Visual Basic can be a good teaching tool if you're working with students who have never written a line of code before, because they can actually produce results that resemble what an application is supposed to look like in their mind. For these students it can be very empowering and may actually get them interested in programming.
The important part is that you don't waste time teaching the IDE or the Syntax, but rather you focus on programming concepts (variables, operators, loops, control, etc).
If the class is filled with gifted students who have already written some code, it might be better to jump into C and teach them the things that most new programmers struggle with like pointers, computer architecture, and operating systems. For these students, starting with VB would be an insult.
I agree there are a lot of people who abuse VB and use it for too long (a full semester of VB for example). But it is more than appropriate for a short introduction class targeted at young children who may have never seen a command line.
You also have to acknowledge that Visual Basic.NET is a different beast than VB. VB.NET is a fairly strong and powerful language and more than suitable for a large variety of applications today....NET isn't my first choice, personally, but I'm tired of all the fanboys here making emotional statements on programming languages being horrible because it's not their choice, rather than being pragmatic and acknowledging their individual strengths.
Cogent is a Tier 1 network service provider (weather or not Sprint and L3 want it to be).
Cogent offers great service at an unbeatable price (4-5 USD per Mbps as opposed to the 15-20 or so Sprint and competitors are charging).
How does Cogent do this? They focused early on metro ethernet services and wave division, instead of wasting money in legacy technologies. They kept their vision clear, and their staff small (under 500 employees).
Cogent is the type of NSP we want as a Tier 1. A very strong backer of Net Neutrality, and no intention of trying to get into the entertainment business unlike Verizon, AT&T, etc. Cogent has a goal of offering the best service at the lowest price (the end result being realistically moving the US forward in terms of available bandwidth).
If you take a look at the CAIDA rankings [http://as-rank.caida.org/], you'll see that Cogent has surpassed Verizon Business (was UUNET) and Global Crossing, and is now right behind Sprint.
Cogent is growing, and if Sprint doesn't do something they're going to loose their no. 3 spot to them. So their strategy is to make a power play and force Cogent into a Tier 2 spot and create uncertainty in the eyes of current and potential customers.
As much as Sprint would like to position itself as a provider for Cogent, it's not. Sprint is a peer for Cogent with Cogent being an equivalent size of the current Sprint network, and larger than many of Sprints other peers.
The idea that Sprint doesn't get as much out of peering with Cogent as Cogent does peering with Sprint is absurd and PR propaganda to try and look like this was anything other than a power-play to keep a competitor at bay.
It will be interesting to see how this goes in court. If I were a Sprint customer I would seriously consider moving to Cogent.
On a side note, Sprint is one of the major opponents against Net Neutrality. Combine that with the fact that Cogent is offering the same level of service for a third the cost, and it's not hard to see why Sprint is trying to take Cogent out of the picture.
I like the 360, but I wasn't about to spend the cash on their HD-DVD drive. Release an external BluRay drive and I might go for it.
Of course I think the days of buying movies on disc are almost over; you can rent movies in HD (okay it is only 720) on XBoxLive and iTunes. So you sell your soul to the DRM lords... it's still nice to legally get content online.
Instant gratification must be one of the seven deadly sins...
Microsoft now knows through research that a large portion of the enterprise market is holding off on switching to "Linux" because they are afraid that a company will come after them for license fees unexpectedly (SCO for example). Mainly CEOs and CTOs who don't get it.
By having an article like this in Fortune, Microsoft is using FUD to keep that market group too nervous to make the switch. Even if it's only 10% (or less), it's still a very cheap way for them to retain their current customer base.
None of this will hold up in court (and Microsoft knows it wont), but it makes good business sense to keep people thinking that they need to be paying you because the alternative is illeagle.
I wouldn't loose any sleep over it. Free Software is something that is too big to die now. We have delt with software pattents before (LZW). If there is a legitimate pattent we'll either find prior art or we'll replace it with something that hasn't been patented (zlib) and in the process probablly come up with something better anyway.
People are starting to notice that traditional Computer Science curriculum doesn't match the job market or peoples expectations.
Traditional Computer Science has a place, but it isn't in IT.
Many people applying for jobs in the IT industry with a CS degree are finding out that employers want more than just a CS degree. Knowing how to write a good compiler is great if you work for a company that creates programming languages, but it's not very useful if you're working for an ecommerce company.
I think we're starting to see a shift away from Computer Science. In its place are new and more specialized programs that are tailored to meet the demands of today's job market.
With that said there will always be a need for Computer Scientists, just like there will always be a need for Physicists. The amount of people who become Computer Scientists will be limited to those perusing research or academic careers.
Here in Maine for example one of our public universities has been building up alternative curriculum for computer science for a number of years. See http://www.cs.umfk.maine.edu/ for details. The site is a bit sparse at the moment... it is my understanding that a student is working on it. Keep in mind that this is a smaller university (only about 1,200 students enrolled).
That's funny. Here in Maine the MLTI (Maine Learning Technology Initiative) has been going very well. The state started the program in 2000 and apparently the results have been good enough to convince the legislature to approve additional spending to renew Maine's contract with Apple Computer for MLTI.
