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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.

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.

It was Gace Hopper Look at this site they have picture of the Bug.

capitalism is in deep crisis.

Well if this isn't a troll i don't know.

-It is saying nothing.
-and then other points are told back to free and open software.

I do not say open software is good or bad, I mean that saying open software is socialist software is a troll. I did use the word communistic as the opposite of capitalistic.

I know the sovjet communistic system is not what marx had in mind when he wrote das kapital, but with communistic is defined first by the people in his time. If i say communistic = soicialistic i do not mean sovjet (or china) communistic= soicialistic. So you could call linux an communistic OS by this definition.

Ok, I did not read DAS KAPITAL.

All i meant to say that this article has included a lot of troll stuff by dragging in a lot of " capatalism is..."

I am yet to see a user-created patch for Windows 3.1...
The shareware (ok not free) trumpet winsock comes quite close. But try to find reasonable support for linux 1.0.... (yes it is there, but not better than support for windows 31.)

-- this i going to dent my karma....but no ac this time, and it is my opinion

i took an astronomy class last year and one of the requirements was to watch the shuttle pass over blacksburg. well the time we decided to watch was special indeed. first the ISS passed overhead and then the shuttle (i forget which one) passed over head on its way to rendevous with the ISS. it was around the time when the ISS was being fitted with new and bigger solar panels.

the whole thing was very cool, and extremly fast. the two objects looked like very bright stars, about the magnitude of venus, and crossed the whole sky in under 90 seconds. it gave a great feeling of the speed that those guys were zipping around earth at.

if you get a chance check it out, you won't regret it.

Nowadays, if the face of so much consistent evidence, you'd have to have some really spectacular counter-evidence to be taken seriously. There are still scientists out there trying to debunk the idea, of course, but mostly they just keep turning up more evidence in favor of the impact.

Unfortunately, the evidence is consistent with a lot of things, including a strong episode of vulcanism, most of what Immanuel Velikovsky's had to say, and the idea of rapid worldwide flooding which so neatly explains many other things (-: a theory so popular on bone-dry Mars, but anathema here on our own soggy globe :-).

What seems to be happening is the same thing, over and over, as when geologist Harlan Bretz fought tooth and nail for four decades before geology accepted his theory for the Spokane badlands. A theory becomes dogma (generally without much real proof) and then all new evidence is seen as conforming to the dogma until finally the explanations become so stretched as to become indefensible, then everyone hurries to been seen as having allowed for the new idea in their old prognostications.

There are a couple of big showstoppers for the meteor-strike-kills-dinosaur idea, including the observation that a lot of dinosaurs did not perish at the end of the Cretaceous, and a lot of creatures which should logically have perished as readily, didn't. Perhaps the most damning is the occasional multiple or conspicuously absent Ir layer, features which are often masked, overlooked or rationalised away during reporting. [pro multi strike] [ con vulcanism] [con flood, many references esp in the linked PDF] [con egg-stinction, but he's wrong, eg non-stealthy birds survived]

Has anyone found strata anywhere that is well-dated and continuous across the 65-million-year age that doesn't show a thin anomalous layer and a radical change of fossils?

I recommend using names, rather than specific ages, or you'll see still more debate about the length of the periods involved, rather than a focus on more ``core'' ideas like seqences of events. And yes, many such have been found; there are less than 200 sites worldwide that do show Ir anomalies, and many of those either show multiple anomalies, or anomalies at depths other than the top of the Cretaceous. Do your own searching. (-:

Meanwhile, IRL, the mundane crapheads are still running things, because there are always going to be more fans of the WWF Smackdown than of All Things Considered, and everybody gets one vote with no literacy tests or competetency tests to weed out the unfit, the uneducated and the superstitious.

