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Pretty consistent. There may be an oversupply of techies in the economy at large, but the H-1B supply is not constant, regardless of demand.

US immigration law "caps" H-1B immigration at a set number. During the boom, it was once 65,000 - high demand and low supply meant that employers couldn't hire enough people, and they bri^H^H^Hpetitioned Congress for a law that would raise the cap. That law said that in 2000, it was to be 115,000, and in 2001-2-3, it was to be 195,000.

As you can see, any time a politician attempts to choose a number for supply and demand and slam it into the market with the fist of legislation, he'll fuck it up, which is precisely what happened. The H-1B cap kept going up, long after the economic bubble that actually made these new employees useful had burst.

So what's the situation now? Well, just like in the last paragraph -- when politicians attempt to legislate the economy, they invariably fuck it up. The law that was passed to increase the cap came with an expiry date. So what happens - after the cap goes up to 195,000 during the recession? Why, it's Fiscal Year 2004 (starting on October 1, 2003)... and now that the economy's picking up, and demand is growing we... well, there's increased demand so let's... let the law expire and cut the H-1B quota from 195,000 back to 65,000! Cut the supply by 2/3! Yay!

And we wonder why our economy's fucked up?

Because even the most cynical of us would never believe our government would be this stupid, a link.

If you think that's fucking retarded, remember that this is the INS (now BCIS) we're talking about. These are the same folks that, approved the 9/11 hijackers their flight school visas SIX MONTHS AFTER THE ATTACK.

So in the grand scheme of things, the H-1B cap manipulations that seem to be legislatively timed for maximum negative economic effect, are pretty small potatoes.

"This book is not only for the business minded, but for a consumer looking to establish a quality long-distance wireless network of their own."

Sounds like something my university's crazy technology program would just jump on, along with the $400 Cisco IP phones and their vision of the future where incoming students get a university-issue cell phone that does voice over IP on the campus network... so that they can later grab parts of the fees for long distance use...

I'm testing the Cisco 7970G for the local university's Technology Quarters program... It's a VOIP phone, but it's only VOIP across the university LAN. Mostly it's absurd overkill, but you can see how people in a big company who make lots of calls could really use it.

It's not tough "DRM"... my university's local online student newspaper equivalent effectively does the same thing.

It seems that they are more interested in banning the devices which use this part of the spectrum rather than the actual use. Would this make any difference? I mean, they're already banning toasters and the like (though it's not that people who like toast can't find it anyway . . .)

It seems that they are more interested in banning the devices which use this part of the spectrum rather than the actual use. Would this make any difference? I mean, they're already banning toasters and the like (though it's not that people who like toast can't find it anyway . . .)

It seems that they are more interested in banning the devices which use this part of the spectrum rather than the actual use. Would this make any difference? I mean, they're already banning toasters and the like (though it's not that people who like toast can't find it anyway . . .)

The best article I have read that summarizes what word got wrong is http://ricardo.ecn.wfu.edu/~cottrell/wp.html.

The gyst is that Word, and all word-processors, confuse the distinct tasks of preparing your text logically, and laying it out. This leads to the standard situation that frustrates me when I have to use Word: I am entering text, when I see that it won't fit on a page, so I stop thinking about my text to change paragraph formatting and then, oh, where was I? Later I'll change the text, and probably want to change the paragraph formatting back, but won't be able to remember what it was before. Now my document is inconsistently laid out.

Implementations may vary. Word is often slated as being particularly obnoxious, changing formatting of its own volition. However, the conflation of distinct tasks is a conceptual error of all word-processors.

The alternative suggested by the article, LaTeX, is undoubtedly not to everyone's taste either, but at least if you read the article, you will understand the deeper reason Word is frustrating.

not_cub

Incoming Wakies get think pads. 2008 specs
Now that's cool...

And if I can get our local Tech Quarters to run a pilot program of some sort, all the better. ;)

And if I can get our local Tech Quarters to run a pilot program of some sort, all the better. ;)

Wake Forest University has this scheme where all incoming students are given IBM ThinkPads. They all have Mozilla (currently, the suite) preloaded, and people are told to use it. Random complaints? Yes. Notable campus-wide virus infections? No!

