Ars Digita Founder Philip Greenspun

Philip Greenspun is (in no particular order) a photographer, writer, software engineer, Web designer, philosopher, and entrepreneur, and is now the "main man" behind the free Ars Digita University program. Years ago, a gentleman with Philip's wide range of interests and skills was called a "Rennaisance Man." Today -- especially in Philip's case -- the phrase "Internet Man" may be more apt, but the idea is the same. Post questions for Philip below; we'll select 10 of the highest-moderated and send them to him Tuesday afternoon (US EDT). His answers will appear, Open Source-like, "When they're ready."

General interview notes/updates: Richard Stallman has been putting plenty of thought into his answers; they should be along within the next day or two. The SCO Presidents have promised to have their answers to us in time for publication Thursday. The band Metallica has agreed, through their publicist, to do an interview about Napster and its effect on the music industry as soon as they finish the music video they're working on now, hopefully later this week. Next week's scheduled interview guest already knows the answer: 42. Yes, we're talking about Douglas Adams. So don't panic, okay?

- Robin "roblimo" Miller

Comments

Re:Renaissance

[roman_mir]

I mean, considered by themselves, of-course

online universities?

[Signal 11]

What's your thoughts on how to encourage socializing in a completely online forum? Many people perceive going to college to be, in part, to find friends and people of similar interest as well as to find professional contacts. Any plans in the works to remove some of the isolation inherent in a completely online forum?

Open Source and "When they're ready"

[cshirky]

Open Source projects of any sort don't appear "When they're ready" -- that violates the "Release early; release often" dictum from CatB. If something is Open Source, it necessarily appears before its ready, because that is the only way to leverage the "Many eyeballs make bugs shallow" effect of Open Source.

I'm not objecting to Phillip producing his answers when they're ready -- they are after all his answers. I'm objecting to the mischaracterization of the way Open Source works.

-clay

Re:Open Source and "When they're ready"

[Roblimo]

Supposedly one of the great advantages of Open Source and/or free software is that you can release it as/when you please, instead of following a schedule laid down by a marketing department or other "outside" influence.

I don't code. I write. And I can tell you I usually write *much better* when I have time to step back and look at my work than when I've got to have it in by 9 a.m. (or when I'm dashing off a fast post like this...)

Many of my friends who *do* code say they do their best work in the same way. Each to his or her own.

- Robin

Re:Open Source and "When they're ready"

[cshirky]

Supposedly one of the great advantages of Open Source and/or free software is that you can release it as/when you please, instead of following a schedule laid down by a marketing department or other "outside" influence.

I really couldn't disagree more -- the system you're describing is essentially 'lazyware'. The OS community is starting to suffer from a weird kind of political correctness, where anything which seems to be unlike ordinary software and travels under the label Open Source is beyond critique. Though I've criticized ESR plenty in print, what he was describing in CatB was not some set of abstract principles, he was describing how Linux actually came to be the success that it is, and the core of that thinking is that given enough eyeballs, all bugs are shallow. This in turn means that an OS project stands or falls on its willingness to release early and release often.

I am a writer too, and one of those writers who agrees with Tim O'Reilly in thinking that because writing is often something better done in solitude, and without releasing early, releasing often, that most writing is not amenable to Open Source methods. I am not suggesting that Phillip should rush his answers -- I really don't care what he says or doesn't say. I do however think its too bad that /. is becoming a home for mushy thinking about open source.

Travels with Samantha

[X]

I remeber reading Travels with Samantha when it first came out on the world wide web (some of my first real reading on the web). What struck me about it, aside from the fact that I enjoyed reading it, was how much of yourself was laid bare in the story. Publicly exposing oneself like this is something that celeberties do all the time, but it was (particularly at that time) a rare thing for Joe private citizen to do (although certainly within your nature ;-).

I'm wondering you can describe what happened as a result of exposing so much of yourself online. I remember reading the comments on the story, and there were certainly a wide range of responses, but I was wondering if you noticed any larger consequences?

12 hrs/day * 6 days/week == severe burnout?

[ToastyKen]

When I read about Ars Digita University, the first thing that came to mind was what an extreme amount 12 hrs/day, 6 days/week, on A SINGLE SUBJECT is. I mean, there do exist people who can take that much work, but don't you think a large percentage of your student population would simply burn out?

I go to a major university, there's no way I put in 12 hrs a day of work, and I'm still already stressed out. And that's with multiple subjects so I can take my mind off of one and switch gears occassionally.

Do you have any plans to counter potential burnout?

Re:12 hrs/day * 6 days/week == severe burnout?

[searleb]

I go to a major university, there's no way I put in 12 hrs a day of work, and I'm still already stressed out.

If you wanted you could go to that major university and work 70 hours a week at it. Nothing is stopping you. Double major. Triple major. There are people that do it. They go to your school.

Do you have any plans to counter potential burnout?

I would think that the main plan for countering burnout is having the school only last for one year.

Re:12 hrs/day * 6 days/week == severe burnout?

[ToastyKen]

Double major. Triple major. There are people that do it. They go to your school. I know there exist people who can do it. I also know that most people cannot. And some of these people who cannot may not know it, and when they try it, they will burn out. I'm just saying that for these cases, Ars Digita University needs to have a plan.

Why do you think this is good?

[Anonymous Coward]

After all, the main point of a university program is social interaction that goes along with it - learning how to interact with people in both working and social environments, how to deal with team work and so on. Your course does none of these - in fact I'd say it instead fosters yet more alienation and aloofness of the part of the "hacker" culture, which already seems to have turned its collective face away from the "real world".

Surely what we as a community need is more social interaction rather than this kind of faceless online experiance. We need to encourage geeks to actually leave their rooms, turn off their PCs and get out there and meet people face to face. Without these kind of experiances, the geeks of tomorrow who will end up in positions of power, will be cold and removed from the emotions that make us human - our ability to empathise with others and share their feelings.

My question is, do you think that this kind of thing is making the average geek a colder and less "human" person than their offline counterparts?

Re:Why do you think this is good?

[xyzzy]

In fact, it is a misnomer to call this a University. A University is a degree-granting institution offering a diverse body of study across several colleges. This *might* be a college, but a college offers a number of degrees within a broad field (Engineering, Arts and Sciences, etc).

This *might* be a trade school.

Re:Why do you think this is good?

[hey!]

In fact, it is a misnomer to call this a University. A University is a degree-granting institution offering a diverse body of study across several colleges.

From The Idea of a University, a famous series of lectures by John Henry Newman delivered in 1852 on the founding of Catholic University in Dublin:

It is the place to which a thousand schools make contributions; in which the intellect may safely range and speculate, sure to find its equal in some antagonist activity, and its judge in the tribunal of truth. It is a place where inquiry is pushed forward, discoveries verified and perfected, and rashness rendered innocuous, and error exposed, by the collision of mind with mind, and knowledge with knowledge.

Hmmm. Maybe there should be a Slashdot university?

In any case, I agree. The Ars Digita program would appear to be more properly called an intensive trade school rather than a University.

Re:Why do you think this is good?

[bolthole]

After all, the main point of a university program is social interaction that goes along with it

Okay, "an important point", I can see, but "the main point"???

Sheeesh. Look no further for what is wrong with the american schooling system.

Re:Why do you think this is good?

[searleb]

the main point of a university program is social interaction that goes along with it

True. However, this school already assumes that you have a degree from an accredited college or university. Consequently, it assumes that you have learned how to be social at your previous institution. Ars Digita seems to be more of a graduate program than a university, and the main point of a graduate school is to learn.

Interest rates

[Anonymous Coward]

Mr. Greenspun, the Federal Reserve's recent interest rate hikes are said to have been inspired by your concern over inflation, which some economists say is misguided. How do you respond to these criticisms?

Re:Interest rates

[MartinB]

Phil GreenspUn != Alan GreenspAn

Oracle vs. open source

[lal]

Oracle plays a central role in your current toolkit. Have you considered switching to an an open-source database?

Re:Oracle vs. open source

[Tassach]

Oracle plays a central role in your current toolkit. Have you considered switching to an an open-source database?

There is no open-source replacement for a true enterprise-level RDBMS. MySQL and PostgresSQL are as close as you can get; neither is a viable alternative to Oracle, Sybase, or DB2 (or even MS SQL Server). Given the complexity of modern database software, and the highly specialized knowledge needed to write it, I don't see the open-source community coming up with an enterprise-class RDBMS any time soon. Phil explains his choice of Oracle on his web site.

That being said, Oracle is a very expensive piece of software, and is a tempremental beast to configure and support. Oracle 8i for Linux can be downloaded for free (free registration required), but AFIK you have to pay for a licence if you use it in a production enviornment. Also, it is a practical impossiblity to run an Oracle installation without a full-time, knowledgable DBA. The high expense of the software and the salary of a DBA makes Oracle infeasable for small businesses or those on a limited budget. Sybase Adaptive Server Enterprise (ASE) 11.0.3 for Linux is gratis for both production and development; ASE 11.9.2 is gratis for development but requires a paid licence for production deployment. ASE 12.0 hasn't been ported to Linux (yet). ASE, while easier to administer than Oracle (IMHO), still requires a knowledgable DBA. Sybase Adaptive Server Anywhere (ASA) (the database engine behind SQL Anywhere Studio) requires far less knowlege to administer, making it far more suitable for small operations. Free evaluation versions of SQL Anywhere Studio are available for Linux, Unix, and Windows.
"The axiom 'An honest man has nothing to fear from the police'

The Ars Digita University is cool, but...

[hey!]

the real problem I see is that there are people with a clue, and people with degrees, and there's not necessarily much of a correlation positive or negative between the two. Ideally, to improve the situation so clueful people get access to the important ideas of CS and that employers get some better idea that when they hire a degreed engineer they're actually getting something worth a premium.

It seems to me that CS degree work should be opened to more people who would advance by demonstrating the ability to do real work integrating important theoretical CS ideas with real world problems. Yet the very format really excludes a great deal of people, especially those who have to work to support themselves.

Does the Ars Digita program offer any real advance in CS degree program quality or accessibility to people who would benefit themselves and society the most?

Re:The Ars Digita University is cool, but...

[aquarian]

Read through the Ars Digita University stuff on Greenspun's site again. You'll see that this is the whole idea: to give the people with "a clue" a crash course in CS, so they'll be able to put their ideas to work.

Industry interactivity

[kwsNI]

What type of interactivity do you have with the computer industry?

A large part of going to college and getting your degree is the networking you get to do with your industry. For instance, a lot of universities have guest speakers (/ job recruiters) come in to speak to their seniors about what skills they need to join the industry. Many of my friends have gone on to work for these very companies because of this. Will there be anything like this in your program or is it just a purely educational experience?

kwsNI

Question

[doonesbury]

The idea that you propose is controversial, and potentially disturbing to the entrenched university/degree program - especially considering the billions that these programs earn based on the concept that the "magic paper" only available through degreed universities is the only qualification for intellegence and competence.

A) Where would you like to see this program move towards, in relation to universities;
B) Do you plan on a "pay" version, for people who can actually afford to pay?
C) The qualifications (and I took a *real* good look at them, I really want to go!) are a bit unusual - in that they require SAT scores. I miss by 50 points, but isn't that exactly the attitude that you're trying to escape - that you need a standardized test to determine intellegence, that you need cash to determine eligibility? Or am I reading too much into the program?

Doones

Re:Question

[Trombone8vb]

In reply to doonesbury:
The idea of a school that does not offer a degree is not new. In music, the Peabody Conservatory does not offer a degree, but a certificate of attendance. All tution and board is taken care of by the school.

For Phillip:
The requirements for Ars Digita U. are a little unique in requiring a bachelors degree. If the idea is to provide a first class education to those who are unable to aquire it, doesn't requiring a degree immediately exclude many people? Like the Peabody Conservatory does with music auditions, how about just picking the best people for the school? Come up with your own test to determine the skills necessary, instead of relying on degrees or even the SAT. Unless you fell that performance on SATs reflects performance in CS.

Re:Question

[bolthole]

C) The qualifications (and I took a *real* good look at them, I really want to go!)
are a bit unusual - in that they require SAT scores. I miss by 50 points, but isn't that
exactly the attitude that you're trying to escape - that you need a standardized test
to determine intellegence, that you need cash to determine eligibility? Or am I
reading too much into the program?

