Several courses on dutch universities have 'numerus fixus', which means only a limited number of students are accepted, as the universities can't accept more due to the facilities and the nature of the courses. This doesn't make them 'elite', as the selection isn't really a selection, but a lottery. In other words, it's not 'hard' to get into, you just have to have luck. It's sad it's this way, really, but on the other hand, it's fair.

We have 1 elite university in the netherlands: Nijenrode University, but compared to Harvard and Princeton, it's very small scale and relatively less expensive.

You as a law student in Amsterdam should know there IS small elitism among law graduates in the netherlands: Leiden University and Utrecht University law students are considered 'higher educated', by many people, which is of course prejudice bullsh*t, but you know how people are. It's however not the same as with the USA system, as you could have applied to study law in Leiden as well, without any extra effort.

The point isn't which university / college you should choose based on what the quality of the program they offer, but whether it's worth the costs.

You say you had the 'elite route', and I hope for you that if you had to take a huge debt to make it through college/grad school, you can afford to pay it back. But what if you didn't have the job(s) you had after you graduated, simply because there aren't that many jobs for people with your skillset/knowledge? Not everyone becomes a researcher (most people don't).

One should really wonder whether it's worth it to take a debt of $100,000+ to visit an Ivy League college/gradschool, as there's no guarantee you will land a job to pay it back.

Because of the limited number of instructions, you have more instructions for a logical operation, e.g. multiply (although many risc cpu's have that operation), so this means you have to load more bytes from ram to do the same thing as a CISC instruction with lesser bytes than the whole piece of code for the risc. As cpu speed vs. ram / bus speed is skewed, it's more efficient to have instructions which take maybe a bit more bits, but on average they don't really take that much more and have microcode on-die to handle them, instead of having to load alot of risc instruction bytes from ram for doing basic operations a cisc can do through microcode. As long as the memory speed/busspeed is not exactly the same as the cpu speed (like on the ps3 where memory/bus runs at 3ghz, equal to the cpu) but slower, risc isn't always more optimal.

For years, people flying to the USA have been treated as criminals when they entered the USA, with questioning at the home airport, scanners, photos taken, fingerprints taken, several times questioning by assault-rifle carrying border patrols what the F*** you're doing in the USA, laptops searched (and taken), camera's searched, shoes that have to be taken off, belts that have to be taken off, no water you could take with you on board, you have to register on a website which costs 14 euros if you want to be left in....do I need to go on?

Now, the USA citizen gets what others have been punished with for years. I'm glad the USA citizen finally experience this and hopefully they'll realize what kind of crap they have forced upon foreigners for years. Because, make no mistake: we in europe now have to get new passports because the USA demands passports with biometrical information. The USA demands that people boarding for the USA in europe are questioned by a security officer who asks questions like "Who packed your bag" and if you answer "My wife" he'll respond with "Do you trust your wife?". What the **** is that kind of shit?.

I do remember the days when I was boarding for Amsterdam on a greece island and all passengers were in a single hall, security was as tough as "Oh is that your bag? Looks ok, carry on!" and everyone had a great time. Did anything ever happen on one of those flights? no.

... simply because most Oracle client stuff runs on it/is written in it. Oracle depends on Java in a lot of ways, and I think it's strategic for them as well, especially against IBM which also relies heavily on Java.

That some high-end people leave Oracle now is not a surprise nor do I think that Oracle will give a hoot: Oracle hasn't become big by sitting on their hands or because they hired only stupid people, they have a lot of clever people on staff as well, they know the brains will come in sooner or later or maybe they already have them on their payroll. Either way: just because some guy did something some years ago at Sun doesn't make that person irreplaceable at Oracle, on the contrary: it might be that person has a vision which worked back then but has no value in the future.

... given that SAT already is NP complete, doesn't that already prove P!=NP? For P to be equal to NP, it has to be equal for SAT too, which it isn't.

So isn't it then coming down to: WHICH classifications can be made, so P==NP for class X and P!=NP for class Y?

Read Shimizu's paper about protecting software through hardware (She's the lead designer for the CELL's protection mechanism). It has nothing to do with obscurity, you simply can't reach the place where things get decrypted as it's on the CELL, in hardware. There are no 'key's to be found, it's not protected by software.

A few years ago I flew from The Netherlands to the USA for a Microsoft conference. At the airport I was asked who packed my suitcase. I was first unwilling to answer that kind of stupid questions but I was told to cooperate or I couldn't board the plane. I asked why these questions were necessary and I was told the USA required them. So I answered "My wife" (which was true). I was then asked "Do you trust your wife?". I was amazed about these kind of questions... wtf do you think .. of course I trust my wife. It went on and on...

