And yet computers 30 years from now will still not be able to solve NP-complete problems in polynomial time. This will remain the single biggest obstacle to "artificial intelligence" until such time as we have asynchronous computers. Asynchronous computers will have a level of randomness, caused by varying quantum delays in transister gates throught the processor, resulting in computers being able to mimic true creativity.
Then, and only then, will computers stand a chance of solving NP-complete problems in polynomial time in a fashion similar to the way real intelligence can.
Oh yes, I forgot to mention. If you use Purify, then use it regularly. Set up ignore rules. After a few weeks, you'll find that you no longer get any false positives. Purify is a *very* good tool, and one I have used for years. If you think Purify is too difficult for your problem, then hire a programmer that knows how to use Purify. Purify is *tha bomb*.
"Heisenbugs", as you call them, are almost always the result of memory management bugs. Arrays boundaries are being overwritten, null pointers are being accessed, freed memory is being used, or some other memory is being misused. It's a very common problem.
Now, one answer to this problem is to use smart pointers and automatic garbage collection. That won't help array boundaries, but you can use an equivalent wrapper for arrays. It's not a bad practice to get into for large-scale C++ development.
Another solution, and one I have found to be *incredibly* useful, is to use a memory profiler. There are loads of memory profilers on the market today. Visual C++ has one included, the GNU Foundation has one, and loads of commercial companies offer profilers. Most of the commercial ones have nice functions, such as pretty (and useful) graphical displays and the ability to profile code that has already been compiled. I remember profiling Solaris (the OS itself) back in the early 90s, finding loads of memory leaks and memory management problems.
Even though I'm not a betting man, I would lay money that if you rid yourself of memory management problems, your code will no longer contain these "Heisenbugs".
I didn't mean to imply that Sun did own ebXML. However, they are one of the (I would say "The") dominant forces in the standardization process. The incorporation of SOAP into ebXML was done at Sun's request. Sun has played a bigger role, in terms of developers working on it, than any other vendor. But you are very right in saying that ebXML has support from a wide variety of vendors.
People. Please get a grip on your Microsoft bashing. Here's some point from a *user* of SOAP (and I'm not even using Microsoft'1 implementation).
-There are other versions of SOAP/WSDL/UDDI available. IBM has gratiously given their implementation to Apache. It looks to be the choice for open-source advocates. Sun has also announced they'll be supporting SOAP/WSDL/UDDI in the SunONE platform. Sun is also making ebXML compatible with SOAP, so that ebXML services can be called using SOAP, and vice-versa.
-IBM/Apache's implementation is interoperable with Microsoft's. Previous versions have had some major problems. But this is less a case of "embrace and extend", and more of a case of "this is new technology, and we haven't got the bugs worked out". I've seen IBM/Apache's and Microsoft's SOAP solutions call one another, from/to different languages. There are still a few quirks, but each release brings both Microsoft's and IBM/Apache's solution in greater compliance with the standard (yes, IBM's solution had some compliance problems, too!).
-Services are the next natural progression in software development. We've got from monolithic to client/server to 3-tier to n-tier develoment. The problem is that even with n-tier development, each tier relies upon the tiers next to it, in the form of a non-standard, programmer-developed API for the interface. Services free us from this, as they standardize the API between "tiers". And, by breaking down the "tier" concept, services can help bring component architecture to what was once a tier. It makes it easier to developed these components, and easier to assemble the components into an application. And it makes it easier to integrate components from third parties (such as -ack!- Hailstorm--but more importantly from small software vendors--I'm certainly not going to trust my sensitive info to Microsoft).
-XML-RPC is *not* SOAP. The only thing in common is that XML-RPC allows network programming using XML, as does SOAP. But SOAP packeges each network component into a service. This service can then be described in a standard way using WSDL (Web Services Description Language), so that programs can discover the API for a service and call the service automaticallly. Then, these services can be advertised using UDDI (Universal Description, Discovery and Integration), a sort of yellow pages for web services. XML-RPC provides RPC functionality, transferring data using XML.
