Sure, but only if you can guarantee that those free-range humans didn't eat McDonald's food every week and inject themselves with questionable pharmaceuticals. If you had some pen-raised humans (and not our prisons, they have high incidence of AIDS and hard drug use) then that would be OK.
Carmack could have been working for NASA or the US military, but instead he simply sits around coding violent computer games.... he is single-handedly causing the deaths of many young men and women.
What exactly do you think the U.S. military does? It does nothing better than causing the deaths of many young men and women (it is demonstrably much better at killing than nation-building). The targets might be young men and women you want killed, but for someone with a holier than thou attitude, how is this morally defensible? Is your basis for these killings being justifiable: racist, nationalist, jihadist? Perhaps you should have suggested that Carmack work for NASA or in medical research.
One day I might learn C, but I've been scared off high level languages for good.
Most C programmers only call it a 'high level language' with their tongues planted firmly in their cheeks. Using lots of raw pointers and OS system calls makes real C pretty low-level. I am not saying that it's very close to assembly; the cpu details are mostly abstracted away.
Actually, NetBeans lets you drop controls on a form from a palette, right-click, choose 'events', and for any event, Netbeans will write a stub function and the event handler to run that stub function.
More importantly, students should probably not be taught programming by starting with GUIs at all. The inversion of control and event handling gets in the way of learning simple programming.
Noooo! Why would anyone teach students using Pascal instead C/C++. Does anyone think the BEGIN/END is really more straightforward than {/}? As students, they are going to have to *learn* things when they program, and curly-braces are the least of it.
Is 'record' and clearer than 'struct'?
If you don't want the students to have to deal with memory management, then use a garbage collection library with your C compiler. If you want to CYA, tell them that they are using a GC library. If you teach them Pascal, and don't explain that Pascal does GC, then they will be hosed when they get to a C/C++ course and don't understand why they have to manage memory.
Oh crap! The US has already been hit with this weapon and we're just too stupid to realize it (fortunately I was wearing my tinfoil hat, so I am able to point-out the attack.)
For further proof that tinfoil protects against the stupid-bomb, I used two of the three, err...well now all three forms of to,too,two in this article without screwing them up.
I don't think the problem is our lack of responsibility. We (the community) need to understand that *every* user contributes to the success of Linux. By donating their tiny portion of mindshare, those users convince commercial hardware and software companies that Linux is worth supporting. Their existence convinces web designers that there is life beyond Windows, and that sites should work with 'alternate' browsers (and not rely on Macromedia crap).
If you read community writings, you will hear that the 'Tragedy of the Commons' doesn't apply to OSS because our resource is not constrained. What needs to be stressed is that 'non-contributing' users really are contributing something valuable.
i wonder what the survival value of a sense of humor is?
The survival value of a sense of humor is 'not much', but the good news is that such unfunny people are unlikely to ever mate. If it is true that women want someone who will make them laugh, then Natural Selection should make our species more funny over the coming generations. Eventually even PHBs and marketing-types will grasp Dilbert (and boy will they be pissed when they do!)
Until the MotP merchandising machine gets running, parents will be buying all of the penguin stickers and stuffed penguin inaction-figures at ThingGeek.com If you were planning to place an order, you had better do it soon.
If the package of a design tool doesn't look good, what does that say about the tool?
It says that your software was created by programmers, working for a software company. For a truly horrible thought-exercise, try to image a team of graphic designers creating software. It would probably work as badly as Corel's box looked. Actually that's being generous, as there is a 99.9% chance that it would never 'work' at all.
As Neal Stephenson pointed-out in In the Beginning was the Command-Line, because M$ refuses to release their applications for other OSes, every time their OS division loses a sale, their application division loses a sale. He said it much better of course, and you can read the whole essay online at http://www.cryptonomicon.com/beginning.html
Forcing someone to lower their prices under threat of theft if they don't is a vioation of indivdual rights./.ers love to bitch about their rights
But that is a perfect example of a free market. If only the damn anti-market gubmint would stop interfering (it is the government that enforces the copyright laws), then everything would find equilibrium. If Free Trade, free market proponents want to bitch about government regulation, government interference, coerced taxation, etc., then they should not go crawling to the government demanding that 'intellectual property' 'thieves' be punished.
You need to update your tired zealot rhetoric for the modern era.
I've worked both (several actually) sides of the street: vb (3,4,5), vc++ (2,6), LAMP, LAPP, C++ (win32, linux, solaris), python, etc. Unix as an OS and development environment was created by programmers, for programmers. As a result, it is a fantastic development platform. Windows was created by marketers for grandmothers.
Even today, with.Net, M$ is still beating the old "non-developers can create programs" drum (no BS, I had a M$ trainer come to my company and explain how our business analysts (not software analysts) would be using Visual Studio.Net to create SOA-components). M$ strives to allow non-programmers to create crap, bad programmers to create near-crap, and really good programmers? We arent't their target market.
Just because someone charges a lot for something doesn't mean that they are price-gouging.
Like it or not, most of us have a built-in fairness meter. When someone says that a drug company sells a pill for $45 that costs them $0.27 cents to manufacture, the outrage is automatic. Then comes the reasonable explanation that research costs have to be re-couped, and the anger subsides (people can be surprisingly reasonable by default). Then, when you find out that Pfizer spent $7billion on research last year, and netted a profit of $48billion, the research argument tends to go out the window. We know what price gouging looks like when we see it.
