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This sounds like a pork program. When I read about computer companies talking to the Government about there not being "enough compute resources", I think of the various supercomputer boondoggles. Here's the current job list for the Mississippi Supercomputer Center. Look at the CPU and memory usage columns. Most, if not all, of those jobs could be running on a 4-core 64-bit desktop machine. Instead, they're running some 10-year old SGI supercomputers as a batch processing service, free to Mississippi academics.

Looks like Ms. Bonnington is also an EE and teaches ballet.

I am fairly certain that by the end of 2004, he could have had a Facebook with just a .edu address.

I was on Facebook in 2003 with an email address from the University of Mississippi—which, despite the good education I got there, and the good time I had, is not an Ivy League school. So I'd say it's more than plausible that this individual could have been on Facebook in 2004.

You need to go at least 0.9c to get any appreciable time dilation (2x).

As objects speed up, they also get more massive. The equations appear to be the same, so at 0.9c, you would be twice as massive. Sure that won't slow you down, but you'll need some serious engines to keep up with the increase in mass. Eventually, the engines will stop working, and you'll reach the speed limit of your design.

http://www.phy.olemiss.edu/HEP/QuarkNet/time.html

I'm sure somebody has worked this out for various mass of spaceships and continuous engine thrust. It would be interesting to read.

The code is (I assume) not a part of the proper gcc (or other compiler) distribution. It was a proof of concept, written and then immediately pointed to and then the author said `see?!?!?!' It was never added to any released software (that I'm aware of.)

But you wanted a citation? Here ya go, read the `27.1.2 Trusting Trust' section. Looks like I was wrong about the date -- it wasn't 20 years ago, it was at least 24 years ago.

OeLeWaPpErKe may have gotten the compiler wrong (since gcc came out in 1987, and this hacked compiler was written about in 1984, it couldn't have been gcc.) But I'd say that the odds are approximately 100% that somebody has made a similar alteration to gcc, which would make what OeLeWaPpErKe said correct. Now, hopefully that change (or anything similar) never made it into the gcc or egcs distributions, but it's possible, and if done skillfully (or with the collaboration of the other people in a position to detect it) it could be difficult to detect.

In any event, read the entire page I cited, and the next few pages in the book. It might help you explain why people are suspicious of the Chinese government's motives here. Or if you want to read the original 1984 paper, here ya go.

Don't critique that which you do not know.

The University of Mississippi School of Law "offers the only dedicated aerospace law curriculum in the nation from an American Bar Association-accredited law school, and requires courses on U.S. space and aviation law, international space and aviation law, and remote sensing; participation in the publication of the Journal of Space Law; and independent research. The National Center for Remote Sensing, Air and Space Law was founding in 1999."

The faculty and staff look very well experienced: international treaties, UN, regulatory exp.; aerospace, aviation, & remote sensing legal work; governmental, public policy groups and private sector.

Curriculum from the National Center for Remote Sensing, Air and Space Law :

Remote Sensing Law: "Remote sensing is a valuable technology in science, foreign policy, national security, and commerce. This course provides an overview of international and domestic remote sensing law and identifies issues in the United States and the international community."

U.S. Domestic Space Law: "This course covers the most developed body of domestic space law in the world: that of the United States. It addresses the nation's civil and military programs and offers a wide variety of commercial activites: launches, remote sensing, and satellite communications, among others."

International Space Law: "This course provides an overview of current international space law in U.N. resolutions and treaties and customary law. It identifies legal theory and principles used in the advancement of civil, military, and commercial space activities."

Journal of Space Law (practical): "The Journal of Space Law is an academic review of national and international scope, focusing on the many aspects of space, remote sensing, and aerospace law. Research, writing, and editing assignments, and other duties necessary to the operation of the Journal of Space Law. One hour credited for each term of participation to maximum of 4 hours. Limitation: credit not available if enrolled in the Mississippi Law Journal."

RTFA before uninformed commentary. HTH.

