The economy is good, so there are plenty of jobs now. But how about 20 years from now, when most of the perl coding/c hacking/etc. has been moved to low wages countries such as india? As always the interesting jobs will go to well educated young people and experienced, well educated older people. Uneducated (i.e. without a formal proof of that education) will get the left over jobs.
Place yourself in the position of a future employer: one job two candidates. One with a master degree and some relevant experience, one without any degree and some experience. I'd hire the one with the master degree because that one has the brains to get a master degree and was strong enough to finish the job. The other one was a loser who went for the quick money and/or was not clever enough to finish his master/bachelor thesis.
Spending some time in college is time well spent. It will shine on your CV and you might actually learn something. The IT business is full with ignorant losers, you have to look for knowledgeable people with a candle. And when you find them you usually find out they did finish school.
There's a technology demo (www.nononelivesforever.com) of about 110 MB with 3 playable levels and a tutorial. There's still some glitches in it but it looks really cool. The sixties style with its bright colours is quite refreshing after the endless quake clones with stupid monsters.
The gameplay seems pretty straightforward but is quite fun. Also Cate (the game character) is a good excuse to retire Lara Croft.
gnutella's basic idea is good, to bad the implementation and design was never properly finished. One of the problems gnutella has is that the format for queries is not specified in the protocol. Consequently, each client returns different things. Type in the search term mpg and you get a list of jpg files.
A strategy that worked in the beginning for searching movies was to type divx and then sort on file size. This way you could find the two or three working downloads of popular movies. Nowadays there's so much noise in what you get back for nearly any query that gnutella is close to useless. Most of the links returned don't even work.
Any initiative for a new P2P protocol should start with defining metadata. This ultimately leads to more specific queries and helps keeping traffic down. ID3 tags are a nice start for mp3's but I think that ID3 is ultimately too limited. I would like to see a P2P network based on RDF.
This whole debate has been an eyeopener for me. A few months back, I would have blindly picked GPL as a suitable license for software I create. Now I know that that severely limits the ways in which my software can be used. When I make my software 'free', to me that means enabling anybody to do whatever pleases them with my software. For me this also includes bundling it with software I don't have access to.
Perhaps it would be a nice idea to make a license wizard. Just toggle all the features you want in it (GPL compatibility, the right to bundle with binary code, etc.) and the wizard spits out a suitable license.
Look, I run linux at home. Nothing is easy on this OS from getting the fucking printer to work to getting the fucking wheel on my mouse to function properly, everything requires browsing tons of badly written HOWTO's.
Windows can be a bitch too, but at least some of it works out of the box.
"From a user's stand point Linux is now no more difficult to get around in than windows"
Oh please! You can't be serious. Talking about FUD. You should spend some time with real users, the type that does not even know how to handle a mouse.
"Sorry bud, the days of shrink wraped software are numbered."
Guess what, linux is being shrink wrapped as we speak. It's not done yet, it will probably take another few years. Or do you really think joe average will be compiling his kernel soon?
Re:MODERATORS: sucked in by reverse psychology!
on
Qt Going GPL
·
· Score: 1
Damn, the whiner got what he wanted. I'm moderated down.
"the second half of this comment is grossly uninformed and/or just flamebait and deserved to be moderated down"
Well enlighten me (no pun intended). Really what good is it to claim somebody is uniformed and than call to the moderators to back your unmotivated opinion up?
"Of course, I realize I'm going to be modded down for this flamebait:)"
Don't bother wasting valuable moderation points on this guy. Use it to moderate people up rather than down.
At least C++ comes with some basic features C does not provide. Probably you can emulate them with macros (that's how C++ was originally implemented) but that most likely results in an uncontrolable mess. The only way you can enforce OO in C is by adopting strict coding standards. You can do the same in C++ and benefit from the additional features in that language.
I agree that C++ in the hands of C programmers is dangerous stuff. Most likely they don't understand most of the features in the language. Hopelessly stuck in the sixties/seventies procedural paradigm they can do nothing but shoot themselves in the foot. But then, should these people really be implementing the next generation GUI? Me thinks not.
Wrapping doesn't solve anything, you still need to maintain the wrapped stuff + the additional bloat (double trouble). Besides why wrap if you can implement in C++ directly (more maintainable code if done properly), or are we trying to cover up for a lousy implementation here?
