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There are several groups working on spintronics-related research around the globe. You can check some of the research the spin-doctors are working on by looking at the Spintronics 2001 Conference webpage. Some incredible results involved researchers injecting spin-polarized current into an LED and producing Circularly Polarized Light!!! Other researchers are trying to produced spin-transistors, to switch/amplify spin-polarized currents. Many of the recent challenges involve producing spin-polarized currents, finding materials that can transport electron-spin, and injecting spin-polarized electrons into semiconductors.

The Chien group here at JHU has been the first to demonstrate experimentally the existence of a half-metal. Crystals of CrO2 have been shown to have spin-polarization of 96%. This was measured at the superconductor/ferromagnetic interface through Point-Contact Andreev Reflection (PCAR) techniques.

I'll explain some of the current concepts of spintronics, but pardon any errors as I haven't really begun my research yet. The manipulation of electron spin is an extra degree of freedom that novel electronic devices can exploit. Spintronics has already, since 13 years after the discovery of GMR (Giant Magnetoresistance) in 1988, penetrated the technology industries (magnetic storage). It's rare for such new technology like this to be commercially available so soon after its discovery. Transistors were one such monumental achievement, the first Ge transistors were available within years of the transistor's invention.

GMR is an effect that occurs with a normal metal film that is sandwiched between two ferromagnetic layers. Depending on whether the spins of the ferromagnetic layer are parallel or anti-parallel, a significant change of resistance is measured across the structure. A more useful device which extrapolates off this concept is a spin-valve This is the standard GMR trilayer, with an anti-ferromagnetic layer on the bottom. This layer pins the spin of the bottom Ferromagnetic layer. The top ferromagnetic layer can then float, and have it's spin affected by the external magnetic field. This in turn creates a magnetic-field-dependent resistance across the device. Sensitive measurements of the magnetic field, obtained by measuring resistance, can be obtained in this manner .This magnetic-field-dependent resistance is known as Magnetoresistance. This concept, in a fundamental sense, is how the newer GMR-based read-heads on high-density hard drives operate.

Another similar device is the Magnetic Tunnel Junction . This is similar to the GMR trilayer, but an insulator film is sandwiched between the ferromagnetic layers, instead of a normal metal. Current can then tunnel through the device, again dependent on whether the spins are parallel or anti-parallel in the ferromagnetic layers. The tunnel junction is the fundamental concept at the core of the MRAM's.

Another exciting area of research with spintronics that I haven't heard anybody on slashdot mention yet is quantum computing. Electrons are spin-1/2 fermions, and hence have two distinct eigenstates of the Spin operator (the eigenstates are usually called "spin-up" and "spin-down"). This makes them perfect candidates for representation of quantum bits (qubits) for potential quantum computation. Some groups are working on this idea, by studying interactions of quantum dots for instance.

Overall, this is a budding field that has already impacted the technology industry in it's scant 13 years of existence. Expect many more interesting and potentially groundbreaking discoveries to occur. But then again, I'm spin-biased. :-)

As a co-inventor on US Patent# 5,331,222 (which has turned out to be basically worthless ;), I'd like to suggest to graduate students that they ask around as to whether a research advisor is proactive in getting students names on research papers, patents, etc., or whether they are not.

I've had the luck to work for two professors who were very pro-active about getting student names on papers and patents.

My first comment is that "performance" means different things to different people. To some it means "throughput", that is, the amount of work that the system can do just prior to being overloaded. To some it means how well it can handle overload. To some it means low latency, that is, that the system can respond to an important event quickly. Which one is important for you depends on what you're doing.

Indeed. Latency is a critical issue in many kinds of processing, especially multimedia. MacOS X, a Mach-based system, delivers superior audio latency under stress. There's a really good whitepaper on this topic here (in PDF... sorry)

the xml.org link for cuneiform encoding initiative is at http://www.jhu.edu/ice/

There is an initiative for almost every ancient language that is know (and decipherable). I'm sure digging thru xml.org will turn up a bounty of results =]

There's TCFS too (Transparent Cryptographic File System). It doesn't need to use a loopback device, but on the other hand it doesn't hide all information (e.g. filenames aren't altered).

USA mirror of TCFS site is here, but looks a bit out of date.

