Some time ago I read an article where a German professor suggested to dig out a cylindrical hole of some 100 meters across and lift it with the excess energy. There was a nice mock up picture going along with it, showing a house and a cow being lifted;-)
They're doing a similar kind of thing here in Germany for some years already, you only get a postcard telling you there's a new phonebook and yellowpages available and where to get it. If you want one, you can collect any number you need at the next post office, certain gas stations and in bigger cities at the central railroad station.
I'd rather say they're going to take Picnik out of business just to step on Yahoos foot while ramping up the advertising for picasaweb at the same time;-)
I hate to say it, but OneNote is really a great piece of software, especially when used on a tablet. There is just nothing like it (that I know of) in the open source world, and I have really searched. Basket maybe comes closest, but it's about 10% of the functionality. The thing about OneNote is that it is not yet another note-taking foo but it allows you to insert just about any document "as a printout", and you can not only scribble into that printout, but due to the built in OCR software you can also copy texts from it.
What you mention is a general trend in IT. First we had a mainframe with dumb clients, then we wanted to use the computing power of our PCs and created rich clients (Windows applications mostly). We realized this is a maintenance hell with versions ever diverging, so we put our applications on the web and had dumb clients again (web browsers). Now, starting with Java applets and continuing with this webserver in a browser stuff, we are on the way to a rich client again. See the pendulum swinging? I'm curious what the next dumb client model will look like, 10-20 years in the future we will know.
Using a version control system should be mandatory anyways. It does not really matter which one, although I also like git best, the most important thing here is to bring your students to getting used to version control systems. They should embrace them as a normal and invaluably useful thing which can be used not only for programming but also for e.g. managing the work on their next thesis paper. But anyways, that's not the point in pair programming. The point is to sit next to each other and do the work together, at the same time in the same file. If physically sitting next to each other is not possible that's a pity because I think it cannot be as effective remotely, but well, when this is the constraint in your case, you have to deal with it. Several tools have been named already, but not the most basic one: screen. It is installable in every Linux version I know (and of the BSD's at least on OpenBSD) and simple to use. Just make it setuid root, start it on one of the hosts, enter ctrl-a ":multiuser on" and ctrl-a "acladd " to allow access from another user. Let the other student log in to the machine and execute "screen -x". Now they share a shell and each can see what the other one types. The drawback of course is that they are limited to using old-school text editors like vi or Emacs and no fancy GUI editors. On the other hand this has the advantage that they really learn how to program and not only to click together some pretty looking stuff without having any idea at all how it works.
That's just about what I was going to write here. I feel the same and I would happily emigrate rather today than tomorrow if I knew any country where the situation is better. Unfortunately this is a global problem and most of the people all over the world are too uninformed to see what's going on, or worse, they just don't care. I mean look, we got 130k signatures to the petition against that law, which is more than most petitions (no matter on which topic) ever reach, and still it's only about one promille of the people who signed it. This really makes me sad.
I can recommend "The road to reality - a complete guide to the laws of the universe" by Roger Penrose. The guy undoubtedly knows what he's talking about (being a famous physician himself) and the book is very math-centric. First the mathematical concepts are explained, then based on that the physics of our universe.
Or even more wonderful if you need a more permanent setup of this: synergy. It gives you basically the same functionality x2x does, but it also works on Windows and Mac (and also mixed environments of Linux, Windows and Mac of course). Couldn't live without it.
If there was a full-blown computer inside the beast, they would not be able to sell it for 400 bucks. What most people do not see is that most of the work inside a flat-screen TV today is done by software anyways. There is an assembly of chips, one for the tuner, one for decoding digital streams, one for analog stuff and some memory, and what holds all of it together is software. If you have the computing power to run the TV with all its control logic and OSD, plus the decoder DSP you need anyways to process DVB signals (which is not much more than MPEG2 and MPEG4 streams) and stuff coming in over HDMI, building a mediaplayer like the one described is just a matter of putting in a card reader and investing some man-months of coding work.
Well I had my own quite frustrating experience with Hardy Heron yesterday. I installed it on my uncles shiny new laptop and it worked out of the box, no technical problems. Today he phoned me asking how to copy a DVD he recorded some time ago with his PVR. Obviously he inserted the DVD and right away some player popped open starting playback, but when he opened the DVD copy application he only got an error message. And guess what, the error message is in English. My uncle is not a computer person and he does not speak English at all, only German. His English is not even good enough to read it aloud on the phone, and he has no internet connection that would allow me to log in remotely. So copying the DVD has to wait until we meet again, in June. This is not the first time this happens with Ubuntu. I made similar experiences with older versions. And I seriously wonder why a lot of the translations missing in Ubuntu are perfectly available in Debian for a long time.