Don't critique that which you do not know.

The University of Mississippi School of Law "offers the only dedicated aerospace law curriculum in the nation from an American Bar Association-accredited law school, and requires courses on U.S. space and aviation law, international space and aviation law, and remote sensing; participation in the publication of the Journal of Space Law; and independent research. The National Center for Remote Sensing, Air and Space Law was founding in 1999."

The faculty and staff look very well experienced: international treaties, UN, regulatory exp.; aerospace, aviation, & remote sensing legal work; governmental, public policy groups and private sector.

Curriculum from the National Center for Remote Sensing, Air and Space Law :

Remote Sensing Law: "Remote sensing is a valuable technology in science, foreign policy, national security, and commerce. This course provides an overview of international and domestic remote sensing law and identifies issues in the United States and the international community."

U.S. Domestic Space Law: "This course covers the most developed body of domestic space law in the world: that of the United States. It addresses the nation's civil and military programs and offers a wide variety of commercial activites: launches, remote sensing, and satellite communications, among others."

International Space Law: "This course provides an overview of current international space law in U.N. resolutions and treaties and customary law. It identifies legal theory and principles used in the advancement of civil, military, and commercial space activities."

Journal of Space Law (practical): "The Journal of Space Law is an academic review of national and international scope, focusing on the many aspects of space, remote sensing, and aerospace law. Research, writing, and editing assignments, and other duties necessary to the operation of the Journal of Space Law. One hour credited for each term of participation to maximum of 4 hours. Limitation: credit not available if enrolled in the Mississippi Law Journal."

RTFA before uninformed commentary. HTH.

Don't critique that which you do not know.

The University of Mississippi School of Law "offers the only dedicated aerospace law curriculum in the nation from an American Bar Association-accredited law school, and requires courses on U.S. space and aviation law, international space and aviation law, and remote sensing; participation in the publication of the Journal of Space Law; and independent research. The National Center for Remote Sensing, Air and Space Law was founding in 1999."

The faculty and staff look very well experienced: international treaties, UN, regulatory exp.; aerospace, aviation, & remote sensing legal work; governmental, public policy groups and private sector.

Curriculum from the National Center for Remote Sensing, Air and Space Law :

Remote Sensing Law: "Remote sensing is a valuable technology in science, foreign policy, national security, and commerce. This course provides an overview of international and domestic remote sensing law and identifies issues in the United States and the international community."

U.S. Domestic Space Law: "This course covers the most developed body of domestic space law in the world: that of the United States. It addresses the nation's civil and military programs and offers a wide variety of commercial activites: launches, remote sensing, and satellite communications, among others."

International Space Law: "This course provides an overview of current international space law in U.N. resolutions and treaties and customary law. It identifies legal theory and principles used in the advancement of civil, military, and commercial space activities."

Journal of Space Law (practical): "The Journal of Space Law is an academic review of national and international scope, focusing on the many aspects of space, remote sensing, and aerospace law. Research, writing, and editing assignments, and other duties necessary to the operation of the Journal of Space Law. One hour credited for each term of participation to maximum of 4 hours. Limitation: credit not available if enrolled in the Mississippi Law Journal."

RTFA before uninformed commentary. HTH.

Don't critique that which you do not know.

The University of Mississippi School of Law "offers the only dedicated aerospace law curriculum in the nation from an American Bar Association-accredited law school, and requires courses on U.S. space and aviation law, international space and aviation law, and remote sensing; participation in the publication of the Journal of Space Law; and independent research. The National Center for Remote Sensing, Air and Space Law was founding in 1999."

The faculty and staff look very well experienced: international treaties, UN, regulatory exp.; aerospace, aviation, & remote sensing legal work; governmental, public policy groups and private sector.

Curriculum from the National Center for Remote Sensing, Air and Space Law :

Remote Sensing Law: "Remote sensing is a valuable technology in science, foreign policy, national security, and commerce. This course provides an overview of international and domestic remote sensing law and identifies issues in the United States and the international community."

