Posting this a day late, so I'm not sure that anyone will read this:(
One of the reason for Java not being as fast as C (apart from the fact that it is usually interpreted, not compiled) is that it is running on OSes (when i refer to OSes here, I mean OSes/Kernals) optimized for making C style code run fast, and some Java things will run inefficently because of this.
To be more specific: (1) Most OSes don't have low level support for garbage collection. This means for example that the virtual memory model can't be easily tuned to use information that the garbage collector might provide about which pages can be swapped out. An OS with gc either built into it, or considered in the design may result in much faster gc.
(2) In OSes with protected memory, calling any function in the kernal requires a context switch, and there is a lot of overhead required for context switches, and for managing this protection. A lot of the reason for this protection is because C is a dirty language that can do horrible things with pointers.
This overhead slows Java down, when Java doesn't _need_ much of this sort of protection, because it is built into the langauge model that things like pointer arithmetic aren't allowed.
(2a) A Java OS would only need threads, not full processes.
(3) Java checks for errors at runtime like writing off the end of an array. Ok, there is not much that can be done about that overhead. This point is not relavant to my argument, but is added for completeness in explaining why Java is slow.
Therefore, it is circular (i.e. incorrect) reasoning to say that because Java doesn't run fast on sytems designed for C, that Java is no good, therefore don't use it for an OS.
If a Java OS was built that was tuned for Java, any C code that was run on it would have to be run in a 'sandbox' where things were protected against that process, and I'm guessing that in this case Java might well compare favourably with C.
Aside: such a OS might be really good for LISP too, which has some similar properties.
Another point is that Java code tends to be much less buggy (no buffer overflows, leaks, double deletes), so even if it is a_little_ slower, it is well worth using to get a more stable result.
Disclaimer: I haven't been following JavaOS, so my arguments might not apply to that specific project.
Not necessarily. It's free for most people, particulary (I imagine) for people in North America and Europe, but people in other parts of the world don't always have as many options.
The only reason that I'm bothering to write this reply is that the 'bandwidth is free' needs to be challenged. I know of too many people on limited bandwith that keep getting sent things like large attachments because of that assumption.
A month ago, I was paying NZ$3/hour access for 28k - hardly free bandwidth, and the university department where I work gets charged something like NZ$1/Mb.
>For gun control backers who don't believe or understand this argument, please prove your independence from the guns of hated conservatives and libertarians; put an "unarmed and proud of it" sign in your yard and on your car.
OK, Done. (Apart from the fact that I don't hate the conservatives and libertarians, and don't own a car). What's your point?
This post more than anything else I have read has swung me in favour of gun control - if having a culture of guns means living in such a climate of fear that you feel that you need one for defence, then we don't need them here any more than they already are.
I'm also proud to live in a country where: - handguns are illegal (I never saw one till I visited the USA), - you need a license to own or use a gun (I don't have a gun license), - most gun ownership is for the purpose of hunting, - policemen don't carry guns, - the airports consider it unecassary to X-ray luggage before getting on a plane.
There are lots of things about this country (New Zealand) that I am not proud of, but I don't feel the need to go even more off-topic.
For those of you outside New Zealand who are looking at this, a bit of background might be in order to see what the outrage is about.
In 1990, the Governemnt sold Telecom for NZ$4.25 billion to a mostly American Consortium. They didn't just sell the service - they actually sold the whole network.
As a condition of sale, the Government retained a "Kiwi Share" in Telecom which placed certain obligations on the corporation. These were (interestingly enough, a brief search on www.telecom.co.nz didn't find this info, so I had to look elsewhere):
1.That the purchasers would sell down a portion of the initial holding to the New Zealand public,
2.That there would be a 49.9% ceiling on the shareholding of any foreign buyer,
3.That the Board would comprise at least 50% New Zealand citizens,
4.That Telecom would maintain a comprehensive residential phone network, with free local calls and increases in the line rental limited to the rate of inflation,
5.That the line rental for rural residential phones would be no more than for urban ones.
I could go into a whole lot of stuff about how the government had promised that they wouldn't sell Telecom, and how it was underpriced, but there is some more info I found here:
http://www.plain.co.nz/bohica/tele_2.HTM
Anyway, Telecom since then has been trying to work its way around some of this. Telecom executives frequently complain how much the rural and free local calling services are costing it. A while ago it introduced a 'plan' where by paying for local calls, you had a lower monthly rental. I _hope_ that this isn't the prelude to trying to get us all onto local charging.
Telecom has also been making very large profits, so it has had ample opportunity to upgrade its netwrok if this was going to be a problem.
So the question is not really about the pros and cons of charging people who make massive use of phone lines (I could see some case being made for this) - it is about meeting obligations which it is quite capable of meeting.
A homosexual that was pissed off about that wouldn't have much sense of linguistic history.
When I was young (shows how old I am), 'gay' meant something like cheerful, or happy. As far as I recall, it was only something like a couple of decades ago that it was taken over by the homosexual community for use as a word to describe themselves that didn't have insulting connotations. An argument could be made (and I'm just using this as an example) that there would be some justice in having the word reclaimed.
The fact is that language evolves all the time, particularly with euphamisms.
For example, 'toilet' was originally a polite word to refer to something else (I don't know what it was called before then), but when I was over in the U.S. I was a little surprised you dont look for public toilets, the word 'restroom' is now used instead. Last place I'd go for a rest;).
There are lots of other examples, which I won't go into here.
It's always a bit sad to see the language that we grew up with being 'corrupted', but I think every generation goes through that, and the language still survives and grows.
My objection with the 'hacker' vs. 'cracker' is not so much the terms that are used, but the fact that (in the popular media), confusion of the terms is connected with confusion of the two cultures.
It would be nice to think that hackers just using another word to describe themselves would help, but the problem is that many crackers regard themselves or want to see themselves as hackers, or just can't understand the difference. It is more glamorous to see yourself as an inventor than a vandal. This is part how I imagine the confusion got started in the first place (another part being distrust of anyone who can do things with such arcane devices as computers), and I suspect that this confusion (whatever terms are actually used) will always be there.
I wonder what restrooms will be renamed as when that starts to become an impolite word?
I'm not sure why that reply was attached to my post... either you have attached it to the wrong place, or misread my comment _completely_.
I've never labelled anyone as a jock, nerd or geek and agree completely that labelling people as if one label describes the whole person is dangerous and divisive. That's why I'm _not_ a nerd or a geek even if I do use MacOS and Linux and post here. I'm so much more than that.
> But I can't help but think that those of us who ever saw ourselves as outcasts have done it to ourselves.
I am possibly taking this to mean something something beyond what the original poster meant, but this could so easily be extended to "outcasts are to blame for their own situation", and there is a point here that needs to be made.
