Re:.NET might be very good to us
on
Perl and .NET
·
· Score: 2
A few months, ago, I heard a research presentation at my school from someone from Microsoft who worked on part of the.NET core. It was quite an interesting presentation, and I came away thinking that the.NET thing, if the manage to pull it off successfully, will be quite impressive, technologically.
The presenter said that MS has plans to port.NET to other platforms in the future, but that the 1.0 release would be just for Windows. After the talk, someone asked about crossplatform considerations, such as byte order and alignment, in the IL VM. He replied that they had made no provisions at all for those issues. Now, my multiplatform programming experience is a bit limited, but I would tend to think that if you don't build something from the start to make it easy to port, it will almost certainly turn out to be hell to port it. Given that, and MS's obvious reluctance to reduce dependence on Windows, I think it will be a very very very long time before we see a high quality implentation of.NET on any free platform.
Or better yet, try Subspace. Same basic idea as xpilot, but taken to a whole new level. And it looks much better too. Yeah, yeah, so it only runs on Windows... Trust me, when you get addicted to this game, you'll keep a windows partition around just to play it. I know I do.
I've been a "C hacker" for a while now, and before that, pascal, basic, and some other various languages. This past semester, my first in college, they started out with scheme and moved to ML. I had never used functional languages before, and I was very impressed by how easy it is to write expressive, readable, and safe code. In fact, it's difficult *not* to write readable code, and imposible to write unsafe code with these languages. I definitely agree that anyone who calls himself a programmer should learn and use functional languages. For a very large class of problems, they're much easier and more appropriate than your standard imperitive language. And they're really not that slow, either. Of course, they're not appropriate for everything (an OS kernel, for example) but neither is C, and there's a whole lot of people who don't realize that.
As for the AP CS test, I took it the last year it was in pascal. In short, I would find it difficult to create a more horrible and misguided test. They tested pascal-specific features and made you manually trace through semi-obfuscated code. It was just disgusting. There was very very little of actual CS concepts, and not very much data structures either. (The AB test included some questions on linked lists and binary trees.)
In today's climate of ultra-serious, loud, loud, loud, loud music, do you ever feel the need to write slightly less obscure, slighty more "sincere"-sounding lyrics to keep up?
... or at least a statistic I read in Nicholas Negroponte's book, Being Digital, that is, that one half of the people on earth have never used a telephone. It really made me think a bit about how different my life might be if I had been born in some other part of the world...
What is all this talk about "the enemy"? These people may be idiots and trying to use questionable ethical means to get as much of your money as possible, but who cares? Let them. You're obviously not going to buy any SDMI products, and I'll bet most people on slashdot won't either. But there are consumers out there who would be perfectly willing to enter a contractual agreement with the RIAA or whoever's selling them music that would limit the rights they have to it. They'd be idiots, but people have a right to be idiots. Don't make the choice for them. Let SDMI fail in the free market, not because some unethical crackers kept their findings secret.
I suppose that I'd be one of those pseudo-libertarians that you're referring to, and I'm appalled by this article.
I'm not appalled that the actions of the company are legal and unhindered by the government. As a libertarian, I should and do believe that the government should not put restrictions on private contractual relationships. The thing that I find utterly disgusting is that a university, a particularly good one, at that, has actually agreed to be a part of this immoral (not illegal) system of distributing knowledge. Universities, even private ones, have traditionally been somehow above this businesslike attitude of, how do I do what is required while still saving as much money as possible. Universities exist to educate people, not to turn a profit. If NYU truely seriously considered this deal and believes it is in the best interests of their students, then I suppose that I could accept it. But I hardly believe taht to be true. Everything that's on the publishers web site seems to imply locking students in to one publisher of textbooks and information, directly opposed to the principles that traditionally govern education.
