There are hundreds of open source projects ranging from simple email software to publicly dedicated WWW servers and full operating systems. This article describes an online platform for educators with free open source educational systems including wikis, blogs, bulletin boards, Content/Course Management Systems, and MOOs, all open systems which are easily installed and managed. By setting up a content-based server, educators can save and archive their files online easily, and integrate their online resources without needing web design skill. With full control of these different educational tools, educators can form a collaborative learning community based on their teaching goals. Thus teachers and students can build an online community as partners. They can learn from and with others, share and try out web learning tools, distribute leadership and inspiration, and support and interact with others from all over the world.
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Threads play a major role in applications programming today. For example, most Web servers are threaded, as are many Java GUI programs. Here are the major settings in which using threads has been founded convenient and/or efficient:
• Programs with asynchronous events:
Here the program must be ready for various events, but does not know the order in which they might occur. For example, in Sections 3.1 and 3.2, we have a network server connected to several clients. The server does not know from which client the next message will arrive. So, we have the server create a separate thread for each client, with each thread handling only its client.
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In the late 1990’s many ERP companies caught the web browser wave, undertaking projects to leverage the Internet and browser technology and even to convert their software to “lite-client” or web “portal” architectures. Unfortunately for some, .NET came on the scene too soon after this major overhaul. When .NET appeared, some were too technically exhausted, or inflexible, or still basking in the glow of their new “Internet-based architectures” to recognize and embrace .NET. Other ERP software companies were and continue to be simply too busy struggling to stay solvent during the devastating one-two-three punch of Y2K, the recession of 2000, and 9/11. They lack the resources to consider the complete restructuring of their products that .NET warrants.
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There is an ongoing information war raging in the software world. Despite free software developers’ best efforts, new proprietary software continues to proliferate. Improved techniques must be developed to reverse engineer efficiently closed data formats so that free, interoperable solutions can be deployed under Linux.

Software reverse engineering occurs on various levels. It may be necessary to study a piece of poorly written, poorly commented code developed in a high-level language such as C++ and understand what the original program was supposed to accomplish. It may also be necessary to disassemble a program that has been compiled into machine language and express it as a higher-level language. In doing this, the underlying algorithms can eventually be expressed as higher-level concepts in a human language. After obtaining an algorithmic description via reverse engineering, the algorithm can be reimplemented for any language on any computing platform.
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The EPICS toolkit consists of a set of software components with which Application Developers can create a control system. The basic component types are:
•OPI
Operator Interface. A UNIX- or NT-based workstation or PC which can run various EPICS tools—the “clients.”
•IOC
Input Output Controller. A VME/VXI-based chassis containing a Motorola 68K or PPC processor with various VME I/O modules for analog and digital signals, and for access to field buses such as Allen-Bradley, GPIB, CANbus or CAMAC.
•LAN
TCP/IP-based Local Area Network. A communication network which connects the IOCs and OPIs. EPICS provides a software com- ponent, Channel Access, which provides network transparent commu- nication between every client—such as OPI—and an arbitrary number of servers—such as IOC.
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What Is Silverlight?
Silverlight is a new Web presentation technology that is created to run on a variety of platforms. It enables the creation of rich, visually stunning and interactive experiences that can run everywhere: within browsers and on multiple devices and desktop operating systems (such as the Apple Macintosh). In consistency with WPF (Windows Presentation Foundation), the presentation technology in Microsoft .NET Framework 3.0 (the Windows programming infrastructure), XAML (eXtensible Application Markup Language) is the foundation of the Silverlight presentation capability.
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RealObjects PDFreactor is a powerful formatting processor that enables server-side PDF creation from XML and XHTML/HTML documents using Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) to define page layout and styles. You can dynamically generate PDF documents such as reports, invoices, statements and others on-the-fly. Since PDFreactor runs on your server, the end-user does not need any software other than a Web browser with a free PDF viewer.
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Traditionally, Microsoft’s core business has been focused on the Windows platform and the Office suite. Windows and Office, by all means, continue to be the heart of Microsoft. The latest versions of the flagship products, Windows Vista and the Office 2007 System, made available to the public at the end of January 2007, have fueled the vast majority of the company’s most recent fiscal second quarter record financial results of $16.37 billion in revenue, and $6.48 billion in operating income. With Office SP1 out of the way at the end of 2007, Microsoft is currently building Windows Vista Service Pack 1, Windows XP Service Pack 3 and Windows 7 client platforms, as well as putting the finishing touches on Windows Server 2008.
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