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I agree.

Not "Open" (notice the capitalization) != closed source.

That's FUD from the story poster, and not fair. The Transgaming guys are doing a great job of improving a major piece of Linux software that's available free (as in beer) and open source.

They release many of their changes under the GPL to WINE's main fork. Their big project is Direct3d for DirectX 8 compatibility. They aren't gonna release as GPL that until they get enough "subscribers". Check out their "business" model. It doesn't get much more open than that. They even release the thing free and open source.

Seriously. If you don't like it, then quit complaining and write your *own* DirectX 8 implementation. What they're doing does *nothing* to hurt Linux and Free Software, and hopefully will do a lot more to help it than stuff that gets some open source nuts crazy (cough...HURD).

Aladdin does pretty much the same thing with Ghostscript. Last I looked, life on Linux would pretty much suck without a Postscript implementation, which we *wouldn't* have without Aladdin. Life *really* would have sucked for years if all we had was lynx and not Netscape Navigator (up through 4.xx).

People, do *not* complain about software that isn't as open as you like. If you want to, write more software. If Open Source is really better in that particular case, then it will win out over time...no fear. Bashing on a bunch of hardworking developers giving their work away is just stupid.

This post from the not-so-random link poster.

Sweet!

Amazing what that old machine still can do.
Go here for some good examples and here is the emulator if you don't have your C64 anymore.

There's even simple Wolf3D clones, a remake of the old PC demo Second Reality, and even a multitasking OS called Lunix!

The C64 is dead. Long live the C64.

NOTE: This is a VoiceXML interpreter. A real system would require a full speech recognition engine and a full text-to-speech implementation.

Actually, I believe it's "Microsoft Windows XP"...MS has put their company name in each product for some time, a la Netscape selling "Netscape Navigator".

Not-so-random link.

How about all the people that rely on a computer infrastructure? Remember the US submarine a few years back that lost its navigation system because it was running NT and the system bluescreened?

Crashes, loss of data, email worms, security breeches...industry loses billions upon billions of dollars from these. That filters down to affect everyone.

So yes, I'd say that keeping Windows off of everything does protect consumers.

Some computers don't need to run Windows.

Sorry, another post was posted while I was typing mine, announcing an open source VoiceXML interpreter. I suppose I spoke about 2 minutes too soon =)

Here's the link for OpenVXI 2.0.

Edinburgh Center for Speech Technology research got far anteriority :

http://www.cstr.ed.ac.uk/projects/sable/

http://www-2.cs.cmu.edu/~awb/festival_demos/sable. html

I just don't get it. Why do people hate X? It's a fairly powerful system. There are implementations with excellent 2d and 3d hardware acceleration.

It does *not* use up "tons of RAM", as some people who don't understand the X architecture like to claim. If you see the X server using lots of RAM in top or the like, there are two very good reasons. (a) device mappings. Top counts this towards the total, but it isn't "real" physical memory being eaten. Have a 32MB video card? Guess why X looks 32MB bigger than it should?

(b) X stores pixmaps locally. This is why X *client* programs use less RAM than their Windows counterparts. One of the two (client or server) *has* to store any pixmap that's going on the screen. For speed over a network, it's much more intelligent for the X server to do so, since the pixmap will probably be drawn many times. So the client doesn't have to store its own copy...but it makes X look "bloated" because it's using some RAM itself to take load off the client programs. The overwhelming majority of RAM that X uses goes to this. If you're using Enlightenment with a pixmap GTK theme, the reason X is taking up more memory is because the client programs *aren't*.

The only real issue people have with X performance is that between the time an application wants to draw to the screen and the time the drawing happens, a context switch needs to occur. This is why the XFree folks came up with DGA, which avoids exactly this -- if you're just playing a game on the local computer, X imposes no overhead.

X does some damn cool things that Windows and friends will never do. Obviously, you can run programs over a network (without incredibly inefficient hacks like vnc). However, on a copy of XFree, hitting control-meta-kp or control-meta-kp- will let you switch resolutions, zooming in on something and letting you show stuff to people across the room (I use this a lot in my dorm room)

There are a few things that I don't like about X. X has a very sophisticated color management scheme, allowing you to output to just about any type of X server, but which can get complicated if you just want to draw something to the screen on your x86 box on XFree. That's why almost no one uses raw Xlib (X's own interface) and uses stuff like SDL or GTK, which handles the nasty details for you, and just lets you do your work.

