Small lessons w/minor consequences
on
School Bans 'Tag'
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
To quote a STNG episode
"If you can't take a little bloody nose, maybe you oughtta go back home and crawl under your bed. It's not safe out here. It's wondrous, with treasures to satiate desires both subtle and gross; but it's not for the timid." -- Q (Q Who?)
We are ending up with a society that is afraid of its own shadow, that cannot make real life and death decisions, and that wants to be protected from all harm. Without being exposed to activities where one could possibly be hurt in a minor fashion, people do not have a frame of reference to make decisions when things really do matter. Instead when someone does get hurt, there is a huge outcry to ban whatever activity caused the injury, no matter how minor.
I hate seeing anyone hurt, especially kids, but the lessons that can be learned from a minor mishap can hopefully be applied later when making a decision that has real consequences. Some of natures more harsher tests are a pass/fail grade with no chance to take the test again, it's much better being able to take some of the smaller pop quizes.
If the biology of the sea is reverting back to a more primative state, it could mean that a biological reset and redesign is happening. Go back to a checkpoint in the design, scrap what came after it and start again to see if the new design can better cope with the changed environment.
To name one, the most direct descendant of Snobol is Icon, though to some even that is "old", there is an OO version of Icon, Unicon, being actively developed, as well as an implementation of Icon that "compiles" down to the Java bytecode (jcon).
Yes -- the point was that a regular expression doesn't handle such things as a searching for balanced parentheses. However even old Snobol had the facility for dealing with balanced parentheses without getting into full grammars and parsers
--- [ full snobol example] --- s = '((abc) def)' s '(' bal . data ')' output = data end
---
would produce
(abc) def
Another tact is the Parse statement from the Rexx language. Rexx's approach is why using a swiss army knife when a butter knife is all that is needed. Rexx's paring templates are not as advanced as regular expressions, nor do they approach the power of Snobol's, however they are fairly easy to read (and to write), and for about (wild guess) 90% of the tasks are sufficient. Yes -- there is that 10%, and for that 10% one ends up writting specific pattern matching code.
The point that I was trying to make is that there is a lot of effort in adding or enhancing regular expressions to everything. Instead there should be more effort in taking pattern matching to a much higher level, and I don't mean simply adding "parser generating support".
If I were to ask everyone to start programming in assembly language, I suspect that I would be laughed at. Yet with regular expressions that is exactly what we are doing. If you take a look at the history of regular expressions, you will find staring right back at you the guts of compiler theory with state machines, finite state automatia, etc.
Instead of asking for regular expressions, programmers should be asking for higher level pattern matching facilities.
Something as simple as finding the balanced parentheses in the string:
(a+b)/((c-d)+e)
using a regular expression is difficult. Yet there have been languages that have advanced string matching capabilities around since the 60's (start looking at Snobol -- which is still alive -- and some of it's descendants).
A while back, IBM released ObjectRexx to the opensource world. The OORexx project is hosted on Sourceforge http://oorexx.org/
It runs just fine under Linux, and can be used as a straight scripting language for shell scripts.
The needs and requirements of the IT industry are very different from the home and small mom and pop shops. For example big IT has a requirement for zero downtime, 24x7x365. They need to be able to run apps that are decades old, not because no one is around to reprogram them, but because they continue to work. They cannot simply have an application "stop working" because of a small system upgrade. Nor can they have applications just crash just because someother application was installed and messed up a library, etc.
To use an analogy, there are millions of cars on the road, used by everyday ordinary people, however there is a different audience which requires heavy duty trucks, and no, I'm not talking about the SUV's, but dump trucks, logging trucks, etc. There is overlap, and one will find common features, however, there are features that an ordinary person would not want or need. Same as there are features found in a small car that say a mining company would not want or need in a dump truck.
The real "problem" is when people try to cater to both audiences with a single product. While I don't mind having certain comfort features in my car, having something like cruise control in a logging truck might not really be a great idea, on the flip side, having airbrakes on a heavy truck does make sense, I wouldn't see it on a car.
