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Moreover, there is free and open-source implementations of those two visualizations: Treemap Java Library and Hypertree Java Library.

http://www.ext.vt.edu/departments/envirohort/facts heets/pottedplants/nephthy.html

I think Virginia Tech has a remote campus in Switzerland. I don't know if it's open to Swiss students or just to students going abroad.

That Penguin Airlines is touting its employment of Linux in its business and aircraft sounds novel for the free software movement, but should anything ever go wrong on one of their "heavily computerized jets," their problems just might become one of the most infamous software engineering mistakes of all time--and a dark stain on the reputation of open source software.

A malfunctioning aircraft could be more disasterous than either the Therac-25 accidents or the Patriot Missile failure in Dhahran.

Konrad Zuse. Before the British heard of the Enigma.

Austria

ftp://gd.tuwien.ac.at/pub/linux/Mandrake-iso/i586/ (Vienna)
Czech Republic

ftp://mandrake.redbox.cz/Mandrake-iso/i586/

ftp://sunsite.mff.cuni.cz/OS/Linux/Dist/Mandrake/m andrake-iso/i586/ (Prague)
Estonia

ftp://ftp.aso.ee/pub/os/Linux/distributions/mandra ke-iso/i586/
France

ftp://fr2.rpmfind.net/linux/Mandrake-iso/i586/ (Lyon)

ftp://ftp.ciril.fr/pub/linux/mandrake-iso/i586/ (Nancy)

ftp://ftp.proxad.net/pub/Distributions_Linux/Mandr ake-iso/i586/ (Paris)

ftp://linux.ups-tlse.fr/Mandrake-iso/i586/ (Toulouse)
Germany

ftp://ftp-stud.fht-esslingen.de/pub/Mirrors/Mandra ke-iso/i586/ (Esslingen)

ftp://ftp.join.uni-muenster.de/pub/linux/distribut ions/mandrake-iso/i586/ (Muenster)

ftp://ftp.uni-bayreuth.de/pub/linux/Mandrake-iso/i 586/ (bayreuth)
Hungary

ftp://ftp.linuxforum.hu/mirror/Mandrake-iso/i586/
Netherlands

ftp://ftp.nluug.nl/pub/os/Linux/distr/Mandrake/Man drake-iso/i586/

ftp://ftp.surfnet.nl/pub/os/Linux/distr/Mandrake/M andrake-iso/i586/
Russia

ftp://ftp.chg.ru/pub/Linux/mandrake-iso/i586/ (Chernogolovka)
Sweden

ftp://ftp.chello.se/pub/Linux/Mandrake-iso/i586/

ftp://ftp.du.se/pub/os/mandrake-iso/i586/ (Dalarma)
Taiwan

ftp://linux.cdpa.nsysu.edu.tw/pub/Mandrake/mandrak e-iso/i586/
United Kingdom

ftp://ftp.mirror.ac.uk/sites/sunsite.uio.no/pub/un ix/Linux/Mandrake/Mandrake-iso/i586/ (Canterbury)
United States

ftp://ftp.cse.buffalo.edu/pub/Linux/Mandrake/mandr ake-iso/i586/ (NY)

ftp://ftp.orst.edu/pub/mandrake-iso/i586/ (Oregon)

ftp://ftp.software.umn.edu/pub/linux/mandrake/Mand rake-iso/i586/ (Minnesota)

ftp://helios.dii.utk.edu/pub/linux/Mandrake/Mandra ke-iso/i586/ (Tennessee)

ftp://mirror.mcs.anl.gov/pub/Mandrake-iso/i586/ (Illinois)

ftp://mirrors.secsup.org/pub/linux/mandrake/Mandra ke-iso/i586/

ftp://raven.cslab.vt.edu/pub/linux/mandrake-iso/i5 86/ (Virgina)

ftp://videl.ics.hawaii.edu/mirrors/mandrake/Mandra ke-iso/i586/ (Hawaii)

http://www.ars.usda.gov/is/AR/archive/dec97/moth12 97.htm Popular-style article
http://www.epa.gov/pesticides/biopesticides/factsh eets/fs-generic_lep.htm very technical, EPA-oriented
http://www.wcrl.ars.usda.gov/cec/papers/jce93-9.ht m Article about an insect population simulation program.
http://ohioline.osu.edu/hyg-fact/2000/2174.html Using bt instead
http://fwie.fw.vt.edu/rhgiles/Trevey/Gypsy.htm Vermont, long piece, "gyplure"
http://www.orst.edu/instruction/bi301/chemcont.htm Dr. Pat Muir's notes for a college class, short, readable. Excerpt:
"The advantages of pheromone use include the facts that they:

