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Maybe it made sense once. But reading TFA, what convinced me that MUMPS is really BOLLOCKS was this quote:

For one thing, as a programmer, I can take an item stored in one of those globals and give it "children," which might be some additional properties of that item. So, we wind up with lists of different things that can be described and added to in different ways on the fly.

Hmm. That sounds almost like you're tracking relationships. Maybe you should use... (wait for it) A RELATIONAL DATABASE. Seriously, we often store object databases in relational databases. It's easy to add more properties to objects in your database with a relational db because of its very nature. You just create a new relationship, appropriately keyed. And there are lots of examples of systems backed by relational databases which permit you to add arbitrary new properties to objects. Take Drupal, for example; you can always either add a new module which will add new properties to old node types, or just add more data types to old node types. You could add, for example, a parent-child relationship. In fact, modules exist to do this already.

Maybe there is something about MUMPS which makes sense, but if there is, it wasn't articulated in this article. I tunneled down to the MUMPS/II page and found this:

1. Hierarchical database facility. Mumps data sets are not only organized along traditional sequential and direct access methods, but also as trees whose data nodes can addressed as path descriptions in a manner which is easy for a novice programmer to master in a relatively short time; 2. Flexible and powerful string manipulation facilities. Mumps built-in string manipulation operators and functions provide programmers with access to efficient means to accomplish complex string manipulation and pattern matching operations.

So basically, nothing you can't have in perl today, with a relational database, and a table or two to track relationships between objects. But instead, it's a whole new opportunity to create problems! MUMPS is a great name for it.

The challenge isn't that you can't do the same thing with a newer type of database but converting all that data into the new one. That is expensive, time consuming and invariably winds up with the loss of 20% or so of the data. My general rule is 2-2-20 Costs twice as much as planned, takes twice as long as planned and you lose or screw up 20% of the data.

Maybe it made sense once. But reading TFA, what convinced me that MUMPS is really BOLLOCKS was this quote:

For one thing, as a programmer, I can take an item stored in one of those globals and give it "children," which might be some additional properties of that item. So, we wind up with lists of different things that can be described and added to in different ways on the fly.

Hmm. That sounds almost like you're tracking relationships. Maybe you should use... (wait for it) A RELATIONAL DATABASE. Seriously, we often store object databases in relational databases. It's easy to add more properties to objects in your database with a relational db because of its very nature. You just create a new relationship, appropriately keyed. And there are lots of examples of systems backed by relational databases which permit you to add arbitrary new properties to objects. Take Drupal, for example; you can always either add a new module which will add new properties to old node types, or just add more data types to old node types. You could add, for example, a parent-child relationship. In fact, modules exist to do this already.

Maybe there is something about MUMPS which makes sense, but if there is, it wasn't articulated in this article. I tunneled down to the MUMPS/II page and found this:

1. Hierarchical database facility. Mumps data sets are not only organized along traditional sequential and direct access methods, but also as trees whose data nodes can addressed as path descriptions in a manner which is easy for a novice programmer to master in a relatively short time;
2. Flexible and powerful string manipulation facilities. Mumps built-in string manipulation operators and functions provide programmers with access to efficient means to accomplish complex string manipulation and pattern matching operations.

So basically, nothing you can't have in perl today, with a relational database, and a table or two to track relationships between objects. But instead, it's a whole new opportunity to create problems! MUMPS is a great name for it.

Even with the turn of the millennia, the vast majority of hospital systems still run on HL7 (Health Level 7) and MUMPS (Massachusetts General Hospital Utility Multi-Programming System aka "M").

HL7 isn't just a standard, but it also describes a protocol used for transmitting patient data which is laughably insecure in the state it was in when I last worked on it in the late 90's. Plain text, no validation, fire/forget, no encryption, no well, no nothing

MUMPS, or M if you prefer, is a programming language designed by the NSA (it must have been, lol, actually it was designed by a couple of Dr's), every variable is global in nature - so if you have an admin token ADMIN, you can set that value anywhere in the running system and it won't care one bit. Rooting M systems is simply a matter of access and knowledge of M.

Oddly, in M, you can also use shorthand, so i == if (IIRC), and it's contextual, so where in a line a value appears determines the values type, so i i i is a valid statement, where each i references a completely different variable/value/object. Insanity at it's best. Here is a great mumps tutorial for those of you that aren't familiar & for those of you who only know "modern" languages, it's a timely Halloween horror show...

Just like a lot of things. Here you go.