I didn't see anything like "lets give everyone a university education".

Presumably, he uses the SATs, because it is a SPECIFICALLY TASKED TEST. It is a test supposedly designed to demonstrate how someone's mental skills measure up to the demands of college.

The fact that many colleges are no mental challege at all, doesnt mean that the test itself is invalid. And it even gets usedfor other things. Like one of the three ways you can get admitted to MENSA.

As a comment on sysadmins in general:
You can have someone who went to a "teach yourself Novell/MCSE/whatever" course, and passed the test. They finally managed to make something stick in their head. But if they dont have a high degree of native intelligence, they will never make a top-notch sysadmin.

SO, one reason Phil could be doing this, is to ensure that people going around with a "I passed through ArsDigica" aren't going to be in the former set. It would look bad on his institution.

No offense meant to you personally. They had to draw the line somewhere. And you could always retake the SAT :-)

Re:Question

[gargle]

The qualifications (and I took a *real* good look at them, I really want to go!) are a bit unusual - in that they require SAT scores. I miss by 50 points, but isn't that exactly the attitude that you're trying to escape - that you need a standardized test to determine intellegence, that you need cash to determine eligibility? Or am I reading too much into the program?

Yes,it's very problematic I think. It's one thing to require SAT and GRE scores, it's another to set hard SAT and GRE score thresholds (1400 for SAT, 2100 for GRE).

No college that I know of has hard SAT and GRE thresholds. In fact, (the last I checked) MIT's EECS department doesn't even require GRE scores for their Masters program.

====

Re:Question

[King Babar]

No college that I know of has hard SAT and GRE thresholds. In fact, (the last I checked) MIT's EECS department doesn't even require GRE scores for their Masters program.

Well, not many colleges may advertise hard thresholds, but actual practice can run very close to this. I do know of one Psychology program (at the University of Oregon) advertises the use of a linear discriminant based on GRE scores and GPA to do the "first pass" at graduate student applications. The theory behind this, which is due primarily to Robyn Dawes is reasonably clear: you set your threshold at a level slightly below the one where you have never, ever seen a successful graduate student in your program so that you don't unrealistically raise anybody's hopes. (And this includes wishful thinking among faculty members, too: you should definitely think twice before you accept a grad student whose chances of success, going from the previous record, are questionable at very best.

In this case, I have no idea how Greenspun U. is setting their threshold, but given the kind of intellectual energy they're looking for, I've seen many worse plans...

Changing face of the web

[revscat]

You appear to be one of the early "movers and shakers" on the web, having dealth with web technologies (client- and server-side) since almost the beginning. During the early days of the web, there was a palpable sense that imminent and vast changes were about to take place; social orders would be shaken, the nation-state would collapse, and a new economic order would arise. Now, almost ten years later, reality has brought most of those idealistic visions down to earth. What potential do you still see for the web, especially as it regards democracy, freedom, and other non-economic issues?

-Rev.

Are any Open Source databases production ready?

[DuBois]

Philip:

I've read "Philip and Alex's Guide..." and hoped to implement your kind of website on my own server. But then I noted that Oracle requires thousands of dollars of licensing fees.

Have you used any of the Open Source databases like MySQL or Postgres enough to recommend one of them for a light-usage site?

Or perhaps none of the Open Source databases are yet ready for production use?

Re:Are any Open Source databases production ready?

[pmcneill]

Go on freshmeat and look for ACS/pg. Some people have ported the ACS to PostgreSQL.

Re:Are any Open Source databases production ready?

[Jordan Graf]

Have you used any of the Open Source databases like MySQL

There are multiple problems with the above statement. MySQL is neither free as in speech nor as in beer. Read their license for yourself. I have never understood why in a community where the nuances of a license are so critically important, mySQL seems to get a free pass.

The other problem is that mySQL does not have transaction support, and so calling it a database at all is a stretch at best. mySQL is a filesystem that uses SQL as a query language. Certainly this is useful, but comparing it to relational databases is dishonest. Of course mySQL is fast: It makes no attempt to ensure transaction semantics.

One could understand the community's attitude towards mySQL if no truly open source alternative existed, but PostgreSQL is both open source, and a "real" database.

Re:Are any Open Source databases production ready?

[DuBois]

Hmmmm... I did go to freshmeat.net and found the following in one of the ACS/pg fora:

"Of course, Oracle can run circles around Postgres, which suffers from pathological brainlock in some cases, but not nearly as often as you might expect and folks are working on improving performance."

I also note that ACS/pg is really waiting for PostgreSQL 7.0, which is still in early beta.

Re:Are any Open Source databases production ready?

[DuBois]

Pardon my ignorance.

I guess I should have checked out mySQL a bit further. I compiled it on an Alpha server and it appears to work. I didn't look at the license. My bad.

A colleague says that he uses mySQL to back his database-driven sites, so I (wrongly) concluded mySQL would be appropriate.

Better do my homework before blabbing on /.

Re:Are any Open Source databases production ready?

[bolthole]

Go read the mySQL FAQ. There is an explicit comparison to postgres.
section 22.2

Summary: If it outperforms Postgres by "an order of magnitude" , then who the hell cares if mySQL doesn't fit your definition of a "real" database?

As they point out, for many many things, transactions are only 'needed' for lazy programmers. And adding transaction overhead when you dont need it, slows things down.

Since there are multiple transactional databases, they chose to go for speed instead.

Re:Are any Open Source databases production ready?

[Otterley]

What the hell are you talking about? Transactions and row-level locking are *absolutely* needed for high availability and performance. Without transactions, there's no way to ensure that your data is really there on disk (MySQL has no such guarantees, which makes it nearly impossible to do replication). Without row-level locking, you cannot have a high concurrent insert/update rate, because all pending commits are forced to block.

Recently Nullsoft switched from MySQL to Oracle for precisely this reason, and the Shoutcast directory insert/select performance was estimated at a tenfold increase. My company is making the same move in short order.

Re:Are any Open Source databases production ready?

[bolthole]

I'd be absolutely terrified to use any software written by someone who believed the above. Transactions are absolutely crucial if you've got multiple processes/threads simultaneously accessing and writing to the database. This tends to be a common scenario for a database sitting behind a website.

Sigh.
Have you READ the mySQL architecture documents? I suspect not. You just wrote it off without investigating it. [ Actually, i did too, until recently].

mySQL allegedly does IMPLICIT row-level locking. It explicitly is a multi-threaded database. It has a lot of implicit atomic operations. Here, I'll make it easy for you:

[I'd give a direct link,but I dont want to slashdot the already busy mirrors]

Go to

http://www.mysql.com/mirrors.html

pick the one closest to you.Click the HUGE "documentation" graphic.

Click on the very first link:
"MySQL 3.23 Reference Manual (One page per chapter with index)."

I sugest you read the full section 1, to try to shed some of your bias.

Then read seciton 5.4.3, which explicitly addresses the question, "Why does MySQL not support transactions?'"

Re:Are any Open Source databases production ready?

[bolthole]

I probably should have replied to YOUR article, not the AC one. So, here's a reply to tickle your "user posting history" reply flags.

[That's how I know to check back on replies to MY postings, anyways ;-)]

Please check my reply to the stubborn AC with this same subject.

Or, just comment on mySQL FAQ section 5.4.3, in reply to this article.

Wealth and Merit

[Sebbo]

I was very impressed on photo.net with your welfare reform essay, and particularly taken by your thesis that America's domestic aid policy is primarily driven by a sour and puritanical terror of giving money to those who might not deserve it.

I was therefore surprised to find your elaborate dissection of how Bill Gates doesn't deserve his money.

Of course he doesn't deserve his money! No economy has ever managed to allocate wealth by merit! But, by losing sleep over that fact, aren't you participating in something very like the nosiness you elsewhere deplore?

Re:Wealth and Merit

[mbaker]

Of course what one considers merit is relative.
Obviously you are speaking in a strictly moral or physical achievement sense; Bill Gates has not physically himself earned his income, nor has he come by it through playing fair.

But of course his actions have earned him his money, regardless of the more moral merit that you're looking for.

It's a matter of predatory economics. You can be a large fat herd animal, or a lithe hunter. While the herd animal spends its days grazing and getting fatter, the hunter stalks the weakest of the prey, and profits from the large amount of calories the herd animal has "earned."
Certainly the hunter has "earned" his calories, even though he doesn't spend his days grazing.

And of course the species that thrives the most is the one that can successfuly survive and reproduce the most effectively.

Of course predatory economics isn't just or fair, and doesn't fit well into a belief system of equality. For certainly if there is a top of the food chain of business, there has to be a lot of people being fed upon.

Re:Wealth and Merit

[Kragen Sitaker]

One of the points Philip makes in his page about how Bill got rich is that it had a great deal to do with who his parents were --- not that there aren't people with richer parents who are poorer today.

Rennisance man vs. Internet man

[genki]

I notice in the subject that you are described as "Rennisance man" and "Internet man". However, I think that there is a big difference between the two - "Rennisance man" is about having expertiese in everything, where "Internet man" is about having a little knowledge about everything. The internet is about having so much information that you can't possibly be an expert in it all, and so you have to just get a little information. Do you think that a "Rennisance man" is possible in the age of the internet?

---------------------------------

Re:Rennisance man vs. Internet man

[mbaker]

Technically speaking, a Renaissance man is an individual with a diverse intellectual interests.
Such as Leonardo da Vinci, who was interested in painting, engineering, philosophy, ...
It doesn't mean the individual must know everything, but rather they have a truly meaningful interest and understanding of many fields.

Education and the Poor

[Q-bert][]

Currently most people remain poor because of lack of a good degree from a top school (among a bunch of other things unimportant to this question). Your online University will be giving away for free the knowledge of a good degree from a top school. Do think the Internet can play a part in leveling the field by allowing anyone who wants to receive a good education (good as in Ivy League)?

(if anyone gets what i'm saying and can phrase it better, PLEASE DO SO!)

Re:Education and the Poor

[Petrarch]

I have been using the Internet since pre-Netscape days. Here are my views.

• Currently most people remain poor because of lack of a good degree from a top school To some degree this is true.
• Your online University will be giving away for free the knowledge of a good degree from a top school Six years ago this is exactly what the internet was. When Mosaic came out and people really started publishing things online the whole web became an online University. Unfortunatly it did not stay that way.
• Do think the Internet can play a part in leveling the field by allowing anyone who wants to receive a good education An education is what you make out of it. It will take time but good learning resources, even at a post secondary level will one day be online in all fields of study. You will just have to wait for them, or make them yourself.

A question...

[jd]

At what point do the pressures of "recognition" start to detract from what you're doing, or from the quality of your life?

(In recent days, there was the sad announcement of Philip Katz' untimely demise, through addiction, and more than a few famous figures have ended up mentally, emotionally and/or physically destroyed through the combined addiction and stress of that fame.)

No free lunch

[roman_mir]

Let me put it this way:
There can not be free lunch. Of-course you get what you pay for. OSS community funds this thing? That's great.

I am on a com-sci program at the university of Toronto, it's a tough program. We have courses that actually DO TAKE up to 4 hours a day for 4-5 days and there many courses at the same time. Very intensive, and this lasts for 3-4 years because you must take up to 21 credits (1 credit = 2 half courses (1 semester) or = 1 full course(2 semesters). Now how do you expect people to learn and remember and be able to apply in course work all the material that is done by other universities?
On the other hand, if you cut down on the material, should you call it a University or a college?
I SUGGEST that you in fact do CUT DOWN on the material, and make yourself a college and concentrate more on the practical side of the material instead of trying to be something you can not be anyway - a full time university. You will be MORE USEFULL to many people if you were a college that taught some specialty programs for free. Otherwise you may even kill your students, and still they will be behind other universities in their education and working materials. For god sakes, the Engineering students at UofT already have like 6 courses a day each one 2-3 hours for 5 days a week + lab work!

Re:No free lunch

[tomblackwell]

A good university will place their students under a crushing workload.

I don't hire people for what they know, or what they learned in university, or what projects they did. I hire them because they can stand an intense amount of pressure and learn new skills at the same time. "Easing off" on the students will make them less useful.

Remember, the facts learned in university are secondary. Most of what you learn won't be regularly used in the work world. It is more important that you understand how things work and that you not bail when the going gets tough.

Will the "University" be open or biased?