* are nontoxic
* are biodegradable
* can be used at low concentrations
* are highly species specific

Hazards or difficulties associated with their use include the facts that:

* resistance to pheromones could potentially evolve (although it would then be difficult for insects to find mates!)
* it is expensive and takes a long time to achieve commercial production."
More than you wanted to know about gypsy moths

In reading up about this I found that some of the same people who don't like pesticides also don't like Bt and pheromones. You wonder how they're going to like a deforested Pacific Northwest if those moths get loose up there.

P.S. URL for the meetup

Spoken like a true pot-head. Never mind the actual facts and research. I quote: "Research conducted during the past seven years by psychology professor Robert Stephens suggests that people who use marijuana regularly may be just as addicted as alcohol, cocaine, or heroin abusers."

Pot smokers are the worst at being in denial, arguably even worse than tobacco smokers in convincing themselves "I can quit anytime I want, I just don't want to". Funny how so many of them never quit, and those that try seem to relapse.

Of course it is not a great exhibit. But as something put together by donations from staff, I think it is darn nifty. In fact, I am jealous because my Alma matter Virginia Tech doesn't have a similar setup. I always felt VA Tech was more for the real geeks and UVA was more for the business minded people. UVA is way too greek to be true geek (coo! I just made that up). So I guess I'm going to have to campaign for a museum at VA Tech now. It might be hard because I live on other side of planet now, but it could be made easier by the fact they regularly auctioned off crap.. erh I mean exhibits... this old in auctions. At least they were doing so a few years ago. So how about it! I'm sure there are more than a few Hokies reading Slashdot. Get to work!

As for the first electronic digital computer, that wasn't ENIAC, either. I know you USAns like to think that you invented everything, but Colossus here in the UK beat you by a few years.

The first binary electronic digital computer was German: Konrad Zuse's Z1.

And ENIAC wasn't even the first stored-program electronic computer: while ENIAC had to be programmed by plugboard, the Manchester Mark 1, aka `Baby', was storing programs in memory along with data, just as all current machines do.

Credit where it's due, please :)

Bill Gates Before Microsoft

Family and Early Childhood
On October 28, 1955, shortly after 9:00 p.m., William Henry Gates III was born. He was born into a family with a rich history in business, politics, and community service. His great-grandfather had been a state legislator and mayor, his grandfather was the vice president of a national bank, and his father was a prominent lawyer. [Wallace, 1992, p. 8-9] Early on in life, it was apparent that Bill Gates inherited the ambition, intelligence, and competitive spirit that had helped his progenitors rise to the top in their chosen professions. In elementary school he quickly surpassed all of his peer's abilities in nearly all subjects, especially math and science. His parents recognized his intelligence and decided to enroll him in Lakeside, a private school known for its intense academic environment. This decision had far reaching effects on Bill Gates's life. For at Lakeside, Bill Gates was first introduced to computers.


First computing Experience
In the Spring of 1968, the Lakeside prep school decided that it should acquaint the student body with the world of computers [Teamgates.com, 9/29/96]. Computers were still too large and costly for the school to purchase its own. Instead, the school had a fund raiser and bought computer time on a DEC PDP-10 owned by General Electric. A few thousand dollars were raised which the school figured would buy more than enough time to last into the next school year. However, Lakeside had drastically underestimated the allure this machine would have for a hand full of young students.