The same should be true for certain types of software. The needs of an IT shop are different from the needs from a home user. An IT shop does have it's geeky crew of people who maintain it, same as a large industry probably has their own group of mechanics who repair and keep the fleet working. And yes, comming from a long IT background, some of the features found in small systems are not really wanted or desirable in an IT environment. On the flip side, as a home user, I would expect a certain amount of "just plug it in and let it go" type of a system and set of applications.
In go, players can be given a rank on how strong they are compared to others. It's a fairly simple method.
Everyone starts out at about 30 kyu. As they get stronger, their kyu number decreases till it gets to 1 kyu. At which point starts a new number system that goes upward, starting at 1 dan and goes to 9 dan.
So..
30 Kyu, is weaker then a 29 kyu,... 2 kyu, 1 kyu, 1 dan, 2 dan,..., 9 dan.
Now that is for amateur rankings. There is a professional ranking system that starts at 1 dan pro and goes to 9 dan pro. I have heard that a 1 dan pro is roughly the same strength as a 7 dan amateur.
There is a handicap system where if you take the rankings of two players and subtract them, it determines the number of handicap stones given to the weaker player. Thus a 10 kyu playing against an 8 kyu, the 10 kyu player gets to play first by placing 2 stones on the board (one set of rules allows black to place the stones anywhere on the board, another set of rules, the stones must be played at specific spots). The rule of thumb is that each handicap stone is worth about 10 points. Another rule of thumb is that each handicap stone "erases" one mistake by the weaker player.
Normally one doesn't play with more then a 9 stone handicap. Mainly because beyond 9 stones, black really isn't "learning" much
To prevent ties, a half point is awarded to white in handicap games, in an even game (where both players are of equal strength), white is given 6.5 points (this has been changing around some -- depending on the rules you are playing with).
Usually after the 1st game or so a 30 kyu player learns enough to drop to around 28 kyu or there abouts.
I have heard that the amount of time and study to go from a 10 kyu to a 1 kyu rank is about the same as going from a 1 dan to a 2 dan.
A game between two weaker players can result in scores of anywhere from just a few points to 100's of points going to the winner. As one gets stronger, the wins are usually only a few points, or someone resigns.
I have seen strong dan and pro players when playing weaker players their goal is to try to get the score within a half point (always in their favor).
In Go, the game really doesn't start to get interesting till about 30 to 50 moves into the game (in chess, the game is usually over at that point).
Currently on one of the online go playing servers, GNU Go (among the top go playing programs -- though not the strongest) is roughly around 11 kyu in strength, A weak dan player can give gnugo a 9 stone handicap and the dan player will still win.
Several years ago, Janice Kim gave the top go playing program a 28 stone handicap and she still won the game (I believe it was a 28 stone game).
To get to a professional level player, it is best to start playing when you are very young. Expect to dedicate your life to the game. To get to a strong amateur dan level, also expect to dedicate a good chunk of your life to the game.
A properly stored clay tablet will last at least 2000 years, making it superior to CD technology as far as longevity is concerned. (And of course there is stone tablets which has an even longer life span).
I have the AV320 (earlier generation). It has a 20gig harddrive, does the video playback/record and mp3/wav playback/record. It has an external card reader. In addition you can get a camera attachement for it.
So.. basically it's the same type of unit as this new one, just not as much memory, different control layout and mine doesn't have batteries that I can replace (well, not without breaking the warranty seal).
Now why did I buy the AV320?
Well I don't have a laptop...
I had just gotten a digital camera and was going on a trip. I was originally looking at just a digital wallet so that I could store extra photos. I was having difficulty in locating one. I did come across the Archos AV320 (it had just came out). When I looked at what it could do I saw that not only could I use it as a digital wallet, but I could also replace my portable Sony Minidisk recorder (the trip I was going on was to a folk music festival). I liked the fact that I could record more then 75 minutes at a time. Last time I had attended I came back with a huge stack of minidisks.
Now why not just get a laptop. -- Well.. when you are carrying a large musical instrument, folding chair, etc, and are going to be setting up in the middle of a jam tent where space is tight, a laptop really is out of the question. With the AV320 I can just set the thing under my chair, hit record and be done with it. It has about a 10 hour battery life.
When I get back, I just hook the AV320 up to a USB port and it shows up under linux as just a disk drive. I can copy to/from the AV320 to linux, edit the recordings etc.
