Well, I wish I could tell you what would work. It's strange, but our university opts for commercial apps every single time.
We use a tool (which might sound familiar) called WebCT, which is commercial - it provides notes & discussion boards for every subject a student takes. Actually though, the lecturers have to use it for the students to get any benefit, and many don't! It's a shame, and so I cannot imagine most lecturers taking their time to master your system (however appealing it might be).
It's amazing, we even use Outlook Exchange servers, when there are so many other excellent O/S alternatives.
In a way, it seems that the bureaucracies prefer commercial stuff.
So my bit of pessimism is that it will take a lot of arm twisting to get people to use educational software:(. What a bummer.
However, it sounds very interesting, so you should please push forward! Good luck!
No, I cannot agree with you at all that C++ is broken.
It is "complicated" due to its expressiveness. The STL is generally well designed (and the folks at Boost are continually improving upon it).
It is popular because its templates allow generation of high quality code that matches C for speed, but is light years beyond in type checking (provided that you tell your compiler to do it). It's also popular because it's OO works well - it's a common misconception to cite C++'s lack of a single root object hierarchy as a flaw - Bjarne Stroustrup gives some compelling reasons for C++'s lack of it (in his FAQ - can't remember the URL).
I do admit that I miss anonymous classes and functions in C++, and I often find it easier to write a for loop than to use something like foreach (which takes a start and end iterator and a function to apply) simply because writing a function is a pain if you just want to print names in a list!
The final reason for C++'s success is that it is not bound to a particular vendor, and this is a major deficiency of C#. I'm not blasting M$ here - this is true for any vendor.
You make a good point. I've become very disenchanted with./ (don't get me wrong, I love this place) since there are simply so many people who want to say something just for the sake of doing it (myself included).
It reminds me of cafe debating - the debates are about as well grounded (which is often not the case) as the coffee, and need just as much sugar to go down (I'm talking low budget cafes).
Maybe people who post interesting stuff consistenly, should automatically receive a higher mod, so one would not have to peruse the potential flamebait & troll posts.
Hey, this is off-topic, but we must address this problem soon, since./ is growing very quickly indeed.
Well, whether or not this will take off on a large scale, remains to be seen. It would be great if it did, and I really think that this would be "true" consumerism - the consumers really get what they want (although it might take some time to convince a whole lot of people that this is what they want:)).
To get back to the topic, moves such as these (specialized equipment to linux boxes) are indicative of the money that gets wasted on building proprietary hardware (and software). This at least, should help to convince those who need convincing, that money could be better spent elsewhere.
Now we just need to realise that paying a CEO $100 Mil a year is bad for everyone (except him, but who cares?), and the total savings would make technology more affordable, and society at large more productive and pleasant.
What a shitty slur. None of the Southern African countries (Namibia, Botswana, Zimbabwe, Mocambique, South Africa, Lesotho, Swaziland) have a history of cannibalism.
Such a condescending attitude reaffirms old stereotypes, and doesn't help reconciliation.
Oh yeah, I guess you don't even know that a hell of a lot of music videos are shot in Cape Town, and that a South African advertising company designed MTV's newest campaign.
Lastly, since the South African government is *finally* representative of the citizens, I doubt that they will just allow our telecoms companies to become rich at the expense of the poor (and there already is legislation regarding cheap service provision for poor people).
This is excellent. I live in South Africa, and there is a massive gulf between the poor and the few rich - this will help to connect all the poor people, and especially the ones in rural areas.
What makes me the happiest of all, is that the system runs Linux, and this is great in the light of the fact that the South African government has articulated its commitment to open source software (they have indicated that they may replace several government systems with Linux boxes! so I hope that it happenes)
I agree with most of what you said, except for Java & Object databases - it seems to have carved a niche (albeit a slow stack based one) for itself. I don't know why people haven't looked into methods such as Semantic Dictionary Encoding, which allows for very fast JIT compilation, and it is very efficient with storage space.