Providing the infrastructure to get something like this going is key. That is where the Maine School and Library Network (MSLN) comes in. MSLN, run by the University of Maine System, provides Internet access to the majority of Maine's 2000+ K12 schools and libraries (any k12.me.us or lib.me.us address belongs to MSLN). Along with these network connections are manageable website content filtering services that are used to limit exposure to sites not appropriate for minors. Filtering is not the entire solution though. The solution is teachers teaching students to be responsible to the point that filtering isn't necessary.
If you just give a school child a new laptop but don't engage them to think creatively then you just end up with another distraction. If this is what is happening then you should blame the teacher and not the laptop.
Along with laptops in the classroom Maine also has a distance learning H.32x videoconferenceing network, also managed by MSLN. This allows Maine students to interact with classrooms in other states and even other nations.
The next step for Maine will probably be moving towards online resources for education rather than expensive text books. There has been discussion about creating a Wiki for use by teachers to build up state-wide curriculum and supplemental learning resources.
Much work is also being done in understanding the most effective ways to teach with technology. At the University of Maine-Fort Kent (UMFK) virtually all classes are now built using WebCT to the point that students expect their classes to be available online. The different thing about UMFK is that while almost all of their courses are online, there are very few online-only courses. Rather than being used to replace the classroom technology is used to enhance the learning experience.
I'm not saying Maine has everything figured out. There have been plenty of bumps along the way since 2000, but for the most part technology in education has been statistically proven to be a good thing. Especially in attendance rates, grades, and enthusiasm for learning.
If this WSJ writer wants to do a story on Laptops in education, maybe he should look at a state that has been doing it successfully instead using one bad example to trash the idea.
When it comes down to it, Java is a much better teaching tool. Knowning Java today is equilivant to knowing C ten years ago. It doesn't take anyone long to see that most journals, text books, etc. use Java as a language that everyone is assumed to know. As an example Tannumbuam recently updated his "Computer Organization" to use Java for examples. Dr. Dobbs frequently seems to use Java unless talking about a specific programming language, etc.
The nice part about learning Java is that, assuming you have a decent instructor, you'll learn how to think in terms of objects because in Java you have no choice. Other languages, even though they say they're object oriented, tend to hide details just enough to let people slide through without learning oop at all. Sure Python is a great object oriented language, but you can use it without ever being exposed to objects and classes. In Java, everything is very literal, and there is little guess work.
Implimentation wise, Java runs on everything. You can use Java for writing servers, applications, dynamic websites, and there are even a nice assortment of microcontrolers like the JStamp that use Java bytecode dirrectly. For this reason most engineers today learn Java..NET is nice and all, but Mono is far from being on par with the Micosoft CRE..NET ties you to Microsoft, and it is noticablly slower than Java in a lot of applications..NET limits you to Vista, and that's betting a lot on a new OS release by Microsoft that many people don't seem to be in a hurry to adopt. Don't forget that while threre are already java runtimes for GNU systems, GCC supports native compilation of Java, and projects like GNU Classpath are much further along than Mono.
After you know Java, C++, C#, etc. will come to you very easilly. The same can't be said about learning C# which teaches little about programming. If Sun continues on their current path, Java might be opened up soon.
The technology market has shifted because the CD sucks as a portable music medium. Let's face it, the first "portable" CD players were heavier than some laptops today, they can thin them down all they like, and add "skip protection" all they like, but in the end, it still needs to be a very un-portable CD-sized device. Companies like SONY tried to address the issue of portability with things like the memory stick, minidisc, and shrunken CD's called pocket CD's that hold a third of the music as a CD.
The fact is that today we live in a very mobile world. Very few people have large expensive sound systems in their home compared to the number of people who use portable players. People want to be able to take their music with them, and not invest in racks of CD's and bulky home systems that will only result in upsetting the neighbors who don't like your music.
The trend of the walkman seemed to get very big in the 90's, but when the industry made the shift from cassette tape to CD they attributed the lack of CD sales to the still high price point. They didn't realize that the way people listen to music was changing, and that their new medium was destined for failure in the portable market.
Today, more and more people are learning that small, portable, players capable of holding not just one album, or one artist, but a large portion, if not all, of your personal music library are the way to go. No more messing around with disks. How does this affect CD sales though? Well, because the record industry is so concerned about piracy, it turns out that they make it difficult for the lay person to get music from their CD to their portable device. It also turns out that the easiest, and most popular, way of ripping CD's is to use iTunes. Great, but iTunes has a music store right there, which is usually faster than going out to a CD store, looking for a CD, buying an entire album for one song you like, bringing it back home, ripping it to your iTunes library, and loading it on to your portable device. What do you do with all the CD's? I know people who have racks of CD's collecting dust and they take up more space than you'd think, not to mention keeping them organized can be a chore.
Napster showed people how easy it could be to get music digitally, they did it by violating copyright, but it caught the attention of a few companies, mainly Apple. With the iTunes Music Store people could now get music digitally, faster, and more easily, than pirating it. People are willing to pay for this added level of convenience, but not much, otherwise they'll resort back to piracy. The trick is finding the right price that will get the record industry the most money before they loose sales to piracy. It turns out that price is 99 cents per song. This is predictable psychologically; 99 cents for one song seems cheep, while adding 50 cents to that price makes it seem completely unreasonable to most consumers.
Regardless of weather it's iPod+iTunes, or another digital music player, the fact is that the CD as a portable player never worked and is now dieing. With a majority market shift from people playing music in their homes, to people playing music using portables, it's obvious that CD sales would inevitably be doomed to failure.