Bill Gates, Paul Allen, and a few other Lakeside students (many of whom were the first programmers hired at Microsoft) immediately became inseparable from the computer. They would stay in the computer room all day and night, writing programs, reading computer literature and anything else they could to learn about computing. Soon Gates and the others started running into problems with the faculty. Their homework was being turned in late (if at all), they were skipping classes to be in the computer room and worst of all, they had used up all of the schools computer time in just a few weeks. [Wallace, 1992, p. 24]


In the fall of 1968, Computer Center Corporation opened for business in Seattle. It was offering computing time at good rates, and one of the chief programmers working for the corporation had a child attending Lakeside. A deal was struck between Lakeside Prep School and the Computer Center Corporation that allowed the school to continue providing it's students with computer time. [Wallace, 1992, p. 27] Gates and his comrades immediately began exploring the contents of this new machine. It was not long before the young hackers started causing problems. They caused the system to crash several times and broke the computers security system. They even altered the files that recorded the amount of computer time they were using. They were caught and the Computer Center Corporation banned them from the system for several weeks.


Bill Gates, Paul Allen and, two other hackers from Lakeside formed the Lakeside Programmers Group in late 1968. They were determined to find a way to apply their computer skills in the real world. The first opportunity to do this was a direct result of their mischievous activity with the school's computer time. The Computer Center Corporation's business was beginning to suffer due to the systems weak security and the frequency that it crashed. Impressed with Gates and the other Lakeside computer addicts' previous assaults on their computer, the Computer Center Corporation decided to hire the students to find bugs and expose weaknesses in the computer system. In return for the Lakeside Programming Group's help, the Computer Center Corporation would give them unlimited computer time [Wallace, 1992, p. 27]. The boys could not refuse. Gates is quoted as saying "It was when we got free time at C-cubed (Computer Center Corporation) that we really got into computers. I mean, then I became hardcore. It was day and night" [Wallace, 1992, p. 30]. Although the group was hired just to find bugs, they also read any computer related material that the day shift had left behind. The young hackers would even pick employees for new information. It was here that Gates and Allen really began to develop the talents that would lead to the formation of Microsoft seven years later.


Roots of Business Career

Computer Center Corporation began to experience financial problems late in 1969. The company finally went out of business in March of 1970. The Lakeside Programmers Group had to find a new way to get computer time. Eventually they found a few computers on the University of Washington's campus where Allen's dad worked. The Lakeside Programmers Group began searching for new chances to apply their computer skills. Their first opportunity came early the next year when Information Sciences Inc. hired them to program a payroll program. Once again the group was given free computer time and for the first time, a source of income. ISI had agreed to give them royalties whenever it made money from any of the groups programs. As a result of the business deal signed with Information Sciences Inc., the group also had to become a legal business [Wallace, 1992, p. 42-43]. Gates and Allen's next project involved starting another company entirely on their own, Traf-O-Data. They produced a small computer which was used to help measure traffic flow. From the project they grossed around $20,000. The Traf-O-Data company lasted until Gates left for college. During Bill Gates' junior year at Lakeside, the administration offered him a job computerizing the school's scheduling system. Gates asked Allen to help with the project. He agreed and the following summer, they wrote the program. In his senior year, Gates and Allen continued looking for opportunities to use their skills and make some money. It was not long until they found this opportunity. The defense contractor TRW was having trouble with a bug infested computer similar to the one at Computer Center Corporation. TRW had learned of the experience the two had working on the Computer Center Corporation's system and offered Gates and Allen jobs. However thing would be different at TRW they would not be finding the bugs they would be in charge of fixing them. "It was at TRW that Gates began to develop as a serious programer," and it was there that Allen and Gates first started talking seriously about forming their own software company [Wallace, 1992, p. 49-51].


In the fall of 1973, Bill Gates left home for Harvard University [Teamgates.com, 9/29/96]. He had no idea what he wanted to study, so he enrolled as prelaw. Gates took the standard freshman courses with the exception of signing up for one of Harvard's toughest math courses. He did well but just as in high school, his heart was not in his studies. After locating the school's computer center, he lost himself in the world of computers once again. Gates would spend many long nights in front of the school's computer and the next days asleep in class. Paul Allen and Gates remained in close contact even with Bill away at school. They would often discuss ideas for future projects and the possibility of one day starting a business. At the end of Gates's first year at Harvard, the two decided that Allen should move closer to him so that they may be able to follow up on some of their ideas. That summer they both got jobs working for Honeywell [Wallace, 1992, p. 59]. As the summer dragged on, Allen began to push Bill harder with the idea that they should open a software company. Gates was still not sure enough to drop out of school. The following year, however, that would all change.


