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Programming

Submission + - Learn Basic Programming So You Aren't At the Mercy of Programmers (sivers.org) 1

An anonymous reader writes: Derek Sivers, creator of online indie music store CD Baby, has a post about why he thinks basic programming is a useful skill for everybody. He quotes a line from a musician he took guitar lessons from as a kid: "You need to learn to sing. Because if you don't, you're always going to be at the mercy of some a****** singer." Sivers recommends translating that to other areas of life. He sayds, 'The most common thing I hear from aspiring entrepreneurs is, "I have this idea for an app or site. But I’m not technical, so I need to find someone who can make it for me." I point them to my advice about how to hire a programmer, but as most of the good ones are already booked solid, it’s a pretty helpless position to be in. If you heard someone say, "I have this idea for a song. But I’m not musical, so I need to find someone who will write, perform, and record it for me." — you’d probably advise them to just take some time to sit down with a guitar or piano and learn enough to turn their ideas into reality. And so comes my advice: Yes, learn some programming basics. Just some HTML, CSS, and JavaScript should be enough to start. ... You don’t need to become an expert, just know the basics, so you’re not helpless.'

Comment Re:Whitelists? (Score 3, Informative) 454

Not a bad idea for elementary kids. A simple redirect using squid to a PHP form which would email someone a link to the site in question and another PHP form for approval which would then automatically append to a whitelist if approved and to a blacklist if denied so students can’t keep submitting the same site. There are a few sites around that have whitelists for education purposes opendns.com springs to mind. The problem is with so many sites being created daily it’s impossible to keep up with educational resources for middle school and high school kids and you are better off with just a blacklist which are more readily available.

When I was first starting out in IT I worked at a reasonably large high school and found the best way to filter was using squid and have a large blacklist automatically updated weekly and use a log analyser such as Sarg to generate reports on a daily basis and anything that seemed out of place or got a lot of traffic and wasn’t related to education would go on the blacklist. Of course none of this was available off the shelf back then, but it’s still probably the best way to go about it considering that it’s a non-profit school. As for facebook, it should be blocked in any school environment, there is nothing on there of any education value.

I don’t know the age range the OP is talking about, kind of seems contradictory. People not able to protect themselves but yet have shame.. doesn’t really make sense.

Comment Re:Great... (Score 1) 113

I'm going to have to agree. I have been using XBMC for a couple of years now and it is far and away the best media centre out there at the moment.

I'm running the Lars Op Den Kamp PVR build of Eden with tvheadend for the TV tuners on Oneiric and use a logitech rumblepad 2 for the controller. Set it up with zsnes and dolphin-emu and can access these without even leaving the couch. The addons repos are great, adding quite a lot of features you could only dream of in other media centres. I rarely have issues even with the latest un-stable builds and when I do there is already a patch out for it.

As for Boxee being for dummies, XBMC isn't hard at all anymore thanks to projects like OpenELEC. I built a system for a friend using OpenELEC and it could not be easier.

Comment Re:Carriers (Score 1) 234

I can't back it up with figures but I would hazard a guess that most people would buy their phones/plans direct through their carrier, locked to that specific carrier. The major carriers have stores located everywhere. It is possible to buy an unlocked phone from a phone store like All Phones, Crazy John's, Telechoice, etc. and they don't seem as numerous. No one I know has bought a phone/plan from one of these places. In regards to the phones being carrier locked it's now easily possible to have your carrier unlock your phone and the carriers are required to do so. If you are on a contract you must keep paying though. Don't know if that made things clearer or more muddy.

Comment Re:Move to another ISP? (Score 1) 173

I'm also in the same situation as you are. Telstra port and Internode ADSL2+ although I get a 19mbit sync. Have to say I have been with Internode for years and haven't had a problem with them. Love all the "free" and fast content.

I think it's preaching to the choir here though. If you can get off Bigpond you should if not the rest of us will pray to the Flying Spagetti Monster for your souls.

Comment Re:Great.. (Score 1) 208

Well it doesn't take an extra power adapter.. I really don't mind what it is but something that actually has a bit of power would be nice. Also I run my HTPC on Linux so I'm not sure those fancy audio features are working yet on the ATI drivers, and what about hardware decoding?? I currently have a 8400GS ticking away in my system quite nicely, not really much good for anything but decoding..

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I tell them to turn to the study of mathematics, for it is only there that they might escape the lusts of the flesh. -- Thomas Mann, "The Magic Mountain"

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