The ratio of CEO compensation to average worker compensation is now approximately 10 times its value in 1950. This is approximately commensurate with the average increase in the Dow average adjusted for inflation.

Right; and one should hardly be surprised by this since our government continually passes more and more regulations that generally only benefits big businesses. The barrier to entry for a small or medium-sized firm to get on a public stock exchange is enormous. When competition is limited, one should not be surprised when the market can no longer efficiently remove wasteful players. Paying prices vastly more than necessary to secure a proper executive is, of course, very wasteful. But this is not a fundamental issue with CEO pay, this is an issue with regulation that keeps smaller firms out.

But why should CEOs receive the entire benefit of a growing economy when all actors have contributed to that growth? CEO compensation has no correlation with company performance.

As I see it, the problem has nothing to do with a free vs. a coerced market. The problem is that the market of executive compensation is entirely divorced from the market at large. "Stockholders... vote... for whatever the management recommends no matter how poor the management’s record of accomplishment may be". This is what I mean by oligarchy: a few privileged elites have control over this smaller market without the essential feedback cycles that stabilize prices in the larger economy.

Yes, and this smaller market is much easier to manipulate when it remains artificially small due to artificial barriers to entry. That said, your definition of oligarchy is quite arbitrary; even if you could absolutely measure the power the "privileged elites" have over a smaller market, at what ratio of power to size does it constitute an oligarchy? I do agree with your sentiment, and I think my paragraph above speaks to it.

The issue is that the market value of labor has plummeted in relation to productivity and in relation to the value of top earners. In the 50s one could work part time at a minimum wage job and pay rent and college tuition and walk away with a degree free and clear. Today, just to pay rent, one needs roommates or more than one part-time minimum-wage job, let alone any ability to pay for education in order to get a better job.

1950: $0.75/hour * 20 hours * 50 weeks = $750 wages $42 * 12 months = $504 rent $35 * 4 quarters = $140 tuition

2013: $7.25/hour * 20 hours * 50 weeks = $7250 wages $602 * 12 months = $7224 rent $3917 * 2 semesters = $7834 tuition

How do you measure productivity? GDP is a pretty useless measurement. Also, there is this silly notion that public sector consumption should actually be counted as production. Since there is no objective way to measure public sector "productivity" (since it is not part of a market), it should not be included in aggregates; also it is quite common for the public sector to be horribly inefficient with its "funds". Government makes up

The ratio of CEO compensation to average worker compensation is now approximately 10 times its value in 1950. This is approximately commensurate with the average increase in the Dow average adjusted for inflation.

But why should CEOs receive the entire benefit of a growing economy when all actors have contributed to that growth? CEO compensation has no correlation with company performance.

As I see it, the problem has nothing to do with a free vs. a coerced market. The problem is that the market of executive compensation is entirely divorced from the market at large. "Stockholders... vote... for whatever the management recommends no matter how poor the management’s record of accomplishment may be". This is what I mean by oligarchy: a few privileged elites have control over this smaller market without the essential feedback cycles that stabilize prices in the larger economy.

The issue is that the market value of labor has plummeted in relation to productivity and in relation to the value of top earners. In the 50s one could work part time at a minimum wage job and pay rent and college tuition and walk away with a degree free and clear. Today, just to pay rent, one needs roommates or more than one part-time minimum-wage job, let alone any ability to pay for education in order to get a better job.

1950:
$0.75/hour * 20 hours * 50 weeks = $750 wages
$42 * 12 months = $504 rent
$35 * 4 quarters = $140 tuition

2013:
$7.25/hour * 20 hours * 50 weeks = $7250 wages
$602 * 12 months = $7224 rent
$3917 * 2 semesters = $7834 tuition

I believe that raising the average wage will have a better impact on the economy as a whole than raising executive compensation. I believe that income inequality is a social ill that should be addressed through policy -- not by Marxian state capture of the means of production and not through Randian private hoarding of the means of production, but through a hybrid realistic approach like "all employees should receive stock options or profit sharing if executives do".

>1 of course but I think there's a working calculator here: http://www.uni.edu/morgans/ajjar/Cosmology/cosmos2.html which should give you the current best estimate if you have Java (I don't, atm).

Since you bring up VistA, there are three items to fill in the gaps in the list you show:

1. "Ancient" can be two kinds, ancient like old cabbage or ancient like a shark is an ancient design. With M, aka MUMPS, it is more of a case of being ancient like a shark. The style is a little different, but it is really powerful. With the resurgance of interest in NoSQL databases, it should be top on your list to at least look at for larger projects. Like with anything else, it's a matter of choosing the right tool for the job and in some cases a hierachical database, as opposed to an object database or an SQL database, is just what the doctor ordered. (Pun intended.)

