Slashdot Mirror

From the title, I thought maybe this was about the Amoeba Operating System . No such luch, alas.

Someone with such a low user id should know better than this; Linux' heritage is MINIX.

No, not really. Linus was using Minix when he started developing his kernel, but the design is not Minix-like.

As Tanenbaum put it:

"MINIX had clearly had a huge influence on Linux in many ways, from the layout of the file system to the names in the source tree, but I didn't think Linus had used any of my code. Linus also used MINIX as his development platform initially, but there was nothing wrong with that.

"Linus didn't sit down in a vacuum and suddenly type in the Linux source code. He had my book, was running MINIX, and undoubtedly knew the history (since it is in my book). But the code was his. The proof of this is that he messed the design up."

Someone with such a low user id should know better than this; Linux' heritage is MINIX.

No, not really. Linus was using Minix when he started developing his kernel, but the design is not Minix-like.

As Tanenbaum put it:

"MINIX had clearly had a huge influence on Linux in many ways, from the layout of the file system to the names in the source tree, but I didn't think Linus had used any of my code. Linus also used MINIX as his development platform initially, but there was nothing wrong with that.

"Linus didn't sit down in a vacuum and suddenly type in the Linux source code. He had my book, was running MINIX, and undoubtedly knew the history (since it is in my book). But the code was his. The proof of this is that he messed the design up."

From the same web page

Also a hint was the discussion about the license. I (implicitly) gathered that the fact that MINIX uses the Berkeley license was very important. I have run across this before, when companies have told me that they hate the GPL because they are not keen on spending a lot of time, energy, and money modifying some piece of code, only to be required to give it to their competitors for free.

And

...If nothing else, this bit of news reaffirms my view that the Berkeley license provides the maximum amount of freedom to potential users. If they want to publicize what they have done, fine. By all means, do so. If there are good reasons not to release the modfied code, that's fine with me, too. Yours truly, Andrew S. Tanenbaum

Then, after further reflection.

If I had suspected they might be building a spy engine, I certainly wouldn't have cooperated, even though all they wanted was reducing the memory footprint (= chip area for them). I think creating George Orwell's 1984 is an extremely bad idea, even if Orwell was off by about 30 years. People should have complete control over their own computers, not Intel and not the government. In the U.S. the Fourth Amendment makes it very clear that the government is forbidden from searching anyone's property without a search warrant. Many other countries have privacy laws that are in the same spirit. Putting a possible spy in every computer is a terrible development.

Andrew Tanenbaum just proved that intelligence does not equal wisdom. Richard Stallman is always right.

No. Andrew Tanenbaum isn't the copyright owner. The university is.
What we've got is Andrew Tanenbaum stating Intel talked to him about licensing. What probably happened after that was Intel had their lawyers talk to the legal department from the university and got permission to use the software without the requirement of disclosure. They probably also asked the university not to go blabbing about it to anyone.

Do you have a copy of the ME binary distribution?
Are you sure that notice is not in documentation motherboard vendors get when they add it to their BIOS?

Unless you bought an Intel motherboard from Intel, there's nothing Intel should be telling you directly.

The ME code is distributed by your motherboard vendor.

Also, Dr Tanenbaum wouldn't get rich, the university would, as they own the copyright, not him. He wasn't aware of the use of Minix in a particular Intel product, but they did discuss the licence.
Intel knew all about the licence. Don't be surprised if they got permission and an NDA from the university in exchange for a donation.

Sorry, this is all theoretical. There is no way that Andrew S. Tanenbaum would move ahead with any sort of legal action.[1]

For casual readers who don't know who "AST" is, that letter at http://www.cs.vu.nl/~ast/intel... is from Andrew S. Tannenbaum, the primary author of Minix. In the letter, he accepts Intel's current behavior quite explicitly. Andrew also complains, in a postrscript, about the use of ME as a spy engine. If Minix were published under a GPL, instead of a BSD license, Minix developers could demand that ME publish the source code for their modifications used to create the spyware. It is precisely that kind of secretive and abusive misuse of open source work that free software and the GPL licenses was designed to prevent.