The Birth of Microsoft

In December of 1974, Allen was on his way to visit Gates when along the way he stopped to browse the current magazines. What he saw changed his and Bill Gates's lives forever. On the cover of Popular Electronics was a picture of the Altair 8080 and the headline "World's First Microcomputer Kit to Rival Commercial Models." He bought the issue and rushed over to Gates's dorm room. They both recognized this as their big opportunity. The two knew that the home computer market was about to explode and that someone would need to make software for the new machines. Within a few days, Gates had called MITS (Micro Instrumentation and Telemetry Systems), the makers of the Altair. He told the company that he and Allen had developed a BASIC that could be used on the Altair [Teamgates.com, 9/29/96]. This was a lie. They had not even written a line of code. They had neither an Altair nor the chip that ran the computer. The MITS company did not know this and was very interested in seeing their BASIC. So, Gates and Allen began working feverishly on the BASIC they had promised. The code for the program was left mostly up to Bill Gates while Paul Allen began working on a way to simulate the Altair with the schools PDP-10. Eight weeks later, the two felt their program was ready. Allen was to fly to MITS and show off their creation. The day after Allen arrived at MITS, it was time to test their BASIC. Entering the program into the company's Altair was the first time Allen had ever touched one. If the Altair simulation he designed or any of Gates's code was faulty, the demonstration would most likely have ended in failure. This was not the case, and the program worked perfectly the first time [Wallace, 1992, p. 80]. MITS arranged a deal with Gates and Allen to buy the rights to their BASIC.[Teamgates.com, 9/29/96] Gates was convinced that the software market had been born. Within a year, Bill Gates had dropped out of Harvard and Microsoft was formed.

similar to Professionalism in Computing which we have at VT.

similar to Professionalism in Computing which we have at VT.

I have an ancient PDP-8 that I would say is very secure. The only input devices are front panel switches, a current loop driven teletype, and a paper tape reader. Storage (even the 2 MegaWord disk packs) is all removable. You have to toggle in the proper boot code (via the switches) to load anything, so it is not something your average script kiddie would be able to do. I do have some serial boards that I will (some day) connect to a linux box for remote access.

Polymerase Chain Reaction isn't really new its at least 5 or six years old. I remember reading about it in Popular Science way back when. As I recall the process is pretty ingenious. First you take a sample DNA molecule, and split the helix down the middle and drop the two halves into a solution of (god I whish I paid more attention in Biology) ,forgive spelling, Addnine, Guanine, and all those other bits of DNA. Then each half rebuilds itself, splits and repeats. The reaction continues until the catalist runs out. Very quickly you can produce several hundred thousand copies of a DNA strand.

For those too lazy to do a google search, there is a breif overview of the process Here

Even if you never get near embedded systems of this type, you can't call yourself a responsible software engineer until you read and learn from An Investigation of the Therac-25 Accidents.

Executive Summary: Company introduces next-generation radiation therapy machine, replacing hardware-based overdosage safety interlocks with software-based mechanisms. Software fails. People are killed.

Schwab

Be careful - the high intensity light from the scanner is damaging to old paper. Even a strobe/flash from a film camera can hurt the paper.

The best media for long term storage is mylar tape - you know, the stuff with holes punched in it.

• Historical Notes:
  http://www.wps.com/texts/paper-tape/
• Get tape from:
  The Trybus Company Inc, or
  Western Numerical Control (52000E)
• And the punch from:
  Western Numerical Control

And yes, I'd leave it to the experts. This might even be the kind of project that a University student would want as part of their studies relating to the preservation of cultural materials.

FWIW: I found a bibliography claiming to deal with Archives and Digital Longevity at http://scholar.lib.vt.edu/theses/archivebib.html

I agree with your point, but this particular bit doesn't quite ring true to me:

Certification make sense in a very limited set of professions where the practictioner will be doing something life-critical like cutting you open, or defending your freedom in court, or designing a bridge for you...with a very few exceptions, programming and sysadmin are not like this

How much software can we really afford to have fail? How many people that don't really know what they're doing can we handle. The Therac-25 incidents don't make me feel any happier -- programmers hack out something and then end users get the product and simply rely on it not to fail. In a lot of cases, this trust is not warranted.