-Web services do *not* have to use the Internet. This concept can work just as well on an Intranet. For large corporations, where there cannot be constant communication between the developers of services, using SOAP/WSDL/UDDI makes sense, as each development group then has a reliable and standard way of using services created by other groups.
-SOAP !=.NET..NET uses SOAP, but SOAP is not.NET. If it were, do you think IBM & Sun would be using SOAP?
Sorry for the long rant. I just hear way too many misconceptions. I get tired of it after a while.
Just use SOAP, WSDL, and UDDI locally. Part of Hailstorm is the definition of a service protocol, built around the OPEN standards of SOAP, WSDL, and UDDI (both IBM & Sun have said they will also support these, and IBM's SOAP solution already works with Microsoft's SOAP solution--cross-language and cross-platfor compatibility).
Nobody will force you to use Hailstorm's services. But the advantage of SOAP, WSDL, and UDDI is great. IBM realizes this. Sun realizes this. But slashdot's readers simply think that if Microsoft touches it, then it's implicitly bad. If you don't like Microsoft, just use IBM's implementation (they've given it over to Apache, in fact, so that it is truly open source).
Add accessibility to GNOME. Right now, GNOME does not work well if you cannot see, for instance. All sorts of things need to be done to help out. Furthermore, there are loads of research into accessibility for GUIs to use as reference material. This wouldn't affect the average Dick or Jane, but would have a tremendous impact on the vision-impaired. Let's make Linux the preferred platform for the disabled!
Great idea. However, the one about letting the user enter a username/password/IP combination is a little stupid. I mean, that kind of defeats the whole purpose.
You also want to make sure the username/password is sent over HTTPS.
Transformers are inherently inefficient. They lose something like (1-(sqrt(2)/2)) power (sorry, my EE classes were a *long* time ago). Big ones are almost exactly as efficient as small ones.
There is one place where a significant amount of power is lost that could be gained. That area is the transmission line. Electrical losses average out to be the same as the above figure. This power is, esentially, radiated back down the transmission line, and is eventually lost in the form of resistance (heat). Now, all that is needed is to simply impedance match your electrical devices to the transmission line. This can be accomplished using a simple LC circuit.
Of course, every new device you plug in will change the impedance of the transmission line. So the device will have to be able to adapt dynamically.
If you can build a device that monitors the impedance of the power line, then impedance matches it with the electrical device, you'll be rich. Very rich. That is, assuming you can market & sell the damn thing.
Hmm...I should have added that tuition from students accounted for something like 1.5% of Rice's annual budget. Again, my figures are a little dated, but the endowment accounts for about 80% of the budget. Most of the remainder comes from private grants (from corporations, non-profit, and not-for-profit organizations), while the rest comes from government research programs, such as NIH and NSF.
The NIH and the NSF account for 73% of government research spending (source: The Economist). The US government spends about $28 billion in research. As a nation with the largest economy (about 25% of the world GDP is from the US), it makes sense that the US government is also the largest research spender. Compare spending per capita, or spending per GDP, and you might get a different picture, however.
You misinterpret my statements. By private, I mean that the university does not received government money for operation. Yes, the government does give these universities money through the form of grants from groups like the NIH and the NSF, but these are for specific research programs, not for general operation.
Private universities (and the public universities in the US) get most of their funding from their endowments. For instance, at my alma matter, Rice University, most (greater than 80%) of the annual budget (last year, $286 million for a campus with 2600 undergraduate and 1400 graduate students) comes from the endowment ($3.37 billion - yes, close to $1 million per student). The situation is similar at other "prestigeous [sic] (technical) private universities", such as Stanford, Cal Tech, MIT, Yale, Harvard, and Princeton.
Now, if you read my statements, I say that our private universy system has a) developed strong partnerships with industry (it has, far more so than in Europe), b) why there are private universities in the first place (Europe doesn't have very many), and c) why the US university system has significantly larger resources at its disposal (annual budgets per student at US universities eclipse those of European universities, despite European governments spending more money per student than US universities). Point c) is not causal from point a); instead, point c) is causal from an eduacation system that is not free, and thus have large endowments given by almumni. Sorry if I did not make that clear before. Points a) through c) were separate points, causal from having a non-free education system.
