I was using it in school as of about 4 years ago. I still get email and snail mail from them every so often.
What I used to do was format my equations in Mathcad and then cut and paste them into MS Word.
Frankly, the equation editor in the newest versions of MS Word is just fine for about 98% of what you'll ever need to do. If you'd doing really fancy stuff or inventing your own notation, you might have trouble.
However, I found the editor in MathCad to be faster for entering equations with minimal use of the mouse.
I know plenty of folks in major CS departments who write and submit journal articles in Word format. I still think the LaTeX-formatted documents look a little nicer (maybe because I'm used to the way they look), but that's a matter of taste.
My personal opinion is that you should use whatever your colleagues are using -- if that's LaTeX, then fine; if that's Word, that's fine too. If you don't care about your colleagues, use whatever's fastest and easiest for you. In the end, people will care what your documents say, not what editor or markup language you used to compose them:)
An old sysadmin of mine swore up and down that one shouldn't reuse tapes, since reusing them can lead to data integrity problems and/or mechanical failures in the tape (e.g., tape breakages).
This was several years ago, so tape technology might have improved.
Let's start with the assumption that you don't care if you're on-call, so long as you never get paged to do something during non-business hours.
A simple system that would work for N people might be the following:
1. Number the people 1..N (or 0..N-1 if you're feeling geeky). 2. The pager starts with person 1. If you need a secondary or tertiary (sp?), then assign to persons 2, 3,...) 3. If person j takes the call passes the pager on to the next unallocated person in the list, who takes on j's priority (i.e., primary, secondary, etc.); if the primary takes the call and you have secondaries, etc., the secondary becomes the primary and the next unallocated person on the list becomes secondary. 4. Goto 3 (couldn't resist)
Assuming that calls are evenly distributed, then you only have to take a call every N*(call inter-arrival time) units of time.
You could change around the "who gets primary next" rule in various ways.
Assuming that you don't get more than one call on a weekday or over a weekend, this system should be reasonably fair.
You get what you pay for... I've been a fan of Thinkpads for a long time. They're very sturdy (for laptops) and last forever if you don't drop them on the driveway too many times:)
Their prices have come down recently... you can get a pretty good system for about $2000 and a fully-tricked-out monster for around $3000. When you consider the relative power of the newer Intel mobile chips, this is a bargain compared to Apple's offerings.
The thinkpad hardware seems quite standardized these days. I know guys who got Linux and FreeBSD running on theirs (either stand-alone or dual-boot with Windows) with minimal trouble.
The R series (one of the newer lines) doesn't seem as sturdy or robust as the A and T series. The T series is their "corporate" line, and they last forever... they cost a little more for the same features but they're lighter, more compact, and more rugged.
I have an A22p that I bought in 2001... The dog has knocked it off the coffee table about a dozen times and it's no worse for wear. A couple of the screws that hold the LCD into the back of the computer got a little loose after about a year, but I tightened them down and haven't had any further issues.
Definitely stay away from Sony and Dell... Sony's are notorious for hardware incompatibility issues and both Sony's and Dells are rather delicate, particularly the "consumer-grade" models.
One note... I paid a couple hundred dollars extra for the 1600x1200 15" screen on my laptop. There are two problems with this... First, running at 1600x1200 I can't read text on the screen anymore unless I use "fonts for the blind". Second, the box is just a little too big to comfortably fit into most laptop bags. It squeezes into my Targus (?) laptop backpack, but barely, and I had to remove some of the protective foam from the top and bottom to get him in there.
Another tip: choose a laptop that has an "accessory bay" that can accept a second battery (to suppliment the main battery). These are very handy on long trips or long progress meetings. Mine gives me about an extra 2.5 hours of battery life. Some of the Dells and others can actually take *2* extra batteries, if you're willing to lug around the extra weight.
Actually, many vendors (including Apple) ship their boxes from the factory to retail outlets like Frys and Best Buy in these exact boxes, with no additional shipping materials. If you still have the origional shipping container, just use that -- it probably has fitted styrofoam pieces that will protect the computer about as well as anything.
Shipping UPS or Fedex *ground* will be much cheaper than by air... however, give yourself 7-10 days for delivery, perhaps more. Hell, you can next-day it to yourself, but it'll cost you the price of a nice DVD burner.:)
I've had to ship loads of computer gorp for business trips (demos out-of-state). We used these large plastic, foam-filled, lockable shipping containers. They were oversized, so we had to pay an extra $50 or $75 per containter, but the airline happily accepted them as checked luggage.
Personally, what I'd do is:
1. Look up the maximum dimentions for checked luggage for the airline you're using. Usually it's something like the sum of the three dimentions of the package can't exceed some maximum number.
2. Go to Office Depot and buy some foam peanuts and a box that is just under the maximum size from (1). Pack your precious Mac up, tape it with some heavy-duty stranded packing tape, and you should be in business.
I'd suggest putting some "Fragile: handle with care" sitckers or markings on the box... don't make it obvious that it's valuable, though.
