Slashdot Mirror

hedley writes "A prior article on the damage Java does to CS education was discussed here recently. There was substantial feedback and the mailbox of one of the authors, Prof Dewar, also has been filled with mainly positive responses. In this followup to the article, Prof. Dewar clarifies his position on Java. In his view the core of the problem is universities 'dumbing down programs, hoping to make them more accessible and popular. Aspects of curriculum that are too demanding, or perceived as tedious, are downplayed in favor of simplified material that attracts a larger enrollment.'"

An anonymous reader writes "F/A-18 Hornet jet fighters just having some fun — and making science interesting at the same time: Video #1, #2, #3, and a photo gallery. The formal name for the cool 'vapor cone' is Prandtl-Glauert Condensation Cloud, which is due the Prandtl-Glauert singularity."

Now that the weekend has passed, folks from all over have had their chance to speak up about the revolution behind the Revolution. Hugh Williams writes "The blokes at Next Generation decided to ask a bunch of game designers, media and analysts what they thought about Nintendo's new Revolution Controller. Some were a little skeptical. Others were downright in love." Additionally, Heartless Gamer writes "Heartless Gamer blog has initial comments up regarding the Revolution controller, but more importantly comments on the various reactions around the internet regarding the controller." Finally, LATRINE! writes "Whether you like it or not, the Nintendo Revolution is on the way. Brittlefish has an article discussing some of the challenges Nintendo will face in gaining acceptance in the market."

Richard asks: "I am interested in starting some home automation projects. The only requirement is that it needs to be controllable via my Linux based system. A Google search for ' "home automation" linux ' returns more than 35,000 hits, including some good ones like this one, which just show how MUCH is out there. Are there any recommendations for a good controller with a serial or USB connection to the computer? What about power switches and sensors? Do I want a system that sends control signals over my house's power lines or RF? Any good software recommendations? As a first project I thought a simple controllable power switch would be fun: Then I could ssh to my home system, use the power switch to turn on a computer controlled radio (Ten-Tec RX-320) and use Speak Freely to send back the audio to my remote location. (This works now except that I don't want to leave the radio on all the time)."

ViperG writes "A small development team known as Moonpod has developed and self-published Starscape, a top-down 2d scrolling PC space action game. You can download the full game for a modest fee of $25, or just try the demo out for free. I haven't played a game this fun since the good old DOS days. If you don't want to take my word for it, read Avault's review." Other readers also point to positive reviews from StaticGamer and from NetJak for another worthy indie game.

ae0nflx asks: "I just graduated from High School and the computer that my parents gave me four years ago has finally died. I've decided to spend all that money that I've been hoarding for a few summers on a new G5. The problem lies in the fact that for college I'll be moving to the East Coast (Upstate New York), from the foggy shores of the San Francisco Bay. Does anyone have any insight on how to ship my brand new machine cross country? Cheap would be good. I'll be flying back in late August and I don't think that I'll be able to take her back with me because I'm assuming she'll be a little big for the overhead bin... I'm not sure if I can trust this to the Postal Service alone." It may not be the same as shipping the big iron, but when you trust your hardware to any shipping company, be it Federal Express, or UPS, you do have the expectations that what you ship, will get to where it's going, and hopefully get there in one piece. Which shipping companies would you recommend for this job? For those who have done this, what experiences have you had, and what suggestions can you pass on to ae0nflx?

ae0nflx asks: "I just graduated from High School and the computer that my parents gave me four years ago has finally died. I've decided to spend all that money that I've been hoarding for a few summers on a new G5. The problem lies in the fact that for college I'll be moving to the East Coast (Upstate New York), from the foggy shores of the San Francisco Bay. Does anyone have any insight on how to ship my brand new machine cross country? Cheap would be good. I'll be flying back in late August and I don't think that I'll be able to take her back with me because I'm assuming she'll be a little big for the overhead bin... I'm not sure if I can trust this to the Postal Service alone." It may not be the same as shipping the big iron, but when you trust your hardware to any shipping company, be it Federal Express, or UPS, you do have the expectations that what you ship, will get to where it's going, and hopefully get there in one piece. Which shipping companies would you recommend for this job? For those who have done this, what experiences have you had, and what suggestions can you pass on to ae0nflx?

