There are plenty of C# intros out on the web (I especially liked the Ask Dr. GUI.NET series at MS, but they are being rewritten to reflect the release version of VS.NET), but O'Reilly recently
posted one that gives instructions on using the compiler/debugger that you can download from MS.
With those tools, one can begin to learn to program with C# without needing to fork over the big green for the new visual studio.
I just want to know what lawyer, or whomever, decided this would would not bring about a tremendous amount of bad press, negative publicity, and expensive lawsuits.
In a similar vein, today the Republicans stated that they thought campaign finance reform would cost them elections.
A FDPR compiler will use the behavior of a previous run (or runs) to optimize the code for the next run, where as a profiling JIT can use the behavior of the current run to optimize the current run: if the JIT notices that you are repeatedly calling a certain function, it can decided to optimize that function the next time it is called.
A FDPR will work fine for a large numerical application, where almost all runs follow the same control path, but for an interactive application, where every run will have a different control flow, these profiling JIT appear to have an advantage.
The Education Market, The Real Target
on
J#
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
Almost all of the introductory CS text books use the Java language, and therefore, most intro CS courses teach Java.
This means that thousands of individual students, computer labs, departements, need to use Java compilers or IDEs. With MS no longer able to provide a Java implementation (more or less, I don't know the exact details), they faced the prospect that new programmers (at least untill the curriculum was switched to C#) would learn to program using non MS tools - MS looses the income from selling these tools, and faces the prospect that students 'comfortable' with products from another company might be harder to 'capture' as MS devotees.
By providing a J# compiler, those students can use (read, buy) a MS tool to do their assignments (especially considering that the intro assignments don't use the advanced features of the Java API, which are un-supported on J#) and start along the path of becomming happy MS developers.
I could, maybe, perhaps, possibly be interested if it was a new book, but not a fifty year old classic
But the real problems would begin if it were a new book.
Old books can be found in stores, sidewalk sales, flea markets, and there will (those from Alexandria excluded) always be some way to obtain them.
But if new books were published only in this manner, they could dissapear when the publisher failed, or data formats changed, etc.
Similarly, in the DeCSS decision, Judge Kaplan claimed that the public's rights would not be lost, because those videos would be always be available in other (i.e. VHS) formats. Try to buy the latest Metallica 8-Track lately?
There is a difference btw. CS and SE, so I agree with you on that regard. But I'll explain why I think a SE should study CS while in school.
Programming is a skill one must teach oneself. You could listen to hundreds of hours of lectures, and read lots of books, but it requires doing it to learn. Much like driving - you cannot read a car's manual and expect to be able to drive. It requires practice, and experimentation (The first time I sat in the driver's seat I had absolutly no idea how much pressure to apply on the breaks).
No one can teach that, you must teach yourself. However, CS is something that is much easier learned through books and lectures. In fact, you would not expect someone to sit down and be able to invent it all from scratch (recursion theory, typing systems, data structures).
However there is a strong relationship - someone who understands CS will be a better programmer. Not to be snobbish, someone who doesn't understand any CS could _not_ be a programmer.
Once someone has learned CS, they could then study software engineering, which is why many universities now offer SE graduate programs. There is a lot to learn about SE, a lot of which can be learned from books, lectures, but it requires first knowing CS.
You are kinda half right and half wrong. I guess it all comes down to semantics.
The question is always asked, "does someone discover mathematics or invent it?" The answer, of course, is that it does not really matter. CS is extremely similar in that regard (and not just the real theoretical (read mathlike) parts) - if I write a new algorithm, did I invent it, or did it always exist and I just happened to find it.
And yes, disecting an OS is dissimilar to disecting a frog, because indeed, someone made it already. But what is interesting, because software development is modular (libraries call other libraries, etc.) even someone who built a software system doesn't know precisely what is going on at the lowest level, and cannot [precisely] anticipate how all those levels will interact. So there is significant research figuring out why network communication in some OS is slow in practice, etc.
