>> As you may know, while I was at uni doing my BSc, I regularly had MSc 
>> students that I'd never met before in my life wander up to me and ask 
>> in broken English whether I could "fix their Java". I have no idea how 
>> the hell they knew my name or my skill with Java...

"Hello? Andrew? You know Java, yes? You fix my Java, yah? No, no, it 
almost work, I say. I just need small fix. You look, yes?"

Typically, their "program" consisted of several files with plausible 
filenames, containing words like "class" and "public" and "int", but... 
it wasn't Java. It wasn't even remotely parsable. It vaguely resembled 
Java, but it was actually gibberish. The only way to "fix" this would 
involve repeatedly hitting the delete key, followed by a lot of typing.

Needless to say, I politely told them to filesystem-check off...

> (yes, by 
> hand, you try drawing the intersection of a cylinder and cone by hand in 
> 3 different projections!)

Are you *kidding* me? Drawing an ordinary circle is almost impossible to 
start with. :-P

> There was only one guy 
> who could do this stuff properly (he did it during a gap year I think) 
> and so as the afternoon progressed each stage of the work would kind of 
> ripple outwards from his desk towards the outside :-)

Heh. Sounds like the "software development project" I did at uni. There 
were four of us, and only I knew how to actually program in any 
language. Fortunately, most if not all of the marks were for producing 
pretty schedule documents, holding meetings, and basically the whole 
project management trip. The actual end product was only about 10% of 
the marks... Unlike me, the others were reasonably good at producing 
lots of whaffly documents. ;-)

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> Typically, their "program" consisted of several files with plausible 
> filenames, containing words like "class" and "public" and "int", but... it 
> wasn't Java. It wasn't even remotely parsable. It vaguely resembled

Ditto in our C++ programming sessions, I'd say about 50% "got it" and 
finished in about half the allotted time, the other 50% had no chance and 
were still there after twice the allotted time with nothing even resembling 
a compilable program, and having to ask for help at every stage.

> Are you *kidding* me? Drawing an ordinary circle is almost impossible to 
> start with. :-P

Well you are allowed to use tools like a compass, ruler, etc.

> Heh. Sounds like the "software development project" I did at uni. There 
> were four of us, and only I knew how to actually program in any language.

Hehe that's great on a CS degree :-)

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>> Typically, their "program" consisted of several files with plausible 
>> filenames, containing words like "class" and "public" and "int", 
>> but... it wasn't Java. It wasn't even remotely parsable. It vaguely 
>> resembled
> 
> Ditto in our C++ programming sessions, I'd say about 50% "got it" and 
> finished in about half the allotted time, the other 50% had no chance 
> and were still there after twice the allotted time with nothing even 
> resembling a compilable program, and having to ask for help at every stage.

In fairness, C++ is actually hard. Java is relatively easy.

But yes, it appears that programming shows a curios bimodal distribution 
like that... I'm not sure why.

>> Are you *kidding* me? Drawing an ordinary circle is almost impossible 
>> to start with. :-P
> 
> Well you are allowed to use tools like a compass, ruler, etc.

Is there a way of drawing an ellipse with a compass?

(FWIW, I have trouble drawing a circle even *with* a compas. Invariably 
I end up with a spiral, or ripped paper...)

>> Heh. Sounds like the "software development project" I did at uni. 
>> There were four of us, and only I knew how to actually program in any 
>> language.
> 
> Hehe that's great on a CS degree :-)

In complete fairness, I think for that particular module the Computer 
Science and Information Systems groups were in the same room, and the 
guys I was working with were all doing IS not CS. That might be pure 
recall bias though...

I seem to recall that even in the CS class, there were few people who 
appeared to "get it" where programming was concerned.

More fun was that time the lecturer wrote Shannon's channel capacity 
limit theorum or whatever the hell it's called on the board. Everybody 
starts spazing out and going "what the hell does 'log' mean?" And the 
lecturer is all like "oh, sorry, I just *assumed* that 3rd year CS 
undergraduates would know what a logarithm is..."

