The reason you would use Linux (and Open Source tools in general) is that it gives you total freedom. The users are in control - not corporate interests.
There's something very liberating about that. Once you've tasted freedom, you never want to go back into the birdcage...
I think you're onto something with your splitting of the NT into the earlier Jewish (Mark, Matt), and later Pauline (pretty much everything else - but including Luke) parts.
The Christianity of today is really much more the religion of Paul than of Jesus. That battle was won when the Ebionites and Gnostics were put down as heretics in Constantine's day (once the religion became an instrument of state power). It's very hard to know what Jesus was really about - so thorough was the Pauline victory. Naturally, all non-approved religious texts were burned.
However, in recent decades, some ancient (and hence uncensored) texts have come to light (see Lost Christianities). It seems clear enough that:
1) The original followers of Jesus were Jews. 2) The original Jewish followers of Jesus became the Ebionites. 3) The Ebionites had a single gospel - Matthew, minus the virgin birth. 4) The Ebionites believed in one god (like the Jews) - not the Pauline trinity. 5) The Ebionites kept Jewish law. 6) The Ebionites considered Paul to be a heretic.
Paul's religion started within a few years of Jesus's death. Paul was very big into prosyletizing - hence, his religion spread. Luke was apparently Paul's secretary/doctor/accolyte. In general, Pauline theology is much more elaborate than Ebionite theology - if you compare Luke to Matt or Mark, you see this elaboration. John came much later, and seems to be utterly unconnected to anything Jewish - it's purely Pauline.
So, the Ebionites held sway in the more traditionally-Jewish areas (Middle East), while Pauline ("proto-Orthodox") Christianity spread thru the rest of the Roman world. In particular, it became dominant in Rome.
None of this would have mattered, except that Constantine (300 years later), out of the blue, decided to make Christianity (very much a minority religion at the time) into the state religion of the Roman Empire. Which variant did he choose? Naturally, the Pauline variety. At this point, all competing Christianities became illegal - Ebionities, Gnostics, etc, were branded heretics, were executed (if they wouldn't recant), had their texts burned, etc.
What I'm getting at is, if you're going to call Pauline theology into question, you've got a whole lot of unwinding to do! There's very little left of non-Pauline Christianity to fall back on. You'll have to go back to the most ancient, pre-Pauline texts. Then, you'll need to start keeping Jewish law, stop believing in the divinity of Jesus, etc.
I think your application of Occam's razor is correct.
Ironically, tho, Occam himself (a medieval theologian/logician) used his razor in the opposite direction: his point was that any assumptions besides the existence of God were superfluous. From there, he argued that there could be no good or evil, as applied to God (i.e. God could not be evil, by definition). He thereby justified the many terrible, murderous/genocidal happenings recorded in the Old Testament (as ordered by God).
Total outstanding student loan debt recently topped $1 trillion (e.g. see link).
Student loan debt now exceeds household credit card debt (see link).
It isn't possible to escape student loans via bankruptcy - they will follow you your whole life, no matter what. This puts them in a class by themselves.
Obviously, the current system is badly broken. Why should the federal govt be in the business of hooking young adults on these onerous loans? If the goal is social leveling (a goal I can get behind), then we should be talking about grants, not loans. What we're doing is creating a new class of indentured servants.
You say "... many former computer scientists decide to start a career in programming rather than finishing (or after finishing) a degree."
Are you saying that "computer science" is limited to academia? If so, are you saying science in general is limited to academia? Surely not. Then, are you saying that computer science isn't really a science? That seems reasonable - in that science is all about probing the truths of nature via experimentation (i.e. the scientific method).
I think you have that backwards: it's not that climate deniers have come to distrust science because science has it wrong on global warming; it's that the deniers distrust science, period. Distrusting science, you're "free" to believe whatever you want to.
Unsurprisingly, such people end up believing just those things which it is in their interest to believe.
These demands are in reasonable sync with the Ron Paul school of Tea Partiers:
1) End the Collusion Between Government and Large Corporations/Banks, So That Our Elected Leaders Are Actually Representing the Interests of the People (the 99%) and Not Just Their Rich Donors (the 1%).
Ron Paul has consistently been against any kind of bail-outs. He was dead-set against the $700 billion bank bailout, for one example.
2) Investigate Wall Street and Hold Senior Executives Accountable for the Destruction in Wealth that has Devastated Millions of People.
Ron Paul hasn't (to my knowledge) advocated this kind of thing. But in a similar vein, he has been an outspoken critic of the Fed - he wants full exposure of all Fed policies. These policies have been used for decades to pick industry winners - so this is an example of collusion between govt. and business. Maybe this really goes along more with point 1, above.
3) Return the Power of Coining Money to the U.S. Treasury and Return to Sound Money
This has Ron Paul written all over it!
