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"I tell my kids that's where Darth Vader lives."

Wouldn't that be the Death Star?

Any other examples?

Actually, not very many anthropologists these days do much linguistic work. That's partly because linguistics has developed as a separate field and partly because cultural anthropology was largely taken over by Postmodernists, as a result of which it has nearly died. Most research on "exotic" languages these days is done either by linguists or by missionaries (who want to translate the New Testament).

I am a linguist and have done extensive fieldwork, mostly on Carrier, the native language of a large region of northern British Columbia. (I also hack a little. Once upon a time I wrote the head-final shell mentioned in Charles Dodgson's comment.) Software is increasingly used for this kind of work, but for the most part it is not the sort of NLP software provided on the Morphix-NLP CD. A lot of that software is useful primarily if you've got a large corpus to work with, and it often presupposes that some basic resources exist, such as a lexicon, or at least a wordlist with part of speech information. For many languages even basic resources such as a lexicon don't exist or aren't available in electronic form, and when you're dealing with really small languages, there aren't any ready-made corpora, such as news text. If you want a text corpus, you've got to make it yourself, usually by recording people telling stories or whatever, and transcribing it. This is an important part of fieldwork, but its incredibly slow and tedious.

There are some tools designed specifically for this kind of linguistic research. One is Transcriber, a tool that assists a human being in transcribing audio recordings. One of the older tools is Shoebox a dictionary database program for field linguists, originally written to run under DOS.

Some of us have used Unix tools to extract and process information, e.g. grep to do regular expression searches. Ken Church at Bell Labs used to give a tutorial "Unix for Poets" on how to use Unix tools for linguistics. Here is his handout. For example, I've produced dictionaries of several dialects of Carrier using scripts written mostly in AWK plus the usual Unix tools, controlled by elaborate Makefiles. Some of us also use emacs a lot, not only as an editor but for doing searches. If you're interested in what kinds of software are of interest to linguists, you might check out the Computational Resources for Linguistic Research page.

It is worth mentioning that spread of the internet has made available a lot of useful material for linguistic research. There are now quite a few languages for which you can obtain a good chunk of text (say at least 100K words), and often you can find parallel text (that is, the language you're interested in plus a translation into English or another language that is useful to you). But this works mostly for relatively big languages, that is, say, languages with a million or more speakers. There are around 340 such languages, depending on how you count, about 2% of the world's oral languages.

One topic that concerns some of us is how software and other technology can speed up the process of documenting dying languages. Languages are rapidly become extinct - some experts estimate that as many as 90% of the languages currently spoken will be extinct in 100 years. [Computer languages may be proliferating at the same rate.:)] The late Ken Hale had seven languages die on him. If we don't find a way to speed up the documentation, or slow down the rate of extinction, most of those languages are going to die without very much being known about them.

Actually, let's not pursue this analogy any further, in case SCO somehow manage to destroy the Death Star^W^WIBM ...

IBM is "Big Blue". Everyone knows that the REAL Death Star is elsewhere...

I think you're bullshitting.
As far as I recall the story, C++ was named because of the ++ (postfix?) operator in C. So, C++ is C + 1

Yup. Check out Bjarne Stroustrup's FAQ page Why is the language called C++

Bala Krishnamurthy at AT&T Labs has given a number of talks recently, including to the IETF, on a spam disincentive program he calls SHRED. My understanding is that it uses offline cryptographic computation to amortize this overhead and distribute it to parties willing and able to devote the computational resources.

In any case, the tag line for this article had it right, standardizing this will be hard and heavy-hitters like Yahoo will need to take the lead. But a key problem is getting the new system to interoperate with the old.

It is important to note that AT&T has an opportunity to gain just as many customers as anyone else from this. People on other networks might be interested in switching to AT&T. From this point of view, dragging their heels would not make much sense. My guess is just that they are getting way more requests than they had expected, and are having huge technical problems.

Note that on their home page links to their wireless plan have been dead for the last two days. I doubt that is something they meant to do. My guess is that life over at the AT&T wireless offices for the last week have been a chaotic nightmare, with everyone getting about three hours of sleep each night. I bet it is just a big mess.

On another note, it seems that if there is going to be true number portability, there should be some sort of national database that is shared. Who would administer this, I don't know, but having each carrier have separate databases gives me some hints as to how much of a technical mess this system could turn into.