You should be able to ship it in this manner for about $5 in packing materials.
See, this is why OZ is a toy language... and not a very useful one at that.
Sure, you can do some really nifty things with it. But that's like learning machining on a CNC machine... you feed in a CAD drawing and out comes your part. The problem is, when you go to work at a machine shop where they use lathes, mills, etc., you're going to have to relearn many things before you become a useful worker.
The argument could be made that, perhaps, modern production languages should include "contstraints" and other such formalisms. Well, gang, perhaps you're right. But they don't. It seems like Oz would be great for use in a theory course... but if your goal is to graduate competent, skilled programmers who have a chance of actually getting a job in programming, they need to know at least one, preferably 2 or 3 modern production languages.
I've read quite a number of programming textbooks. The authors of this book seem well-intentioned, and from a quick scan, the material is quite good.
No, I haven't read it cover-to-cover yet, but I have a few first impressions:
1. This is not a good introductory book for college freshmen. They're getting far too technical/formal way too fast... Don't get me wrong -- I'm a big fan of formalisms and good notation but for many students, this can interfere with the learning process.
2. This oz language... I'm sure it has many technical merits, but it's so unlike any other language used in production shops (e.g., C, C++, Java, VB, perl, TCL, etc.) that its pedagogical (sp?) value outweighs its lack of practical value. CS students, IMHO, need to come away with two possibly divergent sets of knowledge.
a. A solid knowledge of constructs, algorithms, engineering techniques, and good programming habits.
b. A solid syntactic and semantic understanding (ability to code well) of at least one major programming language.
My first CS class was taught in Haskell; the second class was taught in Turing. Both are great languages in their own right... but it took me a while to become as clean in C/C++ as I was in Turing, for example. On one hand, I am grateful for the good habits I acquired learning these "toy" languages. On the other hand, I would have been a more useful programmer faster had I learned these things in C/C++/Java.
Aside from that argument, I think oz is just ugly and rather cumbersome in its syntax. In particular, I'm not a big fan of implicit return statements, e.g., foo(x):= if x>0 1 else -1... I like to see explicit returns... I like explicitness whenever possible. It makes the code easier to read and understand.
That's my opionin, at least.
Again, I think this book has great value.. I am going to read it carefully. As a seasoned programmer and a life-long student in the art/craft/science of programming, I'm sure there are a few gems of realization to be found therein.
"We need to work together to find the right answers, and this is not one of them."
The idea of any manufacturer designing their product such that it could be destroyed by some remote user is abusrd. We're not talking about the self-destruct mechanism on the USS Enterprise here... we're talking about some user on the Internet "destroying" your computer.
I can see it now... someone dumps a worm onto the internet and within a few hours, thousands of computers are destroyed. In general, if you expose a feature that an authorized user can access, someone, somewhere is going to figure out how to access it without authorization.
Copyright laws should be enforced -- at least to some extent. However, I think that unless someone is profiting from the unauthorized dissemination of copyrighted material, no one really gets hurt. Yes, the big record companies may lose a few sales. However, in my experience, people end up buying albums after hearing a few "pirated" singles, since usually the whole album is not available for download.
Keep big brother out of my living room, bedroom, and my computer, thank you very much.
Point taken. Their body of software, however, particularly Windows, constitutes a virus... it invades, multiplies, and eventually kills everything it touches.:::Hoping my Win XP box isn't listening to what I'm typing... Wait... No... I didn't mean it... Aaaahhhh!:::
You've gotta wonder if companies like Microsoft have a vested interest in releasing buggy software. It almost forces you to upgrade from time to time, putting bucks in their pockets. And, yes, it gives them the ability to sell you other products to "work around" or protect you from their own mistakes.
...the chipping away of our constitutional rights.
The First Amendment guarantees a person's right to free expression. Miss Vermont chooses to express her position of alcohol and extramarital sex. Mr. Max chose to express his contempt for Miss Vermont's hypocracy. I can't think of anything more consonant with free expression than this.
But what about Miss Vermont's privacy? Balderdash. By being Miss Vermont, she's made herself a public figure. Indeed, she uses that status to promote her causes. Good for her; so would I in her position (however, I would choose to endorse different causes!). Public figures have a reduced expectation of privacy; this is well-established in case law. Along with the publicity and fame comes scruitny and accountability.
If this court decision stands, consider the slippery slope ahead for the Constitution. If a beauty queen can get this type of injunctive relief, then surely a politician or government official or judge is entitled to it. Granted, the press delves a little too much into the private lives of our public figures. But when a politician takes a moral stand on, say, abortion, drugs, sex, or alcohol, he has to back that up with a track record consistent with his expressed philosophy.
If it turns out that Sen. X smoked pot, got blasted at frat parties, trolled for hookers, or paid for his mistress's abortion, it calls into question any moral position he might take on those issues.
I hope Mr. Max appeals this court ruling; I have no doubt that it will be overturned on appeal, at some level. It doesn't even pass the "smell test", in my layman's opinion.