Sure he did

http://www.cs.vu.nl/~ast/intel/

I don't think there was money involved, and i don't think there was an NDA.
http://www.cs.vu.nl/~ast/intel...

But they had a license :)

... For now.

1.) AST published an open letter, and the fact that the disclaimers are not posted does not seem to bother him much.
See here: http://www.cs.vu.nl/~ast/intel...

2.) Minix3 License, states that, when distributed in Binary form, the DOCUMENTATION has to reproduce the copyright notice and, well, there is no documentation whatsoever abut the ME.
See here: https://github.com/Stichting-M...

Having said that, security through obscurity is not a sensible policy, and AST's courtesy is not enough. If intel is using minix, they should say so and print the license.

having noted the somewhat high-nosed, arrogant tone of your answer

Too bad you failed to note how high-nosed and arrogant your own "Seriously...!" sounded :-)

Anyone into compiler construction and wanting to / trying to use your language would want a grammar

Let me disappoint then. I don't think you can even write a valid EBNF for XL, it's too dynamic for that. Let me explain why.

First, scanning and parsing are really very simple. The scanner is 747 lines of code with comments. The parser is 659 lines of code with comments. The scanner produces a stream of tokens. The parser produces an abstract syntax tree built with exactly 8 node types: integer, real, text, name, infix, prefix, postfix or block. The abstract syntax tree is used both for code and for data. A list such as 1,2,3,4 is really a sequence of infix "comma" nodes with integers as leafs.

What makes it difficult to produce a valid EBNF for XL is that the precedence rules between operators are dynamic. They are initialised from a file called xl.syntax, but they can be changed at run-time. So, of course, I can write an EBNF for if-then-else that would be something like:

if then else = "if" condition "then" statement "else" statement

But that would be imprecise. In reality, with the default syntax, if X then Y else Z parses as (infix else (infix then (prefix if X) Y) Z) (using a Lisp-like notation). That happens because of the specifications of infix priorities for then and else given in xl.syntax. Furthermore, the meaning of this particular parse tree is only given by a "rewrite", i.e. a definition such as if X then Y else Z -> ifthenelse(X,Y,Z). It is intentionally not given by a grammar of any kind. Definitions like this are even more dynamic than the priorities. They are the XL equivalent of functions, so you use them all the time.

Even writing a valid EBNF for integer literals would be hard. XL accepts 16#FFFF_FFFF as a valid integer, but 12#FFFF is not valid because F is not a valid digit in base 12. Ada has the same problem, and most EBNF descriptions of based literals for Ada are wrong. This one for example over-simplifies things and considers 12#FF# as a valid number when I assume any valid Ada compiler would reject it. Of course, you could enumerate all the 36 cases to have a valid EBNF that actually represents the language, but at some point, you have to ask: "what's the point"? And if the idea is to describe a language that is only approximately XL, taking more space to do so than the valid C++ code describing what XL actually is, then that's another big "what's the point" in my book.

Finally, there are a number of priority-based shenanigans that were introduced to make the language easier to use, but make it even more complicated to describe in EBNF or anything like it. Here are two examples.

When you read write -A, you normally read this as "write(minus(A))". On the other hand, if you write A-B, you probably read this as "minus(A,B)". It's not logical, but that's how we read. That leads XL to pay attention to spaces surrounding operators to decide what you mean. I hear you "yuck", but it just works.

Another scenario is even worse. Consider write sin x, sin y. All the people I tried that with read it as "write(sin(x), sin(y))". Problem is that this reveals a priority inversion in our brain. If the comma has lower precedence than function calls, then it should read as write(sin(x)), sin(y). If it has higher precedence, then it should read as write(sin(x,sin(y)). None of them

Linux is an implementation of Minix. Or at least that is where it started.