Record Labels, odd that we still call them that, can easily improve their "bottom line" by simply ending the production and distribution of physical media. The overhead in distributing music digitally is far, far, less than the overhead of printing CD's, packaging them, shipping them, and replacing defective copies.
The record companies continue to complain about profits and CD sales while digital music sales go up. "Even though digital music sales are rising they don't match the profit returned from CD sales they replace". Of course they don't, if you're still paying to manufacture and distribute CD's. The market has decided that digital content distribution is the way they want music, they've decided that 99 cents a song is what they will pay, and the
I'm a Computer Science major but my concentration is Information Assurance and Security.
There are a lot of bad ideas here from people who obviously think that they understand security. When it comes to security someone saying that something is possible should raise an eyebrow, and someone saying that something is impossible should be ignored.
Give me physical access to a computer of an IT staff member who has reasonable levels of access and I will be able to compromise the entire network; period.
If I have physical access to a computer it is mine, and short of physically stopping me there is nothing you can do to prevent me from having complete access to that computer.
Imagine this, if you will:
I have a motive to gain complete control over the network. Be it that I'm a disgruntled employee, looking to profit, or simply wanting to get some dirt on someone I don't like... for some reason I want to get complete control of the network.
Why would I sit down at the computer and work on it for long when there is a risk of being caught?
Instead I bring a bootable utility disk, an external hard drive, and boot up an environment that will let me create a bit-stream image of the entire disk and save it to my external drive.
It takes me about 30 to 120 seconds to set this up, maybe a few extra min if I need to reset the BIOS (but this is an IT staff workstation, I'm sure the lazy IT employee just has his workstation set to boot off the CD already...)
So I go away for an hour or two, come back, retrieve my external HD and there is no way to detect I ever accessed that disk.
Later, I perform an analysis of the disk image looking in file slack, ram slack, and deleted files... what do I find? Sensitive conversations, documents, encryption keys, and passwords: jackpot. That's right, I don't care if you save everything off on a network drive, if your workstation has a hard disk chances are that most of the information I need is hidden on it (especially true on Windows workstations and NTFS file systems).
Not only did I just get all the "keys" to your precious network, but I also got myself an exact copy of that computers configuration so I can replicate it if I need to, and I did it so fast that you won't even realize there is a problem.
How long did this take me? About 5 min of access to the computer, with some down time where I was away doing something else (gee, Mr. Janitor can do this can't he?) in between.
So you see, this idea of storing "sensitive" data only on the network is bunk. You created a $50,000 lock that I can pick with a 5 cent pen, congratulations, your CEO must be proud.
Any, and I stress this: Any computer terminal that is not physically secured should be a diskless workstation. People underestimate the value in thin client computing. From a security standpoint you should treat every hard disk that has ever been in a computer that has accessed sensitive information, even once, as a copy of that information. This includes documents viewed, passwords entered, etc. In other words: every hard disk in your organization.
I guess I'll mention it now for those of you who can't read between the lines: Do you ever throw out old hard drives? What information was on them? What information is still on them? Every time a computer hard disk comes into contact with IT, it should be whipped thoroughly with multiple passes of random data (to avoid data recovery though forensics techniques). I recommend at least the American DoD 5220-22.M Standard Wipe. There are Free Software tools available to do this, such as DBAN.
So are cubicles a bad idea for IT staff computers? I think the answer to that is obvious. The real question here is: Is the benefit to having workstations with hard disks worth the extra security concerns they present? If you deal in sensitive information, you want to be very sure that every computer with a hard disk is physically secure.
The new term for Infosec is "Information Assurance and Security". You want to find a university that offers an IAS program and attend it. The NSA has an IAS certification program if you look arround their website you can find NSA accredited IAS programs. Most notablly are programs offered by Perdue University at thier Center for Education and Research in Information Assurance and Security (CERIAS).
UMFK is also a good choice for Information Assurance and Security if you can't afford Perdue's tuition rates.
Once you have a degree with an IAS specialization it's not hard at all to find internships and eventually job opertunities in the field as its growing like wildfire. Most IAS programs have their students grabbed up by employers before they even finsih their senior year.
- Intel creates CPUs - Intel, like almost every other CPU manufacturer, creates a compiler for their CPUs - AMD creates CPUs - AMD creates no compiler - AMD bitches about Intel, their competition, not supporting their CPU with their compiler.
I'm really not seeing a case here.
Do we expect the Intel compiler to also support PPC and MIPS too? Are we going to sue Intel now, because they don't support 3DNow! in their compiler?
That is ridiculous.
If AMD has a case about unfair business practices regarding back room deals and contracts explicitly encouraging OEMs not to use AMD products then that's one thing, but please stick to that and don't try to make Intel look bad over this bullshit.
No other company would bend over backwards to support special optimizations for a competitor, why would anyone expect Intel to? I don't.
If AMD is upset they should write their own compiler. If you're upset as a developer you should help out with GCC, because Free Software avoids these things.
Again, I see no case here. This article was posted to rally AMD fanatics or something. I usually like AMD, but this type of thing just makes me look down on AMD and its community.