I'll speak from my own case, as that the best way to say this, and I suspect that my case is far from unique:
I was bullied through my whole time at school, not necessarily for being a 'nerd' or a 'geek' but just for being 'different'.
When I look back on it a few years later, I realize the rather unpleasant truth, that in some ways I had myself set up to be bullied. It was like a I created an invisible sign saying 'victim' that everyone else could see and I couldn't (btw, I certainly don't have that sign now). It's difficult to be specific, but there was something that made it obvious that I was a good target - I couldn't/wouldn't effectively hit back. So I can understand the idea that I did some of it to myself.
BUT, and this is where the above is only a half truth, the fact that I was a 'victim' in absolutely no way excuses the victimization, and the system that permitted the victimization to happen for so long. I did not in any way 'deserve' to be bullied. I did in some ways make myself an outcast, but much of that was ways of trying to keep myself safe from further bullying, and the whole mess reinforced itself. I certainly did not intentionally set myself up as a victim, and the times that I was blamed for the situation did me a terrible disservice.
This paragraph might be a little tasteless in the context of the recent shootings, but my one real regret from high school is that I let the bullies get away with it without effectively hitting back. (I suspect that if I said something like that as a student of an American school at the moment, I would be sent home pronto).
I do agree strongly with 'Bucko's point that we need to be careful not to be part of the problem. It's not for being a 'nerd' or 'geek' that people are given a hard time - being different from the norm in whatever way is sufficient. Let's not forget that.
I think that the problem is endemic to the school system, and not just in the U.S.
I went to school in New Zealand, and there seem to be some differences -
1) The social strata mentioned wasn't quite so institutionalized as it was in what I have read here - I wouldn't be able to divide people into 'jocks' and 'nerds' as easily. Perhaps a blindness on my part.
2) The teachers weren't directly part of the problem, although many turned a blind eye. The worst thing that a teacher did to me that I can remember is that one took me aside, and tried to 'help' by pointing out that the problem was that I 'couldn't take a joke' and university would be even worse if I didn't change.
3) Weaponry is a little hard to get hold of in NZ, and the culture is that guns are to shoot animals, not people. Guns in schools aren't a problem. Yet.
My experience of school, while it was hell, doesn't have the horrific details I've read about here, but it was the same _sort_ of problem.
>What I'd like to know is, what can we DO about it, apart from discussing this here - the very place that "non-confirmists, geeks etc" are likely to be anyway?
One thing that can be done (that is happening in this thread) is that people are sharing experiences of what is going on/ has gone on.
Maybe this isn't such as issue nowadays with the internet and all, but I went through hell at school in the 70s and early 80s (it was during my first year of high school that they got their first computer), and it would have been IMMENSELY helpful to know that I wasn't alone in the way I was being treated.
Sure, it doesn't stop the bullying, being an outcast, or change wider society, but this sort of communication is a start. It matters here.
I have to disagree with the idea that school teaches you how to deal with people, at least in my case.
I spent 12.5 years at school, and the one skill I really learned thourghly was how to _not_ deal with people, as shutting off was the way I found to cope with bullying. I regard my school years as a prison sentence. I have spent the last 14 years working pretty hard to unlearn that 'skill' I learned at school, so that I can connect with people better.
Home-schooling wasn't really an option in New Zealand when I was of school-age, but my guess is that it would have suited me.
My major regret from my school days is that I let myself be stuck inside a system that was pretty clearly hurting me, e.g. don't 'squeal' because it's 'not the done thing', and doing 7th form (final year) when I could have gone to university a year early and had one year less of hell.
I have a sort of grudging sympathy with the gunmen - I am in no way condoning what they did, which was a horrific crime and solves nothing, but I have some idea where the urge comes from, as I felt overpowering rage towards bullies.
I am really saddened to see the wrong (or any for that matter) people getting victimized by the response. Trying to find a simple solution to a complex problem usually makes things worse.
> Asking for a citation of a factual statement isn't all that outrageous, is it?
You are quite right. I still stand by what I said, but it was a little misdirected. It is a trick that I have seen used for proponents of something to insist that the detractors furnish all of the proof as a way of letting themselves off the hook. Tobacco companies were masters of this.
In answer to your query, I haven't seen any direct evidence that GM soya causes damage, but it might be of interest to look the story of Professor Arpad Pusztai of Aberdeen's Rowett Research Institute, and his research into GM potatoes. You won't find his results in any journals (he got sacked), but do a web search on potato and Pusztai to get some information.
Concerning my comments on proof - the words 'beyond resonable doubt' were in there for a reason. It is impossible to completely demonstrate anything to be safe, (although demonstration of unsafe is possible). What I object to is that these things are being pushed out with minimal testing and regulation, just because there is a lot of money involved. I just want to see some research addressing the real concerns that have been raised, not just the minimum as set by a government that (in New Zealand) will do anything not to annoy corporations.
One thing that I heard recently (I'm not at home, so I can't give you a reference) is that with food engineered to include pesticides in the United States, the government body regulating pesticides won't look at it because it is a food, and the FDA won't look at it because it is a pesticide.
I'm completely happy with testing of these foods, as long as it is done is such a way that it is nearly impossible for material to escape. Unfortunately, many of the tests going on don't even meet this criterion. As for driving them underground, there is currently little enough control over the process (at least in New Zealand and India) that driving it underground wouldn't make all that much difference in this case, as the corporations make most of their own rules.
I agree on "There are things man was not meant to know" being rubbish - I don't go along with that either. Science itself isn't good or bad - it's what we do with it.
> I could decide that, for example, your computer use is dangerous to me, and demand that you stop it until you prove that it isn't.
Be assured that if you can suggest some plausible reason that my computer use is harmful to you in a way that you can't easily avoid (I'm not asking for proof here), I'll stop until I can give reasonable evidence that your fears are groundless. That is the sort of thing that I am asking of the GM food producers.
> So, if you want to stop someone from doing something, then yes, the burden of proof of danger is on you.
We'll have to just disagree on that one. I've seen so many cases of damage from misuse of technology that I am a supporter of the precautionary principle. Of course, with the way that your so called free society works, even if I could prove right now that GM food was dangerous (I can't), I still wouldn't (on my own) be able to get anyone to stop a damned thing because I don't have enough money to affect the vested interests.
Roy Ward
-- Monsanto is to biodiversity as Microsoft is to standards.
Genetically modified food
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I'm a card carrying Green Party member, and I've been following the GM argument for quite some time (and there is a lot more debate in New Zealand than in the United States).
>> 1. There is evidence GM soya causes immune system damage. > Do you have a citation for this? I'm not asking just to be an @$$; I'd actually be interested in seeing the data.