4) Limit the Size, Scope and Power of Banks so that None are Ever Again âoeToo Big to Failâ and in Need to Taxpayer Bailouts
See above comments on bank bail-outs. Ron Paul has consistently advocated that banks must be left to fend for themselves - no bank bailouts. He's really been the more forceful advocate of this stance, for the longest time - among elected representatives.
5) Eliminate âoePersonhoodâ Legal Status for Corporations
Not sure about this one.
6) Repeal the Patriot Act, End the War on Drugs and Protect Civil Liberties
Ron Paul has been a long-time advocate of drug legalization.
7) End All Imperial Wars of Aggression, Bring the Troops Home from All Countries, Cut the Military Budget and Limit The Military Role to Protection of the Homeland
Again - Ron Paul has consistently argued for de-imperialization for years/decades. He is one of the few in Congress who have voted against all foreign wars, and to bring troops back from pretty much all foreign deployments.
So, if the above list does, in fact, reflect the desires of the Occupy Wall Street-ers, then there is at least a strong theoretical connection between them and the Tea Partiers. That is, if you buy the idea that Ron Paul is the true standard-bearer of the Tea Party. Unfortunately, that isn't necessarily the case...
Once I figured C++ out, I found that my bug rate went way, way down. It's quite rare for me to get any memory reference errors. When it happens, it tends to be within some new library I've written - so when I solve the problem, it's solved generally. Pointers are quite rare - and when they happen, it tends to be buried in some library framework. They're definitely not used willy-nilly. On the other hand, they can be very useful when needed. Typically, they get encapsulated in a smart pointer.
It comes down to making heavy use of the STL. Array reference errors? You can turn on debugging for that, if you want. For some reason, I just find random array references to be rare. It's common to iterate thru an array, but that's a low-bug kind of operation.
C++11 has some really nice features to make for even lower-bug coding. Can't wait...
If C++ is programmed well, then there are few bug opportunities. Probably about comparable to Java (assuming, again, that Java is programmed well). Except that in some ways, C++ is superior to Java (i.e. fewer bug opportunities). The reason is that Java insists that you use its own garbage collector framework, whose properties can be unsuitable for your task, C++ gives you total control.
I'm not saying that any-old programming language, if programmed well, provides few bug opportunities. A counter-example would be C. If you program C++ like C, then you'll have alot of bug opportunities. What I'm saying is that C++ allows for very low-bug programming.
I'll also agree that other programming languages (not including Java) allow for even fewer bugs than C++ - for example, ML. But there are many disadvantages to using a language like ML (e.g. few available programmers, few available API's, speed, to a degree, etc).
Even better is to develop meta-programming frameworks, specific to your task - built on top of C++. This can reduce your bug opportunities even more...
I disagree. In my experience - in the domains I've worked in over the last several years - C++ has been the best overall language for almost all purposes, except for cases which can be handled by simple Bash scripts.
What makes C++ so good? First, to create complex code, it is essential to have a bullet-proof static typing system. This lets you refactor your code with confidence. Refactoring is a continuous process - supporting refactoring is the main task of a (non-trivial) programming language.
In order to have a bullet-proof static typing system, you need templates and generic programming. Check.
OK, so C++ has all these things. On top of that, it provides excellent efficiency, in terms of both memory and run-time.
The icing on the cake is operator overloading. This lets you write very clean domain-specific mini-languages, in effect.
And then, of course, you get the excellent standard library, Boost, the large amount of third party code, the large number of excellent compilers for a very wide range of hardware, and the large number of trained programmers.
All in all, it's pretty hard to come up with a good reason to _not_ use C++ in any domain where efficiency is paramount. Beyond that, C++ is an excellent choice in a wide variety of cases, even where efficiency isn't the most important consideration.
I'll just cut right to the chase: you ought to run Linux, and Ubuntu is probably your best choice.
Here's why:
1) I'm assuming you don't have a budget to buy new hardware across the board. You've got 5,000 machines running (mostly) XP, and a modest IT budget. Your _real_ choice becomes: keep running XP, or switch to Linux. Why? Because you won't be able to run Windows 7 on your old machines (firstly, because of prohibitive licensing costs, and secondly, because your old machines aren't going to be powerful enough).
2) So, the only important question in your case is: should you stick with XP, or start migrating to a free Linux variant? Continuing to run XP is a really bad idea. So far, apparently you've been pretty lucky, and haven't been hit too badly with viruses. If you had, then it would be next to impossible to keep 5,000 XP machines running with a staff of 10. Linux is rock-solid: once you get it installed, it's pretty hard to mess it up.
3) If you stick with XP, you'll necessarily have to switch to something different for any new machines you buy. You understandably want to standardize on one platform, given your tiny IT dept. That won't be possible if you stick with XP.
4) Why Ubuntu? It's very easy to maintain locally (i.e. without an admin), and it has very widespread support (i.e. you'll find almost any Linux-able software can be installed on Ubuntu).
From my understanding of your situation, the bottom line is that the only reasonable way you can hope to keep 5,000 machines going, on a shoestring budget, with 10 support staff, is to switch over to Linux. Then, figure out what software you can run. You'll probably find anything you need for a high school science curriculum.
