Me and my GNU proogies were down at the milk bar listening to Ludwig Van, when I saw source code in my head, turning all blood-red, real horrorshow-like...
Calc is written in elisp and runs in a pair of frames within emacs. It works really, really well. If you have gnuplot installed on your system, it'll even plot graphs for you.
I can't think of too many games that feature their own LISP interpreter, unless you think emacs is fun and difficult enough to qualify as a game.
Well, emacs plays games, how about that? In fact, I keep telling people but no one ever listens: emacs does everything. If I get bored at work, sometimes I'll pop up an emacs and M-x mpuz. There's also tetris, blackbox, gomoku, doctor...
A couple of weeks ago, I managed to completely destroy X on my home PC. I browsed the Web using emacs until I could get X back up.
Last week, I was talking to a co-worker. I mentioned, "I'm forgetting my calculus, I tried to integrate such-and-such, and I couldn't do it. Luckily for me, emacs does symbolic mathematics." His jaw dropped open. (He does tech support for my company's symbolic math package.)
Find a copy of Fractal Image Compression by Michael Barnsley et al. Barnsley describes a method of fitting a fractal to an existing bitmap and reducing the fractal to its generating equation. It's a lossy method of compression, but it produces tiny files (for some images). Barnsley started (or joined, I'm not sure) a company, Iterated Systems, that tried to make money producing these files but it didn't work out for whatever reason.
My BS and scam detectors burned out about three sentences into the guy's offer. "Give me $100 and I *might* give you $5000"? That is a classic scam, a variant of the "Give me $1000 ernest money and I'll split this $10000" scam.
Would you please produce a quote from the offer confirming this? I don't see anything of the sort on the page, and I'm curious as to what you're seeing.
Programmers call themselves "software engineers" because they are trying to ascribe to themselves qualities that do not exist -- i.e. standards and practices and such that work to guarantee quality, and a professional image overall.
I agree with your sentiment, although not your intensity. I save my vitriolic hatred for worthier causes... e.g. visiting sports teams.
When I'm at work, I call myself a software engineer because that's what the employment agreement I signed calls me. I personally don't care for the term. When I'm not at work, I call myself a "programmer" or a "geek", depending on the audience. (Or for the grandparents, I "do computers".*) I toyed with "software developer" for a while, but I didn't like ring of it.
Of course, two jobs ago, I was referred to as (and my business cards said) "The Computer Guy". I really loved that title.
* Over Easter, my grandmother kept asking me questions about programming. "How do you know what to tell the computer?" Can anyone come up with a good answer, because that stumped me.
Blocking/.'s ads directly impacts their ability to stay afloat and provide you with stuff that is worth reading (and in sourceforge's case, worth programming with or on.)
Well now, that depends.
I use junkbuster to block most ads. The reason for this is simple: I'd prefer not to see them. Why? Because they don't interest me. And that's the key point right there. They don't interest me. It doesn't take a lot of logic to deduce that, even if I weren't blocking them, I sure wouldn't be clicking on them. After all, they don't interest me.
It just so happens that set up junkbuster to let Slashdot's ads through. Why? It's not that I'm trying to be a good citizen. It's because they interest me. I want to see what TMBG's up to. I want to see what ThinkGeek has new this week. Not only do I view these ads, but I click on them. Because they interest me.
Now, with that said, I produce the final piece of the puzzle: advertisers generally pay by the click, not the view. If I don't click on an ad, it's irrelevent whether or not I viewed it. Therefore, if I screen out all ads that I wouldn't have clicked on anyway, no one gets hurt. I view ads that interest me, and click on them. I block ads that don't interest me, and don't click on them. I win, Slashdot wins, the advertiser wins.
Simple as that.
(To Whom It May Concern: Yes, I know my grammar is crappy. Who cares?)
Well, that's a matter of some debate amongst the posters here, but I'm going to go out on a limb and suggest:
C) The Copyright Holder
In many cases, this is going to be A) The Record Company, but there are some savvy B) Artists who have held on to their own copyright, not to mention all the little independent bands who haven't yet had a chance to sign away their copyright.