U.S. Domestic Space Law: "This course covers the most developed body of domestic space law in the world: that of the United States. It addresses the nation's civil and military programs and offers a wide variety of commercial activites: launches, remote sensing, and satellite communications, among others."

International Space Law: "This course provides an overview of current international space law in U.N. resolutions and treaties and customary law. It identifies legal theory and principles used in the advancement of civil, military, and commercial space activities."

Journal of Space Law (practical): "The Journal of Space Law is an academic review of national and international scope, focusing on the many aspects of space, remote sensing, and aerospace law. Research, writing, and editing assignments, and other duties necessary to the operation of the Journal of Space Law. One hour credited for each term of participation to maximum of 4 hours. Limitation: credit not available if enrolled in the Mississippi Law Journal."

RTFA before uninformed commentary. HTH.

Here is some data for you:
http://www.coyotegulch.com/reviews/linux_compilers /
http://www.mcsr.olemiss.edu/parallelogram/01_03/ic c.html#performance

FreeBSD 6.1-PRERELEASE (SE7210TP1E) #0: Tue Mar 14 12:15:56 CST 2006

Welcome to FreeBSD and the wonderful world of UNIX!
                Abandon all Hope, ye who Enter Here...

If you need help, the commands; man, whatis, and whereis will help you.
For an introduction to UNIX head on over to:
                http://wks.uts.ohio-state.edu/unix_course/unix.htm l
                http://www.ee.surrey.ac.uk/Teaching/Unix/
                http://www.mcsr.olemiss.edu/unixhelp/

An example of an ad hominem attack would be me saying "I hereby prove that there is a God based on the fact that you are an idiot" (it looks like religion is not the only area where you are lacking education.)

see, you keep doing it again!

an insult to the person IS ad hominem. essentially 'don't listen to him, he isn't smart enough'. that IS ad hominem.

link: http://home.olemiss.edu/~gbrown/reserve/fallacies_ and_causes.htm

"Ad hominem ("against the person"). when people can't find fault with an argument, they sometimes attack the arguer, substituting irrelevant assertions about that person's character for an analysis of the argument itself."

you have not refuted my point - you have simply said I'm not 'educated' enough to argue with. that sure seems like ad hominem to me (attacking the character of the person rather than the argument, itself).

I've always been partial to DD

You paid 82k for a redundant 2 TB RAID 10 server? What were you thinking? I built a 1 TB RAID 5 Array out of 300 gig disks (with a hot spare to boot) for under two thousand dollars, and it can scale to 4 TB by just adding additional disks and controllers. The fact of the matter is, you can build rather large storage systems (10+ TB), with great redundancy provided you know what you are doing that will undercut anything any large data vendor has out there.

Take your car into the shop, spend $1000, 80% of which goes towards labor. Do it yourself will always be cheaper but there are times when you still should bring in the experts (like building a new engine from scratch, or replacing the one you had, unless you are REALLY talented).

Also, see:

http://www.xav.com/scripts/misc/1016.html
http://www.accs.com/p_and_p/TeraByte/
http://vtwug.w2k.vt.edu/pdf/chubtoad.pdf
http://www.phy.olemiss.edu/HEP/sanders_chep03.pdf
http://staff.chess.cornell.edu/~schuller/raid.html

Note: Many of these were done years ago and costs and software have only gone down and improved. I would strongly suggest to go the cheap way, which if done right would result in cost savings in the hundreds of thousands if not millions for this project.

Their patent application infringes on my patented way of inducing sleep in children with a text containing over 100 consecutive words without a period.

Your patent is invalid due to prior art.

PS> Oxford isn't in the US ?

You might better break the news to

http://www.oxfordms.net/

Which is home to a little known University

http://www.olemiss.edu/

If you had only graduated from USM http://www.usm.edu/index.php, you would have known that ;)

Let me put a different perspective on your arguments:

I work with several amateur web designers...they all make their pages by writing the HTML. If you surf through the net, you will find that there's millions of people who are writing their own code. Even those using frontpage spend a great deal of their time in the HTML edit mode.