I'm scared because I'm entering college very soon (tomorrow, actually). Although where I'm going doesn't have any textbook system like this, I'm worried what'll happen by the time four years are up. Or if/when I go to graduate school. This is a bad precedent and I sincerely hope it fails, for the sake of everyone's education.
Let me state I'm not taking sides. I wouldn't consider doing that until I've read and considered material from both groups, and I have not done that, nor do I have the training and background required to make a judgement. I only mentioned Mullis' opinions about HIV and AIDS as an example of the "underdog" in the academic community who may or may not be right, but is nonetheless crucial to the progress of science. And to remind people of the necessity of hard evidence to back up results, which is missing in a lot of today's "science". There are probably better examples than Mullis, but I wrote this in response to an article about PCR.
... why not try reading something by the inventor of the reaction itself, Kary Mullis? He wrote a book called Dancing Naked in the Mind Field, which is mostly just a large collection of stories, opinions, and anything else he wanted to put in there. As you should be able to see immediately, this guy is no ordinary scientist. As for the book, I loved it, and most of you probably would too. There's a lot of stuff in there that will make you challenge how you've been thinking about science, such as the chapter about HIV and AIDS. The whole thing is very not-politically correct, like the chapter on his experiences with LSD and related substances, and that makes it more fun to read. Pick up a copy, you won't regret it.
the book at bn.com - http://shop.barnesandnoble.com/booksearch/isbnInqu iry.asp?isbn=0679774009
2) A one-time pad usually encodes phrases, not letters or single words. A complex one can have multiple phrases available from which one can construct a complete message, ie 48 = "meet me," 47 = "at the courthouse steps," 97 = "at phillip's house," and so on. Both the numbers and the phrases can be chosen arbitrarily, and can be changed every week or even every day.
No!
That's a codebook, not a one-time pad. If you'll notice, the frequencies of different digit pairs (using your example) will likely be different. That's no good. A one-time pad is a long string of true random numbers. They would most often be combined with the message with a simple XOR algorithm, although something else might be more appropriate when using pencil and paper. The point of a "one-time" pad is that the same numbers are never used more than once, hence the name one-time. It's not changed once a day or week, it's destroyed immediatelly after use!
The problem with eliminating "disinformation" stations is this: how would you know which ones are broadcasting truely random information and which are not? You propose statistical tests on the series of numbers. We would assume that these disinformation stations would be using cryptographically secure random number generators. If so, "cracking" these would be just as hard as cracking the real algorithm. In fact, any cryptographically secure random number generator can be converted trivially to stream cipher.
> PS: also note that it's been possible to do this (ie: the info has been available) on the HP48 for several years now. Those TIers are just playing catch-up!
Not quite. It's been possible to do this on many TI calculators for years also. You just need a 9600 baud modem, a TI-Graphlink, and a shell account. There are terminal emulators for the TI-82, 83, and 86, and the 86. This news is just someone doing it with Ricochet wireless modems (which is a damn cool idea, IMO).
In fact, it's even easier to do this with TI calcs because TI sells the TI-Graphlink, which is an adapter from the TI link port directly to a RS232. No homemade components necessary.
This deserves a (Score: 8, Funny) or something like that, because you happened to pick what I consider the funniest single sentance out of the first HHGTTG book. Actually, the funniest single sentance of the whole series. I'm not sure what it is about a disused lavatory and a leopard, but it makes me rofl every single time. It must be the sheer randomness of each part, especialy the leopard... I don't know, but Douglas Adams is a genius.
Ahhh... Thanks for clearing that up. I don't have any experience with mod_perl (besides knowing that it's an module and it does perl) so I didn't know that it cached scripts like that.
>Seperate out HTML/text and code as much as possible
If you're using php (which I strongly recommend:), it _is_ possible to separate code and html. There's a php module called FastTemplate (I believe there's a version written in perl too) which allows you to do just that, by creating template pages with placeholders that a php script can fill in with dynamic data. It's works wonderfully to separate the work of the coders and the designers, which is something that certainly should be done.