There's a paper, Audio Latency Measurements of Desktop Operating Systems, which might give you some useful information. Mac OS X's CoreAudio provided the most consistant latencies regardless of loads, although a suitably patched Linux 2.4 kernel has better latencies under no-load conditions.

"All of the current desktop operating systems offer excellent latency performance under some conditions, though most of them cannot deliver this performance in all situations. This is a substantial improvement over previous results (Brandt and Dannenberg 1998; Freed, Chaudhary, and Davila 1997), but because of the inconsistency of the results more improvement is necessary before reliable low-latency performance can be expected from desktop operating systems.

"In conclusion, Linux showed the best performance in the tests without load while MacOS X showed the best performance in the tests with load. Windows and MacOS 8 and 9 produced some of the best results when using a professional soundcard with the ASIO API but showed poor performance when using the standard APIs and consumer-grade soundcards."

I had an IBM thinkpad laptop (dual-boot Windows 95/Mandrake 6.1, although once I had linux installed I never booted up that 'other' OS :-) ), connected to my GPS (Garmin II+). I ran a VERY simple bash script that just pinged the GPS every minute and grabbed the latitude/longitude/altitude. I stored these points in a data-file, and then rendered some pretty cool maps (Mercator and Perspective Satellite Projections) when I got back from the trip. I rendered the projections on IDL, with some superimposed (and conformally mapped) satellite pictures of Earth for the terrain.

Trip started and ended in NJ, but went through about 40 states in-between, coast-to-coast. Even drove through parts of Mexico and Canada. Put about 15,000 miles on my car in 8 weeks. It was pretty cool, I was totally connected, with laptop and GPS and CB, driving from point to point. Got kind of annoying to keep doing it all the time, though (especially for parts of the trip that friends went with me), but it was definitely worth it!

The online journal isn't caught up, and is kind of wordy at times, but let me know what y'alls think. When I get some free time (yeah right) I'll add some more pictures, shorten all the blah-blah text, and maybe also add a pictures-only tour. Let me know how you guys like the maps, though. I wanted to eventually render them in Python to only use open-source software, but never got around to fully learning Python. Had to settle on IDL instead.

I had an IBM thinkpad laptop (dual-boot Windows 95/Mandrake 6.1, although once I had linux installed I never booted up that 'other' OS :-) ), connected to my GPS (Garmin II+). I ran a VERY simple bash script that just pinged the GPS every minute and grabbed the latitude/longitude/altitude. I stored these points in a data-file, and then rendered some pretty cool maps (Mercator and Perspective Satellite Projections) when I got back from the trip. I rendered the projections on IDL, with some superimposed (and conformally mapped) satellite pictures of Earth for the terrain.

Trip started and ended in NJ, but went through about 40 states in-between, coast-to-coast. Even drove through parts of Mexico and Canada. Put about 15,000 miles on my car in 8 weeks. It was pretty cool, I was totally connected, with laptop and GPS and CB, driving from point to point. Got kind of annoying to keep doing it all the time, though (especially for parts of the trip that friends went with me), but it was definitely worth it!

The online journal isn't caught up, and is kind of wordy at times, but let me know what y'alls think. When I get some free time (yeah right) I'll add some more pictures, shorten all the blah-blah text, and maybe also add a pictures-only tour. Let me know how you guys like the maps, though. I wanted to eventually render them in Python to only use open-source software, but never got around to fully learning Python. Had to settle on IDL instead.

I had an IBM thinkpad laptop (dual-boot Windows 95/Mandrake 6.1, although once I had linux installed I never booted up that 'other' OS :-) ), connected to my GPS (Garmin II+). I ran a VERY simple bash script that just pinged the GPS every minute and grabbed the latitude/longitude/altitude. I stored these points in a data-file, and then rendered some pretty cool maps (Mercator and Perspective Satellite Projections) when I got back from the trip. I rendered the projections on IDL, with some superimposed (and conformally mapped) satellite pictures of Earth for the terrain.

Trip started and ended in NJ, but went through about 40 states in-between, coast-to-coast. Even drove through parts of Mexico and Canada. Put about 15,000 miles on my car in 8 weeks. It was pretty cool, I was totally connected, with laptop and GPS and CB, driving from point to point. Got kind of annoying to keep doing it all the time, though (especially for parts of the trip that friends went with me), but it was definitely worth it!

