This question caught my attention as my first job out of college was working on GURU which evolved from Knowledge Man, a very early (circa early 1980s) 4GL. It may well have been the first 4GL for microcomputers (MDBS was founded in 1978 on the principle that you could run a database on a microcomputer).
Knowledge Man did some really cutting edge stuff when it went out. Like machine independent bytecode generation which the interpreter generated on the fly. Sound familiar?
My job at Micro was helping to port GURU (which at one time supported like 10 or so different microcomputers, most of which time has forgotten) from DOS to Win32. This is where my strong beliefs regarding Microsoft products comes from: most of our work involved working around bugs in 95 (which would then break it on NT. ..)
GURU still only has a text based menuing system for most of its operations (I actually rewrote one of its subsystems in Java using the AWT, and it uses Win32 FileDialogs, but that's about it). Which echos the point one commenter made: they tend to be stuck on the platform they were designed for. GURU could be ported to have a complete GUI front-end, but I shudder at the effort that would be required. Nowdays, almost all of GURUs customers are legacy users (except for those that want it for its great expert system engine). Everyone else has gone to a newer 4GL like PowerBuilder (which I've never actually used).
A couple of the other posters hit the nail on the head when they observed that 4GLs have evolved. But I think they've evolved into more general purpose tools like Perl, Python, or (ych!) VB. For more web oriented, db specific apps there's PHP (which I've really been meaning to learn). All of those tools tend to be more general purpose than the traditional 4GL. Where someone mentioned that a 4GL only solved 60% of their problem, I've found that using Perl or Python nowdays can usually solve 100% of my problem unless performance is an issue. Even most of the traditional programming languages are getting IDEs that give easy access to frameworks for GUIs and DB access, allowing you to do most everything that was once done in a 4GL in C++. Now if that qualifies as evolution, I'll leave as an exercise for the reader.
IMHO anything they broadcast in the first place should be freely redistributable; the only reason network affiliates worry about it is that they depend on a complete absence of competition, and that ought to be corrected. Avoiding advertising is a far more serious issue, as that completely undermines the business model of broadcast television.
Sure, that's a valid argument if the only thing TiVo worked for was broadcast television, but it's not fair (or legal, of course), for me to record Shakepeare in Love off Encore (a channel that's paid for by subscriptions) and email to my friend Tanya going, "Here, you'll like this." Heck, bandwidth is cheap, I can email it to all my friends: why should any of them have to shell out the bucks for premium chanels that I already get?
Of course, you thought your friend/family member that just got on the net was bad enough mailing you every website they find & forwarding every message they get, just wait until they get the all new e-TiVo! "Unforgiven! I've already seen this & it's crap! Now it's eating up all my bandwidth too!"
I got my Tivo for Christmas, so I've had three months now for it to get to know me well (and vice-versa I suppose). Here are some comments across the board about what Rob had to say.
Others have made this point, but it bears repeating: what you watch is stored on the unit and is never sent back to the TiVo service. There are no privacy issues as they don't have any personal data on you (other than what they need for your subscription, but that's probably actually less than the satelite or cable company has on you). Personally, I would like to see them retrieve information anonymously so that they could provide better recommendations.
Others have made this point too, but the next major software upgrade will have support for priorties (which I can barely wait for, I mean, don't these networks know that there are nights other than Tuesday!).
In the three months I've had my unit, it's never crashed. I think Rob's bad HD was the only problem. It's even survived power outages with no harm done beyond only recording the first 9 minutes of Dr. Who (which it was able to save).
Sure, it can slow down sometimes. Especially when you're watching one show, recording another and suddenly generate an interupt by pulling up the menu. But this is only something like a 5 second delay at worst and you see it "building" the menu, so there's really no need for a status indicator.
As cool as it may seem to email shows, let's face it, this has far too many problems with copyright issues for TiVo to want to even think about right now. Look at how just the ability to skip over commercials has raised such a fuss here!
Rob talks about season passes recording a show on any channel - this isn't my experience. Maybe my software version's just old (more on that in a minute), but I have to specify a season pass for a show by name and channel. That way if I just want the new episodes of JAG on CBS and not the syncication episodes on USA, I only specify JAG on CBS. This is useful when you have two different shows on different channels with the same name, like we have a season pass to Airport on BBC which is quite different from the movie Airport that shows up now and then on TNT or whatever.
Now for my own rants: We had to install a new phone jack for our TiVo, which seems rather pointless as we have a DSL line: I wish it had an Ethernet jack that I could just assign an IP address to and let it do all the updates that it needs to over that. Which is another thing: the unit is suppose to do the update call at night but I can't count the number of times it's made it during the day. I think it tries to be smart and sees that we never use the phone during the day (since both my wife & I work) and hence, it presumes that it's safe to call then. That's fine for the weekdays, but it doesn't work on the weekends.
The other major problem that TiVo has (other than priorties) is that it doesn't handle sports schedules or pay-per-view. We pay a pretty penny to get NHL Center Ice, but we hardly ever watch it because it's a pain to program into TiVo (I mean, it's like as hard as programming a VCR!). And we never watch pay-per-view anymore because ordering shows is much harder (it's a pain to switch back & forth between the TiVo & satelite box). All of this is also suppose to be fixed "soon". On the other hand, TiVo has allowed me to catch a lot more shows on HBO and Stars that I would have missed otherwise.