(And keep an XP machine in some labs if you have special equipment that requires it.)
I'm interested in the Unitarian Universalist church. Is it Christian? What happens during services -- bible-based sermons? I've actually never met anyone, that I know of, who was Unitarian.
It's natural: kids start off believing in everything -- tooth fairy, Santa Claus, etc. I saw a study which showed that about 100% of kids believe in Santa Claus at age 5, and about 0% at age 15. In-between was a fall-off curve. First to go is the tooth fairy (in my experience with my kids). Santa's the last of the "childish gods" to go. Many (but by no means all) kids come to realize there is/are no "adult gods" (e.g. "God", ghosts, witchcraft). Then, as you get older, you start to think more about death. The closer people get to death, the more apt they are to become religious. Hence, churches are over-represented with old people. I mean, it makes perfect sense. Religions tend to promise their payoff after you die. Before you die, they tend to be a burden (e.g. time spent going to church, tithing, etc.). So it's only natural that the closer you get to death, the better the deal looks. Less years spent going to church, tithing, etc, but still the same payoff (eternal life, multitudes of virgins, avoidance of eternal fire, avoidance of coming back as a toad, or whatever).
Why post on-topic when you can blatantly go off-topic and get modded up for it? This is a nuts and bolts Tivo article. It's not about considering one DVR solution over another.
It's perfectly relevant to the discussion. After all, the discussion centers on an inconvenient aspect of TiVo. The assertion is made that by using MythTV, you avoid that inconvenience altogether. I find that interesting, in the context of the discussion.
You've managed to talk yourself into believing that either A) there is no such thing as censorship (after all, if China, which has a blatant govt program of censorship, doesn't qualify, then who could?), or B) that everyone has censorship, so it's only normal (after all, _we_ have censorship just like China does, because we _self_censor_, in effect, by choosing to pay attention to information we are inclined to believe).
I think that for you to appreciate the difference, you would need to live in China for awhile.
In my experience, the discipline of cross-platform development is a great aid to the development of high-quality code. It's essential to have more than one unrelated compiler you use. For example, very often, one compiler or the other will be more picky about something (Intel has a nice message warning you of the lack of a virtual destructor in a case where it's needed, and GCC has a nice warning about failing to provide case:'s for all defined types in an enumerated switch. Furthermore, you get to take advantage of the different debugging tools available on the different platforms. For example, Microsoft's debugger lets you break when a given memory location is changed (maybe gdb does too -- I don't know), while Linux has the excellent valgrind for detecting invalid memory references. Some compilers do a better job than others of checking the types for varargs functions, e.g. printf. A library, which may allow bad input on one platform, may complain on another. Etc.
So, the demand for you to drop cross-platform development, in order to enable you to devote more resources to your Windows version, would likely have opposite to the intended effect. (that is, unless you're doing something especially OS-dependant, which it sounds like you're not)
What I do is to re-encode the files in the background. So, I grab stuff in real time, compressed to MPEG 2 by the PVR card; then I have a script which continuously looks for uncompressed files and compresses them to some MPEG 4 format (Xvid is what I currently use). If it's a file I won't be wanting to save (e.g. the reams of Olympics footage, which I skip thru later in the day looking for beach volleyball), then I flag the file as "don't compress" by way of the file name.
I use mostly relatively old computers -- 700 MHz to 1 GHz is typical. I've assumed that having the computer compress in real time is out of the question. You're saying 20% of a 2GHz -- so, in theory, you could do real time with a 700 MHz machine. I don't think I get close to real time, encoding the way I do, but I'll have to check...
The cost isn't a real issue. The fact that they are 3x-10x more expensive to buy is ameliorated by the fact that they last many times longer. That factor alone probably makes them a wash. When you add on the HUGE savings in energy, plus fact that you don't need to mess around with changing lightbulbs so often (saving you labor), then they're an easy win financially.
I don't believe they take any longer than regular light bulbs to warm up. If they do, it's never been an issue for me. There is a short flicker when you fire them up. So what?
I also don't believe they're dim compared to their watt rating. Even if that were true, you could easily solve that by using higher-watt-rated bulbs. The cost savings is still going to be huge.
As for color temperature: "real" lightbulbs have a _horrible_ color! People who are used to them just don't realize it. They put out a strong sickly-yellow hue. Try taking an indoor foto without a flash, and you'll see what I mean. With CFL, you have much more control over the light color. I believe you can choose to match incandescent, if you want. But more likely, you'll want to use one of the natural light colors. Yes, those bulbs may be more expensive (don't know for sure), but again, the cost savings will still be huge.
It's true that they sometimes don't fit, altho I've always been able to solve the problem -- by buying a better-shaped / smaller bulb.
One problem is that I haven't found a reasonable replacement for my spotlights. The CFL versions are way expensive. Maybe they also would pay for themselves, but it's not a slam dunk like it is for regular light bulbs...
