Actually, I don't know if you've ever met Richard Stallman (or at least have been to one of his many lectures or presentations throughout the world), he is a pretty funny guy who appears to have a good sense of humour and is not some kind of egotistical religious cult figure (unless he is in his Church of Emacs mode) like many people like to depict him as. Sure, he is extreme, but history has shown him to be correct quite a lot as well.
Some languages already encourage alternate markup styles. For example, literate programming in Haskell uses LaTeX-formatted source files. Some Haskell compilers also support unicode syntax so you can do "" instead of "->".
On the other hand, there is some evidence that political parties are actually getting weaker. For example, if you look at the trends for the past half-century you'd notice that voter identifcation with parties has been going down, and that more and more people are declaring themselves independent. There has also been some legislation to curb the power of parties such as the McCain-Feingold Act, which bans soft money contributions to parties (basically unlimited grassroots contributions). So political parties may not be the whole picture in the problem. You've got to consider the deadlocks that interest groups cause too (e.g. corn subsidies, NRA, air travel, etc.).
I don't know about Nintendo, but the American release of Final Fantasy IV (by Squaresoft for the SNES) was actually an "easy version" for the US market. Final Fantasy VIII (for the PSX) also had some modifications in the US market version to be easier (specifically, some extra draw opportunities were added to the final dungeon IIRC).
Not all "FUD" (waaay (over/mis)used on this site) is the same "FUD". Have you looked at the facts behind this campaign? Are they false? If the FSF doesn't campaign against the kind of anti-consumer thinking that Vista represents, what else would they do? The movement and ideas behind the FSF predate Microsoft's monoculture.
BTW: Is there an ideological organization that *doesn't* have an axe to grind?
I found it strange that the review concluded by comparing the new battle system to traditional turn-based RPG gameplay (i.e. interesting vs. tedious). When I played through the game (months ago with the Japanese version), I found the real-time battle system was far more tedious than the traditional turn-based stuff. The main reason is the great increase in micromanagement. FFXII has relatively tough bosses (compared to the other playstation FFs), so there's a lot of micromanagement involved in healing and reviving characters. Gambits do help manage that aspect of the game, but I still found the micromanagement to be a boring chore. Plus, since characters will go about continuing their past actions (or Gambit actions) automatically, there are long periods of detachment from the battle (aside from the previously mentioned micromanagement). This made battles really boring for me, as I was either staring at battle menus or bored out of my mind while the characters attacked.
Plus, I found the lack of any real character development in FFXII to be extremely distressing. What's the point of an RPG that plays like a movie if the characters and plot are boring? The ending to the game was so badly executed that I was left wondering who they'd pull out for a final boss until the ending cutscene started rolling (my reaction was: "Huh? You're kidding..."). In my opinion, FFX was leaps and bounds better than FFXII (for the record, my favorite was FFVIII).
If you have some time, go drop a note to HBO at their feedback site. Make it polite and show that you appreciate HBO's support of US democracy. We really need more skepticism and scrutiny in the mass media.
... that myspace costs zilch and has little barrier to entry. Zune costs $249.99 and definitely isn't as "cool" as an ipod (there's your social barrier). This article is pure FUD.
Another idea for improving the quality of collaborative resources has been to have experts verify an article before publication. Why not take this idea and mix it with user reputation? Have some experts in specific fields rank user's contributions to the Wikipedia, and then have karma/reputation rise for that user. There could even be different reputation scales for different areas of expertise, so you might have users who are marked to make good contributions to physics articles, but are untrustable on political articles.
This might prevent some of the mob-think moderation of other "democratic" ranking systems (e.g. digg).
Speaking of which, I kinda wish Redhat would come out and buy out Borland's developer tools group. Since Redhat contributes a lot to GCC, hiring some compiler engineers might make sense in their business scheme too. It'd be really cool if Redhat could put their weight behind a robust rapid development platform for Linux too (Delphi for Linux?).
The issue isn't quite that simple. Like other posters have pointed out, it's not a matter of the GPLv3 being less free. It's just that the GPL and the FSF want to protect the consumers not necessarily the producers (e.g. hardware companies). That's why the GPLv3 prohibits the use of DRM to restrict the consumer's rights.
I can't agree more. I've been very disappointed at their recent releases (I've fallen back to replaying Chrono Trigger...). Even FFXII, their latest single player game, lacks the fun gameplay that the old releases in the franchise had. OTOH, FFXII had some great dialogue (Balthier FTW) and cutscenes, but that doesn't make a game great as opposed to merely good.
I've been reading Reddit a lot lately. I find that Reddit has a good article flow and also has much better discussions than Digg. In particular, I like reading the programming subreddit on Reddit. It's a lot slower than the main page, but faster than developers.slashdot.com.
I took the AP Computer Science AB exam in May. There's nothing on the test that depends on learning how to use javac, jar files, etc. The test focuses on abstract concepts and ideas (e.g. recursion, data structures, big-O notation), and not implementation details. Even on the writing portion of the test (which involves implementing methods for some provided classes) there was no need to know anything about the compiler or underlying environment.