The feature I'd most like to see is seperate preferences for different family members. How many of you have families that everyone agrees what to watch? See? I knew we weren't the only one. That way, I can thumbs up my SNL and my wife doesn't have to thumbs it back down.
SNL's not really a problem though: one problem that TiVo has is recording the same show over and over again. Yes, the origonal Star Trek is a great show, that's why I gave it three thumbs up, but because it's a great show I've already seen every episode I don't know how many times, TiVo doesn't have to record it again. I want TiVo to find another show like Star Trek. Same for SNL, which it really likes to record since I like most of the movies with actors from SNL in them. While I'm on the subject, I wish it would remember what I've seen & deleted in the past month or so so that when I watch something showing on Encore it doesn't record the same movie the following day. I want it to find shows that are different from what I've already seen.
Another problem I believe it has is that it's very US centric. As I recall, TiVo doesn't even support Canadian programming, but I could be wrong on this point.
One of TiVo's coolest features is that it will automatically download new versions of the TiVo software and will restart the system with the new software in the middle of the night when it's not doing anything else. Of course, there are the standard issues with automatic remote software upgrades, but it seems to work great so far, and I think it's just way cool.
Finally, there's been a lot of discussion on the HD & partition type. The hard drive is a Quantum AV drive. They thought the Quantum was best for being able to handle two simultanous video streams (recording & playback) for days at a time. They didn't want to offer an upgrade path beyond upgrading to the 30-hour model for fear that someone would hook up a lower performance HD, causing dropped frames and poor compression effects, which in turn would make them look bad. I think it's also worth noting that the unit is very quiet which is, of course, very important for any component in an A/V installation. So, sure I could hook the 150G Fibre Chanel RAID array I have here at work up to it and it'd work great, but the noise would be unbearable.
Well, there's my 2-bits. Guess I should get some real work done now.
As cool as new gadgets are, this one strikes me as kind of dangerous. As if drivers not paying attention while they're yapping away wasn't bad enough, at least they were able to fix that with hands free phones. I don't think think that the solution for the wireless web will be quite as straightforward. OTOH, think of the headlines:
Yahoo causes 27 car pileup on 101
Andover IPO on E-Trade results in 12 deaths
Mapquest sends man over cliff
Wince phone crashes
(Or whatever they're calling it at the time) But then this might not be headline news, depending on how you interpret it.
I'm a CS '97 grad from Purdue (and I'm guessing we know each other, but I digress) and I recall this type of thing being the subject of a couple talks I heard when I was there.
The first one that comes to mind is when Dr. Comer talked to our 413 class. One of the students asked what he thought about someone registering comer.com , and he totally blew it off, saying that when they developed DNS, they never expected people would just go out registering everything, so that's just the way it goes. I know Dr. Comer can be a hard person to find, but (especially if you're a CS student) if you can get him to put in a nice word for you with the administration, saying that that's just the way the system (in part developed by Purdue) was designed to work, it would probably be a big boon for your case. Of course there are deeper political issues with doing that: I'll leave that as an exercise to the reader.
The second source you'll want to check out is University Cleaners. I heard the owner (who's like a PU ME class of '56 or something) give a talk at a leadership conference. Seems that when he started University Cleaners 30 or 40 years ago, he got the same kind of letter from the University, saying how he had to change the name because people were getting the impression that his business was owned or something by Purdue University, which we all know is a bunch of bunk. Anyway, he made a big case for himself, presented it to Purdue, and they dropped the issue. So look him up and see if he has any pointers for you.
Of course, a bunch of letters from Alums can't hurt. I'd be happy to participate. Just let me know where to send it if you organize such an effort.
The story was Player Piano by Kurt Vonnegut. Probably many more with the same theme, but that was Vonnegut's breakthrough novel. It's also the one that really got him labeled as a SF writer because it was rather ahead of the times in 1952 or so. But as many in Detroit could tell you in the late '70's or '80's, it was fairly accurate.
Very true. If you go to a decent four year accredidated College / University you'll be much better off for a few reasons:
They force you to think. You may be led to believe that they don't give a @?% about you, but if you go talk to the profs, you'll find that that's totally not the case (most of the time, at least). They're making it hard because it does force you to think. Furthermore, it forces you to prioritize because the real world is just as hectic!
You need the degree to get a good job. Where I work at, we won't even look at anyone that doesn't have a CS/EE/Math degree, preferably a graduate degree. That's probably not represenative of most of industry, but I can tell you that most of the places I interviewed at when I left school wouldn't think of talking to anyone without a B.S. or like 10 years experience.
When you're in college, get jobs working for the computer center, CS support staff or whoever and also do some undergrad research. The big schools (like a state university) can afford the big toys (massive Cisco routers, Sun servers, IBM supercomputers, etc) that you talk about. The vo-tech schools can't. Furthermore, most big computing companies donate great equiptment to big schools (SGI just donated half the cost of a new 32-processor Orgin 2000 to my alma-matter). If you get involved, you stand a much better chance of getting your hands on some of this world-class equiptment.