As long as renting a root server including some amount of traffic etc. is way cheaper than the electricity bill for an additional machine at home, let alone costs for a static IP and so on, I don't see why I should not host just about everything in the datacenter.
Maybe a stable driver API inside the kernel is not the real McCoy here, but maybe something completely different should be done: I suggest moving parts of the driver API to the userspace. Sure, that would have some performance impact but as I see it the requirements of a stable API could be fulfilled much easier there, and even without losing any flexibility inside the kernel. I know, suggesting something non-monolithic or even a more microkernel-like system to the Linux community is like begging to be stoned to death, but I do believe in the idea..;-)
In no matter which area of politics or legislation, Europe is blindly copying everything the US does for some years now. I don't know if that is because politicians are paid by interested parties or if they are just stupid, uninterested or without a clue, but Europe is definitely on the way down. Just my opinion.
The fact that on monday 24th the European ministers of agriculture will again vote if Software Patents shall be allowed in Europe is also merely coincidental. If they vote positive, thereby effectively making most OpenSource Software illegal in the long run and costing the majority of software developers (those who work in smaller, financially less powerfull companies) effectively their jobs might yet indeed make monday 24th the worst day, not only of the year but maybe of the decade.
hey, be happy you don't live in Europe! We get the cool gadgets even later than the US and for twice the price anyways. And don't even _think_ about current movies!
Since a white collar worker most of the time is paid higher than a blue collar worker, there's no real financial need for a side job (at least where I come from). What I do is write open source software because thats a lot of fun and is a good thing to be listed in the resume
For an interpreted language java is damned fast, that's right. Especially due to JIT there is almost no difference between C++ and Java regarding speed any more.
The only thing still awfully slow is Swing GUI and all efforts in making that faster result in making it less portable. I remember an article linked from slashdot some weeks ago, where the author promised fast and platform independent Java GUIs, which turned out to be JNI bindings for GTK+... not really what you want on one of the stranger platforms.
The one real problem I see with java is the high amount of memory it needs which is no problem on PC hardware, but can be much of a problem on embedded devices where due to the huge quantity of sold units every cent you spend on memory can cost thousands of US$. Even JavaME still consumes more memory than an app written in C.
Having said so much in favor of Java I must still say that I personally do not like it, and that's not because of having less experience with it.
Once IE and Office run on Linux natively then Linux can finally be branded "the Windows killer." no, when that day comes it can be branded "Windows" because even the best kernel can't stop hundreds of Megs of crap to crash every few minutes. Right and when you get new hardware, plug it in, and restart, what does XP do? Hey, holy shit user, you have new hardware, we need drivers! Oh wait, we have them right here, no recompiles or modules need to be loaded. Well, you can have that for Linux, just phone your hardware manufacturer and ask for the drivers. Oops, the tell you they only support Windows? Too bad, maybe you should send them back their crap and buy something decent that runs out of the box on Linux. There's lots of working hardware out there. Windows works for just about everyone without too many problems. Linux works for people with some problems. General users do not want to deal with anything (interoperability, futzing, fixing, downloading, etc). They just want functionality built in that works w/o question. Well, since you seem to be quite happy with Windows, just stay with it! Nobody forces you to use Linux, nobody even begs you to use it. It's the principle of free choice, and if there are only three people in the world who use Linux it has already fulfilled its purpose.
hey, face it, you live in the US where the outcome of lawsuits is more random than the hardware random number generator on my EPIA is ever going to get;-)
I know that would be mean and against the spirit of the whole thing, but it's rather tempting to include a paragraph in the GPL that prohibits the use of GPL'ed software in countries where it is taxed. If the use of Linux in business is big enough, that would implicitly ensure politicians never get through with such stuff.
Shipping containers are also transported by rail in Europe, I don't think that's much of an issue. But another reason for trains being more profitable in the US is that the dense of population is far less in the US than in Europe. A train can operate most profitable if it can cross vast amounts of miles without having to stop (the same goes true for planes of course). Only on long trips high speeds can be achieved and going from the west coast to the east coast _is_ a long trip. In Europe theres a station every 5 km or so and even the high speed trains stop every 100 km, which is barely enough to go on full speed even provided the rails go straight enough, curving around villages and smaller cities every few kilometers.
Same goes true for me... my first thought about it was: hey, now that virtually _every_ setup tool out there is better than yast, they finally opensource that crap.