You can edit XHTML just as easily as HTML by hand. In fact, XHTML is probably 2x less code, because you don't have FONT tags everywhere. It's much easier to see the information you are trying to convey.

I watched a large numbers of people who had little difficulty learning HTML have tremendous difficulties with XHTML...

It depends on how one approches it. If you think "This text needs to be bold and red," then XHTML is harder. On the other hand if you think "This text is important," and then later decide it should be bold and red, XHTML become easier.

Take something simple like centering. The decision to center a paragraph or image is often made at run time.

I am not sure what you mean by "at run time". Run time of what? A web application? A script? It is possible to put styles into a "style" attribute rather than a stylesheet. The scrip can also set the "class" attribute of the P tag, and the stylesheet can specify that that text should be centered.

The fact that so many real people are avoiding the new think indicates to me that there's problems with the new think. I now agree with and encourage those who resist XHTML.

People always avoid new things; it is our nature to resist change. People have complained about GUI programming, the "new" taskbar in Windows 95, you name it. Just because the majority is not quick enough to accept something does not mean it's bad.

I agree that the box model is best for overall page layout, but the deprecated tag attributes are better for run time design decisions.

Do you even know what the box model is? It has little to do with deprecated tag attributes. The attributes were deprecated for other reasons.

There are many reasons why the FONT tag and it's attributes were deprecated. Same goes for most of the other tags like B and I.

Although I am modded a troll for saying it. I think the W3C is still too much under the influence of Microsoft and other big firms...

I am not were you are getting this information from. The way I see it, Microsoft and other companies that make WYSIWYG editors are interested in the code being too complicated for the M and P to write it out by hand. HTML pages are more complicated, than XHTML (just take a look at cnn.com), so I would think MS is interested in using old relaxed HTML (why do you think IE is so relaxed?)

Just my two cents (well, maybe four) :)

... it's based on classname which is a feature of X. So I presume any application could actually choose seperate (or the same) classes for its various windows itself.

I've thought about this, and figured it was easy enough to do with the find utility. Man page is here. It's not difficult to do, I'll leave it up to you to figure out the specifics.
-ReK

If this were XML, we could define an or tag or even ; but this being X/HTML, we want to use id and class attributes to identify a line of text/code within given standards. The example given in parent, , usually means "error" or "important," so using class="error" or class="important" is far more meaningful to the coder than a deprecated tag, and can be made meaningful in any manner to the general audience with CSS.

>How useful is the meaningless element type in situations where CSS is not used (Lynx, Google, etc)?

- In Lynx, about as useful as the <font> tag, eh? But proper structure and hierarchical markup with headers, paragraphs, and properly identified <div> blocks will work wonders: making clear to searchbots what text is important, and giving disabled users an easily-navigable nonvisual UI. Then, the document can be easily (?) styled for prettiness in normal browsers, while still retaining an intelligible structure for other environments.

Even plain, unclassed <span> tags are useful when nested inside parent blocks, since these can be styled as descendant CSS selectors without suffering from acute classitis. Plus, <span> is standards-compliant, and <font> is deprecated.

ahhh, another common myth debunked.

If you really want to run for a purpose, might I suggest hashing.

While now I prefer to drink my beer while sitting around, I can only say that unless you experience a hash for yourself you will not understand.

The Cray 2 used FC 74 fluorinert, which is no longer produced by 3m. It is apparently identical to FC77, which is described on the msds as "PERFLUORO COMPOUNDS, (PRIMARILY COMPOUNDS WITH 8 CARBONS)". Nice and vague.

Who know after three months of pumping up this m-life that it was for a mobile phone plan.

I remember the billboard with an 8-year-old girl, thinking "what's an mlife, and how do I get one?" The answer, Virginia, is that nobody really knows, but it costs about $40 billion.