Then there's always the fact that college is a blast. I woundn't trade my 4 years for anything. In fact, I liked it so much that I'm applying right now to go back for my Masters! (People have told me that that's even better than undergrad because you concentrate more on what interests you.)
I use a Contured Kinesis keyboard set to use the Dvorak layout. I still use QWERTY on my flat keyboards. That has allowed me to switch easily between the two. The keystrokes are different on the Kinesis, so I just intuitively know that I should use the Dvorak layout. Sure, it took me a couple months to get up to speed on it and I wouldn't say that I'm any faster on it than I was on QWERTY, but it just seems more logical. It also helps that the Kinesis has both the QWERTY and Dvorak legends on the keys. ..
Another poster commented that programming on it is a pain. That was my first thought too, but after a couple months I got used to it. The period and quotes are in a much more logical place and I think I use those more often than {} anyway.
Finally, I think most unix commands got their esoteric names based purely on the QWERTY keyboard (like ls which is two home row strokes on opposet hands, but not that easy on the Dvorak). Good keyboards let you remap anyway, and there are always aliases.
MSNBC has a good article on Criticality. Doesn't quite explain how it differs from a total meltdown or fision blast, but it does explain how it happens and gives a little history.
Actually, there is anedotal evidence of this on some types of aircraft. The regulations have been adopted by the airlines only in the last couple years - not 50 years ago as you suggest. You are correct that shielding against this type of interference would be simple, but I have heard a better argument for their ban: they distract passengers who might miss something importaint that the flight crew says, like, "We're going to crash!" And the cell phone ban was pushed by the FCC not because they mess with aircraft avionics (although I wouldn't want some cheap piece of consumer electonics that was designed to broadcast on any plane I was in), but because they really f*ck up the cell network on the ground (b/c they're recieved by so many cells at once).
My mother, grandma and her husband have all had surgery for CTS and any of them will be happy to tell you that it's very unplesant and should be avoided if possible. All three of them have wrists that don't hurt anymore though, so the surgery was worth it once their conditions had elevated to the point that it had. My grandparents had their surgery done in the past year, and it sounded to be much less painful than when my mother had it a decade ago, but its still no walk in the park.
I have also started experiencing discomfort in the wrists lately, despite my attempts to work more ergonomically. So I've sought out the Health Services department where I work. They've been a huge help: suggesting ways that I can work even better, teaching me exercises, things like that. I'm not going to say exactly what, because they've tailored my treatment for me and everyone's different.
So that's the best piece of advice that I can give: see a doctor, nurse or physical therepist. A doctor is probably want to explore those less invasive routes before performing surgery anyway. If you are gainfully employeed, your employer should pay for it. If they hesitate for even one second, just say, "Workman's Comp". If they don't flinch at that, get a lawyer. If you're a student, see the health services at your school. They probably suck, but it's better than listening to a bunch of/.ers (myself included). Otherwise, you're probably on your own, but it'll be worth it anyway.
He signed a 5 album deal with Sony when he went solo (Probably becuase they did a good job promoting Wham!). And everyone reaped the benifits of Faith. But he released Listen Without Prejudice the same time that Mariah Carrey came on the scene, so Sony did almost nothing to promote it (let's keep in mind that Mariah went on to marry the Pres of Sony Music). This pissed Mr. Michael off to no end (and judging by the responces here, it'd piss any of us off too), so he demanded to be released from his contract. A team of lawyers couldn't help him. So he just stopped releasing anything. All his music was done in collaboration with other artists and released on their labels (remember his stints with Queen and Elton John?).
Then, and I'm not quite sure how this happened, he released Older on DreamWorks SKG Records. Let's keep in mind that the S in SKG is Speliburg (sp?) and the G is Geffen. So the point I've been leading up to is it's possible to get out of a contract with Sony, but you should have a good idea by now what it takes.
Actually, I suspect that M$ did use g++ 2.6.2 (I think - It was a long time ago) as the backend to VC++ 1.0 b/c both shared the same "Internal compiler error"s on some perfectly valid (if not slightly convoluted) C++ code. Hard to prove that sort of thing though. ..
I don't like the idea of the moderation controls always being present and only counting if the user has points because:
The reasons you describe: burnout and only obsessive people being left. I doubt I'd moderate at all if I didn't know I was doing some good.
If people can moderate everything, they won't feel compelled to pick the very best comments.
I propose a better system: relative moderation. Let everyone moderate (within the limits of who is currently allowed to), then using a statistical distribution (or something like that - never really liked sadistics) of the points across all the comments to pick out the best (5s), really good (4s) and so forth comments. I think this might even eliminate the need for M2 moderation (and after all that hard work - sorry).
I just saw the new Aero recently myself and I must say that I was impressed. I used to own not one, but two, of the 486 sub-notebook breed of Aero's. Even ran Linux on them for a time. Alas, I finally sold them after years of hard work and I thought Compaq had retired this glorious machine. I was hence pleasantly surprised to see the new CE based version. If it pays any tribute to its parentage, it should prove to be a fine machine (any OS considerations aside).