But someone, eventually, has to feed information into those boxes and extract and interpret the results. That's a high-level task, for which raw performance may not be as important as flexibility.
True. I'd also say that GUI's are an application area where performance really matters. People are very sensitive to responsiveness. They like snappy response times. A sluggish app gives a decidedly bad impression. Most GUI's, of course, are so simple that even a purely interpreted language (e.g. Tc/Tkl) will give adequate performance. But a big GUI, say, a browser, or a spreadsheet, or an image processor, or a word processor, or a desktop: in these cases, performance really matters.
I think where Java has a niche is in the middleware domain: lots of symbolic processing; relatively fluid requirements, such that adaptability really matters; a domain which is dominated by huge numbers of API's -- so that a langauge with a rich API set has a distinct advantage, as does a language with built-in memory management, simplifying interactions between complex subsystems; a domain where security issues are particularly important -- so that a VM-managed environment becomes a useful way to manage risk. Middleware is an application area which I've never worked in. If I did, I could see where Java would look pretty attractive.
Still, in making a comparison of the relative strengths of Java vs C++ in a given application, I think C++ really is much faster.
First off, the programming language shootout does not represent real code, and the maintainer knows it. (Sure, my language sucks at writing an MPEG compressor, but look how fast I can do an insertion sort!)
Sounds like special pleading. The site uses many (dozens, even) of different algos to make the comparison. You can't so easily just wave away a 2X performance difference. I agree the site is far from perfect. For example, the Intel C++ compiler is shown to be much slower than G++, when in fact, on an Intel processor, it is significantly faster. Who knows why the site's numbers are off -- maybe he uses an AMD processor...?
Anyway, it's _possible_ that that explains everything -- the site maintainer just doesn't handle Java right. Java's just as fast the compiled languages. But I very much doubt it. I think it's much more likely the explanation lies in the fact that Java uses a VM.
Secondly, of course it depends on the task. But the general rule applies that the art of software performance is a tradeoff between programmer time and computer time, and programmer time is always more expensive. Qualitatively, any investment of programmer time needs to pay for itself several times over in computer time to be worth it.
That's fine -- use your language which is X slower but Y% faster to develop. Reasonable values for X and Y will vary by application area. Some apps, you just utterly don't care how slow they run. All that matters is developer time. In many application areas (in particular, the ones I generally work with), performance matters _alot_. I wouldn't accept _very_ slow developer times to get marginal speed improvements. But if, for the sake of argument, C++ takes a little longer to develop than Java, but delivers twice the performance, then I'm going to end up using C++.
Consider this: when your language is slow, it will often lead you to try performance-enhancing design solutions. If your language is inherently fast, it will let you get away with simpler (hence faster to develop and easier to debug) designs.
My application area has almost always been what I would describe as "engine" work. That is, I'm creating huge number-crunching black boxes. Akin to a database. That might help you to appreciate my biases...
This is why web applications are usually written in interpreted languages. When your application runs at the speed of the network, there is often computer time to spare, so it doesn't pay to invest a lot of programmer time. In such a situation, higher-level languages win on the ROI analysis.
No doubt Java makes sense in lots of programming areas -- explaining why it's so popular. But I do believe that, in comparison with C++, it is much slower (perhaps 2X), and it isn't all _that_ much faster to develop in (in my application areas). In fact, without generics/templates, I'm sure Java would be alot slower to develop in than C++. Use of generics yields very important productivity improvements. I understand that Java now has generics, so that's a good thing.
There are things I like about Java. I've considered it before. There are certainly things I hate about C++ (lack of garbage collection isn't high on the list). I often find myself considering alternatives. I need something _fast_, with static typing and generics, but also allowing for functional programming. O'Caml seems like a decent candidate, altho I'd pay a performance hit. Java's problem here is that it doesn't allow functional programming. At least it allows anonymous classes, which is nice. But if I'm going to go changing my main programming language (I only like to use one compiled fast language, and one interpreted slow language), the language needs to solve real problems for me, without creating very many new ones.
I would definitely not suggest the use of an IDE, in your situation. As I understand it, what you're trying to do is to teach software design. Everything which isn't about software design should be avoided. There's plenty to cover -- you just confuse the issue by bringing in this whole complicated IDE thing.
Besides, at a beginning programming level, a student might labor for hours over 100 lines of code. Only when you are fluent, might an IDE become a significant productivity enhancement (where you might blast out hundreds of lines of code a day).
Furthermore, I myself haven't found IDE's to be very useful. They really just get in the way. Better is to have total control of your development environment -- editing makefiles yourself. A syntax-knowledgeable editor is nice, as is a good shell, combined with a fast way to access API info. IDE's only let you work in a certain way -- conforming to a certain model. An IDE channels you into a very constrained way of thinking. That doesn't sound like a good idea for a CS student. You want them to explore the territory on foot. Later, they might get a car, so they can get from point A to point B faster (once they know where they're trying to go).