Colin Douglas Howell writes "Um...wow. I found this idea via the BBC, (see also the Nature article), but it's really worth reading the annotated paper on the subject. (Gotta love the title.) Basically, you drill a hole in the crust, blast a big crack in it, inject a huge mass of molten iron with a little probe floating inside (made out of material which won't melt or dissolve in the iron), and let the iron mass sink to the core by gravity, carrying the probe with it. (The initial crack grows downward as the iron sinks.) As the probe falls, it sends data back using seismic signals that can be picked up with a gravitational wave observatory like LIGO, but coupled to the ground. Of course, there are enormous problems with the whole thing, but it's still cool to read about. To me, the idea is even neater because it was dreamed up by Dave Stevenson, one of my old professors (and one of the best professors I've ever had). I hope he doesn't mind being Slashdotted. :-)"

ddtstudio writes "Apple moved its Worldwide Developers Conference -- a Mecca for Mac programmers -- a few months to make a new OS preview available, which caused enough consternation as developers had to change air tickets and hotel reservations. But now WWDC is only a few days before MacHack, a long-standing, more 'underground' get-together in Michigan. What to do? Apparently MacHack will go on, says, eWeek's Matthew Rothenberg."

Starman9x writes "Over at the The Toronto Star reporter Rachel Ross got a tour of Microsoft's home of the future. She writes with an appropriate amount of humor, given all the easy targets Microsoft has set up. While the writeup is light and witty, there is an unspoken Orwellian undertone to it -- after all, do we really want Microsoft to have that much control over things?"

ddtstudio writes "Baseline Magazine has a pretty good recounting of how even the national TV networks can have a computer network go wrong -- in this case the night of the last U.S. election. From the article: "VNS had been trying to rewrite and retool the system for years. This was just the most recent attempt and it failed miserably." Oracle, IBM, BEA Systems -- all crashed."

pcosta writes "Record companies and movie studios are turning an anti-piracy spotlight on corporate America, sending a letter to top CEOs this week warning of illegal file trading going on at 'a surprising number of companies.' Full story on C|Net." Earlier this month, they also warned schools as well.

Monsieur La Vigne writes "I found this Robot running Windows, based on a STM 486 chip, and 802.11 connectivity. Apparently, the critter has a C++ , Matlab (?) based SDK and some proprietary bus for extension. Not sure what it does, but it looks cool. Has anyone ever heard of these guys or seen the SDK? Seems ripe for a linux port!" It's a little bit expensive.

tres3 writes "The Danes have an ambitious plan of producing 50% of their national electrical needs from wind by 2030. The website has tutorials on everything related to wind energy you can imagine. The index gives you an idea of the detail of the site. It includes land and sea wind turbines as well as details about the machinery needed and where to locate it. There are over 100 pages so I didn't link to them all. [ed. note: thanks] A picture says it all."

Merle writes "According to Horizon Comics MIT has stolen images from their comic Radix in a proposal to the US Army as an attempt to gain funds to foot a project in creating a better, stronger type of soldier for tomorrow. Upon inspection of the images themselves, it can be easily seen that minor image alteration and a bit of photoshop magic for the background, MIT did a classic comic book "swipe" and took the credit for it." Well, imitation/flattery/blah blah blah, but man. Thats just strange.

A Slashdot reader writes "LinuxWorld is running a story explaining how Mac OS X may help break down the walls for non-Windows operating systems, including Linux."

pulaski writes "Here's a link to an interesting Baltimore Sun story. It's about the case of two Californians trying to take some major record companies to task for selling copy protected CDs. It's got the classic Cary Sherman whine but the plaintiffs apparently have some legal muscle." A similar suit was settled with the defendants agreeing to make changes in their practices.

RemiT writes "Steinberg plans to release a Mac OS X version of Cubase SX, their next generation of professional digital music production software. Indicated release date is after the end of Q2 2002, finally making good on Steinberg's commitment to support Mac OS X. (I wonder how long it will be before Mac stalwarts like Moby are using Mac OS X in concert...)"