The online journal isn't caught up, and is kind of wordy at times, but let me know what y'alls think. When I get some free time (yeah right) I'll add some more pictures, shorten all the blah-blah text, and maybe also add a pictures-only tour. Let me know how you guys like the maps, though. I wanted to eventually render them in Python to only use open-source software, but never got around to fully learning Python. Had to settle on IDL instead.

But seriously, if you have a perfectly good Compaq case and power supply holding a 486 board and you find a good deal on a Gateway Socket 7 (or the other way around brand wise), it's really annoying that one's got the video jack where the other has the keyboard and mouse or vise versa

Yeah, OEMs do love to play those kinds of games. Too bad, but I guess they like being the single source (and being able to charge amounts which match that status for spare parts).

By the way, just what kind of old computer junk can you use? (if you weren't kidding)

I think this sums it up: link.

Do Univiersities need to add more "career development" type classes? Probably. Should this be done at the expense of a well-rounded curriculum? Absolutely not! Excuse me while I stereotype for a minute, but people who know a lot about only one thing are often narrow-minded and boring. Sure, those other people that you hang out with who are just like you - they might find you interesting, but the rest of us don't. :-P

The "well-rounded education" is not there soley for people who haven't decided on a career yet. It is there to teach you how to think about a variety of different things in a variety of different ways. It helps you out in your future life by allowing you to hold an intelligent conversation with people whose interests are divergent from yours. It allows you to better understand world events, enjoy a good book or play, or whatever it is you decide you like to do when you aren't working. If you think this is a waste of your time, then you belong at a vocational school, not a university.

Some universities decide to do this by having a core curriculum, and my friends who went to U Chicago loved theirs. My alma mater, Johns Hopkins, did it differently. Each class and major was categoriezed as history, writing, science, etc. We had to take a certain amount of classes in each of these areas. As a result, we got a well-rounded education while retaining some choice over our curriculum. Hate Post Modern Literature? Fine. Take the Anthropology of Sex instead. (I did.) Many of these classes had no direct practical application to the career path I had already chosen, but after a 6 hour organic chemistry lab, they were pretty fun. I just went to Eurpoe for the first time, and I am so glad I took Art History instead of another undergraduate science class full of information that has either become outdated in the last 4 yeats or been repeated during graduate school.

From some of the comments here, it seems like there is a demand for management and business training. I think this type of training should supplement, not replace a traditional university education. And there *are* schools that offer MBAs. Perhaps the training you seek is already there?

Just my $0.02,
-m.

--
no sig, just a website: http://www.bluehurricane.com

The BBC article was kinda light on details . . . care to give more in-depth info about the Enigma Machine?

The Engima story is quite interesting and complex; volumes can and have been written about it and it's beyond the scope of a Slashdot post to relay the full history. But I've provided some links if you're curious.

It should be noted that Bletchley Park's work in deciphering the Enigma codes - used by the Germans to direct operations including U-boat attacks on Allied convoys - proved vital to the outcome of the WWII.

Bletchley Park, code-named Station X, employed teams of mathematicians, linguists and chess champions during the war.

By the end of 1945, 10,000 people worked there.

With the help of decoding machines, the army of experts were able to crack the German code Enigma, which Berlin believed to be unbreakable.

The work carried out at the top-secret centre is believed to have shortened the war by several years and was kept secret until 1967.

The stolen device, an Abwehr Enigma G312, is a rare four-rotor version, one of only three still known to be in existence.

On the other hand, there are instances where separate people can come to the exact same solution independently. On the grand scale, you have Newton and Leibniz co-inventing Calculus. On the small scale, you have (for example) me and someone at Volkswagen writing the exact same select-box navigation script.

Theirs: function lnav(selname)
{
var selected = selname.selectedIndex;
var url = selname.options[selected].value;
selname.selectedIndex = 0; // Added 12.15.99
if(url)
location.href=url;
}

Mine: function jumpto(selector) {
var the_url = selector.options[selector.selectedIndex].value;
selector.selectedIndex = 0;
if (the_url) window.location.href = the_url;
}

In some situations, there really is one best way to do certain things, and coders may well converge on a solution.

I work at at lab at my university that does just this. It's called CIRL, and sent a team to the recent Robocup competition (we lost).