[Wee]

I certainly mean no denigration by this, but will this "University" be universal or will it teach only concepts that use Ars Digita's preferred architecture: AOLServer, Tcl and Oracle? For example, you mention that 40 hits per second exposes the limits of Perl/CGI/DBI (which might be a questionable statement in and of itself), but I've worked on teams that built stuff which very nicely handles hundreds of hits per second using Java servlets and MySQL (for only one example). Will this sort of thing be taught in addition to the stuff you guys prefer?

I just can't help but think that the University will be biased in some way. Certainly, it's biased towards rote memorization in applicants (a rather inflammatory earlier statement alluded that a score of at least 1400 on the SATs was a requirement for being bright), but will the technological course material follow? I know that there's an Ivy League ethos that surrounds many people and institutions, and it would be a shame if that same sentiment ruled out "less bright" technologies as well as people in this new University. (And for the record: I work with extremely smart people -- some of whom never graduated college -- who use none of what Ars Digita uses, so I may be a little biased myself... ;-)

Another thought just hit me: Couldn't this University been seen as a thinly veiled way to promote Ars Digita's technological choices? Honestly, I don't know many people that actually use Tcl or AOLServer to do much, especially in a production environment. If future gradutes of your program are well-schooled in using those products, wouldn't they necessarily think of these technologies first when doing future work? Won't they be biased? So can't this just be seen as an "Tcl/AOLServer Mill"?

Again, I don't mean any slight or to seem like a troll, but this whole thing sounds to me like it'll be as well-rounded as any MCSE learning might be.

-B

OO vs. SA?

[X]

I've noticed that Ars seems to stress RDBMS-centric development over OO-centric development. Even looking at your job openings section you stress database programming experience while not mentioning OO. I'm wondering how you compare OO analysis/design techniques vs. what I'll refer to as "traditional" RDBMs techniques like Structured Analsysis.

Do *you* ever suffer from burnout?

[timgriffin]

Given that your interests/tallents are so many and varied, how have you found the last several years of corporate CEO-dom? Inevitably there isn't time to do everything. What do you miss? What's most rewarding? What's most irksome about your responsibilities? What does the future hold for you?

Other big shots

[Anonymous Coward]

As a Engineering student not majoring in CompSci, but extremely interested in computers, I think I will be seriously considering ArsDigita after my stint at Columbia University is over.

But speaking of columbia fathom.com... My question to you is, does this attempt at putting an insane amount of currently unavailable information on the web a good thing. Currently, I don't exactly follow their profit model, but I have a feeling that they will release all sorts of digitized content for free, but for the whole kit and kaboodle they will charge. Perhaps for a correspondence degree or something.

Does this just increase the digital divide? Isn't the whole Ivy situation an educational divide in the first place? Am I working for evil? Is the hi-fi audio section of your web site a little absurd? (sorry about that last one...)

Thanks.

I am posting anonymously 'cause you know...

Why use Application Servers?

[Doug Dante]

Was the title of a thread in the dist-obj mailing list in which your writings were a serious topic of discussion.

While you support stable technology such as AOLServer with TCL scripting, under what circumstances would you consider a fancy XML, Java, 3 tiered, buzzword compliant solution such as Cocoon?

Trouble recruiting engineers?

[Yub]

Upon graduating college I tried (and failed) to get a job at ArsDigita. In today's supposedly tight employee market do you find the extra lengths you ask your job applicants to go to make it difficult for you to find engineers or does your hefty compensation package and geek-friendly environment make up for it?

Re:Trouble recruiting engineers?

[angelo]

Wow, I'd wager that completing that checklist would make you quite suited to work at ars digita. It would also make you a tool for AOLserver and tcl, two things that are somewhat outside the mainstream. I'm a PHP/apache, ASP/IIS person myself, depending on the project, and I cannot see the need for either tcl or AOLserver in the job market. More likely, I see a need for PERL, Apache, PHP, XML, SQL, and sundry other supporting technologies. Tcl is obviously a favourite to Phil, and as such colours things already.

Re:Trouble recruiting engineers?

[bolthole]

"extra lengths you ask your job applicants to go to" ?

Sheesh. The link you referenced barely counts as a skills test. (the "home study" page).
If someone cannot "pass" that, I wouldn't want them working for me. I'm glad to know that the other Phil doesn't, either.

The onloy catch I see, is intheir mission statement:
" ... work like a slave"

Re:Trouble recruiting engineers?

[Yub]

I guess it depends what you mean by "pass". I completed the problem sets... the ArsDigitans just weren't happy with the quality of my code. In my defense I didn't have much time to spend on making my code elegant and pretty.

As for "extra lengths", have you looked at the AD problem sets? They're quite time-consuming, much more so than the resume/interview it takes to get a job pretty much anywhere else.

Re:Trouble recruiting engineers?

[bolthole]

Oops. Okay, my mistake. I underestimated the problem sets,and didn't properly look at them before posting. There's quite a lot of work there.

Still, though: If someone is interested in working there, they will need to;

1. use they tools they want you to use

2. use them in the manner they want you to use them.

This is a much more practical way of doing so than finding out after a month that they dont like your work.

And you can do the problems sets at your own pace! So I find it odd that you said you "didn't have enough time" to make the code pretty. Was anyone pushing you to submit your work before a certain date?

durnit, if I didnt already just accept a job offer, I would probably be applying at arsdigica myself. sulk.

Re:Trouble recruiting engineers?

[Yub]

I agree that ArsDigita's system is better than the standard resume/interview process, which pretty much completely fails to weed out incompetent people. I'm just wondering if they are having any trouble hiring people because their process is so daunting.

The time constraint for me when doing the problem sets was that I had already started my job hunt and had offers from other companies that I had to reply to by a certain date. So I needed to get an answer from AD relatively quickly.

Opinion vs. Fact

[ryanr]

I read "Travels with Samantha" not too long ago when I ran across a link to it. As a result, I poked around photo.net a bit, and ended up buying a paper copy of "Phil and Alex's Guide to Web Publishing." Great book, recommended. Even though it's on the web, it reads better on paper, the book is nicely put together, nice heavy paper, and the photos look good (all stuff Phil will tell you, too. :) )

My question is this:

In most of your writing, you often put some statement out there as fact, when it is actually an opinion. In many cases, I can spot it as such, and just roll my eyes a bit if I happen to disagree. Are you aware that you do this, do you worry about it, or do you expect your readers to spot it and take it as an opinion? Or are you a typcial college professor whose opinion IS fact, and won't be told otherwise? :)

The reason I ask is that I do a little writing myself, and I find it a unnerving to put something in print that becomes more-or-less unchangeable. I.e. I just worry about being "wrong" either because I am plain wrong, or wasn't clear in my statements.

Why tight coupling to a RDBMS?

[kslee]

First of all, thanks a lot for Philip and Alex's Guide to Web Publishing and introducing Edward Tufte's excellect books.

My Question is:
What's the merit of tightly-coupled-to-Oracle architecture of acs(ars digita community system) as a web application platform? ZOPE is in my mind as the not-tightly-coupled-to-any-RDBMS web applicaton platform?

Some people came to ZOPE because they can not afford an Oracle(in my case, the prefernce of python to tcl played a lot).

Or any comment on the web application servers/platforms which does not have the honor of being commented upon in your web tools review is apprecitated GREATLY!


I know I have almost no chance of being moderated up. But please do nice to a question simillar to mine but written by a native English(or European language) writer.

Alternate way to do it

[RickyRay]

Despite the many things I learned while studying for my CS degree, nothing was ever the same as when I started working in the "real world." I've had the advantage of finding jobs that involved the entire process of researching the available technologies; doing formal design of the GUI, logic, and data; handling security issues; doing evaluations with potential customers to improve it before it ships; and so on. I learned more that way than I ever learned in school. Few grad research projects have that breadth, and undergrads barely have a glimpse of the big picture.
Would you consider doing your online university in a fashion where it is based more on participation in all facets of enterprise-level projects than on typical schoolwork?

Techno-social considerations

[jellicle]

The technical challenge of building an online community is less than half of the total work involved. Social considerations are tremendously important, and a change in one line of code can totally change the flavor and viability of a community. It is my suspicion that ArsDigita has not yet run into communities as challenging as Slashdot, that is, places where some percentage of the population is dedicated to destroying the place through denial of service attacks of various forms. The challenge is to enforce some level of responsibility without eliminating anonymity, without being called a censor, without tracking users like a stalker... Few if any online communities can be said to have gotten it entirely "right", but somehow the majority of real-world communities manage to have civil discourse at a reasonable level. This is really a sort of sociology problem - and hardly an easy one - which is instantiated in computer code. How would you solve these problems? Or, more precisely, how would you start to learn how to solve these problems?

And no, "Trial and error." is not an acceptable answer. :)

--
Michael Sims-michael at slashdot.org

Re:>> ! * ' ' #

[cyborg_monkey]

God damned! That is hilarious!

Keep up the great work!

(of course that was pure sarcasm)

your Lusenet message boards

[soygreen]

As a long-time user of the web/db discussion board at http://photo.net/wtr/, I've watched it degenerate from a useful resource into an ongoing flamewar against anyone who doesn't use AOLServer. Do you have any plans for how to improve the quality of content on your message boards and make them more self-moderating? Some of the features on Slashdot come to mind.

Re:What gave you the inspiration

[Rupert]

How can this be redundant? there isn't a higher-moderated post asking the same question that I can see.

Plus, I want to know the answer to this question. Please moderate it back up.

Irc classrooms

[Rainy]

I studied in ZDU (ziff-davis online university) and the biggest problem imho was that they used forums as a replacement for classroom. I think a much better replacement would be something similar to IRC. What do you think? Logs would make a good study guide for people who come by later.

Re:Irc classrooms

[LetterJ]

What is the biggest advantage of Internet-based education? It's not tied to location, right? When you're not tied by location, you can end up with people from across the world in the class which makes IRC impractical for most folks. Forums let anyone participate on their own time. I don't want to take a class and find that if I can't be up at 3:00 am to be online in IRC, I will only be able to be a passive participant reading what happens. Remember, there is life outside your timezone. There are also a host of other factors that make forums better. Ever try to "chat" when your dog decides to chew on your entertainment center? Or your child starts screaming and needs to be taken care of? If the class is based on forums, you can come back and you will not only not miss anything, but you can participate at any point in the logged discussion. On IRC, the discussion passes you by. Sure you can read the transcripts, but then you aren't really participating in the class, you're going to a digital library.

LetterJ

Competing Archetectures

[Moeses]

The archetecture that you use and recommend has withstood the test of time well. Seeing as you haven't adopted competing archetectures such as IBM Webspheres, what are your percieved limitations of other current 'enterprise class' web solutions and what are you looking for in the next generation of web archetectures that currently is not available?

Re:Competing Archetectures

[Moeses]

nevermind, I found my answer.

http://photo.net/wtr/application-servers.html

Accreditation

[Iam]

First off, let me just say that ArsDigita is a great idea and with the raising prices of CS studies, it could become very popular.

Your web site and some posts mention that accreditation might be a problem for certain employers. Couldn't students write equivalence tests to get the degree which their employers require? (ie- University with a similar curriculum could offer equivalence test) What do you think about ArsDigita University associating itself with a few accreditation organisation?

Iam

for the not-so-privileged

[noy]

You have done many great things, your photography and coding alone are astounding, but you had it rather lucky - its probably much easier to step up from MIT than it is from many other places...

How could/would/should someone who doesn't have all of these opperotunities teach themselves what they need for our digital age?

I know how much it peeves you that MIT is so economically hard to get to [this hits home for me, the EXACT and ONLY reason I am not at MIT now is the price], but not every university can afford hardware for kids to play with. Most elementary schools dont have any hardware or the ability to teach the math, or other skills, that our kids need to get ahead...

Did you have access to an education that helped shape and direct your future? If not, how did you get to do what you did? How would you recommend that others help themselves to where they can be self-supporting and have fun?

thanks

btw, I just got reading travels w/ Samantha for the second time, it was even better than the 1st... not only one of the best sites of '93-'94, but now as well...

Babes and/or Hunks

[quonsar]

Geez Phil - I have tried all of your advice but so far nothing. I had an almost naked picture of me on my website, as well as a cool David Siegel Killer Site Entrance Tunnel, and a domain named after me and still experience and incredible dearth of non-300 lb., non-unbaked-apple-pie-faced Pi-to-the-quadrillionth-decimal reciters have called or written. Perhaps these things only work with AOLServer? And say, if you still have that original Mach 3 razor from Eve's test drive, I wonder if you'd want to sell it?

