< Today, I won't even go near a programming language lower than C and I like Python much better.
So if programmers don't need to know assembler any more what does this tell us? C's abstractions are not significantly leaky. And as compilers get better and better, higher and higher level abstractions will be leak resistant. A great example is OCaml: a very high-level language that still manages to perform [almost] as well as C.
My point: this article is good and all, but it's hardly the final word.
The phone company is hardly a bastion of the latest technology. I'd grant you that QoS over IP is not fully mature, but it seems clear that once it is circuit networks have little to offer. The fact is, ATM is not optimal for transmitting data (as opposed to voice) and data is the future. I'd even argue that broadband connections with guaranteed speed is a short-term solution.
As far as the backbone providers go, a quick Google search shows a few companies offering bridges from their IP backbones to customer's ATM networks -- if they were using ATM for their backbones, don't you think this wouldn't be required? Or perhaps they're as disfunctional as the phone companies and first they switch it to IP and then back to ATM...
My school switched to using Java in almost all the undergrad courses a few years ago and yet students keep coming back from summer jobs and internships talking about how all they used was C++. You should have seen the Microsoft promoter's face when he was informed, in front of an entire audience, that C++ wasn't used in any of the classes. In fact, the only time I've heard a student mention Java in regards to his summer job was a guy who modified the threading model of the JVM -- which is written in C++.
Could it be that Java is only being used in projects which include SQL, XML, and TCP/IP? There are certainly plenty of companies creating software (in-house or commercial) that uses only one or none of those technologies.
I'm an academic purist, so normally I'd tell you that if you want to know about something new: get off your ass and learn it yourself. However in the case of networking I'd have to agree with you.
Let's face it: TCP/IP and UDP/IP are the only protocols worth a damn. Networking courses are filled with archaic ideas like ATM which clearly has no future (QoS will be implemented on top of TCP/IP). You could argue that learning about the good old days will teach students general design principles, however so would learning about the exotic ideas that might not be here for the long haul.
So rather than spend a bunch (it's okay to spend a little) of time on history or cut back the low-level portion of networking courses, I'd rather see students learning about things like IPv6, IPSec, and Mobile IP.
The question comes down to philosophical identity of countries; i.e. are the countries of today responsible for their sins of yesterday? The answer to this question governs the responsibilities of both sides of the economic divide today:
After regime and generation changes, should a Third-World country still be responsible for paying back their debt? Countries cannot declare bankrupcy in the North American sense and so the actions of a dictator or irresponsible government can screw a country financially for decades (if not centuries).
Should Western countries be responsible for the colonialism of the past? Even more tenuous: should new Western countries (eg: the US) be responsible for the colonialism of their parent countries (eg: the UK)? This applies not only to international colonialism but also national colonialism such as Native-population relations.
If Germany was held responsible for WWII, then shouldn't the Allies have executed it as a country? (For example by giving governance over the territory to neighbouring Allies.) Instead the Allies gave the Axis a helping hand and helped make them the economic juggernauts they are today. Perhaps rather than trying trade sanctions against somewhere like Cambodia we should try a similar scorched-earth policy.
Also, I should point out: just because it's not your fault that people are starving, doesn't mean that you're not ethically obliged to help them out.
Did the techies who gave up on their law degrees still find them valuable? I'm not considering law school just because I might enjoy practicing law, but also because legal literacy is even more important than computer literacy in today's world.
Does the legal community realise that they are in desperate need of lawyers with technical background? If so, are the law schools doing their best to fulfill this need such as lowering admission requirements for people with technical backgrounds or targetting recruiting? Are law schools completely full of English and Philosophy majors that need to get a job or is there some diversity there?
I'm asking because in a year or so I'm going to have a Master's in CompSci and I'm considering my options afterwards. While a PhD would be nice, I've also been looking at law school. I don't think I could resist getting an emphasis in technology law, however I'm not sure what to expect...
Design Patterns are important because they suggest that Software Engineering might actually have some content beyond regular CompSci courses.
My school has Bachelor's degrees in both CompSci and Software Design the primary difference being that Software Design students are required to take all the Software Engineering courses while CompSci students get to choose. There was a heated discussion at a recent Dept. meeting over whether CompSci students should be allowed to take the full-credit capstone project in Software Design; it was decided that they should only be allowed to do a half-credit project: "otherwise there'll be nothing to differentiate the Software Design degree".
Now Software Engineers can sit around and learn various patterns for four years, which is exactly what industry wants them to be doing. After all, with a 4-year degree you should be an architect managing diploma-holding-code-monkeys rather than actually writing code yourself. Computer Scientists will have no use for such courses, pointing out that they've had their own "patterns" all along: they're called "algorithms".