In fact, even our public universities have large endowments. For instance, University of Texas at Austin had (my data are dated by now--from ~1990) the largest endowment of any university in the world, followed closely by Yale. Now, UT is a public university. Why would they have a large endowment? Because alumni give money to the university to help subsidize the education for future generations. The for-pay university system in the US has led to the US university system (both public and private) having enormous resources at their disposal.
The problem is.NET is not the glue. IL is. Or, if you want to really stretch it, SOAP is..NET includes these technologies. But these technologies are *not*.NET. Furthermore, the goals of Perl aren't to become this said "perfect glue". Quite the contrary. Perl intends to be able to used as another language as part of someone else's "perfect glue" (namely, IL and JVM).
Hmm. Interesting, overall. But I do have a few things to say.
As for your bad ideas, I don't think MIT is worried that students will sheat on exams. This is a voluntary action, and any tests that professors intend to reuse will likely not be posted.
Also, I don't see the negative of "students can skip more classes referring to the web and how they already 'learned' [sic] something." I mean, this is a positive for students that are unable to make classes. And I don't know for certain about MIT in specific, but most universities at this level don't require attendance for classes.
The goal of this program isn't to provide an MIT-caliber education for free, either. As such, "learning something with the assistance of a vocal teacher [sic] is not the same as reading it" is not really a negative. It's well understood.
Now, as for governments providing "highly reduced incentives [sic]", I think the author must remember that MIT is a private institution. Now, the government might want to encourage businesses to do nice things to MIT in exchange for this. But this is not the role of the US government, at least not with private universities.
As for "in the U.S. your [sic] supposed to be entitled to a free education", this simply does not apply to university. This, in fact, is patently false. This, of course, is the reason why the US university system has developed strong partnerships with industry, why there are private universities, and why the US university system has significantly larger resources at its disposal than other nations' systems.
But, all said, it's a Good Thing[tm]. MIT isn't going to get extra money for this material by keeping it private (at least, not a significant amount), so opening it up is the Right Thing[tm].
Oh, and I certainly hope all those children of welfare families go out and learn from these texts. Realistically, however, I don't think they will. I will, though.
You are misrepresenting.NET here. SOAP is an XML-based distributed programming protocol that is also cross-language compatible. It is more analogous to DCOM, CORBA, EJB, or RMI. The power and beauty of SOAP is that it will be fully supported by Sun ONE, IBM, and Microsoft.NET. And, of course, it's very easy to use.
Intermediate Language (IL) is what provides the COM-like capabilities to extend classes from one language to another. The two are very distinct. IL does not require a roundtrip conversion to XML. IL is more analogous to Java Bytecodes, except that there will be multiple languages mapped to IL. IL will require "managed" subsets of languages like Visual Basic, Visual C++, and Perl.
As for this comment:
Hmmmm. Now what's that? If the semantic model is powerful enough (i.e. provides enough support to implement different programming language concepts on top of it), that's.net, but better.
I was already worried that a large part of the open source community would ignore.net, but it seems that they're about to accidentally develop an alternative that's even better. I seriously hope the Perl developers realize this possibility:-)
I believe you have this 180 degrees backwards. The idea for the semantic model isn't so that other languages can be mapped to Perl. It's so that Perl can be mapped to other languages (namely, Java Bytecodes and.NET's IL). I'm not really sure what the benefit would be of mapping other languages to Perl, when so much effort is being placed on optimizing the runtime environments for Java and.NET. I think Larry's got the right idea.
Sorry for the poor english. Shoulda hit "preview". But I meant to say "...there aren't any local broadcasts of MLB games.", and, "...many people live in locations different than their baseball teams".
And sorry for being pedantic. I would prefer that the quality of English for slashdot posts improve, and I've got to start at home. I'll preview next time...