I don't have a link for you, just search for it on google, or CPAN, or and decent php user site. (I think I first read about it on phpbuilder.)
PHP can be run as a CGI program, but is much more often used as an apache module, just like mod_perl. In that case, what's the benefit of perl over php?
Also, php4 uses the zend engine, which can produce pseudo-compiled programs from php pages, and you can even get a beta version of the zend optimizer, which makes them run even faster. Before complining about the efficiency of php (3), please try out version 4. RC1 is available at http://www.php.net/
In case you don't know, WTF stands for "what the fuck?". As in, what the fuck is this doing as a slashdot story? This isn't news for nerds. This isn't even news! This is old (I visited their site several months ago) and even if it was new, it probably doesn't merit a main article on slashdot. They didn't have a major release recently (which could possibly qualify as news) and their software is still pre-alpha. And what does "the file size is slightly larger than mp3" mean? Both formats use variable bitrates, so the file size can be whatever you want it to be! I ask again, what the fuck is this irrelevant and content-less story doing on the main page of slashdot?
Wow. I find a new SS player on slashdot every week! Great program, btw. I haven't had much chance to use it, because I don't do lots of mapping, but it seems very powerful. About the new UI, what is it written in? If it's C/C++, you can probably take out the lvl-file parts and use them on any platform, and just whip up a simple UI around it. FACTS seems like a perfect fit for a simple CLI interface. It doesn't make much sense a a GUI. The good part of a CLI would be that if you're careful, you could have one source file for Win32 and Linux/other unix and just use #ifdefs. It would make things a bit simpler.
BTW, where do you play in SS? I'm mostly an ASWZ person, but I like to try out new zones.
> No one knows how to build bacteria or viruses from the ground up.
Wasn't there a story on slashdot (and lots of other places) a month or two ago about how scientists had created the first artificial bacterium by throwing a minimal bunch of genes together?
> rest assured that nothing more is going to happen with it
I just have to point out that the subspace community is the most resiliant group of gamers I have ever seen. Far from nothing happening, subspace is as active as ever, with tons of servers and tens of thousands of active players. New features are being added to the server exe's (thanks to a few brilliant assembly wizards) and people have created bots to automate events like elimination tournaments. There are usually several special events going on in a given week, not to mention the many leagues. There have even been several conventions where subspace players meet IRL for a weekend.
For more information, please visit: http://www.subspacehq.com/
I don't mean to imply that what happened with subspace can, or should, happen with any other game. Undoubtedly, the game would have been better supported if VIE had been a little smarter about marketing. Also, nobody would contemplate making a MMPOG if they expected it to turn out like subspace and be totally user-run and make no money for the developers or publishers. But the subspace situation certainly proves that if players want something enough, they will get it, whether the company supports them or not.
BTW, I'm not sure if there ever was planned a "Subspace 2", but here's the current situation: The core developers of subspace (and an artist, I think) left VIE shortly before it fell apart and formed their own company, Harmless Games. Their current title, Infantry, is about as close to a Subspace 2 as you can get. Any subspace player will immediately see the heritage. Infantry is now in public beta test. You can find information or download it at http://www.infantryzone.com/
I do agree with what you say here. In fact, I wrote just that in the last sentance of my original comment. I get the feeling you didn't read that far into it.
Just as a little more anecdotal, and probably invalid, evidence, for 1999, I knew somewhat personally the 4th and 10th place winners in the STS. I can say with confidence that the 10th place person was much more intelligent than the 4th place person. Of course, they were both very intelligent. My original point is just that it's more than intelligence that's judged in this thing. Effort is a huge factor, and the smartest people don't always display the most effort.