However, I got a Palm III last year and I must say, the Aero can't hold a candle to its form factor (like half the size and weight) or simplicity of function (maybe that's just because someone messed up the demo in the store). I don't think that I'd want to lug the new Aero around with me everywhere, like I do my Palm. I would consider getting one to suppliment my Palm though (and replace my Toshiba Libretto).
In summary: The Aeros in my experience have been great machines, but I would still choose my Palm for a basic PDA that I take everywhere.
Let me begin by saying I'm not a Lawyer. I'll ammend that by saying that you should get one. If you have a s/w package that's good enough to export, you can afford a lawyer to give you the quick run down of what is and is not legal for your country/region/situation.
As many have pointed out, the problem here are the export control laws in Austria with respect to Iran and U.S. written code, as established by the Wassenaar Arrangement. As such, you may not be able to export Linux, or parts thereof (e.g. Don Becker's net drivers) to Iran, without falling under Austrian sanctions. However, not all countries have these sanctions. So what you do is export your package, including any U.S. written GPL code, to a third country (i.e. Jamaca) where you set up a separate distribution company incorperated under local (Jamacian) law. This company does nothing more than act as a middle man between you and your Iranian customers. This is essentially what is done in money laundering, except that the Jamician holding company in that case is a bank (I understand that Jamician law is very kind to financial institutions). This usually complicates matters so severly (as international law is involved) that no one would try to prosecute any simple legalities. The only time I've heard of prosecutions in an arrangement such as described is when it's being done to cover strictly illegal activities, such as drug-running.
So is that what software distribution has become? Drug running? I'm remined of Burroughs origional Blade Runner (not the movie version of DADOES). I hope not, but I don't know. What I do know is that you need a lawyer to work out the details, but at least this might give you a general direction to head.
On the flip side, as others have noted, Iran has undergone a dramatic cultural change in the last few years. I would say the political culture there is much more diplomatic than they were three years ago. I would venture that there is the distinct possiblility that they'll be removed from the list of sensitive nations in the not to distant future. But don't hold your breath. By that I mean in the next decade. It won't help your bottom line now, but it's something to watch out for.
I hear you Demona. I actually rather shruged off the whole thing until my wife brought it up reading the paper this morning. It wasn't news to me. The only thing surprising about it is that it didn't happen earlier, that is youthful geeks who just snap. My wife was amazed at the similarity in the descriptions of these students to me at that age. The manner of dress, most of their interests and the fact that they were fed up with the cards they were delt and they were ready to leave their lives and take as many of those that made them miserable with them.
Now I'm not saying that I would have actually gone that far. My father was in law enforcement, so there were firearms in the house that I could have used if I was really determined. I wasn't. Sometimes the only thing that stopped me was knowing that this is exactly what would happen. The media blitz. They'd blame my computers, my books, guns, my parents. And that's just wrong. My parents are two of the most outstanding people I will ever know and I couldn't do that to them. But the thought did cross my mind more than once.
What would even make me think such a thing? I'm reminded of Annie's brother in Annie Hall (sincere applogies to those that can't stand Woody Allen, but I thought this scene was very un-Woody like) who said, "Sometimes I see a car coming towards me in the other lane and I think about just swerving into that lane. Do you ever think about that?" Okay, the quote's not exact, but that's the idea. An idea that I'm apparently not alone in thinking. Books and TV and Video Games had nothing to do with it. Heck, they were probably what kept me from snaping! What it amounted to is that I felt that I was being wronged as an individual. Our society has taught for hundreds of years that if someone or a group is being wronged, killing the opressers is an acceptable solution. Hey! If it was good enough for George Washington, who we learned in first grade was the greatest American hero, it's good enough for me.
Let's look at the violence these kids saw. Take two movies: Braveheart and Mortal Combat. I think Braveheart, which was hearlded as an outstanding piece of historical fiction, had much more to do with this incident than the mindless violence in Mortal Combat. Braveheart was wronged as an individual, he was opressed by the dominate govenment, so what did he do? Revolt! Kill all the Englishmen! There's your ethnic clensing. So what he died in the end? He was a hero and he made history. Well, at least it seems that those kids in Colorado made history. Perhaphs we should hold society to its own standards and say that they're heros as well.
Instead we're calling them criminals. What have we learned from this? Nothing. Instead of implementing special programs for the technically gifted, they're baning trench coats. Hello? Trench coats don't kill people. People that can't stand being out of place, out of touch and see nowhere to go kill people.
There are no hard and fast solutions to problems like these. What needs to change is the society that we live in. It doesn't matter what you ban, they'll still snap and they'll still find a way to wound society in any way they can. So instead of being reactive, we need to be more proactive as a community. Parents, Schools and Neighbors need to identify those kids that don't fit into their nice perfect mold and place them in a less structured environment.