Not really... Linux is monolithic. The kernel design is very different from MINIX, and was so from the very beginning. Linux did use the MINIX filesystem at first, but mostly because Linus was doing his development on a MINIX installation and it was convenient to keep the files there.

As Tanenbaum himself put it :

"MINIX had clearly had a huge influence on Linux in many ways, from the layout of the file system to the names in the source tree, but I didn't think Linus had used any of my code. Linus also used MINIX as his development platform initially, but there was nothing wrong with that. ... Linus didn't sit down in a vacuum and suddenly type in the Linux source code. He had my book, was running MINIX, and undoubtedly knew the history (since it is in my book). But the code was his. The proof of this is that he messed the design up. ... producing a system that was fundamentally different from the base he started with seems pretty good proof that it was a redesign."

Please be aware that MINIX 3 is not your grandfather's MINIX ... MINIX 1 was written as an educational tool ... MINIX 3 is that plus a start at building a highly reliable, self-healing, bloat-free operating system ... MINIX 1 and MINIX 3 are related in the same way as Windows 3.1 and Windows XP are: same first name

http://www.cs.vu.nl/~ast/reliable-os/

"30 moves in a set pattern at an end game, and that is mostly just getting into position, just like a bishop & knight mate. I do not believe a supposed grandmaster would fail and the moves would look exactly the same as a computer."

That's not true.
Something like 30 years ago, there was a program that played king+queen vs king+rook.
Kasparov played against it but could not beat it.

A human will beat another one in QvsR, but a computer will play incredibly deep computer-like moves, that require computer-like moves to counter.

If you can play Awari see Awari Oracle (perfect play of Awari), you will see exactly the same phenomenon. Strange moves that seems inferior on the short term but that are incredibly deep. They are impossible to find unless you compute several dozen moves in advance exhaustively.

What color is the sky in your world? They're both Unixlike but that's as far as that goes. Linux is descended from Minix and runs a GNU userland. OSX is descended from NeXTStep which is descended from BSD. They are almost as different and differently-descended as they could be and still be able to run much of the same code without major changes.

Linux is not descended from Minix, and Linux does not necessarily run a GNU user-land.

In its origins, Linux was simply a fork of Minix.

Oh come on. How many people still believe this Ken Brown nonsense? Even Tanenbaum himself said this is complete nonsense.

While "free" or "liberal" is a translation of the Dutch word "Vrije", the officially used name in English of this university is "VU University", not "Free University". See the website: http://www.vu.nl/en/index.asp

Are they the inventors of the VU-meter?;)

While "free" or "liberal" is a translation of the Dutch word "Vrije", the officially used name in English of this university is "VU University", not "Free University". See the website: http://www.vu.nl/en/index.asp

Strange I was just researching MapReduce online when this slashdot posting appeared.

http://www.cs.vu.nl/~ralf/MapReduce/paper.pdf
http://cnx.org/content/m20644/latest/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MapReduce
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_File_System

Patent examiners need to get their heads examined.

Patents, a strange concept anyhow to have a government imposed monopoly. Revoke your governments power to have patents. That should take care of the pesky problem. Prior art helps too.

That's because it takes thousands of people to make an OS.

AST debunked that years ago. And now that minix is available under a free license there is nothing to stop the FSF calling it the GNU OS.

Tanenbaum (the creator of Minix, the main inspiration of Linus) is dutch.. In Amsterdam he is teaching in the CS department of the VU (Free (as in speech) university) http://www.cs.vu.nl/en/sec/index.php You can take a course here and travel europe in the same time. Dutch people speak english (as opposed to the french or german people) and spain is a 12 hour drive or a 2 hour flight. The UK is next doors.. on the other hand.. we only have one (1) starbucks in the entire country...

*not* a theological school, you google-expert...
http://www.vu.nl/english/index.cfm
you are linking to one of their faculties which studies religions etc.
And you can not get a a Phd in 5 minutes on the internet, not in Holland that is.
Perhaps in your country??

