If you want a good alternative to PHP check out EmbPerl (works with mod_perl, but it is a lot easier than writing mod_perl scripts by hand), it allows you to embed Perl code into HTML similar to the way PHP works, except you've got all the power of Perl, all of the CPAN goodness to draw from, and you can much more easily mix-and-match with other Perl code (for instance back-end code like cron jobs and other stuff that most apps need).
Why oh why has Autocad not been released for Linux?
AutoCAD used to be available for a number of the proprietary *nixes (Solaris, SGI IRIX, HP/UX, etc) back in the Release 10, 11, 12 (and early R13) days. People I used to know that worked at AutoDesk used to make sort of veiled hints that Microsoft put some kind of pressure on them to quit supporting alternative platforms. More or less what they were saying is that AutoDesk was told if didn't quit supporting non-Microsoft platforms that Microsoft would enter the CAD market (possibly by buying up one of AutoDesk's competitors), or at least announce that they were going to, and that would kill AutoDesk by "giving away" the product. But of course nobody in those days would dare come right out and say something like that.
Feh. Inexperienced or bad MCSE's may be cheap. But if you hire a dummy to administer your network -- you have a dummy administering your network. Bad value, even if its cheap.
In my experience, good, experienced administrators are not significantly cheaper for Microsoft's platforms than are good, experienced *nix admins, and no more plentiful or easier to find either.
Furthermore, in my experience, you often need fewer *nix admins for a given number of users (or a given number of servers), so in many cases *nix is cheaper to administer in the long run.
No, the bottom line is that he cheated because he replicated another student's code line for line.
It doesn't say that anywhere in the Washington Post article. It says he "merely talked to another student", and that there were "similarities" on 30 out of hundreds of lines of code. That does not sound to me like "handing in someone else's working program.
Next time you go on a rant about "ivory tower crap," get off your little soapbox and do some actual research into the matter.
Maybe next time you should actually read the article. If you have some sort of inside knowledge of this case, you shouldn't assume that everyone else does, what we have is what is in the story.
When I was in school there were virtually no classes that allowed any sort of teamwork. At most, some of the higher level classes put people in pairs or threes for some projects, but that isn't the same as working on a day to day basis with a team of people on long term projects or in larger teams. And I'm not that worried about people in low level classes being leeches, it won't get them very far. Sooner or later their classmates will figure out they are blood suckers and ostracize them. And if they cheat on daily work, chances are they will blow it on the tests. And if they actually manage to learn enough to pass the tests in spite of cheating on the daily work, then fine, I don't think it matters how they learn it as long as they do.
I think there is a big difference between plagiarism of the type of stealing from others (like copying from books or whatever) and from students sharing ideas or maybe even a little code willingly. And for that matter, in the real world, how many professional developers don't have a shelf full of 'cookbook' type books and places like CPAN, freshmeat.net, sourceforge.org or whatever that they borrow code from rather than writing everything from scratch? Not that many, I'd care to guess, especially those that aren't writing code for resale as boxed software.
Teaching people how to find libraries, example code and books to learn and borrow code from is a good thing. Telling students that it is cheating is bad because it encourages them to try to write every last thing themselves, which means they are likely to pick bad algorithms and write buggy code to reinvent things that are known solutions. There is already too much of that in the industry, and the academic world is encouraging it rather than discouraging it. The sooner you get people started learning why code re-use is a good thing, the better, in my opinion.
It was like that when I went to college also... You know, god forbid that students might learn code re-use, or teamwork. One of the big problems in the software development world is programmers who can't work as a team. Can't read or debug other people's code, or write code that other people can understand.
The whole concept that code re-use or teamwork are cheating is just plain brain damaged.
My fear when dealing with a government run internet utility would be government regulation. Not that it can't happen with private providers, but somehow I can't help but be more worried about the government...
And I'd also worry about quality, given the level of service that one often gets from underpaid and unmotivated civil servants. Private ISPs have enough trouble getting and keeping good techs and customer service people, it would seem to be really tough on government pay scales.
They sell Macs at Fry's here in Austin, and there are generally about as many, if not more sales droids hanging out in that area than around the assembled x86 boxes. Not that I'm terribly interested in either, but you pretty much have to walk down through that area in order to get to where some of the other stuff is.