And on another level, they can force people to use some amount of SSL. Make the mail server SSL-only, for instance. This is especially the case at my university: each student is issued a standard university ThinkPad, and they can control the load on those things. Set up a secure POP connection, have the new laptops set up to use it, and within one replacement cycle (two years) you can have everyone checking their mail securely. Would this be excessively burdensome? It won't protect your web mail or Slashdot account from packet sniffing, but it keeps your email (which usually shares your Important University Password) nice and secure!

(Incidentally, they've been loading Mozilla on them for mail and browsing. I can only see good coming of that, at least.)

My university library is a bit sillier. They have brand-spanking-new IBM machines worth several grand, I'm sure, and all they're doing is running kiosk-mode Internet Explorer to their card catalog site (one that is easily bypassed by Win+R, by the way).

My university library is a bit sillier. They have brand-spanking-new IBM machines worth several grand, I'm sure, and all they're doing is running kiosk-mode Internet Explorer to their card catalog site (one that is easily bypassed by Win+R, by the way).

Since you ask... I'm sorry that I cut this off to begin with, but when I ran nmap -P0 -O search.yahoo.com:

Starting nmap 3.48 ( http://www.insecure.org/nmap/ ) at 2004-02-18 10:06 EST

(The -P0 is necessary because the local university firewall blocks all incoming and outgoing pings.)
I don't own a Mac, and I don't know anyone who owns a Mac... and I haven't used a Mac since some Apple IIe machines in elementary and middle school. I run an IBM ThinkPad R40 slightly modified from the specs listed at that link: an 80 gigabyte hard drive with Fedora Core 1 currently installed.

Would anyone else with nmap care to confirm or deny my quick exploratory findings, for the benefit of npsimons (32752) and others who are all to quick to invent conspiracy theories implicating Mac-lovers?

... and it's stuff like this which makes me glad that my school is an IBM cronie.

... and it's stuff like this which makes me glad that my school is an IBM cronie.

Reference

The second case, the one in Elkhart Indiana, happened less then 5 miles from where I live. That case is the one that made the pinto famous, and is especially bizarre.

In 1978 U.S. Highway 33 between goshen and Elkhart was 3 lanes - one going each direction, and a center lane that was for passing, turning, or whoever wanted to be in it at the time. Head on collisions happened on occasion, and a project was being weighed by the state on whether or not to widen the road. It was being blocked in part by the railroad company that owned the tracks the road follows, and in part by local businessmen who owned the property on the other side.

So along comes this poor girl, who puts the gas cap on loosly after filling up her Pinto's tank. She then gets on to 33... she sees the cap fall off, and decides to stop and get it. On a road with no shoulder, and no where for following traffic to go except into the aforementioned death-trap of a center lane.

And along comes a van. A van driven by a a doped up moron hit the car. The van had a modified front bumper made from heavy wood. And the gas cap still had not been placed back on to the Pinto.

Boom, no more Pinto.

Fast forward to the state prosecutor filing against Ford, and the highway Department quietly expanding the road while the prosecutor had them distracted. (The road is now 5 lanes, two each direction, and a center lane that occasionally sports a head on collision. It also has rest stops every 150 feet, and signs to point them out).

Yes the car had a flaw, but the case that made it famous is suspicious at best. The blame could easily fall on the girl for stopping. It could fall on the doped up driver of the van. It could be blamed on the highway department. The prosecutor managed to blame it on Ford.

At Wake Forest University, ROTC and Information Systems share a building (#26 on the campus map).

At Wake Forest University, ROTC and Information Systems share a building (#26 on the campus map).

My IBM ThinkPad R40 launches Knoppix just fine, and the local computer science department is going to be giving me a hard drive upgrade to dual-boot once I get into the CSC 112 class.
I have run into precisely two faults with my Knoppix games. One, it won't speak to the integrated modem (now that I'm back in the dorm with my LAN connection, not an issue!) Two, I can't turn off the touchpad (sorry, I prefer the TrackPoint and keep brushing up against the touchpad irregularly).

No. It came preloaded on my laptop.

