Do what I do and post everything right here on/. instead. With all the abusive language and Goatse links,/. comments are better than spam for disguising a message.
I hate to say this, but it seems as if the USA is becoming increasingly fascist every day. It has a deified leader (as is typical of US presidents) who was not democratically elected; a legislative body that passes laws to promote and protect big corporate interests over citizens, in total disregard of the constitution; belligerent, jingoistic politics that is focussed on an outside "threat" (which was actually created by them in the first place) in order to deflect interest away from problems at home; a Department of Juctice that capitulates to illegal monopolists despite having the upper hand; law enforcement agencies that spy on and censor people; a social policy that leaves people hungry, homeless, undereducated and in poor health; and a whole lot more.
This doesn't sound any different from Nazi Germany. Oh wait... Hitler actually <i>created</i> jobs and <i>improved</i> the standard of living. I guess it's worse then.
Would the IBM PC be seen as a valuable antique or as a worthless obsolete relic? I used to own one of these. However, my model had CGA graphics with a CGA monitor. Otherwise it was the exact same model, and it looked exactly the same. Unfortunately, all I have left is the monitor, the complete manual set and the original 5 1/4 inch discs (including MS-DOS 2.11, yay!). I haven't tried them in years, but everything should be fully operational.
Could I make anything by selling what I have?
Move to Australia, but don't use Telstra
on
Broadband Crackdown
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· Score: 1
I've been using Optus@Home for about a year now and I can say it is really good. They don't have a set transfer limit like Telstra do. By the looks of it, they aren't filtering any ports, and I have not noticed much of a difference in network speed at all. They appear to be using Solaris with Apache or Netsape Enterprise (depending on the server) on their servers.
IMHO, Australia has a great system (although I'm probably a bit biased since I'm Australian). It is a preferential system, a modification on the UK's first-past-the-post idea. Instead of just picking one guy, we pick a no. 1, a no. 2, a no. 3, and so on. A candidate requires 50% of the vote plus 1 vote to win the electoral seat. If nobody has achieved this after all first preferences have been taken into account, we move to count second preferences, and so on until somebody wins.
True, but the point I am making is that he *does* possess tremendous business acumen. It doesn't matter where this is learnt, whether it be a university or on the job. If you need to take an MBA course to know about business then go ahead and do it -- it *will* help.
One of the German Foreign Office's concerns about Windos (all flavours) was that the NSA (with M$ approval, of course) had backdoors inserted in the code. If so, then using anything M$ could be a national security risk.
Hmm... The NSA 'hardening' an OS that may already have backdoors to help them. Need I say more?
Some of the most successful guys in IT are in that position because they are both tech- and business-savvy. Just look at Bill Gates and Steve Jobs, for example.
At the University of Sydney, Australia, Blue (http://www.pscit.monash.edu.au/~mik/blue/) was developed as a programming language specifically for first year students. I believe it was adopted in about 1997 and was replaced with Java at the beginning of 2001. As a development language, Blue was pretty-much useless, but it is great for teaching programming concepts -- knowledge which is vital for learning any other language. Its pure OO design and its clear limits and restrictions were actually useful for first-time programmers.
I was a member of the last group to be taught Blue. While learning, all we did was complain about Blue not being a real-world language, and we were bitter about being the last class to do such a 'useless' language. We would have chosen Java if given the option -- at least that was actually used outside the University.
Now, in hindsight, I can tell you that Blue was actually a good idea. The main reason why the University dropped it was that they had to maintain all of it themselves. This meant books and assorted documentation, the IDE and the language itself -- quite a monumental task for a cash-strapped CS department. To make things worse, the guy who initially developed it left to another university. I'm sure this would have created problems.
I have a friend that is now doing the same introductory programming subject I did at the beginning of last year, but with Java. He seems to have far more problems than I ever did. Moreover, these problems are over really mundane aspects of programming, like a misplaced semicolon or something. Sure, Blue has these problems, but they were nowhere near as bothersome, allowing us to actually get our work done and learn things along the way.
Another benefit of Blue was its relatively low system load. Last year for Blue, all we had were dumb terminals running X exported from chunky SunOS 5.6 servers. While this setup did pose many problems (they were crash-prone, etc.), they mostly worked well -- and they were cheap. With the introduction of Java, it quickly became clear that these lobotomised computers were not adequate for the job. The University was forced to replace them with GNU/Linux computers, but X was still exported from the servers. In other words, processing power was switched from a centralised to a distributed model. I don't know how much this all cost -- and it appears as if the CS department has tried their best to kerb expenditure with this infrastructure -- but the bill still must have been large.
So what are the alternatives to this scenario? The University could have continued to use Blue, and tried to persuade the developer to relinquish control of the language to a larger body (e.g. the University or maybe even the open source community). They could have been more active with popularising the language, and getting other universities/schools to adopt it. I remember hearing about a few universities in Asia that were interested in Blue. I'd like to know what happened there.
As it stands, though, I think Blue is dead. The last time the Blue web site (http://www.pscit.monash.edu.au/~mik/blue/) was updated was February 1998. The University of Sydney was the only (AFAIK) bastion of hope for this language, and they let it die.