Many people have suggested that the design for Altair BASIC was largely cribbed from the DEC BASIC that Gates had worked with while interning with DEC when he was still a Harvard student. And many others also say that most of the important coding on Altair BASIC was actually done by Paul Allen, who certainly has more unassailable geek credentials than Gates.
Anyways, all this said, the reason why someone would shell out money for that platform is NOT to make economies, it's to get back with his old feelings, get in touch with his beloved platform, out of curiosity, or to develop on a new target system (or to grab one of the rare PPC boards out there:) )
I was never an Amiga fan in its day, so there is no big nostalgia kick for me there, and frankly I can't see many people spending a lot of money just for nostalgia's sake.
The reason I quote the Athlon XP instead of the Athlon MP is that there is basically no significant difference according to the hardware sites like anandtech, so why pay the difference. And I didn't look for the lowest price either, the prices I quoted were from a local dealer that I have bought from.
By the time you put together a complete system, this motherboard doesn't look price competitive to buying a recent Mac, and you have to put everything together yourself. Unless you have a religious reason to avoid Apple, it looks like they are a better option. Don't get me wrong, I think competition is a good thing, but this doesn't look like something that is going to give Apple a run for their money, so I don't think it helps there. And I like putting together machines myself, but if I was going to put toether a new machine for myself today, I could buy a dual Athlon motherboard and two Athlon XP 1700's for not too different than what this 600MHz G3 PPC motherboard is selling for. And that is from a local to me shop.
Don't believe me?
http://www.laboratorycomputers.com/laboratorypri ce sheet.htm
ASUS A7M266D AMD760MPX DUAL $249
PALOMINO XP 1.7PR $128
That's only $56 more than the $450 price they mention for the PPC motherboard, and it doesn't have the CPU's soldered down to "save costs" either. And there is no freaking way that a 600MHz G3 is faster than one Athlon XP 1700, let alone two.
I've also had terrible luck with WD. I've had good luck with Maxtor and Fujitsu, although I only have one or two Fujitsu drives recently and they are fairly old (4G range). Most of my recent purchased have been Maxtor, and I suspect will continue to be so unless they start having problems.
Even if you are paying no interest, your $220 per month for 3 years means you had to have put nearly $15k down. Even if they gave you full high market blue book for your 1984 Mustang, and assuming it was the most valuable model (convertible GT V8), you would still have had to put nearly $11k down.
Most people don't put nearly that much down or have that much trade value in their old car (assuming they aren't upside down on their trade which a lot of people are). Also assuming no interest, $350 for 3 years only pays $12,600. So on a $22k car to get those payments, you'd still have to put $9,400 down. Most people don't even put that much down, most people only put between $500 and $2,000 down. Assuming $2,000 down on a $22k car, and no interest, those people would still be looking at a payment over $550 for 3 years. And even assuming that someone has $2,000 down and a trade in worth $5,000, they'd be looking at a payment of over $400 for 3 years on a $22k car.
You are right... I would guess that if someone yelled "fire" in a crowded theatre, and the audience upon looking around and not seeing or smelling smoke shouted back "sit down and be quiet you @$$hole" instead of starting a riot, that nobody would be charging the person with anything or disputing the person's 1st amendment right to be a jerk...
And you think a phone line is much more secure? Anyone with a lineman's handset can clip on at your demarc point or the little gray canister in your neighborhood where all the lines concentrate. It can be intercepted easily at the central office... or at the central office of the person the call is going to, or at their neighborhood canister or their demarc point... And that is without even talking about cell phones, especially analog ones, which any older TV set or scanner can listen in on...
It isn't really any closer to the HP-PA then it is to the x86 (unless you count "only" having 16 times as many GP registers rather then 64 times as many...).
I dunno, the Itanium looks more like a HP-PA relative than part of the x86 family to me... But I mainly say that from the standpoint that HP's PA people were involved in the design as well, and the Itanium looks like it has a fair amount of influence from the PA. The x86 compatibility in the Itanium looks like more of an add-on than it being a part of the x86 family.
Intel has done a lot of non-x86 CPUs since the i432 (and "less than successful" is an understatement).
I don't know of any that were in the general purpose CPU market that were successful though.