Finally binary compatibility, your apps will depend on the wrapper, not the wrapped piece of C blop.
from not having seen a major release in a few months, I drawed the conclusion that development is slowing down. Since it is far from perfect, I assumed people have something better to do. I don't closely watch development though, so maybe I'm wrong.
And lets not forget that it's peanuts compared to the money you lose on support staff. Better spend some extra money on software rather than 100K$/year on a good system administrator.
Companies don't care to spend 30K or so on a good server. Especially if it comes with userfriendly software and good support. Linux is free but useless without a good support contract. Of course such support is available, at roughly the same price as for commercial software. The impact of license fees can be neglected when you bring in support cost and staff cost.
Especially for small businesses, it is not affordable to have a knowledgable sysadmin around. They have to put up with the less educated sysadmins and therefore have to make investments in usable software instead.
Windows 2000 is ideal for this kind of companies. You don't need a rocket scientist to operate it, it supports a lot of stuff out of the box, most of which is easy to configure. If you have educated staff though, linux/unix is the best way to go.
Great idea, but i need a window manager and I figured enlightenment is as good as any other. In any case I wouldn't consider linux or any unix for doing desktop work anyway. I love linux as a server OS but have no use for it as a desktop OS.
However, the release frequency seems to confirm you are right about enlightenment being obsolete.
I did try BeOS, nice OS but to bad that none of the kind of apps I need are available in a sufficiently evolved state (browser, wordprocessor, email client). I will retry it if a new version comes out or if more apps become available for it (mozilla hint hint).
Quality comes at a price. When you buy apple you pay for the brand. If apple were a software only company, they would be making software for x86, simply because it is a larger market. The reason why mac users are so fanatic is that you have to be a bit fanatic to pay the fee for a mac.
I have a limited budget, and a continuing desire to upgrade my system. That rules out apple because apple hardware is much more expensive than x86 hardware. Using a mac for anything else than graphic design is a luxury I (and many others) cannot afford.
What is obsolete is the fact that it is written in C and not in C++. More specific, it is not object oriented (as are most desktop applications these days) and probably includes some cumbersome mechanisms to make it appear object oriented to the outside world. In my opinion this has to lead to maintenance problems. In the open source world this means that perfectly good developers are spending time on maintaining a project that they could also have spent on other projects.
Now about the linux kernel. If it had been developed in C++ from the beginning, it would probably have moved past the point the current linux kernel is at. Rearchitecting it now is probably not feasible. I wouldn't be surprised, though, if a C++ kernel took over in the future.
Re:MODERATORS: sucked in by reverse psychology!
on
Qt Going GPL
·
· Score: 1
I think any post containing the words moderate, moderator or moderation should be marked as offtopic automatically. Now karma-whoring is something of the past since you can't get your karma above 50 anyway (I'm at 113 now, down from 114). Personally, I think that's a pitty since it removes a reward for posting insightfull or interesting posts.
In any case, when I said "and now for some flamebait", I fully realized that with the licensing issues out of the way, the next topic for the flame wars will be technical differences between gnome and KDE. One notable difference is the use of C in Gnome and the use of C++ in KDE. Hence my remark.
BTW. If you don't agree, feel free to risk your karma by adding to the discussion (which is why we have a moderation system in the first place). Also I'm in favor of a separate, thus on topic thread about moderation and how it can be improved. Particularly the way new threads are initiated is very much open to discussion IMHO.
Since I feel that this reply is a bit off topic (not entirely) I have toggled the no score checkbox which you forgot to do.
Now the debate about Gnome and KDE can finally focus on the stuff that really matters and has kept both from being a serious alternative to commercial desktop environments like windows and mac os: consistency, usability and interoperability.
I'd say KDE has a headstart here, but not a big one.
Now for some flamebait:
Now that the license wars are over maybe it is time to retire Gnome's obsolete C code base. In my view only huge amounts of redundant efforts from open source developers will keep it working and up to date. I'd rather see these efforts directed at something usefull.
Disclaimer: being unhappy with both Gnome and KDE I am now using enlightenment.
The reason apple doesn't port their OS is because that would kill their main source of revenue: hardware sales. Technically there's no reason why we can't run Mac OS on a PC (just like why there's no technical reason why we can't run windows 2000 on a G4). So the reasons why we can't do that anyway are of political/economical nature.