This approach scares me. It seems to be very common to require those who are against a particular technology to prove that it is dangerous. It should be up to those wanting to distribute something like this to prove beyond reasonable doubt that it is safe, and not be allowed to release it until they do so, thereby putting the burden of proof on those who will benefit. The minimal field trials that are taking place certainly don't do this.
> by playing to ignorant fears, the anti-GM factions are making the situation more dangerous, not less.
As a member of the anti-GM faction (I used to not care until I took some time to find out what some of what was going on), I'd like to know which of my fears are ignorant, and how me arguing against GM food makes things more dangerous, as it seems that there are practically no controls currently. See the end of this post for some of my concerns.
> If people 'prefer' no anti-GM'd food, why are there government regulations to prevent it's sale?
The problem here is the underhand ways that the big biotechnology corporations are pushing their product, and organisations like the WTO and ANZFA are working to restrict labelling as being anti 'free trade'. This leaves consumers unable to distinguish between GM and non-GM food. Soya is an example of this sort of problem, as GM soya is mixed with ordinary soya before being exported from the U.S., so there is no way of distinguishing them. The only way that those of us who don't want to eat GM food is to make a lot of political noise about it, and in New Zealand the issue has gained enough attention to possibly be an election issue this year. The simplest way to respond to public pressure is a ban. From the NZ point of view, I would be satisfied to see growing GM crops in NZ banned until proved safe (Nuclear power and weapons are currently banned), and all imported GM food clearly labelled, including what species genes are taken from, so I could choose not to eat it, but this infomation isn't made available, so I also support a ban until such time as it is.
A summary of my concerns (Email me for any clarification):
(1) There is no labelling of GM foods, and such labelling is not allowed or required as being anti 'free trade'. Even labelling food as being non-GE is not allowed under some trade agreements. Knowing what you are eating seems like a basic right to me.
(1a) I suffer from some food allergies, including some not very common ones. It is actually pretty easy for me to avoid products that have clearly labelled contents, as if it contains a bad ingredient I just don't eat it. With (1) above, this could become impossible.
(2) I have heard people glibly say that ill effects can be tested for. Given that some ill effect might not show up for years, and genetic damage can take generations to show up, the GM food testing going on can only test for the short term stuff. This is exacerbated by (1), as if people start getting sick later, there is no way of tracking it down. I'm thinking of such disasters as Agent Orange, asbestos, Thalidimide, and many pesticides that were thought to be safe based on limited trials.
(3) The risk of genetic material leaking into the wider environment, including into other supposedly non-GM foods. We simply don't know enough about how our ecosystems work to risk the wide scale use of GM that is currently happening.
(4) Some of the big genetechology companies are touting their technology as helping to 'feed the third world'. NONE of the genetic modifications that I have heard of help at all with that, or help the consumer at all. Things are being done like: - Round-Up ready soya-beans, that just allow greater doses of herbicides to be used - Terminator technology, which prevents seeds being used from crops to grow more crops (it is actually a lot more complicated than that, and this can leak into neighbouring similar crops). - Modifying foods such as tomatoes to give them a thicker skin, and give them a longer shelf life. This is a slight bonus for food distributors, but doesn't make the food any better. - Making crops produce pesticides. This will increase the amount of the given pesticide in the environment, producin pesticide resistant insects much more quickly. This is analagous with the idea of dosing everyone with antibiotics - a possibly useful tool becomes useless very quickly through misuse.
(4a) I eat organic food where possible, and the worst example of (4) I have heard of is engineering the production of Bt into crops. Bt is one of the safest pesticides, in that it is the only pesticide that can be used by organic farmers as a method of last resort for dealing with pests, by applying very small amounts in carefully directly to affected areas of crops as seldom as possible. Now that Bt is being engineered into crops, there will be great increase in pests resistant to Bt. I have seen estimates that Bt will be rendered useless in about 10 years or less. The corporation concerned acknowledges this. This makes a quick buck for a particular organisation who can then move on to something else, leaving another industry with a reduced set of tools.
(5) There are lots of political aspects to the way that Genetic Engineering is being used, which I won't detail here, except to say that this is a way of large corporations who are answerable only to shareholders to take over a pretty basic area of our lives - our food sources.
I am not against Genetic Engineering per se, but I have seen nothing to recommend the way that it is currently being used for crops, and plenty to suggest that it might be a really bad move.
Roy Ward.
-- Monsanto is to biodiversity as Microsoft is to standards.
This idea sounds good in theory, but this is still a self-selecting group (people _will_ pick who they know), which unfortunately discourages diversity.
You wrote: > Also, I believe that no automated process should be used to decide moderation.
The ways to avoid a self selcting group as I see them is: (1) a fixed carefully selected set of moderators, so any bias doesn't get worse - unsustainable, (2) no moderater - we've already seen what that does, (3) everyone can moderate - I think that this could be made to work, (4) some automatic process, _not_ requiring someone to have been moderated up.
IMO, only 3 and 4 can work.
Rob has chosen a variant of 4, and apart from thinking the moderate vs. post restriction is too strict, he is doing a really good job.
Getting this right is a _very_ hard problem, so Rob is being something of a pioneer in this. Let's try this out and see if it works.
A boycott has to be aimed at causing (usually economic) pain to the people to whom you want to send a message to be effective - a boycott of downloaded software that you don't have to pay for achieves nothing.
As an example of a mis-directed boycott (as far as I understand it - I didn't have access to all the facts at the time), I remember quite a few years ago now, when I was the owner of a Macintosh Classic (the best I could afford), about the time of the infamous 'look and feel' lawsuit, someone told me about this thing called the 'Free Software Foundation' that had this compiler called 'gcc' for which you could get the source and contribute. I was excited about this until I was told that as a result of Apple's lawsuit (of which I didn't approve), the FSF wasn't porting (was discouraging porting? I'm not sure) any of their stuff to Macintosh. I immediately lost interest, because no matter how cool their stuff was, I wasn't going to be able to run it. It took about another 7 years for me to look at open source software when I installed Linux on my G3. The only sufferers in that particular case were me for not having access to GPL software, and possibly the Open Source community for not having any input that I might have provided. Apple certainly wasn't hurt one jot, and I had enough reasons to choose Macintosh over Wintel Box to not make that an option for me.
On the subject of the Apple License, it would certainly be great to have the flaws removed, but remember that this is a huge step for Apple - I thought that Apple releasing a large part of their source was a joke when I first heard it (given how closed they have been up till now), so give them a chance to not get it perfectly right first time.
There is a subtle problem with moderation is that it leads to a very narrow community of interest.
This is because the current system of moderators creates an unstable system, with the fixed point having only one opinion expressed on any issue.
Say for example that there is an article posted that suggests that some feature of another operating system compares favourably against the comparable feature in Linux.
Say, for simplicity, that all of the comments either support or disagree with the article, and that there are about 200 comments. I'd guess that at least 75% of people here are broadly pro-linux, so say that there are 50 supporting comments and 150 disagreements.