XFree supports multiple monitors, desktops larger than your monitor, hardware alpha blending, shaped windows...

It's true that existing GUI "E-Z X configuration tools" haven't impressed me much, so you do have to maybe do a bit of poking to tweak out your configuration exactly the way you want it...but that's also true with most operating systems.

Oh, and Xlib doesn't natively support detatching windows from one X server and reattaching to another. I suppose this could be an issue, but since proposed replacements to X mostly don't do this *either* and since toolkits built on top of Xlib *can* do this...

Of course, you don't *have* to run an X server if you just want a console box...this guy doesn't run X.

For GUI systems, though, X is where it's at.

maybe you should host your site on freenet >> . . or at least that would be a posiblity in the future. .and you would not have to worry about being arested because you said the DMCA was a bad idea. or happen to flash the six lines of perl that decode a DVD
>>

Well, *that* would pretty much get Windows banned in every non-US country. China is already really nervous about running closed-source stuff from MS that the US government might have been putting stuff in.

The open source revolution will happen overseas. There *are* people who care directly about open source and being able to see what's going on...not just about the side effects.

zZz

I'm using a tarball kernel from kernel.org and RH 7.2. It works. You just need to add netlink support, and either the ext3 patch or just use ext2 (like I am).

I wish this would be upgraded to RH 7.2...

One trend that (for better or worse) has been building for the past few years is the building maturity of software as an engineering dicipline. We're not there yet, but in about 15 years some of us will be counted on to develop systems that will be verifiably bulletproof and someone will be sued if it fails. (We may look back at the 90's as the good old days when even high-school kids could make good money cranking out code.)

150 years ago bridges used to collapse regularly; even 100 years ago bridge collapses were not unusual. But today, we're building bridges that will be around forever. What happened? Just before the American Civil War, Civil Engineers got together and decided to become more professional. This also led to standardization of building materials and design processes. Yes, you don't see people building bridges and dams totally off-the-cuff, and it takes a few months to do it right. Today, most bridges have a signature of a certified Civil Engineer on the blueprints and you can guess where the lawyers will be looking if there is a problem.

In the next few years all the SW-CMM process stuff will become critical ( http://www.sei.cmu.edu/ ). There are a few highly organized projects deployed and becuase we're taking measurements we can show that going through all the steps does decrease costs in all phases of a project. With the dot-bomb contraction there's a little less pressure and a little more time to do it right the first time.

The group that will push this through are those who are today identified as (usually) Architects. If you have a customer who can't figure out why there's an Architect on the project who's billing at a higher rate than a coder and yet doesn't produce any executables (my current problem) you can go back and show how, by applying a dicipline, the resulting system will be more stable and usable (my current solution). And even a PHB will see that--developing the communication skills to explain (as best as possible) the latest neat-o blivet to the founder's son is the hardest part of the job.

Of course, I'm still coding. But as a previous poster brought up, it's only to help out in a crunch or to get something started and ultimately my code is maintained (or rewritten) by someone else within a month of my writing it. But actually coding a, say, JSP is the only way to grok what you can do with it.

And giveback? Mentoring that new kid or getting that old COBOL programmer to get with the program is easy. Getting your employer to see the value of process is valuable (start with a new, small project and collect some quantifiable measurements). We are going to have to build a solid environment that we can develop solid systems on, and I don't think it will come from any MonopolieS.

At LinuxWorld in San Francisco, Geoff Harrison (sp?), co-author of the Enlightenment window manager, talked about text/speech conversion. If I recall his talk correctly, most proprietary voice recognition software is derived from the free sphinx system developed at Carnegie-Mellon University, which also has a sourceforge area. The web page at CMU talks about a sphinx3 program that is slower but more accurate, which sounds like a better fit for transcribing a previously recorded interview, but I did not see a link to the source code for it.

Geoff's employer, Cepstral, also claims to have released some related software under "relatively liberal" permissions. (Sorry, I could not find any download links or texts of the corresponding copying permissions.)

The sphinx2 copying permissions have an advertising restriction similar to the one that made the old BSD copying conditions GPL incompatible but "free" in the opinion of the Free Software Foundation. I do not know about the situtation with sphinx, sphinx3 or any Cepstral contributions.