Object databases also already have a niche (I recall some astronomy lab using them), and I'm sure they'll catch on once we have a standard language (like SQL), since each vendor seems to have it's own idea. However, I did an entire project in an object DB called Jasmine, and it was great.
As for Hungarian notation - they tried in one CS class to teach us to use it. It only obfuscated our code.
Some other fads:
The language and environment Oberon from Wirth (creator of Pascal), which just is far too simple to be useful for most programming tasks.
Purely functional programming - using C++ methods to emulate FP is more robust, since you can still do object oriented programming.
I don't know if I'm too keen to rent a little bike with an internet connection. I'd much rather have wireless connection points scattered over the festival terrain which would allow a PDA to connect - that way, I can even walk.
One day, when technology is dirt cheap (if that ever happens), then I wouldn't mind having a little computer loaded on a little bike like that.
On the other hand, it could be a euphemism for "I can rig the software up to make it easier for companies to track down pirates". However, let's hope this is not the case.
Hopefully he's just trying to protect himself. The legal systems are making it far too easy to prosecute developers who have no control over the uses of their software. Sure, we know what can happen over P2P networks, but then the same could be said about the net in principle.
--"External World Viewing Interface" - the day when M$ patented the word "window"
My essential problem with formats such as WMA, is that I don't get the freedom to do with my property (albeit digital property) as I please.
Regardless of what kind of encryption trickery anyone can come up with, someone will either a) break it (DVD), or b) copy it to another format.
So, I think people should sell music online, using formats like MP3 and OGG.
Sure, there will always be pirates, but I think that a fair amount of people would want to legally pay for music, especially if they know that the artists, and not some fat and overpaid record company executive, would reap the benefits, and so be encouraged to produce more music.
I really hate people who think up half baked quotes, and then attach them to their postings as "anon" - Anon
Your critique is quite one-sided, if I may say so. Remember that not all people are like us (knowledgeable folks).
There are many people who have other occupations and interests, and they have no choice but to use computers, since these days, one cannot get by without them. Why should they be compelled to learn more when they want to do other things with their lives?
Saying that "they will just have to learn" is unfair, and can only be substantiated if you are as willing to learn about their occupations. This, I would argue, would be more than challenging when we talk about, for example, neuro-surgery. Can you imagine a world where we all would have to be well versed with the techniques of brain surgery in order to make it through our days? Probably not, yet this is what it feels like to many people who have to use computers, and I suggest that software should be made as painless as possible, so they can live their lives as they choose.
Linux is wonderful, and so also most other open source projects. I love it, and most probably you too, if you are reading this.
It is clear though that nothing really gets done to make open source software "user proof". Take for example gcombust - it works well as cd-writing software, but the interface is daunting to say the least.
Not that one should complain, since the software is for free. Perhaps there should be more people dedicated to (to abuse the English language slightly:)) "user-friendlifying" open source software.
What remains true, is that the open source movement does not owe anyone anything, but it certainly has the potential to offer amazing software (in terms of interfaces), if it can escape from the "0.x syndrome" (ie. a lot of open source software never develops beyond version 0.x, since the developers lose interest or don't have the necessary time etc.)
I could not help seeing quite a few postings about how "boring" algebra is. Algebra is boring in proportion to how boring the person is who is teaching it. It IS important, and it IS required for all sorts of mathematical subjects later on.
For anyone who has object orientation sussed out, think about containers... what are they? They are (abstract) algebraic structures with certain operations that can be performed on them. You can only get a deeper understanding once you know algebra!
This might seem like a trivial example, but there are many similar examples where a sound mathematical basis helps considerably in software design (because you can approach the problems differently)
Oh and of course I have not even started on the importance of math in engineering (but I am not an engineer, so I'll leave it at that).
Moral of the story - the moment that the standard of mathematics drops, the entire IT industry will feel the blow of ineptitude.
Sun should not be congratulated, I think. Linux does not need OpenOffice, and I really do not care if anyone thinks that this is a naive statement.