Shame on that judge and shame on Miss Vermont -- either own up to your sins (if you believe they are sins) or get off your high horse. You can't have it both ways.
Actually, if you believe the folks at the US Treasury and the Secret Service, counterfeiting *is* a major problem. The amount of fake currency produced each year is on the order of tens of billions of dollar. Granted, there are trillions of dollars worth of cash in float at any given time... however, every fake dollar out there does "devalue" the others and hampers the government's ability to regulate the money supply.
Apparently, some countries actively float counterfeit dollars in an attempt to destabalize or otherwise harm the US economy. While, year over year, their contribution is probably in the noise, I suppose it could build up over time.
Your overall point, IMHO, is well-taken, however: changing the money is rather futile, since the older bill patterns will be legal tender for many more decades, if not centuries. Sure, the changes make it slightly harder to pull this off in, say, 30 years, but, overall, the money could be better spent (or even better, not spent) on other things.
Then again, if you're the agency who prints money, perhaps you don't worry too much about how much money you spend. >:-)
Yes, $2 bills are still produced, are in circulation, and are legal tender. They are apparently very popular at race tracks and a few other obscure locations. They're kind of neat -- the artwork on the back side is pretty.
If you want one, a good place to get one is at your local bank. They usually have a couple floating around.
Cashiers hate them because there isn't a slot in the money drawer for them. Also, a lot of people don't even know they exist, so they'll think you're trying to pass forged money.
So, are there encryption algorithms out there where the keys are destroyed or become useless after one transaction or a (small) period of time? That might solve the problem of handing over the keys. Seems like you could exchange messages with something like RSA where you and your cohort generate new key pairs, exchange public keys, encrpyt your message, transmit the message, decrypt it, and then erase the keys. Then, if later, they want to read your message, you *can't* give them the key, because you don't have it anymore.
Of course there are truly "unbreakable" ciphers out there, like one-time pads. The bottom line is, the government can pass as many laws as it wants, but sufficiently-motivated bad guys will still be able to evade. All the laws really do is hurt *our* (read: the good guys') freedom.
>> Isn't our privacy guaranteed within the constitution preventing actions anywhere near this?
Sadly, no. We're basically one Supreme Court ruling away from losing substancial liberties -- free speech, free assembly, privacy in our homes and bedrooms, free communication... not to mention second amendment rights, abortion, etc... Be afraid... and for God's sake, don't vote Republican.
Just wait until some petite functionaire in the Federal Government thinks that, for some reason, you're a terrorist (I mean the generic "you", not you in particular). Do you really want to make it any easier for them to tear your life apart?
Remember that law enforcement agencies are significantly motivated by *politics* -- which may or may not be what's in the best interests of national security, personal liberty, or justice. Today it's Arab terrorists they're targeting. But, perhaps if the recording industry pumps some more money into congress, they'll start locking up college kids for duping Metallica songs.
Locking up real, bone-fide terrorists is fine by me -- indeed, I encourage and support it. But giving some beaurocrat with a hair up his ass more power to invade my privacy is not the way to do it.
Looks like just another opportunity to have our rights violated. I'm sure the Department of Homeland Insecurity is thrilled about this. Is this what Cisco means by "Empowering the Internet Generation"?
Excellent point -- even if she managed to curtail Doubleclick's evil activities, their fundamental purpose is still evil, i.e., tracking one's web usage, clicks on banner adds, and so forth. Whether or not they collect specific "Personal" information, e.g., name, rank, serial number, etc., if they are using my web activity for their benefit without my knowledge or consent, that's bad and anyone associated with these activities should be considered unfit for the position in question.
You see, fellow geeks, the best way to ensure privacy and security is to collect as much information about as many people as possible. That way, the government has all your vital information, and can keep it safe for you.
Yeah. Right.
This is the dumbest thing I have seen in a while from the Shrub administration, and that says a lot. Bush seems to have a real nack for grabbinb up the facists and losers out there and making them important figureheads in his administration. Then again, there's that old saying about birds of a feather... perhaps that should be revised to vultures...... Off to clear my cookie cache before Big Brother uploads it to some database...
All Microsoft-bashing aside, and with all due respect, this donor's idea is novel but misguided.
While I think it would be good for undergrads to be exposed to non-Microsoft software and operating systems, most students *need* to become facile with products such as Word, Excel, Powerpoint, and Windows OS in general. These are skills that many, if not most employers look for and/or require.
I, myself, am what most people would call a UNIX geek -- probably not a hacker by most standards, but I'm generally at home on Linux, Solaris, or FreeBSD, to name a few. For most of my daily work, I use one UNIX or another. On the other hand, when it comes to email, word processing, generating presentations, pretty graphs for management, and the like, I turn to my Windows PC to get the job done; yes, I could use OpenOffice and Emacs and so forth to accomplish the same functions, but my coworkers all use Word and Excel and Powerpoint, so I need to be compatible. Moreover, having tried it both ways, I find the Microsoft approach faster and easier than using the UNIX equivalents.