Has anyone had success communicating with CVS Gnomes? If so, how did you do it? They seem to be afraid of me:(
I had CVS Gnomes once. Noisy little critters, too. They kept clamoring on and on about "underpants" and "big profits". I finally managed to lure them away with a 3-pack of cotton briefs.
Fine, but then you should be willing to pay for the content you consume as salon is asking its readers to do. Otherwise you're mooching off of the money or click-throughs of other readers.
Say I view a web site but simply ignore the ads. Is that acceptible behavior? If so, how is it different from simply blocking the ads? If I load but ignore the ads, I am still "mooching off the click-throughs" of other readers. Both actions are morally equivalent.
It's the same as when I'm watching a show on television and see an ad for McDonald's, but don't immediately rush out and buy a Big Mac. I'm enjoying the program which is supported by other people who do in fact patronize McDonald's, and I don't feel the least bit guilty.
If everyone blocked ads *and* refused to pay subscription fees,
They won't. Advertising isn't an all-or-nothing enterprise; it's based on statistics. Advertisers plan on having a certain percentage of a certain demographic purchasing a certain amount of a certain product. They know that not everyone will respond; some people get their entertainment (or web site, or whatever) gratis. Advertisers know this and plan for it accordingly. Any advertiser who plans for 100% response won't last long in the industry.
all the content on the web would dry up and blow away.
This statement is so utterly ridiculous that I don't know where to begin.
Perhaps some commercial content would dry up. (Briefly... read my next paragraph.) But you're buying into the current perception of the Web as a giant shopping mall or catalog. But it's so much more than that. Some sites don't depend on commercial success. University sites will survive. Science sites will survive. (I don't think I've ever seen an ad on www.nasa.gov.) Personal sites will survive. (I myself host a comparitive review of Medieval European calligraphy on my site. When I started, there was nothing on the Web similar to it. Yet I've never made $0.10 off it. There's lots of personal pages like that.)
The other thing to remember: if advertising turns out to be a failure, people will find another way to make money off the Web. It's that simple. I don't know how; I'm not a prognosticator. But I know that if money can possibly be made, someone will find a way to do it. Commercial sites might go away briefly, but I guarantee that they'd return, soon, and with a vengeance.
Some people use ad-blocking software. If I were you, I wouldn't let that keep me awake at night.
I could do everything a business needs using smokesignals and carrier-pigeons, but would that be the best solution?
Heh. My former roommate once threatened the phone company that he was going to cancel our service and start using Pony Express if they didn't stop telespamming us during dinner. It worked, too.
Second, AOL en Compuserve CD's made such nice coasters for my all my cups of coffee. Does smaller CD's also mean smaller cups of coffee?
I use my AOL CD's as Christmas tree ornaments. I think the smaller size ones will look even better.
Of course, I'm still sad they stopped sending out floppies. I had to go to the store a couple of months ago to buy a box of 3.5"-ers. First time in 6 or 7 years that I've actually had to purchase them.
If somebody was murdered on video, Alien, do you think it would eventually make its way onto tv.
Of course.
Do a Google search for R. Budd Dwyer. Short story: Dwyer was the Pennsylvania State Treasurer in the 80s. While awaiting sentencing for various corruption charges, he called a press conference, at which he shot and killed himself. Although the conference was not aired live, a Pittsburgh television station showed the entire unedited footage later that night, to much public outrage.
Oh look, someone else is trying to make their ad look like a Windows dialog box.
Ugh, don't remind me. I worked IS at my last job, and I lost count of the number of times someone called and reported a "problem" because of one of those ads.
Them: My computer says my modem isn't fast enough. Me:You don't have a modem. Them:Then why do I have this error message?
There was one secretary whom I just could not make understand that it was just an ad. (Forgive me; the Grammar Fairy obviously hasn't been visiting me lately.)