======
"Rex unto my cleeb, and thou shalt have everlasting blort." - Zorp 3:16

Re: socialization

[carlos_benj]

"What's your thoughts on how to encourage socializing in a completely online forum? Many people perceive going to college to be, in part, to find friends and people of similar interest as well as to find professional contacts."

As one half of a parental team that successfully home educated three kids through high school, I think I can tackle this one.

Throughout our experience with our children we were often upbraided with the mantra, 'but what about socialization?' The fear being that our kids were somehow isolated from contact with their peers. What we found was that this perceived fear was a red herring and indicated that the questioner didn't like the fact that we were trying something different (that's gotta be bad, nobody else is doin' it). The reality of the situation was that socialization was minimized within the academic setting (to the benefit of actual learning) and took place outside of those academic boundaries quite nicely.

We involved ourselves with other families that were educating their own children and lasting friendships were forged. Even if we hadn't made an effort to cultivate outside activities, there was daily interaction with neighborhood kids and the other kids at church.

The bottom line is that ample opportunities exist for socialization outside of the classroom or lecture hall. Those that look to the collegiate life to supply them with socialization are often wasting their time and their/our money. If a person can't make friends now, going to college won't make them any more socially adept than going directly into the work force.

carlos

What is the next revolution?

[Bald Wookie]

Since its inception the web has progressed from the fringes of academia to the houses on Main Street, changing our lives along the way. I remember coming home after my first year of university and explaining to my family what the web was. Most of them hadn't heard of it yet and thought that I was crazy to sign up with an ISP. Within a year we all started seeing URLs in print and on TV. Before long the Internet (mainly the web) was getting better buzz than a latin pop star.

Fast forward just a few years. Now I don't go anywhere new without a printout from MapQuest. My phone books go straight into the trash, they are antiques now. About half of the things that I purchase are bought online. The web is my only news source (no, not just slashdot). Nearly all of my work is done over an Internet connection, making even my physical location moot. The growth of the web, even in just the last two years, has changed my life considerably. I would consider it a revolution.

So, what do you think is next? Is there still enough untapped potential in the Internet that it can drastically and unexpectedly change our lives yet again? If so, what kinds of things do you see driving that change and where do you see us heading? If not, what direction is the next technological revolution coming from?
-BW

Online Education and the Digital Divide

[Is0t0pe]

Traditional "meatspace" primary and secondary education institutions have long battled the problem of inequality. That is to say that students attending one school (traditionally urban) receive an overall inferior education to that of students attending smaller or private schools. This educational divide stems from myriad reasons, including over-crowding, under-funding, and inability to attract good teachers. Many measures have been taken to ameliorate the situation to limited success.

My question speaks to the potential parallels of these problems in online education. The most apparent of these is commonly known in the media as the "digital divide". At this time only roughly 50% of American households are currently online and the overwhelming majority of those households don't have broadband (cable, xDSL, etc.) Many educators claim that simple HTML is insufficient to provide quality education and that a very minimum some sort of voice technology in an interactive mode would be required to meet proper educational goals. Others claim a great deal of success with current technologies like message boards, email lists, and searchable online class materials.

Admittedly I am uninformed as to the mechanics that Ars Digita plans to use to reach its students and I am also aware that you have chosen to deal only with a highly selective group given overall global demographics (i.e. only post-baccalaureate candidates need apply). With all that said, I would like to ask how or if you plan on dealing with the digital divide. While this is intriguing in terms of online education, feel free to expound into others subject areas (the political process, consumerism, etc.).

Why bother...

[benenglish]

...with the online component of this plan?

You might be able to find 30 people for the meatspace program who possess the mental ability, the spiritual strength, and the necessarily high level of physical fitness required to get through the program. That is dependent, of course, on the applicants suffering from sufficient mental maladjustment that they would actually volunteer to have absolutely no life for a solid year. It's also dependent on whatever extraordinary support measures these folks can get, be it the support of their peers or from other sources (that, I hope, you are contemplating providing).

But for online folks? Fugedaboutit. It just won't happen. No one will be able to maintain that pace for that time while motivated only by their internal drives and the flickering images on a CRT.

My question, then, is why bother with the online component since it's clearly doomed to failure? Or, do you define success for the online component differently, e.g. if people drop in and out, taking only a bit here and a bit there - would that equal success in your eyes?

Re:What gave you the inspiration

[ryanr]

If I had to guess, I'd say it's because the question is answered here:
http://www.photo.net/wtr/dead-trees/ story.html

what's it like running a company?

[noy]

In travels with samantha, and many of your other musings you sound much like an ordinary grad student or CS/Comp E geek [a good thing, IMHO].

Has starting up your own succesful company and the daily activities associated with running it changed you? Or would you say the changes are more due to someone like eve ;->?

[this is a distinct separate question from my other post]

Security

[ryanr]

On the curriculum page, I only see the word security mentioned once, in relation to DB stuff.

One of the central problems with information security is that application developers don't know how to do secure programming. They aren't taught this in school, or really in any of the places to learn programming. Typically, they have to learn through pain, or from the places that teach security rather than programming.

Do you think that the little bit you've got on the curriculum now is sufficient, and if not, do you have plans to develop that further? If you want a real differentiating factor for your graduates, there's a good one.

problems with "regular" education

[claptrap]

Mr. Greenspun, having started on something as non-traditional as your school, I'm sure you have some thoughts on problems with the traditional forms of post-high-school education. Although I'm sure a lot of us are familiar with them (professors interested more in research than teaching, high student-to-equipment ratio, general network crowding and misuse, etc.) do you think these are capable of being remedied or will all education go the way of "learn-at-home" Internet-based means? Thanks for your thoughts.

Poor for want of a degree?

[jabber]

Hook, line and sinker! I heard the trolling motor over-head, but I decided to bite anyway.

Are you saying that if the poor had a prestigious degree, they would cease to be poor?

Reminds me of a little story/joke:

A very devoutly religious man went to church each morning, and prayed heartily: "Please Lord, let me win the Lottery."

The years went on, and the man's faith stayed steadfast, but the laws of economics drove him into poverty. He continued his daily payer though: "Please Lord! I am a faithful and humble servant. Please let me win the Lottery!"

Eventually, the man died of old age. He went to heaven and met God. He asked: "Lord, I prayed to you every day, I kept my faith and lived a good life. The only thing I ever asked for was that you would let me win the Lottery, but you never did. Why?"

And God said onto him: " I would have, but it was up to you to go and buy a ticket."

It's not exactly on track with your argument, but it's in the same spirit. An education does not assure wealth and success. One has to be motivated to succeed, and in the US (more than anywhere else), the desire to succeed and the willingness to work hard for one's success is all that is really required.

Some people get lucky, and win the Lottery. Others have doors unlocked for them with a Ivy-covered degree. But it is up to the individual to walk through the open door. A motivated person can break down a locked door, or crawl in through a window. (Who here hasn't padded their Resume early on??)

It's more about knowledge and skill than about 'proof of skill' that a degree is. The degree may get you in the door, but what you do inside is what keeps you there. A poor person who is willing to work hard, and can think on their feet, does not need to be poor for long.

As for the reason why poor people remain poor... IMHO, it is because they've come to believe that that is what they are, what they will always be, and worst of all, what they deserve to be.

For all his twisted thinking, Nietsche got this right: "Slave Mentality". People who think that 'the Man' is 'keeping them down', and who put the blame for their misfortune on the shoulders of someone other than themselves, will always and forever be poor. By not accepting responsibility for their own fate, the perpetually poor give control of their lives over to people in whose best interest it is to have a poor, unhappy and frightenned lower class.

The lower class exists because people do not realize that by getting off their welfare-subsidised ass (and I'm not talking about the 'down on their luck' poor, but the perpetually poor, welfare-breeding-welfare poor) they can only improve their situation.

The lack of education has little to do with it.

Re:Poor for want of a degree?

[mbaker]

If anything, this is more of a troll than the parent post.

You'll note that most institutions will cap future earning based upon education. Those with a higher level of formal education will almost always make more, doing the same thing, than an individual without a degree.

As for knowledge, this is a byproduct of education, whether formal or otherwise. Those that are poor, and live in poor environments, are statistically less capable of pulling themselves out of these environments, simply due to the inability to secure a meaningful higher education. It's hard to learn computer science, if you can't afford a computer, very much a formal degree in Computer Science. It's harder still to become an attorney, without formal education in law. This is true of any skilled labor, regardless of the amount of effort you put into it. If you are unable to secure resources, you are unable to educate yourself, very much have someone else educate you.

Poor people remain poor because of our broken predatory economic system. There will always be a much larger demand for janitors than there will be for CEOs of Microsoft. Continually, people that do less and less actual work themselves, and rather use the capital of others, make more than educators, construction workers, farmers, the poor malnurished people that made your clothes in another country, because it was cheaper to hire labor there.
For as long as there are a few rich people controlling the majority of wealth, there will be countless poor all over the country, and the world.

You can not just will yourself out of poverty.

Re:Poor for want of a degree?

[jabber]

True enough, but it does depend what 'poor' means.

My pseudo-troll was based on the single statement in the original post, which said, in effect, that poor people stay poor since they do not have a higher-ed degree.

Poor need not mean impoverished. The reasoning you present, that there is an upper-bound on earnings based on education, is circular. If you make the lack of an education part of the definition of being poor, then yeah, that is the difference between poor and rich. But nothing has been said.

An impoverished person CAN will themselves above the line of poverty. That is all I wanted to clarify. Poor is not poor due to lack of education. Poor (impoverished in the U.S. of A.) is a solvable condition. Takes hard work, luck, persistence, but not a higher-education degree.

Knowledge is not a by-product of education. It is the POINT OF IT. Anyone who is getting an education for any other reason (getting the degree that opens doors, for example) is doing it for the wrong reason.

That is it very difficult for the down-trodden to secure resources and exploit opportunities is a very true and unfortunate fact. We have established many institutions and systems to help. This is exactly the purpose of the United Negro and Native American College Funds; not to mention the great number of ethnically oriented scholarships that are available. Universities offer financial aid to students with lesser means, and there are many other options available (military and civil services for example). So, yes, it tougher to get going in life when you're poor, but it's not impossible.

As for our 'broken predatory' economic system; I'm not so sure I agree that it is. Are you proposing that benefits of being a member of society be divided equally, or based on need? We've seen that fail after causing countless millions of people pain for half a century. I prefer it here, having been there.

Here, I am rewarded based on merit, and my value to others is compensated reflecting my worth. There, my needs were met, and marginally at that, while some people where more equal than the rest of society. Do I think that the US system is perfect, far from it. Universal health care is a Good Thing IMO, and the concepts of HMOs and any sort of insurance (auto, life and especially health) and cancerous tumors feeding on American society. But, what is here is better than what is anywhere else; this is why people like myself keep coming here. We're willing to work hard, knowing that we will be compensated proportionally to our efforts.

It is only human nature to want MORE for one's self. You would not begrudge this to anyone, until you had to compete with them directly for finite resources. This 'broken predatory' economic system has provided us with the creature comforts necessary to allow us to speculate about improving it.

A fair and equitable economy is impossible due to human nature. There will always be a 'top-dog', and a hierarchy of 'underlings', and there is always going to be 'parasites'. The underlings with ambition, willing to work hard and take advantage of opportunities, will be given more opportunities, until they compete with the top-dog directly.

It is a good economic model that encourages competition (Capitalism), established checks and balances to prevent excessive exploitation of the lower by the higher (DoJ, anti-trust, law), and punishes parasitic abuse of the system (welfare is broken). The US has hit it pretty close.

As for the chasm between rich and poor, it's worse elsewhere than here. This system may be a 'broken predatory' one, but it's better than most by far. And education may make the difference between richer and poorer in relative proximity (a tax bracket or two), but not between rich and poor in economic extremes (poverty and gluttonous excess). Tis all.

Re:Poor for want of a degree?

[mbaker]

You stated that success was a factor of knowledge and ability.
This is specifically what the statement regarding the cap of wages depending on formal education is targeted at, and much was said.
Being poor, in the U.S., is lacking sufficient capital to live well, on your own.