One of the best parts of using Linux for robot control is you can do some fairly heavy processing on it (for example, put a Firewire DV camera on it, send the output to a firewire card, decode it, run various computer vision algorithms on the input, and decide what to do next).

However, for the lower-level interaction, we mostly use drivers provided by the people who did the robots for us (we're not really a robotics lab, more of a lab that does computer vision, and we test things out on robots). They provide the sources, of course, but it's not free (OTOH, I wouldn't want to have to write the drivers myself, soooo...)

If you are planning on building one yourself (a reasonable idea considering how much the ones we bought cost), I would strongly suggest you consider using some sort of 8 or 16 bit embedded microprocessor or something even smaller, for doing the actual control (another post had some details about this sort of thing). If you're really feeling 31337, wire it all up with just plain transistors (probably make it a real mess and hard to fix if something breaks, though).

Linux is useful enough on a robot, but it's not really a low level controller; you need something to centralize the control of the phyiscal components into one place, so your "real" computer can talk to just that single spot, instaead of some weird scheme where you would have wires running all over the place connecting directly to your computer somehow.

BTW, Wireless LAN cards in robots kick ass. :)

Also, I'm not sure how expensive it is, but look into ARCnet. It's an "embedded networking" sort of thing; some of the robots use it to connect together various parts (radars, cameras, the wheels, etc) and Linux supports it to some extent.

Here is a little further information about Henrietta Lacks and George Gey. The Henrietta Lacks article is from John Hopkins Magazine and the Gey article is from a University of Pittsburgh article. The Gey article gives a littl more info about his attempts at setting up cell lines and his life, etc.. The Lacks article talks about the family, how they first found out 25 years later that there mothers cells were used and ethical issues, etc..

http://www.univ-relations.pitt.edu/pittmag/culture .html

http://www.jhu.edu/%7ejhumag/0400web/01.html

I found some information about an extension to mgetty, called vgetty. This might be what your after. See here. I'm sure there's more information, but I thought I'd leave that up to you.

Good thing that galactic spirals aren't due to winding, then, isn't it?

An excellent online reference on density waves (the phenomenon currently thought to be responsible for the appearance of spiral galaxies) is at http://fuse.pha.jhu.edu/~danforth/spiral

Density waves were proposed in the mid-60s and have (so far) stood up pretty well. What this has to do with the big bang or evolution is beyond me.

Good control over where software goes facilitates terrific schemes for software management, like the outstanding, time-tested /usr/site system, which permits extremely fine-grained control over what packages are installed, allows multiple architectures to be handled at once, and splits installs such that all of a package's files all go under one logical place, so that the whole package can be terminated with a simple rm -rf.

This is one place where free software leapfrogs commercial, in its ability to handle nonstandard placement (after all, if the software doesn't like where you want to put it, just fix it so it does!)

The thing about Michael Bloomberg is, he really does suck. He's chairman of the board of trustees at my school (Johns Hopkins University) and he does shit like, make anonymous donations even though everyone knows it's him, on orders that the money be spent for shit we don't need (like brick walkways, instead of, say, student services or online course registration). Plus, the school insists on naming everything after him: so far, we have the Bloomberg Center for Physics and Astronomy, and the Bloomberg School of Public Health.

And now he thinks he can become mayor of NY. ~sigh~

After a jaunt to my local library, I can say with reasonable authority that we were both wrong.

Out of my head, about 200,000 died on Aug. 6, 1945

The best accepted figures say approximately 80,000 were killed by blast/fire at Hiroshima, and another 60,000 died later of radiation. Some articles claim 60,000 more long-term deaths (leading to the 200k you cited), but causation is often disputed. A comparable number died in the firebombing of Tokyo and Yokohama (March 10, 1945). A total of 500,000 were killed by firebombs in Japan, with similar counts (a bit lower) in Germany.

found this article. (Dresden around 20,000.)

Other souces say the Dresden bombing killed over 100,000 people. However, the best respected figures are about 40,000 -- same as the people blown up at Nagasaki (plus another 40k from radiation).

Although any single incident is not quite equivalent, the total firebombings killed more civilians.

