Slashdot Mirror

It seems to me that one of the major objections Slashdotters have to the WAVE program is that neither the Pickerton Services Group nor the anonymous reporters are subject to any form of accountability. I offer the following suggestions as an attempted remedy:

Accountablity of Pinkerton through appointment of an ombudsperson.
Universities like the University of Western Ontario and media groups like Brill's Content appoint an individual to act as a neutral third party to investigate complaints. In Brill's Content's case, the individual is given a multi-year contract with protective clauses to allow him/her to write a monthly column without fear of reprisal. I suggest that Pinkerton do the same.

Acountability of anonymous reporters through transparency
According to the WAVE America webpage, care is taken to ensure that reporters remain anonymous by omitting names and identifying details from the WAVE Line reports that are sent to schools. I suggest that these reports be available for scrutiny by outsiders, either through the WAVE America website or though a request of the ombudsperson.

Does anyone read Slashdot after the 731st post?

Zipspeak is a version of the zipslack minidistribution which incorporates the speakup kernel patches. Speakup is a screen reader project headed by a blind hacker named Kirk Reiser and assisted by speakup users and other interested people. Therefore, it is not a threat to independant producers as it is itself an independant product. It is always open to new people to get involved, it is released under the GPL, and it therefore is also free.

Since speakup is a product written by the people who wish to use it, the aim is, in fact, to be as compatible with as much hardware as possible. The list of synthesisers supported in zipspeak matches those supported at the time of the last speakup release. Since then, more drivers have been written and driver code is constantly being worked on. As some of these drivers are not to a satisfactory standard, they were not included with zipspeak. I dare say that zipspeak will be updated upon the next speakup release, which by the way will only be version 0.09.

Kirk is always keen to add more synths. I needed a specific driver written for my particular hardware. He began writing it one Saturday morning, and by Sunday night, I was running it. Talk about service.

We are curious to know about your speech synthesiser. All Kirk needs to write a driver is a spec sheet listing the commands and the lend of a unit to test the drivers with. Even if your speech is in software, we are interested in knowing about it. Feel free to drop Kirk some mail.

I can't emphasise the independence of this enough. This is free software! There is no FDA approval, tax exemptions or any such things, it's just plain hard work and satisfaction in the result. I know little about Apple's standards, but none of their operating systems are particularly usable, in fact, I'd say that linux is much more usable than any apple OS ever was or, quite probably, ever will be.

If you would like to know more, you can visit the speakup webpage at http://www.braille.uwo.ca/speakup/ where you can also check out the speakup mailing list. In addition, you may also contact Kirk Reiser, head of the speakup project at kirk@braille.uwo.ca.

Geoff.

Zipspeak is a version of the zipslack minidistribution which incorporates the speakup kernel patches. Speakup is a screen reader project headed by a blind hacker named Kirk Reiser and assisted by speakup users and other interested people. Therefore, it is not a threat to independant producers as it is itself an independant product. It is always open to new people to get involved, it is released under the GPL, and it therefore is also free.

Since speakup is a product written by the people who wish to use it, the aim is, in fact, to be as compatible with as much hardware as possible. The list of synthesisers supported in zipspeak matches those supported at the time of the last speakup release. Since then, more drivers have been written and driver code is constantly being worked on. As some of these drivers are not to a satisfactory standard, they were not included with zipspeak. I dare say that zipspeak will be updated upon the next speakup release, which by the way will only be version 0.09.

Kirk is always keen to add more synths. I needed a specific driver written for my particular hardware. He began writing it one Saturday morning, and by Sunday night, I was running it. Talk about service.

We are curious to know about your speech synthesiser. All Kirk needs to write a driver is a spec sheet listing the commands and the lend of a unit to test the drivers with. Even if your speech is in software, we are interested in knowing about it. Feel free to drop Kirk some mail.

I can't emphasise the independence of this enough. This is free software! There is no FDA approval, tax exemptions or any such things, it's just plain hard work and satisfaction in the result. I know little about Apple's standards, but none of their operating systems are particularly usable, in fact, I'd say that linux is much more usable than any apple OS ever was or, quite probably, ever will be.

If you would like to know more, you can visit the speakup webpage at http://www.braille.uwo.ca/speakup/ where you can also check out the speakup mailing list. In addition, you may also contact Kirk Reiser, head of the speakup project at kirk@braille.uwo.ca.