http://courses.cs.vt.edu/~cs3604/lib/WorldCodes/Wo rldCodes.html

That said, a well written poetic work catching the proper spirit, and conducive to memorization is probably worthwhile

Actually there are now a few software engineering courses popping up in universities (not comp. sci. nor electrical engineer) and these graduates will necessarily have to adhere to standard engineering practices.
an engineer's hippocratic oath

There is some good information on the Web about the Therac cases, one example of which is here:

http://courses.cs.vt.edu/~cs3604/lib/Therac_25/The rac_1.html

It turns out that the machine didn't simply "incorrectly calculate the amount of radiation" -- it was a design failure of a shielding subsystem that relied on microswitches and sensors for feedback. This sidebar explains it pretty well.

The last paragraph reads:

"Traditionally, electromechanical interlocks have been used on these types of equipment to ensure safety -- in this case, to ensure that the turntable and attached equipment are in the correct position when treatment is started. In the Therac-25, software checks were substituted for many traditional hardware interlocks."

Sounds like a good case for hardware safeguards. "Sure, they cost more, but aren't you worth it?"

- MFN

There is some good information on the Web about the Therac cases, one example of which is here:

http://courses.cs.vt.edu/~cs3604/lib/Therac_25/The rac_1.html

It turns out that the machine didn't simply "incorrectly calculate the amount of radiation" -- it was a design failure of a shielding subsystem that relied on microswitches and sensors for feedback. This sidebar explains it pretty well.

The last paragraph reads:

"Traditionally, electromechanical interlocks have been used on these types of equipment to ensure safety -- in this case, to ensure that the turntable and attached equipment are in the correct position when treatment is started. In the Therac-25, software checks were substituted for many traditional hardware interlocks."

Sounds like a good case for hardware safeguards. "Sure, they cost more, but aren't you worth it?"

- MFN

Well, not exactly. It was used for cancer treatments, not x-ray imaging. And not all of the radiation overdoses were fatal.

It was a UI bug rather than a software bug.

Again, not exactly. The problems with the Therac-25 included hardware issues and some UI problems that lead operators to do some interesting things. They also included some race conditions that were definately software bugs.

You can check out a reprint of an IEEE article discussing it in depth here.

Just for some history: AECL, the Canadian government crown corporation who made the Therac-25, spun off its medical operations into private companies in the 1980s. The first was Nordion, where I worked for a summer as a co-op student, produces radioisotopes for medical use. Nordion was bought my MDS. The other company was Theratronics, which was responsable for devices like the Therac-25. It went without a purchaser for many years becuase of the stigma of Therac-25, but it was eventually (IIRC) bought my MDS as well.

Both companies are in my hometown, and the fallout from the Therac-25 (like the IEEE article) was front-page news when I worked at Nordion in the early 1990s. I just worked on sofware to measure how much of a given isotope to dispense to fill an order, but the whole Therac-25 incident was definately on everyone's mind.

This is quite amusing, but a software bug in my field can result in patients lives being lost.

(A former Theratronics employee is standing right behind me, but he denies having worked on the Therac-25.)

Unfortunately, many people only see what their personal devils and demons tell them to see. And some people like their demons, keeping them well fed.

I am sure anyone here could come up with at least one example of this.

yep, it is demons, not daemons, but that works as well. daemons of the mind. Socrates and all.

The Tobor system would cause more problems than it solves by throwing a very complex solution at a very simple problem.
Better to pay a trained human to do the running or introduce it as part of a Medical degree.

In the 1950's von Neumann was employed as a consultant to IBM to review proposed and ongoing advanced technology projects. One day a week, von Neumann "held court" at 590 Madison Avenue, New York. On one of these occasions in 1954 he was confronted with the FORTRAN concept; John Backus remembered von Neumann being unimpressed and that he asked "why would you want more than machine language?" Frank Beckman, who was also present, recalled that von Neumann dismissed the whole development as "but an application of the idea of Turing's `short code'." Donald Gillies, one of von Neumann's students at Princeton, and later a faculty member at the University of Illinois, recalled in the mid-1970's that the graduates students were being "used" to hand assemble programs into binary for their early machine (probably the IAS machine). He took time out to build an assembler, but when von Neumann found out about he was very angry, saying (paraphrased), "It is a waste of a valuable scientific computing instrument to use it to do clerical work."