My point is that things like Freenet are very dangerous indeed because they provide a sanctuary that lets people develop a false sense of how powerful they are. We know that family size decreases with education - does no one here understand the mathematics of dynamic systems? If the competent hide in a beautiful cyber-utopia, and generate great works, the rate of decay IRL will accelerate. And without new frontiers (e.g., the Americas in the 1600-1900s) to run to, the future looks pretty bleak.

The distinction you're making is between imperative and functional or declarative languages.

software bugs might not kill people

Wrong!

It's probably possible to build such a monster, but the falsework needed to hold up all that granite during construction would in itself be a huge bridge. Steel bridges are usually self-supporting while under construction, but that doesn't work for stone, which has zilch tensile strength. It would probably take more work building the temporary structures to hold up all that stone than to build a bridge som other way.

Here at virginia tech, there are some successful classes and some less so.

If you want to take a look at the Math class i'm taking (math 1015 - algebra/trig/calc intro), click on the lesson pages link. The lessons are fantastic. They can be learned at your own pace, and are accessible from anywhere.

If you wish to, you can go to the Math Emporium, a place off campus that's open 24 hours a day, and has something like 600 Mac G3's/G4's. (they can also boot into windows 2000.) If you go there during appointed times, i.e. 9AM-2PM, one of several teachers for the math course will be there to answer questions for you, and there are grad students on duty 8AM-7PM to answer general questions. It's a great place to do work in general, remove yourself from the noise of life, and to get help.

A not so successful example, however, is CS 1604, intro to the internet. It was created when the internet was the cool new thing, and never revised. The quizzes have questions about Gopher, how to use search engines (looking for allen touring? type Allen AND Touring - as opposed to today's "allen touring"), questions about webpages that don't exist, things related to adobe acrobat 1, the list of grievences goes on and on.

In general, though, computers are ABSOLUTELY necessacary to my education here. My humanities homeworks, due every thursday, are submitted to a "digital drop box", all my teachers respond to email within 24 hours, many times less, my Econ teacher sends out the homework on the listserv, 2 years ago, all my C++ was submitted online, and graded by an automatic grader. It's virtually impossible to get anything done around here w/out a computer. But, if by some chance, mine is broken or gone or whatever, I can always use the emporium.

~Z

Here at virginia tech, there are some successful classes and some less so.

If you want to take a look at the Math class i'm taking (math 1015 - algebra/trig/calc intro), click on the lesson pages link. The lessons are fantastic. They can be learned at your own pace, and are accessible from anywhere.

If you wish to, you can go to the Math Emporium, a place off campus that's open 24 hours a day, and has something like 600 Mac G3's/G4's. (they can also boot into windows 2000.) If you go there during appointed times, i.e. 9AM-2PM, one of several teachers for the math course will be there to answer questions for you, and there are grad students on duty 8AM-7PM to answer general questions. It's a great place to do work in general, remove yourself from the noise of life, and to get help.

A not so successful example, however, is CS 1604, intro to the internet. It was created when the internet was the cool new thing, and never revised. The quizzes have questions about Gopher, how to use search engines (looking for allen touring? type Allen AND Touring - as opposed to today's "allen touring"), questions about webpages that don't exist, things related to adobe acrobat 1, the list of grievences goes on and on.

In general, though, computers are ABSOLUTELY necessacary to my education here. My humanities homeworks, due every thursday, are submitted to a "digital drop box", all my teachers respond to email within 24 hours, many times less, my Econ teacher sends out the homework on the listserv, 2 years ago, all my C++ was submitted online, and graded by an automatic grader. It's virtually impossible to get anything done around here w/out a computer. But, if by some chance, mine is broken or gone or whatever, I can always use the emporium.

~Z

Here at virginia tech, there are some successful classes and some less so.

If you want to take a look at the Math class i'm taking (math 1015 - algebra/trig/calc intro), click on the lesson pages link. The lessons are fantastic. They can be learned at your own pace, and are accessible from anywhere.