And people do create systems to see how a chip works - building simulators _after_ the chip exists - so that they may compare actual to expected performance and determine what exactly is going on.
Of course, on the otherside, where people make the simulators, or test protocols, before the system is built (which constitues a larger fraction of the CS research), they try and refine ideas before the actual implementation. This may seem a lot like pure engineering, but also matches the idea of having an hypothesis (this protocol will reduce bus contention) and proving it, both formally and empirically.
with none of the licensing restrictions Sun likes to impose to keep
companies like IBM in line
These restrictions are to ensure that Java remains
cross-platform. Otherwise the benefit and 'promiss' of Java would be compromised.
If MS (or IBM, or anybody) was allowed to muck with Java as they saw fit, their version of Java would cause a fork, negating the whole cross-platform idea.
If you are having problems finding qualified people, perhaps it is because your selection criteria are too narrow. I have read 'help-wanteds' where the criteria would have been impossible for anyone to meet ("...minimum of 10 years of java...").
A good programmer, someone who knows his salt, who has a good understanding of programming, will have absolutly no problem learning the new skills you require, in a relativly short ammount of time. In fact, your company would probably be better off with a seasoned veteran who does not know the specific skills you desire, than some fool who can put those on his resume but really doesn't know anything.
Putting such narrow criteria in the advert will just cause many talented programmers to not apply, b/c they don't match all you are looking for and fear their resume will not be looked at. This is especially a problem in larger firms, where H/R screens all the resumes first, and will 'circular file' all those that don't match what is desired, never allowing the techies to take a look.
Companies should realize that skill, competence, and general knowledge are far more important that buzzwords. The time spend for a pro to learn the new technologies will quickly pale in comparison to the increased efficiency, reduced bugs, etc., in his work.
This is not the case with regards to phone service. One company owns all the wires from the local office switch to your house. The large ones (former baby bells) are required by law to lease those lines to other carriers. It would be extremely expensive for an alternate carrier to provide its own wire to your home, because it would required lines (and tremendous other infrastructure) all the way from their office to your home.
Vanity presses work for literature, poetry, humanities, etc. because the content of the book is unique: if you learn of an interesting author (at a book reading, lets say) and want to read his work, buying a book by someone else won't cut it.
However, when it comes to technical books, you are often more concerned with the quality of the material, rather than the particular author. Therefore you buy books based on the reputation of the publisher, reviews you have read, etc. It would be very hard for an independent printing to gain that kind of notice. Very few people would choose you over O'Reilly.
This is not to say that all titles would do poorly. Readers would be interested in buying a vanity publication if it was of a topic never before covered, and if the author did an exceptional job. But if that were the case, it probably would not be too difficult to find an interested publisher.
With the vast quantities of technical material freely available online, you would have a very hard time finding a market for bound versions of How-To's. And with the big publishing houses releasing volume after volume, you would have a hard time finding a topic they haven't done.
A completely electronic press might succeed, because there is minimal overhead, put people do have a hard time believing that they need to pay for data.
www.salemnhpolice.com:
World Church of the Creator is a particularly vile organization of white supremisists.
www.salemnhpolice.org:
Some particularly disturbing pornography.
I have no way of knowing if this was the original content of these links, but if it was he has definitely lost my sympathy (which is not to say he deserves prosecution, but we must be careful in choosing our battles.)
for christmas one year, i guess when i was about 10 or so, my parent's (well, it was still santa back then), got me one of those dinky tasco scopes.
now, it was next to impossible to point it where i wanted to, b/c it was the most poorly made piece of garbage, but one night my dad managed to get it aimed at jupiter.
i still regard that as one of the greatest things i had experienced - we were able to see the swirls, and the red spot, and even a few of its moons (or their shadows).
it really was magical, and awe-inspireing, and i still have such vivid memories of that day, 15 years later.
I did mean consenting.