This is a truly excellent drink. It is 100% calorie free. Sodium free too. It is very low on additives and preservatives -- just trace amounts of chlorine (to kill any bugs) and flouride (which actually strengthens your teeth!). You can drink as much as you can stand, without any ill effects -- no caffiene to make you crazy, no fizzy stuff to rot your teeth. If you drink it cold, it's actually calorie-negative! And not only is it cheap, but you can even get it free -- the stuff literally falls out of the sky! You really can't beat it. Give it a try some time -- you'll like it!
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The reason you would use Linux (and Open Source tools in general) is that it gives you total freedom. The users are in control - not corporate interests.
There's something very liberating about that. Once you've tasted freedom, you never want to go back into the birdcage...
I think you're onto something with your splitting of the NT into the earlier Jewish (Mark, Matt), and later Pauline (pretty much everything else - but including Luke) parts.
The Christianity of today is really much more the religion of Paul than of Jesus. That battle was won when the Ebionites and Gnostics were put down as heretics in Constantine's day (once the religion became an instrument of state power). It's very hard to know what Jesus was really about - so thorough was the Pauline victory. Naturally, all non-approved religious texts were burned.
However, in recent decades, some ancient (and hence uncensored) texts have come to light (see Lost Christianities). It seems clear enough that:
1) The original followers of Jesus were Jews.
2) The original Jewish followers of Jesus became the Ebionites.
3) The Ebionites had a single gospel - Matthew, minus the virgin birth.
4) The Ebionites believed in one god (like the Jews) - not the Pauline trinity.
5) The Ebionites kept Jewish law.
6) The Ebionites considered Paul to be a heretic.
Paul's religion started within a few years of Jesus's death. Paul was very big into prosyletizing - hence, his religion spread. Luke was apparently Paul's secretary/doctor/accolyte. In general, Pauline theology is much more elaborate than Ebionite theology - if you compare Luke to Matt or Mark, you see this elaboration. John came much later, and seems to be utterly unconnected to anything Jewish - it's purely Pauline.
So, the Ebionites held sway in the more traditionally-Jewish areas (Middle East), while Pauline ("proto-Orthodox") Christianity spread thru the rest of the Roman world. In particular, it became dominant in Rome.
None of this would have mattered, except that Constantine (300 years later), out of the blue, decided to make Christianity (very much a minority religion at the time) into the state religion of the Roman Empire. Which variant did he choose? Naturally, the Pauline variety. At this point, all competing Christianities became illegal - Ebionities, Gnostics, etc, were branded heretics, were executed (if they wouldn't recant), had their texts burned, etc.
What I'm getting at is, if you're going to call Pauline theology into question, you've got a whole lot of unwinding to do! There's very little left of non-Pauline Christianity to fall back on. You'll have to go back to the most ancient, pre-Pauline texts. Then, you'll need to start keeping Jewish law, stop believing in the divinity of Jesus, etc.
I think your application of Occam's razor is correct.
Ironically, tho, Occam himself (a medieval theologian/logician) used his razor in the opposite direction: his point was that any assumptions besides the existence of God were superfluous. From there, he argued that there could be no good or evil, as applied to God (i.e. God could not be evil, by definition). He thereby justified the many terrible, murderous/genocidal happenings recorded in the Old Testament (as ordered by God).
Some points to consider:
Total outstanding student loan debt recently topped $1 trillion (e.g. see link).
Student loan debt now exceeds household credit card debt (see link).
It isn't possible to escape student loans via bankruptcy - they will follow you your whole life, no matter what. This puts them in a class by themselves.
Obviously, the current system is badly broken. Why should the federal govt be in the business of hooking young adults on these onerous loans? If the goal is social leveling (a goal I can get behind), then we should be talking about grants, not loans. What we're doing is creating a new class of indentured servants.
You say "... many former computer scientists decide to start a career in programming rather than finishing (or after finishing) a degree."
Are you saying that "computer science" is limited to academia? If so, are you saying science in general is limited to academia? Surely not. Then, are you saying that computer science isn't really a science? That seems reasonable - in that science is all about probing the truths of nature via experimentation (i.e. the scientific method).
I think you have that backwards: it's not that climate deniers have come to distrust science because science has it wrong on global warming; it's that the deniers distrust science, period. Distrusting science, you're "free" to believe whatever you want to.
Unsurprisingly, such people end up believing just those things which it is in their interest to believe.
These demands are in reasonable sync with the Ron Paul school of Tea Partiers:
1) End the Collusion Between Government and Large Corporations/Banks, So That Our Elected Leaders Are Actually Representing the Interests of the People (the 99%) and Not Just Their Rich Donors (the 1%).
Ron Paul has consistently been against any kind of bail-outs. He was dead-set against the $700 billion bank bailout, for one example.
2) Investigate Wall Street and Hold Senior Executives Accountable for the Destruction in Wealth that has Devastated Millions of People.