• Lisp
• Forth, and this other Forth one and this one. mmm forth, every good programmer should learn this beauty.
• x86 Assembly pretty boring stuff
• Pascal, well not my favorite either
• Cobol (this list while compile in cobol).
• Fortan. They say it still outcranks C in some areas if you can believe it. (I don't)

So I'm sitting at work using windows and IEv5.5. I just reloaded slashdot and noticed that there was a little icon next to http://www.slashdot.org in the address field that looked like an "/." icon. Is this new? I haven't noticed it before, and this certainly seems like something /. wouldn't make. For those who are curious, you can see the icon at http://jhunix.hcf.jhu.edu/~sjs2/favicon.ico.

Mr. Spey

connecting any system to the internet without looking at the services that run at startup time and applying errata/service packs is extrememly irresponsible and arrogant.

You may find this amusing, then.

If you don't mind throwing combatibility with pre-6 netscape browsers and pre-5 ie browsers out the window, it's quite possible.

Okay, I know I'm plugging my own resume, but I found that I could do CSS tricks with http://www.math.jhu.edu/~martind/resume.html to make certain that my resume printed just the way I wanted it to from ie 5.x browsers (which were the most common in the HR departments I was targetting). Remember that a resume's purpose is to get you past the HR drones; they will either print it out and hand (or fax) it to the person who'd you would actually be working for, or ignore it entirely. In a few very rare cases, I've seen HR departments clued enough to send resumes as email attachments, but not before first converting them to Word and trashing all the formatting anyway. Therefore, ie5-specific CSS in a resume isn't that big a deal.

Not only that, but it wasn't hard to include the necessary extra xml-foo so that office 2000 would load the html as a word doc. with all the borders, etc. set correctly. This made keeping the html, pdf, plain text, and doc formats of my resume in sync quite easy - I'd update the html from anywhere, and use lynx -dump to give me the plain text. I'd then walk over to a windows machine that had the full office 2000 suite on it, and load that page up in ie5. Print to file from ie5 to generate postscript, and also load up http://math.jhu.edu/~martind/resume2k.doc in Word (that file's just a symbolic link to the html). Save the Word doc. in office 95 format and ftp/scp the postscript and '95 doc format back to the server. Then use ps2pdf on the server to turn the postscript version into pdf.

It got a bit more complicated than that for a while - inserting pdfmark stuff into the postscript so that hyperlinks worked in the pdf file - but basically, that's it. (Maintenance of the multiple separate versions has lagged since I landed a job back in August - I only generated the most recent files a few months ago to get recruiters off my back)

If you don't mind throwing combatibility with pre-6 netscape browsers and pre-5 ie browsers out the window, it's quite possible.

Okay, I know I'm plugging my own resume, but I found that I could do CSS tricks with http://www.math.jhu.edu/~martind/resume.html to make certain that my resume printed just the way I wanted it to from ie 5.x browsers (which were the most common in the HR departments I was targetting). Remember that a resume's purpose is to get you past the HR drones; they will either print it out and hand (or fax) it to the person who'd you would actually be working for, or ignore it entirely. In a few very rare cases, I've seen HR departments clued enough to send resumes as email attachments, but not before first converting them to Word and trashing all the formatting anyway. Therefore, ie5-specific CSS in a resume isn't that big a deal.

Not only that, but it wasn't hard to include the necessary extra xml-foo so that office 2000 would load the html as a word doc. with all the borders, etc. set correctly. This made keeping the html, pdf, plain text, and doc formats of my resume in sync quite easy - I'd update the html from anywhere, and use lynx -dump to give me the plain text. I'd then walk over to a windows machine that had the full office 2000 suite on it, and load that page up in ie5. Print to file from ie5 to generate postscript, and also load up http://math.jhu.edu/~martind/resume2k.doc in Word (that file's just a symbolic link to the html). Save the Word doc. in office 95 format and ftp/scp the postscript and '95 doc format back to the server. Then use ps2pdf on the server to turn the postscript version into pdf.

It got a bit more complicated than that for a while - inserting pdfmark stuff into the postscript so that hyperlinks worked in the pdf file - but basically, that's it. (Maintenance of the multiple separate versions has lagged since I landed a job back in August - I only generated the most recent files a few months ago to get recruiters off my back)

I think this explains that you're trolling. Have you done any study of this problem? Based on my experience as a middle & high school math teacher, personal reading, and literature reviews, it's pretty clear that math gender issue can be explained very effectively by social factors. Peer pressure and media influence shunt girls into supporting roles and focus them on appearance over accomplishment.

