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My campus (Southwest Missouri State University) just went to this plan with Napster, much to the chagrin of our computer community. The student government association said it sounded like a great idea while most of the students complained about it. The issue isn't that students have to pay to subscribe for the service, but rather that it is paid for by a student fee increase. This means that every student pays a fee for this service, including the ones that A) don't use it and/or B) don't have a computer. Moreover, the students that really download a lot are going to continue doing it through established mediums such as Kazaa or Bittorrent which will have a larger library than the ones Napstar establishes on the local servers. In general, it's a waste of money, but maybe it'll convince them to lift the bandwidth limit they imposed on campus last year. That's about the only benefit I can see from putting this plan into effect: a false sense of security from which many can benefit. Probably not worth the fee increase though.

Yeah, I settled for the one that shipped because I was already forced to pay for it when I bought Word. This could be seen as a benefit for most (I did), but it's also the classic bundling/monopoly case that people complain about - MS used their 90% market share in one product (office) to push another product (grammer) and destroy the market for any competitors.

If you are at a public university, your state open-records law might require your school to give you the grade distributions for all of the classes offered. My SGA offers this service to students. http://sga.smsu.edu/

I got a B.S. CompSci from a fairly large, state school (Southwest Missouri State University). I was working as a network admin while I was in college, so I had some experience on my resume when I got out. That kept me employed, for the most part, while I transitioned from network admin to development.

Since then, I've worked with ASP, .NET, Perl, Java and SQL. The beauty of a CompSci degree is that you get so much theory in there, that you can implement complex data structures and sophisticated logic in just about any language. Today, I use a mix of ASP, JavaScript and SQL on a daily basis, as well some Perl and MySQL for my "after-hours" projects. I didn't learn learn ASP (VBScript), .NET (C#) or JavaScript in college; I picked those up afterwards. I learned Perl as part of my employment during college (comes in real handy when you're parsing multi-megabyte logfiles looking for real, pertinent stuff to troubleshoot a webserver). I had a formal class on databases, where we covered SQL in the course of a week. I taught myself Java so that I could complete one class, my final semester (the main teaching language was C/C++, which I haven't used since, but they were transitioning to Java). I feel sorry for someone who spent two semesters learning Visual Basic (done some of that, too), but doesn't have enough theory to be able to adapt to a different language.

Get some experience while you're still in college (internships are very helpful); this will get you off the ground when you get out. Get the knowledge from the CS degree; the piece of paper is an important credential, and can get you in the door, but the knowledge will keep you adaptable and employable for decades (hopefully, a lifetime). As long as the school does a good job of getting the knowledge into your skull, I wouldn't be too worried about name recognition (I'm assuming you're NOT going to ITT Technical).

If you're planning a career in academia, a "brand name" degree may be slightly more beneficial. However, your school's reputation credentials are likely to be as important as the impressiveness of its name. My little college (within the large university) is jointly accredited by the IEEE and ACM, and therefore quite adequate to get its graduates into grad school if they so chose.

So, unless you're really bent on being a professor at CalTech, a BSCS at a well-accredited state school should get you where you want to go. Frankly, after more than 5-10 years or so after graduation, your diploma will be a check-off item on a potential employer's list of job requirements. I've never had an interviewer ask about the details of my educations, other than to confirm that I actually had one.

Don't get me wrong: it would be cool to have a diploma from a big-name university. However, don't let that be your litmus test. An additional factor to consider when picking your educational path? Sure - why not. The deciding factor? You'd be crazy.

What crap schools have you been hanging around? I graduated from the small CompSci college of a large state university and had to be fluent in C++, ML, 68k and x86 assembler, Mathematica, and a couple of invented languages to get through the core curriculum (plus Java for an optional class). Granted, it was a very highly rated small-college-of-large-state-U., but it's not like we're talking about Caltech or MIT.

If your school graduates students who only know one or two languages (and those being the industry favorites du jour), then your school sucked. Sorry 'bout that. I hope the diploma at least got your foot in a door or two.

I think what we are seeing is the rise of the cottage industry (discussed here, here, & here as examples) brought up by Alvin Toffler in The Third Wave .

When I tried to check it out, I was told that you couldn't actually check out software, but you could run it on "that one over there" (librarian points at a Gateway P5/60). "I'm not sure you understand," I said, "this is something you'd use instead of Windows, and you have to install it on your own computer to really use it." She looked at me in horror: "we do not condone piracy at this school!"