"3 Interesting" I would say: "5 Stupid"

he is part of the ID crew.

According to this article:
http://cgc.rncan.gc.ca/dir/index_e.php?id=14970&_h=bleeker

He went to the "Free University of Amsterdam".
A theology school.
http://www.godgeleerdheid.vu.nl/english/index.cfm

I can get a Phd in Theology in 5 minutes on the internet, and yes it would qualify as a 'Doctorate'. Because, you know, religion always gets a special pass.

Maybe I misread, or miss interpreted some information...I certianly hope so.

I did notice he offers no falsifiable tests or evidence.

Almost, but not quite. MapReduce has a slightly different format than just map() and reduce(). Here is the signature of map and reduce from a theoretical functional language:

map(): A* -> B*
reduce(): B* -> C

Whereas in MapReduce:

map: (K, V)* -> (K1, V1)*
reduce: (K1, (V1)*)* -> (K2, V2)*

I think that is mostly accurate. Read more accurate/detailed report in MapReduce revisited[PDF].

• ~1984: GNU project started
• 1985: GNU Emacs released
• 1987: gcc released
• 1987: minix released/published
• 1989: GPL v1 released (based on emacs, gdb, gcc licenses)
• 1991: Linux released
• 1992(?): Linux put under GPL.

Anyhow, many of the utilities were from the 1987--1992 time frame, some were earlier and ported to minix.

You can browse some of them here (at least the modern incarnations)

/* patch - a program to apply diffs to original files
*
* Copyright 1986, Larry Wall
*
* This program may be copied as long as you don't try to make any
* money off of it, or pretend that you wrote it

BeOS featured a unique modular microkernel

"While MINIX 3, QNX, Integrity, PikeOS, Symbian, L4Linux, Singularity, K42, HURD, Coyotos, and others [all microkernels] are an eclectic bunch; clearly I am not alone in seeing something in microkernels. If you are wondering why microkernels aren't even more widely used, well, there is a lot of inertia in the system. Why haven't Linux or Mac OS X replaced Windows? Well, there is a lot of inertia in the system. Most cars in Brazil can run on home-grown ethanol so Brazil uses relatively little oil for vehicle fuel. Why doesn't the U.S. do that and reduce its dependence on the volatile Middle East? Well, there is a lot of inertia in the system. Getting people to change, even to superior practices, is very hard."

Andy Tanenbaum, the author of Minix, had a very interesting story about another SCO frontman, Ken Brown. http://www.cs.vu.nl/~ast/brown/ Tanenbaum is somewhat famous for his advocacy of microkernel operating systems. The Linus Torvalds vs Andy Tanenbaum debates on the merits of microkernel (MINIX) operating systems versus monolithic (Linux) operating systems is something of a legend. Nevertheless, Tanenbaum defends Linux fairly vigorously, and this is another comment on SCO's, Dan Lyon's, and Ken Brown's general lack of research.

Alas, silicate (and other) mineralogy/chemistry is not quite as cut and dried as you might think. Quite a few new mineral species are described each year, and many are not initially known as synthetic analogues.

http://www.geo.vu.nl/users/ima-cnmmn/

As Hamlet said: "there are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy"...

After Mach came up with such pitiful performance numbers, all the OS developers* who had been looking to embrace microkernel architecture ran the other way.

I'm not familiar with the performance of early Mach, but Tannenbaum says on his webpage:

"I can't for the life of me see why people object to the 20% performance hit a microkernel might give you when they program in languages like Java and Perl where you often get a factor 20x performance hit. What's the big deal about turning a 3.0 GHz PC into a 2.4 GHz PC due to a microkernel? Surely you once bought a machine appreciably slower than 2.4 GHz and were very happy with it. I would easily give up 20% in performance for a system that was robust, reliable, and wasn't susceptible to many of the ills we see in today's massive operating systems."