Those mlife ads always gave me the creeps, anyway. There was always something a little too close to a religious overtone to them... they looked like they were designed by the same folks who put together a local megachurch's billboard campaign. Kinda like "contemporary Christian" music is disturbingly similar to pop music, with "Jesus" in the place of "Baby".

Gives me the creeps. Just give me that old time religion... it's good enough for me!

I guess laser printers are OK, for letters and stuff. But they have to run Postscript. That way you don't need a word processor! You just hack out Postscript files (using ed, of course) and dump them to the printer.

Which just goes to show you that all this video stuff is just a gimmick that they sell to lazy people. Now if you'll excuse me, I got a program to finish. It takes longer without a compiler or assembler, but I like knowing exactly what's in my code!

Unix's fork() and exec() take only the parameters to specify the program. The equivalent Windows API takes 14 parameters ... and most of those have suitable defaults, if you zero out the structure.

So let's see what CreateProcess lets you do:

BOOL CreateProcess(
LPCTSTR lpApplicationName, // name of executable module
LPTSTR lpCommandLine, // command line string
LPSECURITY_ATTRIBUTES lpProcessAttributes, // SD
LPSECURITY_ATTRIBUTES lpThreadAttributes, // SD
BOOL bInheritHandles, // handle inheritance option
DWORD dwCreationFlags, // creation flags
LPVOID lpEnvironment, // new environment block
LPCTSTR lpCurrentDirectory, // current directory name
LPSTARTUPINFO lpStartupInfo, // startup information
LPPROCESS_INFORMATION lpProcessInformation // process information
);

Hmmm... it appears to let you specify the parameters to run the app. In detail. If you leave some out (eg. lpCurrentDirectory), you get a useful default value.

Now, fork() lets you spawn a duplicate. Great! But it doesn't let you specify anything to do with that duplicate - it just spawns, and you have to take the return code from fork and use that to set up your new processes' parameters.

How about exec()?

Welll.... it appears to certainly have plenty of parameters:

exec man page

int execl (const char *path, const char *arg0, ..., const char *argn,
(char *)0);

int execv (const char *path, char *const *argv);

int execle (const char *path, const char *arg0, ..., const char *argn,
(char *)0, const char *envp[]);

int execve (const char *path, char *const *argv, char *const *envp);

int execlp (const char *file, const char *arg0, ..., const char *argn,
(char *)0);

int execvp (const char *file, char *const *argv);

but wait... what's this?

exec, execl, execv, execle, execve, execlp, execvp

Wow! Look at all of these different exec-style() calls!

Not so simple now, is it?

Bitching about CreateProcess being too complicated would appear to mean that you've never had to start up an application in a suspended state so that you can specify the priority it runs at before it starts going. Or you've never had to monitor the processes' completion state by checking its handles. Or you've never wanted it to run with its support libraries and data files in one folder, while using another as its default folder.

In other words, exec() is great for writing CLI apps that don't do much, and are self-contained. But for anything more complicated, you really have to write a hell of a lot more code.

Debian
Business rescue cd
Linux-BBC
RIP Linux
Damn Small Linux (50 meg!)

Not as much space on these as a full distro, and these are live cds, so basicly a mini-knoppix style thing. Might be worth looking into to have as a quick fix for a bad computer....

PS: the RIP in RIP Linux stands for "Recovery Is Possible"

You seem to be saying that the liberal welfare programs will bankrupt us all. According to a quick Google search, in 1994 there were 14.2 million welfare recipients, including 5.0 million families and 9.6 million children, and they spent, 2.8% of the federal budget. In 1999, there were 7.2 million, including 2.6 million families and 5.1 million children. This doesn't seem like a particularly worrying trend.

Meanwhile, the government spends something like twice as much on corporate welfare.