2: MUMPS (aka "M") is a very powerful and, in the health sector, rather widely used hierarchical database standard and language. It's ISO/IEC 11756 (2005) and has several engines that support it. GT.M, MDH, ANSI MUMPS. There are situations where a hierarchical database like M is more appropriate than the more widely used database standard, SQL aka ISO/IEC 9075(1-4,9-11,13,14):2008.

3: AFAIK the only example of a cross-platform GUI for VistA is Ovid. The most widely used client is still CRPS which is still dependent on Delphi (pascal) and kind of works with WINE or might do ok with tweaking on Lazarus. It's possible to write one, there are bindings for Python and Java. However, getting up to speed means at least one experienced clinician spending a lot of time with the system and at least two programmers (real ones, without Windows) with some clinical experience getting up to speed with VistA. R

4. The design is quite modular, but since all kinds of shysters and carpetbaggers are wanting a piece of the Brewster's Millions spent on electronic health care, there is all kinds of external politics interfering with development and deployment. For example, it is common for some shysters to peddle solutions built around M$ imitation of Java rather than sticking with actual Java for their extensions.

That said, there are also a good dozen open source health care systems designed around various types of clinics and demographics. Some are very good. Good luck finding them though. Wikipedia won't show them, being the playground of marketing corporations and lobbyists. Google won't find them unless you already know the name. Even then there is a good chance a competitor has been jamming the search engines with chaff.

The original was written on a government grant and is in the public domain.

This is a GPL/LGPL version which works with PostgreSQL http://www.cs.uni.edu/~okane/mumps.html "The Mumps Compiler is distributed under the GNU GPL and GNU LGPL licenses." This is of course not a whole IDE or deployable system as best I can tell and there is still code to be written to implement a system.

Does anyone play an "adult" video game to explore the human condition. Heck no. It's all about juvenile self-indulgence. Real adults are far past that stage and have no real desire to subject themselves to unsavory sights and sounds.

And there you have it. That barrier must be overcome for video games to be accepted as a dignified medium worthy of serious topics. It's the perception that must be overcome.

There is a sad truth to this, however there is also a large gray area. All media (books, comics, movies, TV, radio) have their own shining examples of controversial material. Many of them still have not quite been figured out by US society (likely others). As said in other replies, games are becoming an increasingly powerful medium with which to tell a story and directly involve the player. However, we quickly get into the area where "My rights end where yours begin", so while you may have a great story to tell, once it includes some risque nature to it, someone somewhere will be up in arms about it.

Consider other media for a moment. We're all aware of Carlin's Seven Words You Can't Say on TV, as well as all the backlash Howard Stern received and his move to satellite radio, a move which also garnered media attention about the content of his radio show.

The truth of the matter is that these things all reside in a capitalistic society. They wouldn't be made if there weren't some market for them, no matter how obscure or small the market may be. It's true that many juveniles (18-70something) get kicks out of playing GTA, so there's a market for it. Personally I don't care for GTA, so I don't support it by buying a copy (or even downloading one). If you find something offensive in a movie, you don't buy the DVD. If you find something offensive on TV/radio, you change the station. If you find a game offensive, don't buy it. When the market for something becomes small enough, it goes away, just like VHS, just like 8-track, just like VHS.

The Mumps Language was re-designated as the M language a number of
years ago. While Mumps isn't as widely used as some others, perhaps
the people in Redmond should do a literature search before they
name things.

see:

http://math-cs.cns.uni.edu/~okane/mumps.html
http://www.cs.uni.edu/~okane/

The Mumps Language was re-designated as the M language a number of
years ago. While Mumps isn't as widely used as some others, perhaps
the people in Redmond should do a literature search before they
name things.

see:

http://math-cs.cns.uni.edu/~okane/mumps.html
http://www.cs.uni.edu/~okane/

Hmmm... Reasonable eh?

1. The url provided has no prices whatsoever. Imagine that!

2. What are the license constraints in this academic pricing? You know, razors are darn cheap compared to the price of razor blades. That first line of coke is pretty cheap too.

I know the price of my preferred clusters, $0. Usage constraints? None. http://debianclusters.cs.uni.edu/index.php/Main_Page

I had to use Ada in my Data Structures class with John McCormick at UNI http://www.cs.uni.edu/~mccormic/ This guy teaches a tough class but you end up learning a lot, and he is very big on Ada. While I haven't used it much since I did like a lot of features in the language.