And it's great for going on long road trips. I just load a bunch of MP3's onto the thing, hook up a little FM transmitter and just play through the car radio. I haven't been on a airplane flight since I've gotten it, but the thing would be great having along for the flight. Just hook up the DVR attachment record what I want beforehand and I can have my inflight movie(s).
In addition.. just think of the heads up that the Red Coats could have had when Robert Newman climbed the steeple of Christ Church and hung two laterns for Paul Revere to see. http://www.oldnorth.com/hist.htm/
In fact that whole nasty war with Britain could have been nipped in the bud with proper intelligence.
Personally -- I'm not sure what the real answer/solution to the security issue is these days. I understand the concern. Maybe the solution is to hold events such as these in areas that is it easier to "secure" -- say something in a remote part of the country (like the Burning Man event) or a smaller town outside of the mega metro areas. May not be popular with the media, or other those businesses that look towards making a profit over these conventions.
Another possibility is to "network" the conventions. Why does it have to be all in one place, real time video conferencing, etc. could eliminate the need to have all those people at one place at one time.
It's also not only in software engineering, but many other areas as well.
Devices as black boxes:
The other day my wife was explaining to one of our kids that she remembered when one could walk into a corner store with a handfull of vacuum tubes from a broken TV or radio and you would by yourself find which one was broken, buy the replacement tube and replace it without the assistance of someone else. Today -- we have the "No servicable parts inside" imprinted on the case of the box. CD player breaks, off to the trash with it, radio breaks, dumpster time.
How many people can even imagine let alone describe how to build a radio from an old oatmeal box, a crystal, some wire and headphones (bringing back memories of some of the stories that my grandfather told me). (yes I found several web sites that describe how to build one -- do a search of cat whisker and oatmeal box)
Math as a black box:
It's not only the physical devices that we have lost touch with, but also general low level knowledge. A caculator ahh.. the boon of the arithmetically challanged. Takes a couple measurements with a tape measure marked off in centimeters, inputs the length into the calculator and divides by 3, and then tries to measure off.33333333 centimeters. Lost forever is the sense of the margin of error, of rounding off to the appropiate unit of measurement. The SR-71 Blackbird was built without the aid of computers, engineers relied on sliderules. Last I heard, some of the feats of the SR-71 have yet to be broken.
Basic survival as a black box:
Growing up in a rural area, I was at least exposed to some facets of farming. If I were dumped out into the wilderness, I suspect that I could probably find things to eat.. Contrast this to a report that some science teacher told their class that farmers were no longer needed because one could purchase all their food at the store.
Two languages that use the JVM bytecode
on
The Future of Java?
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· Score: 3, Insightful
Well, not quite two (1 1/2 maybe:)
NetRexx "compiles" down to java bytecode, but it does it by compiling into java first. NetRexx allows you to use any Java class.
NetRexx was developed by the IBMer who developed the Rexx programming language. It has a fairly easy syntax, provides some very powerful/easy to use string parsing facilities.
You can pick up a copy of NetRexx (available for download from http://www2.hursley.ibm.com/netrexx/)
The other language is Jcon which does compile directly to the javabyte code. Jcon is a "Java" implementation of the Icon Programming Language.
To quote the website: Icon is a high-level, general-purpose programming language with a large repertoire of features for processing data structures and character strings. Icon is an imperative, procedural language with a syntax reminiscent of C and Pascal, but with semantics at a much higher level.
If you poke around deep enough in the history of Perl, you will find references back to Icon.
Details of Jcon (and download) can be found at the Icon home page at http://www.cs.arizona.edu/icon then follow the link to Java-based "Jcon".
One of the interesting properites about using the 60, 60, 24 is the number of divisors..
To wit..
60 can be evenly divided by 2, 3, and 5 (and multiples of those).
24 can be evenly divided by 2 and 3 (and multiples of those).
It is also one of the reasons why 12 inches is still popular ( 12 can be divided by 2, and 3) so that you can have 1/2 and 1/3 (or multiples of those) of a foot without getting into fractional inches.