If you're talking about Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid, who the hell can say with any certainty. There's this and this. But let's tackle a macro-scale assumption first: in the event that the economic equation is truly as you say it is, why would they allow the entire global economic order to collapse instead of simply reducing benefits and/or cutting costs? Americans are not particularly slaves to a welfare state. Why wouldn't politicians, being nothing if not self-interested, vote to save their own jobs and curtail benefits and maybe lose a few votes, instead of losing everything in a total economic collapse?

Not this again. Once again, the reason for the $500 hammers, etc., is a matter of cost accounting, not nefarious fraud. These "scandals" erupted because the cost accounting used for a number of government contracts spread the large overhead and R&D costs equally by product line item. In other words, if there were 1,000,000 items being purchased, and $500,000,000 in R&D costs, each item was assigned $500 in R&D cost, whether it was a $50,000 custom circuit board or a $10 hammer. A lousy way to do cost allocation? You betcha. Fraud? Nope. See this for more info.

Actually, it was even worse than I remembered - the cost allocation wasn't done on a $ basis, but rather on a line item basis. In other words, $1BN in R&D, 1000 line items being procured, $1MM in cost assigned to each line item, whether they're a customized board for a supercomputer, or the handiwipes used to clean the case. For more, check out this.

Pretty funny how urban legends grow and grow. The legend started as a $500 hammer. It was never true, but proof otherwise doens't stop people from spreading it. The toilet one was also false, but find your own link.

And if they misbehave, threaten to make them do everything in vi.

If they complain, start quizzing them on all the shortcuts.

Since the laser's light is coherent, you can use this interference to reconstruct subtle changes in the distance from the laser to the reflective surface. In other words, you can eavesdrop on someone by looking at how the windows in the room vibrate! Supposedly this was once used to find out what people were saying in an embassy.

At short distances you can use a grapefruit instead of a window, but talking into a grapefruit is just weird. :)

I work in IT at UM, and we have gotten several angry emails from the RIAA about certain students sharing a lot. Of course the university tucks tail and blocks their network access and we have to sit them down in front of a committee and make sure they don't still have copyrighted works still on their machine

It's also trivial to create a spare partition (or remount a RAM disk as root), install a Debian system exactly as you like it, mount etc and var on a RAM filesystem and copy contents in with the init, and then burn the entire filesystem as an ISO, putting the kernel in place with the installer build tools.

I have a similar setup which is capable of mounting ntfs and fat32 filesystems. This has saved me a number of times in repairing screwed up 2000 and XP machines. The NT/2K/XP console mode is a joke. Using this disc, I can get in to repair the install without having to physically yank the drive and install it in another box!

I haven't tried this yet, but I've heard the Knoppix is capable of installing Debian and autoconfigures most things. A painless Debian installation from what I've read. It does set your default Language to German, but that is pretty easy to fix.

Personally, I used LordSutch.com ISOLINUX mini-ISO image and had no problems.

Today is an important anniversary for Oxford.

Here's some info.

I am sure I have heard of someone doing this before in software, but I can't find a link. It should be quite simple to do if you know bit widths and track diameters I guess. As long as Yamaha haven't patented it I can see this turning up as a plug in for CD writer software quite quickly.

This will probably start turning up on ISO's soon, and it would be cool to have a nice Debian mini-CD ISO hacked to say "Woody" in the unused space! Of course, now we have the possible pain of ISO adverts...

You might be disappointed if you downloaded Debian 2.2 ISO's.
Although extremely stable, they are also full of ancient software.
If you want to have an up to date Debian desktop, I would suggest you download a Debian 3.0 netinstall image.
Also, take the time to get an idea of how apt-get and apt-cache work, as they are the best way to install and manage packages.

Debian 3.0 Installation Manual
Debian 3.0 Release Notes
Debian Reference
APT Howto
Just in case I forget something

Not learning apt-get, or sticking to Debian 2.2, will leave you very disappointed.

BTW, the current version of Suse is fairly good. I haven't used Gentoo yet, but have heard many good things about it recently. Redhat can be good, especially if you spend a small amount of time making it look and run nice. (My current very temporary RedHat 7.3 desktop.