You may well be trolling, but assuming you're serious:

he inspired people to write it over a period of 2000 years.

What, this omnipotent god of yours had to work through a bunch of balding monkeys, rather that just saying "Zotz! Biblios appearus!" or something?

I can walk into the library and find dozens, if not hundreds, of books that claim to be inspired by gods or other supernatural entities, from the Upanishads to the latest New Age bestseller from someone channeling telepathic transmissions from Sirius. The Bible just ain't special.

including prophecies that are fulfilled hundreds (if not thousands) of years after they are written

What, prophecies like Jesus's that the world would end during the lifetime of some of his followers (Luke 9:27: "But I tell you of a truth, there be some standing here, which shall not taste of death, till they see the kingdom of God.", and 21:32: "Verily I say unto you, This generation shall not pass away, till all be fulfilled.":)

Let me write and edit a book in which I get to report both the prophecy and the outcomes, and I could make all sorts of prophecies come true. But Biblical authors and editors couldn't even do that.

with no contradictions in the book.

I'm afraid you're again in error.

Look, if you find churchgoing a rewarding expereince, great. Live by the foma that make you brave and kind and healthy and happy.

But if you believe that the Bible is any guide to history, cosmology, metaphysics, or pretty much any aspect of objective consensus reality, you're sadly mistaken.

Kudos on the new release. I'm running Vista, so the support will be nice.

Hasn't Vista always run on java/mumps (well, for the last 5 years anyway)?
http://neamh.cns.uni.edu/MedInfo/vista.html

BBH

I take exception to your list of "likely reasons you would be attending a state university." I have an undergraduate degree from a fine state university (and in May I'll have a master's, as well) and I've had an excellent education here. When I started, the University was just starting its Honors program; my classmates and I had a chance to shape the program, and many of our decisions are still in effect today. Add to that a program director who is not only very good at her job, but also truly interested in making a student's university experience the best it can be, and you end up with a page-long list of honors courses at the front of the course schedule that almost makes me jealous of the undergraduates. Those were truly excellent courses.

Now, my department is a small one, but I can name a number of faculty members who will do just about anything for their students. They offer the elective courses we want to take, they offer seminars in relevant, pertinent topics. When I was doing a senior research project, my "weekly meeting" with my advisor consisted of him taking about ten minutes to review what I'd done and offer advice, and then about fifty minutes of conversation about just about any computing topic you can name. I learned as much from that as most students would learn in a semester-long course. And I got the research credit, too!

Attending a state university is not simply a "this is the best I could do" sort of thing. Hell, UNI has one of the best education programs in the country -- it was called Iowa State Teacher's College for a while, even. There are people who come from all fifty states specifically for this program. Going to a state university is not a compromise. In a lot of ways, it can be far better than going to an Ivy League school where the faculty are too busy promoting their new book than to grade your tests or meet with you to answer your questions. Remember, the school is only half the equation. The other half is the student. A brilliant, unmotivated student will be a collossal failure at an Ivy League school, even though he or she may graduate with a decent GPA, while a motivated student, brilliant or not, can excel in any environment.

I take exception to your list of "likely reasons you would be attending a state university." I have an undergraduate degree from a fine state university (and in May I'll have a master's, as well) and I've had an excellent education here. When I started, the University was just starting its Honors program; my classmates and I had a chance to shape the program, and many of our decisions are still in effect today. Add to that a program director who is not only very good at her job, but also truly interested in making a student's university experience the best it can be, and you end up with a page-long list of honors courses at the front of the course schedule that almost makes me jealous of the undergraduates. Those were truly excellent courses.

Now, my department is a small one, but I can name a number of faculty members who will do just about anything for their students. They offer the elective courses we want to take, they offer seminars in relevant, pertinent topics. When I was doing a senior research project, my "weekly meeting" with my advisor consisted of him taking about ten minutes to review what I'd done and offer advice, and then about fifty minutes of conversation about just about any computing topic you can name. I learned as much from that as most students would learn in a semester-long course. And I got the research credit, too!

Attending a state university is not simply a "this is the best I could do" sort of thing. Hell, UNI has one of the best education programs in the country -- it was called Iowa State Teacher's College for a while, even. There are people who come from all fifty states specifically for this program. Going to a state university is not a compromise. In a lot of ways, it can be far better than going to an Ivy League school where the faculty are too busy promoting their new book than to grade your tests or meet with you to answer your questions. Remember, the school is only half the equation. The other half is the student. A brilliant, unmotivated student will be a collossal failure at an Ivy League school, even though he or she may graduate with a decent GPA, while a motivated student, brilliant or not, can excel in any environment.