Show me the money, euroderf. Any post that claims "science has shown" something without providing a valid URL should be modded down immediately.

This is a short list right off the top of my head of things that have happened in my lifetime that people were initially very upset about but they then got used to:

• sending in a punchcard with a bill payment (becoming "just a number")
• ongoing military action without declaring a war
• welfare (as a demoralizing trap)
• appearance of UPC tags on consumer items
• restrictions on carrying firearms (the Black Panthers carried firearms in public because the law said they could -- see this article)
• credit cards (the rise of consumer debt)
• criminalization of drug possession/use
• high school students being paid police informants
• requiring social security numbers for children
• mandatory drug tests
• employee background checks
• the RICO act and Asset Forfeiture
• political correctness
• expelling students for casual conversation

I really don't think there is a dark motive behind the technology in this article but remember: just because you're paranoid, that doesn't mean they aren't out to get you.

Wishful thinking by the Clinton regime.

They were trying to set a precedent that the census could be done by statistical sampling. If they had succeeded, they could then set up a "sampling" organization and make up any numbers they wanted.

Oh, my. I guess I would find your argument way more convincing if there were even a shred of evidence that what you say is true. Seriously, I see the same old tripe parroted around by people who should really know better than this. So, as my daily dose of public service, let me point you towards an on-line article by Anderson and Fienberg that gives a solid introduction to the issues involved. To cut to the chase here, it is incredibly difficult to find a trained statistician who believes that the naive counting approach to the census could not be substantially helped by incorporating some form of sampling procedure. The problem, of course, is that it is incredibly difficult to find any *two* trained statisticians who agree with each other on what the best procedure would be, which gave politicians an easy way out ("See? Even the experts disagree...").

To give a little bit more away, the primary use of sampling being contemplated was actually targeted at non-respondents. The problem here is that while you could follow up on most non-respondents very easily, there are a lot of them, so it takes time. And, the more time that passes before you follow-up, the worse the data get, and what you really end up with is a systematic undercount. Basically everybody on all sides of the political debate understands and agrees about this. What you should do about it is, of course, where the real fighting starts.

We've got a pretty stiff admission test (you had to score high on the SAT in 7th or 8th grade), but the computer science course is fabulous. Hmm...they may have changed the syllabus recently. The original version is still being taught by the Boston CTY Alumni.

For younger kids, Johns Hopkins' CTY is one of the best programs ever. The curriculum is high level with a great deal of individual attention despite a large number of people on each campus.

For older kids, why not just get a job. There are lot of internship programs. In the Washington area there is one such program through George Washington University, which I wasn't able to find a page for.

Here are a couple of links to try:
(I can't comment on any of them except PCB, which, although very simple, works fairly well and is quite intuitive to use).
MUCS-PCB
PCB
SATCAD

Also try Scientific Applications on Linux

Aha! You've fallen into the trap of deceptive simplicity. The point is when you play this game multiple times in a row -- the iterative Prisoner's Dilemma.

I did this once as a bonus problem with a roomfull of math kids. For points I used Skittles. I carefully explained the rules, divided the whole class into pairs and they played for 10 rounds.

Most of the class followed your strategy. If their opponent cooperated on the first round then defected the other nine, they got 14 Skittles and their "opponent" got 9. I asked the class "how do you win this game", and most of the replied "by getting more candy than your opponent". BZZT!

Exactly one pair of kids cooperated the entire way through. They each got 30 Skittles. I pointed this out, and figurative light bulbs flashed on all around the room. It was freaking perfect.

Here IT is again.

Dancin Santa

OK, a couple more questions: Do you believe the inclusion of the Windows Explorer (the file system browsing tool) in Windows 95 was unlawful? Note that a number of third parties were selling similar tools previously.

Also, with regard to your car analogy, is it unlawful for a car dealer to force you to buy tires with the car even though they're not integrated products by your reasoning?

Finally, would you consider your heart (the muscle) to be integrated with your circulatory system, considering that it can be swapped out for a similar component supplied by a third party?