If you wish to, you can go to the Math Emporium, a place off campus that's open 24 hours a day, and has something like 600 Mac G3's/G4's. (they can also boot into windows 2000.) If you go there during appointed times, i.e. 9AM-2PM, one of several teachers for the math course will be there to answer questions for you, and there are grad students on duty 8AM-7PM to answer general questions. It's a great place to do work in general, remove yourself from the noise of life, and to get help.

A not so successful example, however, is CS 1604, intro to the internet. It was created when the internet was the cool new thing, and never revised. The quizzes have questions about Gopher, how to use search engines (looking for allen touring? type Allen AND Touring - as opposed to today's "allen touring"), questions about webpages that don't exist, things related to adobe acrobat 1, the list of grievences goes on and on.

In general, though, computers are ABSOLUTELY necessacary to my education here. My humanities homeworks, due every thursday, are submitted to a "digital drop box", all my teachers respond to email within 24 hours, many times less, my Econ teacher sends out the homework on the listserv, 2 years ago, all my C++ was submitted online, and graded by an automatic grader. It's virtually impossible to get anything done around here w/out a computer. But, if by some chance, mine is broken or gone or whatever, I can always use the emporium.

~Z

Well, I've done a Java for juniors and seniors who already know OOP here at VT. In the past we have used the Core Java Volume 1 book, but that's not appropriate to your audience, since they don't already know OOP.

Take a look at Java Software Solutions (Addison-Wesley, author=John Lewis), if you are looking for a book tied directly to a language that the students will be working with. (Shameless plug: John was my Master's advisor, and I contributed to the text). It's been very well received at the collegiate level and is well supported. Since your students know C, they may be able to skip a few intro chapters on programming, data types, etc... or at least get through them quickly.

Deitel and Dietel's Java texts are also popular.

If you are looking for only a discussion of OOP topics and not bound to a particular language, I can't be of too much help there, I've not perused any of those recently.

One final point. Please consider attending SIGCSE (http://www.cs.cofc.edu/sigcse2002) in February. It's an invaluable resource for computer science instruction for both new (novice) and old (er, experienced) instructors. SIGCSE is a great place to make contacts, get help on related issues, check out the texts, etc....

Local Multipoint Distribution Services(LMDS) can provide two way digital communication. Applications of LMDS include voice, video, and high speed data communication. The bandwidth of LMDS is more than twice the total bandwidth of AM/FM radio, VHF/UHF TV, and cellular telephone combined. Using LMDS, transmission speeds of several Gigabits per second are possible along line of sight distances of several miles. Just set a few of these things in a line to the closet provider.

I go to VT, and while we don't drive our honor code up the wall like some other school, our CS dept very much discourages any group work whatsoever. Basically, if you haven't holed yourself up in complete isolation till the program is due, you've probably violated the honor code somewhere along the line. They're so fervent about it they have a program running(i forget what's it's called, moss something or other) that will look for similarities between everyone's code. I'm not sure how well it works, but i know a few friends of mine who were caught cheating on a program their freshman year(though they submitted identicle code, so as far as i can tell they deserved it).

In addition, they were going after sites which used player likenesses and images (i.e. Michael Vick) because under the NCAA rules, student-athletes are not permitted to endorse a product or service. VT was apparently concerned in that case about NCAA sanctions related to student run web pages which used player images and likenesses to promote their site.

My point, it's not always the case that the school is trying oppress free speech, but rather protecting the use of their marks and are worrying about other factors, like the NCAA situation.

Still here at VT, students are not permitted to use the school logos on their web pages (see this page ).

Potato Association of America Handbook: Potato Varieties.

Off-colour vegetables.

Who says watermelon must be red?

Potatoes of note. (Potatos or potatoes, either is acceptable. Just not potatoe).

Konrad Zuse. He build (one of) the first digitial computers

[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 solve that second problem. They can now publish patent applications before the patent itself is awarded to the applicant. Previously, the patent was hidden while pending, and patent seekers were not required to disclose this unless they had already signed contracts, say, as part of a standards-body. 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. (And in this case, the FTC aids the investigation for a countersuit.)