They did the i960 which while I didn't like was a real winner in the embedded (esp. military) market. They also did the i960 which I did like and was only modestly successful, I think mostly because they end of lifed it so fast (it was doing fairly well in the market until they EOLed it).
The i960 was more targeted towards the embedded controller market, or at least that is where it had most of its success. I don't know of any general purpose computer that used it as its primary CPU.
They are also doing ARMs, but they didn't design the ISA there.
Well, as they didn't design the ARM, I don't really count it. The ARM has been used in some general purpose desktops and servers, but especially in the US has had limited commercial success outside of niche markets like handhelds.
The only problem with AMD's 64 bit line is that it isn't going to be compatible with the Itanium. That is both good and bad. Good in that it is an alternative, bad in that it is going to cause a lot of confusion.
I think a lot of people are too overconfident that Itanium is going to be successful, let alone quickly. It is going to require a lot of changes to software in order to take advantage of it because it isn't just a 64 bit x86, it is a whole new architecture, one more closely related to HP PA-RISC than x86. It also may not do a very good job of running existing 32 bit code, which could slow down its acceptance, particularly in desktop systems. The last time Intel made a big push (with the i432) to create a whole new non-x86 processor family, it was less than successful. Although to be fair, the i432 was a radically different proposition and the Itanium with its more proven PA-RISC roots looks a lot more sound.
AMD's Hammer architecture, on the other hand, is more conservative, being a x86 family processor extended to 64 bit. It should require less modifications to existing software to take advantage of it, although an argument could be made that it won't have as much advantage to take having more legacy issues with the aging x86 architecture. It also may perform a lot better on existing 32 bit code than Itanium. And if AMD's track history holds true, it will probably be significantly less expensive than the Itanium.
A lot of whether it is Intel or AMD that paves the way for 64 bit mainstream CPUs will probably have to do with which of them is the first one that offers a price attractive product that runs existing 32 bit software well while being marketable as a 64 bit chip. Unfortunately for AMD, the marketable part is, as always going to be tough. While AMD has been hugely successful in "white box" sales where customers can choose their CPU, they've had a much more difficult time penetrating the big name PC markets, particularly in higher end systems. This despite the fact that in many cases an Athlon or Duron would offer a better performance than a PIII or P4 at a better price.
What's the point of becoming gods through technology if we can't tamper with a little evolution along the way?
That is true up to a point, which is partially why my original post was a question rather than a statement. But if we tamper with evolution too much we may have to live with the consequences, and by allowing defects to remain in our gene pool we may be causing a lot of problems for ourselves in the future.
How is someone going to avoid a smell in a communial area if the smell causing substance is allowed?
They probably can't. How are you going to protect them from "smells" their whole life?
Would you want your child to be excluded from eating lunch with the other children if your child was sensitive to it?
Nobody would want that, but it is preferable to having to go out and ban from schools every little thing that might cause a child to have an alergic reaction. Are we now going to have a "zero tolerance" peanut policy in schools so we start suspending any child caught in school with the smell of peanuts on their person. Schools have gotten insanely totalitarian enough already without adding this sort of craziness to the mix.
What if in the first class after lunch a child that had peanut butter on their hands lends a pencil to a sensitive child?
What if in the first class of the day a child that had eaten a peanut butter sandwich for breakfast lends a pencil to a sensitive child? Do we now ban peanut butter from all houses with children of school age?
I'm sorry, but if a child is so sensitive that mere exposure to a smell is life threatening, then they are probably never really going to be able to live normally in society. Sure, that sucks, but it just isn't going to be possible to change that.
You can probably call me insensitive jerk, but aren't we tampering with evolution when we protect people with such an obvious genetic defect from natural selection?
The Soviets didn't back the Northern Alliance, they backed their puppet regime. Both the Northern Alliance (tribal warlords) and Taliban put aside their differences long enough to oust the Soviets and then resumed fighting amongst themselves as soon as the Soviets left.
Once the Taliban is squashed for good, the Northern Alliance will split up and the various warlords will resume fighting amongst themselves again. It is what they've done for thousands of years, why would they stop now?
Slashdot Mirror
If you want a good alternative to PHP check out EmbPerl (works with mod_perl, but it is a lot easier than writing mod_perl scripts by hand), it allows you to embed Perl code into HTML similar to the way PHP works, except you've got all the power of Perl, all of the CPAN goodness to draw from, and you can much more easily mix-and-match with other Perl code (for instance back-end code like cron jobs and other stuff that most apps need).