This site linked by the video primer, says that "Until the advent of version 8 of JASC Paint Shop Pro, Adobe Photoshop was capable of producing better quality JPG's for web and on-screen use, because Photoshop disabled chroma subsampling at highest quality settings. As of version 8, Paint Shop Pro moved ahead, offering the user full control of chroma subsampling. Especially for web use where file size is crucial and images are generally low resolution, Paint Shop Pro's greater flexibility is a considerable asset." But... PSP is no Photoshop, and this is a considerable asset indeed, so what to do? Buy both, and use PSP only to compress images? What a waste. Does the newest version of Photoshop give more control? The latest I've used is 7.0 and it does not AFAIK.

Living on the so-called "second most-wired campus" in the nation, I found that the room had about 5 electrical outlet spots with two plugs each. Add alarm clocks, microfridge, two laptops, two printers, cordless phone, two PDA cradles, TV, DVD player, PS2, my beautiful 300 watt surround sound system, a spare lamp or two (mmm)... There are about 3 big-old power strips which are just packed full.
What disappointed me is despite the 10mbps line to the Internet, there were only two outlets. If I use one and my roommate uses one, where do I plug in the old 486 I converted to NetBSD last week? I'm going to have to get some sort of cheap hub, and that means money. If I had money, I'd be using something better than a 486 as my personal web-server/slave machine.

The rest of the replies to this post are excellent, but I found a more detailed, objective link in about 2 seconds searching Google (don't mean to sound flame-y, I just think it's useful to be inherently suspicious of "definitive" one-sided stories, especially when it takes little effort to find something that's more balanced):

http://www.wfu.edu/~matthews/misc/jpg_vs_gif/JpgCo mpTest/ (Warning: 1.5 MB worth of images)

Then there's this link that's embedded in the link above: http://www.wfu.edu/~matthews/misc/jpg_vs_gif/JpgCo mpTest/JpgForArchive.html

The rest of the replies to this post are excellent, but I found a more detailed, objective link in about 2 seconds searching Google (don't mean to sound flame-y, I just think it's useful to be inherently suspicious of "definitive" one-sided stories, especially when it takes little effort to find something that's more balanced):

http://www.wfu.edu/~matthews/misc/jpg_vs_gif/JpgCo mpTest/ (Warning: 1.5 MB worth of images)

Then there's this link that's embedded in the link above: http://www.wfu.edu/~matthews/misc/jpg_vs_gif/JpgCo mpTest/JpgForArchive.html

I fly RC aircraft, mainly small sailplanes, etc. This talk of mountain waves reminds me of dynamic soaring, which is a technique birds (and sailplaners) use to increase speed -- without flapping wings.

In fact, sailplanes can often reach 150 MPH using this technique. And thats with no propellor. Needless to say, it's fast and exciting. Also, for those of us who like it when things go "boom", a critical failure at 150 MPH is always fun :)

big 'ol realplayer dynamic soaring video

My university developed software for the iPaq that they call PocketClassroom which includes a web server as part of the package. It runs on the iPaq and Prof's are using it through our 802.11 wireless network.

From the site: It turns a PocketPC equipped with a wireless card into a web server, a presentation controller, and a feedback device for a classroom instructor or for any speaker making a presentation to an audience. By incorporating all these functions into one program, it allows you to 'put class in the palm of your hand' as you move freely around the classroom.

We tend to use wireless applications a lot at Wake. My fraternity would get a Symbol wireless device with a bar code scanner every Friday night for hi-tech party check-ins. Pretty righteous, except drunk kids always thought we were arresting them.

My university developed software for the iPaq that they call PocketClassroom which includes a web server as part of the package. It runs on the iPaq and Prof's are using it through our 802.11 wireless network.

From the site: It turns a PocketPC equipped with a wireless card into a web server, a presentation controller, and a feedback device for a classroom instructor or for any speaker making a presentation to an audience. By incorporating all these functions into one program, it allows you to 'put class in the palm of your hand' as you move freely around the classroom.

We tend to use wireless applications a lot at Wake. My fraternity would get a Symbol wireless device with a bar code scanner every Friday night for hi-tech party check-ins. Pretty righteous, except drunk kids always thought we were arresting them.

Don't forget that some colleges give students computers. At Wake Forest , everyone gets a new IBM think pad every two years. (Perfect for formatting and installing Linux, I might add).