Chris asks: "Last Christmas I gave my grandmother a cheap Windows PC with the hope that she would begin conversing with the rest of the family (some on the other side of the country) via e-mail. I don't believe she has turned it on since I was last over there, several months ago. So, this Christmas, I'm giving her a Dreamcast (only $50!) so she can use the Internet from the comfort of her television. I'm wondering if it will be easier for her to use the PlanetWeb browser that comes with the system (version 2) or should I install Linux or netBSD on it and give her a real browser? Ease of use is the single most important thing here. Hardware-wise, she'll be getting the unit, 1 VMU, 1 controller, and the keyboard. Thanks." It's good to see the Dreamcast hardware finding other uses with Sega out of the business; however do you think the Dreamcast would make a decent browser? Update: 12/25 02:50 GMT by C :Perhaps talk of the Demise of the Dreamcast comes a bit prematurely, at least according to this article from Gameswire.

An Anonymous Coward writes: "I received an email from PacBell.net (Pacific Bell's ISP), stating that they're transitioning their usenet services to Prodigy. They're making a few changes along the way." He excerpts from the email: "In addition, after evaluating possible copyright infringement issues, newsgroup usage and the cost of providing newsgroup access, we will no longer offer some alt.binary newsgroups. For a list of alt.binaries that will no longer be offered, please refer to our FAQ at http://global.pacbell.net/usenet_update.html.' Note that the link currently doesn't go to the right place. After telephoning SBC, I was informed that upwards of 90% of the alt.binaries.* groups are going to be blocked."

Leslie Proctor writes: "The GNOME Foundation announced today that they have hired Timothy Ney as Executive Director. Tim is well known in the Free software community for his work with the FSF. More details at www.gnome.org." The actual press release is online, as well as Gnome news. Having worked/talked with Tim before, this is great news for The Gnome Foundation -- Tim's an incredible guy.

kaosmunkee asks: "I was fortunate enough to have an opportunity to use the MBone (Multicast Backbone) several years ago when it was just getting underway. I've recently become interested in experimenting with IP multicast and the MBone again, but my DSL provider doesn't provide IP multicast services. Pacbell doesn't either. Does anyone know of a national DSL provider that supports IP multicast?"

almondjoy notes that, three days ago: "Creative Labs product support tells me they have discontinued their DVD-RAM product line. Is competing specifications really what is destroying momentum of writeable DVD technology into end user systems? Is 'planned obsolescence' the culprit here? All I want to do is dump and/or mix raw mini-DV footage from my digicam onto recordable DVD media. Better yet, I'd like to be able to take that little DV tape and load it into a mini DV drive (is it 4mm DAT?) on my DVD system, and shoot more movies while I'm saving footage to DVD media. I'd also like to make backups of my VMWare guest OS virtual disks to DVD. Wishfull thinking? I did find this nice media compatibility matrix for the different DVD writeable formats, part of the DVD FAQ at DVD Demystified - what a mess!"

dclatfel writes "Just wanted to let everyone know that the latest beta of Mandrake for Intel is up - 7.2 Beta - and it's called Ulysses. (Now where is that Golden Fleece?)" They've got notes regarding it as well - KDE 2 Beta 4, and Gnome 1.2, as well as XFree86 4.01 as the default X server.

It's quickie time! Let's get into the action with some blood and guts. cthulhubob told us about Overkill. In light of all the irritating infringement news, An anonymous coward pointed us at http://www.groucho.com. I don't know why, but Jesper Skov thinks that having turbojets on model airplanes is a fantastic idea. Hey Doc, are you reading? Gabriel Golden submitted The Boomtrain Manifesto. leviathan shared the l33t surfer. According to our anonymous source, "Wired News is reporting that Danni Ashe has become the Most Downloaded Woman on the Internet. In your face, Cindy Margolis!" Bluedove (with a little help from Wes) showed us how to pirate music and video without a computer. alienmole gave us the origin of @. Mantis! is a Sega Saturn obsessive. Check out his site. Garth, while busy turning it up to eleven, told us about the upcoming re-release of Spinal Tap. On a personal note, just wanted to tell my friend Raja to get well, and that we're all thinking about him.

ion asks: "The software community has been putting up with a lot of political turmoil lately (patents that should never have been considered, DVD decryption, copyright issues left and right). My question is: 'How is it that some of the best-paid workers in the world marketplace have almost no political voice?' We have all sort of software advocates like ESR and RMS, but where is the US Congressman or UK rep in Parliament (or other representative in some world government) that have pledged to support the ideals of our community? How can we form some sort of world geek lobby? How can we help the people like Jon Johansen who are victims of the outdated system?" (Read More)

A good question. Geeks are suddenly finding themselves in positions of wealth and power, and with that comes the burden of politics. Many geeks seem to think politics below them, or consider it something best ignored and left to those who can handle it while they concentrate on 'the real work' of solving the problems that need solving. However, I think the 21st century will usher in a time when those who were once shunned and cast out start flexing some formerly-unused political mojo.

