Are you suggesting it is possible to create a program that doesn't involve buffers?
Even the simplest Hello World program uses buffers. Even fancy languages that have run-times and virtual machines use buffers. Buffers are an integral part of designing software because they are an integral part of how the machine works at the hardware level.

I blame the programmers not the language.

I don't even have to think about doing it. Often times it is as simple as an additional if statement to check the size of your source and destination buffers. If the destination buffer is smaller, just don't do the copy.

I see.
Well, as far as a little OOP in C goes, what I have done is to create structures with whatever member data I need, and within those structures I place function pointers to emulate methods.
If you see yourself doing a lot of that you can create functions that return pointers to your makeshift structure-class.
Obviously you don't really get any advanced OOP stuff, but you can get simple inheritance using this method and a whole lot of encapsulation. If I'm not mistaken I think that C-family languages that support OOP actually do something like this behind the scenes.

I guess I wouldn't mind a smidgen of OOP in C as long as they implement it through a library and not directly into the core language.

If you want OOP and C go with C++ instead.
C is supposed to be a high level assembly language, so simplicity and brevity are key.

I find that Objective-C is pretty nice to. It is a very strict super-set of C that adds some OOP functionality and is no where near as complex as C++, in fact it is just a library or two sitting on top of a C compiler to interpret the OOP syntax. It is a shame that it is so tightly bound to Apple products.

The multi-threaded stuff sounds nice. But bounds checking, really? How difficult is it to check buffer size before copying?

I don't make the rules. XP

Apparently there has been some big debate as to whether or not math is a science, for at least a couple hundred years.
People in favor of considering mathematics a science say that it goes back to the root meaning of "science" as a "field of knowledge". Even in the contemporary sense of the term "science", they argue that there are still instances where you would use experimentation to prove or disprove a hypothesis. Naturally though that only happens if you are developing some new formula or something like that.

I guess it kind of makes scene. It is just that we have established so much of mathematics already that it doesn't seem like science because there isn't as much experimental stuff going on with it directly.

There is one thing that invalidates maths that are applied to it, blackholes! XD

Personally, I don't really see the justification for math being a science either, but I just kind of go with it.

Not to be rude, but reread the post.

The OP says he normally teaches hard sciences to students with a major in a hard science meaning that they are more likely prepared for the learning of hard sciences. Because of some staffing issues the OP now must teach his hard science classes to students with a major in soft sciences, thus previous classes may not have fully prepared them for a hard science class.
Because of this the OP is asking how to mold his teaching strategy to better target those soft science majors.

I believe you have miss-interpreted what I said, but I understand what you mean.

What I mean is that there are certain expectations a Unix user might have of their user space and how they interact with it. Think of it as a cultural/unwritten standard. Some user space tools like GNU feel more Unixy then a few LEDs and push-buttons. After all, you can't really pipe the output of an LED into a push-button, though I'm sure you could modify the system to pipe the signal going to an LED into whatever the push-button activated some how, but that isn't exactly the same.

Maybe I'm being a little to philosophical, XP

Having only grazed over the article, Windows NT is Microsoft's current flagship operating system. Windows NT 6.1 being their latest "stable" release marketed under the names Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2

But if they really meant "Windows NT" as in Windows NT 4.0, then I agree, that is pretty darn bad

They didn't port Hurd to the Emacs platform yet. That is why it wasn't as successful.

Like Novell OES-Linux and Cisco NX-OS.

I think Android would still be considered a Unix through and through (going purely on behavior rather then trademarks and licensing)

I always found it weird that you could just plop a non-Unix user space right on top of a Unix kernel. But I guess with enough abstraction anything is possible.

* I mean, most people only ever seem to really use a text editor and a web browser.
A lot of accounting software and architecture design software is already networked to some extent.

I'm sure it would be impossible to move an entire network over to this model, but I think the bulk of a network could be implemented like this.

A cloud model is heavily relying on network resources for your computing needs, no?

Instead of handing out fat clients to all your users, why not host applications over the local network, and give users thin clients? The way I see it, it is less for them to break.
Besides, in the "traditional" enterprise network server-client model, we already rely heavily on networked printing and networked file systems.

I think that if we adopt the cloud model for our internal networks (i.e. a private cloud) that would help improve manageability of the network.
Rather then outsource to someone else's cloud, create your own.

Yes.
But all the ones currently running on PC compatible platforms do not use UEFI secure boot.

When it comes time to buy new hardware, webhosts can chose to put their money into other platforms like SPARC. Maybe in a few years ARM will have some offerings in the server range. RISC is the way to go anyways.