And I agree with you that someone should not be persecuted for their thoughts, but only their actions. However, there are still some differences between pedo and the others: for instance, making child-porn is illegal, b/c a child cannot consent to that, and purchasing it should be illegal as well, because it encourages its production.
Explain to me how it has been shown that any man has violated the rights of another before a trial. I could care less
what the government suspects him of. Let a jury decide.
defendant asks nothing - wants nothing, but to be
let alone until it can be shown that he has violated the rights of another
If we must wait until a trial (and guilty verdict) before we have the power to not 'let alone' a defendant, how will we ever get him to stand trial?
How dare you make this claim. Hetro/Homo/Bi-sexuals have sex with other adults, people who are old enough to understand the situation they are about to enter, and its consequences.
A pedophile, who has sex with a child, is having sex with someone who is far too immature to understand what is going on. Having sex with someone who is too young to know what is happening is quite clearly rape.
Imagine if someone you had not given consent to had sex with you while you were unconscious. You would indeed feel violated and raped. Having sex with an underage child is equivalently as wrong.
mpi-softtech produces MPI Pro, a commercial implementation of MPI. MPI Pro takes advantage of SMP machines automatically - if two tasks are on the same node, MPI Pro will use shared memory for communication between the two.
Although it is commercial software, it is free to download for unlimited use (for Linux, for NT you are limited to only 8 processes).
I have some very limited experience using it, but it might fill your needs.
I moved into my apartment 5 months ago to find that cable tv was on. Time Warner has repeatedly mailed me postcards warning that the service will soon be cancelled, but, five months later, its still on.
I would like to get some kind of broadband service, but (being a grad student) cannot really afford both cable TV and a net access.
There is one dsl service us here, but the reviews are not too good, so I am considering going with RoadRunner. My question is then, if I get RR installed, will the installer discover that the TV is still on and turn it off (or worse charge me for the last five months), or are the two systems distinct enough that it might slip by?
Slashdot Mirror
There are plenty of C# intros out on the web (I especially liked the Ask Dr. GUI.NET series at MS, but they are being rewritten to reflect the release version of VS.NET), but O'Reilly recently
posted one that gives instructions on using the compiler/debugger that you can download from MS.
With those tools, one can begin to learn to program with C# without needing to fork over the big green for the new visual studio.
Just thought someone might be interested.
I just want to know what lawyer, or whomever, decided this would would not bring about a tremendous amount of bad press, negative publicity, and expensive lawsuits.
In a similar vein, today the Republicans stated that they thought campaign finance reform would cost them elections.
Don't people think about what they say?
I think you are missing the point.
A FDPR compiler will use the behavior of a previous run (or runs) to optimize the code for the next run, where as a profiling JIT can use the behavior of the current run to optimize the current run: if the JIT notices that you are repeatedly calling a certain function, it can decided to optimize that function the next time it is called.
A FDPR will work fine for a large numerical application, where almost all runs follow the same control path, but for an interactive application, where every run will have a different control flow, these profiling JIT appear to have an advantage.
No joke!
.NET
I've been thinking about porting brainfuck to
Almost all of the introductory CS text books use the Java language, and therefore, most intro CS courses teach Java.
This means that thousands of individual students, computer labs, departements, need to use Java compilers or IDEs. With MS no longer able to provide a Java implementation (more or less, I don't know the exact details), they faced the prospect that new programmers (at least untill the curriculum was switched to C#) would learn to program using non MS tools - MS looses the income from selling these tools, and faces the prospect that students 'comfortable' with products from another company might be harder to 'capture' as MS devotees.
By providing a J# compiler, those students can use (read, buy) a MS tool to do their assignments (especially considering that the intro assignments don't use the advanced features of the Java API, which are un-supported on J#) and start along the path of becomming happy MS developers.
But the real problems would begin if it were a new book.
Old books can be found in stores, sidewalk sales, flea markets, and there will (those from Alexandria excluded) always be some way to obtain them.
But if new books were published only in this manner, they could dissapear when the publisher failed, or data formats changed, etc.