For how long should we have to buckle for money hungry monolithic companies, who use us as free labour? I honestly think that Sun should be ashamed and this point should be driven to the bone.
Perhaps the best thing in the world would be if a parallel project could be started that would provide a truly free office environment (though I am aware that this would take a very long time indeed to show any progress)
It will only be a matter of time before somebody finds a flaw in the paper. I suppose I will give it a bash.
First of all, to the best of my knowledge, none of the prime algorithms are NP-complete, so even showing that one of them runs in polynomial time will still not answer the question of whether P = NP.
Second, as some other readers have pointed out, this will probably not make a dent in the integrity of crypto systems, since the factoring problem becomes no easier. Take RSA for example. We know that the messages are composite numbers, but I bet you'll keep your computer more than busy for the next few eons trying to factor a 1024 bit composite.
There is a brilliant probabilistic algorithm (due to Rabin and I think Miller) for checking primeness which allows one to arbitrarily choose the likelihood of an error.
So anyways, don't get to excited at the prospect of the fall of the Western world's security, because if anyone posed such a threat, it would be in the interest of many countries to have such a person eliminated.
The thing is that these ridiculous discounts do not seem to exist in countries like South Africa (at least I haven't seen it yet).
Our currency is quite weak (+/- R10 to a dollar) and therefore everything outside of South Africa is very pricey for us. For my studies, I require a library called LEDA, but the new versions are not free for academic use. The student license is $99 (=R999 !!!!!!!) for a year. I cannot afford this and will not pay it (and I am now stuck with an old version).
Unless ALL companies have a policy of providing software for such discounts (including Adobe, Autodesk etc) then people will keep on pirating.
Fact is, that these pirates are doing the companies a favour, because if people get to know these products, they will use them when they start working and at least in South Africa, it is almost impossible for a company to pirate software.
Slashdot Mirror
Well, I wish I could tell you what would work. It's strange, but our university opts for commercial apps every single time.
We use a tool (which might sound familiar) called WebCT, which is commercial - it provides notes & discussion boards for every subject a student takes. Actually though, the lecturers have to use it for the students to get any benefit, and many don't! It's a shame, and so I cannot imagine most lecturers taking their time to master your system (however appealing it might be).
It's amazing, we even use Outlook Exchange servers, when there are so many other excellent O/S alternatives.
In a way, it seems that the bureaucracies prefer commercial stuff.
So my bit of pessimism is that it will take a lot of arm twisting to get people to use educational software :(. What a bummer.
However, it sounds very interesting, so you should please push forward! Good luck!
No, I cannot agree with you at all that C++ is broken.
It is "complicated" due to its expressiveness. The STL is generally well designed (and the folks at Boost are continually improving upon it).
It is popular because its templates allow generation of high quality code that matches C for speed, but is light years beyond in type checking (provided that you tell your compiler to do it). It's also popular because it's OO works well - it's a common misconception to cite C++'s lack of a single root object hierarchy as a flaw - Bjarne Stroustrup gives some compelling reasons for C++'s lack of it (in his FAQ - can't remember the URL).
I do admit that I miss anonymous classes and functions in C++, and I often find it easier to write a for loop than to use something like foreach (which takes a start and end iterator and a function to apply) simply because writing a function is a pain if you just want to print names in a list!
The final reason for C++'s success is that it is not bound to a particular vendor, and this is a major deficiency of C#. I'm not blasting M$ here - this is true for any vendor.
You make a good point. I've become very disenchanted with ./ (don't get me wrong, I love this place) since there are simply so many people who want to say something just for the sake of doing it (myself included).
It reminds me of cafe debating - the debates are about as well grounded (which is often not the case) as the coffee, and need just as much sugar to go down (I'm talking low budget cafes).
Maybe people who post interesting stuff consistenly, should automatically receive a higher mod, so one would not have to peruse the potential flamebait & troll posts.