Well, cancer stuff is cool and all, and I know you all love to comment on anything involving fruit... but I think the AIDS blocking research is a bit more interesting, personally. Not that I have AIDS or anything, but it would certainly be nice to be rid of it, especially in Africa.
There is long, and then there is long. People were expecting it to come out sooner, and it was met with delay after delay. Long release cycles are fine if you tell people about them, but when people expect that you'll be releaing a new version next year and it turns into 3 years later... well... Needless to say, for a while a lot of Debian users moved to more current alternatives.
They started out friendly, but now Ubuntu is distancing itself more and more from Debian, they're making no effort to even stay compatible for package installation, which I think is hurting Debian in the long run. I really wish people would just try and help Debian if they have a problem with it instead of starting up yet another dist to make GNU/Linux "OS of a thousand distributions."
Debian was my first GNU/Linux distribution. 1.3 was the stable at the time, but I ran the 2.0 unstable canidate. For a while I've used others... but I always come back to Debian. The Debian Security Team is a big part of the reason. The comunity nature of Debian, and the history of Debian represent a real important part of the Free Software comunity.
Security is often a thankless job. People only care once something goes wrong. They don't see all the work it takes to coordinate timely security responce. It should also be noted that Debian takes a proactive approach to security with the Debian Security Audit Team.
Debian lost a lot of its reputation with the delays for the current stable release. I think the future of Debian, if its to keep its reputation, will be to move to a standard release cycle of once every 2 years. Sure the Debian releases are few and far between compared to other distributions, but Debian is about software Freedom, not bleading edge technology. It provides a solid and secure OS, and most system administrators don't want to roll out a new version of an OS every 2 years, in fact, most would rather keep running an OS as long as there are security updates.
There are certainly a lot of challanges for Debian right now, hopefully the "Security Issue" goes away with this change.
I've seen a lot of cases where the "leader" doesn't know anything about the project and the real people who know what's going on are the minions below him. I'm guessing this is usually the case at NASA
No offence, but every user should be aware when something is encrypted, and they should be explicitly telling it to be encrypted.
What if "Alice sends an email to Bob" assuming it will be encrypted but "Bob doesn't have a registered public key" so the message is sent normally?
It seems like the easy way to hack this is to block access to the key server so it sends mail unencrypted everytime?
I'm not sure, the website wasn't too informative. Either way, it doesn't get much simpiler than having a "Sign" and "Encrypt" checkbox for GPG. I don't see how this is a good idea at all.
Sorry, but I hope I never see a "Linux" standard that deals with anything other than the Linux kernel.
In all honesty, not enough thought has gone into creating a standard for GNU+Linux. I don't want to see good ideas like debian's package managment system go to waste because everyone decideds to make a bad descission and adopt RPM for package managment.
What about a standard GUI framework? Don't make me start up the KDE vs. GNOME vs. GNUstep fights:P
Standardization of BAD ideas would just hold back progression. An ISO standard might even make it so that ISO can legitimately charge money for Linux, ever think about that?
Who needs standardization, people will eventually gravitate towards the best, and that will be the standard.
The language is the least of your worries. I would strongly advise against.NET (hint, don't go with 'Latest' tech. most small-to-midsized healthcare providers use a mix of new and old software and hardware, for example, I've walked into many hospitals that still run "NT Server 4.0" and "NT Workstation 4.0"). Java has a stong presence in Healthcare but can be extreamly slow on Windows ever since Microsoft stopped releasing their Java VM (Sun's Java VM is horridly slow, they really shouldn't of complained about the Windows one)
Python is getting more and more credibility in Healthcare and Scientific computing. Its fast, easy, stable, and secure. It would be a very smart move to use Python.
Your real focus should be HIPAA compliance. If you don't know what HIPAA is you shouldn't even have this contract, but assuming you're not going to just "give up" you should read up and become informed on HIPAA. This is assuming you're doing the work for a Healthcare provider in the US that is... anyway, HIPAA regulates healthcare software... if you don't meet HIPAA standards for security (not only coding wise but access wise etc) your product will be useless and you'll be forced to redo it... more importantly... you'll look like a group of idiots.
So yeah, start reading up on HIPAA (It takes months to understand it all if your not fimilar with it at all, so I wouldn't waste any time.)
We recompile code all the time in the free and open source world.
Opteron is not even a compitition to IBMs POWER5, let alone the Itanium. I think you should do a bit of research. UNIX generally performs better on RISC.
EPIC is ahead of its time. You're thinking about 20th century computing. "Compiling" code is becoming less and less practical. Computers today can now handle so many operations in shuch a short span of time that the benifits of an inturpreted language outweigh the performance loss. For example, not having to deal with building, linking, compiling code etc., being able to put security checks at the VM level to offer drastically more secure computing systems...
Such a system, designed to take advantage of EPIC is alredy in the works, it will be Free Software, and early tests show that EPIC is dramatically better than older archs for this type of next generation computing.
The benifits of EPIC really stand out when you start to scale, the perofmance gap grows exponentially in that case, so yes, right now... Intel is correct is avoiding trying to maket Itanium as a desktop processor.
Granted the Itanium 2 has some shortcomings, but the EPIC arhc is definatelly a keeper.
Slashdot Mirror
How about using some of the Minuteman III ICBM's we have lying around... I'm sure we could spare a few...
It depends on the target group.
