On Jul 23, 7:09 pm, rjf <fate...@gmail.com> wrote: > Regarding Sage running on a server: some of the components may be > sufficiently general as to pose hazards in a server environment. For > example, Maxima can create and delete files, quickly fill up all > available memory, etc. I would guess that other components are also > hazardous. It seems to me that the only practical solution is to run > Sage in a virtual machine on the server, which may be costly. Is that > what is being proposed?
yes, a c compiler is also a requirement for sage, therefore potentially everything could happen. uhm, i think, a possible way would be to split data and processing. this means, there is a central switch point from the outside network, it knows about many sage systems running in virtual environments (one benefit is, that they can be reset very quickly, restoring their files, ...) and it picks one of them for a user. on the "back side" is a data storage for each user, that is also connected to the selected sage instance. if a sage fails, just the session is killed, not the data. also about the hazards, it should be possible to make things more secure. but that's complicated. one thing that comes to my mind with compiling c code is the "native client" approach by google. it tries to run native code inside a webbrowser. to avoid hazards, there is a checker for the compiled code before it is executed! http://code.google.com/p/nativeclient/ http://nativeclient.googlecode.com/svn/data/docs_tarball/nacl/googleclient/native_client/documentation/nacl_paper.pdf I don't know the details, but Sage has a similar "problem" ;) > > Regarding Sage adoption by schools -- there is a large literature on > computer algebra and teaching.[...] Will using Sage help > weak students? Also for many students, math courses are an (unwelcome) > requirement. Will they change because of Sage? > .... > If a student just doesn't understand (say) what is a function, or > what is a group, will a computer program help? Uhm, i think that's too complicated to say anything definitely about those questions. Although they are very important. I think, one very useful and interesting "test" could be the following: stick together three average students (not only maths, also physics ...) without any or only limited prior knowledge of Sage, with Sage on one PC and let them do their homework together on that computer. a video cam watches them and also one for the monitor! I expect them to get angry and probably fail to use Sage, but that would give a lot of information how they tried to use the product, where they expected things to be, and so on. And yes, I think it would help some students to understand what a group or ring is if it is programmable in sage - but I say only some, others might be confused or more happy with another approach! I think there is no golden way that fits for all students, but more opportunities and more representations of the same idea help to abstract it. H --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ To post to this group, send email to sage-devel@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to sage-devel-unsubscr...@googlegroups.com For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/sage-devel URLs: http://www.sagemath.org -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