OOP will lead to more robust, easier to maintain and higher quality software

It did.

You're right, it did. ;)

Other companies do research too.

Since this one is named TAT-14, it's not suprising that there are other TransAtlantic cables. There are currently active 8 different cables that AT&T use crossing the atlantic TAT-8 through TAT-14, and BUS-1. Cables TAT-1 through TAT-7 are retired.

I believe 1994 was about the time when AT&T came out with it's "You will" commercials.

Coincidence? I think not!

Press release: HTML
Sample commercial (nostalgia altert!): QuickTime

"You will, and the company that will bring it to you is AT&T." ... becasue we're going to patent stuff now before we build it and then sue the pants off of everyone ten years from now.

-ez

"Reach out and sue someone."

It seems odd that someone who wrote a paper on an anti-spam technique in March 1998, would go on to patent an anti-anti-spam technique that wouldn't defeat the technique he discussed months ago. It's entirely possible that AT&T intends to use this to put spam software makers out of business, or at least make spams easier to detect.

It seems odd that someone who wrote a paper on an anti-spam technique in March 1998, would go on to patent an anti-anti-spam technique that wouldn't defeat the technique he discussed months ago. It's entirely possible that AT&T intends to use this to put spam software makers out of business, or at least make spams easier to detect.

It seems odd that someone who wrote a paper on an anti-spam technique in March 1998, would go on to patent an anti-anti-spam technique that wouldn't defeat the technique he discussed months ago. It's entirely possible that AT&T intends to use this to put spam software makers out of business, or at least make spams easier to detect.

I'm not really into this stuff, so I apologize if I miss anything obvious. However, the technology he claims to have used is PHP, a (self-?) modified traceroute and GraphViz. No Java seems to be involved, which would explain why it only takes a day to map it out. ;)

The moment end-to-end encryption and authentication is enabled, either via tunnels or by just encrypting the IP payload, no authority trying to assert control over VoIP will be able to identify one application verses another e.g., VoIP verses HTTP verses SMTP.

They will have to either ban encryption, or ban all applications, which is the equivalent of banning the Internet.

Deploying encryption in this manner will actually restore the Internet to its original design - an application agnostic network, whose sole job is to just make a best effort to deliver bits between the hosts at the edges. Only the hosts should know and will know what applications the Internet is being used for.

The technology already exists, albeit in early forms :

• DNSSEC
• Opportunistic tunnel setup within IPsec

This will also obselete firewalls, proxy servers, NAT, and any other devices that perform applications processing within the Internet. The only applications processing devices left will be those at the edges. Security, aka firewalling for example, will be deployed on each edge device.

Steve Bellovin (one of the Wily Hacker authors) wrote about distributed firewalls in 1999, here : Distributed Firewalls

Try again, bucko: AT&T's reply to the FCC's announcement.

ATT's press release, stating that:

We want to stress that this FCC investigation is not based on the nationwide do-not- call list that went into effect in October. Instead, it concerns claims by customers who believed they were on an AT&T-specific list and received a call they think was from AT&T.

You mean something like a Distributed Firewall. http://www.research.att.com/~smb/papers/distfw.htm l

Wrong.

Pascal is not meant for serious programming like C is, but Pascal has sorta grown into this business application language, and is far from obsolete.

You also cannot do anything in C++ that you can in C. You can do this in C, but not C++:

void f(); /* argument types not mentioned */

void g()
{
f(2); /* poor style C. Not C++ */
}

Or...

void* malloc(size_t);

void f(int n)
{
int* p = malloc(n*sizeof(char)); /* not C++. In C++, allocate using `new' */
char c;
void* pv = &c;
int* pi = pv; /* implicit conversion of void* to int*. Not in C++ */
}

These examples were shamelessly ripped from Bjarne's FAQ, which is available Here.

Would the kernel be alot slower if compiled with cyclone compiler ?

This reminds me of something that happened at a privacy workshop about 10 years ago. The inventor of the ActiveBadge was telling us how his invention (which allows tracking people as they move around a building) wasn't being used for unethical purposes.

"In my lab", he bragged, "we forbid keeping historical data on people's movements.". He went on to say that there was a written policy that you could be fired if you collected such data.