Similarly, in the DeCSS decision, Judge Kaplan claimed that the public's rights would not be lost, because those videos would be always be available in other (i.e. VHS) formats. Try to buy the latest Metallica 8-Track lately?
There is a difference btw. CS and SE, so I agree with you on that regard. But I'll explain why I think a SE should study CS while in school.
Programming is a skill one must teach oneself. You could listen to hundreds of hours of lectures, and read lots of books, but it requires doing it to learn. Much like driving - you cannot read a car's manual and expect to be able to drive. It requires practice, and experimentation (The first time I sat in the driver's seat I had absolutly no idea how much pressure to apply on the breaks).
No one can teach that, you must teach yourself. However, CS is something that is much easier learned through books and lectures. In fact, you would not expect someone to sit down and be able to invent it all from scratch (recursion theory, typing systems, data structures).
However there is a strong relationship - someone who understands CS will be a better programmer. Not to be snobbish, someone who doesn't understand any CS could _not_ be a programmer.
Once someone has learned CS, they could then study software engineering, which is why many universities now offer SE graduate programs. There is a lot to learn about SE, a lot of which can be learned from books, lectures, but it requires first knowing CS.
You are kinda half right and half wrong. I guess it all comes down to semantics.
The question is always asked, "does someone discover mathematics or invent it?" The answer, of course, is that it does not really matter. CS is extremely similar in that regard (and not just the real theoretical (read mathlike) parts) - if I write a new algorithm, did I invent it, or did it always exist and I just happened to find it.
And yes, disecting an OS is dissimilar to disecting a frog, because indeed, someone made it already. But what is interesting, because software development is modular (libraries call other libraries, etc.) even someone who built a software system doesn't know precisely what is going on at the lowest level, and cannot [precisely] anticipate how all those levels will interact. So there is significant research figuring out why network communication in some OS is slow in practice, etc.
And people do create systems to see how a chip works - building simulators _after_ the chip exists - so that they may compare actual to expected performance and determine what exactly is going on.
Of course, on the otherside, where people make the simulators, or test protocols, before the system is built (which constitues a larger fraction of the CS research), they try and refine ideas before the actual implementation. This may seem a lot like pure engineering, but also matches the idea of having an hypothesis (this protocol will reduce bus contention) and proving it, both formally and empirically.
Check out BU's program. http://bioinformatics.bu.edu
Just imagine if your look-ahead proxy decides to prefetch all the one click buy links on Amazon's (and nobody else's) site.
with none of the licensing restrictions Sun likes to impose to keep companies like IBM in line
These restrictions are to ensure that Java remains cross-platform. Otherwise the benefit and 'promiss' of Java would be compromised.
If MS (or IBM, or anybody) was allowed to muck with Java as they saw fit, their version of Java would cause a fork, negating the whole cross-platform idea.
If you are having problems finding qualified people, perhaps it is because your selection criteria are too narrow. I have read 'help-wanteds' where the criteria would have been impossible for anyone to meet ("...minimum of 10 years of java...").
A good programmer, someone who knows his salt, who has a good understanding of programming, will have absolutly no problem learning the new skills you require, in a relativly short ammount of time. In fact, your company would probably be better off with a seasoned veteran who does not know the specific skills you desire, than some fool who can put those on his resume but really doesn't know anything.
Putting such narrow criteria in the advert will just cause many talented programmers to not apply, b/c they don't match all you are looking for and fear their resume will not be looked at. This is especially a problem in larger firms, where H/R screens all the resumes first, and will 'circular file' all those that don't match what is desired, never allowing the techies to take a look.
Companies should realize that skill, competence, and general knowledge are far more important that buzzwords. The time spend for a pro to learn the new technologies will quickly pale in comparison to the increased efficiency, reduced bugs, etc., in his work.
This is not the case with regards to phone service. One company owns all the wires from the local office switch to your house. The large ones (former baby bells) are required by law to lease those lines to other carriers. It would be extremely expensive for an alternate carrier to provide its own wire to your home, because it would required lines (and tremendous other infrastructure) all the way from their office to your home.
