I happen to be Jewish and out of reverence to the lord's name I don't write it out. Also when I said second I ment sec. as in a unit of time, I appologize for not being more concise.
I could easily see IBM coming out with its own distro in the near future. Think about it. Most of their code is for UNIX boxes anyway so it wouldn't be that hard to port.
All they have to do is sell an IBM custom distro, and add some of their own comercial applications software on top of it to make some extra cash.
This is their chance to pick up where they left off when Windows took over the business market. Linux is their chance to dominate the PC market again, and they are about the only company that has the manpower to make a good profit off making comercial linux applications.
IBM wants linux because it is going to give them back their market share. If you can't beat microsoft, quit and play a game that is a whole lot better.
That is a great book. I would highly recomend it to anyone that is into computers. It tells the tale of some hardware engineers. Their battle with the suits at corperate, the commitment to their work, and all of the shianigans that went on in the office like "Tube Wars".
If all you want to do is learn languages, and the principals of sofware engineering go to your local bookstore and library.
If you want to do the really cool stuff and be around a lot people with similar interests re-think your idea about a 4-year program in CS.
It's not to hard to graduate in three years if you really want to, plus you will pick up two very important things.
First you will get at degree. I know that a lot of people that are about to graduate and are still as dumb as a rock. You do get this cool piece of paper that is worth a minimum of $40,000 a year that some companies require for them to hire you.
The second and most important reason is that you will learn a lot of math. I don't know about you but I hated math in high school. College math is a whole new level, and any CS grad without at least a math minor is shooting themselves in the foot.
If you look at most of the really great computer scientists all had a virtually total math background.
If you want to do graphics you are going to need to know linear algebra. If you are going to be doing any serious programing at all you are really going to want to take a couple of discrete math courses.
Not going doing a 4-year program is shooting yourself in the foot. Look at some of your state schools. You would be suprised how cheap you can get an education there. Get a real world programming job over the summers and you can easily start out at $60,000 when you get out if you put your mind to it.
I think people on both sides of this debate need to take a step back and look at the whole picture.
Our world has been around for a very, very, long time. Even when you read Genisis you will notice that man is the last of G*D's final creations.
Does nature evolve over time? Sure it does. Some species die out, and others adapt and change to become more viable.
What is the difference between man and beast? Man has a soul. Just because G*D gave this wonderful gift to some advanced primates we think of as Adam&Eve doesn't mean we are apes. The second G*D gave humans a soul was when humanity was created.
The people of Moses have to realize that creationism and evolution do co-exist and can be tought side by side withought being in total opposition of one-another.
Sience is our way of understanding the great emperical mystries of our universe. Just because the earth is round and not flat, or G*D's creation of the universe was by what our scientists call the "Big Ban" doesn't mean we are heathens. We simply understand more of the world around us. And although science might seem in opposition to G*D at times in the end it corrects us and only brings us closer to and understanding of his glorius world.
Technology is a lot like code. You start out with a simple idea and build upon it. In the process you find more and more you want to add untill it becomes somewhat cluttered. You then refine it down to a point where it is most usefull(Something MicroSoft hasn't seemed to grasp yet). Yes there will always be new unrefined technology. But just like good code in the longrun it gets refined to a point where it becomes more useful than the original.
The problem is that it takes us a while to figure exactly what we want to refine. We want it all, but we want to be able to use it easily too. Some times we figure this out the hard way by wasteing time untill we get fed up with it. Some times we develop new technology that does the job instead.
It is an endless circle, but in the long run it isn't all that bad.
My old high school has run on client/server for years. It didn't take them more than a couple of crashes for the school district to realize what the word BACKUP meant, but they finally caught on.
With client/server you don't need to upgrade the hardware as often either. Yeah your server is going to get out of date, but the clients can get a lot more mileage than a normal PC. In fact I think our school is still getting by with 286/386 clients. Unless you want your students playing Q3Test this works just fine for basic office applications, surfing the web, and our one course in Pascal.
Client/server is the way to go for larger schools. Cheap, easy to admin, and more fun to...err harder to break in to.
For all the bad rap the NSA might get for being on the "protective" side they are one of our country's great national rescources. The US armed forces would be very inefective without an orginization like the NSA to support it. Brawn is rather inefective withought the brains to back it up. Although we give the NSA a lot of crap we have to realize the good they do in protecting our freedom greatly outweighs the infringes they make upon it.
Option 1: Thwarting off international terrorists by intercepting coded communications. Option 2: Thwarting off international terrorists by posting guards armed with M16s at the gate of all international flights.
You bet that NASA will get the bugs worked out of it. I doubt that they will be selling the plans anytime soon though. Think of the military uses for a small transport like this. They can build 1000's of these for the price of one helicopter. I bet we will see the US Military using this a long time before the general public.
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I happen to be Jewish and out of reverence to the lord's name I don't write it out. Also when I said second I ment sec. as in a unit of time, I appologize for not being more concise.