A second trip a few days later got a slightly better reaction: "Well, we don't have a system for checking out software CDs, but you can copy it to a floppy and take it home if you want. We even sell them if you don't have one with you." I replied that I was going to need, oh, about 500 of them, and could I put the cost on my student loan account?

It's nice to see that at least some people in some libraries are a little more knowledgeable now.

Not always so. For example, at my alma mater, Southwest Missouri State University, students retain the copyright even for class work. In their IP policy:

C. Student Works. Unless subject to the provisions of paragraph 4.A. or provided otherwise by written agreement, copyrightable works prepared by students as part of the requirements for a University degree program are deemed to be the property of the student but are subject to the following provisions:

1. The original records (including software) of an investigation for a graduate thesis or dissertation are the property of the University but may be retained by the student at the discretion of the student's major department. In cases of dispute, the matter shall be referred to the University Intellectual Property Committee.

2. The University shall have, as a condition of the degree award, the royalty-free right to retain, use and distribute a limited number of copies of the thesis, together with the right to require its publication for archival use.

3. Creative works developed by a student employed by the University are owned, not by the student, but by the faculty member or the University as provided by this Policy.

Not always so. For example, at my alma mater, Southwest Missouri State University, students retain the copyright even for class work. In their IP policy:

C. Student Works. Unless subject to the provisions of paragraph 4.A. or provided otherwise by written agreement, copyrightable works prepared by students as part of the requirements for a University degree program are deemed to be the property of the student but are subject to the following provisions:

1. The original records (including software) of an investigation for a graduate thesis or dissertation are the property of the University but may be retained by the student at the discretion of the student's major department. In cases of dispute, the matter shall be referred to the University Intellectual Property Committee.

2. The University shall have, as a condition of the degree award, the royalty-free right to retain, use and distribute a limited number of copies of the thesis, together with the right to require its publication for archival use.

3. Creative works developed by a student employed by the University are owned, not by the student, but by the faculty member or the University as provided by this Policy.

e3609e352afba37683c47ce60f9086bb for the waste-setup.exe

554cfa7350333aa4e6eb3b6e24201d80 for the waste-source.zip
5645d0378b5bca6d2cf337686dca9a4d for the waste-source.tar.gz
115d1a2554db4490bdf97b9862df5 a24 for the waste.zip

The Technical Overview for the W.A.S.T.E. package has been coverted into HTML, courtesy of Mr. Lucas Gonze , and it is available at http://gonze.com/waste/WASTE_Design.html

A sourceforge project site has also been set up for the W.A.S.T.E. package. The project site is at http://sourceforge.net/projects/waste/ . It may be empty for the moment, but something will be cooked up very soon.

Below is just a partial list of mirrors for the W.A.S.T.E. package that are currently in operation:

Kindly please click here to find out more about the W.A.S.T.E. package
Kindly please click here to find out more about the W.A.S.T.E. package
Kindly please click here to find out more about the W.A.S.T.E. package
Kindly please click here to find out more about the W.A.S.T.E. package
Kindly please click here to find out more about the W.A.S.T.E. package
Kindly please click here to find out more about the W.A.S.T.E. package
Kindly please click here to find out more about the W.A.S.T.E. package
Kindly please click here to find out more about the W.A.S.T.E. package
Kindly please click here to find out more about the W.A.S.T.E. package
Kindly please click here to find out more about the W.A.S.T.E. package
Kindly please click here to find out more about the W.A.S.T.E. package
Kindly please click here to find out more about the W.A.S.T.E. package
Kindly please click here to find out more about the W.A.S.T.E. package
Kindly please click here to find out more about the W.A.S.T.E. package
Kindly please click here to find out more about the W.A.S.T.E. package
Kindly please click here to find out more about the W.A.S.T.E. package
Kindly please click here to find out more about the W.A.S.T.E. package
Kindly please click here to find out more about the W.A.S.T.E. package
Kindly please click here to find out more about the W.A.S.T.E. package
Kindly please click here to find out more about the W.A.S.T.E. package

Here is a mirror of this fully legal, GPL software. Do with it as you will.