For me, that environment was college. I went when I was 16. That amazed people, but I didn't think it was special. It was a necessary step in my development as a person. To feed into another popular/. thread, I didn't need to go to college to learn the technical skills I have. In fact I probably could have learned more by not going judging by how much I've learned in the couple years since I finished. But the college environment was invaluable for teaching me who I was.
That environment for some is the military or boarding school or becoming a vagabon and traveling the country. Whatever it is, it's necessesary. It would be best if this sort of environment could be provided right there in public schools. Most schools have special programs for gifted students or problem students, but I'm talking about something for the student who isn't really better, just different. A program that would replace their normal classes.
Anyway, this is long enough and I hope I've made my point. Do what you can to change the system. For example, we'll home school our kids when we have them. I'm also going to volenteer to help technologically gifted students at the local school, soon as I've done my grad work. Let's see that none of these people died in vain and that it doesn't happen again.
This makes a lot of sence considering how much Fermilab does with Linux. Check out The article on Linux on page 10. The article refers to their Computing Division's policy on Linux. Which I think is really well thought out. I wish more large, distributed, organizations would put some sort of policy like this in place rather than trying to ignore Linux and then whine about it when there's a problem.
This article seems like a good time to remind people that the Mozilla party that was reported on about a month ago is tonight. Wish I could go but I have to catch a plane in the wee hours tomorrow morn. Oh well, there's always next year.
So Rob, you aren't interested in making an islashdot? Let the user pick their flavour? With how hip you are to the new case designs, I would have thought you'd go for the gee whiz features. If your monkeys are already spending cycles to create dynamic pages, how much more would it cost to make them change the colour tags?
I'm trying to do this at work for some scientific visualization work. Most of our boxes are SGIs, but I ended up with an x86 on my desk, so I ran out and got a #9 Revolution 3D card (as I loved the Imagine 128 I used back in my NT days) and a Xi Graphics server (as they looked to have the best server that supported it). It's slow as a dog. Screen redraws (like between virtual desktops) take on the order of seconds. 3D is just unuseable. My box here at home just has a cheap Matrox Millinium II in it that I use with Mesa and it rocks. I tried out another box at work with a S3 chip & Mesa and that worked beautifully too. My project lead is running a 3Dfx card in his box at home and said that the Linux support for that is impressive. So, if you aren't looking to spend much, I'd pick up a nice 2D card (like the latest & greatest from Matrox) and a 3Dfx card, and just use the XFree86 server with Mesa. I now do my graphics work on an Indigo 2 that's floated down to me. For what you can pick one of those beasts up for these days, I'd say that's probably the best solution if you're doing anything more that fiddling around. How is the SGI port of Linux doing anyway? And in case anyone is wondering, I tried XFree86 3.3.3 with the Rev3D and it looks like #9 changed the RAMDAC on it from what the XFree86 group ran on, which may well explain Xi's problem with it. I'd avoid #9 products for now.
Slashdot Mirror
This question caught my attention as my first job out of college was working on GURU which evolved from Knowledge Man, a very early (circa early 1980s) 4GL. It may well have been the first 4GL for microcomputers (MDBS was founded in 1978 on the principle that you could run a database on a microcomputer).
Knowledge Man did some really cutting edge stuff when it went out. Like machine independent bytecode generation which the interpreter generated on the fly. Sound familiar?
My job at Micro was helping to port GURU (which at one time supported like 10 or so different microcomputers, most of which time has forgotten) from DOS to Win32. This is where my strong beliefs regarding Microsoft products comes from: most of our work involved working around bugs in 95 (which would then break it on NT. . .)
GURU still only has a text based menuing system for most of its operations (I actually rewrote one of its subsystems in Java using the AWT, and it uses Win32 FileDialogs, but that's about it). Which echos the point one commenter made: they tend to be stuck on the platform they were designed for. GURU could be ported to have a complete GUI front-end, but I shudder at the effort that would be required. Nowdays, almost all of GURUs customers are legacy users (except for those that want it for its great expert system engine). Everyone else has gone to a newer 4GL like PowerBuilder (which I've never actually used).
A couple of the other posters hit the nail on the head when they observed that 4GLs have evolved. But I think they've evolved into more general purpose tools like Perl, Python, or (ych!) VB. For more web oriented, db specific apps there's PHP (which I've really been meaning to learn). All of those tools tend to be more general purpose than the traditional 4GL. Where someone mentioned that a 4GL only solved 60% of their problem, I've found that using Perl or Python nowdays can usually solve 100% of my problem unless performance is an issue. Even most of the traditional programming languages are getting IDEs that give easy access to frameworks for GUIs and DB access, allowing you to do most everything that was once done in a 4GL in C++. Now if that qualifies as evolution, I'll leave as an exercise for the reader.
Sure, that's a valid argument if the only thing TiVo worked for was broadcast television, but it's not fair (or legal, of course), for me to record Shakepeare in Love off Encore (a channel that's paid for by subscriptions) and email to my friend Tanya going, "Here, you'll like this." Heck, bandwidth is cheap, I can email it to all my friends: why should any of them have to shell out the bucks for premium chanels that I already get?