From a more general perspective, who's going to hire a writer (tech write, journalist, etc.) who doesn't know Word and can't use Windows? Look at job listings, in or out of the computer industry, and you'll find that knowing Microsoft's products is a prerequisite for the vast majority of the positions (where such knowledge would be relavent -- carpenters don't usually need to know Word!).
I think that forcing students to use non-Microsoft products for *some* of their work would be a good thing -- particularly if those non-Microsoft products run on Linux or another UNIX. It broadens their perspective, build confidence in their ability to learn and master another operating envoronment, and I think would generally enhance their educational experience. That being said, it seems clear to me that forcing them to use *all* non-Microsoft products would be bad for them in the long run.
If this donor really cares about the students whom he hopes to help with this money, he should rethink the parameters of his donation and, frankly, get real. Yes, Microsoft is rather evil, but they're also very successful -- IMHO, much of that success derives from the fact that their products generally enhance one's productivity and one's ability to communicate and work with others. I wish there were another widely-used alternative, but there isn't, not right now, and it's short-sighted to force folks to behave otherwise.
>>IMHO, it's way too slow compared to the missiles,
>> and will not be able to scramble fast enough."
It may be too slow to deploy a 747 as a defense against an inbound ICBM, but this might be useful to defend the 747 *itself* from an anti-aircraft missile. I've heard talk about arming commercial planes with chaff's and/or flares to defend against shoulder-launched surface-to-air missiles; the cost would be roughly $3 million per plane. Perhaps a laser system could be more cost-effective? It's certainly a whole lot cooler:)
I seem to remember the Federal Government passing a couple laws against writing and distributing computer viruses. While this worm may not be a "destructive" virus, it certainly is a virus. As such, IMHO, it would fall under the domain of this law (i.e., unauthorized access to someone else's computer) and RIAA could be prosecuted under that law -- as well they should.
Of course, the Dept. of Justice being the political, beaurocratic, corrupt entity that it is, I doubt that charges would be filed against RIAA for this.
Woah, I think I see Big Brother coming, I need to run....
The last thing we need in this business is more government "oversight" or regulation.
Professionals, such as lawyers, doctors, plumbers, electricians, auto mechanics, barbers, etc. are required to be licensed, and in most cases, this is a good thing. They work in fields where mistakes can lead to wrongful convictions, serious injury, death, major property damage, and the like.
OTOH, there are many fields where it is legal to do certain things, particular maintenence, with no license at all. I don't have to have a license to repair your deck or fix your toilet; granted, if I screw it up and your deck isn't up to code or your toilet floods your living room, you don't have many means of redress, other than suing me personally.
The problem is that the work done in these fields is not necessarily analagous to the work done by PC repair techs. Frankly, fixing a broken system is usually not rocket science; doing so with the minimal amount of work and data loss is something of an art, but most tech support guys fall back to the usual, reformat, reboot, and reinstall method if all else fails.
I don't think the government should be telling me whom I can and cannot pay to fix my computer (in my case, I fix the bloody thing myself), or my car for that matter. If I want to take it to my sister-in-law's best friend's teenage son and give him $20 to get XP working, that's my business. And if I want to get the thing fixed by someone who actually knows what the hell he's doing, and, perhaps, has all the mumble-mumble certifications to prove it, that's also my option.
Other than freedom of choice (in who fixes my PC), the other effect of regulation would be to price or lock out uncertified individuals, such as myself, from the market. Granted, I like my job as a software engineer. But if the economy continues down the crapper and I lose my job, it wouldn't be below my dignity to make some extra bread fixing computers. My 15 years+ of PC hardware and software knowledge certainly is worth something to someone. I shouldn't have to go blow several thousand dollars getting A+ and Microsloth Certified Ignoramious certificates to get a job.
I've worked with many engineers who had all those fancy certifications and many who did not. From what I can tell, they don't make a lick of difference. The only thing that really counts is knowledge (however it's acquired) and experience (and a healthy dose of intuition and luck). The worst thing is someone who can talk the talk and has the cert's but is fundamentally incompetent. Frankly, if I'm interviewing two guys, and one has an MSCE and the other claims several years of administering a Windows NT/2000 network, I'll probably consider them equally and ask them the same questions. I actually have more respect for the guy who's been debugging problems for the last couple years than someone who just passed some exam.
Finally, perhaps as a coup-de-gras of sorts, consider all those Cisco Certifications. As much as Cisco hypes them, you'd think that lots of Cisco employees would have them. Well, I used to work there, and guess what? They don't. Generally, the engineers there are quite unimpressed by anything other than a CCIE (of which there are only a couple thousand in the whole world). It's not about how many tests you can pass, it's about what you've actually done and what you can do.
The cert classes are a nice way to fill in some gaps in your existing knowledge or to get a jumpstart on a new technology, but, by and large, they don't mean dick.
Slashdot Mirror
I was using it in school as of about 4 years ago. I still get email and snail mail from them every so often.
:)
What I used to do was format my equations in Mathcad and then cut and paste them into MS Word.