Now if there is no moderation, that is the proportion that everyone will see. Now assume that there are similar proportions of opinions amoungst the 400 moderators (This is actually unlikely- see below). Assume that 90% of them are well behaved and only moderate on such things as language, flames, giving interesting points of view etc. (this would be a _very_ good ratio), and the other 10% (bad) moderation is based on people agreeing with them. Now the number of biased (bad) moderators that may upgrade or downgrade articies is:
For upgrades, this isn't a problem, since it is still proportional. For downgrades however, there is potentially quite a problem, as the Pro-Other articles may have a significant bias against them, so it is possible that the proportions at a threshold of 0 or 1 is more like 90:10, or even 95:5 instead of 75:25. This gets worse with a larger number of moderators.
This in itself is not such a problem, these are only comments after all, and you can set the threshold to -(something large). However, those who keep getting comments downgraded and read an overwhelmingly single opinion are likely over repeated cases of this to get discouraged and go somewhere else, in this for instance pushing this (unintentionally) towards being a Linux only forum.
Where it gets really bad is that even with a small bias, at some point Rob has to update the list of moderators. If he does it the same way, then those who hold opinions away from the majority are even less likely to be selected, since they have been moderated down a time or two, making this into a vicious cycle, admitting only those who hold the 'right' opinions, with the 'right' opinions getting narrower and narrower. (Don't use RedHat on x86? Tsk tsk tsk... don't want you here). There are plenty of examples in history when this sort of thing has happened... every time there is an 'in' group.
One of the things that I enjoy in comments is when someone can reason well supporting a position that I don't agree with, as this helps me to expand my own ideas. I don't want to lose this.
I wish that I could offer a better system, but one observation is that one of the reasons that democracy works as well as it does is that (nearly) everyone technically gets the same amount of vote. Perhaps if everyone could do one upgrade, (not downgrade) in a 24 hour period?.Any automatic system for selecting moderators is doomed to the problem that I described above.
When I wrote my language ReWrite, I had the problem that there were no existing implementations (Mathematica(tm) was close), but _really_ wanted to write it in itself, because compiling the langauge is quite complex, but it is good for writing compilers.
My solution was to write a quick and dirty hack ReWrite interpreter in Pascal, give it a sufficient subset of the language to get me started, then wrote a pretty minimal compiler in ReWrite, and interpreted the compiler to compile itself. (It took four days on my 8 MHz Mac Classic doing it in little chunks, that interpreter was really slow). Then I stopped using the interpreter and started extending the compiler.
A couple of memorable things from the development process:
I had the interpreter and compiler designed so that they could interoperate, and it was fascinating to watch the compilation rate speed up as more bits of the compiler were compiled (it would link the each compiled function in immediately, and use that in preference to the interpreted one). A gradual speed gain of about a factor of 60.
An interesting part of extending a language written in itself, particularly when it is not a standard language, is that once an extension has been added and works, I start using it in further development on the compiler. The langauge has changed enough since I started it that there is a bit of a mix of coding styles in there - some of the older code is quite hard to read when it has to work around restrictions that no longer exist. (That's why it turns out to have such an unintentionally appropriate name - every so often I rewrite a code module that has grown too old).
By the way, is ReWrite only goes on Macintoshes, is 68K code (not PowerPC), has free binaries but is not distributed with source, and hasn't been released for about three years. I would like to change all of that (except the free part) as I get more time to work on it.
Of course because it only goes on one platform and is wrtten in itself, to only sensible way to port it is to write a cross-compiler, ReWrite to C++ or ReWrite to Java Bytecode compiler (these last two are possible, but hard).
I've strayed off topic a bit, but my experience is that going through that process of getting a compiler going is fun, even if _everyone_ you mention it to before you get it working starts out by saying that it is a waste of time.
I've also get ReWrite on my CV, and I remember going for a job interview where the fact that I had designed and implemented language was seen quite favourably, but:
Interviewer: "What did you write it in?" Me: "ReWrite" Interviewer: "No, what did you _write_ it in?" Me: "ReWrite, it's written in itself" Interviewer: "No, what did you _write_ it in?" Me: "The source code for ReWrite is written in ReWrite itself, just like C compilers are written in C" (snipped a couple more ways of me trying to say the same thing in different ways) Me: (not wanting the interview to be stuck any longer) "The user interface is written in Pascal" Interviewer: "Ah". (he was happy then)
I _like_ MacOS not having protected memory - it makes it so much easier to fool around with the low level stuff;)
OK, I agree that not having PM and PMT is outdated, and I will be upgrading to MacOS X eventually, but I use MacOS at home, and a dual boot Linux/NT box at work, and I find that the from the user experience, this doesn't matter too much as Linux and MacOS are both very responsive, and I need to reboot MacOS because of crashes less often (except when I'm fooling around with the low level stuff!) than I need to reboot NT because of memory leaks.
MacOS has by far the nicest interface. Windowmaker on Linux would come close if I could get a file manager as nice as the Mac Finder.
So, responsiveness (233Mhz machines) Linux > MacOS >> NT, user interface MacOS >> Linux > NT.
I went to University and got a good maths degree, and this has been very useful for computer programming later on, as I keep finding the skills I learned there are very helpful, particularly when it comes to algorithm design. (A computer program and a mathematical proof have a lot in common, and the skills are somewhat transferable). These are skills that I would have been unlikely to have gained without the mathematics. I have worked with several people who have done very little mathematics, and I have definitely found that I have an edge in some areas, particularly at the design level.
I recommend that anyone who wants to be really strong in the computer field should do some mathematics (particularly algebra) to second year level. It won't seem all that relevant at the time, but my experience is that it did in hindsight. Analysis is good too, but only if you already have a strength in mathematics.
I also did a fair bit of CS, and didn't learn very much new there, but helped fill some corners, and exposed me to paradyms (sp?) such as logic and functional programming that are valuable to have.
My regret is that I never studied any arts subjects... English, Philosophy, Political Studies... not relevant to programming, but certainly would have helped contribute to a broader education.
As a final thought, if you are considering going to University, its the skills that you learn that are important, not the tools. Learning tools in this area is best done as you need them.
Slashdot Mirror
Posting this a day late, so I'm not sure that anyone will read this :(
One of the reason for Java not being as fast as C (apart from the fact that it is usually interpreted, not compiled) is that it is running on OSes (when i refer to OSes here, I mean OSes/Kernals) optimized for making C style code run fast, and some Java things will run inefficently because of this.
To be more specific:
(1) Most OSes don't have low level support for garbage collection. This means for example that the virtual memory model can't be easily tuned to use information that the garbage collector might provide about which pages can be swapped out. An OS with gc either built into it, or considered in the design may result in much faster gc.