At LinuxWorld in San Francisco, Geoff Harrison (sp?), co-author of the Enlightenment window manager, talked about text/speech conversion. If I recall his talk correctly, most proprietary voice recognition software is derived from the free sphinx system developed at Carnegie-Mellon University, which also has a sourceforge area. The web page at CMU talks about a sphinx3 program that is slower but more accurate, which sounds like a better fit for transcribing a previously recorded interview, but I did not see a link to the source code for it.

Geoff's employer, Cepstral, also claims to have released some related software under "relatively liberal" permissions. (Sorry, I could not find any download links or texts of the corresponding copying permissions.)

The sphinx2 copying permissions have an advertising restriction similar to the one that made the old BSD copying conditions GPL incompatible but "free" in the opinion of the Free Software Foundation. I do not know about the situtation with sphinx, sphinx3 or any Cepstral contributions.

Perl allows you to do some really cool things, like fit 10-20 lines of code in any other language into 1 line of Perl. (Here's the proof.) Of course, you pay the penalty for being "clever" 6 months down the road.

It's good to remember that just because you can do something, it doesn't mean you should do it.

Seriously though, if you've ever had to debug or maintain someone else's code, you should know how much trouble Perl can make for you. I'd almost rather debug assembly...almost. ;-)

Guido: What's the weirdest question you've ever been asked?

Alice: People ask me to me marry them all the time.

G: Do you ever say yes?

A: No I do not say yes. Do you? I answer a lot of silly questions.

G: Yeah, I occasionally agree to marry random people, although not usually.

A: I see. That's good information: Guido said he occasionally agree to marry random people although not usually

G: How did you know I'm a he?

A: Well, for one thing, Your machine is called "ABRIOT.PC.CC.CMU.EDU".

G: So?

A: So what?

G: I don't know.

A: Me either.

... will be the ones in the DECSS gallery.

It'd be cool if WINE were BSD-licensed and MS used code from WINE in their next Windows release. Heh.

Been there, done that, discovered that it was all about VBR and lame. No other tweaks come close.

Just get a computer lying around, and start it compressing scads of audio overnight. You wake up, and have fun playing.

Ya, but who cares -- everyone's still benefitting...and even if they're focusing on getting one game working, they're moving their DirectX implementation closer and closer to working with every game with every fix they make.

In the mainstream branch of wine, compatibility has gotten exponentially better (well, at least better than linearly) because the implementation is very close now to MS's.

Of course, some of us don't have quite enough juice to run tons of Windows games in WINE, but it's nice knowing that at least the software is out there.

And people bashing on WINE's peformance "emulators are slow"...sheesh. Try it first. I used to have WinNT and Linux dualbooting (until one day when WinNT decided to eat itself), and Linux + WINE got better peformance in the few games I played (Starcraft, Fallout) than NT did. Now, granted, WinNT wasn't carefully tweaked to run games quickly, but that still seems good.

No. It would have been cool back when MS was gonna sell X-Boxes at a loss. Mmm...MS-subsidized Linux box. It'd be more powerful than this, and be cheaper than it when it was new.

X-Box is gonna go for $600 or $700 now, which'll make it flop. The specs are those of a low-end PC, no more.

And it'll drag Halo down with it, more's the pity.

2) I'm going on secondhand information, but I've generally heard better things about IBM drives than Seagate ones.

3) Use the Hoontech Digital 4DWave NX. A hardware manufacturer that actually *supports* Linux, releases all the specs on their hardware, has really good Linux drivers (look at ALSA), hardware mixing...

5) Logitech also makes a line of excellent optical mice, if like me you dislike MS products. There's this really neat one that has an intense blue light-up logo on top...

6) Mushkin's my favorite memory vendor. I've seen sub-par RAM be a PITA to diagnose twice now...top of the line RAM is worth the few extra dollars. Unless you've got an older system, getting marginal memory that doesn't *quite* work with your new motherboard is a real risk.

8) Arctic Silver II? You really *don't* need it
unless you're overclocking. It might make a degree of difference...but, to quote Half-Life, it's "well within acceptable limits" running without thermal compound.

Also....