Frankly, the equation editor in the newest versions of MS Word is just fine for about 98% of what you'll ever need to do. If you'd doing really fancy stuff or inventing your own notation, you might have trouble.
However, I found the editor in MathCad to be faster for entering equations with minimal use of the mouse.
I know plenty of folks in major CS departments who write and submit journal articles in Word format. I still think the LaTeX-formatted documents look a little nicer (maybe because I'm used to the way they look), but that's a matter of taste.
My personal opinion is that you should use whatever your colleagues are using -- if that's LaTeX, then fine; if that's Word, that's fine too. If you don't care about your colleagues, use whatever's fastest and easiest for you. In the end, people will care what your documents say, not what editor or markup language you used to compose them
Actually, that's a non-trivial question.
An old sysadmin of mine swore up and down that one shouldn't reuse tapes, since reusing them can lead to data integrity problems and/or mechanical failures in the tape (e.g., tape breakages).
This was several years ago, so tape technology might have improved.
Let's start with the assumption that you don't care if you're on-call, so long as you never get paged to do something during non-business hours.
...)
A simple system that would work for N people might be the following:
1. Number the people 1..N (or 0..N-1 if you're feeling geeky).
2. The pager starts with person 1. If you need a secondary or tertiary (sp?), then assign to persons 2, 3,
3. If person j takes the call passes the pager on to the next unallocated person in the list, who takes on j's priority (i.e., primary, secondary, etc.); if the primary takes the call and you have secondaries, etc., the secondary becomes the primary and the next unallocated person on the list becomes secondary.
4. Goto 3 (couldn't resist)
Assuming that calls are evenly distributed, then you only have to take a call every N*(call inter-arrival time) units of time.
You could change around the "who gets primary next" rule in various ways.
Assuming that you don't get more than one call on a weekday or over a weekend, this system should be reasonably fair.
You get what you pay for... I've been a fan of Thinkpads for a long time. They're very sturdy (for laptops) and last forever if you don't drop them on the driveway too many times :)
Their prices have come down recently... you can get a pretty good system for about $2000 and a fully-tricked-out monster for around $3000. When you consider the relative power of the newer Intel mobile chips, this is a bargain compared to Apple's offerings.
The thinkpad hardware seems quite standardized these days. I know guys who got Linux and FreeBSD running on theirs (either stand-alone or dual-boot with Windows) with minimal trouble.
The R series (one of the newer lines) doesn't seem as sturdy or robust as the A and T series. The T series is their "corporate" line, and they last forever... they cost a little more for the same features but they're lighter, more compact, and more rugged.
I have an A22p that I bought in 2001... The dog has knocked it off the coffee table about a dozen times and it's no worse for wear. A couple of the screws that hold the LCD into the back of the computer got a little loose after about a year, but I tightened them down and haven't had any further issues.
Definitely stay away from Sony and Dell... Sony's are notorious for hardware incompatibility issues and both Sony's and Dells are rather delicate, particularly the "consumer-grade" models.
One note... I paid a couple hundred dollars extra for the 1600x1200 15" screen on my laptop. There are two problems with this... First, running at 1600x1200 I can't read text on the screen anymore unless I use "fonts for the blind". Second, the box is just a little too big to comfortably fit into most laptop bags. It squeezes into my Targus (?) laptop backpack, but barely, and I had to remove some of the protective foam from the top and bottom to get him in there.
Another tip: choose a laptop that has an "accessory bay" that can accept a second battery (to suppliment the main battery). These are very handy on long trips or long progress meetings. Mine gives me about an extra 2.5 hours of battery life. Some of the Dells and others can actually take *2* extra batteries, if you're willing to lug around the extra weight.
Good luck!
Actually, many vendors (including Apple) ship their boxes from the factory to retail outlets like Frys and Best Buy in these exact boxes, with no additional shipping materials. If you still have the origional shipping container, just use that -- it probably has fitted styrofoam pieces that will protect the computer about as well as anything.
:)
Shipping UPS or Fedex *ground* will be much cheaper than by air... however, give yourself 7-10 days for delivery, perhaps more. Hell, you can next-day it to yourself, but it'll cost you the price of a nice DVD burner.
I've had to ship loads of computer gorp for business trips (demos out-of-state). We used these large plastic, foam-filled, lockable shipping containers. They were oversized, so we had to pay an extra $50 or $75 per containter, but the airline happily accepted them as checked luggage.
Personally, what I'd do is:
1. Look up the maximum dimentions for checked luggage for the airline you're using. Usually it's something like the sum of the three dimentions of the package can't exceed some maximum number.
2. Go to Office Depot and buy some foam peanuts and a box that is just under the maximum size from (1). Pack your precious Mac up, tape it with some heavy-duty stranded packing tape, and you should be in business.
I'd suggest putting some "Fragile: handle with care" sitckers or markings on the box... don't make it obvious that it's valuable, though.
You should be able to ship it in this manner for about $5 in packing materials.
See, this is why OZ is a toy language... and not a very useful one at that.
