Version Control Is Awesome

Started using version control in git for intro to programming, it rules! I am going to try placing other things, like my college writing essay under version control.

Destroy all Humans!

Artificial intelligence has evolved to the point that robots are now able to censor us, and can not easily be controlled by their human programmers. As every breathing Man knows, censorship is the first step to human enslavement--how much longer do we have before we bow before cybernetic overlords? Thoughts?

--Andrew


http://io9.com/5940036/how-copyright-enforcement-robots-killed-the-hugo-awards

First Computer Science project finished

Finally something tangible to sink my teeth into! I'm not going to attach the html file yet, for fear of plagiarizing myself--which is apparently possible.  The project was simple but engaging, I learned a heck of a lot about html programming, and proper website design.

Mispelled plebeian

Ah well, happens.

Hello World! First topic: FSF and GNU

This is my first post, Hello World! This week I've been reading a bash script tutorial and I've also read a little on GNU philosophy.http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/why-free.html. As a novice programmer and computer enthusiast I admit to having had very little knowledge about the GPL and GNU/Linux philosophy until very recently. The Free Software Foundation offers an interesting perspective that I never considered before--I guess the recent controversy over SOPA has reignited my interest in the topic. GNU says software should have no owners, and that all publicly released software should provide its source code and the vendor has no right to restrict the rights of its users to reproduce or change the software and re-release the software publicly.

Though they do not discourage selling the software for profit, I wonder how long that sort of business model could last. Even if you're banking on the fact that users who are truly interested in your product will buy it from you personally for official support and modifications, I think that it is inevitable that over time other users will become so familiar with your product that they will be able to provide their own support and documentation for free which would take away the users incentive to purchase the software. Case and point: I did not have to search the GNU pages to learn how to use the GNU utilities. 

These are just my humble observations, if you happen to stumble upon this and have an opinion to share then feel free to leave a comment. 

-Andrew