When I arrived in the USA, I had my picture taken like I am some kind of criminal, fingerprints were taken (my own country doesn't even have my fingerprints!), I was asked where I stayed, when I would go back (it was written down in the passport), what I was going to do in the USA, why (!), and after that I was asked 10 (!) more times by various people what my business was in the USA, what I was going to do there. And not by normal people, but by people with assault rifles, army boots and what looked like combat police uniforms.

At that moment I decided: I'll never ever go to the USA again, until they become sane again.

Ps: when I and the rest of the people from my plane were waiting for the first customs counter (where you get your mugshot taken and fingerprints seized) border patrol was actively looking for people who held a passport with arabic characters in their hand. These people were taken aside.

Isn't there a line in the USA anthem which says 'land of the free' ? I don't know but what the USA is doing has little to do with 'freedom' IMHO.

I, as a professional ISV owning developer, can only pay my bills because of copyright. This way, I can write software for a living and sell licenses of my work to my customers. What you wrote is IMHO one of the most stupidest things I've ever read about copyright: why would someone who created something NOT own that work? You seem to think that person doesn't own that work, 'society' does.

Sorry, but that's just an excuse for ignoring the fact that you don't own the hard work of other people, they do.

I write software for a living. I have worked for 2 years full time on a new version and I sell that version for money. I can do so because copyright law exists: I _own_ the work I created.

I therefore fail to see why this is a bad thing. Who are you to say what *I* should do with the software I worked on for over 2 years full time? (mind you: I payed my bills from my own pocket) Copyright is a right given to people who create stuff to make THEM decide what they do with it, instead of the people who want to USE it. You for example are not in charge what should happen with my work, I am. And I think that's fair, as I wrote it, spend all my time on it and payed for it from my own pocket, you didn't do a thing for it, so why should you be entitled to use it freely? How am I then going to pay the bills?

It's shocking how much people here bash this composer, as this is a site which always has taken the stance against GPL violation.

If a person X writes a piece of code and licenses it under the GPL, it's X' decision. If I take that code and embed it in my own code, not giving credits to X nor open my own code, I thus 'stole' X' work. It's the same thing as with this sheetmusic: the composer asks money for his work, that's HIS choice, not anybody's elses. If someone else wants to use / have the sheetmusic, that person has to pay: obey the rules the creator of the work has stated.

It's strange that on a site where every GPL violation is big news and a lot of people show their support for the GPL etc. etc. it's apparently 'ok' to violate the rules some composer has stated for HIS work. It's not YOUR work, it's HIS work. Don't want to pay? don't download it.

You are not the one who makes the decision how a creator of a work should distribute that work, unless YOU created that work. Take GPL-ed software. That's IP, if you want it or not. Why? Because that's what the law says.

If I take a GPL-ed piece of software and embed it in my proprietary piece of software and sell it, slashdot and the rest of the open source world would be up in arms, like they have been in the past. That's exactly the same thing as what this composer did.

I.o.w.: it's exactly the same as with the GPL: a work created by a person has distribution rights, and the owner of the work decides which ones, no-one else. Don't like it? Don't use the work. It's that simple. Same with GPL-ed software.

Furthermore, this isn't about some RIAA douchebag bullying some teen. This is about some composer who rightfully wants freeloaders to pay for his work, the same as what a software engineer who wrote a piece of GPL licensed code wants: s/he licensed it as gpl-ed code so users of it in other pieces of code have to follow the rules: it's not their code, they have to follow the rules what the OWNER of the code has stated.

The 'brenna' person is really not that bright. The claim that people can't afford expensive sheet music and really need it because they otherwise will never have a chance in the profession they've chosen is utterly lame. Not only does the composer show that the sheetmusic costs 4$ (which is on par with a starbucks latte in some cities) but what does this brenna person tell the cashier at the local grocery store? "Please give me this food for free, I can't otherwise make a living in this tough profession"? I don't think so.

This kind of border crap is something I want to avoid at all cost. Last time I entered the USA (through seattle airport) I was questioned 10 times (TEN TIMES) what my business was there. And not by polite people who were friendly, no, by soldiers with M16's.

Why would anyone voluntarily want to go through all that?

At least in some European countries: if you file a patent of an idea it's thrown out without being looked at, you have to file a patent of an application of the idea.

To me these 'patents' are nothing more than results of brainstorms which were then patented in case someone else created the idea in real life.

The research on software for multi-core/cpu computers wasn't stopped once people thought their desktops were fast enough, it's been continued for decades and the results have lead to more and more efficient servers. The point is that the PC, the desktop/laptop computer isn't setup as a server with multiple cpu's, shared memory and what not, and in there lies the problem. Not the research, not the software design principles, not the lack of research in languages.