Visual Basic can be a good teaching tool if you're working with students who have never written a line of code before, because they can actually produce results that resemble what an application is supposed to look like in their mind. For these students it can be very empowering and may actually get them interested in programming.
The important part is that you don't waste time teaching the IDE or the Syntax, but rather you focus on programming concepts (variables, operators, loops, control, etc).
If the class is filled with gifted students who have already written some code, it might be better to jump into C and teach them the things that most new programmers struggle with like pointers, computer architecture, and operating systems. For these students, starting with VB would be an insult.
I agree there are a lot of people who abuse VB and use it for too long (a full semester of VB for example). But it is more than appropriate for a short introduction class targeted at young children who may have never seen a command line.
You also have to acknowledge that Visual Basic .NET is a different beast than VB. VB .NET is a fairly strong and powerful language and more than suitable for a large variety of applications today... .NET isn't my first choice, personally, but I'm tired of all the fanboys here making emotional statements on programming languages being horrible because it's not their choice, rather than being pragmatic and acknowledging their individual strengths.
VB .NET might be the perfect fit for this guy.
Cogent is a Tier 1 network service provider (weather or not Sprint and L3 want it to be).
Cogent offers great service at an unbeatable price (4-5 USD per Mbps as opposed to the 15-20 or so Sprint and competitors are charging).
How does Cogent do this? They focused early on metro ethernet services and wave division, instead of wasting money in legacy technologies. They kept their vision clear, and their staff small (under 500 employees).
Cogent is the type of NSP we want as a Tier 1. A very strong backer of Net Neutrality, and no intention of trying to get into the entertainment business unlike Verizon, AT&T, etc. Cogent has a goal of offering the best service at the lowest price (the end result being realistically moving the US forward in terms of available bandwidth).
If you take a look at the CAIDA rankings [http://as-rank.caida.org/], you'll see that Cogent has surpassed Verizon Business (was UUNET) and Global Crossing, and is now right behind Sprint.
Cogent is growing, and if Sprint doesn't do something they're going to loose their no. 3 spot to them. So their strategy is to make a power play and force Cogent into a Tier 2 spot and create uncertainty in the eyes of current and potential customers.
As much as Sprint would like to position itself as a provider for Cogent, it's not. Sprint is a peer for Cogent with Cogent being an equivalent size of the current Sprint network, and larger than many of Sprints other peers.
The idea that Sprint doesn't get as much out of peering with Cogent as Cogent does peering with Sprint is absurd and PR propaganda to try and look like this was anything other than a power-play to keep a competitor at bay.
It will be interesting to see how this goes in court. If I were a Sprint customer I would seriously consider moving to Cogent.
On a side note, Sprint is one of the major opponents against Net Neutrality. Combine that with the fact that Cogent is offering the same level of service for a third the cost, and it's not hard to see why Sprint is trying to take Cogent out of the picture.
I have a 40" 1080p Samsung LCD and I can clearly see a difference between 1080p and 720p.
I think you need a better TV...
Seriously.
I like the 360, but I wasn't about to spend the cash on their HD-DVD drive. Release an external BluRay drive and I might go for it.
Of course I think the days of buying movies on disc are almost over; you can rent movies in HD (okay it is only 720) on XBoxLive and iTunes. So you sell your soul to the DRM lords... it's still nice to legally get content online.
Instant gratification must be one of the seven deadly sins...
Microsoft now knows through research that a large portion of the enterprise market is holding off on switching to "Linux" because they are afraid that a company will come after them for license fees unexpectedly (SCO for example). Mainly CEOs and CTOs who don't get it.
By having an article like this in Fortune, Microsoft is using FUD to keep that market group too nervous to make the switch. Even if it's only 10% (or less), it's still a very cheap way for them to retain their current customer base.
None of this will hold up in court (and Microsoft knows it wont), but it makes good business sense to keep people thinking that they need to be paying you because the alternative is illeagle.
I wouldn't loose any sleep over it. Free Software is something that is too big to die now. We have delt with software pattents before (LZW). If there is a legitimate pattent we'll either find prior art or we'll replace it with something that hasn't been patented (zlib) and in the process probablly come up with something better anyway.
PATENT VIOLATION
...
A method of iteration through a two dimensional structure (the nested for loop):
for (int i = 0; i < lim_i; i++) {
for (int j = 0; j < lim_j; j++) {
}
}
People are starting to notice that traditional Computer Science curriculum doesn't match the job market or peoples expectations.
Traditional Computer Science has a place, but it isn't in IT.
Many people applying for jobs in the IT industry with a CS degree are finding out that employers want more than just a CS degree. Knowing how to write a good compiler is great if you work for a company that creates programming languages, but it's not very useful if you're working for an ecommerce company.
I think we're starting to see a shift away from Computer Science. In its place are new and more specialized programs that are tailored to meet the demands of today's job market.
With that said there will always be a need for Computer Scientists, just like there will always be a need for Physicists. The amount of people who become Computer Scientists will be limited to those perusing research or academic careers.
Here in Maine for example one of our public universities has been building up alternative curriculum for computer science for a number of years. See http://www.cs.umfk.maine.edu/ for details. The site is a bit sparse at the moment... it is my understanding that a student is working on it. Keep in mind that this is a smaller university (only about 1,200 students enrolled).