The various "Slow Glass" stories are a series written by Bob Shaw

Sig: What Happened To The Censorware Project (censorware.org)

A lot of my fellow coworkers are H1-B holders and are thus shut out from government jobs due to a lack of security clearance or the unwillingness to hire anything but US citizens.

If there is a shortage of skilled workers for positions that require a security clearance, then why haven't I found a full-time job?

http://www.ccm.ece.vt.edu/~lscharf/resume-lscharf- spring2002-general.html

If there's anyone out there who needs an developer and/or experienced sysadmin with a security clearance, please e-mail me!

Now, how do I do that without a plugin? Java? Don't make me laugh: Chime has features that would take me years to code in Java- no remotely close equivalent exists.

I try to make plugin free sites whenever possible, but limiting yourself to never using plugins gives up so much capability that you'd be silly to do that.

Eric

Now, how do I do that without a plugin? Java? Don't make me laugh: Chime has features that would take me years to code in Java- no remotely close equivalent exists.

I try to make plugin free sites whenever possible, but limiting yourself to never using plugins gives up so much capability that you'd be silly to do that.

Eric

Now, how do I do that without a plugin? Java? Don't make me laugh: Chime has features that would take me years to code in Java- no remotely close equivalent exists.

I try to make plugin free sites whenever possible, but limiting yourself to never using plugins gives up so much capability that you'd be silly to do that.

Eric

Perhaps the Therac-25 is the device you referred to? From my reading the problems with it weren't date related but they were software failure related.

You don't have to go to Australia to find lack of funding endangering valuable genetic resources; The National Seed Storage Lab in Colorado is in exactly the same boat...er, ark. Read about their funding problems here. An excerpt:

What does this lack of funding mean? It results in another major problem for the banks:
germination backlog, currently of about 30,000 samples at the NSSL. Periodic germination tests
are important to assure the quality of the samples. Also, since seeds will not store indefinitely,
they must periodically be removed, grown out for new seed, and collected. Says Major
Goodman, a crop scientist at NC State who investigated the status of the samples, "Evaluation,
regeneration and utilization are essential parts of a functioning germplasm system. Yet the entire
emphasis...is based upon acquiring larger and larger numbers of samples to be stored in so-called
seed repositories..." A more accurate name, according to Goodman, is "seed morgues." The
samples that are most at risk are older or unusual varieties that are rarely requested, and
germination potential of these samples deteriorates. According to NSSL director Steve Eberhart,
who estimates that it would take 25 years to catch up with the backlog, "We normally test seeds
every ten years to make sure they'll still viable...we've had to eliminate our retesting in order to
process new materials. We don't know which material is deteriorating because we don't have the
staff to the do the germination." For example, there are 30,000 varieties of corn from Latin
America with four scientists assigned to grow and evaluate them. Each person can do 30 varieties
a year, totaling 120. At that rate, it would take 250 years to evaluate them all! Many of the corn
varieties will not survive to be regenerated.

Who had a job programming 50 years ago?

Well, among other people, Dr. J. Presper Eckert and Dr. John W. Mauchly. aka the inventors of the ENIAC and the UNIVAC, the first commercially available computer. 1952 was the year the UNIVAC became famous for the publicity stunt of correctly predicting the Eisenhower-Stevenson presidential election that year.

About a year later, IBM entered the fray with the 701 EDPM. (which was, incidentally, incompatible with IBM's punch card processing equipment -- an early version of changing media (like floppies to CD)). Of course I think only about 20 were ever sold.

So there *were* programmers out there, just not a heck of a lot of 'em...

our profs at vt use MOSS to figure out if we are cheating or not.

The only people that i've seen caught with it, though are the really lazy people(those who just copy their program without even attempting to make it look like their own)

Hmm, I don't see "Walker" listed on the CS Faculty page.. Does he perhaps not work there anymore? I was hoping to see a picture of the guy in case I could recognize him (I graduated VT CS in '00).