[end of stock rant]

There are some questions they can't ask. Then, there are some questions you shouldn't be asked.

Since WMBC is at a university, we feel it's part of our goal to "educate" people about _real_ alternative music. Since UMBC is a big geeky school, the radio station computers run on Linux, and WMBC has more computer functionality than your typical station. We keep track of our CDs using a database written in PHP and MySQL. Each CD has a review, which tracks are recommended and which are profane (and unsuitable for airplay), and frequently some "for fans of" text. This same database also keeps track of our spins, ie what each DJ plays. Listeners can check out the last 10 songs played on the radio, or search the database for all the songs played in the past year.

Ultracool! I have a local college radio station as well, and I've been trying to improve their online presence for a long time.

They have been online for a long time, but I think they've only started streaming their broadcasts over the past few years (and I was advocating this a few years before they actually got it done). Still, I'm glad they are on the web, and when you have the time to release your software, be sure I'll start pestering them to use it, or something like it. I've heard so many good songs from WUVT's programming that just don't get much mainstream play and it would behoove them if somehow, they could get those playlists out to both their local listeners, and their online ones as well!

Since WMBC is at a university, we feel it's part of our goal to "educate" people about _real_ alternative music. Since UMBC is a big geeky school, the radio station computers run on Linux, and WMBC has more computer functionality than your typical station. We keep track of our CDs using a database written in PHP and MySQL. Each CD has a review, which tracks are recommended and which are profane (and unsuitable for airplay), and frequently some "for fans of" text. This same database also keeps track of our spins, ie what each DJ plays. Listeners can check out the last 10 songs played on the radio, or search the database for all the songs played in the past year.

Ultracool! I have a local college radio station as well, and I've been trying to improve their online presence for a long time.

They have been online for a long time, but I think they've only started streaming their broadcasts over the past few years (and I was advocating this a few years before they actually got it done). Still, I'm glad they are on the web, and when you have the time to release your software, be sure I'll start pestering them to use it, or something like it. I've heard so many good songs from WUVT's programming that just don't get much mainstream play and it would behoove them if somehow, they could get those playlists out to both their local listeners, and their online ones as well!

-jdjs

If the bug causes sufficient damage or harm, and the company was negligent, then that should be grounds for a lawsuit. (Of course, IANAL, but my sister is.)
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From Spanish to English using linguaphile

Well, there's always eBay or other auction sites. But, a better long-term solution could be to create a "Used DSL modems" website. You could list your own wares, of course, but also post ads from other buyers & sellers. Unless the participation was really high, you wouldn't even necessarily need a database backend -- you could probably just update the (static) html files manually.

P.S. I'm looking for a new job in Web Development. I invite you to check out my portfolio of hand coded HTML / JavaScript / CSS.

Alex Bischoff
---

• CHOICE /T:Y,5 Reinstall life support

On a related note, does anyone have any tips of finding Open-Source-friendly employers? I'm looking for a job in Web Development (or Web Engineering), but most of the job postings that I've seen are very MS-centric :(. And, it's not that I'd refuse to work in an MS-shop, but I'd prefer not to use only MS software.

I know about GNUJobs, but that doesn't seem to be very comprehensive (a search for "html" yields two hits, for example). And of course many OSS projects have their own "Jobs" section, but I was hoping for more of an all-in-one site..

Alex Bischoff
---

How ironic -- in a story about TrustedBSD, you post your resume in M$ DOC format ;). Kidding aside, I'm also looking for a new job, in Web Development.

Alex Bischoff
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For providing a service that when used once in any any application, becomes on by default in every application (even when you've manually disabled it), those morons deserve all the laughter and ridicule they can get.