Of course, you thought your friend/family member that just got on the net was bad enough mailing you every website they find & forwarding every message they get, just wait until they get the all new e-TiVo! "Unforgiven! I've already seen this & it's crap! Now it's eating up all my bandwidth too!"
I got my Tivo for Christmas, so I've had three months now for it to get to know me well (and vice-versa I suppose). Here are some comments across the board about what Rob had to say.
Well, there's my 2-bits. Guess I should get some real work done now.
-"Zow"
Speaking of 1993, that's when NCSA started publishing What's new for this little package they had called Mosaic.
Here's the first issue.
I was rather surprised to find that a lot of the links I tried still work. I guess that being "first to market" causes some staying power.
As cool as new gadgets are, this one strikes me as kind of dangerous. As if drivers not paying attention while they're yapping away wasn't bad enough, at least they were able to fix that with hands free phones. I don't think think that the solution for the wireless web will be quite as straightforward. OTOH, think of the headlines:
Yahoo causes 27 car pileup on 101
Andover IPO on E-Trade results in 12 deaths
Mapquest sends man over cliff
Wince phone crashes
(Or whatever they're calling it at the time) But then this might not be headline news, depending on how you interpret it.
Hey Brent,
I'm a CS '97 grad from Purdue (and I'm guessing we know each other, but I digress) and I recall this type of thing being the subject of a couple talks I heard when I was there.
The first one that comes to mind is when Dr. Comer talked to our 413 class. One of the students asked what he thought about someone registering comer.com , and he totally blew it off, saying that when they developed DNS, they never expected people would just go out registering everything, so that's just the way it goes. I know Dr. Comer can be a hard person to find, but (especially if you're a CS student) if you can get him to put in a nice word for you with the administration, saying that that's just the way the system (in part developed by Purdue) was designed to work, it would probably be a big boon for your case. Of course there are deeper political issues with doing that: I'll leave that as an exercise to the reader.
The second source you'll want to check out is University Cleaners. I heard the owner (who's like a PU ME class of '56 or something) give a talk at a leadership conference. Seems that when he started University Cleaners 30 or 40 years ago, he got the same kind of letter from the University, saying how he had to change the name because people were getting the impression that his business was owned or something by Purdue University, which we all know is a bunch of bunk. Anyway, he made a big case for himself, presented it to Purdue, and they dropped the issue. So look him up and see if he has any pointers for you.
Of course, a bunch of letters from Alums can't hurt. I'd be happy to participate. Just let me know where to send it if you organize such an effort.
Hope this helps!
-"Zow"
#define GETALAWYER
#include
The story was Player Piano by Kurt Vonnegut. Probably many more with the same theme, but that was Vonnegut's breakthrough novel. It's also the one that really got him labeled as a SF writer because it was rather ahead of the times in 1952 or so. But as many in Detroit could tell you in the late '70's or '80's, it was fairly accurate.
Very true. If you go to a decent four year accredidated College / University you'll be much better off for a few reasons:
Then there's always the fact that college is a blast. I woundn't trade my 4 years for anything. In fact, I liked it so much that I'm applying right now to go back for my Masters! (People have told me that that's even better than undergrad because you concentrate more on what interests you.)
I use a Contured Kinesis keyboard set to use the Dvorak layout. I still use QWERTY on my flat keyboards. That has allowed me to switch easily between the two. The keystrokes are different on the Kinesis, so I just intuitively know that I should use the Dvorak layout. Sure, it took me a couple months to get up to speed on it and I wouldn't say that I'm any faster on it than I was on QWERTY, but it just seems more logical. It also helps that the Kinesis has both the QWERTY and Dvorak legends on the keys. . .
Another poster commented that programming on it is a pain. That was my first thought too, but after a couple months I got used to it. The period and quotes are in a much more logical place and I think I use those more often than {} anyway.
Finally, I think most unix commands got their esoteric names based purely on the QWERTY keyboard (like ls which is two home row strokes on opposet hands, but not that easy on the Dvorak). Good keyboards let you remap anyway, and there are always aliases.
-"Zow"
MSNBC has a good article on Criticality. Doesn't quite explain how it differs from a total meltdown or fision blast, but it does explain how it happens and gives a little history.
-"Zow"
Actually, there is anedotal evidence of this on some types of aircraft. The regulations have been adopted by the airlines only in the last couple years - not 50 years ago as you suggest. You are correct that shielding against this type of interference would be simple, but I have heard a better argument for their ban: they distract passengers who might miss something importaint that the flight crew says, like, "We're going to crash!" And the cell phone ban was pushed by the FCC not because they mess with aircraft avionics (although I wouldn't want some cheap piece of consumer electonics that was designed to broadcast on any plane I was in), but because they really f*ck up the cell network on the ground (b/c they're recieved by so many cells at once).
-"Zow"
I have also started experiencing discomfort in the wrists lately, despite my attempts to work more ergonomically. So I've sought out the Health Services department where I work. They've been a huge help: suggesting ways that I can work even better, teaching me exercises, things like that. I'm not going to say exactly what, because they've tailored my treatment for me and everyone's different.