Aw crap. I should have previewed. Only the first line of the preceeding post should have been italicized. Dohh.
Why oh why has Autocad not been released for Linux?
AutoCAD used to be available for a number of the proprietary *nixes (Solaris, SGI IRIX, HP/UX, etc) back in the Release 10, 11, 12 (and early R13) days. People I used to know that worked at AutoDesk used to make sort of veiled hints that Microsoft put some kind of pressure on them to quit supporting alternative platforms. More or less what they were saying is that AutoDesk was told if didn't quit supporting non-Microsoft platforms that Microsoft would enter the CAD market (possibly by buying up one of AutoDesk's competitors), or at least announce that they were going to, and that would kill AutoDesk by "giving away" the product. But of course nobody in those days would dare come right out and say something like that.
MCSEs are a dime a dozen
Feh. Inexperienced or bad MCSE's may be cheap. But if you hire a dummy to administer your network -- you have a dummy administering your network. Bad value, even if its cheap.
In my experience, good, experienced administrators are not significantly cheaper for Microsoft's platforms than are good, experienced *nix admins, and no more plentiful or easier to find either.
Furthermore, in my experience, you often need fewer *nix admins for a given number of users (or a given number of servers), so in many cases *nix is cheaper to administer in the long run.
No, the bottom line is that he cheated because he replicated another student's code line for line.
It doesn't say that anywhere in the Washington Post article. It says he "merely talked to another student", and that there were "similarities" on 30 out of hundreds of lines of code. That does not sound to me like "handing in someone else's working program.
Next time you go on a rant about "ivory tower crap," get off your little soapbox and do some actual research into the matter.
Maybe next time you should actually read the article. If you have some sort of inside knowledge of this case, you shouldn't assume that everyone else does, what we have is what is in the story.
When I was in school there were virtually no classes that allowed any sort of teamwork. At most, some of the higher level classes put people in pairs or threes for some projects, but that isn't the same as working on a day to day basis with a team of people on long term projects or in larger teams. And I'm not that worried about people in low level classes being leeches, it won't get them very far. Sooner or later their classmates will figure out they are blood suckers and ostracize them. And if they cheat on daily work, chances are they will blow it on the tests. And if they actually manage to learn enough to pass the tests in spite of cheating on the daily work, then fine, I don't think it matters how they learn it as long as they do.
I think there is a big difference between plagiarism of the type of stealing from others (like copying from books or whatever) and from students sharing ideas or maybe even a little code willingly. And for that matter, in the real world, how many professional developers don't have a shelf full of 'cookbook' type books and places like CPAN, freshmeat.net, sourceforge.org or whatever that they borrow code from rather than writing everything from scratch? Not that many, I'd care to guess, especially those that aren't writing code for resale as boxed software.
Teaching people how to find libraries, example code and books to learn and borrow code from is a good thing. Telling students that it is cheating is bad because it encourages them to try to write every last thing themselves, which means they are likely to pick bad algorithms and write buggy code to reinvent things that are known solutions. There is already too much of that in the industry, and the academic world is encouraging it rather than discouraging it. The sooner you get people started learning why code re-use is a good thing, the better, in my opinion.
It was like that when I went to college also... You know, god forbid that students might learn code re-use, or teamwork. One of the big problems in the software development world is programmers who can't work as a team. Can't read or debug other people's code, or write code that other people can understand.
The whole concept that code re-use or teamwork are cheating is just plain brain damaged.
My fear when dealing with a government run internet utility would be government regulation. Not that it can't happen with private providers, but somehow I can't help but be more worried about the government...
And I'd also worry about quality, given the level of service that one often gets from underpaid and unmotivated civil servants. Private ISPs have enough trouble getting and keeping good techs and customer service people, it would seem to be really tough on government pay scales.
They sell Macs at Fry's here in Austin, and there are generally about as many, if not more sales droids hanging out in that area than around the assembled x86 boxes. Not that I'm terribly interested in either, but you pretty much have to walk down through that area in order to get to where some of the other stuff is.
the program was incapably of displaying/handling dates in anything but American MM/DD/YY format -- I'm in Australia (DD/MM/YY).