Geoff.

This can only get worse in a degree program that focuses on gaming. So what's a geek to do? Transfer to Geography. Well not quite Geography. I'm now in the second year of a 4 year degree in Media, Information, Technoculture and Geography, and I'm happy to say that the ratio if guys to girls is much better. What is a geek doing in Media and Geography?

Its all about the information. Media and Information science is about who controls the information and where its at. Its a new program at the University of Western Ontario.

Why Geography? I like flight sims. ;-)

GIS (Geographical Information Systems) is one of the most data intensive applications there is. Its all about crunching big numbers and making sense of them.

The 4 years you spend at University will be the one time in your life when you will be surrounded by people your own age of the opposite gender. Why waste by taking courses with other male geeks, where there is so much geekyness in so many other fields? Open your mind... Explore the possibilities... (Try a Marijuana Cookie... ) =)

Link to Media, Information, Technoculture

Our school has a Women in Mathematics Committee that deals with this sort of thing. Their stats show that females make up about 20 percent of the math faculty, and that percentage has declined in recent years.

Someone from CMU posted that they have a special intro course for non-computer people. We have one of those too. It's a joke. You learn FileMaker, Word, Excel, and Turing (ever programmed in that?). And yes, the class has a lot of females in it. (An aside: not everyone in there is a CS major; they're all math majors though.)

On the issue of minorities, that's really a non-issue at UW. I'd say the class is an even mixture of white and asian students, with a good number of Indian (from India, not Native American) students as well.

A bunch of friends and I were mulling over the latest recruitment brochure sometime last year. (It's much prettier than the one I got.) We noticed the photographs featured a disproportionately high number of white females, especially in programs where they aren't well represented, like CS. So what's up with that? False advertising? (By contrast, a friend of mine who worked on the brochures at Western said they were told to find as many minorities as possible.)

Ooooh, Enchanter flashbacks... Heh, it even fits. Writes a spell scroll into your spellbook for later use.

Cool.

(I'd suggest adding frotz for a command, but it's already a Z-machine interpreter...)

Let's see: gnusto (installation/package tool), rezrov ("unlock/open" == chmod?), malyon ("animate object" == filemanager/program launcher?), filfre ("useless fireworks" == eyecandy something). Oh, this has possibilities... ;-)

Oh Am I an idiot!!!

First of all here is the google search

Secondly here is the link from above!

Well, there is a between Blackdown and the PowerPC JDK effort.

Also, I seem to recall (I can't find it now) that LinuxPPC had the IBM VM for download on their site.

On the Macintosh Z-Machine I used, it could look at a DOS .EXE file and pull the z-code data from the .EXE file and save it separately. I am not sure if all Z-Machines can do this or not.

The "Infocom Masterpieces" CD that you link to actually includes five Zorks, not three. (You are probably forgetting Beyond Zork and Zork Zero.)

The only Infocom text adventures not included on the Masterpieces CD were Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy and Shogun. Both of these were based off of novels and the rights had reverted to the novels' authors by the time Masterpieces was published.

The CD is a dual-format CD that works under Mac and DOS/Win. Since the same PDF files are accessible in both modes (they take up almost 600 Mb by themselves!), it should be accessible under ISO-9660.

People besides Infocom have written games that are compatible with the Z-Machine. In fact, several contest-winning games appear on the Masterpieces CD. There's a wide range of quality out there. This is pointed out perfectly with mst3k1_2.z5. It takes one of the poorest text adventures I've ever seen and MST3Ks it within the text adventure engine itself. The final product is one of the funniest things I have ever seen. It must be played to be believed.

If you want more information about interactive fiction (text adventures), a good place to start is the Unofficial Infocom Homepage

The Infocom text adventures are written in a language called ZIL, Zork Interpreter Language. You may have noticed that each adventure game consisted of one moderately-sized executable and one or two enormous data files, and that the executable image for each game was usually identical to all the others. The executable is a Z-code interpreter that runs the ZIL program stored in the data files.

There are Z-code interpreters on the net that work pretty well. I own a copy of The Lost Treasures of Infocom (about a dozen of the classic games), and once upon a time ran a Z interpreter to play these games on my Linux box.