Hm. I think you figured this out, but looking at what I wrote, I should make clear that the pen-stabbing took place in childhood, not at the mall that day. And he was with his family. Late-night typing hazards include very questionable clarity.

Uni is what us skips call University.

Ah, yes I guess I knew that, but I got too excited. Well nevermind the mall name reference then. :^)

I jumped to the conclusion that you were referring to UNI, where I grew up. Sorry.

2. How much must he spend on batteries to store the power so he can stop cranking for long enough to watch a football match?

3. How much was that generator again?

It's public domain for starters, and Vista has existed in some form or another since the late 1960's. And how the Veterans Department releases it isn't actually in a functioning form.
I did some investigation into it a few months back as one of my customers is a small rural hospital who is shelling out a large sum of money to both IBM and a small software vendor for their management software/hardware.
The biggest knock on Vista is that its written in MUMPS, a rather obscure programming language dating to the late 60's. It's a really interesting language, but altogether it's something of a pain to deal with, and the only two open source implementations of it are the Sanchez GT/M stuff that WorldVista uses (which I'm not even sure *IS* open source, the licensing isn't very clear on it, further, alot of it is written in assembler which means its effectively non-portable), and another MUMPS->C translator developed by a guy at the University of Northern Iowa. http://math-cs.cns.uni.edu/~okane/cgi-bin/newpres/ m.compiler/compiler/index.cgi It's an interesting (and really very solid) system, but unless the MUMPS language it's written in gets some serious support behind it, it's lack of portability and available toolkits will doom it to further oblivion.

I may not like spam, but I realize that the First Amendment was designed to protect speech I don't like.

The U.S. Supreme Court, in their 1978 decision FCC vs. Pacifica Radio Network, found that freedom of speech does not imply freedom of volume. That pretty much covers spam, spim, telemarketing, and junk faxes, as far as I'm concerned, but for some reason the law isn't enforced like that.

That doesn't mean you can't use it! I've cited that Supreme Court decision when writing to ISPs regarding trolls and other net.miscreants, and have had accounts revoked.

Page five of this has a pretty graph, seems reasonably legit (although it's only certain sources of emissions, I think it covers the major ones).

To reaffirm what the article said building linux clusters is very simple. In fact certain distributions such as bccd and cluster knoppix specifically for that. Although configuring clustering softwares such as pvm mpi lam mosix etc wouldn't be a problem, I prefer something which has almost everything build into one package thats why I like the above distros. In fact I built a cluster (using BCCD) at home and used it to render images built from povray. I used pvmpov for the rendering on a cluster part. Although there were only four machines the speed difference was evident. And above all making clusters is extremely cool and shows the paradigm shift towards parallel computing.

Now, windows on the other hand has a variety of such applications. But one doesn't have any free software (well we do have PVM..but still) for clustering a set of computers all running windows. Unless Microsoft releases some Kernel source.. any progress in this direction is of no use.

gnuplot is a command line tool, but it is fairly easy to use, start it with

$ gnuplot

and then

gnuplot> help plot

will get you started. There is a nice tutorial I found searching in google: http://www.cs.uni.edu/Help/gnuplot/. To use the graphs in LaTeX save them in eps or pdf, and then you can use the graphics package to include them.

Hope this helps

I live in Cedar Falls Iowa, a small town of about 35,000.The local util company was the first to start competing with a large cable company in Cable internet, in the USA, and has already run the fiber lines through out the city. This actually brought in Target to build one of there wharehouses on the outskirts of town. Plus another local company is building a datacenter, which is a first for Iowa.
you can find out more about Cedar Falls Utilites at http://www.cfu.net/ and the company building the datacenter here locally at http://www.teamnet.net/
Oh, and Mediacom (the large company that CFU compets with) tried getting a law passed to stop CFU, but lost the battle. Oddly enough, Mediacom is actually owned by AT&T, which is one of the providers CFU uses for there connections.
Oh, and we are home to one of Iowas universities, http://www.uni.edu/