I would, too, especially after some memorable kernel glitches. (Java nuts: replace "Java" with "Python" or "Ruby" or whatever else is popular-but-slow today.)

Was Mach performance worse than a 20% hit, and they just hadn't gotten around to optimizing it yet? Or do people really hate using an OS that's equivalent of a couple months old, while using an interpreted programming environment that makes their CPU the equivalent of a couple of years old?

Of course there is a lot of math involved in many parts of computer *science*. Not so much in computer related jobs in the industry, but certainly in science. Where things go wrong is when this math is educated as a standalone subject. I can still remember the horror of math in the first year of the study. Come on guys, if we were interested in pure math, we would have studied something else.

What was important is -eg- statistics, logic and a bit of number theory. That was indeed present, but then you had "theoretical computer science", "calculus" and a whole bunch of other courses that for some reason were mandatory. Those could be important for further studies, but for some reason they went into these subjects way to deep.

Fortunately, at the Vrije Universiteit, the amount of math in computer science has been significantly diminished over the years. And that's good because I suspect that only a few remember much of the "calculus" of the first year. I'm pretty good in actually remembering the things I've studied, but almost everything about the real mathematical side of things has gone from memory.

So my opinion is: teach it, but only if necessary for the subject, and only if the subject has been choosen as a master or something by the student. And explain *why* it's needed if you teach it - students are not a bunch of drones that have some kind of photographic memory. I do think that computer science relies on algorithms a lot, but just teaching the algorithms without any context is just plain dumb. Algorithms are fine, but looking at computer science from a pure mathematical view point is something else entirely.

Other than this, there is way to little in the article to talk about. A full book review would be much more helpfull. Unfortunately, I could not find any using Google. Either the book is not read, or more likely, it's too new.

Linux started with a guy trying to fix Minix.

The last one is the most interesting, since fixing Minix ended up meaning completely re-writing it because (at the time) the license didn't allow redistribution of modified versions (only patch sets, and those were growing unwieldy).

Finally he asked me if I thought Linus wrote Linux. I said that to the best of my knowledge, Linus wrote the whole kernel himself, but after it was released, other people began improving the kernel, which was very primitive initially, and adding new software to the system--essentially the same development model as MINIX. Then he began to focus on this, with questions like: "Didn't he steal pieces of MINIX without permission." I told him that MINIX had clearly had a huge influence on Linux in many ways, from the layout of the file system to the names in the source tree, but I didn't think Linus had used any of my code. Linus also used MINIX as his development platform initially, but there was nothing wrong with that. He asked if I objected to that and I said no, I didn't, people were free to use it as they wished for noncommercial purposes.

Dumbass. We don't want a link to the product. We want a link to the cute geek chick who invented it!

Why oh why does she have to be wearing a big, bulky, form-hiding winter coat in that photo? :)

There are no "modern advanced OSs" out there that make today's Mac OS X/Windows look like yesterday's Mac OS/DOS.

Don't be so certain of that. There are some pretty cool research projects going. There are things like Bell Lab's Plan 9, there is AST's Amoeba project. And those are from the old-school people. There are certainly other radically cool OSes out there in the wings.

'Doze and the Mac stuff and Unix are legacy designs, no matter what sort of greasepaint is slapped on their faces.

Don't forget that after an analysis by a professional that Ken Brown hired told him there was ZERO evidence to support his claim that Linus stole code from Minix that he refused to believe her ( http://www.cs.vu.nl/~ast/brown/codecomparison/ ).

I find it quite incredulous that someone can devote so much time to this cause

Much the same way that Ken Brown of AdTI had problems believing that Linux wasn't based on the Minix codebase. In fact he had so much trouble that he went ahead and published even after Andrew Tannenbaum (no great friend on Linus' in the past) uncategorically told him that this was not the case.