Vanity presses work for literature, poetry, humanities, etc. because the content of the book is unique: if you learn of an interesting author (at a book reading, lets say) and want to read his work, buying a book by someone else won't cut it.
However, when it comes to technical books, you are often more concerned with the quality of the material, rather than the particular author. Therefore you buy books based on the reputation of the publisher, reviews you have read, etc. It would be very hard for an independent printing to gain that kind of notice. Very few people would choose you over O'Reilly.
This is not to say that all titles would do poorly. Readers would be interested in buying a vanity publication if it was of a topic never before covered, and if the author did an exceptional job. But if that were the case, it probably would not be too difficult to find an interested publisher.
With the vast quantities of technical material freely available online, you would have a very hard time finding a market for bound versions of How-To's. And with the big publishing houses releasing volume after volume, you would have a hard time finding a topic they haven't done.
A completely electronic press might succeed, because there is minimal overhead, put people do have a hard time believing that they need to pay for data.
-
www.salemnhpolice.com:
World Church of the Creator is a particularly vile organization of white supremisists.
-
www.salemnhpolice.org:
Some particularly disturbing pornography.
I have no way of knowing if this was the original content of these links, but if it was he has definitely lost my sympathy (which is not to say he deserves prosecution, but we must be careful in choosing our battles.)for christmas one year, i guess when i was about 10 or so, my parent's (well, it was still santa back then), got me one of those dinky tasco scopes.
now, it was next to impossible to point it where i wanted to, b/c it was the most poorly made piece of garbage, but one night my dad managed to get it aimed at jupiter.
i still regard that as one of the greatest things i had experienced - we were able to see the swirls, and the red spot, and even a few of its moons (or their shadows).
it really was magical, and awe-inspireing, and i still have such vivid memories of that day, 15 years later.
I did mean consenting.
And I agree with you that someone should not be persecuted for their thoughts, but only their actions. However, there are still some differences between pedo and the others: for instance, making child-porn is illegal, b/c a child cannot consent to that, and purchasing it should be illegal as well, because it encourages its production.
If we must wait until a trial (and guilty verdict) before we have the power to not 'let alone' a defendant, how will we ever get him to stand trial?
it's just as valid as homosexuality, bisexuality
How dare you make this claim.
Hetro/Homo/Bi-sexuals have sex with other adults, people who are old enough to understand the situation they are about to enter, and its consequences.
A pedophile, who has sex with a child, is having sex with someone who is far too immature to understand what is going on. Having sex with someone who is too young to know what is happening is quite clearly rape.
Imagine if someone you had not given consent to had sex with you while you were unconscious. You would indeed feel violated and raped. Having sex with an underage child is equivalently as wrong.
Check out GLIDE from www.gnat.com
(look under products).
I have never used this product, but they are a leader in ada compilers and tools.
Such a beast exists.
See my top-level post for details.
mpi-softtech produces MPI Pro, a commercial implementation of MPI. MPI Pro takes advantage of SMP machines automatically - if two tasks are on the same node, MPI Pro will use shared memory for communication between the two.
Although it is commercial software, it is free to download for unlimited use (for Linux, for NT you are limited to only 8 processes).
I have some very limited experience using it, but it might fill your needs.
you are probably joking, but just in case:
Why do you care so much about stopping posts you don't want to read?
I moved into my apartment 5 months ago to find that cable tv was on. Time Warner has repeatedly mailed me postcards warning that the service will soon be cancelled, but, five months later, its still on.
I would like to get some kind of broadband service, but (being a grad student) cannot really afford both cable TV and a net access.
There is one dsl service us here, but the reviews are not too good, so I am considering going with RoadRunner. My question is then, if I get RR installed, will the installer discover that the TV is still on and turn it off (or worse charge me for the last five months), or are the two systems distinct enough that it might slip by?
ha ha
except you are confusing WAP with WOP.