I am the Linux Administrator for the Rod Library at University of Northern Iowa http://www.lib.uni.edu/ We currently run 2 different floors with a custom Linux solution I created. We also run another 2 floors with the standard Windows XP with policies. Once I walked away from the Linux workstations after I set them up I have not returned. (I did have to replug one network cable that was bumped out of the machine) I used qvwm (so it looks like the other Windows terminals) and configured Firefox to look like IE. We do it this way so it is much simpler on the patrons, they always get the same "look" when they get on one of our computers. Also we do not have a login screen, the computers just boot directly into a usable interface. The desktops are empty and they must click on the start menu. After this they can choose only a few options. (i.e. Internet, Calculator, and a few other custom programs for other departments) So far we are only testing the Linux workstations on the top 2 floors. But I believe we will begin to migrate the Windows workstations to Linux. The reason why we decided to test Linux was because we did not have enough money to buy new workstations to replace the Pentium II 400's that Linux is currently running on. So I developed a custom solution that now runs just as quick as our Pentium 4 1.6's. I realize thin-clients are nice, I have developed thin-clients also, but if you do not have administration experience with thin-clients or Linux. I would not suggest using a thin-client solution unless you are willing to invest in someone who does have experience. I read you also didn't want to create your own Linux solution. I am currently working on a library public workstation distribution which will be easily configurable and installable. It will only have the most used options available, if you would like to email me any questions you have, I can give you pages of documentation of things I have tried and solutions I have come up with. My email is eshook at uni dot edu. If anyone else would like to contact me with questions feel free, I would like to help as many people as I can.

Eric Shook

OK we all know that water is needed to sustain life on earth, which is why its such a biggie when the possibility of water on extra-terrestial terrains arises.

But what is it exactly about water that makes it so important? Here is a page which shows some of the most important properties of water. It shows, for example, how capillary action works, a property that allows plants up to 20 feet (i think!) tall to absorb water without using any energy whatsoever!

Albeit a bit late in the thread, the Bootable Cluster CD has been an active project for about two years. It is based off of the LNX-BBC (where I'm a developer), but is an independent project supporting OpenMosix, MPICH, LAM, PVM, and all of the necessary scripts and debuggers to tie together a drop-in clustering solution. It's mainly aimed at Educational institutions with lots of Windows labs, but no dedicated clustering resources.

Yeah, we've got another 17,000 or so here. :)

But it doesn't mean the same thing in Northern Iowa.

I guess you could argue that it was unnecessary--but I was the one laughing when everyone else thought "the internet was down" when they couldn't get to Yahoo Games, Hotmail, and Google.

Of course, it might be noteworthy to mention I find far more "relevant" uses of my Internet connection. :)

"Imagine a cluster of these?" you say?

That's what I'm doing here.

Word.
As an English major who has just been paid for the completion of his first software project, I am enthusiastic about the possiblity of the two disciplines comingling.
When I first had to master the Villanelle and the sestina for a creative writing class back in the eighties, I found my mind stimulated in a way unlike any thought process I had used before. When I began learning python last year, the tickle was familiar.
Please don't be too quick to write off the similarities between the two crafts and especially entertain the possibility that observing fine code written by masters just might improve your own. The Master of Software Arts sounds like an acheivement to be proud of.

Word.
As an English major who has just been paid for the completion of his first software project, I am enthusiastic about the possiblity of the two disciplines comingling.
When I first had to master the Villanelle and the sestina for a creative writing class back in the eighties, I found my mind stimulated in a way unlike any thought process I had used before. When I began learning python last year, the tickle was familiar.
Please don't be too quick to write off the similarities between the two crafts and especially entertain the possibility that observing fine code written by masters just might improve your own. The Master of Software Arts sounds like an acheivement to be proud of.

very little info...but research is goin on at other places too..

Thermoacoustic Refrigerant Pilot

May I suggest the island of San Lorenzo?

However, I soon discovered that one of the nicest features of VMS that we had on those systems was also one of the most dangerous for my account. The system appeared to have some form of revision control. Anytime you saved a file, a ";1" was attached if you had no existing file by that name. Otherwise the next-lowest number was appended to ensure a unique filename. This was good in that you never corrupted a file or overwrote it accidentally (and if you save your files often, if one is corrupted you can back up to the next most recent version) but with a pithy 1.5MB disk quota, it meant that you had to frequently clean out old files. And unpriviledged user backups were nontrivial tasks, because ftp was disabled, and you were limited to using Kermit for file transfers on a 9600 baud line.

Nevertheless, VMS had a good number of benefits to it--and to this day it seems to handle the immense load of our users quite well.

But I should make a point here--don't go calling VMS secure. It can be cracked. Any OS can. The simple fact that it's not used much nowadays may very well be the reason we don't hear much in the way of exploits and cracks for these machines. And further, if the VMS cracking docs you're reading are not modern (within the last 2 years, even for VMS) they are certainly not current--and there are people out there who do, can, and will exploit this OS. Sure, it's not so easy as downloading some program and running it, but it's clearly quite possible. It just might take a bit more effort.