How that mojo is used -- and for what -- depends entirely on us.

Russ Paielli writes "The always brilliant Charles Krauthammer has written a great article in The Weekly Standard on why we should forget the space station and head for the moon and Mars. But space funding will have to be increased. The recently lost Mars Polar Lander cost $165 million, which seems like a lot--until you realize that the movie Waterworld cost more." Update: 01/30 11:38 by E : Link became broken, now it's fixed. Enjoy.

redmist writes "Ars Technica has a great, in depth article about the new Crusoe chips. Enjoy." This one will answer most of the questions I've heard about Crusoe's guts, and how it differs from other microprocessors. "Must" reading for all hardware junkies!

LazLong wrote to let us know that Samba ^[?] 2.06 has been released. A whole slew of bug fixes, as well as some new features. The technical documentation is available, or just go all out and grab the tarball.

Clifton Tipon wrote in to tell us that O'Reilly has a book on Lego Mindstorms for all you robot junkies out there. They're definitely covering the spectrum over there.

jflynn writes "An interesting look at what SCO is telling it's customers about Linux is found here. There seems to be a great deal of fear and loathing." The (unbylined) article appears on a Web site owned by X/OS, a Netherlands-based Unix and Linux consulting/R&D company. It makes some interesting points.

Caleb Shay writes "The cover of New Media Magazine this month declared "Free Your Code, Free Your Mind" and "If you love your online business Set Your Code Free". They have a pretty good article on Open Source and Linux and give some compelling reasons to switch over.You can reach the online version of the article here. "

David R. Miller writes "How would you like to have your own DEC Alpha system for $99.00. Sounds too good to be true? Well check it out here."

Jeff writes "Encryption expert Vince Cate has another approach to get around stupid US crypto export laws - stop being a US citizen. " It's the nytimes, so you need to register to read (And you moan about Slashdot requiring an account to post!) but it's a pretty decent article.

Mark Feathers writes "Apparently KDE has made an official announcement for the pre-release of 1.0. The bummer is, no Red Hat RPM's. They are supporting SuSE but decline Red Hat stating incompatabilities with different libraries and versions. " Update Sirtaj Singh Kang wrote in to explain why there aren't any RPMs: they weren't planning on distributing binaries of pre2 at all. So give up the conspiracy theories people, its getting old.

Jim Race writes " An essay was released 6/19 written by Michael Toy, one of the cool cabal folks behind mozilla.org and an old-timer at Netscape. Definitely worth a read. " Agreed.

Brent Fulgham has written to us with a review of Expert C Programming: Deep C Secrets. While dated (1994), he does recomend it for those wishing to immerse themselves in C programming. Click below to read the full review. Book Review: Expert C Programming : Deep C Secrets

This is my first book review for Slashdot, so I have *ahem* borrowed Rick Franchuk's excellent review formatting and layout information. Any errors or omissions are entirely my fault.

REVIEW: Expert C Programming: Deep C Secrets Peter van der Linden (Prentice Hall ASIN: 0131774298)

Nutshell
Review: An excellent (and humorous) reference for the journeyman C programmer looking to expand his/her understanding of the C language. Although a bit pricey at $40, and somewhat out of date with respect to discussion of C++, it is well worth a read for anyone wishing to become a competent C hacker.
Rating: 9/10 Brent Fulgham

I tend to pick up books on programming fairly frequently, hoping that I will pick up a valuable tip or two, or identify some nagging little coding detail that has been the cause of problems in my own code. Generally, I find these types of books to be either too elementary, focusing on simple programming constructs that are rehashed from any of a number of Idiot's Guides, or overly code-dense at the expense of clarity. So it is a rare treat to read a book like Expert C Programming: Deep C Secrets. This book delves into the dark, cob-webbed corners of the C language to explain various language idiosyncricies, and why things work the way they do in the ANSI standard.

What's Good?