Sure, you can do some really nifty things with it. But that's like learning machining on a CNC machine... you feed in a CAD drawing and out comes your part. The problem is, when you go to work at a machine shop where they use lathes, mills, etc., you're going to have to relearn many things before you become a useful worker.
The argument could be made that, perhaps, modern production languages should include "contstraints" and other such formalisms. Well, gang, perhaps you're right. But they don't. It seems like Oz would be great for use in a theory course... but if your goal is to graduate competent, skilled programmers who have a chance of actually getting a job in programming, they need to know at least one, preferably 2 or 3 modern production languages.
End rant...
I've read quite a number of programming textbooks. The authors of this book seem well-intentioned, and from a quick scan, the material is quite good.
No, I haven't read it cover-to-cover yet, but I have a few first impressions:
1. This is not a good introductory book for college freshmen. They're getting far too technical/formal way too fast... Don't get me wrong -- I'm a big fan of formalisms and good notation but for many students, this can interfere with the learning process.
2. This oz language... I'm sure it has many technical merits, but it's so unlike any other language used in production shops (e.g., C, C++, Java, VB, perl, TCL, etc.) that its pedagogical (sp?) value outweighs its lack of practical value. CS students, IMHO, need to come away with two possibly divergent sets of knowledge.
a. A solid knowledge of constructs, algorithms, engineering techniques, and good programming habits.
b. A solid syntactic and semantic understanding (ability to code well) of at least one major programming language.
My first CS class was taught in Haskell; the second class was taught in Turing. Both are great languages in their own right... but it took me a while to become as clean in C/C++ as I was in Turing, for example. On one hand, I am grateful for the good habits I acquired learning these "toy" languages. On the other hand, I would have been a more useful programmer faster had I learned these things in C/C++/Java.
Aside from that argument, I think oz is just ugly and rather cumbersome in its syntax. In particular, I'm not a big fan of implicit return statements, e.g., foo(x):= if x>0 1 else -1... I like to see explicit returns... I like explicitness whenever possible. It makes the code easier to read and understand.
That's my opionin, at least.
Again, I think this book has great value.. I am going to read it carefully. As a seasoned programmer and a life-long student in the art/craft/science of programming, I'm sure there are a few gems of realization to be found therein.
...must be ill-conceived.
I couldn't agreee more with Sen. Leahy's comment:
"We need to work together to find the right answers, and this is not one of them."
The idea of any manufacturer designing their product such that it could be destroyed by some remote user is abusrd. We're not talking about the self-destruct mechanism on the USS Enterprise here... we're talking about some user on the Internet "destroying" your computer.
I can see it now... someone dumps a worm onto the internet and within a few hours, thousands of computers are destroyed. In general, if you expose a feature that an authorized user can access, someone, somewhere is going to figure out how to access it without authorization.
Copyright laws should be enforced -- at least to some extent. However, I think that unless someone is profiting from the unauthorized dissemination of copyrighted material, no one really gets hurt. Yes, the big record companies may lose a few sales. However, in my experience, people end up buying albums after hearing a few "pirated" singles, since usually the whole album is not available for download.
Keep big brother out of my living room, bedroom, and my computer, thank you very much.
Point taken. Their body of software, however, particularly Windows, constitutes a virus... it invades, multiplies, and eventually kills everything it touches. :::Hoping my Win XP box isn't listening to what I'm typing... Wait... No... I didn't mean it... Aaaahhhh!:::
>:-)
You've gotta wonder if companies like Microsoft have a vested interest in releasing buggy software. It almost forces you to upgrade from time to time, putting bucks in their pockets. And, yes, it gives them the ability to sell you other products to "work around" or protect you from their own mistakes.
How very clever, indeed.
I thought Microsoft *is* a virus.
When a virus and and antivirus come together, is it like matter and antimatter?
Glad I don't live in Redmond...
...the chipping away of our constitutional rights.
The First Amendment guarantees a person's right to free expression. Miss Vermont chooses to express her position of alcohol and extramarital sex. Mr. Max chose to express his contempt for Miss Vermont's hypocracy. I can't think of anything more consonant with free expression than this.
But what about Miss Vermont's privacy? Balderdash. By being Miss Vermont, she's made herself a public figure. Indeed, she uses that status to promote her causes. Good for her; so would I in her position (however, I would choose to endorse different causes!). Public figures have a reduced expectation of privacy; this is well-established in case law. Along with the publicity and fame comes scruitny and accountability.
If this court decision stands, consider the slippery slope ahead for the Constitution. If a beauty queen can get this type of injunctive relief, then surely a politician or government official or judge is entitled to it. Granted, the press delves a little too much into the private lives of our public figures. But when a politician takes a moral stand on, say, abortion, drugs, sex, or alcohol, he has to back that up with a track record consistent with his expressed philosophy.
If it turns out that Sen. X smoked pot, got blasted at frat parties, trolled for hookers, or paid for his mistress's abortion, it calls into question any moral position he might take on those issues.