1) People might want to listen to games that aren't broadcasted locally. I live in Scotland (I'm American). Oddly enough, there aren't any locally broadcast MLB games. Now cricket is another matter. But, even in the States, many people live in a location different than "their" baseball team.
2) The article makes no mention of whether or not they will require a registered version of real-audio. Your comment is a non-sequitor that is likely caused by blair1q's non-sequitor in the slashdot post.
Besides, is $9.99 really that much money? I mean, there are 162 games per team per year. There's no mention whether that fee will cover all teams or just one team, but in either case, this is not a lot of money for a baseball enthusiast. And, if you don't like paying, you can still listen for free on your existing radio.
Your point is well taken. However, it is also wrong. Math is a branch of physics, not the other way around. Math was developed to describe natural phenomena. Calculus was developed to describe the movement of the planets and the acceleration due to gravity. Trigonometry was developed to describe triangles & circles. Linear algebra has its roots in describing cross-sections of cones.
As for the term "philosophy", this dates back to Ancient Greece, when all studies were considered "philosphy". It has more to do with a different meaning of philosophy--that is, the pursuit of learning. This is quite different than the modern interpretation of philosophy, where people ruminate about abstract concepts to discover absolutes.
But, yes, your point is very valid. It is quite absurd to take all of this topics back to their roots.
Yep. I run Tomcat 3.2 (yes, that is the current version, and yes, Tomcat 3.1 was still about 1/3 as fast as JRun & Resin) on my website, where all pages are dynamically generated. Mainly because I'm too cheap to buy JRun or Resin (Resin, btw, is free for personal use).
But JRun & Resin both outperform Tomcat 3.1 & 3.2. But Tomcat 4.0 is supposedly a lot better. I simply can't rely upon it until the development is a little further along.
And, I can't say enough good things about JSP tags. They are the "right" way to do dynamic web authoring.
So you compile your app server with gcj? OK. So I suppose you need an open-source app server. Try JBoss, or Enhydra. Ooops. They both depend upon libraries that gcj doesn't support.
OK. Let's say you get past that hurdle. So now you want to rework the servlet framework so that they are compatible with.so libraries. Hmmm. Why you're at it, why don't you simply rewrite an HTTP server that loads these mythical.so servlets? Your suggestion is ridiculous.
Apps can't tell if they're running natively vs. running in a VM. But the servlet spec depends upon a dynamic class loader. And, lo and behold! gcj doesn't support that (a dynamic class loader is different than a shared archive, I'm afraid).
Yes, but using gcj eliminates all of the benefits of JSPs. Namely, you loose the benefit of having a common JVM across multiple calls to the code. This means you can't pool objects (JSP does this automatically) or pool resources, such as database connections (DB pooling comes for "free" with J2EE implementations, such as the free one from JBoss).
All told, if you pick a decent JSP/Servlet engine (JRun or Resin perform about 3x better than Tomcat), you'll find the JSPs run just a hair (about 10%) slower than the fastest dynamic page systems, mod_perl & mod_php. With the object oriented benefits of Java, and the ability to separate presentation logic from business logic using JSP tag libraries, JSP/Servlet engines are an excellent choice.
By the way, I wouldn't discount ASP+, either. While ASP has a lot of problems, ASP+ has learned from a lot of previous mistakes, as well as from all the benefits achieved from JSP/Servlets. Of course, it will tie you in to MS solutions (bad! bad!), but it's a very good piece of technology, none the less.
Get over it, man. This guy is a teacher. His job is to teach, not to be an expert at all things linux. And, from the sounds of all the people that were clueless about x0rfbserver, I'd have to say that this topic will help a lot more people than just the teacher.
Besides, a better question to ask slashdot would be, "How do I UNinstall BIND?" After all, BIND has had a long history of security-related bugs.
x0rfbserver does, though. Check the contrib section of VNC's web page. It's fully compatible with VNC (which uses the RFB protocol--the name stands for X display 0 RFB server). It works like a charm, and has additional capabilities for scripting VNC events, too.