This book provides additional detail in many areas typically ignored in more introductory texts. For example, pointers are covered quite extensively in this document, and covers the often-overlooked cases in which C Arrays and Pointers are NOT the same. Yes, it's true -- C Arrays can't be assumed to act like pointers in all cases. What's more, the representation of Arrays and pointers in memory are two different animals, and programmers who treat them the same do so at there own risk.

Another particularly useful section is his description of how to define and understand C Declarations. This description was particularly useful for me, as I have always found these constructions to become virtually unreadable when defining pointers to functions, or similar. Mr. van der Linden provides some slick little mneumonics and tables to translate declarations into english meanings. Lots of fun!

Finally, an Appendix entitled Secrets of Programmer Job Interviews gives an excellent set of questions that van der Linden and others have used in job interviews. As a amateur programmer (that hopes to someday be gainfully employed as a Software Engineer ), I found this insight into what the interviewer is trying to accomplish to be highly illuminating. In fact, this section alone might make it worth your while to pick up this book.

Of course, the book contains a great deal more. Topics range from a discussion of the ANSI standardization process to the Obfuscated C Contest "greatest hits". You really haven't lived until you see the fully-functional BASIC interpreter coded in 1,500 characters of unreadable, unformatted C code. See below for a more comprehensive list of what is covered.

What's Bad?

Well, the short answer is not much. The more pointy-haired types might find the frequent use of humour (a mainstay of all of van der Linden's books I have read) to be a negative. In addition, at roughly $40 with no discounts available at the major on-line sellers the book is a bit pricey. However, these are minor quibbles.

In fact, the largest problem with this book (and it's a fairly small problem as well) is its discussion of C++. Since the book was written in 1994, and has not been updated, it is a bit out of date with the current state of the art with respect to C++. In fact, this section is a lot like the introductory Java chapters found in most current C++ books. This chapter could use a rewrite in light of the recent ANSI standardization of C++.

One final minor problem is that the book is highly Unix-centered (and especially geared to Sun's Solaris). Mr. van der Linden has some discussion of DOS protected mode and memory structure, but by-and-large we are presented with a Unix System V description of virtual memory. Now, since I do nearly all of my programming in Linux I did not have much problem with this. However, these sections of the book could use a rewrite in light of Windows 95/98/NT's virtual memory model.

So What's In It For Me?

I'd strongly recommend this text for anyone seriously interested to writing production-grade C. Probably the most important things you can learn from the book are:

• C Arrays are NOT the same as pointers
• How to decipher C Declarations
• Dynamic run-time data structures
• The recipe for Oobleck (from the Dr. Seuss story)

You can buy this over at Amazon.

Table of Contents

Preface

Acknowledgments

Introduction

1. C Through the Mists of Time

2. It's Not a Bug, It's a Language Feature

3. Unscrambling Declarations in C

4. The Shocking Truth: C Arrays and Pointers Are NOT the Same!

5. Thinking of Linking

6. Poetry in Motion: Runtime Data Structures

7. Thanks for the Memory

8. Why Programmers Can't Tell Halloween from Christmas Day

9. More about Arrays

10. More About Pointers

11. You Know C, So C++ is Easy!

Appendix: Secrets of Programmer Job Interviews

Index

Brent Fulgham has written to us with a review of Expert C Programming: Deep C Secrets. While dated (1994), he does recomend it for those wishing to immerse themselves in C programming. Click below to read the full review. Book Review: Expert C Programming : Deep C Secrets

This is my first book review for Slashdot, so I have *ahem* borrowed Rick Franchuk's excellent review formatting and layout information. Any errors or omissions are entirely my fault.

REVIEW: Expert C Programming: Deep C Secrets Peter van der Linden (Prentice Hall ASIN: 0131774298)

Nutshell
Review: An excellent (and humorous) reference for the journeyman C programmer looking to expand his/her understanding of the C language. Although a bit pricey at $40, and somewhat out of date with respect to discussion of C++, it is well worth a read for anyone wishing to become a competent C hacker.
Rating: 9/10 Brent Fulgham

I tend to pick up books on programming fairly frequently, hoping that I will pick up a valuable tip or two, or identify some nagging little coding detail that has been the cause of problems in my own code. Generally, I find these types of books to be either too elementary, focusing on simple programming constructs that are rehashed from any of a number of Idiot's Guides, or overly code-dense at the expense of clarity. So it is a rare treat to read a book like Expert C Programming: Deep C Secrets. This book delves into the dark, cob-webbed corners of the C language to explain various language idiosyncricies, and why things work the way they do in the ANSI standard.

