if you ever see yourself working for the us department of defense, it might worth your time to familiarize yourself with it. sure, in most cases they've moved on from it (and ada) to c++ and others, but there's a crapload of legacy out there that has to be maintained by somebody. because a lot of the guys who know fortran are near retirement, they'll need a replacement...and if you knew fortran, you'd be one of the few young folks who knew it.
Quoted from the syllabus where I attend school (a 4-year, mostly engineering university):
"Submit assessment material on time and submit only your own work."
Quoted from the programming assignment I will turn in tomorrow (emphasis is as it appears on the assignment):
"PROGRAMS MUST BE INDEPENDENT AND ORIGINAL WORK."
I challenge any student out there to submit a program to his/her professor and it be completely "INDEPENDENT AND ORIGINAL." It's probably never gonna happen. One, if you're implementing any of the algorithms discussed in most common introductory algorithm textbooks, you're probably repeating the work of thousands of students, regardless of how independent you may try to be. Two, it is likely that your prof gave you hints/tips on your program; if you're using those hints/tips, they are not original, not independent.
I agree with pretty much every other nerd out there that Google is the best search engine on the net, but there's something that keeps bothering me: it seems like every time I search for something, the top of the list is dominated by sites located at Geocities.com, which is of course owned by Yahoo!. Since Yahoo! is more than likely Google's best customer, you reckon its possible that Google is tuning there search to fit Yahoo!'s needs?
I really don't think so myself, but it's something interesting to chew on.
Although I'm pretty young myself, I can somewhat understand this. I believe if I were hiring, I would definitely hire someone who was a reasonable, affable person with decent computer programming skills or knowledge over a person who had better skills, but no patience or desire to cooperate.
On another related topic, I have to fight becoming a "i am god" person pretty often. After spending some time with people who are wise in life, but who know very little to nothing about computers, it is very easy to become puffed up. However, I've found that just using Linux and occasionally reading the code and the ideas generated by the gurus is very humbling. For example, consider the design of GCC sometime, or consider the ideas embedded into the design of XFree86, the kernel, or any of the programming languages. It doesn't take long for me to see that I'm a whole lot closer to the average AOL user than I am to the gurus, and that it's going to be a long time before that changes!
I'm almost in my 4th year in the computer "engineering" (emphasis on the ") program at my school, and I can not remember meeting more than 1 or 2 computer "science" majors who did not think that they were l337, indispensable, genius, and central to the survival of humankind. Yet, they take 4 years of Java and consider it a degree!
I got on Telocity in September 2000, and I received excellent service. I had no problem signing on, I received my modem within 2 weeks of requesting the service, and they gave me a great price with no contract.
Then, in about March, after having less than 30 minutes downtime from Sept-Feb, they started having routine DNS problems. About twice every week between then and May, I had difficulty connecting. Plus, my maximum transfer rate dropped from ~150kbps to ~110kbps. I called them about this, spent forever waiting, and finally they said they could do nothing about it, that the problem belonged to BellSouth (long distance folks here). That was uncool, but I gave them the benefit of the doubt.
Well, I canceled service in early June. It is taking me forever to return my gateway. It took them about 3 weeks to send me my return airbill; I called them before I got it to ask if they were gonna send me one, and they said yes, it would be sent to me within the next couple weeks. Well, it turns out that they had already sent the thing, but they sent it to the wrong address--this happened
after I told them 3 times on 3 different occassions where they should send it. Now I've been trying to call them to tell them it's not gonna be sent there on time because I did not receive it at the correct address, but I've spent over 30 minutes on the phone twice and have never talked to anybody. Nevermind that I spent >30 minutes waiting on the phone to tell them I wanted to cancel service, and that they would not prorate my bill for the month of June.
This is stinky service, to say the least. Has anybody else had these problems or noticed the gradual downfall of service? I would've sworn by Telocity's service the first 4 months, but ever since, they have been nothing but a hassle. Any Telocity/Directtv folks out there that can explain this?
Statement by Matthew Oppenheim on Professor Felten The Secure Digital Music Initiative Foundation (SDMI) does not - nor did it ever - intend to bring any legal action against Professor Felten or his co-authors. We sent the letter because we felt an obligation to the watermark licensees who had voluntarily submitted their valuable inventions to SDMI for testing.
For the record, the Recording Industry Association of America, one of the founding members of SDMI, strongly believes in academic freedom and Freedom of Speech. This issue, however, is about the competing interests of scientists - those of the watermark technology companies that have invented new technologies and those of Professor Felton who seeks to describe how to circumvent those technologies. To that end, we have encouraged Professor Felten and the technology companies to resolve this matter. We leave it in their hands to do so.