I think it's a pitty mac os X will never run on intel. I'm unhappy with both linux (no decent UI) and windows (decent UI but unstable). Mac OS X seems like a winner in this area, stable, decent UI from the company that practically invented the concept of a UI, runs MS Office (killer app for any desktop environment), runs internet explorer (note I'm actually writing this in a mozilla nightly build) and runs unix apps and development tools. However, should apple ever port Mac Os X, there would be no technically sound reason to buy apple hardware anymore (at least not at the prices they currently sell it).
Books are close to useless for computer documentation. I find linuxdoc more than adequate for all my documentation needs. A printed version would be useless to me since:
- I would probably never read 95% of it
- It would be a huge pile of paper
- It would be difficult to update
- It would be expensive.
Now linuxdoc is not perfect, it is often difficult to find the right document for instance. But once youhave it, it is easy to find out whether you have the latest version, to find relevant related material, cut paste pieces of code/shell script, etc.
Now, I can't imagine that there's a lot of people in paper documentation of an obsolete TCP stack. An online version of this documentation could have been put on the web before it was completely finished, allowing people to comment on it and maybe even contribute to it. That also would have meant that there was at least some documentation while the stack was not yet obsolete.
So for the next version of the book, I strongly recommend not to bother with a paper version. You'll do your readers a favor and make the documentation more usefull. Of course you won't get royalties, but I can't imagine that your current TCP stack book is a bestseller either.
"SETI program is indicative of the fact that we really are alone in the cosmos"
We have only been broadcasting radio signals for about 100 years. There are not that many stars in a radius of 100 light years, so even if there is life somewhere in this universe, it is unlikely it sits in that 100 lightyear radius. That means, alien life can't have noticed us yet. Which means that they probably did not sent a signal back either.
Not that I don't think SETI is a waste of research money. Only a decadent civilization like America can afford to pump so much money into listening to background noise.
Oh, and about 'god', I think the mere fact that we figured out that life rose on earth so quickly after its formation proves that we can do without a god like creature pretty well. After all, there's nothing mysterious about how we figured that out, definitaly no lord's hand at work here. And suppose I'm wrong than it at least proves that the 'god' is not even close to the romantic character in the bible and comparable literature.
"... of the Bible are true in asserting that God made us in his image."
"Indiana University music students can now hear the performances associated with their course work on computer. IU, which has the largest music school in the nation, has digitised its entire music library. "
Hehe, so it is already being used for sharing music.
I heard ms is planning on a.net platform. However, if the.us TLD will be used more often they might consider a windows us version as well (seems more honest to the users) and they've already got windows me.
I use enlightenment, eterm nicely shows the desktop but completely ignores anything that sits between your terminal window and the desktop. So, nice rip off but not fully implemented yet.
"It may not occur now or even in 6 more months"
Make that 6 years. I've heard that 'it's coming, the new and improved version is just around the corner' a bit too often. It will probably come but currently there are significant issues: there is no GUI standard to which you can develop applications, there are two mostly incompatible candidates for this standard that are currently engaging in mud fighting.
Apple is setting the standard and always has. Did anybody notice how important 'transparency' has become since apple demoed Mac OS X?
It's just one example of how apple is leading the way and Gnome and KDE are desperately trying to catch up. Duplicating all cool features on the way but forgetting about the most important one: consistency.
I don't own an apple, I use the other rip off (windows), mainly because of the hardware prices. But even compared to windows, Gnome is very weak. I have it installed on my linux machine, it sucks and doesn't even come close to providing the kind of functionality typically found in operating systems like windows and mac os. Both went to years of polishing and it shows. On linux I have to commandline because there is no alternative when you want to get things done.
Very low, only a tiny portion of china has internet access. Most people in south america don't have getting online as a priority. The people that do get online are of the upperclass, meaning that they probably had education and maybe even learned english.
That doesn't mean that there's no room for more than one language. Take dutch for instance (disclaimer: I'm dutch), compared to english or mandarin, it's a tiny language. Yet there's plenty of content in dutch. It coexists peacefully with content in english, french, german, swedish,....... etc.
Only americans and people in third world countries are limited to one language. Arguably, this is no problem for americans since their economic power causes others to adopt english as a second language.