If the goal of a course is to teach students to do well on an AP CS test, then it's undesirable to spend extra time teaching students the details of software development. The course should instead spend more time teaching OO design, data structures and other abstract ideas.
I guess I wasn't too clear in my post. I was trying to say that kids often try to tackle huge ideas because they're inspired by the software they use (which are mostly all huge projects). This discourages them from continuing.
There are tons of cool and aproachable pieces of software kids could write...everything from a C program that displays stuff on a LCD plugged in your PC's serial port, to a web page that uses Googles Mapping API stuff to find your friends houses.
Good point, but I also think that it is pretty hard for a kid to discover these approachable projects and start working on them without a lot of help. Most classes and textbooks don't seem to really help in this regard either.
I think part of the reason kids don't program is because programming, especially for large projects, is very hard and complex to tackle. Take, for example, your average computer game from 2006. Most of them will have 3d graphics, physics engines, fancy shaders or whatever new 3d card feature is popular at the moment. Making a modern computer game is extremely hard and requires advanced programming and math (e.g. linear algebra) to program.
Now, what does that have to do with being motivated to program? Well, kids are inspired by the software they use and play with. While kids play video games they eventually decide they want to go off and make their own games. However, they can be discouraged by the immense complexity and difficulty in accomplishing that task.
This applies to non-game software too. A kid might look at some cool open source software, say Firefox, and want to start making his own web browser. Or maybe he'll be fascinated by editors and want to make his own text editor. But where should he start?
I've been programming since I was ten, and even I stumble on these issues. There are lots of cool projects I have in mind, but I don't know where to start. I've found that the only way to get around this is to pick up experience building small programs and reading good textbooks (I like Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs by Abelson and Sussman and Software Tools by Kernighan), but that's hard for an impatient teenager who wants to get a lot done.
If you put a million monkeys banging on a million type writers you will eventually end up with the works of Shakespeare. If you put a million intelligent people trying to solve unsolved math problems they will have a solution if one exists....eventually
The problem isn't if a million people could come up with the correct answer. It is if a million people could recognize that they have the right answer.
We've already had plenty of "lame" tags on the stupid articles. It's time we started tagging stuff "awesome". If anything, the rovers most definitely deserve it for their progress.
Slashdot Mirror
Actually, I don't know if you've ever met Richard Stallman (or at least have been to one of his many lectures or presentations throughout the world), he is a pretty funny guy who appears to have a good sense of humour and is not some kind of egotistical religious cult figure (unless he is in his Church of Emacs mode) like many people like to depict him as. Sure, he is extreme, but history has shown him to be correct quite a lot as well.
Some languages already encourage alternate markup styles. For example, literate programming in Haskell uses LaTeX-formatted source files. Some Haskell compilers also support unicode syntax so you can do "" instead of "->".
On the other hand, there is some evidence that political parties are actually getting weaker. For example, if you look at the trends for the past half-century you'd notice that voter identifcation with parties has been going down, and that more and more people are declaring themselves independent. There has also been some legislation to curb the power of parties such as the McCain-Feingold Act, which bans soft money contributions to parties (basically unlimited grassroots contributions). So political parties may not be the whole picture in the problem. You've got to consider the deadlocks that interest groups cause too (e.g. corn subsidies, NRA, air travel, etc.).
I don't know about Nintendo, but the American release of Final Fantasy IV (by Squaresoft for the SNES) was actually an "easy version" for the US market. Final Fantasy VIII (for the PSX) also had some modifications in the US market version to be easier (specifically, some extra draw opportunities were added to the final dungeon IIRC).
Not all "FUD" (waaay (over/mis)used on this site) is the same "FUD". Have you looked at the facts behind this campaign? Are they false? If the FSF doesn't campaign against the kind of anti-consumer thinking that Vista represents, what else would they do? The movement and ideas behind the FSF predate Microsoft's monoculture. BTW: Is there an ideological organization that *doesn't* have an axe to grind?
That's the purpose behind the GNU project. Y'know, the GNU in GNU Network Object Model Environment? The FSF's goal is far broader than that.
I found it strange that the review concluded by comparing the new battle system to traditional turn-based RPG gameplay (i.e. interesting vs. tedious). When I played through the game (months ago with the Japanese version), I found the real-time battle system was far more tedious than the traditional turn-based stuff. The main reason is the great increase in micromanagement. FFXII has relatively tough bosses (compared to the other playstation FFs), so there's a lot of micromanagement involved in healing and reviving characters. Gambits do help manage that aspect of the game, but I still found the micromanagement to be a boring chore. Plus, since characters will go about continuing their past actions (or Gambit actions) automatically, there are long periods of detachment from the battle (aside from the previously mentioned micromanagement). This made battles really boring for me, as I was either staring at battle menus or bored out of my mind while the characters attacked.
Plus, I found the lack of any real character development in FFXII to be extremely distressing. What's the point of an RPG that plays like a movie if the characters and plot are boring? The ending to the game was so badly executed that I was left wondering who they'd pull out for a final boss until the ending cutscene started rolling (my reaction was: "Huh? You're kidding..."). In my opinion, FFX was leaps and bounds better than FFXII (for the record, my favorite was FFVIII).