As a longtime Gnugella user, I will be happy to see Morpheus users join the network. Per Metcalfe's law, this should make our network much more valuable. The past few revisions of the Limewire client in particular have made the service much more responsive. Although the experience has not yet surpassed Napster's brightest hour, given a few more months there will be no reason for that original fileshareing service to return. The limewire folks have even opensourced their client. Now, if only half the people reading this comment could pitch in...

Nobody buys them until everyone else has them. A set isn't usefull until there is programming. There isn't programming because there isn't anyone to watch it. Sets are so expensive because there isn't enough sales volume. There isn't enough Sales volume until lots of people want sets because there is lots of programming.

Metcalf's law states that any networking technology's usefulness is proportional to the square of the number of users.

It will come, don't worry. When it does it will be with a bang -- everything will happen at once when a critical mass is established. Programming will shoot up, prices will drop, and everyone and their dog will either own one or want one.

I love this idea. Really, I love it. But there are some real problems:

First, making and selling these devices will be very hard. Not technologically, but legally and socially. I bet most of the tech work could be done in 6 months and the device could be on the market.

But this isn't Linux - development and sales of these devices will have to be centralized rather than distributed. This means a large corporation. The devices have to be very popular for Metcalfe's Law to make them useful, so they'll have to be marketed. In other words, there'll be one large company for the Feds or RIAA to target and/or intimidate.

Second, this is the farthest thing from unstoppable. How hard would it be for the Feds to setup a listening station in Central Park and flat-out arrest everyone carrying on of these? Just because they're in your pocket doesn't mean they're hidden - they'd have to announce themselves to as much of the world as possible to be of any use. Shit, the RIAA could setup a hidden station in Central Park to perform a DOS (or format) on each one as it wanders by.

Technological solutions are notoriously hard to apply to social problems, and copyright is a social problem. No magical P2P device will sound the death-knell for copyright. It's going to take a sea-change in the way people relate to and value information.

The West Plains campus of Southwwest Missouri State University has a pretty nice
mobile computer lab that you can take a look at the specs on.

The West Plains campus of Southwwest Missouri State University has a pretty nice
mobile computer lab that you can take a look at the specs on.

The West Plains campus of Southwwest Missouri State University has a pretty nice
mobile computer lab that you can take a look at the specs on.

One of the primary targets amongst my right-wing colleagues was the Outer Space Treaty. In particular, they are upset by the "no weapons in space" rule (itself subject to some interpretation as to what it actually means), the "celestial bodies aren't owned by nations" rule, and the "free passage in space over any nation" rule. Finding a way to quietly erode this treaty would make them very happy, because the best way to get rid of a treaty is to quietly let it slip into obsolescence. That way you avoid all of the shouting that accompanies the current missile defense row, for example. The ASAT prorgam, Space Based Laser program, Brilliant Pebbles, and similar have already walked this particular path

The Pentagon has long talked about a Space Plane project. As it is, this is a bad program. The X-33 has technical issues, but I'm sure they will be worked out. On the other hand, it's heavy, relatively fuel-inefficient (for example, the failure of honeycomb design fuel tanks - and replacement with conventional ones - has resulted in significant weight gain/total fuel loss). It also wastes a HUGE amount of infrastucture on carrying a human crew - the same problem exhibited in other Air Force projects. Make something like this unmanned and you can halve the weight, greatly reduce development costs, and make running costs significantly lower - not to mention you don't have to worry so much about pilot safety.

This program satisfies several of these objectives. It further militarises space, gives the Pentagon a shiny new weapon, and gives Frank Gaffney reason to send more faxes to anyone and everyone. In reality, it will be like the B2; expensive, capable of hitting a small number of targets per trip (with high turnaround times, to boot). It's unlikely that very many will be built, and the X33 program already has significant cost overruns. Just like the B2, it will be dubbed as "equivalent to X conventional planes" (with X being a large number) despite the fact that you still need the other X-1 planes for more general purpose missions. Rumsfield is proving to be like Weinberger; willing to spend big bucks on technology that the services want without trying to fit it into any sort of grand strategy. His obsession with China can't be helping, either. Expect several more "silver bullet" military solutions of this type - arsenal ships spring to mind.