Slashdot Mirror
The economy is good, so there are plenty of jobs now. But how about 20 years from now, when most of the perl coding/c hacking/etc. has been moved to low wages countries such as india? As always the interesting jobs will go to well educated young people and experienced, well educated older people. Uneducated (i.e. without a formal proof of that education) will get the left over jobs.
Place yourself in the position of a future employer: one job two candidates. One with a master degree and some relevant experience, one without any degree and some experience. I'd hire the one with the master degree because that one has the brains to get a master degree and was strong enough to finish the job. The other one was a loser who went for the quick money and/or was not clever enough to finish his master/bachelor thesis.
Spending some time in college is time well spent. It will shine on your CV and you might actually learn something. The IT business is full with ignorant losers, you have to look for knowledgeable people with a candle. And when you find them you usually find out they did finish school.
There's a technology demo (www.nononelivesforever.com) of about 110 MB with 3 playable levels and a tutorial. There's still some glitches in it but it looks really cool. The sixties style with its bright colours is quite refreshing after the endless quake clones with stupid monsters.
The gameplay seems pretty straightforward but is quite fun. Also Cate (the game character) is a good excuse to retire Lara Croft.
gnutella's basic idea is good, to bad the implementation and design was never properly finished. One of the problems gnutella has is that the format for queries is not specified in the protocol. Consequently, each client returns different things. Type in the search term mpg and you get a list of jpg files.
A strategy that worked in the beginning for searching movies was to type divx and then sort on file size. This way you could find the two or three working downloads of popular movies. Nowadays there's so much noise in what you get back for nearly any query that gnutella is close to useless. Most of the links returned don't even work.
Any initiative for a new P2P protocol should start with defining metadata. This ultimately leads to more specific queries and helps keeping traffic down. ID3 tags are a nice start for mp3's but I think that ID3 is ultimately too limited. I would like to see a P2P network based on RDF.
This whole debate has been an eyeopener for me. A few months back, I would have blindly picked GPL as a suitable license for software I create. Now I know that that severely limits the ways in which my software can be used. When I make my software 'free', to me that means enabling anybody to do whatever pleases them with my software. For me this also includes bundling it with software I don't have access to.
Perhaps it would be a nice idea to make a license wizard. Just toggle all the features you want in it (GPL compatibility, the right to bundle with binary code, etc.) and the wizard spits out a suitable license.
Look, I run linux at home. Nothing is easy on this OS from getting the fucking printer to work to getting the fucking wheel on my mouse to function properly, everything requires browsing tons of badly written HOWTO's.
Windows can be a bitch too, but at least some of it works out of the box.
"From a user's stand point Linux is now no more difficult to get around in than windows"
Oh please! You can't be serious. Talking about FUD. You should spend some time with real users, the type that does not even know how to handle a mouse.
"Sorry bud, the days of shrink wraped software are numbered."
Guess what, linux is being shrink wrapped as we speak. It's not done yet, it will probably take another few years. Or do you really think joe average will be compiling his kernel soon?
Damn, the whiner got what he wanted. I'm moderated down.
:)"
"the second half of this comment is grossly uninformed and/or just flamebait and deserved to be moderated down"
Well enlighten me (no pun intended). Really what good is it to claim somebody is uniformed and than call to the moderators to back your unmotivated opinion up?
"Of course, I realize I'm going to be modded down for this flamebait
Don't bother wasting valuable moderation points on this guy. Use it to moderate people up rather than down.
At least C++ comes with some basic features C does not provide. Probably you can emulate them with macros (that's how C++ was originally implemented) but that most likely results in an uncontrolable mess. The only way you can enforce OO in C is by adopting strict coding standards. You can do the same in C++ and benefit from the additional features in that language.
I agree that C++ in the hands of C programmers is dangerous stuff. Most likely they don't understand most of the features in the language. Hopelessly stuck in the sixties/seventies procedural paradigm they can do nothing but shoot themselves in the foot. But then, should these people really be implementing the next generation GUI? Me thinks not.
Wrapping doesn't solve anything, you still need to maintain the wrapped stuff + the additional bloat (double trouble). Besides why wrap if you can implement in C++ directly (more maintainable code if done properly), or are we trying to cover up for a lousy implementation here?
Finally binary compatibility, your apps will depend on the wrapper, not the wrapped piece of C blop.
from not having seen a major release in a few months, I drawed the conclusion that development is slowing down. Since it is far from perfect, I assumed people have something better to do. I don't closely watch development though, so maybe I'm wrong.