Ron Paul hasn't (to my knowledge) advocated this kind of thing. But in a similar vein, he has been an outspoken critic of the Fed - he wants full exposure of all Fed policies. These policies have been used for decades to pick industry winners - so this is an example of collusion between govt. and business. Maybe this really goes along more with point 1, above.
3) Return the Power of Coining Money to the U.S. Treasury and Return to Sound Money
This has Ron Paul written all over it!
4) Limit the Size, Scope and Power of Banks so that None are Ever Again âoeToo Big to Failâ and in Need to Taxpayer Bailouts
See above comments on bank bail-outs. Ron Paul has consistently advocated that banks must be left to fend for themselves - no bank bailouts. He's really been the more forceful advocate of this stance, for the longest time - among elected representatives.
5) Eliminate âoePersonhoodâ Legal Status for Corporations
Not sure about this one.
6) Repeal the Patriot Act, End the War on Drugs and Protect Civil Liberties
Ron Paul has been a long-time advocate of drug legalization.
7) End All Imperial Wars of Aggression, Bring the Troops Home from All Countries, Cut the Military Budget and Limit The Military Role to Protection of the Homeland
Again - Ron Paul has consistently argued for de-imperialization for years/decades. He is one of the few in Congress who have voted against all foreign wars, and to bring troops back from pretty much all foreign deployments.
So, if the above list does, in fact, reflect the desires of the Occupy Wall Street-ers, then there is at least a strong theoretical connection between them and the Tea Partiers. That is, if you buy the idea that Ron Paul is the true standard-bearer of the Tea Party. Unfortunately, that isn't necessarily the case...
Once I figured C++ out, I found that my bug rate went way, way down. It's quite rare for me to get any memory reference errors. When it happens, it tends to be within some new library I've written - so when I solve the problem, it's solved generally. Pointers are quite rare - and when they happen, it tends to be buried in some library framework. They're definitely not used willy-nilly. On the other hand, they can be very useful when needed. Typically, they get encapsulated in a smart pointer.
It comes down to making heavy use of the STL. Array reference errors? You can turn on debugging for that, if you want. For some reason, I just find random array references to be rare. It's common to iterate thru an array, but that's a low-bug kind of operation.
C++11 has some really nice features to make for even lower-bug coding. Can't wait...
If C++ is programmed well, then there are few bug opportunities. Probably about comparable to Java (assuming, again, that Java is programmed well). Except that in some ways, C++ is superior to Java (i.e. fewer bug opportunities). The reason is that Java insists that you use its own garbage collector framework, whose properties can be unsuitable for your task, C++ gives you total control.
I'm not saying that any-old programming language, if programmed well, provides few bug opportunities. A counter-example would be C. If you program C++ like C, then you'll have alot of bug opportunities. What I'm saying is that C++ allows for very low-bug programming.
I'll also agree that other programming languages (not including Java) allow for even fewer bugs than C++ - for example, ML. But there are many disadvantages to using a language like ML (e.g. few available programmers, few available API's, speed, to a degree, etc).
Even better is to develop meta-programming frameworks, specific to your task - built on top of C++. This can reduce your bug opportunities even more...
I disagree. In my experience - in the domains I've worked in over the last several years - C++ has been the best overall language for almost all purposes, except for cases which can be handled by simple Bash scripts.
What makes C++ so good? First, to create complex code, it is essential to have a bullet-proof static typing system. This lets you refactor your code with confidence. Refactoring is a continuous process - supporting refactoring is the main task of a (non-trivial) programming language.
In order to have a bullet-proof static typing system, you need templates and generic programming. Check.
OK, so C++ has all these things. On top of that, it provides excellent efficiency, in terms of both memory and run-time.
The icing on the cake is operator overloading. This lets you write very clean domain-specific mini-languages, in effect.
And then, of course, you get the excellent standard library, Boost, the large amount of third party code, the large number of excellent compilers for a very wide range of hardware, and the large number of trained programmers.
All in all, it's pretty hard to come up with a good reason to _not_ use C++ in any domain where efficiency is paramount. Beyond that, C++ is an excellent choice in a wide variety of cases, even where efficiency isn't the most important consideration.
I'll just cut right to the chase: you ought to run Linux, and Ubuntu is probably your best choice.
Here's why:
1) I'm assuming you don't have a budget to buy new hardware across the board. You've got 5,000 machines running (mostly) XP, and a modest IT budget. Your _real_ choice becomes: keep running XP, or switch to Linux. Why? Because you won't be able to run Windows 7 on your old machines (firstly, because of prohibitive licensing costs, and secondly, because your old machines aren't going to be powerful enough).
2) So, the only important question in your case is: should you stick with XP, or start migrating to a free Linux variant? Continuing to run XP is a really bad idea. So far, apparently you've been pretty lucky, and haven't been hit too badly with viruses. If you had, then it would be next to impossible to keep 5,000 XP machines running with a staff of 10. Linux is rock-solid: once you get it installed, it's pretty hard to mess it up.
