mindstorms? Lego Mindstorms are Open Source, because they give you the "code" (plans) and they're free, so you can expand on them! I mean something along the lines of circuit diagrams (even kits) to build your own of this type stuff, plus the low level software to make it go - "luge" has already posted some of this - Thanks! . The only thing that keeps me away from the Lego stuff was that when I last played with it, it wasn't anywhere near robust enough & you couldn't easily attach it to anything other than Lego. I'm not an Electrical Engineer but I've waved a soldering iron about before & usually don't blow anything up / cause injury / destabilise minor political enclaves!:)
At a risk of starting another Holy War, I'd have said Meccano was better. You could machine your own steel plates to really get creative! So how about a/. poll then, Rob? First Geek Toys:
Hey, we're handing it to the next generation of geeks on a plate, here!!! When I was 16, I designed, built & tested (it worked, too!:) my own Turtle from parts bought from RS Supplies. Then wrote a LOGO - like language (interpreted) & editor for my Commodore 64 to run it, complete with hand assembled machine code (anybody remember DATA 255,0,123,55... statements - heheh!). That said, back in those days, you could buy the C64 Programmers' Reference Guide quite cheaply; it had almost a complete breakdown of the internals of the machine, way before OSS was even thought of. I wish I could get something like that going on my PC these days; all analogue/digital expansion cards to plug non-standard H/W seem to cost a fortune these days (last I checked UK £100+). Still, if this Mindstorm kit can give our up and coming under-geeks a head start and that all - important "how does it work" bug, the future of geekdom seems assured! Anybody know of an OSS equivalent of the Mindstorm stuff?
I seem to recall NASA already had a 3D prototyping tool. I don't recall too many details, but it basically relied on converging two lasers into an bath of epoxy resin which was gradually raised up, providing the third dimension. I'd guess that if NASA was allowed to go private, it would find it a heck of a lot easier to work with these guys, and merge the technologies... Now _that_ would be scary! Anybody prepared to make a wild swinging guess at how long it will _really_ be before we have Star Trek style replicators? Imagine that, come home from the pub on a Saturday, chuck a bucket of dirt into a hopper and sit down to steak & chips... All without the risk of setting fire to your kitchen!:) Now, if only they'll sort out this longevity gene business so I'm around to witness it...;)
It's phonetics. Slur a well known Redmond company's name and you get.... Micro$lop!!! Descriptive IMHO, as well... And I thought all you 37337/. h4X0r dudes had a penchant for transliteration and wordplay... Read ESR's definition on hackers, it's lurking somewhere at Tuxedo
Paxman only plays hardball with certain politicians, depending on the BBC's bias at the time. I've seen him turn into a complete big girls blouse when interviewing certain Cabinet ministers. I'd love to see Bill interviewed by a total animal like Clive Anderson (anybody remember him completely taking apart Jeffery Archer a while back?), or a terrier like Raj Persaud. But how much of the interview do you think the Micro$lop spin doctors will leave on the cutting floor, even if Paxman does have a workout on Barking Billy? And I'll bet this is never mentioned in any interview, but it's a great link.
It's Franglais - French & English. Actually, the French Govt has passed laws about usage of foreign language (esp. English) in the national media, everything from what the radio plays to actual words used to describe things eg "computer" is "ordinateur" and must always be referred to as such... If we tried that in England, we'd immediately be denounced as the worst sort of racist scum, the rabid "little Englanders". But we've never had that in our history, anyway - look at how many English words are of continental descent... eg Rendez-vous etc... That is one strength of the language - I think English evolves at a faster rate than most other languages...
Stark? Never heard of it. How about Esperanto instead? Derived from European languages, it was designed to be a simple, effective language for use in business etc, and to allow easier access to foreign language teaching resources for those whose native tongue was not widespread. It was also mooted to be an official language of the EC (where did that other E go from EEC, anyway?), but everybody realised English was better since everybody spoke it already. Except the French, who insisted that their language be adopted too, followed by the Germans. Way to go, EC dudes!:) Well, if you don't believe me about Esperanto, here's a quote from one of the finest literary minds this century: "My advice to all who have the time or inclination to concern themselves with the international language movement would be: "Back Esperanto loyally." - J.R.R. Tolkien
We used to use a text editor called PMate (Programmers' Mate?) for DOS 3.1 about 6-7 years ago... It was the dogs bollocks. It basically had regex way before any other PC text editor even dreamt of it; you could substitute hex values on the fly... It was a Real Programmers tool; the only help file you had was a six sheet manual of each command, and each command looked like a burst of modem noise. I can still halfway remember some of the commands; to quit and discard changes it was something like Escape-Escape-Q-Escape-Escape-X. Aaaah, those were the days!! And no bloody paperclip mincing around on the bottom of your screen, either!!! It would surely seperate the hackers from the scriptkiddies today, anyway!:) Anybody else remember this?