Everything that you do to further yourself, can be converted into capital, and the return capital you can recieve from this action. Formal education is exactly this; an investment to increase returned capital.

The effects of being poor are much more significant than education, and being poor does not hinge solely on education, however education is yet another thing denied to the poor.

Education should not rely on grants and loans specifically targeted at certain racial or religous groups, nor is the limited support offered, capable of getting a poor individual through college. These ethnic and religous grants and loans also do not help poor white individuals.
Yes, there is aid, but not enough. Students are forced into taking out many loans, or are simply incapable of being presented as college material due to the misfortunes that they suffer as a side-effect of being poor.

I don't paticularly care whether or not you agree that a predatory economic system is doomed to subject countless individuals to poverty, lead to every market being divided up by giant conglomorates, or any of the other failings of capitalism, or any economic system that poses citizen against citizen. If you can sleep well at night knowing you support economic fuedalism, then that's entirely your business.

The U.S.S.R and China are also not exactly examples of equality based economics. I'm sorry that you were subjected to an even more corrupt and broken system than the U.S.'s. It's an unfortunate part of current life.

In the U.S. you are rewarded based upon the amount of capital you can possibly supply your master with, or upon the current supply/demand ratio of your skills. This is a system were a self-righteous and arrogant Perl programmer has a higher valuation than the individuals supplying you with food, or the people educating your children. A society where Britney Spears is worth more than the individuals that constructed your house. And throughout all of these, regardless of their paticular value, someone who is doing nothing at all, or very little, collects the majority of the return of even their efforts.

It would be wise to not equate human nature with your own personal ill-will. If you have some desire to be more important, or worth more than someone else, then label it as yourself. Certainly there is no shortage of those that share your somewhat short-sighted views.

There will always be a predatory nature to people's behaviorisms, for as long as it's encouraged. For as long as the BMW determines that yes, you are important, I'm sure there will be individuals, such as yourself, that think that they should somehow be entitled to a decent life, while someone else can't.

The U.S. model of economics lends itself to consolidation of corporations until the market is divided amongst a small number of large corporations. Pepsi (Frito Lay, Taco Bell, McDonald's, Pizza Hut, Pepsi Arena), Coke, Nike, Sony, Toshiba, RCA, Intel, AMD, Microsoft, IBM, AOL/TimeWarner, AT&T, so on and so on and so on.
This is a model of competition in its smallest possible form. Where the greatest amount of competition lies in how much of their production they can move to countries without strong civil rights and livable minimum wages.
It promotes parasitic behavior, through enticing people to control more and more capital, regardless of the practical nature (Bill Gates, Ted Turner, ...), and investors (often times giant corporations), all of whom do little or no work.

Re:Poor for want of a degree?

[mbaker]

I would just like to say that Pepsi doesn't own McDonald's. I was apparently too anxious to get it out there, and it landed in the Pepsi multinational conglomerate's holdings by accident.
I apologize for this stupidity.

Re:Poor for want of a degree?

[jabber]

First off, let me say again, without double-speak this time, that I think education is a great benefit. It offers huge advantages. That said, I don't think it's a requirement for living adequately. What we seem to be running into is semantincs. Some people perceive having cable TV as a necessity - this is a 'spoiled American' perception. Some people take great offense that a restaurant does not offer valet parking - this is just plain obscene. Some people want to heat their home AND afford food in the winter - this is my idea of adequate living.

Being poor, in the U.S., is lacking sufficient capital to live well, on your own.

The definition of living 'well' varies a lot. I still argue that a person with enough drive, willing to work hard, and advance on merit, can get all their necessities paid for, and still be able to afford some semblance of comfort. Of course, this does presume the bare minimum of creature comforts, food, shelter... Harldy acceptable by 'modern standards' eh?

Education should not rely on grants and loans specifically targeted at certain racial or religous groups, nor is the limited support offered, capable of getting a poor individual through college. These ethnic and religous grants and loans also do not help poor white individuals.

Agreed. And further more, I know a thing or two about this from personal experience. It's been my experience to go out and get myself a B.S., and subsequently an M.S. in CS, on my own, working full time, without the benefit of loans, grants or scholarships. I'm white, and my folks make/made just enough that I didn't qualify for financial aid - but all their income is tied up in a double mortgage, [sob-story snipped for brevity]... Needless to say, my attitude about hardships not being insurmountable comes from the fact that I did it.

It would be wise to not equate human nature with your own personal ill-will. [...] I'm sure there will be individuals, such as yourself, that think that they should somehow be entitled to a decent life, while someone else can't.

Now that was just uncalled for, especially in the context of what I just told you in the above paragraph. I worked my way up. I didn't grow up in a slumm, that's true, but *I* got what I have. Nobody handed me a thing, and I did it without going into debt. I expect a certain level of performance from my fellow man, that level being determined by my own ability. If *I* can do it, I feel no pity for someone who claims that they can not.

I came to the US with my parents when I was 10 years old. I am one of those 'damned immigrants' who comes here and 'steals American jobs'. I didn't 'steal' a thing. It was given to me because I work harder than most 'native' citizens who think that the world owes them something for having had the foresight to not ooze down their mother's thigh on the night of their conception.

I worked my ass off in parochial school (where I went because the nuns spoke Polish), and worked in crap jobs through high-school. I worked in increasingly better crap jobs while I put myself through a state University. Then I got a decent job, and worked my ass off there while I worked my ass off some more getting an MS at night courses at a 'prestigious University'.

So save your condescention until after you know where I'm coming from.

I agree with you, the world isn't fair. But, given your new information, accept the fact that this lack of fairness is not a terminal condition. Too many people are faced with this unfairness and throw up their arms and cry "Poor me! Nobody will give me a break! Won't someone PLEASE think of the children!! Boo-hoo!".

To which my response, having walked that path for quite some time now, is: If you spent as much energy trying to improve your life as you do bitching about how unfair the world is, you'd be happy by now.

The U.S. model of economics lends itself to consolidation of corporations until the market is divided amongst a small number of large corporations.

The term for this is 'oligopoly', and there's a real good economic reason for it. The limited competition of 3 to 7 players gets the biggest bang-for-the-buck in terms of economies of scale. It's cheapest to produce disposable goods, if only a handful of manufacturers are competing for raw resources and supply channels. And after all, that is what we Americans crave, isn't it? Disposable doo-hickies of all sorts? The Statue of Liberty should have a 'no user servicable parts inside' sticker on her butt.

As for investors who do no work at all, maybe. They do have to know a good investment from a money-pit though, or else they wouldn't be investors for long. They do something. They grease the wheels of the economy that keeps us both gainfully employed.

Re:Poor for want of a degree?

[omynous]

I am of the poor.

I've worked for many years and have gotten ahead by my own hard work. I am now very successful.

My parents had 6 children and raised them on less than 24K CDN/year. My dad worked on construction all his life, and now has only a wrecked body to
show for it. He cannot read, and will never benefit from any kind of education - a 60+ year old man has little need for that.

I am where I am today because of education, and the hard work I put into my educational experiences. I still strive to continue to learn new things - I've acquired a life-long habit. But that doesn't stop the niggling voice in the back of my head that tells me I am not worthy, that I am a sham. I know that the voice is a traitor - I've plenty to show it the error of its convictions. Yet, it still is there.

Knowing I've my own success to prod me on, and knowing that those same words echo through the heads of my parents and siblings, I understand that it isn't effort or desire that holds them back, but a self-sabotaging mental habit that society reinforces every day.

Education can help. It helped me. It isn't the final answer, but, it never, ever hurts.

If you think that there is no heavy hand of society upon the shoulders of these people, ask yourself this. Those of you who work in an office, you might have seen the cleaning staff who come by every afternoon/evening to empty your waste baskets. Do you know their names? Have you ever talked to them as people? Or are they just faceless automatons who, like machines, work silently, quietly, and never get in your way?

My cleaner's name is Mike. He's a nice guy. He remembers that I recently married and have a child on the way. He doesn't have any kids, but would like to have some someday, when he can afford it.

And he will likely be working poor all his life.

Shannon Mann.

Re:Poor for want of a degree?

[jabber]

You prove my point.

With your hard work and determination, you have succeeded. You have claimed your education (as I have - follow the first thread below my posting), and you have made a life.

Education was not denied to you due to your economic status. It was available, as were other successes - but it took a lot of hard work. Which was exactly my point.

You are in a position to better appreciate your success than somone who received an Ivy League education gratis. You have the depth of experience to educate those around you about the TRUE WORTH of an education, because you know first hand, the difference that an EARNED success makes.

And by the way, the girl that takes out my trash is named Rosa. Her father works in the next building over - also as a janitor. When I started for this company a few years ago, I (25 at the time) passed him (a man in his early 50's) in a hallway. He said "Excuse me Mister" (with a heavy foreign accent) and stepped aside to let me pass.
It felt as if I had been kicked in the teeth, to have a man who could easily be my Father, step out of my way. 'Mister' indeed... "No Sir! Excuse ME. Let me help you with that bucket. Thank you for what you do here."

Rosa takes classes in a local community college. She's trying to get a scholarship and transfer to a state University in the fall. Her father can not give her the money that this will involve, but he has given her the drive to succeed. Just like my father gave me, and your father gave you.

I am very proud of my success, I deserve all that I have achieved because of the work I've put in. But don't think for a second that I am somehow proud, or feel in any way superior, to anyone else; not to Rosa, not to her father, not to my father, and not to yours.

vignette

[passion]

you seem to be rather critical of Vignette's StoryServer.

http://www.photo.net/wtr/vignette.html
http://www.photo.net/wtr/vignette-old.ht ml

They seem to be a "markitecture" company. Marketing first, technology second. So the philosophy that the market will decide which is the better product seems to lead one to the conclusion that they should be headed for doom (I wish). Unfortunately, the people who know the technology aren't always the ones who are making the decisions.

We've seen this before with DOS vs. Mac, and VHS vs. Beta in the mid-80s. I'm a Darwinist myself, but I grow impatient with evolution, and the natural way isn't always the best.

Where do you see their destiny leading, and what kind of a future do other hyped-up cruddy products have?

Considerations for online vs brick and mortar ...

[zerodvyd]

Could you describe the online curricula? I'm highly interested in this, actually. Will there be source to download? Will there be exercises to follow along with? Will there be an open forum to voice concerns, questions, and otherwise communicate with members of the staff and other online 'students'?

It's redundant ...

[daviddennis]

because that question is answered on his site. Look for "the book behind the book" for details. In a word, though, several publishers were interested in his newest opus, and he picked the one that allowed him to publish it on the web.

He got that clout because, although his previous book was not a bestseller, it got stellar reviews and was becoming a bit of a "cult classic".

D

----

Your outlook on industry partnerships?

[petervessenes]

Phil, I own what is, to my knowledge, the third ACS based company in the world, ybos.net. We have a fairly aggressive growth plan, (more aggressive than furfly's for example), and I have a number of questions:

• What's Ars' outlook on industry partnerships going forward? We're too small still to do the projects you guys want, (million+/year) and I don't think we'll be there for at least a year or two. I believe that making partnerships, and building relationsips with companies like ybos is important for you as you go forward: more alternative service providers gain you mindshare in the same way that giving away a year of free training at Ars U does.
• How do you feel about ACS/Pg? Using Oracle is a major blow to doing smaller projects, obviously. Also, I know the state of Postgres two years ago, so I don't blame you for the switch to Oracle from Illustra, but do you have intention to backport to a more open database architecture, or 'bless' Ben Adida and co's work on the ACS/Pg? I think what appeals to me about ACS/Pg is not Postgres (rather obviously), but the more open nature of the development -- Ybos has begun releasing useful ACS modules to the public, and enhancing some slow-moving Ars ones, and it's a medium-level frustration that they'll never get rolled into your toolkit, or that we have to develop side by side. (for example, bryan che kindly lent us his data model early for the events module, but we developed about half a module under his data model before you released the newer module, and we scratched it and started over.) This leads to my final question:
• Do you have thoughts on the relative openness of the ACS development? Would you consider an 'inner circle' development model that would let confirmed developers check code in and out of the development releases? I think that you'd see some significant benefits. I ask about this rather than a 'true' open source system because I'm betting you'd say "no way" to an aggressively open model. I probably would, too.