Just a minor clarification. Switzerland is not a voting member of the UN. They enjoy status as an observer nation. This is the same as the Holy See and Palestine, if my memory serves correct.
Use goobegone, or something like that, to remove the adhesive. The stuff is amazing. A little of it on a cotton swab will remove any adhesive, no matter how old. This would allow you to use the velcro.
Slashdot Mirror
And yet computers 30 years from now will still not be able to solve NP-complete problems in polynomial time. This will remain the single biggest obstacle to "artificial intelligence" until such time as we have asynchronous computers. Asynchronous computers will have a level of randomness, caused by varying quantum delays in transister gates throught the processor, resulting in computers being able to mimic true creativity.
Then, and only then, will computers stand a chance of solving NP-complete problems in polynomial time in a fashion similar to the way real intelligence can.
Oh yes, I forgot to mention. If you use Purify, then use it regularly. Set up ignore rules. After a few weeks, you'll find that you no longer get any false positives. Purify is a *very* good tool, and one I have used for years. If you think Purify is too difficult for your problem, then hire a programmer that knows how to use Purify. Purify is *tha bomb*.
"Heisenbugs", as you call them, are almost always the result of memory management bugs. Arrays boundaries are being overwritten, null pointers are being accessed, freed memory is being used, or some other memory is being misused. It's a very common problem.
Now, one answer to this problem is to use smart pointers and automatic garbage collection. That won't help array boundaries, but you can use an equivalent wrapper for arrays. It's not a bad practice to get into for large-scale C++ development.
Another solution, and one I have found to be *incredibly* useful, is to use a memory profiler. There are loads of memory profilers on the market today. Visual C++ has one included, the GNU Foundation has one, and loads of commercial companies offer profilers. Most of the commercial ones have nice functions, such as pretty (and useful) graphical displays and the ability to profile code that has already been compiled. I remember profiling Solaris (the OS itself) back in the early 90s, finding loads of memory leaks and memory management problems.
Even though I'm not a betting man, I would lay money that if you rid yourself of memory management problems, your code will no longer contain these "Heisenbugs".
I didn't mean to imply that Sun did own ebXML. However, they are one of the (I would say "The") dominant forces in the standardization process. The incorporation of SOAP into ebXML was done at Sun's request. Sun has played a bigger role, in terms of developers working on it, than any other vendor. But you are very right in saying that ebXML has support from a wide variety of vendors.
People. Please get a grip on your Microsoft bashing. Here's some point from a *user* of SOAP (and I'm not even using Microsoft'1 implementation).
.NET. .NET uses SOAP, but SOAP is not .NET. If it were, do you think IBM & Sun would be using SOAP?
-There are other versions of SOAP/WSDL/UDDI available. IBM has gratiously given their implementation to Apache. It looks to be the choice for open-source advocates. Sun has also announced they'll be supporting SOAP/WSDL/UDDI in the SunONE platform. Sun is also making ebXML compatible with SOAP, so that ebXML services can be called using SOAP, and vice-versa.
-IBM/Apache's implementation is interoperable with Microsoft's. Previous versions have had some major problems. But this is less a case of "embrace and extend", and more of a case of "this is new technology, and we haven't got the bugs worked out". I've seen IBM/Apache's and Microsoft's SOAP solutions call one another, from/to different languages. There are still a few quirks, but each release brings both Microsoft's and IBM/Apache's solution in greater compliance with the standard (yes, IBM's solution had some compliance problems, too!).
-Services are the next natural progression in software development. We've got from monolithic to client/server to 3-tier to n-tier develoment. The problem is that even with n-tier development, each tier relies upon the tiers next to it, in the form of a non-standard, programmer-developed API for the interface. Services free us from this, as they standardize the API between "tiers". And, by breaking down the "tier" concept, services can help bring component architecture to what was once a tier. It makes it easier to developed these components, and easier to assemble the components into an application. And it makes it easier to integrate components from third parties (such as -ack!- Hailstorm--but more importantly from small software vendors--I'm certainly not going to trust my sensitive info to Microsoft).