Further questions should be directed to Verance at 858-677-6522
As the President of the UAH LUG, I'll second everything TOTKChief has said. (Before I start, the UAH LUG has only been around since April 1999 and has not had a guest speaker yet, but will soon.)
There are many folks around here who do research on Linux machines and, in fact, research Linux itself, and some of them have shown interest in speaking with us (in particular, the admin of our 16-node research cluster). My guess is that Lehigh would be the same. Speaking is an excellent opportunity for a prof/grad student to pitch their life's work, and what he/she says will probably be doggone interesting, as they're likely to research things that most folks don't know much about. My other suggestion is that you talk to Lehigh's web/email sysadmins; they may not have specific experience with Linux, but there's a chance they're loaded with awesome UN*X info that Linux folks would find interesting.
Good luck!
w|f
I also like Telocity. I use it in Alabama, which is also full-blooded Ma Bell. It took only 2 weeks from the day I ordered to the day the modem was plugged in. They're friendly to lotsa OSs (Linux being the important one, of course), and the modem is friendly to lotsa interfaces (USB/parallel/RJ45). Very nice--very impressive. No yearly contract either (I came in under a special). I don't know anything about their tech service, though.
I haven't read all the comments so I hope I'm not repeating what someone else has already said, but where I attend school (the University of Alabama in Huntsville) the research professors and other researchers have access to Internet II. It appears in the news fairly often around here, but I haven't heard anything about it in a couple months. Now if I can find a way to get them to route it to the dorm...
Slashdot Mirror
from the wired article: "Check out this feature on the Huntsville Times (Tennessee) Web site, where you can read Bill Gates'..."
Ignoring that the link to the website is dead, is it also a popular myth that Huntsville is in Tennessee?
running mozilla 1.2beta2 built with xft2 support has spoiled me with its awesome fonts....when will we see xft2 builds of phoenix? thanks!
w|f
if you ever see yourself working for the us department of defense, it might worth your time to familiarize yourself with it. sure, in most cases they've moved on from it (and ada) to c++ and others, but there's a crapload of legacy out there that has to be maintained by somebody. because a lot of the guys who know fortran are near retirement, they'll need a replacement...and if you knew fortran, you'd be one of the few young folks who knew it.
w|f
"Submit assessment material on time and submit only your own work."
Quoted from the programming assignment I will turn in tomorrow (emphasis is as it appears on the assignment):
" PROGRAMS MUST BE INDEPENDENT AND ORIGINAL WORK. "
I challenge any student out there to submit a program to his/her professor and it be completely "INDEPENDENT AND ORIGINAL." It's probably never gonna happen. One, if you're implementing any of the algorithms discussed in most common introductory algorithm textbooks, you're probably repeating the work of thousands of students, regardless of how independent you may try to be. Two, it is likely that your prof gave you hints/tips on your program; if you're using those hints/tips, they are not original, not independent.
w|f
"WHEREFORE, Blizzard prays that this Court enter judgment in its favor on every claim for relief set forth above and award it relief...."
Okay, so first Blizzard calls on the DMCA for help...then they call on copyright violation law...now they're calling on THE LORD?
Who's next?
w|f
"Great. More sensational journalism. Maybe someone should submit Jack Robertson's resume to Fox News."
...or CNN, CBS, ABC, or--best of all--disinfo.com....
Why do I get the sneaky suspicion this reply will be marked as a troll, while if I were to submit some news with it, it wouldn't? Hmm....
w|f
" @Home Network Approaching Shutdown
Posted by michael on Friday November 30, @04:57PM
from the so-long-and-thanks-for-all-the-code-red dept. "
my response when it happens:
" Slashdot Shuts Down
Posted by wifflefan on Friday November 30, @04:57PM
from the so-long-and-thanks-for-all-the-jerks dept. "
Geez.
w|f
"Do any of you know of cirriculums that are good examples of a true well-rounded education?"
life.
I agree with pretty much every other nerd out there that Google is the best search engine on the net, but there's something that keeps bothering me: it seems like every time I search for something, the top of the list is dominated by sites located at Geocities.com, which is of course owned by Yahoo!. Since Yahoo! is more than likely Google's best customer, you reckon its possible that Google is tuning there search to fit Yahoo!'s needs?
I really don't think so myself, but it's something interesting to chew on.
w|f
No argument here, mimbleton.
w|f
Excellent comments, fredbsd. No need to feel sorry for the rant--RMS asked and he received. By the way, shouldn't you call yourself GNU/fredbsd?
w|f
If Gore were in office, would he also be "unelected"? I suspect RMS would say not. If I were a communist, I would say the same thing.
w|f
$11 million for some of the best gui-only OS code around? Sounds like a good deal to me. Wish I had a rich uncle...I'd buy it and open source it.
w|f
Although I'm pretty young myself, I can somewhat understand this. I believe if I were hiring, I would definitely hire someone who was a reasonable, affable person with decent computer programming skills or knowledge over a person who had better skills, but no patience or desire to cooperate.