(2) In OSes with protected memory, calling any function in the kernal requires a context switch, and there is a lot of overhead required for context switches, and for managing this protection. A lot of the reason for this protection is because C is a dirty language that can do horrible things with pointers.
This overhead slows Java down, when Java doesn't _need_ much of this sort of protection, because it is built into the langauge model that things like pointer arithmetic aren't allowed.
(2a) A Java OS would only need threads, not full processes.
(3) Java checks for errors at runtime like writing off the end of an array. Ok, there is not much that can be done about that overhead. This point is not relavant to my argument, but is added for completeness in explaining why Java is slow.
Therefore, it is circular (i.e. incorrect) reasoning to say that because Java doesn't run fast on sytems designed for C, that Java is no good, therefore don't use it for an OS.
If a Java OS was built that was tuned for Java, any C code that was run on it would have to be run in a 'sandbox' where things were protected against that process, and I'm guessing that in this case Java might well compare favourably with C.
Aside: such a OS might be really good for LISP too, which has some similar properties.
Another point is that Java code tends to be much less buggy (no buffer overflows, leaks, double deletes), so even if it is a_little_ slower, it is well worth using to get a more stable result.
Disclaimer: I haven't been following JavaOS, so my arguments might not apply to that specific project.
> Bandwidth is free, even at 56k.
Not necessarily. It's free for most people, particulary (I imagine) for people in North America and Europe, but people in other parts of the world don't always have as many options.
The only reason that I'm bothering to write this reply is that the 'bandwidth is free' needs to be challenged. I know of too many people on limited bandwith that keep getting sent things like large attachments because of that assumption.
A month ago, I was paying NZ$3/hour access for 28k - hardly free bandwidth, and the university department where I work gets charged something like NZ$1/Mb.
Roy Ward.
>For gun control backers who don't believe or understand this argument, please prove your independence from the guns of hated conservatives and libertarians; put an "unarmed and proud of it" sign in your yard and on your car.
OK, Done. (Apart from the fact that I don't hate the conservatives and libertarians, and don't own a car). What's your point?
This post more than anything else I have read has swung me in favour of gun control - if having a culture of guns means living in such a climate of fear that you feel that you need one for defence, then we don't need them here any more than they already are.
I'm also proud to live in a country where:
- handguns are illegal (I never saw one till I visited the USA),
- you need a license to own or use a gun (I don't have a gun license),
- most gun ownership is for the purpose of hunting,
- policemen don't carry guns,
- the airports consider it unecassary to X-ray luggage before getting on a plane.
There are lots of things about this country (New Zealand) that I am not proud of, but I don't feel the need to go even more off-topic.
Roy Ward.
--
Guns don't kill people - bullets do.
For those of you outside New Zealand who are looking at this, a bit of background might be in order to see what the outrage is about.
In 1990, the Governemnt sold Telecom for NZ$4.25 billion to a mostly American Consortium. They didn't just sell the service - they actually sold the whole network.
As a condition of sale, the Government retained a "Kiwi Share" in Telecom which placed certain obligations on the corporation. These were (interestingly enough, a brief search on www.telecom.co.nz didn't find this info, so I had to look elsewhere):
1.That the purchasers would sell down a portion of the initial holding to the New Zealand public,
2.That there would be a 49.9% ceiling on the shareholding of any foreign buyer,
3.That the Board would comprise at least 50% New Zealand citizens,
4.That Telecom would maintain a comprehensive residential phone network, with free local calls and increases in the line rental limited to the rate of inflation,
5.That the line rental for rural residential phones would be no more than for urban ones.
I could go into a whole lot of stuff about how the government had promised that they wouldn't sell Telecom, and how it was underpriced, but there is some more info I found here:
http://www.plain.co.nz/bohica/tele_2.HTM
Anyway, Telecom since then has been trying to work its way around some of this. Telecom executives frequently complain how much the rural and free local calling services are costing it. A while ago it introduced a 'plan' where by paying for local calls, you had a lower monthly rental. I _hope_ that this isn't the prelude to trying to get us all onto local charging.
Telecom has also been making very large profits, so it has had ample opportunity to upgrade its netwrok if this was going to be a problem.
So the question is not really about the pros and cons of charging people who make massive use of phone lines (I could see some case being made for this) - it is about meeting obligations which it is quite capable of meeting.
Roy Ward.
The chemical properties of an element (all that electron shell stuff) don't affect the nuclear properties.
The force involved in holding a nucleus together (the 'strong' force) is many orders of magnitude stronger than the electromagnetic force.
So element 118 being a 'noble gas' would have no effect on its decay time.
Roy Ward.
A homosexual that was pissed off about that wouldn't have much sense of linguistic history.
;).
When I was young (shows how old I am), 'gay' meant something like cheerful, or happy. As far as I recall, it was only something like a couple of decades ago that it was taken over by the homosexual community for use as a word to describe themselves that didn't have insulting connotations. An argument could be made (and I'm just using this as an example) that there would be some justice in having the word reclaimed.
The fact is that language evolves all the time, particularly with euphamisms.
For example, 'toilet' was originally a polite word to refer to something else (I don't know what it was called before then), but when I was over in the U.S. I was a little surprised you dont look for public toilets, the word 'restroom' is now used instead. Last place I'd go for a rest
There are lots of other examples, which I won't go into here.
It's always a bit sad to see the language that we grew up with being 'corrupted', but I think every generation goes through that, and the language still survives and grows.
My objection with the 'hacker' vs. 'cracker' is not so much the terms that are used, but the fact that (in the popular media), confusion of the terms is connected with confusion of the two cultures.
It would be nice to think that hackers just using another word to describe themselves would help, but the problem is that many crackers regard themselves or want to see themselves as hackers, or just can't understand the difference. It is more glamorous to see yourself as an inventor than a vandal. This is part how I imagine the confusion got started in the first place (another part being distrust of anyone who can do things with such arcane devices as computers), and I suspect that this confusion (whatever terms are actually used) will always be there.
I wonder what restrooms will be renamed as when that starts to become an impolite word?
Roy Ward.
I'm not sure why that reply was attached to my post ... either you have attached it to the wrong place, or misread my comment _completely_.
I've never labelled anyone as a jock, nerd or geek and agree completely that labelling people as if one label describes the whole person is dangerous and divisive. That's why I'm _not_ a nerd or a geek even if I do use MacOS and Linux and post here. I'm so much more than that.
Roy Ward.
The half-truth that I am referring to:
> But I can't help but think that those of us who ever saw ourselves as outcasts have done it to ourselves.
I am possibly taking this to mean something something beyond what the original poster meant, but this could so easily be extended to "outcasts are to blame for their own situation", and there is a point here that needs to be made.