Hmmm... you've touched on a long-standing criticism of the STS here. No, the equipment was not the school's. She attended a special summer research program where she worked in real laboratories with real scientists. The "elitist ring" you describe would certinly be argued true by a whole bunch of people. It can be argued that today, it's just about impossible to be an STS finalist without attending some kind of extracurricular research program like she did. (She happened to go one of the very best, but there are others.) Doing research at the level that the STS expects without access to real equipment and real labs is extrelemy difficult, unless you go for pure math or CS. In the past, you would have had a harder time arguing the elitist point of view (refer to the movie/book October Sky) but now, it's hard to deny it. Just look at the list of finalists' project titles and see how many look like they had to be done in special programs.
Now, making special research programs effectively mandatory may not be such a bad thing. The problem comes in the price: many of them cost money to get in to, often thousands of dollars. (I was lucky enough to get an fellowship where they paid me.) That adds a economic advantage into the mix. Admittance to the programs is often based on things that might be economically influenced also. The net effect is to close off the competition to a whole lot of very intelligent people.
Having said that, I'd like to add my personal feelings about the STS. It's my belief (so far without rigourous argument) that the people who succeed at the STS are the same types of people who are valedictorians. If you haven't been in high school in the past 5-10 years, you might have a slightly different picture than I do. Basically, these people who achieve the most are not always the most intelligent. They are the hardest workers and the most consciencious students. They are smarter than the average, but they aren't often the smartest people in the school. Of course, I admit that there are always exceptions: I know Viviana a little bit (I go to school a few minutes away from her) and she most definitely _is_ the smartest person in her school, and probably many of the surrounding ones too.
[Sorry if I rambed a bit, I have a lot to say, and I'm a bit bitter about my whole STS experience:) ]
You can enter computer science projects in the STS, just like any other area of science. (I did.) They compete against all the other projects from different fields. The thing is that the project has to be about "computer science" not just programming. There has to be science involved. However, if you're intelligent enough to work on open source projects and make intelligent contributions, you're probably intelligent enough to put a "science" spin on whatever work you did to make it worthy of an STS project.
Slashdot Mirror
A few months, ago, I heard a research presentation at my school from someone from Microsoft who worked on part of the .NET core. It was quite an interesting presentation, and I came away thinking that the .NET thing, if the manage to pull it off successfully, will be quite impressive, technologically.
.NET to other platforms in the future, but that the 1.0 release would be just for Windows. After the talk, someone asked about crossplatform considerations, such as byte order and alignment, in the IL VM. He replied that they had made no provisions at all for those issues. Now, my multiplatform programming experience is a bit limited, but I would tend to think that if you don't build something from the start to make it easy to port, it will almost certainly turn out to be hell to port it. Given that, and MS's obvious reluctance to reduce dependence on Windows, I think it will be a very very very long time before we see a high quality implentation of .NET on any free platform.
The presenter said that MS has plans to port
Or better yet, try Subspace. Same basic idea as xpilot, but taken to a whole new level. And it looks much better too. Yeah, yeah, so it only runs on Windows... Trust me, when you get addicted to this game, you'll keep a windows partition around just to play it. I know I do.
I've been a "C hacker" for a while now, and before that, pascal, basic, and some other various languages. This past semester, my first in college, they started out with scheme and moved to ML. I had never used functional languages before, and I was very impressed by how easy it is to write expressive, readable, and safe code. In fact, it's difficult *not* to write readable code, and imposible to write unsafe code with these languages. I definitely agree that anyone who calls himself a programmer should learn and use functional languages. For a very large class of problems, they're much easier and more appropriate than your standard imperitive language. And they're really not that slow, either. Of course, they're not appropriate for everything (an OS kernel, for example) but neither is C, and there's a whole lot of people who don't realize that.
As for the AP CS test, I took it the last year it was in pascal. In short, I would find it difficult to create a more horrible and misguided test. They tested pascal-specific features and made you manually trace through semi-obfuscated code. It was just disgusting. There was very very little of actual CS concepts, and not very much data structures either. (The AB test included some questions on linked lists and binary trees.)