I could easily see IBM coming out with its own distro in the near future. Think about it. Most of their code is for UNIX boxes anyway so it wouldn't be that hard to port.
All they have to do is sell an IBM custom distro, and add some of their own comercial applications software on top of it to make some extra cash.
This is their chance to pick up where they left off when Windows took over the business market. Linux is their chance to dominate the PC market again, and they are about the only company that has the manpower to make a good profit off making comercial linux applications.
IBM wants linux because it is going to give them back their market share. If you can't beat microsoft, quit and play a game that is a whole lot better.
A soul is a hard thing to define. I am certainly no great theologian but I will try.
The soul is what seperates man from beast. It is the moral, spiritual, intelectual, and emotional part of man's nature.
Although apes like Koko do share a lot of our intelectual and emotional aspects, they do not have a moral or spiritual conciousness.
Sorry. In using the word world I was refering to the universe.
That is a great book. I would highly recomend it to anyone that is into computers. It tells the tale of some hardware engineers. Their battle with the suits at corperate, the commitment to their work, and all of the shianigans that went on in the office like "Tube Wars".
If all you want to do is learn languages, and the principals of sofware engineering go to your local bookstore and library.
If you want to do the really cool stuff and be around a lot people with similar interests re-think your idea about a 4-year program in CS.
It's not to hard to graduate in three years if you really want to, plus you will pick up two very important things.
First you will get at degree. I know that a lot of people that are about to graduate and are still as dumb as a rock. You do get this cool piece of paper that is worth a minimum of $40,000 a year that some companies require for them to hire you.
The second and most important reason is that you will learn a lot of math. I don't know about you but I hated math in high school. College math is a whole new level, and any CS grad without at least a math minor is shooting themselves in the foot.
If you look at most of the really great computer scientists all had a virtually total math background.
If you want to do graphics you are going to need to know linear algebra. If you are going to be doing any serious programing at all you are really going to want to take a couple of discrete math courses.
Not going doing a 4-year program is shooting yourself in the foot. Look at some of your state schools. You would be suprised how cheap you can get an education there. Get a real world programming job over the summers and you can easily start out at $60,000 when you get out if you put your mind to it.
I think people on both sides of this debate need to take a step back and look at the whole picture.
Our world has been around for a very, very, long time. Even when you read Genisis you will notice that man is the last of G*D's final creations.
Does nature evolve over time? Sure it does. Some species die out, and others adapt and change to become more viable.
What is the difference between man and beast? Man has a soul. Just because G*D gave this wonderful gift to some advanced primates we think of as Adam&Eve doesn't mean we are apes. The second G*D gave humans a soul was when humanity was created.
The people of Moses have to realize that creationism and evolution do co-exist and can be tought side by side withought being in total opposition of one-another.
Sience is our way of understanding the great emperical mystries of our universe. Just because the earth is round and not flat, or G*D's creation of the universe was by what our scientists call the "Big Ban" doesn't mean we are heathens. We simply understand more of the world around us. And although science might seem in opposition to G*D at times in the end it corrects us and only brings us closer to and understanding of his glorius world.
Technology is a lot like code. You start out with a simple idea and build upon it. In the process you find more and more you want to add untill it becomes somewhat cluttered. You then refine it down to a point where it is most usefull(Something MicroSoft hasn't seemed to grasp yet). Yes there will always be new unrefined technology. But just like good code in the longrun it gets refined to a point where it becomes more useful than the original.
The problem is that it takes us a while to figure exactly what we want to refine. We want it all, but we want to be able to use it easily too. Some times we figure this out the hard way by wasteing time untill we get fed up with it. Some times we develop new technology that does the job instead.
It is an endless circle, but in the long run it isn't all that bad.
My old high school has run on client/server for years. It didn't take them more than a couple of crashes for the school district to realize what the word BACKUP meant, but they finally caught on.
With client/server you don't need to upgrade the hardware as often either. Yeah your server is going to get out of date, but the clients can get a lot more mileage than a normal PC. In fact I think our school is still getting by with 286/386 clients. Unless you want your students playing Q3Test this works just fine for basic office applications, surfing the web, and our one course in Pascal.
Client/server is the way to go for larger schools. Cheap, easy to admin, and more fun to...err harder to break in to.
For all the bad rap the NSA might get for being on the "protective" side they are one of our country's great national rescources. The US armed forces would be very inefective without an orginization like the NSA to support it. Brawn is rather inefective withought the brains to back it up. Although we give the NSA a lot of crap we have to realize the good they do in protecting our freedom greatly outweighs the infringes they make upon it.
Option 1: Thwarting off international terrorists by intercepting coded communications.
Option 2: Thwarting off international terrorists by posting guards armed with M16s at the gate of all international flights.
Hmmm that's a tough one...
You bet that NASA will get the bugs worked out of it. I doubt that they will be selling the plans anytime soon though. Think of the military uses for a small transport like this. They can build 1000's of these for the price of one helicopter. I bet we will see the US Military using this a long time before the general public.