I have now copyrighted the word 'fuck', and would like to offer it's use to the world for the low, low price of $0.05 USD. Users may buy a volume license of 30 uses for a dollar. Sysadmins may obtain an unlimited license for $20/year.
Think about the Monty Hall paradox. It's a loose comparison, but work with me. If your customers are just comparing between Ford and Chevy, and your products are equal, you get 50% of the market, all things equal. If you introduce a new brand, let's call it GMC, some of the customers who might have chosen Ford might choose GMC. Since all you have to change is the 1 dollar name plate, it's a good deal.
This is how GM has run their business for 75 years.
Citation, please. I'd like to see some statistics that justify the hue and cry. While abusing children is certainly vile, if it's rare enough, it doesn't justify repressing the rest of us NO MATTER HOW VILE WE THINK IT IS.
But which ones should we listen to? I'm really interested in what both Noam Chomsky and William F Buckley have to say, and much less so to some random UC Berkeley hippy or right wing logger type.
I think the notion of a moderated, reputation based opinion pool is brilliant.
The used market is not the money factory you claim.
Have you looked at what GameStop's stock has done recently? The stock market thinks Game Stop is a fucking gold mine. Disclosure: I own, and have profited handsomely from Gamestop's stock. If you buy stock, look into GME.
I have come to doubt this phenomenon. I have a 2006 scion xB, that cost me $16,000. I am looking for a second one right now, and Craigslist shows them going for $13,000. That's about 10% depreciation per year, including driving wear. Now, this is an economy car, so I realize that I'm looking for an in-demand item, but still, there doesn't seem to be much of a used car negative premium here.
I think there are cars for which the 'drive it off the lot, lose x%' is more true (Hummers, anyone?), but in general, I think it's on the order of 5-10%, not 30%.
Speaking just as a devil's advocate, not as a serious proponent of BASIC, the first thing students need to learn is the simple mechanics of expressing instructions in a text file and delivering it to an interpreter/compiler, and then causing the file to be run. Then they need to understand what a statement, constant, variable, and type is. Then they need to understand file operations, input and output. Then they need to understand how a language can limit you. [humor] BASIC is certainly adequate for this.
That said, Python or Perl would be my first choice for an intro language out of the readily available options these days. Or C, if I thought the kids were sharp.
What if someone wants to be a CS minor? Should they be required to have existing programming knowledge?
I don't know about 'should', but I suspect that most of the students will have some background. I have a CS Minor (economics degree). When I entered university, I already knew two variants of Basic and fortran. It's a little surprising to me that anyone entering a course program on CS wouldn't already have some exposure. That said, I think the schools could handle this with a lab section on programming basics. If someone is going to be successful in a CS program, major or minor, they should be able to pick up something like C, Python or Basic in a few hours. If they can't, that's kind of a clue to pick another major, IMO.
You're right. Grey market goods aren't a demand factor, they're part of the supply curve. They do affect equilibrium price, though, which is why the RIAA cares.
She needs to go take Economics 101 and realize that if you make something free (which is what piracy does), the demand is going to skyrocket beyond what it would normally be at any reasonable price level.
You might consider a visit there yourself. It's ignorant to say that piracy != losses. Of course it equals losses. You'd have to be fucking daft to think that -noone- who pirates would not have bought the material, had piracy not been available. Some of the users would have bought the material, some wouldn't have. In econ 101, you'd learn about a demand curve, whereby more people want a good at a lower price than a higher price, but the curves are generally found to be smooth, with a slope between 0 and 1.
What econ 101 teaches you is that a realistic estimate of the losses does not equal the retail price times the number of pirated copies.
I think 10 years is too much, for the same reason that I think non-competes need to be restricted; you shouldn't be able to ban somebody from working in an industry forever, just because they worked for one entity in the industry. But I can see two to three years easily.
While a contract is possibly overkill, a good Statement of Work is worth it's weight in, well, neutrinos, or whatever. Just the act of discussing it with your client will clear up a lot of ambiguity, that will help everyone stay happy.
The SOW should cover:
1) what you are doing for the client in terms of tasks
2) What you will deliver, and what the conditions of completeness are
3) When you will deliver it.
4) What the client needs to supply you, and when, in order for you to meet your commitments
5) what you will be paid, and by when.