If the application's pirate-protection relies on a CD being in the drive, then simply put the base for all OSes on the same CD or make all the protection mechanisms look for the same item on the CD (CD file formats being cross-platform). If the license isn't tied to some physical entity, then there's nothing to prevent you copying to another machine of the same OS!
How do companies calculate a side-grade discount? They figure out how much they can get you to pay. Why so arbitrary? Because using the software on another OS doesn't cost them anything.
Why do so few companies copy Epic Games' lead with UT and give consumers all OSes for the price of one? After all, you've already paid for the code and it would be perfectly legal for you to use it in an emulator. Any pirating-prevention schemes that were developed for each OS should still work with combined media.
The only reason I can think of to sell different OS versions seperately is to finance the cost of porting. But Adobe can't use that excuse as they already have a huge market for both sides.
Question: Since you have a license for the software, would you be breaking any laws by pirating the version for the other OS?
No: part of the reason that I'm desperate for a solution is that we're currently living 3 hours apart. If I lived in the same town it wouldn't be a problem trying out all sorts of different configurations. But every time I tried a new version of Windows that was it for 2 or 3 weeks.
I've told her that she should find a new geek, someone who can fulfill her needs, but she's sentimental... >:)
Yes, this is exactly why I want to try Linux before I start blaming the hardware. Windows not only acts weird on its own, it doesn't respond deterministically or clearly to hardware problems.
>Poor COLLEGE students? Shouldn't you introduce her to.avi, divx, and a little friend known as P2P?
Alas, none of those have good web integration. She needs RealPlayer for listening to online radio stations and watching movie trailers. And I think Flash is just kinda required to see the whole net nowadays.
>(and their are howtos out there that explain in detail how to roll your on Live ISO from any distro)
There are? Point me to em! I'm not finding anything definitive (eg: discusses hardware detection) in Google...
She works on the thesis both from home and the library. Maybe she's not paying attention when the format conversion boxes pop up but for whatever reason she's shown up at either place and realised that the latest copy is in a format that can be read at only one of the locations. As a result, she either has to merge diffs or find something else to do until she can get back to a converter.
Oh yeah, schools teach children very carefully about saving everything to floppies. Unfortunately most teachers fail to mention that you should have your work saved to more than 1 floppy! I remember ScanDisking for mere sector scraps the floppies of many a future teacher while living in residence...
Do you have a good metric for testing whether Linux is ready for the desktop? I'm not sure that it is, but it's got to be better than the shit she's struggling with now.
We're starving university students, therefore Macs are entirely out of the question (she's wanted a Mac ever since reading Microserfs). I doubt her aging hardware's ability to run Win2k (or else I would have already tried it) and so it's even less likely to handle XP. But really, should a new computer be required just to word process, web browse (including multimedia content), and listen to music? (Seriously, that's all she does. But for some reason WindowsME can't even do that.)
Believe it or not, she's trying to write a *thesis* in *Word*! Crazy, I know. I'm banned from mentioning BibTeX whenever she starts complaining about citation management. And she's already wasted days thanks to proprietary formats. It's a wonder people manage to get any work done in Windows...
This might be a bit off-topic, but hey, at least I'm not wasting your time with an Ask Slashdot:
Can someone point me towards a live-CD that includes Flash, RealPlayer, and the ability to play as many multimedia files as possible? OpenOffice and some kind of Gecko browser are also required.
The reason is that Windows is just not cutting it on my girlfriend's computer. She's having all sorts of weird technical problems so I've decided something needs to be done. Unfortunately, my Debian is so wacked out and constantly tweaked into a semi-usable state that she doesn't trust Linux. So what I need is something she can use for a few weeks -- still accessing her docs on her Windows partition -- until she's sold.
An even better question is: what the hell are BBAs for? Compared to a MBA you spend double the amount of time learning, you have no other undergraduate degree so you know nothing but Commerce, and yet in the end it's not worth as much as an MBA. Why do people bother?
Are you sure you're not confusing the Postmodernism Generator with Alan Sokal's article in Social Text? If not, can you provide a citation, I'd be very interested to read more about this.
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< Today, I won't even go near a programming language lower than C and I like Python much better.
So if programmers don't need to know assembler any more what does this tell us? C's abstractions are not significantly leaky. And as compilers get better and better, higher and higher level abstractions will be leak resistant. A great example is OCaml: a very high-level language that still manages to perform [almost] as well as C.
My point: this article is good and all, but it's hardly the final word.