JHU has a MS in CS program through their in the Whiting school of enginnering. They have reasonable pre-reqs in math and CS which they offer is you don't have them. 4 classes at undergrad level, 1 math and 3 CS (though you might need another math to be able to take this math). You needn't take them at JHU if you have equivalents from elsewhere (or could take them at a community college for less). They use Java, so one of the pre-reqs is an intro class for that (or c or c++ if you already have it), then a data structures class using java (hint: don't take them at the same time if you're new to java, you don't learn enough in one to keep up in the other at the same time.), and a systems software course. Math is 2 semesters of calc + 1 class BEYOND it. I don't think your stats class will count there, you probably need a diff eq class.

The program is aimed at professionals working in the field, classes are in the evening and weekends. Very competent instructors, usually working in their field. They offer classes throughout their satelite campus system, in southern MD and Montgomery county, MD, and well as Baltimore.

Agreed. Let the kid progress at his own rate, and follow the interests that he puts forward. Another essential thing to remember is that you don't have to go it alone.

• JHU Center for Talented Youth - Study of Exceptional Talent
• Hoagies' Gifted Page

It would seem that old-fashioned face-to-face contact is somehow becoming unfashionable. The Internet does not provide an adequate replacement for physical socialising.

It would seem that old-fashioned face-to-face contact is somehow becoming unfashionable. The Internet does not provide an adequate replacement for physical socialising.

There's a silmulation of it here and another here.
&l t;BR>Also, How does the enigma work? and a short history of the Enigma Machine,

There's a silmulation of it here and another here.
&l t;BR>Also, How does the enigma work? and a short history of the Enigma Machine,

There's a silmulation of it here and another here.
&l t;BR>Also, How does the enigma work? and a short history of the Enigma Machine,

Apparently DIPC (Distributed IPC) can run with MOSIX, although DIPC a few months ago did not optimize migrated processes. It could work, but works better when DIPC realizes that processes are able to run on other systems.

The question is money well spent.

Most people don't realize how old some of these systems are. The EUVE was flown a long time ago and there are now two different instruments that provide similar capability, the Space Telescope Imaging Spectrograph on HST, and the Far Ultraviolet Spectroscopic Explorer.

The EUVE has been running for like 10 years, it is probably a good time for it to end (and Stu Bowyer to find something else to do).

It appears Subversion would like to be a CVS replacement, development looks active.

I sincerely hope whoever moderated this comment up as "funny" never has to experience a close relative (or worse, him/herself) having Parkinson's disease. Michael J. Fox as "that guy who shakes a lot" .. yeah, that's a real knee-slapper. I suppose Magic Johnson is "that guy with the busted immune system", huh? I know at least one Slashdot reader who is afflicted by this disease.

For people who are really interested in Parkinson's disease and would rather help those that suffer from it than make childish jokes about their condition, here are some links:

NIH's Parkinson's Disease Research Agenda

The Morris K. Udall Parkinson's Disease Research Center

National Parkinson Foundation

Computers for People With Parkinson's Disease Project

The characters in the book are black-and-white, it's true, but it's all the more fun because Brunner's palate of blacks and whites are somehow more intense than those of other writers. Nickie Halfinger is a great character, recreated several times throughout the book as he adopts and integrates different personas.

Thinking back on the book a few years after I read it, I notice parallels to events in my own life; and that made me wonder about those events. These are almost certainly coincidences...but -- all but fans of conspiracy theories can stop here.

When I was 12 (in 1972) the state of Maryland held a 'contest' where they took the top 2% of kids on the standardized tests of the day, and brought them to Johns Hopkins University to take the SATs. The top 2% of those were brought in for a huge battery of further tests, both academic and psychological. The top few percent of those kids were enrolled in something called the Study of Mathematically and Scientifically Prococious Youth (SMSPY, later SMPY as they dropped the Scientifically part).

We were given special math courses on weekends in lieu of our middle- and high-school classes, basically to see how fast a bunch of kids could learn things. These classes were amazing; wonderfully taught by gifted instructors. We were encouraged to and given the opportunity to enroll in local community colleges for further math and science courses. Many of us then went to college at rediculously early ages (I was in the middle of the pack of SMPY kids at 15 when I started at JHU.)