6) any assumptions that you are making (client has a web server ready to receive the work, etc)
In more complicated projects, I find it's also useful to start the SOW with a background section that provides a grounding for why the work is being done, and a business objectives section to clarify what the objectives are that the client is trying to meet. Again, these help mostly in making sure that you are communicating well with your client.
Most of the people who are hesitant to use "managed code" are old codgers, elitist fruits and brainwashed newbies who have to be forced into new paradigms, instead of being genuinely interested in new trends.
As well as being too lazy to code up a relevant benchmark. For real world applications that are concerned with I/O of some sort, the language used doesn't matter near as much as the design of the data structures and the program.
If you're writing for device level/kernel/embedded stuff, C/C++ maybe makes sense. But if the OP were doing that kind of work, he'd already know what he needs. For anything else, like business or web applications, Java/Python/Ruby/Perl/C# are going to be more productive, with no practical drawbacks to speak of.
To the OP, I'd start with Java, and add a sprinkling of Python/Jython.
May I suggest that you obtain either Notepad++ or Kdevelop? Both are free, and both handle the indentation problem neatly. NetBeans will do so as well.
I don't find the indentation corrections to be any different than fixing braces/indentation in Java. Python is different if you're used to leaving sloppy brace indentation around after a paste, but otherwise, it's the exact same issue.
It's not going to win races against C, but performance is very much on a par with say Perl
I just did a performance test against Perl for a text file reformatting script I needed. This reformats one file into three other formats. I did a close to statement to statement translation, including the regexes. The python program ran in 60% of the time that the Perl program required on the same hardware. It's at least as fast as Perl, which is almost always fast enough for my needs.
I dropped Perl like a hot rock once I took up Python, and never felt that the forced indentation was anything but a highly desirable feature that eliminates an entire class of annoying compile bugs.
Slashdot Mirror
I'm thinking OJ doesn't care much, one way or another, about publicity any more.
I have now copyrighted the word 'fuck', and would like to offer it's use to the world for the low, low price of $0.05 USD. Users may buy a volume license of 30 uses for a dollar. Sysadmins may obtain an unlimited license for $20/year.
Think about the Monty Hall paradox. It's a loose comparison, but work with me. If your customers are just comparing between Ford and Chevy, and your products are equal, you get 50% of the market, all things equal. If you introduce a new brand, let's call it GMC, some of the customers who might have chosen Ford might choose GMC. Since all you have to change is the 1 dollar name plate, it's a good deal.
This is how GM has run their business for 75 years.
Child pornography is a huge problem.
Citation, please. I'd like to see some statistics that justify the hue and cry. While abusing children is certainly vile, if it's rare enough, it doesn't justify repressing the rest of us NO MATTER HOW VILE WE THINK IT IS.
Creates a new Milky Way...
Why not encourage anonymity?
Because people often act in a much less civil manner when they aren't publicly identifiable.
But which ones should we listen to? I'm really interested in what both Noam Chomsky and William F Buckley have to say, and much less so to some random UC Berkeley hippy or right wing logger type.
I think the notion of a moderated, reputation based opinion pool is brilliant.
The used market is not the money factory you claim.
Have you looked at what GameStop's stock has done recently? The stock market thinks Game Stop is a fucking gold mine. Disclosure: I own, and have profited handsomely from Gamestop's stock. If you buy stock, look into GME.
I have come to doubt this phenomenon. I have a 2006 scion xB, that cost me $16,000. I am looking for a second one right now, and Craigslist shows them going for $13,000. That's about 10% depreciation per year, including driving wear. Now, this is an economy car, so I realize that I'm looking for an in-demand item, but still, there doesn't seem to be much of a used car negative premium here.
I think there are cars for which the 'drive it off the lot, lose x%' is more true (Hummers, anyone?), but in general, I think it's on the order of 5-10%, not 30%.
In which case they'll collect the taxes due when you sell your house. You're dreaming if you think it's as easy as refusing to pay.
Speaking just as a devil's advocate, not as a serious proponent of BASIC, the first thing students need to learn is the simple mechanics of expressing instructions in a text file and delivering it to an interpreter/compiler, and then causing the file to be run. Then they need to understand what a statement, constant, variable, and type is. Then they need to understand file operations, input and output. Then they need to understand how a language can limit you. [humor] BASIC is certainly adequate for this.