The thing is though, if you accept the notion of computer programmers (Linus, rms, and all the rest of them) devoting all their spare time to creating a Free Software operating system, who do you find it so strange that someone whose expertise lies in the legal sphere should devote her time to defending the same?

There are people who can't program but who write documentation to support their favourite free software projects. Must we assume they too are secretly funded by IBM?

This is a 32-bit multitasking operating system for x86 computers, with GUI and filesystem, support for loading and executing user applications in elf binary format, with ps2 mouse and keyboard drivers, and vesa graphics. And a command shell. And an application - a simple text-file viewer."
Granted, it may not be the must useful (or maintainable!) OS ...
Piece of cake... According to Andrew S. Tanenbaum "you'd have to be real dumb not to be able to write an operating system in a month.".
Sorry, but that dont impress me much. Anyone can do it in a month. Unless you're real dumb, in which case you write an obsoleted monolithic kernel instead. *ducks*

These clowns give themselves grand sounding names so people will take them seriously. It even works once or twice but then people catch on to them.

My favorite example is the Alexis de Tocqueville Institution. It appears to be one guy, Ken Brown. When people were still paying attention to the 'SCO' thing, he wrote a book in which he called into question the paternity of Linux. It was really a lame effort. The result is that whatever credibility his institute had vanished in a puff of public indignation. http://www.cs.vu.nl/~ast/brown/followup/

The problem for such people is that, if they wish to continue in business, their credibility is all they have. Gartner did some questionable things, again during the early days of the SCO 'thing'. Later, a company who wanted to sell us a bunch of stuff quoted Gartner. My reaction was that Gartner would say anything they were paid to say. No sale.

Jef Raskin, creator of Macintosh and Canon Cat (the latter embodied his instant-on ideal), also complained about the time it takes a computer to start up.

Startup times have not changed in several decades. Here are some data points I collected a while ago:

AST boasts that "on a 4.77 MHz 8088 [MINIX] booted in maybe 5 seconds".

Data point. AMD K6-2/500 (bogomips : 989.18), 256MB, Gentoo 2004.1, kernel 2.6.5-gentoo-r1 boots in 39 seconds[1] (/etc/runlevels/default/ = apache domainname local mysql named net.eth0 netmount squid sshd syslog-ng vixie-cron)

Data point. G4/dual 1.25GHz, 768MB, MacOS 10.2.6: 33 seconds[2]

Data point. G4/350, 576MB, MacOS 10.3.3: 32.5 seconds[2]

Data point. P4 Celeron 2.4GHz (bogomips : 4734.97), 512MB, Gentoo 2004.1, kernel 2.6.5: 27.5 seconds[1] (/etc/runlevels/default/ = domainname local mysql named net.eth0 netmount sshd syslog-ng vixie-cron).

Data point. NeXTstation Turbo 68040 33MHz: 55.5 seconds[3]

1. from confirming Grub screen to login
2. from Apple logo to login
3. from NEXTSTEP boot to login

Gah. No way to do footnote references in mod_virgule? entities don't work, <sup> doesn't work...

Yeah, yeah, RFID, mark of the beast, firewall, virus, buzzword... whatever! This is Slashdot, and the important question is whether or not this Melanie Rieback chick is hot. 'Cause everyone knows that hot geek girls are the wet dream of every red-blooded male Slashdotter. And thanks to the magic that is Google, the answer appears to be, "Not bad... not bad at all!"

For those that want more detail than the videos provide:

http://www.cs.vu.nl/~melanie/rfid_guardian/papers/ acisp.05.pdf

Scroll to A Brief History of Windows NT/2000/XP by Andrew Tanenbaum. This is a problem regardless of software license. The unique problem that open source faces is that people do it as well as working at the same time.

If it's a small project I wouldn't worry too much in any case. Otherwise, make the programmers agree to some statement before you'll accept their work (it could be an "informal" email). And always remember that estoppel is your best friend.

IANAL, but my key fear with using any copyrighted material is authors being able to revoke a license. Copyright and licensing laws are quite strong after all.