*) Use *3com* network cards. Really. Not for any hardware advantage, but the drivers are solid, and there are serious flaws in at least a fair number of Linux network drivers. In both the tulip and rtl8139 NIC drivers, I've found that the driver *fully* resets the card when a transmit fails (produces a collision) 16 times in a row. Basically, that means that on nonswitched network segments under *extremely* heavy load, you'll get lots of "transmit timed out" messages, and then you'll lose network connectivity for a second or so for each ocurrence. I read up on this, and these are not unique to me. This can make Linux totally unusable on the network. 3c59x doesn't exhibit this problem.

Also, if *I* submit a proposal for IBM to buy me my dream computer and mention "Linux" somewhere in there, does that mean that they'll buy *me* one from that 1 billion dollars allocated for open source too?

256MB RAM? 1.6 Ghz processor?

Why?

Isn't one of the greatest things about Linux the fact that it's really lightweight and efficient (compared to, say, XP)?

Except for the (very) few people running Tribes 2, how can you possibly use all those cycles and all that RAM?

I have a PII/266 that works as an admirable workstation and server. This computer does a heck of a job serving, and it's using nothing more than a 486, with 36 MB of RAM.

I can think of only three ways to possibly use something like the mentioned machine:

a) You're buying some sort of database server for an actual corporation. Not likely, given the sound system listed.

b) You play one of the (few) games for Linux with high-end requirements.

c) You're *really*, *really* dedicated to SETI@Home.

Can anyone think of any reason to pick up a box like this? In the Windows world, it's games and increased bloat of MS office and operating system software that drive the market. But why get this for a Linux box? A *throwaway* Windows box makes a nice new peppy Linux workstation or server these days...

Maybe my standards just aren't high enough, but I can't see the need.

The Ten Things You *Need* To Know About Chicken Pox!

Linux: it saves lives!

cantelope

Hello! Wake up! You're a loss for Verizon! Your monthly fees do not come close to covering the costs to Verizon of the hardware, the upstream bandwidth, and so on if you're saturating the line.

Consumer broadband (DSL/cable) can only exist anywhere near current prices if everyone only uses a small fraction of their available bandwidth.

You don't like it?

Run out and drop $2000/mo on a T1, for 1.5 mega*bits* per second. You'll actually be covering the cost of your bandwidth.

Ah, Ethernet.

Cringley dismisses out-of-hand the porn industry, which is the #2 broadband content provider on the Internet. #1, you ask? Ever download an MP3?

File-sharing is here to stay, and it's the driving force behind broadband. Nobody that has cable modems or DSL lines is going to give them up once they've gotten a taste of them, and nobody who has them will ever go back to modem unless it's their ONLY option.

I wouldn't be so sure. See, ISPs don't make money on people like you, who really hammer the hell out of their connection. They make it off of Mr. Average Jones, who got cable after hearing that it makes "his Internet faster", and only uses it for web browsing.

The only reason people like you can exist is because Mr. Average Jones is subsidizing you. If Mr. Average Jones goes away, your measly twenty or thirty bucks a month is *not* paying for the bandwidth you're using, and your ISP goes out of business.

Now, if ISPs started a "per MB used" pricing scheme, they might have something going.
Oh, and the same applies to modems. Joe Techie is a really *lousy* customer for his local ISP, because he's online 22 hours a day. His $19.95/mo fees do *not* cover the cost to his ISP of maintaining a dedicated phone line and modem plus bandwidth, etc.

Wake up, people. Your ISP does not like you. Ya, all of you on Slashdot. You are not profitable. :-)

The Truth!

"to predict future trends as is possible outside of living in a tribe in papua new guinea that still eats human flesh."

How does eating human flesh automatically disqualify you as a good technology analyst?

Some people may not *like* it...

I never *did* understand that. Yes, having calendaring software is important, but *why* does everyone want it rolled into email software? There's no common functionality that should be shared from either a user or a developer perspective.

*I* don't have a problem with using a separate app for scheduling. *This* guy probably doesn't either.

The registry was a *terrible* architecture decision. I can't *believe* that both GNOME and KDE are trying to copy it (GConf and whatever KDE uses).

Look at how MacOS works -- all relevant metadata is stored in the files *themselves*. The central database is no more than a cache, which makes for excellent reliability (no more "my registry is screwed up"), and runs quickly, since it isn't constantly being modified and internally fragmented.