Slashdot Mirror
Since you didn't mention it, here's the obligatory Bismark quote: People sleep better at night not knowing how laws and sausages are made.
Sure, but only if you can guarantee that those free-range humans didn't eat McDonald's food every week and inject themselves with questionable pharmaceuticals. If you had some pen-raised humans (and not our prisons, they have high incidence of AIDS and hard drug use) then that would be OK.
We'll spit nails to make sure that English is the only official language, but we won't lift a finger to teacher gooder English.
pimposity
What exactly do you think the U.S. military does? It does nothing better than causing the deaths of many young men and women (it is demonstrably much better at killing than nation-building). The targets might be young men and women you want killed, but for someone with a holier than thou attitude, how is this morally defensible? Is your basis for these killings being justifiable: racist, nationalist, jihadist? Perhaps you should have suggested that Carmack work for NASA or in medical research.
Most C programmers only call it a 'high level language' with their tongues planted firmly in their cheeks. Using lots of raw pointers and OS system calls makes real C pretty low-level. I am not saying that it's very close to assembly; the cpu details are mostly abstracted away.
More importantly, students should probably not be taught programming by starting with GUIs at all. The inversion of control and event handling gets in the way of learning simple programming.
Noooo! Why would anyone teach students using Pascal instead C/C++. Does anyone think the BEGIN/END is really more straightforward than {/}? As students, they are going to have to *learn* things when they program, and curly-braces are the least of it.
Is 'record' and clearer than 'struct'?
If you don't want the students to have to deal with memory management, then use a garbage collection library with your C compiler. If you want to CYA, tell them that they are using a GC library. If you teach them Pascal, and don't explain that Pascal does GC, then they will be hosed when they get to a C/C++ course and don't understand why they have to manage memory.
Dupes: you liked it the first time; what's the problem?
For further proof that tinfoil protects against the stupid-bomb, I used two of the three, err...well now all three forms of to,too,two in this article without screwing them up.
Because the same rocket technology (and sometimes the same rocket series) that boosts a satellite into orbit can boost a human into orbit.
I don't think the problem is our lack of responsibility. We (the community) need to understand that *every* user contributes to the success of Linux. By donating their tiny portion of mindshare, those users convince commercial hardware and software companies that Linux is worth supporting. Their existence convinces web designers that there is life beyond Windows, and that sites should work with 'alternate' browsers (and not rely on Macromedia crap).
If you read community writings, you will hear that the 'Tragedy of the Commons' doesn't apply to OSS because our resource is not constrained. What needs to be stressed is that 'non-contributing' users really are contributing something valuable.
The survival value of a sense of humor is 'not much', but the good news is that such unfunny people are unlikely to ever mate. If it is true that women want someone who will make them laugh, then Natural Selection should make our species more funny over the coming generations. Eventually even PHBs and marketing-types will grasp Dilbert (and boy will they be pissed when they do!)
Hey, I was monogamous for a year. However, my wife of seven years doesn't think that one year constitutes 'real monogamy', sheesh.
Until the MotP merchandising machine gets running, parents will be buying all of the penguin stickers and stuffed penguin inaction-figures at ThingGeek.com If you were planning to place an order, you had better do it soon.
WTF? You are only going to see one pill in Morpheus' hand, and it is going to be 3 inches in front of your face. What does he mean 'choose'?
It says that your software was created by programmers, working for a software company. For a truly horrible thought-exercise, try to image a team of graphic designers creating software. It would probably work as badly as Corel's box looked. Actually that's being generous, as there is a 99.9% chance that it would never 'work' at all.
No, Yum is an RPM package manager. Totally different.
As Neal Stephenson pointed-out in In the Beginning was the Command-Line, because M$ refuses to release their applications for other OSes, every time their OS division loses a sale, their application division loses a sale. He said it much better of course, and you can read the whole essay online at http://www.cryptonomicon.com/beginning.html
I don't think *any* Windows provides even the most basic functionality (but most of my friends (geeks) don't fall into the 'many users' pool).
But that is a perfect example of a free market. If only the damn anti-market gubmint would stop interfering (it is the government that enforces the copyright laws), then everything would find equilibrium. If Free Trade, free market proponents want to bitch about government regulation, government interference, coerced taxation, etc., then they should not go crawling to the government demanding that 'intellectual property' 'thieves' be punished.
I've worked both (several actually) sides of the street: vb (3,4,5), vc++ (2,6), LAMP, LAPP, C++ (win32, linux, solaris), python, etc. Unix as an OS and development environment was created by programmers, for programmers. As a result, it is a fantastic development platform. Windows was created by marketers for grandmothers.
Even today, with .Net, M$ is still beating the old "non-developers can create programs" drum (no BS, I had a M$ trainer come to my company and explain how our business analysts (not software analysts) would be using Visual Studio .Net to create SOA-components). M$ strives to allow non-programmers to create crap, bad programmers to create near-crap, and really good programmers? We arent't their target market.
And 5 years ago it was all going to be 'Push'.
Like it or not, most of us have a built-in fairness meter. When someone says that a drug company sells a pill for $45 that costs them $0.27 cents to manufacture, the outrage is automatic. Then comes the reasonable explanation that research costs have to be re-couped, and the anger subsides (people can be surprisingly reasonable by default). Then, when you find out that Pfizer spent $7billion on research last year, and netted a profit of $48billion, the research argument tends to go out the window. We know what price gouging looks like when we see it.