And lets not forget that it's peanuts compared to the money you lose on support staff. Better spend some extra money on software rather than 100K$/year on a good system administrator.
Companies don't care to spend 30K or so on a good server. Especially if it comes with userfriendly software and good support. Linux is free but useless without a good support contract. Of course such support is available, at roughly the same price as for commercial software. The impact of license fees can be neglected when you bring in support cost and staff cost.
Especially for small businesses, it is not affordable to have a knowledgable sysadmin around. They have to put up with the less educated sysadmins and therefore have to make investments in usable software instead.
Windows 2000 is ideal for this kind of companies. You don't need a rocket scientist to operate it, it supports a lot of stuff out of the box, most of which is easy to configure. If you have educated staff though, linux/unix is the best way to go.
Great idea, but i need a window manager and I figured enlightenment is as good as any other. In any case I wouldn't consider linux or any unix for doing desktop work anyway. I love linux as a server OS but have no use for it as a desktop OS.
However, the release frequency seems to confirm you are right about enlightenment being obsolete.
I did try BeOS, nice OS but to bad that none of the kind of apps I need are available in a sufficiently evolved state (browser, wordprocessor, email client). I will retry it if a new version comes out or if more apps become available for it (mozilla hint hint).
Quality comes at a price. When you buy apple you pay for the brand. If apple were a software only company, they would be making software for x86, simply because it is a larger market. The reason why mac users are so fanatic is that you have to be a bit fanatic to pay the fee for a mac.
I have a limited budget, and a continuing desire to upgrade my system. That rules out apple because apple hardware is much more expensive than x86 hardware. Using a mac for anything else than graphic design is a luxury I (and many others) cannot afford.
What is obsolete is the fact that it is written in C and not in C++. More specific, it is not object oriented (as are most desktop applications these days) and probably includes some cumbersome mechanisms to make it appear object oriented to the outside world. In my opinion this has to lead to maintenance problems. In the open source world this means that perfectly good developers are spending time on maintaining a project that they could also have spent on other projects.
Now about the linux kernel. If it had been developed in C++ from the beginning, it would probably have moved past the point the current linux kernel is at. Rearchitecting it now is probably not feasible. I wouldn't be surprised, though, if a C++ kernel took over in the future.
I think any post containing the words moderate, moderator or moderation should be marked as offtopic automatically. Now karma-whoring is something of the past since you can't get your karma above 50 anyway (I'm at 113 now, down from 114). Personally, I think that's a pitty since it removes a reward for posting insightfull or interesting posts.
In any case, when I said "and now for some flamebait", I fully realized that with the licensing issues out of the way, the next topic for the flame wars will be technical differences between gnome and KDE. One notable difference is the use of C in Gnome and the use of C++ in KDE. Hence my remark.
BTW. If you don't agree, feel free to risk your karma by adding to the discussion (which is why we have a moderation system in the first place). Also I'm in favor of a separate, thus on topic thread about moderation and how it can be improved. Particularly the way new threads are initiated is very much open to discussion IMHO.
Since I feel that this reply is a bit off topic (not entirely) I have toggled the no score checkbox which you forgot to do.
Now the debate about Gnome and KDE can finally focus on the stuff that really matters and has kept both from being a serious alternative to commercial desktop environments like windows and mac os: consistency, usability and interoperability.
I'd say KDE has a headstart here, but not a big one.
Now for some flamebait:
Now that the license wars are over maybe it is time to retire Gnome's obsolete C code base. In my view only huge amounts of redundant efforts from open source developers will keep it working and up to date. I'd rather see these efforts directed at something usefull.
Disclaimer: being unhappy with both Gnome and KDE I am now using enlightenment.
The reason apple doesn't port their OS is because that would kill their main source of revenue: hardware sales. Technically there's no reason why we can't run Mac OS on a PC (just like why there's no technical reason why we can't run windows 2000 on a G4). So the reasons why we can't do that anyway are of political/economical nature.