Atomic Energy of Canada, Ltd. (AECL) built a medical radiation device called the THERAC that had a major software bug in it that killed at least three people. If the operator hit the keys on the keyboard in the wrong sequence, the machine would deliver 1,000,000 times the dose displayed on the screen. Massive radiation poisoning, and the victims died in a few days. They finally traced the problem to a coding error made by a contractor.
This, of course, is a massive over-simplification of the problem. The full story can be found here
-----------------

There are a lot of groups working on similar stuff:

http://www.ccm.ece.vt.edu/acs_api - This is my group and I apologize for the lame web page. http://splish.ee.byu.edu These guys do very good work, especially when it comes to hardware description languages. http://www.east.isi.edu/projects/SLAAC/ We like these people too. http://www.annapmicro.com A lot of our graduates go here.

There are several more groups - you can find a more complete list on the People section of ISI's web site.

Does nobody here remember WGBH's 1996 PBS miniseries, The Machine that Changed the World?

some other sites of interest are the IEEE annals of the history of computing: http://computer.org
Virginia Tech and the NSF's history of computing: http://ei.cs.vt.edu/~history/index.html

to get another audience on this you may want to ask you question on or join http://aoir.org the association of internet researchers

My own work and teaching is centered more around the Internet, but it seems to me you want to look at the earliest foundation of computing, such as the origin of information theory, which is quite interesting in itself.

Jeremy
Center for Digital Discourse and Culture
http://www.cddc.vt.edu

Although it's not related to that specific example, Heinlein did come up with the idea of a waterbed in fiction ten years before someone actually invented one and tried to patent it. Because Heinlein had already come up with the idea and placed it in the public domain by writing it into a story, the inventor was unable to get a patent. For the specifics, go to the Heinlein FAQ and text-search on "waterbed".
--

I have just heard from a trusted anonymous source that the Virginia Tech team attempted to steal the championship trophy. Apparently, they were jealous about finishing second, so they tried to take matters into their own hands. Here is photographic proof of the team trying to wrestle the trophy away from the director Bill Poucher:

See for yourself.

According the the anonymous source, the team had to be escorted by Vancouver police out of the contest grounds. Stay tuned, details to be forthcoming.

If you haven't read Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, you should. The point of removing grades from a course (or at least witholding them until the end of the course) is brought up, and defended pretty well, if I remember correctly.

This isn't as trivial a decision as it may sound. A system which, in theory, can interrupt the user every five minutes to deliver a security patch, is gonna get disabled. Excessively onerous "warnings" are almost as much a problem in software design as the absence of warning signs.

For a shocking example, I refer you to "An Investigation of the Therac-25 Accidents." Basically, an X-ray device malfunctioned and killed a whole bunch of people in part because it popped up warning messages as a matter of course. The operators got so desensitized to them that they lost their effectiveness, and people got hurt as a result.

The moral of the story: it's important to warn the user when he's doing something dangerous. It's as important to leave him alone and let him get some work done the rest of the time.

-----
"You owe me a case of beer. Sucka'."

And I didn't think it was one of his better efforts. While I think Hal is a fine author, I have read better books by him.

He's also something of an acquired taste; especially, ironically, for sci-fi fans (on which, there is an interesting essay on 'Hard Science Fiction' here).

Anyway, before you read this, read Mission Of Gravity . If you don't like that, don't read this. If you do, I would recommend this as a followup.
--

I feel this way mainly because most of us lack the physical attractiveness to breed, and so this generation may be the last. I want to see what we do with our short time on the planet.