Slashdot Mirror
Some time ago I read an article where a German professor suggested to dig out a cylindrical hole of some 100 meters across and lift it with the excess energy. There was a nice mock up picture going along with it, showing a house and a cow being lifted ;-)
Time to put that nice collection of data into Openstreetmap. Volunteers?
They're doing a similar kind of thing here in Germany for some years already, you only get a postcard telling you there's a new phonebook and yellowpages available and where to get it. If you want one, you can collect any number you need at the next post office, certain gas stations and in bigger cities at the central railroad station.
I'd rather say they're going to take Picnik out of business just to step on Yahoos foot while ramping up the advertising for picasaweb at the same time ;-)
I hate to say it, but OneNote is really a great piece of software, especially when used on a tablet. There is just nothing like it (that I know of) in the open source world, and I have really searched. Basket maybe comes closest, but it's about 10% of the functionality. The thing about OneNote is that it is not yet another note-taking foo but it allows you to insert just about any document "as a printout", and you can not only scribble into that printout, but due to the built in OCR software you can also copy texts from it.
What you mention is a general trend in IT. First we had a mainframe with dumb clients, then we wanted to use the computing power of our PCs and created rich clients (Windows applications mostly). We realized this is a maintenance hell with versions ever diverging, so we put our applications on the web and had dumb clients again (web browsers). Now, starting with Java applets and continuing with this webserver in a browser stuff, we are on the way to a rich client again. See the pendulum swinging? I'm curious what the next dumb client model will look like, 10-20 years in the future we will know.
Using a version control system should be mandatory anyways. It does not really matter which one, although I also like git best, the most important thing here is to bring your students to getting used to version control systems. They should embrace them as a normal and invaluably useful thing which can be used not only for programming but also for e.g. managing the work on their next thesis paper.
But anyways, that's not the point in pair programming. The point is to sit next to each other and do the work together, at the same time in the same file. If physically sitting next to each other is not possible that's a pity because I think it cannot be as effective remotely, but well, when this is the constraint in your case, you have to deal with it. Several tools have been named already, but not the most basic one: screen. It is installable in every Linux version I know (and of the BSD's at least on OpenBSD) and simple to use. Just make it setuid root, start it on one of the hosts, enter ctrl-a ":multiuser on" and ctrl-a "acladd " to allow access from another user. Let the other student log in to the machine and execute "screen -x". Now they share a shell and each can see what the other one types. The drawback of course is that they are limited to using old-school text editors like vi or Emacs and no fancy GUI editors. On the other hand this has the advantage that they really learn how to program and not only to click together some pretty looking stuff without having any idea at all how it works.
That's just about what I was going to write here. I feel the same and I would happily emigrate rather today than tomorrow if I knew any country where the situation is better. Unfortunately this is a global problem and most of the people all over the world are too uninformed to see what's going on, or worse, they just don't care. I mean look, we got 130k signatures to the petition against that law, which is more than most petitions (no matter on which topic) ever reach, and still it's only about one promille of the people who signed it. This really makes me sad.
I can recommend "The road to reality - a complete guide to the laws of the universe" by Roger Penrose. The guy undoubtedly knows what he's talking about (being a famous physician himself) and the book is very math-centric. First the mathematical concepts are explained, then based on that the physics of our universe.
Or even more wonderful if you need a more permanent setup of this: synergy. It gives you basically the same functionality x2x does, but it also works on Windows and Mac (and also mixed environments of Linux, Windows and Mac of course). Couldn't live without it.
If there was a full-blown computer inside the beast, they would not be able to sell it for 400 bucks.
What most people do not see is that most of the work inside a flat-screen TV today is done by software anyways. There is an assembly of chips, one for the tuner, one for decoding digital streams, one for analog stuff and some memory, and what holds all of it together is software.
If you have the computing power to run the TV with all its control logic and OSD, plus the decoder DSP you need anyways to process DVB signals (which is not much more than MPEG2 and MPEG4 streams) and stuff coming in over HDMI, building a mediaplayer like the one described is just a matter of putting in a card reader and investing some man-months of coding work.
Well I had my own quite frustrating experience with Hardy Heron yesterday. I installed it on my uncles shiny new laptop and it worked out of the box, no technical problems. Today he phoned me asking how to copy a DVD he recorded some time ago with his PVR.
Obviously he inserted the DVD and right away some player popped open starting playback, but when he opened the DVD copy application he only got an error message. And guess what, the error message is in English. My uncle is not a computer person and he does not speak English at all, only German. His English is not even good enough to read it aloud on the phone, and he has no internet connection that would allow me to log in remotely. So copying the DVD has to wait until we meet again, in June.