-XML-RPC is *not* SOAP. The only thing in common is that XML-RPC allows network programming using XML, as does SOAP. But SOAP packeges each network component into a service. This service can then be described in a standard way using WSDL (Web Services Description Language), so that programs can discover the API for a service and call the service automaticallly. Then, these services can be advertised using UDDI (Universal Description, Discovery and Integration), a sort of yellow pages for web services. XML-RPC provides RPC functionality, transferring data using XML.
-Web services do *not* have to use the Internet. This concept can work just as well on an Intranet. For large corporations, where there cannot be constant communication between the developers of services, using SOAP/WSDL/UDDI makes sense, as each development group then has a reliable and standard way of using services created by other groups.
-SOAP !=
Sorry for the long rant. I just hear way too many misconceptions. I get tired of it after a while.
Just use SOAP, WSDL, and UDDI locally. Part of Hailstorm is the definition of a service protocol, built around the OPEN standards of SOAP, WSDL, and UDDI (both IBM & Sun have said they will also support these, and IBM's SOAP solution already works with Microsoft's SOAP solution--cross-language and cross-platfor compatibility).
Nobody will force you to use Hailstorm's services. But the advantage of SOAP, WSDL, and UDDI is great. IBM realizes this. Sun realizes this. But slashdot's readers simply think that if Microsoft touches it, then it's implicitly bad. If you don't like Microsoft, just use IBM's implementation (they've given it over to Apache, in fact, so that it is truly open source).
Add accessibility to GNOME. Right now, GNOME does not work well if you cannot see, for instance. All sorts of things need to be done to help out. Furthermore, there are loads of research into accessibility for GUIs to use as reference material. This wouldn't affect the average Dick or Jane, but would have a tremendous impact on the vision-impaired. Let's make Linux the preferred platform for the disabled!
Great idea. However, the one about letting the user enter a username/password/IP combination is a little stupid. I mean, that kind of defeats the whole purpose.
You also want to make sure the username/password is sent over HTTPS.
Transformers are inherently inefficient. They lose something like (1-(sqrt(2)/2)) power (sorry, my EE classes were a *long* time ago). Big ones are almost exactly as efficient as small ones.
There is one place where a significant amount of power is lost that could be gained. That area is the transmission line. Electrical losses average out to be the same as the above figure. This power is, esentially, radiated back down the transmission line, and is eventually lost in the form of resistance (heat). Now, all that is needed is to simply impedance match your electrical devices to the transmission line. This can be accomplished using a simple LC circuit.
Of course, every new device you plug in will change the impedance of the transmission line. So the device will have to be able to adapt dynamically.
If you can build a device that monitors the impedance of the power line, then impedance matches it with the electrical device, you'll be rich. Very rich. That is, assuming you can market & sell the damn thing.
Hmm...I should have added that tuition from students accounted for something like 1.5% of Rice's annual budget. Again, my figures are a little dated, but the endowment accounts for about 80% of the budget. Most of the remainder comes from private grants (from corporations, non-profit, and not-for-profit organizations), while the rest comes from government research programs, such as NIH and NSF.
The NIH and the NSF account for 73% of government research spending (source: The Economist). The US government spends about $28 billion in research. As a nation with the largest economy (about 25% of the world GDP is from the US), it makes sense that the US government is also the largest research spender. Compare spending per capita, or spending per GDP, and you might get a different picture, however.
You misinterpret my statements. By private, I mean that the university does not received government money for operation. Yes, the government does give these universities money through the form of grants from groups like the NIH and the NSF, but these are for specific research programs, not for general operation.
Private universities (and the public universities in the US) get most of their funding from their endowments. For instance, at my alma matter, Rice University, most (greater than 80%) of the annual budget (last year, $286 million for a campus with 2600 undergraduate and 1400 graduate students) comes from the endowment ($3.37 billion - yes, close to $1 million per student). The situation is similar at other "prestigeous [sic] (technical) private universities", such as Stanford, Cal Tech, MIT, Yale, Harvard, and Princeton.