Meanwhile, I hope you're well! Congratulations on the recent funding. I hope we're not far off.. : ).

ultimate goal?

[jclip]

It seems like Ars Digita U. is akin to those cram-all-of-premed-into-one-year programs offered by many fine universities for those who decide after college to pursue an MD. Your target audience is really nonengineers with a strong interest in learning software engineering and just enough classical computer science to get by. At the same time, you're presumably going to hire some ADU alumni to work side-by-side with classically-trained-and-degreed CS people. It's a brilliant tactic for recruiting low-cost talent. :)

But the idea has rekindled a thought I had long ago. Perhaps would the world be better off if undergraduate computer science programs were eliminated? It's a radical thought, but consider two things:

1. The core courses at most graduate CS programs rehash undergraduate material (algorithms, theory, OS, etc.) at a somewhat more rigorous level.
2. An undergraduate education in CS is very close to wothless for a software engineer, since any reasonably technical person can pick up most of the classical CS knowledge necessary from a copy of Sedgewick's Algorithms in C.

So, at least to my thinking (as the holder of a BA in CS), an undergrad CS degree serves only as a very basic credential, showing that the holder can program and probably can learn to be an effective engineer. The high value placed on the head of a CSBS only shows how insanely valuable an experienced engineer can become, rather than the intrinsic value of the degree itself.

So, what to do? My suggestion would be to start postgraduate software-engineering programs based on the law-school model. Use experienced engineers as teachers, read case studies, and use the Socratic method to force students to think like engineers. As an employer, I know that I would hire people trained in such a way in a minute, but there just isn't anything like that available in today's educational market.

So Phil, you're in the postgraduate education racket now. Do you see the rigorous Ars Digita U. program as a step towards more meaningful engineering credentials within the CS industry, or just as a way to convert liberal artists into billable hours?

MySQL Free? No way. (off topic)

[dragonfly_blue]

Really, good points. Greenspun recommends Oracle for some of the kinds of sites he builds, but it's a little bit pricey for some of us.

Although MySQL is certainly attractive on some levels, i.e. speed, light footprint, etc, their license is without question very commercially oriented, and definitely not free. I know some large sites (including Slashdot) use(d?) it, but those aren't the kind of sites Greenspun is talking about creating, IMHO.

Those reasons, coupled with the fact that MySQL is not really SQL compliant, and doesn't support transactions, forced me to do a little searching a few months ago.

PostgreSQL is a good alternative, but after checking around, we've decided to go with Borland Interbase 6.0, which is now Open Source. It's pretty slick, too, and not as slow as PostgreSQL (although it has trouble with many simultaneous connections.) If we can work threading support into Interbase 6.0 it will truly be an excellent option.

Sure, Oracle would be great, but let's face it; anybody who wants to go to a *free digital university* probably doesn't have that kind of cash.

open photos

[passion]

I also have an interest in photography. I am intending to get a slide scanner to read in the various notebooks of slides that I have shot over the years.

I want to display my work on the internet for all to see, but it makes me nervous that someone would take a copy of my work and use it for something that it was never intended for.

I notice that on your site, you've placed © on all your photos. (Would the GPL have some sort of logical fit here?) Shooting a photograph probably cost me a lot more time and money to place on the web than a chunk of code. I guess that I just want to maintain initial artist recognition of my work.

Open Source

[dragonfly_blue]

Mr. Greenspun uses quite a bit of spendy hardware/software... he develops with an MIT budget, not a free digital university budget.

What are you shooting now?

[HerrNewton]

I know this will likely get pushed aside by more net oriented questions, but what are you shooting for a body, lenses and film these days? I know, different tools for different occassions, but what is your most common setup?

----

open-source competitors to ACS?

[sethg]

What other open-source products are similar (i.e., solve similar problems) to the ArsDigita Community System? What are the strengths and weaknesses of those other products? What features or implementation tricks, if any, did the ACS borrow from those systems, and vice versa?
--
"But, Mulder, the new millennium doesn't begin until January 2001."

Elitest mentality...

[mbaker]

I don't blame you, per se, but it does seem that people view this as a revolution in the "right direction" for education. Really, though, this University seems to cater to a small group of people, that are not only intelligent, but already capable of having earned a meaningful degree at an educational institution. This group is made even smaller, by the need to repay loans after graduation from an acredited University.
So the lack of tuition is somewhat useless, as far as the large majority of even intelligent people is concerned.
You, of course, haven't stated that you intended your University to be non-exclusive, so I'm not attempting to say you're misleading. In fact, you made your elitest mentality clear several times, in the follow ups of the original Slashdot article.

My question, though, is do you feel that this sort of exclusiveness is a model that you would think others should follow, in their attempts of creating a tuition-free educational institution?
Shouldn't the point of a free education be to allow those that might not otherwise be able to attend an acredited institution, as well as those capable, to do so?
Which is more important, allowing a free education to those that chose another field, only to find that CS can now make them more money, or to liberate the masses from the shackles of predatory economics?

web as IBM 3270 terminal

[martinbeck]

I read your book, and you seem to have a very anti-PC attitude (where PC means Mac, Windows, or Linux box on a user's own desk). Why is this? There are clearly a lot of interesting end-user applications that require either lots of local cpu horsepower (video editing, games) or a concern about privacy (tax returns) that make them unsuitable for the web. Given the enormous number of cheap transistors you can put onto a desktop, why do you think that a return to mainframe style dumb terminals and huge servers is the best architecture for so many things?

Please, RTFM

[Once&FutureRocketman]

I have a friend who works for Arsdigita Corp which is a related organization but not the same as the university, and I have been looking at both the company and the university with some interest.

Anyway, the University supplies a generalize undergraduate CS program, not a votech education in particular tools. In fact, they don't teach any programming languages specifically. You have to pick up that stuff on your own.
Check out their cirriculum at the University homepage.
As for ruling out "less bright" people: They are giving their students, for free, a 4-year high level CS program in one year. Their students better be bloody bright. At that pace, they don't have time to slow down for the less-than-brilliant. I agree that SAT tests aren't a real indicator of intelligence, but I think they're using them just to make the first cut. Getting a 1400 should be no problem for the mutant-geniuses that they are trying to recruit.

Python

[slashdot-me]

During your lecture at Berkeley I remeber asking what you thought of python. You replied "there were better languages thirty years ago." Obviously you meant lisp, widely regarded as a practical and popular tool for designing web sites. :-)

So, what do you really think of python + zope?

Ryan

Would ArsDigita Be Right for Me?

[Anonymous Coward]

I am a soon-to-be-graduating senior with a degree in Archaeology from the University of Texas at Austin. My best SAT was 1420 (760 verbal/660 math). My transcript is somewhat confidence-inspiring (3.3 GPA)... When I finish this summer, I will have graduated after only six semesters.

Also, I have a solid knowledge of HTML and UNIX, and through a part-time job at the University, I am quickly learning (some) Perl, PHP, and SQL (check my first example Here. It's still a work in progress obviously...). I am not a trained programmer, although programming in some form is becoming more and more intriguing now that I have figured out the basic concepts (I need to mind all my ";" and "\n" and "{}", etc.)...

The small question is this: would I make an acceptable candidate? Would completing this program create a significant enough benefit for me vis-a-vis the very monastic time investment it requires?

Also, you give example URLs for useful websites built by students and colleages (ArfDigita.org, etc.) who have been trained similarly as the ArsDigita program... The majority of these sites are database-driven... Are there other examples? Are PHP/SQL websites the only useful result of a CS education? Do I really need a CS education to make database websites?

slashcode vs ACS/AOLserver/RDBMS

[kojak]

Love the book! Coffee table book idea definitely rocks.

You do a nice job of extolling the virtues of your ACS, especially since there is now an unencumbered version. Excluding things like the hosting offer you make in the book, would you like to discuss the relative merits of ACS vs slashcode?

Unencumbered version of ACS, ACS itself. Also you say (in the book) that you mirror to above.net, but it doesn't look that way from tracerouting photo.net - do you still do that? Finally, as a UK-type person, love the stand on tuition fees at MIT, not many people have the moral courage.

Thank you.

[Q-bert][]

Couldn't have responded better so such drivel myself. ;)

TCL?

[god]

Do you really see TCL as being wieldy enough for large-scale website construction?

Re: socialization

[Signal 11]

and indicated that the questioner didn't like the fact that we were trying something different (that's gotta be bad, nobody else is doin' it).

And this makes the question illegitmate? Stick to the issues, please, and stop stuffing words into other people's mouths - nobody ever said different was bad.

The bottom line is that ample opportunities exist for socialization outside of the classroom or lecture hall.

Well, I guess that's that then - nobody ever makes friends at school... because they're too busy going to school! I guess talking to the professor after class, or asking a cute guy/girl out, never happens. People never meet other people with similar ambitions and become friends. Nope, none of that happens in college.. that's not the real world! Instead, people go out and get a job.. and then don't work and socialize instead?!

Gimme a break.

What would you do differently?

[adamsc]

If you had to redesign ACS, what would you do differently? (Alternately, given that ArsDigita seems to be replacing some earlier modules, what was the design decision you regretted most?)
__

Web Designer? I don't think so.

[DirkDaring]

Philip is not a web designer. He is a content and application designer.

He knows /nothing/ about web design. He has yet to understand layout, color, balance, font and navigation in any website he has done. He can take great photographs, talk about open source, program perl yadda yadda yadda - but he can't design a website worth a lick. Web Design is much more than just throwing text and a few images onto a page then hyperlinking it until half the page turns blue.

Dirk
http://www.idleminds.org/~dirk/

Re:Web Designer? I don't think so.

[Bullschmidt]

As one who has taken his class, and will be working for ArsDigita, I must say, he IS a web designer. He has very specific views on web design. Not to speak for him, but his primary view is one simplicity. He aims to present what the user is looking for as easily as possible. He puts information up front. True, this may not be "artistic," but I don't see that word in the term web designer. He is not making design decisions haphazardly. He has VERY definate opinions. Just because he has a different view of how it should look, don't knock him.

Re: socialization

[sar-fu]

wow, where/when did you go to college?
Nobody talks to the professor after class anymore, they silently indict him/her for being a eurocentric fascist. Nobody asks out a cute guy/girl, they drink a bunch of kamikazies and "hook up"

Growing into the name University

[ahchem]

Your website mentions that "University" was attached to your institution's name with the hope that Ars Digita could grow into the name. What I would like to know is what specific ways do you envision growing into the name? What other programs do you plan to implement outside the realm of CS? Do you ever see ADU becoming a degree granting accredited University? And if so, how will you accomplish this, while maintaining your unique philosophy of education?

State of Usenet.

[cro]

In your writings you discuss Usenet and your own discussion forum software (LUSENET) extensively. I was just wondering where you think the state of collaborative messaging is going since Usenet is shrinking currently. I don't know how I would have made it in the IT business without Usenet, but I don't even post anymore because everytime I do I get 35 spam messages back. It always seemed to me that the strength of Usenet was in the fact that there was only one. Now there are 35 million discussion forums on the web out there and none of them talk to each other, or want to because they use the forums to generate repeat visits.

College Degree Required

[spell_caster]

The application at the "free college" says you must already have a 4 year degree to apply. I have 20 years in the industry, but no degree. I see the benefits of this course, but am not allowed to participate. Why?
PS My SAT scores are quite high, I am only lacking the degree. This question would also apply to people with 2 year degrees, as well as some dropouts.

Uptime and database technologies

[timbu2]

Phillip:

I have read a lot of your online material and I consider your advice to be the Rosetta stone in creating database driven web content.

What do you do to scale your web databases and keep the uptime near perfect.

What is your policy on upgrading OS'es, adding OS or database patches? What do you use for backup software? Are you using any special FS technology, replication or clustering solutions. What do you think of these technologies. Have you migrated to 64 bit OS and database? If not now, when?

Is HP still your platform of choice over Sun (Sparc/Solaris) and IBM (RS6000/AIX). Why or why not?

Thanks, I'll hang up and take my answer over the ether.

tim

Why the degree/SAT requirements?

[HenryFlower]

For something as non-traditional as Ars Digital University, why require a BS (any BS) and a certain SAT score?

Aren't some of the likely participants in such a program high school dropouts or college dropouts who have used self-study and self-initiative to get them where they need to go? Likely, don't they already own SICP and use it for self-study? Aren't they the people who already learned Oracle from the docs? Etc? Perhaps they scored reasonably high on their SATs but found university stultifying and boring? Perhaps they scored poorly on their SATs (poor test takers, perhaps) but have been highly successful in independent technology consulting.