Just what the hell is this Mountain Dew, anyway? I mean, I can infer it's some sort of beverage, but what does it taste like? I've never seen it over here in Britain... And why is it considered the choice of hackers? Maybe I'm showing my age here, but I've always preferred a few tins of beer (real beer, not that piss you get in the US, I mean 2.7% alcohol by volume?) followed by a gallon or so of coffee to prop you up in the final few hours of those 70 hour coding marathons we programmers love....
Yeah, but it's amazing when you interface the male/female units together... No crimping tools required (unless you like that sort of thing...). But mind out for viruses, use safety equipment when working with unfamiliar units, and always be aware you may create a child process!:)
Yeah, thx, I can read... I didn't mean/. be responsible; surely there must be a way of asserting distribution rights whilst leaving culpability with the author. Don't forget, lawyers get paid for weasel wording - be nice to see it work in our favour for a change? I was driving at sites like/. being able to host free speech whilst offering some kind of legal umbrella for those who want free speech but do not want it taken out of context.
IANAL, but is there no way here that sites like/. cannot issue some sort of Open Speech policy? Something like/. owning our comments, although we are allowed free access to them. So, any comments to be taken from the site by external agents must be confirmed by the person who wrote them. This enables the author to see the context in which they will be used, before they are published. There you have it - free speech you can put your name to, that cannot be hijacked by the press wolves. Or is this too much like having your cake and eating it? Hopelessly naive I admit, but maybe finer minds than mine can make it work...
I don't think I'll be advising the Postal service to lay on any extra staff to deal with the flood of cards... Anybody else notice that the only times us techies get recognition is when there is a server or system down ? You all know what to do....:)
Good point, but who are they going to sue? I'm not a lawyer (fortunately! ) but if an Anonymous Hacker takes some ideas (say SMP) from Solaris source and implements them in Linux, who can Sun sue? OK, they can go after RedHat, Debian et al if they include it, but if said Anonymous Hacker puts the patches in an easy to install package on an FTP server somewhere...
Sun can then prove to the OS community that they are venal lying bastards by suing any company who runs the said patch, but I think politically that would be shooting themselves in the foot. I think this move is a) to pressure Micro$lop, b) to try and get the OS community on-side whilst obliquely threatening Linux. I would say the minute Sun try and be heavy handed over alleged violations of their SCSL, they will totally alienate the OS community and I don't think this is their intention.
I noticed that the article makes brief reference to the problems AMD have with getting the Taiwan industries to provide the motherboard support, whihc could cripple AMD's speed to market gain. This would be a shame; when I bought my K6-2 a while back, I think my bangs-for-bucks versus Intel was extremely good.
I would have liked a much more in-depth discussion of the motherboard support required - can any of you solder-heads out there enlighten me?
"... the only non-metric units we English still use are for roadsigns and beer. Both of which are damn annoying,"
????? They will take my pint glass from my cold, dead hand!!! A "half a litre" would be the sort of drink you'd expect to buy at The Blue Oyster Bar, not the Kings' Arms. Buying a "half" in public is not the done thing in every pub I've been in; reactions vary from laughter to offers of physical violence...
The EC has taken so much from us, and given back so little (except all that wonderful red tape); don't allow them to break this bastion of English social culture. Unless you want to order ein Glas Bier für eine Frau et un paquet des chips s'il vous plait, next time you're down the pub.
Surely, part of the appeal of Linux is that you can tinker with the source code? This "tinker factor" won't sway the drooling desktop users, but I'm sure it's a big pull for us geeks...
Slashdot Mirror
"I figured it was illegal to have a job in something you learned easily and out of pure enjoyment. :)" ;)
I totally agree! I still can't believe they pay me for my job sometimes! Just don't tell my boss!
You've a few good points in there yourself, Enoch! :). I think we both agree that anything that gets you curious is a Good Thing.
It just does my head in (and sorely distresses me) having to explain what an Instruction Pointer is to recent graduates, and then further explain to them that "a CPU dump is not an Active X component"... I guess that's what I'm scared of here, removing curiosity at this young age.
I wonder when the Stock markets will tire of YAICIPO (Yet Another Internet Company Initial Purchase Offer) ? * I am the geek who learnt Karate then kicked your sorry butt in front of the entire school. And now I'm waiting for you...
"Did you have time to design neural networks when you were a kid?" :). Or are you saying at 16 I should have been publishing the seminal works on AI? :)
:) I guess what I'm saying is there's a fine line between spoon fed and encouraging an interest in learning for it's own sake. The ORA book can only be a positive step in this direction - sort of a next step bible, by the sounds of things.
:) Jeez, when I was in my final year of CS, I had a hard enough time configuring a NN for even basic recognition tasks!!! You really think there are minors out there who are writing cutting edge AI algorithms? Hmmm.....