I hope Mr. Max appeals this court ruling; I have no doubt that it will be overturned on appeal, at some level. It doesn't even pass the "smell test", in my layman's opinion.
Shame on that judge and shame on Miss Vermont -- either own up to your sins (if you believe they are sins) or get off your high horse. You can't have it both ways.
Actually, if you believe the folks at the US Treasury and the Secret Service, counterfeiting *is* a major problem. The amount of fake currency produced each year is on the order of tens of billions of dollar. Granted, there are trillions of dollars worth of cash in float at any given time... however, every fake dollar out there does "devalue" the others and hampers the government's ability to regulate the money supply.
Apparently, some countries actively float counterfeit dollars in an attempt to destabalize or otherwise harm the US economy. While, year over year, their contribution is probably in the noise, I suppose it could build up over time.
Your overall point, IMHO, is well-taken, however: changing the money is rather futile, since the older bill patterns will be legal tender for many more decades, if not centuries. Sure, the changes make it slightly harder to pull this off in, say, 30 years, but, overall, the money could be better spent (or even better, not spent) on other things.
Then again, if you're the agency who prints money, perhaps you don't worry too much about how much money you spend. >:-)
Yes, $2 bills are still produced, are in circulation, and are legal tender. They are apparently very popular at race tracks and a few other obscure locations. They're kind of neat -- the artwork on the back side is pretty.
If you want one, a good place to get one is at your local bank. They usually have a couple floating around.
Cashiers hate them because there isn't a slot in the money drawer for them. Also, a lot of people don't even know they exist, so they'll think you're trying to pass forged money.
So, are there encryption algorithms out there where the keys are destroyed or become useless after one transaction or a (small) period of time? That might solve the problem of handing over the keys. Seems like you could exchange messages with something like RSA where you and your cohort generate new key pairs, exchange public keys, encrpyt your message, transmit the message, decrypt it, and then erase the keys. Then, if later, they want to read your message, you *can't* give them the key, because you don't have it anymore.
Of course there are truly "unbreakable" ciphers out there, like one-time pads. The bottom line is, the government can pass as many laws as it wants, but sufficiently-motivated bad guys will still be able to evade. All the laws really do is hurt *our* (read: the good guys') freedom.
>> Isn't our privacy guaranteed within the constitution preventing actions anywhere near this?
Sadly, no. We're basically one Supreme Court ruling away from losing substancial liberties -- free speech, free assembly, privacy in our homes and bedrooms, free communication... not to mention second amendment rights, abortion, etc... Be afraid... and for God's sake, don't vote Republican.
Just wait until some petite functionaire in the Federal Government thinks that, for some reason, you're a terrorist (I mean the generic "you", not you in particular). Do you really want to make it any easier for them to tear your life apart?
Remember that law enforcement agencies are significantly motivated by *politics* -- which may or may not be what's in the best interests of national security, personal liberty, or justice. Today it's Arab terrorists they're targeting. But, perhaps if the recording industry pumps some more money into congress, they'll start locking up college kids for duping Metallica songs.
Locking up real, bone-fide terrorists is fine by me -- indeed, I encourage and support it. But giving some beaurocrat with a hair up his ass more power to invade my privacy is not the way to do it.
Looks like just another opportunity to have our rights violated. I'm sure the Department of Homeland Insecurity is thrilled about this. Is this what Cisco means by "Empowering the Internet Generation"?
Excellent point -- even if she managed to curtail Doubleclick's evil activities, their fundamental purpose is still evil, i.e., tracking one's web usage, clicks on banner adds, and so forth. Whether or not they collect specific "Personal" information, e.g., name, rank, serial number, etc., if they are using my web activity for their benefit without my knowledge or consent, that's bad and anyone associated with these activities should be considered unfit for the position in question.
You see, fellow geeks, the best way to ensure privacy and security is to collect as much information about as many people as possible. That way, the government has all your vital information, and can keep it safe for you.
... Off to clear my cookie cache before Big Brother uploads it to some database...
Yeah. Right.
This is the dumbest thing I have seen in a while from the Shrub administration, and that says a lot. Bush seems to have a real nack for grabbinb up the facists and losers out there and making them important figureheads in his administration. Then again, there's that old saying about birds of a feather... perhaps that should be revised to vultures...
All Microsoft-bashing aside, and with all due respect, this donor's idea is novel but misguided.
While I think it would be good for undergrads to be exposed to non-Microsoft software and operating systems, most students *need* to become facile with products such as Word, Excel, Powerpoint, and Windows OS in general. These are skills that many, if not most employers look for and/or require.
I, myself, am what most people would call a UNIX geek -- probably not a hacker by most standards, but I'm generally at home on Linux, Solaris, or FreeBSD, to name a few. For most of my daily work, I use one UNIX or another. On the other hand, when it comes to email, word processing, generating presentations, pretty graphs for management, and the like, I turn to my Windows PC to get the job done; yes, I could use OpenOffice and Emacs and so forth to accomplish the same functions, but my coworkers all use Word and Excel and Powerpoint, so I need to be compatible. Moreover, having tried it both ways, I find the Microsoft approach faster and easier than using the UNIX equivalents.