The funny part of this is that there are several military areas in which Russia - and friends (China, in particular) have always done better than the West. In particular, missile defence, SAM systems and similar. Admittedly, part of their success may be attributed to a willingness to detonate an explosive near the target - rather than just trying to hit it, but their systems are very advanced. The really funny part is that old Macs (68k and some early PowerPC), old PCs (386s, 486s) are readily available in so-called "rogue states" - in fact, the United States has led the way in giving old PCs to Russia! 3/486s may be a little slow, but they are still significantly more advanced than the chips that guided the original MX missile. They are also a well-established, well-understood technology - and therefore attractive to militaries. (What do you think they are using in Internet Cafes in Iran?)

Personally, I always thought that the "Iraq wants PS2s" argument was a subtle ad-campaign for Sony. While the Emotion Engine is powerful, it is focussed pretty heavily on 3D rendering. While I can think of some uses for it, I'd much rather develop systems on readily available PC parts!

I am the son of a professor of art history. At the last university where he worked, there was one member of his department who as of about 5 years ago works exclusively with computers to create his 2-D art. He certainly is not a particularly unique case. Currently, my dad runs the Department of Art & Design at Southwest Missouri State University. If you take a look at their website, you'll see that they offer a Bachelor of Fine Arts in, for example, "Image Production", or in "Computer Animation". This is a serious, well-known program at a regional university, and again it is not at all a unique case.

I think what causes most people to think of "computer graphics" as something other than fine art is that unless they are being created purely as "art" people ignore everything but their functional use. But then again, as my father would lecture at you for hours on end, "art" is hardly just stuff to look at.

Once, in my CompSci studies at Southwest Missouri State University, my class was given a fairly straightforward assignment. You know the type:

"Given a telephone switchboard with a certain number of lines, and an average call time of n, what is the number of calls that can be processed in a given time period." or something similar.

Well, I set down to turn the description into a specification. When I did, I turned some phrases into variable names:

"number of lines": numLines
"average call time": averageCallTime
"number of calls": numCalls

...and so on. The assignment was easy, and I turned in my homework a few days later. Not too long after that, the professor called my best friend and me into his office to discuss the assignment. It seems, and I swear to God that I'm not exaggerating, that our independently-written programs were pretty much line-for-line identical. The only difference was the "// By ..." line at the top.

What happened? My friend apparently went about completing the homework in the same style I had, and (probably because we worked together a lot) had converted all of the key phrases into the exact same variable names. The algorithms were reasonably standard and we both had the same idea in mind. We'd done enough projects together that our commenting and indenting style matched pretty much exactly.

Honestly, given that two best friends and frequent collaborators turned in identical work, the common response would've been dire. However, the professor was pretty cool, and he knew the two of us well enough to actually believe our story and trust our reactions to the discovery (my version began with a stammered "NO F...ING WAY!").

There's no way, ever, under any circumstances that I would actually expect a teacher to believe that we hadn't cheated. Fortunately for us, ours did. The moral: hey, sometimes coincidences happen.

P.S.: I graduated a while ago. Posting this excuse isn't meant to get me out of any current trouble. :)

My post said that most local businesses and a lot of national business aren't of the nature where adveritising on the national scale doesn't make sense. When was the last time you saw a superbowl ad for a plumber?

True, but irrelevant. Spam is cheap, and cost shifting makes it even cheaper. I get two or three spams a day for businesses in Argentina; I've never even been to Argentina. Why? Because it's more expensive to carefully target your email than it is to just send out a few million extra and live with the decreased response rate.

I don't like spam as much as the next guy, but to think that you'll ever get thousands a day? Get real.

Ten years ago, I got zero. Five years ago, I got one or two. Today, I get maybe 30 a day, despite extensive technological and social measures to reduce spam. Since you seem to have the answers, care to tell me what the maximum number I'll get is? Don't forget to include the fact that only a small percentage of potential internet users are currently on the net.

You're right that it won't be thousands a day, because I'll abandon email entirely at that point. But Moore's law makes spamming ever cheaper and Metcalfe's law makes it ever more useful. Pretending that spamming won't get worse is just sticking your head in the sand.

Too bad. I sold thissystem on eBay last February. Oh, and believe it or not, it fetched $2450 (2.45x10^3).

"2. In your favor most colleges use some form of unix..."