A program such as this has been in use since prior to 1998 here at Virginia Tech

This isn't anything new. I'm a student at Virginia Tech, and the CS dept. has used a "cheating detector" for some years now. It's quite evolved and doesn't only detect obviously copied code (exact copies and copies w/ renamed variables, functions, etc.) but indications of cheating such as a section of code with a drastically different coding style than the rest of the code. It's quite good, and the CS instructors often brag that while it's rarely a case that students cheat (the Honor Code here is a point of pride), the program's garunteed convictions in the Honor Court.

A few years ago, when I was a 2nd or 3rd year at Virginia Tech, some professor implemented a cheating detector into the automated grader for a class called Intro to C++.
Prior to that year, VT had an average of 75 cheating violations for the WHOLE university (25000+ students). For that one class, on one assignment, 150 students were found cheating by the cheating detector... out of the 500 or so students in the class.

Funny as hell

[stock rant on the subject]

Patents are not about who is right, or who is first; patents are about who will sue.

The US PTO is a money-making service for the government, and this fact is why it operates as it does.

There is a misconception that it is the central duty of the PTO to form a blockade against granting patents. The PTO can and will block applications where there's heavy similarity with prior art or existing patents, but that's really just a guideline to using the service, not the core function.

The PTO's purpose is to grant patents for a fee, and it's wholly suited to do so.

The application vetting process of the PTO is a cost center for the operation of the PTO. This is akin to saying that customer service is a cost center for the operation of AT&T. It is required, but they'll cut costs as much as they can get away with.

To fix the patent application vetting process, two things must happen:

• Congress must stop using the PTO's filing fees as a revenue source for other pet interests instead of the PTO's own budget, and
  
• The PTO needs to allow third parties to aid the vetting process by challenging potential patents before they're granted.

As of 15 March 2001, the USPTO has changed their policies to partially solve that second problem. They can now publish patent applications before the patent itself is awarded to the applicant. Third parties may now submit "helpful" arguments against controversial applications. The USPTO can then weigh obviousness against challenges without incurring the costs of doing all the searching themselves.

Breaking patents by finding simple prior art is not enough for most cases. Patents already granted are almost never cracked, certainly not by someone using an independent third party's prior art. In the famous Heinlein/Waterbed case, the patent was denied before it was ever granted by the Patent Office. Once a patent has been granted, the Patent Office rarely will get involved in disputes; that is a matter for the courts.

[end of stock rant on the subject]

Actually, defective software was blamed for the deaths of several people back in 80's in a case known as the Therac-25 Accidents. To make a long story short, a programmer screwed up some code in the software that controlled radiation dosage for cancer patients. No one double-checked the code and the company was held responsible. Nasty stuff.

Safety-critical systems. E.g. medical equiment needs to be 'safe', and often has to prove a certain level of testing/reliability before it is legal to sell it. You can be guaranteed that the s/w producers will be liable if an X-Ray machine gives you the wrong dose

Of course!
The link above is the IEEE report on the Therac 25, the only known case of human death caused by software bugs. Once in a while, the cancer machine at the hostpital would give real big doses of radation, at seemly random times. The sad, scary thing is that all the classic software responses are there - "Let's do it [the safety/sanity checking circuits in this case] in software to save a couple bucks", "It's a hardware problem", "Here's a patch for it (that doesn't fix the whole problem, but patches a few symptons)".

link to text online: http://www.aoe.vt.edu/~ciochett/lit/zen.html

Everytime I read this it means something different. Now I think it's about programming, but that's probably because I'm a programmer :) It's not the best Philosophy book I've read, but it is the best book I've read.

Does anybody remember the title/author of this story?

Bob Shaw, in the story "The Light of Other Days".

Very few public schools are research intensive.

Really? Back when I was in college the professors ALL had research projects on the side. It seems that part of being a tenured professor is that you have to do research and get yourself published, etc...

Now most undergrads aren't doing research, mostly because the system isn't set up for them to be researchers. Many (especially in the engineering and CS degress) barely have enough time to finish their homework/projects/work in the evening, much less do exaustive research in some new field. Post graduate students naturally have plenty of research projects.

Still, one thing that became painfully obvious after awhile is just how much money it takes to run a school, and how little of it there was to go around. I'm not surprised in the least to find them looking for more things to sell.

if you can finish this in one year, my hat goes off to you.

I'm not sure why, but many apartment complexes near college campuses have high speed internet connections in each apartment. It's worth a look. Besides checking local apartment listings, see if a university nearby has a guide to apartments nearby. Virginia Tech, for instance, has a database that includes things like internet connection, LAN, etc.