Aren't these the types you want? Bright, highly motivated self-learners who could take advantage of a non-traditional approach to CS education? Or do you really want only those people who have already done well in traditional approaches (and why don't traditional CS schools already work well for them?)

Evolution of Universities

[LL]

Universities have an interesting pedigree, originating from the monastaries that taught reading/writing (not surprisingly intended to keep records of the church assets :-)) to libraries of learning (a major drawcard of the golden age of Arabian culture), to the Renaisance liberal college (Oxford, Royal Society of London, etc) and currently industrial scientific powerhouses driving the internet transformation (MIT, Stanford, etc).

Given that you see failings in the current system (as indicated by your desire to set up a private course), can you speculate on how you see the tertiary sector evolving. Perhaps you have some views on how private institutes or providers might foster the quarternary education sector (which can be broadly defined as post-post-graduate, professional life-long-learning, university of the third age, or adult free-thinking depending on the buzzword-du-jour or mental biases). Proto-examples I'm aware of vaguely heading this direction are University of Phoenix (US), Open University (UK/Europe), and Universitas21 (Austrasia).

In short, what do you believe the future holds for the next organised stage of research-intensive learning/teaching?

LL

Re:How do you expect this degree to be worth anyth

[tomblackwell]

A "secessful" (sic) university teaches people to think.

Successful graduates of Greenspun's course will know their stuff cold. I have complete faith in this from reading his (gigantic) site. The guy knows how to get things done, and he's smart enough to succeed.

"We (at least in the USA) are a credentialed society. That means we need to have proof of what you say and claim. Without that little piece of paper you really don't have a chance. "

I disagree. I hire regularly, and if I came across a graduate of Phil's program who had adequate communication skills, I'd snap them up in a minute. Credentials are helpful in determining how much pressure a person can take and what kind of workload they can survive. Anyone whose work or educational history can provide the same type of information (degree or not) is equally eligible for my jobs.

Note that this won't work at organizations where H.R. has stolen the reins and decides who gets hired without any real insight into the job and its requirements. Not getting a job at a place like this is a good thing.

Re: socialization

[carlos_benj]

"And this makes the question illegitmate? Stick to the issues, please, and stop stuffing words into other people's mouths - nobody ever said different was bad."

I may not have communicated that as well as I should have. It was obvious from the way the question was framed and the inflection of the speaker and the other objections that they raised that this was not merely a request for information, but a way to legitimize their own belief that we were somehow harming our children (many of them coming right out and saying as much).

And people in fact do say 'different is bad' all the time.

"Well, I guess that's that then - nobody ever makes friends at school... because they're too busy going to school!"

Talk about stuffing words into other peoples mouths....

It doesn't necessarily follow that because there are opportunities outside of class that nobody, ever makes friends at school. That's your inference rather than my implication. You seem to want to hold me to a standard you're not willing to accept yourself. Sticking to the issues is fine, but you don't explain why my 'bottom line' statement is wrong. You just take exception to it. It seems to me that you are the one taking an either or stance on this issue. Mine was not the absolute statement you are making it out to be.

"I guess talking to the professor after class, or asking a cute guy/girl out, never happens. People never meet other people with similar ambitions and become friends. Nope, none of that happens in college.. that's not the real world! Instead, people go out and get a job.. and then don't work and socialize instead?!"

All I said was that there are ample opportunities outside of the academic system to socialize. I went on to say that someone who can't or won't avail themselves of opportunities in one venue will likely find themselves unable to do so in the other.

It may be that over the last 20 years I've had the socialization issue waved in my face so often that I'm a little quick on the draw, but I certainly don't see why my words would have elicited this response.

carlos

IPOs

[eison]

Like many others, your company is planning on doing an IPO in order to satisfy employee's expectation of stock options. It seems to me that being public (and therefore accountable to stockholders) is contrary to the way you presently run ArsDigita - open sourcing things you could sell, for example, could be construed as hurting their investment by not capitalizing on a potential revenue stream. How do you intend to resolve this conflict? Why not avoid going public in order to run the company as you wish?

In general, how can public corporations avoid the all too common quarterly earnings obsession and do important things that may not reflect well on the bottom line? Is there a better way to still satisfy employees without dealing with the problems from being publicly traded?

Data Modeling Tools

[Tassach]

Dr. Greenspun,

Given that the ArsDigita Community System is so heavily database-driven, I was wondering what tools you use for data modeling and schema management.

What is your opinion of modeling tools like Sybase's PowerDesigner and Platinum's ERwin? What kinds of tools do you think are necessary to facilitate the development of highly portable, vender independent database designs? Finally, what is your opinion of UML and to what extent does ArsDigita use it?

"The axiom 'An honest man has nothing to fear from the police'

how open source is the source

[Mr_Ono]

perhaps this is a stupid question, but i can not find any information concerning the type of open source that exists with your arsdigita software.

Are you just saying that it is open source for now with the option to make it closed at some point in the future or did you get some sort of gnu thing going?

I can see your company growing very powerful in the future and if you decided at some point to increase the level of functionality of your code and then decided to go close source that would be a source of income, right?

Re:How do you expect this degree to be worth anyth

[gcapell]

I think our mob would be quite happy to hire all of the survivors of this course that seem to be easy to get along with.

Re:How do you expect this degree to be worth anyth

[muwahaha]

Come on, you don't need the degree you get from
a computer science education, you need the
education. Any potential employer can get a sense
for how much you know from a short interview with
you. The piece of paper is not going to count for
much.

I have friends with excellent hi-tech jobs who
dropped out of Uni.

Alex.

From a Student..

[_marshall]

Hi,

I am a student currently enrolled as a senior in high school in a small town that I'm sure no one has ever heard of. As I prepare for college, I begin to wonder where my life will be headed in the next 5-10 years, and how the college that I choose will have an immediate affect on that course. An "online college" is one that I've dreamed about for years, and would love to participate in, but it seems that a "true" employer would look at a degree from such a college and laugh. Is there room for more online colleges in our society, or do you personally think that it will take more time for people to cope with the realities of the Internet-era?

Also, an online college seems like something very wonderful to me as a high school student, but your program only allows graduate students to attend. Is there a specific reason for this?

Thanks for your time.

--
Homer: "No beer, No TV make Homer something something";
Marge: "Go crazy?";
Homer: "Don't mind if I do!"

Money, VCs and IPOs

[Edd]

Phil, Arsdigita's slogan was once "we don't have venture capital, we have money". You now seem to have both (in plentiful abundance), does this mean you are going down the IPO road, and if so, can we buy into it (gotta do something with all that cash we made shorting Microsoft shares, right?)

--
...in fact msot serious hacking is done by UNIX, and UNIX based systems such as Linux or C++...

Too big to be interesting?

[rho]

The ACS is a tour de force of web application design, to be sure, but as specified (Solaris, Oracle, AOLserver, massive redundancy, other tools), it makes it quite unatainable for small businesses to compete. Small businesses, IMHO, are who could benefit from a web presence the most, as compared to IPO-crazed dot-commers who push out a business plan first, and develop a strategy second.

Do you intend to target just the big-spenders, or are you hopeful that technology will drive down the costs to a point where smaller businesses can participate?

Looked at another way, will small businesses be looking at ACS for their web service needs when they get their MMDS hookup, or will they be looking at other solutions that don't require an Oracle DBA to get off the ground? Wouldn't that market segment (small business) be more interesting than big corporate clients?

Thanks for your work, BTW. You have already taught me more than 4 years of college at only the cost of buying your book and reading your site.

What's next for Philip Greenspun?

[jeddz]

Philip Greenspun has done a lot. He's:

• graduated from MIT, probably THE most prestigious technical university in the world
• taught at that very university (sometimes even refunding tuition)
• created an influential open-source toolkit for creating DB-backed Web sites
• written one of the first widely-publicized and published books on the topic of DB-backed Web sites
• and did so for free on the Web
• started an enterprise open-source software company
• created a unique kind of educational program to teach computer science
• and was companion to at least two great dogs

What's left for Philip Greenspun to do? What's next? What can we expect this wunderkind turned pundit to come up with next? I mean, besides the obvious of assuring the ADU is successful, AD goes public, etc. How will Philip Greenspun continue this revolution that he helped start?

--jeddz

White backgrounds considered as harmful

[doom]

This a pretty simple question about web design: what is it about white backgrounds? Why does everyone seem to think that the best color scheme for a web page is to match a bleached slice of a dead tree with carbon particles stuck to it?

My point is simple: computer screens aren't really much like paper, and white backgrounds emit an awful lot of light that makes the display much more annoying to look at than an old-fashioned terminal used to be.

I agree with nearly everything you say about web design in "Philip and Alex's" guide, except for this one point. The need for high contrast I can understand, but what's wrong with achieving this with a light-on-dark scheme? There's at least one place where you sneer at "trendy" web sites with black backgrounds, but you don't explain why.

The answer is obvious:

[JudgePagLIVR]

find one of the 300lb, pie-faced girls and marry her. I've seen you in your skivvies, you could do worse.

If there are any 300 lb pie faced girls out there looking for a date, please feel free to drop me a note.

Your class and company... ethical concerns

[alexhmit01]

I am an undergrad at MIT in CSE, and several of my friends are currently in your class. More than one is interested in working for your company, and it is widely known through Course 6 (the EECS department) that someone doing well in your class will be automatically made an offer if they apply for a job at your company.

As a student, I have been widely critical of MIT's undergrad education for being intentionally non-practical, although things like 6.170 (Software Engineering Lab) switching from Clu to Java is an improvement.

As a result, I should be thrilled with a course like yours being available, as it takes computer science ideas and uses a real world application.

However, the fact that your class is also a recruiting ground has me worried. By training people that will work for you and competitors, you seem to remove some of that concern, as you are training all the people interested in this field. However, I can't help but consider their to be an ethical question of teaching a class as a recruitment in. Things that I have heard include the completition of the first three problem sets satisfactorily being an in for a job, and/or the completion of the course with a B or better doing so has me worried.

I wonder, how do you separate your academic ethics from your business decisions? Do you see an ethical problem of teaching at MIT and recruiting your own students?

Alex

Why is enterance based on SATs?

[searleb]

I have one question: Why is entry for the school based on SAT scores?

Personally, I am very interested in Ars Digita. I am graduating from Reed College next year with a degree in chemistry. When I leave school I plan on continuing my schooling, not in chemistry, but in a somewhat polar discipline: biomedical engineering. Although my work experience has been in engineering, I am clearly a chemist by education. This will present an obvious problem when I apply to graduate schools. Quick and dirty education in the closely related field, computer science, would be entirely beneficial to me.

Four years ago I took the SATs. Four years ago I was also much less focused and cared less about testing well. Since then I have learned to rapidly read, to write, and as a whole, I have honed my work ethic. Next semester I write an equivilant to a graduate school thesis. Next year I will have a degree from arguably the most difficult undergraduate school in America.

My resume doesn't even include things that I did in high school. Why should enterance to your school be based on an exam I took when I was seventeen? I scored 1390 then, with 610 verbal and 790 math. I won't be allowed to apply to your school because of the 1400 point cap.

I think you would be better off asking for GRE test scores, as you are effectively a graduate school. You could alternatively drop the 1400 point cap and pay more attention to essays, recommendations and transcripts.

-Brian Searle

Tools, or concepts?

[(nil)]

Many of your educational missives seem to focus on the tools you use. AOLserver and TCL work, and so do alternatives.

On the other hand, the ArsDigita University *seems* to be promoting more of a concepts-based learning environment in addition to teaching the tools of the (your) trade.

I know that both skills with tools and skill with theory are both desirable; which would you sacrifice, had you have to make the choice? I suspect you'd rather have a theoretical type that needed to brush up on the tools than vice versa, but the content of your pages makes me occasionally question this conclusion. Does this situation come up in your own hiring practices?

-(())

ArsDigita and new technology

[Dacta]

I've read your book (online), and I found it very enlightening and useful.

I was wondering to what extent you keep it up to date? Some of the information in it seems to be somewhat dated, and because of that it maybe somewhat misleading.