3) If you stick with XP, you'll necessarily have to switch to something different for any new machines you buy. You understandably want to standardize on one platform, given your tiny IT dept. That won't be possible if you stick with XP.
4) Why Ubuntu? It's very easy to maintain locally (i.e. without an admin), and it has very widespread support (i.e. you'll find almost any Linux-able software can be installed on Ubuntu).
From my understanding of your situation, the bottom line is that the only reasonable way you can hope to keep 5,000 machines going, on a shoestring budget, with 10 support staff, is to switch over to Linux. Then, figure out what software you can run. You'll probably find anything you need for a high school science curriculum.
(And keep an XP machine in some labs if you have special equipment that requires it.)
I'm interested in the Unitarian Universalist church. Is it Christian? What happens during services -- bible-based sermons? I've actually never met anyone, that I know of, who was Unitarian.
It's natural: kids start off believing in everything -- tooth fairy, Santa Claus, etc. I saw a study which showed that about 100% of kids believe in Santa Claus at age 5, and about 0% at age 15. In-between was a fall-off curve. First to go is the tooth fairy (in my experience with my kids). Santa's the last of the "childish gods" to go. Many (but by no means all) kids come to realize there is/are no "adult gods" (e.g. "God", ghosts, witchcraft). Then, as you get older, you start to think more about death. The closer people get to death, the more apt they are to become religious. Hence, churches are over-represented with old people. I mean, it makes perfect sense. Religions tend to promise their payoff after you die. Before you die, they tend to be a burden (e.g. time spent going to church, tithing, etc.). So it's only natural that the closer you get to death, the better the deal looks. Less years spent going to church, tithing, etc, but still the same payoff (eternal life, multitudes of virgins, avoidance of eternal fire, avoidance of coming back as a toad, or whatever).
Yes -- much better on the conscience to pay them no wages than slave wages...
It's perfectly relevant to the discussion. After all, the discussion centers on an inconvenient aspect of TiVo. The assertion is made that by using MythTV, you avoid that inconvenience altogether. I find that interesting, in the context of the discussion.
You've managed to talk yourself into believing that either A) there is no such thing as censorship (after all, if China, which has a blatant govt program of censorship, doesn't qualify, then who could?), or B) that everyone has censorship, so it's only normal (after all, _we_ have censorship just like China does, because we _self_censor_, in effect, by choosing to pay attention to information we are inclined to believe).
I think that for you to appreciate the difference, you would need to live in China for awhile.
In my experience, the discipline of cross-platform development is a great aid to the development of high-quality code. It's essential to have more than one unrelated compiler you use. For example, very often, one compiler or the other will be more picky about something (Intel has a nice message warning you of the lack of a virtual destructor in a case where it's needed, and GCC has a nice warning about failing to provide case:'s for all defined types in an enumerated switch. Furthermore, you get to take advantage of the different debugging tools available on the different platforms. For example, Microsoft's debugger lets you break when a given memory location is changed (maybe gdb does too -- I don't know), while Linux has the excellent valgrind for detecting invalid memory references. Some compilers do a better job than others of checking the types for varargs functions, e.g. printf. A library, which may allow bad input on one platform, may complain on another. Etc.
So, the demand for you to drop cross-platform development, in order to enable you to devote more resources to your Windows version, would likely have opposite to the intended effect. (that is, unless you're doing something especially OS-dependant, which it sounds like you're not)
- Chuck
What I do is to re-encode the files in the background. So, I grab stuff in real time, compressed to MPEG 2 by the PVR card; then I have a script which continuously looks for uncompressed files and compresses them to some MPEG 4 format (Xvid is what I currently use). If it's a file I won't be wanting to save (e.g. the reams of Olympics footage, which I skip thru later in the day looking for beach volleyball), then I flag the file as "don't compress" by way of the file name.
I use mostly relatively old computers -- 700 MHz to 1 GHz is typical. I've assumed that having the computer compress in real time is out of the question. You're saying 20% of a 2GHz -- so, in theory, you could do real time with a 700 MHz machine. I don't think I get close to real time, encoding the way I do, but I'll have to check...
Or, use a PVR card, which does compression on-the-fly. I've used the Hauppauge(sp??) PVR-250 (with Linux) for a long time, without issue.
I've been using CFL's for a couple of years now.
The cost isn't a real issue. The fact that they are 3x-10x more expensive to buy is ameliorated by the fact that they last many times longer. That factor alone probably makes them a wash. When you add on the HUGE savings in energy, plus fact that you don't need to mess around with changing lightbulbs so often (saving you labor), then they're an easy win financially.
I don't believe they take any longer than regular light bulbs to warm up. If they do, it's never been an issue for me. There is a short flicker when you fire them up. So what?
I also don't believe they're dim compared to their watt rating. Even if that were true, you could easily solve that by using higher-watt-rated bulbs. The cost savings is still going to be huge.