I'll speak from my own case, as that the best way to say this, and I suspect that my case is far from unique:
I was bullied through my whole time at school, not necessarily for being a 'nerd' or a 'geek' but just for being 'different'.
When I look back on it a few years later, I realize the rather unpleasant truth, that in some ways I had myself set up to be bullied. It was like a I created an invisible sign saying 'victim' that everyone else could see and I couldn't (btw, I certainly don't have that sign now). It's difficult to be specific, but there was something that made it obvious that I was a good target - I couldn't/wouldn't effectively hit back. So I can understand the idea that I did some of it to myself.
BUT, and this is where the above is only a half truth, the fact that I was a 'victim' in absolutely no way excuses the victimization, and the system that permitted the victimization to happen for so long. I did not in any way 'deserve' to be bullied. I did in some ways make myself an outcast, but much of that was ways of trying to keep myself safe from further bullying, and the whole mess reinforced itself. I certainly did not intentionally set myself up as a victim, and the times that I was blamed for the situation did me a terrible disservice.
This paragraph might be a little tasteless in the context of the recent shootings, but my one real regret from high school is that I let the bullies get away with it without effectively hitting back. (I suspect that if I said something like that as a student of an American school at the moment, I would be sent home pronto).
I do agree strongly with 'Bucko's point that we need to be careful not to be part of the problem. It's not for being a 'nerd' or 'geek' that people are given a hard time - being different from the norm in whatever way is sufficient. Let's not forget that.
Roy Ward.
When I clicked on the link for that story, I was hoping for a picture ;-).
Cheers,
Roy Ward
I think that the problem is endemic to the school system, and not just in the U.S.
I went to school in New Zealand, and there seem to be some differences -
1) The social strata mentioned wasn't quite so institutionalized as it was in what I have read here - I wouldn't be able to divide people into 'jocks' and 'nerds' as easily. Perhaps a blindness on my part.
2) The teachers weren't directly part of the problem, although many turned a blind eye. The worst thing that a teacher did to me that I can remember is that one took me aside, and tried to 'help' by pointing out that the problem was that I 'couldn't take a joke' and university would be even worse if I didn't change.
3) Weaponry is a little hard to get hold of in NZ, and the culture is that guns are to shoot animals, not people. Guns in schools aren't a problem. Yet.
My experience of school, while it was hell, doesn't have the horrific details I've read about here, but it was the same _sort_ of problem.
Roy Ward.
>What I'd like to know is, what can we DO about it, apart from discussing this here - the very place that "non-confirmists, geeks etc" are likely to be anyway?
One thing that can be done (that is happening in this thread) is that people are sharing experiences of what is going on/ has gone on.
Maybe this isn't such as issue nowadays with the internet and all, but I went through hell at school in the 70s and early 80s (it was during my first year of high school that they got their first computer), and it would have been IMMENSELY helpful to know that I wasn't alone in the way I was being treated.
Sure, it doesn't stop the bullying, being an outcast, or change wider society, but this sort of communication is a start. It matters here.
Roy Ward
I have to disagree with the idea that school teaches you how to deal with people, at least in my case.
I spent 12.5 years at school, and the one skill I really learned thourghly was how to _not_ deal with people, as shutting off was the way I found to cope with bullying. I regard my school years as a prison sentence. I have spent the last 14 years working pretty hard to unlearn that 'skill' I learned at school, so that I can connect with people better.
Home-schooling wasn't really an option in New Zealand when I was of school-age, but my guess is that it would have suited me.
My major regret from my school days is that I let myself be stuck inside a system that was pretty clearly hurting me, e.g. don't 'squeal' because it's 'not the done thing', and doing 7th form (final year) when I could have gone to university a year early and had one year less of hell.
I have a sort of grudging sympathy with the gunmen - I am in no way condoning what they did, which was a horrific crime and solves nothing, but I have some idea where the urge comes from, as I felt overpowering rage towards bullies.
I am really saddened to see the wrong (or any for that matter) people getting victimized by the response. Trying to find a simple solution to a complex problem usually makes things worse.
Roy Ward.
> Asking for a citation of a factual statement isn't all that outrageous, is it?
You are quite right. I still stand by what I said, but it was a little misdirected. It is a trick that I have seen used for proponents of something to insist that the detractors furnish all of the proof as a way of letting themselves off the hook. Tobacco companies were masters of this.
In answer to your query, I haven't seen any direct evidence that GM soya causes damage, but it might be of interest to look the story of Professor Arpad Pusztai of Aberdeen's Rowett Research Institute, and his research into GM potatoes. You won't find his results in any journals (he got sacked), but do a web search on potato and Pusztai to get some information.
Concerning my comments on proof - the words 'beyond resonable doubt' were in there for a reason. It is impossible to completely demonstrate anything to be safe, (although demonstration of unsafe is possible). What I object to is that these things are being pushed out with minimal testing and regulation, just because there is a lot of money involved. I just want to see some research addressing the real concerns that have been raised, not just the minimum as set by a government that (in New Zealand) will do anything not to annoy corporations.
One thing that I heard recently (I'm not at home, so I can't give you a reference) is that with food engineered to include pesticides in the United States, the government body regulating pesticides won't look at it because it is a food, and the FDA won't look at it because it is a pesticide.
I'm completely happy with testing of these foods, as long as it is done is such a way that it is nearly impossible for material to escape. Unfortunately, many of the tests going on don't even meet this criterion. As for driving them underground, there is currently little enough control over the process (at least in New Zealand and India) that driving it underground wouldn't make all that much difference in this case, as the corporations make most of their own rules.
I agree on "There are things man was not meant to know" being rubbish - I don't go along with that either. Science itself isn't good or bad - it's what we do with it.
> I could decide that, for example, your computer use is dangerous to me, and demand that you stop it until you prove that it isn't.
Be assured that if you can suggest some plausible reason that my computer use is harmful to you in a way that you can't easily avoid (I'm not asking for proof here), I'll stop until I can give reasonable evidence that your fears are groundless. That is the sort of thing that I am asking of the GM food producers.
> So, if you want to stop someone from doing something, then yes, the burden of proof of danger is on you.
We'll have to just disagree on that one. I've seen so many cases of damage from misuse of technology that I am a supporter of the precautionary principle. Of course, with the way that your so called free society works, even if I could prove right now that GM food was dangerous (I can't), I still wouldn't (on my own) be able to get anyone to stop a damned thing because I don't have enough money to affect the vested interests.
Roy Ward
--
Monsanto is to biodiversity
as Microsoft is to standards.
I'm a card carrying Green Party member, and I've been following the GM argument for quite some time (and there is a lot more debate in New Zealand than in the United States).
>> 1. There is evidence GM soya causes immune system damage.
> Do you have a citation for this? I'm not asking just to be an @$$; I'd actually be interested in seeing the data.