Plus, the MacOS-style resource forks are a far more powerful method of storing information in a standardized, editable way than the Windows registry is.

The only reason that the registry exists is because MS screwed up and tried to make an easy-to-use OS that didn't specify that programs should *not* require users to manually edit config files (.INI stuff).

Zup!

This is Linux, land of flexibility. Just make control-alt-delete run any program that works as the equivalent of Windows' c-a-d dialog.

Daily random link: Tada!

"Konq is good for general purpose but am I the only one here who prefers to use a BROWSER to browse the web and a file manager to manage my files"

This is an excellent point. I almost *always* use a dedicated program for any given task, since it's generally much better for that task than some "extra" feature in another. People have forgotten, as IE has gotten more and more widely used, that a consistent interface (learn it once and you can use anything) is not synonymous with component-based software. Look at the good ol' MacOS.

Web browsers should be web browsers, email programs email programs, photo touchup programs photo touchup programs. The same goes for languages and protocols -- html for web pages (not "interactive" Flash monstrosities), Postscript for formatted material...

Ever since MS started a strong push to squish all their products into every office everywhere, people have been told by them that "integrated == good". No. A consistent interface is good...but modularity is much more important in software. Use a word processor that can transfer data to your spreadsheet, yes...but don't constrain your choice of spreadsheets because of your choice of word processors.

Actually, deCSS HAS been written in Brainfuck. See this link on David Touretzky's home page.

Nice troll. Unfortunately, you are wrong.

Reverse Polish notation, also called "postfix notation", has the arguments first, followed by the operator. For example, "3 2 +". Lisp programs are typically written directly in the language's abstract syntax, using the prefix notation and parens with which many are familiar. For example, "(+ 3 2)".

Common Lisp's reader (aka parser) is, however, fully under program control. Through CL's readtables, one can extend the basic prefix notation, e.g. CL's sharpsign-S macro to read in structure objects is "#S(typename :field1 val1 ...)" as opposed to calling MAKE-typename the usual way "(MAKE-typename :field1 val1 ...)". One particulary perverse use of Common Lisp's readtables is a package that implements an infix syntax for basic arithmetic operators, e.g. "#I(2 + 3)".

Unlike static languages like C or Java, almost everything about the Common Lisp run-time environment is under program control. Even the object system can be modified (through something called the Meta Object Protocol). And idiomatic Common Lisp code is often times within a factor of two of idiomatic C code in terms of performance.

I remember a story (TidBITS?) about a program being sold at a Macworld Expo that went through three releases in a weekend...people would mention bugs to the guy directly at the expo, and he had brought his laptop...

And for all you people slamming Linux, all I can say is that little servers like this guy have been up for a lot longer at a stretch than any IIS server you can find (whether it's been rebooted to vaccinate against Code Red, or whether it's fallen prety to it).

I have to point out that MS considers hotfixes pretty much unsupported and doesn't guarantee that they won't break things. Service packs do *not* come out very soon after bugs are found.

You want "release quality software"? Don't use Linus' kernels. There's an easy solution...

It's called Red Hat 7.1 (well, soon to be Red Hat 7.2..whee!)

Tired of goats.cx? Try
a change of pace! Wish I had been involved in creating this...

"Just the usual rebuttal to the usual 'open source fixes bugs quickly' post."

They did fix it quickly. One day.

Secondly, if you want a traditional QA-style environment, check out the kernels from Red Hat, SuSE, Caldera, etc. Those are available. The only thing open source is buying you here is access to what would be considered from a point of view of QA, "beta" kernels.

If you go, say, the Solaris route instead of Linux, you simply forego the option of even touching or looking at alpha/beta kernels. You only get to see the type of thing that Red Hat would distribute. You *can*, if you choose, look at non-QA'd kernels on Linux. You aren't *hurt* at all by going the Linux route.

If you want an experience like Sun provides then grab a copy of Red Hat or similar. Sheesh.

This little guy hasn't been hurt in the least by not running the most bleeding edge kernel. There's no reason to immediately grab the latest version of Linus' kernel if you need production-level QA. Linux just keeps going and going and going...

"Of course, this would preclude you from using MFC..."