From a more general perspective, who's going to hire a writer (tech write, journalist, etc.) who doesn't know Word and can't use Windows? Look at job listings, in or out of the computer industry, and you'll find that knowing Microsoft's products is a prerequisite for the vast majority of the positions (where such knowledge would be relavent -- carpenters don't usually need to know Word!).
I think that forcing students to use non-Microsoft products for *some* of their work would be a good thing -- particularly if those non-Microsoft products run on Linux or another UNIX. It broadens their perspective, build confidence in their ability to learn and master another operating envoronment, and I think would generally enhance their educational experience. That being said, it seems clear to me that forcing them to use *all* non-Microsoft products would be bad for them in the long run.
If this donor really cares about the students whom he hopes to help with this money, he should rethink the parameters of his donation and, frankly, get real. Yes, Microsoft is rather evil, but they're also very successful -- IMHO, much of that success derives from the fact that their products generally enhance one's productivity and one's ability to communicate and work with others. I wish there were another widely-used alternative, but there isn't, not right now, and it's short-sighted to force folks to behave otherwise.
>>IMHO, it's way too slow compared to the missiles,
:)
>> and will not be able to scramble fast enough."
It may be too slow to deploy a 747 as a defense against an inbound ICBM, but this might be useful to defend the 747 *itself* from an anti-aircraft missile. I've heard talk about arming commercial planes with chaff's and/or flares to defend against shoulder-launched surface-to-air missiles; the cost would be roughly $3 million per plane. Perhaps a laser system could be more cost-effective? It's certainly a whole lot cooler
I seem to remember the Federal Government passing a couple laws against writing and distributing computer viruses. While this worm may not be a "destructive" virus, it certainly is a virus. As such, IMHO, it would fall under the domain of this law (i.e., unauthorized access to someone else's computer) and RIAA could be prosecuted under that law -- as well they should.
Of course, the Dept. of Justice being the political, beaurocratic, corrupt entity that it is, I doubt that charges would be filed against RIAA for this.
Woah, I think I see Big Brother coming, I need to run....
The last thing we need in this business is more government "oversight" or regulation.
Professionals, such as lawyers, doctors, plumbers, electricians, auto mechanics, barbers, etc. are required to be licensed, and in most cases, this is a good thing. They work in fields where mistakes can lead to wrongful convictions, serious injury, death, major property damage, and the like.
OTOH, there are many fields where it is legal to do certain things, particular maintenence, with no license at all. I don't have to have a license to repair your deck or fix your toilet; granted, if I screw it up and your deck isn't up to code or your toilet floods your living room, you don't have many means of redress, other than suing me personally.
The problem is that the work done in these fields is not necessarily analagous to the work done by PC repair techs. Frankly, fixing a broken system is usually not rocket science; doing so with the minimal amount of work and data loss is something of an art, but most tech support guys fall back to the usual, reformat, reboot, and reinstall method if all else fails.
I don't think the government should be telling me whom I can and cannot pay to fix my computer (in my case, I fix the bloody thing myself), or my car for that matter. If I want to take it to my sister-in-law's best friend's teenage son and give him $20 to get XP working, that's my business. And if I want to get the thing fixed by someone who actually knows what the hell he's doing, and, perhaps, has all the mumble-mumble certifications to prove it, that's also my option.
Other than freedom of choice (in who fixes my PC), the other effect of regulation would be to price or lock out uncertified individuals, such as myself, from the market. Granted, I like my job as a software engineer. But if the economy continues down the crapper and I lose my job, it wouldn't be below my dignity to make some extra bread fixing computers. My 15 years+ of PC hardware and software knowledge certainly is worth something to someone. I shouldn't have to go blow several thousand dollars getting A+ and Microsloth Certified Ignoramious certificates to get a job.
I've worked with many engineers who had all those fancy certifications and many who did not. From what I can tell, they don't make a lick of difference. The only thing that really counts is knowledge (however it's acquired) and experience (and a healthy dose of intuition and luck). The worst thing is someone who can talk the talk and has the cert's but is fundamentally incompetent. Frankly, if I'm interviewing two guys, and one has an MSCE and the other claims several years of administering a Windows NT/2000 network, I'll probably consider them equally and ask them the same questions. I actually have more respect for the guy who's been debugging problems for the last couple years than someone who just passed some exam.
Finally, perhaps as a coup-de-gras of sorts, consider all those Cisco Certifications. As much as Cisco hypes them, you'd think that lots of Cisco employees would have them. Well, I used to work there, and guess what? They don't. Generally, the engineers there are quite unimpressed by anything other than a CCIE (of which there are only a couple thousand in the whole world). It's not about how many tests you can pass, it's about what you've actually done and what you can do.
The cert classes are a nice way to fill in some gaps in your existing knowledge or to get a jumpstart on a new technology, but, by and large, they don't mean dick.