This was too much for one of the workshop attendee. She interrupted and pointed out that not only was this data gathered at her work, but it was used in her performance review. She was shown a list of other employees and how long she spent talking to them. Apparently, she was spending too much time with the wrong people and not enough time with the right people.

I always remember this when I hear an inventor dismiss the suggestion that their work could be used for unethical purposes.

Here's the real interview: real

This is excellent news! Now we will be able to take advantage of the 3D extensions to C++ that AT&T were researching in 1998, details here (last paragraph).

If you hate C++, it's unfair to suggest you read a book on it. But if you have any fondess for C++, or use C++ (even if you dislike it), Design and Evolution of C++ is probably worth your time. You learn why C++ is the slightly confusing mess that it is, and why Stroustrup believes it's the only way it could have succeeded. Having a grasp on why C++ is C++ (and not Objective C or Java) can improve your C++ coding abilities. And understanding why behavior you don't like is there can at least help minimize the suffering ("This is stupid, but there really isn't any way to change it.").

It's in his FAQ

This paper, c++0x directions, is where he sees c++ going. :D

Try his FAQ: http://www.research.att.com/~bs/bs_faq.html#Java

As someone who used to run www.att.com, I think I can safely say that they know each other.

Intimately.

(the number is 317-816-9336, long distance charges may apply)

Try Python, compiled Python. There are other languages out there with garbage collection. cyclone ADA,scheme,modula or oberon. Too many to list. just google 'computer language garbage collection'

For user-land software, things like python are becoming very practical. Java is probably acceptable for daemons and such (so long as they're not massively performance critical) but isn't ready to be used for anything with a GUI or where startup time matters.

If Sun, or someone else, would come along and modify C slightly by removing unsafe functions, and providing alternatives, you could have the best of both, while not having to completely rewrite all the old code.

"Cyclone is a programming language based on C that is safe, meaning that it rules out programs that have buffer overflows, dangling pointers, format string attacks, and so on. High-level, type-safe languages, such as Java, Scheme, or ML also provide safety, but they don't give the same control over data representations and memory management that C does (witness the fact that the run-time systems for these languages are usually written in C.) Furthermore, porting legacy C code to these languages or interfacing with legacy C libraries is a difficult and error-prone process. The goal of Cyclone is to give programmers the same low-level control and performance of C without sacrificing safety, and to make it easy to port or interface with legacy C code."

What about Cyclone?

It seems like a good step forward.

I think I was impressed with the suite's ability to deal with hard links and case under Windows (which Cygwin didn't). I know NTFS can deal with these, but none of the MS-provided tools can.

Off topic: Wasn't it called something before Interix? I think i had "NT" in name, but they changed it due to MS's "NT" trademark pressure.

That's what text-to-speech software is for.

A good replacement for C, eh? How 'bout C? Or, say, C?

Honestly, though: For low-level programming, there *is* no good replacement for C, for a simple reason: the same power that makes it dangerous is also the power that makes it useful. For high-level programming, there are lots of good replacements -- and you just mentioned, and wrote off, two of the best of them.

Java is getting better (witness the presence of the NIO API in 1.4), and I've got strong hopes for C# and its kin -- but part of what makes C# so useful is its simple API for access to C libraries, something that Java makes much harder. That said, for almost all of the high-level programming I do, I use Python (except at work, where I don't always get to pick; in the cases where I don't have the choice, I write Java).

Sure, Python and Java aren't suitable for low-level work -- but that's what C is good for. And since calling from Python down to C is simple, writing optimized versions of performance-sensitive routines is easy, in the rare event that it actually needs to be done (which has, in my five or so years of writing Python, happened all of once, when I needed some efficient drawing routines which were most readily available from a C library without preexisting python bindings).

Compiling Java to native code with GCJ also decreases the startup-time and runtime performance penalty without sacrificing type-safety -- and works for applications using an increasingly large subset of the available APIs.

Scheme is another language that many folks are too quick to write off. Not only does the language have the expected type-safety goodness -- but compiled scheme can be *very* fast. (On the down side, the lack of a useful standard runtime library is very disappointing).

So, yes, for high-level stuff, there are lots of alternatives... but what are you going to write your Python interpreter or low-level libraries in? For some jobs, there's still no good replacement for C. (Further, I'm not by any means convinced that low-level work *should* be done in an OO language... but that's a different conversation).