MFC is a PITA. I love Linux, but my summer job was coding Windows apps. I chose Win32 over MFC, grabbed gcc and xemacs, popped up MSDN's (incredibly slow) library site, and started running. Used a free resource editor (forget the name now...)

Win32 works pretty darn well, you avoid a lot of the bloat of MFC, etc. It's definitely wanting in modernerity compared to glib/gdk/gtk+, but it works. You really *do not* need Visual Studio or friends to do great Windows development...and it'll especially be worth it when you actually know what the hell is going on if anything goes wrong, as opposed to looking blankly at a screen full of MSVS MFC forms, knowing that something's broken but not knowing where.

"If you are doing any portable code"

Portability is a *joke* on Windows platforms. UNIX has better portability, sad as it is. I needed to write an app that would run on 95 and upwards. The sheer amount of *stuff* that is missing in one or another MS OS or works differently depending on the OS is amazing. You don't notice this if you aren't worrying about backwards compatibility, but it's just plain idiotic. I mean, there isn't a *dithering* function guaranteed to be available on all copies of Windows! For chrissake, the MacOS was doing gorgeous Floyd-Steinberg when DOS had barely entered the world.

This is NOT my homepage. I'm not joking, people.

I just finished interfacing my old Nintendo Powerglove to an HC11 based miniboard, so I can use it to control a Holonomic Killough Platform, loosely based on the Palm Pilot Robot Kit

I like the powerglove over a conventional joystick, because it's pretty easy to interface, and it supplies a large amount of data - X,Y, and Z coordinates, roll data, finger positions, and the 16 keys on the keypad (which usefully send data as if they were a hex keypad, even though they aren't laid out that way).

I have most of the parts I need, including the wheels, and I just finished modifying some cheap servos for continuous motion. Unfortunately, the wheels I bought weren't really designed to be driven, so I'm going to have to find a way to attach the motors. The Palm Pilot Robot kit just uses glue, but since the servos weren't really designed to take the lateral stresses that will be imposed by gluing them to the wheels and making them act as as a suspension system, I'm hoping to work out something a bit more robust.

The only problem I forsee is having to be tethered to the robot in order to control it (it'll eventually be autonomous and won't require a tether, though I plan to still be able to control it with a tether.) I think I'm leaning towards a cheap RF solution, so I can sit at the computer, and control the robot wirelessly.

Just another geek hobby (and ALL of the technology I'm using so far, with the possible exception of the wheels, is from the '80s).

OH - and there's no sacrifice necessary - I haven't had to modify the glove at all, and am not really planning to.

Well that would explain the following two links:

Nasa

And this:

Lena

For those of you unfamiliar with the Lena Image,(or Lenna, if you like,):
To test image compression technologies, engineers use a standard picture to compare the results. What did they use? A scan of a 1972 Playboy centerfold, of course!

Cheers,
Jim in Tokyo

You don't need to run *all* of KDE *or* GNOME, which is the great thing about both projects.

Take me. When I first ran across GNOME (around 1.0), it was really unstable. However, gnome-panel beat the snot out of AfterStep's wharf. So I just ran the panel, and ignored the rest of GNOME.

Now that GNOME is all around better than before, I actually run gnome-session, and have GNOME start my WM. I still don't use gmc, which I don't like, and stick to bash for file management. No icons on the desktop, but I'm using GNOME and GNOME apps.

So while you certainly don't have to run GNOME or KDE or GNUStep (It's Linux! The land of choice!), be aware that the parts may be worth more than the whole.

This is NOT my home page.

Just because the user shouldn't have to worry about what kernel the GUI is running on doesn't make it irrelevant. It is the opposite. If you do the kernel well, the user won't have to worry about it. Do it badly or half-heartedly and the user will be VERY aware of it! It seems that you use a system with a good kernel, which might be why you don't see it as important. It is!!

In summary: you shouldn't write the applications first and then hack together an OS to support them. Write the kernel first, starting with VM and working up from there. Make it support multiprocessors right from the start. If you design it well then, to your users, it will seem like it's not there. Once you have a stable kernel then by all means hide it under a user-friendly interface but give it the attention it deserves!

You can't use the raw floating point power here to play Quake. You can serve up static pages just as quickly on this lowly 486 as you can on a cluster, and most dynamic processing doesn't come close to requiring a cluster (Google and a few other highly specialized sytems aside). You can't *do* much with a system like this, aside from a few specialized tasks.