For instance, while here on Slashdot we may mostly agree with you that Windows NT is a bad platform to host websites on, it does seem that some companies are doing it fairly successfully now, and your book does not seem to reflect that.

Your book seems to say "To build a good website, use Solaris or HP/UX, Oracle, AOLServer, get good people and you'll be okay". While not many people will argue with that statement, do you think you are neglecting other technologies?

Should we read you book more as a "This is how we build websites and it works for us" rather than a "This is how you should build websites" kind of thing?

I also just noticed (just before I submitted this question) that you now have mod_aolserver for Apache. What prompted this being written? Was it requests by clients, or was it contributed by non-ArsDigita employees?

Vetting the acolytes- new alembic of knowledge

[lmflynn]

Philip, one would hope the criteria of enrollment is based on a qualitative overview as well as a quantitative assessment of applicants. To be direct, if my SAT scores pass, and the depth of my self-taught field-specific knowledge impresses your admissions screeners, does my lack of an undergraduate degree necessarily preclude acceptance? College may not have offered what I needed as an adolescent undergrad, but my existance seems best currently defined as a limitless appetite for the digital DNA of humankind's future.

Wah! Please moderate this question down!

[Anonymous Shepherd]

Nothing personal against slashdot-terminal, but I don't want an answer to this kind of question...

...because they think it's a benefit and will lead them to a good job...

Very clearly, in such a hot market and economy, a degree is not necessary to get a good job, when all it takes is skill, effort, ability, and some decent discipline.

Rather, a degree is just a certification that there is some measure of all of the above in the certified/decorated student.

...employers that have or would be willing to accept a graduate of your university...

I'd think Greenspun, obviously would. Also, at this point in the game, anyone who can spot talent, ability, or is even looking for a warm body to code, would take someone who can handle the curricula. It's the person, almost more than the skills, because skills can be honed, taught, and managed. People are much harder to manipulate.

Do you think the numbers will increase?

Of course, this is dependent on the quality of the students who go into the course, and how they handle the course, and not really a function of the course itself except to weed out those people who can handle it, vs those who cant.

But really, I'd rather hear Greenspun talk about how he wants to change education, or why he's doing it when no one else(with more money, resources, etc) is tackling it, what can be done for those who *don't* qualify for his program, and how to get those left out of the system(female, black/hispanic, whatever) integrated into it, or if that is even a problem, etc.

But, of course, if moderators really want to see this question asked of Greenspun... go ahead and ignore me.

-AS

Re:Wah! Please moderate this question down!

[Wah]

I would if I could, but I don't have mod points today.;)
--

Which is more important, education or testing?

[Anonymous Coward]

I propose that improving testing is more important now than improving education, and I'd like your reaction (also explaining how you are apportioning your resources with respect to this), after I explain a little more:

The gist of my notion is that with recognized objective tests, the end result is decoupled from ideas about how to get there. Once a portfolio of test results becomes anywhere near as good a ticket to employment as an MIT BSCS, all kinds of approaches to getting there will come out of the woodwork. Cramming courses, seminars, books, videos, you name it -- we've already seen this with respect to current certification tests for programs much less ambitious than yours.

Obviously different kinds of tests are required for assaying factual knowledge, determining functional competencies, and evaluating other factors that go into a grade (pulchritude, fragrance [humor break]). Some require competent human judgement and some can be automated. But I believe focusing on how a person can get credentials representing what s/he knows and can do would serve everyone better than any new twist on what happens before the testing.

There are lots of ways of learning things (e.g., I have ~80k hrs OJT, besides a few at MIT). If truly meaningful test result portfolios could be earned through testing, my next hope would be for an open source movement in educational resources such as DVDs of the best lecturers, on-line support materials collaboratively enchanced, discussion groups, inner city community self-help projects participating, etc., etc.

Finally, I would hope that the government would see universal free education as having new possibilities. The most serious obstacle is not funding (because digital copying is so cheap), but that digital copying is so cheap. I.e., a lot of vested interests in charging per textbook etc. would be threatened. (Imagine top-notch coursewares from cheapbytes, or Red Hat, or Debian). I don't think the need for physical MITs or other institutions will go away, but I think I'd rather have a DVD of the best lecturer in the country than sit in a mini-theater with 100 other undergraduates listening to an Assistant Prof's TA going through the current lecture, especially if I figure the $/hr at MIT for the latter. The institutions just have to rethink themselves to focus on what can only happen effectively there (and the existence of independent testing would make for better competition and/or synergy between institutions).

I suggest you refocus on testing, Mr Greenspun. What do you think?
--
PS. Test results are useful for job-seekers and employers both, but I think we have to start thinking seriously about reclaiming human primacy, and steer education towards emphasis on learning to be human, rather than on preparing to be a human resource.

How about the 'digital divide'?

[Anonymous Shepherd]

Do you see a problem with the way the Internet, information access, and society is currently organized? Various terms, such as the digital divide or chasm are bandied about; what are your views on the issue, and what do you think needs to be addressed?

It goes deeper than just the internet-learning, science, education, and empowerment in general are all closely tied to this. Women/minorities/underrepresented majorites in science/engineering/power, the haves producing systems that exclude and isolate the have nots, even if it isn't malicious or intentionl, and those who have power producing systems that ignore those who don't, just out of negligence and lack of foresight.

Thanks!

-AS

How do we change the world?

[Anonymous Shepherd]

You're one of the few who seem to want to do something with your wealth and resources, other than just collect it, or stroke your ego, or flaunt it(well, at least do more than just collect/stroke/flaunt). Is there more that those who have less wealth can do, you think? I donate to scholarship funds, to public television, and to alumni funds. But this system helped to create me, when what I want to do is to help people that didn't get helped by the system, people who weren't me. Is that just stupid and unfeasible?


-AS

Question

[cheezehead]

After reading Travels With Samantha it struck me that there were quite a few derogatory comments about Canada and the various foreigners you met on the way. This led me to believe that you are suffering from a mild form of xenophobia, like most Americans. Do you think there is any merit to this or am I hallucinating?

How do you do it?

[sar-fu]

While taking a look at your travelogs I noticed that you seem to meet atractive women wherever you go. Can you tell me what you're secret is? Is it the fact that you have been a programmer since 1976 and "just say no to middleware", or is it the fact that you own a dog. I guess my question is, what do chicks dig more, dogs or code?

Gates Wealth Clock

[funkman]

I see you have created the Bill Gates Personal Wealth Clock. Since Microsoft stock has been dropping lately, Larry Ellison is ready to pass him (if he hasn't by the time you read this). If so, will it be time for the Larry Ellison Personal Wealth Clock?

Flaws of a generic community system..

[kapper]

Anybody who has ever really been part of more than one real-life community, will agree that every community has it's own way of life, with a very different way of doing "things".

A lot of online community systems, such as slashdot are now beeing used for a variety of different communities. Some of these I would say, are less fit than others. Slashdot for example was designed as a system to cultivate a nerd community, as such it would probably not do very well as a superficial-teenage-pop-culture community.

Do you think that it is actually possible to create a community system, which will work with almost any type of community or would that just lead to a web dialect of PL1?

Is Ars Digita working on expanding it's community system, so it can be used for any type of community, or have you decided on a specific type of communities that the system should be capable of supporting?

Arsdigita on Slashdot and Slashcode

[engaga]

Hello Mr Greenspun,

Mr Malda's creation is a great success story -- I for one am not much of a geek but I spend at least as much time with Slashdot as with The New York Times. But it does have problems. The page of questions to you, for instance, is now 179k long and growing. That can be quite a long download for some.

If the Slashdot folks had hired Arsdigita to develop their site using the ArsDigita Community System , what would you do differently? I'd be very interested if you could touch on both the front and back end (more information on the Slashdot system at the Slashcode FAQ ).

Thanks for being a web development industry leader worthy of emulation.

Regards,

Adam Khan

random thoughts

[hrieke]

Philip,
I attended your 2 day leture at MIT back in the beginning of April, and I must say that while you are a good speaker, you tend to think that your view is right just because you think it's right and then dismiss other people's views for not being yours.
For example, you state that the web should be educational, which to a degree we all agree, but when you started to trash a site in your speach (some car site), for not being an encylopdia on automotives! That's going a bit far!
There is room for all types of sites on the web, both those which do teach (which is great), and those that sell and educate the user about the copmany and product only (like 99% of all 'dot com' sites right now).

About your idea for ARSUniversity, which I will have to agree that it should be called ARSTradeschool. How would you handle those with learning disabilities or other handicaps which would like to attend?

Finally, about yourself. I think that you have become what you hate the most in others in the computer industry, overly selfcentered. You 'hate' Bill Gates because he is such a strong personallity, which anyone who has talked with you knows that you are very much the same!
We have seen the face of our enemy, and he is ourself.
Hey, check out my photos too!

Best of luck!
Henry Rieke

Re:How do you expect this degree to be worth anyth

[Pete Bevin]

As an employer, I'd *definitely* interview you if you'd been through this course, and it would *definitely* increase my likelihood of hiring you.

Retooling of faculty

[Hea]

There aren't enough computer science faculty to fill all the open positions at colleges and universities, and the situation is probably going to get worse. If ArsDigita U expanded its CptS curriculum to include graduate-level courses, it might then be possible for faculty in closely aligned disciplines (in far less demand) to retool and fill some of the vacancies.

what philip is pushing......

[pHatidic]

Check his site--www.photo.net. I think someone already replied saying he uses canon mostly, and i think that's correct. One of philip's tips is to only get camera's with aspheric lenses, because they produce much sharper images than those without the aspheric type lense. I know that Olympus and Canon use these, but there not that popular yet among other companies. Also, Philip has said a number of times that plain old point and shoot cameras, as opposed to fancy SLR, are the way of the future.

Hmm what else is there...I know that in the summer Philip bought a waterproof camera, the one he used to take pics of the grand canyon that are posted on his page, I dunno what type though. oh well, check photo.net for more info.

can a db-backed Web site turn a profit?

[slazlo]

Back in November 97 you started a thread in one of your forums entitled "can a db-backed Web site turn a profit?"
You went on to say then that you didn't see how. In reference to that I have a few questions?

Do you still hold this opinion?

If you do, do you see a division in the web between those companies that use the web as a loss leader, those that attempt to make, run a profitable business and will eventually fail, those sites that attempt to build a popular enough site to be a buyout potential, and those that are only interested in contributing content, services with no thought of profit.

Do you take this opinion into account when determining which sites Ardigita retains as clients, since most of your revenue stream comes in the form of ongoing support contracts, turning down some business that may not be funded well enough making their venture a gamble?

I know you have taken large established clients, but have you developed any sites that begun at a startup level, and if so have any become profitable?

The Group Collaboration Sites that are the target of the Open Source ACS toolkit seem to work best when the community targeted is less than 100,000 users, what is the largest community site (membership) that you know of using the ACS toolkit and at what point do you think the sites using ACS will have trouble currently scaling to and is there a plan to increase that threshhold

Thanks for contributions you have and continue to make.

Development Models

[Moeses]

From what I can gather your development model sounds closer to a variant on DSDM (Dynamic Systems Development Method) rather than a waterfall type development model. What are your opinions on different development models and how they relate to internet developers/managers?

Greenspun Boosterism

[Nathan959]

Phil Greenspun is the master of a very narrow range of technologies that are good for very completing some very lucrative work. However, Ars acolytes beware. Remember this was the man who said to learn one thing and do it well. He is not circumspect, and his arrogance is far more impressive than his credentials or his work. The part of Phil I like is the part that encourages innovation and social consciousness in technological endeavor. But when he starts ignoring people who are (naturally) skeptical of AOLServer and Tcl, he starts to make me think he has become the thing business produces: insecure boosters who cling to a single idea because they are tired and have only minimal patience for open-mindedness. I also think Phil must be hanging around with Tufte, the most overrated writer ever. In 20 years, when the real work of information theory has been done, we will look back on Tufte as we look back on Newton today, someone who was a brilliant and foundational innovator, but who's mania for all-encompassing theories and absolute schemas was not very circumspect. Greenspun has become a little tin Tufte; he has 1 great idea for every 5, and because this is a far better ratio than the rest of us, he seems like someone to follow. But my God, Phil, every time I go on photo.net, I feel like it's forced fellatio or something. Do us all a favor, see a shrink, and start confronting your insecure-geek angst; you're dangerously close to getting the Bill Gates personality award.