That's funny. Here in Maine the MLTI (Maine Learning Technology Initiative) has been going very well. The state started the program in 2000 and apparently the results have been good enough to convince the legislature to approve additional spending to renew Maine's contract with Apple Computer for MLTI.
See: http://www.maine.gov/mlti/
Providing the infrastructure to get something like this going is key. That is where the Maine School and Library Network (MSLN) comes in. MSLN, run by the University of Maine System, provides Internet access to the majority of Maine's 2000+ K12 schools and libraries (any k12.me.us or lib.me.us address belongs to MSLN). Along with these network connections are manageable website content filtering services that are used to limit exposure to sites not appropriate for minors. Filtering is not the entire solution though. The solution is teachers teaching students to be responsible to the point that filtering isn't necessary.
If you just give a school child a new laptop but don't engage them to think creatively then you just end up with another distraction. If this is what is happening then you should blame the teacher and not the laptop.
Along with laptops in the classroom Maine also has a distance learning H.32x videoconferenceing network, also managed by MSLN. This allows Maine students to interact with classrooms in other states and even other nations.
The next step for Maine will probably be moving towards online resources for education rather than expensive text books. There has been discussion about creating a Wiki for use by teachers to build up state-wide curriculum and supplemental learning resources.
Much work is also being done in understanding the most effective ways to teach with technology. At the University of Maine-Fort Kent (UMFK) virtually all classes are now built using WebCT to the point that students expect their classes to be available online. The different thing about UMFK is that while almost all of their courses are online, there are very few online-only courses. Rather than being used to replace the classroom technology is used to enhance the learning experience.
I'm not saying Maine has everything figured out. There have been plenty of bumps along the way since 2000, but for the most part technology in education has been statistically proven to be a good thing. Especially in attendance rates, grades, and enthusiasm for learning.
If this WSJ writer wants to do a story on Laptops in education, maybe he should look at a state that has been doing it successfully instead using one bad example to trash the idea.
When it comes down to it, Java is a much better teaching tool. Knowning Java today is equilivant to knowing C ten years ago. It doesn't take anyone long to see that most journals, text books, etc. use Java as a language that everyone is assumed to know. As an example Tannumbuam recently updated his "Computer Organization" to use Java for examples. Dr. Dobbs frequently seems to use Java unless talking about a specific programming language, etc.
.NET is nice and all, but Mono is far from being on par with the Micosoft CRE. .NET ties you to Microsoft, and it is noticablly slower than Java in a lot of applications. .NET limits you to Vista, and that's betting a lot on a new OS release by Microsoft that many people don't seem to be in a hurry to adopt. Don't forget that while threre are already java runtimes for GNU systems, GCC supports native compilation of Java, and projects like GNU Classpath are much further along than Mono.
The nice part about learning Java is that, assuming you have a decent instructor, you'll learn how to think in terms of objects because in Java you have no choice. Other languages, even though they say they're object oriented, tend to hide details just enough to let people slide through without learning oop at all. Sure Python is a great object oriented language, but you can use it without ever being exposed to objects and classes. In Java, everything is very literal, and there is little guess work.
Implimentation wise, Java runs on everything. You can use Java for writing servers, applications, dynamic websites, and there are even a nice assortment of microcontrolers like the JStamp that use Java bytecode dirrectly. For this reason most engineers today learn Java.
After you know Java, C++, C#, etc. will come to you very easilly. The same can't be said about learning C# which teaches little about programming. If Sun continues on their current path, Java might be opened up soon.
The technology market has shifted because the CD sucks as a portable music medium. Let's face it, the first "portable" CD players were heavier than some laptops today, they can thin them down all they like, and add "skip protection" all they like, but in the end, it still needs to be a very un-portable CD-sized device. Companies like SONY tried to address the issue of portability with things like the memory stick, minidisc, and shrunken CD's called pocket CD's that hold a third of the music as a CD.
The fact is that today we live in a very mobile world. Very few people have large expensive sound systems in their home compared to the number of people who use portable players. People want to be able to take their music with them, and not invest in racks of CD's and bulky home systems that will only result in upsetting the neighbors who don't like your music.
The trend of the walkman seemed to get very big in the 90's, but when the industry made the shift from cassette tape to CD they attributed the lack of CD sales to the still high price point. They didn't realize that the way people listen to music was changing, and that their new medium was destined for failure in the portable market.
Today, more and more people are learning that small, portable, players capable of holding not just one album, or one artist, but a large portion, if not all, of your personal music library are the way to go. No more messing around with disks. How does this affect CD sales though? Well, because the record industry is so concerned about piracy, it turns out that they make it difficult for the lay person to get music from their CD to their portable device. It also turns out that the easiest, and most popular, way of ripping CD's is to use iTunes. Great, but iTunes has a music store right there, which is usually faster than going out to a CD store, looking for a CD, buying an entire album for one song you like, bringing it back home, ripping it to your iTunes library, and loading it on to your portable device. What do you do with all the CD's? I know people who have racks of CD's collecting dust and they take up more space than you'd think, not to mention keeping them organized can be a chore.
Napster showed people how easy it could be to get music digitally, they did it by violating copyright, but it caught the attention of a few companies, mainly Apple. With the iTunes Music Store people could now get music digitally, faster, and more easily, than pirating it. People are willing to pay for this added level of convenience, but not much, otherwise they'll resort back to piracy. The trick is finding the right price that will get the record industry the most money before they loose sales to piracy. It turns out that price is 99 cents per song. This is predictable psychologically; 99 cents for one song seems cheep, while adding 50 cents to that price makes it seem completely unreasonable to most consumers.