This approach scares me. It seems to be very common to require those who are against a particular technology to prove that it is dangerous. It should be up to those wanting to distribute something like this to prove beyond reasonable doubt that it is safe, and not be allowed to release it until they do so, thereby putting the burden of proof on those who will benefit. The minimal field trials that are taking place certainly don't do this.
> by playing to ignorant fears, the anti-GM factions are making the situation more dangerous, not less.
As a member of the anti-GM faction (I used to not care until I took some time to find out what some of what was going on), I'd like to know which of my fears are ignorant, and how me arguing against GM food makes things more dangerous, as it seems that there are practically no controls currently. See the end of this post for some of my concerns.
> If people 'prefer' no anti-GM'd food, why are there government regulations to prevent it's sale?
The problem here is the underhand ways that the big biotechnology corporations are pushing their product, and organisations like the WTO and ANZFA are working to restrict labelling as being anti 'free trade'. This leaves consumers unable to distinguish between GM and non-GM food. Soya is an example of this sort of problem, as GM soya is mixed with ordinary soya before being exported from the U.S., so there is no way of distinguishing them. The only way that those of us who don't want to eat GM food is to make a lot of political noise about it, and in New Zealand the issue has gained enough attention to possibly be an election issue this year. The simplest way to respond to public pressure is a ban. From the NZ point of view, I would be satisfied to see growing GM crops in NZ banned until proved safe (Nuclear power and weapons are currently banned), and all imported GM food clearly labelled, including what species genes are taken from, so I could choose not to eat it, but this infomation isn't made available, so I also support a ban until such time as it is.
A summary of my concerns (Email me for any clarification):
(1) There is no labelling of GM foods, and such labelling is not allowed or required as being anti 'free trade'. Even labelling food as being non-GE is not allowed under some trade agreements. Knowing what you are eating seems like a basic right to me.
(1a) I suffer from some food allergies, including some not very common ones. It is actually pretty easy for me to avoid products that have clearly labelled contents, as if it contains a bad ingredient I just don't eat it. With (1) above, this could become impossible.
(2) I have heard people glibly say that ill effects can be tested for. Given that some ill effect might not show up for years, and genetic damage can take generations to show up, the GM food testing going on can only test for the short term stuff. This is exacerbated by (1), as if people start getting sick later, there is no way of tracking it down. I'm thinking of such disasters as Agent Orange, asbestos, Thalidimide, and many pesticides that were thought to be safe based on limited trials.
(3) The risk of genetic material leaking into the wider environment, including into other supposedly non-GM foods. We simply don't know enough about how our ecosystems work to risk the wide scale use of GM that is currently happening.
(4) Some of the big genetechology companies are touting their technology as helping to 'feed the third world'. NONE of the genetic modifications that I have heard of help at all with that, or help the consumer at all. Things are being done like:
- Round-Up ready soya-beans, that just allow greater doses of herbicides to be used
- Terminator technology, which prevents seeds being used from crops to grow more crops (it is actually a lot more complicated than that, and this can leak into neighbouring similar crops).
- Modifying foods such as tomatoes to give them a thicker skin, and give them a longer shelf life. This is a slight bonus for food distributors, but doesn't make the food any better.
- Making crops produce pesticides. This will increase the amount of the given pesticide in the environment, producin pesticide resistant insects much more quickly. This is analagous with the idea of dosing everyone with antibiotics - a possibly useful tool becomes useless very quickly through misuse.
(4a) I eat organic food where possible, and the worst example of (4) I have heard of is engineering the production of Bt into crops. Bt is one of the safest pesticides, in that it is the only pesticide that can be used by organic farmers as a method of last resort for dealing with pests, by applying very small amounts in carefully directly to affected areas of crops as seldom as possible. Now that Bt is being engineered into crops, there will be great increase in pests resistant to Bt. I have seen estimates that Bt will be rendered useless in about 10 years or less. The corporation concerned acknowledges this. This makes a quick buck for a particular organisation who can then move on to something else, leaving another industry with a reduced set of tools.
(5) There are lots of political aspects to the way that Genetic Engineering is being used, which I won't detail here, except to say that this is a way of large corporations who are answerable only to shareholders to take over a pretty basic area of our lives - our food sources.
I am not against Genetic Engineering per se, but I have seen nothing to recommend the way that it is currently being used for crops, and plenty to suggest that it might be a really bad move.
Roy Ward.
--
Monsanto is to biodiversity
as Microsoft is to standards.
This idea sounds good in theory, but this is still a self-selecting group (people _will_ pick who they know), which unfortunately discourages diversity.
You wrote:
> Also, I believe that no automated process should be used to decide moderation.
The ways to avoid a self selcting group as I see them is:
(1) a fixed carefully selected set of moderators, so any bias doesn't get worse - unsustainable,
(2) no moderater - we've already seen what that does,
(3) everyone can moderate - I think that this could be made to work,
(4) some automatic process, _not_ requiring someone to have been moderated up.
IMO, only 3 and 4 can work.
Rob has chosen a variant of 4, and apart from thinking the moderate vs. post restriction is too strict, he is doing a really good job.
Getting this right is a _very_ hard problem, so Rob is being something of a pioneer in this. Let's try this out and see if it works.
Roy Ward.
A boycott has to be aimed at causing (usually economic) pain to the people to whom you want to send a message to be effective - a boycott of downloaded software that you don't have to pay for achieves nothing.
As an example of a mis-directed boycott (as far as I understand it - I didn't have access to all the facts at the time), I remember quite a few years ago now, when I was the owner of a Macintosh Classic (the best I could afford), about the time of the infamous 'look and feel' lawsuit, someone told me about this thing called the 'Free Software Foundation' that had this compiler called 'gcc' for which you could get the source and contribute. I was excited about this until I was told that as a result of Apple's lawsuit (of which I didn't approve), the FSF wasn't porting (was discouraging porting? I'm not sure) any of their stuff to Macintosh. I immediately lost interest, because no matter how cool their stuff was, I wasn't going to be able to run it. It took about another 7 years for me to look at open source software when I installed Linux on my G3. The only sufferers in that particular case were me for not having access to GPL software, and possibly the Open Source community for not having any input that I might have provided. Apple certainly wasn't hurt one jot, and I had enough reasons to choose Macintosh over Wintel Box to not make that an option for me.
On the subject of the Apple License, it would certainly be great to have the flaws removed, but remember that this is a huge step for Apple - I thought that Apple releasing a large part of their source was a joke when I first heard it (given how closed they have been up till now), so give them a chance to not get it perfectly right first time.
There is a subtle problem with moderation is that it leads to a very narrow community of interest.
... don't want you here). There are plenty of examples in history when this sort of thing has happened ... every time there is an 'in' group.