However decimal (metric) runs into problems. You only get 2 and 5 as the multiples without getting into "weird" decimals. Exactly how many centimeters is 1/3 of a meter? how many millimeters?
On some of these systems (I'm thinking of the S/390 with VM) it is not running just one image of Linux on the hardware, but hundreds of Linux images.
Picture it in terms of how many people run Linux today in a large environment. They may have a couple of boxes dedicated to running databases, a couple of boxes hooked up to the internet and handing out web pages, a few firewall systems, etc.
Now take that mental picture and move it into one physical box, but with the same independant pieces. Even the "network" between the pieces looks the same TCP/IP stack to TCP/IP stack (just think of "virtual wires" between the "boxes" within the big box).
So you really don't have one Linux system running on this huge piece of iron, but many. Admittedly you will not get the raw performance of the native iron. But for the most part unless you are doing raw number crunching you should not see alot of degradation.
As far as the develper community support, keep writting the tools and applications that use standard interfaces and don't dip down into the machine code level in your code. If the code is written say in C and one doesn't get two tricky with byte orders then there shouldn't be a problem with the code being ported (a simple recompile is all that would be needed).
Specifically the DVD version which has two interesting "special features". Both are clips that never made it into the version shown in movie theaters.
The first outtake is where the parents are "selecting" the embryo for their new son. After the selection has been made, the Dr informs the couple that while it isn't normally done, he could add some enhancements, such as musical ability, etc. so that the child could have an even better chance.
The second outtake hit me even more however... it was a coda which stated that had the technology and practices shown in the movie been availble the following people would never have existed. It then went on to list such people as Einstein, Hawkings, Beethoven, Helen Keller, etc.
Just a small clear up..
IBM's VM operating system is not the same as OS/390. They are two very different systems.
VM has been around since the mid 60's having been first released outside of IBM as CP/67, then it grew into VM/370 -> VM/SP (VM/HPO) -> VM/XA -> VM/ESA (the current product).
OS/390 has also been around since the mid 60's starting life as OS/360 and going through several name changes (OS/VS, MFT, MVS, MVS/XA, MVS/ESA, and finally OS/390 -- I think I got the right lineup of names:)
Slashdot Mirror
We are ending up with a society that is afraid of its own shadow, that cannot make real life and death decisions, and that wants to be protected from all harm. Without being exposed to activities where one could possibly be hurt in a minor fashion, people do not have a frame of reference to make decisions when things really do matter. Instead when someone does get hurt, there is a huge outcry to ban whatever activity caused the injury, no matter how minor.
I hate seeing anyone hurt, especially kids, but the lessons that can be learned from a minor mishap can hopefully be applied later when making a decision that has real consequences. Some of natures more harsher tests are a pass/fail grade with no chance to take the test again, it's much better being able to take some of the smaller pop quizes.
Thank you :) - I think you got the point of my post.
If the biology of the sea is reverting back to a more primative state, it could mean that a biological reset and redesign is happening. Go back to a checkpoint in the design, scrap what came after it and start again to see if the new design can better cope with the changed environment.
Yes -- the point was that a regular expression doesn't handle such things as a searching for balanced parentheses. However even old Snobol had the facility for dealing with balanced parentheses without getting into full grammars and parsers
would produce
(abc) def
Another tact is the Parse statement from the Rexx language. Rexx's approach is why using a swiss army knife when a butter knife is all that is needed. Rexx's paring templates are not as advanced as regular expressions, nor do they approach the power of Snobol's, however they are fairly easy to read (and to write), and for about (wild guess) 90% of the tasks are sufficient. Yes -- there is that 10%, and for that 10% one ends up writting specific pattern matching code.
The point that I was trying to make is that there is a lot of effort in adding or enhancing regular expressions to everything. Instead there should be more effort in taking pattern matching to a much higher level, and I don't mean simply adding "parser generating support".
If I were to ask everyone to start programming in assembly language, I suspect that I would be laughed at. Yet with regular expressions that is exactly what we are doing. If you take a look at the history of regular expressions, you will find staring right back at you the guts of compiler theory with state machines, finite state automatia, etc. Instead of asking for regular expressions, programmers should be asking for higher level pattern matching facilities. Something as simple as finding the balanced parentheses in the string: (a+b)/((c-d)+e) using a regular expression is difficult. Yet there have been languages that have advanced string matching capabilities around since the 60's (start looking at Snobol -- which is still alive -- and some of it's descendants).