There is a wealth of information about Infocom at Peter Scheyen's Infocom Page. Apart from links to the Z-code interpreters and information on buying the classic games, there is a wonderful archive of historical and technical articles about Infocom. Check out especially How to Fit a Large Program Into a Small Machine, Marc Blank and Stu Galley's technical exposition on the design of the ZIL language and the Z-code interpreter. Great stuff.

The Infocom text adventures are written in a language called ZIL, Zork Interpreter Language. You may have noticed that each adventure game consisted of one moderately-sized executable and one or two enormous data files, and that the executable image for each game was usually identical to all the others. The executable is a Z-code interpreter that runs the ZIL program stored in the data files.

There are Z-code interpreters on the net that work pretty well. I own a copy of The Lost Treasures of Infocom (about a dozen of the classic games), and once upon a time ran a Z interpreter to play these games on my Linux box.

There is a wealth of information about Infocom at Peter Scheyen's Infocom Page. Apart from links to the Z-code interpreters and information on buying the classic games, there is a wonderful archive of historical and technical articles about Infocom. Check out especially How to Fit a Large Program Into a Small Machine, Marc Blank and Stu Galley's technical exposition on the design of the ZIL language and the Z-code interpreter. Great stuff.

And you can download a number of Z-machine interpreters from Metalab. In my spare time, I've been fiddling with a Z-machine front-end for IRC, but I have nothing to show for my efforts yet ;)

A few things to check:

*Are you running with a frame buffer native to your card instead of the generic OpenFirmware one? That means running without using video=ofonly or No Video Driver Checked. Most Macs use atyfb, controlfb, aty128fb, or valykriefb -- most likely on a PowerBook G3 it's atyfb.

*Check out the new Xpmac and XFree86-3.3.5. Get the new Xpmac from http://khendricks.ivey.uwo.ca/rage128_us b/. Don't forget if you have a ATI Mach64 video card to start it with 'Xpmac -mach64', you will get much better preformance.

I hope those tips make your X experience better.

We are a cash strapped beowulf group doing legit research (we actually made a little bit of knot (ap math) history) Everyone seems to like us and support what we are doing but no one is putting their money where their mouths are BALDRIC. We are doing this in the true spirit of beowulf.. Taking old surplus hardware from all around a university and putting it to good use .. All of the research findings must be public inorder for anyone to use it, we have a very open source attitude to the cluster.. We currently have 8 nodes up and running with 7 more waiting to get 'on the action'. But our problem is that we have *no* funding. The biggest support we've gotten is a tiny room (I'm talking 15' x 15' at the most) from our Computer Science department.

My question is: How can we get this kind of support??

We are a cash strapped beowulf group doing legit research (we actually made a little bit of knot (ap math) history) Everyone seems to like us and support what we are doing but no one is putting their money where their mouths are BALDRIC. We are doing this in the true spirit of beowulf.. Taking old surplus hardware from all around a university and putting it to good use .. All of the research findings must be public inorder for anyone to use it, we have a very open source attitude to the cluster.. We currently have 8 nodes up and running with 7 more waiting to get 'on the action'. But our problem is that we have *no* funding. The biggest support we've gotten is a tiny room (I'm talking 15' x 15' at the most) from our Computer Science department.

My question is: How can we get this kind of support??

(they changed the introductory CS classes at my school to use it, just recently, but what do I care, the upper level classes use C because it works :)

Several universities have done this because of deals with Sun. I know at the local University, they have Sun boxes and the putrid JavaStations everywhere, and have started teaching Java in first year.

Actually quite a good move by Sun - make the CS Graduates of the future at least somewhat familiar with thier language, to try and reinforce thier ubiquity.

The best website concerning the Arrow is probably the Discovery Channel's Flight Deck which has a good piece on the technical aspects of the Arrow, and exn.ca has some decent stuff as well. There are several other sites which contain pix, specs & plans, noteworthy info and comparisons or narratives (mirrored), and like all obscure subjects online, it also has a Web Ring.

The Arrow was the first aircraft to pull a 2-G turn at 50,000' without loss of speed or altitude - unusual even today. It was also an extraordinary achievement in the amount and variety of weaponry that it carried in its weapons pack, which could include not only weaponry, but also reconansance equipment, fuel, and just about anything else, most of which could be reloaded or swapped in a matter of minutes - still impressive by today's standards. Consider that an Arrow in 1959 could have flown higher at a similar speed (slightly faster, actually) than an F-14D Tomcat did 31 years later... the Arrow is a 40-year-old accomplishment that would compare remarkably well with the aircraft of today - and comparisons with aircraft of its day are in most instances almost unfair, unless you look only at a single feature.