In today's climate of ultra-serious, loud, loud, loud, loud music, do you ever feel the need to write slightly less obscure, slighty more "sincere"-sounding lyrics to keep up?
... or at least a statistic I read in Nicholas Negroponte's book, Being Digital, that is, that one half of the people on earth have never used a telephone. It really made me think a bit about how different my life might be if I had been born in some other part of the world...
What is all this talk about "the enemy"? These people may be idiots and trying to use questionable ethical means to get as much of your money as possible, but who cares? Let them. You're obviously not going to buy any SDMI products, and I'll bet most people on slashdot won't either. But there are consumers out there who would be perfectly willing to enter a contractual agreement with the RIAA or whoever's selling them music that would limit the rights they have to it. They'd be idiots, but people have a right to be idiots. Don't make the choice for them. Let SDMI fail in the free market, not because some unethical crackers kept their findings secret.
I suppose that I'd be one of those pseudo-libertarians that you're referring to, and I'm appalled by this article.
I'm not appalled that the actions of the company are legal and unhindered by the government. As a libertarian, I should and do believe that the government should not put restrictions on private contractual relationships. The thing that I find utterly disgusting is that a university, a particularly good one, at that, has actually agreed to be a part of this immoral (not illegal) system of distributing knowledge. Universities, even private ones, have traditionally been somehow above this businesslike attitude of, how do I do what is required while still saving as much money as possible. Universities exist to educate people, not to turn a profit. If NYU truely seriously considered this deal and believes it is in the best interests of their students, then I suppose that I could accept it. But I hardly believe taht to be true. Everything that's on the publishers web site seems to imply locking students in to one publisher of textbooks and information, directly opposed to the principles that traditionally govern education.
I'm scared because I'm entering college very soon (tomorrow, actually). Although where I'm going doesn't have any textbook system like this, I'm worried what'll happen by the time four years are up. Or if/when I go to graduate school. This is a bad precedent and I sincerely hope it fails, for the sake of everyone's education.
Let me state I'm not taking sides. I wouldn't consider doing that until I've read and considered material from both groups, and I have not done that, nor do I have the training and background required to make a judgement. I only mentioned Mullis' opinions about HIV and AIDS as an example of the "underdog" in the academic community who may or may not be right, but is nonetheless crucial to the progress of science. And to remind people of the necessity of hard evidence to back up results, which is missing in a lot of today's "science". There are probably better examples than Mullis, but I wrote this in response to an article about PCR.
... why not try reading something by the inventor of the reaction itself, Kary Mullis? He wrote a book called Dancing Naked in the Mind Field, which is mostly just a large collection of stories, opinions, and anything else he wanted to put in there. As you should be able to see immediately, this guy is no ordinary scientist. As for the book, I loved it, and most of you probably would too. There's a lot of stuff in there that will make you challenge how you've been thinking about science, such as the chapter about HIV and AIDS. The whole thing is very not-politically correct, like the chapter on his experiences with LSD and related substances, and that makes it more fun to read. Pick up a copy, you won't regret it.
u iry.asp?isbn=0679774009
the book at bn.com - http://shop.barnesandnoble.com/booksearch/isbnInq
2) A one-time pad usually encodes phrases, not letters or single words. A complex one can have multiple phrases available from which one can construct a complete message, ie 48 = "meet me," 47 = "at the courthouse steps," 97 = "at phillip's house," and so on. Both the numbers and the phrases can be chosen arbitrarily, and can be changed every week or even every day.
No!
That's a codebook, not a one-time pad. If you'll notice, the frequencies of different digit pairs (using your example) will likely be different. That's no good. A one-time pad is a long string of true random numbers. They would most often be combined with the message with a simple XOR algorithm, although something else might be more appropriate when using pencil and paper. The point of a "one-time" pad is that the same numbers are never used more than once, hence the name one-time. It's not changed once a day or week, it's destroyed immediatelly after use!