.Any automatic system for selecting moderators is doomed to the problem that I described above.
This is because the current system of moderators creates an unstable system, with the fixed point having only one opinion expressed on any issue.
Say for example that there is an article posted that suggests that some feature of another operating system compares favourably against the comparable feature in Linux.
Say, for simplicity, that all of the comments either support or disagree with the article, and that there are about 200 comments. I'd guess that at least 75% of people here are broadly pro-linux, so say that there are 50 supporting comments and 150 disagreements.
Now if there is no moderation, that is the proportion that everyone will see. Now assume that there are similar proportions of opinions amoungst the 400 moderators (This is actually unlikely- see below). Assume that 90% of them are well behaved and only moderate on such things as language, flames, giving interesting points of view etc. (this would be a _very_ good ratio), and the other 10% (bad) moderation is based on people agreeing with them. Now the number of biased (bad) moderators that may upgrade or downgrade articies is:
Pro-Linux: 150, upgrade: 30, downgrade 10
Pro-Other: 50, upgrade: 10, donwgrade 30
For upgrades, this isn't a problem, since it is still proportional. For downgrades however, there is potentially quite a problem, as the Pro-Other articles may have a significant bias against them, so it is possible that the proportions at a threshold of 0 or 1 is more like 90:10, or even 95:5 instead of 75:25. This gets worse with a larger number of moderators.
This in itself is not such a problem, these are only comments after all, and you can set the threshold to -(something large). However, those who keep getting comments downgraded and read an overwhelmingly single opinion are likely over repeated cases of this to get discouraged and go somewhere else, in this for instance pushing this (unintentionally) towards being a Linux only forum.
Where it gets really bad is that even with a small bias, at some point Rob has to update the list of moderators. If he does it the same way, then those who hold opinions away from the majority are even less likely to be selected, since they have been moderated down a time or two, making this into a vicious cycle, admitting only those who hold the 'right' opinions, with the 'right' opinions getting narrower and narrower. (Don't use RedHat on x86? Tsk tsk tsk
One of the things that I enjoy in comments is when someone can reason well supporting a position that I don't agree with, as this helps me to expand my own ideas. I don't want to lose this.
I wish that I could offer a better system, but one observation is that one of the reasons that democracy works as well as it does is that (nearly) everyone technically gets the same amount of vote. Perhaps if everyone could do one upgrade, (not downgrade) in a 24 hour period?
Roy Ward.
When I wrote my language ReWrite, I had the problem that there were no existing implementations (Mathematica(tm) was close), but _really_ wanted to write it in itself, because compiling the langauge is quite complex, but it is good for writing compilers.
My solution was to write a quick and dirty hack ReWrite interpreter in Pascal, give it a sufficient subset of the language to get me started, then wrote a pretty minimal compiler in ReWrite, and interpreted the compiler to compile itself. (It took four days on my 8 MHz Mac Classic doing it in little chunks, that interpreter was really slow). Then I stopped using the interpreter and started extending the compiler.
A couple of memorable things from the development process:
I had the interpreter and compiler designed so that they could interoperate, and it was fascinating to watch the compilation rate speed up as more bits of the compiler were compiled (it would link the each compiled function in immediately, and use that in preference to the interpreted one). A gradual speed gain of about a factor of 60.
An interesting part of extending a language written in itself, particularly when it is not a standard language, is that once an extension has been added and works, I start using it in further development on the compiler. The langauge has changed enough since I started it that there is a bit of a mix of coding styles in there - some of the older code is quite hard to read when it has to work around restrictions that no longer exist. (That's why it turns out to have such an unintentionally appropriate name - every so often I rewrite a code module that has grown too old).
By the way, is ReWrite only goes on Macintoshes, is 68K code (not PowerPC), has free binaries but is not distributed with source, and hasn't been released for about three years. I would like to change all of that (except the free part) as I get more time to work on it.
Of course because it only goes on one platform and is wrtten in itself, to only sensible way to port it is to write a cross-compiler, ReWrite to C++ or ReWrite to Java Bytecode compiler (these last two are possible, but hard).
I've strayed off topic a bit, but my experience is that going through that process of getting a compiler going is fun, even if _everyone_ you mention it to before you get it working starts out by saying that it is a waste of time.
I've also get ReWrite on my CV, and I remember going for a job interview where the fact that I had designed and implemented language was seen quite favourably, but:
Interviewer: "What did you write it in?"
Me: "ReWrite"
Interviewer: "No, what did you _write_ it in?"
Me: "ReWrite, it's written in itself"
Interviewer: "No, what did you _write_ it in?"
Me: "The source code for ReWrite is written in ReWrite itself, just like C compilers are written in C"
(snipped a couple more ways of me trying to say the same thing in different ways)
Me: (not wanting the interview to be stuck any longer) "The user interface is written in Pascal"
Interviewer: "Ah". (he was happy then)
Roy Ward.
I _like_ MacOS not having protected memory - ;)
it makes it so much easier to fool around with
the low level stuff
OK, I agree that not having PM and PMT is
outdated, and I will be upgrading to MacOS X
eventually, but I use MacOS at home, and a dual
boot Linux/NT box at work, and I find that the
from the user experience, this doesn't matter
too much as Linux and MacOS are both very
responsive, and I need to reboot MacOS because
of crashes less often (except when I'm fooling
around with the low level stuff!) than I need
to reboot NT because of memory leaks.
MacOS has by far the nicest interface.
Windowmaker on Linux would come close if I could
get a file manager as nice as the Mac Finder.
So, responsiveness (233Mhz machines)
Linux > MacOS >> NT,
user interface
MacOS >> Linux > NT.
Roy Ward.
I went to University and got a good maths degree,
... English, Philosophy, Political ... not relevant to programming, but
and this has been very useful for computer
programming later on, as I keep finding the
skills I learned there are very helpful,
particularly when it comes to algorithm design.
(A computer program and a mathematical proof
have a lot in common, and the skills are somewhat
transferable). These are skills that I would have
been unlikely to have gained without the
mathematics. I have worked with several people
who have done very little mathematics, and I
have definitely found that I have an edge in
some areas, particularly at the design level.
I recommend that anyone who wants to be really
strong in the computer field should do some
mathematics (particularly algebra) to second
year level. It won't seem all that relevant
at the time, but my experience is that it did
in hindsight. Analysis is good too, but only if
you already have a strength in mathematics.
I also did a fair bit of CS, and didn't learn
very much new there, but helped fill some corners,
and exposed me to paradyms (sp?) such as logic
and functional programming that are valuable to
have.
My regret is that I never studied any arts
subjects
Studies
certainly would have helped contribute to a
broader education.
As a final thought, if you are considering going
to University, its the skills that you learn
that are important, not the tools. Learning tools
in this area is best done as you need them.
Roy Ward.