:)
Nope. But then, when I was a kid, I'm fairly sure even Minsky himself was only just out of short trousers, far less getting into neurotransmitters & NN topologies
"This is exactly like the calculator argument... Sure, having calculators readily available means that kids nowadays can't calculate anything [...] But it also means they can move on more quickly to stuff like Calculus".
And still have no clue about what the numbers mean! Would you prefer to run before you could walk?
"...difficult for everyone out of "fairness" for the "old guard". I for one am happy to see that today, it is as easy building a robot as building Lego sets."
I wasn't talking about "fairness". But when a kid gets used to having it easy all the time because the knowledge base required is too low, it gets dangerous for their future development. Like how will they deal with any problems that crop up? If you already understand the nature of the beast, you're already halfway there to finding a solution. It just worries me that as soon as the learning curve is no longer spoon fed, kids with their ever decreasing attention spans will just walk away. That said, you make the entry level too hard and no kid will even get the box open!
"Like designing more complex AI, for instance."
To answer your question on OSS: what do you mean, an "equivalent" to Mindstorms? Lego Mindstorms are Open Source, because they give you the "code" (plans) and they're free, so you can expand on them!
I mean something along the lines of circuit diagrams (even kits) to build your own of this type stuff, plus the low level software to make it go - "luge" has already posted some of this - Thanks! . The only thing that keeps me away from the Lego stuff was that when I last played with it, it wasn't anywhere near robust enough & you couldn't easily attach it to anything other than Lego. I'm not an Electrical Engineer but I've waved a soldering iron about before & usually don't blow anything up / cause injury / destabilise minor political enclaves!
So how about a
First Geek Toys:
Meccano.
Lego.
Technix Lego.
TV remote (for the script kiddies :) ).
Had friends instead.
Do you think we'd need to put these together into a Beowolf cluster? :)
Hey, we're handing it to the next generation of geeks on a plate, here!!! :) my own Turtle from parts bought from RS Supplies. Then wrote a LOGO - like language (interpreted) & editor for my Commodore 64 to run it, complete with hand assembled machine code (anybody remember DATA 255,0,123,55... statements - heheh!).
When I was 16, I designed, built & tested (it worked, too!
That said, back in those days, you could buy the C64 Programmers' Reference Guide quite cheaply; it had almost a complete breakdown of the internals of the machine, way before OSS was even thought of.
I wish I could get something like that going on my PC these days; all analogue/digital expansion cards to plug non-standard H/W seem to cost a fortune these days (last I checked UK £100+).
Still, if this Mindstorm kit can give our up and coming under-geeks a head start and that all - important "how does it work" bug, the future of geekdom seems assured!
Anybody know of an OSS equivalent of the Mindstorm stuff?
I seem to recall NASA already had a 3D prototyping tool. :) ;)
I don't recall too many details, but it basically relied on converging two lasers into an bath of epoxy resin which was gradually raised up, providing the third dimension.
I'd guess that if NASA was allowed to go private, it would find it a heck of a lot easier to work with these guys, and merge the technologies... Now _that_ would be scary! Anybody prepared to make a wild swinging guess at how long it will _really_ be before we have Star Trek style replicators? Imagine that, come home from the pub on a Saturday, chuck a bucket of dirt into a hopper and sit down to steak & chips... All without the risk of setting fire to your kitchen!
Now, if only they'll sort out this longevity gene business so I'm around to witness it...
It's phonetics. Slur a well known Redmond company's name and you get.... /. h4X0r dudes had a penchant for transliteration and wordplay...
Micro$lop!!!
Descriptive IMHO, as well...
And I thought all you 37337
Read ESR's definition on hackers, it's lurking somewhere at Tuxedo
Paxman only plays hardball with certain politicians, depending on the BBC's bias at the time. I've seen him turn into a complete big girls blouse when interviewing certain Cabinet ministers.
I'd love to see Bill interviewed by a total animal like Clive Anderson (anybody remember him completely taking apart Jeffery Archer a while back?), or a terrier like Raj Persaud. But how much of the interview do you think the Micro$lop spin doctors will leave on the cutting floor, even if Paxman does have a workout on Barking Billy?
And I'll bet this is never mentioned in any interview, but it's a great link.
It's Franglais - French & English.
Actually, the French Govt has passed laws about usage of foreign language (esp. English) in the national media, everything from what the radio plays to actual words used to describe things eg "computer" is "ordinateur" and must always be referred to as such...
If we tried that in England, we'd immediately be denounced as the worst sort of racist scum, the rabid "little Englanders". But we've never had that in our history, anyway - look at how many English words are of continental descent... eg Rendez-vous etc... That is one strength of the language - I think English evolves at a faster rate than most other languages...