The phone company is hardly a bastion of the latest technology. I'd grant you that QoS over IP is not fully mature, but it seems clear that once it is circuit networks have little to offer. The fact is, ATM is not optimal for transmitting data (as opposed to voice) and data is the future. I'd even argue that broadband connections with guaranteed speed is a short-term solution.
As far as the backbone providers go, a quick Google search shows a few companies offering bridges from their IP backbones to customer's ATM networks -- if they were using ATM for their backbones, don't you think this wouldn't be required? Or perhaps they're as disfunctional as the phone companies and first they switch it to IP and then back to ATM...
Are there really that many companies using Java?
My school switched to using Java in almost all the undergrad courses a few years ago and yet students keep coming back from summer jobs and internships talking about how all they used was C++. You should have seen the Microsoft promoter's face when he was informed, in front of an entire audience, that C++ wasn't used in any of the classes. In fact, the only time I've heard a student mention Java in regards to his summer job was a guy who modified the threading model of the JVM -- which is written in C++.
Could it be that Java is only being used in projects which include SQL, XML, and TCP/IP? There are certainly plenty of companies creating software (in-house or commercial) that uses only one or none of those technologies.
Can anyone point me to some statistics?
I'm an academic purist, so normally I'd tell you that if you want to know about something new: get off your ass and learn it yourself. However in the case of networking I'd have to agree with you.
Let's face it: TCP/IP and UDP/IP are the only protocols worth a damn. Networking courses are filled with archaic ideas like ATM which clearly has no future (QoS will be implemented on top of TCP/IP). You could argue that learning about the good old days will teach students general design principles, however so would learning about the exotic ideas that might not be here for the long haul.
So rather than spend a bunch (it's okay to spend a little) of time on history or cut back the low-level portion of networking courses, I'd rather see students learning about things like IPv6, IPSec, and Mobile IP.
The question comes down to philosophical identity of countries; i.e. are the countries of today responsible for their sins of yesterday? The answer to this question governs the responsibilities of both sides of the economic divide today:
After regime and generation changes, should a Third-World country still be responsible for paying back their debt? Countries cannot declare bankrupcy in the North American sense and so the actions of a dictator or irresponsible government can screw a country financially for decades (if not centuries).
Should Western countries be responsible for the colonialism of the past? Even more tenuous: should new Western countries (eg: the US) be responsible for the colonialism of their parent countries (eg: the UK)? This applies not only to international colonialism but also national colonialism such as Native-population relations.
If Germany was held responsible for WWII, then shouldn't the Allies have executed it as a country? (For example by giving governance over the territory to neighbouring Allies.) Instead the Allies gave the Axis a helping hand and helped make them the economic juggernauts they are today. Perhaps rather than trying trade sanctions against somewhere like Cambodia we should try a similar scorched-earth policy.
Also, I should point out: just because it's not your fault that people are starving, doesn't mean that you're not ethically obliged to help them out.
Did the techies who gave up on their law degrees still find them valuable? I'm not considering law school just because I might enjoy practicing law, but also because legal literacy is even more important than computer literacy in today's world.
Does the legal community realise that they are in desperate need of lawyers with technical background? If so, are the law schools doing their best to fulfill this need such as lowering admission requirements for people with technical backgrounds or targetting recruiting? Are law schools completely full of English and Philosophy majors that need to get a job or is there some diversity there?
I'm asking because in a year or so I'm going to have a Master's in CompSci and I'm considering my options afterwards. While a PhD would be nice, I've also been looking at law school. I don't think I could resist getting an emphasis in technology law, however I'm not sure what to expect...
Design Patterns are important because they suggest that Software Engineering might actually have some content beyond regular CompSci courses.
My school has Bachelor's degrees in both CompSci and Software Design the primary difference being that Software Design students are required to take all the Software Engineering courses while CompSci students get to choose. There was a heated discussion at a recent Dept. meeting over whether CompSci students should be allowed to take the full-credit capstone project in Software Design; it was decided that they should only be allowed to do a half-credit project: "otherwise there'll be nothing to differentiate the Software Design degree".
Now Software Engineers can sit around and learn various patterns for four years, which is exactly what industry wants them to be doing. After all, with a 4-year degree you should be an architect managing diploma-holding-code-monkeys rather than actually writing code yourself. Computer Scientists will have no use for such courses, pointing out that they've had their own "patterns" all along: they're called "algorithms".
If the application's pirate-protection relies on a CD being in the drive, then simply put the base for all OSes on the same CD or make all the protection mechanisms look for the same item on the CD (CD file formats being cross-platform). If the license isn't tied to some physical entity, then there's nothing to prevent you copying to another machine of the same OS!