The problem with eliminating "disinformation" stations is this: how would you know which ones are broadcasting truely random information and which are not? You propose statistical tests on the series of numbers. We would assume that these disinformation stations would be using cryptographically secure random number generators. If so, "cracking" these would be just as hard as cracking the real algorithm. In fact, any cryptographically secure random number generator can be converted trivially to stream cipher.
Last I checked, one person only had one pair of feet. But I live in the US; it might be different in China...
> PS: also note that it's been possible to do this (ie: the info has been available) on the HP48 for several years now. Those TIers are just playing catch-up!
Not quite. It's been possible to do this on many TI calculators for years also. You just need a 9600 baud modem, a TI-Graphlink, and a shell account. There are terminal emulators for the TI-82, 83, and 86, and the 86. This news is just someone doing it with Ricochet wireless modems (which is a damn cool idea, IMO).
In fact, it's even easier to do this with TI calcs because TI sells the TI-Graphlink, which is an adapter from the TI link port directly to a RS232. No homemade components necessary.
This deserves a (Score: 8, Funny) or something like that, because you happened to pick what I consider the funniest single sentance out of the first HHGTTG book. Actually, the funniest single sentance of the whole series. I'm not sure what it is about a disused lavatory and a leopard, but it makes me rofl every single time. It must be the sheer randomness of each part, especialy the leopard... I don't know, but Douglas Adams is a genius.
Ahhh...
Thanks for clearing that up. I don't have any experience with mod_perl (besides knowing that it's an module and it does perl) so I didn't know that it cached scripts like that.
>Seperate out HTML/text and code as much as possible
:), it _is_ possible to separate code and html. There's a php module called FastTemplate (I believe there's a version written in perl too) which allows you to do just that, by creating template pages with placeholders that a php script can fill in with dynamic data. It's works wonderfully to separate the work of the coders and the designers, which is something that certainly should be done.
If you're using php (which I strongly recommend
I don't have a link for you, just search for it on google, or CPAN, or and decent php user site. (I think I first read about it on phpbuilder.)
PHP can be run as a CGI program, but is much more often used as an apache module, just like mod_perl. In that case, what's the benefit of perl over php?
Also, php4 uses the zend engine, which can produce pseudo-compiled programs from php pages, and you can even get a beta version of the zend optimizer, which makes them run even faster. Before complining about the efficiency of php (3), please try out version 4. RC1 is available at http://www.php.net/
In case you don't know, WTF stands for "what the fuck?". As in, what the fuck is this doing as a slashdot story? This isn't news for nerds. This isn't even news! This is old (I visited their site several months ago) and even if it was new, it probably doesn't merit a main article on slashdot. They didn't have a major release recently (which could possibly qualify as news) and their software is still pre-alpha. And what does "the file size is slightly larger than mp3" mean? Both formats use variable bitrates, so the file size can be whatever you want it to be! I ask again, what the fuck is this irrelevant and content-less story doing on the main page of slashdot?
Wow. I find a new SS player on slashdot every week! Great program, btw. I haven't had much chance to use it, because I don't do lots of mapping, but it seems very powerful. About the new UI, what is it written in? If it's C/C++, you can probably take out the lvl-file parts and use them on any platform, and just whip up a simple UI around it. FACTS seems like a perfect fit for a simple CLI interface. It doesn't make much sense a a GUI. The good part of a CLI would be that if you're careful, you could have one source file for Win32 and Linux/other unix and just use #ifdefs. It would make things a bit simpler.
BTW, where do you play in SS? I'm mostly an ASWZ person, but I like to try out new zones.
> No one knows how to build bacteria or viruses from the ground up.
Wasn't there a story on slashdot (and lots of other places) a month or two ago about how scientists had created the first artificial bacterium by throwing a minimal bunch of genes together?
Not physical evidence, but virtual evidence: a quick look at the dhcp server logs will reveal any unauthorized usage.