So that's the best piece of advice that I can give: see a doctor, nurse or physical therepist. A doctor is probably want to explore those less invasive routes before performing surgery anyway. If you are gainfully employeed, your employer should pay for it. If they hesitate for even one second, just say, "Workman's Comp". If they don't flinch at that, get a lawyer. If you're a student, see the health services at your school. They probably suck, but it's better than listening to a bunch of /.ers (myself included). Otherwise, you're probably on your own, but it'll be worth it anyway.
Best of luck in your recovery.
-"Zow"
He signed a 5 album deal with Sony when he went solo (Probably becuase they did a good job promoting Wham!). And everyone reaped the benifits of Faith. But he released Listen Without Prejudice the same time that Mariah Carrey came on the scene, so Sony did almost nothing to promote it (let's keep in mind that Mariah went on to marry the Pres of Sony Music). This pissed Mr. Michael off to no end (and judging by the responces here, it'd piss any of us off too), so he demanded to be released from his contract. A team of lawyers couldn't help him. So he just stopped releasing anything. All his music was done in collaboration with other artists and released on their labels (remember his stints with Queen and Elton John?).
Then, and I'm not quite sure how this happened, he released Older on DreamWorks SKG Records. Let's keep in mind that the S in SKG is Speliburg (sp?) and the G is Geffen. So the point I've been leading up to is it's possible to get out of a contract with Sony, but you should have a good idea by now what it takes.
Actually, I suspect that M$ did use g++ 2.6.2 (I think - It was a long time ago) as the backend to VC++ 1.0 b/c both shared the same "Internal compiler error"s on some perfectly valid (if not slightly convoluted) C++ code. Hard to prove that sort of thing though. . .
Rob -
I don't like the idea of the moderation controls always being present and only counting if the user has points because:
I propose a better system: relative moderation. Let everyone moderate (within the limits of who is currently allowed to), then using a statistical distribution (or something like that - never really liked sadistics) of the points across all the comments to pick out the best (5s), really good (4s) and so forth comments. I think this might even eliminate the need for M2 moderation (and after all that hard work - sorry).
-"Zow"
I just saw the new Aero recently myself and I must say that I was impressed. I used to own not one, but two, of the 486 sub-notebook breed of Aero's. Even ran Linux on them for a time. Alas, I finally sold them after years of hard work and I thought Compaq had retired this glorious machine. I was hence pleasantly surprised to see the new CE based version. If it pays any tribute to its parentage, it should prove to be a fine machine (any OS considerations aside).
However, I got a Palm III last year and I must say, the Aero can't hold a candle to its form factor (like half the size and weight) or simplicity of function (maybe that's just because someone messed up the demo in the store). I don't think that I'd want to lug the new Aero around with me everywhere, like I do my Palm. I would consider getting one to suppliment my Palm though (and replace my Toshiba Libretto).
In summary: The Aeros in my experience have been great machines, but I would still choose my Palm for a basic PDA that I take everywhere.
Let me begin by saying I'm not a Lawyer. I'll ammend that by saying that you should get one. If you have a s/w package that's good enough to export, you can afford a lawyer to give you the quick run down of what is and is not legal for your country/region/situation.
As many have pointed out, the problem here are the export control laws in Austria with respect to Iran and U.S. written code, as established by the Wassenaar Arrangement. As such, you may not be able to export Linux, or parts thereof (e.g. Don Becker's net drivers) to Iran, without falling under Austrian sanctions. However, not all countries have these sanctions. So what you do is export your package, including any U.S. written GPL code, to a third country (i.e. Jamaca) where you set up a separate distribution company incorperated under local (Jamacian) law. This company does nothing more than act as a middle man between you and your Iranian customers. This is essentially what is done in money laundering, except that the Jamician holding company in that case is a bank (I understand that Jamician law is very kind to financial institutions). This usually complicates matters so severly (as international law is involved) that no one would try to prosecute any simple legalities. The only time I've heard of prosecutions in an arrangement such as described is when it's being done to cover strictly illegal activities, such as drug-running.
So is that what software distribution has become? Drug running? I'm remined of Burroughs origional Blade Runner (not the movie version of DADOES). I hope not, but I don't know. What I do know is that you need a lawyer to work out the details, but at least this might give you a general direction to head.
On the flip side, as others have noted, Iran has undergone a dramatic cultural change in the last few years. I would say the political culture there is much more diplomatic than they were three years ago. I would venture that there is the distinct possiblility that they'll be removed from the list of sensitive nations in the not to distant future. But don't hold your breath. By that I mean in the next decade. It won't help your bottom line now, but it's something to watch out for.
I hear you Demona. I actually rather shruged off the whole thing until my wife brought it up reading the paper this morning. It wasn't news to me. The only thing surprising about it is that it didn't happen earlier, that is youthful geeks who just snap. My wife was amazed at the similarity in the descriptions of these students to me at that age. The manner of dress, most of their interests and the fact that they were fed up with the cards they were delt and they were ready to leave their lives and take as many of those that made them miserable with them.