On another related topic, I have to fight becoming a "i am god" person pretty often. After spending some time with people who are wise in life, but who know very little to nothing about computers, it is very easy to become puffed up. However, I've found that just using Linux and occasionally reading the code and the ideas generated by the gurus is very humbling. For example, consider the design of GCC sometime, or consider the ideas embedded into the design of XFree86, the kernel, or any of the programming languages. It doesn't take long for me to see that I'm a whole lot closer to the average AOL user than I am to the gurus, and that it's going to be a long time before that changes!
w|f
I'm almost in my 4th year in the computer "engineering" (emphasis on the ") program at my school, and I can not remember meeting more than 1 or 2 computer "science" majors who did not think that they were l337, indispensable, genius, and central to the survival of humankind. Yet, they take 4 years of Java and consider it a degree!
Anybody else notice this trend at their school?
w|f
I got on Telocity in September 2000, and I received excellent service. I had no problem signing on, I received my modem within 2 weeks of requesting the service, and they gave me a great price with no contract.
Then, in about March, after having less than 30 minutes downtime from Sept-Feb, they started having routine DNS problems. About twice every week between then and May, I had difficulty connecting. Plus, my maximum transfer rate dropped from ~150kbps to ~110kbps. I called them about this, spent forever waiting, and finally they said they could do nothing about it, that the problem belonged to BellSouth (long distance folks here). That was uncool, but I gave them the benefit of the doubt.
Well, I canceled service in early June. It is taking me forever to return my gateway. It took them about 3 weeks to send me my return airbill; I called them before I got it to ask if they were gonna send me one, and they said yes, it would be sent to me within the next couple weeks. Well, it turns out that they had already sent the thing, but they sent it to the wrong address--this happened after I told them 3 times on 3 different occassions where they should send it. Now I've been trying to call them to tell them it's not gonna be sent there on time because I did not receive it at the correct address, but I've spent over 30 minutes on the phone twice and have never talked to anybody. Nevermind that I spent >30 minutes waiting on the phone to tell them I wanted to cancel service, and that they would not prorate my bill for the month of June.
This is stinky service, to say the least. Has anybody else had these problems or noticed the gradual downfall of service? I would've sworn by Telocity's service the first 4 months, but ever since, they have been nothing but a hassle. Any Telocity/Directtv folks out there that can explain this?
w|f
If you're interested in more details, swing by the UAH concrete canoe team homepage. It even talks a little about their recent launch of the world's first concrete-reinforced rocket!
Finally managed to get into ftp.redhat.com, and it looks just like this one--no 7.1 as of 1112 EDT.
w|f
Not to question your integrity, but I didn't see it there...is it hidden deep in the directories? All I saw was 5.2, 6.2, and 7.0
w|f
I second what donutz has said. Thanks, Doug, for your time.
sourceforge has it too: ftp://download.sourceforge.net/pub/mirrors/kde/sta ble/2.1
As the President of the UAH LUG, I'll second everything TOTKChief has said. (Before I start, the UAH LUG has only been around since April 1999 and has not had a guest speaker yet, but will soon.) There are many folks around here who do research on Linux machines and, in fact, research Linux itself, and some of them have shown interest in speaking with us (in particular, the admin of our 16-node research cluster). My guess is that Lehigh would be the same. Speaking is an excellent opportunity for a prof/grad student to pitch their life's work, and what he/she says will probably be doggone interesting, as they're likely to research things that most folks don't know much about. My other suggestion is that you talk to Lehigh's web/email sysadmins; they may not have specific experience with Linux, but there's a chance they're loaded with awesome UN*X info that Linux folks would find interesting. Good luck! w|f
I also like Telocity. I use it in Alabama, which is also full-blooded Ma Bell. It took only 2 weeks from the day I ordered to the day the modem was plugged in. They're friendly to lotsa OSs (Linux being the important one, of course), and the modem is friendly to lotsa interfaces (USB/parallel/RJ45). Very nice--very impressive. No yearly contract either (I came in under a special). I don't know anything about their tech service, though.
I haven't read all the comments so I hope I'm not repeating what someone else has already said, but where I attend school (the University of Alabama in Huntsville) the research professors and other researchers have access to Internet II. It appears in the news fairly often around here, but I haven't heard anything about it in a couple months. Now if I can find a way to get them to route it to the dorm...