If you have some time, go drop a note to HBO at their feedback site. Make it polite and show that you appreciate HBO's support of US democracy. We really need more skepticism and scrutiny in the mass media.
... that myspace costs zilch and has little barrier to entry. Zune costs $249.99 and definitely isn't as "cool" as an ipod (there's your social barrier). This article is pure FUD.
Another idea for improving the quality of collaborative resources has been to have experts verify an article before publication. Why not take this idea and mix it with user reputation? Have some experts in specific fields rank user's contributions to the Wikipedia, and then have karma/reputation rise for that user. There could even be different reputation scales for different areas of expertise, so you might have users who are marked to make good contributions to physics articles, but are untrustable on political articles. This might prevent some of the mob-think moderation of other "democratic" ranking systems (e.g. digg).
Speaking of which, I kinda wish Redhat would come out and buy out Borland's developer tools group. Since Redhat contributes a lot to GCC, hiring some compiler engineers might make sense in their business scheme too. It'd be really cool if Redhat could put their weight behind a robust rapid development platform for Linux too (Delphi for Linux?).
- The cool thing I've noticed about Reddit is it has some of the democratic, fast-paced nature of Digg with a *much* more intelligent community.
- Reddit also has a much cleaner layout than Digg and is more useable.
- And of course, Reddit has none of that admin censorship that Digg has been bitched at about recently.
So try Reddit out if you think Digg is lame andThe issue isn't quite that simple. Like other posters have pointed out, it's not a matter of the GPLv3 being less free. It's just that the GPL and the FSF want to protect the consumers not necessarily the producers (e.g. hardware companies). That's why the GPLv3 prohibits the use of DRM to restrict the consumer's rights.
I can't agree more. I've been very disappointed at their recent releases (I've fallen back to replaying Chrono Trigger...). Even FFXII, their latest single player game, lacks the fun gameplay that the old releases in the franchise had. OTOH, FFXII had some great dialogue (Balthier FTW) and cutscenes, but that doesn't make a game great as opposed to merely good.
I've been reading Reddit a lot lately. I find that Reddit has a good article flow and also has much better discussions than Digg. In particular, I like reading the programming subreddit on Reddit. It's a lot slower than the main page, but faster than developers.slashdot.com.
I took the AP Computer Science AB exam in May. There's nothing on the test that depends on learning how to use javac, jar files, etc. The test focuses on abstract concepts and ideas (e.g. recursion, data structures, big-O notation), and not implementation details. Even on the writing portion of the test (which involves implementing methods for some provided classes) there was no need to know anything about the compiler or underlying environment. If the goal of a course is to teach students to do well on an AP CS test, then it's undesirable to spend extra time teaching students the details of software development. The course should instead spend more time teaching OO design, data structures and other abstract ideas.
I've been looking everywhere for actual media for the games. Thanks.
I guess I wasn't too clear in my post. I was trying to say that kids often try to tackle huge ideas because they're inspired by the software they use (which are mostly all huge projects). This discourages them from continuing.
There are tons of cool and aproachable pieces of software kids could write...everything from a C program that displays stuff on a LCD plugged in your PC's serial port, to a web page that uses Googles Mapping API stuff to find your friends houses.
Good point, but I also think that it is pretty hard for a kid to discover these approachable projects and start working on them without a lot of help. Most classes and textbooks don't seem to really help in this regard either.
I think part of the reason kids don't program is because programming, especially for large projects, is very hard and complex to tackle. Take, for example, your average computer game from 2006. Most of them will have 3d graphics, physics engines, fancy shaders or whatever new 3d card feature is popular at the moment. Making a modern computer game is extremely hard and requires advanced programming and math (e.g. linear algebra) to program.
Now, what does that have to do with being motivated to program? Well, kids are inspired by the software they use and play with. While kids play video games they eventually decide they want to go off and make their own games. However, they can be discouraged by the immense complexity and difficulty in accomplishing that task.
This applies to non-game software too. A kid might look at some cool open source software, say Firefox, and want to start making his own web browser. Or maybe he'll be fascinated by editors and want to make his own text editor. But where should he start?
I've been programming since I was ten, and even I stumble on these issues. There are lots of cool projects I have in mind, but I don't know where to start. I've found that the only way to get around this is to pick up experience building small programs and reading good textbooks (I like Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs by Abelson and Sussman and Software Tools by Kernighan), but that's hard for an impatient teenager who wants to get a lot done.
Yeah, the FSOpen project is amazing. You can find out more about it here:
FSOpen forum
SCP Home Page
Obligatory screenies thread
If you put a million monkeys banging on a million type writers you will eventually end up with the works of Shakespeare. If you put a million intelligent people trying to solve unsolved math problems they will have a solution if one exists. ...eventually
The problem isn't if a million people could come up with the correct answer. It is if a million people could recognize that they have the right answer.
We've already had plenty of "lame" tags on the stupid articles. It's time we started tagging stuff "awesome". If anything, the rovers most definitely deserve it for their progress.
Wow, April Fools sure is going to make metamoderators' jobs fun.