As for color temperature: "real" lightbulbs have a _horrible_ color! People who are used to them just don't realize it. They put out a strong sickly-yellow hue. Try taking an indoor foto without a flash, and you'll see what I mean. With CFL, you have much more control over the light color. I believe you can choose to match incandescent, if you want. But more likely, you'll want to use one of the natural light colors. Yes, those bulbs may be more expensive (don't know for sure), but again, the cost savings will still be huge.
It's true that they sometimes don't fit, altho I've always been able to solve the problem -- by buying a better-shaped / smaller bulb.
One problem is that I haven't found a reasonable replacement for my spotlights. The CFL versions are way expensive. Maybe they also would pay for themselves, but it's not a slam dunk like it is for regular light bulbs...
True. I'd also say that GUI's are an application area where performance really matters. People are very sensitive to responsiveness. They like snappy response times. A sluggish app gives a decidedly bad impression. Most GUI's, of course, are so simple that even a purely interpreted language (e.g. Tc/Tkl) will give adequate performance. But a big GUI, say, a browser, or a spreadsheet, or an image processor, or a word processor, or a desktop: in these cases, performance really matters.
I think where Java has a niche is in the middleware domain: lots of symbolic processing; relatively fluid requirements, such that adaptability really matters; a domain which is dominated by huge numbers of API's -- so that a langauge with a rich API set has a distinct advantage, as does a language with built-in memory management, simplifying interactions between complex subsystems; a domain where security issues are particularly important -- so that a VM-managed environment becomes a useful way to manage risk. Middleware is an application area which I've never worked in. If I did, I could see where Java would look pretty attractive.
Still, in making a comparison of the relative strengths of Java vs C++ in a given application, I think C++ really is much faster.
Sounds like special pleading. The site uses many (dozens, even) of different algos to make the comparison. You can't so easily just wave away a 2X performance difference. I agree the site is far from perfect. For example, the Intel C++ compiler is shown to be much slower than G++, when in fact, on an Intel processor, it is significantly faster. Who knows why the site's numbers are off -- maybe he uses an AMD processor...?
Anyway, it's _possible_ that that explains everything -- the site maintainer just doesn't handle Java right. Java's just as fast the compiled languages. But I very much doubt it. I think it's much more likely the explanation lies in the fact that Java uses a VM.
That's fine -- use your language which is X slower but Y% faster to develop. Reasonable values for X and Y will vary by application area. Some apps, you just utterly don't care how slow they run. All that matters is developer time. In many application areas (in particular, the ones I generally work with), performance matters _alot_. I wouldn't accept _very_ slow developer times to get marginal speed improvements. But if, for the sake of argument, C++ takes a little longer to develop than Java, but delivers twice the performance, then I'm going to end up using C++.
Consider this: when your language is slow, it will often lead you to try performance-enhancing design solutions. If your language is inherently fast, it will let you get away with simpler (hence faster to develop and easier to debug) designs.
My application area has almost always been what I would describe as "engine" work. That is, I'm creating huge number-crunching black boxes. Akin to a database. That might help you to appreciate my biases...
No doubt Java makes sense in lots of programming areas -- explaining why it's so popular. But I do believe that, in comparison with C++, it is much slower (perhaps 2X), and it isn't all _that_ much faster to develop in (in my application areas). In fact, without generics/templates, I'm sure Java would be alot slower to develop in than C++. Use of generics yields very important productivity improvements. I understand that Java now has generics, so that's a good thing.
There are things I like about Java. I've considered it before. There are certainly things I hate about C++ (lack of garbage collection isn't high on the list). I often find myself considering alternatives. I need something _fast_, with static typing and generics, but also allowing for functional programming. O'Caml seems like a decent candidate, altho I'd pay a performance hit. Java's problem here is that it doesn't allow functional programming. At least it allows anonymous classes, which is nice. But if I'm going to go changing my main programming language (I only like to use one compiled fast language, and one interpreted slow language), the language needs to solve real problems for me, without creating very many new ones.
Try 2x or more speedup. See the Programming Language Shootout.
I would definitely not suggest the use of an IDE, in your situation. As I understand it, what you're trying to do is to teach software design. Everything which isn't about software design should be avoided. There's plenty to cover -- you just confuse the issue by bringing in this whole complicated IDE thing.
Besides, at a beginning programming level, a student might labor for hours over 100 lines of code. Only when you are fluent, might an IDE become a significant productivity enhancement (where you might blast out hundreds of lines of code a day).
Furthermore, I myself haven't found IDE's to be very useful. They really just get in the way. Better is to have total control of your development environment -- editing makefiles yourself. A syntax-knowledgeable editor is nice, as is a good shell, combined with a fast way to access API info. IDE's only let you work in a certain way -- conforming to a certain model. An IDE channels you into a very constrained way of thinking. That doesn't sound like a good idea for a CS student. You want them to explore the territory on foot. Later, they might get a car, so they can get from point A to point B faster (once they know where they're trying to go).
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