Yes, it is really neat that things like this can be made, and the research it allows defintely helps all of us. But as for actually working with a cluster like this...why? What was the last project you were working on that could have used a cluster? (I suspect that there *are* a few people on Slashdot that actually would use one, but even so...)

I'm a CS major at Carnegie Mellon. I've had only a few group programming projects. In particular, there's an operating systems course here which is a big deal, with lots of big projects (a shell, a terminal driver, a kernel, and a filesystem). I felt that I really got a lot out of working with a partner on these projects. The most useful bit was discussing the entire design together. When we both agreed that a design was workable, we split up the coding and went at it. We each saw a lot of things that the other didn't see (design considerations, bugs, etc.).

I do wish I had an opportunity to work on more small-group projects like that. However, there are some considerations:

• In a one-semester course, there isn't enough time to build a huge application. So, more than 2 people on a project probably isn't efficient.
• If you're working with one other person, you really need to make sure that you have a good partner. And not just to get your A: if you're going to be working with someone for 10 or 100 hours, you need to work well with them in order to not go insane.

That said, even though I've only had a few group programming projects here at CMU, I think that my education -- combined with experience in internships -- has prepared me well.

You can always rely on the Official Discordian Super Sercret Cryptographic Cypher Code, from the Principia Discordia:

DISCORDIAN SOCIETY SUPER SECRET CRYPTOGRAPHIC CYPHER CODE,

Of possible interest to all Discordians, this information is herewith released from the vaults of A.I.S.B., under the auspices of Episkopos Dr. Mordecai Malignatius, KNS.

SAMPLE MESSAGE: ("HAIL ERIS")

CONVERSION:
[Simple letter-to number conversion: A=1, B=2, etc.]

STEP 1. Write out the message (HAIL ERIS) and put all the vowels at the end (HLRSAIEI)

STEP 2. Reverse order (IEIASRLH)

STEP 3. Convert to numbers (9-5-9-1-19-18-12-8)

STEP 4. Put into numerical order (1-5-8-9-9-12-18-19)

STEP 5. Convert back to letters (AEHIILRS)

This cryptographic cypher code is GUARANTEED TO BE 100% UNBREAKABLE.

BEWARE! THE PARANOIDS ARE WATCHING YOU!

Nice page. Another good one belongs to Professor Dave Touretzky (he of the anti-DMCA campaigns): it's a gallery of ways to hide DeCSS steganographically, which explains the concepts pretty well.

I don't know where you went to school, but my university cancelled classes in very bad weather and disasters.

My alma mater has only cancelled classes once (as of my last info; I don't know about Sep.11). The mayor of Pittsburgh ordered them to shut off power to the academic buildings during one particularily cold winter.

More of a concern with the apple laptops is the lack of page up/down Home/End buttons.

I've been renting iBooks (the old toilet-seat iBooks, not the small new ones) on campus for over a year now. I actually like Apple's decision to map Page Up, Page Down, Home, and End to Fn-Up, Fn-Down, Fn-Left, and Fn-Right respectively. Obviously, no laptop computer can put those four keys in the same spot as they appear on a PC 101-key keyboard, so most laptops include them along the side instead. I can never get used to that, and it makes all the other keys that much narrower.

Now, if you wanted me to vent about the Shift/Up-Arrow placement on some slim Sony VAIOs, or the lack of an "End" key on iMac-generation keyboards, that's another issue entirely. :)

Is there any plans for improving pgp's ability to incorporate itself into email programs and other forms of internet communications that will make it easier for companies and end users to use?

Take a look at this usability study on PGP. The design hasn't moved forward much since the study was done. PGP is so difficult to use that it may have created a new category: "insecurity through obscurity."

Tim

Care to share some of your suggestions then?

Sure. I've written about this on /. before, but here are a few of the major points -- things that many (most?) people get wrong.