Now, if you read my statements, I say that our private universy system has a) developed strong partnerships with industry (it has, far more so than in Europe), b) why there are private universities in the first place (Europe doesn't have very many), and c) why the US university system has significantly larger resources at its disposal (annual budgets per student at US universities eclipse those of European universities, despite European governments spending more money per student than US universities). Point c) is not causal from point a); instead, point c) is causal from an eduacation system that is not free, and thus have large endowments given by almumni. Sorry if I did not make that clear before. Points a) through c) were separate points, causal from having a non-free education system.
In fact, even our public universities have large endowments. For instance, University of Texas at Austin had (my data are dated by now--from ~1990) the largest endowment of any university in the world, followed closely by Yale. Now, UT is a public university. Why would they have a large endowment? Because alumni give money to the university to help subsidize the education for future generations. The for-pay university system in the US has led to the US university system (both public and private) having enormous resources at their disposal.
The problem is .NET is not the glue. IL is. Or, if you want to really stretch it, SOAP is. .NET includes these technologies. But these technologies are *not* .NET. Furthermore, the goals of Perl aren't to become this said "perfect glue". Quite the contrary. Perl intends to be able to used as another language as part of someone else's "perfect glue" (namely, IL and JVM).
Hmm. Interesting, overall. But I do have a few things to say.
As for your bad ideas, I don't think MIT is worried that students will sheat on exams. This is a voluntary action, and any tests that professors intend to reuse will likely not be posted.
Also, I don't see the negative of "students can skip more classes referring to the web and how they already 'learned' [sic] something." I mean, this is a positive for students that are unable to make classes. And I don't know for certain about MIT in specific, but most universities at this level don't require attendance for classes.
The goal of this program isn't to provide an MIT-caliber education for free, either. As such, "learning something with the assistance of a vocal teacher [sic] is not the same as reading it" is not really a negative. It's well understood.
Now, as for governments providing "highly reduced incentives [sic]", I think the author must remember that MIT is a private institution. Now, the government might want to encourage businesses to do nice things to MIT in exchange for this. But this is not the role of the US government, at least not with private universities.
As for "in the U.S. your [sic] supposed to be entitled to a free education", this simply does not apply to university. This, in fact, is patently false. This, of course, is the reason why the US university system has developed strong partnerships with industry, why there are private universities, and why the US university system has significantly larger resources at its disposal than other nations' systems.
But, all said, it's a Good Thing[tm]. MIT isn't going to get extra money for this material by keeping it private (at least, not a significant amount), so opening it up is the Right Thing[tm].
Oh, and I certainly hope all those children of welfare families go out and learn from these texts. Realistically, however, I don't think they will. I will, though.
Intermediate Language (IL) is what provides the COM-like capabilities to extend classes from one language to another. The two are very distinct. IL does not require a roundtrip conversion to XML. IL is more analogous to Java Bytecodes, except that there will be multiple languages mapped to IL. IL will require "managed" subsets of languages like Visual Basic, Visual C++, and Perl.
As for this comment:
I believe you have this 180 degrees backwards. The idea for the semantic model isn't so that other languages can be mapped to Perl. It's so that Perl can be mapped to other languages (namely, Java Bytecodes and .NET's IL). I'm not really sure what the benefit would be of mapping other languages to Perl, when so much effort is being placed on optimizing the runtime environments for Java and .NET. I think Larry's got the right idea.
Sorry for the poor english. Shoulda hit "preview". But I meant to say "...there aren't any local broadcasts of MLB games.", and, "...many people live in locations different than their baseball teams".
And sorry for being pedantic. I would prefer that the quality of English for slashdot posts improve, and I've got to start at home. I'll preview next time...
The posts make perfect sense.
1) People might want to listen to games that aren't broadcasted locally. I live in Scotland (I'm American). Oddly enough, there aren't any locally broadcast MLB games. Now cricket is another matter. But, even in the States, many people live in a location different than "their" baseball team.