That said, Python or Perl would be my first choice for an intro language out of the readily available options these days. Or C, if I thought the kids were sharp.
What if someone wants to be a CS minor? Should they be required to have existing programming knowledge?
I don't know about 'should', but I suspect that most of the students will have some background. I have a CS Minor (economics degree). When I entered university, I already knew two variants of Basic and fortran. It's a little surprising to me that anyone entering a course program on CS wouldn't already have some exposure. That said, I think the schools could handle this with a lab section on programming basics. If someone is going to be successful in a CS program, major or minor, they should be able to pick up something like C, Python or Basic in a few hours. If they can't, that's kind of a clue to pick another major, IMO.
I was considering them as strings, rather than floats. ;-)
You're right. Grey market goods aren't a demand factor, they're part of the supply curve. They do affect equilibrium price, though, which is why the RIAA cares.
She needs to go take Economics 101 and realize that if you make something free (which is what piracy does), the demand is going to skyrocket beyond what it would normally be at any reasonable price level.
You might consider a visit there yourself. It's ignorant to say that piracy != losses. Of course it equals losses. You'd have to be fucking daft to think that -noone- who pirates would not have bought the material, had piracy not been available. Some of the users would have bought the material, some wouldn't have. In econ 101, you'd learn about a demand curve, whereby more people want a good at a lower price than a higher price, but the curves are generally found to be smooth, with a slope between 0 and 1.
What econ 101 teaches you is that a realistic estimate of the losses does not equal the retail price times the number of pirated copies.
I think 10 years is too much, for the same reason that I think non-competes need to be restricted; you shouldn't be able to ban somebody from working in an industry forever, just because they worked for one entity in the industry. But I can see two to three years easily.
Missing colons and braces.
While a contract is possibly overkill, a good Statement of Work is worth it's weight in, well, neutrinos, or whatever. Just the act of discussing it with your client will clear up a lot of ambiguity, that will help everyone stay happy.
The SOW should cover:
1) what you are doing for the client in terms of tasks
2) What you will deliver, and what the conditions of completeness are
3) When you will deliver it.
4) What the client needs to supply you, and when, in order for you to meet your commitments
5) what you will be paid, and by when.
6) any assumptions that you are making (client has a web server ready to receive the work, etc)
In more complicated projects, I find it's also useful to start the SOW with a background section that provides a grounding for why the work is being done, and a business objectives section to clarify what the objectives are that the client is trying to meet. Again, these help mostly in making sure that you are communicating well with your client.
I suspect that you are referring to what we call colic.
Most of the people who are hesitant to use "managed code" are old codgers, elitist fruits and brainwashed newbies who have to be forced into new paradigms, instead of being genuinely interested in new trends.
As well as being too lazy to code up a relevant benchmark. For real world applications that are concerned with I/O of some sort, the language used doesn't matter near as much as the design of the data structures and the program.
If you're writing for device level/kernel/embedded stuff, C/C++ maybe makes sense. But if the OP were doing that kind of work, he'd already know what he needs. For anything else, like business or web applications, Java/Python/Ruby/Perl/C# are going to be more productive, with no practical drawbacks to speak of.
To the OP, I'd start with Java, and add a sprinkling of Python/Jython.
Mod +3 civil.
in a few weeks you'll forget Python's indentation conventions ever bothered you
Took me about 15 minutes.
May I suggest that you obtain either Notepad++ or Kdevelop? Both are free, and both handle the indentation problem neatly. NetBeans will do so as well.
I don't find the indentation corrections to be any different than fixing braces/indentation in Java. Python is different if you're used to leaving sloppy brace indentation around after a paste, but otherwise, it's the exact same issue.
It's not going to win races against C, but performance is very much on a par with say Perl
I just did a performance test against Perl for a text file reformatting script I needed. This reformats one file into three other formats. I did a close to statement to statement translation, including the regexes. The python program ran in 60% of the time that the Perl program required on the same hardware. It's at least as fast as Perl, which is almost always fast enough for my needs.
I dropped Perl like a hot rock once I took up Python, and never felt that the forced indentation was anything but a highly desirable feature that eliminates an entire class of annoying compile bugs.