1. Your CV is an introduction, nothing more. It's not supposed to be your complete life history in graphic detail. So, provide a concise summary of your relevant skills and experience only, and customise your CV to match the job for which you're applying. Your CV should get you into an interview and preferably provide some interesting points for your interviewer to discuss with you in more detail. It doesn't need to do anything else.
2. Your CV should tell your prospective employer what you offer, not what you want. Frankly, most employers couldn't give an airborne copulation at the CV stage about your life ambition and the type of career you want to have. Good employers will consider this and perhaps discuss it with you at your interview, if you get one. If you're going to mention it at all, put a brief note in your covering letter about the kind of thing you're looking for. At least that way, if they're offering 10K less than you want and a 50 hour week, they'll know to say "no thank you" without wasting everyone's time any more. Don't use up valuable CV space with "personal objectives", "career directions" or other such rubbish.
3. Your CV must be well presented. That means both clear organisation and a readable layout. Most of the CVs that arrive at the office are not well presented. Common mistakes include...
   1. CVs that are needlessly long. If you're looking for something like summer work while studying at university, a page will probably be good enough. For a first or second job after that, two pages is probably appropriate, as you'll need a little space to list the work experience you've got now. If you genuinely need to write more than two pages, you don't need me to tell you how to write your CV. :-)
   2. CVs full of unsupported buzzwords. Agencies are great for sending these, usually on an ugly and hard-to-scan cover page that adds no value to the CV. Employers will not be impressed by your claiming to know 17 different langauges when you've only just graduated, or your gratuitous use of terms like "expert", "advanced" or (God forbid) "mission critical". By all means list your skills, but be honest, and provide objective information, such as the number of years you've been using a skill. You might include a fair assessment of your ability ("basics", "competent", "good"), which helps an employer to understand your focus if you're listing, say, three or four languages. Make sure the experience sections of your CV (work and education) show where these bits of experience happened.
   3. CVs with poor use of English. If you can't even write English, do you expect us to let you write C++ or Perl? Sloppy language is a sure sign of someone who doesn't pay attention to detail, and that is not the kind of person we want to employ. And of course, a professional programming job needs far more than coding skills; it also requires interpersonal and communications skills, for a start. The quality of your CV is the one way a company has to assess these skills until they meet you in person.
   4. CVs that use poor layout. Companies will not be impressed by pointless flash on a CV. Don't overuse things like fonts. Avoid snazzy graphics, strange formats such as 3-fold brochures, or other "distinctive" features. Stick to a clear layout that's easy on the eyes. Use bullet lists where appropriate, but don't overdo it so that your pages look "dotty". Leave plenty of whitespace; a cramped CV is hard to scan, and you've only got 30 seconds -- max -- to convince someone to keep reading.
   Some things, everyone should have. For example...
   1. Provide a summary of your skills. This comes at the top of your CV, right under the personal information. Think about what your potential employer is looking for. For example, if you're going for a programming job, you might list the languages most relevant to the job (maybe with an indication of your proficiency with them -- "Java, 3 years, competent"). You might also choose to list the major tools you've used (e.g., JDK v1.3, CVS).
   2. Provide your academic background in an easily-scannable chronological form. People will check this briefly, often as the first thing they read on your CV, to guage your general level of experience. Include dates and places, grades, and brief notes if, say, your degree course covered something particularly relevant to the job. If your academic career has been quite long (e.g., you've got your degree by now), consider condensing the earlier qualifications into a one liner (e.g., in the UK, 8 GCSEs: 3 As, 3 Bs, 2Cs).
   3. List your relevant work experience in an easily-scannable, chronological form. Give dates and places, job titles, and a brief summary of what you did, including anything that's relevant to the job for which you're applying.
   Finally, certain things will catch the eye of someone reading your CV, and if they're appropriate, you can use them to good effect. For example, consider providing your home page address. If you've got some personal programming projects under your belt, you might consider making the source/docs available on-line. If your CV is read by someone technical, they probably will visit your site and have a quick look, at least long enough to say "Hey, she can really code!" or "Nope, he can't code for toffee." If your home site is full of cutesy photos of your friends, I don't recommend providing a link... ;-)

Apologies for the lack of links in this post; the /. search engine doesn't seem to be working properly right now. However, one link that's definitely worth following is the one to Carnegie-Mellon's Susie the Screener page. This page may come as a rude awakening to many /.ers who think they're clever, but they'll have much, much better job prospects after reading it.

If you just follow the simple and common-sense advice above, I reckon you're already in the top 5-10% of CVs a company will receive. That alone will put your chances of getting an interview way up. Good luck.