This is not the first time this happens with Ubuntu. I made similar experiences with older versions. And I seriously wonder why a lot of the translations missing in Ubuntu are perfectly available in Debian for a long time.
...and can we call it MCP, please? :-)
As long as renting a root server including some amount of traffic etc. is way cheaper than the electricity bill for an additional machine at home, let alone costs for a static IP and so on, I don't see why I should not host just about everything in the datacenter.
Maybe a stable driver API inside the kernel is not the real McCoy here, but maybe something completely different should be done: I suggest moving parts of the driver API to the userspace. Sure, that would have some performance impact but as I see it the requirements of a stable API could be fulfilled much easier there, and even without losing any flexibility inside the kernel. I know, suggesting something non-monolithic or even a more microkernel-like system to the Linux community is like begging to be stoned to death, but I do believe in the idea.. ;-)
In no matter which area of politics or legislation, Europe is blindly copying everything the US does for some years now. I don't know if that is because politicians are paid by interested parties or if they are just stupid, uninterested or without a clue, but Europe is definitely on the way down. Just my opinion.
The fact that on monday 24th the European ministers of agriculture will again vote if Software Patents shall be allowed in Europe is also merely coincidental. If they vote positive, thereby effectively making most OpenSource Software illegal in the long run and costing the majority of software developers (those who work in smaller, financially less powerfull companies) effectively their jobs might yet indeed make monday 24th the worst day, not only of the year but maybe of the decade.
hey, be happy you don't live in Europe! We get the cool gadgets even later than the US and for twice the price anyways. And don't even _think_ about current movies!
Since a white collar worker most of the time is paid higher than a blue collar worker, there's no real financial need for a side job (at least where I come from). What I do is write open source software because thats a lot of fun and is a good thing to be listed in the resume
For an interpreted language java is damned fast, that's right. Especially due to JIT there is almost no difference between C++ and Java regarding speed any more.
... not really what you want on one of the stranger platforms.
The only thing still awfully slow is Swing GUI and all efforts in making that faster result in making it less portable. I remember an article linked from slashdot some weeks ago, where the author promised fast and platform independent Java GUIs, which turned out to be JNI bindings for GTK+
The one real problem I see with java is the high amount of memory it needs which is no problem on PC hardware, but can be much of a problem on embedded devices where due to the huge quantity of sold units every cent you spend on memory can cost thousands of US$. Even JavaME still consumes more memory than an app written in C.
Having said so much in favor of Java I must still say that I personally do not like it, and that's not because of having less experience with it.
Once IE and Office run on Linux natively then Linux can finally be branded "the Windows killer."
no, when that day comes it can be branded "Windows" because even the best kernel can't stop hundreds of Megs of crap to crash every few minutes.
Right and when you get new hardware, plug it in, and restart, what does XP do? Hey, holy shit user, you have new hardware, we need drivers! Oh wait, we have them right here, no recompiles or modules need to be loaded.
Well, you can have that for Linux, just phone your hardware manufacturer and ask for the drivers. Oops, the tell you they only support Windows? Too bad, maybe you should send them back their crap and buy something decent that runs out of the box on Linux. There's lots of working hardware out there.
Windows works for just about everyone without too many problems. Linux works for people with some problems. General users do not want to deal with anything (interoperability, futzing, fixing, downloading, etc). They just want functionality built in that works w/o question.
Well, since you seem to be quite happy with Windows, just stay with it! Nobody forces you to use Linux, nobody even begs you to use it. It's the principle of free choice, and if there are only three people in the world who use Linux it has already fulfilled its purpose.
hey, face it, you live in the US where the outcome of lawsuits is more random than the hardware random number generator on my EPIA is ever going to get ;-)
I know that would be mean and against the spirit of the whole thing, but it's rather tempting to include a paragraph in the GPL that prohibits the use of GPL'ed software in countries where it is taxed. If the use of Linux in business is big enough, that would implicitly ensure politicians never get through with such stuff.
Shipping containers are also transported by rail in Europe, I don't think that's much of an issue. But another reason for trains being more profitable in the US is that the dense of population is far less in the US than in Europe. A train can operate most profitable if it can cross vast amounts of miles without having to stop (the same goes true for planes of course). Only on long trips high speeds can be achieved and going from the west coast to the east coast _is_ a long trip. In Europe theres a station every 5 km or so and even the high speed trains stop every 100 km, which is barely enough to go on full speed even provided the rails go straight enough, curving around villages and smaller cities every few kilometers.
Same goes true for me... my first thought about it was: hey, now that virtually _every_ setup tool out there is better than yast, they finally opensource that crap.