So far, no one has brought this up in this thread, although a lot of people have kind of circled the mark. The Star Wars FORCE is not as close to the Western view of God as people seem to think. It is, however, pretty much equivalent to the Eastern concept of the Tao (procounced "dough", not "tau").
Lucas was and is fascinated by Asian culture, and Japanese culture in particular. Note, for instance, the design of the snowtroopers from Empire and Amidala's costuming from Phantom. However, consider something more important than any of these design issues: the lightsaber. The lightsaber duels in all the movies (or at least the first three... I'm not sure about Phantom) were performed using kenjutsu, essentially modelling the Jedi after the ancient samurai. It therefore was natural for Lucas to choose an Eastern type of mysticism as the basis of his Jedi's beliefs. (Although traditionally, I believe the samurai were more Buddhist than they were Taoist, but I could be wrong.)
Depends. For many, if not most, instances, yes. However, let me describe a situation in which the opposite is true.
During the holidays, when I go to visit my family, I like to bring along something to entertain me on the plane. (Or when everyone's changing diapers or clothes shopping, etc.) Originally, I'd try bringing a few paperback books. A little bit bulky when stuffed in my laptop case, but reasonable.
Then came books on CD. I own three of O'Reilly's "CD Bookshelf" series, plus "Design Patters CD" and "Effective C++ CD". (Yes, I find these entertaining reading. Deal with it.) Wow! When I total it up, that's the equivalent of 21 physical books on 5 CD's. That's an incredible weight/bulk savings.
The kicker, though, is that they don't need to stay on the CD... I very easily copied them to my laptop's hard drive. (I think I'm violating a couple of licenses, but that's moot.) Now I have no CD's at all! Plus now I've supplemented it with some HTML Gnu docs and a big chunk of Project Gutenberg's archives. That's hundreds of books with no increase in bulk at all.
In this instance, the electronic texts are far more portable than physical books.
E-books will supplement paper books in the Western world, but they will never replace them.
I think this is the most accurate statement I've seen in this entire thread.
I think you make some interesting and accurate points. But I saw something last week that would have convinced me in the utter ubiquity of the Internet, if I hadn't been already.
The new Pennsylvania license plates advertise the state's website (www.state.pa.us). License plates!
If they're putting URLs on license plates now, I have to believe that most people know how to venture beyond the confines of AOL.
Slashdot Mirror
Me and my GNU proogies were down at the milk bar listening to Ludwig Van, when I saw source code in my head, turning all blood-red, real horrorshow-like...
Ugh. That's terrible. Forget it.
http://www.gnu.org/directory/calc.html
Calc is written in elisp and runs in a pair of frames within emacs. It works really, really well. If you have gnuplot installed on your system, it'll even plot graphs for you.
Well, emacs plays games, how about that? In fact, I keep telling people but no one ever listens: emacs does everything. If I get bored at work, sometimes I'll pop up an emacs and M-x mpuz. There's also tetris, blackbox, gomoku, doctor...
A couple of weeks ago, I managed to completely destroy X on my home PC. I browsed the Web using emacs until I could get X back up.
Last week, I was talking to a co-worker. I mentioned, "I'm forgetting my calculus, I tried to integrate such-and-such, and I couldn't do it. Luckily for me, emacs does symbolic mathematics." His jaw dropped open. (He does tech support for my company's symbolic math package.)
Emacs does everything.
Find a copy of Fractal Image Compression by Michael Barnsley et al. Barnsley describes a method of fitting a fractal to an existing bitmap and reducing the fractal to its generating equation. It's a lossy method of compression, but it produces tiny files (for some images). Barnsley started (or joined, I'm not sure) a company, Iterated Systems, that tried to make money producing these files but it didn't work out for whatever reason.
Would you please produce a quote from the offer confirming this? I don't see anything of the sort on the page, and I'm curious as to what you're seeing.
Hmm... yeah, that's just sensible enough to pass the grandma test. Thanks.
I agree with your sentiment, although not your intensity. I save my vitriolic hatred for worthier causes... e.g. visiting sports teams.