Also, you should ask to see the CS student lab areas. We have many (Windows/Mac) computer labs for undergrads, but only 2 for CS students (various unix machines).

The most important thing is to meet current CS students. Go to a class or two with them, ask about good and bad professors and classes, etc. Talking with the students at a college is the best way to see what a school is like without being fed all the BS by the admissions people.

Wake Forest has an interesting program that applies to all programs, undergrads and graduate schools, and hands a laptop to every student. If a student is in a four year program they get a new laptop after the second year.

After graduation students get to keep the machine.

I think students pay a technology fee every term that funds it.

-G

One of the major obstacles from more of this sort of thing going on is a lack of readily accessible free media sure there are a few oasis of public domain media and even fewer still examples of GPLed media. The fact remains though that there is no central repository for free media that artists can use to build on one another's works.

My interest is mostly in media that can be used for free games but any media that can be shared amongst the artistic community is great in my eyes. At any rate here are some free media resources that I've found and their associated licenses. I hope this list helps other artists and people looking for free media to use for one purpose or another:

Pixel Place - Lots of public domain images mainly intended for web site use (but you could find other uses if you're a creative thinker)

Ender Design - Public domain images mostly for web sites once again. High quality and very usable for UI graphics. The 'design sets' aren't public domain so be sure and read the license. I highly recommend this site.

The Texture Library - Public domain mostly photorealistic textures intended to be used for games (OpenGL). Very nice!

The Golgotha Project - High quality public domain music, textures and meshes! Perhaps the largest cache of freely available media in one place.

Free Game Arts - High quality media (mostly 3d meshes [MDLs] and textures) with various free licenses. The license which each model/texture is covered by is clearly stated before the d/l so be sure to read!

GNUArt - A site in french with GPLed media (mostly music).

GNUsic - A site that features a CD written by artists who have GPLed their work.

Linkware Graphics - License is called 'Linkware' which translates to free for non commercial use and no modifications allowed. Mostly music related images here. Again mainly for web sites but could be used for other purposes.

Public Domain Images - Small amount of public domain images

I am currently gathering sites with free media and sucking down their contents in preparation for WorldForge's free media repository.

Perhaps all the /.ers know of free media resources which I failed to mention here? The free media repository will have media with all sorts of licenses so don't think we're after just one type of 'free' media. Perhaps others who know of good caches with free media could share them with us here? Thanks!

-Jason

However, I write all my documentation in LaTeX, using encapsulated PostScript for diagrams. This isn't a problem, because I can generate a PDF which is stored in CVS along with the text source files. I do this for software internal documentation as well as for presentation materials (slides).

Binary files are okay in CVS as long as they are derived objects rather than primary objects. What happens during a merge is that you merge the primary objects (LaTeX source files), and regenerate the derived binary object (PDF) from the primary sources and commit the results. However, when the primary objects are non-mergeable (e.g Word documents) you are in trouble. If two people modify the same Word document on separate branches, there is no way to merge other than by hand editing.

With LaTeX, the documentation can be broken into many files which are stitched together with \input directives. This was an advantage because at one point I was working in a small team on the same document. Using multiple files minimizes the amount of back and forth merging that takes place with concurrent development.

I have a few LaTeX macros which can be used to embed CVS keywords like $Id$ in a special way into the documents. The macro actually collects these into a file during latex processing. A special appendix is then added to the output which lists all of the source files and their versions. This is called the ``Bill of Materials'' and tells the reader exactly what versions of the files in CVS correspond to the hard copy.

Here is a good advocacy page you can throw at people who think that word processors are actually suitable tools for intelligent documenting: Word Processors: Inefficient and Stupid.

Perhaps we should also consider HTML, the most portable document format. It is not as hard as TeX/LaTeX to learn (or to process) and also give you structural composing. It is my choice when I don't have TeX/LaTeX installed on my Win-tel PC. Give me an editor and a web browser, I can print a beautiful paper. (including images)

A lot of debates are focused on Vi v.s. Pico, Emacs, word processor v.s typesetting program. However, many people omit how computer can help us improving our writing. TeX/LaTeX, HTML/XML/SGML are very good at keeping us thinking about What we are writing and how to present the ideas through styles and fonts. That is the weakness of most WYSIWYG programs.