What's Good?

This book provides additional detail in many areas typically ignored in more introductory texts. For example, pointers are covered quite extensively in this document, and covers the often-overlooked cases in which C Arrays and Pointers are NOT the same. Yes, it's true -- C Arrays can't be assumed to act like pointers in all cases. What's more, the representation of Arrays and pointers in memory are two different animals, and programmers who treat them the same do so at there own risk.

Another particularly useful section is his description of how to define and understand C Declarations. This description was particularly useful for me, as I have always found these constructions to become virtually unreadable when defining pointers to functions, or similar. Mr. van der Linden provides some slick little mneumonics and tables to translate declarations into english meanings. Lots of fun!

Finally, an Appendix entitled Secrets of Programmer Job Interviews gives an excellent set of questions that van der Linden and others have used in job interviews. As a amateur programmer (that hopes to someday be gainfully employed as a Software Engineer ), I found this insight into what the interviewer is trying to accomplish to be highly illuminating. In fact, this section alone might make it worth your while to pick up this book.

Of course, the book contains a great deal more. Topics range from a discussion of the ANSI standardization process to the Obfuscated C Contest "greatest hits". You really haven't lived until you see the fully-functional BASIC interpreter coded in 1,500 characters of unreadable, unformatted C code. See below for a more comprehensive list of what is covered.

What's Bad?

Well, the short answer is not much. The more pointy-haired types might find the frequent use of humour (a mainstay of all of van der Linden's books I have read) to be a negative. In addition, at roughly $40 with no discounts available at the major on-line sellers the book is a bit pricey. However, these are minor quibbles.

In fact, the largest problem with this book (and it's a fairly small problem as well) is its discussion of C++. Since the book was written in 1994, and has not been updated, it is a bit out of date with the current state of the art with respect to C++. In fact, this section is a lot like the introductory Java chapters found in most current C++ books. This chapter could use a rewrite in light of the recent ANSI standardization of C++.

One final minor problem is that the book is highly Unix-centered (and especially geared to Sun's Solaris). Mr. van der Linden has some discussion of DOS protected mode and memory structure, but by-and-large we are presented with a Unix System V description of virtual memory. Now, since I do nearly all of my programming in Linux I did not have much problem with this. However, these sections of the book could use a rewrite in light of Windows 95/98/NT's virtual memory model.

So What's In It For Me?

I'd strongly recommend this text for anyone seriously interested to writing production-grade C. Probably the most important things you can learn from the book are:

• C Arrays are NOT the same as pointers
• How to decipher C Declarations
• Dynamic run-time data structures
• The recipe for Oobleck (from the Dr. Seuss story)

You can buy this over at Amazon.

Table of Contents

Preface

Acknowledgments

Introduction

1. C Through the Mists of Time

2. It's Not a Bug, It's a Language Feature

3. Unscrambling Declarations in C

4. The Shocking Truth: C Arrays and Pointers Are NOT the Same!

5. Thinking of Linking

6. Poetry in Motion: Runtime Data Structures

7. Thanks for the Memory

8. Why Programmers Can't Tell Halloween from Christmas Day

9. More about Arrays

10. More About Pointers

11. You Know C, So C++ is Easy!

Appendix: Secrets of Programmer Job Interviews

Index

Conrad Heiney writes "Salon Magazine online has an excellent analysis of the current New Republic magazine's failure to fact-check a hilariously inaccurate and completely faked story about rogue teen "hackers". " The most interesting thing to me is how the media picks certain topics, and can just go crazy with them. Films and books have Genres, and I'm convinced that commercials, as well as the news has them as well. Commercials have the 'Happy Family' genre, and occasionally the 'Clever Covering Up of Nudity' or the 'Sexy Model Convinces us to by Something' genre. Likewise the "News" has the 'Hacker' genre along with a host of others. It's no surprise that the news is as often just as fabricated as TV, Film and Commercials. Moral:I shouldn't make stuff up. Bummer, 'cuz I had this really exciting piece I wanted to run tomorrow... *grin*