When I'm at work, I call myself a software engineer because that's what the employment agreement I signed calls me. I personally don't care for the term. When I'm not at work, I call myself a "programmer" or a "geek", depending on the audience. (Or for the grandparents, I "do computers".*) I toyed with "software developer" for a while, but I didn't like ring of it.
Of course, two jobs ago, I was referred to as (and my business cards said) "The Computer Guy". I really loved that title.
* Over Easter, my grandmother kept asking me questions about programming. "How do you know what to tell the computer?" Can anyone come up with a good answer, because that stumped me.
Well now, that depends.
I use junkbuster to block most ads. The reason for this is simple: I'd prefer not to see them. Why? Because they don't interest me. And that's the key point right there. They don't interest me. It doesn't take a lot of logic to deduce that, even if I weren't blocking them, I sure wouldn't be clicking on them. After all, they don't interest me.
It just so happens that set up junkbuster to let Slashdot's ads through. Why? It's not that I'm trying to be a good citizen. It's because they interest me. I want to see what TMBG's up to. I want to see what ThinkGeek has new this week. Not only do I view these ads, but I click on them. Because they interest me.
Now, with that said, I produce the final piece of the puzzle: advertisers generally pay by the click, not the view. If I don't click on an ad, it's irrelevent whether or not I viewed it. Therefore, if I screen out all ads that I wouldn't have clicked on anyway, no one gets hurt. I view ads that interest me, and click on them. I block ads that don't interest me, and don't click on them. I win, Slashdot wins, the advertiser wins.
Simple as that.
(To Whom It May Concern: Yes, I know my grammar is crappy. Who cares?)
Or dogs that have bees in their mouths, so that when they bark they spit bees trained to seek di-nitro toluene at you. Yeah, that's the ticket.
You are correct in stating that the order doesn't matter. However, the outcomes that you are listing are not equally probable.
The rest of this post is left as an exercise to the reader.
Well, that's a matter of some debate amongst the posters here, but I'm going to go out on a limb and suggest:
C) The Copyright Holder
In many cases, this is going to be A) The Record Company, but there are some savvy B) Artists who have held on to their own copyright, not to mention all the little independent bands who haven't yet had a chance to sign away their copyright.
I had CVS Gnomes once. Noisy little critters, too. They kept clamoring on and on about "underpants" and "big profits". I finally managed to lure them away with a 3-pack of cotton briefs.
Say I view a web site but simply ignore the ads. Is that acceptible behavior? If so, how is it different from simply blocking the ads? If I load but ignore the ads, I am still "mooching off the click-throughs" of other readers. Both actions are morally equivalent.
It's the same as when I'm watching a show on television and see an ad for McDonald's, but don't immediately rush out and buy a Big Mac. I'm enjoying the program which is supported by other people who do in fact patronize McDonald's, and I don't feel the least bit guilty.
They won't. Advertising isn't an all-or-nothing enterprise; it's based on statistics. Advertisers plan on having a certain percentage of a certain demographic purchasing a certain amount of a certain product. They know that not everyone will respond; some people get their entertainment (or web site, or whatever) gratis. Advertisers know this and plan for it accordingly. Any advertiser who plans for 100% response won't last long in the industry.
This statement is so utterly ridiculous that I don't know where to begin.
Perhaps some commercial content would dry up. (Briefly... read my next paragraph.) But you're buying into the current perception of the Web as a giant shopping mall or catalog. But it's so much more than that. Some sites don't depend on commercial success. University sites will survive. Science sites will survive. (I don't think I've ever seen an ad on www.nasa.gov.) Personal sites will survive. (I myself host a comparitive review of Medieval European calligraphy on my site. When I started, there was nothing on the Web similar to it. Yet I've never made $0.10 off it. There's lots of personal pages like that.)
The other thing to remember: if advertising turns out to be a failure, people will find another way to make money off the Web. It's that simple. I don't know how; I'm not a prognosticator. But I know that if money can possibly be made, someone will find a way to do it. Commercial sites might go away briefly, but I guarantee that they'd return, soon, and with a vengeance.