The International Institute of Air and Space Law in Leiden has been around since 1986, and there are a number of others.

Given that the space economy is somewhere around the $100 billion/year mark these days (mostly communications satellites of course) there's plenty of room for lawyers to step in and help out. Who gets sued when a half-billion dollar satellite is blown up on the launch pad? Or when a rocket goes astray and destroys a warehouse or two? Who argues on your behalf with international bodies like the ITU, or helps you get your export permits to launch through the State Department's tough regulations? Even NASA has a bunch of lawyers on staff! Law is part of the world we live in, as much as science or technology. Just doesn't get much coverage on /. :-)

• Policy - Exactly what is being centralized and what isn't? Are browsers going to be run on the central machine and displayed on X-terms? Or are they going to run on the satellite machines? You have to answer (or guess the answer) to this question for each and every application you may have. And the answers will not only determine the server CPU/storage architecture, it will also be vitally important to the network infrastructure.
• Development - What sort of development environment will there be? Will all software - from the littlest dinkiest shell script up to the giant mega-app be forced under CVS? Will you allow "checkout" to remote nodes, or only on the central node? etc.

All that said, as for remote CPU utilitization the ruptime command is a start.

Yup, the man page is here.

It says that crypt implements a one-rotor machine designed along the lines of the
German Enigma, but with a 256-element rotor. Methods of attack on such
machines are known, but not widely; moreover the amount of work required
is likely to be large.

For one, the new model includes some features that Linux/UNIX don't readily support - and has some features that are very interesting. Basically, the ACL's are still around - which is nice and all. But most interestingly applications are run with permissions - and not just in the sense of the running as a user. Specific fine-grained controls are possible (though I am unclear as to if they are currently implemented.. I haven't found them yet!) that detail which resources the application has permissions to access - regardless of user context.

This is not quite correct. See for instance here or look up capabilites and unix and posix in google (you may have to search a bit). Or surf here to learn that linux also has capabilities. This is also NAMI (not a microsoft innovation).

"The fact that a manual is shorter doesn't mean that it is a better or easier to install program."

While this is true, it's not even to the point. They didn't compare manuals. They took a book written on building a Linux cluster, and compared it to what is basically a step by step outline for for plugging together a G4 cluster. There are similar outlines out there for Linux clusters, too:

But the point is, this article was written by pro-Mac people, so obviously they're going to take a pro-Mac stance. I mean, if these G4 clusters get to be useful, someone is going to write a 230 page book on how to build one of them. Right now, all the documentation that may be out there could be contained in this one page outline. The books come later, if the technology becomes accepted.

Exceptions are mandatory for good programming, period. If the language you are using doesn't support exceptions (C, Perl, etc), you are going to have problems. Exceptions make sure that if an error occurs, and you aren't aware of it, your program dies, and doesn't go on its merry way, causing a security hole/unstable software.

C++ is implemented in C. Get out your copy of K&R and look up setjmp and longjmp. Do they sound scary? They should.
That is how C++ exceptions work too. Throwing an exception wihtout catching it is calling longjmp without setjmp.

It is your job as a programmer to check error return values, and write you code to clean up after itself if an error is returned. Throwing an exception is a cop out from cleaning up properly.

If your app aborts when memory or disk space is low, you could lose hours of work for your user. This is not going to make the user think your app is stable.

The University of Mississippi has been doing this for years in their graduate program. I know there were plans for undergraduate requirements up to two years ago...not sure if they've been implemented.

...is what I want to know. Must not have much to do with who your local political pull. In MS, the only two schools with I2 are Southern Miss and Msstate. Olemiss, alma mater of Trent Lott and countless other tenured politicians doesn't have it, according to the I2 website. Makes sense, though. USM and MSU have the more well developed CS departments. Glad to see that southern pork barrel politics hasn't yet tainted this area of computing.