:-)
I'm in america, and my preferred date format is CCYYMMDD.
Many people have suggested that the design for Altair BASIC was largely cribbed from the DEC BASIC that Gates had worked with while interning with DEC when he was still a Harvard student. And many others also say that most of the important coding on Altair BASIC was actually done by Paul Allen, who certainly has more unassailable geek credentials than Gates.
Anyways, all this said, the reason why someone would shell out money for that platform is NOT to make economies, it's to get back with his old feelings, get in touch with his beloved platform, out of curiosity, or to develop on a new target system (or to grab one of the rare PPC boards out there :) )
I was never an Amiga fan in its day, so there is no big nostalgia kick for me there, and frankly I can't see many people spending a lot of money just for nostalgia's sake.
The reason I quote the Athlon XP instead of the Athlon MP is that there is basically no significant difference according to the hardware sites like anandtech, so why pay the difference. And I didn't look for the lowest price either, the prices I quoted were from a local dealer that I have bought from.
By the time you put together a complete system, this motherboard doesn't look price competitive to buying a recent Mac, and you have to put everything together yourself. Unless you have a religious reason to avoid Apple, it looks like they are a better option. Don't get me wrong, I think competition is a good thing, but this doesn't look like something that is going to give Apple a run for their money, so I don't think it helps there. And I like putting together machines myself, but if I was going to put toether a new machine for myself today, I could buy a dual Athlon motherboard and two Athlon XP 1700's for not too different than what this 600MHz G3 PPC motherboard is selling for. And that is from a local to me shop.
i ce sheet.htm
Don't believe me?
http://www.laboratorycomputers.com/laboratorypr
ASUS A7M266D AMD760MPX DUAL $249
PALOMINO XP 1.7PR $128
That's only $56 more than the $450 price they mention for the PPC motherboard, and it doesn't have the CPU's soldered down to "save costs" either. And there is no freaking way that a 600MHz G3 is faster than one Athlon XP 1700, let alone two.
You are correct, Conner was indeed bought out by Seagate.
I've also had terrible luck with WD. I've had good luck with Maxtor and Fujitsu, although I only have one or two Fujitsu drives recently and they are fairly old (4G range). Most of my recent purchased have been Maxtor, and I suspect will continue to be so unless they start having problems.
Even if you are paying no interest, your $220 per month for 3 years means you had to have put nearly $15k down. Even if they gave you full high market blue book for your 1984 Mustang, and assuming it was the most valuable model (convertible GT V8), you would still have had to put nearly $11k down.
Most people don't put nearly that much down or have that much trade value in their old car (assuming they aren't upside down on their trade which a lot of people are). Also assuming no interest, $350 for 3 years only pays $12,600. So on a $22k car to get those payments, you'd still have to put $9,400 down. Most people don't even put that much down, most people only put between $500 and $2,000 down. Assuming $2,000 down on a $22k car, and no interest, those people would still be looking at a payment over $550 for 3 years. And even assuming that someone has $2,000 down and a trade in worth $5,000, they'd be looking at a payment of over $400 for 3 years on a $22k car.
You are right... I would guess that if someone yelled "fire" in a crowded theatre, and the audience upon looking around and not seeing or smelling smoke shouted back "sit down and be quiet you @$$hole" instead of starting a riot, that nobody would be charging the person with anything or disputing the person's 1st amendment right to be a jerk...
And you think a phone line is much more secure? Anyone with a lineman's handset can clip on at your demarc point or the little gray canister in your neighborhood where all the lines concentrate. It can be intercepted easily at the central office... or at the central office of the person the call is going to, or at their neighborhood canister or their demarc point... And that is without even talking about cell phones, especially analog ones, which any older TV set or scanner can listen in on...
It isn't really any closer to the HP-PA then it is to the x86 (unless you count "only" having 16 times as many GP registers rather then 64 times as many...).
I dunno, the Itanium looks more like a HP-PA relative than part of the x86 family to me... But I mainly say that from the standpoint that HP's PA people were involved in the design as well, and the Itanium looks like it has a fair amount of influence from the PA. The x86 compatibility in the Itanium looks like more of an add-on than it being a part of the x86 family.