Some people use ad-blocking software. If I were you, I wouldn't let that keep me awake at night.
Heh. My former roommate once threatened the phone company that he was going to cancel our service and start using Pony Express if they didn't stop telespamming us during dinner. It worked, too.
And let's not forget the often overlooked Who Framed Roger Rabbit?. (Of course, Roger wasn't computer generated. At least, I don't think he was.)
I use my AOL CD's as Christmas tree ornaments. I think the smaller size ones will look even better.
Of course, I'm still sad they stopped sending out floppies. I had to go to the store a couple of months ago to buy a box of 3.5"-ers. First time in 6 or 7 years that I've actually had to purchase them.
Of course.
Do a Google search for R. Budd Dwyer. Short story: Dwyer was the Pennsylvania State Treasurer in the 80s. While awaiting sentencing for various corruption charges, he called a press conference, at which he shot and killed himself. Although the conference was not aired live, a Pittsburgh television station showed the entire unedited footage later that night, to much public outrage.
Slippery slope, man.
Whoops! I forgot to read all the replies before posting. Sorry, fmaxwell.
Ugh, don't remind me. I worked IS at my last job, and I lost count of the number of times someone called and reported a "problem" because of one of those ads.
Them: My computer says my modem isn't fast enough.
Me:You don't have a modem.
Them:Then why do I have this error message?
There was one secretary whom I just could not make understand that it was just an ad. (Forgive me; the Grammar Fairy obviously hasn't been visiting me lately.)
So far, no one has brought this up in this thread, although a lot of people have kind of circled the mark. The Star Wars FORCE is not as close to the Western view of God as people seem to think. It is, however, pretty much equivalent to the Eastern concept of the Tao (procounced "dough", not "tau").
Lucas was and is fascinated by Asian culture, and Japanese culture in particular. Note, for instance, the design of the snowtroopers from Empire and Amidala's costuming from Phantom. However, consider something more important than any of these design issues: the lightsaber. The lightsaber duels in all the movies (or at least the first three... I'm not sure about Phantom) were performed using kenjutsu, essentially modelling the Jedi after the ancient samurai. It therefore was natural for Lucas to choose an Eastern type of mysticism as the basis of his Jedi's beliefs. (Although traditionally, I believe the samurai were more Buddhist than they were Taoist, but I could be wrong.)
Hey! I may be fat, murderous, and uneducated, but... uh... but at least I'm cool. My mom says so.
Depends. For many, if not most, instances, yes. However, let me describe a situation in which the opposite is true.
During the holidays, when I go to visit my family, I like to bring along something to entertain me on the plane. (Or when everyone's changing diapers or clothes shopping, etc.) Originally, I'd try bringing a few paperback books. A little bit bulky when stuffed in my laptop case, but reasonable.
Then came books on CD. I own three of O'Reilly's "CD Bookshelf" series, plus "Design Patters CD" and "Effective C++ CD". (Yes, I find these entertaining reading. Deal with it.) Wow! When I total it up, that's the equivalent of 21 physical books on 5 CD's. That's an incredible weight/bulk savings.
The kicker, though, is that they don't need to stay on the CD... I very easily copied them to my laptop's hard drive. (I think I'm violating a couple of licenses, but that's moot.) Now I have no CD's at all! Plus now I've supplemented it with some HTML Gnu docs and a big chunk of Project Gutenberg's archives. That's hundreds of books with no increase in bulk at all.
In this instance, the electronic texts are far more portable than physical books.
I think this is the most accurate statement I've seen in this entire thread.
I think you make some interesting and accurate points. But I saw something last week that would have convinced me in the utter ubiquity of the Internet, if I hadn't been already.
The new Pennsylvania license plates advertise the state's website (www.state.pa.us). License plates!
If they're putting URLs on license plates now, I have to believe that most people know how to venture beyond the confines of AOL.
Well now, that depends on the velocity of the thumbtack, doesn't it? (Hmm... I think I have a new project this weekend.)