CVS developed from an earlier versioning system called Revision Control System (RCS), still in use, which manages individual files but not whole projects. Dick Grune has provided some brief historical notes about CVS on his site. To quote:

I created CVS to be able to cooperate with my students Erik Baalbergen and Maarten Waage on the ACK (Amsterdam Compiler Kit) C compiler. The three of us had vastly different schedules (one student was a steady 9-5 worker, the other was irregular, and I could work on the project only in the evenings). Their project ran from July 1984 to August 1985. CVS was initially called cmt, for the obvious reason that it allowed us to commit versions independently. --Dick Grune

The code was publicly released to mod.sources on June 23, 1986: the original usenet post is still visible via Google Groups.

The code that eventually evolved into the current version of CVS started with Brian Berliner in April 1989, with later input from Jeff Polk and many other contributors. Brian Berliner wrote a paper introducing his improvements to the CVS program which describes how the tool was extended and used internally by Prisma, a third party developer working on the SunOS kernel, and was released for the benefit of the community under the GPL.

CVS developed from an earlier versioning system called Revision Control System (RCS), still in use, which manages individual files but not whole projects. Dick Grune has provided some brief historical notes about CVS on his site. To quote:

I created CVS to be able to cooperate with my students Erik Baalbergen and Maarten Waage on the ACK (Amsterdam Compiler Kit) C compiler. The three of us had vastly different schedules (one student was a steady 9-5 worker, the other was irregular, and I could work on the project only in the evenings). Their project ran from July 1984 to August 1985. CVS was initially called cmt, for the obvious reason that it allowed us to commit versions independently. --Dick Grune

The code was publicly released to mod.sources on June 23, 1986: the original usenet post is still visible via Google Groups.

The code that eventually evolved into the current version of CVS started with Brian Berliner in April 1989, with later input from Jeff Polk and many other contributors. Brian Berliner wrote a paper introducing his improvements to the CVS program which describes how the tool was extended and used internally by Prisma, a third party developer working on the SunOS kernel, and was released for the benefit of the community under the GPL.

• At a very low level, how a computer works. What goes on inside the CPU, what a "bus" is, what memory paging is. Structured Computer Organization by Andrew Tanenbaum, Computer Architecture by Hennessy and Patterson.
• Programming Languages, should know enough about computers to be able to write a simple program in assembly, and then learn a couple "simple" high level languages e.g. Perl, Python, Ruby, followed by C, then Java (or C++), and then a not so common language (aka "languages that make you think") like Haskell, ML, Lisp, or Scheme. Plus a basic/general history of programming languages. Suggested reading: Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs
• Software engineering. From making sure programs work, correctly, to programming in the large (not everything can be written as a 1000 line Perl script), and software development as a profession (ethics, legalities, future). Two good references are Code Complete by Steven McConnell, and The Mythical Man-Month by Fred Brooks.
• Basic electronics. Getting Started in Electronics by Forrest Mims or Lessons In Electric Circuits - Just the basics, Ohms Law and some basic ideas such as logic gates and flip flops.
  
• Enough math to be dangerous

Over here at the Vrije Universiteit in Amsterdam we have 'computation servers'. Any CS/AI student can log in and use the 4-way SMP machines for their studies (and let me say that this is a real help when running CPU-intensive algorithms that otherwise would take weeks to complete). Bigger iron like the old DAS cluster with it's 200 nodes is used for parallel-programming, distributed systems courses and more serious applications.

If you don't know what to do with it, hand it to graduate students that need the cycles.

You'd think so wouldn't you? This page has links including COBOL XML parsers as well as CGI- and RPC- interfaces.

There's even funded university research (watch out for popunders) going on into COBOL - check out the research lab!

You'd think so wouldn't you? This page has links including COBOL XML parsers as well as CGI- and RPC- interfaces.

There's even funded university research (watch out for popunders) going on into COBOL - check out the research lab!