That may be true, but you'd also have a lot of overhead with the
Ada.Text_IO.Put_Line("First Post!");
Now I know you can always add the Use Ada.Text_IO; Put_Line("First Post!"); but if you were taught like I was taugh Ada (at the University of Northern Iowa you were forbidden to use the "use" clause. *Sigh* I do have to say, though, that Ada did teach me a good fundamental base, and also told me I'm _not_ a good programmer :)

cns-compouting

I don't live in a Tech Mecca either, Cedar Falls, Iowa, to be exact, but we've got awesome and cheap cable service from CFU, our municipal utility company.

I had $30/month residential service, which was about 1300kbps/down 192kbps/up. But, I just upgraded to the business class service for $25/month more ($55 total), and that gives me 4000kbps/down and 1400kbps/up. Extra IP addresses are $5/month, not sure what static IP addresses cost yet, I think it's another $20 a month for one of those, but it removes the ban on ports 80 and 23 too. The best part is that they have a 100Mbit bridge between the ISP and the University where I work, it's great for sending stuff to and from my servers.

I'm looking at buying a house right now, and even though I can cross the river into Waterloo and get a house cheaper, I won't buy one outside the Cedar Falls city limits, so I can keep my CFU, it's that good compared to Mediacom. I've had two outages in a year, one was for 5 minutes, the other was when my modem died. I noticed that the modem was out at 6:50 p.m., and they had a guy to my house and me back online by 7:30 p.m. Now that's customer service!

There must be something wrong with the graphs for the e1000 packet size vs. throughput plot, I believe the axis are reversed.-

Also Intel acknowledges that their e1000 adapter have driver issues under linux. This text is from: ftp://aiedownload.intel.com/df-support/2897/ENG/re adme.txt

Known Issues
============
Driver Hangs Under Heavy Traffic Loads


Intel is aware that previously released e1000 drivers may hang under very
specific types of heavy traffic loads. This version includes a workaround
that resets the adapter automatically if a hang condition is detected. This
workaround ensures network traffic flow is not affected when a hang occurs.

This is for the driver verion 4.1.7, released 3/23/2002 (ie. quite new). Older versions had even bigger problems. This might explain why the Intel adapter does so bad in this test. I wish that Intel gets a clue and releases all card specs and GPLs the existing driver so that a true (stable) open source driver could be written and included in the linux kernel. I think the hardware is OK, but the drivers sucks.

A number of PBS stations still carry the program, however. A list of said stations is available at the Nitro-9 site, specifically at http://nitro9.earth.uni.edu/doctor/broadcast.html.

A number of PBS stations still carry the program, however. A list of said stations is available at the Nitro-9 site, specifically at http://nitro9.earth.uni.edu/doctor/broadcast.html.

SECTION 2. DEFINITIONS
(d) University Resources Usually and Customarily Provided. When determining ownership and license rights in copyrightable works, "university resources usually and customarily provided" includes such support as office space, library facilities, ordinary access to computers and networks, or salary. In general, it does not include use of students or employees as support staff to develop the work, or substantial use of specialized or unique facilities and equipment, or other special subventions provided by the University unless approved as an exception.

SECTION 4. COPYRIGHTS
(2) Works created as a specific requirement of employment or as an assigned university duty that may be specified, for example, in a written job description or an employment agreement. Such specification may define the full scope or content of the employees university employment duties comprehensively or may be limited to terms applicable to a single copyrightable work. Absent such prior written specification, ownership will vest with the University in those cases where the University provides the motivation for the preparation of the work, the topic or content of which is determined by the creators employment duties and/or when the work is prepared at the university's expense.

Here at the University of Northern Iowa we have a similar document, and this issue also came up with me recently when developing the low-level software which would be used to control the devices in a computer-controlled train set. Some of the devices required too complex a driver to be really considered within the scope of the class (the course was on Real-Time Systems; we were largely interested in the concurrency aspect.)
As I was more proficient in working with the low-level driver code, I wrote that, and released it under the GPL to the other students and the professor, so it could be used again in future semesters.

However, the terms I included above (which are in my own university's policy) would have completely invalidated my release of it under the GPL, under the conditions that:

1. The University provided the motivation,
2. the university provided the resources (train hardware and computing resources on which I wrote, tested, and stored the code),
3. university expense could be claimed for the time it took me to develop the code, and
4. they could lay ownership claim to the work, refusing to permit me to keep my grade in the course or to allow me to graduate if I refused.