Now I'm not saying that I would have actually gone that far. My father was in law enforcement, so there were firearms in the house that I could have used if I was really determined. I wasn't. Sometimes the only thing that stopped me was knowing that this is exactly what would happen. The media blitz. They'd blame my computers, my books, guns, my parents. And that's just wrong. My parents are two of the most outstanding people I will ever know and I couldn't do that to them. But the thought did cross my mind more than once.
What would even make me think such a thing? I'm reminded of Annie's brother in Annie Hall (sincere applogies to those that can't stand Woody Allen, but I thought this scene was very un-Woody like) who said, "Sometimes I see a car coming towards me in the other lane and I think about just swerving into that lane. Do you ever think about that?" Okay, the quote's not exact, but that's the idea. An idea that I'm apparently not alone in thinking. Books and TV and Video Games had nothing to do with it. Heck, they were probably what kept me from snaping! What it amounted to is that I felt that I was being wronged as an individual. Our society has taught for hundreds of years that if someone or a group is being wronged, killing the opressers is an acceptable solution. Hey! If it was good enough for George Washington, who we learned in first grade was the greatest American hero, it's good enough for me.
Let's look at the violence these kids saw. Take two movies: Braveheart and Mortal Combat. I think Braveheart, which was hearlded as an outstanding piece of historical fiction, had much more to do with this incident than the mindless violence in Mortal Combat. Braveheart was wronged as an individual, he was opressed by the dominate govenment, so what did he do? Revolt! Kill all the Englishmen! There's your ethnic clensing. So what he died in the end? He was a hero and he made history. Well, at least it seems that those kids in Colorado made history. Perhaphs we should hold society to its own standards and say that they're heros as well.
Instead we're calling them criminals. What have we learned from this? Nothing. Instead of implementing special programs for the technically gifted, they're baning trench coats. Hello? Trench coats don't kill people. People that can't stand being out of place, out of touch and see nowhere to go kill people.
There are no hard and fast solutions to problems like these. What needs to change is the society that we live in. It doesn't matter what you ban, they'll still snap and they'll still find a way to wound society in any way they can. So instead of being reactive, we need to be more proactive as a community. Parents, Schools and Neighbors need to identify those kids that don't fit into their nice perfect mold and place them in a less structured environment.
For me, that environment was college. I went when I was 16. That amazed people, but I didn't think it was special. It was a necessary step in my development as a person. To feed into another popular /. thread, I didn't need to go to college to learn the technical skills I have. In fact I probably could have learned more by not going judging by how much I've learned in the couple years since I finished. But the college environment was invaluable for teaching me who I was.
That environment for some is the military or boarding school or becoming a vagabon and traveling the country. Whatever it is, it's necessesary. It would be best if this sort of environment could be provided right there in public schools. Most schools have special programs for gifted students or problem students, but I'm talking about something for the student who isn't really better, just different. A program that would replace their normal classes.
Anyway, this is long enough and I hope I've made my point. Do what you can to change the system. For example, we'll home school our kids when we have them. I'm also going to volenteer to help technologically gifted students at the local school, soon as I've done my grad work. Let's see that none of these people died in vain and that it doesn't happen again.
-"Zow"
This makes a lot of sence considering how much Fermilab does with Linux. Check out The article on Linux on page 10. The article refers to their Computing Division's policy on Linux. Which I think is really well thought out. I wish more large, distributed, organizations would put some sort of policy like this in place rather than trying to ignore Linux and then whine about it when there's a problem.
This article seems like a good time to remind people that the Mozilla party that was reported on about a month ago is tonight. Wish I could go but I have to catch a plane in the wee hours tomorrow morn. Oh well, there's always next year.
So Rob, you aren't interested in making an islashdot? Let the user pick their flavour? With how hip you are to the new case designs, I would have thought you'd go for the gee whiz features. If your monkeys are already spending cycles to create dynamic pages, how much more would it cost to make them change the colour tags?
Regards,
"Zow"
I'm trying to do this at work for some scientific visualization work. Most of our boxes are SGIs, but I ended up with an x86 on my desk, so I ran out and got a #9 Revolution 3D card (as I loved the Imagine 128 I used back in my NT days) and a Xi Graphics server (as they looked to have the best server that supported it). It's slow as a dog. Screen redraws (like between virtual desktops) take on the order of seconds. 3D is just unuseable. My box here at home just has a cheap Matrox Millinium II in it that I use with Mesa and it rocks. I tried out another box at work with a S3 chip & Mesa and that worked beautifully too. My project lead is running a 3Dfx card in his box at home and said that the Linux support for that is impressive.
So, if you aren't looking to spend much, I'd pick up a nice 2D card (like the latest & greatest from Matrox) and a 3Dfx card, and just use the XFree86 server with Mesa.
I now do my graphics work on an Indigo 2 that's floated down to me. For what you can pick one of those beasts up for these days, I'd say that's probably the best solution if you're doing anything more that fiddling around. How is the SGI port of Linux doing anyway?
And in case anyone is wondering, I tried XFree86 3.3.3 with the Rev3D and it looks like #9 changed the RAMDAC on it from what the XFree86 group ran on, which may well explain Xi's problem with it. I'd avoid #9 products for now.