So if you really want to correct some English, why don't you teach the script kiddies to properly spell the word pornography, and leave my well meaning but linguistically quirky bretheren alone. So there! ...ya pansy.
--

--

For those that don't know about him (I've always assumed most people here would), he was in a lot of ways the first computer scientist, having designed & built the first computational devices as we know them today (i.e. something more advanced than, say, an abacus). Interestingly now, but fittingly for a Victorian inventor, they operated purely mechanically, without any of the transistors or other electronic components that are now synonymous with computers. Nonetheless, they were designed to do the same basic functions that a modern computer does, and (yes) it may well have been able to run the Linux kernel. :)

• http://www.ex.ac.uk/BABBAGE/
• http://ei.cs.vt.edu/~history/Babbage.html
• http://www.google.com/search?q=charles+babbage

I find it fitting that his assistant, Ada Lovelace, was the first programmer. It's nice to know that the field had an even 50-50 gender parity at one point, and hopefully it could again in the future. In the meantime, however, we'll make the most of the sausage party....

So if you consider "everybody" to be singular then it seems that at least Mirriam-Webster's agrees that "their" is appropriate usage.

As for whether "their" can be used as a singular gender-neutral pronoun, it's true that dictionaries have recently (in the past few years) begun to accept it. English is indeed evolving. But it's ugly, especially in formal settings (which this is, of course, not). There's a discussion of the issue here: http://www.dictionary.com/cgi-bin/dict.pl?term=A00 42019, containing this advice: "Writers who are concerned about avoiding both grammatical and social problems are best advised to use coordinate forms such as his or her."

There's another discussion I found here: http://athena.english.vt.edu/~IDLE/Gym2/workout6/w 6.stretch2.3.html, which basically suggests that you just avoid the whole situation by pluralizing the subject or reconstructing the sentence entirely.

So we're all right, and everybody is happy. And I'm sure I made a grammatical error somwhere in that post that someone will point out.

--

The Difference Engine was not a programmable computer in the modern sense of the word. This biography explains that the Analytical engine, which Babbage designed but never built, would have been a real programmable machine.

Sure. Try This keyboard compare Java applet. Type in any real-world piece of text and compare how far your fingers would go, how many times you use the same finger/hand, and how many strokes are done on each row. You may be surprised.

...uses a mixture of mini-programs (for stuff like a process/job scheduler) and the Linux kernel (making us add in system calls and use them).

The interested reader is referred to our project list

the stars my destination,

READ Alfred Bester PEOPLE,
GOOD SCIENCE FICTION RULES!!!

p.s. does anyone know about this supposed movie being made of The Demolished Man?

Pity those of us who want to create innovative content using a "specialized plug-in" such as Chime. (Chime allows 3d molecular display in a web page. Yes, there are Java applets that do this. When one of them can do 1/10th of what Chime can at better than 1/10th the speed I might look into it again.)

Chime lets me write pages like these: Atomic orbitals and Crystal unit cells Very useful in my line of work (Chemical education) But as soon as I do this I lock out all "alternative OSs"

Chime's actually more cross platform than most: Windows, Mac and an older IRIX version. It even is anti-MS: it runs like crap in MSIE on both Mac and Windows. (The Mozilla team fixed the compatibility problems when I sent the bug in.) But I can't do this stuff and make it truly cross-platform.

This is a problem for me: in fact, it's one of the main reasons I don't use Linux on the desktop.

Pity those of us who want to create innovative content using a "specialized plug-in" such as Chime. (Chime allows 3d molecular display in a web page. Yes, there are Java applets that do this. When one of them can do 1/10th of what Chime can at better than 1/10th the speed I might look into it again.)

Chime lets me write pages like these: Atomic orbitals and Crystal unit cells Very useful in my line of work (Chemical education) But as soon as I do this I lock out all "alternative OSs"

Chime's actually more cross platform than most: Windows, Mac and an older IRIX version. It even is anti-MS: it runs like crap in MSIE on both Mac and Windows. (The Mozilla team fixed the compatibility problems when I sent the bug in.) But I can't do this stuff and make it truly cross-platform.

This is a problem for me: in fact, it's one of the main reasons I don't use Linux on the desktop.

what about a volcanic based steam turbine?

Lava is hot because it is heated by decaying uranium and thorium. And radioactive potassium; forgot that one.

http://rglsun1.geol.vt.edu/seus.html/a& gt;