How do companies calculate a side-grade discount? They figure out how much they can get you to pay. Why so arbitrary? Because using the software on another OS doesn't cost them anything.
Why do so few companies copy Epic Games' lead with UT and give consumers all OSes for the price of one? After all, you've already paid for the code and it would be perfectly legal for you to use it in an emulator. Any pirating-prevention schemes that were developed for each OS should still work with combined media.
The only reason I can think of to sell different OS versions seperately is to finance the cost of porting. But Adobe can't use that excuse as they already have a huge market for both sides.
Question: Since you have a license for the software, would you be breaking any laws by pirating the version for the other OS?
No: part of the reason that I'm desperate for a solution is that we're currently living 3 hours apart. If I lived in the same town it wouldn't be a problem trying out all sorts of different configurations. But every time I tried a new version of Windows that was it for 2 or 3 weeks.
I've told her that she should find a new geek, someone who can fulfill her needs, but she's sentimental... >:)
Yes, this is exactly why I want to try Linux before I start blaming the hardware. Windows not only acts weird on its own, it doesn't respond deterministically or clearly to hardware problems.
>Poor COLLEGE students? Shouldn't you introduce her to .avi, divx, and a little friend known as P2P?
Alas, none of those have good web integration. She needs RealPlayer for listening to online radio stations and watching movie trailers. And I think Flash is just kinda required to see the whole net nowadays.
>(and their are howtos out there that explain in detail how to roll your on Live ISO from any distro)
There are? Point me to em! I'm not finding anything definitive (eg: discusses hardware detection) in Google...
She works on the thesis both from home and the library. Maybe she's not paying attention when the format conversion boxes pop up but for whatever reason she's shown up at either place and realised that the latest copy is in a format that can be read at only one of the locations. As a result, she either has to merge diffs or find something else to do until she can get back to a converter.
Oh yeah, schools teach children very carefully about saving everything to floppies. Unfortunately most teachers fail to mention that you should have your work saved to more than 1 floppy! I remember ScanDisking for mere sector scraps the floppies of many a future teacher while living in residence...
No Galeon:
$ lynx -dump ftp://ftp.uni-kl.de/pub/linux/knoppix/packages.tx$
And Flash and RealPlayer are vital for her. I'm going to have trouble enough convincing her to live without QuickTime...
Do you have a good metric for testing whether Linux is ready for the desktop? I'm not sure that it is, but it's got to be better than the shit she's struggling with now.
We're starving university students, therefore Macs are entirely out of the question (she's wanted a Mac ever since reading Microserfs). I doubt her aging hardware's ability to run Win2k (or else I would have already tried it) and so it's even less likely to handle XP. But really, should a new computer be required just to word process, web browse (including multimedia content), and listen to music? (Seriously, that's all she does. But for some reason WindowsME can't even do that.)
Believe it or not, she's trying to write a *thesis* in *Word*! Crazy, I know. I'm banned from mentioning BibTeX whenever she starts complaining about citation management. And she's already wasted days thanks to proprietary formats. It's a wonder people manage to get any work done in Windows...
Wait a sec, I need a reason to convert someone to Linux?! You must be lost: this is *Slashdot*.
But seriously, her problems are more niggling than just BSODs and I've observed them with fresh installs of 98, 98SE, and ME in the last 4 months.
Yeah, you're right, sorry. Galeon'd be nice, though.
It's missing Flash, RealPlayer, and Gecko. Why didn't you just recommend I install VMS? Or perhaps you didn't bother to read my post...
This might be a bit off-topic, but hey, at least I'm not wasting your time with an Ask Slashdot:
Can someone point me towards a live-CD that includes Flash, RealPlayer, and the ability to play as many multimedia files as possible? OpenOffice and some kind of Gecko browser are also required.
The reason is that Windows is just not cutting it on my girlfriend's computer. She's having all sorts of weird technical problems so I've decided something needs to be done. Unfortunately, my Debian is so wacked out and constantly tweaked into a semi-usable state that she doesn't trust Linux. So what I need is something she can use for a few weeks -- still accessing her docs on her Windows partition -- until she's sold.
An even better question is: what the hell are BBAs for? Compared to a MBA you spend double the amount of time learning, you have no other undergraduate degree so you know nothing but Commerce, and yet in the end it's not worth as much as an MBA. Why do people bother?
Can you give a citation on that quote? Google doesn't seem to know much about it.
Also: could it be "If you give me German officers, Canadian soldiers..."?
Are you sure you're not confusing the Postmodernism Generator with Alan Sokal's article in Social Text? If not, can you provide a citation, I'd be very interested to read more about this.