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"Invisible" <voi### [at] devnull> wrote in message 
news:49b116ca$1@news.povray.org...
>>> Nah, I'm sure if you do anything reasonably popular in the Internet 
>>> you're going to get at least a few people ask you crazy things.
>>
>> This is very true. Back in '96 there was a local PhD (HAAARKEEER!! 
>> *shakes fist*) who ripped off of me word for word, entire pages, in an 
>> Aquarium Frontiers online article regarding foam fractionation. Some 
>> people in #reefs brought this to my attention, and I was quite amused. I 
>> wonder if he knew I was 16? And while all information and theory I 
>> presented happened to be accurate, he *must* have been crazy to not only 
>> blatantly plagarize, but to rip off of a 16yo. lol! :-D
>
> This is where I mumble something about immitation being the more sincere 
> form of flattery or something...
>

Or the fastest way to royally piss me off. lol! ;-)

> As you may know, while I was at uni doing my BSc, I regularly had MSc 
> students that I'd never met before in my life wander up to me and ask in 
> broken English whether I could "fix their Java". I have no idea how the 
> hell they knew my name or my skill with Java...
>

*head in hands* Oh god...yes I know what you mean...I have similar problems 
with my family, who usually won't even speak to me unless "the internet is 
broken" or some such nonsense.
I typically end up explaining to them that they most probably have no 
business being even anywhere *near* a computer.

I feel to a degree that if you can't write a program (ANY program) you 
shouldn't be allowed to use one either. Thats how people end up doing 
retarded things like downloading "free" games/cursors until their computer 
takes 20min to boot and another 15 to get to the desktop once they type in 
their password (which is usually absent) because of the fact they have 3500 
or so adware, spyware, keyloggers, droppers, backdoors and whatnots 
cavorting about within their machine committing such vile and assorted 
programattic debaucheries that even Caligula would blush. *massive inhale*

The mother of one of my ex-gfs being the case in point here.

I fought and fought to get spybot search and destroy to run on that machine 
(before reformatting) just to see how much crap it would find...it was 
actually over 3500....

>>> The Internet seems to attract crazy people for some reason...
>>
>> But...but....*we're* on the internet... o.o
>
> Now, now... The inverse of a statement does not necessarily follow. ;-) 
> Who said it was a logical biconditional?
>

I like those though, they just feel right. :-)

Off to complete my compositional analysis of HR Gigers "The Spell 
IV"....damned classes...

ian

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>> This is where I mumble something about immitation being the more sincere 
>> form of flattery or something...
> 
> Or the fastest way to royally piss me off. lol! ;-)

That too...

>> As you may know, while I was at uni doing my BSc, I regularly had MSc 
>> students that I'd never met before in my life wander up to me and ask in 
>> broken English whether I could "fix their Java". I have no idea how the 
>> hell they knew my name or my skill with Java...
> 
> *head in hands* Oh god...yes I know what you mean...I have similar problems 
> with my family, who usually won't even speak to me unless "the internet is 
> broken" or some such nonsense.
> I typically end up explaining to them that they most probably have no 
> business being even anywhere *near* a computer.

Buy the T-shirt: "No, I will NOT fix your computer. Go away before I 
replace you with a Haskell one-liner."

> I feel to a degree that if you can't write a program (ANY program) you 
> shouldn't be allowed to use one either. Thats how people end up doing 
> retarded things like downloading "free" games/cursors until their computer 
> takes 20min to boot and another 15 to get to the desktop once they type in 
> their password (which is usually absent) because of the fact they have 3500 
> or so adware, spyware, keyloggers, droppers, backdoors and whatnots 
> cavorting about within their machine committing such vile and assorted 
> programattic debaucheries that even Caligula would blush. *massive inhale*

Heh. I did see one computer that, no matter how many times I disinfected 
it, next week it was infected again. I was astounded at how this could 
be so.

While the owner wasn't that bright, I should perhaps point out that it 
ha--WINDOWS ME!! NEED I SAY MORE?!