I think it's a pitty mac os X will never run on intel. I'm unhappy with both linux (no decent UI) and windows (decent UI but unstable). Mac OS X seems like a winner in this area, stable, decent UI from the company that practically invented the concept of a UI, runs MS Office (killer app for any desktop environment), runs internet explorer (note I'm actually writing this in a mozilla nightly build) and runs unix apps and development tools. However, should apple ever port Mac Os X, there would be no technically sound reason to buy apple hardware anymore (at least not at the prices they currently sell it).
Books are close to useless for computer documentation. I find linuxdoc more than adequate for all my documentation needs. A printed version would be useless to me since:
- I would probably never read 95% of it
- It would be a huge pile of paper
- It would be difficult to update
- It would be expensive.
Now linuxdoc is not perfect, it is often difficult to find the right document for instance. But once youhave it, it is easy to find out whether you have the latest version, to find relevant related material, cut paste pieces of code/shell script, etc.
Now, I can't imagine that there's a lot of people in paper documentation of an obsolete TCP stack. An online version of this documentation could have been put on the web before it was completely finished, allowing people to comment on it and maybe even contribute to it. That also would have meant that there was at least some documentation while the stack was not yet obsolete.
So for the next version of the book, I strongly recommend not to bother with a paper version. You'll do your readers a favor and make the documentation more usefull. Of course you won't get royalties, but I can't imagine that your current TCP stack book is a bestseller either.
"SETI program is indicative of the fact that we really are alone in the cosmos"
We have only been broadcasting radio signals for about 100 years. There are not that many stars in a radius of 100 light years, so even if there is life somewhere in this universe, it is unlikely it sits in that 100 lightyear radius. That means, alien life can't have noticed us yet. Which means that they probably did not sent a signal back either.
Not that I don't think SETI is a waste of research money. Only a decadent civilization like America can afford to pump so much money into listening to background noise.
Oh, and about 'god', I think the mere fact that we figured out that life rose on earth so quickly after its formation proves that we can do without a god like creature pretty well. After all, there's nothing mysterious about how we figured that out, definitaly no lord's hand at work here. And suppose I'm wrong than it at least proves that the 'god' is not even close to the romantic character in the bible and comparable literature.
"... of the Bible are true in asserting that God made us in his image."
If he looks like me, he must be an ugly bastard.
How many windows developers are there? Surely, a magnitude more than 70k. So, the average windows developer has written less than one program.
I think this 'wild guess' is way below the real number of apps ever written for windows.
"Indiana University music students can now hear the performances associated with their course work on computer. IU, which has the largest music school in the nation, has digitised its entire music library. "
Hehe, so it is already being used for sharing music.
I heard ms is planning on a .net platform. However, if the .us TLD will be used more often they might consider a windows us version as well (seems more honest to the users) and they've already got windows me.
rename a file on a fat drive (first example that comes to mind). Try doing this with GMC, no can do.
"... Enlightenment window manager has ...",
I use enlightenment, eterm nicely shows the desktop but completely ignores anything that sits between your terminal window and the desktop. So, nice rip off but not fully implemented yet.
"It may not occur now or even in 6 more months"
Make that 6 years. I've heard that 'it's coming, the new and improved version is just around the corner' a bit too often. It will probably come but currently there are significant issues: there is no GUI standard to which you can develop applications, there are two mostly incompatible candidates for this standard that are currently engaging in mud fighting.
Apple is setting the standard and always has. Did anybody notice how important 'transparency' has become since apple demoed Mac OS X?
It's just one example of how apple is leading the way and Gnome and KDE are desperately trying to catch up. Duplicating all cool features on the way but forgetting about the most important one: consistency.
I don't own an apple, I use the other rip off (windows), mainly because of the hardware prices. But even compared to windows, Gnome is very weak. I have it installed on my linux machine, it sucks and doesn't even come close to providing the kind of functionality typically found in operating systems like windows and mac os. Both went to years of polishing and it shows. On linux I have to commandline because there is no alternative when you want to get things done.
Very low, only a tiny portion of china has internet access. Most people in south america don't have getting online as a priority. The people that do get online are of the upperclass, meaning that they probably had education and maybe even learned english.
....... etc.
That doesn't mean that there's no room for more than one language. Take dutch for instance (disclaimer: I'm dutch), compared to english or mandarin, it's a tiny language. Yet there's plenty of content in dutch. It coexists peacefully with content in english, french, german, swedish,
Only americans and people in third world countries are limited to one language. Arguably, this is no problem for americans since their economic power causes others to adopt english as a second language.