Fortunately, the issue of legal ownership did not end up becoming a key concern, as the application of my drivers were considered too specialized to be of any applicable use in any other context. However, the point is still there--the university could indeed lay claim to all effort I put into the project, and could resell the entire project, complete with my code but without my written consent, all because of the policies laid out in the document.

SECTION 2. DEFINITIONS
(d) University Resources Usually and Customarily Provided. When determining ownership and license rights in copyrightable works, "university resources usually and customarily provided" includes such support as office space, library facilities, ordinary access to computers and networks, or salary. In general, it does not include use of students or employees as support staff to develop the work, or substantial use of specialized or unique facilities and equipment, or other special subventions provided by the University unless approved as an exception.

SECTION 4. COPYRIGHTS
(2) Works created as a specific requirement of employment or as an assigned university duty that may be specified, for example, in a written job description or an employment agreement. Such specification may define the full scope or content of the employees university employment duties comprehensively or may be limited to terms applicable to a single copyrightable work. Absent such prior written specification, ownership will vest with the University in those cases where the University provides the motivation for the preparation of the work, the topic or content of which is determined by the creators employment duties and/or when the work is prepared at the university's expense.

Here at the University of Northern Iowa we have a similar document, and this issue also came up with me recently when developing the low-level software which would be used to control the devices in a computer-controlled train set. Some of the devices required too complex a driver to be really considered within the scope of the class (the course was on Real-Time Systems; we were largely interested in the concurrency aspect.)
As I was more proficient in working with the low-level driver code, I wrote that, and released it under the GPL to the other students and the professor, so it could be used again in future semesters.

However, the terms I included above (which are in my own university's policy) would have completely invalidated my release of it under the GPL, under the conditions that:

1. The University provided the motivation,
2. the university provided the resources (train hardware and computing resources on which I wrote, tested, and stored the code),
3. university expense could be claimed for the time it took me to develop the code, and
4. they could lay ownership claim to the work, refusing to permit me to keep my grade in the course or to allow me to graduate if I refused.

Fortunately, the issue of legal ownership did not end up becoming a key concern, as the application of my drivers were considered too specialized to be of any applicable use in any other context. However, the point is still there--the university could indeed lay claim to all effort I put into the project, and could resell the entire project, complete with my code but without my written consent, all because of the policies laid out in the document.

And I don't necessarily mean assigning Design Patterns and making them learn the things one by one :) But there is a movement out there towards making "Elementary Patterns," or "patterns at a level appropriate for students just learning to design and write programs." That quote is from Eugene Wallingford's Elementary Patterns Homepage, which you should check out.

Basically, elementary patterns are just like full fledged design patterns, but a lot simpler. Instead of a pattern for writing a text editor, for instance, you have one for writing a bounded loop. Or other fundamental programming constructs, such as case statements. Then, to make more complicated algorithms, like searches, you can combine a bunch of simpler patterns to get, for example, a Selection Sort pattern.

I don't know what this would do in terms of making the class more "fun," but it could make it a whole lot easier in terms of understanding one building block at a time, and then reusing those blocks to code some kick-ass apps.

It also means that the net will be REALLY fast tomorrow! Tomorrow is the day that Microsoft should release it's 83MB Service Pack for Windows 2000, the day that Lucas should release a 30MB trailer for Episode II, and that Netscape 6 and Red Hat Linux 7 should be released! Okay, I'm not saying anything like this will happen, but exactly how much bandwidth does Napster consume? It was banned/blocked at the University where I work, with the reasoning that it was not only contributing to widespread copyright infringement, not furthering the mission of the University, and consumed an inappropriate amount of bandwidth. I'm not saying I agree with those decisions, I had no part in them, but that's the rationale I was given after I ran a traceroute to find myself blocked at our gateway. Will my cable modem be faster tomorrow? Time to check out Gnutella...
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Ada is taught at my school for both Comp Sci I and II. The reason given for teaching ADA is that it's a "stongly typed" language and it's pretty fair with error recovery. According to my prof. ADA is used in military tasks involving 100% reliablity (submarine radar traking systems, air traffic control systems, stuff like that).

There are almost no professional opportunities for ADA programmers, unless you would like to work for Rockwell (no offence to those Rockwell folks, but you are the only people I know hiring ADA programmers.) Ada is almost SO strongly typed, it's almost code prohibitive; I get bogged down in the structures and not the implementation of the solution.

However, here are some links for ya'll
ADA Reference Manual
a prof's home page