Hey, this is off-topic, but we must address this problem soon, since ./ is growing very quickly indeed.
Well, whether or not this will take off on a large scale, remains to be seen. It would be great if it did, and I really think that this would be "true" consumerism - the consumers really get what they want (although it might take some time to convince a whole lot of people that this is what they want :)).
To get back to the topic, moves such as these (specialized equipment to linux boxes) are indicative of the money that gets wasted on building proprietary hardware (and software). This at least, should help to convince those who need convincing, that money could be better spent elsewhere.
Now we just need to realise that paying a CEO $100 Mil a year is bad for everyone (except him, but who cares?), and the total savings would make technology more affordable, and society at large more productive and pleasant.
What a shitty slur. None of the Southern African countries (Namibia, Botswana, Zimbabwe, Mocambique, South Africa, Lesotho, Swaziland) have a history of cannibalism.
Such a condescending attitude reaffirms old stereotypes, and doesn't help reconciliation.
Oh yeah, I guess you don't even know that a hell of a lot of music videos are shot in Cape Town, and that a South African advertising company designed MTV's newest campaign.
Lastly, since the South African government is *finally* representative of the citizens, I doubt that they will just allow our telecoms companies to become rich at the expense of the poor (and there already is legislation regarding cheap service provision for poor people).
This is excellent. I live in South Africa, and there is a massive gulf between the poor and the few rich - this will help to connect all the poor people, and especially the ones in rural areas.
What makes me the happiest of all, is that the system runs Linux, and this is great in the light of the fact that the South African government has articulated its commitment to open source software (they have indicated that they may replace several government systems with Linux boxes! so I hope that it happenes)
It just shows what a bit of ingenuity can do.
I agree with most of what you said, except for Java & Object databases - it seems to have carved a niche (albeit a slow stack based one) for itself. I don't know why people haven't looked into methods such as Semantic Dictionary Encoding, which allows for very fast JIT compilation, and it is very efficient with storage space.
Object databases also already have a niche (I recall some astronomy lab using them), and I'm sure they'll catch on once we have a standard language (like SQL), since each vendor seems to have it's own idea. However, I did an entire project in an object DB called Jasmine, and it was great.
As for Hungarian notation - they tried in one CS class to teach us to use it. It only obfuscated our code.
Some other fads:
I don't know if I'm too keen to rent a little bike with an internet connection. I'd much rather have wireless connection points scattered over the festival terrain which would allow a PDA to connect - that way, I can even walk.
One day, when technology is dirt cheap (if that ever happens), then I wouldn't mind having a little computer loaded on a little bike like that.
Until then, I first need personal connectivity
Save the whales! - collect the whole set
On the other hand, it could be a euphemism for "I can rig the software up to make it easier for companies to track down pirates". However, let's hope this is not the case.
Hopefully he's just trying to protect himself. The legal systems are making it far too easy to prosecute developers who have no control over the uses of their software. Sure, we know what can happen over P2P networks, but then the same could be said about the net in principle.
--"External World Viewing Interface" - the day when M$ patented the word "window"
Don't give this idea to SCO - by the magical logic of McBride, your computer may soon belong to SCO!
We have detected some of our IP being pinged off of your PC, therefore it now belongs to us!!! MWuhahahaha.
I hate people who make up stupid quotes and add them to their own works as "anon" - anon
My essential problem with formats such as WMA, is that I don't get the freedom to do with my property (albeit digital property) as I please.
Regardless of what kind of encryption trickery anyone can come up with, someone will either a) break it (DVD), or b) copy it to another format.
So, I think people should sell music online, using formats like MP3 and OGG.
Sure, there will always be pirates, but I think that a fair amount of people would want to legally pay for music, especially if they know that the artists, and not some fat and overpaid record company executive, would reap the benefits, and so be encouraged to produce more music.
I really hate people who think up half baked quotes, and then attach them to their postings as "anon" - Anon
Your critique is quite one-sided, if I may say so. Remember that not all people are like us (knowledgeable folks).