Looks like the ACE and TAO frameworks are heavily used in military applications for some cool stuff with fighter jets, helicopters, radar systems, satellites, and a heck of a lot more.
Of course C++ is used for many cool non-military applications as well.
So, learning ACE and TAO and C++ probably won't hurt you.

I wonder which one they benchmanrked.

Bjarne Stroustrup, the creator of C++, has this to say on garbage collection:

Clearly, if your code has new operations, delete operations, and pointer arithmetic all over the place, you are going to mess up somewhere and get leaks, stray pointers, etc. This is true independently of how conscientious you are with your allocations: eventually the complexity of the code will overcome the time and effort you can afford. It follows that successful techniques rely on hiding allocation and deallocation inside more manageable types.

He goes on to give detailed examples and recommendations on how to avoid using garbage collection.

Has anyone tried Cyclone?

I've heard of it, and I know someone talked about it at DEFCON this year. Has anyone tried it for production applications, or just for proof of concept?

What about the AT&T Relay? If you used it through dialup, would that work? Alternatively, what if you connected a cell phone to the computer via an X-JACK (or whatever it's called) connector, and uesd that for text messaging?

If I had been thinking more clearly, I would have let Bjarne Stroustrup do the talking, instead of me: What do you think of C#?

Somewhere he has given an opinion about .NET, but I can't find it. Does anyone have a link?

More information to add to the above:

I've read about overly restrictive Microsoft EULAs, but this is all I can find now.

Runtime Runaround. (You can't use a program you wrote in the Microsoft FoxPro language under Linux.)

Remember this about EULAs: They bind you now. However, maybe the most scary thing about EULAs is that the vendor can change what they say in the future, after you have heavily invested in your tools, and cannot easily change. Basically, you can be held to a contract to which you didn't agree and which did not exist at the time you first made your decision to use a particular tool. Yes, you can always use the old tool under the old EULA, but the computing industry changes fast and you may need an update. If you need the update, then you either agree to the new EULA or spend the huge amount of time and money necessary to change tools. Moral: Choose your business partners carefully. They have serious control over your future. It's like getting married. You want someone you can trust with your life. When you pick a tool vendor, you want someone you can trust with your corporate life.

In the first comment to the story linked above, there is mention of a Microsoft EULA prohibiting benchmarks.

You are prohibited from using VNC, an excellent free program for remotely interacting with a desktop, with Microsoft Windows XP. See the bottom of this article by Brian Livingston: "Except as otherwise permitted by the NetMeeting, Remote Assistance, and Remote Desktop features described below, you may not use the Product to permit any Device to use, access, display, or run other executable software residing on the Workstation Computer, nor may you permit any Device to use, access, display, or run the Product or Product's user interface, unless the Device has a separate license for the Product."

These are just notes about what Microsoft feels it has a right to do.

All I know is that 98 doesn't have [remote management].

Or better, you can try it online http://www.naturalvoices.att.com/demos/ in English, French, Spanish and German.

General concensus is that you don't need to (and shouldn't) learn C first if C++ is your ultimate goal. By all means learn C if you want to use C, but if you want to use C++ then just go straight there.

For somewhat more detailed arguments, have a read of Bjarne Stroustrup's FAQ...

• Save yourself the burden of typing LaTeX directly, and get a good front-end like LyX. Btw, it can also import existing (not-too-convoluted) LaTeX, just in case you already started writing. TeXmacs could be another option if your book is on a mathematical subject.
• For vectorial diagrams and images, get Sketch and Dia and forget everything else (except perhaps Xfig, which comes handy sometimes). Sketch does a decent job at importing simple PostScript by itself (so you can retouch it), and of course it exports PS and EPS. For importing complex PostScript you may also use it together with pstoedit, which supports the Sketch format natively.
• For graphs and trees have a look at Graphviz, which can generate beautiful outputs (both EPS or bitmapped) from simple textual descriptions of nodes and arcs (and it saves you

Around here even the experienced latex-ers use Lyx for editing their tex documents.
Xfig sounds a scary and rather masochistic way to go... how about Graphviz for flow charts and other similar graphics, and Sodipodi for your vector graphics?

There has been some work on using graphics cards for computation. The tough part is figuring out how to rephrase your algorithm in terms of what the GPU can handle. You'd expect matrix math to work out but people have tried to implement more interesting algorithms too. :-)