Regardless of weather it's iPod+iTunes, or another digital music player, the fact is that the CD as a portable player never worked and is now dieing. With a majority market shift from people playing music in their homes, to people playing music using portables, it's obvious that CD sales would inevitably be doomed to failure.
Record Labels, odd that we still call them that, can easily improve their "bottom line" by simply ending the production and distribution of physical media. The overhead in distributing music digitally is far, far, less than the overhead of printing CD's, packaging them, shipping them, and replacing defective copies.
The record companies continue to complain about profits and CD sales while digital music sales go up. "Even though digital music sales are rising they don't match the profit returned from CD sales they replace". Of course they don't, if you're still paying to manufacture and distribute CD's. The market has decided that digital content distribution is the way they want music, they've decided that 99 cents a song is what they will pay, and the
I'm a Computer Science major but my concentration is Information Assurance and Security.
There are a lot of bad ideas here from people who obviously think that they understand security. When it comes to security someone saying that something is possible should raise an eyebrow, and someone saying that something is impossible should be ignored.
Give me physical access to a computer of an IT staff member who has reasonable levels of access and I will be able to compromise the entire network; period.
If I have physical access to a computer it is mine, and short of physically stopping me there is nothing you can do to prevent me from having complete access to that computer.
Imagine this, if you will:
I have a motive to gain complete control over the network. Be it that I'm a disgruntled employee, looking to profit, or simply wanting to get some dirt on someone I don't like... for some reason I want to get complete control of the network.
Why would I sit down at the computer and work on it for long when there is a risk of being caught?
Instead I bring a bootable utility disk, an external hard drive, and boot up an environment that will let me create a bit-stream image of the entire disk and save it to my external drive.
It takes me about 30 to 120 seconds to set this up, maybe a few extra min if I need to reset the BIOS (but this is an IT staff workstation, I'm sure the lazy IT employee just has his workstation set to boot off the CD already...)
So I go away for an hour or two, come back, retrieve my external HD and there is no way to detect I ever accessed that disk.
Later, I perform an analysis of the disk image looking in file slack, ram slack, and deleted files... what do I find? Sensitive conversations, documents, encryption keys, and passwords: jackpot. That's right, I don't care if you save everything off on a network drive, if your workstation has a hard disk chances are that most of the information I need is hidden on it (especially true on Windows workstations and NTFS file systems).
Not only did I just get all the "keys" to your precious network, but I also got myself an exact copy of that computers configuration so I can replicate it if I need to, and I did it so fast that you won't even realize there is a problem.
How long did this take me? About 5 min of access to the computer, with some down time where I was away doing something else (gee, Mr. Janitor can do this can't he?) in between.
So you see, this idea of storing "sensitive" data only on the network is bunk. You created a $50,000 lock that I can pick with a 5 cent pen, congratulations, your CEO must be proud.
Any, and I stress this: Any computer terminal that is not physically secured should be a diskless workstation. People underestimate the value in thin client computing. From a security standpoint you should treat every hard disk that has ever been in a computer that has accessed sensitive information, even once, as a copy of that information. This includes documents viewed, passwords entered, etc. In other words: every hard disk in your organization.
I guess I'll mention it now for those of you who can't read between the lines: Do you ever throw out old hard drives? What information was on them? What information is still on them? Every time a computer hard disk comes into contact with IT, it should be whipped thoroughly with multiple passes of random data (to avoid data recovery though forensics techniques). I recommend at least the American DoD 5220-22.M Standard Wipe. There are Free Software tools available to do this, such as DBAN.
So are cubicles a bad idea for IT staff computers? I think the answer to that is obvious. The real question here is: Is the benefit to having workstations with hard disks worth the extra security concerns they present? If you deal in sensitive information, you want to be very sure that every computer with a hard disk is physically secure.
The new term for Infosec is "Information Assurance and Security". You want to find a university that offers an IAS program and attend it. The NSA has an IAS certification program if you look arround their website you can find NSA accredited IAS programs. Most notablly are programs offered by Perdue University at thier Center for Education and Research in Information Assurance and Security (CERIAS).
UMFK is also a good choice for Information Assurance and Security if you can't afford Perdue's tuition rates.
Once you have a degree with an IAS specialization it's not hard at all to find internships and eventually job opertunities in the field as its growing like wildfire. Most IAS programs have their students grabbed up by employers before they even finsih their senior year.
This isn't a flame, just hear me out.
- Intel creates CPUs
- Intel, like almost every other CPU manufacturer, creates a compiler for their CPUs
- AMD creates CPUs
- AMD creates no compiler
- AMD bitches about Intel, their competition, not supporting their CPU with their compiler.
I'm really not seeing a case here.
Do we expect the Intel compiler to also support PPC and MIPS too? Are we going to sue Intel now, because they don't support 3DNow! in their compiler?
That is ridiculous.
If AMD has a case about unfair business practices regarding back room deals and contracts explicitly encouraging OEMs not to use AMD products then that's one thing, but please stick to that and don't try to make Intel look bad over this bullshit.