There are many people who have other occupations and interests, and they have no choice but to use computers, since these days, one cannot get by without them. Why should they be compelled to learn more when they want to do other things with their lives?
Saying that "they will just have to learn" is unfair, and can only be substantiated if you are as willing to learn about their occupations. This, I would argue, would be more than challenging when we talk about, for example, neuro-surgery. Can you imagine a world where we all would have to be well versed with the techniques of brain surgery in order to make it through our days? Probably not, yet this is what it feels like to many people who have to use computers, and I suggest that software should be made as painless as possible, so they can live their lives as they choose.
Linux is wonderful, and so also most other open source projects. I love it, and most probably you too, if you are reading this.
It is clear though that nothing really gets done to make open source software "user proof". Take for example gcombust - it works well as cd-writing software, but the interface is daunting to say the least.
Not that one should complain, since the software is for free. Perhaps there should be more people dedicated to (to abuse the English language slightly :)) "user-friendlifying" open source software.
What remains true, is that the open source movement does not owe anyone anything, but it certainly has the potential to offer amazing software (in terms of interfaces), if it can escape from the "0.x syndrome" (ie. a lot of open source software never develops beyond version 0.x, since the developers lose interest or don't have the necessary time etc.)
I could not help seeing quite a few postings about how "boring" algebra is. Algebra is boring in proportion to how boring the person is who is teaching it. It IS important, and it IS required for all sorts of mathematical subjects later on.
For anyone who has object orientation sussed out, think about containers... what are they? They are (abstract) algebraic structures with certain operations that can be performed on them. You can only get a deeper understanding once you know algebra!
This might seem like a trivial example, but there are many similar examples where a sound mathematical basis helps considerably in software design (because you can approach the problems differently)
Oh and of course I have not even started on the importance of math in engineering (but I am not an engineer, so I'll leave it at that).
Moral of the story - the moment that the standard of mathematics drops, the entire IT industry will feel the blow of ineptitude.
Sun should not be congratulated, I think. Linux does not need OpenOffice, and I really do not care if anyone thinks that this is a naive statement.
For how long should we have to buckle for money hungry monolithic companies, who use us as free labour? I honestly think that Sun should be ashamed and this point should be driven to the bone.
Perhaps the best thing in the world would be if a parallel project could be started that would provide a truly free office environment (though I am aware that this would take a very long time indeed to show any progress)
It will only be a matter of time before somebody finds a flaw in the paper. I suppose I will give it a bash.
First of all, to the best of my knowledge, none of the prime algorithms are NP-complete, so even showing that one of them runs in polynomial time will still not answer the question of whether P = NP.
Second, as some other readers have pointed out, this will probably not make a dent in the integrity of crypto systems, since the factoring problem becomes no easier. Take RSA for example. We know that the messages are composite numbers, but I bet you'll keep your computer more than busy for the next few eons trying to factor a 1024 bit composite.
There is a brilliant probabilistic algorithm (due to Rabin and I think Miller) for checking primeness which allows one to arbitrarily choose the likelihood of an error.
So anyways, don't get to excited at the prospect of the fall of the Western world's security, because if anyone posed such a threat, it would be in the interest of many countries to have such a person eliminated.
The thing is that these ridiculous discounts do not seem to exist in countries like South Africa (at least I haven't seen it yet). Our currency is quite weak (+/- R10 to a dollar) and therefore everything outside of South Africa is very pricey for us. For my studies, I require a library called LEDA, but the new versions are not free for academic use. The student license is $99 (=R999 !!!!!!!) for a year. I cannot afford this and will not pay it (and I am now stuck with an old version). Unless ALL companies have a policy of providing software for such discounts (including Adobe, Autodesk etc) then people will keep on pirating. Fact is, that these pirates are doing the companies a favour, because if people get to know these products, they will use them when they start working and at least in South Africa, it is almost impossible for a company to pirate software.