> rest assured that nothing more is going to happen with it
I just have to point out that the subspace community is the most resiliant group of gamers I have ever seen. Far from nothing happening, subspace is as active as ever, with tons of servers and tens of thousands of active players. New features are being added to the server exe's (thanks to a few brilliant assembly wizards) and people have created bots to automate events like elimination tournaments. There are usually several special events going on in a given week, not to mention the many leagues. There have even been several conventions where subspace players meet IRL for a weekend.
For more information, please visit:
http://www.subspacehq.com/
I don't mean to imply that what happened with subspace can, or should, happen with any other game. Undoubtedly, the game would have been better supported if VIE had been a little smarter about marketing. Also, nobody would contemplate making a MMPOG if they expected it to turn out like subspace and be totally user-run and make no money for the developers or publishers. But the subspace situation certainly proves that if players want something enough, they will get it, whether the company supports them or not.
BTW, I'm not sure if there ever was planned a "Subspace 2", but here's the current situation: The core developers of subspace (and an artist, I think) left VIE shortly before it fell apart and formed their own company, Harmless Games. Their current title, Infantry, is about as close to a Subspace 2 as you can get. Any subspace player will immediately see the heritage. Infantry is now in public beta test. You can find information or download it at http://www.infantryzone.com/
I do agree with what you say here. In fact, I wrote just that in the last sentance of my original comment. I get the feeling you didn't read that far into it.
Just as a little more anecdotal, and probably invalid, evidence, for 1999, I knew somewhat personally the 4th and 10th place winners in the STS. I can say with confidence that the 10th place person was much more intelligent than the 4th place person. Of course, they were both very intelligent. My original point is just that it's more than intelligence that's judged in this thing. Effort is a huge factor, and the smartest people don't always display the most effort.
Hmmm... you've touched on a long-standing criticism of the STS here. No, the equipment was not the school's. She attended a special summer research program where she worked in real laboratories with real scientists. The "elitist ring" you describe would certinly be argued true by a whole bunch of people. It can be argued that today, it's just about impossible to be an STS finalist without attending some kind of extracurricular research program like she did. (She happened to go one of the very best, but there are others.) Doing research at the level that the STS expects without access to real equipment and real labs is extrelemy difficult, unless you go for pure math or CS. In the past, you would have had a harder time arguing the elitist point of view (refer to the movie/book October Sky) but now, it's hard to deny it. Just look at the list of finalists' project titles and see how many look like they had to be done in special programs.
:) ]
Now, making special research programs effectively mandatory may not be such a bad thing. The problem comes in the price: many of them cost money to get in to, often thousands of dollars. (I was lucky enough to get an fellowship where they paid me.) That adds a economic advantage into the mix. Admittance to the programs is often based on things that might be economically influenced also. The net effect is to close off the competition to a whole lot of very intelligent people.
Having said that, I'd like to add my personal feelings about the STS. It's my belief (so far without rigourous argument) that the people who succeed at the STS are the same types of people who are valedictorians. If you haven't been in high school in the past 5-10 years, you might have a slightly different picture than I do. Basically, these people who achieve the most are not always the most intelligent. They are the hardest workers and the most consciencious students. They are smarter than the average, but they aren't often the smartest people in the school. Of course, I admit that there are always exceptions: I know Viviana a little bit (I go to school a few minutes away from her) and she most definitely _is_ the smartest person in her school, and probably many of the surrounding ones too.
[Sorry if I rambed a bit, I have a lot to say, and I'm a bit bitter about my whole STS experience
You can enter computer science projects in the STS, just like any other area of science. (I did.) They compete against all the other projects from different fields. The thing is that the project has to be about "computer science" not just programming. There has to be science involved. However, if you're intelligent enough to work on open source projects and make intelligent contributions, you're probably intelligent enough to put a "science" spin on whatever work you did to make it worthy of an STS project.