Dupilcating the functions of WYSIWYG of words on Linux is wasting time for Liunux programmers. The killer application should be something which can help people write there documents with easy to use Interface, shallow learning surve and the power of structual composing. HTML is a language in the right direction for structual composing, however, we need better editors. (Vi is enough for me, but I can not teach my wife vi, the only choice for her is notepad.exe -:)

BTW, wp.html is a very interesting article related to this topic.

Perhaps we should also consider HTML, it is the most portable document format. It is not as hard as TeX/LaTeX to learn (or to process) and also give your structural composing. It is my choice when I don't have TeX/LaTeX installed on my Win-tel PC. Give me an editor and a web browser, I can print a beautiful paper. (including images)
P.S. BTW, wp.html is a very interesting article.
liusn

Other species of birds found on the islands exhibit great changes among their populations over periods as short as a few years. I wish I could find a reference to research done on this (I first heard of it from this month's Scientific American Frontiers). The short of it that variances in food supplies (seeds) over just a few years directly affects the overall appearance (physical size) of future generations of the birds. Smaller birds have less body to fuel, require fewer seeds to feed themselves, and possess beaks more adapted to cracking open their small food. Larger birds, when all available food is small seeds, can't eat enough to stay alive. The larger of the species die out, the smaller reproduce, and the physical properties of the smaller population are passed on to the following generation. Over periods of just 3 or 4 years, the populations of this island physically change to adapt to changes in their environment. The average bird becomes smaller. In food surplus (when larger, more varied foods are available), the opposite happens.

If you're up for a good laugh, visit Creation Research Society, a bunch of "scientists" out to prove that Creation is right. They have an scanning electron microscope, so I guess it's just a matter of time before they re-publish the Bible and prove science wrong, right?

--

> People buy Windows because it runs apps, not
> because it's Windows -- this is why
> Linux isn't huge. It has no (full-grown)
> mouse-clicky apps that people want and
> need. MS' monopoly is in Office, not in
> Windows.

I've become unconvinced that that's true. When I was running OS/2, that was the conventional wisdom among OS/2 users: that the key to OS/2 success was more standard productivity apps. After the release of Warp v3, OS/2 became relatively successful and the userbase expanded. There were a host of independently developed productivity apps that were in general better than the equvalent applications for Windows (DeScribe as compared to Word, Mesa 2 as compared to Excel). In 1996, OS/2 began to decline in popularity, probably because many people regarded Windows 95 as "good enough." Lotus ported their SmartSuite to OS/2 at around that time. Then in 1997, months after the release of a highly end-user oriented Warp 4 (with very nifty context-sensitive help, voice recognition/dictation, etc), IBM repositioned OS/2 as a thin-client system for a few Fortune 500 customers and withdrew all SOHO support. At no time since 1994 or so was there ever a dearth of end-user apps on OS/2.

Linux, on the other hand, offers a model of computer use where "apps" in the sense of monolithic GUIfied programs for doing very specific tasks (like word processing) are not really necessary. In Windows, and OS/2, the focus is on the applications you use, not on the tasks you want to accomplish, and that's a bad model of computer use. In Linux I use a chain of small tools to accomplish the tasks I would have used a word processor before (Emacs Auc-TeX, LaTeX, BibTeX, dvips, pstill), with a host of advantages along the way (better typesetting, easy repurposing of documents for different types of presentation, easy access to bibliographic databases, etc). The demand of new Linux users for Windows-alike applications is really a demand for the Windows-way of doing things. Once you accept the Windows way of doing things, the viability of your platform can be controlled by a few vendors who control access to key applications.

I imagine that Micros~1's goal in porting Office to Linux is to further decommodify file formats and make more users dependent on the formats Office writes. They can always yank support for a platform later.

> Help out with AbiWord/KWord/LyX/Thot!!! We don't
> need or want proprietary software. People who
> use proprietary applications on free OSs are
> completely missing the point.

I agree with you here, but even libre wordprocessors are a bad thing because they are a bad way of working. I recommend that people read Allin Cottrell's Word Processors: Stupid and Inefficient for some insight on tools vs. applications. (LyX is exempt from these criticisms, being based on LaTeX).