One alternative is Ken Perlin's QuikWriting, which has been discussed on slashdot and covered by Wired.

"Quikwriting is significantly faster and less stressful to use than Graffiti, and lets you write very quickly without ever picking your stylus up off the surface, although it has the disadvantage that you need to learn a special alphabet. For further info, you can preview a Technote in either PDF or PostScript, which was published at the ACM UIST'98 conference."

Another alternative that builds on Perlin's QuikWriting work, is Francois Guimbretiere's and Terry Winograd's FlowMenus, published at UIST'00.

"We present a new kind of marking menu that was developed for use with a pen device on display surfaces such as large, high resolution, wall-mounted displays. It integrates capabilities of previously separate mechanisms such as marking menus and Quikwriting, and facilitates the entry of multiple commands. While using this menu, the pen never has to leave the active surface so that consecutive menu selections, data entry (text and parameters) and direct manipulation tasks can be integrated fluidly."

I'm currently designing and programming a user interface on the Palm for a remote control application. So I've implemented "Finger Pies", which are simply pie menus that you can use with your finger!

To paraphrase Ben Shneiderman: Finger Pies work well for implementing direct manipulation user interfaces on handheld personal touch screen devices, in which the application provides meaningful, engaging, tightly coupled feedback on the screen, in response to your gesture. By integrating immediate gratification over time, the user enjoys the satisfaction of direct engagement in an immersive experience, and achieves the cognitive resonance of continuous gratification. [My apologies to Ben for the tongue in cheek impression.]

Finger Pies are not meant to replace character input systems like Graffiti, but they are extremely useful and reliable for many applications of handheld input devices, because they're easy enough to use with your finger instead of a pen.

Finger pies are good for reliably selecting between two, four or eight options at a time (which can be nested as pop up submenus), and they're much more robust and resistant to noise than gesture recognition.

One problem with gesture recognition in general, is that it doesn't allow for "reselection" or in-flight refinement and error correction. That is, once you've made a mistake in a gesture, there's no way to change or cancel it, so you will often get characters that you don't mean, and you have to stop what you're doing and erase the mistake.

Pie menus allow you to cancel or change the selection at any time before you commit to the selection, so you can easily browse the menus. So pie menus are most appropriate when there aren't too many items, the items don't change dynamically over time, and when you need to minimize the error rate and selection time.

Most gesture recognition systems are not "self revealing" like pie menus, which can pop up a "map" showing the directions. So pie menus are much easier to learn than gesture recognition, and more appropriate for novice users. Best of all, they naturally train users to "mouse ahead" and select without looking, so they have a smooth, gentle learning curve.

Another advantage of pie menus is that they're not patented or restricted, and there are several freely available open source implementations.

-Don

Penny Lane: "This song was written about the roundabout in liverpool where John and Paul grew up. Half of the song is fact, half is fiction, but most of it is nostalgia. John was starting to write about personal places, and Paul really took this one and ran. "I wrote that the barber had photographs of every head he'd had the pleasure of knowing. Actually, he just had photos of different hair styles. But all the people do stop and say hello." say Paul. Also, "finger pie" is actually an old obscenity in Liverpool. The girls would never thnk of saying the word. It was used in the song as a fun joke for the lads back home. Months after, waitresses in Liverpool had to put up with lads asking for "fish and finger pie." There is also a phallic reference to the "fireman who keeps his fire engine clean." Penny Lane has become a Beatles landmark, and like Blue Jay Way, has it's problems with stolen signs, which are now nicely bolted down. Penny Lane was recorded on December 29, 1966 and released as a single with Strawberry Fields.The song also has a promotional video." -http://members.aol.com/Sumacca/songs.html

I agree that it would be an extremely bad idea to use NT / Windows 2000 for anything that is mission critical (such as running a semaphore network), and that would be a misuse of the product, but there are plenty of proper uses that can produce really bad results due to software failure, and companies should be held accountable for these failures.

Virginia Tech has a CAVE for VR too. The use it for everything from doing research to well... a little gaming (after all it never hurt anyone). If your interested more information can be found here. They have numerous featured projects, click here if your interested.