Go take a look at "THE" - "The Hessling Editor"
It's an XEDIT clone for *nix -- uses rexx, etc.
A while back, IBM released ObjectRexx to the opensource world. The OORexx project is hosted on Sourceforge http://oorexx.org/ It runs just fine under Linux, and can be used as a straight scripting language for shell scripts.
The needs and requirements of the IT industry are very different from the home and small mom and pop shops. For example big IT has a requirement for zero downtime, 24x7x365. They need to be able to run apps that are decades old, not because no one is around to reprogram them, but because they continue to work. They cannot simply have an application "stop working" because of a small system upgrade. Nor can they have applications just crash just because someother application was installed and messed up a library, etc.
To use an analogy, there are millions of cars on the road, used by everyday ordinary people, however there is a different audience which requires heavy duty trucks, and no, I'm not talking about the SUV's, but dump trucks, logging trucks, etc. There is overlap, and one will find common features, however, there are features that an ordinary person would not want or need. Same as there are features found in a small car that say a mining company would not want or need in a dump truck.
The real "problem" is when people try to cater to both audiences with a single product. While I don't mind having certain comfort features in my car, having something like cruise control in a logging truck might not really be a great idea, on the flip side, having airbrakes on a heavy truck does make sense, I wouldn't see it on a car.
The same should be true for certain types of software. The needs of an IT shop are different from the needs from a home user. An IT shop does have it's geeky crew of people who maintain it, same as a large industry probably has their own group of mechanics who repair and keep the fleet working. And yes, comming from a long IT background, some of the features found in small systems are not really wanted or desirable in an IT environment. On the flip side, as a home user, I would expect a certain amount of "just plug it in and let it go" type of a system and set of applications.
To put this into even more perspective
..., 9 dan.
In go, players can be given a rank on how strong they are compared to others. It's a fairly simple method.
Everyone starts out at about 30 kyu. As they get stronger, their kyu number decreases till it gets to 1 kyu. At which point starts a new number system that goes upward, starting at 1 dan and goes to 9 dan.
So..
30 Kyu, is weaker then a 29 kyu,... 2 kyu, 1 kyu, 1 dan, 2 dan,
Now that is for amateur rankings. There is a professional ranking system that starts at 1 dan pro and goes to 9 dan pro. I have heard that a 1 dan pro is roughly the same strength as a 7 dan amateur.
There is a handicap system where if you take the rankings of two players and subtract them, it determines the number of handicap stones given to the weaker player. Thus a 10 kyu playing against an 8 kyu, the 10 kyu player gets to play first by placing 2 stones on the board (one set of rules allows black to place the stones anywhere on the board, another set of rules, the stones must be played at specific spots). The rule of thumb is that each handicap stone is worth about 10 points. Another rule of thumb is that each handicap stone "erases" one mistake by the weaker player.
Normally one doesn't play with more then a 9 stone handicap. Mainly because beyond 9 stones, black really isn't "learning" much
To prevent ties, a half point is awarded to white in handicap games, in an even game (where both players are of equal strength), white is given 6.5 points (this has been changing around some -- depending on the rules you are playing with).
Usually after the 1st game or so a 30 kyu player learns enough to drop to around 28 kyu or there abouts.
I have heard that the amount of time and study to go from a 10 kyu to a 1 kyu rank is about the same as going from a 1 dan to a 2 dan.
A game between two weaker players can result in scores of anywhere from just a few points to 100's of points going to the winner. As one gets stronger, the wins are usually only a few points, or someone resigns.
I have seen strong dan and pro players when playing weaker players their goal is to try to get the score within a half point (always in their favor).
In Go, the game really doesn't start to get interesting till about 30 to 50 moves into the game (in chess, the game is usually over at that point).
Currently on one of the online go playing servers, GNU Go (among the top go playing programs -- though not the strongest) is roughly around 11 kyu in strength, A weak dan player can give gnugo a 9 stone handicap and the dan player will still win.