Stark? Never heard of it. How about Esperanto instead? :)
Derived from European languages, it was designed to be a simple, effective language for use in business etc, and to allow easier access to foreign language teaching resources for those whose native tongue was not widespread. It was also mooted to be an official language of the EC (where did that other E go from EEC, anyway?), but everybody realised English was better since everybody spoke it already. Except the French, who insisted that their language be adopted too, followed by the Germans. Way to go, EC dudes!
Well, if you don't believe me about Esperanto, here's a quote from one of the finest literary minds this century:
"My advice to all who have the time or inclination to concern themselves with the international language movement would be: "Back Esperanto loyally." - J.R.R. Tolkien
I'm a LAN admin myself, and I'd rather shoot any one of my users in the head... ;)
Boy, I'm damn glad I don't have to call you to reset my password!!!
We used to use a text editor called PMate (Programmers' Mate?) for DOS 3.1 about 6-7 years ago... :)
It was the dogs bollocks. It basically had regex way before any other PC text editor even dreamt of it; you could substitute hex values on the fly...
It was a Real Programmers tool; the only help file you had was a six sheet manual of each command, and each command looked like a burst of modem noise. I can still halfway remember some of the commands; to quit and discard changes it was something like Escape-Escape-Q-Escape-Escape-X.
Aaaah, those were the days!! And no bloody paperclip mincing around on the bottom of your screen, either!!! It would surely seperate the hackers from the scriptkiddies today, anyway!
Anybody else remember this?
Just what the hell is this Mountain Dew, anyway?
I mean, I can infer it's some sort of beverage, but what does it taste like? I've never seen it over here in Britain...
And why is it considered the choice of hackers?
Maybe I'm showing my age here, but I've always preferred a few tins of beer (real beer, not that piss you get in the US, I mean 2.7% alcohol by volume?) followed by a gallon or so of coffee to prop you up in the final few hours of those 70 hour coding marathons we programmers love....
Yeah, but it's amazing when you interface the male/female units together... No crimping tools required (unless you like that sort of thing...). :)
But mind out for viruses, use safety equipment when working with unfamiliar units, and always be aware you may create a child process!
"forking is a kind of plagiarism" :)
I've never seen process creation described like that before!
Yeah, thx, I can read... /. be responsible; surely there must be a way of asserting distribution rights whilst leaving culpability with the author. Don't forget, lawyers get paid for weasel wording - be nice to see it work in our favour for a change? /. being able to host free speech whilst offering some kind of legal umbrella for those who want free speech but do not want it taken out of context.
I didn't mean
I was driving at sites like
IANAL, but is there no way here that sites like /. cannot issue some sort of Open Speech policy? /. owning our comments, although we are allowed free access to them.
Something like
So, any comments to be taken from the site by external agents must be confirmed by the person who wrote them. This enables the author to see the context in which they will be used, before they are published. There you have it - free speech you can put your name to, that cannot be hijacked by the press wolves.
Or is this too much like having your cake and eating it?
Hopelessly naive I admit, but maybe finer minds than mine can make it work...
I don't think I'll be advising the Postal service to lay on any extra staff to deal with the flood of cards... :)
Anybody else notice that the only times us techies get recognition is when there is a server or system down ?
You all know what to do....
I'm not a lawyer (fortunately! ) but if an Anonymous Hacker takes some ideas (say SMP) from Solaris source and implements them in Linux, who can Sun sue? OK, they can go after RedHat, Debian et al if they include it, but if said Anonymous Hacker puts the patches in an easy to install package on an FTP server somewhere...
Sun can then prove to the OS community that they are venal lying bastards by suing any company who runs the said patch, but I think politically that would be shooting themselves in the foot. I think this move is a) to pressure Micro$lop, b) to try and get the OS community on-side whilst obliquely threatening Linux.
I would say the minute Sun try and be heavy handed over alleged violations of their SCSL, they will totally alienate the OS community and I don't think this is their intention.
I would have liked a much more in-depth discussion of the motherboard support required - can any of you solder-heads out there enlighten me?
?????
They will take my pint glass from my cold, dead hand!!! A "half a litre" would be the sort of drink you'd expect to buy at The Blue Oyster Bar, not the Kings' Arms. Buying a "half" in public is not the done thing in every pub I've been in; reactions vary from laughter to offers of physical violence...
The EC has taken so much from us, and given back so little (except all that wonderful red tape); don't allow them to break this bastion of English social culture.
Unless you want to order ein Glas Bier für eine Frau et un paquet des chips s'il vous plait, next time you're down the pub.
Surely, part of the appeal of Linux is that you can tinker with the source code?
This "tinker factor" won't sway the drooling desktop users, but I'm sure it's a big pull for us geeks...
Have an audio recorder running, and rewind it 10 seconds - perfect recall, instantly!!!
And if you mount a webcam, you can relive your lurching way home from the pub and never have to wonder how you got home the next morning...:)