> Off to complete my compositional analysis of HR Gigers "The Spell 
> IV"....damned classes...

I say "people are strange" and you start talking about *Giger*?!

Post a reply to this message

"Invisible" <voi### [at] devnull> wrote in message 
news:49b128f8$1@news.povray.org...
>>> This is where I mumble something about immitation being the more sincere 
>>> form of flattery or something...
>>
>> Or the fastest way to royally piss me off. lol! ;-)
>
> That too...
>
>>> As you may know, while I was at uni doing my BSc, I regularly had MSc 
>>> students that I'd never met before in my life wander up to me and ask in 
>>> broken English whether I could "fix their Java". I have no idea how the 
>>> hell they knew my name or my skill with Java...
>>
>> *head in hands* Oh god...yes I know what you mean...I have similar 
>> problems with my family, who usually won't even speak to me unless "the 
>> internet is broken" or some such nonsense.
>> I typically end up explaining to them that they most probably have no 
>> business being even anywhere *near* a computer.
>
> Buy the T-shirt: "No, I will NOT fix your computer. Go away before I 
> replace you with a Haskell one-liner."
>

Not really my style...but if they made a bumper sticker...

>> I feel to a degree that if you can't write a program (ANY program) you 
>> shouldn't be allowed to use one either. Thats how people end up doing 
>> retarded things like downloading "free" games/cursors until their 
>> computer takes 20min to boot and another 15 to get to the desktop once 
>> they type in their password (which is usually absent) because of the fact 
>> they have 3500 or so adware, spyware, keyloggers, droppers, backdoors and 
>> whatnots cavorting about within their machine committing such vile and 
>> assorted programattic debaucheries that even Caligula would blush. 
>> *massive inhale*
>
> Heh. I did see one computer that, no matter how many times I disinfected 
> it, next week it was infected again. I was astounded at how this could be 
> so.
>
> While the owner wasn't that bright, I should perhaps point out that it 
> ha--WINDOWS ME!! NEED I SAY MORE?!

*vomits* What a terrible "OS". That OS even makes the OS on my old late 
1980s (early 90's?) era Unisys computer (magellan os?) look good.
I don't know what it was called.

>> Off to complete my compositional analysis of HR Gigers "The Spell 
>> IV"....damned classes...
>
> I say "people are strange" and you start talking about *Giger*?!
>

Hey, I *am* a death-metal head after all, what do you expect? :-p
*makes a Deicide, Hate Eternal and Vital Remains playlist*

;-D

ian

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Invisible <voi### [at] devnull> wrote:
> Is there a way of drawing an ellipse with a compass?

  If you want a mathematical ellipse, the answer is obviously no. As you
traverse the boundary of the ellipse, the radius constantly changes, and
this is of course impossible to achieve with a regular compass.

  Ellipses can be approximated with a compass, though.

-- 
                                                          - Warp

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> Is there a way of drawing an ellipse with a compass?

Not directly, you have to draw a cylinder viewed from each axis first (with 
a compass and ruler), then draw an intersecting shape (eg a titled plane), 
then by projecting a series of intersection points from each view you can 
construct the curve where the two shapes intersect, which if you choose the 
shape type and position correctly will be an ellipse in one of the 
projections.  Yay mechanical drawing is fun :-)

Or if you want to draw one directly, just use a piece of string:

http://www.ellipse.com.au/idea_art_ellipse.html

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On Fri, 6 Mar 2009 08:35:52 -0500, "[GDS|Entropy]" <gds### [at] hotmailcom>
wrote:

>I feel to a degree that if you can't write a program (ANY program) you 
>shouldn't be allowed to use one either.

I used to feel like that about cars until one day I looked under the bonnet and
said. "Yes, there is an engine there" and quickly closed the thing. :)
-- 

Regards
     Stephen

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Invisible wrote:
> 
> Q. Will you have my babies?
> A. Sure, why not?
> 

A. For breakfast or lunch?

-Aero

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