• The CIA's U2 spy-plane had a higher flight ceiling than the Arrow - 60,000' compared with 58,000 - and its only defence was altitude. In 1959, one of the very few things aloft that could have brought one down from its flight ceiling was an Arrow, which could bring down a target at a 70,000' altitude. The U2 was replaced by the SR-71 Blackbird (nominated elsewhere), which the Arrow predates just slightly (the Blackbird first hit the drawing board at Lougheed's SkunkWorks in September 1959, whereas the Arrow project was scrapped in February 1959; note the SR-71 has a strikingly similar cockpit configuration). For further comparison, the F14's flight ceiling is about 53,000', (the SR-71's is around 85,000' achieved in 1976).
  
• The F-117A Stealth Fighter has internal weapons carriage and fly-by-wire controls: the current wave of the future. The Arrow had both in 1957.
  
• The F/A-18 engines (20 years later) each produce 11,000/16,000 pounds thrust without/with afterburner; the Arrow's Iriquois engine produced 19,500/25,600 with a potential for 30,000 -- more similar to a MiG-31 or an F-14.
  
• Delta-wing aircraft were revolutionary at the time - the Arrow was a tail-less delta-wing design with a "blended" cockpit (think Stealth Bomber) rather than the (at that time) conventional "bubble" cockpit with a conventional wing design.
  
• Although the Arrow was intended for use as a fighter-interceptor, its armament bay was larger than a B29 Bomber's.
  

The Arrow contained serveral other aviation 'firsts' and 'near-firsts' and several 'bests' and 'near-bests' - but the truly amazing thing was the way that Avro brought it all together in a single package. The designers' plans for an 'Ultimate Arrow' suggest they were thinking bigger still, despite having made history already - there is really no telling what might have evolved from the project today if had been left intact. After the project was scrapped, many of the design team from Avro went on to work on other projects, so that certain Arrow features apparently began to appear in a variety of places, including (perhaps) the Concorde, the Stealth Bomber, and at NASA, where 32 Avro engineers ended up working on Mercury, Gemini, and Apollo - including Apollo 11 (nominated elsewhere) and I believe 13 (also nominated elsewhere) and the space shuttle.

If there isn't an interesting story at the other end of a link, I'm not going to go there. (and if Hemos says there is, and I discover that he lied just to bring down a site, I might go somewhere else for my Nerd News, and /. loses ad revenue.)

Now everyone go /. my website

As for interactive fiction, the Zork games (and almost all of Infocom's interactive fiction) were platform independant. With the data files (included in the "Masterpieces of Infocom" CD) you can play them almost anywhere. I've gone through the entire Zork trilogy on my PalmPilot, for example :)

Oh, and interactive fiction is still being written. Just finding it takes a little work, but it's still going. I doubt it ever truly left :)

Good luck!

They did get a b-52 to carry a nuclear reactor, but they never made a plane powered by nuclear power.

Ture at my university our Computer Science program consists mostly of men, but there are an increasing number of women entering this growing field.

I've also notised that there is a diffrence between a "hot" chick going into Computer Science and a "cool" chick. All of my computer science buds are 'cool' people who also just happen to be what most would consider 'attractive' but that attractiveness is earned by a good personality.

PICTURE

This is a picture of my comp sci friends at my 21st birthday (I'm the drunken geek with the tie on). Every single one of these 'chicks', as people call them, kick most of the male population's asses in coding. These 5 girls were in the top %10 of our class (300 people, mostly male)for the year.

The Scholorship is a GREAT idea, but maybe Rob should be changed to "A really cool girl entering CS" ;-)

I've spent three years so far at UWO, learning what is bascially CS theory.

The article summary talks about colleges "keeping pace" with technology, but how much is that really necessary? OO hasn't undergone major changes since it appeared... basic OS, networking, and database theory are all still the same.

A focus on techniques instead of tools is important to me; I can learn a tool in hours by digesting a manual, but techniques I learn best from working with experienced programmers and designers.