Intel has done a lot of non-x86 CPUs since the i432 (and "less than successful" is an understatement).
I don't know of any that were in the general purpose CPU market that were successful though.
They did the i960 which while I didn't like was a real winner in the embedded (esp. military) market. They also did the i960 which I did like and was only modestly successful, I think mostly because they end of lifed it so fast (it was doing fairly well in the market until they EOLed it).
The i960 was more targeted towards the embedded controller market, or at least that is where it had most of its success. I don't know of any general purpose computer that used it as its primary CPU.
They are also doing ARMs, but they didn't design the ISA there.
Well, as they didn't design the ARM, I don't really count it. The ARM has been used in some general purpose desktops and servers, but especially in the US has had limited commercial success outside of niche markets like handhelds.
The only problem with AMD's 64 bit line is that it isn't going to be compatible with the Itanium. That is both good and bad. Good in that it is an alternative, bad in that it is going to cause a lot of confusion.
I think a lot of people are too overconfident that Itanium is going to be successful, let alone quickly. It is going to require a lot of changes to software in order to take advantage of it because it isn't just a 64 bit x86, it is a whole new architecture, one more closely related to HP PA-RISC than x86. It also may not do a very good job of running existing 32 bit code, which could slow down its acceptance, particularly in desktop systems. The last time Intel made a big push (with the i432) to create a whole new non-x86 processor family, it was less than successful. Although to be fair, the i432 was a radically different proposition and the Itanium with its more proven PA-RISC roots looks a lot more sound.
AMD's Hammer architecture, on the other hand, is more conservative, being a x86 family processor extended to 64 bit. It should require less modifications to existing software to take advantage of it, although an argument could be made that it won't have as much advantage to take having more legacy issues with the aging x86 architecture. It also may perform a lot better on existing 32 bit code than Itanium. And if AMD's track history holds true, it will probably be significantly less expensive than the Itanium.
A lot of whether it is Intel or AMD that paves the way for 64 bit mainstream CPUs will probably have to do with which of them is the first one that offers a price attractive product that runs existing 32 bit software well while being marketable as a 64 bit chip. Unfortunately for AMD, the marketable part is, as always going to be tough. While AMD has been hugely successful in "white box" sales where customers can choose their CPU, they've had a much more difficult time penetrating the big name PC markets, particularly in higher end systems. This despite the fact that in many cases an Athlon or Duron would offer a better performance than a PIII or P4 at a better price.
What's the point of becoming gods through technology if we can't tamper with a little evolution along the way?
That is true up to a point, which is partially why my original post was a question rather than a statement. But if we tamper with evolution too much we may have to live with the consequences, and by allowing defects to remain in our gene pool we may be causing a lot of problems for ourselves in the future.
How is someone going to avoid a smell in a communial area if the smell causing substance is allowed?
They probably can't. How are you going to protect them from "smells" their whole life?
Would you want your child to be excluded from eating lunch with the other children if your child was sensitive to it?
Nobody would want that, but it is preferable to having to go out and ban from schools every little thing that might cause a child to have an alergic reaction. Are we now going to have a "zero tolerance" peanut policy in schools so we start suspending any child caught in school with the smell of peanuts on their person. Schools have gotten insanely totalitarian enough already without adding this sort of craziness to the mix.
What if in the first class after lunch a child that had peanut butter on their hands lends a pencil to a sensitive child?
What if in the first class of the day a child that had eaten a peanut butter sandwich for breakfast lends a pencil to a sensitive child? Do we now ban peanut butter from all houses with children of school age?
I'm sorry, but if a child is so sensitive that mere exposure to a smell is life threatening, then they are probably never really going to be able to live normally in society. Sure, that sucks, but it just isn't going to be possible to change that.
You can probably call me insensitive jerk, but aren't we tampering with evolution when we protect people with such an obvious genetic defect from natural selection?
The Soviets didn't back the Northern Alliance, they backed their puppet regime. Both the Northern Alliance (tribal warlords) and Taliban put aside their differences long enough to oust the Soviets and then resumed fighting amongst themselves as soon as the Soviets left.
Once the Taliban is squashed for good, the Northern Alliance will split up and the various warlords will resume fighting amongst themselves again. It is what they've done for thousands of years, why would they stop now?