Several years ago, Janice Kim gave the top go playing program a 28 stone handicap and she still won the game (I believe it was a 28 stone game).
To get to a professional level player, it is best to start playing when you are very young. Expect to dedicate your life to the game. To get to a strong amateur dan level, also expect to dedicate a good chunk of your life to the game.
And in 200 years -- just try to find a device that will read the thing.
A properly stored clay tablet will last at least 2000 years, making it superior to CD technology as far as longevity is concerned. (And of course there is stone tablets which has an even longer life span).
I have the AV320 (earlier generation). It has a 20gig harddrive, does the video playback/record and mp3/wav playback/record. It has an external card reader. In addition you can get a camera attachement for it.
So.. basically it's the same type of unit as this new one, just not as much memory, different control layout and mine doesn't have batteries that I can replace (well, not without breaking the warranty seal).
Now why did I buy the AV320?
Well I don't have a laptop...
I had just gotten a digital camera and was going on a trip. I was originally looking at just a digital wallet so that I could store extra photos. I was having difficulty in locating one. I did come across the Archos AV320 (it had just came out). When I looked at what it could do I saw that not only could I use it as a digital wallet, but I could also replace my portable Sony Minidisk recorder (the trip I was going on was to a folk music festival). I liked the fact that I could record more then 75 minutes at a time. Last time I had attended I came back with a huge stack of minidisks.
Now why not just get a laptop. -- Well.. when you are carrying a large musical instrument, folding chair, etc, and are going to be setting up in the middle of a jam tent where space is tight, a laptop really is out of the question. With the AV320 I can just set the thing under my chair, hit record and be done with it. It has about a 10 hour battery life.
When I get back, I just hook the AV320 up to a USB port and it shows up under linux as just a disk drive. I can copy to/from the AV320 to linux, edit the recordings etc.
And it's great for going on long road trips. I just load a bunch of MP3's onto the thing, hook up a little FM transmitter and just play through the car radio. I haven't been on a airplane flight since I've gotten it, but the thing would be great having along for the flight. Just hook up the DVR attachment record what I want beforehand and I can have my inflight movie(s).
remove extra slash at the end of the link
T eaParty.html
h tml
http://campus.northpark.edu/history/WebChron/USA/
http://www.oldnorth.com/hist.htm
http://www.bostoncitylinks.com/boston_revolution.
If the British had this system, the whole Boston Tea Party could have been stopped. http://campus.northpark.edu/history/WebChron/USA/T eaParty.html/
h tml/
In addition.. just think of the heads up that the Red Coats could have had when Robert Newman climbed the steeple of Christ Church and hung two laterns for Paul Revere to see. http://www.oldnorth.com/hist.htm/
In fact that whole nasty war with Britain could have been nipped in the bud with proper intelligence.
http://www.bostoncitylinks.com/boston_revolution.
Personally -- I'm not sure what the real answer/solution to the security issue is these days. I understand the concern. Maybe the solution is to hold events such as these in areas that is it easier to "secure" -- say something in a remote part of the country (like the Burning Man event) or a smaller town outside of the mega metro areas. May not be popular with the media, or other those businesses that look towards making a profit over these conventions.
Another possibility is to "network" the conventions. Why does it have to be all in one place, real time video conferencing, etc. could eliminate the need to have all those people at one place at one time.
Anyway -- just something to think about.
Cannot agree more with with Ellen Ullman wrote.
.33333333 centimeters. Lost forever is the sense of the margin of error, of rounding off to the appropiate unit of measurement. The SR-71 Blackbird was built without the aid of computers, engineers relied on sliderules. Last I heard, some of the feats of the SR-71 have yet to be broken.
It's also not only in software engineering, but many other areas as well.
Devices as black boxes:
The other day my wife was explaining to one of our kids that she remembered when one could walk into a corner store with a handfull of vacuum tubes from a broken TV or radio and you would by yourself find which one was broken, buy the replacement tube and replace it without the assistance of someone else. Today -- we have the "No servicable parts inside" imprinted on the case of the box. CD player breaks, off to the trash with it, radio breaks, dumpster time.