No other company would bend over backwards to support special optimizations for a competitor, why would anyone expect Intel to? I don't.
If AMD is upset they should write their own compiler. If you're upset as a developer you should help out with GCC, because Free Software avoids these things.
Again, I see no case here. This article was posted to rally AMD fanatics or something. I usually like AMD, but this type of thing just makes me look down on AMD and its community.
Learn how to Read.
Well, cancer stuff is cool and all, and I know you all love to comment on anything involving fruit... but I think the AIDS blocking research is a bit more interesting, personally. Not that I have AIDS or anything, but it would certainly be nice to be rid of it, especially in Africa.
There is long, and then there is long. People were expecting it to come out sooner, and it was met with delay after delay. Long release cycles are fine if you tell people about them, but when people expect that you'll be releaing a new version next year and it turns into 3 years later... well... Needless to say, for a while a lot of Debian users moved to more current alternatives.
People want predictability.
They started out friendly, but now Ubuntu is distancing itself more and more from Debian, they're making no effort to even stay compatible for package installation, which I think is hurting Debian in the long run. I really wish people would just try and help Debian if they have a problem with it instead of starting up yet another dist to make GNU/Linux "OS of a thousand distributions."
Debian was my first GNU/Linux distribution. 1.3 was the stable at the time, but I ran the 2.0 unstable canidate. For a while I've used others... but I always come back to Debian. The Debian Security Team is a big part of the reason. The comunity nature of Debian, and the history of Debian represent a real important part of the Free Software comunity.
Security is often a thankless job. People only care once something goes wrong. They don't see all the work it takes to coordinate timely security responce. It should also be noted that Debian takes a proactive approach to security with the Debian Security Audit Team.
Debian lost a lot of its reputation with the delays for the current stable release. I think the future of Debian, if its to keep its reputation, will be to move to a standard release cycle of once every 2 years. Sure the Debian releases are few and far between compared to other distributions, but Debian is about software Freedom, not bleading edge technology. It provides a solid and secure OS, and most system administrators don't want to roll out a new version of an OS every 2 years, in fact, most would rather keep running an OS as long as there are security updates.
There are certainly a lot of challanges for Debian right now, hopefully the "Security Issue" goes away with this change.
I've seen a lot of cases where the "leader" doesn't know anything about the project and the real people who know what's going on are the minions below him. I'm guessing this is usually the case at NASA
Now "Linux" is its own classification of software? Come on, it's bad enough you people call it an operating system... ;-)
No offence, but every user should be aware when something is encrypted, and they should be explicitly telling it to be encrypted.
What if "Alice sends an email to Bob" assuming it will be encrypted but "Bob doesn't have a registered public key" so the message is sent normally?
It seems like the easy way to hack this is to block access to the key server so it sends mail unencrypted everytime?
I'm not sure, the website wasn't too informative. Either way, it doesn't get much simpiler than having a "Sign" and "Encrypt" checkbox for GPG. I don't see how this is a good idea at all.
Sorry, but I hope I never see a "Linux" standard that deals with anything other than the Linux kernel.
:P
In all honesty, not enough thought has gone into creating a standard for GNU+Linux. I don't want to see good ideas like debian's package managment system go to waste because everyone decideds to make a bad descission and adopt RPM for package managment.
What about a standard GUI framework? Don't make me start up the KDE vs. GNOME vs. GNUstep fights
Standardization of BAD ideas would just hold back progression. An ISO standard might even make it so that ISO can legitimately charge money for Linux, ever think about that?
Who needs standardization, people will eventually gravitate towards the best, and that will be the standard.
The language is the least of your worries. I would strongly advise against
Python is getting more and more credibility in Healthcare and Scientific computing. Its fast, easy, stable, and secure. It would be a very smart move to use Python.
Your real focus should be HIPAA compliance. If you don't know what HIPAA is you shouldn't even have this contract, but assuming you're not going to just "give up" you should read up and become informed on HIPAA. This is assuming you're doing the work for a Healthcare provider in the US that is... anyway, HIPAA regulates healthcare software... if you don't meet HIPAA standards for security (not only coding wise but access wise etc) your product will be useless and you'll be forced to redo it... more importantly... you'll look like a group of idiots.
So yeah, start reading up on HIPAA (It takes months to understand it all if your not fimilar with it at all, so I wouldn't waste any time.)
We recompile code all the time in the free and open source world.
Opteron is not even a compitition to IBMs POWER5, let alone the Itanium. I think you should do a bit of research. UNIX generally performs better on RISC.
EPIC is ahead of its time. You're thinking about 20th century computing. "Compiling" code is becoming less and less practical. Computers today can now handle so many operations in shuch a short span of time that the benifits of an inturpreted language outweigh the performance loss. For example, not having to deal with building, linking, compiling code etc., being able to put security checks at the VM level to offer drastically more secure computing systems...
Such a system, designed to take advantage of EPIC is alredy in the works, it will be Free Software, and early tests show that EPIC is dramatically better than older archs for this type of next generation computing.
The benifits of EPIC really stand out when you start to scale, the perofmance gap grows exponentially in that case, so yes, right now... Intel is correct is avoiding trying to maket Itanium as a desktop processor.
Granted the Itanium 2 has some shortcomings, but the EPIC arhc is definatelly a keeper.
Thats all I'm going to say.