The college I'm majoring in CS at (a fairly large state university) has precisely one UNIX/Linux box that I know of. It's an x86 running Red Hat 6.1, and only CS students can log into it. Furthermore, the machine is a fairly tightly-kept secret... a student or faculty member has to go ask a certain professor in person during his office hours in order to get a password. Why so secret? You tell me. I've never been able to get a satisfactory answer out of anyone.

Once upon a time, the campus network was (I believe) VMS, but about four years ago the switch was made to NT. With the exception of a few MacOS boxes in the open labs and a few Win9x boxes in faculty offices, everything on campus runs NT. Why sell all the terminals, switch to NT, and buy expensive PCs to replace every VMS term, when students have already been using VMS, and therefore could probably stomach Linux? Again, you tell me; I've never been agle to get a satisfactory answer out of anyone.

Well, if you managed to just sit there without screaming/moving/anything (a la buddhist monks during ww2) i would be greatly impressed. Not necessarily intelligent, but enlightened possibly.

I've been a die-hard Amiga fan for years, but that's changed over the last 7 days. I'm not going to sell my Amiga or put it on mothballs, but neither am I going to spend another penny on it.

Amiga has lost my loyalty forever. I need to get things done, and I no longer have faith that we'll ever see new Amiga hardware. No matter how Gateway spins their announcements, I won't believe in miracles until I'm sitting in the same room with one, watching the 21st century's answer to the Boing Demo.

I'm kind of bummed about it, but it looks like instead of getting that shiny new AmigaNG (or whatever they were calling it at any given time), I'll be spending my money on a nice dual Pentium board.

See ya, Amiga. It's been a blast for the last 14 years, but I'm just not in love with you anymore.

-any dumbass can get a elementary edu degree.

Introduction

I attend Southwest Missouri State University, which started life as Missouri Teachers' College or similar. Consequently, we have a pretty large Elementary Education contingent on campus, and I spent plenty of time in lower-level general education classes with them.

Now, I make no claims to speak for everyone. However, I'd have to say that the E-Ed. group was, as a whole, the ditziest, least educated, and generally dumbest group around.

A Personal Example

As a non-traditional student, I live off-campus and work full-time to provide for myself. At one point, I was spending my evenings and nights behind the front desk of a local motel (0) - many of them with an E-Ed. major, "Jenny". She was a very sweet and kind girl, but as dumb as the proverbial box of rocks. Dim. Slow. Whatever; she was it. Anyway, I helped her with a lot of her homework, because motel work isn't exactly the most intellectually stimulating thing you can find yourself doing. Unfortunately, neither was said homework. I'd swear on a stack of Bibles that her pre-exam study sheet for "Geography for Educators" class was a U.S. map with blanks for you to write in the states and their capitals.

Jenny was struggling.

Yep, that little exercise you whipped out in what, 3rd grade?, was almost her undoing.

On one occasion, another co-worker ("Mindy") was helping Jenny with her math homework, when suddenly J. started getting upset. "Well, just because you're some kind of genius doesn't mean that I can't be smart, too", says she. What had Mindy done? She made a practice worksheet of fractional arithmetic (you know, 1/2 + 1/4, 2/3 x 3/8, etc.). Mindy was so surprised that Jenny was completely stumped, that she couldn't help but to start laughing.

I thought that maybe Jenny was just a slow learner, until she graduated with a 3.8x GPA (out of 4) - on the Dean's list, and all. She wasn't a slow student; she was one of the star performers.

Conclusion

As I said, I full well expect others' experiences to be different than mine. (2) The above are just what I've seen first-hand. I fully believe that at least one school is slapping degrees on the dumbest students on campus, and these slow-burners are then going out and teaching our children. I don't have a teaching degree, but I'm confident enough in myself (especially compared to some others) that I plan to home-school my children.

Refs

(0) Which is actually not bad work, if you're more interested in people-watching and being alone with your schoolbooks than you are in a large paycheck.

(1) Disclaimer - I have no interest in arguing my opinions, for that reason.

The last amiga I saw was a gaming system from the 80's

You said it yourself - you haven't seen a real Amiga in years. It's easy to get stuff done on my Amiga.

More to the point, though, I have fun using it.

Many RA files are just G.728 files with funny headers, so you can use any G.728 decoder on them. Here is the source to one: http://www.cs.cmu.edu/afs/cs/local/mosaic/common/o mega/Web/groups/AI/areas/ speech/systems/ldcelp/