How many people can even imagine let alone describe how to build a radio from an old oatmeal box, a crystal, some wire and headphones (bringing back memories of some of the stories that my grandfather told me). (yes I found several web sites that describe how to build one -- do a search of cat whisker and oatmeal box)
Math as a black box:
It's not only the physical devices that we have lost touch with, but also general low level knowledge. A caculator ahh.. the boon of the arithmetically challanged. Takes a couple measurements with a tape measure marked off in centimeters, inputs the length into the calculator and divides by 3, and then tries to measure off
Basic survival as a black box:
Growing up in a rural area, I was at least exposed to some facets of farming. If I were dumped out into the wilderness, I suspect that I could probably find things to eat.. Contrast this to a report that some science teacher told their class that farmers were no longer needed because one could purchase all their food at the store.
Well, not quite two (1 1/2 maybe :)
NetRexx "compiles" down to java bytecode, but it does it by compiling into java first. NetRexx allows you to use any Java class.
NetRexx was developed by the IBMer who developed the Rexx programming language. It has a fairly easy syntax, provides some very powerful/easy to use string parsing facilities.
You can pick up a copy of NetRexx (available for download from http://www2.hursley.ibm.com/netrexx/)
The other language is Jcon which does compile directly to the javabyte code. Jcon is a "Java" implementation of the Icon Programming Language.
To quote the website: Icon is a high-level, general-purpose programming language with a large repertoire of features for processing data structures and character strings. Icon is an imperative, procedural language with a syntax reminiscent of C and Pascal, but with semantics at a much higher level.
If you poke around deep enough in the history of Perl, you will find references back to Icon.
Details of Jcon (and download) can be found at the Icon home page at http://www.cs.arizona.edu/icon then follow the link to Java-based "Jcon".
One of the interesting properites about using the 60, 60, 24 is the number of divisors..
To wit..
60 can be evenly divided by 2, 3, and 5 (and multiples of those).
24 can be evenly divided by 2 and 3 (and multiples of those).
It is also one of the reasons why 12 inches is still popular ( 12 can be divided by 2, and 3) so that you can have 1/2 and 1/3 (or multiples of those) of a foot without getting into fractional inches.
However decimal (metric) runs into problems. You only get 2 and 5 as the multiples without getting into "weird" decimals. Exactly how many centimeters is 1/3 of a meter? how many millimeters?
I'll second Moneydance
I've found it to be fairly easy to use. It does what I want it to do.
Picture it in terms of how many people run Linux today in a large environment. They may have a couple of boxes dedicated to running databases, a couple of boxes hooked up to the internet and handing out web pages, a few firewall systems, etc.
Now take that mental picture and move it into one physical box, but with the same independant pieces. Even the "network" between the pieces looks the same TCP/IP stack to TCP/IP stack (just think of "virtual wires" between the "boxes" within the big box).
So you really don't have one Linux system running on this huge piece of iron, but many. Admittedly you will not get the raw performance of the native iron. But for the most part unless you are doing raw number crunching you should not see alot of degradation.
As far as the develper community support, keep writting the tools and applications that use standard interfaces and don't dip down into the machine code level in your code. If the code is written say in C and one doesn't get two tricky with byte orders then there shouldn't be a problem with the code being ported (a simple recompile is all that would be needed).
The first outtake is where the parents are "selecting" the embryo for their new son. After the selection has been made, the Dr informs the couple that while it isn't normally done, he could add some enhancements, such as musical ability, etc. so that the child could have an even better chance.
The second outtake hit me even more however... it was a coda which stated that had the technology and practices shown in the movie been availble the following people would never have existed. It then went on to list such people as Einstein, Hawkings, Beethoven, Helen Keller, etc.
Anyway.. good movie
Cheyenne
Just a small clear up.. IBM's VM operating system is not the same as OS/390. They are two very different systems. VM has been around since the mid 60's having been first released outside of IBM as CP/67, then it grew into VM/370 -> VM/SP (VM/HPO) -> VM/XA -> VM/ESA (the current product). OS/390 has also been around since the mid 60's starting life as OS/360 and going through several name changes (OS/VS, MFT, MVS, MVS/XA, MVS/ESA, and finally OS/390 -- I think I got the right lineup of names :)