All through this, we were monitored and profiled, but provided practically no guidance or counseling. Sadly, this was a disaster for many of us; we couldn't handle the pressure of Johns Hopkins (which was, and is, an incredibly competetive and cutthroat school.) I find this lack of guidance or even simple compassion unforgivable now.

The sinister part of this, though, is that a relatively large percentage of my SMPY-mates went on to work at the NSA, nearby in Fort Meade, MD. It just seems a little too convenient to me -- and reading Shockwave Rider a few years out of school (after getting kicked out myself, but fortuitously landing in the groundbreaking computer graphics facility of the day at NYIT [whew!]) made the parallels of TSR's Tarnower to SMPY clear and disturbing.

Anyway -- I now return you to your regularly scheduled Slashdot.

thad

These are some of the questions that come up to my mind:

Be able to migrate IIS to Apache first, and still be able to access the MSSQL databases (FreeTDS?)

Use a scripting syntax similar to ASP so that the programmers don't have much of a headache learning new stuff (PHP looks like a solution).

Java Server Pages will solve both problems. Sun has worked very closely with the Apache project on making JSP run well under Apache including giving away code and contributing to projects a la Tomcat. Here's a site to give you a quick overview of JSP.

Migrate MSSQL 7 to MySQL, PostgreSQL or other (Which one is better for web development?)

Depends on what kind of Web development you are doing. For the kind of work I have done which is both mission critical (eliminating MySQL) and requires speed (eliminating PostgreSQL) commercial databases have always been the correct solution to solve my problem. Both IBM's DB2 and Oracle 8i are available for Linux and are also very friendly with Apache and Java.

If your site does not traffic in mission critical data (e.g. a bank, major e-commerce company) then MySQL may be the solution that you seek. It is quick, fairly easy to use and heck, slashdot uses it.

Web log reports (I need to generate reports on the web site usage. What weblog report generators are available for Linux? Which ones do you use? Are there any that generate graphs, charts, etc..?)

Look on Freshmeat.


(-1 Troll)

There is already substantial interest in the historical study of computers, and especially of their impact on society and culture. As time goes on, the subject will attract more interest, funding, and jobs in academe. While the CS world may not now (and probably never will) be open to historical analysis of computing, the subdiscpline/cross-discipline of "History of Technology" could provide you with the training to be a computer historian.

History of Technology tends to focus on the social/cultural/political context as well as the technical details of a given technology. People in the field study everything from metallurgy to recombinant DNA. History of Technology is a stepsister to History (and/or Philosophy) of Science. History of Science, as traditionally practiced, focuses on the development of ideas, e.g. from Newton to Bacon to Darwin, etc. Some History of Science people do technology and/or society, too.

Check out the Society for the History of Technology (SHOT), and especially their journal, Technology and Culture. http://shot.press.jhu.edu/

If you want to be an academic computer historian, research and teaching in the history of technology be a good route to employment. Starting out from high school, the first step is getting a good undergraduate education. Don't be afraid to follow your interests. Try to choose classes from the most invigorating (not necessarily the most emminent) professors. Lean to think clearly, to write well, to read with great abandon.

Then, if you really want to be an academic, chose a program carefully. Chances are, the place to do computer history in most universities will be either the History department or the History of Science deptartment. A few schools have History of Technology or Studies in Technology and Society programs. All it takes is one or two good professors to make a good department. Rensaeler Polytechnic, MIT, U of Chicago are some schools with strong History of Technology programs. Start by reading widely--find books/articles you like, and find out who wrote them. Maybe you can study with those authors, or with those that trained them. Read a good general guide to graduate school--I like either Lingua Franca's The Real Guide to Grad School: What You Better Know before You Choose or Peters, Getting What You Came For.

Academe can be a great life, if it's what you really want to do. Don't worry about that now, though--enjoy your education.

--EG

Such as Paul Ceruzzi, who works for the smithsonian, and has written several books on the subject. He's also involved with SHOT, the Society for the History Of Technology.

You might also be interested in the slightly less formal Vintage Computer Festival, taking place at the end of September. There will be plenty of history and historians there. The VCF web site also has a long list of links to museums, collectors, etc.

And, of course, I would be denying my own conceit if I did not mention my own collection of classic computers.

Computer history is a growing field, but not one that I think you could ever get rich in, any more than any other similar field. Certainly it is fascinating to look back and see just how far we've come.