2) The article makes no mention of whether or not they will require a registered version of real-audio. Your comment is a non-sequitor that is likely caused by blair1q's non-sequitor in the slashdot post.
Besides, is $9.99 really that much money? I mean, there are 162 games per team per year. There's no mention whether that fee will cover all teams or just one team, but in either case, this is not a lot of money for a baseball enthusiast. And, if you don't like paying, you can still listen for free on your existing radio.
Math is an invention. Physics is an observation. Math was invented in order to better observe physics.
Your point is well taken. However, it is also wrong. Math is a branch of physics, not the other way around. Math was developed to describe natural phenomena. Calculus was developed to describe the movement of the planets and the acceleration due to gravity. Trigonometry was developed to describe triangles & circles. Linear algebra has its roots in describing cross-sections of cones.
As for the term "philosophy", this dates back to Ancient Greece, when all studies were considered "philosphy". It has more to do with a different meaning of philosophy--that is, the pursuit of learning. This is quite different than the modern interpretation of philosophy, where people ruminate about abstract concepts to discover absolutes.
But, yes, your point is very valid. It is quite absurd to take all of this topics back to their roots.
Yep. I run Tomcat 3.2 (yes, that is the current version, and yes, Tomcat 3.1 was still about 1/3 as fast as JRun & Resin) on my website, where all pages are dynamically generated. Mainly because I'm too cheap to buy JRun or Resin (Resin, btw, is free for personal use).
But JRun & Resin both outperform Tomcat 3.1 & 3.2. But Tomcat 4.0 is supposedly a lot better. I simply can't rely upon it until the development is a little further along.
And, I can't say enough good things about JSP tags. They are the "right" way to do dynamic web authoring.
So you compile your app server with gcj? OK. So I suppose you need an open-source app server. Try JBoss, or Enhydra. Ooops. They both depend upon libraries that gcj doesn't support.
.so libraries. Hmmm. Why you're at it, why don't you simply rewrite an HTTP server that loads these mythical .so servlets? Your suggestion is ridiculous.
OK. Let's say you get past that hurdle. So now you want to rework the servlet framework so that they are compatible with
Apps can't tell if they're running natively vs. running in a VM. But the servlet spec depends upon a dynamic class loader. And, lo and behold! gcj doesn't support that (a dynamic class loader is different than a shared archive, I'm afraid).
All told, if you pick a decent JSP/Servlet engine (JRun or Resin perform about 3x better than Tomcat), you'll find the JSPs run just a hair (about 10%) slower than the fastest dynamic page systems, mod_perl & mod_php. With the object oriented benefits of Java, and the ability to separate presentation logic from business logic using JSP tag libraries, JSP/Servlet engines are an excellent choice.
By the way, I wouldn't discount ASP+, either. While ASP has a lot of problems, ASP+ has learned from a lot of previous mistakes, as well as from all the benefits achieved from JSP/Servlets. Of course, it will tie you in to MS solutions (bad! bad!), but it's a very good piece of technology, none the less.
Get over it, man. This guy is a teacher. His job is to teach, not to be an expert at all things linux. And, from the sounds of all the people that were clueless about x0rfbserver, I'd have to say that this topic will help a lot more people than just the teacher.
Besides, a better question to ask slashdot would be, "How do I UNinstall BIND?" After all, BIND has had a long history of security-related bugs.
x0rfbserver does, though. Check the contrib section of VNC's web page. It's fully compatible with VNC (which uses the RFB protocol--the name stands for X display 0 RFB server). It works like a charm, and has additional capabilities for scripting VNC events, too.
Just a minor clarification. Switzerland is not a voting member of the UN. They enjoy status as an observer nation. This is the same as the Holy See and Palestine, if my memory serves correct.
Use goobegone, or something like that, to remove the adhesive. The stuff is amazing. A little of it on a cotton swab will remove any adhesive, no matter how old. This would allow you to use the velcro.