Slashdot Mirror
If AUD isn't real, what is it? Fake? Use the Web. No need to get a kangaroo to rape a koala (although that sight has gotta be worth a few bucks).
I think you mean Francs. The last time I checked, the Swiss wern't paying for goods and services with sausages.
Do what I do and post everything right here on /. instead. With all the abusive language and Goatse links, /. comments are better than spam for disguising a message.
I hate to say this, but it seems as if the USA is becoming increasingly fascist every day. It has a deified leader (as is typical of US presidents) who was not democratically elected; a legislative body that passes laws to promote and protect big corporate interests over citizens, in total disregard of the constitution; belligerent, jingoistic politics that is focussed on an outside "threat" (which was actually created by them in the first place) in order to deflect interest away from problems at home; a Department of Juctice that capitulates to illegal monopolists despite having the upper hand; law enforcement agencies that spy on and censor people; a social policy that leaves people hungry, homeless, undereducated and in poor health; and a whole lot more.
This doesn't sound any different from Nazi Germany. Oh wait... Hitler actually <i>created</i> jobs and <i>improved</i> the standard of living. I guess it's worse then.
Would the IBM PC be seen as a valuable antique or as a worthless obsolete relic? I used to own one of these. However, my model had CGA graphics with a CGA monitor. Otherwise it was the exact same model, and it looked exactly the same. Unfortunately, all I have left is the monitor, the complete manual set and the original 5 1/4 inch discs (including MS-DOS 2.11, yay!). I haven't tried them in years, but everything should be fully operational.
Could I make anything by selling what I have?
I've been using Optus@Home for about a year now and I can say it is really good. They don't have a set transfer limit like Telstra do. By the looks of it, they aren't filtering any ports, and I have not noticed much of a difference in network speed at all. They appear to be using Solaris with Apache or Netsape Enterprise (depending on the server) on their servers.
IMHO, Australia has a great system (although I'm probably a bit biased since I'm Australian). It is a preferential system, a modification on the UK's first-past-the-post idea. Instead of just picking one guy, we pick a no. 1, a no. 2, a no. 3, and so on. A candidate requires 50% of the vote plus 1 vote to win the electoral seat. If nobody has achieved this after all first preferences have been taken into account, we move to count second preferences, and so on until somebody wins.
True, but the point I am making is that he *does* possess tremendous business acumen. It doesn't matter where this is learnt, whether it be a university or on the job. If you need to take an MBA course to know about business then go ahead and do it -- it *will* help.
One of the German Foreign Office's concerns about Windos (all flavours) was that the NSA (with M$ approval, of course) had backdoors inserted in the code. If so, then using anything M$ could be a national security risk.
Hmm... The NSA 'hardening' an OS that may already have backdoors to help them. Need I say more?
Some of the most successful guys in IT are in that position because they are both tech- and business-savvy. Just look at Bill Gates and Steve Jobs, for example.
At the University of Sydney, Australia, Blue (http://www.pscit.monash.edu.au/~mik/blue/) was developed as a programming language specifically for first year students. I believe it was adopted in about 1997 and was replaced with Java at the beginning of 2001. As a development language, Blue was pretty-much useless, but it is great for teaching programming concepts -- knowledge which is vital for learning any other language. Its pure OO design and its clear limits and restrictions were actually useful for first-time programmers.
I was a member of the last group to be taught Blue. While learning, all we did was complain about Blue not being a real-world language, and we were bitter about being the last class to do such a 'useless' language. We would have chosen Java if given the option -- at least that was actually used outside the University.
Now, in hindsight, I can tell you that Blue was actually a good idea. The main reason why the University dropped it was that they had to maintain all of it themselves. This meant books and assorted documentation, the IDE and the language itself -- quite a monumental task for a cash-strapped CS department. To make things worse, the guy who initially developed it left to another university. I'm sure this would have created problems.
I have a friend that is now doing the same introductory programming subject I did at the beginning of last year, but with Java. He seems to have far more problems than I ever did. Moreover, these problems are over really mundane aspects of programming, like a misplaced semicolon or something. Sure, Blue has these problems, but they were nowhere near as bothersome, allowing us to actually get our work done and learn things along the way.
Another benefit of Blue was its relatively low system load. Last year for Blue, all we had were dumb terminals running X exported from chunky SunOS 5.6 servers. While this setup did pose many problems (they were crash-prone, etc.), they mostly worked well -- and they were cheap. With the introduction of Java, it quickly became clear that these lobotomised computers were not adequate for the job. The University was forced to replace them with GNU/Linux computers, but X was still exported from the servers. In other words, processing power was switched from a centralised to a distributed model. I don't know how much this all cost -- and it appears as if the CS department has tried their best to kerb expenditure with this infrastructure -- but the bill still must have been large.
So what are the alternatives to this scenario? The University could have continued to use Blue, and tried to persuade the developer to relinquish control of the language to a larger body (e.g. the University or maybe even the open source community). They could have been more active with popularising the language, and getting other universities/schools to adopt it. I remember hearing about a few universities in Asia that were interested in Blue. I'd like to know what happened there.
As it stands, though, I think Blue is dead. The last time the Blue web site (http://www.pscit.monash.edu.au/~mik/blue/) was updated was February 1998. The University of Sydney was the only (AFAIK) bastion of hope for this language, and they let it die.